Work Text:
It becomes increasingly obvious, as more and more evidence comes to light, that one of them is going to have to go down to London to see this case through. And of course it makes sense that it should be Ruth. Matt’s the one who says it, but he didn’t need to, they all know. She’s got all the connections, knows people in the Met still, knows how everything works there. Someone has to go, and there’s literally no reason it wouldn’t be her.
Matt still says it, like he knows she doesn’t want to.
And Ruth shrugs, and rolls her eyes, and swings by her house to pick up a couple of days’ clothes on her way to Sumburgh. She locks everything up behind her, and even remembers to text Alan to tell him she’ll be gone for a bit.
She doesn’t have a drink as the plane takes off, the sparkling sea and the isles dwindling beneath her, because she’s working, damn it, but she wants one.
She doesn’t know how to deal with this feeling, still. Doesn’t know why it’s so unavoidable. It’s only likely to be a few days, nothing about this is remotely a big deal. But she remembers the last time she left, after she and Tosh wrapped up that first case together, when she was heading back to her life and her flat and her job. She remembers the weird, hollow tug in her gut telling her she was going the wrong way. London had never been the wrong way before that, not once in her life since she was eighteen-and-two-days and leaning on the railing of a ferry with the wind in her hair and the isles fading into the distance behind her.
Things would feel ok if Tosh was here. She could distract herself talking about the case, or Tosh would have said something to make her laugh, because Tosh has got really appallingly good at noticing when Ruth needs a laugh, recently.
If Tosh was here, Ruth would have an anchor, something solid telling her she was coming back.
The plane takes her to Heathrow, not direct, of course, but with a stop in Aberdeen that’s just long enough to be annoying and not long enough to have lunch. All of London sprawled beneath as they come in to land and all she feels is a vague sense of unease and irritation. She wants to laugh at how horrified her younger self would be.
London, when she gets there, is crowded. She doesn’t remember it feeling this crowded before, though she doesn’t think anything has actually changed in the time since she moved. It’s like she can’t take a full breath in.
It’s nice to see some of her old colleagues. She’s not really keeping in touch with anyone, it just feels like more effort than its worth, mostly. But it’s good to say hello, all the same. It feels very strange, being back in the same rooms she used to work in all the time, feeling the big machinery of the Met working all around her. She thought she missed some of the - well, efficiency feels like too strong a word, but the speed of things here. She thought she did.
She texts Tosh. The first one is an update about the case, but the next three are just chat and really aren’t necessary when they’re both working. She needs to get her head in the game.
It’s a very long day by the time she calls it a night, and she almost gets on the tube going the wrong way, on autopilot back to the flat that’s no longer hers. She finally makes it to the hotel so tired that all she can do is fall into bed, no time for it to feel weird that she’s in a hotel in London. It’s one of the really samey, anonymous ones anyway - could be anywhere in the world.
It becomes apparent, the next morning, that she’s going to need to be here longer than a couple of days. She didn’t bring enough clothes for this, and she resents that she’s going to have to buy more.
She does get into the swing of things though - there’s not a choice really. There’s a job needs doing, and she’s here to do it. She texts Tosh and it isn’t the same as talking to her but it’s nice having her on the end of the phone.
On the third night, Ruth dreams. It’s a little bit of the isles. A little bit of London. A little of Tosh, who kisses her soundly before vanishing to accomplish something important elsewhere. If Ruth’s subconscious has to be quite this unsubtle, at the very least, she thinks, when she wakes feeling distinctly unsettled, it could have kept Tosh with her a bit longer, got to some of the good stuff.
London feels closed-in the next day. The air is heavy and the clouds are low, almost like they could be touching the rooftops. The buildings loom on every side of Ruth, oppressive, somehow. She wants to go and stand by the river where the sky opens up, and take a deep breath and watch the water, fast and busy and alive as the rest of the city. But there’s not time for that, really.
So she loses herself in the work. That at least comes easily to her. It takes a couple of weeks, in the end, and the case is messy and grim but that does make it absorbing - the longer she’s there, the more of her headspace it takes up. She bounces thoughts off her colleagues, the way she always has, but there’s no one who catches what she’s throwing quite the way Tosh does. No one who challenges her that same way, and rolls their eyes when she’s being too abrasive but gets it anyway. No one who adds to her thoughts the way she adds to theirs, building on each other’s brainwaves, up and up until they get there together. No one who understands her like Tosh does.
