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Entry tags:
hard to dance with a devil on your back, the unusuals, Walsh/Beaumont, NC-17, 1/1
Title: hard to dance with a devil on your back
Fandom: The Unusuals
Pairing: Allison Beaumont/Jason Walsh
Rating: Explicit
Length: ~6000 words
Notes/Warnings: Set slightly pre-canon, spilling over to the first episode so spoilers for that. Also, characters act in ways consistent with things revealed in later episodes, so maybe vague spoilers going forward? Title from Florence & the Machine's Shake It Out.
Cross-posted to AO3, here.
Like any other detective, Allison Beaumont had seen a lot of weird shit in her decade on the force. Honest to God, you never knew what morons you were going to encounter on a shift, but she'd long since decided that rolling with it was the secret to staying sane and happy in the job. And she was--at least mostly. Mostly sane, mostly happy, even if she was dancing on the financial edge and had lost all ability to talk to people who weren't cops. Her weekly phone calls to her mother lasted about ten minutes and consisted of updates on her cousins (translation: how many kids they all had and how nice their houses were) and some pointed questions as to whether she'd been to confession recently (at this point, it was a given that she needed to have gone to confession; Allison didn't even bother trying to dodge that one now). She kept up with a couple of friends from school, but their work stories mostly consisted of who was having an affair with which boss, not the joys of digging through dumpsters to piece together an extortion case or the fine art of dealing with snitches. It made idle chatter a little of a challenge. Dating was pretty much a joke; even guys who got off on the thought of a woman with a gun couldn't manage to deal with the shitty hours or the even shittier moods that sometimes took a while to shake off at the end of a shift.
It didn't matter, though: there had never been a time when Allison hadn't wanted to be a cop and for all the downsides, she wouldn't trade it for anything. And there was always hope: Banks was divorced and God alone knew what Delahoy got up to in his free time, but Alvarez was married, and while Allison did her best not to even think about Alvarez's home life, Cole was engaged, and the fiancée sounded normal and functional and everything that would make her own family happy. Cole, of course, was the exception to a lot of rules, so you couldn't count him as a norm, but it was always nice to know he was out there even if he sometimes warped reality and ended up being even weirder and more annoying than the rest of the job.
"It's not right," Cole muttered as Allison shoved him down the sidewalk away from Kowalski and his mouth. "It's not right that he can talk to you like that--"
"Shut up," Allison said. It came out harder and nastier than she meant it to, because no shit, it wasn't right that the Burt Kowalskis of the world could mouth off to her and every other female cop in the city and the best advice anybody had ever been able to give her was to let it go. No shit, it wasn't right, and she might appreciate the support Cole was trying to offer, but having to deal with him on top of Kowalski himself was getting on her last goddamn nerve. "You think I don't know that, Cole? You think that?"
"No," Cole admitted.
"And that pissing match between you and him? You think that made anything better?" They were far enough away from the rest of everybody that Allison barely bothered to keep her voice down. "Because I gotta tell you, Henry: it really, really didn't." She didn't look at him, just kept walking, because she knew what she was going to see: that righteous, stubborn set of his jaw that she honestly sometimes wanted to hit.
"I didn't mean to make it worse," Cole said. "It just makes me so--"
"Mad?" Allison snapped. "Yeah, Cole. No fucking shit." Normally, she watched her mouth around him--he was a good cop and a good partner and even if he'd never actually said anything about it, she'd seen the pained look on his face when every other word out of her mouth was the f-bomb. Partnership was about accommodation sometimes and cleaning up her mouth wasn't such a big deal. It was probably a sign of what a piss poor job she was doing with holding it together that he didn't so much as blink at her now, only shrugged and bumped his shoulder into hers. She kept walking, three more steps, but then she bumped him back and they were good again.
"Everything okay over here?"
Gritting her teeth, Allison turned around and leveled her best Not now, dickhead glare at Walsh and his neutral, professional, see-how-non-threatening-I-can-be stance. Good cop, decent guy, but there were days when she really wanted to kick him out of the detachment he wore like a suit of armor.
"Your partner is a pig," she said, biting off every word precisely. She threw the keys to the sedan to Cole and wrenched open the passenger-side door. "Since that's nothing new, yeah, everything is just fine over here."
Walsh looked like he wanted to say something but she guessed he got the message of how very little she wanted to hear it when she got in the car and slammed the door in his face. There was probably some wordless shit going on between him and Cole, but when Cole got in the car, he didn't say anything but, "Coffee? We're not far from that place you like."
Allison hesitated; as much as she'd love to, she had better things to spend her money on.
"My treat," Cole said. "To make up for being an idiot back there." He fixed her with his best sincere face, the one that took more energy to ignore than she had at the moment. He knew that, and he knew the second she caved, too, but at least had the class not to gloat. "You have to order it yourself, though," he said as he put the car in gear and backed out and away from the curb. "You know I get lost once you get past, uh, well, you know. The part where you tell them large or small."
The aw-shucks attitude was mostly for real--it had taken her a while to believe it--but she knew when she was being played. She just shook her head, though, and let him coax her out of her mood, because that was what partners were supposed to be about.
* * *
"Not that I'm saying 'no,'" Allison said the next morning when she got to her desk and found a cup from Joe on the edge of the blotter, "but this is taking the making-up-for-being-an-idiot a little too far." She waved the cup at Cole.
"Not me," Cole said, tipping his head toward the corner, where Walsh was pacing around on a call, the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder so he could scribble notes as he walked. Before Allison could catch his attention, her own phone was ringing and apparently, it was going to be one of those days because she was still on that call when Sergeant Brown was calling for her and Cole to go play nice with Narco about how their crack was packed in some ugly-as-fuck-but-incredibly-ancient urn or vase or something stolen from a very concerned City Councilman. She almost left the coffee on her desk--she didn't need any more complications in her life--but grabbed it at the last second, working on the theory that on days like this one was shaping up to be, you did not look free caffeine in the mouth, especially not an extra shot latte from Joe. She wasn't entirely sure what she expected, but when she did finally catch Walsh's eye, two steps before she was out of the squad room, he gave her one of his half-smiles, one of the ones that usually just made her want more of things she knew damn well to stay away from.
Given that it wasn't even nine o'clock and they were already behind the eight ball, she gave herself a break and just let it be.
