So I've finally finished this after what seems like months. It's amazing what you can put your mind to when you're procrastinating, but it was a choice between this and a 2000 word essay for my Open University course. And I'm slightly heady that Boyd will be back next week so here it is.
Title: The Weight On His Shoulders
Pairing: Grace/Boyd
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to and including season six is fair game
Author's Notes: This follows on from Walk In The Park, and the episode Shadowplay
Disclaimer: Waking The Dead belongs to the BBC, the characters aren't mine except to play with and return unharmed.
The Weight On His Shoulders
Grace had been watching him from her office for the past ten minutes, in reality surreptitiously since he had written Mel's name on the board and sat down. The others had left a little while ago, off to sleep, grieve and if the look on Spence's face was anything to go by, to drink to oblivion.
Boyd had remained, finally venturing from the safety of his own office, planning she guessed to clear the board, but he had sat down and there he had remained. From outward appearances he was the same man he had always been, his face revealing little but she knew he was a broken man, a man who was allowing himself a few moments to grieve. Grace, more than anyone, knew he wouldn't allow himself longer, would never entirely deal with his guilt or blame or the fact that it was like losing Joe all over again. He also wouldn't turn to anyone. Someone would have to reach out, persist when he repeatedly pushed them away, and then there wasn't any assurance that he would accept.
Composing herself as she had been trying to in public all day, Grace stepped out of her office and made her way across the room. "Sitting there staring at her name on a board isn't going to bring her back," she offered quietly.
He continued to stare off into space, his reflection in the board no longer registering as he focused on Mel, his thoughts wandering to happier times, to the last few days and most recent case, and to her smile that would remain with him always.
"How about a drink? Something to eat?" Grace suggested, not wanting to leave without at least trying to take him with her.
Boyd shook his head, acknowledging for the first time that he had heard her. "Not tonight."
"I'm buying," she said, moving closer until she could see his face more clearly in the semi-darkness of the room. His expression was one she had witnessed in the bereaved a thousand times, one which Boyd carefully masked almost instantly.
"Really?" he asked, a small smirk forming before he remembered and it dissipated. "That's the best you have to offer?"
She rolled her eyes, catching the hidden connotations. "If I thought taking you to bed . . . ," Grace trailed off, not too sure how to end the comment. If she believed in her heart that sex would take away his pain, their pain, she'd take him home in a second. The trouble was they both knew it couldn't.
He waited then suggested, " . . . would rock my world?" What he needed was solace and an acknowledgement that things would get better. Grace could and would, if he let her, give him both those things, what he wasn't going to find was forgiveness. Only Mel could give him that.
Grace continued to study him, her initial instincts confirmed and her resolve strengthened. "What about coffee?" she countered, briefly wondering if she was asking for trouble.
Peter turned to look at her, his eyes lacking anything emotive. "I don't think there's enough coffee . . . Ah, you have a plan to get me so wired I'll talk." He wanted to get angry at her, send her away in a torrent of words but there was nothing left inside him.
"No, I only have decaf. And hobnobs," she added, smiling slightly. "I don't expect you to talk. I just want the opportunity to keep an eye on you. The idea of you sitting here all night thinking . . ." It all came flooding back and it was too late to stop the tear trailing down her face. "Come home with me," she implored, driven by the idea of the empty house that awaited her.
He caught her surreptitiously trying to wipe her tear streaked cheeks out of the corner of his eye and something in him broke. "Sure, but I need something stronger than coffee."
"My secret stash is empty," she shrugged, harbouring little satisfaction from the fact she'd won.
They stopped at an off licence, two streets from her house, and Boyd dashed inside, reappearing a few minutes later carrying two brown paper covered packages. Passing them to her, he climbed back in the car and started the engine.
Grace raised an eyebrow. "Two?"
"It's okay. No need for a lecture on personal responsibility. The scotch is for me. And because I know you're not keen, the wine's for you."
"Just the one bottle?" she teased, feeling normality slipping in for the first time since Mel had hit the ground before her.
"I wouldn't want to be accused of trying to plunder your virtue." He gave her a faint smile, which failed to reach his eyes or warm her heart.
