DISCLAIMER: I don't own Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy, or Aurors. Or cop shows.
Good Cop, Bad Cop.
Aurors Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy are partners. Together, they catch killers. You know, when they aren't trying to kill each other, that is. :Series of oneshots R/S NextGen:
ONE: If You're Reading This.
"Hey," she called after him.
With her stuck in a hospital bed, Scorpius Malfoy didn't want to turn back around. Seeing Rose out for the count like this unnerved him. Sure, it was a hell of a sight better than when she was collapsed in a pool of blood in an underground cellar, but he still didn't think he was quite ready to admit how scared he'd been then. And c'mon, his emotions would be all over his face (Rose had always teased him about that).
"Yeah?" he said without turning around.
"Oh, just look at me, would you?" Rose said, frustration clear in her voice.
He took a deep breath. Ah, he was in too deep anyway. Might as well make this worse, right? He spun on the spot, still halfway to the door of her private (and heavily guarded) room at St Mungo's hospital. Rose didn't look any better than she had done five minutes ago, but at least she didn't look worse, right? Her ginger curls were still dirty and matted, in a tangled mess around her bruised and battered face. Having suffered multiple cuts and stabs to her chest and arms, he tried his hardest not to wince whenever he accidentally caught sight of one of the bandages, particularly the one he knew that extended all the way up her neck. She was pale and shaky, and the complete opposite to the kind of Rose that he knew.
His Auror Rose Weasley was ferocious and determined! She never let something stop her … probably the reason that she'd managed to survive the torture long enough for him to finally rescue her.
If it hadn't been for him in the first place …
"Seriously, stop bloody looking at me like that," Rose said, eyes narrowing at him.
"Shut up! I'm not looking at you like anything," Scorpius was quick to counter, crossing his arms defensively.
"Yeah, and we both know that's a lie," Rose scoffed. She gestured with a hand at the chair beside her bed, before saying, "Just sit the hell back down, ok? We both know that you want to."
Blimey, there really was no arguing with her, was there? He reluctantly shuffled his way over, sitting down huffily. He'd known since day one what signing up for the Auror Office meant; it was a career full of boring stakeouts and gruelling training, breaking gut-wrenching news to victims' families, duelling with suspects and the occasional emotional breakdown. It was constant fights with his partner, getting frustrated beyond belief when she would once again go off the books and he would have to somehow fix her mistakes. Most days, the job made it worth it.
Today … he'd almost considered quitting.
"So," he said eventually, doing his best to keep his voice casual, and not all high-pitched and strained like it had been since she'd been taken. "how's it going?"
"Oh, y'know," Rose made a face. "Not bad."
"I hear you got kidnapped and tortured?"
"Yeah, but it was nothing I couldn't handle," Rose still somehow managed to smirk at him.
"Seriously, Weasley," Scorpius said then, leaning an elbow on the edge of her bed and unable to keep up the light teasing that they were usually so fond of interspersing with full-blown arguments. "I know you don't want me to say it, but I'm going to anyway – I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – I shouldn't have under-estimated Fuller! I should have anticipated him going after you, especially since we were so close to catching him – I should have had protection placed on you, I should have been there to protect you–"
"Oh, Merlin's bloody beard …" Rose cut in, exasperatedly. "Are you done, yet?"
"Well, I could also mention that if I'd just trusted your instinct, we might have been able to make an arrest sooner and this never would have happened," Scorpius tried, weakly.
"Malfoy," Rose shot him a look which was still terrifying, even with the black eye. "c'mon, where would we be if I wasn't making crazy assumptions and theories and you weren't there to shoot me down and keep things realistic?"
"We wouldn't be in a hospital ward, I'm telling you that."
"Stop it!" Rose snapped. Despite the many blood-replenishing potions she'd been administered and the magical sealing for her wounds, Rose still managed to reach out a hand and smack him upside the head. He'd rather lost track of how many times over their partnership that he'd been subjected to her physical abuse … though he'd never realised how much he would miss it, until now.
