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It was nice of Lea to come in to have lunch with Shaun.
Usually, the two of them tended to be too busy with work to be around each other until the evening crept around; but even then, they were usually both exhausted from work and didn’t really have much conversation to offer to one another. Their conversations typically relied on Lea to have a topic for them to talk about that would then remind Shaun of something that he could add to move things along, but if she had nothing, conversations barely lasted long enough for them to be considered one. A quick exchange would be about it before they said goodnight and went their separate ways. To their rooms, that is.
Some occasions resulted in them watching about half of a movie until Lea fell asleep and Shaun went to his own room, unless Shaun arrived home to Lea already being asleep in her room when he came home. Whenever that happened, he usually just let her sleep. It was rather rare though, since Lea always liked seeing him at least once before she went into her room for the night to crash.
With Dr. Glassman being busier than usual today, it was nice to have company. Shaun certainly preferred to have lunch and breakfast with someone he had done so with for years; due to the fact that he knew how to have conversations with him better, thanks to him knowing him a lot longer than Lea.
Despite the fact that it wasn’t Wednesday and he was having pancakes for lunch instead of breakfast, today was going very well. He had gotten his favourite type of pancakes with the most amount of chocolate chips he had gotten in a while, which he was very pleased with.
Come to think of it, he could push aside a lot of his routine for Lea, but in the back of his mind, there was always a limit for how much he could sacrifice before it became uncomfortable to deal with. It was hard to predict things, especially with both of them having their separate preferences.
How could they, anyway?
There’s no way to expect the unexpected when there’s so many things that could have set it off in the first place.
Usually, it was little minuscule details that set Shaun off. Whether it was the toilet paper facing the wall instead of facing outwards, or the way the fruit bowl in the kitchen had to directly be in the best possible place for sunlight all day; literally anything could tumble him into a bad and uncomfortable mood, which Lea didn’t always deal well with. Sometimes he was a bit cranky until the issue was fixed, other times it took him a while to slip out of his bitter mood. He never meant it though, obviously. He would never intentionally be rude to someone unless he had a reason to.
“Hey, earth to Shaun?” Lea had softly called out as she waved her hand in front of Shaun’s face to snap him out of his apparent daze, even though doing so had startled him more than intended. His eyes went wide as his chair screeched back on the tiles floor a little, which made an awful squeaking noise creak into his ears that certainly brought some unwanted attention in his general direction.
Heavy, short breaths left Shaun as he tried to recover from his daze, as well as remember where he was and what he was doing, his eyes eventually trailing to Lea for guidance, who had her teeth gritted out of embarrassment for what she had just done, due to feeling bad that she had startled him.
“Sorry buddy. You kinda just... spaced out for a little bit there. I was worried you were gonna let your lunch go cold.” She gestured to the 2 pancakes left on his plate with her fork before eating some of her own as she playfully shrugged, a hand soon resting under her cheek as she awaited Shaun’s reply. Lea was half expecting him to space out again, but was thankful that wasn’t the case, since she didn’t really have a plan to snap him out of it for a second time, thanks to her first attempt backfiring a tad.
“O-Oh. I was just thinking about my patient’s surgery later. We’re going to... create a stent to deal with his... ectopia cordis, because once we transfer their heart there’s a 70% chance that-“
“Shaun.”
Shaun had stopped talking to look at Lea with confused eyes, his eyebrows furrowed due to the unclear motive Lea had for interrupting him. His hands clasped together as the eye contact continued, since he had issues with holding it for elongated periods of time. What had he done wrong? He was only explaining what he was thinking about mere minutes prior to this conversation.
He was dreadfully puzzled as to why exactly Lea was upset with him. Well, she seemed to be upset, anyway. From the sudden interrupting to the stern tone of her voice, that could be the only thing happening, right? Surely.
But why?
“I know you’re... well, excited about that, but... it’s not the kinda thing I wanna hear while I’m eating, y’know?”
Lea paused to swallow her food, since she had been rudely speaking while eating, even though she had to for Shaun’s sake. If she had taken any longer with her answer, who knows what Shaun would have thought. She cleared her throat with a nod before poking her fork into another piece, since she was planning to continue eating while they were chatting about this sudden issue. “Especially with pancakes, actually.” She added this with hopes that it would make sense to Shaun, but it only seemed to make him more confused.
“Why... especially pancakes? What... makes them such a bad combination when paired with a conversation about heart surgery?” Shaun thankfully wasn’t as upset as Lea thought he might be, but it was understandable. It was clear from his body language that he was simply trying to understand what Lea meant, while getting annoyed that he couldn’t do so by himself without asking questions about it.
