Now they're actually working together.

Updates will probably be annoyingly irregular. The usual disclaimers apply.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

John F. Kennedy

Like Granite

The one thing they both already know is that life is rarely simple. The other thing they discover quite quickly is that their Thames House personas clash. They start well enough. They tease each other with double meanings. She makes important and obscure connections. But it is incredibly hard to reconcile the man who puts tomato ketchup on his macaroni cheese with the man who authorises the exploitation of a teenaged Muslim agent – whose feet are beaten so badly that the resulting blood clot gives him a brain haemorrhage. Baghdad was a simple checkerboard. The Grid is like granite: glinting crystals of black and white all jumbled up with the dubious grey.

In an attempt to shelter her from the consequences of her double-agent status, he keeps her as far out of the loop as possible. He even dismisses her from briefings early. She spends three solid days staring at a Homeric quote that she learned off by heart when she was doing her A-Levels. As if that isn't insulting enough, Danny and Zoe can bitch for the UK given half a chance, and it doesn't take long to eavesdrop on a corridor conversation about her supposed loyalty to GCHQ.

He is distinctly relieved when Tom realises that someone on the Grid is leaking information to Whitehall. He decides not to let her know that the game is up, thinking that at least she won't have to feign surprise or distress. It culminates in a horrible riverside conversation with Tom, worsened by the fact that the layers of lies simply increase in number.

Her body language does not encourage. Suspecting that he might have made a tactical error, but convinced it was for her own good, he sets himself at a deliberate distance, appears to thrive on confrontation and is both irritable and demanding. The frantic pace and brash nature of the field officers leaves her feeling even more insecure, which starts to manifests itself as exasperating vacillation.

After ten weeks and one EERIE exercise, she thinks he's a heartless bastard, and he's wondering if she's cut out for Section D. It doesn't help that he is desperate not to take advantage of his position while she is afraid that she'll burst into tears and beg for special treatment. They have stopped leaving messages in the drafts folder of a certain email address. They are missing each other dreadfully. He spends Christmas in London, alone. She goes back to Cheltenham to see her Mum.

Her stepbrother, Peter, is at her Mum's house. He gets so drunk on Christmas Eve that she finds him lying on the sofa at seven on Christmas morning, wet with urine and dead to the world.

~ooooO0Ooooo~

April 2004

During a potentially disastrous POTUS visit, a psychologist called Miranda Sawyer interviews some of the team, in what she calls a steam-valve exercise. Tom is so livid about it that he calls in a couple of large'ish favours and has Miranda fired.

He pretends to be livid, too, but of course he knew about her remit from the Personnel Department right from the start, and did nothing to prevent her progress. He drinks three fingers of twenty-one year-old Macallan (the direr the situation, the cheaper the whiskey: today was a good day) and reads all of the resulting transcripts.

Two sentences set the mental version of an air raid siren wailing within his skull. Zoe suspects that Ruth has been in love with him since day one. How the hell can Zoe think that when he can't see it at all? Exactly when did he lose the ability to read her? Did he ever have it? Ego threadbare, he conveniently forgets Zoe's opinion on the matter and concentrates on Ruth's interview. She will not even admit to liking him, just that he is a good boss.

A couple of weeks later, his house is burgled. He has broken two cardinal rules: taking a major piece of work home with him and using the same code for both his front door and the safe in his spare room. He knows he is an absolute bloody idiot – far worse, so do his team.

At lunchtime, she quietly opens his office door and finds him hiding behind the blinds with his head in his hands.

'Are you all right?'

'Clearly not.'

'It's a bit of a shock, having your house broken into. When I was a student it happened to me. I was sharing a house. They took all of our stereo equipment and we weren't insured.'

'That was very silly of you.'

'I suppose it was.'

He looks up. Angry. Ashamed of himself. 'What do you want?' he asks curtly.

'That briefcase should have been in bloody Thames House, not your house!' she bursts out. 'Don't you ever think about what happened to Tom's old girlfriend? What exactly were you thinking?'

'It was the middle of the night when I got it. I was tired.' Damn it all to hell, don't look at me as if you care. 'It's none of your business anyway!'

'Don't I know it!' she snaps back. 'Heaven forbid I get close enough to ask how you are. If you'll be okay on your own tonight.'

'What on earth are you talking about? You're the one who told me to keep a distance!'

She tilts her head, brow puckered. 'Christ, Harry! It's not nice being burgled. Muddy footprints on the stairs and SOCO fingerprint powder everywhere.'

'No SOCO. I haven't reported the break-in.'

'Well that makes all the difference!' she exclaims sarcastically, exasperated arms flapping. She walks over to his corner and reaches out a hesitant hand to rub his arm. 'Are you okay?'

One touch is all it takes. His head drops forward until it rests on her shoulder. His universe clears its cosmic throat and begins to breathe more easily.

'There's a team at my house packing everything,' he mumbles. 'Security breach. I'm stuck in a safehouse until I can sell up and find somewhere else.'

They both know what this means: CCTV monitoring his comings and goings. He is being kept on a short leash. Internal Affairs will start sniffing about if he stays out all night without providing an explanation, and they'll certainly take notice – and photographs – if she visits.

~ooooO0Ooooo~

Her secondment renewed for another six months she no longer hesitates about coming to see him. His office door may as well be nonexistent for all the notice she takes of it.

His house is on the market but he hasn't found a buyer yet.

~ooooO0Ooooo~

TBC

For our American friends: SOCO = Scene of Crime Officers, pronounced "sock-oh".