SWEET SURRENDER

Ros/Adam. AU, from mid series 8. Ros has to permanently disappear, and she finds something much unexpected when she gets out of the country. Oneshot. I've always loved these two – this is clearly not what happened, but where my imagination would like to have taken them.

Spoilers from about the middle of series eight.

Disclaimer: All property of the BBC, I'm afraid.

It's only been two years, but it's changed them both inexplicably.

He's changed on the outside. The explosion left burns all down the left side of his body, and his left leg's stiff and prosthetic. The twelve surgeries left him with at least some semblance of a once strikingly handsome face, but there's a long, thin scar tracing from his hairline to his jaw, and it's just under his chin that the skin turns mottled and taut with burn scars. The easy mobility he once had is now nothing more than a dream – he walks with a stiff limp and heavily favours his right arm. His hair is kept short and militant, and his right eye is criss-crossed with a scar, leaving him entirely blind in one eye.

She's changed on the inside. She's learnt to embrace emotions, particularly guilt and grief – and she's really felt things since she was last with him. She lost members of her team – young people, hardly at the top of their game yet – and because it was the closest thing to family she knew, it broke her down inside. She'd been so sure of right and wrong, so faithful in her own judgement; all that was gone now. She isn't sure whether she's merely the shell of what she once was, or something quite different.

The coded knock on the door startles him. He'd never expected them to actually send anyone.

She doesn't know anything about what she's wandering into. Harry promised her a familiar face, rehabilitation, someone she could trust, and remain untraceable. She'd had to leave before he could do any more explaining.

The irony of it all is that it actually takes him longer to recognise her than vice versa when the door finally opens. She sees right past the scars and the unshaven face; finds herself looking straight into eyes that still occasionally haunt her dreams. The case she's been holding clatters to the ground and falls open, revealing a few blanks sheets of paper, the final touches to a business woman guise.

It's not until she cover her mouth with her hand in a gesture so painfully familiar that it dawns on him. Her hair's a few shades darker and the sunglasses hide her eyes, but he knows the woman standing on his doorstep. Knew her, at least, in another life.

It takes them both a moment to gather themselves. Then she bends down quickly, gathering the scattered contents of her case, and he steps back to allow her through the door. She takes a step in, shaking all over, biting her tongue to keep herself from bursting out into a thousand unsaid things.

The moment the door swings closed behind her, leaving them standing close in the narrow, dark hallway, she pulls the sunglasses off and hisses, "You want to explain to me how the fuck you're alive?"

Is that a hint of a smile on his lips? He takes the briefcase from her hand and sets it on the floor before answering, and it's not really an answer.

"I never thought I'd see you again-"

She's still shaking, wishing she wasn't. He's so close to her, and it's odd – some part of her mind registers the burn scars, the prosthetic – all she really sees are his eyes.

"I-" she starts, but whatever words that might have been die on her tongue.

As yet, he hasn't touched her, and when he does, when he takes her by the shoulder and looks right into her face, she feels her knees almost give out underneath her. Thank God there's a wall behind her, and she leans on that as she finally manages the words.

"Adam…" her voice is hoarse, dry, "How is this-"

"I survived the car bomb on Remembrance Sunday, but only just…" he's talking so close she can feel his breath on her face, and she knows he's talking about the scars but she can't see them, not right now, "…by the time I'd recovered enough in the hospital to even know my own name, weeks had passed. You… you'd all been told I was dead – you were mourning me, Wes… Wes was…"

She brings a shaky hand to the side of his face like it's the most natural thing in the world. The scar brushes against her skin, chafing.

"Harry knew, anyway." He continues, "But we both agreed, in my current state-" there's bitterness in that, "-I was better off staying dead. Wes was safer, Wes was more detached from it all, and I wasn't any use anymore…"

"You should've-"

He shakes his head, turning his face into her palm. "I didn't know if I'd ever walk again, Ros… I'm not the same man I was before…"

She's struggling to breathe, watching the pain cross his face, dancing over scars. It seems right to lean in, match her forehead to his. His eyes close, hers follow a shadow of a second later.

"I'm so, so sorry." She breathes, and right now it's enough.

They fall into a strange order of things, like they were never apart. Adam sets Ros' bag in a spare bedroom, leaves her alone. It pains her to watch him stagger around the kitchen, cooking for them both, and she stares out of the window until the tears in her eyes dissipate.

They eat mostly in silence, Adam asking the occasional question, Ros answering bleakly. Jo's dead, Ben's dead, Malcolm retired, Connie was a traitor, Ruth's back as if she never left. He listens in quiet wonderment – he's never quite believed that everything would continue in the same sordid way without him. She mentions Wes a few times, but he tenses up, and she stops, staring at her spaghetti bleakly. No more words are exchanged.

Wordlessly, she takes on the washing up as he sinks into the worn sofa, turning on CNN and staring blankly at news he's no longer a part of. She excuses herself early, the silence taking its toll, and leaves the room after a light, spontaneous kiss to his cheek. They're not the people they once were, and it's beginning to show.

By 2am, sleep hasn't even begun to lull her. She heard him limp to bed long after midnight, and has been listening to the silence ever since. His face, as she remembered it, handsome and perfect, is flashing before her mind, but somehow it's not that man she's wishing for.

