'You're a falling star,
you're the getaway car.
You're the line in the sand, when I go too far.'

Everything

"Number 52?"

"Yep, that's us," Harry confirmed to his companion as he stood up to make his way to the counter, musing as he did so at life's infinite complexities and unexpected twists and turns. Or, more accurately, wondering how he came to be sat, dressed in full suit and dinner jacket, in this somewhat nocuous-looking pizza place with his best friend and colleague, Nikki Alexander who was rather over-dressed herself, in a midnight blue, one-shoulder cocktail dress and heels. She smiled at him as he walked over and paid for the food and grabbed it from the counter, it looked less than appetising even encased in cardboard boxes and a white plastic bag that looked lank and damp from condensation.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked her, "mine's closest," he added and once again, she just smiled. It was all she needed to do really; it lit up the whole room in every way. Even if they had been appropriately dressed for such an establishment, he imagined the two slightly grimy-looking men (that was the only accurate way to sum them up) who were standing in the corner, chewing like cows on their kebab meat would still be staring at her, even though she was neither the loudest, nor the most scantily clad woman in there at the time. He took an instinctive step closer to her as they left, holding the door open for her to pass.

"Do you want to get a cab?" he offered but she shook her head.

"It's hardly worth it," she answered, it being the first time she had spoken in a while. "If we take the shortcut it'll only take us fifteen minutes – it'll probably take longer in the taxi as we'll have to go all the way round." And that was that as she began walking off purposefully in the direction of Harry's flat. He glanced pessimistically at her thin jacket and open-toed heels and asked if she was sure. But of course she was sure, or so she told him.

Nonetheless, this did not prevent him from courteously (and in what he considered to be a dashingly chivalrous manner) shrugging off his much warmer and more practical coat and tucking it round her shoulders. He didn't understand how she hadn't complained, it was absolutely freezing!

They then entered into serious negotiation, as they always did in these situations.

"Really Harry, thank you but you don't have to," she protested, trying to hand it back.

"No it's fine, I don't mind," he insisted and, true to form, this argument was repeated a few times before he in the end resorted to telling her that if she gave it back he would refuse to wear it, so one of them might as well be warm.

"Stubborn git. But thank you."

This was how it always went, from her original protest to the final outcome. But still, it was a ritual they seemed unable to break.

Nikki always knew that, right from the beginning of those discussions, she would eventually lose and was generally rather happy to do so; the jacket was pleasantly oversized for her and was warm and cosy and smelt of Harry. She covered her face up to her nose and nuzzled into the slightly scratchy, marl fabric.

"Besides, I owe it to you," he continued.

"Why?"

"It's definitely my fault you're out here in the first place."

Nikki shook her head emphatically and tsk tsk-ed the notion, but they both knew he was right. Having been at the most important event of the year in the prestigious British Association in Forensic Medicine calendar together-but-separately, it was Harry who had had the rather noticeable argument with that absolute idiot of a man, Keith Owen, how in God's name he had ever become a doctor, let alone a forensic pathologist was absolutely beyond Harry.

He couldn't even remember what they had disagreed on, but Harry had known from the moment that Owen (who had been a fellow medical student at university) had approached him that this night was going to go from bad to worse. Not only had he not yet managed to find Nikki out of a room of what essentially might as well have been their patients rather than the pathologists themselves, but Owen's father was quite well known in the field and was 'generously funding' much of the dinner and drinks for the night. As it was they were only there because Leo had insisted they should show their faces and when they had both whined like children and asked why he couldn't go instead, he had simply replied that it wasn't his type of place. Bloody man. If Harry hadn't known better, he would have suspected that Leo was trying to match make. Again.

Once the argument at this dinner (not that dinner had even started yet) had escalated it was unlikely that Harry would have been able to stay and show his face in polite conversation for the rest of the evening, so he was beyond lucky that Nikki had shown up at this point, linked arms with Harry, apologised to Owen and, implying that they were together, had insistently nudged him away and out of the building. Thank God she had stopped him when she did. Things really had been getting quite personal. But then, Nikki had always been there to stop him going too far. Or to pick up the pieces when she hadn't quite made it in time.

