A Copper's Instinct: Chapter 12
Title: A Copper's Instinct
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
Chapter 11
On the ground, Kinnell stiffened.
“Nicholas,” he barked, jerkily. Flickers of anxious white were showing around the edges of his eyes as they whipped, back and forth, between Nicholas and the quickly-approaching van. His bleeding muzzle scrunched, baring his teeth. “This's gone far enough. Let me go. Now.”
"I'll show you far enough," snarled Nicholas, and grasping the morphic disruptor through the plastic baggie like someone handling something thoroughly unpleasant, deployed it expertly, right under Kinnell's chin.
"That ought to keep you for a few hours. I'd go quietly if I were you. You wouldn't want a muzzle. Or a tranquilizer."
Kinnell yelped as the nasty jolt shuddered through him, his limbs jerking uncontrollably for a second, scuffling up the earth underpaw, but it was nothing compared to how he reacted when he realised what Nicholas was saying. The Andes, who had just recovered enough balance to get a little complacent, were nearly pulled off their feet all over again.
“What? NO! Please! Ohgod, please, no, Nick, you can't do this to me-”
Stepping back, Nicholas adopted a concerned look.
"As much as I respect you personally, I'd've been an idiot to try and go ahead without taking precautions first.”
The dense foliage separating the track from the trees crackled and parted. Two RSPCA officers ducked under the branches and hurried into what was quickly becoming quite a crowded clearing. Apart from the light blue shirts and dark blue epaulettes, their uniforms didn't really look all that different from those of Nicholas's team, and the firm grip they maintained on their own restraint poles as they spotted Kinnell suggested that they took their work quite seriously, to say the least.
“What's the situation?” said the older of the two.
Nicholas tried to look at home in a baby blue thermal blanket-toga. "Right here. Ripped off most of my clothes, but nothing too serious. Looks more scared than anything right now. Funny looking dog, ey?"
“I've seen odder,” said the younger one, walking cautiously around to the Andes and slipping his own restraint collar over the 'dog's neck, although not without some difficulty, as Kinnell was currently trying to do an impression of a cantilever spring under tension. “What d'you think, Reg? Alsation cross?”
“Bloody furious, by the look of it,” said the other one. He was staring at Nicholas's ear. “That looks nasty. What happened?”
"Just a minor altercation," said Nicholas, mildly. His shredded ear oozed a little. "I'll put a little antibiotic on it."
“You grab this,” interrupted the younger officer, passing his pole across to his superior, “and I'll take the other one. Right? Carefully...”
Between them, stepping backwards over the bracken, they hauled the struggling wolf off towards their open van.
"I think," said Nicholas, clapping Evan on the back. "That I owe everyone here at least five rounds. After I get some clothes and some medical attention."
Pause.
"...Doris, you can stop filming now."
The team cheered again, with a deal more genuine enthusiasm this time round. Any lingering traces of gloom evaporated rapidly at the unprecedented prospect of Nicholas getting them laddered at his own expense. The Andes exchanged surreptitious looks which suggested that they were going to at least have a shot at returning the favour. They were determined that Kinnell wasn't going to remain the only person in Sandford to ever manage to get Nicholas Angel helplessly drunk. It was too entertaining a prospect to pass up.
Doris looked a bit put out, but lowered the camera. “Could make a fortune with this tape on eBay. People pay good money f'r a bit of pay-per-view, Chief.”
"Doris," said Nicholas, very, very calmly. His cheeks were flushing, and the grip on the blanket increased. "I'm quite sure they don't want to see me all cut up, and even if they did, I wouldn't want those sort of people looking at me. Now can someone find where Kinnell stored his pants so I can check into the hospital and not have to bleed on my own things?"
*
“Hell of a day, huh?” sighed Danny, dropping himself into the welcome (if mildly saggy embrace) of his sofa with a heavy spring-challenging whump. As he fumbled sleepily for the lamp, it occurred to him that the room looked a bit weird, somehow. It took a moment to remember that this was because he'd had a go at tidying it up of his own volition, a couple of days ago, driven by the same uneasy doomed-competitive unhappiness that had made him cut out drinking and try to get up too early.