Up here, up in the mountains, dawn comes early, and she knows light will seep through her curtains soon. She climbs out of the bed – it's strange, that limbs can still ache from a life she's no longer part of – and makes her way down the hall to the other bedroom.

When her eyes becomes accustomed to the light she sees him, facing away from her, sheets tossed aside, and she sees his leg, without the prosthetic, destroyed completely. She hates herself for the fact that it makes her flinch, and she whispers his name as she slides in beside him, pulling covers over them both, moulding her body against his in a way both familiar and strange.

As if he's never been asleep at all, he rolls over to look at her, and there are tears in beautiful eyes – the last remaining scrap of beauty. Neither of them says a word, but he slowly brushes her hair from her face, his ever-injured left arm causing his fingers to spasm uselessly.

She catches them in her hand, slowly wrapping her fingers round his to cease the shaking. She traces the scar along the side of his face, before reaching forward to press her lips against it, lightly. Her lips follow her fingers over the scar crossing his eyes, trace down to the papery scarred skin of his neck. He clutches her face in his hands and kisses her wordlessly, before pulling her tight to him and holding her close to a broken, scarred body.

"Thank you." He breathes, as she murmurs his name, and they drift asleep, together.

As the morning light slips over the pair of them they are still entwined, Ros' head resting on his good shoulder, his arm curving around her waist. Her T-shirt has risen a few inches and his fingers are tracing patterns on her bare skin, making her shiver slightly.

Both want to speak, but the words are bigger than both of them. Adam presses his lips to her hair lightly, and she reaches up to hold his hand in hers, groping loosely at the air when she realise she's picked the wrong side, his hand lays limp and near useless at his side.

She's overcompensating when, instead, she raises herself onto her elbows to kiss his lips, the deepest yet, allowing herself the taste she not so long ago thought she'd lost forever. He finds his breath hitching – he may be destroyed, she may be a different person, but he still reacts to her the same way – she's tantalising, puzzling, forbidden. It's in that moment that he realises that he'd loved Ros Myers for a time, and as she pulls away and stares at him, having conditioned herself to see his scarred face… when she looks at him like nothing's changed since the moment he held her in his arms underwater and strange, dormant feelings rose to the surface… well, he considers the possibility that he might still love her.

"Morning…" he manages, and the left side of her mouth curves up, the hint of a smile, and they know they're both remembering months of lazy, sunlit mornings being but a dream, even more alarms and schedules to keep. The shadows of someone else's life.

"I…I guess there's nowhere you have to be?" she laughs, kissing the side of his jaw, the rough skin chafing slightly. He shakes his head, running his hand through and through her short blonde hair, watching it reflect in the mountain sunlight.

"Good." She whispers, and they lay there, nothing changing, for a while.

As it is, they lay side by side in near silence for the next few hours, content to feel close to each other, content to both be alive.

Ros gets hungry just after midday, and leaves him with a promise of return and a dry comment about domesticity. He hears her muttering from the kitchen as he downs his drug cocktail, something about the food content (or lack of) in men's fridges. Strapping on the prosthetic leg, he hears a crash as she opens the haphazardly stacked cupboard, and as he tests his weight on the leg, as he does every morning, he almost laughs at the curses coming out of her mouth.

She almost feels guilty when, as she tips the omelette onto his plate, she hears the tell-tale tap-thud of his gait into the kitchen. She sets it on the table, gesturing for him to sit.

"I was bringing it up."

"Ros, I'm not an invalid. I'm perfectly capa-"

"Right." She cuts him off, staring pointedly at her own omelette mixture. For moments, there's silence, until she serves her own and sits opposite him.

"You get used to it." His voice is quiet.

"What?"

"The arm and the leg. You get used to it. It's not as bad as it looks. You'll adjust to it."

"I'm adjusted already. Honestly, Adam."

He sighs slightly, which she doesn't credit with a response.

"I still go to the physio down in the village once a week."

"What's your cover for that?"

"He thinks I did this twenty miles outside Kabul."

"Right. And me?"

"What?"

"My cover?"

Adam swallows, frowning. "You want to come to physio?"

"I want to come to physio." she nods, as if there never would have been another option, as if he's stupid for asking. "My cover?"

"A family member?"

She raises her eyebrows but says nothing. He can't help the smile that creeps onto his lips. She's here, she's his, she's safe.

Their routine becomes easy enough. Ros admits within hours of breakfast that cooking's not exactly her forte; Adam cooks all their meals after that. She cleans the house though, with a vigour he admires, and when she's done with that she tells him she's going to conquer the wilderness he has in the place of a garden. She makes her silent, demanding changes to the shopping list online – full roast coffee, tampons, Pinot Noir and chilli sauce. Without a word, she siphons off half his wardrobe and puts her clothes in there – all mention of the spare room disappears. When they go to bed at night, she takes over the left side of the bed and the right corner of the bathroom sink and she lifts up his detached prosthetic and stack it neatly in the corner, before crawling into bed and fitting her back against him with familiarity.

"Do you miss London?" London has become the code word for Section D, Harry Pearce, her old life.

