"You know I'm on your side." He said it as though he was already waiting out a slap from her, but his hand was so distinctly calm and graceful as he settled a large cup of coffee onto the marginally cleared spot to her right.
"But?" Ally refused to raise a glance into the way Carreira was leaned opposite her at the table, catching the way he peaked his fingers leaning on the top of one of the unread reports as she lifted the mug thankfully.
"But was that smart?" he asked in a suddenly rushed and hushed quietness, his voice curbing toward subtly secretive even though the door was closed and they were alone in the conference room.
"Not at all." She kept her tone loose but controlled as she finally looked up, sipping slowly down on the sharply bitter and half burnt coffee before nodding toward the door, "How's it playing out there?"
"Equal parts amusement, disgust, anger and jealousy." He breathed out slowly before a smiled ranged its way over his young face, "I think Duly's in the bathroom finishing himself off, actually."
She ignored the dig at the other deputy and palmed the mug into both hands, letting its warmth work against the chill in her hands that had resulted after every ounce of blood in her had rushed to somewhere between her lips and throat and the tightened rise of her collarbone, "How's it play with you, Carreira? And Eglee? You're the closest I have to - "
"I don't give a shit who you're… ya know. And Candy thinks it's hilarious." He'd finally drifted down toward sitting, his other hand slacking the chair around slowly so that he could lax back into it and tip himself back and forth in the most annoying fashion, "That was a little too Wild West stand-off for me but I like to be a lot more subtle in my romantic gestures, ya know? Flowers. Candy. Cuervo shots that lead to bathroom liasons."
Ally gave him a dipping glance that stinted arched as she lifted the mug higher, thankful to all that was supposedly holy he didn't know the illicit details of some of her more recent liasons, "That's subtle?"
"It is nowadays." He chipped her a smile that just made him seem so young, so very stupidly young, "You're playing roulette, Lieutenant. You know that'll hit Patterson by the end of the day."
"Patterson knows." Ally laid coolly between them on a feigned shrug of supposed apathy and complete control, neither of which she had in stock, "How do you know I'm not just playing him with her permission?"
"Because, right now? You're equal parts embarrassed and thirsty, LT." His too young grin swathed wide into her wide glanced glaring before he cut it down and leaned slightly forward on a nod, "You should just tell me the play so I can handle the fallout. Because half of them don't trust you right now."
Her head shook slowly into certain and sullen acknowledgement, "If they don't trust me now, they're never going to, Luis."
"Yeah, but I wanna know which ones are more likely to make a big deal out of it. Because they're the ones that are just not gonna back off the boys in leather." His body angled a little farther forward as he exhaled slowly, "Listen, if they're leaning straight, things around here could settle a little. And I'd have an extra forty five minutes for Cuervo and a random liason."
She gave him a slowly and affectionately wry smile, "You really need to re-evaluate the sort of women you're attracting, Luis."
Because he seemed far too fresh and brightly brown eyed and easily amused to fairly match a woman that would dare a man into taking her on in a liason of possibly catastrophic proportions. But she happened to know a man who could teach him something about it. And well.
"Nothin' wrong with enjoying a woman when and where she'd like to be enjoyed. Ask your friend." And the wry rolling in his tone implied maybe he well knew more about it than she assumed, and it had her ironically smiling into the way she leaned back in the chair and set the coffee aside, "He seems to know the when and where of you, Jarry."
"How long have you been in this quadrant?" She asked him on a cocked glance and an intentional deflection.
"Long enough to know where you two are trying to take this town." The deputy murmured back into the cagey and complicit tone.
"And?"
"And it mostly worked. Until they got their heads so far up their asses they couldn't see past the blood lust." She didn't speak in response because she knew that the sudden jittering rise of him into standing was a combination of concern and actual nervousness, his palms both bracing the back of the chair as he shoved it into the table and swallowed, "And he is capable of some outrageous fucking blood lust, Lieutenant. I've got at least two downright gory murders I would've liked to pin him on."
"So why didn't you?" She asked between them with a drawn out caution and curiosity, leaning into the table at the way he'd back off and away from her, her long fingers curving the cup back close to her.
