I.

Holly is cleaning up in her kitchen when she hears a car pull up in front of her house. She looks out of the window over her front yard to see a familiar figure clambering out of the passenger seat. She turns to put some of her newly cleaned plates in her cupboard, and when she turns back to look out of the window again, Gail is walking up the front path, looking at her phone, and Steve is pulling away in his dark SUV. Returning to polishing her kitchenware, Holly looks up again only moments later when she hears the front door being pushed open.

She can tell before she's even properly laid eyes on the police officer, just from the way Holly can hear her coming through the door, that the Gail who has entered her home this evening is once again a violent storm of bottled up emotions on the brink of explosion. There is no hesitancy in the way she opens the front door and no particular care in the manner in which she closes it again. This is not the crumbling, fragile woman of an hour ago. Both are highly emotional and dangerously volatile; but in the hospital, all the defences Gail had built up had faded into nothing, she had made it clear that she needed someone to hold her and help her make it through the hours. Now, those walls have returned, higher than Holly has ever seen them, and it is clear that this Gail is not searching for someone's shoulder to cry on.

And whilst Holly knows that suppressing emotions of this intensity does nothing to actually make you feel better, and certainly does not make them go away, she also knows Gail. She knows that Gail certainly does not appreciate others trying to worm their way, uninvited, in to join her in the wasp's nest she buries herself in and force her into the head on confrontation with the feelings she so desperately avoids.

So when Gail comes charging into her kitchen with clearly no intention of stopping to dissect her feelings with Holly, the brunette knows she has to attempt to find a way of halting the one woman war path without making Gail feel Holly is pressuring her into opening up to her.

"Hey… You hungry?" She tries, knowing that on most days, food would be one of the vices of Gail's that may be able to distract her from the task of ensuring that her defences were steadfast and unyielding.

Gail, however, is opening and closing Holly's cupboard doors, in a desperate search for something Holly thinks she can guess the identity of.

"Nope, I only want alcohol."

Yep, she was right. Unfortunately. The other of Gail's vices. The one far more likely to facilitate a potentially dangerous eruption of emotions, an eruption Holly is slightly fearful of witnessing.

"Uh, um, it's up there." Holly knows that attempting to stand between Gail and her liquor cupboard would be one of the more futile tasks she attempts in her life. "But why don't you eat something first?" She knows before she says it that the chances of that succeeding in slowing Gail down are virtually nil, but she can't not try.

"Yeah okay, if it's got alcohol in it." Gail is unable to look Holly directly in the eye yet; the brunette notices the lack of eye contact and her heart sinks slightly. It doesn't bother her that Gail marches around her kitchen with the confidence of someone who owns it, as it would some people. Because that's just Gail, and Holly holds great affection for the way Gail pays no heed to those sorts of societal norms. But that she won't look at her after exposing so many of her vulnerabilities such a short time ago; that stings a little.

"You okay?" Holly tries, giving up on trying to distract her, but trying not to sound too probing.

"I'm fine, not like I'm the one who got shot." The bite to Gail's tone doesn't surprise Holly in the least, but she finds herself compelled to keep trying to get Gail to open up even though she knows the likely outcome is that the blonde is just going to push her away.

"Maybe we shouldn't have left the hospital."

"Holly, there are thirty other cops waiting around, there's really no point me being there. Nobody's looking for my shoulder to cry on." Gail finally makes eye contact with the other woman, but there is no warmth in her eyes.

It breaks Holly's heart that Gail believes nobody cares about her. She hates that Gail feels alone and isolated and disliked, when there is so much about her to adore. "Gail…" she tries, wanting to wrap her up in her arms and make her feel loved, but it doesn't take anywhere near Holly's level of intelligence to know quite how much of a bad idea that would be right now.

"You know what though? We could go back as the big… gay distraction. Yeah, let's… let's give people something to talk about. I mean, now that I've come out to my brother that juicy bit of news is just gonna… spread like herpes." Gail almost looks gleeful as she says it, and Holly's heart feels heavy. She pours herself another glass and grabs the bottle, carrying both upstairs to where she can deal with her emotions in the way she always does; alone, and with hard liquor. "There's no going back now, girlfriend. There ain't no going back." She says without looking back as she marches up the stairs, stepping slightly more heavily than is probably entirely necessary.

