It would just be Chandler's luck that a body gets called in that very afternoon.

The air is so cold and sharp he can smell the blood in his nose as he walks down the street towards the address Miles had read out to him over the phone, leaving his car in the nearest space he could find.

Miles meets him on the corner, face like thunder as he glances up from beneath his turned-up coat collar at the clouds threatening to break at any moment. 'Meeting go well?'

Chandler shrugs. 'Enough.'

(No. It went dreadfully, even if he's the only one who realises. It's going to stay that way.)

Miles doesn't push, just turns on his heel with a indifferent noise. Chandler follows, hands in his coat pockets against the wind.

The sergeant nods towards one of the terraced houses set back from the street; the tiny front garden's already filled to the brim with the neon police cordon. 'Kent and Riley are already inside with Caroline. Mansell's talking to one of the techs.'

'Pretty, is she?'

Miles huffs a laugh. 'Well out of his league.'

It's against his nature to joke at crime scenes, but they all do it. None of them laugh too hard, or too loudly, but there's an unspoken agreement that they leave their distress, their malaise for later—for where they're unnoticed. It's something the Commander had told him stood in his kitchen when he'd first entered CID as a fresh young face with only half the worry lines he has now; the victims—the ones left behind as much as the body on the floor—don't want their feelings. They want them in control, commanding, decisive, not reverent and sentimental. They might think they want their sympathy, but they don't; they want their ability, their expertise.

That's probably where he first went wrong.

'Professor John Howell, forty-two, married for twelve years, two kids,' Miles begins as they approach, offering a quick nod to the uniform who lifts the tape out of a mixture of politeness and duty. 'The next-door neighbour found him; he was returning a book he'd borrowed, saw the body through the window in the front door. Nasty shock for mid-morning.'

Chandler ducks his head. 'Has uniform been through?'

'No, for once they haven't trampled everything out of place. One of the competent ones was closest, stopped any contamination.'

'That's something. SOCO?'

'They're in there now. We're authorized to go in, no need to hang about in the cold longer than we have to.' As if to underline his words, a gust of wind barrels down the street; Miles grimaces and makes for the front door. 'Come on, boss.'

Chandler barely makes it over the threshold before he has to maneuver himself over a toppled hatstand; before they make it any further Miles shoves a crime scene suit in his direction. They're all out of order, they probably should have climbed into them before stepping foot inside but Chandler barely registers. Kent hovers somewhere on the periphery of his vision, speaking in hushed tones to Riley as she leafs through a pile of post with double-gloved hands, and although all he's done is looked up at him for a split second's worth of recognition the Commander flashes back to the forefront of his mind, his words and his half-hearted warning. Chandler loses his grip on the zip; Miles shoots him a look as he swears under his breath. He ignores his sergeant and swivels his gaze to the scene before them instead.

It isn't much better.

It's definitely not easier.

It's a crime scene dappled with bits of brain and blood spatter washed in a watery sun, the occasional shaft of light tinted jewel-toned by the coloured glass pattern in the door. Howell's splayed at the foot of the stairs, one arm flung out to the side of him while the other's smothered by his deadweight—ghost-blue, his face white and slack-jawed amidst the puddle of crimson. Chandler gulps but forces himself to keep looking, just like he always does, noting the awkward angle of one ankle and the dark blotched stain at the neck of his dressing gown.

The techs just get on with it, smooth through the disarray of someone else's life, passing around evidence bags and handling them like they're made of soap bubbles. They have protocol to follow, procedures. So do they, really, but it's different. They have certain tasks to complete, certain steps. Chandler his team think. Look, and think. They're just left with the seconds of screaming silence, the grain of the wood almost obliterated by clotting red, the ghosts trapped in bloodstains. When he next shuts his eyes it will still be there, like indelible ink on the inside of his eyelids, another in a line of scenes he'll never quite be able to forget.

He doesn't know where to look now. He'd normally look to Kent, a shifted glance over his shoulder while they leaf through possessions, through the scene, but even the thought of doing that with the Commander's words still echoing in his ear makes him think he's about to heave. He can't have that now, can't have that in any situation where he's supposed to be taking the lead and making the decisions. He can't have a clouded head, not now, not even for him.

'What've we got?'

Kent's looking at him, he can tell; he's probably frowning, too (he knows, he always knows) but Chandler keeps his gaze fixed on Llywellyn. She notices his fixedness, but doesn't comment.

'At first glance,' she begins as she gets to her feet, 'an luckless event in which a man's accidentally fallen down the stairs.'

Miles shuffles. 'And in the second?'

'Occam's razor isn't always an honest witness, Ray.'

'Not an accident, then? '

'I can't be certain, you know that.' Llywellyn says as she gives them the same stern face she always does, complete with the faux-derisive glance, 'but no, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't be comfortable labeling this as an accidental death.'

Miles nods. 'Walk us through it.'

'I'm relatively confident putting cause of death as blunt force trauma to the back of his head, but that couldn't have come from the fall. You just wouldn't have enough momentum for that sort of injury.'

Mansell appears from one of the open doorways. 'Are you saying hitting your head on a banister falling downstairs can't kill you?'

