DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.

A/N: This little piece was very hurriedly written in a couple of hours for CatS81,
just as a bit of cheering-up fluff. So if it's a little rough and maybe a little bizarre, I humbly apologise.

Brunus Edwardii

By Joodiff

It's the smile. It's always the smile, whether it is predatory, mischievous, or just incongruously boyish as it is now. It knocks years off him, that smile and she occasionally wonders whether he is actually aware of its power. It's an idiotically naïve thought, Grace thinks immediately – of course he's aware of it. Very well aware of it. This time, though, there is nothing sly behind it, no hint of mischief in it. The smile is open and artless, and there is the tiniest hint of amusement in his voice as he says, "Really…?"

"Really," Grace confirms. She takes a sip from her glass – sadly just mineral water, given that it is only lunchtime – and studies him across the restaurant table. "I never had one. We're talking about the immediate post-war years, Boyd. There was austerity; things were still rationed…"

"You're breaking my heart," he says wryly. "C'mon, Grace, I'm not that much younger than you, things were still rationed when I was a kid."

"Ah, but there are also geographical and socio-economic factors to consider."

He rolls his eyes towards the heavens. "Oh, God, here we go…"

"I'm just saying."

Boyd groans. "What are you just saying? My grandfather was a bloody miner from Ebbw Vale, Grace, and my grandmother had eight kids in a tiny back-to-back terrace. You really want to start comparing proletariat roots? Go right ahead."

She laughs and takes another sip of water. She sees him glance at his watch and rightly guesses that they are already late returning to work. Changing the subject, she asks, "Are you staying with me tonight?"

Boyd shrugs slightly. "I won't be finished until late. I have an appointment with that Preston woman from the DPP first thing in the morning – but thanks to DI bloody Jordan and his equally useless sidekick the paperwork for the Swain case is a complete disaster area – I'm not holding out any great hope of it landing on my desk in any presentable state until this evening."

Despite thinking that his irritable depiction of his subordinates is just a little too harsh, Grace nods in understanding. She knows it isn't a good idea to press him any further, but they have already spent far too many nights apart in the last week or so for her liking. Quietly, just a little tentatively, she says, "I miss you."

"A bit like toothache?" Boyd suggests mildly. He leans back in his chair and signals to the waiter for the bill. "It could be gone midnight, you know."

"Better late than never," Grace tells him.

For a moment they gaze at each other, a hundred and one things passing unspoken between them. Boyd nods slowly. "All right. Keep the bed warm."

"Don't I always?"

-oOo-

Wisely, Grace keeps out of his way for the better part of the afternoon. He is plainly a man on a mission, springing out of his office like a bad-tempered Jack-in-a-Box at regular intervals to thoroughly berate both Kat and Spencer for their lack of progress, their questionable administrative skills and just about anything else he can think of. There's quite a lot of stamping, shouting and door-slamming, and when Boyd finally leaves the building for a meeting with someone from Islington CID, the general sigh of relief in the CCU's headquarters is palpable. Moments after his departure, Eve drifts into the squad room from the lab, and Grace finally leaves the relative safety of her office. By mutual consent, a universal coffee break is declared.

"Is it just me," Eve says in a rhetorical tone. "Or is he in a particularly foul mood this week?"

"It's not just you," Kat says promptly, and Grace does not miss the depth of feeling in the younger woman's voice.

"It's that bloody woman at the Yard," Spencer says, pushing a pile of papers aside and dragging his keyboard back in front of him.

"Maureen Smith?" Eve guesses, sipping coffee. "What's she done now?"

"It's not so much what she's doing, but how she's doing it," Grace says. Maureen Smith has been the subject of several long and particularly vindictive private tirades just recently. She adds, "Let's just say the heavy-handed approach isn't being appreciated."

Eve chuckles. "I thought he had a bit of a thing for feisty women?"

"Maureen Smith isn't feisty," Spencer says, tapping away on his keyboard. "She's a bloody bulldog in uniform."

"She fancies him," Kat says, rifling through her in-tray.

"God help him, then," Spencer says shortly.

Grace hides her smile. The conversation ebbs and flows, changing direction several times. Eve wanders away, presumably back to the lab, and Grace returns to her office. Perhaps an hour later Boyd's return is heralded by the sound of rapid footsteps followed by a boisterous entry through the squad room's double doors. Grace mentally braces herself for the inevitable impatient shouting, but it seems he has returned in a considerably better mood than the one he left in. In fact, he doesn't even stop to harangue his junior officers, just acknowledges them vaguely in passing before disappearing into his own office.

Curious, Grace reaches for her phone and dials his extension number. She hears his phone ring only once before he picks up with, "Why are you still here?"

