summary: life on erid is good, aside from the occasionally nagging desire to get married. — epilogue to the love hypotheticals series (parts i and ii here!)
pairing: ryland grace x reader
word count: 4.3k
tags: established relationship, domestic fluff, literally just domestic fluff, relationship labels, engagement/marriage, grace teaching science on erid, rocky, adrian mentioned, needy!grace, they kiss n' stuff, references to past chapters !
cross-posted to ao3
Your humble abode on Erid isn’t exactly what you pictured for yourself—but you couldn’t want anything more than what you’ve got. For starters, you like your Eridian cottage. It’s a nice, oaky structure, decorated with a plethora of items salvaged off the Mary. You’ve got enough room for a bedroom and a living room. A writing desk in the corner for you, adjacent to another for Grace, both next to a large circular window to oversee the artificial ocean. Outside, of course, the artificial coast is beyond anything you’d seen in your time on Earth. There’s the granular, multicolored sand, the arch formation, hills matted with mixtures of moss and tall grasses, the fog, Grace’s favorite, and the even-tempered, cold-climate.
After being trapped in a pressurized metal barrel for months, you’re very lucky to wake up to this biodome and all of its fine details. Excluding, of course, the alarm that Grace has insisted tooth and nail for the two of you to keep at his bedside. Like this morning, when you have your legs wedged in between Grace’s and an arm swung around his abdomen, the alarm blares out the same monotonous tone over and over, disturbingly persistent. “Alarm,” you murmur, face buried in the pillows. He stirs only minimally, hand coming up to brush over the back of your head. Ryland runs warm, and he sleeps like a log. Too comfortable. Louder, you let out a groan, “Ry.”
You run your cold-tipped fingers just beneath the hem of black sleep shirt, jutting into the tender surface of his stomach. Reactively, he flinches away from you with a half-intelligible, “Jiminy Jack Frost, you’re cold.”
The alarm’s still blaring; he’s no help. Another minute passes before you bother to reach your arm over Grace’s body to slam it off. And by then, with half your weight pressed down on his chest, he’s already rustled awake. Caught underneath you, Grace has a weary, half-conscious grin on his face. It’s almost enough to make you livid, the way he’s looking up at you, all glimmery, just past his lashes. Barely awake and far too pleased. Stubbornly, you say, “We’re throwing out the alarm clock.”
Your executive decision comes like a punch to the gut. Grace’s grin falls, and he immediately props up on his elbows. “What? Why?”
You have to rub your eyes. “It’s disturbingly loud—like, fire alarm loud. Adrien has the biodome on a regular twenty-four hour Circadian rhythm, which means we can wake up naturally,” you list off, “And it also doesn’t work.”
“It works.” Grace grabs away at his glasses, taking them up off the bedside table and slipping them on just to argue with you more visibly. Plainly, he states, “I’m awake right now.”
“But, it doesn’t wake you up. It wakes me up, and then I have to do the dirty work of getting you out of bed.”
“Whatever this is—” Grace makes sure to jut his fingers around your stomach with a bunch of tentative prods, just about the same as you’d done minutes trying to jolt him awake, “—is not getting me out of bed.” You immediately grab for his hands, trying to pry them away from you. Despite your morning bickering, the back and forth of the two of you tousling against one another doesn’t have a single drop of malice to it. When all is said and done, you’re very, very pleased to be stranded in space with him.
—
“Okay, class. Review time. Who wants to tell me about Newton’s Laws of Motion?”
Your favorite (and very rare pastime) is accompanying Grace to his science classes. The Eridian younglings seem to be extra jumpy every time you decide to help out and watch Mr. G in his element—pressed to the xenonite glass and rattling away at the sight of you sitting on a tall stool beside his setup. There’s a very large makeshift Newton’s Cradle atop the steel table today, and a chorus of loud chirping, each youngling more eager than the next to impress. Each has their own individualized pattern of: Me. Me. Me.
The enthusiasm is resounding. Grace claps, a grin growing wide on his face, “One at a time, one at a time.” One very small Eridian at the front of the multitiered formation raises their claw particularly high. One of Rocky’s younglings. Grace throws an index-finger up: “Shoot, Junior.”
Junior shrills: If mate, where younglings?
You can practically see Grace’s soul rise up out of his body. His hands are stilled at his sides. Regret sets in on his face. Of all the things. You swallow, hand coming up to pull at the neckline of your sweater; it’s unbearably hot despite the fog. It takes a moment for Grace to fall back into motion. Sternly, he says, “That is so presumptuous of you and not at all appropriate for you to ask me in a classroom setting.” Stubbornly, Junior thuds himself into a slump on the floor. Grace carries on, “Who’s up next?”
It’s clear that Grace wants to get a grip on the detour quickly and try to steer them all back in the right direction. But, it’s too late. This initial question seems to spiral into a very clear trajectory. More chirps and hums: Tired of human Newton. Want learn human courting ritual. Tell us first meet story.
Grace puts both of his hands up. “We’re supposed to be learning about Newton’s Laws. Not scaring our very special guest.” His objections are met, and vastly overpowered, by the repetitive chorus of the younglings, who are increasingly interested in the same thing: First meet. First meet. First meet.
“Okay. You want me to do first meet.” Grace turns to you, finally, a sorry look on his face and a blush tinging his cheeks red just beneath the rims of his glasses. “They want me to do first meet, hon.” He’s exasperated. You can’t help but grin, because this occurrence is nothing new. You’ve told some iteration of “first meet” to the class about a hundred times—detailing, at length, your chance meeting with Grace. All things considered, it isn’t the worst story in the world.
It takes you a very short amount of time to get yourself set up for the retelling. You sit cross-legged in front of the xenonite glass. The younglings make sure to huddle up as close as possible as you speak. Now, Grace has his cardigan shed, hanging on the corner of his whiteboard, and he’s taken your place on the high stool. You talk, and he listens—along with the rest of his Eridian science class. “Mr. Grace and I met on a ship on an ocean just like this one, but bigger, a very, very long time ago. We were both recruited for a very important mission to save the Earth. We all know this part of the story, right?” The younglings sing with agreement. They know Earth’s prior turmoil as much as they know Erid’s.
From behind you, you pull out two identical, xenonite models. You hold up one, “So, here’s me,” and then the other, “And here is Mr. Grace.” They’ve seen these before, and are sure to brighten up at the sight of the little figurines. “When I first met Mr. Grace, I thought he was… handsome.”
The word choice sets Grace into a fit, all while the younglings chirp along and stamp their claws on the floor. “Oh, good lord,” you hear him grumble. You peer over your shoulder to see that Grace has his hands buried in his face, unable to look you in the eyes.
“We were assigned to work with one another, which meant we had to see each other constantly. This was more difficult than you’d think. When I talked to Mr. Grace, like this…” You dance your little figurine mini-me towards mini-Grace, and you make sure to pull mini-Grace back. “He’d be a little bit surprised, and retreat into his shell a little. An equal and opposite reaction, kind of like…” you trail off, gesturing to the Newton’s Cradle behind you. The younglings seem to murmur with agreement: Third Law. You nod, “And I’d do the same. We kind of danced around each other for a while, but it all worked out in the end.” Junior waves a claw around: Is true?
Grace concedes, pressing his glasses higher up on his face. You can see the bottom half of his lenses beginning to fog up. He’s absolutely flushed and it’s impossible to conceal. He concedes: “It wasn’t that simple, but for the sake of the lesson, yes, it was just like Newton’s Third Law of Motion.” Then, they erupt into further discussion amongst themselves: Now, mates. Human courting very simple. Human courting like physics. Bond is easier than Eridians.
“Alright, alright,” Grace pipes up again, trying to quiet them down. “If you guys can run me through the other two laws, we can do lunch a little bit early.”
—
The younglings are only half-willing to accept your departure and listen to the rest of Grace’s motion unit. While Grace teaches the rest of his lesson, you’re due to meet with Rocky on the central quarter of the beach. He’s always making sure to monitor the two of you, a good host tending to his human guests.
You’re not sure how the topic comes up. Maybe, it’s the unintended topic of Grace’s physics lesson, or your nearing one year anniversary of being on Erid. Or, it’s the fact that it’s simply been long enough without verbalizing your particular feelings on the matter. Grace was something to you on the carrier, before either of you had been sent up to space. Acquaintance, then crush. Then, sort-of boyfriend. Definitely boyfriend, by the time he’d gotten the greater portion of his memory back.
Now… all the Eridians like to call you mates, which is altogether too biological for either of you. Partner’s probably better. With all this taken into account, there hasn’t been a very good time to iron it out with him. The two of you have been so satisfied on Erid that it seems sort of pointless to do so. You’re happy. And still, you’re being struck with the sudden feeling that you desperately, desperately want to be married to Grace.
So, you bring this up to Rocky. As the two of you have your daily stroll about the biodome, he’s trying his best to understand the minute details of what a “marriage” is. You make sure to trudge along the sand slowly, matching the pace of Rocky rolling along as best as you can. Human ritual is confusing. Mate asks mate to be together forever, but together already. Futile?
There’s no doubt about it that the proposal thing is futile. It’s futile and outdated already on Earth—and so, it should be futile and outdated all the way on the other side of the galaxy on Erid, where its inhabitants bond so easily. “Well, yes. Obviously, we’re already together, together.” It sounds so immature when you say it. “But, it’s an Earth tradition, you know? Beyond the formality and all, it’s… romantic.”
Rocky dips only slightly into the seafoam as it approaches and recedes with the tide. Need meaning of word. You have to think about this particular word deeply. Romantic? What’s romantic?
Grace is, even if he doesn’t claim to be. Nobody else would be willing to ration out coffee for you, teach the robot-arm to dance to your favorite songs, and take up handicrafts to make you slightly less bored (his favorite: an army of medical glove dolls). His proudest achievement, by far, has been solving your complaints about having zero reading materials. His idea: taking Stratt’s pirated-everything laptop and transcribing books for you by hand on the back of old lab manuals. It takes you a short minute to collect your thoughts together neatly for Rocky’s understanding. “Humans like to express care for their mates. In a marriage, rings are a symbol of a lasting bond. You wear them on your left hand, here.”
You wiggle your ring finger at Rocky. He rolls a bit closer to you, water flicking off the geometric edges of his xenonite shell. Oh. Understand. Like how Adrian name carved on arm? All Eridian mates do this.
“Yeah,” you nod, “It’s exactly like that.”
I know Grace finger circumference. And I know your finger circumference. His claws are raised into the air triumphantly, as if struck by a stroke of genius. Adrien and I fabricate rings for human ritual. You try to breeze over this fact that Rocky has your body measurements stored in his very extensive Eridian brain. What’s more concerning is the fact that he’s serious about the rings. You almost immediately draw back, raising your hands up and waving them rapidly, with a punchy “no.” Rocky seems to slump in his xenonite casing. You’re far too disagreeable. Why not? Rocky provide easy fix.
“Grace and I haven’t had the talk yet, and I don’t want to rush it.” The truth is that you’re shy to ask. When all is said and done, you’re sure that Grace will say yes. There’s no reason for him not to say yes—one, because he adores you, and two, because you’re basically already married. But, the question feels far too serious for your taste, and you’d rather let him bring it up himself.
Rocky seems to tumble on his back and roll over into the water again. No sense. Not difficult to see—you, Grace, good life. Unnecessary complication. You don’t have much of an argument against him.
—
Your walk back up to the house after Grace’s class is filled with nothing but high remarks. It’s just the two of you again, the younglings back to their respective clans and Rocky back to work. As you trudge up the hill with Grace, breeze whipping around your hair, he’s still a little bit caught up by the thought of you handling his students earlier in the morning. “Maybe, you can take my job and I can take up something more solitary. Like fishing.”
“It’s not a big deal, Ry.” You have to stifle your amusement. “You short-circuited. It happens.”
Grace tilts his head, blinking intermittently, “Would you really call that short-circuiting? I’d consider it more strategic than anything else.” Grace shoves his hands into his pockets, more mortified than anything else at the thought of his own flustered shock. He doesn’t believe what he’s saying himself, and still, he’s far too prideful to admit otherwise. As the two of you reach the front door, Grace makes sure to skip in front of you eagerly to open it and let you both in.
“Right. We can definitely classify it as a strategic, intentional lapse in speech,” you tease. While Grace bends over to untie his Converses and kick them off, he seems to hang his head particularly low.
“You’re not allowed in the classroom for the rest of this month,” he tells you. Two and a half weeks. It’s more for his sake than it is his students’. You nod, placing your work boots on the rack right by Grace’s sneakers.
“In any case, they’re just curious. It isn’t an inherently bad thing.” He doesn’t try to contest that point. Curiosity is never a bad thing, and it’s palpable how much his new class of younglings adores learning from him. What he doesn’t like, admittedly, is how their curiosity extends into your shared dating history. He’s very lucky you haven’t retold how you sacrificially launched yourself into space with him; it would no doubt cause a coup.
It’s clear that Grace is at least overall pleased with your storyelling—because as soon as you shut the door behind you, he seems to stoop down to try and kiss you. His blonde hair tickles at your forehead with the action, glasses slightly askew. It’s with much regret that you have to stop him. Grace comes upon an impasse. He’s kissing the front of your palm, not your lips, and he’s deeply confused. He retracts. “What?” You make sure to duck out the way and keep a straight path towards your writing desk. Grace trails behind you like some kind of lost puppy, “Wait, wait.”
“It’s Friday.” Since the start of Project Hail Mary, you’d been assigned to documentation, and so, on Erid, you thought it would be best to carry on with the work. Fridays—you and Grace had agreed upon sticking to as close as Earth time as possible—were for your weekly log, an ongoing tracker of your settlement on Erid. You tell Grace, dragging your chair back and seating yourself onto it, “It’ll take ten minutes just to type something up.” More like twenty. You’re very thorough, and he knows that. “I’ll make it quick, and then we can do dinner.”
You’re dancing around the fact that Grace very clearly does not want dinner. He nearly keels over at your despondence towards him. “I’ve been waiting all day to get you to myself,” he confesses. Much to his protest, you open the old laptop and click into the usual file. Grace tries again, throwing his cardigan over the back of your chair: “Maybe we can circle back to the log in an hour or so, and work productively on our oxytocin output.” The corporate-scientist talk really kills you.
“Fifteen minutes,” you wager. Grace groans. You know exactly where this tends to go. He gets needy, distracts you from your work, makes it near-impossible to return to. Secretly, you adore when he gets like this—all restless and slightly irritable. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” you chuckle, “I mean, physically, I cannot leave the dome.”
“One smooch and I’ll get out of your hair?” he rasps back. You tilt your head to look up at him with a very empty look of exasperation. Grace takes both of his hands and cups them onto your cheeks, before holding you still to plant his lips onto yours. Still seated at your desk, you have to twist your neck oddly to better face him, and when you finally find a comfortable enough way to turn, you make sure to brush Grace’s forearm with your hand. You can feel him smiling into you. It’s almost juvenile, the way he evolves the quick peck into a deeper and more intimate kiss.
You tug on the side-loop of his jeans, and he pulls off of you with a labored breath. “O-kay,” you punch out, “Quota reached. You go work on lesson plans over there, and I’ll do my logging over here.” He lets out another belligerent grumble, and reluctantly obeys. Grace makes sure to press a kiss to your temple, before padding over to the living room to give you space.
Though, you can hear Grace mumbling, out of sight, “Armando, do you see what I have to deal with?” It sounds as if Grace drags a chair out at the dining table and slides himself onto it. Then, silence.
Alone, now, you have ample time to consider what your writings will be made up of. Your log from last Friday reads briefly about improvements to the biodome—perfection of water temperature thanks to Adrian and your attempts to germinate soybeans from the Hail Mary. You’re not exactly sure what to write about for this week. There’s Grace’s lessons with the Eridian younglings, your ongoing efforts to create an English-Eridian dictionary, and today’s extensive talk with Rocky about marriage. The last option, of course, needs to be omitted from the record, on the off chance that your other half checks the file. All things considered, you could be happily un-married to Grace.
—
But you’re pleased, of course, finding that he thinks otherwise.
Only a few weeks pass when the subject crops up again. You’re busy hanging up laundry, while Grace sweeps the floor. It’s one of those more productive weekends in the biodome, and he’s whistling along to The Beatles. The clothesline reaches from one edge of the bedroom to a corner of the dining room on the opposite side. You’ve got a good momentum going, a rhythmic tug and fold of clothes off the line, until Grace asks—or, rather, stumbles into—“Do you remember when I thought we were married? I mean, I thought I was married to you, but I didn’t know that you were you. What am I saying?”
You know exactly what he’s trying to say, and it’s enough to make your hands jittery. Just when you thought you’d be able to flee from the overall concept of marriage, he decides to throw you off your game. You hold up a maroon shirt of his—a worthy distraction. It has a crude illustration of an amino acid with downturned eyebrows and fumes puffing out on either side of it. A-mean-o, the shirt reads. Not very funny, but you’re sure that you’ve stolen it from Grace at least once or twice. You try to laugh it off. “Well, I’d say it’s pretty difficult not to remember,” you tell him, “You’re still a pretty long way from living it down.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d necessarily want to do that,” he hums. You fold the shirt with an all-too-sharp precision and toss it onto the rest of the old shirts piled on your king bed. Does he know what he’s saying? You can’t tell. The next garment that you grab off the line is one of Grace’s red jumpsuits that the two of you have naturally turned into gardening gear. The act of folding this up isn’t nearly as easy, considering that your hands are stiffening with nervousness.
Grace comes right behind you, one hand brushing against the small of your back as he passes you and bends over to rustle around his side of the bed. He’s very determined to obtain whatever’s been stashed there. You can see his hand slip underneath the mattress, and he makes sure to hold the foreign object behind his back as he turns to face you. “Can I give you a hypothetical? Won’t take too much of a setup.”
“Ryland.” You’re as wary as you are delighted. You try to peer around him to see what he’s got tucked behind his back, but he’s very quick to angle himself away from you.
“Okay, just be patient with me.” He chuckles at your eagerness, one hand coming out to hold you still by the shoulder. Then, he retracts it—chest rising and falling as he looks more soberly over your face. “The first time we met.” Grace stalls, then tries again, “Let’s say, hypothetically, the first time we met, I desperately wanted to talk to you.”
“What?”
“Like after my first astrophage meeting, I saw you eating dinner in the cafeteria on the center-left table, but I was too nauseous from the jet ride over to eat that night. So, I sat there the morning after because I thought you might show up. And you did,” Grace rambles through the explanation, before talking a big breath in. “How would you react if I had done that? Hypothetically?”
“I’d probably call you a stalker, hypothetically.” Your lackluster response makes him squirm.
“Okay, well, that’s what happened,” Grace surrenders. He only seems half-offended—less so when you seem to start laughing at him. “Okay,” he breathes in, “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve always wanted you around me since forever ago. And I want us to do… this.” He takes your hand to place the object onto your palm. You seem to sober up a little bit, hushed. Grace hands you a small, xenonite box, all cross-hatched. It weighs barely anything.
“This isn’t an ammonia bomb, is it?”
Grace snorts. “I have a sneaking suspicion that you know it isn’t that.” You turn the box over in your hand; you’re sure that there’s some sort of Eridian engraving in it that you haven’t quite mastered yet. “I figured that we haven’t done things very linearly. You basically proposed by coming up to space with me, and I proposed by already thinking we were married. So, the real deal’s in there. Sorry for the wait.”
You don’t even care to open it that moment, too preoccupied with him to even think about the box in your hand. You make a sweeping motion to throw your arms over Grace’s shoulders, chin tucking over his shoulder. With just as much ardor, he brings his arms around your waist. There, the two of you embrace there for the next couple of minutes. In your cottage on Erid, in the middle of space, ages away from Earth. Away from Earth might’ve bothered the both of you once before—but now, it doesn’t seem so bad.
—
It’s a warm night in the biodome. Grace has your hand in his lap, and he’s using his index and his thumb to rotate the wedding band on your left hand. It’s a perfect fit on both of you, some kind of dark metal alloy with what you think is xenonite glass embedded into a middle-layer. The hushed sound of the waves echoes out from down the hill, and the two of you sit on the grassy knoll in one another’s company. You’ve been thinking this all night long, and you’ve got to ask: “Did Rocky tattle on me?”
Grace hangs his head with a grin, “Not on purpose. I went and asked if I could get him to fabricate me some wedding bands. You can imagine the look on my face when I found out he already had them done.” Before he can tease you any further, you make sure to take Grace’s face into your hands and kiss him silly. He seems to chuckle into it a bit, caught off guard by the sheer intensity that you seem to want to press your lips into his. By the time you’re done with him, his glasses are practically at a forty-five-degree angle on his face.
You have to reach your hands up to straighten them out for him. Then: “How long d’you think before your class notices these things?”
Grace groans, leaning his forehead straight onto your shoulder. “I can’t even think about that right now… Half a class period, if I’m lucky.”
I'MA TELL THE WORLD THAT YOU'RE MINE, MINE, MINE! / BRADLEY "ROOSTER" BRADSHAW
SUMMARY Maverick gets a taste of the past when he sees you with Rooster.
WORD COUNT 3.5k
WARNINGS/TROPES Fem!Kazansky!Reader, childhood friends, ambiguous relationships (in the sense I never actually define if this is the first time they've kissed or a regular thing), references to the first Top Gun movie, no use of Y/N, pet names (sweetheart, baby, ma'am), PDA, uncle mav!! set during that first hard deck scene in TGM, in which hangman unknowingly digs himself a bigger hole with mav
AUTHOR'S NOTE wow, a non-hockey + reader-insert fic for once! not sure if this'll be a recurring thing, but i'm giving y'all a taste of my AO3 :)
Gold spilled through the windows, glinting against the ceiling-hung model airplanes and sweating beer bottles scattered throughout the Hard Deck. Most chairs lay unoccupied, and the wooden planks creaking beneath your feet were still visible past the sparse early evening crowd.
You were reveling in the calm before the storm.
Each time the front door gave way to a sudden rush of wind, you glanced up, observing, picking apart. There was the civilian, whose wide eyes flickered like he'd stumbled into a place twenty miles from where he was actually meant to be. Then came the couple—definitely military—who sidled up to the counter and rattled drinks off like a maintenance checklist, like they couldn't quite shake off work.
The worst ones were the slim-bodied, khaki-clad aviators, who sauntered in with the confidence of a vain peacock, laughter as vibrant as the attention-grabbing feathers adorned in deep blues and verdant greens.
Hangman leaned against the counter with that perfectly, frustratingly charming grin of his. Your name rolled off his tongue, laced with shallow affection. A light-hearted flirt fest was all. "How've you been, sweetheart?"
"You're a few hours from Lemoore," you said. "Both of you."
The corners of Coyote's lips flipped up. "Missed us?"
"Terribly." Sarcasm dripped from your tone. "What can I get you tonight?"
Amber beer bottles scraped against the counter. Hangman winked as he threw a few dollar bills down—a hefty tip, as always—and you blew a meaningless kiss in the air that sent him and Coyote away.
"Your dad know you're flirting with his men?"
You turned slowly in hopes that you could rein in the widening stretch of your mouth in time, but a full-blown beam glimmered beneath the dim bar lights as you met the familiar raised eyebrows and knowing green eyes that had watched you—and seen past your innocent eyelash batting—through nearly every stage of life.
"I was wondering how long it'd take before you showed up here," you said, cheeks flushed with remnants of a passing youth. You rounded the bartop, two strides becoming one, feet light like the floor was made of springs.
Maverick barely twisted in his seat in time for your embrace, his shoulder digging into your sternum as you flung your arms around his neck. He shifted, winding his grasp around your ribs, unable to hide his smile as your sweet laughter echoed in his ears like a bright sunny day. "Hi, kid."
"Hi, Mav. It's been a while. I missed you."
"How'd you know I'd be around?"
You were behind the bar again. "All this time, and you're still asking."
Maverick's lips thinned. Of course. "How is he?"
A sharp breath inflated your chest, your gaze falling to the lemons yet to be cut. You picked up the knife. "I don't feel like crying on the job today," you said with a slight tremble. You made one slice before putting the knife back down and forcing your chin up. "You should go see him while you're here. I'm sure he'd appreciate it after all the strings he's pulled for you."
"You're making digs at me now?"
"Only fair for all the teasing you've put me through as a kid." Your gaze slid to the door as it swung open. Just another group of civilians. "Look," you propped your forearms on the counter, "I'm not supposed to know anything about this, but you know my dad has never been able to keep things from me, especially not about..." You paused when Maverick's expression wavered, then cast a glance over your shoulder, toward Hangman and Coyote by the dartboard—the only kind of people you'd come to know throughout your life. "I know Bradley got called back here. Are you ready to see him?"
Are you? came close to slipping out of Maverick's mouth—a quick rebuttal he'd slammed down with teeth grinding together, just short of painful. The sting eventually shot through his jaw when he noticed the threaded bracelet looped around your wrist, weathered and stained as time frayed the edges. You and Bradley had matching ones. He remembered that. He was there when you made them.
And the shirt you were wearing—a deep blue with the University of Virginia insignia printed in the middle—was loose around the collar, nearly sliding down your shoulder, sleeves scraping past your elbows. It was almost comically oversized. If he had to guess, he'd say it was Bradley's, somehow in your possession over the years—years he'd lost with him, but years you hadn't.
Those aviators, too, roosted atop your head, clearly forgotten to take off before the start of your shift, looked an awful lot like the ones he'd gotten Bradley as a teenager. You must have been the recipient of them after their relationship had plummeted into the seventh circle of Hell.
Money not wasted, he supposed.
But his question would've been a stupid one to ask.
You were nearly doused in Bradley Bradshaw, and instead of the tumultuous ball of dread cradled in his stomach, your heart was probably jumping for joy at the very thought of seeing him again.
Something in his chest clenched as the mission loomed over his head. You. He had to think of you, too. He couldn't afford to blow this.
"Get back to work," he finally said.
Your gaze flitted over his face—steely, calculating, like you were dissecting every thought that passed through his brain, paired with a cocky edge that pushed your head atilt, obnoxiously chomping on the stale piece of gum in your mouth. God, you were every bit Iceman's kid when you did that.
Maverick wasn't sure if he found comfort in that.
"Fine," you relented. "We'll do it your way, Uncle Pete." You pushed away from the counter. "But you owe me dinner."
You returned your attention to your job, mentally preparing for the moment this bar would be turned upside down and inside out as the clock struck closer to midnight. The limes and lemons were cut into wedges, and you'd wiped down the counter more times than truly necessary, and really, you should be switching out the kegs, but Maverick looked pathetically lonely as he nursed a pint, and you'd run your luck—and a keg—dry the last time you tried to do it, so you remained at your station and hoped someone else would do it for you.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Penny froze, a crate of freshly washed glasses and schooners perched on her hip. "You know about this?"
You bit back a grin, innocently shrugging. You could feel Maverick's disbelief burning into the rear of your head as you attended to a new patron. Then another. And another. Until the bell clamored beside you, a jingle that coaxed cheers from everyone but the reason behind it.
"Tough night, Mav," you said over your shoulder, but your amusement trailed off when Hangman's voice ricocheted like a jet engine.
"What do we have here?"
With Payback and Fanboy flanked behind her, Phoenix strolled through the front door—just three. Your stare lingered on the closing gap as the door thudded against the frame, trying to keep the small puff of dejection from blowing against the bottle of vodka in your hand.
He'd be here soon enough.
Hangman eventually found his way back to the bar. "Penny, my dear."
"Yeah?"
"I'll have four more on the old-timer."
Your lips slanted. The slight tilt of Maverick's head was meant to snuff out your impending rib-aching, tear-filled laughter, but your smirk only deepened. "You gonna be able to buy me dinner after this, old man?"
"You're trouble," said Maverick. His gaze darted to Penny, long enough for you to understand that he had meant more than just the fun you were poking at.
All you responded with was a wink.
Hangman beckoned you over with his fingers. He leaned down, his voice a quiet hum against the ruckus flowering around you. "I'm not one to judge, but he's a little older than your usual target, ain't he?"
You ducked your head, hiding the way your face twisted in all the wrong ways and swallowing down the retch shooting up your throat, before the coquettish mask returned. "My usual target's not here."
"Will he be?"
"I don't believe I'm at liberty to tell you, Hangman."
His eyes crinkled. "Well, if you're looking for a new one," he said, "you know where to find me."
You snorted.
"Bradshaw!"
Your head whipped toward the door.
Amidst the throng of people pouring into the Hard Deck, you spotted the familiar sunkissed skin swathed in a loose, unbuttoned shirt, jeans mapping out the creases in his muscles, and those sunglasses you'd talked him into buying one day. Your mouth had tipped up in a smile before you even realized.
Hangman sighed. "And there goes my chance."
"Like you ever had one." Penny slid in beside you, putting down four beers in front of Hangman.
"I'll let him know you're here."
Your gaze followed Bradley as he bounded past the bar and toward the pool tables, joining the growing group of aviators. "No, you won't."
Hangman flashed another one of his charming smiles. "Much appreciated, Pops. Hey, sweetheart, what song are you feeling? I was thinkin' Slow Ride." He scrunched his nose when you fixed him with a dry and hardened stare. "Offer's still on the table."
