disclaimer: without prejudice. the names of all characters contained here-in are the property of FOX and Ryan Murphy. no infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
author's notes: written for Seblaine Sunday, prompt: crime fighting. inspired by a gifset by sebastardclarington. written for Allie.
Trouble;;
The call comes in over the radio on his way to work, dead body found under overpass, and it still settles underneath his skin uneasy every time, the frequency of those calls, the cruelty of people when pushed to their limits, the path of crime scenes blotted all over the city. He's seen them in all kinds of places; rich mansions, cardboard boxes in an alleyway, elevators, clubs, cars, rooftops, but it never ceased to affect him one way or the other.
Some would say they learn to live with it, that they give it a place separate from their home lives, keep it locked behind walls impenetrable by outsiders, memories indexed inside imaginary filing cabinets.
But that's a thing most people say to get to sleep at night.
He angles the car around, the back and forth of the windshield wipers making his route visible enough to navigate through the rain pouring in torrents from the sky. Some days everything clashes, the contradiction between a sunny summer day and the putrid smell of a decomposing body, but then there are days like these, unabashedly illustrative of his job–rain, cold that chilled to the bone, the entire playing field a dark grey hue that complemented pale white lividity.
Grabbing his forensics kit from the car, Sebastian dives under the police tape after showing his badge. His boss outlines the case for him and Quinn, ordering them to process the first two people on the scene, a man and woman dressed in black hoodies under leather jackets, guarded by two officers in uniform.
"You two find the body?" he asks, approaching them from behind, clipping his badge onto the bottom of his shirt, unaware that the two witnesses turn around in synchrony, and one of them recognizes him.
"Sebastian?" comes a still too familiar voice, accompanied by the recollection of a hot mouth against his skin and his lips, fingers digging into his back, and the sweet cries of sexual release.
He looks up to find two dark eyes unlike any other he's ever had the pleasure of gazing into. "Blaine," he breathes, trying hard not to drop his kit in the process, overwhelmed by the sudden assault of memories his mind gets flooded with, a soft haze of endorphins rushing through his veins like heroin. Blaine stares at him, arms crossed over his chest, eyes doused in confusion–his probably spell out the same sentiment.
Quinn, standing next to him with her own kit, clears her throat.
He snaps to and averts his eyes. "Did you touch anything?"
"We turned him over," Blaine's friend answers; she's a tall Latina who's hiding most of her features inside her hoodie, hands stuffed into the pockets of her leather jacket. He's never seen her before, but then he never did meet any of Blaine's friends.
"We're gonna need a DNA sample from both of you, and your fingerprints."
Blaine remains silent, leaving his friend to say, "We didn't kill the guy."
"I don't think you did," he answers. "It's for elimination. Standard procedure."
The Latina takes a step closer, "No, I know my rights and–"
"Santana," –Blaine grabs his friend by the arm– "Let's just do this and split, okay?"
Quinn ushers Santana to a more secluded spot, leaving him alone with a boy he hasn't seen in two years.
This is the last place he thought he'd find Blaine again.
"So this is what Sebastian Smythe does by day," Blaine says, plopping down on the hood of a nearby car, regarding him in much the same way he's tempted to scrutinize Blaine–barely held back curiosity, mildly amused, and a little scared. He's not sure if he should feel relieved that Blaine still remembers his name.
Blaine had literally tumbled into his life, shoved into his arms at a club he was checking out with some friends. It started messy and sudden, with careless flirtation and a dance, a sloppy drunken kiss at the end of the night. He'd been assigned to the crime scene unit only two weeks before and his brain needed short-circuiting, and Blaine turned out to be the most welcome distraction.
He returned to the club night after night until his eyes located Blaine automatically, who was always talking to someone, but always joined him. Their fling started precarious and fun, but it didn't take him long to develop feelings for the loose-jointed boy who saw right through him. They talked, they flirted, found release with each other he could've found in various other partners, but there was something about Blaine that kept drawing him back.
Maybe it was the way he held his cigarette, rolled it between two fingers, his head tipped back and eyes closed when he breathed out the smoke, savoring it longer after they'd fooled around for a bit. Maybe it was the way Blaine talked in moments like those, about rock bands he'd never heard of and long dead singers that made him realize Blaine was a boy born in the wrong era. Or maybe it was simply the way Blaine kissed him, once on the lips and once to the corner of his mouth, before he got dressed again and left for the night.
Because Blaine never stayed.
"Hey!" a cop yells, about to call Blaine out. "Get down from there, you little–"
"It's okay," –he holds up his badge, stopping the officer in his tracks– "I got him."
Blaine slides down, both feet planted firmly on the ground again. "I should keep you around."
"Why?" he asks, carefully placing his kit on the hood of the police car and unlatching it. "You plan on getting into trouble?" He cocks an eyebrow, but Blaine only smiles; he always did enjoy his definition of trouble.
"You didn't strike me as a cop," Blaine says, eyes trailing down his body, leaving him to question whether Blaine ever took the time to size him up as anything. Whenever they talked it was never about work, and the whole point for him was to leave the job behind.
