Fic: Lives Are For Living. (5/35)
Title Lives Are For Living. (5/35)
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other Torchwood and Being Human characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 2000. (Total posted 9250 /65,000)
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts canon level violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother. Spoilers for Being Human (UK version) up to series 5 episode 3, and for Torchwood up to Children of Earth.
A/N: Crossover with Being Human. Technically a CoE fix it as it's set in the same 'verse as Finding Ways To Smile Again (although that isn't apparent until about 2/3 the way through the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV - which is where it breaks from Being Human canon.
Summary
After being pushed out of the police force following the events of Children of Earth, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself in the deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out of his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed.
A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they had never expected and bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find.
Starts here: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/214504.html
Tom had left as the evening shadows had started to get longer, taking his pack and its rolled up tent out to where the fields met the woodland a few hundred metres from the side of the farmhouse.
Andy found it made the house seem strangely empty without him, despite the fact that Tom had only been there a couple of hours and was, with the exception of his Aunty Edith's solicitor, the only other person to have ever been in the house with him.
From his bedroom window Andy could just see the faint light of a torch or lantern as Tom finished sorting out his tent. It was dry and warm night, the near full moon lighting up the valley. It was, Andy thought, the perfect weather for sleeping out under the stars. Yet part of him wanted to go down to the tent and ask Tom to come back to the house. The other wanted to join Tom out there under the spreading beech trees, sit around a camp fire with a few bottles of beer and talk about nothing important until the sky started to brighten with the dawn, as he'd done with friends as a teenager.
Not that he'd seen any of them in years, those friendships had slowly drifted away after he joined the police. The awkwardness that people seemed to have being around a police officer spilling over into the times when he was of duty, conversations becoming generic, guarded and dull, until they had slipped away altogether. There was reason that for a lot of people in the police their friends also tended to be in the service as well or at least a closely connected one.
Turning over in bed, Andy looked up at the beams in the ceiling. He was tired, but he knew that there was no way that his mind was going to switch off just yet. Not wanting to think about his own life, or lack of it, Andy turned his attention back to Tom.
Tom who was definitely distracting and fascinating. Tom who seemed so nice and who maintained an almost painfully naïve sense of trust despite life having dealt him a spectacularly bad hand. Growing up in a van with only his dad, moving from one place to another with nowhere to really call home and no friends or family to turn to when his father was murdered. And now he was homeless and jobless with nobody in the world who apparently cared about him or missed him.
Andy rolled over again just in time to see the faint light by Tom's tent go out. Sighing, he got out of bed and went back through to the living room and sat down at the table. He couldn't let Tom go without at least trying to help him.
Employing somebody to help him renovate the farm and turn it into a campsite had been something he'd considered, but having a group of builders there or haggling with contractors wasn't something that he'd felt ready to do. Tom was different though, employing him to do a few odd jobs for a few hours a week until he sorted himself out somewhere to live and maybe a full time job seemed like it would be something that would be good for both of them.
The settlement or more accurately bribe, he thought bitterly, that he'd been given for leaving the police had been very generous, a pension and cash lump sum as if he'd completed a police officer's standard thirty year service, rather than the ten years that he actually had. With the farm being his outright, and with no mains gas or electricity to pay and the water coming from a spring there was only food, council tax and the associated costs of keeping the landrover on the road. He could live on it for a long time as long as he wasn't too extravagant with it.
A lot of the lump sum was set aside for jobs that Andy couldn't do himself, like having a new septic tank fitted for the toilet, more toilets for people camping there, solar panels for the house and when it was finished the barn as well, a new back-up generator for when it was wasn't sunny enough for them to work and the costs of paying contractors to fit it all. It would all be money well spent though or at least it would be spent once he actually got the farm to a stage where he could get it all fitted.
With so much of the money already allocated he knew he couldn't afford to employ Tom full time, but something like twenty hours a week, plus free camping and free food he hoped would be enough to tempt him to stay for a while. Tom's lack of address meant that him having a bank account was unlikely, so it would have to be cash in hand. Not strictly legal, Andy knew, but after the couple of years he's had he's quite happy to ignore certain parts of it where it's not actually hurting anybody.
The worse that could happen was that Tom would take offence at being offered work like he was a charity case and leave. Andy would be no worse off than he already was if he did, but he knew it would be a very long time before he stopped worrying about Tom if he did.
The clock showed a quarter to three before Andy had finished looking through all his bank statements and costings paperwork for the renovation of the farm. Exhausted, but satisfied that he could afford to employ Tom for at least a couple of months, Andy finally went to bed.
x-x-x
The sun was only just above the horizon, the early morning sky still streaked with the colours of dawn, when Andy woke. Yawning and wondering if Tom had managed to get a better night's sleep in his tent, Andy when through to the living room.