'Far from it,' Llywellyn says turning her head towards his approach, Kent following close behind. 'It's perfectly possible, it's just not probable. Look at fall dynamics—I've got Elliot doing the calculations now, the poor sod's freezing himself out in the garden but he's the absolute best we've got with maths. Most of the time the angle of impact's glancing, and with that you'd need a significant amount of additional damage. You see it most often where there's a turn in the stairs. You see—' She steps back and gestures towards the staircase, carefully side-stepping on the young tech behind her. 'Relatively speaking, a body falls down a staircase goes in a straight line, but if you fall approaching from one side or the other you'll fall at an angle going in a direction opposite from your starting point.'

She wiggles her hand in the general direction, but Chandler can't follow. Kent's eyes keep flicking from her to him and back again; how's he supposed to focus? They'll have to come back later, when everything's been bagged up and untaped, released, and get someone to act it through. Preferably not him.

'Every time you bounce, it'll throw you off a straight line. But that's all the theoretical stuff, all assumptions in a perfect world. Then you've got to factor in everything else: weight, height, build, clothing, sobriety…' She trails off. 'That's why we've got Elliot.'

Kent walks closer to them and cranes his neck to get a better look up the narrow staircase. 'But you still don't think this was just an unfortunate misstep?'

'No. Even with all that—and we can get all of that with quite a high degree of scientific certainty, I might add, and we can compare it all with the body given enough time—I don't think so. Look here.'

They follow her pointed finger, her hovering almost-touch as she crouches next to Howell and wafts a gesture around the back of his head. Chandler gulps and tries not to breathe; the blood's bad enough, the messiness of all of it, but she's right. Where they should only find flesh and bone with a layer of slippery red there are jagged additions, vaguely wooden in nature but Chandler can't look too closely, not until the morgue. His mouth dries at the sight and he snaps back to standing up straight, swallowing. The air's metallic and busy, overwrought by plastic and processed paper bags and chemical kits. He almost longs for the gusts of wind outside, the reassurance that the world is bigger than he is.

'Are those… splinters?' Kent scowls.

Mansell makes a dissenting sound from where he's leant over Kent's shoulder. 'Bit big for splinters, don't you think? Wouldn't want one of those lodged in your finger.'

'I can't say what they are, or where they've come from, but I can tell you they've not come from the banister itself. There's a bloodstain where he did hit his head on the way down, but no splintering of the wood. These have come from something else, something thrown with considerably more force.'

Kent frowns, and his paper suit rustles sharp in Chandler's ears as he folds his arms across his chest. 'So, someone smacked him around the back of the head with something wooden that they'd thought matched the banister, to try and make it look as if the fatal wound had been from when he'd hit his head?'

Llywellyn nods. 'Er, bang-on, as they say.'

'It's a preliminary course of inquiry,' Chandler corrects, voice just that bit too sharp.

Kent looks away. It sends a pang of regret through Chandler's chest, but he can't do anything about that. Riley pokes her head around the nearest open doorway and breaks the odd, thick silence.

'Skip, boss,' she says in lieu of a greeting, and gestures into the room. 'Have a look at this.'

Chandler looks back to the pathologist. 'Is that all for now?'

She nods. 'Pop by later for a full report. A few hours should do it. Tomorrow morning at the latest.'

'Thanks, Caroline,' he manages, but she gives him a look that suggests she can see through him.

(She probably can. She's always been uncanny that way.)

Chandler follows Miles's suit, backstepping carefully over the disrupted area until he can maneuver himself closer to the doorway and look inside. The room is neat, tidy; there are a few books strewn about in odd piles but nothing that strikes him as odd. Then again, there rarely is.

Miles huffs and leans in, careful not to disturb anything too much. 'This his office?'

'Yeah,' Riley says, stepping aside so he and Chandler can move further into the room, Kent and Mansell bringing up the rear. 'There's another upstairs, apparently, but we can't get up there until they've finished swabbing the stairs—you know, finger prints, shoe smudges, footprints, the lot. The earliest's probably tomorrow at this rate.'

'Two?' Miles scoffs, glancing around in a way that's supposed to emphasize how small the house is. 'Bit presumptuous with his space, isn't he?'

'I've been told by one of the techs—Julie, lovely girl; Mansell, don't even think about it—that upstairs looks a little more like a library or an archive of sorts. Much smaller than this room, if that's even possible. I'd bet this is where he spent most of his time.' She rests her hands on her hips and glances around, at the high windows and equally high bookshelves. 'Ed would be thrilled.'

Chandler's sure he would be, but he can't quite stand the way Kent's hovering next to his elbow with a careful expression that says more than he's comfortable with so he just moves in closer, carefully picking at papers and files just in case anything catches their eye. Miles almost gets a heavy hardback on his foot when he accidentally dislodges a carful bundle at the corner of the table, narrowly avoiding smashing a half-full bottle of ink.

He gives the offending volume a stern glance. 'Shouldn't we be looking through his post? I doubt all this academia will throw anything up.'

'It already has, skip.' Mansell snickers. 'It only just missed you.'

'Sod off.'

'I've had a look through what's on the side table,' Kent offers from where he's crouched, head tilted to read the spines on the lower rungs of the bookcase. 'There's nothing obvious, no bills with massive red "overdue" stamps, if that's what you're looking for. Just one or two personal letters, something from Senate House, something else from—what was it?'

'Something from a publishing house, I think,' Riley fills in. 'Looked like a royalty cheque to me.'

Miles nods at nothing in particular. 'Make sure those get through in the first batch of evidence, we'll start with those.'

It's only when Riley heaves one of the heavy wood drawers open and gasps that they find anything worth looking at; the thing's full, almost overflowing. The papers—half crisp and new, the others creased and torn—would definitely be flying off of their own accord if it wasn't for the heavy paperweight in their center, a smoothed pebble that looks like one from a beach Chandler thinks he may have been to as a child.

