AN: 100% for Ella (matt-smiths) because she's flawless.

She's always enjoyed a drink; alcohol has always been the one thing that Sandra Pullman has managed to rustle up for herself without managing to get food poisoning or manage to dye her own hair purple (courtesy of beetroot falling out of a cupboard) and she's damned sure that she enjoys the taste of it. It's what's gotten her through the painful dates with men she'd much rather forget, through the family gatherings which always seem to focus on how she still hasn't found any man at all to love her, and especially through the times of year which seem to focus heavily on relationships.

Unfortunately, it's not enough.

There comes a time in every person's life when they need more than just the bottle and the paperbacks – and it hits Sandra the week before her forty second birthday. Gone is the single-mindedness about her career and then coming home and being thankful that it's empty of a dirty, old man who would probably be whining for sex or for her to cook him a meal he would then complain about; she actually, sort of, wants that.

Well, if she's being completely honest with herself, she wants the first one more than an actual relationship.

Part of her wants to get onto a dating website and fill in all the forms, just so she's actually got someone to share her birthday with, now that her Mum is basically unavailable, but that would require having a brain free from the fuzz alcohol brings with it. And if she's honest, that's the best part of alcohol; the ability to forget everything, to have a sort of dream world where she's shagging the hottest, most senior man in the entire police force and her job is better than leading a bunch of old has-beens, is the best part of the experience of getting drunk.

The worst part comes the morning after.

~x~

"Morning, Guv!" his voice is too cheerful for her on a Tuesday morning when she's suffering from one of the biggest hangovers she's ever had. "Boyfriend have you up late last night, did he?" he continues, making a joke about the continual lack of Mr Pullman in Sandra's life, laughing louder than she wants him to.

"Gerry Standing." Just the way she says his name probably should have him running, but he never does; he's aware she's too fond of him to actually follow through on her next words, "if you don't leave me alone right now, I'm going to go to Strickland and have you fired. Do you understand?"

The ping of the microwave behind her makes her jump, until she remembers that she put her breakfast in there, a last ditch attempt for her to wake up out of the hangover fog and to get focused on work before they all get fired.

His smile is too cheerful as he says, "watch out for that, Sandra. After all, remember the other week when you gave yourself food poisoning cooking toast?"

"Shut it, Standing, or you'll be looking for another way to pay for your gambling habit before you can say, off down to the bookies."

He doesn't hang around for her to make good on her threat, and yet as he leaves, she finds herself smiling. It's only with this man that she actually feels semi-confident talking about things she'd rather not discuss, no matter how crude he can be about them, and feelings like this don't ever come about for Sandra Pullman.

So when they do, she knows that she should act on them; after all, if it's a lay, who gives a crap who it's with?

~x~

When putting the teams together for this case, she deliberately puts herself with Jack, as so to avoid the innuendos coming out of Gerry's mouth; she'll put up with them when she's pissed, sure, and then she'll give a fair few of her own, but not when she's still recovering from a mammoth hangover for no special occasion.

"Looking forward to the birthday later this week, eh?" all Jack's words do is remind her that she's got nobody to share it with, and that she may as well spend it working late on this case, as that's the only way they're going to get it cracked before the annual UCOS Christmas party, where it's tradition for them all to trade clothes and play dress up, the three drinkers getting absolutely inebriated in the process before one of them pukes over the letters for Strickland.

Bearing in mind that the party is held in December and they're currently in the January sales season, it shows that they've got a lot of work to do.

"I'm looking forward to it about as much as Gerry enjoys going over to see the Lestades," she replies with a small smile, recalling the last time they both went over to see his younger brother in the butcher's shop. Given that she had dragged him there to take the Christmas cards she had written for him, he had deemed it befitting for her to pay for the entire night's drinks, when he had gotten so plastered she had actually taken him home to hers for the night.

The memory of seeing him starkers the next morning, drinking her orange juice out of the carton, still haunts her today. However, she realises with a start, that's probably where she got the idea from that he'd be alright in bed; she could tell why he'd been so popular with the wives, anyhow.

"Sounds promising, then," Jack smiles in response, getting into the passenger seat of Sandra's car. "Oh, and I promised I wouldn't tell Gerry as it's meant to be a surprise, but do make sure you stay late in the office on your birthday. He's got something planned out for you, apparently."

Cheeks ablaze, Sandra is all smiles as they pull out of the car park, on their way to find the son of the burn victim whose body happened to be found in fifteen different places within the space of three hours, and had so many different enemies, she had managed to freeze her computer screen trying to read them all.

