I haven't had a chance to really sit down and work on this fic, but now the ATEOTD universe is done (for now) I thought I'd try and concentrate my efforts on this one. It's a long fic and I'd like to try and get it finished before I get married next year so I'll see how I go. I've also got a Christmas fic I'll probably try and get up in early December.

Anyway, things have been a bit slow going so far, but they'll pick up in the next chapter or so now Martina is actually here with him. In the meantime, enjoy some angst with a few hints of Joetina sexual tension.


4

The unwanted guest of Joey Boswell

Martina still had no idea exactly what she was doing here. She'd come with the intent of sternly, forcefully ordering Joey Boswell to return to Liverpool. Instead she'd ended up drenched, freezing, stranded and at the mercy of Joey's rather limited hospitality, stuck in a honeymoon suite with him. It seemed he didn't know exactly what to do with her, what to make of her being here. Joey barely spoke to her, barely looked at her, and when he did he regarded her with what appeared to alternate between curiosity, confusion, annoyance and pity.

He shifted so rapidly between the states of kindness and hostility that Martina felt her head might spin. He'd procured a pot of hot tea from somewhere (room service?), poured her some, but shoved her cup into her hands rather than offering it to her nicely. Seeing she was soaked to the bone, he'd thrown his robe at her and muttered she could use his en suite if she wanted to wash up, warm up and dry off, and then skulked back to the armchair in the corner of his room, where he seemed to have made a permanent home judging by the collection of cups and plates around it.

Martina tried to ignore his mood, tried to keep her brain firmly in logical territory – see to her more basic needs and then work out where to from there. She hadn't thought beyond finding Joey Boswell and telling him off, had assumed (she didn't know why, she must have lost all reason) he would immediately roll over and comply with her order to return home, and now instead she was in a right mess. She would have to speak to him properly at some point, she knew, but keeping herself from getting pneumonia was a far more pressing concern. She had a hot shower in Joey's en suite, the steam clearing her sinuses and making her feel significantly better, and then while she was there she cleaned herself up a bit more, splashed water on her face, combed her fingers through her hair (she really hadn't thought this through; she hadn't even brought a hairbrush, or a toothbrush), wrapped herself in the dressing gown Joey had thrown at her and went back into the main room.

Joey raised his head briefly when she opened the door, something unfathomable in his eyes, and then he turned his head back to his paper (three days old; how many times had he read it, she wondered) and ignored her again.

Martina decided to take no notice of his open annoyance at her being here. She crouched down, laying her wet things out in front of the fireplace in the hope they'd dry before tomorrow, when she prayed Joey wouldn't make good on his threat to push her onto a train and make her find her own way back. She'd sort of counted on him seeing sense when he saw her, driving them both back to Liverpool right away. Joey, however, seemed to have no intention of doing anything of the sort. He really wasn't himself, not at all – not the version of him she'd always seen, anyway. And, judging by what Adrian had said, not the version his family usually saw either.

After half an hour of sitting in a very awkward silence, Martina decided she was going to force a conversation, whether he wanted one or not.

'Just how long are you planning on living in this 'otel?'

It got him to look up if nothing else, and there was an ire in his eyes she hadn't seen before. It looked rather like the Joey Boswell equivalent of her icy stare down the DSS, the one she used for particularly ratbaggy claimants with daft excuses.

'Rest of my life,' Joey murmured. Martina growled under her breath, frustrated no end at his stubborn refusal to do anything, his wilful hopelessness. This wasn't the Joey Boswell she knew.

'I realise the Boswell family have inordinate amounts of the state's money tucked away in your little Kelsall Street palace,' Martina said, 'but I should imagine even you don't have infinite cash.'

Joey was silent again.

'And when the money runs out, what then?'

'I think you should keep your mind on your own problems, sweetheart,' Joey growled. He would almost sound intimidating, dangerous, had he not still been slumped in his chair moping. 'For instance, what are you gonna do if you push me too far and I turf you out into the cold in nothing but that dressing gown? And I am this close, Martina.' He held up his hand, narrowing his index finger and thumb until they were almost touching.

