AN: This was supposed to be for a Valentine's Day fic exchange. As you can see I'm so very late. I started it on time, but could not finish it. Thank you for your patience, PiscesChikk! I'm sorry! I hope this works close enough to your prompt.
The prompt: "A conversation between Reese and Carter. They talk the entire night about themselves, childhood, dreams, being in the Army, etc. They have wine or beer or champagne, but the whole fic is just their conversation from one topic to the next. End it with them falling asleep in each other's arms. No smut. A goodnight kiss is okay."
"A zoologist? Really?" Joss turned to look at John in shock. They were leaning side by side against her paisley couch. Her feet were scrunched close to her chest while his feet were stretched in front of him on the carpet.
"Specifically, herpetology*, but yes." He turned to look at the bewilderment on her face. "Is that so strange?"
"For you? Yeah, kinda," she answered honestly. She took a swig from a cold bottle of beer. It was her third one and she was starting to feel a tingle of heat climb up her cheeks from the alcohol.
He shrugged and smirked. "We couldn't all guess our real professions at nine years old, Joss."
She let out a breath. "You're never going to let that go, huh?" She bumped her shoulder against his and felt the beginning of a different kind of warmth spark.
She was surprised that he arrived shortly after six p.m. with a box of chocolates, a bucket of popcorn, a case of her favorite beer and a movie.
She didn't question it, didn't push him to reveal why he'd come to her on Valentine's Day when he could be out getting laid by any number of his admirers. Joss wasn't sure she was ready for his answers.
They hadn't had a rift, but they danced around their feelings, the choreography complicated and at times baffling; the music of life was forgotten as they stepped to their own rhythm.
"Absolutely not. I only wish I got to see you during show and tell. I bet the other kids hated you." He smirked at her.
She laughed and gazed straight ahead, a middle school memory hitting her. "Oh god, they did. I couldn't lie worth anything and I was the designated snitch."
"Remind me to play poker with you one day."
She scoffed at him. "I would never play poker with you. I would lose all my money." She lifted the cold bottle to her lips.
"Or all your clothing," he replied. There was playfulness and something else, something so very John Reese in the intensity in his voice.
The beer burned the back of her throat when she choked on it, the suds spilling onto her cotton tank shirt as she scrambled to wipe the amber liquid away with a napkin.
"John," she groaned.
"Can't help it if you can't hold your liquor, Joss."
She shook her head. "I can handle my liquor and then some." The and then some implying certain things, and they let the silence fill in their thoughts.
This. This was what infused all of their interactions. It was a tight wire act and Joss looked forward to every performance, each acrobatic move of theirs more dangerous and breathtaking than the one before.
She stretched her feet out in front of her and wiggled her red painted toenails.
"Didn't know you were into red," he said. He leaned his arms back on the cushions of her couch. She tried not to notice how his biceps flexed with the movement.
She shrugged. "I like it every now and then." She reached for the remnants of the greasy popcorn sitting between his legs. "It's not like I get to wear something that shows my toes often anyway."
He nodded. "That's a shame. You have nice toes, Joss."
She rolled her eyes and scooted up against the couch. His fingers were dangerously close to the nape of her neck and she held her breath for a moment before slowly exhaling. "Now you're getting carried away. Anyway, so this herpetology; where were you going to do that?"
"Don't know. I don't think I thought that far ahead. I just wanted a job where I could pick up snakes, lizards and frogs and not get in trouble with my mother."
She looked at him then, really looked at him. She took in the tinge of gray around his temples, the smooth, odd but endearing shape of his nose, the pout of his lips and she let herself wonder about kid Reese. She wondered if he always had such intensity or if the Army and C.I.A. had hammered it into him piece by dreadful piece.
When he turned to her again she almost gasped. The intensity hid under the surface of who he was now, but the way he looked at her was tender and she gripped the bottle she held tighter.
"So you were a mama's boy?" She joked.
"Just like Taylor."
She smiled. "Touché."
"He's a good kid." John wiggled his toes this time and she almost laughed at that. He was so relaxed, and she had to admit that she was surprised he owned a comfortable pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but now that she saw him in them, she was surprised she'd never imagined it before.
"Yeah," she agreed. "He is. I might have made some mistakes, but I think Taylor came out okay." She sighed.
