Work Text:
Hitch had a tendency to forget that knocking was polite—or maybe she simply didn’t care that barging in on someone without notice was rude. To date, her unexpected appearances in the room Marlowe shared with Boris hadn’t caused any real issues, but there had been a few close calls—enough of them that Marlowe had seriously considered taking measures to block the door, lest the timing of one of her entrances have unfortunate consequences.
Marlowe always knocked, of course. He liked that protocol existed for properly attempting to enter someone else’s space. While Hitch, in a moment of enthusiasm, was likely to push open a door without thinking beyond the fact that the person she wanted to see was on the other side, Marlowe’s enthusiasm simply transferred to his knocking.
He thought about this difference between them as he lifted his hand and brought his knuckles down against the door to Hitch’s room. It was a polite knock and his usual: three times, but soft, considering the hour.
She didn’t answer.
He wondered about it for a moment, remembered a conversation from earlier in the week where she’d mentioned something about “going out with the others”—an activity he rarely participated in himself, even when someone thought to invite him—and drew the conclusion that she was probably still out.
But he knocked again: three times, a little louder. Just in case.
The possibility existed that she’d returned from her outing already, and the more he considered it, waiting patiently outside of her door, the less he wanted her to be home. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her, because he wouldn’t have left his room in the first place if he didn’t have a reason to, but—
It was complicated.
He hated that phrase, but nothing else could ever describe Hitch Dreyse wholly and accurately, let alone his relationship to her. Somehow he had misjudged her original character, had determined her at first glance to be selfish and irritating. He knew better, now. She had proved it several times over already, but that was part of the problem.
It was a stupid problem—the kind of problem other people had.
His relief was mixed when his second knock went unanswered. The disappointment he felt was unexpected, but he tried to reason with himself about it: she was probably still out having fun, and it was selfish to wish her inside the entire evening and bored instead. He didn’t need to see or speak to her to do what he’d come to her room to do in the first place, anyway, and if she had answered, she’d probably get him locked into conversation far longer than he’d planned for.
His hand drifted down to the doorknob, and his fingers absently wrapped around the cool metal. It wasn’t polite to simply enter Hitch’s space without her permission, but he was only there to drop off a book he’d promised to let her read, and that did not require her presence. She probably wouldn’t mind if he entered for that purpose only. In fact, he thought with some measure of wry amusement, she’d probably complain at him later if he admitted that he hadn’t felt comfortable dropping it off without her there.
He could almost imagine the teasing.
So he turned the knob and pushed her door open.
Her room looked as it always did: disorganized. He headed straight to her desk; even in the near-darkness he knew where it was and how to get there; avoiding the clothes and boxes on the floor made what should have been a two second trip take much longer, but after a few moments in the room his eyes adjusted enough that the light coming in through the window was enough to help him avoid most of the mess.
It wasn’t until he set the book down and saw loose sheets of paper on her desk that he considered leaving a note, but he dismissed the idea as unnecessary; the book’s presence would explain itself. She knew to expect it.
It wasn’t until he turned to head back to the door that he saw her: Hitch, of course, and just her hand, fingers curled slightly around one of the rails of her top bunk. The realization that she was in the room almost caused him to trip over a shoe he’d meant to side-step. After the shock faded and his balance returned, he took in the situation in its entirety and couldn’t help the exhale of breath he gave, born of frustration and maybe a little of something else, something he wasn’t willing to dwell on.
“What a mess,” he said, using a foot to move her shoe out of his path. He wasn’t sure if he was only talking strictly about the state of her room.
As silly as the notion seemed when it came to him, he realized he probably ought to check on her—make sure she was okay. He wouldn’t have bothered at all since she’d clearly made it back to her bed just fine, and was very likely in an alcohol-induced sleep, but…he’d seen her drunk before, after the Stohess cleanup. She’d been upset about Annie not having come back, and drunk she hadn’t been capable of pretending it didn’t bother her. He still found it incredibly sad, and didn’t care to remember it, but it was hard not to, especially now. He took a step toward the bunk beds that sat up against the far wall: it would only take a few seconds to check.
“Yeah.” Even though her voice was soft, it still managed to startle him. He tried to swallow his too-fast heartbeat as she shifted in her bed to peer at him through the rails. “But you like cleaning up messes, right?”
He assumed she meant it as a joke, but her tone was off. It made sense when he considered the very real possibility that she was probably drunk.
“I brought you the book,” he said, the only thing he could think to say, really.
She lowered her head, shifted again. “Okay.”
“I didn’t know you were in.”
She didn’t reply. Avoiding tripping over her other shoe, he moved over to the bed and looked down at the bottom bunk. It was the only tidy thing in the room, he realized—perfectly made up and unwrinkled. Annie’s old bed. He stepped on it, hauled himself up so that he could see what Hitch was up to.
She spoke almost as soon as he was there, as if she’d known to wait for him to do it.
“I’m gonna tease you ‘bout that later, y’know.” She smiled, seemingly to herself. “Entering a lady’s room unannounced ‘n all.”
