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The first thing Chris tells Street when they get together is that it has to be a perfect science.
Sure, Hondo and Hicks know, saving them any professional repercussions or embarrassment, but she makes it crystal clear in Hicks’s office that they’re the only four who need to know, and that’s how it’s going to stay. They go about their workdays like they always have, lives on the line and gunfire and bombs, and pretend like nothing’s changed. Honestly, keeping things normal at work is the easy part. It’s figuring out how to grow their relationship outside of it that’s harder. Los Angeles is big, but not that big. Eyes wander. Everybody talks.
They decide Long Beach is best if they’re going out for date night. He shows her all his old haunts, and they sit on the sand and watch the waves break over the shore. After looking both ways, she slips her hand into his and rests her head on his shoulder.
Nights in are spent at Chris’s, cooking and watching movies and talking until their eyes refuse to stay open any longer. He keeps an arsenal of white lies in his back pocket to feed Luca when he gets home, on the nights he goes home.
More often than not, though, he finds himself waiting for the perfect opportunity to leave his house and head to her place. Sometimes all it takes is saying he has a date to garner a wry grin from Luca and silence his questions, but other times he has to wait for nine o’clock to drip all the way to eleven until Luca goes to bed. Duke goes with, and Street gives it a fifteen minute grace period before he snags his keys and helmet, closing the door with a quiet click.
He walks his bike halfway down the block before turning it over and getting on—a lesson learned the hard way—and then loses himself to the Los Angeles night and the anticipation of seeing her. Feeling her lips on his.
It’s midnight, one night, when he finally finds himself slipping the key she gave him out of his pocket and into the lock. After the day they had, all he wanted was to go home with her, but the armory needed inventorying and Luca needed a listening ear. Street drops his backpack and toes off his boots next to the door, then hangs his jacket over one of the dining room chairs. He tries to roll the knots out of his shoulders as he walks to her bedroom and carefully pushes the door open in case she’s already asleep. The creak of her dresser makes him wince, but it’s quickly superseded by the rush that still hits him whenever he opens his drawer at her place. Jeans traded for sweats, shirt forgone all together, he turns to the bed.
Chris’s chest rises and falls in a perfectly even rhythm, her scent lingering in the air, and he takes a moment to take it all in before shuffling across the carpet and pulling the covers back.
The rush of cool air against her exposed upper body blows her cover. Cracking her eyes open, she extends her arms out to him, hands grabbing at the space he’s not yet occupying. With a gentle laugh, he fulfills her wish and slides into her warm embrace, body automatically relaxing into hers.
“Hey,” he whispers, ghosting his lips over her forehead. “Sorry I’m so late.”
Snuggling closer, her hair tickles underneath his chin, arm resting loosely against his waist.
“S’okay. Glad you’re here.”
It’s such a stark contrast to her usual guarded tone that he immediately melts underneath it. A yawn pulls at his gut, the bright green alarm clock urging them both to get some sleep while they still can and he nuzzles closer.
“Me, too. Good night, Chris.”
“Mm. Sleep tight.”