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Endeavour didn’t plan on getting drunk.
Well, not too drunk, anyways. A slight buzz, perhaps, to carry him through the stormy night, but not drunk. And yet, here he was, well into his seventh glass of scotch, trying his best not to throw up.
In an attempt to focus on something other than being sick on his pajamas, Endeavour tried to count the raindrops pattering against his window. "One, twothreefour." He used to play the same game with his Mother when he was younger. "Nineten, eleven, twelvethirteenfourteen." It wasn’t until he was older that he’d realized it was supposed to be impossible. "Nineteentwenty, twenty-one." All the same, he found the impossibility of it soothing. Or, at least, he usually did.
Nothing that night was working as it was supposed to. Endeavour's thoughts turned immediately to his conversation with Thursday earlier that afternoon. “Go home,” he’d said. “Put your best record on. Loud as it’ll play. And with every note, you remember…that’s something the darkness couldn’t take from you.”
Well, Endeavour had attempted to follow Thursday's orders. The record he currently had on was indeed playing loudly. It rather hurt his head, actually. It was some horrible pop record his great aunt had given him for Christmas the year before. The music was extremely grating, filled with choruses of “yeah yeah yeahs” and guitar riffs.
Of course, it had not been his first choice. When he’d arrived home earlier that night, he’d dropped his things on the floor and moved straight for the record player. With increasingly shaking fingers, he’d placed the needle on one record after another, hoping that perhaps one of them would soothe his thoughts as they had in the past. Madame Butterfly. Tosca. Turandot. But, just like counting the raindrops, music hadn't worked. None of it had.
With a sigh, Endeavour knocked back another glass, and wondered despairingly why Puccini had failed him. Oh, using music to forget the events of the past week was so much easier said than done - hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop thinking about Evelyn Balfour, Grace Madison, Ben Nimmo, Daniel Cronyn. All of them dead. Dead because someone had thought it amusing to watch him go about solving their murders.
Endeavour groaned and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. His mind was like a broken projector—thoughts skipping constantly back to the same memories. And to make matters worse, his side was hurting again.
He tried to think of something else to distract him from those thoughts, and decided to pouring himself another glass of scotch. He was disappointed to find that it was the last drops of the bottle. He sipped it slowly, and tried to pay attention to the lyrics of the record. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves you..." He was (thankfully) distracted from this exercise by what appeared to be a pounding at the front door.
He got up slowly from where he sat and ambled over to door, curious as to who could be calling at this time of night. When he opened it though, the only sign of life was a tabby cat across the street, doing its best to dodge the raindrops. His stoop, however, was empty. He closed the door with a sigh. Perhaps he had mistaken the incessant drumming coming from his record player for knocking. It was very likely.
It wasn’t until a short interval between songs (if you could really even call them songs) that Endeavour heard the knocking again, followed by someone calling his name. At first, he decided to let it go—he didn’t really feel like playing ding-dong-ditch at the moment—but whoever was there this time was very persistent and, a few moments later, there was another round of heavy pounding the door. It rather felt like they were pounding on his skull, but that very well may have been an effect the scotch. With a grimace, Endeavour finally eased himself up from the carpet (how he’d gotten there, he couldn’t quite remember) and shuffled to the door.
Endeavour really didn’t know who he had expected to see standing on the other side of the door, but Peter Jakes was definitely the last person on his list. And yet, there he was, dripping wet from the rain, smoking as usual. Jakes gave Endeavour a quick once-over before saying matter of factly, “Well fuck, you’re a mess.”
Endeavour could say the same for Jakes. He was completely soaked through, and looked a bit like a wet cat, with his bangs hanging limply in his eyes. This would have made Endeavour smile if it wasn’t for the fact that he felt he was going vomit any moment. “Hullo to you too, Jakes,” Endeavour finally managed, after a few steady breaths through the nose. “Wasn’t really expecting you.”
“That’s Sergeant Jakes to you, Morse,” he replied, cheery as ever, narrowing his eyebrows. Those eyebrows. Endeavour sighed. He couldn’t tell if Jakes was always angry, or if his eyebrows just made it look that way. “Anyways, I’m here to pick up my shirt,” Jakes added, taking one last drag on his cigarette before stamping it out.
“Your shirt?” Endeavour asked, feigning complete innocence. Ah, yes. The shirt. The shirt that was currently lying wrinkled somewhere in his bedroom, covered with blood.
“Yes, my shirt. The one I told you not to mess up, remember?” Jakes said, casually pushing past Endeavour like he was entering a crime scene. Endeavour huffed, rather annoyed, but closed the door quickly behind him and followed Jakes down the hallway. He was very eager to find the shirt and hide it before Jakes saw what he’d done to it.
