Disclaimer: I don't own any of the original characters nor the original Inspector Lynley Mysteries – they belong to Elizabeth George and the BBC. I have borrowed the characters from the TV-Show and solely own the ideas of my stories and the developments I let them go through. I also do not own any of the characters from other TV shows mentioned or appearing in this story. They belong to ITV.
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Author's notes: Another short idea that had turned into a longer story... (Well, yes, I also had thought about tennis but seriously - I still haven't found a good explanation why and how Barbara would practise that for years.) Maybe later I'll find more sports... Maybe sailing? LOL! Anyway, here is another sporty one, this time a bit different to the previous stories and definitely longer. Besides, I decided to post it as an ILM-story though some known characters from other detective shows appear or are mentioned.
Summary: Who said he could not benefit from her aikido-related knowledge? Who said she could not benefit from his rowing experience? And who said that a sunny summer's day in Oxford spent with assisting in the investigation in a murder case could not become... err... relaxing? The local detectives obviously were more than capable of solving that case on their own.
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Sportif (III) - ch. 1 - Chinese Meditation
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"You what?!" he gasped.
"I've been practising it for years." she answered as if it was absolutely nothing unusual.
DI Tommy Lynley had just peeled himself out of the the sheets of his bed. He peeked at his alarm clock. Almost six. He could have slept another hour but somehow he was already awake so why not simply get up, take a long shower and then go down and have breakfast.
He was in a small but excellent hotel in Oxford where he and his Sergeant, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers as a matter of fact, were sent to help or watch the local CID. Or whatever else the Superintendent had said about this useless co-operation. DI Lewis and DS Hathaway were more than capable to solve this case on their own. Lynley and Havers only were some nice sidekick, some guests that could help with minor tasks and stand in the way like Lewis and Hathaway probably would when they would be in London. Well attuned teams do seldomly need help - both teams had agreed on that in the first few hours of their partnership and from then on Lynley and Havers had a wonderfully easy 9 to 5 job, almost only were present and just added a few ideas but mainly did research and other things that usually were done by the local constables.
But since their bosses had ordered them into this co-operation they would make the best of it. The Met even had arranged a stay here in the beautiful college town only fifty miles away from London. That's why DI Tommy Lynley, Lord Lynley to be exact, the 8th Earl of Asherton, had upgraded their stay in Oxford and rebooked from the boring and simple urban B&B to this not so cheap hotel north of Oxford with more space in the rooms as well as on the outsides - big beds, huge ensuite bathrooms, a grand veranda and green plants wherever you look. The skyline of the wonderful buildings of Oxford was visible only from their rooms on the first floor. You had to look across some trees at the end of the big grassland in the garden. Barbara Havers had, contrary to her usual behaviour, not objected and not even argued that he had played his creditcard once more.
Ah, Miss Havers... Tommy thought smiling. He was in love with her. He had not known that his feelings for her were so entirely deep until recently. She had openly talked about leaving the Met and transfering to a calmer CID. When she had talked about Causton CID, in the middle of nowhere like Tommy thought, and since it had sounded as if everything of this transfer already was arranged he suddenly felt that he did not want to lose her. He did not want to work with anybody else. He would miss her presence, he would miss her remarks, he would miss their lunch breaks and their pints after work. And then he realised that he also would miss her scent, he would miss the coffee she always brought him and the brief touch of their fingers when he took the mug from her, he would miss the looks she gave him, the glares, the smiles, the uproaring laughter when they celebrated some solved case, the rising crimson in her face when he congratulated her for something good and he would miss the opportunity to put an arm around her shoulders in a half hug when she needed to be cheered up for something bad, he would miss her shy smiles when he caught her staring (probably into the blue but sometimes he hoped and thought she had stared at him) and her fierce objections and arguments against his theories when she was sure she was right with whatever they were fighting about. He would miss her in his life. And at some point he had realised why.
And he even would miss her adorable grumpiness in the morning when it was too early and she had had no coffee yet. Probably she was still sound asleep now, he thought and sleepily trudged to the window.
He almost stopped breathing by the view that was offered.
