Dani Powell feels like she should have come with a warning label.
Probably several of them.
Malcolm Bright certainly came with his own set. (They were more like flashing hazard lights.) Dani had known full well what she was getting herself into with him when they had started seeing each other. Hell, the disclaimers had been self evident when they were only friends. It was obvious to anyone who spent more than ten minutes talking to the guy; he came with baggage heavy enough to crush him.
At present, these were burdens she desperately wanted to help him with, to share with him. She could never fully take them away, she knew, but she could lessen the load when he let her.
He was so much easier to love than she had ever anticipated. Even her most half-assed attempts to empathize with him, to be understanding and help him, were met with such reverent wonder and genuine appreciation that her heart nearly burst with affection for him. She found herself in a precarious, uncharted place, emotionally, where she wanted to throat punch anyone who had ever hurt him, anyone who had ever even thought to wrong such a gentle, special soul as Malcolm Bright.
And being that vulnerable terrified her.
Bright was still annoying. He still had plenty of quirks she would never quite understand. And she knew that one day, he was going to get himself hurt for the most asinine reason, and she would have to pick up the pieces. She knew the day was coming where she would need to sit him down and explain to him in the simplest possible terms that she needed him to be safe, that he couldn't pull this shit anymore, and that he had to stop and think before he ran headlong into danger at the drop of a hat. It was a conversation she felt coming, in the same prophetic way animals could sense hurricanes.
In spite of all this, she still feels like she's tricked him, sometimes-that he thought he was getting this strong, independent woman who has her shit together. And she's not that, at all.
She's so far from that, it's not even funny.
So when he sees her break down for the first time, she expects him to be shocked. Repulsed, even. She expects him to recoil from her, or think less of her. She expects him to not know what to do with her.
But he doesn't do any of those things.
When he finds her, comes to her from the other room after they've both fallen asleep in their separate spaces, she's sobbing into his pillow so hard, so violently, she's barely able to make any sound at all. The air she does manage to take in comes in hard, painful gasps and shoots out in breaths that make her entire body tense up.
She's spent a lot of time in Malcolm Bright's bed lately. Very little of that time has been spent actually sleeping, in the months they've been seeing each other. (She's not upset about that.) Usually, she dips out. Usually, she heads home late, sated and happy and buzzing with the high of infatuation.
But lately, she hasn't wanted to leave. Lately, she's wanted to fall asleep with her head on his chest, listening to the sound of his heart. As they lie together, he traces his fingertips over her bare back, or plays with her hair, or massages her scalp so gently and so tenderly that it makes her heart swell, and she just doesn't want to leave.
He doesn't make her. But he steadfastly refuses to fall asleep in the same bed. He tells her that if he hurts her in his sleep, he will never, ever forgive himself for the rest of his life. (She believes him.)
She thinks he's worth the risk, thinks that the weight of another person next to him in his bed would comfort him tremendously. But she doesn't fight him on it. (Yet.) This is still new, this thing between them, and she doesn't want to barge into his life and make him do things he's afraid of. (Yet.)
So he doesn't make her go home, and she doesn't make him sleep next to her. He lets her fall asleep curled in at his side, and when he's certain she's in a deep enough sleep, he slips away. Moves over to the couch, where he's installed a second set of restraints for himself, and a spare mouth guard is waiting in its case on the end table closest to the wall.
The bed feels lonely and cold without him next to her. And eventually, his absence bleeds into her dreams.
Admittedly, the precursing week didn't help. Work has been difficult for Dani lately, with their current caseload. Malcolm thrives on it, says he needs it. But if Dani is being honest, she could use a break. She's getting burnt out.
And then, to top it all off, their newest victim turns out to be a child—a little girl, no older than eight, from the Bronx.
Malcolm is uncharacteristically quiet as they unpack everything they know about the little girl in the conference room, his focus solely on the whiteboard as he scrawls out his notes and observations. They're all uncharacteristically quiet, truth be told, and incredibly on edge. No one wants to talk about it, but they have to talk about it, and the conversation that follows is stilted and forced.
