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Risk Assessment

Don Eppes x Reader

Words: 3844

Part Two of Three

Summary: As your feelings for each other push boundaries you’d both set for yourselves a long time ago, Don distances himself during a tough case and you have to decide if your relationship is worth the risk.

Notes: I know it’s been a minute, but I haven’t forgotten about my Don fans out there (we are few, but we are powerful haha) I love this show and the brother dynamic and Don’s emotional complexity is just so fun to write. I will hopefully have the last part up at some point soon.

More Don: HERE

You took the stairs two at a time, heart beating out of your chest, and mind reeling. You didn’t hear the nurses asking you if you needed help over the panic in your head. All the news said was that there was a shootout between a suspect and FBI agents. Many casualties, including one agent in critical condition.

So when Megan called you that he’d be here, you’d almost gotten sick waiting in traffic. How she’d known to call you, you hadn’t given much thought to.

By the time you reached the right floor, you couldn’t breathe, your eyes were blurring with tears, and your legs wanted to give out. But you kept going.

Doctors rushed by with a gurney and all you saw was the blood.

You started to follow them.

He found you first.

Don put one hand on your shoulder to stop you from rushing after the gurney and one hand on your cheek to bring your eyes to his.

“Don,” you sobbed, shaking your head and blinking away tears, worried he’d be gone when you looked again. “I thought- I hadn’t heard anything and I-”

“I’m okay, baby. See?” He motioned to the bandaged cut on his forehead. “I’m fine. Just take a deep breath for me, sweetheart.”

“Oh my God,” you threw your arms around his neck. “Thank God. I saw the news and I just knew you were there. I had this awful feeling and then Megan…” You trailed off, burying your face in his neck.

Don nodded. “Megan told me she called you, but your connection got cut off.” He pulled back to kiss your forehead. “I’m sorry for worrying you, but I’m okay. I promise.”

“No, I’m sorry,” you sniffed, wiping your face with the back of your hand. “I should have waited. Instead, I barged in here like, well, like the FBI.”

He led you over to some chairs where you could both sit, not letting go of your hand. From around the corner, Megan came with a pair of coffees from the cafeteria, stopping when she saw the two of you. She ducked back behind the corner before either of you saw.

“You’re really okay?” You asked, fingers grazing the wound on his head.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I got pushed out of the way by…” His eyes followed the trail of doctors hurrying with the person you’d seen before. “Her name’s Anderson. Took a bullet to the neck.”

“Jesus.”

“Worst part is, the guy got away.” His grip on your hand tightened. “This sicko that’s been shooting people in broad daylight and we almost had him and he still got away.”

He swallowed hard and kept his eyes on the hall.

A silence fell between you as you calmed down and his shoulders tensed. Finally taking a deep breath, you sighed.

“Don, I’m so sorry.”

He let go of your hand. “It’s not like you pulled the trigger.” Don ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “You know, you really aren’t supposed to be here and I think I’ve freaked you out enough for the night, huh? Why don’t you go back to your place and I’ll meet you there?”

You were taken aback, but not totally surprised. When it came to stuff like this, your boyfriend wasn’t the most open. But, then again, neither were you. It was something you had in common- bottle it up and hope it doesn’t burst.

“Yeah, okay.” You stood, kissing the top of his head. “I can make something up for you, if you want? I think I’ve still got some of that pasta you liked. I can throw it in the microwave.”

“That’d be great, actually.” He tilted his chin up, pulling your lips to his for one more kiss. “I’ll call if anything else happens, okay? And I promise, if the connection goes bad, I won’t leave you hanging.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Agent Eppes.” You kept looking back at him as you left as if waiting for him to call you back. But he didn’t. So you left.

Now with the seat open, Megan crossed the room to sit beside her team leader.

“So that’s the mystery woman,” she said, handing him the coffee.

“Mystery woman?” He scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, for the past four months you show up to work with this big grin on your face and then this happens-”

“Speaking of which,” he interrupted. “What the hell were you thinking calling her? You know, it really freaked her out. She didn’t know what happened and she comes sprinting in here like, I don’t know, I’m dying. I hate doing that to her.”

“Don.” Megan shook her head. “You’re the one who told me to call her.”

His brows furrowed. “What?”

“I mean, sure, you were kinda out of it from hitting your head, but you just kept saying, ‘Y/N. Call Y/N. I want to see her.’ So you gave me your phone and I called her,” she explained.

Don leaned back in the chair, piecing together bits of fuzzy memory. He took a drink of coffee.

“Huh.”

Megan nodded, drinking from her own cup. “So you guys seem pretty serious.”

