Disclaimer: This is a short piece I wrote based on the possible future of a fanfiction I have planed. I alone own the female character and nothing else.
I shouldn't have followed her.
It was the heat of the argument, the blood pounding in my ears and the biting look of almost hatred in her eyes that made me follow as if I would shatter if I stood still. She marched out of the room, the low heels of her shoes distinct on the tile and fading into the commotion of the people milling around the police station yet too palpable to my ears.
I shouldn't have followed.
Everyone looked at one another awkwardly as she left, having avoided eye contact as the at first innocent exchange of ideas grew heated and our words became sharper, cutting into something we couldn't discuss and yet teasing it bloody to the surface. It wasn't the first time I let my feelings affect my work. Not the first time I stepped too far over the line and scrambled back with the illusion of control that I knew I didn't have.
If I had control I wouldn't have followed.
I followed her through the conference room and into the crowded offices, my heart pounding blindingly in my ears and my heartbeat shattered over every inch of my skin, walking after her footsteps as she disappeared into a deserted office nearly empty but for a series of metal cabinets against the wall and a round table surrounded by chairs in the center.
I shouldn't have closed the door.
The drawn blinds over the window clattered as I closed the door behind me and she turned to face me, running her fingers in frustration through her hair and causing it to fall frazzled and twisted around her shoulders in a collapse of faded red like burnt copper.
What the hell was that?
It was anger that sharpened my voice again but not for the same reason. Not for being questioned or my methods judged but anger because it wasn't anger that made my skin feel too tight for my body or my heart rate feel like it was scattered and broken across my limbs. Not anger that made my eyesight blurred and my senses deafened because they were fought and won by something no logical amount of thinking could ever explain. Not anger that poorly interrupted me with the realization that her fiancé was in the next room, her engagement ring prominent on her finger and all I could think about was that her hair was tangled and alive like it was after the numerous times she woke up beside me with my sweat from the night before still sticky on her skin.
It wasn't anger.
She didn't answer, still fuming from the argument and the electricity in her eyes sparking and almost enough to make me take a step back. She was angry. I wasn't but she was.
You had a theory. I disagreed.
She said it innocently, contrasting against the anger I could sense under the words but held back as if to antagonize me further and force me back into the fight. Get under my skin and break up whatever usually kept me so calm and sink her fingers into every inch of me I tried so hard to keep restrained.
It wasn't anger that got her under my skin.
I turned away from her, trying to control my breathing and feeling her already collapsing under my skin, beneath my control and breaking me loose. She knew how to do it. Surgically. Perfectly. Shift me apart into something different and knowing when to stop and how to hold back. She knew how to rip me apart into something indistinguishable and how to put me back together with nothing more than a glance or a brush of her fingers over mine.
It wasn't anger that broke me in its name.
You have a right to disagree but the way you handled it was unprofessional. I turned back on the last word and she scoffed and turned away, knowing as well as I did how hypocritical the final word was. That I could use it without choking on the sound when I could remember her fingers clawed into my back in ached ecstasy and an hour later the two of us on opposite ends of the table refusing to share glances and discussing the case with cool detachment.
Unprofessional? That's rich coming from you.
She smirked slightly as she said it, her words skimming over the topic neither of us should be bringing up and yet bleeding it so both our hands were stained. The moments when we caught a second or two to hold hands, the evenings we went on dates in distant restaurants to avoid being seen, the nights when we took turns pressing the other into the mattress biting and panting against sweat stained skin ...
She was under my skin. And I was stained by it.
Nevertheless you should have chosen a less antagonizing approach. I met her eyes as I said it, wanting her to catch my meaning beneath the slipperiness of blood that everything she did and said bubbled under the surface of my humanity to rend me consumed by something else. Wanting her to rend her own skin free and apart to prevent the destruction of my own but knowing she wouldn't and I couldn't because it wasn't destruction that got her under my skin.
I didn't mean to.
I got caught on her near apology, not expecting it or the sincerity behind the words and how they stood out in the near violence of our argument. How the occasional word or thought of kindness or affection stood out in how we pushed and cracked at each other with no line to bear or cross. How she told me that she loved me, the words broken between what we presumed were dying breathes stood out when I thought again of how she said we would never work because it interfered with our work and returned to playing cards with Morgan with a cool sense of detachment.
I know.
She didn't mean to do it. To cut under my skin and rip me apart and to shreds. I didn't mean to return the favor. Didn't mean to cause her to leave the team more times than I could count because she couldn't stand next to me and not cross the few inches to touch me. Didn't mean to push her further into the spiral that left her teetering off the edge and only by her own strength and will keeping herself from crashing over. Didn't mean to get under her skin and break my way through to get there as she did to me until we were both bloody and torn because we let the other in. We grated against the other. Wore the other down thin.
Eventually there would be nothing left.
She stared at me for a moment, letting the words sink in and letting the sound of them soothe everything she was apologizing for. Every moment. Every second from the moment we met until this moment right now. When I kissed her still married and came to her months later too consumed in lust and frustration to remember the ring on my finger as I bit into her shoulder and cried out in my first physical loss of control. When she left the team to protect us and nearly died in my arms, her blood on my hands and the sound of my repeated confession broken on my lips in my second loss. When Rossi proposed to her in front of the team and she didn't need to say yes but only kissed him in reply, his hands delicately and already sliding the ring onto her finger.
When I broke and there was nothing left to lose.
I couldn't tell which of us moved first but before I could process the futility of the thought her lips were on mine and my fingers were twisted into her lower back, pulling at her shirt and touching the softness of her skin underneath.
There was control.
Her lips bit at mine desperately and whatever thought I had to take this slow, keep it gentle was gone and I was all jagged parts and my lips sucking her tongue. I caught my fingers into her hair and held her rigid against me, my other hand pulling her shirt along her back so I could feel the curve of it stretched to her shoulders that contracted with her nails biting into my arms and rending through my sleeves.
And this was its loss.