But it hits Dani the hardest. Gil pulls her aside later, asks her if she wants to take a break. And truthfully, she does. She desperately wants to take a break. And she will, once they find the sick bastard that murdered an innocent child in cold blood.
She'll spend an entire day lounging around her apartment, watching stupid baking shows on Netflix, not thinking about dead children. But they have to catch the guy first.
In the meantime, she can't stop thinking about it. It keeps her up at night.
Malcolm sees her unraveling and is desperate to help. But the truth is, he's nearly always in a state of unraveling, himself. And they may be friends—good friends—at their core, but there's so much about her that he doesn't know. So much she hasn't let him see. So she shuts down, shuts him out. It's the wrong move, and it feels wrong in the moment. She knows avoiding his probing questions and those eyes that seem to read her mind is only going to work for so long.
So, she distracts herself. She distracts herself with his mouth, with his body. He lies with her for a long time after, with his head resting between her breasts and his hand on her hip, caressing her skin with the pad of his thumb. Eventually, his hand slows as he starts to drift off. He lifts his head and glances up at her; she's been still for so long now, it's easy for her to feign sleep. So he eases out from her side, takes her hand in his, and kisses her knuckles once before gently laying her hand back down on his comforter.
Eventually, sleep does find her. But it doesn't take her gently. It sinks its talons into her and pulls down hard.
She dreams of all the children from the Bronx she hasn't been able to save. One after the other, she sees them lined up in the basement morgue of the precinct, lying on cold metal tables, their small bodies half concealed by white sheets. She dreams of finding the person responsible for this, pulling her gun on him, and freezing up. He gets away; he gets to hurt more kids.
In her dreams, she's screaming. In her dreams, she feels a terrible mixture of rage and fear, and they blend together until they're so strong, she's choking on them both.
She can feel someone grabbing at her, and she fights, kicks, and yells her heart out. A pair of strong arms constrict around her from behind, holding her own thrashing arms in place. Panic seizes her so strongly that it wakes her up; she throws her head back, and whoever is holding her narrowly avoids a broken nose.
When she finally tears her eyes open, the first thing she sees is the soft light of the street lamps coming in through a familiar set of arched window panes. She's panting, pulling in one ragged breath after another as she looks around, taking in the familiar setting of Malcolm's bedroom. As she stills, the constricting feeling around her chest lessens some, and she looks down to see Malcolm's strong arms holding her.
Dani knows first hand how physically strong Malcolm Bright is. He isn't a large man, but he also isn't one to be underestimated. She learned that first hand after he tackled her to the ground in his sleep and fought her with flailing limbs on the floor of the precinct until he jerked awake, crushing her to him with a grip that only loosened as he regained consciousness and realized what was happening.
He holds her almost this tightly again, now, pinning her arms to her side from behind, holding her back to his chest, until he hears her breathing change. "Dani," he says brokenly, and she gets the feeling this isn't the first time he's called out her name. "Sweetheart, please." There's a note of pleading threading through his voice that just guts her. She reaches up and grips his forearm with her hand, squeezing it tightly, and he almost chokes on his relief.
He nuzzles her hair out of the way with his nose and whispers warmly into the shell of her ear: "It's okay. I've got you."
Wordlessly, she turns toward him, pressing her face hard into his chest. Her breathing is gradually evening out, and she's able to focus on what's real and what's in front of her. Mainly Malcolm, and she grips him just as tightly as she remembers him gripping her that day in the precinct. She grounds herself in his solid presence, taking the material of his T shirt in her hand in a tight fist.
One day, she'll find it funny she's never seen Malcolm in just a simple T-shirt until she started sleeping with him. Her nose is smushed into the organic cotton material, and it's so much harder to breathe with her face pressed into him this way, but she doesn't care. As soon as she turns toward him, his hand is in her hair, cradling the back of her head.
"I'm so sorry," he murmurs, "I didn't hear you at first."
She shakes her head, trying to tell him it isn't his fault, that he has nothing to be sorry for, but all that makes its way out of her throat is a short sob. He lets out a shaking breath and hugs her tighter. His other hand moves up and down the small of her back soothingly.
