The Boyfriend

Summary: Pseudo-canon. Sometime pre-series. Martha has a new boyfriend. No it's not Clive. Yes you should read this whether you're a C&M shipper or not!

Disclaimer: Still don't own Silk.

A.N. I felt inspired to prove that I can write Martha with a love interest who is not Clive. Obviously this is still a C&M story but one about their friendship…mostly. It's pretty canon I think. We'll call it Anna-canon just in case! We have almost 20 years of backstory to write. I hope you enjoy my contribution! It's over 9.5k in total and I'm splitting it into three rather awkwardly different sized chapters!

'So what's he like?' Clive asked, faux casual.

'Who?' Martha responded absently, not looking up from the new brief she was absorbed in.

'Your new squeeze, obviously!'

'Squeeze Clive?' She said, attention successfully pulled from her notes, just as he'd intended when he'd chosen the word. 'Honestly!'

'What would you prefer? Boyfriend? Lover?!' He rolled the r on the last word and she rolled her eyes at him.

'Come off it.'

He was delighted to see a faint blush creeping up her neck. 'Not graduated to the status of lovers yet?' he teased, partly just to wind her up, partly because a tiny bit of him was interested. Martha Costello didn't have that much of a sex life as far as he could tell and while sharing an office wasn't the surest way of knowing, it did give a number of clues which Clive was adept and experienced enough at picking up on. Flurried late arrivals in chambers, smudged lipstick where usually the pillar box red was perfect, an extra application before she left for the day, a certain look in her eyes and sometimes just something subtly different about the way she was, particularly with him. Mellower perhaps, brushing off his attempts at flirting with more ease than usual, happier to laugh and indulge him simply because they were both secure in the knowledge it would never happen. Martha Costello wasn't a cheat, and certainly not with Clive Reader. Not that their relationship was likely to develop beyond the volatile friendship they'd managed to build over the intervening years since becoming first pupils and then tenants together. She didn't need someone else in the picture to keep him safely at arm's length, that much was obvious, but perhaps she thought it made a difference to him. He hated that she thought him that sexist, that he would consider another man the reason to keep his distance rather than her own regular rebuffs. To counterbalance this he made sure to flirt as consistently and shamelessly when she was in a relationship as when she was out of one. If anything, Martha being attached made him fly closer to the wind, pushing that little bit harder, teasing, just because he had the opportunity. She had plenty of chance with him if she'd wanted to tease him back, little though she used the wealth of inspiration his extra curricular activities afforded her.

No, Martha Costello's sex life was a mystery compared to his, seen in rare glimpses every now and then, when she dragged herself away from work long enough and let her guard down. He was pretty sure he wasn't alone in chambers in wondering about it, or even the Bar at large. She had a reputation, for her boldness, for her brilliance, and it gained her plenty of admirers, much as his confidence, charm and cutting cross examination did for him. She didn't take advantage of it the way he did though. Certainly no one would ever call her a player! She was more likely to be followed by whispers of frigid which he found particularly distasteful as well as ridiculous. Anyone who thought Martha Costello was cold and sexless was clearly emotionally stunted themselves. She was the most passionate person he knew. Probably a fiend in bed when she wanted to be too, though he had nothing to base that on other than a finely tuned sexual radar and his own inadvertent fantasies. He wasn't a perv, honest; he didn't make it a habit of imagining his colleagues in less than professional situations but there had been that time they were both three sheets to the wind and she'd said something that sent his brain into overdrive and that same alcohol soaked brain had never forgotten it.

'Clive!' Martha's sharp tone brought him back to reality. She was eyeing him with a frown. 'You can't comment on my sex life and then go off in another world, it's bloody creepy to be honest...'

Clive felt his own face start to flush and desperately tamped it down. 'No, no,' he said quickly. 'It just made me think I should call Heather back, that was all. Nothing untoward.'

'Really. Cause your relations with Heather are oh so perfectly innocent?'

Clive winked at her. 'You know me, I don't kiss and tell.'

She had to give him that; for all he was a player and never hid his escapades and encounters in the slightest, he didn't talk about them loudly across chambers or anywhere else. While gossip might filter out of the men's robing room, it didn't come from him, at least nothing more than an oblique comment or two, an allegedly sheepish shrug or well timed wink.

'Which one is Heather again?' she asked, not really interested in the slightest but enthusiastic enough about the topic's ability to shift the focus from her own relationship to keep the conversation going.

'Tall, blonde, great arse.'

'Because now I know exactly who you mean.' Martha said sarcastically. Clive Reader, while not particularly discriminating when it came to women, as long as they were of above average intelligence and attractiveness, did have a recognisable type. The description of Heather applied to probably fifty percent of the women she knew he'd slept with recently and probably a good proportion of those she didn't know about.

