It's her father's parting shot as the taxi drops him at home first that sees her leaning forward and giving the driver Dempsey's address and asking him to take her there rather than her own.
"You must come down for a weekend in the country, Harriet. Some fresh air and decent food will do you the world of good, my darling. Bring James too, that American of yours makes a fine martini and, quite frankly, I enjoy his company."
She had nodded, not unaware of his unexpected fondness for her partner, also not unaware of her feelings shifting in that direction the better she gets to know him too, something she's still trying to make sense of, especially given the turn things have taken recently. Physically she felt a pull from the start, there's no denying that, but the longer they worked together, the more obvious it became that he's so much more than the image he seemed determined to cultivate when he arrived. Back then he was dismissive, brash, rude, and a complete and utter sexist. He still has those moments but they're less frequent now, and more often than not he listens to her these days when she calls him out on his behaviour. In quieter moments they talk, they make each other laugh, and stakeouts are definitely less boring with him, she can't deny that; despite her initial thinking that she might learn to tolerate him at best, she likes him, she genuinely likes him, and she cares about him. Which brings her back to why she's here.
On his doorstep she realises the time, hesitates before ringing the doorbell, only now thinking he could be out or he may be at home but not alone, but she's sent the taxi away so she has no option other than to make her presence known and hope he's fine with an unannounced visit.
"Harry…" The surprise on his face is evident, but it's quickly followed by a grin so she relaxes and smiles back at him. "Everything okay?"
"Hi." He's probably thinking there's been some robbery somewhere that Spikings has decided they need to attend at almost eleven o'clock on a weeknight. "Yes, everything's fine, I just...sorry, are you busy?"
"Busy deciding whether it's too late for another drink, not much more besides that." He steps back, opens the door wider. "You coming in?"
"Thanks." She steps inside and waits as he closes the door behind her. "It's not too late for another drink. I'll join you, if it makes you feel better."
"I always feel better when you join me, Harry." The sincerity in his tone catches her slightly off guard and she says nothing, just follows him into the kitchen. She takes her coat off and drapes it over one of the kitchen chairs, and when she looks at him he's studying her, curiosity in his eyes. "You look nice...hot date tonight?"
"Dinner in Chelsea with a man who insisted on paying for everything, drank too much, and kept telling me I need to eat more, work less, and get more fresh air." She smiles and takes the glass of wine he's offering, nodding her thanks.
"Ah, how is your dad?" He briefly rests a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently before heading towards the living room.
"Oh, you know him, he's fine. He asked after you, of course, he always does. And he told me I ought to head down for a weekend, and that you should come too." In the living room he sits down and she sits next to him, crossing her legs, catching his eyes drift down to her thighs before he pulls his gaze back. "Anyway, I was passing by this way on my way home and-"
"If my place is on your way home from Chelsea, your sense of direction is heading the same way as mine." He takes a sip of wine and leans forward to put the glass on the table, turning to face her. "What are you really doing here, Harry?"
"Look, if you're not in the mood for company, I can go." She wonders why she is here, why she didn't just go home, and she feels like perhaps she should have followed her sensible side like she usually does, rather than the impulsive side that doesn't come out to play all that often but decided to rear its head tonight. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
"Hey...I didn't say that, you're not bothering me." His hand moves to her arm, his fingers warm on her bare skin. "I just didn't expect a late night visit."
"It's not that late, Dempsey." She's being obtuse, she knows that. He's right, she wouldn't usually drop in without warning at this time unless there was something wrong, which there isn't, so it's understandable that he's confused.
"No, I guess not." He shrugs and glances at his watch. "Pretty late for you to swing by though."
"Yes, I suppose it is." She acknowledges that, takes a sip of wine.
"Thought maybe you'd been on a shitty date and needed me to remind you that good guys still exist in the world." He grins and leans back, still studying her, clearly still wondering what she's doing here.
"How did you know your doorstep would be the first place I would find myself in such a situation?" She smirks at him and he returns it. "He might be obsessed with his conviction that a lack of regular country air will be my downfall, but my father isn't such a terrible dinner date."
"So, if that's not it...what's going on?" He narrows his eyes, watches her, waiting for her response.
"It's stupid, really." She shakes her head, wondering if she should have just waited until they were at work to talk to him, but knowing he would brush it off if she did. "I was worried about you, Dempsey. It's been a...strange week, and I know the thing with Lymon got to you even though you insist it didn't, and I just wanted...to see you, I suppose, to make sure you're okay."
"I'm okay." He reaches for his wine glass again, averts his eyes from hers, and sighs.
"I was thinking about what I said too." She doesn't think what she said was wrong, she just questions her decision to voice it. "The night I came to find you in the office-"
"You looked so great that night." He stops her, a faint smile making its way onto his lips.
