"Angel!" Sergeant Tony Fisher yelled in the other Sergeant's face, leaning across the desk and snapping his fingers under his coworker's nose.

Nicholas Angel jumped in his seat, floundering momentarily before bracing his hands against the edge of his desk, and gritting his teeth as he looked up slowly to meet Tony's gaze.

"Yes, Sergeant?" Nicholas spat, holding his temper to the best of his ability.

His anger was more than apparent; apart from going white-knuckled almost immediately, he was on more familiar terms with the other officers as of late, calling everyone by first names and usually refraining from titles completely, even around civilians.

"You've a call," Tony replied, sounding a bit hurt. "From Lun-din again."

Nicholas ignored the stressed mispronunciation of their nation's capitol, sighing inwardly as he watched Tony slouch away, realizing he'd somehow managed to hurt the man's feelings.

"Oi, Tony, suck it the fuck up," he muttered to himself, shaking his head as he swung his hand rapidly over to his phone, hovering just above the receiver as he waited for the call to be put through.

It was nearly eight months since the village of Sandford had experienced the horror of bloody, guerilla warfare, and seven and one quarter of the intervening months had been happily uneventful and Met-free. The last three weeks, however, had delivered him at least one phone call a day from the Chief Inspector, or worse, his contemporary desk jockey, Sergeant Liam Nash, a listless and intuitive chap who'd taken the easy way off the streets after a homeless hermaphrodite in a Superman costume tried to break his arm over a pair of shoes.

Ah, the good old days. Nicholas shuddered. The phone rang. He grabbed it, shoved it to his face, and waited for the ranting to begin.

"Angel," Nash's voice came in clearly, despite the ancient technology. "How's the boyfriend?"

Nicholas nearly choked on his own spit.

"Excuse me, Sergeant," he replied, coughing sporadically for a moment. He was pleasantly surprised that he'd been able to use one of his favorite chastising phrases twice that day, and it wasn't even lunch yet.

"Officer Butterman is not my …boyfriend… Even if he were, which you must know is completely against regulations, we are even further banned from discussing relationships while working, be they inter- or extra-office-related."

Nash scoffed, the sound digging up fond memories of his old Met beat he'd been trying to quash for the past few months. His old partner reminded him in many ways of Danny, except that they somehow also managed to be entirely different in the same instance: They both liked action movies, but Liam was more casual about them. They both liked to entertain people, except Danny had less rigidity about him. They both liked Italian food, comic books, drinking too much and imaging amazingly complex and outrageous chase-related fights, but Liam preferred to cook himself while Danny ordered out, Danny's comics were less organized but more diverse, Liam could hold his liquor better, and Danny's fights always ended in explosions while Liam's had spectacular car crashes.

"Seriously, Nick," Liam continued, his professional tone completely gone, "How are things with Danny?"

Nicholas sighed, resting his head in his hand, his elbow on his desk, and his common sense in a dark, unhappy corner of his brain.

"Things are…complicated," Nicholas replied, eyeing the inexplicably empty office warily before grabbing the phone cradle and pulling it toward him, plucking at the duc tape that kept the unit together. They'd been messing about, celebrating Doris's birthday with a piñata shaped like the head of the American president, when one of the Andy's swung far too wide and smashed the phone to bits.

They'd called it prophecy at the time. Nicholas had called it grounds to buy a new phone, one that wasn't older than the Queen, but when he'd seen Danny smiling his arse off, playing the master duc tape technician, gathering all the little bits together on the floor and piecing them back together, he couldn't help but let him have his fun.

"So you love him, then?" Liam asked, a slight chill lacing the too-straightforward question, making any answer Nicholas gave very, very dangerous.

"Liam," Nicholas murmured, sighing in earnest now, running his free hand through his very short hair.

"It's not like with you and me. This is different. This is…"

"You mean it's not just tension-relief-fucking?" Liam offered, the cold honesty making both of them bite their tongues for a moment.

"Liam," Nicholas tried again, "this is going to sound far more cliché than I would ever willingly choose to be, but…I've really changed, you know?"

He heard Liam exhale against the mouth piece on his end, and the distant sound of aggravated chair wheels told him his old friend was having a good spin around the office with his phone.

"For his sake, Angel, I hope so," Liam replied.

The way he said Nicholas's last name, with such sweetness and care, told him what Nicholas had already suspected in all the recent phone calls: Kenneth was tired of Liam dragging about like a love-sick puppy.

This Constabulary bit was a total load, but at least it would get Liam back out on the streets where everyone knew he belonged.

Nicholas heard a door open in the distance, and a sharp bang and rattle of glass told him somebody was about to burst in on him having a good mope with his ex partner.

"Sorry, gotta fly, love," Nicholas murmured hurriedly. "Somebody's-"

Danny stormed in, his iPod blaring some ridiculous 80's rock music, totally oblivious to Nicholas's presence. He was dancing as he walked, making him look excessively foolish, and Nicholas wondered for only a moment why his partner was there on his day off, a thought which was immediately discarded as his brain overloaded at the alarming prospect of Danny catching him on the phone with Lun-din; everyone in Sandford was convinced that Nicholas was only a heartbeat away from leaving them, especially Danny.

"I'll let you go," he barely heard Liam say, as he'd allowed the receiver to float slowly away from his head in a desperate attempt to get it back in the cradle before Danny took notice. "But you'd better well call me in the future, too, Angel-dear."

"Yeah, sure," Nicholas barely whispered, ignoring Liam's teasing, the phone hitting the cradle and sliding across the desk in one rapid downward movement of his hand, rocking back quickly on his chair and feigning innocent boredom, in case Danny should look up from his musical distraction.

Liam and Danny were so similar and so different, but a part of him told him that it was really he who had to change. He had to spend less time thinking about making everyone else seem different.