A/N. This is just a short little story that was hanging round in my head and had to be written down. It's actually a one shot, though I've split it into chapters because it just seemed to work with certain moments in the story! Don't worry though, no cliffhangers; this is a happy bit of fluff! Established relationship, no angst, no San Francisco or adoptions. We can but dream. Hope you enjoy.
Holly walked round the house, turning off lights and making sure the doors were locked, humming softly under her breath as she did so. She was feeling exceptionally pleased with herself. Earlier that evening, she had entered the lion's den and lived to tell the tale. She had bitten the bullet, faced the music, conquered the demon, survived the apocalypse...tonight, Holly had attended her first Peck family dinner.
Throughout the past seven or eight months that the two of them had been together, Gail had been desperately putting Elaine off. However they had finally been cornered into going; much to Gail's disgust and Holly's trepidation. Despite the dire warnings that she had received beforehand from Gail, Steve, and even Tracy, Holly thought the meal had gone pretty well. She had impressed Elaine right from the get go with her choice of wine, and she had successfully fended off any interrogation attempts whilst still been polite and friendly. Elaine had been very complimentary of Holly's work on a recent triple shooting and was even interested in her latest journal article that was soon to be published. She had gotten on famously with Bill, bonding over a shared love of jazz and ice hockey.
Holly would have been content to escape with all of that, but as she and Gail said their goodbyes and made their way through the hallway, she spotted a framed family portrait hung on the wall. It showed a teenage Gail, stood rigidly alongside her parents and her brother who was in full dress uniform. Holly stopped to take a look and of course Elaine noticed her curiosity.
"It's a lovely picture isn't it? That was the day Steven graduated from the Academy," she told Holly.
"Yes, it is," Holly agreed, although privately she thought the shot was a little too stiff. "I've never seen any pictures of Gail when she was younger," she commented casually.
Elaine pounced on that one. "Oh Dr. Stewart, I must show you my album then! I have lots of pictures of Gail growing up!"
Holly could only nod as Elaine bustled upstairs before returning with a large leather bound photo album. From all she knew of Gail's mother, Elaine didn't seem the sentimental type and Holly was frankly surprised that she kept a family photo album. Gail's strangled groan of horror didn't escape Holly's ears and she glanced over at her girlfriend who looked as though she wanted to sprint out of the door.
Holly grinned at her, waggling her eyebrows to try and tell Gail to lighten up a bit. Everyone had embarrassing baby photos at their parents' house! However, as Elaine flicked through the album, talking Holly through the photos, she soon realised this was no ordinary album. The shots were all very formal and severe, posed for official photographers at various events over the last thirty years. There was a tiny Gail, no more than four or five years old, sat on her mother's knee with Steve and Bill stood either side in what appeared to be Elaine's office. Elaine told Holly it was after a promotion. The photos fast forwarded through the years and events; Gail at age eight saluting in the background as her mother greeted the Chief of Police, then at eleven posing with the family at an awards ceremony. The Pecks at the Commissioner's Gala dinner where the fourteen year old Gail grimaced at the camera from under her jet black hair. Elaine couldn't help commenting on Gail's "gothic phase" as she showed Holly that one. There was even Gail's high school graduation; Bill looking proud as punch, Steve grinning like an idiot and Elaine standing tall and staring steadily at the camera.
Holly enjoyed seeing her girlfriend grow up though the photographs (and secretly thought Goth Gail was hilarious) but altogether she found the album a little bit strange. It wasn't at all like the ones she knew her own parents kept, with candid shots of Holly and her siblings running round their garden or ripping open birthday presents.
Still, it was another little insight into her girlfriend's life, and Holly loved putting the pieces of Gail's jigsaw together. And it seemed to indicate that Elaine approved of Holly, which was a start. Holly grinned at herself in the bathroom mirror. She had passed the meet the parents test! She quickly brushed her teeth and strolled through to the bedroom to search out her girlfriend who had been suspiciously quiet since they had returned to Holly's home half an hour ago.
The lump in the centre of the bed explained Gail's disappearance. The blonde was rolled up in the sheets, her head buried under a pillow. Holly approached with caution and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Hey gorgeous. Whatcha doing?" she asked, softly.
"I am waiting for the ground to open up and swallow me Holly. I'm just going to lie here and wait. It's going to happen anytime soon. You should probably move away, in case you fall in too," came the muffled reply.
Holly smothered a grin. She knew Gail had been embarrassed by the pictures; her face had gone an interesting shade of crimson and once Elaine had reached the last picture, she had practically dragged Holly out of the door. "Come on Gail, it wasn't that bad..." she wheedled, tickling the duvet lump where she assumed Gail's ribs were.
