A/N: The start of this is probably a bit sappy, but oh well :) and thanks for reviewing, people. Love you all :D

Sarah x

Hanssen woke when the sun started to shine through the curtains; looking at the clock, he saw it was quarter to seven. He felt a warm body stuck to his, and the events of last night quickly replayed themselves in his mind. In particular, the sounds of Serena's screaming troubled him. He'd hated her sounding so terrified and broken. When did he start to actually care about Serena Campbell?

He was almost amused to find her arms were wrapped around his waist, her face pressed into his chest. It also, however, made him feel slightly uncomfortable. She had clung to him in her sleep and, even more disturbingly, his subconscious had allowed her. Judging by the way his arm was draped over her, he'd embraced her, even. That concept was pretty foreign to him, after so many years on his own.

He revelled in the way she was not hard and cold. She was soft and warm when she was sleeping. Their legs were tangled, not helped by the length of his, her bare legs somehow caught up in his. He'd forgotten that she was sleeping in only a shirt.

He gently brushed her hair out of her face, tracing the soft line of her cheekbone lightly with the tip of his finger. He'd always liked the softness of her face; it contrasted with the harshness of her dark eyes. He liked that her face was beautiful but soft. She was sort of the opposite of Jac Naylor, whose face, though equally beautiful, was angular and threatening, her eyes completely defensive. Serena's features were whatever she wanted them to be.

He'd never truly appreciated her beauty before, perhaps because the ugliness that came of out of her mouth half the time distracted him from it. But here, while she was sleeping, while she was silent, she was...cute. Childlike, just as he'd thought last night. He couldn't wipe that word from his mind; she seemed to have made quite the impression during her time in his home.

His thumb traced her brow bone, and her nose wrinkled slightly. He smiled to himself, wondering if she was really as nice and pleasant as she'd been last night, or if she had been restraining herself. She'd been good company as they had relaxed on the sofa together, smiling and laughing.

He felt her stir, and took his fingers away from her face. He watched as she opened her eyes, taking in the situation and, when she realised where she was and who she was with, leapt back like he'd struck her with a red hot iron. She looked quite embarrassed; he was starting to think that maybe she hadn't experienced the safe feeling of sleeping next to someone for a while. The same rang true for him, actually.

She looked at him with her dark eyes. "What happened?" she asked suspiciously.

"We slept together," he said simply, not realising the implications of that phrase until a look of ill-disguised shock crossed her face. "No, no," he added hastily. "Not in the way you're thinking. No, we literally slept together. Nightmare, remember?" He added in his mind that had anything other than sleep happened last night, he would not have allowed himself to forget it.

She nodded and pulled the duvet up to her shoulders. How odd. She was self-conscious. Serena Campbell was self-conscious. He'd never have pegged her as the type to hide herself away. "Last night," she began, her voice hoarse. "My nightmares, what I told you. Can we just...keep that between us? It's just because I've never really discussed what happened before and I don't want everyone knowing about it. And I'll keep quiet about your mum," she added.

"That goes without saying," Hanssen replied, his voice lower and gentler than he'd intended. He met her dark eyes, finding that she was obviously confused and panicking slightly about waking up next to him, but there was also a softness in her eyes. He couldn't help but wonder if she was lonely. He'd never seen someone cling to another like she'd done to him.

He got up, and went downstairs, flicking the kettle on. If he was truly honest with himself, he was as confused as she was. He measured out coffee, pouring the water in when it finally boiled. He took the two mugs up the stairs and walked straight into his bedroom, assuming Serena had not left the bed while he was away, but he was wrong; she was standing in nothing more than his shirt, her legs bare, the pale skin of her upper chest revealed by the open top buttons of the shirt and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

He handed her the coffee; normally he would have been dressed by now, downstairs listening to the early morning news, but he was making an exception in Serena's presence. He got back under the duvet, watching her hesitate before copying his actions.

"I'm sorry," she told him again, the second time in less than eight hours. "For, you know, sort of cuddling into you. It probably made you uncomfortable."

"Don't worry about it," he reassured her. "We cannot control what we do when we sleep."

She smiled her brightest grin, and he had to give her a small smile back as he sipped his coffee. Their feet were touching under the duvet, her naked leg resting squint against his. Her face was absent of any make up, and her eyes were a little red from her night time confessional, and yet, somehow, there was a raw, defenceless beauty about her he'd never seen before. Maybe because she was so obviously nervous, and had opened up to him last night, he was seeing her in a different light. He couldn't place what she was evoking in him, but it wasn't something he had felt for her before.

"You hugged me last night," she informed him of what he already knew; it had been brief, but he had returned her embrace as they had shared their demons. "You're nice," she accused.

"There's no need to sound so surprised, Ms. Campbell," he retorted, feigning hurt at her remark. She just grinned again, drinking from her mug.

