A Satisfying End by Brightbear
Part One
Disclaimer: Spooks/MI5 does not belong to me. It belongs to Kudos, the BBC and many other people who are not me. Unfortunately.
Rating: NC-17 for sex between two men, the occasional bad word and very mild violence.
Spoilers: Episode 6 of the first season and episode one of the second season.
Pairing: Tom Quinn/Patrick McCann
Summary: McCann's laptop bomb had personal consequences for 'Davey Crockett' so McCann feels the need to apologise in person.
Notes: A big thankyou to my Betas Han and Thia. Without you guys, I would never have dared to post this (at least not where other people could read it).
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Patrick McCann sat in his car on a street in northern London and watched. Across from him was the front door of a flat with a well-kept garden - an ordinary house in an ordinary street. It was utterly peaceful and Patrick felt it matched his mood well. For the first time in years, Patrick was thinking solely about himself. There was no cause to champion, no junior officers to supervise, no projects to monitor and since his plastic surgery, no MI5 surveillance to avoid.
It was ironic that he now found himself facing this particular flat and waiting for this particular man. It had taken him a few hours of searching to find the location of the bomb scare. Once he had the address, it had taken less than twenty minutes to drive here. He knew he had the right flat when he saw the damage to the door where the police had forced it open.
Patrick's new freedom allowed him room to indulge a little. It was that indulgence that had driven him to warn the man he'd dubbed Davey Crockett about the bomb hidden in the laptop. Perhaps he was stretching things, taking risks by being in this street, but he had sat here for several hours already and he wasn't intending to give up and go home now.
About lunchtime, a woman and a girl pulled up in a taxi. While the taxi waited, they walked into the flat. They were gone for only a few minutes before they emerged again, hastily packed suitcases under their arms. The little girl was bleary-eyed and sullen.
"Where are we going now, Mummy?"
"We're going to stay with Grandma for a while. Okay?"
"What about Tom? How will he know where to find us?"
"Tom... Tom's at work."
"We will come back, won't we? We did last time."
"Get in the car, Maisie."
They climbed into the taxi and left. Patrick went to a pub for lunch and then sat in his car again.
The man he was waiting for didn't come home until two o'clock that night. Tall, broad-shouldered 'Davey Crockett' parked his car outside his flat. He sat in his expensive car for a moment, hunched over the wheel with the engine still running. Every few seconds he raised a hand to wipe his face but otherwise, he remained completely still.
It took a minute for Patrick to realise that 'Davey' or 'Dave' was crying. After less than a minute he seemed to shrug it off. He wiped his eyes, got out of his car and walked to the front door. Dave spent half a second trying to use his key card in his front door lock before realising that the lock was broken.
Dave walked into his flat and turned on the light, closing the door behind him. Through the window, Patrick watched him stand motionless in the middle of his living room. Then Dave turned and walked out of sight. A moment later and Dave was back with a large cardboard box in his hand.
Patrick dug around in the back of his car to find a pair of binoculars. He held them up to his eyes and took a moment to focus them. Dave was packing things into the cardboard box: stockings, a child’s jumper and a photograph in a frame. He sat there on his couch, holding the frame in his hands and staring at it. After a long time, he put it into the box and covered it with the jumper. He carefully pulled the cardboard flaps of the cardboard box closed and rested his hands on the box. Then Dave sat there and stared at his hands. Patrick began to wonder if Dave might be more than a little drunk. He stood and walked out of sight again.
Patrick decided that half of the day was far too long to spend sitting in one’s car. He got out and walked to the front door. He walked straight in past the damaged lock and into the flat.
The walls were white and the carpet was expensive and clean. As he walked out of the entry way and into the living room, Patrick could appreciate the size of the flat. It would seem that MI5 paid its officers well, although then again Patrick had demanded to speak to somebody relatively senior and it was Dave that had been sent.
