A/N – I quite like drabbles and double drabbles. I see them as a bit of a challenge and I like trying to say things in as few words as possible. This is a new challenge to myself, one drabble for each possible combination of characters from the show, although the combinations will only be between characters who interacted in the series. To clarify, that means there is a whole lot of Harry and Malcolm, for example, but not so much Calum or Erin. Each drabble is influenced by a song title and only the most obvious ones will be blatantly shippy. This will have approximately twenty chapters.
Harry and Tom – The Soldiers of the Old Home Guard.
Somehow, when he was learning everything that he needed to know to join the service, Tom had a very clear picture of the legendary Harry Pearce in his mind. No one ever told you how old these old soldiers really were, so the fact that Harry had all his own teeth and no grey hair when Tom finally met him came as something of a surprise. He really wasn't that old, maybe in his early fifties to Tom's mid-twenties, and for the longest time Tom didn't know how to treat him.
The first time he saw Harry take someone twenty years his junior out with the most casual looking of slices to the throat, he realised the truth. Harry was experienced, that much was true, but old was a word that should never, ever have come to mind.
Danny and Zoe – Have It All/Old Friends.
She shouldn't have done it really. She had no reason to ever go back to the UK, the country she had given everything to and that had robbed her of even more. But after fifteen years, Zoe felt as though the time was right, so she gathered up her children – teenagers now, almost grown – and she took them to visit home, just once.
She walked them past Thames House, they oblivious, her searching for faces that she knew she would never see, and then she took them to visit Danny because God knew it was the least she could for him. The kids stood in front of the unfamiliar grave and fidgeted, but Zoe read the name and her breath caught and she began to cry tears she had never before shed.
"This is what you gave me," she whispered, arms around the boys, "When you sent him to me, Danny. This is what you gave me and I owe you so much."
Malcolm and Colin – Little Talks.
Colin wasn't sure how it started but in one particularly fraught team meeting, he caught Malcolm staring at him across the table and making shapes he didn't recognise with his hands. Later, when he asked him, Malcolm said it spelled out 'Save me' in the sign language alphabet and he was just doing it so he didn't have to listen to Tom throw a tantrum.
Colin laughed, because of course that's what it was. So, unknown to Malcolm, he had a look at the alphabet and the next time he caught Malcolm doing it, he was able to answer 'Save yourself'. Malcolm's little noise of surprise disrupted the growing tensions and brought the meeting back to friendly ground and although Malcolm blushed, Colin just grinned. Malcolm was sweet when he was embarrassed and in Colin's opinion, it didn't happen nearly enough.
Sam and Ruth – Truly, Madly, Deeply.
Ruth was so upset by Danny's death that Sam wondered, when she had come round from her sedation and gone back to the Grid, if she had had a rival for his affections all along. Ruth was her friend and she didn't want it to be like that, the two of them mourning a man they loved who was in turn in love with the memory of another.
But then Ruth went with Harry to collect Danny's body and Sam seethed with grief and bitter jealousy, until she watched them come back late that afternoon and she saw Ruth watching Harry and she understood. Ruth wasn't in love with Danny. Not even in the slightest.
So Sam went to her friend and they cried together, tucked away in the briefing room, for a love that now would never be and another that could never happen.
Adam and Fiona – Unfaithful.
He'd promised himself he would never be a cliché, the spy from a foreign land who snatched away the beautiful woman from under the nose of the man he was there to spy on. Adam Carter was better than that, he told himself, better than all of it.
Then he met Fiona and she was beautiful and he broke every single promise he had ever made. She was worth it though, worth all the lies and all the pain and all the deceit and everything he ever had to deal with because of her.
She was the only person he ever betrayed himself for.
And she was entirely worth it all.