Season 4: set vaguely in the future.
A/N: I found this in my unfinished file, and decided I liked it just as is.
Disclaimer: The characters and the show CSI:NY are the intellectual property of their creators and CBS.
Friends to the End
She could feel his hot breath on her neck. She could feel him, hard and muscled, against her back. The air was close, and the tension palpable, as they waited for the order to move out.
Three days she had spent in a van with him, staking out the scene. It wasn't her job, but these days, they all pitched in to do what was needed. A lot of lines had blurred. And one of those lines was the one between her and him.
It had started the way it always did, with more awareness of each other. She would bring him back his favourite sandwich – corn beef on rye; he'd toss her a chocolate bar – dark with almonds – with her coffee. After 24 hours, to keep each other alert during the hours they were both awake and not spelling each other off, they started to talk, to share things they would never have told anyone else.
They learned what was fair game for teasing (Devon and him), and what was still a trigger for tears (Frankie and her). They learned what could be discussed (his feelings for Angell) and what could not (her feelings for Mac). And somewhere in the middle of that van full of equipment, listening in on a gang of thugs and murderers, the things that might have stood between them dropped away, until there was little left but the truth.
During the raid on the warehouse they had had under surveillance, she could feel his presence on scene as if he sent off a signal; the body heat he had surrounded her with before the troops moved in seemed to radiate no matter where she was. In the darkened warehouse, in the gun battle that ensued, in the take down of six heavily armed men, she could have unerringly pointed to where he was.
And so it was that she felt the bullet that ripped into his flesh, felt the blood that gushed over his skin, almost before he registered the pain that burned through him. She had turned to push him out of the way a second before the danger had been apparent to him, and, according to the doctor later, probably had saved his life.
Because instead of the armour-piercing bullet hitting that big heart which beat once for him and once for the city he protected, it had gone through the fleshy part of his arm and would hurt like a son of a bitch for a few months.
But lying on the floor with her pressed against the full length of his body, her green eyes staring deeply into his blue, confused and fogged with shock and pain, all he could think was "Finally."
And when he reached up to tangle his hands in the mass of dark hair pulled severely back, when he opened her mouth with his need, when he felt the touch of her tongue on his lower lip and moaned, the last thing on his mind was how many kilos of coke they had just got off the street, or how many of the gang had been killed or injured, or even how many other cops on the scene might have just joined him on the casualty list.
The only thing he could think of was how perfectly her ass filled his hands.
And when they got out of the dark corner they had been blown into, and plunged back into the business at hand, that heat stayed with him, a small intense flame held in his heart.
What the bullet failed to do – pierce his heart – she had done years ago with one casual glance.