Noted
…
Scanning the uncharacteristic mess covering the surface of his desk, Boyd scowls and shoves papers aside, hunting irritably and unsuccessfully.
"Grace!" The bellow is loud and angry, indicative of his fraying temper and rapidly evaporating patience.
"What?" is the equally irritable demand issued in return as she pauses in his doorway, her expression making it clear that he has interrupted her in some way.
At this precise moment though, he doesn't particularly care. Not when the ACC is expecting an update from him within the hour. "Where's the file on the Adams lad? I can't find it."
Grace sighs, resting a hand against the frame as she regards him, annoyance still visible in her eyes. "That's because I haven't given it to you yet."
"I wanted it yesterday!" he retorts, stacking pages and documents into piles to clear a fraction of usable working space.
"'I want never gets.'"
"It does if it signs off on expense reports and holiday requests," he replies, glancing up again.
Refusing to play, Grace simply shrugs. Stepping through the door to avoid being overheard, she utters a simple, "Fine, go away on your own next month, then."
"Funny!" he glares. "Report, now!" Then, because it's her, and only because it's her, he adds a quieter, "Please."
"Five minutes," she tells him. "I'm just on my way to the ladies."
"Oh, no! If that's the case, I want it now."
Grace scowls, her blues eyes narrowing dangerously as she stands for a moment, deliberating, before disappearing into her own office. She's gone longer than he expects; several minutes pass before she marches back in, wordlessly drops a closed file squarely on top of the open book he is flicking through, and then marches back out again, pointedly ignoring him.
Intrigued by the set of her shoulders and the sharpness of her gait, Boyd tracks her as she moves across the squadroom, eyes inevitably drawn down to follow the outline of curves concealed by her clothing, his memory taking the pleasure to fill in for him all the intimate details of what lies beneath.
It's half for show, half in tetchy frustration, her behaviour, and when she disappears through the double doors with a highly uncharacteristic bang of wood on mental, he finds a smirk breaking free to spread across his lips. Shaking his head, he opens the folder before him and finds a Post It note sitting squarely in the middle of the first page; three inches by three inches, it's a soft yellow in colour, with Grace's loopy, messy handwriting scrawled across it.
Ricardo meeting, 7:30. Sharp.
It's utterly incongruous – meaningless to anyone else who might come across it. Not so to Boyd. Grave is offering him an olive branch, a chance to make it up to her for the petty squabbling and the large blocks of time they've spent apart in the last couple of weeks. Not by choice, admittedly, that lack of contact, but rather the nature of the job, and a series of unfortunate circumstances that have conspired to occur all at once. Still, it doesn't mean he hasn't missed waking in the mornings with her warm body curled up against his, or, for that matter, going sleep beside her. Or even…
His eyes focus on the page again, before his mind, his thoughts, betray him. Yes, it's an olive branch all right, but one with a slight sting to it, for Sharp is not a warning to be on time to the restaurant of her choice. It's a warning to simply be there.
And why not, he thinks. It's Friday afternoon, and after he's dealt with his prickly, impatient superiors the earliest escape he can manage seems justified after the week they've had. Take her out, have a nice meal and spend the entire weekend alone together. Definitely.
It's been a long day – a long week, even. He wants to see her smile, make her laugh. See that wicked twinkle in her eyes when her impish streak blazes bright and his patience frays in an altogether different kind of way.
There are Post It's in his draw, too. Two kinds, actually; official Metropolitan Police memo slips, complete with crest and contact details, and a stack of the same plain yellow squares that the two of them reserve just for one another. What started as an idle game – sending coded messages to relieve the boredom of a slow, rainy afternoon – has, several years later, transformed itself into a method of private, personal communication hidden in plain sight.
He prints a neat reply, momentarily smug at the difference in their handwriting, and then tucks the tiny square inside a book of hers before getting to his feet and ambling across to her office, dumping the thick paperback unceremoniously in the middle of her desk.
She'll get the message, and she will smile, the day's hostility fading as she deciphers his hidden meaning. And through the glass he will catch her eye, and he will smile, too.