Chapter Text
Holder couldn't say that he'd never thought about this. That in his weaker moments, when he was tired of ignoring the nagging pull of desire deep in his belly, that he didn't think about her. What her hair would feel like wrapped around his fingers (it’s plush, soft), whether she would dominate or let him take the lead (she's bossy, of course), what sounds she'd make (she swears and sighs and says his name like it's a blessing and a curse).
Her windows are wide open, the cool pre-dawn air floating over their overheated bodies. His legs are getting tired now, starting to shake. He can feel his toes gripping the nappy berber carpet, his knees pressing into the side of the mattress.
He slides his hands along the milky expanse of her back, from her neck to her hips. He’s really trying to control his pace, to not leave Holder-shaped handprint bruises on her hips. Linden twists to look at him over her shoulder. Her hair is a mess, her eyes are wild.
"Holder," she whispers. "Stop being so polite."
He pulls her back, hard, and she gasps, clutching fistfuls of the sheets and arching her back.
He can't believe this is real.
* * * * *
Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it had always been there, lying in wait for one of them to feel that frission of intensity that sparked between them and act on it.
Well, he had, finally. Or maybe she had. It didn’t matter. If he was lucky - and by lucky, he meant the luckiest son of a bitch to ever walk the earth - they’d bicker about that later, have one of those flirty couple fights about who made the first move. Come on, Linden, it was totally you. Calling me late at night, telling me to come down to some random bar. Actually Holder, it was a restaurant, and it wasn’t MY hand up my dress in public. Pretty sure that was you.
It had happened on a Friday in August, in the middle of a record-setting heatwave that had settled on the city like a thick flannel blanket, robbing them of sleep and energy and sanity.
Summer in Seattle is usually heaven - not too hot, breezy, bright, beautiful. The leaves bloom in big green bursts from the trees, the harbour fills with sailboats, and the sun buffs the city to a high shine. People bask in the sun like lizards at every opportunity, forgetting the ten months of rain they’ve just suffered through. They’re in love with Seattle again. This is the best city on earth! You couldn’t pay me to live anywhere else! And on and on.
But for the past two weeks it had been hitting 95 degrees by mid-morning, and shit was starting to get real. Seattle is temperate, so no one has air conditioning. Those starry-eyed sun lovers were starting to get testy. The violent crime rate was starting to spike.
Like true Seattleites, Holder and Linden each had their own weather obsessions. Linden fancied herself to be some kind of amateur meteorologist. She examined the clouds every morning, developing theories about whether a particular color or density or formation meant it was going to rain. Her track record was shit. Holder preferred to take an almanac approach, googling historical trends. He’d been keeping track of how many sunny days they’d had in a row. He’d update Linden every day, announcing their progress towards drought.
It was day eighteen of the sunny streak. Day eighteen was the day they lost their minds.
Holder had gone in extra early that morning with the intention of airing out their office. The SPD building was a mortar and brick oven with no air circulation, and these days it was filled with red, sweaty men packed into kevlar vests and uniforms that didn’t breathe. The smell was off the charts.
He was lurking under their tiny office window trying to reposition their overworked fan when she came in, looking like any old thing would set her off. The heat made her extra bitchy. He’d told her that a few days ago. It didn’t go well for him.
“Day eighteen, mama!” he called. She jumped, looking around to see where he was.
“What?” she snapped.
He forgot what he’d said for a minute, ogling her covertly from his corner. The punishing temperatures were forcing Linden to adopt a new go-to uniform. It was nothing fancy, just jeans and a t-shirt, but her shirts were tighter that he would have expected. It was worth suffering through the body odor napalm in the office just for that.
He cleared his throat. “Day eighteen, no rain. Come on, Linden. I update you daily. The heat fry your brain, or what?”
She gave no indication she cared. “Did you check on the warrant?” she asked, rifling around the papers on his desk like they were hers. She’d been on him about this warrant for a day and a half. Like he was just sitting around on his ass all day with his feet up.
“No dice. Fucking Judge Newman.”
“I’m going to find him at the courthouse today. He’s being a dick on purpose,” she muttered. She looked back at him, scowling. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to maximize fresh air flow in this stank-ass office. You’re welcome, by the way.”
She ignored him, sitting down at her desk and turning on her computer. He sighed, wandering over and slumping down into his chair.
“Look,” he told her, flicking a paper clip at her. “Don’t go ruffling Newman's feathers. We’ll be lucky if he signs it without you giving him shit. Anyway, we got court today, so you’re not gonna have time to harass him.”
She just raised her eyebrows and gave him that little nod that meant she planned to do the exact opposite of what he just said.
Today was the second day of their testimony in the trial of a low-level mob boss they'd managed to pin for a series of executions last winter. Court made Linden crazy. She couldn’t stand sitting around all day, waiting to be called. Holder was actually looking forward to it, only because the courthouse had air conditioning.
