A/N: 4 chapters - 1. Pre 5.05 2. Pre 5.05 3. During 5.05 4. Post 5.05 First ever 'Spooks' story. Hope you like.
Chapter One
Maybe Juliet was right. Perhaps she was in love with him.
It wasn't that he couldn't read people's feelings – that certainly wasn't the case. Nor was it false modesty; he knew that he could make Ruth smile in a way that no one else quite could, that he could make her eyes flash with laughter, that he could even bring a pink flush to her cheeks. He knew that he could make her happy. He knew that he could love her.
Yet, somehow he was never quite sure about Juliet's words. Because there was always that inscrutable…something…to Ruth Evershed that managed to confuse him.
Sometimes she seemed so distant, so unconcerned – as though she barely registered his presence. And how could that be? How could she possibly love him when she usually bore her thoughts and feelings so unashamedly? How could she tell Ros to stop hiding behind metaphors one moment, and run from loving him the next? After all, however much strangers might underestimate her, he knew that Ruth wasn't one to scare easily.
So, he would convince himself that everyone was wrong. That of course she didn't love him.
And that would be when she did something like this; stand before him, insisting with a ferocity that made her eyes smoulder that she Not Naïve. It was as though she needed him to know it, that in fact, in that one second, making sure that he knew it was her singularly highest priority.
Almost like she loved him.
Oh, Bloody Hell.
---
Ruth could feel the threat of a red tinge already beginning somewhere close to her ears. Why did it matter whether he thought she was naïve? What difference did it really make?
None at all, was the answer. And yet she stood there saying it like a petulant child when there were far more urgent things that needed discussing.
Like a weapon of mass destruction eh, Ruth?
"You're absolutely right," said Harry.
But Ruth snapped her head away from him to look over the London skyline. He was humouring him because he was lovely, and polite, and a gentleman. Because he pitied her for being such an idiot.
And that was why she couldn't bear to look at him.
---
Harry wondered if it was something he had said that had suddenly made Ruth so determined to avoid looking at him, but it didn't seem likely. He was about to move his mind onto the next possibility when he was reminded of something else that Juliet had said, and suddenly knew that he wasn't going to let the opportunity pass him by.
---
"That's quite a conversation shift." Ruth was admittedly quite justified in her startled reply.
"Onto a rather happier subject than weapons of mass destruction," pointed out Harry, hoping that said subject would also prove to be significantly less disastrous. "Or your naivety," he added.
"I'm not naïve," she said, but she was grinning this time.
So was he.