"Why didn't Unser lock every one of them up?" Carreira shook his head into a loss of any acceptable explanation, his hand flaring off the faux leather and waving into the air as he snorted derision, "It would've created a power vacuum. Sucked this whole county into a shit field. Y'know what happens when you're ankle deep in shit?"
She lazed him a supposedly bored glance and shook her head, "You just buy new shoes, Luis."
"You get sucked farther down, Ally."
She let her jaw rise hard into the stark force he'd put into the usage of her first name, the novelty of it off his lips its own implication of his sincerity, "Are you warning me away from him or trying to cover my ass?"
"I have no idea. Because I don't know what the hell you're doing." He'd let his voice tone off again toward somewhat genial, mildly murmured as he wiped his palm nearly childishly and embarrassed against the back of the empty chair.
Her eyes softened as she let her head tip and she lifted the coffee again between them, using it to aim toward him gently, "You know I can't just tell you everything."
"You can imply enough to get me pointed in the right direction, though." Carriera offered into leaning his forearms along the chair ridging, his fall back humor brightening back into his eyes.
She just blinked and stalled the mug halfway to her lips, head jutting a fraction to the side, "Can I trust you, Luis?"
"You just let a murderer put his tongue down your throat in front of your entire squad and you're worried about whether or not you can trust your own deputy?" A near on laugh of amused hysteria cast off him as he pressed off the chair and headed for the door, "This ain't Mob City, boss. I'm the good guy."
"Are we? The good guys?" Ally asked after him, finally taking another swallow of acrid coffee, the drawn back and detracted way she was addressing him, with her shoulders back and a blocking between them, making it obvious that she wasn't necessarily going to just imply anything.
"Better than bad." He shrugged at her, a certainty that she was undeniably jealous of plain on his darker features.
"I just don't know if that's true."
The heavy and stacked fall of the other man's boots was such a familiarly echoed phrase in his house that he let his shoulders lax as he wedged his own boot against the open refrigerator door, Tig's voice catching up on him from behind, "See, when you left Scoops, Hap was with ya."
"And I sent him home." Chibs shrugged as he lifted a half carton of orange juice and shucked it into the sink for dumping without even checking the date, "Or off in search of… whatever it is he searches for."
Half the food in the fridge just had to go. Well, probably more than half. Probably, likely, all of it. He wasn't sure when the last time he'd put leftovers on that second shelf exactly was. But it was before he'd memorized exactly which drawers in her kitchen had the good knives and the bottle opener.
Tig let off a snort behind him and stepped into the long counter to his left, already rifling through the grocery bags that had been dumped across it, "Term 'rode hard and put away wet' mean anything to you?"
"Tiggy." He cast a shaded and shaming glance to the side, door still tucked open by the toe of his boot as he palmed against the top of it.
"I know." Trager left off in a sort of quieted and nearly apologetic softening, lifting the milk and handing it over blindly to be put away, "He's a very sweet man beneath all the batshit crazy."
The Scot lifted an aiming toward the other man while he shoved it onto the top shelf with a nodding, "And loyal t'you regardless, yeah?"
"What the hell are you doing?" The older man's eyes were grayed in the low and sallowed kitchen lighting, their usual brightness dulled down as he waved around the hushed kitchen, "AJ makin' you sleep alone tonight? You getting a little punishment?"
"She is not." Telford shot off tightly, swinging the door shut before he swung around, letting his back lay up against it as his arms looped over his chest, the dark of his eyes glossy as he chewed into his bottom lip. "Gettin' things set up."
"You're a nervous daddy." The box that Trager had been lifting dropped back into the bag and both his hands went flat falling to the countertop, his head cocked into a surprised turn of sweetened amusement.
"Shut it." Chibs bit his jaw tighter as he stared into the seemingly too small kitchen, shaking his head into the two loose chairs at the table he'd pushed aside to the southern wall just to avoid early sunlight on hungover mornings.
"You are." Tig murmured into a chipped amusement, his voice scattering quiet, "You're all jitters."
"She doesn't know me." He slagged off the frustrated pass of the words into the room, shaking his head slowly, "And she's gonna be pissed as hell. What do I tell her, Tig? I just explain that sorry, love, your da can't step sideways without landing in shit?"
