Fic for cerealkiller0 Part 1
Recipient: cerealkiller0
Author: TBA
Disclaimer: Author doesn't own the show or the characters and isn't making any profit.
Title: Theory and Application (Part 1)
Pairing: Don/Colby; Don/Ian; Don/Colby/Ian; a 'blink and you'll miss it' mention of past Don/Ian/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Summary: Solving bank robberies, tracking down fugitives, sleeping with a member of his team - it’s all in a day’s work for Don Eppes. So a visit from an old friend shouldn’t change anything, right?
Author's Note: A huge thanks you to my beta for her clear-sightedness and enthusiastic encouragement throughout the writing of this.
“I’ve got this, Don.”
Don glanced up from collecting the loose crime scene photos scattered around the war room to find David looking back at him.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, gesturing Don to pass over the few photos he’d so far managed to gather. “Go home.”
If he weren’t so tired Don might have smiled at the easy authority David was developing these days.
“Thanks man,” he managed, leaving David to clear the mess. He made his way to his desk, where he found another member of his team waiting for him.
“You want a ride home?” Colby asked.
Don wondered just when his badass Violent Crimes squad had turned into a bunch of tag-teaming mother hens, but right now he wasn’t complaining.
“Sure,” he said, grabbing his jacket and making an abortive reach for his papers before remembering the case was closed.
Colby was quiet on the way to the parking garage, which Don was grateful for. They’d gotten the perp before more people got hurt, but that still left three innocent men dead. Three families and who knew how many more lives devastated because of one man’s twisted power games.
“Some days I wonder why we do this,” Don said, sighing as he closed the car door.
Colby shrugged as he put the car in drive. “Someone’s got to.”
After a moment’s pause to consider, or maybe it was just because he was looking for his swipe card to get out of the garage, he added, “Besides, we’re good at it.”
Don felt himself smile despite his best attempts because yeah, that was the goddamn truth. Sinking back into the seat, he closed his eyes, trusting to Colby to get him home.
**
He woke up to Colby’s voice saying his name.
“You’re home, Miss Daisy,” he said when Don finally got his eyes to stay open.
Colby was carefully casual. The car engine was off but the key was still in the ignition and his seatbelt was buckled, leaving it completely up to Don. It always was up to Don, of course, but he appreciated that there were no assumptions being made.
“You want to come up?” he asked as he opened the car door. He didn’t actually wait for an answer; he didn’t need to. He knew Colby would be behind him as he let himself into his apartment.
It was still the mess he’d left it in two, or was it three, days ago: dirty dishes on the coffee table, and the towel from his last shower still haphazardly over the couch for some reason he couldn’t now remember.
He heard Colby closing the front door behind him and, turning, gestured in the general direction of the kitchen. “Help yourself.”
God only knew if there was any food there, but there were takeout menus if not.
“You want anything?” Colby asked him, on his way to the kitchen.
“Later,” Don said. Right now he wanted nothing more than to get clean and fall into his bed. He heard Colby rooting around in the fridge as he stumbled his way towards the bathroom and peeled off clothes that he’d been wearing for far too long.
Stepping under the warm shower felt like coming back to life. He liked the pressure high so that the water was hard on his body, scouring off the dirt the job brought them into contact with, and right now it was damn near perfect. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sting of the spray and the way the water sluiced down his body, and felt himself begin to relax for the first time in more than a week.
He was just reaching out for the soap when he felt Colby’s solid body press warmly against his back.
“Here,” Colby said, “let me.”
And Don did. He let Colby’s hands work over his body, slippery with soap, and allowed his head to hang down so that, between Colby’s touch and the water pressure, the knots in his shoulders and neck had no choice but to start to unravel. From there it didn’t take long to realise that he wasn’t quite as tired as he’d thought as Colby’s hands continued to move over his body, and once Colby dropped to his knees in front of him it was no effort at all to bury his fingers in Colby’s wet hair and push into his mouth, fucking in slow and easy. And damn, but Colby was good at that. Too damn good because Don wasn’t going to last, and his head banged back against the tiles as he lost himself in Colby’s mouth.
He was aware as if from a distance of Colby turning off the shower and rubbing a towel over him before manhandling him through into the bedroom, and any minute now Don was going to tell him just what he thought of being treated like a child, but maybe he’d close his eyes first, just for a minute.
Yeah, he’d show Colby who was boss. Any time now.
********
Liz hated Wednesday mornings. Wednesday was the day her favourite barista had off. She still hadn’t worked out what it was he did to her coffee to make it so much better - maybe it was simply the flirty smile he always served up along with the coffee - but on Wednesdays her coffee run on the way to work was always lacking.
Adding insult to injury on this particular Wednesday, she got to the office to find David had gotten in before her and had already made the coffee in the break-room. She and Megan had suspected it was a tactic on David’s and Colby’s behalf to make the worst coffee they could so they wouldn’t be expected to make it again, but that deduction had been called into question the time they’d seen Granger happily drink his way through an entire pot of so-called coffee he’d made which nobody else would touch, and then turn round and make another pot before anyone could stop him. That explained Granger’s coffee - he’d burned his tastebuds away long ago with the tar he drank - but whatever the hell it was Sinclair did to the poor innocent machine remained a mystery.
“Coffee?” She blinked as a steaming Grande seemed to materialise on her desk, and looked up to find Nikki grinning at her.
“Figured you’d need extra after the week we’ve had,” she said. “It always that intense round here?”
Liz nodded. “Pretty much.”
If anything Nikki’s smile grew wider. “Good,” she said. “I heard stuff about you guys when I got assigned here. Nice to know it’s true.”
“What stuff?” Liz wasn’t all that interested in inter-office gossip but desk-delivery of good coffee definitely deserved some courtesy in return.
“Oh, you know,” Nikki said, leaning a hip against Liz’s desk as if she was settling in for the long haul. “There’s your clean-up rate and the genius brother - I mean that stuff’s practically in the newsletter - and there’s how Don Eppes ‘always gets his man’.”
“Did you just use airquotes?” Liz demanded.