Patrick settled himself on the couch and waited for Dave to return; waited for Dave to do a double take when he realised who was sitting on his couch. When he'd been waiting for ten minutes, Patrick began to get impatient.
“You should know your front door’s not locked,” he called loudly.
There was only silence in the flat. Too much silence.
Beginning to feel uneasy, Patrick stood up and walked through the door to the rest of the house. He found himself in the kitchen. Two empty wine bottles and a half-empty bottle of whisky stood forlornly on the table. There were no glasses out and everything else in the kitchen was neatly in its place. The kitchen light had been left on, as had the living room light.
“Anybody alive in here?” said Patrick, dryly.
He returned to the living room. A set of stairs led up to a landing. Again, the landing light had been left on. Patrick started slowly up the stairs. A shattered glass lay on the landing carpet. The flat remained silent.
Patrick walked along the landing. All the doors along it were wide open, showing the rooms beyond. One contained a small bed and shelves that had been recently cleared. Another bedroom had a double bed but Dave wasn't in there either. On each side of the bed stood matching end tables. One was stacked with a telephone, an alarm clock and books. The other was bare, still showing the dust marks where somebody's belongings had been hastily cleared away. Patrick thought about the woman and child he had seen earlier. They had packed so quickly that Patrick had not thought much of it. Now, surrounded by the debris of a broken relationship, he was almost moved to pity.
Further along the landing there was a study but, like the kitchen, everything in here was carefully put away. As far as Patrick could tell, nothing had been altered or removed. It reminded him of Dave’s professional efficiency. Unlike the rest of the house, the lights in he office were all switched off and there was still no sign of Dave's whereabouts.
Patrick reached the end of the hall and there was only one door left. This door was shut. A queasy feeling began to build in Patrick's gut. Somehow, that closed door was more horrible than all those empty rooms. He pushed at the door with his fingertips and it swung open easily.
Dave was slumped on the bathroom floor, resting with his back against the bathtub. His head was lolling sleepily against his chest and his face was unnaturally pale. Both legs and one arm were sprawled lazily across the tiles. The other arm was curled protectively against his chest. Between Dave's long fingers, Patrick could see the small orange bottle that was standard for medical prescriptions.
Blinking stupidly, Dave noticed Patrick. He frowned but made no move to get up.
“Oh, no, you don’t want to be doing that,” said Patrick heavily.
“Who... you? What?” managed Dave, still staring at Patrick in confusion.
It took Patrick a moment to remember that Dave could no longer recognise him. It seemed that the plastic surgery had been successful in making his new face suitably anonymous.
Abandoning words, Patrick marched into the bathroom and seized Dave by the front of the shirt. He braced his feet on either side of Dave's body and tried to haul him upright. Dave twisted away, his shoes slipping on the tiles. The weight was too much for Patrick and he had to drop him.
Dave landed back on the floor with a bump, stunned. Patrick bent down and took a new handhold on his shirt. Dave lashed out with his arms or tried to. His movements were uncoordinated and slow and Patrick avoided them easily. Patrick hoped to God the clumsiness was due to the alcohol and not the pills.
“Get... out of my house,” slurred Dave, finally managing to cuff Patrick across the head.
The blow glanced off harmlessly and only succeeded in overbalancing Dave sideways. Patrick took the opportunity to crouch down and slide his arms underneath Dave's back. He braced himself against the bathtub and jerked Dave forward.
With a grunt, a surprised Dave was pulled to his feet. Only a firm grip around his waist prevented him from tumbling face-first over Patrick’s shoulder. Dave's fingers clawed at Patrick‘s back as he wildly fought to keep his balance. He settled for seizing fistfuls of Patrick’s shirt. Patrick kept still, arms locked around Dave’s waist until he was steady. Dave’s fingers released Patrick’s shirt.
That was the moment that Patrick swung him around and pushed him over the tub. Dave tried to push backwards and Patrick hit him in the ribs. Dave sagged, gasping, bent face-first over the tub. He gripped the edge until his knuckles were white. Before he could recover his breathing, Patrick pressed his own weight forward until he was pinned awkwardly against the side of the tub.
