Lewis Fic: Half a World Away
Title: Half a World Away
Rating: Teen
Pairing: James Hathaway/Robbie Lewis
Summary: There's that feeling of losing James, somehow, building even before he left, and now all of a sudden sharpening into something undeniable, like it's been a premonition after all.
Notes: . Thanks to wendymr for her wonderful beta'ing of this which was very supportive as well as madly useful ;).
Half a World Away
August.
“Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes,” teases Robbie, as James, pint glass in hand, slides into the booth beside him. James grimaces back at him and murmurs some excuse about tutoring, which seems aimed at either his slight tardiness this evening or his lack of availability in general recently.
“Ignore him, James,” Laura advises. “Not all of us are gentlemen of leisure now. Some of us still have to earn a living.”
Robbie wasn’t quite joking, though. It’s good to set eyes on James properly. Seems like it’s been ages. He grins at him now. “And what have you been doing with yourself over the last couple of weeks, then?”
He only attends to James’s response with half an ear as his mind starts to nudge around what James is saying-because this Teaching English as a Foreign Language Course is all very well, Robbie supposes, and it’ll bring in another strand of students for James’s private tutoring-but he can’t really have built up enough of them to prevent him having to dip into savings that Robbie suspects can’t be that much of a buffer-and then he catches the words contract overseas and he tunes right back in in a hurry.
It’s wholly unexpected. James might have been around a fair bit less recently-but that had been temporary, of course, that was him trying to find his way after leaving the force. That wasn’t this. Overseas. Did he just say-Thailand?
Robbie sets down his glass sharply. “Why the-”
“Thought it might be good to get away for a bit.” James cuts him off. And he dips his head to his pint glass.
Robbie, not deterred in the slightest, raises his eyebrows at the top of that bent head and opens his mouth again, but falters, his attention forcibly diverted towards Laura by the unexpected intensity of her gaze turned straight on him.
In the long years before their relationship, throughout its surprisingly brief duration, and now, as they’re re-establishing their own brand of straightforward friendship in the aftermath-there’s no-one who can match Laura for how much she can get into one glance. It throws Robbie further, which is enough to give her a chance to cut in first, and give James an entirely different reaction than Robbie had been about to deliver.
“That does sound different, James, very interesting. Tell us-”
And James, his eyes settling on her, starts to tell them both. About a language school in Bangkok-Bloody hell, Bangkok-and three-month contracts and all Robbie is required to do is make the right noises in the right places, because expressing his thoughts on this matter is, for some currently unestablished reason known only quite strongly to Laura, not the right thing to do here. And then he’s getting further looks from her, since apparently his half-hearted attempts at enthusiasm are not enough either. He bides his time, not all that patiently, to get her on her own for a moment.
But Laura cheerfully informs him that he can get the next round in.
And then he glances back after ordering and sees the two of them, immersed in a far more intense discussion than they’d had time to work up to since he’d left the table. Laura is leaning forward, gesturing, at her most persuasive. And it isn’t working on James, who has straightened into full defensiveness, his height and sideways glance being used effectively to evade whatever she’s trying to say.
Then James, sensing his gaze, glances over at Robbie and his face smooths over as he turns back to Laura, who stops talking. And when Robbie returns they’re discussing vaccinations. Which isn’t something he can contribute much to. Laura is advising, still being kindly practical. She’s been quite gentle with James recently, every time they meet. And Laura is here every time James manages to fit in a pint, these days. It’s just like James, really-loyal to a fault. Making time to do Robbie a favour and help him out as Robbie gets his friendship with Laura back on a secure footing. Prioritising that. Agreeing obligingly to a pint under that pretext even if his schedule has left him rather too busy to meet Robbie on his own at other times. Although James is fond of Laura too, of course, and wouldn’t want to lose touch with her either.
