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Chapter Text

The bar smelled overpoweringly of stale beer and cigarettes, fried food and carpet glue. It was the kind of place that would be cheerier adorned with yellow crime scene tape, and Milt couldn’t help wondering whether the Battle Creek PD had discovered it in the course of a homicide investigation. But this evening it was a functioning hospitality establishment crowded with police officers and festooned with eight green balloons and a lopsided foil banner that read, “CELEBRATE!”

What exactly they were celebrating, no one had seen fit to tell him. There had been several rounds of drinks, and ironic choruses of “cheers!” and now Detective Niblet was regaling him with a lengthy anecdote about a lawnmower which, as far as Milt could tell, shed very little light on the situation.

“The blades were rattling like a tin can on a barbecue,” Niblet said, and Milt made a politely encouraging noise.

He hadn’t admitted his ignorance of the occasion partly because he enjoyed having a reputation for omniscience and partly because he was confident he’d figure it out eventually. Let’s see—there hadn’t been any significant case closures over the last week as far as he knew (and Commander Guziewicz wouldn’t have let Russ and the others exclude him from anything juicy). Perhaps a previous collar had received an appropriately harsh sentence. Perhaps someone was leaving or retiring, or had announced their engagement…

As he thought that, he glimpsed Russ and Holly deep in conversation over by the door. For a split second, he wondered, and an unidentified heaviness settled in his stomach. But then Holly, grinning up at Russ, held out her hand in the classic shake position. Not a romantic gesture. Russ scoffed and half-turned to scan the room… until he saw Milt.

Their gazes locked for a brief, intense moment that sent a secret shiver right down to Milt’s heels. He raised his eyebrows as dryly as he could. Russ jerked back, glared at Holly with that familiar pugnacious jut to his chin, drained his beer, said something, and shook her hand as if they were making a deal.

“—flew off and beheaded an entire bed of gardenias and a plastic flamingo—” said Niblet.

Milt barely had time for a twinge of trepidation before Russ thrust his empty beer glass at Holly, stretched out his neck like he was about to interrogate a hostile witness, and shouldered his way over. “Hey, Niblet, what are you guys talking about? Oh, the lawnmower story? That’s a good one, great twist ending—but just so you know, Jacocks is looking for you. Said she has some questions about candle-making.”

For a moment it was touch and go. “It took three of us to extract it from the wall of my—” Niblet started, then broke off. “Candles?”

“That’s what she said.” Russ patted him on the shoulder, and the next minute Russ and Milt were as alone as it was possible to be in a bar full of coworkers.

Politeness demanded that Milt not say thank you, so he contented himself with ordering two drinks and handing one to Russ, realising too late that Russ was already flushed and uncoordinated.

Russ took the drink anyway, gulped it down in one long breath, and said conversationally, “I just bet Holly two hundred bucks I could get you into bed.”

Milt laughed. That had to be a joke. But for once Russ wasn’t smirking or skewering Milt with that sharp, cynical gaze. He shrugged at Milt, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. Milt forced himself not to frown or glance at Russ’s mouth, or look around to make sure no one was listening. For a moment, he considered telling the truth: drawling, Can’t say I’ve never thought about it. But for all Russ’s forthrightness, this was obviously not a come-on, which meant it was a trap.

Holly was watching from the other side of the room. Such a sweet personality, but she was dangerously perceptive. Tonight she looked curious and a little concerned, and Milt remembered: Holly was always protective of Russ. So what was up with this bet?

He pulled himself together, quirked the corner of his mouth and said mildly, “Two hundred dollars. And you’re just telling me outright? Are you sure that’s your best strategy?”

“Well, yeah.” Russ looked offended. “I’m playing to lose. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Milt shoved his confusion under a veneer of scepticism.

“Look, I didn’t go to prep school in Malta—”

“Monaco.”

Russ rolled his eyes. “Monaco, like some people, but I’m not an idiot.”

He said it as if that were reason enough. As if his open, ongoing suspicion of Milt were his main—and maybe only—objection.

He must have seen something in Milt’s reaction, because he gave a careless, intoxicated shrug. “What, your NSA buddies haven’t already filled you in on the personal foibles of everyone in town? Then sure, I’m Russ Agnew, and I’m bisexual. But I’m not sleeping with you. I don’t sleep with people I work with, and I don’t hook up with people I don’t trust.”