A snorted noise came up between them as Tig turned his hip into the counter, a shrug lifting his shoulders as he made a quirked face and lifted the box again, "She's Fiona's. She's gonna bitch slap you regardless of clean sheets and… is this Gluten Free? Really? What if she's Pro-Gluten?"
He ignored the perched looked of brow raised amusement on the other man's features as he wiped both hands down his cheeks. "She's gonna hate me."
"And at least she'll be alive to do so, Chibs." The box dropped raggedly back into the bag once again and Chibs winced hard into jerking his jaw right, turning a sorrowed glance over the other man's clamped jaw and downed pale palms. "Right?"
"I know." He nodded a dipped and tamed acquiescence into the other man's rigid stillness, "Sorry, Tigger."
The lankier man's body jittered a little before he drew in a long and full expanse of oxygen, forcing it down deep into his swelled lungs with a long nod of acceptance but an otherwise culled silence. They matched an even rhythm of slow breathing before Chibs finally leaned his hand out to tug into the other man's shirt, fingers shifting into the thinly worn fabric and gripping there in silent stalwart leaning. Tig finally capped him a quick smile to the side, stretching a little closer into the touch.
"You going back to Ally's?" Trager asked as he caught against beads and squeezed along Telford's wrist, letting them loosen apart in a shifting that had them facing the same direction and mimicking in the way they stretched long legs forward, hips back leaning.
"She's comin' here." Chibs let his arms back up into his chest, curling his shoulders forward on a sluggish shrugging.
"Really?"
"Yeah, really." He banked an intentionally assertive tone into the other man's slight surprise, glance hashing darker as he took in the bewildered amusement Tig was aiming between them, "Why y'makin' that face?"
"She's coming here." Trager pointed toward the tiled floor, his fingers dabbling a little as he nodded in affirmation, "As in, this here?"
"It's clean." The younger man clipped off defensively, glancing around the kitchen to redouble what he already knew was true before his arms tightened farther into his chest.
Tig gave him a breathy laughing noise and a swift nod, head tipping forward, "It's fine. You have a nice place. It's just…"
"What? What's wrong with my house?" Chibs asked into a sudden concern that he'd so completely missed something that may have been so intricately important to the presence of a woman. He'd always managed just fine before and without his Vice President's assistance.
"Nothing." Tig demanded between them as he lifted both open palms in a move that was meant to bridge the honesty in his eyes, "It's your house."
"I do own it." The Scot muttered back as he shoved off the fridge, loosening his shoulders into the way he tagged off the cut and slung it along the back of one chair, fingers wiping off the worked leather as he angled a glance back toward the way his friend was smirking at him.
Tig wiped along the side of his mouth slowly, glancing about the kitchen before meeting back to defensively dark eyes, "When's the last time you had a woman in this house?"
"Don't start in." Chibs groaned out the words as he shunted past the other man, digging into the grocery bags as a mode of complete avoidance.
Because the answer was that he damn sure just didn't recall.
"You're gonna have a woman in your house." Trager teased the words quietly along Telford's shoulder, ribbing up into the shirt-sleeved shoulder of the younger man and laying a leaning up against the President. "And your daughter."
"Thank you for pointing it out. I hadn't realized." He slaked off on a wearied but mostly patient patterning of sarcasm.
"So I should go?" Tig nodded as he used the other man's stunted up frame to push off from, heading a few steps across the kitchen with his boots clattering an echo into the too quiet kitchen.
"Why?" Filip cast off with a shrugging, letting his voice lift after the other man as he waved toward the fridge, "I have steak."
Tig's paler face suddenly washed up a wreckage of a smile, eyes widening up, "Do you not wanna be alone with her in your own house, Chibby?"
"You're startin' to annoy me now." Chibs cast back as he angled over the bag and bit into the inside of his cheek a moment, unsure of where to really start, "I got one thread of patience left today."
"Fraying it?" the other man's voice was a far-too-pleased-with-himself almost song of humor.
He nodded once into it as his palms flacked flat to the counter and he pressed his weight forward, stretching his spine into a crackling that seemed to slake a margin of relaxation between his shoulder blades, "A bit."