* * *
Allison let the second cup be, too. It showed up on the same corner of her desk a week later, an innocent bystander in whatever this was that was going on. Walsh wasn't around when she found it; Cole didn't say anything and neither did the rest of the squad, but she'd seen Walsh orchestrate a hell of a lot more complex maneuvering from behind the scenes during more than one prank war. She was draining the last of it when he and Kowalski blew in from a stakeout, throwing theories and insults back and forth at each other in about equal measure. There was maybe a little more of an edge there than they usually had, and they both looked like they'd been going at it for a while, so she tossed the cup in the trash and nodded once to Walsh. This time, she didn't even get the half-smile, but for a split-second, no more than the time between two blinks, he let that mask he wore all the damn time slip, just long enough that Allison knew it was deliberate. Then it was back and he was hammering at Kolwalski again while Allison slammed down hard on everything seeing behind it had stirred up.
* * *
The third time… Allison didn't let that one be. She couldn't. It was waiting for her when she got in for a four-to-twelve shift, right there on the corner of her desk, the same as always. She drank it, and appreciated it, and when she got off, she made her way to the tiny restaurant where Walsh lived and put the empty cup on the counter.
"What is this?" It was a good voice, she decided. Quiet and serious, a smooth cover for all the stuff churning around inside.
"Uh, coffee?" For the first time, she saw that smirk, the one that she'd been expecting all along, except she was close enough to see how he wasn't really meeting her eyes. He didn't have many tells, but she knew a dodge when she saw one. "More specifically, a double-shot latte--"
"Walsh," Allison snapped, and he shut up like she'd flipped a switch. They stared at each other for a couple of seconds--or rather, she watched him try to stare a hole in the wall over her left shoulder while he tried to pretend nothing was going on.
"It's… whatever you want it to be," he said finally. "You want it to be coffee, me grabbing an extra whenever I'm by Joe's, I'm good with that." His eyes were all over the place: the counter, the wall behind her, the door, and back to the counter again like he was casing the place for a SWAT team. "You want it to be more? I can go there, too."
It was hot in the room, the heat from the grill adding to the air pushed down out of the vents. He had tiny beads of sweat collected at his temples and more in the hollow at the base of his throat. Allison could feel them gathering on her own skin, between her breasts, on the back of her neck. Walsh was looking at her, finally; it was her turn to look away.
"I don't do this." Allison studied the cup, like it might tell her how she was supposed to get through this when it mattered how she did it. She knew how to cut guys off when she didn't care--she could take them out at the knees without a second thought--but that wasn't how she wanted this to go.
"I don't either," Walsh said, and when Allison made herself look at him, she read the truth of the statement in his eyes. She wished it was enough, but she'd seen too many things like this blow sky high and she'd sworn she wasn't going to go down that path. There had never been a time when she hadn't wanted to be a cop and this--Walsh--wouldn't be the first thing she'd sacrificed to make that be a reality.
"Coffee," Allison said carefully. "Just coffee." She held Walsh's eyes steadily, until he nodded once and picked up the cloth on the counter before him. "Thanks," she added.
"No problem," Walsh said, easy like always. Allison didn't let herself look back when she walked out the door.
* * *
Not that Allison expected anything different, not with Walsh, but there wasn't any fallout from her decision. Life in the Second moved along, the same as always. Delahoy and Banks amped their codependent dysfunctionality up a couple of notches; Kowalski nearly put a Boy Scout in the hospital; Alvarez managed to irritate the bartender at McFadden's so thoroughly that he was only allowed in the place if he stayed in the far corner and never spoke; and Cole was in some weird alternate dimension so often Allison was afraid he was going to kill himself walking down the stairs one day. He blamed it on wedding stress, which Allison could believe since no detail was too small for Amy to consult with him on. He seemed to love it, though. They'd be sickening if they weren’t so cute, Allison decided.
Walsh was Walsh, and Allison thought she was doing an okay job being herself, too. She maybe spent a little more time than usual in the gym, but kicking the shit out of the heavy bag beat losing it on the job. She made an extra effort to not antagonize her mom and even gave the okay to let her set her up on a blind date with one of the neighbors' nephews. It wasn't going anywhere--she had nothing in common with the guy, but dinner wasn't a complete disaster and it was a reminder that there really was life on the other side of the badge.
Every day, it got a little easier to not think about the path not taken. She'd just gotten to where she thought she could see where she'd be free of all the what-ifs when she and Cole got back to the station in the middle of a graveyard shift to hear that Kowalski was dead.
"Stabbed?" Cole sounded shaky, hollow, and Allison tried to remember if he'd lost someone on his squad before. It was a gut punch even if you’d gone through it already, even if the detective in question was as much of an ass as Kowalski. Cole wasn't the only one on the edge: Delahoy was staring off into space and Banks was going to stroke out any minute. None of them did more than tolerate Kowalski; Allison didn't want to think about Jason and how this was going to hit him.
"I'm on my way to tell Walsh," Sgt. Brown said, pulling his coat on as he walked through the squad room. He looked around at everyone and rubbed hard at the bridge of his nose. "Do me a favor and don't burn the place down while I'm gone."
He sounded tired and pissed--Allison knew IA had already been at him--but he said it as though there was no question about him dealing with it personally. She was grateful he’d be the one breaking the news to Walsh, not some anonymous headhunter. Brown knew the deal with Kowalski, but he wouldn't be there to grind salt into the open wound of losing a partner.
By the next day, the rumor mill was almost completely out of control. Allison kept her mouth shut and stayed in the background and did her job. Cole was on this like there was no tomorrow; keeping him on some kind of an even keel was surprisingly difficult. The new girl Brown had thrown into the mix was hanging tough despite looking like she was all of twelve. As far as Allison could tell, she wasn’t letting Walsh steamroll her, plus she had a good comeback for everything and whenever Allison heard her open her mouth she sounded like a good cop. Whatever game Brown was playing with transferring her over from Vice, at least Walsh had somebody on his six who wasn’t dragging a mile-long IA case file.
And Walsh--he was processing about like Allison thought he’d be, which was to say he wasn’t processing at all, just hunkered down and focused totally on getting the sonofabitch who’d done it. Allison couldn't do a whole lot to lighten that load, but she had a damn good time roughing up Alvarez when he went for Walsh. Part of that was just the sheer joy in reminding Eddie what a wuss he was, but it was always a stress-reliever to get rid of some of the low-level aggravation the guy caused with his total cluelessness. Mix in his ambition and Allison honestly didn't know how nobody had ever shot him in the back on a stakeout.
The grin Walsh shot her when she grabbed the idiot was like a hit of the good shit, a rush as concentrated as it got. The practical part of her brain was annoyed as fuck at the reaction. It had taken her weeks to get to some kind of equilibrium and one damn smile shouldn't be enough to rock her back on her heels. Then again, she was the one who'd just jumped to the guy’s defense so maybe she just needed to relax and go with it.
