Some fluff at last!

This chapter is way less intellectual. Less exposition, but more fluff. The plot can wait...

Enjoy!

Ruth awoke to find she was alone on the couch, the rug tucked under her chin. There was no sign of Harry. She felt a brief pang of concern, but knew there was no reason for it. The kind of intimacy she had shared with Harry throughout the night as they'd sat together on the couch, lit only by the glow from the heater as they discussed their immediate pasts, was something far from everyday in Ruth's experience. The nearest she had come to that same degree of connection and closeness in a relationship with another had been her working relationship with Harry. She then caught the whiff of toast from the kitchen, along with the sound of the coffee percolator bubbling away. Tucking the rug around her for warmth, she shuffled to the kitchen. Still no Harry, although there were signs that he possessed basic culinary skills – two mugs, two plates, two egg cups, the butter dish, jam and honey, all arranged on the table. Ruth felt her face break into a smile, and she quite unconsciously uttered an `awww'.

Crossing to the sitting room she looked out the window, and yes, his car was still parked out front. A movement caught her eye, and there, strolling along the cliff-top towards the house was Ruth's own personal Knight In Shining Armour. In his hand he clutched a small bunch of flowers, and even as she watched, he bent to pick more, adding them to the bunch. If those on the Grid could see him now! Ruth drew the blanket more tightly around herself, enjoying watching him without his knowing. He seemed so un-Harry-like dressed in casual cargo pants and a military-style jacket, but she was rapidly warming to the casual Harry. Suddenly, he looked up and saw her standing at the window. His face changed from the pout of concentration to the broadest of smiles, and he waved to her like it was the most natural thing to be doing. Ruth now knew what it felt like to be living inside a Nescafé commercial.

She met him as he entered the house. She'd momentarily considered a flying tackle, but knew that such aggression on her part was no longer necessary. He was actually very pliable where she was concerned. Still holding the flowers in one hand, Harry grasped her to him with the other arm, and kissed her warmly and thoroughly.

"Hi," she said, coming up for air.

"Hi yourself," he whispered, nuzzling her ear.

"Are those flowers for me?"

She felt him nod, but he didn't look up. He'd taken her earring in his mouth and was running his tongue around her earlobe. Ruth let the rug drop from her, suddenly too hot for it. At this rate, the coffee pot would be boiled dry before they even made it to the kitchen.

Reluctantly, Ruth pushed him away. "I really need to shower."

All that remained from their first proper breakfast together was the little vase of wildflowers in the centre of the table. Ruth knew she'd not be able to throw them away. She'd even mentally chosen the book into which she'd surely slip them to press them so that she could keep them forever as a reminder of this day. Which reminded her...

"My books, Harry, what happened to them? What did you end up doing with them? I can only hope they went to a good home." She knew he'd have looked after Fidget for her, but her books had been easily as precious as her cat, and likely more durable.

"They're at my place, in the attic. I couldn't bear to sell them, and to throw them out would have been unthinkable. I knew how much they meant to you." Harry looked up from drying a plate to catch her eye. "And they were all I had left of you," he added almost whispered, his emotion close to the surface.

She then covered the short space between them in an instant, removed the plate and tea towel from his hands, grasped his face between her hands and kissed him long and deeply. His response was immediate and equally as intense. Teeth clashed and tongues writhed as he grasped her buttocks and pulled her hard against him. It was a move short on subtlety, but Ruth knew exactly what he was saying. It's time. Briefly coming up for air, she looked at him and lifted her eyebrows.

"Harry Pearce – you've pulled!"

And so it was that at 11:38 on a brisk spring morning in coastal Devon, 20 months, 6 days and 21 hours after Ruth had left him forever for the second time, she led him by the hand up the stairs, and he eagerly followed.

Their lovemaking was careful, even awkward at first, but frantic leading up to its completion. They spoke little, other than to say the usual – I love you, or Is that alright? or Move over a bit, my leg's going to sleep or How'd you get that scar?. It was not perfect, but they had still to discover their natural rhythm as a couple, and they had all the time in the world for that.

They lay together afterwards while their breathing steadied and slowed, comfortable at last in each other's company. A smile settled on Ruth's face.

"Is this what's called basking in the afterglow?" she asked, not really needing an answer. She liked words, and if she couldn't write them or read them, speaking was the next best thing. Harry responded to her question by nuzzling her neck and planting gentle kisses behind her ear.

