Don't look back
Title: Don't look back
Author: shadowbyrd
Pairing: Tosh/Kathy
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set post TTLM
Word Count: 1853
Tonight is Kathy and Nick’s fourth date. Or third. She keeps forgetting. He’s a friend of a friend of her Sergeant, John, who introduced them at a party of his. As she nods along to another of Nick’s seemingly endless stories, Kathy decides she is ever going to forgive him for it.
And she wasn’t moping, whatever John says.
She’s managed so far to keep Nick away from the flat and avoid being herded back to his, but tonight he’s dropping hints like bricks. She’s spent half the evening hurling them back at his face, but he’s still not getting the message.
She’s still trying to get rid of him when she’s walking to car - going on about work tomorrow, the case she’s working at the moment, and wasn’t he parked at the other end of the car park? - when she walks back into somebody.
“Oh, sorry -!”
“Get off me!” The person - the woman - shoves her away hard and into Nick. He grabs her and holds tight, like he’s trying to be protective. Like she needs protecting from a tipsy, five foot two Asian woman -
Click.
“Tosh?”
The woman doesn’t turn around, but she walks a little faster, wobbling a little on very high heels and tripping at the curb.
Kathy shrugs Nick off and hauls Toshiko to her feet. “What the hell are you doing?”
Tosh tries to shrug her off in similar manner, though isn’t quite as successful, falling against her the second she manages to find her feet again. “’M walking home. Wha’s it look like?”
“Er, who’s this?” asks Nick, hovering in a way that says he does not want to get involved.
“A…friend.” says Kathy vaguely, trying to keep Tosh upright. She’s never seen the other woman anywhere near this drunk before. “You’re not walking home, not in this state.”
“Yeah, well the guy in there says ’M not driving home. Took my keys off an’ all, bastard.” Tosh says into Kathy’s shoulder.
“I’m not letting you walk home like this - God’s sake, how many have you had?”
Tosh widens her eyes into an expression of painful innocence. “Just a couple of little ones. And then a couple of bigger ones!” she shrieks in short lived laughter and Nick takes another step back.
“We could just put her on a bus.” he suggests.
Kathy scoffs “Yeah, that’ll end well. Come on, Tosh, stop playing silly buggers and get in the car.”
“But -” Nick begins.
“I think we’re going to have to call it a night.” Kathy tells him firmly, dragging Tosh to the car.
“She could be here with somebody.” Nick says.
Kathy pauses opening the door to glare at him. Next to her Tosh laughs bitterly.
“Not with anyone, never with anyone.” She pouts at Kathy “No one ever wants to be out with me.”
Kathy shoves her into the car arresting-officer style and slams the door. “I’ll call you.” she tells Nick, climbing in the other side. Nick just stands there, gawping like a particularly put out goldfish, only moving when Kathy nearly runs him over reversing out. If Tosh weren’t in such a state it would all be very funny.
From the corner of her eye she can see Tosh scowling out of the window. For aminute Kathy feels like the mother of a teenager.
“D’you want to tell me why you’re pissed out of your mind?” she asks, biting her tongue before she can tell Tosh to put her seatbelt on.
Tosh presses her forehead against the glass, eyes crossing as she stares at the streetlights. “What do you care? You said you were sick of all the lies. Said you had better “things” to do.” she slurs, making the quotation marks with her fingers.
Kathy sighs. “Put your seatbelt on.” she mutters, slowing for the lights.
“Like that ponce back there with the dead stoat on his head.”
Kathy smirks against her will. “You think the aftershave’s bad, you should be there when he’s got his hair gel in. The combined smell, it’s just unholy.”
Tosh snorts, tipping her head back. “Men. They’re taken, or they’re gay, or they just want to be friends, despite the fact they’ve looked you up and down in that way, even after they’ve said they just want to be friends, or they’re from the fairly distant future and need to go back to stitch it up again.”
Kathy, who’s been silently ticking off guy in the suit, Jack, Harper as Tosh rambles, does a double take. “I was with you until that last one.”
Tosh just sighs again and says, apropos of nothing “Jack’s a cunt.” She goes back to looking out of the window. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you home.”
Tosh rolls her eyes. “You said you didn’t want to do that anymore.” she reminds Kathy, stretching her arms.
“Your home.” says Kathy “Just, sit tight, alright, we’re almost there.”
Unhappily, this was not the moment that Tosh chose to tell Kathy that she had moved. That came approximately two minutes after Kathy had pulled up outside Tosh’s house. After trying fruitlessly to get Tosh to give her directions, Kathy just snatched Toshiko’s bag and went through her purse until she found something with her address on it.
“Mugger!” Tosh yells, rolling down the window.
“Shut up!” Kathy shouts back, throwing the bag back into Tosh’s lap and starting the engine. Tosh bursts out laughing and keeps yelling until Kathy locks the windows shut.
