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It’s the walking along the beach that does it. Paul blames the tide, and the sand, and the officer from Southampton who doesn’t know the difference between a rock and an upturned boat when he sees one.
Foyle and he had been seconded that morning to help in the search for a local smuggler. Someone in some higher office somewhere felt that this particular smuggler, if caught, could prove to be the “lynchpin in the whole chain of smuggling on the east coast.”
Paul quotes this sentence grimly over and over to himself as he trudges through sandbanks. He also reminds himself repeatedly that it isn’t raining: there’s a cold wind off the water and the sky never quite clears, but it isn’t raining.
And, in the end: nothing. A boulder which looked like a boat hull and an awkward send-off for the Southampton inspector.
Paul tries to get some sort of feeling of satisfaction out of this at least -- after all, it’s what he and Foyle had said this morning: Well, no-one uses that beach very much, inspector and It’s a long way from town -- you’re sure you mean here? -- or, rather, tried to say over the ebullient enthusiasm of the out-of-towner. But, as he sits on the bench at the top of the cliff and tries to rub some feeling back into his left knee, it doesn’t really work.
Some distance away, where the cars are both turned in off the road, he can see Foyle and the inspector doing the dance of polite nothings as the Southampton man tries to get away without actually admitting that he wasted a day of their time. Foyle has his hands deep in his coat pockets and Paul can tell from the set of his shoulders that he’s skirting actual rudeness; everything about his stance implies impatience. Sam is perched on the bumper of their car, carefully knocking sand out of her shoes.
There might be sand in his shoes, too. He can’t really tell -- his right foot had gone mostly numb after he cracked his anklebone against a hidden rock. He curses the rock -- just for a change -- and leans back, closing his eyes for a minute.
There had been a time when a day spent like this would have left him pleasantly tired, muscles nicely worked out, ready for a quiet evening and bed. But that was when he still had a whole and working set of legs.
‘Paul.’
He blinks his eyes open, cranes his head back slightly, and makes something meant to be a salute in Foyle’s general direction. ‘One more pass, sir?’
Foyle sniffs and glances back over his shoulder. ‘Not if I have anything to say about it.’
Paul leans to the side and can see the Southampton car pulling away. Even the taillights look sheepish.
‘Perhaps we should interrogate some of the mussels, sir. Those clams might’ve been holding out on us.’ He braces himself on the back of the bench and levers himself to his feet, balancing carefully on his right foot and testing his left on the ground. ‘And I know I saw some suspicious seaweed.’ The first touch sends a lance of pain straight through his hip and he has to resist the urge just to drop back onto the bench.
‘Here.’ Sam, her shoes on but untied, has come across the scrubby grass and is holding out his cane.
‘I leave that at the station.’
‘Yes, well...’ She shakes the handle at him and he takes it. ‘It’s here now.’
It takes him a moment to rebalance himself with the cane and he can feel Foyle a step behind him. The cane makes it possible for him to take a step, then another, then another. He’s slow and awkward and stiff and he hates it all. He hates that Sam has gotten back to the car, tied her shoes, and started the engine by the time he’s halfway there. He hates that Foyle is pacing calmly beside him, hands in his coat pockets, watching the sunset light as if having his sergeant gimp around is something that happens every day.
Paul hates to think how close that comes to being true.
Three years later, he knows he’s doing well -- the amputation wound is clean and the scar tissue is sound. Most days, it doesn’t even hurt. He hasn’t quite gotten to the point of forgetting about it -- if nothing else, that’s a little hard when he has to strap his foot in place every morning and take it off every night.
Finally, finally, he folds himself into the front seat of the car, props the cane between his knees, and lets Foyle slam the door shut.
At the station, Foyle’s the one to help him out of the seat, holding the door out of his way and providing a steady shoulder so Paul can get over the slight rise of the curb.
Sam pulls the door shut behind him, then waves and drives the car past them and into the yard. The sound of the tires on the cobbles echo for a minute in the street.
‘Here.’ Foyle’s holding out his arm, the way he might have for a dance partner in his youth, Paul thinks rather bitterly.
‘I’m fine, sir, really--’ He waves the cane and Foyle gives him a disapproving look.
‘I didn’t order you off the beach this afternoon, sergeant. Consider this the alternative.’
