Title: Taking Your Medicine
Pairing: Travis Marks/Wes Mitchell
Summary: "What did you think was going to happen, Travis?! Because I have news for you: the real world has consequences. You can't just do what you want and expect there to be no repercussions."
Warning: Slash.
Rating: K+
Common Law is so gay I had to write something to show my support. (For crying out loud, it's called "Common Law".) This story came out of nowhere and hit me like a sack of bricks. Enjoy.
Travis threw pens and notepads into a box. He reached deeper in his desk drawer and found yet another formerly missing stapler to add to his growing collection. He could ignore the eyes watching him, but that bittersweet smirk at the fourth recovered stapler was too much.
"You don't have to be here for this, you know." He watched Wes from under his brow as he shrugged one shoulder, the other perfectly content with leaning against their desk side column.
"It's late," the man said passively.
"So go home," Travis snapped.
"And I wanted to give you a ride. Let me finish." The blond pushed off the support and walked around to the other's desk. He picked up a pen— one that looked awfully familiar and was probably his— and dropped it into one of the cardboard boxes. "Save you from having to try and fit these on your motorcycle."
"I was just gonna drop 'em off downstairs."
"Oh." That was all Wes had left to contribute, so he let the quiet creep back in. Under normal circumstances, the silent treatment from Travis would have felt like Christmas morning. Given their circumstances, however, he felt an overwhelming need to say something, anything. "So… dinner?"
"I have leftover pizza," Travis retorted coolly, roughly throwing his desk calendar into a box.
"Damn it!" Wes yelled, angry at having been shot down so callously for the official fifteenth time that day. "What did you think was going to happen, Travis?! Because I have news for you: the real world has consequences. You can't just do what you want and expect there to be no repercussions."
"'Do what I want'? I thought I was doing what we wanted. Or is this your way of telling me it was all against your will?" He stood up and looked Wes in the eye, both unblinking and refusing to back down.
"It's my way of telling you that crowding into my personal space in the break room was a horrible, horrible idea. Granted, I told you that at the time. But you weren't listening then, and God only knows why I repeat myself all the time."
"I'm guessing it's because you like to hear yourself talk," Travis scoffed, raising his voice and appreciating the late hour as they were the only ones left on that floor.
"And you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Wes stepped closer, trying to be intimidating and coming threateningly close to finishing it with a shove.
"All I know is you were quick enough to speak up to the Captain," Travis shot back, taking his own step forward.
"What are you even talking about?" the blond asked, crossing his arms to keep them to himself. The absolute last thing he wanted was for it to turn into a physical altercation.
"The Captain. When he called us to his office," he explained, talking slowly as if it were the most apparent thing in the world. "He no sooner had it out of his mouth why we were there when you butted in saying what we had was just some quick fling and it was all over. And might I just say that was the first time I had heard about some expiration date that came and went."
"For crying out loud, Travis." Wes dropped his hands from around his chest and ran them through his hair. "Have you even read the Police Manual? Or is it just something you put under your dining room table to keep it from wobbling? Because all I did," he pointed sharply at the chief's office as his voice grew in volume, "was beat him to the punch. You cannot be in a relationship with your partner! It's a conflict of interest. I was trying to save our jobs."
"And what? We were just gonna continue on until the next time we got caught?" Travis looked him over with a sneer on his face, and watched as Wes dropped his gaze for the first time. The blond stared at the floor and shuffled his feet, and that was enough of an answer for him. "Oh," he chuckled humorlessly, "so you were serious. It was just a quick little thing gone by."
"What did you think was going to happen, Trav?" He looked back up at him with an expression wrought with sorrow. "Your place, my place, your place, followed by a relationship that would last the ages? I thought you were the one-night-stand king. I'm surprised we even made it to the third encounter."
"The one-night-stand king, huh?" Travis asked through a fake smile and a briefly exhaled laugh. He picked one of his boxes up and shoved the other one under his arm. "I don't suppose he's the kind of guy that asks for a department transfer just to save a relationship, is he?"
"I didn't think he was, but you'd be surprised." Wes grinned tentatively but it wasn't returned.
Travis started walking out of the Robbery-Homicide Division and to the elevator. He kicked the down button and waited for it to climb to their floor. A couple of seconds had passed by when he felt the box being pulled out from under his arm.
"Come on," Wes pleaded, holding up the heavy container. "Let's do dinner. We'll eat whatever you want."
"I have leftover pizza," he responded, not looking at the blond and simply staring forward at the elevator.
"Would you please just let me buy you dinner?"
"What, you don't like pizza?" Travis asked, the smallest grin in the world tugging on the edges of his lips.
The elevator dinged and Wes smiled, adjusting the box in his arms. "Actually," he said, stepping in, "I do like pizza sometimes. No peppers?"
"This thing is loaded down with like five different kinds of peppers," Travis said with a smirk. Wes groaned and no other words were said as they descended.
It wasn't until the doors of Wes's car were closed with them both inside that he said, "I don't want you transferred. And I certainly don't want a new partner."
"Yeah, well it's that or we see how long we can go on lying to the Captain." He wasn't about to mention Wes's recent termination of their relationship as long as the other didn't. For the time being, he was going to pretend their little liaison was still in effect. He wasn't sacrificing his job for nothing.
