Thank you once again to Serenbex, Girisha1 and HMbookqueen for your lovely reviews! I'm so grateful for your support, it means so much.
Also thank you to HMbookqueen for favouriting/following me, you lovely person, it's much appreciated.
Oh and to Girisha1... First of all, I'm sorry I couldn't update before now but, like you, I started college on Monday and I was very busy, so apologies all round on that score. However, as promised, I've got some Stevie/Smithy for you in this chapter, so I hope that makes up for the delay in updating.
Enjoy! ;)
"Sarge?"
Harriet glanced up from her position leaning against the custody desk and frowned. Stepping sideways, she peered round the corner to see who'd shouted her, dragging the fan along the desk to keep her cool in the mid-August heat.
"Ben?" Harriet frowned as the PC held open the double doors at the end of the corridor.
"DS Turner's just got back; shall I ask him to interview Hayley Rhodes with me?" Harriet nodded and informed the PC that Emma was in Interview room one with the suspect.
In the four months since she'd transferred to SunHill, a fair amount had happened. There'd been four new PC's arrive and Nikki Wright had transferred out of SunHill a few weeks ago, with her replacement, Rachel Weston, arriving a fortnight ago .
Harriet had settled in well with the relief. Stevie and Jo, in particular, had become close friends with the uniform Sergeant and the trio had become well known around the station for their regular wind up's on Smithy and Mickey. However, people still didn't know much about the brunette's past and Harriet wasn't about to enlighten them.
Unsurprisingly, her relationship with Callum hadn't improved, either, since her first day but the Inspector continually paired them together regardless, only separating them when the other was sent to work on the custody desk or their tempers got the better of them. Inspector Gold had had them in her office at least twice in the past month after one of their bust ups.
She grinned at Smithy as the man appeared beside her and loped an arm around her neck. Her smile faded when she spotted Callum and Millie heading out of one of the interview rooms, the man aiming a cold look in her direction.
"What's wrong with you?" Smithy glanced at the look on Harriet's face.
"Sergeant Sensitive." Harriet sighed as she leant against the inside of the desk. Smithy peered round the corner and smirked as he spotted his colleagues.
"I reckon the Inspector paired him with Millie so he could show off his people skills."
Harriet snorted. "I've nicked people with better people skills than him."
"Don't let Stone hear you saying that!" Smithy grinned as there was suddenly a loud crash and a few choice swear words before Stevie appeared beside the desk. Grinning at the two Uniform Sergeants, she folded her arms.
"Alright, loves?" The blonde leant against the wall as Harriet snorted at her friend's obvious attempts to check out Smithy's bum without been caught by the man.
"Well I was but it seems you, calamity Jane, have disturbed the peace in my calm custody suite."
Stevie grinned at her close friend. "Gotta make an entrance."
"What'd you want anyway, Moss?" Harriet leaned over and pressed the release button to the door of the custody suite for Tony and Leon.
"It's Friday," Stevie replied, pushing herself off the wall as the two officers entered with a young man. "And it's been a shit week so I reckon were well over due a night on the tiles"
"Am I invited?" Smithy called from his position crouched on the floor helping Leon search the man.
"If you're buying us drinks, then of course, love."
"Anything for you, Moss" Smithy shot back as he stood up and winked at the detective, placing the man's possessions on the desk. Harriet looked up from filling in the entry form and caught Leon's eye, smirking at the flirting occurring between Smithy and the blonde.
"So I'll see you at the Blah bar at eight, then?" Stevie turned and surveyed the four officers stood beside her.
"Rule me out." Tony responded with a laugh as he scribbled his signature on the bottom of the form Harriet had just pushed towards him. "I'm done with wild nights out. It's not worth the week long hangover."
Stevie rolled her eyes as Harriet grabbed the cell keys from under the desk and led Leon and the newly booked in prisoner towards the cells. "You three?"
"Of course we are." Smithy responded with a grin. "This is Harriet and Leon's first night out at SunHill."
"Better stock up on painkillers, then." Stevie shared a smirk with Smithy as Leon raised his eyebrows at Harriet who simply shook her head in response.