Now, with Nicholas a reassuring, slightly antiseptic-smelling shape close by, he couldn't imagine what had come over him. He assumed he'd had some brilliantly logical idea about where to put the TV remotes, at the time, as well. They were nowhere in sight, and it was probably going to take Nicholas's eerie sixth sense for lost things to ever find them again.
Danny yawned contentedly, and started to pry his laced-up trainer off with his other foot.
"Mmm," said Nicholas, thoroughly stoned on pain meds, as he ran fingers across the surface of Danny's bulk. He was very slowly collapsing forward onto his rescuer. "Gonna go t' London tomorrow, yeah?"
“'Course,” said Danny. He was sleepy enough to only sound a bit nervous, and he burrowed an arm under Nicholas's back, supporting the gentle slow-motion slump against him. “Sure y'don't want to wait a bit till you're less sort of full of holes? Don' want her to think I been beating you up.”
Nicholas giggled, stupidly. "Always coming home scraped up anyway. Can't... um. Can't- cantalope. Wait. Can't lettum get the drop on us again."
“Mm? S'a a bunny with antlers, en't it?” Danny nuzzled him on the back of his drooping neck. “You gonna get some sleep now? Early start tomorrow. Looks like I'll be waking you up for a change, 'ey.”
He wanted to ask Nicholas if he was okay, really all right, after everything that had happened today, and great chunks of it Danny hadn't even been there for. Whether his partner was lucid enough to be able to answer or not, however, was another thing entirely. Non-sequiturs about cantaloupes were not an encouraging sign.
"Norra bunny. Gonna save my mum. Jussincase."
“Okay,” said Danny, snuggling closer. He almost wished Nicholas got doped off his tits on prescription medication more often- he was so sort of sweet and easy to reassure like this. That was an 'almost', though.
“Love you.”
Nicholas's head drooped forward once and raised quickly, as if in agreement with this statement, until he did it again, overcompensated and fell back against Danny's shoulder, head spilling back with the taped ear and an uncharacteristically open mouth, and started to snore.
Danny settled into a more comfy position on the sofa, letting Nicholas flop over as much as was necessary to avoid either of them waking with a sore neck. Nicholas didn't usually snore. Danny, who knew he snored himself on occasion, remembered that the one time he'd snored loud enough to wake himself up, he'd been in hospital, and the reason had been because his nasal cavities had been full of old blood. He hoped this wasn't why Nicholas was snoring. It really had, after all, been a hell of a day.
I hope she likes me, he thought, sleepily, barely aware of the thought at all, and closed his eyes.
*
It only felt about ten minutes later that the weight of Nicholas on Danny's upper chest was gone, and there seemed to be an odd sort of tugging around the area of last night's trouser zipper.
“Whug,” mumbled Danny, and tried to curl in on himself, like... well, like a sleepy hedgehog with someone poking at its underbelly.
"Good morning," chirruped Nicholas, who had no right to be grinning that much at what must have been barely dawn and all covered with fresh bruises. He also seemed to be kneeling strangely across Danny's feet. "Thought you'd like a new alarm clock."
And then he bent towards where his hands had succeeded in their unzipping, and... well, chose Doris's dirty option number one.
*
“So if he was one too, right,” said Danny, picking his way around puddles on the pavement, quick-drying in the sun after the rainy night, “why was he after you again?”
He was clear on most of what had happened, the gist if not the specifics. Nicholas was still reticent about some of the specifics. This particular part, though, was still giving him trouble in the sense-making department.
“I mean, yeah, secret government shit, but I mean... he's one too.”
"He had a collar." Nicholas's hand kept wavering up to almost touch his ear... and then shoving itself into a pocket. "He was registered. I wasn't."
He paused, apparently thinking something over. "You know the thing I said to him before they dragged him off? You missed it, but he said pretty much the same thing to me earlier when he cuffed me up."
Danny thought for a moment, working this out, then laughed and shook his head. “Shit. I always miss the best bits.”
