"Have they gone? Or can we shut the door or something?"

"We can go to bed if you like"

"I thought you promised Ronnie…"

"Not hers, Muppet, mine, well the one I sleep in when I'm here, it's a bit cosy, just a single…"

He stopped her saying anything else by the simple act of kissing her, then picked her up into his arms and stood waiting for directions with his eyebrows raised as a question.

-OG-

Sprawling on top of him Molly was butterfly kissing his prominent jaw line with its five o'clock shadow, then pulled her head back slightly and looked up at his face and smiled at his look of complete and utter contentment as she tried to hold onto his wrists to stop his hands which had started to wander again, then gave up and let him run his finger-tips lightly up and down her back on skin which was suddenly so super sensitive that it felt almost ticklish. The bed was not only a narrow single but was actually a child's bed and so was far too short for him so that his feet hung over the end, and stuck out of the bottom of the duvet which Molly was struggling to pull right over their naked bodies without changing her position on top of him. Ronnie's flat was not only far too hot and sauna-like in the summer but was arctic in the winter, so much so that there was often frost on the inside of the windows in the mornings, but cuddling up to each other under the duvet while they listened to the rain beating on the roof made it feel perfect as far as they were concerned.

"I think we should buy a bed the same as this for the flat, maybe a bit longer, but definitely single like this one"

"I was thinking you'd be more for one of them super king size jobbies"

"No, this is cosy, and you can't get away from me, so that even if we have a fight you're going to have to sleep on top of me, there's no room for anything else" He laughed at the expression on her face "You are going to move in and live in the flat with me, aren't you? as soon as the tenants push off"

"You're being a bit previous, aren't you?"

"No" He stopped stroking her back and thought for a minute "well maybe, but it doesn't feel like that and it's not like we've only just started seeing each other is it? We've known each other for a lifetime already and we may have only just started being together but I know I want to live with you, that I still want you to be the last thing I see every night and the first thing I see every morning, that'll never change"

"No"

"No, what?"

"No, I can't just come and live with you"

"Why not?"

"Because I still need to get to lectures every day and to get here to do my shifts for Ronnie"

"We have trains that go in and out of London, I got on one this morning" His voice was full of teasing laughter "They run every day" He paused and frowned "and anyway that sounds like excuses to me. Do you actually mean that you don't want to live with me?"

"I can't afford to, I'm a poor student, remember? I've got no bleeding money"

"You don't need any money"

"What, you think I'm gonna live off you? I don't think so"

"Why are you so bloody difficult? You wouldn't let me to top up your phone and you didn't want me to pay the bank, and now you don't want to share my flat, to live with me, and I want you to, I want to look after you, so why won't you let me?"

"I dunno, I can't get me head around it, it just feels all wrong"

"Molly, you let Ronnie treat you, so why not me?"

"I'm sorry, it just feels …. I don't need no-one to look after me, I can look after meself" She paused and shrugged "Okay, so sometimes I'm a bit crap at it, but I manage in the end"

"What do you think would have happened if everything had worked out for us the first time round? If we'd been together for the last four years?"

"I dunno, I've never even thought about it" She lied.

"I do, I know. We'd be living, oh, I don't know where, probably somewhere in the suburbs I expect, and we'd most likely have at least a couple of kids by now that would be running you ragged, and I'd go off to work every day and wash the bloody car on Sunday mornings and we wouldn't be arguing about who pays for what, would we? We'd just be sharing what we'd got, so why can't we share now?"

"You made that sound like we've had a bloody lucky escape, mate"

"Well, I didn't mean to. Look, just think about it, you don't have to decide right now"

"Oi, what you doing?" She tried to grab his hand as he flipped her over onto her back and then half lay on top of her as he began to tap his fingers lightly to caress her from her collar bone down to her hip and back up again, then bent his head and started kissing a trail down her neck to her breasts at the same time as holding her still by resting his hand on her hip. He unfastened his lips from her nipple and gave her a wicked grin.

"I'm seeing if I can persuade you to change your mind"

She arched her back up towards him, put her hand up to the back of his head and pulled it down so that he took her nipple back between his teeth.

"Keep trying, in fact you can try a bit harder if you like"

-OG-

The headlights from the van swept across the ceiling as Mollie opened her eyes and fumbled for the bedside lamp then changed her mind and just sat up, shivering in the cold air as she emerged from the warm fug of his body and the arm that was holding her close to him under the duvet.

