A/N: Ruined for life. That's what I am. I once read a very well received fic where the sex scene started because of the drop of a hair clip. Honest to God, a hair clip. Ping. It hit the floor, and an insane, indiscrete, work-place liaison (that resulted in an inordinate amount of property damage) then resulted. I have rebelled against that sort of brisk, fanciful portrayal ever since.
Thank you for all the kind help, Sel.
Thank you for reading this. I know this has nowhere near the audience of the Harry Potter and Who stuff I write, but I love Morse dearly. And I wanted to see him 'sorted' so to say. If someone else who loves Morse reads this, and likes it, then, well, it just makes my day.
/ / / / / / / / /
In that strange bed with Siobhan, Morse's concessions to comfort and need were few. His belt and shoes he had left on the floor. His shirt was pulled open. And his trousers were still on, just unhooked at the top.
She kissed him. But she seemed so mindful of not leading him on. One of those proper girls told that there was nothing worse, he supposed.
There had come an unguarded moment when his fingers had grazed her stomach beneath her top. She had gasped. She'd gripped his shirt fiercely then, as if her hands would rather be somewhere else. And she had actually pulled her hips further away from his through some obvious effort.
"Stop," she said. He heard the question in it as much as the request.
"Sorry," he answered softly.
She was afraid he had misunderstood. "It wasn't that I don't want you to..."
"Hmmmm?" he soothed.
"I want you to, too much."
"And that's not what we're on about tonight."
"Mmm," she rallied, now that she had her breath back. "I hadn't thought we were." She had smiled then, as if amused by their joint ability for torture.
His mind soon lit on a hundred topics, like the improbability of being there with her. "Why did you want to see me?" he whispered.
"Because all my fantasies started running along these lines."
His look was incredulous.
"Us. Like this," she confirmed.
"I couldn't write to you first. You know that." It was a seeming non sequitor, but it was really a return statement on the shared, early affection.
"There was something about you after we worked through the night together," she told him.
"It started then," he answered. "Something in the way we got along that night. The way you started to tease me. Like we were old friends. You would lean close when you talked. Smile." He shook his head as if to clear it. "You said, 'Spending a night with a man can be very revealing.' And it sounded so... Lovely."
"It was a foolish thing. I don't know why I thought I could say something like that."
"Maybe because it was 2 am," he said with a whispered smile.
"I told myself I could flirt a bit and you wouldn't notice."
"I didn't believe it, is the problem. I'm fairly blind sometimes. Though I got a little less blind that night. I realized you had freckles on your nose. Three weeks on that case and I never noticed. What else was I missing, I wondered. It got steadily clearer then," he kidded. "Because there you were stretching, sitting at my feet on the floor... like a nymph. Innocent. And so alive. Oblivious to how attractive you were being."
The corners of her mouth turned up at the compliment.
"For me," she said with a touch to his throat, "It was your shirt pulled open just there. It was those quiet admissions ... things you said about doubt and wants. It may have been the bit of beard in the morning that made it all feel so comfortable and intimate. That was how I saw you after that in my head. You... in the morning. That sort of stolen picture of you."
"Everyone thinks me so unbearable." He winced hearing his own words. Did some part of him constantly find it necessary to engage in self-sabotage, he wondered?
But she only laughed.
"It's true," he told her. "I am difficult. Impossible at understanding people. Overbearing... And I was all of that on that case, and you would just roll your eyes at me. I saw it," he accused with a touch of a laugh.
"I have four brothers," she informed him.
"Oh, no wonder I've never had much luck with women. What were the chances of me finding a women with four brothers?"
"In my neighborhood. Fairly good," she joked.
"I liked that you didn't cringe when I came into the room."
"The way the others did?"
He narrowed his eyes at her and cleared his throat in that mock officious manner he was prone to.
"I started to become rather fond of your scowl, actually," she whispered. "I haven't seen you do it lately."
"No," he smiled. He heard her sigh then. And he risked touching her. He used a single finger to touch those freckles on her nose.
"We should get some rest. We have to clear off early tomorrow," came her sleepy words.
"It is tomorrow," he teased pedantically.
"It always is with us." And she closed her eyes.
He had wanted to kiss her again as she drifted off, but he had resisted being so selfish. Once she was sleeping, he made himself turn away from her - to try to reduce the desire he felt a bit.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
The next morning, up and dressed, they both seemed to find conversation oddly more difficult.
Morse checked his pockets one more time and then scanned for any errant belongings. Seeming distracted, he walked for the room's exit where Siobhan stood waiting.
"What?" He asked seeing that she would not open the door for them to leave.
