Secret Santa gift for la_luna_sangra
Profiler: Wonderwall
Author: kosmickway
Rating: R for salty language and sexual references
Pairing: John/Rachel
Summary: A series of vignettes through the stormy history of Rachel Burke and John Grant.
Author’s Note: I took some liberties with canon here, so the vignettes don’t exactly follow the season 4 episodes. I also worked some time-traveling magic and sent a couple of 2009 items (like flat-screen TVs) back to 1999. Enjoy and PLEASE leave some feedback-- I'd love to hear what you have to say.
***
“Mother-FUCK” is the only word that comes to my mind when I see Rachel Burke standing in the VCTF Command Center.
This tops it. This is the gooey icing on a cake of epically shitty proportions. It’s not enough that Sam has managed to get herself kidnapped by Jack-Burke has to show up to help look for her.
“John, she’s the best there is,” Bailey said absently, using his good arm to peruse yet another of the endless stacks of case files pertaining to Jack, looking for the umpteenth time for some kind of clue as to Sam’s whereabouts. “If we want to find Sam alive, we need Rachel Burke.”
No. We don’t. We really and truly don’t. Yes, she’s good-it’s an acknowledged fact that Burke is the best profiler to come out of Quantico since Jack Crawford back in the late eighties. But we don’t need her to solve this case. And maybe I’m biased-okay, scratch the ‘maybe,’ I’m definitely biased-- but we’ve been together four years now. Who’s better equipped to find Sam than the four of us?
I watch her from across the Command Center, delaying the moment when I have to start actually conversing with the bitch for as long as possible.
She’s hot. I have no problem admitting to that. She’s got a red head’s sass and a body like mortal sin. But her voice is like nails on a chalkboard-every word out of her mouth makes me want to acquaint myself with a bottle of Crown Royal as soon as possible for as long as possible. She’s got that same goddamn know-it-all quality that Sam had, that scary ability to look at me and read me like an open book. But the really shitty part is this-- she DOES know it all, or at least most of it, since she was the instructor for the “refresher courses” I had to take at Quantico the summer after the First National debacle, the one that got me a reprimand and almost ruined my career with Atlanta PD. She spent all summer coaxing me to be more open to new investigative techniques, lecturing me about my attitude, grating on my nerves. Burke knows way more about me than I’m comfortable with.
And because I’m a total fucking idiot, I ended up spending a drunken night with Rachel Burke in her room at Quantico. Too many beers at the Boardroom, too many martinis at the Indian restaurant, too many shots of tequila back in her room and WHAM, we’re rolling in bed, she’s giving me the best blowjob I ever had (much as I hate to admit that), and then she’s got one more hold over me.
And now she’s here. In my Command Center. Talking to my team. Breathing my air. Drinking my coffee.
Can this week get ANY FUCKING WORSE?
***
It’s Murphy’s law-once you sleep with someone you don’t ever want to see again, you inevitably end up having to work with them. So I have to suppress a groan when I walk into the VCTF Command Center behind Bailey Malone and see John Grant in all his arrogant asshole-ishness, chatting with the IT guy-what the hell is his name again?-and waving a cup of coffee as if he has all the time in the world, as if his colleague’s life isn’t at stake.
“Listen up, people,” Malone announces to the room at large. “This is Rachel Burke from Quantico. She’s going to be the lead profiler in the search for Sam Waters. Give her access to any and all pertinent information as she asks for it. You’re to give her full cooperation, understood?”
The pathologist and the IT guy come over to greet me, but Grant keeps his distance. It’s fine by me-I’m not looking forward to working with him, much less speaking to him-but I also know that I need to put on a good act. I don’t want anyone to know that we’ve met before, or that we broke the fraternization rule all to hell on that night in July five years ago. So, trying to keep my distaste off of my face, I walk over and shake his hand.
“Rachel Burke. And you are?”
His face is carefully neutral but his eyes flash. I can just hear him thinking “Oh, THAT’s the way you want to play it” and I try to communicate through my own gaze that, yes, that is
EXACTLY how I want to play it.
The phrase that came in to my head the first time I saw John Grant was “cock of the walk.” He swaggered with a bad-ass, frat boy strut that I’ve always hated. He positively radiated an attitude problem. Here was a man who was good looking, talented, and intelligent-and he not only knew it but had no scruples about using it to his own advantage. John Grant is the sort of man who can blend into any crowd-the high class, coke snorting set or the lower class, beer drinking set-and get the information he wants. He can charm any woman who’s fool enough to buy his line of bullshit. He can play bad cop to Malone’s good cop and never flinch when he’s got the barrel of a gun pointed at his head.
