A/N: Localizing all of my drabbles and stray fics from Tumblr right here. Mostly Nadine/Mike-centric, with a few Elizabeth/Henry and miscellaneous ones thrown in—enjoy! :)
[Jealous kiss]
I'm running late.
Nadine quickly fires off the text as she's pulling out of the parking garage. She and Mike have dinner reservations, but she'd gotten tied up in a never-ending chain of phone calls with the Italian embassy and couldn't speed it along for anything.
And traffic downtown is still murder at this time in the evening and it's going to take her at least another half hour to get to the restaurant, and Mike is already there waiting for her.
Her phone buzzes, and she checks it at the next stoplight.
No worries. Find me at the bar when you get here.
When she finally gets to the restaurant, she gives the hostess a friendly smile as she walks past her to the bar. Her steps slow, and she stops short.
At the far end, Mike sits with a gin and tonic and a young, perky, blonde thing draped all over him.
Well, not literally draped over him—but certainly doing her best to chat him up. Nadine watches as the woman throws her head back and laughs. The sound grates Nadine's ears even from all the way over here. The woman places a hand on Mike's shoulder.
Mike subtly shrugs it off, but the woman is unperturbed. She leans against the bar slowly, angling herself to give him the best possible view of her breasts.
Nadine straightens her spine, forcing down feelings of irritation and unreasonable jealousy. She's better than that. She glides over to them, setting her purse on the bar on the other side of Mike, and brushes her hand over his back. He turns and, when he sees her, his smile is affectionate and genuine and relieved.
Before he can say anything, she slides a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in for a deep kiss. A little more demonstrative than she would usually allow for in a public space. Not that she has anything to prove.
It takes Mike a second to process what's going on, and he barely has time to wind an arm around her waist when she pulls away, smirking just a little. She uses her thumb to wipe traces of her lipstick off his mouth. "I'm sorry I'm late," she murmurs.
When she glances up, the other woman is gone.
[Kiss on the back]
Nadine is lying on her stomach in bed with a pen in her hand, trying to edit the latest printout of the budget memo. Mike is brushing his teeth in the adjoining bathroom, and she hears the hiss of the faucet as he turns it on then off, and then a click as flips off the bathroom lights and comes back out to the room.
He reaches out and runs his hand over her ankle as he passes her, moving to the other side of the bed where he changes into pajamas. Nadine glances over at him, peering over the tops of her glasses, only a couple of times as he strips down. She tries not to let him distract her, but she's not entirely successful.
He crawls into bed next to her. He kisses her shoulder. "Missed you all day," he murmurs, even though he says that every day. He lifts her free hand to his lips and kisses the back of it.
"Missed you, too."
He kisses all the way up her arm and she laughs softly. He shifts so he's behind her, rubbing his hands up and down her back through her shirt, moving up to her shoulders to massage them. She groans as he works out the knots between her shoulder blades.
"You're tight," he murmurs, pressing harder. "I think you need to relax."
She knows that what he really means is, let me relax you.
"I have to finish this by morning," she protests. She crosses out a few lines of the text and scribbles a note in the margin. She flips the page.
"You work too hard." He lifts the hem of her shirt, shifting backward and bending down to kiss the small of her back. He kisses it again, a little higher. Nadine draws a wobbly underline under an item on the bulleted list and makes a haphazard correction next to it. Mike grazes his teeth over her skin and she shivers. He pulls her shirt up higher, and follows the path of newly-exposed skin with his lips.
"C'mon Mike I just need a minute," she tries weakly. "I'm almost - um - almost done."
He kisses over each vertebra, and across the whole plane of her back. "You do that. I'll do this." Mike slides a hand underneath her, flat on her bare stomach, and continues to move his lips over her skin.
But it takes very little of him to get her hot and bothered.
She tosses the file and pen aside and turns over. "Okay, you win. I'll finish it later."
[Angry kiss]
"How dare you," Nadine hisses. She practically leaps off the couch, and there's a flurry of motion as she grabs her purse and her coat and hunts down her shoes.
