Work Text:
“Nice job today.” Kristen looked up from her desk to see Stuart standing there, a faintly awkward air hanging around him despite his congratulatory words. “You definitely put in an Oscar worthy turn with Sentinel.”
“Jubal wasn’t so bad either,” Kristen said, keeping her voice deliberately light. “I guess we make a good team.” She was keeping an eye on Stuart’s face and when his eyes flickered downwards, she had the answer to a question she hadn’t even asked. “I’m guessing he also told you he’s reassigning me to the JOC indefinitely.”
“Yeah, he mentioned.” Stuart actually sighed, tapping the table with his index finger. “That’s a tough call.”
She didn’t know if he meant for her or for Jubal, so she went another tack completely. “I thought you’d be relieved to be off baby sitting duty.”
She was going for bright and breezy and teasing and she thought she managed it too. Stuart seemed to take it like that anyway, narrowing his eyes as he brought a hand to his chest like she’d offended him. “What, when I was so close to getting you just how I wanted you?” She laughed at that, like she was meant to but when Stuart stepped closer to her, leaned back against her desk, bracing both hands behind him, she wondered if she’d given something away. “But seriously... you okay with that?”
Kristen chuckled without any real humour. “It sucks,” she said flatly. She could be honest with Stuart; she knew what she said to him wouldn’t get back to Jubal. “I wanted to get back out there, it’s what I want to do. And I know-” She held her hand up to forestall whatever it was he’d opened his mouth to say. “I know he has his reasons. But this was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and I want to move on from it.” Words she hadn’t said to Maggie, words she didn’t even know were in either her head or her heart kept coming. “But the job will move and people will move on and I’ll be stuck in here... how am I supposed to move on if I don’t get back out there?”
Stuart tilted his head, brow furrowing into a frown as he stared down at her. Without breaking eye contact, he reached around, grabbed a chair from beside Maggie’s desk and pulled it over. Dropping down into it, he leaned in close, kept his voice low so no-one could overhear them. “Getting back on the horse isn’t always the best idea,” he told her and she couldn’t help herself, she rolled her eyes. Her mom, her friends, even her doctor, they’d all said the same thing. It didn’t make her believe it.
Stuart took a deep breath, let it out slowly and she tried not to feel like a brat. It didn’t work. “You know what the worst day of my life was?” He said it almost conversationally and she was so surprised she just shook her head. “It was the day we buried my brother.”
Kristen felt the world tilt a little around her. He’d never mentioned his brother, not since the first day they’d worked together.
“I shouldn’t say that.” He continued without missing a beat. “I mean, we didn’t bury him, there was no body in the coffin... his favourite sweatshirt, the watch Mom gave him when he graduated college, letters she made us write... but it was so long, you know, between the day it happened and when we were able to hold the funeral... I remember sitting there, thinking to myself, this is the day I can move on from all this. Stop waiting for it to be some giant mistake, for him to walk back through the door.” He paused, looked heavenward as he ran a hand over his lips. “I was wrong.”
She didn’t ask him how, or why. That wasn’t her business and it wasn’t what he was trying to tell her anyway. “I needed time to grieve my brother. Just like you need time to process what happened to you. And that doesn’t happen all at once, or in a few weeks. Jubal just wants to make sure you have that time. We all do.” He shrugged. “And who knows, maybe you’re right. Maybe all that happens is that you cool your heels in the JOC for a few weeks. Do your computer nerd thing and get out of pounding the pavement in a New York winter. Which, you know, isn’t the worst thing.”
She had to laugh at that. “Guess not.”
“But if Jubal’s right?” Stuart leaned a little closer, obviously pressing his advantage now he had her smiling. “If something happens out there and you’re not ready? It’s bad. For you, for me, for him, for some poor innocent we’re trying to help.... and if that happened, you’d never get over it.”
Kristen couldn’t argue with that, so she didn’t even try. She did, however, ask him the question that was most troubling her. “Do you think I’ll be back out there?”
Stuart actually grinned, reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder, squeezing tightly. “Kid, I’m not even going to try to start a book on that. No-one’s gonna bet against you.”
If anyone else had said that, she’d accuse them of being cheesy. From Stuart, with the conversation they’d just had, she only smiled. “Thanks, partner.”
“Any time.” He held his hand up for a fist bump and she gladly obliged. “Now, c’mon, what do you say we go get some lunch? I’ve been running around the NYSE all morning and I’m starving.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard him say something like that and the familiarity made her smile. She's hadn’t had much of an appetite the last few weeks but suddenly, she was starving too. “Let’s go,” she said, standing up and grabbing her jacket, taking a small step towards moving on.