I.
Inside the precinct there are only a few officers roaming around; Gail has never seen it this empty. She can't help but feel a slight twinge of happiness that she almost manages to make it to the locker room without running into anyone who knows her well enough to comment on her hair, though.
Almost.
"Woah." She her brother's voice before she sees him. He is stood opposite the women's locker room entrance, much like he had been when he was waiting for her in the early hours of this morning, playing with his phone, mouth hanging agape as he stares at her.
"What are you still doing here?" Gail grumbles.
"We've been working the Ford case all night, just about to go home." He narrows his eyes slightly, and she shifts uncomfortably on her feet. "When did you manage to fit a haircut into the last 6 hours?"
Gail shrugs. "About 4am."
"What…?"
"I don't want to talk about it." The idea of discussing with her brother the drastic exposing of her vulnerability to Holly earlier that morning makes Gail feel a little ill.
Steve picks up on her reluctance and changes the topic. "Were you with Holly all night?"
"Yep."
"So whilst some of us were working hard through the night, you were busy getting down and dirty with our best forensic pathologist?"
"Don't be crass, Steve."
"So you were?"
"What, no! I'm not talking about Holly with you!"
The door to the locker room opens before her brother can reply, and Traci appears, stopping dead in her tracks when she realises who the blonde in front of her is.
"Wow, Gail… nice hair." The detective says, offering a tired, but seemingly genuine smile.
"Thanks." Gail mumbles.
"Where… did you get it done?"
"Holly."
"Oh right. Well, tell her I said it looks good."
"Sure." Gail shrugs and looks down at her feet.
Traci turns to Steve. "You ready?" She asks.
Steve nods, but before they can start to move down the corridor, Gail grabs his arm. "Wait, can I just…" She gestures around aimlessly, but Traci guesses her intention.
"I'll see you by the car. Have a good shift, Gail."
"Did you, you know, tell anyone?" Gail asks, watching Traci's retreating figure rather than making any sort of eye contact with her brother.
"I literally only just saw you, how could I have told someone?"
Gail looks up at him in slight disbelief of his dopiness. "Not the hair, about Holly."
"Oh, oh. Of course I haven't. That's your news to tell. But you know you weren't very subtle at the hospital yesterday, right? People may have worked it out for themselves. Especially because it's you, you know; everyone knows when Gail Peck holds someone's hand, they must be pretty special." He replies.
"Right. Thanks. I mean, I don't care if people know; I just also don't want people to make a big deal about it."
"Okay, well I'll tell Traci to cancel the 'coming out' party she's planning then." He flashes her a mischievous grin she is all too used to seeing.
Gail gives her brother a shove to the shoulder and scowls at him in response. "You said you didn't tell anyone."
"I didn't, she guessed."
She eyes him suspiciously for a moment. "Okay, whatever. But yes, definitely no parties."
"If I hear about any, I promise I'll try find a way to put a stop them. But, um, I actually had something I wanted to talk to you about."
Gail cocks her head slightly. "Oh yeah?"
"I got a call from Mom about half an hour ago…"
"If this is about me not going on those ridiculous blind dates anymore, she can…" Gail interrupts him, her voice raising slightly.
But before she can finish her own sentence, Gail herself is interrupted by her brother. "It's not about that. She was telling me that Inspector Jarvis stripped Best of Staff Sergeant last night, it's all pending an investigation up at headquarters but she seemed pretty sure it was going to stick," he says, in a hushed voice.
"What, why?"
"Something to do with the handling of this whole Ford thing, I don't know. But they're likely not going to tell you everything, and she wanted us to know. You know her, she probably wanted to remind us that she's up there, getting all the information we're not privy to."
"Why hasn't she tried to call me yet?"
"I told her I would tell you so that she didn't have to herself. Because I thought maybe you wouldn't want her calling you today… or for the next few days."
She shudders at the thought of her mother asking her about her private life right about now. "Oh, right. Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks."
"Just don't go gossiping about it to everyone."
"I am many things Steve, but I'm not much of a gossip. Have they instated someone new?"
"Mom thinks they're gunning for Shaw, but obviously that's not going to happen until he's back at work, so you'll probably be stuck with Jarvis for a while."
