Chapter Text
The Dispatch bullpen sounded louder than usual that morning. Robert sat at his desk staring at the same report for the third time without actually reading it while phones rang, keyboards clattered, and Courtney balanced on the back of a chair across the room.
The jacket hit first—pink, cropped, wrong for the room on purpose. The rest of her followed sharp and compact, dark violet spikes catching the overhead light just enough to look intentional.
“Visi,” someone called, “you’re going to break your neck.”
“Relax,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve fallen off worse.”
Robert closed his eyes briefly. Three years ago he probably would’ve laughed.
Now he just felt tired. The chair scraped loudly as she hopped down and spun around.
“Robert!” she called across the room. “You saw that, right? Graceful.”
A few people chuckled.He forced a faint smile.
“Thrilling,” he said.
She didn’t notice the tone. Or maybe she did and chose not to. Courtney grabbed a coffee and wandered toward his desk, weaving between chairs like the entire office was just an obstacle course she’d memorized. She leaned against the edge of his desk.
“You look like you got hit by a fucking truck,” she said.
“Didn’t sleep much.”
“You should stop working at three in the morning,” she said lightly.
Robert rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Somebody has to finish the reports.”
“Or,” she said, tapping the stack of papers, “you could not treat every case like it’s the end of the world.”
Robert looked up at her.
“That’s literally the job.”
She grinned, but he didn’t. The moment stretched just long enough for the grin to fade slightly.
“Okay,” she said. “Someone’s grumpy.”
She bumped his shoulder playfully before heading back to her desk.
Robert watched her go. He used to like how loud she was.
He used to love that about her. Now it just made him feel older.
====
By the time he finally left Dispatch that evening, the tension from the morning was still sitting in the back of his mind like something unfinished. Robert heard the knock a few minutes before midnight, the sound quiet but unmistakable in the stillness of the apartment, echoing through the hallway in a way that made his stomach tighten before his mind had even caught up with the realization.
He already knew it was her.
He waited a second too long before opening the door.
When he finally opened it, she was standing there with her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jacket, shoulders slightly hunched against the cold night air, her hair loose and wind-tangled.
Something under the edge of her shirt pulsed once—faint red, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
Neither of them spoke right away.
“You going to let me in, weirdo,” she said finally, her voice edged with dry impatience, “or are we doing the dramatic doorway thing tonight?”
Robert stepped aside without answering. She walked past him into the apartment with the easy familiarity of someone who had crossed that threshold a hundred times before, moving through the living room without hesitation, like the space still belonged to her as much as it did to him.
Beef lifted his head from the couch almost immediately and bounded toward her, nails clicking across the floor as his tail wagged hard enough to shake his entire back half.
“Well,” she murmured, crouching down to scratch behind his ears as the dog practically melted into her hands, “at least someone in this apartment is still happy to see me.”
Robert closed the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment, folding his arms across his chest as he watched the scene unfold in front of him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, but it didn’t sound like a rule.
She didn’t look up. The small ring at her septum caught the light when she tilted her head, quick and metallic.
“Yeah,” she said. “You already tried that on the phone.”
“You remember that part.”
“Hard to miss.”
She stood slowly then, brushing her hands against her thighs before turning to face him fully. And that was when he noticed something different.
She seemed quieter tonight. The usual bright, chaotic energy she carried into every room wasn’t there tonight — not gone exactly, but muted, like someone had turned the volume down on the version of Courtney the rest of the world was used to seeing.
“You’re really doing this,” she said.
Robert exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair as though the gesture might somehow organize the mess of thoughts he’d been carrying around all week.
“Visi—”
“No,” she cut in immediately, shaking her head once. “Don’t start with the serious voice. I hate the serious voice.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke.”
The words came out sharper than he intended, the frustration in his chest finally breaking through the careful restraint he had been trying to hold onto since she walked through the door.
“I know.”
She was closing the space between them inch by inch until the distance felt small enough that he could feel the warmth of her presence through the thin strip of air separating them. She was too close again.
“You look like hell,” she said, studying his face. Not casually.
Really studying him now, her eyes tracing the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the exhaustion settled into the lines around his mouth.
