Work Text:
As the days go by
by Spix
"Don´t the hours grow shorter as the days go by?"
Morse truly hears only that line in the song playing in the radio. Of course it´s not his, if it were he wouldn´t be hearing that station, too juvenile for him. Still the question needs an answer: yes, days ARE shorter... at least for him.
He´s in what it was his favourite pub near home on his day off, he was busy last couple of months, work, hospital, almost being retired... that was his life lately. He didn´t have the time to go to the pub and, like many things in this too-fast age, it changed. Well, that´s not the word the bartender used: renewed, actualized to be more Fashionable Modern. Hence the music and the crowd.
Morse is nursing his beer in a last act of respect for the place he will not come back to again. He shouldn´t be drinking it anyway, doctor´s orders. He shouldn´t be doing a lot of things if he wants to live another couple of years.
The Police is changing too, more high-tech, more younger officials and God forbid, younger DI. So many changes are making him feel slow and tired. Morse knows he'll just keep going on until Lewis makes DI, stupid bureaucrats didn´t let him until poor Robbie just gave up. But Morse didn´t train the boy for nothing.
Boy, how untrue, even the young DS who was under his wings all this time is years past. Robbie will do very fine as Inspector, Morse is sure of that. He just wants a little more time to see it and tell him he´s proud. Robbie always made Morse proud.
Yet he never said it directly. Maybe he ought to say it soon because indeed days are growing short.
end