Disclaimer:nothing you recognise belongs to me.
Rated M for a reason ladies and gents – here be shameless smut. Not something I do much so feedback would be much appreciated. Also I'm a Brit, so if I mess up with American terminology (it must be really annoying) then please let me know and I'll correct it.
There's a little shoal of neon tetras navigating around the fake coral that blankets the bottom of their tank, and Joss watches them idly. The big fishtank takes up most of the right wall of the restaurant, and on the rare occasions she goes there she always tries to find a table near it. Taylor doesn't really care what he eats – MacDonalds or Michelin starred, he probably wouldn't take much notice despite the lectures she's given him on healthy eating. She's not much better, Joss supposes. Her mother used to bake her own bread, spend hours on the evening meal. She herself often skips meals or just grabs whatever is convenient at either the precinct or a nearby hotdog stand. In the evenings she makes a half hearted attempt to cook something halfway decent, but exhaustion often means that more often than she would like to admit she reaches for the well worn little collection of take-away menus tucked behind the pottery cow with three legs that Taylor made for her at pre-school.
But Taylor is away. Only for a week she tells herself, but still. She raised him so that he could make his own way in the world. That's what parents do, and it's not his fault that the apartment is too quiet without him.
So it's nice to be here, despite the circumstances, in the airy chrome and glass of Seascape restaurant. The waitresses are unobtrusive but diligent, and there's no music, just the steady hum of conversation that she has no interest in listening to. Sipping the dry Martini that cost twice as much as she was willing to pay usually and therefore tasted twice as good, Joss tracks the movement of a flashy Siamese Fighting fish, its silky looking fins and tail the exact electric blue of her dress. So much for it just being the females of the species who dress up, she thinks wryly.
There's a slight flicker of black over by the door as though on cue, and Carter smiles to herself, although she gives the man who has entered the restaurant only a cursory, studiedly indifferent glance.
Even when he'd been drunk, almost suicidal and frankly dangerous, it had been hard to shake John Reese from her mind. Put him in a beautifully cut suit, shave off the scruff and give him purpose and he was fucking lethal. Pretending to sip her drink and study the fish in the aquarium, Joss watches the reaction of the rest of the patrons and its staff from the reflection of the glass.
And yeah, not hard to predict. Two previously calm and collected waitresses practically collided when asking if he had a reservation and the bartender who had spent more time looking at her cleavage than taking her order looked surly when he passed over the scotch Reese had ordered. The two pretty beyond what nature had given them and more easily pleased than was safe, girls at the end of the bar, were practically salivating.
She waits until he sits down opposite her before she makes an effort to actually notice him.
"I'm guessing that there is a really good reason for this, because I actually have places to be."
Arrogant fucker that he is, he merely sits back, serenely as though they were old friends. There is a glint in his eyes as he slowly takes her in though, and Joss suddenly has to force down the urge to tug up the bodice of her dress and smooth down its skirt. Giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he'd unnerved her was not an option though, so leaning forward, she braces her elbows on the table and gives her best don't fuck with me glare, a little gratified at the way his eyes dart down to her deepened cleavage. "Who are we staking out and why?"
"Why do you think that we are on a stake-out?" He takes a sip of his scotch and settles back in his chair.
"What?" There's a gun in her purse, she throws a mean punch and there is always a knee to the balls . At the very least she could wave her badge around the restaurant and get him and his manipulative friend arrested. He's not the one in control."You asked me to dress up and meet me here because it was important," Joss says between gritted teeth. She's trying to keep her voice down but two women at the next table turn their heads at her voice. "Can you get to the point already?"
"This is the point." Accepting a small basket of bread rolls from a pretty Asian waitress, he shrugs his shoulders when Joss merely glares at him when he offers her one.
"Taylor thought that you might be lonely while he was at camp. So here I am."
Joss blinks. Mobsters, gun running, hell even homicide she can get her head around. Her own son collaborating for want of a better word with a fugitive, a killer involved in goodness knows what though...
"It's alright." She watches John's long strong fingers tear apart a bread roll. "He's not into drugs or gangs and he definitely hasn't started smoking."
"And how long have you two been friends exactly?" The words come out brittle and accusatory, so Joss downs her Martini and welcomes the burn of alcohol down her throat.
"I just keep an eye on him, that's all". John reaches a hand out to the one she's clutching around the stem of her glass, and Joss tucks her hands into her lap to avoid his touch. "Carter.."
"You're babysitting me for my son."
"I wouldn't say babysitting."
There's nothing left in her glass and she'll be damned if she's going to order another drink just to throw it at John Reese and his ridiculously pristine shirt, so Carter keeps calm and merely glares at the man across the table.
"What the hell have you been doing with my son?"
"Just keeping an eye out for him. He thinks that you like me."
