Work Text:
They’re still in bed when the clock ticks over from the ‘acceptable time to rise’ of 09:59 to 10:00, which is decidedly more of a lie-in territory. Todd – in his role as the slightly ill-fitting big spoon – has one hand splayed over Dirk’s chest, thumb petting absent-mindedly at his collarbone as he watches the silently judgemental digital display of his alarm clock marching steadily on. Meanwhile, he and Dirk stay in contented stillness.
At barely a week since the end of the uncreatively dubbed ‘CIA Incident’, normal habits still haven’t resumed. Amanda phones to check-up much more than is strictly necessary, Farah’s nervous habit of checking her personal arsenal is neurotically repetitive, and Dirk still opts for cosy lie-ins over jumping out of bed full of mystery-solving energy as he used to. Todd thinks, perhaps it’s because they’re not on a case – after all, this is really the first time he’s been around Dirk when there’s no case to solve. Or perhaps it’s the sex.
Todd would like to think it’s the sex, but the sex they’ve been having isn’t really the sort of intense, frenetic sex that usually warrants a lie-in the next morning. That’s not to say it’s not good sex, it’s very good sex, just that it’s the sort of slow, comforting sex that – in Todd’s experience – doesn’t usually happen until a few months into a relationship and certainly doesn’t warrant a lie-in the next morning.
Dirk mumbles something unintelligible and rolls over, burying his face in Todd’s shoulder close enough that Todd can feel the flutter of his eyelashes as he starts to return to the world of the conscious. Gentle kisses are being pressed in a sporadic pattern over Todd’s neck and shoulder until a soft voice breaks through the near-silence.
“Beans on toast?” it asks. Todd nods and then winces at the sudden bite of cold air as Dirk rolls out of bed and somehow manages to dislodge the entire duvet in the process. If Todd’s being perfectly honest, he doesn’t like beans on toast. In his (admittedly limited) experience with the meal, the first few bites are tolerable but by the fifth or sixth mouthful the toast is more soggy than crunchy and the rapidly cooling beans do little to distract from that unpleasant texture. Still, Dirk evidently enjoys making the meal, which Todd suspects is the only one he knows how to make, and who is Todd to deny him that?
Fifteen unusually quiet minutes later, Dirk and Todd are sitting on the bed eating beans on toast. Todd is trying valiantly not to let the sauce drip onto the sheets while Dirk is making no such effort, more focused on his explanation of what he’s observed from Todd’s apartment window while cooking (burning) the initial batch of toast.
“-and once I saw the parakeet, I immediately realised why the little girl had let go of her balloon. You see, there’s a little known coded language used only by residents of one particularly small former-country in Eastern Europe which I am fortunately rather familiar with-“
“Maybe we should go out today, then,” Todd cuts in, the words silencing the room, as if they were in a space-ship and Todd had stabbed a hole in the wall through which the comfortable atmosphere had been sucked out. Dirk looks at him with an almost imperceptible furrow to his brow, and then his eyes flick down to his barely touched beans on toast. “I just thought,” Todd continues, voice a little higher now he's worried he’d upset things, “Since you’re obviously in the mood to solve a mystery. Maybe if we go out somewhere, and not just to see Farah or Amanda, maybe then we’d come across a mystery to solve.” ‘And then things would go back to normal’ is the unspoken end to that sentence which hangs in the air.
That’s what all this is, really. The sex and the beans on toast and the lie-ins that last ‘til lunchtime some days. The hallmarks of a new relationship being used to disguise the fact that Dirk is scared to leave the apartment. Scared to solve mysteries that he can’t observe from their fourth-floor window, scared to let the flow of the universe drag him along when the last place it dragged him to was a dark holding cell underneath a CIA base far from everyone he loved.
The silence drags on until Dirk cautiously continues, “Anyway, this coded language is interesting because to the average observer it looks like nothing more than a series of utterly random events but to me – a master of coded languages – it in fact-“
Todd chews on a mouthful of sauce-saturated toast and listens to Dirk ramble on. Another day of this can’t hurt, he thinks. They’ll finish their breakfast, then order pizza for lunch and dinner and then finish the day with slow sex that reassures them both that they aren’t broken. And then tomorrow morning might be the morning where the fear dissipates enough for Dirk to go out. And then the past might actually start to feel like the past, rather than this ugly smog suffocating them in the present.