Lewis Fic: Limits. Part Four.
Story: Limits
Rating: Teen
Part: Four
All sorts of thanks to wendymr for all her work beta'ing this and talking it through, and all the encouragement - a huge help.
Part IV
The very early hours of a Monday morning in February. John Radcliffe Hospital.
The florescent lights are making the linoleum-tiled floor far too bright in patches. In other places, it’s scuffed far beyond the restorative abilities of that floor polishing machine that keeps humming past. Scuffed from other people’s restlessly moving feet as they’ve sat here over the years, unable to still their own anxieties. James finds that he’s able to sit without moving, though. If he just stares at a patch of the floor, with its patina of light, hard enough, and doesn’t let it slip out of focus, if he keeps that in front of his eyes, then he can hold back that other vivid mental image that keeps threatening to overwhelm him.
It’s the aroma of coffee that finally rouses him from his stupor, and he turns his head enough to see a cardboard cup arriving on the empty seat beside him, and a hand withdrawing. It’s a familiar hand somehow, one that he’s seen in motion a lot-“James?”
“Oh. Can you-”
And Laura, looking down at him in pure concern, gets it immediately. “Yes. Of course. They’re not telling you much, is that it? Hold on.” And she’s heading for the nurses’ desk, already in full professional mode. He can recognise that even through his confusion at her suddenly materialising here. He straightens up properly, and watches after her intently to gauge her reactions to what they’ll tell her. He’s standing by the time she makes her way back to him but she sits down and waits, tilting her head and an enquiring eyebrow at him and he reluctantly settles back down again, back in this unmercifully hard plastic seat, but with her beside him now.
“It’s not too bad, honestly, James. It’s just observations they’re keeping him in for. They’ve looked at the x-rays and his ribs aren’t broken. They don’t think the whiplash is too bad either. But it’s a precaution. Because he can’t recall the moment of the accident, that’s their concern. So he’s had a scan just in case it was any sort of neurological event that caused him to briefly lose consciousness, caused him to lose control, and it does look fine. It was probably the impact from the collision itself that caused a slight concussion, and that’s why he can’t quite recall it. So it’s just that they need to do overnight observations now, that’s what’s prompted his admission.”
“That’s what they told me-but it’s just easier to believe that he’s really all right, coming from you,” he explains in relief. She’s looking at him, warmly, rather struck by that, it seems. And it sinks in that-“I should have rung you, I would have rung you if I’d been thinking straight-not just for you to get information, I don’t mean-”
“I hope you know you can, either of you, any time.” She’s stressed the either of you part. He’s not sure, at the moment, why she’s doing that, so he tries to explain his omission further, because, God, of course she’d want to know if Robbie is hurt. But what comes out of his mouth is somehow a wholly different aspect to this. “Robbie would’ve if he’d been the one sitting here-” But it’s equally true. Robbie would have reached for his phone, without a second thought, and called her. If the positions were reversed and it was James in there and he’d felt the need for support. If they wouldn’t let him in until the morning.
“I know,” Laura is saying. “And you would’ve thought of it eventually too. Wouldn’t you? But luckily there are people ahead of you here.”
“How did you know?”
“A certain Detective Sergeant Lockhart is obviously pulling a pretty late night tonight.” Oh, Julie. “I think something broke in a case. She said she’s with Grainger while Robbie’s on leave? Anyway, someone in Traffic must have told her that the two of you were involved. She called me. So what actually happened? How did you both land up in a single-vehicle RTA, as she put it?”
“Landed up in a ditch, more like,” mutters James. “And I don’t know what happened.”
“You don’t remember?” She’s looking at him sharply now. Then she does that thing he remembers from back in his days in the station where she narrows her eyes a bit and starts to focus on his face even harder. “And how come you can’t tell them whether Robbie lost consciousness, anyway? Or fell asleep? You must have-”
From someone else, that could feel like blame. But from the way she’s looking at him, he knows where her concern lies. “No, I was asleep. I didn’t lose consciousness, I’m not concussed, I’m not really hurt, I was just asleep.”
She’s still looking rather hard at him. And, fuck, she’s going to try persuading him to go home, that she’ll drop him home and he should get some rest and come back in the morning. He’s well aware that that would be the reasonable thing to do and she’s eminently practical. She’s been incredibly kind already, coming down here at this hour of the night, and it’s not an emergency, she’s aware of that by now. It must just seem like he’s being anxious, really. He feels a rising dismay that he’ll have to argue with her. He doesn’t, somehow, have the energy for it. But he also finds that he suddenly minds, he really minds, that he’s going to make things awkward when he refuses her, that he’s going to cause the warmth of her support so far to dissipate because this will understandably frustrate her.
He can’t, right at this moment, after the sudden relief and comfort of her presence, face the prospect of things descending back into that awful feeling of awkwardness that he can’t get past with her ever since Robbie had told him what had actually happened between him and Laura-and now it’ll just seem like he’s being stubborn and obtuse. It would hardly be unlike him. He must have seemed to Laura over the past few months to be horribly aloof, and he really isn’t in much of a state to handle this well. Not that he can handle it at the best of times. And the upshot of it is that she’ll surely depart, in the end, as most sensible people would, and leave him here alone again to battle against the long reach of those unrelenting images. He waits, resigned, for her to start her persuasion, for her opening shot.
“You’ll want some more coffee, James. You haven’t touched that one. I’ll get you a hot one.”
Oh. Well, somehow he seems to have bought a bit more time here. And a hot drink would be welcome, actually. He is a bit cold, despite his coat and the overheated hospital. Better not to say. The unpalatable stuff the vending machine will dispense should at least have a warming effect.
At some stage during each of those long nights here with Robbie, on the job, back in his Sergeant Hathaway days, he would generally reach a tipping point where the desire for something vaguely resembling a coffee overrode his reluctance to sample the stuff from these machines. There had always been the foolishly-enduring hope that it couldn’t possibly be as bad, as weak and tasteless, as the previous time. He watches Laura vaguely now as he remembers one night, which could have been one of so many, waiting for the go-ahead to question the survivor of an attack. He’d offered a cardboard cup to Robbie; along with an involuntary grimace at the first sip he’d taken from his own cup, unable to suppress his ire this time.
“Coffee, sir? Although I think there’s a case to be made for suing them under the Trade Descriptions Act, using that name for it. You’d need to drink half a dozen cups of this before you got any sort of benefit from it.”
“You certainly would,” Robbie had informed him with that grin that used to mean that James had said or done something to amuse or exasperate or both in fairly equal measure. And now these days-well, it means much the same, really, but there’s an unsuppressed fondness to it, pure affection in Robbie’s eyes to accompany it, and it seems more directly aimed at James. Whereas it used to be a grin that Robbie gave more to himself. Sometimes, these days, it seems to be unprompted. James, absorbed, doing something as ordinary as sitting on the couch working out some tricky fingering on the guitar, will suddenly raise his head and find himself the recipient of that grin.
He’s still thinking about that, about all the time spent here with Robbie back when they were Lewis and Hathaway, inspector and sergeant, back when Robbie used to be his sir-when a cardboard cup is offered to him. He takes it, with polite thanks, sipping automatically, as Laura sits down beside him again. But it’s strong. And the strength of it makes it taste like actual coffee. He stares at it and then at Laura, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying his reaction, if the look on her face is anything to go by. “What, James? You don’t know how to humour the vending machine?”
“You’re amazing,” he tells her in much more sincere gratitude. He takes another sip just to check-“That would have been a damn useful technique to learn years ago,” he reflects.
“I can imagine,” she informs him rather smugly. “You can override-well, never mind actually,” she says to herself. “Trade secret. Handy one, too. So next time you find yourself or Robbie in here after your various misadventures, you can take one look at that vending machine and you’ll be straight on the phone to me. Won’t you?” She’s looking at him rather searchingly now, though.
“I really will,” he promises, and he doesn’t mean it for the coffee. Ridiculously impressed though he actually is.
But it’s come home to him, sitting here with her in all her rather-missed sympathetic humour and warmth, that the awkwardness these past months-none of it has been due to Laura. All of it has stemmed from his own guilty unease at getting something that felt too good to be true, at what had felt like her expense. However irrational that feeling may be.
The coffee is helping to order his thoughts now, a bit. His mind, still occupied until now, with avoiding processing those pictures from tonight, is finally beginning to take in a little more than his immediate surroundings and his tangled emotions. And something that’s been nudging at the corners of his awareness finally makes it to the forefront. He frowns at Laura-“I thought you were in Germany?”
She looks down at herself and then peers around the waiting room, appearing to take this question quite literally. “Apparently not,” she says gravely. “But you know best, of course.”
She’s being ridiculous purely to cheer him up now. But he feels his lips quirk all the same. At her willingness, if nothing else. And judging from the slight lift of mischief in her expression in response, he must have managed a smile.
“We got back earlier tonight,” she enlightens him. “And Franco is now apparently so accustomed to my phone going at ungodly hours that he barely stirred when I left. Don’t think he took in what I was saying. He’ll think I’m on a callout, actually,” she says to herself, “Which I shouldn’t be tonight. That’ll puzzle him when he’s more alert. Must text him first thing in the morning.”
She’s staying herself. Not just, thankfully, not pressing him to leave or asking why he won’t, but she’s going to stay here with him. The thought fills him with utter relief. “How was Germany?” he asks suddenly.
She looks at him, amused. “It was good, James. And you don’t need to make polite conversation with me if you’re not up to it.”
“No, I want to know.” He does. Robbie had mentioned she’d been slightly ambivalent about this trip before she left, not a position I really anticipated finding myself in, meeting the family, he’d told James she’d said. Although James also knows that she and Franco had planned to travel around a bit as well during their fortnight there, so it wouldn’t have been too intense.
