Title: The Short Walk Home

Fandom: Press Gang

Pairing: Kenny/Lynda friendship

Spoilers: A Night In post ep

“Nearly finished, Boss?”

Lynda squinted up at Kenny, momentarily distracted from slashing her red pen across a sheet of paper that already had more red than black on it, looking at the little clock on her desk, eyes widening when she was able to focus on it enough to read it. “Is that the time?” Her voice betrayed her disbelief, and Kenny allowed himself a little smile.

“Yeah… half past ten; I’ve been trying to tell you for the last half hour.”

Lynda dropped her pen onto the papers, and Kenny realised with a start that those papers looked familiar, as they should considering that he was the one who dug them out of the pile on Freddie’s desk. Eyeing the amount of red ink decorating them, and remembering the fact that they were only notes, not even a first draft of an article, Kenny made a mental note to remember to calm Freddie down first thing on Monday morning. It was part of his general duties as Assistant Editor of the Junior Gazette, and there were times when he thought that the fact that Lynda was his best friend and that he was one of the few people she listened to was a major reason for his getting that particular job.

Then there were other times, like now, that he knew it was probably the main reason why he got the job.

And right now, when Lynda was looking around the mostly dark newsroom – after all, it was half past ten on a Saturday night – before looking back up at him with a gimlet-eyed glare, he really wished that he’d turned down the job and run away as far and as fast as he could. Pluto would be nice.

“Where’s everyone else?” she demanded, and Kenny, hands in his trousers pockets, swung around to look at the door. She made it sound like there had been a cast of thousands, when, in fact, only four people had been there all evening – Lynda, working off her own issues; Kenny, who hadn’t been quick enough with an excuse; Spike, there purely by virtue of threat; and Tiddler, who had reasons of her own.

“They left,” he said simply, but that wasn’t enough for Lynda, who seemed to take exception to two-thirds of her work force going absent without leave, even at ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

“Without asking me?”

“Tiddler’s mum was going to be waiting outside,” Kenny told her. “And I don’t think she was too pleased about Tiddler doing late duty anyway.” And the reason why their Junior editor had taken Sarah’s yellow and done her late shift – seeking fodder for an English assignment; a play based on three of her friends – was something that Kenny, in a million years and under peril of death, would never say to Lynda. “And Spike was going to a party.”

Lynda’s jaw dropped, and her voice was high with indignation when she spoke. “Without asking me?”

Kenny bit down on the inside of his cheek, hard, before even thinking about answering that question. Spike had been chasing Lynda since the first time he’d laid eyes on her, with Lynda putting up as much resistance as she possibly could – and with Lynda, that was a lot. It was plain to anyone with eyes though that she did fancy Spike and that it was only a matter of time before something happened between them – hopefully before one of their fights literally blew the roof off the newsroom. The Spike and Lynda Show was a regular attraction for the news team, and hence, Tiddler’s idea of studying Spike and Lynda as inspiration for her English assignment. Not even she, though, had imagined that she’d get quite such good ammunition.

“Maybe he didn’t feel like it was the right time,” Kenny suggested finally. “What with everything that went on here tonight.”

Lynda arched one eyebrow, staring him down. “Name me one time that’s ever stopped Spike before.”

“Well-” Kenny was all ready to frame some kind of excuse, but Lynda was already standing, stuffing pages into her briefcase.

“Exactly! It’s never stopped him before… so what’s so special about this time?”

Kenny wanted to say that Lynda had never before made a running exit to the bathroom to cry in peace because her boyfriend had dumped her, but considering he’d heard loud and clear the contempt with which she’d greeted Spike when he tried to talk to her about it, he wasn’t going to raise that particular point. “Your lucky day?” he suggested weakly, and Lynda paused, hand poised to switch off her desk lamp.

“Is that a joke about my name?” she demanded, and he held up both hands in the universal declaration of innocence. Well, that or don’t shoot.

“Boss… would I?”

The purse of her lips told him loud and clear that she wasn’t sure, but it must have been his lucky night too, because she didn’t pursue it. “Right… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“On Sunday?” The words fell from Kenny’s lips, and the second they did, he knew it was pointless. Sunday might be a day of rest for the rest of the world, but the rest of the world didn’t have Lynda Day as their boss and best friend. “Forget I asked that.”

“Look, I’ll even be nice about it… you can have a lie in.” Visions of his bed and pillow danced in Kenny’s head, vanishing quickly when Lynda continued crisply, “Instead of half five, you can get here at six… how about that?”

A million responses presented themselves, but Kenny went with the path of least resistance. “Thank you Lynda.”

“You’re welcome… just don’t tell anyone or they’ll all want one.” Lynda might have been joking, then again, probably not. “Oh… and did you get that maths thingy done?”

“Yeah.” Kenny fell into step beside Lynda as they made their way towards the door. “You?”

He knew what was coming when she looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “It might be possible that I could need a little help,” she admitted, and once again Kenny was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. That admission would have been like pulling teeth for Lynda.

“And it might be possible that I’ll remember how to do it,” he told her. “Especially if I got some extra sleep… say and got here at nine?”

Lynda narrowed her eyes, but the corners of her lips were twitching. “Nine it is then,” she said, flicking off the lights and locking the newsroom door.

They walked down the corridor in silence, closing the heavy doors behind them, locking them securely for the night. Only when they began walking away from the building did Kenny speak. “Walk you home?” he said, and Lynda, as he knew she would, turned a look of pure exasperation on him.

“Must we do this every late duty?” she asked wearily. “For the hundredth time Kenny, you do not have to walk me home!”

“Amazing.” Kenny shook his head, amazement ringing in his tones, and Lynda looked up at him sharply.

