Blah blah blah, don't own Spooks, don't make any money off my fanfic, don't have any monies in the bank, so please don't sue, etc., etc., etc. "Firsts" seems to have been sort of well-received, so here's another fic. Who knows, my brain doesn't make any sense anyway. Story is clearly AU, but runs in a parallel timeline to canonical events. Rated M for "mounds of melons and mundane making of love" because, again, my brain makes no sense and it made me giggle.

Breathe Me
by Scintillating Tart
August 2014 – October 2014

One:
The Beginning of the End

Ruth came home early and hung her jacket up on her hook. She noticed the quiet about the house first; it was never this quiet, not with an eleven year old and an eight year old running around. Then she noticed the girls' jackets were gone from their hooks, and someone else's suit jacket was hanging up. Oh dear, that meant Gareth had brought his lover round again.

She sighed. Some things never changed. Her husband was one of those things. They'd gotten married straight out of Oxford, a good idea at the time, as they got on well and he'd needed a beard to get quite comfortable in the trading world. Gay men in finance didn't tend to go over well. And, well, he'd wanted children, and she was his best friend and – yes. They'd been married and had Rosaleigh in short order. Then his parading a string of lovers through the house had begun, and she'd moved into the guest room. Despite all this, they were a strange sort of normal and happy, maybe.

She'd long since stopped being jealous of his lovers and had even gone so far as to sleep with someone she'd met in a bar. Hence Margaret. She winced and put up her blinders again, pretending to stop feeling for a while. It had been a long day, and the sound of the bed in the master bedroom creaking and groaning through the floorboards was enough to set her teeth on edge.

Ruth went into the kitchen and got a bottle of wine out of the fridge where she'd put it to chill before work. GCHQ wasn't exactly the most impressive job she could've gotten, but they were flexible and being in Cheltenham was good for the girls – they were close to Ruth's mother, that way. In fact, that's probably where they were. That's where Gareth usually dropped them off when he was going to have bed-breaking sex.

She poured herself a very generous glass of wine and drained it without so much as a breath between gulps. When the alcohol hit her, she felt pleasantly woozy and not anymore upset than she'd been when she'd realized that her husband was upstairs fucking again. She exhaled a little and tried to think of a way to tell him that she wanted out.

Nine years before, she'd thought about leaving him. She'd gone to the pub after work with her colleagues from her section, since he'd been off to take Rose to see his parents in Bath for the weekend. It had been nice – the drinks had flowed freely and while they were getting smashed on shots and hard liquor, she'd hung back at the bar with a glass of white burgundy. A handsome man had chatted her up and Ruth had laughed and played the game to its inevitable conclusion; she was only a lonely woman after all. For all of the closeness she and Gareth shared, she was lonely. She missed things like the companionship of a man, the touch of his skin, the way his look spoke volumes about what he wanted from her…

James Henry had been the one to break those walls and take her for a ride without mercy. Even nine years later, she trotted out her memories of him to use as fantasy fodder. He was passionate, heated, every word he'd spoken had been laced with unspoken urges and desires that she wondered if she could fulfill. Two nights of torrid, steamy sex, and then he'd vanished from her life as quickly as he'd come into it.

They'd been careful, but she'd still managed to get pregnant. It wasn't the worst thing that had happened, but nothing had been the same since that weekend. Gareth still couldn't look her in the eyes and see her as a creature with passions equal to or maybe even greater than his own; which was ironic, considering the shouts from upstairs. She briefly considered knocking the ceiling with a broom handle, but that was slightly more passive aggressive than just growing a pair and asking him for a divorce.

She finished off the bottle of wine without even realizing it, and groaned as her head began to swim. Of course, what would she do if she left him, anyway? He held the purse strings – the house was his, the cars were his, she was just a footnote with her tiny income from GCHQ. She'd been stupid enough to go looking for James Henry once before, on one of her rather depressed, maudlin days, and had found out he had died not long after their affair. So she had no one even to turn to, should she just up and leave here. Her mother already thought she was ridiculous for having married Gareth in the first place, knowing full well that he was homosexual. Telling her about their fumbling sexual relations at the beginning of their marriage would only cement the ridiculousness.

Putting up with what was going on upstairs was an altogether different matter. The bed finally stopped creaking and the noise died down. Ruth was grateful for small favors, because her head was beginning to ache. Maybe another bottle of wine to dull the pain.

Midway through the third bottle, she realized she was crying – and she was so drunk she couldn't stand up if she tried. That was so attractive, she chided herself.

A young man – very young, couldn't have been more than twenty – came into the kitchen in his green trunks and nothing else. He barely spared her a glance as he went to the fridge to get a beer.

"He blows hot and cold," Ruth said quietly. "When he decides he doesn't need you anymore, you'll hate yourself for ever loving him."

