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Tan was watching Chris like she was a wounded panther that he was going to have to have put down. It was driving her insane. Most nights, she liked it when people looked at her like she was dangerous, like she would kill them for looking at her wrong, but the unsettled fear in Tan’s face was just making her uncomfortable tonight. Maybe because it was mixed with pity. Her stomach rolled, probably more from the alcohol than disgust, and she reached for the sink behind her instinctively. Okay, Tan had to go. He didn’t need to watch her vomit in her kitchen sink tonight. She opened her mouth to tell him as much, but was cut off by a short shake of his head.
“Don’t.” His tone was sharp, and Chris was glad that she’d sobered up somewhere between the first and second punches to the face or she’d have flinched from him. “Don’t tell me not to worry about you and to just go home again, okay?” Some idle part of Chris’s brain wondered if he realized he was getting louder with every word. “Because I’m getting real sick of that routine, and it’s not going to fly tonight.” The end was almost a shout.
Chris didn’t know what to say to that. She tried to look at him, to say anything other than just “Get out, leave me here to fall apart on my own.” It was harder than it should have been. She worked her gaze up from his combat boots, some part of her noting missed shoelace notches and sloppy knots and wondering if that was because he had been in a hurry to get to her. The thought tightened something in her stomach, and her eyes just wouldn’t go any higher than his collarbone. She couldn’t look him in the eye right now. It would shake her too deeply.
They stood frozen like that for a long minute, Tan furiously searching Chris’s face for answers and Chris, staring steadily at the collar of his open flannel, refusing to give them. Tan broke first. Just barely.
“Sit,” he growled, and stalked off in the direction of her bathroom. Part of Chris wanted to growl right back at him, but another part was just so, so tired of fighting. That part won out, letting her sink down into a dining room chair just as Tan came back with the first aid kit. She was a split second from an eye roll and telling him that she could put superhero Band-Aids on her own boo-boos when he held up his hand and made a choked off warning sound. Well. She still rolled her eyes.
“Shut up.” Tan cracked open the first aid kit on the table and Chris kicked her chair around to face him. “You’ve been doing a shitty job of taking care of these.” Again, she tried to respond, and again, he let out a strangled cat noise. “I don’t care what you get yourself into in your spare time, but if you get an infected cut in your eyebrow, you’re gonna be really pissed.”
He wasn’t wrong. Exhaustion finally sunk into her weary bones, and Chris’s last drops of fight rushed out her all at once. She slumped against the back of the chair as Tan tilted her face up to dab at her eyebrow with a gauze pad soaked in alcohol. It took a massive effort not to wince at the burning sensation, and she almost had it, until he wiped across the cut particularly roughly. She felt her nostrils flare and her breath catch before she could help herself.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and she didn’t believe him for a second.
With her eyes closed, the faint burn of alcohol fumes in her throat weren’t enough to overpower the clean, woodsy smell of Tan as he leaned close. She’d noticed it before, there was no reason for her to bother noticing it again. Except before, he hadn’t had her jaw in his hand, holding her still with his fingers under her chin and the tip of his thumb a breath away from her mouth. His hand was warm and steady, and he held her with just enough pressure to ground her a little. The tiniest sigh slipped out between her lips, making Tan ‘mmm’ softly.
“Okay, that time, I didn’t mean to.” Chris did believe him this time, but she cracked open the eye he wasn’t rubbing alcohol above and finally got a word in edgewise.
“That means you did mean to the last time.” She made sure to keep her tone light, more of an observation than an accusation. Something clenched in her chest at the thought of Tan leaving, especially because of something she said. Funny, that, when five minutes ago she would have given anything to lock the door with him on the other side of it.
He didn’t react, anyway. Instead, Tan finally put down the gauze pad, now mottled with red, and peeled open a butterfly suture. Chris shook her head and instinctively leaned back in the chair, but there was no escape from the firm hand that grasped her jaw again and turned her face back forward.
“Stop it,” Tan grunted, frowning with the effort of applying the suture one-handed. “You’re lucky I decided you didn’t need a couple stitches in it.”
Chris snorted and rolled her eyes again, but stopped resisting. “Yeah? And who were you going to call to do that? Deacon?” Her words were distorted, squished a little by the fingers pressing into her cheeks, but she didn’t really mind. “The last time you tried to practice stitching for your Field Medic 1 cert you almost passed out.”
The offended look that tightened his features almost made Chris eek out an apology - an apology! Where the hell did that come from? - before Tan cracked a smirk and pressed her suture into place a little more firmly than he really needed to. “You know, maybe I just figured that with Deacon and Luca already playing team doctors, I could just go back to kicking your ass in Tactical Driving!” He looked a little too cheerful as he took a step back to admire his handiwork. “That should stop yet another scar breaking up your eyebrows. Although, I guess I’m willing to admit that that’s not the worst look for you.”