"Keep dreaming, Seresin!" you exclaimed to his back.
Maverick handed his card to Penny to close his tab. His gaze was heavy on you, tracking the way your giddy grin faltered as a new song danced into the air. Hangman's laughter was a beacon within the crowd, as though he knew you were rolling your eyes at him. You hadn't even followed through when you drifted to Bradley again, like a compass needle always finding true north.
Yeah, his qualms with this mission went beyond him and Bradley. He definitely needed to think of you.
"Why'd you pull his papers, Mav?" you asked softly, a quiet hum that was nearly lost in the flood of commotion warming the room up. It felt misplaced for a place like this. But you asked anyway.
"He wasn't ready."
You slipped a lemon wedge against a glass. "Neither was I, and you and my dad hadn't made a sound when I put my application in. I think that only pissed him off some more."
"You weren't going in to be a pilot."
"Bullshit, and you know it. If my eyes hadn't shit the bed, I'd be in that cockpit." You handed the drink off to a waiting sailor. "I know it's different—you and him, you and I—but at the end of the day, he still made it here. Was it really worth losing him over it?"
The muscles in Maverick's jaw ticked. He shook the distant fog in his eyes away. "Do you always have heart-to-hearts with your customers?"
"Only the ones I grew up with."
Penny put Maverick's card down on the counter. "It's been declined."
Disbelief warped his face. "You're kidding."
Penny didn't pull her attention from him as she told you, "Why don't you take your fifteen?"
You didn't stick around. You didn't want to. You'd seen Penny and Maverick dance around each other for as long as you could remember, spanning since before you were born. Whatever unresolved tension hung between them was something you did not want to be trapped in the midst of.
Hangman wooed. "I knew you couldn't resist, sweetheart."
But his words fell on deaf ears as your hand glided up Bradley's arm and across the expanse of his back. His skin didn't twitch, and there wasn't a flicker of surprise in Bradley's eyes—not at the sudden warmth encasing the scars littered on his neck that traced the path of your touch, not at the brush of your thumb against the hairs on the back of his head, not at the comforting press of your body against his, not at the weight of your stare that seemed to settle his entire soul.
No, of course not. He would know you even if his memory were wiped.
Bradley snaked his arm around your waist, meeting your eyes with a face-splitting grin. A sweet mix of seasalt, wood, and sweat encircled you as his body draped over yours, the tautness in your shoulders dissipating with a slow exhale that would make the next few hours of fulfilling drink orders worth it. You weren't sure if the shivers prickling your skin were from the ticklish brush of his mustache or the gentle kiss on the curve of your neck.
"Watch the hand, Bradshaw," you warned when his palm ventured low over the curve of your spine, skimming the top of your jeans. His chest trembled with laughter, and yours followed as you pulled away—a sound so attuned to his, a familiar beat you'd grown up with, one your heart had learned to mimic. "Hiya, you big stud."
"You look good," he said, kissing the side of your head. "Always do."
A satisfied hum rippled in your throat. You remained nestled against Bradley, but turned to Hangman with a sugary sweet smile. "Oh, I'm sorry, Seresin. Did you say something?"
Hangman rolled his eyes as laughter erupted around you.
Bradley's lips grazed the shell of your ear, breath warm. "Unplug the jukebox and meet me at the piano?"
"I was getting sick of this song anyway." You slipped from Bradley's grasp, even as his arm seemed to contradict his words and tightened around you.
Groans weaved between patrons as you yanked the plug from the outlet, slicing through the song that Hangman had selected.
Bradley held his hand over his shoulder, waiting patiently to feel yours slide against his before pulling you onto his lap. "How long do I have you for?"
"One song," you said, taking his folded sunglasses from the collar of his white vest and resting them back on the bridge of his nose. "Make it a good one, hot stuff."
"Yes, ma'am." His fingers dexterously tapped along the black and ivory keys of the wooden upright piano, quelling the complaints around them.
Something warm wrapped around you, memories infiltrating your mind of late summer nights in high school, and endless karaoke nights he'd back you up with, and ballads after your first heartbreak, and thunderous thrumming that kept the party alive, and relaxing Saturday mornings as the waves crashed into the nearby shore, and stories you'd heard from your dad and Maverick over the years, and behind each one, you could hear Bradley pressing one key after another.
There was nothing quite like it.
The bell rang again as a distant echo in your head. You managed to catch the moment Hangman, Payback, and Coyote carried Maverick out of the bar by his limbs. Overboard. Briefly, your eyes connected over Bradley's shoulder, and you picked out the subtle shift in his expression, like he, too, was caught in a memory. A very different one.
Then, he was gone in a blink of an eye.
Maverick left your mind just as quickly as he'd gone as the first few notes of Great Balls of Fire played out. Bradley had told you about the fading recollection he had of him perched on a piano while his dad belted out the song. He also spent hours teaching you to play it. You were sure Carole would've been sick of the song by the time you'd figured it out if it didn't remind her so much of Goose.
"You shake my nerves, and you rattle my brains," Bradley started strongly, his voice rasping with charisma. His mouth was hot against your ear. "Too much love drives a man insane!"
Laughter shook your chest as you joined in, your head bobbing to the rhythm. You didn't care for the way his body jostled, or his head bumped against the back of your shoulder as he damn near shouted the lyrics for everyone to hear.
It was fun. Being with Bradley was always fun.
Whether it was doing fifty push-ups in the kitchen together because your dad thought he was standing too close to you, or helping you with the infinite mountain of paperwork you needed to fill out during your tenure in the Navy, or grocery shopping with his mom before she passed—all of it was a zing of adrenaline and a rush of dopamine when it was with him.
You were out of breath by the time the song ended, throat scratched raw from belting out the familiar song. Ecstasy leaked into your exhale, trembling yet light, and your lips remained pinned up as Bradley squeezed your waist, his arm winding around securely, a comfortable heat seeping past the fabric of your shirt.
It took everything in you to peel away from his grasp.
"What time are you off?" he asked.
"You've got an early morning," you said. "Don't do it to yourself."
Bradley twisted around as you disappeared through the sea of people. "But I want to!"
The rest of the night had stretched long and strenuously, incessantly churning out drink orders, wiping down sticky counterspace, and restocking bottles. By the time the last drunk-to-high-heaven person had ushered themselves out, you were ready to collapse behind the bar and call it a night.
Penny had to pull you off a stool before your eyes fluttered shut until daybreak.
Hauling your bag over your shoulder, you shouted goodnight to her on your way out. The chilly coastal breeze beyond the front door did enough to revive what little energy you had left, bones chattering beneath your pebbled skin.
A startled gasp cut past your lips when you found Bradley leaning against your car, sunglasses askew on his nose and one sleeve of his loose, unbuttoned shirt sliding down his arm. Somehow, he still looked more put together than you. "I thought you left with the rest of 'em."
His head snapped up, a slow grin stretching across his face. "You wouldn't tell me what time you got off, so I waited."
"And now you need someone else to get you home," you said, recounting the drinks you'd served him (and cut him off from for his own benefit).
Bradley dug his keys out of his pocket, the matching bracelet you had with him hanging off the keychain that glinted beneath the exterior lights of the Hard Deck, and handed them to you for safekeeping. "Yes, ma'am." He watched you haphazardly stuff your things into the backseat of your car. "D'you know why we got called back?"
A teasing spark shined in your eyes. "Should've known you just wanted to use me."
Something akin to a wounded noise escaped Bradley. "Baby, no." His hands clumsily cradled your jaw. "I would never."
"What about the time you tried to make Vanessa Torres jealous?" You pushed his sunglasses into his hair.
"That was one time. Almost twenty years ago."
"So not never." The amusement on your face faltered, easily wiped away as time plunged deeper into the night. You curled your fingers around his wrist, his radial pulse gently beating beneath you. "I don't know what the mission is," you conceded quietly, swallowing thickly, "but whatever it is, promise me you'll come back."
Bradley's eyes flickered between yours. You had probably done this a million times by now—made him swear that he'll return. That he'll return to you. Alive. And each time, he felt the weight of his career compressing his bones until he was about ten inches shorter. Was this what his dad felt? He wished he could ask him that, see if it got any easier.
"Haven't I always?" He hoped you wouldn't notice the slight crack in his voice.
You gave a short hum, as though you could see right past him. He doubted that the lingering alcohol coursing through his system was any good at keeping a mask up; then again, he was never very good at hiding things from you to begin with.
"Get in the car," you said softly, pulling your face away from his hands. "We'll grab your Bronco in the morning."
"Can I get a kiss first?"
That got a quiet little huff of laughter from you, swelling when he pulled you even closer, his arms tightly looping around your waist, like the very notion of space between you was inexcusable.
"Kiss me, baby," he sang like he was behind the piano again. Quieter this time—a personal serenade.
"You're something else, Bradshaw." You pulled him down for a surprisingly gentle kiss, a delicate pressure that sent a quiet, warm ripple straight to your chest. You hated to pull away, even as your heart rapped against your ribs and your lungs heaved for air, but you couldn't stop the giddy stretch of your lips as age-old butterflies erupted in your stomach.
"Ooh," Bradley shivered, "that feels good."
"Yeah?" You notched an eyebrow. "You gonna love me like a lover should?"
"Oh, baby, I'll do a lot more than that." He nuzzled his face against your neck. "I'ma tell this world that you're mine, mine, mine."
"Good." You stole another kiss. "Now get in the car."
summary: you wake up late on the hail mary, and grace doesn't seem to remember anything about you—or, your relationship. you don't know how to break the news to him. (a continuation of love hypotheticals, but can be read as a standalone! part iii here!)
pairing: ryland grace x reader
word count: 4.7k
tags: established relationship, hurt/comfort, fluff and angst, temporary amnesia, avoidance, close proximity, awkward flirting, avoidance, tending to injuries, ryland grace doesn't know how to be nonchalant — and neither does reader
cross-posted to ao3
The force with which you slam open the door to Stratt’s office echoes down the hall—loud enough to trigger a couple of security detail officers to rush in behind you. They concede only as Stratt raises her hand up and nods for them to shut the door. Her relentless calm against your impatience only urges intensity. “Send me up. I want you to send me up,” you demand, nails digging into your plans. It’s your first time, after all this time working for Stratt, that you’ve ever been upset at her. It’s a foreign feeling, being so incensed with someone so excessively authoritative.
“Sit,” Stratt tells you. Her eyes are wide despite her well-kept composure; she would’ve expected this from anyone but you—her calm-and-cool documentation specialist. Begrudgingly, chest rising and falling rapidly, you sit. It feels a step down from your initial entrance. A part of you wants to. drag all of her files with thrown-out arms onto the floor—but you know that’ll only make her more bewildered with you.
Instead, you repeat: “Send me up with him.” It was clear to everyone but Grace what was going to happen to him after the accident. When DuBois and Shapiro passed, you had wept to him in his bunk—head rested on his chest as he thumbed the muscle of your shoulder. And, he simply hadn’t known that you were crying for him, too. You loved Grace, even though you’d only just gotten to know him. You’d just gotten to know him, and it was going well.
Stratt is quick to reject your request, you can tell, by the way her lips pucker in dissatisfaction. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“I know what I’m asking and I want you to do it,” you affirm. “You can say that Grace and Yao and Ilyukhina don’t know two cents about documentation,” It’s a good excuse, and you know it is because you’ve spent the past few hours thinking it up. All Stratt needs to do is feed it to the committee. “DuBois would’ve done that job, bless his soul. I can do it in his place. Same job up there as I do down here, and I’m good—you know that. I can be useful.” Utilitarian, first. You know Stratt well enough to cover all your bases.
Decent justifications. You can see Stratt crack just slightly. She shakes her head disapprovingly, “We would have to recalculate for launch to account for your rations and your belongings. It would take an extra week to account for the extra weight. And you’d have to get fitted for a suit.” With an authority as uninhibited as hers, all Stratt needs to do is say yes. All the logistics are not as much of a barrier as she’s making it out to be.
So, you have to be more point-blank: “He might hate you for sending me up, and for a while, he might hate me even more for making you do it.” That part frightens you more than the act of doing it: Grace’s disappointment seeing you on the same suicide mission that he’s been relinquished to. It’s strange, though, that you haven’t felt more sure about something in your whole life. You want to be with Grace. “He has to go up. We all know it, even if he thinks he’s not fit for it.” You glance down at your lap, and back up at Stratt, “You care for him, don’t you?”
She’s quiet. You push harder, “I know you do, or you wouldn’t go through all the effort to take care of him. I’m asking you to do this for him. Let me do this. He needs me.”
“You’ve only just met,” Stratt counters. For a moment, she sounds like your mother—scolding you for running away, in some juvenile act of defiance. It’s possible that Stratt cares about you even more than she does Grace. You’ve known her for double the time that he has, and worked with her just as closely. Your most generous assumption of her feelings towards you is that of a caring mentorship.
“And it will have been worth it in the end. You have to believe that.” The last thing you’re sure about is that Stratt has seen you and Grace together from the beginning. How you had liked Grace and Grace had liked you. How you’d kept each other company all of those months. How you’d spend all those dull morning meetings passing notes to each other. How, after one of those wistful karaoke nights, you’d been holding hands at the bar seats—Rylan’s cardigan draped over your shoulders.
It’s a set plan. You’ll be missing on the day that Stratt asks him to go up—some excuse about Yao and Ilyukhina needing your informational support after DuBois’ passing. And, inevitably, when she forces him to go up, you’ll be packing your go-box to be loaded onto the Hail Mary. Grace will run out to the field to evade the anesthetic, and you will be nowhere. In the end, he’d have fought harder if he knew you were planning on going up there with him.
—
When you wake up from the coma, you’re quick to shed yourself of the plastic wrapping, the intubation, and the rest of the IV and tubing with sweaty, frightened palms. It takes you a minute to orient yourself—dead, black air outside the portholes, the bleak whiteness of the ship’s hull. You’re in a bedding unit on the ground floor, accompanied by the automated whirring of a robotic arm. “What is the capital of California?” the computer repeats, “What is the capital of California?” When you look up, the rest of the pods shut, you know clearly what you have to do.
“Consciousness detected. User 4,” the computer rattles on as you clamber up the ladder, bare in the stark-white underwear they sent you up in. You remember—Stratt, “not enough time to code your information into the ship’s computer”—as glance down the robotic arm spinning on the floor below. When you climb up to slide each of the coma pods open, with no avail—there’s absolutely no one home—you realize that you must’ve woken up a little late. You have to find him. They must be around somewhere, but it’s all eerily quiet.
The hull of the ship is… not exactly what you remember it to be. You’d done only one walkdown with the rest of the crew, and it never once had anything like this. There are these strange crystallized structures mounted up on the walls, lined with dark geometrical frames. “What the hell,” you mutter. You come up to one of the larger structures in the containment room, and tap your hand on the crystalline surface of it. It’s anything but normal, and still, no crew in sight. You feel like you might be sick from the implication.
It’s not before long that you hear a repeated thunking along the floor just outside in the room over. Before long, there’s a smaller version of the structure hurdling in. You feel your stomach drop at the sight. Inside, there’s some kind of spidery thing making its way towards you, appendages rapping closely against the glass shell to wheel along. It feels like something straight out of Alien, and you’re very sure that you need to start running.
“Oh, no. Nope.” You shoot your arms out, looking for anything to throw. If a bunch of these beings have taken over the Hail Mary, and possibly captured the rest of your missing crew of three… it's awfully neat. There’s nothing on the ground, no signs of struggle, and absolutely nothing to throw.
“Grace. Grace. Grace,” an automated voice buzzes out. What? Your jaw goes slack. This thing knows your boyfriend’s—no, you’re not even sure you’d gotten that far—Grace’s name.
There’s a raspy voice echoing down the hall that’s all too familiar: “Rocky, I said I need an extra hand. You’re not still mad at me about the eating thing, are you?” You can already feel the tears welling up in your eyes. You remember clearly how you let Stratt stick you with the syringe. You’d done it for him, and he’s here—and you’re both here. Everything according to plan. Except the alien, of course. Still, he rolls back and forth, back and forth in front of you.
“Grace, friend awake. Grace, come now,” it buzzes again, pressing up flush against the containment of the glass, as if trying to examine you. “Come, come, come, come…” All things considered, it doesn’t appear that this thing wants to eat you.
You have to cough a few good times, massaging at your throat, before yelling out a crackly: “Grace!” There’s a clatter—the sound of something metal dropping onto the floor, glass breaking. Then, rushed steps. He stands in the doorway, hands locked behind his head, eyes wide with his glasses hanging off the edge of his face. You run straight into him, arms shooting around his waist.
“You’re awake,” Grace says. You can feel his arms wrap slowly around you as you press your ear to his chest. Though, for you, it only feels like a long nap since you’ve last seen Grace, you can’t be sure how long it’s been for him.
Rocky, you remember Grace calling him, rolls toward the two of you: “This is hug, question?”
Grace nods, chin coming up against the top of your head. “Yes, Rock—this is a hug,” he looks down at you, astounded, “And… uh, morning. I didn’t think you’d wake up. System advised against taking you out myself, and—”
You can’t be bothered to peel yourself off of him. “Just be quiet a second, Grace. I’m just trying to soak in the fact that you’re okay.” Before they put you under, you’d considered plenty of scenarios about how he’d react to your being on the Hail Mary when you both woke up. His confusion, a possible hint of anger. Now, he’s… rather pacified. You reach up to run your hands through his scruffy blonde hair, nails dragging it on his scalp. He’s watching you check over his face with intent.
“Oh. This is… nice,” he hums, eyebrows knitted together. You must look strange, inspecting him like this—but for you, on that last day you hadn’t been sure that either of you would get up to space safely. Grace is just as handsome as he was when you left him, and the yellow NASA jumpsuit on him reminds you only of his old raincoat.
You have to tilt your head up to kiss him, and as soon as you get remotely close, he seems to straighten up and away from you. “I’m sorry, I can’t—I’m married.” You retract from Grace stiffly. Was he married? No, that doesn’t make sense; he couldn’t have been married, he lived alone—one ex. He had an ex before. And then, he had you. Grace tells you, “I don’t know why I know that, but I’m very certain about it. In here.” He taps his index finger against his right temple. You have to think it over again.
“Right. Sorry,” you say deliberately. It’s a perfect chance to solve it then and there—Are you? or No, you’re not.—but there’s an obstruction, you remember now, Stratt’s words: He won’t remember a single thing about himself. Echoes, if anything. “I’m just… super happy to see that everything’s doing well,” you tell him, “Just got ahead of myself.” Maybe it’s the easy way out, avoiding the truth of your circumstances and his. It’s too immediate, too real. You can see Grace squeeze his hands together in an anxious kind of manner, how you’d seen him do when he had a time crunch on the project and didn’t want Stratt to be pissed with him.
—
Per your lack of actual belongings, Grace lets you borrow a pair of boxers and a t-shirt of his. In the reflection of the windows, black space and your own silhouette, you have to wonder what just the three of you are going to do. No Yao, no Ilyukhina. News of their passing gives you a bout of nausea, to which Grace resolves with a bottled water and an assurance that their burials were nothing but peaceful. Though there’s a lingering sense of urgency for you to be around Grace, you can’t exactly push it. Married? Grace seems flighty around you within the first couple of hours of your waking up from the coma, like he’s frightened to be caught in the same room as you. When you give him your name, he doesn’t seem to react to it in any way. It’s like some odd fever dream.
You figure it all has to be taken in little by little. The two of you agree to have a bit of alone time—if that’s even possible—in the projection room. Together, the two of you settle on a beach ambience, all fog and homely. For a moment, with the digitalized sound bouncing around the enclosed sphere, you can pretend that the two of you are there, sitting on the sand together with your knees pulled up to your chests. Grace starts. “So, your name isn’t on Mary’s manifest. Are you some kind of stowaway?” There’s a commitment to his words, a seriousness just beneath the joke that makes you pull back an immediate answer.
You can’t even comprehend what Grace might think when you tell him—if he’ll be heartbroken that you’re there, if he’ll be made that you martyred yourself for him. So, you keep it vague: “I thought it best fit for the project to be sent up with the three of you. I’m still shocked that I swung it, but I did.”
“They just let you come up?” His skepticism makes you nervous. Maybe, Stratt was right. You aren’t supposed to be on the Hail Mary, and you never were; you were only meant to document and archive and keep track of the information.
You run your tongue over your teeth. “No, I mean, I really had to sell the idea.”
“Of you joining the suicide mission.” Him and his stupid logical inquiry. You can only give him a sickly sort of nod, and trust that he won’t dig any further into it. After all, if it was as easy as it was for Yao, Ilyukhina, and DuBois to give themselves up for the cause, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for there to be someone else like them. Grace seems to accept this easily. “And, you and I…?”
Would’ve been great together, given time. And now there is time. Instead, you admit a measly: “We knew each other, yeah.”
“And you know about me. Who I am,” he affirms. Grace isn’t quite sure how to ask you how you know him, what you were to each other—friends, coworkers, or otherwise.
You shoot for as-vague-as-possible: “I mean, as much as you do. We only knew each other for a very short amount of time.” He looks unsatisfied by your answer, but doesn’t seem to prod any further. To him, you appear just as clueless an agent as he is. Guiltily, you hope that he’ll stay that way until you can figure out how to tell him anything different.
—
You decide to put on a puppet show, laying supine in the little pod with little figurines in your hand. Rocky’s doing: he’s made one little miniature of you and one little miniature of Grace. In front of your face, you dance them along with one another, two geometrical forms moving in unison but unable to join together. You can hear Rocky rolling into the room far before he even enters the room, the bulkiness of his xenonite shell knocking across the ground of the hall. When you tilt your head to look out at him, he’s already well jutting into your sleeping pods.
He asks, “Why hide while Grace working, question?” Right about now, Grace should be doing a couple of extra checks on the Taumoeba, and making sure that the Hail Mary’s trajectory towards Rocky’s ship is still on-point. Which means he’s busy. And you can escape for a generous forty-five minutes before he needs a spare hand.
You have to lock the miniatures away in your closed palm, and slide them just beneath the pillow. You scoff: “I’m not hiding. Where’d you get that from?” You click a button off the side of the pod, letting it extend the bed outwards; as you get up, legs dangling off the side, you can see Rocky roll back slightly.
He insists: “In bed. Make little noise in corner of ship.” It’s all very matter-of-fact.
“I just needed to take a breather,” you correct. In truth, you are very patently hiding from Grace. It’s a terrible habit now that you know that Grace is a pin drop away from recalling who you are.
Rocky pushes again, “Need meaning of word.”
“Breather, like… there’s a lot happening, and I need to rest for a second and think.” It’s the most clean-cut definition you can think up for Rocky. Though, it omits the obvious: you’re terrified to tell Grace and are perpetually delaying the inevitable.
“Think what, question?” As flatly as his programmed voice seems to ring out, Rocky shows a genuine sort of care that you’d find rare among most humans. You can’t exactly reject his attempts. They’re nothing but good-willed.
It takes you another minute or so of silent deliberation before you can figure out how to seek Rocky’s help without giving away too much. Finally, you offer up a decent, analogous-enough hypothetical: “If your mate—if Adrien had come up with you, left Erid, would you be angry with them?”
Disjointed and with much urgency, he responds: “Not angry. Sad. Very sad. Adrien stay on Erid. Stay home. Journey is too high risk.” His response can only send you into a further state of despondency. Rocky and Grace are more alike than either of them would like to admit. Rocky only affirms what you already expect of his response, and by extension, of Grace’s. He must be able to gauge your panicked reaction in the laborious sound of your breathing and the well-engrained frown adorning your face. “Are you sad, question? Thinking of mate.”
“Something like that.” You smile faintly. The thought of calling Grace that—given your absolute lack of time together—amuses you. Still, it’s an endearing thought. You wonder if he’d be as entertained by it as you are.
“Not familiar with Earth mating traditions,” Rocky reminds you. “If talk with Grace, maybe feel better, question?” Rocky has absolutely no clue.
—
Out of the three of you, you happen to have the least painful injuries after Tau Ceti-E—a couple of tender bruises on your back, and a sprained ankle. As you’re still very much in love with Grace, it feels absolutely excruciating to act casually around him. Him flinging himself out of the ship for the bacteria collector was enough to send you into a panic. And, now that everyone’s safe enough—injuries aside—you fall back into an easy enough routine.
And, it’s not as if he’s a blank slate. He’s still plenty identical to how he was when you first met—intelligent, sometimes klutzy, and prone to curiosity. You flock to him like you did then, on the carrier ship. There’s some instances, you think, that Grace must feel it, too—despite how much he strays away from you.
Like now, as you insist on cleaning his wounds up. Though it’s an easy enough job for the robotic aide, both you and Grace have unanimously agreed to let the system cool down after the obvious intensities of your near crash. So, you’re in the lab, Grace is seated on one of the tall stools, whining as you peel off the old patch off his cheek. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”
“This isn’t going to go any faster with you squirming like that,” you say, discarding the papery adhesive on the counter. The gash on Grace doesn’t look terrible, just scabby around the edges. You take up supplies from the open medical kit on the counter beside you both. Your hand grips his chin as you drag an antiseptic-saturated cotton swab across his cheek. His scruff is rough against your fingertips. “Just stay still and let me disinfect it. You’re worse than a kid.”
“You know, I don’t think you’re wrong,” he responds with gritted teeth. You can tell he’s trying, out of embarrassment, to hold in any further disgruntled noises. “Have you been icing your ankle?”
“As much as I can,” you mumble. You can tell that he’s trying to distract himself, hands gripping the seat of the stool.
Grace hums, “Well, if you need to be off your feet for the next couple of days, I’m pretty sure Mary isn’t going to get any worse.”
You lift the swab off his cheek a moment. “Are you asking me to take a break, or are you telling me to?”
“Whatever you’ll agree to more easily?” Grace grins softly. His insistence is so familiar that you almost forget that the half of him that knows you is missing.
You return the swab back against his wound, and he flinches less intensely than before. Softly, you tell Grace, “I’ll think about being off my feet. Don’t want Rocky waking up to a dumpster fire of a ship—you know how he hates messes.”
It isn’t until the new bandage is on his cheekbone that the two of you, at once, recognize the sort of position you’re in. Grace with his hands grasped tightly around either side of your waist, and you wedged in between his parted legs. You must have failed to notice, and clearly he hadn’t either. You swallow soft, face hot. You can see Grace’s eyes flash down to your lips and back up.
“Thanks,” he coughs out, red-faced, “I better go check on Rock now.” As soon as his glasses are shoved back onto his face, Grace dismisses himself with a beeline towards Rocky. You make sure to step aside, making sure to toss the used supplies into the nearest waste bin, before closing up the kit and tossing it back into its usual drawer. Now, the ship feels exceptionally tiny. You can see Grace press his face closer to the xenonite glass of Rocky’s container. His glasses are fogging up, and you can see through the glass that he’s trying his best not to glance up at your direction.
—
While Grace is occupied with taking care of Rocky, you’ve dedicated yourself to restoring the Hail Mary to her prior state. The cleaning is a decent distraction, and gives you a good chance to survey the ship’s inventory. The cockpit has the worst of it, manuals scattered and screens cracked from the interior pressure. You try your best to order everything back into place.
There's a whiteboard discarded in the flight deck lodged behind the chairs, bent in the middle but still largely recoverable. You pick it up gently, as if recovering some kind of ancient artifact. There’s a couple of phrases at a time scribbled neatly in columns: San Francisco? Good with cilantro. I’m a teacher. You can’t imagine what it must be like to be him—bits and pieces of who he was before the launch, trying to sew themselves into something meaningful. Another column: Notebooks? Sweet coffee, no exceptions. Gorgeous.
There are a couple more identifiable things that sell the understanding that it’s all you. Hometown. The names of cafes and restaurants you liked to go to before the project started. That sells it: this side of the board is all about you—detailing in fragments all the time that you’d spent being together all that time on Project Hail Mary before the launch. How you’d like each other from the start over breakfasts in the carrier ship’s cafeteria. How you’d pass notes across the table during those five o’ clock committee meetings.
Open windows. How you’d kissed for that first time before dinner with the team, in your crammed bunk room. You’d had the windows propped open that night to let the open air and sea mist in; he remembered that. He remembered sentiments about you—but he still can’t quite place your name or your face. It’s you who’s clouding Grace’s brain, and he doesn’t even know it. He thinks you’re married. It’s an educated guess that he’s reiterated enough times to think it’s real.
—
It takes quite a bit of thinking over when you decide to confess. While Rocky shows Grace his ship, you’ve decided to stay back and make sure the Hail Mary is in top shape to get refueled. You come up with the courage while he’s gone, and it’s all plotted out thoroughly in your head:
Grace, I haven’t been honest with you. I need to tell you that I knew you more than I said that I did, before this. I need you to forgive me for what I’ve done, and know that it was the best possible choice I could’ve made—even if you might not agree. And anyway, we’re here now and we won’t be going back, so there’s nothing to be done but be together.
When Grace makes it back in, suit shedded, he doesn’t think twice to collapse onto the ground of the main hull. You find him like that, knees pulled up to his chest, heavy-lidded eyes swollen from crying. He must know now, somehow, how he got there. And, he must have a sneaking suspicion about how you got there, too. The need for your drawn-out confession has evaded the both of you.