After a couple of attempts at lighting the range which seemed even more resistant to his efforts to get a fire burning than usual, Andy gave up and lit the camping stove. Coffee made him feel slightly more awake and after a couple of cups of it and some breakfast, Andy decided it was now late enough to go and see if Tom was awake.
Tom's tent was pitched in slight hollow at edge of the small wood that bordered the edge of the farm, the branches of the trees spreading out above it. The tent looked like it had seen better days, the material faded and most of the seams repaired with gaffer tape, but Andy suspected that it was still waterproof as Tom had seemed quite capable to when it came to practical tasks.
Dressed in the same rather tatty shorts and vest that he'd been wearing the previous day, Tom was sitting on a tree stump, his back to him, while he warmed his by a small fire. The fire was burning brightly in a carefully dug and stone edged shallow pit, his battered camping kettle and mess tin style pan apparently full of porridge carefully propped over the flames.
“Mornin'” Tom said standing up, not seeming startle at all that Andy had walked up behind him. “Hope you don't mind me using bits of wood out of there.” He gestured to the woodland. “There's a fair old bit of fallen stuff in there that if you get it cut up proper and stacked to dry it'd be right good on that fire up at the house.”
“I've not even looked in there,” Andy said truthfully. It was enough work getting the farm sorted out without having to think about woodland management or whatever it was called. “Take whatever you need out of there, ”
“Thanks. You really sure you don't mind though?” He asked, concern edging into his voice. “Only I don't want you be short come winter. I mean you could probably sell some of the stuff, like they do at garages sometimes in those string sacks, if you wanted to maybe get some coal instead.”
Tom was far more practical and knowledgeable about the things that needed doing, Andy thought, than he could hope to be for until he'd spent at least a year on the farm, probably making a complete idiot of himself half the time because he hadn't got a clue what he was doing. Certain now that he was doing the right thing, Andy pushed ahead with this plan.
“Actually I've been thinking,” Andy said hoping that he didn't end up sound too pushy or desperate, the last thing he wanted was to drive Tom away by being too weird. “It's a lot of work to get this old place turned into a camp site and yesterday made me realise that maybe working on it by myself isn't a good idea, and you did say that you weren't in a hurry to get anywhere. So would you be interested in working here? I could pay you for say twenty hours a week, plus free camping and food. I mean if you want to, that is.”
Eager and earnest, Tom smiled as, without a pause, grabbed Andy's hand and shook his enthusiastically. "Course I do. Yer won't regret it. So what you need me to do?"
Relieved that Tom was staying, but still tired after only having a couple of hours sleep, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be working on the barn and risking making an idiot of himself though another mishap caused by a lapse of attention on his part just yet. Doing a few small jobs round the house and then going back to bed and trying to get more sleep sounded like the best plan. “No, I've got a few other things to go. Any way, you'll want to get your camping gear sorted out and maybe take a walk down to Rhayader to buy anything you need, as you won't really get a chance tomorrow.”
"Do ya need me to work on Sunday then?"
"No, Monday will be fine," Andy replied, hearing the hesitation in Tom's voice. Tom didn't seem like the type to observe organised religion, but so much about Tom seem contradictory. Perhaps his family had been religious? Maybe that's why the tattoo was a cross rather than skulls or some so called tribal design. Thinking that his mother would be nodding her head in approval at the young man right now, he said, "There's a chapel down in Elan Village or a church in Rhayader. If you want to go."
Tom frowned and then said, "Do you think I should? I mean is that normal like round here?"
And there was that undefinable strangeness again, Andy thought. Why was Tom so concerned by trying to do what others would call normal? "I just thought that's why you didn't want to work on Sunday. It seemed like the most likely reason."
"No, it ain't like that," Tom started to put his trainers on. "It's just some there's some other stuff I really need to do, so I might be a bit late on Sunday morning, and I didn't want you thinkin' that I didn't want the job, 'cause I really do."
Andy decided it was none of his business what Tom needs to do, even if he was a little curious about what it might be, given what he'd said the previous day. "Okay, Monday it is then. If you need anything just come up to the house, like if you want cook or use the phone."
"Thanks." Tom smiled again like Andy's given him something amazing. "I bet this place'll be great when you get it all done up."
Andy looked out across the sunlit valley. “Do you know, I really think it will,” he said, finding that for the first time he could really see himself living and working there rather than just surviving.
Part 6: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/218004.html
Note.
The knowledge about how pensions are calculated from the job I do in real life, but for anyone interested the figures would be (in Andy's case) roughly half of actual annual pay for the pension, plus three years worth of pay lump sum.
