Chapter Nine Deep Focus

Chapter nine

Deep Focus

Anyone who said making movies was glamorous, lied .

Lee wasn't sure what he enjoyed more. Watching paint dry or watching the many, many, many people flittering around a set doing nothing, then doing something, then all hands go , then back to standing around doing nothing.

There was a lot of standing around doing nothing.

The film crew had taken over the entire ranch for the past few days. Lee was once again shoved into the background while Eddie worked. It was what he was here to do, of course. What he'd agreed to do. Keep out of the way but keep an eye. That was his job. But he couldn't lie. He was bored. There wasn't anyone to talk to. Apart from one elderly couple who'd managed to get a room on the ranch, everyone else was tied up in this film. He missed Eddie. Which was stupid. Because he was right there. Currently swimming laps in the outdoor pool on a break from rehearsing scenes with Tiffany, while he'd walked the perimeter hoping to get some exercise despite being in the hottest place on earth. Eddie had even loaned him his AirPods to listen to music, podcasts, shit, even the news , to keep him occupied. Tiffany and the crew were somewhere else among the cluster of trailers and tents and other stuff set up to create the backdrop of the ranch that main character Joel owned, and also further out into the desert for where Tiffany's character was to be stranded.

Plot hole: why hadn't she flown from New York to Las Vegas when her car was that old?

But he was still bored !

The first day, the excitement of learning how a production crew built a set and created a movie from nothing had kept him interested. But after that, Lee had discovered creativity takes time. A lot of fucking time. Longer than many of his hidden surveillance stints. And Eddie had either been in read throughs, screen tests, make-up, or training for something or other. Lee had to…hang around. And during the evenings, Eddie dined with the crew at the mobile catering unit. Lee chose not to. Mostly because Mitch made his ears bleed with his barking orders and his demands for this, that, or the other. For everything, always, to be ‘ harder !'. Lee preferred a quieter space to eat. He ate on the wooden benches outside the saloon where Savannah, the waitress, gave him a free beer and talked about her own divorce. Lee nodded idly, not offering much of himself, gazing at the desert and waiting for Eddie to emerge to walk him back to their room.

The nights, Lee remained on the floor.

His back hurt.

And he was sluggish.

He hadn't had a decent night's sleep in…was it three years now ?

And he hadn't worked out since landing in America.

Eddie slapped his hand on the edge of the pool, finishing his umpteenth lap, and Lee ducked inside the gated fence, sweat pouring down his face, vying for shade from the umbrellas to shield him from the blazing sun. Okay, that wasn't the only reason. Not only was he bored, but he was also starved of conversation, and he missed Eddie's incessant chatter. Then Eddie emerged from the water, lean and toned body rippling with the markings of subtle muscle, and pushed up onto the side, rendering Lee speechless anyway. Eddie was elegant. Masculine. Striking .

Lee hadn't had a reaction like that since…

It didn't matter when, because all he could focus on was the water cascading off Eddie's unblemished, youthful skin, every curve and line of sinew stressed with his lithe movements as he reached for his towel on the lounger, sopping wet swim shorts clinging to his rounded behind and slender thighs. He shook out his hair, droplets flying off and landing on the ground to create splashes to add to the already simmering pool deck. It was as though he were in slow motion. As if Mitch had asked the post-production team to wind down his movements so Lee could watch. Feast .

Is this what it's meant by the male gaze?

Lee was glad he had his shades on because he couldn't take his eyes off him.

It had to be because Eddie looked like Rupert. Had the same body. Slender but fit, the perfect physique for long distance trail running or rock climbing. Rupert didn't do that anymore. He spent his time in suits and in the wig and gown he wore in court. But Lee remembered him in his twenties, envying his body. Lee was stockier. Bulkier. Had to work hard on himself or he'd lose his muscle and return to the chubby kid he'd been when growing up.

But it also could be because—

"Did you find somewhere to run?" Eddie asked him as he draped his towel back over the lounger.

"It's too fucking hot to run," Lee snapped for more reasons than he was antsy and needed to do something. Lift weights. Run. Climb. Shoot something.

Mostly clear his head.

Then he might sleep .

He was fooling himself with that last one.

Eddie crawled onto the lounger, lay on his back, arms behind his head as if sunbathing in the desert was his favourite pastime. "Did you hear about that bloke who ran across Africa?"

"Hardest Geezer? Yeah. Legend."

"Rival that and do the Badwater Ultramarathon. World's toughest foot race through Death Valley should be a piece of piss for you, right?" Eddie slipped on his sunglasses, then grabbed the hefty script he carried everywhere from the ground, and adjusted the back of the lounger to sit up and read it. "I'll be right here when you get back."

