Thank you so much to everyone reading – it's always lovely getting an email through with a review or a favourite :)
I have decided, after my last one shot Can't Hide Forever was posted last week, that I'm now just going to concentrate on finishing this story (as well as Impressions) before stopping writing Stendan fic altogether. I was quite late to this fandom, so just want to say thanks again for the feedback you've all sent my way. Hope you like chapter ten!
It was a restless sleep that Ste had on the sofa that night. The letter, which he'd finally forced himself to open, was barely more than a few lines of handwritten scribbles.
As a Constable, he would probably have scoffed at how pathetic it was - an indirect threat on a tatty sheet of paper.
But this was his life; nothing about this was laughable.
By six am, Ste gave up on sleep altogether and got up to make a hot drink. By the time he returned to the sofa, Amy was there. He almost jumped at how suddenly she had appeared. Clearly she'd been suffering the same way he had been all night.
"You okay?" he asked her, attempting a smile.
She smoothed her hair away from her pale face and managed half a smile back.
"Have to be, don't I?" she replied, gesturing with her eyes towards the room where their kids were sleeping.
Having not even taken a sip yet, Ste offered her his mug of tea; but Amy shook her head and made her way to the kitchen to make her own.
"You going into work today?" she asked while the kettle was boiling.
He hesitated, knowing that he would probably have to. Amy turned around in time to catch the worry that was written all over his face.
"Ste, we'll be fine here, honestly! You do what you have to do, me and the kids are perfectly safe now."
"If you really believe that, then why couldn't you sleep?"
She avoided his gaze as the kettle conveniently came to the boil, turning away to pour her tea.
"Because," Amy said carefully. "I know we can't stay here forever."
Ste frowned at the implications of that. He decided that if need be, they wouldn't have to go anywhere.
"I'm not having you go back there yet. Anyway, you know you could stay, if you wanted to? I could find somewhere bigger for us to live; you, me and the kids."
Amy's smile told him she appreciated the thought. But he knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.
"Ste, this was supposed to be your fresh start. I know you left Manchester to keep us safe, but I want the same for you too," she said, wandering over to sit with him. "How are you ever going to find a man if you and I are living together like a couple?"
"Leah and Lucas come first," he insisted. "And so do you. Any bloke that comes into my life will have to accept that."
She didn't argue again, and in the silence Ste thought about Brendan. After what the Irishman had done for him and his family the night before, it seemed clear that he more than understood Ste's priorities.
Besides, there had been no talk of what this thing between them even was. Beyond a strong mutual attraction and a connection, did they actually have any sort of relationship status?
An hour later, after they'd eaten and he'd got ready for work, Ste and Amy decided to let the kids sleep in. She made a call to the school and nursery in Salford, letting them know there had been a family emergency and that Leah and Lucas wouldn't be back for a little while.
In turn, Ste picked up his own phone and dialled an old familiar number, his hands shaking while he waited for someone to answer.
"Hello, this is Ste Hay," he said after a further minute. "Could I speak to DI Chambers, please?"
~ EXPOSURE ~ EXPOSURE ~ EXPOSURE ~
Walker was still in charge - and apparently still lording it up in DCI Osborne's office - when Ste arrived in MIT.
He could tell this was exactly what was going on by the look on Brendan's face.
"Cheer up, it's Friday," he greeted in what he hoped what an upbeat tone.
Nancy and Brendan stared at him in surprise as he went to sit at his desk.
"We weren't sure if you'd make it in today!" Nancy said. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," he lied. "What did you tell him?" he added, head tilting in the direction of the office and their DI.
"Nothing," Brendan replied softly, his voice a sharp contrast to the look of contempt that had graced his features just before he'd noticed Ste's arrival.
"We thought you might phone in yourself," Nancy elaborated by way of explanation. "But we'd both have backed you up if DI Walker had asked any questions about it."
He nodded, immensely glad that nothing had been said about his personal life. At least not to the Inspector.
Just as Ste was expecting the other DC to ask him about the events of the night before, the office door burst open.
"There's been a fatal domestic incident on Crown Road - a young woman. Brendan, Ste, get yourselves down there. Nancy, if I could borrow you for a few words please?"
DI Walker disappeared back inside the office again, leaving a disgruntled Brendan and Nancy in his wake.
Ste was the only one not having a moan as they all went about doing as instructed.
"What the hell is that about? 'A few words'?!"
Brendan ignored her. "Come on, Steven, before I change my mind and start rearranging our charming DI's face."
Distracted on the way to Brendan's car by a text from Amy, Ste barely shrugged in response.
"Forgot to say, please thank that friend of yours from last night. What's his name again? Brian?"
If he hadn't been so consumed by recent events, he would have laughed, then corrected her straight away. As it was, he just replied with a simple 'okay', then checked that she and the kids were alright.
They were, which at least gave him some temporary relief.
When they'd got into the car, Brendan turned to look him over. "Ye okay, Steven?"
A couple of days before, he would have chirped insistently that he was absolutely fine. In fact, he had done just that on his first day.
Now however, even after only five days of knowing this man; of breaking down a few barriers and eventually kissing each other senseless, Ste found that he couldn't bring himself to pretend anymore.
"Not really," he replied with a sigh. "Oh, Amy wanted to say thank you, by the way."
Brendan started the engine and began the journey to Crown Street. "It was no trouble," he said easily.
"I don't know what we'd have done without you," Ste continued in a small voice.
"Hey," the Sergeant soothed, his voice trailing off as he seemed at a temporary loss for words. Even throughout all this, the car's speed dial remained on target with the current road limit.
Noticing this, Ste smiled back at him, without giving away that it wasn't just his unlikely gentility, but the mixture of it and his erratically speedy driving that had managed to cheer him up.
