"Oh, sorry, detective. I didn't realize that was you from behind. Lot of fine girls out today."


Looking back, Joss could see the brazen hint for what it was. She hoped Hector Alvarez thought she'd found him out thanks to that catcall and comment. Served him right.

In the days leading up to Hector's arrest, the trail of his henchmen that appeared in the ninth precinct's bullpen kept her on the edge, sure he was sacrificing them for some larger purpose. But according to Fusco, post-arrest Hector had railed angrily about the loss of his men. Now, in hindsight, she had a sinking feeling that the reason they'd all landed in cuffs at her doorstep was the same reason Hector's main garage had been blasted apart with a grenade a day after she visited it.

That reason was currently watching her from across her regular coffee place. And Joss was pretty sure the plastic cup of smoothie held in front of John's face was just his excuse to sit there rather than an attempt to be discreet.

She glanced once, twice—still watching her. All right, that's how it is. She turned resolutely back to the barista, a white boy who regularly used the customers to try out his pick-up lines. In response to the barista's wink and smile, the briefcase-carrying man in front of her reared back askance, grabbed his coffee and basically ran away. Joss chuckled inside at the look on his face.

"Joss?" The barista met her eyes and started his slow-smile-and-dance routine once more. "Jocelyn? Jocinda?"

"Just Joss is fine," she said, and reached for her cup.

"Okay, Just Joss, just let me know how the coffee is." He handed it to her; she closed her fingers around it, but he didn't let go. "Always trying to improve."

"Sure." Joss pulled back harder. He held on for one more second before letting go.

"My name's Dave," said the little shit, and beamed.

"Oh, hey," she said, "that's my son's name." Smirking at his instant dismay, she sailed off.

Unfortunately, as she turned away, her eyes crossed paths with John's. Around the now-empty cup, his fingers twitched in her direction: come here.

She wasn't going to be petty and pretend she hadn't seen him. (At least, not today.) Taking her time, Joss wove her way through the tables and arrived at John's table. He gently nudged the chair opposite him with a foot and kept his stare on her. Sit.

She sat. "So."

"We've got a case nearby," he said smoothly.

So he was starting to anticipate her questions. She wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that their interactions were getting predictable.

Maybe it was time to stop engaging. "This is my coffee break. Don't talk to me."

"Okay," he agreed immediately, and leaned back from the at-attention posture he'd developed as soon as she'd sat down.

Joss pivoted her chair a few degrees away from his direction and lifted her coffee. After two sips, she frowned at it. Why did it feel off?

…Because the barista had given her a medium instead of a small, that was why.

Grimacing, Joss set the cup down hard on the table and glared at it. Then she picked it up again. Not going to let extra coffee go to waste, even if she did feel annoyed by its intentions. Besides, Dave was probably regretting the upgrade, what with finding out she was a mom and all.

"Something wrong?" Her shadow spoke up.

Yeah. Shadows aren't supposed to talk. "No. Nothing." Resolutely she put the coffee to her mouth again without sparing him a glance.

There he went in her peripheral vision, closing his body angle in toward her bit by bit. "Was the barista bothering you, Joss?"

She nearly groaned aloud. "He was bothering everyone."

Oh, that was not the right answer. She could almost hear the gears grinding in his head: 'Everyone' includes Joss, so since I want to recruit her as the corrupt cop to my vigilante act, I must defend her honour. Because that's obviously the best way to appease a female cop.

Swiftly she added, "But soon as I mentioned my son…" She waved a hand as airily as she could, and leaned back hard in her chair as though if she did so with enough emphasis, it might make him do the same.

Miraculously, it worked. John relaxed from the gopher pose he'd been edging toward. "So why the black coffee today, Detective?"

She noted the address change. "What about it?" she said, and took an extra-long sip.

"I just thought you preferred your coffee sweeter." He tilted his head.

"Yeah, you know, I might need something sweeter—or stronger—after finding out that you managed to suss out my taste in coffee."

John's head tilted further. She didn't fill in the silence, just kept working at her coffee. There were only ten minutes left in her break, and Molina was waiting on a report from her.

Eventually he filled the space: "I thought we were friends."

Lord, what a terrible line. "You're worse than Dave," she scoffed into her coffee.

