Lonely Hearts Still Beat the Same
They were at work when it had happened. It was dark and cold. Winter. They hadn't planned it, or expected it, or even necessarily wanted it; but it still happened.
He found her in the locker room. She was crying. A wave of sympathy hit him harder than a ton of bricks, for she looked exactly like he felt.
"Let's go for a drink tonight," he suggested gently, coming to rest on the bench next to her. "Just you and me."
"Alcohol isn't going to make all this go away," she muttered.
"No, but it might help."
He didn't really know what else to do. Normally he would hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but you can't make the death of a child 'okay', especially when she was the one who did the post-mortem.
"I shouldn't have let you do the PM," he mused out-loud. "I should have made you give it to me."
Her eyes sharply caught his. "I'm more than capable, Harry," she said, an edge to her voice.
"I know you are. But even so..."
"What?" she asked, the volume of her voice rising. "Just because I'm a woman I shouldn't be allowed to do autopsies on kids? Just because I have ovaries I'm suddenly inadequate at my job? Is that it?"
Startled, he got to his feet and backed away slightly. "Nikki, I'm not saying anything of the sort! Look, I'll give you a few minutes to calm down..."
He began to retreat from the room, but stopped when she screamed after him, "Yes, watch out, Nikki's hormones are making her cranky again!"
Turning, he said slowly, "What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing is the matter with me!" she shouted, also on her feet. "There's nothing wrong me, I'm just the same as ever! Stuck in my same life, with the same people, the same elusive dreams and the same bloody everything! Just like it always has been, and it always will be!"
Frowning, he took a few steps closer to her again, fairly positive that her anger wasn't directly pointed at him. "Are you saying you want, what, change?"
She sighed, leaning her forehead against her locker. "I'm saying that there are things that I want... things that I have no idea how to get."
He smiled slightly, recognising the words he'd said to her over a year previously.
"What do you want?" he asked softly.
She turned her head to look at him for the briefest of seconds, before turning away again and saying, "Nothing drastically important."
Nonplussed, he said, "So why are you so worked up about it then?"
He didn't miss the anger that flashed in her eyes once more. "Don't patronise me, Harry, it doesn't suit you."
"I wasn't!" he protested. "If you want something that badly, then go out and make it happen!"
"It's not quite as simple as that, is it?" she snapped. "Don't you think I would if I could?"
Beginning to lose his patience with her riddles, he said, "Well, sitting and crying isn't going to achieve anything!"
"How dare you!" she cried. "How dare you act like you know what's going on in my life, as if you know what's best for me!"
He ran a stressed hand through his hair. "I do know what's best for you!"
"No you don't!" she yelled, glaring at him. "You don't know anything, Harry! You hardly know what's best for yourself, let alone anyone else!"
"And what's that supposed to mean?" he growled, his own fury creeping to the surface. If he'd been calmer right then, he'd probably have had the sense to walk away. He knew exactly how volatile both of them could be when their tempers were riled, and usually it was best just to back off and cool down. But it was too late for that now.
"It means that you're nearly forty and you're still a bachelor, with a string of bimbos half your age trailed behind you!" she said viciously.
"You're one to talk, Miss Different-Guy-In-Her-Bed-Every-Night!" he retorted. "When was the last time you had a serious relationship?"
"When was the last time you did? Oh yes, Anna the pretty young lawyer. The pretty young lawyer who used you to get bloody pregnant!" she yelled, her eyes dark.
He wasn't going to deny that it didn't sting. "Don't you dare talk about Anna like that!" he warned angrily.
"Or what? Still feeling guilty are we, because you were in a strop and weren't there to save her?"
A silence fell, a silence so loud that it screamed in his ears and coursed through his veins. She was the only person he'd told the truth to about the circumstances of Anna's death. He never once thought that she'd use it against him in such a cruel manner. Even she seemed to realise that she'd crossed the line, as she pressed her fingers to her mouth and looked at him with wide, fearful eyes that were shining with tears.
The will to fight had escaped him. He sank onto the bench with his back to her, trying to process what had just happened.
"Harry..." she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be. It was the truth, after all," he said shortly.
"No. You couldn't possibly have known what was going to happen on that rooftop," she said, trying to make up for her earlier words. "I shouldn't have said anything, I'm sorry."
"Stop apologising!" he snapped.
They fell into another awkward silence. She crossed the room and sat down right beside him. He leant forward with his elbows on his knees so that he wouldn't have to look at her. The last thing he wanted to do right now was look at her. Because he knew that she was right: his life was nothing to boast about.
"We know exactly how to do the most damage, don't we?" she muttered softly. "To each other, I mean. We know exactly which words will hurt the most. Why is that?"
He ignored her, unsure of what to say to this. He knew the answer, of course he knew the answer, he just didn't know how to tell her. But he had to, surely? He couldn't go on like he was, like he always had, pretending not to feel it.
Slowly, he turned his head to face her. "You always hurt the ones you love," he said quietly. It took her a moment for the true weight of his words to sink in, and when they did he watched as her eyes widened in shock.
"Don't, Harry," she pleaded, repeating his earlier actions and getting to her feet so that she could step back. "Don't go there. It will all end in tears, you know it will."
"How do you know if you won't give it a chance? Give us a chance?" he asked, also standing.
"Because we work better as friends than anything else," she told him, gazing at him imploringly.
"You don't know that," he objected.
She was insistent. "Yes, I do! I love you so much, but as my best friend. I'm not in love with you."
A slight flush rose in her cheeks, hardly noticeable to anyone who didn't know what it meant. But he knew, because he knew her. It meant she was lying. He understood why; she didn't want to get hurt. She didn't want him to hurt her. She'd said herself, she'd watched him leave behind a string of women. She was scared of becoming just another one of his conquests, he knew that. But he also knew that she was wrong, because there was no way that any of those women equated with her.
In three strides he was standing directly in front of her. He grabbed her wrists tightly and backed her against the lockers, their bodies pressed together and their faces just inches apart. Ignoring her gasp of surprise and consequent protests, he laced his fingers with hers and held her hands either side of her head.
"Are you telling me that you can't feel it?" he growled. "That you haven't always been able to feel it?"
They were so close to each other that he felt the shiver which travelled up her spine.
"Harry..."
"You're not like the other girls, Nikki," he interrupted. "You're smart and beautiful and funny. They were nothing compared to you, they never have been. Somehow, it's you that manages to bring out the best in me. You understand what's going through my head with nothing more than a look. I don't know when it happened, but at some point over the last seven years you became the most important person in my life."
"I'm not going to be another notch on your bedpost," she whispered, looked down at the floor. "It would ruin us."
"I don't want one night," he told her firmly. "I want a lifetime."
He gently placed a finger on her chin and tilted her head towards him. "Tell me you can't feel it," he asked again.
She swallowed hard. "Of course I can feel it."
Without waiting for her to say anything else, he captured her lips in his own. The kiss was light, soft, full of unspoken emotion – yet far from platonic. They were way past that stage now. He gently pulled back, but only so that they could catch their breath and smile at each other. She soon had her hands either side of his face, pulling his head down to meet hers. On this occasion he wasted no time in deepening the kiss, causing her to moan into his mouth and him to push her even more into the lockers. To think they'd been arguing only five minutes previously seemed inconceivable, for they were so inextricably connected now that it was as if they had loved each other forever. Maybe, he reasoned, they had.
Dedicated to all you gorgeous people who still read and review my stories. I love you all. Really, I do.