lady_bols | [oom] Room 6620

His arms went slack after the first half hour, his eyelids hovering somewhere between open and closed. He'd tried the breathing thing again, but it's always the same result when he dares to shut his eyes.

And now he's promised her he'll stay here, for a while at least. Could be a long while. So he has to accept that he's going to be living with this for the forseeable future. It exhausts him just thinking about it, so he tries not to.

Then she calls his name, and his muscles jerk, eyes snap to fully open, and his arms close around her again as if on reflex. He doesn't try to wake her. Sleeping, however badly, is probably the best thing for her right now.

She relaxes against him again, his embrace bringing her palpable relief. The tears come and go. She never lets go of him, not once. At some point, she wakes, her eyes blinking open but not really focusing.

'Don't go. You promised,' she murmurs, holding a finger under his nose like a school marm. And then she slips away to the loo, coming back with her hair wild around her face, the queue down her back having fallen apart while she tossed at turned. There's a faint smile on her lips as she takes her place again. She does give him a questioning glance, sleepy eyes wondering if he needs to relieve himself as well.

He rolls to his back when she's gone, taking the opportunity to work some life back into the arm she's been resting on. His eyes flit to her face when she walks back in, but he doesn't move. He feels kind of welded to the mattress at this point.

'Comin' back in here?'

Or maybe she wants her own space now. Her choice.

She hesitates for a moment, and then nods, kneeling up on the bed and crawling up beside him on all fours. She feels like she's made of spun glass, held together by the pressure of the air. If he's inviting her back in, she goes without hesitation, winding herself up along his side from shoulder to knee.

Before, she would have worried about appearances. It's unprofessional, it's weak to need coddling. But after the last few days, those things don't hold a candle to the basic human need for touch and comfort.

He slips his arm around her again. It's weird, really. He spent three years wanting to get this close, and now they're here and everything's a mess.

'Back t'sleep, luv.'

Edited 2012-06-23 23:25 (UTC)

And yet, for all the unresolved sexual tension between them, it doesn't feel awkward at all. In fact, it feels right in a way she can't put words to, to rest her head on his chest and wrap her arms around his middle.

"You don't mind, do you?"

He shakes his head before realising that she won't be able to see.

'No.'

No, he doesn't mind that.

Her grip on him tightens minutely, and then relaxes again. Her breathing settles down down but he can tell by the tension in her, she's not going to fall back asleep very quickly.

After a few minutes, she draws a breath and holds it.

"Do you remember Arthur Layton?"

'Layton?'

Down-at-heel tinker turned drug baron.

'Yeah, of course. He was all tied up with drugs, an'...'

A couple of things suddenly seem to click.

'...that bomb.'

The mere mention of the bomb makes her jaw clench.

"I was driving Molly to school." A dry laugh rises and is choked back down. She can tell him this. It's only fair that he know. "She was reading Sam's file, I remember that clearly. Told her to put the classified document back in the file. That's when the call came in. Someone was holding a busker hostage in front of the Tate. It was Layton." As she remembers, her voice falters. "Mols didn't listen. She didn't stay in the car. Layton got his hands on her. He pressed the barrel of his gun to my little girl's head."

'Bastard.'

The flash of anger is automatic. And it makes a lot more sense of her first day.

'That's why you wanted him so bad.'

"Well he let her go." That still baffles her. "He used her to get away, because she wasn't his target. I was. He asked for me by name. And I had no idea who he was or what he wanted. He slipped away and after we gave a statement, Evan met us. Evan is her godfather. You remember him?"

He knows all the players.

"Anyway, Layton waited for me in my car. He took me at gunpoint down to the water. Told me he knew my parents."

She has to take a deep breath, and another.

"He shot me. I was talking to him, trying to establish just what he wanted from me -- what I meant to him. And he just--shot me."

There's still a shock in her voice. A disbelief at the truth. How could that happen to her, and on her daughter's birthday.

Edited 2012-06-24 02:11 (UTC)

He's quiet as he listens. Coppers who have issue with their passing. Yeah, her fixation on Layton makes sense now.

'Blokes like that - there's not much anyone can do, luv. Can't reason with a bloke who doesn' want anythin'.'

"I know that. Don't you think I know that? I was a DI before I came to you, Gene."

If he is angry at that boy, then he should recognize her own anger. She should never have let her curiosity take her away from the safety of the street.

He shifts a bit at that. Right. Yeah. She's a DI. He's not.

'Sorry.'

'It was a stupid, stupid mistake, but he mentioned he knew my parents, and I just had to follow him, had to find out who killed them.' Again, her voice starts to tremble, and she laughs, a quiet self-deprecating sound.

'I spent that entire first year at Fenchurch being chased by a bloody clown, would you believe? And Layton was involved, but it didn't matter. I couldn't stop it from happening again. And then you were there, carrying me away from the scene, and I don't remember you being there but you were, somehow.' The more she talks, the more girlish her tone becomes.

She hasn't talked to anyone about this. And still the memory of the detonation(I'm happy, hope you're happy too) and the (red balloon) plume of fire rising into the sky is as clear as the day it happened.

Edited 2012-06-24 15:23 (UTC)

The scene.

A few more things click into place.

'You were Alex Price.'

Yes, of course. Of course.

'An' you found out it was your father.'

Well, it explains the mess she was in after, and the depression that prompted him to take her to Manchester that Christmas.

She nods, her head bobbing up and down over and over, as if just hearing him acknowledge the truth of it is unreal. The wash of relief and sorrow threatens to overwhelm her again.

