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It all seems to go downhill after her one night stand, somehow.
Or maybe it’s not so much about the one night stand; maybe it’s rather because she’s out of reasons to ignore her pain, now that she’s spread her mother’s ashes, and she needs to find new distractions to keep from thinking about it too hard.
Claire doesn’t sleep much that night. She tosses and turns in bed, unable to process the fact that she won’t see her mother ever again, unable to face the reality of her loss even a week after it happened.
Damn Morgan Reznick for not letting her live in denial for just a little longer.
She shows up to work the next day, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and can’t help but feel relieved to go back to being paired up with Shaun. She’s not sure she could have taken Morgan’s knowing eyes following her the whole day – even the thought of it unnerves her.
She’s not used to feeling seen like that.
Claire thinks she’s done a good job pretending to be fine the entire morning. She smiles the way she usually does, calms down a patient who freaks out on them and almost tries to run out of the ER, bottles up her personal feelings to shove them far away where she wants them to belong, and carries on working towards her dream of becoming a fully-fledged surgeon. But when lunch breaks arrives, she suddenly realizes that she needs some time alone to regroup before she goes back to showing a carefully constructed façade to the world. So, rather than sitting down in the cafeteria like she usually does, she decides to isolate herself in a room to eat instead.
And Morgan finds her there.
Of course she does.
“Hiding much?”
“I’m not hiding”, Claire replies without looking up from the textbook she’s flipping through, doing her best to keep her voice steady and even. “I just need to find the best approach for one of my patients. And, in case you’ve forgotten: the last time I attempted to read in the cafeteria, you and Alex proceeded to make concentrating impossible. So, lesson learned.”
A few seconds of silence elapse after she’s done talking, and the lack of response finally makes Claire flick her eyes upwards. She finds Morgan looking at her with the same amount of concern as the previous evening, there for everyone to see, and she really needs her to stop doing that right now.
“Quit looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re worried I’m going to break. I’m not.”
“Are you sure?” Morgan pushes, leaving her spot near the door to come sit next to Claire.
Claire sighs, feeling frustration rise up within her. She doesn’t want to talk about her mother’s death right now, wants anyone else to learn about it even less, but if Morgan keeps being uncharacteristically gentle around her, someone is bound to pick up on it and wonder what the cause is very soon.
“You know, for someone who is an asshole ninety-nine percent of the time, you sure seem to care about my well-being a lot these days”, Claire accuses instead of answering either of Morgan’s questions. “Is that even genuine or is it all for show? Sucking up again?”
She knows she’s not being fair. She remembers Morgan helping her once already a few months prior when she had nothing to gain from it, remembers glimpsing another side of her before she closed off again, but she can’t help it. Right now, she’d rather push all help away than deal with her grief like she knows she should, and Morgan makes an easy target for obvious reasons.
She’s all too aware that the way she’s currently behaving doesn’t feel like her at all.
But maybe in a way that’s actually a good thing, considering she’d really rather not be herself for a few days.
“I know what you’re doing”, Morgan says calmly. “It’s not going to work.”
“Enlighten me. What is it I’m doing exactly?”
“Taking your feelings out on me. You’re trying to anger me so I’ll go back to antagonizing you because that’d give you something to focus on and you’d stay distracted from your grief, but I’m not going to take the bait, no matter what you say to me – no matter how hurtful. Don’t bother.”
Caught red-handed, Claire winces a little. Morgan saw right through her with an ease that is starting to feel a little too familiar.
“Yeah… I was trying to do just that. Sorry”, she whispers with genuine embarrassment.
“It’s okay. In case I didn’t make it abundantly clear yet, I’m not the best at dealing with emotions either, so I understand. If anything, I’m just surprised to discover we have the same fucked up coping mechanisms.”
A short, surprised laugh escapes Claire’s lips.
“Or maybe you’re rubbing off on me, because that’s the fist time I ever tried to do that”, she admits. “In which case, I’m not quite sure whether I should hang out with you a lot more or a lot less.”
“If I get a say in the matter, I vote for the first option”, Morgan offers, smiling. But, because it sounds a little too earnest of a statement, she feels compelled to add: “Besides, I’ve always been told I’m a good influence.”
Claire laughs frankly this time, for the first time since she got the phone call informing her of her mother’s car accident.