Tosh’s new place is a flashy new apartment block with a vast underground car park, where Kathy parks and Tosh starts getting difficult again.
“Don’t wanna.”
“Jesus Christ, you are being such a child.” Kathy grumbles, yanking her seat belt off and going around to the other side of the car. She smacks Tosh’s hands away and undoes her seatbelt and pulls her out of the car. Tosh manages to keep her balance for a full ten seconds before she starts to teeter over. Kathy pushes her up against the car to steady her.
Or at least, that’s what she meant to do. Suddenly all she can smell is alcohol and that faint scent of Jasmine that always lingers around Toshiko, as she runs her fingers through her hair and Tosh’s hands settle on her hips.
And really she should stop the second she realises what they’re doing. But the second comes and goes and she lets it go on. She’s missed…not this - they’ve never done anything quite like this before - but she’s missed Tosh. So much.
Eventually Tosh is the one to push away. She doesn’t look shocked or angry; she just looks so utterly dispirted Kathy’s breath catches.
“Tosh, what’s -”
“He left me.” Tosh says, fat trembling tears rolling down her cheeks. “He - I had to send him away, and now he’s…” Her shoulders shake as she lets out a big choking sob. “He didn’t remember me. Didn’t have a clue. I’m never going to see him again. And he’s never going to -” Any further words drown as she begins to cry in earnest, slumping back against the car.
Kathy steps back instinctively to give her some space, even as her hands reach for Toshiko’s face. “Hey, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Tosh just shakes her head, pushing her away and runs, bare feet thumping across the concrete.
“Tosh, wait!” She’s wearing heels, but can easily outrun Tosh. She doesn’t know the layout of the building, but she remembers the number of Tosh’s apartment. Why then, she just stands, watching as Toshiko runs away Kathy doesn’t know.
The next morning as Kathy looks over the two bodies, a cup of tea in one numb hand, she can’t help but wonder if this is karma for lying to Nick about that case she was working.
“So, double murder, mysterious circumstances,” Jack crouches down next to Kathy. “You mind telling me what was so mysterious about these circumstances?”
Kathy lifts the cover. “From what the coroner’s been able to make out both bodies have been completely drained of blood.”
Jack grimaces. “Nice. Owen?”
Owen Harper set the cases he’d been carrying down and set to work examining the corpse.
“I was…I was thinking vampirism,” says Kathy, clearing her throat. Jack smirks “but we haven’t found any wounds or puncture marks.”
Owen, who had been checking the neck, grunts in confirmation.
“Could still be a vampire. They don’t all have teeth.” says Owen, checking the victim’s eyes. “I’m going to have to get these two back to the lab, run some tests.” He added to Jack.
Jack nods and turns to Kathy. “I understand you’ve been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector.” She nods warily - she always gets wary when Jack smiles at her like just so. “Excellent! You’ll be able to turn them over to us, then?”
Kathy purses her lips and gets to her feet. “But of course. I’ll go sign off on it now.”
“Excellent.” says Jack, joining her “Anything else we should know?”
“Should all be in the reports.” says Kathy, stepping back from the scene and hopefully out of earshot of Owen. Jack follows “But there’s something I’d like to know.”
The smile vanishes. “You know I can’t disclose any -”
“I saw Toshiko last night.”
“Oh.” Jack’s face goes perfectly, politely blank. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“And…?”
“What happened?”
Jack shrugs. “She’s just been a bit out of sorts lately, you know how she is.”
Kathy nods, eyes narrowing in a big fake smile. “Yeah. Now, seriously, what happened? She was in a complete state! I’ve never seen her so upset -”
“Yeah well, that’s probably because you didn’t let the dust settle after you broke if off with her.” says Jack quietly.
It’s a minute before Kathy can speak. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say I did this to her?”
“I’m trying, apparently rather unsuccessfully, to tell you that it’s none of your business.” says Jack flatly “Not anymore.”
“I can still care about what happens to her.” Kathy growls.
“You can.” Jack agrees “I still can’t tell you anything.”
“I didn’t end it because I stopped loving her!” Kathy strains to keep her voice low, but can’t help the way her voice rises to a shout.
“I know.” he says, looking on her with the same distant compassion people usually show the dead “But that’s your problem.”
Kathy watches hopelessly as he walks away, back to his team and discusses something with Gwen. Behind the police tape Tosh is stood by their car, fiddling with some gadget or other, pausing to rub her eyes. She glances up toward the scene and locks eyes with Kathy. She drops her gaze back to her palm top and turns away.
Kathy shakes her head and goes off to fill in Jack’s bloody forms. When she looks back over her shoulder, Jack’s grinning, telling Tosh and Gwen a joke or a story. Gwen falls around laughing with him. Tosh rubs her forehead, frowning like she’s got a headache. She looks around and Kathy promptly looks away and walks faster.