Gail flipped herself over and pulled the pillow away from her face to stare at the brunette. "Are you kidding me? It was horrific!" she groaned.
"Hey, it was nowhere near as bad as you thought it was going to be. She didn't try to push you into the detective rotation, she didn't ask to see proof of my qualifications..."
"Holly!" Gail interrupted, as she wrestled with the bed sheets. "My mother liked you! You impressed her!"
Holly was confused. "Right. Isn't that a good thing?" she asked, reaching out to untangle Gail from the knotted sheets.
"Noooooooo!" wailed the blonde. "It means she will keep inviting us back!"
Gail's torso finally popped out of the sheet, and she sat up, looking at her girlfriend with such a mournful expression that Holly couldn't help but laugh. She leant over and placed a soft kiss on Gail's pouting lips.
"It's okay, honey. We can come up with a list of excuses. Maybe get Steve involved and co-ordinate our defences. In fact, I could just really piss her off next time?" Holly suggested, trying to placate her girlfriend. She kissed her again and then moved her lips along Gail's jaw line.
Gail sighed and tilted her head to give Holly better access. "Mmmm. No, nerd. It's good that they like you, of course it is," she said truthfully. She was glad that her parents had seemed to get on so well with Holly. As much as she had insisted she didn't care what the Pecks thought, she would have been devastated if her parents hadn't accepted her relationship with Holly. Even so, the photos were a step too far. "But Holly, she showed you the family album!" Gail flopped back onto the bed, covering her face with her hands.
Holly lay down next to the police officer, and stroked her fingers up and down Gail's forearm. "Well I liked seeing you as a kid", she said with a smile. "You were adorable, Gail."
"I was not," the blonde stated, lifting one hand to glare at Holly.
"Sure you were!" Holly laughed. "Even when you were mean and moody, with your jet black hair and clothes, you were still cute!"
"Stewart, you and I are going to fall out," Gail warned. "Those photos are not cute. Those photos are hideous. They're forced and fake; one boring police event after another. We look like a poster campaign from the force's recruitment office,"
Holly had to agree with her girlfriend, "Well, they are a little formal I suppose."
"They're plastic, Holly. I hate them. Why can't my family be normal and just show my new girlfriend some picture of me naked in the bath or something?"
"We could get naked in the bath now instead, if that would cheer you up?" Holly said, brightly. She took Gail's hand off her face and kissed her palm, shuffling her body closer to her girlfriend and putting her arm round her waist.
"Nothing will cheer me up Holly. I'm too depressed that you have seen the evidence of my family's weirdness and my horribly awkward teenage self," Gail replied in a dejected voice.
Holly tightened her grip on the blonde. Gail was being overly dramatic, of course she was, but she also knew that Gail was insecure about her family and childhood. Okay, so the photo album had been a little weird. But Holly wasn't sorry that she'd seen it. "You know, the fact that your mother has saved all those photos and put them together in an album shows that she really cares about you and Steve. And that she's proud of you," she told her girlfriend.
"I think it's more like those types of photos feed her illusion of the perfect family. Something to show off to the top brass,"
"How many people has she shown that book to?" Holly asked, with a flash of intuition.
Gail paused to think before answering, "I don't know. None of my ex-boyfriends have seen it. And I don't remember any of my parents' friends seeing it either."
"Well there you go then. It's not for political posturing; she cares about those photos,"
"Hmmm. Maybe," Gail replied. She frowned, wondering why her mother had suddenly chosen to make the album public. Was it her way of saying she approved of Holly? Or was it a warning of some sort?
Holly spotted the frown and tried to kiss it away to pull Gail out of her funk. "Come on, honey," she whispered softly into her girlfriend's ear. "Isn't there anything I can do to cheer you up?" she asked, slipping her hand across Gail's abdomen and drawing small circles over her hip bones. She nuzzled into Gail's neck, pressing her lips just underneath her ear.
Gail felt herself responding to Holly's touch despite her lingering embarrassment. She hated that Holly had seen her mother's bizarre collection of family photos, but her girlfriend didn't seem to be freaked out by it. Though Gail still thought it was crazy that Elaine had never showed the pictures to anyone she had bought home before. And actually, she herself had met Holly's family a couple of times now and had never seen any baby photos of her girlfriend. Holly's parents were far more emotional than her own family, the sort of family who kept photos of their children on the walls, never mind in albums. In fact, that gave her a thought. She turned onto her side to face Holly.
