OK, so here goes! This one's named after the Snow Patrol song I just happened to listening to as I began to write all this. Do give it a listen if you can, it's beautiful!
Spooks, nor any of its characters belong to me. Unfortunately! :P
He swirled the pungent liquid in its shallow glass. Peering over the rim as he swallowed, he could see her; not clearly, but he knew she was there. Her chair and her arched back leaning over her desk was in his eyeline. He'd seek her out, subconciously sometimes, but would always end up sat like this, looking at her. He felt both guilty and exhilarated by it. And it was these small pleasures that he held on to, the only part of their relationship he could determine for himself.
Somewhere along the line, this is what they had come to. Secret glances, knowing looks and barely uttered plesantries. She knew it was partly her decision to pull away, to maintain the professionalism they had both initially strived to up-keep. The affection that was born out of this was simply only expected in this job. Mutual respect was about as far as it should have always been. She told her herself that her habitual loneliness had simply been relinquished in his prescence, and it was this she craved, not him.
She had a taste of what a normal life could be, and it was taken away by the very life she was forced to escape. He was part of that, and somewhere along the way, he had become buried underneath the life of details she had she sat at the very desk she had aquired all those years ago, her second life seemed like a dream, a life experienced in coma, only to re-emerge out of unconciousness to find everything as it was, back to the beginning.
Day and night could pass on the otherside of these four walls, and she would not know. Her job was one where every second mattered, every second was another second where disaster and suffering could be averted. Riding the bus home was her moment of clarity to resurface as a regular human being, tutting very sternly when the bus was a few minutes too late, or when the weather was particularly unforgiving that day. It didn't matter that she had prevented an illegal drugs trade-off or freed a hostage when she showed her pass to the driver, she was just another person trying to get home. And it was in moments like this that her mind would change gear, go on auto-pilot, recharge for tomorrow.