Grace does not take offence. The brusque words mask concern, and she knows it. Technically, she is still supposed to be working limited hours, even though test result after test result is proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the dark spectre of cancer has not simply retreated but fled the battleground altogether. Dryly, she says, "I was just about to ask you why you're suddenly in such a good mood, but…"

They regard each other through the glass partition that separates their offices. He says, "Go home, Grace."

Meaningfully, she glances at the clock on the wall. "It's only half-past six, Boyd. Nowhere near the end of the working day for those of us contractually obliged to keep Peter Boyd time."

"Do I really need to come in there and stand over you while you put your coat on?"

Principally because she knows he will, Grace shakes her head slightly. "No. I'm just finishing something, and then I'm off."

"Good," he says, and the line goes dead. For a moment longer they look at each other, and then he turns away, finally settling behind his own desk.

Smiling slightly, Grace makes a half-hearted attempt to return her attention back to the task in hand. It isn't easy, not while she is perpetually fighting the impulse to look round at the man in the next office. Inwardly, she sternly tells herself not to be so easily distracted, but somehow…

She risks a quick glance, only to find the deep, dark eyes looking straight back at her. His eyebrows quirk slightly, just a little pointedly. Grace has no doubt that he has already set her a time limit. One minute over it, and he will certainly follow through on his threat to stand over her while she prepares to leave. Strangely, she finds the knowledge more comforting than intimidating. Peter Boyd is gruff, quick-tempered, capricious and stubborn, but Grace knows better than most that there is another side to him, a very different side. She knows that he is also gentle, humorous and intensely loyal. She knows he is essentially a good man, a kind and thoroughly decent man who despises cruelty and hates injustice. Grace forgives him far too much, and she knows that, as well, but regardless of his many faults and failings she loves him, and possibly one of his most redeeming features is that he loves her, too – and with exactly the same ferocious devotion he displays in so many things.

Somehow, she always knew that when it finally came down to the tacit boundaries between them, it would be a case of all or nothing. She always knew there wouldn't be any half-measures. Always knew that if he ever held his hand out to her, and if she ever took it, there would be no questions, no discussions, no attempts to broker terms. All or nothing. And when the moment came, awkward and inexplicable as it was, she was, as ever, proved right.

Surreptitiously, she glances at him again, and this time he is apparently oblivious, his attention on whatever paperwork is now spread across his desk.

Her single thought is simple. Elemental.

My man. Mine.

And, of course, he is. In all his moods, in all his many facets.

-oOo-

Six months, give or take a few days. Six months since that pivotal moment standing beside the window of her room in the private clinic. Six months, and he is already indelibly imprinted on her home. Her illness set the pattern – she did not have the energy to attempt to live in two places at once. Boyd was the one shuttling between his house, her house and work, and it has never really changed, even as her strength and energy started to return. Really, it makes sense – he has far less free time than Grace does, and she doesn't have much. Far better that she spends the time alone in her own comfortable domain – but using her house as their main base does mean that there are times when her sitting room definitely looks like an extension of his office.

Grace will never admit it, but it's oddly comforting to glace round and see his presence quietly marked by the mundane necessities of life. She quite likes the chaos he leaves in his wake, even if she frequently chides him for it. There is something… reassuring… about finding odd possessions that are not her own randomly strewn around the house. Something deeply satisfying about the alien array of male toiletries in the bathroom, the razor abandoned on the side of the old-fashioned sink. The stupid, everyday minutiae that announces loudly and clearly that not one but two people are co-existing in the same domesticated space. And that one of those two people is very definitely male.

She thinks they will grow old – older – together. She thinks that at some point he will grumble and complain and grumpily put a ring on her finger entirely of his own volition. She thinks that one day they will retire to a quiet village which she will love and he will ostensibly hate. She thinks all these things not because of the way she is, but because of the way he is. All or nothing.

Tonight, though, she is alone. He won't break his word, Grace knows that, but she may very well be in bed asleep by the time his black Audi finally rolls into the street. He won't wake her up, but she will wake anyway, and she will curl up against him because if there is one thing he's very good at it's being a warm, solid and very comforting physical presence in the long, dark hours.

Grace meanders through the rest of the evening, doing a few household chores, writing up a few notes and finally watching the end of a very old black and white film. By eleven, she is ready for bed. No sign of Boyd. She refrains from calling his direct dial office number. If he is there, calling him will probably only make him even more irritable, if he is not there, well, then he's already on his way. She ascends the stairs, debates the merits of a hot bath and settles for a quick shower. It's twenty-past eleven when she finally reaches her bedroom.

And suddenly the reason for the late-afternoon improvement in Boyd's mood becomes quite clear.

Gruff, quick-tempered, capricious and stubborn, Grace thinks again. And quite possibly one of the sweetest, gentlest men she's ever known.

