Title: What Kind Of Day Has It Been?
Author: Sefkhet
Pairing: Leo/Harry
Rating: PG
Summary: It's been miserable weather, the Metropolitan Police continue to be useless bureaucrats, students become more ignorant by the day, and, by the way, Harry and I are sleeping together.
Notes: This takes place in a universe without Janet, but otherwise contains spoilers up to the end of Series 14.
What Kind Of Day Has It Been?
It was early evening and the middle of a London winter. The streetlamps outside the lab had been on since shortly after lunch. Most students hadn't returned yet from the long winter vacation. Harry was out at a crime scene, and Charlie was somewhere in the building making preparations for the body that he would be bringing back. Leo had been called into a meeting with the Dean that promised to be both long and dull.
The intercom buzzed, breaking the absolute silence, and Nikki startled from her paperwork and splashed tea over an autopsy file.
In the dimly lit corridor, on the other side of the glass door, an unfamiliar woman stood, bundled up in a thick coat and scarf and gloves. She snapped the light switch on and blinked as the flourescent tubing flickered into life, and opened the door.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
The woman pulled her scarf away from her face. "I'm here to see Leo Dalton," she said.
"I'm afraid Professor Dalton is in a meeting," Nikki said, closing the door behind them and gesturing her towards Leo's office. "Is he expecting you? Is there something I can help with?"
"Or Harry Cunningham," she suggested.
"I'm sorry." Nikki looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Samantha Ryan," she said.
Nikki's eyes widened. "From Belfast," she said. "Of course. It's a pleasure to meet you. I was fascinated by your retrospective analysis of blast injuries."
Samantha Ryan smiled. "It's very kind of you to say so."
"What can we do for you, Professor?"
"Oh, nothing," she said. "This is entirely a social call. I'm over for the International Justice Conference. Harry and Leo are old friends and I've not seen them in quite some time." She looked again at Nikki. "You must be Dr Alexander.
"Nikki. Please."
"Sam," said Sam. "Have you any idea when one of the boys might be back?"
"I don't. I can't imagine that Leo, at least, will be terribly much longer, though. I'm sure he wouldn't mind your waiting here for now."
"Thank you," she said, and looked around the room for the first time since they had entered it. "He's redecorated."
"This was your office?" Nikki asked.
"Yes, once upon a time." Sam stepped across to Leo's desk and carefully touched his photo frames, a picture of Leo and Cassie that had evidently been taken by Theresa, nestled between a carefully preserved one of a much younger Leo and his wife and a far more recent photograph, near Buckingham Palace, of Leo with his MBE and Harry looking proud enough to burst. "That's a nice picture," she said. "Is it true that he was thinking about refusing it?"
"I think he felt for a time that he didn't deserve it," said Nikki.
"That sounds like Leo."
"He was talked around," At a sudden clatter outside and the sound of footsteps in the hallway, she glanced out of the glass walls of Leo's office. "That sounds like him, too," she said with a smile. She popped her head out into the corridor.
"There are days when I wonder why I took this job, Nikki," said Leo, cartoon thundercloud almost visible over his head. "And those days all seem to involve meetings like that one."
"You've got a visitor," she said.
"Hello, Leo," said Sam.
Leo's mouth fell open. "Sam." And in two long strides, he was across the room and hugging her. "It's good to see you. What on Earth are you doing here?"
"I'm seeing you," she replied promptly.
"I'm flattered," he said, deadpan. "What are you doing in London?"
"Conference. And – " She sensed the interruption and held up a hand. " - I thought, while I was here, that I should catch up with my old friends and make sure that they haven't destroyed my old department."
"We haven't."
"I can see that. Are you free tonight?"
He looked at Nikki, hovering near the doorway, and said: "In the old days, when she said that, it usually meant that I was about to agree to spend the whole night at work."
"It means very much the same thing when he says it to me," said Nikki to Sam.
"I stopped meaning that when you stopped working for me," Sam said. "Come on, Leo. Take a girl out to dinner."
