As always thank you so much for reading! It gives me an excuse to let Harv & Maddie run wild for a little bit longer. And any excuse in that department is a good excuse for me. :) Hope everyone's weekend is off to a good start.

Rated M: for only one F-Bomb? How 'bout that. What would I do without the "Find…" button on google docs? (I'd say this is proof that they're cleaning up their act, but … we all know they're not.)

(x)

Harvey Bullock trudged back out of the locker rooms after splashing more cold water on his face. A veritable cloud of AXE body spray hung stale in the air around him. When he reached his desk, he knocked five Advil out of the container and swallowed them down with the splash of water left in the paper cup Madeline chucked in his face.

He crunched through the rest of the tums she left behind, shaking his head.

The one day - the one day - he gets himself hammered, and she jumps down his throat for it. Nevermind the month or so of keeping sober enough to walk into court with Gordon and the doc each day. He huffed a humorless laugh to himself. She told him he didn't have time for a relapse. He decided to take that as a backhanded compliment. At least in order to have a relapse you first had to have attained some sort of period of sobriety first.

Harvey squinted his eyes shut as the muffled sounds of Madeline and the Cap's screaming match pounded through his skull. He plopped back down at his desk and massaged his face, trying to ease his hangover.

… What the hell was he supposed to do? He'd just gotten some pretty devastating news dropped on his head. He watched his partner step out of that prison van chained in irons, a husk of the man he used to be. Gordon walked straight into the center of Blackgate into a mob filled with a couple hundred men, give or take, that he put in there himself. Some less than a month ago. His partner was meatdust. Plain and simple.

Harvey groaned. Goddammit, he wanted a drink. Scratch that, he didn't just want a drink. He wanted the whole bottle all over again.

He rolled his eyes to himself. And now here comes Madeline. Yapping a bunch of crap like always and trying to make him feel bad. There's a shocker. He wanted to tell her to worry a little less about his poor life choices and give a little more thought to her own.

He glanced over his shoulder as the sounds of shouting ceased up in Barnes' office. Maybe that meant she was straying from her usual 'fuck however this reflects on (insert crazy powerful bureaucratic power structure here)' and playing the game. Maybe, just maybe, covering her tight little ass for once. You know, just to shake things up.

All of a sudden, he heard the door of the Captain's office close loudly, and he glanced over to see Madeline, red-faced, heading back toward her office.

Or, you know, not. If she hadn't busted up his whiskey glass, he would have held it up to her in tribute. Welp, there you have it, folks. Put another notch in her lipstick case. Once again, Dr. Madeline Scott got herself shitcanned.

The day was just getting better and better.

The door banged open, and Captain Barnes called down to him. "Detective Bullock. A moment of your time, please."

Harvey released a sarcastically content sigh and pushed himself up to his feet.

He guessed that meant he was next on the chopping block. Maybe after this, he and Maddie could skim through the help wanted ads together. Just like old times.

(x)

Harvey Bullock took his time getting himself up to the Captain's office, as he wasn't particularly in a rush to get himself fired.

Barnes glanced up at him from his desk, looking about as fed up with him as usual. "Get the door," he said to him.

Harvey obliged him and sat down in the hot seat. He sighed out, still feeling a bubble of alcohol raging and pulsing just behind his left eye. He started thinking about how throwing up might make him feel better. Maybe he'd get on that whenever Barnes was through with him. Maybe after that he wouldn't feel like he was riding shotgun on the tilt-a-whirl.

Barnes announced, "I'm assigning you a new case."

He blinked in mild surprise. "Okay," he found himself saying.

His captain handed him a heavy folder. "A tranny hooker was found dead in a hotel by the 10th Street Cafe. No fingerprints. No witnesses. No one's come forward to ID the body."

He flipped through the pages. Check, check, check, and check. He wondered if it would save everyone some time if they just started calling those sorta standard crime scenes the Harvey Bullock Special.

Barnes added, "Multiple stab wounds through the body, with the knife left stuck down inside the chest cavity. It's the same MO as one of the last cases you went and closed a week ago."

Harvey frowned. "We already busted the killer on that one," he said flatly. "Scuzzbag cokehead dealer killed the hooker and took the drugs-"

"Right, the drug dealer did it. It's a very popular tagline of yours," Barnes shot back at him. "Right up there with 'the husband did it.'"

He managed not to roll his eyes. It wasn't his fault that shit was Cop 101. He was like his mother. He stereotyped. It was a time saver. He would've shared the wisdom of it with Barnes, but he was beginning to think that if he just kept his mouth shut he might get to kept his badge and his paycheck after all.

Barnes said, "Re-open the last case with the dead call girl that was found on Baker Street killed with the same type of weapon and found in the exact same crime scene. The way I see it, we've got the beginning shades of a serial killer here."

Harvey said, mostly to himself, "That oughtta keep my nights full."

He said in an aggravated voice, "It'll give you an excuse to put your prostitute CI connections to work and a legitimate reason to skulk around in Gotham's red-light district. For once."

Harvey said, "I'll get right on it." and didn't say, Just let me grab my nipple clamps.

As he stood up, Barnes looked at him overtop of his reading glasses. "Oh, and take Alvarez with you."

His shoulders dropped and he argued, "Alvarez's got enough cases he's mucking up just by walking upright and breathing. He'll just get in the way-"

"He goes with you. Or you can go by yourself and leave your badge on my desk."

All right, Uncle Fester. Give my regards to Mrs. Clean. Harvey gave a nod. He tried to make what he said next sound on the level and above-board, "Whatever you say, Cap."

