Three Signal Bars

By dusk, the landslip has turned the pass into mud and broken slate. Gethin leaves the pool car at the barrier, grabs the emergency kit, checks his phone. Three signal bars, no route around. He points uphill to a squat depot.

“Luxury,” he says. “A roof.”

“And a radio, if the authority remembers its emergency procedures.”

The key sits beneath a steel cover. Inside: a generator, a radio, a tool cupboard, and one narrow fold-down bunk. You see the problem.

I put my bag beside it. “Boundary discussion.”

“Already?” He produces a tyre pencil. “I was going to offer you the wall side.”

“You’re very considerate when stranded.”

He draws a black line along the vinyl mattress. It wobbles twice, then crosses my imagined half.

“That is theft.”

“Engineering tolerance.”

“You work on radios.”

“Signals need room.”

It is irritating that he can make me laugh after two years of refusing him the satisfaction.

The generator coughs and dies before the depot warms. Gethin has its side panel open in seconds; I crouch beside him, holding the torch while he finds a loose terminal.

“Try the breaker,” he says.

“It is above the bunk.”

“Naturally.”

I step onto the mattress, reach for the red switch, and the bunk shifts under my boot. His hand closes around my waist before I pitch backward. Through my jumper, his palm is solid and still. I look down; he looks up. Neither of us makes a joke.

“Breaker,” I say.

“Right.”

The generator settles into its work. He lets go slowly, as if the decision belongs to me.

At nineteen hundred, the radio crackles. Gethin gives our location and repeater status. Control says the recovery crew cannot clear the pass until daylight. Next check: twenty-one hundred.

I take the handset. “Copy. Two adults, secure at the depot.”

When the channel closes, rain taps the metal roof.

“I left because they gave field leadership to Davies,” I say. “Not because I disliked paperwork.”

Gethin leans against the workbench. “I know.”

“You noticed?”

“I noticed you stopped arguing with me. That was alarming.”

“And you let me go.”

“I thought you wanted distance. I was wrong to make that convenient.”

It is an apology without clever cover.

He looks at the bunk, then at me. “If tonight becomes anything else, we use condoms. We ask. We answer honestly. Either of us says stop, it stops. No sulking, no argument.”

“I have condoms.”

His eyebrows rise.

“I inspect remote bridges, Radio Man. I plan for bad weather.”

“Very wise.”

“Do you agree?”

“Entirely.”

At twenty-one hundred, we will report that we are still safe. Before then, Gethin stays by the bench and I remain beside the bunk, both of us pretending that distance is an administrative detail.

“Gethin,” I say. “Kiss me.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Is that an instruction, Inspector?”

“It is a request.”

He crosses the depot slowly. His hand cups my cheek. “Still yes?”

“Yes.”

The first kiss begins carefully, then changes. I seize his shirt and pull him onto the bunk, smudging his tyre-pencil line beneath us.

“Boundary breach,” he says.

“Write it up.”

The radio squawks before I can demonstrate the corrective action. Gethin reports the generator steady and our shelter secure. Control says the road crew will start at first light.

“Next contact, zero six hundred.”

I take the handset. “Two adults secure at the depot. Vale out.”

Gethin turns back. “Where were we?”

“Clothes off.”

“Concise. I admire that.”

“You called it difficult.”

“I was professionally blind.”

His shirt hits the floor. I pull off my jumper. He works my bra loose, then pauses at my waist.

“May I?”

“Please.”

His palms cover my breasts; his thumbs work my nipples until I arch against him. I undo his belt.

“Still yes?” he asks.

“Very yes, Radio Man.”

“I want your mouth,” I say. “Then your fingers. Then I want you inside me.”

“An excellent sequence.”

“Get on with it.”

He kneels between my thighs and waits. I open my legs. His tongue circles my clit with patient attention that turns my joke into a sound I cannot disguise. One hand keeps me open; two fingers press into me, easing deeper at my order.

“More.”

He gives it to me, mouth and hand working together until the bunk knocks against the wall and I come with his name in my teeth. Beyond the blanket, the depot is cold.

When I pull him upward, his cock presses along my thigh. “Condom.”

He finds the packet, then looks at me. “Still want this?”

“Put it on.”

He rolls the condom down. At my entrance, he waits again.

“Slow first. Then less slow.”

His laugh is brief. He eases into me inch by inch. I draw him all the way in.

“Move.”

The bunk complains beneath each stroke. Rain rattles the roof. Gethin keeps asking—“Here?” “Like that?” “More?”—and I answer, because there is no prize for silence.

“Harder.”

His control slips. He drives into me with a rhythm that makes me brace both hands on the mattress. I meet him until I need a different angle.

“Turn over.”

His eyebrows lift. “Now who is giving instructions?”

“Comply, Radio Man.”

He rolls onto his back. I swing over him and lower myself, taking him deep. His composure leaves the building. He says my name like it surprises him; his hands hold my hips while I set the pace.

“Catrin. Christ.”

“Not radio protocol.”

“Forget protocol.”

I lean down and kiss him while I ride him, then keep going until every measured answer he has ever used to irritate me is gone. His hand slips down; he presses my clit. Pleasure pulls tight and breaks. I come around him; he follows seconds later, buried deep, his body rigid beneath mine.

After, we lie under the narrow blanket, the pencil mark rubbed away. The generator and rain make enough company.

“I haven’t found a replacement for you,” he says. “Not at work, and not once I’m home.”

“That is the closest thing you have to romance.”

“Neither have I. I have made every new engineer suffer by comparison.”

“I wanted you to fight for me when I left.”

“I wanted you to stay. I made it sound as though I only needed another name on the rota.” His hand settles against mine. “I was afraid you would see how badly I wanted you nearby.”

“You were not subtle.”

“Just cowardly.”

We talk until sleep takes us in short turns: bridges, radio dead zones, the coworkers we have become without each other. You can mistake competence for distance if you are determined enough. I have done it for two years.

At six, the handset crackles. A crew has opened one lane through the slip.

“Control,” Gethin says, “depot team secure. Repeater certified. We’re leaving now.”

“Copy. Travel safely.”

Morning gives the pass wet stone, low cloud, and orange cones. My phone finds three signal bars as Gethin loads our bags into the pool car. Messages begin arriving. I leave them unanswered.

“Office?” he asks.

“Breakfast first.”

“Is that an instruction, Inspector?”

“It is a first date.”

At the depot gate, he waits with the car idling. I look over the pencil-smudged map on the dashboard. “Could sharing a route become something we choose on purpose, Radio Man?”