He hesitated, sighed, and laughed. "Yes. Yes. Nikki, if anyone from the Dean's office calls here, tell them I've left for the night. Is Harry still around?"
Nikki had been halfway out of his office and back to her own desk. She stopped and turned back to them. "He's attending a murder scene in Wimbledon. He's not long gone."
"All right. Tell him I'll see him later." And, almost as if it were an afterthought: "In fact, tell him to join us, if he's back quickly."
She nodded.
There was an audible rustle and a clatter as Leo collected his coat, phone, keys, and wallet, Sam waiting patiently for him by the door. Nikki sat down with her abandoned paperwork and her cold tea, and the last thing she heard before the lights outside flickered back off was the bang of the lab door and Sam Ryan saying, "You look really well, Leo."
"You do look well," Sam insisted, over good red wine and the chatter of the small restaurant that Leo had taken her to. "The last time I saw you – "
"I could hardly look worse than the last time you saw me."
The last time she had seen him had been soon after Teresa and Cassie's deaths. He had been lost, then, and broken, and borderline suicidal. Now he looked healthy, less drawn, smiling, the old twinkle back in his eyes.
"It's been five years," he said. "I set myself up on a self-destruct for a good while there, as I'm sure Harry must have told you at the time, not to mention whatever other contacts you've got stashed around the university, but I've found that time is a great healer. As are love and friendship and the comfort of having good memories of the time I did have with them and the space still to grieve them when I need to."
"I'm glad," she said honestly.
"I am, too." He stretched across and topped up her wine glass. "Now. You tell me about Belfast."
For the better part of another hour and most of the bottle, she caught him up on David and Northern Ireland and the four day conference that had brought her back to London. He was snorting at an anectode, one that probably wasn't suitable for mixed company, let alone a public place, about a Belfast detective and an autopsy finding, when his mobile rang.
"Hold that thought," he said. "Hello?"
"Nikki's been telling tall tales about you taking some woman out for dinner."
Leo grinned. "I'm sure she has."
"You thinking about trading me in?"
"I think I should look for someone younger, don't you?" he asked. "Sarcastic. Opinionated. Never learned how to pick socks up. Gorgeous. Oh, wait."
Harry's laughter rang down the phone line. "Good. Don't let her go away again before I've seen her, OK?"
"I won't," he said. And, hopefully: "We haven't ordered dessert yet."
"I don't smell fit for polite company," he said, with regret. "Or look it, for that matter." He yawned into Leo's ear. "Tomorrow, if we can manage it. I'll see you at home, all right?"
"All right," Leo agreed. "Get some sleep, okay?" As he hung up the phone, Sam was grinning at him. "What?" he asked.
"I didn't know you were seeing anyone."
"Mm."
"And you tell me that I'm a terrible correspondent!" she exclaimed. "How long?"
"A year and a half?" Leo said. "A little less than that, maybe. We've been living together since September."
"Leo, that's wonderful." Sam looked as though she might fly across the table and hug him right there in the middle of the restaurant. It was a disconcerting emotion to see on the face of Sam Ryan. "I want to know all about her. How did you meet?" She smiled. "Did your eyes meet across a crime scene?"
"Ah." Leo put down his fork. "Well."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "It's not the girl from this afternoon, is it?"
He nearly choked. "No," he said firmly, and looked her straight in the eye. "It's Harry."
"What?" Sam looked startled, then confused, then as if she wasn't really sure that she'd understood the joke properly. "Our Harry?"
Leo looked as if he was considering that. "Well," he said eventually, eyes twinkling. "My Harry."
"Harry Cunningham?"
"Yes."
She opened her mouth to say something, and then seemed to think better of it and took a large swallow of wine instead. Leo watched her, patiently, as she seemed to consider and then reject a dozen different sentences.
"Have I shocked you?" he asked, finally.
"You've surprised me," she said. "I was expecting you to say that you'd met a nice DCI or a forensic scientist, or that there was someone who works at the university. I think I'd have been less surprised if you'd said that it was Dr Alexander. Harry's just so – so – "
"Male?" Leo suggested.
