How They Reunited

Over 3 years later…

"Anderson!" A booming voice thundered out with the loud thud of a sliding cell door. "You're free to go."

Her buzz was wearing off, the horrible nausea in the pit of her stomach growing steadily with the immense pounding deep in her skull. The floor was beginning to slow the spinning that left her stumbling most of the night, but when she looked up at the open door she was certain it wasn't any alcohol induced delusion.

"Save it," his terse voice bit harshly before she had the opportunity to open her mouth. There was a fire in his eyes she hadn't noticed before, and even if her perceptions and state of mind were off, she knew full well it wasn't a look to be trifled with. Lifting herself less than gracefully and stumbling slightly out of the large cage, Alex Michaels forcefully grabbed her arm the moment she was close enough and did everything in his strength to resist throwing her out of the room in anger as he pulled her out of the precinct without so much as another word.

"Alex, I…"

"Don't even start," his bark with rough, the metaphorical fumes billowing out of those burning eyes. He was angry, that was undeniable, and she was to blame. She didn't say anything else as she silently climbed into the passenger side of his car and for the remainder of the short drive to her apartment, only the sounds of the city kept her mumbling mind company.

"I'm sorry," she tried to declare once the pair had finally made it up the stirs and into her tiny apartment. The door slammed thunderously behind them with a vibrating boom.

"Don't, even try and tell me you're sorry." She made the mistake of catching his eyes, but under the pressure that they bore into her she quickly looked away like a guilty child being reprimanded.

"Do you have any idea what mess you've made?" It was hard to imagine his voice rising higher than it already had. "You assaulted a man! In the middle of a bar when you were so pissed off your ass, you couldn't even make your one call."

She tried to open her mouth to apologize but he beat her to it.

"Don't you dare try and tell me you're sorry. The amount of shit I've had to pull to get you out of trouble with blowing your cover, get drunk in the middle of an op, getting into car accidents we all know you were anything but sober for, and now assaulting a man for what? Whistling?" If looks could kill the younger operative would have burst into flames then and there. "What the fuck has gotten into you?"

"I'm sorry!" She finally yelled out before he had a chance to scream at her again.

"Sorry?" He made the sound of a sarcastic and strangled laugh. "Oh good, I've saved your ass more times in the past three years than most handlers have to deal with in a lifetime, but no matter, because you're sorry."

There was a pressure building in her head and increasing with every word out of the angry man's mouth, but she didn't dare look at him now.

"You know what Jamie," his voice was much lower now. "I'm done. I tried to help you, I tried to get you help, and I've covered for you so many times that the agency could lock us both up for the rest of our lives if they knew about it. You're officially on two weeks of leave and when you come back be ready to break in a new handler because I'm done here."

The news pummeled into her so unexpectedly it was as if the air was pulled straight out of her lungs. "What?" she just barely managed to croak.

"I was offered a job a few weeks ago in a different department." Finally, Jamie's pleading eyes looked up and met with his. What she found in the man's gaze however caused an entirely different wave of pain coursing through her body. "I tried to help you Jamie. I tried to get you help, I made appointments for you to meet with a therapist and I covered for you even when you had no idea they were watching, but I can't let myself drown in this with you."

There was silence then. Their eyes stared, unblinking; searching into one another's for any sign of change, but it never came. The longer Jamie stared at her once friend's eyes, the more she realized how much they had changed to her. There came a moment then, a moment in which realization dawned on her and she knew things were permanently changed.

Without another word, Alex finally turned away. It took four long strides to reach the door, and without so much as a syllable, he opened her door and crossed over the threshold.

"You should know," he spoke up unexpectedly before he closed the door behind him. "That there are eyes on you."

Her eyes snapped up to his at the unexpected words.

"If you don't change Jamie, don't expect to stay employed for long." With that he disappeared behind the door and with one small echo throughout the apartment, she was left alone.

In the few weeks after the fall out, time seemed to blur. There were days that seemed like weeks, and hours that seemed like seconds. One moment try sped by so fast she almost forgot to breathe, and other times it was so slow she felt like it was standing still. She thought the first day in the office without the most familiar face nearby would be the worst, and it did feel like it at the time. Walking through those doors the first day, not yet entirely believing his last warning and seeing his office vacant and in boxes was rough. Walking through those doors after a week was strange, that empty feeling like something vital was missing ever present. After two, then three, and then four weeks it settled into a strange dull ache, and like everything else, life moved on.