She slowly and gently lifted the arm that was across her and slid out from under it, being very careful not to disturb him as he slept on, oblivious, and she got out of the bed and grabbed her clothes off the floor. She threw them over her arm so that she could get dressed on the landing before going down to help Ronnie unload and sort out the debris from the party; she felt that it was the least she could do in the circumstances and she also knew just how tired Ronnie would be by now.

"You didn't need to get up and help me; I take it you were tucked up in bed"

"Yeah, but its okay, you're welcome"

"I would have thought you'd have been shagged out by now"

"Ronnie!"

"Sorry. Where is he now? Has he gone?"

"No he's upstairs asleep"

"Hope you're being safe"

"Course we are, stop worrying about me"

Although it had stopped raining it was bitterly cold and damp as they sorted waste into food and plastic and paper and chucked it in the relevant bins, while Molly tried hard not to shiver; she hadn't wanted to put the lights on to find a warm sweater or fleece or something in case she woke Charles up, and she was now deeply regretting it.

"He asked me to move in with him"

"Course he did, are you going to?"

The two girls were sitting in the grubby and untidy lounge of the flat, Ronnie didn't think much of doing housework, she saw it as a complete waste of her 'down' time because it didn't stay 'done', so she only ever did the absolute essentials and concentrated on keeping the food preparation areas of the warehouse spotless. They were drinking hot chocolate, Ronnie because she was tired and hungry but didn't fancy anything to eat and Molly because she was frozen stiff and also hadn't eaten much all day.

"Nah, don't think so"

"Why not? I would have thought you'd have jumped at the chance; you're potty enough about him aren't you? Well you were, oh, shit, does that mean he's crap in bed?"

"Ronnie! No, he's anything but crap, not that that's got anything to do with you, you nosy cow. And it's got nothing to do with me loving him n' that, it's a whole load of other stuff, I mean, it's too soon and I wanna finish me course and I haven't got enough money to live out there anyway, and he's in the army Ron, what happens if he gets posted to bleeding Catterick next week, or some other shit-hole that's a boil on the bum of the world, I just don't think it's the right thing for me to do right now"

"Have you told him?"

"Yeah, I don't know if he believed me, but he wasn't exactly thrilled"

-OG-

Chares woke up when a door banged somewhere in the building and as usual he was instantly wide awake, years of army training meant there was no period of semi-wakefulness between sleeping and waking, but it took him a few seconds to orientate himself as to where he was and what he was doing there. Molly had vanished from the bed and as he started to get up to go and look for her he heard the murmur of voices and realised that Ronnie was home and that they were in the lounge next door chatting, so he lay back and waited for her to come back to bed; there was no way he was going in there for a cosy three way chat with Ronnie.

He was just drifting back off to sleep when she tip-toed in and stripped off her clothes, dropping them on the floor, totally unaware that he was watching her in the glow of the street light through the thin curtains through eyes that were half closed, or that he was waiting for her to slip back into the bed before he spoke or did anything else to show that he wasn't asleep. She slipped under the duvet and spooned her cold body against his warm back, there was very little room to lay any other way, and put her freezing feet against his warm legs, then put one arm round him, tucking her other cold hand between the warmth of her thighs, getting comfortable and ready to go back to sleep. He moved the hand that was cuddling him down to his groin to cup him, listening to and loving her quiet giggle as his body instantly reacted to her and she realised that he was wide awake. He pulled her on top of him as he turned over onto his back, her head tucked under his chin.

"Sorry, did I wake you up?"

"No I was already awake, but you can wake me up like that any time you like"

She moved her body so that she was pressing against his erection which was trapped against her stomach.

"We can't, Dawsey, we've run out"

"That was piss poor planning Major, mind you, if you bloody call me Dawsey again you won't need another condom"

"I didn't know I was going to get this lucky, did I?"

"If you look in that drawer next to your side of the bed you'll find a birthday card, look inside it, but don't ask"

-OG-

Almost a year on from the Brigadier's garden party and it was another warm, bright and sunny day with just a few wisps of white clouds as Molly stood and looked at the crowds of guests at the Regimental Family Day. Lots of men in fatigues and women in bright summer dresses with hordes of excited children tearing around and babies in buggies and the smell of burgers and frying onions together with the tinny noise of tannoy announcements and loud music as she scoped the crowd looking for a very tall, dark and familiar soldier who was supposed to be meeting her here by the children's merry-go-round.

