Hear the Whisper of The Raindrops
"Did you fucking see the look on her face? You know I'm going to love you forever for that, don't you, even if I do have to haul your arse round the back and beat the crap out of you for not telling me"
"Go on then if you think you're 'ard enough, double fuckin' dare you" Molly giggled loudly as she made a threat straight from her past but with just enough menace in her voice to make Tilly back away from her slightly "And why the fuck do you wanna do that? What are you mithering on about this time?"
"You … and him ….. and how pissed off fuckface was when she realised that you'd fucked up all her chances of shagging him later on, but I know now what Fingers was on about earlier" She looked at Molly with speculation written all over her face, then frowned "You know, I always thought you were married, well that's what I heard anyhow"
Tilly nodded her head to indicate Charles who had gone back to paying polite attention to whatever it was that Sergeant Morris, aka fuckface was bending his ear about, his head tilted to one side as he listened to her every word, well to all intents and purposes anyway, although he had that 'this is so fascinating' glazed expression on his face that told Molly he was bored shitless.
"What you thought I was married to him and keeping it a secret? Yeah right, course I am" Molly deliberately misunderstood what Tilly was implying as she raised her eyebrows in fake disbelief and gave a loud snort of incredulous laughter "When you get to know Fingers a bit better, Till, you'll know that he talks out his arse most of the time and what he don't know he makes up, and as for me and the boss, well, like all of us who was in Afghan, we go way back, nothing else, nothing special, nothing at all for you to get arsey about and nothing for her to get her knickers in a knot over"
"He winked at you … what was all that about?"
"He winks at a lot of people"
"Does he? I've never noticed and I've done an advanced study as you know" Tilly gave a short laugh "What you're telling me then is that there's really nothing else going on with the two of you? Really? Shit, cos apart from I'd have to kill you for stealing him and not giving me details, you know, size of knob, skill with knob, I'd say weaknesses as well but he obviously wouldn't have any of them, but it would've been really good if it had meant that she got a big fat 'get fucked' from him"
"Don't think there's much danger of her getting anything from him, he looks bored stupid"
"Yeah, he does, doesn't he? Good boy"
What Molly really wanted to do was to smirk and tell Tilly very smugly that neither fuckface nor anyone else had a chance because he was HERS, well he would be hers again once they got home, and she'd got no intentions of sharing him with anyone. They were only going to be in this place for another twelve hours or so and for most of them she'd be in bed, asleep, on her own, mores the pity, and then an endless bloody crappy noisy flight in a Hercules and home, although what they were going to do once they got there or where they were going to go she hadn't a clue. First things first though, she was going to have to come up with some fabulous fool-proof plan, one that no-one would see through in a million years, to get her out of going back to barracks in the mini-bus with Tilly and the other medics.
-OG-
"Have I got this bloody right, stop me and tell me if I start to go wrong won't you, cos I can't quite believe what you've just told me, how much of this stuff have you had?"
Lisa waved her glass of Prosecco in the general direction of Molly who was sitting on the bar stool next to her with an ecstatically happy grin plastered all over her face. Despite Lisa's aspersions she was absolutely 100% stone cold sober, had had precisely two mouthfuls of fizzy water but was as high as a kite on happiness.
"I haven't, don't drink at lunchtime"
"What? Since when? Don't answer that, I can't hack born again smug especially when it's a load of bollocks, so let's see if I've got it right, this bloke, the one that you told me about before Vegas, the one that you said fucked with your feelings so much that he broke your bloody heart, the one we agreed was a knob who should have his dick chopped off and stapled to his head, well now you tell me that he's back and it's all kissy kissy, forgive and forget and all the rest of that shit? Just feel free to stop me if I get something wrong here, won't you?"
"So far you're pretty spot on, well, except for he's not a knob, Lees, he never has been and I never said that he was, did I? that was you said that when you was trying to cheer me up, and we're not technically together, me and him, not yet, but we will be. I mean, we couldn't out there cos it's not allowed, seeing as how he's a sort of senior officer ….. and I'm … not …. and then I had to go straight back to barracks when we got home, 'n he did 'n all, so I'm seeing him later"
She smirked, making no attempt to wipe the happy grin off her face or to control the bubble of excitement that kept trying to escape and which was making her want to skip round and high-five everyone sitting there quietly minding their own business while they had their lunch in the bar.
"So if he's an officer that means he's older than you, right? I mean how old is he? 40? 50?""
She didn't add the words 'I wouldn't put it past you, but you must be bloody mad' but they hovered unspoken in the air.
"40? Nah course he's not and it don't follow Lees, you can be an officer when you're still young, and yeah okay he's maybe a bit older than me, but …. alright he's thirty two, 'n that's not old, happy now?"
