A/N: I blame the S5 promo pic. It put ideas in my head. Written in one sitting, so forgive me for mistakes. Enjoy!
Gail was mad at me.
She was so obvious about it, but she probably thought she was being discreet. To others, maybe. But at this point, I knew her. I definitely knew her and she was definitely upset at me.
I knew why too.
We had dinner plans the other night. It was supposed to be our first official date. We had already hung out multiple times in casual settings—the batting cages, a hockey game, and just unofficial hangouts at the Penny. But that was supposed to be the real dinner date.
Gail surprised me by even bringing it up in the first place. She pulled me aside while we were with the officers from 15 at the Penny. At first I had thought she was sick and wanted to go home because I could see her sweating like crazy. But instead, she proposed the idea of going out to dinner. It had been adorable, the way she asked. She tripped over her words and eventually threw it out like it was no big deal. But I knew she had been nervous to ask me.
As if my answer would have been anything but yes.
She had grinned for a split second before brushing it off with a "cool" and a head nod. I spent the rest of that night grinning like an idiot and whenever Gail and I looked at each other, I think I blushed profusely. It had been nice to make official plans.
But the afternoon before the dinner was supposed to take place, my boss asked me to cover a coworker's shift. One of the other pathologists scheduled to work the night shift had called in sick and he desperately needed somebody to stay in the lab and be on call.
I called Gail and told her the bad news. I apologized and explained that it was out of my control. She thought she had played it cool, again acting like it was no big deal. But I heard it in her voice, even over the phone. I hadn't heard from her for the next two days, nor did I see her.
Every time I texted her, she texted that she was busy. She was being petty, but it was endearing, because it wasn't her fault. I had cancelled our plans that took her a lot of courage to even ask in the first place.
So I decided enough was enough. I marched through 15 Division's front doors, scouring everywhere for one pissed-off Officer Peck. Instead, the first officer I came across that I knew was Chris.
"Hey, Holly," Chris raised his hand in greeting from his desk. "What're you doing here? Dropping off a report?"
"Nah, I'm looking for Gail. Have you seen her?"
"Yeah, she's around here somewhere. We just got back from patrol and just doing a bunch of reports now. Everything okay?"
"Yeah, she's pissed at me," I explained with an eye roll. "She's been avoiding me so I thought I'd come and find her.
"That explains it," Chris laughed and leaned back in his chair.
"Explains what?"
"Explains why Gail's been acting like a puppy kicked in its butt. She keeps snapping at me for the tiniest thing. I thought it was something with her mom again. But I guess it was just you."
"Just me?" I raised an eyebrow.
"No, I mean not just you. I mean, uh—" Chris flushed and gestured frantically with his hands before giving up and hanging his head down.
"I'm just kidding. Relax," I said with a laugh.
"Diaz!" Gail's voice came from behind me. "Did you finish that report so we can get out of here already?"
I whipped around to find an angry-looking Gail Peck storming towards Chris and I. That is, before she stopped in her tracks with her mouth open.
I waved my fingers at her. "Hey, remember me?" I joked.
"What are you doing here?" Gail asked flatly.
"To find you."
"Well you found me. Congratulations, you win hide and seek." Gail continued walking to her desk and sat down in her chair, pushing papers around in a sorry attempt to look busy.
"C'mon, let's talk," I pleaded.
"There's nothing to talk about," she said stubbornly. "I have a report to work on."
Chris snorted from next to her. "You mean you have to yell at me to work on the report."
That earned Chris a swift punch to the shoulder from Gail. Damn, Chris hadn't been kidding. Gail was in a vicious mood.
"Fine." I sat down in an empty chair next to the two of them. "I'll wait until you finish."
"Don't you have some dead bodies to cut open or something?" Gail sniffed.
"Not at the moment. If there are, my boss will give me a call," I replied, settling down in the chair.
Gail bent her head down to work on the report but I could tell she kept eyeing me from her peripheral vision. I suppressed the urge to smile at how childish she was being. It would just piss her off even more.
