A Romantic Gesture (Part 3)

This is to make up for the last two chapters. Because I know it was a bit rough there for a moment.

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Donovan sent off his report, grabbed his satchel, and headed to Carter's desk. The day's long hours hung off him and all he wanted to do was see her. But when he got to her desk, he found it empty. He made a slow circle but knew he wouldn't see her, her bag was gone.

"Have you seen agent Owens?" Donovan asked an agent one desk over.

"She left about thirty minutes ago," she said.

Donovan thanked her and walked to the elevator, sending a message off to Carter as he went. By the time he hit the parking garage, he'd received a quick response.

"Had something to do. I'll see you at your place for dinner."

Despite being tired, Donovan smiled and pocketed his phone. Though the drive wasn't long by any standards, he felt like it took ages. It had been only a month since Carter and he had gotten back together and seeing her always made his day better. He could all too clearly remember the months of not being able to see her or even talk to her.

When he opened the door to his apartment, he expected to find her waiting but it lay empty. He stepped inside and something crinkled underfoot. He bent down and picked up a folded piece of paper. On it was written a simple note in Carter's handwriting.

When you're ready, come up to the roof.

Hurriedly, Donovan exchanged his suit for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and raced up the stairwell. He opened the door to the finished roof and stopped. Laid out on the wooden deck was a tablecloth with takeout bags ready and waiting. Lanterns circles the set up, glowing dimly, the evening only just beginning. Standing in the center of it all was Carter.

Her hair hung loosely over her shoulders and she wore the Marine t-shirt he'd brought her in college and an old pair of Navy Seal sweatpants. Somehow seeing her like that was more attractive to him than if she'd been wearing a stunning dress with her hair done up.

"What's this?" he asked, approaching her.

She swept her hands out. "I believe it's what people call a romantic gesture."

Donovan laughed and kissed her, relishing the feeling of her lips.

"Why?" he asked as they took spots on the edge of the tablecloth.

"This last month we've been working so much on our cases that I figured we needed a night where we weren't pouring over crime scene photos and analyzing psychopaths."

"How'd you think up this?"

"I called Maddy and asked her what to do. She said nice dinner, somewhere romantic, and wear something attractive. This is what you got."

Donovan cupped her face and kissed her again. "Remind me to thank Maddy later."

"You think this outfit fits that description?"

"Yes I do."

Carter playful pushed him. "Hopefully that makes up for my lack of cooking."

She set before him a styrofoam container and Donovan knew from the smell exactly what it was.

"You went to my favorite Mexican food place," he said.

"It's better than me burning your dinner."

"I would still eat your burned dinner."

"I wouldn't. Now eat, it's already getting cold."

Donovan dug into the food, feeling like he always did while eating Mexican food like he'd been transported back to his childhood.

"How's your case going?" he asked, once he'd finished off half the container.

"I don't want to talk about our cases, the FBI, or anything involving work tonight. I want to talk about you, me, us, anything other than work."

Donovan agreed with this. They'd both been intense the past half year about work. Mainly since they weren't together, their work-life seemed to jump in to fill that void. They needed to rebalance, even if those months meant people were taking notice of them at the Bureau.

"What's your most embarrassing moment?" Carter asked.

Donovan raised his eyebrows. "That's what you want to know."

She shrugged. "It's a place to start and something I've never known."

Donovan hesitated since the moment was truly embarrassing. Carter grinned and nudged his shoulder.

"Come on. It can't be that bad."

"Worse, actually."

"Now you have to tell me."

For a second, Donovan thought of saying a different moment. He ran his hands through his hair and Carter watched him with a taunting glint in her eyes, daring him to share. When she looked at him like that it was impossible to say no.

"Okay, when I was seven, I was a bit of a punk since I was trying to make up for how small and young I was. Not a good idea with older brothers and a Marine base. One night, as I was heading back from my mom's office to the house, a group of cadets pretended to ambush me, at my brothers' request. They scared me so much that..." He shifted. "I...wet myself."

Carter burst out laughing and fell over. Donovan felt his face flush even as he enjoyed hearing her laugh.

"I told you it was worse."

"I'm sorry," Carter said, though her smile made the apology less sincere. "Did that humble you?"

"A bit, mostly it made me determined to get revenge. I didn't because my brothers were smarter but it definitely made me want to be stronger and smarter. What about you? Most embarrassing moment."