"Young." And, with an irritated sigh: "Yes, all right. And male. I'd wondered about Harry," she said. "Not to stereotype, and he doesn't fit the stereotype even if I'd wanted to. But more - it didn't seem as if gender would be a thing that he'd be much worried about."
"I'll tell him you said that," Leo said drily. "And he's not that young, no matter what he might like to think."
"But you, Leo," she went on, as if she hadn't heard him speak. "You were straight."
"I was bisexual and happily married," he said. "It's not the same thing."
"And you never said a word!"
"Why would I?" he asked. "It wasn't relevant. I'd planned to be with Teresa for the rest of my life. I had vowed it. And then suddenly Teresa wasn't there anymore and I didn't know what to do with myself."
She regarded him over a forkful of calamari. "And then Harry?"
"And then Harry," he said. He caught the look on her face. "Oh, not immediately. It wasn't like that. There was a long period of guilt and self-hatred and recklessness and too much drinking and too much work and not nearly enough of anything else. And then there was a string of hopeless dates and meaningless sex. And then…" He trailed off. "He says that he was waiting for me to get my head screwed back on properly."
"He asked you?"
"You're surprised by that?"
"No. I'm surprised he knew that you'd be receptive."
"The string of hopeless dates wasn't all with women," he said. "Besides, I haven't always been Professor Dalton. I haven't ever been Professor Dalton with Harry, come to think of it, except when he's taking the piss," he added, with a smile that could almost have been described as fond. "Harry and I were spending our evenings together down the pub when you were our boss. He'd heard stories about an ex-boyfriend or two."
"I missed all the good gossip, obviously."
"The perils of being in charge," Leo agreed. "Of course, I didn't realise that I was being asked out, so it's possible that I miss the good gossip through sheer obliviousness."
Sam laughed.
"The summer before last, the three of us had spent the whole day at a major incident scene and when we got back, he came into my office, very purposeful, and asked if I'd have dinner with him, which was hardly the first time we had had dinner together. But he dragged me out of the office that night and took me out and refused to let us talk about work the whole evening, and I enjoyed it more than I had my last three dates put together. And then he drove me home and kissed me goodnight and left me standing on the doorstep with my mouth hanging open."
"And you both lived happily ever after?" she asked, skeptical.
"Except for when he disagrees with me in front of the police," he said. "But he's always done that."
"It's just – " Sam shook her head. "It's Harry."
Leo grinned like an idiot. "I know."
"I'd never imagined it," she said. "The two of you. There are a few things that make more sense now – "
"Like?" A thousand things that they had given away over the years, he thought. The emails he had exchanged with her, saying things that would have been obvious if she had known what she was looking for. The ones she had exchanged with Harry, too, probably. They hadn't been trying to keep her in the dark. They had just never got round to spelling it out for her.
"The photo on your desk, for one," she said.
His mouth quirked up. "I'd forgotten that you'd have seen that. Nikki took it."
"And your wedding ring."
"That wasn't Harry," said Leo. Absently, he rubbed the base of his left ring finger, still occasionally taken aback by its bareness even after all this time. "That was my psychiatrist and a very large bottle of whisky. It felt like being unfaithful, seeing other people while I was still wearing her ring."
"Do you ever wonder what she'd have thought of him?"
Leo sat back in his chair. "I don't need to," he said. "Harry knew them. She liked him. Cassie liked him, too, mostly because he talked to her like an adult and was willing to go into more of the gory details about post-mortems than I was."
"And you think that she'd have approved? Teresa?"
"I think she'd have been envious," he said, with a twinkle.
Sam seemed to be considering her next words carefully. "It's not that I mind," she said eventually. "It's not that he's a man, either, or at least not entirely that. It's just a lot to get my head around."
"We should have told you earlier," Leo said. "We never meant to not tell you. We just didn't know how. It's not the kind of thing you put in an email, is it? 'It's been miserable weather, the Metropolitan Police continue to be useless bureaucrats, students become more ignorant by the day, and, by the way, Harry and I are sleeping together.'"
"It might have been a start," she said. And: "I gather that it isn't a secret."
