A/N: Did I imagine that smirk on Hanssen's face when he walked away from Sahira after she said she wanted her shifts changed? He looked a bit too pleased to me.

Sarah x

As he walked away, he allowed himself a tiny smirk. After tonight's fiasco, Sahira wanted different shifts to Greg, possibly because he was all too willing to cause no end to trouble for her momentary benefit. The thing that Hanssen saw, however, was that he did not take the future into consideration when he made these gestures. He had no way of knowing, in his profession, what would happen next and who he would rely on to help him. He had the best of intentions, but he was actually causing her more harm by attempting to help her.

Hanssen found himself wanting to turn back and comfort her, because he knew that she hated to do that to Greg. And he realised that, for some reason, he was not walking anymore. He was standing still, feeling Sahira's eyes burn into his back with the questioning look he knew she was donning, still wondering if he should speak to her or not. Before he knew what he was doing, he was standing before her, looking down on her. He regretted her pain but not the cause; as far as he could tell, she was better off with a bit of distance with Greg.

The silent tears were still in her eyes as she looked after Greg's path down the corridor. Hanssen could feel his usually steady hands shaking as he decided what to do next. As he watched her, the tears started to fall down her bronze cheeks. His trembling fingers wiped them away and she looked up at him, surprised by this unusual gesture of comfort to her. Another thing that clearly shocked her was the look on Hanssen's normally hard face; there was a rare softness there, just for her. "It's for the best," he assured her quietly.

Then, for the second time tonight, she was in the arms of a man who was besotted by her. Only these were the arms that had been quietly there for years. They belonged to a man who cared about every aspect of her life, even though he could not be a huge part of it. And he had to admit that he was jealous that Greg got to spend so much time with Sahira, that he had let her in, while Hanssen generally watched from the sidelines and did what he could for her without showing her feeling or any vulnerability. That was how he could get them both hurt, and the last thing he wished on her was anguish of any kind.

"Greg said something to me before, about someone's best friend being hopelessly in love with them," she muttered to Hanssen. "I was an idiot. I should have known something like this would happen." That one got to Hanssen a little; that statement applied to him as much as it did to Greg, if not even more so. He was finding himself falling harder than ever before, though he had spent many years wishing he had the courage to tell her.

"He was trying to help you," allowed Hanssen carefully, "but in doing so, he only brought trouble onto both of you. He meant well, but those kinds of gestures will almost always end in a mess." He could see why Greg had done it in the first place. Sahira's beautiful face looked tired, with almost invisible black marks, noticeable only to those who looked close enough, beneath her eyes. And she had always hated night shift, as he knew from past experience.

She placed a hand on his chest briefly, and he could see her eyes wander to his. When they met, she was questioning why Hanssen was trying to make her feel better. He watched as she racked her brains for any other motive than kindness, as it was so rarely shown so directly by him. Giving up, she said, "Goodnight, Henrik."

He returned it with an curious expression about his face, one that was neutral apart from the contamination of longing and love for her that she could not see. Or maybe she could and she held her silence to prevent another fiasco like tonight's. As she walked away from him, he realised that maybe he was a little too pleases about her decision to rearrange shifts. Was he really so in love with her that he wanted no other man to show affection for her? For years, they had shared a bond of absolute trust that sometimes bordered on fondness. He knew she was thinking about why he had told her what he had, and that she was now suspicious of his motives and his every word. His gestures were small, with the fixing of toys and the betraying of emotion in his voice round her. "Nothing is so broken it can't be fixed," he told himself.

Hope it was alright!

Please review!

Sarah x