~x~

On the day of her birthday, she's not particularly happy; there's been the standard happy birthday cards from the odd members of her family she doesn't think she'd recognise if she had to point them out on the street, as well as the reminder from her doctor that she needs to book her next smear test, something which made her laugh when she read it, but nothing of any particular interest. There's been no hot guy turning up at 6am, apparently a builder but who actually turns out to be a stripper, or anything that could be deemed out of the ordinary for a standard Monday morning. All in all, it's not been an impressive first nine hours to Sandra's birthday – so she decides that she'll put up with some more of Gerry's banter today, just for a laugh.

Ever since Jack told her that her sparring partner has plans for today, Sandra's spent all the possible time with him that she can; she's managed to put up with his sexist jokes, have a few cracks about the amount of money he's lost at the races, and even pay for a few meals down at the local pub, all the while wondering what this surprise is. Every time she thinks about it, it turns into something either completely embarrassing to define her age, or somehow manages to turn itself into a drunken orgy with half of the Metropolitan police squad there. Neither of them sound particularly appealing, to be honest, but she's not going to be picky about a present; anything could be better than the big, fat zilch she's currently got.

"Alright, Guv?" he greets her in the kitchen, the mug reserved for birthdays out and ready for her to drink from, "it's getting harder to look in the mirror in the morning, isn't it, knowing that you're a year older than you were the day before, aren't I right?"

Unfortunately, he is.

"I suppose so, but then it also reminds me that I haven't wasted a year of my life fucking some sexist, racist fool who thinks that my only purpose in life is to please him," she finds herself managing to reply in a sweeter than normal tone, watching as his mouth falls open. "Oh, I'm sorry, that was what your ex-wife told me on the twenty seventh anniversary of your divorce, apparently pleased that she got out of the sexual side to your marriage."

With a secret smile on her face, she turns away and heads towards her office, leaving a red-faced Gerry in her wake, ignoring his attempts to try and discount what she's just said…even though every single word about his ex-wife was untrue.

Somehow, Sandra thinks with a twang of jealousy, he's got the women coming back more and more, the longer it's been since they've been divorced.

And she finds herself wondering, just for a second, what she would have been like, if she had married Gerry Standing.

~x~

Five thirty rolls around, and she's got no plans to be leaving the office any time soon; not only because of what Jack pre-warned her about, but also because she really doesn't have anything else interesting to do. She could go home and watch whatever dramatised cop programme the BBC are putting out nowadays, or maybe even catch some of an erotic tv show that makes her realise just what she's missing out on, with the single life she leads, but she'd much rather actually catch up on some work.

And, you know, see what Gerry is doing for her.

The furthest part of her mind, the one she decided to relinquish control on a long time ago, turns these last words she's thought into a dirty phrase, by replacing the word for with to.

"I, uh, see you're still here, Sandra." He's standing by the door, neither knocking for permission to come in nor striding straight in, though he would normally do the latter. As she looks up from her paperwork, she can tell that he's smartened up a tad and is holding a large box in his arms, alongside a smaller one on top of it.

"Are they for me?" she doesn't bother to greet him, simply gets intrigued by the presents. It had been decided when UCOS first started that when birthdays rolled around, the only thing to be given was a card and a happy birthday. This doesn't fit right into the situation here. "Oh, Gerry, you shouldn't have!"

He blushes slightly as she beckons him in, walking forwards to place them on her desk. "It's nothing much, really. Just something that you, as a wine lover, may appreciate."

The first box contains two wine glasses.

The second, much larger one contains six bottles of one of the strongest red wines she's ever had the pleasure in tasting.

"Oh, I don't know what to say, Gerry!" she's touched at his gift, and it's more than enough to get her distracted from whatever, frankly disgusting plans she may have had, that would have included slamming the door shut and stripping naked in about three or four seconds flat.

"You can use the corkscrew in your top drawer and get one of those beauties opened up, because I didn't spend all that money just for them to get drunk by you!" he rubs his hands together, and she understands the implication of the two glasses simultaneously to opening and pouring the wine.

Something tells her that she's not going to be leaving the office tonight.

~x~

She's right about this; at almost eleven pm, on their third – or perhaps fourth – bottle of wine, they're still sitting in her office, yet they've already managed to throw all the paperwork around the room to make it look cosier, fit her computer under her chair and leave the entire oak desk free to do whatever they want.

All reason has gone from her head, as the memories of dreaming of what she wants to do on this day return to her, and as she slams the glass of wine down on the filing cabinet top, she slurs, "I want to fuck you, Gerry Standing."

