It's quiet in the office. Fry is sat buried in reports and expenses. Spikings left a while ago and Chas is sticking red mapping lines onto a board in his office, sipping coffee and staring a lot at the pattern he has created.
Harry is reading her notes at her desk and Dempsey is bashing out a report. "Have you go the list of names? I can't remember that guy from the bar."
She hands over her notebook with the page flipped open and he types in the missing information, hands it back to her, remember not to toss it across the desk. There's a undercurrent of efficiency as she hunts through a filing cabinet for details on a case. He checks notes with her and they companionably scope out what they need to do on Monday. He wants to ask her about her weekend but this - a calmness - is welcome. Whatever way he thinks about the words, they come out crassly. He's not after a date, he just wants to have her close.
She begins to tidy her desk, puts her coffee cup by the machine for the cleaners, locks up her desk drawer and looks for her car keys. She disappears to the bathroom. When she's back, she's wearing new lipstick, and reapplied her perfume. Her hair is newly scrunched. She's changed her sweater and now wears a thin blouse.
Dempsey doesn't study her clothes in any detail. At work she's professional. He admires her extraordinarily ability to wear clothing that allows her to roll in the dirt, fling herself from the car and run at high speed without restriction. Undercover or on those precious social visits, she wears dresses that take his breath away.
The blouse gaps and he looks away sharply as he sees a hint of red lace. He presses the wrong key and feels faintly disgusted at himself. He finds that emotion a little odd, he's never been shy about coming forward, she's beautiful but there's something a little disrespectful after she's saved his ass and proven she's bigger than his ego.
When she stretches to put on her coat, he sees it again. Then she bends down to collect her bag and he's drawn to her like moths to flames. The phone rings on her desk and he becomes fascinated by the report on his desk and lighting a cigar.
She cradles the receiver under her chin, brushes her newly polished hair from her eyes, "I'm just leaving, I'll see you shortly."
Then she's buttoning up the coat, nodding at Dempsey and leaving. He didn't notice she'd changed her flat shoes to high heels. He feels his stomach sink.
Dempsey finds himself outside her home. It's a habit he must stop. Like smoking, junk food and being a sexist shit. He's trying. But he lapses often into overprotectiveness that strays into judgement about her gender. Dempsey remembers 'that conversation' about women in the police, sat in his towel, determined to shock her with regret, lording it around London playing the cheap playboy, winding her up by checking Gloria's wellbeing too long and seducing Angie the contract killer. He barely remembers the prick he once was but he knows Harry hasn't forgotten, and neither should she.
Truthfully he's proud to call his partner. But right now someone else is having sex with her and he doesn't like it. It's a dose of salts since he's never hidden his love life, though it's lately a dry spell. She killed Angie, colluded with him over mutual unwanted attentions and fought for him over Mara, or at least that's how he likes to think of it.
Dempsey supposes that when she left him for another job, she would meet others. Her social circle is wide and he's given her space since he persuaded her to return. She's beautiful and may want to settle down. Simone said as much. Fleeting images of her holding a newborn, of celebrating her wedding and pinning up pictures of her child at her desk come to mind. He wants to be the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle at the chapel at Winfield Hall, to lay his hands on the bump that will be their child. To pin those photos at his desk too.
Her car isn't there and the lights are off. Dempsey lets himself in, makes a coffee and sits on her couch. He settles for quiet rumination but has no idea what he'll say to her. In the brief space between seeing her last, he's changed a little more because of her. He feels like he's had an epiphany.
"Dempsey?" Harry appears through the door, bringing a rush of chilly air. She drops her keys and bag on the hall table and kicks off her shoes, hurrying in. "Are you alright? What's happened?"
She looks at him quizzically, her hand on his arm. She looks perfectly ordered. Her lipstick is in place, only a little faded perhaps from drink or food, her hair and clothes as unchanged as they were when he saw her last. Whoever she met, hadn't tried. If it had been him… she's never look like this, like nothing took place.
"Why are you in my house, Dempsey?" She's tired and he needs to think of a reason. How are you? What's your father up to? I can't remember how to cook lasagne and how do I claim expenses again.
"Harry, did you have a date?" Dempsey knows there's no way to frame the words without sounding like the American idiot that she assumes he is, and that he's presented himself as.
"It's none of your business if I did." She's defensive as he had expected. She sits at the far end of the couch.
