"Do you believe in chemistry?" Annie asked casually as she made her way back to Auggie's bed.
It was the 5th night in a row the two had shared a bed and Annie was getting a little too used to it. Certainly an assignment was going to ruin this little bliss bubble they found themselves in soon.
"You mean like mixing ammonia and chlorine will kill you, or two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen give you water?" Auggie asked sleepy and confused.
"No nerd boy, I mean chemistry…." She accentuated the word as she ran a cool hand along his warm rib cage.
"Oh, pheromones and stuff, sure, why not, makes as much sense as any for people to get together, why do you ask?"
"Because you smell really good," she proved her point by burying her nose in the crook of his neck and smiling against his skin.
"Well, I try," Auggie chuckled as she began to kiss along his collar bone.
"I noticed it a long time ago. We had worked like 42 hours straight and all the soap and after shave had worn off and I leaned over to grab a file and I could smell just you. I had to walk away," she was kissing down his stomach now and he was trying to pay attention to her point.
"I chalked it up to exhaustion, I was not madly attracted to my best friend, I was just tired, let my guard down, you know?" she looked up from her spot near his waist and when she made that move her hair skittered across his skin making him squirm.
"Yep, had a few moments like that myself over the past few years."
"Really? And all this time I thought you were immune to my charm," Annie giggled and returned her lips to his bare skin.
"Really. How do you think I always know it's you? We joke about fuzzy auras and 6th senses, but I am in tune to you Miss Walker," he let his hands sift through her hair.
"True," she practically purred.
"Part of it is the scent thing, I am truly attracted to you, but it is also your breathing patterns and your pulse, there is an actual rhythm to you Annie that I feel when I take your arm or grab your hand. It even works remotely, my headphones are so sensitive I hear every hitch in your breathing, every gasp and every sigh when you are on a mission."
"That is true of any Operative you are assisting though?" Annie was now truly curious and she slid back up to look Auggie in the eye and see if he was teasing her.
"Yes, but no other Operative has ever affected me the way you do, so clearly there is something about our chemistry that is different. Remember Nadia Lavandi?"
"Sure."
"We were surveiling her and you ran out of the van to interrupt her birthday party," Auggie chuckled.
"Uh huh, it clearly sounded like gunfire, but whatever," Annie lamented.
"You crawled over me to get out of the van."
"And you tried to stop me," she remembered the electricity of that moment so clearly.
"Most men would have been affected by a beautiful woman practically bouncing on their lap, but for me it was holding your wrists and feeling your pulse race that almost caused me to lose it. I had to let you go because if I didn't I was going to kiss you."
"If I had a dollar for every time I was going to kiss you, we could run off to a deserted island," she joked but he could feel her pulse speeding up just the tiniest bit.
"Danielle says my voice changes when I talk to you."
Auggie grinned at that.
"Your voice changes all the time, you have serious authoritative Annie and silly funny Annie and worried Annie and sexy Annie. Your voice is so rich and textured sometimes it seems like I can feel your words, like Braille."
Somehow this conversation had gone from silly to serious really quickly.
Annie kissed him then, trying as hard as she could to tell him how much this meant to her, how much she loved him.
"I knew we would be good at this," he indicated the disheveled bed around them, "that is part of why I fought it for so long."
"Yeah," Annie sighed understanding his point.
"I couldn't allow us to get too swept up in the sex until we established our trust and our work ethic. This was the least important part of our tremendous relationship to me, I needed you here and here," he pointed to his head and his heart.
"This was supposed to be a silly conversation about pheromones," she chuckled but he could hear the tears in her throat.
"Shhhh," he soothed as he pulled her tight against his side.
"So you were serious about the timing thing, this is the time for us, finally," squeezed him.
"Yep, figured if Eyal made one more offer to run off into the sunset I was going to lose my shot, so I snuck in there before another year went by, before you got hurt again, before you realized I was a total dork and you wanted nothing to do with me outside of work. Any of those things would have totally sucked," he tried lightening the mood again.
"Well 2 of those things will never happen and I will try very hard not to get shot again anytime soon," she laughed sleepily.
"Good, now go to sleep Miss Walker," he slid down from the headboard and curled around her body.
"Was this our 'talk'?"
"It was a very good start and if you want to have these talks naked in bed after sex it is totally fine with me," he mumbled against her hair.
"You are adorable," she sighed and drifted off to sleep.
The End