“This is for your own good, Davey boy,” said Patrick apologetically, before grabbing Dave’s jaw in one hand and sticking the fingers of his other hand down Dave’s throat.
Dave jerked and tried to bite. Only the firm grip he had on Dave’s jaw saved Patrick’s fingers. Dave tried to push Patrick off but the tiles were still slippery and now his knees were jammed up against the bath. Patrick could feel Dave’s tongue pushing wetly at his fingers. Pinning it in place with his index finger, he shoved his ring finger down Dave’s throat.
An elbow collided with Patrick’s ribs. Patrick grunted and involuntarily loosened his hold but Dave was already beginning to retch. Unable to stop the reflex reaction, Dave bent forward and vomited into the tub. Patrick stood back as Dave vomited up every pill he’d just swallowed.
It was a decidedly unpleasant sight and Patrick looked away for something to distract him. He picked up the prescription bottle and read the label. The sound of retching stopped and Dave began gulping in great breaths of air instead.
Patrick noted the date of prescription on the bottle of painkillers was several months ago. When he looked back up, Dave hadn’t moved but he was watching Patrick.
“This is serious, prescription only stuff, Davey boy,” said Patrick evenly, waving the empty bottle.
“I got shot,” said Dave thickly, eyeing the small bottle in Patrick's hand.
Dave let his head flop forward, Patrick wincing as his forehead collided with the tub with a loud thud. At first he was afraid Dave had knocked himself out but a long-suffering sigh reassured him that this was not the case.
Patrick peered over Dave’s head, into the tub. Wrinkling his nose at the smell, he did a quick count of the pills he could see. The sheer number of pills was frightening but better in the bathtub than dissolving in Dave’s stomach. He tried to compare the number of vomited pills and the size of the pill bottle but he had no idea how many pills had been in the bottle to begin with.
“You want me to call an ambulance, Davey?” asked Patrick.
Dave shrugged and kept his eyes shut. The man was radiating misery and helpless apathy. He really didn’t seem to care which was possibly more worrying than anything else.
“You can’t stay on the bathroom floor, all night you know,” said Patrick, his patience wearing thin. “Trust the voice of experience - you’ll have a hell of hangover when you wake up tomorrow morning.”
Whatever response Patrick had expected, it wasn’t Dave’s indignant snort.
“I wasn’t planning on waking up,” said Dave angrily.
“Holy mother of God, that’s a stupid thing to say,” Patrick snapped back.
Dave’s eyes flashed with the first sign of true life since Patrick had found him. Patrick stepped up behind Dave so that Dave had to crane his neck to maintain eye contact.
“You bloody well need some sense thumped into you, make no mistake,” said Patrick, raising his voice.
That was when Patrick noticed that the younger man was already shivering, despite the defiant look in his eyes. Patrick forced his anger down. He was still angry but he also recognised a brittle-ness to Dave, a vulnerability and fear that the defiance was only just masking. He'd seen Dave afraid before, for God's sake, he'd pointed a gun straight at Dave's head. Dave had been afraid then but there had still been a determination there that had impressed Patrick. It seemed that whatever strength had sustained him throughout their last encounter was rapidly draining away.
Huffing grumpily, Patrick crouched down again so that he was inches from Dave’s face.
“You can’t stay on the bathroom floor, Davey,” he said determinedly. “It’s bloody cold and uncomfortable and I don’t fancy spending the night in here.”
Patrick slid his arms under Dave’s armpits. This time, Dave made no move to resist and was easily pulled to his feet. Dave leaned against him, clinging, and Patrick paused to rearrange his grip again. Patrick could feel the shivers running through the entire length of Dave’s body. He really didn’t want to have to call an ambulance unless he had to. His presence in the house of an MI5 agent would be difficult to explain. The less scrutiny his new identity (and his new face) received, the better.
TO BE CONTINUED