He shakes his head, slipping on his neoprene gloves. "I'm not a cop."
"And we never did spend a lot of time talking, did we?" Blaine still reads his mind after all this time.
He chuckles. "You haven't changed."
Blaine leans in closer and winks. "You always liked me this way."
He swallows hard, and tries to focus on his work, opening a buccal swab to brush against the inside of Blaine's cheek. Blaine opens his mouth and he reaches the swab inside, his mind rehashing all the ways that mouth had tasted him–their first kiss imbued with the cheap whisky the bar peddled; Blaine's tongue teasing over his sweaty skin; that one night after a horrible day in court and Blaine blew him in the front seat of his car, his come staining pearly white on his cheeks.
Blaine had been more than a distraction to him, he was someone he'd come to trust with his pleasure that he often allowed to verge on pain if it meant bearing it in Blaine's arms, someone there after an awful day at work that could wash away the trace evidence with little to no effort. Someone he'd taken for granted. Because Blaine disappeared into thin air, without any explanation.
He grabs the electronic fingerprinting kit, much easier to use than the standard ink and fingerprint card, especially in the field, and takes hold of Blaine's hand, the onslaught of images revived by the simple action enough to make him lose his focus again–Blaine's fingertips nipping at his skin, thumbs circling his nipples, a warm palm adding pressure to his abdomen. A fist around his hard-on.
He clears his throat, the recollection briefly shattered, and it's enough to notice that when he presses Blaine's fingers to the touchscreen, his movements become irregular and twitchy. "Are you okay?" he asks, releasing Blaine's hand. "You're shaking."
"I'm fine." Blaine shrugs, and starts digging around in his pockets. "You got any smokes?"
"I don't–"
"You don't smoke," Blaine interrupts, smiling a crooked though anxious grin. "I almost forgot."
And he'd find the time to be touched that Blaine bothered to remember that, but Blaine's teeth start clattering as if he's terribly cold, yet despite the rain temperatures haven't dropped that drastically.
"Blaine, you don't seem fine," he says, tempted to reach out and rub Blaine's back, but he lost the courage to do that–Blaine left him for a reason, and there's a part of him that's convinced it was something he did; maybe he got too close or too clingy, maybe he wanted more from Blaine than even he had realized.
Blaine rubs at his arm, eyes downcast and his voice grows smaller, "I've never seen a dead body before."
He almost falls a step closer, but stops himself, heart aching around the confession and his own memory–he was eleven years old, his grandfather lay still in his coffin, his mother cried while his father kept his distance, and when they got home his grandmother made him a strong cup of tea with more sugar than he'd ever been allowed.
"Wait here," he says, aware that Blaine can't use his pity or his comfort, and heads back to his car, grabbing a can of soda from the glove compartment. "Drink it." He hands the can over to Blaine once he's made his way back. "It'll make you feel better."
Blaine hesitates for only a moment before he greedily starts sipping, visibly relaxing. Blaine's never been one to accept charity easily, he believed in making his own way and prided himself in not needing anyone, so this experience must have Blaine pretty shaken up. He's seen countless of dead bodies since his grandfather, and he still hasn't gotten used to it.
More than ever their two worlds seem to have collided, but the silence between them alienates, they don't match up, they don't fit together when scrutinized like this. Blaine's the bad boy to his good cop routine but he doesn't want him to be.
He labels the swabs he took and packs up his kit, a tug at his shirt where Blaine absconds with his badge.
"Hey," he protests feebly, while Blaine uncovers a permanent marker and writes down his phone number on the plastic covering his badge–he's almost certain he had something more to say, but the temptation of Blaine proves as alluring as it is frightening all over again. If it's a choice between a little mayhem or Blaine disappearing again it's not a hard one to make.
Blaine clips the pass back onto his shirt, drawing an enticing step closer. "In case you're looking for more trouble," he says softly, and he wants to surge forward, capture Blaine's lips and kiss him senseless, mark him with his teeth as his and his alone. But he lost the right to do that too.
He smiles as feeble as his protest, his heart decided on a faster pace. "I have to get to work," he says, lips tingling, but Quinn's waiting for him to process the scene and Santana's waiting for Blaine. Now's not the time. "Make sure to keep up your blood sugar."
"Yes, sir, Mr Detective." Blaine salutes, tracking a step back, staring with an intent he can't decipher. "But call me," he adds, before he pulls up his hood again and hurries towards Santana, the two of them leaving the crime scene huddled close together.
Staring down at his badge, Blaine's handwriting stained across the plastic, the thought of calling Blaine proves less than enticing. He's not sure what he'd do should Blaine run again, should he get attached to the warmth of his body and be forced to go without it all over again. Blaine wasn't a casual hookup, he could've been the real deal, and Blaine must've realized that long before he ever did.
But if Blaine ran because he got scared, why was he looking to close that distance again?
