Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Sir? Honestly, sir, you have to wake up now, we’re going to be late—”

There’s a hand on one of Robbie’s shoulders, moving it insistently back and forth against his will. And now that he’s becoming aware of it, his sergeant’s voice seems to have been chiding at him for the past indeterminate while. He’s growing increasingly impossible to ignore, that’s for sure. Despite Robbie’s best efforts. That obstinate tone is pulling him right up from under the weighty depths of his sleep and letting him know that any hope of a few more minutes’ peace is at a definite end.

It’s early daylight. An overharsh winter’s morning sun is low enough in the sky to strike his eyes from an entirely unaccustomed angle in this hotel room, as he turns, frustrated, onto his back and why James has felt the need to open the curtains already—

“Sir, c’mon,” comes that voice from above him and James has released his grasp now. “We’ve only got half an hour until we really have to be downstairs.” Robbie grimaces up at him from this odd vantage point, but automatically takes a mental check on him as they tend to do. James is fully dressed, fully alert and looking confusingly young, as he still tends to in more casual clothes. He’s also looking down at Robbie with something eating at him that he’s not voicing, and it’s all too bloody early for this. The whole combines to make an awareness chafe at Robbie that while his sergeant has been up and about, moving around the room and getting on with the day, he’s been lying here oblivious in such a confusedly deep sleep that James has had to shake him awake and now Robbie’s caught, wrongfooted—

“Why didn’t the alarm go off?” he demands, more of an accusation than he’d intended, as he casts a glare at the clock provided on the ornate table between their beds.

“Because I was awake before it and turned it off,” James defends it, still narrowing that frowning gaze right down at Robbie. But then he takes a step back and turns away to start flicking through the various brochures and hotel literature that are neatly fanned out on the table. Probably allowing Robbie a bit of space to get his head together.

Robbie scrubs the fingers and thumb of one hand below the corners of his eyes. Right. James had set that alarm for some ungodly hour of the morning last night, saying something about a decent-sized pool and his plan to go for an early swim. The conference is located in a pretty nice hotel, Robbie allows, although that might be part of what had raised the cost of it to a level that he privately thought a bit steep.

Innocent had seemed to share his view. Even if she’d been the one who’d pretty much dispatched them here when Peterson had had to drop out. She’d called them into her office on Monday and told them that one or the other of them would be required to take his place. Robbie had nearly seen it coming. These training updates were mandatory and came to everyone sooner or later. They just seemed to be delivered in larger groups, in more of an outsourced fashion and in further-flung venues every time they caught up with him. Peterson’s misfortune had simply hastened theirs.

“How d’you suppose Action Man landed up with an ankle boot over the weekend?” James had mused half an hour before, turning his head from where he stood in their office doorway, watching whatever mild stir appeared to be taking place out there centred on Peterson’s arrival in the incident room.

“I don’t know, Sergeant, probably fell out of a tree rescuing some unsuspecting cat,” Robbie had said shortly.

He’d badly needed a more restful weekend off than the one he’d just endured and the week ahead had seemed to be looming just then in dispiriting and almost unmanageable fashion. James had straightened his shoulders and turned back to his desk and the start of his own backlog of tasks that had piled up from their two recent back-to-back cases. And, reliably as you like, Robbie’s phone had started up before he’d made much of an inroad into his intray and they’d found themselves sitting in front of Innocent and hearing the details of her own particular plans for how they were to start the coming weekend. Bloody hell, it was only Monday. But he and James had been due to be off the on-call rota from Friday evening, so they were the all-too-obvious choice.

The only surprising part had been that she’d given them the choice of whether they were both going to do the training now, or if one of them still wanted to wait until the next date. But then, Peterson’s new sergeant hadn’t been going with him. There seemed to be some teething problems there, from what Robbie had surmised, and Innocent must have made a strategic decision that now wasn’t the best time to send them off to be thrown together in more intensive fashion at a conference if she had any hopes of them shaking down into an effective partnership longterm. Obviously, that wasn’t a concern with him and James. He’d shot an enquiring look at James, received his silent confirmation that they were on the same page here and told Innocent that they’d both get it over with then, ma’am.

Why she’d grimaced back at him at that was anybody’s guess.

“Well—it’s on a Friday but you’d need to drive down the night before, Robbie.” And her tone had become half-apologetic. “As it’s in Lancaster, I’m afraid. So it’ll mean a two night stay for a one-day course.”

“I’m sure we can drive back on the Friday night—”

Innocent had pushed a brochure across her desk to him, open at the schedule for the training day. Christ, that looked long. “It starts early and there’s an after-dinner session too, Robbie,” she’d said in the face of his look. “General consensus seemed to be, the last time I was privy to a discussion on arrangements for mandatory training, that it would be more cost-effective to offer some of these updates confined within the one day. Cost-effective if your officers live more locally to the venue,” she’d murmured.

“Right.” Robbie frankly hadn’t fancied the thought of that at the moment, but it had still seemed unfair to send James alone. Not something he found he could really do in the face of the rueful, complicit half-smile his sergeant had just flickered at him.

“Okay, I’ll see if we can add a second participant as a last-minute booking,” Innocent had said, still sounding oddly torn about the whole thing, given that all of this was her doing. She’d pulled up something on her computer screen, and then her eyebrows had confirmed her displeasure at it. As it had turned out, that was at the cost of belatedly adding a second hotel room. She would’ve got an early-booking deal for Peterson’s place, no doubt. She’d grimaced at the price options and then informed them they’d be sharing what was advertised as a large ensuite twin room for the two nights and were there any issues with that?

“Issues?” Robbie had queried in a tone that hadn’t tried overly much to hide his thoughts about her choice of words.

Innocent’s eyes had roved briefly over his expression. “Yes, Lewis,” she’d said, briefly, before her assessing gaze settled on James. “Hathaway?” she’d asked.

“No, ma’am,” James had said, calmly as you like. You could practically hear the shrug in his voice beneath the more formal words.

Well, Robbie had supposed she probably had to check such things with every junior officer she put in that position these days, but it was a bit much being treated like Peterson and his man, as if they couldn’t cope with sharing a room without bother. Six years in a partnership and you have your own ways and means of dealing with things and with each other. Which is why Robbie, observing from the sidelines, privately holds out little hope for Peterson and Blake. You tend to fall into those easy habits early on for it to work, the way you adapt to the other person. Especially when the other person is James. He’s a right funny mixture of standoffishness and fiercely guarded privacy on the one hand, and then a sort of endearing lack of boundaries on the other, and you just have to know how to take him, that’s all.

And then he goes and gives you that half-hopeful, half-trusting look sideways and you inwardly sigh and concede defeat and acknowledge that you can’t let him down and take the way out that Innocent is sort of offering, you can’t just pull rank and send him off to endure this one alone despite the dire timing. You have your own shorthand and expectations of each other like that and your own rhythms that you sink into with a partner after years of familiarity and you don’t question them too deeply—well, there’s no bloody point questioning anything too deeply when it’s James, not like you’ll get any answers, Robbie had reflected, and the thought had summoned the first half-smile of the day to his face.

James, sitting there beside him, had shot him a quick head-tilt of a query, ready to be amused too, as Innocent had perused her screen again. He’d looked like he was taking all this hassle in his stride, at least.

Then he’d lain in the bed across from Robbie’s last night, in quite upbeat mood for him, talking lightly about all manner of things, in pleasantly entertaining fashion. Robbie remembers finding himself suddenly grinning in the dark, amused at an anecdote James was wryly relating about some recent gig he’d played with his band, before he’d lost track of what that murmuring voice was saying next and he must have drifted off.

Then there are hazy memories of the hum of the shower in the en suite, and of rolling over being tugged right back down into oblivion, with relief, but maybe also memories now of resisting the half-heard sounds of someone moving quietly around the room—

“I did have a go at waking you before I went down for breakfast,” James points out now, giving Robbie pause again. Had he? “But it seemed best just to let you be a while longer. You were more than a bit—resistant. Had a few choice mumbles to make at me on the subject too,” James mutters under his breath.

Hell. Bloody worse is that he’d dozed off in the car on the way down here too, when James was driving the second leg of the journey and, fair enough, it had been a long week, they’d tried to cram five days of work into four so they wouldn’t come back on Monday to too much of a backlog, and had landed up getting a later start from Oxford than they’d wanted. They’d hit the M40, with Robbie driving, at the worst possible time of the evening, and that had set everything back.

But Robbie seemed to have slept pretty much from the moment they’d got back in the car after their stop for dinner, and he’d had no intention of doing that. The car had been warm, James had been explaining in depth about something he’d read about this new research study that’d featured at the end of the radio news, and that was the last Robbie recalled until an ad had blared and he’d heard a more peaceful murmur beside him of Let’s stick something else on, then, and a CD had clicked into the player. There’d been the sound of something lightly classical and nothing more until James had roused him when they reached the hotel, and he’d come to, feeling disorientated, groggy and with a stiff neck.

Much like he does now. “So you’ve gone back down and had breakfast?” he asks, trying to catch up on the events he’s missed. “Went out for a smoke, more likely, you mean, did you, before we get started?”

James shrugs, looking wary. Bugger, it’s not actually James’s fault Robbie feels like a bear with a sore head disturbed mid-hibernation. As he shoves back the covers and gets up, he registers that it is his head rather than his neck that’s aching rather dully. It’s going to be a long and trying enough day, and he’s fallen behind on it already. He might’ve known this would all catch up with him here in Lancaster.

“Seriously, sir, you won’t have time to eat, d’you want me to order you something from room service while you’re taking a shower? A Danish or something?” James has picked up a slim leather folder and is examining its contents.

“No.” He doesn’t even feel hungry, he feels as if he’s been yanked from his sleep to a call out in the middle of the night. Minus the adrenaline that comes with that.

“Coffee then? They do a cafetiere,” James says, sounding interested. “It’s listed as coffee for two. Now that’d be better than that filter stuff they had downstairs…”

“Should’ve known you had ulterior motives,” Robbie says, making an effort to tease now but it must come out a lot gruffer and flatter than he means it to with his sleep-roughened voice because he gets no response back except for James drawing his brows at him unhappily, as Robbie make his way past him to the bathroom.

Maybe a hot shower will help clear his head. Ah, bugger. He can see why James suggested coffee, he looks almost as bad as he feels.

===

“Think I’ll head on up,” Robbie says with a certain relief, putting down his empty pint glass.

James glances at him in surprise. “Already?”

The last time they’d both been away together, they’d landed up nursing pints in a pretty similar hotel bar into the early hours, Robbie remembers. Then, as now, James had secured them decent seats beside a fire as Robbie got the drinks in after dinner. But the atmosphere of this old place, with its brass-and leather fenders and old polished wooden tables and an impressive bar set apart from the regular’s lounge and the main part of the hotel—it’s all rather lost on Robbie tonight. He could do with putting his head down for a bit. He could do with being back in Oxford and not having a long drive to face to get there tomorrow.

Oh, and of course last time they wouldn’t have been sharing a room but now... “Have you got your key?” Robbie asks.

James drains his pint and sets the glass down, rising to his feet. “I’ll come up,” he says.

“Ah. No, you stay and—" He comes to a halt, having no real way to finish that sentence. He hadn’t meant to curtail James’s evening but, really, what does he expect his sergeant to do? Go and mingle with the crowd of coppers he can now hear getting slightly raucous in the function room that the hotel manager has rather optimistically allocated to them, across the lobby? They’ll be spreading in here soon to take over this bar too no doubt.

“I have a key,” James is telling him. “I’ll just—” And he gestures vaguely at the cold and rain-sodden January night outside. There must be a smoking shelter out there.

“All right,” Robbie agrees, not seeing much help for it.

He judges it best to affect not to see his sergeant’s silent scrutiny as Robbie leaves the bar, although in reality, the heat of James’s unapologetic gaze at you when he’s trying to work something out could fry an egg at fifty paces.

===

Oh, bloody hell, again? Robbie fumbles a hand on the table for his phone and hits the speed dial without further thought. “James?” he queries into it, hoarsely. 

“Morning, sir,” comes a much too cheery response for this hour of the day—although somehow the way that the sun is spreading right around this room also far too cheerily for Robbie’s befuddled mood is cueing him in that it may be far later than he thinks.

“What time is it?” But his bleary gaze falls on the clock. He blinks at it in disbelief so that it takes a moment to process that a distinct silence has fallen on the other end of the phone.

“Did you honestly just wake up now?” James’s voice asks slowly. Robbie thinks that’s far too flaming obvious to need any answer. But the animation has vanished from James’s tone too. “I’ll come up,” he says shortly and then the call cuts off before Robbie can tell him to give him a while and barely a minute later there’s the click of a key card in the door, heralding James’s approach. He comes in and shuts the door, and then he just stops where he is, gazing at Robbie. There’s a shadow that’s drawn down deep within his eyes, stilling him. Robbie sits up abruptly, suddenly very effectively wide awake. “James?”

James crosses to the bed as if he’s made up his mind about something, and stands there looking down at him.

“Are you ill, sir?” he asks curtly.

“What? No.”

“Right,” James says flatly, focusing on the wall behind Robbie’s shoulder.

“James?” But his bearing is as warily tense as someone who’s expecting an undeserved blow—Robbie shifts over a bit to clear a space for him. “C’mere.”

James says nothing in reply, but he drops down to sit on the edge of the bed, his eyes aimed at Robbie’s now, but his gaze already blanketed… Ah, hell. Robbie really hadn’t meant to put that sort of look on him.

“James. Tell you if I was, all right?”

James frowns, his eyes searching Robbie’s face for the truth in this. It seems best to just return his gaze, and submit to his examination in silence. Just as the best way with James is often to let him get there himself when it comes to stuff that’s stirred him up. Give him a bit of time and—“Yeah?” he asks eventually.

“Yeah. I would.”

He only gets a nod in return but James’s whole posture seems to soften with relief.

“What’s been making you think that, anyway?” Robbie asks, all of those mercilessly assessing looks since they got here suddenly making more sense.

“You’re increasingly exhausted recently, you slept pretty heavily in the car and both mornings here, you seem to have little or no energy, you left the bar early last night, and—you’re just not looking right lately.”

Robbie could brush any or all of that off and pretend to be jokingly insulted at that last but James’s voice is achingly careful. And that also sounds like a list he might have been compiling and brooding about for a while… Bugger. It shouldn’t be that hard for him to ask Robbie this. He shouldn’t have had to ask at all, come to that, Robbie should just have said—“Haven’t been sleeping much the last while, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

“Aye. And then yesterday morning—reckon you woke me from the deepest sleep I’d had in a while,” he admits.

“Oh,” says James again, illumination dawning over his features. He looks like all the puzzle pieces have shifted to fall into place and he’s just solved a case single-handedly. “That’s why you’re so—”

“Why I’m so what, exactly, now, Sergeant?” Robbie enquires suspiciously as he comes to a halt.

“More quintessentially your own plain-speaking self, sir,” says his sergeant smoothly.

“You saying I’m grumpier than usual?”

“No, I believe I very specifically did not say—”

“You’re saying I’m grumpier than usual.”

“Well—your words, sir.” But he leans back now, both arms propping himself up as he makes himself comfortable, sitting here on the side of the mattress, right at Robbie’s hip. And he grins at him.

Robbie arches his eyebrows at him to keep that lighter look on his face for just a moment longer. “And what you’re saying now is, if the hat fits, put it on,” he translates. James quirks his eyebrows back at him silently.

Robbie had been too short with him, then. Even for James who’s well-used to Robbie’s rough edges, God knows. He should’ve just said sooner. But it’s making a fuss about something that makes you feel sodding old. He offers up the information that his granddad who’d lived with them for years had always had trouble sleeping after he’d retired and would be up at all hours of the night, hoping this’ll form some sort of gruff unspoken half-apology instead.

This displeases his sergeant no end.

“You’re not—it doesn’t have to have anything to do with age. You’ve had this problem before.” Trust him to remember. But his brows are drawing back together now as something in his overanalytical mind must be overtaking his relief—and what’s he doing anyway distressing himself so much and getting so relieved, over Robbie, the daft bloody sod. He’s making Robbie ache in rather restless fashion as James often does, wholly oblivious of the effect he has. “How come you slept so well last night then?” he asks slowly. “And Thursday night? And in the car…” He’s intent as a hawk, ready to swoop in on any flaw in Robbie’s reassurance, despite how much he obviously also wants to believe it.

“Reckon it was probably you talking,” Robbie realises, because, hell, he can’t remember the last time he’d slept that much two nights running. He’d thought that first night was just reaching a point of pure exhaustion in the way that this seems to go, but now that there’s last night to add to the tally. “You must have one of those soporific voices, lulling me off.”

Because James may have taken a vow of silence on his personal life, but he can fairly natter till the cows come home when he’s off on one of his favourite topics, and he’d landed up easing Robbie’s path into sleep pleasurably and effortlessly after he’d come up to join him last night.

“Are you saying I’m boring?” James demands, his voice climbing in indignation.

“No, I believe I very specifically did not say that, Sergeant.” Robbie grins at him. “No, if it was that, I’d have been nodding off left, right and centre in those seminars then, wouldn’t I?”

James nods a rueful acknowledgement of this. “Not the most scintillating set of talks I’ve ever attended,” he owns.

“Seemed to put a spring in your step.”

“What?”

“Well you’re up early each morning and off—swimming or whatever.” Robbie suppresses a sigh. He’s feeling less irritable about that than yesterday but, Christ, it still just brings your age home to you when you’re confronted at close quarters with your sergeant’s lithe and energetic form back from being driven to actually seek out exercise first bloody thing in the morning.

“I’m a morning person,” James explains. “Best part of the day.”

It’s funny the habits you still don’t know he has when you’re so used to him—he’s never seemed that lively of an early morning when he’s crashed on Robbie’s couch, but then that tends to happen when they’ve either been up dead late brainstorming together, so they’re in the thick of something active and need to get on with things pronto the next day. Or after a night when a case has ended badly and Robbie has gruffly manoeuvred him back to his to let a bit of drinking and the odd comment from one or the other of them do the debriefing for them. And chances are that after that James would’ve been feeling the joint effects of an alcohol and a case hangover the following morning.

One of the lecturers yesterday had been discussing the correlation between violent crime and the level of familiarity between a perpetrator and their victim and had made that crack about the person most likely to kill you being the first person you saw in the morning and the last person you saw at night. There had been a mild ripple of laughter at a joke most coppers had heard by now and that was probably more to do with the sudden relief at a shift in atmosphere that any attempt at humour would provide in this intense day of seminars.

James had taken the opportunity to mime startled suspicion, drawing upright and away in pretend horror, moving out of the lazily slouching posture he’d slid into some time during the past hour. Then he’d treated Robbie to a grin, propped his head against his hand again and returned to studying the lecturer as if he found him cheerily fascinating.

It’s a look Robbie has noticed his sergeant seems to cultivate when stuck in that sort of situation, and God only knows what goes on his brain behind it.

Robbie had taken his point, though, that James seemed to have assimilated some time ago. It’s true that somehow they’ve become the person in that role for each other.

Well, Robbie’s flat is essentially on James’s route to work, and it’s become easier to fall into the habit of his sergeant picking him up there and Robbie returning the favour some days, and who’s Robbie going to see in the run of a normal evening after bidding his sergeant good night anyway? It’s also become fairly natural that when James hasn’t got band practice or something else on—and James rarely seems to have something else on—that he’s up for diverting for an afterwork pint and he generally comes back for a takeaway and a bit of continued beer-drinking on a Friday evening.

And Robbie should maybe be doing something about that, the amount of time his sergeant amiably gives up to spend drinking pints with his boss on top of all the hours he spends in work. God knows he shouldn’t be the first and last familiar face James sees most days. But he hadn’t quite been able to miss that it just didn’t go down too well a few months back when he’d all out told the lad he needed someone properly in his life.

“You had your swim and your breakfast then?” he asks now, giving James a nod to shift himself off the bed. More than past time to get up.

“Mmm—well, just coffee and toast earlier, I’m hungry now, though,” James says, rising, looking thoughtful. “I could do brunch. Will I…”

“Aye, whatever looks good.”

Robbie leaves him examining the menu with interest. A plan which initially seems to have backfired when he returns freshly showered, shaved and dressed in Saturday clothes only to discover that the small table by the window not only has a white linen tablecloth and has been properly set, but that under the silver dome keeping his breakfast warm is—

Robbie stands beside his place and raises his eyebrows at his sergeant, who is lounging in one of the wooden chairs drawn up to the table in his own gravity-defying fashion, perusing the Saturday Guardian while he waits. James looks over the top of the broadsheet section at him. “It’s eggs benedict but with smoked salmon instead of bacon, a layer of avocado, dill butter and on a toasted open bagel instead of a muffin—”

Robbie considers it askance and then his sergeant. “Why?” he asks plaintively.

James shrugs and lowers the paper in half. “Omega-3 fatty acids help with sleep—”

Robbie casts a quelling don’t-you-start look at him. “Says he who orders the large cafetiere of caffeine.”

“You could have hot milk if you prefer,” James suggests. That quelling look used to work better in the early days with him.

“What’s wrong with a layer of good old-fashioned bacon in it? That’s the classic way to have it.”

“You like smoked salmon,” James tells him. “You like the seafood chowder on the menu in the White Horse.”

Fish for breakfast. Really not what Robbie was picturing. But it’s obviously too late to change their order. Better to try it while it’s still warm. Robbie pulls out the other chair and sits down opposite him. James straightens, folds the paper deftly and tosses it onto the wide, low windowsill. It is a nice day out there now. The sky is that particular sort of bright paler blue you get in winter if you get a bracing, crisp day. The drive back might be pleasant enough. They could always stop off for an early dinner if this brunch doesn’t work out…

“You need to get all the flavours together in a forkful,” James instructs him.

“Yes, thank you, Sergeant, I know how to eat. You’re a dab hand on giving people advice on how to do the ruddy obvious, aren’t you,” Robbie grumbles, doing as suggested nonetheless. Oh, now that’s good. It all goes together, with what must be the dill butter just giving a bit of piquancy.

The corners of James’s mouth quirk upwards in satisfaction as Robbie chews in silent appreciation. “I could make this,” James muses. “It’s more a question of assembly than cooking if there’s no need for the hollandaise. I mean—you could make this, sir.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, there. I can poach an egg. You can do that in the microwave these days, you know. Lyn doesn’t think much of me frying things, so she gave me a special poached-egg-shaped plastic dish.”

James looks briefly appalled at the idea of marrying a microwave with eggs. Then again, he looks that way most of the time about Robbie’s purchases when Robbie has him stop off at the supermarket and James sees him purchasing a microwaveable ready-meal for the evening. “Well, I’ll be looking forward to next time I crash on your couch then,” he says gravely. “What with the delights that will await me in the morning.”

“You’ll be having your toast and whatever cereal you normally find when you go rummaging in my cupboards, or fried eggs and bacon if it’s a Saturday, and you’ll count yourself lucky,” says Robbie equably. “Morse never made me breakfast. Looked at me like I had two heads once when I just asked him if he had any butter making myself a sandwich in his house.”

James grins across at him. He generally pokes around in the cupboard for cornflakes if that’s what he’s after on mornings when he arrives before Robbie is ready. He never seems in much of a hurry even when he turns up early. He also pointedly and determinedly ignores the jar of instant coffee as if it’s personally insulted him, and messes around with the whole palaver with the cafetiere instead, handing Robbie a perfectly made cup when Robbie comes to join him, it has to be said. Although not said aloud. Robbie’s taken to using the cafetiere at weekends himself, but he’s not about to tell his sergeant that. No need to encourage him in his ways.

