Fic: Lives Are For Living. (1/?)
Title Lives Are For Living. (1/?)
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other TW and BH characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 1250. Total will be over 20k.
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother.
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 in much later in the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV.
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 deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out off 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.
The countryside rolled away on either side of the landrover as Andy drove along the winding road that led up from Rhayader to the Elan Valley.
Central Wales on a late spring day with the sun shining and the wind scudding clouds overhead made the place seem far more idyllic than Andy knew the place to sometimes be. He'd first seen it three months earlier on a bitterly cold February day when he'd come to see what it was his Great Aunt Edith had left him. Although left wasn't quite the right term as she was still alive, if very frail. She'd wanted to make sure that the small hill farm she'd lived on all her life remained in the family and rather than risk leaving it in a will to someone who might sell it straight away.
The fact that there was no livestock left apart from half a dozen chickens that were currently living on a small holding in the next valley had helped Andy make his decision. He'd take on Cwm Elan Farm and try to make a new life for himself.
It had come as a lifeline at at time when he'd most needed it. The past two years had been horrendous and it was only now, isolated from the world and from Cardiff, somewhere Andy had once sworn he'd never leave, that he'd started to feel better about his life and the future.
Parking the battered old landrover in the cobbled yard in front of the farm house, Andy switched off the loud, juddering engine and listened to the quiet of the countryside around him. The distant bleat of a hill sheep, the twittering of a bird and the bubbling of the spring that ran out of the base of the cliff behind the farmhouse and down to join the river in the valley below.
Cwm Elan Farmhouse was a traditional Welsh longhouse and was, if he was honest, in its current state little more than a three roomed shed. Set with it back to a sheer rock face and flanked by two crumbling outbuildings and some rusted bits of corrugated iron that had probably once been a pigsty it was in it current state hardly a dream house.
The farmhouse's three rooms consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room that also contained an ancient range style cooker and a utility room that contained an equally ancient copper and mangle, a sink and a tin bath. He supposed that the small stone room that had once been a coal shed that opened into the utility room might also count - not that it could really be used for anything, it was damp, windowless and the ceiling was barely high enough for him to be stand up in it. And the less that was said about the outside toilet the better.
Despite its problems, Andy had finally found a kind of peace that had been missing from his life for for too long. From the moment the creatures Gwen had called weevils had brought carnage to the police station where he worked in Cardiff things had started to degenerate. Wary glances in his direction and whispers about his involvement with Gwen and Torchwood. Snide comments about how 'he'd been so lucky not gone into the briefing room a few minutes earlier or he might have been caught in the attack.' There's been no 'Bloody hell, are you alright, mate?' because he'd been the one to find most of the senior officers in the station shredded like so much meat as to nearly be unrecognisable. No, for him there had just been suspicion.
Getting out of the landrover, Andy began to unload the things he'd collected from the builders merchant earlier that morning. All too familiar thoughts still churned over in his mind, how that even after the weevil attack things might have been alright but for what happened next.
From the moment the bomb had blown Roald Dahl Plas to pieces things had never been the same. The world had stopped making sense. Andy paused, hands resting on a roll of waterproof fabric what was needed for the barn roof. Even now, more than a year since the day when he'd gone against orders to do what was right the memories were still fresh. The suspension, reinstatement and associated suspicion and isolation from his colleagues that followed still had the ability to leave a sick feeling in his stomach and his nerves on edge.
Closing his eyes, Andy took a few deep breaths until his heart no longer felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. It would be a long time, he thought, until he was able think about what had happened, how he'd effectively been thrown on the scrapheap, forced to take early retirement on supposedly on mental health grounds or face trial for misconduct and maybe even jail time. It had been no choice at all, he'd taken the money knowing that they were paying him off to be rid of what they saw as an embarrassment to the force.
Opening his eyes, Andy ran his hand through his hair, which was staring to curl and fizz over the tops of this ear now that he no longer kept it cut short. Today it was just him, a load of slates that needed removing from the barn roof and an awkward roll of material that needed tacking to the roof joists before the slates could be replaced.
Once the landrover was unloaded and the pile of garden rubbish that Andy had cleared from the around the barn the previous day was raked into a bonfire and lit, he turned his attention to getting to removing the slates.
The breeze dropped as the morning went on, the sun getting hotter as it rose high overhead. Sitting on the roof, a slowly growing pile of slates stacked on the wall top, Andy was confident that he would have this part of the job done by the end of the week.
He'd look at a few books and a blog written by a couple in Cumbria doing a similar kind of renovation, and Andy was fairly sure he'd got the basics of it. Take the old slates off, check the timbers for rot and replace if necessary, nail on the waterproof felt stuff and then put back the slates. Simple if backbreaking work. He didn't mind that, in fact the harder the work the better. Going to bed tired but feeling like he'd really accomplished something had helped his mood since moving here.
It was just after midday and Andy was considering taking a break when he saw a young man walking across the fields towards the farmhouse. A hiker was Andy's first thought as he looked at the man's backpack with its tent roll strapped to the bottom of it and a couple of pans tied to the top. Yet the clothes didn't seem quite right, Andy noted as the man got closer. The vest and cargo shorts had seen better days, clean but worn out.
Setting aside the slate that he'd been trying to remove, Andy was surprised at how easily he fell back into police mode as he made a more thorough assessment. The man was young, late teens to early twenties at most. Five foot six to five foot eight tall, average build, short dark hair. He didn't appear to be armed or in a hurry to either get somewhere or away from anything.
Andy was still trying to decide whether he should call out to the man and ask him if he was lost when the man stopped at the edge of the farmyard and waved.