Robbie thinks Laura’s own concern for James all stems from how taken aback she’d been when he’d told her how his sergeant was resigning, abruptly and with no further plans. He and Laura had still been together then. She’d been worse than Innocent about it in some ways-and Innocent had certainly tried her utmost to get Robbie to persuade James into any other option than leaving the force entirely. Not that Robbie had given that idea the time of day. Once he’d grasped that James really meant what he said, he’d had to acknowledge that this might have been coming for a while. And that his urgency about seeing James sorted when his own plans for retirement had begun to take shape-pushing James towards the vacancy he’d create as some sort of solution-that might have been partly prompted by a growing anxiety about the lad.
Laura had seemed to share that worry-talking about James being burnt out and how a period of stress-related absence would have been a better option for him to get back on his feet without burning his bridges. You’d think she’d understand why this idea of James leaving now just-isn’t advisable. Maybe she feels this plan to teach overseas is a good compromise, a way to get some perspective. But still-why would he need to leave Oxford? Most folk he knows are here, aren’t they? It feels wrong. Regardless of how it makes some sort of sense when James and Laura are talking, and seems to be forming into some sort of done deal.
And finally, it’s James’s round and he’s rising from the table. But he’s barely negotiated his way around the nearest set of happy Friday evening punters and out of earshot when Laura is turning to Robbie, also with something to say. “Hope you’re going to take him out for a goodbye pint without me here too?”
“I-why are you asking me that?” A goodbye pint. It wasn’t that long since they’d fitted in a pint when James had gone off to Kosovo. When James was still his sergeant and he’d seemed to have a better hold of him. This last couple of months-it all seems to be moving rather fast for Robbie now.
“Because he’d like that. It might-help.”
“He doesn’t need any help to go. He’s fairly made up his mind, hasn’t he? Don’t know what he needs to go that far for,” grumbles Robbie, all the unsettling disgruntlement at these sudden developments rising to the surface now. “There’s enough English language schools in Oxford.”
“I sincerely doubt that that’s why he did the course. And maybe he does need-to go that far.”
“What? Why would he?” But Adam Tibbit is in Robbie’s mind now and James’s footsteps coming to a halt on a bridge. I need a change.
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Laura says. He stares at her. “Look, Robbie.” She’s not looking at him now. She’s looking at James, who’s leaning both elbows on the bar, one foot up on the brass foot rail, looking ridiculously young again in that hoodie in the way he still tends to in odd moments when he’s in casual clothes and as slouched down as ever. “Either be more supportive and let him go, or ask him not to.”
“Ask him not to go? He’s not me sergeant anymore.” Laura rolls her eyes at him. “I’ve no right to ask him not to go anywhere.” Even if I don’t much like it.
“Well, then,” Laura says, matter-of-factly. “If that’s your decision, be a bit less bloody grudging about it.”
Robbie sends her a look. It’s all he has time to do because James is turning, balancing three pints in a careful triangle between his long fingers. None of this was his decision. Only one thing is, as it turns out.
===
“How’re all these overseas arrangements, then? You still all set to go?”
“Mmm.” James contemplates the beer in his glass as if Newcastle Brown is a new and interesting vintage to him. Which would be another frustrating reminder of how he hasn’t been round in a while if he wasn’t so obviously sending signals to Robbie to drop this. But there’s something needling at Robbie about this over the past couple of weeks and now he’s finally managed to get James over for an evening, back on his couch. And seeing as Laura isn’t here to glare at him…
And Robbie starts to push gently at him. “It all just seems a bit quick-I mean, don’t you need a visa-”
“The language school over there is sorting it-they seem very efficient. I can get a business visa for three months and then they can apply for a work permit and the visa can be continuously extended to cover my contract-”
Hold on. “But you said your contract was just for the three months.”
“Yeah, three months. With the option of a longer contract renewal if I do well.”
“Of course you’ll do well,” says Robbie but it comes out more resigned than he’d intended. Why does it feel oddly like James doesn’t really plan on coming back?