"No," he said.
It had never been a secret. Nikki had known from the very beginning. Harry's mum and Leo's parents and sister had known from almost the beginning. And it had made its way around the Met quickly enough after the day, a couple of months in, when Harry had been being flirted with by a detective new to the force, blonde and perky and looking all of fourteen years old, and Leo had looked up from a dead body and said, mildly, "Hands off, Constable. He's spoken for."It had never been a secret or something that either of them were ashamed of, everyone else knew and the ones who didn't usually learned fairly quickly through gossip or hearsay or seeing them together, it was almost astonishing that she hadn't heard something on the forensic grapevine before now, and they had both meant to tell her, really.
"Where are you staying tonight?" he asked impulsively.
"The Marriott."
"Stay with us," he said. "Honestly. No need for you to be staying in a hotel when you've got friends in town. If you'd told us you were coming, we'd have said that in the first place. It's comfortable. It's quieter. It's free."
"Harry won't mind?"
"I very much doubt that he'll even be awake. He was on call last night."
"I don't want to impose," she said.
"You won't be. I'd not have offered if you would. Besides," Leo said solemnly. "I have been duty bound by Harry to not let you back out of the country until he's seen you."
After a taxi ride that took them via Sam's hotel to collect her belongings and via a roadworks diversion almost to Blackheath, they entered what Sam still thought of as Harry's flat, where there were two lamps on, a cat battering their ankles, and a forensic pathologist sound asleep on the couch.
"This is Bayleaf," said Leo, not troubling to keep his voice down. "Harry was adopted by her a few years ago. Have you ever been here?"
"Briefly," she said. "Harry brought me back here after the memorial service."
He nodded. "The kitchen is through there. Help yourself to food, coffee, anything you want. The spare room is upstairs, second door on the left, and the bathroom is the one before it. There should be clean towels in there. We're at the other end of the hall." He looked at her. "I'd offer to carry your bag up, if I thought you'd accept."
"I can manage, thanks." She gestured at the snoring lump on the couch. "Are you going to leave him there?"
"No," Leo said. "I've slept on that couch, nobody's back deserves such punishment." He glanced at Harry, and his face softened. "I'll wake him up and get him to bed in a minute. He's been awake since yesterday morning." He held out his keys. "Take those, in case we're gone before you get up or, more likely, not here when you get back."
She smiled, accepted the keys, and turned away.
"Sam?" She turned back, one foot on the bottom step. He hesitated. "It's good to see you," he said. "We oughtn't to have left it so long."
Ten minutes later, she was passing over the upstairs hall on her way back from the bathroom and heard the murmur of voices from downstairs. She looked over the stair rail. Harry had barely moved from his sleeping position, but his open eyes and his smile were clearly visible in the lamp's glow. His voice was alert, but still rough from sleep. "How did she take it?" he was asking.
Leo was sitting on the edge of the couch, fingers in Harry's hair. "Would you believe that I actually rendered her speechless?" he replied.
"No," Harry said, voice amused. "I wouldn't."
"For two full minutes," Leo said. "She said she'd have been less surprised if I had been with Nikki."
Harry wrinkled his nose. "Thank you," he said. "For that image."
Leo laughed, properly, and Sam was startled by how young he suddenly looked. He bent down and pressed his lips to Harry's forehead, his jaw, and finally to his mouth. Their faces were obscured by the shadows, but Sam could see well enough that this wasn't something awkward for either of them. It was familiar, not a prelude to anything – Harry's eyes had still been black with exhaustion – but affectionate and comfortable.
"Come on," Leo said, barely audibly. "There's a perfectly good bed upstairs and I've got better things to do tomorrow than listen to you grump about your back. And I'm not carrying you, I don't love you that much."
She emerged the next morning to the sound of familiar voices and the smell of brewing coffee.
"How much of this is true?" Leo's voice asked.
"I've no idea," said Harry. "What is it?"
