Chapter Text
Midday.
Three minutes. Down the steps, past the gates.
Three minutes thirty. “Move, move, move”, past New Empire, past the bus stop.
Two minutes, round the corner. Up the steps, first landing.
One minute. Last flight of stairs, there was a man in front of him on the bridge.
One last burst and he felt like his lungs were collapsing on themselves. He ran at the man, almost knocking him over. The blond seemed familiar and it took him a second to know who it was. Maybe less than a second, he knew him like the back of his hand, no one would ever quite be like James Webb.
‘What the fuck?’ he gasped, still trying to suck in as much air as he could into his lungs which burned with every breath. ‘You?’
He grabbed him by the collar, pushed him onto the railings of the bridge. He knew it wasn’t high enough to kill, goodness knows that had been a rather uncomfortable lesson for him at seventeen. He didn’t want to kill him though, odd as it seemed. Just get him in enough pain to tell him where Standish was. And Webb was a wetwipe sometimes, so maybe he would fess up without River getting fired for attempted murder.
‘Where is Standish?’ He hissed at him.
‘It’s not me-I-they have my sister, my nephew.’ Webb squeaked. He really squeaked. He was genuinely terrified, and River could feel his heart hammering under his hands as he held his throat. ‘I swear, River, I swear. On my life.’
‘Who?’ He yelled at him. ‘Who the fuck is they?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shouted back. River felt like a monster holding this pathetic little man over a bridge by his vomit-inducing tie. It felt so wrong to have this power. He look out his gun and pressed it against the side of Webb’s throat. ‘I don’t know. River, I mean it. I just had to tell you this.’
‘Fuck off.’ River spat at him. ‘Get out of my sight.’
Then he let him go. Webb slithered out of his grip and walked away from him, clutching his tie, staring at River like a rabbit at a fox. He kept his eyes on him, blue, slightly piercing, for as long as he could until he was at the other end of the bridge. Then River lunged forward because he knew what was about to happen. His gun was in his hand and he pointed it, but not before Donovan rammed into Webb. There was that crunch, sickening, a little too wet to sustain the slightest hope that he was alive still. And as Donovan walked away, Webb fell in front of River, his eyes blank and icy, and that telltale dribble of blood was starting to seep from his temple. Somehow there was blood on River’s hands too, and he felt tarmac hard on his knees as he collapsed next to him.
His heart hammered as he woke up and, for ten minutes, he just lay in bed, pushing the covers off so the sweat could dry. He hated sticking to the duvet.
Of course, it ended differently sometimes; occasionally he shot him with his own gun, his own hand trying not to pull the trigger, once he had fought off Donovan and the last thing he had felt before waking up had been blinding pain in his own temple. Nonetheless, something always reminded him that it wasn’t real; this time, Webb hadn’t even told him anything.
Now that was over, River could get back to fucking around in the corners of Slough House like Jackson Lamb’s personal dust mote. He got up slower than usual, although that was still quicker than 90% of people; his beard could go another day, so he left the razor where it was. Didn’t need to bring back those fond memories of secondary school too early in the morning. He did need a shower–rather badly actually–but he knew that as long as he worked for Lamb and with Ho, a good coating of deodorant would render him the cleanest man in the building. And it was not as though he would be meeting anyone outside of Slough House for at least the next ten years, and that was if he got promoted (or sacked) that very evening, and the ten years would be the amount of time it took for someone to fuck up more disastrously than crashing King’s Cross Station on a training exercise. They would quite literally have to blow up Buckingham Palace, but you never know, they still had Webb in the system somewhere, even if it was in HR. There was no time to bother about that though, because, even as he left his flat thirty seconds later than usual in the hope that he would receive a call from Regent’s Park and might get a lazy morning. What River would do on a ‘lazy morning’ was not anything he had really thought about, but there must be something to life other than what Lamb would call ‘shuffling paper’. Fucking Lamb, as though he’d ever so much as laid hands on a piece of paper, River thought as he forgot to lock his door and had to forfeit the bus which was already in the stop in order to retain the contents of his flat (which probably cost downwards from £500 overall) from the highly unlikely incident of a burglery on the only day he did not lock the door. Then he realised, with fleeting annoyance, that he had forgotten his socks; that evaporated rather fast as he realised that the likelihood of taking his coat off in the Arctic tundra of Slough House in November was negligible, so being asked to take his shoes off was probably not something to lose any sleep over.
Eventually the bus arrived opposite Slough House and he nodded curtly at Duffy as the thickset man glared at anyone who came within fifty yards of the bus stop. His coat was laid across half of the bench, his meaty buttocks across at least another quarter, and the man who dared to sit on the remaining foot of metal was a braver man than River at least.