When they finally do wrap up, or at least, come to the end of the part that Ruth is needed for, her colleagues ask her to go for a drink with them, and she does. She doesn’t quite know why. But she has a good time, it’s nice to let her hair down a bit after the intensity of the last little while, and she’s sick to death of the inside of her bland hotel room. It wasn’t all bad, this job when she had it, there’s a reason she stayed in it as long as she did, even as she got increasingly less enamoured of the Met as a whole.
She stumbles back in late, after a couple more than she had intended, collapses into bed and is out like a light. She dreams, again, of Tosh, vivid this time - first at Kings Cross, but not Kings Cross as it is now, all shiny and bright and done up for the tourists. Kings Cross as it was, with all its dirty brick walls, and narrow spaces with far too many people jostling each other through them, and cafes that never seemed to be in the same place twice. Kings Cross that felt grimy and real and like London the moment you stepped off the train. Tosh is there, waiting, when Ruth steps off the train, smelling like sea-salt air amid the chaos of the city.
Then, somehow, they’re at Ruth’s old flat. She’d forgotten how small the living room was - she’d never had that much stuff but it still felt crammed into the corners. Tosh stands amongst all the detritus of Ruth’s life, takes her by the shoulders, and kisses her - in this dream, there’s a kiss, and then there’s more too, Ruth’s dream self so sure she can conjure up the feeling of Tosh’s body pressed up against hers, of Tosh’s hands on her bare skin. Of the way that Tosh would touch her, and the way her voice would sound when it was breathless and thick with desire.
She wakes with the nondescript hotel bedsheets tangled about her legs, and a deep, insistent ache between her thighs. She knows she needs to get up and shower - her mouth tastes furry and unpleasant, and her head is sore - but she’s so painfully aware of her own slick heat, and she can’t help slipping her fingers down and into it.
It doesn’t take long - she’s swollen and hot and she doesn’t hold back, rubbing quick circles over her clit until her body tenses and convulses, with a sobbing gasp and a hard, quick pulse of pleasure through her core. She’s not not thinking of Tosh when she comes.
Panting for breath and sticky with sweat, Ruth lies looking at the blank hotel room ceiling, feeling vaguely unsatisfied but unable to find the will to try again.
Instead, she finally galvanises herself to get up and into a fairly reasonable state, and then to the nearest decent coffee place she’s managed to locate during her stay. She goes into work because they still need her for the final wrap-up, and by the time she gets there the hangover has dulled to a mild headache and a bit of background nausea.
She’s not in any way prepared when Thomas calls her into his office that afternoon and asks her to stay.
“You’re thinking of someone else,” she says, when he tells her he missed working with her. He laughs, tells her she’s good. Really good. (“Oh, I know,” she replies, with a grin.)
And then he asks her straight out if she feels wasted up there. Something about her potential. (“They’ll never promote me. Not with my mouth.” She trots it out like she has before but he makes a face that says he doesn’t agree.)
She doesn’t answer, not right then. The “no” sits on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t quite say it. He tells her to think about it, and she leaves his office with static buzzing in her ears.
She meant to book onto the flight the next day, only she hasn’t yet, and in the end she doesn’t. After a tasteless dinner and dreamless sleep, she wakes up in her bland hotel room again, pulls on her least smart work trousers while wishing they were jeans, and her good solid boots, and gets on the tube.
Camden isn’t the same now, as it was in 1994. Not by a long shot. She used to complain even when she lived here still, about the tourists and the prices and all the things a good Londoner does. She’s not here to buy £15 crispy gnocchi bullshit and take aesthetic photos with a queue of wannabe influencers. But the pavements here still remember the sound of her ratty old boots back then, fresh off the ferry (and the long, long bus rides when she couldn’t afford the train), via Aberdeen and Edinburgh and Newcastle and Durham and whatnot, going and going until she got here. London was always the goal, and Camden Town had seemed the heart of it to her wide eighteen-year-old eyes.
Ruth wanders, and remembers. The heart of this huge, messy, living city that took her in in ways that she had never known before. Nowhere had ever hurt her in the ways it did either, but even those seemed somehow worth it for the feeling, here, that she could breathe.