"What?" She finds herself smiling back at him, waiting for him to go on.
"The dress, the one you had on that day, that night...silky, satiny thing. Looked like melted chocolate." She frowns, unable to remember what dress she had on, slightly bewildered that he does. "It looked really good on you, Harry."
"That's the second compliment you've paid me tonight, Dempsey." She's not complaining, it just isn't quite what she expected. "One more and I might have to check behind your ear for a reset switch."
"Come on, Harry, you know I think you're beautiful." She's not an idiot, she knows he finds her attractive, he proved it beyond all doubt just a few weeks ago, but beautiful is on a different level, and for a moment she's thrown by it.
"If you think I don't recognise an attempt at changing the subject, you severely underestimate me, Dempsey, and I'm almost certain that's not the case." She pauses, bites her lip before she goes on. "What I said about Lymon being who you might have been had you not been a cop...I feel like I-"
"You were right." He leans closer, his words putting a stop to hers. "I'm not saying I liked hearing it, but you were right."
"And that's why he got to you." She understands it, there's something about seeing the things you don't like about yourself reflected back that magnifies them, forces you to confront them.
"He didn't get to me, Harry." He switches back to denial and it frustrates her.
"You know, you may be reckless sometimes, and far too often you charge into situations before you think, but you're a good cop, Dempsey, a great cop, and you sat in front of me a few nights ago and told me you couldn't do it anymore, that you were losing your edge." She's not holding back now, she knows what she heard that night, recalls the uncertainty she saw in his eyes. "By all means tell me you don't want to talk about it or it's none of my bloody business but don't try to fob me off with some crap about how he didn't get to you. Please give me a little more credit than that."
"Alright, so maybe there was something about him that got under my skin." He runs his hand across his forehead, frowning at her. "I couldn't read him, couldn't pin him down, couldn't figure out his next move."
"And you hated that you couldn't get one step ahead of him." She keeps her voice low, her eyes firmly on his.
"Yeah, I guess I did." He nods, his admission reluctant but out in the open.
"I didn't want you to think I was making assumptions. I could just see how much it was bothering you and I…" She stops and shrugs faintly, smiling at him.
"I don't think it's making assumptions if you hit the nail on the head, Harry." He's right, it's an assessment rather than an assumption, and she knows him, she knew what was bothering him.
"No, maybe not." She sighs, thinking again about Lymon and how if Dempsey's life had gone that way they wouldn't be sitting here now. "Still, I wasn't judging, I was just...concerned."
"Yeah, I know. Why do you think I wasn't surprised when you found me in the office that night?" He grins at her. "We know each other pretty well now, don't we?"
"I guess we do." She nods and agrees with him, trying not to think too much about just how well they know each other, how she only has to close her eyes now to picture every inch of him. "Which is why I also knew you'd deny it and tell me it wasn't getting to you."
"That's pretty rich coming from someone who should probably get 'I'm fine' tattooed across her forehead to save herself the effort of saying it so often." He nudges her shoulder and grins a little wider.
"Do you think I don't question myself too?" She slides her shoes off, releasing her feet, her gaze still on him.
"You, Harry?" He looks like he's not sure whether or not she's serious. "I don't think I've ever met anyone who always seems so sure of themselves."
"It's taken years of practice for it to appear that way." She smiles, thinking of all the times she's gone home at the end of a day convinced she wasn't up to the job, demoralised by the constant fight required just to survive as a woman in the force. "I'm a woman so when there's tea to be made or an upset witness to comfort it falls to me, when something is about to get heavy some male colleague or other always feels the need to warn me. It's exhausting, Dempsey, and I've had plenty of days when I've gone home and wondered why I bloody bother, but then I remember I love my job and I'm good at it, really good at it. So I usually have a glass of wine and lie in the bath for a while until I've managed to remind myself of that, and the next morning I'm ready to go again."
"I guess I'm one of those guys, right?" There's a note of contrition in his voice that she appreciates. "Do you soak in the tub thinking of ways to punish me?"
"Are you asking if I think about you while I'm wearing nothing but bubbles, Dempsey?" His eyebrows raise and she laughs, taking a moment to enjoy the look on his face.
"Now all I can think about is you wearing nothing but bubbles." He smirks, his head back in the game, and she smiles.
"We're partners and we need to be able to talk about these things. The work things, not the bubble baths." She pulls her eyes away and takes a sip of wine before looking back at him. "I know that goes against the New York tough guy image you work so hard on but we're no good to each other if we can't even admit when there's a case we're struggling with."
"Goes both ways, Harry." He shrugs and she knows that's fair, she's as good at denial as he is. They both need to work on it.
"Alright so..." She pauses and lets out a sigh, tired all of a sudden. "Next time either of us thinks we have a bogeyman to deal with, we speak up, right?"
