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Casey pushed open the his front door as he shoved his keys back into his pocket, wincing at the creak that seemed to echo in the silence. The clock on the wall beside the stairs ticked loudly, past midnight, and he kicked off his shoes with a sigh. The day had dragged, endless paperwork and interviews that stretched on far longer than he'd planned - Anderson had been called in to help on another case that could use her skill set, which had left Casey on his own to finish tying up all of the loose ends of their current case.
He was exhausted, his temples throbbing with the headache he hadn’t been able to shake since noon. The countless cups of coffee he had downed probably weren't helping, either.
As soon as he stepped inside, he could sense the tension in the air. Miranda sat on the edge of the couch, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her foot tapping against the hardwood floor. Her glare was sharp enough to cut through him.
"You’re late," she snapped, not even letting him get a word in. "You were supposed to be home at eleven."
Casey’s shoulders slumped.
He just wanted one night. One night where they could pretend that everything was fine, one night where they wouldn't fight. "I texted you, the interview ran over," he said. "There was nothing I could do about it. I even begged Johnson to take the last of my paperwork so I could head home earlier than it would have been if I had to finish up everything."
That was three drinks he owed Johnson now, not to even speak of everyone else at the office. His wallet wasn't going to survive all the favors he was handing out in his attempt to stay on his wife's good side.
"That’s what you always say," Miranda shot back, her voice rising. "Every damn night, it’s something. You think I don’t see what’s going on? The excuses, the long hours... I’m not stupid, Alex. I know you’re staying late because you can’t stand being home with me. Or... maybe because you’d rather be with her, that partner of yours."
...Anderson?
Casey froze, blindsided. "What-? Miranda, no, that’s not true. Anderson is my partner. That’s it. We work cases together, that’s all. I promise. And she's married, happily."
Unlike him and Miranda, Anderson's relationship with David was the picture of a perfect marriage, the perfect little family.
"Yeah?" Miranda stood from the couch, her finger pointed accusingly at Casey, "and why do you light up every time she calls, huh? Why do you keep staying late at the office, probably whispering with her in some dark corner? Don’t lie to me, Alex!" Her voice grew more shrill with each word, her accusations twisting the air between them like a blade.
Casey could feel his patience slipping, the exhaustion from the day catching up with him. He tried to keep his voice steady, but anger seeped through. "Miranda, listen to yourself! This isn’t about Anderson. It’s about my job. I know the hours are hard, and I'm sorry, but I’m doing this for you! I'm working all these late hours, all this overtime, so we can keep a roof over our heads! My paycheck-"
"Your paycheck?" she interrupted, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "You think I care about your stupid paycheck, Alex? You think that makes up for all of the nights I spend alone, wondering if you’re lying in a ditch somewhere, or worse? If you're cheating on me with some bitch?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off again, her words spilling out like venom. "You piece of shit, Alex, you don’t know what it’s like. You don't know how it feels, waiting at home every night expecting to get a call that you’re fucking dead. And when you do come home, you can barely say anything to me before you go to bed and we repeat it all over again. I fucking hate this, Alex!" She took a breath, her voice lowering to a deadly whisper. "I hate you."
Casey flinched at the words, a sharp pang striking him in the chest. He knew their marriage had been unraveling for a long time, but hearing it out loud felt like a blow. He took a shaky breath, trying to keep the peace. "Miranda, can we just... not tonight? Please. I’m exhausted, and I don’t want to fight. Look, I don't work Sunday, we can both sit down and have a very long talk about... everything."
And maybe that talk would end with the declaration he had been expecting for months.
"You're tired? Well too bad," she hissed, taking a step closer, her hands clenched into fists. "I'm not finished."
She loomed closer, and Casey could see the tremble in her hands, the way her breathing came too fast. The tension of the argument hung between them, a smoldering ember.
"Miranda, I'm going to bed. We can talk later-" he reached out as if to steady her, to ease the rising tension, but she jerked away, and suddenly - snap - something inside her seemed to break.
Before he could react, her fist swung out, connecting squarely with his cheekbone. The impact snapped his head to the side, pain bursting like fireworks behind his eyes. He stumbled back, catching himself on the arm of the armchair behind him, tasting the sharp tang of blood as he bit his tongue.
For a moment, as he raised his hand to press against where she had hit him, all he could do was stare at her, his lips parted in shock and his eyes wide and disbelieving. Miranda looked just as stunned, her eyes widening as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just done.
The room itself seemed to hold its breath, the air thick with shock.