"Do you know what nerd, there is something you can do. You can show me yours!" she said
Holly grinned, her mind clearly still elsewhere. "Show you what now?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Photos," Gail stated. "I want to see your old photos!"
Holly stared at her. That wasn't quite what she had been insinuating and she was pretty sure that their evening could be better spent. She tried to put Gail off.
"I don't think I have any here Gail, they're probably at my parents," she said, leaning in again and nibbling at Gail's earlobe.
Gail nudged her girlfriend backwards so she could look at her directly. She was a police officer; she could smell a cover story a mile off. "Oh please. You're one of those sappy, sentimental types, Holly Stewart. Plus you're a geek. You probably stuck all your photos into albums in date order, then made a database to cross reference them according to subject matter," she said.
Holly rolled her eyes. "You couldn't be more wrong, Peck," she drawled. She trailed her hand up Gail's side and tugged her closer, trying to press her lips against the blonde's.
Gail lifted a hand and put her fingers against Holly's lips. "Prove it," she told her.
"Hmm. I can't. My photographs are definitely all at my parents," Holly replied, kissing Gail's fingertips.
"Don't believe you," Gail stated firmly. "Come on lunchbox, you've got to do better than that."
Holly pulled a face and bit the tip of Gail's index finger before flopping back onto the bed. She gave up. Clearly Gail wasn't going to let her get out of this, and the faster she saw the pictures, the sooner they could carry on with Holly's other plans. "Green box, under the bed," she said.
Gail crowed in triumph and rolled out from under the covers, dropping off the side of the bed to scrabble underneath.
"Did you just yelp?" Holly asked, hoping to wind Gail up a little. When no reply came, she shrugged her shoulders and picked up one of the journals from her bedside table. If Gail was busy, at least she could get a little reading in. She quickly got lost in the first page and therefore ignored the large green crate that was dumped unceremoniously on the other side of the bed. Gail's head popped up behind it as the blonde knelt on the floor and started to rip the packing tape away from the cardboard.
"Oh my God," Gail exclaimed, when the flipped the lid open. Inside the box was a jumbled mess; wallets of developed films from various processing companies, photo CDs with scrawled labels and hundreds of loose shots scattered amongst it all. "Dr Stewart, this is a disgrace!"
"Told you," Holly smirked. "Never got around to organising those," she said, before turning back to her journal.
Gail's attention was already elsewhere however. She grabbed a handful of photos and flicked through them, staring wide eyed as her girlfriends face skipped back and forth through various ages. This first batch all seemed to be of a teenage Holly, laughing with a group of high school friends, playing softball, even out hiking with her dad.
"You were a very gawky teenager, Hols," Gail commented.
Holly frowned at her, "Thanks babe," she muttered.
"Just saying!" Gail shrugged and she held up a shot of Holly and two friends posing by a huge Christmas tree in a mall of some sort. Holly towered over the other girls and she looked as thin as rake.
"I had very long legs as a fourteen year old. It took a while for the rest of me to catch up," Holly said, cringing at the picture.
Gail started to open some of the wallets and skimmed through them, sniggering as she went. Holly shook her head, knowing she was going to regret caving in to the blonde and letting her see some of her old pictures. To be fair, although Gail had looked mortified when Elaine bought out the album earlier, she hadn't complained too much, so Holly decided to be a good sport about it and let Gail get on with it.
"Who's this?" Gail asked suddenly, waving a photo in front of Holly's nose. The picture was a close up of Holly with her arms wrapped round another brunette, both of them grinning up at the camera with their cheeks pressed together.
Holly looked over her glasses at the photo and winced. "That would be my ex girlfriend, Jules," she told the blonde. Gail's lip curled, but she didn't say anything, simply continuing to flip through the packet of photos. Holly watched her girlfriend for any sign of a reaction, wondering if jealous Gail was about to make an appearance. "That was taken seven or eight years ago. We drove down to Niagara that week, stayed for a few days..." she said conversationally.
"Yeah. I can see," was Gail's short reply, as she briefly flashed a photo of the same girl in front of the famous waterfall. Gail continued to look at the Niagara photos, checking each one carefully before finally reaching the end of the roll. She shoved them back into the wallet. "I don't like her," she stated flatly.
"I would stay away from any of those other yellow wallets then maybe," Holly said, suppressing a smile.
Gail tossed the yellows to one side and gazed at some of the single photos she uncovered, which appeared to be of Holly aged eleven or twelve with her brother at a Maple Leafs game. Holly went back to the journal, but was soon interrupted again.
