Chapter Text
It isn’t real. None of it is real, because this—this, the way Chloe is in a coma and Oliver is fighting through the fog of a concussion and Sam is in surgery—can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, because Holly works in a different building and doesn’t spend time in the police station and is never ever ever in direct proximity to people who are firing guns.
Except it is real, and Gail’s fingers are locked around her knees, fingernails digging through the heavy material of her pants, as they race towards the hospital. Chris is grim and silent, the siren squealing through the roof as buildings blur outside the windows. The bones in her hands creak the tighter she holds onto her knees, so persistent that surely Chris can hear it over the sound of the siren.
They have no information, no real information, just there was a shooting at 15, Swarek was shot and a lab tech was wounded and Holly’s phone, the one she never turns off, the one she always answers, has gone straight to voicemail seven times. Nausea builds in her stomach and she bites down on the inside of her cheek. There’s nothing for her to throw up because she hasn’t eaten in hours, since before Andy’s frantic radio calls brought them to a park with a bleeding Chloe, before she and Oliver took fire in a dirty alleyway, before she kissed Holly because Holly was babbling and scared and it was suddenly the only thing Gail could ever want out of that moment, but her stomach rebels anyways. She manages to unwrap her fingers and fumble with her phone, pressing it to her ear and listening to it ring through to Holly’s voicemail for the eighth time.
“It might not be bad,” Chris says helplessly. He lays on the horn and they blow through an intersection. “If it was bad, they would have told us already, right?”
He’s talking about Swarek, because there’s nothing he can say that’s going to counter lab tech and wounded and eight unanswered phone calls. Gail grinds her teeth together. “Go faster.”
The hospital is a mill of activity, more sirens and movement and blurs, blue uniforms streaming around looking for information. It’s a disaster zone of frantic cops, swarms of concern for Sam and the bullet in his stomach, but Gail’s palms are still warm from the skin of Holly’s cheeks and she can still taste cherry lip gloss and the vanilla lattes Holly indulges in every morning on her tongue, and she abandons the waiting room because there’s a wall of cops between her and the nurse’s station. She knows this hospital—this fucking hospital, the one where Andy spilled her guts, the one where Traci lost the man she was going to marry, the one where Gail buried the broken pieces of her that a serial killer tried to pick apart— and it’s left, left, right, up the stairs, right to a quieter station, the one where she knows all of the nurses.
She’s rattling off Holly’s name, fingers tight around the edges of the counter, before Francine—blonde, 42, two kids, always snuck Gail an extra dessert—can even say hi. “Is she here? Was she brought in with the cop who was shot?”
Francine, to her credit, doesn’t question Gail’s demands, but simply taps away at her keyboard.
“She’s here,” Francine says. “No gunshot wound, but sustained some lacerations from broken glass. She needed some stitches.”
“Shit,” Gail groans out. She’s the cop, she’s the one who goes out in gets shot at, not Holly, never Holly. “Where?”
“Down the hall, third on the right. She should be about to be discharged.” Francine grips her wrist before Gail can take off. “Take a breath, honey. If it was bad, she would be in the ER.”
Gail doesn’t say anything—she doesn’t do words well, words are Holly’s thing—but she lets Francine squeeze her hand briefly before she speeds off down the hallway.
Holly is sitting on an exam table when Gail all but bursts in, startling them both. The blue button down she’d been wearing is sitting on the table at her side, covered in splotches of dark red, and the white shirt under it has dried blood down the right side.
Gail jerks to a halt in the doorway, her hand tight enough on the doorknob to make it creak. There’s a line of stitches, black and ugly, stretching over Holly’s temple.
“Hi,” Holly says. She puts her glasses on carefully, wincing; her hands are shaking visibly.
“Hi?” Gail says. “You’re just going to say hi?”
“Well, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to say anything first,” Holly says with a shrug. “Is there a script I should be following? Specific protocols for after watching someone get shot?”
“A pro—Jesus Christ,” Gail mutters. She shoves the door closed behind her and crosses the room. Her fingers tremble, hovering an inch away from the line of tiny stitches. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Holly says softly. One side of her mouth quirks up in to a half-smile, but it doesn’t last. “They even got a plastic surgeon to come do the stitches. Said I shouldn’t even really have a scar.”
