[ Breathing ]

AUTHOR: Isabelle Kennedy

FEEDBACK: [email protected]

WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/retroeighties

CATEGORY: Jo/Roper, Jo POV

SPOILERS: Everything up to ‘Payback’

RATING: Soft R

DISCLAIMER: All characters are the property of Patrick Harbinson, the BBC and Stormy Pictures. No copyright infringement intended. Title and summary are courtesy of Kate Bush. Archive anywhere; just drop me a line first.

SUMMARY: My instincts tell me to keep breathing.

Autumn in Germany. The air crisp and cold and too much like home. She sits on the steps outside the barracks, a wire mesh light the only barrier against the pitchy blackness. Wishes for a moment that she smoked, just so it would give her something to do with her hands rather than pick at her cuticles. She has never had a manicure, never had the nails for it, but she looks at her hands and decides that she’d look good in plum. Or maybe burgundy. Something bright, something that people would notice, because she’s many things but she isn’t shy.

She pulls her jacket closer; it’s colder than she thought. Colder than it was five hours ago, when adrenaline ran through her veins like fire, colder than it was when she thought she was going to die. Warmer than it was when she thought he was going to die. She looks down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Decides that burgundy wouldn’t suit her, after all. Too much like blood on her hands again. She wonders why they shook so much when she heard the shot, saw the car crash into the railings and tasted the bitterness in her mouth, the bile rising from her stomach. When his life started to mean so much to her that she’s glad others died instead of him. Glad that someone got a bullet through his chest, someone else got his brain splattered against the windscreen just so that she could lose control for a second and let her guard down.

She knows that the attraction between them isn’t a secret. There have been too many lingering glances and too many accidental touches and too much that she’s already said. She’s pretty sure that Neve thinks they’re already sleeping together, wonders why she’s so interested, what she’d do if she were right. Thinks that Burns is hoping they aren’t or that they won’t. Or maybe he hopes that they are, so that he can finally get rid of her. Regardless, they’ve probably been aware of the attraction far longer than she has.

She isn’t sleeping with him. The truth makes her smile, makes her breathe out, the air curling like cigarette smoke. She enjoys the power she has over him, is amused that all it took to divert his attention was expensive shoes and a flash of cleavage. That he is no different from any other man, not that she had many illusions before. And just because she’s unfamiliar with those arts doesn’t mean she didn’t know what she was doing when she pushed him into the wall of the club, his hand burning into the curve of her shoulder. She thinks it would have been too easy that night, or many of the nights before, to take the final step. But she hasn’t, she didn’t. It doesn’t mean she hasn’t fantasised about the sex, about his body pressed against hers or her legs wrapped around his hips.

She looks at the sky, thinks that it would never work. Imagines that intimacy comes about as easily for him as it does for her. She knows that she’s too proud to depend on someone, to show that she needs them. Because she doesn’t, just lets them think she does, it’s easier that way. She isn’t a romantic, doesn’t fall in love easily. There have been maybe two, three people who were worth the effort, but most were only worth the night she gave them.

Sometimes she likes to think that his feelings for her are merely irritation, tempered by infatuation. The electric light flickers and she doesn’t want to think it might be something more. She wonders why she feels so broken, so fragmented, the pieces scattered like dust in the wind. Like nothing can ever be right again.

She closes her eyes, hears footsteps on the stone and knows it’s him, because there isn’t anyone else. Doesn’t open her eyes, but judges the distance by the sound of his feet. When she does look, he is sitting next to her, his elbows resting on his knees, legs wide. Still wearing his suit trousers and shirt, but creased and dirty now. She looks at his face, his eyes slightly bloodshot, face swollen from impact with the airbag and finds that she can’t look away. Then he blinks and the spell is broken.

“Have you heard anything more about Burns?” she asks, tightening her hands together.

“He’s still in surgery. They don’t know for how much longer.”

There is silence and she realises that neither of them know what to say, know whether there is anything to say.

Then she speaks, voice steady. “I thought you were... when I opened the car door, I thought you were dead.”

“I know,” he says, tone deliberately light. “You could have had my job.”

“Roper...”

Then, suddenly, she’s kissing him. Or he’s kissing her. But it doesn’t matter because he’s soft and slick, his mouth hot against her throat and his hands in her hair. Her fingers are pressed against his shoulder blades, pulling him closer, pulling him into her. He tastes like spring water and for a moment, she allows herself to forget where she is, forget about everything.

And, just as suddenly, she’s pushing him away, her breath loud and harsh. Then his thumb traces the line of her jaw and she stops breathing for a long second. Stops thinking why it’s a bad idea, stops thinking altogether as his thumb dips lower.

She stands, brushes the dirt from her jacket. “It’s too cold out here.”

He follows her inside, like she knew he would, like she wanted. Follows her into her room, presses her against the door and kisses her again. Makes her forget everything.

And she thinks that this is how she can mend herself, because it is genuine and immediate, her fingers hard against his neck and his tongue wet against hers. She can put herself back together like this, with his shirt flung across the desk and her jeans on the floor. She can heal herself by gasping his name, by arching her back, by holding onto his hips. It’s more than sex, not exactly making love, but an affirmation that they’re alive. That they survived.

“We’re not dead,” she says much later, when they’re lying in her bed together and she sounds surprised. “And maybe this is for real.”

Because it is, maybe, because even though there was blood and even though nothing makes sense, this just might be how it’s supposed to happen.

End.