When morning came and that damn alarm forced them from slumber, Boyd roused from his sleep with a groan and hand rubbing sleep from his eyes. His left arm was cold where it had been out of bed and his hair hung down over his forehead making him look a handful of years younger. Though he'd had decades to grow used to it, Boyd wouldn't ever be much of a morning person; he preferred nighttime when the stars were out and most people had gone home. Still, he'd not risen to the rank of detective superintendent by being lazy, so Boyd sat himself up and stretched. Stretching had always been a curious thing, so good until it suddenly wasn't.

"I like your hair like this." Sapphira mused beside him as she to sat herself up with the covers around her naked chest to keep warmth in rather than modesty. "My silver fox."

Boyd chuckled. "Silver fox, I can work with that. I'll have to shave though, otherwise I'll be more like a silver goat."

That had a roar of laughter escape Sapphira, the sort of laughter it was far too early in the day for, yet laugh she did. He pulled her into his arms for a kiss, his manhood interested but his brain fully aware he needed to be in an early meeting to defend why he needed so many people in his unit. Honestly, he had no idea what the higher-ups had a problem with; Boyd had a team of seven, two of which were only clerks doing filing work. Reducing his team any further would be like asking Santa to deliver everything with nothing but a Ford Escort and a drunk elf. Regardless, there wouldn't be any getting out of the meeting and he had every intention of alternating between pointing out his solve case statistics and glaring until he was dismissed.

"You smell all sweaty."

She slipped out of bed revealing her naked form to him.

"And whose fault is that?"

Sapphira shrugged. "Not a clue, I'm a good girl who wouldn't do anything bad, Detective Superintendent." He smirked as she held out a hand to him. "Let's go shower."

Those three words were what led to him pressing her against cold tiles while he thrust into her underneath the shower's hot spray. Their tongues mingled for a mix of last night's beer the taste of the sweet nectar she'd left in his mouth. Waking up miserable had become a habit of Boyd's, but not when Sapphira was around, she brightened his life and reminded him the world was more than just murder and flinging hate around.

After actually showering, the gray-haired man had donned a black suit with indigo shirt and put on his cufflinks while Sapphira had dried her raven locks. He'd made quick work of making tea and toast – wasn't like he could hold a candle to some of the meals he'd seen her come up with – and read the morning paper while they ate. A strange domesticity wasted no time settling back in, as though Adam Callaghan hadn't ever darkened their doorstep and Boyd hadn't stupidly tried to be chivalrous. They ate, he read his paper while Sapphira read the side facing her – hell, even a couple of birds decided to chirp outside the dining room window. Happy, Boyd found he was genuinely happy again and not just because he'd had sex.

Work couldn't be put off though, so Boyd eventually found himself heading out while Sapphira returned home to her sister. He'd of course offered to drive her, but it wasn't far and the bus stop was right at the end of his road, so the two had kissed then parted ways.

~X~

Glaring and pointing out statistics had served Boyd well because he'd left his meeting with as many team members as he'd gone in with; there had even been the smallest hint that Cold Case might finally see a budget increase for the first time in over six years. Eve, everything always circled back to Eve and Felix and Frankie before her. While having a dedicate forensics expert was unusual for a unit, it wasn't a reason to act like Boyd monopolized the police's entire forensic capabilities for London. Eve was vital to their work at Cold Case, half the time the leads her tests gave them were the only reason a case got solved. They needed Eve and her talent, so Boyd would fight tooth an nail to keep not only her but the rest of his maverick team. They'd built up a cadence over their years together, something not to be taken for granted. Boyd wasn't stupid, he knew he'd pissed so many people off that they'd felt the need to shove him in a basement since early retirement for a detective superintendent of his skill would have looked suspicious, and he was too damn good to be outright fired. None of that meant Boyd wouldn't give Cold Case his all just like he had with every other unit he'd been assigned to over his long career.

