God almighty.
I'm sticking with Greater Love (part 1) for now so we don't have to think about…y'know…The other stuff that happened. I will tackle that at some point, but right now I really can't!
I found these ones really difficult because there was so much material in that one little scene with Nikki and Leo that it has turned into separate quotes and separate back stories for me. So I apologise if they overlap or confuse anyone, I've tried to be a succinct as possible!
Any feedback you have would be lovely! Or if you just want a grieving buddy, I'm here for yah xxx
"You, are jealous."
Okay so this isn't a subtext. But what is she jealous of? Love, or the fact that they have a baby? I wanted to explore when this started because I hadn't really seen 'screen Nikki' (not 'fic Nik') as very maternal at all until this series. I hope I do this justice, it was an absolute gift!
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Those days, it was as lurid as the metallic drip of the cold tap in your kitchen. They seemed to keep in time with one another, joining together to announce each passing second with a momentary echoing din which seemed to shake the world beneath your feet until you could barely maintain your balance.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
It became more of a pendulum. A heavy, copper pendulum, throwing itself from side to side, reaching out and only just maintaining balance. Reaching and grabbing at hopes, dreams, memories adorning the collage of your prime, taking one at a time and ripping them each to shreds. Each and every time.
Drip. Drip. Tick. Tick.
You got the kitchen tap fixed.
The ticking soldiered on alone. Un-phased by the abandonment.
Bit like you, really.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Chants the biological clock.
It had crept up on you.
Against the hazy, dreamlike backdrop of South Africa, you dissected your decomposing, much adored pets while your peers played with dollies and prams.
After your degree, your friends paired up; each passing month another left hand was claimed by an overbearing, sparkling diamond. You went home. Your energy was poured into your work, your training, and you would smile politely as friends announced their new arrivals and then disappeared into a dull, dreary world of nappies and sleepless nights. You didn't envy them then.
And yet, they were the ones still smiling, while you stood over a putrid corpse, found in a lonely, badly decorated flat, having lain for a fortnight, only found because the family below reported an unusual smell. Alone.
They were the ones who had someone to love unconditionally. Someone to belong to, belong with, someone who would if fact notice if they were to decompose. And you were the one repressing the desolate, empty feeling in your stomach as Leo covered up the body of Helen Karamides' most recent case;
A three month old infant.
It had woken feelings in you that you hadn't known existed.
Perhaps they had always been there, really, since you met him and subliminal seeds began to be sown. This was in fact the first slip up of your subconscious.
And he had noticed. Perhaps because he felt the same.
A hand had gently squeezed your shoulder and you had to supress a lustful shudder as he held it there and continued to walk, until he had almost wrapped you up entirely. He soon left you cold again though, removing his tender hold on you, yet remaining intimately close. Anything other would have been inappropriate. You wouldn't have complained, of course.
What you felt for him seemed to glow from your every pore in moments like these. Moments in which he was so attentive that he wouldn't even ask you for your thoughts or troubles and would simply watch you for a while. Moments in which he would know exactly what was wrong, despite you not having uttered a word and despite there being a multitude of things that could have been bothering you. Moments in which he would hit the nail right on the head by saying something so unusual, you would barely register that you wanted to hear it.
One day, you'll make an excellent mother, he had said that particular time, in the corridor, looking out through the glass, hands clasped to the railings, and you had felt your body sag ever so slightly. Relieved? Or deflated?
You had intended to be lucid in your reply. Well, only if I find someone worth – but you had turned to him and stopped dead mid-speech. That kind of proximity was something you had never gotten used to with Harry, being that close to him was somewhat like experiencing gravitational pull. You had occasionally considered not fighting it so hard…
But it hadn't just been that. It had been the way he had looked at you, in a way he hadn't looked at you before. If you were not very mistaken, in a way you had not witnessed him look at any woman before.
That was exactly it.
He was looking at you as if you were most certainly not just any woman.
He had looked at you as if he knew something you didn't. As if your story, the story of you and him had been presented to him as one of those beautiful classic, hardback books with the material cover and the musty smell, and he had read it, cover to cover.
No babies, he had whispered. You had replied with a barely coherent, What?
I'll talk to Leo. His voice was still gentler than normal; quiet. Almost secretive. I'll tell him it's one rule we're not willing to negotiate, shall I? If he wants to do these cases, he'll have to give us those days off, yes? Unable to speak, you had nodded your reply.
Might be too close to home, one day; His final eight words and he leant in and lightly kissed your temple. Before you had a chance to lean into his touch, he left back through the double doors.
Ever since then, you ached.
You ached when you saw women; staff at the university, visitors to the Lyell centre, even strangers in the street, a hand spread protectively on their disproportionate, swollen, uncomfortable looking stomachs.
You envied the secrets they held. They were each being stretched almost to their very limits. They were sacrificing their sleep, their health, their comfort, their leisure, to carry a weighty entity in their stomach for the best part of a year. They would soon have to endure the most pain one can endure.
…And yet, each and every one you saw had one thing in common, aside their contorted skin.
They all glowed.
They glowed with a happiness and a beauty unlike any other. Their smiles were a constant beam of light in the dull world around them.
None of it seemed to make sense to you. It confused you, while making you positively sick with envy.
You are a scientist. You don't take well to perplexities and paradoxes and things you do not understand.
You hated them. You hated them for the relentless, uncomplicated, unconditional love they would soon realise. They would be in charge of a tiny human being, completely in love and dependant on them, and they would love it in return because it encompasses everything that is familiar to them; themselves – oh, to see your own eyes, but younger, fresher, innocent, reflected back at you – and the love of their life; their protector, lover, companion and soul-mate.
The would not only have that love, but they would be given a chance. A chance to put right all that had been wrong with their own upbringing. A chance to do it the way they wished their own parents had. That was invaluable.
That's what you want; a triangle. Someone to love you, and for you to love in return. And then someone else composed from that love. Someone to cement you together in a tie of love and blood, never to be broken. To cocoon you in a haven where you belong for longer than the world will ever last.
Then you realised how much you had changed for him without even realising.
The clothes you wore, your appearance. Before, you barely cared about how men saw you in the trivial material you covered yourself with. Growing up in strong heat meant clothes had a purpose of protection, rather than attraction. But being in his presence every day had resulted in a good half an hour each morning, or the previous evening, picking out an outfit for the following day, keeping a careful eye on your hair, keeping it in check. You hadn't even noticed yourself becoming more feminine with each passing day. It was almost embarrassing. You had turned into another subject of one of David Attenborough's nature programmes.
And here we see the female of the species, putting on a show of extreme vanity, in the hope of attracting herself a mate, in order to populate her habitat with her offspring.
The thought of that natural, organic, turn of events doesn't scare you anymore.
What scares you is the thought of never having it.