Barbara Havers was glad that His Lordship was not short of money and for once she had agreed on this hotel upgrade without any objections. She would enjoy the rest of the time she had with her DI. The transfer to Causton CID seemed to be agreed on. She would go there, finally make her exam for Detective Inspector and in a couple of years or maybe earlier she aspired to replace DCI Barnaby (the second, she had learned). She even already had looked for an affordable little cottage in Midsomer Market somewhere near Causton. Housing prices were much lower there. The only thing she would miss was a certain DI. Though he was - next to the promotion - the reason why she wanted to leave the Met. She could not bear to have him around anymore. For quite some time, for years if she was honest to herself, she had more than a crush on him. First she only admired him but little by little she fell in love with that man who was so absolutely different to her. Her working class roots were something she was proud of and also something of which she knew that it would always be in the way to even be considered as a fling by the Earl. Oh, yes, they spent all their lunch breaks together, recently they also went out for dinner quite often, they had a pint after work on a regular basis or once had watched a film (which was disturbed by their bloody mobiles buzzing unisono and calling them to a crime scene). Tommy, like she meanwhile constantly called him in her thoughts, and in her thoughts only, even had asked her out to some charity event his mother had organised in Nanrunnel, the Cornish village near the manor where he had grown up. And it had been a relaxed and wonderful weekend. He considered her as his friend. A good friend maybe, or even another sister, but definitely nothing more, of that she was sure.
Though she knew she would overcome that loss eventually she really would miss him once she was transfered so for now she enjoyed the rest of the time she had with him and made the best of this little escapade in Oxford their Superintendent had sent them to.
Like the days before Barbara had gotten up at 5:30 and in the first rays of sunlight she had tiptoed down the creaky old stairs, then - with a quick detour via the kitchen - out the veranda doors on the back of the house. She scuttered across the granite floor to the grassy meadow.
There she was now that Tommy looked out of the window. Of course she did not recognise that he was watching her.
What an amazing but nonetheless beautiful view, he thought. For a while he only could stare.
Barbara stood there in the dewy grass behind the house. She was barefoot and he was sure that she also did not wear a bra under that wide and thin, with the pastel lights of the morning shining through it almost aethereal, ecru shirt with wide sleeves. It was long and covered her bottom. The trousers she had on under that shirt were equally wide and of the same cloth. By the crinkled look Tommy would say it was her pyjama. Not those funny prints anymore? he wondered.
In smooth movements Barbara bent and stretched her legs, turned her upper body, drilled and twisted her feet, made a slow step, stretched her arms and hands in movements like she was doing some of her aikido stuff in slow motion. She obviously practised some asian meditation. One of the kind you so often see in documentary films about china.
Though he was slightly irritated that Barbara was doing this, down there in the garden of this hotel, before breakfast, Tommy indulged in the view. Her delicate curves were hidden under the wide pyjama but from time to time they came into sight under stretched cloth when she raised her arm in a big circling movement above her head. When she turned and made another slow lunge her bottom really was a sight to look at. The features of her face showed a deep peace and such a radiating concentrated harmony he formerly never had seen on his grumpy, gruffy Sergeant Havers.
Tommy's hand reached out as if he involuntarily wanted to touch that face. He indeed wanted, but she was down there and he was up here and there was a window pane and multiple yards between them. His hand stopped flat on the glass.
"Bloody!" he whispered and forced himself to turn away. He had to get some cold water into his face, or better take a full cold shower. Something in his stomach had twisted too pleasantly. How could he ever get through this day with that image in his head? Looking over the rim of a towel at his reflection in the mirror above the sink he started to grin. That's the idea! He would join her, whatever she was doing there. Barefoot like she was and still in his comfortable pyjama he hurried down the stairs.
On the cold granite Tommy slowed down his pace.
"Mornin', Barbara." he said not too loud as if his voice would disturb the peace. The first birds already were chirping.
Barbara did not stop in her flow nor did she seem to be too startled or amazed that her DI joined her.
"And a very good morning to you..." she softly said in the rhythm, or better flow of her motions breathing deeply in and out, then making a move like she was hugging something. Lynley almost expected she would call him Tommy right in that moment. "...Sir."
Tommy's knees almost went limp. That had been the breathiest, sexiest, most erotic Sir he ever had heard. He harrumphed. Then the full length of this - for this hour absolutely un-Barbara-like - sentence went through to his brain. Something about this scenery was totally different and somehow strange.
Grinning he placed himself diagonally behind her and curiously tried to mimick her movements.
"What are you doing in the garden at this unholy hour of day?"
For a few breathes Barbara was silently continuing her exercises then she seemed to push down something heavy and stayed in that position.
"I'm practising qìgōng and tàijí quán*, Sir, some sort of Chinese way to start the day." Barbara answered with closed eyes. Tommy took the same position and also closed his eyes. For a while they were breathing in harmony. He literally could feel the silence although his feet were a bit cold.
As if she had heard his thoughts about the cool dew Barbara continued with a murmuring voice. "If you concentrate on the position you are in, between the chi of the sky and the chi of the earth, you could feel the warmth of the earth flowing through your feet and legs to your centre. And from above the soft light of the morning floods you from your head across your chest and to that same centre." She breathed in and out. "Breathe!"
Tommy breathed.
