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There was a such thing as a friendly, companionable silence, and Karrin Murphy never expected she’d be sharing one with a White Court vampire. Though something about it was bugging her.
“You’re staring at me, Thomas.”
The vampire blinked once, slowly, his lids lowered over his pale eyes, which settled his handsome face into a fully pensive expression. “Can I ask you something?”
Murphy crossed her arms, settling her back more comfortably against the wall, but more importantly it allowed her to casually watch him. He mirrored her position on the opposite wall almost completely except his hands were tucked in his pockets. The hotel room wasn’t huge, but both of them had places to sit while they waited for Harry to finish showering, but they somehow chose to stand for whatever reason.
“Shoot.”
A small smirk quirked the edge of his lips upward. “Why haven’t you made a move on my brother yet?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I get why he hasn’t made a move on you—mainly because he’s a moron and doesn’t see things until they literally punch him in the face—but you’re sharp. I bet you noticed the way he started looking at you long before he ever did.”
Murphy snorted. “Got that right.”
“Exactly. So…why, then?”
“What makes you think I want that from Harry?”
He adopted an indignant look. “Don’t insult me, Murphy. White Court vampire abilities aside, you’ve got all the signs. He frustrates the hell out of you, but you stick around. He tries to push you away to protect you and you knock him on his ass to remind him he wouldn’t be alive without you. He makes you laugh—like, really laugh, not the kind of cute giggling thing girls do to stroke the male ego. He’s given you plenty of room to back off if you want, but you don’t, and you sure as hell have other romantic options if you want them. So I figure that it’s not a one-sided thing. I’ve seen how happy you make him, and while you hide it pretty well, I think he makes you happy too, for better or worse.”
Murphy nodded. “You’re observant for a pretty boy.”
Thomas shrugged. “It’s a gift.”
She sighed. “It’s not as simple as you make it sound. Sure, I like him. Sure, he makes me happy. He’s hardheaded and simple and easily the best friend I’ve ever had, even if I want to punch him about a thousand times a day. But we’ve had this conversation before. He’s never going to stop being a wizard, or the Winter Knight as far as we can tell. He’s going to live for a couple thousand years if he doesn’t get himself killed again, and I don’t want him to spend the rest of those long years heartbroken because I died in my seventies. Harry’s…a damn good man. I want him to find someone who won’t get left behind. That’s exactly why I’m keeping things this way. It’s not because I’m scared for myself. I’m scared for him.”
Thomas tilted his head slightly. “So you lecture him all the time about protecting you, but you’re actually protecting him?”
Murphy frowned. “Tread lightly, vampire.”
“Just being honest. I’m not trying to change your mind. I just want to understand you. He’s my brother and while he’s still content with your friendship, I think it eats him up that he can’t be with you the way he wants to. Harry doesn’t love anything lightly. It’s all or nothing with him. He loves you. You know that, don’t you?”
She glanced down at the carpet, her voice hushed. “Yeah. I do.”
Thomas exhaled. “Shit. And I thought my life was fucked up.”
The bathroom door opened, spilling vapor and light into the room, and Harry walked out, automatically stooping his head a bit so as not to smack the top of the door. He glanced between the two of them.
“Who died?”
He had to duck rather quickly as both of them threw pillows from the couch at his head.
The monster vanquished and the day saved, Thomas tugged on his coat and cleared his throat.
“Before I go, I feel the need to tell you both something.”
Harry and Murphy quieted their good-natured bickering to give the vampire identical suspicious looks.
“What?” Harry asked.
“You are fucking idiots.”
Both of them stilled. Murphy glared. “Excuse me?”
Thomas pointed at her. “You heard me. You told me you won’t be with him because you don’t want him to be heartbroken after you die, but guess what? That won’t change anything. You are going to die someday, and Harry will never get over it. Ever. But I guarantee it will hurt less if he can reflect over what an incredible relationship you two had. Believe me, having decades of good memories with a woman you love makes it easier to deal with loss instead of spending the rest of his life wondering what it could have been if he had only made a move.”
