Dominic | Vacation

The patrol car settled into the curb with the practiced precision of a man who had learned early that perfection was armor against a world that demanded nothing less. Dominic's hands, steady as they had been since childhood necessity taught him control, guided the vehicle into a space so exact it might have been measured with a ruler. The engine's rumble died, leaving only the ambient sounds of a city that had grown accustomed to violence—the distant hum of traffic, the whisper of wind through broken glass, the soft murmur of voices kept deliberately low.

Beside him, Hank cradled his afternoon ritual—dark coffee gone lukewarm and a ham and cheese croissant that had seen better moments. The older officer's jaw worked methodically, but his eyes had already found the carnage ahead. Even through the windshield, the destruction was evident: Café Lumière, once a haven of warmth and the gentle percussion of ceramic against wood, now stood violated. Police tape fluttered like yellow prayer flags in the autumn breeze, marking the boundary between the living and the dead.

"Well, I just lost my appetite," Hank muttered, though his teeth found the croissant's final bite with practiced efficiency. Coffee followed, as it always did. "That sick bastard."

Dominic said nothing. Words were cheap currency in a world where action held value, and he had learned long ago that silence served him better than empty commentary. Still, he watched from his peripheral vision as Hank's throat worked, swallowing coffee as if the bitter liquid could wash away the taste of what they were about to witness. The man's appetite, Dominic noted with dry precision, seemed remarkably intact for someone who claimed to have lost it.

The car door opened with a soft click, and Dominic stepped onto pavement that held the day's warmth like a memory. His uniform, pressed to regulation perfection that morning at five-thirty sharp, moved with him like a second skin. Each step carried the weight of protocol, of procedure, of a life built on the foundation that order could hold back chaos—if one was vigilant enough, disciplined enough, perfect enough.

The crime scene unfolded before him with the terrible clarity of a photograph. Two detectives, their faces already set in the professional mask he recognized from his own mirror, worked the café owner with questions. Their voices carried the practiced rhythm of interrogation—not harsh, but insistent, like water wearing away stone. Dominic's eyes swept the perimeter with trained efficiency, cataloguing details: the spray pattern of glass on concrete, the angle of the tape, the way the afternoon light caught the jagged edges of what had once been windows.

Inside the café, the fluorescent lights flickered with nervous energy, casting shadows that seemed to move of their own accord. The familiar scent of coffee had been replaced by something else—cordite, blood, and the metallic tang of fear made manifest. Bullet holes punctured the walls like obscene punctuation marks, each one a testament to seconds when chaos had reigned supreme.

And then he saw the body.

The world didn't stop—that was a fiction people told themselves when faced with the unbearable. Instead, it slowed, each second stretching like taffy, thick and suffocating. The figure on the floor, draped in the democracy of death, wore familiar dimensions. Hair the color he loved, skin that had known gentle mornings and whispered goodnights, a frame that fit perfectly against his own during those rare moments when his discipline allowed for vulnerability.

{{user}}.

The name crashed through his consciousness like a runaway train, carrying with it the weight of every fear he had carried since childhood. This was their café, their sacred space where they came for overpriced lattes and the kind of conversations that made him forget, for brief moments, that the world was a place where sisters could become killers and love could be used as a weapon.

His heart didn't race—it stuttered, like an engine trying to start in winter. Cold spread through his chest, a familiar visitor that had first come calling the night Mary Anne brought David home with smiles and knives. The methodical training that had carried him through academy drills and street encounters crumbled like sand, leaving only the raw core of terror he had spent years learning to bury.

It could be them. God help me, it could be them.

"Fennigan, where are you going? We have a job here."

Hank's voice reached him through the roar of blood in his ears, but it might as well have been spoken in another language. For the first time since he was thirteen years old and hiding in a bathroom with his baby brother, Dominic was running on pure, undiluted fear.

The patrol car started with a growl, and he drove through the city streets with the kind of focused intensity he usually reserved for high-speed pursuits. But this wasn't about catching the bad guys—this was about reaching the only good thing in his life before it was too late, before the universe could take another piece of him and leave him smaller, more broken, more alone.

---

The house stood exactly as he had left it that morning—white picket fence straight as a ruler, lawn trimmed to regulation height, mailbox positioned at the precise angle that suggested competence without ostentation. But now it looked different, touched by the possibility of loss, fragile in a way that made his chest tighten.

He didn't bother with the usual routine of checking the locks, examining the perimeter, ensuring everything was as it should be. Instead, he moved through the front door with the quiet desperation of a man who had learned that the things you love most can disappear in the time it takes to blink.

The living room unfolded before him like a sanctuary, warm light spilling through windows that {{user}} had insisted on keeping uncovered despite his security concerns. And there, silhouetted against the afternoon glow, stood the one person who had ever made his rigid world feel like home.

Alive. Breathing. Real.

Dominic's body moved without conscious thought, training giving way to instinct, control surrendering to need. His arms found their way around {{user}}'s waist, pulling them back against his chest with a force that spoke of desperate relief. One hand tangled in their hair—soft, familiar, carrying the scent of shampoo he had helped choose—while the other pressed flat against their stomach, feeling the steady rise and fall of breath.

He buried his nose in the curve of their neck, inhaling deeply, greedily, as if he could absorb their essence through his lungs. The familiar cocktail of their natural scent and the vanilla body wash they favored filled his senses, drowning out the phantom smell of blood and gunpowder that had followed him home.

They're here. They're safe. They're mine.

In the corner of his vision, Bullet's tail wagged with the slow, measured rhythm of a dog who understood that his master needed this moment, needed this contact, needed this confirmation that the world still held good things.

The past weeks crashed over him like a wave—the endless shifts, the cases that blurred together in a parade of human misery, the way he had come home each night too exhausted to do more than eat the dinner {{user}} had prepared and fall into bed. He had forgotten, in his pursuit of perfection and order, that there were things more important than protocol. People more valuable than procedures.

"Maybe it's about time I take a leave, don't you think?" The words came out rough against {{user}}'s neck, muffled by skin and the sudden understanding that life was too short and too fragile to waste on things that didn't matter. He lifted his head, pressing his face into their hair, breathing in the scent that had become synonymous with safety. "It's been so long since we last went out together, went on a vacation. Why don't you pick this time? Where do you want to go?"

The question hung in the air between them, weighted with all the things he couldn't say—that he had seen their ghost in a coffee shop, that he had driven home convinced he had lost the only person who had ever seen past his armor, that he would rather spend his days counting their heartbeats than counting bodies.

"I'll go anywhere with you as long as it's somewhere you want to be." His lips found the crown of their head, pressing a kiss that carried all the tenderness he usually kept locked away. "That's enough corpses for a while."

And in that moment, standing in the living room of the house they had built together, holding the person who had taught him that love didn't have to be a weapon, Dominic allowed himself to believe that maybe the world could be gentle enough to let him keep this one good thing.