Title: Pillow Talk and Parallel Universes
Rating: T
Category: Fluff, Richard/Camille, Resolved Sexual Tension, Humour, did I mention the fluff?
Summary: Explaining multiverse theory has never been so challenging
When Camille woke she knew it was too early. She felt a bit groggy, and distinctly like she was forgetting something. She rolled over onto her back, throwing out an arm in annoyance as she tried to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. Instead of the mattress, her hand came down hard on something considerably denser and that also let out an 'oumph' of protest.
"Good morning to you too," Richard grumbled, the indignation in his tone being tempered rather by the smile on his face.
She returned the smile, crawled closer and kissed him good morning, "I'm sorry, I completely forgot you were there."
"Oh well that's just great for my confidence. Spending the night with me left so little an impression you can't even remember it the next morning."
She levelled him with a look to make it clear that was not the case, "Or maybe you tired me out so thoroughly that my brain simply can't function properly yet." She started to trace shapes with her fingers on his chest, smiling in an almost predatory manner. "However if you're feeling hard done by I'm sure I could make it up to you."
He seemed to consider this a moment and then asked, perfectly seriously, "Yes, but do you have any milk?"
Her fingers stilled instantly, and she sat up and looked at him in confusion, "What?"
"For the cup of tea, do you have any milk?" he clarified.
Camille couldn't help it, she burst into laughter, "That isn't what I meant."
"Well what else could you mean?" Good God the man was dense. Either that or she failing to comprehend the true significance of a cup of tea to the English. She slipped the hand from his chest lower and he flushed as he caught on. "Oh, my, well, I certainly, um, wouldn't say no to that. But I don't suppose there is a chance of that cup of tea first?" He was being cheeky and he seemed to realise it, because he gave her the sort of schoolboy grin he had probably perfected on his mother or teachers to get away with things. Much to Camille's annoyance, it worked completely on her.
"Ok then, you just stay nice and comfortable in bed then and I'll go make you a cup of tea," her tone was mock-sarcastic.
"Fine!" He said, shifting to get up. "I'll make my own tea!"
"No, no, no," she said, hands on his chest and pushing him back down. "You don't even know where anything is in my kitchen." He settled back without protest, even looked like he might doze off again.
Camille decided making tea naked was probably not the best plan she'd ever had, so she pulled on a pair of knickers. She couldn't find where her top had been discarded, so she grabbed Richard's shirt and shrugged it on, it was long enough to leave her decent if anyone did look through her kitchen window.
He roused when her weight displaced the mattress, sitting up and taking the tea from her. As he was about to take the first sip he glanced at her and then suddenly paused, as if that one glance had caused him to see something he found profoundly disturbing. "What is it?" she asked, glancing down.
"Is that my shirt?" he asked in a slightly strangled tone.
"Yes, are you worried I'll mess it up?" she teased.
He popped his tea down on the bedside table and turned back to her, fiddling with the collar on the shirt, "No, it just, it sort of reminds me of that time we had you locked up in the cells in that stupidly small bikini and Dwayne's shirt. I spent the entire time I was trying to interview you with this mantra in the back of my head going 'don't look at her legs, don't look at her legs'"
She was willing to admit (though only to herself) that she found that little admission rather flattering. "Truly?" She asked. "Because I didn't think you found me attractive back them."
"Have you met you?" he said incredulously. "Of course I bloody well found you attractive. I'm still half expecting to wake up in a hospital here and be told I've had an accident and that the painkillers may have given me quite vivid dreams."
"But you, well, sometimes you get a bit…flustered," she said vaguely by way of explanation.
"Yeah, well, maybe if I wasn't using so much energy trying not to make a fool out of myself in front of you those slips wouldn't have happened," as he spoke, he flicked open the first button on the shirt.
"Well you realise," Camille told him, shifting herself towards him. "That there is a key difference between that outfit and this one?"
"Oh?"
"I'm afraid I don't have anything on underneath this shirt," she said apologetically.
"Do you know," he told her, grinning. "I think that might actually be an improvement."
The tea went cold.
Richard decided he was going to have to give that shirt permanently to Camille. He didn't think he'd ever be able to wear it again in a professional setting. She was resting her head on his shoulder, and when he glanced down he was a little surprised by the look on concentration on her face, as if she were trying to figure out a very difficult problem. Dear God he hoped she wasn't having second thoughts.
"What are you thinking about?" He tried to sound casual.
"What do you think it would be like if it had been the other way around?" She asked.
Despite what they had just done, the question still made him feel a bit flustered. He was also confused why she'd feel the need to ask such a question, surely a confident woman like Camille would understand the logistics of such things? He ended up stumbling over his reply, "Um, well, we could try that later if you like…"
She giggled, punching him playfully in the arm, "I didn't mean that. I was wondering what you think it would have been like if I'd been sent to London and made to stay instead of you ending up on Saint Marie."
He was a little embarrassed now about his initial interpretation of her question, so protested loudly, "How am I supposed to figure out that's what you meant from the question 'what do you think it would be like if it was the other way around'? I can't actually read your mind you know!"
"Oh I don't know about that, you seemed to respond pretty intuitively to my needs just now."
He raised his eyebrows, "Taking my hand and sticking it where you want it is not intuition Camille, It's following orders."
