He extracts himself from a conversation that he lost interest in almost as soon as it began, and from a blonde payroll clerk who seems to have decided he's the thing she's interested in. There's only one blonde he wants to spend the evening with, the same blonde he spends every day with yet still thinks about when he goes home, and he's barely seen her since he arrived. He has eyes on her now and she's alone, a faint frown on her face that he sees as his mission to remove.
"Hey, partner." He slips into the space beside her at the bar and smiles as their arms brush against each other. "Haven't seen you all evening. Thought maybe you'd gotten lucky and snuck off out of here."
"Really? I'm surprised you remembered I was here at all." She holds his gaze for just a second and then turns her attention back to the drink in front of her.
"What?" She's not happy with him, he can hear it, but he has no idea what he's done this time.
"Nothing, it doesn't matter." He watches as she shrugs and wrestles with whatever it is she wants to say.
"Something's bugging you, Harry, so whatever it is obviously does matter."
"Fine, okay…" She sighs and he almost grins at how dramatic it sounds, deciding for his own safety to keep a straight face instead. "There is something I've been wanting to ask you."
"Ask away, princess."
"Well…why is it that I appear to be the only woman in London in whom you have no interest whatsoever?" He watches as she takes a mouthful of champagne and he wonders how the hell she can have gotten that so, so wrong.
"What in the name of hell are you talking about?"
"It's fine, I know that not everyone can be your type. I'm just...curious, I suppose. When you first arrived, when we were first working together it seemed like...well, some days it felt quite relentless, the way you were. The flirting and the innuendo, and then recently it had started to feel like things were different, like perhaps you and I were…anyway, now it's like I've been sprayed with repellent..." She stops and the frown creeps back onto her face. "Oh God, are you seeing somebody? Is that what it is?"
"Am I seeing someone?" He can't believe she's asking, can't believe she thinks he could be interested in anyone other than her.
"Look, forget it, it's fine. I'm not your type, let's consider that the end of this conversation."
"You seriously think that?" He wonders how the hell they got here, how he has somehow managed to give her the idea that he doesn't find her attractive, when he spends more time thinking about her than is probably healthy. "That I have no interest in you? Holy shit, you're-"
"Honestly, Dempsey, it doesn't matter. We can blame the champagne and never mention it again. Mention what again? See, I have no idea."
"And no, for the record, I'm not seeing anyone." He watches as a tiny smile threatens her lips, and marvels at how good she is at hiding it almost instantly. "How many glasses of that stuff have you had?"
"I don't know, a few, I suppose." She shrugs as she finishes the glass and sets it down on the bar with a defiant thud. "Not enough to render me anywhere close to smashed, and certainly nowhere near enough to completely exhaust the free bar yet."
"It's...not a free bar."
"What are you talking about? Of course it's a free bar." He can't help grinning at her. She's gorgeous, and just on the right side of antagonistic for him to rise to the challenge.
"Nope, I don't know how…" He grins even wider. "It's definitely not a free bar."
"Well, I haven't paid for a single drink all evening. How do you explain that?"
"I can't explain it but if I had to guess, I'd say the bartender there is either scared to death of you, or he thinks you're hot."
"Well, it's good to know the twenty-year-old behind the bar finds me attractive seeing as we've already established that I leave you completely cold, so-" She stops and stares at him, the look in her eyes one he's seen before, usually when she's about to fight with him. Dammit though, he thrives on the challenge and she knows it.
"What do I need to do to prove how far wrong you are on that one, Harry? Throw you down across the bar and kiss every damn inch of you?"
"For all you know, that might be exactly what I want. Did you ever think of that?" There's a beat of silence and a flush in her cheeks that makes him think maybe that is what she wants. "But no, that's probably not the best idea. Not here anyway."
"You're crazy, you know that, right? You're smart, you're beautiful, and you're so, so damn sexy...Jesus, Harry, on the days you show up to work in those leather pants I can barely focus." He leans in, close enough that he can hear the catch in her breath. "Does any of that sound like you're not my type?"
"No, I... I don't suppose it does." There's a glint in her eyes now, a confidence that intrigues him, makes him want to hang on in there to find out what game she's playing tonight. "Did you know this place has a roof garden?"
"Did you know it's November and as cold as shit outside?" He's used to her abrupt subject changes now, it's not something that throws him the way it once did.
"Well, it generally is cold in November, Dempsey, yes." She rests her chin on her hand and looks up at him, her blue eyes wide and completely, beautifully distracting. "You brought a coat, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I brought a coat."
