"I'm just saying... people are going to talk, Greg."
"Bloody let them, then," Greg answered as he flipped through a stack of records in his lap. He clearly had better things to do with his time than entertain the bullshit concerns of their co-workers.
Iain brought him a cup of tea, and an annoyed scowl. Greg looked up and pursed his lips. "What?" He asked, a shade too sourly.
It was a testament to the Iain's respect for the surly older detective that he didn't roll his eyes. They were having an off-day - it did happen from time to time. When he was feeling uncomfortably insecure, and Greg was just his usual obnoxiously blunt self, their mutual happiness tended to deteriorate rapidly. It didn't help that they were both bitterly sarcastic by default, and rubbish at conflict resolution.
They could give a little - a loving glance, or a cup of tea - but that was bloody it.
"You say you don't care that anyone knows you're gay, but you won't even tell Anderson that we've moved in together," Iain explained for what felt like the hundredth time. "Any straight couple would've told the whole bloody office and expected a party-" Greg cut him off.
"What do you expect me to do? Walk into the building wearing a neon shirt that says 'I'm bumming Stupid'?"
Iain made a very disgruntled face. Greg stared up at him, three records in one hand and tea in the other, utterly unapologetic for what he'd said. "I don't know why you're offering," Iain replied after a short, cold silence. "You wouldn't do it."
"Because my- our personal life doesn't belong in the office!" Greg explained slowly, trying to gesture with his hands without spilling scalding tea down the leg of his trousers.
"You were shagging a man you brought to crime scenes," Iain retorted, voice raising to match Greg's. "How is that any better?"
"We weren't shagging on the damn job."
"Neither are we!"
"Exactly! It doesn't- fucking- matter!"
Both detectives went silent and glared at each other as they realised they'd worked themselves full circle - right to the start of the argument they'd been having for a week straight. Greg put down his records - he'd been trying to sort through them, figure out which ones he was missing from various collections - and stood up slowly.
"I'm going to bed." He put his untouched tea down on the coffee table.
Iain fumed silently. Only after Greg had slipped into the bathroom did he march into their bedroom, grab a pillow and the duvet from the bed, and retreat to Greg's stupid, horrid, squashed, old couch. He quickly cocooned himself into the blanket and settled down into a cosy nest just as the bathroom light went off. As he shut his eyes, he heard an annoyed grunt from the bedroom - the result of his lover-turned-unhappy-flatmate discovering the newly barren bed.
But if Greg had anything to say about it, he kept it to himself. Iain heard the bedroom door shut.
All those sullen, self-conscious feelings of regret and indecision silently came creeping back in the darkness of the sitting room. His stomach turned, and he buried his face in the pillow - questioning his own stupidity, cursing Greg's stubbornness, and demanding to know why the universe couldn't just bloody let them get along like they usually did. They were so good about not fighting - they bickered, but they didn't get into separation-worthy feuds like this.
Well, not until recently, he admitted. But there had to be a first time for everything.
Closing his eyes, he desperately tried to focus on the warmth of the duvet wrapped around him, and not the heartache that covered every inch of his temporary bed. That fucking awful couch smelled just like Greg; it was all smoke and a certain kind of soap, and probably dirt and grass and sweat, too - not that he was actively trying to get a whiff of those last three. Maybe shoe polish, because Greg was an idiot and spilled things.
Iain frowned. They were both idiots.
He took a deep breath - held it in for a moment - and forced himself to ignore the creeping pain in his stomach as he slowly drifted off to sleep.
Back in the bedroom, Greg stared up at the shadowy ceiling. A hint of light slipped through the curtains from the street lamps outside, casting strange shapes across to the closet doors. Ordinarily they didn't bother him - he could hide his face in a pillow, or against the back of Iain's head, and be bloody unconscious to the world in a matter of minutes.
Tonight he just watched the shadows bounce around as cars passed on the road.
Minutes slipped by. Eventually hours, and he still just kept watching the light - angry with himself for not dragging Iain's arse back to bed. Angry with Iain for sleeping on the god damn couch in the first place. Angry with both of them for thinking a stupid, silly argument was worth sleeping apart.
He rolled over, closing his eyes. He'd pulled a thin blanket from the closet, but it didn't matter. There was a big, empty space next to him that he wasn't used to anymore, and he hated it. It was cold, and lonely, and wrong - so wrong.
He climbed out of bed, feet moving swiftly across the cold floorboards as he quietly pulled open the bedroom door and peeked out into the darkness. He could see a vague outline of the couch, and knew exactly where the coffee table was by default - it'd been in the same damn place for ten years, and it was never going to move. He slowly walked out into the sitting room. If Iain was awake, he didn't have anything to say. Greg sighed.
Carefully - silently praying that Iain's astonishing ability to sleep through natural disasters would hold out - he wedged himself onto the couch, and pulled the younger man, in his cosy blanket-nest, over top of him. It wouldn't be the most comfortable place in the world to sleep.
But it was the right one.