The Most Important Thing
She gave him a kiss and cuddled up next to him with a big sigh. "I love you, Munchie."
She could feel him tense up beside her and thought, Aw, hell, not again.
"I wish you wouldn't say that," he told her.
She propped herself up on one elbow and the blanket slid down, baring them both to the waist. She noticed, as she always did, his ascetically slim form. Even in the weak light coming in from the street, she could see every rib.
"Look, John, I'm too tired to have this argument tonight," she said irritably.
"What argument?"
"The one where I play dumb and say, 'What, Munchie?' and you say, 'No, the other part.' Then I ask, 'Why?' and you tell me because it makes you feel obligated to respond in kind. Then I tell you you're under no obligation. I can tell how you feel by the way you treat me. You say, 'It's not the same.' I say, 'No, it isn't, but that doesn't matter.' 'Yes, it does,' you tell me. 'No, it doesn't,' I say. 'Saying it isn't important to you. It is to me. I need to know when I go to bed at night that if I don't wake up in the morning my last words to you were loving.' Then you say it still makes you feel obligated, and I say it shouldn't. You say it does, I say, 'Fine,' you say, 'Fine,' and we both roll over and go to sleep pissed."
"Oh, that argument," he said, realizing only now how familiar it was.
"John, I really can tell how you feel about me from the way you treat me, the way you touch my arm when you walk by, the way you fix my coffee, the way you will stop what your doing to walk me to my car at the end of the day even when you're nowhere near ready to go home for the night."
She rubbed her hand softly up and down his arm.
"There might be a day when saying those words to me feels like the most important thing you will ever do," she said. "But I'm not holding my breath."
He smiled knowing she knew him better than that. He was a romantic at heart, but he was more original than that. He was also a cynic, and after four failed marriages and too much other crap to mention, the romantic part of him had pretty much gone into retirement.
"I do love you," she said, seeing him cringe, "and I'm not going to take it back. Now, we can be friends with benefits for as long as you want. It's certainly less complicated than having a relationship, and I rather like having an uncomplicated life. It's still not going to change the way I feel about you, and it's not going to stop me from telling you how I feel. So, you might as well grow up and get over it."
He couldn't help but smile at her naiveté. She could never understand how much he hated those words, she hadn't been hurt by them the way he had. The truth was, he could never love her the way he ought to. He'd been burned too many times to ever love a woman that way again. She was right that being friends who had sex was a lot easier, but she deserved better, not easier.
"I'm not going to abandon you, John," she told him, filling the silence that he had let grow between them.
Now would be the right time to say those words. They were just words after all. He opened his mouth to speak.
"As long as we understand each other," he said, feeling like a coward and trying to make it ok by telling himself that she deserved more than just words.
She kissed him again and lay down beside him.
"Look at us, John," she said, "two damaged, broken people, yet when we come together, we make something whole and beautiful and perfect."
She snuggled closer and he pulled the covers up. She wasn't quite what most people would call beautiful, and he was far from perfect, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder and they were perfect for each other. It was good enough.
There was surprisingly little blood, but she had gone so pale. Her eyes were moving rapidly under her lids and her breathing was so shallow he had to put his hand in front of her face for a moment to feel it, just to be sure she hadn't stopped.
"No!" Munch screamed as his brain processed the images his eyes were seeing.
"Bus is on its way," Elliot said in the background as he put the cuffs on their perp and shoved him out of the apartment, "about two minutes out."
"Oh, God! Look at me! Please!" John pleaded, undoing the Velcro of her vest to make it easier for her to breathe.
He was vaguely aware of Fin, kneeling opposite him, pressing a clean, white handkerchief to the wound under her arm, a solid, if not very comforting presence.
"Are you injured?" Lake was asking their latest victim as he sat the woman down on the couch, giving her the chance to steady herself before walking her outside to give her statement.
He remembered their conversation last time they'd made love. The argument they'd had so many times.
"I love you," he whispered harshly.
Her eyes barely opened, the brown orbs rolling sightlessly behind the slits. She cocked a brow slightly and smirked.
"Told you so," she whispered so that only he could hear her.
She took a deep breath, let it out, and left them.
Note: This was originally meant to be the beginning and end of a much longer work about Munch and an original character, but it doesn't look like I'll ever get around to that, so I took out the OC's name and you can imagine what you wish.
Disclaimer: Law & Order: SVU isn't mine. Wish it was, but it's not. If it were, Philadelphia and Florida wouldn't have been so soapy (or might not have happened at all, I don't know), all of the ridiculous EO nonsense would stop, Olivia would be dating Porter, Kathy and Elliot would renew their vows, Kathleen would not be the most obnoxious and selfish child in the universe, Munch and Fin would have social lives and star in at least as many episodes as Benson and Stabler, Dani would come back and partner with Lake and they would get several episodes a year, too, and Cragen would find a nice lady friend and maybe even marry her. Huang, Warner, and Novak, ehhh, they seem pretty normal so I would leave them alone.