"I really hope we don't die in your car before we can get to this poor dead woman," he remarked drily.
"Nobody dies in my car, Steven."
"That confident, are you?" he challenged, eyebrows raised.
"Always."
The street was swarming with uniformed police and neighbours when they arrived at the scene.
Ste watched as Brendan swooped into action, asking a member of uniform what the specifics were and where the body was.
They were then led inside a pristine looking house, right through to the kitchen where the young women was lying on the floor. She was on her back, her eyes wide open and faded bruises covering her pale face. There were fresh pressure marks all over her neck.
She had been strangled.
Ste listened to the accompanying PC explain how the woman's sister had found her body, and that the husband was nowhere to be found.
And from the information they'd already received, it sounded like they already had a suspect in mind. He felt sick.
When he and Brendan went to talk to the victim's sister, he felt even worse.
She painted a very clear picture of Luke Martin - the apparently violent husband of poor Karen, whose life had been stolen aged just twenty-seven. It was all far too close to home for Ste.
"Steven."
His efforts to forget about Terry and that note had now come to nothing.
"Steven!" Brendan's voice disrupted his inner turmoil. He looked up and, not for the first time that week, told himself to get a grip.
Karen Martin's sister was sobbing, and he was just standing there feeling sorry for himself.
"Right," he nodded, trying to look like he'd been fully attentive the whole time. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs-"
"Mrs Turner," the woman managed to choke out.
Ste took one look at her ashen face and thought of Amy, who'd lost her own sister a few years before. Then he thought of someone else. Someone who could have identified with Karen more than anyone, but who was no longer around to do so.
He wanted to be the one to get men like Terry - and this Luke Martin if the hints were accurate - locked up for good. And he wouldn't be able to do that if he spent all his time dwelling and going into random bouts of silence at inappropriate times.
So, alongside Brendan, he made all the right noises and said all the things an investigating officer was supposed to say. Forensics came and went, and the body was finally moved. The grieving sister's husband turned up to take her home, and eventually they left themselves and headed back to MIT.
It felt surreal to Ste; going through the motions, behaving as though he was detached from the situation when history meant he felt anything but.
"Ye know a couple of hours ago when I asked if ye were alright?" Brendan asked him mid-journey.
"Yeah?"
"Compared to the look on your face right now, then ye were positively merry."
He couldn't bring himself to glance the Sergeant's way. "Just...don't ask. Please," he replied.
"I get it," Brendan said lightly. Ste was pretty confident that he didn't; but he wasn't going to correct him. "What we just saw was quite brutal, even without any blood. Could get to any man, that."
He finally turned his head, catching the man's eye for a brief moment before he parked the car. "Not you, though," he pointed out with a raised eyebrow.
Brendan shrugged as he undid his seatbelt. "Well, ye can't mess with perfection."
Ste shook his head and went to step out of the car.
"Ye really think it doesn't bother me?" The Irishman's voice surprised him, as did the hand that had reached over to pull him back inside the car. He didn't make a fuss about it, though; just reached over to shut the door again.
"I don't know," he answered after a minute. "You seem to walk into crime scenes in the same manner I've seen you walk into a pub – without batting an eyelid."
"Only way to get the job done, Steven. Doesn't mean I don't care when I'm faced with the battered body of a girl even younger than I am. Today could have been especially difficult if I hadn't kept my mind on what I was there for."
"Why's that?"
"Because I knew someone else who died from strangulation."
Ste hadn't even considered that Brendan might also have been affected so deeply by what had been inside that house. Sometimes he just lost himself too much to notice anyone else.
"Lynsey?"
Brendan's eyes said more than words ever could.
"I'm sorry."
There was only silence then, and Ste began to grow concerned that he had created an awkwardness for the rest of the day. He really didn't want to have that hanging over them, so he made a quick decision to give away something about himself.
"I lost someone too."
The Sergeant's eyes flicked to his, and Ste swallowed the dry lump in his throat before continuing.
"The thing I can't talk about...let's just say it involved something similar to what that poor girl went through today. I...I wish I could switch off my emotions sometimes, but I'm not quite there yet."
When Brendan still hadn't spoken, Ste made a move to leave his car a second time. But once again he didn't get very far. This time, though, he was stopped by two softly uttered words.
"Come here."
He sat back in the passenger seat and resisted the urge to lean closer to the man. Within seconds Brendan had closed the gap between them and was cupping his face so delicately that he could barely believe it was the same arrogant sod who'd tried to re-interview him that Monday.
"Ye should know by now that ye aren't the only one to lose control. In my case it's pent up anger; in yours it's...hmm, shall we say your ability to concentrate?"
Ste smirked at him. "Is that supposed to be less emasculating than 'getting emotional'?"
"No, but ye can't deny it's true."
"Thanks, that doesn't make me sound like the most promising Constable."
"I wasn't angling for flattery here."
"Brendan," Ste replied, face beginning to flush with the warmth of the man's hands, which were still holding his face. "I say this as the man you're obviously about to kiss the face off of, rather than as your DC: just shut up."
"If you insist."
Any minute now they were going to have to get back to work. They'd have a disgruntled Nancy to keep happy, and a snobby and clearly somewhat dodgy DI who was temporarily in charge. And that was on top of the latest murder inquiry.
Meanwhile Ste had an entire family at home who were relying on him to keep them safe, and he hadn't the first clue how long he could do that for.
But for a few selfish seconds he put it all out of his mind and kissed his superior officer as if his whole life depended on it.
And for some reason, despite his misgivings about what this 'thing' between them even was, right now it felt like life really did depend on Brendan Brady.