Seeing Nicholas's hand creeping earwards again, he frowned. “Leave it,” he said. “Every time I see you poke it I'm gonna poke you. Somewhere you're not expecting it.” He illustrated his point by prodding an index, lingeringly and with malice aforethought, into Nicholas's ribs.
Nicholas smacked it away on sheer panicked instinct. "Oi, like you're one to talk. Aren't you forgetting something?"
On sheer panicked instinct, Danny looked down. No, he was definitely wearing trousers.
“What?”
Nicholas reached into his own trousers, and pulled out Danny's phone. "What do you think's going to happen when we go into London and you wander off to every bargain bin and wind up lost?" His voice, as far as Nicholas Angel's voice could go, at least, sounded like he was teasing.
“Could arrange a rendezvous,” said Danny, a bit sulkily. He didn't like talking about London that much, or at least he liked Nicholas talking about it just fine, but he didn't like having to hazard his own ideas about it, ever since he'd absent-mindedly asked Nicholas if London had more than one sort of supermarket. “Like by that big clock in the middle.”
"C'mere, you big twat." Flicking the phone open, Nicholas threw an arm around Danny's shoulder, grinning madly up into the lens.
Clik. clik clik clikclikclik.
Danny beamed, then flicked two irreverent fingers up at the tiny lens, creating a stop-motion obscenity which rendered every photo after the first two utterly useless for display in polite society anywhere.
“S'whatI'mtalking'bout.”
Nicholas pressed the red casing into Danny's clumsy fingers. "Just to give you a little more incentive to keep track of the damn thing."
Danny stuck it in his back pocket. "C'mon. Or we'll be late-early."
*
By the time they had signed in and made their way to the locker room, it was nearly five to nine. Danny hung back as they walked down the corridor, a natural sort of wandery dawdling which nevertheless left Nicholas well in the lead as they reached the doorway.
The room was unusually crowded. Doris and the Andes were loitering about in a suspicious-looking little group by Doris's locker, and Tony and Bob were nearby, ostensibly scrutinising a photograph out of one of Bob's numerous classic car magazines. The level of conversation dipped noticeably as Nicholas walked in.
Nicholas Angel was an expert on the street when it came to sniffing out which perp in a clusterfuck was selling the drugs, and right now, every single one of his officers was acting like they were the ones with coke baggies in their socks. And how no one would look at his locker.
He could ruin their fun, of course, but he already owed them five rounds, and it would probably just be best to get it over with.
He opened his locker.
Something bounced off his head and jingled as he caught it one-handedly. And then he got a proper look at it.
Nicholas turned the item over in his hands, considering the myriad ways to react.
"Oh. Thank you. It looks very... comfortable."
Doris started clapping, grinning, and trod very heavily on Andy Wainwright's foot until, squint-eyed with pain and glaring at her, he joined in. Like a round of dominoes nudged by a finger, the others followed suit. It didn't last very long, and the Andes both looked like they'd keel-haul anyone who ever mentioned it, but the overriding sentiment was genuine. They were applauding him and themselves, too, for pulling together when it had been needed.
"Weren't my idea," murmured Danny, behind him, happily, as the noise petered out. "But I thought you'd like it."
"I see," said Nicholas, gravely, rubbing the thick, chunky leather in his fingers. "Well, as long as it's not a retirement present." He held it out. "Well? Who's going to do the honors?"
There was a short, slightly startled pause as everyone played a quick round of not-quite-looking-at-each-other. After a moment, Doris stepped up, looking almost timid for once, and took it off him.
“Wouldn't be the first time,” muttered Andy Cartwright.
“You shut y'r mouth, y'cheeky little sod,” she snapped back, fiddling with the buckle behind Nicholas's neck. Once fixed, it sat below the line of his collar, the little round tag paired up with the St. Christopher like a pair of, well, dogtags.
"Thank you Doris," said Nicholas, as dignified as he could manage in front of a woman who knew where his moles were. He craned his neck to see the tag against the notch in his collarbone. "'Chief'. I hope none of you forget that when Danny and I leave for London this morning. No, it's not a holiday, and no, that doesn't mean parties in the office in my absence are acceptable. We should be back within the week, and then we'll see about the beer. I promise."
