Don't Look so Sad I Know it's Over
No need for her to turn round to see who it was he was talking to, she could feel eyes on her the way you do when there's someone staring at you, that feeling that makes every instinct you've got scream and tell you to turn round and cop a look, but she didn't because there was only one person called Boss that would know her. She'd known, of course, that he'd be there somewhere the minute Fingers had shown up and told her that the rest of them were there, but that didn't stop her heart from pounding like it was going to jump right out of her chest or her pulse from thundering in her ears as if Status Quo were playing a drum solo inside her head. It was just as bloody well that no bugger was going to come over and take her blood pressure or they'd have had her in a hospital bed never mind on a transport plane, but she couldn't help it.
It didn't matter what she did she had to keep the stupid grin on her face, even if it was an act that might show, and she had to try to look like there was no big deal, but she couldn't stop the panic that was beginning to make her legs shake and her mouth feel like the Gobi Desert. How the fuck was she supposed to be able to just look at him and say 'hello Boss, how are you this lovely fine day?' as if none of it mattered, as if none of it had even happened, as if he didn't matter to her anymore?
More than a year and she wanted to see him so badly when she realised that he was standing somewhere just behind her, only a few feet away, but at the same time she didn't. Course, if she had any bloody sense at all, or even half the brain she'd talked to Adam about, she'd do a bloody runner. She could always make excuses to Tilly later on because the other girl was lovely but wasn't always the sharpest tool in the box, and she could tell her that she'd felt sick or something. All that bloody time she'd spent being a fucking loony tune and trying to get her shit together looked like it was all a waste of time now because it felt like it had happened yesterday.
Typical Dawsey gobshite, she never had known when to shut it and leave well alone, but she'd never meant to light the blue touch paper for him to explode like that. She'd pushed him once too often, had kept on and on at him trying to make him explain why he was spoiling for a fight with her, had got no idea what it was bugging him making him all moody and brooding about the place the way he was, so that she wasn't prepared when he'd turned himself into Bossman and accused her like that, when he'd said that she'd lied to him and that he didn't think that he could live with it and had then asked her how he was supposed to ever trust her again. He hadn't wanted to let her explain, in fact he wouldn't listen to anything that she had to say, not properly, not that she knew what to say exactly because everything he'd said was true, she had done all that. It was just that she hadn't meant to put anyone in danger or anything, and definitely hadn't meant to hurt him in any way, she'd hidden it from him because she knew how he would react. She hadn't told him because she hadn't wanted to hear him tell her not to do it, so he was right, she might not have said the words exactly or told him straight out or even told him once she'd done it, in his eyes that meant she'd lied.
He'd stood there with his legs wide apart and arms folded across his chest with his hands tucked into his armpits, that arrogant way he had of standing with that look on his face, that 'I'm in charge and don't you forget it' stern expression that she'd always hated. He was hard and cold and distant and nothing like the Charles that she thought she knew, the one that smirked at her and laughed and joked and teased her, the one that cuddled her when she got a bit upset and teary about some sad animal thing on tele, the one who'd told her that he loved her, the one that she'd made love to, that had made love to her as if they were the only two people in the whole world that mattered. That Charles seemed to have gone, he seemed to have left the bloody building. She'd royally fucked it all up. What was it he used to say about her? That she didn't think things through before she did them, and he was absolutely bloody right, she hadn't stopped and thought for a single solitary moment about anything but her tunnel vision of needing to check it out for herself that she hadn't fucked up that little girl's life.
And now, more than a year on she was going to have to face him again. She hadn't seen him or heard anything from him since he'd said all that stuff and time had made her see that there had been more going on with him that evening than her not telling him about Kabul and that, although she still didn't know what it was. But that evening she hadn't waited to listen to any more of it, she'd just got all angry and defensive and called him names before slamming the door on her way out, so that she hadn't got a scoobie now how to be around him.
