Work Text:
He sits in his truck with a scowl on his face, gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are white. He can hear frenetic music in his ear and it’s either giving him a headache or making the one he already has infinitely worse. Of course he can’t see anything, but he saw the dress she was wearing when she went inside and it was worse than anything he ever imagined. Skin tight and sparkly, leaving nothing to the imagination of anyone who happens to glance her way. His jaw tightens and he mutters some choice words at the genius behind this plan - Max.
“Dude, chill,” Simmons’ voice comes through his comm. “I can feel the rage from here.”
“That’s not healthy, Ellis,” Yates’ voice concurs.
Ellis rolls his eyes but makes a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. “Thanks to the peanut gallery for the assistance. I’m doing just fine.”
Yates snorts and he’s tempted to pull the ear piece out, but he needs to hear everything because he’s the exit strategy. If he misses something and she’s in there for one second longer than necessary, he’ll murder someone.
The bass thumps louder in his ear, in all of their ears, and everyone shuts up because if that’s what Max is hearing it means she’s getting closer to the target. “Comm check,” he says, needing to hear her voice, for strictly police-related reasons.
“Check,” she replies, and he lets out a breath. This op is so low risk it’s ridiculous to have this many officers involved, but it’s her first solo job and Li insisted, for a variety of reasons. “Let me do my thing, Charlie,” she continues in her pretend super-serious voice, and Ellis can’t help but smile. The volume in the background increases more than he thinks possible, giving him no choice but to let her do her thing.
“Where can a girl get a mojito around here,” is barely audible over the music, and his jaw clenches all over again. The code phrase means Max made contact with the target and things are in motion. Of course, the things that are in motion make him sick to his stomach because she’s wearing that dress to gain access to a flash drive that has thus far eluded all other attempts. Every undercover cop was made a mile away, which is why Max volunteered herself - no one in a million years would peg her as an officer. He’d objected vehemently, with a list ten pages long of reasons why it wouldn’t work, but in the end Li agreed with her and here they are.
Nobody is talking now; her comms are active because he can hear that godforsaken bass and what he hopes is not rustling. There are no situations in which he wants to hear rustling in his ear when his partner is undercover on a honey trap.
Her laughter cuts through the background noise straight to his gut and he closes his eyes and wants to throw up. He’s imagining a thousand scenarios and he hates them all. He shouldn’t even be here, he clearly can’t be objective, but he’d die before letting Simmons or Yates be her extraction plan.
“You okay, man?” Simmons asks, quietly but everyone on comms can hear him anyway, except probably Max who’s having the time of her life in the club.
“Fine,” Ellis says, his voice tight. No sympathy needed here, just a guy waiting for the signal to get his partner from a job. He leans back against the headrest, keeping a close eye on the entrance across the street, and forces himself to release his grip on the steering wheel. He tosses some of Max’s stakeout snacks in his mouth, but they taste like sand. He burns a hole through the doorway with his eyes, but it doesn’t make anybody come out any faster.
Then, suddenly, the door bursts open and Max is standing there like a beacon in a red dress. He sits up so suddenly he smacks his head on his own windshield, and he’s ready to run towards her with his gun drawn, but she bends down to adjust her shoe strap - the signal for all-clear. When she rises up she has a giant smile on her face and she’s walking calmly, looking both ways before crossing the street and letting the wind blow through her hair. She doesn’t even glance over her shoulder as she makes her way to the truck. He can’t take his eyes off her.
She opens the door and jumps in, a slightly complicated maneuver thanks to the damn dress, and he resists the urge to floor it as soon as she’s buckled in. It’s not his first day on the job despite evidence to the contrary and he knows not to draw attention, however much he wants to.
“I got it,” she says triumphantly, digging the drive out from the front of her dress. His eyes almost follow the movement but he closes them just in time. “Ellis!” Her voice is slightly petulant when he has no response. “I got the drive!”
His knuckles are white on the steering wheel again and he’s staring straight ahead. Her joyful expression from a successful solo mission fades because he’s being an asshole and his stomach twists but he can’t look at her.
“Ellis - ”
“How did you get it,” he asks and he instantly regrets it. First of all, he’s acting like an abusive boyfriend instead of a supportive work partner, and second of all, he doesn’t want to know how she got it.
She physically recoils from the question because it is so ridiculous. “How did I get it?” she repeats, exasperation dripping from every syllable. He looks at her now because he deserves the full weight of her scorn and he knows it. “I got it,” she says, each word clipped in anger, “by using a sleight of hand trick my dad taught me when I was five.”
He can’t even think of what to say; his bones feel loose in his body and his hands fall from the steering wheel into his lap. But she is not finished. “I got it,” she continues, flopping back in the seat and crossing her arms over her chest, “because this absolute moron kept it in his wallet and none of you cops thought to look there.”
“Hey,” comes Simmons’ voice in their ears, and Ellis is so startled he swears because he forgot they’re still on comms.
“Get off comms, you idiots,” says Yates, echoing his thoughts, and it sounds like she’s trying not to laugh.
