Title: Making Plans
Rating: Same as the show...T I guess.
Summary: When a routine post mortem leaves Nikki worried about her own future Harry makes an unusual offer.
Pairing: Harry/Nikki
Disclaimer: I own it all. I am the BBC, I have Emilia and Tom chained up in my cellar...jk. I don't even own a dvd boxset.

Harry arrived back from observing an interrogation as a dozen or so sombrely dressed people left the Lyell centre, it was unusual for so many relatives to come at once but beyond slight surprise it didn't cause much of a reaction in him.

Not so with Nikki who he found sat at the conference table looking uncharacteristically subdued.

"Cheer up Nikki, anybody would think somebody'd died." He got a half-hearted smile for his silly joke but not the giggle he'd been hoping for. Whatever was on her mind was heavy enough to weigh down her usually buoyant spirit.

She couldn't get her brain to switch gears, she was still seeing the family that had just left…so many people joined by bonds of love, generations of affection wrapped around each individual. Nikki'd never had that, never been cocooned in the heart of an adoring family. It made her envious, sad and lonely all at once…it also made her think. Would she ever meet somebody she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, to make a family with?

"Do you think we'll ever get married?" it was such a random questions, posed so completely out of the blue, that Harry had only one way to answer it, with his usual flippant irreverence.

"To each other? Hadn't given it much thought…but I suppose I wouldn't rule it out. Would Leo be able to give you away and be best man as well do you think?" The idea of Leo running around doing double duty at their wedding brought forth another smile but Nikki's eyes were still troubled.

"Harry be serious, please…" With nonchalance born of longstanding habit, he sat on the table.

"What's brought this on? You aren't withered yet you know." She knew different, so did he really, at her age parts of her, parts that she had never found opportunity to use, were beginning to degrade.

"I know, I know. It's just…I did a post mortem this morning."

"Was it a spinster pathologist in her nineties?" Harry was familiar with the expression on Nikki's face, half exasperated affection, half reproof. "Sorry, sorry…being serious. I'm listening."

"Matthew James Armitage was ninety three. I determined cause of death to be chronic congestive heart failure."

"Hardly unusual given his age, although I'm not sure how it relates to your fear of being a raisin." For some reason Nikki was glad he remembered their last conversation on the subject, even though it was five years ago.

"He died in his sleep, lying next to his wife of seventy years and surrounded by pictures of his family."

Harry began to see why this case had bothered Nikki so much, family was a touchy subject for them both.

"A large family I take it?"

"Very, five generations, seven if you count the pictures of his parents and grandparents."

"How…productive." It meant nothing but seemed like the safest thing to say.

"By the time the Armitages were our age they'd been married over ten years and had four children. I can't remember the last time I had a second date, I've never lived with anybody…don't you ever feel like that part of life is just slipping away from you?" The honest answer was yes, he did feel like his career had taken a huge toll on his personal life, but he wasn't sure Nikki needed honesty.

"Shut up. You'll end up with some handsome billionaire who's amazing in bed and treats you like the precious jewel you are." She grinned at his compliment, despite the dismissive tone he was using.

"I might meet the perfect man, or I might end up with somebody like you."

"And what exactly is wrong with me pray tell?"

"How long have you got?"

"People with revolving bedroom doors shouldn't throw stones." Her smile faded and she got up from the chair, walking a few steps away from him.

"I'm tired of all the one night stands and the flings with unsuitable men. I'm not in my twenties anymore and the jokes have stopped being funny."

Harry somehow felt like it was his fault she was upset. He made digs about her love life all the time, but they didn't usually hit home like this, not that he'd noticed anyway. She turned around and faced him again with eyes that were too shiny for his liking, too close to brimming over.

"Is it so strange that I want somebody to come home to, the possibility of my own family? Or did you think post mortems and empty sex was all I wanted out of life?" Christ where had all this come from? He thought of himself, rightly or wrongly, as her best friend, he should have noticed if something like this was troubling her. He hopped off the table and closed the distance between them, pulling her into a hug before she had chance to object.

"No, of course not. You deserve to be happy Nikki…I didn't know you weren't."

"Neither did I, not like this, not until this morning. I went to his house and saw the life he'd made for himself…then I saw myself in sixty years, my corpse putrefying where it fell…in a room decorated with yellowed certificates and faded newspaper clippings." The picture her words painted was bleak indeed but he couldn't let her dwell on that morbid scene.