Once that had all been dealt with, he'd headed back to his office to help the team review cases. Stella seemed to think she was onto something so he'd let her run with it while the rest of them did their best to find something new to help get families closure. However, the longer Boyd sat at his desk with a pile of files open before him and his glasses slipping down his nose, the more he found his mind return to Sapphira. The thought of her a niggle which soon became a woodpecker jabbing him in the brain, a little seed which blossomed into an eerie forest of chaotic thoughts. That loud part of him that valued logical reasoning kept confronting him with the thirty-two year age difference, while that animalistic part they'd satisfied last night and that morning urged him to never let her go. Torn; Boyd was torn between what he so desperately wanted and his mind insisted was the right thing to do. Sapphira enjoyed being with him clearly, but she could do so much better than him and he'd already hurt her enough.

"Destroy every relationship I have." He mumbled knowing he'd trapped himself in a cycle of negative thinking.

As though having sniffed it out, Grace knocked on his office door and stepped inside with an armful of files gathered precariously in her grasp. No greeting was offered, Grace simply dumped the files down on his desk with a sigh.

"This is getting ridiculous, Boyd. Every case I've reviewed this week is, while hear-trenching, at an absolute standstill. I for one am sick of it. These are only getting solved with deathbed confessions or miraculously finding DNA."

"That's just how it is, Grace." He confessed with a shrug. "DNA may as well be magic with how quickly it can solve a cases police haven't been able to crack in years. Doesn't matter which country you're in, DNA is a godsend."

She dropped into one of the black guest chairs only to catch the top file as it slipped from the stack. "I guess I just don't enjoy knowing there's nothing we can do for these victims. I've been with Cold Case since the beginning, you know that, and since day one it's bothered me."

"Grace, it bothers all of us but that's the way of things. We never know when new evidence will pop up, there's hope for this mountain of cases yet."

From Grace escaped a long hum while she chewed on her thumb in thought. Nobody liked the cases they had to return to the shelves – that was another cycle of negative thoughts.

"That's a surprising level of positivity from you, Boyd. Then again, you've been acting strange all day. You came in practically giddy despite having that meeting, then you came back and a switch flipped as soon as your backside hit that seat. Have you been seeing a therapist again? I'm not going to have to listen to you muttering Shakespeare again, am I?"

Boyd huffed out a laugh. "No, no more Shakespeare. I was just in a good mood – aren't I allowed to be in a good mood?"

"Of course you are," Grace was quick to say. "It's just that you've been a little akin to a roller coaster today. Are you okay? What was said during the meeting?"

He waved her off. "Oh, the usual; Cold Case is lucky to have its own forensics expert, they'd shut us down if we didn't have such a high success rate, we're being watched like a hawk."

"Definitely the usual. I note you sidestepped my other question though. Are you okay?"

While almost always polite about it, Grace could be like a dog with a bone when it came to checking on her colleagues. While tenaciousness was something Boyd admired in his teammates, he couldn't stand it being turned from suspects to himself.

"Leave it alone, okay? I need to do some thinking; if I need to do some talking then I'll come to you, promise."

She eyed him a moment as though combing through a mental checklist, then conceded and gathered up the files she'd left precariously on Boyd's desk.

~X~

Things around the office didn't change much for the following few days; cases were evaluated and evidence pulled for a second look only to be boxed back up. Then Spence had stumbled across an untested fabric scrap in a evidence box from the late eighties and practically hurtled into Eve's lab. A new angle; that was all anyone at CCHQ could ask for.

While they eagerly awaited the results of Eve's tests, Boyd had chosen to pass the time drinking coffee and cleaning out his bottom drawers since they had a habit of becoming a dumping ground for this and that. All thoughts of cleaning got shoved aside just before five o'clock when Sapphira knocked rhythmically on the office door which led out into the hallway rather than the bullpen. Boyd was off his knees and had the door open in hardly a few seconds, a genuine smile on his lightly stubbled face. Since they'd tumbled into bed together the pair hadn't actually spoken; it had only been a few days after all. However, none of that meant his mind hadn't continuously alternated between joy over having Sapphira back in his life and kicking himself because of her age and what had led them to meet in the first place.

"Hi, Sapphie. What brings you here?"

"I wondered if you wanted to come to dinner with me, my treat. I was thinking that Italian place we went to before."

Boyd really did like that restaurant. "You had me at Italian."