Gail groans at the memories of the steely, uncompromising man who used to frequent her parents' soirees when she was a teenager. "Brilliant, so I'm losing my partner and we're stuck with Jarvis? I should have stayed in bed."
"Yeah I know, maybe you should apply for the next detective rotation, join me up in Guns and Gangs…?"
Gail's expression returns to a steely glare.
Steve smirks slightly. "Sorry, Mom may or may not have made me promise to slip that in somewhere."
"Yeah, well, you didn't have to actually do it."
"I'm a man of my word, Gail, I would never lie to our mother." He grins.
"Oh right, so she knows that you had sex with Annie Marchelis, in Mom's bed, at a house party you threw when they spent a weekend at the cottage when you were 18, then?" Her eyebrows raise, her lips pursed at her brother's pure cheek.
"You should get going or you'll be late to parade." His grin falters slightly but his tone remains steady as he pushes her towards the locker room door and he sets of down the corridor towards the car park.
Gail turns back to look at him walking away. "I swear to God Steve, if I find out that you've mentioned anything about Holly to Mum I will make sure you don't have any secrets to keep from her anymore."
Steve doesn't look back as he shouts back. "You really don't want to start playing that game, Gail. Don't think I don't know about you and Nick in the back of Dad's car."
Gail's face scrunches at the memory as she rolls her eyes at the back of her brother's head, watching him walk out of the door, before darting into the locker room to get ready in the short minutes left before she's meant to be at parade.
II.
"Where the hell is everyone?" Gail asks as she sits down next to Chris in the parade room, technically a minute late, but there is no-one at the front to register that. There is no-one in most of the seats. Chris is the only one of her friends in the room, along with only a handful of other officers.
"Dov's in the hospital with Chloe, Andy's with Sam. They were both witnesses at an armed robbery gone wrong at about 4 o'clock this morning, so they were given the day off. Chloe woke up at about 3, Sam a couple of hours later. Cruz is still in with SIU, I think. Most people who weren't witnesses to the shooting were here helping with the investigation all night, but they've mostly gone home. I think Traci was one of them. They only finished cleaning up the crime scene about an hour ago." Chris narrows his eyes slightly as he takes in her hair, but says nothing about it.
"What about Nick?"
"I don't know, I only know anything because Dov's been texting me. I only just got here." Chris shrugs slightly.
"Yeah, me too. Is Oliver okay?"
"Dov said he should be getting discharged later today, back to work by the end of the week, hopefully."
"Hmm." Gail is still not quite finished processing the idea of Oliver coming back to work as a staff sergeant. Sure, he'd be good, but he's her partner. She likes him, she doesn't want him to leave her out on the street to potentially be stuck with a partner like Price whilst he works behind a desk all day. Something she knows for a fact he wouldn't want to do anyway.
"You didn't come home last night." Chris tears her from her thoughts
"I stayed at Holly's." She looks forward at the empty spot where a staff sergeant should be stood, not meeting Chris' inquisitive gaze.
"Oh. Well that's good, right?"
"Yeaaaah…" She drags the word out but is stopped from saying anything more by a buzzing in her pocket. She pulls out her phone and a small smile creeps onto her face when she sees who is contacting her.
Holly: Do you know what happened to that file I brought over to the station yesterday? May or may not have gotten distracted and left it in an interrogation room
Gail's smile widens at the memory of Holly, all flustered and adorable at the precinct yesterday, and she hastily taps out a reply.
Gail: Honestly, no idea. Not like you to get distracted at work
There are only moments before her phone buzzes with the reply.
Holly: Unforeseen circumstances threw me a little
Gail: Unforeseen? Don't pretend you didn't come to the station planning to get a little action
Holly: I was just coming to check on someone, completely innocent
Gail: Oh yeah, who?
Holly: This hot blonde cop chick. She looks a lot like you, but her hair's not as sexy
Holly: But seriously, I may need to come pick up that file at some point
Gail: I'll have a look for it after parade
Gail: If that means you're promising to come to the station at some point
Holly: I don't know, the courier usually does that stuff
Gail: I'm sure you can make an exception
Holly: I'll see what I can do. Depends what's in it for me
Gail: You'll have to come and find out
She slips the phone in her pocket still smiling widely. She feels Chris' eyes on her to her left, and she turns to look at him, her smile fading to be replaced with her usual glacial expression.