~fin~
Art
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
Chapter 11
On the ground, Kinnell stiffened.
“Nicholas,” he barked, jerkily. Flickers of anxious white were showing around the edges of his eyes as they whipped, back and forth, between Nicholas and the quickly-approaching van. His bleeding muzzle scrunched, baring his teeth. “This's gone far enough. Let me go. Now.”
"I'll show you far enough," snarled Nicholas, and grasping the morphic disruptor through the plastic baggie like someone handling something thoroughly unpleasant, deployed it expertly, right under Kinnell's chin.
"That ought to keep you for a few hours. I'd go quietly if I were you. You wouldn't want a muzzle. Or a tranquilizer."
Kinnell yelped as the nasty jolt shuddered through him, his limbs jerking uncontrollably for a second, scuffling up the earth underpaw, but it was nothing compared to how he reacted when he realised what Nicholas was saying. The Andes, who had just recovered enough balance to get a little complacent, were nearly pulled off their feet all over again.
“What? NO! Please! Ohgod, please, no, Nick, you can't do this to me-”
Stepping back, Nicholas adopted a concerned look.
"As much as I respect you personally, I'd've been an idiot to try and go ahead without taking precautions first.”
The dense foliage separating the track from the trees crackled and parted. Two RSPCA officers ducked under the branches and hurried into what was quickly becoming quite a crowded clearing. Apart from the light blue shirts and dark blue epaulettes, their uniforms didn't really look all that different from those of Nicholas's team, and the firm grip they maintained on their own restraint poles as they spotted Kinnell suggested that they took their work quite seriously, to say the least.
“What's the situation?” said the older of the two.
Nicholas tried to look at home in a baby blue thermal blanket-toga. "Right here. Ripped off most of my clothes, but nothing too serious. Looks more scared than anything right now. Funny looking dog, ey?"
“I've seen odder,” said the younger one, walking cautiously around to the Andes and slipping his own restraint collar over the 'dog's neck, although not without some difficulty, as Kinnell was currently trying to do an impression of a cantilever spring under tension. “What d'you think, Reg? Alsation cross?”
“Bloody furious, by the look of it,” said the other one. He was staring at Nicholas's ear. “That looks nasty. What happened?”
"Just a minor altercation," said Nicholas, mildly. His shredded ear oozed a little. "I'll put a little antibiotic on it."
“You grab this,” interrupted the younger officer, passing his pole across to his superior, “and I'll take the other one. Right? Carefully...”
Between them, stepping backwards over the bracken, they hauled the struggling wolf off towards their open van.
"I think," said Nicholas, clapping Evan on the back. "That I owe everyone here at least five rounds. After I get some clothes and some medical attention."
Pause.
"...Doris, you can stop filming now."
The team cheered again, with a deal more genuine enthusiasm this time round. Any lingering traces of gloom evaporated rapidly at the unprecedented prospect of Nicholas getting them laddered at his own expense. The Andes exchanged surreptitious looks which suggested that they were going to at least have a shot at returning the favour. They were determined that Kinnell wasn't going to remain the only person in Sandford to ever manage to get Nicholas Angel helplessly drunk. It was too entertaining a prospect to pass up.
Doris looked a bit put out, but lowered the camera. “Could make a fortune with this tape on eBay. People pay good money f'r a bit of pay-per-view, Chief.”
"Doris," said Nicholas, very, very calmly. His cheeks were flushing, and the grip on the blanket increased. "I'm quite sure they don't want to see me all cut up, and even if they did, I wouldn't want those sort of people looking at me. Now can someone find where Kinnell stored his pants so I can check into the hospital and not have to bleed on my own things?"
*
“Hell of a day, huh?” sighed Danny, dropping himself into the welcome (if mildly saggy embrace) of his sofa with a heavy spring-challenging whump. As he fumbled sleepily for the lamp, it occurred to him that the room looked a bit weird, somehow. It took a moment to remember that this was because he'd had a go at tidying it up of his own volition, a couple of days ago, driven by the same uneasy doomed-competitive unhappiness that had made him cut out drinking and try to get up too early.