There’s the chirps and ticks of the ship’s machinations, the low hum of the Hail Mary cutting through space, and there’s the sound of his muffled sniffling. Oh, Grace. You’re quite aware of the fact that he can see the soles of your shoes right next to his. Your voice falls lower than a whisper: “Are you upset with me?”
“It’s you. Of course not,” Grace grumbles. You let out a little bit of a sigh—seating yourself onto the ground beside him. He hangs his head, “We’re so not married.”
“In your head, I guess we were.”
“That’s so embarrassing,” Grace groans, palm coming up to cover his face. You have to nudge his shoulder with your own. Not that embarrassing, you want to say—but all too shy to do it aloud. He murmurs, “Why did you do it?”
“It was this or slow death. Living with the fact that I wouldn’t ever see you again.” This is a confession in and of itself—admitting to Grace that you cared about him crazily enough for you to leave the planet. “I convinced Stratt before she sent you up, made sure you wouldn’t find out about it. I knew you wouldn’t want me to do it, and I knew you didn’t have a choice.”
“You knew she was going to send me, and you volunteered yourself up to keep me company,” he repeats back to you. He nods with a sturdy, rasped out “huh.” It’s clear that he’s still trying to settle with the fact that he’s known you this whole time—more than known. Grace rubs his fingers gingerly against his forehead.
“Sure you’re not mad?”
To that, he eagerly shakes his head. “I should be. Selfishly, I’m kind of stoked. I mean, I get you all to myself. That’s, like, the dream. I win.” Grace throws a weak, celebratory fist into the air. You have to stifle a giggle. Yes, this is the Grace you knew. “Obviously,” he says, “you get the short end of the stick.”
“Don’t,” you tell him, index finger pointed. “I’m one-hundred percent where I want to be. It’s you and me, Dr. Grace.”
“You and me,” he repeats. He makes a quick swipe at your hand, lips brushing over your knuckles in a quick kiss. Grace makes sure to hold your hand hostage in his own, and the two of you sit there a while, your head leaning on his shoulder. There isn’t a single bit of assurance that the two of you will be making it back to Earth in due time, and still, you don’t feel much of a need to rush.
summary: after stratt hires you on as a documentation specialist for project hail mary, you find yourself being more and more drawn to one dr. ryland grace. (part ii here and part iii here!)
pairing: ryland grace x reader
word count: 4.5k
tags: (set on stratt's vat, pre-tau ceti) meet-cute, strangers-to-lovers, forced proximity, workplace relationship, idiots in love, fluff, will they/won't they, documentation specialist!reader
cross-posted to ao3
What would you do if the apocalypse started?
It’s a stupid hypothetical that you make up when you’re trying to get to know somebody. Something you say at two in the morning at a sleepover, or at work in the break room with absolutely nothing to do. It isn’t serious—never that—until the Petrova line. Until the pending death of the Sun. Until Eva Stratt comes knocking on the door of your high-rise apartment, asking you—really, telling you—to abandon your day job and leave for overseas.
She has you document everything. You take notes on all the major classified meetings. You transcribe conversations between officials, especially the particularly tense ones. When you’re not writing, she has you in front of a printer-scanner, making copies for the bi-weekly organizational debriefings. You went to school for technical writing, and now, it appears that you’ve been placed into the absolute life-or-death version of a dream job. It could be worse. You could be at home, knowing that the next thirty years will spiral into world crises and war over rations. At least you’re doing something.
Her latest project for you—and, allegedly, the most important—is technical writing regarding astrophage. For the past few weeks, you’ve done nothing but compile information from Stratt’s several global microbiologists. It isn’t until the big breakthrough—the “great American scientist” who figured out how to breed the little things—that the ball starts rolling. You’ve been hearing all about him, no matter how unwillingly. There’s plenty of reserved comments from Stratt about how reclusive he seems to make himself. From the scientists, who praise his findings. From the agents, too—a schoolteacher, he’s a schoolteacher, and he dresses like one, too.
The first time you meet him truly is ultimately… gratifying. Dr. Grace lives up to expectations. You’re at the other end of the table when Stratt leads him in: a mousy, blonde-haired thirty-year-old man. Glasses askew, and dark-blue eyes blown wide. It takes a lot of will for you not to tilt your head at the sight of him—the way his eyes dart around the room, his unsuccessful attempt to back himself out of it. It’s… amusing–like watching a baby bird get coaxed out of the nest. What comes next is rather productive. You type fast on your laptop: astrophage, single-celled, Venus, high-CO2, breeding, replication by mitosis. You aren’t able to focus much on him, per say. It’s more his words, his cadence when he talks about the discovery—and the following queries that come with debriefing him on Project Hail Mary. He’s cute. And there isn’t enough time in the world for you to think that.
—
The next time you see him is in the mess hall a couple days after. Clearly, Stratt has him settled in—probably placed him in a nice bunk with another one of the old scientists. He sits mulling over a bowl of cereal, looking almost identical to the way that he did in the meeting room. The greatest change, clearly, is his choice in clothing. He’s got a knit cardigan on, over some punny science t-shirt that you can only vaguely read. Dr. Ryland Grace sits alone. And, he’s in your spot.
Your imagination runs its course. Maybe, he likes solitude. Maybe, he’s still facing the fact that this ship is filled with some kind of Sisyphean effort to try and save the planet. You’re very sure, looking at him stirring his spoon pointlessly in the bowl, that this situation is too big for him. He wants to go home. You’ve got your own tray of breakfast—oats and bottled juice. Clearly, you’re not used to the barrack-like quality of the ship quite yet, or else you’d be able to sit down with just about anyone else. The only downside of your job is that you don’t have very much time to talk—buried in screens and stacks of files. You sit alone, too, most of the time, in this very spot that Grace has decided to occupy for himself.
You approach him slowly, waiting for him to notice your presence on the other end of the table. It’s regrettable that he doesn’t, so caught up on the swirling quality of his cereal. You have to knock your knuckle on the edge of the tabletop. “Dr. Grace,” you hum. He retracts his hand from his spoon like it’s red-hot and stands up to greet you.
“Hi,” he says, pulling his own tray back to make room for yours. “Please, please sit down.” You wonder if he’s going to try and reach out to shake your hand—but he’s back down as soon as you swing your leg over the bench. You follow suit, giving him a polite, tight-lipped smile. Grace hums, eyes squinting as he taps his fingers across the tabletop. “I recognize you,” he says, “You had the, uh, fast hands.” The observation comes out of his mouth disjointed and awkward—but, straight to the point.
“Stratt hired me on as a documentation specialist. Fancy title for making sure that everything gets dated and down on paper,” you tell him. You almost want to light up at the thought of him picking you out in that stuff-full room—but you’ve got to keep your cool. “I’ve been assigned to record all research regarding the astrophage.” Which means you’re going to spend a lot more time together.
“Important work. Historians will love you if everything turns out how it’s supposed to,” Grace nods. In truth, you’d never considered your job in that light. In your head, Stratt had simply wanted documentation as a contingency. If all Hell broke loose, there’d still be the logs that you maintained of all the work of the scientists, the engineers, the researchers… You hadn’t been able, in the rush of it all, to consider what it meant long-term.
“Right,” you chuckle, “And molecular biology’ll make a pretty shrine for you, too.” It’s a silly thought—Father of the Astrophage, on a platinum plaque. The flattery makes him shift in his seat, index finger coming up to push up his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. You have to soak it in a little bit, his nervousness up-close. It’s charming.
The two of you sit in silence for a moment, making ample use of your food by using it to keep quiet. Grace has his cereal, and you your oats. It’s easy. You feel like a little kid again, trying to make a friend in the cafeteria; you’re sure that’s what it looks like, too. You take a moment to crack open the lid of your juice, and Grace takes the opening. “Is this where you would’ve wanted it to end up?” he asks, “When… everything, you know—”
“Went to shit? No, not at all,” you huff. It comes up again. What would you do if the apocalypse started? Except, this time, it’s very clear that neither of you have much of a choice. Yes, it’s definitive now. Grace doesn’t know how he got here, still, despite the briefings. He’s in the middle of the ocean, and so are you; he wants advice. “I think most people hope for a conservationist sort of end. Like, in the middle of the redwoods, in a tiny cabin with a stone chimney, or something.”
He lets out a dry chuckle and stifles it quickly with the back of his hand. “Is that what you wanted?”
“No. I mean, I think I’m where I’m supposed to be now. It’s this or slow, slow death.” For an unquantifiable amount of people, you could add. You find it better not to.
“And, your family—?”
“—knows I’m here, if you can believe it. Stratt’s act of kindness. They think I’m doing administrative work for the U.N., which isn’t a complete lie,” you murmur under your breath. He can only nod solemnly. Carefully, you recall: “She told me that you didn’t… have anyone to contact.”
He doesn’t seem phased at all by the inquiry. “No, no. My parents passed away before I finished doing my doctorate. They were older. I moved to the Bay for my tenure track after that. It was the easiest decision I could’ve made, considering—” He doesn’t have to spell it out for you: he bombed his own career with a single dissertation—it was teaching or nothing at all. And, all things considered, Grace really loved to teach. “I lived alone in the end. No dog, one ex.”
Ex. You think it’s probably too soon—and, too much pressure—to tell him that you don’t have anyone else waiting for you at home, either. In some twisted way, you might want him to be curious about it. To wonder if there’s someone waiting for you at the shore, or if you’re hooking up with one of the pilots on-deck. It’s all a bit of harmless fun. Vaguely, you explain, “I had an apartment, too. Nice place. Took forever to hunt for it, lock down the lease, decorate—and then, nothing. Had to surrender the keys after Stratt made it clear she wanted me on-board.”
—
It’s all been a little bit less lonely since Grace’s boarded the ship. You practically have to be glued together on account of Stratt’s orders. “He should rarely leave your sight,” she tells you over dinner one night, in a cleared navigational deck, “It’s imperative that you have his calculations recorded down to the decimal and uploaded to the database.” Really, it isn’t the hardest task. After that first breakfast, he seems generally comfortable in your company. He floats towards you, seemingly, more than you do him. The greatest tell is his punctuality. Grace makes it early enough to morning meetings so that he can position himself right beside you.
When there’s much more dull conversation being held about different nations providing staff or material, you notice that he has the tendency to get more… distractable. Beneath the table, you can feel his knee brush against yours as he bounces his leg—sole of his sneaker scuffing against the floor. Of course, he doesn’t have nearly as much reason to listen when the conversations turn more diplomatic and less scientific. And, while you’re supposed to pay attention heartily and take your extensive notes, Grace is on the less helpful end of the spectrum.
He likes to pass notes. They vary in topic and seriousness. There’s one particular morning when he chooses to be heavy-handed with them. It starts as soon as the representatives begin to argue. With nimble fingers, Grace slips the note right next to the trackpad of your laptop. Britain is a tool. Britain being the politician from Britain, an older man with too-tight trousers who dissented to almost everything Stratt had to offer. You take the card and slip it between the front cover and the first page of your notebook.
More chatter, and you can already see him scribbling out the next one behind his walled-up hand. You peek over, and he slides it determinedly towards you. Hope they do something other than eggs today at caf. Yes, they’d served it five days in a row. You decided to keep your complaints about it in for the first three days, and broke on the fourth. Grace had heard the bulk of your argument—the grittiness of powdered eggs, and how you’d kill for a stack of pancakes. This note, you slide back over to him. It’s not nearly as taboo as the first, which means he can have it back.
The last one Grace has for you comes a whopping ten minutes later, after he gets pulled into a conversation about laser tech for the breeding tanks. Once that devolves into yet another disagreement, he turns his attention back over to you. This new note, he makes sure to fold in half before lodging it beneath the keyboard of your computer. It takes you another five minutes of conversation lulling for you to open it. You pry the two edges open to read it: What do you do with sick chemists? Helium. What do you do if they die? Barium.
This one makes you snort to yourself too loud for your liking. You brush the index card into your lap with your nose scrunched in realization of how much of a slacker you must look like. This routine of yours is beginning to set itself in most morning meetings, and you’re beginning to wonder if you should start giving him the silent treatment. Grace appears rather proud to have made you laugh, chest puffed out; he tries to hide his smirk by looking down at his lap. If Stratt has an opinion about it, she doesn’t say anything.
—
You’re staring, and you really can’t help it. Grace has his cardigan shedded and strewn across the nearest lab chair. He’s doing an awful lot of calculations, something on astrophage power output that you’ll have to ask him to spell out for you later. The graphic, of course, is no better than the rest of the shirts he’s worn all week. But, the real kicker is the way that the fabric of his short-sleeves are hugging around his biceps. You couldn't have guessed that Grace would be so… fit.
You can’t take your eyes off him now, as he takes a black Expo marker to the surface of the whiteboard. The shirt’s tight. You’re checking him out. It isn’t until he peeks over his shoulder at you that you become all the more conscious of it. It’s a fleeting moment; unwillingly, you peel your eyes off of his and onto your laptop on the desk in front of you. You’re supposed to be compiling a folder to send out to the Payload Systems team. Not… this.
“Sorry,” you shoot out mindlessly. You make an exerted effort to examine the inventory list on your screen and cross-check it with another spreadsheet on the tab over. Busywork. It’s better to look like you’re doing literally anything else.
Grace doesn’t take his eyes off the board as he continues scribbling across it. He lifts the marker off the board a moment: “What for?”
You suck in a deep breath. An apology implies that you’ve got something to be sorry about. You want to leave now—but there’s really no good excuse to. Stratt is off-site, which means that you’re only doing busywork ‘till she’s back with new news. So, you elaborate with an empty “…Nothing.”
“O-kay,” he enunciates. You can’t do anything but return back to your screen with an attempt at dutifulness. Grace stays at the board, head tilted to write some undecipherable combination of greek-letters at the upper-right corner, and you can go back to your previously abandoned work. It’s almost machine-like, the way in which he scrawls the information from left to right, without any hesitation. You write several lines down on the notepad to your left: Hermle centrifuge machine needs replacement. Polypropylene for containment units — CNPC bulk load. And, messily, at the corner of your page, In love with Grace?
It’s difficult to tell. You’re together ninety-percent of the time. You’re clearly attracted to him and his square frames and his dad clothes. He makes you laugh, lets you use his old iPod to listen to Oasis. And maybe it’s the close proximity speaking, but you feel deeply about Grace in a way that you aren’t sure how to describe. Like now, as he caps the white board marker and slides it into his back pocket, before coming over to check on you with quick steps.
“On a scale of one to ten, how illegible is that?” he asks you. You try not to cave as he rests both of his hands on the edge of your desk, toned arms straining right beside you. You squint as you stare at the board, trying to make sense of the numbers.
“I think I can get everything down except for that bottom-half. It’s not your handwriting, just the formulas,” you admit. You’d never been one for complex mathematics, and you need to make sure you can get the equations recorded exactly as they are.
He hums, “That isn’t bad at all. For now, just note the biomass—circled and labeled it wet weight, in tons. If you need to, you can send the number out to DuBois, see if I got the match right, and I…” Grace trails off, picking up the mug that he has set on the desk next to you. He makes an additional effort to peer into your own empty mug, before picking it up with his other free hand. “Will be right back.” He carries them out of the room without another word. Another plus: he fetches you drinks without any asking.
It’s more quiet when he’s out of the room, presumably at the espresso machine just down the hall. In Grace’s absence, you can actually think more clearly about the situation. You know that Shapiro and DuBois have their own version of a relationship—albeit, more or less casual. At the end of the world, nobody really bats an eye about it. All things considered, it’s actually better for morale. You have to wonder if that’s in the cards for the two of you.
It isn’t long before he comes back with the two mugs. First, he places his a safe couple of inches away from your computer. Then, he makes a slow gesture for you to take your mug out of his hands. “Careful. It’s hot,” he tells you softly, running his hand beneath the bottom of the cup to swipe off the possibility of a wet ring. As he gingerly passes the handle into your hands, your fingers brush against one another comfortably. You note, eyes glancing up from the steaming cup, that there’s a faint blush littering his cheeks. But, he’s too intent on the handoff to take his eyes off the coffee to look up at you. Yes, you think, In love with Grace.
—
Once you figure out that fundamental fact, you start to think it over too much. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with your finding. It’s natural, and probably inevitable, for you to have fallen for him. What’s more anxiety-inducing is what you’re supposed to do about it. Under any other circumstances, you’d be okay keeping your mouth shut and letting the opportunity pass you up. But, considering the timeline of the Earth at present, it seems like there’s no time to waste. At the end of the world, it isn’t the sort of thing you should keep to yourself. You should tell him. And still, you’ve been sitting on the idea of it for weeks.
You really hope that Grace hasn’t figured it out, as observant as he is—but it’s really very clear to everyone else on Project Hail Mary. You can tell by the way they watch you both, like it's morning television. Grace rambles on about astrophysics, and you listen. He goes off on tangents about old and wrong college professors, and you laugh. You talk about your life before the project, and he listens with his chin resting on his hand. He asks you questions about what you used to do, where you used to go—like you’re another thing to learn. And everyone fawns.
It’s a good night when you hole yourself in your bunk room. All the engineers and specialists and to-be cosmonauts are all gathered together for drinks and a movie. The simple act of slipping away, letting people assume that you’ve got a migraine or an extra load of paperwork, is easy. It’s in the comfort of your tiny twin bed that you get to listen to the ocean and wailing ship creaks, window propped open to let in the fresh air. It’s strange to think that this room has been yours for so many months; the gunmetal ceiling of it is familiar now.
You get to enjoy this for upwards of an hour, until footsteps come clunking down the hall. You’re sure you know who they belong to. There’s a couple of soft, metal knocks on your door. “Hey, buddy. You sleeping?” It’s Grace’s muddled voice on the other side of the door. “Dinner’s up and everybody’s wondering where you’re at.”
You raise your head off of your pillow, “Door's unlocked. Just come in.” It’s a quick scramble for you to sit up and toss your legs over the side of the bed. As soon as Grace makes it through the doorway, you give him a sheepish smile and a wave.
“Jeez, it’s freezing in here.” Grace’s cardigan is hanging on his right hand. Another tight tee tonight, vintage tour shirt for The Beach Boys. You have to look away as he tosses it on the desk chair adjacent to your bed and as he comes up to sit right beside you. “You know,” he starts, lowering onto the hard mattress, “If you’ve been feeling overworked, I already told you I’d tell Stratt I could handle my own documentation for a week. It’s lab standard, anyway—”
He’s not making it any easier for you. “No, it’s fine,” you insist. It isn’t very easy to tell him that you’re not overworked, that you just have stupid feelings for him. Your refusal only makes him work harder.
Dismissively, he continues, “You can just sit there and watch me work. Read a book or something. A little bit of downtime isn’t going to be the end of the world. And, yes, I know how it sounds given the current circumstanes—but I think you definitely deserve it with the amount of running around that you do.” He’s getting rather impassioned about you resting, so much so that when you mumble out his name—a soft-spoken “Grace”—he doesn’t even pick up on it. He only marches on, “When you think about it, it’d help my research, too. Because if you’re stressed, I’m stressed. And that’s just no good.”
“Ryland,” you blurt. He halts, lips parting and closing. You never call him that, and now he seems very, very dazed. You explain, “I’m not overworked. I just needed a bit of time to think. Alone.”
“Right,” he cedes. “I’m sorry.” You can see his shoulders slump in the slightest, all guilt-ridden about having disturbed you. Grace leans weight onto his sneakers, clearly in an attempt to get off your bed and dismiss himself. Too easily, you reach for his arm to hold him in place.
“No, I want you,” you retract it just as quickly with a blurted, “Here. I want you here.” Grace looks more puzzled than before, but sits himself more comfortably on the end of your bed. Open to listen. You clasp your hands together, “Okay. I’m going to give you a hypothetical… Say, you have a decent life, nothing crazy. Good job at a library. It’s modest, and you’re happy with it. Go You have a good place, good friends. No… partner.” Maybe, the two of you are more similar than you realize. “And that’s okay,” you add, paying no mind to the way Grace’s eyes soften behind the lens of his glasses.
You carry on: “You’ve been okay with that for a decent amount of time. Then… apocalypse starts. You find somebody by chance, who you’d probably never cross paths with otherwise, and you realize that you like being with them. And, suddenly, because the apocalypse has started, you probably won’t have another opportunity to like another person like you do this one. And you really like the one.” You can feel your palms clam up at the confrontation of it all, the vulnerability.
He blinks slowly once. Then, twice. Grace raises a slow index finger up towards himself, eyes peering just over the frame of his glasses, “That’s me.” He states it out like an educated guess, cut-and-dry.
“No, it’s Yao,” you shoot back. “Yes, it’s you, obviously. Who else would it be?”
“Okay,” he says, hand reaching up to take his glasses off. Grace stands up with a deep breath, hand ruffling through his spiky-blonde hair as he walks further away from your bunk. Again, he mutters out a soft, “Yeah, okay,” not far off from how he looks trying to expand out a calculation. Grace taps his foot on the floor, paces left, then right, rubs his palm over the scruff on his face. A torturous lack of response. Then, finally, he turns around. “So, the whole time you weren’t just really into microbiology?”
You have to gawk at him. “Are you being serious?” He looks completely serious, glasses hanging off of his chin, blue eyes inspecting the irked look on your face with doe-like curiosity.
“Well, can you blame me? You’re gorgeous, and you’re also impossible to read.” Gorgeous? He thinks you’re gorgeous. That’s nice. You can feel the warmth bloom in your chest at the implication—but you can’t help but scoff out of pure offense. He puts his hands up in a haphazard shrug. “I mean, now that I know, it makes a lot more sense why you look at me like… that. I wasn’t totally sure.” Now, it seems that he’s making a bit of a game out of it. You don’t care to ask him to elaborate on what “that” looks like.
Stubbornly, you tut, “I’m taking it back. I’m taking it back, and it was completely hypothetical!” You stand up from your spot on the bunk, walking narrowly past Grace to your desk. Briskly, you pick up his cardigan—disposed of on your desk chair—before bunching it up and shoving it towards him.
“No, no, no—you can’t take it back. Cat’s out the bag,” Grace insists teasingly, hands clinging to the cardigan. Before you can completely let go of the woollen fabric, he makes sure, next, to grasp his hands over yours. They’re significantly larger and warm, too warm; with your hands plastered to his chest, there isn’t really anywhere for you to go. You think he must feel the nervousness practically radiating out of you, because he seems to slow down: “Okay, I’m being difficult. I can grovel if you want me to.” Grace’s voice lowers down into a rasp.
There’s a cockiness about it that you haven’t exactly seen from him before. You can’t tell if it’s making you flustered or annoyed—both, likely—and in some bout of courage, you get on your tiptoes to press your lips against his. The cold, metal frame of his glasses nudges against your face as the two of you kiss. Grace takes one hand up to cradle your jaw, and you can hear a quiet, satisfied hum come out of him. It does live up to hypothetical expectation, the way his body melds against yours clumsily around the barrier of the cardigan. It’s very him, and it’s very you.
Grace can barely be convinced, with your hands pushing back against his chest, to let you take a breath of air. Once the two of you split, Grace has a sideways smirk. “I really like you, too. Not sure if I made that clear,” he murmurs. “So, would you come grab dinner with me?”
The Slytherin changing rooms were alive with that restless pre-match buzz — the clatter of brooms against the walls, the chatter of teammates trading last-minute strategies, and the sharp scent of broom polish hanging in the air.
She wasn’t technically supposed to be back here.
But Mattheo never cared much for “technically,” especially when it came to her.
“Oi, Riddle, your girlfriend’s here to distract you!” one of his teammates called from across the benches, smirking.
Mattheo didn’t even look up from lacing his gloves. “Not a distraction. My secret weapon.”
That got a round of laughter, but his attention was already shifting toward her as she wove through the crowd of players. His curls were slightly messier than usual, sticking out from where he’d tugged his jersey over his head, and the deep green of his Quidditch robes made his eyes look even sharper — and more dangerous — than normal.
“You know I’m not supposed to be in here,” she murmured when she reached him, leaning casually against the locker beside his.
“You love breaking rules,” he said with a smirk, standing and resting one hand against the locker just above her shoulder.
“You’ve got a match to focus on,” she reminded him, glancing toward the doorway that led to the pitch.
“I know,” he said, leaning in slightly. “But I don’t go out there without my good luck first.”
Her brow arched. “You mean that ridiculous superstition?”
“It’s not ridiculous,” he said, his tone mock-serious. “Every single game I’ve won, I’ve gotten a good luck kiss beforehand. Every time I didn’t—”
“You still won,” she interrupted.
He grinned. “Coincidence. I’m not risking it.”
She tried to step sideways, but his arm dropped casually in front of her, blocking her path. “Mattheo…” she warned, though she couldn’t quite hide the smile tugging at her mouth.
“Just one,” he said, leaning closer.
“You said that last time and you took four.”
“That was me being restrained.”
She laughed softly, but before she could fire back another quip, his lips brushed hers — warm, quick, and entirely deliberate.
“That’s it?” she asked when he pulled back.
“Not nearly enough,” he murmured, tilting her chin up with his fingers before kissing her again, slower this time, deep enough that she momentarily forgot the smell of broom polish and the sound of boots clattering against stone.
When he finally pulled away, his smirk was shameless. “Better. Now I’ll win for sure.”
Before she could retort, he pressed another kiss to her forehead, then her cheek, then the tip of her nose. She tried to shove him back, laughing, but he caught her around the waist just long enough to steal one more quick kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“Alright, Riddle, save it for after the game!” someone yelled from across the room.
Mattheo didn’t even glance over. “I’ll be collecting more after the game,” he said in a low voice meant only for her, making her cheeks warm.
He grabbed his broom, giving her hand a quick squeeze before jogging toward the tunnel that led to the pitch. Just before disappearing into the light, he glanced back, caught her watching, and shot her a wink that made her stomach flip.
And she knew, without a doubt, that whether it was superstition or not, he’d play just that little bit harder — because of her.
Post-Match
The roar of the crowd was still echoing around the pitch when she made her way down from the stands. Slytherin had won by a comfortable margin, and from the way Mattheo was grinning when he pulled off his helmet, she knew he’d be insufferable about it for the rest of the day.
He spotted her before she even reached the players’ tunnel. Tossing his broom into the arms of a teammate, he jogged toward her, curls damp with sweat, cheeks flushed from the cold wind.
“Told you,” he said, a little breathless. “Good luck kiss works every time.”
Before she could answer, he leaned down and kissed her — no hesitation, no care for the fact that half the team was filing past them. His lips were warm despite the chill in the air, his hands bracketing her face like he’d been thinking about this the entire match.
“You’re disgusting,” Theo’s voice cut in, and she pulled back just enough to see him standing a few feet away, holding his broom over one shoulder and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Mattheo didn’t even glance at him. Instead, he kissed her cheek. Then her forehead. Then the tip of her nose, grinning when she laughed and tried to push him back.
“Seriously?” Theo muttered, wrinkling his nose. “She’s my cousin, Riddle.”
“Yeah,” Mattheo said, completely unapologetic, “and she’s my girlfriend. Which means—” he kissed her again, right on the corner of her mouth “—I get to do this whenever I want.”
Theo groaned like he was in actual pain. “Merlin, I’m going to be sick.”
“You’ll survive,” Mattheo said easily, finally stepping back — though his arm slid around her waist possessively as he did. “Besides, you should be thanking her. She’s the reason we won.”
Theo gave her a look. “You’re enabling him.”
She only smiled. “Maybe.”
Mattheo smirked, clearly enjoying himself far too much. “Definitely. Now, if you don’t mind—” he tugged her toward the changing rooms “—I have more victory kisses to collect. Privately.”
Theo groaned again, muttering something about switching teams next year as they walked away.
And she couldn’t stop smiling, because as ridiculous as his superstition was, Mattheo had played that match like the entire outcome depended on her kiss — and maybe, in his mind, it really did.
By the time they made it back to the Slytherin common room that evening, the celebration was still going strong. Music from a charmed gramophone filled the air, the fire crackled brightly, and the tables were covered in leftover pastries from the victory feast.
Mattheo, however, had zero interest in joining the chaos.
The second they stepped inside, he tugged her toward one of the big leather sofas near the fire and all but collapsed onto it, pulling her down with him.
“You’re heavy,” she said with a laugh, trying to push his arm off her so she could sit properly.
He just tightened his hold. “Shh. The good luck hasn’t worn off yet.”
She blinked. “That’s… not how it works.”
“It is if I say it is,” he murmured, his curls brushing her cheek as he leaned his head against hers. “Can’t risk you wandering off and taking it with you.”
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t actually try to move again. “So what happens when it does wear off?”
“Then I get another one,” he said, completely matter-of-fact, before tilting his head to kiss her temple. “Maybe two, just to be safe.”
Across the room, Theo walked in, took one look at them curled up together, and immediately turned back toward the dorm stairs. “Nope. Not doing this again today.”
Mattheo grinned against her hair. “He’s so easy to wind up.”
“You’re terrible,” she said, but she was smiling too.
“Maybe,” he agreed, kissing her cheek this time. “But you love me anyway.”
And she didn’t bother denying it — because the truth was, he was right.
Summary: where y/n develops an unfortunate crush and the only person standing between her and her crush… is the guy she accidentally kissed at a party.