Nikki shrugged. “I’m just sayin’. I think they forgot what country we’re in. Either that or Don breaks out the Mountie outfit on weekends.”
Liz snorted into her coffee. That gave her some visuals she certainly wasn’t going to share, though from the smirk on Nikki’s face she didn’t need to.
Speaking of which…
“Morning Don, Colby,” Liz said.
Don nodded and Colby gave a half wave as they walked past. Nikki had taken the hint and headed back to her desk, taking her Venti and cupcake with her. Liz briefly mourned the cupcake but there were always the red velvet ones in the vending machine for later. If she got really desperate.
Taking a sip of the coffee Nikki had brought her, Liz watched Don and Colby talking with David in the break-room. If she hadn’t already known about Don and Colby, she’d never have suspected from watching them. She’d been taken by surprise the day a couple of months back when Colby had met her on the walkway outside the building and asked in an uncharacteristically tentative way if he could talk to her. She’d agreed and followed him over to the railings, where he’d seemed more intent on leaning on his folded arms in the sunshine and watching the cars passing underneath than doing anything else, let alone looking at her.
She’d given him a couple of minutes - he was from Idaho after all - but it became increasingly apparent to her that he’d been struck dumb. And more interestingly…
“Are you blushing, Granger?”
“No. Yeah. Maybe?”
“So what did you want to talk to me about?”
He took in a breath as if he was about to face a firing squad and for one horrible moment she’d thought he was going to ask her on a date, so it was actually a relief when he came out with it.
“Don and me, we’re sort of seeing each other,” he’d muttered, managing to look her in the face for at least three seconds.
“Sort of?” she’d asked.
He’d shrugged and not answered, concentrating on looking into the mid-distance like there’d been something really interesting there instead of office blocks and mid-afternoon sunshine hazy with pollution.
She’d looked at Colby’s face as he’d determinedly stared into space, the colour in his cheeks not subsiding in the least under her scrutiny. She’d always thought he was a decent guy - well, apart from those weeks during the whole spy thing - and the fact he was telling her about this confirmed that. Yeah, because it wasn’t like Don would have had the balls to tell her face to face. It wasn’t like Don would even think she might prefer to know rather than be blindsided if it blew up. She wondered whether to say something to Colby, to warn him about the potential Don had to hurt people who cared about him, but she thought it wouldn’t be welcome. And it wasn’t as if Don ever meant to hurt people. He just did.
So she’d let Colby off easy.
“Thanks for telling me.” She’d meant it.
He’d nodded. “Figured you should know.”
“Appreciate it, Granger,” she’d said, slapping his shoulder as she walked away. His very broad, firm shoulder, which was kind of a surprise now she actually thought about him and Don together. He wasn’t Don’s usual type.
“Oh, and Granger?” She’d almost got to the doors before turning back and raising her voice to carry across to where he was still standing at the railings. She had to be careful what she said with so many colleagues around - neither Don nor Colby were officially out at the Bureau so far as she knew - but she couldn’t let it go completely: Colby was just too much fun to tease.
“Yeah?” He’d turned round and was looking at her, eyes screwed up slightly against the sun, but finally looking more like an FBI agent and less like an overripe tomato.
She pitched her voice to carry to him - and everybody else - with ease.
“Just remember to switch off your radio before the two of you start making out on stakeouts.”
Fire trucks had nothing on the colour of Colby Granger’s cheeks.
She’d been still smiling slightly when she reached the office, but had decided not to tease Colby too much. It wasn’t as if dating the boss was the easiest thing in the world to do, especially when your boss was Don Eppes.
Liz glanced now at Colby as he pushed the break-room door open, bickering with David as they headed to their desks, cups of questionable coffee in their hands. It was none of her business what was going on between him and Don so long as they didn’t bring it into the office with them.
Then Don got the call about First Mutual Bank, and introspection went out the window.
********
“What have you got, David?”
David looked up as Don’s voice cut through the hubbub around him. He’d been comparing notes with Colby.
“Three robbers, all in hoodies and Michael Jackson masks, semi-automatics, got the contents of the tellers’ drawers and shot one of the tellers who didn’t move quickly enough.” She’d been frozen in terror, according to her colleagues. “They took off in a white Camray they’d parked right outside. None of the witnesses we’ve spoken to so far have been able to ID anything about them, not even their ethnicity. We’ve pulled the plates from the CCTV and LAPD have an APB out, but so far nothing.”
“Looks like the same MO from last month over at Riverside,” Colby put in.
Don’s unamused look summed up what David was feeling. They’d had precisely nothing to go on from the Riverside robbery, not unless you counted a nice mugshot of Michael Jackson from the security footage.
“As we’ve got a pattern establishing, Charlie might be able to help,” Colby said.
“And we’ve got a bullet now which might tell us more,” David added. Even if it was still somewhere in Maria Torres, who was currently undergoing emergency surgery.
Don looked seriously unimpressed so Colby and David exchanged glances and melted away to go do something crucial elsewhere. While details from the Riverside robbery might help them solve this if they were in fact dealing with the same crew, Don hated being reminded of their failure. And Don being on edge made Colby tense, and didn’t that make David’s day even better.
“Fun times,” Colby muttered to David as they left the scene later.
“And it’s still raining,” David complained, opening the car door. “It’s LA - it’s not supposed to rain this much.”
“You wouldn’t feel if it you had any hair.”
“Just because you don’t appreciate style when it’s in front of you.”
“I appreciate style just fine, but that’s not what I’m seeing.”
“You wouldn’t know style if it bit you in the ass.”
“Least it’d bite my ass, not run screaming.”
“Hey, you want to go for a beer later?”
Colby thought for a moment as he pulled out into the slow-moving traffic. “Sure,” he said. “So long as we get away from work before dawn.”
Thankfully - or not - they managed to leave work at a time that made them seem almost like regular people, because they just didn’t have anything to go on. The techs hadn’t found anything; the bullet from bank teller, who’d died on the operating table, hadn’t shown up any matches for weapons linked to any previous crimes; and the getaway car - which turned out to have been stolen forty minutes before the robbery - was found torched two miles away on a piece of waste ground which had a number of access routes.