'Works for Hiscox.'

'Not a lawyer then?'

'She is, in house though.'

'Ah.'

'What?'

'Nothing.'

'Didn't think you were one to judge Marth.'

'I'm not.'

'Mmhmm,' he challenged but she didn't rise to it.

'So what's her title then?' she asked.

'What? At work?'

She laughed a little at him then. 'No, in, uh, your life... Have you...graduated to the status of lovers yet?!' she teased.

'Mocking me Martha?!'

'Always.'

He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, not perturbed in the slightest. 'You know me, lovers is where I start.'

'Lovely.'

'Oh it is.'

'Doesn't that ever…?' She hesitated, wondering why she was now the one pushing the boundaries of this frankly far too personal conversation.

Clive waited, one wrong word, the shrill of the telephone, footsteps from outside the office, anything at all really could send her back to her brief, shutting the door on the moment they were having, far closer to friends than colleagues right now, closer than they usually got without alcohol's emotional lubricant.

'Isn't it, lacking?'

Clive paused too, weighing up the question. 'Sometimes,' he admitted. 'Depends if it matters.'

'And with Heather?'

'There isn't a lot of conversation. And it's not serious, so it doesn't really matter. We get on well enough.'

'Well enough?! That's miserable Clive.'

'The sex certainly isn't.'

She shook her head at him. 'You're incorrigible.'

He grinned, a little sheepishly, and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Martha always cut right through his bullshit and it disconcerted him sometimes. 'Anyway,' he said, 'I thought we were talking about you and Rob.'

'Robert.' Martha corrected automatically.

'Robert,' Clive amended, drawing out the name ridiculously. 'And how serious are things with young Robert?'

'None of your business.'

'Come on Marth, I just opened up about Heather.'

'You told me she had a great arse and the sex was good! I hardly call that a heartfelt exchange!'

There was something about the way she was looking at him, the challenge and teasing note in her words and voice that made the thoughts he generally avoided thinking about, and certainly never voiced, spill out his mouth unwarranted.

'Well…Heather's great, really. She's smart and beautiful…' he hesitated.

'Why do I feel like there's a but coming? There's always a but with you isn't there Clive?!'

'She had a broken engagement not that long ago and I'm pretty sure she's convinced they're going to get back together,' he said and Martha felt a little guilty for her harsh words. For all he might have a pretty regular stream of female companions it didn't necessarily follow that the rotating door was solely down to him.

'She's using you then?' she asked.

'It's fine. It's not as though I'm really offering her an alternative.'

'No,' Martha agreed, eyes piercing, even from across the room, as she studied his face.

'So, fair's fair, how how are things with you two?'

'Why do you want to know?'

Clive shrugged. 'Personal curiosity, professional concern.'

She narrowed her eyes at that. 'And what is that supposed to mean?'

'We are co-defending next week, just want to make sure…'

'Don't you dare finish that sentence Clive Reader!' Martha's voice was ice cold. 'I don't question your abilities in court based on your sex life! I don't voice concerns that you might be lusting after Heather's arse or lamenting her departure when we're supposed to be working and I'd appreciate it if you could grant me the same respect.'

'Sorry,' he said quickly, and he was. 'I didn't mean... I mean, I didn't intend.. That was wrong of me to say. You know I'm not a misogynist Martha.'

'I do. But sometimes you say things without thinking and they sound fucking awful to be frank Clive.'

'I'm sorry.'

She nodded and there was a stiff moment of silence. Martha's eyes slid back to her brief but she offered an olive branch. 'For the record, Robert and I are fine.'

'Great,' Clive said carefully, before diving back into the conversation. 'You still haven't told me what he's like you know.'

Martha sighed, though more with amusement than frustration. 'You're like a dog with a bone, you know that Clive?'

'I do have it on good authority that my puppy dog eyes are second to none,' he quipped.

'Some people are just easily susceptible. I've never had a problem with them personally.'

'You, Martha Costello, are the one woman immune to my charms,' he said dramatically and she laughed.

'Or the one woman you're not stupid enough to try it on?'

'I'm not sure you can claim that. I'm sure I've tried at some point.'

'Perhaps not hard enough if your success rate is anything to go by,' she teased before the words really registered.

Their eyes were caught on each other's across the office. They had moments like this sometimes, when one or other of them would say something that could be construed as something else entirely, something too close to the thing they avoided, too much like something that meant something. They looked at each other for a beat, then another, blue eyes on blue, unguarded, uncertain, anxious but unafraid. Acknowledging the moment but not speaking of it. Wondering if one day one of them would break the silence with something other than an awkward laugh, a retraction or redirection of the conversation.