“What were you even doing in the station?” She should move, pull her hand back from Holly’s face, kiss her, do something, but her spine is so tight with relief and confusion and fear that her teeth ache and her arms are too heavy to do anything but hover.
“I came to see you,” Holly says simply. “I wanted to make sure you hadn’t been shot or something.”
“You—God, you stupid genius.” She finally breaks her paralysis, all but yanking Holly into a hug, forehead burrowing into Holly’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Holly’s hands aren’t shaking anymore, one pressing heavily against the vest between Gail’s shoulderblades and the other tangling in her hair easily. “You too,” she says quietly.
“You should answer your stupid phone when people call you,” Gail grumbles into her shoulder, not ready to move yet.
“It’s a hospital.” Holly’s hand traces up and down her back and there’s too much between them—the vest and her uniform and the t-shirt under it—but it burns into Gail anyways. “They made me turn it off. Rules are rules.”
“Who the hell cares about rules?”
“You’re the police officer, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to.”
“Shut up.” Gail finally pulls back from the embrace, blinking against the sting in her eyes. Holly stares at her evenly, but her gaze isn’t enough to distract Gail from the stitches, and her hand reaches for them again. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything?”
“I’m okay.” Holly’s hand curve around her wrist. She has soft hands, uncalloused, and they always smell a little like latex and hand sanitizer; her fingers are long, wrapping completely around Gail’s wrist easily, her thumb sliding back and forth on the back of Gail’s hand. “Really. It wasn’t deep, I don’t have a concussion, the damage was purely superficial and—”
Gail kisses her, heavy and afraid, just like she had the first time. She stands between Holly’s knees , hands tight on her hips, and presses up on her toes to reach the height that Holly’s seat on the table gives her. Holly’s fingers curl around the edges of her vest where it hangs from her shoulders, pulling her closer.
“You could have just said yes,” she mumbles into Holly’s mouth.
“Are you ever going to kiss me when there isn’t some kind of crisis going on?”
“Probably not,” Gail says drily. She falters, her hands uncertain on Holly’s hips. “About this afternoon, when you came by—”
“We can talk about it later,” Holly says. She presses a kiss to Gail’s temple and pulls her into a tight embrace. Gail grips tight to her hips, forehead dropping down to her shoulder. She breathes in deep, counting her breaths and sorting through the scent of antiseptic and betadine until she finds the familiar perfume that Holly wears, the one she noticed for the first time sitting in a coat closet with a bottle of champagne.
“Okay,” she mumbles into Holly’s collarbone. “Okay.”
“What happened to the detective that was shot?” Holly asks after a few minutes.
“He’s still in surgery.” Gail sighs, and her breath skims over Holly’s throat, drawing a shudder out of her. “Everyone is downstairs waiting.” She pulls back reluctantly.
“You should go.”
The arguments that would normally rise instinctively, the stubbornness that would plant her heels to the floor, is nowhere to be found, and she sags tiredly.
“I—”
“Come on,” Holly interrupts, offering the same smile she did in coat closets and batting cages. “I’ll go with you.” She slides off the table, directing Gail back a few steps so she has space to pull her coat back on. Her fingers shake, though, as she struggles with the buttons, and her smile falters.
Gail pulls her hands away gently, fitting buttons through holes slowly. Dark grey covers the bloodstained white one button at a time until the only evidence left is the ugly line of sutures on her head.
“You should probably go home,” Gail says, fingers still wrapped around the edges of Holly’s coat.
“It’s fine,” Holly says, one side of her mouth pushing up into that familiar half-smile, but it falters after only a second.
“Seriously, okay—”
“Gail, stop,” Holly says sharply. “I just—don’t want to go home and sit around by myself and think about this—” She gestures to the stitches, the ruined blue shirt. “All night.”
“Okay,” Gail concedes. “Okay.” She fits her hand around Holly’s deliberately and they walk down to the waiting room in silence.
Steve and Chris are standing together, forgotten Styrofoam cups of coffee in their hands. Gail lets go of Holly’s hand after a brief squeeze so she can hug Steve tightly.
“Any news?”
“Nothing yet,” Chris says.
Gail nods and tucks her hand back around Holly’s, though if Holly’s coat happens to hide it halfway, she doesn’t stop it. “Chris, Steve, this is Holly.”
