Title: The Letter
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the show. Even the idea came from a story Joodiff wrote for me. The story just developed a life of its own.
Summary: Boyd knows it is a very bad idea. An invasion of privacy. Post-"Endgame" (mild spoilers for that episode)
A/N: This is my very belated birthday-present for CrazyMaryT (I hope it counts that I wrote it on her birthday). Hope you all enjoy. Many thanks and hugs go to Joodiff for the quick beta.
The Letter
Boyd knows it's a bad idea as soon as he actually holds it in his hands. His name being written on it in Grace's distinctive looping scrawl isn't really an excuse. The easily recognisable four letter word that is his name on the somewhat pristine cream coloured stationary hasn't entitled him to actually pick it up, open and read it.
It was a very bad idea and Boyd is only too aware of it before he even unfolds the sheets of paper contained in the envelope. There are only two, rather small ones at that. Thick paper, probably even a little fragrant, but he doesn't dare to find out.
It's not his place to just take what is lying around in this room, even if it is supposedly addressed to him. If Grace wanted him to read it, she would have given it to him, or had somebody give it to him in case...
He stops the line of thought before it can fully take hold. Ignore the thought and it will go away, won't it?
But it doesn't.
Boyd knows.
The thought hasn't left him for days. Weeks.
Nothing can break through the ongoing cycle of these thoughts and there has been plenty of material that tried. Life-altering things, disastrous things, unfinished things. All with the potential to finish him off for good. He knows, because he is far more self-reflective than he likes people to know. His image is seemingly the only constant in the chaos around him.
He stares at the paper in his hand, the solidity of it, the reality of the writing inside of it. It creases where his thumb presses the paper against his fingers, and for a moment Boyd imagines the fingerprint his thumb will leave. Something for Eve to find, if she were to be so inclined. Which she isn't.
Eve is back at headquarters manning the fort, so to speak. Along with Spence and Kat. Still, Boyd knows that they are not getting any work done today. They'll be sitting and staring at the various phones, willing them to ring and at the same time, praying that they won't just yet. Early calls are bad news.
Boyd doesn't think either would appreciate him calling to say that he's found a letter, addressed to him, that he isn't sure he should read. In fact, Boyd knows he shouldn't read this letter, but he can't find it in himself to put it away again, if possible in a way that Grace won't notice he has found it.
It will be hours before she'll be back in this room, days possibly. And upon arrival there will be much more pressing matters for Grace than to check whether objects have been moved from their original place. Not that he expects her to be suspicious in any way. Despite being burgled, mugged, shot at and kidnapped, Grace is one of the single-most carefree people when it comes to her personal safety.
That gives him pause, because it doesn't really make sense. But when does Grace really make sense?
She'll tell him things, like she did over the past days and weeks, but almost none of them really managed to take hold in his mind. He's been too preoccupied with the thought he refuses to entertain. Naturally, Grace has seen right through him. He can still feel her hand holding onto his, squeezing to emphasise what he does not understand. Just like before everything went to hell in a hand basket.
Back then he wasn't sure if it was for her benefit or his. This time, he has the strong suspicion that Grace was indulging him, holding his hand in a show of support, instead of the other way around. As it should have been.
Time crawls, seemingly backwards. It's only been ninety minutes since they took her away. Not even halftime yet. If things...
He bites back a curse at the predictable direction in which his thoughts go again.
There are so many things he could be doing right now. So insanely many things he should be doing as a highly-paid police officer with a unit recently coming out of a brush with disaster. His in-tray is overflowing, the answering machine for his office phone filled up with urgent demands from his superiors. But he's sitting here on this bloody uncomfortable chair. Staring at a letter he shouldn't be reading. Doesn't even know whether he wants to read it.
A small move near the door catches his attention for a moment and he whips around to check almost violently. He's still jumpy, still hyper-aware of anything that could even remotely pose a threat.
The young woman who throws him a questioning look, asking whether he needs anything, is an employee though, somebody he's seen around, seen being kind to Grace. That's important, makes her an acceptable person.
They talk, Grace said with a small grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. Boyd didn't catch on right away. Gossip keeps every workplace oiled as he's found out to his cost over the years. Why should it be different here?
Grace just shook her head. They talk about them, she finally admitted after some of the good old back and forth they are so incredibly good at. Words like 'obtuse', 'difficult', 'grumpy' fell. He smiles for a brief moment. There was no real heat in it. There never is these days.
So the employees talk...about them. About...well...them.
Grace gleefully used the terms that make his hackles rise. She does it for pure sport. Just to get him worked up.
Works every bloody time, too.
Shaking his head, he groans at the tightness of his muscles. Why in God's name do they never have anything remotely comfortable to sit on? Shouldn't they? Considering the hours people spend on these chairs? It feels like the uneven pattern of the chair back will leave a permanent impression on his back, not to mention his clothes. Maybe he should sue...
That's more like what Boyd feels like. Just raise hell, because he can't stand sitting here waiting. Forced into inertia. Waiting.
It was a bad idea.
Picking up the letter, that is. Not being here, even though he hates every damn second of every damn minute he waits without knowing.
The young woman is back, pulling him out of the spiral of increasingly dark thoughts. He shouldn't think so much. Grace told him just the day before that he shouldn't think so much, but actually say what he thinks. She believes it would be easier...cathartic. The sad fact is that it would probably do him good, but it's not a concept he is willing to consider.