“All right, then.” She probably thinks he’s just seeking the distraction, but she starts to tell him all the same. And it turns out that it does help, actually. He always likes hearing about places he hasn’t been to and Laura, of course, is a good person to ask, with her wry take on events. God, he’s missed that too.
“It can be interesting, though,” she’s confiding now, her gaze rather drawing him out of his thoughts again. “Getting that other perspective on your partner from people who know him so long.”
“What did you find out?” James asks, alerted by her tone.
She gives him a quick grin. “I went for a drink one night with Franco’s sister-her husband works away a lot so we left Franco babysitting his nieces. And once she’d had a couple of gin and tonics, I learnt that, to Franco, I was the one that got away all those years between our first relationship-and now.”
She delivers the well-worn phrase in rather ironic tones that don’t fool James because he uses that same mechanism himself for truths that rather matter. “And you didn’t know that?” he asks. God, he has been a fool, hasn’t he? It actually sort of does her own happiness with Franco now a disservice, doesn’t it, he thinks confusedly, for James to still be so unable to get past what had happened with her and Robbie.
“No, he wouldn’t ever quite have volunteered that information to me, I don’t think,” she says, considering. “Wouldn’t have actually put it into words. Men.”
“Men,” James agrees.
“And have you been visiting the family yourself?” she asks, in ultra-polite tones, deadpan. He grins at her, suddenly enjoying the complicity. Because spending a week helping to mind a highly energetic small boy is not a position James ever anticipated finding himself in either. But he certainly wasn’t about to let Robbie tire himself out, taking his leave and then looking after his utterly endearing but thoroughly exhausting grandson alone. Lyn had sounded rather desperate when he took her call at home, before he’d even passed her over to Robbie and garnered from Robbie’s reactions what she was ringing about.
And it means rather a lot to him that both Robbie and Lyn had simply taken it for granted that if his research permitted he would come up to Manchester too. It still takes James aback, this easy acceptance the Lewises have of what family members willingly do for each other. It still takes him aback that he’s a member of someone’s family.
“Lyn’s childminder is away,” he explains. “And then Tim’s mum fell ill-she’s okay now-but he wanted to go down to his parents’ place in Cornwall. And Lyn had a training course all week at work-giving it, not taking it-so-”
“Combination of circumstances, really,” Laura acknowledges. “Well, Robbie was due leave. And you were all right to take time off from your research? Robbie says you’ve been going at it fairly hard.”
He feels another pang at guilt at that. Robbie says. Because he could have managed to join them now when Robbie meets her. His schedule isn’t exactly inflexible. It had just become the pattern that since Laura and Robbie worked together, in the months after their break-up, they had continued to link in with each other sometimes over coffee or lunch or an after-work drink. Well, or over post-mortem results, come to think of it.
And James, preceding Robbie out of the force, and no longer part of that pattern, had simply ceased to see Laura much.
He doesn’t really avoid her, as such, not at all, he tells himself firmly. He just-he’s let Robbie catch up with her, respected their friendship of years and the priority that that should take, restoring that-but he’s beginning to pick up that that unwillingness to intrude, it’s not just unnecessary now, it’s perhaps not been quite fair to Laura. And to his own friendship with her. And he hasn’t, in all his discomfort, been giving that enough weight.
It had been such a relief, initially, to think that she and Robbie were re-establishing their friendship, with an ease that James privately rather still wonders at. That that hadn’t been wrecked by the mess that had somehow been created when she and Robbie had tried to be together. A mess that James, without actually knowing about it, had been at the centre of.
And it had been a relief at first that he hadn’t had to face her much himself. He had felt so exposed to realise how she must have seen his feelings for Robbie for-well, God knows how long-but then, worst of all, that she’d seen those feelings still in evidence while she was with Robbie herself. How brutally disrespectful and disloyal of him.
Robbie just sees it all in typically straightforward fashion at this stage-Water under the bridge now. She knows neither of us would have done that to her deliberately. James finds he has no ability to believe that it can be that straightforward. Well, in general he simply tries not to think about it much at all. With some success. If there’s one thing James Hathaway has had considerable practice in, it’s in suppressing things.
He joins Robbie and Laura the odd time when they have an after-work drink, picking Robbie up, but making sure too that he chooses evenings when Julie will be there. Well, it’s always good to catch up with Julie anyway, hear how she’s finding his old role. And Julie, who certainly seems to get along much more easily with most of her colleagues than James ever did, also tends to casually invite most of Robbie’s team. It had rather brought home to him how he and Robbie had tended to function very much as a unit of two during his own sergeant days. But it also makes things easier for him in not quite interacting directly with Laura.
And then that initial instinct to avoid her, almost to withdraw a bit in her presence, had somehow, fight it as he does now, taken on a life on its own.
It might have been easier, after all, if he had been forced to see her in work in the aftermath and let her matter-of-fact friendliness just put that guilt to rest. It has been a while, hasn’t it? He does talk to Laura within that group setting; he just finds himself holding back a fair bit when he’s with Robbie in front of her. But he certainly hasn’t talked to her alone, in a conversation of any proper length, since-Christ, since before he left work. He’s rather shocked at himself. And yet-here she is tonight.
“D’you want to go outside for a bit?” Her voice cuts into his thoughts and he realises he’s just been sitting here silent again.
“Oh-I gave up a few months back.”
“I know that.” And in her pause he hears again an unspoken; Robbie said. “But for some air, a break from all this-” And her hand gesture somehow takes in the over-bright florescent lights, the edgy, waiting, not-quite-silence of a deserted waiting area and the whole bleakly oppressive atmosphere just bearing down on James’s overactive mind.
“No.”
“Okay.” And despite the abruptness of his refusal, her voice is as casual as if his resistance is perfectly acceptable. “Bet you’re well behind on all the station gossip, aren’t you?” she asks. “Well, I’m two weeks behind myself, but I’ll bet I’m still more up to date than Robbie ever is. There’s all sorts you won’t know about…”
And she’s talking again, without seemingly requiring any particular input from him. He manages to follow most of it at first. But then he closes his eyes for a moment, trying to focus on her voice and what she’s saying, and that’s a very bad idea. That image that seems to have imprinted itself on the inside of his lids startles him back out of the more relaxed state he’d slipped into.
Laura has stopped and is looking at him harder again now. She hasn’t missed the startle. “What is it, James?” she asks. Her face is very kind.
He can’t really fight her consolation much longer. He offers up what should be the safer, first part of the story. The factual, more mundane part that should keep him away from the choppier waters of what he’d seen just after the crash-
“I took the first part of the drive,” he starts. “And then we swapped, and Robbie said-he said he’d take over now and wake me for the last part-” But he stops, overwhelmed again despite his best efforts. This time, though, it’s the memory of Robbie, leaning against the car in the over-bright service station forecourt, an island in the starry dark, above the red and white streams of taillights on the motorway below. Robbie, with his woollen jumper pulled on against the cold night, leaning against the car and joking, while he enjoyed the coffee James had fetched for him, about the lack of stamina in the young. Because James had pulled in when he’d started to feel tired. And that was why Robbie had taken over far before the planned switch at the halfway point. And he must then have decided to just let James sleep.
“Hey.” Laura is gently trying to get his attention, reaching to take the hand lying in his lap. Fuck. He can’t suppress the wince at the sudden stab of sharper pain.
“James.” And she’s gently supporting the aching wrist now. “You didn’t tell them about this?”
“There’s nothing much to tell, I’m sure it’s just a sprain.”
“Are you?” she asks.
He actually doesn’t feeI like lying to her. And not just because it would be a pretty pointless exercise. He gives a sigh and relinquishes the truth about this part.
“I honestly didn’t notice it properly at first, take it in. I was too busy, just talking to Robbie, making sure he was calm when we were waiting and he was sort of stunned. And then it seemed so trivial compared with him, not something to distract anyone with, you know? I just wanted to focus on him. And in the ambulance-they let me go with him, they said I should get checked for shock-he was still a bit out of it-I couldn’t get to talk to him-so I was just letting it lie on my lap. And when we got here, I just refused their assessment really, just left , I thought if they knew they'd send me off for x-rays and casts-”And I can’t leave him here alone, I just can’t.
“Well, I don’t have x-ray vision, but-”
He just nods, closing his eyes for a moment once more as he cedes to the inevitable. He knows full well that he has to go downstairs and get this checked. He can’t really fool himself much longer. But closing his eyes is such a bad idea. There’s that vivid image, almost the worst one, just waiting to ambush him as soon as he removes his gaze from the comforting familiarity of Laura’s face.
“James?”
“He looked-on the stretcher, he kept closing his eyes and he was strapped to it, as a precaution, they said…”
“He looked worse than he is, then, I’ll guarantee you that,” she says gently. “Immobilised, that would have made him look worse. That’s what you need, James, is it? Is that why you’re sitting here? You need to just see he’s in one piece for yourself?”
He nods at her, relieved, suddenly understanding that, yes, that’s exactly what he needs, just to see and touch Robbie and make sure-
“Well, then,” she says, in matter-of-fact tones, getting up. “Let me see what I can do about that. But remember-” And she stops right in front of him and gives him a grin “-if I get you in to see him, you’ll be mine to command after that, then, Hathaway.”
===
Robbie isn’t asleep. He’s propped up on pillows, looking a bit pale, but still his blessedly familiar self. There’s a look of pure relief on his face when James levers the door slowly open, just in case he disturbs him. And if he sounds a bit gruffer than usual, that could be the lateness of the hour-“There you are.”
“They wouldn’t let me in to you-”
“They said you were all right, James. You’re all right?”
“Yeah. Are you-”
“I’ll be fine. Nothing that won’t mend soon enough. Bit bruised. It’s the concussion they’re keeping me in for. Tried to tell them, I did, I’ve got-”
“A head like an anvil, yes, I know.”