He then pointed at Harry. “And you’re an idiot for keeping your mouth shut and not spending every waking second worshiping this woman in every possible way. You wouldn’t be alive without Karrin. She’s saved your ass so many times I’m pretty sure there’s a copyright symbol tattooed on you that says ‘If lost, return to Karrin Murphy.’ I get that you respect her boundaries and all, but for fuck’s sake, Harry, you’re crazy about her, and she’s worth the trouble of making the extra effort. I’ve seen every kind of woman that has ever existed and she’s one of a kind.”
“You are way out of line, Thomas,” Harry growled.
“Yep,” he replied unapologetically. “So be mad at me for as long as you like. If you ignore my advice, fine, that’s your choice. I just didn’t want to walk on eggshells forever, since you two have been tiptoeing around the issue like a couple of ballerinas. Au revoir.”
He exited without another word, leaving the two in a stunned silence.
“You know,” Karrin said slowly. “I could probably get off at least one shot before he disappears down that hallway.”
“You are welcome to take it,” Harry grumbled, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. He’s got a mouth on him. Always has.”
“I feel like I should make a ‘Deliverance’ joke just for the sake of novelty.”
Harry shot her a look, his lips twisting with the effort not to smile. “Don’t you dare.”
He grabbed her jacket from off the back of a chair, holding it out while she slid her arms in the sleeves.
“He has a point, doesn’t he?”
Harry sighed, brushing lint off her shoulders. “Probably.”
Murphy faced him, wearing her best blank face. “Well, we did just ice another bad guy—”
“Ha-ha,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes.
“—so that merits celebration. How ‘bout I buy you a drink?”
Harry swayed a touch, squinting at her. “I’m sorry, did you just ask me out?”
She put her hands on her hips and shifted her posture into that authoritative thing she could do that made Harry both scared and ridiculously turned on simultaneously. “Got a problem with that?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Absolutely not, but I just wanted to clarify in case it becomes important later, like when Thomas acts like a smug jackass about being right.”
“He’s always a smug jackass,” Murphy quipped, heading towards the door. “Runs in the family.”
“Hey!”
“Dresden.”
“Shutting up.”
It took four whole bottles of Mac’s ale for Harry to force the question out.
“So…should we?”
They stood on the sidewalk outside the pub—entirely too close together as usual—and he bounced on his heels, hands shoved in his pockets, waiting for an answer.
“Should we what?”
“Go out. Just once. I mean, no harm in trying it once.”
Murphy quirked an eyebrow upward. “You’re serious.”
“Fairly sure I am.”
“You want a real date? Where I fix up my hair and wear makeup and perfume and dig out a dress from the back of my closet and strap on high heels and laugh at everything you say even if it’s not funny?”
Harry paused. “Is that what real dates are like? Damn, it’s been a while. Oof!”
He rubbed the spot where she’d punched him in the ribs. “Yes, Murphy. All of that. Or at least the parts you actually feel like doing. I’ll dress up, as much as I can afford to anyway, and comb my hair down and pick you up and open doors and pay for dinner and gaze deeply into your eyes like I’m the lead in a Nicholas Sparks movie before we have sloppy drunken makeouts on your front porch.”
She glared. He nudged her shoulder with his. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. Have sloppy makeouts with me, Murph. If you don’t like it, no harm, no foul. You’ll still be the beloved troll of my bridge either way.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m so gonna regret this, but…fine. Friday. Nine o’clock. Take me somewhere that actually has entrees and not Number Sixes.”
“Deal.” The taxi finally pulled up to the curb and she opened the door, pausing. He opened his mouth to say goodbye, but she caught his lapel and jerked him down to her height, laying a kiss on his lips that drove away the cold Chicago night entirely. His knees started to give out by the end and he had to catch himself with a hand on the car door, exhaling a muffled groan of pleasure against her soft lips right before she drew back.
Murphy’s blue eyes gleamed wickedly. “See you Friday, Dresden.”
