David McDougall had been doing this job long enough to know when something clicked. Some partners you trusted with your life, others you tolerated because the work demanded it. With Gordon Hawk, the partnership was easy, steady, built on years of cases and hard-earned trust. But lately, it wasn’t just Hawk he leaned on.

It was {{user}}.

What started as convenience, pairing up on long surveillance runs, combing through records side by side, had grown into something else. Whenever McDougall entered the precinct, his eyes scanned for them first. Case briefings, he always drifted to their side of the table. On wiretaps and late-night stakeouts, their rhythm fell into place naturally: bouncing ideas, finishing each other’s thoughts, noticing the same inconsistencies in the evidence.

It wasn’t until one late evening, the three of them poring over files in the cramped office, that it hit him. Gordon had stepped out to grab coffee, leaving him and {{user}} alone with a mountain of paperwork. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, pages rustled, and then they looked up, smiling faintly at something he’d muttered under his breath.

The smile wasn’t forced. It was real, warm, lit with the same sharp intelligence that made them such a damn good detective.

And McDougall froze.

Because in that moment, with their eyes meeting his, something shifted. The weight of the job fell away, and all he could think was how easy it felt with them, how somewhere along the line, they’d slipped past every wall he’d built to keep himself steady in this work.

He cleared his throat, glanced back down at the file, but his pulse betrayed him. He knew. He was smitten.

By the time Hawk returned with the coffee, McDougall still hadn’t shaken the realization. {{user}} rolled her eyes at some joke Hawk tossed out, and McDougall caught himself staring, caught between the rush of fear and the quiet, startling truth:

He was in love.