James sends him a glance. “Look, I know you don’t think much of this whole idea-”
Oh, bugger. And Robbie is torn. He hadn’t really meant to pour cold water on James’s plans either. Maybe Laura’s right. God knows, he can see, looking back now, how James had looked those last few months in the job wasn’t right-and that look, that quietly desperate look, it’s just not lifted like it should have. And Adam Tibbit is in Robbie’s head again and how Robbie had failed to see just how badly James was distressed at the time. Until James had made it very clear by coming to that abrupt decision to resign that hadn’t really been so abrupt if Robbie had let himself see the clues in the time coming up to it. Maybe this is right for James. Maybe Robbie is just far too bloody used to having him around and he’s being selfish. He doesn’t know what to say now. And James is grimacing, digging for a phone that must be buzzing in his pocket.
“Estate agent,” he explains, examining a text. “Any chance you could drop the keys in? My flight’s on a Sunday, next Sunday, so I can’t…”
“But you’re not giving up your flat? I thought you said you were subletting it? Unofficially, like?”
“No-I had to give notice on my lease. I was going to sublet it, though-until it fell through. To one of the guys in the band, as it happens.”
“Shelley?” says Robbie stupidly, automatically, utterly distracted by this blow. Because it feels like a blow.
“I-what?” James is staring at him. Then he seems to take in that Robbie genuinely doesn’t understand what he’s said, even if he doesn’t see why. “No, my band, the one I was in. Our cello player. And he’s definitely not called Shelley. He goes by the name of Jim.”
“I used to call you that,” Robbie says. “You didn’t like it and you never said.” He wants to get up and leave the room. He just wants to walk out and be on his own at the sudden memory of James back at the start of their years together. Their years that, just at this moment, really seem to be approaching some sort of an end. He doesn’t know what the hell is wrong with him. He pushes himself back more firmly on the couch and forces himself to stay sitting.
“No, I-It was just that I didn’t like the nickname. I didn’t mind you having a name for me. I just didn’t like the name itself.” James is frowning at him now. Robbie makes an effort to pull himself together.
“So if you’re giving up your flat, then, what are you going to do with all your stuff?”
“Hiring a storage unit-”
“No, you don’t. You can shove it all in the spare room.”
“You need your spare room for when Lyn visits.”
“No.” Robbie finds himself using his best, implacable, and-that’s-an-order-sergeant voice, hoping it still works on James. “You’ll leave your things here.”
“Sir,” James concedes, smartly, immediately identifying the tone. And follows that with a reluctant grin.
===
But he does give in and leave his stuff there. He even sees sense about staying in Robbie's, in that reassuring room of boxes, the night before he leaves. Well, he’s slept in there enough times over the years when they’ve exhausted themselves late into the night tossing ideas back and forth on a case or just when he’s a couple of beers the worse for wear. Robbie waves off his thanks for it-you can make me me breakfast one more time before you leave. And then doesn’t hold him to that, of course. He’s not having any of this healthy nonsense that passes for breakfast with James. Might as well get one last proper full English into the lad before he goes. He’s that bit too thin recently.
Breakfast seems to be over and done with fairly fast that morning, with the restless feel of a travel deadline fast approaching, and then it’s time to leave for Heathrow. And Robbie giving him a lift there is something else that James had initially resisted and then just yielded to. He doesn’t seem to have much argument to him at the moment. Which is vaguely worrying in itself. But at least it means Robbie can see him off properly.
And they’re outside packing Robbie’s car with what James is taking when Robbie realises that the reason why both rucksack and wheeled case are being carefully adjusted as buffers in his boot is because-he’s bringing the guitar? Robbie had seen that carefully stowed, or so he’d thought, in his spare room, safely ensconced until James came back to claim it, and now-it turns out it was just in there overnight. Turns out he’s taking it.
“You sure you-” Well, of course he is. The golden rule. Never let your instrument out of your sight. It’s just-“You sure you’ve got everything?”