By the time they reach Foyle’s doorstep an hour later, Paul’s glad of the arm. On a regular night, the walk from the station is nothing -- he barely notices it any more. But tonight Foyle’s a solid support. Where Paul’s cane sometimes slips between cobbles or into cracks in pavement and leaves him wobbly, Foyle never wavers. He unlocks the front door, pushes it open, and comes back to give Paul a hand up the step.
‘It’s all right -- I can do this bit --’ Paul waves him away and nods to the large brindle cat rubbing against the doorjamb. ‘Make sure she doesn’t go wandering.’
Foyle steps back into the hall, snapping on the small table lamp, and drops his coat on the hook. He scoops up the cat who immediately tries to climb his shoulder, purring like a small engine.
Paul braces himself, plants the cane on the granite step, and pushes himself up, takes a breath, and repeats the process, ending up just inside the front door. He takes another breath and looks up at Foyle. ‘See? Nothing to it.’
Foyle’s scowling and he steps aside to let Paul come a staggering step or two forward and shuts the door behind him. The cat grumbles and struggles until Foyle lets her down to purr around Paul’s ankles, nudging at the cane with interest. Paul would bend to give her an evening scratch behind the ears but he’s not sure he’d get back up again. His head is buzzing more than a little.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’ Foyle lifts Paul’s hat off his head and puts it on the peg beside his own. He steps around Paul and eases the coat off his shoulders, giving him time to switch the cane from hand to hand.
Paul considers playing stupid -- I don’t know what you mean -- but it’s patently obvious and Foyle knows he isn’t stupid. ‘It’s the only way I get stronger.’
Foyle snorts and makes a long arm to push open the sitting room door. ‘You’re not going to get stronger by testing the wound every chance you get. You’re just going to end up back in hospital.’
Paul limps slowly after him and, with an irrepressible sigh of relief, lets himself sag into his armchair. The cat follows him and leaps onto the arm of the chair as he sits down, butting impatiently at his wrist until he teases her under the chin. She sits back on her haunches, a monument to the satisfied cat, and her green eyes turn to slits with pleasure.
‘I didn’t know it was going to be this bad,’ Paul says as Foyle pushes himself back to his feet after setting a small fire in the grate. It may be late spring but the warmth of the open flame is still welcome in the evening and the radiant heat through the chimney will leave their bedroom nicely warm.
‘You couldn’t have guessed from the last time you did this?’ Foyle dusts his hands and drops into his own chair on the other side of the hearth rug.
‘It was the sand,’ Paul says, ignoring the dangling bait of Foyle’s last remark. ‘And going up and down. If we’d been up on the cliff, I’d’ve been fine.’
The arch of Foyle’s eyebrow makes it clear he isn’t convinced. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘A little, yes.’ Foyle gets up and Paul starts to push himself to his feet but Foyle puts a hand on his shoulder.
‘Stay here. I’ll make us up a tray. It’s been too long a day for a big dinner.’
Paul looks up at him and nods. They linger there for a minute, Foyle’s hand on Paul’s shoulder, the pad of his thumb caressing the side of Paul’s throat, then Foyle smiles at him and turns to the kitchen.
When the small fire burns down to ashes, Paul’s half-asleep in his chair. The pain in his leg has faded to a dull ache, helped along with a generous post-dinner whiskey, and the cushion of the chair is easing nicely under his weight. He knows he’ll pay for that ease when he tries to get up but for now he just wants to enjoy it.
Distantly, he hears Foyle get up and move around the room, placing things for the morning, then go out into the passage and up the stairs. Tweed, curled half-asleep on the arm of his chair for most of the evening, perks her ears at this, then darts out of the room and up the stairs after him.
Paul waits until he hears the thunk of the wardrobe door closing to lever himself out of the chair. He gropes for his cane, finds it, and braces himself to push up. He pauses half-way up, bent like an old man. As anticipated, his back and hips have stiffened and his legs ache from the long hours in the sand. The anticipation doesn’t make it any easier to deal with and he hesitates, caught between one kind of pain and another.
‘Here, here, here--’ Foyle, pajama-clad, is back downstairs again, beside him, pushing at his arm much as Tweed had done earlier until Paul gives in and drops it over his shoulders. ‘You know that’s easier.’