"Well, I'm going to go up there to get some air and escape..." She waves her hand in the air, turning her nose up as she briefly glances around the room where their colleagues are at various stages of embracing the party spirit. "This."
He watches as she gulps down the remaining champagne from the glass in front of her and climbs down from the stool she was perched on. Smiling sweetly at the bartender, but clearly standing by her insistence that it's a free bar tonight, she offers no money and heads for the door. He's left with no choice but to follow, biting back a grin, intrigued by her mood tonight, and determined to enjoy it. On automatic pilot he follows her to the cloakroom and picks up his coat, draping it over his arm and watching as she does the same with hers.
They take the stairs and as he walks behind her he takes the chance to admire her dress, to admire her in the dress. It's dark red, fitted, and it hugs her curves perfectly, this partner of his who somehow thinks he has no interest in her. Sure, he was obnoxious at first, he knows that, flirting almost constantly, making comments that were without a doubt inappropriate, but then he got to know her, started to like her, to respect her, so he dialled it down. The last thing he expected was that she would take his attempts at being decent as an insult.
When she showed up and stopped him from shooting Coltrane, standing in the sun looking like Wonder Woman in a catsuit, she saved him from himself, and he thought she knew it. When she invited him out for the evening and they danced, drank, and spent the drive home flirting with the idea of bubble baths and champagne, he thought they were on the edge of change. But now here they are, weeks later and still he's listening to her tell him she doesn't know how much he wants her.
They reach the top of the stairs and she pushes through the door leading out onto the roof. The biting cold air snatches the breath from his lungs and steals the compliment he was about to give her on how beautiful she looks tonight. He hears her sharp intake of breath as the cold hits her too and he wonders if she's rethinking this idea already.
"God, it is freezing out here." She pulls her coat on and wraps it tightly around herself, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she turns to face him.
"Yeah, someone really should have mentioned that when you suggested coming up here, huh?" He slides his coat on too, and loops his scarf loosely around his neck.
"Shut up." She smirks at him and turns away, no doubt expecting him to follow her, which he does. "Over here."
She leads him to a corner half-sheltered from the wind by a solid pillar. On the other side of the pillar is a bench which looks no warmer than the concrete floor he's standing on but which she sits down on anyway. He sits next to her, their thighs touching, and for a minute they say nothing.
"Why do you suppose they expect us to turn up to these things? I mean, do you really think the Commissioner cares who comes to his retirement party?" It's not what he expected to hear, he's actually not sure what he thought she might say, or why they're up here at all.
"Doubt it." He shrugs and smiles at her. "I don't think it's mandatory. Pretty sure we could have said we were busy and just...not shown up."
"I think it would have been frowned upon though, don't you?" She sounds frustrated and he's confused. Usually she's great at these things, she mingles like the pro that she is and she makes him want to be better at it, like she does with so many other things. "Maybe next time we should say we can't make it and see what happens."
"Maybe we should, yeah." He smiles at her and notices her expression soften. "What are we doing up here, Harry?"
"I just wanted a break from the party, I suppose. All that small talk and smiling, trying to remember the names of people we never talk to from one party to the next. It's all rather…dull, don't you think?"
"Hell, I don't even remember the names of half the people we do talk to." He can't put his finger on exactly what it is, but she still doesn't seem quite herself. "You're usually great at all this though, you're the human half of this team and I'm the blundering neanderthal, as you like to remind me."
"I don't find myself needing to do that nearly as often these days." There's a hint of a spark in her eyes that makes him smile. "You've…evolved."
"Thanks…I guess?" It's barely a compliment but he 'll take it. "So, what's really going on tonight? With you?"
"Oh nothing, really. I just don't seem to be in a party mood tonight." She shivers slightly so he takes off his scarf and drapes it around her neck, tugging on the ends and pulling her towards him. "I'm not sure why."
"You look great tonight, by the way, I meant to tell you that earlier…you know I think you look sexy in red."
A fleeting hint of embarrassment crosses her face and he knows she's thinking of the same night he is, the night he dropped her off at a nightclub wearing one outfit and took her home in a totally different one.
"You scrub up rather well too, but I suspect you already know that." The tone again, the one he would swear was jealousy if he didn't think it was possibly just his own wishful thinking. "You were quite the Pied Piper of the accounts department downstairs."
"Is that why we're up here? So you can drag me away from the admiring glances of all the other women?"
"All the other women? Modest too." She gives him a look that he suspects could wither any other guy to nothing but only ever seems to spur him on. "What if I said it was?"