“What?”

“That we do this every late duty and you still haven’t figured out that it’s not a question.” Lynda was ridiculously easy to wind up sometimes he reflected, and this was a particular bone of contention between them.

“I can find my own way home, you know,” she reminded him, and he just gave her a look.

“You never know who you might meet,” he told her, and she glared at him.

“Are you insinuating that I’m incapable of looking after myself?”

“Who said I was worried about you?” Kenny put as much amusement into his voice as he could possibly muster. “It’s those other poor people I feel sorry for…” He stopped talking with a laugh, dodging her slap deftly, and while she was still half-glaring at him, she was smiling a little too.

“Remind me why we’re best friends again?” she asked, and he shrugged, not finding an answer for her question, but coming up with one of his own.

“Why didn’t you tell me about you and James?”

At the sudden mention of her ex-boyfriend’s name, Lynda’s friendly – well, friendly for Lynda – demeanour vanished. James Armstrong, a maths student at the college, had broken it off with Lynda the previous evening, using the excuse that he needed more time to study. A weak excuse, and everyone knew it, just like everyone had known that morning that Lynda was in a worse mood than usual, handing out the dreaded yellows to anyone who didn’t have a good enough excuse to get out of late duty.

“What do you mean?”

Angry, belligerent, her best “this-subject-is-closed” voice, except for once, Kenny wasn’t going to let it go. “I mean, you’ve just said that I’m your best friend… so how come, as your best friend, I had to hear that news from Spike of all people?”

Lynda sniffed. “You sounded pretty amused by it,” she told him, and he couldn’t exactly deny that.

“It just took me by surprise is all,” he tried, but Lynda’s harsh laugh told him what she thought of that.

“And you wonder why I didn’t tell you.”

Now it was Kenny’s turn to be belligerent. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lynda sighed heavily, her shoulders rising up and down, her pace quickening, a sure sign of temper. “It means, Kenny, that why would I tell you about James and me? You can’t stand him, you’ve never liked him.”

“Well, yeah, but-”

“Why?” Lynda stopped him mid-search for a comeback, her voice curious rather than angry, and the mental whiplash must have shown on his face because she continued, “Why didn’t you like him? What could you see that I couldn’t?”

In truth, there were a lot of reasons why Kenny had never liked James Armstrong, and it was nothing to do with the fact that he was older and more intelligent and more handsome and all the other reasons that Norbridge girls loved him and Norbridge guys hated him. It had more to do with the fact that he was an arrogant so-and-so who had girls swarming around him like flies around a honey pot, and Kenny would have bet every last penny he had that Armstrong had another girl all lined up to replace Lynda. Indeed, if Julie Craig’s gossip radar was accurate, and it had never been wrong yet, then Armstrong had, last week in town, been seen getting very well acquainted with a tall brunette who was most decidedly not Lynda. It was just another thing that Kenny would never tell her, though he had no problems with telling her the other reasons why he hated James Armstrong. He even opened his mouth to tell her them.

Instead, what came out was, “He’s not good enough for you.”

“Oh please!” Lynda didn’t even break stride, pure disgust in her voice as she cast her eyes to heaven. “You sound like my mother.”

Not something that Kenny usually would like to hear, but this time, he’d take it as validation rather than insult. “Well, we were right, weren’t we?” His words hit home as her steps faltered, slowing her pace. He took no pleasure in taking the wind out of her sails though, not after he’d seen her venting her hurt and anger that night. So he made his voice gentler when he spoke again. “Look at how he treated you Lynda… tell me you’re not better off without him.”

She stopped in her tracks, looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, and he swallowed hard when he saw tears there. It had been a long, long time since he’d seen Lynda cry; his earlier comment of “Do you think she does?” hadn’t been feigned for the benefit of Tiddler and Spike. He wanted to say something, anything, to make her feel better, but before he got a chance to, she turned on her heel and walked away.

She walked away, but not so quickly that he couldn’t keep up with her; Lynda-speak for “You’re right, but I’m not going to admit it, so let’s not talk at all.” So respecting that, he fell into step beside her, and they walked in silence until they turned the corner into Lynda’s street.

“You’re right, you know,” she said quietly then, and he grinned over at her.

“Usually,” he said, rewarded with a look to heaven and a small smile.

“I could seriously hurt you, if you weren’t my best friend. You’re lucky you know,” she said as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her voice light, the kind of tone that she rarely used at the news room.

Kenny studied her carefully, tilting his head in consideration, words once again falling from his lips before he could stop them. “I’ve always thought so,” he said seriously, maybe too seriously, because he could see her cheeks flush red in the dim lamplight as they stopped outside her gate. In an effort to get them back on level ground, he took a step back. “So, nine tomorrow morning at the newsroom?”

Lynda nodded, casting a glance over her shoulder at the dark house, then looking at her watch. “My mum’s out for the night,” she told him. “D’you want to come in for a coffee… game of chess?”

He narrowed his eyes. “That depends… will you throw me out if I win more than two games in a row?”

Lynda’s jaw dropped. “Kenny, I was fourteen… I’ve grown up since then!”

“Two and a half years later and I’m still having traumatic flashbacks,” he retorted, and she rolled her eyes.

“You’re exaggerating again.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Tell me, Lynda, is this what passes for grown-up in your world?”

He couldn’t keep the smirk from his face as he threw that at her, and the way she pressed her lips together, evidently torn between the desire to laugh and smack him with her briefcase didn’t help matters any. Finally, she just levelled him with a look. “Do you want coffee or not?”

She was smiling at the end of the sentence, her hand on the gate, and he grinned. “Coffee would be lovely,” he told her, following her into the house, closing the door behind him.