Chapter Text
Leila watches him over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip of her wine.
“You seem distracted,” she says.
Arrash scoffs, glancing away from her to their right. Beside them at the table, Leila’s workmates are cooing over a picture of someone’s kid nephew. Or was it niece?
The phone makes its way into Leila’s hands by way of some insistent shoving and she breaks off from staring at Arrash to look down at it. “Oh, your cousin is so cute,” she says.
Ah, right. Cousin.
The small fragment of shame he feels must show on his face because when Leila hands the phone back, she gives him a knowing look.
“What?” he asks, hunching his shoulders defensively.
“Distracted,” she proclaims. A pause follows in which Leila seems to be making her mind up about something. Whatever it is, Arrash can tell he won’t like the next sentence out of her mouth.
Leila takes another delicate sip of her drink—far too casual—and asks, “Is this about Stefan?”
Once, she’d have said ‘work’. Now she says ‘Stefan’. The name alone makes his relatively bad mood worsen. “Really?” he says. “Does everything have to be about him now with you?”
Arrash sees Leila’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rise and knows instantly that he’s said the wrong thing.
“With me?” she says. “I think you’re getting us mixed up.”
He opens his mouth to answer, but it turns out he’s lost his words in the face of how disgustingly right his sister is. Maybe she should’ve been the detective. After all, she’s always been better at getting to the truth of the matter than him.
Arrash is just about to retort something senseless that would undoubtedly have caused him to receive the rough edge of Leila’s tongue when he notices her gaze slide away from him and fix on something over his shoulder.
A grin spreads on her face. “Speak of the devil.”
Arrash whips his head around to see Stefan and another man being shown to a table across the restaurant.
Stefan looks… a bit like he did the second time Arrash met him when he had to push the idiot out of the way of a lorry. He’s dressed in a suit for once (a nice suit, Arrash can’t help but notice) and his hair is pushed back (which does not make him look sexy, damn Leila for making him watch that film).
Also, he’s wearing glasses. These may or may not make him a tiny bit sexy. Sexy to other people, Arrash thinks firmly. Not to him.
“He looks good,” Leila says, genuine approval warming her tone. “I didn’t know Stefan wears glasses.”
“He doesn’t,” Arrash replies, frowning.
Since meeting and, more recently, moving in with Stefan, Arrash has learned a horrifying array of facts about him. Stefan dumps about four sugars in his coffee (repulsive). Stefan goes to sleep with the TV on (freak). Stefan is an unironic fan of Justin Timberlake (hilarious). Stefan prefers spearmint to peppermint (permissible).
Stefan—despite a tendency to squint when he reads—has 20-20 vision.
All this knowledge is horrifying because it means Arrash knows far too much information about someone he purports not to like as much as he does. And it’s fairly intimate, personal information, at that. Some people don’t even know their own spouse’s blood type.
“What’s he doing here?” Arrash wonders aloud.
The restaurant is small enough that he can see Stefan and his companion clearly, but not small enough to hear what they’re saying as they sit down and begin to peruse their menus. The unknown man looks to be in an even nicer suit than Stefan’s. Three-piece job, well-tailored to fit his broader frame. He’s older—his dark hair is streaked with grey. Probably mid-to-late-forties, if Arrash had to guess.
“Could it be more of his mysterious SFO business?” Leila asks. “Oh, are the geek-glasses his disguise? Who does he think he is, Clark Kent?”
Arrash has to suppress a smile at the memory of Stefan ripping his own shirt when he was drugged and declaring he was Superman. “Something like that. Here, swap seats with me.”
“What? Why?”
Arrash turns back around in his chair to glare at his sister. “I can’t keep craning my neck like this, it’ll look weird. And it’s starting to hurt.”
“Staring at him for the rest of the night won’t just look weird, it is weird. I swear, you two really are obsessed with each other.” Despite her protest, Leila stands up and grudgingly swaps sides on the table. Leila’s friends don’t bat an eyelid, too used to the siblings’ teasing and quirks to comment.
“Happy now?” she asks once they’re resituated.
“Ecstatic.”
Leila rolls her eyes and seamlessly integrates herself back into the conversation her colleagues are having about the junior doctors’ strikes, apparently ignoring him now.
This leaves Arrash free to observe Stefan and his companion uninterrupted. Neither are angled enough towards him that they should notice his surveillance, at least.