"You're not going to make me stop thinking it was my fault!" Scorpius insisted, grabbing at her hand to stop her after giving a yelp. "I seriously could have prevented all this–"
"If this was anyone's fault, it was mine!" Rose exclaimed hotly, fighting to get her hand back. "I was the one who ignored orders, refused to listen, like I always do! You always said that you knew it'd get me into more trouble than just extra paperwork one day, and you were right!"
"We're never going to agree on this, are we?"
"Do we ever?" Rose answered. Finally, she managed to snatch her hand back; however, the movement seemed to be too jarring for her recent injuries and immediately afterwards, she cringed with a gasp of pain. Scorpius was on his feet immediately, heart pounding, as he reached out and took hold of her shoulders gently, helping her ease back onto the hospital issued pillows.
"… will you please try to not kill yourself now?" he asked, desperately.
"I make no such promise …" Rose muttered through her gritted teeth. When Scorpius managed to supress his nervous tittering and had sat back down again, Rose eventually opened her eyes once more and turned to face him.
"I'm still mad at you," she assured him. "but … you going to explain how I ended up being kidnapped by our least likely suspect, or what?"
Of course. To the point and completely ignoring the fact she was talking to her close partner, who she had been working alongside with for the better part of four years. For all the emotion she had in her voice, she could have been talking to a brick wall. However, the sheer fact that she had still allowed him to fuss over her, to help her settle back into her pillows, was enough to remind him that there was still some respect for their partnership in there somewhere.
"The victim's sister," Scorpius decided it was a lot safer to just play along. Things were heavy enough as it was. "Rebecca? Her story fell apart once I started hounding her after you were taken. She'd been protecting her sister's memory, but Kylie Newbury had died refusing to give up Rebecca's location. I'm guessing you didn't either?"
"No," Rose said, voice unnaturally soft. It made him glance up at her for a moment, never having heard her sound so sincere before.
"I … I mean, well, once we got the full story from her, about how her ex was still trying to find her, hurt her, it was easy enough to lock down an arrest. The hardest part was figuring out where he'd taken you. You can thank Miles and the forensics team for that one, figured out which house it was just by the type of wood it was made out of. Wood! Can you believe it?"
Rose looked like she wanted to smile at his words, but she stamped it down, looking away. He was pretty used to that by now, after four years of pretending that Rose didn't secretly amuse him and vice versa … but Scorpius caught it sometimes, a slight tugging at the corner of her mouth, a teasing glint in her eyes, the odd scathing comment that bordered on flirtatious and made his chest lurch …
He didn't think he'd ever forget the cold dread that had sunk into his bones the second he'd gone over to her flat to argue some more, and realised that she'd been taken. With the door left open and signs of a struggle, he'd called it in with a shaking voice and had been forced to push his way through the crowd of forensic Healers arriving to analyse the scene. He'd needed to reach the outside pavement, needed to breath in deep lungful's of air that didn't help at all, because his Weasley was gone and he didn't know if …
"Anyway!" he cut in over his own thoughts, quickly. "You know, it's probably a good thing that you were taken instead of me."
"Oh, really?" Rose snorted. "Enlighten me."
"Well, for starters, my pain tolerance is, like, zero," he pointed out. "Don't you remember the case with the cactus?"
"Remember? I swear you split my eardrums with all that screaming!"
"It was the pines, I'm fairly certain it's hazardous for them to be stuck in like that–! Uhhh, anyway," he added hastily at the look on her face. "I mean, the point is that I would've been utterly useless in that situation. You've always been the strong one out of the two of us."
"I think you give me more credit than I deserve, Malfoy," Rose said, glancing away.
"No, really!" Scorpius insisted. "I get a cactus embedded in my skin and I cry a bloody river, but you – you broke your arm once, yet you just kept on running and still tackled that suspect like it was no big deal!"
"That bloke had it coming," Rose shrugged. "That was the one who murdered his wife because she was sleeping with his dad, right?"