"I'd say you didn't have to drag my ass up onto a freezing cold roof. You could have just said 'I'm done with this party, let's get out of here.'"
"Dempsey?" She drags his name slowly across her tongue and he wonders if she knows what it's doing to him right now.
"Yeah?"
"I'm done with this party. Let's get out of here." She grins at him, and it's the grin that he knows would make him do anything she asked him to, anything at all.
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know. Maybe somewhere not quite so cold? And yes, before you say it…" She presses her thumb to his lips and grins at him. "I do know it was my idea to come up here."
"I still can't believe you could think I don't have any interest in you." Her gaze falters for a second and she bites her lip the way she always does when she's uncomfortable. "Got me worried I might be losing my touch."
"We can't have that, can we? The NYPD's very own Casanova losing his charms." She smiles and edges closer. He realises that in all the times he pictured this moment never once did he imagine she'd be the one to initiate it.
"You putting the moves on me here, Harry?"
"If you have to ask, perhaps I'm the one losing my touch." She's so close now he can feel her breath on his cheek. Her eyes are always beautiful but this close and in the dim light of the rooftop, they're like two perfect jewels and they're focused firmly on him.
"Nah, your touch is pretty much perfect." She runs her finger down his jaw and he smiles. "I just didn't quite expect it."
"Why? Because you think I'm buttoned-up Harriet, too prim and proper to even think about letting her partner know how attracted she is to him? Boring little Sergeant Makepeace who always does everything by the book and surely never gazes across the desk wishing Lieutenant Dempsey would throw her across it and bang the living hell out of her. Is that it?"
"I don't think…holy shit, I can't think at all now you've put that image in my head."
"Then…don't think." There's barely a beat before she's leaning against him and her lips are pressed to his, her hand cupping his jaw, her skin cool but her touch firm.
He's a guy who has had his fair share of kisses, probably more, but he knows within seconds that he's never had a kiss that upended him like this one. His whole body feels like it's been shot with adrenaline, and he feels the blood rush eagerly, and embarrassingly quickly, to all the places it usually does when he's home alone and thinking about her. She feels perfect against him, her breath mingling with his and her lips soft as they explore his.
"You taste like...stolen champagne." He feels her lips curl into a smile against his.
"I still maintain it was a free bar."
"Yeah, maybe for you." The hand that isn't resting gently on his face shifts to his thigh and when she moves it higher the state he's currently in is obvious. "Still worried you're the only woman in London I don't find attractive?"
"I'm starting to suspect that I may have misread things in that respect." She shakes her head and lets out a soft sigh. "You know, if it hadn't have been for that body in the road the night we went to see the jazz band…"
"Nothing like a murder to kill the mood, huh?" She nods and he reaches for her hand and runs his thumb slowly across her knuckles. "I really wanted to take you home that night, Harry, and I kind of thought you knew that."
"I did. Or I thought I did but then we were derailed and I wasn't sure if it was just our usual flirting and it didn't actually mean anything, or-"
"It meant something, angel. It definitely meant something." He cuts her off before she can start to head down the road he thought he'd just managed to close off. "I mean, come on, we've been heading towards something for a while, haven't we?"
"I…" She hesitates and bites her lip but the acceptance he sees in her eyes gives him hope. "Yes. Yes, I suppose we have. I think perhaps I just wasn't sure what it would mean for us if we were to give in to it."
"What's the alternative? Thirty years from now it's your retirement party and someone says 'Hey, remember the Yank? What was that guy's name…Dorsey, Doherty?' I sure as hell don't want that and I don't think you do either." God, he hopes he's right about that. "Can't know if we don't try, right?"
When she looks at him, he thinks about New York and realises he can't imagine himself back there, he can't imagine himself anywhere she's not. She doesn't answer his question but her hand slides into his and she stands up, a faint air of hesitation dancing across her face for just the few seconds it takes him to catch up.
"Right." She nods and her tone is certain, her decision made. "For the avoidance of doubt, I don't ever want you to be the Yank whose name I don't remember thirty years from now."
"We can get matching tattoos, princess. You can get my name across your ass and I can get yours down the length of my-"
"That's a mental picture I really wasn't prepared for this evening." She laughs as she stops him from finishing his sentence. "No, I think giving this…us a try is a much better idea."
"You still got that bottle of '76 Cristal?"
"I do." He remembers that night, the night his preference for champagne over hers for a bubble bath led them to the damn A40 and everything that followed. "Do you still have those extravagant bath salts?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Then it sounds like we have a good place to start." She stands up and grabs his hand to pull him with her. "Let's get out of here."