She climbed in and shut the door. The taxi drove off. Harry’s heart went with it.
Friday night, 10:31pm
“I’m gonna kill him.”
Murphy had given up pacing around her den because her heels made her feet hurt and instead stood in the kitchen brewing coffee and polishing the Sig that she was going to unload into Harry Dresden’s skull if he showed tonight. No one stood up Karrin Murphy, not even the Winter Knight. He was a dead man.
At long last, she heard four heavy knocks on the front door and stomped towards it with all of hell in her wake, throwing it open with the mother of all death glares.
She froze.
Harry Dresden, wizard, the Winter Knight of Mab, stood on her welcome mat drenched from head to toe in black mud.
He offered her a weary smile. “Hiya, Murph.”
All the anger she had prepared subsided as her eyes raked over his body. Beneath the caked mud she could see an actual suit—one that had been tailored and everything—and dress shoes. More alarming than that was the fact that she could see blood dripping from several slashes in his shirt. His tie had been sliced right in half.
Murphy took a deep breath. “Do I even wanna know?”
“Probably not.” He paused, adopting an apologetic look. “Can I come in?”
She growled underneath her breath before answering. “As long as you promise to clean up the horrendous mess you’re about to make.”
“Done.” She stepped aside and he stumbled into her house, shivering from the change in temperature.
Murphy pointed to her bathroom. “Shower. Now. I’ll find something dry for you.”
“Thanks, Murph.” He tiptoed down the hallway, trying desperately not to let entire globs of mud hit the carpet in vain, and managed to get there in not too many steps on account of his long legs. She took some towels out of the linen closet and opened the bathroom door, which elicited a panicked shriek from the wizard, who had been in the middle of taking off his ruined suit pants.
“So,” Murphy asked, scooping his pants up into a faded blue towel. “What happened?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love it,” Harry said after flipping on the faucet to the tub. “Assassination attempt by one of the Sidhe.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Harry said, tossing his tie in the garbage. “They blew up my rental car right before I got inside and then opened a portal into Nevernever right on top of my freaking head. I had to fight a thirty-foot carnivorous worm monster.”
He shrugged out of the jacket and shirt, launching into an explanation of how he managed to escape and kill the beast as she leaned against the wall, listening patiently.
“—and then I walked here because no cab would pick me up looking like a love affair between Larry Byrd and a mudpie.” His large hands were on his boxers when he blinked and realized he was one piece of clothing away from being naked in front of his best friend slash would-be date.
“Um,” Harry coughed, praying the mud hid the blush on his cheeks. “I kind of need to shower now.”
“I need your boxers first,” Murphy said calmly. “The entire ensemble’s going in the washer and dryer after I rinse out all the mud.”
“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”
“On the inside? Yes. Quite loudly, in fact.”
He hung his head. “Guess I had that coming.”
He stepped into the shower, safely hidden behind the curtain, and she heard some rustling—along with a few curse words as he tried not to slip and fall while balancing on one leg—then he held out the boxers. She rolled her lips inward to hide a smile at his apparent modesty before leaving the bathroom.
Around fifteen minutes later, Harry reappeared wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans that he’d left at her place in the event of an emergency. Murphy sat on the couch with a fluffy towel in her lap and her First Aid kit open on the coffee table.
“Sit,” she ordered, dabbing rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball.
He shuffled over to the edge of the couch and laid his head in her lap. She pushed stray wet strands of hair away to reveal the cut along his forehead. He got just a fleeting moment to admire the view. She wore a black-and-white cocktail dress that hit her at the knees and fluttered out a bit. Her makeup was light—a little silvery eye shadow and mascara, nothing more.
Harry closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You almost got eaten by a giant worm. I think you don’t need to apologize this time.”
“Yeah, but you got all dressed up for nothing. A waste is still a waste.”
Murphy shrugged, her touch light and careful on his skin. “Shit happens.”
“You look good.”
“Thanks.”
“What do you think our date would have been like?”