“Have you ever been told that even just once in your life?” she challenges, carrying on with the easy banter.
Morgan shrugs. “I’m sure I have… at some point? Not that I can really recall, though. You might have a point.”
“So you lied”, Claire points out, gasping in mock-offense.
“Maybe”, Morgan brushes off easily. “But I did make you laugh.”
There’s something just a little too honest, a little too open about the statement, that makes them both freeze as the air gets knocked out of Claire’s lungs. The room feels too small all of a sudden, and Morgan is too close, and she can’t breathe or think or—
The beeping of Morgan’s tablet-pager saves Claire from having to answer.
“I have to go”, Morgan says, getting up hurriedly. “An emergency with my patient. But—” she falters, swallows, glances at Claire then looks away quickly, “if you ever do want to talk… You know where to find me. I’d be happy to listen.”
Claire finds her voice just in time to reply before Morgan gets out the door. “Thank you. For… for yesterday, and… everything.”
Morgan turns back around just long enough to nod and smile. “Anytime.”
Claire absent-mindedly lowers her gaze back to her abandoned textbook, wondering when exactly she started feeling so safe around Morgan, when the latter’s head appears back in the doorway, wearing a smug smile that has Claire confused for a second.
“Oh, and by the way? You were definitely hiding.”
“Was not!” she protests, although it’s only half-heartedly.
“Who’s the liar now?”
“Don’t you have a patient emergency?” she calls after the retreating head, loud enough to be heard from the corridor.
Morgan simply laughs as she hurries away, and Claire tries her best to ignore just how much the sound fills her with warmth.
If she had been told a year ago that she’d soon be seeking out Morgan freaking Reznick’s company on a nearly daily basis, she would never have believed it in a million years.
And yet, it’s what ends up happening.
While their dynamic doesn’t change much at the hospital, since they go about their days mostly apart anyway, what shifts is that they begin spending a lot of their evenings together after work. They go out for drinks or dinner at various places in the city, or they just sit on a bench in a park and talk, and Claire wilfully ignores the fact that all of these feel a little like dates because that’s not something she can deal with at all right now.
(The fact that maybe perhaps possibly she wants these evenings to be dates… well, Claire wants to think about that even less.)
But they talk and talk and talk some more because it turns out that, somehow, Morgan is the only one Claire manages to open up to about her mother. The only one she doesn’t keep at arm’s length.
Realistically, she knows she should be seeing a therapist – she went through all of medical school, after all, so she’s more than able to critically analyze her situation from a doctor’s point of view –, but she can’t bring herself to go back to the one she was seeing with her mother because that would include explaining what happened, and the idea of searching for another one, well…
She’s too deep into the denial stage of grief to manage to bring herself to do that.
So she talks to Morgan instead, and Morgan listens, and blessedly refrains from giving her any sort of medical advice.
For now, that has to be good enough.
It’s not good enough, and, whenever she actually lets herself consider her situation, Claire is fully aware of that, especially considering how she spends the rest of her free time.
Namely, picking up random guys in a bar or another after she’s parted ways with Morgan for the evening. And then spending a few hours with them forgetting how to think, thus being effectively distracted from the grief she’s still not willing to deal with.
She doesn’t know how to process the fact that the one person whose existence shaped her personality is now gone, or how to shake the feeling that she’s partially responsible for that. Logically, she knows that her mother is the sole responsible for the accident that cost her her life – the decision to open that bottle of champagne was hers and hers alone -, but the fact still doesn’t make the feelings go away.
She chose to leave that one full bottle of champagne in her apartment.
Her mother opened it to celebrate her big achievement.
She feels guilty, and then guilty some more for feeling guilty in the first place, and it’s overall a huge mess. One that, unlike the pain, she can still ignore, so she’s doing just that.
Bottom line: as far as the world minus Morgan is aware, her mom is still alive, and nothing is wrong with her, and there’s no storm in her head during the better part of her work days.
(If having a mom like hers as a kid taught her anything, it’s how to be a good ‘all is perfectly fine’ actress.)
At least, until she and Shaun get a patient that requires a simple surgery, and the question of who will get to do it starts to arise, and Claire is hit by the realization that it would be irresponsible for her to do it even if she seems to be favored for the role. She’s a good actress, sure, but the truth is still that she’s not in any mental state to handle that much responsibility.
She finds Dr Lim in her office, and takes a deep breath before she starts the speech she prepared in her head.