All of which leads to his “I am The Man and therefore vastly superior” attitude.
I hate that in a man.
He starts talking strategy with Malone and leaves me with Grace and George who, thank God, haven’t seemed to pick up on the tension in the air. Two days, maybe four, maybe a week, and John Grant is out of my hair for good.
***
Of course he’d invite her to join the team. Of course he would. Because deep down, Bailey Malone absolutely fucking hates me.
It’s official. The red-head drives me to drink. There isn’t anything I want more in the universe than to go home and take a few healthy shots of Ketel One. But instead we’re stuck in the office waiting for tox results from Grace and therefore obliged to make small talk.
“So … you gonna do it?”
“To which ‘it’ are you referring?” She sifts through files, cleaning and organizing as we talk. It’s another thing that drives me insane about her-she’s so damn neat and tidy. Type A-you bet your ass. Probably OC as well, but I’m not a psychologist-who am I to diagnose Burke’s mental issues?
“Wear the wire against Perone.”
I’m only asking for the sake of keeping the conversation going. I know she’ll wear the wire. Given the choice between the needs of a Bureau flunky like Joel Marks and a gang boss like James Perone, she’ll come down on the Bureau’s side every time. You’ve got to hand it to her-at least she’s loyal.
“No, I’m not.”
Huh. Hadn’t seen that one coming.
“You’re balking at the chance to take down James Perone?”
“Yeah, I am. And it isn’t just because we’re taking advantage of a man who’s lost his only child-it’s because Marks is planning an entrapment. Encouraging Perone to think Francis Conway is responsible for his daughter’s death pretty much insures that Perone will retaliate against Conway in a really big, really ugly way. To have me give the father of a murder victim misleading information about the case AND wear a wire against him isn’t how I do business.”
“So you’d rather stand up for a mob boss’s rights than take him down for the crimes he HAS committed and will commit again in the future?”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t take down Perone-I’m just saying there are better ways to do it than entrapping him.”
Well, she’s wrong. But at least she’s got the cajones to back it up. That’s one thing I will admit to liking about Burke-she may be intense in her beliefs and feelings to the point of stubbornness, but at least you know where you stand with her. With Sam, it was never clear. She was always half in and half out of some scum bag’s brain pan, so you never could tell what she was thinking or feeling.
“Would you do it?”
I’m Patrick O’ Doyle’s son. My father was a flunky for Cahill O’Connor and his band of thugs. He wasn’t powerful enough to be a threat to the syndicate, but he had just enough influence to order the “accident” that took out my mother when she was ready to turn him in. Burke doesn’t know any of that, of course, but asking me if I’d turn on a gang boss like my father is like asking if I’d accept a million dollars for stepping on a cockroach.
“Hell, yes.”
Burke studies me for a long time with those penetrating green eyes, then nods.
“Yeah. I thought you would.” Her phone vibrates on her hip and she looks at the display. “I’ll give you this, John-you always stand on the high road.”
***
“This is about the goat, isn’t it?”
That’s the only possible explanation for why John is acting like such an ass. We’d been doing okay for awhile, developing a working relationship that felt almost friendly. Almost. Then Marks slapped a moral turpitude charge on me this morning and in the last two hours it’s all gone to hell.
George stifles a laugh and it’s all I can do not to smack him in the back of the head. John, however, has no such compunctions.
“Something funny, Brainiac?”
“I’m just trying to remember the last time the word ‘goat’ was uttered within these walls.”
“We need to talk,” I tell John and drag him into my office.
I start pacing. George calls that my “default setting” since I always seem to fall into it when I need to think.
“Where the hell did he get this shit?” John looks like he wants to hit something. He opts for rooting in my desk drawer to come up with the Scotch and tumblers I save for when Bailey comes into my office.
“I have no idea. It’s not like we were indiscreet.”
And it’s true. We weren’t. We were drunk, sure, but not falling down drunk and not in a place where anyone would have known us, at least not after we’d left The Boardroom. And, yes, there was some noise coming from my room that would have given away that I had a … guest … but no one would have known it was an agent I had in my room, much less one of my own students. The fact that Joel Marks knows John and I spent an evening in flagrante delecto means that somehow or another, my privacy has been severely breached.