"It's going to disappoint you because it doesn't compare to the awfulness of yours."

"Tell me anyway and I'll laugh just the same."

She shoved him and he laughed at her.

"It might be nothing to you, but in sixth grade, the whole class had to participate in the spelling bee or at least the preliminary round. I was the first one to misspell a word. Patriot. I got the i and the o mixed up. No one said anything about it, but I felt completely stupid after so many kids hadn't messed up."

She played with her food, pushing around the rice.

"When I got home I cried about it." A small smile appeared. "Captain spent all night with me going over the spelling bee words until I knew them all. He told me it was okay to feel stupid at times, that it would happen, but I never had to stay that way."

Carter stopped talking, her face turning pensive. Donovan waited, sensing a shift in her thoughts. Knowing that brought him quiet happiness. He could read her again.

"Looking back it's strange to realize how much Captain was the support I always needed. My mother was there for a lot of things, but when I was hurt, he was the one I went to."

She lifted her head and gazed out on the city but Donovan could tell she wasn't seeing the buildings starting to light up with families home for the day.

"Have you ever put together why she left after fourteen years of being a mom?"

After a long second, Carter looked at him. There was sadness in her eyes but something else he hadn't seen before: peace.

"From a profiler's viewpoint, I think I do understand it. It was her age. She'd turned thirty-two. I think she realized that the life she'd dreamed of in college was not going to happen unless she went after it like she'd planned. So she did."

No matter how much time had passed, Donovan couldn't imagine the pain being easier to handle. His mom meant the world to him, trying to picture her leaving one day felt gut-wrenching.

"I'm sorry."

Carter nodded but looked away. "It's interesting looking back on life and being able to see things in a different perspective."

At her musing tone, Donovan stretched out on his back, placing an arm behind his head, watching her. He didn't care about what they talked about, he simply loved hearing her voice. Who cared if their conversation topics were of a heavier quality than romantic ones.

"Such as?" he asked.

"High school mostly," she said with a soft chuckle. "I walked around with this 'I'm not like other girls' kind of attitude when that wasn't really the case."

Donovan pointedly stared at her and she rolled her eyes.

"Okay, yes I'm not sure the other girls were assembling guns at night, had punching bags in their rooms, or went through training courses with Secret Service agents on the weekend but..."

She shrugged and toyed with the edge of the tablecloth. "We all used words like weapons, trying to shield ourselves from being hurt. We were trying to get through high school the best way we knew how. We were all trying to figure out who we were at the time.

"I wish I could have seen that just because they were better dressed than me didn't make us two different species. That my lack of style didn't make me less than, even if I felt that way. Even if I felt the lack of a mother every time they approached me looking perfect so I reacted."

She shook her head and sighed.

"But it's easy to be retrospective at twenty-one when I've started to deal with my issues. Back then all I ever felt was anger, hurt, and abandonment. I wasn't really in the right headspace to see the world clearly."

She sounded so calm that Donovan felt proud of how far she'd come. Though he couldn't take credit, she'd done the work all on her own.

Behind her the sun set, haloing her as the wind teased her loose hair. Donovan felt struck by how beautiful she was. This girl who'd chosen to not leave him but make the effort to talk to someone so she could come back to him. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve this amazing girl.

"Why me, Carter?"

"Why you what?"

"Why decide to be with me? I barely talked to you the first week we met. I pushed you to share, to open up. You could have punched me and been on your way."

Laughing, she leaned forward and ran her hands through his hair, eyes locked with his.

"Are you regretting choosing to befriend me?"

He kissed her, pulling her close.

"Never, because I know how amazing you are. But I don't know why I warranted your attention."

She straightened, still looking down at him.

"Part of it was the mystery surrounding you and Link when I first met you. But the other part... Do you remember how you looked at me the first time we met?"

Donovan did, he was memorizing her face and reading her body language. As well as trying to figure out why someone as attractive as her was working to hide it.

"It was calculating," Carter said. "It wasn't sexual in any way. It was like you were assessing whether I was carrying a gun or were memorizing my face. That one look was completely different than other looks I'd gotten over the course of my high school career. Most were dismissive, others sexual, a few curious. But not with you."

Carter took his hand and intertwined their fingers, running her thumb over his palm.

"Beyond that, you saw me and cared enough to keep seeing me, even when I put up my defenses."

"Because I saw a girl worth seeing." He kissed the back of her hand. "Was I really the only one?"