"Travis, you love your job," Wes pointed out matter-of-factly.
"True, but sometimes change isn't so bad." He turned the radio up only to have the knob spun back around to silence.
"Narcotics is a bad change, a very bad change." Wes rested his hand on the other's shoulder, and the contact felt odd as they both knew how much he hated unnecessary touching. "Ask Cap if you can stay on. We'll try to make do with different partners, and everything will work out fine."
Travis paused in thought for a second before shaking his head. "It's too late."
"No, it isn't." Wes removed his hand from his former partner's shoulder and used it to pull out his phone. "I'm calling him right now, and we're going to sort this all out." He was halfway through his contact list when Travis leaned over and trapped Wes's face between his hands, stealing a nice and lengthy kiss which he thought he thoroughly deserved.
"Okay," he said smugly, "now you can call him."
Wes shook himself out of his daze and placed the call. "Cap, hey. It's Wes. I wanted to talk to you about Travis. The department's going to suffer without him. You know it, I know it, the whole station knows it. Now, I know there's a conflict of interest, but—" Travis interrupted him with a quick succession of taps on his arm. "Hold on." He held his palm over the phone. "What?"
One of Travis's hands was covering his face in mortification while the other pointed straight ahead. Wes followed his finger to the indicated point and saw the Captain give them a little wave before closing his cellphone and walking towards them. When Sutton reached the car, he knocked on the window of the backseat, and Wes unlocked it with a sigh.
"Forgot my wallet," he said as he climbed in and sat down. "Can't very well take the misses out to eat without that." They all sat in quiet for a moment until the Captain clapped his hands together. "So… this is how things are gonna go. I didn't see nothin'. In the break room, Johnson didn't see nothin'. Most importantly the two of you did not, are not, and will not do nothin'. And in return for this whole lot of nothing going on I have some conditions." Wes and Travis nodded their heads, waiting for him to continue. "For starters, 'nothing' will continue to happen at work. If you want to do something you wait until you get home like everybody else, that clear?"
"Yes, sir," they both agreed.
"Now second, of course, is that we get our dream team back together. Travis, I want you unloading your stuff back upstairs in the morning so you two can keep the department looking good. How's that sound?"
"I think I can do that," Travis grinned, clapping his hands and rubbing them together exuberantly.
"You bet you can," Sutton laughed. "That's the easy one. This next one ain't." He sobered instantly and looked back and forth between the two of them. "This is the last but most important term. I'm only going to tell you once because this one warning is all you get. There is a conflict of interest and no denying it. But what we also can't deny is what a cop's job is. We protect those who cannot protect themselves. They are our first priority. And when push comes to shove, God forbid it, I need to know that you will both put the lives of innocent civilians over each other, the ones who knew what this job was when they signed on. But if you ever feel a day comes when you can no longer do that, you come straight to me and we'll work things out from there. Because I promise you boys," he looked at them with not an ounce of mirth nor mercy in his eyes, "the day either one of you lets a civilian take the fall in your partner's place is the day it becomes my unfortunate job to crush you. Do I make myself clear?"
The two of them sat stunned in their seats, unused to hearing the man say such cutting words that had, until then, been thought to have gone out with the therapy.
"Do I make myself clear?!" he yelled.
"Yes… sir," Wes answered, echoed shortly afterward by Travis.
"Good," the Captain said with a sigh, trying to put his usual tranquil self back in place. "You two just remember everything I said, and we'll by able to carry on all well and good." They nodded their assent, and the man climbed out of the car with a quick word of farewell.
"Wow," Travis breathed out a full minute later. "Things just got serious."
"Yes, they did," Wes agreed with a sigh. "And all because you couldn't keep your hands off me."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. You were the one who couldn't keep his hands off of me." Wes shrugged with a smile and started the car only for Travis to turn the keys back around and pull them out. "You're the one that offered to drive me home that night."
"It was raining, and you drive a motorcycle," Wes pointed out.
"And then there was your little act at the gate so that you had to come in and borrow a towel."
"Once again, it was raining and you gave me the wrong gate key for getting in your place. I ended up soaking my suit and the interior of my car. I think I was justified in asking for a towel." He grabbed his keys back and cranked the car again. "I would also like to point out that you purposefully gave me the wrong code and followed it up by supplying me with a change of clothes a size too small."
"I gave you what I had," Travis said, failing to suppress a laugh.
"You gave me what you thought would be funny," Wes half growled.
"You are not always right." He started browsing through radio channels and changing all of Wes's presets.
"No," he grinned, "but I'm right so often it's scary." He swatted Travis's hand away from his stereo.
"You're not right about my Police Manual being under my dining room table."
"No?" the blond asked skeptically.
"No," said Travis, keeping silent for a few seconds. "It's keeping my chest of drawers level."
Now that I think about it... I'm not really sure this fic has a purpose or plot of anything. Hmm. Oh well.
I never upload something right after finishing it. Especially not something written in only a couple of hours. But I'm still keyed up from that great finale. Watch me regret this later when I read back over it and find a typo every other word.
Hope you enjoyed. I demand more fics for this fandom.