But never mind the fact that the Bureau apparently keeps WAY closer tabs on its agents than I’m comfortable with-Joel Marks plans to make me pay for wearing a wire against him by using my one-night stand with John as leverage. That’s dirty pool, even for Marks.
“We have to deny it ever happened. It’s not like he has photos or tapes.”
But then there’s that little thing called perjury and the fact that I’d be committing it if I walked into a courtroom and swore that I’d never had a relationship with John. I can’t do that. My personal integrity is more important.
He knows what I’m thinking-he may be an ass but he’s good at reading people-and he snorts inelegantly.
“Jesus, Rachel. There goes that ethics fetish of yours again.” He knocks back a Scotch. “Are you honestly going to get up in front of the suits from the OPR and admit that we slept together? I was an agent under your supervision when it happened. You know as well as I do what that means-you’ll take a formal reprimand, then a suspension, and maybe even an expulsion. You really want to go down that road?”
I don’t. But I also have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. If I let my ethics go this once, they’ll start going more and more until I’ve got nothing left.
“John, it’s not that black or white. It-“
“Look, Rachel, here’s the bottom line. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened. And I’ll swear to that in a court of law.”
Not quite the response a woman wants from a man, even if it will save her ass and her job. And to be perfectly honest, his response wouldn’t bother me so much if I weren’t slowly realizing that, dammit, I’m developing feelings for John.
The only thing I can think to say is, “You’d be perjuring yourself.”
John shrugs. “No one can prove that I am or I’m not. As far as Marks knows, you, me, that night is a rumor. And we all know that you can’t prove a rumor.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that you’d be perjuring yourself. And there’s no need for that-I’ll admit to it and take the reprimand. They’re not going to expel me.”
John shakes his head. “You don’t know that. If Marks laid down the charge, he’s probably found a way to make it stick. Better to pretend it never happened in the first place.”
The matter-of-fact “father knows best” tone in his voice is REALLY irritating. That, combined with the messy mix of emotions stewing in my chest is enough to make me erupt.
“Don’t you play the white knight with me, John Grant. Save your chivalry for someone who’ll fall for it!”
John looks irritated. “What the hell is this, Rachel? I’m trying to save your ass and you’re busting my balls.”
“I don’t need saving!” I storm at him. “I’ve never needed a man to save me and I’m not starting now, not with you.”
He knocks back another Scotch and slams the glass on the credenza so hard that it cracks. “You know what your problem is, Rachel? All you’re interested in is keeping your reputation as an ice-cold bitch fully intact. If it’s so much easier not to need people, why the hell did you join this team in the first place?”
“To do some good in this world!”
“Yeah? How the hell do you expect to do that if you’re not with us anymore?”
By now we’re both so pissed off at each other that we’re shouting loudly enough to be heard through the closed door. I catch a glimpse of Bailey crossing the Command Center and know we’re about to be interrupted. He sees my eyes move toward the door and he strides toward it, not wanting Bailey to open the door on his parting words.
“Take it, Rachel. Compromise.”
And then he’s out the door and I’m left with the distinct impression, for the first time since I’ve known John Grant, that the bravado isn’t an act at all.
***
Kate’s only been gone five days and I feel like I’ve been grieving for her for years.
When was the last time I let a woman get under my skin this way? Was it Angel? No, I don’t think even Angel was able to create the same feeling in me that Kate did, the sense of being home when I was with her.
That’s gone now, gone before we had a chance to really embrace it-- but not before it had settled in my stomach, warm and welcome, like the after burn from a shot of whiskey. It took me too long to see it for what it was. It took me too long to see her.
A key slides in the lock and the door opens. My heart leaps for a moment, hoping against hope that it’s Kate, even though I never had gotten around to giving her the key to my place.
It’s Rachel, arms full of grocery bags, still dressed for work.
“Hey,” she says, setting the bags down on the table. “Brought you some matzo ball soup. George gave me the recipe.”
She starts pulling things out of the bags and putting them away, rooting out bowls, spoons, crackers, lettuce for a salad as she talks about work. She doesn’t, thank God, try to compensate for my silence by being overly cheerful or talkative-she speaks to me as though we’ve just finished a case and are on the plane to go home instead of walking on eggshells (George), mother-hen-ing (Grace) or being awkwardly silent (Bailey).
