Chapter Text
Duncan had said to him that he didn’t need to and he hadn’t listened. It was a cold morning and he had come early, so he sat in his car in the parking lot, his hands pushed into his pockets. Maybe Duncan was right, maybe he shouldn’t have come. Lately, every time he had visited Duncan, there had been this look in the man’s eyes like maybe he was worried about Jimmy.
Jimmy straightened his back. It was half past nine. Duncan stepped out of the main door and looked around, saw him, stopped for a second. He stepped out of the car and waited. His feet felt stiff, he should’ve walked a bit or something. And maybe he shouldn’t have come. Duncan would look at him with the same worry in his eyes, like he couldn’t move on, the look Duncan had had in his kitchen so many times over the years as they had talked about his love life, or rather Duncan had talked about it and he had tried to dodge the subject.
Duncan seemed younger than last time Jimmy had visited. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Jimmy said and hugged Duncan back. First time they had touched since Duncan had gone in. It felt odd, like his body had forgotten. There weren’t so many people he hugged these days.
“Thanks,” Duncan muttered close to his ear, then stepped back.
“Of course.” Of course he had come.
Duncan drew in a long breath. “Good lord, this is weird.”
“Aye.”
“You’re going to have to tell me if I’m being too weird. Like, if I stop to watch pigeons or something.”
Jimmy was probably supposed to laugh at that, but he had something in his throat. “You can watch pigeons if you like.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Duncan said. There was something about his smile, he dropped it too soon. Then he glanced at the car. “Can we go?”
“Sure.”
It was odd, to have Duncan settle in the passenger’s seat. The car seemed smaller. The scent of Duncan’s cologne was missing. But Duncan’s arm seemed very close to Jimmy’s as he started the engine.
“Did you have somewhere where you need to be?” Duncan asked after they were already out of the parking lot, going down the road to Jimmy didn’t even know where.
“Not really.”
Duncan glanced at him, then looked away. “Right. Would you…”
“I have the whole day,” he said, because maybe it needed saying out loud.
Duncan cleared his throat. “Breakfast, then?”
**
“I bought a house,” Duncan said.
Jimmy looked up from his toast and eggs. They were in what was probably some kind of a trendy café, because other people were working with laptops and looked about twelve years old. Probably neither one of them had really concentrated on picking the place.
He sipped of his coffee. “Where?”
“Here,” Duncan said, “Aberdeen. Or not exactly, it’s a smaller place twenty miles away. But…”
“Okay.” So, Duncan really wasn’t coming back to Shetland.
“I can’t come back,” Duncan said, his voice kinder than was necessary. It wasn’t like he was leaving Jimmy or anything. They’d see each other, Jimmy could visit, and Duncan would come up to Shetland to see Cassie of course, and then he’d probably stay at Jimmy’s place, it wouldn’t be so different.
“What’s the house like?” Jimmy asked, pushing his fork through the egg.
“Well, I’ve only seen photos. And there’s some kind of renovation that needs to be done. I thought it’d give me something to do.”
“I’m sure you’re going to find plenty to do.”
Duncan smiled, reached over and punched him in the arm, so lightly it felt like something else. “I’m going to try to keep out of the prison at least,” Duncan said and leant back again. “Want to see it?”
“What?” The light was coming from the large windows behind Duncan’s back and it made it difficult to look at Duncan. There was the constant clatter of young people typing with their laptops in the background.
“The house.”
“Aye. I… Now?”
“You said you have the whole day.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Okay. Great.” Duncan leant back in his chair, took a deep breath. “God, this is nice.”
“What is?” Jimmy asked with no reason at all.
“To, I don’t know. Be here. In a café. Anywhere.” Duncan reached for his cup of coffee but didn’t drink from it. “With you. Are you aware that you look much better now that you’ve quit?”
Jimmy very carefully swallowed the piece of toast in his mouth.
“I mean, and don’t take this personally, but you were beginning to look like shite. Always exhausted.”
“Doesn’t sound personal at all.”
“It suits you. The freedom. Retirement.”
It didn’t suit him. He had gained a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to stare at the ceiling and think about what the hell he thought he was doing. He had tried a few jobs but nothing made sense. He didn’t know what to do. And it had only got worse after the break-up. “Thanks. Happy to hear.”
“It’s not a joke,” Duncan said, “you look great. A bit grey but what can you do.”
“Look who’s talking,” Jimmy said, but it was difficult to make his tone just right. Maybe he had just forgotten how to speak to Duncan. In the prison, when he had visited, they had mostly just talked about Cassie. And it hadn’t really been about talking anyway. He didn’t know what it had been about but it hadn’t been about talking.
Duncan was smiling now. It was a soft smile, a kind one.
“Anyway.” Jimmy pointed his fork at Duncan’s plate. “Aren’t you going to eat that? Because I can –“
“Keep your fingers off my eggs,” Duncan said and started eating.