He got about halfway there.

After that fun little shared experience, Harvey chucked aside the file Barnes handed him and got down to more time-sensitive matters. The dead call girls could wait. The way he figured it, the dead were dead. When you saw dead bodies as often as he did, you realized how useless the dead were. As far as he knew, for the moment, Jim Gordon was still on the right side of the dirt. If he was going to stay that way, he needed help of the serious sort.

Harvey got on the horn to every bureaucratic guard dog who would give him the time of day, trying to figure out what paperwork needed to be filed, what smooth talk he needed to sugar up and down out of his lips, and what palms needed to be greased to get Gordon out from behind prison bars.

(x)

Madeline pulled up her skirt and rested her left leg atop a desk chair with two throw pillows stacked on top of it. She made a short noise of discomfort as she positioned an icepack on her thigh and tried to think unswollen thoughts.

Outside the wind gusted and rain ratcheted against the window pane. According to the weather, it would be daybreak before the storm would let up.

She ran her hand through her hair and began proofreading a criminal profile she only just finished writing, when she heard loud boots stomp up the hall to her open door. She glanced up from the file to see Harvey Bullock poking his head inside her office. His hat held droplets of rainwater, and his hair was wet, no doubt from running through Gotham's streets in the downpour.

He gazed around at her desk, walls, file cabinet, and throw rug, appearing to take it all in. "Looks like you still got your degrees up on the wall."

She smirked a little and nodded to him. "And you've still got your badge on your belt." She set aside the file, letting it slap down onto her desktop. "So are you done bemoaning your hangover and swearing that you'll never have another drink again for the rest of your life-"

"You mind givin' it a rest?" he bit back at her. "If it's all the same, I'd like to go back to just feeling you judge me, okay? It's palpable."

Her shoulders dipped at his words. When she caught his eye, she said in a soft voice, "Look, I know it sucks, okay?" She paused, her mouth open, before she said, "I just … I know."

He stared away then, jaw stiff.

Madeline knew when it came to gloom and doom that Harvey was a seasoned pro, but that didn't make his grief any less genuine or striking. If anything, it made it more so. The air between them grew thick with all the things neither of them were willing to speak aloud.

He stepped further inside and motioned to the pillows and icepack. "How's the leg?"

"It acts up when it rains. Or when it doesn't. It's fine." Then she shifted, asking him sincerely, "How are you?"

He expelled a hard breath against his closed lips. "Got a brand spankin' new bitch of a case. Right along with new orders to train Alvarez."

"Well, somebody's gotta have all the fun."

"Every time he opens his mouth, I can feel my IQ dropping. He's walking brain death."

She listened to the rain hammering against the window and she brought them back to the topic he attempted to avoid. "I tried to get myself signed up to visit him."

Harvey squinted at her and quickly put two and two together. "I'm guessin' that means you made the no-fly list."

She nodded sadly. "I am hereby banned from ever setting foot in Blackgate again. Grey probably put that in effect going back six years ago. I just never had any reason to check on it until now."

He had the audacity to look vaguely relieved to hear she couldn't step back inside, which sort of made Madeline want to slap him.

She expelled a long, frustrated breath. "It's bullshit. He shouldn't have gone to jail."

"Yeah, well, we don't live in 'Should Land.'"

"I know what goes on in that shithole they call a prison," she said. "He can't stay in there, Harv."

He leaned forward slightly. "You think I don't know that?"

She looked up at him. "What're we going to do?"

"We?" he echoed. "-We- aren't doin' anything. You're gonna leave this business to me."

There were those spoken edicts she didn't miss. Madeline only half-rolled her eyes.

They fell into another uneasy silence. Harvey broke it. "You must've figured out the magic words to say up in Barnes' office."

"It was a little more complex than 'open sesame.'" She smiled wryly. "But it appears I shall live to see yet another thrilling GCPD work day."

He nodded to her. "How'd you con him into keeping you on payroll?"

"I told him he would never find anyone who would be a bigger pain in his left cheek than I am," she said. "And I magnanimously agreed to no longer drag his name or the GCPD through the media mud, cross my heart and hope to be pink-slipped."

"Whatever dance routine you did up there, you'll have to draw it out in an Arthur Murray diagram for me. So I might have some new moves the next time he calls my ass in there."

"Just lip off and talk back." She shrugged. "Works for me."

"Yeah, well, not all of us look cute as kitten britches when we do it."

Madeline huffed a short laugh. "You want to borrow my makeup kit? You could get all gussied up. I brought extra eye-liner if you want it. I could give you those smoky eyes."

"Thanks but no thanks. Just because I gotta pucker up and kiss it doesn't mean I gotta wear a fresh shade of lipstick." He took a step toward the door and then turned back. "You gettin' home okay?"

"Just like every other day."

Harvey was about to take off, when he paused for a moment in her doorway. "Oh, I, uh…" He cleared his throat. "I saw the paper today…"

Madeline blinked at him and quickly brushed the words away. "Oh, you know. It doesn't matter." She said, "Just because I wrote a book doesn't mean they have to like it."

"Well, actually, I saw about five or six hundred papers," he said. "They got whole stacks of 'em that didn't sell down by the docks. They're gonna use 'em to wrap up the fish in the morning." He sent her a brash grin as he took his leave. "Guess that's all they're good for."

Before she could try to stop herself, a wide, full smile broke across her face, and her cheeks blushed just as Harvey left her office. As she got back to work, she listened to his footsteps clump away, grow faint, and disappear altogether.