⤷ choi soobin x fem! reader
⤷ side platonic! txt x reader
genre: enemies to lovers, college au, humor, angst, (kinda has a bit of a love triangle)
profiles
01. - I know you!
02. - small world
03. - Romeo and the fugitive (written)
04. - getting cozy
05. - bribery wins
06. - privacy screen
07. - k-bbq and soju (written)
08. - chaperoning
09. - a jealousy tactic? (written)
10. - a pivoting point
11. - forget it (written)
12. - missing the encore (written)
13. - the debrief
14. - addressing situations
15. - are you free this Saturday?
16. - blurring the edges (written)
17. - which one is it?
18. - I wish everything was a lie
19. - what else can I even say?
20. - hover in limbo
21. - between you and I (written)
22. - bittersweet (written)
23. - make it better
24. - question...?
25. - sweet nothings (written)
26. - tubatu + y/n
27. - unwritten rule
28. - a crashed proposal
29. - the alchemy (written)
30. - 8 months later
completed !
*ੈ✩‧₊˚ spinoffs!
ִ ࣪𖤐 the party before summer break
genre: heavy make out (no smut), fluff, angst, prequel
ִ ࣪𖤐 beomgyu ending
genre: angst, fluff
taglist: (send an ask or reply to be added ! )
@salalalalami @im-down-for-gyu553
Summary: where y/n develops an unfortunate crush and the only person standing between her and her crush… is the guy she accidentally kissed at a party.
⤷ choi soobin x fem! reader
⤷ side platonic! txt x reader
genre: enemies to lovers, college au, humor, angst, (kinda has a bit of a love triangle)
profiles
01. - I know you!
02. - small world
03. - Romeo and the fugitive (written)
04. - getting cozy
05. - bribery wins
06. - privacy screen
07. - k-bbq and soju (written)
08. - chaperoning
09. - a jealousy tactic? (written)
10. - a pivoting point
11. - forget it (written)
12. - missing the encore (written)
13. - the debrief
14. - addressing situations
15. - are you free this Saturday?
16. - blurring the edges (written)
17. - which one is it?
18. - I wish everything was a lie
more to come...
taglist: (send an ask or reply to be added ! )
@salalalalami @im-down-for-gyu553
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ synopsis — you are known for your brain rot anime content on twitter. so much so that you caught the attention of txt’s soobin on his secret stan account and became mutuals. what will become of this new friendship?
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ pairing — idol!soobin x fem!reader
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ genre — smau, idol au, fluff, prob crack, angst if you squint, comedy (dying as i am writing)
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ featuring — rest of txt, billlie’s tsuki and svt’s hoshi as y/n bestie, enhypen’s park sunghoon as a cameo and more!
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ warning — may contain anime spoilers, swearing/cursing, y/n is a simp for animated men, please ignore time stamps!!!
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ status — start july 7th, 2024 - end september 17th, 2024
︶︶ ˚ ᡴꪫ tag list — closed
the storyline
o. y/n’s circle — soobin’s circle
i. fan boy mentality
iii. enhypen 1 soobin 0
iv. a tall woman with a fat ass
v. pookie bear
vi. “infatuation”
vii. close the gym
viii. men with dark hair
ix. karma
x. delete his twitter
xi. siri play down bad
xii. tiramisu cake
xiii. bsf approved
xiv. sugar daddy
xv. war is over
xvi. prettiest girl
xvii. friendzoned
xviii. weeb senses were tingling
xix. loser in a hot body
xx. and if he’s ugly, bonus
xxi. more than gojo
xxii. soobin sunk it
xxiii. bless her heart
xxiv. ungrateful brat
xxv. skipped a few chapters
xxvi. bye baby
Summary: He was supposed to be just your friend. The funny one. The one who never took anything seriously.
Until you started sitting too close to Cedric Diggory.
Warnings: Slow Burn / Soft Jealousy Spiral / Friends to Lovers / Cedric Diggory as an Unintentional Rival / Sibling Chaos & Teasing
It started the way most bad decisions usually do.
With laughter.
With noise.
With Fred and George Weasley in the middle of it. And with you, right there beside them like you had always belonged there.
You weren’t the quiet type.
Never had been.
If anything, you were worse.
Loud when you shouldn’t be. Smiling when you were supposed to be serious. Saying things that made professors sigh and classmates laugh in the same breath.
Somehow, you had ended up orbiting the Weasley twins like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Fred liked to call it “a shared lack of survival instincts.”
George called it “friendship.”
And you just called it home.
You sat with them at meals when you could, snuck out with them when you shouldn’t, and got dragged into half of their ideas whether you agreed or not.
Which, most of the time, you did.
Right now, the three of you were sprawled somewhere just outside the corridor near the courtyard, half-hidden from professors and fully hidden from responsibility.
Fred was mid-story, hands moving as he spoke. George was laughing already, like he knew how it ended. And you were leaning back against the stone wall, trying not to choke on your own laughter.
“You did what to Ron’s wand?” you asked, breathless.
Fred looked far too pleased with himself. “I didn’t do anything,” he said innocently.
George snorted. “That’s the problem. He didn’t do anything. That’s when it’s worst.”
You shook your head, wiping your eyes. “You’re both going to be the reason Hogwarts burns down one day.”
Fred tilted his head at you. “And you’ll be right next to us cheering it on.”
You opened your mouth but didn’t get to answer, because footsteps cut through the moment.
Sharp.
Familiar enough to make all three of you pause at the same time.
You didn’t even have to turn around to know.
Professor McGonagall.
“Miss L/N,” McGonagall said crisply.
Not angry.
Worse.
Controlled.
You stood up slowly. “Professor.”
Her eyes moved between you and the twins. Then she spoke: “I’ve been informed that your academic performance this term is… concerning.”
Fred let out a quiet, almost invisible sound beside you—something between amusement and “oh this is going to be good.”
You shot him a warning look.
McGonagall continued. “If your grades do not improve, you will not pass this year.”
Silence.
Even Fred stopped smirking.
You swallowed.
“I’ll… fix it,” you said quickly.
“I hope so,” McGonagall replied. “Because repeating a year would be… embarrassing, for someone of your capability.”
That hit a little harder than you expected.
Then she added: “I will be arranging mandatory tutoring sessions for you. Mr Diggory has agreed to assist you.”
Fred blinked.
George’s eyebrows lifted.
You, on the other hand “…Cedric Diggory?” you repeated slowly.
“Yes.”
There was a pause where your brain tried to compute it.
Cedric Diggory.
Perfect grades.
Perfect posture.
Perfect smile.
Perfect everything you were not.
You exhaled.
“…Right.”
McGonagall gave you a look. “You will begin tomorrow.”
And just like that, she turned and walked away.
Leaving silence behind her.
Fred was the first to break it. “Well,” he said lightly, but his tone had shifted. “That’s your downfall sorted.”
“Shut up,” you groaned.
George didn’t laugh immediately, which was unusual. When you looked at him, he was watching you. Not teasing, not joking.
Just watching.
Then he smiled.
“Maybe he’s not that bad,” George said.
Fred looked at him like he’d grown a second head.
You blinked. “You’re joking.”
George shrugged. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Fred scoffed. “She won’t survive ten minutes of Diggory’s voice.”
You threw a pebble at him.
It missed.
Unfortunately.
Fred caught it anyway, grinning again like nothing had changed.
But something had.
Even if none of you said it out loud yet.
The first study session was a disaster. You were late on purpose. Not very late—just enough to make a point.
Cedric Diggory was already sitting at one of the long library tables when you arrived, books neatly stacked beside him, parchment organized in perfectly straight lines.
You stopped at the end of the table and stared.
“I just want it officially written down somewhere that McGonagall is ruining my life.” You dropped into the chair across from him dramatically.
Cedric slid a book toward you. “Open to page seventy-two.”
You stared at him in disbelief. “No greeting?”
“I said hello when you walked in.”
“That barely counted.”
Cedric leaned back slightly in his chair, studying you for a second. “You talk a lot when you don’t want to do something.”
You narrowed your eyes. “And you sound exactly like someone who color-codes his notes.”
“I do color-code my notes.”
“Of course you do.”
Somehow, impossibly, that made him laugh quietly and annoyingly it suited him.
You decided immediately that this was unacceptable.
The next hour was painful. Not because Cedric was mean.
That would’ve been easier.
No, Cedric was patient.
Calm.
Infuriatingly calm.
Every time you tried to derail the lesson, he just looked at you steadily until you eventually answered the question anyway.
By the time the session ended, your brain hurt.
“You survived,” Cedric observed as you packed your bag dramatically.
“Barely.”
“You answered everything correctly by the end.”
You froze slightly. “…I did?”
Cedric nodded once. “You’re not bad at this.”
The words hit strangely, because most professors sounded frustrated when they spoke to you.
Cedric just sounded certain like he hadn’t doubted it.
You looked away first. “That’s suspiciously encouraging.”
“I’m trying a new strategy.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Manipulation?”
A small smile appeared again. “Positive reinforcement.”
“Disgusting.”
Cedric laughed quietly under his breath as he stood.
And for some reason—
you smiled back.
The common room was loud when you returned later that evening.
Fred and George were exactly where you expected them to be: occupying far too much space on one sofa while Lee Jordan sat nearby looking like he was seconds away from regretting knowing either of them.
Fred noticed you first. “Well?” he asked immediately. “Did Diggory bore you to death?”
George looked up from where he’d been absentmindedly spinning a quill between his fingers.
You dropped onto the armchair across from them with a dramatic sigh.
“He organizes his notes by color.”
Fred made a horrified face.
George snorted softly.
“And he says things like ‘focus’ with a straight face.”
“That poor man,” Fred muttered. “He has no idea what he’s dealing with.”
You grinned slightly, but George noticed something before Fred did. The way your mouth twitched when you talked about Cedric.
The fact that you were still talking about him.
“You’re smiling,” George said suddenly.
You blinked. “No I’m not.”
“You are,” he replied calmly.
Fred pointed immediately. “Oh, she is.”
“I am not.”
“You fancy the prefect,” Fred gasped dramatically.
You threw a cushion at him.
He caught it easily.
“Shut up.”
George was still watching you though.
Quieter than Fred now.
More observant.
“What’s he actually like?” George asked.
You opened your mouth automatically with another insult ready but paused.
Cedric’s quiet laugh flashed unexpectedly through your head.
The way he’d looked at you across the table and said: You’re not bad at this.
Your stomach did something strange.
“…Annoying,” you answered finally.
Fred grinned. “There she is.”
But George noticed the hesitation.
And for the first time something small and unfamiliar twisted unpleasantly in his chest.
Over the next two weeks, something deeply irritating started happening. You stopped trying to skip the study sessions.
At first, Fred thought it was a joke. Then he thought maybe McGonagall had threatened you with public humiliation.
George just watched.
And noticed things.
Small things.
The way you fixed your hair before going to the library now. The fact that you actually brought the right books. The way you came back complaining about Cedric while smiling at absolutely nothing.
It was suspicious.
Very suspicious.
“You’re spending an unnatural amount of time with Diggory,” Fred announced one evening from upside down on the common room sofa.
You looked up from your parchment. “You spend an unnatural amount of time upside down.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s really not.”
George sat nearby pretending to read while listening to every word.
Fred pointed at you accusingly. “You laughed at something he said earlier.”
“It wasn’t that funny.”
“But you laughed.”
You rolled your eyes dramatically. “Merlin, are you jealous?”
Fred looked scandalized. “Of Cedric Diggory? Absolutely not. He irons his shirts.”
“He probably irons his socks too,” Lee added.
George stayed quiet.
Because unlike Fred, George wasn’t joking anymore, and that was becoming a problem.
The next study session was somehow worse.
“You’re distracted again,” Cedric said calmly from across the table.
“I’m literally reading.”
“You’ve been staring at the same sentence for three minutes.”
You narrowed your eyes. “That sounds made up.”
Cedric leaned forward slightly, resting one arm on the table. “You know, you’re very different when your friends aren’t around.”
You blinked. “…Excuse me?”
“You act louder around the twins.”
“That’s because they’re loud.”
Cedric’s mouth twitched. His attention entirely on you in a way that made your stomach feel strange lately.
You looked down quickly.
“I still think you’re annoying.”
“I think,” Cedric said calmly, “you just like arguing with me.”
You opened your mouth immediately then stopped.
Cedric noticed the silence instantly.
And smiled.
George was already in the common room when you came in.
Alone.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
Fred was usually there too. Half causing trouble, half laughing too loudly at something that wasn’t funny. But tonight it was just George, sitting on the sofa near the fire with a book open on his knee.
He looked up the moment you stepped in.
“You’re late,” he said.
It sounded like a joke.
It wasn’t.
“I had study sessions.”
“I noticed.”
That made you pause.
“Diggory again?” he said lightly, closing the book with one hand.
You sighed and dropped into the sofa across from him.
“I’ve got something for you.”
You squinted. “That sounds suspiciously like trouble.”
“It’s not. It’s Transfiguration.”
You stared at it.
“What is this?”
“Notes.”
That made you laugh once. “You don’t have notes.”
George raised an eyebrow. “I do now.”
You opened the first page and stopped laughing immediately, because it wasn’t just notes.
It was structured. Diagrams. Color-coded arrows. Tiny corrections in the margins. Underlined key spells. Even little sarcastic comments scribbled next to difficult sections like:
‘this part is evil, good luck’
and
‘McGonagall will absolutely ask this just to ruin your day’
You looked up slowly.
“…You did this?”
George shrugged. “Don’t sound so shocked.”
“This is—” You flipped another page. “This is actually good.”
“I know.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Since when are you secretly good at Transfiguration?”
“Since you started spending all your time in the library,” he said lightly.
The room shifted.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just… quieter.
You looked at him properly now.
“George…”
He cut you off immediately, too fast. “It’s nothing. Just figured you needed help if you’re trying to avoid repeating a year.”
You frowned. “That’s not why I’m—”
“You’re always with him lately.”
Cedric.
The name wasn’t said out loud, but it didn’t need to be.
You opened your mouth.
Closed it again.
George leaned slightly closer, tapping one of the pages. “I went through your syllabus. Twice. Some of this stuff is actually useful if you don’t want to die in McGonagall’s exam.”
“You read it twice?” you asked quietly.
He shrugged again, but this time it wasn’t convincing.
There were faint ink stains on his fingers.
Like he’d been writing for hours.
Like he’d actually sat there and worked.
For you.
Something in your chest tightened unexpectedly.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” you said.
“I know.”
Silence.
Then softer, almost careless again:
“But I did it anyway.”
You looked down at the notes again.
Then at him.
Really looked.
The jokes were still there. The grin was still there. But underneath it—something quieter. Focused. Slightly tense, like he was waiting for your reaction more than he wanted to admit.
“You highlighted half of it,” you said.
“Yeah.”
“With different colours.”
“Helps with memory.”
“That is the most responsible thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
George snorted. “Don’t get used to it.”
You smiled.
And that was the problem.
Because George noticed that too.
His eyes softened just slightly.
“You know,” he said, voice lower now, “you’re actually listening to me for once.”
“I always listen to you.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Not like this.”
Something shifted again.
He reached out—slowly this time—and turned one of your pages so it faced you properly. His fingers brushed the edge of yours.
Didn’t move away.
Didn’t pretend it was accidental.
Just stayed there.
Close.
“Start here,” he said. “If you can master that section, McGonagall won’t have anything to complain about.”
You nodded faintly, but you weren’t reading anymore.
Not properly.
Because George was too close.
His shoulder leaned in slightly as he pointed something out.
“Here,” he added, tapping a line. “This is where everyone messes up.”
“I don’t think I mess up everything,” you muttered.
A small smile.
“You do when you panic.”
“I don’t panic.”
“You absolutely panic.”
You turned your head to argue—and found him already looking at you.
Not joking now.
Not teasing.
Just watching.
The air between you changed again.
Slower.
He stopped talking.
You stopped pretending you were reading.
“George…” you said, quieter this time.
He didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze dropped—just for a second—to your mouth.
Then back up.
And something in his expression tightened like he’d made a decision he wasn’t fully ready for.
“You’ve been gone a lot lately,” he said.
“You know I’ve been studying.”
“With him.”
The words weren’t sharp.
But they landed like something heavier than anger.
You opened your mouth—
Nothing came out.
George exhaled slowly, like he was trying to keep himself steady.
Then he leaned back slightly, forcing space between you again, but not enough to erase what just happened.
“I don’t like it,” he admitted.
That made you freeze.
Because George didn’t say things like that.
Not seriously.
Not like this.
“…You don’t like Cedric or?” you asked carefully.
George huffed a short laugh. “No. I don’t like that you’ve started looking at everything like it’s somewhere else you need to be.”
Your throat went tight.
Then, almost like he regretted how honest that sounded, he reached for the notes again.
“Anyway,” he added quickly, “I could do this better than him.”
And this time there was no joke at all.
“For you.”
Your breath caught slightly.
That was the moment the distance between you stopped being safe.
He was close now.
Close enough that if you moved even slightly—
Your knees brushed his.
He leaned in just a fraction more.
His gaze flicked to your lips again—this time slower.
Intentional.
And for a second, it felt like everything had narrowed down to this one moment.
His hand slid to your cheek.
Warm.
Real.
And then he kissed you.
It was George in every possible way—soft at first, unsure for half a second like he still couldn’t believe you were there… and then something in him finally let go.
The kiss deepened.
Slow.
Careful.
Like he was afraid of ruining it if he moved too fast.
Your hand lifted without thinking, grabbing lightly at the front of his shirt, pulling him closer like you finally made a decision you’d been avoiding for too long.
George made a quiet sound against your mouth—something between relief and disbelief—and leaned in.
Like he’d been waiting for this without admitting it even to himself.
The world narrowed.
Fire crackling somewhere behind you.
Paper forgotten.
Everything else gone.
Just him.
Just warmth.
Just—
The door slammed open.
“—YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT LEE JUST—”
You both moved apart too fast.
Too obvious.
Fred froze in the doorway.
Looked at both of you.
Slow smile forming.
“…Oh,” he said.
Long pause.
Then brighter:
“Oh, this is bad.”
George leaned back in his chair immediately. “We were studying.”
Fred nodded slowly. “Sure.”
You grabbed the first random book on the table. “Transfiguration.”
Fred raised an eyebrow.
Then grinned wider.
“I leave you alone for ONE evening,” he said, delighted, “and you start… bonding academically.”
George sighed.
You stared at the ceiling.
Fred walked further in, shaking his head.
“This is going to be so entertaining.”
And George, under his breath, only for you to hear:
Divination was stupid. Theo knew it. Enzo knew it. But unfortunately for the two of them, Daphne Greengrass did not. She was quite the believer in fact—spending hours charting stars to gauge compatibility, gazing into her crystal ball, and practicing her palm reading. A load of bollocks and a complete waste of time in Theo's opinion, but, he wasn't a monster and so he humored his friend, content in blocking out Professor Trelawney's incessant babbling for an hour at the start of his mornings.
Theo was just admiring how particularly gray the walls of the castle were looking this fine afternoon when a sharp elbow to the ribs pulls his attention back to the old bat's class. Theo shoots a glare Enzo's way as he rubs his wounded ribcage pointedly. To only further his agitation, Theo notices that Trelawney is now stood directly in front of him extending a deck of tarot cards to him as she blinks her wide owlish eyes at him expectantly.
With a deep sigh and a rather dramatic eye roll, Theo plucks a card from the deck and hands it back to the witch without even bothering to glance at it. Trelawney doesn't seem to mind much though as she inhales sharply, a grin that seemed much too wide for her face forming as she flips the card back to Theo.
"Yes, yes. Just as I predicted dear boy. Just as I predicted. The Two of Cups!" She announces proudly, brandishing the card out towards the class.
Daphne squeals.
"Oh Teddy—"
"Don't call me that."
Daphne ignores him.
"How exciting. How romantic," she continues, clearly far more interested in the pull than Theo was.
She pulls out a script of parchment, finger tracing down the lines of notes until she finds what she's searching for. Then she shoves the parchment under Theo's nose.
"Look there. The Two of Cups—signifies mutual attraction and deep connections. A representation of kindred spirits in the early stages of falling in love. That's so romantic," she gushes, continuing on in her notes.
Enzo snorts doing a horrible job trying to stifle his laughter. Theo glowers, not even wanting to deign such a ridiculous concept with a response. This was ludicrous. The whole thing. Theo had been attending Hogwarts for well long enough to know that there was not a single present student in the school that he would even dignify having a romantic relationship with. He can't help but shake his head and scoff at the mere idea.
"Oh lighten up Teddy, heaven forbid you let Daphne have this," Enzo snickers, clearly enjoying the discomfort the whole thing brought Theo.
It was easy for him to say. It wasn't his love life being carefully dissected by their mystic enthused friend.
Being the new student at any new school was always going to be nerve wracking. But being the new student at a new school in a whole new country was significantly worse in every aspect. Whispers float down the corridors, your name echoing off the high ceilings of the castle, and eyes flicker towards the ground as you pass as if they hadn't just been staring shamelessly the moment prior. Normally the stares wouldn't bother you much, but the constant hushed voices were beginning to be unnerving. Your lips tighten as you move swiftly through the halls and you can't help but feel a bit self conscious as you smooth out your unfamiliar, deep blue robes.
You weren't exactly enthusiastic about your new school to begin with. It was different—of course it would be—but no matter how much you had prepared yourself for all the changes, it just hadn't been enough. Like really, they let a ratty, old—albeit sentient—hat determine house placements? You hadn't wanted that thing anywhere near your head, but it just couldn't be helped. Then, once you had been placed into your house, you come to find that yours is the only one in the entire school that requires you to solve a freaking riddle just to get into your damn room. Asinine. And to top it all off, the wretched school was literally impossible to navigate because the staircases, apparently, were also sentient and did whatever the hell they wanted.
All that to say, when you finally collapse into a seat in the back of, what you hoped was the History of Magic classroom, you were more than a little miffed. With an agitated huff, you try to stay invisible as more students begin to file into the classroom, taking their seats closer to the front. As seats fill, the extra buffer of breathing room melts a bit of the tension in your shoulders. When your professor—a ghost you notice dryly—begins to write on the chalk board, you finally feel yourself start to relax, pulling out a roll of parchment from your bag and carefully copying down each line.
Just as you're about to finish—The Gargoyle Strike of 1911—the classroom door swings open once more and a boy with brown hair and dark, calculating eyes saunters in. You're content with giving him a quick, uninterested glance before getting back to your notes, but unfortunately for you, the boy is rapidly approaching. His bag hits the floor next to you with a dull thread and you feel your lips turn downward into a frown as you look up at the boy once more in annoyance.
You watch as the boy's mouth opens as if to say something, but then his eyes meet yours and you watch him freeze, mouth agape for a moment then two. Just as it's becoming a bit uncomfortable, he seems to awaken from his trance looking shaken, brows furrowing as if he were wondering why on Earth he was just standing there like a fool. Still though, he tilts his head awkwardly—chin gesturing towards the rest of the class—and for the first time you notice that every other seat in the room seems to be occupied. With a sigh of defeat, you wordlessly turn back to the board, preparing to scramble to write down whatever you'd missed just now, content with simply ignoring this boy's existence for the the rest of class.
"A 'wildcat strike' refers to a stopping of work by unionized workers without authorization from the union. In 1911 the wildcats were winning, meaning things were moving in favor of the gargoyles—"
Good god this was horrible. You weren't even ten minutes into your first day of this new class and you already wanted to throw yourself off the top of Ravenclaw tower. It seemed as though many of the other students in class felt similarly as one of the boys sitting a few rows in front of you lets out a concernedly loud snore. You have to choke down a snicker as your eyes flicker up to the ghost at the front of the room, but he doesn't seem to notice. Or if he does, he doesn't care.
"That's Finnigan. There's a running bet on how long it'll take him to fall asleep after Binns starts monologuing," the boy next to you murmurs, a smirk tugging at his lips.
You turn to look at the boy, surprised to hear him speak after all, and for the first time take a good look. Shit. He was hot. You don't really get the chance to dwell too much on it though because he speaks again.
"That one next to him is Thomas. Any second now he'll start piling things on top of 'em. See how high the stack gets before it falls over or Finnigan wakes up. Whichever comes first."
As if on queue, the boy next to the snoring kid carefully places a thick text book on his friend's back. Then another. It's like you can't look away as you watch on in morbid fascination.
"They friends of yours?" you find yourself asking as the boy, Thomas, adds an ink well to his tower.
Your desk partner snorts.
"Hardly. Lions and snakes don't exactly get along," he says smoothly.
You have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but you don't want to ask. Instead you continue to watch as a bag of Bertie Bott's jelly beans, three quills, a sweater, and someone's pet frog is added to the pile. A potted plant is about to be placed on top when a sneeze sends the whole thing crashing to the floor. Professor Binns doesn't even blink as he just continues on. Finnigan's head shoots up as he takes in his surroundings once more, shoulders slumping when he apparently realizes where he is. Understandable.
The rest of class is an absolute drag as you flit in and out of different thoughts and daydreams. Anywhere was better than here, listening to this ghost drown on. If he were any less interesting, you're sure the entire class would die of sheer boredom and be cursed to haunt this very classroom with the old professor. Doomed to be subjected to the very thing that killed you all in the first place for all eternity.
After what you're certain is the longest hour of your life, class finally ends, but to your dismay, you realize that halfway through class you'd simply given up on taking notes. Dammit. As though reading your mind, the boy next to you slides his parchment towards you. His notes are impeccable. Perfectly neat rows in dark ink with not a smudge in sight.
"I can get them back tomorrow," he says simply, before returning the rest of his materials into his bag.
You open your mouth to thank the boy, but before you even get the chance he's gone in a swoosh of emerald green and black.
The whole thing leaves you a bit stunned. It was the first real interaction you'd had with, really anyone at your new school and you couldn't tell if you'd completely blown it or not. He'd seemed decent enough, whoever he was. And that's when it occurs to you. You hadn't even bothered to ask the boy's name.
"Mmm. What was their name again?" Theo asks, trying to appear nonchalant as he inserts himself into Enzo and Daphne's conversation.
The three of them occupied their usual spots inside the Slytherin common room, the soft glow of green flames painting their faces as their voices mix in with the other echoes of the dungeon. Enzo eyes Theo suspiciously, noting that—despite the unbothered front he put on—Theo's fingers couldn't seem to stop tapping anxiously against his knee. See, usually when Enzo and Daphne were participating in their daily debrief, Theo was staring off into the abyss, pointedly ignoring them. So it didn't take an intuitive genius to pick up on the sudden spike of interest he was showing.
"Y/n. They're from America," Daphne says helpfully, seemingly oblivious to the way that Enzo was trying to dissect their friend's inner most thoughts.
"Why all the interest? They catch your eye? Are you two already falling into the early stages of love?" He taunts when he isn't able to get a proper read on his friend.
Theo's heart stops beating in his chest for half a moment before he juts out his chin defiantly.
"All anyone will talk about. Just curious to know who all the fuss is about," he retorts, forcing his voice to remain steady as he continues to stare ahead, avoiding the curious glances of his friends.
He can tell Enzo doesn't quite buy it, but that simply isn't his problem to worry about at the moment.
So they were from America. Huh.
Truthfully, Theo didn't know much about America. Hadn't ever really cared to find anything out. He was familiar with Ilvermorny of course. Which was presumably your former school, but that was pretty much the extent of it. Maybe he'd ask you about it tomorrow.
Assuming he didn't freeze up again at the mere sight of you. Salazar's ball sack that had been bloody embarrassing. Theo couldn't think of a single other time he'd ever frozen up like that, brief as it had been. Usually Theo liked to consider himself to be quite suave. Charming even, if he did say so himself. And he did. It was completely unlike him to be rendered speechless. Especially not by the mere presence of someone with a pretty face.
But it simply hadn't been his fault. How was he supposed to expect that some great, higher power was going to reach deep into his inner most thoughts and desires—pull together every single physical trait that Theo could possibly fantasize about—and combine them all into one single heavenly creature, and then plop them down right next to him in History of Magic of all classes.
Fate was cruel.
And speaking of fate, there was also all that nonsense from Divination that morning to think about. Theo leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. Surely the fact that batty, old Trelawney had predicted that he would fall in love was a complete coincidence in relation to him practically being prepared to propose to the new student in History of Magic a mere few hours later. How could it be anything else? Divination wasn't real. The whole class had been so close to being completely scrapped so many times that you either had to be a fool, or Daphne to believe in it.
Okay, so maybe Theodore was starting to believe it. A little. But what was he supposed to think as he watches you drag your feet through the door scowling? He feels his chest tighten as the two of you make eye contact and he watches as you make your way over to him.
"This seat taken?" you ask, already dropping your bag to the floor. "Didn't take you as one to be into this kinda stuff," you say conversationally as you pull parchment and a quill from your bag.
Theo scoffs, rolling his eyes.
"I'm not," he assures, "But Daph is," he adds, head tilting as he gestures to his friend.
He watches as your eyes dart over to the pretty brunette sitting happily between him and Enzo, assessing.
"Oh. Are you two?" The question lingers on your lips and Theo is quick to shake his head no.
Salazar he was being stupid. Of course you would assume—Why was he being like this?