"Hard work, this acting lark?"

Eddie's face remained buried in the pages of the text. "Didn't you used to sit on stakeouts, eating doughnuts?"

"It was more Gregg's steak bakes, and what's your point?"

Eddie adjusted his shades. "That why they call it a stakeout?"

"Obviously."

"How long was your longest steak-bake out?"

"Twenty-one hours. "

Eddie lifted his sunglasses, velvety brown eyes landing on him. He whistled. "What do you do in a car with a fellow officer for that long to keep awake? Play truth or dare?"

"Read poetry to each other."

"Bet you did, you dirty fucker."

Lee leaned on the wire fencing, his tight chest easing. Here it was. Here was the banter he'd been seeking to pass the time. A disturbance from over at the trailers behind them caught his attention, and he shielded his eyes to check out the happenings. That's what the past three days had been like. Silence, followed by commotion, back to silence. Tiffany stamped down the metal steps from a trailer, gesticulating furiously at a man with a wireless intercom headset on, clutching a tablet and a rolled up script in his back pocket. The makeup woman peeked out the trailer door. Lee couldn't hear what was being said, but he could guess.

"Why doesn't Tiffany like her hair?" he asked Eddie.

"It's too brittle," Eddie said, eyes scanning the pages of his script. "Deserts making it dry. She needs an intensive moisturising conditioning treatment. Jenny doesn't have one."

"Jenny?"

"Makeup lady."

Lee sat on the end of the lounger next to Eddie's, swiping the sweat from his brow, then cracked his neck from side to side.

"Why don't you go for a swim?"

Lee flinched involuntarily. "No, thanks."

Eddie cocked his head. "You can swim, right?"

"Yes."

Eddie arched an unconvinced eyebrow. "Can you?"

"I know the mechanics of swimming. "

"The mechanics?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure if I was submerged in water, I could get myself out of it."

"Lee?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you not swim?" Eddie pursed his lips, stifling his need to laugh.

"I just said I can swim."

"You said you'd probably survive if you were drowning. That's not swimming."

"I'm no Adam Peaty, no."

"I didn't ask if you were an Olympian. That part, I already know. I asked if you can swim. If you could dive in there and give me ten laps."

"Ten laps of what?"

"Literally anything. Doggy paddle?"

"I reckon I could do ten laps of doggy paddle, yeah."

Eddie smirked. "But you don't know if you can?"

"Read your fucking script." Lee turned back to watch the commotion.

Eddie chuckled. "Who would have thought it? The great adventurer, rock climber, mountain trekker, survivor extraordinaire can't swim. Don't you need to know how to swim to join the police?"

"I can swim. And yes, you need to know how to swim to join the force. There's a pool at Hendon and you either prove you can, or they teach you. But I was City of London. Not Bondi. I don't need to be Michael fucking Phelps."

"What if someone fell in the Thames?"

"They have the coastguard for that. Or fire service."

"Literally ask for anyone but you, then?"

"I worked counterterrorism."

"Good job none of them tried to bomb a boat. "

"I can go on a fucking boat!" Lee barked in frustration.

"Chill, bro." Eddie raised his glasses. "No judgement here."

Lee sighed, tempering his annoyance. He had learned to swim, but hadn't enjoyed the way he'd learned. Cora had berated him for his lack of enthusiasm to swim too, mostly because she felt it ruined their holidays when he refused to get in the pool or go beyond his waist in the sea. He wasn't afraid of it, per se. But he wasn't…elegant. His thick-set, muscular body sank like a brick and he had to work extra hard to float, making him appear as if he was drowning.

Which he wouldn't be.

"Your dad saved me from drowning once," Lee said, as if recalling the memory right there and then, and how that day had glued him to Rupert.

"Yeah?"

"The outdoor pool one summer, think we were about…seven? Hadn't been swimming before and I was too scared to go in, standing on the side, this pudgy kid shaking like a leaf."

Eddie breathed through a smile, eyes on his script but Lee knew he was listening. Intently. Intriguingly.

"My old man had taken me and he didn't want his son looking like some p—" He stopped himself from uttering the dreaded word his dad had used on him, taming it down for Eddie's sake. "Scaredy cat, so he clambered down from the side and chucked me into freezing water."

"Fuck."

"Yeah. He was a bit heavy-handed, my old man."

"Sounds more than heavy-handed. Sounds abusive."

