This is my very first fanfic published, so keep that in mind, please - I was inspired by all the clever fanfiction writers who have written about these wonderful characters before. I am a huge fan of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries from BBC, and have borrowed their characters to play with just for fun and at no profit to myself, and I promise to return them unharmed, but hopefully very satisfied...I've never read the Elizabeth George novels, and can't believe anyone would keep Tommy and Barbara apart on purpose, but I thank her for creating them...
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Detective Inspector Tommy Lynley sighed deeply, then tried once more to concentrate on the mound of paperwork cluttering his desk, but found himself reading the same line over and over without it making any more sense than it had the first time.
His shoulders sagged; his muscles ached. He was tired; in fact his whole team was exhausted after the murder case they had finally closed today after three weeks of hard police work. The fact that they had caught the bastard didn't erase the image of the victim from his mind, the strangulation marks standing out in stark contrast to the pale skin on the young woman's throat…
"Fancy a drink, sir?" Barbara Havers' voice interrupted his train of thought, and he lifted his head with a smile for his sergeant. "C'mon then, some of the lads and I are headed down to the pub."
"I really need to stay and finish some of this paperwork, Havers," Lynley said.
"Rubbish! That stack will still be there tomorrow," Barbara told him, sensing his hesitation. "You owe it to the team to celebrate with them after all their hard work capturing Monahan. Even Lafferty's agreed to leave his dungeon – sorry, I mean morgue – and join us."
"Right then, that settles it. I couldn't possibly disappoint Lafferty, now could I?" Tommy laughed, pushing himself back from the desk and reaching for his jacket. Barbara's green eyes lit up in response, and they headed for the door.
It was Friday night, so it was no surprise the pub was busy, full of noisy patrons who already had a few drinks under their belts. Tommy looked over at Barbara, who shrugged back apologetically. DC Nkata, and his "partners in crime," as he called them, McConnell and Cook, had selected tonight's location, and the trendy, modern bar was a far cry from their usual pub, The Acorn and Ivy, with its dark woods and quiet coziness.
McConnell was shamed into buying the first round, and they had just settled at a table when Stuart Lafferty joined them, depositing his helmet at his feet under the table.
"Now I know why you lot chose this place," Lafferty teased. " It's a real meat market, this is. You hoping to get lucky tonight, Winnie?"
"You know I don't need luck, Lafferty," Nkata objected, dreadlocks shaking and dark eyes twinkling as he laughed at the pathologist. "I do just fine on my own. Cook and McConnell here though, they need all the help they can get, and we wanted Havers to have a nice selection of buff young lads to choose from."
Nkata's comment resulted in a great deal of hooting and hollering from the table, and earned him a sharp jab in the ribs from Barbara's elbow.
"Oh, right, like I would lower my standards enough to take on any of the men here," she scoffed. " And the biggest losers of all are right here at this table!"
"Wait a minute," Tommy protested, smiling. "How did I get on this loser list of yours? I had nothing to do with tonight's choice of pub, and I haven't done anything to piss you off lately, have I?"
Barbara looked at him and tilted her head, as if considering the list of his recent infractions against her. "You have been fairly well behaved lately," she admitted, winking at him. "I'll agree that you're less of a loser than the rest of this sorry lot!"
"Well, Lynley, looks as though you're the only one with a chance at going home with our lovely sergeant tonight," Lafferty teased, causing Barbara's cheeks to flush bright red.
The others laughed rowdily at the joke, but Lynley merely smiled and raised his glass to her. "I should be so lucky."
Barbara turned an even more intense shade of red, and drained her glass to hide her embarrassment. What on earth had possessed her to joke with Tommy like that? It had verged on flirting. It was one thing to have a laugh with Nkata or the others under the circumstances, a fun night out with co-workers and friends, but with Lynley? It cut far too close to the bone.
She scolded herself internally, for some lines in the sand were not meant to be crossed, and her friendly working relationship with eight earl of Asherton was one of those lines.
"Right then, Lynley, since you seem to be the 'lord of the losers' tonight, you buy the next round," Lafferty said before he mercifully changed the subject to the football game playing on the television mounted above the bar.
Tommy smiled and headed to the bar to order the next round of drinks with a vague sense of unease in his stomach. He was used to the "blokeyness," for lack of a better word, that pervaded the Met, no matter how many inroads women had made in the force, but somehow seeing his sergeant bear the brunt of the joke made him very uncomfortable.
His working relationship with Havers - their friendship, for he thought of them as friends in spite of all their differences, or perhaps because of them - shouldn't be the subject of laughter, even if Lafferty hadn't meant anything by it.
