Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed these random chapters so far. You all make me smile :)
Prompt: curtains. For Lady J. It went a bit weird. Naturally.
"It was nice of you to come, Harry." The Russian man smiles and rests one hand on the gun at his hip.
Harry doesn't answer. He thinks that if they get out of this, he doesn't care what Ruth says. He's marrying her. He's bloody marrying her and they are living in a house in Sussex and they will lie to their neighbours when they come over for tea and they're never thinking about MI-5 again.
Except they probably aren't going to get out of this. He doesn't even know where Ruth is. She might already be dead, although he doesn't think so. He imagines the Russians would have told him if they had killed her, just so they could see his reaction. They probably would've killed her in front of him. They still might.
He doesn't know why he has the sense that this is it – his final curtain call – but he can't shake it. It's been there ever since he received the phone call this morning, informing him that the reason Ruth hadn't shown up for work wasn't because she was ill or late, but because the bastard Russians had heard that Harry Pearce was prone to giving up state secrets for her and they wondered if he'd do it this time, too.
He'd heard her voice on the phone, briefly. "Don't you dare, Harry." That's all she'd said and he knew that she was telling him not to come, to do nothing.
But he had to. But this time, he doesn't have anything to give them except himself. And he knows that's not enough.
The Russian man is sliding the gun out of its holster. Harry's own gun is in an unknown location, taken from him as soon as he stepped out of his car. He has no back up; Dimitri and Tariq had covered him while he slipped out of the office against orders, but right now they're probably getting yelled at for their troubles and so won't be able to help him.
Where the hell is Ruth? He's wondering what the point of it all is. Are they really just going to shoot him? Do they have a plan? On the face of it, the operation seems a little amateurish, but he knows he'd be foolish to underestimate them. The man standing in front of him with the gun certainly seems solid enough to do some damage.
"What do you want?" Harry asks him, casually, as though he really doesn't care what happens either way.
"Finally." The Russian man laughs. "Some sense out of you." He cocks the gun and points it at Harry's chest. "Tell me where the wave project is being stored."
He has no idea what the wave project is. In a way it's good, because it means there's no danger of committing treason, intentionally or otherwise. On the other hand, it's bad because his ignorance means he has even less to barter with. He stares at the man, hoping it might unnerve him.
The man steps forward, not at all unnerved. "Tell me, Harry. Where is the wave project?"
Harry pretends to be considering it. "Have you tried the ocean?"
A bullet is shot into the floor near his feet. "Don't be funny," the Russian man says calmly, apparently unaffected by the noise and the shock of dust that explodes from the concrete. "You know as well as I do what it is."
Actually, no, he really doesn't. But he can't say that. And he can't lie and pretend he does, either. As soon as he got found out, there'd be trouble. Well. More trouble. He changes tack and lets himself begin to get angry. "And you know as well as I do that I'm not even going to consider helping you until you give me proof that my colleague is okay." He tries not to sound too desperate, but the word 'colleague' trips him up and he might as well have just come out and said 'the woman I love'.
The man knows it, too. He tilts his head, his expression condescending. "She's fine. I promise."
Not good enough. "I don't believe you."
Something in his expression must convince the man that Harry's serious and he shouts something in Russian, calling towards the door that leads back to a corridor and the way in – and out. Nothing happens for a long moment, so the man shouts again and then a few seconds later, the door swings open. The sight it reveals is a little bit backwards in terms of what Harry is expecting.
He has been expecting to see Ruth with a gun to her head and another large Russian man holding the gun. Instead, he sees Ruth forcing a gun against the temple of someone he takes to be an accomplice of the man in front of him. Her face is bloody and she looks like she'd rather just collapse against the wall, but the man in front of her is in worse shape. She's holding his arm to steady him and pressing the gun firmly to his head. She looks pissed off. The man she's holding looks mortified, and as though he has given in.
Harry has never been so bloody proud in his life. He wants to stop and laugh and applaud and possibly construct a congratulatory sentence using the word 'kickarse', but there's no time. He takes the moment of distraction and launches himself at the man in front of him, barrelling into him and knocking him to the ground. The gun goes skittering across the floor. He takes the man's head in his hands and cracks it against the concrete, not hard enough to kill him but definitely hard enough to incapacitate him for a while. Certain he's out cold, Harry stands and goes over to Ruth. He gives her a smile, then takes the other man's shoulders in his grip to steady himself and jams his knee into the guy's groin. He goes down in an instant.
Not bad for a curtain call.
OoO
It's not Sussex, but it's fairly perfect as it is. Harry's not quite sure how they ended up in the Peak District, but he's not complaining. Not that there's much to complain about with scenery like that right outside the door. He never even complains about the slightly cheesy fact their village is called Hope. He can't. He chose it.
It's a Saturday and they're shopping in Sheffield, picking out curtains for their recently moved into home. This sort of outing used to fill him with dread, but now the decision over whether or not to get blackout lining on the curtains in their bedroom seems like a monumentally important consideration and he's loving every minute of it.
"What colour do you want?" Ruth asks him, staring at the sea of drapery in the home department of John Lewis.
He might be loving it, but that doesn't mean he's any good at it. "Well, the walls are blue, so… something that goes with blue."
"Good thinking. But I thought you wanted to repaint?"
He thinks about it. "Something that goes with everything, then."
"Cream?"
"Sounds wise."
Ruth heads off to the pale-coloured curtain section and the numerous shades of fabric that could all be counted as 'cream'. He's about to follow her, but something catches Harry's eye. "I really like these ones."
She stops and looks at the curtains he's pointing to. "Those are children's curtains."
They are indeed children's curtains. They're blue with white and yellow shapes on them. Stars and moons and planets. They'd look great in the back bedroom of their house, the one that is currently ostensibly reserved for 'guests' but has been left empty. He suddenly really, really wants those curtains. He looks at Ruth and knows he probably has a ridiculously daffy expression on his face. He doesn't care. "I know."
"But what – ?"
"Ruth," he cuts her off. He reaches out, takes her hand and draws her towards him. He stares into her eyes and wills her to see what he's thinking.
"Are you suggesting that…?"
He nods. "Yes."
She doesn't answer him but she has a small smile on her face and the warmth of it gives him hope and makes him think that maybe they have one last big adventure left in them, after all.
*cough* Nope, don't know what happened with that last bit. I gave into the lure of the fluff. Thanks for reading :)