Lea sighed quietly with a reassuring smile to let Shaun know that she wasn’t as upset as he thought she was, due to countless times when a sigh from her had made him panic into thinking that she was going to move out (or some other drastic decision) because of some unbridled rage that the sigh somehow meant in his eyes. It was strange, but getting Shaun to talk about it helped her understand how he processed it. The only problem was that it usually took a lot of effort for Shaun to open up about things, so it was very likely that there were many more issues that were bothering him that he wasn’t open to discussing just yet.
“Well...” Lea tapped her plate with the fork a couple times before stopping, which irritated Shaun a little before she had done so. He was in the middle of bringing his hand forward to tell her to stop before she had already done what he was about to request. Slowly, he brought his hand back to his side of the table, a content expression on his face for only a mere amount of seconds before he heard Lea’s next words.
“Okay, I got it. Close your eyes.”
Hm. Shaun didn’t like the sound of that. He looked uncomfortable as he was told to do this, especially because it didn’t make much sense in regards to their conversation. He awkwardly laughed before he spoke, since it was something he typically did when he was confused and or nervous about something. Other times he laughed was when it was considered inappropriate to do so, but of course he didn’t know any better until he was told.
“...w-why would I-“
Only a couple words slipped out of his mouth before Lea cut him off, which she knew that he didn’t like, but there was certainly times and places when it was acceptable for her to do so, according to her own judgement. Sometimes she did it just to see his sentence cut short while his mouth crackled into confusion, just because the sudden expression of surprise wasn’t an emotion he expressed that often around her unless she was the one to provoke it in the first place.
“Ah, ah, ah! C’mon, I’m not just gonna tell you why, that’ll ruin the whole thing!” As easy as that sentence was to understand, extra measures had to be made for Shaun. After another forkful had been swallowed, Lea calmed her body language down before she spoke, just to get the message across as much as possible. “I swear th-this won’t take long, okay? I’ll make sure you don’t miss your... uh, next shift or call or... whatever.”
Shaun stared at Lea, who was now staring back at him with excitement in her eyes, as if she was about to show him a magic trick of some kind. He hoped that she wasn’t going to show him one of those. He didn’t really like magic tricks anymore. Not after someone in school told him to close his eyes for one, only to pop a balloon right next to his ear just to see him stumble in surprise and stim negatively out of fear. He wished he could forget that day sometimes.
“Mm. Okay. A-As long as it isn’t a magic trick.”
Reluctantly, Shaun closed his eyes and kept them closed, while his hands stayed close together and fidgeted silently, all while he waited on what to do next according to Lea. His fingers brushed against each other calmly as he awaited what to do next, even though he was a little bit anxious about the entire thing.
Lea was puzzled due to the random mention of the magic trick, but pushed it aside, since asking about it would only start another conversation and waste more time. Shaun tended to go off on long tangents when he was asked about a different topic of conversation, so it was best not to distract him now.
“...I’m pretty sure it isn’t one, but i’ll try not to surprise you.” With a shaky breath, Lea picked up her fork and knife and began to cut Shaun’s pancakes into pieces, which was proving to be rather difficult with a plastic knife and fork. Shaun unfortunately heard her doing this, which intrigued him enough to make him open his eyes a little.
“Lea. Why... why are you using your fork and knife to cut my foo-“
Before Shaun could finish, Lea had covered his eyes with her hand, which had startled him into pausing his sentence midway. You could tell by the fidgeting of his hands that it had made him uncomfortable, but the surprise of this situation was needed for this to work.
“Hey! No peeking, okay? I can’t do this if you’re not gonna play fair, Shaun.” Lea playfully tilted her head at Shaun to try and win his heart, which worked like it always did after a couple moments of noticeable hesitation from her boyfriend.
“Mm. O-Okay. I’ll... keep my eyes closed, even though it might look strange to everyone else.”
Shaun comedically whispered the last part of his statement, which made Lea smile more than she had that day. Shaun always made her feel like so much more and she was forever grateful to call him her boyfriend, she certainly had no doubts about that.
“I’m sure everyone in here has seen much weirder things happen in the cafeteria. I’d bet money on there being a couple tables tossed or kicked over at some point.”
“I did see some scratches on the floor once. I thought that they might be from a wheelchair. But I suppose they could also be from a table being... thrown in defence, even though I don’t see why doing that in a stressful situation would be very helpful.” Even though it was very strange for him to have a conversation with Lea with his eyes closed, Shaun kept his word and kept his eyes closed, mostly due to not wanting his eyesight to be suddenly covered by Lea’s hand again out of nowhere.
