#winternelson

That done, he glances down into his glass, swirling it so that the last of the wine dances with reflections. A dust mote, caught against the deep ruby of the surface, sits steady as the hand of a spun compass.

“I don’t think they like me very much,” he says.

On the other side of the flat, Winter looks up from the sink, considering Nelson over one shoulder. Still just as quiet, his expression just as empty as it had been all through lunch.

“Parents usually love me,” Nelson adds, straightening, pushing himself away from the window. He paces past the table, setting the glass down with a faint scrape of crystal against hardwood. “I’m told I seem very responsible.”

It takes a moment, as though Winter’s internal systems are lagging so badly that he needs time just to recognise him, but then he smiles, and it’s real. Nothing like the polite, skin-deep efforts that he’d been making all afternoon.

“It’s not personal,” he says, and there’s even a trace of a laugh in it. He turns away from the washing up bowl, flicking excess water from his hands, and reaches for a tea towel. “And you don’t like them much either.”

Nelson stops. He’d meant to make a start on the drying himself, but Winter is already descending on the draining board with a studied intensity that clearly would have been frenzy, if he’d let it.

“I don’t like the way they look at you,” Nelson says, settling against a work surface instead. He hadn’t liked most of it, really – the atmosphere had been so cold, and Winter had carried himself so stiffly, that they might as well have eaten outside, half-frozen in the November wind – but that had been the worst of it. Their polite disinterest. When they’d shaken his hand with all the engagement they might grant a gate across their walking route. A four-hour lunch with only cursory attention paid to their son’s partner, like it didn’t matter to them who he was seeing. They’d looked at Winter, at everything he was and everything he cared for, weighed it and found him wanting. “When they asked about your inspector’s exam–”    

He’d wanted to step in, then. Had let his eyes flick over to Winter, trying to ask, silently, do you want me to defend you? Is that why I’m here? But he’d got nothing back. Winter had just sat there, replied to his parents in a flat, level voice, blank behind it.

Nelson had tried to divert them anyway, throwing out a few questions about their own work, but he’d known by then that he wasn’t saving anything. There had never been any chance at that.

“They’ve always had high expectations,” Winter says, in the same casual tone that he uses to talk about everything that hurts. “I barely saw them growing up. They were always out working. Wanted to send us to the best schools, make sure we had a good start.” He slots a plate back into its place in the cupboard, utterly without force, a stark contrast to the anger that turns in Nelson’s gut like an animal seeking flaws in its cage. “They just wanted more for me than the police, and definitely more than a dead-end job in Midsomer.”

“More than someone like me?” Nelson guesses, but even with all that bitterness in his mouth, none of it’s on his own behalf.

Winter pauses, back at the draining board. His fingers shift away from another plate, reach for a glass instead. He passes Nelson on the way to its cabinet, and lays a brief hand against his arm, the slightest shading of regret across his features.

“I’ve known for a long time that nothing that makes me happy is ever going to be enough for them,” he says, his touch a request that Nelson hears the part he thinks is more important. He does, but the rest of it’s still too sour for him to taste anything else.

“And you’re just all right with that?” Nelson asks. Wasted breath, probably. They wouldn’t be having this conversation if Winter didn’t think he could pretend that everything’s fine.

“I got used to it.” The same sort of thing he’d say about Misomer’s climate. About immutable qualities of the world that cannot be altered, rather than two people who’d apparently never got over the fact that their son didn’t measure success the same way they did, and didn’t bother trying to hide their disappointment. “They do try.”

“Not hard enough.” Nelson curbs a snarl, swallows the urge to snatch the tea towel, take Winter’s hands himself. Whenever this had broken, it had been a long time ago. The bone’s too knitted for sharp edges anymore.

He leaves it.

A few months ago, he remembers, Winter had told the Barnabys about their relationship. They’d talked about it beforehand. Winter had been sure the Barnabys would have no problem with his sexuality. He’d known that they already liked Nelson. And yet, through every conversation they’d had about it, Winter had been tense, nervous despite his efforts to pretend otherwise. Dogged by a fear of something he wouldn’t or couldn’t articulate, right up until he’d finally spoken to them.

Winter had asked him down for this over the phone, voice so level, so resigned, that Nelson had thought there might actually be something wrong with the line, up until he’d heard it the same all through lunch. He’d made no occasion of the introduction.

So, Nelson’s here for him, not them.

He stays where he is, lets himself be the still point, while Winter finishes with the drying up, and then starts to move methodically through the flat, putting everything back the way it had been before his parents had come. Keeps going until it’s all done and the dark’s drawn in around them, and then he just stops. Stands there like a clockwork toy that’s run down.

Nelson steps in before he can feel it.