"It's just that those airport novels talk about couples being spent after they have sex, and when I first read that when I was thirteen or fourteen, I thought it had something to do with money, and I thought to myself, what's money got to do with people having it off?"

Harry rolled on to his back and laughed. "You precious, precious woman!"

"Now I know that it's a metaphor. Spent equals empty - "

"Spent equals knackered," added Harry, before he leaned over and silenced her with a kiss.

"I'd say I'm sated," Ruth continued, after he'd rolled back on to his own side. "Are you sated, Harry?"

"Definitely."

Several minutes passed in near silence. They listened to the chirping of birds in the trees outside the window, and in the distance the lap of the waves as they licked the beach. How more perfect could this be?

"Ruth," he began – carefully, it seemed, "what made you choose that moment to jump me?"

"Harry Pearce! I so did not jump you. I just encouraged you. Nothing more."

"You jumped me, darling. You launched yourself across the kitchen at me, pelvis first. I had no say in the matter. Technically it may not have been rape, but...I don't know...in a court of law, who knows what the judgement would be."

"Sexual harassment, you mean? You didn't appear harassed, Harry. On the contrary. I'd say you enjoyed yourself a little too much, if that's possible."

"I can't possibly disagree with that, nor would I want to. So why that moment? Was it the flowers?"

"The flowers certainly helped, but I'm hoping you didn't pick them just to get yourself laid."

"As if I'm that cynical, sweetheart."

"It was what you said about my books, about why you'd held on to them. That they were all you had of me. That's a very sexy thing for you to have said, Harry."

He reached across to her and held her in a comfortable and loose embrace, his mouth close to her ear.

"I haven't been called sexy since – oh – 1989."

"I find that very hard to believe."

They slept away most of the afternoon, only waking when Harry's phone rang.

"Aren't you going to get that?" Ruth asked him, and he answered by rolling her on top of him and positioning her so that she could see his face as well as feel his growing excitement. Ruth was impressed that a man of his age could be ready for her that quickly. Their second time was slower, almost languid, and with their first time out of the way, they could relax into it and let down any walls which may still have existed between them. They made time to examine one another's bodies – with fingers and tongues as well as eyes - making quiet comments as they did so.

Harry: "Your stabbing scar appears to be coming along nicely."

Ruth: "Perhaps I should get one the other side to match."

Ruth: "Stabbing?"

Harry: "No - appendectomy."

Ruth: "Gunshot wound?"

Harry: "No. My best friend stabbed me with a pocket knife when we were ten. He wanted to see what colour my blood was."

Ruth: "That scar looks like it would have been really painful."

Harry: "Not as painful as losing you."

They came together, laughing like teenagers as they did so.

"I aged ten years when I lost you," Harry murmured, once his pulse rate had dropped below 100, "and finding you again is stripping those years away."

"I love you, Harry Pearce. I promise to not run away from you again."

They slipped into the kind of comfortable silence familiar to seasoned lovers or people who have been together a long time – which Harry and Ruth had, but not in this way. Sometimes words diminished rather than added.

"Perhaps it's time we ate," Ruth mused, as much to herself as to Harry, "that's if you have an appetite for something other than me."

Harry laughed into her hair, more of a growl, really. "I could feast on your forever, my love."

"Nice thought, Harry, but we're both in the real world now where the laws of physics, nature and all the universal principles of time and space apply. We no longer inhabit that twilight world of espionage. In this world – our world now - food is necessary to sustain life. If we continue to feast on each other we'll die."

"Better we die together than apart."

Ruth disengaged from his arms and turned to face him.

"We almost did, didn't we? Die apart, I mean."

Her words hung in the air like the smoke from a post-coital cigarette. Neither were keen to pursue this subject. The wounds for them both were still painful. The raw finality of death was a reality they'd each faced time and again, but Ruth's apparent death almost two years previously had left a scar which had damaged them both in ways they had still to examine. Ruth could feel Harry's eyes on her. She believed that they gave off a heat all of their own.

"Perhaps we should make a pact," Harry suggested. "Perhaps from now on we should agree to go everywhere together."

"Can that wait a few minutes?" Ruth replied. "I really need to pee, and the last thing I need for that is an audience."

Ruth rolled away from him, lifting his arm from her shoulders, then stepped off the bed and walked across the room, a bold move for her, given she was naked as the day she was born. She was enjoying her role as initiator. Harry sat back against the pillows, admiring her body and how it moved when she walked. He considered himself a lucky man.