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You don’t even notice it’s his order until you’re halfway through making it, the coffee pouring into the cup and mixing nicely with the syrup. You should have recognized the order, you make it every day, but some days (like today) you’re distracted.
“Sam,” you say loudly as you’re putting the lid on the coffee cup, looking around for him. He’s not hard to spot, standing well over six feet in his gray suit today. You like the way this one fits him, it hugs his shoulders nicely and falls just above his ass so that you get a good view as he heads out of the shop.
“Hey, Y/N,” he greets you as he takes the cup from you, reaching for a cardboard slip to put around it.
“Mornin’, Sam,” you say back, smiling. “Anything exciting on the agenda today?”
Sam gives his little half-shrug, the one he gives you most every morning. “Same old, same old,” he says, same as always.
You know better than to ask anything else; Sam’s a detective for the local police department and can’t ever talk about his cases, but you know he appreciates your interest. After serving him coffee every morning for going on three years, the two of you have found a sort of friendship based on these simple questions.
“You working a double today?” he asks, the question you knew was coming.
You shake your head. “Come on, Sam, you know better. Thursdays are singles, ‘cause I always work the double on Fridays. Sometimes I think you forget things too easily.” You wink at him and he laughs, turning toward the door.
“See you tomorrow, Y/N,” he says, waving.
“I’ll be here,” you reply. The bell on the door jingles as Sam leaves and you only give yourself a moment to watch him go. Then it’s back to work, mixing cappuccinos and lattes and handing out pastries to the customers.
Sam walks into the precinct, a smile still on his face from seeing you. You always start his morning off right, with a smile and a coffee. He can barely remember a time before his daily coffee shop stop, seeing you every morning there. He likes the routine, almost as much as he likes you.
Too bad he’s too shy to ask you out.
His smile fades, though, as he enters the bullpen. His desk is in a corner, facing his partner’s, and the entire wall surrounding them is covered in pictures and handwritten notes pinned all over, maps with red x’s, and the faces of seven victims.
He and Balthazar had been working the case for three weeks now, after the third victim had been murdered and the pattern recognized. The victims were all single, service workers, who were kidnapped and tortured for three days before being suffocated, the bodies dumped in various parks around the city.
The case was really getting to them, but Sam’s determination to catch the killer hasn’t waned. The last victim was found two days ago, so the killer would be finding their next victim now.
Sam just needs to find that missing piece to figure out who it is.
Balthazar comes up next to him and sighs. “Any minute now, hell even right now, he’s getting another one. What are we missing?” Bal asks, draining his own coffee cup.
Sam grunts, grabbing the newest paperwork on his desk and diving in, updating their murder board and trying to make more connections.
You punch your code into the timeclock and wait until it reads Clocked Out before leaving the back room. Charlie has already gotten control of the counter – the afternoons are much less crowded and easy for one person to handle.
“See you tomorrow, Char!” you say cheerfully as you head out the door. The sky is dark, almost like it’s going to rain, so you decide to head straight home. No dawdling around the park today, not if it’s bad weather.
Your walk home is a short one, but the whole way home you feel uneasy. You decide it’s because of the weather – it really does affect your mood when the sun’s not out.
Your head up the steps of your apartment building, getting your keys so that you can go right inside. You’re eager for a nap, or at least a vege-fest, your couch calling your name.
You open your apartment door, pulling your bag from your shoulder, when you’re pushed from behind. Your bag goes flying as you trip and fall forward, another, more forceful, blow falling to the back of your head.
You hit the ground, dazed for a few seconds before the world goes black around you.
Sam walks into the coffee shop, heading straight for the counter to give his order. He doesn’t see you at the machines, but knows that sometimes you’re in the back.
He smiles as he gives Charlie his order, but she’s obviously stressed and doesn’t smile back. Sam brushes it off, though, and goes to wait for you to call for him to get his coffee.
To his surprise, Charlie goes straight from the register to the machine to mix his drink. He steps up toward her.
“No Y/N today?” he asks, the disappointment leaking out with his words even though he didn’t mean for it to. Charlie glances up at him and sighs.
“No, she didn’t show up. And she hasn’t answered any of my calls. I’m not supposed to do the morning rush by myself, especially on Fridays, there’s always supposed to be two of us, and Y/N is never sick or anything, and she said yesterday she’d be here.” All of Charlie’s words tumble from her mouth a hundred miles a minute, probably because she’s had a few cups of coffee herself to keep up with the morning rush of customers.
Sam frowns. Yesterday you had told him you would be working a double today, and you didn’t seem ill. And now you weren’t answering your phone?
Charlie holds his coffee out for him and he thanks her, wishing her luck before leaving the shop. The entire walk to the precinct has Sam’s mind swirling around you, wishing that he had the time to check up on you, but he doesn’t even know where you live. And that would probably be a bit creepy, looking up your address just to show up at your door when you miss one day of work.
