Crazy chapter 2 ...


The cool, crisp ivy tickled the back of her neck and Ruth's hands interwove with Harry's at the side of her body. Their kisses were lazy and delicate but it was just this sort of tender kiss which never failed to make her weak at the knees.

"You know," she muttered, nuzzling her lips into his neck, "perhaps we shouldn't have come on this trip."

He looked at her enquiringly.

"Well for a start," she began, removing a large ivy leaf from the side of her face, "if we were back home, I wouldn't feel like I needed Piriton, and secondly, I'm almost certain the house owner would more than approve of our sharing a bed." She looked at him, seriously, hoping he would make the connections in what she was trying to tell him.

"It's up to you. I'm certainly not going to hold it against you if you go back on what you told me this afternoon, but I'm not going to make you feel bad if you don't want to sneak around."

"She's a lovely landlady and I really don't want to upset her if we've got another two nights to stay."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Always too bloody considerate, you," he muttered, sealing the admonishment with a kiss.

"I know," she whispered in reply, a trickle of laughter almost breaking free. "Somebody has to balance out your bluntness."

He arranged his face into a suitably exaggerated expression of shock. "Such insolence, Miss Evershed…if only I could say it wasn't true."

She laughed, loudly, before lowering her voice to a more appropriate tone. "I wouldn't change you though. Now be a gentleman, help me out of the flowerbed and walk me to my room."

"With pleasure," he whispered, hand extended, and the loved-up coupled retreated inside.

--

"Harry! You're supposed to be being a gentleman!" her voice was hushed but incredulous as the warmth of his palm grazed the back of her thigh beneath the linen of her skirt. Making it to their rooms had been the easy part; separating to sleep alone was proving trickier than Ruth expected following her alcohol consumption and their intimate embrace.

"Ruth, you're the one with one palm tucked inside my shirt buttons who can't stop kissing me."

"Point taken," she mumbled, as she did exactly that again, and pressed her lips against his. She stepped backwards, and his fingertips tickled bare flesh as they trailed over her retreating legs. A moan tripped involuntarily from her throat and she bit her lip and smiled. "G'night, Harry," she whispered, back against her door, hand on the handle.

"Goodnight, Ruth," he replied, withdrawing down the corridor backwards so he could watch her a few seconds longer until she had disappeared inside.

--

"What!?" Harry groaned. A banging of some sort had penetrated into his conscious thought but he wasn't really coherent enough to make sense of it. The digital clock read 00.11, and he reasoned he could not have been asleep for longer than 15 minutes, but it felt as though it was the dead of the night.

"Are you awake?"

"No, I'm sleep talking," he muttered, grumpily.

"Let me in," she whispered.

A series of dull thuds and heavy trudges grew gradually closer, and a topless, boxer-sporting Harry appeared where seconds previously a sturdy oak panel had been.

"Are you ok?" he asked. Ruth noticed his one eye was closed and the other squinted at her, his head tilted lopsidedly.

"Oh…oh, you were asleep."

He nodded, slowly, as if it was a monumental effort. "Ruth, are you sure you're ok?"

"Uhm, yeah," she squeaked, "um, fine. Sorry I woke you up." In her mental rehearsal for this moment, she had arrived in his doorway, seductively leant against the frame, and had been swept up into his arms, no questions asked. In reality, however, having woken him up, found him groggy and squinting at her, she was feeling more apologetic than horny. What's more, the failure of her movie-like fantasy to materialise meant she was now going to have to verbalise her desire to him.

"Ruth…?"

"Yeah? Oh, um, I…um, I was thinking about you. Well, not about you…kind of about you, actually. About me and you."

Harry's other eye miraculously opened and both brown pools gained focus. "Yes…"

Her nerves were abated, at least, by the fact that she had now secured his attention; now all she had to do was banish the guilt she felt at sneaking around, and work on meeting his gaze rather than boring a whole in his chest with the heat of he stare.

A small cough floated down from the end of the hallway. "Oh dear, is there something troubling you? Can't sleep? Perhaps I can make you a Horlicks or get you something?" the sweet-as-pie landlady cooed. The look on her face told Ruth she was not so innocent as to believe that Ruth simply couldn't sleep, but it was better than an out and out confrontation about why she had one foot over the threshold to Harry's room.

