26.02.2017 update: I have gone through and edited this story a bit, mostly just improving the writing (cos OOOOH BOY was it clunky and awkward in places), I haven't changed any plot points. The first and easiest edits I made were to get 3 rid of my babbling away at the beginning of each chapter, because who cares really about that, but I will give a little foreword here; If you've read this story before, I hope you enjoy rereading this time as much as you did the first. If you're new to it, I hope you find that you get at least some enjoyment out of it.
If you are new to this fic, or you want a reminder, the premise is that it fills in the gaps between the episodes, (starting with the finale of season 4) to explore the Golly we never got to see so much on screen. I have half a plan for where I'm going with it (ish), but I don't want to say at this point where it will finish, because it ended up being quite a slow moving story and there is every chance if I were to write it up until the season finale of season 5, let alone season 6, it would get to 100+ chapters and I would only finish writing it on my deathbed (which a handy website called just told me will be in 54 years). But I hope you enjoy the journey, wherever it may lead. And thank you in advance to you, the one person still reading this garbage.
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I.
God, this is horrible. Gail slips into the hospital waiting room. Her skin is still hot and her cheeks are damp and her eyes are red even though she's spent the past ten minutes staring into the mirror willing them to return to a somewhat normal colour. Pushing her phone into her pocket, she sidles up to where Steve is standing alone, hands in his pockets, looking slightly awkwardly at the officers around him.
"Hey, are you okay?" He reaches out an arm towards her as she approaches him. "Do you want a kleenex?"
Gail shakes her head as she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm fine." She mutters.
"Where did you go?"
"Washroom. I had to call someone, she's... uh, she's on her way over." She sniffs and blinks, trying to compose her face, although she is fairly certain it is in no way working.
Steve's expression changes from concern to slight confusion, his forehead creasing ever so slightly as his eyebrows furrow. "Who?"
"It's uh... Holly, you... saw her earlier. She came to see me at the precinct, when you were giving me that pep talk about not getting killed."
"She's a… friend of yours?" He probes, not that Gail doesn't notice that he's slightly taking advantage of her emotional instability to obtain some actual information about her usually guarded life.
"I... don't know. We were friends, but I think, maybe... maybe I ruined that. I don't know." She can feel the heat in her eyes and blinks again, more ferociously this time, to stop any tears from emerging.
The confusion doesn't leave Steve's face but he gives his sister a weak, uncomfortable and unnerved-looking smile. "Well, she's coming here, right, so she can't completely hate you?"
"I don't know. She's so nice she'd probably come anyway. But I care about her, a lot. Like, really, really care about her." Her voice tails off as she speaks and she can see Steve trying to process her words out of the corner of her eye as she looks awkwardly down at the ground.
But then she hears the rustling of a coat and the steps of someone running towards them, and when she looks up and recognises the face in front of her, Gail can do nothing to stop herself from throwing her arms around the neck of the woman stood before her. She holds on longer than she has ever consciously held onto another person in her life, so overwhelmed with relief that Holly is here, that she barely hears her speaking.
"I'm really glad that you're here." She murmurs, before finally breaking their embrace, taking a moment to look properly at Holly's worried face before turning back to her brother.
"Steve, this is Holly, Chris this is Holly." She says, making the probably slightly unnecessary introductions to the men who both know full well who the woman in front of her is, in an attempt to show Holly that she's not actually trying to hide her from her friends, without actually having to say 'This is the girl I think I might be falling for and spent a good five minutes kissing in the conference room yesterday.' At least, not while she's still not convinced that Holly would even accept her into her life like that now.
"Hey, how's it going?" The corner of Steve's lips turn up slightly and he nods warmly, Gail can see a slight understanding dawn in his eyes, but turns back to the gentle, bespectacled, dark eyes of the woman next to her, uncomfortable under Steve's questioning gaze.
The brief but sincere smile that appears on the other woman's face shows her that she appreciates the gesture of the introduction. Gail's tongue darts out to moisten her lips, preparing them to say something she hasn't yet thought of.
"Do you um, want to...?" Gail gestures over to the seats, and Holly nods, smiling in a manner Gail perceives as nervous; her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and her hands moving to push her glasses up her nose even though she'd only done that less than a minute previously, and the spectacles couldn't actually be any closer to her eyes already.
As they walk over towards the seats, Gail looks back at her brother, flashing him the smallest of smiles and just noticing him starting to talk to Chris before she turns back to look where she is going.
Holly stands next to the seats, still looking slightly nervous, and waits for Gail to lower herself tentatively down into a chair before taking the seat next to her.