That thought stayed with Allison through the rest of the day, through the build-up to the raid and taking the door, through the long wind-down and the inevitable crash at the end of the day, when all the adrenaline was gone and there was nothing left but a badge to be retired and an empty apartment to go home to. Finding herself outside Walsh’s place felt like a step in the same direction, the one she'd set the second she grabbed Alvarez.
Allison watched him through the plate glass window until the last random customer left and he stood with his arms braced against the counter and his head down. He didn’t look up when she pushed open the door, only said, "I was starting to wonder if you were going to come in or if I should just put a call into dispatch that I'd picked up a stalker."
"I guess that’s a better option than that sawed-off you keep under the counter," Allison answered.
"Yeah," Walsh snorted. "I'm not really up for any more live ammo today."
"I'm not going to argue with that," Allison said. He looked up at her finally and she eyed him critically. He didn't look bad, not exactly, but he was frayed around the edges. Since Allison had been in hostage situations with him where he'd barely broken a sweat, the tight set to his jaw and the way he was holding on to the counter hard enough that his knuckles were white were blinking neon signs to how far gone he was. "When was the last time you slept?"
"Is that really why you came by? You couldn't nag me about my sleeping habits at the station?"
Allison arched an eyebrow and held firm, and far more quickly than she'd anticipated--which was another big sign--he shrugged and said, "I caught a couple of hours on the couch in the break room."
Allison nodded and watched him for another little bit. "You done for the day?" she finally asked. "Because unless I miss my guess, you didn't just call Kowalski's wife--”
"Hannah," Walsh said. "Her name is Hannah."
"Okay,"Allison said. "Hannah. You went to the Bronx and saw her again, told her we got the guy." Walsh shrugged minutely; Allison kept going before he could interrupt. "You made sure the new girl was okay after it all went down; you gave Kowalski as good of a send-off as it gets." She didn't add and a better one than he deserved but she wasn't sure she kept it out of her tone. He let it go, though.
"Yeah, so?"
"So," Allison said, as neutrally as possible. "It's one in the morning and you've slept for maybe three hours in the last thirty-six. I'm asking if you've got anything else you're telling yourself you need to do."
Before he could answer, a couple of high school kids came yapping in the door wanting to know if Walsh was still open. Allison figured it was the perfect excuse--and hey, it was his life, he could run himself into the ground if he wanted to; she'd just have to hang out a little while longer to see if he really did finally drop--but Walsh was shaking his head almost before they finished.
"Sorry, I'm just shutting down for the night." He came around the counter, keys already in his hand, and the kids let him herd them out the door. He turned and looked at Allison and when she didn't move, a little of the tension eased out of his shoulders, his jaw. He locked the front door and killed the neon sign in the window and then stood watching her for a long few seconds. "You don't do this," he said finally, moving close enough that Allison could see the pulse beating under his jaw.
"Neither do you," she answered. Quickly, before all the reasons why they didn't could push between them, she traced a path under and along his jaw. His skin was warm and rough; the feel of it against just the tips of her fingers set her own heart pounding. He caught her hand as she started to let it drop, holding it against his throat for another few seconds that felt endless. His pulse tripped fast and hard against her fingers; and when he turned his head so he could drag her fingers across his mouth, his lips were soft and dry.
"Allison," he said, hoarse and low. It was all the warning she got before he was crowding her back against the counter, his arms braced on either side of her. She smiled at him and slid her hand back until it was cupping his jaw, drawing him closer. His own grin flashed out right before she kissed him and she had a split-second to think that it was good that they were starting this for real with smiles. That was just for a moment though, and then all she could think was more: more of his mouth on her, more of his hands on her, more of his skin against hers.
"Fuck, yeah," he rasped against her throat and Allison realized she'd been saying all that out loud in the brief bits of time in between their mouths moving hard against each other. He smiled at her again, sharp and hungry this time, and she knew she was returning it in kind even as she yanked impatiently at his shirt. They stumbled twice on their way toward the back of the diner, once when he pushed her coat off her shoulders and she tripped on it, and again when she temporarily gave up the quest for skin and scrubbed the heel of her hand down hard over the front of his cargoes, grinding the zipper into his already hardening cock. He stopped them then, stripping off her shirt with something close to a growl and biting kisses down her throat and across her collarbone and shoulders.
"Nice," Allison managed, and then hissed as he caught her nipples in tight, twisting pinches, the lace on her bra scraping at nerve endings she’d practically forgotten she had. "Jesus, that’s good," she groaned when he pushed her against the wall and did it again. It was better than good, but she still wanted more. She got a handful of hair and dragged his head up. "You do have bed in this place, right?"
She really didn't care where they were going, so long as they got there; she just liked a little advance notice if she was about to get fucked over a counter or against a wall.
"Back room," Walsh said, with an expression that said he knew exactly what she was thinking and would be happy to work his way through all available surfaces with her. Automatically, almost without thinking about it, she tightened her grip and dragged him closer so she could sink her teeth into his bottom lip. The fact that she was all for the same plan was irrelevant; smugness that ingrained needed a little pushback.
"Then how about getting us there?"
He didn't really lose the smirk, but she didn't miss how his eyes darkened at the bite. He got them moving again, this time with no distractions other than the way his hands curved around her hips, so she was counting it as a win regardless. Also counting as a win was the promised bed, right around the corner, and the effortless way his hands moved across her skin to unbutton her jeans and ease them off her hips. Even having to stop him because she was wearing boots that needed to come off first--sue her, she hadn't planned on needing to get naked in a hurry when she'd showered and changed after the raid--ended up being a major win when she ended up sitting on the bed with him kneeling in front of her dealing with the laces.
There was enough light from outside the room that she could study him while he worked at the knots, head down, serious and focused, no trace of the smirk. He looked up and caught her watching, but didn’t call her out, only looked back down and switched to the other foot. She decided it was ridiculously unfair that he got eyelashes like he had, but then he was sliding her boots off and she could shimmy out of her pants and underwear and lose her bra and the only thing she could think was how much she wanted him.
His eyes moved over her, mouth, breasts, belly, cunt, so intently she could almost feel his gaze, but he didn’t move until she reached up to take her earrings out.
"Leave them?" he asked, hoarse and low. He touched the gold hoops so lightly she almost didn’t feel them move. His touch still rippled over her. "I promise to be careful."
"What if I don't want you to be careful?" Allison whispered, which was and wasn’t the truth; she wanted it--him--hard and rough, but just the one light touch had made her shiver.
"I can be both," he answered. "Whatever you want." He said it lightly, softly, but his eyes were still intense. She nodded once, and then shifted back until she could lie down with her shoulders propped up on his pile of pillows. It was a cheap cover for how she couldn't face everything she thought she was seeing in him, but he let her take it, so maybe he wasn't quite as in control as he was letting on.
