Stuart Turner eyed the target building through his binoculars; it was a mixed raid and Inspector Weston was calling the shots, and somehow Stu had a bad feeling about it. The slight buzz of a car window being lowered intruded on his consciousness, and he rolled an eye sideways at his companion. "What?" He sounded irritable, and Stevie smirked slightly.
"Nothing, Sarge."
"If it's the aftershave again, I've got a new one," he scowled, "and I've used a lot less of it.... happy?" he snapped a little sarcastically. Suddenly it had become open season on Stuart, and he was feeling less than delighted with this new development.
Christmas!he thought gloomily. He paid scant lip service to Christmas now. His sister had her family and they were off to her in-laws, his parents were both gone now, and Stu had nobody. The latest round of office teasing had him feeling under siege. He had been on duty over Christmas, on Christmas day itself, as he had swapped with Max. Actually, Max had plans, and he'd swapped with Stu, only saying it the other way round sounded better. To Stu, at any rate.
Me, DI Manson and a microwave turkey dinner...be still my beating heart! Well, it was better than sitting at home watching dvds and playing games until he finally fell down an entire bottle of wine and crawled away to his lonely bed. He contemplated the two bottles of Chianti that were still sitting in the wine rack in his kitchen, wondering in a depressed sort of way whether the job had finally got to him. It was ten AM and he was thinking about alcohol. And it wasn't as though he could even really have a drink, since he had Daisy for the weekend. He'd promised his sister he would look after her while Katrina and her husband went to some company shindig with Mike's firm. He was slightly relieved that he wasn't going to be saddled with both girls, as Suzy had an invitation to a friend for the same weekend, so it was only Daisy.
Just to cap things off nicely, he was developing a hideous cold. His chest felt a bit tight, his throat felt slightly raspy and his head felt more than a little stuffed. But coming down with the flu the week after a holiday shift wasn't going to cut any ice, so he kept his misery to himself.
Stevie looked sideways at her partner. He was in a foul mood, as there had been a new joke at Stu's expense only that morning, and she felt slightly guilty when she'd looked up from laughing and caught the flash of real hurt in his eyes as he just stood there and took it. She'd tried to talk to him about it, but he'd just brushed it off, pulling rank on her. Stevie had huffed in frustration, and it was Jo who came to her rescue.
"Leave him for now," the older woman advised, "he's wound up and you won't get close."
Stevie looked at her friend and wondered. There had been a gentle rumour going on for months that Stuart Turner and Jo Masters were very close, closer than mere friendship, although the office gossip found the fact of their friendship odd. What out-and-proud gay feisty fortysomething Jo could possibly have in common with slippery shallow metrosexual thirtysomething Stuart was a continuing mystery no one had actually gotten round to investigating But something they certainly had, as Stuart was more relaxed and less confrontational around Jo, and everyone knew it. And Jo seemed to revel in teasing him and in getting away with it, plus they would share the joke. Whether he was aware of it or not, it was to Jo that Stu inevitably turned when something wasn't playing on a case, and they appeared to share a private understanding that transcended the normal boundaries of a working relationship.
There was even that time... Stevie looked out of the window...she'd been coming back into the building, feeling tired and more than a little frustrated, Jo and Stuart up ahead of her. He had his hands in his pockets, and his body language looked much like Stevie felt. She wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying, but then Jo put a companionable arm round his neck, and they looked at each other. She was close enough to see the expressions on their faces: they looked so relaxed and happy to be together. Stevie had felt quite touched by the warmth of their relationship. Whatever the truth of the matter, Stu didn't feel the need to be anything other than himself with Jo, and she responded to that.
Jo would have teased him out of his mood by now...Stevie sighed. She wasn't quite sure why she was obsessing about Stuart Turner these days, but there was something going on in her head, and every so often, a pair of brown eyes would upset her equilibrium.
"Sarge?"
"What is it, Stevie?" He sounded less than friendly, which wasn't Stuart's usual behaviour. Most of the time he was a like a big, bouncy puppy leaping around. Although...her eyes narrowed slightly as she remembered their argument about Rob Towler.
She was about to come back at him, when "go, go, go," sounded from the radio, and they leapt out of the car.
Two of the suspects had broken free of the police cordon and taken off with Stuart in pursuit, Jo and Stevie following. They crossed the car park and headed up the steep bank at the end. Stuart followed the suspects up the grassy bank, which was wet. By the time he reached the top, the fleeing pair were out of sight.
He peered cautiously over. He could see where they'd gone through: there was a tangle of old rusty barbed wire at the bottom. Stu pondered going down there to try and get them, or better still, getting uniform to do it for him. He turned around, about to shout back to Jo and Stevie that there was something down there and he would be following, when he lost his footing and tumbled down the other side of the bank.
"Stuart!" Jo yelled, and she and Stevie scrambled up the bank.