Riley clucks her tongue. 'A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.'

'Christ's sake,' Mansell mutters from somewhere beside her as he tries another drawer. 'Busy fella.'

Kent sounds almost desperate as he gets to his feet to peer over their shoulders. 'There must be some sort of system.'

'We'll get Bletchley Park straight on it,' Mansell says, deadpan.

Chandler glances up to catch Kent just on the right side of saying something appropriately pointed when there's a creak of floorboards from outside and a young uniformed officer appears, face bright and eager as they all turn to look at him in an almost-eerie unison.

'Sorry,' he begins, but he doesn't look sorry at all. 'I just took a call from the station. They've managed to find the family. Wife and two children, they're at his mother's for the school break up in Derbyshire. He was supposed to join them at the weekend.'

'Right,' Chandler says, only half registering. He'll have to look at that later. 'Thank you, uh…?'

'PC Fletcher, sir.'

'Thank you, Fletcher.'

He doesn't say any more, just turns back to whatever it is Miles has his nose in now. He can feel the officer hovering behind them for a moment, like a ghosting itch, but he turns on his heel and leaves them to it before long. He can tell Kent's fidgeting's gone up a notch, too, although he's trying to smother it; Chandler busies himself with the paraphernalia on the windowsill and attempts to ignore it. Even if he was in a better state of mind, now's not the time. They can't do anything about it. That doesn't mean that Kent brushes past him, squeezing through the last remnant of moveable space, his back doesn't stiffen and he doesn't hold his breath.

He almost wishes he's still oblivious, that he doesn't know. But you can never unlearn what you want to, can you?

'Get this bagged up,' Chandler says offhandedly as he straightens to whoever happens to be closest to his shoulder.

'Yes, sir.'

He tries to ignore the question in Kent's voice, and turns on his heel in search of fresh, uncloistered air.

It doesn't help him find an answer.

'This list, while exhausting, is not exhaustive.'

Ed shoves the papers he's been cross-referencing in Kent's general direction; he only just manages to grasp them all before Ed lets go completely. Kent shoots him a look—they're probably all out of order now, it'll take him hours to straighten them out at this rate—but Ed doesn't see it. He's too busy staring at the whiteboard, Chandler and Miles looking between him and the words with expectant expressions.

Chandler tries first. 'What do you mean, not exhaustive?'

'He's a medievalist,' Ed says again, as if that fact alone cracks the case.

'And?'

'Doesn't that explain it enough for you?' Ed leans forward and peers over the top of his glasses at a particular list of references. Anglo-Scandinavian coinage, it looks like, but none of them are sure. It's all Greek to them—or Latin, as the case may be, but even Chandler's lost on that part. 'You can't possibly be exhaustive as a medievalist.'

Miles exhales a long-suffering sigh. 'You'll have to elaborate for us plebs, Buchan.'

'There's not enough to be exhaustive about,' he continues, still peering at the names Kent's just finished copying out from the forms. 'I mean there's plenty there to look at, plenty of primary source material and artefacts and the like, but no one's really got the foggiest what they mean. There's mounds of debate, loads of discussion, but no conclusions.'

'Bit like us most of the time then,' Miles mutters, shifting his own stance until he's face-to-face with a photocopy of the notebook that had been left open on Howell's desk, pen still poised to write when they'd arrived that morning.

'Not exactly.' Ed pauses and fixes Miles with a shrewd look. 'Sometimes they've got more.' He ignores everyone's eye-rolling and runs a finger beneath a list of names. 'These academics—they're the ones he keeps referencing, aren't they? In his notes and the rough manuscript?'

Kent hums in assent.

'Most of them are familiar; these here—' He circles the top three names. 'Those are the classic arguments, they pop up in virtually every paper and book on the subject. The others aren't as familiar. They might be more recent, possibly even still sentient enough to work. They may have even worked with Howell, depending on where they're based. I can have a look around, if you'd like; see if there's any who would have had the opportunity to meet up with him to discuss research or theories? They might have more light to shed on his work than his family.'

Chandler looks over at them, his expression one that suggests he's surprised to find himself agreeing. 'Good idea, Ed. How long do you think it'll take you to narrow them down?'

Ed takes it as a challenge; he always does. 'I'll start straightaway.'

'Take Riley with you,' Miles calls after him. 'Try and condense down Howell's argument for her. One of us needs to have at least a general idea of what he was on about.' Ed raises a hand in acknowledgement and catches Riley's elbow as they pass in the doorway; Miles just shakes his head and mutters, 'And she's the most likely to not throttle you in the process.'

They ignore him for the simple fact that it's the truth, especially when they're just getting started like this. That, and the fact that Riley would probably find it interesting. Kent can't tell if she's just really good at putting up with Ed's shenanigans or if she's actually curious about what he has to say. (Probably a mixture of both.)

'What does that say?' Chandler leans towards Miles with one of the papers in his hands, finger pointed at a scrawled note.

Miles takes one look at it and shrugs. 'I can't tell. You're the one who did the courses.'

'They aren't much use if I can't even identify letters.' Chandler brings it closer to his face, frowning, but gives up and shakes his head. 'These are a mess.'

'Personal, though, isn't it? Noke-taking? Once you get into it you've got a bit of your own shorthand.'

Chandler hums. 'You should have seen mine.'

