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A/N: Inspired by the coffee spill scene and Voight and Miller's smoldering chemistry. They probably won't go there even though Voight is long overdue for a love interest. They should, though.
All errors are mine.
~o~
She felt the first tinges of a tension headache brewing. Her body was taught—tense and on edge, adrenaline and fire pumping through her veins.
She didn’t hear him, but she sensed his presence before he so much as made it to her periphery.
If he reacted to her sitting on the couch in his dark office at this late hour, her leg still bobbing, fingers running through her hair, she didn’t see.
He was staring at her by the time she looked up. He leaned against the edge of his desk, hands deep in his pockets and jaw clenched.
“You let Doblowsky go,” it was less of a question and more of a statement of disbelief.
Anger rolled off of her in waves, but then, that was nothing new in the face of such an infuriating man. Voight was obstinate, and it seemed they could never be in a room together without going a row.
He glared at her, doing that thing where he bit the inside of his cheek – biting back words and replacing them with new ones. “I had to.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped through gritted teeth. She was on her feet in an instant, so wired up that she paced in front of him. Her eyes shooting daggers.
“Miller…” his voice trailed off as he pushed himself off the desk in a blink of an eye. He was in front of her just as quick, his eyes scanning over her following her neckline to … another ruined shirt.
“It’s not my blood,” she supplied, her voice clipped.
She didn’t miss the look in his eye as he shifted from alarmed to relieved. She also couldn’t resist calling him on it.
“Careful, Hank. For a moment, I almost thought you gave a shit.” Her smirk was humorless, still keyed up about the case and their victim.
She took this one too hard, and she knew it. The vic was a young teen, sexually assaulted and left to die a brutal death.
Their latest witness coded in front of her eyes, blood everywhere when she followed up on the case earlier that evening.
She hadn’t shared that tidbit, that she was following up on him and his team, but by now, she suspected be pieced it together.
Voight’s answering grunt suggested he was not amused, but he disappeared around his desk and produced a t-shirt. He tossed it at her and stared pointedly at the door, silently dismissing her.
She headed to the door, but only to slam it shut, mainly to piss him off, assert some authority.
The bullpen was empty, and anyone who ever came within sniffing distance of the two of them in a room together usually left anyway.
“You should’ve held him longer!”
Voight narrowed his eyes at her, rubbed his nose and sniffed. She could see she was trying his patience, but she didn’t care.
“We had nothing to hold him on,” he glared at her defiant, once again not taking kindly to her questioning his judgment and ability to do his job. “We had to cut him loose. My hands, as you know, were tied.”
The “you tied them” went unsaid. The truth was Voight got under her skin for good reason. Rules exist for a reason, and optics were everything in their field, particularly these days.
She was sickened by cowboys who did whatever they pleased and ran roughshod because you couldn’t rein them in.
Those methods remained a stain on the uniform, and if recent events hadn’t shed light on that, then nothing ever would.
But she also understood Voight’s impulses. Bending the rules for the right reasons shouldn’t be a bad thing.
The problem is it’s a slippery slope. You can’t control who gets the luxury of that and who doesn’t. You can’t control what’s motivating a person’s actions.
“Your people need to try harder. This case is an optics nightmare, and we need a goddamn collar!”
“You’re unbelievable!” He came around the desk shaking his head and dead set on showing her the door himself.
She could smell the soap off his skin as he closed in on her, see the worn leather from his jacket he had yet to shirk off.
“We’re doing everything we can, Samantha,” he annunciated her name like a hiss. “My job is to solve this case. I don’t give a damn about your optics.”
He practically trembled in front of her with anger and impatience. His gravelly voice coming out in a growl.
“If that were true, you would’ve found a way to hold Doblowsky by any means necessary. Work him over. Get him to confess. Close the case--" she said hotly, her head spinning.
She jutted her chin out, raised an arched brow at Voight. She snapped her mouth shut, jaw tense as she bit back words she knew damn well she shouldn’t mean.
“By any means necessary?” He filled in the blanks for her. He exhaled a bitter, caustic laugh.
“You come into my precinct on your high horse, and ride my ass about how we do things, and now you’re, what, asking for this?”
His eyes bored into hers, studying her, searching, reading, and she had no way of knowing what it was he saw. What he found.
“You’re a real piece of work, lady.”
He stepped closer into her space, his lips near her ear, breath ghosting across her the side of her face and neck. “One of these days you have to pick a side and stick to it.”
