[rookieblue] fan!gift exchange | "it's beginning to look a lot like christmas..."
For the A-PLUS fangirls participating in the Yuletide Hates Us Rookie Blue Fan!Gift Exchange, this is where you post your completed gifts. Once you've finished a gift, please post it as a reply (or several replies if necessary) to this entry.
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How it ends: he buys her a ring.
They haven’t talked about it, not really, but. It’s been two years and change of them living together, of Jo stealing his shirts and hogging the covers, of fighting over whose turn it is to make the coffee, to write their final case reports. Of singing along to radio commercial jingles on the drive into the station.
Luke's never been in love, before her, never been anywhere close to it. She makes it seem like magic.
He can see down the straight line of his (of their) future, holding the small sparkling thing in his hands. A wedding, gold bands on their fingers. Them working through cases, laughing and moaning and groaning about scumbucket suspects, her notes sprawled across both their desks and a pen in her hair. Empty takeout containers, interrogation rooms, the unmarked car with the broken heater that she loves anyway, maybe a task force or two. Together. A kid or two, one day. A bigger place; a house with a yard.
Her face when he asks her, when he says the words, is a room of regret, is a punch to the gut. But then: she takes the ring. Puts it on. Looks at him hard, inscrutable. Kisses him, fiercely, desperate.
The next day, Jo tells him, her voice skittering across the frozen winter air. About the task force, the promotion she’s applied for. Luke nods, tries not to see the connection, hear the if this then that in her voice. “I’ll apply too,” he says. “We’re partners, right? Could give us an edge.”
Jo looks him in the eye. Says, “Yeah, absolutely.”
He applies.
Doesn’t get it. Detective in charge is banging around 27 one day, there to follow up on a drug bust. Luke’s heart pounds; he asks, and hears no. He feels Jo’s eyes on him when he walks back to their office. They can be together, him and Jo. Maybe. If Jo gets passed over, too.
She doesn’t get passed over. She tells him later that night, that she got it, that she accepted. “Could be worse,” she offers. “Sometimes they don’t give you any notice at all, expect you to pack up and leave. Disappear without a trace.”
Luke grits his teeth. “What does this mean? For us, Jo. What does this mean?”
Jo presses her lips into a straight line.
She sets the ring on the counter when she leaves, bag packed and a plane ticket with her name on it. No note, no goodbye. Just an empty house and a diamond ring.
---
He’s at 15 by the time she gets back. Lives across town from their old place, lives an entirely different life. Has a fishing cabin, new friends, hangs at a different bar post-shift. She calls him, just once. He watches her name flash across the screen, waits as it rings once, twice, three times. Thinks of her wicked smile, of the crease between her eyes when she was angry, when she was upset, when they would fight. Of their slapdash home, the kitchen full of unused pots and unused pans, their sheets left tangled at the foot of their bed, clean collared shirts draped across an easy chair that neither of them ever, ever bothered ironing.
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t leave a message.
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YES! THIS THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for indulging me!!
Luke kisses her again, one night a couple months in, because he wants to be her boyfriend, Oh, LUKE. BB. Of course he does... So freaking in character for my pre-series Luke head-canon. GUH.
How it ends: he buys her a ring. FAVOURITE LINE. Utter perfection in the apparent paradox.
You are a genius, it is official. THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU ARE THE BEST!
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This is amazing. I LOVE IT.
It is beautiful and haunting and just as I imagine. POOR LUKE.
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I love how you can feel the whole way through that they're just not on the same page, but that neither of them actually realises until the RING. Beauuuutiful.
It also makes me very glad that I didn't get the thing I was throwing around for this prompt anywhere near done, because oh, how it would have sucked in comparison.
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