She made the sound of annoyance as she stepped out of the cool, white building and onto the street.

"Desk duty my ass," she muttered angrily to herself. Her therapist was recommending her be put on desk duty, attend therapy twice a week for the next few months and avoid any and all alcohol until all other issues were cured. Bullshit. What she needed was to get back to her missions, and lose herself in her work. That was what she was good at and she was convinced that was all she needed. She was not denying that in the past few years she had slipped and slid herself into too many problems. What she was denying was that desk duty was supposed to be the solution.

"Jamie?" She looked up at the sound of her name and froze. In her chest her heartbeat quickened. In her veins her blood raced. The world suddenly went silent and still like a movie in slow motion and just for a second, she forgot to breathe.

He was almost exactly as she had remembered. His half-curled hair that same golden medium brown, his eyes still the warmer, clearer shade, his skin still bronzed and sun kissed, and it was him.

Both were silent as Ben took a step forward and closer to her, his eyes remaining open, unblinking as if he were afraid she would vanish into thin air. He looked tired, his eyes a little sunken in and shadowed even as they stared so wide-eyed at her. Another step and his brows came closer together, a look of disbelief starting to emerge, a glint of something else hidden behind it. He took a third and final step closer when she finally pinpointed what was different. There was a look in his eyes, which despite being housed by a warm brown hue, made her cold inside. There was something in the rigidity of his face, the twitch of his brow that emanated a darker presence. What was worst of all was the something dark in his presence was much too familiar.

"What are you doing here?" It was the first words that managed to escape after several moments of silent tension.

He was slow in his response, taking the time to watch her every minute movement as if trying to read her before verbally responding to her question.

"I'm photographing a wedding." He answered so crisply and slowly as if the four words made everything about him traveling almost ten thousand miles across the world to this exact spot make perfect sense.

Jamie had to remind herself to breathe to remain conscious. In any other circumstance everything in her being would be flashing, shrieking and ringing off red alarms and bells. She didn't believe in coincidences much in her line of work, but in this instant she didn't even second-guess the situation.

Jamie wasn't certain where a conversation on the street metamorphosed into an invitation to her apartment, but the entire time frame from meeting Ben on the street to ending up bringing him back home with her was as fuzzy and unclear as a bad and half-forgotten memory. The tension in the air was thick as they rode silently in her car, out into her building and up the flight of stairs to her front door in silence it was almost suffocating. She counted each step she took to distract her racing mind and heart from the man silently following behind her. Her eyes scanned every smudge, crack, and imperfection in the paint of the walls as the turned one hall and then a second before reaching her door. She fumbled with the keys when they finally came to number 312 before she managed to jam them into her battered lock and push open the heavy door with a loud and ominous creak.

"Its really messy," she started absently as the door finally swung much more quietly closed behind the pair. The light streaming in through the single window in the main room of the apartment highlighted light clouds of dust swirling in the air as the pair stepped further into the room.

"You've seen my apartment." His counter was lightly spoken and even though she knew he'd said it for comparisons reason, it sent a shiver through her memories.

"Everything always had to be obsessively organized when I was a kid so I guess I finally took the freedom to be as disorganized when I moved out." Her small talk faded out as her eyes followed him slowly making his way through the small space of her main living area. He noticed her couch, pale blue and in need of a patch, the thin, worn fabric thin and fragile yet strangely inviting. He noticed the oddly assorted end tables and half empty shelf, corners dinged and dented, worn away from previous abuse. His eyes scanned the near vacant walls, devoid of any pictures, frames or photos and he frowned.

"Covert operatives aren't supposed keep too many photos of themselves." He nodded half absently but by the look in his eye she could see he really wasn't interested in her lack of decor.

"You don't know how strange it was for me to be torn over someone I didn't even have a photo of." The sound he made was almost a sad and sarcastic half laugh.

He stopped his slow pace in the middle of the room, his hands never leaving his pockets and Jamie couldn't help noticing how his tall form almost looked misplaced in the tiny room usually only occupied by an even tinier body. For a moment she thought about offering him a beer, but the memory of their first full conversation in a bar over a few beers brought back a bitter taste to her mouth that made her decide on something subtler. "How long are you staying here?"

"Four days." His reply was short and slow, almost sounding tired in response.