Part 2 http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/215686.html
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other TW and BH characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 1250. Total will be over 20k.
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother.
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 in much later in the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV.
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 deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out off 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.
The countryside rolled away on either side of the landrover as Andy drove along the winding road that led up from Rhayader to the Elan Valley.
Central Wales on a late spring day with the sun shining and the wind scudding clouds overhead made the place seem far more idyllic than Andy knew the place to sometimes be. He'd first seen it three months earlier on a bitterly cold February day when he'd come to see what it was his Great Aunt Edith had left him. Although left wasn't quite the right term as she was still alive, if very frail. She'd wanted to make sure that the small hill farm she'd lived on all her life remained in the family and rather than risk leaving it in a will to someone who might sell it straight away.
The fact that there was no livestock left apart from half a dozen chickens that were currently living on a small holding in the next valley had helped Andy make his decision. He'd take on Cwm Elan Farm and try to make a new life for himself.
It had come as a lifeline at at time when he'd most needed it. The past two years had been horrendous and it was only now, isolated from the world and from Cardiff, somewhere Andy had once sworn he'd never leave, that he'd started to feel better about his life and the future.
Parking the battered old landrover in the cobbled yard in front of the farm house, Andy switched off the loud, juddering engine and listened to the quiet of the countryside around him. The distant bleat of a hill sheep, the twittering of a bird and the bubbling of the spring that ran out of the base of the cliff behind the farmhouse and down to join the river in the valley below.
Cwm Elan Farmhouse was a traditional Welsh longhouse and was, if he was honest, in its current state little more than a three roomed shed. Set with it back to a sheer rock face and flanked by two crumbling outbuildings and some rusted bits of corrugated iron that had probably once been a pigsty it was in it current state hardly a dream house.
The farmhouse's three rooms consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room that also contained an ancient range style cooker and a utility room that contained an equally ancient copper and mangle, a sink and a tin bath. He supposed that the small stone room that had once been a coal shed that opened into the utility room might also count - not that it could really be used for anything, it was damp, windowless and the ceiling was barely high enough for him to be stand up in it. And the less that was said about the outside toilet the better.
Despite its problems, Andy had finally found a kind of peace that had been missing from his life for for too long. From the moment the creatures Gwen had called weevils had brought carnage to the police station where he worked in Cardiff things had started to degenerate. Wary glances in his direction and whispers about his involvement with Gwen and Torchwood. Snide comments about how 'he'd been so lucky not gone into the briefing room a few minutes earlier or he might have been caught in the attack.' There's been no 'Bloody hell, are you alright, mate?' because he'd been the one to find most of the senior officers in the station shredded like so much meat as to nearly be unrecognisable. No, for him there had just been suspicion.
Getting out of the landrover, Andy began to unload the things he'd collected from the builders merchant earlier that morning. All too familiar thoughts still churned over in his mind, how that even after the weevil attack things might have been alright but for what happened next.
From the moment the bomb had blown Roald Dahl Plas to pieces things had never been the same. The world had stopped making sense. Andy paused, hands resting on a roll of waterproof fabric what was needed for the barn roof. Even now, more than a year since the day when he'd gone against orders to do what was right the memories were still fresh. The suspension, reinstatement and associated suspicion and isolation from his colleagues that followed still had the ability to leave a sick feeling in his stomach and his nerves on edge.
Closing his eyes, Andy took a few deep breaths until his heart no longer felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. It would be a long time, he thought, until he was able think about what had happened, how he'd effectively been thrown on the scrapheap, forced to take early retirement on supposedly on mental health grounds or face trial for misconduct and maybe even jail time. It had been no choice at all, he'd taken the money knowing that they were paying him off to be rid of what they saw as an embarrassment to the force.
Opening his eyes, Andy ran his hand through his hair, which was staring to curl and fizz over the tops of this ear now that he no longer kept it cut short. Today it was just him, a load of slates that needed removing from the barn roof and an awkward roll of material that needed tacking to the roof joists before the slates could be replaced.
Once the landrover was unloaded and the pile of garden rubbish that Andy had cleared from the around the barn the previous day was raked into a bonfire and lit, he turned his attention to getting to removing the slates.
The breeze dropped as the morning went on, the sun getting hotter as it rose high overhead. Sitting on the roof, a slowly growing pile of slates stacked on the wall top, Andy was confident that he would have this part of the job done by the end of the week.
He'd look at a few books and a blog written by a couple in Cumbria doing a similar kind of renovation, and Andy was fairly sure he'd got the basics of it. Take the old slates off, check the timbers for rot and replace if necessary, nail on the waterproof felt stuff and then put back the slates. Simple if backbreaking work. He didn't mind that, in fact the harder the work the better. Going to bed tired but feeling like he'd really accomplished something had helped his mood since moving here.
It was just after midday and Andy was considering taking a break when he saw a young man walking across the fields towards the farmhouse. A hiker was Andy's first thought as he looked at the man's backpack with its tent roll strapped to the bottom of it and a couple of pans tied to the top. Yet the clothes didn't seem quite right, Andy noted as the man got closer. The vest and cargo shorts had seen better days, clean but worn out.
Setting aside the slate that he'd been trying to remove, Andy was surprised at how easily he fell back into police mode as he made a more thorough assessment. The man was young, late teens to early twenties at most. Five foot six to five foot eight tall, average build, short dark hair. He didn't appear to be armed or in a hurry to either get somewhere or away from anything.
Andy was still trying to decide whether he should call out to the man and ask him if he was lost when the man stopped at the edge of the farmyard and waved.
Part 2 http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/215686.html