As Sam entered the kitchen, Leo pushed his reading glasses up his nose and read out from his laptop screen: "The girl, who lived in the Norbury area of Greater London, had been brutally stabbed and would have died within minutes of the attack. It is thought that she had been sexually assaulted before death. Home Office pathologist Dr Henry Cunningham looked shaken and upset as he left the crime scene."
"Henry?" Harry asked. He leaned over, hands on Leo's shoulders. "The police investigation is focusing on the victim's links to the Muslim community. Why are you reading the Daily Mail?"
"You don't look like a Henry," Sam said.
He twisted round, looking genuinely pleased to see her, and let go of Leo to reach out for a hug. "It would have killed you to let us know that you were coming?" he asked with a smile. "It's good to see you, Sam."
"It's good to see you, too. I hope you don't mind that I've invaded your flat."
Harry shook his head. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm sorry that I wasn't more – well, more conscious, when you got here."
"You found everything?" Leo asked, handing her a mug of coffee. "You slept?"
"I did," she said.
"I'm on my way out," he said, and she noticed belatedly that he was dressed for court. "I've got a breakfast meeting with CPS, but we'll talk this evening. I'll cook something."
Harry grinned at the look of vague alarm on Sam's face. "He can cook," he reassured her. "Sort of."
"Cheek," Leo said. "I should be back in the office after lunch," he said to Harry. "You'll be – "
"I will be proving the Daily Mail wrong," said Harry.
Leo picked up his briefcase, stepped forward, curled the fingers of his free hand in Harry's hair, and leaned in for a very thorough kiss. "I'll see you later," he said. And, at a more normal volume: "Have a good day, Sam."
Sam stared after him as he disappeared out of the door. "Was that for my benefit?" she asked, finally.
"I rather like to think that that was for my benefit," Harry said, but without rancour.
She blushed. "Sorry."
"Oh, no." He looked at her curiously. "Altogether, you seem to be taking this with a lot more..." He waved his mug in the air, searching for the right word. "A lot more equanimity, I suppose, than Leo said you did last night."
"And what else has Leo been saying?"
"That he can't work out whether you disapprove of it or you just don't understand it," he said bluntly. He raised an eyebrow at the surprised look on Sam's face, before turning his back on her to make himself busy with the toaster. "He's my partner, Sam. You couldn't have thought that he wouldn't tell me."
"I didn't expect any of it," said Sam. "I'm not sure what I thought your relationship with Leo was, but I certainly didn't think that it was this."
"And it wasn't, when we worked for you," he pointed out.
"He said that. He also said, although not in so many words, where I could shove my disapproval."
Harry turned to face her again, holding a plate. "Is that what it is? I had assumed," he said, polite warning colouring his tone. "As you're in our flat and drinking our coffee and you spent last night in our spare room, I had thought that you couldn't disapprove all that much."
"Leo jumps to conclusions."
"He worries," Harry said, relaxing. "He worried, in the beginning, that people would think that he was manipulating me, and so he gets defensive. I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. But."
"But Leo worries that the sun won't rise," Sam said.
He smiled. "He told his sister much the same thing, about where she could shove her disapproval, before he had told her what there might be for her to disapprove of."
"It took me by surprise," she said. "It took me by surprise, first, when I saw him looking so happy, and then when he told me that you were the thing that was making him happy…"
"It did me, too," Harry said. "It still does."
Sam thought about the photos on Leo's desk. She thought about what she had heard when she had eavesdropped on them the previous night, and how easy they had looked together that morning before they had known she was there, and how, even years ago, they had always gone to each other before anyone else. She thought about the smile on Leo's face when he had answered his phone and about how pleased she had been for him before she had known that Harry was on the other end of it. She thought that if there were still things about this that she didn't understand, she would work them out for herself. She took a slice of toast.
A year later, just after Christmas, when the streetlamps came on early and the students were away being fussed over by their neglected families, Sam Ryan was packing her things away for the night when an email pinged into her inbox.
From: Leo Dalton
To: Sam Ryan
Subject: I won the coin flip.
It's been miserable weather, the Metropolitan Police continue to be useless bureaucrats, students become more ignorant by the day, and, by the way, Harry and I are getting married.
All my love,
L.