'I mean,' she said at last, it felt like ages but had probably only been a few seconds. 'If the Clive Reader charm really is all that.'

'I guess we'll never know,' he said, and his voice sounded worryingly disappointed to his own ears and he quickly pressed on, hoping she couldn't hear it. 'But that still doesn't tell me what he's like. Everything I'm not I presume?'

Martha paused, pen tapping on her lip. 'Actually, you're more alike than I give you credit for really.'

Clive was disconcerted by the response, fiddling with the ribbon he'd taken off his own new brief that morning. 'How do you mean?'

'It's not so much looks. He's not my usual type anyway,' Martha mused. Clive didn't really think she had a type, not one he had been able to ascertain from the few men he'd met or seen her with over the years. 'It's more, in attitude, no, personality. Essentials maybe, I don't know.'

She was rambling a little and Clive couldn't help loving it when she got flustered, couldn't resist poking at her discomfort.

'Essentials huh?' he asked, confident again, eyebrows waggling.

'Don't make me take back the compliment,' she said warningly but her tone was light. 'He's certainly not as cocky as you…'

'Who is?' Clive joked, spreading his hands.

Martha simply smiled at him, knowing as well as he did that the cockiness was really just a front, borne out of lingering memories of teenage insecurity rather than outright confidence, assured as he might be about his performance in court and prowess in the bedroom.

'He's intelligent, thoughtful, driven… You're very different too, don't get me wrong, but his background isn't that dissimilar.'

'Really?'

'Yes Clive, that's why I said it.'

'I just didn't peg you as someone who…'

'Don't peg me!'

'I mean…'

'What, Clive? Choose your words very carefully!

'Just…you're always quite scathing about my background.'

'I don't discriminate if that's what you mean.'

'I know you don't Marth. That just doesn't seem like your type.'

'You can't decide what my type is based on me teasing you about going to boarding school.'

Clive felt, privately, that there was a bit more of an edge to it than teasing really conveyed but decided it was better to let it go. 'Fine. So what did you mean by similar?'

'He didn't go to Harrow, but you know; nice house, suburbs, two parents who stayed together, grammar school, Downing…'

'Hmm, Cambridge boy.

'Don't start with the Oxbridge debate, please.'

'Not saying a word,' Clive said, though he was obviously thinking it. Oxbridge rivalry didn't appear to dim with the passage of time. 'What does he do anyway, young Rob?'

'He's a lecturer. King's.'

'An academic huh?'

'Yeah.'

Clive considered a number of scathing comments about perpetual students before settling on, 'Not a real job, is it?'

'Don't do that Clive.'

'What?'

'Say something rude just because. You don't know him, you haven't met him…'

'And why is that? Why does he never come by chambers?'

'Why would he? I think it's awkward when people pick each other up from work like schoolchildren.'

Clive fidgeted, thinking of the times ex girlfriends had loitered in chambers, some making stilted conversation with Martha while others draped themselves over his desk, ignoring her completely and entreating him to finish up faster so they could leave. Heather had done it only last week, if not quite as ostentatiously as some.

'Is he hideously ugly?'

'No!'

'Grossly disfigured? Questionably dressed?'

'No, no,' she gasped, properly laughing now. 'He's a perfectly normal bloke. Average height, regular build, generally handsome…'

'Oh,' Clive said in mock disgust. 'That's disappointing!'

'God knows what you and Billy would say to him if he did turn up. But I suppose you wouldn't consider that an acceptable factor in discouraging me.'

'Of course not.'

'The only one I'd really dare introduce him to is Alan and yet why would I? That would be like some weird and unnecessary parental introduction.'

'Have you met his?'

'Why?'

'Just wondered.'

'Yes.'

'What're they like?'

'Old. A lot older. Fine. Nice. They were in town for something, we only saw them briefly. He met them for lunch, I was in court for most of it.'

'How did that go down?'

'I didn't ask. Not much I could do about it was there?'

'No. But you liked them?'

'They're quite… I don't know how to say this politely really. They're quite…conservative.'

'I'm not sure that's considered an insult in general society Marth.'

'Not amongst your friends, no.'

'Big C or little c?'

'Er, little but but big too I expect.'

'Oh my god Marth, are you dating a Tory? I never thought I'd see the day!'

'No, Clive. Robert is suitably liberal.'

'Not a socialist though?'

'No. But Liberal enough anyway.'

'Do his parents know?'

'What?'

'That you're a raging tomato.'

'Sometimes your slang is very strange Clive,' she said, silently chalking it up to his boarding school education. 'I don't think he will have mentioned it.'