Ever since he found out that Stefan essentially works as an undercover operative for the Serious Fraud Office a lot of the time, he’s been curious about how that works. As a police officer, it strikes him as something the SFO probably shouldn’t be doing. As a friend, it strikes him as pretty dangerous work for Stefan, considering who they’ve gone after and what the consequences have been so far. Arrash doesn’t fancy being shot at or trapped in a car about to burn to death ever again, thank you very much.
He watches a waiter take the man’s order and then Stefan’s. He hears Stefan laugh too loudly at something the man says. He watches them eat a starter while discussing something animatedly.
After the plates are taken away, Stefan gets up from the table and heads for the restrooms. Without him there, Arrash’s view of Stefan’s dinner companion improves and he takes in the man’s relaxed, arrogant way of leaning back in his chair, the expensive-looking watch on his wrist. He looks as if he believes he owns the place. Perhaps he does—you can never tell in London.
Then, Arrash sees him take out a white tablet, drop it in Stefan’s glass of water, and swirl it around to mix it in.
Arrash’s vision goes weirdly dark at the edges. It feels like the temperature in the room has just dropped several degrees.
“Rash?” Leila’s voice gives him a jolt, less for the disturbance of his focus but for how far away she had sounded despite being right in front of him.
“He just put something in Stefan’s glass.”
“What? Rash—”
Arrash stands up, knocking his hip against the table in his haste to get around it. As he charges over to the other table, Stefan returns and sits down again, smiling at the bastard who would presume to drug him. His hand stretches out towards the glass.
Without thinking, Arrash calls out “Police!” and everyone in the restaurant turns to look at him. The buzz of chatter stops along with the clink of cutlery.
Stefan’s eyes meet his, wide and confused. He jumps out of his chair like a scalded cat when he recognises Arrash, his mouth starting to shape the letter ‘R’.
“Police,” Arrash repeats, cutting Stefan off before he can make it clear that they know each other. This time, the word is more authoritative. Less frantic. “Sir, I just saw this man put something in your drink.”
There’s a loud scrape as the man pushes his chair back to stand up too, drawing himself up to his full height. It’s still a few inches below Arrash’s. “I did no such thing,” the man says, his measured words spoken in an upper-class accent attesting to years of private schooling and privilege. No wonder he can’t take no for an answer. “This is preposterous.”
“Really?” Arrash goes on, keeping his voice deadly calm even as his heart is racing from a sudden burst of adrenaline. “You’re going to stand there and lie when I just saw you do it?”
“It’s the truth. What is this? Are you jealous that this man—” here he indicates a still baffled-looking Stefan, “—enjoys my company? I saw you staring at him from the moment we walked in.”
“Jealous?” Arrash repeats incredulously. “Of you? Please. I don’t have to drug people to get them to sleep with me.”
“With an attitude like yours, I find that surprising. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. Come on, Stefan.” The man moves around the table and puts his hand on Stefan’s lower back as if to lead him away then and that tears it. Before he knows quite what he’s doing, Arrash is striding forward and punching the man in the face. Hard.
“Rash!” Stefan shouts and wow, he really is bad at this undercover stuff. Stefan looks at him and must catch his expression of utter disbelief. “I mean,” he says haltingly, “that—that was really rash of you!”
Stefan proceeds to give him a helpless sort of half-grimace-half-smile, which Arrash can only shake his head at despairingly.
Meanwhile, the man Arrash just punched is on the floor at their feet, holding his nose while blood gushes out of it. “You broke it,” he says thickly, the ‘t’ sound becoming a pitiful ‘b’.
Stefan glances down at him and his face changes into a look that’s equal parts irritation and resolve. “Shut it,” he tells him, then addresses Arrash. “You have to get out of here,” he says, “before the actual police come.”
A comment about being actual police comes to mind, as usual. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to end up getting arrested for assault!”
“Neither do I,” Leila says from behind them. She makes a grab for Arrash’s wrist and tugs. “Come on.” Her friends are at her back. Rachel has her phone pressed to her ear and is looking down at the squirming, groaning man with disdain. She’ll be calling the police.
“You were never here,” Rachel says. “Don’t worry.”
Arrash looks back at Stefan who, despite what just happened, looks to be calm and collected. The only thing betraying him is the dishevelment of his hair where he’s just ran a hand through it. He looks more like himself now.
“Are you all right?” Arrash asks. There’s no way he’s leaving if the answer is ‘no’.
“I’m fine,” Stefan replies, sounding fondly exasperated. Too fond by half, considering they’re pretending they don’t know each other.
Arrash shifts on the spot, still unsure whether to leave Stefan like this.