"That Holly?"
"Yeah, not that it's any of your business."
"No, I know. You just seem happy. It's nice." He says, earnestly.
"Why is it that whenever I'm happy people always want to make a big deal about it? Does anyone ever think that maybe I'm usually happy, and it's you guys who turn me into a cynical, cranky bitch?"
"Maybe, but we live together and we used to date. I know you hate it, but we actually know each other quite well."
"Whatever, Chris." Gail dismisses him. It annoys her more than most other things, when other people seem to think they know her so intimately. Maybe they know what she's like, and what she does, and what she likes to do, but that doesn't mean they actually know who she is. Years of people dismissing her as the self-involved, unfeeling, nasty, suck-up daughter of police royalty made her miserable for so long. She's past that now, she's learnt to build up her walls and not let it bother her like it used to, and her friends have slowly come around to a slow acceptance that she is not the person they initially thought she was, but it still irks her when people think they have her all sussed out. And even after four years of working together, it's quite clear that her closest workmates still haven't quite managed to fully shake their initial opinions of her. Except maybe Oliver, but she's not sure he ever really viewed her like the others did anyway.
Holly doesn't do that. She's never viewed Gail with the filter everyone else seems to see her through, not once in the time they've known each other. There is still so much of herself Gail has to show Holly, but somehow it already feels like Holly understands her and accepts her more than she remembers anyone else doing in a long time. And she's the first person she's met in a long time who Gail finds herself actually wanting to let in.
Urgh Gail shakes herself, forcing herself to think about something less pathetic. That had been dangerously close to being an extremely sentimental and introspective train of thought. As if she hasn't had enough of those in the past 24 hours.
They only sit there in a slightly awkward silence for a minute or so longer, before Inspector Jarvis enters the room and makes his way to the front. She grimaces and sits back in her seat, awaiting Jarvis' inevitable explanation of his new temporary reign as Staff Sergeant.
III.
She is, as she expected when she saw who was in the parade room, partnered with Chris for the day. There are only a couple of other cars out on patrol with them, and they are all helping operate a speed check. Probably Jarvis attempting to prevent them getting involved in any major busts whilst they are so low on officers.
It works for Gail though. She can just lean against the squad and text Holly about how bored she is while Chris does all the actual work. Or at least, that's what she manages to do for the first three hours, until Holly gets called out to a crime scene to work on a just discovered body. Just half an hour before lunch too, when Gail had planned on surprising Holly at the morgue with takeout.
So now she's just angry at the world, and spending the whole day issuing speeding tickets is not helping. She doesn't have much interest in talking with Chris either, still holding onto some anger at his suggestion that he knows her so extremely well and that she truly is some sort of perpetually unhappy antagonist. That's probably Holly's fault. Showing Gail that it is actually possible to treat her like a fully developed human being with feelings has kind of raised her expectations of all human interactions. He's tried engaging her in conversation numerous times, but the fact that he has no idea why she's annoyed with him is not working in his favour.
If Holly was actually here she may point out that giving Chris the cold shoulder for one gaffe he is unaware of probably doesn't help people change their opinion of her. And she can't help being petulant, that's second nature to her. She may be self-destructive, but maybe if people stopped pretending they knew why, she wouldn't be so nasty. Maybe. Maybe she is just a horrible person and Holly has some sort of brain injury which is stopping her from seeing that.
"Maybe we should go to the hospital in our lunch break?" He suggests in his sixth or seventh attempt to get a civil response from his partner.
Gail shrugs, but internally she concedes that does actually seem like a good idea. If she can't see Holly in her break, seeing Oliver is easily the next best thing. And she can palm off Diaz to Dov and Chloe.
"Sure, but we need to grab lunch on the way, I'm not eating hospital food."
Chris smiles slightly to himself at the semi-successful interaction. Is that all it takes to get a smile out of her friends now? Getting through a single sentence without insulting them?
IV.