"Why are there no pictures of me in your granny flat?" She sniffed a little and he felt her cheek move against his chest. She was smiling.

"They're in the bedside cabinet with the rest of my pornography." Laughter bubbled up from inside them both and pushed back the dark cloud that hung over Nikki. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"You're really worried about living your life alone aren't you?" She looked up at him, her brown eyes gazing into his.

"Aren't you?" he couldn't think of anything glib to say, not when she was looking at him like that, and even if he could, he wouldn't have said it. The moment felt too important, too real to belittle.

"I…well it's not something I'm looking forward to." She lowered her head, wondering if he thought she was overreacting, behaving like some sort of Bridget Jones character and obsessing over her biological clock.

"The best relationships I've ever had with men are the ones I have with you and Leo." It was a pretty big declaration to make, even though the two men had probably come to that conclusion on their own.

"You and Leo…that's practically incest." He received a swat on his chest for that sage remark.

"Thanks for those psychological scars, pervert. Be honest Harry…when was the last time you met somebody you thought you could get serious about?"

If he answered completely honestly, the conversation would take on a completely different direction, because if he was completely honest the last time he realised there was a woman he could get serious about was when he was in a pub called the hearts of oak with a loquacious blond pathologist by the name of Nikki Alexander.

"It was years ago and nothing ever came of it. What are you suggesting?"

"I don't know. I just see the pair of us ending up old and lonely…it seems like such a waste."

Harry had an idea, a crazy, brilliant, silly, genius idea that would either go down in flames or erase all their worries for the rest of their lives.

"Let's make a pact. If it looks like we're going to wither on the vine, we pluck each other." Nikki extricated herself from his arms far enough to let her look him in the face.

"I beg your pardon?" From her indignant expression Harry inferred that she'd misheard him.

"If there's no chance of us getting married to other people by the time we're forty, we get married ourselves." Well, she hadn't been expecting that. It made a strange kind of wonderful but scary sense…they'd never had a sexual relationship but somehow Nikki could see them working out. Mostly though, she was confused by the sudden knee-jerk proposal Harry had just made.

"By the time who's forty, you or me?" He didn't think before answering. If he was going to end up with Nikki anyway, he wouldn't make her a forty year old bride.

"Me." Nikki blinked, taking a second to double check her maths, not that she needed to.

"Harry, that's only eighteen months away."

"Thank you Nikki, you know for a moment there, I'd actually forgotten how old I was."

"Are you sure about this?" He seemed to be so calm about the whole idea, like it was just another one of his jokes…she wanted to know he meant it before she said yes and put herself on the line for him. It had happened once before and though it was mostly not his fault, Harry had hurt her, leaving her to discover that tears shed over him were bitterer than most.

"Chances are you'll meet somebody tomorrow and save me the ordeal of having to go through with it, but…" He took both her hands in his and willed the truth into his eyes. "Yes…I'm sure."

He meant it? He was willing to spend the rest of his life with her, have a family with her? No of course not, if it didn't work out they'd divorce…but he was willing to give it a real go, which was more than she'd ever been offered before. She took a deep breath and tried to slow her racing heart.

"Ok. It's a deal. If neither of us is in a relationship by your fortieth birthday, we get married."

Harry grinned down at her and gave her hands a squeeze. Her heart was still racing but it felt lighter than it had in a long time.

Neither of them noticed Leo walk in or register his presence until he cleared his throat.

"Harry-" They parted and turned to face their friend who was most definitely in 'boss' mode.

"Leo! Nikki and I just got engaged!"

"Mmm hmm. Two cases have just come in for the pair of you. Harry, you've got a RTC in Lambeth…Nikki, a possible suicide in Peckham." With that he turned and left again.

"I don't think he heard me." It seemed not, which Nikki felt was something of a relief.

"It's not technically true for another eighteen months anyway. I'll see you later." She grabbed the papers on her case and left the room to prepare for going to her scene. Harry frowned and got ready for his own new case, putting Leo's failing hearing to the back of his mind.

Safely back in his office, Leo sat at his desk shaking his head at the behaviour of his to colleagues, whatever this new mischief was he didn't want to know about it.

He didn't seriously believe they had just become engaged to be married…because he didn't credit either of them with much sense or self awareness in that particular department.