“You’re going home,” Thomas had said to her, that day when all the mess with Ellen Quinn began. But it wasn’t - Shetland may have been home-where-you-come-from, but London was home-where-you-go-home-to from the day her boots touched the filthy ground at Victoria Coach Station and she had to find a hostel in the pouring rain using a soggy A-Z that she’d paid too much for at a corner shop. It was home then, and home for a long time after.
She dodges a group of kids, loitering and smoking, the cuffs of their jeans dragging on the damp pavement and their laughter ringing out above the general traffic-and-people noise, because some things don’t change, despite all the rest. There’s a ghost of her own self, leaning against that same wall, laughing that same laugh - so clear, so vibrant that Ruth can feel the scratch of brick against her back and the papery roll between her fingertips, despite the lifetime in between them.
Eventually, in no great rush, her feet find their way to the canal, where things are cleaner than they should be. She walks along the towpath until she’s away from the worst of the crowds, and she pulls out her phone and takes a photo of some pigeons fighting over a half-eaten crisp. She sends it to Tosh with the caption, majestic London wildlife.
Tosh texts back so quick it’s almost like she was waiting by her phone. Call David Attenborough. And then, a moment later, I saw orcas from the car this morning.
Ruth finds herself smiling. Sends back, bet they were smaller than the rat I saw last night. She thinks about Tosh in her car, driving along those winding, deserted roads by the sea with the sky so big above her. Thinks about the empty seat next to her where she’s sat so often, chatting and laughing like they were the only two people in the world.
She doesn't go to all the places in London she’s ever loved - that would take too long, be too much for this one day. She’d have to go over every inch of this enormous city, somehow, find every version of herself. It’s an unimaginable task, and it’s pleasing somehow to realise that - how very much of herself there is here. How many roads and pubs and cafes and views and alleyways and corners and everything else are wound through her memory, through her sense of self. How much of herself is here, inextricably, and always will be.
So she doesn't go to all of those places, but she goes to some - a particular bench on a hill, two very different bridges at two very different parts of the river, a cafe where the owner still recognises her and the egg and chips are just as good as they’ve always been. Tosh would like it too, she’s sure.
And that night she goes back to the hotel, packs up the last of her stuff, sleeps more deeply than she probably has any right to, and in the wee early hours of the morning, treats herself to a taxi to Heathrow - the Met can afford it.
She rings Thomas from the terminal to tell him no, and ignores the disappointment in his voice.
And she leaves the city that was home on the first flight of the day, and she doesn’t want to look too closely at her feelings while she’s up there, so she doesn’t - she buys overpriced WiFi and catches up on her emails instead.
She texts Tosh from the layover at Aberdeen, just to let her know she’ll be back at work tomorrow, and when she finally does arrive at Sumburgh, Tosh is standing there waiting for her. Something inside Ruth, in the very centre of her chest, immediately and without conscious thought, relaxes at the sight.
“I’ve cancelled your taxi,” Tosh says, by way of greeting, and hands her a takeaway cup of coffee.
Ruth takes a long, deep breath - coffee and airport and the hint of outside air on the draught from the doors and Tosh. She tries to speak, to say hello, but it catches in her throat and something she won’t, she can’t, look at yet threatens to overwhelm her. She sips the coffee, still hot enough to burn her tongue, and grounds herself in the sting of it.
Tosh glances at her sideways then, but doesn’t ask anything, which Ruth is grateful for. They head out to Tosh’s car, load Ruth’s suitcase into the boot, and then Tosh starts to drive them north.
The silence between them isn’t uncomfortable, as Ruth sits here next to Tosh, in Tosh’s car, like she’s done a hundred times before. She looks out the window, watches the rolling landscape stretch out on every side of her, land and sea and sky. And after a bit, she realises that Tosh is… not waiting for her to talk exactly, that would imply that there was some expectation, some pressure on her and she feels none. Tosh, not two feet away in the confines of the car, solid and real and here with her, is giving her space. Something still knotted up in Ruth’s chest loosens, just a little.
“Where to?” Tosh does ask eventually, keeping her tone light, as they approach the place where they’d need to turn one way for Lerwick or the other for Brindister.
“Actually,” Ruth says, without quite knowing she’s going to, “I’ve got a better idea. You free this afternoon?”
Tosh glances her way with a ready grin. “I’m all yours.”
