A/N: I'm posting this in honour of Harry's birthday... I know it's probably a bit OOC, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Set somewhere after series 8.
Paint Me: a story about one character drawing a picture of another
It's one of those hidden talents, I guess. You know the kind, everybody has something they are good at, better than the average person. A lot of people; most, I like to think; keep these talents hidden, choosing to let it be something for their own personal use and enjoyment. They choose to dedicate themselves instead to something totally different. Sometimes I wonder why; I mean, you'd think expressing yourself through something you're good at would be pretty damn rewarding. But then I think that if your secret were revealed, it wouldn't hold the same lure and interest it once did as something kind of forbidden.
But anyway, I am off on a tangent there... My hidden talent is drawing. There is something terrifyingly soothing about detailing some small slice of life onto a piece of paper. Giving that blank, empty paper meaning and fulfilment is a good feeling too. And the sensation of the pencil scratching across the texture of the paper… wonderful! There are times when all I want to do is draw. My hands and arms positively sing with the desire to create. Several years ago, I finally gave in and brought a nice, new spotless sketchbook to the Grid, to keep locked away in one of my desk drawers. That one is now grimy and smudged, full, at the bottom of that drawer under about a dozen others just like it. Hidden.
I've never voluntarily shown anyone my drawings. In the security services, every inch of our lives are probed and raked over by internal affairs, so it feels good to have something that is mine and mine alone. But now I have been caught red-handed. Found out. Discovered. Trapped. Exposed.
Exposed. That is what I feel right now, as I stare at Ruth sitting at my desk, examining my forgotten sketchbook. She has discovered my guilty pleasure. I am furious at myself for being so careless and leaving the drawer unlocked while I nipped over to Whitehall. She looks at me standing frozen in the doorway and wordlessly puts the sketchbook down on the desk before rising from the chair. I am overcome with fear and dread as I wonder what she will think of me.
My legs somehow remember how to move, and I find myself seated at my desk before I am aware of it. She is standing on the opposite side, facing me.
"I'm sorry," she offers. "I didn't mean to pry. I needed the report on Al Salih." I shuffle some papers around on my desk, and locate the file she needs. I know I am blushing, I can feel the burn of it start at my neck and work its way up, past my cheeks, all the way to my forehead. I hand the report to her, avoiding her eyes; hoping, praying she will let me be. I'm not so lucky. "Why did you never tell me you could draw, Harry?"
I'm floored. She saw the sketchbook; she could easily accuse me of stalking or harassment or something just as weird. It is filled with drawings of her, nothing else. She is my favourite… my only muse.
"I don't know, I just…" I shrug.
"Can I see them?"
"I thought you already had," I snap and I instantly regret it as I see her wince. She is not deterred, however.
"I'd like to take another look which, given that I appear to be the subject of them, seems like a reasonable request, don't you think?"
She is moving back around to my side of the desk before I can protest, not that I could have resisted that voice asking me for anything. The blush I felt earlier was nothing compared to what I feel now as she moves around me, almost behind my chair, looking over my shoulder at the open sketchbook still lying on the desk.
"These are really good, Harry." I can't decide which is rendering me incapable of speech; her compliments regarding my drawings, or her breath on my cheek.
Her hands, which had been resting on the arm of my chair, move now, creeping down my left forearm almost soothingly. Finally, at my hand, she manipulates the book so that she can flip the previous drawings out to be viewed. She looks at them quietly; page after page of different studies of her. She is still now, and her hand begins to move even more slowly than before all the way back up my arm. Wrist, elbow, shoulder. She doesn't stop there though. She keeps moving and her hand is cool against the skin of my neck, which is still warm with embarrassment. Her hand continues it's journey up into my hair, where it finds a slight grip and forces me to meet her gaze. The expression on her face unreadable, unrecognisable.
"Harry, this is the single, most flattering thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you."
Before I have a chance to respond, her hand in my hair has pulled my head toward her, where our mouths meet almost painfully. I wish I were able to draw right now, as I'd be recording an expression that has never made an appearance in my archives before. My eyes slip shut involuntarily though, as I am overcome with the emotions stirred in me by the feeling of Ruth's lips on mine.