"Nice to see you Dawes"
"Sir"
He'd carefully kept his gaze on some point in the distance over the top of her head so that he didn't meet her eyes but even so his eyes had widened imperceptibly when she'd responded and he'd swallowed hard, almost gulped, when she'd stood to attention in front of him and lifted her chin up before she'd said anything. It was unlikely that anyone else would have noticed it, but she did. Instinctively, or maybe because she'd spent so many hours studying that face and the way it reacted to things, usually in bed, that she knew that her response had hurt him for some reason. Although what the fuck he expected her to do she didn't know, as she stifled the unfortunate urge that she had to start giggling like she used to in days gone by when she felt nervous, even though there was nothing even remotely funny about any of it. Giggling wouldn't help one little bit, not with anything.
He looked just the same, tall, so that she got that crick in her neck from looking up at his face while he kept his chin up and didn't help by looking down at her, and dark and rangy and very fit with not a bit of fat on him anywhere, in fact he looked to her as though he'd lost quite a lot of weight, although that could have been that she was comparing him to Adam, and his hair was cut pre-tour short, not a curl in sight. Despite everything he still made her heart flip over.
"Anyway, better crack on, good to see you again"
He didn't wait for her to say anything, just came out with that trite load of bollocks as he painted a false smile across his face and directed it somewhere over the top of her head, then turned on his heel and walked away, he didn't even look back as she stood and watched him get swallowed up by the crowd. She wanted to shout at his disappearing backside 'Is that it? Is that all you've got to say? Ask me how I am, ask me where I'm going, tell me where you're going, you didn't even look at me so don't just walk off like that' but she knew, that even though he'd just done precisely that or maybe because that was what he'd done, that he was no more indifferent to her than she was to him.
"Boss was in a bit of a hurry"
Fingers raised an eyebrow and watched Charles as he hurried away and then gave a little mental shrug and decided to give up on his mission to chat Tilly up, something which had got his undivided attention while Molls and the Boss had been having a bit of a chat, catching up or it would appear …. not. He looked at her face and began to detect an atmosphere. He'd always thought that the Boss had a very soft spot for their tiny medic, and that it was mutual, but was suspicious now that there might have been some sort of falling out at some point because the last he'd heard the Boss was singing her praises to anyone who'd listen after she'd saved his life in Afghan. Didn't look that way now.
"Yeah, said he had to crack on, you'd better go 'n all, else he'll 'ave you up on a charge"
"Nah, not me, lurves me, doesn't he? So, now, tell me, where are you two going for your holiday in the sun?"
"Obock"
"Where the fuck's that?"
"The Yemen"
Molly didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed, then decided on the whole that it was a relief that she'd had to tell him where it was, she'd thought for a moment that Lady Luck had posted them to the same place, but if that had been the case he would have known where it was.
"You?"
"Shan'a"
"Where the fuck's that?" She giggled as she repeated his words.
"The Yemen ….. top destination for sunshine breaks this year, innit? It's the capital I think, sort of, well it used to be before the Saudis redesigned by dropping a few well-aimed bombs her and there"
"Lovely, nice and safe then? Just make bloody sure you keep your 'elmet on and keep yourself ducked down behind some'ing if they start with that shit"
"Don't think that's going to help much if some inconsiderate bugger starts dropping bombs on me do you?"
She wanted to run off and find him and beg him to keep himself safe. Just because they were well over and done with, it didn't mean that she could stop worrying about him getting hurt or worse.
-OG-
Three hours into the seven and a half hour incredibly noisy and deeply uncomfortable flight and she had her ears firmly plugged in as she listened to her audiobook of Poldark and did her best to concentrate on the story that seemed to her to be very different to the one that she'd seen on tele, although she still thought Ross was a bit of a shite so that all her sympathies were with Demelza. She had tried to have a bit of a kip to kill time but hadn't been able to drop off, so in the end had given up and started trying to concentrate on her book again. It was difficult, not because it wasn't good or because she wasn't enjoying it, it was and she was, but she kept on losing the thread because he was sitting on the opposite side of the plane, albeit right up at the top end and well away from her, but he was still in her line of vision so that her eyes kept on being drawn to look at him as if he was a magnet or something, or looking at the side of his face as he resolutely stared straight ahead or down at the floor between his legs. The first time that she'd looked over to where he was he'd been looking at her so that their eyes had met before they'd both hastily looked the other way, and then she'd plugged herself in so that she could concentrate on not looking at him.