Ruth won’t read anything into it, but she can’t help the flutter of warmth that pools in her belly.
So Tosh keeps driving, and Ruth directs her. They stop at a corner shop where Ruth buys a six-pack of beer, not quite the cheapest watered-down piss she used to drink back in the day, but nothing too fancy either. Then they keep going, until the roads get narrower and windier, and eventually there’s a stopping place where they leave the car and Ruth leads the way on foot, up and up, between hills and rocks and thick, tussocky grass. It’s not far, but it’s sharply uphill most of the way.
The view when they get there is lovely, of course - the sharp, dark sea cliffs a little distance away and the long, empty view out over the water until it fades into cloud on the horizon. Beautiful and bleak and just a bit too remote for most of the tourists to ever make it up here.
Tosh, bless her, doesn’t comment on the unexpected scramble or ask where they’re going. She does stop a moment to catch her breath and stare out over the wide, wild landscape with a gleam in her eyes and a smile on her face that makes Ruth’s heart do something strange behind her ribs.
Ruth finds what she’s looking for not long later - a sheltered spot in the lee of a rocky outcrop, where the grass is relatively flat - and they settle there, sitting side by side on the ground with their backs to the stone, and the sea ahead. In the watery sunlight and without the strength of the wind, it’s almost warm.
She’s forgotten a bottle opener, but she pulls two beers out of her bag along with her house keys, using the edge of one key to flip the caps off both. She catches Tosh grinning at her when she hands her one, and raises an eyebrow in return.
“Used to come up here sometimes,” she says, after taking her first swig. The taste of the beer mixes with the smell of the salt breeze in a dizzying swirl of memories. “When I was, I don’t know, sixteen, seventeen? With Cal mostly, or sometimes the whole wee gang of us.”
Tosh laughs, and Ruth looks at her sideways. She’s staring out over the silver-tipped sea, the breeze blowing her fringe across her face and for a moment she seems to almost glow in the afternoon light. Ruth suddenly doesn’t know that she could look away if she tried.
“Bit different to where I grew up,” Tosh says, amusement laced through her voice. “The favoured underage drinking spot was a mucky kids’ playground behind a tower block.”
Ruth snorts. “Yeah, all right.” She takes another drink, watches Tosh do the same. “I’d have given anything to be within touching distance of Glasgow at that age. This all seemed so boring then. So small.”
“Teenagers think everything’s boring. I thought my whole town was a shithole.” Tosh pauses, wrinkles her nose, “Which, to be fair, it kind of was. I’m sure I’d have hated it here just as much though.” She gestures expansively, taking in the wide, wild expanse all about them.
Ruth can see so vividly in her mind’s eye for a moment, teenage Tosh - she’s seen photos, recalls the scraggly hair and ripped jeans and too much smudgy black eyeliner - lounging up here, all misplaced, mixed-up confidence and awkwardness and hormones and nonsense, just the way she and Cal used to be. The image makes her smile.
They finish their drinks in companionable silence, listening to the wind in the grass and the roll of the sea, and for a while Ruth lets her mind drift and she just breathes. She doesn’t know if it’s being back here that lets her feel like she can breathe properly again, or if it’s being with Tosh. She’s not going to look at that too hard just now.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Tosh says, eventually, quietly.
Ruth glances over at Tosh, but Tosh doesn’t look back at her. She just keeps gazing outwards, sitting there cross-legged, close enough that her knee is almost brushing against Ruth’s thigh, but not quite actually touching.
There’s a pause long enough that Ruth wonders if she should say something, before Tosh continues. “I was… I thought you might not want to come back.” Her tone is light, but carefully so. Ruth recognises it as something very deliberately controlled. “Not much to offer up here, is there, compared to London. I wondered if you might get there and remember why you left Shetland in the first place. If it’s still too boring for you here.” That last sentence is very clearly meant to be a joke, but it comes out just sounding awkward.
Tosh turns towards Ruth then, though not really meeting her eyes. She looks like she might be about to say something else, but she doesn’t, just kind of shrugs. Her cheeks are pink from the fresh air, and there’s a funny sort of half smile tugging at her mouth, her hair coming loose from its bun in all sorts of flyaway strands about her face.
Without a single other thought in her head, Ruth leans forward to close the gap between them, and kisses her.