She loses Chris within about two minutes of entering the hospital, he headed towards the ICU and Chloe, and she in the opposite direction to Oliver's room. She narrowly avoids an encounter with a very tired looking McNally in the corridor on her way. She hasn't had much time to consider the Nick/Andy/Sam situation in the past 24 hours, but she knows that part of her is slightly selfishly smug that Nick appears to have been dumped, and another part mad at McNally for feeling it necessary to spend a couple of weeks sleeping with Nick, knowing full well it would hurt Gail, even though it was now apparent her feelings for him were pretty insignificant compared to those for Sam.
It amazes her, when people do things like that to her, how anyone ever expects her to trust other people.
Oliver is alone in his room, but speaking to someone on the phone. Relief sweeps over Gail as he looks up at her and smiles. She hadn't contemplated it until about thirty seconds ago, but a slight worry that he would be asleep and she would have to find someone else to keep her entertained was starting to creep into her mind.
"Alright, Celery, you just get back to sleep. Peck is here now, so I'll be fine for a while. I promise. I'll see you in a couple of hours. Okay. Yes. Okay, I love you, too. Bye."
Gail is stood, eyebrows raised in the doorway. "The L word, huh?"
"I hear that's what I should be asking you? Different L word, mind."
Gail feels herself turning slightly pink. "Who are your sources?"
"Chloe, but I believe hers were Dov and Chris."
"So much for a private life." She sighs, pulling up a chair beside his bed and pulling her lunch out of a carrier bag.
"She didn't have a whole lot to say. Just that you were apparently looking quite cosy with a certain forensic pathologist in the waiting room last night. Who I presumed was the same forensic pathologist who followed you out of an interrogation room at the precinct yesterday."
Gail sinks slightly into her chair. A part of her had been hoping she'd gotten away with that. Which was a bit naïve, admittedly, Oliver is a decent police officer after all, and it would probably be worrying if his deductive reasoning hadn't got him to that conclusion. "Holly, yeah. Please say you didn't mention that bit to Chloe?"
"Nope, no, that's between us."
"Good. Thanks." She smiles up at him, weakly.
"You want to talk about it?" He looks at her, his expression so open and honest and kind that she struggles to fight it.
"I don't know, I mean there's not a lot to say. We kissed. Well, I kissed her. Then I freaked out and cut off all my hair." She waves her hand vaguely towards her head as she speaks, indicating the newly acquired pixie cut, in case it somehow had escaped his notice.
"I was going to ask. Well you did a pretty neat job of it."
"Holly fixed it for me."
"Sounds like a keeper. Why did you freak out? The woman thing?"
A look of great concentration and thought falls upon Gail's face, her eyes narrowing slightly and her lips pursing. "No, I don't think so. That was only a tiny part of it. I think it was more just because I like her, a lot. It's kind of scary, how good I feel when we're together."
"But she hung around, after you cut off the hair?"
"Yeah, and that's what makes it so scary. I had a meltdown in front of her, and kind of insulted her, pretty badly too, and she stuck around and looked after me. No-one's ever done that before."
Oliver smiles warmly at her. "She sounds like she's good for you. I've liked her when I've worked with her, she seems nice."
Gail smiles into her pack of cheese puffs, eyes slightly glazed over. "She's pretty great." When she registers that she's possibly been indulging Oliver with more details of her budding relationship than she is entirely comfortable with, her eyes snap back up to look at the gently smiling man on the bed before her.
Yeah, she definitely said too much. "Not a word of me going all soppy is to reach anyone's ears, you hear me Shaw?"
"Only if you give me one of whatever's in that bag."
Gail narrows her eyes at the other officer suspiciously, before reaching in and pulling out a box of donuts, watching as an excited glint appears in his eyes.
V.
When they get back on the streets, the afternoon proves to be no more interesting than the morning, and by the time their shift is ending, Gail's foul mood is back in full force.
She is getting changed in the near empty locker room when her phone alerts her to a new message.
Holly: Sorry, haven't been able to leave the lab since this body got in. Finished now though, still okay if I come pick up that file?
Gail looks into her locker and pulls out the papers she had earlier discovered still scattered in the interrogation room, placing them on the bench behind her.
Gail: Sure, meet you outside
Holly: Great, should be there in fifteen, thank you!