With a strange, soft little smile pulling at his mouth, Stefan abruptly steps right into his personal space. Before Arrash can question it, Stefan presses a hand to his right cheek and a gentle kiss to his left, and uses the cover provided by that gesture to quietly tell him, “I’ll see you later. Go.”
For the benefit of their audience, he steps back and says more loudly, “Thanks for the rescue, handsome stranger.”
All at once, Arrash feels like he’s done about ten shots of that awful 95% Polish rectified spirit. His head is spinning. His cheeks are burning. “Any time,” he says faintly when he manages to gather his wits again.
Stefan’s eyes gleam with amusement as he tilts his head towards the door and raises his eyebrows. Somehow though, Arrash can’t bring himself to move or look away.
In the end, it’s Leila who hauls him away with a muttered, “Come on, you idiot.”
Instead of turning to look in the direction he’s going, Arrash keeps his gaze on Stefan.
Stefan gives him a wink. “I’m fine,” he says.
With that said, Arrash finally lets himself be pulled out of the restaurant.
Leila is giving him a headache with the force of her glare. Despite her being stood four people away with her back to him in the crowded tube carriage, Arrash can just feel her ire. The buffer of having the friendly faces of Joanne and Isabella between them is useless. It’s sibling telepathy—they’ve had a lifetime to cultivate it and for Leila to learn to weaponise it.
Stops go by, people get off the train, people get on. Leila ends up getting jostled until she’s right next to him.
“What were you thinking?” she hisses when she’s deemed her frosty silence to have gone on long enough. “Were you thinking?”
“Hey now,” Joanne says. “He was saving that guy from potential date-rape!”
“Yes,” Arrash says, waving a hand in her direction. “Thank you, Joanne!”
“You’d already ‘saved’ him when you pointed out what you saw, you didn’t need to risk your career by hitting him!”
Arrash blows out a frustrated breath, shaking his head. “You know the only thing I hate more than racists is rapists.”
The train slows and a glance at the underground map above tells him it should be their stop. After quick hugs are exchanged between the girls, Leila all but leaps out of the carriage as soon as the doors open. She heads for the exit without a backward glance.
“I think what you did back there was great, honestly,” Isabella says when Arrash turns to say his own sheepish goodbyes. “It almost happened to my sister. Wish somebody’d had the guts to lamp him.”
Joanne nods her agreement and Arrash smiles at them both. “Thank you, ladies. I’ll buy you a drink next time we’re out to apologise for cutting the evening short tonight.”
They wave after he disembarks and he can’t quite keep down a proud grin at their response. At least he’s endeared himself to some people.
When he walks into the family home, he can hear the tell-tale crack of a wine bottle cap being opened. He goes into the kitchen to find Leila at the island pouring herself a generous helping.
She makes quick work of drinking it, holding up a hand to impress upon Arrash that he shouldn’t speak until she’s done.
“Right,” she says after finishing the glass. “I’m ready to have this conversation now.”
“Look, I just saw red and I—”
“No, not about that. I’m done with that now, if there are any consequences you’ll deal with them. No, I want to talk about Stefan.”
Arrash loosens his tie, sets his elbows on the counter, and rubs his temples. “Jesus, what about him?”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
There’s a quiet, pitying quality to the question. It has gravity, like Leila wants him to actually consider his answer. So Arrash squashes the knee-jerk denial that springs up his throat while he tries to muster up a better response.
“I know you, Rash,” Leila goes on when it becomes apparent he’s not going to answer any time soon. “I know how you are when you like someone. Have done since I was in Year Five and you were in Year Seven and you were head over heels for Alex Wilkins.”
“I wasn’t ‘head over heels’.”
“Rash.”
Arrash looks up at her. The resigned slant of her eyebrows asks for honesty.
“I don’t know, okay? I don’t even know how I feel,” he admits in a rush. “The bloke’s a menace, he drives me crazy!”
Leila says nothing. Again, Arrash thinks what a good detective she would make. She knows all the tricks to get him to talk.
“But,” he sighs. “But he drives me crazy in—in other ways, I guess.”
There’s the sly curve of his dopey grin to contend with, the warm hazel of his eyes that turn green in sunlight. That weird high-pitched laugh he sometimes does, the way he gets Arrash on even his worst days and cuts through all of the bullshit to make him laugh again.
“You never go for guys you like,” Leila says, sadness in her tone.
They’ve had this conversation before. Arrash steals Leila’s wineglass out of her hand and pours himself a more respectable amount than she did, swirling the burgundy liquid around the glass as he considers his next words.
