Disclaimer: If I owned or was making money from any aspect of Criminal Intent whatsoever, we would have gotten the goddamn eighth season episodes back in November like they motherfucking promised us.

He takes. She gives.

This is who they are.

He turns away from the door and kisses her, hard and desperate and needing, hands clutching at her shoulders and backing her up into the counter because this is who he is, this is what he does, he takes and takes until there's nothing left and then he takes more because he is near-exploding with hurt and hunger like raging fires that devour everything in their path. And she lets him kiss her, because even though they've never done this before this is who she is and this is what she does, he hurts and she consoles, he breaks and she sweeps up the shards, he demands and she surrenders, she gives in and gives herself.

She's so tired of this. Of being the one who has to fix everything. She's so tired of this but she can't walk away because at some point that she can't even remember anymore she lent him so much of herself that they fused together and walking away would rip them both into bloody pieces.

He aches and she surrenders, letting her body go limp as he tries to wrest comfort from her lips, his scorching hers, the weight of him pressing into her. So many pieces of herself and her life she's handed to this man over the years, pieces of her loyalty and her trust and her career and her love and her mental and emotional health, and she thinks almost idly to herself as his tongue scrapes across the roof of her mouth that it was inevitable that one day she would offer up her body as well. The next logical progression. His left hand brushes the side of her breast and his right drifts down to squeeze her ass, and suddenly she sees the rest of the evening, the rest of her life, spread out before her like a flow chart, the sex and the tears and the sacrifices she will make for him over and over and over again until he owns every bit of her and she is just a tenant renting his property.

And it fucking pisses her off.

She kisses him back, hard and angry, because she's earned the goddamn right to motherfucking enjoy this, she is going to own this, this is hers. She is not going to let him take her, she is going to take this, she is going to take him. She grips his biceps and slams him into the wall, jamming her tongue down his throat and feeling nothing but satisfaction as his head jerks back in surprise and smacks into the bricks. Her lips are bruising his and her hand is down his pants and fuck regrets and fuck tomorrow and fuck the whole world because he is going to follow her lead for just this once, goddamnit—

He opens his mouth to say something and she bites his lip to shut him the hell up and tastes blood, and it feels so motherfucking good to make him hurt like he's made her hurt, to consume part of him the way he's tried to consume every part of her, and she rips at his clothing and wrests him to the ground.

He surrenders.

She fucks him like a hurricane, hard and fast and her nerve endings are on fire everywhere she touches him and they're one great big messy tangle of limbs and emotions and sweat and she clings to the moment because it's nowhershererealrealrealtriumphant, their hips crashing together and pain/ecstasy/skin slickwetsliding over skin and his mouth opening and closing and his eyes wide and she did this to him, is doing this to him, and his hands say please help me and her hands say fuck you and go to hell and IhateyouIhateyou(you'remine) IHATEYOU and she marks him, claims every inch of his skin with her nails and her teeth, clenches him tight between her legs and makes every part of him hers because she is hers and not his, not his not his not his not his—

The universe explodes, and when it comes back together it's different, the pieces rearranged. The kitchen lights are obscene in their brightness. The room echoes with their breaths. His skin sticks to hers, and around them, around their little bubble of spent need and loss and fury and relief, life is somehow still going on.

Maybe this is who they will be.