Charlie was doing something with the data from this and the previous robbery that probably involved algorithms or equations, but so far it was nothing more than scribbles on a chalkboard.
All in all it was one of those days when David was pleased to leave the place behind him. He’d been looking forward as well to chewing over stuff with Colby, who he hadn’t seen so much of off the clock since he’d hooked up with Don. And that was something that David had tried to avoid thinking about ever since Colby had told him. Since the Chinese shitstorm Colby seemed to have made it a point to tell David everything that was going on with him. The downside of that was that David would have been much happier not knowing some of those things.
While it was nice to catch up over a couple of beers, to be with somebody who just got it about the job without having to have it explained, Granger was being particularly annoying tonight.
“How’s Claudia?”
Colby just forgot sometimes that he couldn’t get away with that shit any more, not without payback.
“How’s Don?”
So conversation was dropped in favour of watching the game on the screen behind the bar and David found himself slowly relaxing from the frustrations of the day. It was good not to have to worry about anything for once.
********
Next day it was clear to anybody within a five mile radius that Don wasn’t in the best of moods. He didn’t do well with failure at the best of times; when someone ended up getting hurt because of something he thought was his fault, he was like a bear with a sore head. Colby kept his head down, along with the rest of the team, as they trawled through hour upon hour of surveillance video from the bank, businesses around the area, and traffic cams.
Don’s frame of mind wasn’t improved by Charlie’s briefing. Not least, Colby thought, because Charlie explained his processes in excruciating detail when he could have skipped straight to his gloomy conclusion.
“…So I’ve managed to identify areas with elevated geographical probability, but we’re still looking at a large number of potential targets.”
The street map of LA that he brought up on the screen had a depressing number of red dots on it, each representing a potential target that met all the criteria.
“The difficulty is that without a lot of information my projections are going to be fairly general. There has to be a pattern to the location of the banks chosen and the origin points of the stolen cars, but I need more data in order to assign values.”
Don sighed. “Have you got anything that’ll tell us when they’re likely to hit again?”
“As for that Don, it’s very interesting. For both robberies, there was a heavy rain shower in progress, which had been accurately forecast.”
“Aw, come on, that’s got to be a coincidence,” Nikki broke in, so dismissive that Colby almost winced for her greenness when it came to Charlie.
Charlie of course jumped on the chance to educate yet another FBI agent on the mathematical reality of coincidences whilst simultaneously pointing out the odds of heavy sustained rainfall in LA and the odds of the same crew robbing two banks during that occurrence. Colby could feel a math headache coming on.
Liz was frowning. “I get that it was part of their planning, but what advantage is there to robbing a bank in the rain?”
“Fewer people on the streets, those people minding their own business hurrying to get places without taking any notice of what’s going on,” Charlie posited.
“And less customers in the bank to either get in the way or be witnesses,” David added.
Don shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Is there any way you can work out why these guys are hitting LA instead of, say, Seattle, if they’re going with wet weather?” Nikki asked. At least she was embracing the math, even if she did seem to see it as a magical solution.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t have enough information.”
Colby was sure he was about to explain in minute detail the type of information he might need and which mathematical principles he would be violating in attempting to answer her question without that information, so he broke in quickly with a thought of his own.
“Maybe there’s other bank robberies by the same crew but with different masks or clothes. Any way you can broaden your search to look for unsolved robberies with a similar but not identical MO?”
“Sure,” Charlie said. “It’ll take me a while, but if I can start data mining your records for, say, the last six months to start with and then -”
Don cut in on what sounded as if it was going to be a long and enthusiastic explanation. “See what you can do, Charlie, okay?”
Charlie nodded absently, staring at the board again, mind obviously off somewhere on its own path already.
“There’s fuck all else we can do tonight,” Don said, sounding really pissed about that fact.
Nikki raised her eyebrows in pointed comment after Don had left the war room, but none of the rest of the team met her gaze as they filed out after him out into the bullpen. It didn’t sit well with any of them, Colby knew, to be stuck with no way forward unless they got lucky with the previous week’s security footage from the bank. And there would be a fair amount of luck involved in identifying the one person out of hundreds who was really there only to case the place.
Rotating his neck and shoulders to ease the stiffness from where he’d been hunched over staring intently at a screen for most of the day, Colby tried to work up some enthusiasm for more of the same tomorrow. Maybe they wouldn’t have to; maybe Charlie would figure something out.
“You coming, Colby?”
It wasn’t so much a question as a summons. He grimaced slightly at David as he got his jacket from the back of his chair, and followed Don out of the office. There was sympathy in David’s expression, but it was mixed up with an expression that Colby could only read as ‘What the hell are you doing, Granger?’
Colby didn’t know how to answer that question because he didn’t know what he was doing. All he knew was that it was Don, and with all the good stuff that went along with that there was other stuff that, yeah, maybe wasn’t quite so easy.
He’d worried a bit about the thing with Don bleeding over into the job, but years of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell meant it was still second nature not to let it; at work Don was the boss and that was all there was to it. Apart from the times he sucked on those coffee stirrers, because Colby was only human after all. Then there were the thigh holsters, of course; they might cause the occasional lapse from complete professionalism but whose brain wouldn’t stutter when Don looked like that? Those vague fantasies about Don holding him down and fucking him hard in the locker room were sadly never going to come true, but he supposed the whole point of fantasy was keeping it just that. So yeah, keeping it out of the office wasn’t really a problem.
The trick sometimes was figuring out when Don stopped being the boss and became Don, because that line seemed to move daily, depending on Don’s mood. And sometimes it wasn’t that Don was the boss, but that Don was just Don - stubborn, uncommunicative, and infuriating as hell.
Just like he was when they got back to his apartment. Colby knew better than to say anything. He knew that he should just keep his head down and let Don work through it, but since when did he ever just shut up when he should? And he hated that Don was so hard on himself the whole time, and figured that maybe he could get through to him.
“Look, it’s not your fault, Don. It’s not anyone’s fault except the scumbags pulling this shit.”
