fic: Chutney on Toast, pt 1
Introduction by waffleguppies
Me and marshwiggledyke started this one in the middle. This makes it a bit hard to follow, so I'm going to include a summary of the events of the first-half-that-wasn't. We both enjoyed writing this one. It's quite sad and bittersweet, and it's based on an AU premise which, thankfully, didn't really happen.
So... after all is said and done, and all the paperwork is finally dealt with, Nicholas Angel leaves Sandford. He's gone for a very long time. He becomes a Chief Inspector in the Met, and continues to be the most efficient and driven police officer London has ever seen.
Ten years on, the BBC commissions a documentary about the Sandford Incident. Before he can voice much in the way of what a stupid idea this is, Nicholas finds himself railroaded into taking part through a particularly vicious (and viscous) display of office politics. He finds himself back in Sandford, being stalked and filmed by a very eager investigative journalist, who quite quickly becomes a very fed-up investigative journalist, upon discovering that his chosen subject is about as exciting and easy to get to open up as a concrete oyster.
Danny, now an Inspector and protective of his village in a way which gives Nicholas unpleasant feelings of deja-vu, does not seem to be happy about the intrusion. The two ex-partners immediately get off on the wrong foot, and the journalist, who fancies himself in the running for a Pulitzer for this little job, plays them off against each other. Over the next few days, bad feeling increases, old grievances come to the surface, and it all eventually comes to a head in a screaming match in Market Square. Which, due to some very unfortunate remarks in the heat of the moment from both parties, turns into a fight.
The film crew, being honour-bound to observe events without affecting them, films the whole thing and then makes a run for it.
Title: Chutney on Toast
Ratings/Warnings: Hard PG-13 for kissing, mentions of mansexing and mansoloing, polyamory, exes, and language.
Characters: Nick/Danny, in their early forties
Wordcount: 7425
Summary above.
***
The fight didn't last much longer, after that.
Both parties had more or less battered themselves to a standstill, and last-ditch flailing at each other somehow turned into mutual support, and, when that failed, mutual sliding to the cobbles.
The tight, shivery fistful of leaves fluttered in Nicholas's chest again, pounding his temples hot and dark, and he felt in his pocket for his pills, dry-swallowed one. Danny watched him, gingerly feeling around his own swelling eye.
“You're not well, are you?”
Nicholas laughed, the short blunt huff of a man appreciating a not-very-funny irony.
“No.” With a sideways bunny-ears smile, he took on the persona of his doctors, his colleagues, his higher-ups. “'I work too hard.'”
Danny nodded.
“Some things don't change.”
“Yeah, they do, Danny. Back then, you made me- made me switch off, for a little bit. I think you were the only person- the only anything- who ever really distracted me from the job. That wouldn't happen now. I'm too, too...”
He stopped, shrugged, wiped his lip on his shirt.
“Yeah, well.” Danny retrieved his hat from the pavement, brushed heavily at it. “I'm not that good at it myself, anymore. Too much to be gettin' on with. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I do.” Nicholas kept quiet for a bit, then added “I'm sorry I said you were like... well. I'm sorry.”
Danny waved it off. “Nevermind, 'ey. I'm sorry I said you weren't from round here an'a'.”
“Well. You were right, I'm not.”
“You could've been, though.”
For another minute, maybe two, neither moved, or spoke. Like a couple of kids after a punch-up, the two bruised, bleeding fortysomething police officers sat on the curb next to each other, a couple of thousand-yard-stares fixed on the dusty cobbles.
At last, Danny pulled himself upright, offered a hand. Nicholas took hold of it and stood, after a couple of false starts.
“What happens now, then?”
Nicholas glanced in the direction which the next Louis Theroux/Martin Bashir/Michael Moore (plus protesting camerawoman) had vanished in. “Now, I suppose I go and subpoena our mutual friend for that tape, and try to save both our jobs.”
“You can't subpoena a tape from a journalist,” said Danny. The shadow of the ghost of a little note of awe flickered in Danny's voice. Hearing it, like a solemn little epitaph of all the innocent hero-worship of that once-upon-a-time- that bizarre, bloody, and occasionally brilliant summer- made Nicholas felt very old.
“Yes, I can,” he told him, wearily. “I'm a Chief Inspector.”
Danny frowned, and the tiny bubble of might-have-been shattered in the breeze. "Yeah? I'ma Inspector, and you're on my beat. You know, I used to think you were such hot shit an' all, an' you know wot I learned? I'ma hell of a lot better at standing up to people than you are."
"Oh yeah?" Nicholas sniffed. His nose didn't seem to be that badly bruised, but it felt hot and stuffed-up, as if the bleeding was happening somewhere inside. Somewhere along the line, Danny had acquired a hell of a right hook.
Somehow, he didn't feel like arguing any more.
"Got a better idea?"
Danny shrugged, blinking his black eye, doing his not-quite-looking-at-Nicholas trick. "...Pub?"
*
Nicholas ordered an orange juice. He really fucking wanted a proper drink, actually, but that was pretty much exactly why he knew he shouldn't have one, and besides, alcohol and his pills were not easy bedfellows.
“What're you having?” Between them, the state of their clothes and their various bumps and bruises, they were attracting some askance looks. Nicholas was pretty certain that the average Crown patron had aged by about ten years since he'd last been in the pub, but then, so had he.