For a moment, Kent's hurt that he hasn't. It's irrational but there, real. He can't quite shake it off, not really, not with the lightness of Chandler's voice and the dry chuckle he gets from Skip. Kent turns back to the photographs, the piles of books and papers that look like they mean nothing at all but probably constitute an academic archive that would rival Ed's. He doesn't see them.

'I think Judy's still got my books from when I was in uniform somewhere in the attic,' Skip continues. 'Those look like they're written in Morse code most of the time.'

'I'm not especially surprised, Miles.'

'Ta, sir.'

He's got something like a stomach cramp, high up under his ribs, sweet and crawling. It's been there ever since he'd laid eyes on Chandler at the scene, and it had nothing to do with the body that lay before them. It had everything to do with that split second when Chandler had looked at him and he'd looked haunted, like he'd just remembered or realised exactly how far wrong he'd gone. How much of a mistake he'd made. Then the look had gone, disappeared, wiped off his face in favour of something much more controlled, and Kent still can't decide if that was for his benefit or the crime scene's.

'Is any of this in order?' Chandler's voice is the same sort of indignant it had been when he'd first walked into their incident room amidst their crisp packets and open collars. 'Our lot's usually better than this.'

'It wasn't our lot. If I had to describe Howell, the phrase "couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery" comes to mind.'

'How on earth was he managing to work?'

'You've seen Ed.' Miles gestures vaguely towards the door. 'Some people just work that way, as difficult as that may be for you to imagine.'

Chandler sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. 'Was any of this on his computer?'

'Yeah, some scans, some documents. But they're all labelled as backups, so there shouldn't be anything on them that's not already on our desks. Good thing, too; the tech boys will have a field day with this lot. We won't hear from them for weeks.'

Chandler groans and reaches blindly for the first hardback on the stack of books they've left on the end of Mansell's desk. He flicks through it, pages rustling, until he chooses a page at random and peers at the text. Kent can see out of the corner of his eye that there's more handwritten on that page than there is typeface; whether or not they'll be able to decipher it is another question altogether.

'So this guy has an affinity for marginalia?'

Miles looks up from the evidence bag in his hands. 'For what?'

'Marginalia.' Chandler taps one photograph while looking at another. 'Writing in the margins of books. One of Coleridge's inventions.'

'Writing in books?'

'No, the word.'

'What's this Coleridge fella doing adding words to dictionaries?' Miles only sounds half-interested. 'They're already too bloody heavy.'

'Coleridge.' Chandler pauses and turns to fix the sergeant with an incredulous look. 'You know, water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink?'

'What are you on about?'

Kent clucks his tongue between reading the papers in his hand and the writing on the board. 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Skip.'

'Not you, too.'

He turns to grin at Miles but accidentally gets Chandler as well, and he knows the smile doesn't quite reach the edges of his mouth. He has a feeling of wrongness creeping up his back, but he's got an entire past of gathering up his fears and tucking them away somewhere safe.

This is how he's always imagined it: the beginning of the end.

Chandler's mouth is so serious.

Kent's quick to turn back to the work, to the bits of someone's life they're pinning to a whiteboard and picking apart. Chandler and Miles return to their rambling observations in the hope that perhaps something will occur to one of them so they have something more to work with before the preliminary forensic reports come back, but Kent can't bring himself to listen to closely. All he can think for those long moments is that when Chandler looks at him and he doesn't get the usual feeling, something must be wrong—but equally wrong is his inability to tell exactly what it is. His chest echoes as hollow skeletons' do as he stares at the photographs of Howell's stacks of books and papers until his eyes slip out of focus; he shakes himself back into the room and returns to transcribing, but the letters wobble.

Miles stops talking as Chandler stalks away to his office, and turns to the room at large. 'Right, who wants to man the tipline?'

Kent averts his eyes and redoubles his efforts to look busy.

'No one? How surprising.'

Chandler lies staring into the cool darkness, overly conscious of the fact that his and Kent's breathing is out of sync. He distracts himself from the swirl of thought in his head by trying to align each inhale, each exhale, but he can't get enough air that way and he gives up with a short sigh, pressing the side of his face further into the pillow. Kent snuffles and pulls his arm tighter around Chandler's chest, resettling almost as soon as he's unsettled himself. Chandler glances down at him and brushes his mouth against Kent's forehead in a disquiet kiss.

He still can't quite believe how he got here.

He knows how, though. Objectively, it was a series of mistakes and decisions he chose the wrong side of because the issue had been more than just 'we shouldn't do this,' hadn't it? Anderson's face tells him that from where he hovers on the edge of thought. Chandler screws his eyes up against the intrusion and tries to focus on the gentle puffs of air that warm the hollow of his throat, the thrum of Kent's skin and the beat beneath but it all just reminds him and drives the point home. He can't escape his own mind, can he? God knows how many times he's tried.

Commander Anderson worms his way into Chandler's head, his smirk and his utter disbelief. Chandler doesn't know whether he wants to crush Kent closer to his chest or push him far, far away. And worse than both of the options is his reality, because Chandler freezes and does nothing about the panic welling up behind his ribs.

Then Kent makes a sleep-sodden sound, pressing close to Chandler's shoulder in his sleep, and the unconscious nudge wipes the recollection clean. For a brief moment Chandler thinks of nothing, just tries to focus on the soft steady breathing that he can feel under his arm, the gentle warmth of Kent's foot against the top of his own. But it doesn't last, can't last, and the weight that at first had seemed comforting is suddenly smothering, too close and too much and too true.

