Ruth's POV from Harry's POV. There's a third chapter with actual plot that I'll get finished at some point. There were no flames, there was some love and some people were intrigued. Thanks!

The usual disclaimers apply. This is rated 'M' and don't you dare forget it.

Not Close Enough

In order to get their arms around each other properly they'd managed to migrate a whole metre and partially dislodge one angle-poise lamp. Ruth sat on the edge of her desk, feet dangling merrily and a very quiet Harry standing between her thighs. Their kisses were neither graceful nor particularly skillful. Instead, they were tender. And greedy. And fizzing with intent. He slid a hand down to her bottom and pulled her against him. She tilted her pelvis and widened her thighs, egging him on with a gratifying hum of approval.

And then she whimpered, pulled her head back and squeaked, 'No.'

His cock would have whimpered too if it could. Gentlemanly instincts on full alert, he shifted his hips a fraction and loosened his hold on her. He'd never seen anything like Ruth's eyes in that moment. Desire-expanded pupils and oceans of something that looked strangely like fear.

'No?'

'I can't!' she said desperately. 'Harry...'

He released her and took an unsteady pace backwards, kicking her abandoned chair in the process and sending it on a random path away from them. 'What? You're looking at me as if I'm torturing you!'

She gave a half-laugh, half-sob and abruptly crossed her ankles. 'You sort of are.'

'Ruth, you can't say things like that when I've just been touching you like that and not explain. It's cruel, and I know you're not cruel.'

'Oh, Harry, I'm sorry!' The contrition was genuine. 'It's just... it's that... I-I-I—'

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. 'I don't think you're trying to tell me that you'd like to take it slowly.'

She emitted a single huff of laughter at that. A smirk of delighted awareness followed. 'Absolutely not. I don't think I could. We could. Wow, Harry! Oh, Christ, I don't know how to explain and maintain a shred of dignity.'

'If your dignity gets a whiff of maintenance, I'll be mortally offended. I've spent the last week dismantling mine, you know.'

She held out a hand until Harry shuffled close enough to grab by the front of his shirt and pull closer. She rested her nose against his chest and sucked in a deep breath of him before looking up at his face. 'I know you have, and I do understand it. Honestly.'

'But you're not prepared to do the same for me.'

'It's not that. It's not. Oh, fuck it! Feel free to take the mickey out of me some other time, but I'd really rather not talk about it here.'

'At last, she sees the light,' he muttered, and was filled with the unmistakeable buzz associated with the prospect of getting some answers. But – and probably for the first time in his life – it only partially made up for his rapidly subsiding erection.

'Is this make or break time?' he asked lightly as he followed her into the same pod and then out towards the lifts.

'Um. Well. Yeah, it probably is,' she admitted.

'Then I'm going to be autocratic and demand neutral territory.'

'Okay. Where?'

'A hotel. Complete privacy, but I'm getting a suite so we don't have to sit on a bed while we talk.'

Ruth digested this information briefly and decided not to argue. 'Right. Good idea. Thank you.'

They were checked into somewhere four-star and anonymous in less than an hour. Ruth didn't know how much the suite had cost but the sitting room was spacious enough to pretend there wasn't a bedroom next door at all. It both amused and touched her to see Harry throw his coat and jacket across the desk, toe his shoes off and pad across the carpet towards the sofa. He sat down, propped his feet up on the coffee table and regarded her with a carefully mild expression.

'I think you'd better pour us each a glass of wine from a little bottle, come and sit down, and tell me what's happening inside that labyrinthine mind of yours. If it makes it easier, chuck me a packet of peanuts and I can pretend to concentrate on those while you talk.'

Again, Ruth did as she was told, opting for red wine. She set the glasses on the coffee table and sat down. Then she shifted a bit closer to Harry and handed him a packet of dry roasted. His attention immediately shifted towards opening the bag.

'I love you with all my heart,' she said.

As far as Harry was concerned, the world should have rocked at those words. Not being in an earthquake zone, what actually happened was a veritable fountain of peanuts.

'Shit!' he exclaimed, taking his feet off the table and brushing his shirtfront frantically before giving up and turning towards Ruth. 'Sorry! Good heavens! Say it again!'

She was laughing. They were both giggling as peanuts worked their way between the sofa cushions. Eventually, she pushed him back to one end of the sofa, picked up her glass and began to speak into it.

