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“One pink gin and tonic for me, and one espresso martini for – woah, woah, easy there, Kate!”
Christofer swiped the glass away as smoothly as he’d put it down, when Kate – craving the sweet relief of alcohol – had made an overdramatic lunge towards it. He shook his head and tutted playfully, eyes twinkling with a certain mischief that only he could get away with around her. “I’m happy to buy drinks for tonight, but I’m not carrying you home if you black out because your urge to forget the traumas of this past week meant you consume half the alcohol behind the bar. The Christmas party was bad enough.”
“What happened at the Christmas party?” she asked, taking a begrudging tiny sip of the martini.
He winked. “Exactly.”
“Chris. Stop teasing me.”
“I’m deadly serious.”
“Ibrahim.”
“Lethbridge-Stewart.”
Kate grimaced. “At least you call me by my full surname.”
He slid into the booth opposite her, raking a hand through his hair and freeing some of his dark curls from the spray he insisted on putting on it every morning. “I don’t think I’ve seen you this infuriated since I started working for UNIT.”
“Spoilers: I haven’t been.”
“You’ve faced down the god of play and pandemonium without batting an eyelid, and yet one detective from the Metropolitan Police is ten times worse than that?”
“Yes. You’ve heard the way she talks to me, Chris.” A second, much larger, sip of martini, one that bordered on a gulp. “With that saccharine smile and the tone that suggests she has to act like she’d lick the dirt off my shoe, but really, she’s plotting on driving a bullet through my skull at the first given opportunity. Oh, Commander, forgive me for interrupting – no, actually, I don’t forgive you for interrupting, stop trying to undermine my authority!”
“Not to play devil’s advocate here,” Christofer began, unflinching under the icy gaze she shot him over the rim of her glass, “but I don’t think she’s trying to undermine your authority, per se. She’s been assigned as your liaison for Met Police and your consultant for restructuring UNIT’s security, so it might just be a case of her still settling in and not having a full understanding of how UNIT works.”
“Oh, she has a full understanding, alright,” Kate said sourly. “I sent her a fifty-page document outlining all the highly confidential details of our security procedures, and I tested her during conversation when she first arrived, and I know she’s read that document. And memorised it. Oh, and that’s another thing – why do I need a liaison?! You,” she said, jabbing her finger at Christofer, “are the literal head of Tower Security – if I’m going to talk to anyone about restructuring, it’s you. Twenty years of military experience working alongside me and they give me a random detective who doesn’t know when to shut her mouth?!”
She rubbed her forehead, emitting a sigh that resonated in her throat to the point of sounding like a growl. “And before you say anything, I know it’ll be beneficial to have a closer relationship with the Met Police, especially after UNIT was dragged through the nine circles of political hell. We need to have a closer relationship with all public law enforcement, full stop – we can’t just sit all high and mighty in our headquarters. But couldn’t they have chosen someone less… you know…”
“Irritating?” Christofer supplied, although his eyes were fixed on a spot beyond her head.
“Irritating is putting it kindly. She struts into my Ops Room, with her stupid swagger and her ridiculous attitude, and – what are you looking at?”
“Don’t turn around.”
“Well, now I’m going to turn around,” Kate huffed, “you can’t just say that and – ”
The words died on her lips.
Strolling into the bar, her arm linked through that of another woman’s, was none other than Detective Inspector Jill Raymond.
Kate watched them walk up to the bartender. Jill gave her order and, as their drinks were being made, she leant in to murmur something in the woman’s ear, a sultry smile on her lips. The woman blushed and laughed, tucking a blonde ringlet of hair behind her ear.
Something hot and primal stirred within Kate’s chest. It bubbled like sulfur, clogging her veins as it seeped out from her heart and oozed into every nook and cranny of her body. She swallowed, her grip tightening on the glass and nearly snapping the stem in two, suddenly unable to tear her gaze away from how Jill reached across and tenderly, so tenderly, trailed her finger across the woman’s jawline.
She wanted it to be her.
The realisation was like the first gulp of air after being choked – or the first constriction of fingers around the throat.
“Smug bastard,” Kate muttered, forcing herself to look at a ring stain on the booth table. She could feel Christofer’s eyes on her, but she found she could not look him in the eye, not with her heart pounding like a swarm of angry birds. “I bet she knew I would be here. She has access to my schedule – she chose this place deliberately, I know it, so she could rub it in my face.”
“Why would she rub it in your face?” Christofer asked, evidently confused.
“Going on a date with a tall, blonde woman, who’s probably just her type, she’s done this to piss me off – ”
“Again, why would she – ”
“Well, I’m not annoyed!” Kate tipped her head back and swallowed the rest of the martini in three neat gulps. “I won’t let her get under my skin.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She can get as much sex as she wants,” she continued, shrugging light-heartedly to emphasise her point and to hide the fact how that simple three-letter word, sex, in the context of Jill made her want to scream. “I don’t care at all.”
Christofer examined her. Something shifted behind his brown eyes, something that made Kate feel as if he could see into her very soul.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
“What?” Kate snapped, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Oh,” Christofer repeated, and she turned her gaze away from him, any sharp comebacks lodging in her throat. “Kate, you – ”
“Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“So you know what I’m going to say?”
“I don’t know anything anymore, and that frustrates me. How does takeaway on your sofa sound? Shitty scifi movie, enough Chinese to last us a week.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said, finishing his drink and standing up, and she had never felt more platonic love for him than she did in that moment, “then let’s go. It’s a Friday night, after all, this place is bound to start getting crazy.”
He offered her his arm, and she took it. As they went to leave, she veered them both to the left with a sharp nudge of her hip, and whispered, “Say something hilarious. Or just say anything at all.”
“I once fell out of a baobab tree during a night watch in Africa,” Christofer said immediately, and Kate barked out a genuine laugh, one that she forced to carry on long after the humour had dissolved, long after they had approached Jill’s booth, long after she tucked her head onto his shoulder and made fleeting, electrifying eye contact with the detective, who regarded her with an impenetrable gaze that meant Kate knew she’d hit her mark.