Sneak Peak
I...got distracted today. From my catering AU of a different fandom and swan-dived into another. Okay, my OC distracted me, tbh.
Anyhow, preview, because I feel like sharing. This is from the BBC show Endeavour. (I am horribly behind in the seasons, but love the main characters.) You do not have to know anything about the show, other than crime drama set in the mid 1960s. That should be enough for my baby drabble here.
Positively no clue where this is going to go.
If you’d please, read?
Morse tried to prop himself up on DeBryn’s door frame after knocking. The world was beginning to spin a bit, and he vaguely thought maybe he should have listened to Thursday’s admonition to eat something earlier. Come to think of it, he couldn’t quite remember the last time he had eaten. No matter, at least he had figured out the *words and things about murder and shit*. He shook his head, hoping to clear the darkness infringing on his peripherals, but succeeding only in making the door frame appear slightly off kilter. Fleetingly, he congratulated himself on stopping here. Max wouldn’t mind, and he was beginning to think he really might not have made it home. The door opened, and Morse attempted to straighten up. The ground, however, rebelliously lurched sideways, and he nearly fell through the door. He was caught by...not Debryn? A woman? A woman in Max’s house?
“Sergeant Morse? Good heavens!” The voice, definitely female, sounded strangely familiar, but the room was a bit too hazy for him to make an identification. Maybe if he sat down, for just a moment, he might be able to puzzle this out.
“I’m...I’m looking...Max...Doctor Debryn...friend…” Morse was pretty sure he wasn’t making much sense, but his words seemed hard to find. The woman didn’t respond, she seemed intent on getting him in the direction of what should be Max’s couch. Morse wondered if he was accidentally interrupting a romantic evening, the room seemed lit by candle light, it was so dim. He tried to compose himself as he sat down, but managed only to narrowly escape falling off of the couch.
“Sergeant, can you hear me? Morse? Are you…” He thought the woman was talking to him, but he couldn’t quite hear her. Morse attempted to sit up, so that he could hear her better. His overworked and underfed body refused to comply, and he felt himself slip into unconsciousness.
The young woman stared down at the pale, red-haired man on the couch, hands on her hips. “I told Max one of these days, someone awkward was going to show up.” She huffed in laughter. “I didn’t expect it to be the most awkward detective at the nick. Well, Mr. Morse, what exactly happened to you?” She bent down, inspecting Morse for any obvious injuries. Discovering none, she checked his pulse. Slower and weaker than it should be, but from what Max told her, that was normal for this particular young man. “Probably haven’t slept in days and only scotch for sustenance, ey, Mr. Morse?”
Her face softened as she recalled some of the stories Max had told her of his friend. Lonely, antisocial, arrogant, but brilliant. Opera lover--she wrinkled her nose a bit at that, and kind hearted. He looked younger, more vulnerable now than the last time she had seen him. She reached over him, grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch and tucking it around him. “You need some mothering, good sir. And I daresay, you’ll find I’m much less of a pushover than your Mr. Thursday.” She smirked, and danced off to the kitchen to fix some tea and porridge.
Morse climbed his way back to consciousness slowly, first becoming aware of the sounds of cooking and...singing? A woman, singing. He smiled, Joan. Then his memories came back to him, and with them, a wave of sadness he thought he had managed to seal away deep inside. Not Joan; never Joan. Briefly, he considered not opening his eyes, letting himself drift off again, maybe forever. His natural inquisitiveness took over, however. There was a strange woman in his friend’s house. Max DeBryn, who he had thought was quite unattached. With a sigh, he cracked an eye open.
The woman was hovering over something on the stove, her back to the couch and Morse. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew her from somewhere, though the glimpse he caught of her gave him no clues. It wasn’t until she turned around, bearing two cups of tea, that he recognized the ridiculously short caramel brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“Dr. Eckles?” he croaked, trying desperately to reconcile the paisley brown skirt and cheerful smile to the prickly attitude and men’s trousers the new pathologist usually sported. And...she was in DeBryn’s house? At 10 o’clock at night?
Her smile twitched into a smirk, and Morse found equilibrium in the familiar, albeit skeptical, look she gave him. “Tell you what, DS Morse. If you drink your tea, I’ll answer any questions you have.” She set the tea down next to him, vanishing to the kitchen again. She returned with a bowl. “And, if you eat all of your porridge, you may call me ‘Delle.”
(FYI, ‘Delle [pronounced del] is my OC.)
