A/N: This story is my one-shot in response to the prompt from Sigma Creations, to create a story using the line: "tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway".

This was written in a hurry, so I'm not even sure it makes sense to anyone other than me!

"Not your place, Harry. I need to go home to mine."

"I thought you said Beth is home tonight."

"Yes. She is. I'm not inviting you to stay."

Harry guided the car towards the kerb, the lateness of the hour providing ample parking spaces along the commercial strip. Sleek concrete and glass boxes of ten or more stories flanked them on both sides of the street, the lights of the city blinking and sliding along the windows' surfaces. He turned off the engine and then sat back in his seat, waiting for the bombshell which he suspected Ruth was about to deliver. Foolishly, he had assumed they were fine …. more than fine. He believed they'd been headed towards something lasting, something permanent, and he'd never been happier. In is head they were a couple, although they'd only been stumbling along together in this way for around four months, over one month of which he'd spent on home detention for having given away a defunct genetic weapon in exchange for her life.

Ruth folded her hands in her lap as she stared unseeing through the windscreen. Since late in the afternoon dark clouds had been gathering on the horizon, but the inevitable cloudburst was taking its time. The air was heavy with humidity and unspoken words, and the very last thing Ruth needed at that moment was to witness the sadness in Harry's eyes. She was about to hurt him, and she knew he'd not take that well.

"What's this about, Ruth? I can't read your mind."

"It's ….. nothing really." Ruth could feel Harry's eyes on her, but she was not about to cave in and tell all. To look at him - so handsome in light-coloured slacks and his shirt sleeves rolled up, the open neck of his shirt begging her to kiss the small patch of skin at the hollow of his throat - was to lose most of her resolve. "I spoke to Jane."

"Bloody hell. What did she have to say this time?"

At Ruth's insistence they had accepted an invitation to have dinner with Jane and Philip at their home, along with three other couples, none of whose names Harry could remember, and it had only been twenty minutes since they'd left. Harry had no objection to Ruth spending time with Jane, so long as their friendship did not interfere with his relationship with her. Whilst Jane was dispensable, Ruth definitely was not. He sighed heavily, realising it was about to be a very long night.

"She ….. suggested that I ask you something rather …... personal."

Harry leaned forward to restart the car. "I'm not doing this here," he said curtly, "nor am I doing it with Beth listening from an adjoining bedroom."

Harry drove straight to his own home, his mind in a turmoil of possibilities. He was not about to lose Ruth without a damned good fight. If she wanted out he'd let her go, but he'd shadow her wherever she went. He was certain she needed him just as much as he needed her.

Inside the house he poured them each a whisky – she a small one, and he a triple. Then he sat in his favourite armchair, and using his toes he pushed off his shoes. He indicated Ruth should sit in the armchair opposite. Despite wanting to pour the whisky down his throat to quench his fear, Harry sipped slowly, waiting for Ruth to begin. He watched her closely as she fiddled with her glass, passing it from one hand to another.

"At my request Jane told me a …... little of what went wrong between the two of you."

"Christ!" Of all the topics of conversation Jane and Ruth had at their disposal, he had not expected this. For the first time, Ruth lifted her eyes to meet his, and he saw how afraid she was. "We really don't have to have this conversation, Ruth. I love you and you love me. What else could be more important than that?"

"It's just that you and Jane once loved one another in the same way."

"Not in the same way, no. We were young, and I was incredibly immature, and so not ready for the commitments required by a marriage."

"Jane suggested ….. and I agree with her …. that you should tell me the very worst of ….. your behaviour while you were still married to her."

Harry sat back in his chair and expelled his breath through his lips. "You're not serious, Ruth."

"But I am."

"Why? What will it achieve? I was in my twenties when Jane and I married. Neither of us were terribly good at the relationship side of things. She expected me to be ….. a romantic figure, like in the novels, while I thought she'd be ….. well ….. I hoped she'd provide sex on tap."

"That was unrealistic."

"And I did some things of which I am now terribly ashamed, and I wouldn't want you to know about such things. It has nothing to do with us."

Ruth waited a moment before she replied. "But I need to know, Harry. I need to know the very worst of you before I can trust that you will be prepared ... to risk everything for me."

Harry suddenly got up and stood in front of the gas fire, cold now because of the warm weather, He stared into the mirror above the mantelpiece, and all he saw was a flawed man. He'd believed that by giving away Albany he'd already risked everything for her, but this ... strange request of hers represented another level of risk altogether. Could he do it? "What if, when you hear what I have to say, you no longer love me?"

"I'm not that shallow." Ruth placed her whisky glass on the floor, and moved to stand just behind his right shoulder. She placed her palm on his back, her touch warm against his shirt. "Harry, come and sit opposite me so that I can see you." She took a deep breath before she continued. "I need you to tell me every terrible thing you did ….. and let me love you anyway."

Harry wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. "Alright. On one condition. I want to stand here … with my back to you, so that we can see one another in the reflection of the mirror."

Ruth removed her hand from his back. She thought his condition bizarre, but if he was about to tell all, she wasn't about to object. She turned and once again sat in her chair. As she bent to pick up her glass, a rumble of thunder shook the living room windows. Ruth sipped her whisky and waited. She knew Harry was finding this difficult, but she had to know. She needed to hear it from Harry.

"I think ….." Harry began, "that the worst thing I ever did was my last act of carelessness and contempt before we separated for good." Harry's voice was quiet, a monotone. "Jane and the children were visiting her mother. I was invited, but as usual, I blamed work for my inability to accompany them. After work one night I picked up a woman in a bar and took her home to ….. our home and had sex with her in Jane's and my bed. I wore a condom so as not to leave ….. evidence, but Jane knew anyway."