“Okay, so—” Milt took a sip of cheap domestic beer. “Forgive me if I’m missing something, but if that’s the case, why make the bet?”

Russ turned to face the room, propping an elbow on the bar behind him. “Holly started it. It’s fine. I can afford to lose.”

“Okay.” For a moment, Milt was genuinely off-balance. Russ was messing with him, but he’d taken it into such an intimate sphere that Milt was sure his own façade lacked some of its practised teflon. To cover his confusion, he changed the subject. “Tell me this, then. What are we celebrating?”

Russ raised an eyebrow, and Milt cocked his head at the foil banner.

“Oh,” said Russ. “The BCPD just acquired two new xerox machines.”

The police department needed field equipment a hell of a lot more urgently than copiers, and Milt knew Russ knew it, but he still couldn’t help saying, “You could have used mine.”

“There was nothing wrong with our old one. It’s a scam. One of the mayor’s biggest supporters is Battle Creek’s very own Copier King. And now Mayor Hardy can claim with a straight face that the police are receiving brand new state-of-the-art equipment.”

“Ah,” said Milt, and ordered Russ another beer. Just two colleagues drinking together in a run-down bar, and a bet that didn’t mean anything at all. It was for the best—of course it was.

Chapter Text

“Someone’s coming!” Russ swung his flashlight beam towards Louellen Richardson’s open study door and clicked on the radio. “Font, talk to me.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Milt placed a bug inside a standing lamp and checked it was transmitting.

“Did I ask you, Chamberlain?”

“No one’s been in or out,” confirmed Font from his car outside.

But then came six distant beeps of an alarm keypad, and Milt stilled, listening. The click of the apartment door, footsteps, voices, and a low sexy laugh followed by a man’s groan.

Richardson must have come home early through a back entrance, and she wasn’t alone. An illicit liaison, someone she didn’t want to be seen with. And if she stumbled in—or past on her way to the bedroom—and found Milt and Russ, the whole surveillance operation would collapse.

“Of course she lives in a fourth floor apartment,” muttered Russ under his breath. He killed the radio, opened a closet door, and pushed some coats aside. “Get in here. We’ll wait till she falls asleep and then make our escape.”

Milt looked at Russ and back at the closet. It was the size of a Rolex travel case, and it backed onto the bedroom. The idea of being slotted in there with Russ for an indefinite length of time, listening to two strangers have sex, made Milt’s pulse kick up far more than Richardson’s untimely return. If Russ made the slightest sound, Milt could clamp his hand over Russ’s mouth. He could already imagine the scratch of stubble against his palm, the hot breath and tension between them. Russ’s body hard up against his. Then he saw Russ’s expression.

The challenge was barely veiled—and since Milt couldn’t answer it right now, or forcibly kiss it off Russ’s face, he scanned the room for other options. “Or—”

He threw the clasps on the surveillance equipment case, eased the window open—stopping it from creaking through sheer determination—and climbed onto the fire escape. Russ bundled after him, nearly knocking over a lamp and catching it just in time. He fell onto the fire escape, landing on one knee with a muffled exclamation, and Milt steadied him, trying not to notice the stiffness in Russ’s spine, or extrapolate what that might say about his limitations in the sack.

Together they pushed the window closed. It creaked slightly. There was no visible movement inside. Surely Richardson was too occupied to have heard.

“This is a stupid risk,” said Russ. “Sooner or later she’ll notice the unlocked window.”

Milt pulled a standard-issue magnetic latch-turner from the surveillance case and secured the latch from the outside.

“Who makes all this stuff? Does the FBI have its own Q?” grumbled Russ.

Milt waited till they were back in the car before saying, mildly, “Have you ever considered Pilates?”

Russ squinted at him in the dark. “What kind of a question is that?”

“Forget I asked,” said Milt and started the car.

Chapter Text

Russ came out of the motel reception. “There’s only one available room, and it’s a single.”

Milt felt a spurt of irritation. The first time had been drunken, direct, and unassuming; the closet suggestion had been a seemingly last resort. This was none of those things, and he refused to be manipulated into physical intimacy. But he couldn’t let it get under his skin either. They’d been on the road for two solid days now—they had to sleep.