It had been a long night, Chris figured. That was the only explanation for why Tan’s last sentence had her searching his face for some hint that he meant it, that he was complimenting her. On a scar. In her eyebrow. Chris forced her gaze down to her hands, away from the sharp, still-concerned lines of his face. She barely had time to register her scraped, bruised knuckles that were definitely going to hurt tomorrow before he started speaking again. If she hadn’t been so distracted by carefully keeping her walls in place, she might have noticed that he sounded nervous, rushed, like he was trying to keep up his own.
“Not that you need gaping wounds in your face to look good, or anything.” She did glance up at that, and thought his face might be the tiniest bit red, but he turned away before she could think of anything to say. Collecting various bits of first aid trash off of the table, he shrugged. “I know, I know. None of my business.”
The filmy haze over Chris’s thoughts finally started to clear at that. She hauled herself to her feet as Tan dumped his handful of garbage and started to wash streaks of her blood from his fingers. Her accusative “What is that supposed to mean?” died in her throat when she turned to confront him, though, stuck somewhere in the way that his flannel, with its dark green and orange pattern, stretched over his shoulders. With his back to her, Chris had a second to just… look at him, and to take in everything from the tension in the back of his neck to the way he seemed to shift on his feet nervously. Even with his back to her, she could see his jerky, tight movements in the way his arms and shoulders twitched.
He’s worried about me , Chris realized with a sharp snap. Tan turned off the water and dried his hands on the front of his jeans without turning around, and his protracted silence only confirmed it. Not just worried, scared. She didn’t know what to do with that information, so she just hid her suddenly-trembling hands behind her back. She hated being unsure. Hell, she’d become a whole-ass cop partly because she always wanted to be able to know what to do. And now, here she was, leaning against her table with a butterfly suture holding her together and Tan in her kitchen, very carefully not looking at her.
He could only dry his hands for so long, though, and he trudged over to her freezer to pull out a bag of frozen corn. Chris would have laughed him off if she suddenly didn’t kind of feel like all the air had left the room. The uncertainty gripped her tight, and all she could do was watch him step toward her, his eyes intentionally locked on to the spreading bruise on the hinge of her jaw. Was it just her, or did he step way, way closer than he needed to just to touch the ice pack to her face? This time, she turned her head willingly to give him better access, and let her eyes closed as cold and tenderness jolted from the area on contact.
He wasn’t playing with her this time, though. Tan’s touch was so gentle and steady, and she was just so tired . She couldn’t help but lean into him by just a hair, her shoulder tucking in toward him to find a little foundation against his chest. Chris barely even realized she was doing it until it was too late. The second she leaned in enough to touch him, Tan drew in a sharp breath and dropped the bag of corn unceremoniously on the table next to her. Her eyes flew open and caught sight of a look of outright fear across his features before he turned and headed - no, rushed - toward the door.
“I should get going,” he ground out, sounding like he was talking from between his teeth. It was late, almost 2am, he had every right to go home. So why did Chris outright panic when his hand landed on the doorknob?
“ Wait .” Chris’s voice was so small and exhausted that she almost couldn’t continue, though he froze with his hand on the knob and his eyes making determined contact with the peep hole. They stood like that, frozen again in taut limbo, and she could feel her heart breaking a little as she whispered out one tiny, “ Please .” Uncertainty - anxiety? - swelled in her throat again and crowded out any other words, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.
In a blink, Tan was standing in front of her with his fingers under her jaw again and his eyes burning into hers. Something like anger glittered dangerously inside of him, and Chris had to resist the urge to pull back and look away. By a shred, she met eyes so deep and whiskey brown-gold that she knew, all at once, that they would drown her. She didn’t care. The eye contact held. It was the wall that she’d slapped up between her and anyone or anything that felt like connection that fell.
Just as tears welled up in Chris’s eyes, tears that she just couldn’t bring herself to give a damn about anymore, Tan leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. It was a tenderness that she hadn’t let anyone show her a while, and the wall around her heart crumbled a little more as she shut her eyes against tears that started flowing freely. It wasn’t until he shuddered, movement that she could feel in the scant inches of air between their bodies and in the warm, grounding spot where their foreheads touched, and drew in a shaky breath that she realized he was crying too.
“Damn it, Chris.” Her eyes were blurry, but she opened them anyway at his trembling voice. “I have been so fucking worried about you.” His breath followed his murmur, ghosting across her face and making her wonder what he tasted like.
“You have?” Chris could barely whisper, but she had to know. She had to be sure that whatever layer she was picking up under his words was really there; she’d spent too much time lately learning the hard way that you can’t take back your mistakes in life. So she touched the tips of their noses together, tried to steady herself with her breath, and let Tan rest his hands on her upper arms in an act that comforted them both.