Then he started to make his way up to the top floor to see if Lamb would consent to give him a job for once; perhaps today would be the day he would be allowed to do something to pass the time until five o’clock spat out a clump of disgraces onto the pavement in front of the iron gates. But Lamb hated nothing more than someone who could possibly be construed as eager, so it was not in River’s best interests to go straight there. Sidonie Baker was still yet to be replaced, and, since there was no longer a thousand boxes of files–most of which not even Molly Doran had any idea about–cluttering up his office, River had taken to seeing how long he could make a marble run. Standish left it be if she ever did come in and Lamb hadn’t been arsed to even check River was still alive for the last couple of weeks, so it was reaching quite impressive lengths.
It was understandably rather a surprise when Lamb opened the door and kicked it back against the wall so it shuddered from the impact. The shock increased when his immediate move was not to topple the intricacies which were assembled around the room. The worst was yet to come though; the thing which almost made River fall over with fright was when a navy blue Cucinelli suit walked through the door, paired with the Karl Ungar tie River was so used to retching at –though, as he never failed to point out, it seemed that someone had got to it before he could. The pale man wearing it was somehow less of a surprise, but River got up very quickly so he could create some obstacle between him and the marble run. Not that he was that attached to it, but, you know, it had been a lot of effort, and it wasn’t as though either of the intruders would be visiting again soon, so he would rather not rebuild it. Besides, if it became a Thing™, he might as well knock it over himself now.
‘Uh…’ seemed to be all he could conjure up as Webb stepped forward to shake his hand.
‘Come on, River,’ he said, smugly, though perhaps a little less certain than he would have been a year ago. Whether that was down to Lamb or his injury–which were almost the same thing anyway–River was not sure. ‘I’m supposed to be the one with brain damage.’
‘Oh, that’s just River.’ Lamb added helpfully.
‘I know.’ Webb smiled like a lizard, taking River’s hand and shaking it as soon as he brought it up to gesticulate in protest.
‘Mind you,’ Lamb added, looking around at the stacks of books supporting forks, staplers, pencils, and miscellaneous rubbish. ‘I do wonder if it’s degenerative.’
‘I’m sorry,’ River managed to say eventually, ignoring Lamb. ‘You–why are you here? You’re-you’re dead. You can’t be here. I went to your fucking grave.’
‘Well I can actually,’ Webb replied, although it was hard to miss the surprise when River mentioned visiting his grave. ‘I’m not dead. Well, as far as Regent’s Park is concerned, I am, but as you can see, I am quite alive.’
‘You-you’re in on it?’ River spat, turning his anger to Lamb. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘Well, seeing as you seem to want each other’s guts whenever you’re in the same room, no, I didn’t think it necessary.’ Lamb said. ‘But I’m glad you love each other again now, because Webb’s sharing your office.’
River gaped and had to draw on all his reserves of social ettiquette not to take a physical step away from Webb.
‘So, I don’t know what you’ve got going on here,’ Lamb continued, looking around them at the intricate jungle of stationery. ‘But, I hardly think it’s gonna be a popular move now you’re buddies.’
‘Buddies? we’re not fucking-’
‘Well, you are now.’ Lamb creaked the floorboard as he wandered out, leaving a trail of smoke and odour in his wake.
‘Are you sure you’re sane, River?’ Webb was inspecting the marble run carefully, although River was pleased and a little confused to see that he had not taken any joy in its destruction yet. Yet.
‘Well, if I’m not, it’s because Lamb hasn’t given me so much as a shoe to clean for the last six weeks.’
Before River could claim either desk, Webb sat in what had been Sidonie’s chair, and was where River had been taking his naps for the last month, seeing as his own desk was the start point for the marble run and consisted of a marble collection. He was this close to jumping on him, punching him in the face, and telling him to work outside the door. But instead, he chewed his lip for a second and walked out.
‘Standish?’ He shouted, striding through the offices in the general direction of her office. ‘Standish?’
It was a rather pokey affair where the gable ends made it almost impossible to put any filing cabinets higher than two feet tall. As a result, despite being in charge of the most files, she had a wall of cardboard boxes which were, knowing Standish, likely to be alphabetised or dated, but to anyone else appeared entirely random. Her desk was next to the skylight, but there was, from Kay White’s time in Slough House, another desk. It was dark, had no window, and the door opened almost on top of it; River could just imagine Webb having to get up every time someone came in.
‘Yes, River?’ she sighed, standing up from underneath her desk, a duster and some paper clips in her hand. ‘Oh, Lamb said to tell you that Webb cannot come in here.’
‘Fucking…’ River turned on his heel. ‘Thanks a lot.’
When he reentered his office, Webb had not moved, but seemed to be looking through River’s–well Sidonie’s–computer.
‘Get out.’ River snapped and slapped his hands off the mouse. ‘This is my desk.’
‘Goodness Cartwright, will I have to call HR?’ Webb smirked. ‘Inappropriate content and assaulting a colleague.’
‘Call yourself, you mean,’ River scowled. ‘Oh, no wait, you aren’t even in HR anymore. You’re in Slough House.’
‘Vetting, River. It was vetting.’