(for lovely @flipzimm, continued from here!)
Rey had simply come over to make Flip a meal after his day at work, since Poe had, yet again, forced her out of the hospital after working for almost four days straight. And she’d made it, the pasta and sauce still on the stovetop when Flip comes home, but Rey isn’t making it anymore -- her hands shaking as she holds the folder in her hand. She wasn’t even looking, she’d merely seen the photograph on his kitchen table, the corner of it come out of a folder when Rey had paused, ghosting her fingertips over it.
She knew the man in the picture, was Rey’s first thought, the recognition coming over her like a wave -- sending a shiver up her spine. It’s her ex boyfriend is what she found the picture of, and she had no idea why Flip had a picture of her ex boyfriend in his folder, until she’d looked further into it. He’s undercover, currently trying to infiltrate her ex boyfriend’s... whatever he’s a part of, Rey doesn’t exactly know, which is why she’d broken up with her ex in the first place, when things were starting to get out of hand.
She hates that her eyes well up with tears, hot and stinging, blurring her vision when she hears Flip come through the door. She wishes so desperately to go back in time and not see the picture, to not have the knowledge she does now in her head -- she wants to go back to how things were.
Not in the beginning; Flips words echo in her head, Rey pinching her lips together as she looks over at him once more. “But you figured it out, didn’t you?” she asks, her voice cracking just slightly -- and she hates how it makes her feel weak, crying in front of him now. It feels as if everything is unravelling beneath her, and she can’t seem to do anything to stop it. “Is that why you were asking me questions about him? To try and use me to get information about him out of me?” Rey asks, even though she knows that isn’t what he was doing. She knows Flip. Or, she thought she knew Flip.
He’s angry, Rey can very obviously hear that in his tone, which he should be. She’d looked into a confidential file, one that she shouldn’t have even gone near. When he calls himself a fucking inconvenience Rey doesn’t say anything for a few moments, her eyes tracing his features as she takes a small, cautious step toward him. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” Rey says, her tone more firm now, a little sharp. This isn’t how she wanted to tell Flip she loved him, none of this moment was even close to how Rey imagined it, she thinks to herself, taking in a sharp breath.
It makes her worry, the fear that he doesn’t feel the same way about her start to settle in her chest -- making her vision blur again. A part of her so desperately wants to ask him, wants to know the truth -- even if it isn’t the answer she wants to hear from him about his feelings for her, whatever they may be. “You’re not -- I didn’t mean it like you’re some sort of complication in my life,” Rey clarifies, her throat feeling tight as she speaks -- trying to hold back more tears now. “This is -- this complicates things, Flip. And you knew about this, you knew about these -- complications before I even had a clue,” she tries to explain, shaking her head over at him now.
“You don’t think I would get that? Understand doing what you do because you save people? I save people every day, Flip, just like you do. But you just --” Rey stops, running a hand through her dark hair, trying to find the right words to tell him. He couldn’t have told her. She hates that she knows he isn’t in the wrong, having kept this from her -- he had too. But she knows her ex, and she knows Flip being around him puts his safety into question -- so a large part of her if absolutely petrified that she’s going to lose Flip because of him. “It’s different, how we do it. You and I don’t save people in the same way,” she says, knowing how absolutely ridiculous she must sound to Flip.
Rey doesn’t move her gaze from Flip now, pausing as she hears his next few words. “What do we have?” she musters up the courage to ask, since they’re both faced with the question now. She takes in a nervous breath, closing the space between them; she’s been this close to Flip before, but not in this sort of tension -- not when she can feel her heart pounding rapidly against her ribcage, tilting her head to look up at him now. “What is going on between us, because right now I don’t know myself, Flip,” she admits quietly, her eyes once more trying to read his features -- trying to read at least some of the emotions going through him.
