Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were few things worse than being a woman in a male dominated field. Being a gay woman in a male dominated field that just so happened to be military law enforcement… well, that about topped the list.

She usually did a pretty good job of hiding it, dating (or, at least, pretending to date) guys who cared more about the romance than the sex. Not constantly, just enough to keep up the ruse. They were few and far between, but she had managed to find a couple. If nothing else, it meant she usually had fresh flowers in her kitchen a few times a month. Since Eddie, though, she hadn’t seen anyone.

If she was being honest, it was hard to force it. The entire team had been through so much these past months, and she just couldn’t make it worse for herself.

That being said, people were starting to get suspicious. Namely, Vera.

Vera Strickland was all about nightlife, and more often than not, Lala went along with her. From rowdy base bars to chain nightclubs across the border, the two of them had been nearly everywhere. Vera gave her some time after Eddie. A cool-down period, she had called it. It had been almost a month after the end of that relationship before she’d pointed out a guy all the way at the other end of the bar. She tried playing ignorant, but all that got her was a blatant wink and a too-forceful nudge.

Saying no the first time was acceptable. Expected, even. Last night had been the eighth. She didn’t miss the way her friend’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Lala had called it a night soon after.

Tonight, she’d had enough. It was a stormy combination of stress, frustration, and a few other things she didn’t care to name that led her out of Camp Pendleton, across the border, and past the usual stop of Tijuana into Rosarito. Rosarito wasn’t far from Tijuana, but it was far enough and small enough that she knew she wouldn’t encounter anyone else from the base.

She parked her truck outside her favourite bar, shrugged off her leather jacket, and went inside.

The air inside the club stuck to her skin like glitter, all hot and movement and passion. Lala manoeuvred her way over the the bar, sliding between bodies, and managed to signal the bartender for a beer. She downed half of it the moment it was in front of her. She had no need to be completely sober right now anyway, this was always better tipsy. Her eyes scanned the crowd, only slightly less intently than she would for a case. She wasn’t without a reason for being here.

Ten minutes in and she had a girl’s waist in her hands and hair brushing her face. The place was packed, and the average blood alcohol level in the room was high enough that nobody payed any attention to the blood rushing through Lala’s face, or the way her right thumb hooked into the belt loop of this girl’s jean shorts, or the way her other hand was drifting higher up her back, dragging the thin fabric of her shirt up with it.

Moments flashed through her brain, like what they say about your life flashing before your eyes right before you die. The woods behind the cabins at her summer camp when she was ten. The girl she had regular study dates with in high school. The dark back entrance to her residence her first and only year of university, and they way nobody could see into it if they weren’t really searching. The apartment she rented sporadically when she wasn’t training with the Marines, very conveniently in an artsy area where nobody looked twice. The last time she found herself in a girl’s apartment at two in the morning, and how she didn’t sleep at all. It had been way too long since that night.

Lala let herself sink into it all for a minute, the feeling of lips on her neck, hands in her hair, legs trying to press between hers, before she took control again.

There were few things Lala liked hearing better than the little gasps of air when a girl found her back against a wall that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago. She loosened her grip for a moment, checking her eyes to make sure she was okay, before letting her own body take over, kissing her collarbone, her neck, moving higher, just slowly enough for the girl beneath her to bite out half-words of frustration. Lala’s hands matched the pace of her mouth, drifting across her stomach, her waist, up her back, into her hair. When her lips reached her jaw, she paused.

“Name,” she breathed, voice dusky with the effects of the beer and this. Hearing a noise of non-comprehension, she repeated a little louder, “What’s your name?”

“Natalia,” came the breathless reply.

“Natalia,” Lala echoed, hovering just above her mouth. “How ‘bout we get out of here, Natalia?”

Chapter Text

Four. That was the number of Friday nights turned Saturday mornings they had before she asked.

She had been dreading the question. That dread had contributed (in no small part) to her early departures, waiting just long enough for a few sentences of conversation before she pulled her clothes back on and left the motel room to start the drive north.

This time, though, she didn’t manage to leave quits fast enough. In the few extra moments it took to locate her t-shirt, the question had been asked.

“So when are you planning on taking me for a proper date?”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want it. It was that hookups are much easier to hide than girlfriends.

She made a half-hearted excuse about work schedules as she all but ran out the door, still wrangling her left arm through its sleeve.

She couldn’t dodge the question forever. She couldn’t even dodge it for a week.

A sign reading “10 miles to Oceanside” registered in her peripheral vision, the first thing she’d seen since leaving Rosarito that wasn’t a spaced-out blur of colour that seemed much duller than it was on any of the previous trips.

All she had seen since leaving that hotel room was a set of golden scales, with danger on one side and happiness on the other. She couldn’t figure out which was heavier.

Her radio rang out. Dead petty officer. She hit the gas. NIS Special Agent Lala Dominguez was always first on scene.

-

Her excuse may have been half-hearted, but it wasn’t a lie. Work was hectic, and she got called in at all hours, evidenced by the fact that their Saturday case had turned into a Thursday night arrest. Or, maybe it was Friday morning by now. Time had long since become a construct, one that she had given up trying to track.

She managed an hour long nap in the bullpen around lunch, the anxiety rattling around in her stomach rendering her mostly unhelpful in the after-action reports the team needed to finish. Her mind was on Natalia, and only Natalia.

Feeling completely drunk after only one beer. Eyes dilated beyond biological necessity. Awareness of every muscle in her body. A hundred decibels and hearing nothing. Three in the morning and feeling completely awake. Blood rushing to every part of her. Waking up with someone else’s long, dark hair strewn across her chest.

Franks had called her a workplace distraction once, but she was sure Natalia was more of a distraction on a good day than Lala could ever be.

She put down her pen, with more force than strictly necessary. Hookups might be easier to hide than girlfriends, but she would be damned if she took the coward’s way out. She picked up her jacket and keys, and, with a muttered excuse to Randy, ran out of the office.

She met Natalia in their usual place, pressed up against the sticky walls of the bar, next to an out-of-use jukebox filled with Tracy Chapman and Chavela Vargas and Bob Dylan. She savoured the heady smoke and vibrations of guitar strings, the slight sting of peppermint lip balm, the fingernails on her stomach. She let it continue for a minute, threading her fingers through Natalia’s hair, before she forced herself to pull away.

Taking in the dilated eyes and mussed hair in front of her was almost enough to make her knees buckle, but she knew what she needed to do. She took in a quick breath and steeled herself before asking, hope and fear painfully audible, “Dinner?”