Don whirled round on him from where he’d been pacing round the living room, his strides jerky and full of anger.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about - I’m responsible for this. If we’d found them last time, this would never have happened.” He jabbed his finger at Colby to underline his point. “Maria Torres would still be alive right now if I’d done my job properly.”
Colby spread his hands appeasingly where he was seated on the couch. “You can’t go through life thinking like that. You can only do the best you can and then let the rest go, or you’ll twist yourself up so badly you’ll end up really screwing up.”
“Sounds like something you’d know about, Colby.”
And shit, Don knew how to aim low when Colby overstepped his boundaries.
Colby started counting to ten to stop himself saying something that would blow everything up beyond repair. He got to eighteen before Don dropped some takeout menus on Colby’s lap.
“What d’you fancy?” he asked.
“Italian?” Colby didn’t really care, but figured it best to take the olive branch when it was extended.
Don phoned the order through then went to take a shower, coming back in faded FBI sweats. Colby followed suit - he’d taken to leaving a small duffel in his car with a change of clothes for the office and gym clothes - and came back through in time to find Don paying the delivery guy and taking in bags with savoury smells that had Colby’s stomach rumbling within seconds.
He trailed Don through to the kitchen and got his wrist smacked hard when he tried to snag a meatball, only for Don to pick it up, tossing it from hand to hand till it cooled enough to pop into his mouth.
“Get some glasses,” he said, or at least that’s what Colby thought he said through his mouthful.
Snagging a meatball successfully this time - and damn, they were hot - Colby opened the cupboard where Don kept his wineglasses and pulled out a couple, all the while sucking in air over the hot mess of spiced meat in his mouth. He didn’t know if Don wanted red wine glasses or white wine glasses so he just went for the biggest ones. It’d been that sort of a day.
Don was opening the last bottle of wine from the rack when Colby put the glasses on the counter.
“Thought that was for your Dad,” he said.
“I’ll get some more before Sunday,” Don said, shrugging. “Anyway, this way we get to find out if it’s any good - you know Dad’s picky about his wine.”
Colby snorted. “Just a bit.”
Alan Eppes invited the team round for meals fairly regularly and it had become an informal team bonding activity to panic over what wines were and weren’t acceptable to take as a gift. All had been good when Megan was still with them - they’d simply sent her to the liquor store with a stack of bills and she’d bought a suitable bottle from each of them - but now they were left scrabbling.
They took loaded plates and glasses of red wine through to put them on the coffee table, and watched the game while they ate. Rather, Don watched the game; hockey wasn’t Colby’s thing, so he ate his food, enjoyed the occasional fight on the ice, and watched Don, seeing the way that food and wine and a lack of demands being made on him began slowly to smooth the lines of strain from his face.
Some days Colby thought it might have been the best thing to happen to Don that he didn’t make it into the majors back in the day because he would have felt responsible for each and every defeat, and nobody could function for long under that sort of pressure. He felt the same responsibility at the FBI of course, but at least Don had a good team round him here who’d try and tell him it wasn’t all up to him - and he had his family too, which was important to Don. Was important to most people, really, but he knew Don would feel rootless without Alan there, and Charlie too.
“Hey, you not watching this?”
He looked up from his thoughts to find Don had turned sideways, one arm propped on the back of the couch, and was looking at him.
He shrugged guiltily; he hadn’t a clue what the score was. “I was hungry.”
Don made a soft noise in his throat and leaned in, his hand going to Colby’s cheek to hold him in place as his mouth covered Colby’s. Colby opened up to Don’s heat, just as he did every time; it’d been one thing that had really surprised him, just how much Don liked kissing. And how fucking good at it he was.
Don’s tongue pushed between his lips and Colby came back at him, until it ended in a tussle as both were intent on kissing but also trying to find a way for this to work on the damn couch that was really not the right shape for this. Colby ended up astride Don, knees splayed either side of Don’s thighs as they kissed, and trying to get those sweats off so he could touch skin.
“Damn it, Colb,” Don said with something that was almost a laugh when Colby had to grab the back of the couch to avoid falling off after Don pushed forward a bit too enthusiastically, “You’re too big for this.”
“Never had any complaints before,” he grinned, bending down to get at Don’s mouth again. For a moment Don melted under him, opening up and letting him take the lead, but he should have known better, because Don’s hands were working their way into his sweats, finding the hot length of his cock, and then all Colby could do was pant unevenly against Don’s neck.
“Bed,” Don said, and who was Colby to argue. Specially if it got them off this damn couch that might look fancy but was not designed to have sex on. Don’s bed, on the other hand, was a thing of beauty and Colby had been thinking about replacing his own ever since he first saw the acres of California King that dominated Don’s bedroom. Right now he wasn’t so much seeing it as feeling it because somehow he’d ended up out of his clothes and on his back under Don, and he wasn’t complaining - oh, God, he so wasn’t complaining about either of those things right now.
Don was pushing into him and Don was above him and in him and Colby pulled him down for a bruising kiss, messy and deep and so fucking good. The muscles in Don’s arms were limned in the orange light that filtered through the blinds from the streetlamps outside, the same light that masked his eyes, and Colby wanted to touch and lick but Don had that rhythm going already, the one that always brought Colby to pieces under him and it was too late for either of them to do anything but hold on.
Afterwards they lay tangled up on the comforter and Colby knew that soon the cooling sweat and come would become unpleasant, but not yet, not while they were both still breathing hard and not yet quite sure whose body was whose.
After a few minutes though Don made a regretful little noise and moved away from Colby. He headed for the bathroom to dispose of the condom while Colby managed to rouse himself enough to pull the covers back and get into Don’s bed. For the first few weeks he’d gone home after, till Don had said one night he might as well stay as it was closer to work. That way, he’d added with a grin, they’d get to have morning sex as well. So now Colby stayed, and the bed was big enough that they could share it all night and never touch until he’d wake up with Don’s hands and mouth on him, bringing him up through the last layers of sleep for a morning hand job or blowjob. And then it was all business and rushing to get into the office.
One of the unexpected side-benefits to screwing the boss was that Colby got into the office earlier these days. He wasn’t entirely convinced that was a benefit rather than a drawback, but he couldn’t see how to refuse an incentive package like Don.