With a piece of the other’s pancake now being on the end of her fork, all Lea had to do was to get Shaun to focus on the task at hand, which couldn’t be done efficiently until they finished their current conversation. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t take until the end of his lunch break to do it.
“...well, do you remember the time you were going to hit my car? With that big bat you just happened to have lying around?”
“Oh. Yes I do. A-And... the bat wasn’t... mine. I got it from a woman who had already done it to her boyfriend’s car. She was very nice.”
Oh. Shaun never told her that part. Well to be fair, they weren’t really talking much around that period anyway, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise once she thought about it for a second. It was a thing of the past for sure, but... wow. Shaun must’ve gotten the idea to do it from her. Wonder what her reasoning was.
“Good to... know.” Lea awkwardly trailed off before remembering what she was doing, as well as remembering that she was on a strict time limit with this, which was a terribly daunting thing to think about.
“Anyway, the reason I’m bringing it up is that... people usually do... violent things like throw stuff or... or break things just to get their anger out. They don’t wanna hurt anyone around them so they just... pick up the nearest obstacle in their way. Sometimes it’s a table, sometimes it’s... a bat; but... people just do things like that when they’re stressed. It helps get emotions out without hurting anyone on purpose.”
A silence blanked over Shaun and Lea as Shaun seemingly processed her statement, which was taking quite some time. Perhaps it was the lack of eye contact due to his eyes being closed, but Lea couldn’t read his emotions as well when she wasn’t able to see what he was looking at. She could only hope that he understood her explanation, but there was no time to wait and find out.
Best to push forward before she loses time to demonstrate her idea.
“Anyway, enough about tables and bats, Shaunie. I want you to open your mouth for me, but don’t chew, okay? It’s VERY important for my... explanation.”
At first, Shaun didn’t seem to like that idea. Being told what to do was already troubling with his eyes closed, but being told to not eat when he was hungry was rather upsetting for him to hear. As much as he wanted to object, curiousness got the better of him, which led to him agreeing to follow the instructions, regret soon following after.
“Okay. As long as I’m... allowed to eat it eventually. I don’t want to have to spit it out onto my plate. That would be very unhygienic and rude.” Shaun sounded uncomfortable as he uttered those words, but honestly Lea couldn’t blame him. Spitting out food was one of the worst feelings in the world.
Despite the fact that most food in the cafeteria usually got put into the trash by the consumers themselves, there was a slight chance someone could walk by and attempt to take their tray with plates that seemingly looked to be finished with. Nobody wants to take a plate with food that looks better suited for baby birds to consume though, do they? Let’s hope not.
“That’s part of the plan.”
Lea reassured Shaun with a nod that he couldn’t see before she brought the fork forward, being thankful that his mouth was already open so that she didn’t have to tell him to. With some awkward precision, the piece was now in place, which Shaun already seemed irritated by, especially because those pancakes were his favourite and he hadn’t had breakfast today. Even with his mouth closed, you could tell exactly how much this was bothering him.
“Okay, so let’s pretend that... I’m you. Or... maybe someone else like... Claire or... n-nevermind. It doesn’t matter who I am actually. What matters is that... I’m talking about something gross and... gooey and bloody, while you’re trying to eat.”
Lea paused to look over at Shaun, who even with his eyes closed was clearly troubled by the fact that he wasn’t allowed to eat yet, but seemed to be even more irritated that he currently couldn’t speak verbally either, which was his best type of communication according to himself.
A lip was bit by Lea as she let her eyes trail over to the clock in the distance near the elevator, her immediately noticing that Shaun’s lunch break was nearly over, which meant that he could be called any minute now to go assist with something far more important than what he was currently doing.
“Okay. Bite down and start chewing but, don’t swallow all of it, okay? I need you to think about something, Shaun.”
She watched attentively as Shaun began to do just that, even though it didn’t seem like he was having some difficulty with the ‘not eating’ part, as he seemed to be hungrier than usual due to spacing out earlier and wasting some of his time doing nothing.
“I need you to...-“ Lea paused, trying to think of the best possible example that could get her point across. “You’ve dug into hearts before, right?” Lea looked at Shaun for affirmation, not being surprised that all she got was a mumbled ‘mhm.’
“Okayyy... All I need you to do is to... think about that. Think about how the inside of a heart looks and... all of the squishy noises it makes when you move stuff around in there. Literally think about the grossest things you can, Shaun.” Lea had more to say but her instructions were already working effectively. It was clear that Shaun was having trouble swallowing due to discomfort, but eventually managed to, as well as open his eyes while a heavy breath hopped out of his throat.