"Right." He smiles at her and she feels herself relax under his gaze. "But like I said, there's no such thing as the bogeyman."
"Ah, of course not." She returns the smile and leans back, sinking gratefully against the couch. "So next time there's a madman with bad hair and a shotgun threatening to get under your skin, will you please talk to me? Even if it's just 'this guy is really pissing me off, Harry'. Deal?"
"Yeah." She startles slightly when his fingers brush gently across her cheekbone, just briefly before his hand drops back into his lap. "Deal."
The silence they fall into is comfortable, familiar, and she's not sure when it became this easy to be with him, to be around him. She remembers when their silences always felt like they needed to be filled, the curse of being forced to spend hours on end with an unknown entity, someone whose company she could never have imagined enjoying back then. It feels like such a long time ago, and she wonders if he would admit how much he's changed if she were to ask him. She smiles, knowing that even though he might not admit it, he's well aware of it. Thanks to one night three weeks ago, things between them have changed too but they haven't talked about it. Some days it's an elephant that looms large in the corner of the room but tonight the elephant seems to be napping and the air between them is calm, free of the tension that hangs heavily over them like a rain cloud some days.
"You know, when I said he reminded me of you, I was talking about his intensity, his focus. That's what reminded me of you, not the...well, not the violence, I didn't see that in him and think of you." She's not sure why she's telling him this, she's sure he knows what she thinks of him. He looks at her and she smiles. "I'm fairly sure you're not a psychopath."
"Fairly sure?" He smirks at her and she grins.
"Well, as sure as anyone can be..." She shifts slightly and her foot brushes his leg, his eyes widening slightly before she pulls it back. "I'm sure if you had ended up living a criminal life, you would have been the best criminal you could have been."
"Is that meant to be a compliment, Harry?" He smirks and she knows he recognises a compliment when he hears one. She knows she's right too, if he had pursued a criminal life, he'd have been one of the finest.
"There are just so many criminals who are really bad at it. Although they do keep us in jobs, I suppose." She smiles at him, watching as his gaze shifts to her legs again. "Anyway, yes, it's a compliment, don't fight it."
"Fine, I'll take it. Another drink?" She looks up to see him gesturing to her empty glass and she's torn between saying yes, asking for tea instead, and telling him she really should head home.
"I should probably go, it's late." She offers up a protest but her heart isn't in it. She's warm, comfortable, he's offering more wine, and she doesn't want to go yet.
"It was already late when you got here." He watches her closely, like he expects her to get up yet somehow knows she won't.
"Then it's even later now so I definitely should go." Her words don't match her failure to move even slightly.
"But you'll have one more drink." His smiles spread slowly across his lips.
"Yeah, I'll have one more drink." She nods, finding herself liking how well he knows her.
"I can't even drive you home." He holds up his wine in front of her, grinning. "This isn't exactly my first glass of the evening."
"I know." She knows what he'll say even before her next words are out. "It's fine, I'll call a cab."
"You could stay." His tone is matter of fact, as always, his eyes are still fixed on her. "I can drive you home before work in the morning."
"I suppose I could stay..." It's certainly the option she's leaning towards as she looks at him. "I probably shouldn't have come over so late."
"It's not like you haven't crashed here a bunch of times, Harry." She does end up here far more often than she would probably admit, or he at her house. Long days, bottles of wine, tiredness that seeps too far into their bones to make driving home an option; more regularly lately, it seems. "I can probably find the exact same clothes I gave you to sleep in last time."
"Not that they stayed on very long last time." The words are out of her mouth before her brain can censor them and she keeps her eyes focused on his.
"No, they didn't." There's a tender note to his voice that causes her breath to catch, and his eyes are gentle as he looks at her. "But we don't talk about that night, do we, Harry?"
"I didn't come here tonight expecting to stay. That's not…" She pauses, knowing without a doubt she'll be staying so realising she's wasting her time pretending otherwise. "Why don't we talk about it, Dempsey?"
"Maybe because you left before I woke up and when I tried to talk to you about it you said 'don't worry about it, women are capable of sex without feelings too', or something along those lines." He sighs and his frustration is clear.
"And I stand by that. Women can absolutely enjoy a night of really great sex without it having to mean anything more." She smiles at him, suddenly glad she did come over if they're finally going to talk about what happened. "I'm not one of those women though."
"You're not?" He frowns slightly, looking so unlike his usually confident self that she has to resist wrapping herself around him, climbing into his lap, and staying there forever. "Then why didn't you say that?"
"I think I just…" She wonders now why she thought it was easier to brush it off as a one-time thing, to act like it was just sex and nothing more. She thinks perhaps self-preservation was at the root of it but she doesn't quite feel ready to admit that. "I didn't want you to feel like you had to let me down gently or act like it meant more to you than it did."
