“You alright?” - Another ‘short’ BaileyxCruz fanfic
The ship has definitely sailed. The feelings are strong with these two. Last episode inspired me so… for all you CruzxBailey shippers out there, here another short (sort of) fan fic. We need more of them. MORE. OF. THEM. “You alright?” Two words, constantly repeated, constantly asked. She loves to use those two words to address him, to check if he’s trapped somewhere, far distant from reality, following a thought or just thinking about a lead to follow on a case. Is there really an answer for that two-words question? Probably not. But it makes him smile. Every time, it makes him smile. At least not so openly, but an inner smile definitely generates inside him. You can see at the bottom of his dark eyes that somehow he’s smiling, deep down, knowing that someone cares. Some may say ‘Dude, don’t jump the gun’. Some may say that is just a commonly asked question - one of those absent-minded asked questions that you may even ask to a complete stranger, with no real intention of knowing if everything is actually right. But she asks it every time. Every. Time. Every time she sees him frown, every time she sees him slowly keeping his head down and get lost God-knows-where, she asks. She just asks. She must mean it. However, he never knows how to answer that. “Yeah…”, it’s the first thing he says, out of impulse, but then there’s silence. A silence filled by a concatenation of empty words, a series of redundant statements on what is happening or what will happen in a while. Completely ‘professional’ words, always and only completely ‘professional’ words, never out of context. But he feels exactly like this – out of context. He felt out of context the day he arrived at the Robbery and Homicide, when the Black Hulk case was the first one they had to deal with. He felt out of context when she looked at him, fierce and sassy as ever. He knew it wouldn’t have been easy to earn her trust, and he knows she’s probably not sure yet if he’s a trustworthy subject to have on her side. But inside, he smiles, every time she asks. Because he’s quite sure she cares. That’s what partners do – they care for each other, right? “To serve and protect” is the motto, and this is what he does, although sometimes he feels more protected than actually protecting. She’s a force of nature, that’s a matter of fact. She walks confidently towards her own future, with her chin up and a satisfied grin on her face. Dress her in a long yellow gown, give her a baseball bat, let her smash cars and go tell Beyoncé to be afraid – she could definitely stole Queen B’s spotlight. Let’s be honest, It would be a lie to say he never stood still, staring at her, contemplating the shape of her lips as they press together, almost silently venerating her as an ancient figure - a merciful goddess from a far away place and time. In his mind, she’s not just someone to describe as ‘damn hot’, as he heard other officers comment on her. She’s more than that. She’s way more than that. He’s happy when she teases him, but he’s even happier when she doesn’t say a word. When she looks at him implying something by only moving her eyebrows, or when she let her head lean on the side, and her ponytail moves behind her shoulders. He’s even happier when he can smell her perfume from the other side of the desk. But she’ll probably never know any of this, because all he can answer, every single time she asks those two words, it’s just ‘Yeah’.