Shaun’s mouth was merely a squiggle of discomfort as he finally swallowed everything, his exaggerated breath being over as he now tried to think of a response to that disastrous deed, since it must have been some sort of trick. It had made him feel uncomfortable and disgusting, along with a prickly distaste to pancakes for the time being, which was the most upsetting revelation of all thanks to it being one of his comfort foods.
“That... that was... awful. You... you made me feel like... I... I was eating a heart. That is... disgusting.” Shaun’s fingers gripped against the table as he tried to keep himself from doing anything else, since you could tell just from the redness in his face that he was terribly upset. Hopefully he wasn’t going to recall their conversation from earlier and throw the table, which would only add to the amount of scratches that already littered the floor below when the sun shined on it just right.
“Now you get it, right?” Lea asked Shaun this as she raised an eyebrow at him, while also attempting to make eye contact with him to calm him down a little. She genuinely didn’t mean to make him as upset as he was getting, but hopefully this could be turned around in her favour. Emphasis on ‘hopefully’.
“Hey, hey hey... it’s... it’s gross and disgusting... I know, but that’s how I feel when you talk about these things when we’re eating, Shaun.” Lea tilted her head to let Shaun know that everything was going to be okay, as well as shakily bring her hand forward to hold his; her thumb now making circular motions on the palm of his hand with the most soft and caring rhythm in the world.
“I’m not mad at you, Shaun. You don’t need to be mad at me either. You know I love listening to you when you talk about the amazing work you do here. I just... don’t want to hear about it if I’m eating something, because... well, then I think about eating something I shouldn’t be. Okay?”
A smile was plastered across Lea’s face as she awaited an answer from Shaun, one that shone with hope with a sprinkle of uncertainly, since Shaun could be oh so painfully unpredictable when the it was unneeded the most.
“Okay. Thank you... t-thank you for showing me that, Lea. I... I need to go check imaging before the surgery.” With that, Shaun had immediately let go of Lea’s hand and was already standing up, despite the fact that he didn’t eat most of his lunch thanks to their silly little experiment.
His shoes squeaked off the floor as did Lea’s, due to her standing up at the same time to check on him before he fled. She had to admit, she was worried. Worried she had gone too far. Worried that she could’ve explained her side better before... well, before this had happened. Lea never liked seeing Shaun in such a hurry. She knew it made him terribly anxious, especially when he left conversations as bluntly as this.
“Shau- Shaun! Hey, hey wait up!” Lea called for him as she grabbed his coat, which immediately made Shaun stop, mostly due to the sensation of pulling on his clothing being rather uncomfortable.
“Are you... sure you’re okay? You’re sure I didn’t... I dunno, make you mad about... missing lunch or something?” Lea was grasping at straws here, but she really wanted to know if there was something she had done or something she could do before she saw Shaun later when he got home.
“I’m not mad. I just don’t want to be late. I’ll... try not to talk about ‘gross stuff’ the next time we’re eating.” Shaun nodded slightly in Lea’s general direction, even though that usually meant that he really wanted to get going before he got into trouble.
A wave of relief slowly washed over Lea as Shaun reassured her, even though it was very likely that he was going to bring this up again later when he wasn’t as busy. It was inevitable, but due to it still being rather early in the day, she had time to mentally prepare for it. Shaun’s tone wasn’t the most convincing, but his body language told Lea otherwise, since he didn’t seem to be in a hurry as much anymore after he had explained his reasoning for rushing.
Looking down, she noticed her hand still clutching Shaun coat. Trailing her eyes even further would reveal that Shaun was clearly uncomfortable with it, yet was puzzled on how exactly to bring the issue up when he had such little time to explain it.
She smiled confidently at Shaun as her shoes squeaked across the floor, her other hand now clutching the other side of his coat in an attempt to pull him downwards a little, which had only worked due to it being out of nowhere.
A slight yelp slipped out of Shaun as this was done, since he really didn’t expect it and certainly had no time to process it before the next action had been done. While still pulling down his coat, Lea had decided to give Shaun a tender kiss on the lips, the action being done purely out of love, admiration; maybe even a little bit out of spite, just to see how embarrassed it made him.
“Thanks Shaun.” Lea cooed with a smirk as she lightly released her grip on the coat as to not startle Shaun again, who definitely had enough emotions to deal with according to how red his face was right now. His cheeks were blossoming with embarrassment while his mind was desperately fishing for words to say in reply to what had just been done, that action alone seeming to be proving very hard for him to do, in a positive manner of course.