“Do you want to order in tonight?” he asks, pausing beside him with an off-hand glance at his watch. “There are repeats on until three, and they’re showing the episode where Detective Ostergaard’s trapped in a haunted hotel.”

He’d usually expect a light, good-natured jab about his taste in television, but Winter just nods and smiles, lets Nelson lead him to the sofa and trusts him to order something he’ll like, while he scrolls through the available channels like he doesn’t remember exactly which one he’s looking for.

Winter’s quiet, and he stays that way until so close before the end of the opening credits of their first episode that he might have measured it specifically to stop the conversation from going any further. Or maybe he’d just realised it was his last chance to speak.

“Thanks for coming,” he says, eyes fixed on the screen and flickering with cold reflections.

Nelson exhales, his attention flickering away from Detective Ostergaard’s crime scene, spattered with red that’s slightly the wrong shade. He has nothing he knows how to say, so he just takes Winter’s hand, and raises it to kiss the inside of his wrist, a ghost of lips across his pulse point. Hopes that tells him everything. And then he lets go, brushing his thumb across Winter’s knuckles.

They watch in silence for a moment, Kate’s favourite pathologist spouting nonsense to camera with more conviction than the average person will ever feel, then Winter lets out a dragging breath, like he’s trying to purge every corner of his lungs. He wavers towards Nelson, and Nelson leans in to meet him.  

This is why he’s here, Nelson thinks, as Winter’s head settles onto his shoulder, and he inclines his own so that his cheek rests against Winter’s hair. Crap telly and a takeaway, a weight of warmth, someone who remembers the way back to normal. Just to be there, where he’s needed.

With any luck, it’ll be a long while until Winter’s parents feel obliged to visit again. The food will be here soon, and there’ll be enough spice in it to burn the last of the bitterness off Nelson’s tongue. The wound will scab over again, and Winter’s smiles will look a little less brittle.

Ground too cold for tyre tracks, no cameras for miles, any potential witnesses bundled up indoors the way anyone sensible should be on a freezing January night. Nothing from forensics at the scene, though they’re testing for fingerprints on all the nearby gates, and they’re still waiting on full analysis of Winter’s personal effects.

No wonder that no one in the incident room seems to want to come anywhere near him.

Maybe he should just go back to the hospital. He’d be just as much use there. It’s not as if Fleur would welcome his presence in the lab.

A chime from his email heralds the arrival of Winter’s phone records, and Barnaby pounces on it with the speed and desperation of a starving crow at carrion. The data spools out across his screen, lists of calls and numbers, reams of texts, enough to make his computer wheeze for a moment as it adjusts.

Barnaby had sent him two messages, that night. He hadn’t really noticed that Winter never answered either of them. Maybe, if he had, they might have–

He swallows against the sting in his throat, and clicks into the file of voicemails, before leaning down to excavate his headphones from the depths of his drawer, yanking at the wire as it tangles, again and again, no relief in the dull force of it. Once they’re finally free, he plugs himself in, and hits play on the first one.

“Hi, Jamie, it’s Charlie.” The voice at the other end is so familiar that it takes Barnaby a moment to register the actual words being spoken, his jaw slackening. “Sorry to ring in work hours. Turns out I’ve got some leave coming up, and I thought maybe I could come down. Or we could go somewhere together, if you like. Call me when you get home.”

Nelson. Barnaby blinks against the hang-up tone, and for a long minute his body feels simply too heavy to move. He doesn’t know what he’d wanted. A confession, perhaps, a name for Winter’s assailant. A clear, plain-English explanation for what had happened, what he’d even been doing out there in the first place.

Not this. Not something personal. Not something so personal that he’d had no idea about it himself.

He’d been aware, he supposes, that Nelson and Winter know one another. They’d met at Sarah’s last birthday do, and a couple of times since, on the odd occasion that Nelson had come visiting. If pressed, he might have said that they’d got on, but he’d spent the lion’s share of that party either doing the rounds or hiding in the kitchen with Paddy, and he couldn’t say how much of that belief was just a vague awareness of shared interests. He remembers them sitting together, Winter sprawled in a garden chair like it’s an art form, gesturing with a champagne glass, Nelson straight-backed, smile slow but sincere.

Winter had never mentioned him. Yet here they are. First name terms, making plans.

Barnaby shifts the mouse to select the next message, and can’t help his focus drifting past the monitor, to Winter’s empty desk. It watches him back, a hollow monument, and he clamps his teeth together at the sudden impulse to make excuses to it. There still might be something in here that could help. He has to check.