“You need to give the surgery to Shaun. I know you told me to suck it up and never show weakness, but…” She trails off and steels herself to get the truth out: “This is not me doubting myself, it’s a very clinical self-assessment of my mental state. My mom died in a car accident a little over two weeks ago – the night after my first surgery, actually –, and I’m not… I… I mean, I think I would constitute a risk for my patient if I was to lead a surgery for the time being. Assisting is fine, I would never let my personal life interfere with my usual work, but a lead role would be—”
“Claire.”
“I— Yes?”
“You didn’t need to give me that much information. Also – you were rambling.”
Claire thinks about apologizing, doubts Dr Lim would be particularly happy about that, and decides to own up to it instead.
“I was.”
Dr Lim nods, satisfied by her reaction, then resumes. “I take note of your circumstances and I’ll make my decision later today. You can go back to your patient now.”
Claire debates saying anything more, but she knows there’s nothing she could add that would influence Dr Lim’s decision. So she nods too, and then turns around in silence.
“And, Claire?”
She stops in the doorway.
“Yes?”
“I’m really sorry for your loss.”
Claire nods once more, gratefully this time, and leaves the office without another word.
“Aren’t you disappointed Dr Lim gave the surgery to Shaun?”
Of course Morgan would ask this. Morgan turns everything into a competition that she wants to win, and tends to forget that not everyone handles opportunities the same way she does.
“No.”
“No?”
Claire shoots her a warning look, then sighs exasperatedly when she realizes Morgan is never going to let this go. “I asked her to.”
“You what?”
Morgan looks genuinely shocked, and it makes Claire smile a little.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to lead a surgery for the time being”, she admits.
Morgan doesn’t say anything back, just looks at her in a way that makes Claire want to squirm. She feels completely exposed under the scrutiny, like Morgan can see everything she’s trying so hard to hide – and maybe she can, because—
“You’re not as fine as you want everyone to believe, are you?”
There it goes. The thing Morgan has clearly been holding herself back from pointing out for over a week now.
Claire tries to deflect. “I’m dealing.”
“I don’t think you are, actually.”
She doesn’t try to deny it any further. She has a feeling it wouldn’t be convincing – not with Morgan, anyway.
“Do you want to know what I think?” Morgan pushes.
Claire looks around the semi-crowded bar, searching for a good excuse to escape the conversation, but she finds none.
“Will you listen to me if I say no?”
“What do you think?” Morgan grins victoriously, then quickly sobers up again and it’s with a completely serious voice that she exposes her theory. “You won’t stop trying to run away from dealing with your pain. First you kept your mom’s ashes in the truck of your car instead of spreading them the way she wanted to, then you tried to refuse my help because that would mean actually doing something, and now you’re still pretending nothing happened when we’re at the hospital. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll play along as long as you want me to, but I don’t think this is working for you. I have eyes, Claire, you’re not fine; you’re exhausted, you’re a good enough actress to fool all of our colleagues, but I know what’s going on in your life and I can see that your head is a million miles away sometimes. You’re talking to me almost every night, but it’s about your mother’s life and never about what you feel now that she’s dead. You’re acting like it didn’t happen at all, and I don’t understand why. I thought spreading your mom’s ashes would help you face her death, but…” Morgan doesn’t finish her thought; just shrugs, helpless.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re the most irritating person they’ve ever met?” Claire mutters.
“I get that a lot, actually”, Morgan says with no sense of shame whatsoever. “I choose to take it as a compliment.”
Claire can’t help but snort. “Of course you would.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Now, feel free to tell me what I got wrong about what you’re doing, once you’re done trying to redirect the conversation to a topic you’re not uncomfortable about.”
Morgan makes it sound like a challenge and Claire refuses to take the bait, so she just glares at her instead.
“What is it that you don’t want to face?” Morgan insists. “You’re not in denial about her death anymore, you’re in denial about what it means for you. And I can’t figure out—”
“Don’t you ever shut up?!”
“I’ve been doing that for a week, and it has gotten you nowhere. So yes, I’m doing the exact opposite tonight, just in case that actually works.”
Claire grabs the remainder of her drink and downs it in one go, preferring the burn of the alcohol to the burn of Morgan’s searching eyes on her. It gives her a few seconds to think, figure out how much she’s willing to reveal about what’s really going in her head.