It’s been like this for the last five days. Rachel comes after work with dinner, groceries, a movie, some form of distraction. She cooks and she makes me eat. She cleans up and turns on a movie or the TV, then curls up with case files until I feign going to bed so that she can get back to her own apartment. It’s suicide watch, which means Rachel’s only doing what Bailey’s ordered her to do, but it still makes me feel a little bit better, knowing that there’s at least one person I haven’t driven away with my moody rages. In spite of all the turmoil in our lives, we’re actually getting along now-she’s the only person I don’t mind having around me.
Rachel sits down across from me and looks me over. “You look tired.”
“Didn’t sleep.”
It’s the dreams, the ones of Kate-more specifically of Kate alive and whole. Some nights they turn into Kate riddled with bullets. But they come every night just the same. I didn’t want to deal with them last night, so I stayed up and watched Shark Week programming on the Discovery Channel all night long, even when they started showing the same set of six shows again and again.
“The doctor gave you something for that, didn’t she?”
Yep. She did. Xanax. It puts me out into a dreamless sleep. I should be popping those babies by the handful. But here’s the fucked up part-even though I’m dreaming about Kate’s murder most nights, at least I’m dreaming about Kate. I take the Xanax and she goes away. I take the Xanax and I might never get her back.
I don’t even realize I’m saying that out loud until I look at Rachel and see that her eyes are starting to well up.
“John,” she says softly, taking my hand in hers. “There’s no way to keep her.”
The thought enrages me as much as it sickens and saddens me. I jump to my feet, head for the punching bag hanging from its metal frame and lash out at it savagely. I pummel it with everything in me, ignoring the fact that I’m tearing my hands all to hell because I haven’t taped them and I’m not wearing gloves. I only stop when my hands start slipping on the surface of the bag. When I look down, I see that my knuckles are streaming blood.
“Fuck!” I yell, putting all my fury and grief into that one word. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair, it’s not fair, IT’S NOT FAIR! Why did it have to be her? Of all the people in this goddamn city, why did it have to be Kate?”
My knees won’t hold me any longer. I let myself slip to the floor and huddle, knees to chest, like a scared kid. My knuckles are bleeding all over the floor and my tears are soaking my t-shirt.
I hear the rap of her heels on the floor and I wonder if she’s had enough, if she’s going to walk out and leave me here, alone in my anger and guilt. But then she’s kneeling in front of me with bandages and peroxide and washcloths, and she doesn’t say a word, just takes my hands in hers and begins to bandage me up.
***
I wake up screaming, something I thought only happened in the movies. It takes me about four seconds to realize that I’m awake, two to realize I’ve screamed, and another five seconds to notice that I’ve automatically drawn my gun and am about to take out my flat screen TV with a well placed bullet.
After that, it takes about ten seconds to register that I’m not alone in my bed and that the person next to me isn’t Joel Marks, as I’d been dreaming.
“Easy.” John’s hand comes up to cover mine on the barrel of the gun. “I’d kind of like to watch that if we can’t get back to sleep.” He nods at the TV and then eyes the gun. “Thank God you didn’t take the safety off.” He loosens my fingers and slides the gun onto the night stand. “Bad dream?”
I nod, not trusting my voice yet. Every time I wake up it hits me all over again-Danny, the paramedics, the scene at the top of the warehouse on Harbor Street when Bailey and John showed me Danny’s body covered in a sheet.
John knows. Sometime in the last six months, between losing Kate and losing Danny, we’ve come to understand each other in a way that never would have been possible had our lives gone on as they always had. Somehow, in the act of losing people we loved, we ended up finding peace with each other.
“Marks again?”
“Yeah.” My mouth is dry. My eyes, on the other hand, are threatening to spill over.
“Here.” He passes me a bottle of water that’s sitting on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
“Thanks.” I swallow hard, trying to get everything under control-my tears, my emotions, my racing heart, my churning stomach. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“I know.” His hand comes up to rest on my back. His palm is warm-I can feel it through my shirt. “But I think it’s time you stopped waking up alone, don’t you?”
The tears well again. Fuck. Where’s my control? It’s disappeared into thin air. I feel as brittle and fragile as glass with a crack spider webbing through it-any more pressure and I’m going to break.
His hand moves to the back of my neck, his fingers kneading the tension out. “I’m right here,” he whispers. I feel his lips on my temple and I close my eyes, sinking against him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
END.