"Jesus, Molly, he's only a year younger than my boss, and he's a middle-aged goblin who's going to be doing a comb-over soon" She looked at Molly over the rim of her glass "And what about Adam? Does Adam know? Does he know about Adam? Did you even tell him?"
"Course I told him, he thought it was well funny cos he knows it weren't real, that we weren't real, Adam and me, he told me that otherwise he wouldn't have found it funny, and no, Adam don't know yet, it's none of his business but he won't care"
Molly drained her glass and waved it in the direction of the wine, suddenly water wasn't hitting the right spot. She wasn't finding this outing nearly as much fun as she'd anticipated when she'd rung and arranged it, she'd been really looking forward to talking to someone about him.
She'd had to keep her mouth zipped and keep a neutral expression on her face until they'd got back to Brize. Tilly hadn't been fully convinced by her bullshit and had been behaving like a bloody drugs sniffer dog, watching her like a hawk and looking for evidence so she'd had to be very careful to avoid looking at him at all during the flight home. Then the bloody girl had stuck to her like chewing gum on a shoe when they'd got into arrivals. Charles had tried to indicate with his eyes and eyebrows that Molly should follow him so that they could find a little corner somewhere to have a private conversation, although she'd already given up on maybe having a bit of a snog cos that was out the bloody question with Miss Marple on the case, but they hadn't even been able to do that. First of all Tilly was hanging round her like a bad smell and then loads of other people kept on coming up to him to grab his attention, so that in the end he'd given up and sent her a text saying he'd call her later, which had made her giggle a bit. He was standing less than six foot away from her and had had to send her a text.
"So Prince Charming didn't mind that you got so fucking blitzed you did a whole lot of stupid shit and that it was all his fault"
"It wasn't his fault, Lees, it was mine, and you thought it was well funny at the time, and when we got home you was the one told all the others, remember? You thought it was a joke then, and anyhow what about you? I remember you was just as blitzed as I was, and it was an accident that I was the one ended up with Adam and not you, so why are you being like this? I thought you'd be happy for me and I am gonna be with him, Lisa, I want to be with him and I don't want him to be all shitty with me over stuff I did when we was split up"
"Yeah okay, but it wasn't me that married some bloke she didn't know and then decides to show him the door as soon as her arsehole of an ex does her a favour and takes her back"
"I'm not sure what I'm even doing 'ere now, I thought you was my mate and I was dead 'appy and now I'm not, so thanks for that and none of it were like that and you fuckin' know it, don't know why you're saying all this shit?"
"Sorry, I'm being a bitch, aren't I? I Sorry, got a bit carried away and I never meant to piss on your parade, Moll, I am happy for you, really I am if he's what you want, but I can't help feeling you're jumping into this a bit and I feel dead sorry for Adam, that's all"
"What you talking about? Adam and me, it's not like that at all is it? You know as well as I do that he don't love me and I don't love him … I like him, we're mates and I hope we're gonna stay mates but that's all, and I know how much you like him, so why don't you go for it"
Fuck, one of these days she was going to learn that it was always better to engage your brain before you open your gob because once again she'd heard herself say something completely tactless, suggesting that her friend, one of her best mates, should go for her sloppy seconds as Nan would say, fuck seemed to sum it up nicely.
"And I didn't mean that the way it sounded"
"Bloody hope not, I hope I'll never be that desperate"
"Yeah, sorry"
She was lying again, she was sorry for being tactless but knew exactly how much Lisa liked Adam, in fact how much she'd liked him right from the very start so that she'd always found it difficult to believe that her and Adam weren't a real couple. The problem now was that she had been going to suggest her and Lisa found a flat to share somewhere, something that she'd just well and truly kyboshed because somehow she couldn't see that happening now. Shit, her and her big mouth.
-OG-
The noise of a door banging and then someone shouting woke her with a start from a five minute 'rest me eyes' nap that seemed to have turned itself into hours and hours of deep sleep so that it had got dark outside and she had no idea what the time was. All she did know was that she was chilly and frowsty and had bed hair, not to mention clothes that were creased to buggery.
They'd arranged for him to pick her up round the corner from the main gate at 6 o'clock which, according to the time on her phone, meant she had precisely eighteen minutes to do something with her face and her hair, brush her teeth so that her breath didn't stink when hopefully she'd be kissing him, find something to wear that didn't look like she'd been to bed in it and then get out of this place, get across the parade ground, down to the main gates and round the corner to meet him, SHIT. She had been planning on being ready and waiting, all organised and fragrant and tarted up to the nines, as much as she was capable of anyhow, but now she'd have to settle for being clean and bloody late.
"Thought you'd stood me up"
"Sorry, I was running a bit late" She looked at her watch, not bad considering, it was only 8 minutes past 6, it could have been a hell of a lot worse and she hadn't wanted to waste time by stopping to text him.