Tosh’s lips are soft. Of course they’re soft, what else would they be, but they’re so soft. Ruth hears Tosh’s little indrawn breath of surprise, feels her freeze stock still, and knows an inevitable moment’s deep and horrible certainty that she’s misread everything all along, but then Tosh’s mouth relaxes against hers and she kisses her back. Tosh’s tentative fingers brush cool against the back of Ruth’s hand, and Ruth almost shivers in response.
The kiss lasts only a moment, Ruth can’t settle into it, for all that her heart is racing in her chest. She backs off, just the slightest bit, just far enough to see Tosh’s face. And there in Tosh’s eyes in the same gleam, looking back at her, that there was looking out at the sea. The same smile, playing at the edges of her mouth.
They’re there a moment, just looking, breathing, before Tosh’s hand closes over Ruth’s and it’s Tosh this time who leans back in, with a small, pleased sort of noise in the back of her throat that Ruth only just hears over the sound of the sea. Tosh kisses her like she’s been waiting for this. Like this is the culmination of a thousand imaginary kisses, like she’s thought about it just as much as Ruth has - more maybe. It’s wild and wonderful and filled with need, and she brings her free hand up to tangle in Ruth’s hair at the nape of her neck, and Ruth feels that right through her, down to her toes.
It’s as though, once they’ve started, they don’t either of them remember how to stop. Tosh’s mouth is intoxicating - her lips a little chapped but still so unbelievably soft, her tongue sliding against Ruth’s, her teeth scraping over Ruth’s bottom lip. Ruth wraps her arms around Tosh’s waist, under her jacket but over her jumper, pulling her in close, and Tosh makes that sound again, a little louder this time, pleased and wanting and slightly breathless, and Ruth knows beyond conscious thought that she wants to keep hearing exactly that, again and again and again.
She had dreamed about it, about Tosh in her arms, Tosh’s body pressed against hers. She thought she knew what it would be like, but the reality is so much more. Tosh is warm, even through her layers, her body fits against Ruth’s like it was always meant to be there, and Ruth loves the way her breathing quickens as the kiss deepens further still.
She doesn’t mean to topple them over, but she can’t help surging forward into the kiss, into Tosh, and Tosh leans backwards, her hands on Ruth bringing Ruth firmly along with her, and between them they eventually hit a point where Tosh loses her balance and falls back into the grass with Ruth on top of her. Tosh makes the loveliest little sound of surprise, and grins against Ruth’s mouth, and Ruth can’t help smiling back, and they’re both breathing hard, and Ruth feels a rush of pure exhilaration, before Tosh’s tongue slips back between her teeth and all her attention is drawn back into the kiss, into the physical sensation of Tosh’s mouth, Tosh’s body beneath her. She could lose herself in this, so easily. Her mind wonderfully blank - nothing here but Tosh, and the way her own body reacts when Tosh’s hands run down her back to grip her arse, even through her jeans.
She presses herself down against Tosh without thinking, leaning into her own bodyweight, Tosh’s thigh slipping between hers, and the building heat there throbs in response, urging her to push in closer, harder, more. She’s wet already, enough that she can feel it, enough that any remaining sense she might have had is driven from her head. She slides her hands inside Tosh’s jacket, under the hem of her jumper and shirt, up until she finds the warmth of bare skin. Tosh gasps, whether from cold or contact, and Ruth can feel goosebumps under her fingertips.
Her hand drifts upwards, up Tosh’s side, then wedges into the space between them until she can cup Tosh’s breast through her bra. Tosh arches into her touch, makes the most gorgeous little sound of need into Ruth’s mouth, her nipple hard beneath fingers and fabric.
And then it’s Ruth’s turn to gasp, as Tosh finds some kind of leverage and rolls them over, and her body covering Ruth’s is so delightful and so all-encompassing that Ruth wraps her leg around Tosh without thought, bringing Tosh’s thigh back between hers where it presses down against the seam of Ruth’s jeans, just deliciously there.
Tosh breaks the kiss to grin down at her, a little hint of something like triumph in her eyes. Ruth could stand to see more of that from her, honestly. It suits her.
Behind Tosh’s head, up above them, Ruth can see the big Shetland sky. It feels like it stretches on so much further up there, and it’s just as real, just as tangible, as Tosh is.
