~2~

Title: D is for Dangerous
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: off-screen use of alcohol, swearing, sexual situations
Characters/Pairings: Sheridan/Luis
Summary: prompt: alcohol. "It's 3 a.m. Normal people are in bed right now."

"Crane!" Luis bellowed, leaning heavily against Sheridan's door. "Open up." Pounding on the door some more, he yelled, "Open the damn door!"

Tugging the belt of her robe tighter around her waist, Sheridan hurried down the stairs of her otherwise quiet and dark home, turning on lights as she went and wrenching the door open when she reached it. She hissed her displeasure at Luis. "It's 3 a.m. Normal people are in bed right now." Her words didn't seem to register with Luis, and more than just his unexpected presence on her doorstep, his demeanor, and the wild look in his dark eyes as he crowded past her taking up space in her narrow foyer (and not just encroaching on, but obliterating her personal space), unnerved her.

Impossibly, Luis stepped even closer to Sheridan, an unsettling, unreadable expression overtaking his handsome face as he barked out the obvious, "You're not in bed."

For the first time, Sheridan smelled the alcohol on Luis's breath, the heavy stench of cigarette smoke that clung to his rumpled clothes, and her heartbeat picked up with the realization that this wasn't the Luis she knew, this wasn't him at all. She swallowed hard against a throat that was suddenly dry. "I was." She could feel the solid, powerful heat of him through the thin silk material of her robe, and feelings she'd thought she'd successfully buried (deep) started to make a traitorous resurgence. His harsh demeanor made her bristle. Yet, she couldn't help but think his anger was nothing more than a mask of his real feelings, emotions he obviously didn't welcome, equal parts worry and want. She quickly shut off that train of thought and deftly sidestepped Luis, ready to throw him out, when he stopped her in her tracks.

"You should be."

Her hand, white-knuckled, on the door knob, Sheridan refused to rise to his baiting tone and pointedly reminded him, "So should you." Sighing when he showed no indication to leave, she went against all her reservations and pushed the door shut, lifting searching blue eyes to his familiar face, tonight wearing an expression so foreign to her beneath the
belligerent façade, she wouldn't, couldn't, believe it. Sure, they'd left full-out antagonism behind a while ago, but this? Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald didn't want her, Sheridan Crane. It was unfathomable, and she couldn't shake the feeling that something momentous had to have occurred for him to look at her the way he was looking at her now. Shaking her head at him, she walked past, intent on retrieving sheets and a pillow from the linen closet. "Make yourself comfortable on the couch then. I'm going back to bed."

Luis snared Sheridan by the hand before she could get far. "I'm not drunk," he insisted. His fingers gentled around her wrist at her sharp intake of breath, and he reeled her closer.

Sheridan's blue eyes considered him, her mind revisited their brief but eventful history, from outright adversarial, forced co-existence to reluctant, earned respect, and her response was weighted. "You're not exactly sober either." Still, she didn't stop him when his other hand settled low and with bruising possession on her waist, and he eliminated the space between them in two deliberate steps. There was a rough desperation in his touch that rendered her powerless to resist him. Something wasn't right here, and she wanted to call him on it, but she settled for light condemnation, "This isn't you, Luis." Her breath stuttered past her lips when the hand on her wrist migrated to her waist to join its twin (taking a few interesting scenic detours along the way). His long, blunt fingers tangled in the belt of her robe, and his dark, smoldering eyes stared at her mouth as she rambled on in increasingly nonsensical words. "You don't want me. You don't even like me. You only put up with me because…" she trailed off as her back met the wall with a thud, momentarily knocking the breath out of her, and she could only stare at her own hands in their newfound position on his chest. "Luis, what happened tonight? Was it a case? Is that what's bothering you?"

Luis's hands had loosened and untied the belt of Sheridan's robe as she'd been speaking, and they parted the silk material, stealing inside to settle low on her hips. His thumbs dipped just below the elastic edge of her underwear and stroked the warm skin there. "Who said anything's bothering me?" he dismissed her concerns with what amounted to a low, forceful growl. "I'm fine."

Through sheer force of will, Sheridan kept her voice steady as she answered him, her touch light on his worry-furrowed brow as her fingertips sought his face. "You wouldn't be here if you were fine. You can talk to me. I'll listen," Sheridan promised. For the first time, she saw hints of the real Luis in the man that stared back at her with tortured dark eyes. Her relief was short-lived though, when his hands slid around to cup her backside and pull her into him as her fingers threaded in his hair.

"I don't want to talk, Sheridan." Luis ground out, resting his forehead against hers. "I want…"

"What do you want, Luis?" Sheridan pressed on, growing ever more aware of her half-naked state, and the growing evidence of just what he wanted. Her hands trembled and curled around the nape of his neck when he answered her not with words but by closing the miniscule distance between them and capturing her bottom lip between both of his own in a kiss that was surprisingly gentle given the dark place from which he wouldn't let her draw him out. Sheridan felt herself growing warm, liquid, and compliant to the demands of his insistent mouth and body as he kissed her into a sighing response.

One kiss became two, three, a kindling fire gaining force and intensity, and Luis chased Sheridan's robe from her shoulders with his desperately seeking hands. His mouth mapped her lips, her neck, her shoulders, and the full curve of her breast where he'd pushed the thin spaghetti strap of her camisole down with urgency. It took Sheridan's soft, hesitant touch over his pounding heart to slow his frenzied movements, calm his mouth on hers to a gentle clinging and reluctant release of lips, and he pulled back to stare into her blue eyes, filled with desire but also with questions he couldn't answer, at least not tonight. "Sheridan." He looked down at her hands, that had finished unbuttoning his shirt and now rest on his bare shoulders beneath his parted shirt. "Sheridan," he repeated, his own dark eyes turbulent with emotions he didn't dare lay name to. "I…"

Impulsively, Sheridan hushed Luis with a kiss, unconsciously offering him the comfort of her body, and her arms wound around his neck, hanging on for dear life as the kiss sparked and blazed out of control, an inferno of years' worth of repressed feelings. She moaned into Luis's mouth when his big hands slipped beneath her thin night shirt, skated across her ribcage, and cupped the sensitive mounds of her breasts in his palms. Her nipples tightened under the teasing stroke of his thumbs, and they broke apart, Sheridan panting lightly against Luis's mouth. This wasn't the Luis she knew, but she was powerless in that moment to willingly deny him anything he wanted, and they both knew it. A question was asked, and answer received, from blue eyes to brown, and Sheridan started to lean back in to kiss Luis again, only to have reality come crashing down harshly around them with the sound of one voice, one word.

"Mama!"

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