"You're behind," Allison said, finding an almost careless tone. She waved idly at his clothes. "I think I might be disappointed."
"We wouldn't want that," Walsh said, rolling to his feet in one smooth motion. Allison made a small noise of appreciation, one that lengthened out into a satisfied hum as he reached back and pulled both shirts off in one go.
"Better," Allison said. He sat down on the bed to deal with his own boots and she smiled and reached out to trace a path along his spine. He arched into her touch a little, almost as though he didn't notice he was doing it and Allison didn’t know which was scarier: knowing that he'd let down his guard enough to do that or how much she liked it that he had. She kept her hand on him, regardless, until he was out of the boots and standing back up to lose his pants. "Definitely better."
Walsh didn't say anything, but his eyes were flickering over her again and without consciously thinking about it Allison let her hands follow the same path, fingering lightly at her nipples, stroking down over her belly and between her thighs, quick, skimming touches that got her heart pounding.
"Jesus, Allison," Walsh muttered. Allison smiled at where he stood frozen and started over again. She took her time on this round, tugging at her nipples until they were aching and hard, spreading her legs wider, teasing the both of them. "You're going to fucking kill me," Walsh finally said, almost choking it out, shoving at his pants and boxers.
"Better not be before you fuck me," Allison countered, gasping as she pushed two fingers into her cunt. "Not if you value certain portions of your anatomy." He crashed down on the bed next to her, more hard kisses across her thighs and hips and belly before he penetrated her roughly, adding two fingers to her own and wringing a hoarse cry from her.
"I got you, babe," he said. He curled his fingers on the next stroke and Allison nearly arched off the bed. He grinned at her and did it again, and again, catching her exactly right over and over. "Come on," he coaxed. "Let me have this and I swear I'll fuck you through the bed if you want." He sucked a bruise into the underside of her breast and caught the nipple between his teeth, sharp and electrifying. The sudden bright pain jolted over and across his hand fucking her mercilessly and she was coming on a crashing wave that dragged her down and wouldn’t let her up.
Jason stayed close through it all, there and steady, his mouth brushing over her neck and jaw, focusing Allison's scattered brain as she surfed back up to reality. Even with the deliberate care he was taking with her, she half-expected to see a smug, self-satisfied smirk on his face when she opened her eyes--she could own her history of going for the cocky assholes--but all she got was a deepening of the laugh lines around his eyes and what passed for a pretty tame kiss on her mouth, lazy and easy and right.
"Nice," Allison murmured when he let her up for air.
"You say that like it was a surprise." He dropped another kiss on her mouth, this one a little less lazy, a little more focused. "I think I should be offended."
"You could be," Allison said, wrapping one leg around his waist and pulling him closer. He groaned softly as she arched up against him, his cock pressing into her belly, and she smiled. "If that's really what you want to be doing."
"It really fucking isn't," Jason gasped, shifting his weight so he could reach over her head with one arm, feeling along a little shelf at the head of the bed without pulling away from her.
"Good boy," Allison told him, and he hesitated for a second, like he was debating giving her a hard time about that, too, so she leaned up close and said, "It isn't what I want either." She whispered it, even though it was just them there, no one else in the place at all. "I want your cock, and I want it in me--" She broke off when he groaned and kissed her hard enough that her lips felt bruised but picked it right back up when he let go of her to rip open the condom and put it on. "I want you fucking me, Jason, want you in me deep."
She reached out to where he was kneeling between her legs and put her hands on his thighs, dug her nails in and dragged a path up toward his cock. He let her get almost all the way there before he grabbed her wrists, fingers biting into her skin hard enough that wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with bruises. She wasn't sure which one of them liked that idea more, but she didn't guess it mattered much, not with how much they were obviously getting off on it.
"No touching," Jason said with a pretty decent attempt at calm, at least if you didn’t know him well enough to hear how his voice was thinning out or see the tension in his shoulders. "Not if you want to get fucked."
"I do want it," Allison said, her voice suddenly uneven. She swallowed hard. "You know I do, Jason, come on." She let him pin her wrists to the bed next to her shoulders, used it as leverage to arch up into him as pushed inside her, his cock thick and hard, everything she’d been telling herself for months to quit thinking about.
Jason let go of her wrists and dropped his head down into the curve of her neck, shaking against her, his breathing fast and shallow. "Fuck," he said, his mouth moving on her skin. "Fuck, you feel good."
"I'll feel better coming around you," Allison said, holding him close, one hand combing through the short hair at the base of his skull, the other sliding down along his spine and over his ass. "Don’t stop now."
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, smart ass that he was, but he was moving, finally, long, slow strokes just hard enough to wring a gasp out of her every time, good enough that she didn’t care what came out of his mouth so long as he kept going.
He kept that same slow rhythm, just enough to wind them both up, but Allison felt him shaking against her and wanted that, wanted him to lose that fucking control he was so good at holding onto.
"Come on, baby," she whispered, because he liked it when she made it clear he was the only one supposed to hear what she was saying. "Come on and give it to me, let me see you." She raked her nails down his back and over his hips, across his ass, and he hissed and swore and stopped trying to pretend like he didn't want to fuck her blind. "Like that," she gasped. "Keep going, fuck, Jason, don't stop."
It was better than good, getting to be the one who held him together while he was buried deep inside her, his hips grinding hard against hers, the muscles in his back and shoulders and ass straining to get him deeper. She tilted her hips and wrapped her legs around his waist and something about the angle set her off again, too, long drawn-out tremors that had her gritting out his name while he shook apart against her.
"You were right," Jason mumbled after a stupidly long time of neither one of them being able to do anything but lie there and try to remember how to breathe. "You did feel better when you were coming around me."
"Classy, Walsh," Allison snorted, but she let him kiss her one more time and kept a hand on him while he rolled off her to deal with the condom.
"You staying?" he asked, even as he was settling her next to him and dragging covers up around them in a cocoon. Allison hummed an acceptance and he burrowed into her, wrapping her up like he half-expected her to sneak out in the night. It got quiet for a bit, but he didn't relax, not completely. "Long fucking day," he finally said.
"Good end to it?" she asked and maybe relaxed a little bit more herself when he nodded into her shoulder. She let it get quiet again, felt him wind down against her some more before she added, "Are you going to sleep now or do I have to choke you out?"
"Mmmm," Jason murmured. "Promises, promises."
"I thought you looked a little jealous when I grabbed Alvarez this afternoon," Allison teased.
"Baby, you can grab me any time."
