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Moments in the Rain
By ralst

 

Rain splashed disjointedly against the windscreen, only to be captured and sent hurtling into space by the rhythmic power of the wipers. It was almost hypnotic.

"Scribbs, wake up!"

The blonde jerked in her seat, the heavy weight of lassitude falling from her eyes as she scowled at her DI. "Don't shout." She thought about pouting, but the last time she'd tried that particular move Ash had given her a twenty minute lecture on maturity and its place in modern policing. "Can you remind me, again, why we can't have the radio on?"

"We're here to work, Scribbs, not indulge your juvenile listening habits." Surveillance was tedious at the best of times, but it was tantamount to torture when forced to share a confined space with a woman singing off-key to the latest bubble-gum pop to escape from the crèche of modern music. Or at least that was the conclusion Ash had reached after a particularly harrowing ten hours spent trapped in a van with Scribbs and her boom-box while they waited for a drug trafficker to show his face. "We could play I-Spy," she conceded.

The steady rhythm of the windscreen wipers pulled at the edges of Scribbs' wakefulness and she found herself fighting a yawn. "Boring," she sighed, her eyelids lowering.

Ash would have liked to take umbrage with the remark, as she herself was an excellent I-Spy player, but had to concede that their current situation required something a little more daring than a game of I-Spy to stop it falling into the category of most boring day of their lives. "We could talk about our depressing lack of a love life."

"I have a love life," Scribbs mumbled, her words becoming indistinct as she slouched further into her seat. "It's a sex life I'm lacking."

The idea that Scribbs, the uncouth and rumpled bane of her existence, could have a love life that didn't include her, filled Ash with horror. They were meant to trade overly embellished anecdotes about their appalling taste in men, while ignoring the elephant in the room that was their burning and, one could say, unhealthy desire to rip each other's clothes off. Falling in love was not part of the equation. "What love life?"

Later, if pressed, Scribbs would blame her slip on the windscreen wipers, and their hypnotic powers of suggestion, but the truth was that she was just too exhausted to keep up the pretence. "Our love life." Her eyes closed and she was seconds away from descending into a deep sleep when the arctic feel of Ash's stare roused her to full wakefulness. "What?"

The accumulated resentment and yearning of a year spent ignoring her own feelings, and Scribbs', bubbled up in the back of Ash's throat and made it impossible for her to speak. Ash knew, that whatever she said, it would change their relationship forever, and sitting there, on a cold and rain drenched Monday afternoon, she knew she didn't have the courage.

With the flick of Ash's wrist, the radio sparked to life, and another opportunity was washed away.

The End

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