He swiveled on his chair and shot a balled up piece of paper at the garbage can, scoring a perfect 3-pointer. Linden looked at him pointedly across their desks, apparently unamused by his display of athleticism. He knew she was antsy. Their current case was stalled out, and they both knew the warrant was a stretch. They were spinning their wheels.
He watched as she gathered her ponytail up and shoved all her hair through her hair elastic, creating a giant messy ball on the back of her head. She’d been doing that lately, trying to keep her hair as contained as possible. It made her harder to spot in a crowd, without that shock of copper down her back. But he also got to check out the back of her neck this way, which he’d never considered a particularly sexy part of a woman, at least not until now.
He was a mess these days. Thrown right off his game. Partly, it was the heat. But mostly, it was because a few days back, there had been a little...incident. And he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
They’d been questioning a nervous little engineer at the Boeing factory, the colleague of a suspect in their case. Neither of them had really expected to get anything - it was like the fifth time they’d tried - but they were getting desperate. Through some combination of determination, dumb luck, and Jedi mind tricks, Holder had managed to crack him that day. He gave them some information that turned out to be nothing, but at the time it was a huge break, the first they’d had in a long time. Holder was beside himself, dancing around Linden as they walked down the hall and doing a play-by-play of his masterful interrogation. Some nerds in labcoats passed them, looking at him like he was from another planet.
“Seriously,” she told him as they got into the elevator, “your ego won’t fit in here if it gets any bigger.”
“Yeah, whatever Linden. You love watching me work my magic.” She was excited too, he could tell, even though she was pretending not to be. He winked at her, and that squeezed a little laugh out of her.
A guy with a giant mechanical contraption on a cart got on at the next floor, cheerily yelling “excuse me sir!” and forcing everyone to press themselves against the walls. Holder had ended up right next to Linden. He was feeling great, and nothing was better than teasing her, so he casually propped his elbow on the wall above her and gave her a pervy once over, just to get a rise out of her.
And then he realized how close he was to her, and he panicked a bit. Because she wasn’t moving away or glaring at him or any of the other things he expected when he pulled a stunt like that. She was looking right up at him with her eyes wide open, a serene expression on her face. He could smell a spicy-sweet combination of coffee and strawberry shampoo.
Everything in his peripheral vision faded to black, his focus narrowing to the woman in front of him. He was vaguely aware of the elevator dinging through floors on its way down, people edging around the huge machine to get on and off, oblivious to the moment happening in the corner.
Holder and Linden stayed locked in a staring contest, pushing it from unexpected to intense, although neither of them had moved. Looking at her like this was against the rules. Her eyes were magnetic. He was intoxicated by her. The elevator swayed just a bit at one stop, and his fingers brushed her bare arm. He caught a flare of something in her eyes that shot a jolt of electricity right through his guts.
Her gaze started drifting to his mouth, over and over, and he realized she was thinking about kissing him - and then the doors opened and the guy with the machine was backing out yelling “thank you sir!” and Holder was on the opposite side of the elevator like it was a race and his life was at stake. He couldn’t look at her now, ironically, and rest of the ride down felt like the longest ten seconds of his life.
When the doors finally opened to the lobby, he made some awkward attempt at chivalry by motioning for her to get out first. She walked by him slowly, her little smile back in place, but slightly different now, like she knew something about him she didn’t know a few minutes ago.
Since then, he’d been extra careful. He stayed on his side of the car, he didn’t touch her, he tried not to let the teasing go too far. She made it hard. A few times he’d caught her staring at him with this look, and his heart had practically stopped. So he bottled that shit right up, because he had a feeling it would be uncontrollable if they let it out.
* * * * *
He let Linden go hustling off in search of Judge Newman when they got to the courthouse, completely uninterested in getting his balls handed to him. There was no way they were getting that warrant. It was questionable at best.
He stretched out in a chair in the lobby and basked in the delicious air conditioning. Outside, heat shimmered off the pavement, making everything look slightly warped. People came through the front doors in droves, looks of complete relief on their shiny red faces. All these poor bastards in suits, he thought, lifting his t-shirt off his stomach for a minute to get some air under it.
He wondered idly how many new bodies they were going to pick up if this heat stuck around. There was a charge to the air, a subtle current of barely contained insanity. He could feel it. People were about to start losing their shit, doing crazy things. Like eye-fucking their partners in elevators.
Speak of the devil, he thought as he spotted her stomping towards him, a stormy look on her face. She slowed in front of him, and he could almost see the cartoon steam coming out of her ears. He nudged her leg with his foot.
"We'll find another way. Always do."
She puffed out a frustrated sigh and sat next to him. "What time is it?"
He closed his fingers around her forearm, lifting her wrist up into the air. "See, this is called a watch, and since you wear one - "
She yanked her arm away and turned to glare at him. He couldn't keep a smile off his face. She made it too easy sometimes.
