Answer me one thing, lovely people. If you think they were involved in series 3, when did they start an intimate relationship. I was tempted to add something here, but I don't think so. Post-Prizefighter? Before or after Simone? I'd love to know what you think in the reviews! I'm really enjoying writing this.
He thinks he's done okay. The fire is lit. In the oven, the dinner is slow cooking. He's bought red wine. He's hidden his overnight bag; banking on their odd marital status but he will leave if he must. It's Harry's call.
"I can smell food." Two hours have passed since Harry arrived home; he's been integrated and had some thinking space while she showered. She is all he's got. Chas maybe, but the man is somewhere in London persuading his fiancée to marry him. The irony isn't lost on him as his wife-not-wife sits crossed-legged on the sofa with her nose in the air, like the Bisto kid. She examines her own kitchen.
"Pasta bake and a salad; I know you like your rabbit food. No oil." Hearing his mother's voice in his head, he pulls out the chair for her at the properly laid the table where newly cut flowers sit in a vase.
He really does want to try to do this right.
"This is lovely," She says later after they've attempted to talk about the case and ended up chatting about his mother. Her new mother-in-law, he thinks. Harry really ought to know what she's let herself in for. "You've been hiding your domestic talents, James Dempsey."
He bites back the first words, and she must see it. Her cheeks are rosy on her second glass of red.
What the hell.
"I know how to cook five meals an' I'm amazing in the bedroom." He knows he's onto something when her eyes meet his and anchor him with an amused gaze. It's taking all his willpower to stay in his seat as he feels the heat that only she creates begin to build.
Her reply is lost when the phone interrupts them. Harry startles. "Oh! It might be Freddy."
He hears her talking to Mark. "I don't know… yes, I heard. Next week? I'll have to check my diary. Yes, of course. I'll call."
He thinks that Mark has blonde hair, no chin, and a job in hedge funds. Big teeth, all perfectly lined up, no gaps but probably can't cook pasta or meatballs. Limp in the bedroom, but his heart sinks and he feels his mood falter; the fantasy future he never knew he wanted unraveling.
He takes out his feelings on the dishes and then remembers they are not his to break; he's a guest here. A guest. The call has ended. There are distant sound of the flush of a toilet. Her footsteps on the stairs.
"Mark, huh?" He says with quiet venom as she walks in.
"There's a band…" Harry begins, picking up a tea towel.
"See, if I'd known this marriage was open, I'd have found myself a broad by now." The sudden hurt on her face is a perverse pain; she feels something.
"Just a minute, Dempsey." She tries. He feels his emotions collapse under the weight of all he thinks about her but daren't say. "James, wait."
"You get to hook up with Mark and his good teeth an' I'm what?" He storms into the hall and grabs his bag. "I won't get in your way."
In the reflection of the mirror, he can see her chin pebble with emotion; he's learned that look since Coltrane. Her eyes meet his. "Mark works at Ronnie Scott's. I was trying to get tickets to see a jazz band from New York, and I thought you'd like to go…with me."
Fuck.
She's turned her back on him; his heart drops like a lead weight. "You have a tape of their music in your apartment."
He isn't expecting Harry to quietly hand him a mug of coffee when he walks into the kitchen. There's a sheet of paper with her neat writing on it. "It's the address of a squat. Ask for Spike; he has a yellow mohican. He'll put you up in a room on the first floor at the back by a fire escape. He knows to expect you."
He isn't sure if it's a hint that he has to leave, but he obediently sits when she asks him to, his heart tight, knowing she's way out of his league. She watches him for a moment, her face obscured by the mug, and she floors him not by chewing his ear off as he deserved; "Have you seen them play before?"
He startles; it takes him a moment to work out what she's talking about. "Yeah, my Uncle Herb played for them when I was a kid. I used to sit in rehearsals sometimes; he'd take me along, try to keep me outta trouble."
Before he can think of a suitable apology for his cheap shot, she distracts him again.
"If you want your freedom, I can arrange it…." Her eyes travel over his face, reading him like a complicated book with an awkward middle chapter.
