BOOM.

I don't want any distractions tonight.... The sentiment is a foreign thing as it hangs in the air between them, weighted down with remnants of blood and ash, and Zaf wonders if his surprise is as obvious as he believes it to be. His entire face throbs with every beat of his heart and there's an ache settling into muscle and bone that's unlike anything he's felt before and all he can think is how welcome an endless rant about Minecraft or something would be. Wes is familiar, Wes is easy...Wes is horrible knock-knock jokes and Wii bowling tournaments, a ball of energy that is far removed from corpses hanging from trees and the harsh reality of those meant to protect the country doing their best to destroy it. Uncle Zaf is a far better alternative to the man he is right now, but he smiles softly at his best friend and section chief (another short, wincing thing) and nods as if he understands what in the hell Adam is after.

"No distractions." What am I then? The question lingers on the tip of his tongue before its swallowed down, chased away with a huff of breath akin to a groan as he makes his way to his own desk and the jacket that is carelessly lying atop it. "Here." Fingers dig into its pockets and Zaf notices with a vague disinterest the lines of crimson that have embedded themselves in the grooves of his knuckles... he'll have to scrub them harder or something. His keys are tossed to the other man and he answers the questioning look with a shrug of bruised and aching shoulders. "I've lost enough friends today. Can't risk losing her too." It's enough to break the ice, enough to almost make it feel as if its just another end of day teasing, as if they're two friends leaving a normal nine to five and not two men struggling to stay afloat in a sea awash with corpses. It's funny, he thinks... the way they never talk about the things that haunt them, the way he sometimes wonders if his colleagues see the same faces and the same trails of smoke that haunt his dreams.

***

The trip to his flat is as nondescript as any ride with Adam Carter at the wheel can be and had it been any other day the younger agent might have celebrated its end with a dramatic kiss to the pavement but today he's too sore and far too tired. Victory has turned out to be much heavier than he once would have imagined. He feels every bit of the two flights of stairs that lead to his door and it's with a sigh of exhaustion that fingers fumble with the lock, weight all but falling forward into the entryway when it finally opens. There's a basket of clothes sitting on the couch, dirty and jumbled together as if waiting to be taken care of and Zaf can all but swear he sees a twitch in the corner of the other agent's mouth when he notices it.

"When you say no distractions..." The joy of a best friend is that he's not obligated to play host (the older man knows where everything is better than he does sometimes) so rather than offer a drink or something, he simply collapses onto the waiting furniture with a groan that is half relief and half pain before finishing his thought. " ... This isn't a debrief or something, is it? I don't think I have anything strong enough for that. I don't think Blackpool was strong enough for that." Brown eyes seek out Adam's blue ones and Zaf shifts his weight, giving the whole sitting up straight thing his best attempt given the circumstances and freeing up a space where the other man can sit if he so wishes.

He's done his best to drive carefully in Zaf's baby, actually stopping at intersections rather than the casual roll through them he usually practices, keeping to something vaguely resembling the speed limit, and he's mildly concerned by the fact that no remark follows the ride to Zaf's flat - that in itself is a miracle. But adding to his unease is the way the younger agent visibly pales with each step on the two story climb to his door, the beating he took earlier obviously having exacted a heavier toll on his body than he was letting on, and Adam follows him into the flat with a familiarity born of years of friendship, watching as Zaf more or less falls onto the couch with a groan.

"Not a debrief. I just wanted to...talk. Away from the grid," he amends, his gaze settling upon the cuts and bruises that decorate his best friend's face, knowing how much they must be paining him. Adam moves into the kitchen for a moment, fetching a bottle of water from the refrigerator and an ice pack from the freezer, pausing at a cupboard long enough to grab the bottle of Motrin before making his way back out to where Zaf is patiently waiting for him. Adam presses the bottle of pain reliever into the other man's hand, watching as Zaf pops a few into his mouth and swallows them down with a deep pull from the water bottle, and it's with careful hands that the older man rests the ice pack against the colorful bruise that decorates his best friend's brow, studying the damage to the familiar features he's grown so fond of over the years.