Paul hums noncommitally. ‘And you know I hate using you like a human crutch.’
‘We haven’t had to do it this way in weeks,’ Foyle says, as they make their slow, awkward way out into the hall and face the staircase. ‘You’re hardly going to break me.’
Paul hmmfs again and looks up the stairs. They had experimented with carpet and without and, for the time being, without is safer. The rubber stop at the tip of his cane catches better on wood than carpet. Stripped down like this, though, the stairs look dark and forbidding.
There’s barely room for Foyle to angle himself between Paul and the wall but they’ve got this down to a science now. Most days, all he really wants to have is the reassurance of Foyle’s presence behind him, just knowing he can’t really fall back and crack his head open. But in the early days every night and every morning was like this as Paul learned the new challenge.
And, if he was put to it, he would have to admit there’s something about the two of them making their way up together that he likes. The effort might be awkward but the existence of it makes a transition place, literally between their work -- at the bottom of the stairs -- and their home -- at the top. It’s reassuring to have Foyle with him in this space, helping him get through it, a daily reminder that Foyle wants him here.
Their bedroom is only a couple of steps from the top of the stairs and Foyle has left the door open. There’s a stream of dim light from the bedside lamps that just reaches the top steps. Tweed is already ensconced in her favorite place on top of a stack of Paul’s old sweaters on top of the wardrobe, peering down at them as if wondering why they don’t climb up and join her. It had taken them a long time to figure out that she achieved the height by playing a game of ‘don’t touch the floor’ almost all the way around the room, starting with the dresser and ending with a leap and a scramble from the windowsill.
Foyle ducks out from under Paul’s arm and goes across to his side of the bed, picking up his book and leaving Paul to undress on his own. It’s slow but, even without the cane, he can make his way around the room fairly handily at this point.
He still has a moment of hesitation when it comes to stripping off his trousers but he simply takes a breath and does it now, not even glancing in Foyle’s direction. At least he’s always been a vest-and-pants sleeper so he doesn’t have the added steps of putting on pajamas. He crumples up his shirt and tosses it in the direction of his hamper; it lands a little short but he can get it in the morning.
He lets himself down onto the mattress and starts undoing the straps that hold his false foot in place. His knee and the short stub of bone and muscle below are throbbing and he’s vaguely surprised he can’t see them pulse in and out with his heartbeat.
‘Is it bad?’
He shrugs and sets the prosthetic aside, the straps dropping back against the molded leg piece with a thwap.
‘Paul.’
He closes his eyes, leaning back on his hands and letting his shoulders sag. ‘It hurts.’
There’s a sound of rustling cloth and the mattress dips and then springs back as Foyle gets up. Paul can’t be bothered to open his eyes, just listens for the door to open or for Tweed to be chivvied down from the wardrobe. Instead there’s a light touch on his knee and, when he opens his eyes, Foyle has tugged a foot stool out from under the window and is perched at his feet.
‘What...’
Foyle holds his hands to either side of Paul’s knee like brackets. ‘May I?’
Paul blinks and, belatedly, thinks to reach for the sheet to tug it over himself -- it’s not as though Foyle hasn’t seen him before but-- He doesn’t usually sit around like this. ‘Yes?’ He sounds foolishly tentative and he shakes his head briskly, waving a hand as if to brush the words away. 'Yes. Yes, of course, yes.'
Foyle smiles and runs his hands over Paul’s knee, smoothing halfway up his thigh and then back down. His hands are warm, familiar, and steady and Paul doesn’t know exactly which part of that starts to make the muscle relax, starts to make him relax, but he doesn’t really care.
Instead of worrying about it, he lets himself drop back on the mattress, until he’s nearly lying flat, letting the warmth of the room and the warmth of Foyle’s hands ease him towards dozing. Foyle starts to add pressure slowly -- so slowly that Paul almost doesn’t notice until he hits a particularly nasty knot of muscle just behind and above his knee and, involuntarily, Paul jumps and curses.
‘Sorry--’ Foyle pauses, one hand under Paul’s knee, the other cupping over the front of what remains of his shin. ‘I’ll be more careful.’
Paul looks down at him and shakes his head, pushing himself up and leaning forward that he can brush his fingertips over Foyle’s cheek. ‘I don’t think you could be.’