Moments later - I don't know how long - I can finally see again. I see her, a few inches from my face, staring at me, into me. I realise the kiss has been over for a while, and I have been sitting like a fool with my eyes still closed. She doesn't seem to want to laugh at me, though she does display a cute little smile. The fog in my mind clears and I find that I am capable of speech, after all.
"If you like these, you should see the ones I keep at home."
I've known Ruth for seven years, but this feels like she is seeing me for the first time ever and I don't quite know what to do with myself. She looks at me with an interesting smile on her face, and then back at the book. I am trembling as she peruses the record of my obsession, the hundreds of drawings and sketchbooks strewn out on the coffee table.
These sketchbooks and my drawings were a lifeline while she was in exile. I must have drawn her at least once a week, imagining her in different scenarios, different poses. Thinking about her time away, makes my hands itch to draw once more; to pick up a pencil and sketch her as she is now; preserve the memory of her happy and relaxed in my living room, leaning against my sofa with her legs tucked under her. Just in case she is ever ripped away from me once again.
"You can if you want, you know," she says, reading my mind. "I don't mind." I grab for the closest sketchbook like a drowning man would for a lifebuoy. She lets a small chuckle escape then and I know I am done for.
I capture the winsome, almost amused expression on her face, but once isn't enough. Another view, another angle. She tries to ignore me as I move around the room but she has never seemed more aware of my presence in all the time I've known her. I wonder if she is uncomfortable with this, but surely she would've said something if she was. So I move on, yet another angle, this time across from her, in the chair. She has unconsciously moved with me every time I've moved, and now she is looking directly at me, not at the myriad of drawings I brought her here to see. I finish a couple more really rough sketches and switch to the next page as I move down onto the floor on the other side of the coffee table.
"What are the little rough sketches for?" She shows me a sheet filled with several studies of her from several years ago, very similar to the ones I just completed.
"I used those to draw a more complete, detailed charcoal sketch."
"Charcoal?"
I nod. "Mmm." Oh God, I haven't felt like this in years.
"Where is it? I'd like to see it." The expression on her face is neutral, but her voice has dropped to a near-whisper. Maybe it's because that's what my voice was like a moment ago, who knows…
"It's uh...upstairs… I'll go and get it." I am suddenly very self conscious; not even able to utter the word 'bedroom'.
"That's ok, I'll just come with you." Oh God. My mouth is like a desert.
We are up the stairs, heading towards my bedroom before I realise it. I barely have enough sense in my head to hope that it's not too messy before I am pushing open the door and going toward the wardrobe.
As I hand her the folio, she gives me a strange look and sits on the edge of my bed. My head is swimming now, I can't catch even one of the millions of thoughts swirling around in it.
"Why didn't you bring these with the others, to the living room?" Good question, why didn't I? Then I remember, as the look of shock registers on her face as she looks down while opening the folder containing even more drawings. "Never mind… I think can see why."
I blush scarlet once more, a seemingly permanent state for me tonight, as she flips through the folder.
"Is this the one you drew from those in the living room?" I nod as she holds up the one that is my favourite of all my drawings. In it, like all the others hidden in this folio, she is nude. Completely naked. It isn't like something you would see in Playboy though, it is a tasteful nude. Art. Or at least I hope that's how she sees it. That's how I meant it.
I wonder if I shouldn't be giving some of these explanatory thoughts a voice, but she continues to sift through the drawings and I lose the initiative. She doesn't look terribly offended though, and I begin to feel hopeful.
"How did you draw these, Harry, I mean, without, uh, seeing...," she doesn't finish the sentence in words, but with a gesture towards her body. Oh God.
"When we rescued you from Cheprasov…" I admit and after a few moments of confusion, I see the realisation dawn on Ruth's face.
She had been snatched one night, ripped from her bed because I had something that a Russian terrorist, Alexi Cheprasov, wanted. He and his men had hidden her on a barge on the Thames, holding her to ransom. During the raid to get her back, Cheprasov had grabbed her from behind and flung them both overboard into the freezing water. Minutes later, when she was pulled, coughing and spluttering, from the river I saw one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Her nightdress was almost see-through, clinging to her curves like a second skin. I only caught a glimpse for a few seconds, before she was wrapped in an insulation blanket, but it was enough; the image was burned on my memory.
