When Duty Isn't Enough

Author: Firebird

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Neither Hot Fuzz nor its characters, settings etc. are mine. Original characters are, as the name would imply, original and belong to me.

**

Chocolate cake

"Something smells good," Nick commented as he followed Lily towards her kitchen.

"It's chocolate cake. I just iced it. Want a slice?"

"I don't really eat chocolate cake."

"Not even when your girlfriend makes it? You have to when your girlfriend makes it. It's like a law."

He shook his head, smiling, already knowing that he was going to give in. "Lily, I'm a police officer. There's no such law."

"That's why I said it was like a law," she grinned back. "Although I'm considering writing to my M.P."

"You would actually write to your M.P. to request a law be passed requiring men to eat their girlfriends' chocolate cake?" He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. Her insanity must be catching, he thought, because he half-believed she might actually do it.

"Mm-huh," she affirmed. "So, really, it'd be easier if you just had some. C'mon Nick," she pleaded. "I've seen you eat Cornettos. And this is home-made with love and all-natural ingredients. Pleeeease?"

"Alright. A small piece."

She grinned and kissed him. "Yay."

**

Reading Material

It was so late that it would soon become early, but Nick was unable to put the book down. When he had asked Reverend Grant for something which might expand his understanding of Lily's faith he had been attempting to garner a degree of intellectual insight, nothing more, but the book Grant had provided was doing far more than that. Alone in the late-night quiet of his living-room his heart was starting to thrum with the possibility that all this might, just might, be true. And if it was, if there was a hope beyond the seeming hopelessness of a depraved world, a love beyond the fleeting, failing feelings of this world, a chance for forgiveness even when you felt that what you had done was unforgivable... Well, he hadn't quite worked out all the implications yet, but the WHAT IF? was inscribing itself in capital letters in his mind, and he just had to talk to someone.

"Lily? Lily, it's Nick. Open up!"

"Nick?" The window above him opened, and his girlfriend's head emerged. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" she hissed.

"I know. I'm sorry. I need to talk to you." He smiled hopefully up at her, and she sighed and withdrew back into the house. A moment later he heard her footsteps on the stairs.

"What if it's true?" he asked her as soon as she opened the door, grabbing at her upper arms in eagerness.

"What?" She was heavy-eyed with sleepiness, her arms wrapped around her dressing-gown-clad form in an effort to ward off the chill. "Nick, it's 2am. What's so important it can't wait?"

"What if it's true?" he repeated, eyes shining, as he let himself into her house. "What if God's real, and Jesus is real, and the Bible is true? What does that mean?"

He wandered restlessly through to her living-room and began to pace backwards and forwards. Lily, meanwhile, dropped herself down onto the sofa and wrapped the throw around her shoulders. For the next hour she let him talk himself out, heading down to the kitchen at one point to fix them both a cup of tea. He didn't object to the caffeine, didn't even notice it, but continued to talk until at last he sat, exhausted, and prayed the first sincere prayer to cross his lips since he was a child: "God, if you're real, I need to know you're there. And I'm sorry about those kids in the pub. And, uh, amen."

**

Fighting, and making up

"That's Lily," Nick told Danny, pulling over. It was nearly 10pm, and dark enough that it was only the familiarity of having seen her almost every day for the last three months that allowed him to recognise her.

"What's she doin' out this late?"

"Walking." Nick's tone was flat with disapproval. "Lily!" he called, as he stepped out of the patrol car. She turned towards him and he would have bet good money that she was scowling. "What on earth are you doing out this late?" he asked in a quieter tone as he closed the gap between them.

"Walking," she replied in a deceptively reasonable voice.

"I thought we talked about this."

"No, you lectured me on how dangerous it was, and I decided to ignore you."

"Do you have any idea what could happen to you?"

"Do you have any idea how unlikely it is that anything'll happen to me? I've been doing this for years, Nick, and I've never had a problem."