And sure enough, fifteen minutes Holly's car pulls into the car park, where Gail is stood waiting for her, file in hand.
"Thank you, so much." Holly says as she approaches the blonde. "My boss would have murdered me if he found out I was dumping case notes around the stations so I could talk to girls I liked."
"Why didn't you just bring a fake file, dumbass?" Gail asks, her face still carrying the weight of her frustration at the day.
"Because, officer, I wanted a solid backbone to my reasoning for being there. In case you started snooping." Holly stops in her tracks, only mere inches from Gail, arms awkwardly hanging by her sides. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the brunette is unsure about how to greet her.
"You didn't really allow much time for snooping before you went full on ramble-mania."
"Yeah, well, I got kind of flustered. How was your shift?"
Gail shrugs and slouches slightly. "Crap, boring. Plus side, apparently everyone knows about us already so at least I don't have to actually tell them." Her scowl lessens a bit.
"And you don't mind that they know?"
Gail shrugs again. She stops scowling, and while she doesn't replace her frown with any indication of a smile, Holly visibly relaxes slightly, apparently put slightly at ease. "No, I thought I would, maybe, but I don't."
"But it was a crap day anyway?"
"Yeah, it was boring, we were doing pointless work, Best's being replaced, maybe by Oliver, Chris was the only other person without the day off and he was just such poor company compared to you. And I'm hungry."
Holly laughs softly. "Well I can probably do something about that last one. You want to go to that diner down the street?"
Finally some warmth finds its way into Gail's expression. "That would be… amazing. No salads, though."
"I know, come on."
Holly turns to head back to her car, but is stopped by Gail's hand on her wrist.
"Were you really going to walk off without kissing me?" Gail asks, eyebrows slightly raised.
"I didn't know if you wanted…?" Holly is cut off as Gail pulls on her wrist again, pulling them together in a tender meeting of lips.
"I want, Holly." Gail's lips curl as she pulls back, noticing the slightly dumbfounded but happy smile that has emerged on Holly's face.
She lets go of the other woman's wrist and skips –or as close as Gail has ever come to skipping- around to the passenger side of Holly's car. Holly turns slowly to look at her.
"Cat got your tongue, Dr Stewart?" Gail grins as she ducks into the vehicle. Holly blinks a couple of times and follows.
VI.
Eating dinner with Holly is the easiest thing in the world. It's barely different from when they were friends, only now there is something new and exciting in the way they look at each other. But the way they make each other laugh and forget their problems as they talk about their days, that's the same. That was always there. And any of Gail's lingering fears about this new relationship slip effortlessly away as she is reminded just how easy being with Holly is.
Gail still makes fun of Holly's little quirks, like the way she can never decide what she wants to eat, then gets flustered when the waitress comes over to take her order and blurts out something randomly from the menu she had almost no intention of actually ordering. And Holly returns the favour, mercilessly mocking Gail for her predictability when it comes to ordering food; Holly doesn't think she's ever seen Gail pick anything other than the unhealthiest item on a menu.
But then Holly still smiles a smile that stretches to her eyes at Gail in a way that fills her with warmth, like she actually cares about what she has to say. And Gail still gives a genuine smile back, grateful but also just captivated by this incredible woman in front of her.
And their laughs. There is no question in Gail's mind that Holly has the most beautiful laugh she has ever seen. The way Holly's mouth curls up on one side into a slight smirk, before the laugh breaks forth from her lips as she grins so widely Gail can almost see all her teeth. It is nothing short of mesmerising. Gail herself finds herself incapable of repressing her giggles in the company of the brunette.
It was notable to Gail that when they were friends that their back and forth was always so natural, and it doesn't stop being natural when Holly reaches over to wipe some ice cream off Gail's face, and Gail grabs her hand between her own and strokes it absently but deliberately with her thumb whilst they continue their comfortable repartee. Neither does it stop when Holly leans over and plants a brief but gentle kiss on the blonde's lips to distract her so she can pull the bill from the officer's grasp, nor when they're walking out of the diner and Gail slips her hand into Holly's for the brief walk to the car.
Nothing has really changed; it is different, but it is the same. It is better.