He shakes his head, noting that she seems to finally believe that he really won't turn back on his vows unless she legally cuts the cords. His throat is choked by his apology.
"…only I don't think it would be wise at the moment." She says with, he hopes, relief.
'What about what you want?" Dempsey pokes a little at the wound he's created. He's surprised when she collects the cups and starts to wash up, an erratic motion that's at odds with her usual poise. "Harry?"
The mugs are well washed; "I've made up the spare room for you; there's towels on the bed."
"What do you want?" He asks with gentleness this time.
It's that sixth sense he had with her from the start. There's the tension in her that he felt when Spikings had unwittingly announced her friend Sara's murder to the team well over a year ago. From the back of the room, he'd seen her fracture even though he stood behind her. She's breaking again, and this time he is the cause.
"I'm off to bed; goodnight." She evades with eyes like teardrops.
He catches her; gathering her by the door, read for rejection, "I don't have to go."
"Yes, you do, that's the point," Harry urges, "It doesn't matter what I want."
"Which is?" He seems to break through this time.
"A normal life, something a bit ordinary." She confesses with an obvious half-story. "Instead, I had a first husband who slept with my best friend, and my second husband seems to have a knack of finding trouble."
"I could walk away from it." He offers, surprising himself with the gesture.
"It's too late now. Anyway we have a moral obligation." She sniffs, still held in the circle of his arms, braced against the doorframe.
He slips into the sheets on her shy invitation. She's sleepy and they're both anxious. She checks again that he has the address of the squat, and he tells her of a pub where they can meet, whispering into her hair as her head is heavy against his shoulder. It's a space for comfort not making love even if his body aches for her. He's haunted by the feeling that if he doesn't die, he may have to go back to NYPD and can't have her once and walk away.
In his head, he's victorious, imagining driving her home from the date to his place. He'll order some of the bath oil she loves.
Before sleep claims him, he is certain of one thing. "Thank you for being on my side."
DMDMDM
"This is awkward…" Harry says from the seat beside him. He nods in weary agreement.
Chas is dressed like a penguin and his new wife like a meringue; they dance on the sticky floor of the pub. Watching on, with bemused expressions, are the regular punters on a Saturday night and an assortment of tipsy colleagues. Fry is the dormouse at this strange party, sleepily and drunkenly dipping his head onto his elbows in the booth table across the way. His girlfriend - who knew, exclaimed Harry rhetorically - keeps nudging him to dance.
Dempsey fingers the white satin affair Harry rescued from the dry cleaners. "If my suit hadn't got sent back, we could've had another go."
"That wasn't funny when you said it last week." She leans on his shoulder, "This suit ... when you last wore it, you propositioned me on a sofa between a dead body and a bomb."
"Romance won't ever die with me." He looks at a harassed Spikings who is bidding a hasty goodbye to the newly married couple, something to do with Mrs. Spikings needing him at home. "Promise me we'll never get like that."
Harry raises her eyebrow, "If I start to express an interest in chinz, garden gnomes or WI, you have my permission to divorce."
"Ditto golf and DIY." He drinks the last of his lukewarm beer, and she nods, fading a little as the CD player starts another loop of party favourites. "You wanna go home?"
"You're not coming in?" Harry asks when he lingers on her doorstep, clearly mystified by his actions.
"I wanna scrub this week off me and sleep like a bear." He is torn, but tomorrow will come soon enough. "I'll pick you up.. 'bout six? We can get a drink, and whaddya call it? Supper?"
"Of course, yes, the band!" Harry's expression lifts as she realises the day. He is suddenly all too aware that she's been working twice as hard in his absence.
"There's one condition." She says with a blush.
"Name it." He pulls back from her sudden embrace, waiting for his challenge.
"We're still illegal, according to Cosmo's November 1985 issue."
It takes him a moment to catch up and he laughs when the nickel falls, so to speak. "We're the police; that ain't allowed."
She nods in quiet agreement and then with a wicked grin he hopes to see more of, she bestows a chaste kiss to his lips; "Best you bring handcuffs."
She's going to kill him, he's sure of it.