'I've been terrified of saying it for so long. But I've realised that there's no way of explaining this to you without flaying my heart anyway, and after what you've said to me you deserve an explanation.'

The implication was that he hadn't deserved one before now. He pondered the benefits of sharing the contents of his saucier dreams compared with good old-fashioned restraint.

'Terrified?'

'Yes. It seems logical to err on the side of caution when you're hopelessly, horrifically vulnerable. I know it's trite but I really hate getting hurt.'

'Hurting you wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I proposed. I know it wasn't smooth, and it wasn't perfectly timed, but I thought it might help you to get over the doubts you seem to have about me.'

'Yes, I know. But Harry, you have this propensity to cause me pain, and I'm not sure if I could survive it now, let alone if I let myself go completely. If I give myself up to this... to you— '

'Propensity?' he cut in, chagrin at the ready.

'The thing is, you'd sacrifice me if it meant saving the life of many—'

'Ruth!'

'—No, let me finish! I accept it and I'm prepared to risk it. Honestly and wholeheartedly, Harry. I fell in love with all of you, not just the easy bits. But I'm not sure if I could do the same. If it was your life, versus the lives of many, I'm not sure if I could choose the multitude over you!'

'You won't have to!'

'Can you really say that? Given what's happened to us?'

'I think so.'

'That sounds like faith, not certainty. And anyway, that's still not the point. The point is that if it ever happened... If I ever chose you... Well, then your propensity would kick in.'

The answer began to occur to Harry. It was such a theoretical hang-up that he was very nearly furious. Until he reminded himself that actually it just should have been theoretical.

'You think I'll fall out of love with you. That you'll break under pressure to save my life and then I won't love you any more.'

'I can't see my decision, Harry. I've spent ages trying to see my way through it and I can't! If I save you, you'll despise me for it, but if I sacrifice you, I'll lose you straight away. And there's this sick little fragment of my heart that wonders if it would hurt less to let you be killed than it would to feel your scorn. Which is just wrong!'

A loud sniff told him that she'd begun to cry. He awkwardly leant across the sofa to retrieve her glass and then pulled her into his arms and let her sob. Perhaps he should have felt guilty for enjoying the weight of her against him so much but he was far too busy stroking her back and kissing the top of her head.

'During the eons of tortuous moral philosophising did it ever occur to you that context is everything?' Harry asked as he rinsed a face flannel in warm water and passed it to Ruth. She was sitting on the toilet with the lid down, looking very well-wept and rather sheepish about it.

'I'm not completely stupid. Yes, context is a factor.'

He watched her wipe her face. 'It's the factor,' he ventured. 'My mind doesn't run like a computer program, with "if-then-else" rules of conduct all mapped out in advance.'

She stood up and wandered out of the bathroom, bypassing the bed without a glance on her way back to the sitting room. Harry followed her and suppressed an urge to stick his tongue out at it as he passed.

'I'm an analyst,' she eventually said. 'I've spent a long time training my mind so it does work like that. So I can see patterns when things are messy.'

'And you're better at it than anyone I've ever met. Which is excellent for when you need to analyse things—'

'You're saying that in a Harry-versus-the-masses decision I should just go with my instincts?' she yelped. 'Is that what you did with Nico?'

'Not completely. But there's no way I could have predicted the best way to respond to that situation in advance. The man holding us hostage was a spy himself. Our people didn't seem close to finding us. You realise that if they hadn't found us, Nico was dead whether or not I gave up the uranium.

'Yes.'

'Instinct told me to act as if I didn't care. To buy him some more time.'

Ruth's frown was epic. 'But I don't have it! I wouldn't have thought of it!'

'I think you would!' Harry replied, scenting an advantage. His chin went up and his posture opened out. An experienced soldier addressing his troops. 'Or you'd have thought of something different. Something better. And that's the crux of it. I know that you'll always do the best you possibly can, given the information at your disposal. I know that it won't be worse than I could manage. One of the saddest things about being me is that the list of people I respect is so short. But you're number one, Ruth. By a bloody mile! It's one of the reasons why I love you so much. Why I'm never going to stop loving you while I'm even vaguely compos mentis.'

Her voice failed her.

