Catch Me When I Fall

I sighed and twirled my pen as I worked on my report. God, why did Captain Croft insist on me taking two days of desk work? I bit the end of the pen as I read over what I had written so far, making sure I got all of the details down that were necessary. After the shit show I had to deal with last night, I hoped I got everything I needed.

"If you bite that any harder it's going to burst."

I looked up and smirked at him, taking the pen from between my lips. "It wouldn't be the only thing to burst in my mouth in the last forty-eight hours," I quipped, enjoying the crimson blush that spread across my partner's cheeks.

My partner, Dimitri Belikov, sat down at the desk across from me, giving me a heavy look. Fresh out of the academy I was partnered with 'The Silent Russian'. Despite being easy on the eyes and only twenty-seven, he barely spoke unless it was to give direction, and even then he was short and terse. For a few weeks as being a rookie I thought it was because he had an issue with me being a woman, but he was quick to dismiss that thought when I brought it up.

He was still turs and professional towards me regardless of how much I tried to break him out of his shell. That was until we were doing crowd control at an active scene and someone pulled out a gun. I remember complaining earlier that day that the vest was uncomfortable, but after the gun pulled and shots were fired, I couldn't have been happier.

The impact of the bullet knocked me to the ground, gasping in fear that I had in fact been shot despite the vest. It hurt like hell and pain radiated through my torso and I felt light headed from breathing so frantically.

I started to calm finally when my partner's face appeared above mine, tugging at my vest to make sure it was only lodged in the vest, commanding me gently to take slow deep breaths. His hand cupped my cheek and quietly comforted me when he told me that the bullet was in fact stuck in my vest. He also was there when I got discharged from the hospital and drove me home.

After that day it was like whatever wall that kept him from opening up crumbled to pieces. It started with a cup of coffee in the morning before starting our shift, or joining our group for drinks after a shift. It slowly escalated to personal conversations on patrol, going into detail about our families and upbringings. We bonded over the lack of father figures and unstable households. I confided to him about only meeting my father after turning eighteen and how my mother practically abandoned me at a private school at age 5, only to see her a few times the whole time I was there. That the only family I had was my best friend and her parents. He told me all about his sisters and how he had defended his mother against his father when he was thirteen.

Over time it turned into meetings for breakfast on days off that lined up, or the occasional drink without the rest of our shift. Those drunken nights turned into something completely different. Flirtatious banter led to longing glances and gentle brushed of the hand.

It was so subtle that neither of us saw it coming and it hit us both like a freight train when we realized what was brewing between us. It didn't come to pass until the work Christmas party when he pulled me aside into a vacant office, his lips coming down on mine.

Kisses in storage closets turned into secret meetings after work and frustration on an unmeasurable level. While relationships weren't against policy, being partners caused an issue. Nobody was privy to our growing relationship in fear that we would be punished, so we kept our heads down about it.

"If I remember correctly, you quite enjoyed that," Dimitri murmured under his breath, look at me before looking down at the report that needed to signed off on. I smirked and bit my lip, putting my signature on the bottom of the report.

"It wasn't the only thing I enjoyed," I chirped as I stood up to put my report in the basket to be taken and filed. I could feel Dimitri's eyes follow me as I moved and I chuckled to myself softly. Thankfully we were the only ones here right now, but his eyes following my every move would definitely give us away.