Chapter Text
Carl is in early Monday morning, for no other reason than he has fuck all else to do. No Jasper and no Martin at home should mean the flat is blissfully quiet. And it is, but it’s also empty, and there are only so many times he can take advantage of that to have a wank to the memory of James fucking him before he’s sore and dehydrated as well as unable to decide what to do with himself.
Fuck him, but he misses James.
Which is pathetic. It’s been a day and a half; they woke up in bed together Saturday morning for fuck’s sake. He shouldn’t be longing for James’ presence. Except for those awful months when James was still in hospital, and Carl visited him every day, they’ve rarely ever seen each other at the weekend. James needs to spend time with his family. With Donna.
Two spectacular fucks to cap off three weeks of the sort of sex he figured he’d never have again, now he’s in his late 40s, and a night spent in the same bed should be enough. Yet every time he touches James, every time James touches him, every time he even thinks about touching him, it only leaves him wanting more.
On Sunday, he’d tried watching one of Martin’s mind-numbing train programmes to shut off his brain. He went for a fucking walk. Spent the entire time meandering the streets trying to tamp down memories of the incredible sensation of James inside him, images of James sucking him off Saturday morning, the half-awed look on James’ face as he gazed up at Carl while Carl fucked himself on his cock.
At this rate, he’ll have to buy a dildo to fuck this unquenchable need out of his system. James is in his pores, in his chest, in his fucking soul if he has one, sunk so deep he will never be the same again. Which sounds fucking perfect if he doesn’t think about Donna and the fact that he’s living on borrowed time.
Donna has tolerated him mucking up her life for more years than his actual wife did; dragging her husband off on investigations at all hours, getting him into the odd pub fight, showing up on their doorstep unannounced and more than a little worse for wear. Getting him fucking shot, nearly killed, and probably permanently disabled, despite the intense physio James has been putting himself through.
And now this, which she can only be allowing because of his fragile mental state or some shit, and it’s not even that fragile compared to a couple of months ago. Having James physically back at work has done more for his state of mind than any of the therapy Moira forced him into.
Sex with James is, as fucking horribly cliched as it is to admit, better than his wildest fantasies and has even fulfilled a couple along the way. But if Carl’s learnt anything in his 47 miserable years on this planet, it’s that nothing good lasts. He wants this to, with every fibre of his wretched being, but it won’t. Not for long.
For years, James has been the only good thing that’s stuck, and now he’s gone and fucked that up too; let the creeping need in his gut overwhelm the last shreds of self-preservation that kept him from saying any of it out loud.
James said he loves him, but Carl’s been here before; the high before the fall. That fleeting jolt of joy won’t be enough of a counterweight to hold him above the pit while he watches the soft looks James gives him sour and harden into disdain. It didn’t go unnoticed that James didn’t say he was in love with him. The absence of that one tiny two-letter word will be the death knell for all of this.
Not that he should even want James to be in love with him. If he were, what would that mean for his marriage? For Donna? The boys? Nothing good.
The past three weeks have been, frankly, fucking amazing—the highs of regular sex all but blotting out the slog of their most recent case—but, as usual, he took it a step too far. This won’t work out the way he wants. And what would working out even look like if it did? He wants far too much, that’s for fucking sure. He wants to disappear into James, let himself be consumed until there is nothing left. He wants two nights together, then three, a fucking week. A lifetime.
What he should be doing is either walking away while there’s still a chance of preserving their friendship, or stop fucking thinking about it and enjoy it while he can. He hasn’t come close to managing either.
Fuck.
Carl sticks a pen down the cast to try to scratch the itch that’s been growing since yesterday, only succeeding in pinching the delicate skin of his inner wrist between the cast and the pen. Two more weeks, the doctor said, one week earlier than their worst estimate, and he’ll finally be shot of the thing.
He sighs, gets another cup of mediocre coffee from the machine Rose scrounged from somewhere, and tries to concentrate on reading through the bank statements that were piled on his desk when he got in. Maybe somewhere in this stack of paper there’s something of fucking interest that will capture his attention long enough to stop him thinking about anything else. Or, at least, move the case forward.
He’s made it through three tedious pages when the lift pings, followed by the whirr of the stair lift. Fucking finally.
The smile Hardy flashes him as he makes his way over settles Carl’s jangling nerves more than he’ll ever admit.
“‘Morning,” James says, with the same affection-laced tone as his first words when they woke up in Carl’s bed Saturday morning. It sounds like a proposition, an invitation, a temptation, and it very nearly drives away every other thought in his head. Carl resists the urge to respond with something as soppy as, It’s better now you’re here, even though that’s painfully true. Christ, but he needs to get it together.
James sits his arse on the edge of Carl’s desk, on top of the bank statement he was reading, grinning down at him until Carl has no choice but to pull him into a kiss. He leans in, hand in Carl’s hair, tongue in his mouth, pleased hum in the back of his throat. When Carl shifts in his chair, he can almost feel where James’ cock was up his arse. If he had lube on him, he’d be seriously considering asking James to fuck him right now.