"I, er, Harry has my, um…." Oh God, think of something woman! What might Harry have that's yours? "My…"

"Tablets," stated an authoritative voice from over her shoulder, thrusting a cardboard packet at her.

"Oh, funny tum?" the older lady asked, sympathetically.

Ruth looked down at the packet in her hand and let out a loud, mental groan. "Yes," she muttered, "funny tum. Night both." She shuffled back to her room without another word to either of them.

--

Imodium!? xxx

Ruth wasn't sure if it was possible to type in an incredulous fashion, but she was trying her damndest as she inputted the letters into her phone and hit send.

For emergencies x, came the reply. She rolled her eyes.

That wasn't what I meant. You could have passed me paracetamol. Or a hair dryer xxx

Stop moaning. It was dark and I was rushing. Love you, Mule x

She smiled. She remembered the first time he'd called her Mule, and the feigned offence she'd made at his blunder, but now she liked that it had stuck. Besides, she'd repaid him in kind with a nickname of his own after one of his more infamous temper tantrums had struck.

Love you too, Grumpy xxx

--

"Morning," Ruth smiled, pulling a seat up around the small, circular, breakfast table. Harry rose and then seated himself again.

"Morning, sleep well?"

"Not exactly," she replied, weighing up whether to whisper that she hadn't quite ever managed to shake the notion of a second attempt at visiting him. Thinking better of it, as she remembered her shame at having almost been caught breaking the house rules, she continued, "strange bed and all that, I think."

Harry smiled, sympathetically.

"You?" she asked.

"Well, a rather naughty house-guest did try and disturb me around midnight, but after that I slept like a baby."

She blushed profusely at his words. "I did feel bad."

"For waking me up, or breaking the rules?" he winked.

"Both." She gave his left shin a quick nudge with her foot as their host – Flo, as Harry had earlier learnt she was called – entered the room with an oversized tray of warm empty plates and a rack of toast.

"If you'll tell me what you like I have everything on the go on the stove," she explained, already retreating through the open door and into the other room. She continued to talk to them even out of sight. "Good night's sleep? Sweet dreams? Ruth, duck, are you better?"

Harry didn't exactly think any of his dreams could be likened to "sweet", and would certainly not be the type of thing she would want to hear about. She popped her head around the door in search of an answer to her questions, and her guests simply nodded to appease her. Satisfied, she returned to her cooking, a glorious smell of bacon and sausages appearing from almost nowhere, and Harry craned his neck to try and peer into the kitchen. She walked past and caught him staring, a look of hunger on his face.

"Banger, Harry?"

"I would have loved to, given the chance, you puritanical nun," he muttered, under his breath, seizing upon the unwitting double entendre she'd provided.

"What?" she asked.

"Oh, I said 'I'd love one, any chance I can have more than one?'"

"Will you give her a break," hissed Ruth, after Flo has finished establishing the rest of their breakfast order. "That is quite clearly never going to work this weekend so can you stop going on about it? It isn't her fault you have no self control."

"Oh, just me is it!?"

"Fine, we…but you started it."

"I know. And I intend to finish it too," he replied with a wink. "Just as soon as we get home."

"There you go," Flo sing-songed as she placed full plates of hot food in front of them both, "I'll leave you to enjoy it in peace."

Ruth smiled warmly at the older woman, knowing from the look on Harry's face that he was doubtful whether Flo could actually manage to leave them unattended for longer than five minutes.

"A fiver says she's back here within the next two minutes," he muttered as Flo wandered back towards the kitchen.

"Harry!" she tried to admonish him, but the small chuckle that escaped belied her tone and Harry raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh fine, you're on!"

She had got as far as picking up her knife and fork before the kitchen door re-opened and Flo bustled back across the room. "Sorry! I almost forgot to give you this!"

Harry made no attempt to hide the satisfied smirk that had settled on his face at the reappearance of their overbearing hostess and was too busy mouthing 'I told you so' to take note of what Flo was saying.

"Not much use having an itinerary if it gets let in reception is there? I don't know, I'd forget my head sometimes!" Flo carried on, unaware that both her guests looked alarmed as she plonked the sheet of paper down next to Harry. "I'll leave it here for you."


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