********
Author: TBA
Disclaimer: Author doesn't own the show or the characters and isn't making any profit.
Title: Theory and Application (Part 1)
Pairing: Don/Colby; Don/Ian; Don/Colby/Ian; a 'blink and you'll miss it' mention of past Don/Ian/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Summary: Solving bank robberies, tracking down fugitives, sleeping with a member of his team - it’s all in a day’s work for Don Eppes. So a visit from an old friend shouldn’t change anything, right?
Author's Note: A huge thanks you to my beta for her clear-sightedness and enthusiastic encouragement throughout the writing of this.
“I’ve got this, Don.”
Don glanced up from collecting the loose crime scene photos scattered around the war room to find David looking back at him.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, gesturing Don to pass over the few photos he’d so far managed to gather. “Go home.”
If he weren’t so tired Don might have smiled at the easy authority David was developing these days.
“Thanks man,” he managed, leaving David to clear the mess. He made his way to his desk, where he found another member of his team waiting for him.
“You want a ride home?” Colby asked.
Don wondered just when his badass Violent Crimes squad had turned into a bunch of tag-teaming mother hens, but right now he wasn’t complaining.
“Sure,” he said, grabbing his jacket and making an abortive reach for his papers before remembering the case was closed.
Colby was quiet on the way to the parking garage, which Don was grateful for. They’d gotten the perp before more people got hurt, but that still left three innocent men dead. Three families and who knew how many more lives devastated because of one man’s twisted power games.
“Some days I wonder why we do this,” Don said, sighing as he closed the car door.
Colby shrugged as he put the car in drive. “Someone’s got to.”
After a moment’s pause to consider, or maybe it was just because he was looking for his swipe card to get out of the garage, he added, “Besides, we’re good at it.”
Don felt himself smile despite his best attempts because yeah, that was the goddamn truth. Sinking back into the seat, he closed his eyes, trusting to Colby to get him home.
**
He woke up to Colby’s voice saying his name.
“You’re home, Miss Daisy,” he said when Don finally got his eyes to stay open.
Colby was carefully casual. The car engine was off but the key was still in the ignition and his seatbelt was buckled, leaving it completely up to Don. It always was up to Don, of course, but he appreciated that there were no assumptions being made.
“You want to come up?” he asked as he opened the car door. He didn’t actually wait for an answer; he didn’t need to. He knew Colby would be behind him as he let himself into his apartment.
It was still the mess he’d left it in two, or was it three, days ago: dirty dishes on the coffee table, and the towel from his last shower still haphazardly over the couch for some reason he couldn’t now remember.
He heard Colby closing the front door behind him and, turning, gestured in the general direction of the kitchen. “Help yourself.”
God only knew if there was any food there, but there were takeout menus if not.
“You want anything?” Colby asked him, on his way to the kitchen.
“Later,” Don said. Right now he wanted nothing more than to get clean and fall into his bed. He heard Colby rooting around in the fridge as he stumbled his way towards the bathroom and peeled off clothes that he’d been wearing for far too long.
Stepping under the warm shower felt like coming back to life. He liked the pressure high so that the water was hard on his body, scouring off the dirt the job brought them into contact with, and right now it was damn near perfect. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sting of the spray and the way the water sluiced down his body, and felt himself begin to relax for the first time in more than a week.
He was just reaching out for the soap when he felt Colby’s solid body press warmly against his back.
“Here,” Colby said, “let me.”
And Don did. He let Colby’s hands work over his body, slippery with soap, and allowed his head to hang down so that, between Colby’s touch and the water pressure, the knots in his shoulders and neck had no choice but to start to unravel. From there it didn’t take long to realise that he wasn’t quite as tired as he’d thought as Colby’s hands continued to move over his body, and once Colby dropped to his knees in front of him it was no effort at all to bury his fingers in Colby’s wet hair and push into his mouth, fucking in slow and easy. And damn, but Colby was good at that. Too damn good because Don wasn’t going to last, and his head banged back against the tiles as he lost himself in Colby’s mouth.
He was aware as if from a distance of Colby turning off the shower and rubbing a towel over him before manhandling him through into the bedroom, and any minute now Don was going to tell him just what he thought of being treated like a child, but maybe he’d close his eyes first, just for a minute.
Yeah, he’d show Colby who was boss. Any time now.
********
Liz hated Wednesday mornings. Wednesday was the day her favourite barista had off. She still hadn’t worked out what it was he did to her coffee to make it so much better - maybe it was simply the flirty smile he always served up along with the coffee - but on Wednesdays her coffee run on the way to work was always lacking.
Adding insult to injury on this particular Wednesday, she got to the office to find David had gotten in before her and had already made the coffee in the break-room. She and Megan had suspected it was a tactic on David’s and Colby’s behalf to make the worst coffee they could so they wouldn’t be expected to make it again, but that deduction had been called into question the time they’d seen Granger happily drink his way through an entire pot of so-called coffee he’d made which nobody else would touch, and then turn round and make another pot before anyone could stop him. That explained Granger’s coffee - he’d burned his tastebuds away long ago with the tar he drank - but whatever the hell it was Sinclair did to the poor innocent machine remained a mystery.
“Coffee?” She blinked as a steaming Grande seemed to materialise on her desk, and looked up to find Nikki grinning at her.
“Figured you’d need extra after the week we’ve had,” she said. “It always that intense round here?”
Liz nodded. “Pretty much.”
If anything Nikki’s smile grew wider. “Good,” she said. “I heard stuff about you guys when I got assigned here. Nice to know it’s true.”
“What stuff?” Liz wasn’t all that interested in inter-office gossip but desk-delivery of good coffee definitely deserved some courtesy in return.
“Oh, you know,” Nikki said, leaning a hip against Liz’s desk as if she was settling in for the long haul. “There’s your clean-up rate and the genius brother - I mean that stuff’s practically in the newsletter - and there’s how Don Eppes ‘always gets his man’.”
“Did you just use airquotes?” Liz demanded.
Nikki shrugged. “I’m just sayin’. I think they forgot what country we’re in. Either that or Don breaks out the Mountie outfit on weekends.”