Gail can feel dark eyes look up and down her body; she is sat tensely on the edge of her seat, looking anxiously off into the distance. Holly relaxes back slightly into her own seat, but the blonde is unable to do the same.
"Hey," Holly speaks up, softly, after a few minutes of sitting in silence. "Are you okay? I mean, is there anything I can get you?"
Gail turns to look at her friend, her whole body shifting slightly to face her. She notices that nervous expression still has not left Holly's face, and her brow furrows slightly in response.
She coughs slightly, quietly, before she speaks. "No, it's okay. I'm just happy you're here."
"Of course I'm here."
"You look worried... about something?"
Holly smiles at the pale woman. "I'm worried about you, Gail. I don't like seeing you like this. And I'm really glad you're alive and everything, because I've been terrified all day that you might not be, but I hate that you look so distressed."
"You're not... angry about what happened earlier?"
Holly frowns slightly, her nose wrinkling and mouth falling slightly open, although no words come out.
Gail sighs slightly and elaborates "At the precinct, you know; when I, you know, blew you off." She winces and looks away as she says it, not really wishing to acknowledge her less than exemplar behaviour out loud.
Holly relaxes and leans forward, placing a hand tentatively on Gail's thigh "Gail." She says in her absolute warmest voice, which Gail silently notes is quite an achievement, as she considers Holly's voice on any regular day to be the softest and most reassuring she has ever encountered.
Gail turns her head up to look into the dark eyes that are surveying her.
"That wasn't your fault, I shouldn't have come and intruded on you like that, it was awful timing on my part. And I have this tendency to just jump head first into things and I never really considered that maybe for you, the middle of your workplace, surrounded by everyone you know probably wouldn't have been the first place you'd want to see me after the whole interrogation room thing..."
"Holly." Gail tries to interrupt.
"... and obviously when we were in the interrogation room, emotions were running kind of high so I could understand if maybe you think it was a mistake, so I don't want to pressure you into anything and I hate that by turning up at the station you may have felt like I was asking you for something you didn't want to give..."
"Holly." Gail coughs to catch the brunette's attention when it becomes clear repeating her name isn't going to do the trick.
"Hm?" Holly starts to retract her hand from Gail's leg but has barely left the fabric of the officer's trousers before Gail's hand is on top of hers, intertwining her fingers between the pathologist's fingers, over her knuckles, returning her hand to where it had been resting on Gail's thigh.
"I don't think it was a mistake. And part of the reason I was upset was because I thought I'd blown... whatever this is, already. I thought you were going to tell me we couldn't be friends anymore, or whatever we are."
Holly's mouth curls up into her trademark half smile. "You haven't blown anything. I mean, we should probably talk... not right now, but at some point. But I'm here, now, in whatever way you want me to be."
Gail gives an actual genuine smile for the first time since she arrived at the hospital. "Do I look all blotchy and horrible?"
Holly bites the corner of her lip. "Your, uh... your eyes are a bit red, yes."
Gail scrunches her face up in disgust, the idea that almost everyone she knows and cares about has seen her looking like this making her feel so uncomfortable she wants to curl up in a ball and never see any of them ever again. Except for Holly.
"I have a compact if you want to have a look?" Holly suggests.
"No, it's okay. Probably better if I don't know, I don't exactly have any makeup or anything on me to fix it." Gail sighs. She would love more than anything to get up and leave, get away from the inquisitive eyes she can feel occasionally glancing over and she and Holly and their interlocked hands. But even she, the ice queen of 15 Division, can't bring herself to abandon everyone when they don't know what is going to happen to Chloe and Sam and Oliver... oh Oliver.
Her eyes brim with tears at the thought of her partner, locked up by this police-hunting maniac, taken when she should have been around to back him up. Granted she wasn't expected to be with him at that exact point, but he was still her partner. At least he he seems like he is going to be fine; he is alive and considering the circumstances, relatively well. But Sam, and Chloe. Maybe not so fine. And even though Chloe is possibly the most annoying person she's ever met, and she's never held anything other than a slight distant admiration for Sam, a couple of tears escape her eyes and roll down her cheeks.
"Hey." A soft voice beside her says, and Gail knows that her tears have not gone unnoticed. She can feel Holly's thumb rubbing her leg, drawing circles on her thigh.
Part of her longs for the comfort of Holly's hand on her cheek, wiping away her tears; or for her arms to wrap around her so she can bury her face in the other woman's neck; but she knows Holly would never do such a thing until she knew Gail was comfortable with it. And to be honest, she probably wouldn't be. Comfortable with it, that is. Not while all her colleagues are stood so close, probably revelling in seeing her in a less than composed state for once.