Author: shadowbyrd
Pairing: Tosh/Kathy
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set post TTLM
Word Count: 1853
Tonight is Kathy and Nick’s fourth date. Or third. She keeps forgetting. He’s a friend of a friend of her Sergeant, John, who introduced them at a party of his. As she nods along to another of Nick’s seemingly endless stories, Kathy decides she is ever going to forgive him for it.
And she wasn’t moping, whatever John says.
She’s managed so far to keep Nick away from the flat and avoid being herded back to his, but tonight he’s dropping hints like bricks. She’s spent half the evening hurling them back at his face, but he’s still not getting the message.
She’s still trying to get rid of him when she’s walking to car - going on about work tomorrow, the case she’s working at the moment, and wasn’t he parked at the other end of the car park? - when she walks back into somebody.
“Oh, sorry -!”
“Get off me!” The person - the woman - shoves her away hard and into Nick. He grabs her and holds tight, like he’s trying to be protective. Like she needs protecting from a tipsy, five foot two Asian woman -
Click.
“Tosh?”
The woman doesn’t turn around, but she walks a little faster, wobbling a little on very high heels and tripping at the curb.
Kathy shrugs Nick off and hauls Toshiko to her feet. “What the hell are you doing?”
Tosh tries to shrug her off in similar manner, though isn’t quite as successful, falling against her the second she manages to find her feet again. “’M walking home. Wha’s it look like?”
“Er, who’s this?” asks Nick, hovering in a way that says he does not want to get involved.
“A…friend.” says Kathy vaguely, trying to keep Tosh upright. She’s never seen the other woman anywhere near this drunk before. “You’re not walking home, not in this state.”
“Yeah, well the guy in there says ’M not driving home. Took my keys off an’ all, bastard.” Tosh says into Kathy’s shoulder.
“I’m not letting you walk home like this - God’s sake, how many have you had?”
Tosh widens her eyes into an expression of painful innocence. “Just a couple of little ones. And then a couple of bigger ones!” she shrieks in short lived laughter and Nick takes another step back.
“We could just put her on a bus.” he suggests.
Kathy scoffs “Yeah, that’ll end well. Come on, Tosh, stop playing silly buggers and get in the car.”
“But -” Nick begins.
“I think we’re going to have to call it a night.” Kathy tells him firmly, dragging Tosh to the car.
“She could be here with somebody.” Nick says.
Kathy pauses opening the door to glare at him. Next to her Tosh laughs bitterly.
“Not with anyone, never with anyone.” She pouts at Kathy “No one ever wants to be out with me.”
Kathy shoves her into the car arresting-officer style and slams the door. “I’ll call you.” she tells Nick, climbing in the other side. Nick just stands there, gawping like a particularly put out goldfish, only moving when Kathy nearly runs him over reversing out. If Tosh weren’t in such a state it would all be very funny.
From the corner of her eye she can see Tosh scowling out of the window. For aminute Kathy feels like the mother of a teenager.
“D’you want to tell me why you’re pissed out of your mind?” she asks, biting her tongue before she can tell Tosh to put her seatbelt on.
Tosh presses her forehead against the glass, eyes crossing as she stares at the streetlights. “What do you care? You said you were sick of all the lies. Said you had better “things” to do.” she slurs, making the quotation marks with her fingers.
Kathy sighs. “Put your seatbelt on.” she mutters, slowing for the lights.
“Like that ponce back there with the dead stoat on his head.”
Kathy smirks against her will. “You think the aftershave’s bad, you should be there when he’s got his hair gel in. The combined smell, it’s just unholy.”
Tosh snorts, tipping her head back. “Men. They’re taken, or they’re gay, or they just want to be friends, despite the fact they’ve looked you up and down in that way, even after they’ve said they just want to be friends, or they’re from the fairly distant future and need to go back to stitch it up again.”
Kathy, who’s been silently ticking off guy in the suit, Jack, Harper as Tosh rambles, does a double take. “I was with you until that last one.”
Tosh just sighs again and says, apropos of nothing “Jack’s a cunt.” She goes back to looking out of the window. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you home.”
Tosh rolls her eyes. “You said you didn’t want to do that anymore.” she reminds Kathy, stretching her arms.
“Your home.” says Kathy “Just, sit tight, alright, we’re almost there.”
Unhappily, this was not the moment that Tosh chose to tell Kathy that she had moved. That came approximately two minutes after Kathy had pulled up outside Tosh’s house. After trying fruitlessly to get Tosh to give her directions, Kathy just snatched Toshiko’s bag and went through her purse until she found something with her address on it.
“Mugger!” Tosh yells, rolling down the window.
“Shut up!” Kathy shouts back, throwing the bag back into Tosh’s lap and starting the engine. Tosh bursts out laughing and keeps yelling until Kathy locks the windows shut.
