DISCLAIMER: So not mine.  You think I'd put *Debbie* over
            Chandler's desk?

TITLE:      All the Wants You Waste
AUTHOR:     kel
FANDOM:     The Bill
PAIRING:    Chandler/Taviner

RATING:     PG-13, L, A
CHRONOLOGY: Around the end of Episode 034.  Ish.
SPOILERS:   Mild for Episode 036, but nothing that wasn't
            signposted.
SUMMARY:    Where's your crown, King Nothing?

COMMENTS:   I'm doodling here.  Probably not quite the Des
            I'm wont to paint elsewhere, but you never know.
ARCHIVE:    Jasmine Alley, Fabulae, Rareslash
FEEDBACK:   Of any and all stripes welcome –
            to bessie@goldweb.com.au.

THANKS TO:  Rie for beta, as always.  Eggbert 'cos deep down
            I'm a sucker for Happy!Des.  Oh God, did I say
            that out loud? ;-)  And Carin for
            being the first to tackle these two.
            C'est ta faute, madame.  Encore! :-)


====================

All The Wants You Waste
by kel

=====================


Tom Chandler stands, on this cold and rainy evening, at the
window of his freshly-painted office.  In his reconstructed
little kingdom, looking at the world and not the letter in his
hand.

Alex wants the letter signed.  Alex wants to go away, to get
away.  To find somewhere warm and honest where he can get on
with things.

Alex wants to get out of the rain, thinks Tom, looking down
over the car-park.  He's down there now, talking openly to Des
Taviner, glancing up at Tom's window and away with undisguised
contempt.

Des doesn't bother to look up.  Des is laughing, or the
closest he comes to it in the presence of senior officers.  It
must be one of his good days.

Des has good days now.

It's quietly, mildly galling.  Only mildly.  Because Tom knows
Des also has days where his mouth opens under Reg's and
suddenly there's no world to hold him up.  That sometimes he
can and will be touched, and other times it sends him deep
inside, where buried, rotting things leave black and oily
smears on Reg's healing hands.

Tom knows because he knows.  Tom remembers when the hands were
his.

He didn't make Des this way, however much he's wished it,
sometimes. There's stone in Des, deep inside, stone and a
formless, seared and scarring pool to match his own.  Born
there, died there, shied from and shielded.  Shot through
Des's flesh, his prison and his reinforcement. And with it,
always, always these moments when the bleakness rises, forcing
venom into any would-be healer's face with granite lips and
balling fists and cold, dead eyes.  Moments when the bleakness
stretches calmly into Des' form and settles in, walks it round
with stiff-backed memories and easy, violently coloured-in
contempt.

Tom stares without curiosity at the talking pair, thinking how
joyous it had all been, once.  To find someone //like// who
didn't seem to mind that little push beyond, and could share
in all the taking to be done. Who saw, like him, the world at
their feet; who should have seen that all they had to do was
take and set and hold it all.  Someone strong enough to turn
that goddamn little black prison inside out, and show it who
was boss.  Let it spill its poisons *there*, on *them*, and
not on you.  Never on you, never in you, never own you.

Tom saw, and knew he could.  Tom took Des' hand, and pulled
himself up, and made that turn.  And turned again to do the
same and wondered idly what would happen if.  If there was
really room for two, and if he really, truly wanted Des to
change.

Many miles ago.

He sees Reg run across the yard, thin shoulders hunched
against the rain, the happy lines of indulgent suffering
etched deep into his face. Sees him hand Des his coat, and
sees Des smile.

Sometimes Reg can make Des laugh.  Sometimes Tom can forgive
him for making the part of Des that he loved best curl and
suffocate in its dirty little corner.  Even if it means he can
no longer take comfort in the thought of Taviner as something
ruined and selfish and gone. The vagrant, masochistic hope he
*wasn't* grew boring long ago.  He surveys its remnants in
himself, finds it cheap and false and never what it was when
Des was far away and it didn't really matter if he'd healed.

He can see the man in Des, now, fighting hard to best the
parts he'd long thought king.  Fighting hard and helplessly,
dangling, falling, almost gone.  But he can see Reg, too,
bleeding hard and holding on, the way Tom forgot he'd wanted
to when his Des disappeared behind a face gone hard and grey.
When Des gave up and fell into his quiet, lonely prison with
the shadowed, open door.  When Des found it just that little
bit too hard to find his way back out alone, and Tom found it
just a little bit too hard to care.  When Tom looked at
everything and smiled, when Tom stood up and took his hand
away.

Together, oh dear God, together they could have burned the
world.  Razed it, tamed it, won and walked together.  And now
all he has is this, this desk and this letter and Alex gone.
And Des has Reg, and Reg is holding on, with his skinny wrists
and gentle calm and love and love returned.

And now Alex won't be here to ask what hurts him most: that
it's possible, or that it's not his problem any more.  Alex
can't be told to shut up, or mind his own fucking business, or
come and help him make it go away.

The car-park's empty now, empty but for dark and puddles.  Tom
closes his blinds and sits at his desk and thinks about all he
surveys.

He knows he made the right decision.  Of course he did.  It's
what Tom Chandler does.

He signs the transfer application, thinking only 'here, and
here, and here'.  Thinking poor Alex, such a lot to live up
to.

He won't waste time on wishing to be missed.


===== (C) bessie 2003 =====