Title: A Complicated Christmas?
Fandom: Spooks
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Ruth
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Summary: A Christmas interlude to my fic Complications. Harry and Ruth's first Christmas as a couple.
Disclaimer: I don't own Spooks or any of the characters or dialogue you may recognise. They all belong to Kudos/BBC.
A/N: As stated in the summary, this is a Christmas interlude to my other fic, 'Complications'. You will probably need to read that first in order for it to make any sense. This interlude will fit between chapters 11 and 12 of 'Complications' and will cover Christmas and New Year for Harry, Ruth and the children. I think it will be about 5 or 6 chapters in length. (Or maybe more…who knows?!)
Chapter 1
Saturday 28th November 1998...
Harry Pearce walks through his front door, exhausted and ready to crawl into bed. It's 7.30 on a Saturday morning and he's been awake for the past 36 hours, saving London from a threat by the IRA. His plans to go straight to bed are scuppered though, as an excited Catherine hurtles down the stairs to meet him, jumping into his arms.
"Daddy! Guess what?" she asks animatedly as her staggers through to the living room with her still in his arms.
Suddenly he's not so tired anymore, his children are one of the only things that have this effect on him. The other is Ruth Evershed, his analyst, but more importantly and more recently, his girlfriend.
"What?" he says, smiling at his daughter.
"We've been given our parts for the Nativity play! I'm the cook."
"The cook?" Harry asks, a little confused.
"Head cook!" Catherine asserts proudly.
"There was more than one cook present at the birth of Jesus?" he asks.
"Duh!"
"Right. So tell me more. What do you have to do?"
"It's the main part Daddy. I've got lots of lines to learn. You'll help me won't you?"
"Of course I will. And so will Claire."
Catherine nods. Claire, the nanny Harry employs to look after the children while he's working, has already looked at her script with her. "And Ruth? Do you think Ruth will help?"
"If she comes round I'm sure she will." He and Ruth haven't actually told the children that they are in a relationship; they want to make sure it will work before admitting it to them. The reason being that they didn't want the children to become too attached to Ruth and lose her if their relationship didn't work out. The children, however, adore Ruth already, so their plan seems to have failed somewhat.
"Can we ring her and ask?" Catherine pleads. Harry looks at his watch. Ruth had only left the Grid at midnight so he doesn't think that's a good idea, but Catherine, not waiting for her father's decision, is already dialling the number. When it starts to ring, she hands the phone out to Harry, still to nervous to initiate a phone conversation herself. Harry considers hanging up but realises that the ringing will have probably woken Ruth anyway and she'll dial 1471 to find out who it was that was calling so she'll know it was him.
"Hello," murmurs a sleepy Ruth.
"Hi," Harry greets, his tone softer than it ever is on the Grid.
"Harry. Is everything okay? Do you need me to come back in?"
"No. I'm sorry for waking you. But Catherine wants to speak to you, she was dialling the number before I could stop her."
"That's alright. I like hearing from her…and you."
"I'll keep that in mind." Catherine was becoming impatient with her father and held her hand out for the phone. "Anyway, Catherine's mithering me for the phone so I'd better hand you over."
He passes the handset to his daughter and listens as she tells Ruth her news. He doesn't know what Ruth says to her, but she starts laughing and it's a sound which Harry loves to hear and one that relaxes him instantly. So much so that when he decides to 'rest his eyes' he falls very quickly into a deep sleep.
He awakes a few hours later to the sound of Catherine reading lines from her script. He follows the sound of her voice through to the kitchen and is surprised to see Ruth sat with her, running lines. Graham is also in the kitchen, doing a jigsaw. He stands unnoticed in the doorway, observing the way Ruth is seemingly able to help Graham and keep pace with Catherine.
"Don't forget," she tells Catherine, "if a word is underlined in the script, that means that you've got to really emphasise it."
Catherine repeats the line as instructed and Harry applauds her, announcing his presence.
"Daddy! You're awake. I've learnt nearly two pages already – Ruth's been helping me!"
"So I see." He approaches the table and places kisses on both his children's heads before joining them, sitting next to Ruth. "I thought I'd sent you home to have a nice relaxing day; to recover from work."
"You did, and I thought what better way to relax than to spend time here; you know how much I enjoy being with you and the children; they bring out my long lost youth. No, seriously, when Catherine told me you'd fallen asleep on the sofa after just getting in, I realised you must have had to stay much later than me, so I've come to..." she trails off, a blush rising in her cheeks.
"To what?"
"To take care of you."
Harry, aware of little eyes and ears, takes Ruth's hand under the table and gives it a gentle squeeze showing her how much her appreciates her actions. "Thank you Ruth, but you need to take care of yourself too."
"I'll be fine Harry; I've had six hours sleep. You on the other hand have only had three. Do you want to go up to bed and I'll watch these two?"
"No, I'll be fine for a bit. Where's Claire anyway? It's not like her to leave the children if I'm asleep."
"Ruth told her to go home," Catherine tells him.
Ruth blushes again, "I…I hope that's okay Harry. It's just…she had been here for nearly two days…I thought she deserved some time…I'm sorry if I overstepped.
Another squeeze of her hand stops her babbling. "It's fine, honestly. You're right, sometimes I forget that she might have a life outside of here."
Ruth smiles. "Good. Well, if you're not going back to bed, would you like something to eat?" Ruth asks.
Harry looks at the clock. It's 10.45; too early for lunch. "I'll could murder egg on toast," he admits.
"Right, well you sit there and read lines with Catherine while I rustle you up something."
Harry does as he's asked but he's not sure how much use he is to Catherine; he's too distracted by the sight of Ruth so at home in his kitchen. As he watches her he wonders what on earth he did to deserve someone like her. For the first time since Jane left, he can see himself being married to someone else. There's only one problem; on paper he's still married to Jane. As Catherine berates him for reading the same line twice, Harry vows to ring his solicitor first thing Monday morning.
A/N: So what do you think? More?