Tosh, who leans down, loose strands of her hair falling on either side of Ruth’s face, and kisses her again, as though she can’t help it, and her mouth is so soft, so good, that Ruth is immediately swept away by it again.
She knows, of course she knows, that they should stop. She’s sure Tosh knows it too. That even up here in the far reaches of remote nowhere, someone could catch them, and what would that look like. That’s a bit of gossip that’d spread all over the isles before she’d have time to get to her feet. She has a perfectly nice house, with a perfectly nice bed, and Tosh has a flat, and she’s not been in Tosh’s bed but she’s sure it’s perfectly nice too, and they could go back to either one of those.
She can’t stop. She doesn’t want to, not really, not with the sharp, fresh Shetland air all around them and the grass under her back and the sky above and Tosh’s body moving against hers, keeping her warm.
And, if she’s being totally honest, this isn’t the first time she’s rolled around in the grass up here. She’s not been caught before. Well, almost that once, but it’s highly unlikely, and she’s keeping an ear open for approaching feet. Or so she tells herself, as she tugs Tosh in closer, wriggling beneath her, seeking some kind of friction with the same single-minded intensity she’s putting into the kiss.
And Tosh matches her, kissing her like she’s the only thing on this earth that could possibly matter. Shifting in time with her movements, increasingly hard, quick, desperate. Little sounds, gasps, rolling into moans low in her throat. It’s dizzying and consuming and so fucking hot that Ruth could almost… that the heat between her legs is building, sharpening in that beautiful way that spurs her on, and on, rocking against Tosh, letting her body set the rhythm she so badly needs.
Tosh’s hands on her hips, on her waist, holding her down and moving away, and Ruth’s confused for a second before realising that Tosh has made just enough space between them to get her hands in and unfasten Ruth’s jeans.
And Ruth can’t help but arch up again as Tosh’s fingers move down her belly, into her underwear. Her touch is just a bit cold, but Ruth’s skin there is hot and the contrast adds an extra thrill of sensation that has her wanting more, now. Luckily, Tosh is on it, isn’t making her wait. and Ruth parts her legs further, giving Tosh access as best she can.
Tosh’s fingers on her are exactly the revelation she knew they’d be. Ruth knows she’s a mess, soaking wet and panting into Tosh’s kiss, leaning into her touch, made of need, shameless. She’s never really seen the point in holding back during sex, in hiding how much she’s enjoying herself, when she is.
She thinks, as Tosh’s fingers brush over her clit, of the hotel room in London and her dreams of Tosh. Of the kisses her subconscious conjured up that left her so desperate for just exactly this. Of the solid reality of the here and now, of her body reacting to Tosh’s touch in all the ways she knew it might, because it’s Tosh, because she’s here with that salt breeze and open sky and the sound of the sea, and, fuck, Tosh seems to know exactly what she needs. Of the pinpoint of this exact moment, where Tosh moves her hips against Ruth’s thigh and slides her fingertips over and around Ruth’s clit, pressing down, finding a rhythm to match Ruth’s ragged breathing, more, harder, and god it’s not going to take long like this.
Tosh stops kissing her, looks down into her eyes with a sort of wonder, watching as Ruth’s body takes over, her muscles tensing, passing the point of no return, nothing left to her but fierce, burning need and the intensity of Tosh’s gaze. She comes hard, her hips jerking up of their own accord, into Tosh’s hand, and with a sound like someone knocked every bit of air out of her, satisfaction pulsing through her body like a heartbeat.
She catches her breath, after, eyes closed against the daylight, a little dizzy with the everything of it all and the lingering rush of her orgasm.
Shifting against her, just slightly, Tosh makes the smallest sound, breathless. Ruth feels a smile spread across her face. Hazy still, she wraps her arms tight about Tosh, hands on her bum, pulling her in, encouraging her movements against Ruth’s thigh, bracing her foot against a rock to give Tosh a steadier purchase there. She murmurs things to Tosh, holding her there, half-incoherent still and all her thoughts filled with the exhilarating mix of her own pleasure and Tosh’s need. Tells her something like good and yes and come for me.
And Tosh does, and Ruth watches her face, the way Tosh watched hers barely a minute before - watches her eyes widen and then close, the lovely way her brow furrows. She sees Tosh’s mouth shape around her own name in that moment, and there’s such sheer, uncomplicated pleasure in it.