“They didn’t seem convinced,” Robbie says with a grin. “Come on, then, what are you doing all the way over there?” All the way over there is perhaps a whole step away now. But James accepts the invitation with relief, sinking down on the side of the bed, at Robbie’s hip.
Robbie regards him, eyes slightly narrowed.
“So, apart from my head and that hedge and the car, any other damage done?” he enquires, eventually. He’s assessing something, eyes searching James’s face.
“Some rather startled cows,” James offers.
“C’mere,” Robbie says, gently, raising an arm. James buries his face in his shoulder, feeling one large, warm hand cup the back of his head. He stays there for a moment, just tilted into Robbie, held, as best either of them can manage for now, breathing in Robbie’s scent.
“I wish you’d woken me,” he mutters eventually, into that shoulder.
“You reckon your driving skills are that much better than mine, that it?”
James raises his head to look at him and then raises himself back into a sitting position. Robbie’s hand rests warm on his back. “If you hadn’t driven most of the way, you wouldn’t have been so tired.”
“Oh, don’t be daft. ‘Course I wasn’t driving tired. Or asleep. We probably hit black ice. There was a warning on the radio earlier. What’s up with your arm?”
James says nothing at all.
Robbie raises his eyebrows at him. “Don’t think I’ve ever held you without getting held right back. With interest. And now seems a funny time for you to change your habits. What’s wrong with it?”
“Laura reckons the wrist might be broken,” he confesses reluctantly.
Robbie’s eyes search his face again. “And shouldn’t you perhaps be letting them downstairs in A and E know about that?” he suggests. James feels a flush heat his cheeks. “Go on, now. I’m fine, honest. Off with you and get that seen to properly. Bloody amazed Laura hasn’t got you down there already. Good that you called her, though.”
He looks so genuinely pleased at the thought that now doesn’t seem quite the time to explain how it was that Laura came to be here. It seems only fair to defend her, though. It’s not as if she’s been sitting there letting him avoid proper treatment all this time. “I said I would now if she could get me in to see you first…”
Robbie is rather amused. “Like that, is it? Not often someone gets the better of Laura. She must be losing her touch. James. She’s right, though. Go on. Before you do yourself more damage. That’s your guitar-holding hand.”
James feels his own eyebrows climb in pure indignation. “I don’t just hold it with this hand-” But obviously he’s only playing right into Robbie’s hands.
“Yeah. Exactly. I mean it. Go on now. Not having you lose any mobility in that wrist.”
“I just-”
“Christ, things were easier sometimes when you were me sergeant,” Robbie mutters. “At least you pretended to listen to me then.”
“I do listen, you know I do, I just-”
And Robbie is suddenly intent. “What? What is it, James?”
But James can see it again now. It’s rising up to meet him even despite the real warm presence of Robbie. He swallows and tries to finally get it out of his head, to dilute the vividness of it into words. “There was just a moment,” he says with difficulty. “When I woke up to all of that. You were lying back with your eyes shut.”
“I was taking a moment, James, that’s all-” But then Robbie seems to take in what he’s saying. “Ah, love. Stuff of nightmares, isn’t it? Sorry. I am. C’mon now.” And there’s the side of Robbie’s hand cupping his face now, and his thigh is pressing against James’s hip as he seems to try and draw closer, draw James into him. And James gives a sigh and surrenders, dropping his head back down on that shoulder, feeling himself held again for a while, in safety.
“Go an’ get your hand looked at now, will you?” comes Robbie’s voice in his ear eventually. “I’ll only be fretting if you don’t.” And, James knows, that’s true. He draws himself back up, reluctantly, and looks at Robbie. Robbie seems to think he needs a bit more persuasion. “And I need me beauty sleep-well as much as I can get when this lot will keep waking me, asking me if I know my sodding name.”
James gets up off the bed. He can’t deny he yearns to be back in their own bed right at this moment, to roll over and settle himself against Robbie, much as he does when he wakes in the night, often eliciting a soft, satisfied grunt or a warm arm arranging itself against him. But this hold now seems to have been enough to finally settle that tight feeling in his chest. The solid comfort of Robbie has somehow done its work. Robbie, who is undeniably very much still here, and very much still Robbie.
“Don’t try telling them your name should be on your chart,” James advises as a parting shot. “They’ll have heard that one before.”
“Shame,” mutters Robbie, shifting in an attempt to get more comfortable. “There goes my first line of defence. James, I’ll be discharged before you get through the queue in A and E at this rate.”
===
“I’m going to have to call Lyn soon.” It sounds to Robbie as if James really isn’t relishing the prospect.
“Put her on to Laura,” Robbie suggests, “an’ they can have a professional discussion.” Laura’s expression as he looks over at her lets him know that he’s pushing his luck now. But she has no idea quite what Lyn, in combined anxious-daughter and practical-nurse mode, is about to subject James to. James can obviously take an educated guess.
“Rather you than me,” says Robbie to him. “It’ll have to be you, though. I can’t use me phone in here.” And he gestures with his head towards the sign above his bed, thoroughly unrepentant.
Robbie feels quite cheerful this morning, all things considered. The whole hazy ordeal of the accident seems rather like a bad dream, losing its power to disturb him in the light of the winter sun, angling now through the window. Laura has informed him that he should probably be cleared for discharge once the neuro consultant starts her rounds and James, despite looking rather like death not-much-warmed-over himself, and sporting a cast and sling, seems genuinely, oddly, rather content.
Even more odd is that James, who has always been reticent about displaying any physical touch in front of Laura, was not just straight over to Robbie for a quick but firm kiss this morning, he’s actually perching on the side of the bed again now, thigh pressing ever so slightly against Robbie’s thigh, his good arm resting on the bed so that his hand is very close to Robbie’s. Every so often Robbie feels James’s fingers tangle and untangle with his, playing with Robbie’s hand, as is his wont.
Laura certainly doesn’t seem to mind, although she never would have now, Robbie is quite sure. But something appears to have shifted a bit at last. He can see it in James. James’s awkwardness around Laura, the way he withdrew around her, and yet obviously tried so hard not to so that it had come to seem so unfair to press him-none of that struggle is in evidence in James this morning.
It had seemed distinctly unfair too that James was the one who had assumed the burden of guilt over what had happened with Robbie and Laura. It had just been bloody impossible to stop him. Although, God, Robbie had certainly tried, but to his slightly helpless frustration, James had always seemed to interpret Robbie’s clumsy efforts at reassurance-Laura’s never blamed you, you know, come on now, of course she doesn’t-as further pressure to try and overcome his awkwardness around her. It had taken Robbie a little while to realise that, whatever helplessness he felt in the face of James’s struggle over this, James very much felt the same.
“I’ve got to get back, as soon as your consultant has been and gone,” Laura informs them both. “I’ve had a text to inform me that brunch will be made at my convenience.”
And Laura, Robbie has suspected for some time, has not only known but rather minded that the old established ease of her interactions with James had somehow tightened into this helpless holding back on James’s part. But now-
“Have we messed up the last day of your leave?” James surprises Robbie further by jumping straight in. “Did you two have plans?”
“Nothing so structured, no. Brunch and a siesta will do me just fine. Practically continental. Although-not very Germanic. Then I’ll be ready for this evening if we want to venture out for dinner. We do tend to stay in holiday mode until the eleventh hour, in the sense that I shouldn’t be back on the on call rota until tomorrow. Have to make the most of it.”
“You’ve been here all night and you can still contemplate heading out this evening once you’ve slept?” The mere thought of it makes Robbie feel even more tired. But he looks across at her and tilts his head and hopes he’s somehow conveying his own gratitude for that, her coming here and sitting with James.
The warmth in her eyes as she directs a shrug at him suggests she may understand what he’s trying to get across.
“She’ll be all right. She knows how to make vending machines dispense strong coffee,” James informs him in a loud stage whisper. Robbie tries to suppress his amusement at how impressed James must have been at that. And grateful, no doubt.
“And don’t you forget it,” Laura says to James. Well, he’s missing something here now, but he rather feels like it’s none of his business. And if James is meeting Laura’s eyes again, with that direct gaze, and a hint of pure amusement, that’s more than enough for Robbie. It has eaten at Robbie a bit, James’s guilt over this and Robbie’s own inability to disperse it. Now it feels like quite a weight being lifted off at last. For something that doesn’t exactly come up much, that they’ve rather avoided discussing in the end, this had certainly cast its shadow.
“Jean sends her best,” Laura announces, turning back to him now.
“Innocent?” says Robbie, startled at the sudden intrusion of the spectre of his chief superintendent into this early morning interlude. He’s not due back at work for another couple of days.
“Well, it’s all around the station now, no doubt. She rang me as soon as she got in this morning. Once she’d established to her own particular satisfaction that you both really are all right, her main line of enquiry was about why you can’t even take a mini-break to Manchester without somehow creating more work at her nick. She was wondering why you couldn’t drive into ditches in someone else’s jurisdiction, I think.”
“Oh, that’s harsh, that is,” grumbles Robbie, secretly rather touched by the promptness of that phone call.
“And she wanted to let you know that from what Traffic worked out at the scene it looks like you hit a patch of black ice-oh, what now?” For Robbie is turning a distinctly triumphant look on a James who has already assumed a highly forbearing expression.
“Thought I fell asleep, he did,” Robbie informs Laura, who rolls her eyes at him, possibly at the tinge of smugness in his tone.
“Not asleep,” James clarifies. “I thought you were tired, there’s a difference.”
“Either way,” says Robbie, rather satisfied, “I’m cleared of both charges. Innocent man, here.”
Privately, he’s thoroughly relieved. He’d been fairly sure that he wouldn’t have tried to push through fatigue while driving, it’s not like he hasn’t seen the catastrophic effects that that decision can result in on the job.