Holly watches her leave, letting out a long, slow, sigh as she does so. But she knew, from the day she met her, that Gail is a package deal, and the tendency to become this closed off and belligerent when she feels this vulnerable is part of that package. She can do little but hope that Gail will learn that she can open up to her, that she can trust her and know that Holly will think no less of her for doing so, even if she won't with anyone else.

And to Gail's credit this is the first time she has lashed out at Holly; she knows, from what Gail has told her, and from what she's overheard from other officers at the morgue, that it is usually a fairly regular occurrence. And this has been a far more draining day than most.

She forces herself to stop concentrating on justifying Gail's impertinence to herself, and get something to eat. Gail may be happy surviving on Bourbon for the night, but Holly needs actual sustenance. She'll have a bowl of cereal and a mug of hot chocolate, and then, if she hasn't reappeared in ten minutes, she'll search out the antagonistic blonde roaming her second floor.

II.

It's actually fifteen minutes before Holly decides to head upstairs, concerned that if she forces her way into Gail's personal space before she's had the time to calm down a little, she will lash out again. As she climbs the stairs she can hear music, which as she walks down her hallway she identifies as coming from her bathroom.

She stops and knocks on the door. "Gail? How much longer are you going to be in there?" She calls, but there is no reply. "Hey. Please confirm existence." She tries again, starting to worry slightly about what may be happening on the other side of the door. She was at least expecting Gail to shout something biting back at her, not to be received by complete silence.

"I'm coming in." She calls again, before cautiously pushing the door open. She pokes her head around the piece of wood separating her from the blonde, and she certainly could not say that the sight before her is one she expected. Gail is leaning over her sink; her ponytail, severed from the rest of her hair by Holly's scissors, in her right hand, while the scissors lay next to her left.

"Who cares right? It's only hair." Gail says, all the harshness that was in her voice a quarter of an hour ago evaporated.

This was it, this was the emotional eruption Holly had been wary of. It was more mellow, but no less drastic, than the hysterical tantrum she was expecting.

Holly takes the reduction in the combative tone of Gail's voice as an indication that the walls that were earlier keeping Holly out have crumbled again, and that she can enter the room, turning the music down as she does so.

"So, this is happening?" She says, aware that she needs to speak but not entirely sure how exactly to deal with this unfolding breakdown.

"Yeah," Gail replies as if it's the most normal thing in the world. "I saw your scissors and I just thought oh, 'yaaay', there's something I can just… rewind." Gail steps backwards and sits herself on the floor, leaning back against Holly's dresser, severed ponytail in hand. She looks up at Holly. "You see this inch, this inch is from the academy. This inch is from the first six months on the job. This inch is from when I was dating Chris. That part's when Jerry died. And then you see these last few inches. That's round two with Nicholas." She explains, waving the symbol of all that has caused her hurt and pain in the past few years out in front of her as she speaks. She reaches again for the bourbon bottle and taking a swig as Holly approaches her.

"Okay, but honey…" the brunette starts to say as she lowers herself down to take a seat.

"No, look, look, look," Gail interjects. "There's literally no bad inches 'cause I'm just gonna go back to the beginning and I'm rewinding everything and I…" She lifts her hands up to touch her hair, and the reality of what she has done seems to dawn on her. She emits a sound that Holly can't work out is more a sob or a laugh. "Oh my God, what I do? What I do?"

She raises her hand to her mouth to cover what is now most definitely the start of a sob as Holly speaks.

"You cut off all your hair."

Gail emerges from behind the hands she was using to hide her whimpers so that she can speak. "I'm freaking out a little bit aren't I?"

Holly nods, unable to hide the slight bemusement at the current situation. "Yeah." She sees Gail nodding slightly too. "But that's okay."

Gail looks up at her incredulously. "I have to go to work in the morning, Holly. Look at me."

"The hair situation isn't ideal." Holly agrees, trying to give her an encouraging smile. "But this has been such an intense day for you. That stress was going to manifest itself somehow. I went through medical school, I saw more dramatic reactions to stress than this every year at exam time. Sometimes you just need to do something crazy to release it. And I might be able to fix the hair, if you'll let me?"

Gail nods slowly. "You'd do that?"

Holly smiles and ducks to look into Gail's eyes. "Of course. Get in the tub, I'll get the scissors."

III.

Gail climbs over the edge of the bath and sits herself down in the middle, whilst Holly positions herself on the edge, and starts work on shaping the brutal haircut into some sort of style. They speak only for Holly to confirm that Gail is fine with the direction Holly is taking her haircut in, the silence otherwise allowing Holly to concentrate on doing a respectable job with the scissors, and Gail to mull over the events of the past few hours.