The lift pings. Carl groans, James’ hand tightens in his hair. They let the kiss linger longer than they ought to, longer than they usually do; the pull of James even harder to resist after their night together. Neither of them moves away until there are footsteps in the corridor.
Hardy is still sitting far too close when Rose greets them with a little finger wave and a too-cheery-for-Monday, “G’morning!”
“Did you find something?” she asks, nodding toward the bank statements strewn across Carl’s desk and under Hardy’s arse.
“Not about the case.” Hardy grins and grabs his crutches, pushing off the desk. Carl averts his eyes from the flex of his shoulders as he crosses the room.
“Oh.” Rose looks between them, her lips pursed in a thoughtful tilt. At least she knows better than to ask a question he doesn’t have a good answer for. “Nova said she’d have these for us today.” She picks up most of the remaining bank statements. “Apparently, commercial statements from more than five years ago are only available on paper.”
“Lucky us,” Carl says.
Rose flips him off and heads towards her own desk, depositing stacks of bank statements on Hardy and Akram’s desks on her way.
Carl pulls the statement that’s been wrinkled by James’ arse toward him, tries to concentrate on the sea of numbers and bank account codes, not the look James is giving him from across the room.
A few minutes later, Akram arrives, settling in to start on his own stack of bank statements.
The basement is silent save for the turning of pages and the usual unidentified gurgles and thumps from the depths. Someone drops something upstairs with a reverberating clunk. Carl’s wrist itches inside the cast. Akram hums, Rose sighs and taps her pen against her desk. James keeps flashing him smiles that leave him shifting in his chair, adjusting himself in his jeans.
Carl is contemplating fabricating a lead to get Rose and Akram out of the basement for a few minutes when Hardy says, “This could be something.” He taps the paper in front of him. “There are regular payments of £1483.56 every two weeks, going back at least a year. All to different accounts but always the same amount, either on the second or the seventeenth of the month.”
Akram shuffles his statements around, “I’ve got some too.”
“Me too,” says Rose.
So does Carl. There are seven different companies, repeating in an obvious pattern, now they know to look for it. Each company is owned by a holding company, owned by another holding company, owned by a third holding company, which Rose traces to a logistics company out of Glasgow.
“No phone number that I can find,” she says. “But there’s a street address in an industrial estate west of the city.”
“Looks like a warehouse,” Hardy says, leaning closer to his laptop.
“Should we go have a look?” asks Akram.
Carl could phone Glasgow and have them check it out, but after the last time he spoke with anyone over there, they’re as likely to tell him to go fuck himself as to help.
“Why the fuck not?” Carl looks at his watch. “If you get a move on, you might even make it back before the worst traffic.” He tosses Akram the keys to the Sierra as he passes. He should probably let Akram keep them; he’s got two more weeks of desk duty, but he selfishly enjoys not being at the whim of bus schedules on his way to and from work.
As soon as the lift doors shut, Carl is on his feet.
“Convenient, aye?” James grins up at him.
“Very.” Carl’s mobile buzzes across his desk behind him. He ignores it. It’ll only be Moira asking for a case update he doesn’t have. He sits on the edge of James’ desk.
His mobile goes silent.
Good.
He spreads his legs. James’ grin turns heated as he rolls his chair forward and runs both hands up Carl’s thighs, thumbs tracing the inseam of his jeans.
His fucking mobile starts up again.
“You should probably get that,” James says with a frown, sliding his hands down to rest on Carl’s knees.
Carl sighs and gets up, striding back across the room, ready to tell whoever it is to fuck off, when the name on the screen draws him up short. Donna.
There is no good reason for Donna to be ringing him when James is right here, and one very obviously bad one. He picks up his mobile, bracing for the ticking time bomb of this whole thing with James to explode in his face.
“Donna,” he says, eyeing James across the basement. He shrugs, as if he has no idea what this is about.
“Hiya, Carl,” Donna says, suspiciously chipper. “What have you got on for tonight?” She continues without giving him time to respond. “Don’t give me some shite about work, I know you’re still on desk with James. And I know Jasper and Martin are away.”
He can’t deny that all of these things are true.
“Busy,” he says, anyway, out of habit.
“Sure you are.”
He glances across the room again. There is a stillness to James’ gaze that means he’s waiting to see how Carl will react. That’s not suspicious at all.
“I’m taking a pottery class.” Carl raises his eyebrows at James, points at his mobile with his free hand, and twist his hand in his direction in a, what the fuck, gesture. James only shrugs again.
Donna laughs. Laughing at him, seeing right through him. “Good for you. Give James a lift home after work and have dinner with us first, then. A proper home-cooked meal.” He’s about to protest that he does know how to cook when she adds. “No excuses, I know you won’t bother making yourself something when you’re on your own.” Irritating as fuck that she knows him so well, but he can’t deny that either.
