A/N: Recently I've had a few ideas and one of them fitted into this story, so here's another chapter after all these years. There will be a third because there are too many ideas in my head. Enjoy...

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with a hint of whisky

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"It's so much nicer here." Barbara said. "Not like in the interview rooms."

"I suppose Sarah will relax here. Are there cookies on the table?" Steven asked.

"There are. Chocolate cookies."

"Mhm, I thought as much."

"Let me guess, you smell them?"

"Of course." the young man snickered. He heard porcellain clonking against wood. "Thank you."

Barbara had helped him locating the small settee. She went and sat down in the luxurious leather office chair, placing her own coffee mug onto the desk.

"Ah!" she sighed.

Steven grinned."You're relaxed here too, aren't you?"

"A bit, yes."

"Please describe the room for me, Barbara."

"Well..." Barbara let her eyes wander through the room. "On the opposite wall from where you sit there's a row of metal file cabinets. Light green and ugly."

"The usual ones, I suppose."

"Exactly. Next to the door there's a row of four simple wardrobe hooks. On one there hangs an umbrella. As far as I know it already had been hanging there for years. On this wall here behind me is a picture. An oil painting. It shows the Cornish coast. Somewhere near his home there." She knew exactly where it was. Once she had been sitting there, letting the wind dishevel her hair. She had been talking with her boss, wishing it would have been for a nicer reason than it actually had been. She patted the green desktop mat in front of her. "And then there's this desk and this huge, extraordinarily comfortable office chair."

Leisurely she turned on it this and the other way and looked at the things on his desk. The chair's ball bearings screeched a bit every time she turned the chair to the left.

"What's on the desk?" Steven asked.

"The usual stuff." Barbara replied. "Nothing extraordinary."

She described the dark green desktop mat with leather edges, a mahogany penholder with only one single ball pen advertising the Ritz-Carlton, one folder labelled Henderson/Notting H. and a pad of sticky notes. On top there were scribbled curls and lines and - Barbara hesitated briefly but decided she would not mention it to the young man - hearts. To the right there was a laptop with an extra mouse but it was closed. A movable storage container was under the left half of the desk and to the right there was an empty rubbish bin.

"It sounds very tidy." Steven commented.

Barbara sighed. "He is." Her own desk usually looked as if a bomb had hit it.

"No personal things?"

"Yes." Barbara looked at the three pictures.

One was an old picture of a teenage Tommy with his family, she told Steven, and one with him in uniform, which looked rather sexy, Barbara admitted and Steven laughed out loud. There also was a third picture Barbara had to take a closer look at. It obviously was a printout from a rather bad JPG and it surely had been in one of the circular emails which usually were sent after parties because this photograph was taken on one of these occasions. It showed DI Lynley, DC Nkata, DC Carlos and herself in a close round.

The irritating thing was that she and her boss almost looked like a couple on this shot. She did not describe that to Steven though. She also kept to herself that she wondered why there was no picture of his late wife. Barbara deeply breathed. She never had spent many thoughts on the pictures on his desk nor had she seen them properly but the office party picture was rather disturbing.

Fortunately Steven could not read her mind. He only had heard her deep breath. "This room is a huge difference to the almost clinic smell of your open plan office, isn't it?"

"Yah." Barbara nodded although the young man could not see it. "Very much so."

Tommy's aftershave still lingered in the air and there was the smell of leather, also a touch of wood. "Sometimes he smells like cold tea with milk and a musky spice in the background." Barbara quietly said, immediately shocked that she had said it loud. It had been supposed to stay in her head. But since she had said that she could as well go on. "With a hint of very expensive whisky. Somehow... slightly forbidden... Not the smell of an alcoholic, you know, it's different." And she definitely knew how he smelled when he was drunk. It was an experience she rather would not have made but knew that his darkest days obviously were gone by now.

"Mhm, I know what you mean. It's just the scent, not the drink."

"Yah. Although I'm pretty sure he always has a bottle of that stuff in his cabinet here. Oh, and when he returns from his estate in Cornwall there's even the faint scent of horses on his clothes."

Steven just listened. "Mhm."

"I rather like it. But you only sense it when he walks past you."

"Or when you stand close to his desk, skimming through a file together..." Steven suggested. He could not see the dreamy expression on Barbara's face but her voice mirrored it distinctively.

"Exactly." It almost had sounded like a sigh.

"And you always recognise it because you sometimes close your eyes when you're standing next to him."

Barbara did not answer immediately. She sat in her boss' chair where the faint remnants of his scent were the most obvious and leant back closing her eyes. She enjoyed that the smell was surrounding her there and the expensive cardigan that was hanging across the backrest for a bit of comfort during unexpected late night shifts softly tickled her arms. The image of him sitting here in the dim light of the desk lamp with his cardigan on and his reading glasses sliding to the front of his nose made her smile. Yes, she did close her eyes sometimes.

When Steven suddenly snickered she blushed. She still had not answered to his question. "What you try to do as often and secretly as possible, I suppose." he teased her.

Barbara still did not answer. Steven was so right. How could it be so obvious even to a blind young man, still a twentysomething, knowing her for only three days now. If even the young man recognised it others surely also had.

Only DI Lynley obviously had not but she was not sure if it was a good or a bad or just a sign of indifference.

"I'm all too right, hm?"

Barbara nodded with a slight blush but then remembered he did not see it. "Yes." she whispered with still closed eyes.

"Well, Sergeant Havers. Testing how it feels on this chair?"

His voice made her jerk. When Tommy Lynley came into his office he saw her sitting in his chair. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be relaxed. It made him grin.

Barbara blushed even deeper when she finally saw it. Averting his eyes she got up mumbling "Sorry, Sir."

When Inspector Lynley had been summoned to Super Intendent Ardery for a quick report about the state of affairs in the Batterson case, he had sent Barbara and Steven to his office where they all should meet him later. They were waiting for Sarah, the blind girl who had witnessed the murder while she had hidden in a wall cabinet, as well as for her father and a social worker. Tommy was pleased that she had not sit down next to Ellerby.

"You can sit there whenever you want, Barbara." he said with something gentle in his voice Barbara only could describe as affection. It was highly confusing.

For a moment she just stared at him and he stared back.

He thought about how it would be if they would be equal colleagues. Although it would mean that they would not work together anymore Lynley would approve of her finally passing the tests. She deserved a promotion. As far as he knew she had solved all required courses and he was sure she would be a good Inspector. And then finally this stupid barrier of the bloody rule about relationships in the chain of command would dissolve. It would be wonderful and easy to deepen their friendship.

Tommy swallowed. Then he lopsidedly grinned.

Barbara blushed again. She only was thinking about sitting in this chair when he was sitting there at the same time. For a brief moment her mind had formed the image of them snuggling, the image of her sitting on his lap with her arms around his neck. The image of him kissing her.

It definitely was too warm in here. She cleared her throat.

"We were just talking about senses, Sir." Steven said into the silence that had filled the pause. "And what we do to improve certain ones. You know, I actually give a lecture about that tomorrow. Why don't you both come?"

He invited both detectives to a suburbian education centre where his 'adventure' would take place the next day.

Lynley was just about to politely decline because the last thing he would like to do was listen to that young man Barbara seemed to admire so much but in that moment Ardery had popped her head through his office door to hand over a folder. She obviously had heard enough and since she knew enough of the actual case and how a little bit of more understanding could help them she agreed with Steven. "What a brilliant idea, Dr Ellerby. Lynley, Havers, you have an appointment tomorrow afternoon."

DI Lynley did not at all look forward to it.

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