A/N: Thank you all for reading, and also to those who reviewed.
Ruth began to wake up just before eight at night. He had been holding her hand, talking quietly about the plans he had for them both. They'd only ever talked in general terms about having a future together; it is hard, when they are both so deeply entrenched in the security services, for them to even imagine having a life beyond Thames house. Harry had been doing little more than speaking aloud some of the ideas which were beginning to take shape in his mind, ideas he'd had while waiting for her to wake up.
It was straight after he'd talked about them buying a house in the country, and getting a dog, perhaps a Labrador or a German shepherd, or even an Afghan hound, that Harry felt her fingers move, and then to his joy, he noticed her eyelids flutter. It seemed like only minutes later that she began struggling with her breathing tube, and after alerting a nurse, who then called the doctor on duty on the ward, the tube was removed, and Ruth's first words to him, spoken in a raspy voice were, "You can talk such bollocks, Harry."
His face relaxed in a wide grin as he leaned down to kiss her lightly on her lips. This time she made a slight movement with her own lips, a welcome response to his kiss. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and hold her close to him, but there would be time for that at a later date, when she was better, when her shoulder wound had healed.
"You'd better keep good with those promises, too," she said, her eyelids heavy, her voice slurring on the consonants.
"Promises, eh?" quipped the nurse, who was occupied taking Ruth's vitals, the doctor (far too young to have people's lives in his hands, in Harry's opinion) had moved in to an emergency several rooms away. The nurse's name tag declared her name to be RN Vicki Bampton. "You make sure you keep him to them, too. Nothing less than two carats is worth having, I say. My sister got a three carat diamond after her car accident, but she lost an eye, so I thought she more than deserved the ring. It was him driving, too, so he had to make a grand gesture, or else she'd have dumped him." She slipped her pen back in her pocket, and looked directly at Ruth. "You're doing well, my sweet. My advice would be to get those promises in writing," and then she left the room, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the highly polished linoleum flooring.
Alone again, Harry looked at Ruth, who was almost asleep again, but with a smile on her lips. He reached across and kissed her slowly. "If only she knew," he said quietly.
"Go home, Harry," Ruth slurred.
"I'm going nowhere. My place is here. With you."
Ruth fell asleep again, but Harry held her hand in his, all the time rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. He was imprinting himself on to her, so that even if she ever – God forbid - lost her memory, she would still remember him. Just before Ruth had woken, he had made her a promise – aloud – and maybe she had heard it.
Nurse Vicki Bampton had assumed that he'd asked Ruth to marry him. He hadn't, although not because he didn't want that. He did. He wanted everything with Ruth that was possible for them to share. Just as she had been finding her way out of the fog of unconsciousness, he had been speaking to her, imagining that she could hear everything he was saying. Just before he had started talking about what sort of dog they could get to share their house in the country, he had promised her something that had popped into his head, and he'd then spoken the thought aloud …... perhaps unwisely. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to go through with his part of the bargain. It had just been a silly, spontaneous promise he'd made when he'd believed she couldn't hear him, or if she could, all she'd hear would be just the indistinct rumble of his voice.
Just before midnight, Harry went home to sleep. The stress of Ruth's shooting had exhausted him, and he knew that were he to have slept in the chair by her bed, his back would have ached all the next day. Next morning he stopped by the Grid.
"Anything on that bomb?" he asked Dimitri, the only field operative in at that early hour.
"I've handed it over to the police. It seems that it was a civilian matter. Something to do with a turf war."
"A turf war resulted in over two hundred people nearly being killed?"
"I'm only going by what the police have told me. It's not our territory, Harry."
"I know. I know it's not. And Deery?"
"He's in a closed facility awaiting assessment. There's a high probability he'll be sectioned."
Harry pursed his lips, as though that particular news tasted bad. "Ruth won't be happy about that."
"And how is Ruth? She must be fine, otherwise you wouldn't be here, yeah?"
"She's …... she woke up last night for a short while, and she was herself." Harry allowed his face to break into the gentlest of smiles, unconsciously displaying his pleasure at Ruth's recovery. "We had a brief conversation, and then she went back to sleep."
"Go back to her, Harry. She needs you. We can take care of things here."
Harry nodded, and watched Dimitri's face in an attempt to determine if there was a hidden meaning behind his words. His staff knew about he and Ruth. At least, they thought they knew what was going on between them. He and Ruth had made a conscious decision to play down their relationship, but to not hide it. Their occasionally arriving at work together in the morning had raised some eyebrows. No doubt the other Grid members mentally had them between the sheets on a regular basis, which was not the way it was between he and Ruth. They wanted to get to know one another away from work before they went to bed together, although staying away from the bedroom was becoming more and more difficult.
Their kissing sessions on the couch had recently led to some moments of heat during which one of them had had to call time out. Their hands would wander over the other, seeking skin under the layers of clothing. The closest they'd been to breaking their pact to not have sex yet had been only a few days earlier, when Ruth had invited him for dinner after work, and they had each had a few glasses of wine to relax after a long and difficult day on the grid. After they'd eaten, Ruth had playfully straddled him while he sat on his chair at the table. The sensation of her heat from between her legs pressed so closely against his groin had almost broken his resolve. The sight of her breasts so close to his face had not helped him maintain self control, either. He'd taken a deep breath, put his hands on her hips, and slid her body off his knees, explaining how close he'd come to tearing off her clothes, and sinking himself into her. They'd become used to experiencing arousal during their snogging sessions, but that time had been almost too much for Harry to resist.
"I want you now, Ruth," he'd said to her, his voice thick with arousal, "and this is not the way I wanted our first time to be."
