Falling in love with your coworker was a cliché. That kind of meet-cute went down perfectly on the glossy pages of a romance novel, but never in real life, and especially not in an alphabet government agency. That kind of bond should be formed through coffee dates and planned dinners and fireworks at sunset, not day-old takeout and secret cookies and stolen explosives. It was a bond woven through shared trauma and so much regret.
It was regret they had come to share - of sacrificed evenings, of lives built on false identities, of lost hope. Most importantly, regret of closed doors, fearing the consequences if their glass castle crumbled.
They loved each other quietly for years, first as individuals pining for something just out of reach, then as a matched set, keeping what they shared private, behind locked doors. Even after they'd proposed the idea of forever, it was a quiet secret, held close to their hearts. In a world where anything could be found in a database, uncovered with select keywords, something entirely analog could be maintained, and perfected, behind shadows.
Their (separate, different) job titles had them saving the world, not falling deeply, permanently, irreversibly for a person living within it. There was a time, and a place, and it certainly wasn't then.
Regardless, life worked in mysterious ways - putting two together in a place originally filled with one, forcing change in behavior, in attitude, in existence, in intent.
They had, over the course of nearly eight years, gone from antagonists in the other's story to something else; something just as impressionable but different. It was a good different, not contingent upon aggravating perfection or sentences stolen, but instead finding their unified perfection, and filling lives, not empty wavelengths.
They were comfortable, waking up wrapped in the other every morning, her head burrowed into his shoulder, his arms loosely looped around her shoulder. Yet, their path kept them far from complacent, and the mornings they spent basking in the other weren't taken for granted. In nearly a decade, they'd lost more people than they cared to count - attended too many funerals, investigated too many disappearances, lost too many friends. There was never a guarantee that they wouldn't wake up alone one morning and forever.
Even though the minutes spent were melancholic at times, their years had been far from constantly negative. If all else, they'd found each other, and built an inner circle as close as family. They'd gained new skills and developed old, overcome obstacles and fears and the unknown. Law enforcement was as much their backbone as it was a turning point; an opportunity to better lives and improve communities.
As much torture as there was, it was important for them to recognize how far they'd come, as both individuals and as something more. What had started with bribery and elf tights and tension had cumulated into something comfortable and happy and uniquely them.
They wouldn't change it for the world.