"Damn straight," Allison said. She was worn out herself, but not so much that she wasn't bone-deep happy when he fell asleep mid-laugh.
Fandom: The Unusuals
Pairing: Allison Beaumont/Jason Walsh
Rating: Explicit
Length: ~6000 words
Notes/Warnings: Set slightly pre-canon, spilling over to the first episode so spoilers for that. Also, characters act in ways consistent with things revealed in later episodes, so maybe vague spoilers going forward? Title from Florence & the Machine's Shake It Out.
Cross-posted to AO3, here.
Like any other detective, Allison Beaumont had seen a lot of weird shit in her decade on the force. Honest to God, you never knew what morons you were going to encounter on a shift, but she'd long since decided that rolling with it was the secret to staying sane and happy in the job. And she was--at least mostly. Mostly sane, mostly happy, even if she was dancing on the financial edge and had lost all ability to talk to people who weren't cops. Her weekly phone calls to her mother lasted about ten minutes and consisted of updates on her cousins (translation: how many kids they all had and how nice their houses were) and some pointed questions as to whether she'd been to confession recently (at this point, it was a given that she needed to have gone to confession; Allison didn't even bother trying to dodge that one now). She kept up with a couple of friends from school, but their work stories mostly consisted of who was having an affair with which boss, not the joys of digging through dumpsters to piece together an extortion case or the fine art of dealing with snitches. It made idle chatter a little of a challenge. Dating was pretty much a joke; even guys who got off on the thought of a woman with a gun couldn't manage to deal with the shitty hours or the even shittier moods that sometimes took a while to shake off at the end of a shift.
It didn't matter, though: there had never been a time when Allison hadn't wanted to be a cop and for all the downsides, she wouldn't trade it for anything. And there was always hope: Banks was divorced and God alone knew what Delahoy got up to in his free time, but Alvarez was married, and while Allison did her best not to even think about Alvarez's home life, Cole was engaged, and the fiancée sounded normal and functional and everything that would make her own family happy. Cole, of course, was the exception to a lot of rules, so you couldn't count him as a norm, but it was always nice to know he was out there even if he sometimes warped reality and ended up being even weirder and more annoying than the rest of the job.
"It's not right," Cole muttered as Allison shoved him down the sidewalk away from Kowalski and his mouth. "It's not right that he can talk to you like that--"
"Shut up," Allison said. It came out harder and nastier than she meant it to, because no shit, it wasn't right that the Burt Kowalskis of the world could mouth off to her and every other female cop in the city and the best advice anybody had ever been able to give her was to let it go. No shit, it wasn't right, and she might appreciate the support Cole was trying to offer, but having to deal with him on top of Kowalski himself was getting on her last goddamn nerve. "You think I don't know that, Cole? You think that?"
"No," Cole admitted.
"And that pissing match between you and him? You think that made anything better?" They were far enough away from the rest of everybody that Allison barely bothered to keep her voice down. "Because I gotta tell you, Henry: it really, really didn't." She didn't look at him, just kept walking, because she knew what she was going to see: that righteous, stubborn set of his jaw that she honestly sometimes wanted to hit.
"I didn't mean to make it worse," Cole said. "It just makes me so--"
"Mad?" Allison snapped. "Yeah, Cole. No fucking shit." Normally, she watched her mouth around him--he was a good cop and a good partner and even if he'd never actually said anything about it, she'd seen the pained look on his face when every other word out of her mouth was the f-bomb. Partnership was about accommodation sometimes and cleaning up her mouth wasn't such a big deal. It was probably a sign of what a piss poor job she was doing with holding it together that he didn't so much as blink at her now, only shrugged and bumped his shoulder into hers. She kept walking, three more steps, but then she bumped him back and they were good again.
"Everything okay over here?"
Gritting her teeth, Allison turned around and leveled her best Not now, dickhead glare at Walsh and his neutral, professional, see-how-non-threatening-I-can-be stance. Good cop, decent guy, but there were days when she really wanted to kick him out of the detachment he wore like a suit of armor.
"Your partner is a pig," she said, biting off every word precisely. She threw the keys to the sedan to Cole and wrenched open the passenger-side door. "Since that's nothing new, yeah, everything is just fine over here."
Walsh looked like he wanted to say something but she guessed he got the message of how very little she wanted to hear it when she got in the car and slammed the door in his face. There was probably some wordless shit going on between him and Cole, but when Cole got in the car, he didn't say anything but, "Coffee? We're not far from that place you like."
Allison hesitated; as much as she'd love to, she had better things to spend her money on.
"My treat," Cole said. "To make up for being an idiot back there." He fixed her with his best sincere face, the one that took more energy to ignore than she had at the moment. He knew that, and he knew the second she caved, too, but at least had the class not to gloat. "You have to order it yourself, though," he said as he put the car in gear and backed out and away from the curb. "You know I get lost once you get past, uh, well, you know. The part where you tell them large or small."
The aw-shucks attitude was mostly for real--it had taken her a while to believe it--but she knew when she was being played. She just shook her head, though, and let him coax her out of her mood, because that was what partners were supposed to be about.
"Not that I'm saying 'no,'" Allison said the next morning when she got to her desk and found a cup from Joe on the edge of the blotter, "but this is taking the making-up-for-being-an-idiot a little too far." She waved the cup at Cole.
"Not me," Cole said, tipping his head toward the corner, where Walsh was pacing around on a call, the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder so he could scribble notes as he walked. Before Allison could catch his attention, her own phone was ringing and apparently, it was going to be one of those days because she was still on that call when Sergeant Brown was calling for her and Cole to go play nice with Narco about how their crack was packed in some ugly-as-fuck-but-incredibly-ancient urn or vase or something stolen from a very concerned City Councilman. She almost left the coffee on her desk--she didn't need any more complications in her life--but grabbed it at the last second, working on the theory that on days like this one was shaping up to be, you did not look free caffeine in the mouth, especially not an extra shot latte from Joe. She wasn't entirely sure what she expected, but when she did finally catch Walsh's eye, two steps before she was out of the squad room, he gave her one of his half-smiles, one of the ones that usually just made her want more of things she knew damn well to stay away from.
Given that it wasn't even nine o'clock and they were already behind the eight ball, she gave herself a break and just let it be.