Liz snorted into her coffee. That gave her some visuals she certainly wasn’t going to share, though from the smirk on Nikki’s face she didn’t need to.
Speaking of which…
“Morning Don, Colby,” Liz said.
Don nodded and Colby gave a half wave as they walked past. Nikki had taken the hint and headed back to her desk, taking her Venti and cupcake with her. Liz briefly mourned the cupcake but there were always the red velvet ones in the vending machine for later. If she got really desperate.
Taking a sip of the coffee Nikki had brought her, Liz watched Don and Colby talking with David in the break-room. If she hadn’t already known about Don and Colby, she’d never have suspected from watching them. She’d been taken by surprise the day a couple of months back when Colby had met her on the walkway outside the building and asked in an uncharacteristically tentative way if he could talk to her. She’d agreed and followed him over to the railings, where he’d seemed more intent on leaning on his folded arms in the sunshine and watching the cars passing underneath than doing anything else, let alone looking at her.
She’d given him a couple of minutes - he was from Idaho after all - but it became increasingly apparent to her that he’d been struck dumb. And more interestingly…
“Are you blushing, Granger?”
“No. Yeah. Maybe?”
“So what did you want to talk to me about?”
He took in a breath as if he was about to face a firing squad and for one horrible moment she’d thought he was going to ask her on a date, so it was actually a relief when he came out with it.
“Don and me, we’re sort of seeing each other,” he’d muttered, managing to look her in the face for at least three seconds.
“Sort of?” she’d asked.
He’d shrugged and not answered, concentrating on looking into the mid-distance like there’d been something really interesting there instead of office blocks and mid-afternoon sunshine hazy with pollution.
She’d looked at Colby’s face as he’d determinedly stared into space, the colour in his cheeks not subsiding in the least under her scrutiny. She’d always thought he was a decent guy - well, apart from those weeks during the whole spy thing - and the fact he was telling her about this confirmed that. Yeah, because it wasn’t like Don would have had the balls to tell her face to face. It wasn’t like Don would even think she might prefer to know rather than be blindsided if it blew up. She wondered whether to say something to Colby, to warn him about the potential Don had to hurt people who cared about him, but she thought it wouldn’t be welcome. And it wasn’t as if Don ever meant to hurt people. He just did.
So she’d let Colby off easy.
“Thanks for telling me.” She’d meant it.
He’d nodded. “Figured you should know.”
“Appreciate it, Granger,” she’d said, slapping his shoulder as she walked away. His very broad, firm shoulder, which was kind of a surprise now she actually thought about him and Don together. He wasn’t Don’s usual type.
“Oh, and Granger?” She’d almost got to the doors before turning back and raising her voice to carry across to where he was still standing at the railings. She had to be careful what she said with so many colleagues around - neither Don nor Colby were officially out at the Bureau so far as she knew - but she couldn’t let it go completely: Colby was just too much fun to tease.
“Yeah?” He’d turned round and was looking at her, eyes screwed up slightly against the sun, but finally looking more like an FBI agent and less like an overripe tomato.
She pitched her voice to carry to him - and everybody else - with ease.
“Just remember to switch off your radio before the two of you start making out on stakeouts.”
Fire trucks had nothing on the colour of Colby Granger’s cheeks.
She’d been still smiling slightly when she reached the office, but had decided not to tease Colby too much. It wasn’t as if dating the boss was the easiest thing in the world to do, especially when your boss was Don Eppes.
Liz glanced now at Colby as he pushed the break-room door open, bickering with David as they headed to their desks, cups of questionable coffee in their hands. It was none of her business what was going on between him and Don so long as they didn’t bring it into the office with them.
Then Don got the call about First Mutual Bank, and introspection went out the window.
********
“What have you got, David?”
David looked up as Don’s voice cut through the hubbub around him. He’d been comparing notes with Colby.
“Three robbers, all in hoodies and Michael Jackson masks, semi-automatics, got the contents of the tellers’ drawers and shot one of the tellers who didn’t move quickly enough.” She’d been frozen in terror, according to her colleagues. “They took off in a white Camray they’d parked right outside. None of the witnesses we’ve spoken to so far have been able to ID anything about them, not even their ethnicity. We’ve pulled the plates from the CCTV and LAPD have an APB out, but so far nothing.”
“Looks like the same MO from last month over at Riverside,” Colby put in.
Don’s unamused look summed up what David was feeling. They’d had precisely nothing to go on from the Riverside robbery, not unless you counted a nice mugshot of Michael Jackson from the security footage.
“As we’ve got a pattern establishing, Charlie might be able to help,” Colby said.
“And we’ve got a bullet now which might tell us more,” David added. Even if it was still somewhere in Maria Torres, who was currently undergoing emergency surgery.
Don looked seriously unimpressed so Colby and David exchanged glances and melted away to go do something crucial elsewhere. While details from the Riverside robbery might help them solve this if they were in fact dealing with the same crew, Don hated being reminded of their failure. And Don being on edge made Colby tense, and didn’t that make David’s day even better.
“Fun times,” Colby muttered to David as they left the scene later.
“And it’s still raining,” David complained, opening the car door. “It’s LA - it’s not supposed to rain this much.”
“You wouldn’t feel if it you had any hair.”
“Just because you don’t appreciate style when it’s in front of you.”
“I appreciate style just fine, but that’s not what I’m seeing.”
“You wouldn’t know style if it bit you in the ass.”
“Least it’d bite my ass, not run screaming.”
“Hey, you want to go for a beer later?”
Colby thought for a moment as he pulled out into the slow-moving traffic. “Sure,” he said. “So long as we get away from work before dawn.”
Thankfully - or not - they managed to leave work at a time that made them seem almost like regular people, because they just didn’t have anything to go on. The techs hadn’t found anything; the bullet from bank teller, who’d died on the operating table, hadn’t shown up any matches for weapons linked to any previous crimes; and the getaway car - which turned out to have been stolen forty minutes before the robbery - was found torched two miles away on a piece of waste ground which had a number of access routes.