“If I don’t answer, you’re just going to ask again day after day until I do, won’t you?” she sighs.
Morgan stares at her in a way that attempts to be triumphant, but that ends up being more soft than anything else. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”
“Irritating and stubborn? Well, now you flatter me.”
Surprise makes Claire snort, and she leans to the side so she can playfully shove Morgan with her shoulder. “Don’t let it get to your head.”
“I’m definitely letting it get to my head.”
“You’re impossible.”
Morgan nods unabashedly. “I know.”
Claire rolls her eyes, pretends to be annoyed for all of three seconds, then falls silent again. This time, Morgan lets her gather her thoughts, waiting for her to be ready to share what’s been bothering her.
It’s strange, how the thought of revealing to Morgan parts of herself that very few people are aware even exist doesn’t feel weird or uncomfortable. There’s a sort of natural ease between them; it’s been there ever since Morgan helped her with her mom a few months back and they got to know each other a little better, but the week they’ve just spent talking almost every day has increased it tenfold. Of course, what also helps is the fact that, no matter how hard Morgan pushes, she still never criticizes and never judges – which sounds almost ironical considering she spends her time doing just that with everyone when they’re at work, but she’s totally different off hours. Endlessly supportive, even.
And Claire is never going to know peace again until Morgan has gotten a truthful answer anyway, so she might as well get it over with and jump into the deep end.
“I don’t know how to handle what my mother not being there anymore means, for me”, she admits. “Her behavior when I was growing up was fucked up and I spent more time taking care of her than the other way around, but it shaped me into the person I am today and if…”
“If?” Morgan prompts gently.
Claire absent-mindedly turns her empty glass around on the table on a loop, trying to find a way to properly explain thoughts she can barely turn into words in her head.
“I’ve been mad at her for so long”, she resumes after a little while. “And even though we had started working through our issues lately, I still have all this anger and resentment in me… All those things I felt like screaming at her sometimes and that I still want to get out, but that are all aimless now. I can’t tell her anything anymore. I can’t fix anything. I can’t even ask her why she decided to open that stupid bottle of champagne I should have never left in my apartment! And I’m mad, I’m so mad at her for getting into a car and driving half-drunk, but none of my anger matters because she’s dead. There will be no more improvements, no more explanations, no more excuses, no more setbacks – the only things left are memories and sadness and questions and anger, and I feel guilty for half of those in the first place because my mom is dead! My mom who I never stopped loving no matter how terrible she could be to handle is dead and I’m a mess, I’m devastated, it hurts like hell, and yet my feelings about that stupid car accident and the whole life before that don’t stop there because—”
She has to stop for a second, eyes firmly fixated on the empty glass in front of her, and swallow over the lump that has formed in her throat.
“I— I shouldn’t feel anything besides sadness; I shouldn’t still be wanting an apology for most of the shitty things she made me go through as a child, I shouldn’t be that pissed at her for essentially getting herself killed in a way that could have been so predictable, it feels so wrong, but I still do. And I know I can’t hold onto it anymore, because it’s all forever in the past now and I’ll have to find a way to move past it eventually, but I’m not— I’m not sure how to do that because I’m not sure who I am without all these things I’ve been carrying with me my entire life!”
Claire takes a deep breath once she’s done talking, blinks back tears, and finally dares meet Morgan’s eyes again.
There’s a level of understanding in them that she wasn’t expecting.
“You’re Claire Browne”, Morgan says quietly. “Compassionate, empathetic, always smiling and trying to help and putting others before herself, working her ass off to become an incredible surgeon Claire Browne. The relationship you had with your mom doesn’t affect or change any of that.”
Taken aback by the freely-offered compliments, Claire gapes for a few seconds.
“Is that— Is that really how you see me?”
“I used to call you Saint Claire, didn’t I?” Morgan remarks, hiding the honesty behind a dig in a way that is starting to feel very familiar to Claire.
“To make fun of me!” she feels the need to point out.
“Yeah, well…” Morgan swallows, looks away and then back at Claire. “I might be your polar opposite and think your personality will be a disaster in terms of career-related ambition… but I can still tell that what I just listed are your qualities, not your flaws. Even if they make you Saint Claire.” She pauses, then adds: “And hey, they landed you the first surgery, so you must be doing something right.”