“O-Oh. Y...you’re welcome.” He finally managed to hum out some sort of reply while his arms swung happily by his sides, which Lea adored to see, especially since Shaun didn’t stim in public places that often. It was never clear if he was conscious of doing it in crowded places or not, but it was way more likely for him to do it when he was alone or with at least one other person, from Lea’s experience anyway.
Before Shaun had the chance to drift off into daydreaming about how much he loved his girlfriend, his phone buzzed, which thankfully alerted him by shifting him to his more professional state of mind, even with a little bit of happiness sprinkled in between.
“I-I have to go prep my patient for surgery.” Shaun muttered before he spun around on his shoe and began to walk off, which Lea didn’t object to, since she didn’t want him to be late for something so important. Even calling him to say goodbye would probably be too much of a distraction, so she opted to wave to him to herself while blush collected on her own face as she now began to daydream about how much she was in love with her significant other.
Eventually, she found herself finishing off some of Shaun’s pancakes, (some of them got too cold) before dumping the rest of them in the trash, as well as sliding the tray to collect with the rest, instead of leaving it on the table for someone else to deal with. She hummed quietly to herself as he picked up her handbag, since Shaun had gotten a song stuck in her head ever since they sang it during karaoke last night. Sure, they were both a little bit drunk on a work night, but they had fun, which was all that mattered. It was also nice to find a type of alcohol that Shaun actually liked, compared to his long gone relationship with tequila.
“Lea?”
Wuh oh. Not many people here knew her name just yet, so hearing it usually meant one of two things. She was in trouble, or Shaun needed her for something. It wasn’t Shaun calling her, so it probably wasn’t the second one.
Looking up for her nonsensical rummaging led her to make eye contact with Dr. Lim, someone who she had heard little about from Shaun, but had mostly heard nice things about, which was a good start to this conversation. She actually wasn’t even searching for anything in her bag in the first place, but had pretended to for a couple extra seconds to buy time, just in case she needed to prepare for the worst. Didn’t seem like it was the case though. Thank god.
“Uhhh, yeah? What’s up?” As rude as it may have seemed to be acting casual with the Chief of Surgery, thanks to Dr Lim’s calm body language, her reasoning for visiting Lea didn’t seem to be as urgent as it may have initially been. Well, here’s to hoping, right?
“Oh nothing major, don’t worry.” Dr. Lim reassured her with a calm laugh before continuing, which made the conversation feel a lot more casual, which was comforting enough to ease the tension. “Just wanted to thank you for cheering Shaun up. He-“
“What? W-Was he upset this morning or something?” As rude as it was to cut her off, Lea was very surprised to hear that Shaun was actually in need of cheering up, especially because it didn’t seem that way when she was talking to him earlier. Had he been giving her hints that she hadn’t noticed? Uh oh.
“Mmm, I wouldn’t say upset, but he wasn’t most attentive. Kept spacing out a lot like he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep, which probably isn’t the case.”
Fuck. Had Lea really let Shaun go to work while he was hungover? Oops. Best not to say much, it’d definitely give them away. Both of them were bad liars, whether they were hungover or not.
“...huh. I’ll... I’ll ask him how he slept when he got home.” Lea shrugged with a smile as she swung her handbag onto her shoulder, which hopefully indicated that she had to get going, even though the only reason she wanted to leave was to get out of this conversation before she said something stupid.
Dr. Lim thankfully took the bait and nodded, stepping backwards a little to indicate that she too had to get going anyway, since it was probably extremely likely that she was on Shaun’s surgery team today, or may even be supervising it at least.
“Be sure to ask him how many people he’s told about your kiss while you’re at it. So far everyone on my surgical team knows about it.” She added with a wink before walking off, which Lea playfully rolled her eyes to once they were facing away from each other. Of course Shaun was doing that. He had done it the first time they had kissed as well, it being such widespread news around the building that you would have assumed they were on the front of the newspaper or something.
Lea didn’t mind though, of course. She loved seeing Shaun as happy as this, since the happiness usually rubbed off on her; today certainly being no different. As the automatic doors closed behind her and she walked out in pursuit of the parking lot, she couldn’t help but walk out with a smile, wishing time could go faster so that they could be together again and do whatever they wanted, when they wanted.
Well, apart from drinking on work nights. That one needed to be put on hold for a while, until they sorted out each other’s hangover issues.
Or until they got bored enough and forgot about the consequences.