Tosh’s new place is a flashy new apartment block with a vast underground car park, where Kathy parks and Tosh starts getting difficult again.
“Don’t wanna.”
“Jesus Christ, you are being such a child.” Kathy grumbles, yanking her seat belt off and going around to the other side of the car. She smacks Tosh’s hands away and undoes her seatbelt and pulls her out of the car. Tosh manages to keep her balance for a full ten seconds before she starts to teeter over. Kathy pushes her up against the car to steady her.
Or at least, that’s what she meant to do. Suddenly all she can smell is alcohol and that faint scent of Jasmine that always lingers around Toshiko, as she runs her fingers through her hair and Tosh’s hands settle on her hips.
And really she should stop the second she realises what they’re doing. But the second comes and goes and she lets it go on. She’s missed…not this - they’ve never done anything quite like this before - but she’s missed Tosh. So much.
Eventually Tosh is the one to push away. She doesn’t look shocked or angry; she just looks so utterly dispirted Kathy’s breath catches.
“Tosh, what’s -”
“He left me.” Tosh says, fat trembling tears rolling down her cheeks. “He - I had to send him away, and now he’s…” Her shoulders shake as she lets out a big choking sob. “He didn’t remember me. Didn’t have a clue. I’m never going to see him again. And he’s never going to -” Any further words drown as she begins to cry in earnest, slumping back against the car.
Kathy steps back instinctively to give her some space, even as her hands reach for Toshiko’s face. “Hey, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Tosh just shakes her head, pushing her away and runs, bare feet thumping across the concrete.
“Tosh, wait!” She’s wearing heels, but can easily outrun Tosh. She doesn’t know the layout of the building, but she remembers the number of Tosh’s apartment. Why then, she just stands, watching as Toshiko runs away Kathy doesn’t know.
The next morning as Kathy looks over the two bodies, a cup of tea in one numb hand, she can’t help but wonder if this is karma for lying to Nick about that case she was working.
“So, double murder, mysterious circumstances,” Jack crouches down next to Kathy. “You mind telling me what was so mysterious about these circumstances?”
Kathy lifts the cover. “From what the coroner’s been able to make out both bodies have been completely drained of blood.”
Jack grimaces. “Nice. Owen?”
Owen Harper set the cases he’d been carrying down and set to work examining the corpse.
“I was…I was thinking vampirism,” says Kathy, clearing her throat. Jack smirks “but we haven’t found any wounds or puncture marks.”
Owen, who had been checking the neck, grunts in confirmation.
“Could still be a vampire. They don’t all have teeth.” says Owen, checking the victim’s eyes. “I’m going to have to get these two back to the lab, run some tests.” He added to Jack.
Jack nods and turns to Kathy. “I understand you’ve been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector.” She nods warily - she always gets wary when Jack smiles at her like just so. “Excellent! You’ll be able to turn them over to us, then?”
Kathy purses her lips and gets to her feet. “But of course. I’ll go sign off on it now.”
“Excellent.” says Jack, joining her “Anything else we should know?”
“Should all be in the reports.” says Kathy, stepping back from the scene and hopefully out of earshot of Owen. Jack follows “But there’s something I’d like to know.”
The smile vanishes. “You know I can’t disclose any -”
“I saw Toshiko last night.”
“Oh.” Jack’s face goes perfectly, politely blank. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“And…?”
“What happened?”
Jack shrugs. “She’s just been a bit out of sorts lately, you know how she is.”
Kathy nods, eyes narrowing in a big fake smile. “Yeah. Now, seriously, what happened? She was in a complete state! I’ve never seen her so upset -”
“Yeah well, that’s probably because you didn’t let the dust settle after you broke if off with her.” says Jack quietly.
It’s a minute before Kathy can speak. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say I did this to her?”
“I’m trying, apparently rather unsuccessfully, to tell you that it’s none of your business.” says Jack flatly “Not anymore.”
“I can still care about what happens to her.” Kathy growls.
“You can.” Jack agrees “I still can’t tell you anything.”
“I didn’t end it because I stopped loving her!” Kathy strains to keep her voice low, but can’t help the way her voice rises to a shout.
“I know.” he says, looking on her with the same distant compassion people usually show the dead “But that’s your problem.”
Kathy watches hopelessly as he walks away, back to his team and discusses something with Gwen. Behind the police tape Tosh is stood by their car, fiddling with some gadget or other, pausing to rub her eyes. She glances up toward the scene and locks eyes with Kathy. She drops her gaze back to her palm top and turns away.
Kathy shakes her head and goes off to fill in Jack’s bloody forms. When she looks back over her shoulder, Jack’s grinning, telling Tosh and Gwen a joke or a story. Gwen falls around laughing with him. Tosh rubs her forehead, frowning like she’s got a headache. She looks around and Kathy promptly looks away and walks faster.