"Chas!" He comes out of his office to see only a few members of his team, and none of them look as though they're exactly drowning in work.
"Yes, guv?" Chas glances up from the chocolate bar he's focused on, having the good grace to at least look mildly guilty for being caught in the act of doing absolutely nothing.
"Those two..." He gestures towards the two empty desks in front of him. "George and bloody Mildred. Where are they?"
"Uh, down in archives, I think." Chas grabs a report from the stack in front of him, opens it, and shrugs as he goes back to his chocolate bar. "Background checks on the warehouse job, I think they said. Something like that anyway."
"Both of them?" He sighs, wondering what the hell they're up to now. "Since when does it take two of my detectives to rifle through a few filing cabinets in the bloody basement?"
"Do you need me to go and find them?" Chas looks willing but no, he'll find them himself, he could probably do with stretching his legs anyway.
"Far be it from me to tear you away from your afternoon snack, Chas." He rolls his eyes as he strolls past him. "I think I can just about manage to find the archives room."
From the amount of noise coming from the room as he approaches, he safely assumes he's found his missing detectives, and that Dempsey is no doubt taking out his latest impatience on the filing cabinet drawers.
"You do know that you can slam those drawers all you want but if the files we need aren't here then they aren't here?" Makepeace's exasperation with her partner is clear even from the other side of the door.
"Yeah well, it makes me feel better." Dempsey's reply carries the tone of a sulky teenager.
"Well it's getting on my nerves." Makepeace snaps back and he wonders if they're going to manage to spend twenty minutes fighting over something as insignificant as this. It's something they're remarkably good at. "Could you just please try to open and close the drawers like a normal bloody person?"
There are a few seconds of silence during which he can only imagine Dempsey is making a show of opening and closing drawers as quietly as he can manage while his partner is probably busy rolling her eyes.
"Better, Sergeant?" Dempsey's voice again, but there's a hint of humour in it. "Quiet enough for you?"
"Much better, thank you." Makepeace's reply is sharp but mostly lacking in anything that sounds like real anger. "See, that wasn't so difficult, was it?"
"I guess not…" Dempsey sounds calmer, surprisingly so given how he's usually more than ready to fight with his partner. "What's really bugging you this morning, Harry?"
It's the second time this week he's had to go looking for them after finding their desks suspiciously empty. When he found them in the locker room it was clear something was wrong, despite their insistences to the contrary. He's almost at the door when he hears Makepeace's voice again, and it stops him in his tracks.
"If you must know, Dempsey, I'm scared." Her tone is matter of fact, her statement simple.
"Scared, you?" There's something in her partner's tone that suggests he knows what she's referring to, so he holds back, wonders for a moment if it's entirely appropriate for him, as their boss, to be eavesdropping like this, but he stays anyway, hoping the errant American hasn't dragged his partner into yet another case they should be staying clear of. "Come on, babe, I know you and there ain't a damn thing you're scared of. What's going on in that beautiful head of yours?"
"What do we do if...when the doctor calls..." She pauses and he finds himself holding his breath, even though he's outside and they can't possibly know he's there. "It's going to be positive, I know it is. What then?"
"We've talked about this, Harry...I mean, we've gone against all our natural instincts this week and talked about the big things a lot." There's a pause on Dempsey's part, and he feels a sudden, sinking realisation that he's got himself stuck outside this door inadvertently listening in on a discussion that clearly isn't about work at all. "What happens after the doctor calls is we get a few months to get used to the fact we're having a baby."
How he manages to stay silent he has no idea, but he can feel his eyebrows climbing so high up his forehead that he's not sure how they'll survive the drop back down. A baby. Makepeace is having a baby...potentially. With Dempsey...definitely, it would appear.
He's had his suspicions for a long while that something had shifted between them but never stumbled across any conclusive proof, quite content to let them carry on as usual at work, regardless of their after hours...activities. They still bicker in the way they always have, their arrest rates are still good, better than ever, in fact, and yes, Dempsey gazes at his partner like the world revolves around her, but he always has so that's nothing new. His curiosity was piqued when they called the A40 body in at almost midnight on their night off and were then uncharacteristically vague when it came to the details. Then, when Dempsey was on the run during the Simmons case he was almost positive that Makepeace was harbouring her partner, something she would surely do without question if they were closer than anyone realised. He hadn't considered though that it might be anything quite to this level.
"I know we've talked it over and I really thought I was okay, and I am okay. Well...I'm as okay as I can be when my life, our lives, are quite probably about to be turned upside down. What we didn't talk about is what might happen if I'm a terrible mother. Have you stopped for a second to consider that? That you could be about to have a baby with someone who just isn't cut out for motherhood at all?" He can hear the panic in her usually cool voice and it makes him smile because he has a strong feeling she'll be fine. "I didn't have a mother growing up, you know that, and what if I just don't have a clue what I'm doing?"
