excerpt from my zayne x mc marriage of convenience longfic
synopsis: Doctors must never date their patients. It's completely unethical, no exceptions, not even for a surgeon as renowned as Dr. Zayne Li. He'd lose his license in a heartbeat, much to the chagrin of his dear childhood friend and (begrudging) primary care patient. After years of mutual pining and one too many compromising late-night phone calls, she proposes something a little more permanent.
tags/warnings: marriage of convenience, rom com, slice of life, smut, post-explosion so character death/grief mentioned, named MC, slight hints of yandere caleb (we love him), husband zayne, daddy kink but they're loling about it tbh.
notes: WIP with a few chapters left, 47k word count
excerpt: Zayne can feel the memories wash over him as they walk into her building and take the elevator up, all the times he’s been here, her house parties, the movie nights, making sure she got home safe when she was too drunk to stand, those awful weeks after the explosion. He glances over at her, catches the look in her eyes, the thoughtful way her mouth is settled. She’s thinking about it too.
“Are you gonna miss coming here?” she asks, looking over her shoulder at him as she unlocks her door.
He gives her a little smile, looking around the familiar apartment. There’s the couch where he’d spent countless hours in its ugly purple glory, the kitchen where he made her make pizza instead of ordering it, the corner of the living room he’d always end up working on his laptop from. He can still see her, wrapped up in a blanket, watching her ridiculous game shows and explaining the inane rules to him with her legs propped up in his lap.
Michelle looks up at him, caught off guard by his swift, certain answer, and he realizes that she had been bracing for this, the part where they’d say goodbye to this place that held so many memories for both of them.
He reaches out, cups her face with one hand, his fingers light on her jaw. He gently presses her back so she’s against the door, her keys making a soft jingle as they fall to the floor. His thumb moves to trace the curve of her lower lip, his voice tender as he tells her: “Not for a single second. Not when I know I'm taking you home with me.”
“You’re soooo funny,” she says, breaking away from his kiss, sounding a little breathless as she steps away from him.
He leans against the kitchen counter as she disappears into her room. He can hear her rummaging around, the sound of dresser drawers opening and closing, the closet door clicking again and again. He crosses his arms, trying not to look too much like he’s waiting on her.
She emerges with a bulging tote bag and an armful of picture frames, letting them clatter onto the countertop, which makes Zayne wince.
“Look at this, it’s so cute,” she says. It’s a photo of them, the three of them. She looks about 10 to Caleb’s 12, their arms wrapped around each other, sticking their tongues out at the camera. They look so much alike, it’s hard to believe they aren’t actually siblings, hard to believe they aren’t twins, really. He must be 14 or so, it looks like the summer before he left for college. It was right before he’d…well. He can’t think about that. She doesn’t remember. Part of him cringes, wants to look away. He’s standing a few steps away from them, just enough space to make it awkward, his arms folded across his chest. He’s not looking at the camera, he’s looking at them. Michelle has clearly mistaken his expression for fond irritation, but Zayne knows what it actually is — jealousy.
He swallows hard, the image clawing at something tender in his chest. They were the first real friends he ever had. He never had that casual ease with people, the effortless charm Michelle and Caleb seemed to possess in spades. Then there was the way she leaned into her brother like gravity itself demanded it, while he loomed over the two of them like a gangly interloper. Does she not see it? A particularly uncharitable thought returns to him, one he’d settled on many times in the weeks after Caleb died, especially when he held her while she sobbed. You’re just a replacement.
“See? You really were like our dad,” she says, oblivious to his racing thoughts.
“That’s one way to put it.”
He takes the frame from her hands before she can dig up another emotional landmine, setting it gently on the counter. His fingers twitch toward the other photos, her and Caleb at his DAA graduation, his face unnaturally flushed, Josephine under a blooming cherry tree. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to poke at an open wound when he’s still figuring out where he stands in all this grief.
“I just mean you’ve always been like family to me,” she says, her voice soft as she wraps her arms around his waist.
Her voice drags him out of his thoughts, and his arms wind around her, pulling her close. He rests his chin atop her head as he exhales slowly. He thinks of teenage Michelle jumping behind the couch when they’d all played Dead Space for the first time, her begging Caleb to let her borrow his car before she even had her permit, the way she and Josephine would share a blanket watching old musicals while he and Caleb pretended not to like them. Yeah, family.
“You too,” he says into her hair. “All of you.”