The icing on the cake comes next: “Great job, Max,” says Li, and Ellis hears disapproval in his tone. “We’ll debrief tomorrow. Keep that drive safe. Good work, everyone.”
There is a soft click followed by silence and Max and Ellis are alone. She stares straight ahead, clearly fuming, and he scratches the back of his neck with his hand as he decides what to do.
“Uh,” he says eventually, cautiously holding out her bag of snacks, “stakeout snack?”
It was not the right thing to do. “What the hell, Ellis?” she explodes, facing him again, fire crackling in her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you? That was embarrassing for me! I’m not a child!”
“I know, Max,” he says. He rubs his face with his hands. “I - ”
“Holy shit, Ellis, we have to go!”
He looks up, startled, and Max is trying to fit herself in the footwell. He scans the surroundings to see what the hell is going on and notices a large man, obviously from the Henchman College of Dropouts, crossing the street towards them with purpose in his step and murder in his eye.
“Give me your shirt,” she hisses, and he whips it off and hands it to her. She pulls it on and it goes to her knees but doesn’t cover the whole dress; she hesitates for a second before tearing the bottom half off and shoving it under the seat. “He’ll recognize me,” she says, a hint of panic in her voice.
Ellis grabs her arm and hauls her across him so she’s wedged between his body and the driver’s side door. He can see the guy in the passenger mirror, checking the interiors of all the cars on the street, and he’s closing in.
“He’ll recognize me,” Max whispers again, pressing herself back against the door. Ellis adjusts himself so she’s practically lying underneath him and he’s blocking as much of her body as he can, but it’s not enough and he knows it.
“Sorry partner,” he says, and her brow furrows before he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. She gasps into his mouth but then her arms are around his neck and she’s pulling him down on her.
Her lips are soft and he can taste the mint from the mojito.
There is a sudden banging on the passenger window and Ellis drags his lips from hers, turning to face the intruder with unfeigned irritation on his face. Max buries her face in his neck.
“I’m looking for someone,” the guy yells, his voice muffled by the glass. “You seen a girl in a red dress?”
Max hides as much of her body as she can beneath his. Ellis glares at the guy. “Look buddy, me and my girl are a little busy, kindly fuck off.”
The guy tries to look around Ellis’ body, shining his flashlight in. Max pulls her bare leg out from underneath them and hooks it around Ellis’ body, pulling him closer. The guy at the window smirks. “No dress here dude,” Ellis says, an edge in his voice, “red or otherwise.”
“Yeah okay, man, keep your pants on.” There is a pause and nobody breathes. “Or don’t!” He laughs at his joke and moves on to the next car in the row.
For the second time in one night he fights the urge to speed off to safety, and rests his head on her shoulder. “We need to wait a bit,” he says quietly, into her neck, and she nods against him. He feels her chest rise and fall rapidly underneath him. His own breathing is unsteady and it’s not just from narrowly avoiding a gunfight in the middle of the street.
He nearly has a heart attack when one of her hands ends up on the back of his head, her fingers gently combing through his hair. Her other hand settles on his back and he feels oddly comfortable, half-lying on top of his partner in his truck. He closes his eyes for a minute and breathes deeply, inhaling the scent of her.
“Max,” he says eventually, because he has to. Her leg is still wrapped around him and she starts tracing patterns on his shirt with her fingers, obviously in case the goon is still watching them. She doesn’t respond but she must be listening because his voice is in her ear. “I’m sorry. I was an idiot. You’re amazing.”
She still doesn’t say anything but her fingers keep moving in his hair and on his back so he goes on talking. “I was… I - I was jealous,” he finally gets out, and there’s an embarrassing crack in his voice.
“I’m a professional,” she says, finally, but the earlier anger is gone from her voice and he’s so relieved.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and he’ll say it again million times. He lifts his head to see her face and she’s looking up at him a gleam in her dark eyes. The hand on the back of his neck pulls him down and her lips brush his again, and his head spins. She makes a small sound in the back of her throat, and a surge of desire flows through his body. He presses himself against her, his hands running along her sides and he can feel the sequins of the dress underneath the borrowed shirt. When his palm makes contact with her bare leg she lets out a soft moan and it hits him straight in his core.
Then, suddenly, she pulls back and he’s hit in the face with the cool night air. “Okay, we can go now,” she says, breathless, and he has never been more confused. “The dude is gone,” she explains like he’s an idiot. Realization filters in through his lust-clouded brain and he sits up straight, a strange sense of loss settling in his gut. Right. The fake make out to fool the henchman. That’s what she was doing.
“Right,” he says aloud, clearing his throat. “Okay, Max, you need to just get back over there and I’ll…”
He glances at her, only briefly because he has some pictures in his mind that are not work-appropriate, and she has a smirk on her face and mischief in her eyes. The fog in his brain begins to lift because he knows that look but he has emotional whiplash and can’t afford to make any more tactical errors. “Max,” he says, slowly, trying to put all his questions into one word, and she very deliberately takes his shirt off her body and tosses it to the floor of the truck. His eyes widen and he swallows hard.
“I knew you were going to be trouble when I saw you sitting with those assholes on that first day,” he finally says, and she laughs and pulls him back down on top of her.