“Like devoting my energy towards patient care rather than trying to out-bribe Alex with Dr Lim?” Claire can’t help but retort, amused.
“I couldn’t let him win!”
“You should really try to tone down your ego and pride sometime, you know”, Claire advises. “You’d be surprised to discover how much more cooperative people are when you don’t act superior to them all the time.”
“Or they take it as an occasion to screw you over”, Morgan counters.
Claire rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “What a cynical and not at all surprising reaction coming from you.”
“I wasn’t joking when I said we are polar opposites.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that we are.”
And, in their case, Claire thinks, it looks like opposites really do attract, because they complement each other almost perfectly – which probably explains why it turns out they get along so well. Their personalities are well-matched.
(She’ll deal with the second meaning of the words attraction and well-matched later. Later.)
“You know—” Morgan starts; then stops, hesitates. “Your mom made some really bad choices in her life, that’s undeniable, but she loved you and from what you told me, she was so proud of you. You not doing her, or yourself, any favors by letting her last bad choice impact your residency.”
“I’m not—”
“You could have done that surgery, Claire. Everyone says you handled the first one like a pro. You didn’t want to do this one because you didn’t feel fine enough to take on that much responsibility, but the only reason this is happening in the first place is because you’re holding yourself back. You know exactly why your mother’s death is hitting you that hard, you just made that very clear, so why do you still refuse to deal with all of that? For how long do you plan on pretending that nothing happened – for how long do you want to keep doing a disservice to yourself?”
Ignoring just how true Morgan’s words ring, Claire brushes past them and adds them to her mental box of things to deal with later – a large pile that seems to never want to start growing these days.
“As long as it’ll take, I guess”, she answers dismissively.
“As long as it’ll take for what?”
Claire fixes her with a look that clearly demands she stop insisting and, for once, Morgan actually backs off. Somewhat.
“Alright, fine, I’ll shut up if you want me to”, she surrenders. “I’m trying to help you by pushing you and I think you know that even if you won’t admit it, but I can’t walk your path in your stead. At some point, the choice has to be yours.”
“I know”, Claire murmurs, the sound barely audible.
“I know you do”, Morgan replies with a sad half-smile.
She keeps looking at her for a while longer with an expression that Claire can’t quite read, and then she gets up from her chair.
“I’m going to head home. You should do the same – you look like you’re going to pass out soon if you don’t get some sleep.”
Claire nods, even though the idea of going back to her empty apartment alone makes her feel queasy, and lies through her teeth. “Yeah. Will do.”
She watches Morgan exit the bar after paying for her drinks without moving, but, as soon as she’s sure she won’t be seen, she starts looking around in search for a handsome guy to distract her for the night, no strings attached.
A part of her fleetingly wonders if she’s acting like that because her mother called her “so serious, so restrained” not that long before she died and behaving the complete opposite way now makes her feel in control through a weird sense of pettiness, but she squashes that theory down immediately. She doesn’t want to be analyzing anything at the moment, she just wants her brain to stop thinking altogether.
It doesn’t take long before a man approaches her, clearly interested. She’s alone at her table and giving off not-so-subtle signals after all, so she knew the wait wouldn’t last. They chat a little, more out of politeness than anything else, and a few minutes later they’re leaving the bar together.
She pulls him into an alley on their way to her car, eager for the intrusive thoughts to stop as they’ve had all week through this very method, but things take a route entirely different from what she had been expecting this time when he begins kissing her and suddenly it’s not his mouth that Claire is picturing onto hers, but Morgan’s.
She freezes all of a sudden, although the guy doesn’t seem to either notice or care. He keeps pushing her until her back hits a wall, kissing his way down her throat and trying to slide his hands under her shirt, and it feels all wrong. Like the hands shouldn’t belong to him, but to—
Unable to keep this up when she sees the image of Morgan pressing her up against the wall instead of the guy whose name she doesn’t even know every time she close her eyes, Claire quickly extracts herself from his semi-embrace, ignoring the puzzlement and rising anger on his face as she begins retreating. The insults thrown her way barely even reach her ears as she nearly runs all the way to her car, and she only relaxes a little once she closes the door behind her.
She sits there for what feels like an eternity, unable to catch her breath as she rests her forehead on the steering wheel, and tries to process what just happened.
She imagined Morgan kissing her.
She wished it was Morgan kissing her.
