Work Text:
The ring box feels cold and heavy in her pocket, Moira thinks numbly and lights up a cigarette, sitting in the same place she had been for the last three hours—her desk, with eyes too red and wet and glassy for her expression be misconstrued as boredom. Today wasn’t meant to end like this; the geneticist had had plans, for fuck’s sake, had been going to get down on one knee for Angela (just thinking her name made her chest constrict) and ask her to do her the highest honor of becoming her wife.
Then her paper about her recent foray into rapid forced cell regeneration and decay had been published and Angela had read it and Moira had known, before she’d said anything, that it was over between them. She’d allowed Angela to lambast her, suffering in uncharacteristic silence until the other woman had left, Angela’s upset and concern morphing into betrayed anguish, because she’d really outdone herself that time, hadn’t she, believing her own lies: what a besotted self-important idiot she’d been. Someone like her could never be exultant, never be satisfied; her work took precedence over her feelings, whatever those may be, because the world needed a breakthrough in science more than it desired her happiness.
It was for the best, she tells herself. No more setbacks. No more ridiculous arguments about my morality. No more distractions.
No more Angela.