He could manage to bundle it down at the station, this surging feeling, when there are other things to occupy his mind. Even the Commander's passing interest in his personal life couldn't outweigh the demands of the burgeoning investigation, the phone calls to the family and the very preliminary interviews. He'd even been more himself around Kent when they'd got into the swing of things, and apart from the occasional nagging twinge at the periphery of his thoughts he'd been able to put it out of his mind. Or, he thought he had. Once or twice Kent had looked to him through the glass of his office, gaze unguarded and obvious in its suspicious concern, and Chandler had had to look away and lay his hands flat on his desk, the line of his fingers alongside all the others he'd put down to protect himself.

He hadn't said anything about it; he couldn't, there were no words yet. He'd just come out of his office long after the sun had set and they were relying on the flickering lights of the incident room, tinged green and pallor-inducing, and although he'd known somewhere in the back of his mind the door hadn't slammed enough times for everyone except him to have gone home he was still surprised to find Kent sat at his desk pouring over the bagged notes. Chandler had just stood and watched for a moment, indulged some part of himself that felt foreign (as it once had before), and cleared his throat just as Kent flipped one page over with tired, sluggish fingers.

'Go home,' he'd said, voice gentler but still sticking in his throat.

Kent had looked up at him, one canine still indenting his bottom lip, and seemed hesitant.

Chandler had just sighed and turned to grasp at Kent's coat on the nearby hangers. 'Come with me.'

Then he'd looked even more conflicted, but only for a split second. Chandler doubts the concrete thought as to why had even really entered his mind. But Kent had been getting to his feet and grabbing at the papers, the photocopies, the plethora of dense research that none of them were really equipped to take. Chandler hadn't stopped him; how could he, when he was lugging home several of Howell's dogeared books in a desperate attempt to ascertain exactly what pivotal point it was that his wife was now cursing.

Not that it had done much good.

For a moment he considers going back to the books, extricating himself from Kent's sleep-determined grip and escaping to the kitchen with the ancient dusty volumes. There are a couple of well-thumbed paperbacks in there as well—he'd thought for a moment that perhaps Howell annotated all his reading, not just his academic work—but a quick flip through them earlier had told him that isn't the case. Still, there's a chance that he only did it sporadically, isn't there? They might still tell them something.

He shifts slightly, a slow pull backwards, as he decides he'll have to get up, he can't stay here like this and expect to get any sort of rest, but Kent stirs and purely out of reflex Chandler stills. The other man doesn't wake, just nudges into the small amount of space Chandler's put between them, and the DI gives up. He doesn't quite relax into the embrace Kent leaves wrapped around his torso, not really, but there's a little less tension there as he resignedly shuffles back. Kent burrows into Chandler's chest, gruffling slightly in his sleep, nose nudging his upper arm.

Chandler feels a pang of affection but swallows it down. He can't, not now, it's the wrong place and the wrong time. It always is, isn't it? Christ. What the hell has he done?

That's a loaded question.

A muffled police siren squeals on the road outside and Chandler tries to ignore how the sound makes his stomach knot, tries to remember why he'd done this at all and why the slight curve of Kent's limp fingers against his spine gives him some inexplicable comfort, or why the thought of seeing him sat up pouring over his own pile of papers had made something in between his ribs twitch in painful sympathy.

He tucks Kent up against him like his chest tells him to, like the lump in his throat instructs. He expects it to hurt, to suddenly explain to him why this doesn't make absolute, complete sense, but it doesn't. Kent just twists into the curve of Chandler's neck, his head slotting into place in the gap between skull and sheets, and before Chandler can think twice about it he rests his chin against Kent's curls and sighs something that might—just might—be considered contented.

Kent just wants to stop thinking. Just for a moment. Maybe five minutes.

Just long enough to get to sleep.

But that's not going to happen, is it? He's not even in his bloody bed, just sat in the kitchen staring at the time glowing green on the door of the microwave nursing a half-empty cup of instant coffee that went cold about an hour ago. He's not even sure why, except it has something do with the case and the job and Chandler. Mostly Chandler. Damn it.

He wasn't supposed to let this happen.

(He has, though. He always has. This isn't the first time he's sat up with Chandler stuck at the forefront of his mind.)

It'd be easier if he could just figure out what had happened.

He hadn't expected an easy morning, but he hadn't expected to be woken by Chandler shaking his shoulder either. He hadn't expected to find himself the only one still underdressed, and even as he'd stood there in his suit and tie Chandler had just said in a monstrously level tone, 'You'd better go.' Then nothing had been right—absolutely nothing, with any part of his life.

Kent doesn't know why it still bothers him. It shouldn't, by all accounts it was true—but it wasn't necessary, and maybe that's where he's getting stuck. All precedent (and God aren't they familiar with the importance of precedent?) would suggest there'd be no problem, there's nothing to worry about with them. They're spick and span all the way to the station and back, they always have been, so why did Chandler look at him with trepidation in his eyes, a set of his mouth that said he wasn't happy with the way the morning had begun.

(Well, yeah, neither was Kent, but that was entirely different situation altogether, wasn't it?)

He might as well have just said 'get out,' and been done with it. At least he'd know where he was up to with that. It had stung like rejection although he'd spent the night nestled in Chandler's warm, expansive bed; for the first time it had felt as if they might not be what he thought they were, when he'd let himself out without any other acknowledgement. Then he'd done three days of thinking, about the case and about this and about them and he can't quite manage to stop.