"Dave?"

Time for a change of topic. "Tell me something," she said, "was it you who sent all those goons to my desk this past week?"

He blinked, visibly rerouting. "Goons?"

She would've expected a silent smirk and know-it-all eyebrow lift. "Well, thanks anyways."

"Who—" His eyebrows dived. "Alvarez's men?"

"Yeah, who else?" She drank more of her coffee and observed his expression. "Now why do you look so put-out?"

There was a sharp crack. The empty plastic cup in his hand, which was white (well, more white than usual) with tension, was now split halfway open.

Joss paused. Looked at it.

Then she looked back up at him. "Something wrong?" she said, repeating his words back at him.

He didn't say no. He didn't say anything, just regarded the cracked cup in his hand for a moment before letting it fall to the table.

"John."

His eyelids flickered up to meet her gaze. "What did Alvarez say to you that day?"

"What? What day?" Now she was the one rerouting.

"The day—" He paused, pressed his lips together. "The day you went to speak with the bodega owner."

She thought back. "Oh. He said—actually, that was the first clue he dropped. He was so cocky back then…" She paused a moment to savour the satisfaction of his arrest. "By the way, are you always following me?"

"What did he say?" John asked again, words carefully spaced out. "After he whistled at you. What was it?"

"Something about 'lotta fine girls round here'. Reference to his side piece, obviously."

With a screeching scrape, John abruptly shoved his chair back and stood in one sharp movement.

Joss put down her coffee and squinted at him. "All right, what is it now?"

"I'm going to get you a latte," he said, more tersely than that particular phrase had ever been said, and strode off toward the counter.

Making sure her jaw was closed, she stared after him for a few beats. Then she turned and saw the poor person who'd had the misfortune of sitting behind John, now wedged firmly in between their chair and their table.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry." She leaped out of her chair and rushed over to help their tablemate in unwedging them.


Five minutes later, the medium black had been pushed aside in favour of the latte Joss was now nursing. John was back in his chair, which Joss had moved to the side so that there were no other chairs directly behind him.

She stared at him as she sipped. "Did you pay for this?"

"Why do you ask?" He cocked his head innocently.

Because at the cash, he'd waved Dave over for an exchange of words. Next, the barista had, in order: jerked back, crossed his arms, leaned forward, pointed a finger, hastily dropped his arms and, finally, stepped very far back before scurrying off to the coffee machines. He'd then carried back the cup Joss was currently drinking from straight to John, who had subsequently returned to their table without handing over a penny.

"You know what, I don't want to know." Joss sunk back into the obliviously sweet depths of her latte.

"Is it good?" he asked, archly.

"Yeah," she said, and struggled for a moment to decide whether to thank him or not. No, it was basically stolen coffee.

…But she didn't mind ripping off Dave some. Sorry to all his fellow employees.

"Really good," she decided, and drank some more.

And there was the small, pleased smirk on his face. He sat back, relaxed, now taking up the entire chair with one foot crossed over the other knee.

When he seemed to be content to just sit there and watch her drink her coffee, she quirked a brow. "Don't you have to get back to your case?"

"I've got time," he said, comfortably ambiguous, and didn't move a muscle.

"Is that so." She tapped her fingers against her cup and contemplated the air over his head. "Well, I'm kind of craving a doughnut. Boston cream."

She lowered her gaze to his, and his smirk grew into a small smile. "Of course," he said, with a tone of politesse, and stood up to make his way back to the counter.


"…I shouldn't have done this," Joss mumbled half-heartedly around a mouthful of sweet doughnut. She swallowed and licked her lips for remnants of cream. Bliss.

"But you didn't," John said. His cracked plastic cup was gone, as was her cup of black coffee; there was nothing else in front of him. He hadn't gotten anything for himself, had just sat there and watched her eat. "I did."

"That's true," she said, nodding to herself. "True."

And she allowed herself this, a small moment of not upholding the law, a beat of time as something other than a pillar of justice. An instant to break outside the rules.

John leaned in, drawing her attention back to him. "That's why you have me," he said, seriously.

Joss had thought from the beginning that he had her, that he sought her out for her usefulness to him, that this was how their relationship worked in his vigilante-hero universe.

She rather liked it the other way around.