Boyd wants to do things, consequences be damned. Not sit around and wool-gather like he does at this moment. Action, not words.
The woman repeats herself, holding out a plastic cup with tea in it. Boyd takes it gratefully, only to find himself in a sudden bout of clumsiness. The paper in his hand is precious, even though it taunts him. But the tea is hot, so is the cup, and he can't really balance both.
The letter drops onto his lap, the pages opening slightly. Grace's looping scrawl.
He stares at it unseeingly, refusing to distinguish any specific word. That makes it real, the breach of privacy.
"The letter was very important to her," the young woman says, giving Boyd a start. "She wanted you to have it, if..."
He places the cup on the floor in jerky movements that speak clearly of his unwillingness to hear any more. With the other, he covers the writing, as if to hide the intimate content of the letter. Even though he doesn't know whether it is.
Intimate.
For all he knows, Grace could have told him to stop being such an arsehole.
"Thanks for the tea," he chokes out with a grimace.
The woman smiles as she leaves, no doubt to spread even more ridiculous gossip about them. Of entirely untrue things.
It astonishes him that people have these ideas. Where they get them from, he doesn't know. There isn't anything special about the fact that he's sitting here while Grace... Where else should he be? Pragmatically and logically thought through? It's what she would do for him as well. It's what she did years ago.
It was a very bad idea to pick up the letter. He's guessed why Grace chose to write him a letter instead of just telling him.
A morbid thought he doesn't want to follow on. But he does.
What if she can't tell him in person again? What if she... Another four letter word, so much worse than any other he's refusing to deal with.
It's too...final.
Too much of everything and Boyd balks at its implications.
He doesn't want her to die. It's as simple as that. A life without Grace is...well...not impossible. But pointless. He can't really say why that is. Most of the time Grace is a thorn in his side, not mean, but achy. She confuses him with her ability to talk so much without saying anything, saying so much without actually voicing it.
She confuses him. Though he has grown a lot better at anticipating her she still doesn't do what he expects her to. When he expects her to. How he expects her to.
A life without Grace would be a lot simpler. A lot less complicated. A lot quieter. A lot more...
That's the crux of the matter.
Boyd knows he'd be bored without her. A lot more lethargic without her to pester him. Life would be...
The room is bland, bland colours on the walls, bland colours in the pictures. Bland textiles. Boyd fits right in, in his ordinary clothes, in ordinary, subdued colours. A bland man of bland age in a bland life.
He groans at the picture building in his mind. It's far from the image he likes to have of himself and somehow it galls him to imagine that Grace might be the splash of colour in his otherwise bland existence.
Worse even, he's sitting in this room, thinking. Overthinking!
Fact is, he acknowledges decisively, he doesn't want Grace to die. He wants her in his life in whatever capacity.
The letter crumples in his hand again and because Boyd is, in the end, a man of action, not of thinking, he finally opens the pages and starts to read.
"Dear Boyd,"
That's a start, though not a very exciting one, he snorts.
"If you've got beyond the first two words, you will be pleased to know that this is not the letter I've prepared in case I should not make it through surgery."
He pauses.
"I wouldn't want to be predictable. Or, heaven forbid, make it easy for you."
Boyd snorts again, a lot more surprised now. Or maybe, he is not.
"You'd be disappointed, if I did."
He can almost see her smirk at him now and shakes his head, because predictably he feels like scratching his nails over a blackboard or something.
"So, don't expect any deep and soulful descriptions of feelings here. I'm saving them for my final letter to you, which you will never receive, because I plan on outliving you, simply to annoy you."
He stares and then he laughs.
"See? Laughing wasn't so difficult, was it?"
She was smiling, when she wrote this, Boyd just knows it.
"And now that I've successfully destroyed your guilt over having taken a private document unbidden - Shame on you, by the way! - Now that I've brought you back to reality, I think it is time you stopped sitting in my room worrying. Go to the office, annoy Kat, Eve and Spence, so they stop worrying as well."
Boyd keeps shaking his head, though there are the beginnings of a frown on his forehead.
"Believe me, I'm very glad that you've been with me before I went in. And I will be even more glad to see you once I wake up. But I don't want to see you looking unkempt and wrinkled when I do. It's my prerogative, waking up from anaesthesia."
He rolls his eyes. Really...that woman...
"Don't roll your eyes at me. You know I'm right."
There is an additional sentence implied. Heavily. And not for the first time Boyd wonders, how Grace does it.
Life would be a lot easier. A lot less complicated. A lot quieter.
A lot more bland.
"Go to the office, Boyd. And then go home. I'll be here tomorrow."
He can almost hear her voice, saying those words. Quietly. Gently. Quite possibly sitting next to him on the sofa, her shoulder brushing against his arm, a glass of wine in her hand. And a smile on her face.
"I'll be very glad to see you.
Grace."
How long he sits on that uncomfortable chair, staring absently somewhere he doesn't see, he won't remember. Boyd forgets the time. The paper is heavy in his hand, much heavier than its actual physical weight. But it's warm between his fingers. And soft. And fragrant. Though he hasn't any real proof of that.
It was a very bad idea to take the letter and open it, but in the end it was definitely worth it.
Thank you for reading. Comments would be greatly appreciated.