Leo would be furious tomorrow when he found out that the Lyell Centre had had what was essentially worse than no representation at the dinner and doubly furious at Harry when he found out why.

"It's not as though I wanted to be there in the first place," she replied with a casual shrug, somewhat hindered by the coat. "Though that was quite a spectacle you were making. What exactly were you arguing over?"

"I don't even know now, really. Just some sanctimonious comment he made about something at university," he said, attempting to brush off how trivial the whole thing had been. There really had been no need to let bloody Owen anger him like that, but he never did seem to find the knack of keeping a hold of his temper.

"Well," she began as they stepped into the relative warmth of the apartment block and then into the apartment itself, which was the definition of toasty, "you'd better tell Leo it was about the reputation and integrity of the Lyell Centre, or some new and controversial discovery or technique. Don't worry," she gave him a playful nudge and a dazzling smile, "I'll back you up."

And Harry didn't doubt that she would.

As she had been speaking, they had begun to shed clothing - in appropriate ways (at least, far more appropriate than Harry would have wanted). She hung his coat up on the right hook in the hallway, being perfectly familiar by now with just about everything in his flat and where its correct spot was.

Harry got the wine, the glasses and the plates while Nikki kicked her heels off and made her way over to the sofa, channel-hopping through the TV and trying to find something worth watching at 10.30pm on a Wednesday. Her search proved fruitless however and she settled on some relatively harmless-looking crime drama rerun.

Harry settled down next to her, the two of them leaning instinctively into each other as they always did, taking comfort from the warmth of the other's body and the perfect way in which they fitted together.

They must have looked ridiculous to anyone else. The two of them dressed up to the nines, only to be sat on a sofa watching some unheard of channel on the TV and eating takeout pizza and chips. The only thing that didn't seem to look entirely incongruous next to them was the wine that they were slowly but surely getting through.

Nikki had never been amazing at holding her alcohol when the drink in question was wine. It just never seemed to like her as much as she liked it. Half a bottle was always enough to make her feel slightly hazy and any more was getting into dangerous territory. So when Harry cracked open the second bottle she knew it was a bad idea to accept the glass he gave her, when they were expected to be at work at 9.30 tomorrow. Actually, no, it was long past midnight, so make that 9.30 today.

She tried to hide a yawn behind her hand as she stretched slightly, nudging Harry's knee with her own.

"Boring you am I?"

"As always, Dr. Cunningham," she smiled, yawning again.

He mock sighed and told her she always knew where the door was. "Don't let it hit you on the way out."

"Mmm, whatever you say Harry, but you know you'd be sitting on your own right now, if I hadn't kindly agreed to come back with you and share my wonderful company and high-brow wit." Her argument was somewhat hindered by the fact that she yawned again, damnit.

"Well it's not my fault you're clearly a lightweight. Or that you're clearly getting old."

"And it's not mine that we had to walk all the way here at 10.30 at night."

"Aha, so you do think it's my fault?" they were still joking but there was a different note in Harry's voice, one that Nikki knew was his way of questioning whether she was annoyed at him.

"Well, technically yes it was, but that doesn't mean I care, or that I would have preferred being there to being here," she answered firmly, kissing him on the cheek sweetly before standing up. "It's late, can I stay?" she asked. Without waiting for an answer she wandered off to his room. From behind her he shouted,

"Would it matter if I said no?"

She just smiled to herself and let herself into his bedroom.

The layout of the room, as well as the smell of Harry, was so familiar that it felt like home. Without even switching the light on she knew to dodge the pairs of shoes he wore so often that he never bothered to put away and to step over the dodgy corner of the rug that wouldn't lie flat on the floor (an impressive feat given how unstable she felt, though she'd never admit it). She pulled out a pair of old pyjama trousers and a well-worn, baggy t-shirt that had once been Harry's from a drawer that had, for a long time, been known as 'Nikki's drawer'.

She changed in his tiny en suite, brushing her teeth and using cosmetics from the stuff arranged neatly on the left-hand half of the middle shelf of the cupboard, where a gap had been made for her a long time ago.

