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There were little things. The smell of aftershave in his bathroom, when Nicholas had spent the night on the couch, both of them too exhausted, more often than drunk, to drag themselves off to bed. Not that Nicholas would ever drag him to bed. They weren’t gay, or anything. At least Danny wasn’t, and Nicholas had that girlfriend, didn’t he? Ex, rather, not that it mattered. But yeah, there were these little things. Aftershave. His towels hung up the wrong way, which was probably the right way, knowing Nick. Forgotten jackets and socks, which was odd, because Nicholas didn’t seem the sort to forget things.
Yeah, little things.
Like when he came into the station – the new station, which wasn’t properly set up yet, and not all of them had desks, or proper desks, at least – and there was a mug of tea there ready for him. Just the way he liked it; milk and no sugars. Everyone gave him sugars, thinking he wanted it, everyone ‘cept for Nick. Nicholas. Danny didn’t even know which name he preferred, which was funny. You wouldn’t catch anyone calling him Daniel. Seemed to fit Nicholas, though.
There was less cake and more dried things with names Danny had no idea how to pronounce, but somehow, there were more snacks now than there used to be. And they weren’t half bad, all them kale chips and nuts and what have you, and the wasabi was hotter than any curry Mr Patel down in Buford Abbey could dish up. And that was another thing; once Nicholas noticed Danny liked them, there usually was a small bowl of them stood on his desk every morning. Once there were proper desks. Neither of them said anything.
They still went to the pub, and still came back to Danny’s more often than not, and every time they did, Nicholas stayed over. It was a bit of a routine, but Danny didn’t mind; he liked regular and usual. He always had, but these days, he found he liked his days more alike than different. That’s the one thing him and Nicholas had in common, what apart from the films and policing and that; they liked things regular. Nicholas started getting him Belgian beers with fancy names when it was his round, and they didn’t taste half bad, some of them. It was all right. It’d all be great, really, if it wasn’t for, well… the little things.
Here was one: They’d stopped talking so much when Nicholas came over, and the films were on. They wouldn’t talk through ‘em, of course, but they’d snigger at some parts and get into little bickering arguments at others, because that’s not how you’d shoot a gun really, Nicholas would say and yeah, Danny would counter, but you weren’t usually balancing on the wing of an airplane while doing it now were you. There was none of that; no laughing, no snarky comments, nothing. When they fell asleep, Danny would wake up to find Nicholas’s hand ‘round his back, and that was OK, but whenever that happened he couldn’t quite go back to sleep again.
Things were all right at work, because even when there wasn’t much going on, there was a lot going on, and you could always count on the Andies for distraction if you needed it. Come to that, Doris could speak for two, which she often did now she was pregnant. None was more surprised than her at that, by the way; she said she didn’t know her girlfriend could get her pregnant, what with the hormones and all, and while Danny didn’t quite get what that meant, he liked the way it made Fisher drop his biscuits into his tea. Everyone was doting over her now, and Nicholas got really quiet and kept congratulating her. Maybe he wanted kids, too?
Most of the time, they did all right. Nicholas had his cottage now, and needed a lot of help setting it up, even weeks after he’d moved in. Danny didn’t mind; it was good to feel useful. Good to have something to do where they could talk about what was going on, rather than having to come up with things. That was new; they never used to be like that; it used to be harder to stop than to start and now it was the other way around. Danny put all his lamps up, then the pictures, then they moved all the furniture in the lounge so it’d work better with the new TV. Then they bought the new TV. Installing it was a bit of a bother, so it was only afterwards that Danny realized this meant Nicholas was meaning to spend more time here and less time with him.
That wasn’t such a little thing.
Danny rarely got really proper falling-down drunk these days, but, he reasoned, it was his birthday. Nicholas hadn’t mentioned anything at work, and there hadn’t even been a bowl on his desk, just some lukewarm tea. Doris had given him cake, but he was careful with those ever since the incident last Easter, so he’d thanked her and fed it to Saxxon. Once they’d cleaned the mess up after that, it was leaving time, and no one invited him to the pub.
At first he’d thought it was one of those surprise parties, because that’s usually how they went, wasn’t it? But the thing about those were, you were usually asked to go do something else, and that usually happened before eleven o’clock at night. Better then, to spend it on his own with a bottle of that beer Nicholas said some monks only brewed a few barrels of every year, and down it with as much whiskey as he could find in his cupboards, which turned out not to be much. He was almost getting to the falling down stage, when he heard the knock on his door. Thankfully, he wasn’t quite there, or he wouldn’t have been able to open it.
“Sorry,” Nicholas said, “I didn’t… it wasn’t ready in time.”
Danny might be drunk and a bit slow, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what a house key looked like, and there was one in Nicholas’s hand, sure enough. Such a little thing.