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other Torchwood and Being Human characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 2000. (Total posted 9250 /65,000)
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts canon level violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother. Spoilers for Being Human (UK version) up to series 5 episode 3, and for Torchwood up to Children of Earth.
A/N: Crossover with Being Human. Technically a CoE fix it as it's set in the same 'verse as Finding Ways To Smile Again (although that isn't apparent until about 2/3 the way through the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV - which is where it breaks from Being Human canon.
Summary
After being pushed out of the police force following the events of Children of Earth, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself in the deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out of his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed.
A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they had never expected and bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find.
Starts here: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/214504.html
Tom had left as the evening shadows had started to get longer, taking his pack and its rolled up tent out to where the fields met the woodland a few hundred metres from the side of the farmhouse.
Andy found it made the house seem strangely empty without him, despite the fact that Tom had only been there a couple of hours and was, with the exception of his Aunty Edith's solicitor, the only other person to have ever been in the house with him.
From his bedroom window Andy could just see the faint light of a torch or lantern as Tom finished sorting out his tent. It was dry and warm night, the near full moon lighting up the valley. It was, Andy thought, the perfect weather for sleeping out under the stars. Yet part of him wanted to go down to the tent and ask Tom to come back to the house. The other wanted to join Tom out there under the spreading beech trees, sit around a camp fire with a few bottles of beer and talk about nothing important until the sky started to brighten with the dawn, as he'd done with friends as a teenager.
Not that he'd seen any of them in years, those friendships had slowly drifted away after he joined the police. The awkwardness that people seemed to have being around a police officer spilling over into the times when he was of duty, conversations becoming generic, guarded and dull, until they had slipped away altogether. There was reason that for a lot of people in the police their friends also tended to be in the service as well or at least a closely connected one.
Turning over in bed, Andy looked up at the beams in the ceiling. He was tired, but he knew that there was no way that his mind was going to switch off just yet. Not wanting to think about his own life, or lack of it, Andy turned his attention back to Tom.
Tom who was definitely distracting and fascinating. Tom who seemed so nice and who maintained an almost painfully naïve sense of trust despite life having dealt him a spectacularly bad hand. Growing up in a van with only his dad, moving from one place to another with nowhere to really call home and no friends or family to turn to when his father was murdered. And now he was homeless and jobless with nobody in the world who apparently cared about him or missed him.
Andy rolled over again just in time to see the faint light by Tom's tent go out. Sighing, he got out of bed and went back through to the living room and sat down at the table. He couldn't let Tom go without at least trying to help him.
Employing somebody to help him renovate the farm and turn it into a campsite had been something he'd considered, but having a group of builders there or haggling with contractors wasn't something that he'd felt ready to do. Tom was different though, employing him to do a few odd jobs for a few hours a week until he sorted himself out somewhere to live and maybe a full time job seemed like it would be something that would be good for both of them.
The settlement or more accurately bribe, he thought bitterly, that he'd been given for leaving the police had been very generous, a pension and cash lump sum as if he'd completed a police officer's standard thirty year service, rather than the ten years that he actually had. With the farm being his outright, and with no mains gas or electricity to pay and the water coming from a spring there was only food, council tax and the associated costs of keeping the landrover on the road. He could live on it for a long time as long as he wasn't too extravagant with it.
A lot of the lump sum was set aside for jobs that Andy couldn't do himself, like having a new septic tank fitted for the toilet, more toilets for people camping there, solar panels for the house and when it was finished the barn as well, a new back-up generator for when it was wasn't sunny enough for them to work and the costs of paying contractors to fit it all. It would all be money well spent though or at least it would be spent once he actually got the farm to a stage where he could get it all fitted.
With so much of the money already allocated he knew he couldn't afford to employ Tom full time, but something like twenty hours a week, plus free camping and free food he hoped would be enough to tempt him to stay for a while. Tom's lack of address meant that him having a bank account was unlikely, so it would have to be cash in hand. Not strictly legal, Andy knew, but after the couple of years he's had he's quite happy to ignore certain parts of it where it's not actually hurting anybody.
The worse that could happen was that Tom would take offence at being offered work like he was a charity case and leave. Andy would be no worse off than he already was if he did, but he knew it would be a very long time before he stopped worrying about Tom if he did.
The clock showed a quarter to three before Andy had finished looking through all his bank statements and costings paperwork for the renovation of the farm. Exhausted, but satisfied that he could afford to employ Tom for at least a couple of months, Andy finally went to bed.
x-x-x
The sun was only just above the horizon, the early morning sky still streaked with the colours of dawn, when Andy woke. Yawning and wondering if Tom had managed to get a better night's sleep in his tent, Andy when through to the living room.