The man gave her a piteous look and said, "Good thing it's just sex, then." He went back upstairs.

Ruth managed to pull herself together a bit by the time Gareth came downstairs, piss and vinegar dripping from his veins as he said, "Oh, you're home early. For once."

She smiled a little and went back to slicing chicken pieces for dinner. "Yeah, you might let me know you took the girls to mum's next time," she said in a falsely cheerful tone. He snorted and made a non-committal noise. Suddenly, she rounded on him, knife in hand. "Don't dismiss me like that," she hissed. His eyes widened at the knife in mid-air, and she lowered it back to the counter. "Don't," she added. "Okay? Just don't pretend that you're the only one with feelings in this relationship."

"We don't have a relationship," Gareth said. "We have an arrangement."

She took a deep breath, but the wine fueled her on. "I want a divorce," she said quietly.

"I don't really care what you want anymore, Ruth," Gareth snapped. "Don't you understand that? Don't you wonder why I can't stand to be in the same room with you? Because you let someone else fuck you – you agreed it would be me – that children would be OURS –"

"You didn't touch me," she hissed. "Not after Rose. What am I meant to do, Gareth? Wait my whole life for you to decide you can pretend I'm a boy so you can shag me from behind – which really hurt, by the way, because you don't even know that you have to wind a woman up before you can stick your dick in!" She felt like she was watching herself from outside her body; she never spoke this way to anyone, let alone her husband.

He stared at her for a long moment, then snapped. He backhanded her and she felt blood as she bit her tongue. "Don't you ever –"

She didn't back down. For once in her life, she was brave, and she stared him down. "I want a divorce," she repeated. "And I want primary custody of Rose and Daisy. You can have them on school breaks and holidays and weekends, but I want primary custody. I don't want them coming home to what I came home to today."

His face was flushed scarlet, almost purple, and he was clearly furious from the way his teeth were gnashed together. "I want the house and the Rolls," he snapped.

"I'll keep the BMW," she said quietly.

"I'll call the solicitor in the morning," he grunted.

She nodded and said, "And before you say anything else about my… indiscretion… it was two nights a long time ago. There hasn't been anyone else. So if you think to use infidelity against me in court, I have a parade of gay men who would gladly come out and accuse you of the same."

Gareth snorted a laugh. "You know, that boyfriend of yours came round and asked for you. Got very quiet when I told him you were married."

She paused, taking that in for just a moment before she whispered, "You bastard. You unimaginable bastard."

"He wasn't even handsome," he snorted. "Not fuckable in the slightest. Were you pissed when you fucked him?"

Not nearly as drunk as she was now, she had to admit silently to herself. Ruth exhaled and said, "I'm making stir-fry for dinner and mum's bringing the girls home in ten minutes. I want your boyfriend gone by the time they get here."

"Not your house, Ruthie," Gareth reminded her caustically.

"No, but the children are my concern," she snapped. "And they don't need to be exposed to this anymore."

Gareth grunted a reply, then said, "You're not getting half of my accounts."

"I don't want them," she said simply. "I just want my salary you've been holding onto." She didn't tell him she'd applied for a secondment to MI-5, that there was a possibility she'd be moving to London and taking the kids with her. It was hard enough to tell him she wanted a divorce. Her jaw hurt where he'd hit her, but she deserved that; she'd known better than to provoke him, but she'd done it anyway.

Ten minutes later, he was leaving, and so was his lover. He passed by Rose and Daisy without even saying hello to them, and he glared at Ruth's mother.

"Who pissed in dad's cereal?" Rose asked as she sat down at the table, slinging her school bag onto it. "He's been mean a lot lately."

"Yeah," Daisy added unhelpfully.

Elizabeth sighed and said, "I should –"

"No, mum, I want you to be here," Ruth said quietly. "The truth is, your dad's very angry with me. I've asked him for a divorce for reasons we aren't going into. Just know this: it is not your fault. And he will love you both just as much – maybe even more – without me there."

Daisy looked up at her mother and frowned. "I don't want you to get divorced –"

"Don't be stupid," Rose said. "All they do is fight. They need to be apart."

Elizabeth frowned at her daughter, and Ruth said, "Girls, don't fight, please."

"This is stupid," Daisy said. "Dad loves you –"

"No," Ruth said with quiet certainty, "no, Daisy, he doesn't. He hasn't for a long time. And I don't love him any longer, either. It's best that we split up now, before you and Rose get hurt by being in the middle, okay?"

Daisy huffed. "Okay," she finally said grudgingly.

"Now, I'm finishing up dinner and you two need to do your homework and then I'll read another chapter of A Wrinkle in Time, okay?" Ruth said.

"Okay," they agreed.

Things were going to be rough for a while, but maybe not so rough as all that. Maybe things would be okay again soon.

END PART ONE