Now, with Nicholas a reassuring, slightly antiseptic-smelling shape close by, he couldn't imagine what had come over him. He assumed he'd had some brilliantly logical idea about where to put the TV remotes, at the time, as well. They were nowhere in sight, and it was probably going to take Nicholas's eerie sixth sense for lost things to ever find them again.
Danny yawned contentedly, and started to pry his laced-up trainer off with his other foot.
"Mmm," said Nicholas, thoroughly stoned on pain meds, as he ran fingers across the surface of Danny's bulk. He was very slowly collapsing forward onto his rescuer. "Gonna go t' London tomorrow, yeah?"
“'Course,” said Danny. He was sleepy enough to only sound a bit nervous, and he burrowed an arm under Nicholas's back, supporting the gentle slow-motion slump against him. “Sure y'don't want to wait a bit till you're less sort of full of holes? Don' want her to think I been beating you up.”
Nicholas giggled, stupidly. "Always coming home scraped up anyway. Can't... um. Can't- cantalope. Wait. Can't lettum get the drop on us again."
“Mm? S'a a bunny with antlers, en't it?” Danny nuzzled him on the back of his drooping neck. “You gonna get some sleep now? Early start tomorrow. Looks like I'll be waking you up for a change, 'ey.”
He wanted to ask Nicholas if he was okay, really all right, after everything that had happened today, and great chunks of it Danny hadn't even been there for. Whether his partner was lucid enough to be able to answer or not, however, was another thing entirely. Non-sequiturs about cantaloupes were not an encouraging sign.
"Norra bunny. Gonna save my mum. Jussincase."
“Okay,” said Danny, snuggling closer. He almost wished Nicholas got doped off his tits on prescription medication more often- he was so sort of sweet and easy to reassure like this. That was an 'almost', though.
“Love you.”
Nicholas's head drooped forward once and raised quickly, as if in agreement with this statement, until he did it again, overcompensated and fell back against Danny's shoulder, head spilling back with the taped ear and an uncharacteristically open mouth, and started to snore.
Danny settled into a more comfy position on the sofa, letting Nicholas flop over as much as was necessary to avoid either of them waking with a sore neck. Nicholas didn't usually snore. Danny, who knew he snored himself on occasion, remembered that the one time he'd snored loud enough to wake himself up, he'd been in hospital, and the reason had been because his nasal cavities had been full of old blood. He hoped this wasn't why Nicholas was snoring. It really had, after all, been a hell of a day.
I hope she likes me, he thought, sleepily, barely aware of the thought at all, and closed his eyes.
*
It only felt about ten minutes later that the weight of Nicholas on Danny's upper chest was gone, and there seemed to be an odd sort of tugging around the area of last night's trouser zipper.
“Whug,” mumbled Danny, and tried to curl in on himself, like... well, like a sleepy hedgehog with someone poking at its underbelly.
"Good morning," chirruped Nicholas, who had no right to be grinning that much at what must have been barely dawn and all covered with fresh bruises. He also seemed to be kneeling strangely across Danny's feet. "Thought you'd like a new alarm clock."
And then he bent towards where his hands had succeeded in their unzipping, and... well, chose Doris's dirty option number one.
*
“So if he was one too, right,” said Danny, picking his way around puddles on the pavement, quick-drying in the sun after the rainy night, “why was he after you again?”
He was clear on most of what had happened, the gist if not the specifics. Nicholas was still reticent about some of the specifics. This particular part, though, was still giving him trouble in the sense-making department.
“I mean, yeah, secret government shit, but I mean... he's one too.”
"He had a collar." Nicholas's hand kept wavering up to almost touch his ear... and then shoving itself into a pocket. "He was registered. I wasn't."
He paused, apparently thinking something over. "You know the thing I said to him before they dragged him off? You missed it, but he said pretty much the same thing to me earlier when he cuffed me up."
Danny thought for a moment, working this out, then laughed and shook his head. “Shit. I always miss the best bits.”