"We do good bye here, I figure. You aren't one for the whole clutch in public." She leaned back against the door and then raised her hands to rest on him as he stepped to her silently. When he kissed her, she sensed how different it was already. Rushed. Wrong. And absent.
"You'll go straight to work?" she asked as she pulled the door open. She walked with her small bag into the hotel's hallway.
"Mmm," he nodded as he stepped out. "Out of time, otherwise. I've a change of clothes at the station."
"Good," she teased, "as those look slept in."
"And I'll get Lewis to drive me home tonight, I suppose."
"God knows what he'll think."
"I have the train ride to figure it out... if I care what he thinks."
They had gotten into the lift, and she punched the buttons now to drop him off in the lobby. Freed up from that task, she found they could only stare at each other.
They lived over an hour apart, that had been one of her constant thoughts that morning. Not that he had expressed an interest in seeing her again. It was beyond her to be coy. Despite what she wanted to be that morning, she knew she was coming off exactly like what she was... an exhausted women who could not hide the attraction and need she felt.
She couldn't take the silence suddenly. "You've got my phone number," she asked, unnecessarily.
"Yes," he said sounding clipped.
She hated herself for the push she'd just given him, mentioning the number. Still, his short answer earned him an eye roll from her.
They'd gotten off the lift and were both standing in the foyer now, seeming awkward in front of the lift's doors. She looked at her watch and then at him. She was beginning to think she was more concerned with getting the Detective Chief Inspector to work that day than he was.
"Morse!" she prompted.
"I don't know what to suggest," he nearly whined. She waited, trying hard not to fill the gap in conversation with ideas of meeting one place or another.
She turned around and battered the lift call button. He tried to place her attitude. Avoidance? Displeasure? He knew what had caused it at least. It was his lack of statement that had done it.
The door dinged open and she walked half in looking horribly impatient. "Back in," she announced.
He was too far ensconced in this personal drama to fight the fact that any trip to the hotel's underground car park was just going to take him further from the train station and his trip back to Oxford.
They stood in silence on the trip down, until he asked her, "Are you busy next weekend?" He sounded so horribly ill at ease over this question that she had begun to pity him.
"No, I'm not busy," she told him as the lift let them out below ground. "Over there," she told him then, pointing out her car.
He followed without a word before managing, "Do you have a preference on where we would meet?" There was a wince then and an anxious scratch at his head.
"We've mucked about too long," She said looking at her watch. "Look, this is my fault. So, get in the car and I'll drive you home."
"That's an hour in the wrong direction for you," he complained.
"I've got permission to come in late because of the course. You are already running late. The train will make it worse. And it's all because I've been feeling so ridiculously needy this morning trying to angle a second meeting. So, get in. Please."
He complied silently.
...
By the time they pulled in to his drive, it was decided. She would come up to his place Friday after work.
She swallowed hard and put the car into reverse. As the house door closed on the Inspector, Siobhan wondered what they had just begun.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Morse postponed their meeting. A murder was dropped in his lap and the investigation could not wait the weekend. Throughout the week that followed there were phone calls and more apologies. There was quiet talk and that tight feeling of nervousness in their guts. Each wondered if what they had shared in London had been some sort of fantasy. Either gone or not quite real.
Come the following Friday there was an agreeable, if cautious dinner out. And then more relaxed drinks at his place, late. While she carried the finished glasses to the kitchen, he stood and paced by the bookcase. He fiddled absently with his record collection, and she came up behind him, compelled by the need to touch him.
Her fingers were light on his back. But it all played heavily on his senses. He turned and found her arms around him. There was a constant flow of touches then, punctuated with restrained kisses and uneasy breaths. The effect was a steady ratcheting of the desire they both felt.
Whether it was him or her that began things in earnest then, she wasn't sure. But the kisses had become intense, and they were on his stairs suddenly.
Half way up, she was now facing down the staircase. He looked up at her with his hands on the railings, as if worried she would do something foolish. She stood a stair up making her just the wee bit taller than he was.
There had been a reason they were headed up. He felt it like a tightening in his stomach. But they had stopped here for what felt like very dangerous foreplay. But as she kissed him, the misgivings left him. She had turned things, making them feel heady and somehow wonderfully imprudent.
As he eased back to catch his breath and really look at her, he noticed how the lines around her eyes were so scarce. She was more than 10 years younger. And he couldn't for the life of him figure out why she would be here with him.
He worried there was a tremor to his fingers as he touched her cheek. If she was half as nervous as he was, she was managing not to show it. Her hands were in his hair and she was leaning in to kiss him again. He registered how much he wanted her and how different she was from any other woman he had known.