Allison let the second cup be, too. It showed up on the same corner of her desk a week later, an innocent bystander in whatever this was that was going on. Walsh wasn't around when she found it; Cole didn't say anything and neither did the rest of the squad, but she'd seen Walsh orchestrate a hell of a lot more complex maneuvering from behind the scenes during more than one prank war. She was draining the last of it when he and Kowalski blew in from a stakeout, throwing theories and insults back and forth at each other in about equal measure. There was maybe a little more of an edge there than they usually had, and they both looked like they'd been going at it for a while, so she tossed the cup in the trash and nodded once to Walsh. This time, she didn't even get the half-smile, but for a split-second, no more than the time between two blinks, he let that mask he wore all the damn time slip, just long enough that Allison knew it was deliberate. Then it was back and he was hammering at Kolwalski again while Allison slammed down hard on everything seeing behind it had stirred up.
The third time… Allison didn't let that one be. She couldn't. It was waiting for her when she got in for a four-to-twelve shift, right there on the corner of her desk, the same as always. She drank it, and appreciated it, and when she got off, she made her way to the tiny restaurant where Walsh lived and put the empty cup on the counter.
"What is this?" It was a good voice, she decided. Quiet and serious, a smooth cover for all the stuff churning around inside.
"Uh, coffee?" For the first time, she saw that smirk, the one that she'd been expecting all along, except she was close enough to see how he wasn't really meeting her eyes. He didn't have many tells, but she knew a dodge when she saw one. "More specifically, a double-shot latte--"
"Walsh," Allison snapped, and he shut up like she'd flipped a switch. They stared at each other for a couple of seconds--or rather, she watched him try to stare a hole in the wall over her left shoulder while he tried to pretend nothing was going on.
"It's… whatever you want it to be," he said finally. "You want it to be coffee, me grabbing an extra whenever I'm by Joe's, I'm good with that." His eyes were all over the place: the counter, the wall behind her, the door, and back to the counter again like he was casing the place for a SWAT team. "You want it to be more? I can go there, too."
It was hot in the room, the heat from the grill adding to the air pushed down out of the vents. He had tiny beads of sweat collected at his temples and more in the hollow at the base of his throat. Allison could feel them gathering on her own skin, between her breasts, on the back of her neck. Walsh was looking at her, finally; it was her turn to look away.
"I don't do this." Allison studied the cup, like it might tell her how she was supposed to get through this when it mattered how she did it. She knew how to cut guys off when she didn't care--she could take them out at the knees without a second thought--but that wasn't how she wanted this to go.
"I don't either," Walsh said, and when Allison made herself look at him, she read the truth of the statement in his eyes. She wished it was enough, but she'd seen too many things like this blow sky high and she'd sworn she wasn't going to go down that path. There had never been a time when she hadn't wanted to be a cop and this--Walsh--wouldn't be the first thing she'd sacrificed to make that be a reality.
"Coffee," Allison said carefully. "Just coffee." She held Walsh's eyes steadily, until he nodded once and picked up the cloth on the counter before him. "Thanks," she added.
"No problem," Walsh said, easy like always. Allison didn't let herself look back when she walked out the door.
Not that Allison expected anything different, not with Walsh, but there wasn't any fallout from her decision. Life in the Second moved along, the same as always. Delahoy and Banks amped their codependent dysfunctionality up a couple of notches; Kowalski nearly put a Boy Scout in the hospital; Alvarez managed to irritate the bartender at McFadden's so thoroughly that he was only allowed in the place if he stayed in the far corner and never spoke; and Cole was in some weird alternate dimension so often Allison was afraid he was going to kill himself walking down the stairs one day. He blamed it on wedding stress, which Allison could believe since no detail was too small for Amy to consult with him on. He seemed to love it, though. They'd be sickening if they weren’t so cute, Allison decided.
Walsh was Walsh, and Allison thought she was doing an okay job being herself, too. She maybe spent a little more time than usual in the gym, but kicking the shit out of the heavy bag beat losing it on the job. She made an extra effort to not antagonize her mom and even gave the okay to let her set her up on a blind date with one of the neighbors' nephews. It wasn't going anywhere--she had nothing in common with the guy, but dinner wasn't a complete disaster and it was a reminder that there really was life on the other side of the badge.
Every day, it got a little easier to not think about the path not taken. She'd just gotten to where she thought she could see where she'd be free of all the what-ifs when she and Cole got back to the station in the middle of a graveyard shift to hear that Kowalski was dead.
"Stabbed?" Cole sounded shaky, hollow, and Allison tried to remember if he'd lost someone on his squad before. It was a gut punch even if you’d gone through it already, even if the detective in question was as much of an ass as Kowalski. Cole wasn't the only one on the edge: Delahoy was staring off into space and Banks was going to stroke out any minute. None of them did more than tolerate Kowalski; Allison didn't want to think about Jason and how this was going to hit him.
"I'm on my way to tell Walsh," Sgt. Brown said, pulling his coat on as he walked through the squad room. He looked around at everyone and rubbed hard at the bridge of his nose. "Do me a favor and don't burn the place down while I'm gone."
He sounded tired and pissed--Allison knew IA had already been at him--but he said it as though there was no question about him dealing with it personally. She was grateful he’d be the one breaking the news to Walsh, not some anonymous headhunter. Brown knew the deal with Kowalski, but he wouldn't be there to grind salt into the open wound of losing a partner.
By the next day, the rumor mill was almost completely out of control. Allison kept her mouth shut and stayed in the background and did her job. Cole was on this like there was no tomorrow; keeping him on some kind of an even keel was surprisingly difficult. The new girl Brown had thrown into the mix was hanging tough despite looking like she was all of twelve. As far as Allison could tell, she wasn’t letting Walsh steamroll her, plus she had a good comeback for everything and whenever Allison heard her open her mouth she sounded like a good cop. Whatever game Brown was playing with transferring her over from Vice, at least Walsh had somebody on his six who wasn’t dragging a mile-long IA case file.
And Walsh--he was processing about like Allison thought he’d be, which was to say he wasn’t processing at all, just hunkered down and focused totally on getting the sonofabitch who’d done it. Allison couldn't do a whole lot to lighten that load, but she had a damn good time roughing up Alvarez when he went for Walsh. Part of that was just the sheer joy in reminding Eddie what a wuss he was, but it was always a stress-reliever to get rid of some of the low-level aggravation the guy caused with his total cluelessness. Mix in his ambition and Allison honestly didn't know how nobody had ever shot him in the back on a stakeout.
The grin Walsh shot her when she grabbed the idiot was like a hit of the good shit, a rush as concentrated as it got. The practical part of her brain was annoyed as fuck at the reaction. It had taken her weeks to get to some kind of equilibrium and one damn smile shouldn't be enough to rock her back on her heels. Then again, she was the one who'd just jumped to the guy’s defense so maybe she just needed to relax and go with it.