She wanted, and she still wants Morgan to kiss her; can’t stop thinking about it so much that she almost feels a ghostly feeling against her lips.
The realization that she’s wanted that for a while now hits her like a ton of bricks. And it forces her to confront some things she’s been carefully and voluntarily ignoring for months now.
She knows exactly when the shift started; when she went from disliking Morgan to being… curious about her. It all happened on their day off after the outbreak, when Morgan almost coerced her into getting brunch with her and ended up selflessly helping her with her mother afterwards. They connected that day in a way they hadn’t before, and there was something there. Something that prompted Claire to spontaneously answer “it’s a date” when Morgan mentioned it’d only be fair if she met her mother too now, and something that she’s been shoving far, far down ever since that day. Something that feels a little terrifying to even think about.
Morgan is far from the first woman Claire has ever been attracted to, but Morgan is also Morgan. Unhealthily ambitious, self-proclaimed stone cold bitch Morgan Reznick is probably the last person in the universe Claire should be developing a crush on.
Because she can’t deny that this goes beyond just some physical attraction, even though the fact that Morgan is ridiculously pretty clearly doesn’t help matters either. And there lies the real problem; why she really did not want to think about any of it: it’s complicated, for lack of a better word, because there are two sides of Morgan and Claire knows both. One that infuriates her, and one that… Well— The truth is that Morgan is anything but a stone cold bitch once she lets you past the first layer of armor, and Claire has been privy to another, much softer side of her way more than once now. A softer side that makes her want to find out who Morgan Reznick really is behind her defenses, and get to know her better and better, and—
Yeah, okay, she’s screwed.
Shit. Shit.
This is why she didn’t want to even let herself think about any of this, because now that she has started she can’t stop. And she fully blames her exhausted, treacherous mind for ignoring her wishes tonight and spurring on her current existential crisis.
At least – thank god for small mercies – she has a day off tomorrow, which means that she has a couple of waking hours ahead of her to figure out how to deal with that ridiculous crush and shove it right back where it belongs.
Claire starts up the engine, takes a deep breath or two, and inserts herself into the traffic as she forbids herself from thinking about Morgan any longer for the night while she drives herself back home.
She enters her apartment already in a haze, and passes out on her bed almost immediately.
When she walks into the hospital for her next work day, Claire still has no idea how she’s going to handle talking to Morgan now that her rebellious mind won’t stop going places it shouldn’t, so she does the only thing she’s been good at lately: she avoids the issue. By literally avoiding Morgan altogether.
She sticks with Shaun during the entire day, glad to end up getting a lunch break closer to the middle of the afternoon than actual lunch time for once, and doesn’t reply to Morgan’s texts asking if they’ll meet up or not that evening. She even goes as far as to leave her shift later than she should have to ensure she won’t accidentally run into Morgan, on the off chance the latter decided to wait for her.
She’s all too aware that the way she’s acting is completely immature, but right now she really can’t deal with this rather inconvenient crush that she could only describe as the icing on the cake of her current mental struggles. It’s all too much in such a short period of time.
By some miracle, she manages to keep this up during a whole other day as well, unwilling to admit that her luck won’t last forever and she won’t be able to avoid Morgan confronting her about her behavior for much longer. Avoidance, and then avoiding thinking about said avoidance, has become the only constant in her life since her mom died.
And it comes to an end a lot earlier than she expected it to.
There’s a knock on her door that night, an hour past dinner time, and she doesn’t think to check who is on the other side before she opens it.
The sight of Morgan standing in front of her makes her wonder if she’s hallucinating for a second.
“How do you know where I live?” is the only thing she can think to ask once her brain jump-starts back into action.
“The hospital’s HR database”, Morgan answers coldly as she brushes past a frozen Claire to enter the apartment. “You’d be surprised to learn how much supposedly confidential information a blonde white woman can learn if she smiles charmingly enough.”
“Less surprised than you think”, Claire mutters as she closes the door without thinking about it, her body switching to autopilot and taking over her actions. “What are you doing here? This is kind of an invasion of privacy”, she remarks pointedly.
“Yes, well, I don’t care”, Morgan retorts. “There’s no way I was waiting until tomorrow to get an explanation.”
Claire raises an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate.
“You don’t get to do that, you know”, Morgan continues, furious.
Claire choose to pretend she doesn’t know full well what this is about. “Do what?”