Trager just banked a laugh between them and his boots carried the echoing sound closer to the door and farther from the Scot, "Yeah, I'm goin'."
"Gutless." Chibs taunted after him, turning his jaw onto his shoulder after the other man.
"Guilty." Tig called back, "You wrangle that woman on your own, brother. I ain't got the strength tonight."
He was blatantly and happily surprised by the stillness of her, palming his beer and letting the stretch of his upper arm slant the living room doorframe as he let his eyes linger the long line her straightened up spine made from shoulders to ass to boot heels. She was back in her own comfortably tarnished cowboy boots and something about the worthy wear on them made him smile as he took up another swallow, rubbing the slickly cool bottle edge along his bottom lip thoughtfully.
He liked her more in the long denim and stacked heels than he did in a uniform or even looking too close to something like a legitimate old lady. It reminded him that she was something definitively different from the other women around him, or even what she was when she was working. Something uniquely her own and quixotic and maybe more casually comfortable in her own skin and clothes and the blur of soothing soft luxury than the starkness of either other option.
Her head had slowly cocked into studying his shelving, the fingers of her right hand lifting to reach for something and stalling up before touching, as though she'd caught herself up in a swaying of jacked up respect, regardless of the fact he hadn't made a sound. Chibs smiled into her pausing, appreciating the second thought she'd unconsciously made, the deference to the touching that proved her more thoughtful than disregarding.
"I do read sometimes," he taunted sweetness into the quieted room to reward her patient pausing, "y'shouldn't seemed surprised."
"I'm not surprised, Telford." Her head shook her hair dark down the seamed line of her spine, the white of her tank top so delightfully and purely clean on her as her shoulder blades shifted, her fingers dipping to complete their movement as she pulled a book from the shelf. "I'm curious as to subject matter."
"Pornography and repair manuals." He tossed up playfully at the strong stretch of her before swilling back on the beer, letting his other hand catch into his pocket as she turned with a book curled up into her chest and a wry glance on angled features.
"This is Yeats."
"Yes, it is." He murmured. "Right next to Behan, he is."
"You are a romantic." Her voice had stressed a rising surprise between them, the sharpness of her usually stolid features seeming to soften on a smirk.
"Y'think Behan's a romantic?" He grinned at her with a shake of his head, "You would, Lieutenant."
"The calendar is two months behind." She blinked at him, the book still clutched into her chest by bare but muscle tensed arms and her head angled though her eyes hadn't moved from his. "You cleaned before I got here because it smells like pine pitch in here. You have a deplorable habit of not putting pictures in actual frames and a bottle opener actually attached to the wall. As though you just don't have the energy to keep opening a drawer."
He panned her a glare that was still more patient than she'd expected so she inhaled deeply into a forward stepping, smiling into the way he matched the movement closer to her by pushing off the wall.
"And the furniture is more tasteful than I'd expected. You pick it out yourself, or did you have help?" She taunted at him, letting her voice rag a little toward churlish.
Chibs leaned the mostly empty beer to the coffee table, setting it beside the barely used coaster just to annoy her watching, "Funny, Lieutenant."
"And you're nervous that I'm in your space." She raised her head back into the way he palmed her close, his hands so broadly stretched and intentionally spanning on her waist, "Because, somehow, in your head, it sets a precedent. One that you're just not sure you're comfortable with yet."
"Y'done?" he asked cockily into studying the way the top of the book just barely cut some of his view of her cleavage and down.
"Not even close, Scotty." She shook her head so assuredly that he thought he may as well have signed the surrender and lifted the sword just by the turning of her jaw, "The pictures you do have framed get the most attention, because even if you did dust in here, you didn't wipe the fingerprints off the glass. Like the one of Tara and Thomas."
"Ally."
"Should I make bets about the kitchen? Gloves are on the table, cut's on the chair, dishes are still damp, fridge is full because you're nervous about your daughter coming and the garbage is… empty." She nodded tightly into her assertion, "You make sure that garbage is empty because you never know how long you're gonna be gone and you don't want - "
His hands jacked her tight up into him and the poetry that broached between them was nothing in comparison to the way her eyes lit up fired in the face of his tightening, "The observant detective thing is sorta cute sometimes but now you're just gettin' annoying."