Tommy could hear that she was moving again and so he opened his eyes. Her face was calm and earnest while she turned to the side and pushed something invisible aside in slow motion. Then she let her arms describe something like a vertical circle when her body turned to the other side where she pushed something else away.
"When you feel the chi, the flow, the energy culminating in your centre you can create a space around you, a mighty sphere of that energy." She chuckled. Tommy never had heard her chuckling at this early hour of the day nor had he heard her talk so much before she had had breakfast or at least a coffee. "Well, that for later is to learn, like my Sensei had said at that point." Again she breathed deeply. "For the start you should see it as a simple meditation, Sir."
"And you show me how?" Tommy eagerly asked.
"Of course." Her voice still was calm and she still seemed undisturbed. "Later." She bowed into the direction of the rising sun and then took a stance as if she was wanting to fight now.
"Aikido?" Tommy asked.
"Something like that." she answered and started some slow movements which Tommy tried to repeat but she made too much hidden gestures and complicated turns with her hands and twists with her upper body so he soon surrendered. He was not able to follow.
But he tried to repeat the hugging and pushing things Barbara had done earlier from his memory. Even slower than Barbara had done it but deeply concentrated. Soon he actually just stood there, entirely relaxed, knees merely bent, arms hanging in front of his body, palms and fingertips of both hands facing, with his eyes closed and his mind focussed on himself, the feeling of the dew at his feet, the beginning warmth of the sun on his face and the sounds of Barbara's breathing, her pyjama slightly rustling with her movements, the leaves whispering in the treetops, the birds and the waking hotel business in his ears. He did not even recognise that Barbara eventually had stopped.
She had finished what he had not been able to copy and had turned to her DI. Barbara really watched him for the first time this morning. For his age and lazy way of living he made quite a well shaped figure in that black silken pyjama. Everything at his appearance was alluring.
"Now, shall I show you a bit of that?" she asked. Tommy opened his eyes and they smiled at each other.
"I'm still wondering about this all, but yes, please."
"Hm. I was quite stunned myself but actually there are already a few people I've showed this." Barbara said and went behind Tommy.
"You what?!" he gasped.
"I've been practising it for years." she answered as if it was absolutely nothing unusual. Tommy had turned to Barbara and looked tremendously irritated so she explained that she had started with the outdoor qigong one morning after she had returned from a bloody awful crime scene. "The third slaughter of Johnson, you remember? After the Proctor case." Tommy nodded with a disgusted face. On that very morning she had found no sleep and had needed fresh air so she had gone out of her flat and to the shopping centre's backside where a little park was. She had exercised in the rising sun. It had been so recreative that she had repeated it the next day and almost every other day that she had the time. One by one she had had onlookers, and one by one some of those had come regularly and had asked her to explain and show what she did. Always with the hint that she was no sensei and could explain it nowhere near as good as a real master would she had shown them some moves and told them a bit of the backgrounds.
"Unbelievable..." he mumbled shaking his head and pensively looking at his colleague. Still waters... he thought but soon his mind was disctracted by her lesson.
"My sensei showed me some fundamental principles and easy first exercises. Well, those he knows and practises, there are multiple other styles and principles... First: Raise your head relaxed."
Tommy raised his head.
"No, Sir. You don't want to kill the birds with your chin, do you. Just raise it loosely. Yah, like this. Second: Stretch your back into a straight posture and -" boldly she placed a flat hand onto his chest. "- you don't need to show off your muscles! Keep your chest back."
Tommy grinned. Her hand still laid on his chest and it made him a bit nervous. His heart pounded and he was sure Barbara was able to feel it though she showed no sign. When she placed her other hand softly on his waist he had to force his thoughts back onto the Chinese meditation she was trying to show him.
"Third: Keep your waist loose. Don't strain the muscles there." Though her hands left his chest and waist it was not becoming easier for Tommy because Barbara walked around him and now that she stood behind him he could feel the warmth her body radiated onto his. Her fists gently pressed into the small of his back. "Those muscles here. Don't strain them. Mellow out, Sir."
"Easier said than done." he croaked. Feigning to be oblivious to what he truly meant Barbara laughed. She had become a bit nervous too when she had realised that she actually had touched him like this. And with us both being in pyjamas!
"Now slightly bend your knees. Just go down a tiny bit. Feet stay positioned under your shoulders." Her warm hands now were positioned flat on his hips and with a soft pressure she pushed him down a few inches. "Stay relaxed."