"You held my hand," she recounted to him. "When I told you what happened to my dad, you held my hand," she said. He shifted rather uncomfortably; when he'd soothed her last night, he was not counting on her reminding him of it. "I fell asleep holding Henrik Hanssen's hand," she announced slowly. "Do you know what that means?" she said, leaning slightly closer to him as she looked up at his face.

"Enlighten me," he replied.

"It means you are actually human."

"Mmm," he uttered, swallowing his coffee. "Well spotted, Ms. Campbell."

"Thank you," she smiled. "I think I deserve a medal!"

"For what?"

"For disproving a well established scientific theory," she answered, her grin only growing wider.

"And which theory is this?"

"The theory that you have an on and off switch, circuit boards and hard drives," she explained. "I can say with total confidence that you sleep, you have a rather warm human body and you have a rather emotional human mind."

All he could do was smirk to himself. There was no answering back to her when she was like this; her confidence had made a miraculous return to her. The sparkle was back in her eyes, ready to face today with a smile as if she hadn't spent last night crying. And for that, considering he'd seen for himself what her nights were so often like, he admired her.

She looked at the clock and said, "Time to get ready for work."

"Yes," he agreed, though he could have sat there for a lot longer with her, given the chance. She was good company; her sense of humour really was something else. She seemed to like to tease people.

By nine o'clock, Hanssen was pulling into the hospital car park. "I'll get out here," Serena said unexpectedly as he turned into the junction. "I don't want stupid questions from Ric and Michael, because they'll never believe nothing actually happened," she explained, and he had to merit the logic in what she was saying as she got out of the car.

He parked in his usual space, next to Serena's temporarily abandoned car, and got out. Michael Spence was passing and was about to say something to him, until there was an Earth shattering noise from behind them. Henrik turned to see a car, rather what was left of the car, crashed into the wall. His immediate reaction was to drop everything and run, Michael quickly mirroring his actions.

Chrissie Levy and Antoine Malick, both presumably arriving for work, were quick to join them. The driver's chest had been crushed, that much was obvious. The steering column had been pushed up too – something told Henrik this car had not been well-maintained – leaving the man behind the wheel bleeding out, an inch from death. The sight reminded him of Serena, and what she'd told him. It was odd that this had happened so soon after him finding out about Serena's father, but it was a coincidence he chose not to dwell on. This crash, judging by the lack of maintenance given to the car, was always going to happen sooner or later.

He remembered Serena was approaching and panicked slightly as he and Malick attended to the man. "Sister Levy," he called. "Ms. Campbell will be coming around that corner any moment," he informed her, nodding towards where Serena was going to appear. "I would like you to make sure she doesn't become involved in this."

"But-" Chrissie began to argue.

"We will be fine without you," he assured her.

"Too late," Chrissie told him as he took the man's almost non-existent pulse. He looked up to find Serena running towards them and groaned internally. "Here she comes."

Hanssen briefly looked up once more, only to see Serena approaching rapidly. He met Malick's eyes, warning him not to say he'd tried to avoid her presence, before saying to Chrissie, "Not a word to Ms. Campbell about what I just said."

"Of course," the blonde nurse replied. Serena appeared behind Malick, a hand resting on the registrar's back as she leaned in to survey the situation from the passenger side. As Hanssen had feared, a rather haunted look flashed across her face.

"What happened?" she asked, and Henrik could tell from her voice she was struggling already to keep her composure.

Michael appeared behind her with a trolley. "We'll have to wait for fire and rescue to cut him out," he announced, pointing out there was no way the five of them could get him out. "And this is a pretty old car, about twenty years old," he added to Serena. "It's obviously not been looked after properly so I assume that's why the collapsing mechanism failed. You see it a lot in the States because we don't have MOT testing like you do," he explained to her.

Henrik looked up at Serena, and silently told her with a look to go before she cracked under the strain of the situation. "I'm fine," she whispered, but he could see that she wasn't. "Go ahead."

He took her at her word and proceeded to gently open the man's shirt from the back seat behind, to find that the extent of the injuries meant he was probably going to be dead before fire and rescue got to them. He heard the sirens approaching from the main road and hoped that perhaps he was wrong, but there was nothing that could really be done; the man wasn't conscious, not for the lack of Malick trying. His pulse was thready and weak, his breathing had all but stopped and he was losing blood at a shocking rate. Not to mention his chest was crushed, too.

"I can't," she whimpered to him, so quiet he wondered whether Malick had heard what she'd said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologise," he told her as she backed away out of the back of the car. Fire and rescue started to take over, and Hanssen stayed to oversee until he was cut out. "Straight to Darwin," he ordered Michael once the man was on the trolley, though he didn't think even Miss Naylor and Mr. Hope could save him; he was too far gone, and it wasn't very often that Henrik resigned himself to that.

He found himself looking around him, scanning the area for Serena, but she was gone. Why, he wasn't sure, but he wanted to find her. He wanted to know she was alright. He thanked Malick and Chrissie and left them, trying to decide whether to go up to his office or begin his search for Serena.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x