Work Text:
Danny Reagan loves his wife.
It’s true, he loves Linda more than anything. That’s the first thing he would like to say.
The second thing he would like to say is he didn’t know who started it.
*
It was a rough case and a dangerous one. Gun trafficking. Those were gruesome as a rule. An uptick in violence associated illegal guns and trafficking-related incidents had them working a lot of overtime. On that particular night, they’d both been up for two days without so much as a nap, running on coffee and adrenaline from having been shot at three times over the course of the last week. One detective pair had been put in the hospital the day before, one one of whom was unlikely. Everyone at the precinct was on edge.
At about four in the morning, Jackie Curatola and Danny Reagan found themselves in the incredibly stupid situation of staking out a seedy apartment complex alone, manpower being stretched thin, awaiting the appearance of the man that they had identified as a strong suspect in the chain of command.
He showed up alright. A scream from a nearby alleyway drew them both out the car just in time to see the suspect bolt across the street. Danny gave chase, Jackie went to check out the scream.
Neither of them noticed the car screaming down the street until it was much too late.
A spray of bullets had them diving for cover where there was none. As the car passed, shots were fired from one of them, shattering the back window. No plates, any maker’s symbol stripped, it and the suspect they had been investigating vanished without a trace in the chaos.
“Danny!”
“Jackie…” he responded to his partner’s nearly hysterical yell as she came bolting across the street over to him. Reaching him, she peeled him off the ground from where he’d practically faceplanted to evade the hail of bullets, holding him at arms length, hands fisted tightly in the material of his jacket. He held tight to her too as they looked each other over for obvious injuries. Danny took in the ripped material on her sleeve and side, be it from a bullet or the dive he didn’t know, just as Jackie took in the bullet holes in the brick mere inches above where he’d been laying.
The next second they were wrapped up tightly in each others’ arms and another half second later they were kissing.
Like he said, he had no idea who started it, just that someone, or maybe both of them, did.
It was rough for a closed mouth kiss, driven by pure emotion and a desperation to make sure they were both still breathing, exhaustion addled as they were, and further rattled from too much coffee and adrenaline. Not long after they broke apart, still holding tight to each other. Jackie’s “You hit?” was muffled into his shoulder as much as his “No, you?” was buried in hers. She shook her head and hugged him tighter as they both drew in huge gulping breaths of air.
“They set us up.”
“Yeah.”
One of them finally gathered the presence of mind to call it in, still refusing to let go of the other.
They did peel apart by the time backup arrived.
They got to go home after that, going their separate ways without another word. Riding the last molecules of adrenaline in his system, Danny barely made it in his door and onto his couch before he was out cold. He slept straight through the day’s activities and woke up sometime the next night.
His wife was already in bed reading.
“Long shift you had there?”
“You could say that.” He gave her a quick kiss. “Be right there.”
“You’re going back to sleep?”
“Yes please, I gotta do that again tomorrow.”
He was in the shower when the events of that morning hit him.
He half ran downstairs to call his partner, mortified. She picked up on the first ring, equally so. He sat on the back porch and talked to her for a solid hour. Neither of them could come up with an explanation for what had happened.
“To be perfectly honest with you,” he told Sergeant Gormley the next morning, “I don’t remember much in the way of details after about 2am.”
He was talking about the shooting, not about the fact that he’d fucking kissed his partner.
*
Neither of them mentioned it again. They also didn’t mention the fact that it became something of a habit, after a rough day, a rough case, a close call. Just a hug, a quick press of lips, foreheads pressed together, never anything more, just to make sure they’d both survived the day.
But for Danny, a man happily married for nearly twenty years, father of two sons, it was hardly just anything, was it?
Danny Reagan loves his wife, his family, more than anything. But damn it, God damn it, he loves his partner too.
El Fin