Author: kosmickway
Rating: R for salty language and sexual references
Pairing: John/Rachel
Summary: A series of vignettes through the stormy history of Rachel Burke and John Grant.
Author’s Note: I took some liberties with canon here, so the vignettes don’t exactly follow the season 4 episodes. I also worked some time-traveling magic and sent a couple of 2009 items (like flat-screen TVs) back to 1999. Enjoy and PLEASE leave some feedback-- I'd love to hear what you have to say.
***
“Mother-FUCK” is the only word that comes to my mind when I see Rachel Burke standing in the VCTF Command Center.
This tops it. This is the gooey icing on a cake of epically shitty proportions. It’s not enough that Sam has managed to get herself kidnapped by Jack-Burke has to show up to help look for her.
“John, she’s the best there is,” Bailey said absently, using his good arm to peruse yet another of the endless stacks of case files pertaining to Jack, looking for the umpteenth time for some kind of clue as to Sam’s whereabouts. “If we want to find Sam alive, we need Rachel Burke.”
No. We don’t. We really and truly don’t. Yes, she’s good-it’s an acknowledged fact that Burke is the best profiler to come out of Quantico since Jack Crawford back in the late eighties. But we don’t need her to solve this case. And maybe I’m biased-okay, scratch the ‘maybe,’ I’m definitely biased-- but we’ve been together four years now. Who’s better equipped to find Sam than the four of us?
I watch her from across the Command Center, delaying the moment when I have to start actually conversing with the bitch for as long as possible.
She’s hot. I have no problem admitting to that. She’s got a red head’s sass and a body like mortal sin. But her voice is like nails on a chalkboard-every word out of her mouth makes me want to acquaint myself with a bottle of Crown Royal as soon as possible for as long as possible. She’s got that same goddamn know-it-all quality that Sam had, that scary ability to look at me and read me like an open book. But the really shitty part is this-- she DOES know it all, or at least most of it, since she was the instructor for the “refresher courses” I had to take at Quantico the summer after the First National debacle, the one that got me a reprimand and almost ruined my career with Atlanta PD. She spent all summer coaxing me to be more open to new investigative techniques, lecturing me about my attitude, grating on my nerves. Burke knows way more about me than I’m comfortable with.
And because I’m a total fucking idiot, I ended up spending a drunken night with Rachel Burke in her room at Quantico. Too many beers at the Boardroom, too many martinis at the Indian restaurant, too many shots of tequila back in her room and WHAM, we’re rolling in bed, she’s giving me the best blowjob I ever had (much as I hate to admit that), and then she’s got one more hold over me.
And now she’s here. In my Command Center. Talking to my team. Breathing my air. Drinking my coffee.
Can this week get ANY FUCKING WORSE?
***
It’s Murphy’s law-once you sleep with someone you don’t ever want to see again, you inevitably end up having to work with them. So I have to suppress a groan when I walk into the VCTF Command Center behind Bailey Malone and see John Grant in all his arrogant asshole-ishness, chatting with the IT guy-what the hell is his name again?-and waving a cup of coffee as if he has all the time in the world, as if his colleague’s life isn’t at stake.
“Listen up, people,” Malone announces to the room at large. “This is Rachel Burke from Quantico. She’s going to be the lead profiler in the search for Sam Waters. Give her access to any and all pertinent information as she asks for it. You’re to give her full cooperation, understood?”
The pathologist and the IT guy come over to greet me, but Grant keeps his distance. It’s fine by me-I’m not looking forward to working with him, much less speaking to him-but I also know that I need to put on a good act. I don’t want anyone to know that we’ve met before, or that we broke the fraternization rule all to hell on that night in July five years ago. So, trying to keep my distaste off of my face, I walk over and shake his hand.
“Rachel Burke. And you are?”
His face is carefully neutral but his eyes flash. I can just hear him thinking “Oh, THAT’s the way you want to play it” and I try to communicate through my own gaze that, yes, that is
EXACTLY how I want to play it.
The phrase that came in to my head the first time I saw John Grant was “cock of the walk.” He swaggered with a bad-ass, frat boy strut that I’ve always hated. He positively radiated an attitude problem. Here was a man who was good looking, talented, and intelligent-and he not only knew it but had no scruples about using it to his own advantage. John Grant is the sort of man who can blend into any crowd-the high class, coke snorting set or the lower class, beer drinking set-and get the information he wants. He can charm any woman who’s fool enough to buy his line of bullshit. He can play bad cop to Malone’s good cop and never flinch when he’s got the barrel of a gun pointed at his head.
