The End Looks Paved With Gold

"Hey Winnie."

She glances up, has been eavesdropping on Ben's side of the conversation with Team Two, is actually startled when she hears another voice. "Boss. Hey."

He pauses next to her, gives her that smile that always makes her think of milk and cookies after school, eight years old and her dad braiding her hair off her face so it doesn't get into her dinner plate. "You been waiting around long?"

She shrugs. "Just since the end of shift."

He checks his watch, gives her a look she doesn't know what to do with. "Four hours?"

She shrugs again. Nowhere else she could think of to go. Not without Spike.

He clears his throat. "You know SIU can take a while."

"Yeah." She knows.

He slips into the seat beside her, just looks straight ahead. "He's going to be fine."

"I know."

"It's just routine. Nothing to worry about."

She nods her head. "I know," she says again.

"They'll ask him to go through what happened, series of events, the call. It'll be fine."

"Boss? I know." Not her first time through the process, not at all, she knows exactly how it goes, this is the job. After all, she's the one who files those reports (but she also thinks about hard calls, about how difficult the right thing is, about the struggle to stay human, the cost of split-second decisions).

"Okay."

She swallows hard. "It's not that I'm worried about. I know he did the right thing. I was on the call, I heard it. But-"

"Making those calls is never easy, Winnie."

"I know," she says, shakes her head. "And I know that you guys have to make them. I get it. I just wish-"

He lets out a quiet sigh, doesn't look at her. "I know. That things were different. Truth is-"

"Yeah. I know. I know. Someone has to make those calls." She picks at her fingernail. "I just wish it didn't have to be any of you." It would be a whole lot easier if it didn't have to be any of the people she cares about. Probably would be easier than that if she'd been able to keep them all at arm's length in the first place, the way she should have. She'd tried to, way back in the beginning. But Spike had always made her laugh, Lew had always asked her how her morning was going and she'd gone dancing with Jules more than once, had watched the play-offs with Sam and Ed and Boss had brought her coffee, handed it over with a smile and that had been that. And then she'd looked up one day and realized that everything she felt for all of those people went far beyond coworker to coworker and then it was family and then Spike-

Well. The point is - it would be easier but there's no way she can go back now.

Boss smiles at her, this tiny edge of surprise right there in his eyes. "He'll be glad you waited."

She tries to return that smile. "Where else would I be?"

The elevator doors open and Winnie thinks that her breath catches, the circles under Spike's eyes, how dark his eyes are against his skin. He looks tired in a way she's never seen him look before. She wants to push him behind her, make sure nothing bad ever touches him again, wants to know what could possess someone as good as him to choose this job, always knowing that making a hard choice could be just around the corner, the kind of choice that no one else can face making.

She can't get her feet under her, can't push herself up, like she's holding a stone under water.

Boss glances at her, gets up and does what she wanted to do, talks to Spike, makes him smile. Pats him on the shoulder, is still talking to him but Spike's looking at her and if she didn't know any better, she'd think he was scared.

She has no memory of standing up, walking over to him, knows that she stares at him hungrily, this flashback to the day after he asked her out, like she'd looked up and seen something different in him.

"Hey," he says cautiously and actually, she really wants to throw her arms around him, forget all about professionalism and the workplace environment and not touching each other while they're working.

She thinks she smiles at him. "Hey." And she's just always liked the way his face is, the way he looks at her, liked it before she ever even realized she liked it.

Boss is looking between the two of them like he'd like to shake them both, just shakes his head instead and lets out a sigh like he'd really like to roll his eyes. "Spike? I'll check in with you tomorrow. And remember-"

"Yeah, no alcohol, I got it."

Boss smiles. "Of course you do. Well. Get home safe you two."

Winnie watches Spike's head turn, watches the twist of his neck, watches him watch Boss leave. She swallows. "You need to get anything from your locker?"

He stares at her, eyes roaming her face, gives her a shaky smile. "Two seconds. Just have to get my bag. You uh-you going to wait?"

She almost laughs, like what does he think she's been doing here this whole time? And there's no way she's leaving now, not when he's standing right here in front of her. "I-yeah. Yeah, I'm going to wait."

He steps close, close like he's going to kiss her, flashes her a smile and she feels a hint of relief, like he's still in there and he's not going anywhere. Thinks isn't it funny that he can smell the same, Old Spice and that underlying scent of him but that everything can be so different to the way it was this morning (they'd had ridiculous, impractical sex in the shower and he'd only told her once they were in the car that he'd set the alarm half an hour earlier than she'd thought and now they even had time to stop at the Timmy's drive-thru before work. She'd glared at him and huffed about how he'd made her rush to get ready and how her hair was all wet and a little tangled, but then, she hadn't really been that mad, not at all).

She wants to tell him that she'll drive, that she just wants to make things easier for him but she's a little scared the way she's feeling right now, that she'll accidentally step on the gas at a red. He gets in the car, starts the ignition and she reaches across blindly and squeezes his hand hard. She wants to kiss him, wants naked skin right against hers, wants to slide her arms around him.

"Can we go home?" she asks, doesn't even recognize her own voice.

He doesn't answer her, just squeezes her hand back and then doesn't let go of it.

They don't say anything the whole way there, radio off and no other cars on the road with them.