"We started something." Dempsey thinks back to the high rise and the night after the bistro. After the relief on seeing him had left her face, they'd excelled at a masterclass in flirting. As they ran hand in hand through the debris she had laughed at the freedom of not having to hang about for uniform. The adrenaline worked it's way over to him and she saw it in his face. Felt it as they kissed each other in the darkness of a street in god-knows-where in London. They hadn't planned on house guests, the small one-bed flat had thrown them together on the sofa bed. He'd encouraged her as they made out, unwilling to do more until they were themselves. Not that he has said so and in not saying so, perhaps was his mistake. He'd forgotten the women before her. Never wanted anyone the same since.
When she walked across the kitchen in his shirt, he'd gazed at the burn marks on her thighs from his stubble. They were both surprised when they made eye contact. It was easier when they were Danny and Debbie. He wanted to get a sun visor with their fake names on it, for the car he was going to steal.
'Danny and Debbie started something." She replies, bringing him back from his daydreams with painful accuracy. "Loulou and Dwayne started something."
"We never talked about what it meant." The words slip out and he can't catch them.
"Why now?" She comments calmly, as if it wasn't even important to her, but her hands twist in her lap. Hands that have touched him, given him such pleasure that it broke his heart.
"It has to come up sometime." Dempsey wants to rip into her composure. She's too good at undercover. Leave her as wanton as Dwayne left Loulou. He'd do anything for Loulou and her hopeless accent. This feels like they're sat in front of Spikings debating the details of a difficult case or directions when he's got them lost around the North Circular yet again. "You're saying that it could happen again and you'd pretend it didn't."
"Why now?" She asks."So you can go back to New York guilt free? Or did you want to know if what Danny and Debbie, Loulou and Dwayne did is notch on your bedpost to go with all the rest? Why now?"
"'You left and it's not been the same since you came back."
"I apologised for that." She says primly. "I'm sorry that I went out this evening and was happy without you."
"That's not what I meant." Dempsey feels a familiar sense of frustration building him inside his belly, "I'm glad you're happy. It's good. I hope you have a great life with him."
"Will you stop…"
"I'm sure he'll give you everything I can't." He continues. How the hell does he stand back and watch her life move on without him?
"Will you shut the hell up."Harry yells and he's so stunned by her expletive that he closes his mouth.
"I should go." Dempsey makes a vague move that might be mistaken for leaving.
She catches his arm. Maybe they should've tried to listen to each other.
He's proud of his work, typically.
Dempsey threw off her blouse, about the same time as she caught his sweatshirt and flung it in the same direction. She spoke his name. She's cried it out several times since. He listened to her say it. Said her name back.
The dammed bra is hanging off the coffee table. She's only wearing evidence of him. Finger-light bruises, a hickey on her neck and her nail marks are in his back. He's sore, she's exhausted him. Almost. There's still enough in the tank for one last hurrah before the grandfather clock strikes midnight. Her knickers and his boxers lie at it's feet.
"Who?" Dempsey asks, waiting almost within her reach.
"I went out with a girlfriend to the theatre for god's sake." She inches forward. It's torture but he's got to know.
"Harry?" He asks, "Who did you wear this for."
She is staring at him with a demanding look that is uniquely her. She's as direct with him now as she always is. He's utterly at her mercy. For him perhaps. When she was Loulou, her bra was black with gold flowers, as gaudy as the coat and the extravagant outfit. Her stockings fashioned from cheap nylon which grazed his legs. The thought she may have dressed thinking of him excites him. That alpha male DNA that makes up who he is, that will never change. "Not for you, Jim Dempsey. Or Dwayne or Danny." Oh.
"I dress for me." Harry gasps, shattering around him bang on the chimes of midnight. He likes this more than anything else. It's entirely her, not Loulou or Debbie wearing their borrowed clothes. This is her. He makes love to her slowly then, his Harry. When they're finally through, it's she who holds him. For he's not for sharing with anyone.
I have all sorts of stuff lurking around on old drives, this is one I've managed to retrieve! Reworked and inspired by 'Two Sides' by louella on here. I like the idea of listening...if only! I also wondered - after The Wheelman and The Prizefighter (amongst others, I guess The Burning too) how easy it was, or not, to let the behaviours of the personas they adopt go and his jealously. Especially in The Wheelman which seems to be suggesting a lot, maybe also that Dempsey has changed a little in the second series (he was awful in the first!)
There's a more M rated version of this over on AO3 /works/26064457