FIC: Five Other Uses Danny Butterman Found For His Notebook
Breaking my tradition of using song lyrics for my HF fic titles...
Five Other Uses Danny Butterman Found For His Notebook
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Rating: PG
Pairing: You know, like in the movie.
Notes: Click here if you're geeky, but the fic comes first.
Disclaimer: All characters herein belong to their respective owners, none of which are me.
Summary: See title.
There's a swan on his desk.
It's a small one, to be sure, but he's fairly certain it wasn't there when he stepped out of his office for a hurried confrontation with the building contractors twenty minutes ago.
'What's this?' he asks Danny's grin.
'It's a swan.'
'Yes.'
'It's folded out of oregano.'
'Origami?'
Danny nods. 'It's folded out of origami.'
'No, I meant - Never mind.'
Swans on desks, he's obliged to acknowledge, are no longer much of a novelty around here: even after three months little folded reminders are still turning up in inconspicuous and not-so-inconspicuous places around the temporary HQ, courtesy of his detectives. He's found the birds loitering furtively in his locker, perched atop OSPRE textbooks, sitting brazenly in other people's chairs. But those have been primitive, roughly-constructed things, stiff and angular, the three-dimensional equivalent of stick-figure drawings.
The tiny paper sculpture currently nestled in his Inbox, however, is something else altogether. He stares, not a little astonished, at the complex, ruffled curve of wings, the delicate bill, the gracefully-arched neck. And the tell-tale pattern of fine grey lines ruled across the white sheet.
'You've not been using your notebook for unofficial purposes, have you, Constable?'
It's only when Danny's grin widens that Angel catches himself unconsciously reaching out to brush one finger over the miniature bird's head. He snatches his hand back, rather entirely too late.
'Oh, no,' Danny tells him cheerfully. 'Strictly for the good of the Service.'
* * *
'Danny?'
'Yeah?'
'I can't help noticing...'
'What?'
'That my peace lily has rather more flowers on it than it did yesterday evening.'
'Flowers sort of come up overnight sometimes, don't they?'
'They do. But generally, and this is the sticking point so to speak, not twenty-six of them at once.'
'I thought it'd look more happy, like.'
'Twenty-six of them, Danny?'
'You did say it were looking a bit sickly.'
'Yes, but only because my office was too bright until we got the blinds in on Tuesday.'
'Oh.'
'You...cut out prosthetics for my lily.'
'Bob helped.'
'Did he, now?'
'Well...he lent me his roll of sellotape.'
'Ah. That would account for the dog hairs.'
'And Doris let me use her green pen.'
'I suppose that would account for the glitter. So when you said you had to stay behind last night for extra paperwork, you meant...'
'Paper...work. Yeah.'
'Hmm.'
'I thought...'cos it were me what talked you into bringing it in here, you know. It's just...'
'What?'
'Everyone's got things on their desk, see? Photos of their mums and nephews and all that. And you hadn't...got any...er.'
'I could've just brought in a photo of my lily.'
'Nicholas - '
'No. No, I shouldn't have said that. I know what you were...I know.'
'I'm sorry it's been hard on your plant. Being somewhere new, and all.'
'It's all right, Danny. It'll adjust.'
* * *
New desks delayed again.
The last bit of carpet tile is laid down, the blinds have been put up, and the final patches of fresh paint are drying (in a considerably unexciting fashion, as both of the Turners have attested to) in the back store-room, but their new desks are still in transit somewhere on the A40, waylaid by some of what the villagers assure him is the worst rain Gloucestershire has seen in decades.
Three days ago the drivers got lost; two days ago the truck cracked an axle. He's well beginning to think the entire enterprise is cursed somehow, only he can't really see the harm, in a cosmic sense, of acquiring desks that haven't been unearthed from someone's grandfather's attic or wherever it is that old furniture crawls off to die.
He's stoically ignored the shortcomings of the rickety artefact occupying his office, despite the fact that writing upon its surface is a task akin to crossing the deck of a sloop in high seas, possibly whilst inebriated: proper police work does not necessitate the access to, or the use of, shiny new brushed-metal desks. But all the same there's something to be said for drawers that don't stick and wood that isn't warped and legs that were cut by a carpenter employing a good tape measure, or at least employing a decent piece of string.
But when he sits down to fill out the week's expense report, his desk doesn't so much as budge. He gives it an experimental push; the Rock of Gibraltar couldn't be more steady. Setting down his biro, he gets down on hands and knees and peers beneath, to find folded pieces of lined paper wedged beneath two of the oak legs.
* * *
He stares in bemusement at the small flurry of shredded paper bits that's just fallen over his head to land on his uniform trousers and the upholstery of the driver's seat. 'What on earth, Danny?'