-oOo-

"Edward," he'd said to her in the restaurant, absolutely deadpan. "All teddy bears are called Edward, aren't they?"

"I don't know," Grace had replied with a slight shrug. "I never had a teddy bear."

And he'd smiled that artless, gentle smile and said, "Really…?"

"Really," Grace had told him. "I never had one. We're talking about the immediate post-war years, Boyd. There was austerity; things were still rationed…"

-oOo-

It is assuredly a teddy bear. One of those expensive, hand-finished bears that cost far too much money and tend to end up in the hands of adult collectors, not in the hands of rumbustious children. A teddy bear. Really. Soft mohair pelt, bright button eyes, soulful sort of expression. Probably, the bow round its neck was part of the original deal, but Grace is damned certain that the solid, standard Met police issue speedcuffs that are currently securing it firmly to her antique brass bedframe haven't come from any toy shop she's ever heard of. Or any dubious shop in Soho, come to that.

Damned man may very well be insufferably, nauseatingly sweet when the mood takes him, but he has a very odd sense of humour.

But it's very definitely a teddy bear. The teddy bear she never had as a child.

And she just knows it's always going to be known as Edward.

Grace laughs. Of course she does. And there's no-one present to notice that she also sheds the odd tear or two. Because there's currently only one man on the face of the planet who would buy her a teddy bear. And only one man who will most assuredly growl and complain bitterly if she tries to express even a fraction of the affectionate gratitude swelling in her chest.

She walks round the bed, superbly aware of her own foolishness as she says, "Hello, Edward."

The key to Edward's restraints is on her bedside table, and it only takes her a moment to release him. It.

It's stupid. Bloody stupid, in fact. But when she gets under the covers she drags Edward into the bed with her. He – it – is, after all, a lot more equable in temperament than the man responsible for his – its – presence. If not quite as potentially entertaining between the sheets.

-oOo-

She just knows he's grinning, and when she opens her eyes, she finds that she's right. He's standing at the end of the bed unbuttoning his shirt cuffs and he's grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. She wishes their paths had crossed years ago. Not loosening her grip on Edward, she says, "You bought me a teddy bear."

"Surely not," Boyd says, still grinning. "You really do have an over-active imagination, Doctor Foley."

Grace raises her eyebrows at him. "So if I get Spencer to run the serial number through the computer, those cuffs won't flag as being issued to a certain Detective Superintendent of our acquaintance?"

"I never carry cuffs, Grace, you know that."

"You never wear a uniform but you've got one," she points out.

The grin only increases. "Yeah, and I'm still not putting it on for you."

"Spoilsport," Grace says. She holds up her new prize. "What are we going to call him?"

"I told you, all teddy bears are called Edward."

"Only in your universe, Boyd," Grace says. She makes a show of considering her own question, then says, "I think I might call him Peter."

He glares at her. "Don't even think about it."

She meets the glare with a grin of her own. "Timothy, then."

"Piss off, Grace," he says, but there's a definite glint of amusement in his dark eyes. "All teddy bears are Edward. End of discussion."

"How much is it worth for me to keep my mouth shut about this?"

"Blackmail is a serious offence, and besides, I'm utterly incorruptible," Boyd says complacently. "And you're forgetting something very fundamental."

Grace frowns slightly. "What?"

"Nobody will believe a bloody word of it," he says.

-oOo-

A little while later, in the quiet darkness, she says, "Boyd?"

The reply is sleepy but remarkably patient. "What?"

Returning to their slightly surreal lunchtime conversation, Grace asks, "Did you really have a teddy bear?"

He groans. "For fuck's sake… do you know what time it is? Go to bloody sleep, woman."

"But did you?"

The answer is tetchy. "Of course I did. Believe it or not, I was a completely normal little boy. And, yes, before you ask, he really was called Edward. Now, can we please go to sleep? Somehow I've got to sell the DPP on the Swain case in the morning, in case you'd forgotten. And if I don't, Maureen Smith's made it quite clear she's going to have my balls for it."

Grace smirks into the darkness. "Just tell her they're already spoken for."

"Like that's going to help."

She waits a calculated number of seconds. "Boyd?"

The growl is predictable. "Grace…"

"I love you."

"Go. To. Sleep."

Grace laughs softly. Edward may be more equable, and distinctly furrier, but he is not half as much fun to provoke. Nor is he a big, bad-tempered lion with the heart of a pussycat.

But he is the first teddy bear that Grace Foley has ever owned.

- the end -

"Brunus Edwardii" was the subject of a scholarly article published in the Veterinary Record.
"Brunus Edwardii" is commonly taken as dog Latin for "Teddy Bear".