But James had certainly looked worn out and had had the prospect of a tough enough week ahead of him, catching up on his research schedule after Manchester, and then that meeting with his tutor this morning, which was why they’d driven back last night. Well, all those plans are effectively out the window, James’s meeting is obviously getting rescheduled and he’ll be needing an extension now, anyway. But Robbie had certainly found himself loath to disturb him last night at the planned switching point.
He’d let the off ramp to that service station come and go, let it flash on by while he cast a look at the slouched, drowsing warm body beside him. James’s face had been turned towards Robbie even in sleep, much as he always seems to gravitate towards him even within the burrow of a warm bed. The radio had been murmuring low, it was a clear, sharp night, and cocooned in the car like this with James en route back to the ordinary rhythm of their days in Oxford, he’d felt a wash of sheer gratitude for just having James beside him, for the way his life was now.
And then lying here last night, not being able to clearly recall the moment of the accident, he had, despite his protests to James, been wondering what might have happened. Whether he’d been responsible for James being injured. And he’d known full well too that if fatigue on his part had had any role to play in this, then James, irrational as it would certainly seem to Robbie, would nevertheless have been the one carrying the guilt of this, of Robbie’s effects from the accident. James had been the one to push the decision about driving back last night, and he’d have berated himself for that when it had turned out he’d needed to hand over the driving so early in the journey. James’s propensity to guilt makes Robbie feel strangely helpless at times, the full force of it. And that further torment for James would have been the actual long term damage from this accident, thankfully now avoided.
“Black ice,” repeats Robbie, firmly now. He manages to mask his relief and deliver it with a distinct note of satisfaction, to both James and Laura, as his final pronouncement on the subject. They exchange a brief, long-suffering glance with each other, two sets of blond, eloquent eyebrows lifting in unison.
And it should probably irritate Robbie, really. This covert, mutual agreement that he's being slightly insufferable. But it doesn’t. Quite the opposite. Somehow, their old familiar complicity just settles something within him and warms him right through his being instead.
====
There’s no illusion of warmth from the sunlight; the day is almost as clear and cold as last night had been. But Laura knows that if she picks her spot the relative quiet outside and the natural light will still be as thoroughly welcome as they’ve always been after she’s spent a night under those florescent lights.
She’s not about to drive herself home on her current low rations of sleep, not after all that, but she knows where to go while she waits for Franco. There’s a reliably empty, very familiar bench in a less-used part of the grounds. It’s so shadowed by the main building that there’s still a glimmering of frost on the concrete path this morning. And, she realises, with a swell of pleasure as she approaches it, she can just take it for granted by now that he’ll know to find her here too.
She’s just thoroughly glad that Julie had thought to call her-more than glad, she’s relieved. She sincerely does not like the idea that James could have sat there injured and alone all night. And while she knows he must eventually have gone to get that wrist set of his own accord, he had seemed so-not in shock, strictly speaking, but she can certainly see why the paramedics might have suspected he was initially. Traumatised. By the shock of seeing Robbie like that, it turned out, on top of the accident that must have startled him awake in brutal fashion. And then there had obviously come the pain that he wouldn’t give in to.
She’s relieved on quite another level, though. She’d been beginning to think that the distance that had somehow become levered between her and James was going to settle into something insurmountable and permanent.
Laura had had to discreetly intervene in the early hours of this morning after they’d waited for some time in A&E together. James, she’d thought, would probably see her intervention as queue-jumping. Which it wasn’t. She’d genuinely wondered if he shouldn’t be a higher priority, all things considered. Whether they’d put enough weight on when the accident had occurred, rather than when he’d first presented. And James had seemed exhausted after he’d seen Robbie. He’d almost fallen asleep in one of those impossible chairs in the waiting area and had only startled awake as his arm had moved as he drowsed off, obviously sending a further stab of pain through his drowsy fogged state. That had been her tipping point. A brisk but friendly discussion with one of the senior nurses she knows hadn’t gone awry.
But she’d certainly made sure she’d managed to carry out that discussion out of earshot of James. She’s come up full force against his personal code of ethics now and the way it seems to torment him and she hadn’t been about to risk finding out if it extended to things like this.
She can still acutely remember the moment when she’d realised quite what this had done to James, what had happened between her and Robbie.
A post-work drink had been arranged and Robbie had texted James to join them. It had been a little while somehow since she’d seen James, not since he and Robbie had finally got together, actually. So she’d been pleased when he arrived, smiling over at him as he slid in beside Robbie, but still distracted by her ongoing conversation with Julie. Up until the point when Julie’s mobile had summoned her attention and she’d disappeared outside.
Laura still hadn’t seen anything amiss, turning to join in whatever slight bickering Robbie, obviously thoroughly enjoying himself, had already started to engage in with James. And then Julie had beckoned her governor from the door, something perhaps breaking on their case, after all, and Laura had turned to James, wanting to hear all about his acceptance onto this course-Robbie had been so thoroughly, touchingly proud about that. And James had stared straight across the table at her for a moment, from the opposite bench, stricken. She’d felt her own smile falter in response. Then he’d risen so hurriedly, offering to get her a drink, not meeting her eyes at all but looking rather helpless somehow so that it seemed only fair to just accept and let him go-by the time he’d returned, Robbie was back and James had started trying rather desperately to act as if nothing was wrong at all. Leaving her thoroughly disconcerted.
Because there was no chance of ever getting James Hathaway to talk something like this through with her. That was a hopeless proposition. The only way to try and get at it was to go through Robbie. And then it had turned out that her efforts there had been doomed to failure too.
“Does James understand I don’t hold anything against him for what happened?” she’d enquired, the next time she’d shared a quick coffee break with him at the station.
Robbie had immediately lowered his cup, abandoning his cooling coffee, and the look that had passed very briefly over his face was a shadow of that wretched one that had appeared that night when he’d finally begun to grasp that he actually needed to make a choice, between her and James. He knew exactly why she was asking too.
“Well-he’s certainly been told,” he’d told her, slowly, meeting her eyes all right but his tone really not inspiring much confidence in her. “And he can be told again-”
And she’d realised then that she couldn’t thrash this out with Robbie, who obviously doesn’t dwell on this but equally obviously is still hit with discomfort any time she gets near the topic. She’d had no doubt he’d have done his level best, in his own way, to convince James that none of this had been his doing, anyway. And so she’d simply been as gentle as she knew how to be, not pushed things, and hoped James would come to see over time that she really didn’t blame him. But she’d begun to fear after a while that it might not be enough. Just as Robbie’s best in this instance obviously wasn’t quite going to be enough either. Robbie’s reassurances and his own pragmatic view on this apparently couldn’t quite reach the spot here for James. Whenever she thought of that look of helplessness, she knew her blaming him wasn’t really the problem-it was him blaming himself in a way neither she, nor even Robbie, would be able to reach.
And it had eventually occurred to her, perhaps naively, that James’s struggle would resolve itself, anyway, surely, as her own relationship with Franco redeveloped-and then began to become something more than it had been the first time around.
It had been a bit of a revelation to her when she’d realised that, if Robbie could get around his mental block of seeing another man as a partner, then surely she could reconsider this idea that mere distance meant a relationship would be too difficult to pursue? Long-distance relationships were rather different now than they had been anyway, back when she and Franco had first found their careers diverging off into different cities in different countries. And, thankfully, they hadn’t actually had to challenge themselves with a long-distance relationship this time for too long. Belgium, where Franco had been based when they’d started to explore this, had certainly had its compensations. But having him back permanently in Oxford since Christmas-well, that’s far more of a delight. It had certainly rather consumed most of her attentions outside work, in very pleasurable fashion.
But it had still been quite hard to watch James whenever she’d seen him-to realise quite how much he cared about what he thought he’d done and yet have her hands tied dealing with it. It was frustrating to think how, with any other friend, she could obviously have raised the topic. James, though-friendship with James has always been an odd if valuable beast .Perhaps all the more worthwhile for being rather hard-won and different. Because she certainly suspects he doesn’t make close friends easily and that’s presumably part of why he holds himself to pretty high personal standards of loyalty for those he has. She’d just had no real idea quite how high.
If there hadn’t been quite so much else to think about back then, as she and Robbie stuttered to a halt in their relationship, as the real extent of what Robbie felt for James had finally dawned on her, then one of them, knowing James, might have predicted this. But it had been Robbie, with his stalwart, loyal heart that she had been concerned for-he had been so appalled at himself back then. And deeply worried that he’d hurt her. Then once he’d really grasped that she was all right, even with him moving on to James, he’d been fine, a far simpler proposition to deal with. It was James, in all his tortured loyalty and his own kind-heartedness, who’d had had far more difficulty than anticipated. But also in his concern for her. His unnecessary concern.
Because she really shouldn’t be causing concern to anyone. And she reckons that’s finally hit home to him now. That must be a large part of what’s making her feel so content this morning. Well, seeing them both safe and relatively unharmed and leaving them bickering away mildly again while they wait for Robbie to be officially discharged, that had also had its own welcome effect. That had effectively obliterated the jolt from that phone call last night when she had taken in what Julie was saying-that it was people who belonged to her who had been hurt this time, not a stranger who was past assistance but waiting for her to do her job.
The loss of one night’s sleep and keeping James company in a ridiculous amount of coffee-what is his caffeine tolerance like?- to gain back that old ease with him seems somehow a very reasonable price to pay.
Which is just as well in the circumstances, she tells herself cheerfully, as she spots Franco appearing around the corner. His features are already moving into that much-loved quick, soft grin, a very particular grin, that always seems directed straight at her. Because there’s no need whatsoever for anyone to worry about Laura’s heart. It’s perfectly happy these days, she reflects, as she starts to grin in response.