They wind up in a bank of chairs facing the windows, Holly’s hand warm in Gail’s as they wait. An hour passes, and then another, and Holly curls up sideways into her seat, pillowing the uninjured side of her head on her arms and drifting off to sleep.
Swarek is finally out of surgery, and Andy goes back to visit him. Gail watches her walk away, numb to the mess that her friend had put herself in, and then shakes Holly awake. “He’s stable,” she says quietly. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
She takes the squad car, leaving Chris to find his own way home. She’ll get an earful for it, surely, for taking a car for personal reasons, but there’s no way in hell they’re sitting around any longer to wait for a cab.
Holly’s apartment is full of clutter, covered in books and papers and files. “How can you keep your office so neat and your house looks like this?”
“Work is work. Home is home.” Holly shrugs out of her coat, hanging it from the rack by the front door. She takes a deep breath, pushing her hands through her hair; one hand bumps her glasses, jarring them against her stitches, and she grimaces. Gail’s chest aches at her wince, fingers curling into fists. Holly pushes at her glasses, agitation building visibly in her shoulders.
“I know you have—whatever that you need to figure out, and that’s fine, I get it, but could—I just—” She leans tiredly against the wall, shoulders slumping. “Can you stay? I just—really don’t want to be alone.”
“Yeah,” Gail says. “Sure.” She takes off her own jacket, handing it to Holly, and one hand falls to rest on the butt of her gun. “Is there somewhere—”
“Lockbox,” Holly says as she hangs up Gail’s jacket. She produces a metal box from the shelf in the closet with a combination lock on it.
“You just keep a lockbox in your coat closet?”
“I need somewhere to hide my drug money and fake identities.” She smirks, familiar and easy and not at all like she was cut open by broken glass hours before, and unlocks the box, holding it open for Gail to deposit the service weapon into.
“If I wind up having to arrest you, that’s gonna suck.”
Holly snaps the box shut and locks it, putting it back in the closet. Her shoulders sag once more, exhaustion sweeping back over her, and Gail grinds her teeth together.
“Come on,” Holly mumbles, grabbing her hand and leading her through the apartment to her bedroom.
“I can sleep on the couch,” Gail says, even as she trails after Holly.
“Just—don’t. Not right now, okay? Don’t do that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you get all weird and scared.” Holly rounds on her, her hands pressing against Gail’s cheeks, and it’s familiar but not, and Gail’s breath hitches somewhere behind the Kevlar covering her chest. “If you have to freak out and run and go process whatever this is, fine, but just—tomorrow, okay?”
“Tomorrow,” Gail mutters. “Okay.” She fumbles with the Velcro on her vest, sighing as the weight lifts off her chest. Holly takes it from her, weighing it in her hands before settling it on her desk, and Gail’s fingers trip up on the buckle of her belt because Holly’s are unbuttoning her uniform shirt.
“Do you have a shift tomorrow?”
“No.” Her belt joins the vest, and her uniform shirt flutters down around her feet. Gail pauses, one hand reaching out towards Holly’s stitches once more. “Did they give you anything for the pain?”
“It doesn’t really hurt,” Holly says with a shrug. She sits on the bed, toeing out of her boots and tossing them towards the closet.
“It will,” Gail says quietly. She sits down next to Holly, one hand rubbing over her own face. There aren’t any scars, but sometimes she can still feel the cuts on her face, the blindfold heavy over her eyes, the paralyzing fear of being stuffed into the trunk of a car. Her injuries weren’t even severe, but they still ached for days. “You should try and stay ahead of the pain.”
“You have a lot of experience with stitches in your face?” Holly falters as the words come out, her breath shaking, and she shakes her head violently. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know the answer to that.”
“Well,” Gail says, clenching at her knees. “I did just recently spend quality time on an Oxy trip.” Drain cleaner is far easier to think about than serial killers. “Do you have any advil?”
“Yeah, it’s in the bathroom,” Holly says tiredly. “Medicine cabinet, top shelf.”
Gail retrieves the advil and a glass of water from the kitchen, returning to the bedroom to find Holly in sweatpants and a fresh t-shirt, the bloodstained one crumpled in her hands. “How do you do it?” she asks, not looking away from the shirt.
“Do what?” Gail sets the glass down on the dresser, not looking away from Holly’s slumped shoulders.
“Go out there, every day, when something like this might happen.”