Martina bristled, lips pursing. Joey seemed to have dropped his charming act of late, unleashing a side of himself that bordered on nasty. God, she hoped this was his misery at being jilted talking. It didn't half shatter the illusion he always gave when she saw him – of the cheeky rogue coasting his way through life, of the man for whom family unity was everything. Of the man whom she had always been, she was ashamed to admit, embarrassingly attracted to. She'd managed to cover it up fairly well over the years (wasn't hard, when she simultaneously hated him), although, to her dismay, she'd still found him popping up in most of her fantasies, no matter how hard she tried to push him away, no matter how many times she reminded herself that it was never going to happen, that she had a working relationship with him, that he made her life difficult and was blatantly cheating the state, that she did, in fact, hate him fervently. And, much as she was furious with him at the moment, she didn't much care for the idea of that Joey Boswell, the one who sneaked into her head uninvited, being nothing more than a front.

'And I'm this close,' she hissed, 'to losin' the last shred of my sanity, Mister Boswell. After finding most of it unravelled over the years, from your ridiculous attempts to con the state out of every penny you can shake from it, the one solid piece I thought I was holding onto shattered after landin' meself in hot water with my superiors trying to keep you on the list – and God even knows why, when you're deliberately carryin' on this way.

'Take me off, then. Would've saved you all this trouble and your sanity if you'd done that in the first place.'

'And that's what you want, is it?'

Joey shrugged.

She couldn't picture it, even when the evidence was staring her in the face. The notion that Joey Boswell, ever the protector and defender of his devious little clan, would throw away an allowance that could contribute to their survival (and ability to acquire more expensive things on the quiet) just seemed unthinkable. Surely he couldn't mean it. He was in high dudgeon, yes, and understandably so – Martina had had her heart broken in the past, but the humiliation and devastation of being left at the altar must be on another level completely. Nonetheless, his obstinacy, his refusal to face up to his responsibilities and his insistence on wallowing was doing her head in.

'Are you honestly telling me you want to cancel your…' she rolled her eyes 'only source of income? Your only way of surviving?'

Even the not-so-subtle jibe didn't seem to get her anywhere. Joey barely reacted. He wasn't looking at her, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

'What am I livin' for, eh? What? Go on, tell me that, sweetheart.'

'United family ring a bell?'

Joey's face darkened in a way Martina didn't fully understand.

'I'd prefer not to discuss my family at present, thank you,' the bitterness in his voice when discussing his family was unprecedented, and it took Martina aback. More than took her aback, in fact, it knocked her for six. Joey Boswell had never shown resentment towards his family in her presence before – quite the reverse, in fact. He spoke of them in a tone that bordered on reverence, seemingly delighting in boasting of their saintlike unity whenever the opportunity presented itself. Martina's curiosity, already piqued by this whole situation, was now ravenously clawing at her insides.

'Why?' she pushed again.

'Oh dearie me. We seem to have forgotten what I was this close to doing.' Joey's sing-song voice had a dangerous edge. He raised his narrowed fingers again threateningly, and Martina, lips pursing so tightly she could feel her teeth against them, decided against pushing any further for the time being.

They fell back into unpleasant silence.

When the hour grew later Joey disappeared into the bathroom and came back out in silk pyjamas, which, had the situation been different, Martina might have made a comment about. She was aware, though – too acutely, uncomfortably aware – that she had better stay on Joey's good side or else. Their situations were reversed here; he had the power, the ability to send her on her way with nothing, and she was left grovelling for whatever he deigned to give her. Making a snide remark about yet another display of affluence would, she realised, not be wise.

'I'm just hoping,' Joey said, more to himself than to her, 'I'll wake up and this'll have been a nasty dream and you won't be here.'

'You and me both, Mister Boswell. You and me both.'

'Well, we've learned a lesson here, haven't we, sweetheart? Outside your little plastic lie detecting box, you'd do well to mind your own business. Just because people come to you down the DSS and lay their troubles out before you doesn't give you an invitation to stick your nose into their private lives.'