"Do not." She sounds like a five year old, and is well aware of it, but when he waves away the menus offered, downs his scotch and practically drags her out of the establishment she doesn't put up a fight. A pretty angel fish looks at her from its glass prison as though in disappointment and she wonders how the whole strong, smart, independent woman thing thing she's got going on is so hard to hold on to when Reese's hand is in hers.
It doesn't take long to get back to her apartment and no time at all to get to the bedroom.
Oh God, it's been such a long time.. Joss isn't sure what to do with her hands. Getting the zipper of her dress down is easy enough, but shrugging it off her shoulders suddenly seems ridiculously complicated. She's not the eighteen year old that took for granted her taut body with the arrogance of youth. She's had a kid, she's not what she once was, and what if he doesn't...
"It's ok." John's voice is raspy and low, his breath tickling her ear, and when his hand strokes down the expanse of her back bared between the unzipped material of her dress, she exhales slowly, resting her head against the strip of skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt. The cotton is crisp, dimly she wonders if he starches his shirts – do people do that anymore? She can't think why anyone would bother. His skin is warm though, the sparse hair on his chest slightly scratchy against her cheek. Since he seems quite happy to hold her without doing anything else, she lifts a hand and peels away one side of the shirt from his shoulder. Brushing his nipple makes him shudder so she does it again, shoving the rest of his shirt down so that she can find the other.
"Joss." It's a groan and a warning, and looking up into those blue eyes dark with desperation, she finds the strength to unhook the straps of her dress and let it drop to the floor before kicking it away. The strapless bra doesn't do much to hide her, nor do the black lace panties. She looks up at him, trying to keep her breathing even.
" Joss." The words are soft, a prayer as he drops his head down to her collarbone, clever fingers unhooking her bra and then one hand is stroking down her stomach and cupping her sex, and she's fairly sure that she's going to come from that alone, before she's even really touched him, and that would be an honest to God tragedy.
"Wait." Her voice doesn't sound like her own, but he backs off obediently as though he hadn't ignored everything she'd ever asked of him before. There's still not much space between them, if she leant forward her breasts would brush his chest. And although that seems like a pretty brilliant idea she forces herself not to.
"Changed your mind?" For once he's not making a joke. His voice is low, concerned, and although from the way his erection is tenting the front of his pants and his jaw is tensed, and the fact that he obviously really, really wants this, wants her, Joss knows that he'd walk away without recrimination if she truly told him "no". It's a strange sort of power.
"I want to look."
John closes his eyes, untangles the shirt that is still tangled around his wrists and throws it somewhere in the general vicinity of where her dress had landed. "If you want a strip tease then sorry, I haven't had that training." The words are light, but his eyes are almost worried when she takes him in. Almost as though he were looking for approval, although why that would be she has no idea. Tense and unsure, lean muscles flexed, he's the most beautiful thing that she's ever seen. Perhaps it's the scars. And there are a lot of them. Silvery slashes that speak of blades, puckered pockets on muscled flesh where bullets slammed into muscle and God only knew what else. It's a miracle that he's still alive. She kisses them all and nuzzles the still pink wound on his abdomen. She's already marked him, albeit involuntarily. The kitchen isn't far and part of her wants to grab a knife and bleed for him too. Instead she pushes him down onto her bed. When he runs his fingers through her hair it's almost like benediction.
Undoing his belt is easy, so is sliding his pants down, and it's not like she's some blushing virgin. When she closes her hand around his erection he groans, when she slides the pre-cum down and licks his slit clean she wriggles slightly so that he can feel her breasts against his thighs, and looks up at him with a smile.
"It's Ok."
"Not remotely." His hands in her hair pulling her up are almost painful, and the cop in her wants to protest, to fight, but then John's head is between her thighs, his hands holding her hips down and when he slides two fingers into her and suckles her clit Joss bites her wrist so as not to scream out and wake the neighbours.
He's careful though when he enters her. Letting her relax and work out where she wants to put her legs, giving her the time to stay "stop" or "enough". When he finally collapses on top of her he's quick to roll over so as not to crush her. When he asks if she's alright she doesn't know whether to laugh or smack him.
It's nice though. Curling up beside him. She doesn't even mind when he wakes her up at two in the morning with the flash of blue eyes in the dark and his fingers exactly where she wants them.
When the dawn comes it's hard to do much but make an undignified grunt and snuggle further beneath the bed covers. Even if John is making a particularly obnoxious (and surely totally false) quip about Taylor going into business with Finch because he predicted them being together.
" If that's true then Taylor is grounded," Joss says sleepily. "No Prom, no basketball, and I'm re-tuning his tv so it only gets the Discovery Channel." Turning her head, she nuzzles her head into the pillow and watches as an unashamedly naked John bends down to pick up the dress she'd spent a weeks wages on and tossed unceremoniously on the floor. The view is very nice she decides. And when the noise of the shower makes her restless, she gets up and pads off to the bathroom. No point in wasting water after all.