"Then it's a good thing you've got me, princess..." There's a beat of silence before Dempsey goes on. "Because, I mean, I'm not going to have a clue either, but I'm still going to be an awesome dad."
"Well that certainly fills me with reassurance, thank you." The faintly caustic tone is back in her voice, all is well. "The thing is though, babies are tiny and fragile, and they need feeding and bathing and just...keeping alive, Dempsey, and we both have ridiculous jobs that don't exactly lend themselves to raising children, and-"
"Alright, stop right there." He's successful in stopping her before she lists every worry it's possible for first time parents to have. "You are calm...well, when you're not yelling at me, and you're organised, and infuriatingly rule-abiding, and you're the first person who has ever gotten me to eat vegetables. I mean, every night. We eat vegetables every night. Even my mom never managed that. You're going to be great, honey, I know it."
"Calm? I'm calm?! I have quite honestly never felt less calm." She sighs loudly enough to be heard outside the door. "Oh God, are we really ready for this?"
"Yeah, we are. We're totally ready for this." He admires Dempsey's confidence in the face of his partner's fear. "Come on, what happened to your little 'I definitely want at least a couple of kids' announcement not so long ago?"
"Well…" She goes quiet again and he really could, really should walk away at this point, but his feet seem determined to stay exactly where they are. "I suppose if we manage to feed and water this one and avoid dropping him on his head we can revisit that little declaration eventually."
"Him, huh?" Even from outside the door he knows Dempsey is grinning. He can almost hear it.
"Or her, you know…it just doesn't feel right referring to our baby as 'it'." It seems his Sergeant is calm again and he can't help being just a tiny bit impressed by Dempsey's apparent skills in the area of talking her down. "You know it's not that I don't want this. I do. I just..."
"You weren't exactly planning on it right now so you just need to freak out a little first, and panic that you can't do it until you get to the point where you realise you're going to be as great at being a mom as you are at everything else." He's impressed again, but no longer entirely surprised that Dempsey seems to know her thought processes so well. "I know you hate that you can't control this, angel."
"Dempsey, I can't even control whether my breakfast stays in my stomach these days." There's humour in her voice, he can tell. "Just...tell me it's all going to be fine. Please."
"It's going to be fine. Better than fine, it's going to be great. And we really should get married." He's not sure he's ever heard Dempsey sound so enthusiastic about anything.
When he headed for the basement, he genuinely expected to find nothing more than the two of them looking for information on a case, no doubt one he hadn't given them permission to investigate. He wouldn't have put a single penny on this being what he was about to overhear.
"You don't have to panic marry me, Dempsey, it's not the nineteen bloody fifties." She laughs and if he can tell this is her way of saying yes then he's pretty sure Dempsey must know.
"Dammit woman…" He hears Dempsey let out a loud and typically dramatic sigh. "You're such hard work."
"Thank you." Even from outside the door he can almost hear Makepeace grinning. "I do try my absolute best."
"I want to marry you because I love you, because I'm crazy in love with you, I want to be with you for the rest of my life because you're the love of my goddamned life…Jesus, Harry, you know all this already. I got sent over here, they put me with you, the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, and I thought hell, if I ever get so much as a kiss from this one I'll die happy, and then after you did kiss me I realised that no way am I dying now, I'm hanging in there for more, and then..." Dempsey sighs again and there's silence from Makepeace who is clearly going to let this slightly muddled speech run its course. "What I'm saying is I'm not suggesting we get married just because I might have knocked you up."
"You know, as delighted as I am to hear that, your proposal skills could use some work. We're in a basement that smells of...well, I dread to think what that smell actually is, we're surrounded by musty old files, and you just used the phrase 'knocked up' when referring to the apparent love of your life, me." He hears an attempt by Dempsey to interject, but he has no chance because Makepeace clearly isn't quite finished. "However, in spite of all of that, and yes, I am absolutely going to blame my hormones for not demanding something more romantic...yes, what the hell, let's get married."
"You're not only saying yes because I might have knocked you up, right? Ow!" He assumes Makepeace has landed a thump, as she tends to do when her partner is being deliberately obtuse.
"As much as this little...situation may be accelerating things, I'm strangely and quite inexplicably in love with you too, so no, I'd marry you regardless." There's another sigh that he recognises as coming from Makepeace, before she continues. "And who knows, if we're married it might lower the risk of you being deported next time you do something that borders on treason too. Two birds with one stone and all that."
He has to hold in a snort at that, and he realises it's about time he made his presence known. Creeping back along the corridor, wondering how the hell he ended up hiding in the basement, eavesdropping on his staff, he shakes his head, trying to knock the grin off his face.
"Dempsey! Makepeace! You down here?"