"Nah. No. Daph's an old friend. Enz and I are just here for moral support. And an easy O." Theo hears himself drawl. "What about you? Training to become a seer?"
"Hardly. This was the only elective left that fit into my schedule apparently."
Salazar's balls you were perfect, Theo thinks to himself as Trelawney comes sweeping into the room. Her eyes are closed and her fingertips are pressed against her temples as she swooshes around the room, humming lowly.
"I feel new energy. An unfamiliar presence. You!" Trelawney screeches in her trembly voice, stopping in front of a poor, innocent Hufflepuff with an accusatory finger hovering dangerously close to their eyeball.
Theo can't help but let out a dry snicker and is delighted when he sees you out of the corner of his eye trying to hold back a laugh too. When it's clear to the old professor that the student in front of her had actually been present all year, her eyes scan the room, finally coming to a stop when they rest on you.
"Ah, there you are my dear! Your energy feels so concentrated on this side of the room, it simply drew me over," Trelawney babbles as she makes her way over. "Now let's see here. Palms up dear, palms up, let me have a look."
Theo watches amused, ignoring the weird kissing faces Enzo is making at him, as you sigh but still present your palms facing upwards to the professor. Her bony talons quickly engulf your hands, her eyes fluttering shut once more as her head tilts back, a low hum starting once more.
"Yes, yes. How interesting," the hums get louder as the professor's fingers dig into the lines of your palms. "I see. In the darkest hour, a dark shadow, it will over take you. Consume you."
Trelawney's eyes snap open and Theo watches her face melt back into a warm smile as she gives your hands one last squeeze.
"Welcome to class dear. We have much to learn, so much to see!"
Theo finds that he rather likes the way his heart swells when you turn to look at him, brow raised as you shake your head ever so slightly as if to say, 'what a nutter'.
"How many freaking goblin rebellions is it going to take before the British Ministry finally takes the hint and leaves those poor goblins alone?" you huff, slamming your books a little too loudly onto your table in the library.
You can feel Madam Pince attempting to burn a hole through your back as she glares at you, but you ignore her.
"Probably at least—" Theo checks his notes from the day's lesson, "six or seven. Unfortunately not every revolution to rid oneself of British rule is successful," he teases lightly.
You glare at the boy pointedly.
"I'm not even particularly, patriotic," you grumble, the word actually quite sour on your tongue, "but nothing brings Americans together quite like our mutual hatred of the British."
"Mmm. Do let it go on record now that my family is Italian," Theo replies dryly.
Theodore had very quickly become your closest friend at Hogwarts. From that first day in History of Magic the two of you just seemed to click. It also definitely helped that not only did he share your dry sense of humor, but he was also insanely smart, and very easy on the eyes. You'd been worried for a split second when he first introduced you to Daphne Greengrass, a familiar turning in your stomach that you'd quickly identified as jealousy flaring up, but it had been quickly squashed when Theo assured you that they were indeed just friends. But that was neither here nor there. You and Theo had become practically inseparable in the month that you'd been at your new school, much to the chagrin of his friends. You liked them too of course, and they'd been good sports about welcoming you into their little group, but with Theo it was just easy.
You slide your potions notes across the table just as Theo hands over his Charms essay for you to look over. No words exchanged, but you were both perfectly in sync. Easy.
It's far past dark when you finally push your chair back, the old wood scraping against the floor, and you force yourself to stifle a yawn.
"Alright. I'm calling it a night," you announce as you begin packing up your books. "I should head back in case it takes an hour to get that damn eagle to open up the common room door again."
You hear Theo let out a snort at your last comment. He'd heard well and good your complaints about that stupid hunk of metal.
"Guess I'll head out as well. Mattheo has been complaining that he never sees me anymore, but he's just mad he can't copy my notes anymore."
The two of you quickly gather the rest of your things, slinking out of the library right as Pince begins making her rounds to toss the last lingering students out before closing the doors for the night. The walk to Ravenclaw tower is made in comfortable silence as you walk side by side, both of you trying to ignore the way the back of your hands were brushing against each other as you went. When you finally arrive, a whole group of students in black and blue are outside the door when it swings open. Not wanting to miss your chance, you toss Theo a smile over your shoulder before disappearing with the crowd of students through the door.
As soon as you enter your room, you dump your bag on the ground at the foot of your bed, trade your stiff school uniform for a more comfortable track set, and turn right back out the door—a disillusionment spell on the tip of your tongue. You move silently against the walls, retracing the same steps you'd just taken, leading your right back to the library. It's dark now—you knew from experience that as soon as the clock hit ten, Pince was out the doors. You lift your wand, ready to cast the usual alohomora but tonight something stops you. Call it a gut feeling. You grip the handle of the heavy, wood door and without so much as a squeak, the door swings open. Huh. Maybe the cranky librarian had been in such a rush to leave she forgot to lock up.
Without giving it so much as a second thought, you slip through the doors, following the familiar path that lead you right to the heart of the restricted section of the library. Really, you often found yourself wondering, why on Earth did they have a so called restricted section, and then not even bother to put up a single ward to keep students from entering? Wasn't very restricted if they asked you. Your fingertips brush over the spines of different books as you pass through the shelves, pulling one from the shelf every so often if it catches your eye. The silence of the empty library was deafening, but you relished the way you could hear your footsteps echoing on the tile and the rustle of pages turning as you flipped through your nightly finds.
You're on your tiptoes, straining to reach a large tome from the top shelf when you catch sight of a dark shadow appearing out of the corner of your eye. God, you hoped it wasn't that old man Filch. He wasn't as bad as everyone made him seem, you'd been able to talk him out of snitching on you thus far, but it kind of ruined the mood. Your hand drops to rest on the handle of your wand as the shady figure draws closer and you prepare to throw one of your books its way just in case.
"What are you doing here?" the confused voice of Theodore rings out just as you're about to launch your copy of Moste Potente Potions at his head.
You feel your shoulders sag in relief. You hadn't been scared of course. Just vaguely alarmed. Then you let out a laugh.
"And what's funny?"
"Oh, nothing. Just Trelawney and her whole 'A dark shadow is going to overtake you' spiel," you snicker. "And what do you mean what am I doing here? What are you doing here?" you ask rather indignantly, turning back to focus on the book that was just out of your reach.
"I come down to the library at night all the time," Theo replies, crossing his arms defensively.
"Well it's obviously not all the time because I've been here every night this month and I've never seen you down here," you reply casually.
You can practically hear Theo rolling his eyes at you.
"Well of course not all the time, Filch would start getting—sorry did you say you've been here every night? How has Filch not caught you?"
You shrug your shoulders noncommittally, glaring up at the book that seemed to be just taunting you.
"He has a few times, but we usually just chat for a little and then he'll send me on my way."
You don't see the absolutely stunned look on Theo's face.
"You chat? With Filch. About what?" Theo asks incredulously.
You let out an exasperated sigh.
"The weather. Cat toy recommendations for Mrs. Norris. His mother's retirement in France. I don't know, we chat about a lot of things."
You still aren't facing Theo, but if you had been, you probably would have laughed at the completely gobsmacked look that was written across his face.
"Now will you be useful and get that book down for me?" you ask, foot stomping impatiently on the ground.
Still too shocked to respond, Theo reaches up over your head, placing one hand on your shoulder for balance as he easily plucks the book you'd been reaching for off the shelf. Just as he's about to hand it to you though, it seems he comes back to his senses and that smug grin that you'd become so familiar with recently finds its way back to his lips.
"Uh uh uh, where's my reward?" he teases, holding the book just out of reach once more as he smirks down at you.
"Reward?" you ask dryly, looking up to raise an eyebrow at your friend.
Had he always been standing so close?
"I'm a Slytherin. I don't do something for nothing now," he says, voice like honey in your ears.
"What do you want?" you ask, eyes narrowing.
Theo tilts his head as if pretending to think.
"A kiss."
You blink, shoulders shrugging as you turn to face the boy properly. Seemed fair enough to you. You were definitely getting the best end of the deal. So you tug on the collar of Theo's sweatshirt, before crashing your lips into his. His lips are warm and soft and that's all you take note of before pulling away quickly. Theo is clearly stunned once more so you take the opportunity to finally get your hands on the book you'd been eyeing this whole time.
"Thanks Theo!"
Theodore Nott was dangerously close to never brushing his teeth ever again. Because you had kissed him last night. In some sudden, stupid burst of confidence he had asked you to kiss him and you did. It had been a complete joke—Theo hadn't even remotely considered that you'd actually do it, but you'd grabbed the collar of his jumper and then your lips were on his and he knew he was well and truly done for.
"Theo. Theo! You need to get your act together mate," Lorenzo grunts, elbowing his friend to get his attention.
"What? Stop that," Theo mutters, batting his friend away from him.
"Seriously. You're acting like a love sick puppy."Brie
Theo glares.
"Would take one to know one," he snaps, falling back in his seat with a huff.
Now it's Enzo's turn to narrow his eyes.
"I'm going to choose to ignore that because you're just upset that you didn't kiss y/n back," he responds.
Theo's eyes bulge at the bold—albeit correct—observation.
"Can you keep your bloody voice down?" he hisses, eyes flickering about to make sure no one had heard.
Luckily, you had only just entered the divination classroom so at least Theo was safe for now. Or maybe not.
"Morning," you say brightly giving the group a small wave and taking your usual spot next to Theo.
Theo opens his mouth to respond but, Salazar you smelled good today, and your lips, god your lips looked soft and pink and, the words feel caught in Theo's throat. Somewhere in the distance he can hear Enzo snickering obnoxiously, but all Theo can do is stare at you dumbly. This was mortifying. As soon as he figured out how to move again Theo was launching himself straight off this bloody tower.
"Hey, do you want to sneak into the library again tonight?" you ask casually, laying your things out on your desk, seemingly oblivious to the fact that you were about to send Theo into cardiac arrest.
Of course I'll sneak back into the library with you. Especially if it means you'll kiss me again, Theo wants to say. But he has at least a little bit of dignity left, so he straightens himself in his chair, trying to maintain at least somewhat of an air of nonchalance as he finally strings a sentence together.
"Sure."
Okay, so a sentence might be giving himself a bit too much credit, but it was better than sitting there gaping like a daft idiot. You seem satisfied with his answer though as you turn to face the front just as Trelawney waltzes into the room with her usual dramatic flair. Theo drifts in and out of the lesson as Trelawney rambles on about tea leaves and the placement of tasseography symbols. He tried to focus. Really he needed to, because the alternative was his gaze finding its way to the curve of your lips and the way your tongue pressed against the inside of your cheek as you furiously scribbled down notes.
The gentle sound of metal clinking on china pulls Theo wholey back to class as a spoon taps impatiently on the teacup in front of him as if urging him to drink. Glancing around he sees most of his classmates were already bottoms up. Drinking down the rather bitter liquid, Theo carefully places his cup back down in front of him, peering disinterestedly at its contents. Just looked like soggy tea leaves to him.
Trelawney insists on moving about the room though, dissecting the meanings inside each little cup and leaving behind a trail of utterly befuddled students in her wake. When she finally reaches Theo, he can visibly see her begin to vibrate with excitement as she moves his cup around in her hands, swishing the tea leaves back and forth.
"Look there, dear. Do you see?" she asks giddily, shoving the teacup back in Theo's face.
"No." he replies flatly, not even bothering to examine the wet leaves.
"Look closer."
Theo's nose is practically inside the cup now and he can hear you and Enz snickering on either side of him. Traitors. When he still doesn't say anything, Trelawney lets out a huff, sticking her crooked finger into the cup and speaking slowly as if explaining something to a small child.
"Right there. Don't you see?" she asks, as if it should've been the most obvious thing in the world. "An axe—" she swirls the cup to the side. "And a butterfly."
Theo stares blankly at the old woman.
"Use their notes and figure it out," she finally huffs in exasperation before sweeping off to another table.
As soon as she's gone and Theo makes eye contact with you he can't help but chuckle as Daphne scowls at the two of you.
"Look," she sighs, shoving her notes across the table for Theo to read.
The Axe—problems overcome
The Butterfly—success and pleasure
Wonderful. More nonsense. That was the problem with divination—the definitions were so broad they were basically meaningless. Overcoming problems and success? That could be about anything. Theo pushes the parchment back to its owner with a shrug. He'd just do what he always did and make something up for the assignment.
Shadows loom against the dimly lit walls of the library as you and Theo wander through the shelves together. Theo had been quieter than usual tonight. To be fair, he wasn't usually the most talkative person ever, but you had had to push to get your usual banter out of him. He clearly had something on his mind. You don't push though. That was something you both appreciated about each other—just being there together was enough.
Once you both have a sizable stack of books pulled together you tuck yourselves away in one of the back corners of the restricted section. Far enough that not even Mrs. Norris would bother to wander all the way back. You find yourself curling up next to your friend, legs pressed together and shoulders brushing as you cast a soft lumos charm just bright enough to illuminate the pages of your books as you read. The quiet is nice after a long day of navigating the crowded halls and classrooms of the school. Hogwarts was definitely a lively place, and you hadn't realized just how much you missed having some peace and quiet until you'd snuck out of Ravenclaw tower that first night.
"Do you think divination might not be completely useless?" Theo asks a while later, breaking the silence.
You look up in surprise before glancing down at the book he's reading—Divination Through the Ages: A Skeptics Guide—your eyebrows furrowing in thought. If you were being honest, you'd always thought that divination was, to be polite, dumb. In fact, you'd been rather pissed when your head of house, Professor Flitwick, had told you that it was the only class that would fit in your schedule. But you didn't think that was what Theo wanted to hear at the moment.
"I mean, all forms of magic have their unique uses I suppose," you reply carefully, wondering where this was going.
Theo just hums in response, continuing to finger through the pages of the book as you watch with curiosity. Finally, with a deep breath, he snaps the book closed and turns to face you. It's clear he wants to say something as you search his eyes which seem to be getting ever so slightly closer by the second. You can't help the way your eyes drop down to his lips as his tongue glides across his bottom lip nervously. They're so close now you can practically feel the way they had pressed against your own last night. However brief that encounter had been. When you finally tilt your head back up to meet his eyes once more, your nose brushes his and you feel your breath hitch. If you didn't know any better, you'd think he was about to kiss you right now.
And then his lips are on yours and you feel your body go limp as he pulls you into him, your eyes fluttering closed as he molds you to him. Your book slips from your fingers with a dull thud as it hits the ground, but you hardly notice. Theo's lips are just as warm, and soft, and utterly intoxicating as you remembered them to be. You can feel Theo smiling against your lips as he pulls you impossibly closer and you forget where you are, what you were doing, everything except what it feels like to be held in Theo's arms.
When you finally break apart, it's your turn to blink in stunned silence as Theo gazes down at you, his breath warm against your cheek.
"Ever since you arrived, everything that divination has told me has come true," Theo says gruffly, clearly not pleased to be having to admit it.
You couldn't blame him. The two of you had kind of bonded over how unseriously you both took the class. Still though, you tilt your head, inviting him to continue.
"The first day we met—that morning in divination, a deck of tarot cards told me I was going to fall in love."
A dry laugh escapes Theo's lips as he pulls back, eyes trained everywhere but at you now. Which is probably for the best as you feel tendrils of heat creeping up into your face.
"I didn't believe them of course. Thought it was pure rubbish."
Your heart stutters for a moment before your eyes land on the book Theo had been reading so intently up until now.
"Hm. And did something change?" you ask cautiously, not daring to get your hopes up.
"Well, the soggy leaves in my tea this morning kind of implied that I should get my act together if I wanted any sort of success, so—" Theo lets out another wry laugh, though there's no humor in his voice. Just a nervous undertone that you can tell he's trying to mask.
"Well did you? Fall in love that is?" you ask, suddenly feeling shy around Theo for the first time.
There's a beat of silence where you can practically feel your heart trying to tear its way out of your chest. You hadn't quite realized just how much you wanted this until it was staring you in the face. Or rather anywhere but. Then Theo meets your eyes once more.
"I think I could. If I'm not half way there already."
His words melt every bit of tension you had been feeling previously as you let out a breath that you didn't know you'd been holding.
"I think I'm half way there too."
Everyone say thank you to the beta readers @simplyastra and @nottendo 🫶🏽
SYNOPSIS— leon kennedy breaks your heart for the last time, and as shitty as you feel about it, you break up with him the day before he begins his new job. you ignore his drunk calls and texts, heart aching and tears drying on your cheeks. the next morning, the unimaginable happens. you spend the next few years trying to survive, regretting leaving behind the love of your life. he searches for you as ardently, keeping you close to his heart as his hope slowly begins to fade, coming to terms with the fact you might have died that fateful day. until one day, he finds proof that you're still alive, and he vows to find you no matter what.
GENRE — angst/comfort, some action, romance, fluff, yearning
PAIRING — re2! leon kennedy, re4! leon kennedy, ex bf! leon kennedy x fem! reader
A/N — OMG it is HERE!! based off of this drabble, i decided i needed to make this a complete fic :33 i LOVE leon kennedy and i love re9 it's so good and seeing leon age like the finest of whiskeys is what i needed in life. this is my first time writing for him so i hope you all like! :p
"What are you- what? No, you can't just-"
You paid no mind to Leon's stuttering as you continued shoving your things into the small duffle bag you'd brought to his apartment. It seemed bittersweet, that you had just finished helping him move, fully intending to let your own things collect until you found a new home with him.
The plan was to quietly pack your things while he was at work and throw the bag in your car, then break it off clean when he got home. Instead, he came back almost two hours early, a bottle of wine in a crinkled brown paper bag and a stack of takeout boxes wrapped neatly in a branded plastic bag.
He had all but thrown the food to the side when he realized what you were doing, rushing over just to stand helplessly at you side, reaching out to you but never touching you.
It's not like you didn't love Leon anymore, that wasn't the reason you were leaving, quite the opposite in fact. It was no secret that Leon had reckless tendencies, something you hoped he would soon grow out of. But learning he had all but thrown your concerns out the window and entered the police force amidst a restless society, getting a call that he had died on the job was a reality you weren't ready to accept.
You loved Leon more than anything, and you would rather leave than ever see him get hurt, as selfish as you felt and thought your actions were.
"We can work this out, just tell me what I did wrong, you don't have to leave-"
"Leon, enough," you sighed, feeling the tears stinging in your eyes as you tried to tune out the desperation in his voice.
He was young, he was unsure of himself, but full of passion and searching for his life's purpose. Loss had been no stranger to him, bits and pieces of his family's death revealed after time, the reason behind his intentions of becoming an officer. Though you felt as though you knew Leon plenty, there was an undeniable wall around his heart, one you feared you would never get through.
As you finished zipping up your bag, making sure you had taken at least most of your things, you stood and turned towards the lone doorway that would lead you out of his life for good.
Instead of a peaceful goodbye, a reaction unlike Leon in every way, stubborn and headfast as he was, he stood still in the doorway. His blue eyes pierced yours as you finally met his gaze, and this time, the tears did come. Streams fell from your eyes, warm and sorrowful as you tried to ignore the shimmering of his eyes.
"Just at least tell me why, why are you leaving?"
His voice, low and hurt pierced the silence and echoed in the walls of your head. If only he knew that he was perfect, everything you had ever wanted and more, there was nothing left for him to change.
You just shook your head, letting out a heavy breath. Nothing you could say would ever get through to him.
"I just can't do this Leon. I'm sorry."
Leaving Leon was the hardest thing you ever had to do, passing by the small congratulatory card you had made for him when he told you he'd gotten his new job, unaware to his decision and the complete details. How naive you were, how in love you had been to hold him back from his life pursuits.
This way, he could live his life helping people the way he always dreamed of, and you could be at peace knowing you would never hear of his death.
Now, you wished you had never left him.
Your car was low on gas, though that did not deter you from settling your foot on the gas pedal of the car, swerving around walking corpses starving for living flesh.
And what of Leon?
You had heard the voice through the static of the radio, instructions to head to the police department for safety and medical assistance. When the sirens sounded, he was the first person on your mind.
Dead bodies piled in front of the staircase. It was eerily silent, an air of dread and death filling the air, suffocating you. The chance never came to step inside.
The passenger side window shattered with the force of a body slamming against it, a terrifying inhumane roar sounding throughout the silence. Bloodied hands reached lazily in through the gap, dripping along the pale upholstery of your interior.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.."
The gearshift seemed to move on its own as you threw the car into reverse, speeding your way back towards the city limits.
It was lucky you had packed your necessities.
ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━
Leon was familiar with the premise of fighting to survive. He was an orphan himself, after all. He was not adverse to the brutal reality of persevering through the worst.
Images of you flashed in his vision with every step forward, bloody and torn, screaming as you reached out to him. Only his worst nightmare of losing you could go from a breakup to a zombie apocalypse. He felt like he was just waiting to wake up.
He had made it through the worst of it, he thought.
The police station was searched thoroughly, he'd found the underground Umbrella lab, he'd survived and had been recruited to work for the government, even saving a little girl along the way. Try as he might, he couldn't convince the agents rushing him towards the waiting helicopter to let him comb over the city once more, his eyes frantically roaming the chaos-ridden streets for any sign that you were alive.
He found none.
For the next few years, he was assigned various jobs. Most of them endangered his life, most of them wore down on his resolve. Each time he came across a body that looked a little too much like you he had to force himself to look away and swallow the knot in his throat.
It wouldn't be long until he would be able to resume his search for you.
He hated himself for letting himself get caught up in his grief. Each time he embraced another woman, no matter how stunning, no matter how entranced he had been, his mind always drifted back to you.
Would it be better off if he just moved on? Would the ghost of you stop haunting him, plaguing him with vivid images of the various deaths you could've befallen at this point?
Soon he learned that few survivors aside from himself and Sherry, the little girl he'd found, remained alive from the outbreak in Racoon City.
A hush had fallen over the office the day of, just hours before the nuke was dropped. He remembered the twisting of his chest, like an invisible knife had been thrust inside and turned like a cog, tangling with the flesh of his lungs and filled his esophagus with thick blood. That was before he had even learned of what happened.
That was perhaps the first time Leon had ever become so destructive.
Not only had he barged into conference rooms and yelled at the top of his lungs, he'd broken the old wooden furniture that resided in his hollow apartment, splinters littering the floor. He wept when he thought of you, how you'd scold him for the mess.
He wasn't the same after that day.
Hardened, cold, uninterested. All he was concerned about was saving more people, trying to atone for his sin of letting you slip from his grasp.
Pain consumed him like a fire and a gasoline-dipped match.
Every night was shared with whatever hard liquor he could get his hands on, though the bottle of aged scotch you had gifted him for his twenty-first birthday remained sealed, tucked away in his cabinets.
Spain had given him a breath of fresh air. Grief did not follow him through the rich city, did not drag behind him like a sad dog.
Guilt returned once he retrieved the president's daughter.
What was he doing?
What was the point of anything if you weren't there to experience it with him?
He thought of you, how much you would've loved the city, aside from the danger he regularly indulged in for his paycheck. He thought you might've picked the country for your honeymoon some day.
ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━
Learning of the destruction of Racoon City was detrimental. It had shook you to your very core, leaving you restless most nights, mind endlessly creating scenarios in which Leon must have survived. He was a fighter, he had never been one to give up.
Settling in a small town was the best you could do for yourself over the few years since you had seen him. A lone glove from a pair of his remained in your bedside drawer, alongside a small glass trinket he'd bought for you at a rest stop when the two of you left for Racoon City. A worn and tarnished necklace remained fastened around your neck, his birthstone.
Each day was a fight to continue moving forward, learning where to get resources, how to grow your own food, making connections with your neighbors, learning basic aid, learning to protect yourself with more than the small handgun you had been gifted from Leon. He had been so worried for your safety since he was getting a new job.
You had headed a small search group in the town, along with two men and two women. Each venture beyond the barrier meant potential death.
It was your fourth journey out when you stumbled into a small ruined bunker a few miles outside of Racoon City. Empty, useless, and devoid of all traces of life.
As you did with every outing, you tucked a small embroidered cloth into the gap of an old drawer.
Silly as it felt, you knew Leon would recognize your shoddy handiwork, after all, you hadn't gotten any better since you had seen him last.
ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━
Betrayal took away the pain of you for a short while.
Scorned by a woman who had once again taken his attention from your memory, he had an even stronger resolve to remain faithful to you, even though he had began to believe you really had been killed in the catastrophe long ago.
On the occasion, he found himself free of your memory. Your voice no longer carried along the wind, your scent no longer sweetening the blood and sweat of his own body, your touch no longer warm on his skin. In those moments, it was like you had never existed.
It felt wrong to be happy in those moments.
You had loved him so much, and he had loved you all the same. He knew how worried you were when he first mentioned the idea of becoming a police officer. It wasn't an easy conversation, but it had all but removed the ability to speak about it with you. He still felt guilt for never telling you about the academy, about his interview, until the very moment you began packing for Racoon City.
He remembered the look on your face, the tears that welled in your eyes, your resolve too strong to let them fall. It had almost been the end of your relationship that night, he had just barely convinced you to at least go with him.
With a sigh, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, grimacing lightly at the dirt that dragged along his skin. Searching through cupboards and digging through dusty piles of who-knows-what was getting tiring.
At first, he paid no mind to it.
His main concern was getting out without having to deal with anymore of the infected, gathering whatever nifty weapons, ammunition or supplies along the way. When his eyes drifted over the room, a bitter taste in his mouth he had seemingly wasted his time, a small movement caught his attention.
The wind drifted in through the broken windows in stray paths, barely enough to lift his hair, but enough to ruffle a small white cloth that hung from a drawer he had already checked.
There was no point in looking at it. Since the drawer had already been checked, what would be the point in examining some useless rag?
Still, he sighed and let his boots trudge against the worn wooden floors towards the drawer anyways. A tarnished brass handle, scratches at the legs from a small animal, a dog maybe. It was probably just a handkerchief from the poor souls who had lived there previously.
Like a violent wave crashed over him, he stumbled back. Blinking rapidly, heart stuttering in his chest, his shaking fingers delicately traced over the small red flower embroidered on the corner.
You had been smiling so widely the first time you had tried it, eager to find a way to patch up all the holes Leon had been getting in his jeans. He insisted he could always buy new ones, but you hated to see a tiny rip cause the waste of the nice brand of jeans he always wore.
Back then, you had patched up a small hole, maybe the size of a dime, on his thigh, matching the black denim as closely as you could. On the surface, no one could tell that it was a cute charm you had added.
"Now you can wear me with you wherever you go." you'd said.
His eyes scanned the area once more, frantically. Had you been here just moments ago? Hours, days, weeks, months? Had this been here for years, a call to find him, and he had been preoccupied with god knows what?
Clenching the fabric tightly in his hands, he felt his determination grip him once more.
You were out there, somewhere. You were searching for him all along, just like he had been searching for you. D.O.S. be damned, he was going continue looking for you until you were in his arms once more, flesh or bone.
ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━
Once again, played like a puppet by the strings of fate, Leon was whisked away to another continent.
His frustration grew by the day, tormented by the physical strain he was beginning to notice more as time wore on, a sign of his age surely. His thirties so far had not been kind to him.
This time in his collision with Ada Wong, he was surprised to find her helping the D.S.O and B.S.A.A., making avoiding her more difficult. To his surprise, he had found himself lacking the same attraction towards he had a decade ago, the tension much looser than before.
Perhaps it had been you, perhaps it had been because she was not currently his enemy. Whatever it was, he had been sure to keep it nothing less than professional between them.
She had noticed.
Normally, they would banter back and forth, exchange seductive comments thinly veiled by their distaste towards one another. He had been quieter, more focused, more eager to return to the states.
She did not say anything when they parted ways.
Leon had searched nearly every inch within a fifty mile radius after finding what you had left for him.
In his search, he had uncovered three other pieces of you.
A small charm you had received from your favorite sushi restaurant, a california roll with an exaggerated grin. Next was an empty bottle of his cologne, the bottle he had just bought before his new job started. Most recently was a small pot you had made in a pottery class, uneven around the top and glazed too thickly in some places, but something you cherished anyways.
He had begun leaving his own trinkets, too.
Thus far he had left a shotgun bullet with your initials carved into the side from the tip of his knife, a small wooden cat he had picked up on his travels, and lastly, a handwritten note addressed to you.
It took him hours to put his thoughts onto paper, to choke out the feelings he had long locked away. He spoke of your presence that lingered beside him, the ache in his chest each time he thought of you, the longing that came with knowing you were alive, and he could be just on the other side of a door and he would never know.
Sherry, though still young, had been his closest confidant in his turmoil.
There wasn't exactly a wide dating pool in the D.S.O., but she could tell when he had made himself sick with love, ridden with a type of yearning that he may never fulfill.
Embarrassing as it was for him to open up to her, albeit leaving out most of the details, he took her advised.
He grumbled when he stepped foot into yet another abandoned home, feeling silly even in his solitude. No one would see that he had left this note for you here, but it was possible someone else would come across it. What then?
What would pouring his feelings out in ink mean if your eyes never laid upon the paper he had carefully folded, your name in his scratchy capitals?
Though the moment did not come.
Echoing footsteps raised his alarm, tucking the letter back into his pocket as he pressed himself against the wall, reaching for a gun on his hip.
An unintelligible murmur and hushed conversation carried down the corridor, accompanied by several pairs of soft footfalls and a quiet metal clicking of some kind.
