Work Text:
The sequence of events happens like this;
Spider is stood in a multi-storey car park, sunglasses perched atop his head, the risk of his big fat bonus slipping from his fingers increasing as he faces down the overly sensitive, stupidly sentimental love-sick merc who's standing in the way of his total domination and ruining what, previously had been, a perfect, almost orgasmically blissful afternoon of finally achieving a perfect victory over Cartwright.
He’s kind enough to offer some advice to Donavon - he’s sympathetic, really - getting too invested in what had to be little more than a fuck and the briefest allowances for intimacy in their industry was always misguided.
Hell, Spider had found that out for himself the hard way - and so he was of course eager to share this wisdom. Mostly to ensure he still ended the day several thousand pounds richer, as planned.
But then Donavon’s expression turned,
And then his head slammed against something, hard, sparks of light and dark exploding behind his eyelids before he could even really register the pain but could feel wet, and warmth, dripping down the back of his neck -
And then there was just dark, and an interminable buzzing growing louder and louder until it overtook everything -
And then he was standing in his bathroom. Brushing his teeth.
He stares at his reflection; too out of sync with the solid facts of reality to manage anything like confusion, or fear - he’s just. Shocked.
The black electric toothbrush in his hands buzzes, the same frequency, but quieting now from the overwhelming screech it was earlier. Like everything Spider owned, it was high quality. Not making horrible car-crash engine-screaming sounds was a standard feature.
Task left half-undone, mouth open at an unflatteringly gormless angle, he’s snapped out of his state of paralytic shock as a trickle of sudsy, lathered toothpaste begins to dribble out of the corner of his mouth.
“Fu—“ he curses, muffled, and leans over to spit his mouthful into the sink, watching how the mix of saliva and half-used toothpaste clings to the basin bowl as it slides down toward the drain. He runs the tap long enough to half-heartedly wash it away, and lowers his head to drink from the spout like an animal, like Cartwright did.
By the time his mouth is clear of leftover grit, there’s still a remaining grease track of saliva and toothpaste lingering against the porcelain. He ignores it, knowing someone else will clean it soon enough.
On the glass shelf below his mirror, his little two-minute sand-timer, to ensure perfection in his daily rituals, as in all things, had long since run dry.
Smacking his lips together, he frowned. He’d probably wasted a lot of time looking stupid, and then trying not to stain his silk dressing gown to really give his molars a proper seeing to. Repetition would probably be necessary, he wasn’t the sort of backward savage to fall into bed after a night out and torment his bed-mate with beer and pizza-scented snores, like some.
What was he doing?
The shock was starting to fade. Disparaging thoughts about River following quickly on from the first stirrings of clarity was standard procedure for coming to consciousness; indications that everything was right, and normal.
He set down the toothbrush, and peered closer at himself in the mirror. But, no, none of this was normal. Something had happened - he was missing some chunk of time, some explanation for how he had got from there to here.
Some sort of concussion-related amnesia, perhaps?
Studying his face in the mirror, he found no flaws in his reflection, as usual. But, carefully, he raised a hand to the back of his head, tilting his neck to try and see behind himself, thinking of the sick crunch and the hot wet something that had poured down his neck.
His scalp was smooth. His unstyled hair soft and loose, no hint of blood dirtying it.
What was he doing?
Brushing his teeth, no gel in his hair - was the day ending, or beginning? Glancing around for his phone, or a watch, he could find no trace of anything to tell him the time, so he opened the door of his en-suite into the bedroom to see -
River Cartwright. Face down, sprawled across his bed, snoring into his pillow. He’d kicked loose some of the sheets covering him - ran like a radiator, that one, one of the many ways sleeping beside him felt like sharing a bed with an overly enthusiastic golden retriever - and the bare skin of his back and legs suggested he was naked, or near enough.