"Yeah, and he's in Azkaban for life, thanks to you," he answered.
"Look, I'm not … I'm not that strong," Rose mentioned, quietly. "When … ok, you are not allowed to say anything in response to what I tell you," she suddenly added. "Say even one word, and I swear I'll throttle you right here in his hospital room. Got it?"
"Loud and clear," Scorpius couldn't help but needle her a little bit with a grin.
She rolled her eyes, but continued. "When I was … when he had me … I wouldn't tell him where we were keeping Rebecca. He could tell that he was getting nothing out of me, so after debating a bit, he decided to try a new tactic. He said … that he was going to find you. And if I didn't tell him where she was, he would chop off your fingers, one by one, before cutting you open, letting you die slowly and painfully."
It was one of those instances where Scorpius felt like he should probably look away … but couldn't seem to be able to. Like a train wreck, his eyes were stuck on Rose, on the way she was biting her lip like she did whenever she was trying to work something out in her head, and the way she was looking slightly vulnerable like she only occasionally let herself be when she was around him.
"I was going to tell him," Rose admitted, almost in a whisper. "So whatever you might think, I wasn't strong. Hell, I was going to tell a murderer where to find his next victim!"
"Because you didn't want to hurt me," Scorpius said, unable to sort out what was going on inside his chest. "Weasley …"
"Hey!" Rose snapped. "Not one WORD in response, remember? Or I'll do more than throttle!"
Oh, he didn't need to say a thing. He knew that his smug grin would be insufferable enough for her. Sure enough, she basically groaned at the sight, trying to reach out and smack him again, though he simply ducked out of the way this time. It wasn't often she admitted that she actually cared about him – in fact, it was so rare, that Scorpius often mistook those times as her joking anyway – so when he did figure out what she was saying, he had learnt to savour it.
One of these days, he really ought to figure out how to tell her he cared, too.
He didn't think he'd ever forget bursting his way into that cellar. His eyes had immediately gone to Rose crumpled on the floor with her arms curled in on herself, clearly trying to stop herself from bleeding with no wand before she passed out. He'd barely even noticed his team behind him apprehending their murdering ex-boyfriend, David Fuller, slamming his face into the ground so they could arrest him. Scorpius had simply sprinted to Rose's side, blind terror seizing him and catching him in his throat as he yelled her name, over and over. By the time the Healers had arrived to transfer her to St Mungo's, he had been covered in her blood, and he'd practically screamed when his supervisor tried to make him come back to the office and give his statement first.
He'd waited the entire two hours and twenty three minutes it had taken to get her stable again, pacing outside the theatre room.
"Look, what're you still doing here?" Rose eventually huffed. "You should be busy interrogating Fuller and getting a full confession, not sitting here and worrying yourself into a coma about me!"
"Look, for once can you just humour me?" Scorpius rolled his eyes. "My partner nearly died today, give me a break!"
"I didn't nearly die–" Rose scoffed.
"Weasley, you basically bled out," Scorpius mentioned, flatly.
She snapped her mouth shut.
"Well," she eventually said. "I'm still talking, aren't I?"
"Yeah, I don't think you get it," Scorpius said, impatiently. "I'm not talking about a suspect holding you up at wand point, or having a curse shot at you. I've been in this profession a long time, and I've had all that and more happen to me on a regular basis. Hell, with you as my partner, it's a wonder we've both managed to survive this long! I'm saying that now, it got to the point where you had literally stopped breathing, and I seriously thought that you were going to die right there in my arms! You have no bloody clue how TERRIFIED I was, so don't you dare just sit there, claiming that it was no big deal!"
Oh, Merlin. He hadn't meant for all that to come out. With the atmosphere in the room so tense already, he'd even been trying to downplay the hurt he'd felt at her flippant remarks. But he hadn't been able to ignore this one. Rose finally had the decency to look sorry, avoiding his gaze for a long moment. Then, he noticed her face harden as she decided something. With the bruises and bandages, the face looked thunderous.