After a couple of attempts at lighting the range which seemed even more resistant to his efforts to get a fire burning than usual, Andy gave up and lit the camping stove. Coffee made him feel slightly more awake and after a couple of cups of it and some breakfast, Andy decided it was now late enough to go and see if Tom was awake.
Tom's tent was pitched in slight hollow at edge of the small wood that bordered the edge of the farm, the branches of the trees spreading out above it. The tent looked like it had seen better days, the material faded and most of the seams repaired with gaffer tape, but Andy suspected that it was still waterproof as Tom had seemed quite capable to when it came to practical tasks.
Dressed in the same rather tatty shorts and vest that he'd been wearing the previous day, Tom was sitting on a tree stump, his back to him, while he warmed his by a small fire. The fire was burning brightly in a carefully dug and stone edged shallow pit, his battered camping kettle and mess tin style pan apparently full of porridge carefully propped over the flames.
“Mornin'” Tom said standing up, not seeming startle at all that Andy had walked up behind him. “Hope you don't mind me using bits of wood out of there.” He gestured to the woodland. “There's a fair old bit of fallen stuff in there that if you get it cut up proper and stacked to dry it'd be right good on that fire up at the house.”
“I've not even looked in there,” Andy said truthfully. It was enough work getting the farm sorted out without having to think about woodland management or whatever it was called. “Take whatever you need out of there, ”
“Thanks. You really sure you don't mind though?” He asked, concern edging into his voice. “Only I don't want you be short come winter. I mean you could probably sell some of the stuff, like they do at garages sometimes in those string sacks, if you wanted to maybe get some coal instead.”
Tom was far more practical and knowledgeable about the things that needed doing, Andy thought, than he could hope to be for until he'd spent at least a year on the farm, probably making a complete idiot of himself half the time because he hadn't got a clue what he was doing. Certain now that he was doing the right thing, Andy pushed ahead with this plan.
“Actually I've been thinking,” Andy said hoping that he didn't end up sound too pushy or desperate, the last thing he wanted was to drive Tom away by being too weird. “It's a lot of work to get this old place turned into a camp site and yesterday made me realise that maybe working on it by myself isn't a good idea, and you did say that you weren't in a hurry to get anywhere. So would you be interested in working here? I could pay you for say twenty hours a week, plus free camping and food. I mean if you want to, that is.”
Eager and earnest, Tom smiled as, without a pause, grabbed Andy's hand and shook his enthusiastically. "Course I do. Yer won't regret it. So what you need me to do?"
Relieved that Tom was staying, but still tired after only having a couple of hours sleep, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be working on the barn and risking making an idiot of himself though another mishap caused by a lapse of attention on his part just yet. Doing a few small jobs round the house and then going back to bed and trying to get more sleep sounded like the best plan. “No, I've got a few other things to go. Any way, you'll want to get your camping gear sorted out and maybe take a walk down to Rhayader to buy anything you need, as you won't really get a chance tomorrow.”
"Do ya need me to work on Sunday then?"
"No, Monday will be fine," Andy replied, hearing the hesitation in Tom's voice. Tom didn't seem like the type to observe organised religion, but so much about Tom seem contradictory. Perhaps his family had been religious? Maybe that's why the tattoo was a cross rather than skulls or some so called tribal design. Thinking that his mother would be nodding her head in approval at the young man right now, he said, "There's a chapel down in Elan Village or a church in Rhayader. If you want to go."
Tom frowned and then said, "Do you think I should? I mean is that normal like round here?"
And there was that undefinable strangeness again, Andy thought. Why was Tom so concerned by trying to do what others would call normal? "I just thought that's why you didn't want to work on Sunday. It seemed like the most likely reason."
"No, it ain't like that," Tom started to put his trainers on. "It's just some there's some other stuff I really need to do, so I might be a bit late on Sunday morning, and I didn't want you thinkin' that I didn't want the job, 'cause I really do."
Andy decided it was none of his business what Tom needs to do, even if he was a little curious about what it might be, given what he'd said the previous day. "Okay, Monday it is then. If you need anything just come up to the house, like if you want cook or use the phone."
"Thanks." Tom smiled again like Andy's given him something amazing. "I bet this place'll be great when you get it all done up."
Andy looked out across the sunlit valley. “Do you know, I really think it will,” he said, finding that for the first time he could really see himself living and working there rather than just surviving.
Part 6: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/218004.html
Note.
The knowledge about how pensions are calculated from the job I do in real life, but for anyone interested the figures would be (in Andy's case) roughly half of actual annual pay for the pension, plus three years worth of pay lump sum.