Work Text:
I
Something about the serenity of domesticity – bread you put in the toaster, someone else lifting it out with little yelps and dropping it on the plate; finding the jam without the lid on; picking up milk for someone else’s fridge; making coffee for two. Probably Morse would put it better, Peter doesn’t care. To him this is peace: balancing two saucers of tea with a packet of biscuits under his arm to Morse who has the case notes.
It’s like that a lot now: just them and the case and regular intervals of fuel (tea, coffee, biscuits, cigarettes, sandwiches, toast, beer). It’s easier to work than Peter had ever found it before, like all the mysteries fall into place with their theories firing across the table, every suspect confesses to their quick fire questions and sharp eyes. Having Morse is like finding something he’s been looking for ever since he started working at Cowley. Something he’s been making up for the loss of by having a great many shallow friends and acquaintances, something he had always been jealous of in Morse and Thursday. Now he has it: him and Morse, like finally finding the other wheel to his bike, the other side of his coin, the other half of his slice of toast.
And now it seems easy, seems like the only thing that will never break.
Peter’s never held much for stability. Stability is the sort of word people who have money can afford to say (“The stability of my inheritance” – perhaps – “He must have stability of funds before he marries her”) but with Morse he has that; Peter has found the ever escaping stability, the one thing he will never lose, not if he can help it.
It’s not even just at work that it feels like he’s found his other half. At home when they’re both in one or the other’s kitchen making dinner, or doing the crossword, or eating breakfast, or sharing a cigarette or a glass of scotch, or down the pub having an argument with Strange feeling like two sides of the same sarcastic sword. They were partners, stronger together than apart.
A partner is what Peter has been looking for his whole life, really. Decades of feeling apart from everything and everyone else. Decades of attempting to look like them, talk like them, forget what made him different. And now here was Morse, fully aware of Peter’s past and accepting him still. And here was Morse, beside him still.
Something about the serenity of domesticity; life probably puts it better.
II
He’s ironing Morse’s fucking shirts, which is a fucking liberty, the prick. Honestly, which one of them was the sergeant? Though, Morse had been the one to do the washing (and it’s Peter who complains about the creases, he supposes) so maybe it’s only fair delegation of chores. Morse is doing the crossword and keeping half an eye on dinner (Morse says takeaway every night is a waste of money and the miser is on a campaign of cheap home cooking).
“You can still see the stain,” he informs him, holding up one of Morse’s shirts and gesturing. “You’ll need to put it in for another wash.”
Morse drags his eyes slowly away from the crossword, still writing in one of the answers in slow, neat capitals. He hums in question, eyes flicking between the shirt, Peter’s stove, and his newspaper.
“Shirt, Morse, stain.”
He shrugs, blinking back down at the crossword. “I don’t mind.”
“Just wash it again.” Jesus fucking Christ.
Morse frowns. “I’ll wash it again when I wash it again, I can wear it still. The stain, presumably, isn’t preventing me from wearing it.” He looks up again under his brows and squints dramatically. “You can barely see it.”
“I can see it.”
Peter’s pretty sure he sees Morse’s eyes roll before they drop back to the paper. “You’ll know it’s there even after a thousand washes. I don’t care.”
“No wonder you don’t have a bird.”
He twists in his chair to reach over and give the pot of (hopefully) something edible a stir. “Yes, well… This’ll need ten more minutes.”
Peter sighs and drops the shirt onto the ironing board, smoothing it out carefully. “What even is that?”
“I’ve told you! Stew!” Morse gesticulates with the wooden spoon and almost gets some brand new stains over Peter’s freshly ironed shirts.
“Is it?”
III
There are still nightmares sometimes. Peter thinks there might always be. He’s getting better at crossing the hall now, he has his own key, letting himself into the ordered chaos of Morse’s kitchen. Morse hears him sometimes, or sometimes he’s still awake playing records, but sometimes Peter just stands by the front door, listening to the familiar silence and the familiar sleeping presence, sometimes that’s enough. Morse comes into Peter’s often enough, if Peter doesn’t wake he’ll find Morse sitting at his kitchen table, fast asleep, or (on one memorable occasion) lying on the floor with his head resting on Peter’s Beatles records (“It’s not like they’re use for anything else, except perhaps using the sleeves in a bonfire.”) and leading Peter to believe he’d died .