There’s freshly squeezed orange juice as well as the coffee with this breakfast. Although why the hotel kitchen has felt the need to put it in champagne flutes is anyone’s guess.

“Bucks fizz minus the fizz, unfortunately, sir,” James tells him, breezily, catching Robbie’s dubious look at his glass. “Seeing as we’re both driving. This was like a—breakfast package deal.”

Ah. Well, at least Robbie’s feeling more than halfway human now, enough to take his fair share of the driving. A hot shower and a good late breakfast can do wonders for the spirits. Never mind an amiable companion across the table who’s a ruddy daft sod getting himself so wound up about Robbie for no good reason, but—well, that’s also just James, isn’t it.

Wouldn’t really have him any other way.

================================================================

“What’s up with you?”

The muttering that James is engaging in across their office is becoming increasingly irate, and it’s starting to distract Robbie from his own quick perusal of what’s piled up in his inbox over the weekend. It’d been a quiet enough few days last week, after they’d returned from the conference, giving them a chance to catch up on themselves again. But for some reason that’s beyond Robbie, every bugger seems to send an email last thing on a Friday afternoon to await his attention first thing on a Monday morning. And he needs to get through anything genuinely requiring a response so he can focus on what’s just been landed on them now. James has been deputed to make a head start in the meantime.

James scowls across at him now. “It’s Hooper’s literal notetaking combined with his colloquialisms. If he insists on writing down practically every word each interviewee says, then there’s no need to introduce crimes against the English language while he’s at it.”

“S'pose we have enough actual crimes to deal with,” Robbie acknowledges.

There’s been a house burglary late yesterday evening and Innocent, strongly suspecting a link to a previous incident a fortnight before, has seen fit to pass it to their team this morning for particular attention. Robbie can see why—Peterson’s team had taken the first one and he’s off active duty for now. And there’s something disturbing about these. An elderly woman had been surprised by a sturdily-built intruder dressed all in black, right down to his balaclava, who had loomed over her in her armchair, in complete silence, rummaged briefly to take the small amount of cash she had in her flat, picked up a couple of personal items of hers that very obviously weren’t worth much to anyone else and left without a word. It all seems like a pointless waste of trouble forcing an entry to such a modest flat at all, when the only lasting effect was surely to destroy the householder’s peace of mind in her own home. Which almost sounds like it’s the whole point. Because the fact that the previous incident had been carried out for similar lack of personal gain is bothering Robbie.

It’s a depressing state of affairs to come in and start the week with. Presumably, James’s demeanour has more to do with that than anything Hooper has actually written in those statements he’d taken from the victim’s neighbours last night. Although Robbie privately doesn’t envy his sergeant his task. “He gets all the details, though, you have to give him that.” He’s just painstaking in including every single one of them. And speaking of the devil…

“You get all them statements then, Sarge?” asks the man himself, stopping in their office doorway on his way to his desk in the incident room, his overcoat still on.

“Yes,” James says as pleasantly as he can manage perhaps. “Thanks.”

“That one—he’d talk the hind leg off a donkey,” Hooper says with a nod at the one James is holding.

“Yes,” says James, glancing at it, barely suppressing a sigh. It does look long. Then his gaze narrows on something near the bottom of the page. Robbie watches him fight a losing battle with himself.

“Of,” James mutters to himself. Ah, hell. 

“What’s that, now?” Hooper enquires.

“Of,” says James, rather helplessly, as if he’s trying and failing to stop himself. It’s like a flaming uncontrollable reflex with him, correcting people’s English. Especially when he’s in a mood. “The phrase is ‘the tip of the iceberg,’ not off.”

“No.” Hooper is implacable and quite sure. “I wrote down exactly what he said. Always do. He said he heard nothin’ and it was bad enough living on the ninth floor of those flats when the lift is forever breaking an’ if the soundproofing was so bad that he could hear what was goin’ on in a flat below him and one over that’d make him tip off the iceberg. Though I reckon he meant more that it’d be the last straw, y’know the straw that broke the camel’s back, the drop that makes the teacup overflow, the tipping point—like in a coin pusher machine when you drop the coin in that makes your winnings fall off the platform…”

“All right,” James interrupts hastily. There’s a flush mounting under his collar. “Sorry.”

Hooper allows himself a quick grin. “S’all right, Sarge, we can’t none of us get them all right all of the time. Not even those of us with a posh university education—”

“Thank you, Constable,” Robbie intervenes mildly. James just doesn’t quite grasp that Hooper is the type of bloke who’ll persist with something as a continued joke even now that that bit of rancour has gone out of it for him. Robbie reckons Hooper’s persistence now is almost his clumsy way of trying to make amends with James for earlier days.

“He knows more idioms even than you,” James grumbles into Robbie’s tactful silence as Hooper departs, looking rather cheerful at this unexpected victory for his over-inclusive note-taking technique.

“Away with you and your idioms. That’s just homespun wisdom—”

“…that you learnt at your grandmother’s knee,” James completes, with a sigh. “Yes, I know. It’s too early for this.”

“I used to love those penny pusher machines in the arcade on the pier,” says Robbie thoughtfully. “I won big once, the year we went to Skegness—my dad wouldn’t let me put the coins back in for another go, though, so I bought an ice-cream wafer instead.”

“A much more prudent long-term investment, obviously, sir,” says James. He’s still a bit bent out of shape.

“You just get more pernickety about other folk’s use of English the worse form you’re in,” Robbie tells him. It’s like a barometer for James’s mood. Morse, on the other hand, had been low-scale irritable in familiar fashion so much of the ruddy time that it would’ve been hard to tell if his fussiness with Robbie’s grammar had varied with his humour.

Robbie doesn’t feel too bad himself this Monday morning, all things considered. Getting that unexpected rest in Lancashire seems to have knocked his sleep back into shape again last week. And that’s been more of a relief than he could have anticipated. It had made this a fairly relaxed weekend, if a quiet one. Newcastle had even had a win. He’d thought of asking James over to watch the match with him, but decided his sergeant could probably do with the weekend to himself, the lure of a good book apparently winning out over football. Or so he’d recently been told. James doesn’t seem much-restored, though; maybe his own time off hadn’t been the best. He’d been in better humour after spending half last weekend at a conference than he is this morning. He’s grimacing at that witness statement now. And he’ll make no progress with it till he’s cleared his head a bit.

Robbie feels in his back pocket for his wallet. “Go and get us a couple of coffees, would you?”

James looks up, surprised. “It’s pretty early.”

“Well, you can always make do with the canteen coffee instead if you don’t fancy one from the coffee place…”

“No, no,” demurs James hastily. “Far be it from me ever to dispute the instruction of a senior officer, sir.” And he rises, reaching for his coat flashing a sudden smile across the office that’s a pretty good version of his usual smirk, in response to Robbie’s look of complete disbelief.

================================================================

Robbie sighs and slows the car to take another blind bend cautiously in the darkness. It’s probably time to concede defeat. The best route back that James can find for them on that route-planning thing on his phone is still going to take them largely on the rural and local roads they’d seen more than enough of getting here. Robbie’s begun to suspect that there isn’t one motorway in the whole county of Lincolnshire, anyway. Finding themselves still here at this late stage in the day was not exactly part of the plan. They’d hoped to be back within reaching distance of Oxford at this stage. But once Innocent had finally cleared this trip, and their taking the time away from the other minor cases that have risen up in the last fortnight, Robbie, who’d pushed for a chance to follow this lead, had stopped off at James’s flat to wait while his sergeant had packed an overnight bag, just in case, before driving them to his where he’d done the same.

They’d had a stroke of luck discovering a common acquaintance to both victims of those break and entries, who’d moved up here with what seemed highly coincidental timing last week. And you never knew where a lead, sorely lacking on this case so far, might take you.

This one has taken them absolutely ruddy nowhere, in terms of the case and their current location. They’re both exhausted and hungry and pushing on further on unfamiliar, unlit winding roads that are probably best described as scenic on a good day—and when the radio is warning in foreboding tones of clear skies, low temperatures and ice Robbie does not consider that a good day—it’s not a resoundingly clever idea. “Check and see where the nearest place with some sort of accommodation is, would you?”  he asks, resigned.

A short interlude of swiping at his phone later and James is directing them to a Bed and Breakfast that he says can’t be that far away now, it’s located just a few miles from the last blink-and-you-miss-it lit-up one-street village they’ve passed through. Although they seem to be winding their way into deeper and darker countryside by the minute, now.

“You sure about this?” Robbie enquires dubiously, peering ahead as far as the headlights allow on a one-track road they’ve turned down.

“It has an average of approximately four out of five on Trip Advisor,” James tells him. “And their own website is currently advertising vacancies."

“No, are you sure you’re sending us in the right direction—” But the lights of a large house have appeared round a bend in the lane.

It’s sharply cold when they get out of the heated car in what appears to be a large cobble-stoned farmyard in front of the house, bordered with old stone outbuildings. The forecast had had that one right. And it’s a clear night with no cloud cover. James pauses with his hand on the boot, gazing upwards.

“Sergeant. If you want your dinner this side of Christmas…”

“It’s February,” James informs him.

Robbie heaves a sigh. He’s hungry. “Get a move on,” he clarifies.

A minute later and he’s wishing he could say the same to the woman behind the small reception desk in the roomy old hallway of this big modernised farmhouse.

“Two rooms,” she repeats slowly. “Oh. But we’ve let out most of our rooms to a group of hikers who’d booked in advance—so there’s only the one room left.”

Robbie’s surprised by a feeling of almost-relief. He’s been having trouble getting over to sleep again at night recently. The mood of resignation that had settled down on him at the prospect of getting a restless night of bad sleep in a strange bed, restricted in someone else’s house, suddenly alters and shifts. He casts a look at his sergeant, who is nodding, seemingly taking this wholly in his stride. Good.

 And the idea of sharing a room segues neatly into the welcome prospect of having James natter away again as he did in the hotel a few weeks back.

“We’ll take that,” he confirms, prompting the woman along as she hesitates doubtfully.

James had said there was a promising-looking pub in that last village, they could get a late bite to eat there once they’ve freshened up a bit.

But their hostess is looking a little uncertain. “I’d have to say—well. This is a family—” And she stops, mired in indecisiveness.

Oh, bloody hell. And Robbie, taken aback on a couple of counts here, is monumentally irked in the circumstances to discover a certain feeling of heat rising on his own face that he hopes to God is not translating into an actual flush as this woman looks from one to the other of them, frowning unhappily.

“Excuse me?” James cuts in, in an entirely courteous and enquiring tone, which also has an ascending note to it that tells Robbie that if this woman is about to start any hedging about letting two blokes stay in the same room together in her establishment, James will be coldly, irrefutably and oh-so-politely letting her know exactly where she doesn’t stand on any ground to do so. Robbie—who wants his dinner, a pint and a night’s sleep in that order and will be ensuring they are securing that room, suddenly decides his sergeant has this matter well in hand, and eyes him with a certain fascination as James draws himself up to his full height, and focuses his intent, querying gaze right down at her. And that’ll be just for starters. She continues to frown, oblivious, utterly absorbed by her own concerns here.

“It’s a family room,” she says, taking the icy breeze right out of James’s sails in one fell swoop.

“Oh. But—it’s got two adult-sized beds, though?”

“Yes. I suppose—oh, it doesn’t really matter, does it?"

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” James tells her with proper courtesy now, but his eyes slide sideways to meet Robbie’s, telegraphing a look of impatient bafflement, as she turns to reach for the one key left on the key-shaped wooden board mounted on the wall behind her.

It all becomes a bit clearer after they follow her directions up the stairs to the top of the house where she’s assured them a large converted en suite attic room awaits them.

“I’m not sleeping in that bed,” says James, flatly, coming to a halt right inside the door he’s just unlocked.

Robbie puts a palm on the small of his back to prompt him a couple of steps further in, and then shuts the door behind him before he takes a proper look at the offending article that has stopped his sergeant in his tracks. Ah. He maintains a straight face.

“That single bed, sergeant? Nor am I,” he says equably. And he drops his coat on the double bed just to make sure he’s firmly staked his claim.

James is still staring at it. “But this—it’s a family room, that’s what she meant, that’s the child’s bed—”

“It’s a decent-sized full-length single, though, your toes won’t poke out the end, if that’s what you’re worried about,” says Robbie seriously. It has neatly-pressed clean bedlinen, too, and it’s quite comfortable-looking, it’s only got the one sticking point—

“I am not sleeping under a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet cover,” James says, enunciating each word in far clearer fashion than is strictly necessary.

“Our Jack would love that.”

“I’m sure he’ll love hearing all about how his Grandpa slept in a Thomas bed when you tell him, then.”

“Senior officer here, Hathaway. It’s not often I pull rank, but I don’t reckon that bed befits the position of a CID Inspector—”

James glares at him. Then he yanks the duvet up and turns it over, resettling it, in silent vehemence. Or as vehemently as he can, considering that the bed is in a bit under the slope of the eaves. But he gets enough energy into it to relieve his feelings, all the same. Although—his efforts seem to have been in vain.

“Oh, look,” says Robbie, in interested tones, “it’s reversible. That red train—he’s your namesake isn’t he? Wonder if your pillowcases are reversible too…”

There’s a mutter at him from his sergeant as he goes to investigate the wardrobe for a spare blanket to cover the cause of this affront to his dignity, that, seeing as Robbie actually is the senior officer here, it’s probably best to affect not to hear…

===

James is the one having trouble getting to sleep. And it’s not Robbie shifting about that’s keeping him awake; Robbie’s feeling quite relaxed now. Even though this certainly isn’t an orthopaedic mattress, and his pillows lack firmness too. But his sergeant is tossing about every few minutes, fighting with his bedcovers, like he’s too alert to wind himself down to rest.

Robbie waits, hands clasped under his head.

“Is there light coming through those skylights? Is it bothering you?” comes James’s voice eventually through the darkness.

There are two large skylights set in the roof high above Robbie’s bed, one in the longer slope of the ceiling in front of him and one right overhead in the shorter, steeper pitch on the other side of the apex. But there’s bugger all light to speak of. It’s always easy to forget just how dark the countryside is at night when you’re used to the light pollution in Oxford. “You’re not still angling to swap beds? You can’t see them trains in the dark, you know.”

“No, I mean—I saw there was a pole with a hook for the roller-blinds above them.”

“Ah. No, you’re all right, I can see the stars here.”

There’s the sound of James rolling over yet again, presumably to face Robbie, because his voice sounds nearer this time, interested. “Can you? Which—Fuck.” The echoing thud that accompanies the abrupt end of that sentence tells Robbie what’s happened. Ah, hell. He hadn’t thought the slant of the eaves brought the ceiling down quite so low over that bed that even James could actually whack his head sitting up.

“You all right?” Robbie asks, turning rather pointlessly in James’s direction.

There’s a prolonged string of barely decipherable words from the other bed in response as James relieves his feelings about this entire set-up. If it’s not exactly a string of recognisable curses he’s delivering, that’s largely because he seems to be exercising his vocabulary in new and interesting ways in a muttered diatribe that takes in the whole concept of the not-so-charming quaint and homely English traditional Bed and Breakfast in general, people who shouldn’t be allowed to convert their attics into bedrooms without prior thought for sufficient headroom in particular, the placement of bedroom furniture being utterly discriminatory against people who are of above average height, the sheer inanity of novelty duvet covers and something to do with a mattress that must have been handstuffed from the feathers of the various farm birds to get it so sodding lumpy.

Robbie wonders why he’s not been blacklisted amidst that little diatribe. It was his hunch that’s landed them here, after all, in the first place. But when he does goes off-key on an intuition, James, even when dubious, certainly makes his thoughts known but is willing to follow too, even if he thinks it’s down the wrong road. He’s remarkably forbearing that way, even on a case like this, and that’ll be what’s really bothering him underneath it all. This one has worked its way under his skin, just as it has with Robbie, and they’ve been uselessly spinning their wheels on it and getting nowhere fast. And partly, Robbie knows, that’s why he’d let this lead assume larger proportions in his own mind than was justifiable, in the hope it’d give them something to do, something to tackle. And he’d dragged James along with him while he was at it, and in all fairness his sergeant doesn’t actually get much say in the matter.

Poor bugger. No wonder he’s had enough.

“Feel better now?” Robbie enquires.

James makes a disgruntled noise. “Which ones,” he asks eventually, resigned, “can you see?” He’s going to be shifting about all night in discomfort and probably whacking his head any time he sits up in the dark…

“Which ones—Well, I don’t know, Sergeant, that one is Ringo Star and those are his mates John, Paul and George—oh, would you get over here,” says Robbie, aiming for a long-suffering tone, “and you can do a bit of star-gazing and lecture me on all your ancient constellations. That send you off to sleep, would it?"

He’s expecting James to need a bit more persuasion before coming over to drop down on top of the covers for a bit of nattering and gazing at the comets or what have you that his sergeant will spot. He’s half-expecting a demurral. After all, it’s a bit—well, lying on the same bed, this should be—a line that matters to cross.

But there’s the sound of James getting cautiously out of that bed into the gap between theirs and then his hand grazes Robbie’s bare upper arm just below the cuff of the t-shirt Robbie wears at night, and James’s cautious footsteps recede as he starts to make his way around the bed, by touch.

“Turn on the light, you daft sod,” Robbie says in disbelief. “You’ll be stubbing your toe next.”

“No. You’re seeing more now because your eyes have been gradually adjusting to the darkness,” says his sergeant. And this, to him, seems to be sufficient reason to outweigh the surely obvious need for some light to guide him back to Robbie.

Robbie is about to argue further when he realises that James is over at the other side of the bed, and without further ado he’s lifting the duvet cover. He shifts himself right in underneath it, beside Robbie.

It occurs to Robbie that he could now move to the very underappreciated single bed his sergeant has just vacated, and obviously should. But James shifts, angling himself more diagonally, his head suddenly pressing on the edge of Robbie’s pillow, creating a slight imbalance, and his elbow knocking gently against Robbie’s. He must be mirroring Robbie’s position, the way he often does, but in the dark, as he settles beside him. And, as he exhales slowly, he suddenly feels like more of an easy presence to Robbie than he has been for the past while. He really hates this case.

“It’s easiest if you start with the plough,” he instructs Robbie.

“I know the plough,” Robbie acknowledges, turning his thoughts and his gaze back upwards and deciding maybe it’s just best to go with this set-up for the moment. It’s been an odd sort of a day overall, and it all feels a bit apart from Oxford, the two of them out here in the wilds of Lincolnshire, in a room at the top of this rambling old house, amidst the silent darkness of a farm at night. “Though we used to call it the butcher’s cleaver,” he adds, surprised into remembering a long-lost phrase as he finds overhead a pattern he hasn’t thought to look for properly in years. The stars do stand out remarkably clearly.

“That’s—well, I suppose if you squint at it a bit…” James considers this. “I can see why ever-pragmatic northerners would do, so, sir,” he decides. “Although, strictly speaking, the plough is an asterism and not a constellation—”

“Or on second thoughts, you could send me to sleep,” mutters Robbie.

James ignores this, settling comfortably deeper into the bed. “There was a bloke in the seminary who knew a lot about astronomy,” he confides. “He was a smoker, too. And after you see a pattern once that you haven’t seen before, it’s easier to find it again—one star leads to another and then there’s key ones. Pointers. Like clues. We can use the first two stars in the handle of the Plough that point directly towards Polaris—these two. So—see, if you follow the line they create over to here—” His arm brushes against Robbie’s. And then his shoulder presses firmly against Robbie’s shoulder as James must be pointing and gesturing, despite the darkness. 

But it’s enough of a signpost that he’s giving Robbie with touch. Robbie adjusts the angle of his head to follow the trajectory that he can feel that arm must be making across the sky.

“And now imagine a line dropping straight down towards the horizon—not that we can see the horizon,” James muses. “We should really be outside. You’ll only get two large snapshots here inside the frame of these windows and, because of the angle of them, the way they’re set into the slope of the ceiling—”

“If you think I’m clambering out of any skylights to sit on a roof doing some star-gazing, Sergeant, you have another think coming. I’m not freezing my bollocks off sitting on an icy slate roof for anyone.”

There’s a chuckle from James. “Duly noted, sir,” he says gravely. “All right, a line down from Polaris to where one would see the horizon if one were freezing one’s bollocks off outside. That’s due north, so if you use that imaginary line as your reference point whenever I refer to east or—”

“I’ve got you.”

“Now look back here out of the other skylight. That looks south.” And as James turns onto his side to get a better view out of that other skylight, almost right above their heads, Robbie boosts himself back on his pillows beside him, gazing upwards. James has somehow landed up very near… “You can see Orion’s belt?” he murmurs, his voice close to Robbie’s ear. “The three stars so close together—”

“Yeah.”

“Follow the line of it downwards to find the brightest star of all. That’s Sirius. Even though it looks like one star, it’s actually a binary star system—Sirius and his fainter companion star.”

“That so?”

“Yes. Like an inspector and his sergeant who has to be relegated to the child’s bed,” says James in disgruntled tones.

“Ah, away with you. You’re not anyone’s fainter companion, man. You’d be too bloody hard to eclipse.”

“Yes. Well—” He sounds pleased despite himself, though. He doesn’t even tell Robbie that one star probably can’t eclipse another one. And he’s getting well into it now, getting caught up in the distraction. His tone is properly relaxed as he resumes. “Sirius is known as the Dog Star because it’s part of Canis Major—the large dog—see? Sirius forms his nose, and then you follow his body on a diagonal, to the southeast… ” His arm jostles companionably right against Robbie again. Warm. There’s the friction of warm bare skin. James’s T-shirt, when he’d pulled on his nightwear earlier, had been sleeveless. That firm warmth that’s pressing briefly against Robbie’s upper arm, each time his sergeant points, is James’s bare, lean, lightly muscle-defined upper arm, imprinting its own warmth partly into Robbie’s shoulder, right through Robbie’s T-shirt sleeve, partly pressing right against Robbie’s upper arm where there’s no intervening barrier. “See?” his sergeant asks.

Robbie realises that he should be coming up with something here, and turns his head back to look upwards again, turns his straying focus back to those stars. “It’s like lookin’ at an ultrasound in the old days and squinting till the shape of a baby starts to emerge.”

“The heliacal rising of Sirius—when it seems to rise on the eastern horizon just before the sun—it used to coincide with the most sultry days of summer back in the time of Ancient Rome—the dog days. Hence the name.”

“They used the phrase ‘dog days’ in those days? Are you having me on? That’s what my nan used to call the worst days of a hot summer. And global warming aside, I’ll tell you that—”

“Summers were longer and hotter back when you were a lad,” James says gravely. “Yes, I know.”

Robbie elbows him neatly below the ribs, causing James to jerk in involuntary protest, and now his thigh twitches over for a moment to brush against Robbie’s, too, also warm and lean and very firm…

“Well, the Romans would have phrased it as diēs caniculārēs, to be accurate,” James allows.

“That sounds a lot less like something my nan would’ve said, all right,” Robbie says after a moment. He’s now thoroughly distracted by that brush of thigh against his own leg. It must be something to do with the way that they’re both wearing the thin cotton of pyjama bottoms. Because James’s thigh will often brush against Robbie’s as they sit on a bench for a lunchtime sandwich in summer, or on Robbie’s couch when James sprawls down a bit, and it’s comfortably, familiarly James, but it doesn’t normally cause quite that sort of a reaction when Robbie’s pulse quickens like that or—Christ, this is his sergeant that he’s—he must need a decent night’s kip even more than James does.