That thought stayed with Allison through the rest of the day, through the build-up to the raid and taking the door, through the long wind-down and the inevitable crash at the end of the day, when all the adrenaline was gone and there was nothing left but a badge to be retired and an empty apartment to go home to. Finding herself outside Walsh’s place felt like a step in the same direction, the one she'd set the second she grabbed Alvarez.
Allison watched him through the plate glass window until the last random customer left and he stood with his arms braced against the counter and his head down. He didn’t look up when she pushed open the door, only said, "I was starting to wonder if you were going to come in or if I should just put a call into dispatch that I'd picked up a stalker."
"I guess that’s a better option than that sawed-off you keep under the counter," Allison answered.
"Yeah," Walsh snorted. "I'm not really up for any more live ammo today."
"I'm not going to argue with that," Allison said. He looked up at her finally and she eyed him critically. He didn't look bad, not exactly, but he was frayed around the edges. Since Allison had been in hostage situations with him where he'd barely broken a sweat, the tight set to his jaw and the way he was holding on to the counter hard enough that his knuckles were white were blinking neon signs to how far gone he was. "When was the last time you slept?"
"Is that really why you came by? You couldn't nag me about my sleeping habits at the station?"
Allison arched an eyebrow and held firm, and far more quickly than she'd anticipated--which was another big sign--he shrugged and said, "I caught a couple of hours on the couch in the break room."
Allison nodded and watched him for another little bit. "You done for the day?" she finally asked. "Because unless I miss my guess, you didn't just call Kowalski's wife--”
"Hannah," Walsh said. "Her name is Hannah."
"Okay,"Allison said. "Hannah. You went to the Bronx and saw her again, told her we got the guy." Walsh shrugged minutely; Allison kept going before he could interrupt. "You made sure the new girl was okay after it all went down; you gave Kowalski as good of a send-off as it gets." She didn't add and a better one than he deserved but she wasn't sure she kept it out of her tone. He let it go, though.
"Yeah, so?"
"So," Allison said, as neutrally as possible. "It's one in the morning and you've slept for maybe three hours in the last thirty-six. I'm asking if you've got anything else you're telling yourself you need to do."
Before he could answer, a couple of high school kids came yapping in the door wanting to know if Walsh was still open. Allison figured it was the perfect excuse--and hey, it was his life, he could run himself into the ground if he wanted to; she'd just have to hang out a little while longer to see if he really did finally drop--but Walsh was shaking his head almost before they finished.
"Sorry, I'm just shutting down for the night." He came around the counter, keys already in his hand, and the kids let him herd them out the door. He turned and looked at Allison and when she didn't move, a little of the tension eased out of his shoulders, his jaw. He locked the front door and killed the neon sign in the window and then stood watching her for a long few seconds. "You don't do this," he said finally, moving close enough that Allison could see the pulse beating under his jaw.
"Neither do you," she answered. Quickly, before all the reasons why they didn't could push between them, she traced a path under and along his jaw. His skin was warm and rough; the feel of it against just the tips of her fingers set her own heart pounding. He caught her hand as she started to let it drop, holding it against his throat for another few seconds that felt endless. His pulse tripped fast and hard against her fingers; and when he turned his head so he could drag her fingers across his mouth, his lips were soft and dry.
"Allison," he said, hoarse and low. It was all the warning she got before he was crowding her back against the counter, his arms braced on either side of her. She smiled at him and slid her hand back until it was cupping his jaw, drawing him closer. His own grin flashed out right before she kissed him and she had a split-second to think that it was good that they were starting this for real with smiles. That was just for a moment though, and then all she could think was more: more of his mouth on her, more of his hands on her, more of his skin against hers.
"Fuck, yeah," he rasped against her throat and Allison realized she'd been saying all that out loud in the brief bits of time in between their mouths moving hard against each other. He smiled at her again, sharp and hungry this time, and she knew she was returning it in kind even as she yanked impatiently at his shirt. They stumbled twice on their way toward the back of the diner, once when he pushed her coat off her shoulders and she tripped on it, and again when she temporarily gave up the quest for skin and scrubbed the heel of her hand down hard over the front of his cargoes, grinding the zipper into his already hardening cock. He stopped them then, stripping off her shirt with something close to a growl and biting kisses down her throat and across her collarbone and shoulders.
"Nice," Allison managed, and then hissed as he caught her nipples in tight, twisting pinches, the lace on her bra scraping at nerve endings she’d practically forgotten she had. "Jesus, that’s good," she groaned when he pushed her against the wall and did it again. It was better than good, but she still wanted more. She got a handful of hair and dragged his head up. "You do have bed in this place, right?"
She really didn't care where they were going, so long as they got there; she just liked a little advance notice if she was about to get fucked over a counter or against a wall.
"Back room," Walsh said, with an expression that said he knew exactly what she was thinking and would be happy to work his way through all available surfaces with her. Automatically, almost without thinking about it, she tightened her grip and dragged him closer so she could sink her teeth into his bottom lip. The fact that she was all for the same plan was irrelevant; smugness that ingrained needed a little pushback.
"Then how about getting us there?"
He didn't really lose the smirk, but she didn't miss how his eyes darkened at the bite. He got them moving again, this time with no distractions other than the way his hands curved around her hips, so she was counting it as a win regardless. Also counting as a win was the promised bed, right around the corner, and the effortless way his hands moved across her skin to unbutton her jeans and ease them off her hips. Even having to stop him because she was wearing boots that needed to come off first--sue her, she hadn't planned on needing to get naked in a hurry when she'd showered and changed after the raid--ended up being a major win when she ended up sitting on the bed with him kneeling in front of her dealing with the laces.
There was enough light from outside the room that she could study him while he worked at the knots, head down, serious and focused, no trace of the smirk. He looked up and caught her watching, but didn’t call her out, only looked back down and switched to the other foot. She decided it was ridiculously unfair that he got eyelashes like he had, but then he was sliding her boots off and she could shimmy out of her pants and underwear and lose her bra and the only thing she could think was how much she wanted him.
His eyes moved over her, mouth, breasts, belly, cunt, so intently she could almost feel his gaze, but he didn’t move until she reached up to take her earrings out.
"Leave them?" he asked, hoarse and low. He touched the gold hoops so lightly she almost didn’t feel them move. His touch still rippled over her. "I promise to be careful."
"What if I don't want you to be careful?" Allison whispered, which was and wasn’t the truth; she wanted it--him--hard and rough, but just the one light touch had made her shiver.
"I can be both," he answered. "Whatever you want." He said it lightly, softly, but his eyes were still intense. She nodded once, and then shifted back until she could lie down with her shoulders propped up on his pile of pillows. It was a cheap cover for how she couldn't face everything she thought she was seeing in him, but he let her take it, so maybe he wasn't quite as in control as he was letting on.