The house had been in darkness when they had arrived and if by some silent agreement, they left it so, switching lights on and off as needed as they made their way to the sitting room. Grace switched on the small table lamp and drew the curtains, effectively turning the room into a refuge for their emotions.
Waiting for her to settle herself on the sofa beside him, Boyd opened the bottle of wine and poured a glass. He didn't really have a plan other than he didn't want to talk, something he was sure Grace would push for. She couldn't help herself and in truth oftentimes it was what he needed, but for once he knew what he needed more than she did.
"I hadn't planned on visitors," Grace apologized, glancing at the papers strewn around her living room, half dead flowers in a vase. The dust she was certain he couldn't see.
"My place looks ten times worse." Which may have been an understatement. Boyd as a rule wasn't a heavy drinker. He drank to be social and sometimes when sleep was evasive. The open bottle and tumbler were still on his bedside table from the early hours of the morning, dirty clothes from the past few weeks scattered through his apartment where he had discarded them late at night. In a corner of his room a carrier bag held his clothes from the day before, Mel's blood figuratively, and from where he'd cradled her, splattered over them and he would never wear them again. He wondered what a psychologist would make of the trail of destruction that characterized his home and his life.
Silence engulfed the room as they both avoided the subject that had brought them to this point. They were sitting in her living room, the two open bottles of alcohol sitting on the table beside them, the small table lamp casting shadows across their faces.
Tucking her feet beneath her, Grace twirled her glass in her hands, constructing her words carefully.
"Don't," he said firmly, anticipating what was to come.
"I was just . . ."
Boyd turned to look at her, concern growing as he caught sight of her glazed eyes, tears prickling beneath the surface.
"I know you don't want to talk about it," Grace said, deliberately turning away from him, not wanting to add to his problems.
"No, I don't," he snapped, his voice uncharacteristically low and controlled
"At some point you're going to have to." At some point he should get professional help, talk to someone who could help him. At some point was a long way off, because Boyd, Grace knew, had avoidance down to an art form.
Boyd nodded, knowing that it was going to take a lot more than a bottle of scotch to get him to open up. A small part of him hoped that would be the end of it, but he knew her.
"I wish it hadn't been Mel. I mean I wouldn't have wanted it to be Spence, or you, but I still wish it wasn't Mel."
Boyd said nothing, wishing she could drop it but acknowledging that talk for Grace was catholicising.
It had only been a few weeks since they had witnessed the effect a death in a team could have. The Organized crime task force had outwardly imploded around them - disbelief, anger and eventually grief - for Boyd's team the emotions had all come at once, the team looking to Boyd to show them what to do. His answer was to carry on as before, more determined than ever, work an ever present distraction.
"I wish she hadn't died alone," Grace tailed off, hitching her breath as a sob escaped.
He wanted to hold her, he wanted to take her to bed and make love to her, and pretend none of it had happened. A random and totally impossible wish, one that he hated himself for having, one that seemed to drift into his consciousness when life became unfathomable.
"No one should be alone."
Another sob escaped and his thoughts turned to the rest of his team. Spencer had been quiet when he left, his arm firmly wrapped around Frankie. They needed each other, initial annoyance with each other having become real friendship and now it was the one thing they needed. Mel was their closest friend, over time the three of them sharing a relationship he could never be part of. He and Grace were more like parents, watching and worrying from a distance, a thought that at any other time would amuse him.
"Do you trust me?" he asked finally, turning his body to face her, brushing sense aside.
She hesitated, choosing to be candid and honest. "To a point."
"Fair enough." He didn't really trust anyone. Grace was the exception. "But you know I wouldn't intentionally hurt you."
The alcohol she conceded was affecting him more than he usually allowed. Grace nodded mutely.
"Then trust me." Without saying another word he leaned in and kissed her firmly on the mouth, pulling back almost instantly. "But I can't talk about this. I'm not going to do anything stupid. Words. . ." He kissed her again, this time more gently before sliding his arm around her and pulling her against his chest. The kiss having the effect of silencing her. Mel was gone, he was practically making a pass at Grace, and the only thing that reached him was the warmth of her body.
