Work Text:
There was no one on the streets at this time of night.
There shouldn’t have been, at the very least— it was three in the morning, and Sally Donovan wanted nothing more than to be in her bed, sleeping, like a normal person. Instead, she was blinking the sleep and police lights out of her eyes, wrapping tape around a few light posts to keep civilians out. Like everyone wasn’t already either asleep or dead or policemen anyways.
Speaking of policemen, where the hell was Lestrade? He was usually the first person on the scene, calling out orders in that exasperated-yet-passionate tone he got when he was on the job. She knew that he’d been having some personal troubles, what with his wife finally leaving him for good and, well, the Holmes incident, but that was no excuse.
Fuck, she thought grimly to herself as she tied up the final piece of blue and white tape; we all have personal problems. There’s no reason at all for him to be missing.
There was no use- she might as well accept it. Her heels made a soft crunching noise on the asphalt as she walked over to the body and the policemen circled around it- gunshot wound to the head, middle of the street. A woman in one of the flats had phoned it in not forty minutes ago; She had already came down here to point fingers in Sally’s face and blame her for all of the yard’s shortcomings.
So when a younger officer thought that now would be a great time to get snide with her, she found herself with her finger in his face, growling insults and orders to him: Like everyone else wasn’t tired! Like everyone else didn’t have places to be! Beds to be in! Wives and Husbands to get back home to!
Well.
She scowled, forcing her anger to subside with a curt order serving as an apology- no one else dared to speak to or against her, seeing as Lestrade still hadn’t shown up.
She didn’t have to wait long.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry- Sally, don’t give me that look, I said sorry three times before I even got out of the car. I had to go downtown to the office.”
He was, indeed, still in his car- she hadn’t let him open the door before storming over, if you slept in so help me god written all over her face.
“Yeah, well, some of us have been here, getting this cleaned up. Wiggins keeps sassing me and Anderson is saying shit behind my back, I know it.”
He sighed. She opened the door a little bit more, allowing him to ease himself out of the driver’s seat. Instead of reply, he merely shoved a warm cup of coffee in her hands. He smiled- it was equal parts snarky, apologetic, warm. He didn’t do mushy. He did get down to business. The coffee was still hot.
It was exactly the way that she took it.