A/N: This starts immediately where the series ended, but does not include Sadie robbing the Art Gallery. In this slight veer from the truth, she instead headed straight home. I hope whoever reads this enjoys it. Thanks

Chapter 1

Sadie sat on the sofa, eyes not focusing on anything at all, the darkness almost enveloping her, an anesthetic to the mind. It was rather pleasant, actually. She didn't want to think about what had happened in the past few hours, she didn't want to have to face up to the fact that she'd ruined whatever it was she'd had with Lauren. If she began examining it all, she was quite sure that it wouldn't end well. And so she welcomed the numb, not-quite-with-it feeling she was currently experiencing. She didn't hear the front door open, she heard nothing at all, she'd had enough practice in her life to be able to block things out.

Tess fumbled with her front door keys, muttering to herself in a quest to know how on Earth it could be so cold and why she never learnt to dress up warmer. Finally the key fitted into the lock and Tess walked in, checked her face in the mirror and popped her head around the kitchen door. It was dark and she sighed despondently, about to turn and head towards Lexy's room.. maybe she was in there. Just as she started to turn though, a movement in the darkness caught her eye. She squinted, trying to work out what it was, hoping that it was Lexy asleep on the couch as she had been last night. After a couple of moments, Tess gave up trying to guess and instead turned the light on hoping that it wouldn't disturb Lexy if she were sleeping.

"Sadie?" Tess felt her heart sink once more as she watched her flatmate- the wrong bloody one- sitting statue-like on the couch. "Earth to Sadie." she tried again, crossing the room until she was stood right in front of her. "Sadie!"

"What?" Sadie replied, her voice a dull monotone, her gaze still fixed ahead, not bothering to look up and acknowledge the woman stood in front of her.

"Um, firstly, where were you? So much for being excited to come tonight."

"What?" Sadie repeated, having no idea what Tess was referring to and not really caring.

"Okay, what's the matter?" Sadie could be a rude little cow, but Tess could tell that something was wrong, this wasn't Sadie just being her typical moody self. When there was no response, Tess knelt in front of her. "Look at me!"

Slowly Sadie brought her eyes into focus and found herself staring directly into Tess' face. "What do you want?"

"I want to know what's going on. Clearly something's wrong." Tess reiterated, now feeling pangs of worry. This wasn't like Sadie at all. In fact, the only other time she had seen Sadie even remotely like this was when Frankie had left for New York. "Sadie, talk to me."

Sadie finally seemed to pull herself together, though it pained her to do so. The last thing she needed was to spill her guts to Tess and so the only other option was to put her well-worn mask back on. "Nothing's wrong," she said, and although her tone wasn't quite as breezy as she'd hoped, she was pretty sure she'd pulled it off. "Oh.. sorry about your thing. I got caught up."

"You got 'caught up'?" Tess spluttered. "First Lexy and now you? Great. Yeah, no, that's great. The biggest night of my life and no-one cares!" She stood up and walked over to the table, roughly pulling out a chair and sitting down on it heavily. "Well.. apart from Ed." she amended, feeling guilty for lumping him in with everyone else. "Anyway, yeah.. thanks a lot."

"I said I was sorry, didn't I?" Sadie replied, standing up and walking towards the door. She could feel her mask slipping and she couldn't last much longer without it crumbling. "Get me another ticket and I'll come another night."

"That's not the point!" Tess said, her voice rising as she watched Sadie lean against the doorway. "I got you tickets for tonight. For my opening night! Don't bother, okay? Just leave it." Her eyes followed Sadie's retreating back, tears threatening to well up as she felt the hurt wash over her. "Did you hear Lexy come in?" she called, remembering why she'd come into the room in the first place.

"Nah." Sadie responded flippantly, and a moment later her bedroom door shut loudly behind her.

Tess remained sitting alone in the kitchen for a short while, feeling letdown and pissed off. She'd really began to think of Sadie as a good friend, but what sort of friend wouldn't bother going to something that obviously had meant so much to her. For a moment, she allowed her thoughts to linger on Cat. And Frankie. Cat would've been there, Hell, she would have been the first one there, panicking about being late. And Frankie, for all her faults and flaws, would have been there too. They'd both been really pleased for her. Ah shit, it hurt so much to think about them. Especially Cat. She tried not to think about her too much because it just.. it was too painful. Tess stood up suddenly, shaking her head as if to try and dispel the thoughts. Not tonight. She couldn't do this tonight. She headed out of the kitchen, turning the light off behind her and hovered outside Lexy's room before knocking on the door. "Lexy?" No answer. Pushing the door open quietly, she spotted the still-made bed. She sighed, looking around the room as if Lexy might be hiding somewhere. Sitting down on the bed, she dialed her number, not quite knowing why, or what she expected to hear but not being able to resist. It rang for a few moments and just as Tess was about to give up, she heard Lexy's voice.