Rating: Teen
Part: Four
All sorts of thanks to wendymr for all her work beta'ing this and talking it through, and all the encouragement - a huge help.
Part IV
The very early hours of a Monday morning in February. John Radcliffe Hospital.
The florescent lights are making the linoleum-tiled floor far too bright in patches. In other places, it’s scuffed far beyond the restorative abilities of that floor polishing machine that keeps humming past. Scuffed from other people’s restlessly moving feet as they’ve sat here over the years, unable to still their own anxieties. James finds that he’s able to sit without moving, though. If he just stares at a patch of the floor, with its patina of light, hard enough, and doesn’t let it slip out of focus, if he keeps that in front of his eyes, then he can hold back that other vivid mental image that keeps threatening to overwhelm him.
It’s the aroma of coffee that finally rouses him from his stupor, and he turns his head enough to see a cardboard cup arriving on the empty seat beside him, and a hand withdrawing. It’s a familiar hand somehow, one that he’s seen in motion a lot-“James?”
“Oh. Can you-”
And Laura, looking down at him in pure concern, gets it immediately. “Yes. Of course. They’re not telling you much, is that it? Hold on.” And she’s heading for the nurses’ desk, already in full professional mode. He can recognise that even through his confusion at her suddenly materialising here. He straightens up properly, and watches after her intently to gauge her reactions to what they’ll tell her. He’s standing by the time she makes her way back to him but she sits down and waits, tilting her head and an enquiring eyebrow at him and he reluctantly settles back down again, back in this unmercifully hard plastic seat, but with her beside him now.
“It’s not too bad, honestly, James. It’s just observations they’re keeping him in for. They’ve looked at the x-rays and his ribs aren’t broken. They don’t think the whiplash is too bad either. But it’s a precaution. Because he can’t recall the moment of the accident, that’s their concern. So he’s had a scan just in case it was any sort of neurological event that caused him to briefly lose consciousness, caused him to lose control, and it does look fine. It was probably the impact from the collision itself that caused a slight concussion, and that’s why he can’t quite recall it. So it’s just that they need to do overnight observations now, that’s what’s prompted his admission.”
“That’s what they told me-but it’s just easier to believe that he’s really all right, coming from you,” he explains in relief. She’s looking at him, warmly, rather struck by that, it seems. And it sinks in that-“I should have rung you, I would have rung you if I’d been thinking straight-not just for you to get information, I don’t mean-”
“I hope you know you can, either of you, any time.” She’s stressed the either of you part. He’s not sure, at the moment, why she’s doing that, so he tries to explain his omission further, because, God, of course she’d want to know if Robbie is hurt. But what comes out of his mouth is somehow a wholly different aspect to this. “Robbie would’ve if he’d been the one sitting here-” But it’s equally true. Robbie would have reached for his phone, without a second thought, and called her. If the positions were reversed and it was James in there and he’d felt the need for support. If they wouldn’t let him in until the morning.
“I know,” Laura is saying. “And you would’ve thought of it eventually too. Wouldn’t you? But luckily there are people ahead of you here.”
“How did you know?”
“A certain Detective Sergeant Lockhart is obviously pulling a pretty late night tonight.” Oh, Julie. “I think something broke in a case. She said she’s with Grainger while Robbie’s on leave? Anyway, someone in Traffic must have told her that the two of you were involved. She called me. So what actually happened? How did you both land up in a single-vehicle RTA, as she put it?”
“Landed up in a ditch, more like,” mutters James. “And I don’t know what happened.”
“You don’t remember?” She’s looking at him sharply now. Then she does that thing he remembers from back in his days in the station where she narrows her eyes a bit and starts to focus on his face even harder. “And how come you can’t tell them whether Robbie lost consciousness, anyway? Or fell asleep? You must have-”
From someone else, that could feel like blame. But from the way she’s looking at him, he knows where her concern lies. “No, I was asleep. I didn’t lose consciousness, I’m not concussed, I’m not really hurt, I was just asleep.”
She’s still looking rather hard at him. And, fuck, she’s going to try persuading him to go home, that she’ll drop him home and he should get some rest and come back in the morning. He’s well aware that that would be the reasonable thing to do and she’s eminently practical. She’s been incredibly kind already, coming down here at this hour of the night, and it’s not an emergency, she’s aware of that by now. It must just seem like he’s being anxious, really. He feels a rising dismay that he’ll have to argue with her. He doesn’t, somehow, have the energy for it. But he also finds that he suddenly minds, he really minds, that he’s going to make things awkward when he refuses her, that he’s going to cause the warmth of her support so far to dissipate because this will understandably frustrate her.
He can’t, right at this moment, after the sudden relief and comfort of her presence, face the prospect of things descending back into that awful feeling of awkwardness that he can’t get past with her ever since Robbie had told him what had actually happened between him and Laura-and now it’ll just seem like he’s being stubborn and obtuse. It would hardly be unlike him. He must have seemed to Laura over the past few months to be horribly aloof, and he really isn’t in much of a state to handle this well. Not that he can handle it at the best of times. And the upshot of it is that she’ll surely depart, in the end, as most sensible people would, and leave him here alone again to battle against the long reach of those unrelenting images. He waits, resigned, for her to start her persuasion, for her opening shot.
“You’ll want some more coffee, James. You haven’t touched that one. I’ll get you a hot one.”
Oh. Well, somehow he seems to have bought a bit more time here. And a hot drink would be welcome, actually. He is a bit cold, despite his coat and the overheated hospital. Better not to say. The unpalatable stuff the vending machine will dispense should at least have a warming effect.
At some stage during each of those long nights here with Robbie, on the job, back in his Sergeant Hathaway days, he would generally reach a tipping point where the desire for something vaguely resembling a coffee overrode his reluctance to sample the stuff from these machines. There had always been the foolishly-enduring hope that it couldn’t possibly be as bad, as weak and tasteless, as the previous time. He watches Laura vaguely now as he remembers one night, which could have been one of so many, waiting for the go-ahead to question the survivor of an attack. He’d offered a cardboard cup to Robbie; along with an involuntary grimace at the first sip he’d taken from his own cup, unable to suppress his ire this time.
“Coffee, sir? Although I think there’s a case to be made for suing them under the Trade Descriptions Act, using that name for it. You’d need to drink half a dozen cups of this before you got any sort of benefit from it.”
“You certainly would,” Robbie had informed him with that grin that used to mean that James had said or done something to amuse or exasperate or both in fairly equal measure. And now these days-well, it means much the same, really, but there’s an unsuppressed fondness to it, pure affection in Robbie’s eyes to accompany it, and it seems more directly aimed at James. Whereas it used to be a grin that Robbie gave more to himself. Sometimes, these days, it seems to be unprompted. James, absorbed, doing something as ordinary as sitting on the couch working out some tricky fingering on the guitar, will suddenly raise his head and find himself the recipient of that grin.
He’s still thinking about that, about all the time spent here with Robbie back when they were Lewis and Hathaway, inspector and sergeant, back when Robbie used to be his sir-when a cardboard cup is offered to him. He takes it, with polite thanks, sipping automatically, as Laura sits down beside him again. But it’s strong. And the strength of it makes it taste like actual coffee. He stares at it and then at Laura, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying his reaction, if the look on her face is anything to go by. “What, James? You don’t know how to humour the vending machine?”
“You’re amazing,” he tells her in much more sincere gratitude. He takes another sip just to check-“That would have been a damn useful technique to learn years ago,” he reflects.
“I can imagine,” she informs him rather smugly. “You can override-well, never mind actually,” she says to herself. “Trade secret. Handy one, too. So next time you find yourself or Robbie in here after your various misadventures, you can take one look at that vending machine and you’ll be straight on the phone to me. Won’t you?” She’s looking at him rather searchingly now, though.
“I really will,” he promises, and he doesn’t mean it for the coffee. Ridiculously impressed though he actually is.
But it’s come home to him, sitting here with her in all her rather-missed sympathetic humour and warmth, that the awkwardness these past months-none of it has been due to Laura. All of it has stemmed from his own guilty unease at getting something that felt too good to be true, at what had felt like her expense. However irrational that feeling may be.
The coffee is helping to order his thoughts now, a bit. His mind, still occupied until now, with avoiding processing those pictures from tonight, is finally beginning to take in a little more than his immediate surroundings and his tangled emotions. And something that’s been nudging at the corners of his awareness finally makes it to the forefront. He frowns at Laura-“I thought you were in Germany?”
She looks down at herself and then peers around the waiting room, appearing to take this question quite literally. “Apparently not,” she says gravely. “But you know best, of course.”
She’s being ridiculous purely to cheer him up now. But he feels his lips quirk all the same. At her willingness, if nothing else. And judging from the slight lift of mischief in her expression in response, he must have managed a smile.
“We got back earlier tonight,” she enlightens him. “And Franco is now apparently so accustomed to my phone going at ungodly hours that he barely stirred when I left. Don’t think he took in what I was saying. He’ll think I’m on a callout, actually,” she says to herself, “Which I shouldn’t be tonight. That’ll puzzle him when he’s more alert. Must text him first thing in the morning.”
She’s staying herself. Not just, thankfully, not pressing him to leave or asking why he won’t, but she’s going to stay here with him. The thought fills him with utter relief. “How was Germany?” he asks suddenly.
She looks at him, amused. “It was good, James. And you don’t need to make polite conversation with me if you’re not up to it.”
“No, I want to know.” He does. Robbie had mentioned she’d been slightly ambivalent about this trip before she left, not a position I really anticipated finding myself in, meeting the family, he’d told James she’d said. Although James also knows that she and Franco had planned to travel around a bit as well during their fortnight there, so it wouldn’t have been too intense.