Freddie had even brought him a cup of tea, and that's a sure sign that all this thinking's showing. That's never a good thing; he's got a heart of sand, and when it breaks it gets everywhere and you're never rid of all the grains, not really, not without a lot of time and a lot of effort. Kent's not sure he's got either of those to spare anymore. He's just so fucking tired, and he can't even manage to sleep. Not properly, anyway. Not since that morning, not since they'd realised the hatstand was missing an appendage and not since he and Chandler had spent three days speaking to each other in the fewest words possible. Kent doesn't even know why he's doing it too, why he's joining in with whatever it is that's made Chandler go like this, but there must have been a point where that was the only thing to do and they've passed it.

Kent doubts he'll get an answer if he asks. Not right now.

He's not sure he'll be able to handle the answer he'd get.

(He doesn't need Chandler to tell him that.)

Shit.

It wells up, this feeling—surges, creeps up on him like the tide. He doesn't really realise he's veered off into thinking about it before there's another shot of vague panic or a long, diluted anxiety that lays just low enough for him to work until it's his turn to make the tea and there he goes again. He can't sleep either, not without wrestling with an amount of sheets that feels too big for him now or waking from a half-doze with what feels like a revelation seeping through his memory, only half thought and even less easily remembered. He lies there, feeling the thump of his heart against the mattress and wonders despite all the trouble that's ever got him into. That, and he yearns; he hasn't realised exactly how far he'd gone, exactly how much he misses Chandler's sleeping deadweight beside him, how much the man's lopsided smiles and downturned eyes had features in his days—and his nights. And, most of all, he hasn't been able to tell if he misses Chandler or if he misses everything they had because somewhere, in that low, uncomfortable, truth-telling part of his stomach, he knows they're running out of time.

Aren't they?

And that's probably the most telling thing, because he's had enough time to think about it.

He can't be doing with this.

One night, when Kent had spent long enough staring at the gradual lightening of the space around his window, he'd just given up and felt. He hadn't thought he could feel much more than he already had, in the long stretch of waiting between walking out of the station into dark, drizzly London and walking back in again, but when he stops trying to understand why and just leaves it to accost him he can feel the beginnings of embarrassed tears prick at his closed eyes. He hadn't let them come, he couldn't allow himself that, so he'd bitten his lip and drawn the the pillows close to simulate Chandler's body. He'd wrapped his leg around the stack of pillows and felt frustrated with the poor analogue.

(He should have known it was a bad idea.)

He'd woken the next morning with a snap and a gasp, hot with alone.

'By all accounts, he seems like a lovely guy. A bit one-track-minded, but still. A nice guy.'

Kent feels like saying Nice guys get killed all the time; wouldn't it be lovely if only the ones who deserved it got something smashed into the backs of their heads? but he doesn't. That's not what Riley means, and he knows it.

He just stays quiet and keeps his gaze on the whiteboard. That's what they're all doing, anyway, at least until they get something else to go on. Right now they're just relying on the hope for some sort of mental breakthrough, an epiphany moment akin to those Chandler's had before—not that it'll get them very far. Chandler's buggered off somewhere; Kent's trying to pretend he doesn't care. Miles had heaved himself up and said 'I'll go,' and they just let him get on with it. Riley and Mansell had exchanged significant glances that they thought Kent hadn't seen, and he'd ended up drinking two cups of black coffee (the cheap kind they keep in for emergencies, not Chandler's, not now) just to keep himself distracted with the bitterness.

'Massive reading list, though.' Riley sighs, undeterred. 'The endnotes are almost as long as the manuscript itself.'

'I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to see the backlash if he failed to reference properly.' Kent folds his arms and scoffs, not in an entirely well-meaning way. 'You think we're hard on theft.'

'He can't have possibly had all of these in his house, could he?'

Ed pipes up from where he's taken up residence at Riley's desk. 'They're not all massive comprehensive volumes. Some are just articles; journals take up a lot less space than encyclopaedias. There's electronic access, too.'

'Except he's not likely to have bothered with those, is he?' Mansell says from where he's sat behind them, voice dry. 'He didn't even draft the thing on the computer, everything's by hand.'

Normally they'd think he was exaggerating—there must be something on his laptop, otherwise why would he have it at all?—but no, he was right. The tech boys still hadn't gone through everything, still hadn't searched every electronic nook and cranny, but even they would tell Chandler when he rung up ready to barter for information that the thing hadn't even been switched on for two months.

'I can't keep all these Williams straight.' Mansell turns a page with a frustrated sigh. 'What am I looking for again, exactly?'

Ed doesn't look up from his own book but answers anyway. 'What we're all looking for, Finlay: something.'

Kent feels the lump in his throat swell, but doesn't move his eyes away from the board. Notnow.

'They're not cheap, either,' Kent says, desperate to say something at the very least. 'Not even the online ones. We're not talking about a paperback from WHSmiths or a few issues of Private Eye here.'

'But you would still buy the essential ones, wouldn't you? The ones you use the most?' Riley rolls a pen between her fingers, biting her lip instead of the cap this time. 'Imagine having to give back one of your references right when you're at a pivotal moment just because some tosser's on a waiting list.'

Kent finds himself straightening his back in the ensuing pause, his mind working. 'Unless you can't.'

'What?'