She leans against the wall in his foyer, just stares at him. He locks the door and then leans back against it. He clears his throat like he's going to speak and then doesn't say anything and it's like there's this window between them, glass and reflections and she can't get through it.

"Are you hungry?"

He shakes his head at her and she wants to know why he hasn't just touched her yet.

"Do you need anything?"

And he's still standing there, still not saying anything and she has no idea who moves first, if it's her reaching for him or him reaching for her but her head hits the wall, back and shoulders too, his hands leaving trails of heat on her skin and she's suddenly aware that she's telling him that she needs him over and over and his fingers are pressing hard enough into her ribs that it almost hurts. She's also pretty sure that she pulls so violently at his shirt that she tears off some of the buttons. He gets her right up against the wall, the sweat sliding across all the skin between them and it's really fast, a little too desperate and she's pretty sure she's going to have his fingerprints bruised right into her thighs and that walking is going to be all kinds of non-fun tomorrow.

(She really can't bring herself to care, not with his lips against her neck, the way he chokes out her name against her mouth. Plus, he bites right into her skin right at the end, breaks the surface a little and what is up with her that this is suddenly a thing that turns her on? Thinks that maybe it isn't, not really, but anything he does kind of is.)

Her legs are shaking as he sets her gently on the ground and she wants to start laughing but also hug him as tightly as she can.

"Love you," he breathes right against her temple and then kisses her so that any reply she makes gets lost in his mouth.

They stumble their way up the stairs (and she thinks it's got to say a lot about his state of mind, how he doesn't even say anything about the buttons now missing on his shirt, how they're probably going to be finding them in his front hallway for weeks), get themselves cleaned up.

She's sitting on the edge of the bed when he comes out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist and she clears her throat because for a few minutes there, she thought he was trying to drown himself in the shower. "You okay?"

He looks out the window and then at her. "I'm not going to freak out, if that's what you're asking me."

She licks her lips, thinks about the right way to bring this up. "You haven't taken a Sierra shot the whole time I've been at SRU." Or she could just go straight for the direct approach.

He raises an eyebrow, this hard expression on his face that makes him look like someone else entirely.

"Not that I don't-I'm not saying that I thought you couldn't," she says hastily. "I'm just. Saying."

He gives her this patient kind of look and her jaw drops a little because he's looking at her like he's about to start quoting one of the SRU manuals at her, like she's the one who needs to be talked down here. "I'm fine."

"Yeah. Well. Okay." She nods. "And if you're not. That's fine too."

There's a long pause before he opens his mouth again. "I wasn't wrong."

She looks at how he's standing, how his arms are crossed all defensively across his chest, his jaw set. "I know that." Of course she knows that, didn't have to be on the call to know it for sure.

"I had to take that shot. Got the order to fire."

She just looks at him until his eyes meet hers.

"Cut and dry."

She still doesn't say anything.

"That's the job, Winnie." He sounds like Commander Holleran, those pep talks he gives. Thing is, it's not Norm Holleran she wants to talk to right now.

She doesn't bother telling him that she knows what the job is, knows what it entails, it's why she didn't become a cop in the first place, why she chose what she chose. "You need me to remind you that you made the right call?"

He lets out a breath and she sees him relax ever so slightly. "I-yeah."

"Okay." She licks her lips, thinks about how he's the best person she knows, how he's got more decency in his little finger than most people have ever. "You did the right thing. You did. He was escalating, he was going to kill someone else. He was armed. You did the only thing you could do. And it was the right thing. Even though it sucks." She swallows, wonders how far she should go here. "And I'm glad that there are people like you out there who can make those calls so that the rest of us can be safe. People like you who make those calls so that the rest of us don't have to."

Spike clears his throat. "That was pretty good." Looks like he's trying to smile but is failing miserably.

"Yeah? Future as a motivational speaker?" She thinks she might be shaking, how she can see the effort it's costing him, all this relief that he's still him.

"Definitely."

She swallows. "I believe all of that though. Just. You know. So you know."

He leans against the dresser, clears his throat again. "You uh. You didn't have to wait around for me. Just. You know. Next time."

She raises an eyebrow, feels a little taken aback at that one because they always leave together and it's not because she needs a ride, she got home all on her own for years before they got together. "I know I didn't have to."

"Win-"

She shakes her head at him, thinks that doesn't it just figure that he's gone and forgotten what she's doing here with him in the first place. "Stop it. Don't get like that. Don't you know by now?" Clears her throat. "I'm, you know, not going anywhere."

"I know that."

She's really not sure that he does know but then she figures that the only way she's ever going to prove it is by sticking around, accepting every part of him, even the parts he tries to hide – and she's not opposed to that at all (it used to scare her, feeling that way. Doesn't anymore. Or maybe it does and she's just learned to live with it because it sure as hell beats living without him). "I love you."

He stares at her like she's said something he's never heard before. "I-Winnie-" He crosses the room, hauls her to her feet and kisses her and she has no idea what his reaction's about but his arms are tight on her waist and she hugs him back, squeezes tightly.

She says it over and over, thinks for whatever reason, he needs to hear it, his arms still tight around her and she does, means it in a way she didn't understand until him. Thinks she could probably mean it forever.

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AN: Possibly, I need a reminder on what fluff actually entails. I'll make it up to you...?