They couldn't have been from any agency he was aware of, otherwise he would've been informed.
When he was sure they wouldn't see him, he peeked out around the corner, eyes narrowed and searching for any sort of threat first and foremost.
Two women and one man followed each other in procession, no gear of any kind adorning their bodies, holding only standard hand guns aside from a rifle strapped to one of the women's backs.
After a few moments of scanning the interior with their guns raised, a woman sighed and tucked her pistol away into a worn holster on her hip.
"This one's empty too. We have to keep searching."
The sound made Leon inhale sharply.
Suddenly, he realized that the stature of that woman was foreign to him, surely changed by time, by a familiar shade of hair, an inflection in her voice, the brown leather holster that had to be at least fifteen years old.
His body locked up before he could think.
He couldn't get his hopes up. There were plenty of women he had encountered over the years, alive, dead, infected and otherwise. Quite a few had a resemblance to you. This woman was no different, and he wasn't yet sure if she was up to no good.
"You two see if there's any other buildings near by, they could have a separate shed for supplies. I'm gonna have another sweep."
As if by fate, Leon and this woman had been left alone in this house.
He had only briefly adjusted to reaffirm his grip on his gun, holding in close to his shoulder as he continued to watch.
Slowly, she exhaled. Leaning her lower back against the top of a lounge chair, her eyes flickered up to the ceiling, closing gently. Still, he could not be certain.
Only when she reached into a small pouch on her side and reached inside did he briefly consider confronting her, lest she lay some sort of trap or dangerous item behind.
Instead, he watched as she carefully handled a small teddy bear. The original material was clearly worn, frayed and patchy, but it was stitched together again and again, covered in small brown flowers he could only catch in the light.
You moved to gently set it atop the chairs cushion, propping it against the back.
A gift from yours and Leon's first date, a stuffed animal he had won from the claw machine at the ripe age of nineteen. As fruitless as it seemed, it felt wrong to leave any place without saying goodbye to a piece of Leon. If anything, you would run out, and you would know for certain.
Heavy boots thudded against the floor, creaking under shifting weight down the hall as you jumped up hand reaching for the small pistol on your hip.
Before you could draw it, the world stilled.
The blonde had darkened over time, shoulders broadened and hands calloused by the horrors of the infected. Blue eyes clouded by years of fatigue, death and plague still shone when they met yours, caught in the sunlight filtering gently through the windows.
It was unbelievable, after all this time, but it was undoubtedly Leon Kennedy.
"Leon.." you breathed, body frozen in place.
He did the moving, long strides placing him in front of you in mere moments. His smell encompassed your senses, the feeling of his being at your side once more bringing a lightness to your chest you had lost so long ago.
His hands were gentle, though urgent as they cupped your cheeks in his hands, bringing himself in to kiss you.
Years of passion could not be conveyed in a single kiss, but if there was anything close to it, it was this moment.
Leon's hands moved to embrace you, pulling you tight against him, holding you as though you might disappear at any given moment.
You were here, you were real, you were alive.
The warmth of your skin radiating under his hands could not be faked, the way your body pressed against his in the way you two fit so perfectly together, like long missing pieces of a puzzle finally reunited. Your hands tangled in his hair, breath fanning across his lips when you parted for air.
Relief and sadness hit you simultaneously.
Tears dribbled down your cheeks, only to be kissed away by Leon as his hands ran up and down the expanse of your back.
He had aged, still as handsome as ever, but he scarcely the man you once knew. All of the years that had passed had been stolen from you, and trinkets and clues would not give that time back.
Crinkled paper resided in his pocket, still stained with his scratchy handwriting, still flourishing with words he had yet to say to you.
Instead of pulling it out and giving it to you, closest to his original plan of leaving it there, he let the silence settle between the two of you, heart pounding in his chest in a rush of revival. There would be time for him to detail the extent of his feelings for you, he would make sure of it.
You were in his arms once again, and that was more than he could ever ask for.
summary: you assume jack likes you until the pitt starts betting on how long it'll take him and samira to get together; jack assumes you like him until you get called into work while on a date with your coworker. turns out, all it takes is a bad bet and an even worse date for you and jack to realize how in love the two of you are. (7k)
characters: jack abbot / fem!loser!reader, trinity santos, samira mohan, nick barker, mcvadi crumbs
contents: friends to lovers, idiots in love, implied age gap, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, jealousy, humor, so much flirting, cw for medical procedures, medical inaccuracies, and probably several hr violations
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
You make it halfway through your shift with a lighter wallet and a heavier heart than when you started it.
You can hear Princess shuffling through her stack of cash from the other side of the workstation, flaunting her winnings from a well-placed bet. You try and fail not to let it distract you as you scribble at the clipboard before you, with your heavy head propped on your clenched fist.
Charting was hard enough back when the computers were still running, back when it was easy — let alone when you have to make every single note by hand, and flit physically through a hundred different files just to cross-reference all the information.
“Is this what it was like back when you were a resident?” you’d asked Jack, when he dropped off an order slip by the filing cabinet, beside the bulky fax machine you were standing in front of and trying to tame.
He slid in beside you with a wide hand on your lower back, smelling like a dizzying mixture of sweat and musky cologne. He adjusted your labs in the tray without another word, turning it around and flipping it right-side up for you.
“Yeah, actually,” he’d nodded, dialing the proper number on the machine with his pointer finger, including the area code that you had forgotten to add. The corner of his lip flickered upward in a faint half-smirk as he joked with squinted eyes, “Back in the 1900s— when charting was done by candlelight.”
You felt your own mouth curling into a quiet smile despite yourself. “So this must feel really nostalgic for you then, huh?”
“Extremely,” he deadpanned.
“Well…” you sighed. “Got any tips for me then, old man?”
Jack exhaled a heavy breath and turned to face you while the heavy machine beeped and buzzed beside you. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his camo pants and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Well, look at it this way— Today is gonna suck, but… That means every shift from now can’t possibly get worse than this one, right?”
“Yeah,” you scoffed. “That, or we just… keep descending into another circle of hell every day.”
Jack smiled wider at your cynicism, patting you softly on the shoulder before sauntering off the way he came. “That’s the spirit, kid.”
You still feel his hand on you even now, wide and warm over your thick black scrubs, while you trudge through the rest of your charting. You hate the effect he has on you; you hate how often he plagues your every thought. It takes a great amount of muscle memory, you find, not to accidentally jot his name down as your hand moves the pen on autopilot.
You don’t think it’d feel quite as pathetic if you thought that there might be an inkling he felt the same way about you. But now, all you are is an R4 with a stupid schoolgirl crush on her boss, and half a mental breakdown away from scribbling little hearts in her notes with his initials scrawled inside.
“You plan on getting in on this?” Santos asks in place of a greeting as she slides her swivel chair next to yours. She wears a faint smirk on her lips and a mischievous glint in her light eyes that gives you great pause.
Ink smudges on the inside of your wrist as you halt your scribbling to flash her a dubious look. “…On what?”
“Ahmad got bored after Princess won the last bet,” she tells you, reaching behind her to tighten the half-ponytail at the crown of her head. “Said the grid was too good to take down so soon, so… He started a new one.”
You scoff a dry laugh and turn away again.
“Yeah? What is it this time— Which one of us is gonna be the first to have a breakdown and quit? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’d win that one…”
“Close…” Trinity croons, leaning in like she’s about to tell you some sort of secret. Her eyes flit somewhere over your shoulder, in the vague direction of where Mohan stands with Jack across the room, before she confesses. “It’s about Abbot and Samira. I have it on good authority that they were getting pret-ty close in Central 4 together…”
“C-Close?” you echo on bated breath.
Your head whips over your shoulder to the other side of the workstation, where Jack and Samira exchange information about one of her patients. You hadn’t given their closeness a second thought before now. It’s like you blinked, and now the sight of them together makes you feel sick.
You hope Santos doesn’t see the hurt weighing down your features when you turn back to her. “What— What do you mean close?”
“I mean, Dr. Abbot was half naked while Samira was tending to his shoulder,” Trinity explains with a scoff and turns back to her own clipboard. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it until I heard her say, ‘It’s our little secret—’”
She mocks in a high-pitched voice, which sounds nothing like Samira’s, before laughing to herself.
“—Like, c’mon. You guys could at least try to be subtle about it.”
You know she expects you to start laughing with her, but you struggle to find the energy to do so now.
“Yeah…” you sigh instead, hardly audible as you struggle to speak through the sudden tightening in your chest. “Right…”
“You should go place a bet,” she tells you, half-distracted by the files before her. “You could win back the money you lost and then some.”
“With what?” you joke with a sad scoff. “The three dollars I have left to my name?”
She flashes you a deadpanned look. “If that’s all you have to lose, I think I’d take those odds.”
You figure Trinity’s right. You have nothing more to lose, in truth — not after the shit day you’ve already had, and the money you’ve already lost, and the teenage heart inside of you that’s already broken.
You finish up your charting, return the clipboard to the patient rack, and retrieve your wallet from the locker room. Because, as you see it, you’ll either leave this shift about a hundred dollars richer or with nothing at all; either totally vindicated or with a bank account just as empty as you feel on the inside.
You find Ahmad in the security room, and he flashes you a toothy grin as you slink through the doorway like a shy little storm cloud. He motions with the notepad he holds in a sun-kissed hand. “I knew you’d wanna get on the books, kid— What’d it take to convince you this time?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug with a mournful sigh. “I just… realized that I have nothing else to lose, I guess…”
Dr. Barker laughs from beside you.
“Well, that’s always the best reason to make a bet, in my experience,” he jokes with a pearly white smile, pushing the sleeves of his navy button-down up to his elbows to reveal the expanse of his tanned, scruffy forearms.
Nick Barker stands quite a few inches taller than you — which you hadn’t expected before now, since he’d spent most of his time in the E.R. sitting behind the portable radiology machine. He has to look down at you from the bridge of his broad nose from this angle, with eyes so dark they’re almost black.
He’s almost effortlessly handsome. Like, Disney prince sort of handsome. The kind of handsome that makes it impossible to look into his eyes without blushing like a schoolgirl.
“I’m normally a lot more responsible than this, but… I figured all things considered…” you trail off with a sheepish shrug.
“Yeah, you’re talkin’ to the girl who hasn’t taken a day off since I started here— Two years ago,” Ahmad scoffs. “I think you deserve to let loose every once in a while, Doc, all things considered.”
He taps you gently on the head with his notepad. You roll your eyes and reach into the pocket of your scrubs, cheeks burning under the weight of the sudden attention you’re getting.
“Just put me down for $10—” you say, but cut yourself off when Ahmad hisses through his teeth. “…What is it?”
“Minimum this time twenty,” he grimaces.
Your shoulders deflate with a sigh. “Seriously?”
“We had to up the ante this time, kid— Rules of the game.”
“Then I guess put me down for twenty…” you huff and pluck your wallet from your scrub pockets. “For… unrequited…”
“Unrequited by who?” Ahmad presses with his brows raised to his hairline.
“I don’t know. Samira, I guess,” you shrug, half-timid, ‘cause it’s not like you totally believe it either. You’re just trying to take a page out of Trinity’s book, really, and manifest something good for yourself for a change — pretending that Abbot isn’t into her in the hopes that it’ll make it somehow real.
“What?” Ahmad laughs like it’s funny. “You’re telling me you don’t believe in love?”
You flash him a solemn look in return. “I’ll start believing in something again when the systems come back up,” you answer in a monotone.
“Touche…” he nods slowly while Dr. Barker exhales a quiet laugh through his nose.
A familiar voice comes suddenly from the entrance:
“I think that is the single sanest answer I’ve heard all day,” Jack Abbot himself hums in a gritty deadpan.
You nearly break your neck with how fast your head whips over your shoulder, finding the man leaning against the doorway with his toned arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk dancing on his lips.
Your skin prickles with a red-hot heat while your pounding heart drops to your stomach. If he wasn’t into you before, he certainly won’t be now — not with you making bets on his love life like a crazy person with nothing better to do. (Though, in many ways, that is exactly what you are.)
“Dr. Abbot…” Ahmad croons, trying to play casual despite knowing his secretive betting ring’s finally been found out. “That’s funny— We were just talking about you.”
“Robby may or may not have told me,” Jack confesses as he saunters slowly into the security room, boots heavy on the white linoleum. “Wanted me to tell him if there was something going on with Mohan and me, so he could recoup the money he lost in the last bet.”
“…Well, is there?” Nick wonders lowly.
“C’mon, Barker. Where’s the fun in that?” Jack scoffs a dry laugh, then goes strangely solemn again in a flicker. “Even though, as an attending, I think I have to say that I am very against this— I feel like this has H.R. violation written all over it.”
“Well, what Gloria doesn’t know, won’t hurt us, right?” Ahmad quips.
“I’ve been livin’ by those exact words for years, brother.”
Your hands are clammy and trembling for a reason you can’t name as you pull two crumpled bills from your wallet — a dingy, pastel Polly Pocket billfold you’ve had since you were twelve — as if you needed another reason to look any less cool in front of Jack. The pale pink interior is left glaringly empty, save for a few folded receipts and miscellaneous fortune-cookie slips.
“Wow…” you huff as you pass Ahmad the twenty. “That is all the cash I have to my name. I’m officially more broke than I was in med school— I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“I can take you out to dinner with my winnings, if you want,” Nick offers suddenly.
Your head snaps in his direction, and his eyes widen, as though surprised by his own forwardness. He swallows hard, pronounced adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, scruffy with a five o’clock shadow.
“You know, if you— if you wanna… let loose or whatever.”
Your lip flickers upward in a shy smile when Dr. Barker sighs and shakes his head to himself. A few rogue strands of dark hair fall from their gelled quaff and hang over his forehead until he pushes them back in place again.
“Sorry, that, uh…” He chuckles awkwardly at himself. “That came out weird.”
“I might be stuck in charting jail for the rest of the night, actually,” you say with an apologetic grimace, wringing your clammy fingers into knots. “Can I get back to you on that?”
“Yeah!” he blurts, a little quicker than he means to. He clears his throat and, in an octave lower, repeats himself. “Yeah. Totally. No worries.”
You dismiss yourself with a quiet smile and lack the courage to look Jack in the eye when you pass him on the way to the door. He watches you leave and waits for you to glance back at him with his heart in his throat. You never do.
Still, though, he can’t help but feel a little proud of himself; after watching you turn down the handsome radiologist every woman on this floor has been fawning over all day. He turns back around and hisses through his teeth, trying not to look as smug as he feels.
“Damn,” Jack deadpans. “That was cold, man…”
Nick’s dark eyes widen and flit wildly between the two men on either side of him. “Wait— Really?”
“Ice cold…” Ahmad affirms with a slow nod. “Girl said she’s broke, and you think she’s gonna say ‘no thanks’ to some free food? In this economy? Yeah… She’s not into you, man.”
Jack claps the solemn boy hard on the shoulder. “You win some, you lose some, kid… Don’t take it too hard.”
You forget all about the stupid bet and Nick’s offer some hours later, when Robby sticks you with Ogilvie and tells you to walk the MS4 through your canthotomy patient.
You talk aloud as you slice your scalpel through the young girl’s eye, where the socket is raging red and bulging from the pressure behind it. The boy doesn’t say a word the whole time, just holds the plastic cup where the bright crimson blood drains from the eye, and doesn’t move a muscle until it stops.
“I think that’s the closest I’ve come to puking since I started med school,” the boy confesses when it’s done, standing just over your shoulder while you fill out the patient’s med slip. “I didn’t even get that close during cadaver lab, when all of us started craving meat from the formaldehyde— I’m pretty sure five people dropped out that day alone…”
His voice trails off when Samira catches your eye, rushing by the desk with her wild curls falling from her claw clip. She wears the hard shift all over as she makes a beeline directly for Jack, planting herself ahead of the older man; so close she has to tilt her chin to meet his gaze.
Your hand freezes around the pen as you keep your eyes on the two of them, staring harder than you probably realize as you struggle to make out their conversation. Their words are drowned out by Ogilvie’s rambling, and the surrounding beep and chatter of the crowded E.R.
Mohan talks wildly with her hands and says something about “a letter,” while Jack nods along sympathetically and says something along the lines of “give me your number.”
Your chest flares with a white-hot feeling when you watch the man pass Samira his phone to plug her number into. It’s like the world has fallen out from under you and swallowed you whole, like you’re drowning in the fire of your own envy.
You’re barely seven hours on the job, and you’ve already lost all your cash — you’ll be doomed to the three-day-old leftovers in the fridge, if the newfound heartache hasn’t already snatched your appetite for the evening. That means you’ll be running on fumes tomorrow morning — still broke, still hungry, still heartbroken.
Then you remember Dr. Barker — Disney prince Dr. Barker — and his offer of dinner from earlier in the security room.
You make the terribly impulsive decision to take fate into your own hands and forget to properly dismiss yourself before dropping the finished order slip off across the room. Ogilivie is quick to follow close behind, lacking any real sense of personal space. He nearly trips over himself to keep from running into you when you freeze suddenly in place.
“You don’t have to follow me anymore,” you tell him.
“Oh… Well, then… What am I supposed to do?” the blonde boy shrugs.
“I don’t know. Do whatever you want…” you trail off and glance around the bustling work station. You spot Trinity standing at the chart rack and motion over to her. “Go help Dr. Santos with her next patient.”
The dark-haired girl turns at the sound of her name.
“Oh, please don’t—” She cuts herself off with a sigh when Ogilvie makes his way towards her anyway. “Fuck. Fine…”
You continue your trek to the other side of the crowded work station, where the portable radiology machine takes up the majority of the room. You can smell the man’s expensive, musky cologne before he ever comes into view.
“Hey, Nick…” you greet, then wince at how weird it sounds a second later. “I mean, Dr. Barker— Sorry—”
He glances up from his work at the sound of your voice. “Nick is fine,” he assures with a kind grin and a pair of chocolate-colored eyes.
You try to smile back, but your nervousness makes it look more like a grimace. “It’s not, like, totally too late for me to take you up on that offer for dinner, is it?”
“No!” he blurts with a shake of his head. “Of course not!”
“Great…” you say with a relieved sigh.
“Yeah, I’ll— I’ll text you the details later.”
“Oh. Well, you don’t…” You scrunch the bridge of your nose in a sheepish look. “You don’t have my number…”
His mouth falls softly agape with the realization. “Oh. Right. Duh.”
You smile wider despite yourself, ‘cause he’s almost as awkward as you are, which you didn’t think was possible before now — especially not for someone as pretty as he is.
You turn away and grab the nearest pen, clicking it on with your thumb before reaching for his arm. You scribble your number over the dark blue veins on his wrist with a newfound confidence — one that you never had before now, one spurred on by the man’s obvious shyness.
You feel Nick’s eyes on you when you look away, flitting wildly across your profile.
“This isn’t… This isn’t just because of the bet, is it?” he wonders with a waver in his voice.
Your brows furrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the whole thing you said about… losing all your money or whatever,” Dr. Barker explains with a sheepish laugh. “You’re not just going out with me for a free meal, are you?”
“Well, isn’t that kinda the point of going on dates? The free food?” you joke with a dry laugh, which fades instantly at the confused look Nick gives you in response. Your face floods with horror a second later. “I’m kidding! I’m totally kidding— Of course not.”
“Okay,…” Dr. Barker says with an awkward chuckle. “Good.”
“Good,” you echo with a sigh and rise to full height again.
“I’ll, uh— I’ll text you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” you chirp with a polite nod and a giddy grin, which ebbs the second you turn away from him. You shake your head as you slink back through the bustling emergency department, squeezing your eyes shut and murmuring under your breath in disgust, “I’ll be waiting—?”
You nearly trip over yourself when you ram suddenly into a firm body. Two calloused hands grasp gently at your elbows as you stumble backwards. You almost lose your breath when you find Jack Abbot towering over you.
“Shit… you huff. “Sorry, I— I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Where’ve you been hiding?” Jack squints. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Your shy smile fades into a disbelieving squint almost instantly; at the bitter reminder of Jack and Samira — of the seemingly intimate conversation they’d shared just minutes ago, and of the bet you know you’re bound to lose now.
“No, you weren’t,” you deadpan.
“I was,” he insists. “I feel like I always am, some way or another.”
Your chest warms at his words. You choke on the funny feeling when you force yourself to swallow it down. “I was just— walking one of the interns through a lateral canthotomy,” you stammer as you step back out of his hold.
“Gnarly,” Jack hums with a slow nod.
“Did you, uh… Did you need me for something?”
“Yeah, I have a patient over in Trauma 2— Sliced through his left hand with a circular saw,” Jack explains, staring down at you from the bridge of his nose as he crosses his strong arms over his chest. “But the crazy part is, he used his right hand to take the nail gun and—”
“Oh, my god,” you blurt before you mean to. “He tried to put his hand back on with the nail gun, didn’t he?”
“Close…” he hums with a knowing glint in his eyes. “He used the gun to fire two nails into his temple— Said he thought it would distract him from the pain in his hand. And the weird thing is, he’s walking and talking just fine.”
“Holy shit…” you mumble, wide-eyed. “Why do you always get the cool cases?”
“You can have it,” he assures you, with something soft swimming in his eyes. “That’s why I wanted to find you— so you could do it with me.”
Something about it feels way more intimate than being asked out for dinner.
You finish the rest of your shift as normal — feeling like a shell of your former self after hours of running on fumes; both excruciatingly tired and buzzing with white-hot adrenaline all at once.
The only real difference between today and every other day before this one is that, for the first time in a long, long time, you actually have plans outside of work — almost like a real human person with a social life would.
You return home after the long day, only for an hour or so, to shower and change out of your scrubs. You wash away the scent of blood, sweat, and antiseptic from your skin, and only cut your knee once when you shave your legs for the first time in weeks. You pull out a nice top, a short skirt, and a real bra from the depths of your closet. You go as far as to break out the expensive perfume that you’ve had for years, ‘cause you only use it on extra special occasions, which tend to be few and far between for you.
You feel like an entirely different person when you meet Dr. Barker at the address he’d sent you a few hours ago — a nice bar, just a few blocks down from your apartment building, that you’d been meaning to visit for years but found every excuse in the book to stay home instead. You find the man sitting alone in a far booth in the dimly lit room, sipping slowly at the beer he nurses in his hand, and feel a little like a fraud when you slide into the vinyl seat across from him.
Nick has only known you for the better part of a work shift, to be fair, not counting the handful of times you’d smiled politely in passing when you clocked out for the day. You know he’s got some version of you in his head already, like all men do — someone much cooler than you really are, someone much better at separating their work life from their personal life than you are.
You prove him wrong in record time, sharing a plate of loaded nachos between you and forgetting to eat any of it as you get too easily lost in your ramblings. You tell him of the long shift, and of the man you met with two nails in his skull, and fail to remember that not everyone can talk of blood and gore over a meal as easily as you can.
“—Honestly, I’m still surprised it didn’t hemorrhage! The X-Ray showed one of the nails was, like, half an inch away from nicking an artery,” you ramble with a giddy grin. “I pulled them out with some local anesthetic, and he was totally fine— Well, except for the hand, obviously. ‘Cause he did lose a few fingers, but… Dr. Abbot took care of that, so…”
“Did he?” Nick hums, hiding his smile behind the pint he brings to his mouth.
He thinks this must be the fifth or so time you’ve brought up the man’s name tonight alone — not that you seem to notice. He doesn’t know whether that’s supposed to make him feel better or worse.
“Yeah— I always tell him he would’ve been an amazing surgeon if he didn’t have the hand-eye coordination of, like… A half-blind sloth,” you say, then swallow hard at the playful look Nick gives you in response. “‘Cause, you know, sloths are really clumsy, and they… Sometimes mistake their own limbs for branches, so… They fall a lot…”
You trail off and reach for the glass of water at your side, becoming very suddenly self-aware of your inability to stop rambling.
“You talk about him a lot,” Nick observes with a kind smile, licking the sheen of alcohol from his lips.
“…Who?” you wonder with furrowed brows.
“Dr. Abbot.”
Your features flood with terror. “Do I?”
His broad nose scrunches with a breathy laugh. “A little bit, yeah.”
“Oh, god…” you groan and hide your face behind your hand. Nick’s laugh gets lost in the rock music playing overhead. “That’s so annoying. I’m sorry—”
Your phone glows to life as it buzzes against the wooden table it sits on. You reach over to flip it face down before you can read the message on the screen.
“I didn’t… I didn’t even notice… I’m so sorry.”
It vibrates again, twice more in quick succession.
Your stomach twists with the anticipation of what it might say.
“It’s whatever,” Dr. Barker shrugs, pushing the sleeves of his button-up to his elbows. “I get it. He’s your boss and everything, so…”
Your phone buzzes on the table once more, for longer this time, now with a phone call.
You tense, but make no move to answer it, for fear of making this more awkward than you already have — though your pretending not to hear it doesn’t make it any better.
The corner of Nick’s lip twitches into a sympathetic smile, ‘cause he can tell that you’re trying to be polite, even though you’re fidgeting at the thought of answering it. Because your friends usually only ever text you, so if someone’s calling, it’s bound to be important.
“You can get that if you need to—”
“Thank you,” you sigh before he’s properly gotten the words out, scrambling for your phone with anxious hands. “I’m so sorry. It’ll be quick, I swear. I’m sure it’s just… Fuck.”
The call ends before you can answer it.
Nick’s eyes widen at your reaction. “Everything okay?”
“It’s Parker…” you answer with your eyes trained on the blue-white screen. Your chest deflates with a heavy sigh beneath your skin-tight top. “And I know it’s serious because she despises double-texting and she just sent me four back to back, so…”
Your eyes are wet and preemptively apologetic when they dart to the man across the table, who meets the disaster of you with a tender grin.
“You gotta go back in, huh?” he squints.
“I do…” you sigh. “I’m so sorry—”
“Just make it up to me next time,” Nick shrugs, watching with kind eyes as you scramble for your phone and purse. “When I win that bet, I mean. I’ll take you out somewhere nice— We can do this for real. If you want.”
You slide out of the cracking vinyl booth with a grimace — equal parts unnerved at the idea of doing this a second time and half-surprised that Nick would even want to, after you did nothing but anxiously ramble before bailing on him out of nowhere.
“Yeah…” you waver anyway as you stand to full height again. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe.”
“Thank you again— I’d kiss you right now if I could,” Dr. Ellis tells you when you pass her in the ambulance bay, where she hurries out of the E.D. on long limbs. She calls over her shoulder, moments before she’s out of earshot. “You look hot, by the way!”
The passing reminder of what you’re showing up to work in hits you like a punch to the stomach.
The double doors of the PTMC part for you, and the air-conditioned emergency room wraps its cold fingers around every inch of your exposed skin — your shaven legs, arms, and collarbones; all of which are normally concealed by your dark scrubs and undershirts.
You can’t help but feel a bit like you’re doing the walk of shame as you race past the work station with your head bowed, barely noticing that the systems are up and running again as you go. You’re too busy trying to make yourself as small as possible on your way to the scrub dispenser down the hall.
Jack smells you before he sees you.
He gets a sudden whiff of something sweet and creamy, like whipped vanilla and fresh raspberries, something candied enough to eat. Then he looks over his shoulder, from where he’s stood at the front desk, and finds you rushing past him in a hurry. His neck nearly cracks with the strength of the double take he gives at the back of you — short skirt swishing around your thighs, tight shirt showing a sliver of your lower back. He feels a little like he’s in middle school again, going wild at the mere sight of a girl’s bare shoulder.
By the time his brain starts working again to greet you, you’ve already turned the corner.
“Whoa, gotta hot date tonight?” he hears Shen ask as you walk by.
“Just left one, more like,” you scoff.
“Damn. Poor guy,” the man quips, then laughs when you flip him off.
“…What the hell?” Jack mutters under his breath, with his eyes still trained on the empty hall you’d just disappeared down.
“What? You didn’t hear?” McKay wonders aloud, from where she’s hunched over the monitor across from him, still closing down for the day now that the ED isn’t in analog hell anymore. She peers up at him with tired blue eyes, half-hidden beneath her wild fringe. “Don’t tell Princess, but apparently, she went out with that Dr. Barker guy from radiology.”
“Oh, really?” Jack hums, nodding slowly to feign interest. He hopes the hurt flaring in his chest doesn’t show all over his face as he turns back to his computer. “Sounds fun…”
Javadi eyes him from behind McKay’s shoulder. Her dark, observant stare traces the edges of his face as she twirls the string of her lavender jacket with her pointer finger.
“Well, don’t look so upset about it, Dr. Abbot,” she jokes with a quiet laugh, half-dazed from the long day. “I have a lot riding on this bet about you and Mohan, you know—?”
Cassie flashes the younger girl a wordless look.
Victoria’s eyes go wide when they flit back to Jack’s.
“—Which I wasn’t supposed to mention in front of you…” she blurts and fakes an awkward laugh. “There is no bet, actually. I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
Jack doesn’t ease the tension by telling her that he already knows; that he has known all day. He just flashes her a half-smile and a pair of squinted eyes as he steps back from the monitor.
“Real smooth, kid…” he jokes before he walks away.