“We talked almost every day for over a week”, Morgan says angrily, glaring daggers at her, “and then after Monday night you decided to act as if I didn’t exist. You won’t even look at me, either at work or right now. And I deserve better than that, Claire. I deserve at least an explanation. Whatever I said that day to make you react like that, the bare minimum I’m asking for is to know what it was!”
There’s an edge of hurt in her voice that she doesn’t fully manage to hide, and that gives Claire pause as she realizes she never stopped to envision the impact her actions could have on Morgan. Ever since she made it back to her car that night, she never thought of anyone but herself, and it takes her a few more seconds to figure out why.
The truth is, she never thought Morgan would actually care more than superficially about the distance she put between them.
“I—” she falters. “I didn’t— You didn’t do or say anything. This is about me. Just me.”
Morgan narrows her eyes and crosses her arms, standing her ground. “I don’t understand. And I’m not sure I believe you either.”
“Well there isn’t much I can do about that, can I?”
“Why are you avoiding me like the plague?”
“I’m not—”
“Cut the bullshit”, Morgan cuts her off. She takes a few steps forward until she’s right in Claire’s space, making it hard for her to look anywhere but at Morgan. “What is going on?”
Exhaustion morphing into anger is more often than not a recipe for disaster, Claire knows that, but being aware of what’s happening within her and stopping it are two vastly different things that rarely go together. To be fair, though, she doesn’t even really try. Because Morgan is in her apartment, right in front of her, and Claire is getting more and more overwhelmed by her current situation that she was wholly not prepared for up. So it doesn’t take much for something in her to snap.
Control.
She needs to gain back control of the situation. That’s all that matters right now.
She moves forward, forcing Morgan to step back, and looking at her for the first time since she appeared at her door with eyes in which fury dances. “I don’t owe you an answer”, she says curtly, the tone of voice so rare for her that it sounds foreign even to her own ears. “At least not tonight – not while you’re in my apartment uninvited. This is my home, and right now I don’t want you in it.”
Claire only realizes they never stopped moving when Morgan’s back hits a wall and they end up way too close to each other to really have any sort of personal space left. She doesn’t back off, though. She wants to pick a fight right now, wants to immerge into that terrible coping mechanism she was called out on once already and hopes Morgan will indulge her this time.
Except Morgan doesn’t. Of course, Morgan doesn’t.
“What is it you don’t want to tell me?” she pushes, more upset and vulnerable than angry now, although also still frustrated. “You may not have looked my way even once these last two days, but I did, and I see exactly what it is that you’re doing. You’re avoiding me the same way you keep avoiding dealing with your mother’s death. And I can’t figure out why or what caused the shift, but I do know there’s something you’re keeping from me.”
“You seem to spend an awful lot of time watching me at work”, Claire points out.
“I watch everyone, that’s how I learn about everyone’s weaknesses and how to exploit them”, Morgan replies easily, albeit maybe a little too quickly – not that Claire notices, too focused on other things to pay attention to such a small detail.
Other things including how their bodies are almost touching, and how she’d only have to lean forward and up to close the gap—
She needs to stop thinking about that. She needs to put some space between them.
Except she can’t make herself move away.
“So, how long until you use my weakness against me then?” she challenges, eyes blazing.
A bitch. She’s being a bitch and she can’t stop.
Morgan shakes her head, shock written all over her features. “I would never do that, you have to know that by now. Do you honestly think I would do that?”
“A year ago I would have said yes, but then again you never really gave any of us a reason to think otherwise”, Claire states truthfully. “To be perfectly honest, a year ago I didn’t exactly like you.”
“And now?”
The question feels a little too desperate for Claire to envision lying. The urge to lose herself in an argument is brimming right there beneath the surface, same as it’s been for a few minutes, but she doesn’t want to hurt Morgan on purpose. She never wanted to hurt Morgan at all; never even thought any of that really mattered to her.
“Now I know that you hide behind an armor, and that you care about some things a lot more than people give you credit for – yourself included, I think”, Claire says honestly.
The tension between them shifts then, losing thickness to become more loaded, and the silence stretches on for long enough that she doesn’t have a good reason to keep her imagination from running wild anymore. She doesn’t try really hard either, in all fairness, because she suddenly finds herself faced with a question that she had managed to evade so far: would it be so bad if she just gave in? If she stepped just an inch closer and kissed Morgan right there, forcing herself to confront reality in hopes it would stop her fantasies? Would it—
“Not like that.”