“Megan…” He groaned.

“I’m just saying, if she’s the one you’re asking for in your hour of need, it can’t just be a fling, right?”

“Isn’t it a crime to harass the guy with a head injury?”

She opened her mouth to rebuttal, but both agent’s focus switched to the doctor approaching them. And from the looks of his expression, it wasn’t good.

You heard more details on the news than you did from Don. In the days following the shooting, authorities were in an intense manhunt for a man named Pete Nicholsen, the lead suspect in a series of killings involving a hooded shooter in public places.

Agent Anderson was paralyzed from the neck down.

That, you heard from Megan.

In fact, you hadn’t heard anything from Don in two days.

It was Charlie who invited you over for dinner. He said things had been tense and that having some company might be nice, especially since you and his brother seemed to get along at the lecture.

He told you he might be in the garage, so he left the door unlocked. But when you opened the door, it was the older Eppes brother you saw first.

Don sat in the living room. While there wasn’t any light, you could tell it was him by the way he sat, leaned forward with a beer in his hand. Like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Hey stranger,” you greeted softly.

Don’s back straightened up and his head whirled around.

“Hey.” A small smile graced his lips and he stood to meet you. “What are you doing here?”

“Charlie invited me. He thought a guest would make dinner less… tense.”

“I see,” Don grunted, running a hand down his face. “So he still doesn’t know?”

You shrugged. “I didn’t tell him. He just thinks we ‘get along.’”

“I wonder what gave him that idea,” he smirked, putting a hand on your cheek and pulling you in for a kiss.

You sighed against his lips, melting into his touch. You hadn’t stopped thinking about it for two days. Thinking about how he was at the hospital. That same tension was there now, even as he kissed you.

“Don,” you said, pulling away. “Are you okay? I know that there’s been a lot going on, but you kinda vanished on me and I’m not going to lie, I’ve been pretty worried. I mean, I have to learn everything from the TV and sure, I get that maybe you don’t want to talk about it but-”

“Honey, slow down,” Don sighed. He leaned against the back of the chair, nodding. “You’re right, I had to step back for a couple of days. With what happened to Anderson and then you showing up at the hospital thinking it was me, when it should have been me, I don’t know, there was just a lot going through my head I had to deal with, okay?” He took your hand, running his thumb over your knuckles, slowly going back and forth to calm you down. Or to calm him down. He couldn’t really tell. “But I’m back now, alright? You don’t have to worry.”

Despite his reassuring words, the tone of his voice only increased your already growing concern. You remembered the gut-churning panic you’d felt when you thought he was the one in that hospital bed. You thought about every surge of electricity you felt spark in you whenever he smiled. Even now, the way he was looking at you, guarded and all, you still just wanted him to look at you for forever.

This is what you were afraid of and yet you didn’t want it to stop.

“Don, I-” You started but were cut off by the sound of footsteps.

“Hey, Y/N, you’re here.” Charlie beamed. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

With his brother’s eyes on you, you stepped away from Don to join Charlie in the dining room, letting those three terrifying words die on your lips.

It was your turn to play the ‘dealing alone’ game. Not out of pettiness, but out of protection. While your heart was so full and your chest ached when he wasn’t around, your brain reminded you of all the reasons you hadn’t wanted to let things get this far to begin with. You told yourself a long time ago that nothing was worth the risk of getting hurt again.

And all of it was because of a stupid four-letter word.

The repetitive rattle of your fingers against the table helped tune out the rest of the cafe. Unfortunately, that included your lunch date.

“You okay there?” Megan asked with an amused smile. “You look like you just joined Larry in space for a second.”

“Sorry,” you sighed, shaking your head. “I’ve just been thinking about a lot.” Sliding your empty plate aside, you eyed her curiously. “Like why you asked me to have lunch. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have a badass FBI best friend, but this just felt a little out of the blue.”

“Alright, you’ve got me there,” she admitted. “Though I wouldn’t mind having a brilliant criminology professor in my back pocket whenever I want to remind the boys that this job isn’t all about running around with a gun.”

You both laughed and you felt some of the weight on your chest lighten.

She took a drink of her coffee. “There is something I wanted to ask you about, if it isn’t overstepping our budding friendship…”

“You’re wondering about how I know your team leader.”

“No, I know about the class you teach with Charlie, and Don complained about his little guest appearance the whole week leading up to it,” she said. A smirk teased her lips. “I was more wondering why you two are keeping your relationship a secret.”

Your mouth fell open and she laughed.