"Wait, Nadine -" He gets up too, following her into the hallway. "You know that's not what I meant." He grabs her wrist, but she shakes him off. She steps into her shoes and walks over to the door, but he refuses to just let her leave like this. Not before he has a chance to fix it.
As she reaches for the handle, he grabs her by both forearms and spins her around, pushing her back against the door roughly. A little harder than he meant to. Her belongings fall to the floor.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn't look frightened - just more pissed off. "Get your hands off of me," she says, her voice dangerous and low.
He lets go of her and backs off a half-step, opening just millimeters of space between them. He raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. He shouldn't have touched her like that. "I'm sorry." He looks down at her bare arms with guilt. The skin reddens where he'd grabbed her, though he hadn't held her hard enough to bruise. He'd never be able to forgive himself if he had; he's not that kind of man. "Just talk to me."
"Talk to you? I can't even look at you right now!" Nadine says with a laugh of disbelief. She stares at a point just past his shoulder and her anger is still cold. It keeps her stiff. "I mean, Jesus—" she scoffs. "Mike, if that's what you really think of me—"
"It isn't."
"If your opinion of me is that low—"
"Of course it isn't. You know it isn't."
"I honestly—" She blows out a long breath, running one hand through her curls in frustration. "I don't know what we're doing here."
His blood runs cold, and then hot with his own anger. She has no right to hold their entire relationship hostage like that. He tells her so. And then—
"And you have no right to dictate it the way you see fit!" she nearly screeches. And that's just… that's just wholly inaccurate.
"You're fucking impossible," he snaps, and her eyes flash. She looks dangerous, sharp. Icy. He wants to kiss her just to see if their lips will stick.
So he does.
She responds instantly, and they both must be more turned on by the situation than they care to admit. Her lips practically bruise his with the intensity of her kiss, and their teeth clash. He presses her against the door, and she runs her nails over his scalp and pulls him closer with a hard grip on the back of his neck.
Mike lifts her easily.
They have all night to work this out.
["I almost lost you" kiss—takes place during the hospital scene from 'Taking Hits', where Mike is sitting with Nadine right after she gets shot.]
Nadine is impossibly small and pale on the stark white hospital sheets.
Mike is counting all of his blessings that she has somehow escaped this nightmare alive.
He pulls up a chair on the left side of her bed—her good side—and takes her hand in his. He brings it to his lips and is suddenly overwhelmed. He was so close to losing her. And he wouldn't have even known until it was too late.
He bows his head over her body, resting his forehead against her hand as tears begin to fall. So close.
It's some time later—he wasn't asleep, but maybe just dozing off a little—that he feels the twitch of soft fingers against his face. He lifts his head.
Nadine's eyes have opened a little. He folds his hands around hers and she squeezes his fingers weakly.
"Rise and shine, gorgeous," he says softly, and the corner of her mouth twitches. He'd said that to her yesterday morning. And then they'd both gotten ready for work, and then he'd come home in the evening but she hadn't. She almost really hadn't. He kisses the back of her hand again. He can't even express how grateful he feels in this moment.
"Hi there." Her voice is a hoarse whisper. She blinks slowly a few times, gradually clearing the fog.
"How do you feel?"
"Like death warmed over."
He clenches his fingers over hers and closes his eyes.
"Too soon?" she asks, and he can't even fathom how she could be cracking jokes at a moment like this.
"A little, yeah." He lets out a shaky breath. "God, Nadine, I just… I can't believe…"
"You and me both." She lifts her hand to his cheek, strokes over the stubble. "I'm sorry for scaring you," she murmurs. He turns his head to kiss her palm.
"Doesn't matter now. You're here." He reaches over and tenderly smoothes limping curls away from her face. "Are you in pain?"
She tries to breathe deeply, but winces halfway through. "Yeah. A little. Can't really tell yet."
"When the morphine wears off…"
"Yeah," she agrees, and then groans. "God, I must look like hell."
"You look beautiful."