I knew why she was mad. She knew I knew. But I just wanted to hear her say it. Gail needed to learn to communicate if we were going to make this work. I wasn't going to spend our entire...relationship trying to guess what she was thinking. Next time, the situation may not be so easy. So I needed to fix it now.
After half an hour of staring around the police station, Gail finally finished the report. She stapled it together and tossed it over to Chris.
"Here."
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Chris asked.
"I don't care, whatever you want. I'm out of here." She stood to leave and I stood abruptly with her. She was not going to take off when I had made the effort to come all the way over here.
"You can't leave, we haven't talked yet."
"I told you, there's nothing to talk about." Gail readjusted her gear belt and I looked at the ridiculous amount of gear that she was required to wear as part of her uniform. I'll never know how police officers manage to chase down bad guys wearing all that junk. Junk that included...a pair of handcuffs.
A brilliant idea presented itself in my head and I knew that Gail was probably gonna hate me for it. But if she kept refusing to talk to me, there was no other way around it. When I didn't respond to Gail's statement, she started walking to the locker room, leaving me standing there with Chris. He shrugged at me and stood up with the report in hand.
I followed Gail before she got too far and surreptitiously removed the handcuffs from their pocket. Thank goodness officers kept them in the back. I made sure to remove the key too. I put one of the cuffs around my left hand quietly, still following Gail without her noticing. I made sure to make it loose enough so it didn't leave any marks or bruises.
"Wait," I said, grabbing Gail's right arm. "C'mon."
When she stopped and turned around, I swiftly used my right hand to cuff the other half onto her right wrist. I bet she was going to regret teaching me how to use her gear now.
"What the—" Gail yanked her right arm, pulling my left arm with her.
"Ow!"
"What the hell?" she exclaimed, bringing her right arm up to her face to examine our hands. "Are these my cuffs?"
"Yup," I snickered.
She immediately reached with her left hand to the back of her gear belt, presumably to find the key.
"Looking for this?" I held up the key with my right hand and dangled it in front of her.
Gail immediately reached for it, but I was quicker than her. "Nope," I laughed, stuffing the key into my right back pocket. Deep in that pocket.
She tried in vain to twist her arm to reach my pocket, but I moved and twisted with her so she couldn't reach the key.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, her eyes darting back and forth around the station. Nobody had noticed yet that one of 15 division's officers was handcuffed to a forensic pathologist, but somebody was bound to notice soon.
"Well, you won't talk to me. Desperate times call for desperate measures," I explained seriously.
"This is seriously desperate." Gail jingled her right arm uselessly. "I want my arm back."
"And I'll give it back. When you talk to me."
Gail groaned in frustration and stomped her feet like a petulant child. Everything about her just made me want to smile and kiss her. But I didn't think she would appreciate that at the moment.
"Diaz," she muttered, walking swiftly back in the direction we had come. I had no choice but to follow. It looked like Gail didn't want to talk yet. She found Chris still wandering the hallway, looking for Sergeant Best.
"Uhhh…" Chris started, pointing at our hands with the report in his hands. "Was that an accident?"
"Yes," Gail snapped as I said "no" at the same time.
"Nope," I said resolutely and winked at Chris.
"Give me your handcuff key," Gail snapped, holding out her left hand impatiently. I took a slight step back so Gail couldn't see me shake my head at Chris. He smirked in response.
"Quit smiling and give me the key," Gail opened and closed her hand.
"Can't. I lost it," Chris explained shortly with a hint of a smile.
"You lost your handcuff key?" Gail blew an impatient breath. "You're lying."
"Maybe. But what are you gonna do about it?" Chris laughed and walked past us. "I have to turn in this report. Good luck!"
Gail groaned out loud. "Are you kidding me?"
"Now can we talk?" I asked, hoping to get an affirmation. She was going through a lot of trouble just to avoid talking to me. I wondered how her past relationships' communication had fared. We hadn't gotten that deep, but I was guessing not very well.