He pulled back, virtually unfazed by her flushed skin and the goosebumps he invoked in her.
“You can’t have it both wa…” his voice trailed off as she untucked her blood stained shirt exposing smooth brown skin and toned abs.
The dried parts stuck to her skin as she yanked the shirt over her head and cast it aside in a ball.
“Don’t you think I know that,” she snapped back at him, her chest heaving with the exertion.
She raked a hand through her hair, cursing herself.
She didn’t miss the way his eyes roamed down her torso, rested on the black stretch laced bralette both utilitarian and sexy.
Her scent wafted between them, a faint plume of the perfume she spritzed that morning.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard his breath catch, sensed nerves or maybe discomfort. She could never tell which. He cleared his throat and took a few steps back.
The t-shirt hang loose on her, the worn fabric oddly comforting against her skin. It smelled like spiced soap and …him.
She pressed her back against the door, her head tilted back as she sighed. She watched him rummage through his desk drawers.
Voight pulled two glasses out of the bottom drawer with one hand, strong fingers gripping the rims and a bottle of some unknown hard liquor with the other.
From the color, she guessed it was bourbon. She watched him pour, his back to her, taking his time as if giving her space to get decent or pull herself together.
Or hell, maybe he was attempting to do the same. The air was charged between them. It always seemed to be that way, and she had yet figured out how to dispel all that tension.
He approached her silently, handed her a glass without uttering a word. She hesitated for only a second before her fingers were brushing against his, the glass cool beneath her palm.
His eyes lingered on his shirt she was wearing, a faraway look in his eye.
She wanted to know where his mind went in that moment, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her if they were friends let alone whatever they were now.
And she couldn’t even say what they were now. She wondered if he had the same conflict she did … if he felt whatever it was she felt whenever she shared a space with him.
Maybe he did.
The only time she ever saw Hank Voight get flustered was when it seemed, and maybe she imagined it, he came close to actually seeing her as not just this pain in his side but the beautiful woman she was.
She knew what attraction looked like, and even though Voight was a tough read, something in her told her she wasn’t off about that.
She nursed her bourbon, then shot it back with a grimace and relished the burn. She held back a cough, and Voight watched her with an unreadable expression as he sipped on his own.
She fought off a squirm beneath his scrutiny. She looked like hell. She felt like it. Smudged eyeliner, tussled hair, and no sleep.
She couldn’t shake this case or the weight on her shoulders under the watchful eyes of the city. Some days it felt like it was too much. It was overwhelming and heavy, and she missed her roots.
But she didn’t claw her way through an infrastructure designed to screw her twice over, rising above her white male counterparts who got far more, far quicker for sheer mediocrity, to buckle under the weight.
She couldn’t afford it.
Suddenly the door felt as if it couldn’t hold her full weight and that of her burdens.
She was weary to the bone. Her eyes stung and prickled from exhaustion and tears of aggravation that would never make it past her eyelids.
She’d make damn sure of that.
Voight took another sip, regarding her over the glass. She exhaled slow, unsure if she needed to prepare herself for another round or if he would call a truce for the night.
His voice was low, quiet even, and he surprised her with, “Don’t you ever get tired?”
He waved the tumbler around before taking another sip. “The song and dance, shuck and jive show you have to put on. Tell me you get sick of it.”
There was an opportunity to point out how racially insensitive his phrasing was – a shot at irritating him with the implication, rubbing it in how much of a dinosaur he is.
Reminding him of how his old-school verbiage and tactics don’t hold nor fare well under the microscope of today’s micro and macro aggressions.
It was a chance to show him just what she had to consider and juggle every second of every day.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The question was shockingly sincere given who asked it, and they were trapped in a moment.
She wasn’t dumb; she knew it – knew that she had already been more vulnerable than she intended. Why stop now?
Her hand skimmed along the creases of his jacket. She felt him tense beneath her, but he didn’t move.
She tugged gently until he fell forward, pressing a palm against the door above her shoulder to keep himself from falling into her.
His body caged her in, and she liked it. How powerful his presence was looming over her.
She tossed her tumbler on the couch and grabbed his, drained the rest of his bourbon with ease, and he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of her.
He still studied her intensely, looked through her. He was unperturbed that she finished his drink and no longer paid notice of her fist clenching his collar, the way their breaths intermingled in the space between them.
Did she ever get tired? She snorted. He had no idea.