Afterward - with Tosh’s collapsed on top of her, loose-limbed and gloriously heavy, and Tosh’s fingers still inside her knickers, idly stroking feather-light swirls over her slick and sensitive skin - Ruth finds herself thinking about London again, in those very earliest days of being there. Things she hasn’t thought about so clearly in years. She thinks about standing on Hampstead Heath with the city laid out before her, green into grey, sweeping out forever and ever into the distance. About the scavenged posters she’d stuck over the mouldy walls of the bedsit she’d shared with a friend (who vanished one night with a boyfriend and half Ruth’s clothes) - how she’d loved that tiny parcel of space with all her heart. About that one pub where she drank her first Snakebite and Black while some band that probably went on to be famous played something mediocre that resonated deep in her soul, and everything had felt so huge and open in front of her.
She thinks about the first girl she kissed, there in that other world where all things were suddenly possible. And the long, long road between that girl, cheap beer on her breath and an intoxicating smile, to this one, here, solid in her arms, in Shetland.
She kisses, here and now, the side of Tosh’s head. “Come with me,” she says. “Next time.”
Tosh lifts her head enough to half look at her, stifling a yawn, and smiles. “What, and leave Sandy in charge up here while we go for a jaunt? Can’t see Matt going for it.”
A huff of laughter escapes Ruth. “They’re big boys, they’ll cope.”
“All right,” Tosh says, after a moment, during which she draws a slow, gentle circle round Ruth’s clit and Ruth shivers, just a little. “But I’m taking you to Glasgow too.”
Ruth raises an eyebrow, though she’s not sure Tosh can even see it from that angle. “I’ve been to Glasgow.”
“And I’ve been to London,” Tosh tells her, firmly. “But you’ve not been to my Glasgow.”
Any more than Tosh has been to Ruth’s London, seen things through Ruth’s eyes. Knows what it can feel like. “No, you’re right,” Ruth concedes, grinning, and trying not to press herself into Tosh’s touch. “I’ve not.”
It’s distracting now - enough so that Ruth is strongly considering going for another round, right here. She could really get used to Tosh touching her, just there, just like that. She’d like, if she stops to think about it, for that gentle fingertip to slide inside her. A second one too, ideally. She’d like to be filled with Tosh, to clench around her, let the fierce, nagging heat build up until it overtakes her again, lying here in this liminal space between all the versions of her life.
Of course, this is the moment that a spatter of rain lands on her forehead.
“Shit,” she says, with feeling. “Tosh…”
“I know, I know.” Tosh sounds equally disappointed and is already removing her hand from Ruth’s pants and scrambling to get up without squashing her. Ruth takes a fraction of a second to mourn the loss of sensation before sitting up and buttoning her jeans hastily.
Tosh looks flustered - beautifully so. Her hair has fallen almost entirely loose from its bun in wisps and tangles all about her face. Ruth wonders briefly what she must look like herself, as she clambers to her feet and brushes grass from her legs and bum, picks a twig from the back of her hair. She wonders if her own lips look as kiss-swollen as Tosh’s do. If she has the same slightly starry expression on her face.
She steps in, close again, she can’t help it, and kisses Tosh soundly, and Tosh doesn’t seem to object in the slightest, until the individual drops of rain start to turn into an insistent drizzle, and they break apart, breathless and Ruth finds herself laughing from sheer euphoria. Something has begun here. Something real, that she’s maybe been wanting for a long time.
Grinning right back at her, Tosh reaches out and takes her hand. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of here before we drown.”
They walk back to the car quickly, and mostly in silence - neither the rain misting around them nor the wind beginning to pick up makes for a leisurely stroll.
By the time they make it, the rain is bordering on torrential - Tosh has the hood of her jacket pulled as far forward as it’ll go, just her nose poking out, and Ruth’s hair is plastered to her cheeks. As they fall gratefully into the car, breathless and drenched, there’s another rainstorm that Ruth doesn’t think about. She won’t, not now. He won’t get in the way of this.
Instead, she thinks about the rain at Victoria, that day she arrived - thick and grey and the streets shining with oily puddles, and it was somehow refreshing all the same. Perhaps this rain also heralds a new phase of her life, just like that.