Ruth had slid off his knee, and sat demurely on the chair next to him. "How do you picture our first time?" she'd asked quietly, her legs primly together, her skirt covering her knees.
"In a bed – perhaps in an expensive hotel …... Paris would be nice. Big bed, clean sheets, room service, no phones."
"What if we can't manage that before we're both rendered decrepit?"
"Then it will have to be one of our beds – yours or mine. Not here, not on the couch, not against the door, not in the kitchen."
"I have this recurring fantasy where we have sex against the front door of your house."
"On the inner side of the door, I hope," he'd added quickly.
"Ohh …... I think shagging against the outside of the door might be fun. Just think of how the neighbours would react."
He'd laughed at that, and drawn her closer to kiss her, unable to keep his distance from her for long.
Harry could see that once Ruth recovered from her operation on her shoulder wound, they would no longer be able to hold back. Their time together may be limited - they had little idea what the future would bring - so when Ruth was well enough, he knew they should make the most of their passion for one another. Had Deery been in full control of the pistol he'd pointed at Ruth, the shot could have been fatal. A bullet through her heart would have killed her instantly. Harry shuddered briefly at the thought, pulling his mind away from the image of Ruth's body lying pale and still on a slab in a hospital morgue.
"Are you alright, Harry?"
"Yes, Dimitri, I'm fine. Just a bit …... tired still."
Erin breezed on to the Grid, looking like she'd visited her hairdresser on her way. Her high heels clicked on the floor as she approached Harry and Dimitri.
"I take it that Ruth is awake," she said.
"Yes," Harry replied. "I'm thinking that I should perhaps …..."
"Go back to her bedside, yes," Erin said, looking Harry up and down. "I've been in touch with the Russian Embassy. With your permission, Harry, I'm thinking of bringing Alec White back for the next few weeks. Just until the Russian contingent leave. You need to be free to spend time with Ruth. She needs you. We need her back with us, and I think that will happen quicker if you spend as much time with her as you can."
Harry nodded, surprised by her compassionate attitude towards Ruth's hospitalisation, although Erin must have noticed how important Ruth was to the smooth running of the section, and now he is back on the Grid himself, how important she is to him. When he was free later in the day to give it more thought – after he'd spent time with Ruth - he knew he'd question the wisdom of bringing Alec back to the Grid to help work with the Russians, but at this moment - at just after 7 am - his mind was already a few miles away, at the hospital with Ruth. He wanted to be there. He needed to be there. Ruth needed him.
"If you're on top of it, then, Erin …..."
"We are, Harry. Lucy can step up into Ruth's shoes for the interim. She'll make a fine chief analyst one day …... when …..."
It wasn't like Erin to not finish her sentences. Her thoughts, her words, were always well thought out, and her sentences clipped, and with a full-stop at the end.
"When what, Erin?" Harry asked.
"When …... when Ruth moves on."
"Do you know something I don't?"
"No, of course not. I was just thinking that with you and Ruth being …... together ….. you might …..."
"Changes of any kind are not in the offing, Erin. I can assure you that Ruth will be back on the Grid, and at her desk as soon as she can. Nothing will hold her back."
"I was thinking aloud, Harry, and it's none of my business. I'm sorry. I have work to do, and you have a hospital visit to make."
Erin then turned from him, and walked away from him, her hair bobbing on her shoulders, and her heels clacking on the hard floor. Harry turned back to his office, chiefly to get away from the Grid floor, and any eyes which may have been following their conversation. What had she meant? Did she know something he didn't? Had Ruth confided something to Erin? Harry thought the likelihood of Ruth confiding in Erin about as likely as snow in August. He knew that Ruth was capable of so much more than being his senior analyst. She was brilliant. She could do almost anything she wanted to. There would be jobs in any security service in the world that she could slot into with ease, and then there was the possibility of her teaching in universities. He often worried that he was holding her back by relying on her the way he did.
There was also the possibility that Erin was hinting that he and Ruth would one day marry, and perhaps have children. He and Ruth had never once mentioned the word marriage in relation to themselves. They discussed a future together, but the word `marriage' had never been uttered. It was too soon. But in his private moments, Harry often dreamed of he and Ruth sharing a house, a name, and perhaps a child. He knew it to be the foolish and sentimental meanderings of an aging man, but a man could dream, couldn't he? He thought Ruth would make a wonderful mother, and he was prepared to be a different kind of father to the one he'd been. Yes, their work was incompatible with marriage and a family, but he'd like to at least give it a try. With Ruth, a life together had the potential for being wonderful.
By the time he reached the hospital, it was lunchtime. Harry knocked on Ruth's door, and when he heard her voice, he entered the room. There was Ruth, sitting up in bed, a tumbler of something gooey in front of her, a thick straw bent at a right-angle so that she could suck the mashed food into her mouth.
"Hi," she said quietly, smiling at him. "This is my first solid meal, if this mash can be called solid. I feel like a baby all over again. It's quite nice, really." Her voice was still husky from the breathing tube.
"Hi yourself," Harry replied, watching her for a moment, taking in everything about her. The bruising on her cheek and under her eye was dark and angry, and he noticed that she had to use her right hand for everything, since her left arm was wrapped tightly against her body, no doubt to protect her damaged shoulder muscles. Her eyes looked bright and alert, and for that he was thankful.
Smiling at her, he walked to her side and then stood there. He reached out towards her with his hand, but then left it dangling, not sure whether she'd welcome him touching her.
Ruth pushed her meal away, and took a sip of water from a glass. She turned towards him, and smiled widely. "Don't I even get a kiss?"