'You probably don't deserve me,' he added, gulping his wine with a cheerful flourish. 'And I'm a portly old man who certainly doesn't deserve you. Aren't we lucky to get more than we deserve?'

She stared at him and wondered what the hell to do. He was so adamant. Walls were beginning to crumble under trumpet volleys of sheer conviction. Why did his voice make such a difference?

She took a deep breath and made her decision. 'I suppose we are lucky.'

He blinked. He knew. 'Do you want to stay here?'

There were fire drill instructions on the doors and plastic bags on the glasses. Neutral territory suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea. In a second, Harry had pulled his mobile out of his jacket and hit a speed-dial button. 'Mike? Yes, I'm all right. Can you do me a huge favour?'

Mike arrived via the ready meals section at Tesco Express. They waited for him in the blustery darkness outside the hotel. Standing so they were touching. Leaning against each other and not saying much.

Beth was eating pasta in front of the telly when they walked in. She nodded a full-mouthed hello as Ruth darted into her bedroom and began to pack a bag. Harry fixed Beth with an impenetrable look and then spoiled the effect by raising a blatantly jubilant eyebrow.

In the kitchen, Scarlet greeted Ruth like a long-lost friend, sniffed the Tesco bags he was holding and then asked to be let out into the garden. Ruth did the honours and grinned at him as she shut the back door. It felt as if he'd never seen her smile properly before. 'Are you hungry?' he asked rather lamely.

'Where's your bedroom?' she replied.

He dumped the bags on the work surface and led the way. He had made his bed that morning and thought about Ruth. Now she was sitting on it, holding a leg out straight in front of her. 'Help me take my boots off.'

She was wearing black and red stripy socks. Dennis the Menace colours. 'I like to know that a little bit of me will forever be a student,' she explained, standing up again and making quick work of his tie. She undid three of his shirt buttons and leant forwards to kiss his chest. Open-mouthed. Repeatedly. Oh, God.

'Ruth,' he croaked.

'Mmmm. Clothes off. All. Now.'

She lifted her head and found him waiting impatiently for kisses. Desire flared so quickly that they didn't bother trying to undress each other and only broke apart so that she could pull her blouse over her head. In a minute they were both naked except for their socks and then Harry was clumsily toeing his off at the same time as Ruth was climbing backwards onto the bed. She leant back on her elbows and let him stare at her breasts. At her cunt. Pale skin invited him to make it flush. Freckles begged to be licked. She was gorgeous and she was eying him so hungrily that his skin tingled.

He followed her until she was cradling him. She shifted her legs and stroked the backs of his knees with stripy woollen toes. His erection seemed to slide into entry mode all by itself and the world went a little bit dark as he felt the first hints of her heat.

She groaned loudly and then laughed at herself. Ran happy hands over his shoulders and down his back. 'I can't help it. You feel so good I can't help it.'

'It's mutual,' he managed.

He propped himself up on one elbow and reached down to stroke her with his free hand. She squirmed and ummed and ahhed beneath him until all of a sudden they were fucking each other quite hard and every stroke felt so unbelievably good it was difficult to catch a breath. She pulled his head down for a tonguing kiss with one hand and grabbed his bottom with the other, holding him deep and grinding up against him. He felt the clench of her orgasm and thrust into it with a moan of pleasure.

'Yes!' she gasped. 'Oh, yes, don't hold back.'

A few minutes later, Harry summoned enough strength to lift his face away from the side of Ruth's neck. 'Good grief. I must be squashing you flat. I'm so sorry!'

She smiled and shook her head. Smoothed his hair back with one lazy hand. It was damp with sweat but then so was hers.

'I'm all right so far but you'll have to move soon. It seems a shame, really.'

'Ever having to move again?'

'No, silly. Having to, um, part.'

At which point they did.

'But it means we can come together again,' he suggested with a smile. 'And again. And again, and again.'

'Well there is that, I suppose. It wasn't bad, eh?'

'Not bad? Not bad? Darling, my heart has discovered a new pace. I'm fairly sure I shouted something very sentimental and if I were thirty years younger I'd already be gearing up for round two.'

To emphasise the point, he kissed her as lovingly as he knew how. Ruth's eyes filled with tears. Then her stomach gave an enormous rumble, signalling the unmistakeable need for dinner before round two became a reality.