"Times change." Lee shrugged it off despite the feelings of inadequacy the times had left him with. "Might have drowned if this skinny kid hadn't pulled me up from the bottom of the deep end. Sorta became firm friends after that. Rupert spent the rest of summer teaching me how to swim. Or, well, at least how not to drown."

He'd learned properly after that, but never enjoyed it. Then when he'd done his training for the Met, he'd had to prove he could swim fifty laps. He had. Through sheer bloody will. He'd much prefer to climb a three thousand foot rock face than swim, though.

He twisted on the lounger to face Eddie, tucking one leg under his backside, and changed the subject away from painful memories. "Are movie sets always this…boring?"

"I'm sure you mean to say, ‘fascinating but lengthy' and I'd agree." He held out his script. "You could help by reading Tiffany's part for me."

"Not that bored."

Eddie retracted his script, flipping to another page. After a while, he said, "Do you miss it?"

Lee wiped his mouth, beads of salty sweat irritating his skin. "Swimming with Rupert?"

"The Met? Your job."

"Aspects of it."

"The steak bakes and poetry recitals?"

"The catching terrorists, mostly."

Eddie lowered his sunglasses. "I can always get myself into some serious mischief for you to brandish your hot rod and kill a neanderthal if it helps you out any."

Lee's pulse suddenly pounded in his ears and he bowed his head, closing his eyes, willing the flashing images to stop. This was why he didn't sleep. Because of the memories. Of having to relive it all in dreams that didn't die. But it was happening now. Right then. Closing in around him and making him tremble .

Please, not now. Not here. Not in front of Eddie.

"Lee?" Eddie's voice lost its jest, and that gripped Lee harder. He couldn't even fake how not okay he was with him. "Shit. Lee, I'm sorry, I didn't—"

Lee stood, stars circling his vision. "It's fine."

Man up. His old man's voice encroached on his thoughts.

Eddie dumped the script on the ground by his lounger. "Lee—"

Lee didn't let him finish, and instead marched his jelly legs out of the pool compound, over the desert patch, toward their lodge. He shook, trembled, and his gut wrenched itself inside out. He had to get away. Be alone. Away from the echoes and sirens. The smoke and the faces. The memories that relentlessly haunted him in his dreams and seeped into his day. He had to be free from the faces of those he hadn't saved because he hadn't been quick enough. Brave enough.

Man enough.

He tumbled through the turbulent storm of regret he'd been drowning in for the past couple of years and dropped the room keycard to the concrete. Retrieving it through his foggy vision, he got himself inside, hand to his mouth in case he were to spill his guts and tried to breathe through the attack. The door creaked as it drifted to a close, but before it could click into the lock, a hand slapped it open.

"Lee?"

Lee closed his eyes, unable to acknowledge Eddie behind him with his cautious steps and gentle voice. How could he? He was falling apart and he couldn't have Eddie see that. He was protecting him . But he'd meant to protect the entire nation and had failed at that, too.

"Lee? "

Lee had no choice but to face him when Eddie laid a hand on his shoulder and compelled him to spin around. God, those eyes. Those milk-chocolate eyes looked at him in pity, in sympathy, and it was too much. Lee both hated it and leaned toward it. Why couldn't he keep upright? Why was he falling?

Falling.

Falling .

Eddie caught him, hands gliding up his back, along his neck and urging Lee not to let go, his gentle, calming voice finding him in the darkness, "Lee? Hey. It's okay."

Not it wasn't. It never would be again.

And that choked him and made him fall harder. Eddie drew him closer, and Lee didn't know how or why, but he wrapped his arms around him, stealing comfort by basking in his embrace.

In his weird, unprecedented security.

"Jesus, Lee, I'm so sorry." Eddie's fingers made their way through his hair, his damp, sweaty, musky hair, and it felt so damn good . He could cry. He wasn't sure if he wasn't already crying. "You're shaking."

Lee couldn't form words. He couldn't form thoughts. Because if he allowed himself to think , to drift back to why he was like this, he'd remember Stanley pleading with him. Remember when the light in his eyes went out. Remember how Stanley wasn't there anymore. How he'd made a wife a widow and three children fatherless.

And how that was all his fault.

Eddie's lips grazed his ear. "Talk to me."

Lee couldn't. What good would it do to talk ? Cora had begged him to. Had screamed at him to get help. To say something . He never did. She'd turned her back on him, eventually. Perhaps it was that making him tighten his grip around Eddie, hoping to gain some of his naivety. His innocence.

"God, Lee, I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. I shouldn't have said what I did."