Clocking out on time wasn't exactly usual for Boyd, an hour after at the earliest was far more normal, but still his team didn't bat an eye at his departure. They slipped down to the parking garage and into Boyd's Audi which some idiot had parked so damn close to that he'd struggled to physically get in the damn thing. Then made their way out into the dying London light while the radio muttered away to itself.

Boyd surreptitiously glanced at Sapphira as he drove them to the restaurant and was instantly struck by just how different she appeared compared to the first time she'd sat in his car. Back then she'd had dirty hair, threadbare clothes and everything she owned stuffed into a zigzag backpack. Quiet, scared and isolated were words he'd have used to describe her, but all of that had changed. Gone was the unwanted girl who'd been crushed under guilt, and in her place was the brave one he'd always known her to be. Sapphira might have been decades younger than the gray-haired man, yet that hadn't stopped him coming to admire her strength of character.

Locating a parking spot close to the Italian restaurant had been like pulling teeth, but Boyd soon snagged one so the two could head inside. Unlike the last time they'd visited, the restaurant was far more busy with people wanting an early dinner. Regardless, they were soon seated at a small table roughly in the middle left of the room and had drinks on the way.

"Everything okay, Boyd?" She asked after they'd ordered their meals. "You look tired."

"Gee, thanks." He breathed out with a smirk. "Just what an old man like me wants to hear."

Sapphira nearly rolled her eyes. "You're not that old. I just meant that you look a bit worn out. Is there a new case at work?"

"There's always a case at work, Sapphie, the problem is that most of them can't be reopened for one reason or another. It's been grating on the whole team."

"I guess I never thought about that. Makes sense you'd need a certain criteria to open a cold case back up. What sort of things do you need?"

Drinks found their way to the square table then, beer for him and red wine for her. Glasses reflected a candle's flicker between them leaving the table akin to a starry night. A universe between them yet still so close.

"There isn't a checklist exactly, but the key things are; new evidence surfacing, a suspect's impending release from prison, re-examining of evidence with modern tests. I was actually having this conversation with Grace a couple of days ago. DNA is they key to solving cold cases a lot of the time."

Delicately, Sapphira lifted her wine glass for a sip. "Isn't that why they say DNA never lies?"

"That's what Eve keeps telling me. Stella says she's onto something, hopefully I'll hear more about that tomorrow."

"She thinks she's found something new?"

He shrugged. "I've got no fucking clue. Put it this way; if she's got nothing concrete to show me in the morning, Stella's getting an ear full and I'm reopening the Ferguson case." That had Sapphira tilt her head questioningly. Boyd didn't often open up about work or – well, anything really. However, everything about Sapphira made her so easy to talk to. "Case from around New Year. While most people were welcoming in 1980, the three Ferguson sons were asleep. Somewhere between their parents putting them to bed and waking up the next morning, someone entered the house, suffocated the eldest and kidnapped the twin boys. Nobody ever saw the boys again."

"My God, that's awful."

With a small nod Boyd drank a gulp of his beer. That case had been on Boyd's mind since the day Cold Case had been officially set up. The parents had been sleeping off a drunk celebration, the boys' bedroom had been up on the second story so a creeper slithering in the window didn't seem likely, and the twins hadn't been spotted nor had bodies ever been located. Even as a new case police hadn't been all that sure it would get solved, sure they'd done everything humanly possible, there just hadn't been any trail to follow. Nobody strange seen in the area, the parents hadn't seen anyone watching or following the twins, no signs of forced entry. That had left most suspicion on the parents, yet they'd been glued to the television celebrating New Year for most of the evening and police had managed to prove that when the parents had given such an accurate description of the live broadcast.

"Cold cases are always awful. I've got no new reason to reopen it, but I like to take a stab every few years, shake some trees."

She smiled across the table at him while two fingers tucked a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear. "I think that's called dedication to the job."

Dedication was one word for it, a nicer word than his bosses would have surely implemented.