“With a book,” he said, deadpan, watching her carefully.
“Devious,” she half-whispered, still smiling like it was a great joke. “Didn’t think you were that kinda guy, Marlowe.”
“I like books.”
She lifted her knees a little, delight practically radiating off of her. “I know!” She cringed when her voice came out louder than she intended it to. “Me, too!” she added, quietly but with an enthusiasm that gave away the fact that she was decidedly intoxicated.
It wasn’t bad, though. At least it wasn’t like the last time.
She wasn’t upset, and better yet she’d managed to get to her own room.
Compared to the last time he’d seen her drunk, this time she looked rather endearing. She was still in the clothes she’d worn to go out, a dress with a modest neckline that buttoned down the front to the waist, but the first few buttons were undone and the entire dress skewed to one side; he wondered if she’d tried to get it off and had decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Her feet were bare and all her moving around had only managed to twist her skirt around her knees.
He reached for the rumpled blanket at the foot of her bed and tried to straighten it. “Don’t you ever make your bed?” he asked as he started to pull the blanket over her.
“No,” she said, and he let the end of the blanket cover her face. She didn’t seem to mind at all, as she kept talking: “Why should I when I jus’ end up sleeping in it again?”
“It saves you time at the end of the day.” He knew his explanation wouldn’t mean anything to her, but it was true.
“You’re saving me time right now,” she pointed out, fingers peeling the blanket away from her face just far enough so that she could see him. Her hair was tousled and he hated that he found it attractive—found her attractive, and not just right now but all of the time. Lately, spending more than a fraction of a second in Hitch’s presence made him think too much; it was inevitable that he end up with a few ridiculous, inane thoughts, but it was getting out of hand.
He was starting to like her too much, starting to look forward to seeing her, starting to feel disappointed when he didn’t. And it wasn’t as if she’d done anything to really make him feel that way. She was just being herself, and his mind wanted it to be something else. That was he kind of shit other people struggled with; it wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He needed to figure out how to put a stop to it.
He busied himself by checking to make sure her feet were actually tucked underneath the blanket.
“You really are the real deal,” she told him, wrapping an arm around her pillow and pushing her face into it. She wasn’t fast enough to hide the stupid secretive smile that started to tug at her lips.
His stupid thoughts returned. The whole thing made him want to do something ridiculous, something impossible—like run a hand through her hair.
Instead he changed the subject.
“Aren’t you tired?”
The sound Hitch made, face half buried in her pillow, sounded positive.
“Then you should sleep.”
She made another small sound that was muffled by the pillow, so Marlowe assumed she was well on her way there. It wasn’t until he’d stepped off of the lower bunk that she moved. “Marlowe,” she complained, “you’re supposed to say good night.”
He paused, then leaned over to smooth the wrinkles from the blankets on Annie’s bed that he’d put there. “Good night,” he offered.
“Not like that.”
He sighed. “Good night, Hitch.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t do it right.”
He could have argued with her for an hour, probably, but it wasn’t worth the effort when she was likely to be unreasonable. “How should I do it then, if you know so much?”
“You’re s’pposed to kiss someone when you tell them good night, Marlowe. Don’t you know anything?”
He froze. “I’m not doing that,” he said, with too much hesitation in his voice.
“Why not?” Her fingers curled around one of the railings at the side of her bed.
There were a great many reasons, but one was far better than all the others combined: “You’re drunk.”
“But that makes it easier,” she tried to argue, though she sounded more confused than anything—as if she couldn’t quite understand where she’d gone wrong.
“It’s the opposite, actually,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
He waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything else. He reached up to touch her hand, which still rested on the lower rail. He was about to say good night a final time when she lifted her fingers to rest between his.
“If you’re not gonna do it then I will,” she told him.
He didn’t believe her, of course. How was she going to do much of anything when she was intoxicated and still in the top bunk? He almost smiled at her gumption.
But then she surprised him, something she’d managed to do a lot of, lately: she leaned forward and pressed a sloppy, exaggerated kiss against his fingers, the only part of his hand that she could get through the rail.
“Good night, Marlowe,” she said, and giggled as she tried to untangle their hands, the motion clumsy and slow.
After she’d finally managed it, he helped her get her hand back through the small gap in the railing, his heart beating too hard, his mind unable to settle on any singular thing. He squeezed her hand before he let it go and the emptiness felt weird, after. He cleared his throat.
“Good night, Hitch,” he said—rationally, not soft and too deep, like his voice wanted him to—and moved toward the door.
She didn’t stop him. She didn’t say anything. She just sighed happily into her pillow like everything was perfect in her world.
Marlowe supposed after the last time he’d found her drunk, that this ought to be a relief, but the relief wasn’t whole; he couldn’t stop thinking, even after he closed her door softly behind him. “She’s drunk,” he told himself aloud under his breath, sternly, as if hearing the knowledge aloud would dislodge some of his more ridiculous thoughts. It didn’t help, not as much as he wanted it to—not nearly as much as he needed it to.