“All the fucking time,” she rasped. She half shrugged, her lips turned up just slightly in a barely there smile.
The admission cost her something. She felt it, and she didn’t know what to do with that. Her thing with Voight tended to be about having the upper hand, power and wielding it.
She felt like she relinquished some to Voight that night, and she didn’t know what he would do with it. She didn’t know how it would cost her.
She closed her eyes, banged her head against the door and exhaled.
Voight's knuckle was feather light as he brushed it against her cheek. Just enough to make her eyes pop open. She stared into his eyes, inquisitive, but his face betrayed nothing at all.
He merely grunted under his breath in the way he did when he processed information.
She knew what he was thinking. He wondered why she still did it – this job. But it was a question he would never bring himself to ask.
She answered the unasked.
“I don’t know. Most days I don’t really know.”
Her hand slipped beneath his jacket, found a strange comfort in how warm and solid he felt beneath her fingertips. He was stable and strong.
His heart beat a steady rhythm beneath her palm, and she chased that feeling, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, buried her face in the crook of his neck.
Voight didn’t flinch. She exhaled, then breathed in his scent that had become so familiar.
His breathing was even, soothing, but hers stalled when she felt his chin rest against her head.
It surprised her. He didn’t make any other movement, only stood there, one arm still firmly planted against the door, the other resting by his side.
He was a man of few words, even then. The silence beat their usual heated exchanges, and she didn’t know when the bubble would burst.
She didn’t really want it to yet.
Her breath was shaky to her own ears as she shifted. Her lips light as she peppered kisses along Voight’s jawline, the scratch of new growth prickling.
She heard him swallow hard, saw his Adam’s bob through hooded eyes that attempted to meet his to gage his expression.
As usual, Voight was difficult to read. His eyes were softer than she’d ever seen them but still revealed nothing as she closed in, pressing her lips to his tentative at first and then firmer.
He watched her but didn’t pull away. She eventually did though, stared into his eyes, her breath hitching when his darted to her lips nearly imperceptibly.
She went in again, leaned into him, her lips pressed against his, coaxing them open as … he kissed her back. She hummed, her hands slipping to the back of his neck, pulling him in closer.
She started things, but he set the pace, so subtly she almost thought she had all the control. She wanted to laugh at that but a small moan came out instead.
His fingers barely ghosted across her back. She could feel the heat from his palm so close to the small of her back but not finding purchase.
She could still taste the bourbon on his lips, chased it with fervor, and he let her. Her pulse raced; her mind was muddled as the only thing she felt and saw was Hank. He consumed her.
He pulled away slowly, his breath ragged, but he was still so close their noses were practically touching.
His eyes were dark and stormy as he looked at her. His tongue darted out between his lips, savoring her. At least, she assumed or hoped. She wasn’t sure what she felt anymore.
He leaned in, his nose barely gliding along her cheek as he whispered in her ear. “You should go home. Get some rest.”
His raspy voice was deeper, molten to her ears, and he pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against hers.
She nodded in agreement, not trusting her voice just yet. Afraid of the desire he’d hear in it, the disappointment.
Confusion? Regret? Rejection?
Her palms fell to his chest again. She felt his heart pounding beneath her fingertips as she directed all of her focus to smoothing his shirt and jacket and working up the nerve to meet his eyes again.
She was still trapped though. One of his arms still caging her in, pressed against the door above her head. The other on the doorknob.
She waited, only working up enough nerve to stare at his chin.
His arm dropped from its place beside her, but he leaned in. He inhaled slow and deep before pressing a light, lingering kiss to her hairline. “Get some rest,” he murmured again against her hair before moving away.
The loss of his body and the solid warmth it provided was a shock to the system.
She peeled herself off the back of the door, and he pretended he didn’t notice how difficult it was for her.
He opened the door, and she cleared her throat. She attempted to gather her bearings as she slipped out.
She risked a glance over her shoulder once she crossed the threshold. Her voice was quiet and soft, even to her own ears.
“Hank,” she finally met his eyes, and he stood there, patient, giving her his undivided attention. “Get that son of a bitch, yeah?”
He nodded, his jaw set and that determined look in his eye. And she knew that he would.
“We will.”
It was a promise, and she believed him with every fiber of her being. She nodded, a small, sad smile tugging at her lips as she walked away.
She could feel his heated gaze following her every move as she walked through the bullpen.
She liked it when they called a truce.
~o~