Jakes, with his long, spindly, stupid legs, had already made it to the bedroom by the time Endeavour caught up, and was surveying it with thinly veiled disapproval. Endeavour noticed that his eyes lingered on the records strewn across the floor and the empty bottles of scotch on the bedside table. Endeavour opened his mouth to make some sort of excuse for the mess, but Jakes spoke first, asking rather abruptly, “So, you like to the Beatles?”
Endeavour closed his mouth and then opened it again, floundering. What did the Beatles have to do with any of this? "Ah, no, not particularly."
“Oh. Well,” Jakes said, obviously just as confused as Endeavour felt. “Then why are you listening to them?” He motioned to the record player, which was currently churning out some sort of pop anthem about love. Endeavour shuddered.
“Am I listening to the Beatles?”
“Yes,” Jakes said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s ‘Can’t Buy Me Love.’”
“Oh,” was all Endeavour had to say. Was it really? He was a bit disappointed, as he had always expected the Beatles to sound much better than this.
“You’re actually hopeless, you know that, right?” Jakes said, covering his face with one hand. For a moment, Endeavour thought Jakes was actually smiling, but when Jakes looked back up his face was all pinched up again, like he’d just been sucking on a dozen lemons. Nope, he’d definitely imagined the smile.
“So, about that shirt?”
“I don’t have it,” Endeavour answered quickly. Perhaps too quickly—Jakes gave him a disbelieving look. “It’s—ah—at the cleaners. I told you I’d take care of it, didn’t I? I always keep my word.” He was rambling a bit, but he was hoping that it would buy him time to locate the shirt. If only he’d just paid a bit more attention to wear he’d shed his clothing that night…
After a quick once-over of the room, he finally spotted it lying crumpled on his comforter, beneath last Sunday’s crossword. Bingo. “I—I think I should have it back for you by the end of the week,” he said, inching towards it in what he hoped was a surreptitious fashion.
“Really?” Jakes said, following Endeavour’s gaze and movement. “What’s that then?”
“Well, yes, that’s just my spare—“ he began, trying, quite unsuccessfully, to hide the stained shirt from Jakes behind his back. But Jakes, not weighed down by alcohol as Endeavour was, snatched it right from his hands.
“I got this for Christmas last year, you know. From my kid sister. She spent a three month's pay on the monogrammed initials,” he said, pointing to the inside of the collar, where the letters ‘PFJ’ were embroidered in green. Endeavour wondered what the ‘F’ stood for. “But I’m sure that means nothing to you, fancy Oxford boy.” Immediately, a few wonderfully descriptive ‘F’ words came to mind, but he wasn’t about to say them to Jakes’s face.
Instead, Endeavour just sighed. “I’ll get it dry-cleaned or something.”
“Nah, just needs a bit of ironing,” Jakes said, holding the shirt out before him, giving it a quick once-over. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem too bothered by the state of the shirt, but then his eyes fell on the red stain. His eyes darkened. “Is this blood?”
Endeavour’s heart sank. He didn’t like Jakes that much, but he really did feel bad about the shirt. Even moreso, now he knew his sister had paid for it. “Yes, it’s blood. But it’s from today, so it’ll come out, I’m sure.”
“From today?”
“Yes, I’ll just go over to the cleaners now—“ Endeavour said, fumbling for his coat, disregarding the fact that it was eleven at night and that the cleaners would definitely not be open. He swayed, feeling suddenly dizzy. He steadied himself for a moment, grabbing ahold of his desk chair.
“I don’t want you to dry clean it, Morse,” Jakes said, crumpling the shirt up in his hands.
“Alright, fine. I’ll get you a new one.” He let his coat drop to the floor, too tired to hang it up. “What size are you? I’m sure I can pick one up tomorrow before work or something—“
“Morse, it’s fine, I—“
“No, really, I’ll get you a new—“
“Morse, just shut up,” Jakes interrupted, his voice a much louder than Endeavour thought necessary.
Endeavour looked down at his feet, embarrassed. The record (the damned horrible record!) chose that moment to come to a stop, filling the room with a terribly awkward silence. “I really am sorry,” he finally mumbled.
Jakes laughed. He actually laughed. Granted, it was a rather hysterical laugh, but, well, at least he wasn’t cursing at him. “I don’t care about my shirt, Morse.” Another surprise. “Honestly, you’re acting like an idiot.” Not so surprising. “I mean, Christ, you’re clearly still hurt and yet, here you are, absolutely drunk out of your skull, when you should be resting. I mean, normally I’m all for getting hammered but not when you just got knifed by a serial killer.”