“I know it’s the twenty-first century, Leila. I know the discovery that I’m gay is way less likely to get me kicked off the force than, say, punching would-be rapists in the face. I know.”
“Mum would be okay with it too,” Leila says. Slowly, like she thinks she has to be careful on the subject. “I think she must know by now, or at least suspect.”
Cold dread slices through Arrash when he realises he’d forgotten all about their mother and the possibility of her overhearing. He barely has the time to look over his shoulder though before Leila is saying, “Embroidery class.”
“Ah.”
“She’d be okay,” Leila insists.
“What about you?” Arrash says. At her frown, he expands. “You fancy him, don’t you? Stefan?”
Leila smiles. “He is very cute. Funny too.” The smile fades and she looks briefly wistful. “But in all seriousness? We’re from different worlds as far as work goes, even if all we’re both doing is trying to help people. All the secrets involved in what he does would get to me, I think. And I’ll hopefully be heading to medical school next year. It would be a bad time to start something with anyone.”
“So you wouldn’t go for him?”
Before Leila can answer that, Arrash’s phone rings. Or rather, it blares ‘Sexyback’ at a volume that’s embarrassing beyond belief. There’s no need for caller ID, Arrash knows exactly which bastard must have made it do that. “It’s—”
“Stefan,” Leila finishes the sentence with an unholy grin. “I won’t ask.”
“I’d better—”
Leila waves him off. “Go, go. I’m going to call Rachel, see if she got home all right after she stayed.”
Phone still proclaiming that ‘other boys don’t know how to act’, Arrash drops a kiss on his sister’s forehead as he passes by to take the call in the sitting room.
“Stefan? Are you all right?”
“Rash,” Stefan’s voice says in one long breath. “Rash, I’ll be honest with you—I am not great.”
He sounds… drunk? After what happened earlier, it’s worrying enough to get the hairs on the back of Arrash’s neck all standing to attention. “Stefan, where are you? Are you at home?”
“I,” Stefan declares, “am home. Lovely home. Our home, which is lovely.”
Well, he’s definitely at least tipsy. “Are you on your own?”
“Yep, very lonely on my ownsome right now. Are you going to come get me?”
Arrash doesn’t think it necessary to say that if Stefan is at the flat then it hardly counts as coming to get him. But it’s not like there’s any question that Arrash wouldn't go wherever Stefan asked him at this point. “Yes, Stefan, I’m coming home now.”
A pause follows that has Arrash checking the call hasn’t dropped, then Stefan says “’kay,” in more of a half-yawned mumble than an actual agreement.
Arrash waits for him to say more. “You sure you're okay, Stef?”
“Completely,” Stefan says. “Turns out I always was!”
Arrash can’t make any sense of that, so he ignores it and focuses on the fact that it sounds like Stefan will probably be fine until he can get to him. “Stay put,” he instructs. “Drink some water and I’ll be with you before you know it.”
“Cool,” Stefan says and then hangs up.
After a journey that somehow seemed to take a century, Arrash is finally back in Stratford and traipsing up the stairs to their flat.
The best outcome would be that Stefan has done as he said: gulped down some water and sobered up a bit in the time since they last spoke. It’s nearing eleven o’clock already. Despite going out, Arrash had still hoped to get an early night to be fresh for whatever Heywood and Sands might throw at him tomorrow morning—no such luck.
He unlocks the front door and lets himself in, calling out, “Stefan? It’s Rash.”
No answer comes. Arrash is just about to shout again when the door to the larger bedroom (naturally Stefan got that one) opens to reveal a rumpled Stefan squinting out at him. His tie is gone, the top three buttons of his shirt have been opened, and there are flecks of blood on the collar.
Arrash reaches out towards it. “Are you—?”
“It’s not mine,” Stefan says, leaning away from Arrash’s hand. He looks and sounds annoyed, which Arrash was not expecting in the slightest after Stefan’s over-the-top gratitude act earlier. Maybe it was all just an act. But why would Stefan be pissed off with him?
“Can I come in?” Arrash asks uncertainly.
“Be my guest.”
Stefan throws his door open wide in an expansive, definitely not-quite-sober gesture and turns back around to head inside.
Arrash follows, a spark of retaliating annoyance igniting as his confusion grows.
“Why are you pissed off with me?” he asks when he’s crossed the threshold.