The rain soaks soggy in his clothing while he and Quinn process the crime scene and wait for the coroner to remove the body. At the lab they toss a coin to determine which of them will process the body, a toss he loses for the first time in weeks. None of them are particularly comfortable around bodies, they prefer the sterility of the crime lab, the deftness of the mass spectrometer and the impersonal nature of a microscope–he still needs sugared tea every time he comes back from the coroner's office, having stared into two dead eyes far too long, the cold of dead skin sunk into his bones.
His eyes catch on Blaine's phone number throughout the day, so often that he programs the number into his phone and removes the handwriting with some acetone, or he won't get any work done.
The day ends in a torrent of leads they pass on to the local police, all in the hopes that it will lead them to the perpetrator, and as he drives home that night his phone starts burning a hole in his pocket. His head's too full of work to be able to catch any sleep, and his thoughts race around the idea of Blaine with a whirlwind of doubt.
Inviting Blaine back into his life could be inviting trouble along with him, more uncertainty than he's able to bear. But with that trouble came the certainty of a fulfillment that was all but guaranteed.
He dials Blaine's number without giving himself more time to question his motives, the thought of having Blaine alone too tempting to dismiss.
And Blaine's at his door no half hour later, attacking his lips without warning, at once familiar and brand new, warm and sturdy, a safe haven away from unease and contradiction. Blaine chases away the stale taste of death with the subtle hint of alcohol and nicotine on his breath, the scent of formaldehyde replaced by raspberry-scented hair gel, and the background static of colleagues' voices relegated to the sweet nothings he draws from Blaine's lips.
He peels back every single one of Blaine's layers, with his lips, his hands, tongue licking a long wet line up Blaine's neck while he fucks into him, Blaine clasping at his back lewd and inarticulate, moaning his name in between breathless sighs, grabbing at his ass and legs winding around his waist to get him deeper, harder.
They collapse in a tangle of limbs followed by sloppy kisses, soft caresses down each other's skin.
Blaine pushes a kiss to his groin, their positions on the bed somewhat uneven, sheets soiled with come and lube and spit. "I wasn't expecting you to call me so soon." He lifts his head, his pupils blown, a soft blush in his cheeks.
He draws a hand through Blaine's hair. "I guess I can't resist a bad boy."
Blaine smiles, lips tending to the same spot before he trails up higher, planting disorderly kisses along his abdomen until he's hovering over him. "I could be dangerous, you know," he says, lowering himself down onto his body. "For all you know I killed that man under the bridge."
"And this is you..." –he searches for the term the profilers like to use, more apt than any other word in this situation– "... inserting yourself into the investigation."
Blaine snorts, chin digging hard into his sternum, but the weight of Blaine on top of him feels safe and reassuring, warm in a way so few others have managed to be.
His fingertips trail up and down Blaine's spine. "A criminal mastermind with low blood sugar."
Blaine rests his ear over his heart. "How do you do it every day?" he asks, the question endowed with a vulnerability he never allowed to show before.
"It gets easier," he lies.
He's filed it away, built his own walls for fear that one day it could all spill out at once and it'll leave him broken–he believes in what he does and there's an almost sadistic satisfaction that comes from catching the people who committed these crimes, but it takes its toll, and after two years in the crime lab Blaine's the only one who has ever erased his unease completely.
"And I find my distractions."
"Sex?" Blaine asks, raising himself higher and settling next to him.
"You," he answers unthinking, but that spills out without restraint or fear.
Blaine averts his eyes and turns around, coaxing his body along with him. "Sex," he repeats.
He curls his body around Blaine's shorter frame, naked and fragile beside him and says, "Yes", kissing Blaine's shoulder.
He lies.
Blaine turned into more than a distraction and he reads that about him all too well, sees right through him unlike any other guy that's gone before him. Yet Blaine's the only one scared of that responsibility, afraid of his love rather than the weight of his disremembrance. But he returned, tumbled back into his life differently but just as messy and sudden–and for some reason Blaine had invited himself closer this time around.
He wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, a missing kiss to his lips and the corner of his mouth and he can't recall Blaine leaving his bed at any point during the night. He's not sure he can do this again, have Blaine walk out on him every night, expect rejection even if it doesn't come–that would eventually take its toll too and a price he's unwilling to pay.
Sitting up, he breathes in deep, hit by the singular smell of cigarettes. He pulls on his boxers and pads into the living room, finding Blaine sprawled out half-naked over the couch, some of his long play records laying disorganized across the coffee table.
He leans sideways against the doorframe, studying Blaine closely; his head lies tipped back over the armrest, lips puckered around a breath of smoke he releases slowly and he can't help a smile. Blaine has never stayed over before, never bothered to try it on for size, but he doesn't seem particularly disgruntled right now. He could stand waking up to this every morning.
"Morning, killer."
Blaine opens one eye, and smiles before closing it again, settling deeper into the couch. "Your music collection is pathetic."
He chuckles and heads into the kitchen, preparing to make breakfast for two, even if Blaine were to decide he's not sticking around for anything that domestic.
A few moments later Blaine joins him, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades before he reaches his arms around his chest.
"Breakfast?" he asks, almost too afraid to break the silence, guiding Blaine's hand over his heart.
Blaine's lips curl upward against his skin, "I knew you'd be trouble."
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