“No, even before the Romans,” James is insisting now. “Aristotle uses the term in Physics. And in the King James—”

The bible, the Greek philosophers, the Romans and their Latin and a bit of word origins thrown in for good measure. It’s like some sort of perfect storm to keep James happily musing to himself all night long. The case is well forgotten.

That’s the ticket, thinks Robbie. This pillow is more comfortable now, straightened out by the counterbalance of James’s elbow leaning on the edge of it. And the bed has become comfier, a better support, with the weight of two bodies levelling out the mattress. Physics, like James just said, that must be it.

Apparently this companion star burnt out years ago and isn’t really there, it’s an earth-sized ember or somesuch, James is going on about it now. Its luminosity comes from stored thermal energy. And this bed is definitely warmer with the presence of James’s body, it’s like being within the radius of a gentle fire, so it must be like James after all, that star, Robbie thinks, pleasantly confused. Robbie would tell him that, if he wasn’t entirely too contentedly drowsy to move or make the effort required to speak—

===

“What the hell?”

“Make it stop,” groans James, flouncing onto his side to face Robbie and reaching up to curve his pillow round his head, holding it in place with both elbows jammed in. Then, as the unholy noise starts up again, he yanks the pillow over, right on top of his head and rolls onto his back, underneath it.

Robbie huffs a laugh, despite the rude awakening, at the sight of him. “What d’you want me to do, Sergeant, arrest it for a breach of the peace?”

“That’d be a good start,” comes a muffled voice.

“Be a bit tricky getting handcuffs tightened round the legs of a rooster—what’s up with you this morning?”

“What d’you mean what’s up with me?” says the voice from under the pillow, all blunted consonants. “That’s a worse noise than a bloody siren.”

“Thought you were a morning person?”

There’s a pause while Robbie regards his sergeant’s still and currently headless form. Then—

“I am,” says James agreeably, coming upright and dropping the pillow into his lap to reveal a bright expression that somehow doesn’t look all that convincing. “Can’t go for a swim here, though, of course.”

“Maybe we could find you a duck pond if you fancied a quick dip.”

“What? Oh, funny. I’m just going to get a shower—unless you want to go first?”

“No, you go ahead.” What was all that about? Must have stayed up too late watching stars. Robbie will be all right to linger in bed a few minutes longer. That was a comfy night’s sleep. He’d know nothing from the time he’d drifted off to the sound of James murmuring about his constellations until their wake-up call just now. Apart from a half-dreamt impression of rolling over within the depths of the bed and the night and briefly encountering a warm tangle of long limbs in the darkness. Robbie had shifted back to his own side as James had muttered something sleepy and yielding and indecipherable back at him.

“That’s made me thankful there were no chickens on Lodge Farm when I was growing up,” James says when he eventually reappears, all half put together, hair still damp, barefoot, and shirt tails untucked but dressed otherwise apart from the formal framework of tie and suit jacket.

Robbie tries not to betray his surprise. Or at least to make it seem like it’s purely about the lack of chickens in a farmyard.

“Just the horses, eh?” he asks casually, getting up with a pleasantly deep stretch.

“Not just, but they were certainly the main focus, yes,” James agrees, rummaging in his bag.

Permeating the steamy air of the bathroom, the almost-visible clouds of moist mist, is a scent that part of Robbie’s mind automatically associates with James, a certain sharp leafy note that comes from some cologne. There had been the faintest impression of it last night in the dark  in that bed looking at the stars. It’s part of James’s own particular mix of scents that have in turn been part of Robbie’s unexamined background for years now, although it’s in more condensed form than usual. And it makes Robbie realise that—

“Lend us your shower gel, would you?” he asks, sticking his head back into the bedroom. “Forgotten mine.” The rumpled duvet, turned back on both sides, brings home to him how James must have simply settled himself to sleep in the bed after Robbie had dropped off, without apparently considering returning to the single. And James turns now, considering.

“I think you’ll find the selection our hostess has left in there would suit you well,” he says casually.

“Ta.” Robbie reaches for one of the miniature bottles in a little straw basket, wondering if they’re supplying ones that advertise Bed and Breakfasts now too, or do the folk running them just get little bottles in Boots these days and—oh, for Christ’s sake. He belatedly registers that over-casual tone of James’s.

“I’m a patient man, Sergeant,” he says leaning around the doorframe and discovering James is now, for reasons best known to himself, tugging on his socks while leaning against the wall, in stork-like fashion, instead of sitting on the bed as any reasonable being would do.

“I think crème de rose with an underlying hint of honeysuckle would suit you down to the ground. Could become your signature scent, sir.”

“I’d be the talk of the nick if that’s what you mean. Smelling like a rose garden in February,” Robbie says, holding out a hand firmly for James’s own shower gel. His sergeant leaves off his acrobatics to produce it with a grin. They do have to get back to the nick some time this morning. Maybe it’s as well they’re getting more of a head start than planned on the day.

The white-painted attic room has grown increasingly bright in the last few minutes as more light spreads in to every angular corner of it, and it seems to be one of those February mornings that you can’t really take for granted, the ones that remind you that Spring is an actual possibility. The sky right overhead is pale blue, shot through with long trails of clouds in mainly pinkish hues. James, standing there under those big skylights, starting to knot his tie now, has a bit of a burnished glow about him, his hair and his skin, from the softness of the sun before it makes its way all the way up. And, Robbie reflects, shaking his head as he heads back towards his shower, he’s apparently chosen his shirt to match the sunrise.

Whatever about their hostess’ shortcomings on furniture arrangement and scented toiletries, she does an excellent breakfast. A proper fry-up, Robbie is very pleased to see. And James seems quite happy to join him in one.

They’re the only guests at this hour in this room that runs right along the back of the farmhouse. The other tables are empty. But that’s all right. It’s bright and peaceful, they’re left to their own devices after they’ve been served and they have a view across a grassy stretch at the back of the farm to fields receding towards a gentle rise of the land—a view which does include a duck pond, Robbie notes with amusement, nodding sideways at it suggestively. James rolls his eyes at him and nurses his coffee cup, leaning back in his chair with his long legs stretched under the table, gazing out at the early morning scene and the colours that still linger in the sky, deeper now. There’s a bit of a reluctant smile lingering at the corners of his mouth too. And the light is doing odd things to his eyes, as they shift from grey to light blue, just like, Robbie is further entertained to see, the way the colours on the surface of the water in that pond shift with the ripples spreading across its surface.

He blends in so well with these early-morning surroundings that it seems sort of natural that he’s looking almost content, out of the city for once. Because he’s looking more properly peaceful this morning than Robbie can recall seeing him before.

Robbie sits and watches him for a moment. They may have made bugger all progress with the case, but he reckons this whole trip wasn’t such a bad idea. They’re both heading back to Oxford in far better form than when they left it less than twenty-four hours ago. When his phone starts up, it takes him a second to snap back into mode and reach to silence its harsh tone with an answer. He barely has time to process that it’s too early for this to be anything routine and then the realisation comes, a mere dispiriting second before the confirmation.

There’s been another break-in, someone else silently terrorised in their home.

James sips his coffee silently, his expression setting in a still resignation as Robbie makes short replies into the phone, asks a couple of questions and ensures Innocent will be told to send their team to the scene, that it’ll take him and his sergeant quite a while to get back to Oxford.

By the time he terminates the call, James is rising from the table and lifting his chair back in, while he turns his head to take one last look out of the window. From this angle, that light in his eyes seems to have dwindled a bit already, and his bearing is taking on that tension that you don’t really notice until it subsides again, but that comes with him needing his usual defences intact as they head back into all this.

Bugger.

Chapter Text

“That website you showed me yesterday—d’you remember the name of it?”

“Didn’t you save it?” James asks, glancing up.

“Aye, but…” Robbie gestures in frustration at his computer.

“Whatever has it done to you this time, sir?” James asks gravely, getting up nonetheless and coming over to lean over beside Robbie. “What on earth…”

“I saved it as a bookmark,” Robbie tells him, running the cursor down the screen, “the way you suggested before.”

“Yes, but—” James stares at the list that runs from top to bottom in a sidebar on Robbie’s screen. “Have you saved every website you’ve been on since I showed you how to do that?”

“Should be easier than googling again,” Robbie asserts.

The cheeky bugger actually closes his eyes for an instant, as if he thinks he’s ruddy well unobserved, and inhales. “Only if you organise—” He sighs. “All right. I’ll find it here and then show you how to create folders in the bookmark tool.” And he bends to frown at the screen, taking possession of the mouse and sliding it away from Robbie’s unresisting hand. “There, you see—” His shirtsleeved upper arm brushes against Robbie's, as he makes a small adjustment to get the cursor to halt at the little symbol that’ll identify the website for him. “That one, I think.” He leans in closer still, absorbed. And there it is again, that sharp leafy scent that keeps emerging more strongly and suddenly at odd moments now. “There.” But Robbie is back to a fortnight before and the warmth of his sergeant’s arm pressing against his own as they’d lain there in that attic room in the Bed and Breakfast. And James’s words and the soft brushes of his touch had drawn out the patterns in the stars overhead in the dark sky of the Lincolnshire countryside.

There’s a slight noise from the doorway, and James’s head lifts in unison with Robbie’s. James’s hand slides forward off the mouse and he spreads a palm briefly on Robbie’s desk, propelling himself upright. “Ma’am,” he says politely.

Robbie looks at Innocent. How long has she been standing in the corridor not saying anything? It occurs to him that he could have simply relinquished his chair and stood to give James free rein at his computer, rather than have James leaning close beside him like that—

“Gentlemen,” says Innocent, eyeing them with an unreadable expression.

“Ma’am.” Robbie inserts a query into his own acknowledgement. But she’s headed off down a track of her own making now.

“For the sake of the accountants’ blood pressure, Robbie, any extra expenses incurred on overnights at conferences need to go on a bill separate to the accommodation invoice, please do remember. I don’t have to tell you why we all need to be open and transparent in our record-keeping to avoid any suggestion of impropriety in the current climate. Everything needs to be firmly above board for the audits.”

“Right,” Robbie agrees with a sigh. It’d be a ruddy odd choice to use a cafetiere of coffee for a case of police bribery, after all. Although maybe it’d work on James. But it seems a bit much for her to have called into their office to remind him of that.

Innocent frowns at him, still looking a bit torn. Then she glances down briefly at her tablet she’s holding. “Well—I’ve approved your request for extra manpower on this case. Two of the new DCs are being allocated to your team for now.”

“Ah. Thank you, ma’am,” says Robbie relieved. The break-in that had occurred so early in the morning while they were up in Lincolnshire has gone nowhere fast. The latest this week had taken place while a couple were out at work and a Mrs Travis, the husband’s elderly mother, had been the only one home. It had initially seemed to offer some clues which had had them run ragged the last two days chasing up potential leads before any trail grew cold. But fairly fruitlessly. They’ve hit a dead end here. It’s getting hard to see the woods for the trees with frustration on this case.

The victims seem to have sod all in common with each other, other than being in no real physical shape to present any sort of threat to an intruder. Even if they weren’t terrified. They’re reliably home alone at the time of the break-ins, suggesting that each of them have been watched for the pattern of comings and goings in their households. The type of homes and the areas they live in vary in seemingly random fashion, but presumably in a pattern that their perpetrator’s movements hold the key to. Any potential links between victims or overlap between the people in their lives are tenuous at best and so far seem to lead absolutely nowhere. And yet everything about the deliberate, silent intimidation described and the odd choice of items taken continue to suggest to Robbie’s intuition that there is something not at all random but very personal at the heart of this.

It’s the sort of case that needs feet on the ground and will probably be solved with good old-fashioned grassroots detective work. The clues have to be there in the evidence, after all—if they could just see what the pattern is within all the white noise and paperwork that surrounds any crime these days.

“Hooper is updating them on events so far, as we speak,” adds Innocent, casting a glance out at the incident room. Robbie’s eyes follow her automatically to spot Hooper and the two newest DCs who have recently made it out of uniform. Colton and Truong. Both young and keen, and Truong had rather distinguished herself on a case with Grainger while still a PC, noticing what had turned out to be a crucial piece of the puzzle at a scene. Good.

Innocent is still gazing thoughtfully out at the everyday mild chaos of the crowded incident room. Then she seems to reach a decision, turning to close the door firmly behind her.

“Stay here please, Sergeant,” she tells James. Who hasn’t actually made a move to leave.

James’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline, the only comment he apparently feels able to make on this. But it’s not James who Innocent is levelling her straightforward gaze at now. “Look. Robbie. There’s a charge for breakfast via room service on that bill—”

Bloody hell, they’re back to this? “And I settled that, ma’am,” Robbie objects, letting a note of annoyance creep into his voice. Well, James had technically been the one who’d negotiated their checking out, but Robbie had reimbursed him for all their extra charges, despite his protests.

“Better coffee, ma’am,” explains James, talking over him. As if that’s sufficient answer in itself, Robbie thinks, amused in the midst of his impatience. It might be to James, come to think of it.

Innocent continues as if she hasn’t heard him, her own decidedly unamused look still directed at Robbie. Current climate or not, she’s making a complete mountain out of a molehill here. “There’s also a late check-out fee—”

“Which we also took care of. Ma’am, the department’s not getting charged for anything—”

“Lewis. If you want to forego breakfast downstairs and assure me you were both out sightseeing or taking advantage of an on-site gym on the Saturday—”

“Excellent set of cardiovascular equipment,” James intones gravely. Innocent’s gaze barely flickers sideways towards him and this further effort at diversion. She’s still intent on Robbie. Who is getting a sinking feeling now…

“—I’ll be quite happy to accept any honest reassurance from you. But I need to ask—” Dear God. Robbie stares at her. “—whether there’s anything I need to be aware of here with you and your sergeant which should have been openly declared by now, as you both know, from the guidelines—”

“No, ma’am,” Robbie cuts her off abruptly. And much more sharply than he maybe would have if she hadn’t come far too close to shining a light on those odd half-guilty remembered sensations that he’d just been experiencing when James had leaned in close.

“No, ma’am,” James says, a beat behind Robbie, a fainter echo, suddenly making Robbie think of Sirius’s fainter companion star, of Lincolnshire again, of James lying in a bed beside him pointing out those constellations—but in that moment of stretching silence before James had backed him up, there had been a small release of breath from him, barely more than an exhale, and Robbie had felt…he tries to work out what exactly that was—

Innocent doesn’t react much. “You’ll understand why I had to ask,” she says, opening the door to leave them be again.

Christ almighty. As the controlled clamour from the incident room, their own accustomed background noise, starts to filter back in, Robbie half-turns his head to look at his sergeant, since there’s no putting it off. James has bent to study the computer again as if their chief superintendent’s questions were merely routine. But as Robbie stares at him he looks up, a sudden keen-eyed glance and gives a shrug. “Honestly, sir, I doubt Innocent thinks you’re—well, I think we’ve reassured her that your honour is intact.” And he starts to scroll through the bookmarks again. “There,” he says after a moment, coming to a halt. “That one at the top now. I’ll sort them into some sort of system later, if you like.” And he straightens up to head back over to his own desk.

Robbie sits and watches as his sergeant drops back into his own seat, pulls himself into his desk, and reactivates his own computer. He supposes Innocent has to follow up on all sorts of—things—like that, these days, that might look suspect, but he finds himself wondering unreasonably why she felt she had to do that, if she ruddy well felt she had to at all, with James right there? Because James now looks a bit—

“Better coffee?” Robbie enquires after a moment.

James huffs a small laugh and looks over at him. “Should I have told her how good the dill butter was when we were sharing our brunch for two?”

“Brunch for—?”

“A late lie-in brunch for two. That’s what it was listed as on the menu. And on the bill, I suppose,” says James thoughtfully.

Robbie groans, picturing Innocent moving rapidly and efficiently through these minor bureaucratic interruptions to the brisk pace of her day, picking up the memo from accounts, and then her all-seeing glance honing in on that particular detail of the bill attached to it, of bloody course.

“You’d had a lie-in. It was a late breakfast option. You liked the salmon,” James says, with a shrug, “And—there were two of us.” He’s deliberately missing the point with a certain imperturbable grace in the way he tends to do at moments like this that makes you feel a bit—daft, a bit like you’re letting him down if you don’t rise to the occasion with him.

And that’s what it had felt for a moment there with Innocent. In that moment of pause before James echoed Robbie’s words. Like Robbie was somehow letting him down.

==

“A bit of damp never hurt anyone?” James repeats in disbelief as they both arrive into the foyer of the building that houses the morgue, later that afternoon, with far more haste than dignity. It had initially seemed like a good idea to divert while they were in the neighbourhood of the Radcliffe and call in to Laura to pick up the final report they need from her for an unrelated, mercifully closed, case that Robbie wants off his desk pronto. They’ve more than enough to be going on with at the moment.

Robbie had said that, dismissively, a few minutes previously when James had eyed the sky dubiously, hesitating, his hand on the interior handle of the car door. And then James had turned up the collar of his coat and got out anyway. Come to think of it, he could’ve waited in the car if he’d wanted. Robbie is now mildly soaked, bone weary and more than a bit fed up. “Didn’t know it’d start raining cats and dogs halfway between here and the car park,” he says in disgust, catching hold of the fire door at the top of the staircase that his sergeant is making a long arm to hold open for him, reaching back from where he stands, a couple of steps below Robbie already.

James perks up a bit immediately, glancing back up as he rounds the bend in the stairs. He’s been pretty quiet most of the afternoon. “That,” he informs Robbie, “is a saying that may well stem from the combined traditional depictions of the Norse God of Storms, Odin, with dogs and also from witches flying through storm clouds on broomsticks with cats—”

“Did Santa Claus give you a book on the history of daft sayings for Christmas?” Robbie asks him, as he falls back into step beside his sergeant, making their way along the corridor to the morgue, “Cause I know it wasn’t me.”

“There may be an etymology app downloaded on my phone,” James concedes, shooting him an injured look at this casting of aspersions upon his own mental stock of knowledge. “But that’s more to do with the origins of individual words…Doctor,” he breaks off, inclining his head gravely at Laura as she appears in the corridor. “How are you?”

“I,” says Laura, halting in her tracks to take a hard look at them both, “am fine. Whereas the two of you,” she continues, displeased, “You’d both blend in far too nicely with the other occupants here.”

“She’s saying we look like death warmed up,” says Robbie in injured tones to James. It has been a bloody long week so far, in fairness, when they’re only three days into it.

“Yes. Thank you, sir,” says James in long-suffering tones, stopping just short of an eyeroll at his guvnor’s helpful explanation. “And thank you so much, Dr Hobson.”

“Not much warmed up either,” Laura tells them frankly. “Patchily reheated, at best. You’re looking tired again, Robbie.” And just like that she’s segued straight into direct concern in that way that she does. “Are you putting in late nights on this case? And James, you’re—are you feeling okay? Are either of you getting enough sleep? I heard about the latest—well, you know this one could be a long haul.”

Robbie knows that all too well. His sergeant—who’s not exactly more idealistic or hopeful about these matters any more in the way that he maybe used to be, but is just less well able to handle the thought that they may not actually crack this before another elderly victim has their peace of mind destroyed in their own home, stiffens a little in protest.

“No use you both running yourselves into the ground just when we need our best pair of detectives,” Laura says, tilting her head at James.

James gazes back at her and then gives a soft sigh, as if relinquishing something, Robbie’s not sure what. But he wonders, as he’s wondered a couple of times recently, just how much James has worked out about how things are now for Robbie with Laura.

Laura’s turned her attention back to him now. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of being ambushed in my workplace, anyway?” she asks. “Because, not to be inhospitable, Robbie, but—”

One quick internal phonecall to her department’s secretary, and she’s arranged for a copy of the report to be waiting for them upstairs.

“Look after him, why don’t you,” she advises, turning her attention back to the file she’s holding that represents in paper form her own most pressing current concerns—and leaving Robbie wondering just which one of them she’s addressing. Then he finds himself wondering further whether that actually matters. Laura raises her head to give him a brief smile as he frowns at her. “And stop cluttering up the morgue before my new overeager student mistakes one of you for a cadaver to practice on.”

Robbie comes to a halt outside the main doors of the building, once they’ve secured the report and silently negotiated corridors and stairs back into the outside world. He’s thinking. James stops beside him without protest.

The worst of the rain has spent itself for now. The chill damp air of the car park is nearly welcome after the close air of the hospital building, even if the day is already yielding to dusk after an unremittingly grey afternoon. The security lights are warming up into a harsh halogen glow. And James is looking pale in this unflattering light. All hollows and shadows. And pretty much as weary as Robbie feels. It’s not knocking-off time yet, but—

“Time to call it a day,” Robbie decides. “And take ourselves back to mine for a bite to eat. Because according to our good doctor, the look of both of us is enough to scare the horses from their feed.”

James looks momentarily relieved. “Speak for yourself, sir,” he objects. But then he grimaces in frustration. “I’ve still got those case summaries to do,” he admits. “I haven’t exactly made much progress on them today.” That is a bit unusual for him. Must be in need of refuelling.

“Case of two heads being better than one, then,” Robbie tells him. “Come on. Dinner first. We’ll stop off back at the office and you can get them.”

===

“Come and get it while it’s hot,” Robbie instructs. The two plates of pasta that he’s just set on his kitchen table have a far more appetising appearance and aroma than usual. James had steered him in the direction of a fresher basic type of sauce to use. Well—if you can call it steering when your sergeant removes the jar of sauce you’ve just added to the basket he’s holding, regards the label, absently says “no,” and just puts it back on the shelf before heading off down a different, refrigerated aisle. They’d landed up with more veg than Robbie would normally bother with, too, but James had made himself useful chopping and sautéing the various additions until the one-pot stage of the meal preparation when he’d wandered off to drop down on the couch, surprisingly leaving Robbie to it.

He’s slumped down now, leafing through a file. “This isn’t even one of ours,” he complains, dropping it and getting up. “Someone’s filed it with current cases by accident. It’s from Grainger’s case last year when that gang’s modus operandi was to hack into hospital waiting lists and send those fake appointment letters to get people out of their houses.”

“Aye,” remembers Robbie, tasting the sauce with appreciation. He thinks it’s the fresh herbs James had had him tear up and put in that are making this taste so much better. Basil leaves. “They were ruddy realistic-looking, though, those letters. What they needed to solve that one faster was for their burglar to be using a typewriter that had a dodgy key for one letter of the alphabet.”

James holds his fork still, looking at him in disbelief. “A typewriter? Yes, or they could have resorted to traditional methods of delivery while they were at it and then Graigner’s lot could have questioned the telegraph boy. Should just call you Miss Marple, sir.”

“That’ll be Poirot to you. You’re one to talk, you’re the one getting yourself poisoned with flaming arsenic. And you needn’t think I’ve forgotten you were carrying smelling salts around, my first case with you. Don’t knock the typewriter, it served us well enough for years. Although I’ll have you know that I was one of the first in our nick to be trained up on a computer when you were still—” On second thoughts, it’s really best not to think about what age James had been back in the late nineteen-eighties. Not even into his ruddy teens... “—reading a book,” Robbie finishes ruefully.

“What happened to you, sir?” asks his sergeant sadly. “In your admirable quest to embrace that new-fangled technology?”

“You came along and made all my efforts in that direction redundant,” Robbie tells him. “Stop picking at that now and eat up.” Because, rather disappointingly, his attempt at cooking doesn’t seem to be tempting James’s appetite as much as Robbie’s. Best have a go at coaxing him a bit under the guise of grumbling orders at him. “Not too often you’ll get a homecooked dinner here, Sergeant, make the most of it when it happens.”