He ignores her and bends to check one of the specific lists of books Ed's left blu-tacked to the whiteboard. When that doesn't turn up what he's looking for he walks over to the other end, skirting around Riley's crossed ankles and skims through Chandler's handwriting, looking for whatever it is that's sparked his memory. He doesn't quite know what it is, but he knows it when he sees it in the middle of the list of Howell's personal belongings found with his body.

Kent turns on his heel and reaches over his desk for his coat. 'Tell the boss I'll be at the British Library.'

'What?'

Riley's more confused than she should be; she's alluding to another of the same question, but Kent doesn't want to answer either.

His mouth works quicker than his mind. 'If he wants to know more, he can ring me.'

He's snapping, he knows, he does that occasionally. They don't deserve it, they're all on his side and they should be working as a team, damn it, but all he can think now is that he needs to go. Needs to get out and fill his head with something that might actually lead to a sort of answer, something concrete. It had been raining earlier—cold, clammy—and as far as he knows it still is. It had lashed Kent's face on the way in—it had made him feel better, of all things. Maybe it'll do it again.

He leaves his scarf hooked over the back of his chair, forgets the gloves he's tucked in the left-hand drawer. His pockets will do, and he doesn't want any of them getting any sort of sodding ideas. He just wants to go and see if he can still do his job.

Riley's voice follows him out, a casual question directed at Skip as he saunters back in, oblivious. 'What's the matter with him?'

Kent hopes Miles doesn't say.

(He would hope Miles doesn't know, but it's too late for that.)

'It's not often we get an intellectual case. Killing someone over doctoral research? Bit rich for Whitechapel.'

'Yeah, bit more than doctoral, though, wasn't it?'

In the end, it had taken three phone calls and a well-timed visit to an obscure antiquarian bookshop. Chandler hadn't expected such vitriol from a scholar. He'd said as much when they were booking Browning, just another part of the put-on banter of the interview room, and got such a cackling laugh in response that he wondered why he'd ever felt at home in a university. He definitely doesn't remember it being this cut-throat.

Then again, it has been years.

At the same time he does know he's seen friendships fall apart like this, though perhaps not as catastrophically and certainly not over a theory as to the exact nature of kinship in medieval England. That does seem a bit specialist, even for them. But, objectively, he can see the strange, twisted logic that had gone into it. Browning's crowning glory, the theory that made his name, had been on the cusp of being torn apart. A flaw in his argument, previously unexploited, had been laid bare in Howell's upcoming piece. None of them can follow exactly what it was, only Ed has any sort of idea and he's wittering on about it now to Mansell as the DC doesn't even try to look interested, but it was there, and it would have ruined his magnum opus. (If that's what you could call it.) His legacy.

The logic's there. Chandler can almost empathize, and it makes him want to scrub himself clean twice over. He keeps replaying it in his head, the part where their respective understandings diverge. Browning went for a polite chat with an old friend and ended it with a killing, a coward's hit from behind; Chandler stops at the disappointment, the self-loathing, the slow and creeping resignation to the inevitable.

'I mean, the man's obviously got problems.'

Miles' voice brings him back, reminds him he's holding a handful of files that need to be somewhere else.

Riley huffs as she peels away the scene photos. 'When don't they?'

'Stop being existential,' he says, dropping into the nearest vacant chair and taking the papers from her outstretched hand. 'I don't have the energy for it.'

'You've got the energy for a pint, though, I'd bet.'

Miles makes a show of thinking, then taps the papers against the desk and grins. 'I'm pushing it, but go on.'

That gets a laugh from the both of them, only Riley's thrown over her shoulder with an honest grin. Chandler's trying not to notice but it brings a half-smile to Kent's mouth as well, although he's still quiet as he gathers the lists they've been keeping pinned up for reference. Chandler's heart lurches as he watches him alphabetize them out of the corner of his eye, double-check that their edges line up before securing them all with a bulldog clip. He almost can't beat to think that it might be for his benefit, even now, even after all this. Kent still… well, he still cares, doesn't he?

He shouldn't. Chandler can't see why he would.

(Never has, has he?)

Riley pulls at the edge of Browning's likeness, the photo they've pulled from the author page in a copy of his book, and exhibits a theatrical shudder. 'He seems as if he should leave a slick behind him.'

There's a murmuring agreement in the pause, and for some reason Chandler finds it difficult to extricate himself, difficult to turn back on them and retire to his office with the door left half open and a quiet moment half lost. Instead he stands, the side of one leg pressed almost uncomfortably against the closest desk, and tries not to watch their youngest DC too closely as he peers at the photography in Riley's hand—the forced smile, the staged arms, the eyes they've just seem confess to murder.

'People always lie, don't they?' Kent says, musing to himself more than anything as they go back to peeling off the photographs, wiping off the lists.

Miles scoffs. 'Like rugs.'

Mansell makes an uncannily similar sound from the other side of the board. 'If they didn't we'd be out of jobs.'

Chandler swallows down bile; it's too close to him now, more so than it usually is. Everything feels… pertinent. Even now. His heart pumps in a wavery sort of movement and his hands are shaking, just a little, but he's just going to ignore that.

There's a report to write, after all.

'Oi, Kent!' Miles' voice echoes across the emptying incident room. 'You coming down the pub?'

Chandler looks up from his report to see Kent stood at his desk, shrugging his coat onto his shoulders. Even from where he's sat in the cradle of his office, he can tell that Kent doesn't look as pleased as he'd have expected him to. After all, he'd brought in the essential evidence, the last clinching detail that put Browning in a holding cell.