'It's 'cos you're an Inspector today. Yaaayy.'
'I've been one since yesterday.'
'Yeah, well, it's your first time in the car as an Inspector.' A few more bits drift down. 'Yaayyy.'
Danny's grin is infectious, and Angel has the sudden, odd thought that the nine hours since he's last seen Danny have been just about nine hours too long. He shakes his head at the makeshift confetti, not quite able to bite back a smile. 'I thought the party was last night?'
As rhetorical questions go, that one's quite near the upper end of the scale; it'd be nigh-on impossible to forget that the party was last night, what with the lingering ache behind his eyes and the nagging feeling that someone's absent-mindedly left their roll of 240-grit sandpaper in his corneas; and with the fact that when they exited the station the Andys were still duelling over which of them had the worse hangover (Wainwright held the last winning hand with 'like an entire herd of pink elephants doing obscene things in my - ' before Angel pointedly shut the door behind them).
And as promotion celebrations go, it was just the long table at the pub and seemingly endless rounds of bitters, but it sure as hell beat champagne corks and spiral streamers and 'Good Luck Nicholas' spelt out in royal blue on a silver banner.
'I'll pick it up,' Danny mumbles then, and Angel abruptly realises his own smile has slipped, that he's been gazing at the dashboard in too-long silence. Without his conscious volition, his hand shoots out and grasps Danny's wrist, halting his partner's search for the paper fragments.
'This party's better,' Angel tells him quietly, and as much to Danny's surprise as his own, it's completely true.
* * *
When he comes back in, skin still damp from the shower, it's to find the bedroom empty and a note on his pillow.
Sorry -
I know we said together but I just I think I need to take a walk.
Come find me?
He turns the paper over several times in his fingers. It's unfolded, uncut, untorn; no dog hairs, no sellotape, no glitter: simply a sheet with words on, nothing more. Sees the slight shakiness of the handwriting, the small round translucent spot that overlaps the word need and causes the ink to run, just a little.
Ten minutes later, fully dressed, he's sitting behind the wheel of the motionless squad car. Early morning sunshine is streaming in brilliantly through the windows; and, tucked carefully into his left shirt pocket, the note crinkles gently every time he shifts position.
Come find me.
Simply a sheet with words on, but it's everything.
He fires up the engine and pulls the car out onto the street, headed for the florist's shop, the old church-yard, and Danny.
Five Other Uses Danny Butterman Found For His Notebook
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Rating: PG
Pairing: You know, like in the movie.
Notes: Click here if you're geeky, but the fic comes first.
Disclaimer: All characters herein belong to their respective owners, none of which are me.
Summary: See title.
There's a swan on his desk.
It's a small one, to be sure, but he's fairly certain it wasn't there when he stepped out of his office for a hurried confrontation with the building contractors twenty minutes ago.
'What's this?' he asks Danny's grin.
'It's a swan.'
'Yes.'
'It's folded out of oregano.'
'Origami?'
Danny nods. 'It's folded out of origami.'
'No, I meant - Never mind.'
Swans on desks, he's obliged to acknowledge, are no longer much of a novelty around here: even after three months little folded reminders are still turning up in inconspicuous and not-so-inconspicuous places around the temporary HQ, courtesy of his detectives. He's found the birds loitering furtively in his locker, perched atop OSPRE textbooks, sitting brazenly in other people's chairs. But those have been primitive, roughly-constructed things, stiff and angular, the three-dimensional equivalent of stick-figure drawings.
The tiny paper sculpture currently nestled in his Inbox, however, is something else altogether. He stares, not a little astonished, at the complex, ruffled curve of wings, the delicate bill, the gracefully-arched neck. And the tell-tale pattern of fine grey lines ruled across the white sheet.
'You've not been using your notebook for unofficial purposes, have you, Constable?'
It's only when Danny's grin widens that Angel catches himself unconsciously reaching out to brush one finger over the miniature bird's head. He snatches his hand back, rather entirely too late.
'Oh, no,' Danny tells him cheerfully. 'Strictly for the good of the Service.'
* * *
'Danny?'
'Yeah?'
'I can't help noticing...'
'What?'
'That my peace lily has rather more flowers on it than it did yesterday evening.'
'Flowers sort of come up overnight sometimes, don't they?'
'They do. But generally, and this is the sticking point so to speak, not twenty-six of them at once.'
'I thought it'd look more happy, like.'
'Twenty-six of them, Danny?'
'You did say it were looking a bit sickly.'
'Yes, but only because my office was too bright until we got the blinds in on Tuesday.'
'Oh.'
'You...cut out prosthetics for my lily.'
'Bob helped.'