===

“I know there’s a proper pattern somewhere here too, probably staring us in the face—if we can just see it.” Robbie has been sitting on the edge of the couch, shirt-sleeves rolled back and elbows on his knees, examining one file after another, as they lie open on the coffee table in front of them. James has been sitting further back, beside him, presumably going over his notes but he’s been quiet for a while. And it hasn’t escaped Robbie that his posture is far stiffer than it usually is when they sit together on the couch. He’s been hoping Innocent hasn’t somehow introduced any ruddy awkwardness, after all, making James feel uncomfortable… He glances back in enquiry now when he doesn’t get a response. James is rubbing hard at his temple with the knuckled fist of one hand, his eyes screwed shut.

“Yes,” he says suddenly, his eyelids lifting as he seems to feel Robbie’s scrutiny. He blinks rapidly at Robbie.

“You can barely see the pages at all, can you,” Robbie realises. “You that tired?”

“It’s Colton’s writing,” grumbles James, pressing his head back against the top of the couch, “and the way he’s transcribed every word of this statement from the Travises’ next door neighbour. He’s been spending far too much time with Hooper. He notes that she was home at the time but can no longer see into their back room out her kitchen window after she was persuaded to put in proper wooden panelling since good neighbours make good fences.”

“Aye, well, Colton’ll have checked if that’s true, hasn’t he? That her line of sight would be blocked.” That’s just like this ruddy case, Robbie thinks unreasonably. People are that set on privacy these days that you can’t even catch the break of a good old-fashioned nosy neighbour peering over her fence at the comings and goings next door.

“It’s good fences make good neighbours, not the other way round—” But even James’s grumbling doesn’t hold much bite to it somehow.

“Ah, don’t start that, now. Come on, what’s up with you?” Robbie considers the look of him properly. He’s still pale, even for him. And now that Robbie comes to take it in, James’s forehead seems to have been etched with semi-permanent furrows all evening. “How long have you had a headache? You’re all eyes.”

James makes an effort to narrow said eyes at him reproachfully. “I don’t get headaches,” he tells Robbie.

“All right, sergeant. Have it your way. On a scale of one to ten, where one is that you could still enjoy your beer and ten is that the pain is now making you feel ill, just where does this non-existent headache fall?”

James lets his eyes wander to the untouched open beer bottle sitting at his end of the coffee table. “It’s hard to quantify that which does not exist,” he says. But his expression lets Robbie know he’s giving in.

“When did it start?”

“Since—I dunno, soon after Innocent visited us this afternoon.”

Huh. Robbie puts the file aside and shifts back to sit against the back of the couch too, his head resting close to James’s. James looks at him without moving. “I’ll tell her she’s being a pain in the neck, will I? If you have to take a sick day tomorrow. What with all her enquiries about what we had for our brunch…”

James huffs a small laugh. “I’ll be fine. It’s just getting a bit worse at the moment so—if you had anything along the lines of pain relief…”

That does it for Robbie. “I’ll hunt you out some Nurofen, I use it the odd time for my back. C’mon now, you go on into the bedroom and get your head down for a bit in the meantime.” He certainly doesn’t look fit to drive. And Robbie’s had a beer too many. What James needs is a darkened room for a bit while the painkillers kick in, and he should be all right to head home then.

“It’s too early to go to sleep,” James says, but he looks overwhelmingly relieved at the offer—even if he seems to have sort of misunderstood it.

“Aye,” says Robbie, trying to play catch-up here and unable for some reason to clarify that he hadn’t actually meant that as an invitation for the night. “Just—you go ahead and get your head down, then. I’ll be in to you in a bit.” He means with the painkillers but James nods at him trustingly and then winces, looking as if he regrets that impulse. His movements seem quite slowed as he stands. Robbie frowns after him as he disappears from the room.

And this case is going to be the death of them, if Robbie doesn’t keep a better eye. Which is ruddy odd for a burglary case but then there’s all sorts of oddness going on around this that Robbie can’t quite put his finger on.

James is lying in the bed by the time Robbie goes in with painkillers and water. Well, Robbie can hardly kick him out now, he reasons. Do no harm for just the one night. Was all right in Lincolnshire, wasn’t it? And James does look shattered. Like raising his head, now that he’s given in to lying down, could be painful in itself. Robbie considers him and then lowers himself to the side of the mattress right beside him, passing him the tablets. He hands him the glass of water as James props himself up on his other elbow and palms the tablets into his mouth, then reclaims it as soon as James has swallowed a gulp to chase the tablets down. James seems grateful to sink back down without having had to sit up properly.

Robbie leans back, regarding him. “You should’ve said something sooner. When it started.”

“Mmm. Like you. And your insomnia,” James agrees.

He’s got Robbie there. Robbie shakes his head at him and puts a hand to his sergeant’s forehead. Cool enough. Maybe too cool. James is wearing only a very fitted undershirt, and his boxers and the duvet has slid down with his movements to rumple over his narrow waist on this side. “You warm enough? Want another blanket?”

“I’m fine,” says James, dismissively, his words thoroughly at odds with the look of him. But as Robbie removes his hand, James turns his head a little more towards him. “Don’t sleep on the couch,” he says, suddenly intent.

“I’ve no intention of doing any such thing, Sergeant,” says Robbie, firmly.

James makes a noise of amusement.

Robbie looks down at his sergeant and James looks back up at him, still blearily entertained by that. He must have taken his contacts out, the way his eyes aren’t quite focusing. And it must be that that does it, that summons up a sudden memory of James smiling up at him from a hospital bed after he’d emerged dazedly, still intact, from one of the longer nights of Robbie’s life. You saved me. And then, as now—well, Innocent may see James as the one in the vulnerable position, the junior officer in a partnership; and he is, of course, and the memory of her glances at Robbie this afternoon is rising up too now in the confusion of Robbie’s mind and colliding with that mental image of James in that hospital bed but—if James is the one in the vulnerable position here, then how come it’s something within Robbie that seems to take a battering?

He gives a sigh, pressing his hand to the mattress beside James’s hip and the rumpled duvet, preparing to leave him in peace. But James just keeps gazing up at him, somehow keeping him there a moment. Robbie feels his features soften into a rueful grimace at him. How’s James do that? Just by looking at Robbie like that sometimes, he make him feel as if whatever guards Robbie might put up simply don’t apply to him. It pulls Robbie down in another direction entirely from the path Innocent’s warning glances are meant to keep him on. The path of straightforward reason.

“Talk to me?” James asks suddenly as Robbie still sits there on the edge of the bed. Oh. Well—he’s done that for Robbie, after all. No harm in—that. And the case files aren’t going anywhere. Robbie thinks for a moment, then gets up. He takes James’s suit and shirt from the chair they’ve been haphazardly draped over, on his way back round the bed, and folds them with long-practiced ease over a hanger, pushing them in amongst his own clothes in his wardrobe. Then he sits on his own side to toe off his shoes and pushes himself back against the headboard on top of the covers. By the time he’s settled comfortably and turns his head to look down at him, James’s eyes have closed.

“What d’you want me to tell you about, then?” Robbie asks.

“Tales from your days of solving crimes in the Agatha Christie era,” his sergeant mumbles.

“Cheeky sod,” says Robbie without heat.

James rolls his head slowly a bit towards Robbie now. “She was a pharmacy dispenser, you know. In the first world war. Agatha Christie. That’s how she knew so much about poisons. And one of the theories for her fascination with writing about them is that her fear of making a mistake with potentially deadly mixtures had just played on her mind so much—”

“All right. Hush, now.” He just doesn’t know how to stop his own brain, does he? Goes too fast for him sometimes. And Robbie may not have the wealth of knowledge that James has at his fingertips, but he reckons he has a few tales that might provide a gentle distraction for his sergeant in his pain.

“Tell you about two cases, then. Along a musical theme. One is about me infiltrating a rave back in the nineties with my baseball cap on and all.” Although Robbie might just leave out the events that had led up to that one. “And the other one led to me landing up at the opera—well, when you worked with Morse opera tended to be involved more often than you’d’ve ever believed—but I did get to hear Puccini sung in the Roman Amphitheatre in Verona. Did I ever tell you about either of those?”

“I think you know you didn’t, sir,” James mumbles. “We both know I’d remember a baseball cap…”

After a while, Robbie works out that it’s the bedside lamp that’s bothering him. He keeps turning his head in Robbie’s direction and frowning further. Robbie reaches out and clicks it off, barely pausing as he warms to his tale. He’s unable to glance at the facial expressions James had been making in response to his words any more; the pathway of light coming through the half-open bedroom door from the hallway doesn’t reach James’s side of the bed. But the odd weary chuckle from his sergeant lets him know he’s still listening.

At some point, when James has been properly quiet for a bit, Robbie reluctantly levers himself up off the bed to go back to the files. He’d been getting so relaxed there, talking to the friendly presence beside him, that he feels an odd yearning for an early night himself now. As he sits on his couch and runs an unenthusiastic eye over the paperwork, there’s a nagging sort of awareness of his sergeant asleep in his bed. He doesn’t feel like disturbing his own more settled frame of mind now by putting on the television for background noise after the still and quiet of the bedroom. He’s left his bedroom door ajar, anyway, in case James needs anything else. But nor does Robbie feel like disturbing his peace of mind with the content of these files, when it comes right down to it.

The flat is warm. There are odd random clicks from the heating and more regular deeper ones from the kitchen clock, punctuating each passing minute, and there’s no sound from James who must be out of action for the rest of the night. So once Monty decides to make his presence known at the back door a bit early this evening, and has been let in for the night, there doesn’t seem to be all that much point staying up any longer.

It’s not something he’s had to consider before in this flat, an actual need to keep noise muted as he moves through the routine of getting ready to turn in, rather than the unbidden quiet of solitude. It’s rather nice, that certain relief that descends as he finally heads back into the dimness of his bedroom. The feeling of night time quiet and anticipated rest is far more palpable when there’s two of you, when there’s that warm, peaceful body in his bed.

He clicks the bedroom door shut gently to make his way over to the bed in darkness, then pushes back the duvet and slides in, settling himself with the minimum of shuffling about.

James, on the other side of the bed, turns towards him with a soft grunt of approval.

Best thing for him, really, sleeping it off.

Which is why his early morning disappearance comes as a bit of a poser.

===

“How’d you get in here?” Robbie asks. He’s woken to find a purring and satisfied presence has made itself at home on the bed. Monty, obviously highly complacent at getting the chance to assert his belief that this is where he should spend every night, ignores this.

It’s nowhere near time for the alarm to go off. It’s pretty much still dark. But Robbie has slept very well. And he’d been vaguely aware any time he stirred of James breathing deeply and evenly beside him, there right throughout the night. He’d even muzzily taken in at one stage that James must sometimes sleep on his front because Robbie had half-roused to find he was drowsily settling an arm across his sergeant’s back… James wouldn’t have noticed that, though, and Robbie had been too relaxed to do anything but pull his straying arm back to his own side. But James must have been uncomfortable when he woke up and had slipped out, Robbie supposes, uncomfortably dispirited by this himself.

And, really, what the hell were they thinking last night?

It’s no wonder James rethought the whole thing once he was alert again and his sore head had cleared. It’s different from how this had happened in Lincolnshire. Different somehow when it’s in Robbie’s own home. Robbie’s own bed. And quite how they had landed up sleeping in the same bed on the exact same day that Innocent had pretty much expressed reservations about boundaries, unwarranted though her actual suspicions were—ah, damn it. Well, not much point lying here despite the early hour since he’s fully awake now. A hot shower beckons.

By the time Robbie emerges from the shower the day is starting to get underway outside, too, because as he’s standing, towel around waist, gazing at the selection of shirts in his wardrobe, the early morning winter sun is sending a shaft of segregated light, if not yet warmth, across his bedroom carpet and bare feet, through the still-closed wooden slatted blinds. But Robbie must not be fully awake because it still takes him a moment to register the dark grey slim fit suit trousers and jacket and a shirt of dubious hue that are still hanging on the rail, pushed in amongst his own more regular choices.

James can hardly gone far dressed in boxers and undershirt, not even for a smoke—Robbie shakes his head, unable to put this disparate set of clues together. “James?” he queries aloud, raising his voice.

“In here,” comes a call from the direction of the kitchen.

No, he bloody well wasn’t. Not when Robbie went in there for a glass of water before his shower. No sign of him.

Once Robbie’s dressed, he discovers James standing in the kitchen, beside the table, leafing through a newspaper with one hand, while holding a half-empty pint glass of water in the other. He looks flushed and very wide-awake. He’s also dressed in exercising gear.

“Went for a run,” he explains. “My gym bag was in my car. And you were in the shower. When I came back.” He’s still breathing hard between utterances. He does have a spare key for emergencies and Monty-feeding duties when Robbie goes up to Manchester. He must carry Robbie’s keys on his keyring. It’s hard to tell if he’s still as pale as yesterday. If his colour is heightened and flushed now, that’ll be the after-effects of a run in outside temperatures that could surely only politely be described as bracing. He’ll be frozen once he starts to cool down from his exertions.

Robbie shakes his head at him, letting his face convey what he thinks about self-punishing regimens like this. Although James just grins back at him. “Plenty of hot water still left for you if you want a shower here,” Robbie tells him. “We’ve a bit of time before work, so we can stop off for you to change properly at your flat—you must’ve been up at the crack at dawn. You daft bugger.”

“Thanks,” James says, looking pleased at the offer and he heads off in the direction of a shower. Robbie supposes the real question is why James had come back at all when it’d surely have made more sense for him to head home and go for a run from there—he shakes his head again and decides that, seeing as he’ll be waiting a bit before they have breakfast, he may as well start messing around with the cafetiere to make the coffee properly.

James looks appreciative once he reappears to join Robbie, who’s been sitting at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves, enjoying his first cup while leafing through the newspaper. Radio 4 murmurs away agreeably in the background. They’ve still got time for a leisurely-enough breakfast too. It all seems remarkably civilised. Maybe there is something to this getting up early lark, after all. Minus the jogging, obviously.

“I could get used to this,” he says, as his sergeant drops down into the chair opposite him, reaching for the cafetiere. He’s dressed in yesterday’s shirt with his suit trousers and with still-damp hair, but he looks like he’s pretty relaxed in the warmth of the kitchen. “You being my paper-boy…”

“Mmm-hmm. And—I believe I was promised eggs and bacon,” James says, looking over the rim of his mug at him. “The next time I availed of your kind hospitality.”

“It’s Thursday,” Robbie tells him.

“Seems like it should be the weekend,” James says feelingly. He’s not wrong there. Robbie had said that, though, hadn’t he? Back in the hotel, the first time they’d landed up sharing a room and James had been the one who’d sent Robbie to sleep surprisingly easily. Last night, Robbie talking on to him had been enjoyable, but it was seeing James still himself into sleep, watching him get past his pain like that to find rest as he had listened quietly to Robbie’s words, that’s what had done ruddy odd things—

“Didn’t think you were the type to sneak out while me bed was still warm…” says Robbie, trying to make light of this oddness.

James gives him a long-suffering look. “I did bring back croissants, actually, from a proper bakery. They’re very fresh and quite flaky…”

“All is forgiven,” says Robbie magnanimously. “Where’d you put them?”

“The cello player in my band,” James tells him, putting down his coffee cup and rising to produce this unexpected treat. “He’s a pastry chef at a new French bakery that’s opened and he kept saying I had to try these first thing. Here.” And he sets a plate in front of Robbie, another in front of his own accustomed place when he eats here, and a third with the tempting looking pastries on it in the centre of the table.

Robbie takes a croissant as his sergeant settles back down and reaches to pour more coffee into his waiting cup. But he’s forgotten the knives and—“I’ll get the butter.”

“You cannot put butter on them,” James informs him, adamantly, setting his coffee down in haste and putting a mug-heated hand on Robbie’s forearm as he goes to get up. “These are croissant au beurre. That’s why they’re a deeper colour and the top of them is caramelised, and that’s what’ll give it a proper authentic crunch.”

“Can’t I, Sergeant? Think I’ve some marmalade at the back of the cupboard, then,” Robbie says thoughtfully.

There’s a silence while James drops his hand and blinks at him in disbelief, this suggestion apparently being an even worse crime against croissants than the butter would be. But he’s reminding Robbie of how he’d looked last night, dazedly blinking up at Robbie in his exhaustion and his pain. What’s he think he’s doing going out exercising this morning? He’ll be wearing himself out, literally running on empty in this frigid air.

“I’ll get some apricot jam for next time,” James decides, solving this to his own satisfaction.

“Did you feel well enough to do that this morning—go for a proper run?” Robbie asks him.

James shrugs a shoulder. “Headache’s gone,” he says, sliding a croissant onto his own plate.

“And your French friend’s bakery is over in—”

“Jadran’s Serbian,” James informs him. Apparently in lieu of an actual response. “And croissants aren’t really French either, in origin. It’s thought that they were invented by the Austrians when they were under siege by the Ottoman Turks—a baker working in the middle of the night raised the alarm when he heard them trying to tunnel into Vienna and the city’s defenders were alerted just in time—”

“Which is an hour of the night you and I have been seeing all too frequently,” Robbie cuts in. “So just how early were you up?”

“The bakery doesn’t open till eight, it’s just Jadran will pass me a bag of these out the back door.”

Robbie sighs. He’s that bloody good at answering questions sideways. Innocent should really lend James to the new recruits for them to practice interrogation techniques on as a bit of a challenge.

“So to celebrate their part in the lifting of the siege—” his sergeant says, returning to this impromptu history-of-breakfast lesson, lifting his coffee mug and gesturing at Robbie with it in a way that makes him suddenly thankful that James has half-drained it again already, “—the bakers created pastries in the shape of the Turkish crescent they’d seen on the invaders’ battle-standards.”

“How’d the croissants get to France, then?” Robbie asks, giving in for the moment, despite himself.

“Marie-Antoinette was Austrian. And just try it plain—these are made with pure butter, that’s why their arms are out straight. The French have actual legislation that says if you use any substitute fat like margarine then you have to wind them into the crescent shape.”

“Aye, but I think this one is a bit far outside its lawmaker’s jurisdiction either way,” Robbie says, taking a bite. “Ah, that’s good. Where d’you say this bakery was, then?”

He only gets another shrug for this last none-too-subtle attempt to establish just how far James has been pushing himself this morning. James’s mouth is probably full, though. At least he’s got his appetite back this morning. For buttery pastries shaped like battle-standards and, more reassuringly, for imparting ruddy odd bits of knowledge over a cup of coffee too.

Robbie bites into his again. It surrenders warmly to the assault of his teeth in a deeply-toasted, yielding-soft fashion—and immediately scatters flaky crumbs right down his shirt front.

“Authentic crunch,” James confirms cheerfully, nodding around a mouthful of his own croissant.

================================================================

An internal seminar on Ethical Issues in Modern Policing is nowhere near the top of Robbie’s list for useful ways to spend a morning. But he supposes it gives them a break from more everyday routine bureaucracy. And from thinking about that particular thorn-in-their-side stalled case. There have been no further break-ins since Mrs Travis’s ordeal last week but not much clear forward progress towards identifying their perpetrator either, it feels like. This little interlude should be a distraction of sorts. Except that in order to answer a question that someone’s posed about conflicting loyalties and internal reporting, the facilitator has diverged off from actual police work and into power differentials and the boundary issues they can raise. Ruddy marvellous. Robbie’s only thankful Innocent isn’t sitting in on this one to cast more of her unflinching glances at him.

Is every bugger obsessed with this recently, or is it just playing on Robbie’s mind like Agatha Christie and her poisons?

Something about all this is hitting uncomfortably close to home and it’s disconcerting him, although James—James, sitting beside Robbie halfway down the long table in the meeting room, seems remarkably unperturbed by it all. He’s giving every appearance of being politely uninterested in the lecturer’s educated views. As if none of this could possibly relate to him and Robbie. And a while back Robbie would have been right with him there. But not since Lincolnshire, and not since that night, a week ago now, when his sergeant had laid an aching head to rest on one of Robbie’s pillows and then slept beside Robbie in his bed.

Robbie shifts, trying to shrug this off. James sends him an enquiring glance, then, when he gets no response, reaches for his takeaway coffee cup, grimaces at the contents and puts the rest aside, returning to his notes. He’d come back from their break earlier, coat on and flapping open, cheeks flushed, slipping back into the meeting room just in front of the lecturer and then sliding one of the cardboard cups he was bearing in front of Robbie before dropping back down into his place. He’d obviously decided the short break was just long enough to indulge in his twin cravings for nicotine and caffeine. What’s he doing now, anyway? With his pencil, making those little marks—ah, lord, he’s correcting the punctuation in his handout.

Just as well they’re winding to a close.

“…so if you can fill in the questionnaire in your lecture-aide and ensure you add your details and return it to me on your way out,” instructs the facilitator, right on cue.

James, suddenly concerned, leafs through this hand-out that turns out not to be a hand-out after all. The questionnaire starts on the other side of the page he’s just finished editing. No way he’ll be able to tear it out. He shoots a glance along to the end of the table to see if there are any going spare. Looks like he’s out of luck there, too, Robbie reflects, keeping a straight face.

“Bugger,” James mutters, resigned, turning his attention to the questionnaire.

Robbie hides his amusement and starts on his own.

===

“I’m going to look like a right know-it-all,” James says, annoyed, once they’re a decent way along the corridor.

“Scandalous misrepresentation of your character there,” Robbie agrees, putting a hand briefly on the small of his back to correct his sergeant’s course towards the nearest exit and head straight out of the station for lunch. He could do with clearing his head. “And you should’ve tipped your coffee over that form and said it was unusable.”

“Thank you for that belated helpful suggestion, sir,” says James, stopping short, as that sinks in. “Ever the pragmatist—”

“Aye, well, it’s not my first seminar, by any means,” Robbie says, exerting light fingertip pressure to get him moving again. It certainly wasn’t the longest or most irrelevant one Robbie’s ever had to suffer through. Just the first one that’s ever made him uncomfortably wonder if it was all half as irrelevant as it maybe should have been… His hand is still resting on James’s back.

He drops it.

===

“Come in, Robbie.” Robbie shakes his head as Innocent gestures with her eyes towards a seat and stays standing in front of her desk. He’s had enough of sitting after this morning, and he’s hoping this won’t take too long. He’d been heading out to follow-up on Mrs Travis, who’d originally gone to stay with her other son in the aftermath of the break-in, not wanting to be in the house alone during the day. She’s back in Oxford and had responded to Robbie well even when in a state, when it had first happened. It might help her feel better now she’s back to know she’s still on the police’s radar. She’s also the best, most-recent source of information they’ve got.

Innocent looks slightly amused at his demeanour in the odd way she sometimes tends to do. “Today’s facilitator let me know,” she starts, “that there’s a couple of places still going spare on a residential course he’s running next week.”

Robbie, who had been briefly distracted when she’d started there, by the thought that he’s been called in over James’s ruddy apostrophe corrections in the handouts, takes a moment to change tack mentally. “And I’ve been going through the CPD section of the performance review files for your team,” Innocent adds tellingly.

Robbie only half suppresses a sigh. There are some days it feels like she’s determined to continue his professional ruddy development right up until the day of his retirement do. His eyes flit to a brochure lying prominently on her desk. York, it says. Then again—and he’s imagining lying in the warm darkness in a hotel room bed, James’s voice drifting across to him, knowing and amused, and teasing Robbie into a warm and comfortable mood as he drifts off himself…

“Not you, Lewis,” comes Innocent’s voice, startling him thoroughly back to himself. Christ. She’s giving him a look that lets him know she’s caught the sigh. “Your sergeant, as it happens, would be best placed to benefit from this one.”