“I read people for a living, remember?” She pointed out. “I had some suspicions, but when he kept asking me to call you when he had that head injury and you came running into the hospital like John Wayne, it pretty much confirmed what I thought.”

“He asked you to call me?”

Megan nodded. “Oh yeah. You were all he could talk about when he was all loopy. It was pretty cute, actually.”

You covered your growing smile with your hand, imagining Don doped up on pain meds and rambling about you to his co-worker. But then you remembered the circumstances and remembered who was really hurt that day.

“So you figured it out,” you shrugged.

She pointed a finger at you playfully. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

“It’s,” you took a deep breath, “complicated.”

“With Don? Shocker,” she teased.

You both finished your meals and paid. On the way out, she put a hand on your arm, giving you a smile that was somewhere between friendly and concerned.

“This job can be a lot to handle, especially when you're involved romantically with someone in the field,” she said. “And I know Don isn’t much of a touchy-feely kinda guy, but I think that you’ve been really good for him. I mean, I’ve really never seen him so happy. But, like I said, I know it can be a lot so if you ever want to talk, I’m around, okay?”

You laughed. “Thanks, but I pretty much wrote the book on ‘emotional detachment.’ I think I can handle Agent Eppes.”

She lifted her hands in mock surrender. “Maybe that’s even more reason to talk to someone about it.”

With a look that conveyed the phrase ‘just think about it,’ she went back to her car and you walked back to yours, trying your best to shrug off her ability to not only read you, but also the issues that you were starting to notice in a relationship she shouldn’t even know about.

Charlie was in the middle of explaining to the class the ways equations can be used to track the spread of a bioterrorism attack when you saw him. You looked up from the notes you were taking and there he was. Standing outside the window. Waving at you. He looked like a normal guy. Nice haircut, clean clothes, new-looking backpack. But something about him seemed familiar. While you couldn’t place from where, something in your gut was telling you to not look him in the eye.

No one else seemed to notice him and he was gone by the end of the lecture. Still, you couldn’t shake the unease from your nerves.

“Earth to Professor Y/L/N,” Charlie teased, waving a piece of chalk in front of your face. “If you really thought it was that boring, you could have just said so.” He smirked and took a seat across from you.

You looked around. The students had all left and you hadn’t even noticed.

“It was really interesting, Charlie. I’m sorry,” you sighed. “I guess my head is just somewhere else.”

“Yeah, you uh,” he nodded, “you’ve kinda seemed that way for a while. Is everything okay? If the class has too much to your plate, I can take over some more of the grading-”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You already do too much as it is.” You stood, packing your class notes into your briefcase and hugging it to your chest. “Besides, I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping well.” His concern only deepened so you came up with something more reasonable than dreaming about his brother choking on his own blood with a hole in his throat. “New neighbors. Probably just some partying college kids.”

“Uhuh,” he hummed, narrowing his eyes. Whether or not he believed you, he didn’t press the issue. Charlie wasn’t exactly great when it came to emotions and, while it was deeply bothering him to see someone he liked to think of as a friend in a bad place, if it wasn’t solvable through math, there wasn’t much he could do.

“Do you want to go grab some coffee?” You asked, hoping to change the subject. The last thing you needed right now was a line of questions that you weren’t ready to answer.

“Coffee sounds perfect.”

You were both halfway to the campus cafe when you heard the shots. At first, you thought someone had set off fireworks or something, but you remembered the man outside of the window. You’d seen him on the news.

Pete Nicholsen.

He took the stairs two at a time, sprinting into the courtyard where campus security, police, and other FBI had already gathered, along with a whole audience of students and staff. Don didn’t give himself time to think. He just ran.

Don spotted Sinclair first, standing over the body of a woman with Y/H/C hair. She wore a blazer and had a briefcase busted open just a few inches away from her hand. He tried to calm his breathing as his mind went into a frenzy.

The call was shots fired at Cal Sci. One casualty. Female. He only had one thought.

What had he brought you into?

“Who is it?” He asked his fellow agent.

“We’re looking for her I.D. in her things now,” David explained.

“I need it now, damnit!” Don ran around to the other side, hoping to be able to see the woman’s face, and tried to prepare himself to see yours.

“Agent Eppes!” A voice called from the crowd.

He spun on his heel, frantically scanning the group of students.

“Don!”

He turned again and saw you.

All of the breath in his lungs exhaled in a sigh of relief. He motioned to Colby that he’d be right back and rushed across the courtyard. It took every ounce of control he could muster not to pass the police line and pull you into his arms just to make sure you were really there.

“Are you okay? Were you out here when it happened?” He asked, making sure to keep a step away to maintain his composure. “Where’s Charlie?”