"Prom!" yelled the cop excitedly, as she read the front of a blue photo pack.
Holly groaned and dropped the journal over her face. "I don't like you right now," she said from under the paper.
Gail grinned happily at her and pulled the stack of photos from the wallet, silently betting herself ten dollars that these were going to be priceless. She stopped short at the first sight of Holly in a midnight blue ball gown, her hair pinned up on top of her head with soft tendrils falling around her face. This young woman couldn't be further away from the slightly awkward teenager of three of four years earlier. "Oh wow, Hols. Stunning," she said softly.
"Urgh," Holly grunted, still hiding under her research article.
"No, seriously," Gail insisted. "You look incredible in these." She flipped through the first few individual shots, and some of Holly with her parents, before stopping again when a young man appeared. "Hey, is this your date?" she asked, stretching up to pull the sheaf of papers from Holly's face.
"Yep. Mark Lyons. He was a really good guy actually," Holly said, smiling at the picture.
"He's cute," Gail observed. "So were you dating, dating him, or just Prom dating him?" she asked curiously. She hadn't really spoken to Holly about boyfriends before.
The doctor turned her smile on her girlfriend, amused that Gail hadn't seemed to take an instant dislike to Mark in the same way she had with Jules. She took the photo from Gail and explained, "Mark was my best friend in high school. We did date for a little while when we were around sixteen, kind of because we got along so well that it felt like the next natural step, you know? But it was never right for either of us, so we ended up just being friends,"
"Friends with an ex? Never a good idea, Lunchbox," Gail said. "So how did you end up going to prom with him then, if you were just friends?" She continued scanning through the photos, smirking at one of Holly and Mark pulling ridiculous faces at the camera.
"Well, neither of us were dating anyone around prom time. To be honest, as I got a little older, I began to realise that I was gay, probably around the end of high school. Mark was one of the few people I spoke to about it. And he was so cool about it all; he really helped me through it, though I still never came out until college. Anyway, we decided that as neither of us were attached and neither of us had our eye on anyone to ask, we'd have far more fun if we went together. Who did you go with?"
"Oh God, Jason Bouchard," Gail replied, looking absolutely disgusted. "He smuggled in a bottle of rum, spiked the punch, got drunk and tried to feel me up on the dance floor. I kicked him in the nuts and broke the heel off my shoe. And he wasn't as hot as your Mark," she said with a pout.
"Teenage dramas, hey?" Holly smiled ruefully. "Mark and I both spent most of prom staring at the same girl!"
Gail reached the last of the collection of prom photos and pushed them back into their wallet. "Never mind Hols. I bet half the boys in that hall, and probably a few of the girls were checking you out that night. Looking this fantastic, you'd have strolled in and heads would have turned. No more gawky teenager, right?!"
"Oh I felt gawky, believe me. I spent the whole night fiddling with my dress. When the party was finished, Mark and I got changed into our jeans and climbed onto the roof of his parents' house to look at the stars," Holly told her.
"Nerd," Gail replied, rolling her eyes. The doctor simply nodded in agreement, picking up her journal article again and waving it in Gail's direction. She vaguely noticed the blonde go back to the box and start to sift through another batch of photos, before becoming immersed in her reading once again.
Gail held up a single photo of a tiny toddler, sat in a washing basket and pointing up at the camera. She glanced back and forth between the picture and the woman in front of her, trying to see Holly's features in her childish face. As a baby, Holly had huge eyes that were the same deep brown as they were now, and Gail could even spot the half smile that she sort of considered Holly's trademark. It was stupid, but she was fascinated by this box of photos and all that she could learn from it. Seeing her beautiful girlfriend grow and change was amazing; it almost felt like Gail had known her longer and knew her better. And some of these were just so damn cute as well; this next one of Holly and her mom sharing a fierce hug for instance. Gail suddenly had an image of Holly one day holding her own young daughter like this flash through her mind, and an unexpected warmth spread through her body. She felt her face flush and quickly set the toddler photo aside.
As Gail lifted more snapshots of young Holly out of the box, she spotted a large brown envelope buried at the bottom of the crate. She pulled it free and flipped over the flap at the top to peer inside. Her mouth dropped open in shock.
"Oh my God!" she shrieked.
"Hmm? What?" Holly asked distractedly, still reading her research paper.
"Holly Stewart, you keep porn in your box of treasured childhood memories!" Gail exclaimed in a high pitched tone, her eyes wide and her eyebrows raised. She stared at her girlfriend, waiting for an explanation.