Robbie sends another glance at the quotes on the front cover under the picture of York’s city walls. Comprehensive coverage of the range of ethical issues in the modern workplace that are an essential background for anyone moving towards a team-management position, he reads. Oh, bugger off, he thinks unreasonably at the brochure. “Ah,” he hedges. “Hathaway’s not exactly interested in—career advancement.”

“Shouldn’t that be up to Hathaway to decide, Robbie?” Innocent asks, looking at him rather too hard. “But, yes, I had picked up there may be some hesitation there about taking the natural next step. So perhaps now might be a good time for you to have a word about that? Try to get to the bottom of it?”

It’s never good when she speaks in question marks. But he’s got as far on that one as James is going to let him. He grimaces back at Innocent’s enquiring expression, realising that it’d be a sincerely bad idea to give her any inkling of what his sergeant had pretty much said last year—that he was staying on in the job only while Robbie does. Besides, Robbie still has trouble believing that one himself. That James with his sharp mind and all his accumulated knowledge and skill as a detective wouldn’t want to go for a promotion. And she’s right that it’s part of Robbie’s job as James’s immediate superior and team leader—or it should be—to support him progressing in his career. Lord knows Robbie could’ve done with a bit more support from Morse over that. Though, as it had turned out, he’d had Robbie’s back more than you’d ever have guessed from his flaming attitude sometimes, fighting Robbie’s corner in private about promotion to an Inspector’s position with Strange.

So how exactly Robbie has landed up in the opposite position—finding himself trying to get his reluctant sergeant out of this one with his own Chief Super—is hard to figure.

“I wouldn’t want to lose a sergeant like Hathaway either, if I were you,” says Innocent, in the face of his silence, a hint of a complicit smile starting to play around her mouth.

Robbie’s hand goes to the back of his neck.

“It’s not that—” Or is it? Sometimes it’s confusedly hard to tell how much of his own reluctance to push this with James is due to—well maybe he would be guiding James more to follow his own interests if it wasn’t that losing him would be such a—well, a disturbance.

“He needs to keep up with current issues to keep his options open for the future. And this will cover the requirement to be up to date on ethical procedures and modern challenges. So have a word, will you?”

“Ma’am,” Robbie agrees, picking up the brochure, since this seems to be both more of a direct instruction than it sounds like and his cue to go. He wonders whether she’s trying to make some sort of a point having him be the one to sell this to James, but that’s likely his own discomfort talking. He’s just been a bit wrongfooted overall today. He could do with a whole lot less of these modern issues at this point and a damn sight more policing.

Innocent is already turning her attention to her next task, pulling a letter from her intray. “Tell him to try and rein in his reflexes on the punctuation marks while he’s there, will you, Robbie?” she adds, straight-faced and without looking up.

Ah, hell. “Ma’am,” Robbie mutters, taking his leave.

===

James glances up, leaning back in his chair, as Robbie slides the brochure onto his desk. “Haven’t you had enough Continuing Professional Development for one day, sir? Or what you’ve been known to more commonly refer to as that ruddy malarkey?”

Robbie grimaces. “Herself doesn’t seem to think this morning was sufficient punishment for some of us.”

James doesn’t make a move to pick up the information, but he seems receptive all the same. “Where are we off to this time, then?” he asks, stretching.

“Not me. It’s more aimed at—”

James’s eyes narrow at the brochure. Robbie can see why. He’d flicked through it on his way back to the office and, in fairness, he reckons this course does have content useful in James’s current day-to-day work. It’s just unfortunate that the way the organisers have chosen to promote it is to put enthusiastic quotes from former-attendees on the cover, largely saying none too subtle things about career-progression advantages of it.

“Sergeant ranks,” James completes flatly. “Right.”

Worse, Robbie thinks. James still isn’t making a move towards the brochure, but he’ll have worked out that sergeant-moving-towards-inspector would be the more accurate description here.

“Innocent reckons you’re a good candidate for this,” Robbie says in his best persuasive tone. “You know the way these things work, it’s a vote of confidence in you, a bit of an investment for the force sending you. I’d’ve been well chuffed if Strange had singled me out for that sort of thing when I was with Morse.” He doesn’t know why he’s making sure James is linking this back to Innocent. It’s not like James will think Robbie decided to send him off on this, is it?

James isn’t really listening, anyway. He’s just waiting for Robbie to finish.

“And what do you think?” he asks, surprisingly direct.

Ah, God. “Well—you can’t go by what I want. I mean, it was always sort of—tricky—you know, balancing what I thought Morse wanted from me with what would’ve been best for my own career—” he tries, clumsily.

There’s a silence from his sergeant that’s quite damning in its complete closure of this avenue of conversation. But there’s that ruddy look again too that’s almost one of betrayal. Robbie’s really only trying not to stand in his way, after all, he thinks, frustrated, he’s only trying not to take advantage of his sergeant’s stubbornly loyal nature. Most of the nick had thought Morse did that with Robbie.

“It’s next week,” Robbie says, giving up.

“In the middle of this case?” James asks in disbelief.

“I suppose—you know Innocent thinks this one may’ve come to a halt for now, she’ll be thinking we need to let go of it soon,” Robbie says, recognising the truth of this even as he says it, from Innocent’s perspective. She’ll be reallocating resources. Meaning them. Their time and energy onto other priorities asserting themselves and further away from this case.

“Look,” he says, getting up. “Speakin’ of which, I’ll be back in a bit, I’ve got to head out to see Mrs Travis—”

“Sir,” says James, just a little stiffly. And he reaches obediently for the brochure.

===

Robbie pauses, perforce, outside his back door as Monty winds briefly round his legs before picking his way on into the kitchen. It’s been a clear, dry evening and as he glances upwards a familiar voice wanders across his mind…then you follow his body on a diagonal, to the southeast, like so….and he finds himself trying to gradually work out the shape of that large dog that James had somehow made emerge from the randomly scattered pinpoints of light—until Monty interrupts his ruminations with a definite note of displeasure as he discovered that his evening meal is not materialising as quickly as it should.

But just before Robbie turns in for the night, he pulls back his curtains, visited by the impulse to lie in bed and count stars instead of sheep. Then he settles back, hands behind his head, looking at that sky that isn’t half as dark as it was in Lincolnshire.

He hasn’t been sleeping all that well again, so it’s maybe just as well it’s been a quiet week in work, case-wise and in general. It’s been distinctly quiet in the office too. James had headed off for his course without any further outward show of resistance, although Robbie isn’t deluding himself that that means he’s reconciled to it. More like James is taking the path of least resistance, so he hadn’t had to engage in discussing the thorny issue of his promotion prospects any further. And Robbie can’t for the life of him tell whether he's respecting his sergeant’s wishes in backing off, or whether he should, as his boss, be probing further in a professional manner—

He’s sod all use at actually pulling rank with James, always has been. He’d landed up letting him have the sort of leeway that would have fairly appalled Innocent if she’d found out what was going on during those all-too-memorable couple of cases, and would have had her asking all sorts of questions of Robbie himself if she knew the whole truth of how much he’d covered for James when James’s past had risen sharply up to haunt him and Robbie—Robbie just couldn’t let him be rawly exposed or reprimanded officially for what he’d done on the McEwan case or with Scarlett Mortmaigne when the sheer level of self-punishment that James directs at himself… Although Robbie’s also aware that if anyone else on his team had lied or concealed evidence to that extent…

And even on a more day-to-day basis James is fairly irrepressible, that look that dances at the corners of his considering expression letting you know that he seems to find Robbie in full inspector mode directed at him sort of amusing or confusingly—well, ruddy well appealing on some odd level.

Robbie settles deeper into the mattress. There are so few clouds tonight that even with this limited view more of the stars seem to be emerging from the darkness now.

He’d miss that dry wit across the office if James was actually to take this push that Innocent is trying to give him here and make the move towards his inspectors. It wouldn’t be the same seeing that much less of him, it would be sort of like this week has been as an all-too-quiet taster—

Ah, sod it.

Robbie reaches in the darkness and gropes for his phone on his bedside table. You still up? he jabs into it.

The light from the screen dims and the room fades to black around him again.

When the phone suddenly illuminates again, casting its pale and blue-lit glow straight up at Robbie’s ceiling, there’s an electronic ringtone to accompany it. Robbie feels a grin illuminate his own features as he reaches for it.

“Lewis,” he says casually.

“Sir?”

“Evening, Sergeant.”

“Everything—”

“Everything’s fine, James.”

“You’re not working late and—”

“Me? No, I’m home. Just thought you might want to tell me all about these management and ethical issues in modern policing…”

There’s a pause. There’s no background noise so James must be in his hotel room.

“Did you ring me up,” demands James’s voice indignantly, “so me imparting my knowledge on the course content could send you to sleep?”

“So young and so suspicious,” says Robbie sorrowfully.

“I’m going to hang up on you,” James announces, rather detracting from the drama of the gesture by giving Robbie an advance warning.

“Now, now. Can’t have me telling Innocent my sergeant put the phone down on his boss. Bet they’re not teaching you to do that. Wouldn’t be very rank-respecting of you.”

“Are you going to tell her you lie in bed at night and call me on the phone cause you can’t sleep?” James enquires, unerringly getting to the heart of the matter. Probably not, no, thinks Robbie ruefully.

“I should’ve just recorded you on a tape before you left,” he grumbles comfortably at James. “Be much less trouble than the live version of you. Could’ve taken you into the interrogation room. Or used your iPod. Like the Dictaphones our secretaries used to use in the nick.” Nothing like demonstrating the sheer extent of your Luddite tendencies to get your sergeant going with a neat little lecture about the ins and out of how he loads recordings on his device.

“No—it doesn’t work like—an iPod isn’t—you’d have to upload the—Oh, God,” mutters James. Unluckily, that hasn’t done it; he’s subsiding in patient exasperation.

“What’s York like then? You seen much of it? Bet it has all sorts of interesting history and—cultural things—”

“Are you in bed?” asks James suspiciously.

“What?” Robbie asks, hoping he’s hitting the right note of mildly confused and affronted.

“You are, aren’t you—you did ring me up so…”

“Ah, give over.” Maybe I missed the sound of your voice nattering away like a second stream of consciousness…“Saw your friend Sirius tonight when I was letting Monty in.”

“Two friends,” James corrects automatically, but he sounds appeased again and warmly interested just like that. “I—hold on a sec. There’s a balcony.” Must be handy for him having a smoke. There’s a pause while Robbie listens to what must be the sound of curtains being parted and then French windows sliding back. “It’s cloudy here,” James says, after a moment, frustrated. “I can only see patches. It seems to have been raining pretty much ceaselessly since I arrived, anyway. And—if you don’t mind my asking, sir—what am I even doing here?”

“They didn’t give you an overview of that at the start?”

James makes a soft noise of impatience, and damned if it isn’t odd not to feel the mattress give a bit and adjust beside Robbie as an accompaniment to that sound in the dark. His sergeant is probably still standing out on that balcony in York, despite those clouds he’s getting annoyed at. Robbie sits up and presses the phone against his ear with a shoulder as he gets out of bed, too.

May as well try from another angle and see what happens.

He goes to the window, craning his neck to look over the rooftops across the street, but it’s still eluding him. He can’t quite find the right way to look that makes what he knows is there emerge. It had seemed fairly evident when James was gesturing beside him, his arm pressing against Robbie’s, moving slowly from one point of light to the next as he’d patiently waited for Robbie’s eyes to adjust to this new way of looking at all those individual stars that turn out to be really arranged in all those different configurations.

And James is still quiet at the other end of the phone now.

“Innocent genuinely reckons this’ll be good career development for you,” Robbie admits. A truth but not much of an explanation.

“Yes, but—”

“It is stuff that’ll come in useful, or you know I’d’ve objected more to her sending you off and leaving me short for a week—the paperwork’s not going to do itself while you’re gone.”

“But why didn’t you?” James asks softly. As if to himself. So softly that if Robbie wanted he could pretend he hadn’t heard that. Hadn’t heard the unspoken question either, as James frets about why Robbie would let Innocent send James on a course that pushes him a little more in the direction of an eventual promotion. Out of their partnership.

Robbie leans a hip against the bedroom window sill, his free hand at the back of his neck.

Because it’s not fair to hold you back, he could say. Because I know what it feels like to be caught between loyalty to your governor and your own career—and God, the sheer unquestioning constancy of James’s loyalty—for some strange reason it makes it hard to reciprocate, as Robbie surely should, to push him for his own good. But it’s like the opposing pulls of two magnets, it also feels like it would somehow be—unkind to James, a betrayal of his loyalty to do that too, Robbie thinks, confusedly, and that surely is just Robbie finding excuses for his own selfishness.

“Thought she had a point that it might come in handy for you,” he says, his voice emerging a little gruff. “In the future, anyway.”

“I’ve been thinking—I wondered maybe why you wanted me to do this—you’re not thinking of retiring?”

“No,” says Robbie, taken aback. “Tell you if I was.”

“Oh.” And James sounds—and surely this can’t be right in light of what Robbie just been thinking but—he sounds acutely disappointed. Why on earth would he want Robbie to retire… Is he partly wanting to leave himself but feeling he can’t be the one to dissolve their partnership? Or has he just been feeling so let down after Robbie had failed to back him up as James would have expected on this—this maybe being to James his efforts to keep their partnership going? Surely things aren’t that bad. None of this seems to properly follow, somehow.

But Robbie certainly seems, very oddly, to have plunged his sergeant into silence again with that.

“Hotel probably has a nice pool anyway, doesn’t it?” Robbie offers in a clumsy half-apology.

“I don’t know,” says James, distracted. “Orion’s belt,” he adds suddenly as the clouds must have shifted enough for the moment to let him make that one out.

“There you are,” says Robbie, turning his head to find it with his own eyes, somewhere above the gap at the end of his street. “Can you find Sirius, then?”

“I don’t know,” James repeats, sounding a bit lost. “It’s gone again. It’s too hard to see from where I am. It was much clearer when we were in Lincolnshire.”

“Aye,” Robbie acknowledges.

Everything was.

Chapter Text

Robbie regards the contents of his freezer without undue enthusiasm. Yesterday evening, following that conversation with James the night before, he’d stopped off on impulse at the supermarket and had pretty successfully replicated that pasta dish for dinner. But he neither fancies two nights in a row of vegetarian eating nor can he be bothered doing all that again tonight so an indifferent microwave-heated shepherd’s pie for one had seemed the better plan. It’s not proving the most tempting prospect now either. But then Friday nights are generally made for a bite in the pub or a takeaway back here… He reaches for his phone which is letting him know he’s got an incoming text.

Had an idea about our burglar, his screen announces without preamble. Robbie feels his features lift into a grin at it. Much as his spirts suddenly experience a lift as well.

He shuts the freezer door and leans his shoulder against it. You back then? he jabs into his phone.

James’s replies generally seem to come while you’re still pressing send. Yes. Have you eaten?

===

When James leads him into his flat there’s an aroma coming from his kitchen area that’s enough to remind Robbie he does have an appetite after all.

“Lamb and red wine casserole,” his sergeant informs him. “Oh.” He’s looking half-apologetically at the six-pack of beer bottles in its cardboard carrier that Robbie had picked up on his way over. Robbie had assumed he was being asked over to order a takeaway and there’s a Belgian ale that he’s noticed James likes with most Asian dishes. But James nods at a bottle of wine that’s sitting open on his breakfast bar. “If you don’t mind, I think that’d go best—”

“Aye, you stick these in your fridge and enjoy them another time,” Robbie tells him.

James has a glass of the wine already on the go but once Robbie’s been supplied with one and has taken an appreciative taste, he guesses aloud that, “This wasn’t used in the casserole, was it?” It’s a pretty decent red.

“No, I just thought it’d go well with it,” James answers, crouching down and balancing his hands on his jean-clad thighs to peer through his glass oven door. “I went light on the rosemary in this, in case you’re not keen on that, and it’s rich enough overall so that it needs a more robust, fruitier red to complement it. And it’s done,” he says in satisfaction.

“But you never made that in the last half hour?” Robbie queries.

James is now manoeuvring a casserole dish out of the oven with pot holders. “It was a half day,” he explains. “I’ve been back a few hours already.”

Robbie settles at a high-backed stool at the breakfast bar and watches him as James rests the dish on a waiting trivet, removes the lid and then starts to ladle green beans from a saucepan on the hob onto two waiting plates. There are herby dumplings in that casserole dish, Robbie sees with appreciation. “You’ve made more than enough for two?” he observes, trying to work out at what stage this became something James had decided to share with him or whether Robbie really was just the casual afterthought he seems to be to his sergeant’s pleasurably domestic evening.

“I cook in bulk and freeze sometimes,” James tells him, bringing over their plates. His cheeks are suddenly flushed with the heat from the cooker, making him look endearingly overwarm in his hoodie and his jeans. Ah, he must like to cook to relax. Probably spent the afternoon getting back to himself after his unwanted week away, and it’s dead nice of him to invite Robbie over either way. Just the sort of meal Robbie most likes in the winter, too, especially on a frigid night like this is. And he hasn’t had it homemade, as opposed to from the menu of a pub, in far too many years.

“Do you want to continue this interrogation of your dinner, sir, or perhaps try tasting it?” James suggests. He’s sat himself down opposite and is waiting, a smile playing around the corner of his lips. 

Robbie shakes his head at him and picks up his fork. The generous chunks of meat are so tender that they’re almost falling apart. And overall—well, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that James can properly cook.

===

“I’d be over the limit,” Robbie says regretfully, after dinner, putting a hand out to cover his glass where it rests on the coffee table. Shame, really. It doesn’t look expensive but it's a very well-chosen wine.

James puts the bottle down and leans back again beside him, against the couch cushions. “You could stay here,” comes his voice, casually. “If you like.”

Robbie looks at him. James examines his television, which is showing a documentary tracking the coming of the monsoon rains to different countries across the world.

Then he slides his eyes sideways to meet Robbie’s silent study of him.

“I mean—you’re still not sleeping, are you? And I’ve been told before that I very specifically don’t have a boring voice that lulls people off, but apparently there's something all the same about the information I impart…well, just if you wanted.” And he returns his attention to the screen.

And Robbie should put a stop to this. He should ask his sergeant what the hell they think they’re doing contemplating doing this again.

Except—except that James has asked him over and it wasn’t actually much of an idea he’d had about the case, which is still stymieing him just as much as Robbie. They haven’t even been talking about it much. So James mustn’t be feeling averse to a bit of company himself this evening either. Even if his boss is not the company James should be after, or having in his bed, for God’s sake, and Robbie surely shouldn’t be slipping further into taking up more of his time and—focus—like this when the job already consumes more than enough of both of those for James.

But it’s been bloody tiresome and oddly stressful, the quietness of this week, and it hasn’t lent itself to sleeping well. And now they’ve just been enjoying a pleasantly teasing conversation over dinner, and hasn’t Robbie felt the lack of someone whose shared sense of humour can surprise him into a lift of his spirits like James’s dry wit does. Ever since that phone conversation, he’s been straight-out regretting agreeing to James being sent off like that when he so clearly hadn’t wanted it, regardless of what Innocent had implied about how it might do him good. And he’s also uncomfortably aware that his own guilt may have pushed him into pushing James into it and just—confused his sergeant like that.

But James has returned with a certain air of casual purposefulness about him, so maybe the time away from the other stresses of the job has done him some good, after all, Robbie hopes.They seem to have cleared the air over it, without need for any further mention, and Robbie’s relieved enough about that in itself that he’s not about to let any more awkwardness get shoved between them by refusing the olive branch that this evening seems to be. He’s fairly sure that James shouldn’t be the one feeling he has to offer olive branches either.

And Robbie’s just plain weary.

The thought of lying beside James in a warm bed now and having the comfort of his company again in what could otherwise be the most wakeful long hours of the night—

He reaches for the wine bottle to top up his glass.

James slouches down further beside him with a sigh.

===

This bed is comfy. James is obviously also someone who makes up their bed with fresh sheets to come back to before he heads away anywhere. Robbie’s getting an insight into his small but telling domestic routines this evening, the comforts he allows himself. He finds he’s very glad that his sergeant takes the time to do right by himself sometimes.

Robbie’s been drifting pleasantly. Earlier on, when James had gone out for his last late-night smoke, he’d stood just outside those sliding doors into the small garden with his head tilted at an angle that made his neck ridiculously long. Cued in by that, Robbie had joined him, nursing his mug of tea, staying sensibly inside, until he’d realised that James was a few steps ahead of him, working out the pointer stars that led to—“There,” he’d said in satisfaction, nodding upwards. “Sirius…” And then he’d teased out one by one all the other stars that made up the outline of the elusive big dog, with the glowing end of his cigarette as an odd sort of pointer in his long fingers. And the constellation had suddenly emerged clearly again from its own background of other distracting stars that led your eye astray if you focused on them too much when you were trying to make out the shape of it properly.

“Hiding in plain sight,” Robbie had said in wry acknowledgement, once he’d got it and it seemed suddenly obvious once more. As long as you didn’t take your eye off it for it too long. The warmth of James’s living space and the evening they’d just spent was comfortably around him but the cold air had been slowly encroaching as he’d stood in the doorway. He’d been drawn forward while investigating James’s gestures at the sky overhead. “Get back in here before we freeze, now.” James had just grinned at him and taken his time, lounging against the wall, finishing his smoke, his eyes glancing upwards from time to time, and his thoughts lingering on who-knew-what old legends that those stars touch off in his ancient mind.

But he’s gone back to far more down to earth topics now, Robbie thinks, amused in the darkness.

He’s filling Robbie in on a few dryly-told anecdotes about the fellow coppers he’d encountered on this course.

And Robbie’s been privately coming to the conclusion, reading between the lines, that his sergeant has found certain parts of the past week both interesting and useful. Although—lying in bed beside Robbie—this sure as hell can’t have been the sort of thing they were teaching him or condoning there. But that’s James for you. He sits in a week of lectures, he listens, he probably absorbs all the material and produces perfectly accurate assignments in fairly effortless fashion…and then the stubborn bugger just proceeds in his own sweet way as if none of it could possibly apply to him.

Robbie shakes his head ruefully on the pillow, but it turns into a movement of frustration as the headlights of a passing car sweep across the ceiling and down the wall and a band of light briefly glares right through his closed lids. That keeps happening, and it’s getting bloody annoying.

“Try moving over here,” James suggests, as Robbie mutters a curse in the wake of the latest oblivious driver, and then the mattress dips as James gets out of the bed. “It’s the headlights hitting the mirror at an angle, you’re better off moving over to my side.”

“And what about you?” Robbie enquires, shifting over nevertheless into the space left by James, and finding further warmth.

“I’m used to it. It doesn’t bother me. And I sleep on either side of my bed.” And he’s suiting his actions to his words, resettling himself with every appearance of relaxed ease where Robbie had just been lying.

Robbie can’t quite imagine that. He’s always slept on the right side of any bed because Val had slept on the left. It had been such a long-engrained unquestioned habit that it had simply remained even after—well, when there was no need for him to choose a side any more. And the night they’d done this in Robbie’s flat James had obviously known which side of the bed to take from the belongings on Robbie’s bedside table. But this—it’s fine, this new arrangement. And when another car goes by and the headlights make a vanishing path across the ceiling and down the wall, it avoids Robbie and doesn’t seem to bother James, judging by the way his voice continues on, undisturbed, although starting to slow now.