All of which leads to his “I am The Man and therefore vastly superior” attitude.
I hate that in a man.
He starts talking strategy with Malone and leaves me with Grace and George who, thank God, haven’t seemed to pick up on the tension in the air. Two days, maybe four, maybe a week, and John Grant is out of my hair for good.
***
Of course he’d invite her to join the team. Of course he would. Because deep down, Bailey Malone absolutely fucking hates me.
It’s official. The red-head drives me to drink. There isn’t anything I want more in the universe than to go home and take a few healthy shots of Ketel One. But instead we’re stuck in the office waiting for tox results from Grace and therefore obliged to make small talk.
“So … you gonna do it?”
“To which ‘it’ are you referring?” She sifts through files, cleaning and organizing as we talk. It’s another thing that drives me insane about her-she’s so damn neat and tidy. Type A-you bet your ass. Probably OC as well, but I’m not a psychologist-who am I to diagnose Burke’s mental issues?
“Wear the wire against Perone.”
I’m only asking for the sake of keeping the conversation going. I know she’ll wear the wire. Given the choice between the needs of a Bureau flunky like Joel Marks and a gang boss like James Perone, she’ll come down on the Bureau’s side every time. You’ve got to hand it to her-at least she’s loyal.
“No, I’m not.”
Huh. Hadn’t seen that one coming.
“You’re balking at the chance to take down James Perone?”
“Yeah, I am. And it isn’t just because we’re taking advantage of a man who’s lost his only child-it’s because Marks is planning an entrapment. Encouraging Perone to think Francis Conway is responsible for his daughter’s death pretty much insures that Perone will retaliate against Conway in a really big, really ugly way. To have me give the father of a murder victim misleading information about the case AND wear a wire against him isn’t how I do business.”
“So you’d rather stand up for a mob boss’s rights than take him down for the crimes he HAS committed and will commit again in the future?”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t take down Perone-I’m just saying there are better ways to do it than entrapping him.”
Well, she’s wrong. But at least she’s got the cajones to back it up. That’s one thing I will admit to liking about Burke-she may be intense in her beliefs and feelings to the point of stubbornness, but at least you know where you stand with her. With Sam, it was never clear. She was always half in and half out of some scum bag’s brain pan, so you never could tell what she was thinking or feeling.
“Would you do it?”
I’m Patrick O’ Doyle’s son. My father was a flunky for Cahill O’Connor and his band of thugs. He wasn’t powerful enough to be a threat to the syndicate, but he had just enough influence to order the “accident” that took out my mother when she was ready to turn him in. Burke doesn’t know any of that, of course, but asking me if I’d turn on a gang boss like my father is like asking if I’d accept a million dollars for stepping on a cockroach.
“Hell, yes.”
Burke studies me for a long time with those penetrating green eyes, then nods.
“Yeah. I thought you would.” Her phone vibrates on her hip and she looks at the display. “I’ll give you this, John-you always stand on the high road.”
***
“This is about the goat, isn’t it?”
That’s the only possible explanation for why John is acting like such an ass. We’d been doing okay for awhile, developing a working relationship that felt almost friendly. Almost. Then Marks slapped a moral turpitude charge on me this morning and in the last two hours it’s all gone to hell.
George stifles a laugh and it’s all I can do not to smack him in the back of the head. John, however, has no such compunctions.
“Something funny, Brainiac?”
“I’m just trying to remember the last time the word ‘goat’ was uttered within these walls.”
“We need to talk,” I tell John and drag him into my office.
I start pacing. George calls that my “default setting” since I always seem to fall into it when I need to think.
“Where the hell did he get this shit?” John looks like he wants to hit something. He opts for rooting in my desk drawer to come up with the Scotch and tumblers I save for when Bailey comes into my office.
“I have no idea. It’s not like we were indiscreet.”
And it’s true. We weren’t. We were drunk, sure, but not falling down drunk and not in a place where anyone would have known us, at least not after we’d left The Boardroom. And, yes, there was some noise coming from my room that would have given away that I had a … guest … but no one would have known it was an agent I had in my room, much less one of my own students. The fact that Joel Marks knows John and I spent an evening in flagrante delecto means that somehow or another, my privacy has been severely breached.