They peered over.
He'd fallen straight down the slope into the barbed wire, and his struggles to free himself from its spiky grasp only served to tangle his legs ever tighter into its grip. He was well and truly trapped, like a fly on a spider's web.
"Some help?" He peered up at them, a wealth of sarcasm in his tone, and gingerly they made their way down to try to help him. He was trying to prise the stuff away with his hands, with absolutely no success.
"Stuart, stop thrashing around. You're making it worse." Leaning over, Jo tried to help him with his predicament. The sharp spines were thoroughly entangled with his jeans. Gingerly she tried to pull some of them away, but his thrashing attempts to free himself had ensured he was caught fast.
"God, you've really done it to yourself this time!" Jo muttered.
"You think?" he panted, sarcasm and a real hint of pain evident in his tone.
Stevie looked at the mess he was in. "There's only one way out of this."
He looked up at her expectantly. "Do enlighten me?"
"You're going to have to take your trousers off."
"Eh!"
"If we take your shoes off, you can try and wriggle out of your jeans."
"There has to be another way."
"Sure, there is...." Jo put her head on one side. "I go and get someone down here with wire cutters and we cut you free. Do you really want to wait that long? Have uniform tramping all over here?" Jo cast a meaningful glance upwards at the sky. The temperature had dropped, the wind had picked up and she knew any moment it was going to rain.
Stu scowled. He had no choice. His legs were scratched and gouged beneath his jeans and it was all starting to sting, he was already cold and damp from his slip down the bank, he had encountered some brambles and a few stinging nettles on the way down, and if his already overburdened psyche sensed that Stevie and Jo were enjoying his discomfort, he knew he only had himself to blame for this one.
Reluctantly, he reached for his belt and undid it, remembering as he was lowering the zip that the boxers he was wearing under his jeans were a joke present from his sister. He pushed his jeans down a bit as Stevie and Jo took his shoes off, then they attempted to prize the wire apart so that he could wriggle free.
Stevie took one look at the TweetyPie boxers and choked; Jo suppressed a smile as a sideways glance at her grumpy sergeant's face told her that he really couldn't take much more. She felt a twinge of guilt, though, as he looked really stressed and upset.
Stu managed to get one leg halfway out until his grip slipped, and as a particularly vicious spine gouged a deep track in his leg, he yelped. It was painful and slow, but finally he managed to get out of the wire. His jeans were torn, his legs gouged and bleeding. Resisting the urge to laugh and make matters worse, Stevie turned her attention to helping Jo extract his jeans from the barbed wire, while Stu fidgeted from foot to foot in his soaked and filthy socks.
Just as Jo was handing him his jeans back, the heavens opened. Stu reassembled his clothing in haste, stuffing his feet back into his shoes and following the two women up the bank, he slipped a couple of times, soaking and muddying his clothes even worse. By the time he landed on the other side and had run the gauntlet of the sniggers and sideways glances back to the car, he was fervently wishing he was somewhere else entirely. Not the least because Inspector Weston was looking grim-faced at him; after all, he'd lost two of the suspects.
He got a roasting from an angry DI Manson when he got back to the Station. Things had pretty much reached rock-bottom as far as Stuart was concerned, and he still had an hour to shift's end. In his damp and bedraggled clothing, he sat hunched over his desk, typing up a statement as though his life depended on it, acutely aware of the throbbing of every scratch on his gouged and abused legs, and wishing that the pounding in his head would slow down a little. He kept his head down, ignoring the attempts of first Stevie and then Jo to try to draw him into conversation, and at shift's end he bolted out the door as though the hounds of hell were on his heels.
Jo looked at Stevie. "I think we need to go and make it straight with him."
Stevie looked at her friend a bit reluctantly."He's in a really foul mood. He won't like us going to his place."
"I know, but what would you rather? Him going on like this, or a short-lived eruption, and then some peace and harmony next week?" Jo cocked her head to one side and surveyed her friend.
Stevie sighed. Jo was right, of course.
They stopped off at the supermarket on the way, where Jo bought a large chocolate cake as a peace offering, then they headed to 65 Cusack Gardens.
Stevie thought about it. There was something about Stu which got to her, something which appealed to her sense of fun, and there were times when she would look across at him and wonder -- wonder if the promptings of her heart were hormones or something completely different.
And he seemed interested in her. But there was this distance. And she wondered about the distance. Jo seemed to have bridged the distance without the slightest difficulty, and she wondered about that too.
"Penny for them!" Jo's slightly dry tone penetrated Stevie's consciousness and she looked up, for a split second wondering exactly where she was.
"Definitely not worth that much," Stevie grinned. "Let's do this. He can only kill us once, after all."
"He's Stuart Turner, not a man-eating tiger," Jo replied. "He's unlikely to try and eat you."