And Robbie’s head is now settling deeper into a pillow that smells acutely like James—James, who must have showered after his afternoon of cooking because there’s that leafy scent again. That’s it, Robbie thinks. Monsoon rains. Whatever James uses, it puts Robbie in mind of the sudden sharp scent you used to get back in the British Virgin Islands in the moment of stillness before the torrential rain of a tropical storm swept in. Like the leaves of all that greenery lifted in advance just waiting, and that was the scent that carried to you as the humid air lifted too, giving you pause whenever you happened to be outside at that one moment.

There’s a moment of pause here in Oxford now as James’s voice peters out beside Robbie, and then he shifts, a hand coming out suddenly to rest on Robbie’s arm as James yields to sleep.

===

James can hardly head off exercising this morning, Robbie decides, looking at his still-sleeping sergeant. Be odd to. Robbie’s been awake for a little while, lying here in the satisfying quiet of an early Saturday morning, but now, as if sensing his reflected scrutiny, James, stretched on his side but turned towards him, starts to stir vaguely.

Robbie, lying on his back without any need to turn his head, watches James’s eyes start to blink open in that fiendish mirror.

“Morning,” says James without moving.

“What the actual hell is it with you and this thing, anyway? Do I even want to know why you have that there?” enquires Robbie dubiously.

“There when I moved in here,” James says, on a yawn.

“So you say,” says Robbie in the tone of patent disbelief that he usually reserves for suspects he’s aiming to get a reaction out of in an interrogation room.

“It was,” James insists, coming upright suddenly and swinging his legs over to sit on the edge of the bed. Ah, hell, he’s getting up already? It’s barely light yet. “And you get used to it. It makes the room a lot brighter, even on a fairly dull morning—”

“Why on earth anyone would want to wake up to be confronted with themselves, first thing in the morning, large as life and twice as ugly…”

“Oh, stop fishing for compliments,” James advises him. “I’m particularly fond of your rugged natural good looks in the morning, sir, before you embark upon your painstaking grooming routine.”

“Painstaking—”

And a hand comes back to ruffle Robbie’s hair—ruffle his hair!—before the cheeky sod who is his sergeant propels himself energetically upwards off the bed and heads across to pull open his wardrobe and contemplate the contents.

“You get up like some criminal rolling out of the car in a high-speed chase,” Robbie complains to his backview.

“Done much of that in your time, have you, sir?” James asks, and then stretches luxuriously, his back still to Robbie, the muscles in his shoulders suddenly prominent through the thin fitted cotton of his t-shirt, and the t-shirt riding upwards to expose an inch of his bare lower back above those cotton pyjama trousers he wears that hang low on his narrow hips.

Then he stills, his expression curious as he looks into the mirror mounted inside the wardrobe door—Christ, the wardrobe must come with that included, James would hardly have purchased another bloody mirror—it’s angling James’s reflection over to the monstrosity on the wall and back to Robbie on the bed. And if Robbie can see James’s expression, then what James has seen in his mirror is Robbie’s expression as he’s been watching his sergeant’s backview…

“It’s like a fancy outfitters in here,” Robbie grumbles at him to cover his sudden confusion. It is, too. All these angling mirrors remind him of the changing room in the place he hires a formal suit from when needs must.

“Mmm,” James says, non-committal. Then he turns back to face Robbie, having selected the casual clothes he was after. “I’ll go and get breakfast provisions,” he tells Robbie. “As soon as I’ve had a quick shower. Did you sleep okay?”

“I did, James. Thanks. But no hurry, is there?”

James seems to disagree if the pace he’s moving at is anything to go by. Robbie’s starting to feel bad now that his presence must be stopping his sergeant from heading out for his proper morning run. “Fancy an omelette?” James asks over his shoulder, and he pads barefoot towards the door without waiting for a response. “My local supermarket isn’t bad for fresh vegetables. May as well do them properly. Get a couple of your five-a-day in early, sir.”

Robbie, bemused, realises that he would quite fancy an omelette, come to think of it. His reflection on the opposite wall shakes his head back at him, equally unable to work out the cheery, energetic bugger that is James Hathaway of an early morning.

================================================================

Robbie rubs his eyes, the glare from his computer screen beginning to seem a bit much. It’s been a long day to start the week with. There’d certainly been barely a chance for James to catch up on himself this morning after his week away. Their case has not only resurrected itself but taken a sharp turn for the worse.

The victim this morning had made a panicked emergency call, saying only that there had been an intruder with a robber’s mask in his house before he’d rung off abruptly, and when a patrol car had reached the scene he’d been found collapsed. Neither the coppers on the scene nor the paramedics shortly afterwards had been able to revive him. There’d seemed no obvious signs that he’d been attacked, but they’re waiting for Laura’s verdict now. Innocent has pointed out to both Robbie and a set-jawed James that this might not even be one of theirs but Robbie can feel it and from what he saw of the scene—nothing ransacked, nothing too obvious missing, lock on the back door forced open—he’s found nothing to contradict that yet.

It just doesn’t make much sense to him that the bastard they’ve been chasing would suddenly escalate like this… What they need from Laura now is the cause of death so they know exactly what they’re dealing with in terms of their perpetrator’s motives from here on in. And Robbie’s never been much use at this waiting part.

It doesn’t help much when Innocent materialises in the doorway, having made time amongst everything else to check in with James about how his course went. James looks rather surprised by that, and initially just provides the brief courteous answers that he assumes are all she wants before he realises she’s seeking proper feedback.

But it's become evident to Robbie, as James gets drawn into what he’s saying in response to Innocent’s musingly-casual questions, which are actually shrewdly aimed at the material James would have covered—and James becomes rather animated, despite himself, telling her all about some new research study—that Robbie had been right in thinking his sergeant has gained a fair bit out of this course in terms of his training. If James will accept that. Innocent has certainly grasped it too; she’s looking rather satisfied. Robbie sits, arrested in his own work, watching them both from behind his computer, knowing fine well what she’s thinking and finding it bloody hard to disagree with her. James would make a damn good Inspector. Much as that does tug at Robbie in ways that—it just shouldn’t. James would also make the sort of inspector who would be keenly aware, underneath it all, of every nuance of these ethical issues, and add to that his own personal moral code… and Robbie’s hand slides sideways off the computer mouse, unnoticed by either his chief super or his sergeant.

James would make the sort of inspector who would never agree to what Robbie had on Friday night, whatever his junior officer had suggested. Friday night in James’s own home had been different to Lincolnshire, when they’d sort of stumbled into things with James in that uncomfortable bed needing his sleep, or the time when James had had that headache. Friday night was James doing that for Robbie. And James may merrily dismiss any of these boundary issues applying to him and being there for his protection, whenever it doesn’t suit his purposes as sergeant, but if James was the one in the senior position, then Robbie knows, with the full force of an undeniable truth hitting home, James would never take advantage of a more junior officer offering something like that.

James would only have suggested that Robbie come into his bed like that if he were truly okay with it, though, wouldn’t he? Despite the way he’d then seemed uncomfortably rushed like that about waking up with Robbie the next morning. Whatever about his softhearted concern for his governor, he surely wouldn’t have let his quiet loyalty towards Robbie, and the way he almost seems to cleave towards him sometimes, sway him into putting Robbie’s needs above his own…

Innocent’s footsteps are receding down the corridor.

“D’you ever feel I’m taking advantage, like?” Robbie blurts out.

“Of what?” James asks, without looking up, having returned to rifling away at the case file, searching for something.

“Of—being your guv’nor, I suppose.” It sounds bloody daft, put that way, really. There’s nothing like voicing something aloud to see that how little truth there actually is in it, Robbie realises.

“Constantly,” James tells the file, scowling at it, displeased at the contents. And he draws another open file towards him instead.

“What?”

He glances up. “We’re sitting here, drinking very nice coffees fetched from the coffee place by me, as per usual despite the pouring rain—”

“Ah, have a word with yourself,” says Robbie, relieved. “That’s barely a drizzle. And you wanted your smoke.” Robbie had paid for the coffees, too; he’d reached for his wallet as they’d wound to a natural, if frustrated, end to their debate on their latest competing theories on their burglar now, and James had reached reflexively for his own pocket in response, checking for his cigarettes.

“I bow to your superior, if purely academic, knowledge of what the weather is doing, seeing as I’m the one sent out to brave the elements,” says James, leaning back and gesturing at Robbie with his pen now. “But to shed further light on your kind enquiry, sir, I’m also sitting here trying to extract some sense from these dull-as-ditchwater witness reports you delegated to me—and that was your actual description of them when you piled them into my unprotesting hands. And ‘witness’ is a misnomer, incidentally, when no-one has seen or heard anything of any apparent use.”

Robbie’s tasked him with going through all the interviews from the different burglaries now to see if there are any commonalities in what people who were in the vicinity at the time had noticed, that could provide a clue. And frankly, that’s because he reckons that if there’s anything there to find, then his analytical cleverclogs sergeant will be the one to find it. But James has never taken too kindly to the more tedious tasks Robbie passes down to him, it’s true.

“And,” James continues, animated. Christ, he’s got a fair few grievances at his fingertips, hasn’t he, Robbie reflects, fascinated by this opening of the floodgates. Then again, if Morse had ever asked Robbie the same question… “I was the designated driver for yesterday evening’s supposed pint. So it was a metaphorical pint instead of an actual one for me, yet you still mocked my particular choice of non-alcoholic beverage—”

“That was you paying daft money for a bottle of cold herbal tea with fizz added that I still can’t believe they sell in a proper pub—”

“That was a herbal vitamin drink. And thus you added insult to injury, while I was hampered by my lowly rank in mocking you back with the level of wit and creativity I would truly like to unleash on you. And I’ve been suppressing the urge all day to tell you that you just can’t wear that tie with that suit—seriously, sir. There’s a slight check pattern in the blue thread in the weave of the tie and there’s a pinstripe in your suit, you just—you can’t. But I can’t enlighten you about any of that and I have to suffer in silence due to your elevated rank, meaning I can’t express my opinions on any of these matters.”

“Must be very hard for you,” Robbie agrees, squinting down at his tie, bemused.

“The suit you had on Monday and then the grey shirt with the blue undertone—that’s what would work with that tie,” James informs him, as an aside. And he returns his focus to those reports that he must be finding some commonalities in, judging from the notes he’s scrawled so far. 

“I—right.” Monday? Which suit was he wearing on Monday, for God’s sake? And Robbie’s pretty sure his shirts don’t have any such things as undertones. He wouldn’t allow that.

James gives him a one-shouldered shrug, glancing up again, thoughtful. “I can provide some further examples to help you decide if you’ve been abusing your power over me—”

“You’re all right there,” Robbie says ruefully, and then reaches for his phone as a text alert goes off. “Laura’s got preliminary findings,” he tells his sergeant, getting to his feet.

“And I’m ordered about with no regard whatsoever as to whether I’ve finished what I was previously instructed to do…” says his sergeant in response. Robbie is rapidly realising he may come to regret ever starting this line of enquiry. Although he also notices that James has risen the moment Robbie made a move to do so and is pulling on his coat already despite the continued running commentary. “And I doubt it’ll be up to me to decide whether or not I want to drive…” Oh, Christ.

It’s going to be a long journey over to the Radcliffe.

===

When Laura had said preliminary, it’s now become very apparent that she meant preliminary, based on initial examination and her access to Mr Acton’s medical records, and she’s not about to be swayed from that stance, regardless of Robbie’s best instincts just chafing at the bit, wanting proper confirmation now.

“I’m not prepared to confirm anything before the post-mortem, and you know full well you don’t really want me to, Robbie. I can tell you that natural causes may have been involved to some extent—he had medication for heart failure, there are signs that it had progressed further than had been suspected at his last cardio consultation, and the stress of the intruder…”

“Anything else?” Robbie asks, thoughtful, frowning out the window of the small pathology office, as he takes in the implications of this.

There’s a telling silence. When he focuses on her again, Laura is leaning back against the desk. She’s pretty unimpressed at this lack of recognition that she’s already given them information well ahead of what she certainly considers is her very reasonable timeframe. “Yes,” she says briefly. “That tie does not go with that suit.”

There’s a noise of surprised delight from James.

“You texted her and put her up to that,” Robbie accuses him suspiciously. Although, despite the smirk now breaking out on James’s features as he irritatingly says nothing to confirm or deny that, for all of his smartarsery earlier he’s not really been in a likely mood after today’s events for it to occur to him to collude with Laura. What’s with everyone and the sudden fashion advice? The combination can’t be that bad…

“You’re the one who gave me that tie,” Robbie protests, in injured tones. “Said it’d match me eyes.” Laura had, too, at Christmas.

James, making a long arm past Robbie to pick up Laura’s summary from where it lies on the surface of the desk beside her, misjudges things and drops it, letting it flutter to the floor. Robbie frowns at him as he bends to pick it up.

“I really didn’t mean for you to abuse it by putting it in that sort of setting,” Laura tells him. “You’ll be getting socks from me next year now.”

“Can’t go too far wrong with those,” James says smoothly to her, straightening up. Robbie glances at him. But James has dropped his head to examine the report.

Laura raises her eyebrows at Robbie in a measuring look that feels curiously like some sort of a prompt.

===

“She used to do that to Morse, you know,” Robbie says, setting down his pint glass. “Insult his choice of clothes when he annoyed her. Which was more often than not. Or his haircut.”

James looks on the verge of saying something at that, eyeing Robbie sideways.

“Go on, then,” Robbie tells him, “I don’t bite. And no, Laura’s not annoyed with me. But we did call a halt to—well, I told her what I told you. About being stuck in the past. Got to thinking about it and it didn’t seem quite fair for me to be reacting like that over her Franco showing up if I wasn’t ready myself to—anyway, I told her that and she saw what I was getting at. And she told me that last time round they only broke up when he took a job back in Germany when he was offered a very good opportunity—anyway, I wouldn’t be too surprised, from something else she’s said more recently, if things weren’t developing pretty well again now on that front—he’s properly back in Oxford now.”

James has just been gazing at him throughout this. Fair enough, he hadn’t actually asked and Robbie’s sudden need to explain all that to James, to make it clear how things finally stand with Laura—it’s heating him under the collar now. It’s all true but the way that James is contemplating him in silence is making him feel much as he had when he’d awkwardly got through saying things to Laura. She hadn’t really looked surprised, more rueful if anything. She’d also, after initially turning her attention to focusing on her wine glass, looked up at him again, regarding him rather hard. “Okay, Robbie,” she’d said, not unkindly. “Understood.” And there had been a certain amount of relief to having it said, but the way she’d then continued to contemplate him across the pub table had also made him feel uncomfortable. Like she’d thought he somehow wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

And it’s ruddy impossible to know now what James is thinking of all this, but his look at Robbie is putting him in mind of that slightly annoyed discomfort again. He waits for James to say that he was only going to ask if you were ready for another, sir.

James takes a draw from his pint, his eyes not leaving Robbie’s face. Then he sets his glass down with a grimace. “D’you mean all of that was for nothing?” he enquires.

“Eh?”

“I think what you’ve always failed to take into account, sir, is that it completely spoilt my dinner that night, the ethical dilemma of what to do after I’d spotted them. I can’t cogitate on the moral and philosophical issues of the day and digest at the same time. And I’d really been looking forward to that lamb passanda.”

Robbie is surprised into a relieved enjoyment of this. “That’s why you’re so skinny, eh? Cause you think too much?”

“That’s it,” James agrees. “All those thorny theological dilemmas I had to wrestle with in the seminary nearly finished me off, I’ll have you know. That’s why I had to leave in the end.”

Robbie nods at him, musing. “Thought I heard something about a fish pie, all right,” he says. “It’s all coming together now.”

James rewards him with a half-smile for remembering, and then focuses on his almost-empty glass, turning it around slowly in half circles on the table. On his beermat, off his beermat. Soft thuds pausing rhythmically against the wood.  “Are things all right now, then?” he asks diffidently, stopping himself before Robbie can reach to touch a halt to that new level of fidgeting. “For you and for Dr Hobson?”

“Aye, they’re fine,” Robbie says truthfully. “We’ve been friends too many years to let any of that get in the way long-term. No hard feelings.”

James looks reflective. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he says. “She did give you that tie—no, honestly, sir, it’ll work well worn with something else.”

Robbie rolls his eyes at him, getting that bit of a smile again in response. “And you reckon I owe you one lamb passanda then, is that what you’re sayin’?”

“And a chicken vindaloo. With extra spices. Plus they generally throw in a free cucumber raita…”

They seem to be heading back to Robbie’s. Robbie drains his glass, anticipating a takeaway, a couple more beers, getting their teeth into this case a bit more, because he just knows it’s getting to his sergeant underneath all this just as much as it is to him, and then James’s welcome company as he grows more relaxed into the late evening—and then he’s taken aback to realise, as he watches James, sitting there on the pub bench, contorting to draw on his coat, that what Robbie’s really picturing is a decent night’s sleep lying comfortably in bed with the relief of someone next to him in the dark again. And then when Robbie stirs in the night hearing the sound of James breathing quietly beside him. That’s what he wants—

“Sir?”

—Well, he’ll just have to make sure that James goes home at the end of the night, then. Unless he can find an excuse to make sure they go to James’s instead so Robbie’s the one who doesn’t stay.

Because they just can’t do this bed-sharing as a regular thing. Surely.

“Are we—” James has moved forward to the edge of the seat and he gestures at Robbie’s glass, querying if they’re staying for another.

Are we? Christ, Robbie has no idea how to complete that question. Never mind the answer.     

================================================================

James pauses in his frustrated rereading of the witness statements in one of those files spread across his desk and points his pen over at Robbie. Robbie stops what he’s doing, effectively put on hold. He’s glad enough of the break at this stage of the day.

Yesterday evening hadn’t been quite as relaxed as he’d anticipated, very decent takeaway notwithstanding.

There’d been that half-uncomfortable awareness that when it got to a certain stage of the night he’d have to kick James out.

Not that he hasn’t sent him on his way before without James seeming to turn a hair but—it just feels different doing that now after Friday, that’s probably what it was. And the need that that’s created to re-establish proper boundaries, to put it in sodding seminar-speak. Probably that’s what had created that discomfort for Robbie when he’d teasingly told his sergeant to head off home now or he’d meet himself coming back—and it’d felt like James had given him an odd sort of a look.

And then, true to form, Robbie hadn’t slept well.

“Fair weather friends,” James says, leaning back in his seat, his eyes unfocused, but aimed over Robbie’s shoulder. Robbie gives him his full attention now and waits. James slowly focuses his gaze back on him. “When they were at the crime scene for Mr Acton yesterday afternoon, Truong spotted a window-cleaner who was working in the area and she went to take a statement from him—you know, what he might’ve seen that might turn out to matter…”

“Aye, he could’ve had a bird’s eye view of the comings and goings,” Robbie acknowledges.

“Well—yes. But that’s not it. He said that any clients on Mr Acton’s street are only fair weather customers, so he wouldn’t have been over there on a February morning.”

“And?”

James turns his pen over and over on his desk, thinking.

“But that’s not what it means—that’s not how you describe people who don’t use your services in winter. That’s just taking it far too literally. If you’re a fair weather customer you’d only employ someone at times when things are going well for you—”

“Aye, I’m familiar with fair weather fans jumping on and off the bandwagon what with the fluctuating fortunes of Newcastle over recent years,” Robbie says dryly, “but don’t get too distracted by getting yourself wound up by that now.”

“No, I mean—I don’t think it’s Truong,” says James frowning at his files. “Although she also seems to have adopted Hooper’s overinclusive note-taking technique down to a T,” he mutters. “I think all these misused idioms—it’s something to do with this case. Remember the woman next door to the Travises’ and ‘good neighbours make good fences’?”

“That seems a bit—clutching at straws, sergeant,” Robbie tells him, not quite willing to entertain this. “Things have come to a pretty pass if you find yourself tackling cases through policing folk’s grammar. Even in Oxford…”

James doesn’t rise to the bait. “Okay. But.” And he drops the pen and sits forward, suddenly energised, his fingers briefly flying across the keyboard. “Well, he’s given a false address,” he says after a moment, “the window-cleaner. It doesn’t exist—the house numbers on the street he claims to live on stop at twenty-two and he’s given twenty-four.”

“That could’ve been written down wrong,” Robbie says after a moment. James is looking at him though. “All right, Hooper’s witness was the first one then, go and talk to him, and to Truong, about this window-cleaner who seems to share this terrible habit of misusing sayings and take another look at them, then—”

James is already on his feet. Robbie stays put and watches from his desk, through the half-tilted blinds, as his sergeant goes straight to Hooper’s desk and Hooper leans back slowly in his seat, listening. Robbie experiences a sudden qualm born of Hooper not really being the person he’d generally direct James to share his wilder theories with, although—well, up to James how much he wants to tell him, he reasons, and he may just ask for a physical description of both witnesses from Hooper and Truong rather than confide in Hooper—but, Robbie is surprised to see, James seems to have simply shared the whole idea because Hooper is getting up, looking distinctly interested, and they’re beckoning Truong over to consult her now.

When James comes back into the office a moment later he raises his eyebrows over at Robbie. Robbie suppresses an eyeroll at him, suddenly amused by this. “Aye, go on,” he says. Hooper is already approaching the office door, pulling on his coat.

It’s unfortunate that the pair of them only make it a few steps along the corridor before they encounter Innocent appearing around the corner. Robbie, catching sight of their sudden convergence hastily decides it may be prudent to join that particular gathering in the corridor.

It’s even more unfortunate that James feels the need to interrupt Robbie’s very brief explanation by elaborating on his misuse of idioms theory before it’s been properly explored. Innocent’s eyebrows climb towards her hairline, her expression an odd mixture of impressed and resigned. She looks even more quietly bemused to see James and Hooper backing each other up, arguing their case for this with enthusiasm. Hooper seems well taken with James's idea and quite willing to acknowledge there was "something a bit off" about the bloke he'd first interviewed. Innocent’s eyes seek and meet Robbie's discreetly, and she signals curious amusement at him.

Until Hooper says, as if suddenly struck by a thought, “Told you, it’s best not to summarise the information you get from witnesses too much, ma’am.”

Innocent blinks rapidly as she seems to be valiantly trying to suppress her thoughts on how all her efforts to get Hooper to take statements less like a singularly-minded court reporter have just received quite a blow. She looks much as James tends to when striving not to correct someone’s grammar, Robbie thinks, amused.

“Yes, well, a separate issue we can return to, Constable Hooper. For now, I believe you and Sergeant Hathaway here have a suspect to investigate further.”

It’s not long before Robbie gets a text that they’re bringing him in.

James and Hooper have found the bloke—one Gordon Harris—at home at the address where Hooper had first questioned him about whether he’d heard anything during that break-in in his neighbour’s flat. Back at the nick, Truong soon identifies him as their window-cleaner, too. Although it turns out to be all sorts of odd-job services that this bastard touts.

And in the way that these things tend to happen, now that that ruddy implausible clue has emerged, the rest of the puzzle starts to fall into place.

Each of the little misuses of sayings that had so irked his sergeant throughout this case are traceable back to the one bloke. Even the good neighbours making their good fences; Harris was the one who’d put up that fence next door to the Travises after persuading their neighbour in those terms into having it done—or pressuring her, Robbie now suspects from Harris’s hectoring style—and that was presumably how he’d also come in fateful contact with Mrs Travis, who must have turned down his services in a way that had pushed his hair-trigger sensitive buttons.

