Title: Like a Clockwork

Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: DeWitt/Dominic
Spoilers: vague for 1x08 A Spy in the House of Love
Disclaimer: No, I don`t own one damn right :P

Notes: So, a new story, also thanks to just_drifting_6 for beta, it was appreciated much more than you´ll ever know, Elsa :)

They had been like clockwork, she and Mr Laurence Dominic, ticking in a perfect and polished harmony. Once, she had actually liked that idea. Now it just seemed empty, pathetic, true nonetheless. They were so very excellent at elevating their work to a strictly professional level; they were so brilliant at keeping their distance, and yet they both knew that it was their unspoken friendship, their personal jokes, the unresolved tension, that made the clock tick, that made them bright, always ready and efficient.

It was only natural that crossing boundaries like that would cause harm.

They had been so dangerously reckless, Adelle thought. The elevator hummed softly as it carried her to her office. She held her weight on her right leg the whole time and watched in disgust as the blood made its way through the bandage and blossomed on her silky blouse once again. She didn’t bother switching the lights on as she entered. Slowly, drowsily, she made her way to the minibar, allowed herself a little comfort and sat down.

God, how she hated herself. For more than three years time, she kept rejecting all those little pointy remarks with which they could always make each other smile, and never more than that. All those silly trembles she would feel when they stood too close, and, once again, never more than that...

Obviously, they never, ever slipped and God knows she wished they had.

Just once. It would have been so easy, just another touch away, a touch their professionalism would never allow them to take.

But it would make matters so much easier. Somehow, she thought she wouldn`t need to be as she was right now, slumped in one of her luxurious, soft armchairs, feeling as if she had missed something.

They had been so proud about being professional, and she would willingly mistake lust for loneliness, affection for gratitude... Yes, how grateful she was for Mr Dominic, for his collected, yet sometimes amusingly crude attitude, for his brisk intelligence, with which he had been a perfect partner. And she, she had always been so good at keeping her cool, at standing resolute, at never letting show how much she really needed him, at holding onto her sanity.

...She really was sick of herself.

She lay her head back, staring into the ceiling. She had kicked her high heels off earlier, and now she felt like a child, open and fragile, and tears flew past her ears, cold on her neck and lower...

She would take special care in the future to prevent the crying from becoming a habit, but now, when she finally got brave enough and let all her barriers, all her defenses down for a few blissful moments, it helped. Along with the vodka, it made her comfortably numb, and she found that if she tried a little bit, she was able to suppress all her thoughts for just a while.

And so she watched the lights behind the blinds, listened to the distant sounds of the street and waited for the relief to wash over her. She hoped for it to dissolve in her blood along with the alcohol, to fulfil the dull spots in her mind.

It never did.

Unaware, she kept searching for it, in the sounds of ocean at her apartment in the night, in her sleep, at the bottoms of glasses after empty glasses of alcohol, and sometimes, desperately, between the translucent boxes in the unrelenting cold of the Attic, staring into the steady and taunting blue of his eyes...

And as the clock learned to tick again, in the end she learned to live without it. It cost her many sleepless nights, many hours of working like a machine - a cold, stern machine she had turned into in the process - and many, many litres of various alcoholic beverages, but eventually, she stopped hoping. She refused to think of herself as some kind of pathetic martyr - she brought this all upon herself. As idealistic as she was, she had to realize she had lost all her chances for solace, and a long time ago - the clock she was, she had to keep ticking in a perfect, polished harmony, even if there was a wheel missing, and so there was no time for chasing hopes, for pity, for waiting for relief to come.

It never would, anyway.