He removed an arm from the couch and placed a warm hand on her thigh. His fingers brushed against the skin not covered by her sleep shorts and she felt instant goose bumps rise at his touch.
"You've made good choices in other ways too, Joss." His hand slowly rubbed up and down her leg.
She needed to stop him right away. She grasped his hand with one of hers.
"Thank you, John. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way."
"I understand." And she knew he did. She knew he had lots of regrets in his life. She knew he carried burdens that weren't even rightfully his. They were alike in that way.
"Tell me about the time you were most scared?"
He removed his hand from her thigh and she was relieved. He was making her want some things they weren't quite ready for yet, that she wasn't quite ready for yet.
"You'd think it would be in the C.I.A. or in combat, but it was when I was eleven years old and my cousin Jimmy held my head underwater when we were fighting on the beach. I thought I was dying."
He reached over to snag another bottle sitting in a bucket of ice. A flip of his wrist with the bottle opener and he chugged down a third of the beer in his hand.
"Never seen anyone get a beating so badly though. It was almost worth dying."
She noticed the grimace on his face and knew there was no love lost between him and his cousin.
"That's terrifying," she remarked.
"It was. What about you?"
"Probably the C-section with Taylor. The I.E.D was bad." Her hand went up to rub the tender skin underneath her tank. She felt the scar radiating down her side. "But Taylor," she shuddered, "I almost lost my boy."
He slid a hand down her arm and weaved his fingers into hers. The slick of popcorn grease on the pads of her fingers brushed against the back of his knuckles.
For a moment they were transported back into that morgue. Not with the feelings of helplessness or fear, but the budding tenderness that was turning into something they both knew was too big to continue to ignore.
"You're a good mom," he reiterated.
Tears pricked her eyes and she had to will them away. "Thanks," she whispered. She swiped her unoccupied hand across her eyes and cleared her throat.
"So Kara?"
The subject change was abrupt and sent him metaphorically reeling backwards, dizzy. He inhaled sharply and attempted to slip his hand from hers, but she held on. She stayed still and let him find his way.
He finally found his voice. "She wasn't always that way. I mean she was, but she wasn't." He sighed. He knew it sounded like a jumbled mess, but Kara herself was a mess. "I'm not sure what happened to her." He shook his head.
They sat in silence and Joss jostled his arm.
"You took separate paths, John. You are not like her." She knew him. She knew he would travel the rabbit trail of his fears until he reached a conclusion that was wrong, that was false for who he was as a person. He would take the blame and let it fester deep into his soul until the only thing he saw was darkness. Joss knew that had to do with Kara; something the woman had said or did put John on edge in a way she never saw him otherwise.
He shook his head again and turned away from Joss. "I am like her. I'm not completely like her, no, but I'm enough that I can tap into that place inside me. I'm not a good person, Joss."
Joss wanted to sigh out loud. John lived in a place of unforgiveness, but only for himself. He forgave Fusco, Shaw, Finch and herself, but he could never pardon himself. He removed the fact that he was a complicated human being just like them and made himself a villain. Joss wasn't sure he would ever get to the point of seeing that, yes, he'd made some bad choices, some reprehensible ones, but that he wasn't alone in that.
"You are a good person, John, but I know you don't see that." She bit her lip and watched him.
"You really don't see me as terrible, do you, Joss?"
"No, John, I don't." She placed her hand over his and gave it a squeeze.
They both took a sip of their beer. She finished hers and reached for another one. She was going to be tipsy in a half a hour at this rate. She hadn't done heavy drinking since her early days in the military. It wasn't always safe to let your guard down around fellow soldiers and she knew not to even try it once she made it on the police force or even once she leveled up to detective. One night of excess drinking could lead to an "accident" the nasty folks that had infiltrated the NYPD could blame on too much alcohol. But with John she didn't have to worry. They could drink, get a little liquid courage flowing and still come out mostly intact.
She nodded toward his foot. "So how'd you break your toe?" She couldn't help but notice the pinkie toe on his right foot didn't wiggle so much as sway. It leaned to the side and jutted outward and she was sure it never healed straight, probably from a hasty, but ineffective splint when it was initially broken.