He stepped from blazing sunshine into the reception awning’s shade and opened the passenger door of Russ’s crapheap. “I’m sure there’s another establishment we can—”

“I already asked. There’s only one other motel, and it closed last year when the sugar refinery moved to Georgia. It’s a dying town, Milt. It’s barely a town at all. Hard to believe it produced a world-class counterfeiter.”

“If the town is dying, why is the motel booked out?” But Milt knew the answer: it wasn’t. Russ hadn’t mentioned the bet with Holly again, but he’d decided to win it after all. “Only one bed” was a classic gambit, so transparent Milt could have laughed—except for some reason, it was pissing him off. He opened his mouth to make it politely clear he knew what Russ was doing, to say he’d book them separate rooms himself, that that was what expense accounts were for. But just then a tour bus crunched onto the gravel of the leafy, overgrown motel entrance, stopping when its nose was two inches from the crapheap’s rear bumper.

“Hey,” called the driver through the window. “Would you move that—and I’m using the term loosely—that car outta the way?”

The side of the bus read BILBO’S TRAVEL AND TOURS, and its seats were full of passengers, most of them women. Milt shut the passenger door again and, while Russ moved the car, looked up at the bus driver. “Mr Bilbo, I presume. What’s going on?”

“Romance writers’ retreat,” said the driver, and inched his bus into the space Russ had vacated.

Milt moved aside and watched women pour off the bus in twos and threes, all deep in conversation. Some of them slowed to stare at him, a few took photos, and one grey-haired lady in a green suit said, “Oh, honey, the good Lord must have sent you to inspire us.”

“He’s with me,” said Russ impatiently, dangling a room key from his finger. He beckoned Milt to the room at the end of the row.

It was even smaller than Milt had imagined, and there was, as expected, only one bed.

“I’m taking the bed.” Russ glanced at him then looked away, his nonchalant act as thin as tissue paper. “Share or not, your choice.”

Right, thought Milt, disbelievingly.

He went outside and sat at a picnic table under the trees, where he spent an hour needlessly reviewing the case file and reading through the latest forensics news and the all-staff memos in his work email. When he judged the romance writers had dispersed from reception, he went and charmed a camp bed out of the proprietor, because that was a saner option than sharing with Russ.

Russ watched Milt set up the camp bed in the tiny space at the foot of the bed. “Scared you’ll get cooties?”

“I just think we’ll both be more comfortable this way,” said Milt. It wasn’t technically a lie. “I kick in my sleep.”

“Hey, I don’t care. Do I look like I care?” Russ snorted—and called him a Boy Scout for the rest of the case.

Chapter Text

“This isn’t a trail,” said Russ, “it’s an animal track. Probably bears.”

“Stop whining.” Milt pulled Russ’s arm more securely across his shoulder, more than half carrying him, and marched onwards. They were soaked from falling off the rope bridge into the river. They’d lost their suspect, their cell phones, and their way. For the last two hours, it had been too overcast to navigate by the sun, and now night was falling. So was the air temperature. Worst of all, Russ had banged up his knee to the point where, even at his most stubborn, he couldn’t put weight on it.

It was up to Milt to save the day.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you? Chamberlain to the rescue,” grouched Russ through gritted teeth. He was shivering.

Milt wasn’t loving it at all. For starters, his clothes were chafing everywhere. But that didn’t seem worth mentioning, so he just asked, genuinely curious, “Would you rather I left you here?”

“Maybe,” said Russ, and then twitched and pointed. “Hey, is that a fencepost?”

“We’re in the woods.” But Milt saw it too: an upright stake, weathered and rotten. And then another one a few feet away. “If that used to be a fence, there might be shelter nearby.”

“Does FBI training include a module in stating the obvious? That would explain so m—”

“There!” interrupted Milt, spotting a blackened chimney through the trees. He picked up the pace, ignoring Russ’s complaints, and soon they were standing on a wooden porch, ankle deep in sludgy fallen leaves.

The cabin was rough and abandoned, and one corner was badly scorched, but a chimney meant a fireplace. They could dry off, warm up, and regroup. Hopefully scrounge something to eat, maybe even a change of clothes. The door was locked. Milt kicked it open, holding back so he wouldn’t accidentally bring the roof down. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Russ’s reaction to another setback.