River Cartwright being in his apartment, being in his bed, being naked in his bed wasn’t totally unusual, sure. But, whatever fantasies he might have had in all the planning of this day, he hadn’t really expected this would be how it ended
And he couldn’t remember it; there was no string of events that explained how he got from that multi-story, to here, back home, with River taking up space in his bedroom.
River being naked in his apartment had some precedence, but it wasn’t just that, he realised, as he scanned his surroundings. The room itself was different - altered by the influence, of him, more than just a puddle of dirty clothes abandoned on the floor, and toppled furniture and pettily altered displays, from their standard dramatics of a hurried, hateful hook-up.
There were bits of him everywhere. Half-discard clothes in his size and (lack of) style and quality were constrained to a stylish rattan hamper, at the very least, to restrain his chaos. A tourist's poster advertising the penguins at Regents Park zoo from the 1920’s that River had bought him when they’d both started working at the Park, was hung up next to the window in pride of place.
I thought you’d like it, he’d guessed, watching Spider squint at it as he unfolded it in the pub. It’s like - old and shit, he’d so eloquently delivered. The gesture was sweet, he remembered thinking, despite it being a misguided attempt to guess his interior design taste, or have some say in how Spider decorated his flat. Spider had returned some witty repartee that it was called vintage class, when he did it. River was the stuffy old grandpa boy.
For a while it had lived in a cheap frame tapped up with renter-friendly command strips, but that was a long time ago. It was rolled up deep, deep in the back of his second wardrobe now, certainly not hung on the wall in a far more refined, dark oak frame.
One of the penguins looked at him, goofy little beady eye staring accusatorily, smugly, as though telling him he and the other flightless morons had won, making it back up and the wall. Spider tore his eyes away, fleeing from the judgment of the paper penguin, needing more clues to make sense of… any of this.
The bedside table he sprawled closest to had been utterly contaminated by River too.
His smudged glasses he was self conscious about wearing rested on a dog eared paperback, some old spy novel from the sixties, literally, practically a vintage artefact in spite of how a teenage river had utterly spoiled it from hundred of re-reads, taking it in the bath and warping certain pages, spilling tea on it and letting the fraying cover get crushed at awful angles in a backpack.
There was the water bottle he didn’t clean enough, his favourite flavour of protein bar prepared for the ‘breakfast’ he’d inevitably horf down on the hoof, always such chaos in leaving the house before his adhd meds kicked in.
If he didn’t know better, he might think River lived here. But that was all impossible.
And yet. The most implausible thing of all, was the simple titanium band glinting on River’s ring finger.
The absurdities were stacking up. River didn’t wear jewellery; he’d never known him to accessorise like that. So, what, he was getting married? When had that happened? Spider would have known if he was getting married. River didn’t have social media, but Spider kept track of him nonetheless.
Besides, he would have noticed the ring on River’s finger before now, surely, in the absence of time he was still missing to explain his presence here. Spider had some standards, he probably wouldn’t have slept with him if he was getting married - not for any particular concern about wrecking River’s home life, no, that would be a bonus - more so that he deserved more than sloppy seconds from whatever poor schmuck River had convinced to deal with him for a decade or two before the inevitable tragic divorce.
The great big lump in his bed stirred, peeling one eye open, he smiled saccharinely at him, patting the empty space beside him, what was probably meant to be invitingly.
Not overtly tempted by the cloying domestic scene, Spider followed the lure anyway, and settled in next to him, his space in the bed still warm, as though he’d just left it.
River smiled doofily, rabbity teeth showing through his parted lips as he octopused himself onto Spider, squeezing tight like he was about to do a death roll, still managing to get a handful of his arse to grab.
But River didn’t suffocate the life out of him. Just clung tight, as if afraid Spider would disappear without him in his arms.
“Miss you,” he muttered, not having woken enough to have gained any eloquence yet.
James scoffed.
“I was brushing my teeth.” He dismissed scornfully, enduring the bear hug. River hadn’t been this… needy, for a while now. They didn’t exactly cuddle anymore.