"You wear your boots in the living room and the kitchen but not in the bedroom." She guessed into the assumption quietly, dropping a glance along the more worn trackings in the carpet before looking back up, "Yes? I bet that's the softest room in this entire house."
"Didn't do this t'you. Didn't categorize your life according to belongings." He squinted over her, scraping his teeth along his bottom lip after the accusation.
"You categorize your life according to your belongings, Telford."
Chibs snorted hard and defensively between them. "I do not."
"Bike, patch," Her smile preceded the lay of her lips softly and incrementally along the wired tight line of his jaw and he felt his throat swallow on its own in response, "me."
"Maybe marginally so." He admitted the whispering so quietly so that she couldn't celebrate all that much in being right.
"Liquor cabinet's in the living room and not the kitchen?" The drawing back of her head tilted her back into humor, "You see no reason to hide the fact you like your drink and other comforts close at hand. You're not ashamed of being a bit of a hedonist."
"One drink's too many for me. Thousand's not enough." Chibs murmured on her with a grin he hadn't meant to make.
And she matched it with a thinned glance, "That wasn't Yeats."
"Behan. Sort of." He winked at her, plying the book from her fingers and drawing it from blocking them up any farther, letting it sway to their sides as he leaned his mouth along hers and welcomed the slide of her tongue against his.
She sometimes surprised him with the way she turned his own advances round on him.
Like a mirror on his wanting, something that reflected heat and gave him back a doubled helping of his own basic burning.
He couldn't help but smile into the fact she most often kissed him back like vengeance was on her mind and forgiveness in her mouth.
"Y'haven't even gotten to my music yet."
Ally arched him a dry smile, letting her nose wrinkle up slightly into the way she shook her head aside toward glancing over the stereo and back to him, "Please, don't tell me there are showtunes involved. It would completely ruin the forensic profile I have going in my head."
"You've been working that profile since before we met, Lieutenant." He let his whisper linger quieter, the wedge of near distrust broaching between them before he smiled it away with a nearly forlorn shake of the head, "Haven't you?"
"You hid the actual porn." She retorted, keeping the playfulness crowded between them to block up his near on tip toward frustration, "Didn't you?"
"Goddamn right I did." The grin was the best of all possible results she could have hoped for and she appreciated the fact he widened it between them.
Ally slicked her tongue along her lips, head cocked, "I bet I can find it."
"You hungry, darlin'?" His face had so surprisingly softened and warmed into a smiling gentleness, the searching he made over her making her shoulders rise into lagged lay of breathing at the change of his tone.
It wasn't his usual gaited taunting and it was nothing of distrust. It wasn't even lust.
It was concern and care and all the things she was just not supposed to find in a man with hands more bloodied than a surging stigmata.
She nodded a flushed surprise into the terrifically unguarded gentleness of him. "A little."
He nodded her his knowing, gave it between them as though he'd completely figured her out without the use of profiles or studying or anything besides the watching of his darker eyes, "Back porch has reading chairs and a grill that's probably about ready. All warmed up."
"You clean that too?" She ribbed at him on a surrendering smile.
"Bottle of merlot out there too." Chibs tipped back into her, catching the way her jaw lifted to match his in angling, "Maybe you can have it if y'stop bein' such a little wiseass."
"Devious." She followed after him as he turned with a giddied teasing, her fingers tucking into his belt so that she could lag on the way he was avoiding her taunting. "Gonna get me drunk and take advantage of me, President?"
"Y'just completely take the challenge outta things sometimes, woman." He slagged a slightly whining tone into his turning, laying a sweet brown of his glance over her before his lips tinted a teasing smile between them, "It's no fun."
She traded his lathed teasing for a jaded glance and a sudden breathing fight of a tone, one that went daring toward an unavoidable edge, "You want fun, Telford? You just earned the challenge."
"Good." He lifted the book pointedly back into her on a grazing grin, intentionally lazing a glance down the way her shirt curved on her before he left her to grasp the book back into her chest, "Now keep your hands t'yourself, Sheriff"
Ally rolled her eyes into the way he batted her hand off from fidgeting his back pocket, her shoulders dumping lower, "Boring, Scotty."