It was one of those things that she'd really missed as he got out of the car in the rain and held the door open for her where most blokes would have leaned across the seat and pushed it, wouldn't have dreamed of getting out and getting wet. But she loved the way that he did all that gentleman stuff and how it always made her feel. It made her feel like she was … well, cherished and she'd never be able to understand why some people thought it was patronising …..
"Where we goin'?"
"Somewhere I can kiss you without providing a photo opportunity for any passing squaddie with a phone, so we can either go home and get a takeaway, or we can go and find somewhere to eat that's far enough away so I can kiss you without an audience, you choose"
"What …home? BATH?"
"No, of course not, my home not my parents' house, I live in Ash Green, it's not very far" He raised his eyebrows "I thought you would have known that"
"Nah, I didn't keep tabs on you, why would I?" She'd thought for one horrible minute that they were about to set off on some two hour bloody drive in which case she should definitely have made time for a pee, but then carefully didn't add that she'd avoided anything to do with him for the past year but he probably knew that already without her telling him, he hadn't exactly sought her out either "Ash Green it is then"
He was right, it seemed to take no time at all before he was pulling up outside one of those converted workman's cottages. It was the middle one of a tarted up terrace, one of them with new windows that are supposed to look old and hanging baskets in the summer, but not in November obviously, although one of his neighbours had already got a wreath on the door. And it was handily just across from a very small and pretty pub which was definitely not the sort of place that squaddies go to get pissed as a rule. The house had one of those long front gardens with an old-fashioned lamp in it, one looked like a gas lamp but wasn't, it wasn't on anyway so it was all very dark. It didn't look as if any of his neighbours were in either, there were no lights on anywhere as Molly looked up and down the row without commenting, she could just tell from the road that it was all dead trendy …. and dead bloody expensive ….. although why that should come as a surprise she didn't know.
"Careful, it's slippery when it's wet"
His arm went round her shoulders and stayed there as she stumbled slightly on the path, and smiled her thanks but didn't say anything. All her gung ho confidence appeared to have buggered off somewhere and it seemed to have taken her ability to speak with it as this swarm of butterflies did aerobatics in the pit of her guts.
"You're very quiet, are you alright?"
He'd opened the door and had stood back to let her go in first while he patted his hand around on the wall obviously feeling for the light switch and she didn't know why she was she was starting to panic, she just was. She wanted to ask him not to put the light on but was too late as he flicked a switch and then kicked the door shut without looking at it as he moved to stand in front of her without saying anything else, just tucked her rain-wet hair behind her ears with fingers that were so gentle a shiver of anticipation ran down her back.
"What's up?"
"Nothing, well, I'm a bit nervous that's all"
"Believe me, you're not the only one"
His hand was shaking very slightly as he cupped her chin, and tilted it up to make her look at him, to look at the expression on his face, the one that she'd seen the very first time he'd told her that he loved her and that he didn't need to know everything about her to know that. But now he did know most of it, and it looked as though he still loved her despite that, she could see it in the way his eyes focussed on hers as he ran his thumb over her cheekbone and turned her legs to jelly. All the shyness and the nerves and the rest of it disappeared as her bones turned to water and she moved to bridge the gap between them so she could kiss him. Her slight movement was enough to make him lean forward and very gently brush his lips against hers, his bottom lip barely grazing hers as his hand moved to the small of her back and he pulled her towards him making her feel as though her heart was going to explode.
"God, you have got no idea how much I've missed you"
He was breathing the words against her lips as he started kissing her in a way that made it seem as though it was years since the last time he'd seen her, the last time that he'd held her like this.
"Yeah I 'ave, I've missed you too"
Suddenly she couldn't get close enough as she did her best to press herself against him and put her hands down to cup his bum and pull him against her as he did his level best to angle himself to stop her feeling just how hard he was and how badly he wanted her. He stopped trying and pulled her against his hardness when the kisses stopped being enough and hands began to delve under clothes. They were still standing on the doormat, still wearing their damp coats, and hadn't even got in the house properly.
"Hey" He took a deep breath and made a huge effort to calm things down as he helped her off with her wet parka and slung it over the coat stand by the door "Come on, let's get in and get a drink or something, I'll open some wine and we'll organise some food, what do you want to eat?"
"Not very hungry" She giggled and wound her arms back round his neck, her fingers tangling in his curls as she pulled his head down towards hers to kiss him again, seriously testing his resolve not to drag her straight off up the stairs to bed "And I've given up booze"
-OG-
A/N: Thank you for your kind reviews – Sorry they didn't get as far as his birthday in this chapter – but the chapter was getting too long. Chapter 12 – I promise. Hope you all have a nice weekend.