But never mind the fact that the Bureau apparently keeps WAY closer tabs on its agents than I’m comfortable with-Joel Marks plans to make me pay for wearing a wire against him by using my one-night stand with John as leverage. That’s dirty pool, even for Marks.
“We have to deny it ever happened. It’s not like he has photos or tapes.”
But then there’s that little thing called perjury and the fact that I’d be committing it if I walked into a courtroom and swore that I’d never had a relationship with John. I can’t do that. My personal integrity is more important.
He knows what I’m thinking-he may be an ass but he’s good at reading people-and he snorts inelegantly.
“Jesus, Rachel. There goes that ethics fetish of yours again.” He knocks back a Scotch. “Are you honestly going to get up in front of the suits from the OPR and admit that we slept together? I was an agent under your supervision when it happened. You know as well as I do what that means-you’ll take a formal reprimand, then a suspension, and maybe even an expulsion. You really want to go down that road?”
I don’t. But I also have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. If I let my ethics go this once, they’ll start going more and more until I’ve got nothing left.
“John, it’s not that black or white. It-“
“Look, Rachel, here’s the bottom line. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened. And I’ll swear to that in a court of law.”
Not quite the response a woman wants from a man, even if it will save her ass and her job. And to be perfectly honest, his response wouldn’t bother me so much if I weren’t slowly realizing that, dammit, I’m developing feelings for John.
The only thing I can think to say is, “You’d be perjuring yourself.”
John shrugs. “No one can prove that I am or I’m not. As far as Marks knows, you, me, that night is a rumor. And we all know that you can’t prove a rumor.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that you’d be perjuring yourself. And there’s no need for that-I’ll admit to it and take the reprimand. They’re not going to expel me.”
John shakes his head. “You don’t know that. If Marks laid down the charge, he’s probably found a way to make it stick. Better to pretend it never happened in the first place.”
The matter-of-fact “father knows best” tone in his voice is REALLY irritating. That, combined with the messy mix of emotions stewing in my chest is enough to make me erupt.
“Don’t you play the white knight with me, John Grant. Save your chivalry for someone who’ll fall for it!”
John looks irritated. “What the hell is this, Rachel? I’m trying to save your ass and you’re busting my balls.”
“I don’t need saving!” I storm at him. “I’ve never needed a man to save me and I’m not starting now, not with you.”
He knocks back another Scotch and slams the glass on the credenza so hard that it cracks. “You know what your problem is, Rachel? All you’re interested in is keeping your reputation as an ice-cold bitch fully intact. If it’s so much easier not to need people, why the hell did you join this team in the first place?”
“To do some good in this world!”
“Yeah? How the hell do you expect to do that if you’re not with us anymore?”
By now we’re both so pissed off at each other that we’re shouting loudly enough to be heard through the closed door. I catch a glimpse of Bailey crossing the Command Center and know we’re about to be interrupted. He sees my eyes move toward the door and he strides toward it, not wanting Bailey to open the door on his parting words.
“Take it, Rachel. Compromise.”
And then he’s out the door and I’m left with the distinct impression, for the first time since I’ve known John Grant, that the bravado isn’t an act at all.
***
Kate’s only been gone five days and I feel like I’ve been grieving for her for years.
When was the last time I let a woman get under my skin this way? Was it Angel? No, I don’t think even Angel was able to create the same feeling in me that Kate did, the sense of being home when I was with her.
That’s gone now, gone before we had a chance to really embrace it-- but not before it had settled in my stomach, warm and welcome, like the after burn from a shot of whiskey. It took me too long to see it for what it was. It took me too long to see her.
A key slides in the lock and the door opens. My heart leaps for a moment, hoping against hope that it’s Kate, even though I never had gotten around to giving her the key to my place.
It’s Rachel, arms full of grocery bags, still dressed for work.
“Hey,” she says, setting the bags down on the table. “Brought you some matzo ball soup. George gave me the recipe.”
She starts pulling things out of the bags and putting them away, rooting out bowls, spoons, crackers, lettuce for a salad as she talks about work. She doesn’t, thank God, try to compensate for my silence by being overly cheerful or talkative-she speaks to me as though we’ve just finished a case and are on the plane to go home instead of walking on eggshells (George), mother-hen-ing (Grace) or being awkwardly silent (Bailey).