"Hey, hey, Tess. How's it going?" Lexy's Australian twang came through the receiver, causing Tess to close her eyes briefly.

"Fine." was all the response she could muster. She was hurt, pissed off and feeling shit, and although she tried to mask it, she knew it still rang clear in her voice.

"Look, Tess, I'm really sorry, I.." Lexy began and Tess knew that it was out of order to come down hard on her just because she had a job to do.

"Oh, no, don't be silly. Duty calls and all that. Are you still at the hospital?"

There was a pause and after a moment Tess wondered if she'd been cut off. "Uh, yeah, yeah, I am." Lexy replied finally.

"Oh, well, I won't keep you then. Night." she hung up, her heart heavy. This was supposed to be the best night of her life. Sure didn't feel that way to her.

Sadie was sat on her bed, a couple of lines laid out in front of her ready and beckoning as she leaned forward and snorted them. She fished around beside the bed until her hand grasped what she'd been looking for. Vodka. Yes please. Her head ached and her eyes were sore. Fucking Tess, interrupting her and forcing her to confront everything. Fucking everyone. What the hell had happened to her? A fuck was a fuck, that was how she viewed it. Or how she used to view it anyway. She'd realized a long time ago that no one else was going to save her, protect her, no woman, no man, just her. And that was fine. She'd been fine with that. And then Frankie had come along, someone so similar to Sadie herself, someone who seemed to emanate danger and fun, someone who was just as fucked up as she was, maybe even more so. And so she'd lowered the walls she had so expertly built and she'd cared about Frankie far more than she was comfortable with. She'd been burned of course, from experience she knew that she would be, and Frankie had fucked off without so much as a backwards glance. But out of all of that, the one thing that had unsettled her the most was how she'd allowed herself to be hurt. Again. After years of self preservation, she'd let someone else fuck her about. And that wasn't okay.

She frowned now as she thought of it, taking a swig of vodka from the bottle, barely wincing as it hit the back of her throat warming her up instantly. She sniffed forcefully, feeling some of the residue of the coke still hanging about before she forced herself to face her thoughts again.

The days following Frankie leaving had been hard. She'd come across as if she'd forgotten about it all, as if she were no longer affected by what had happened, but behind her bedroom door it had been another story. Every time the phone had rang, she'd feel her heart racing at the thought that it might be Frankie. It never was. It never would be. She knew deep down that Frankie would never contact her again. And what was the best way to move on? Fucking someone, of course. And so that Italian screamer had entered her life, however briefly. And actually, it had sort of worked. She'd felt rather pleased with herself. Until Lauren. Honestly, at first this.. thing.. with Lauren had been something to do- literally- to get the result she wanted. Work. Of course, she couldn't deny that Lauren was hot. Her eyes were fucking amazing. And the sex.. well, it was good. Very good. But she'd only started it to try and get some articles published, to get some money coming in. And Lauren had been unable to resist, just as Sadie had first suspected. So things progressed. And somehow it had ended up that Sadie was feeling things for Lauren that she had promised herself she would never feel for anyone again. She couldn't explain it. And when she'd seen that watch, the one left by that snooty bitch, she couldn't help herself. She'd just wanted to impress Lauren, she'd wanted to prove to Lauren that she was good enough for more than a casual fuck. It was stupid, she knew that now, but she'd just tried to do a nice thing. And once more, she'd fucked up. Big time. She felt her heart constrict as she remembered the way Lauren had looked at her, with such disdain and disgust. The cutting words before she'd walked away, leaving Sadie stood outside in the cold, alone. Alone. Again. What was she going to do? She didn't want to go out and fuck someone, she wanted Lauren.

With a painful tug on her heart, Sadie reached for the small plastic bag beside her and tipped some more coke on the DVD case in front of her, using her pointless bank card to chop it up into a finer consistency.