Instead of answering me, Gail continued to storm down the hallway towards the detectives' station, still pulling me with her. She poked her head in the room, keeping me from entering the room with her body.
"Traci!" she hissed.
A few seconds later, Traci emerged from the room. She spotted the handcuffs immediately. "Peck, I think you've gotten a pathologist attached to you."
"I hadn't noticed," Gail replied sarcastically as I snorted. "Give me your handcuff key."
Again, making sure that Gail couldn't see me, I shook my head at Traci and winked at her like I had done with Chris.
Traci raised her chin and made eye contact with me with a look of understanding. "I don't have it with me," she explained, making an elaborate show of patting her pockets. "It's in my locker."
"Well, go get it," Gail demanded. "Right now."
"Can't, we're swamped right now," Traci said, choking back a tiny laugh. "Gotta get back to work. Good luck guys."
She went back into the room and Gail muttered a swear word under her breath.
"I heard that, Peck," Traci called from inside.
"Good," Gail snapped, poking her head back into the room and giving Traci what I assumed was a very deathly Gail glare.
"Let's just talk now, okay?" I pleaded.
Gail looked up and down the hallway but couldn't find anybody else she knew well enough to uncuff us without asking too many questions or being embarrassed about it. Ball was in my court now.
I forced her to walk with me into one of the interrogation rooms. It wasn't until I pushed her in and closed the door that I realized it was the same room where Gail had first kissed me and this thing that we had became real. It had gone from just hanging out and unspoken words to just raw action. I shivered as I remembered how forceful Gail had been and how thankful I had been that she had made that move.
The handcuffs were making my wrist slightly tingle so I decided to try to convince Gail to spill as quickly as possible.
"I know you're mad at me." I stood face to face with her, at least as much as I could while our hands were cuffed together. I tried to look her in the eye, but Gail kept looking away and at everything else in the room except me.
"I know you're mad at me," I repeated. "And it's okay. I would be too."
Still nothing. No response. I decided to keep talking. Maybe, hopefully, at some point, she would just jump in after I blabbed enough.
"But if we're going to make this work, we have to talk about it, okay? I'm so glad you asked me to dinner. I know that took a lot. And I'm really happy that you got up the courage to do it, because I couldn't. I wanted to, but I couldn't. But you did it, and you couldn't have any idea how excited I was for dinner."
I could see Gail's expression start to soften, but she still refused to make eye contact with me, instead looking down at our hands.
"Work sucks. Work is a serious bitch. But things like that will come up sometimes. They're rare. But it will happen. But I'll do my best to make it up to you. But you have to tell me that you're not okay with it if you aren't okay with it. Okay? That's all I ask. Because we tell each other things, right?"
Gail nodded at the floor. Baby steps.
"I'm sorry that I had to work. But let's not waste anymore time not speaking to each other. Let's go out for dinner now. Or tomorrow. Or whenever. But let's do this," I said with conviction. "I like you," I added at the end. "And I want this to work. But you have to work with me."
Gail finally looked up and I breathed a sigh of relief.
"You like me?" she asked softly. She sat down on the table, pulling me closer to her.
"If I didn't like you, I definitely wouldn't handcuff myself to you," I said with a scoff. Then it hit me. Gail had always been plagued by insecurity in her relationships. Especially with the Nick situation turning out the way it had, she was just a little cat, still recovering from her wounds.
"I like you," I repeated. I finally felt safe enough to touch her, so I gave into the instinct that had been poking at me since I laid eyes on Gail today. I reached for her hand and it encouraged me when she didn't resist. I interlocked our fingers as our wrists stayed handcuffed together. Her palms were sweaty, like the way they got whenever she was nervous.
"I like you," I said a third time. "So I want to make this work. But you have to help me."
"I was pissed at you," Gail finally blurt out. I smiled in response.
"Why are you smiling?" she complained.