Nightmares are easier with a partner. Sharing is difficult, he does it rarely (never about Blenheim Vale), but companionship is terrifyingly easy. They can sit there for hours in almost complete silence, breathing with each other. It doesn’t even have to be dark and sheltered any more, they can have the lights on, sit reading different books, or doing different things, together .
Peter thinks about Morse, about his terrifying, devastating, fragile beauty and he feels it in his chest. This partnership has the same glorious, heart-rending, blinding, flaring beauty . It feels like delicate, translucent paper between his fingers. Vast and courageous and mountainous with monoliths of pure golden sunlight, delicate as hollow bird bones beneath his fingertips. It feels like the edge of a precipice looking out over the most beautiful and dangerous unfamiliar landscape Peter has ever seen. It is incomprehensible. It is home.
IV
They annoy each other sometimes, like they always have and always will do. Morse does something stupidly brave or gets too arrogant or Peter snaps too sharply or hits a nerve with cruel accuracy. But that’s all it is: ‘annoy’. It seems so petty compared to what they used to be, two storms battering ferociously and unmercifully against each other to see where the other one broke, trying to find the fault lines and splinters and cracks. Now they try desperately to repair one another, two ships in those desperate pounding storms pulling close together and offering what little protection they can, what little supplies of emotion they have to spare to mend holes in the hull and tears in the sail.
The storms are still strong sometimes, strong with rage and vicious, savage brutality. They know the weaknesses ever better as they try and help stop each other’s leaks, they know where to aim their cannons for the best, most devastating destruction. They know each other so well they could dismantle each other with one careful placed push.
But Peter trusts Morse, he trusts Morse to tear at him and scream at him with that frightening cool anger and then he trusts Morse to make him a cup of tea and awkwardly place it on the edge of his desk or be waiting outside his front door to walk to work with a flat, uncertain smile. And, incredibly, Morse trusts him back. It feels like the only thing in the world that matters, it feels like the only kindness anyone has ever shown him.
*
They stand at the top of the fire escape, smoking, the bustle of the station far removed behind them.
“D’you think he did it?” asks Peter.
Morse says, “Yes.”
And Peter believes him. “Alright, where do we start?”
*
“You’re certain?” Morse has his fingers clasped loosely around Peter’s wrist, his eyes unwavering and intent.
Peter pauses, eyes on the information board behind Morse’s head where the victims stare blankly out of the PM photographs. “If you’re right about Lawson, then yes I am.”
Morse nods. “Then we need a car.” And Morse believes him.
V
They’re in Morse’s flat, trying another of his disastrous ‘stew’ attempts. Morse has the crossword poking out from under his plate and he’s frowning. (Peter had already done all the celebrity questions that Morse never understood.) Morse says, “My lease is running out.”
Peter blinks, looking up from picking over the good bits (the sausage, potato, and carrots). For some reason he had thought they’d be here forever. “Oh?”
“When do you think we could get off work?” Morse looks up expectantly from his crossword. “Yours can’t be much more than mine, I hadn’t been here long when you showed up.”
Something incredible and something he will never mention until his dying breath (And perhaps not even then) because it’s a soppy, dangerous feeling, bursts under his collarbone. “Right. To look at flats.”
He must be smiling like an idiot because Morse has his head cocked. “You do have enough money to share rent on a two bedroom?” Then he fumbles with his knife and fork. “Of course if you want to live –”
“– Morse. Yes, fine. We can start looking this weekend.”
One of those slow half-smiles that show his teeth slides up Morse’s face. He huffs a small breath and takes a large bite of stew. He frowns. “This really isn’t very good, is it?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he promises. “Want some toast instead?”
Morse scowls at him. “Waste not want not.”
“Fine.” He rolls his eyes, he’s probably still smiling like a fucking idiot. “You can have my bowl too, I’m having some toast.”
“Fuck off,” he mumbles through his stew.
Peter thinks it’s probably detrimental to your health to be this happy all the time.