#buttonwiseman

He’s hunched over his coffee table (If he’s going to work at home, he can at least be comfortable, it has nothing to do with the way his whole body ached when he tried sitting at his desk. He probably needs a new chair.) doing his best to work out what he's supposed to be filling out on this line when his ringing phone nearly startles him out of his skin.

He checks the screen: Ellie. That’s… unusual. They text, (because they’re friends, and friends text each other), but outside of when they were trying to organize Nick’s surprise party, she’s never called. Especially not in the middle of a weekday. His stomach clenches, his mind jumping - is she ok? does she need help? - to worst case scenarios. He fumbles the phone, rights it, answers.

“Hello?” His throat stings a little when he speaks. That’s an allergy symptom, isn’t it?

“Hey,” she responds. She sounds calm, she’s ok. The tension in his stomach dissipates. “It’s Ellie. Can you open the door?”

Can you open the… It takes him a second longer than usual to understand what she means, his momentary panic over her well-being shading into confusion. What is she doing here? How would she even know he was home, unless…

He fucking didn’t...

“Did Nick send you?” he says, “I told him -” I’m fine, he tries to finish, before she cuts him off with some rather pointed words about not wanting to be a bother.

He doesn’t. Want to be a bother, that is. But she raises a fair point about already being here. It would be worse to just send her back home after she made the effort to come over, wouldn’t it?

Nick was probably counting on that when he asked her to check up on him. Arsehole. 

He heaves a sigh - getting up off the couch takes more effort than it should - and takes a quick look around the room to check that it’s tidy before he goes to the door. It is. Of course it is. And he rather doubts that she’d care if it wasn’t. But at this particular moment, it really feels like it matters.

Ellie’s standing in the hallway, phone still held to her ear. Her brown eyes - deep brown, the kind a man could get lost in - widen at the sight of him as he stands in the doorway. He says could. He means does. They’re dark, warm, flecked with black and framed by impossibly thick lashes and...

You’re gawking, Black. He gives himself a mental shake and looks down. And he notices the bags. That she’d lugged all the way here. For him. And that swooping in his gut is definitely not allergies. No, that’s guilt. (It is guilt. That’s all.)

“You didn’t have to -” he starts to say, but she cuts him off again with a roll of her eyes.

“It’s fine, Gray,” she says. “Now go sit down, you look like hell.”

Ouch.

He backs away from the entry to let her in, protesting, “It’s just a headache.” 

He’s fine. She can make her delivery like Nick asked her to and go. He’s sure she has better things to do. “It’ll pass.”

“Uh huh.” And he may not be an empath, but even he can feel the scepticism radiating off of her. “Have you taken your temperature?”

“I’m not sick.” He insists, around the scratching in his throat. And anyway, he doesn’t get sick, so naturally he doesn’t have anything to take his temperature with. “And I don’t have a thermometer.”

She doesn’t seem at all concerned by that, just reaches into one of her bags and tosses a small package his way. He catches it, and looks down. It’s a thermometer. Of course it is, because she’s smart enough - so damn smart, she’s going to be brilliant as an MIV -  to come prepared. He looks back at her, and she’s smiling. Beaming, really.

Her smile could light up a room. Is lighting up the room.

She’s also saying something. He blinks, managing to tune back in before he’s forced to admit that he hadn’t been listening, “...reading comes back normal, I’ll leave you alone.”

He’s not getting out of this. 

“Fine.”

She drags the bag into his (essentially pointless) kitchen, and he can hear her rustling around as he pops the thermometer in his mouth.

He waits.

It beeps.

He looks.

“Well?” she calls. 

“That can’t be right,” he mutters, more to himself than her. Because that temperature is a low grade fever. And he doesn’t get sick.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“One hundred and one.”

“How about that,” she says, mildly. 

Cheeky. He smiles to himself. Of course she is, she’s Nick’s sister. She’s Nick’s sister.

The smile falls away.