"You're behind," Allison said, finding an almost careless tone. She waved idly at his clothes. "I think I might be disappointed."
"We wouldn't want that," Walsh said, rolling to his feet in one smooth motion. Allison made a small noise of appreciation, one that lengthened out into a satisfied hum as he reached back and pulled both shirts off in one go.
"Better," Allison said. He sat down on the bed to deal with his own boots and she smiled and reached out to trace a path along his spine. He arched into her touch a little, almost as though he didn't notice he was doing it and Allison didn’t know which was scarier: knowing that he'd let down his guard enough to do that or how much she liked it that he had. She kept her hand on him, regardless, until he was out of the boots and standing back up to lose his pants. "Definitely better."
Walsh didn't say anything, but his eyes were flickering over her again and without consciously thinking about it Allison let her hands follow the same path, fingering lightly at her nipples, stroking down over her belly and between her thighs, quick, skimming touches that got her heart pounding.
"Jesus, Allison," Walsh muttered. Allison smiled at where he stood frozen and started over again. She took her time on this round, tugging at her nipples until they were aching and hard, spreading her legs wider, teasing the both of them. "You're going to fucking kill me," Walsh finally said, almost choking it out, shoving at his pants and boxers.
"Better not be before you fuck me," Allison countered, gasping as she pushed two fingers into her cunt. "Not if you value certain portions of your anatomy." He crashed down on the bed next to her, more hard kisses across her thighs and hips and belly before he penetrated her roughly, adding two fingers to her own and wringing a hoarse cry from her.
"I got you, babe," he said. He curled his fingers on the next stroke and Allison nearly arched off the bed. He grinned at her and did it again, and again, catching her exactly right over and over. "Come on," he coaxed. "Let me have this and I swear I'll fuck you through the bed if you want." He sucked a bruise into the underside of her breast and caught the nipple between his teeth, sharp and electrifying. The sudden bright pain jolted over and across his hand fucking her mercilessly and she was coming on a crashing wave that dragged her down and wouldn’t let her up.
Jason stayed close through it all, there and steady, his mouth brushing over her neck and jaw, focusing Allison's scattered brain as she surfed back up to reality. Even with the deliberate care he was taking with her, she half-expected to see a smug, self-satisfied smirk on his face when she opened her eyes--she could own her history of going for the cocky assholes--but all she got was a deepening of the laugh lines around his eyes and what passed for a pretty tame kiss on her mouth, lazy and easy and right.
"Nice," Allison murmured when he let her up for air.
"You say that like it was a surprise." He dropped another kiss on her mouth, this one a little less lazy, a little more focused. "I think I should be offended."
"You could be," Allison said, wrapping one leg around his waist and pulling him closer. He groaned softly as she arched up against him, his cock pressing into her belly, and she smiled. "If that's really what you want to be doing."
"It really fucking isn't," Jason gasped, shifting his weight so he could reach over her head with one arm, feeling along a little shelf at the head of the bed without pulling away from her.
"Good boy," Allison told him, and he hesitated for a second, like he was debating giving her a hard time about that, too, so she leaned up close and said, "It isn't what I want either." She whispered it, even though it was just them there, no one else in the place at all. "I want your cock, and I want it in me--" She broke off when he groaned and kissed her hard enough that her lips felt bruised but picked it right back up when he let go of her to rip open the condom and put it on. "I want you fucking me, Jason, want you in me deep."
She reached out to where he was kneeling between her legs and put her hands on his thighs, dug her nails in and dragged a path up toward his cock. He let her get almost all the way there before he grabbed her wrists, fingers biting into her skin hard enough that wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with bruises. She wasn't sure which one of them liked that idea more, but she didn't guess it mattered much, not with how much they were obviously getting off on it.
"No touching," Jason said with a pretty decent attempt at calm, at least if you didn’t know him well enough to hear how his voice was thinning out or see the tension in his shoulders. "Not if you want to get fucked."
"I do want it," Allison said, her voice suddenly uneven. She swallowed hard. "You know I do, Jason, come on." She let him pin her wrists to the bed next to her shoulders, used it as leverage to arch up into him as pushed inside her, his cock thick and hard, everything she’d been telling herself for months to quit thinking about.
Jason let go of her wrists and dropped his head down into the curve of her neck, shaking against her, his breathing fast and shallow. "Fuck," he said, his mouth moving on her skin. "Fuck, you feel good."
"I'll feel better coming around you," Allison said, holding him close, one hand combing through the short hair at the base of his skull, the other sliding down along his spine and over his ass. "Don’t stop now."
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, smart ass that he was, but he was moving, finally, long, slow strokes just hard enough to wring a gasp out of her every time, good enough that she didn’t care what came out of his mouth so long as he kept going.
He kept that same slow rhythm, just enough to wind them both up, but Allison felt him shaking against her and wanted that, wanted him to lose that fucking control he was so good at holding onto.
"Come on, baby," she whispered, because he liked it when she made it clear he was the only one supposed to hear what she was saying. "Come on and give it to me, let me see you." She raked her nails down his back and over his hips, across his ass, and he hissed and swore and stopped trying to pretend like he didn't want to fuck her blind. "Like that," she gasped. "Keep going, fuck, Jason, don't stop."
It was better than good, getting to be the one who held him together while he was buried deep inside her, his hips grinding hard against hers, the muscles in his back and shoulders and ass straining to get him deeper. She tilted her hips and wrapped her legs around his waist and something about the angle set her off again, too, long drawn-out tremors that had her gritting out his name while he shook apart against her.
"You were right," Jason mumbled after a stupidly long time of neither one of them being able to do anything but lie there and try to remember how to breathe. "You did feel better when you were coming around me."
"Classy, Walsh," Allison snorted, but she let him kiss her one more time and kept a hand on him while he rolled off her to deal with the condom.
"You staying?" he asked, even as he was settling her next to him and dragging covers up around them in a cocoon. Allison hummed an acceptance and he burrowed into her, wrapping her up like he half-expected her to sneak out in the night. It got quiet for a bit, but he didn't relax, not completely. "Long fucking day," he finally said.
"Good end to it?" she asked and maybe relaxed a little bit more herself when he nodded into her shoulder. She let it get quiet again, felt him wind down against her some more before she added, "Are you going to sleep now or do I have to choke you out?"
"Mmmm," Jason murmured. "Promises, promises."
"I thought you looked a little jealous when I grabbed Alvarez this afternoon," Allison teased.
"Baby, you can grab me any time."
"Damn straight," Allison said. She was worn out herself, but not so much that she wasn't bone-deep happy when he fell asleep mid-laugh.