"Dammit, Harry...last Friday you wore the same skirt you were wearing that night and I spent half the morning thinking about how soft your thighs felt when I slid my hands under it. The day before yesterday you took a bite of an apple and all I wanted to do was wipe the juice from your chin...with my tongue. Some days it takes every bit of strength I have not to pull the car over and kiss the hell out of you." She feels herself blushing at his words and at the way he moves closer to her, but she forces herself to keep her eyes on him. "Does that sound like it didn't mean anything to me?"
"I...no, I don't suppose it does." She smiles again, feeling a weight lift that she didn't know was bearing down on her quite so heavily. "Then I may as well tell you that when you're typing you poke your tongue out, just a little...concentration, I think, and last Thursday it got me so distracted I had to leave the room. And yesterday I was watching you cleaning your gun and all I could think about was how your fingers had felt on my skin, and…inside me. So, yeah, it wasn't meaningless sex to me either."
"So for the last three weeks I've been spending my nights lying awake thinking about you and the whole time I could have had you here with me? Is that what you're saying?" He shifts again and his thigh presses against hers, his hand moving to her knee and sliding just under the hem of her dress. She bites her lip to push back the moan threatening to explode out of her. "I could have had you in my bed doing all the things I kept dreaming about, I could have been kissing you, I could have been inside you...that's what you're saying?"
"Yes, I think...that's exactly what I'm saying." Her brain buzzes with the thought of him lying in bed thinking about her when she's been doing exactly the same. "I've thought about that night a lot, I thought I'd left it too late to take back saying that it didn't matter."
"And I thought you'd decided I was good for a night but that was it, and I thought…" He grins and shakes his head. "I thought you'd started seeing someone, that guy, the one who called you at work a few times, told me that day that I really should find you and have you call him back because you'd definitely want to talk to him. Simon, or whatever."
"Simon is my divorce lawyer, Dempsey. I stupidly left it so long to finalise things that Robert decided to play hard ball and try to get half my house, which I would burn to the bloody ground before I'd hand over to him." She takes a breath, rage at her ex-husband bubbling up yet again, energy she refuses to waste on him. "The day Simon insisted I'd definitely want to talk to him was the day he finally managed to get my shit of an ex-husband to back down. So for the purpose of absolute clarity, I didn't sleep with you and instantly run out and start dating someone else, you bloody idiot."
"Okay...good, I'm glad." His hand moves from her knee to softly cup her face. "So you'll stay tonight?"
"I'll stay tonight." She leans into his caress and smiles.
"And you won't run away in the morning and act like it was nothing?" There's a teasing note in his voice and she probably deserves it.
"I'm not going to skip into work announcing it..." She knows half of their colleagues think something has been going on between them for months, she doubts any of them would be surprised if they were to confirm it. "But no, I won't act like it was nothing."
"Because you and me, Harry, it's not nothing." She feels a combination of emotions run through her, all wrapped in a warm, welcome blanket of attraction, of an arousal only he can ignite in her.
"I know that, I just didn't know if you realised that." He's about to respond but she moves her index finger to his lips, letting him know he doesn't need to. "I know you do now, Dempsey."
She suddenly feels like she's said all she needs to say, and even though she didn't come over here for any other reason than to be sure he was alright, the reasons she wants to stay are very different. She's not someone who lets her heart rule her head, but when it comes to him she at least needs to let it join in the game, so she pushes away her sensible side, removes her finger from his lips and replaces it with her own.
He kisses the way he does everything else; with total commitment, without thinking of the consequences, and with a passion and focus that borders on obsession. If she wasn't sitting down already, the intensity would threaten to take her knees out from under her. The first time this happened feels almost like a blur now, like something that could be blamed on a difficult day, on a tough week that began with Tom being killed and ended with her needing to feel Dempsey's warm skin against hers to reassure her restless mind and churning stomach that he was fine, he was alive, very much alive. It was physical, a release she needed, comfort he was more than willing to provide, even though she remembers having to shush him when he asked if she was sure, his thumb stroking gently across her face as he looked into her eyes for any signs of uncertainty. She should have known then that she wasn't just another notch on his bedpost, she should have stayed the next morning instead of dressing in the dark and creeping out while he slept, feeling stupid and forcing her heart back into its locked box as she let herself out, driving home as the sun started to peek over the horizon.
As he pulls away this time there's an absence of worry in his eyes, there's only anticipation, and a softness she can't completely interpret but that gives her a warm buzz deep down into her core. Taking his hand she stands up and pulls him out of the living room and down the hallway towards the bedroom. In the doorway he stops and pulls her against him, his lips moving to the side of her neck and his hands resting lightly on her lower back as she sighs into his hold. She doesn't know what this is, not really, not yet, but she knows that this time she won't be running away in the morning.