They had long since acknowledged that their arrangements of eating takeout and drinking wine at one another's flats were impractical in nature and it had been Nikki that had first taken provision against this. Harry, pronouncing it unfair that she had 'invaded his life' so fully had insisted that he have the same privileges at her home. They both secretly loved that the other had moved in just a little bit and these nights together occurred with such a frequency (and they of course saw each other day-in, day-out at work) that it really was like being an old-married couple sometimes.

'You're every minute of my every day.'

Unbeknownst to each other they had both often wondered just how long they could stay like this, being the everything in each other's lives without giving in to the fact that there was clearly something else there, just a little bit out reach. Though it was easy enough to wrap up and put away for now, they both knew it was growing just a little stronger and a little less easy to ignore with every day that went past. It was like a wave, which started off far out at sea and grew bigger with every bit of progress it made into the shore. And it was getting angrier and more passionate with every roll it made and when it reared its head, white horses clamouring to be let free as it crashed upon the shore, there was nothing they were going to be able to do about it. And it terrified them both, because who knew if they were going to survive it?

But for now, it was okay to just be each other's constant – to be the lighthouse in the storm, guiding each other when they needed to muddle through. They both needed someone to tell them where the rocks were or to help them get off when they got stranded.

'And in this crazy life,
and through these crazy times,
it's you, it's you
you make me sing.
You're every line,
you're every word,
you're every thing.'

So for now, there were no questions asked when they had both gotten ready for bed and changed into their comfiest, oldest pyjamas and Nikki had clambered under the covers in the space on the left-hand side of the bed that Harry, already asleep, had left beside him. She curled up with her back to him, and his to hers, though they both knew that in the morning they would have gravitated like magnets to be lying side by side, their heads inclined towards each other.

They had long ago agreed that they wouldn't let the other sleep on the sofa (because, really, when has 'no, it's your house' ever trumped 'well, you're the guest' or vice versa?).

And in the morning, Harry always privately thought that it was his favourite time of the day to be with Nikki, particularly if they had woken up on a Sunday, when they were usually on call, no obligation to rush into the office. She would wake up, her hair tangled beautifully (really, how did she do that? Harry was sure that his hair was always a crazy nest sticking up from his head first thing in the morning), her brown eyes slightly misty from sleep and there was always a slight confusion about how on earth she found herself lying in bed beside him, though there was always the wine to blame for the slight memory loss. Then she would bid him good morning, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, smile shyly at him and excuse herself to the bathroom, after having grabbed her spare change of day clothes from the drawer she had adopted before wandering off to wash and change, her shower gel and shampoo being on the second shelf in the bathroom.

'And you play it coy,
but it's kind of cute.
And when you smile at me
you know exactly what you do.'

They sometimes wondered if Leo ever suspected (incorrectly) that something was going on when they turned up at exactly the same time in the morning and left together in the same car at night, as they did the day after the failed dinner party. He would sometimes quirk a questioning eyebrow in Nikki's direction, but she would just pretend she hadn't seen. Today however, after letting them settle at their desks with some coffee from the cafetière he approached them to quiz them about the night before.

"How was the dinner?" he asked and Nikki caught Harry's startled look at no-one in particular.

"Yeah, it was okay," she replied non-commitally.

"Anything exciting happen?" he asked and they both knew that it was a double question: 'did anything happen at the dinner?' and 'did anything happen after the dinner?'

"Nope, nothing at all, right Harry?"

"Right."

'You're every song
and I sing along
'cause you're my everything.'

-/-/-

A/N: Thanks again for reading and thanks so much to everyone who reviewed the first oneshot- your reviews were all so nice and made me smile! I hope this one was okay, probably a bit fluffier, and also the prime example of how these will not follow any remote type of timeline. Sometimes they'll be friends, sometimes they'll be enemies and sometimes they might be lovers. The pieces'll likely be written as they come to me, and probably won't be reordered that much. Basically it's gonna be like dropping a photo album and all the pictures being put back in the wrong order. If you guys don't like this format then I'll reorder them as much as I can when I write them, so just say the words :-).

Hope you enjoyed this one! Please use the spangly new(ish) review button to tell me what you thought :-D