“Thanks.”
“You sleeping?”
“Not much. Dispatch has been hell.”
Her mouth tilted slightly at that, the corner of it lifting in a small, crooked expression that might have been sympathy or irritation or something far harder to name.
For a second something bitter flickered behind her eyes.
“Working hard,” she said, quieter. “Good boy.”
The words came out too soft to be a joke and too bitter to be affection.
Robert frowned immediately, the words hitting him with a strange mix of annoyance and recognition.
“You don’t have to make it a joke.”
His voice was calmer now, but there was a tired edge under it, the kind that came from knowing exactly what she was doing.
“Yeah,” she said. “At least I’m not the only one avoiding the main problem.”
For a moment neither of them moved, the silence stretching again until it felt almost physical. Then she sighed and shrugged out of her jacket, tossing it casually onto the back of the nearest chair. Underneath, she was wearing one of his old shirts.
Robert recognized it instantly. It hung loosely on her shoulders, sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms like she’d rolled them absentmindedly while walking over, the fabric soft and worn in that way clothes only get after years of being lived in.
“You kept that,” he said.
She glanced down at herself briefly before looking back at him.
“Yeah, and?”
Seeing her in his shirt still did something annoying to his brain.
For a second it almost fooled him - like nothing had changed.
“Court,” he started, the word catching halfway between caution and exhaustion.
But she didn’t let him finish.
She stepped closer again, closing the space between them with that same stubborn confidence she always carried — the kind that assumed the world would eventually bend if she pushed hard enough.
This time she reached up and caught the front of his shirt in her fist, tugging him down just slightly so he had to look directly at her.
“You’re thinking too… fucking… much,” she said, each word slow and deliberate, like she was trying to physically drag him out of whatever spiral his mind had disappeared into.
Robert exhaled through his nose.
“I’m trying to think enough for both of us,” he said quietly.
For a moment she just stared at him.
Then her mouth tilted into a small, frustrated smile.
“There it is,” she muttered. “I’m the problem again.”
His jaw tightened immediately.
“That’s not what I said.”
For a second neither of them moved.
Courtney was suddenly done arguing.
“Every time,” she said, quieter now, which somehow made it worse, “every time it gets like this you start talking like you’re filing a report.”
Robert’s jaw tightened.
“That’s not—”
“It is,” she cut in, not sharp, not even angry, just… certain. “You step back, you analyze, you decide what the problem is like it’s something you can solve if you just think hard enough.”
“And what would you prefer?” he snapped, the restraint slipping just enough to show teeth. “That I don’t think about it? That I just—what—go along with whatever this is until it blows up again?”
Her expression flickered — something quick and defensive and too familiar.
“At least that would be honest.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
For a second, something in his face shifted — not anger, not exactly — something closer to being called out in a way he didn’t have a clean answer for.
“Honest?” he repeated, low. “You think this—” he gestured between them, the space, the history, all of it compressed into that one frustrated motion, “—you think this works because you don’t think about it?”
“I think this works,” she said, stepping closer, not backing down, not giving him the distance he clearly wanted, “because I’m actually in it.”
The space between them collapsed down to almost nothing.
“You’re always halfway out the door,” she added, softer now, and that was the line that hit — not because it was loud, but because it wasn’t.
Because it sounded like something she’d been holding onto for longer than tonight.
Robert let out a breath through his nose, slow, controlled, like he was trying to get ahead of something already moving too fast under his skin.
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” she agreed immediately. “It’s not.”
And then, just as quickly:
“But neither is this.”
That silence again — heavier this time, not empty but crowded, full of everything they’d both already decided not to say out loud.
He could feel it building, that familiar pressure in his chest, the instinct to pull back, to put space between them before it tipped into something worse — something harder to come back from.
Courtney had always been good at spotting the exact moment he started retreating — like it was a tell he’d never quite managed to hide. Her mouth tilted, just slightly. Not amused. The next thing she did wasn’t careful, and it wasn’t thought through — it was just her, the way she always moved when she got tired of waiting for the world to line up in a way that made sense.
She pulled him down into a kiss that felt less like a decision and more like momentum finally catching up to them.