Endeavour just blinked at him. Was he joking? Judging by the severe downturn of his eyebrows, he was not. This was so shocking that the only thing Endeavour could think to say was, “I’m not drunk.”
“Of course not,” Jakes replied with a sigh. He didn’t sound very convinced. Endeavour responded, very maturely, by sitting down in his desk chair with a huff, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Look, I'm not here to baby you,” Jakes began again, looking down at his feet, searching for the right words, “It’s just that I’ve known men on the force, good men, who were broken by a lot less, Morse. You need to take care of yourself right now, that’s all.” Jakes looked up at him with what almost looked like, if Endeavour didn’t know any better, concern. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, longer than Endeavour was comfortable with.
However, Jakes was the first to break it, his eyes falling to Endeavour’s shirt. A crease formed between his eyebrows. “Christ almighty.”
“What—what are you doing?” Endeavour asked, his voice rising a few octaves as Jakes crouched down beside him and began fumbling with his shirt.
“What does it look like I’m doing?,” Jakes muttered, tugging at the hem of his pajama top, which Endeavour noticed for the first time was soaked through with blood. No wonder his side was hurting so much. “Now take your shirt off so I can see what we’re dealing with.”
Endeavour gave him look of pure horror. Jakes just rolled his eyes and told him to shut up and do as he was told.
Under normal circumstances, Endeavour wouldn’t have obeyed such a command, but seeing as he was rather worried about all the blood, he did do as he was told (though he did it with lots of huffing and lip-pursing). However, he found it to be extremely difficult to get his shirt off, as his fingers were slow from all the alcohol. After a few moments of watching him fumble, Jakes simply swatted his hands away and did it himself. Jakes had extremely nimble fingers—something Endeavour had never noticed before.
It took Jakes only a few seconds to take his shirt off, fold it neatly, and place it on the desk. Endeavour felt a rather awkward sitting shirtless in front of Jakes—in front of anyone, really. But Jakes hardly seemed to notice or care, though he did cast a quick glance at Endeavour's bare torso before focusing on the bandage. Probably so that he could tell the lads back at the station tomorrow how horribly scrawny he was. Endeavour reddened. How embarrassing.
He was brought from this reverie by the touch of Jakes’s fingers on his abdomen, which were still cold from being out in the rain. They just barely grazed his skin, but Endeavour felt goose bumps up and down his body.
While Endeavour tried to regain his composure, Jakes expertly peeled back the bloodied bandage. It stung a little - some of the blood had dried and was stuck to his skin, making it difficult to remove the dressings. When Jakes could finally see what was underneath, he sucked air in through his teeth.
“What’s the damage?”
“Not looking too hot, Morse. Where’d you put the antiseptic and bandages DeBryn gave you?”
Morse started to stand to get them but Jakes sat him back down on the chair with a strong hand. Endeavour sighed, but gave in. Standing made his head swim, anyways. “Bathroom. Medicine cabinet. Top left.”
While Jakes rifled through his medicine cabinet, Endeavour wondered why he was suddenly being so nice to him. Maybe he wanted to snoop around his bathroom to find more things to make fun of him for. Maybe the other officers had put him up to it. Oh, god, work the next day was going to be hell. Endeavour sighed and wished he still had a bit of scotch left.
A few moments later Jakes reappeared and Endeavour no longer had time to think of work-related conspiracy theories. The only thing he could focus on was how much his side hurt - whatever Jakes was doing stung badly. He was probably doing it on purpose. After a particularly painful prod, Endeavour groaned and asked sarcastically, “So what, are you suddenly a licensed doctor now?”
“What the hell to you think?” Jakes grumbled, prodding him harder. Endeavour flinched. “Sorry we can’t all afford to go to fancy schools like you.”
Endeavour bit his bottom lip, feeling a bit guilty. “Sorry.”
Jakes worked in silence for a few more minutes. “My uncle was a medic in the war,” he offered. It took Endeavour a moment to realize he was picking up where their conversation had left off. “Used to give me lessons when I was a kid. I learned a thing or two. Came in handy a few times on the job, too. Sometimes the ambulance isn’t fast enough, you know?”
Endeavour nodded. He knew.
The work Jakes was doing still hurt, but Endeavour felt he owed it to him to try acting like a mature adult. He only let out a moan of pain every few minutes. Just when he was beginning to get used to the pain, though, Jakes patted down the new bandage, and smiled (well, it was more of a smirk) up at him. “All done. Almost good as new.”
"Thanks. Looks a lot better."
Jakes ran his fingers over the end of the bandage. Endeavour noticed they weren't as cold anymore. It felt rather nice, actually, so he didn't move.