The lads were all up the other end where he was as well otherwise she'd have had them to chat to, as it was she was surrounded by people she saw every working day of her life and was far too restless and unsettled to want to exchange banalities with any of them. The lads had been as pleased to see her as she had been to see them, there had been hugs and kisses all round, so that she'd had a quick trip down memory lane of just how fond of them she was. They'd introduced her with a load of insults to all the new members of the section, including Georgia Lane, who as Fingers had said, was very good looking so that Molly felt a piercing dart of jealousy that this Georgie was with them, day in and day out and was part of the section, was with him, and she wasn't.
She'd laughed and joked around with them and had done her best to keep a lid tight shut on her jealousy as they'd carried on with insulting her the way they always had and she'd laughed like a drain and high-fived the other girl when Dangles had relayed Lane's way of dealing with Monk's stupid remarks. She immediately made a mental note to store it up and share it with her colleagues for use as and when needed. Everything changed when Captain Stern Face showed up and glared at her, well not at her as such he still hadn't looked directly at her, but in her direction so that she'd shifted her arse to stand and wait with her own lot and had done her best to pretend she hadn't noticed and that she was immune anyway, to him and to the looks he gave in her direction…
-OG-
He'd seen her the instant he'd arrived in that departure hall and just for a second the shock of it had made him stand still until that familiar sinking feeling in his stomach had made him seriously consider turning round and walking in the opposite direction, but he hadn't, he'd been too busy looking at her, drinking her in and then it was too bloody late because Fingers had caught sight of him and called out. She'd looked just the same as he'd remembered, well why he should have imagined that she would look any different he had no idea, but until he'd seen her again he'd forgotten just what it had felt like when he had been so happy, when he'd first known that the girl that he loved so much felt exactly the same way about him. When he'd known that despite the bloody age gap and all the rest of the shit, the horror of Smurf's death and the enforced separations of her second tour, which had been his own crap idea, and then his rehab at Headley, they were going to work. Just how wrong did he turn out to be?
And now here he was leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs and looking down at the floor of a transport plane as the memory of her standing in the kitchen of his parent's house in Bath came back to haunt him. She'd had that beautiful frown of concentration of hers on her face as she'd jiggled a pan about on the hob, stir frying something or other as he'd stood behind her and loudly ogled her arse before he'd put his arms out and pulled her back against him. She'd shrieked that the bloody dinner was going to be burnt to buggery if he didn't pack it in so that he'd growled against her neck to just leave it, and had then turned her round with his hands on her arse until she was pressed up against him with her arms wound around his neck and her fingers twined in the curls, as she pulled his head down towards her. He remembered reaching over her shoulder and turning the bloody cooker off before going back to kissing round her neck, and then saying that they'd get a take away, a memory that was torturing him now as they both sat on some fucking flight from hell or was it the flight to hell, and he had no choice but to spend the next seven hours or so not looking in her direction.
God, seeing her like that out of the blue after more than a year when he'd just about convinced himself that it was all for the best and that the car crash that had been his life was now back to being under control, it had all gone to shit again in an instant. He hadn't looked at her face when he'd gone over and spoken to her, he wasn't sure whether she'd still be able to read him as easily as she always used to so that she'd know what he was thinking, what he was feeling, but he'd then felt this massive stab of pain, of loss, when she'd stood to attention like that and had given him that 'Sir' in that manner as though he was some random Rupert and she was no-one special, just some squaddie, had meant that in the space of a couple of hours he was firmly back to square one.
-OG-
A/N: Thank you everyone for your support and feedback, please keep it coming because it is that that keeps me going. Now, much as I longed to just have them fall on each other's necks with glad cries I don't think it's going to happen quite that easily because there just might possibly be one or two obstacles ….