Because it turns out he’d had no more contact with his victims than them refusing his offered odd-job service in a way that had made him feel he was being talked down to. He flies into a cold seething fury at any supposed slight to his intelligence. Which is making things quite stressful for  Robbie’s sergeant in this interrogation, since James’s own barely-suppressed fury, now that they have this self-righteous deluded bastard in front of them, usually translates into cutting comments in these situations. But he’s having to rein that in under Robbie’s warning gaze, so they can get as much sense out of Harris as possible.

It’s proving bloody hard going.

No wonder they hadn’t been able to spot a pattern in these robberies. Harris would barely have registered on his victims’ radars when he’d showed up at their door in a brief interaction. Some of them probably wouldn’t be able to pick his face out of a line-up. The only pattern here is the bloody bizarre set of rules in this bloke’s head about when he feels slighted and his flashes of ugly vindication in taking vengeance.

Just as well for Morse he’d never met this bloke, Robbie reflects. Given Harris’s extreme reaction to being patronised.

He’s also hard to contain, answering questions in long and unnecessary detail, seemingly getting a kick out of letting the police into the supposed secrets of his methods. He’s bizarrely insisting on speaking slowly so they can “take further notes.”

He wouldn’t want to see the notes James is scrawling on the notepad resting on his thigh under the table.

Harris’s long and winding speeches are peppered with his use of phrases he’s clearly adopted in grandiose fashion without paying overly much attention to the meaning. He loftily informs them that he knows he’s overexclusive. As if it’s a form of snobbery, instead of polite shorthand for being bloody longwinded and liking the sound of his own voice. Inclusive, James writes on his notepad and underlines it, and his own frustration, heavily three times. Robbie just nods at him. But it’s one of the most bloody tiresome interviews Robbie has ever been privy to, too. And there are going to be problems ahead about Harris insisting he didn’t want a lawyer for all of this; it’ll be all too easy to argue he was of unsound mind when making his confessions after reading what he’s said.

Robbie is thankful for the message that Hooper has taken into evidence personal effects from each of the victims from Harris’s flat. Apart from the money, which Harris insists as referring to as ill-begotten gains, making a small muscle clench in James’s jaw, he’s kept each of the items taken as some sort of personal vengeance trophy. Ill-gotten, James scrawls in the corner of Robbie’s vision. Robbie puts a hand briefly on his arm to stop him without removing his gaze from Harris.

It should be a mildly diverting light relief, feeling James beside him itching to correct each misused term as it emerges from Harris’s mouth in his pedantic, condescending delivery. Robbie was briefly tempted to say aloud at one point: For the benefit of the tape, Sergeant Hathaway is now muttering indecipherable things under his breath and makin’ a heroic effort to suppress all his natural instincts cause he doesn’t want to land up having to clarify his utterances on the record later.

But Harris seems unmoved by the fact that he’s likely hastened Mr Acton’s death—just goes off into a rant about some slight he’d felt was contained in Mr Acton’s innocent refusal of his window-cleaning service.

Robbie knows full well why his sergeant is so wound up this time. He’s right with him on this one.

“One for the psychiatrists, perhaps, Robbie,” Innocent says in sympathetic ruefulness when he and James finally emerge, making Robbie wonder how long she’s been watching them. She’s always good about managing to put other things aside and hanging about, however late it is, when something like this comes to a head. “Laura Hobson stopped by while you were both in there. She has official confirmation that it was natural causes for Mr Acton’s death.”

“Right,” Robbie says, this coming as no real surprise to him.

“She also had a few words to say,” Innocent tells him, with her eyebrows at considering half-mast, “about how she wouldn’t have been yielding to pressure to push through on getting those results for you today, if she’d known the two of you were currently occupied in obtaining such a very full and frank confession?”

“Right,” Robbie agrees, not much chastened. They owe her a drink, he mentally translates Laura’s message she’s left for him there.

Innocent rolls her eyes at him. “But she was muttering in an interested way about personality disorders and she did mention that misuse of language constructions is one sign of a deterioration in mental health.”

“Aye. I think we got that one, ma’am.” The bloke is off his rocker. Robbie just doesn’t reckon he’s so off his rocker that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’d been out to cause fear and distress to bolster his own sense of importance, and that’s what he’d done. James doesn’t look much better than Robbie feels. He’s leaning his shoulder against the wall, looking fairly dispirited, too. As if the wall’s all that’s keeping him upright.

“Intents and purposes,” he says suddenly, making Robbie turn properly to look at him.

“Hathaway?” Innocent enquires.

“It’s to all intents and purposes,” mutters James to no-one in particular. “Not to all intensive purposes.”

Innocent permits a smile to lighten her expression. “Indeed, Sergeant,” she says soothingly. Then her glance flits over to Robbie. “Take him home, would you, Lewis? And get some sleep. Nothing for the two of you to do now that won’t keep until tomorrow.”

===

Robbie sincerely doubts that his chief superintendent meant him to interpret her instruction to take his sergeant home quite like this.

But when he’d approached the turn that would have put them undoubtedly on the way to James’s flat, James had straightened a little in the passenger seat, suddenly watchful.

Robbie had shot him a glance. “Nightcap?” he’d asked.

James had made a noise of casual assent, but he’d relaxed again.

And the nightcap had done it, funnily enough. Although not the actual drink. Robbie had pulled out the bottle of whiskey that he tends to keep for occasions and largely manages to resist the urge to dip into when it’s—well, just a rough night.

“You deserve that,” he’d told James’s surprised look, setting a glass in front of him. “Cracking a case based on your pernicketiness about other folk’s use of English…”

James had tried to suppress a smile. Then he’d stood there in Robbie’s kitchen, holding the glass cupped on the palm of his hand, contemplating the amber depths. “If I drink this…” he’d said. Robbie had poured him a good measure.

“You can kip here if you want,” Robbie had said, pouring his own glass, not feeling the need to look at his sergeant.

And then—well, it’d have seemed an odd sort of artificial boundary to put in place now, wouldn’t it, to banish him to the couch again. It wouldn’t—solve anything—doing that, somehow.

And really, what’s the harm? Robbie asks himself now, shifting his head more towards James’s voice in the darkness. Then he hastily quells that thought before a voice in his head that sounds remarkably like Innocent’s, or some stray ruddy course facilitator, can furnish a few immediate and eloquent answers. And what would Robbie’s defence be? I’m just soothing me sergeant the best way I know how after he’s had to listen to the English language being misused in ways that seemed to pain his ears, by an utter bastard I couldn’t let him release his true opinions on...

No harm, Robbie tells himself, firmly, as his sergeant shifts slightly beside him in response to Robbie’s movement, and then continues on with what he’s saying, with that deep voice segueing from one topic to the next one it touches off.

He seems to have his guards down now. He’s slowly coming down off the case. And he’s drifting into mumbling about things fairly unfiltered, in the way he does, giving an insight into the amount of stuff that dances around his head. He genuinely seems to enjoy having free rein to natter on about whatever takes his fancy. Like one of those late-night radio DJs sending his thoughts out into the night, but with an intimate, teasing midnight voice that makes you feel like he’s there right beside you, talking only to you in the dark…which, of course, James is…

No harm at all, Robbie thinks helplessly.

Chapter Text

When he presses his palms briefly to his mattress as he sits upright, the fingertips of one hand find warmth on the other side of the bed and Robbie passes his hand briefly down the sheet, almost able to feel an imprint of someone who’s recently left. There’s a half-remembered sensation of warmth leftover from last night too, settling deep within him in the dark and brought about by the close presence of James. His last slowed-down adjustments to his sprawled position had brought him a bit nearer to Robbie and suggested he was finding peace at last. In the drowsy relief that that had brought, Robbie had let go of any remaining thoughts of that godawful interrogation, just as they must have finally vanished from James’s head.

But where the hell’s he gone now? It’s early yet, and they’re not expected in until later. Can he not just relax like he does at night? It’s kind of annoying after that to wake alone in the quiet of the bedroom. It feels like the natural way of things would be wake up to him yawning and rolling over, stretching his long-limbed body under the duvet and making comments… Not that it’s the natural way of things to have your sergeant nattering away to you as you fall asleep, Robbie reminds himself as he becomes more sharply alert. And he pushes himself back to sit up properly against the pillows, his head tilting back against the hard reality of the headboard, in the dim light of what sounds like a bloody awful morning beginning outside the curtains. The duvet is still folded back on the other side of the bed, evidence of James’s silent exit.

A good half of his frustration at this probably comes from the way that James’s avoidance of their waking up in the same bed cheerily presses home Robbie’s guilt. Which is also making a far heavier and more persuasive argument in the cold light of day than it had managed to do last night.

He’s becoming aware of a tap running in the bathroom, though, letting him know that James hasn’t gone too far yet, and after a moment it stops and James appears in the bedroom doorway, toothbrush in hand and a dab of toothpaste caught in one dent at the edge of his lips. He’s obviously been summoned mid-toothbrushing somehow by the sounds of Robbie’s rousing.

“Morning, sir.”

He’s dressed in yesterday’s work clothes. He’s kept a toothbrush here in the medicine cabinet since his earliest days of crashing on the couch. And the colour changes every so often as he replaces it with a new one. But he needs more than that, he needs a spare shirt at least, Robbie processes absently, his eye still distracted by that smear of toothpaste as James’s mouth quirks at the corners into a look of amusement at him. Wearing yesterday’s clothes, when he’s still early-morning dishevelled, just makes him look more tired, like he’s just pulled an all-nighter.

Robbie’s all-too-aware that James has been right here in the bed all night. At some drowsy moment in the darkest hours he’d woken as James had stirred, and then a long, lean thigh had slipped against his as James had rolled over onto his stomach and burrowed deeper into the bed. Then a long arm had been flung out from under the duvet and dropped onto Robbie’s chest. But when Robbie had shifted away a bit, to give his lanky sergeant more space to roam in his sleep, James had muttered in disgruntled tones and rolled back to his own side again.

He’s definitely been here all night. It just seems like it’s been much too short a night.

“How much sleep d’you get?” Robbie demands, narrowing his gaze at him.

James shrugs. “Enough.”

That’s a matter of opinion. “But you’re not going for a run in this weather?” It sounds like it’s blowing a howling gale out there, the way the rain is dashing in jarringly sharp flurries against the window. Technically, the sun might be just about up, but there’ll be little sign of it this morning.

“Swimming,” says James briefly.

“You will be, yeah,” Robbie agrees.

“No, I’m going for a swim. Indoor. Heated pool.” And he disappears again.

“You in training for a triathlon, Sergeant?”

“Sir?” comes the query floating back into the room.

“All this runnin’ and swimming—I’m just waiting for you to take up cycling next. Or javelin-throwing.” Or start pole-vaulting out the window in his haste to make a quick exit. The tap starts up again. Robbie sighs, his frustration at this whole situation and at himself masked under the noise of the water.

“That would be an Aquathlon,” James says, a minute later, coming back into the room. “The running and swimming minus the cycling.”

“You makin’ that word up?”

“No. If I was I’d make up a better one. And if I were training for an internationally-recognised sequential hybrid event contest, I’d choose chess-boxing.”

“You’re having me on,” Robbie says after a pause when he tries to reconcile that in his head. It’s too early for this.

“I assure you, sir. Alternate rounds of each." He hasn’t pulled that one from all the random facts in his head, Robbie’s fairly sure. Although even Robbie had had no idea quite how remarkably diverse the set of knowledge in Hathaway’s head was before his sergeant had embarked on his own version of pillow-talk. Sport is shaky ground to him though. If you can call chess-boxing a sport. Half of a sport?

“What did I tell you about wanderin’ round on Wiki before breakfast?”

James raises his eyebrows at him, seeming mildly affronted at that. But he has got his phone sticking out of his trouser pocket. And then he drops to his knees and reaches to start rummaging under Robbie’s bed—what the hell? Oh, he’s kicked his shoes under there. Robbie has picked up by now that James’s rejection of his clothes at night is fairly thorough and surprisingly unorganised.

James perches on the side of the bed to put the shoes on, but then pauses, holding them paired in his hand, looking over his shoulder at Robbie. “Did you sleep okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. I did,” Robbie says truthfully.

James isn’t making any progress with the shoes. “It’s going on a while now, this insomnia...”

“Ah, it comes and goes.” The last thing he can do is let James know quite how much he makes a difference there. James, always too kindhearted for his own good under all his smartarsery, would probably just keep offering to ease Robbie off to sleep like he had last week. And there’s one thing Robbie’s clear on now, and that’s that this sure as hell won’t be happening again under the guise of him allowing his sergeant to fulfil a need like that for him. Maybe it had been different enough last night, when James had been the one who’d seemed to badly want the distraction to shake off the worst of this case. But they won’t be doing it on Robbie’s behalf any more.

“But you are still sure that it’s not linked to anything else—” James is asking, his diffident tone pulling Robbie back to him.

“Told you before, didn’t I? I’m all right,” Robbie tells him. “And I talked to a doctor, recently—”

“You did?” says James, releasing the shoes haphazardly and his hips swivelling as he turns to face Robbie. He sounds as ruddy well taken aback as if Robbie’d never trouble the medical profession unless he was at death’s door.

“—well, by that, I mean I asked Laura,” Robbie clarifies.

“Sounds more like it,” mutters James resigned.

Laura had asked various questions, to check that there wasn’t anything else going on, right enough, Robbie had assumed, before she’d given him her verdict along with a look that had let Robbie know she also felt he should be asking his GP about this if it got any worse. Although, as she’d also admitted—“Aye. And she said they’re unlikely to prescribe anything, anyway, when it hasn’t an acute onset or isn’t severe or connected to any sudden life events.”

Like a trauma. As they’d called it back then. The one time he had been given something to finally knock him out when, in a state of shock, sleep had just deserted him, his whole ability to function knocked sideways, like his entire system had just been protesting severely against having to accept the reality of what had just happened…

“Different this time, Robbie,” Laura had said softly into his silence, and when he’d returned his focus to her she’d been looking at him with a rueful compassion. She’d remember that too.

“Aye,” he’d assured her, staunchly. “Different now.” But—it is.

James is still looking at him and gives a brief nod now. Then he bends and stretches an arm to recapture those shoes, the muscles in his shoulders making themselves known through the thin material of his shirt, and his long torso stretching even further, and then he’s up off the bed again—

“Didn’t even know you were a regular swimmer,” Robbie grumbles after him as he departs. He really hadn’t. He’d thought that was just the lure of a decent pool on site that time in the hotel in Lancaster.

Maybe it’s a swimmer’s body that James has, then, he muses, left to himself in the bed. All broad shoulders and slim waist that he bares to the water. And those long limbs straightening out and pulling strongly, stretching back past his flat stomach and those firm thighs and then reaching again, breaking the surface of the churned-up water as he powers up and down the length of the pool—Oh, bloody hell. A hand suddenly clamps onto the door jamb and James leans his head and one of those shoulders back in briefly.

“I was entirely too afraid you’d have me diving into cesspools of sewage far more often if I owned up to it, sir, ” he informs Robbie as a parting shot before he disappears again. Jack-in-the-box that he is. Or maybe more like a yo-yo. Robbie wonders if he’s even coming back this time. It’d make more sense if he went home after, of course. He’ll have to go home to get his swimming things now, won’t he? And his clothes for today.

“You going to—”

“Bring back croissants, yes,” comes the answer called back to him before the door slams. Robbie sighs. He’s going to have to have a word about that or he’s not going to be too popular with the neighbours. Why’s James need to be in such a flaming hurry, anyway? You’d think he’d be used to leaving more quietly for all his early morning exercising, considering he lives in a flat himself.

Then Robbie’s left feeling the lack of that teasing distraction as quiet descends on his flat again, giving him far too much room to face the jointly discomforting truths that not only does he keep catching himself thinking like that—like James’s presence here of a morning is something that’s going to happen some more—but there’s one more pressing reason that this has got to stop now for Robbie’s own peace of mind, which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. And that’s got a lot to do with the way he’s having to make far too much of an effort not to let himself go back to picturing his young sergeant’s lithe, strong body powering up and down a swimming pool.

 ================================================================

Two Weeks Later.

When the phone starts up suddenly in the quiet of the bedroom, there’s a confusing moment while Robbie gropes for it in vain on the bedside table in the dark and the noise is coming from the wrong direction. Until there’s the shift of the mattress beside him as a body on the other side of the bed rolls over and Robbie hears that voice he’d gone off to sleep listening to, a bare couple of hours ago, it feels like.

“Hathaway… Oh. I’ve brought Inspector’s Lewis’ phone home with me, ma’am,” says James smoothly as Robbie sits up and clicks on his bedside lamp. He lies like it’s second nature, Robbie thinks, and him barely awake, and he raises his eyebrows at his sergeant in feigned disapproval. James, lying there, just slants a grin up at him and then composes his face to say into the phone, with a measure of regret, “Sorry, ma’am. Well, standard issue—yes, I realise that.” Then there’s a silence while his face sets into resignation, as he obviously takes in the details of a call-out. Bugger. “I’ll call my own mobile and let Inspector Lewis know. Yes, ma’am.”

And he rolls over and stretches right across Robbie, his chest pressing briefly against Robbie’s side, to drop Robbie’s phone back in its more accustomed place.

“Standard issue with unique identifying numbers on them, she felt a strong need to let me know,” he explains, shifting back to his own side of the bed to get up.

Not so identifying in the dark when there are two of them, ma’am, Robbie thinks ruefully, pushing back the duvet himself. And your sergeant has picked up both earlier this evening and shoved them into the back pockets of those jeans while you let the cat in and locked up. And then he’d apparently dropped both phones on the table on his side of the bed when he’d undressed to slide in beside you.

Because when Monty had made his presence known at the back door at the end of the evening, Robbie, rising reluctantly from the couch where he’d been slouched in a pleasant state of Friday-evening relaxation, had said, “And I'd better let you out the front way while I’m at it, I suppose.”

But James hadn’t made a move, had sat very still, in fact, and then said, “Do I have to go?” and it had emerged very abrupt.

Robbie had stopped in front of him, taken aback.

And somewhere out there there was a stronger man than Robbie Lewis, who could have joked that one off and said, Yeah, you do, Sergeant, be off with you, see you Monday morning now. But not if they knew James in the way that Robbie knows James and how the likelihood of him asking like that...

James, sitting there in his jeans and that hoodie because he’d headed home after work and then come over bearing stuff to cook, and a recipe in his head, and he’d assumed control of Robbie’s kitchen—Thought we could give the takeaway a miss for one Friday, sir, you’ll like this, and you can make it again—James had held his gaze, his head tilted back on the couch, casual as you like, but one foot, quite apart from his tight control, had tapped a rapid separate rhythm that had said to Robbie it would somehow be more wrong to send him away than it would be to let him stay—

“I can sleep on the couch,” he’d backtracked, and that had been nearly worse than his sudden assertion of protest at what Robbie had been doing in the last two weeks, since the end of the Harris case: sending him jokingly on his way on nights like this.

“Course you don’t have to sleep on the couch,” Robbie had said gruffly. And he’d headed for Monty, who had been making his indignation known.

James had risen and secured their phones, jamming them into his back pockets. And Robbie, holding the door open, had watched as his sergeant had run two glasses of water and headed off towards the bedroom without further discussion, but his back view as vulnerable as if he half-thought you’d change your mind…

And, yes, Robbie would have changed his mind if he’d known he was about to get a middle-of-the-night call from Innocent.

But James’s eyes are invitingly mischievous now as he glances over at Robbie, while he pulls his jeans back on. They’ll have to stop off at his flat for him to change too, so they’d best get a move on now—but Robbie is realising that the cheeky bugger quite enjoys this level of what he’d doubtlessly insist is an innocent deception. Literally an Innocent deception, Robbie thinks to himself, with a rueful chuckle despite himself, and James grins over at him in complicit amusement.

“You can brief me in the car,” Robbie tells him. He’s well aware that this one can’t be good if Innocent is already involved and delegating. He heads over to the wardrobe and starts to go through the process of pulling out clothes he’d hoped he wouldn’t be troubling until Monday morning.

“This one,” says James’s voice. And a long bare arm in a t-shirt sleeve brushes past Robbie’s shoulder. “Laura’s tie. It’s fine now. You can wear it with that suit, but maybe the lighter blue shirt instead then.”

Robbie looks at him. He hasn’t had anyone give him casual advice on his clothes since—well, since the last time he used to share a bed. And this is coming after years of—not. Then again Robbie hasn’t had anyone slip right into his own solitary everyday routines either or quietly assert himself within them since…

For all he’d said to Laura—and he’d been sure he meant it, too—he’s not sure now. For all his failure to move on for years, he’s fallen back into a sort of domestic intimacy recently and it’s with the one person who he’s resoundingly not meant to fall into anything with, and couldn’t have predicted, but somehow...

His eyes follow James as James makes his way back around the bed and drops to his knees to root for his trainers that he’s kicked under it again. James crouches down, peering, making a long arm. Robbie automatically rolls his eyes at him, still distracted by his thoughts, but just gets a smirk in return.

Then the smirk changes to a grimace as James comes back up to his feet, reaching to jam a hand into his jeans pocket as his phone goes. “Hathaway—” he says. And then he stills, completely, his posture making Robbie stop and look across at him.

He releases the phone, his fingers curling loose like it’s suddenly painful to keep hold of it. It drops onto the bed.

In the sudden resounding silence Robbie can hear Innocent’s voice coming up sharply from James’s phone. “That was fast, Hathaway. Two minutes by my estimate for you to reach Inspector Lewis’s home.”

“Fuck,” says James softly. Not softly enough.

Innocent’s rising anger is making her clipped tones sharply audible too. “Well, my thoughts exactly, Sergeant. Although you’ll find I’ll express them more politely but at far greater length once you two gentlemen are free to have a full and frank discussion about this.”

Fuck, say James’s eyes to Robbie, across this bed that they’ve both just vacated, still rumpled and warmed by their bodies.

“I was calling your phone,” Innocent continues, with a sarcasm that would rival James’s, were he in a frame of mind or a position to compete, “to let Inspector Lewis know that—”

Robbie reaches and picks up James’s phone as his sergeant stays quite still across from him. “Ma’am,” he says neutrally, cutting this off.

“Monday morning, Lewis, my office,” says Innocent shortly. “First thing. I’ll deal with this then. You’re both off the on-call rota now.”

“Ma’am,” acknowledges Robbie, equally shortly and the call ends abruptly as Innocent presumably goes in urgent search of whoever is next in line for a callout.

Robbie puts James’s phone down gently beside his identical one. It’s gone very quiet in the bedroom in her wake. James watches his movements before lifting his eyes to Robbie’s face again. He swallows. “Are we suspended?” he asks after a moment.

“No. She’s just—she doesn’t want us working together on a case until she’s got this sorted.”

“I didn’t think—I could’ve said that I’d come home with both phones there—”

“And you reckon she’d have believed another elaboration to your story after your Pinocchio impression a few minutes before?” Robbie asks him.

“But—” But James is still struggling with the turn events have taken, trying to work out how he could have prevented this.

Although now that they’ve been so abruptly exposed, there’s a feeling of inevitability about it to Robbie that makes him wonder how the hell they’d ever thought they could do this without consequences.

The worst of those consequences isn’t what’s coming their way from Innocent, though. It’s that look of bewilderment on James’s face.

“I’ll sort it out with her, all right? Make it clear she’s off her rocker and jumping to conclusions,” Robbie says gently.

“She’ll be delighted if you put it like that,” James tries. He’s still not moving. Apart from his gaze darting about as he tries desperately to process this. “Sorry,” he blurts out.