That was a Rose he knew well.
"Fine," she said, suddenly glancing up to face him. "I know that I'm not being fair to you, and I'm sorry. I know you care, like … really, I know you care," she said, voice almost softer, surprising him enough into looking up. "So I'm going to tell you about what happen to me, ok?"
He couldn't do anything but nod.
"He got me by surprise, was already waiting in my flat. The only reason he managed to get me, right?" she added, and Scorpius almost wanted to laugh at the hint of her wounded pride in there. "He knocked me out and I woke up in that cellar. I didn't even know who had taken me until he showed up."
He knew why she took that moment to pause; what happened next was painfully obvious. However, she gritted her teeth and continued,
"Look, it hurt. I can't really describe it, there's no way I could, so it just … hurt like a bitch, Malfoy. He had me immobilised on the floor, and used my own wand to control the knife. Had to give him credit for that; no fingerprints, magical or otherwise," she gave a weak smile. "You know me: no respect for a sloppy murderer. Anyway … eventually, he stopped 'cause I still wasn't talking. And there was a point between threatening me and threatening you when he left me by myself," she shrugged at his confused face. "Yeah, I dunno why, but he was seriously frustrated then, so it must've been to try and come up with a new tactic. Guess he didn't think I would have the strength to move. But I did," Rose's determined face faltered slightly as she glanced over at the table next to her bed. There wasn't much on top of it; a glass of water, her wand that had eventually been recovered at Fuller's hideout where he'd taken it from her, and what appeared to be a blood-stained and scrunched up piece of paper. "There was a pen nearby. And I remembered that I had a shopping list stuffed down my bra."
Scorpius didn't know what Rose wanted him to say there, or even where she was going with this, so he stayed silent. Sure enough, he noticed the faint outline of various groceries on the outside of the folded paper. Eventually, Rose apparently decided that she wasn't going to wait for him to reply.
"I thought I was dying, Malfoy," she said, voice going quiet. "So I … wrote something."
"You were bleeding from multiple stab wounds, and you still found it in you to write a dying letter?" Scorpius said, staring. This woman was amazing, sometimes. Absolutely mental … but yeah, totally amazing.
Rose just shrugged. "I knew I couldn't go out without saying something. But, turns out, the something I wrote was for you."
Suddenly, that paper seemed to scream out to him all the more louder.
"I want you to read it."
"What–?" Scorpius practically croaked. "N-no! No, Weasley, I can't–"
"You have to, ok?" Rose insisted.
"No, I don't want to read anything you had to say when you thought you were dying," Scorpius was absolutely firm on that matter. However, Rose reached out then and caught hold of the edge of his sleeve. It was only a slight tug, but it made him falter.
"Please," she said. "Just read the bloody thing, ok? I can't stay alive, knowing that there's a bunch of things I was only brave enough to tell you when I thought I wasn't gonna be around to address them."
Only the hand at his sleeve stopped him from ripping up the letter on the spot. He wasn't sure he could do it; read the words that she would have only admitted on her deathbed. But he understood her point, and he accidentally made the mistake of looking at her. The bruises on her face made him reach out and take the letter written on the back of a shopping list in dodgy, barely legible handwriting. He gingerly unfolded the letter in his hands, trying to avoid the spots of blood … though of course none of that mattered once he started reading.
Malfoy –
I'm dead. I know I'm dead. No sugar coating it, I screwed up, and you won't rescue me in time. And yeah, I'm sorry about that, but it'll be my fault, so stop hating yourself like I know you are, ok?
I don't even know why I'm writing this. I won't have much longer, and I just want to scream and never stop. But I want you to know: I've fought every step of the way. I swear I haven't told him anything, and no matter what he says when he gets back, I promise I won't give up. I swear, I'm gonna hold out as long as I possibly can.