'And what about your mum?'

'Hasn't met him, no.'

'Why not?'

'Why does it matter?'

'Just having a conversation Marth, no need to get shirty!'

Martha sighed. 'She's in Bolton for a start.'

'So? No nice little trip up North? Cosy weekend away?'

'When,' she began archly, 'have I ever been the type to go away for the weekend?'

'Good point. So that's the only reason?'

Martha looked uncomfortable but didn't shy away from his continued questioning. 'Not really. But I've never had that kind of relationship with my mother. We're not like that. Talking about boys, me bringing them home so she can vet them, she didn't do it when I was sixteen, never mind thirty-something.'

'You forget I know exactly how old you are Marth. I take it this means Rob doesn't?'

'Robert. And no. It's never come up.'

'Never come up? Right,' he said, clearly unconvinced. A thought suddenly occurred. 'He's younger, isn't he Marth? You've got yourself a toy boy! Are you being a cougar Martha Costello?!'

'If you know exactly how old I am Clive Reader,' she said slowly, stressing all three syllables of his name. 'You know exactly why I feel I'm too young to be considered a cougar and frankly I'm insulted by the insinuation.'

'Fine. You're not a cougar. But is he a toy boy? Come on!'

He's not a toy boy Clive,' Martha said, wincing at the word. 'He's barely younger than you.'

'Hmm. Interesting.'

'What is?'

'Nothing.'

Martha huffed. 'This conversation is not getting either of us much work done.'

'I thought that was the exact reason we were having it. What's your brief like?'

'Bloody awful. Yours?'

'Dull. Want to slack off early, go to the Crown?'

'Can't.'

'Meeting Rob?'

'You know his name is Robert!'

'But it's fun to see you get annoyed on his behalf when he's not even here. Tell him to meet us there.'

'I don't know Clive, what did I just say about not having him meet you and Billy?'

'I'm not going to do anything.'

'Fine. But I don't want some pissing contest.'

'No pissing here Marth. You really think he's threatened by me?'

'No I don't think he's threatened by you,' she said tiredly, adding under her breath, 'He doesn't really know about you.'

'What?'

'He knows you exist Clive.'

'But just as a colleague?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay.'

'I know we're…past that point, it's just hard to explain sometimes, you know. The job we do, the work we do, the way we do it. The hours, the closeness with colleagues who understand. I've had it, mess things up before.'

'And you don't want it to this time. He means a lot to you then?'

'He…could do.'

'So tell him the truth. Really Marth there's a reason they say honesty is the best policy.'

'And you follow that do you? With all your…'

'It's not the same Marth, I'm not trying to have a real relationship with any of them, not really, or at least very rarely.' He took a breath. 'I'm going to find it hard pretending to anything other than what we are, Martha, around you. We've got a shorthand, an understanding, a friendship. I can't just turn it off, and, and then there's…'

'What?'

He shook his head but Martha knew what he meant.

'I know.'

It was the way they flirted, because even she flirted back sometimes so it wasn't just on him. The way they knew each other, comfortable, familiar in a way that colleagues weren't. It was the way they talked, something natural and easy between them, a shared vernacular. The way they fought too, sometimes; exaggerated, incisive, tempers flaring perhaps quicker than really made sense. Passionate, alight with something that buzzed and burned between them; chemistry, not that either of them would ever say it.

'We're just close, Marth, and there's nothing wrong with that.'

'Maybe there is.'

'I don't know. We've never crossed any kind of line. There's never been anything…nothing actually, tangible.'

'I don't mean…'

'What do you want me to do? Back off? I'm not doing anything that would step on his toes. Do you want me to…stop, with the jokes, the flirting? Or at least try to?'

'I know. And no. I don't want you to change Clive. I don't want us to change. It's just… Remember that time…that guy…'

Clive knew the one she meant. 'Stuart?'

'Yeah.'

'It's not the same. The guy was a knob, Marth. It's not as though you were choosing to talk to me over him, just sometimes, because of what we do, I'm going to understand you better. He couldn't deal with that. Why not give Rob the benefit of the doubt?'

'Maybe,' she said, sighing over the word.

'If you want to, that is.'

'I don't know. We're fine how things are. Balancing on the edge of being serious but not really being. It's comfortable as it is. I'd rather not rock the boat.'

'You know I get that. How often do I do serious? I'm the last person to push you into that, it's just usually that's more your style.'

'I guess so.'

'Come on, invite him to the pub and I'll scope him out.'

'I don't need you to…' she began.

'I know,' he said quickly. 'But think about it on the way? I'm gasping for a drink!'