For half a second he didn’t move.
Not because he didn’t want to—but because he knew exactly what this was. The pattern. The problem.
And then she shifted closer, her hand at the back of his neck, warm and grounding, and the restraint cracked.
His hands found her waist, pulling her in. The kiss deepened—messy, urgent, more about contact than control.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” he said against her, breath uneven.
“I know.”
Her forehead pressed to his. That was worse. Because she knew—and chose it anyway. She pulled him back in, and this time he didn’t stop. It wasn’t careful after that. No space, no distance—just heat and friction and the familiar shape of each other colliding without permission.
He backed her into the wall, and she met him there, just as hard, just as certain.
“Robert—” she breathed, but it wasn’t a question.
He didn’t answer with words. The instinct took over, hot and immediate. His hands slid to her waist, fingers digging into the soft fabric of his shirt she wore, and he yanked her against him. The kiss deepened, turning from a fight into a frantic, hungry search. She made a small sound against his mouth, half relief, half frustration, a low whimper that vibrated through him.
“That’s better,” she murmured, but the words were lost.
He broke the kiss, panting, his forehead resting against hers.
“I don’t fucking want it to be fixed,” she shot back, her hands already working at the hem of his t-shirt, her fingers hot against his skin. “I just want this. I want you.”
That was all the permission he needed. He pulled back just enough to drag the shirt over his head, tossing it aside. She looked at him like she was angry he still affected her.
He hooked his fingers under the hem of the shirt she wore—his shirt—and pulled it over her head in one smooth motion. It joined his on the floor.
His hands were everywhere. He rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, her body bucking against his
“Robert,” she breathed softly, his name catching in her throat.
He answered by kissing her again, a deep, consuming as he deftly unbuttoned her black jeans. He pushed them down over her hips, and she kicked them away, her movements clumsy with urgency. He followed suit, shucking his own sweatpants and boxers until there was nothing left between them. He lifted her, and her legs wrapped around his waist instinctively. The new angle brought them together, hot and hard.
There was nothing gentle about it. It was hard and fast and desperate, a frantic rhythm that spoke of all the time they’d lost. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful either.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a low growl.
Her eyes, dark and dazed with pleasure, fluttered open and locked with his. He put two of his fingers in her mouth. She made a noise against his hand that almost stopped him. He watched her face as he drove into her, watched the pleasure build there, the way her lips parted, the flush that spread across her chest. Her back arched, her body tightening around him like a vise.
“Come for me, Court,” he urged, his voice strained.
His words were her undoing.The sight of it, the feel of her clenching around him, sent him over the edge. He buried his face in her neck with a guttural groan. They stayed like that for a long moment, bodies tangled, breathing ragged, the sweat cooling on their skin.
They stayed close at first, like separating would mean acknowledging too much. Her arms were still around him, but looser now. Not holding—resting. The apartment felt bigger again, the edges of it creeping back in — the couch, the dim light, the faint hum of something electrical in the background — all the things that existed outside of them whether they wanted them to or not.
He looked at her then. Not the way he had before — not caught in the moment, not reacting — but actually looking. The stubborn spark was still there in her eyes, bright and defiant as ever. Courtney had always been like that. He had spent so long trying to guide her that he wasn’t sure when it had turned into something heavier. Something dangerously close to being responsible for her instead of simply loving her.
“Someone liked it,” she said softly.
“I did,” he answered.
And that was true. That had never been the problem. Her mouth curved, small, familiar — but it didn’t quite reach her eyes this time.
“See?” she said, softer. “Still works.”
This time, he didn’t answer right away. Not because he disagreed. But because he wasn’t sure what “works” meant anymore. That hesitation—small, barely there—was enough.
Courtney felt it. Her arms slipped from around him a second too early, like she’d remembered something mid-thought. She stepped back just a fraction, reaching for her shirt without looking at him.
“Yeah,” he added, lighter now, but not quite convincing. “Still works.”
The space between them didn’t agree. And standing there, with everything settled just enough to think again, it felt heavier than before.
Courtney pulled her shirt back on.
Robert watched her do it.
Neither of them said anything useful after that.