I can only imagine your face when you read this so, here goes … our partnership means a lot to me, ok? And I know I give you shit for it, I know I yell at you and cause a lot of unnecessary paperwork, but there's a reason that I requested we stay partners after that second case, and it's not just so I was allowed back out into the field again. It was because I wanted to keep working with you.
Screw it. I love you.
Now kindly burn this letter after you read it, so no one ever finds out. Kay?
– Weasley.
He didn't know where to look.
His hands were still holding the letter, but he wasn't really reading it anymore. He couldn't look at Rose, couldn't look anywhere except at the smudging letters which were beginning to blur together the more he stared. Only minutes later, perhaps after stuffing the letter back down her top, Fuller would have come back with a new tactic: that he was going to hurt Scorpius unless she told. And she would be willing to talk, only to pass out as Scorpius and his team finally burst in to rescue her. She was willing to give up, after so determinedly insisting that she never would! And having known Rose Weasley and worked with her for so long, Scorpius knew that a little thing like giving up was something that she never did lightly. The fact that she did was …
It was because I wanted to keep working with you.
I love you.
Oh, Rose.
"So, y'know," Rose was shrugging. "You can go ahead and kill me now–"
He didn't even care what she was saying. Tossing the letter lightly onto her bed, he quickly leaned over and wrapped his arms around her. He was torn between not wanting to hurt her, and wanting to perhaps haul her into him, pushing his face into her neck, breathing her in and maybe pressing a light kiss to her neck, seeing where it led … but perhaps it was best to stay away from analogies like that for now. He didn't let Rose have enough time to react properly, lest she strangle him, so he simply pulled back and sat down hesitantly on the edge of her bed, unable to help the smile on his face.
"Auror Weasley, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you're sort of incredible."
Rose, it seemed, was still rather gob smacked, which was to be fair. He could count on one hand the amount of times that they had hugged.
"I …" she began. "Uh …"
"Look, we've been through a lot, you and I," Scorpius told her, twisting his fingers together. "I mean, torture, serial killers, stalking, kidnapping … that one time we got buried alive together?"
"I thought we promised to never talk about that?" Rose said, weakly.
Oh, yes. It was a vivid memory. After their investigation had gotten a little too close for the murderer's liking, they had accidentally found themselves knocked out on their way out of the office and unceremoniously dumped in a eight by four wooden box together, buried alive in a Yorkshire cemetery. Trapped in such close quarters until they had eventually been found and rescued, it had only been their hands tied behind their backs that stopped Rose from beating him to death before they could run out of air instead. He hadn't even discovered how claustrophobic Rose could be until that incident, and he'd spent the entire time they'd been trapped simply talking to her, trying to calm her down …
Course, there had also been a panicked (and hot) we're-going-to-die kiss thrown in there, which they still never talked about, two years later …
"Ah, well," Scorpius shrugged. "Maybe it's about time we did?"
The look of utter panic on her face basically made it worth it. Scorpius was sort of wondering where on earth this bout of bravery was coming from, but it was obvious; the two of them had been teetering on the edge of something for years, and this was probably about as close to a confession that he would ever get. The hell if he wasn't going to take that chance! He was so tempted to reach out and touch her, to gently stroke her cheek with his thumb. Normally so stoic, he'd be able to tell that Rose would be trying her hardest not to react, but c'mon, it'd be his job to notice these things; the small hitch in her breath would be a giveaway …
Y'know, if he actually got up the courage.
"You … you want to do this now?" Rose practically stammered, though that couldn't be right; Rose never stumbled over anything. "I nearly died, Malfoy, perhaps now isn't the best time to be admitting anything–"
"Oh, so now you admit that you nearly died?," Scorpius cut in, hotly. "Well, I'm sorry, but forgive me if I was trying to be as brave as you are!"
"I think you're forgetting that Gryffindor wasn't your house!"
"Weasley–" He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. This woman was seriously totally impossible. "You wanted me to read that letter, because you couldn't stand only having the courage to write it when you thought you were dying. Well, this is something I never thought I'd say unless I was dying and screw it all if I'm not going to be as brave as you!"