He leaves the work station and turns the corner to find you cradling a pair of black scrubs to your chest and making a beeline for the restroom nearest to the break room. He rushes on long legs to catch up with you, limping slightly from his prosthetic. You freeze at the sound of your name from his lips, echoing from down the long hall. Your skirt swishes around your thighs as you spin in place to face him.
“Hey…” Jack greets, only slightly out of breath when he towers finally over you.
Your brows lower in confusion at the sight of his flustered state, but you smile nonetheless. “Hey…?”
“How was the, uh… The date?”
“Date?” you scoff. “What date?”
“The one you had with Dr. Barker.”
His biceps strain against his scrubs when he crosses his arms over his chest, peering down at you from the bridge of his nose. Your cheeks flare instantly. You can’t help but feel like you’ve been caught, like he’s just found out you’ve been cheating on him or something — even though the two of you aren’t even together, even though it’s abundantly clear that he wants someone else.
“Well, it wasn’t— it wasn’t really a— a date,” you stammer and turn away. “It was just… dinner.”
“Right,” Jack scoffs and follows behind you the short distance to the bathroom. “Because the two of you weren’t flirting in the security room or anything.”
You huff an emotionless laugh and roll your eyes at him, even though you know he cannot see you. “Yeah, because you and Samira weren’t flirting in Central 4 this morning or anything…” you echo in a gritty monotone.
Jack catches the bathroom door before it can shut behind you. You glance over your shoulder when you hear it hit his palm. You find the man looming in the doorway with something mischievous glittering in his narrowed eyes.
“I’m trying to get changed,” you deadpan, despite the distant fluttering in your chest.
Jack passes through the threshold and lets the door shut behind him, leaving the two of you alone in the empty bathroom, where the white-blue fluorescent lights buzz overhead.
“Am I hearing things, or do you sound a little jealous?” the older man quips, glittering eyes trained on the back of you as you duck into the singular stall across the room.
It clicks shut behind you.
“Aren’t you the one who came chasing after me, Dr. Abbot?”
“Aren’t you the one who ran off from your date just to come back in?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” you laugh.
“C’mon,” Jack scoffs. “You know what.”
Your short skirt pools around your feet with a quiet thud. You step out of it and toe off your right shoe, sliding on the adjoining pant leg before slipping the sneaker back on again. You do the same for the left side, and Jack has to shake the visual of your half-naked body from his head.
“I thought we had… You know, I thought we had a thing going on…”
“A thing?” you repeat, half-muffled, as you slide your shirt over your head. You hang it over the stall before reaching for your scrub top. “I wouldn’t exactly consider flirty comments and lingering eye contact a thing.”
Jack catches a glimpse of your bare spine through the sliver in the door frame. He swallows hard and forces himself to look down at his feet.
“You say that like I don’t wish I could do more,” he tells you. “I’m an attending— I can’t just go around making moves on my residents. It’s not a good look.”
The stall door squeaks open again. You come into view, now dressed in your scrubs, and wearing a hardened scowl on your dolled-up face. “Well, that didn’t stop you from getting Samira’s number, did it?” you argue. “Or letting her patch you up this morning?”
“I gave her my number because she asked for a recommendation letter, and I told her I’d give her one,” Jack confesses, watching you with a glittering gaze as you storm past him with your clothes cradled to your chest. He makes room for you by the sink and fights back a grin while you scrub angrily at your hands. “And I was patching myself up, actually, until she walked in looking for her patient.”
“Well, how convenient…” you grumble.
Jack smiles wider. “You are jealous,” he croons.
“I am, actually,” you deadpan, with your eyes trained on the soap you suds between your fingers. Even still, you can see the man in your peripheral vision, standing in the mirror just behind you. You can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and smell the cologne lingering on his clothes.
“So that’s why you went out with the Barker guy, huh?” Jack lilts. “You just wanted to make me jealous…”
“No, actually,” you tell him. “I went out with Nick because I figured I should probably stop chasing after a guy that obviously doesn’t want me.”
You turn off the faucet with your fist and reach for the paper towel dispenser at your side.
Jack follows your every move.
“Yeah?” he hums lowly. “And who said I didn’t want you?”
You turn around to glare at him despite the newfound heat swimming in the pit of your stomach.
“Well, I think you’ve made it pretty clear, Dr. Abbot,” you deadpan. “I don’t think the entire floor would be betting on you and Samira otherwise.”
Jack takes a daring step closer, until you have to tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he towers suddenly over you. With his hands crossed over his chest, he bows his head and tells you, “Well, I don’t want Mohan. And I don’t care about that stupid bet. Is that clear enough for you?”
Your chest warms with a familiar feeling. Your features crumple under the weight of it as you murmur sheepishly, “Okay. I’m not even trying to be funny right now, but if you’re trying to tell me that you do like me, you’re going to have to say that outright, or else my brain won’t—”
You feel his hands on you, wide and warm around the outsides of your elbows. You feel your feet stumbling on the tile, and your chest colliding with his, and then his mouth pressing against yours. You feel his chapped lips, his coarse scruff, and his exhaled breath from his nose as it fans warm over your skin.
You freeze against him, too stunned that he’s kissing you at all to remember to kiss him back.
Jack pulls away from you a dizzying second or more later. He peers down at you with a heavy gaze and smiles when he realizes you haven’t yet taken your eyes off him.
“I like you…” he tells you slowly, as though to make sure you’re really hearing him. “Are we clear now?”
You swallow hard and nod your head, licking at your kissed lips in a feeble attempt to taste him again.
“Crystal,” you quip drily.
You rise to the tips of your toes and wrench your free hand in his scrub top, with every intention of kissing him again — for real this time. You flinch in a fleeting panic when the bathroom door squeaks open a second later.
Samira slips inside, too distracted by the phone in her hand to see what she’s walking in on. You and Jack freeze against one another accordingly, as if being so still will somehow make you invisible.
The door closes behind her and muffles the never-ending chaos outside. Only when it clicks shut again does Samira look up from her phone, dark eyes wide as they flit wildly between the two of you.
“Holy shit…” she mumbles under her breath, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud at all.
You push the man away from you on instinct.
“We weren’t doing anything!” you blurt, hardly convincing in the matter.
Jack’s soft eyes cut over to you. “Real smooth,” he mumbles.
Samira’s look of shock ebbs into a giddy smile.
“I knew it!” she exclaims, voice ringing through the tiled restroom. “Ahmad looked at me like I was crazy when I put forty dollars on the two of you, but I knew I was right!”
Your brows furrow in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“The bet,” she shrugs with a smile. “I put mine on the two of you. Which means I just got a couple hundred dollars richer, at least.”
The realization hits you like a punch to the stomach.
“Which means I just lost all of my money…”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I can spare some of my winnings. I mean, it’s only right, right?” Samira says with a pretty laugh. “You guys can go out for drinks or something special. My treat.”
It becomes suddenly very difficult to imagine yourself from five minutes ago — back when you were overcome with jealousy just by the sight of her alone — knowing now that she had been rooting for you this whole time. Jack seems to know this, too, based on the smug smile he gives you.
“This real nice of you, Mohan,” he says. “But if I’m taking my girl out for drinks on a first date, I’m gonna be the one payin’ for ‘em— No offense.”
“None taken,” she shakes her head. “Means more money for me.”
You’re still catching your breath in the meanwhile, ‘cause the newfound title has all but punched the breath from your lungs. My girl, he’d said, and god, you wanted nothing more than to be his girl.
“We should, uh—” You clear your throat when the words get stuck there. “We should probably get out of here before the others think something weird is going on…”
“Something weird is happening— The entire E.D. is betting on my love life,” Jack scoffs as he follows you out of the bathroom, where the chaos of the E.R. finds you almost instantly. “Sorry you lost, by the way. The bet, I mean…”
He catches himself nearly reaching out for your hand. He balls his own into a fist instead to fight the urge. You can see the longing to glittering in his eyes, anyway, when you turn to flash him a sheepish look in response.
“Well, I didn’t lose completely,” you lilt with a lazy shrug.
“No?” Jack hums.
“No…” you grin. “I think I won where it mattered.”
author's note: wrote this one in response to this lovely ask i received earlier today:
"Omg but like, the reader being so flirty with jack all the time (secretly is in love with him) amd he just smiles and shakes his head but he loves the attention from her then one day she sees him ask dr al hashimi for beers and she assumes he asked her out on a date and she backs off and stops flirting and barely even looks him in the eye because if she does she'll fall apart and abbot doesn't understand why she stopped flirting and tries to give her openings for her usual flirty lines but she doesn't bite anymore and just the she fell first, he fell harder stuff it's soooooogood😭😭"
thanks so so much to the lovely @stuffingbuttsandshit for this message (i fw your username sm) and i hope i did it justice. please never be afraid to send me a request, and thank you for all the support, it means the world !!! also, i'm back into my teaching job tomorrow, so this will be the last of what you'll hear from me for a couple days <3
pairing: jack abbot x resident! reader
word count: 4.1k
warnings: miscommunication/misunderstanding trope! medical inaccuracies, reader is a resident but no mention of age, no specific phsyical attributes to certain gender mentioned, also not proofread!
songs i listened to while writing this: so easy (to fall in love) by olivia dean, easy by the commodores, purple by wunderhorse, when we are together by the 1975
description: You flirt with jack every shift like that's what you spent years in med school studying for. When you overhear a conversation between him and another attending, you decide to pull yourself together and face the music - no amount of one sided love would ever change your relationship. At least, that's what you think.
It started out as a joke at first.
It wasn't a calculated one. Not even a particularly brave one. It was a way to find a bit of fun in the middle of a 12-hour shift that tested every line of the Hippocratic oath that you had taken against your better judgement. It was the kind of dumb thing that slipped out of your mouth during a long shift that should have died an embarrassing death right then and there.
It was harmless flirting. Something to take the edge off. Maybe you should have taken a less, well, serious victim.
"Careful, Dr Abbot," you'd said lightly, half leaning against the nurses station while he was in the middle of catching up on charting. "If you keep looking that good under fluroescent lighting, people are gonna start accusing you of witchcraft."
Jack had looked up from the keyboard he was typing away at with that familiar flat, unreadable expression and the smallest hint of amusement at one corner of his mouth. The entire nurse's station had gone quiet, and if you hadn't known any better, you might have thought an elephant had waltzed into the room and taken his seat in trauma room one. You watched as Mel looked up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash, which is what made you realise you may have taken it too far, because to be honest, Mel usually passed no heed on your usual antics.
Jack had lifted his eyes to yours, studying you for exactly two seconds, then given one slow shake of his head.
"I could do with a check-up on our food poisoning patient in room 4, doctor y/l/n."
That had been it. No scolding, no shutdown, no sharp reminder of professionalism. You ran the image of that twitch in the corner of his mouth over and over again in your head that night like a teenage girl with a crush on her best friend's brother. Or in this case, more like her best friend's dad.
So naturally, because you were a glutton for punishment and loved the thrill of tethering on the edge of something hopeful, you did it again.
And then again.
And somehow, over the next few months, flirting with Jack became a part of your regular shift rhythm, as natural as grabbing gloves from the wall or stealing sips of stale coffee between traumas. You called him handsome under your breath while passing in the hall. You leaned into his space during chart review just to watch his jaw flex. You told him he was ageing like your favourite bottle of red, which had earned you a long, suffering stare and a low, "Jesus Christ."
You did it at first because it was fun. A way to pass the time. But as the months went on, and you moved from junior to senior resident, the truth behind your incessant flirting became a lot more embarassing than you ever wanted to admit.
You were smart. Too smart. Educated and graduated at the top of your class, saved countless lives on the daily and still had time to feed your tabby cat at the end of it all. So there was no reason why your stupid, dumb brain had decided to fall in love with your attending.
You flirted, because you were in love with him. With Jack.
You had been for longer than you wanted to admit to yourself. Long enough that the whole thing had settled beneath your ribs like a live wire. It was warm, and humming, and a little dangerous. Long enough that it had stopped feeling like a crush and started feeling like something worse.
The problem was, Jack never really gave much away.
He liked the attention, you knew that. You weren't imagining that part. He never stopped you. Never looked annoyed in any serious or real way. There was always that familar tiny shake of his head, that almost-smile, that quiet tolerance that was so stupid adorable and somehow felt more intimate than an outright encouragement would have.
But Jack was Jack.
Steady. Closed off. Impossible to read unless he wanted to be read. So you flirted, and he let you, and you told yourself that that was enough for now. You were a resident, and he was your attending. You weren't naive enough to believe that he would ever take a relationship with you seriously.
And you know, maybe it would have been. If you hadn't caught him mid conversation with Robby's sabbatical replacement, Dr Baran Al Hashimi.
It happened halfway through a nightmare shift when you were running on little else but caffeine and instinct, and the Pitt had that strange, overstretched feeling it got when every room was full, and everyone inside them was talking too loudly. You were cutting through the hall outside the break room with a chart tucked to your chest, already halfway to Trauma Two in your head, when you heard Jack's voice from inside.
It was common to catch Jack in during the day shift, and you wouldn't have stopped if he'd been talking to anyone else. But you caught Al Hashimi's laugh first. Low, and brief, and then Jack saying, "You want to grab that beer later?"
Your feet stopped moving before your brain caught up. There was no hesitation in the question or audible awkwardness. No heaviness to it that made it sound work-related. It sounded easy, casual. Like asking someone out. You wondered if he was shaking his head in that way he did with you.
Al Hashimi said something you didn't fully hear, because by then your pulse had gone loud in your ears. You self-diagnose with mind-numbing tinnitus and prescribe yourself a huge dose of amitriptyline. The ringing grows louder as you watch her smile, small, but warm, and nodded once.
"Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."
And that was it. So, you kept walking before either of them could see you standing there. By the time you eventually got to trauma two, your face was perfectly composed and your stomach felt like it had dropped through the floor. It was ridiculous, really.
Jack had never promised you anything. He had never flirted back in the way you flirted with him. Never said anything you could hold up in your defence. He just let you tease him and seemed to enjoy it. That was not the same thing as wanting you. And Baran Al Hashimi was gorgeous, and strikingly intelligent, and better yet, an attending. You heard that she had worked overseas doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan. She was everything you weren't and more. Of course Jack would want her. God, you didn't blame him.
So, you stitched up a teenager's chin and reassured a frantic mother and signed off on discharge paperwork with steady hands, all while something sore and humiliating tore through your chest and the ringing in your eyes got louder.
Then, because apparently the universe had a cruel sense of humour, Jack found you by the supply closet twenty minutes later.
"There you are," he said.
You looked up automatically and cursed yourself. And there he was. The same broad shoulders, same tired eyes, same infuriatingly unreadable expression.
Usually, by instinct, you would have said something. Nice of you to finally show up, handsome. Missed me? Something stupid and teasing and light enough to keep the whole thing moving. To keep that little nugget of hope that lived between your ribs aflame.
Instead, you just held out the chart in your hand.
"Dana needs your signature on this."
Jack took it, but his eyes didn't leave your face.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine-
You cut in, begging to be finished with the conversation, and forced a small smile. "All good, really."
His brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. It was the first time in almost a year that you'd walked away from him without giving him something. And Jack, as it turned out, noticed immediately.
The following night, you called him Dr Abbot during rounds. It came out before you could stop it, a verbal guard you decided to throw up to protect yourself from more hurt that wasn't even his fault. Not Jack, not any of your usual easy little digs. Just Dr Abbot, flat and professuonal and wrong enough that his head lifted from the chart like you'd said something in another language.
He looked at you for a second too long.
Then he said, "You sick or something?"
You pretended to not know what he meant. "Nope."
"Then why are you acting weird?"
"I'm not acting weird?"
Santos, standing two feet away with a pen tucked behind her ear, visibly turned her whole body to watch.
Jack's mouth flattened, unreadable. Shocker. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
He looked like he wanted to say it outright, but with half the team standing around the nurse's station and Lena calling for updates across the room, all he ended up saying was, "Never mind."
But it wasn't never mind, because you kept doing it. You stopped leaning into his space. Stopped giving him those easy openings for banter. Stopped calling him old man, stopped telling him his curls looked good, stopped stealing sips from his coffee and dropping protein bars in his pockets when you passed him in the hall.
At first, Jack felt confusion, which quickly turned into a gnawing annoyance he couldn't shake. By the third shift, with no change from you, the whole thing had become impossible to ignore.
You were charting at the nurse's station when he came up behind you and set a fresh cup of coffee down by your elbow. A sleek, black takeaway cup that looked suspiciously like the one from the new bakery across the street you talked about going to with Santos before shift.
You looked at it, and then at him. Usually, this would have been an easy way in. What, no little heart on the lid? Starting to lose your touch, Abbot? Anything, anything would do.
Instead, you said, "Thanks."
Jack stared at you.
"Thanks?"
You blinked at him. "What?"
"That's all I get?"
You looked back at the screen where your chart lay half full. "It's coffee."
"It's your coffee. Two shots, and vanilla creamer. I made sure they used the barista oat milk you always rant on about."
You kept your eyes on the screen, even though every bone in your body was begging you to reach out and touch his forearm in thanks. "Oh, well, thank you very much, Dr Abbot."
He stood there for another beat, arms crossed, like he was waiting for the rest of it. When it didn't come, he muttered, "Right," and walked away.
Across the station, Santos leaned slowly towards Whitaker.
"This is sooo much worse than I thought."
Whitaker looked nervous. More than usual. "Should we..do something?"
"No," Santos smirked. "Absolutely not. This is premium entertainment."
Javadi, creating a circling motion with her hand towards the direction of you and Jack, said, "That looked like some form of attachment rupture."
Santos pointed at her while still looking over at you. "You are absolutely right."
You ignored them all and kept writing. Any acknowledgement and you'd have to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment and humiliation. You think that actually might be a better way to go then facing Jack again the way you just did.
Four days go by. Four days of you being perfectly pleasant and professionally distant and absolutely miserable about it. You felt like like a three year old kid sulking in the corner after being refused ice cream for dinner.
Jack still tried, in his own strange, increasingly irritated way, to hand you opportunities you no longer took. You didn't read them as openings anymore, couldn't let yourself slip again into the realm of hoping it meant anything more than trying to get through a shift in one piece.
By the end of the week, Dana got involved.
She caught you restocking suture kits in a supply alcove and leaned against the doorframe with the expression of a woman who already knew the answer and was just waiting for you to say it out loud.
"What'd you do to him, hon?"
You kept your eyes on the shelf. "Nothing"
Dana snorted. "Honey, I know I'm in day shift territory, but I have known Jack Abbot for too long to miss when he's sulking."
"He doesn't sulk"
"He absolutely does. He's just old enough to do it quietly."
You smiled despite yourself. If Jack was here right now, you'd make a joke about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks, or whatever that saying is.
"There it is," she said, poking an accusatory fingernail at your shoulder. "Tell me what happened, kid."
You hesitated, fingers tightening around the pack of gauze. Dana Evans had a way of dragging honesty out of people with nothing but eye contact and a gaze that reminded you of your mother. You make a mental note to call her after shift and apologise for every time you've ever talked back to her.
"You know Al Hashimi? Robby's stupidly hot replacement? I overheard him ask her out"
Dana let out a laugh - no - a cackle. Dana was cackling at you.
You frowned. "Dana! Seriously, I know, it's not like I'd have any chance with him, but I just thought, just maybe-"
"You are a total idiot."
"Dana."
"She was going to a trauma conference with one of his old friends from the military and he asked if she wanted to talk to talk about it over a beer."
Your grip loosened on the gauze, and you turned to stare at her.
"Sorry, what?"
Dana crossed her arms. “Robby asked him to get her thoughts on some presentations he's gonna miss on his sabbatical. He's tryna suss her out, you know."
Your stomach dropped all over again, but this time for an entirely different reason. If your first option was crawling into a deep, dark hole, well, this option would have to be something far worse. Like, being shot from a canon, butt naked, while every one of your ex-boyfriends watched.
Dana's expression softened just enough for you to recognise her natural maternal instinct taking over. "You really thought he was asking her out on a date?"
You nodded, slowly. You ran an exhausted hand over your face, hoping the ground would come and swallow you whole.
Dana shook her head then, taking your shoulder in her hand and rubbing softly, a comforting presence that took you out of your head. "Baby, that man has been halfway in love with you since before Christmas."
You didn't acknowledge it until she was already pushing off the doorframe, walking away with that irritatingly final air of hers.
"What?!"
That made everything worse. So, so much worse.
Because now, you had no excuse. Now it wasn't about Al Hashimi, not really. It was about the fact that if Dana was right, if Jack had wanted your attention all this time, if all those tiny almost smiles and deliberate little openings had meant what you'd wanted them to mean - then you had spent four days acting like a stranger because you were too scared to ask, and too damn immature to think of any other possible situation.
That night, you slipped into the stairwell in between consults to breathe for exactly thirty seconds and maybe lightly bathe yourself in peace. Then, the door opened, and there he was, filling the space with the same steady presence that always made it feel a little smaller, and a little warmer.
He shut the door behind him, and you waited for the onslaught of questions.
"You gonna tell me what the hell your problem is?"
You stared at him over the railing. There was no real heat in his voice, but there was frustration. And beneath that, something else, something tighter.
"Uh, nothing?" You cursed yourself for making it sound like a question you definitely knew the answer to.
"Try again."
"Shouldn't you be working?"
"Yeah," he said. "I should be. But instead, I'm here. Because you've spent four days acting like you don't know me anymore."
Of all the things you expected him to say, that one landed harder than you expected. You looked away. Embarassment was a feeling that you were getting far too used to.
Jack waited a beat, then came down two steps so he was closer, though not close enough to touch.
"You stopped flirting with me." You laughed at his bluntness. He continued.
"You won't look at me. You won't call me Jack. I spent fifteen minutes of my twenty minute break time arguing with a lady in a bakery the other day about how she had to use the milk I brought for your coffee, and all you could say was thanks?"
The obvious edge of offence in that almost undid you. Load the canon now, doctor!
You said quietly, "I heard you ask Al Hashimi for a beer."
Jack turned and blinked at you, and for one second, his face went completely blank. Then he stared at you like he'd just discovered the source of a leak that had been flooding his basement all week.
"That's why?"
You swallowed. "Um, yeah. I assumed, you know. You, gorgeous woman, a beer. Date territory."
"That wasn't a date."
"It wasn't a date."
"No." He let out a breath through your nose. "Robby wanted me to ask her about this conference. We were talking about work. He's cagey about her, taking over his ER and all."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Jack said.
He continued, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Why would that matter, anyways?"
You laughed once, sharp, and utterly miserable. You were so far past the point of humiliation, you might as well get it all out now. "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously."
You looked at him then, really looked at him. And you saw it, that he genuinely didn't understand. That whatever this had been to him, it had not included the possibility that you'd step back so quickly. That made it worse somehow. Better, too, But mostly worse.
You looked down at the stairwell floor and said, because apparently there was no salvaging you dignity now. Here goes, you guess. "Jack, I don't know how to say this without, just saying it. I-I'm, in love with you"
Then the words sat there. Plain, horrible, real. For a second, that felt like so much longer, neither of you moved.
Jack broke the silence, very quietly, "You're kidding."
Your head stayed staring at the ground. That was it, there was no going back now. You tried to ignore the intense stare you could feel burning two holes through your head.
"You're in love. With me?" he repeated.
Heat climbed your face, and you couldn't believe this was happening right now. Is this not an ER? Does nobody with a GSW want to come through and interrupt your lovely moment here?
"This is deeply humiliating, so, if you could not-"
"Jesus Christ." He laughed once, and your heart fell into your ass and ran fifty miles in the opposite direction.
Then he came down the last two steps and stopped right in front of you.
“You thought that was one-sided?”
Your mouth opened. Closed.
“I flirt with you constantly and you smile and shake your head,” you said weakly. “What was I supposed to think?”
Jack looked at you like that was the most ridiculous sentence he’d ever heard.
“I never stopped you.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I wait for it.”
You blinked.
His jaw flexed once, like he was annoyed you weren’t getting there fast enough.
“I know what time you usually get coffee. I know when your shift starts from the sound of your shoes in the hall. I know when you’re about to make one of those stupid little comments because your whole face changes before you say anything.”
Your heart was pounding now, hard enough to hurt.
Jack took one more step closer.
“When you stopped, the place felt wrong.”
That did it.
That cracked the whole thing open.
You looked at him and saw it all at once. Every quiet little allowance he’d made for you, every almost-smile, every opening he’d handed you on purpose just to hear what you’d say.
You whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I thought I was being obvious.”
You let out a wet, startled little laugh of your own, because of course he had. Of course Jack Abbot thought silently orbiting someone and letting them flirt without interruption counted as emotional transparency.
“You are a disaster,” you said.
“So are you.”
You smiled despite yourself.
His gaze dropped to your mouth for the briefest second before lifting again.
Then, in a voice gone rougher somehow, he said, “Say something.”
“What?”
“One of your lines.”
You stared at him.
Jack looked almost impatient now, but there was something fragile hidden under it too, something he would probably deny to the grave.
“You’ve had one ready every shift for 9 months,” he said. “Say it.”
A laugh caught in your chest.
Then, softly, because it felt different now and somehow still exactly the same, you said, “You know you’re ridiculously handsome, right?”
Jack shut his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, there was that tiny head shake again, the one that had started all of this.
“Jesus,” he muttered, and then he kissed you.
It wasn’t tentative, or rushed either.
It was the kind of kiss that felt held back for too long, warm and sure and a little bit annoyed, like he was making up for the fact that both of you had apparently been idiots about this. Your hand came up to the back of his neck automatically. His slid to your waist, steady and firm, drawing you in until you had to grab the front of his shirt just to hold onto something.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
“You done making assumptions?” he murmured.
You laughed softly, breathless. “Maybe.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Okay,” you said, smiling. “Yes.”
“Good.”
You looked up at him. “You loveeeeee me!"
Jack’s mouth twitched.
“Don’t start.”
“You do.”
He leaned back just enough to look properly annoyed. “You really want to have this conversation right now?”
“Yes.”
He sighed in that long-suffering way of his, but you could see the amusement sitting just under it now.
“You realised it first” he said.
You grinned. “Yeah, okay, but mine was slow. Yours was like, falling off a cliff into a stream of like, love crocodiles .”
Jack looked at you for a second, then gave in with a tiny shake of his head.
“Yeah, okay ” he said quietly. “Shut up.”
Something in your chest melted completely.
You kissed him again before he could ruin it by pretending he hadn’t said that. This one made him laugh against your mouth, just for a second, and then his hand tightened lightly at your waist and he kissed you back.
When you finally pulled away, there was a muffled voice from the other side of the stairwell door.
“Are they in there?”
Damn it Trinity.
You dropped your head briefly to Jack’s shoulder and groaned. “I hate this hospital.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you admitted. “I really don’t.”
Jack tipped your chin up with two fingers.
“You coming back down?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
You smiled. “Very romantic.”
“I’m not here to romance you. I’m here to stop you making yourself miserable over nothing.”
“Wow.”
“You started it.”
You laughed again, because there it was, that grumpy, teasing edge that somehow made everything feel more like him, not less.
As he opened the stairwell door, Santos nearly fell inward from where she’d clearly been listening.
Her eyes went wide.
Then narrowed. Then widened again.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I knew it.”
Jack looked down at her with profound irritation. “Don’t you have a patient to bother?”
Santos, unfazed, looked past him at you and grinned. “So I was right.”
Whitaker, standing three steps behind her looking mortified, asked, “About what?”
She pointed at both of you. “Everything.”
Jack muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like unbelievable and moved past her, one hand brushing your lower back as he guided you into the hall.
Not enough to draw attention.
Just enough that you felt it.
And this time, when you looked at him, he was already watching you with that same tiny, impossible almost-smile.
You smiled back. He shook his head once more, like he couldn’t believe you. But he looked pleased.
reader being upset because she hears rumours that Langdon has a date coming up but she and Frank have been flirting for so long she thought he might ask her out. but it's just some miscomunication and a happy ending
date
pairing: frank langdon x fem!reader ( no use of y/n )
content warnings: nothing i think! besides maybe reader having awful communication issues
a/n: hai lovely! i hope you like this and thank you for requesting <3
"He's what?"
Your head snapped up so fast you felt a twinge in your neck. Perlah leaned against the counter, casual as could be, dropping what felt like a bomb directly into your lap.
"Apparently he has a date," Perlah whispered, though the wicked glint in her eyes suggested she had absolutely no intention of keeping this information quiet.
Princess, perched on a rolling stool beside you, nearly fell off. "No way." Her eyes went wide with delight. "With who?" She leaned forward, grateful for anything to break up the monotony of a 10 AM shift.
Perlah merely shrugged. "No one knows." But the look she shot Princess promised they would find out.
You sat frozen between them, watching their mouths move as they switched into rapid Tagalog, words flying back and forth over your head. Their voices faded into background noise as five words kept repeating on a loop.
Frank Langdon has a date.
The man you'd been crushing on since your very first month at The Pitt. The man who had spent the past several months doing things that made you wonder if maybe he felt the same way.
The way he'd find excuses to brush against you in the supply room. The coffees that appeared at your workstation whenever you pulled a double, always made exactly the way you liked them. The way his eyes would find yours during the worst cases.
You stared at the computer screen. The mouse sat motionless under your hand, cursor blinking uselessly on the discharge summary you'd abandoned mid sentence.
