A/N: This has been sitting on my phone for far too long. Anyway. Some of you might remember toast girl. Long story short: I had a lot of emotions for a girl that used give me toast, she left before I could make my emotions known.

This is a semi retelling of that story with a few fundamental changes to make myself and toast girl a bit more Gail and Holly like.


Gail was dying and nobody cared.

She should have stayed home in the warm depths of her bed, yet here she was, slowly creeping up the track towards her stop on the train. Possibly her final stop. A hard cough ripped from her chest. Yes. Gail was definitely dying, and not for the first time that morning she cursed her dying mind for thinking it was good idea to start the commute.

The train jerked into the station, and Gail sniffled loudly as the doors opened, blasting her with cold air.

It was winter. She was dying in the harsh, harsh depths of winter. At least it would be a mildly poetic death.

Gail was sure there was something she had done terribly wrong in a former life. There was no other explanation for the fact she was dying and currently having to push her way through a crowd of ungrateful commuters to get to work. She smiled at the familiar tingling in her nose, and the blonde drew in a quick breath.

The effect was akin to something Gail had once seen in a documentary; when the twitchy herd of wildebeast realised there was in fact a crocodile in front of them. Gail was the crocodile. They were the wildebeast.

The sneeze was quick, hard and effective. The crowd in front of her scattered, giving her room to finally exit the carriage. Reaching out, Gail had to steady her swaying body on the bald head of the only person still trying to push past her.

She wasn't entirely sure how she made it up the steps, or how she made it down the steps on the other side of the walkway. All Gail knew was the small cafe she occasionally visited was less than two minutes away. It was going to save her life, preserve her very existence, make the world a better place. It was going to supply her with coffee. All she needed was one cup, just one small cup and she wouldn't be dying any more.

Letting out a frustrated groan, Gail waited as car after car continued to block her route. She timed her run perfectly. At least... In her mind she had planned a run. What actually happened was a slow amble, her muscles aching and protested at every step her barely moving feet were making.

If she had more energy she might have sworn at the car horn that blared at her. The warmth of the cafe wrapped around her, warming her cold gloveless hands.

"Awww, sweetie. You're not looking too good." The woman on the other side of the counter greeted.

In the three months, nine days of working in the office block across the street, Gail had never once seen the stranger before. With her long brown hair and ridiculous lop sided smile, Gail would have remembered her. The woman pushed her glasses up her nose and dropped the book she was reading onto the counter.

"Col-" Gail's voice wheezed before outright giving up and turning into a breathy whimper. This was not the first impression she wanted to make. "Der." In that moment, Gail wanted to throw herself into the glass casing of the counter. It had gone from bad to horrific, and Gail wanted to go right back to dying again.

"I'm translating that as you have a cold?" The stranger asked.

Gail didn't trust her voice to not make her look like a complete imbecile again. Instead she nodded. The moment her head tilted forwards, she regretted her choice. The low thrum of her headache was suddenly sending spikes of pain across her temple and she grumbled incoherently at the feeling. The other woman was smiling though and making the most ridiculous cooing noises that just made Gail want to curl up and disappear.

Gail did not need to be cooed at. She was Gail God Damn Peck. The same Gail who had once tackled what turned out to be an armed robber to the floor. The same Gail who was one day going to be the meanest, most bad ass police officer Canada had ever seen.

At least she would be if she survived this plague.

"Tell you what, sit down there and I'll make you some toast. On the house."

Gail wanted to protest, because the woman was clearly new, and giving away food when you were new was definitely not how to keep your new job. Unfortunately, her voice chose that moment to fail her. Once again, Gail wheezed.

"I'm Holly by the way, just started over the weekend. Do you come here often?" The brunette asked over her shoulder as she popped a slice of bread in the toaster.

"Gail." Swallowing, the blonde tried to desperately hold back the cough she could feel building. "Yes."

It would have to do, and Gail felt like screaming because Holly had left herself wide open. There was a definitely a witty response Gail could have hit back with to impress her, but she was dying and all her mind could come up with was a jumbled mess of cat metaphors.

"You're not dying. Trust me, I'm going to be a doctor one day." Holly paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Sort of."

Gail groaned. In her sickened, fevered state, she had said something aloud. Her eyes widened horror. She had most definitely thought about how beautiful Holly was, and oh God, what if she had said that aloud too?

"Hey, did I call you beautiful out loud?" Why was her voice suddenly so clear? Why couldn't it have stayed stuck at a pathetic wheeze? "I think I'm dying."

Let no one say Gail couldn't recover from a potentially embarrassing situation.

Holly lifted a single eyebrow. "Of a cold or embarrassment?"

Gail couldn't answer, at least not in a way that wasn't going to somehow end in her accidentally propositioning the other woman. "Both."

"Well," Holly smiled as she scrapped a knob of butter across the freshly popped toast. "If you don't die, maybe you should come visit again."

Gail stared at her blankly. She had just sniffled her way into the cafe, her pale skin practically grey, and her nose redder than she had ever seen it. Yet here was toast girl inviting her back. Gail's mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she tried to come up with a response that would in some way reassure Holly that she wasn't a completely disaster.

"You too." Gail finally replied, her eyes closing at Holly's bemused expression.

Even is she did survive, there was no way Gail could ever go back.


A/N: There will be further chapters at some point.
Hope everyone had a good holidays :)