X-X
"Harriet!" The brunette spun round from her position in the doorway to the bar as she heard her name being called. Spotting various members of SunHill taking up the far corner of the bar they'd all agreed to meet at, she smiled and walked over to join them.
Dropping into the seat beside Will, she caught Jo's eye from across the table and the detective leant forward, smiling softly. "You look gorgeous." Jo whispered, sensing her colleague's nervousness.
"Are you hitting on me, Ms Masters?" Harriet replied with a nervous smirk.
"Oh, don't. I've already had Mickey rabbiting on about whether I'm on the pull tonight" Jo rolled her eyes. "Don't let him hear you saying that, you'll send his tiny mind into overdrive."
"And we can't be having that, can we?" The two brunettes shared a grin as Stevie sauntered over to their table, a large glass of red wine clutched tightly in her hand.
"Har!" The blonde launched herself at the uniform Sergeant. By the looks of things, it appeared as if Stevie had already been here a while. "Have you got a drink? Where's your drink? Will, be a gent and go and buy Harriet a drink. What you drinking?"
The TDC laughed and shook his head at the blonde. "What you having, then, Sarge?"
"It's Harriet out of work, Will." Harriet attempted to disentangle herself from the tiny woman sprawled across her and the bench she was sat on. "Vodka and Lime, thanks, love."
As Will disappeared towards the bar with Mickey, she managed to manoeuvre Stevie from on top of her and position her beside her on the bench. Spotting the blonde eyeballing someone stood beside the steps leading to the main part of the bar, she leaned forward to see who it was and smirked as she spotted Smithy staring back at the blonde. Spotting the Sergeant watching him knowingly, he quickly turned away as Stevie muttered something about going to get another drink and left the bench. When Harriet glanced back, Smithy was gone.
"Those two are unbelievably obvious." Sam muttered as she shook her head and took a gulp of her drink. "It's almost embarrassing."
"Especially seen as one of them is a detective." Harriet grinned as Will returned and placed the woman's drink in front of her.
Sam and Jo chuckled as the older woman placed her glass on the table. "So, did you know anyone at SunHill before you transferred here?"
"Not anyone who works here now," Harriet took a sip of her drink. "But I knew one of your old officers."
"Who?" Sam and Mickey chimed in unison.
"PC Cameron Tait." Sam's eyes widened slightly at the name.
"How the hell did you know Cameron?" The blonde frowned.
"I took three months leave from the job when I was twenty three" Harriet folded her arms. "That must have been… 1997. I'd been doing it for five years at that point and I wanted to see some more of the world and so I went to Australia with a few friends. Cameron was mates with this bloke who started seeing one of my friends. He was 21, I think, and it seemed like he was fairly new to being a copper at the time and when he found out I was a cop, we ended up latching onto each other."
"Did anything happen between you?" Mickey asked.
"No way. We were just mates." Harriet laughed and shook her head.
Silence descended upon the table until the sound of heels clicking sharply on the ground distracted them and they glanced up at Stevie, who was clutching Smithy's wrist with one hand and her drink with the other. Her makeup looked slightly smeared and her hair was ruffled. Shaking her head, Harriet grinned as she realised what her friend had been up to.
"Sally just rang; her, Nate and Kezia have just come off shift so their gonna meet us at the club." The blonde took a gulp of her drink and staggered slightly. "You guys coming?"
"No thanks, Stevie;" Sam drained her glass and stood up, collecting her things. "Abi's going on a hen do tomorrow so I'm looking after Rose and trust me, a hangover and a three year old do not mix well"
Similarly, Will, Emma, Banksy, Stuart and Ben opted out of going to the club as they all had early starts the following day. Once it seemed that the remaining officers were willing to head down to the club with her, Stevie beamed and started gathering up her things.
Following the crowd of tipsy officers out of the bar, Harriet put her arm around the petite blonde stood beside her, partially out of fondness but mostly to make sure she didn't fall over.
"You're a dirty girl!" Harriet whispered in her ear with a grin.
The blonde giggled. "It was just a snog, babe, and anyway, he's bloody hot!"