He's never meant it more.
["We can never be together" kiss — take 1.]
"I'll think about it," she'd said to him.
But now she's had some time to think about it—a couple of days, during which she's pulled up his number on her phone several times and stared at it, waffling—and she's having second thoughts. Sleeping with him on election night was a mistake. Dating him? That would be an even bigger mistake.
She ends up not calling him at all; she shows up at his house instead. This is probably its own mistake.
But she thinks they should have this conversation in person so that she can enumerate for him all of the reasons why "going out" with each other (to use his teenager-vocabulary) would be an emphatically bad idea - without room for misinterpretation.
She can hear Gordon barking inside, alerting Mike to her arrival before she even gets all the way up the driveway. The door opens before she can ring the doorbell.
She's come straight from work, so under her coat she's still wearing the sheath dress she'd slipped into that morning, but Mike is in jeans and a soft cotton shirt, and she can't remember if she's ever seen him dressed so casually. She tries not to stare.
"Hey," he says, and his eyes are light. He steps aside. "Come in." Doesn't even ask her why she's here. He probably knows what it's about, although her answer will disappoint him.
He's standing close enough behind her that she can smell the faint traces of his cologne and feel his breath light on her skin; it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "Let me take your coat," he says, and lifts it off her shoulders.
"Oh, thank you." She's trying not to feel very awkward about this. She hovers uncertainly in the entryway while he pads over to the coat closet. Gordon regards her with placid eyes from the far corner of the living room.
Nadine looks around. She vaguely remembers the details of Mike's home from the last time she was here, but at the time she'd been more preoccupied with… other things.
"Would you care for a drink?" he calls from around the corner.
She clears her throat. "No, thank you. I don't mean to stay long; I just… I just thought we should… talk."
"Will you join me for dinner, at least?"
That would be a date, and she can't let him trick her into one of those. Not when she's here specifically to shut them down. "Oh, I don't—"
He reappears, and he's smiling and saying, "Nadine, I insist," and guiding her over to the sofa with a warm hand at the small of her back. He sits so close to her that there's barely an inch of space between their knees, and she's already feeling so off-kilter that she nearly forgets what she came here to say.
"I can't date you," she blurts out. That's one way to get it out there. His eyebrows go up, but he gives her space to collect her thoughts and say her piece. "I can't—Mike, it would just be a supremely bad—we work together —we couldn't… we couldn't be together." She wills herself not to blush. Who's the teenager now?
"Okay," he says simply, but he's staring at her mouth now, and she involuntarily draws her bottom lip between her teeth. "If that's your decision, then I can respect that." His eyes dart back up. "I'm guessing that means it's a 'no' for dinner."
"…Right." She wonders why it is that he can destabilize her so easily.
He nods, and stands up. She does too. "Well, I wouldn't want to keep you. I appreciate you stopping by, Nadine. Let me walk you out." He goes to retrieve her coat again, and when he comes back he helps her into it. Then they step out and before she can even really catch up to everything that's just transpired between them, they're standing next to her car. She fumbles with the key fob before she manages to unlock her door, and when she looks up again Mike is suddenly very close to her.
Gently, he brings one hand up beneath her chin. Her heart begins to beat faster. "One last kiss for the road, then?" he wants to know. He searches her face carefully; gives her time to turn him down if she wants to.
She doesn't want to.
He leans in slowly and brushes his lips against hers; once, twice, three times. Then deeper. Nadine slides her hands up his chest as he presses his tongue against her lips, asking permission, and she bunches the fabric of his shirt in her hands as she opens her mouth to him. He groans and pins her against the side of her car.
She almost gasps out loud when he pulls away. She tries to get her focus back.
Mike cups her cheek with one hand, runs his thumb over her swollen lips. With the other, he reaches past her and opens the car door. "Get home safe," he murmurs. He kisses her again, softer.
He stands in the driveway until she's pulling out and driving away, hands in his pockets, and Nadine still has no idea what's just happened.
But maybe one dinner together wouldn't be such a bad idea.