Happy New Year, everyone. May it be happy and healthy :)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Spooks, they belong to Kudos and the BBC. This fic is not written for any commercial gain.

Just a bit of fluffy, but sentimental, New Year’s fic. Apologies for the slightly rushed start…I got really behind with writing and, until 2 hours ago, I’d pretty much only written the last third of it! Oops!

Thanks Pea!

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To say the day has been awful is somewhat of an understatement. Most days are awful, in all honesty, but when it’s New Year’s Eve and you find out you have 5 hours before someone lets off the ultimate ‘firework’ in the middle of the biggest party in the country, it tends to shape up to be a worse day than normal. Still, there are things to be thankful for; a successful outcome, for one, in all senses – ticking timer stopped, explosion averted, no injuries, every head counted safely back on to the Grid. Then there’s other silly things to be thankful for, like the two people still hanging around, both grateful for once they can blame their lack of New Year’s Eve plans on necessity rather than apathy.

For Ruth, it’s the lack of someone to spend it with which almost always makes her decide not to bother. It’s not that she doesn’t have friends; she has plenty. It’s that she can now count the number of single friends on one hand, and she knows at least 3 of those will bag themselves a man by midnight without fail. For Harry, it’s just overhyped, overpriced and, when it comes down to it, just another midnight. Perhaps it’s that it’s normally just another midnight, alone in his bed, but he doesn’t admit that very often. Instead, he moans loudly about the price of tickets, taxis, drinks and anything else people care to name. He’s had his fair share of being a drunken idiot in younger years, and, now he’s older and wiser, he doesn’t need to be charged 4 times the price for the privilege.

“Ruth, everybody's gone. It's over, you can go.”

She shrugs. "I didn't have any plans." Wordlessly, she begins to collect the mess which litters the place; hastily accessed files strewn everywhere, half empty mugs of stone cold coffee and screwed up workings out. "You're not in a rush either?" she questions, as she watches him lazily saunter from computer to computer, switching them off.

"Not really. It's just another year, isn't it? You know my thoughts."

She nods, and a melancholy noise of agreement floats from her lips. They all know his thoughts after last year's outburst at Zaf, who had attempted to start the party early…on the Grid. Moreover, she tends to agree – if she was to make New Year’s plans, being squashed into a sweaty club with drunk revellers wouldn’t be her number one choice. The way he’s looking at her lets her know that she’s clearly let her mind wander off elsewhere – again – and he’s waiting for her to come back to Earth again.

"These papers'll take forever to sort back into the right files," she mumbles, eventually.

"It still doesn't mean you have to stop."

"No, but I will."

"I'm going to make a start on the report then." He takes himself off to his office and she watches as he opens his draw, pulls out a pen and a sheet of crisp manila paper and makes handwritten notes to inform his report. She smiles because it’s one of the things she loves about him – that old fashioned habit, lost to almost everyone else she knows, of putting ink to parchment, despite the flat screen and keyboard at his disposal.

As she busies herself with returning paper copies to their various folders, she thinks about being here, now, on New Year’s Eve. To so many people, it would be a sad, disastrous state of affairs, volunteering to stay late and work, but for her, it’s rather comforting and, in a way, she’s spending it in the company she’d most like. On second thoughts, she reflects, perhaps that’s sadder still.

She knows how much she has hurt him in the past, and she berates herself for it every single day, but days, and then weeks and then months had passed since she’d turned him down, and she was both too stubborn and frightened to admit she might have been wrong, especially after so long. Now it is just easier to do what they have got so used to doing; pretending nothing had ever nearly happened, that there was never a something which could have been something more. In a way, her staying here is her own strange attempt to say she cares – she can’t do it in words, but she hopes that just by being here while he is, of her own accord, will go some way to showing how much she does value his company. It’s pathetic, she thinks, but it’s the best her vulnerability will allow her to do.

Her thoughts are still ongoing some ten minutes later, and are rudely interrupted by his emergence from his office.

“Just came for a pen,” he mutters, distractedly, as his gaze is caught by the TV they've left running in the corner. The clock is counting down at less than 30 seconds to go, now; this countdown should be calmer than the last, all together different, countdown they faced, less fraught, less tense, but for some reason his heart is beating strangely fast and his stomach feels knotted.

She moves over, beside him, as if she is reading his thoughts. “Bit of a different timer, isn't it?” she sighs, casting her eyes on the screen, noticing for the first time just how close it is now. In her head, she can still hear as Adam’s panicked voice announced that he’d just caused the timer to double its speed, and Malcolm’s calmer voice taking him through an alternative plan.

