Archive of Our Own (BETA rev. 2101)

"It's late," Jim said, slowly, looking over the stack of clippings at Lewis.

"I know," the older man said, voice ragged. "I can -- you should go home. This isn't your problem."

"No, it's yours," he answered, sharper than he meant it to be. "And you -- are my problem."

Lewis' eyes met his, the hint of what might have been a smile, had they not been as exhausted as they were, crinkling the edges of his face. "You have alternatives."

Jim frowned at him, rose, collected the inspector's jacket. "Come on."

"You don't -- I can't --"

He didn't say that Lewis' dead wife would still be dead in the morning. He didn't say that it had been five years, or that chances were Cooper hadn't known anything, he'd just liked taunting a policeman. Lewis knew all that. Jim just stood in the ruin they'd made of Cooper's files and stared, expressionlessly, at his DI.

Lewis wouldn't meet his eyes.

Jim stuck a hand out, finally, took Lewis' elbow, and towed him toward the door. As he pushed the inspector up the stairs, he flipped the lightswitch. The basement didn't go dark, exactly; there were too many electronics in it for that, and their LEDs cast a weird multicolored glow over the place. Like a particularly defective set of holiday lights.

They were in the car when Lewis said, brokenly, "I ought to be able to sort this out."

"Yeah," Jim said. "It'd be nice if once you were a copper, you could always get the bastard." He reached out and flicked on the radio -- late-night Radio 3, something Baroque with a lot of cello that he didn't recognize off-hand. The music went around and around, the same theme up and down and about again, building and turning until the end of the movement burst out in a flurry of violins.

"You think I should give it up?" Lewis asked, in the pause before the allegro kicked in.

"No." It was, oddly, one of the things he admired most about his partner, the doggedness with which he stuck to things. He was, himself, a quitter -- he walked away, found something else or someone else, went into another line of work. It was easy enough, when you were young and bright, to find new people and new things.

The radio segued into something Polish with a lot of piano to it, and then a bit of Wagner. The Dance of the Apprentices. Jim stifled a grin.

Lewis waved a hand at the speaker. "Fancy a romp in the German countryside, then? Being part of the glorious medieval system?"

"I thought I was part of the glorious medieval system."

"Aye, there is that." Lewis pushed his hair back off his brow. "He always used to think of me like that, Morse did. The apprentice. A bit thick, prone to gallivanting around the country and getting drunk on holidays."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure he didn't, sir."

"You didn't know him," Lewis said, mouth twitching. "Of course, he'd have liked you. You, Sergeant Hathaway, are the sort of apprentice Morse always thought he deserved. Loyal and silent and overeducated."

It stung a bit, actually. Jim took the roundabout faster than maybe he should have.

"That was my turn, there," Lewis said a moment later.

Jim paused before replying. "I don't think you should be by yourself this evening, and I've slept on your couch. I'd rather sleep on mine."

"It's up to you to decide where I spend my evenings, then?"

"Not always, sir."

Lewis glanced toward him. "And if I tell you to take me home?"

"I'm driving, sir."

"You should stop calling me sir, Hathaway. I suspect your motives. I suspect you're really saying, 'you idiot,' when you sir me like that."

"Yes, sir."

"Bastard," Lewis grumbled.

"I doubt it very much," Jim told him, "and if you'd met my mother, you'd share my confidence. Here we are, then." He turned the sedan into the narrow alleyway behind his flat, shut off the engine, and pulled up the brake with a metallic creak.

Lewis reached for the door handle, then paused. "You don't need to nursemaid me."

Jim decided that getting out of the car was the better part of valor. It was cold out, and he had to lean back from the rear door of his building to catch enough light from the single halogen bulb hung over the car park to find the right key. Behind him, he heard the passenger door slam and Lewis' footfalls, crossing the asphalt and climbing the stairs.

"Drink?" he asked, in his flat.

Lewis shook his head. "Go ahead if you like, but not for me, thanks." He lowered himself onto Jim's couch. "You're right."

"Mm?" Jim tucked the hanger into his suit coat and hung it in the hall closet.

"This is nicer than mine."

"You can have the bed, if it'll be better for your back."

"Give me a blanket, will you? I'm fine here."

Jim walked down the hall to his bedroom, took a spare blanket from the closet, sniffed to make sure it was sufficiently clean, and returned to the sitting room. "You'll be warm enough?"

Lewis was unlacing his shoes. "You heat the place at night, don't you?"

Jim smirked. "Usually, but I could make an exception for you."

"Please."

"You settled, then?" Jim asked.

"Quite. Look, Hathaway --"

"Sir?"

"You're -- thanks. I do --" He gestured with one hand.

"Yeah," Jim said. "I do too."

His hand was halfway to the light switch when Lewis said, "It's not so much that I'm in mourning, you understand. It's more that it's a job and it's got to be done."

Jim flipped the light off. There were a lot of things that had to be done, he thought, which didn't necessarily make the doing of them any easier. "I'll be just down the hall, if you need anything," he said, into the darkened room.

"Night."