Work Text:
Helen (on Britslash) challenged us to find "Just a few hundred words on the
most absurd couple your imagination can come up with."
All right, you asked for it.
TITLE: Summer Rain
AUTHOR: kel
SERIES/PAIRING: Hold yer horses.
RATING: PG-13 for naughty words.
COMMENTS: Hasn't been beta'd, sorry (well, obviously). Comments of any
kind to bessie@goldweb.com.au Come on, chillun, brighten my
workday for me now.
As a hard-working, industrious Commonwealth Public Servant, I'm pleased to
inform you that the following was entirely funded by the Australian
taxpayer. Personally I consider workplace slash to be a perfectly
legitimate way to compensate for cuts to arts funding under the Howard
government, but for Chrissake don't tell my boss or she'll give me something
to *do*.
============
SUMMER RAIN
by kel 3/9/98
===========
Bob Cryer lies naked in the long, late-summer grass, eyes closed, listening
to the rain patter around him, enjoying the gentle feel of the drops on his
skin. It's worth it to be out of the office, even if it is only for a day.
And out of London -- the fog, the dirt, the lead in the air, Reg Hollis...
God almighty, it's definitely good to be away from Reg Hollis. He grimaces,
automatically.
"Oh yeah, that's the other thing."
"Huhmm?" A dark, sleepy voice issues from somewhere above him.
"He's started wearing a bloody trenchcoat now. Ever since that business
with Area and the crates... Dunno *what* he thinks he looks like."
He feels his companion shift, a large hand coming down to stroke his greying
fringe, stopping off along the way for a not-so-surreptitious scratch at the
copious groin upon which Bob's head rests.
"I told you he were an idiot."
"Yes, but, still..."
"Look, just for once, can we talk about something other than the job?
You're not a sarge on **my** patch." Stroke. Scratch. The other coughs,
a deep, tobacco-laden growl that seems to rumble up from somewhere deep
underground, engulfing as the old, forgotten mines beneath them. Scratch.
Stroke. "All work and no play, Bob. There's more to life than Reg bloody
Hollis."
"Thank God for that." Bob shifts slightly, nuzzling closer, revelling in
the feel of the watery sun on his bare shoulder, the stray blades of
still-dry grass sticking up awkwardly from under the other's bulk, tickling
his back. He laughs, brings one hand up to stroke the broad expanse of
thigh in front of him, watches the pale, fragile skin stretch and wrinkle.
His fingers move in intricate, indolent whorls, tracing words he doesn't
need to say. "I'll do you a deal."
"Oh aye?" Another cough, honeyed thunder, a sound he's learned to miss at
midnight as Shirley curls against him in their wedding bed.
"Yes *aye*." He grins, pure and boyish mischief in his eyes, well-worn,
well-loved routine. "I won't mention Reg Hollis, and you don't mention
rugby. OK?" He ducks, laughing as one huge hand swats at his ear,
connecting with old and friendly force.
"Get knotted, Cryer. Man's got to have his vices."
The lazy affection in the other's voice folds itself around him like a
favourite blanket. The hand creeps down, finds and holds his own, dark
hairs stirring gently in the breeze. He brings it to his lips, gentle kiss
on a gargantuan and gnarling thumb, turns to place another in the darker,
wirier tufts beneath his cheek.
"True, but there's no law that says he has to have the full set."
That old, low chuckle - deep, warm, impossibly contagious. In his youth Bob
tried to draw it -- now **there's** a daft idea, he thinks, fondly -- and
found it impossible. Now, twenty years later, he visualises it as the dark
stranger at a party, the loud twat in the bad suit who pulls you onto the
dance floor whether you want to go or not, who smiles like he knows you
inside out and won't take no for an answer. The one who whirls you round,
leaves you dizzy, gives you something you'll remember as the time of your
life. Just like its owner, really.
"You sound like my bloody doctor."
The other's tone: light-hearted. Too bloody light-hearted by half, thinks
Bob, but knows better than to push it. Instead he throws the weight of his
concern into the brush of lips upon the other's softest skin, breathing
velvet musk.
"What'd he say this time?"
The only answer is a click, a hiss, a grunt of satisfaction. Bob props
himself up on his elbows and turns to face his lover, finds him grinning
rudely through a haze of cheap and noxious smoke.
Gaptoothed grin, belch, the buzz of insects blurring with the scritch of
blunted fingertips along an ever-broadening belly.
"The suspect chooses not to answer that question on the grounds that he may
incriminate himself. **And** the medical officer in question, who just
between you and me, is a fucking prat of the first water."
Bob tries not to laugh, swears, flicks the other's navel rim just hard
enough to hurt.
"But..."
"Bob..." Lazy wave of the cigarette, an easy tone with just enough edge to
it to warn. Gentle.
"Oh... fuck it. I know, I know - '"My body, my business', right?" Bob sits
up, deliberately avoids the other's eyes, concentrates on the weaving path
of a tiny ant, fearless mountaineer on the twin Kilamanjaros of the other's
chest.
"Aye, well that's what I told 'im. In fluent Anglo-Saxon, mind. He got the
point eventually."
"Jesus H. **Christ**... "
He shakes his head, meets the other's gaze, incipient scowl drawn from him
by the impossibly cheerful five-acre smile, face creased in laughter at his
own expense, all-engulfing. Irresistible as the broad, powerful arm which
slides around him, pulls him over and down until they lie chest to chest,
locked together, sliding together like old leather, old love, worn to fit
closer than a sleeping child and her teddybear.
The cigarette, discarded, smoulders gently. Bob sees tiny, fragile rainbows
as droplets hit the ash and turn to steam, then finds that deep hazel gaze
fixed on his, hears that voice gruff and gentle and oh so part of him now.
"Come on, Bob. There's nowt wrong with the Fat Man that another twenty
years of this won't cure, hey?"
Gentle hand cupping his face, a touch that reaches through the grey and
holds his heart.
"I said, hey?"
Bob sighs, lays his head on the other's shoulder, gives in and smiles,
feeling fifty-odd and tired, twenty-odd and ready for anything. Safe.
Home.
"Yeah, fine, OK. Have it your way."
Broad arms close around him, lips touch his as gently as the rain.
"I always do, you daft bugger, I always do," smiles Andy Dalziel.
end
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(and they said it couldn't be done!)
l