DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
May 11th 2013 - this is a little gift for CatS81. Happy birthday! xx
Once Upon A Time
by Joodiff
The lighting may be soft and the shadows flattering, but she doesn't quite have his unshakable self-possession so as she sits up she quietly helps herself to his discarded shirt and delicately shrugs into it. Fastening at least a few of the middle buttons, she props herself up comfortably against heaped pillows before reaching for her replenished wine glass. He stays where he is, lounging indolently at the foot of the bed, and he is so serene and so composed that she honestly starts to wonder whether he's completely forgotten that save for a stray fold or two of rumpled white bed-sheet he's entirely naked. Not that she's predisposed to complain, but this is all so new that there is still something a little unsettling about the blatant presence of so much exposed flesh when it belongs to a long-standing male colleague who really shouldn't ever be in her bedroom, let alone in her bed.
There's something hypnotic about the deep dark eyes and the intense way they watch her. Something extraordinarily compelling. Not looking away for even a moment he also stretches out to pick up his glass and she's struck again by his complete self-assurance, by the way he moves so naturally, so easily; no attempt made to hide anything from her inquisitive gaze. She envies him that. The savage scars that mar his flank have faded, but as he moves they become more obvious and she wonders if it has ever occurred to him to feel self-conscious about them. She knows there have been other women, can't imagine he's never been asked for the brutal story behind the permanent reminder of another man's obsession.
"There was a woman," he says, picking up the conversation again. "Years ago. French."
She raises her eyebrows deliberately. Silent innuendo.
He chuckles at her reaction, a deep, amiable noise. "A grande dame, you might say. I was a scruffy, half-starved young law student living in a bloody awful bedsit in Hackney. I think I amused her."
"Before Mary?" she questions, mentally reviewing what she knows of his history.
He nods, takes a sip of his wine before answering, "A long, long time before Mary. I suppose it must have been a year or so before I decided to jack in law school and apply for Hendon. I wasn't quite twenty."
"And she was…?"
"She was…" he seems to think about his reply for a moment. The finish comes with the slightest of grins, one that speaks of fond reminiscence. "Unique."
If she asks him to, he will tell her the whole story, she's sure of that, but in his own indomitable way and in his own time. She gazes at him, trying to erase all the long years and picture the naïve, fresh-faced young man he must have once been. It's not easy – they've both lived too much and too hard for that, and it shows. On them both. Idly stroking his bare thigh with her foot, she asks, "Did she have a name, this grand dame of yours?"
"Hélène," he supplies without hesitation. "Her name was Hélène. She came to London in her twenties – not long after the war."
It's her turn to chuckle, not because she disbelieves him, but because she absolutely believes him. And because she has a reasonable grasp of mathematics. "Ah, I see."
"She was a dancer. An exotic dancer. Well, had been, anyway."
There is no way she can be anything but wry in response. "Why am I not at all surprised?"
"You asked me where I learned to dance so well," he says mildly, resting his glass on his knee for a moment before removing it and stretching his legs out.
She asks, "Good teacher, was she?"
The look in the dark eyes turns foxy. It suits him. Like the sly, crooked grin that momentarily appears. "Oh yes."
"Bad boy," she chides, amused.
"You don't know the half of it," he admits, and this time the accompanying grin is entirely for her, entirely for the present not for the past. "So you see, Grace, despite what you think, I do have form as far as older women are concerned."
"Outrageous," she tells him. Burning curiosity makes her ask, "So just how old was she?"
He is nonchalant. "Forty-eight, forty-nine? I was too much of a gentleman to inquire too closely."
She snorts. "Of course you were. And did she ever bother to ask you if you were actually old enough to be shaving, let alone getting up to anything else?"
"Ha-bloody-ha," he says. He captures her foot with his free hand, begins to massage the sensitive sole with his thumb. She likes the feel of it. Likes the illicit shivers generated by the very gentlest of his caresses. He almost smiles. "You really wouldn't believe what that woman could do with a whip and a feather boa."
She mimes an emphatic shudder. "And I really wouldn't want to."
He tilts his head disarmingly, and now there's lazy amusement reflected in his eyes. "You're shocked."
"You know me better."
"Surprised, then."
She does not accept the challenge, merely says, "Do you blame me? I was under the – obviously mistaken – impression that you were a very wholesome young man."
"What, just because I eventually decided to join the police force? It was the 'sixties, Grace – come on."
"You're shattering all my precious illusions, Boyd. Anyway, how old were you back in the Summer of Love?"
"Seventeen."
She almost wishes she hadn't asked. Dryly, she says, "I rest my case."
"I was precocious."
"Apparently so."
"I told you, I was nearly twenty when I met Hélène." He releases her foot and stretches languidly before putting his hands behind his head. She does not miss how clearly-defined his biceps are, how the complimentary shadows fall in all the right places. He smiles, ridiculously angelic, and she immediately wants to kiss him. Wants to lose herself in him all over again and forever. "I lied about the whip."
"And the feather boa?"
"No," he says gravely, "that part was true."
She shakes her head, prods him gently with her foot. "You're making this whole story up, aren't you?"
Unexpectedly, his expression clouds and he drops his hands away from his head. Solemn now, he crosses his legs, sits forward. "I adored her, Grace. Absolutely adored her. She had such a spark about her. She'd been through so much, seen so much, but, Christ, didn't she know how to laugh."
She recognises his sincerity but doesn't know quite how to react to it. Awkwardly, she looks away for a moment. Clearing her throat, she looks back to ask, "What happened?"
He shrugs, and she's oddly touched by just how gentle, just how melancholy he is as he rubs his beard reflectively for a moment then says, "Some things just aren't meant to be."
The words cause an imperceptible tightening in her stomach. She knows those words so well, has repeatedly told herself the same thing for more years than she likes to think about. And yet, here he is. The man she's spent half the night dancing and making love with. She suspects he will easily hear the apprehension in her voice as she tentatively offers, "Nothing's ever so set in stone it can't be changed, Boyd."
"I was a kid, Grace. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of hope and dreams. She knew far better than I did what was good for me. One day I turned up at her flat and she was gone. She'd packed her bags, paid her outstanding rent and walked out without leaving a forwarding address."
She looks down. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he says, strangely earnest. "She knew what I was like – far too intense, far too stubborn. Far too young. She didn't want me to throw my entire future away for a woman thirty years older than I was."
"Because you would have done, wouldn't you?" she says quietly, knowing she's right.
He looks at her steadily for a moment. "Without a second thought. But she knew I'd end up resenting her for it. She was a very smart woman, Hélène; you would have liked her."
She tries to hide her scepticism. "Maybe."
"She taught me to dance," he points out, as if it means everything. And maybe it does.
"And extremely well, too, I'll give her that," she says. On impulse she raises her glass. "To Hélène."
He gravely returns the toast. "To you. Happy birthday, Grace."
And – against all the odds – it is. A happy birthday. Because she has finally shared her day with him in exactly the way she's always wanted to. And because once upon a time there was a woman who taught him to dance.
- the end -