"Malfoy–"
"I love you!"
Oh, Jesus. He actually SAID it!
The look on Rose's face was a strange mixture of so many emotions, Scorpius wasn't entirely sure he could figure them all out. He suddenly felt rather self-conscious, despite the fact that Rose's letter to him had admitted the exact same thing. Never the one for dramatics and emotions, Scorpius had been determined since day one that he'd never tell how he really felt towards his partner. Besides, their partnership had never really been about that sort of thing; sure, it had always been there, a tense undercurrent that effected every thing they did, but at the end of the day, they needed to get the job done. Complicating things by taking a chance on love was simply never an option.
Sure, they cared about each other. That much they were willing to admit in those small moments of facing down death on the job. But this …
"I'm sort of starting to wonder why I thought this was a good idea …" he admitted, probably looking a little shell-shocked.
"Me, too," Rose said, faintly.
"In that case," Scorpius forced himself to glance away, to hastily stumble to his feet and head for the door. "I'll, uh, just head on out then, and I take back everything I said! Clearly, this is something else that we should never mention again."
"Oh, definitely."
"In that case," he nodded. "See you when you're fit for duty again, Auror Weasley!"
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Seriously, this was the second time that he was attempting to escape this room! He had almost been half out of the door, cursing himself to hell and back for bailing, however, when she spoke up.
"Wait," she called out. He froze, hand even outstretched to take the doorknob. He took a deep breath, before turning back around. Rose was wincing, looking like she would much rather hide under the bed than face whatever this thing was between them, but she still carried on.
"This is getting ridiculous," she said to him.
"Not arguing with you, there."
"Trust me," she said, face going pale, which was a pretty incredible feat, considering that she was white enough already. "I'd much rather bury this like we normally do, but … we've gone too far, this time. It's out. It's been said. If we run away at this point, again, then what kind of Aurors would be be?"
"Pretty shit ones, I suppose," Scorpius said.
Rose just snorted at that. "Fair enough. So," She gave him that vivacious, determined look that he often saw in her eyes; the look she got right before she ran a suspect down, or yelled at him for getting in her way again. The look that drove him crazy every time he saw it. "In that case, hey, I love you too and yeah, I nearly died today."
Heart hammering, Scorpius grinned. "What're you gonna do about it?"
"Me? You're forgetting that I'm the one stuck in this hospital bed!" Rose pointed out. "No, what you are gonna do is get over here and snog my face off before I get a hold of my wand and shove it up your arse!"
It took him all but half a second to make the decision, and another to stride determinedly across the room. He reached out and held her head gently, avoiding her cut neck. He knew he needed to be gentle and calm and a million other things that Rose Weasley wasn't, but he didn't care; he leaned down and kissed her before he could even really think about it. He threaded his fingers into her hair, feeling basically everything explode inside of him. She let out a contented sort of noise before reaching up and tugging on his collar, trying to pull him closer. Ohhh, he didn't want to hurt her, but those lips were incredible, and Rose would almost certainly kick his arse before he could ever hurt her himself. There was no telling how long he'd wanted this, and the way she held on, like she would never let go …
Screw it. He opened himself up and poured everything into that kiss. Besides, when had going against what Rose Weasley said ever been a good thing?
-Fin.
A/N: So I love me a good cop show. And without a doubt, Castle will always be my favourite. I watched an episode where Beckett writes a letter to her partner/fiancé, unsure whether she's going to survive or not, and naturally, I thought of Rose and Scorpius (because when don't I?). As a result, THIS oneshot came about!
Then, I sort of went insane and came up with other oneshot ideas which took place in the same universe. When I realised that I had quite a few, I decided to make them all just one story. I don't promise regular updates for this, they'll probably just come out whenever they happen to. Sorry about that!
Still, I hope you all liked it! Please, I'd love it if you would review and let me know what you think. :)
Until next time -
- Moon. :D