She’s also still rummaging around in his kitchen - he can hear the cabinets opening and closing as she looks for...whatever it is she’s looking for. He gets up to help, and ends up in the doorway just in time to see her trying to reach a mug with a spoon. Because there isn’t a problem she won’t face head on, won’t try to solve herself. She has her hand braced on the counter, pushing herself just a little higher as she stands on tiptoe. It’s causing her shirt to lift just a little, exposing just a sliver of her midriff. And it wouldn’t be that hard to help her, to stand behind her and pass that mug down, a hand on her waist…

He tears his eyes away, cheeks flaming in spite of his chills, and fixes them resolutely on the wall. So much so that he doesn’t notice that she’s standing in front of him with a laden tray until she tells him that he’s blocking the exit.

He follows her back to the living room, careful to look away when she sets the tray on the coffee table, just to be safe - she came here out of kindness, not to be ogled - although he catches her gesture for him to take a seat as she says, “Tea, soup, nap. Proven 100% effective most of the time.”  

“Really,” he says, sitting down (because it’s polite or because she asked or both) “this isn’t necessary -”

She cuts him off again, “You have a fever. Drink the tea. Eat the soup. And lie down. If you’re still awake after 15 minutes, I’ll back off and let you get back to work.’”

He opens his mouth, halfway to telling her that he isn’t sick. Closes it, because if that didn’t convince her before the thermometer reading, it’s not going to now. Opens it again, halfway to telling her he doesn’t mind the company. But he doesn’t want to monopolize her time. And he can’t think of how to frame it that doesn’t sound weird or creepy except it shouldn’t be either weird or creepy to ask your friend (because they’re friends) if they’d like to stay a little longer...

“I didn’t drug your food,” she says dryly.

“I didn’t think -” he didn’t even suspect that. She’d clearly misinterpreted his silence. But she doesn’t give him a chance to explain.

“Gray!”

“Right, sorry.” It’s probably for the best. He doesn't have the first idea as to how he would go about explaining it anyway.

She sits down at the opposite end of the couch, as far from him as she can get, (it aches, a little, to always be kept at a distance) and he recognizes the MIV study guide she pulls out of her backpack. He sneaks glances at her between mouthfuls of soup, studies the curve of her pursed lips, the way her brow furrows and smooths as she puzzles over the text. She’s quiet, still, in a way that Nick never is - goddamnit it, don’t think about Nick right now - and it’s...nice. Comfortable, to sit in silence with her. 

He doesn’t want to stop. 

And she’s absorbed in her studies. Would she notice if he just...eked his reports over?

“Hey!” She’s looking directly at him, pointing at the papers under his hand. Yes. Apparently she would notice. “We had a deal,” she reminds him.

He stares at her for a moment, mind racing (or rather, mind wading through knee deep mud thanks to the congestion) for any excuse to stay out here with her, before the look she’s giving him tells him that he’s not getting out of it. 

“Fifteen minutes,” he confirms.

“Mhm. Fifteen minutes.”

He sighs, makes his way to his bedroom and lays down on top of the covers. He isn’t going to fall asleep. He’ll just lie here for the requisite fifteen minutes, then he’ll go back into the living room, tell her it didn’t work, and she can… go…

It’s dark. In that hazy space between sleep and waking, he is aware - because his arm is draped over a body - that there’s someone (Ellie) in the bed with him. He gently tugs her closer, nestles back into his pillow for the split-second before his thinking brain kicks in. 

And his eyes fly open. 

He rockets to the edge of the bed, almost falling over the side, we shouldn’t, too close, don’t want to take advantage, doesn’t feel that way about me and…

And the lump he’d been holding doesn’t budge. 

Because bunched up comforters don’t move.

He rolls onto his back, and rubs a shaky hand over his face, the wave of panicked adrenaline receding as quickly as it had surged. “Fuck,” he breathes. 

Something else floods him in its place. Something that isn’t quite the ease that comes with relief. Something that feels a little more like a weight in his chest. Disappointment.

Oh.

Oh shit.