As Lexy climbed back into bed, trying with all her might to leave Sam undisturbed, she felt like shit. Lying to Tess was not okay. Tess was lovely, in fact, she'd come to be one of Lexy's closest friends. But what could she say? "Sorry I left, I went to fuck Sam."? She didn't want to hurt Tess, she didn't deserve that. And she felt guilty. Did she inadvertently lead Tess on? She didn't think so, she'd always been a tactile person and she'd only recently found out about Tess fancying her. Not only did she not want to hurt Tess by telling her the truth, she had to protect Sam too. Lexy couldn't prevent a smile coming to her lips as she looked at the woman asleep in front of her. God, she was fucking beautiful. She continued to gaze at Sam for a couple of moments before settling down back in bed, pulling the duvet around her as she lightly rested a hand on Sam's shoulder, careful not to wake her. As she lay there she listened to the soothing sounds of Sam's light breaths. It was only then that worries started to cloud her mind. What would happen in the morning? Before they'd gone to sleep, Sam had given her a soft, tender kiss, but what if this was just a rebound fuck and she regretted it in the morning? How would Lexy cope then? She was due in work at noon the following day, but luckily her scrubs were in her locker at work so she wouldn't have to rush home in the morning. Unless Sam wanted her out. Lexy's brow furrowed at the thought of it, and she frowned further as she thought about Tess. She'd walked out on her fucking opening night. In the middle of it! That had been out of order, Lexy knew that, but she also knew that she couldn't have left Sam in the state she was in. Not in a million years. It was a messy situation, one that Lexy had never envisioned being the centre of, she strived to have a simple life usually, to let shit things pass her by. Being a nurse and seeing all the horrible shit that she saw every single day had made her decisively seek out a carefree life. But things never worked out that way, did they? She groaned quietly in confusion before closing her eyes and willing sleep to take her.

Lauren lay in the darkness next to Jo who was also pretending to be asleep. She'd been trying for sleep for an hour now but it just wasn't coming. All she could think about was the evening's events. That dinner had been truly horrific, Cath was like a dog with a bone, Lauren unfortunately being that bone. Jesus Christ, that woman just didn't let up and it ended up being a dinner of hostile stares and thinly veiled accusations swaddled in an excruciatingly tense atmosphere. And then Sadie had been her usual obnoxious self, texting with threats of coming in and disrupting the night. To be honest, Lauren had been half tempted to let her, it wasn't as if the dinner could have gone much worse, but in the end her sensible head came into play and she'd gone outside to confront her. She'd been so angry with her, furious to be exact, that for once, the lure of Sadie hadn't drawn her in. She'd wanted to slap her. Hard. Instead she'd told her just what she thought in that minute. Looking back on it now, she probably wounded Sadie far more with those words than she would have with a slap. When she'd gone back into the house, she'd popped her head around the door, feigned nausea and headed up to bed. The evening downstairs wrapped up pretty quickly after that and Jo had stormed up to their bedroom and proceeded to lay into her. Lauren hadn't really known what to say besides continuing to play along with the façade of not recalling where she'd bought the watch. Understandably, that hadn't gone down too well and Jo had stomped off to the bathroom, got ready for bed and without so much as a "Goodnight." had climbed into bed with her back turned. And so now Lauren was laid in bed, her head spinning as she tried to work out exactly what to do. She loved Jo. Truly, she loved her deeply. But Sadie.. shit. There was something about her, something she couldn't resist. And she knew that that sounded like such bullshit, she knew that if she told anyone that, they would roll their eyes at her, but it was true. Sadie brought out something in her that she hadn't realized she'd missed. And Lauren was enchanted by her. By the way she looked, the way she spoke, the way she acted, the way she made Lauren act. She missed that part of herself, the part that she'd stifled for years in a way she had never even realized until Sadie had come along and unlocked it. It made her notice how much of herself she had given up for Jo, for the life she now led.

She turned over in bed, facing the window as her mind continued to race. Sadie. Sadie had only given her the necklace because she'd wanted to do something nice. And Lauren had slapped her down. She hadn't missed the pained and broken look that was on Sadie's face as she'd walked away from her. And at the time, she'd been too angry to care. But now, since about ten minutes after she'd stormed inside infact, it was Sadie's face that kept creeping into Lauren's mind. What a night. What a fucking night.