He’s still in a fantasy of making you chicken noodle soup and cuddling you on a couch when he walks into the bullpen. It’s not until Sam stands in front of the murder board that his heart and brain freeze.
You’ve missed work unexpectedly, you’re not answering your phone.
You fit the profile.
“BAL!” Sam yells, slamming his coffee onto his desk as he rushes to his keyboard. Balthazar is at his shoulder in seconds, enough time for Sam to type your first and last name into the database.
Your head is pounding when you wake up, and it’s dark. You’re not laying on the carpet of your living room like you were at your last memory, making your heartbeat immediately quicken.
The floor is cold and hard under your skin and you struggle to sit up, especially when you realize that your wrists are tied together.
Panic seeps through your bones.
You carefully raise your hands to your head, feeling wetness where it throbs the most. You have a goose-egg, that’s for sure, but you’re also pretty sure you are bleeding, too.
The room is too dark to see anything, so you slowly get yourself upright and start to walk around blindly. You don’t bump into anything, and soon enough you’ve figured out that you’re in what is basically a closet, a room about eight feet by eight feet with nothing but a door – with no knob.
You’re stuck in the dark and you have no idea what to do.
“So who is this girl?” Bal asks as he closes his car door. He has to practically run after Sam, who’s already at your apartment building door.
“Y/N, she works at the coffee shop I stop at every day,” Sam says quickly. He rushes down the hall, pausing at each door to check the number before he gets to yours. “She wasn’t there this morning – she never misses a shift. And Charlie said she’s not answering her phone.”
Sam bangs his fist on your door, all fantasies of him making a sick-you chicken noodle soup wiped from his mind. If you answer the door, he will melt into a puddle of relief, but as soon as he’s done knocking he knows that won’t happen.
The door opens by itself under the force of his fist. “Y/N?” he calls, loud enough that you would be able to hear him from anywhere in your apartment. The door swings the rest of the way open, showing your bag on the floor, contents strewn every which-way.
There’s a smear of blood on the edge of the carpet, your phone laying broken next to it.
“He’s got her,” Sam says, blood boiling.
There are CSI members crawling across your apartment, taking pictures and samples from all over. Sam is grateful that their case is a top-priority one, that he could get the techs here so quickly. Every moment you’re gone is a moment that you could be hurt, or worse.
He can’t think about that.
Balthazar shows up at Sam’s elbow. “We may have something.”
Sam turns, going for your kitchen where they’ve set up a ‘home base’. A couple of the techs are standing there, hovering over a sample.
“This was found on the floor just inside the door,” one says. “Probably from someone’s shoes. We checked all of Y/L/N’s shoes in the closet, there’s nothing similar on hers. Best guess is that it’s from our guy.”
Sam looks at the sample, only seeing a bit of dirt. “What does that mean?” he asks, hoping his voice doesn’t sound too desperate.
“On first glance, without our advanced machines, it’s not just normal dirt,” the other tech explains. “It’s a mix of garden soil and ash, which is a strange combination. Until we get it back we won’t know for sure, but there are a few warehouses on the west side of town that used to be Home Depot storerooms before they burned down. I can’t promise you for sure, but-“
Sam doesn’t hear the rest of it because he’s already on his way back to the car.
“Sam, wait!” Bal calls, running to catch up with him. Sam hauls himself into the driver’s seat and Balthazar barely makes it into the car before the tires are squealing on the pavement.
Balthazar doesn’t ask Sam questions, merely grabs for the walkie on the console. “Dispatch, this is Detective Roach. We need back up at the old Home Depot warehouses on 8th, stat.”
Sam’s speeding, so Balthazar turns their lights on. They blaze through town, getting there in a quarter of the time that it would normally take. Balthazar turns the lights back off when they’re getting close and Sam slows down, neither of them wanting to give themselves away if this is the place.
Sam parks a little bit away from the buildings and the two of them get out, checking their guns. “She’s in there, I know it,” Sam says. He doesn’t know it, but he’s hoping hard enough that it’s true. Balthazar just nods, motioning for Sam to take the lead.
You have no idea how much time has passed since you woke up, but all of a sudden the door opens. The light that pours in is too much for your eyes and you have to cover your face with your bound hands.
Unfortunately, whoever opened the door grabs your hands and drags you out of your closet, making you stumble. Your head throbs at the jerky movement and you can’t stop a sob from escaping.
“Please,” you say, thinking that maybe you can connect with them. “What’s going on?”
You don’t get a response, just continue to get dragged down a hallway. You trip a couple times, especially since your eyes still aren’t adjusted and the person is dragging you much quicker than your legs want to move, but have to quickly get your feet back underneath you. Whoever’s dragging you doesn’t seem to care if you get banged up.