'Did he, now?'
'Well...he lent me his roll of sellotape.'
'Ah. That would account for the dog hairs.'
'And Doris let me use her green pen.'
'I suppose that would account for the glitter. So when you said you had to stay behind last night for extra paperwork, you meant...'
'Paper...work. Yeah.'
'Hmm.'
'I thought...'cos it were me what talked you into bringing it in here, you know. It's just...'
'What?'
'Everyone's got things on their desk, see? Photos of their mums and nephews and all that. And you hadn't...got any...er.'
'I could've just brought in a photo of my lily.'
'Nicholas - '
'No. No, I shouldn't have said that. I know what you were...I know.'
'I'm sorry it's been hard on your plant. Being somewhere new, and all.'
'It's all right, Danny. It'll adjust.'
* * *
New desks delayed again.
The last bit of carpet tile is laid down, the blinds have been put up, and the final patches of fresh paint are drying (in a considerably unexciting fashion, as both of the Turners have attested to) in the back store-room, but their new desks are still in transit somewhere on the A40, waylaid by some of what the villagers assure him is the worst rain Gloucestershire has seen in decades.
Three days ago the drivers got lost; two days ago the truck cracked an axle. He's well beginning to think the entire enterprise is cursed somehow, only he can't really see the harm, in a cosmic sense, of acquiring desks that haven't been unearthed from someone's grandfather's attic or wherever it is that old furniture crawls off to die.
He's stoically ignored the shortcomings of the rickety artefact occupying his office, despite the fact that writing upon its surface is a task akin to crossing the deck of a sloop in high seas, possibly whilst inebriated: proper police work does not necessitate the access to, or the use of, shiny new brushed-metal desks. But all the same there's something to be said for drawers that don't stick and wood that isn't warped and legs that were cut by a carpenter employing a good tape measure, or at least employing a decent piece of string.
But when he sits down to fill out the week's expense report, his desk doesn't so much as budge. He gives it an experimental push; the Rock of Gibraltar couldn't be more steady. Setting down his biro, he gets down on hands and knees and peers beneath, to find folded pieces of lined paper wedged beneath two of the oak legs.
* * *
He stares in bemusement at the small flurry of shredded paper bits that's just fallen over his head to land on his uniform trousers and the upholstery of the driver's seat. 'What on earth, Danny?'
'It's 'cos you're an Inspector today. Yaaayy.'
'I've been one since yesterday.'
'Yeah, well, it's your first time in the car as an Inspector.' A few more bits drift down. 'Yaayyy.'
Danny's grin is infectious, and Angel has the sudden, odd thought that the nine hours since he's last seen Danny have been just about nine hours too long. He shakes his head at the makeshift confetti, not quite able to bite back a smile. 'I thought the party was last night?'
As rhetorical questions go, that one's quite near the upper end of the scale; it'd be nigh-on impossible to forget that the party was last night, what with the lingering ache behind his eyes and the nagging feeling that someone's absent-mindedly left their roll of 240-grit sandpaper in his corneas; and with the fact that when they exited the station the Andys were still duelling over which of them had the worse hangover (Wainwright held the last winning hand with 'like an entire herd of pink elephants doing obscene things in my - ' before Angel pointedly shut the door behind them).
And as promotion celebrations go, it was just the long table at the pub and seemingly endless rounds of bitters, but it sure as hell beat champagne corks and spiral streamers and 'Good Luck Nicholas' spelt out in royal blue on a silver banner.
'I'll pick it up,' Danny mumbles then, and Angel abruptly realises his own smile has slipped, that he's been gazing at the dashboard in too-long silence. Without his conscious volition, his hand shoots out and grasps Danny's wrist, halting his partner's search for the paper fragments.
'This party's better,' Angel tells him quietly, and as much to Danny's surprise as his own, it's completely true.
* * *
When he comes back in, skin still damp from the shower, it's to find the bedroom empty and a note on his pillow.
Sorry -
I know we said together but I just I think I need to take a walk.
Come find me?
He turns the paper over several times in his fingers. It's unfolded, uncut, untorn; no dog hairs, no sellotape, no glitter: simply a sheet with words on, nothing more. Sees the slight shakiness of the handwriting, the small round translucent spot that overlaps the word need and causes the ink to run, just a little.
Ten minutes later, fully dressed, he's sitting behind the wheel of the motionless squad car. Early morning sunshine is streaming in brilliantly through the windows; and, tucked carefully into his left shirt pocket, the note crinkles gently every time he shifts position.
Come find me.
Simply a sheet with words on, but it's everything.
He fires up the engine and pulls the car out onto the street, headed for the florist's shop, the old church-yard, and Danny.