Does the rest of what he’s leaving behind in Oxford matter enough to him? He’d better not contact Robbie when those three months are up and tell him he’s hired a storage unit and has some band mate doing him a favour and coming round to shift those boxes…And there’s a growing feeling of urgency to do or say something about all this if Robbie could only work out what that was.
It feels like they must have taken a wrong turn somehow, during all those years, for this to be happening. It doesn’t feel right. James going away like this, so open-ended, and he's not even sure James wants this, he seems almost apathetic, as if he’s just resigned to it. Like he's sending himself away, instead of wanting to go.
And yet as he manoeuvres the car out onto the road, he thinks of what Laura had said recently when he’d had a go at getting her around to his point of view. “I seem to recall you going away. When it was all too much for you.”
He’d looked at her, taken aback. “That was because-”
She’d reached for his hand. “God, I know, Robbie, of course I do. You know that. I don’t mean to draw a parallel, exactly. Just-people do leave sometimes for all sorts of reasons that maybe they can’t even articulate. When it’s too hard to stay. And like you said, when you came back, it was a start.”
Time ticks inexorably by through the slightly constrained, distracted conversation of the car drive, the hassled distraction of parking and James’s check-in without Robbie finding some way to-well, it’s a bit bloody late to express any reservations about this now, isn’t it?
And then right in front of the security gate, at the very last moment, James is in his arms, and he doesn’t even know who’s initiated that.
But it doesn’t feel comfortable. Ridiculously, because James has always so easily, comfortably, fitted himself straight into Robbie; leaning against him on benches, relaxing against him on couches, such a constant close presence during all those years as his sergeant, right at Robbie’s shoulder. But they don’t actually hug and this is awkward and one-armed on James’s part, because of the precious guitar travelling as hand-luggage. He seems almost stiff in Robbie’s brief embrace. Attempt at an embrace. And the light touch of his arm around Robbie makes him seem barely there. What it does feel like, though, is a goodbye.
And then there’s a quick, small smile at Robbie, with James’s eyes just not quite meeting Robbie's rather narrowed, discerning gaze, and he’s gone.
Part II
Rating: Teen
Pairing: James Hathaway/Robbie Lewis
Summary: There's that feeling of losing James, somehow, building even before he left, and now all of a sudden sharpening into something undeniable, like it's been a premonition after all.
Notes: . Thanks to wendymr for her wonderful beta'ing of this which was very supportive as well as madly useful ;).
Half a World Away
August.
“Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes,” teases Robbie, as James, pint glass in hand, slides into the booth beside him. James grimaces back at him and murmurs some excuse about tutoring, which seems aimed at either his slight tardiness this evening or his lack of availability in general recently.
“Ignore him, James,” Laura advises. “Not all of us are gentlemen of leisure now. Some of us still have to earn a living.”
Robbie wasn’t quite joking, though. It’s good to set eyes on James properly. Seems like it’s been ages. He grins at him now. “And what have you been doing with yourself over the last couple of weeks, then?”
He only attends to James’s response with half an ear as his mind starts to nudge around what James is saying-because this Teaching English as a Foreign Language Course is all very well, Robbie supposes, and it’ll bring in another strand of students for James’s private tutoring-but he can’t really have built up enough of them to prevent him having to dip into savings that Robbie suspects can’t be that much of a buffer-and then he catches the words contract overseas and he tunes right back in in a hurry.
It’s wholly unexpected. James might have been around a fair bit less recently-but that had been temporary, of course, that was him trying to find his way after leaving the force. That wasn’t this. Overseas. Did he just say-Thailand?
Robbie sets down his glass sharply. “Why the-”
“Thought it might be good to get away for a bit.” James cuts him off. And he dips his head to his pint glass.
Robbie, not deterred in the slightest, raises his eyebrows at the top of that bent head and opens his mouth again, but falters, his attention forcibly diverted towards Laura by the unexpected intensity of her gaze turned straight on him.