Frank Langdon has a date.
You bit down hard on your lower lip, the pain pushing back against the hot pressure building behind your eyes. Absolutely not. You were not going to cry in the middle of the ER over a man who, let's be honest, had never actually said anything. Had never made a move. Had never done more than hint and flirt and make you feel special in a hundred tiny ways that apparently meant nothing at all.
Get a grip.
You logged out of the computer, pushed your chair back, and walked directly into a wall of warm muscle.
"Woah there."
You knew that voice.
Frank's hands caught your upper arms, steadying you before you could stumble backward. His grip was warm even through the fabric of your scrubs. When you looked up, because of course you had to look up, the man was infuriatingly tall, he was already smiling.
Frank must have seen something in your face, because his own expression shifted almost immediately. The smile faded. "Hey. You okay?"
For one terrible moment, you couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything but stare at his face, at the genuine worry, and wonder how someone could look at you like that and then go on a date with someone else.
"Yeah, no, I'm fine. Sorry." You pulled away from his hands, ignoring the way your skin seemed to protest the loss of contact, and stepped around him. "Gotta check on a patient."
You didn't look back. If you looked back, you might see something in his eyes that would undo you completely, or worse, you might see nothing at all.
So you disappeared into the nearest patient room.
Behind you, Frank stood exactly where you'd left him. He stared after you, confusion etched into every line of his face, before his gaze slowly drifted to the nurses' station. Perlah and Princess suddenly found the computer screen fascinating. Neither would meet his eyes.
Busying yourself with patients barely helped. It did something, kept your hands moving, your mouth talking, your brain focused on vitals and medications and everything except the image of Frank Langdon on a date with someone who wasn't you. But the moment a room emptied, the moment you had two seconds to yourself, the thought came back.
Frank Langdon has a date.
You'd just finished discharging a teenager with a sprained ankle when you found yourself back at the central board, staring up at the rainbow of markers and patient names.
What patient should you take next? Didn't matter. Pick one. Anyone. Just keep moving.
"Hey."
The voice came from your left, close enough to make your heart seize. You didn't need to look to know who it belonged to. You'd know that voice anywhere.
You glanced up briefly. Just long enough to confirm it was him, standing there in his black scrubs, hair slightly disheveled, looking down at you with an expression you couldn't quite read.
Then your eyes were back on the board, fixed on a random patient name. "Hi," you managed, and even that single syllable came out too quiet, nothing like your usual voice.
Frank actually did a double take. He'd gotten used to your smile. The smile that would carry him through the next hour. But there was nothing now. Just a blank expression and eyes that refused to meet his.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, suddenly unsure of himself. His hands itched to reach for you, but something in your posture made him hold back.
"Want to take the fever one together?" The question came out softer than he intended. Not his usual style at all.
You bit your lip, still not looking at him. "Uh, no sorry." You took a step back. "I have to—I have to check on Ogilvie and Joy. And their patient." You were stammering, you realized. Actually stammering. "Resident duties."
The last part came out with a small grimace, as if you'd just remembered that Frank was also a resident, as if you were reminding yourself that he existed in the same professional category as you, that there was nothing special about him, nothing that should make your chest ache this way.
You turned to leave without waiting for his response.
His hand caught your forearm before you could escape. "Hey." His grip was firm enough to stop you but not enough to hurt. "Did I do something?"
He turned you toward him slowly, giving you every chance to pull away, and when you didn't, he stepped closer. Your shoes nearly touched. You could smell him, that stupidly nice combination of hospital antiseptic and whatever soap he used, the one you'd noticed weeks ago and never mentioned because that would require admitting you paid attention.
"No!" The word came out too fast. You shook your head, and when you tried to gently shake off his grip, he let go immediately. "No, no, you haven't done anything. I promise."
For a horrible and awkward moment, you didn't know what to do with your hands. They hovered, before one of them landed on his chest. You patted him. Twice.
"I'm fine," you heard yourself say. "Just a rough day with patients."
You both stared at your hand on his chest. For one endless second, you felt the warmth of his body through the thin scrub top, the way his heart was racing. You dropped your hand like it had caught fire and then you were gone.
At some point, you lost track of time hours ago, you were called to assist. Car accident, multiple patients. Robby's voice called your name as you fell into place beside Frank. Side by side, like always.
You worked well together. You always had. Frank would reach for something and you'd already have it ready. You'd start a sentence and he'd finish it. It was the kind of relationship people spent years building.
But today, there were no lingering looks from you. No soft smiles when he did something right.
Robby called out a compliment when you got a difficult line on the first try, and you smiled at him, the way you used to smile at Frank. Frank tried to add his own praise, laying it on thick, hoping for even a crumb of that smile. Garcia, working beside you, rolled her eyes the moment he opened his mouth.
Frank ignored her completely, too focused on you. You gave him something that barely qualified as a smile. Then you turned back to the patient. Frank felt something crack in his chest.
It got worse.
When he handed you an instrument during the procedure, your fingers hesitated before taking it, careful to avoid touching his. When he reached for the ties on the back of your surgical gown, something he'd done a hundred times before, you nearly bolted away. Only the fact that he already had hold of the ties kept you there, frozen, while his fingers worked the knot with shaking hands.
What was happening? The question rattled around Frank's skull for the rest of the shift. He couldn't focus.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He got you coffee.
You were in the break room, hunched over a clipboard, when he found you. The coffee sat in his hand, made exactly the way you liked it.
"Hey."
You looked up. And then you just… stared at him, at the coffee, back at him. For too long. Long enough that Frank started to feel uncomfortable under the weight of it.
He held the cup out, waiting. His big blue eyes were wide and uncertain, searching your face for something, anything. Then he smiled at you. The smile that showed his dimples, the one that usually made you smile as well.
Your eyes dropped immediately. You took the coffee with careful fingers, making absolutely sure not to brush against his.
Frank felt like someone had poured ice water down his spine. He missed you. He missed your smile. He missed the way you'd throw flirty comments at him across the ER. He missed the way your eyes would light up when he walked into a room. He missed you. And you were right here, three feet away, and he'd never felt further from you in his life.
"Hope I added enough sugar." He tried for casual and failed. His voice came out almost pleading.
You took a sip and shook your head slowly. "It's perfect. Thank you." You set the coffee aside on the counter and picked up your clipboard again, flipping through papers you'd already read twice. A clear dismissal.
Frank wanted to grab you by the shoulders. He wanted to shake you until you talked to him, wanted to demand answers, explanations, anything that would make this stop hurting.
Instead, he tried one more time. "You sure you're okay, pretty?"
He'd called you that once, during your second month at The Pitt. You'd been exhausted, running on no sleep and bad coffee, and he'd brought you a sandwich from the cafeteria. Eat something, pretty. You're gonna fall over. You'd called him handsome right back. And somehow, it had stuck.
You flinched. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks, Frank." You gave him a weak smile and you didn't call him handsome. He nodded wordlessly and left. He didn't see the way you stared after him.
The end of shift crawled toward you like it knew they were both suffering and wanted to drag it out.
You felt Frank's eyes on you before you looked up. There was something about the weight of his gaze that you'd grown attuned to over the months like a warmth at the back of your neck. You'd always loved it before. You loved knowing he was looking, that you existed in his line of sight.
He was finishing up with his last patient, an elderly woman with a stomach ache who'd been admitted hours ago and was finally being moved upstairs. You watched him from the corner of your eye as you pretended to focus on your charting. Saw him glance your way, hold the look. Long enough that even from across the ER, you could see the confusion in his expression.
You dropped your eyes back to the computer screen.
You'd barely spoken all day. That was on you. You knew it was on you. Frank had approached at least ten times. Ten separate opportunities to just talk to him, to ask about the date, to clear this whole mess up. But you couldn't. Every time he got close, every time you heard his voice, your throat closed up and your eyes started burning and all you could think about was tomorrow.
Tomorrow, when you'd come back to work. Tomorrow, when you'd have to hear about his date. Tomorrow, when you'd have to pretend to be happy for him while some other woman's name sat on his lips and some other woman's smile lived in his memory.
Better to start the distance now. Better to build the wall brick by brick before tomorrow, when you'd really need it. Before you had to hear how fantastic she was, how beautiful, how funny, how everything you weren't.
Then Frank was suddenly behind you. He didn't do his usual thing, the thing where he'd lean against your desk and make stupid jokes until you gave in, the thing where he'd wait for you to finish so you could walk out together, the thing where he'd annoy you just enough to make you push your charting to tomorrow, letting him pull you out of your chair while you giggled and pretended to be mad, warm all over from the simple pleasure of his hand in yours.
He just stood next to your desk. "I'm going home." His voice was careful. "You need a ride?"
You looked up and God, his eyes. Those stupidly blue eyes that usually softened with warmth when they landed on you. Now they just looked desperate. His hands stayed at his sides. He was resisting the urge to touch you. You could tell. You'd grown to read his body language as well as you read your own.
You shook your head. "No, I'm fine. Thanks." The lie tasted bitter on your tongue. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
Frank hesitated. For one awful moment, you thought he might push. Then he nodded and he didn't even manage a smile this time. "Yeah. Fine."
You heard the hurt. Frank Langdon, who hid everything behind sarcasm and that infuriating confidence, was upset.
You don't know how long you sat there. But it was long enough for the night shift to start filtering in, for Dana to give you a concerned look from the nurses' station that you pretended not to see. You just kept charting.
By the time you finally finished, your eyes were red rimmed and hurting. You couldn't tell if it was from the sheer heartbreak or from staring at a computer screen for way too many hours. Probably both. Definitely both.
The locker room was quiet this late. Everyone else had gone home or moved to night shift, leaving you alone with your own miserable thoughts.
You pulled your jacket from its hook and draped it over your arm. Your fingers found your phone, and you stared at the screen without really seeing it.
What was Frank doing right now?
Was he home, getting dressed up? Changing out of his scrubs into something nice? A button down, maybe, the dark blue one that made his eyes look even prettier? Was he standing in front of a mirror, running his hands through his hair, checking his reflection before heading out?
Was he already at the restaurant? Was it even a restaurant, or something fancier?
Who was she? Did you know her? Was she a nurse from another floor, a doctor from a different department, someone completely outside the hospital? Was she pretty? Smart? Funny?
Was he going to kiss her tonight?
Would you have to hear about it tomorrow? Would he come in with that stupid smile, that glow of someone who'd had a good night, and would someone ask and would he tell them and would you have to hear it?
You grabbed your phone harder and pulled up the bus schedule. The next bus would be here in twelve minutes. You'd wait in the cold, go home, crawl into bed, and try not to think about where Frank was or who he was with or what he was doing.
Simple. Easy. Fine.
You walked out into the Pittsburgh night, and the cold hit you immediately. But you barely noticed it. Your eyes were on your phone, squinting at the bus times, trying to calculate how long you'd be standing here, while simultaneously trying not to think about how every passing minute was another minute Frank spent with someone who wasn't you.
Nine minutes until the bus. Nine minutes of him being on a date. Eight minutes. Eight minutes of him maybe holding her hand. Seven minutes. Seven minutes of him maybe leaning closer, maybe—
You walked directly into someone.
Your phone flew out of your hand, clattering to the pavement, and you stumbled backward with a yelp, only to look up and feel your entire world stop.
Frank, standing right outside the hospital entrance. Frank, who had left an hour ago. Frank, who should be on a date right now, not standing here in the cold.
"Frank?"
"Hi." You could see him physically stop himself from adding pretty, saw the way his mouth opened slightly, then closed, then opened again on just the simple greeting. Remembering your flinch this morning, trying not to hurt you again.
Your heart cracked a little more at that small act of restraint.
"What are you doing here?" You bent down to grab your phone, grateful for the excuse to look away from him for a second.
Frank was quiet for a moment. "Waiting for you." You blinked at him.He gestured past you, toward the bus stop where you'd been heading. "I knew you were lying."
Heat flooded your face immediately, guilt, embarrassment, the horrible feeling of being caught. You opened your mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Charting was going to take too long. I didn't want to bother you." You scuffed your shoe against the pavement, unable to meet his eyes. "You had… things. To do."
Things. Such a weak word for a date with another woman.
"Never bothered me before."
Your eyes finally met his. He was right. He'd never once acted like you were a bother. You thought about all those nights when he'd sit in the chair next to you while you finished charting, spinning back and forth, making stupid comments, poking at your arm until you swatted him away and told him to stop bothering you. He never listened. He just grinned that stupid grin and kept bothering you.
He never went home without you. Not once.
So why were you surprised to find him here now? Why had you ever thought he would?
"Did I do something?"
Your eyes shot up to meet his. The streetlight behind him cast his face in shadow, but you could still see the concern in his eyes.
"No, why?" The words came out too defensive, and you regretted them immediately. Regretted the 'why' most of all, because now you'd put yourself on the spot.
Frank tilted his head, studying you with those impossibly blue eyes. "You know why." You bit your lip and glanced away toward the bus station. "I'm serious." His voice dropped and he tilted his head again, trying to catch your eyes. "Did I upset you? Did I say something wrong?"
You shook your head quickly, too quickly, still staring at the bus station.
"I'd like to fix whatever I did."
The silence stretched. The bus sign clicked to four minutes.
"Frank, I'm fine." Your voice sounded strange to your own ears. "Just go, before you're late for your date, yeah?"
You finally met his eyes. God, his eyes. You'd never get over his eyes, so blue they almost didn't look real, so blue you'd spent months finding excuses to look at them, so blue you'd written terrible poetry in your head that you'd never admit to anyone.
But now those eyes just looked confused. "Date?"
"Yeah." Your voice cracked slightly. "Your date. Tonight."
Frank stared at you for a long moment. "I don't have a date," he repeated, and his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Who on earth said I had a date?"
Your brain, exhausted and overwhelmed at this point, could only manage one word. "Perlah."
Frank's eyebrows shot up. "Perlah?" He tilted his head, processing this information. "And where did she get it from?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask." You mumbled the words, suddenly feeling very foolish. Why hadn't you asked? Why had you just accepted it as fact? Normally you were smarter than this. Normally you didn't take gossip at face value.
But normally your heart wasn't on the line.
Frank glanced down at you. "Okay. Well, I don't have a date."
You raised your head, searching his face for any sign of deception. "Where'd the rumor come from, then?"
He shrugged. "I don't know," he mumbled.
You narrowed your eyes. You'd spent months watching Frank, watching him with patients, with colleagues, with attendings. You knew his tells. You knew when he was hiding something. "Yeah, you do."
Frank's jaw worked. You could practically see the gears turning in his head. Finally, he spoke. "Perlah just misunderstood my conversation with Donnie."
He was looking away now, studying the hospital entrance. The streetlight caught the slight flush creeping up his neck.
"What conversation with Donnie?" you prompted gently.
Frank's eyes flicked to yours, then away again. He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture you'd rarely seen from him. "Was talking about how I'd been planning on asking you out. On a date. And Donnie, being Donnie, probably said something loud enough for Perlah to hear and she… filled in the blanks wrong."
You stared at him. Your brain, which had been through absolute hell today, officially stopped working. "Huh?"
Frank grinned at that, even as a flush spread across his cheeks. He looked almost shy, which was so utterly ridiculous on a man like Frank that you couldn't quite process it.
"My turn to ask weird questions," he said, and his voice had gone softer now. "Why were you so upset with me? Are you sure I didn't say anything wrong?"
"Because—" You stopped. Your mind was still stuck on the words asking you out on a date,. "Because we've been flirting for months!" The words burst out of you, louder than you intended, more upset than you wanted to sound. "Flirting for months, Frank. And then I just—I find out you're going on a date with some other girl, and I'm just supposed to be fine? I'm supposed to just stand there and watch you smile at someone else and bring her coffee and wait for her after shifts?"
"You could have just asked me." His voice was impossibly fond. "You've been here long enough to know that listening to Perlah's gossip is never a good idea."
You crossed your arms, defensive now. "Don't act like you haven't believed half her gossip before."
Frank's grin widened. "That's different. Her gossip is usually right. But you should have learned by now that when it comes to me, you come straight to the source." He stepped closer, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to maintain eye contact. The silence stretched between you, both of you smiling at each other.
"So," you said slowly, "you were planning to ask me out?"
Frank's expression softened further and he nodded. "If you'll let me."
"Yeah." You felt the smile spread across your face. "Definitely."
"Good." Frank's own smile widened, those dimples making an appearance that made your heart stutter. "Let me drive you home first," he said softly, "and we can discuss the details there, yeah?"
You nodded, unable to stop smiling. But before you could take a step toward where his car was presumably parked, you rose up on your tiptoes and wrapped your arms around his neck.
You buried your face in the curve of his neck. You'd missed his touch so badly. And now that you could have it again, you couldn't get close enough.
Frank didn't hesitate for even a second. His arms came around you immediately. "Please don't ever do that again," he mumbled against your hair.
You giggled against his neck. "I'll try my best, handsome." You felt him relax as soon as he heard the word.
Finally, reluctantly, you pulled back. Frank's hands lingered on your waist, clearly unwilling to let go entirely, and you didn't blame him. You didn't want to let go either. But then he smiled and reached for your hand. His fingers intertwined with yours and he started walking toward his car, pulling you gently along with him.
"So," you said, swinging your joined hands slightly as you walked, "are you going to take me to a fancy restaurant?"
Frank glanced at you, one eyebrow raised, amusement flickering in his blue eyes. "That's your first question?"
"It's an important question. I need to know what I'm getting into."
He laughed. "Yeah. I'm taking you to a fancy restaurant."
-when dr. langdon's attention is focused on the new nurse, you can't help but feel a little salty-
frank langdon x reader
cw: misunderstandings, work place relationships, clueless frank, jealousy, dana is sick of everyones shit, mc is a bit dramatic, unrealistically slow pitt, Red Bull!
wc: 2.4k
There's a stupid saying about assuming that you heard once upon a time. Probably years ago, when you were a kid and some wise-cracking adult thought they were being smart.
“You know what they say about assuming. It makes an ass out of you and me.”
It's such a stupid saying. For the longest time you’d never been able to wrap your head around it. It truly doesn’t make a lick of sense. Then again, most sayings are stupid quotes coined throughout history by some idiot who thought they were being smart.
Maybe you don’t get it because you’ve never taken the time to put any real thought into its meaning. Doing so would be a waste of time, anyways. Who really cares?
Apparently you do today, because there's currently nothing else to do in the Pitt.
The instant that thought crosses your mind you scrunch your nose with a hiss. Great. Now you’ve jinxed yourself.
Who even decided that anyways? There’s no reason that making a simple observation about the world around you should spell bad luck for the next hours to come. It's so stupid.
There’s no real reason you’re in such a sour mood right now. Well, maybe there is—but you told yourself this morning you wouldn’t let it bother you anymore after Dana decided to point out the newly forming wrinkles on your forehead.
“The hells the matter with you kid? You’ve been walking around with a stick up your ass all week.”
Her unexpected intrusion into the break room made you jump, causing you to whack your head into the top shelf of the refrigerator while fishing for the Red Bull you’d shoved in it a few shifts ago.
A loud curse flew from your mouth and you turned to glare at her, palm already lifting to nurse the forming bruise on your scalp.
“Good morning to you too, Dana.” The fridge door shuts with a loud clank.
“Nothing good about this morning, but I get the feeling you already know that. What's the matter?” Her gruff voice was accompanied by its usual lilt of sarcasm. She looked certainly worse than you, but that’s not something you’d ever point out. Her blonde hair was pulled back tight behind her head, a faint sheen of unwashed grease evident. The grey scrub top she wore held quiet wrinkles, likely from the previous day’s shift.
“It’s nothing, I'm fine. Just tired,” you lied. She knew you were lying, but you hoped she wouldn’t press the matter any further. Not because anything serious had happened. Quite the opposite in fact. Your week had been ruined for the stupidest and most embarrassingly trivial reason ever.
She found purchase at the sink next to you, cleaning out a coffee mug that would soon be her morning’s savior. An unconvinced hum escaped her throat.
The tab of your Red Bull pulled up with a hiss and pop. “I think Langdon’s going out with the new nurse.”
Dana stared at you.
“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response,” she finally said, voice thick with exhaustion.
You scoffed, rolling your eyes as she walked out of the room, not forgetting to chastise you as the door shut behind her.
That was three hours ago, and while you’d like to say you stuck to your word and forgot about the ordeal, there’s no point in lying to win a case against your own conscience.
You hunch over the nurses’ station with an audible groan, wincing when your forehead bumps its cool surface. The knot on your head is just another gift from the universe to ruin your day, it seems. It's not like you have any real reason to be upset. As blurry as the lines of daily flirting and occasional shared drinks after shifts with your coworker are, getting jealous over Frank’s potential new girlfriend seems to be crossing them just a bit.
Potential.
The word echoes in your brain.
Of course, you have no real proof. Just because she’s been on the majority of his cases as of late doesn’t mean that they’re fucking. It doesn’t even mean that they’re friends! At least, that's what Trinity had told you after you drunkenly pestered her for thirty minutes straight. Now she refuses to hear about Frank at all—not that she ever wanted to in the first place.
But still, the way he smiles and cracks jokes that were normally reserved for you every time she’s near makes your skin itch. And it’s obvious she’s into him with how much time she spends ogling him instead of doing her actual job—
If you weren’t directly in the center of the Pitt right now you might slap yourself. When did you get so antsy over Frank Langdon of all people? God, you sound like a pathetic teenage girl instead of the secure and competent senior resident that you actually are.
The train of thought finally snaps you back to reality, and with a squeeze of your eyes you shove yourself back and out of the creaking swivel desk chair you’ve been sulking in the past few minutes. As you stand, you make a final promise to not let this bother you.
For real this time.
You almost made it another three hours without breaking that promise.
Almost.
It's just after lunch when your petty jealousy and baseless assumptions worm their way back into the forefront of your mind. You’re working on a protein bar you’d found hiding in your bag since who-knows-how-long, when a familiar voice drifts up behind you.
“Haven’t seen you all day. Don’t tell me you’re avoiding me or something.”
The chalky snack snags in your throat as you swallow. You glance at him briefly, swiping through the tablet in your hand with a little more fervor than necessary.
“No.”
Yes.
Frank’s eyes squint in that familiar way of his, and you hate how attractive you find it. He studies you for a moment, probably weighing whether or not to point out how weird you’re acting.
“So I noticed we’re both off Thurs—”
“Welp, I've got a patient I need to check on. Or examine. Both. Crazy rash case.”
His brows knit together watching you force your own foot into your mouth. Heat creeps up your neck, and instead you decide to shove down the last of your protein bar in one giant bite, nodding with an awkward smile and scurrying toward central six as fast as your sore feet can manage.
You push through the glass door, brushing aside the curtain and forcing yourself to forget that absolute dumpster fire of a conversation that definitely just took a few years off your lifespan.
The fifth patient you’d picked up within the hour presented with a mysterious onset rash. This was exactly the case you needed to pick you up in the afternoon—Something fun and challenging to distract yourself.
Except, standing in front of you is the poor new hire you’ve unjustly deemed an arch nemesis, patient chart in hand and smiling with her sickeningly sweet voice.
“Oh, I was expecting Dr. Langdon.”
Today might be the day you lose your medical license. And catch your first ever felony.
Clearing your throat does nothing to help the strain in your voice. “I’m the presenting physician. You should see that on the chart.”
Her smile grows even wider. “Oh, I know! I just caught him outside earlier and figured since he was nearby I'd get his attention first…”
She could tell you that the patient’s leg fell off and they were now in septic shock, and you’d still feel the urge to toss something at her head.
You breathe, walking over to the portable computer in the corner of the room. “Did something happen?”
Your ID badge slides across the computer’s scanner. The screen blinks to life instantly.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center Patient Portal…
Log In Successful…
“Oh no, I just had a question about charting protocol.”
“I’m right here. Shoot.”
Your fingers dance across the keyboard instinctively, gaze flickering across the screen as she rambles about her struggles with the ‘unfamiliar system’. You beckon her behind you, tilting the screen her way. She watches in naive awe as you explain the inner workings of PTMC’s patient charting system with an amount of patience that is a genuine miracle.
Your finger points to a highlighted box when she asks another question. The nurse—whose name you realize you still don’t know—thanks you sincerely, and you have to hold back another sigh as she dives into more rambling, hands twirling around her perfectly laid curls.
With that, you’re finally able to examine the patient—the job you would have liked to start five minutes ago—all the while nurse Bradshaw (you finally got a peek at her name badge) hovers like she’d like to take over your job. To your absolute disappointment, it takes about thirty seconds for you to diagnose the patient with an extreme case of hives.
There goes your fun pick-me-up case.
You finish your examination with a sigh, typing a few final notes into the chart before excusing yourself. You make a mental note to yell at whoever is running triage for choosing to waste a bed on something that could’ve been taken care of with a strong antihistamine.
As you’re debating whether or not to stoop low and cherry-pick your next case, a familiar voice coos beside you, along with something cold pressing against your neck that makes you yelp.
“Ow—”
You whip around instantly, only to be met once again with a perfect head of dark brown hair and intense blue eyes staring back at you.
As well as… a can of Red Bull?
“Consider this a peace offering.”
You stare up at Frank, hesitantly accepting the cold can offered to you. “Uh, thanks.”
You catch his confident facade deflate in real time, and Frank runs an uncertain hand through his hair. “Did I, uh, upset you?”
Sure, you figured he’d start asking questions sooner or later, but this was a lot sooner. Not to mention the fact that Frank Langdon pulls off the kicked-puppy look far too well for a physician in his thirties. It’s unfair, really.
You chew the inside of your mouth, suddenly finding the hallway floor, the nurses’ station, literally anything, half as interesting as his eyes. It’s not like you’d been planning to admit your jealousy directly to his face.
What was there to be jealous of, really?
Yes, you and Frank have a history of flirting during shifts.
Yes, the two of you exchanged phone numbers and you text regularly.
Yes, you go out to bars together after shifts and make plans every other weekend.
But none of that actually means anything. Because you’ve been too terrified to ask that dreaded question. The risk of ruining the carefully crafted dance the two of you had perfected over the past months was far too great. You don’t need to look far to know that work relationships are more likely to sink than float when things get serious.
If the new girl caught his eye and he decided he was finally tired of you, then that was that.
“I just didn’t know if I said or did anything lately.”
Your jaw tightens. You know better, you really do, but something snaps in you.
“Well,” you start, nail peeling the tab of the Red Bull with a quiet click, “You’ve just seemed so busy lately.”
Frank frowns. “Busy?”
You shrug, feeling oddly emboldened as the fizzy energy drink stings at the raw skin in your mouth. “You know, with Bradshaw.”
The confusion on his face makes your breath feel heavier.
“Bradshaw,” he repeats.
You shift slightly under his scrutinizing gaze, forcing yourself to not look away. “The new nurse,” you clarify.
Frank stares at you for a full three seconds, which is ample enough time for you to realize how absolutely stupid you sound right now. Then, he laughs. It's deep from his chest and he drags a hand down his face in disbelief.
“Oh my god,” he mutters.
“What?” Your tone comes out slightly defensive, and you’re still trying to ignore the redness encroaching on your skin.
He looks back at you, a shit eating grin plastered on his face. “You think I'm seeing Bradshaw?”
“Well why else would you two be so close lately?”
You think he’s going to laugh in your face again, but his head turns, and he calls out across the floor to the woman in question. She walks over with a cheerful smile, greeting the two of you.
“Say, where’d you tell me your husband was going fishing?” Frank asks casually, his grin growing in absolute delight as the realization dawns on your face.
Husband?
You look at her hands, perfectly polished with a cherry red, and adorning her left ring finger a shiny diamond resting snugly in a golden band.
You think you could die at this moment. In fact, you’re praying for it. And Frank knows it all too well. Disappointingly, you don’t collapse from a heart attack or stroke, so instead you opt to stare very intently at the drink in your hand.
The two chat for a second longer before she heads off, wishing you both a good day. Frank turns to you once more, taking a step closer as he leans against the counter.
“I’m flattered you’re so concerned about my relationship status. Any particular reason why?”
You don’t respond, refusing to meet his gaze. The worst and best part about Frank Langdon is that he hardly takes anything seriously. He might not be offended by the ridiculous misunderstanding you created, but he’s definitely never letting you live this down.
And suddenly, that stupid saying from earlier comes creeping back into your mind.
“I thought you were an ass,” you mutter to yourself.
Frank cocks his head, leaning in to hear you better.
“I’ve been an ass,” you say louder, pinching the bridge of your nose. Apologies have never really been your forte. “I’m sorry.”
He chuckles. His hand twitches against the counter like he wants to touch you. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”
Your head snaps up. His intense blue gaze already betrays the mischief brewing in that pretty head of his.
“Let me take you to Le Mont Thursday night.”
You take a gamble on making just one more assumption. This new one being that Frank Langdon is asking you out on a date, and you’d be utterly stupid to say no.
an: varuna try to actually write one of the millions of drabble ideas she has stored away challenge go! I actually wrote the bulk of this last night at 4 in the morning after getting the idea off here. I genuinely cannot find the fic I was inspired by, but if you have any clues feel free to tag them! I really wanna get back to writing more short fics for other characters. :P
A like and reblog goes a long way! thank you so much for your support <3