She paused. “Pretty normal. By our standards, anyway. I’ve never been a big fan of conventional dates.”
“Not enough explosions and one-liners?”
She grinned, opening a bandage. “Exactly.”
She smoothed it over his brow and he opened his eyes, staring up at her so suddenly that she stopped breathing for a couple seconds. He caught her wrist and brought her hand down to his mouth, kissing her palm, her wrist, eventually flipping her hand over to kiss her fingers.
“I’m sorry, Murph,” he murmured. “I wanted this to be perfect. I wanted this to be…us.”
She let out a little laugh. “This is us, you dumbass. Everything going wrong. We are walking catastrophes, you and me. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”
“Do you wish it had?”
“Like I said. Wouldn’t be us.”
“Can I make it up to you?”
She adopted a suspicious look. “Depends on how.”
He stood and walked over to her grandmother’s record player—which she had taken a painstaking amount of time fixing until it was in tip-top condition—and found a disc, flipping it in his long fingers for a moment and muttering to himself about how to get the contraption to work. She watched with a hidden smile, sliding the towel off her lap and resisting the urge to help. He got it working and turned around, holding out one hand.
“How ‘bout it, Murph? You’ve got killer footwork, after all.”
“Yeah, while kicking monster ass. While dancing? Pretty sure I look like Forrest Gump having an epileptic fit.”
Harry pouted. “C’mon, Murph. You don’t want to let Gene Pitney down.”
She sighed, but stood up and took his hand, allowing him to pull her into the circle of his arms. It wasn’t hard to sway to the beat of “Town Without Pity” and surprisingly, Harry wasn’t awkward on his enormous bare feet. The only discomfort was tilting her head back to look up at all six-feet-and-nine-inches of him so she could mock him properly.
"Should I even ask why you know how to slow dance?”
“It’s easy enough. And I’ve been forced into several soirees in my day. This is the first that won’t end in violence, or so I hope,” he added, lifting his eyebrows in question.
Murphy grinned. “I will neither confirm nor deny that. Got to keep you on your toes. Besides, you did stand me up.”
He groaned, and it sent a wave of admittedly pleasant shivers down Murphy’s front. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, maybe I should just keep your mouth busy in the meantime.” Before she could make another snappy comeback, Harry leaned down and stole a kiss the same magnitude of the one she gave him before she got in the cab at Mac’s. Murphy’s mind went blissfully blank through its duration. His lips were soft and held the first kiss for several tantalizing seconds. He waited patiently for her participation, and she sighed before opening her mouth to his, her tongue slipping past his bottom lip. She slid her hand free of his and wrapped it around his neck, tugging him down further to her height. Harry exhaled a needy sound and picked her up round the waist, holding her so she could reach better. She felt the smooth, hard muscles of his chest along the front of her body and knew there was no way in hell he was leaving her house tonight. They’d finally set a course for the iceberg and she was going to enjoy every single second of it.
Murphy woke up naked and alone.
It had been quite a while since she remembered the disorienting sensation her own cotton sheets on every part of her skin, and the pleasant fuzziness that accompanied fantastic sex. She blinked a couple of times and rolled over to survey the other side of the bed, confirming that it was empty. Her eyes widened and a tiny, freezing cold thread of fear wound its way up her stomach. Had something come up? Or did the realness of what they’d done hit him and he panicked?
She slipped on his oversized t-shirt and walked down the hallway, feeling slightly sick, and turned into the den.
Harry was on all fours with a bucket full of soapy water and a brush, scrubbing the muddy footprints out of her carpet.
He glanced upward when she appeared in the doorway, smiling warmly at her. “Oh. Hey, Murph.”
Murphy shook her head and walked over to him, lifting his chin and bending enough to kiss him. He hummed pleasantly through it.
“What was that for?”
“For being you. For not being any other knucklehead I’ve invited into my personal life. Make sure you rinse the brush out well. I’ll go make some coffee.”
She walked into the kitchen, grinning like an idiot, and couldn’t have cared less.
FIN