Your eyes start to adjust to the light and you notice that the hallway around you is awfully dirty. The paint is peeling and the floor is caked in layers of dirt and ash. The guy dragging you – you can see now that it’s a guy – has a work jumper on, coveralls that look like a mechanic’s uniform or something. He’s got a hat on and doesn’t ever turn back to look at you, so you can’t tell any of his distinguishing features.
“Please,” you say again, wanting him to look back at you just to see his face. You’re desperate for anything, but you get no response.
He drags you into a larger room and throws you toward a corner. You fall on your knees, scraping them through your jeans and making you cry out a little bit.
“Cry all you want, girlie, no one will hear you here,” a rough voice says. It sounds like gravel on sandpaper and makes you shiver.
The guy still doesn’t turn toward you, obviously not worried that you’ll get away. He’s too busy looking at a table of tools, ones that are big and scary and sharp. You really don’t want to think about what those tools are for.
When he doesn’t turn back toward you, you look around the room. The door you came through is the only one. There are a few high windows, none of which you could reach without a ladder. The room is filled with tools, from big machines to a wall of toolboxes. Wherever you are, this room is probably the maintenance room.
You scour the tables closest to you, looking for something you could use to overwhelm the man and give you enough time to run. The tables are metal, as are most of the tools, so anything you pick up will make noise.
You glance at him once more before getting quietly to your feet, stumbling to the closest table. Your eyes find a rubber mallet, one that won’t make too much noise when you pick it up, but when you reach for it you’re pulled back and a hand slaps your face, hard.
How had he sneaked up on you like that? You fall to the floor hard, screaming out your pain. Your cheek is already swelling, you can feel the heat below the surface as you cup it gently.
“Stupid girl,” he spits at you. You hold your cheek as you look up at him. His face is disformed, burn marks pulling the skin in all the wrong directions. The hatred in his eye keeps you down and you start to cry.
He turns back to his table, obviously satisfied that you won’t try anything again. You can’t help but think he’s right, with the way your head is throbbing and your face is burning, you don’t think you could keep your balance by yourself anymore.
You close your eyes, hoping for anything good to come from this horrible situation.
The scream is what drives Sam to run. They already searched one building with no luck, but right as they entered the second building they hear your yell of pain.
Balthazar follows quickly after Sam, the two of them reading each other’s minds after years of working together. Another sound of pain helps them narrow down where they’re going, and then they’re on either side of the opening to a long hallway.
Sam peers around the corner, seeing an open door at the end of the hall. He watches for a minute before a man in coveralls crosses the room. The man speaks, too lowly for Sam to understand, before he hears your whimpers.
Sam motions to Balthazar, letting him know of the one man on the right side of the door, indicating that it’s unknown if there’s more than one perp in the room. Bal nods and then counts down, the two of them launching into action in sync.
Their footsteps are quiet as they half-run down the hallway, guns outstretched before them. They make it to the door of the room without being seen, pausing there. Balthazar has the better vantage point, being on the left side of the door, and he does his best to scout the room. He silently tells Sam that it’s only the one man, but he’s standing over you so there’s no clear shot.
Balthazar will draw the guy’s attention away from you so they can take him down.
Sam counts down this time, and then everything happens in fast-motion. They enter the room, Bal yelling and drawing the man away from you. Sam shouts as well, his gun pointed at the guy until Bal has shot him in the kneecap and tackled him, pinning him to the ground.
Then Sam sees you, stashing his gun before running to you and picking you up in his arms. You’re crying, your face red on one side and your hair in the back caked with blood. Sam can’t help the wrench of his heart as he turns from the room, carrying you away from the man.
There are police officers in the hallway now and Sam yells for them to go help Balthazar and secure the scene. He doesn’t stop, though, carrying you all the way outside before sitting on some steps with you in his lap.
It’s only then that Sam realizes how tightly you’re holding the neck of his shirt, how you’re quietly sobbing into his shoulder. He pulls you closer, kissing your head.
“Shh, Y/N,” he coos, calming himself as much as you. “You’re safe now, I’m here.” Sam gets his pocket knife out quickly to cut the binds around your wrists. When they’re free your hands wrap around his neck properly, pulling the two of you even closer together.
As wrong as it is, Sam can’t help but feel that holding you this close feels nothing but right.
“It’s going to be okay, Y/N,” Sam mumbles against your cheek, unable to stop himself from kissing the skin there. “I’m never going to let you go again.”
Your head pulls away from him then, long enough for your eyes to meet. Sam smiles softly at you before you lean forward to kiss him, something that both of you have wanted to do for a very long time.
Something good did come from this horrible situation after all.