Once inside, Russ found an oil lamp and matches, and they looked around: four walls, the tiniest hearth Milt had ever seen, about six sticks of kindling, and a bare, narrow cot.

Russ hung the lamp from a hook on the ceiling and hobbled to sit on the edge of the bed, ow-ing with each step. “Looks like we’re going to have to huddle to keep warm.”

The suggestion was so studiedly casual, it doubled back on itself into innuendo.

Milt narrowed his eyes. Since the motel, he’d had plenty of time to consider the terms of Russ’s bet, how literal the phrase get you into bed might actually be. Would platonic proximity suffice? Or maybe Russ was planning a seduction scenario, starting with Milt tending to his hurt knee and working his way up, pulling back wet clothing, warming Russ’s chilled flesh…

Milt shook himself. They were in dire straits. Russ was a stubborn son of a bitch; of course he’d try to take advantage of the situation to win. But survival was paramount.

And Milt had no intention of being used. “I’ll light the fire.”

At least the kindling was dry. He arranged it and was just reaching for the matches when he heard the distant rumble of—no, wait, that wasn’t thunder. He jumped up and ran outside, around the side of the house and down a previously unnoticed overgrown driveway.

An eighteen-wheeler bore down on him, its headlights dazzling in the gloom.

Milt waved, and the engine brake bellowed in reply. The ground shuddered and shook. The truck shrieked to a halt. A window rolled down.

“Excuse me, sir.” Milt flashed his most earnest smile. “Could my friend and I trouble you for a ride to the nearest town?”

Chapter Text

“See?” said Russ, waving an evidence bag in Milt’s face. “I told you it was the same handwriting. Who needs your satellite-powered forensic graphological analysis team. I’ve got eyes, and we’ve got our murderer. Look at the loops on the ‘f’s—this guy is a maniac.”

“That’s good work, Russ.” Milt resisted taking a step back. The Battle Creek PD’s poky little evidence lock-up felt crowded, but if Russ got a hint of his discomfort that would only make it worse. He focused on the case. “Though I’d hesitate to suggest that a flourish in a person’s penmanship is any indication of mental instability.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re like a—” Russ stopped in front of the lock-up cage door. “Did you close this?”

Milt couldn’t remember closing the door. He might have. “Why?”

“The lock’s broken. It won’t open from the inside.” Russ rattled the handle to demonstrate, then tried in vain to squeeze his hand through the grill. “Holly was going to call the locksmith Thursday, but Guz told her to wait until the budget flips over on Monday. The most technologically advanced lock in the whole building, and it can’t handle a little casual mistreatment. We’d be better off with a giant padlock.”

Milt looked over Russ’s shoulder. “That’s the most advanced lock in the building? It’s from the ‘80s.”

“1982, to be exact.” Russ turned around, and he was right in Milt’s space, and Milt couldn’t take it.

He stepped back.

Russ’s lips twitched, and his chin came up. “Guess we’re trapped together, Milt. Again. Look, I think Destiny is a load of self-delusional bullshit, but at this point, even you have to admit that we—”

Milt took out his phone and called Jacocks.

Russ breathed a laugh and managed to make even that sound sarcastic. “You just can’t stand being stuck with me, can you?”

“Russ,” said Milt evenly, his heart thrumming a warning in his chest, “if you want to make a move, then you’re going to have to actually make a move. I’m not letting circumstances trap you into something so you can blame me afterwards. I’m not doing anything just so you can win a—”

“Wait.” Russ blinked, and then his gaze sliced away Milt’s obfuscations like a laser. “You’re saying you want me to make a move?”

Milt gritted his teeth. “Why don’t you make one and find out?”

“Oh no.” Russ pointed. “You just want an excuse to lord it over me.”

Milt shrugged. Why bother to set him right? Russ was a detective—he’d either figure it out for himself or he wouldn’t. In the meantime, Milt refused to be used.

Chapter Text

Milt leaned against the wall at the end of the bar, desperately trying to distract himself from Russ’s tight black t-shirt and traces of eyeliner. This was just a case. They were following a solid lead, even Commander Guziewicz said so.