She wipes her own eyes with the back of her hand instead, but she just can't work out how to stop the tears from falling. Because she doesn't cry; she doesn't let emotions take her like this. But something that has happened in the past few days, be it realising that the feelings she held for Holly were no more than a simple harmless crush, or the intense passion of the short minutes they had spent together in that interrogation room, or the knowledge that Chloe, a person she had said only one vaguely nice thing in the entire time they had known each other, could just die at any moment, or the guilt she felt at knowing she had hurt Holly when she gave her the cold shoulder at the precinct, or the idea that Oliver may have died and she hadn't been there to do anything about it, or the devastation on Andy's face now Sam could be dying too; one of those things, or all of them, had destroyed the cold, emotionless walls she has so carefully built up, and now they are coming cascading down around her. And she can't just sit there and hold the person she wants to hold the most in the world, and sob into her shoulder until she has no tears left inside of her, because it is so new, and beautiful, and delicate, and this is Gail; she is the bull in the metaphorical relationship china shop, and she doesn't want to smash everything yet.
It's so new. Gail looks up and looks around through her silent tears and is surprised to see that they have garnered very little attention. She sees Chris looking at them over her brother's shoulder as the two stand in conversation, but the tears are making him blurry and she can't tell if his look is one of surprise at her clutching the hand of the woman next to her, or concern at the tears still slowly running down her face. She blinks, trying to rid the stinging water that has pooled in her eyes, but by the time Chris has come back into focus, his attention has returned to her brother.
Looking further around the waiting room she notices that Nick, too, is gazing in their direction, leaning forwards in his seat with his hands under his chin. But his stare seems unfocussed and Andy is sitting uncomfortably next to him and it doesn't take a genius to work out what is going on there, so Gail doubts that there is much room in her ex boyfriend's thoughts for any opinion on whose hand she is holding.
As she scans the rest of the room Gail catches Traci's eye, and after her friend's eyes drop ever so momentarily to the hands on her leg, she gives a small encouraging smile, then returns to the conversation she was having previously.
But this encouragement only causes a creeping sense of guilt to emerge in the pit of Gail's stomach. Of course no-one cares that Holly is a woman. And Gail holding her hand is such a small, insignificant detail in the life of anyone other than Gail herself. Especially when there is all this tragedy and hurt going on around them.
And she wants to do more, to show Holly that she cares, but she can't think of any gesture that wouldn't be too bold. People may not care that there is something happening between them, but there are certain... conventions when it comes to the interactions between two people who have just come together, particularly in open, emotionally charged, public places like hospital waiting rooms. And Gail has certainly never been one for obvious public displays of affection anyway.
She removes her fingers from between Holly's, which, to be honest was becoming slightly uncomfortable anyway; hands are meant to be held palm to palm, not palm to knuckle. She runs her hand up Holly's arm towards her elbow, and then around to the inside of her arm, and down towards the inside of her hand, lifting it from its position on Gail's leg. She squeezes it, and Holly looks deeply into Gail's eyes, returning the squeeze. Gail gets lost absorbing every detail of Holly's face as their hands fall back down, this time to the seat, where Gail once again finds herself placing her hand over the top of the brunette's, this time wrapping the ends of her fingers around the edge of the hand underneath, anchoring them to the seats as Gail tears herself from the darkness of Holly's eyes and looks vacantly off into the distance.
II.
They haven't moved by the time the doctor comes out to speak to Frank. Instinct makes them rise to their feet, their hands falling apart, preparing for any bit of news that may be about to come their way, but when Gail realises that very little has changed, she falls back into her seat, this time slumping against its back instead of sitting nervously on the edge.
Holly joins her, and has only returned to her seated position for a brief moment when Gail's head falls down onto her shoulder. Gail's eyes flutter shut, her chest rising and falling with her slow breathing. When Holly's hand reaches across to rest on her leg again, the police officer grasps it with both of her own and holds it in her lap, slowly stroking it with one of her thumbs.
"Is she asleep?" Traci's voice rouses Gail, and although she can tell she must have drifted off, it feels like it was barely a moment since she slipped out of consciousness.
"Yes, I think so." Holly replies, as Gail's face scrunches and turns to rub itself into Holly's shoulder.
"She has a name." Gail murmurs, quiet but sharply. She stretches her fingers, releasing Holly's hand from her grasp and finally turns to look up at the couple in front of them, squinting at the light.