And next to her, Tosh flips her hood back and shakes water out of her fringe, and suddenly they’re both catching each others’ eyes and laughing, because Tosh looks just as much of a drowned rat as Ruth’s sure she does herself. Because they just had sex on the grass like teenagers, and Ruth’s body is still buzzing with it; still light and filled with that specific kind of euphoric energy that she loves so much.
“Brindister.” Tosh says, and Ruth nods, though it wasn’t a question, and she settles back into her seat as Tosh begins the drive.
“I thought about it,” she says, presently, looking out past the windscreen wipers at the green and the hills and the wide, wild grey sky, and the long ribbon of road winding away in front of them. “Staying in London. My DCI there asked me to. Made me a pretty decent offer.” She glances at Tosh sideways, without turning her head.
Tosh nods, doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “Why didn’t you?”
“Missed the bright lights of Lerwick, obviously. Where else can I go to the northernmost Boots in the UK?”
There’s a quiet snort of laughter from the driver's seat, and Ruth can’t help grinning in turn.
“Well,” Tosh says, after a moment’s comfortable silence. “I didn’t miss you either. Barely thought about you at all, if I’m honest.”
“Oh yeah? Back to how it should be, eh? You and Sandy, solving crimes and saving the day?”
“Mmm,” Tosh agrees. “No one leaving their empty crisp packets all over my desk, or nicking half my chips after they finish theirs, or telling me to go home when I’ve still got work to do.”
“Or bringing you coffee just how you like it, or listening to all your wee dramas, or sharing their frankly brilliant taste in music? Or kissing you senseless.” Ruth raises an eyebrow. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me about your and Sandy’s relationship.”
She catches Tosh’s little horrified nose-wrinkle at the very idea. Then, “You weren’t kissing me anything before you left.”
“More fool me,” Ruth can’t help but say. She rubs her fingers across her own lips - the taste, the warmth of Tosh’s mouth on hers immediate and lovely in her memory. Thinking about it draws her attention to the lingering sticky heat between her legs. “I’ll make up for it,” she finds herself saying next. “When we get back to mine, I’ll make up for every moment. Just you wait.”
She hears the sharp catch in Tosh’s breath and knows a great sense of mixed satisfaction and anticipation. She’s still got it.
She watches, for a bit, the scenery outside the window. The way the grey light seems to highlight every line of the stark landscape in a way that does, actually, feel sort of right. Sort of like home.
“I’m in,” Tosh says, suddenly enough into the silence that Ruth startles. She’s radiating uncertainty. “I just… want you to know that. If this… us… if this is… real...”
Ruth doesn’t look at her - it feels like Tosh needs the space to get her words out.
Tosh takes a deep breath, blows it out again, and then continues, her voice a little steadier now. “I didn’t think I wanted anything else. After Donnie, you know. It was so complicated. And I thought I was… content, by myself. Fine. Happier. And I was!” Ruth finds herself nodding along, caught up in the vague indignation - of course Tosh was fine! She waits for Tosh to breathe again, to gather herself and carry on. “But I can’t… It’s you, you know? It’s us, you and me. I think I’ve known how I feel about you for a while, actually. A long while.” There’s a crack in her voice that digs right into the centre of Ruth’s chest. “And I’m all in, Ruth. If you are.”
Ruth looks out the window at Shetland, again, right there all around her, and then she looks over at Tosh. “Yeah,” she says, taking in the shape of Tosh’s mouth and the soft line of her jaw, and the way her eyes reflect the wild, wonderful weather outside. Ruth smiles, and it feels like it takes over her whole face, her whole self. “Me too.”
Tosh, glancing quickly her way, takes her hand off the wheel long enough to put it on top of Ruth’s, and squeezes her fingers.
And then Tosh drives them the rest of the way back to Ruth’s house, which feels like it takes both longer and less time than it should, where they pick up precisely where they left off. In her very own bed, in this house that she owns, in this next part of her life that she’s chosen, here in Shetland, with Tosh’s fingers buried deep inside her and Tosh’s lips and tongue working some kind of delicious magic that’s going to tip her over the edge again any moment now, Ruth knows she’s exactly where she wants to be.
***
Ruth gets off the train under the bright, arching ceiling of new Kings Cross, boots hitting the platform with a satisfying thud - first hers, then another set right behind.
Tosh steps up next to her with her usual ready grin. “Right,” she says, taking Ruth’s hand. “Where to?”