Charlie was doing something with the data from this and the previous robbery that probably involved algorithms or equations, but so far it was nothing more than scribbles on a chalkboard.
All in all it was one of those days when David was pleased to leave the place behind him. He’d been looking forward as well to chewing over stuff with Colby, who he hadn’t seen so much of off the clock since he’d hooked up with Don. And that was something that David had tried to avoid thinking about ever since Colby had told him. Since the Chinese shitstorm Colby seemed to have made it a point to tell David everything that was going on with him. The downside of that was that David would have been much happier not knowing some of those things.
While it was nice to catch up over a couple of beers, to be with somebody who just got it about the job without having to have it explained, Granger was being particularly annoying tonight.
“How’s Claudia?”
Colby just forgot sometimes that he couldn’t get away with that shit any more, not without payback.
“How’s Don?”
So conversation was dropped in favour of watching the game on the screen behind the bar and David found himself slowly relaxing from the frustrations of the day. It was good not to have to worry about anything for once.
********
Next day it was clear to anybody within a five mile radius that Don wasn’t in the best of moods. He didn’t do well with failure at the best of times; when someone ended up getting hurt because of something he thought was his fault, he was like a bear with a sore head. Colby kept his head down, along with the rest of the team, as they trawled through hour upon hour of surveillance video from the bank, businesses around the area, and traffic cams.
Don’s frame of mind wasn’t improved by Charlie’s briefing. Not least, Colby thought, because Charlie explained his processes in excruciating detail when he could have skipped straight to his gloomy conclusion.
“…So I’ve managed to identify areas with elevated geographical probability, but we’re still looking at a large number of potential targets.”
The street map of LA that he brought up on the screen had a depressing number of red dots on it, each representing a potential target that met all the criteria.
“The difficulty is that without a lot of information my projections are going to be fairly general. There has to be a pattern to the location of the banks chosen and the origin points of the stolen cars, but I need more data in order to assign values.”
Don sighed. “Have you got anything that’ll tell us when they’re likely to hit again?”
“As for that Don, it’s very interesting. For both robberies, there was a heavy rain shower in progress, which had been accurately forecast.”
“Aw, come on, that’s got to be a coincidence,” Nikki broke in, so dismissive that Colby almost winced for her greenness when it came to Charlie.
Charlie of course jumped on the chance to educate yet another FBI agent on the mathematical reality of coincidences whilst simultaneously pointing out the odds of heavy sustained rainfall in LA and the odds of the same crew robbing two banks during that occurrence. Colby could feel a math headache coming on.
Liz was frowning. “I get that it was part of their planning, but what advantage is there to robbing a bank in the rain?”
“Fewer people on the streets, those people minding their own business hurrying to get places without taking any notice of what’s going on,” Charlie posited.
“And less customers in the bank to either get in the way or be witnesses,” David added.
Don shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Is there any way you can work out why these guys are hitting LA instead of, say, Seattle, if they’re going with wet weather?” Nikki asked. At least she was embracing the math, even if she did seem to see it as a magical solution.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t have enough information.”
Colby was sure he was about to explain in minute detail the type of information he might need and which mathematical principles he would be violating in attempting to answer her question without that information, so he broke in quickly with a thought of his own.
“Maybe there’s other bank robberies by the same crew but with different masks or clothes. Any way you can broaden your search to look for unsolved robberies with a similar but not identical MO?”
“Sure,” Charlie said. “It’ll take me a while, but if I can start data mining your records for, say, the last six months to start with and then -”
Don cut in on what sounded as if it was going to be a long and enthusiastic explanation. “See what you can do, Charlie, okay?”
Charlie nodded absently, staring at the board again, mind obviously off somewhere on its own path already.
“There’s fuck all else we can do tonight,” Don said, sounding really pissed about that fact.
Nikki raised her eyebrows in pointed comment after Don had left the war room, but none of the rest of the team met her gaze as they filed out after him out into the bullpen. It didn’t sit well with any of them, Colby knew, to be stuck with no way forward unless they got lucky with the previous week’s security footage from the bank. And there would be a fair amount of luck involved in identifying the one person out of hundreds who was really there only to case the place.
Rotating his neck and shoulders to ease the stiffness from where he’d been hunched over staring intently at a screen for most of the day, Colby tried to work up some enthusiasm for more of the same tomorrow. Maybe they wouldn’t have to; maybe Charlie would figure something out.
“You coming, Colby?”
It wasn’t so much a question as a summons. He grimaced slightly at David as he got his jacket from the back of his chair, and followed Don out of the office. There was sympathy in David’s expression, but it was mixed up with an expression that Colby could only read as ‘What the hell are you doing, Granger?’
Colby didn’t know how to answer that question because he didn’t know what he was doing. All he knew was that it was Don, and with all the good stuff that went along with that there was other stuff that, yeah, maybe wasn’t quite so easy.
He’d worried a bit about the thing with Don bleeding over into the job, but years of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell meant it was still second nature not to let it; at work Don was the boss and that was all there was to it. Apart from the times he sucked on those coffee stirrers, because Colby was only human after all. Then there were the thigh holsters, of course; they might cause the occasional lapse from complete professionalism but whose brain wouldn’t stutter when Don looked like that? Those vague fantasies about Don holding him down and fucking him hard in the locker room were sadly never going to come true, but he supposed the whole point of fantasy was keeping it just that. So yeah, keeping it out of the office wasn’t really a problem.
The trick sometimes was figuring out when Don stopped being the boss and became Don, because that line seemed to move daily, depending on Don’s mood. And sometimes it wasn’t that Don was the boss, but that Don was just Don - stubborn, uncommunicative, and infuriating as hell.
Just like he was when they got back to his apartment. Colby knew better than to say anything. He knew that he should just keep his head down and let Don work through it, but since when did he ever just shut up when he should? And he hated that Don was so hard on himself the whole time, and figured that maybe he could get through to him.
“Look, it’s not your fault, Don. It’s not anyone’s fault except the scumbags pulling this shit.”
Don whirled round on him from where he’d been pacing round the living room, his strides jerky and full of anger.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about - I’m responsible for this. If we’d found them last time, this would never have happened.” He jabbed his finger at Colby to underline his point. “Maria Torres would still be alive right now if I’d done my job properly.”