She surprises me now, by looking up at me with a smile on her face. "You are very talented, Harry." I am speechless for what feels like the hundredth time today. "Maybe someday you'll let me pose like this for you?"
"You know, this isn't exactly what I had in mind when I offered to pose for you?" She startles me, I hadn't known she was awake. She raises up and looks at me.
"Yeah, well, this doesn't mean I won't take you up on that someday." She blushes, actually blushes, as I say this. We just consummated an seven-year-long love affair on the floor of my bedroom and now we're both blushing like school children. I am sitting across from her, watching her. With a finger I am absently stroking the paper I have just imbued with life, a drawing of her wrapped in the blanket I pulled off of the bed after we made love.
She raises up and catches my lips gently before settling beside me to look at my drawing pad, sighing happily as she sees another drawing of herself. I hope she never gets tired of this, of me and my obsession, because I don't think I will ever be able to stop. I don't want to stop, ever.
"How long?" she asks me, in a voice that makes me glad to be alive.
"How long what?"
"How long have you been drawing me?"
I don't know what to tell her. She saw an awful lot of the drawings, so many different scenarios and moments. I think back, recalling her first day on the Grid. She made her first appearance in my sketchbook that day...
When I come back to the present, she is looking at me, as if she has taken the trip back in time with me.
"Why do you want to know?" There are no thoughts whirling around in my mind now, so I fall back on the obvious.
"Because I want to know how long you've loved me," she says, her voice telling me a lot about how she is feeling right now. There is only one answer to that, so I go to retrieve it. As I leave the room, I turn to see a mystified expression flit across her face.
I have willed this to her; in the event of my death it is to go to her, but she wouldn't have seen it until then if she hadn't seen my sketchbook today. I can't believe the changes that this little inconsequential thing has brought about. Her eyes are still following me when I come back
into the bedroom. I am still nervous though, as I hand her the frame I just removed from my safe.
Her eyes light up and her jaw drops though, so I am hoping that means she is pleased.
"Harry..." Her mouth continues to move but emits no more sound. I have rendered Ruth Evershed speechless... Wow. But her face then crumples as if she is going to cry.
"Ruth? What's wrong?" I move to take her into my arms as I squat on the floor, but she beats me to it, clinging to me and laying her head on my shoulder. "If you don't like it or you want me to stop drawing you I will, I-"
"Shut up Harry. It's perfect, it's beautiful, I should've known, I can't believe..." She is silent again and I tremble in fear. I detach her from my shoulder and move her back so I can see her face. There are a few tears, but her eyes are shining with joy. My trembling changes to the kind you get when you feel incredible happiness. "I always wondered how you saw me, Harry."
"Now you know?" I am whispering. It's quite possibly the most important thing I've ever said, and I'm whispering. I look down at the drawing that holds her attention once again and see it from a new perspective. I see it the way it probably looks to her.
It is the drawing I did that day, her first day on the Grid. Her hair is longer, her clothes different, but her face is the same. She is looking at me defiantly, challenging me; telling me to 'Bugger the Home Office'.
I let my gaze wander back to her as she is now, tousled hair, smudged make up, comforter for clothing, and am overcome by emotion. The day I did that drawing, I never imagined that I would do a billion others, that she would last long enough on my team to become an obsession. But something in me soon realised that there was something about her I would want to keep near me always. And now I have a new Ruth to draw-the one that I know loves me back, whether I deserve it or not.
"Yes, I know now. And I feel like I am only now seeing the real you." I must be giving her an interesting expression because she continues on as if to explain to me. "You don't realise how much of yourself you put into these, do you?"
"No, I don't really think about it."
"I see your love for me in every one of these, Harry. Every single one. It just makes me love you even more."
If I thought I was speechless a minute ago, I didn't even know the meaning of it till now. Finally though, sense returns to me. "What about you, Ruth? How long have you loved me?"
"'Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?'" Whatever I am expecting her to say, it isn't that; to quote Marlowe seemed very un-Ruth like, at least before today. She merely looks at me, then wraps her arms around me, smiling that cute little smile again.
Four months later, for my birthday, I get the one present I've been hoping for for the last seven years. Ruth poses for me, nude, save for the diamond ring that sits on the fourth finger of her left hand.