"You were the only one that I appreciated being seen by. There was one other guy whose attention I didn't like having."

This piqued Donovan's curiosity. "You never told me about him. What happened?"

"It was during sophomore year. I was in a senior math class. His name started with a J, Jackson, Jamie or something." She paused, her brows pinching together in thought. "Looking back on it I can see how there were so many red flags that he had a predator mentality."

"What?"

Carter merely shrugged like it should have been obvious to her. "Yeah, he pushed past my first 'no'. Inserted himself into my life, calling, texting when I hadn't given him my number. Singled me out with a rose on my locker. Flattered me when I already made it clear I didn't want him. Pushed past my boundaries after I told him no on countless occasions. Isolated me. Until the point he had me pinned against a wall and completely vulnerable."

Donovan shot up. "What? Are you serious?"

Anger flared through him and he curled his fists as if he could punch the past. Carter touched his cheek.

"You can breathe. He's not here," she teased. "I broke his nose before he could do anything and Captain got him expelled from the school."

Donovan slowly let out his breath and relaxed, though he still wanted to pummel this Jackson, Jamie guy. But it was in the past and Carter was in the present. He cupped her face.

"I'm sorry you had to face that," he said.

"You want to know what one of the hardest parts of it was?"

He caressed her cheek, his gaze locked with hers.

"It was feeling alone. Feeling like no one could see that this guy's attention wasn't flattering it was harassing. I wish I had told Captain, Maggie, or even a female teacher.... But hindsight, I guess."

She straightened and smiled as if brushing off the past. "What about you? When did you feel the most alone?"

Though he knew Carter wanted to move on from the topic, he didn't want to. He wanted to ask more about this guy, find out who he was. But that wouldn't help anything. What could help was being here with her. So he accepted the change.

He laid back down and took her hand, holding it to his chest. She softened and he knew she'd wanted to leave the past where it belonged.

"It would be easy to think it was the first month that I was assigned to Link," Donovan said. "But actually it wasn't because my brothers messaged and called me so much during that time, constantly wanting updates.

"It was about four months in. The reality of me being gone had settled in, Brock was away at Quantico, both Clint and James were focused on college. That was when I was the loneliest." He smiled up at the sky. "I used to call my mom and ask her to put the phone nearby just so I could hear her moving about, talking."

"She told me about that."

He looked at her. He wanted to steal a picture of how she looked right then, backlit and gazing down at him with such an affectionate expression. An expression she rarely showed unless it was just them two.

"These last few months were the second loneliest time for me," he said. "Despite having my brothers and coworkers, not having you around felt miserable. Not being able to talk to my best friend. Not being able to see you. To work near you."

"I know how to feel. I felt the same way." She hesitated. "That's why I had an idea."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I wanted to approach the Director and request a transfer to your team."

Donovan rose, a smile overtaking his face.

"You'd want to work with me?"

The idea filled him up with happiness and excitement.

"What I want is to become your partner and we form our own team, but we're still new enough I'm not sure they would let us do that."

"Being on the same team would be a start."

He could imagine how easy it would be working with her. They knew each other like no one else, they thought the same way, and where they differed it only served to improve their work because it made them analyze everything from each angle.

"It would." Carter kissed him. "Who knows maybe we'd become legends." She grinned at him. "We'd be an unstoppable couple."

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How's the water, fishy! ๐ŸŸ๐Ÿฌ

(Just so you know all you got to do is just keep swimming)

Quick! Dive into those thoughts and find me some buried treasure! Or you know, general penny worth treasure. ๐Ÿ’ญ๐Ÿ’ฌ๐Ÿ—ฏ

Penny cause you know ๐Ÿ˜ penny for your thoughts!

Whatever ๐Ÿ™ˆ I don't care if I'm not amusing to you anymore, if my oddness is a routine you've read before. That doesn't crush my soul or anything. ๐Ÿ˜ข Yup, totally fine.

I feel like I suck at writing romantic chapters. They're never very cutesy. Though Carter and Donovan aren't that way so maybe that's way.

What is the most romantic thing you could see them doing? ๐Ÿค”

Who knows, maybe I'll write one of your suggestions. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ

Also if you want to read about that J guy Carter talking about then you'll find him in Unwanted Attention.

Vote, comment, follow!

Speaking of romantic, here is a song written for Carter and Donovan by a reader! Enjoy!

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

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