The physical contact and the gentle beat of his heart was in some way unsettling. As she listened to his breathing in the silence of the room, her body rising and falling with each breath he took, she felt herself giving in to emotions she had chosen to keep checked. Each time the desire to cry had washed over her she had held it at bay, sometimes more successfully than others, but now with him she no longer wanted to. The tears shed silently and she closed her eyes, oblivious to the dampness that stained his shirt, feeling suddenly more important than talking.
There were no words he knew that could offer comfort, that would come with time, and as much as his own grief was all consuming tears weren't his way of release. Holding her gave him something, a sense of what his role would be and he knew that mourning would be for others.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Grace rubbed her eyes and broke contact, sitting upright. "Sorry."
Boyd lightly squeezed her shoulder. "Are you ok?"
Nothing would make the situation alright, and they both knew it.
"I'm not looking forward to sleeping tonight." She could see the body on the ground, the life gone out of Mel's eyes. The night before they'd had work, no one wanting to walk away until they had some semblance of a answer. Then there had been a brief few hours while she had lay on her bed staring at the ceiling before it was time to return to the office.
"I'd offer to sit up all night and talk, but as you know I'm not great at touchy feely." He smiled gently and she responded in kind. "At our age we need all the sleep we can get."
She nodded, acknowledging they at least needed to try. Learning forward, she poured another glass of wine and topped up his glass. "You can stay in the spare room."
"You have a spare room?"
"Now the kids have flown the coop, I'm just rattling around here." The house was too big but it was her home and occasionally they came to visit.
For all the mentions of her kids, Boyd had never met them. They had lives that kept them away from Grace and she hated it, he knew but he frequently forgot she was as lonely as him.
"Ok. You want to go to bed?"
She smiled faintly, thoughts briefly turning to another time, dissolving immediately as she remembered why he was there.
"I should probably rephrase that."
She nodded her head.
Surprisingly she had fallen asleep almost immediately when Boyd had persuaded her to go to bed. When she had awoken, the sun had been shining and there had been a few minutes when things hadn't seemed so bad. Finally, reality had sunk in and she had dragged herself downstairs and put on the kettle.
"You don't look so hot," he announced, entering the kitchen in typical Boyd brusque fashion.
"Cheers, you know how to make a girl feel good about herself." How he managed to get a date she often wondered but there was something about him that drew women in.
"I just meant if you want to take a day or two," Boyd explained, rubbing his hand across his temple in anticipation of headache he knew he was due.
"Are you? Is Spencer?" she asked, verging on being pissed at him.
He shook his head, realizing that without even trying he'd said the wrong thing again.
"Then don't worry about it." She set about making tea, trying to check on him periodically. "How are you doing?"
He glanced away, masking his emotions before she could read them. "Someone needs to speak to her parents." Even in the light of day or because of it, he was avoiding the subject of him.
"I'll do it," she offered, knowing that he would hate doing it, oblivious to what she was doing, what in retrospect would be his undoing.
"Thanks," he turned back to her. "Are you sure?"
"If I need . . . If I have a problem, you'll be the first to know." She smiled at him, imparting that she was ok.
It was all he could ask for. Taking the offered tea, he leaned back in his seat, his thoughts returning to work. The case was done bar the paperwork, then he would suggest they all take the weekend, maybe Monday as well. It would give him chance to clear Mel's desk and save someone else the painful task and he could deal with his head. They needed time to grieve. He would give it to them and keep the team together in the only way he knew how. What was so uniquely Boyd would become more so.
"So where do we go from here?" Grace asked, wondering just how they'd get through it.
Boyd glanced up at her. "Forwards, I guess."
"A step at a time." There were stages to grief, she knew, to be worked through and overcome. The process was a long one, but necessary. A step at a time wasn't his forte. Through it, over it, under it was more his motto. She couldn't even imagine how he would deal with the loss of someone else he cared about.
He smiled weakly.
Grace finished her tea and picked up the empty bottles from the counter, tossing them into the recycling box. "I guess one of us should think about getting dressed."
He mumbled something incomprehensive and she twisted to look at him, waiting for the comeback, the teasing. The fact it didn't come told her more than he could ever know.
The End