“Are you alright?” Jakes said suddenly, so soft Endeavour almost thought he’d imagined it.
Endeavour cleared his throat before responding, “Yes, I think I’ll be fine for tonight. I’ll have DeBryn take a look at it tomorrow—“
“You know that’s not what I meant, Morse.” Jakes looked up at him. There it was, that stupid look again. Concern.
Endeavour’s face felt very hot and his eyes stung. Oh god, he knew that feeling and what it fortold. He looked away, at anything but Jakes, not feeling much like breaking down into a sniveling mess in front of him.
Jakes—stupid, stupid, suddenly nice Jakes—ignored Endeavour's embarrassment and grabbed his hand. He gave it short a squeeze. Endeavour looked down at their hands, awkwardly entwined, and then up at Jakes. He squeezed back. Then, before he knew what was happening, Jakes was kissing him.
He couldn’t tell if this was just another one of Jakes’s jokes that he didn’t understand. He imagined it was. But his mouth was warm, and he tasted like peppermint and cigarettes, so Endeavour kissed him back.
Kissing Jakes was something Endeavour would have never imagined himself doing—it was both wonderful and terrible at the same time. Jakes's long, stupid, beautiful fingers grazed Endeavour’s jaw and neck, while his mouth pushed up against his own. Endeavour wanted to touch him back, to reach out and grasp Jakes's hair with his trembling fingers. He decided it would be safer to tightly grip the chair instead.
When Jakes finally pulled back, Endeavour gasped, trying to catch his breath. In between breaths, he managed to say, “I—I thought you hated me.”
Jakes chuckled. “It’s nothing personal,” he mumbled into his neck. “You’re a pretty Oxford boy—I hate you on principle.” He looked up at Endeavour with a smirk before closing the distance between them once again.
This time, Endeavour kissed him more deeply, and felt a warmth wash over him. Letting go of the chair, he brought a hand up to touch Jakes's hair. It was still damp from the rain, and let out a soft moan. Endeavour curled his fingers around it and pulled Jakes closer. He could feel him smiling against his lips. Endeavour smiled too, and kissed the corner of his mouth.
For the first time in a long time, he no longer felt weighed down. Not by a case, not by the past, not by anything. Maybe this was what he needed in his life. Stab Wounds. The Beatles. Peter Jakes. It was revolutionary, really. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.
Endeavour stood up unsteadily and manuevered Jakes in the direction of his bed. He ran his mouth down his jaw, his neck. Jakes let himself be moved, and even turned them around at the last minute to push Endeavour gently onto the bed. They looked at each other, Endeavour below and Jakes above, and for a moment, everything in the world felt as it should. Endeavour leaned forwards for another kiss, but, for some reason, Jakes just kissed the tip of his nose and said, "Sorry, Morse."
Endeavour let out a frustrated moan. And just as things were getting good, too. “I’d love to stay, but you really shouldn’t be overexerting yourself. Plus, you're drunk.”
“Not drunk,” Endeavour huffed.
“Don’t be an ass.” Jakes leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips once more before getting off the bed. He pulled the bed covers up to Endeavour’s chin and brushed his bangs out of his face. “Take the next few days off and get some rest. Alright?”
Endeavour nodded grumpily, trying not to look too exhausted, even though he was.
“You’re going to need it," Jakes said, putting on his coat, "because as I recall you never finished that all paperwork I gave you.”
“Mmm.” His eyelids were already beginning to droop.
“Hundreds of things to be filed. Thousands, maybe." Jakes paused at the front door, doorknob in hand. Endeavour hoped it had stopped raining. "It’s going to be very horrible and boring so I expect you in the office at 7:00am sharp on Monday. Is that clear?”
"Yes, sir." He attemted a salute, but his hand-eye coordination was sub-par at the moment. Jakes just shook his head and closed the door behind him.
It wasn't until he was gone that Endeavour noticed the damned shirt, the shirt Jakes had come all this way for, lying crumbled on the carpet. "Hey! Wait!" Endeavour called, hoping his voice would carry. At first, he thought he hadn't been heard, but Jakes reappeared after a moment, eyebrows raised in question. "Um, well, you forgot your shirt," Endeavour said lamely.
"Oh, I'll come back for it later," Jakes said, moving once again to leave. For the first time that night, Endeavour began to think Jakes hadn't come for the shirt at all.
"Um," Endeavour started, before Jakes could close the door. "I just wanted to say...thanks. About tonight. So, um, thank you, Peter."
Jakes bit back a smile, but not before Endeavour saw it. “That’s Sergeant Jakes to you. Now, go to sleep, Endeavour.”