He doesn’t need to hear her say it out loud to see the writing on the wall. She could at least have given him the courtesy of putting him out of his misery right away, but no, Donna is going to make him wait until she can do it in person. So she and Hardy can do it in person. They will have talked about this because they do that shit, the two of them a united front.
“Okay,” he says, because what else can he say? Please let me continue having sex with your husband because I think it might destroy me if you don’t. Too fucking late for that.
Christ, but he’ll miss James’ skin against his own, his hands on his arse, the way James tugs his hair just right when he’s sucking him off. He’ll miss lying in bed together, head on James’ chest and James’ arm around his shoulders, now he’ll have to get by on memory alone.
He’ll miss his best friend when the end of the sex inevitably sours that too.
Possibly, Donna says something else, but he doesn’t hear it. He ends the call, turns his back on James, closes his eyes and presses his mobile to his forehead. It was a fucking ambush, and James didn’t warn him.
He flips his mobile around in his fingers and pockets it, paces to the mostly empty board, pulls off a photo and moves it up higher, moves another down, taps his fingers along the top edge of the board.
Of course, James is loyal to his wife over Carl. What the fuck made him think it would be any other way? Best friend, partner, fuck buddy, whatever they are at this point, none of that holds up against wife. Whatever love James claims to feel for him, it’s not the same as the all-consuming desire that’s rapidly turning to stone in his gut, threatening to drag him under. None of this should come as a surprise, but it feels like a fucking knife to the gut all the same.
He’s in love with his happily married best friend, and he’s a fucking idiot for letting it get this far. After Vic, he resolved to never again give someone the power to tear him apart with a few words. But he didn’t listen to himself any more than he listens to anyone else; chasing something just because he wanted it, even though it was never going to end in anything but disaster.
It will be a new kind of hell, working together after this, knowing exactly what he’s lost. Once he gets through the next two weeks, he’ll be back out in the field, at least, won’t have to see James sitting across the basement from him all day long.
He’ll get over it eventually.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Maybe.
Fuck.
“Oi, what did she say?” Hardy asks, as if he doesn’t fucking know.
Carl spins away from the board and glares at him, throws up his hands. “You could have fucking warned me!”
Hardy’s face scrunches up in a mockery of confusion. Fucking prick, pretending he’s none the wiser. “Donna said she was inviting you to dinner.”
“Dinner.” Carl flashes vicious air quotes in his direction.
Hardy tilts his head at him, brow creasing. “Aye, dinner. And you’ll save me the price of an Uber, giving me a lift home.” There’s all the confirmation Carl needs that the two of them fucking planned this.
“Fucking awesome!” Carl turns away, paces back to his desk. He barely restrains himself from sweeping the bank statements onto the floor for dramatic effect. Instead, he pushes them into a neater pile. “So, you’re just going to let it happen?” The words come out hurt, defensive. He hates himself for it.
“Donna’s cooking, so aye, I guess. What do you think is happening here?”
Carl jabs a finger at him. “Don’t play innocent with me when the two of you are—”
“Mate,” Hardy says, in his most placating tone. But he’ll not be fucking handled, not about this. He won’t stand here and watch James pretend that this isn’t happening.
Being in love with his best friend, his partner, is one thing; his wife knowing and allowing them to continue fucking is another thing entirely. Of course, James told Donna what Carl said. That was the deal. She’s all right with them having sex as long as James tells her about it. But it was inevitable that this new information would lead to her ending it.
He never should have said the words out loud, never should have saddled James with this overwhelming desire that is right now tearing them both apart. Never should have let himself be lulled into a false sense of security by endorphins and James’ dick up his arse. He’s in too deep; he was in too deep from the start, and now he’s in real danger of fucking drowning.
He needs to get the fuck out of here.
Carl reaches for his coat and the first excuse he finds as he heads for the stairs. “Need a proper fucking coffee.”
“Carl,” Hardy calls after him, voice laced with frustration and concern.
He doesn’t turn around when he hears Hardy’s chair roll across the floor, or the sound of the crutches on the tile as he stands. He can’t face seeing the concern on his face, or the pity that goes with it. He’s not fucking staying here to listen to Hardy explain why this is for the best for everyone involved. He’s well fucking aware that it is. It could never have gone any other way, and he’s a fucking idiot for hoping it would. Hardy and Donna have a plan to let Carl down easy over dinner. Well, fuck that.
“Carl, fuck’s sake—”
Carl is at the foot of the stairs when he hears the clatter of a crutch hitting the desk, then the tile.
He does turn around then.
James is leaning on the edge of his desk, one crutch in his hand, the other on the floor. It’s within reach if he bends down. He’s fine.
Carl turns away again, but not before he glimpses the look of hurt on James’ face. That’s worse than fucking pity. Almost enough to make him go back. But not quite.
He sprints up the steps two at a time, Hardy’s frustrated shouts following him into the lift. It’s cruel, running off when he can’t follow, but Carl can’t be anything but cruel right now. He’ll regret it later; he always regrets almost everything later. But better this than staying and spilling his fucking guts all over the basement floor.