Which Spider was glad for - frankly - River’s pathetic, puppy-like need for affection had been stifling, and he’d just endured it when he had to. There was no part of him that would trade room and privacy in his spacious and luxurious bed for the clingy furnace that used to occupy it.
But that wasn’t true, of course.
He hadn’t relished the privacy, the luxury of space and solitude as much as he’d imagined, when River’s presence in his life had so abruptly, so thoroughly, diminished.
There’d been a time after River’s fall from grace and shunting to Slough House were he’d spent his evenings, which were suddenly free, suddenly solitary, trawling the dog section of London’s animal shelters. He’d been drawn to the sad-eyed, floppy-eared spaniels and retrievers and labs and collies - all the type of dogs that would go insane cooped up in a London flat all hours of the day.
It had been a stupid exercise; he should have been focusing on himself, on building his connections, securing his career, doing whatever he needed to do to gain Taverner’s favour and approval now that he knew how easily she tossed aside her favourites.
He should have been enjoying having no commitments, being single - he should have gone out in the evening and allowed himself to be seduced, should have downloaded the apps and summoned an easy fuck for an evenings entertainment and not have to worry about managing their ego, or their emotions.
There were a thousand things he could have spent his time doing.
Instead he’d drunk, alone, and gotten a bit weepy reading the bios of shelter dogs left abandoned for too long, and tried not to psychoanalyse himself too much about why he was doing that, instead of a thousand other better things.
River rolled his barely open eyes.
“Noo,” he corrected, nuzzling closer against James’s shoulder, “this whole… Chieftain secondment, thing.”
Secondment? Highly paid salaried career with extensive bonuses, didn’t he mean?
“Better than Slough House,” Spider bit back venomously, wanting to remind River of their respective places - and how much Spider towered above him.
But the idiot didn’t respond appropriately. River opened his eyes properly then, looking at Spider softly, almost sadly, he stroked the side of his face, and said “Yeah,” soothingly, sickeningly sympathetically.
“She wouldn’t do that. You’re too useful for her to get rid of like that.” What was he going on about? Taverner? If so, River was misguided. His usefulness to Taverner had dried up; she’d made that clear after the whole debacle with the Russians, when she’d visited him in hospital to lay out his options. Slough House, or quit.
But Spider would never go to Slough House and River would never look at him with such repugnant pity at the thought of him ending up there.
Uncomfortable, Spider reached for more familiar ground - he snorted derisively, and sneered across at his bed made who was still fucking stroking him, and tried not to think of how nice it felt.
“Well. I earn far more than you ever will, Cartwright.”
River laughed, mock-offended.
“I’m a public servant!” He insisted, as though that somehow made him the honourable, noble one. “Besides, I know you're not just in it for the money. What happened to the ‘two bright lights of the intelligence service,’ eh?” River asked teasingly.
“…what?” Spider blinked. How did River know about that? Those thoughts about their future certainly wasn’t something Cartwright was ever privy to, and that possibility was long gone - River was no bright light but a catastrophic meteorite, plummeting into disaster and causing craters of damage in his wake.
River was watching him slyly, looking smug at having gained this secret knowledge from him.
“C’mon you don’t think you hid your vows that well, did you? I promise I only read the first page.”
“Vows?”
“I didn’t realise you were writing your own! I thought it was cute, since we’re basically just eloping.” River said teasingly, still casually groping him.
“…eloping?” Spider mirrored yet again, not capable of summoning up anything much more clever, for how his brain was still glitching and faltering hearing the casual way River was tossing out those insane words.
River smiled at him, looking slightly concerned. “Yeah? You feeling alright, love? We had this conversation, remember? Neither of us want our mums there - and the O.B… well, he’d probably just get confused.” Rivers' expression turned sad, and he glanced away into the middle distance for a moment as his smile flattened. But he afforded a valiant effort to juttering it back to life, and he bumped against Spider's shoulder playfully as he pushed himself up to a seated position.