Something desperate tightened around the corners of his mouth, and he pulled back just an inch or two to be able to look at her face. And there it was - a reckless, vulnerable certainty that she had never seen, shining in his liquid-gold eyes like a hazard warning, or maybe like the safe shores of a lighthouse. “Chris, yes .”
She chose the lighthouse and closed the gap between them.
Kissing him felt like coming home, and not to an apartment full of ghosts and echoes. His lips were soft and gentle, kissing her back without rushing or pushing or demanding. It felt like having the ground under her feet again and like maybe, just maybe, she was going to be okay. Most of all, kissing him felt right . Right like nothing had felt since Erika asked if they could move in together. Chris’s gut wrenched at the realization and she broke from Tan’s mouth with a gasp. His hands dropped from her arms like lead weights, and not touching him just made things worse.
Tan’s brow furrowed with confused hurt, but his hands spread at his sides and he took half a step back, like he was trying to appear non-threatening to a jaguar.
“No, no,” Chris shook her head and grabbed at his hands, would have laughed at herself for how important it was for him to understand if she’d had a spare braincell. She pressed his hands to her face again and closed her eyes, taking a breath before sighing out, “It’s just… a lot.”
Fingers shaky, Tan cradled her face, and Chris’s heart softened just that much more when he carefully repositioned one hand to not lay over the bruise on her jaw. “I know,” he murmured, part soothing and part his own quiet exhaustion. “I know it is, and I don’t wanna make it any harder for you, I just…” He didn’t continue, and the silence hung around them, laden with anticipation.
It only took Chris another second to make her decision. Maybe it was the wrong one, but she didn’t particularly care. Too many choices had been made for her lately, too many moments out of her control. So damn the consequences; this she would do for herself.
Meeting his eyes with as much courage as she had left in her tired heart, she pressed her palms to his chest and welcomed her first real smile in weeks.
“Actually, I think maybe I’m ready to have someone help make it easier on me.”
A look of outright shock was quickly replaced by the cheesiest grin Chris had ever seen on Tan’s face. Before she could even laugh at him, he pulled her in to kiss her fiercely, and she swore she could taste his joy. It was infectious, and they had to break the kiss to both let out soft, relieved chuckles. The tension was gone. Chris’s chest was lighter than it had been in too long.
“Stay.” It wasn’t much of a request; she had no intention of letting go of the tiny glimmer of humanity she suddenly felt when Tan was within touching distance.
His wild grin softened into sweet compassion, and he brushed the lightest kiss across her forehead. “Got any hot cocoa in this place?” He let go of her and turned to rifle through her cabinets. “Hot cocoa isn’t the worst thing to be drinking at 2am!”
Chris grimaced, knowing the truth of that, and pointed him to the cabinet full of hot beverages. “No hot cocoa, but there’s always herbal tea up there.” At Tan’s vaguely impressed look, she rolled her eyes and pointed him to the electric kettle. “I’m not always a drunken mess when it comes to my beverages.” Her tone, and the heart behind it, were still light, but she knew that at some point, she had some owning up to do.
But not tonight. “Want to sit and watch something for a little? You could go throw something on the TV?” Tan already had tea bags in mugs and water heating in the kettle. He was focused on his task, but he threw the suggestion over his shoulder with a smile.
Thank god they didn’t have to work the next day. Chris folded up in the corner of the couch and flicked on the TV. The late night news was putting out their daily recap, so she got caught up until Tan dropped a mug of what smelled like chamomile tea on the table next to her and plopped down on the other side of the couch. Chris grunted, dissatisfied with the arrangement, and grabbed her mug of tea before pushing herself across to him. Amazing how easy it was to settle into his side, to accept the warmth both from the mug in her hands and the man at her back. Almost natural.
She grabbed the remote, about to change the channel to something more interesting, when Tan jerked a little and leaned forward, pulling her deeper against his side and bending her around a little.
Half ready to jab him in the side with her elbow to get him to lean back again, she was cut off by his stunned, “Is that William Shatner?”
Her attention honed back in on the TV, where an anchor, who looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh, was reporting on some incident at the zoo earlier in the day. Chris and Tan watched, riveted, as footage rolled of William Shatner doing some kind of PR next to the elephant exhibit. Just as he turned toward one of the elephants, she let loose a torrential downpour of poop, and the camera popped back onto Shatner for just long enough to capture his horrified face before he was covered from head to toe. The clip ended, but Chris and Tan sat, glued to the TV, for several seconds of stunned silence. And then Chris absolutely lost it. It only took a moment for Tan to catch up, and soon they were both howling, bodies shaking against each other in unbridled laughter.
Not a bad way to end the day, all things considered.