Steve looks between the two of them. "Frank's asked us to head back to the station, we can drop you two home on the way if you want? You don't need to be back on duty until the morning."
"It's okay, I brought my car, but thanks." Holly smiles up at him, grateful for the offer.
Steve turns to his sister. "Are you, um, going back with Doctor Stewart?" He asks slowly.
Gail turns to look at Holly, aware that this is not a question they had broached, and that the answer she wants to give may potentially be seen as coming loaded with expectations and implications. "I probably need to go dump my uniform at the station." She eventually says, when Holly doesn't seem to give her a sign as how to answer.
Holly nods with a smile. They both stand and follow Steve and Traci out into the car park.
When they reach Steve's car, both women slow down and look at each other hesitantly, waiting for Traci and Steve to get into the car and fall out of ear shot.
"You know, once you're done at the station you can come around to mine, if you don't want to be alone or something. I can cook up something to eat, you must be starving. We can watch a film, or you can just go to sleep, whatever you want." Holly is looking down at her feet as she speaks, but looks up as she finishes, a nervousness in her eyes.
Gail smiles slightly and takes one of Holly's hands in her own. "I would like that. I'll get Steve to drop me off."
"Will he mind?"
"He's my brother; he'll do it, or I'll threaten to tell Mum he's got a new girlfriend." She smirks slightly, and Holly laughs.
"Okay, well, I'll see you soon then?"
"Yeah. Thank you, for all of this." Gail squeezes Holly's hand and flashes a look at the car before leaning in and placing a quick but gentle peck just to the right of Holly's mouth, before letting go and darting in through one of the back doors of her brother's four by four.
As they pull out of the car park, Gail watches Holly smile and walk to her own car. She looks down at her own fidgeting hands, unable to ignore the pounding of her heart in her ears, but equally unable to stop a wide grin creeping across her face. She closes her eyes and sighs. What a night.
III.
It does not take Gail long to change in the empty locker room, but she does take a few moments to reapply the makeup that her tearshad washed away and hide the few remaining signs of her earlier breakdown. Locking her things away, only taking her phone out with her, securely in her jacket pocket, she glances in the mirror on her way out, adjusting her scarf slightly as she does so.
When she leaves the locker room, Steve is leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway, looking at his phone.
"You ready?" He asks, looking up at her and pushing himself off the wall.
She nods and follows his lead as he starts walking towards the car park.
"So am I dropping you off at the frat house?" He asks as they climb into the car.
Gail bites her lip slightly and doesn't turn to look at him as she speaks. "I was actually hoping you'd be able to take me to Holly's. She doesn't live very far."
He nods slowly as he turns the key in the engine. "Okay. Which direction."
She points right down the road as they pull up to the car park exit, and he turns and drives down the road.
Apart from Gail's occasional directions, they don't speak as they drive, the quiet music coming from the radio and Steve's light drumming along on the steering wheel the only noises between Gail's brief words.
Gail finds her hands fidgeting in her lap as they draw nearer, and she notices Steve glance over at her.
"Have you been here before?" He asks eventually as they turn onto Holly's road.
Gail turns to give her brother a slightly open mouthed, scrunched up, 'duh' look. "I just directed you here off the top of my head, what do you think?"
Steve presses his lips together for a moment. "Right, of course."
"It wasn't like you're thinking. Just watching TV and stuff, and I stayed the night when I burnt my hand at that grow-op." She says, turning back to carry on looking out the window.
"It's this one". Gail indicates to a house just in front of them, and Steve pulls the car up to the side of the road.
He ducks down to look up at the building through the windscreen. "Nice house."
"Yeah, well that can happen when your parents let you be something other than a cop."
Steve glances over at his sister. "Well, you've done well. Nice one."
Gail turns sharply to look her brother in the eye, a slightly scathing look in her eye. "I don't like her because of her paycheck."
"I know, I didn't mean..."
"I should get inside." Gail starts to open the car door and undo her seatbelt.
"Gail."
She turns slowly to look at him once again. "What?"
"I'm happy for you, for finding someone, for moving on from Nick."
"Whatever, it's all new; don't get your hopes up for Gail's great romantic happy ending yet." She pushes the door fully open and steps out of the car, turning to duck her head to look at her brother before she shuts it again. "Thanks for the lift."
She turns to walk up the pathway to Holly's house, pulling her phone out of her pocket on her way, finding one message from five minutes ago sitting on her home screen.
Holly: Door's unlocked, let yourself in
She slips the device back into her pocket and hears Steve's car pull away as she reaches the front door, turning the door knob and pushing it open into the home.