"How?"

"The woman – whose name I'd forgotten by morning – lost a gold earring while we were in bed. Jane found it, and gave me the third degree. I told her what I'd done, and she screamed and cried and hit me. I took it all, because by then, I believed that I …... deserved her hatred."

"That was the worst thing?"

"From my perspective, yes, because I did it deliberately, hoping to get caught. I wanted to get caught."

Ruth listened as the stories continued. She felt detached, the stories seemed so unreal, so unlike the man she knew Harry to be. She found it hard to imagine the Harry and Jane of present day behaving as they had back then. Most of what Harry confessed was of similar ilk …. endless stories of betrayal and adultery, disrespect and sexual excess, the worst of male behaviour, made worse by him having been married at the time.

"But the worst thing -"

"I thought I'd already heard the worst thing."

"Ruth ….. this is difficult enough. Please let me say this." Ruth nodded and sat back, watching Harry's eyes reflected in the mirror above the fireplace. As Harry cleared his throat a thunder clap rattled the windows, and a few sprinkles of rain hit the pavement outside. The noise distracted him for a moment and he looked across the room to the window. Then he turned around to face Ruth. "I think that for this …. particular confession, I need to sit opposite you."

"Why is this one different?"

Harry had already turned, and in a few steps had reached his chair. He eased himself into the armchair, then fiddled with the whisky glass from which he'd only taken one or two sips. He then rested his elbows on his knees and looked directly at Ruth. "I know you won't ….. enjoy hearing this, because it's about Elena Gavrik."

"I already know that you had an affair with her, Harry. That's hardly news. I also know that you were married to Jane at the time."

Harry's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, leaning further forward in his chair. As he was about to speak the rain began in earnest, and was soon running in rivulets down the outside of the window panes. In less than a minute roof gutters overflowed and water cascaded onto the pavement. "You'll have to sleep here tonight, Ruth. I'm not going out in that."

Ruth smiled at him. She'd never imagined she'd spend the night anywhere else. "Go on."

"There's no easy way to say this, but ….. Sasha Gavrik is my son."

Ruth sat back as though she'd been slapped. She had not expected this at all. Jane had told her nothing about this, which meant that it was unlikely she knew. "I … I find that hard to believe ….. Harry."

"Why? I was having regular sex with her at the time he would have been conceived."

"And you didn't think to use a condom?"

"I was sure I did, but Elena has assured me that ….." And suddenly another possibility began to emerge, and Harry looked right into Ruth's eyes, certain that the same possibility had occurred to her.

"Harry …. Elena is a spy. She lies for a living. She's been doing it for almost forty years, so she's probably quite good at it ….. otherwise someone would have shot her by now."

Harry was shocked by her matter-of-fact manner. Ruth had always been so gentle, so compassionate. "She lied to me, didn't she?"

"I'd say so. She told both you and her husband that Sasha was your son, and then she sat back and pulled the strings."

"Bloody hell."

"Clever woman."

They both relaxed and listened to the storm as it raged overhead. The humidity was still high, along with the ambient temperature. Harry was surprised to feel a trickle of sweat running down his chest and pool at his waist. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He should be giving thanks. Ruth had listened and not judged him, and nor had she left him. He opened his eyes to see her smiling at him. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

Ruth got up from her chair and stood over him. She then placed a hand on each arm of his chair and then leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his lips. She pulled away a little and then kissed him again, this time with more passion. When the kiss ended she stood up. "Thank you, my love."

"For what?"

"For being honest."

"How do you know I didn't make up the whole thing?"

"I don't, but I do know that you love me enough to risk everything we are and everything we could be by being honest …. about an embarrassing part of your past."

Harry reached out with one hand and drew her closer, until she was sitting on his knee, one arm hooked around his shoulders. Ruth then reached down and placed her lips on the bare triangle of skin at Harry's throat. She left her lips there for a few seconds and then sat up. "I've been dying to do that all night," she said. Harry wrapped both arms around her waist and pulled her close.

"Do you know what Jane feels was the worst thing you did?"

"Jane told you everything?"

"No. She only told me two things. One was the story of the woman you brought home to sleep in your bed, and the other was when you told Graham you'd be at his school concert and you didn't turn up." Harry's silence told Ruth that perhaps she should have kept that information to herself. "She told me nothing more, Harry, which is why she suggested that I should ask you."

"Graham's school concert was several years after Jane and I split up. Jane likes to believe that Graham's problems began that night. I suspect he's more sensitive than most, and our rather noisy fights upset him at a time when he needed a secure and loving family around him." Harry squeezed Ruth lightly and placed his lips on her bare shoulder. He had to choose his words carefully. "Ruth …... I'd rather you didn't share anything about us ….. you know, intimate details …. with my ex-wife."

"I'd never do that. I value …. us. It was she who shared two stories from when you were married. They are her stories as well as yours, Harry. She had a right to do that."

Harry sighed and then nodded. Then he drew her head to his and kissed her while the storm unleashed its fury outside. He considered himself a lucky man. Had Ruth not insisted he would never had told her the stories he'd shared with her that night, but he felt lighter, cleaner, and best of all, Ruth still loved him.

They sat together in the chair for another hour. Harry's arms were around Ruth, while her head rested in the curve of his neck. Once the storm had blown itself out it left a cleaner and colder city in its wake. When Harry felt Ruth shiver in his arms he kissed the top of her head and said the one word, "Bed?"

"Yes please," she replied.

Slowly and carefully they got to their feet and took themselves upstairs. "We're good?" he asked as they reached the first landing.

"We're very good."

Harry smiled as he followed her to their bedroom.