She's crying, and her tears are soaking the front of his shirt; but if he minds, he doesn't say. He just keeps shushing her quietly, whispering to her over and over again that it's okay, he's here now, he's got her and he's not going to let her go. And slowly, tentatively, she starts to come down, starts to believe him.
Eventually and inevitably, fear is replaced by mortification. She starts to pull away from him, ducking her head to avoid meeting his eyes. "Sorry," she murmurs. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Immediately, his hand his under her chin, gently nudging her face up to look at him. "Dani," he says firmly. His eyes are huge, intense, only made more so by how dark it is in the room and the way the moonlight coming in through the windows reflects off them. "Stop." He leans down and brushes his nose over the tip of hers. "Darling, this isn't your fault." He's never called her "sweetheart" or "darling" before tonight, but she decides then and there that it suits him-them-so well, she doesn't ever want him to stop.
It doesn't occur to her how fruitless it is to argue with Malcolm Bright, of all people, about nightmares, but she makes a valiant attempt anyway. "It's been a while," she starts, "But I'm not usually that loud." She continues, despite the fact that he's shaking his head vehemently at her. "At least, I-don't think I am. I usually wake up. It's j-just-this case has been-" Whatever she was going to say next is lost in a hiccup, and she can almost see Malcolm's heart break through the expression on his face.
He leans down and kisses her cheek once, then darts over to the other cheek to deliver a second, and then pulls back to press his nose into hers lightly again before he touches his forehead to hers. "I know," he says, and the weight with which he speaks those two words makes her believe he really does know how she's feeling. Despite the fact that he's spent the whole week talking about the type of person who would want to kill children, their background, their wants, motives and desires-as if he understands them. "I know," he says again. "It's not okay. None of this is okay. But we're going to find him, all right? We're going to stop him, Dani. You and me-together."
He sounds so sure that she finds herself nodding along with him.
She decides, in this moment, that she loves him. The thought pops into her head and she latches onto it in eager agreement. She doesn't voice it aloud (and won't for several more months), but this is the moment she will look back on and know, as she looks up into his sincere eyes-eyes that shine with tears, eyes that tell her he'd do just about anything to trade places with her and relieve her of the fear that has her in a choke hold-that she's let herself finally, finally, fall fully and fantastically in love with him.
He clearly misreads the stunned look on her face as residual fear, and he moves her hair back to kiss her neck, peppering her skin with kisses he hopes will ground her, until he finally makes his way to her lips and takes them against his own. He can taste her tears, and she can taste his, but that doesn't matter. What matters is this, now, and how fiercely he's holding her, and how hard she's trying not to float away.
What matters is that despite her protestations, he stays with her the rest of the night. She needs him, and he knows it, so he stays. He keeps vigil at her side, refusing to let sleep take him, too. And with him next to her, Dani is able to drift off. This time, it's dreamless.
And for the first time since she's been seeing him romantically, she wakes up in the same bed as Malcolm. He's the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. Feeling her stir, he looks at her, and her heart pangs at just how tired he looks, how prominent the dark circles are that cradle his eyes. But then his face splits into a beautiful smile, one she can't help but return.
When they arrive at work that morning, Gil does a double take when he sees Malcolm and asks him if he even tried to sleep the night before. Malcolm gives him a look, his eyes flashing, and, thankfully, Gil drops the subject without further quarrel.
Dani is almost positive she's never loved Malcolm more than she does in that very moment, and when they sit down next to each other at the conference room table, she takes his hand in hers, squeezing it gently before lacing their fingers together. His knee is bouncing, a conduit for his jittering energy, but it stills as he looks over at her. And the expression he wears is so tender, so adoring, that she just has to lean over and kiss his cheek.
JT chooses that moment to walk in-just in time to see it happen. "Oh, gross," he mutters. "Seriously? That's a thing now?"
"Shut up, JT," Dani says quietly, though she's smiling, as Malcolm leans in to kiss her for real.