'You've met my mother, too.' The situation is too odd not to laugh at, 'You had me bent over a desk and my skirt raised to stamp my arse when she walked in.'

'Caroline Price.'

His tone manages to acquire some tone on that comment. It's dry, but it's not a monotone.

'Yeah. Thanks very much for sticking me with her.'

A touch of amusement, even.

For the first time since they've arrived, a genuine laugh takes her.

'She's still my mother, regardless of...' Yeah, all of it.

'And you called me a clenched-arse, toffee-nosed bitch.' She may be giggling through her tears now.

'Yeah, OK. Sorry.'

She's probably nicer when not dealing with her over the table.

'An' you are, sometimes. Were.'

She gives him a nudge in the ribs, but there's no malice in it.

'I am not a clenched-arse anything. At least not after three years of drinking with you.'

She adamantly refuses to speak of herself in the past tense, not while she can still draw a breath.

He just meant 'were' as in, that argument had happened fairly early on. She relaxed soon enough.

'Hold your drink pretty well. For a bird.'

"Thanks." She swipes a hand across her eyes, resting her head on his chest again. "I feel better now, knowing your liver is immortal."

She inhales deep and lets her breath out in a long shuddering sigh. "I wonder what happened to him. If they caught him. If they even knew who he was..."

For a minute, he thinks she's talking about the Layton in 1981. But that doesn't make any sense, so he forces his sluggish brain to do some work.

'You might find out, one day. Or maybe never. You can't wonder, luv. You'll drive yourself mental.'

She huffs a tired laugh. It's getting easier to force down the tears. After three years, she would hope so.

"Too late..."

He doesn't think she's mental. He thinks she's coping pretty well, actually. Most of them have long forgotten what happened to them, and don't remember before they get to the pub. For someone who never got to forget, the fact she's not permanently hysterical is a pretty big thing.

'Don' say that. Don' do yourself down.'

She's quiet for a long moment, and he can feel her shift. If there was any light at all, he could see her peering up at him, confused.

"Are you telling me... You don't think I'm mental anymore?"

Her tone is quiet, and not a little baffled.

He blinks into the darkness. Again, he's struggling to comprehend a bit.

'Well...you acted weird 'cos of - all this, didn' you?'

Maybe not.

'I expect all the stuff just from being you will carry on, though.'

'So, you don't think I'm completely mental, just the usual...women are incomprehensible kind of mental.' She's had her world view shaken enough without that.

'...yeah?'

He's completely lost the thread of what she's getting at.

Good. Yes, okay. The world rights itself a little, and she settles back.

After a moment, she shifts again, one hand resting in the center of his chest to steady herself. She listens to the sound of his breath to orient herself, and this time the kiss is not as tentative. It's gentle and chaste, wrought of a genuine affection.

Edited 2012-06-25 00:14 (UTC)

...things are just getting even more bizarre.

Still. He lets her, and responds, albeit without moving into it or doing more than pressing back with his lips. Just for a moment.

And after - quietly, very quietly -

'What you doin', Bols?'

Edited 2012-06-25 00:45 (UTC)

She is quiet for a long moment, settling back into the crook of his arm, the tension not leaving her body this time.

'I have a second chance.'

Her fingertips trace a tiny circles on his shirt.

'I can't let it slip by me this time without -- '

The words fade in her mouth, because she doesn't really know what she's doing. It felt like the right thing to do.

He stares up at the ceiling, aware of the patterns being drawn on his clothes, and the weight of her on his arm. He doesn't know what to say to that. He has a lot of questions, but they're not making much sense in his head. He's at the point of exhaustion where he's starting to hear things, random words and snatches of imagined conversations when he turns his head, hidden in the rustling in the folds of the quilt.

's'different now, isn' it?'

Well? Isn't it?

'What's different?'

Her voice is quiet, not quite willing to disturb the blanket of darkness or whatever spell that's made it okay for her to be lying here in bed with him, almost nose to nose in the dark.

He blinks, slowly.

'I'm not what you thought I was.'

Another moment passes as she parses that sentiment.

'You are still who you are. And that's all I care about, really.'

She can't begin to address the fact that the man she's fallen for has actually been dead for thirty plus years, and that his entire adult existence happened through the lens of other troubled souls and their unfinished business. But she's known him for three years, in times both good and bad, and in her mind, she could no more walk away from him now than she could walk away from Molly when she first turfed up in 1981.

He's pretty sure it isn't that simple, though he can't for the life of him think why at the moment. He just knows that it matters to him. What he is is so tied up with who he is, it's difficult to see them as different.

'Can we talk about this some other time?'

He's not blowing her off. But he can't think straight, and he doesn't want to get it wrong.

'Of course.'

Her hand slips around his middle, and she gives him a squeeze, nuzzling against him a bit. She's content to let that conversation happen at a much later date.

But there's one question she'd really like to know the answer to, if he even has an answer.

'Why did you wait for me?'

That one's easy enough.

'I waited in case you came.'

Nothing more he can say. He could no more have left with the possibility of her turning up hanging over him, than she could leave now. He can't articulate exactly why, other than he'd never have forgiven himself if he'd walked out that door without waiting to see if they'd let her in.

She nods against him, her body now pressed tight against his side.

"I'm really glad you did."

The rest of it can sort itself out in the morning, she thinks. He's here, warm and solid against her. They're battered, surely. The whole world has been turned upside down, for both of them.

But they're together. All the rest of it, she thinks, can wait till the light of day.

Edited 2012-06-25 04:16 (UTC)

[oom] Room 6620

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