When plates were placed before them Sapphira almost hummed with delight, Boyd might have grabbed a sandwich earlier but she'd forgotten to eat, and her stomach wasn't happy with her over it. With food before them, their dinner conversation turned to Sapphira's new job at the King & Pheasant rather than lingering on the terrible fates of three young boys. She seemed to have settled in well, something Boyd was truly pleased about since she deserved some stability in her life. The owner, Owen, had proven himself a friendly man with the patience to teach her properly rather than expecting Sapphira to instinctively understand everything. Yes, she did finally have that stability.

Flickering of orangey light continued to do its best to conjure up a romantic glow alongside the single yellow rose which had been cut far too short for its tiny vase; poor thing needed more water as well. A hubbub carried on around them while they ate. Rich prawns and salty parmesan danced on their tongues like an elegant ballet. Like those nights on his couch, they talked and joked with one another without a care in the world and Boyd had savored every second of it. Not until that hard-working candle had burnt down to a nub and threatened to shine its last did they finally get the bill. Of course Sapphira had promised dinner would be her treat when she'd invited him, but Boyd's long fingers had still itched to reach for his wallet. Part of him had wanted to insist he paid, that he was the man and so it was his duty. Then a voice in the back of his mind that sounded eerily like Grace had pointed out the forties were long behind them, and this was probably the first time Sapphira had ever been in a position to buy someone anything. So, wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

"Let me drive you home?"

Rain would fall soon; a misty trickle had already set in so heavy droplets couldn't have been far behind, and when it rained in England, by God did it rain. With a smile and little hum of approval, the pair made their way back to the car with Sapphira's hand entwined with his. Belly full and a stunning beauty on his arm – it had been a good night.

Getting the heater on felt blissful, a hot gust of air that banished the misty chill that had descended along with the night. Clouds had already blanketed overhead blocking out twinkling stars and satellites, only light pollution and the occasional plane lit the sky that evening. Alongside warmth, a comfortable silence lingered during the drive, a peaceful quietude unlike the urgency and desire floating around the car last time. Although, when he finally stopped outside Sapphira's new place, rain splattering on the windshield with a rhythmic pattering, Sapphira pulled him into a kiss by his lapels. Soon he had a lap awkwardly filled with beautiful young woman, his arms snared around her waist and tongue tasting the rich red wine on her lips. Everything about her made Boyd want to cling tighter – 'thirty-two years' his mind abruptly stressed which had him pull away a little that made Sapphira's brow furrowed.

"I em – Sorry, I'm not sure about this. I'm too old."

He wanted her, Boyd knew that all too well, but that niggling thought and logic just wouldn't leave him alone. It harassed him like a stray dog begging for scraps – a permanent lingering with its own gravitational pull.

Boyd's body mourned the loss of her as Sapphira slipped back into the passenger seat to stare out the window a moment and gather her thoughts. He didn't need Grace's knowledge and instincts to realize he'd upset her. Of course he'd upset her, he always ruined everything – a prerequisite of being him by this stage of Boyd's life.

"Boyd, this so-called problem is all in your head. It isn't that you're too old for me. I honestly don't care about your age, it doesn't bother me at all. I actually rather like it, you're a silver fox like I said. The problem is that I'm too young for you. My age bothers you. I'm twenty-five, Boyd. A grown woman and I like you. I want to be with you. Although, if you can't get over my age, then please admit it rather than making out you're doing this for me or some other noble reason."

He swallowed audibly while she continued to gaze out the window. "You deserve better."

That had Sapphira's head snap to him with sorrowful green eyes, and Boyd wished the world would just swallow him up.

"I decide if you're good enough for me and you're more than good enough for me, Boyd." She sighed deeply. "Go home and think about it, yeah? I really want to be with you, but if you don't want to be with me then…"

She trailed off quietly, then pushed the door open letting cold and the wet drumming of rain in. Brown eyes watched her vanish into the small apartment building before rage descended to blind him. He hated how right her words had been – hated that he'd yet again ruined a relationship. Before he knew it fists were bludgeoning the dash relentlessly until his skin threatened to bruise and he'd knocked the wind out of himself. Slumped in his seat with his head rested against the wheel, Boyd decided to just go home and lament his idiocy at the bottom of a whiskey glass.