Colby spread his hands appeasingly where he was seated on the couch. “You can’t go through life thinking like that. You can only do the best you can and then let the rest go, or you’ll twist yourself up so badly you’ll end up really screwing up.”
“Sounds like something you’d know about, Colby.”
And shit, Don knew how to aim low when Colby overstepped his boundaries.
Colby started counting to ten to stop himself saying something that would blow everything up beyond repair. He got to eighteen before Don dropped some takeout menus on Colby’s lap.
“What d’you fancy?” he asked.
“Italian?” Colby didn’t really care, but figured it best to take the olive branch when it was extended.
Don phoned the order through then went to take a shower, coming back in faded FBI sweats. Colby followed suit - he’d taken to leaving a small duffel in his car with a change of clothes for the office and gym clothes - and came back through in time to find Don paying the delivery guy and taking in bags with savoury smells that had Colby’s stomach rumbling within seconds.
He trailed Don through to the kitchen and got his wrist smacked hard when he tried to snag a meatball, only for Don to pick it up, tossing it from hand to hand till it cooled enough to pop into his mouth.
“Get some glasses,” he said, or at least that’s what Colby thought he said through his mouthful.
Snagging a meatball successfully this time - and damn, they were hot - Colby opened the cupboard where Don kept his wineglasses and pulled out a couple, all the while sucking in air over the hot mess of spiced meat in his mouth. He didn’t know if Don wanted red wine glasses or white wine glasses so he just went for the biggest ones. It’d been that sort of a day.
Don was opening the last bottle of wine from the rack when Colby put the glasses on the counter.
“Thought that was for your Dad,” he said.
“I’ll get some more before Sunday,” Don said, shrugging. “Anyway, this way we get to find out if it’s any good - you know Dad’s picky about his wine.”
Colby snorted. “Just a bit.”
Alan Eppes invited the team round for meals fairly regularly and it had become an informal team bonding activity to panic over what wines were and weren’t acceptable to take as a gift. All had been good when Megan was still with them - they’d simply sent her to the liquor store with a stack of bills and she’d bought a suitable bottle from each of them - but now they were left scrabbling.
They took loaded plates and glasses of red wine through to put them on the coffee table, and watched the game while they ate. Rather, Don watched the game; hockey wasn’t Colby’s thing, so he ate his food, enjoyed the occasional fight on the ice, and watched Don, seeing the way that food and wine and a lack of demands being made on him began slowly to smooth the lines of strain from his face.
Some days Colby thought it might have been the best thing to happen to Don that he didn’t make it into the majors back in the day because he would have felt responsible for each and every defeat, and nobody could function for long under that sort of pressure. He felt the same responsibility at the FBI of course, but at least Don had a good team round him here who’d try and tell him it wasn’t all up to him - and he had his family too, which was important to Don. Was important to most people, really, but he knew Don would feel rootless without Alan there, and Charlie too.
“Hey, you not watching this?”
He looked up from his thoughts to find Don had turned sideways, one arm propped on the back of the couch, and was looking at him.
He shrugged guiltily; he hadn’t a clue what the score was. “I was hungry.”
Don made a soft noise in his throat and leaned in, his hand going to Colby’s cheek to hold him in place as his mouth covered Colby’s. Colby opened up to Don’s heat, just as he did every time; it’d been one thing that had really surprised him, just how much Don liked kissing. And how fucking good at it he was.
Don’s tongue pushed between his lips and Colby came back at him, until it ended in a tussle as both were intent on kissing but also trying to find a way for this to work on the damn couch that was really not the right shape for this. Colby ended up astride Don, knees splayed either side of Don’s thighs as they kissed, and trying to get those sweats off so he could touch skin.
“Damn it, Colb,” Don said with something that was almost a laugh when Colby had to grab the back of the couch to avoid falling off after Don pushed forward a bit too enthusiastically, “You’re too big for this.”
“Never had any complaints before,” he grinned, bending down to get at Don’s mouth again. For a moment Don melted under him, opening up and letting him take the lead, but he should have known better, because Don’s hands were working their way into his sweats, finding the hot length of his cock, and then all Colby could do was pant unevenly against Don’s neck.
“Bed,” Don said, and who was Colby to argue. Specially if it got them off this damn couch that might look fancy but was not designed to have sex on. Don’s bed, on the other hand, was a thing of beauty and Colby had been thinking about replacing his own ever since he first saw the acres of California King that dominated Don’s bedroom. Right now he wasn’t so much seeing it as feeling it because somehow he’d ended up out of his clothes and on his back under Don, and he wasn’t complaining - oh, God, he so wasn’t complaining about either of those things right now.
Don was pushing into him and Don was above him and in him and Colby pulled him down for a bruising kiss, messy and deep and so fucking good. The muscles in Don’s arms were limned in the orange light that filtered through the blinds from the streetlamps outside, the same light that masked his eyes, and Colby wanted to touch and lick but Don had that rhythm going already, the one that always brought Colby to pieces under him and it was too late for either of them to do anything but hold on.
Afterwards they lay tangled up on the comforter and Colby knew that soon the cooling sweat and come would become unpleasant, but not yet, not while they were both still breathing hard and not yet quite sure whose body was whose.
After a few minutes though Don made a regretful little noise and moved away from Colby. He headed for the bathroom to dispose of the condom while Colby managed to rouse himself enough to pull the covers back and get into Don’s bed. For the first few weeks he’d gone home after, till Don had said one night he might as well stay as it was closer to work. That way, he’d added with a grin, they’d get to have morning sex as well. So now Colby stayed, and the bed was big enough that they could share it all night and never touch until he’d wake up with Don’s hands and mouth on him, bringing him up through the last layers of sleep for a morning hand job or blowjob. And then it was all business and rushing to get into the office.
One of the unexpected side-benefits to screwing the boss was that Colby got into the office earlier these days. He wasn’t entirely convinced that was a benefit rather than a drawback, but he couldn’t see how to refuse an incentive package like Don.
********