Work Text:
The pile of sawdust and plaster pearls was the first thing Sullivan noticed when he opened his front door. His frown deepened as his gaze followed the jamb upward. An elongated U of cast iron sat at eye-level where this morning there had been only trim. Sullivan’s attention flickered over to the door itself. As he’d suspected, there was a matching metal thumb protruding past the edge of the barrier. A curious mmph escaped his lips, but he couldn't help smiling at the thought that the lock's installer might still be around.
There were faint noises coming from the far side of the cottage. Sullivan stepped inside silently, slipped his feet free of his shoes, and crept forward. Few places in Kembleford offered him a true stealth advantage – every building seemed to have its own unique creaks and moans, and he’d never been skilled at disguising his passage through outdoor spaces – but he knew the auditory tells of his own home. Dodging them, he snuck up behind the figure whose attention was riveted to the garden door.
Sullivan, like anyone, possessed more than a few secrets. He had by now shared most of them with the man in front of him. One that he kept private was the delight he took in watching him work, not just at hard manual tasks, but at finer, neater ones like this.
In fact, the more delicate the job, the better. It was always a joy to catch the flex of a bicep or admire the straining curve of Sid’s spine when he was engaged in rougher efforts, but such images only took Sullivan so far. Any donkey could budge a heavy object. But no animal, and few humans, had the finesse to use the same limbs that lifted and pulled to repair a broken watch or pick a complex lock.
What Sid was doing right now was no specialist’s project, but there was something about the way he was doing it that struck Sullivan as complicated. Sid often hummed or whistled when his hands knew the steps well enough to act without the full participation of his brain. Today, though, there was no music. Sid’s posture was too rigid for song, and his actions were slow and careful, as if this work required the utmost care. His face was hidden, but Sullivan would have wagered that it was fixed with intense, arguably uncharacteristic, concentration.
But why? Sid had installed a hundred locks before, thumb latches, bolts, chains. There was nothing about the construction of the police cottage’s doors that should have made things difficult, or at least Sullivan didn’t think there was. He hadn’t even asked for these flip-locks to be put on, so there was no deadline to meet, no customer to satisfy. He felt his earlier frown begin to re-form. “...Sid? What are you doing?”
“One sec.” He was putting the last screw – an abnormally long one, Sullivan noted – into place, and he used the brief delay he’d asked for to throw his weight behind one final tightening twist. That done, he closed the new lock and yanked the door open hard against it. Sullivan winced at the resulting slam as the U-bend caught the little metal thumb and threw the door shut again. “Yeah,” Sid murmured as he wiggled the new apparatus to make sure his test hadn’t weakened its hold on the frame. “That should do.”
“Should do what, exactly?”
“Should do to keep people out who aren’t meant to be in.” Sid smiled as he turned, and some of the tension left his shoulders as he looked Sullivan up and down. “You’re earlier than I thought you’d be. I’ve still got one left. I wanted to have them all done as a surprise.”
“As a...surprise.”
“Yeah. Something nice to come home to.”
Sid’s smile widened as he spoke, edging towards a grin. It seemed all wrong, though, and Sullivan suddenly realized why; his boyfriend was dissembling. “Sid, what the hell is going on?”
Once upon a time, Sid would have tried to keep the act up. But they knew each other too well for that now, and they both knew that that was the case. He blew out a long breath and wrapped his arms around his stomach, his smile dissolving. “...It’s that Chief Inspector in Ipswich,” he confessed.
It took Sullivan a moment to work out the reference. The news had come through a few days ago, and while it had been important enough to be on the radio it had happened far enough away that it had barely blipped on the village’s busy rumor radar. What did Kembleford care if some distant DCI had been murdered by a disgruntled man whom he had marked down (erroneously, it turned out) as a strong suspect in a case?
Evidently Sid cared a lot more than his neighbors. More, too, than Sullivan himself did. “It was an unfortunate end, certainly,” he allowed. “But the particular circumstances were one in a million. And-”
A beat passed. “And what?”
The remark he’d bitten off wasn’t going to go over well, but hadn’t they just proven that it was pointless to try and lie? “...And he was a policeman. Work-related violent injuries, and even the occasional death, are to be expected from time to time.”
“So what,” Sid challenged. “You ‘expect’ those things, too?”
“To some extent, yes, I suppose I do. I certainly hope that they don’t happen, but they’re possibilities you accept when you agree to uphold the law professionally.” His tone must have been too blasé, because a tiny tremor ran across Sid’s mouth. “You must have the same understanding, the same acceptance, every time you go to work. Don’t you? Accidents happen. Mechanical failures, bad weather...people die on the roads every day.”
It hit him, then, exactly what Sid must have felt when he’d heard about the Ipswich killing. It was the same thing Sullivan felt every time he read about a bad traffic collision, a roll-over, a bridge giving out under a lorry. He was generally able to push the resulting emotions out of his mind – he couldn’t do anything about driving hazards, not really, and at least Sid was a surprisingly safe operator – but now he folded his arms in imitation of the other man’s pose and shivered. “...Oh,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”
“‘Salright. That is, it’s not alright, it’s bloody awful to think about, but...you’re not wrong. I guess I just hadn’t imagined anything happening here before. That’s the whole point of home, innit? You’re supposed to be safe. I mean, I’m not gonna be run over in my bed, am I?
“...But that Chief Inspector got stabbed in his. Never even knew what happened, the papers’ve been saying. I heard he’d left a window open, which wasn’t brilliant of him, but plenty of people can pick a lock. Even a good bolt like the ones you’ve got. These, though...” He jerked his head towards the addition he’d just made to Sullivan’s security array. “They might get past one of them, if they really wanted, but they’d make enough noise doing it to give you a warning.”
“Yes.” Sid still looked upset, and Sullivan didn’t feel much less so himself. He uncrossed his arms, stepped forward, and pulled his boyfriend into an embrace. “Yes, they would. It is extremely unlikely that I’ll ever need them to alert me to anything,” he soothed, “but thank you for putting them in.”
“You’ll use them? At least at night, and ‘specially if I’m not here?”
“Of course.” How could he say no after hearing the half-stifled sniffle that had accompanied that request? “Of course I will.”
They stood like that for a long moment, bearing one another’s leaning weight and exchanging gentle, comforting nuzzles. “You mentioned a third lock?” Sullivan eventually queried.
“Yeah.”
“But I only have two doors.”
Sid pulled back enough to look at him. “I got it for upstairs.”
Precious overkill. Sullivan toyed with the idea of refusing this final gesture – it would look odd when, if, he moved out and someone else saw the lock on the bedroom door – but he discarded it quickly. What the future thought could be dealt with then. Right now, installing an extra bit of protection would give the man in his arms relief, and that was far more important. He kissed him softly. “Will it disturb your work if I sit on the bed and watch?”
Sid’s eyes gleamed as if he did, perhaps, know one more of his secrets than Sullivan had meant to tell him. “Won’t bother me at all. Just let me get this sawdust up first, before I forget. I know you don’t want that laying around.”
“It’s fine for now.” Sid’s eyebrows rose. “When we’re done in the bedroom,” Sullivan squeezed his hand suggestively, “I’ll help you clean up.”
This time Sid’s smile was real. “Like the sound of that, love...”