“All right, then.” She probably thinks he’s just seeking the distraction, but she starts to tell him all the same. And it turns out that it does help, actually. He always likes hearing about places he hasn’t been to and Laura, of course, is a good person to ask, with her wry take on events. God, he’s missed that too.
“It can be interesting, though,” she’s confiding now, her gaze rather drawing him out of his thoughts again. “Getting that other perspective on your partner from people who know him so long.”
“What did you find out?” James asks, alerted by her tone.
She gives him a quick grin. “I went for a drink one night with Franco’s sister-her husband works away a lot so we left Franco babysitting his nieces. And once she’d had a couple of gin and tonics, I learnt that, to Franco, I was the one that got away all those years between our first relationship-and now.”
She delivers the well-worn phrase in rather ironic tones that don’t fool James because he uses that same mechanism himself for truths that rather matter. “And you didn’t know that?” he asks. God, he has been a fool, hasn’t he? It actually sort of does her own happiness with Franco now a disservice, doesn’t it, he thinks confusedly, for James to still be so unable to get past what had happened with her and Robbie.
“No, he wouldn’t ever quite have volunteered that information to me, I don’t think,” she says, considering. “Wouldn’t have actually put it into words. Men.”
“Men,” James agrees.
“And have you been visiting the family yourself?” she asks, in ultra-polite tones, deadpan. He grins at her, suddenly enjoying the complicity. Because spending a week helping to mind a highly energetic small boy is not a position James ever anticipated finding himself in either. But he certainly wasn’t about to let Robbie tire himself out, taking his leave and then looking after his utterly endearing but thoroughly exhausting grandson alone. Lyn had sounded rather desperate when he took her call at home, before he’d even passed her over to Robbie and garnered from Robbie’s reactions what she was ringing about.
And it means rather a lot to him that both Robbie and Lyn had simply taken it for granted that if his research permitted he would come up to Manchester too. It still takes James aback, this easy acceptance the Lewises have of what family members willingly do for each other. It still takes him aback that he’s a member of someone’s family.
“Lyn’s childminder is away,” he explains. “And then Tim’s mum fell ill-she’s okay now-but he wanted to go down to his parents’ place in Cornwall. And Lyn had a training course all week at work-giving it, not taking it-so-”
“Combination of circumstances, really,” Laura acknowledges. “Well, Robbie was due leave. And you were all right to take time off from your research? Robbie says you’ve been going at it fairly hard.”
He feels another pang at guilt at that. Robbie says. Because he could have managed to join them now when Robbie meets her. His schedule isn’t exactly inflexible. It had just become the pattern that since Laura and Robbie worked together, in the months after their break-up, they had continued to link in with each other sometimes over coffee or lunch or an after-work drink. Well, or over post-mortem results, come to think of it.
And James, preceding Robbie out of the force, and no longer part of that pattern, had simply ceased to see Laura much.
He doesn’t really avoid her, as such, not at all, he tells himself firmly. He just-he’s let Robbie catch up with her, respected their friendship of years and the priority that that should take, restoring that-but he’s beginning to pick up that that unwillingness to intrude, it’s not just unnecessary now, it’s perhaps not been quite fair to Laura. And to his own friendship with her. And he hasn’t, in all his discomfort, been giving that enough weight.
It had been such a relief, initially, to think that she and Robbie were re-establishing their friendship, with an ease that James privately rather still wonders at. That that hadn’t been wrecked by the mess that had somehow been created when she and Robbie had tried to be together. A mess that James, without actually knowing about it, had been at the centre of.
And it had been a relief at first that he hadn’t had to face her much himself. He had felt so exposed to realise how she must have seen his feelings for Robbie for-well, God knows how long-but then, worst of all, that she’d seen those feelings still in evidence while she was with Robbie herself. How brutally disrespectful and disloyal of him.
Robbie just sees it all in typically straightforward fashion at this stage-Water under the bridge now. She knows neither of us would have done that to her deliberately. James finds he has no ability to believe that it can be that straightforward. Well, in general he simply tries not to think about it much at all. With some success. If there’s one thing James Hathaway has had considerable practice in, it’s in suppressing things.
He joins Robbie and Laura the odd time when they have an after-work drink, picking Robbie up, but making sure too that he chooses evenings when Julie will be there. Well, it’s always good to catch up with Julie anyway, hear how she’s finding his old role. And Julie, who certainly seems to get along much more easily with most of her colleagues than James ever did, also tends to casually invite most of Robbie’s team. It had rather brought home to him how he and Robbie had tended to function very much as a unit of two during his own sergeant days. But it also makes things easier for him in not quite interacting directly with Laura.
And then that initial instinct to avoid her, almost to withdraw a bit in her presence, had somehow, fight it as he does now, taken on a life on its own.
It might have been easier, after all, if he had been forced to see her in work in the aftermath and let her matter-of-fact friendliness just put that guilt to rest. It has been a while, hasn’t it? He does talk to Laura within that group setting; he just finds himself holding back a fair bit when he’s with Robbie in front of her. But he certainly hasn’t talked to her alone, in a conversation of any proper length, since-Christ, since before he left work. He’s rather shocked at himself. And yet-here she is tonight.
“D’you want to go outside for a bit?” Her voice cuts into his thoughts and he realises he’s just been sitting here silent again.
“Oh-I gave up a few months back.”
“I know that.” And in her pause he hears again an unspoken; Robbie said. “But for some air, a break from all this-” And her hand gesture somehow takes in the over-bright florescent lights, the edgy, waiting, not-quite-silence of a deserted waiting area and the whole bleakly oppressive atmosphere just bearing down on James’s overactive mind.
“No.”
“Okay.” And despite the abruptness of his refusal, her voice is as casual as if his resistance is perfectly acceptable. “Bet you’re well behind on all the station gossip, aren’t you?” she asks. “Well, I’m two weeks behind myself, but I’ll bet I’m still more up to date than Robbie ever is. There’s all sorts you won’t know about…”
And she’s talking again, without seemingly requiring any particular input from him. He manages to follow most of it at first. But then he closes his eyes for a moment, trying to focus on her voice and what she’s saying, and that’s a very bad idea. That image that seems to have imprinted itself on the inside of his lids startles him back out of the more relaxed state he’d slipped into.
Laura has stopped and is looking at him harder again now. She hasn’t missed the startle. “What is it, James?” she asks. Her face is very kind.
He can’t really fight her consolation much longer. He offers up what should be the safer, first part of the story. The factual, more mundane part that should keep him away from the choppier waters of what he’d seen just after the crash-
“I took the first part of the drive,” he starts. “And then we swapped, and Robbie said-he said he’d take over now and wake me for the last part-” But he stops, overwhelmed again despite his best efforts. This time, though, it’s the memory of Robbie, leaning against the car in the over-bright service station forecourt, an island in the starry dark, above the red and white streams of taillights on the motorway below. Robbie, with his woollen jumper pulled on against the cold night, leaning against the car and joking, while he enjoyed the coffee James had fetched for him, about the lack of stamina in the young. Because James had pulled in when he’d started to feel tired. And that was why Robbie had taken over far before the planned switch at the halfway point. And he must then have decided to just let James sleep.
“Hey.” Laura is gently trying to get his attention, reaching to take the hand lying in his lap. Fuck. He can’t suppress the wince at the sudden stab of sharper pain.
“James.” And she’s gently supporting the aching wrist now. “You didn’t tell them about this?”
“There’s nothing much to tell, I’m sure it’s just a sprain.”
“Are you?” she asks.
He actually doesn’t feeI like lying to her. And not just because it would be a pretty pointless exercise. He gives a sigh and relinquishes the truth about this part.
“I honestly didn’t notice it properly at first, take it in. I was too busy, just talking to Robbie, making sure he was calm when we were waiting and he was sort of stunned. And then it seemed so trivial compared with him, not something to distract anyone with, you know? I just wanted to focus on him. And in the ambulance-they let me go with him, they said I should get checked for shock-he was still a bit out of it-I couldn’t get to talk to him-so I was just letting it lie on my lap. And when we got here, I just refused their assessment really, just left , I thought if they knew they'd send me off for x-rays and casts-”And I can’t leave him here alone, I just can’t.
“Well, I don’t have x-ray vision, but-”
He just nods, closing his eyes for a moment once more as he cedes to the inevitable. He knows full well that he has to go downstairs and get this checked. He can’t really fool himself much longer. But closing his eyes is such a bad idea. There’s that vivid image, almost the worst one, just waiting to ambush him as soon as he removes his gaze from the comforting familiarity of Laura’s face.
“James?”
“He looked-on the stretcher, he kept closing his eyes and he was strapped to it, as a precaution, they said…”
“He looked worse than he is, then, I’ll guarantee you that,” she says gently. “Immobilised, that would have made him look worse. That’s what you need, James, is it? Is that why you’re sitting here? You need to just see he’s in one piece for yourself?”
He nods at her, relieved, suddenly understanding that, yes, that’s exactly what he needs, just to see and touch Robbie and make sure-
“Well, then,” she says, in matter-of-fact tones, getting up. “Let me see what I can do about that. But remember-” And she stops right in front of him and gives him a grin “-if I get you in to see him, you’ll be mine to command after that, then, Hathaway.”
===
Robbie isn’t asleep. He’s propped up on pillows, looking a bit pale, but still his blessedly familiar self. There’s a look of pure relief on his face when James levers the door slowly open, just in case he disturbs him. And if he sounds a bit gruffer than usual, that could be the lateness of the hour-“There you are.”
“They wouldn’t let me in to you-”
“They said you were all right, James. You’re all right?”
“Yeah. Are you-”
“I’ll be fine. Nothing that won’t mend soon enough. Bit bruised. It’s the concussion they’re keeping me in for. Tried to tell them, I did, I’ve got-”
“A head like an anvil, yes, I know.”