She made a face as she briefly pondered such long flights for such a short trip but didn't comment. Finally, he turned still silently back to her, his eyes watching her every movement but eyes not daring to meet his. There was an engorged moment of quiet where the only sounds in the room arose from the life outside that continued on despite the tension in the room.

"There's also a kitchen over there," she motioned to the corner more lightly, but by the way he was watching her it more than apparent that he wasn't looking for a tour of her sorry excuse for a kitchen. "Its not as nice as yours," she began adding before he cut her off.

"It fits you." He wasn't smiling but something in the tone of his voice seemed lighter.

She was quiet. They were three innocent words that somehow seemed so unbelievably intimate, and for a second Jamie made the mistake of meeting his gaze and their eyes locked. The look he had in his eyes made a chill run down her spine. There was something there, an emotion there that was something between deep and repressed longing and a simmering, burning pain that was festering like a rot in his heart. She wanted to turn away, to make her eyes look at something else for fear of the emotions that seemed to be seeping out of his stare and bury themselves into her bones.

"I've missed you," she blurted out the words so fast she didn't even have the time to second-guess herself. The exact instant her words were voiced, his eyes lit up in a way only to be described at hopeful, and before she had even a moment to think, he crossed the room in three long strides and did something three years ago she would never have expected the usually quiet and softly spoken man to do: without even given a chance to protest he pulled her into him roughly and smashed his mouth against hers in an almost aggressive way she would never have expected from such a soft-spoken man. The gasp was pulled right out of her mouth in a kiss that was so fiery it left her mind muddled and cloudy like the smoke coming of freshly rekindled embers. His big hands grasped her around her waist, his hold firm and almost rough as his fingers held her tighter against her. They stumbled back a step and her back pressed against the closest wall. Her hands grasped at him, clutching and pulling at the cotton of his shirt, anything to get him closer.

A loud gasp erupted from her throat as he let go for a moment to take a much-needed breath of air. "I missed you for years," he groaned in her ear, his voice making her shiver at the power in it before his lips trailed down the side of her neck in hot, lingering kisses.

Her breath was ragged, heart racing in her chest, blood hot in her veins, she felt like she was going to suffocate in her own skin. As if on cue, Ben's hands immediately dropped to the hem of her shirt, hungry hands tugging at it, silently asking permission. Jamie didn't hesitate, her arms rising immediately so he could pull the loose cotton off her steaming skin. She groaned loudly at the loss of contact as he took the moment to throw off his own shirt, but her hungry hands roamed the smooth expanse of his warm skin the instant he was close enough to touch.

"I hope your tour includes a bedroom," his rough voice breathed in her ear as one hand slid down her waist and back and the other snaking up her rib cage until a finger fanning over a sensitive still-covered peak stirred a deep hiss from between her teeth. She had to swallow thickly at the panting air escaping her lungs. His hot lips trailed back up her neck just as he shifted his knee currently between her legs sending a shivering whimper through her body at the muted but heavenly friction it created.

"Yes," she whimpered. It was almost a plea, a million sensations and an unexpected flood of emotions coursing through her system. She protested when one of his hands separated from her skin to push them off the wall and stumbling backwards towards the door he could only assume was her bedroom.

"Please," the throaty whimper cried from her lips as they fumbled through the doorway and into her dark room. A moment later her knees roughly hit the back of her low mattress and before she could steady herself the pair tumbled onto the untidy sheets in a tangled heap.

"Please,"' the foreign word seeped out of her swollen lips once more like the name of a dangerous stranger that left her breathless.

Author's Note:

Hello my dearies! So first of all I want to tell you that I changed the ending of chapter 4, so if you didn't read the "revision" (which really is an entire rewrite of the second half of the chapter) you may want to do that.

Secondly, it wasn't much of a lemon but I hope you got some little spice out of the end. I always had the idea of this planned out since the beginning, but somewhere in writing these two original characters they took on a life of their own and then I got to this part where they reunite and I battled with the prospect that it may not be very well in character for them. (Particularly Ben. Jamie's a little more impulsive.) But I think I got it to work. Ben hasn't spoken much, but if it isn't clear yet it will be soon that he didn't just get over her and move on, he had some lingering effects from their harsh split too.

Okeydokey, I'm going to stop now. Auggie is supposed to come in next chapter or at the very least the one after that.

Leave me love,

- Liz