His thoughts are jumbled, disjointed...up until the moment his gaze catches the younger man's dark eyes, and in that moment it all becomes perfectly clear to him what he wants to say - what he needs to say. Adam moves the laundry basket from the couch rather than settling himself upon the chair adjacent to where Zaf was sitting, and he swears he can see a flicker of surprise cross the younger man's face when he sits beside him, not so close as to crowd him but close enough that he can feel the warmth from Zaf's body radiating across the space between them to chase the chill from his own bones.

"You mentioned Blackpool." Adam's voice is low, soft, and he studies his best friend's face as he speaks, reading every miniscule reaction with the ease of one who is fluent in the language of Zaf. "I've been struggling to remember a lot of what happened there, but I have a few vague...images. Things I thought must have been a dream." He pauses for a moment, gathering his courage around him like armor in case this went very badly before forging on. "It wasn't a dream, was it Zaf?"

There is a moment of silence where he can see the other man hesitate, probably trying to gauge Adam's tone, his mood, to determine the proper way to answer the question, but before Zaf can respond the older man gives a quiet huff of amusement, blue eyes holding that dark gaze despite his own need to look away, to hide the feelings that must be written plainly upon his own face.

"Something you said earlier clicked with me, and...you're right. We've lost enough friends today. I don't want to waste any more time being afraid..." Adam swallows hard, his heart beating a staccato rhythm in his chest as he runs one hand through already tousled hair, glancing away for a scant moment before meeting the intensity of Zaf's gaze once more. "I can't lose you. You are...I want..." A frustrated sound escapes his throat as he struggles to find the words, finally settling on the ones that would either earn him the very thing he wanted more than anything on earth...or cost him his best friend.

"Well, we could always flip a coin - loser has to start running in what we think is his general direction. If he fires a shot or two it might give us a chance to get near him. We'd know where he is at least." The suggestion is met with a silence that brings a flash of amusement to brown eyes, lips curving upwards in a grin. No? Just me? Back to the drawing board, then. Fingers scroll idly across the tablet, tongue pressing to the inside of one cheek as Zaf searches for some sort of semblance to a plan, breath a white mist in cool night air. It's cold out here in the middle of bloody nowhere, and he takes a break for a moment, curling his fingers into warmish palms, urging the feeling back into them.

"Have you ever seen The Fog? Old movie, eighties I think." He doesn't bother looking up, can feel Adam's hand resting atop his shoulder, and he's loathe to do anything that might take it away. "It's a creepy, thick fog, yeah? And the people start dying in it." Now, dark eyes do glance upwards, meeting his colleague's gaze in the eerie half light. "I've got about half a dozen ideas and I'm pretty sure you're going to shoot down every one of them." Shoulders curl inwards, words carried on a sigh as he pitches forth what he thinks is both his best idea and the one most likely to get them somewhere warm (and less creepy). "Ruth got us a list of old addresses. Most of them have been sold off or belong to other people now .. but this one..." Thumb presses an entry on the screen and the document changes, shifting to an image of a terraced house. "His mistress still stays there. Supposedly he gifted her the house a few years ago before they had a bad split. He threatened to kill her, forced her into hiding. What she told GCHQ anyways."

Zaf's casual mention of The Fog gets Adam's attention, brows knitting together for a moment as he searches his memory for a faint recollection of a night years before - one where he'd forced his brother to sit through what he called "the classics," including one misguided attempt at a zombie movie that left both of them huddled beneath a blanket at 3am cursing all filmmakers but especially George Romero - and a faint smile touches his lips and he huffs a quiet laugh through his nose at the moment of ill-timed nostalgia. The Fog had been creepy, of course, but what frightened one most was the unknown: what might be lurking unseen behind that thick curtain of mist? What dangers and fears might hide mere meters from a person while they carried on with their lives, unaware of the threat to their safety?