“They didn’t seem convinced,” Robbie says with a grin. “Come on, then, what are you doing all the way over there?” All the way over there is perhaps a whole step away now. But James accepts the invitation with relief, sinking down on the side of the bed, at Robbie’s hip.
Robbie regards him, eyes slightly narrowed.
“So, apart from my head and that hedge and the car, any other damage done?” he enquires, eventually. He’s assessing something, eyes searching James’s face.
“Some rather startled cows,” James offers.
“C’mere,” Robbie says, gently, raising an arm. James buries his face in his shoulder, feeling one large, warm hand cup the back of his head. He stays there for a moment, just tilted into Robbie, held, as best either of them can manage for now, breathing in Robbie’s scent.
“I wish you’d woken me,” he mutters eventually, into that shoulder.
“You reckon your driving skills are that much better than mine, that it?”
James raises his head to look at him and then raises himself back into a sitting position. Robbie’s hand rests warm on his back. “If you hadn’t driven most of the way, you wouldn’t have been so tired.”
“Oh, don’t be daft. ‘Course I wasn’t driving tired. Or asleep. We probably hit black ice. There was a warning on the radio earlier. What’s up with your arm?”
James says nothing at all.
Robbie raises his eyebrows at him. “Don’t think I’ve ever held you without getting held right back. With interest. And now seems a funny time for you to change your habits. What’s wrong with it?”
“Laura reckons the wrist might be broken,” he confesses reluctantly.
Robbie’s eyes search his face again. “And shouldn’t you perhaps be letting them downstairs in A and E know about that?” he suggests. James feels a flush heat his cheeks. “Go on, now. I’m fine, honest. Off with you and get that seen to properly. Bloody amazed Laura hasn’t got you down there already. Good that you called her, though.”
He looks so genuinely pleased at the thought that now doesn’t seem quite the time to explain how it was that Laura came to be here. It seems only fair to defend her, though. It’s not as if she’s been sitting there letting him avoid proper treatment all this time. “I said I would now if she could get me in to see you first…”
Robbie is rather amused. “Like that, is it? Not often someone gets the better of Laura. She must be losing her touch. James. She’s right, though. Go on. Before you do yourself more damage. That’s your guitar-holding hand.”
James feels his own eyebrows climb in pure indignation. “I don’t just hold it with this hand-” But obviously he’s only playing right into Robbie’s hands.
“Yeah. Exactly. I mean it. Go on now. Not having you lose any mobility in that wrist.”
“I just-”
“Christ, things were easier sometimes when you were me sergeant,” Robbie mutters. “At least you pretended to listen to me then.”
“I do listen, you know I do, I just-”
And Robbie is suddenly intent. “What? What is it, James?”
But James can see it again now. It’s rising up to meet him even despite the real warm presence of Robbie. He swallows and tries to finally get it out of his head, to dilute the vividness of it into words. “There was just a moment,” he says with difficulty. “When I woke up to all of that. You were lying back with your eyes shut.”
“I was taking a moment, James, that’s all-” But then Robbie seems to take in what he’s saying. “Ah, love. Stuff of nightmares, isn’t it? Sorry. I am. C’mon now.” And there’s the side of Robbie’s hand cupping his face now, and his thigh is pressing against James’s hip as he seems to try and draw closer, draw James into him. And James gives a sigh and surrenders, dropping his head back down on that shoulder, feeling himself held again for a while, in safety.
“Go an’ get your hand looked at now, will you?” comes Robbie’s voice in his ear eventually. “I’ll only be fretting if you don’t.” And, James knows, that’s true. He draws himself back up, reluctantly, and looks at Robbie. Robbie seems to think he needs a bit more persuasion. “And I need me beauty sleep-well as much as I can get when this lot will keep waking me, asking me if I know my sodding name.”
James gets up off the bed. He can’t deny he yearns to be back in their own bed right at this moment, to roll over and settle himself against Robbie, much as he does when he wakes in the night, often eliciting a soft, satisfied grunt or a warm arm arranging itself against him. But this hold now seems to have been enough to finally settle that tight feeling in his chest. The solid comfort of Robbie has somehow done its work. Robbie, who is undeniably very much still here, and very much still Robbie.
“Don’t try telling them your name should be on your chart,” James advises as a parting shot. “They’ll have heard that one before.”
“Shame,” mutters Robbie, shifting in an attempt to get more comfortable. “There goes my first line of defence. James, I’ll be discharged before you get through the queue in A and E at this rate.”
===
“I’m going to have to call Lyn soon.” It sounds to Robbie as if James really isn’t relishing the prospect.
“Put her on to Laura,” Robbie suggests, “an’ they can have a professional discussion.” Laura’s expression as he looks over at her lets him know that he’s pushing his luck now. But she has no idea quite what Lyn, in combined anxious-daughter and practical-nurse mode, is about to subject James to. James can obviously take an educated guess.
“Rather you than me,” says Robbie to him. “It’ll have to be you, though. I can’t use me phone in here.” And he gestures with his head towards the sign above his bed, thoroughly unrepentant.
Robbie feels quite cheerful this morning, all things considered. The whole hazy ordeal of the accident seems rather like a bad dream, losing its power to disturb him in the light of the winter sun, angling now through the window. Laura has informed him that he should probably be cleared for discharge once the neuro consultant starts her rounds and James, despite looking rather like death not-much-warmed-over himself, and sporting a cast and sling, seems genuinely, oddly, rather content.
Even more odd is that James, who has always been reticent about displaying any physical touch in front of Laura, was not just straight over to Robbie for a quick but firm kiss this morning, he’s actually perching on the side of the bed again now, thigh pressing ever so slightly against Robbie’s thigh, his good arm resting on the bed so that his hand is very close to Robbie’s. Every so often Robbie feels James’s fingers tangle and untangle with his, playing with Robbie’s hand, as is his wont.
Laura certainly doesn’t seem to mind, although she never would have now, Robbie is quite sure. But something appears to have shifted a bit at last. He can see it in James. James’s awkwardness around Laura, the way he withdrew around her, and yet obviously tried so hard not to so that it had come to seem so unfair to press him-none of that struggle is in evidence in James this morning.
It had seemed distinctly unfair too that James was the one who had assumed the burden of guilt over what had happened with Robbie and Laura. It had just been bloody impossible to stop him. Although, God, Robbie had certainly tried, but to his slightly helpless frustration, James had always seemed to interpret Robbie’s clumsy efforts at reassurance-Laura’s never blamed you, you know, come on now, of course she doesn’t-as further pressure to try and overcome his awkwardness around her. It had taken Robbie a little while to realise that, whatever helplessness he felt in the face of James’s struggle over this, James very much felt the same.
“I’ve got to get back, as soon as your consultant has been and gone,” Laura informs them both. “I’ve had a text to inform me that brunch will be made at my convenience.”
And Laura, Robbie has suspected for some time, has not only known but rather minded that the old established ease of her interactions with James had somehow tightened into this helpless holding back on James’s part. But now-
“Have we messed up the last day of your leave?” James surprises Robbie further by jumping straight in. “Did you two have plans?”
“Nothing so structured, no. Brunch and a siesta will do me just fine. Practically continental. Although-not very Germanic. Then I’ll be ready for this evening if we want to venture out for dinner. We do tend to stay in holiday mode until the eleventh hour, in the sense that I shouldn’t be back on the on call rota until tomorrow. Have to make the most of it.”
“You’ve been here all night and you can still contemplate heading out this evening once you’ve slept?” The mere thought of it makes Robbie feel even more tired. But he looks across at her and tilts his head and hopes he’s somehow conveying his own gratitude for that, her coming here and sitting with James.
The warmth in her eyes as she directs a shrug at him suggests she may understand what he’s trying to get across.
“She’ll be all right. She knows how to make vending machines dispense strong coffee,” James informs him in a loud stage whisper. Robbie tries to suppress his amusement at how impressed James must have been at that. And grateful, no doubt.
“And don’t you forget it,” Laura says to James. Well, he’s missing something here now, but he rather feels like it’s none of his business. And if James is meeting Laura’s eyes again, with that direct gaze, and a hint of pure amusement, that’s more than enough for Robbie. It has eaten at Robbie a bit, James’s guilt over this and Robbie’s own inability to disperse it. Now it feels like quite a weight being lifted off at last. For something that doesn’t exactly come up much, that they’ve rather avoided discussing in the end, this had certainly cast its shadow.
“Jean sends her best,” Laura announces, turning back to him now.
“Innocent?” says Robbie, startled at the sudden intrusion of the spectre of his chief superintendent into this early morning interlude. He’s not due back at work for another couple of days.
“Well, it’s all around the station now, no doubt. She rang me as soon as she got in this morning. Once she’d established to her own particular satisfaction that you both really are all right, her main line of enquiry was about why you can’t even take a mini-break to Manchester without somehow creating more work at her nick. She was wondering why you couldn’t drive into ditches in someone else’s jurisdiction, I think.”
“Oh, that’s harsh, that is,” grumbles Robbie, secretly rather touched by the promptness of that phone call.
“And she wanted to let you know that from what Traffic worked out at the scene it looks like you hit a patch of black ice-oh, what now?” For Robbie is turning a distinctly triumphant look on a James who has already assumed a highly forbearing expression.
“Thought I fell asleep, he did,” Robbie informs Laura, who rolls her eyes at him, possibly at the tinge of smugness in his tone.
“Not asleep,” James clarifies. “I thought you were tired, there’s a difference.”
“Either way,” says Robbie, rather satisfied, “I’m cleared of both charges. Innocent man, here.”
Privately, he’s thoroughly relieved. He’d been fairly sure that he wouldn’t have tried to push through fatigue while driving, it’s not like he hasn’t seen the catastrophic effects that that decision can result in on the job.