Seeing Nicholas's hand creeping earwards again, he frowned. “Leave it,” he said. “Every time I see you poke it I'm gonna poke you. Somewhere you're not expecting it.” He illustrated his point by prodding an index, lingeringly and with malice aforethought, into Nicholas's ribs.
Nicholas smacked it away on sheer panicked instinct. "Oi, like you're one to talk. Aren't you forgetting something?"
On sheer panicked instinct, Danny looked down. No, he was definitely wearing trousers.
“What?”
Nicholas reached into his own trousers, and pulled out Danny's phone. "What do you think's going to happen when we go into London and you wander off to every bargain bin and wind up lost?" His voice, as far as Nicholas Angel's voice could go, at least, sounded like he was teasing.
“Could arrange a rendezvous,” said Danny, a bit sulkily. He didn't like talking about London that much, or at least he liked Nicholas talking about it just fine, but he didn't like having to hazard his own ideas about it, ever since he'd absent-mindedly asked Nicholas if London had more than one sort of supermarket. “Like by that big clock in the middle.”
"C'mere, you big twat." Flicking the phone open, Nicholas threw an arm around Danny's shoulder, grinning madly up into the lens.
Clik. clik clik clikclikclik.
Danny beamed, then flicked two irreverent fingers up at the tiny lens, creating a stop-motion obscenity which rendered every photo after the first two utterly useless for display in polite society anywhere.
“S'whatI'mtalking'bout.”
Nicholas pressed the red casing into Danny's clumsy fingers. "Just to give you a little more incentive to keep track of the damn thing."
Danny stuck it in his back pocket. "C'mon. Or we'll be late-early."
*
By the time they had signed in and made their way to the locker room, it was nearly five to nine. Danny hung back as they walked down the corridor, a natural sort of wandery dawdling which nevertheless left Nicholas well in the lead as they reached the doorway.
The room was unusually crowded. Doris and the Andes were loitering about in a suspicious-looking little group by Doris's locker, and Tony and Bob were nearby, ostensibly scrutinising a photograph out of one of Bob's numerous classic car magazines. The level of conversation dipped noticeably as Nicholas walked in.
Nicholas Angel was an expert on the street when it came to sniffing out which perp in a clusterfuck was selling the drugs, and right now, every single one of his officers was acting like they were the ones with coke baggies in their socks. And how no one would look at his locker.
He could ruin their fun, of course, but he already owed them five rounds, and it would probably just be best to get it over with.
He opened his locker.
Something bounced off his head and jingled as he caught it one-handedly. And then he got a proper look at it.
Nicholas turned the item over in his hands, considering the myriad ways to react.
"Oh. Thank you. It looks very... comfortable."
Doris started clapping, grinning, and trod very heavily on Andy Wainwright's foot until, squint-eyed with pain and glaring at her, he joined in. Like a round of dominoes nudged by a finger, the others followed suit. It didn't last very long, and the Andes both looked like they'd keel-haul anyone who ever mentioned it, but the overriding sentiment was genuine. They were applauding him and themselves, too, for pulling together when it had been needed.
"Weren't my idea," murmured Danny, behind him, happily, as the noise petered out. "But I thought you'd like it."
"I see," said Nicholas, gravely, rubbing the thick, chunky leather in his fingers. "Well, as long as it's not a retirement present." He held it out. "Well? Who's going to do the honors?"
There was a short, slightly startled pause as everyone played a quick round of not-quite-looking-at-each-other. After a moment, Doris stepped up, looking almost timid for once, and took it off him.
“Wouldn't be the first time,” muttered Andy Cartwright.
“You shut y'r mouth, y'cheeky little sod,” she snapped back, fiddling with the buckle behind Nicholas's neck. Once fixed, it sat below the line of his collar, the little round tag paired up with the St. Christopher like a pair of, well, dogtags.
"Thank you Doris," said Nicholas, as dignified as he could manage in front of a woman who knew where his moles were. He craned his neck to see the tag against the notch in his collarbone. "'Chief'. I hope none of you forget that when Danny and I leave for London this morning. No, it's not a holiday, and no, that doesn't mean parties in the office in my absence are acceptable. We should be back within the week, and then we'll see about the beer. I promise."
~fin~
Art