"Haven't been away long enough." She whispers bluntly, wrapping his fingers around hers. "Not yet."

He remembers six months in Russia, and hopes she doesn't equate this as the same thing.

"This is forever now, though." It's selfish, but he's happier than he's been in years.

"I know." She tucks herself into the curve of him more tightly and closes her eyes. "Goodnight, Adam."

"Goodnight."

It's there that they seem to hit a wall. It's all sleeping in the same bed and a few kisses here and there and smiles, and shared meals, but there's no honesty or passion or feelings. Maybe he's scared she'll leave – the world's her oyster, she could be anywhere – and maybe she's still wary of the scars and the prosthesis and the pain in his eyes.

They even seem to reduce contact – intentionally, anyway. At night they start out lying side by side, not quite touching, but end up curled around one another in the mornings. Hearts race simultaneously when their skin brushes, when their eyes meet – but they're both terrified and they seem to have come to a mutual understanding of avoidance.

She walks him down into town for his meeting with the physiotherapist, every one of his jerky movements sending a frisson of pain through her. No one stares as they walk through the town centre – simply glance curiously in Ros' direction. He introduces her in the end, in rapid Swiss-French, as Lisa Bridge, an old school friend. That allows her to grasp his hand tightly as he works through the pain barrier, pushing and pushing for each tiny bit of mobility.

On the steep, agonising walk back she considers buying a little car – Adam can't drive it, but there's no reason why she shouldn't. It would give them a little more freedom, surely.

He's tired when they get back – she runs a bath on a whim and puts the kettle on, and then almost laughs at her own domesticity.

"What do you think would've happened, if Remembrance Day hadn't been the day… if I hadn't-"

He chokes as he realises for the first time that she could blame herself for what happened. They're laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He turns his head to look at her profile – straight, strong nose, trembling lips.

"No." he breathes, not daring to touch her. "It wasn't your fault. I would never have…"

Her head falls to face his. "You were out the car door, weren't you, Adam? It's the only way you could have survived."

A slow, almost guilty nod. "But it wasn't-"

"You only needed a few more seconds, you would have been clear… I… it's my…"

Without warning, he pulls her tightly to his chest with his one strong arm. "Can you hear how ridiculous you sound?"

The feel of his warm skin is so welcome.

"If I hadn't-"

He shakes his head, kissing her hair. "Ros, I saw you, when I thought I never would again… you were the first thing I remembered, my first lucid though…"

She grits her teeth to quell the shaking. "You were dead…"

"No." he breathes. "I'm here. I'm alive. I'm with you."

He's never been this happy with that fact.

She's been living with him for a month now, and still they're at their twisted impasse, still they shudder rather than say what hangs in the air. Ros has bought a little Fiesta – it couldn't have been more out of character if she'd tried – and she drives down for the weekly shopping now. She hasn't once offered to take him with her - she makes out that it's just not crossed her mind, but they both know that in reality she simply needs the time alone. She makes almost days of her trips into town; she has a bite to eat on the taxpayers' dime and strolls along the river in good weather.

And spends the whole time thinking of Adam.

One day, she imagines for a minute she sees Harry walking the opposite bank, and she drives back up the mountain without waiting for her change at the café. Adam's sitting outside on the big wooden lawn chair when she approaches, and she says nothing, only nods towards the house and head inside as he limps after her.

She rids him of his shirt in the hallway, and she's letting him half-lean on her as they stagger blindly into the bedroom, all the while kissing wildly, like the people they used to be. The shirt sleeve gets caught and his left arm starts to shake, but she doesn't give him the opportunity to pull away, wrapping her fingers tight enough around his wrist to gain control before forcing the hand to rest on her hip.

He can hardly breathe because of her, his heart racing, and she can feel it in his chest, taste it as she runs her lips over his neck, ignoring the damaged, marred skin. Because to her, in that moment, he's the same man who was the only man to get past her defences in the last fifteen years. She's hungry for every last inch of him, and right now she's so delirious she has no idea anything's changed.

He uses his right hand to release each button of her shirt, slowly and gently, hardly brushing her skin. He's playing with her, but testing her at the same time, gauging whether or not her whole heart's in this.

"Stop beating around the bush." She hisses in his ear, warmth pooling in her stomach as she brushes her fingers playfully over the zipper of his jeans, dancing across his skin as she slowly pops the button, her breath hitching.

It's been far too long.

It doesn't take much to motivate him, and her shirt has been thrown across the room in seconds, and they're falling onto a bed they've silently shared for weeks, Ros pinned between him and the mattress. She flips them almost effortlessly, and has to grit her teeth to control herself when she pulls away and hears his low groan. His jeans are around his ankles by now, but she sits up, reaching down to unstrap his leg with sudden sensibility.

Both of them hold their breath, back in the now.

But she's tossed the jeans (avec leg) across the room, and she's trailing her way back up his body, running lips and hands over his stomach, his chest, back over his jaw…

It's her turn to reel in desire when he pushes her jeans roughly over her hips, and, heart thumping audibly, she takes his mouth with hers again, a sweet surrender.

FINIS

I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are very much appreciated.