Lee found his voice, but not the courage to move away. "Not your fault."

"I mean, yeah, technically. It's the bastards who did this to you. But it is my fault for being flippant about it." Eddie fisted his hair, almost as if he were in as much pain as Lee was right then. As if he was taking Lee's injustice for his own.

Why would he do that?

Lee fell again. Face buried in Eddie's neck, he inhaled the chlorine and the leftover hint of what had become distinctly… Eddie .

Eddie was in nothing but swim shorts, his near-naked body pressing into Lee, slippery skin melding into sweaty clothes. Lee had a stark awareness that he didn't want to let go. Not even when Eddie ghosted his head along his, compelling Lee out from his hiding place to look him in the eye. Consumed by those melted chocolate eyes, Lee wanted to dive right into them. Lose himself in his swirling depths. Drown in them. Without a shred of fear.

And Rupert wasn't even there to drag him out.

Dropping his forehead to Eddie's, he focused on his thick lips parting and how the waft of sweet, warm breath trickled onto his face causing his spine to tingle.

What was happening?

Lee grappled for his restraint and Eddie struggled for air, but Lee couldn't stop himself from tracing the outline of Eddie's mouth. His lips were plump and provocative, and unwittingly forming into the shape of a kiss. Lee shivered. He could feel himself tightening his arms around Eddie, and he couldn't stop it. Didn't want to stop it. He was losing his battle. His grip faltered, and he was hanging by a thread. Bewildered and drifting, all he could do was wait. The room faded, cocooning him in an embrace that shouldn't happen. And Eddie was hard , the thin material of his damp swimming shorts unable to conceal the erection prodding Lee's leg in probing invitation.

A fierce knock on the door slapped Lee back to reality, and he ripped his arms from around Eddie, stepping back, wiping his brow and willing his racing pulse to calm. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't function. Couldn't believe what he'd almost let happen.

What he might have wanted to let happen.

"What?" Eddie called to the door, having remained exactly where he was, chest rising and falling with hard breaths.

One of the production runners called through the wood. "You're due with Hank."

Eddie closed his eyes. " Shit ," he mumbled to the carpet. Then to the door, "Getting dressed. Be there in a sec." He listened for the footsteps to fade before turning his gaze back on Lee.

Lee couldn't say anything. What should he say even if he had the energy to speak? It was as though the floodgates he'd been desperate to keep closed had burst open, swamping his ability to comprehend. To rationalise. To make sense of anything.

"I have to go," Eddie said, searching the room for his bag. He pulled out some clothes, clutching them to his chest. "You should get some sleep."

"I don't need sleep."

"You need to rest, Lee."

Lee narrowed his eyes .

"You think I don't know?" Eddie wriggled into a T-shirt. "I know you don't sleep on that floor."

Eddie wasn't wrong. Lee didn't sleep. Not just when on the floor. He'd been battling insomnia for such a long time, he'd forgotten that people might expect him to sleep occasionally. Cora had chucked him out of their bed long before the declaration of divorce because she hadn't been able to deal with his tossing and turning and inability to shut off. It's why he couldn't share a bed with anyone anymore. Who would put up with that?

"If you won't get in the bed with me," Eddie stamped over to the bathroom, "then use it now. Sleep ."

"I didn't come here to sleep. I came here to watch out for you."

"We're on a closed set. I'm fine. You are not."

"I am fine."

"You're not."

"I am."

"Jesus, Lee. Are you twelve?"

Lee chuckled despite himself.

Eddie softened. Everywhere. Lee hated he noticed. "Get some rest, Lee. I'll be fine." He then grabbed some stuff from his suitcase and dived into the bathroom, allowing Lee to breathe.

When he emerged, changed from his swim shorts into a pair of trousers that made him look like he belonged on a catwalk, he gave him a stern look reminiscent of the ones Rupert used to give when Lee would tell him about his next hairbrained adventure into the backwaters.

"Bed." Eddie pointed at the mattress, made up to perfection by housekeeping, before heading to the door. "Sleep." He settled his hand on the knob, ready to pull open the door, but then hesitated.

Lee held his breath .

"I'm sorry," Eddie said, voice weak and exposed.

"It's not your fault. I need to learn what the triggers are."

Eddie lifted his gaze from the floor to him. "I didn't mean for that."

Lee swallowed, throat dry, unable to respond. What did he mean? That he'd come after him? That he'd held him? Nearly kissed him?

Or that he'd been hard when doing all of it?

Eddie didn't clarify.

He left, leaving Lee dazed and confused, and more unsure of himself than he'd ever been before.