It overwhelms Gail to look up at Holly and feel herself overcome with affection for the brunette before her. More affection than she ever anticipated. And certainly more than she would admit to out loud. But that overwhelming feeling becomes more bearable to her with each thing Holly does for her. By turning up to the hospital, letting her raid her cupboards for alcohol without complaint, and now by sitting here sorting out the mess she had made of her hair, Holly is actually, somehow, successfully showing Gail that she is someone she could, for the first time in her life, really, really rely on. She is opening Gail up to the idea of letting someone into her life, and she doesn't completely hate it.

But as she'd stood in front of that mirror with Holly's pair of scissors in her hand, she'd known that as much as she was slowly accepting the depth of her feelings for the brunette, it didn't either make her entirely comfortable. These feelings so new, and intense, and worryingly dependent on another human soul. A human soul so close to perfection as it was possible to get that it made her feel woefully inadequate. With her history of screwing up and hurting people, she was an incredibly poor example of a person who should be in an intimate relationship with someone. History had proven that one to be true.

But her relationship with the universe wasn't a one way thing. She'd given the world shit, but the world had delivered her equal amounts of shit in return. Perick, that fucking undercover assignment Nick and McNally went on, that first year on the job when all the rookies but Chris looked at her like her being there was causing them some major offense, her mother, Chris dumping her solely for letting someone else in under her defences, this whole Ford thing. She just wanted to forget it all, be someone new, someone better. And that was when the hair came off. She thinks. She was riding quite the emotional high at the time, so who knows what ideas were being fed into her mind by those hormones.

And the alcohol. That probably didn't help either.

Holly was right, there had been something cathartic about slicing off a large chunk of her hair, like she was releasing a weight of negative energy she had pent up inside her; lingering anger at the world and the way it had treated her in the past few years.

She is still trying to negotiate the complex maze that is her emotional state as Holly is finishing up on her hair. And all she's really found is that she really, really wants to let Holly know just how much she cares about her. To make sure she is completely aware that the fact that she is a woman doesn't bother her, and that she just wants to be with her. She's always going to be a mess, but she wants to be Holly's mess. But of course, because she is such a mess, actually conveying that is something Gail considers quite problematic. The idea of exposing so much of herself, even to Holly, terrifies her. She already knows Holly could destroy her.

Or even worse, she could hurt Holly. She knows she has already. The desperately anguished look on her face when she'd compared the news of their relationship to a venereal disease, and even earlier when she straight up rejected her before heading out to find Ford; that was proof that Gail was incapable of having anyone in her life who she couldn't cause hurt to when she was feeling lost or angry. And it had been hurtful; it wasn't just the regular snark she dished out on a daily basis to keep herself amused; Holly gave as good as she got when it came to that, it was one of the many things Gail liked about her. She had been explicitly harsh to her in a way that screamed 'I really don't want to be around you right now'. And she hated herself for it. But here Holly was, nonetheless, fixing her hair like no hurtful words had ever been said. No-one else would do that for her. But Gail knows, even when she tries, she is incapable of preventing herself lashing out at the people she cares most about when she's hurting. She has never been able to prevent herself from being so impetuous, and she resents herself for it.

Because this, this impudence… this is normal to her, it's comfortable. Tearing up in front of her colleagues whilst someone strokes her hand, exposing herself in front of almost everyone she knows; that perturbs her, looking back on it makes her feel anxious and self-conscious. At the time, when she was ravaging her friend's kitchen in search of liquor, she'd been almost proud of the fact that in the heat of the moment Holly's slightly crestfallen expression wasn't making her stop or feel guilty. But now, with the time that has passed and the hair that has been lost since she stormed up Holly's stairs without a second thought, she feels awful. She hates that she can do that, that she knows she can't stop herself from being a cold-hearted bitch.

But for all those concerns about causing hurt and getting hurt, Gail just really wants to go back to the warmth and comfort of kissing the beautiful woman in front of her. To forget about everything else that has happened in the past days and just be with Holly. Feel her and hold her, and be felt and be held. And as an added bonus that may help with the 'letting Holly know that she wants to be her mess' thing.

"Urgh, life." Gail murmurs eventually, staring vacantly at a spot on the wall behind Holly.

"I know right, who needs it?"

"You can plan, plan and prepare but it doesn't really matter because things just go where they're gonna go."

"Yep, sort of like this cow lick." Holly smiles to herself at the comparison.