"And one day your luck will run out, and I'll be picking you up from the hospital, or worse. Look, I'll drop you home."

"Thanks, but I'd rather walk."

"Lily, please."

"I said I'd rather walk."

"Look, just get in the car."

"I'm not getting in the bloody car."

He considered grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the vehicle, but rejected the idea. She wasn't technically doing anything wrong – beyond taking years off his life expectancy with worry, anyway – and Nicholas Angel had never, ever laid hands upon a woman in anger.

"Then I'll walk you home."

"You do that."

The next afternoon he knocked on her door.

"Nick?"

He held a small cardboard box out to her. "Peace offering?"

"What is it?"

"Open it."

She did so, and frowned at him, puzzled. "A Tamagotchi?" she tried, her lips twisting in amusement.

That surprised a laugh out of him in spite of the tension. "It's a personal alarm. I want you to take it with you when you go walking, okay? And I'm going to teach you some self-defence moves."

Ten minutes later he was flat on his back on her living-room carpet, and Lily was wincing as she looked down at him.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she offered him her hand.

"Ow." He sat up slowly. "Yeah, I think so. What just happened?"

"I have a blue belt in aikido," she admitted.

"And you couldn't have just told me?"

She had the decency to look contrite. "I could have, but I was mad at you. Besides, I thought you had a black belt in judo."

"Yes, but you had the element of surprise."

She pulled him closer and kissed him. "Always."

**

Conversations: being happy

"So, you seem a lot more cheerful lately," Danny observed, taking a long swallow of his beer.

"Yeah." Nick sipped his own pint. It was just the two of them tonight, and it was good to have a chance to catch up.

"That Lily. Who'd have thought Inspector Angel would start leaving work on time."

"Well, I've discovered that work isn't all there is to life."

Danny hesitated, his glass half-way to his lips. "You still, um, you still like your job, though?" he asked tentatively.

"What makes you ask that?" Nick hedged.

"I don't know. It's just... when you arrived you were so into it, like Robocop or something. Now you look miserable half the time, and the other half is when you're thinkin' about Lily."

"I miss being out on the street. I spend so much time behind a desk that I don't feel I'm being as effective as I could be."

"What're you talkin' about?" Danny exclaimed in total disbelief. "Now you have all of us being your ears and eyes and legs. You're like this amped-up, expanded version of yourself. You can't tell me that makes you less effective."

Nick took a long swallow of his beer. "I guess it's hard stepping back. Back in London they used to tease me about trying to be 'the Sheriff of London', a one-man crime-stopping force."

"Well, even a Sheriff's gotta have his deputies, right? An' deputies need a Sheriff. You're our Sheriff, Nick."

He thought about this for a moment, the nodded. "You're right," he said eventually. "I never thought of it that way, but you're right."

Nothing more was said on the subject, but over the next few weeks Danny couldn't help but notice that his friend seemed to be a lot more contented in his work.

**

Blackberries

"You're honestly telling me you've never been brambling before? My dad used to take us every autumn, in the woods near our house." Lily smiled at the memory. "And then mum would help us make blackberry and apple pie. And in the spring we'd go up there to pick bluebells."

He smiled back at her. "I grew up in a concrete jungle. I'll take you down to London some time and we'll visit the Natural History Museum. That was my favourite place when I was a kid."

"A museum?"

"They have this massive dinosaur skeleton in the foyer, and a T-Rex, and a blue whale."

"For real?"

"Well, not live ones, obviously, but yeah. When you're seven years old stuff like that makes an impression."

"I'll bet."

They were walking together through the morning-damp grass up to the woods behind Brannigan Farm. It had been Lily's idea to go brambling on their shared day off, and her enthusiasm had been infectious. A short while later the two of them were picking clusters of the plump, deep-purple berries from the trailing brambles that filled this quiet corner of woodland.

"You should plant these around your cottage, you know."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. They'd be great for deterring intruders; even thornier than roses."

He threw a blackberry at her.

**