"Pint 'o bitter," said Danny, shouldering onto the bar and squinting at a blackboard he'd long since memorized. Starting up at square one again.
Nicholas paid, following Danny over to a table. He glanced over at a few elderly men playing darts in the small crowded area between the bar and the door. Those kids... by now they would have been nearly the age he had been, the night he'd kicked them all out of the pub. They all would have been old enough to drink here, now.
He settled himself in a chair with his back to the door. You could make your peace with a lot of things, given time, but it didn't mean that they rested easy.
“Where's the fruit machine?”
Danny grunted into his pint. "They say it's 'cause it was too twentieth century, but really it's 'cause Bob died on it."
“Oh, I- oh.” Nicholas hadn't asked. He'd noticed, of course, felt the space where there had been a person- a friend and colleague, as far as Danny was concerned- but he'd fallen out of the habit of enquiring about other people's lives. Retired, dead, they both meant more or less the same thing in the scope of his daily routines back home- either way, people came and went, passed through the departments and the units he was responsible for.
I should have asked.
“I'm sorry.”
"Just kinda slumped on it on his way out," said Danny. For a second, he sounded strangely young. "We thought he'd just fallen asleep on his feet at first. Nope. Died on a fruit machine."
Nicholas stared down into his glass. It was preferable, right now, to looking Danny in the eye. None of the usual platitudes sounded anything other than patronising in his head, so he struggled for something else.
“Do, um... do you still have a K9 unit?”
Danny shook his head. "We still got Saxon, but he's nearin' it and all. Mostly sleeps under Bob's old desk nowadays." He brightened. "We've got Gabe, though, since he cleaned up. Nearly as good as.." He faltered, giving Nicholas a tiny shameful glance out of the corner of his swollen eye.
"Anyway."
But Nicholas was still gazing blankly into his orange juice.
“This documentary, Danny... you were right, it wasn't my idea. I didn't want to be involved at all, but...” He shrugged. “Politics.”
"Well, I got that," laughed Danny. "People like big exciting copper films. 'Specially if they're real. And if they've got at least two decent explosions an' a car chase." He quieted down. "You were right about the afters, though. The paperwork."
“Hey, I stayed for the paperwork.”
"Din't stay for after the paperwork. Which meant more paperwork. For me."
A frown settled into the place it had carved out for itself above Nicholas's nose. “Well, whenever I left, there was going to be more paperwork. For both of us. I just didn't want to drag it out longer than necessary.”
"Didn't have to leave at all," muttered Danny into his pint, and rubbed at his eyes. "Don't understand why anybody'd want to leave Sandford."
“I didn't want to, I-”
Nicholas stopped, appalled at himself.
“I mean to say, we just had... we were just heading in different directions, Danny. I belonged- I belong in London, that's all, it had nothing to do with Sandford.”
"Looks like it's done you real well an'a," said Danny, eyeing him. "Working too hard for a beer."
Nicholas pulled a face and drank most of his orange juice in one. I really fucking want a beer. One beer will not kill me.
Well, probably not.
“They want-” He stopped, sniffed again, smiled a tight smile. “Yeah, well. Looks like you haven't done badly for yourself.”
Danny just wanted that I'm trying to be polite face to go the fuck away already. Haven't done badly. What the fuck. "Doris finally gave up trying to play matchmaker with me."
Nicholas coughed. “Really? I always thought, er, maybe you and Doris...”
"Naaaah. Was never like that with Doris, anyhow. She's with the Turners, now."
"Plchzth!!"
Incautiously, considering the subject matter, Nicholas had picked this moment to attempt to finish his juice. He managed to set his glass down, eyes watering.
"So, you're not... uh... I mean, you're not, at the... Well. Yes. Good to know. I'll bear that in mind," he added, clawing his way back towards formality with every word, after a very shaky start, "at least I'll know not to embarrass anybody if it comes up-"
But Danny was grinning as if he'd ended up with ketchup all over his face. "Ey, I remember when I made you do that. Even turned your head to be polite."
"What? When?" Nicholas, flustered, felt in his pocket for a tissue.
Then he remembered. Cranberry juice burned a lot more than orange if it made its way into your nasal passages, that was for sure. Marcus Carter's big brother said he'd fingered 'er up the duck pond-
"Oh, jesus." Despite himself, and the crassness of it, he was smiling.
Now that was the look Danny had missed. It looked like Nicholas hadn't smiled in years, and it nearly hid all the tight frown lines scratched into his face. "Doris's up the duff for the second time, though whose it is, no one knows. You? Puttin' buns in any ovens, lately?"
“You are joking.” Nicholas made an effort to compose his face. It was hard, because the way Danny looked when he knew he'd made him smile was something else that was immediately familiar, even with the black eye, familiar and so, so welcome, but he managed it.
“No. No, I haven't... no.”
"Awww. No little Nicholas's running around, pouting their little faces off b'cause nobody's doing it right and tryin' to vault the sofa?"
Nicholas shrugged. “I'm not really a fan of small children. Or vice versa, come to that.” But you, you'd've made a fantastic dad.
Danny looked a bit disappointed, but stood. "Want another round of orange juice?"
Shouldn't do this. Shouldn't. Fuck it.
“I'll... have a pint, please.”
*
Part 2