“It’s not always like this.”
“But it is, isn’t it?” She balls the shirt up and throws it across the room. It lands in the trash can by her dresser, flopping silently half in and half out. “Maybe someone isn’t hunting you all the time, but people shoot at you. You don’t go outside without a bulletproof vest because someone might try to kill you anytime.”
Gail’s mouth is dry, words of reassurance dying in her throat because she doesn’t really believe them.
“Doesn’t it scare you?”
“Every day,” she says quietly. She picks the glass back up, offering it and the advil to Holly. “Come on, let’s crash.”
Holly swallows the advil without another word, draining the glass and setting it on the bedside table. Gail unties her boots and accepts a pair of sweatpants the Holly offers her, changing without embarrassment because sleep and not thinking about the last 24 hours is so much more important than modesty.
Gail curls onto her side, staring unabashedly at Holly’s profile. From this side, she can’t see the stitches. From this side, she can almost pretend that no one’s ever hurt Holly before, that Holly didn’t wind up in the hospital because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that Holly wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time because she was worried about Gail.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” Gail says after long minutes in the dark. Her voice is too loud for the middle of the night, for a shared bed and whatever it is that they’re beginning, but she’s never known how to be anything but brash anyways.
“You, too,” Holly murmurs, head rolling to the side to look at Gail. She squints without her glasses, and it pulls on her stitches; she winces momentarily and Gail’s jaw tightens. Her fingers clinch and unclench, and she reaches across the space between them, finding Holly’s hand and twining their fingers together.
“You scare the crap out of me,” Gail says. She presses her lips together as soon as the words are out, biting down as if she can pull them back in. Holly wrinkles her nose in confusion, and Gail sighs. This isn’t who she is, not in real life, but nothing is real in the middle of the night when Sam and Chloe might die and Holly has stitches in her head, so she speaks anyways because maybe she doesn’t really know herself that well. “You’re like this wrench that got thrown into everything and now it doesn’t make sense anymore.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“Everything. Me. What I thought I knew about me.” Gail exhales slowly, blowing air out through her lips loudly. “Because if I want you, then that changes everything.”
“It doesn’t have to, you know. There’s no fundamental difference—”
“I know, I just—thought I knew who I was, and what if I was wrong? Or what if I was right and this is just some—phase and I’m that asshole?”
“Then we’re friends,” Holly says with a shrug. “Look, Gail, if we have something, we have something. I like you. Maybe you like me. If it turns into something serious, then that’s awesome. If it doesn’t, then we’re friends, and that’s awesome, too. If we’re friends and not—whatever else we might be, then that’s what we are.”
“Nothing is that easy,” Gail mutters. “If it was that easy no one would ever get hurt.”
“People just don’t think things through before they do them, and when it doesn’t live up to their expectations, then they get hurt.” Holly shifts onto her side, squinting at Gail in the dark. “Being your friend isn’t a consolation prize.”
“It can’t be that simple.”
“Maybe it can be.” Holly yawns, settling more into her pillow. “We can argue about it tomorrow if you really want.”
“Tomorrow you’re going to be more awake and using stupid big words again and I won’t stand a chance,” Gail says drily.
“Kinda my point,” Holly says. She yawns again. “Go to sleep.”
“But—”
“Sleep.”
“I—”
“No.”
“You suck,” Gail mumbles.
“Only if you ask nicely,” Holly says without opening her eyes.
“You’re such an asshole,” Gail says with a sigh. The gap across the bed is too big, Holly too far away for her to protect—and there’s a stark stretch of black on Holly’s temple screaming at how utterly Gail had failed at that once already—so she tugs on Holly’s hand. “Come here, you jerk.”
Holly rolls with the momentum, shuffling closer and curling around Gail’s side. Her foot hooks around Gail’s calf, head pillowing on Gail’s shoulder. She’s asleep almost immediately, breath whispering across Gail’s throat and fingers curling around Gail’s t-shirt.
Gail measures her breaths against Holly’s, staring at the ceiling so she doesn’t stare at Holly’s stitches, or consider Sam and Chloe in the hospital, or how they almost lost Oliver, or the whistle of bullets flying past her.
It’s almost morning by the time she finally makes it to sleep, and Holly hasn’t moved an inch, her breaths still steady and calm in her sleep.