Morse shifted between them, settled in and pressed his weight more firmly against Percy's knee. Percy looked at the cat with warmth, "He's very warm."
"He knows it and he weaponizes it."
He laughed, and she tucked the sound away in her mind as the rain kept up its irregular patter against the window.
"Percy."
"Arthur."
"Arthur, you should sleep."
He nodded, set his cup on the table, leaned back into the sofa and closed his eyes. Within minutes, his breathing shifted and the toll of four years of performance was etched on his face. He looked like someone who had been in one place long enough to forget the outside world existed.
She sat for another hour, watching him, the window, the rain, Morse asleep beside him, thinking about Jones at her desk with her usual drive, Chen in the station car park sipping from his thermos, Miller tucked away in whatever room he'd been hiding in and Diane spending her final hours arranging things and people until she drifted off to sleep.
Percy woke up before her; he watched her quietly for a moment before heading to the kitchen. She woke soon after, she heard him before she saw him, gently opening cupboards and making as little noise as possible while searching for things.
She stayed in the chair for a moment without announcing herself, he was still in yesterday's clothes, the dark coat folded over the back of the sofa, his sleeves were pushed to the elbows and he was reading something on his phone. In the grey morning light, stripped of the familiar settings, Aldric's sitting room, the service corridor, the park bench, all the charged spaces they'd shared, he was simply a man in a kitchen, a little disheveled from sleeping upright, hair out of place. Seeing him like that, unguarded in a way he hadn't been before, stirred something in her she couldn't quite name.
Morse sat on the counter, watching him like a senior official.
Percy noticed the cat and whispered, "I don't know where she keeps anything."
She stood and he turned toward her; for a moment, they regarded each other across the small apartment in the grey morning light.
"Second cupboard, left of the sink." She said, before heading to the bathroom and returned to find him holding two cups of tea.
They stood at the counter with cup in hand. Last night, there had been sofa and the weight of circumstances between them. Now it was just the counter, the window, an ordinary morning that felt extraordinary and nothing between them.
"Jones has fifteen hours."
"Fourteen and a half." He brushed his finger on the cup, "I've been thinking about what comes next, after Callow, after the testimony and whatever the rest of the process ends up being. Four years inside a single objective and then the objective ends and the space where it was is just a space."
"You're allowed to not know what comes next." She looked at his finger brushing on his cup.
"What did you do after the Calloway reassignment? After they took the file?"
"I was angry for three weeks then I filed it away and took the next thing, that was the wrong approach."
"What would the right one have been?"
"Something with more air in it, something that acknowledged it had happened instead of just storing it somewhere dark and walking normally."
He set his cup down, reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He stared at her; his hand rested lightly on the edge of her jaw.
She looked at him, sensing the change in his breath and placed her cup down, "Arthur."
Just his name but the way she said it was its own complete sentence and he heard all of it, he kissed her first, his mouth was warm and after the first moment, the carefulness melted away, revealing something that had been quietly waiting beneath it for three days, patient, present and now at last with no reason left to wait.
She kissed him back with everything she'd been holding onto since the park bench and the service corridor.
His hands found her face; his thumbs traced her cheekbones as though he was learning the geography of her face.
She felt him exhale against her mouth, the breath of someone setting down a weight they'd forgotten they were carrying, she pulled back just enough to look at him.
"I should tell you." His eyes wandered over her face, "I've been thinking about doing it since Thursday morning."
"The park bench."
He nodded, "You were looking at me like you were deciding whether to trust me and I was thinking about entirely the wrong thing."
"I noticed, at the bench when you said my name."
"How I said it?"
"Carefully, like you were making sure it didn't mean anything particular."
"It did and I was making sure I didn't look like it did. I was trying to be professional, but my mind wandered to something else, something we'd do at the counter after a cup of tea if you were mine, something I shouldn't have thought, but did anyway."
She kissed him again, slower this time, intentional, her hands drifted to the front of his shirt, feeling the worn fabric from yesterday, the heat of him beneath it. He let out a quiet sound against her lips and pulled her closer, one hand moved from her face to the back of her neck, the other rested at her waist, he held her there with a certainty that felt more like a choice than a simple touch.
They stayed like that in the cramped kitchen as the rain fell outside and the city carried on with its usual Saturday morning routine, oblivious to what was unfolding four floors above, when they finally pulled apart, it was only by a few inches, her hands still rested on his chest, his still at her neck and waist, neither closed the gap nor widened it until her phone buzzed.
It was Jones; she picked up instantly.
"I'm done."
"Already?" Mira was taken aback but not shocked.
"I don't rest when I work." After a brief pause, Jones continued, "While using the methodology Diane Collier left to track the fourth man, I discovered something else, there's a fifth man, Mira."
To be continued...