She can't really put her finger on what it is she feels as she watches the numbers diminish; it's as if she is detached from it all, watching herself as she stands there, with Harry, in those dying seconds of another year. It seems to be going so slowly, so calmly, as if she's in a bit of a daze and, even though noise is blaring out from the TV as the crowd begin to shout those final ten numbers, she doesn't really hear it.

“They’ll never know,” her distracted voice sighs as, somewhere, deep inside that television set, the sound of cheering crowns booms out.

“No. They won’t,” he agrees. “And Ruth…Happy New Year,” he whispers, quietly. She is still staring at the screen, and he turns, just slightly, to watch her. The fireworks are reflecting in her wide, but tired, eyes, flickering bright colours across her pale face.

“Happy New Year,” she replies, eventually, very quietly. She can't bring herself to turn and face him, worried what she might see if she does - someone as lonely as she is, someone searching for the same things, but not afraid to reach for it, unlike her.

He watches as her shoulders sag and her gaze falls towards the floor. She looks embarrassed to be there, as if she can't wait to escape, and it hurts because he's seen that look before.

“Ruth…”

She turns her head a little way, enough to know exactly how he's looking at her, but not so much as to have to meet his eye.

“Yes?” she breathes.

There is a long pause, filled only with the sound of their breathing, unsynchronised and rushed. She seems frozen for a while, before beginning to clutch desperately at her own arms, folding them protectively across her body, as if suddenly cold. He's making her wait for something - a word, a gesture - but he doesn't know what that something is and she's almost too afraid to wonder.

“For Auld Lang Syne,” he breathes, letting his head gently fall to hers. His lips meet with the top of her cheekbone and a soft, gentle kiss lingers just beneath the corner of her eye.

She makes no move to pull away, and he finds himself repeating the gesture, just the softest touch against the softest skin. Almost unnoticeably, he moves himself closer, and although she stands exactly as she was, her whole body literally trembles against him. Before long, his kisses are salty with taste of a tear or two, no longer restrained from falling down her face.

“If you want me to stop,” he murmurs, and lets his lips brush against her cheek again, “if you want me to stop…”

Barely, just barely, she shakes her head, but it's enough to cut the difficult sentence short. She makes as if to speak, muscles gently moving beneath his now stilled lips, but she has a lot to say, and nothing adequate to say it with. She feels frightened and foolish all at once; scared to finally let him in and silly to have pushed him away at all.

“Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, that press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish,” she speaks, softly, her gaze half on the kissing couples on TV, half on a spot on the wall behind it; she needs to give herself something else to concentrate on for fear she won’t get through what she needs to say any other way. She readies herself to continue but, when her lips part, it is not her voice she hears, buzzing softly in her ear.

“Beyond comparison the worst are those by our own folly, or our guilt, brought on. Robert Burns. Remorse.”

She nods, and the only words he can find are, “I know…I know.”

“I should never have pushed you away,” she announces, once again directed to the spot on the wall.

“I should never have pushed you so hard,” he counters, mouth barely touching her pale skin. Her arms unfold, slowly, drifting back to her sides; her left hand seeks, and finds, his right. “Will you look at me?” he asks.

She does, and she is so small, and lost, and beautiful that all he can do is smile at her.

“Will youstop looking at me?” she teases, softly, but not without a quiver of nerves, when his gaze seems to continue indefinitely.

“No,” he replies, quite simply.

“Yes,” she retorts, and finally he sees a spark of confidence begin to return in her eyes.

“No,” he replies, again, their faces closer.

“Yes.” She touches her nose to his and his eyes finally close.

“You win.” Before she can comment, his lips press against hers with gentle insistence, and then just rest there, waiting for her reply. The chaste response she'd anticipated giving seems to fail her, and one small movement against his mouth becomes another, and another, until their lips are parted and she can taste the flesh of his tongue and feel the edge of his teeth. It's over quickly but, for those precious few seconds, he knows she has been completely unguarded.

She leaves their lips touching, smiling gently against his before forgetting herself and falling back into the lure of kissing him.

“Do you make resolutions?” he asks, pointedly, when they finally part. He’s frightened to push her again, but finally it seems as though a hint of promise might be made; a new beginning in a new year.

“No,” she replies, with all too blunt honesty, but she continues before his face can fall too far. “But if I did…”

He smiles, nods, and ends her sentence for her with a kiss. That’s enough for him. That’s enough.

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