"I try." Tommy mumbled. Some of her energy seemed to float through her hands and into regions that were distinctively below his centre. He swallowed. Of course he had dreamed of her and of course it had not always been appropriate but the actual proximity, her actual touch like this obviously was reality. Tommy had never before felt this strong desire to simply turn and pull her into an explicitely unrelaxed embrace. His prayers pleaded for it to not deepen because wearing such a thin pyjama only would make this desire visible. He almost gave in when he felt her warm breath on his back and her hands stroking across his shoulders and upper arms. Oh, please, dear weather god, let it snow now!
"Four: Let your shoulders and your elbows hang down. Slack. But please don't slump, Sir." Barbara did not know how she could go on talking at all. First her fists in Tommy's back and then her flat hands on his hips, where she had noticed that he wore no underwear which had made her all the more nervous, were feeling great but now that she stood only inches away from his back she revelled in moving her palms across his tensed muscles. Under the pretense to show him which parts she addressed with her lesson she shamelessly caressed him. Gods, I'm so glad he can't see me. Barbara knew that she must look wanton like she in fact was at the moment. To actually, really touch him like this was far more, even mind-blowingly wonderful than any indecent dream she had ever had of him.
"And don't forget to breathe, Sir." She should follow her own advice.
Barbara ripped herself away from his backside and took a stance in front of Tommy where she did what she had told him so far. Together they simply breathed. In fact Barbara found it hard herself since they had locked their eyes and the lovingly contented smile she saw in Tommy's were not easy to interpret and less easy to handle.
"Now the next things are a bit philosophical as well." she continued her lesson. "Hold the balance. That not only means to keep standing, it also means to keep the void and the fulness divided. Arrange the weight accurately. Body and mind."
Bloody hell, my body and mind are totally unbalanced and only focused on you, Barbara! he thought. "U-huh." he said.
"Co-ordinate top and bottom, sky and earth. Remember what I've said earlier?"
Tommy nodded. It was the breathiest, sexiest, most erotic Sir I've ever heard.
"Close your eyes."
Reluctantly he followed her order.
"Form a ring with your thumb and middle finger. I'll show you something. Just follow where I lead you." When he had done like he had been told Barbara grabbed his wrists. "Keep your eyes closed." she murmured while she raised his arms and let him make some moves upwards and downwards. Then she had to let it go because the proximity she had put herself in had become too much for her to bear.
"Nah, this doesn't work. Just look and copy what I do. Keep in harmony with the inside and the outside." Her arms again pushed and pulled something invisible like she had done it earlier and Tommy repeated it.
"See? All exercises are calm..." She slowly showed a few sequences and Tommy followed. "It's a continuous stream... Don't forget to breathe, Sir."
He breathed in and out and then thought that he could do this forever. Tommy wanted to practise this meditational thing with Barbara each and every single morning of his future life. Again he felt that he did not want her to leave the Met, did not want her to leave him. He really did not want her to leave at all.
I have to do something.
After another fifteen minutes of silent, meditational exercise Barbara finished with a bow into the sun. Meanwhile it was fully risen and probably the breakfast tables were laid out by now. The sounds from the hotel had grown louder and it was possible that the two were watched by some of the guests from behind curtains.
"Usually I've finished earlier" Barbara explained. "and would be showering by now."
"I'm only happy that you already were so nice and easy... and politely communicative at this hour of day." Tommy grinned. "And all this before breakfast. You did have had a coffe, didn't you?"
"Guess what, Sir? This..." she bent down and took a mug with the last drops of a now surely cold beverage. "is no lush green tea. I'd never exercise without having my cup of coffee - no matter what the Chinese would say about that."
On their way back to the house they shared a companionable grin. Tommy held the door open for her and she stepped into the winter garden.
"...but I can't figure out why you still sometimes... or mostly? ...are as grumpy as you usually are in the mornings at the office."
"Because, Sir, I'm sometimes late, had a bad night or no coffee and simply am not always able to start my day with qigong or with complete exercises. Do you think I'm trudging barefoot and in thin clothings through the muddy winter's streets to the park and catch the flu?"
"I even wonder if you wear exactly this in the hottest of summers..." he chuckled and then bent down to her ear to whisper "Everybody is able to see that you wear nothing underneath, Barbara."
Her face went deep red. "Of course not, Sir." She emphasised every single word but then blushed even more when she realised what she had said. "I mean, of course I don't wear my pyjama in the public park."
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Author's note: About that Qigong-thing: yes, I've once came in touch with it and also have done some more research, but if you think that I've described something wrong, please keep in mind that there are many interpretations and mixtures with modern meditational practises. If you are Chinese, please feel free to enlighten me (per PM!), if you are not, well...
*qìgōng and tàijí quán - speak it somehow like English speakers would say this: chee gong and ty'gee'ye chuan (and if you know the German ü the last part is more of a chüan) - I think this comes close, but, hell, don't ever think this is how a Chinese would say it ;-)