“Ah, James. Not your fault. You’ve nothing to be sorry for here—”

His sergeant doesn’t believe that. “I’d better—” And he drops silently down onto the edge of the unmade bed and bends to root briefly under it. Then he ties on one shoe after the other, haphazardly, his back to Robbie, but pulling one knee up briefly to his chest in an effort to steady himself.

The vulnerability of his back view is pulling at Robbie’s heart just as painfully as it had earlier tonight when James had retreated down the hall to Robbie’s bedroom without looking back. After making his protest at Robbie’s attempt to get him to leave. After Robbie’s effort to put that bit of distance back between them had made his sergeant finally rebel.

But there are all sorts of truth descending helplessly on Robbie now, one falling domino touching off the next.

And he knows, he just knows, as James gets up and Robbie gets a look at him, before James thrusts his head into his hoodie, that what’s making that surge of utter misery rise up deep within those very blue eyes is not the thought of the furore to come. It’s that they can no longer do this unacknowledged, it’s that James thinks his own mistake has ruined this, has ruined what they almost had—

And Robbie finds he can’t face the thought of standing in Innocent’s office and saying aloud again that there’s nothing between him and his sergeant. Denying James again. He’s sick of this. Sick of holding back when he can see now that that’s hurting James more. Sick of the idea that this is somehow seen as wrong when this is James and he wouldn’t knowingly hurt James for all the world. And Innocent will take a pretty suspicious view of them sleeping in the same flat, if that’s what they tell her is all that’s happened here tonight, but she’ll accept in the end that it’s just that, having no real proof of them being in any other sort of arrangement, but—but Robbie knows he’s not doing that to James again. He’s not putting that betrayed expression back in his eyes, so at odds with the demeanour James is trying to project here, not ever again if Robbie can help it.

James is ready to leave now and he steps over to retrieve his own phone, his eyes running helplessly across the strip with his own unique identifying code on it.

Robbie instinctively takes a step back so that he’s between his sergeant and the bedroom door.

Because Robbie’s also had more than enough of everyone else’s definitions of what should or shouldn’t be going on here when he reckons they can figure out the shape of this themselves if he can just give James the choice. It comes as a sharp relief to see how that’s possible at last.

He reaches out and takes hold of James’s upper arm as James tries to brush past him. James stops right beside him, staring ahead.

Robbie tries in vain to catch his gaze. Despite an attempt to swallow his voice still comes out sounding harsh to his own ears. “How much,” he asks roughly, “d’you still want to be my sergeant?”

James doesn’t answer at first. He just drops his head down onto Robbie’s shoulder. It’s warm and heavy and his whole posture slumps against Robbie with relief.

Robbie cups his shorn head with the palm of his hand.

“Now that you mention it, sir,” comes a mumble straight into Robbie’s shoulder, straight into that gap in his collarbone that turns out to be just the right place for James to nudge his forehead into with his words, “I’ve been thinking for a while that I could take it or leave it…”

Robbie slides his palm down to press against the nape of James’s bare, warm neck and makes him raise his head.

In that moment of pause there’s that sharp leafy scent of the coming tropical rain again, at the edges of Robbie’s senses. But this time there’s James’s eyes, impossibly wide and clear and gazing right into Robbie in silence. The whole of him a gentle plea still awaiting confirmation of orders.

“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, then, eh?” says Robbie gently. Just so he can watch that slow smile starting, so very close up.

At first the relief, as Robbie yields to the kiss, is the warm surety of a confirmation; of James’s want meeting a truth lodged waiting in Robbie’s heart. But then it becomes a more urgent demand that leaves no room for any leftover fears that James is hindered by lingering thoughts of rank. It leaves no room for anything but James.

===

If Robbie had known what it would be like having James on this side of the bed, he reckons he’d have embarked upon a happy retirement without further ado a couple of months back and just tugged James right over to him that first time back in Lincolnshire under a starry sky.

Because James has cuddled himself right into Robbie’s side now, as if he wants to be touched on every inch of bare skin. And there’s a lot of inches of that, as he’s only in his boxers. He’d pulled away briefly earlier, only to hastily discard his clothes, after Robbie had yanked him down on top of him on the bed. God only knows where his shoes have landed this time. And he hadn’t shown much more restraint in reefing Robbie’s T-shirt off when he’d returned to him, dropping right back down on top of him again, limber and catlike, and promptly resuming all of his extremely welcome advances.

Robbie is down to just his pyjama bottoms now, having placed a hasty embargo on more than the kissing for tonight, when he’d seen James’s eyes wander contemplatively to his waistband. James had twisted his mouth into a considering expression but then had simply pushed the tips of his fingers down over Robbie’s hip, into that waistband, as he’d pressed himself right back into Robbie again. Cheeky sod. But if this is what kissing a bloke is like, it’s still more than enough to be going on with for a very happy while. Robbie is now lying shoved back a bit on his pillows, with a warm head pressed into his bare chest, a leg crooked over Robbie’s leg and an arm tucked heavily round his ribs. Rather as if his sleepy, contented and apparently-now-ex-sergeant is aiming to pin Robbie to the mattress. Well, he can’t actually make out much of James’s profile now that they’ve returned the room to darkness, but he’d certainly seemed happy enough, when he’d finally slid down with a sigh and shifted himself into this position.

Robbie passes his hand back over James’s head firmly enough to make him nudge into Robbie’s palm a little harder, seeking the pressure. “Will we open the curtains and you can show me Sirius?” he asks, as his hand pauses at the nape of James’s neck.

“Don’t,” James orders into his chest emphatically. “Move.”

Robbie chuckles and resumes his petting.

“Not there, anyway,” James rumbles contentedly after a moment.

“Why? Where’s he gone?”

He yawns, his breath stuttering warm against the hair on Robbie’s chest. “After early spring, Sirius isn’t visible at night. We won’t be able to see it until around midsummer now…and then we’ll have to get up at dawn… ”

“That right?” asks Robbie.

But James stiffens a little, coming alert under his touch. “I didn’t mean—”

“Midsummer, you say?” He nods shortly. Robbie ignores the jolt of movement and just keeps on passing his hand slowly back over James’s head. “It’s as well to know this isn’t a passing fancy for you,” he tells him. “I’ve just lost the best sergeant I’ve ever had to keep you in me bed…”

“Flattery,” says James, after a pause, “will get you absolutely everywhere. Although—I don’t think anyone has ever seduced me into bed by misusing an idiom before...”

“You haven’t lived. And technically I was getting you back into the bed. Play your cards right and I’ll be continuing me courtship of you with all sorts of slaughterhouse sayings,” Robbie promises. “How’d I misuse that, anyhow?”

“It’s not hung, it’s hanged. Everyone makes this mistake. People are hanged and pictures are hung.”

“Dunno which you’d use for the poor old sheep, then—”

James’s head tilts back against him as this one sets him off. “No, it’s nothing to do with slaughtering livestock. Up until the nineteen-twenties, someone could be hanged for stealing anything more than a shilling, so you might as well steal a more expensive sheep since the punishment would be the same anyway.”

“While you’ll be tryin’ to continue your education of me in every other way,” says Robbie with a sigh. “I’m going to bribe Gurdip to get that app blocked from your phone.”

“I thought you would’ve remembered that law from your early days as a constable,” James says gravely.

“Me early days as a constable, I was keeping busy working vice in Newcastle, I’ll have you remember.”

“That’s right.” But he sounds intrigued at this now, God help Robbie.

“Plenty of time for me to continue your education with a bit of what I picked up there another time, Sergeant,” Robbie says equably.

There’s a rather prolonged silence from James. “All right,” he agrees after a moment in a tellingly casual tone. Robbie grins into the darkness. “And you’re not allowed to call me that any more,” James reminds him, after a further silence, sounding drowsy now but still rather intrigued. “Sir.”

Ah. Right. That’s all going to take some getting used to. Robbie grimaces. “And Sirius the inspector, you’re tellin’ me he’s invisible now, too? Not just the sergeant?”

“Effectively so, to us, yes.” James’s voice is getting slurred now as sleep starts to overtake him. “Because of the changing position of the earth as it orbits round the sun. That’s why a few new stars appear in the East every night. It’s like the sky shifts over gradually, not even quite one degree a day. But really it’s us moving. So we’ll see different patterns now.”

“Different patterns, eh? Sounds good to me.” Speaking of which. “So you’re not going to disappear on me in the morning, then?” Robbie would be absolutely fine with waking up with James in this position. More than fine.

“Why’d I want to do that?” he asks. Robbie hadn’t known it was possible to get him this relaxed. He seems to be drowsily floating, still and warmly weighted on Robbie’s chest. He turns his head a little further in.

“Just if you were planning on bein’ up and about bright and early tomorrow morning…” Robbie says softly.

“Hate mornings,” James mumbles over him. And then, and maybe it’s something to do with the way that his face is half-buried in Robbie now as he finally stills altogether for the remainder of the night, there’s the sound of a soft snoring starting up. Robbie huffs a laugh to himself, unheard.

===

“D’you know you snore?” Robbie asks, on a satisfying yawn, blinking his eyes open to find the sun vaguely starting to make an impact in the room and a pair of sleepy blue eyes already regarding him from the adjoining pillow.

“I snore?” says James in disbelief, raising his head. 

“Aye, well, just a bit last night when you were dropping off.”

“I snore?” says James, wholly indignant now, and pushing himself upright. “Seriously, sir, I think you’ll find I’m not the snorer in this bed!”

Ah, Lord, that’s properly woken him up. “Lie back down here, would you?”

James takes him at his word, sliding down and rolling over to plant himself firmly with his head on Robbie’s shoulder. He also delivers a good morning kiss right under Robbie’s ear lobe.

“That what’s had you getting up so early?” Robbie asks, after the very welcome interlude that’s triggered has passed and James has settled himself back down again for a while. There’s a thin band of sunlight filtering through the gap at the top of curtains and starting to make its way across the ceiling. “My snoring—that was disturbing you?” He reckons he’s doing rather well to recapture his train of thought after that awakening.

There’s a suspiciously long pause. “No.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Robbie’s a bit chagrined at the thought.

“Displacement,” James mutters.

“Eh?”

“Displacement. It’s a defence mechanism. When a reaction is transferred from the original object that’s actually provoking it to a more acceptable one.”

Robbie tries to work this one out. “Am I the original object in this scenario?”

“You’re always original, sir.”

“And the exercising was…?”

“It was bloody torture not being able to touch you in the mornings,” James says fervently. “Waking up with you right there. It was like when I was giving up smoking, time before last, and had to go rowing in the early morning to stop myself from reaching for a cigarette…”

“You said you were a morning person,” Robbie protests, trying to revise history in his head here. It’s like when you get the answer to something that’s been bothering you on a case but you have to go back and look at the original events sideways from your new perspective. And then they start to tumble into place…

“I did,” James agrees. “I lied about that, though,” he says cheerfully.

“You—I’ll displace you back to your own side of the bed, Sergeant.”

“No,” says James, unashamedly punctuating his words with little burrowing shifts of his firm body right against Robbie’s side. And his thigh strays heavily over Robbie’s again in a way that makes it suddenly very clear to Robbie just how much he wants James to stay right where he is and maybe keep on doing that… “You won’t. And, like I said, you can’t call me that any more.” But he’s levering himself up now on one elbow so that the more-than-able muscles in his upper arm briefly make their presence known and James lands up with his mouth close to Robbie’s ear. What’s he up to? “I mean—as far as you’re concerned,” he murmurs, with warm exhales tickling the side of Robbie’s neck, “You’re no longer my boss. Are you?” And he’s kissing under Robbie’s ear again. Had he worked out earlier from Robbie’s reaction that… James’s voice is falling downwards into a deeper, slow rumble. “We’re just two blokes who happen to work in the same nick. Workmates, as you’d say yourself…” Robbie’s head rolls sideways, on the pillow, away from James, giving himself over to James’s ministrations, despite his better judgement. “Aren’t we, sir?” 

He’s stopped, waiting for some sort of answer. Robbie—who would agree right now if James suggested Robbie inform Innocent that he wants to take a demotion back to the rank and file and put in for a transfer to the Outer Hebrides—grunts his assent.

“Hmm.” James contemplates this, lazily, as he settles his whole body in closer and his breath ghosts so near to the back of Robbie’s neck that it seems impossible he can get any closer without—and James’s mouth briefly touches against the nape of Robbie’s neck now, but that’s not it, that’s close but not quite—how’d he have a clue where Robbie’s sweet spot is anyway, how could he know—James’s mouth touches again in a proper, tantalising, experimental kiss that’s just almost there… Robbie’s eyes drift closed of their own accord.

“I think it’s important,” that voice starts again, mumbling so low that Robbie has to strain to hear it. Why’s he still talking? And the warm palm of James’s hand straddles the back of Robbie’s neck now and the tips of those long fingers starting to explore lazily, massaging light circles of pressure, searching slowly to find the precise place… “important for me to check that, as they said in that seminar, we’re not irrevocably overstepping the boundaries of our professional relationship if I were to slide my finger just a little further down right—here? No?—and then if I were to—No, that wasn’t the end of that sentence, was it? Wait—what was the end of that sentence?” And his hand stills completely.

Robbie’s eyes open in disbelief and he turns back to stare up at James, very close. James’s teasing hand stays relaxed, trapped in the cavity under his neck. “Sergeant—”

“No, no, you're definitely not allowed to call me that in bed any more,”James says sadly, dropping his head as he shakes it so that his mouth brushes right against Robbie’s as Robbie makes a vain attempt to capture it, and then James’s finger unerringly presses straight into—

“Jesus Christ—”

“No, Wolfgang Christ, that was what they used to call me in school, did I ever tell you that, Robbie?”

“Hathaway, if you don’t—”

“Oh, you are still willing to give me the odd order, are you, sir? Good.” And he grins wickedly down at Robbie and then drops that mocking mouth down to meet Robbie’s at last while he keeps his hand where it is and varies the pressure on his finger, fuelling the flames, moving teasingly away from, and right back into, that spot that always seems to be wired directly to Robbie’s groin.

This kissing-only stage is unlikely to last the weekend.

And James is the one who’s going to make Robbie break it.

“I’ve had my suspicions about that for years,” James says in deep satisfaction, once Robbie has done his utmost to silence him very effectively in a way that James had only seemed to thoroughly appreciate. He’s recovering now though, stretching out lazily on his back beside Robbie again, his hands clasped under his head. “The way that your hand goes to the back of your neck when you feel under pressure. You’re instinctively protecting a vulnerable spot.”

“I—” Robbie had certainly never thought of it that way. And, bloody hell, he knows he does that in front of actual people. With James watching.

“It’ll be interesting now,” James resumes, with a glint in his eye, “to see if that happens in front of Innocent on Monday morning…” Oh, sweet Lord. “But I thought it would be useful if you could honestly reassure her that you don’t take advantage of a position of authority in our relationship.”

Robbie wonders just what the hell had ever made him fear he could be taking advantage of this particular junior officer. Then hot on the heels of that thought comes the realisation that that may have been James proving a certain point to him after these last couple of months of Robbie’s confusedly guilty and protective hesitations. Well, Robbie’s fears have certainly been put to rest on that score… “I notice you’re still calling me sir, incidentally,” he complains. “When it suits you.”

“Mmm,” James hums contentedly, watching that shaft of sunlight spread its slow but steady way across the white ceiling, gathering more brightness within its path as it widens. “That’s more of a personal honorific, though. Robbie.”

But Robbie needs to get revenge for what that ruddy teasing smartarse has just done. “I reckon Innocent will assign Blake to me, you know,” he muses. He watches James’s brows draw down in a moment of confusion at this sudden change of tack. “It’s not like he and his partner are doing too well together—”

“That’s hardly Blake’s fault,” James points out, “His inspector is—fuck.”

“You’re very profane recently,” Robbie observes mildly.

“Fuck,” says James again as he grasps that the flip side of this particular coin would be that he’d be assigned to Peterson in Blake’s place.

There’s a short silence while Robbie maintains an expression of frowning contemplation, he hopes.

“Actually,” says James, rolling back on his side to face him. “Did I mention I’ve been thinking of going for my inspector’s?”

Robbie laughs aloud. “First I’ve heard of it,” he says.

“I’m sure I said something—”

“Don’t be so hasty, now. I think you could be a good match—you and Action Man. You with all your running and swimming and…chess-boxing. He could do the boxing and you could do the chess. You’d make a good team.” But is James genuinely more willing to consider going for the promotion now? Has going on that course piqued his interest after all?  Or is it that they’ll be separated now, anyway? Is that really so much of what’s been holding him back? Ah, James. “Come to think of it,” Robbie says more kindly. “That may be a way to appease Herself. She’s been wanting you to turn your thoughts in that direction for a while now. We can tell her every cloud has a silver lining and all that. Be better than telling her you’d take OSPRE over Peterson any day of the week—”

“—and twice on Sundays,” completes James absently.

Robbie had always assumed he’d be the one to see James through that inspector’s course if James had ever agreed to it. He pushes down an unexpected pang.

“Look, what are we telling her?” asks James and he looks more uncertain than he has at any stage so far on this delightfully lazy and guilt-free sunny Saturday morning. Robbie reaches out to stroke his head again. He really is remarkably like Monty. The way you can soothe him back down with touch.

“As few actual details as possible. We’ll tell her truthfully that you were just crashing here for the night, but our relationship is—progressin’—and so we’re jointly requesting your transfer.”

Plus Robbie will be keeping his hands rammed in his pockets and away from his neck for any part of Monday morning’s coming debacle that involves having James in the room with him. Just as bloody well James won’t be standing aside, watching him alertly, the next time Robbie is standing briefing his team on a complicated case in the incident room either… “And if you’ve any sense, you’ll also start by apologising profusely for your all-too-prompt deception when you first picked up the phone,” he advises. “She really doesn’t take too kindly to being lied to.” 

“She thinks we’ve been lying to her for ages,” James says ruefully.

“Aye, that’s what’s got her so rattled there last night—” Then he stills, his hand dropping back from James’s head. Because maybe—maybe in a way Robbie has. “She’s possibly been tryin’ to keep us out of trouble too,” he acknowledges, thinking of Innocent pushing Robbie to steer James towards that training course. Robbie really wouldn’t put it past her.

James shifts to look at him better. “What will she think of our solution then?”

And Robbie suddenly feels again the weight of James’s head on his shoulder last night as he’d bowed his head in a relieved surrender. “Well, it’s not like we’ll be letting her know we’ve already put it into practice. But she might be relieved the whole issue will be done and dusted, and we’re not resisting her dissolving our partnership or denying things that’s she’s now completely convinced are there. One less headache for her. And I wouldn’t really assume she’ll do a straight swop. There’s a few changes coming up, so she’ll probably have a cabinet reshuffle and you’d be unlucky to get Peterson that way.”

“Anyone would be unlucky to get Peterson—”

“Aye, but—” He hesitates, looking at James’s gloomy expression. Robbie hadn’t really meant for him to take his teasing thoughts on Innocent’s reassignments that seriously. “Don’t say anything round the nick, but Grainger asked me to go for a pint recently and he’s thinking of calling it a day soon. So his sergeant will be needing an inspector and he’s worked cases jointly with Peterson far more than you have. Grainger doesn’t want any rumours getting around yet, though.”

“I think they already have,” James says but he’s looking relieved all the same. “That someone’s retiring, I mean.”

“That why you thought I was?” Robbie enquires, remembering that oddness. “When you asked me on the phone while you were on your course?”

“I didn’t think you were.” But he’s avoiding Robbie’s gaze, his eyes are moving aside to watch the sunlight that’s crept up over the foot of the bed. And over James’s calf, Robbie notices absently, all golden-brown hairs turned even lighter, with one of his legs sticking out from under the very rumpled duvet they’ve tugged haphazardly back over themselves.

“James?”

“It was more that I hoped—it was stupid, really.”

“You’re lying in my bed, Sergeant, and we’ve just snogged the living daylights out of each other.”

James stares at him. “Snogged the—how terribly romantic of you, sir. I’ve gone weak at the knees.”

“Just as well you’re lying down, then,” Robbie says equably. “You’re too bloody tall to catch if you’re goin’ to make a habit of swooning on me. I’d do me back in. But my point is that whatever you feel was stupid…”

James moves his head in frustration, some inner struggle rising to the surface about whether or not to evade this all the same. “Sometimes I’d sort of fantasize—you might decide to take the final step and retire so you wouldn’t be my boss and then I’d know you wanted—that you’d tell me the reason why you’d decided to break our working partnership was so we could—it wasn’t like I thought you would, I just had the fantasy come into my head—Christ, I told you it was stupid,” James says his cheeks patchily flushed at hearing all of this emerge in concrete words.

Robbie kisses him gently, then stokes a thumb across the heat of his cheek for good measure. “You’re a daft old sod, you are.”

But he’d also been ahead of Robbie in sensing the proper path to resolving this all along. And the thought of having James nattering away beside him now some nights without guilt or restraint on Robbie’s part, and being able to reach over towards his warmth and draw him closer to quiet him better when he’s restless—it makes something inside Robbie that he hadn’t known he was still holding back just unspool. The sun is almost halfway up the bed now. But it seems James really is in no hurry this morning. Robbie gives a deep sigh and raises an arm in invitation. James shuffles back over pretty willingly, landing up half on top of Robbie and more in the sunlight.

“Never stayed in bed with both you and the sun here before,” Robbie tells him. This is blissfully comfortable now. Although—poor bugger feeling he had to get up early like that.

“I know,” James grumbles. “Much more of that platonic bed-sharing and I think my anaerobic capacity would have been better than it was when I was on the boat race crew.”

Robbie still can’t get his head around that one. “And you’re really telling me you were only getting straight up and heading off exercising in such a hurry because—”

“Don’t mock me,” James cuts in seriously, propping his chin up on Robbie’s shoulder. “Unrequited lust. It’s a terrible burden to have to bear.”

“Unrequited—”

James makes adoring eyes at him. “I’m only human, sir.”

“Ah, give it a rest, you.” Although bloody hell, his level of enthusiasm last night had certainly told its own tale. And a thought strikes Robbie belatedly—“But—what about them croissants?”

James grimaces at the mere reminder. “No,” he says firmly. “That bakery is practically more local to London than your flat. And it’s up a steep hill. I will no longer be going on croissant runs.”

“Shame,” says Robbie regretfully. “I liked those croissants. They had a certain—je ne sais quoi about them.”

James settles his head back down, seemingly preparing to go back to sleep again. Robbie reckons he could certainly get on board with that. “We can go to the bakery when it’s actually open, then,” he tells Robbie. “They have little café tables on the pavement with wrought-iron chairs. And good coffee.”

“At a normal hour of the morning, though,” Robbie says hastily, sensing a threat to his peace, after all. “You know, like when normal people would have their breakfast on a weekend.”

“Brunch for two,” James corrects lazily. “And Jadran will be delighted to see you. The first time I stopped by the back door on a pre-dawn run and asked for four croissants he winked at me and said that it must be serious…”

“Your friend thinks that you were getting those croissants…”

“For breakfast in bed, yes,” James agrees. “But don’t worry, sir. I can introduce you as my ex-boss.”

Robbie gives him a quelling look. Not that it achieves any noticeable effect. “But on the plus side—you’re sayin’ we can have proper mornings like this now? No running, swimming, chess-boxing or climbing trees? We can just be two grumpy blokes in a bed havin’ a lie-in?” And Robbie’s being kissed again.

“Bloody hate mornings,” James mumbles happily into his ear.

 End.