'All right, all right, don't rub it in.' Martina rolled her eyes.

'I think I've got licence, sweetheart, to rub this in until one of us dies.' This would have been a promising tease, had Joey's voice not still sounded furious, and had he not punctuated his words by getting into bed, throwing the covers over his head and turning away from her.

Martina looked at the lump in the blankets that was her arch nemesis and bit her lip.

She hadn't really thought about what happened once night fell. Another sign, Martina thought, of how daft, how badly thought-out this whole escapade had been. She had nowhere to sleep, unless Joey showed enough compassion to spare a few inches of room in his bed. (He had the space; it was massive, but whether he would be courteous about it was another matter.) It was inappropriate to want to get into bed with him, given their working relationship, but the alternatives were the floor in front of the fire or Joey's armchair, and she didn't particularly fancy either.

'Are you gonna get in here or what?' came Joey's muffled voice from beneath a mountain of blankets.

Thank God he was offering after all. Saved her the trouble of asking. Still, she'd better save face, pretend she wasn't quite so relieved.

'I'll sleep in the chair.'

'Don't be so bloody stupid, Martina.' He sounded fed up again. The top of his head emerged from beneath the bedspread, eyes narrowing at her. 'There's more than enough space for us both. Not only that, it's Baltic in this place at night, 'specially when the fire dies out. You'll freeze to death in that chair. So let's not have any more of this rubbish about sleepin' there just to prove some daft point – I think you're beyond preservin' any sense of dignity after what you pulled today. Just get into bed and shut up. Okay?'

'Oh, if it's not an imposition.'

She hadn't meant to snap at him, keeping in mind her precarious position, but Martina couldn't help it. His tone got her dander up.

'You are an imposition, full stop,' Joey snapped back, 'while you're at it bein' one, you might as well be comfortable.'

He turned away from her again, pulling the blankets up as high as they'd go.

'Get the light. It's on your side.'

She supposed that meant it was all right, then.

Martina got into bed and switched off the lamp.

The silence was awkward, an enormous hovering presence over her head. Martina felt she should say something, only she wasn't sure how it would be received. She decided to anyway.

'Goodnight, Mister Boswell.'

'Shut it,' was all she got in reply.

It was still bucketing down outside. Martina was comfortably warm in here; the fire was still going for now, the blankets and Joey's dressing gown sufficient to keep the chill from outside well away, and yet she felt shivers going down her spine. At the thought that, though there was quite a vast expanse of mattress between them, she was sharing a bed with Joey Boswell. At the fact that she had come on an impulse to bloody Scotland, for no other reason than to give Joey Boswell a good telling-off. At the fact that being here proved Joey really wasn't married, he really had been left at the altar, and while her more noble side felt sorry for him, a devious little part of her couldn't help but be thrilled. It was the same part of her that had felt so sickened when she'd found out he was married, the part of her that had wanted to come to Scotland, that had never really got over him all those years, not even when Shifty arrived on the scene (although she'd convinced herself she had). The part of her she needed to eradicate no matter what. She couldn't let some daft bout of emotion take over her senses like this. She was here for one reason only. Because Joey Boswell was making her life at work very difficult, and she needed to put a stop to this nonsense. (Or perhaps because she really had gone mad, given she had actually done something daft and come all the way up here).

She forced it out of her mind, reminding herself instead that while her intention had been to exert some of her power and dominance over him, get him to roll over and do what she said, the opposite had happened. She was now completely dependent on Joey Boswell's mood not turning too dark, her security, shelter and warmth now in his hands when he was in an unstable state of mind. At least for now enough of the real him remained that he was letting her take refuge with him, even if this basic kindness was tinged with resentment. At least he hadn't slammed the door in her face in the end. At least she had a bed (well, half a bed) and was warm and dry. That would have to do for now, and she'd work out what to do and how to deal with Joey Boswell properly tomorrow.

Martina felt the beginnings of sleep wash over her. She shifted onto her other side, settled herself, and let them take her.