"Because that's all I wanted to hear," I laughed. Really, that was just the one sentence that I had been looking for since I cuffed us together. Just for Gail to admit what she was feeling.
"You wanted to hear that I was mad at you?" Gail asked incredulously. But a smile was coming back to her face and I knew it was going to be okay.
"Yup."
"You're ridiculous," she giggled an actual giggle and I widened my eyes at her.
"Did you just giggle?"
"No, stop. It was a normal laugh," Gail said, her legs fidgeting on the floor. She used her left hand to pull at my waist. I came closer to her until I was standing in between her legs.
She placed our hands on her leg, still interlocked. "I like you too," she mumbled after a period of silence.
I grinned at the top of her head. The situation was working out better than I had planned.
"Good."
And finally, finally, I gave into the second instinct to kiss her and leaned in until our mouths touched. We hadn't kissed very often so far and that was what made each of them so special. Despite her cold exterior and stubbornness, I knew that when we kissed, I could just tell—Gail was a softie. She was just somebody who wanted to love somebody and wanted to be loved. She just guarded her heart well. I wanted to be the one who got through the walls. I wanted to be the only person with the key.
I lost all semblance of conscious thought after that because Gail made a noise that was halfway between a whimper and a moan. I swear to God I felt it all the way down to my toes so I pushed harder against her. She let out another breath and I almost felt my head implode. Just when I thought I had reached my limit, I felt Gail's left hand move from grasping my waist at my side to behind me. And then it started moving south. As soon as her fingers reached the tip of my back pocket, I realized what she was doing and reluctantly wrenched my mouth from hers.
I grabbed her hand and narrowed my eyes at her. "What do you think you're doing?" I asked breathlessly.
"Uhm…" Gail was out of breath too but she looked like she was definitely a lot more in it than I was. She leaned up and in to kiss me but I ducked my head to avoid contact.
"You're trying to distract me!" I accused her.
"And it was working too," she muttered under her breath.
"I'll give it to you now, but I can't believe you would sink so low," I frowned and reached into my pocket to reach the key.
"I do what I have to do, just like you," Gail protested.
I finally unlocked the cuffs and Gail dropped them on the table behind her. I was about to walk away defeated when this time, Gail reached for my waist with both hands, pulling me even closer so I was nestled in.
"What?" I asked, tilting my head in confusion
"You like me," she said in conclusion. It was a statement, like she needed to say it until she believed it.
"I do," I confirmed. I would say it however many times she needed to hear it, despite her trickery. It was only fair since I had tricked her in the first place.
"Good." After a moment's pause, Gail grasped my hands and placed them on her lap again. "So dinner?"
"Oh yeah, I'm not letting you get out of that."
"Good," Gail confirmed again. Before I could say anything else, the interrogation room door swung open and two male officers I didn't know came bustling in. I broke away from Gail's space immediately.
"Sorry, we've got a suspect being interrogated in the interview room," one of them said, nodding towards the window, where indeed, a very dejected looking young man was led into the other room by a third officer.
"No problem," Gail stood immediately from the table and pulled me to follow her. "We'll get out of your hair."
"Wait, you forgot your handcuffs," I said as we closed the interrogation room behind us.
"It's okay, I don't need them."
"You might need them later tonight," I whispered in her ear. When she turned to look at me, eyes wide open like Bambi in a field, I did my best to keep a cool face.
"Are you serious?" she hissed at me. Her shock was hilarious, eyes so wide, mouth gaping, so I lost it and burst out laughing.
"I'm just kidding. The opportunity was too good not to take."
"You sure about that?" Gail asked with a laugh.
"Well, I guess you'll just have to find out tonight," I replied winking at her. "See you tonight, Officer Peck."
A/N: Ah well. Take it for what it is! No worries, I'm still working on the next chapter of Only Time so keep your eyes peeled for that. Just had to get this out of my head first. Anybody still flailing on the floor after seeing that promo pic? No? Just me? Okay then.