In the long years before their relationship, throughout its surprisingly brief duration, and now, as they’re re-establishing their own brand of straightforward friendship in the aftermath-there’s no-one who can match Laura for how much she can get into one glance. It throws Robbie further, which is enough to give her a chance to cut in first, and give James an entirely different reaction than Robbie had been about to deliver.
“That does sound different, James, very interesting. Tell us-”
And James, his eyes settling on her, starts to tell them both. About a language school in Bangkok-Bloody hell, Bangkok-and three-month contracts and all Robbie is required to do is make the right noises in the right places, because expressing his thoughts on this matter is, for some currently unestablished reason known only quite strongly to Laura, not the right thing to do here. And then he’s getting further looks from her, since apparently his half-hearted attempts at enthusiasm are not enough either. He bides his time, not all that patiently, to get her on her own for a moment.
But Laura cheerfully informs him that he can get the next round in.
And then he glances back after ordering and sees the two of them, immersed in a far more intense discussion than they’d had time to work up to since he’d left the table. Laura is leaning forward, gesturing, at her most persuasive. And it isn’t working on James, who has straightened into full defensiveness, his height and sideways glance being used effectively to evade whatever she’s trying to say.
Then James, sensing his gaze, glances over at Robbie and his face smooths over as he turns back to Laura, who stops talking. And when Robbie returns they’re discussing vaccinations. Which isn’t something he can contribute much to. Laura is advising, still being kindly practical. She’s been quite gentle with James recently, every time they meet. And Laura is here every time James manages to fit in a pint, these days. It’s just like James, really-loyal to a fault. Making time to do Robbie a favour and help him out as Robbie gets his friendship with Laura back on a secure footing. Prioritising that. Agreeing obligingly to a pint under that pretext even if his schedule has left him rather too busy to meet Robbie on his own at other times. Although James is fond of Laura too, of course, and wouldn’t want to lose touch with her either.
Robbie thinks Laura’s own concern for James all stems from how taken aback she’d been when he’d told her how his sergeant was resigning, abruptly and with no further plans. He and Laura had still been together then. She’d been worse than Innocent about it in some ways-and Innocent had certainly tried her utmost to get Robbie to persuade James into any other option than leaving the force entirely. Not that Robbie had given that idea the time of day. Once he’d grasped that James really meant what he said, he’d had to acknowledge that this might have been coming for a while. And that his urgency about seeing James sorted when his own plans for retirement had begun to take shape-pushing James towards the vacancy he’d create as some sort of solution-that might have been partly prompted by a growing anxiety about the lad.
Laura had seemed to share that worry-talking about James being burnt out and how a period of stress-related absence would have been a better option for him to get back on his feet without burning his bridges. You’d think she’d understand why this idea of James leaving now just-isn’t advisable. Maybe she feels this plan to teach overseas is a good compromise, a way to get some perspective. But still-why would he need to leave Oxford? Most folk he knows are here, aren’t they? It feels wrong. Regardless of how it makes some sort of sense when James and Laura are talking, and seems to be forming into some sort of done deal.
And finally, it’s James’s round and he’s rising from the table. But he’s barely negotiated his way around the nearest set of happy Friday evening punters and out of earshot when Laura is turning to Robbie, also with something to say. “Hope you’re going to take him out for a goodbye pint without me here too?”
“I-why are you asking me that?” A goodbye pint. It wasn’t that long since they’d fitted in a pint when James had gone off to Kosovo. When James was still his sergeant and he’d seemed to have a better hold of him. This last couple of months-it all seems to be moving rather fast for Robbie now.
“Because he’d like that. It might-help.”
“He doesn’t need any help to go. He’s fairly made up his mind, hasn’t he? Don’t know what he needs to go that far for,” grumbles Robbie, all the unsettling disgruntlement at these sudden developments rising to the surface now. “There’s enough English language schools in Oxford.”
“I sincerely doubt that that’s why he did the course. And maybe he does need-to go that far.”
“What? Why would he?” But Adam Tibbit is in Robbie’s mind now and James’s footsteps coming to a halt on a bridge. I need a change.
