SWAT - One Shots

Shattered [Part 1] Post 5x20

[A/N: Hi, this filler OS is post 5x20/pre 5x21 - it will be in two parts and will be just angst all the way through that two week break, but we all know what happens in 5x21 so, Enjoy 😬
-Kate 🫶🏻]

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The busy roads of Los Angeles were still not enough of a distraction as Street rode his bike home. He had driven that route between HQ and his and Luca's place, thousands of times, which meant that in his current state of mind, he hadn't needed to pay much attention.

Unfortunately, it left him the chance to play over and over again the conversation that just unfolded a mere fifteen minutes ago in the HQ parking lot.

Luca had given him somewhat of a pep talk in the locker room before their shift ended, his friend and teammate finally admitting he knew that him and Chris had something deeper than just friendship between them, that he'd known for months.

When Luca told him that he needed to let Chris know how he felt, the memories of the last five years came pounding through like a freight train.  Street told Luca that it was so much more complicated than that.

Chris already knew how he felt. His heart was always displayed on his sleeve for her. He also thought he knew how Chris felt too. That they had felt the same way.

Street let his feelings and everything that had happened between Chris and himself be what pushed him to finally go to her and get everything out in the open.

They needed to have this conversation, it had been pushed back too many times and as much as it pained him to think that way..it was really now or never. This was it. He couldn't keep up with...whatever this was.

Nothing had changed about their situation since the team was reformed when Chris and Luca returned from Germany. They'd promised each other to be patient while they tried to find a way. But, it'd been just over 12 months since that talk and they were no closer to where, he thought, they both wanted to be.

During his small trip to Miami before the hijacking incident, he was telling the truth when he said that he had spent that day thinking about them. How to make them work, what might have had to be sacrificed. He was ready to make the changes they needed to. He even told Chris on the phone that morning that he was frustrated, that they never made any progress and this waiting game was tiring him out.

But, she'd told him she couldn't make him do anything he didn't want to. She couldn't make him wait for her. After all this time, and still nothing had changed, he guessed, he couldn't make her do anything she didn't want to either.

Chris didn't want to do this. If she did..wouldn't they have been together already? Or at least taken some sort of step in the right direction.

After his talk with Katie on the plane, his doubt had almost completely set in. Maybe it was time to move on? The question rattled around the back of his mind as they'd tried to find a way to take back control of the plane.
The truth of their situation burning a whole in his chest. It was never gonna happen.

When Katie asked him to grab a bite to eat, he took the offer. He was never one to give up on those he loved, but, he was always used to people turning their backs on him, that's probably why he had held on so tightly. Their bond, was nothing he had ever experienced before. He couldn't lose it. They couldn't lose each other, right? They'd experienced too much, felt too much, it could never go back to just friendship between them.

But, nothing had changed.

He grabbed that bite to eat with Katie, and it was nice. Great food, great conversation.
But he was an idiot. Street had spent the whole "date" thinking about how Chris would have loved to eat at that burger place. There were so many times he wanted to bring up her name as they talked about everything.

Who was he kidding? He couldn't push those feelings away. Hadn't they already tried that?They knew it didn't work. It was real, it was always going to be there. 

He'd returned to work at next shift and had been trying to find a moment to talk to Chris, it didn't even have to be about anything, he just wanted to hear her voice, be close to her. They hadn't really spoken since they'd gotten him off the plane. After five days of shifts, and the only conversations they shared were about the cases, it kinda felt like she was avoiding him.

Then Luca was all of a sudden on his case about this double date he'd planned with Olivia and her friend Darcy. Which he eventually found out was just a ploy to finally get Street to admit his feelings for Chris, which he thought he had under wraps this whole time.

He'd never actually said it out loud but Street knew he was in love with her. He had been for a long time. He didn't realise it was so obvious, but Luca did live with him, and Chris had spend a lot of time hanging out at their place.

Hearing Luca's observations about how he also thought that his two youngest team mates were perfect for each other, Street's chest filled with warmth and he collected all his courage to finally tell her.

He wanted them to do whatever they had to, he wanted them to be together. They deserved the chance to be happy. No more waiting.

Yet, here he was, now still sat upon his bike in his driveway. Unwilling to make his way inside. Luca's truck was nowhere to be seen, meaning he had already left for his weekend getaway.

He couldn't face his friend anyway, he knew he would ask him about Chris and his heart just wasn't ready.

His heart didn't want to remember how he had found her so conveniently in the parking lot. How she revealed to him that she was leaving SWAT. That she wasn't going to be a part of their team anymore.

He didn't want to think about how he put his whole heart on the line to suggest that this change could be their solution. Their start. Their first step to finally being happy. He had been filled with so much hope.

That their biggest problem would finally be resolved. No more rules to hold them back.

Each of those tiny little cracks in his chest, one for each time their feelings had been pushed back before, no longer had him anxious for an impending break, as his heart remained shattered back on the HQ motor pool asphalt.

Although his heart was now just a hollowed out area, it still remembered.

It remembered how she told him that this solution they had been waiting for, didn't really mean anything. That she didn't think they were meant to be, because you know, if it was supposed to happen, they would have been together already, right?

Right? He thought to himself again, his breathing became ragged as he unfortunately remembered and tried to fight back his emotions.

She hadn't let it happen, not because of the rules- which was now an even more painful reasoning, as he had hammered it into his head for the last year so that he could respect her values- but for a reason she couldn't actually tell him.

He remembered, that she told him that this was all the truth. Telling him that she didn't love him like he did her, might have eased the heartache just a fraction. It would have made her ripping his heart out just a little more plausible. He asked her to admit that her not loving him was the real reason she couldn't go through with it.

But she couldn't tell him that.
She didn't say anything.
No matter how many times he asked. She had her wall. She was hidden.

Chris not being able to look him in the eye and tell him she didn't love him sent him over the edge.

If she couldn't say it, that meant she did love him, right?

If you're in love with someone, shouldn't you want to be with them. Isn't that how it worked?

He realised they should have had this conversation a long time ago, when she had decided that this was how she actually felt. So that maybe she could have revealed her truth before he'd gone and invested all of his heart into her. There would have been no empty promises. No asking for patience for a day that would never arrive. No feeling like a fool for believing he might have finally been worthy of her love.

Lastly, he remembered telling her he was done. It was over.

So he left.

And she let him.

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[part two will be up in the next few days
- Kate 💜 ]