Work Text:
“What the hell did you do back home?” Carl asks as he watches the fence lining the field which seems to stretch further and further into nothingness. The ice pack sits cool and solid against his eye, the pain a not so dull ache.
He turns to Akram in the driver’s seat to search the side of the other’s usual sombre face, then he considers the slightly reddened knuckles of the hands holding the steering wheel.
He measures the space between him and Akram and sees if he can push the boundary.
Every time he pushes the metaphorical space and expects a shove in return, a sigh always comes out of his partner of, presently, almost four months. This time is no different.
“Please don’t use your injury as a means of getting the answer. This is low, even for you.” Akram says.
Akram keeps his wall of secrecy impenetrable. Carl groans.
His right eye still stings from being socked by some asshole—who got his own right eye socked right back in the next second, courtesy of his trusted DI, of course. Moira will kill them both.
“Thought you had a soft spot for when I’m hurt or sick.” Carl mutters.
“The common thing to do is to be nice to people who are feeling unwell, yes.”
“All this time you do it out of common decency and not pure altruism? Could’ve fooled me.”
Akram, being so infuriatingly sagely while he calls Carl dumb in a million different ways says, “I think everyone is selfish to an extent.”
Carl rolls his eyes, which he’s forgotten will really hurt. He winces. Looking at the slowly darkening country road affords them to be non-confrontational up to this point, until Akram glances his way—surely out of common decency and not concern. Ha.
It’s over in a second, but something moves in Akram’s habitually still gaze, visible even with one eye blurry. A hint of some warm creature in the stone-cold dark. He’s seen it before. Carl doesn’t chase it, only because he wills himself not to. This is a place he doesn’t touch—that neither of them do, really.
Akram’s concern reminds him of the damn press conference. On days like that, he imagines his tie being loosened, someone steadying him, keeping him from collapsing like a lawn chair onto the ground. Carl keeps people at an arms length, so it came as a surprise when he thought back and remembered Akram had kept the distance, all pressed grey suit and tidy hair, concerned but invariable in his assessment. Breathe. You are not having a heart attack.
Carl breathes in the cold air that’s blowing his face, stinging it a bit.
“Does it hurt a lot right now?” Akram sets his eyes on the rural, middle of bumfuck nowhere road again. They must be heading the right way, but Carl is beginning to doubt himself.
“Not if I can leave it alone.”
“You never leave anything alone.” Akram reminds him, then he says dryly, “I have to say, you’re utilizing your injury rather ineffectively.”
“Oh, for fucks sake.”
“You should sleep. It’ll be at least two hours before we reach Edinburgh.”
“Bored of my chatter already?”
Akram shrugs, a smooth movement by way of flexible rotator cuff and deltoid muscles. Carl’s told that they’re maintained through home workouts. He saw them bare in the communal shower (the ones above, not in their dinky basement. they still have some standards), and Carl’s shoulders felt like pathetic wire clothes hangers in comparison.
“I think Jasper and your lodger would appreciate you not being cranky from the lack of sleep, besides their concern for your eye.” Akram says. Carl readily snaps out of his stupid, no good, inappropriate workplace dynamics reverie.
“Jasper said that you’re such a girl dad.”
Akram raises his brows, lips almost tugging into a smile. Carl’s pulse is not fluttering, threatening to take him for a flight, not at all.
“Yes. I’m a father of two girls.” Akram says, amused. “Who both want to be veterinarians now, apparently.”
“Oh?”
“It changes every two weeks. They recently found a tiktok influencer that cares for farm animals.”
“I wish Jasper thinks about those things. All he does is play games and and think about his girlfriend.”
Akram seems to consider it. “I am willing to guess that he does think about his future, only that he tells his lodger and not you.”
Carl huffs. “What is it that you’re not good at? Is there anything at all? Knows how to parent, how to cook, how to be a better copper than most coppers here—“
“People say that I keep to myself. My old boss said I was too quiet.”
Carl holds up a finger to make an important point, even if the other isn’t looking at him.
“Contrary to your old boss, I think you shutting the fuck up when it really matters is a positive quality.” He says.
“Thank you.” Akram’s curt reply almost makes Carl laugh. “What is it that makes someone a girl dad?” Akram asks, actually seeming curious. He’d probably jot the definition down in his little notebook if he weren’t driving. Case related things go to the front pages of the notebook, while the unrelated go to the back, every word scribbled in cursive that looks way better than Carl’s own.
It’s in the littlest of things.
“The idea is you’re perceptive in ways boy dads can only hope to be.” He replies. Case in point: Carl Morck, barely holding on stepfather.
“You are perceptive, Carl.”
He shakes his head, exasperated. “I don’t understand Jasper.”
“You tend to overcomplicate relations.”
“Well, see, they’re actually overly-complicated to me.”
“You do not overcomplicate things with me.”
“Right. I don’t overcomplicate things with you.” He’s lying through his fucking teeth.
Oh, if only Akram sees the carefully measured space Carl had meticulously set up. There isn’t a single thing in his world that isn’t complicated, or tedious, or okay as it is, only at an arm’s length—always at an arm’s length.
The grass and the fence along the side of the road stretches ever on. Carl entertains the idea of him taking the wheel himself and driving pass the orange lampposts, into the dark, veering offtrack into someone’s property and not crashing in the process. It would calm him, just a tad.
All that is impossible when Akram is here, driving him home, teetering on the metaphorical border of the place where they could touch, but never do.
This is fine, Carl tells himself. Today they’re closer to solving another cold case. All is fine with the world.
For a while Akram seems to think. About what? Carl doesn’t hope to know. Then he asks: “Is there a particular reason you park your car so badly?”
“It’s convenient.” Carl replies.
“You are just shit at parking.”
“I am not.”
“Your parking fines say otherwise.” He eyes the drawer in front of Carl, the one he stuffs all of the case papers and his fines in.
Carl fancies himself a contrarian, a stick up people’s arse just for the hell of it, so he shuts up when the other is right and gives him nothing by way of confirmation or god forbid, satisfaction.
“I presume that I am correct.” Akram says, a once in a blue moon smile on his face. Carl imagines himself touching the expression, how it would shift under his hand. Akram’s smile would widen, or his lips would flatten into a thin, mortifying line.
The truth is he’s satisfied with not knowing. He has to be.
Carl doesn’t dare close the distance, not when contact comes with the warning of friction. He leaves the space between them untouched.
This is fine.