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Laura says. He stares at her. “Look, Robbie.” She’s not looking at him now. She’s looking at James, who’s leaning both elbows on the bar, one foot up on the brass foot rail, looking ridiculously young again in that hoodie in the way he still tends to in odd moments when he’s in casual clothes and as slouched down as ever. “Either be more supportive and let him go, or ask him not to.”
“Ask him not to go? He’s not me sergeant anymore.” Laura rolls her eyes at him. “I’ve no right to ask him not to go anywhere.” Even if I don’t much like it.
“Well, then,” Laura says, matter-of-factly. “If that’s your decision, be a bit less bloody grudging about it.”
Robbie sends her a look. It’s all he has time to do because James is turning, balancing three pints in a careful triangle between his long fingers. None of this was his decision. Only one thing is, as it turns out.
===
“How’re all these overseas arrangements, then? You still all set to go?”
“Mmm.” James contemplates the beer in his glass as if Newcastle Brown is a new and interesting vintage to him. Which would be another frustrating reminder of how he hasn’t been round in a while if he wasn’t so obviously sending signals to Robbie to drop this. But there’s something needling at Robbie about this over the past couple of weeks and now he’s finally managed to get James over for an evening, back on his couch. And seeing as Laura isn’t here to glare at him…
And Robbie starts to push gently at him. “It all just seems a bit quick-I mean, don’t you need a visa-”
“The language school over there is sorting it-they seem very efficient. I can get a business visa for three months and then they can apply for a work permit and the visa can be continuously extended to cover my contract-”
Hold on. “But you said your contract was just for the three months.”
“Yeah, three months. With the option of a longer contract renewal if I do well.”
“Of course you’ll do well,” says Robbie but it comes out more resigned than he’d intended. Why does it feel oddly like James doesn’t really plan on coming back?
James sends him a glance. “Look, I know you don’t think much of this whole idea-”
Oh, bugger. And Robbie is torn. He hadn’t really meant to pour cold water on James’s plans either. Maybe Laura’s right. God knows, he can see, looking back now, how James had looked those last few months in the job wasn’t right-and that look, that quietly desperate look, it’s just not lifted like it should have. And Adam Tibbit is in Robbie’s head again and how Robbie had failed to see just how badly James was distressed at the time. Until James had made it very clear by coming to that abrupt decision to resign that hadn’t really been so abrupt if Robbie had let himself see the clues in the time coming up to it. Maybe this is right for James. Maybe Robbie is just far too bloody used to having him around and he’s being selfish. He doesn’t know what to say now. And James is grimacing, digging for a phone that must be buzzing in his pocket.
“Estate agent,” he explains, examining a text. “Any chance you could drop the keys in? My flight’s on a Sunday, next Sunday, so I can’t…”
“But you’re not giving up your flat? I thought you said you were subletting it? Unofficially, like?”
“No-I had to give notice on my lease. I was going to sublet it, though-until it fell through. To one of the guys in the band, as it happens.”
“Shelley?” says Robbie stupidly, automatically, utterly distracted by this blow. Because it feels like a blow.
“I-what?” James is staring at him. Then he seems to take in that Robbie genuinely doesn’t understand what he’s said, even if he doesn’t see why. “No, my band, the one I was in. Our cello player. And he’s definitely not called Shelley. He goes by the name of Jim.”
“I used to call you that,” Robbie says. “You didn’t like it and you never said.” He wants to get up and leave the room. He just wants to walk out and be on his own at the sudden memory of James back at the start of their years together. Their years that, just at this moment, really seem to be approaching some sort of an end. He doesn’t know what the hell is wrong with him. He pushes himself back more firmly on the couch and forces himself to stay sitting.
“No, I-It was just that I didn’t like the nickname. I didn’t mind you having a name for me. I just didn’t like the name itself.” James is frowning at him now. Robbie makes an effort to pull himself together.