"No, but there's a fair chance he could gas us both with the aftershave." They looked at each other.
Jo snickered.
Standing outside number 65, Stevie was having second, third, fourth and even fifth thoughts. Stu had looked really angry and upset when he'd lit out of CID at the end of the shift, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to beard the tiger in his den if he was still wound up.
Jo stared at her companion meaningfully, sighed, and then knocked. A moment or two of silence, and then the door was yanked open.
"What," the flat's owner snapped irritably.
Stevie stared. Stu was wearing a towelling robe which hung unbelted and open, and a pair of crumpled shorts. It was when she looked down that she gave a gasp of horror. His legs were a patchwork of hastily applied iodine and peeling dressings over a multitude of cuts and grazes.
"Stu, your legs." Stevie was appalled. "Why didn't you say something?"
Stuart opened his mouth to say something, something cutting and very unfriendly, when the tickle at the back of his throat finally caught. What came out was a wheeze, followed by a prolonged coughing fit that had him leaning against the door frame for support.
"Uncle Stuart," Daisy wailed from the top of the stairs. "I'm bored."
Jo took charge. "Stu, come with me and we'll sort your legs out. Stevie, Daisy knows you, why don't you sort her out?"
Stevie grinned and headed for the stairs.
Jo took Stu's elbow and gently pushed him the direction of the bathroom. To her surprise he went without a grumble.
"Sit down." She put a hand on his chest to push him into a sitting position on the stool in the bathroom, surprised at the little tingle that zipped through her, as her fingers met his skin. She knelt down and took a closer look at the damage. Most of the cuts were superficial, but he'd done a bad job of cleaning them up, and the dressings he'd applied to the deeper cuts were peeling away and not doing anything. "Best start again, hadn't we?" Jo felt unaccountably shy. She didn't do shy. They'd achieved a working relationship a long time ago, and they felt comfortable in each other's company.
To cover her confusion, she got to her feet and rummaged though his medicine cabinet. Coming up with the supplies she needed, she ran some hot clean water into the basin and set to work, cleaning the cuts and applying iodine and dressings where necessary.
From time to time he coughed and spluttered above her head, and his responses to her conversation were mostly monosyllabic, then there was the occasional hiss of pain when she pressed too hard.
Other than that, there was a strange silence in the air. She looked up to catch the strangest expression on his face: half hopeful longing, and half denial.
Finishing up, Jo got to her feet. "Well, that's that then," she exclaimed brightly. A little too brightly, trying to clamp down on the most peculiar feeling inside. A feeling that shouldn't have been there, as she didn't do men, especially her own sergeant, but there was something about Stu which had always got to her.
She held out a hand, intending for him to take it so that she could pull him to his feet, the sort of things friends do. But you don't want to be his friend...you want something very different... the insidious little voice in her head murmured, a voice which made no rational sense to Jo. She tried to ignore it, as well as the odd feeling when he took her hand. And she looked down at their clasped, intertwined fingers for a moment. Her heart beat a little faster, and then a little slower, and she wondered again what the hell she thought she was playing at. She looked him in the eye, the solemn brown eyes looking back at her. The shutters were up, but she could see something, she had no idea what...then she stepped closer. He looked away, but she put her free hand under his jaw and gently turned his face up to hers so that she could see into his eyes.
She could see it there: the hope and longing. He was holding it back as hard as he could, but his defences were shaky. Suddenly she knew that she was in control, and where that should have given her a little skip in her soul, she felt a rush of tenderness towards him. Her hand slid round the back of his neck and she bent her head. Their lips were millimetres apart, and as she could sense his hesitation, his fear of rejection, Jo closed the gap between them. His free arm slid round her waist, not crushing or hauling her up against him, but tentatively, gently, almost as though he was scared to intrude. Very tenderly they explored each other.
When they finally broke apart, he closed his eyes and leaned into her. His head was swimming, Jo's arms were round his neck, and her slim fingers were stroking his hair. He breathed slowly, acutely aware of the rasp in the back of his throat, and a storm of emotions he was having trouble controlling.
Jo cuddled him, her arms around his neck, his head resting against her chest, and she wondered why it felt so right. It should have felt all wrong. Unwilling to break the mood, she leaned into him and rubbed his back. He settled comfortably against her, his headache had slowed to a dull throb, and he drifted happily, enjoying the sensation of closeness.
Stevie paused outside the door. Jo had her arms around Stu, the expression on her face tender and loving; Stu was leaning against her, arms round her waist, his eyes closed, an expression of contentment and something that looked very much like love on his face. Stevie eased back slightly so that she could study them without being seen. It wasn't spying on them, not exactly. There was something very appealing about their closeness, and here she had the answer to the question that had been rattling around in her head for a while.
Whatever else was true, the station gossip mill was this time on the money. Jo and Stuart did have something.