“Undercover in a gay bar,” muttered Russ into his beer bottle. “This is getting ridiculous.”

Russ had fought the assignment. Commander Guziewicz had had to put her foot down, and Jacocks and Holly had practically pinned him in a chair to apply the eyeliner, most of which Russ had wiped off in the car. But not all.

“It’s a nice place,” Milt pointed out. The beer was a million times better than the BCPD’s local, and the clientele were lowkey and unpretentious, with a wide range of ages. If anything, Milt and Russ were overdressed.

“You would think that.” Russ glared at the latest of a string of strangers who’d come over to introduce themselves. “He’s with me. Beat it.”

The guy looked disappointed and backed off without a word.

“I don’t need a bodyguard, Russ,” said Milt, annoyed at the possessiveness, even if it was purely practical under the circumstances.

“You need something.” Russ turned his back to the bar and surveyed the room casually. Then he winced and pushed right into Milt’s personal space. “Kiss me!”

“What? Why?” Nothing about Russ’s tone suggested romantic intent, so Milt glanced over his shoulder.

Russ grabbed his face to stop him, looking pissed. “The guy who just came in—tall guy by the door, denim jacket—I busted him for fencing stolen goods last year. He’s going to blow our cover.”

“So keep your back to him.” Milt caught Russ’s hands and pulled them from his face before he could think about how good they felt. The eyeliner had smudged, making Russ look like a bad-tempered raccoon, but damn, Milt wanted him anyway.

But this didn’t count as a move. This was camouflage, expedience, and that damn bet. He let Russ go. “I’m not kissing you for a case.”

“He’ll see me.” Russ glared. “He’ll screw up our sting.”

Milt sighed and reached across the bar to hit the light switches. The whole bar was immediately plunged into darkness, and there was a general chorus of “What the hell?”s.

Under cover of the hubbub, Milt dragged Russ out the emergency exit.

Chapter Text

At clock-out time on his first day back at work after Brock Eaton kidnapped and shot him, Milt had just finished and submitted his report when he heard the outer door and footsteps. He looked up.

Russ was in the doorway.

Milt pushed back from the desk and straightened his sling. He didn’t really need it, but the new scar tissue pulled uncomfortably if he overextended his shoulder, and more importantly, it made a statement.

Of course, Russ didn’t need reminding who Milt was. He’d always suspected the worst and now he knew everything—what Milt had done, why he was like this. The shameful mistakes he’d tried to bury and atone for. The panicked confession in Brock’s car trunk seemed a million years ago, but Russ had all the facts—which left them where?

Might as well ask outright. “What do you want, Russ?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious. You need me to draw you a map?” Still propped against the doorframe, Russ held up a bottle of wine. His expression was serious, absent the scornful ambivalence he’d always worn before.

Milt was suddenly, wearily aware that he ached all over. For five years, he’d been pushing forward through a fog of guilt, downplaying his (untrustworthy, dangerous) instincts and compensating with rules, logic, and precision technology. Now the fog was lifting, he could see more clearly. He was pretty sure Russ was genuinely interested, the bet was just an excuse, but he still wasn’t sure how to navigate. Could he trust his gut on this? Safer to stick with principle.

“I’m not sleeping with you so you can win two hundred dollars.”

Russ looked confused. “What?”

Milt waited, giving him a chance to admit it.

After a moment, his puzzlement cleared. “Oh, the bet? That was a one-night thing. I paid Holly the next day. That was weeks ago.”

“What?” That couldn’t be right. Milt shook his head feeling like his ears were full of water. Russ had been engineering situations ever since that night—or, well, technically the universe had been doing it on Russ’s behalf. But it had all been for the bet, hadn’t it?

“Why—what did you think was going on, Milt?” Russ sounded weird. He pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room, clearly processing. Then he snapped his fingers. “Robinson’s apartment. The motel. The gay bar.”

“It added up,” said Milt. “I thought you—”

“Jeez, I thought you thought I didn’t wash or something. That I didn’t measure up to the stick up your ass. But no, you actually believed I’d sleep with you to win a bet?” Russ had the effrontery to sound offended.

“You made the bet!” said Milt, stung. Legitimately annoyed. “Why would you make that bet if you weren’t going to follow through?”