“I’m fine. And he’s working with Larry to get a jumpstart into figuring out where this guy could have gone after he-” You caught a glimpse of the body through the crowd of law enforcement. “Oh my god.”

“Hey, just look at me, okay?” He whispered. “Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart.”

“Don.” You blinked, took a deep breath, and focused back on him. “Don, I saw him.”

He froze, that same sinking weight in his chest coming back. “What?”

“He was outside-” You ran your fingers through your hair, trying not to panic. “Nicholsen was outside of the classroom. With me and Charlie. He waved at me like he knew who I was.”

Cal Sci. One Casualty. Female.

“Okay,” he cleared his throat and nodded. “Okay, then I’m going to need you to come with me. And we should go get Charlie.” Don motioned to Colby and the others again, pointing in the direction of Charlie’s office. They continued investigating the crime scene. “This just got a lot more complicated.”

He helped you push through the crowd, his eyes scanning every face expecting to see Nicholsen’s confident smirk looking back at him. Once out of the way of the scene, Don found a deserted hallway and let his barrier break. He locked you in his embrace, cradling the back of your head with his shaking hand.

“I don’t have to tell you what I thought when I got that call,” he said against your shoulder.

You rubbed your hand back and forth across his tense shoulders. “I guess we’ve traded places this week.”

Don pulled back. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be,” You looked at him and those dark eyes and nodded determinedly. “I want to catch this guy, Don.”

“No.” He started walking toward his brother’s office. “You aren’t touching this case anymore. Neither is Charlie. This guy knows who you both are. I’m not giving him a chance to take another shot at you.”

“You can’t be serious-”

“What do you think that is?” He shouted, spinning around and pointing back toward the courtyard. “It’s a message, Y/N. That is a warning shot. The next time, he isn’t going to miss and I can’t let that happen. I-”

Three words lingered on his lips, brought out by the terrifying thought of losing you.

Don swallowed hard and continued down the hall. “We have to go.”

The truth was, he had two thoughts when he got that call.

Please not her.

I love her.

And it scared him to death.

His apartment was dark. When you unlocked the door with the key he’d given you, it didn’t even look like he was home. But once you got into the living room, he was there like he’d been at Charlie’s place. Alone. In the dark. With a bottle of beer in his hand and a blank stare in his eyes.

“Don?”

He jumped, blinking up at you like you’d pulled him out of a trance.

“Hey. I didn’t even hear you come in,” he said. He sounded exhausted, but there was something else too. Something that worried you.

“I looked over some data with Charlie. He thinks he might be able to figure out how to finally catch this son of a bitch.” You sat on the arm of the chair, rubbing his shoulders.

He shrugged you away. “I thought I told you that you were both off the case.”

You stood again, crossing your arms. “And you thought that was going to work?” You scoffed. “Have you met your brother?”

Don set the bottle down on the side table so hard you thought it might break.

“Damnit, Y/N, you saw the guy outside of your classroom,” he snapped. “He shot a woman on your campus that matches your description.” He stood too, looking you in the eye. “He’s still out there and you think this is a joke?”

“Charlie isn’t going to hide, Don,” you fired back. “And neither am I. The quicker we find this guy, the quicker all of this is over, right?”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“Don,” you sighed, reaching out for him again. This time, he didn’t pull away, but when your hand found his cheek, you recognized the look in his eye.

Conclusion.

“Donnie, what is this about?”

He took a deep breath and gently took your hand away. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

You opened your mouth but found your throat had gone dry and the air had left your lungs.

Don clenched his jaw to keep himself in control. Already, a voice in his head was screaming at him to stop, repeating those same two thoughts from before.

Please.

I love her.

But that was exactly why he had to. He’d realized today how much he had to lose. And he couldn’t bear the weight pushing down on his chest. Maybe it was time to let it go.

As the tear slipped down your cheek, he hated himself for the weakness that got him there. He couldn’t protect you. He wasn’t strong enough to face those emotions of panic and loss like he got a glimpse of today. You deserved someone who could hold you without thinking about everything going wrong.

You didn’t say anything. You just went into his bedroom, grabbed a few of your things, and walked to the door, stopping to look back at the man you’d fallen so totally in love with and loved him all the same even though your heart was breaking.

“I thought we were worth the risk, you know.” Was all you said before closing the door behind you. The apartment fell into a silence that seeped into his head.

Don sat back down and stared into the dark.

#don eppes x reader #numb3rs #numb3rs imagine #don eppes #charlie eppes #rob morrow #david krumholtz #megan reeves #crime drama imagines

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