"Stubbed it during my last tour. I'd just fallen asleep when the sound of enemy fire sounded too close to base. Crunched it right against a backpack I had on the floor. It started swelling immediately and I buddy taped it. Didn't help that I had to shove it into a boot. It was already a mess by the time someone checked on it."
"Ouch," she winced.
"Looks worse than it is," he responded.
"I don't doubt it."
John flipped out a Swiss army knife and tore through the plastic covering the oversized heart-shaped box. The popcorn and beer had been enough until then. He took a glance at the underside of the box, his fingers tracing over the diagram describing the pieces and their proper location. Joss always found the guessing game frustrating in the cheaper boxes of chocolates. The picture might appear to show a coconut center, but she'd find herself biting into a gooey caramel chocolate instead. It was the lack of order that bothered her, but she watched John pluck out a piece and grin in satisfaction when he chose correctly. She shook her head. Of course he would be lucky in even something as nonsensical as choosing the right chocolate. There was some kind of otherworldly luck that John had. It came in charm and simplicity and it came in the many chances he got.
She absently rubbed her scar. She guessed she had some of her own otherworldly luck.
"Want one?" He offered the box to her.
She scrunched up her face and shook her head. "No, don't think I want chocolate and beer. I'm almost at my limit for the night."
He picked up another piece and bit into it. "Pretty good chocolate for the discount bin."
She smiled. "It's only in the discount bin because the day is almost up and the store is trying to cash in on those absentminded boyfriends and husbands."
He shrugged and finished his chocolate before grabbing another one.
She looked down at the beer between her thighs and rolled it between her palms. Should she do it? Should she ask? She wasn't drunk, but she did have a nice buzz going.
"Why'd you come here tonight, John? I mean tonight of all nights."
There. That was what she could contribute to their death-defying act of the night.
His hand finished slowly pulling away a chunk of chocolate, the caramel center stretching and curling with the motion as he chewed a piece he'd bitten off. He swallowed the chocolate slowly, letting the air shift uncomfortably between them. They were usually good at silence, but she'd twisted it into a shape that they weren't used to and now it perched on one leg struggling not to topple over.
"I wanted to see what you were up to," he remarked. His tone was not as assured as usual.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. "Plus, I heard you didn't have any plans. Didn't think I could let a beautiful woman be alone on Valentine's Day."
"I don't need your pity, John." There was no disdain in her voice. While she had moments of aching to be with someone, she also enjoyed the single life. The single life had been a relief after the disappointment of her married life and then the troubles that flooded her after Beecher's death.
"Trust me, Joss, there's no pity from me."
He placed the remnants of his chocolate piece on a discarded, greasy napkin and grabbed her hand. "Truthfully?"
She nodded.
"I didn't want to be anywhere else tonight."
She inhaled a quick breath at his honesty.
John was the one who reached outward, blindfolded, and took a leap off the scaffolding, but they both knew she felt the same way about him being a highlight in her life.
She nodded. They didn't need to do more tonight. They'd raised the bar for their next daredevil act of emotional sharing and would no doubt rise to that new challenge in the future.
"So why haven't we watched this movie yet?" She gestured to the DVD forgotten on the carpet next to the melting ice bucket.
He grinned. "Didn't think you could handle it."
"I already told you I can handle anything you got, John," she teased. "Spill it."
He flipped the case over and smirked.
"Really? You want me to watch Love Actually with you?"
"It's not just for Christmas, Joss. It's a great movie."
"I can't believe this," she murmured. She flicked a hand toward the television. "Well, go ahead."
His removed the popcorn from between his legs and his grin grew as he scrambled to pop the DVD into her player. He shut off the lights on his way back and lowered himself beside her. He was so close that she could smell the remaining tang of his aftershave. Her nerves fired up as he placed an arm around her shoulders again, but they settled as the opening credits rolled.
They watched the first act in silence and she felt the full effects of the beer at last. Her eyes drooped with sleep and just as she stopped fighting with the sandman, she felt a warm hand caress her face and smooth lips brush the corner of her mouth.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Joss," John whispered.
A/N: *Herpetology is a subset of zoology and is the study of amphibians and reptiles.
Fic Title comes from a poem that is connected with Valentine's Day (copied from Wikipedia, but using the 1810 more modern version of the spelling for "should"):
Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784):
The rose is red, the violet's blue,
The honey's sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou'd be you.