Then, without another word, Miranda turned sharply on her heel and stormed off and up the hallway. Her footsteps echoed against the hardwood, fading into the bedroom above Casey's head. A door slammed, rattling the walls, leaving him alone in the quiet aftermath.
Casey stood frozen, his breathing coming in short, ragged bursts. His face throbbed where her fist had struck, a burning heat blooming beneath his skin. Their arguments were always ugly, but this... this was new.
Their fights had never turned physical before.
His thoughts spun, a messy tangle of hurt, anger, and a dull, aching sorrow. He’d known their marriage was cracking at the seams, but he hadn’t expected this. For her to actually raise her hand against him...
He moved to the kitchen, grabbing a bag of frozen blueberries from the freezer. The cold stung against the swelling skin, but he welcomed the sensation, trying to numb the pain that spread deeper than the bruise. He caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror, the beginnings of a bruise darkening beneath his eye.
It looked as bad as it felt.
He sank down onto the couch, pressing the ice to his cheek, the room around him dimly lit by the lamp in the corner. He tried not to think about what he’d say to Anderson in the morning, how he’d explain the bruise and the split in his lip. Knowing her, she's have a million questions spilling from her lips the second she saw him.
He didn’t have the energy to come up with a story right now.
Instead, he focused on the chill of the frozen peas, on the ache settling deep in his bones, and tried to ignore the growing knot in his chest.
Tried to ignore what his marriage had become.
The couch was lumpy and uncomfortable, but he didn’t dare sleep in their bed tonight. He stayed there, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the clock tick away the minutes, knowing that when morning came, he’d have to put on a smile and pretend that everything was fine.
It wasn't.
Casey slipped into the office early, hoping to avoid too many questions about the dark bruise blooming beneath his left eye. He adjusted his collar in the reflection of his car window before he headed inside, trying to will away the ache in his cheekbone. It hadn’t worked, of course - he could feel the heat radiating from the swollen skin with every step, a painful reminder of just how shitty his life had become.
The ache was deeper than just the bruise, it settled somewhere in his chest, a dull, gnawing pit of worry and despair that he desperately tried to ignore.
He tried to focus on the routine - scan his badge at the entrance, scan it again because the machine always acted up, trudge up the stairs, pour and down a cup of bitter coffee that was nothing compared to the coffee Anderson always brought from the coffee shop that she refused to tell him the name of - but everything felt off-kilter, like a record playing just slightly too slow. He kept his head down as he walked past the bullpen on his way to the office, willing himself to be invisible to the figure that was clearly Anderson, his partner busy catching up on the morning talk with their other colleagues that were gathered around someone's desk. He slightly turned his head away, trying his best to blend into the drab gray walls. But he should have known better.
"Hey, Casey!" Anderson’s voice called from behind him, her tone casual as she walked up behind him. Luckily Casey had turned a corner and escaped the view of everyone else in the bullpen, but he knew there was no escaping Anderson's attention now. "Hold up. You and those long legs of yours, are you trying to make me run after you?"
He winced before turning around, adjusting his expression into something that felt halfway normal. He forced a smile, but he knew it probably looked as stiff as it felt. Even the slight movement of his features sent a flare of pain racing across his cheek. "Morning, Anderson."
She didn’t smile back.
Anderson's gaze sharpened as she took in the bruising around his eye, the way his lip was split and still a little swollen. Her curious expression quickly turned serious, concern clouding her features as she took a step closer. "What the hell happened to your face?"
Casey tried to play it off, giving a nonchalant shrug. "Tripped and got into it with the coffee machine, if you can believe it. Who would've thought, my heart's one true love did this to me."
The joke was a little too close to the truth.
Anderson’s eyebrows shot up, clearly unimpressed with his attempt at humor. She crossed her arms, tilting her head slightly, the way she always did when she didn’t believe a word he was saying. She had always been so unnervingly good at sniffing out lies - although, to be fair, Casey's lie had been rather shit. "Right... Because coffee machines have fists, I forgot about that feature." Anderson stepped closer, her eyebrows curving upwards in worry, "Seriously, Casey, what happened?"
He looked away, the smile slipping from his face. He could feel her eyes on him, drilling into the side of his head, but he didn’t trust himself to meet her gaze. Not yet. "It’s... it's nothing," he muttered, trying to brush past her, trying to escape to the sanctuary that was their office. "Just... a rough night, that’s all."