"Linden!" someone called from the front doors. They both turned, and Holder's eyes narrowed as he tried to place the guy coming towards them. Thick rimmed glasses, slicked back hair, Goodfellas-looking son of a bitch.
Oh snap, he thought. That little FBI boy toy of hers. Organized crime. Honestly, he had forgotten this guy existed.
But she obviously hadn’t, he realized, watching with growing irritation as her face transformed into a huge smile. What the fuck, he thought.
She stood up, and Holder suppressed a gag when the guy caught her up in an awkward hug. Linden was as far from a hugger as you could get. He was glad to see she looked uncomfortable about it.
"Corey, you remember my partner, Holder?" she asked, still smiling.
Holder stood slowly for the obligatory handshake, applying more pressure than necessary. Corey. Total douchebag name.
"Hey, nice to see you," Corey said. "You guys here for the Mancini trial too?"
"Yep," Holder replied, before Linden could say anything. "Livin that organized crime life."
Corey looked at him blankly, then moved to catch up with Linden, who had already started walking down the hall to their courtroom, probably to avoid this awkward fucking scene. She looked back briefly to see if Holder was following too, and he just raised his eyebrows at her like really? This guy?
She shot back a little frown and walked on. He trailed behind, listening to Corey talk to her about the trial. He suddenly felt murderous. For no good reason. For all he knew, she hadn’t seen this guy in a year and a half, since he’d helped them with the Larsen case. But it still raised his hackles, and that was a problem in itself.
All he wanted now was to get called first so he could testify and get the fuck out of there so he didn’t have to watch her look at Corey with her face soft and her guard down. The way she sometimes looked at him.
* * * * *
By the time they broke for the day, Holder was in the shittiest of moods. He’d had to endure Corey’s boring-ass stories and smarmy little smiles for hours. He’d watched him and Linden talk for a solid 20 minutes at lunch, looking way too friendly. He hated himself for being such a little bitch about it. He wasn’t that guy, that lovestruck teenager hoping his first crush would notice him. Even when Corey left, he couldn’t shake his foul mood.
As if that wasn’t enough, the courtroom’s air conditioning had quit midway through Holder’s testimony, the system grinding to a halt with an audible screech. The judge wanted to keep going, so Holder sat on the stand and tried not to think about the fact that even his balls were sweating. Linden looked sorry for him at that point.
She tried to grab him as he was leaving, but he kept walking, desperate to get home and shower. “You headed home?” she asked.
“Fuck yeah, I’m stewing in sweat here. Peace out, partner.”
She looked at him funny as he passed her, with her head tilted just a bit like she didn’t quite understand what he was saying. As he stood in the shower, being doused with blissfully cool water, he wondered whether she’d wanted him to stay. But to do what? Hang out? As close as they were, they weren’t really on that level.
But he couldn’t ignore that things had been shifting between them, even before the elevator incident. He could feel it in the way they sometimes lingered in the office after they were done for the day. He could feel it in the way he’d grown bolder in touching her, just casually - a poke in the shoulder, a hand resting briefly on her back - and she didn’t seem to mind. He could feel it when he looked up and caught her staring at him with her eyes just slightly narrowed, like she was trying to figure something out.
He was too tired to think about it tonight though, drained from court and the heat and suppressing a desire to kill Corey all day.
He had three fans at home, and he set them all up in the living room. He turned off all the lights and ate leftover pizza in the dark. He watched a documentary about stingrays and moved as little as possible to avoid breaking out in a sweat again. By about 10:00 he was half-asleep and trying to work up the energy to move from the couch to his bed when his phone rang.
He groaned loudly, fumbling for it on his coffee table. “Holder,” he barked into it, scrubbing his hands over his face to try to shed the exhaustion.
“Hey, it’s me,” Linden replied. “Do you...um, what are you doing?”
"Just chillin. For real. You should see the setup I got over here with these fans, yo. It's like air conditioning, but windier."
She didn't say anything. He could hear loud voices and music in the background.
“Where are you? We get a call?" he asked.
“Oh...no, I just couldn’t stand how hot my apartment was, so I went out.”
Holder sat up straighter on the couch, his mind starting to put the pieces together. This was a social call, he realized. Not the first time, but definitely not a common occurrence. And very interesting, considering recent developments.
“Sarah Linden, out on the town,” he teased, standing up and stretching. “Are you gettin some digits, or what?”
“Oh, tons.” He could hear the smile in her voice. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to see it in person.
He took a deep breath, then went all in, wincing like he was ripping off a bandaid. “Where you at? Want me to come down?”
There was a pause, just long enough for him to start second-guessing everything, before she gave him the name of a little restaurant near her apartment. "But I don't want to bother you if you - "
"It's all good, it's not like I can sleep in this heat either," he lied. With his scientific fan triangulation he could actually sleep fine most nights.
"Okay," she said finally. "I'm on the patio."
She hung up before he could say anything else.