He doesn't understand at first, given how foggy his brain is from the wine, but then he does, and it's with a chuckle that he replies, "what makes you think that I want to sleep with you?"

She laughs in the way she does when she's drunk, unreasonable and ridiculously sexy, and says, "because it's the best opportunity you're going to get, mate. And, after all, you're not getting any younger."

There's no contesting this fact on Gerry's behalf, and though she would have preferred to have gotten to this stage with a bit more romance, Sandra's sure that she can pull it off in this room. It would have been preferable if it was a guy who was younger than her (though the reports coming back from Gerry's wives tell her that he's actually pretty flexible, something that would normally have made her shudder) and there had been flowers, actual courting, perhaps even a few sweet kisses, though she'd have skipped them out if it meant that she got to shag the guy on her birthday, but Gerry Standing will do, given that he was nice enough to actually provide the alcohol to get drunk with in the first place.

Plus, she does sort of think he could be quite handsome, and he's the man she's closest to, so perhaps this could work out between them.

Neither of them are sure how they move towards one another, yet somehow she's falling into his lap and they're both laughing, before her eyes catch his, and his hands lace into her blonde hair. Somehow, his lips find hers and there's an eruption of something that she never expected to get from this, before she finds herself deepening the kiss and trying desperately to rip the dress off without getting up off his lap.

Between feverish kisses, they manage to stand up and move across to the handily clear desk – a cleaning up that they both really appreciate – where she slams into it, his hands moving across her body in ways that she never considered he would, both of them trying to remove the other's clothes in a drunken stupor. She manages to kick him in the balls whilst trying to remove her own shoes – when they cost more than three hundred pounds each, she can recall to be careful with them even when she's this drunk – and he catches her skin in the zipper of his jeans in a way that neither of them understand.

Then he's on top of her and they're both sweating and moaning and trying to desperately get to where they want to be, something which is harder said than done when they're both inebriated, and all Sandra can consider is, why didn't she ever do this before? It's not just the sex, but it's the way that it's in the damned workplace – something which will make for an interesting recall whenever she's bored in this room again – and somehow, pleasure and work are becoming mixed together. Yet she manages to push every thought out of her head besides for the man on top of her, a focus she continues until they're both done.

And then they both promptly fall asleep...on the desk…in UCOS…naked.

Of course.

~x~

"What the hell?" she tries to pretend as if she remembers nothing from last night when she wakes up, slathered in bodily fluids she'd probably rather forget about, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. Yet she can recall everything from the night before, all be parts of it rather hazy, and it's certainly something that she's not going to regret doing; it made her birthday interesting, and she learned that what his ex-wives said is true.

He certainly is the best lay she can ever remember.

There's no interaction between the pair of them as they hastily head to the locker rooms and shower, putting on the clean clothes they always store in the room (though not for emergencies like this, she thinks wryly) and she begins to wonder what she should say, or if she should do anything to suggest that she remembers about as much as he evidently does.

"I think that…last night was interesting, but if we did it again, I'd want to have no alcohol before it." He approaches the subject when they're almost finished cleaning up her office – she's sure that there's no way that anyone would be able to recognise she'd slept with her co-worker in here last night – and it's certainly something she's been considering as well.

"Sounds good," she replies, but before she can say anything else, Jack is on his way down the stairs, probably with enough food for them all to eat, as is his custom on the second Tuesday of the month.

He winks at her as he walks out of her office, and Sandra isn't entirely sure what is going on, other than that she needs to hide the red wine and the glasses before anyone like Strickland comes in.

"Morning, Sandra! Fancy seeing you and Gerry here before me this morning!" Jack smiles as he hands her the usual: bacon and egg sandwich, something appreciated more than usual this morning.

Before he walks into the locker room to hang up his jacket, Jack turns around with a peculiar expression on his face. "Oh, and before I forget, the night guard at reception said he heard the strangest of things last night, from UCOS…it apparently sounded like a dog howling, or something along those lines!"

She barely manages to contain her smile as she replies, "oh, you never know, Jack. Maybe the place is ran by wolves when we're gone."

Then she winks at Gerry before ordering, "someone make me a cup of tea. I'm gasping."

And then pretends not to hear Gerry's, "I always thought the girl was meant to make the boy his breakfast after sex," as she walks away. After all, she wouldn't want to spoil their date this evening, would she?

AN: I'd appreciate it if you didn't favourite without reviewing.

Vicky xx