'No thanks, skip,' he says, voice steady even as Miles frowns at his answer. 'I think I'll give it a miss tonight.'

Miles eyes him for a moment, obviously having similar thoughts to Chandler, but he doesn't press. 'All right. Good work today, lad.'

Kent smiles—that odd closed-mouth one he does when he's slightly embarrassed—and lets Miles' parting clap to his shoulder rattle through his limbs. That's the worst he has to endure; Riley and Mansell have already walked out the main doors in search of pints and Ed's still stuck somewhere in 1968 for some unknown reason. Chandler's not bothered about ascertaining exactly what that reason is—he'll undoubtably find out in the morning, it'll probably be on his desk waiting for him—so instead he folds the file in front of him closed and runs a hand over his face.

When he glances up again, Kent's looking at him. Chandler shifts slightly in his seat as if his mind's telling him to get to his feet faster than his limbs are, but after a moment he realises that there's an almost negligible shake to Kent's head, an almost hidden refusal of something that's not even been offered yet. Chandler frowns, cocks his head—this is new—but there's just that strange and steady look, something akin to disappointment. It's something that flitted across the Commander's face, too, before his abject refusal.

The similarity makes brings bile to the back of his throat, and as Chandler fumbles to his pocket for the trust and familiarity of the tub of Tiger Balm he can hear the steady step of Kent's retreat. If that's what it is. Chandler doesn't feel like it is; he's doing more running sat there, isn't he? That's a particular talent of his. He's been doing it for days, he's felt himself doing it but he couldn't stop. It's instinct, self-preservation taken too far. He shouldn't have to, not against him, but… he is.

He always manages to fuck it up in the end, doesn't he?

(He should have known. One look at his track record, and he should have known. One look at the rest of his life.)

Chandler's on his feet before he's realised he's made the decision to get up. It's just as well his body's ahead of his mind, he can't think quick enough—or, he can, but he can't keep up well enough to know what he's thinking. There's just something that feels terribly wrong about letting Kent go, more wrong than the rest of these awkward days have been, and he can't just sit there even if he wants to. He can't just leave it, can he, he has to try and find what he has to say to resolve whatever it is that's made a mess of his head. Just—don't—

Don't what? He doesn't know. He doesn't even know if he's talking to Kent or himself.

Chandler catches up with him halfway down the stairs, one foot still on the landing. 'Kent—'

He doesn't ask him to wait. That's too close. Kent knows, anyway, knows what he means; he stops on the second to last step, hand loosely caught on the banister, and waits just a beat too long before turning back in Chandler's direction.

'Is there a problem?'

(It's the best way he can think to phrase it, with the duty officer sat right there with his paper and the group of PCs at the end of the hall. It's cold, too clinical, even he can see that now but it's the best he can do. Shit.)

Kent pins him with a look, eyes hard from where he's glancing up the stairs towards him. It feels shockingly intimate for all the space between them.

'You, sir.'

Chandler's mouth closes, his throat working around some sort of hindbrain fear that roots him to the spot. Kent watches his stillness for a moment, his inability to act, and casts his gaze downwards before turning back to the direction he'd been going before and heading for the door. Chandler can't follow, couldn't even if he's managed to get that far in his thinking; this is the station, he can't just rush off after him without alerting more questions.

(It feels like a feeble excuse, even though he knows it's valid.)

The door rattles shut, the brief flare of the sound of rain and traffic smothering Kent's footsteps as he seeps into the darkness outside, one figure among many. Chandler feels his hand slip off the banister, fingers falling away one by one, as he tries desperately to think what he's supposed to do now, what he can do now and what he wants to do now. He doesn't know any of it, can't know; that's the most terrifying thing, isn't it? It's what's been happening to him for years. He can see it all crumbling around him, he's horrified by it, but he can't quite make himself do anything.

Oh, God.

He can't stay standing there, he knows. He balances on the brink of panic like an upturned needle. It isn't a question of if he'll tumble, but when. Probably soon, preferably somewhere other than the main staircase of Whitechapel Police Station. Even as he thinks it he feels the urge to turn to Kent, to search him out in the crowd but then he realises, remembers exactly what's just gone on and his heart lurches.

Two uniformed officers approach the foot of the stairs, but Chandler's still too stunned to think anything of it, even as they climb closer. He keeps his eyes fixed on the glass doors, the darkness throwing back a mirrored image where it wouldn't in the day until he can't ignore them any more, then he's forced to catch their eye and offer a polite expression that only just about manages to throw a cover over all the cracks. He hates them a little bit for it, a flare of emotion that he's not used to in this context, but that too he battles down. What else can he do?

'Evening, sir,' one of them says, smile too wide to be genuine.

The other smirks as they pass. 'Good catch, eh?'

Chandler barely registers exactly what it is they're implying as they take the stairs beyond him two at a time, clattering across the same floor he'd just ruined with the memory of Kent's hard gaze, brittle with hurt. They waft past with stale smoke, the scent overridden with a new layer of fresh and the echo of a half-hearted crafty cigarette; he flinches away as he places it, unhappy and uncomfortable. He can't tell if it's that or everything else that makes him feel a bit sick. That itch to fix it, though—that one he can manage. He can put that right, if he tries.

(Maybe.)

A/N: Next (and final!) chapter on Monday, 06 January 2014.

I'm afraid my history student's showing a little bit in this one. Couldn't help myself. You may possibly be able to guess what essay I was grappling with at the time of drafting this. ;)

Thank you so much for the comments and wonderful support. One more update to go!