“I was being sarcastic! I was drunk, and Holly made a crack,” said Russ. “I’m not a total jerk. Why do you think I told you about it?”

“I—” Milt stopped. He hadn’t really thought about it; blurting it out had seemed such a Russ thing to do. “I suppose I thought you were playing fair.”

Russ tilted his head. “You know, you’re not usually so slow on the uptake.”

There wasn’t a single trace of a sneer in his voice. The tension in his stance was different, too—not resisting or hostile, just wary. Ready to snap his guard back into place if Milt put a foot wrong.

There were no set steps you could learn for this kind of dance. The FBI’s gadgets and apps wouldn’t help. It was like waltzing with a bear trap.

Milt was still off-balance. He couldn’t be sure why Russ was acting this way. Maybe coerced by circumstances he hadn’t explained? Alien intervention or something? The responsible move would be to back off and regroup.

He was really sick of being responsible about everything. He rubbed his forehead. “You said you don’t sleep with people you don’t trust.”

“Right,” agreed Russ, meeting his eye. He stepped closer. “The thing is, I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate the, uh, the possibilities. You’re a narcissistic 24-carat pain in my ass, and repressed as hell, but you’re also really hot and good at everything you do, and the only one you’re conning is yourself, so I figure if you’re into it, it’ll be worth the hassle.”

Milt felt every nerve in his body wake up and zing. But he couldn’t just let that slide. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Brock kicked you pretty hard—did you get a head injury?”

“Ha ha.” Russ stuck his hands in his pockets. “Why do you think the universe keeps trying to manoeuvre us into tight spaces together? I think it’s because we’re supposed to bone. And I for one am done fighting it.”

“Gee, Russ, I’m swooning.” But the jolt of exasperation quickly metabolised into lust. Milt swayed closer despite himself.

The crinkles at the corners of Russ’s eyes deepened, and Milt flashed back on the cornfield. The bullet wound in his shoulder had been far less important than Russ’s hands on him, the feeling that Russ cared. Could he have that again?

“Hey,” said Russ, “tell me you don’t want it, and I’ll back off, we’ll forget the whole thing, no hard feelings. You can go back to dodging the odds.”

“I—” Milt stopped. Russ’s body was undeniably on board, and his heart—Russ was all rough edges and hard surfaces, abrasive enough to scrape away Milt’s habitual numbness. They could be real with each other. He unfastened his sling and dropped it on his desk, anticipation rising. “Your place?”

“Unless you’ve got a better idea.” Russ’s gaze dropped to the sling. “You don’t need that?”

“I’m fine.” Milt was fizzing as if he had champagne in his veins. He walked right up to Russ… and glanced past him, out through the glass frontage. In the detectives’ department across the hall, Jacocks and Font were pretending not to watch, but Holly gave an encouraging thumbs up.

Milt shoved Russ towards the alcove with the office supplies. “Over here.”

The overhead light was off, and the extending wall afforded a small measure of privacy. Russ set the wine on a filing cabinet and regarded the paperclips and staples. “And you accused me of being a romantic.”

Milt pinned him against the stationery shelves, meeting his eye.

They’d survived Brock. Nothing was forcing them together. The bet was over. And Russ wasn’t fighting it. He was here, looking back at Milt intently, hungrily, without suspicion.

Milt touched his jaw, the rough-soft scratch of stubble, and Russ pushed up, skipping gentle, or soft and exploratory, or any of those first-kiss stages, leaping straight to devouring. He kissed with such intensity that for a second Milt mistook it for fury—until Russ pulled Milt’s shirt free and palmed his back enthusiastically.

“Hey.” Milt tore his mouth away. “Hey, slow down.”

“What? Why?” Russ surged forward, crowding Milt two steps back until they were against the copier, chasing his mouth, but when Milt kept evading the kiss, he stopped. “Now what? Is it your shoulder? Or did you change your—?”

Milt caught his arms. His body was hot and taut but not agitated, and his face was flushed, mouth reddened, eyes wild and dark, mesmerising even without eyeliner. He held Milt’s gaze with surprising, uncharacteristic patience as if he understood what this meant, the momentousness of it, Milt’s whole life shifting gears.

