Taking you up on your lovely offer of a sick ficlet (sicklet? Lol) to make me feel better you wonderful dear. In the spirit of the flu, how about Kylo and Rey working in the same company, with one crushing on the other from afar. The crushee comes down with flu but keeps coming to work, and the crusher starts leaving them anonymous little gifts to help ease their symptoms. Then maybe as they get better, the gifts get a bit more romantical ❤️
I am so, so very sorry - this got buried beneath a bunch of asks, and I totally missed it! I’m hoping to hell and back you’re not sick any more, but here’s a little ficlet anyway?
If there’s anything worse than being sick, it’s being sick and coming to work. As the chief editor, he’s in charge, and can therefore take sick days whenever he damn well pleases without too many people throwing a hissy fit. But as the chief editor, he’s also nearly the only one who knows what the fuck is going on, and so it’s impossible for him to take a sick day.
Fuck his job, really.
And fuck Starbucks for only having skim milk today instead of the half and half he usually takes.
“Good morning, Mr. Ren.”
He’s more than sure his annoyed grunt towards the small brunette at the front desk - what’s her name? Fae? Kay? Rey? Rey sounds right - he’s more than sure that it doesn’t actually count as a greeting, but it will do for now as he pushes through the glass doors and makes his way back through the black hallways towards his corner office. He doesn’t see the way she looks back at him, doesn’t see her concerned gaze, or the way she immediately pulls up a Starbucks order form online.
He visits the bathroom more than four times in an hour, bringing toilet tissue back with him since he ran out of his desk tissues three hours ago. The toilet tissue is rough on his nose, but it’s better than the paper towels in the kitchen nearby, so he’ll take what he can get. The fifth time he goes, he returns with a handful of toilet paper to see a new box on his desk. It’s one of the larger ones, long and sleek and black and silver. Modern, well designed. And thankfully completely full.
He has no idea who his tissue angel is, but he sighs as he tosses the toilet paper into his desk for emergencies, and reaches for a lotioned tissue, sighing at the relief his nose gets.
-
At 11, it’s a cup of coffee with a handful of creamers and sugar. At 1, it’s a brownie on his desk, perfectly angled on the crisp white napkin. At 3, it’s another box of tissues, with a yellow Post-It telling him they noticed he was running low again.
Perhaps it would be creepy, if he was in his right mind, but with his brain fuzzy and nose stuffed up, he’s honestly just grateful.
-
The next day is no better. In fact, he swears it’s gotten worse. He’s started sneezing, and with sneezing comes snot, and he hates those tacky little plastic pockets of Kleenex because the patterns are god-awful, but he wishes desperately he had eight of them in his suit jacket because he’s tired of scrambling for a napkin to wipe his face.
“Sir, you don’t look so good,” the brunette at the front desk tells him, worry in her voice, and he looks to her.
Oh, yes, he knows her now. He’s seen her with Finn and Poe, laughing and smiling during the lunch hour. Rey. That’s her name. Rey. And she’s looking at him like he’s a fucking idiot for coming in, and looking pointedly to the Purell on the desk.
“I have my own,” Kylo says, attempting for his voice to be harsh, but instead it just comes out gravelly and froggy as he stomps by towards his office.
Within the hour, a bottle of decongestant is on his desk, as well as another box of tissues.
-
Four days. Four days of being in absolute misery, and he still can’t tell who’s been dropping the gifts. Hux isn’t that kind, nor would Hux have put the scented hand sanitizer in his desk. He hasn’t seen Phasma all week - oh, that’s right, she’s off at a conference in Peru. There are others he knows, but not that well, and he’s more than sure he doesn’t know the person who had a small bouquet of white lilies delivered with a note that said ‘I hope you’re feeling at least a little bit better?’ with handwriting that matched the Post-Its left on each item.
Flowers. Chocolate. A new wool scarf that the gift-giver must have knitted themselves, a soft cashmere but the stitches not perfect like a machine’s. He wears it and buries his cold nose into it, not noticing the way Rey blushed when he walked past.
Who the fuck could it be?
He groans as he battles the remains of the cold, his head still stuffed but his nose now clear. He’s just exhausted, now, and he sighs as he runs his hand through his hair.
“Sir?”
“Hm?” he asks, looking up to see Rey standing in the doorway, her coffee-colored dress clinging to her small figure and then flaring out near her knees. “Yes?”
“I received three calls at the front desk. Hux isn’t in his office, so I wondered if you could forward these numbers to him? They sounded urgent,” the woman offers, sliding a piece of paper across his desk with numbers and messages and names.
“Hm, yes, sure,” Kylo mutters, his gaze slipping right back to the form. He hears the slight ‘slap slap slap’ of her flats, the soft hiss of the door closing, before he looks up to actually look at the paper, and his heart skips a beat.
“Wait, Rey!”
She’s halfway down the hallway by the time he lunges around his desk and opens his office door, and she’s stopped, turned halfway towards him as he takes long strides towards her.
“It was you,” he insists.
“Sir?”
“You,” Kylo says, pointing at her. “You gave me the tissues, and the flowers, and the medicine, and the scarf…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, in a tone that he knows damn well she shouldn’t be using with the man who is at least ten times her superior, but he can see the way her cheeks flush, can see the way she avoids looking at him.
“… Rey.”
“What?” It’s almost snappish, and he smirks that she would be so offended at being caught.
“… could I take you out for coffee? As a ‘thank you’, of course,” he says, in a tone that obviously means more than just ‘thank you’.
She hesitates for a moment before she looks up at him, and smirks right back. “Just as a thank you?”
“No,” he answers bluntly, because she is attractive, and he does want to get to know the woman who knitted the chief editor a cashmere scarf just because he was sick.