**
The house was a disaster. The wind got through from the broken window and the back half looked like nothing had been done to it since maybe the 70’s at best. Apparently there had been an old woman living there and in the end she had only used two rooms at the front of the house, the living room with old sofa and armchairs facing each other, covered in dust, and the kitchen where there was a small bed in the corner next to the table.
“I’ll get rid of the bed,” Duncan said. “I can sleep on a mattress in the living room. Or on the sofa.”
“If the mice haven’t been eating it.”
“I was in the prison, I can handle mice.” He frowned. “I don’t really like mice.”
The house was standing on the hill, looking up to the valley. They went back outside and stood there next to an old tree with a sway hanging from a thick branch. Jimmy pushed his hands into his pockets. There was barely anything else than heather to be seen, loads and loads of it moving in the wind. The village was at the other side, two miles down the hill. They had driven through it to get here. It seemed like a small place, Duncan would probably get bored. Or maybe even in a village that small Duncan would find someone, some nice woman who’d fall for Duncan’s charm.
Duncan laughed when Jimmy said this out loud. “Okay, let’s get back in. I want to show you what I’ve been planning to do.” What he was planning turned out to be two bedrooms, one smaller for when Cassie would visit, and one larger, he would get rid of the closet next to it to make it big enough but didn’t say what for. It had a window facing up the hill, so what he would be looking at would mostly be just the grey sky. It wasn’t too bad. He’d have to rip everything off to fix the room but Jimmy didn’t bother saying that out loud just now. The bathroom was terrible but Duncan had in the past been pretty good at planning bathroom renovations, so that would probably be alright for as long he wasn’t thinking about doing the actual work himself. Jimmy really hoped he wasn’t. He was talking in an easy voice, seemingly lost in his great plans, and it was kind of nice to hear him be like that even if the plans only were about an old house up on the hill somewhere.
Duncan said he’d stay at the house, sleep in the old woman’s bed.
“Absolutely not,” Jimmy said and drove them back to Aberdeen where he had a hotel room booked anyway for one more night, Duncan could take the bed and he’d sleep on the sofa. Duncan refused to take the bed. They had a short argument about it and afterwards he felt so good that when they walked to a restaurant a few blocks away from the hotel he caught himself smiling. In the restaurant Duncan kept looking at everything like it was wonderful and that seemed incredibly sad in a way, and he wanted to apologise to Duncan but didn’t.
They didn’t talk much during the dinner. Duncan said three times that the steak was excellent, and they both had at least one glass of wine too much, and on the way back to the hotel it started raining. The streets glistened wet in the orange lights and their steps had the same rhythm. It was nice.
“You never told me what happened,” Duncan said later, when Jimmy had taken a shower and was brushing his teeth in the bathroom.
“What happened when?” he asked through the door he had left ajar for some fucking reason.
“With Meg.”
Good lord. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it,” he said and spat in the sink.
“But you seemed to like her. Like, really like her.”
“Aye.”
“So, what happened?”
“Nothing happened.” He opened the door and stepped back into the room. Duncan looked straight at him from the sofa. “It just wasn’t right.”
“Bullshit,” Duncan said. “It wasn’t right like what? Did you get scared?”
Surely there was no point carrying on this conversation. “Of what?”
“Of getting hurt, I’d guess.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Jimmy,” Duncan said quietly, “you can’t be alone for forever.”
“I’m not –“ Jimmy took a deep breath, walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. He should’ve put socks on, his bare feet looked ridiculous on the carpet. “I’ve got Cassie.” He only had Cassie, like, on Sundays when she came over to have dinner with him, and sometime on weekdays if he popped by in the bistro, only he tried not to do that too often so Cassie wouldn’t grow tired of her old dad who was a bit lonely and always missing her.
It was nice that Duncan didn’t say anything.
“It just didn’t feel right,” Jimmy said. “With Meg. I don’t know why.”
Duncan looked at him for a long time before saying, “you should try dating, then. Have you heard of Tinder?”
“Have I heard of Tinder?”
“Aye. Because it’s not the same than Twitter.”
“Aye, I’ve heard of Tinder.”
“Have you tried?”
He would’ve gladly tossed something at Duncan but didn’t have anything suitable at hand. Bedside lamp would’ve probably been a bit too much. “Are we going to sleep or what?”
“I can take the pictures for you,” Duncan said. “I’ll lend you a nice shirt and then we’ll put you on Tinder. The ladies will love you.”
Jimmy bit his lip.
“A retired detective,” Duncan said, “that’s got to be good on Tinder. They’ll think you’re clever or something. And with your eyes, they’ve got no chance.”
“With my eyes?”
“Aye.” Duncan stood up, took the extra towel and went to the bathroom.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Jimmy called through the door that Duncan hadn’t closed all the way.
“Nothing!” Duncan called back, and after a minute there was a sound of the shower being turned on. Jimmy lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.