"I'm sitting in a bathtub, waiting to hear if my friends are still alive, drinking bourbon with the coolest chick ever. And I have no hair." Gail looks up at Holly as she says it, and sees the corners of her mouth turn up at the use of the term 'coolest chick ever'.

"Not exactly a fairy tale."

"No." Gail murmurs, unable to take her eyes off the face of the woman in front of her.

"Still kinda beautiful though." Holly sets the scissors down and reaches forwards to hold Gail's chin, and the blonde is immediately grateful for the re-establishment of physical contact between them.

"Oh really?" Gail continues to look deep into Holly's eyes, unable to hide her scepticism.

"Yeah." Holly says it with such warmth and heart, that any lingering doubts and fears Gail had in her head at that moment are washed away, and she finds her gaze, not lessening in intensity, dropping to the lips of the brunette woman crouching in front of her.

Holly cups her cheeks with both hands, tenderly stroking her thumbs across her cheeks as she does so, drawing their faces closer together. For the first time in memory, Gail's desire to run is almost completely absent, and she can't help but continue to watch Holly's lips intently. Whilst the brunette is the one who moves most of the way to meet Gail's lips with her own, the younger woman does lean into it and falls into the kiss just as willingly as Holly from the moment their lips first collide.

Gail marvels at the tenderness of the encounter; slower and softer than their urgent and desperate dalliance in the interrogation room. She feels security in the way Holly's hands ever so slowly move down her jaw, whilst still cupping her cheeks affectionately. And whilst she craves more of Holly; to hold more and feel more and experience more, she also wants to stay in this pure and gentle moment forever.

It feels like an age before Holly pulls back, when it is only a matter of seconds, but what does the truth matter in comparison to this incredible, reality distorting chemistry?

When Holly speaks, she does so quietly. "Come on, let's wash this mess down the drain." She says, her forehead lingering in its position, resting against Gail's own. If Gail weren't so swept away by the passion of the moment she would probably have taken a moment to be impressed with the double meaning to Holly's words.

Gail barely registers that they are standing up, so lost is she in Holly; her face, her scent, her lips. She barely has steadied herself on her feet before she has to pull Holly back to her with a hand behind her head, their lips already apart for too long for her liking. Holly seems to have the same idea, her hand reaching up to her jaw, long fingers stretching around her neck, tickling the skin which would formerly have been covered by her peroxide tresses.

Their kisses start tender, however Gail feels herself giving more, and needing more, and their kiss gathers in intensity in a way that would have left them breathless and gasping for air if Holly hadn't, to Gail's surprise and confusion, broken away to drop down and turn on the water to the showerhead.

"What are you doing?" She asks vacantly, still lost in their embrace, not removing her hand from its hold on Holly's side until the rush of cold water to the top of her head causes her extremities to spasm in shock.

"Oh my God, it's freezing!" She screams. Every muscle in her body clenches as the coldness spreads from her head to her toes. Even the warmth from Holly, whose arms have returned to wrap around Gail's body and hold her close can't prevent the involuntary movements her body is making and distract her from the overwhelming chill that is making her groan out in horror.

Not until Holly's hands return to her cheeks and her mouth is once again enveloping her own, that is. She is still giggling in shock when their lips first collide, but it does not take much for her to fall back into the passion of their kiss, her hands first grasping Holly's shoulders before moving up to hold her face. The pounding cold on the back of her neck is forgotten, along with everything else in the world; their hands holding each other's faces in this place and time, except for a brief moment when some instinct tells Holly to grasp Gail's hand in encouragement.

And Gail takes it, slipping her tongue past Holly's lips, eager to taste again what she only so momentarily got to experience what felt like days earlier in that interrogation room.

Every so often Gail can feel Holly's lips curling up into a smile against her own, and they break apart for mere moments, not breaking their holds on each other's faces, for Gail to succumb to an involuntary excited and slightly dumbfounded giggle. Which only causes Holly's smile to grow greater until one or the other of them deepens their kiss again.

They stay like this, their hands rooted on each other's heads, keeping the other from pulling back too far, although it is clear to both neither has any intention of doing so. It feels like desire, but not just a desire for sexual gratification; a desire to hold and cherish as well as to discover.

Their foreheads eventually come to a rest upon each other's, so they can only breathe in each other's air and can only smell each other's scent.