It’s been like this for the last five days. Rachel comes after work with dinner, groceries, a movie, some form of distraction. She cooks and she makes me eat. She cleans up and turns on a movie or the TV, then curls up with case files until I feign going to bed so that she can get back to her own apartment. It’s suicide watch, which means Rachel’s only doing what Bailey’s ordered her to do, but it still makes me feel a little bit better, knowing that there’s at least one person I haven’t driven away with my moody rages. In spite of all the turmoil in our lives, we’re actually getting along now-she’s the only person I don’t mind having around me.
Rachel sits down across from me and looks me over. “You look tired.”
“Didn’t sleep.”
It’s the dreams, the ones of Kate-more specifically of Kate alive and whole. Some nights they turn into Kate riddled with bullets. But they come every night just the same. I didn’t want to deal with them last night, so I stayed up and watched Shark Week programming on the Discovery Channel all night long, even when they started showing the same set of six shows again and again.
“The doctor gave you something for that, didn’t she?”
Yep. She did. Xanax. It puts me out into a dreamless sleep. I should be popping those babies by the handful. But here’s the fucked up part-even though I’m dreaming about Kate’s murder most nights, at least I’m dreaming about Kate. I take the Xanax and she goes away. I take the Xanax and I might never get her back.
I don’t even realize I’m saying that out loud until I look at Rachel and see that her eyes are starting to well up.
“John,” she says softly, taking my hand in hers. “There’s no way to keep her.”
The thought enrages me as much as it sickens and saddens me. I jump to my feet, head for the punching bag hanging from its metal frame and lash out at it savagely. I pummel it with everything in me, ignoring the fact that I’m tearing my hands all to hell because I haven’t taped them and I’m not wearing gloves. I only stop when my hands start slipping on the surface of the bag. When I look down, I see that my knuckles are streaming blood.
“Fuck!” I yell, putting all my fury and grief into that one word. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair, it’s not fair, IT’S NOT FAIR! Why did it have to be her? Of all the people in this goddamn city, why did it have to be Kate?”
My knees won’t hold me any longer. I let myself slip to the floor and huddle, knees to chest, like a scared kid. My knuckles are bleeding all over the floor and my tears are soaking my t-shirt.
I hear the rap of her heels on the floor and I wonder if she’s had enough, if she’s going to walk out and leave me here, alone in my anger and guilt. But then she’s kneeling in front of me with bandages and peroxide and washcloths, and she doesn’t say a word, just takes my hands in hers and begins to bandage me up.
***
I wake up screaming, something I thought only happened in the movies. It takes me about four seconds to realize that I’m awake, two to realize I’ve screamed, and another five seconds to notice that I’ve automatically drawn my gun and am about to take out my flat screen TV with a well placed bullet.
After that, it takes about ten seconds to register that I’m not alone in my bed and that the person next to me isn’t Joel Marks, as I’d been dreaming.
“Easy.” John’s hand comes up to cover mine on the barrel of the gun. “I’d kind of like to watch that if we can’t get back to sleep.” He nods at the TV and then eyes the gun. “Thank God you didn’t take the safety off.” He loosens my fingers and slides the gun onto the night stand. “Bad dream?”
I nod, not trusting my voice yet. Every time I wake up it hits me all over again-Danny, the paramedics, the scene at the top of the warehouse on Harbor Street when Bailey and John showed me Danny’s body covered in a sheet.
John knows. Sometime in the last six months, between losing Kate and losing Danny, we’ve come to understand each other in a way that never would have been possible had our lives gone on as they always had. Somehow, in the act of losing people we loved, we ended up finding peace with each other.
“Marks again?”
“Yeah.” My mouth is dry. My eyes, on the other hand, are threatening to spill over.
“Here.” He passes me a bottle of water that’s sitting on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
“Thanks.” I swallow hard, trying to get everything under control-my tears, my emotions, my racing heart, my churning stomach. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“I know.” His hand comes up to rest on my back. His palm is warm-I can feel it through my shirt. “But I think it’s time you stopped waking up alone, don’t you?”
The tears well again. Fuck. Where’s my control? It’s disappeared into thin air. I feel as brittle and fragile as glass with a crack spider webbing through it-any more pressure and I’m going to break.
His hand moves to the back of my neck, his fingers kneading the tension out. “I’m right here,” he whispers. I feel his lips on my temple and I close my eyes, sinking against him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
END.