Morgan’s words get Claire out of her thoughts and back into reality. She doesn’t understand them at first, but their meaning become a whole lot clearer when she snaps her gaze back up from Morgan’s lips (when did she even start looking at them?!) to her eyes. Her eyes that are screaming what she won’t say. What Claire hadn’t even thought about – a truth hinted at rather than stated.
“Not like that”, Morgan whispers again. “I won’t be another one of your one night stands. I won’t. I can’t.”
Claire’s eyes widen while her brain desperately tries to process what is happening. “How do you know about that?!”
“I thought I had forgotten my wallet at the bar, Monday night”, Morgan explains. “I actually found it at the bottom of my purse before I made it all the way back, but I saw you leave with that guy. I only guessed there were others, but you kind of just confirmed it.”
Claire feels the fight drain out of her as the truth she should have seen all along settles inside of her: this ridiculous crush she doesn’t know how to deal with isn’t one-sided. Why did she never even consider whether there might be something other than friendship between them for Morgan too? Why did that never even occur to her?
Why did she not see it?
It should have been obvious. It should have been obvious whenever Morgan was looking at her the way she is now, it should have been obvious every time she softened around her and no one else, it should have been obvious whenever she made her laugh so she’d feel a little better.
Claire is not sure how to react. There are too many things happening in too little time, she can’t keep up.
The worry and concern in Morgan’s eyes make her want to cry. To be fully honest too, for once.
As if she read her thoughts – and Claire is honestly starting to consider that maybe she can, in a way –, Morgan speaks again. “You need help, Claire. The way you’re behaving tonight… This isn’t you, I know it and you do too. And I want to help you, I really do, but I can’t do that if you don’t let me.”
“I—”
The words get stuck in her throat as a giant lump forms there, full of too many things left unsaid and too many things she avoided for too long, and the first tear rolls down her cheek before she can even think of holding it back.
The feeling of Morgan’s finger gently brushing it away is what breaks the dam at last. The sobs finally start with a violence she can’t contain, wrecking her entire body as Claire lets herself cry properly for the first time since she saw her mother dead in her car, and she all but collapses into Morgan’s freely offered embrace.
She has no idea how long her breakdown lasts, but Morgan silently holds her through it all.
“I need you to do one thing for me”, Claire says once she has calmed down enough for that. “Please?”
Morgan nods. “Of course.”
“I was seeing a therapist with my mom, I don’t know if I told you that already. I… I need to go see her again, I clearly do, but I don’t want— I don’t know how to— Could you call her and tell her what happened? I don’t think I have enough strength to do that myself, but I can’t make an appointment before she knows.”
“Just give me her number and consider it done.”
Claire smiles gratefully, trying really hard not to think about how much of a mess she must look like right now. “Thank you.”
“So… this means you’re not ignoring me anymore, right?”
The question, way more playful than worried, catches Claire off guard enough to make her laugh in a way that is starting to feel both familiar and comforting, and she wonders if she’ll ever get used to the way Morgan can make everything seem so much easier with just one perfect sentence at the perfect time.
“Sorry I was an asshole.”
“You do realize you never did tell me why I had to come here to get an explanation on my own, right?”
“I know. Not tonight, though”, Claire says. Taking things one step at a time sounds like the best option right now, and answering Morgan’s question would lead to more than she could deal with at the moment.
“Okay. I can live with that.”
Morgan smiles softly at her and, for the first time in a while, Claire lets herself fully relax.
It’s going to take some time to get herself out of the hole she buried herself in, she knows that, but she’ll get through this. Things are going to be okay.
She’s going to be okay.
(They kiss for the first time almost at the same spot in her apartment a few weeks later, once Claire is a lot less of a wreck and she realizes she never did make her own feelings obvious on the day she saw Morgan’s in her eyes.
And she had imagined many scenarios in her early fantasies, all of them involving an argument and a heated kiss one way or another, but that’s not how it goes at all in the end. It’s gentle, and slow, and it makes her feel a lot more than she was really prepared for.
But it feels safe, and it feels right, and that’s all that matters.)
(It turns out she’s falling for Morgan freaking Reznick.
And, really, she wouldn’t have it any other way.)