It had been more than six months since they'd first got together and Molly was still living a semi-nomadic life, although she was no longer spending the majority of her nights in the bottom bunk in a bedroom at her family's flat in east Ham, she still stayed there sometimes but very, very occasionally now that she had finished her degree and had joined the ranks of the gainfully employed. She spent a lot of her working week living with Ronnie, helping her out by paying rent and she still did the odd waitressing shift, although mainly to help Ronnie out when she was struggling and needed someone, rather than the other way round. Most weekends she spent in Ash with Charles at his flat, except when Ronnie was having a staffing crisis, but so far she'd resisted all his efforts to get her to move in permanently, so that he had all but stopped mentioning it now.

It had been Ronnie and her flat that she had fled to when she'd had the devastating news that she'd been unsuccessful in her application to join the Think Ahead Project, the vacancy they did have was filled by someone who'd got a 1st and not a 2.2 like she had and it had been two days before she'd even told Charles what had happened. Her old feelings of not being quite good enough had returned with a vengeance so that she didn't want him to know that she was an epic fail again, which she now had to admit had been totally unfair on him; he'd been just as devastated for her as she was for herself. Getting a job in Camberwell based at the Maudsley had restored some of her faith in herself and she now loved the fact that there was a mix of patient problems that she had to help solve, even if it meant that she was on call one Saturday morning a month and two evenings a week, because social care issues didn't always fit neatly into office hours.

She'd stayed at Ronnie's the previous night because she'd been on call that morning and had promised Charles faithfully that she would show up in the afternoon if she possibly could, patients allowing, even though she didn't have very much to do with the army side of his life, she tended to avoid it most of the time. Now, as she searched the crowd for him, she had the most horrendous sense of deja vue as she spotted him with a very tall, slim, fair and pretty girl in army fatigues, Miranda, her hand on his arm, as they stood together in a group of people who all threw their heads back and roared with laughter about something. Molly stood there dithering for a minute as to whether she should just leave, or whether she should go over and join them when she saw him say something to Miranda and pat her arm, another taste of deja vue, as he turned and strode in her direction, grinning widely when he caught sight of her in the crowd. The rush of jealousy which had made her want to go over and slap Miranda's hand off his arm had told her something that she'd really known for months, that she needed to accept the fact that the time had come to stop playing silly buggers and to do what she should have done months ago.

"Hello beautiful" He bent down and kissed her cheek "Have you come to rescue me?"

"You didn't look much like you needed rescuing to me; you looked like you was having a nice time"

"Couldn't possibly have a nice time without you, you know that"

"Liar"

"I was just being polite"

"Yeah, I know, and enjoying Miranda perving on you"

"I was not and she was not"

"I don't know about that, that's what it looked like to me"

She patted the back of her hair, making sure that her plait hadn't started to come loose and that it was still tightly fastened at the bottom, she'd been growing her hair ever since they'd got back together and it was finally long enough to put up in a French plait without falling out halfway through the day, reminding him even more of the Molly he'd fallen in love with over five years ago.

"Charles, I've been thinking"

"Christ that sounds bloody dangerous"

"Ha ha, very funny, bloody hilarious"

"I thought so" He stopped walking and looked at her expectantly "So what have you been thinking about, gorgeous?"

"That maybe it's time to share"

He stared at her straight faced as she half smiled at him, biting her bottom lip, feeling and looking slightly anxious in case he no longer wanted her to move in with him. Then, with his biggest smile spreading across his face he bit his own bottom lip.

"You mean, at long bloody last you're going to move in? Going to live with me full time?"

"Nah, I thought I'd let you share my student debts, help me pay them off" She giggled "Of course I'm saying I want to move in with you, if you still want me to. What do you think?"

"I'll have to charge you rent"

"Shit, it better not be very much, I work for Social Services and I got debts, so I'm bloody poor, me" She giggled, hoping she'd got it right and that he was actually joking.

"Well, I was thinking about some sort of payment in kind"

"Were you? now there's a bloody surprise"

He grinned as he picked her up and held her above his head, totally ignoring the crowds of people around them, and then let her down slowly until her face was level with his, although her feet were still way off the ground, and she put her arms round his neck as he kissed her, fairly circumspectly bearing in mind their audience, then whispered 'let's go home'.

-OG-

Author's notes: Happy endings a speciality! Am toying with what I'm going to do next but I'm addicted so it probably won't be long before I'm back. Hope you enjoyed this, please review for me.