But James had certainly looked worn out and had had the prospect of a tough enough week ahead of him, catching up on his research schedule after Manchester, and then that meeting with his tutor this morning, which was why they’d driven back last night. Well, all those plans are effectively out the window, James’s meeting is obviously getting rescheduled and he’ll be needing an extension now, anyway. But Robbie had certainly found himself loath to disturb him last night at the planned switching point.
He’d let the off ramp to that service station come and go, let it flash on by while he cast a look at the slouched, drowsing warm body beside him. James’s face had been turned towards Robbie even in sleep, much as he always seems to gravitate towards him even within the burrow of a warm bed. The radio had been murmuring low, it was a clear, sharp night, and cocooned in the car like this with James en route back to the ordinary rhythm of their days in Oxford, he’d felt a wash of sheer gratitude for just having James beside him, for the way his life was now.
And then lying here last night, not being able to clearly recall the moment of the accident, he had, despite his protests to James, been wondering what might have happened. Whether he’d been responsible for James being injured. And he’d known full well too that if fatigue on his part had had any role to play in this, then James, irrational as it would certainly seem to Robbie, would nevertheless have been the one carrying the guilt of this, of Robbie’s effects from the accident. James had been the one to push the decision about driving back last night, and he’d have berated himself for that when it had turned out he’d needed to hand over the driving so early in the journey. James’s propensity to guilt makes Robbie feel strangely helpless at times, the full force of it. And that further torment for James would have been the actual long term damage from this accident, thankfully now avoided.
“Black ice,” repeats Robbie, firmly now. He manages to mask his relief and deliver it with a distinct note of satisfaction, to both James and Laura, as his final pronouncement on the subject. They exchange a brief, long-suffering glance with each other, two sets of blond, eloquent eyebrows lifting in unison.
And it should probably irritate Robbie, really. This covert, mutual agreement that he's being slightly insufferable. But it doesn’t. Quite the opposite. Somehow, their old familiar complicity just settles something within him and warms him right through his being instead.
====
There’s no illusion of warmth from the sunlight; the day is almost as clear and cold as last night had been. But Laura knows that if she picks her spot the relative quiet outside and the natural light will still be as thoroughly welcome as they’ve always been after she’s spent a night under those florescent lights.
She’s not about to drive herself home on her current low rations of sleep, not after all that, but she knows where to go while she waits for Franco. There’s a reliably empty, very familiar bench in a less-used part of the grounds. It’s so shadowed by the main building that there’s still a glimmering of frost on the concrete path this morning. And, she realises, with a swell of pleasure as she approaches it, she can just take it for granted by now that he’ll know to find her here too.
She’s just thoroughly glad that Julie had thought to call her-more than glad, she’s relieved. She sincerely does not like the idea that James could have sat there injured and alone all night. And while she knows he must eventually have gone to get that wrist set of his own accord, he had seemed so-not in shock, strictly speaking, but she can certainly see why the paramedics might have suspected he was initially. Traumatised. By the shock of seeing Robbie like that, it turned out, on top of the accident that must have startled him awake in brutal fashion. And then there had obviously come the pain that he wouldn’t give in to.
She’s relieved on quite another level, though. She’d been beginning to think that the distance that had somehow become levered between her and James was going to settle into something insurmountable and permanent.
Laura had had to discreetly intervene in the early hours of this morning after they’d waited for some time in A&E together. James, she’d thought, would probably see her intervention as queue-jumping. Which it wasn’t. She’d genuinely wondered if he shouldn’t be a higher priority, all things considered. Whether they’d put enough weight on when the accident had occurred, rather than when he’d first presented. And James had seemed exhausted after he’d seen Robbie. He’d almost fallen asleep in one of those impossible chairs in the waiting area and had only startled awake as his arm had moved as he drowsed off, obviously sending a further stab of pain through his drowsy fogged state. That had been her tipping point. A brisk but friendly discussion with one of the senior nurses she knows hadn’t gone awry.
But she’d certainly made sure she’d managed to carry out that discussion out of earshot of James. She’s come up full force against his personal code of ethics now and the way it seems to torment him and she hadn’t been about to risk finding out if it extended to things like this.
She can still acutely remember the moment when she’d realised quite what this had done to James, what had happened between her and Robbie.
A post-work drink had been arranged and Robbie had texted James to join them. It had been a little while somehow since she’d seen James, not since he and Robbie had finally got together, actually. So she’d been pleased when he arrived, smiling over at him as he slid in beside Robbie, but still distracted by her ongoing conversation with Julie. Up until the point when Julie’s mobile had summoned her attention and she’d disappeared outside.
Laura still hadn’t seen anything amiss, turning to join in whatever slight bickering Robbie, obviously thoroughly enjoying himself, had already started to engage in with James. And then Julie had beckoned her governor from the door, something perhaps breaking on their case, after all, and Laura had turned to James, wanting to hear all about his acceptance onto this course-Robbie had been so thoroughly, touchingly proud about that. And James had stared straight across the table at her for a moment, from the opposite bench, stricken. She’d felt her own smile falter in response. Then he’d risen so hurriedly, offering to get her a drink, not meeting her eyes at all but looking rather helpless somehow so that it seemed only fair to just accept and let him go-by the time he’d returned, Robbie was back and James had started trying rather desperately to act as if nothing was wrong at all. Leaving her thoroughly disconcerted.
Because there was no chance of ever getting James Hathaway to talk something like this through with her. That was a hopeless proposition. The only way to try and get at it was to go through Robbie. And then it had turned out that her efforts there had been doomed to failure too.
“Does James understand I don’t hold anything against him for what happened?” she’d enquired, the next time she’d shared a quick coffee break with him at the station.
Robbie had immediately lowered his cup, abandoning his cooling coffee, and the look that had passed very briefly over his face was a shadow of that wretched one that had appeared that night when he’d finally begun to grasp that he actually needed to make a choice, between her and James. He knew exactly why she was asking too.
“Well-he’s certainly been told,” he’d told her, slowly, meeting her eyes all right but his tone really not inspiring much confidence in her. “And he can be told again-”
And she’d realised then that she couldn’t thrash this out with Robbie, who obviously doesn’t dwell on this but equally obviously is still hit with discomfort any time she gets near the topic. She’d had no doubt he’d have done his level best, in his own way, to convince James that none of this had been his doing, anyway. And so she’d simply been as gentle as she knew how to be, not pushed things, and hoped James would come to see over time that she really didn’t blame him. But she’d begun to fear after a while that it might not be enough. Just as Robbie’s best in this instance obviously wasn’t quite going to be enough either. Robbie’s reassurances and his own pragmatic view on this apparently couldn’t quite reach the spot here for James. Whenever she thought of that look of helplessness, she knew her blaming him wasn’t really the problem-it was him blaming himself in a way neither she, nor even Robbie, would be able to reach.
And it had eventually occurred to her, perhaps naively, that James’s struggle would resolve itself, anyway, surely, as her own relationship with Franco redeveloped-and then began to become something more than it had been the first time around.
It had been a bit of a revelation to her when she’d realised that, if Robbie could get around his mental block of seeing another man as a partner, then surely she could reconsider this idea that mere distance meant a relationship would be too difficult to pursue? Long-distance relationships were rather different now than they had been anyway, back when she and Franco had first found their careers diverging off into different cities in different countries. And, thankfully, they hadn’t actually had to challenge themselves with a long-distance relationship this time for too long. Belgium, where Franco had been based when they’d started to explore this, had certainly had its compensations. But having him back permanently in Oxford since Christmas-well, that’s far more of a delight. It had certainly rather consumed most of her attentions outside work, in very pleasurable fashion.
But it had still been quite hard to watch James whenever she’d seen him-to realise quite how much he cared about what he thought he’d done and yet have her hands tied dealing with it. It was frustrating to think how, with any other friend, she could obviously have raised the topic. James, though-friendship with James has always been an odd if valuable beast .Perhaps all the more worthwhile for being rather hard-won and different. Because she certainly suspects he doesn’t make close friends easily and that’s presumably part of why he holds himself to pretty high personal standards of loyalty for those he has. She’d just had no real idea quite how high.
If there hadn’t been quite so much else to think about back then, as she and Robbie stuttered to a halt in their relationship, as the real extent of what Robbie felt for James had finally dawned on her, then one of them, knowing James, might have predicted this. But it had been Robbie, with his stalwart, loyal heart that she had been concerned for-he had been so appalled at himself back then. And deeply worried that he’d hurt her. Then once he’d really grasped that she was all right, even with him moving on to James, he’d been fine, a far simpler proposition to deal with. It was James, in all his tortured loyalty and his own kind-heartedness, who’d had had far more difficulty than anticipated. But also in his concern for her. His unnecessary concern.
Because she really shouldn’t be causing concern to anyone. And she reckons that’s finally hit home to him now. That must be a large part of what’s making her feel so content this morning. Well, seeing them both safe and relatively unharmed and leaving them bickering away mildly again while they wait for Robbie to be officially discharged, that had also had its own welcome effect. That had effectively obliterated the jolt from that phone call last night when she had taken in what Julie was saying-that it was people who belonged to her who had been hurt this time, not a stranger who was past assistance but waiting for her to do her job.
The loss of one night’s sleep and keeping James company in a ridiculous amount of coffee-what is his caffeine tolerance like?- to gain back that old ease with him seems somehow a very reasonable price to pay.
Which is just as well in the circumstances, she tells herself cheerfully, as she spots Franco appearing around the corner. His features are already moving into that much-loved quick, soft grin, a very particular grin, that always seems directed straight at her. Because there’s no need whatsoever for anyone to worry about Laura’s heart. It’s perfectly happy these days, she reflects, as she starts to grin in response.