She doesn’t make Public Appearances - capital P, capital A. That’s not to say that she doesn’t appear in public. Ok, she doesn’t ‘appear’ in public, popping out of sewer grates or out of a cloud of smoke or whatever, like some kind of Rumpelstiltskin-esque creature, (Heh, ‘be a good little Ment and eat your veggies or Ellie Wiseman will get you while you’re sleeping.’). Although from the way certain corners of the internet treat her existence, it’s not that much of a stretch to believe that they might think that. She’s been...sheltered? would probably be the right word for it, not Rapunzel’d.

Maybe Bertha...whatever her name was… Rochester? Probably, that would have been her married name anyway. Maybe she would be the more accurate comparison? Except she went after her husband rather than her brother… or, no, didn’t she go after her brother? There was a fire involved in there somewhere, possibly relating to the husband’s fiancee, so maybe this comparison isn’t really the greatest either. She’s not all that into arson, and the idea of Gray having a bit on the side is kind of...laughable. Not that no one would take him up on it. (Oh, would they ever.) Or throw themselves at him. Metaphorically, anyway. She hasn’t borne witness to any literal self-yeetings. At least not yet.

It’s a strange expression. How would one go about literally throwing oneself, anyway? Jumping? Swooning? Better hope whoever it is you’re throwing yourself at catches you with either of those. Although given that the alternative would be letting them hit the ground, he’d probably feel honor-bound to catch -

Her rapidly derailing train of thought is interrupted by the gentle pressure of Grayson’s hand squeezing hers - their entwined fingers shifting the ring that she isn’t quite used to the feeling of yet. She hadn’t forgotten that they’d been holding hands, exactly, but… ok, maybe she had, a bit. It’s fine. He’s heard weirder.

“Hey,” he’s smiling at her, eyes twinkling with mirth as he rubs his thumb over hers. “You’d make a beautiful Rumplestilskin.”

She chuckles. Because of course that would be the bit he’d focus on. “Just what every girl wants to hear,” she says with a wink.

4:58:46 pm.

She can’t have failed.

She’s never failed a test in her life. (Pollard’s doesn’t count. That’s not a failure, it’s a reverse medical miracle.) So she can’t have failed.

4:59:02 pm.

Two hundred is a pass. Two hundred out of two-eighty is only 71.4%. She definitely scored more than seventy-two percent.

Right?

Right.

4:59:33 pm.

This is the worst. This is the absolute worst. Why couldn’t they release the scores at, like, 8 in the morning or something? Just, get it over with, so that she’s not stuck waiting all day.

4:59:51 pm.

Her hand is hovering over the refresh button on the page, mind buzzing so loudly that words aren’t even getting a look in. She can hear Nick puttering around in the kitchen. She’s probably giving him a migraine.

5:00:00 pm.

She slams the refresh button, fingers tripping over themselves as she enters her login information. Was that a typo? Backspace, try again, just in case. Don’t want to get locked out.

Then…

L o a d i n g . . .

Because almost everyone who wrote the ASE is doing the exact same thing, and it’s probably crashing the system.

Forget screaming internally. She’s on her way to screaming externally.

5:01:08 pm.

280. Yeah, ok that’s what the test’s out of, so where’s her score? Where’s her score?

Scroll down. Scroll back up. Scroll down again.

What. The fuck.

That… can’t be right. That can’t be right.

5:01:24 pm.

She gets up, starts pacing. That doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t seem possible. She must have read it wrong. She looks back, 280, still staring her in the face. 

Footsteps, thump-thump, two at a time, Nick comes crashing up the stairs. Head pokes into the room (she’d left the door open). No doubt alarmed by the echoing chorus of whatthefuck ricocheting around in her head, he’s got his face arranged into a reassuring smile.

She just points to the laptop, and goes back to pacing. Confirm it or find another answer, I can’t take the suspense, it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make sense, doesn’tmakesense.

There’s a pause. A soft, “holy shit!” A loud whoop, she turns to look, and she’s lifted off her feet in a bone-crushing hug, as Nick crows “You aced it, Button!”

I aced it. I aced it. I aced it!

The ASE.

Wait.