“Hello, me again. Working late? I did try texting, and messaging, but I suppose you’re out in the sticks somewhere, and the second you get back to Causton I’ll have drowned you in notifications.” Nelson pauses for a moment, and Barnaby grimaces. The sticks isn’t inaccurate. They’d found him miles from anywhere, a pale gash amongst the bramble and hedgerow of a field boundary. Barnaby hadn’t seen him there, though he’d passed the ambulance on his way out. There had been enough of a picture left, in crushed grass stems and bloodstains, the skeletal branches of a handful of trees jagged overhead like the roof of a shattered cathedral. “I swear, Midsomer won’t get proper phone coverage until it’s obsolete everywhere else. Anyway, they did all go out at normal intervals. Look, this holiday thing, it’s not urgent, they just want me to book it as soon as I can. Hope whatever’s going on isn’t too grim. Call me when you can.”

There’s an unease, gathering in the low points of Nelson’s voice, papered over and rationalised, but still clear enough to Barnaby. A fear that he couldn’t quite stifle.

One that Barnaby will have to confirm. Someone else he loves, who this will punch a hole in. At least he hadn’t had to tell Fleur – she’d already been at the scene when he’d got there, tearing into some poor uniform for something, as if she could make up for the blotching on her face with the sharpness of her teeth. Sarah had been there when he’d taken the call, and they’d felt it together.

He can’t even be sure that Nelson will be an end to it, not when Winter’s personal life is apparently more immaculately compartmented than Barnaby’s sock drawer. Nothing hidden, just neatly never spoken of.

“Jamie,” Nelson says, in the next voicemail, a shade more urgent, control wavering. “Call me. Don’t make me try Barnaby.”

That certainly would have been an interesting conversation. Though, from the timestamp, not one that would have made any difference. They’d had the call by then. Dog-walker. She’d thought he was dead already. Barnaby had taken her statement, the odd-eyed collie that might have saved his sergeant’s life sitting patiently, obliviously by her side. He’ll have to tell Nelson that, too, make sure he understands that there was nothing he could have done.

Barnaby clicks through again, despite the flat, heavy certainty in his bones that there’ll be nothing here, nothing that’s his to hear.

“You’re not getting these, are you? I don’t know why I keep sending them.” Nelson drags in a breath, raw over the faint static of the line. “I checked the local news. I need you to call me, text me, I don’t care, send me a carrier pigeon, I’m sure someone still has those down there, just tell me that wasn’t you.”

Barnaby hasn’t seen the reports. Someone else – the chief superintendent, probably – had spoken to the press. He’d been sitting on one of those hospital chairs, listening to Sarah’s breathing hitching beside him, waiting to hear Winter’s odds on lasting the night.

Last one.

“So, I’m on my way down. Nearly called Sarah about eight times. Not sure what I’ll do if you’re okay – surprise visit, I suppose. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” There’s a thud of a car door from somewhere, a distant muttering of other voices, Nelson’s cracking quieter in response. “I started picking up Radio Midsomer in the car. They’ve still not given a name, so–” He cuts himself off, half-sigh and half-sob. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

Barnaby wrenches the headphones off like a noose from round his neck, and then presses his face into his hands, hard enough that false light sparks across the backs of his eyelids. Something about the way that Nelson had said I love you had felt like it was the first time. Evidence, he thinks, and hates it.

He pulls his phone out, so numb that it doesn’t even really feel like an action that he takes, then scrolls down to his lesser-used contacts, and makes the call.

Nelson picks up within a second of the first ring.

“Sir?” His voice is taut, aching. He knows what’s coming, would have taken it as confirmation that Winter was the police officer he’d heard about on the news the second he’d seen Barnaby’s name on the phone screen.

“Are you driving?”

“Pulled over.”

He hadn’t meant it as a traffic safety admonishment, and hopes Nelson hadn’t taken it that way.

“We had to access Winter’s phone,” he says, and then stops. Gives that a moment to settle in, for Nelson to grasp what it means, for the turning of guilt in his stomach to subside. “I’m sorry, Nelson.”

“Is he…?”

“They’re doing their best.” It might not be enough. “You shouldn’t have found out like that.”

“Causton Hospital?”     

“Yes. How close are you?”

“About an hour. Give or take.”

“Sarah and I will meet you there.” And he’ll grant Nelson the dignity of telling Sarah about the relationship himself, he decides. He’ll check over the rest of Winter’s phone records, excepting his message history with Nelson, and then make his way back to the hospital. “We’ll you soon.”

“Yes, sir.” Nelson pauses, the silence thick with everything that he’s stifled back into his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

Nelson rings off, before Barnaby can tell him he doesn’t deserve that, and then he’s left alone in the incident room, at the centre of a wasteland of hush that no one here would cross. He swallows, strikes the damp from around his eyes, and makes himself focus in on the screen again. This, and then he’ll make sure that Nelson doesn’t spend another second of this alone.