Work Text:
Even after ten years on the same beat, people don't know you. Sure, they know you don't fit the doughnut stereotype, that you aren't a glazed, a plain, or a jelly-filled, but that's all. They just get two coffees ready, and some girl barely old enough to be in high school writes little love notes on his coffee because he drinks his with sugar and you like yours black. They know you come at ten o'clock, that they're your last stop for the evening. They know it and they're usually ready and it's in and out twenty seconds later with your two free coffees because you've been working this beat for a decade and you've gone through a school girl a year and they all want him.
As you walk back to the squad, you sometimes read their notes. The exact wording changes, but it's always the same message and the same teenage handwriting that you yourself still have, even though you're twice that age. It's quite nauseating, with the 'kisses for Bosco' and the 'Jennifer & Bosco forever;' the meaningless words they scribble onto the lid in black ballpoint are even more sickeningly sweet than the way he takes his coffee. For a moment you wish that when he went in for the coffee, he wouldn't stand in there longer than necessary just to chat with these girls. You also wish that when he returned, your cup would be the one with the sweet nothings written on the plastic lid. You're jealous of him, your best friend, over the senseless writings of little girls who never stay for more than a year. But who cares how empty the words are when the attention is real?
Today you've had a particularly bad shift; you saw a young girl who could have been one of Bosco's coffee lovers die after being shot three times. Knowing your dreams will be haunted by the image, you decided you need some caffeine to keep you awake until you're too exhausted to dream. Although it's two o'clock in the morning, you go to the place you always visit at ten. You don't go because it's nearby or because you know it's open twenty-four hours, but because you need to know not every school girl who writes love notes on carry-out Styrofoam cups died today.
You go in, and of course she isn't working because it's two in the morning and she probably has school and other teenage things to do before tomorrow's note. You sit at the counter and it feels strange to actually ask for a coffee and stranger still that you're only asking for one. But you realize that he's your partner and you know how his mind works, so you order one from him, anticipating his arrival long before the bells on the door jingle.
The worker, a college boy who looks like he's had better days and should really be studying, puts the two coffees in front of you as Bosco comes and sits next to you. You know he came here for the same reason, so you don't slide the cup over to him. Instead, you reach into your purse and pull out a black ballpoint pen and write on the white lid in loopy, girly letters. As you write, you realize you weren't jealous of the attention he received. No, you were jealous of the attention the girls were able to give with their silly words. Tonight you know you can do the same, but with sincere words that have and will last more than a year.
You drop the pen back into your purse and let him take the coffee and read the words he's seen a thousand times before, but never from you. You watch intently as his brain translates the image before him into concepts, as he begins to understand that you're an adult who knows what it means to say, 'I want you, Bosco.' He doesn't react immediately and you take that moment to consider how much you two -- two cops in a doughnut shop -- must look like a bad joke, like an eighties pop song.
He, already standing, draws you from your considerations with a gentle touch on the shoulder and you look up at him. You can tell he sees you as the real deal, the coffee lover who is willing to go farther than words, who will write the words and say the words and mean the words even after you've both come. Because of that, you stand and exit with him, leaving both your untouched coffees sitting on the counter.
You drive to his apartment, not touching since his hand rested on your shoulder at the shop. Nor do you speak, your writing having said it all for both of you. You don't really notice anything during the ride to his place, the climb up the stairs, the walk to the bedroom. You don't notice anything until your mouth is on his and he's tearing at your clothes just as you're doing to his. Then you fall onto the bed and begin noticing everything.
You notice just how good his mouth, hot and tasting so much better than coffee, feels as it covers yours too briefly before moving on. You miss it and want to scream in frustration, but that scream morphs into a cry of pleasure before it even passes your lips. He's left a trail of kisses behind in his journey from your mouth to your breasts, where he traces those ugly scars with his tongue, making you think that maybe they aren't so ugly. Once he's covered them three, four, five times, you think that he's about to move on, but he isn't done yet and your fingernails dig into his flesh as he teases you, his fingers on your left breast mimicking his mouth on your right.
His hands move on, tickling you slightly as they glide over your stomach. Then his fingers are inside you, thrusting, and he pulls himself away from your breasts so he can watch you long enough to make you self-conscious before you're no longer conscious of yourself and of him and the sensation is the only thing that exists. When you think it can't get any better, when you're sure that this is perfection, you learn you're wrong and you haven't felt anything until he's actually inside you.
You move with him and against him, trying to meld the two of you into one that can never be separated. You feel it coming, building, and you wish you could delay it just a little longer, but it's an explosion of the most incredible thing you've ever felt and it hits you with such force that you're not truly aware until you open your eyes the next morning.
You see the light coming in through the blinds, the messy sheets that are down by your feet, and the clothes and -- thank God because you sure don't remember it -- the condom wrapper on the floor by the bed. The only thing absent is Bosco and you're afraid of why until you remember that you're in his apartment and he wouldn't have left; no, he would have told you to get out. So you sit up and pull the sheet around you just as he's coming in, wearing a pair of sweat pants and carrying two coffees. He hands you one, the one with a note taped on it because he couldn't very well write on a ceramic mug.
You smile as you glance at the blue chicken scratch he tries to call handwriting. The words he didn't say last night, the words that will take him a long time to express verbally, stare at you from the love note taped to the handle: 'I love you.'