Anderson’s hand shot out, grabbing his arm gently, but firmly enough to stop him. Her voice softened, a note of worry creeping in. "Casey, c’mon. I’m your partner. You don’t have to do this alone, whatever this," she motioned to his face with her free hand, "is. If something happened - if someone did this to you - you need to tell me. Please."
"I promise, Anderson. Nobody did anything to me," the lie tasted like ash upon his tongue. "I promise."
He hated lying to his partner.
Anderson didn’t look convinced. She studied him for another long moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line. "Casey. You and I both know, I’ve seen enough domestic cases throughout my time here to know when someone’s hiding something," she said quietly. "You don’t have to pretend with me. It won't work."
Her words hit harder than he expected, and he felt a tightness in his chest. Domestic abuse. That wasn't what this was. It was just one hit, a spur-of-the-moment accident that Miranda hadnt meant.
It wasn't... that.
He’d spent the entire drive into work telling himself he wouldn’t say anything, that he would just make up a lie and stick to it like his life depended on it. It would just make things worse to tell her, wouldn’t it? But now, standing in front of her, the lies felt like they were slipping through his fingers. He swallowed hard, clenching his jaw, before finally looking up and meeting her eyes. There was no judgment there - just concern, patient and unwavering, the same way she’d looked at him a hundred times before when they’d faced down a tough case together.
He had to tell her.
"It was Miranda," he said, the words coming out in a hoarse whisper, as if saying them too loudly would make them more real. He glanced around the hallway, making sure no one was close enough to hear, before adding, "She... She hit me last night. It just... happened. I don’t think she meant to. Not really."
Anderson’s eyes widened, and she let go of his arm, stepping back like she needed space to process what he’d just said. She, too, looked around, and then grabbed his arm and pulled him into the office they shared, shutting the door behind them. "Casey, that’s not-" She hesitated, her brow furrowing, then softened her tone. "That’s not something you should brush off. If she hurt you - if this isn’t the first time-"
"It is the first time," Casey interrupted, a little too quickly, like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. But it was the truth. "We’ve argued before, yeah, but it’s never gotten physical. Last night, she just... she lost control. I must’ve pushed her too far. It was probably my fault, something I said. It’s not... She’s not usually like that."
That one was a lie.
He heard how weak his own excuses sounded, but the words spilled out anyway, like he could somehow make sense of it if he just kept talking. Anderson’s expression softened, but she didn’t back down. "Casey, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t make her do anything."
Casey scrubbed a hand over his face, wincing when his fingers brushed over the bruise. "I don’t know, Anderson. Things have been rough for a while now. I mean, she thinks - she thinks I’m having an affair with you." He let out a hollow laugh, throwing his hand up in the air. "Can you believe that? And she won't listen to me whenever I try to reason with her. And she’s scared every time I go to work that I won’t come home, that every time I'm staying late I'm probably dead in a ditch somewhere. That I’ll end up like... you know."
Anderson’s expression softened at that. She knew exactly what he meant, the unspoken weight of all the agents they’d lost over the years, all the spouses that had received that horrible knock at the door. "That doesn’t excuse it, Casey. I get that she’s scared, but it doesn’t give her the right to hurt you. Nothing does."
He nodded slowly, his shoulders sagging under the weight of everything he’d been carrying. "I know. But... I don’t know what to do, Anderson. She’s still my wife, and I keep thinking maybe... maybe I can fix it. That this was just a one-time thing."
Their marriage had been falling apart since long before last night. Casey had been telling himself it was a one-time thing since long before last night.
Anderson looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, before she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "I can tell you're not going to listen to me if I tell you to leave, at least not right now. You don’t have to figure it all out right now. But you do need to take care of yourself, Casey. And if you need help, or if you need a place to stay... you’ve got options, okay? You’re not alone. If you ever need anything, and I mean anything, David and I are just a call away. We have a guest bedroom."
The tightness in Casey’s chest loosened a little, and he managed a small, grateful nod. "Thanks, Anderson. I... I appreciate that."
He could feel her eyes lingering on him as he turned away, heading toward his desk. The conversation had left him feeling raw and exposed, a feeling he hated, but... at least he knew he had something, if it ever happened again.
He tried to focus on the case files spread out in front of him, but all he could think about was the raw anger that had been in Miranda’s voice the last night, the way her hand had struck out so fast, like she hadn’t even thought about it - like it was just second nature.
He told himself, again and again, that it was just a one-time thing. That she was scared, and he couldn’t blame her for that. But the ache in his cheek, and the ache in his chest, refused to let him believe it.