“And who knows? Everything goes well with the Slow Horses,” he said, using the name the way most people do, slightly insultingly, a bit sadly, like something foul squished on the bottom of a nice pair of loafers, “Maybe Taverner will have calmed down enough to walk you down the aisle, eh?” River kissed his cheek, and then was leaping out of bed - swallowing his pill, his body coming to life as he stretched and yawned and cracked his back, sauntering bare-bottomed across the room to Spider’s second wardrobe, which was supposed to contain his out-of season suit rotation, and mementos of a life best forgotten.
Instead, it was crammed with knit-wear and polos and corduroy and identical black shirts. It was poorly organised, things shoved in almost frantically, at all possible angles, discarded mounds of uncertain origin making textile hills on the floor of the wardrobe.
From his bed, Spider watched River sort through what were undeniably his clothes, before selecting some jeans and a dark t-shirt, yanking them both onto his body before he disappeared into the bathroom to clean his teeth.
“You know,” River began, before he’d quite finished, spitting out his toothpaste and running the tap, “I was actually quite impressed by Guy managing to get into The Park. Out of all of them, she seems the only one with any potential. I’d happily work with her again, once we clear Duffy and his fucking dogs out, who knows, maybe they’ll be hiring? We could put in a good word for her, least you could do after that whole thing with - what was his name? Bike chase guy?”
“Harper?” Spider responded without thinking, River’s casual disregard for a man that Spider didn’t much care about, but River was supposed to, frying his brain. River wasn’t behaving at all like he was supposed to.
“Yeah, him. Not your fault, really, but I think there are still some pretty hard feelings there, love.” River continued casually as he emerged from the bathroom, chucking his daily items into a backpack he fished out from the basket. Swinging it over his shoulder, he approached the bed again, on Spider’s side, kneeling down so that he could cradle Spider’s head in his hands, and kiss him tenderly, gently. Like he loved him.
“I’ve gotta go see Taverner before all this grey books stuff kicks off. But tonight, when Tearney’s waving the white flag and I've ground Duffy into paste somewhere, you and I? We’re gonna celebrate.” River promised. His eyes were sharp, teasing, a strange, flat cruelness to them, a seductive smirk spreading across his face, the promise of exactly how they’d be celebrating very clear. As if this was a shared victory - as if they were in it together, rather than Spider towering over him, River pathetic in defeat.
River just grinned at his silence. He bumped their foreheads together gently, and closed his eyes, looking utterly peaceful for half a moment.
“I love you,” he said, like he meant it, like it was true, like he said it all the time. He kissed him on the cheek, and then was gone, the sound of his keys rattling and the door slamming in his wake.
Spider blinked around his room, still in shock. Something beeped from his bedside table, and he reached instinctively for the offending object.
His phone told him yet more impossible things. The date was the same. As though it was somehow possible the day he’d already lived had been reset, and started over again just before nine o’clock.
The other impossible thing was his lock screen. Him and River, beaming up at the camera, gooey and sentimental and disgustingly in love, Spider’s eyes scrunched into a laughing smile, River pressing a kiss to the side of his face, hands raised performatively for the camera, rings glinting off their fourth fingers.
Spider’s eyes drifted again to his bedside table, and reached for another offending object.
An engagement ring. Like the one in the photo. His engagement ring.
He blinked down at it; trying to make sense of all the impossible things, and coming up short.
The ring slipped onto his finger perfectly.
It was beautiful. Like it had been made for him; chosen by someone who knew him better than anyone.
But, that was all impossible. Of all the things Spider had earned for himself, all he'd built - that kind of love, that kind of intimate, vulnerable knowing from another wasn't one of them.
He didn't deserve this.
Wether this was a punishment or a reward or a second chance or some brain-addled coma dream, he didn't deserve any of this.
So what the fuck was he supposed to do now that he had it all?