And in that instant he realized just how perfect a metaphor it was for the work that he and Zaf had chosen to do - to end the threat that your neighbor, the man who read the meter, your cashier at the petrol station, your bloody best mate could be a terrorist conspiring to kill you and everyone you loved.

"It takes a certain amount of skill to terrify people with precipitation, doesn't it?" His tone is droll, revealing none of the depth of thought he'd just put into a film he'd only seen once over twenty years earlier, and the hand that rests upon his companion's shoulder shifts slightly as Zaf hunches inward, whether from the chill in the air or an uneasiness that Adam understands perfectly he can't say. His gaze holds the younger man's dark eyes for a long moment, assessing and weighing their options as he chews upon his lower lip thoughtfully. "The mistress's house would be a logical first place to check out, since surveillance is obviously not going to be possible in this."

He gestures around them, the mist swirling around his hand in reaction to the shift in air currents caused by his movements, a chill skittering down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature as he nudges at Zaf's back gently. "You keep digging into the mistress's recent history - bank records, property, any relationships of note from the past few months, you know the drill." Adam takes his hand and helps him to his feet, turning to fall into step beside his partner as they pick their way through the dense fog toward the car, hesitating only a moment before opening the door in order to shoot the other man a meaningful look across the roof of the black sedan.

"Not really my color, is it?" The joke is weak, falls flat in the overwhelming silence of an all but empty room, and Zaf grows silent for a moment, dark gaze studying the smear of crimson across the tip of Adam's thumb. Blackpool should bring a laugh out of him, should bring more than the ache that suddenly stirs in the hollow of his chest, but all he can manage is a half smile, lips curving 'round the metallic taste of blood. This has been a victory more akin to a defeat, a heavy and haunting thing that has produced new ghosts to wait in a dark bedroom corner while he struggles to sleep. Zaf's lip tingles, a lingering sting from both the pressure of the older man's finger and the wound itself, and he tries not to think about that night in Blackpool, tries not to think about how (for the briefest of moments) he had been sure everything was about to change.

Brows furrow slightly, not at the other man's acquiescence but more the conditions that come with it... for the past eight years Adam has been his mentor, his section-chief, his closest friend.... they know what the other plans to do before he even decides on it himself, know the ins and outs of each other's moods and worlds as if they share a brain ... but for the first time, it feels like there is something that has been built between them. The older man stands there - quiet, reserved... emotions well suited for the death and destruction that had prevailed a mere few hours before .. but there's something else as well, some shadow lingering underneath Adam's mood that leaves Zaf feeling confused and restless. He nods in agreement, fingers briefly shifting upwards to gently prod at a freshly stitched brow.

The concern that etches his features doesn't lessen as he watches Zaf press careful fingertips against the stitches that intersect his brow, the bruising already vivid and promising to get worse before it gets better, and Adam allows himself to wonder if the younger man had taken anything for the pain before the medic had sutured the cut. Probably not, knowing Zaf. He almost smiles at that, only barely managing to suppress it...but it's for naught as the other man's sarcastic words register through his distraction and a genuine grin flashes in response.

Whatever he'd been about to say died before it reached his lips, however, at the feel of Zaf's fingers tugging gently at his collar, the brush of cool skin against the flushed warmth of his own throat making him swallow convulsively, and Adam resists the urge to lean into the contact like some touch-starved kitten begging for attention from a loving hand. He can't tell if it lasts for mere moments or an hour - time has stood still for him, frozen in that instant, their gazes each holding the other's while Zaf is touching him in a way that is both entirely innocent and all too intimate for Adam's state of mind. He can feel his heart beating double-time in his chest, can feel the way his lungs constrict as if desperate for more oxygen than they're getting, and he knows from the heat that crawls up his neck and onto his face that he's blushing - actually blushing - at Zaf's casual straightening of his collar.

Pathetic, really.