Stefan’s room is, as usual, something of a tip. It's nowhere near as bad as the flat he’d been sharing with Jan and the others but it's also nowhere near the standard of cleanliness and order that Arrash keeps his room in. Nothing is on the floor in Arrash’s room; meanwhile, Stefan has got socks, a tennis racket, and CDs all lying about ready to trip up unsuspecting visitors.
Stefan splays himself over the middle of his bed, about a 60-40 split of sat up and laying down. Arrash remains stood by the door, sentry-like.
“Did you get the milk?” Stefan asks.
“Did I—” Arrash looks around in disbelief, but of course there’s nothing and no one there to give him the strength he needs to cope with this. “No, Stefan, I didn’t. Funnily enough, I was a bit preoccupied with coming to check on you first.”
“Didn’t ask for your help.”
The belligerent tone kindles the spark of anger into a small flame. “You sure about that? You certainly needed it earlier.”
Stefan has the gall to laugh then. “Dispersible aspirin,” he says.
“Disp—what?” Arrash runs the words through his brain three times and they still make no more sense. He wants aspirin?
“It was dispersible aspirin,” Stefan says. “In his glass. Not mine.”
Arrash freezes.
“You really shouldn’t hit people on blood thinners,” Stefan continues almost casually. “They took Professor Walsh to hospital.”
Shit. Shit. But he saw—
He saw—
Stefan shakes his head at him. “They said he’d be all right. I offered to go with him, but I think he was annoyed with me for some reason. Maybe it was because of the interfering moron who decided to stick his nose where it didn’t belong.”
Shit. Arrash drags a hand down his face, stunned. So he got it totally wrong. He was lucky Leila did get him away… He could just imagine Heywood’s face as he decided to fire him for good this time.
Why didn’t the man say it was his own medication? From his reaction, he was probably just too affronted by getting accused of spiking someone’s drink in a crowded restaurant… and then Arrash hit him. He didn’t get much of a change to explain himself, really.
“Who was he?” Arrash asks.
“Can’t talk about my work.”
This again. Arrash huffs out a mirthless laugh. “Right. Your work. You know, I may have been wrong about this professor of yours, but what if I was right? What if I hadn’t been there tonight?”
“What are you on about?”
The flame becomes an inferno and Arrash explodes. “I’m on about a complete amateur working undercover! Are you even trained for this? Do you have backup every time? Did anyone even know you were in that restaurant with him tonight?”
Stefan’s face says it all. Arrash knows him well enough by now to see when all his clever comebacks have abandoned him.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” Arrash continues. “So you go around pretending to be someone you’re not with dangerous men, and then you’re surprised when they try to drug or—or take advantage of you? Both of those things have already happened! You do remember what happened with David Leese, right?”
Arrash is pretty sure that, since meeting Stefan, he’s never seen him look genuinely furious as he does now. Scared, happy, smug, condescending, thoughtful—yes. Never as angry as this. If Arrash weren’t so angry himself, that realisation might be enough to make him back down.
“If I hadn’t done all of that,” Stefan says in a low voice, “we never would have got him, or Ruhn Laboratories, or UK Remicon. Or any of them since. This is my job, Rash, I get results.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed and I can’t—”
Arrash breaks off. He doesn’t even know himself where he was going with that. Can’t let that happen? Can’t stand the very idea of it?
“Can’t what?” Stefan demands.
Arrash thinks fast, lets his anger provide the answer. “I can’t keep bailing you out of the situations you get yourself into.”
“You didn’t bail me out! You just about sabotaged my entire operation! My target is in the hospital and I almost asked how he knew who I was because I thought it was like when I was drugged before. I thought I’d been found out and nearly exposed myself in the process because of you!”
“‘Operation’?” Arrash repeats. “‘Target’? You work for the SFO, Stefan, not MI5. This cloak and dagger act isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing! It can’t be legal; who even approved this? Your boss?”
Stefan shakes his head, rolling over onto his side to put his back to Arrash. “You don’t know a damn thing about my work.”
“That’s right, because you don’t tell me.”
“Because I can’t.”
“Right, unless you need to use my warrant card because you want me to lose my job.”
“I don’t want that,” Stefan protests softly.
The futility of the conversation hits Arrash then. The rage drains away, leaving him sagging back against the door without that righteous anger there to buoy him up. Instead, resignation fills him until he feels so weighed down that he just can’t go over this same ground anymore. He’s tired.
“Whatever,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Stefan’s shoulders lift in a shrug. He doesn’t turn back to look at Arrash. “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Arrash mutters. More to himself than to Stefan.
He doesn’t slam the bedroom door on his way out, just lets it close firmly, finally, and then heads to his own room.