Gail enjoys the intimacy and comfort of Holly's hands caressing her cheeks. She opens her eyes to see that Holly's glasses have been completely covered with water, obscuring the view of her entrancing dark irises, and loosens her grip on Holly's cranium slightly in order to slide them off her face. She holds them tightly in her hands as she reaches around to grasp Holly's waist, slipping her glasses into her back pocket as she does so.

Holly smiles and opens her eyes, making eye contact immediately with the blonde in front of her. She glances down quickly towards Gail's nervous smile before returning to look deeply into those eyes that are surveying the movements of her face so intently.

Her eyes drift shut again as she speaks. "I should turn off the water."

Gail nods slightly but makes no moves to loosen the grasp on Holly's waist. Holly strokes her cheek with her thumb and Holly can feel the grip tighten.

Holly lets out a long breath that Gail can feel against her face. The brunette ghosts her lips against the other woman's cheeks as she finally moves to turn the shower off, Gail's hands never removing themselves from Holly as she does so.

When she stands again she kisses her way up Gail's neck before returning to rest their foreheads against each other again, eyes closed.

"I'm sorry." Gail murmurs, her eyelids fluttering open so she can try and read Holly's eyes, but when she sees that they are closed to, she gives up and shuts them again.

"For what?"

"This evening. I didn't mean to get all 'me' on you. I just wanted to go to bed and hold you but I guess I… got all freaked out or whatever."

"We can still do that."

"I don't know if I want to anymore."

Holly's eyes snap open, but before she has a chance to vocalise whatever made them do so, Gail has pulled her back into a kiss.

Holly's left hand buries itself in Gail's newly cut hair as her right returns to trace her jawline. Gail feels her shudder against her hand as it slips under her shirt and trace the skin of her lower back. In response, Holly's right hand drops to grip Gail's backside and pull them somehow even closer together.

Gail feels a burning as Holly's hand pulls them tight against each other, and her hands roam slowly further up the other woman's back, marvelling at the smooth, wet skin they find there. She pulls herself from the kiss to look Holly in the eye, tugging her shirt even higher as she does so.

Holly looks at her deeply for a moment before nodding slightly and Gail pulls the shirt up over her head and throws it on the bathroom floor, the water it has soaked up causing it to land with quite a thump.

Holly leans in slightly but Gail lifts a hand to her cheeks and holds her back gently, as she steps back slightly, leaving Holly's arms resting loosely on her shoulders; and drops both of her own hands to run slowly down Holly's side and across her chest, gliding over the muscles of her torso. Her eyes follow her movements closely, absorbing every centimetre of olive skin she can find. She is captivated by its smoothness, by the way she goes from being soft at the curves of her waist, to hard and toned across her abs. She is particularly taken by the plain silver stud she finds at her bellybutton, and the dark moles she discovers occasionally dotted across her frame. She circles each a couple of times before continuing her journey.

Holly makes no attempt to halt Gail's exploration, her eyes following the blonde's own as the move around her body. Every so often Gail will trace her fingers over a particularly sensitive area, and she will tremble slightly, causing Gail to look up at the brunette for a moment, with eyes getting ever darker with lust and desire.

Gail's hands trace her collarbone and start to head south across her chest before they come to a halt less than an inch above the upper edge of her laced black bra. She looks up into Holly's eyes once again, her lip slipping between her teeth.

Holly smiles gently and drops one of her hands to cover Gail's, guiding it down to trace the skin above her bra tenderly, before guiding it up to her lips to grace it with the lightest of kisses, before returning it to its position on her breast

Gail leans in and ghosts her lips against Holly's. "You're so beautiful." She whispers.

Holly pulls her into a deep kiss, dropping her hands to explore the skin under Gail's jumper at her lower back.

Gail shivers violently as Holly's fingers spread across her skin, and the brunette breaks their kiss.

"You're cold?" She murmurs.

"Only a little, it's fine." Gail turns her attention to Holly's neck, coating it in small but wet kisses.

"No, we should… we should dry off… get out of the bath." Gail ignores her, working down towards her collarbone.

"Mmm." Gail continues kissing her.

"Gail." Holly says softly, and Gail lifts her head slightly.

"We should dry off. Warm up."

"You're keeping me warm." Gail says into Holly's neck, but when she looks up into Holly's dark brown eyes she relents. "Fine." She sighs, placing a quick and tender kiss on the other woman's lips before turning and stepping out of the bath. "But if you think I was anywhere near done there you are gravely mistaken." She says, grinning as she chucks a towel at the topless woman still standing in the bathtub.