“So if you’re giving up your flat, then, what are you going to do with all your stuff?”
“Hiring a storage unit-”
“No, you don’t. You can shove it all in the spare room.”
“You need your spare room for when Lyn visits.”
“No.” Robbie finds himself using his best, implacable, and-that’s-an-order-sergeant voice, hoping it still works on James. “You’ll leave your things here.”
“Sir,” James concedes, smartly, immediately identifying the tone. And follows that with a reluctant grin.
===
But he does give in and leave his stuff there. He even sees sense about staying in Robbie's, in that reassuring room of boxes, the night before he leaves. Well, he’s slept in there enough times over the years when they’ve exhausted themselves late into the night tossing ideas back and forth on a case or just when he’s a couple of beers the worse for wear. Robbie waves off his thanks for it-you can make me me breakfast one more time before you leave. And then doesn’t hold him to that, of course. He’s not having any of this healthy nonsense that passes for breakfast with James. Might as well get one last proper full English into the lad before he goes. He’s that bit too thin recently.
Breakfast seems to be over and done with fairly fast that morning, with the restless feel of a travel deadline fast approaching, and then it’s time to leave for Heathrow. And Robbie giving him a lift there is something else that James had initially resisted and then just yielded to. He doesn’t seem to have much argument to him at the moment. Which is vaguely worrying in itself. But at least it means Robbie can see him off properly.
And they’re outside packing Robbie’s car with what James is taking when Robbie realises that the reason why both rucksack and wheeled case are being carefully adjusted as buffers in his boot is because-he’s bringing the guitar? Robbie had seen that carefully stowed, or so he’d thought, in his spare room, safely ensconced until James came back to claim it, and now-it turns out it was just in there overnight. Turns out he’s taking it.
“You sure you-” Well, of course he is. The golden rule. Never let your instrument out of your sight. It’s just-“You sure you’ve got everything?”
Does the rest of what he’s leaving behind in Oxford matter enough to him? He’d better not contact Robbie when those three months are up and tell him he’s hired a storage unit and has some band mate doing him a favour and coming round to shift those boxes…And there’s a growing feeling of urgency to do or say something about all this if Robbie could only work out what that was.
It feels like they must have taken a wrong turn somehow, during all those years, for this to be happening. It doesn’t feel right. James going away like this, so open-ended, and he's not even sure James wants this, he seems almost apathetic, as if he’s just resigned to it. Like he's sending himself away, instead of wanting to go.
And yet as he manoeuvres the car out onto the road, he thinks of what Laura had said recently when he’d had a go at getting her around to his point of view. “I seem to recall you going away. When it was all too much for you.”
He’d looked at her, taken aback. “That was because-”
She’d reached for his hand. “God, I know, Robbie, of course I do. You know that. I don’t mean to draw a parallel, exactly. Just-people do leave sometimes for all sorts of reasons that maybe they can’t even articulate. When it’s too hard to stay. And like you said, when you came back, it was a start.”
Time ticks inexorably by through the slightly constrained, distracted conversation of the car drive, the hassled distraction of parking and James’s check-in without Robbie finding some way to-well, it’s a bit bloody late to express any reservations about this now, isn’t it?
And then right in front of the security gate, at the very last moment, James is in his arms, and he doesn’t even know who’s initiated that.
But it doesn’t feel comfortable. Ridiculously, because James has always so easily, comfortably, fitted himself straight into Robbie; leaning against him on benches, relaxing against him on couches, such a constant close presence during all those years as his sergeant, right at Robbie’s shoulder. But they don’t actually hug and this is awkward and one-armed on James’s part, because of the precious guitar travelling as hand-luggage. He seems almost stiff in Robbie’s brief embrace. Attempt at an embrace. And the light touch of his arm around Robbie makes him seem barely there. What it does feel like, though, is a goodbye.
And then there’s a quick, small smile at Robbie, with James’s eyes just not quite meeting Robbie's rather narrowed, discerning gaze, and he’s gone.
Part II