Lynley looked back at the table, and saw that Barbara had recovered from her embarrassment and was laughing at some story Winnie was telling, so he resolved to get over himself, and headed back to the table with the drinks. Odd though, that he should feel so protective of her feelings.
After the next round, McConnell and Cook headed off home, having an earlier call in the morning than the others, and Lafferty left just a short time later, not wanting to drink anymore since he had his motorcycle to drive home.
Nkata went for the next round, but got sidetracked by a pretty blonde in a short skirt when he got to the bar, as Barbara and Tommy looked on with amusement.
"I don't know if we should hold our breaths for that next pint, Sergeant," Tommy chuckled. "I think Nkata may have forgotten our order."
"No worries, this one is on me, and then we'll head home," Barbara said. "And next time, we'll do our regular, quiet, cozy pub and leave the meat market to the likes of DC Nkata, yeah?!"
"All right, but I'll hold you to that, Havers!"
Lynley watched Barbara as she headed up to the bar and flagged down the barman, her red-gold hair shining, backlit by the neon behind the counter. He saw the obviously inebriated man seated next to her say something, and laughed softly to himself as he imagined her highly sarcastic comment back.
Tommy's smile faded, however as he watched the look on Barbara's face when she heard the man's reply. He was already out of his seat and headed for the bar when he saw the drunk man reach out and stroke her rear end.
Thinking back on it later, Lynley couldn't remember any conscious thought behind what he did, only emotion; just heat and anger and fury flooding his body, and the instinct to protect his Barbara from this drunken lout.
"Sir, stop, it's no big deal, sir," Barbara called out repeatedly. "Let him go, sir, please….Tommy, please."
Barbara saying his name finally got through to Lynley. He looked down and realized he had the bastard face down on the bar with one hand constrained behind the man's back.
"Apologize for your rude behaviour to the lady," Lynley snarled through gritted teeth.
"Look, mate, I'm sorry, really I am," the drunk whimpered against the sticky marble surface of the bartop. "I didn't know she was taken, you know? Pretty woman at the bar, you can't blame a bloke for trying. I didn't know she was here with someone, truly."
"She is with me, understood?" Lynley snapped, pushing the man's face harder into the bar, then letting him go abruptly. He turned to face Barbara's huge green eyes, and grabbed her hand, rubbing his thumb over her fingers. Whether he was trying to reassure her or himself, he wasn't sure. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, sir, really, I'm fine. Let's go, let's get out of here," Barbara replied, pulling her hand away from his. "Time to go home, I think."
They retrieved their coats and headed outside into the cold night air. No taxis in sight, of course, so they began to wander down to the next cross road, hoping to find some there. Tommy was still fuming inside after what had happened, every nerve and muscle still tense.
"Are you sure you're all right, Barbara?" he asked, his voice still curt and clipped.
She stopped, and turned to face him, reaching out her hand to touch his upper arm. "It was no big deal, sir, really. I wouldn't be much of a police woman if I couldn't handle a drunken idiot in a bar, would I?"
"No woman should have to put up with something like that, especially not you," he replied, reaching out to brush her hair away from her face. "Let's find a taxi, I'll escort you home."
"You don't need to do that, sir, I'll be fine on my own," Barbara protested.
"I'll escort you home, Sergeant," Tommy insisted, in that tone that made even Havers hesitate to argue.
They found a taxi at the next corner, and settled into it, glad to be out of the cold and headed toward home. After Tommy gave the driver directions to her flat in Chalk Farm, they sat in companionable silence, as they so often did when traveling on cases. Barbara sighed in relief, glad the day was over, relieved the incident at the pub had not been worse, happy to be heading home.
Tommy, though, was not quite so comfortable. All of the sudden he was terribly aware of his sergeant, his friend, Barbara Havers, as a woman. He had never really thought of her as a woman before, not really. Not as an object of desire by other men. Certainly never as something he would desire himself.
Tonight, though, something had shifted. His anger when the idiot at the bar had fondled her was something primal, something terribly possessive. And he had no idea how to handle this new knowledge, this new awareness of her, what to do with it. Even now, he could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her body near him in the back of the taxi, even though they were not quite touching.
The driver pulled up in front of Barbara's flat and stopped. She turned toward Tommy and put her hand on his arm once again.
"Thanks for everything, sir. I don't think anybody has ever defended my honor before, whether it was necessary or not," she said.
"Anytime, Havers, anytime," Lynley replied, and he leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. She gasped a bit, and retreated, and he cursed himself for being so uncharacteristically forward with her. "See you tomorrow?"
"Yeah, see you tomorrow, sir," and with that, she was gone, running up the steps to the entrance of her flat. He leaned back in the seat of the taxi, making sure she was inside and safe before he told the taxi to drive on.