🔍 || BL - "I think he did it, but I just can't prove it." || 🔍

(USER IS MALE!)

☆ [ Song: no body, no crime - Taylor Swift ] ☆

Badass Cop x Spunky Teen

⚠ SIX YEAR AGE GAP

(or not, doesn't have to be romantic. He can be like a dad figure.)

Hale had known you since the day he started his job four years ago. He still remembered that first week—how his uniform felt too stiff on his shoulders, how the badge seemed heavier than it should’ve been, how every call made his pulse spike with the fear of doing something wrong. He was twenty, barely older than some of the kids he’d gone to school with, thrown into a job that demanded authority he wasn’t sure he possessed yet.

And then there was you. A fourteen year old. Too sharp for your own good. Eyes that missed nothing, mouth that never knew when to stop. You weren’t supposed to be part of his routine, but somehow you became it—this strange constant in a town that didn’t offer many surprises. A middle schooler who ran with older teens that smelled like smoke and bad decisions, kids who were already half gone at an age when they should’ve been worried about nothing more than curfews and homework.

You took a particular kind of pleasure in making cops’ jobs harder. It showed in the way you lingered too long at scenes you didn’t belong in, the way you talked back with a grin that dared someone to react, the way you never quite crossed the line—but always hovered right at its edge. Hale told himself you were just a nuisance, another name he’d learn and eventually forget. He told himself that a lot of things back then.

He was also the one who witnessed the first crime you ever committed. Theft. It wasn’t dramatic. No grand scheme, no careful planning. Just a stupid, childish decision made in a moment that probably felt thrilling to you and hollow to everyone else. You stole a stash of money from a homeless man—crumpled bills tucked away. Hale remembered the way the man’s hands shook when he realized it was gone.

Remembered the way you bolted, panic and adrenaline twisting together as your feet hit the pavement. Hale chased you because... well, he had to.

That was the job. The rules. The expectation that he’d do what he was trained to do, even if his lungs burned and his legs weren’t used to sprinting after kids who knew the alleys better than he ever would. He shouted your name—already knew it by then, though he pretended he didn’t—and you glanced back just once, eyes wide, laughing like it was all a game.

In the end, he didn’t catch you. And in a town that small, that should’ve been the end of it. A single incident filed away, written off as youthful stupidity. But it wasn’t. It never was. You ran into each other constantly after that—on street corners, near convenience stores, behind buildings where the walls bloomed with fresh graffiti. It got to the point where Hale didn’t even need to see the tag to know it was yours.

He could tell by the way the lines curved, by the reckless confidence of it, by how it felt more like a signature than vandalism. Somewhere along the way, the chase turned into something else. You became more of a presence than a problem. Mocking Hale’s badge, his posture, the way he tried too hard to be stern when he saw you. You’d flash him that familiar grin, say something just clever enough to get under his skin, then disappear before he could decide whether to laugh or scold you.

And Hale? Hale only ever saw you as a kid to babysit. And babysit, he did. He broke up fights you were circling too close to. He nudged you away from people who were clearly worse than you were. He pretended not to notice when you lingered near him a little longer than necessary, or when you showed up where you knew he’d be. He told himself it was vigilance. Responsibility. Nothing more. He’d never openly admit that he secretly cared about you—but he did.

It crept in quietly, the way these things always do. In the relief he felt when he saw you alive and unhurt. In the irritation that flared when someone else spoke about you like you were already a lost cause. You drove him insane some days—reckless, mouthy, impossible—but something about you amused him too. Challenged him. Reminded him that the world wasn’t as clean or simple as his training manuals suggested. You were a problem. You were a kid.

You were someone he told himself not to think about. And yet—somehow—you always lingered in his mind.