The last of Milt’s doubts evaporated. Running on pure instinct for the first time in five years, he smirked. “You said I’d make it worth it. To do that, you have to slow down.”

“You want it slow?” Russ echoed, a note of his usual incredulity slipping in.

Milt wrapped him in a tight hug against the copier. “Trust me,” he said into Russ’s ear, and then he kissed him like thick golden honey until there were no more thoughts, just Russ’s mouth perfect against his, and Russ’s spine softening and arching under his hands. Russ gripped Milt’s hips, kicked his legs apart, and started rocking in. The copier rattled like a broken lawnmower.

Celebrate! thought Milt, out of nowhere, in large glittery letters. He swore against Russ’s mouth and, paying absolute attention, stroked the line of Russ’s jaw and down over the swell of his adam’s apple. Not a bear trap anymore; a wildfire, hot, hungry and exhilarating. Milt wanted him now, and tomorrow, and next week, and next month. He had to make this so good that Russ would keep coming back. Luckily, he knew exactly what would make Russ crazy.

Teasingly careful, he unknotted Russ’s tie and started working on his shirt buttons, one by one.

Russ came up for air, eyes blurry and breathing hard. “Here? You want to take it slow against the office supplies? You can’t wait for, I don’t know, an elevator breakdown or a locked bank vault or something?”

The teasing had a breathlessness that made Milt swallow hard. He looked down at his fingers in the blue fabric, in the shadowy space between their bodies. The glimpse of undershirt and skin. “I’m good, Russ, but you of all people know I’m not a saint.”

“You’re the devil,” agreed Russ, and licked his lips. “But you’re my devil. And hey, you did say I could use your copy machine whenever I want. You going to let me fuck you?”

Heat flared down Milt’s spine. “Bet me it’s going to be phenomenal.” And when Russ huffed and narrowed his eyes, Milt took his mouth again, saying into the kiss, “Obviously I’m playing to lose.”

Chapter Text

The medical examiner’s suite was quiet when Holly knocked on the open door. No dead bodies or grisly evidence in view—that was a good start. Meredith herself was sitting in the corner with her feet up on a red plastic footstool, reading, a coffee cup and a half-eaten sandwich on the counter beside her. It took her a moment to look up.

“Can I help you with something?” It wasn’t a warm welcome, but it wasn’t unfriendly.

“Hi. Hi, there. Sorry to interrupt.” Holly gave a little half-wave and went inside, determined not to wimp out. They didn’t know each other well, but Meredith was sharp and funny and really pretty. Holly had been thinking about getting to know her a lot better—and if Russ could catch Milt’s eye, anything was possible. “I was just wondering—I mean, I’ve been wondering for a while. Meredith, would—would you maybe like to get a cup of coffee sometime? I mean, as a date.”

Holly was determined to be upfront about this. She’d ended up in the friend zone by default too many times. Women took one look at her and just assumed.

Maybe Meredith had been assuming, too, because she raised her eyebrows and looked at Holly appraisingly. Her book was still open in her hand, and she glanced down at it, then closed it using a scrap of paper as a bookmark. The cover read Motel Masquerade in ornately curling script, and there was a picture of a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man, his open shirt blowing in the wind. He bore a truly startling resemblance to Milt.

Of course, Holly knew about Meredith’s vocal obsession with Milt and his butt, but she’d been hoping that was mostly a smokescreen. Or else, that Meredith might be up for a rebound. She was about to share the news of Russ and Milt’s new thing, hoping that would help her case, but before she could find an appropriately sensitive way to phrase it, Meredith tilted her head. “Just coffee?”

Holly tried not to look too smitten—or like she was going to pounce on Meredith and ravish her without warning. “To start with,” she said. “But you know, after that—I, uh, I kind of bet Russ a hundred dollars that I could get you into bed.”

She blushed. It was so embarrassing. What kind of person bet on sex like that?

But Meredith’s eyes brightened. She hopped off her stool and reached for her bag. “You are really hot in a buttoned-up kind of way. And I have to say, the prospect of Russ losing a hundred dollars is a great selling point. Do you think we can bargain him up to two hundred? Ooh, can I be there when you tell him?”

Holly laughed and held out her hand, flushing when Meredith took it in her warm, capable grip. “Absolutely. We’ll tell him together.”

The End