Now it was her turn to be a little embarrassed, she really hadn't expected him to point out her somewhat wanton behaviour. She decided to distract him by posing her question again, "Go on then, I've been trying to think about how I'd be in the UK."
Richard frowned, and suddenly understood why she'd looked more than a little perplexed when she'd been considering the issue, "I can't really think of a set of circumstances where that would happen, though. According to the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics every time a choice or decision has to be made, two or more universes are created, one for each possible outcome of the choice. I suppose in theory there may well be a series of choices that could have been made that would end up with you in London but the pathway isn't exactly clear. I imagine in such a universe all sorts of other things would be different as well, fundamentally we may not be the same people."
She was staring at him, "I…" she started, before shaking her head fondly. "Must it be an academic exercise? Can you only think of it in the terms of this 'multi-verse' or can we just, you know, imagine it?"
"Oh well in that case if you'd been transferred into my unit in London I'd easily be able to avoid working with you because CID is so big, which of course would have been my loss but I wouldn't have realised that, would I?"
"Why would you have avoided me?" She cried indignantly.
"Well we didn't exactly get on brilliantly at the start, and don't claim it was just me because I distinctly remember that you told the Commissioner that you couldn't work with me!"
She huffed quietly, then suddenly brightened, "Well perhaps in that universe your commanding officer would order you to look after me!"
"Yes, and perhaps my mother is the landlady of a pub which has the only decent Rhum Agricole in the whole of London, and is thus guaranteed your custom," he said sarcastically, but after a thoughtful pause added. "Mind my mother was a bar maid and did always want to run her own pub so that one isn't very farfetched."
"See! We'd be forced into spending time together and I'd complain about London being impersonal, cold, grey and rainy but you'd try to convince me otherwise."
"No, if you didn't like it that'd be your problem," he said firmly. She narrowed her eyes, and he realised he might be in trouble, so he hastily added, "I'm sure I would feel sorry for you being so far from home though, and try to help you settle in a bit more." And actually, that was probably true – if she'd been assigned to his care he probably would feel a vague duty to make sure she was happy. She certainly seemed happy with his addition, as she snuggled back into him.
"Good, so we'd end exactly where we are now, but just in London."
"Is that what this was all about? You were wondering if we'd still be…" he hesitated, decided to replace the phrase he was originally going to use. "If we'd be, um, together in this alternative universe of yours?"
"I don't know why it bothered me or why it even occurred to me so don't ask."
"But it's your made up universe!" he chided her.
"Well I think we're together in all those other universes you were talking about as well," she added.
"Well, no, I must not have described it properly, those universes are created when we make choices. They'll be plenty where we aren't together because of making opposite choices," he explained patiently. "Take last night for example, I could just as easily stormed off in a huff instead of, well, you know…"
"Ah well in that universe I would have gone after you."
"But they'll also be a universe where you don't do that."
She was now the one with a patient tone, "Well then when I went back into my Mother's bar she would have asked me what was wrong and told me to stop being stupid and go sort things out with you."
He sighed, decided to switch tacks to get his point across, "Ok, well let's forget that bit of the evening. What if that man you were flirting with had decided not to come into the bar? Then we wouldn't have argued."
"Oh please we'd been bickering all day. I would have done something else to annoy you, winding you up is not a choice Richard – it's a way of life."
God she was being difficult about this, "Ok then, but there would be plenty of universes where I was never even born."
"Well I don't exist in those universes either," She said, with the added audacity of sounding bloody confident of it.
"But then there are all those universes where I was never sent to Saint Marie, or where I did that PhD on the Roman settlement of Emona, or where your undercover assignment takes you off on an entirely different track."
"Ok," she said, sitting up again to give him the look she reserved for when she was trying to be tolerant of his pragmatism but he was pushing her limits. "How about an amendment. Let's say we are together in every universe where we have met."
"Ah but what about those universes where we meet and then the next day I'm killed by a car or eaten by a shark?" He countered, feeling pretty smart.
Her face fell, and she very suddenly turned away from him and said quietly, "I don't like those universes." Guilt welled up almost immediately, he hesitantly reached out and touched her shoulder, was more relieved than he would admit when she didn't shrug him off.
"Nor so I," he told her back. "And since I am always careful when I cross the road and my hatred of sand and the ocean probably permeates every world in the multiverse I don't think those ones I suggested actually exist." Scientific inaccuracy was worth it if it made her happy. When she did turn back over he couldn't hide his smile. "Ok how about I suggest an amendment?"
"What?"
"There are universes where we aren't together yet."
"I might be able to live with that." She leaned in and kissed him slowly. When she broke it off and pulled back to look at him, he must have been smiling stupidly, because she poked him in the chest and asked, "What?"
"You are ridiculously sentimental," he told her as he wound his fingers into her hair. "And you've just massacred quantum mechanics and multiverse theory, but I'm completely willing to forgive you."
"Oh is that right? And why are you willing to forgive such wicked acts?" She teased.
Might as well dive straight in, "Because I love you."
This earned him her brightest smiles yet, "And I love you." He pulled her in for another kiss, and she mumbled against his lips, "In every universe."
A/N Did I mention the fluff? There is also a major clue to a series I have been writing in this story. Thanks to isailaway who let me use an idea she was originally going to use in "Heat".