Different, yes. Wickedly smart. Funny. Amazing.
And younger, his mind supplied again. In her prime.
Oh God, he thought, freezing. He was half up the stairs, beyond wanting her. And there was THAT conversation to still have. He'd forgotten how to approach this, if he had ever known.
He caught her hand to slow her down, to get her attention. And in a voice that betrayed him, he said only. "Contraceptive?" Morse feared he was blushing.
She paused then before simply telling him, "Sorted." He pressed against her and kissed her again, but got lost. It was that horrible policeman's brain. It hated loose ends and round about answers.
"Sorted how?"
She flushed. Obviously, she hadn't wanted to have this conversation.
She leaned back against the railing. "I'm on the Pill. I wanted to wait to tell you. I didn't know what you would think."
"You've been on it because..." Because she was prepared, he thought, because she was a woman of this new age. On the Pill. Partners at the ready. Like that bloke she had just gotten rid of a few months ago. He dropped his head. "I shouldn't of pried." He was kicking himself for thinking he was somehow special.
"No!" she said instantly seeing he had misunderstood. "I wasn't on it before. Well, I was 10 years ago, but not for the fellow I told you about. We never got to this point. He managed to stop being special before we got 'half way up the stairs,' so to speak. And oddly enough, he had been the most promising thing in ages." She paused, wanting that to sink in for him.
She continued finally in a voice that was less sure. "I didn't want you to know you were the reason I had gone on the Pill, because it all seems rather calculating."
"Because we hadn't... " he said before he paused.
"And because the Pill isn't the sort of thing you go on if you figure it's just the once."
"I have been thinking about this since I saw you last and when I have... well, I haven't thought about it being just once. That doesn't mean I won't drive you away."
"Shhhhh," she told him.
"What you said before, Siobhan, about being 'half way up the stairs'..." he said, continuing her metaphor.
"Yes?"
"Just. ... It's been ages. You deserve to know. You are that special."
She pushed off from her place against the wall then, and pulled him along with her up the stairs.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
He came into his kitchen the next morning to find she was doing battle with his cooking implements.
And that she had changed the station on the radio that sat on the counter. Not a good start to what should have been a very nice morning. He was not a man accustomed to overnight guests who upset his habits.
But it was as if he was merely watching the scene. He registered that these things should have bothered him. And they didn't. He was stuck there, staring at the way her neck arched just so, and wondering at the likelihood of a repeat of last night.
How can I be so vain as to think I am any different from the mass of men? Because, God, I'm pathetically simple, really, he thought.
One irritation did pierce his self evaluation though. "It's that bloody awful song that was on in your car last week," he declared finally as he pointed to the radio.
"It's oddly ubiquitous," she replied.
"It wouldn't be on my usual station," he half snipped.
"I cannot cook to your usual station. It is too early for opera," Siobhan insisted with a smile.
He took a step towards the counter then as if he would adjust the radio. She was in front of him just as quickly.
Her arms went up and around his shoulders.
"I won't dance to this song," he told her.
"I've noticed," she teased.
But his hands had settled nicely at her waist. "What do they even call this?" he said with mock annoyance.
"God knows." Her hips moved against his gently then as she picked out merely every other beat in the chorus. "The pop hit du jour."
"It's inescapable, presumably," he said as he pulled her even closer. "I hear this in every shop I'm in. "
"That's my point," she told him, seductively. "I advise surrender ... Just this once. Because somehow opera does not make me want to do ...this."
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Morse stood at his office window, his eyes vaguely on the parking lot outside. He'd gotten here early today, midway through his week. He had finished his crossword and had taken to fiddling with the radio. Pop music was coming in now. But not that song.
But it could not be long before they played it. And he was right, he noted with a self satisfied smile, as the one song faded into the next. Standing there with that idiot chorus in his head, he could almost feel her pressed up against him the way she had four days previous. He could almost taste the kisses she had given him as she had pretended to hold him hostage there in his kitchen. They wouldn't make it through breakfast, he had predicted. He hadn't had his coffee yet, and he found himself wanting her again.
He wanted her now as he stood in that office, half way between his scheduled visits. He groaned without realizing it.
He didn't hear the door. It was the inordinately cheerful, 'Good morning, sir' that first roused him.
Morse didn't bother to turn around. In fact, he thought it unwise until he'd had a moment to collect himself.
"Oy!" Lewis complained then, noticing the music. "That song is everywhere. You can't get away from it. But I am surprised..."
"Surrender, Lewis. I heartily recommend surrender."
