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Someone is knocking on his door.
Not unreasonable. Not unreasonable at all, actually. Sure, it might be two am on a Tuesday and yeah, he technically has to get up in four hours so he can go to the gym before work but cut a guy some slack. Sometimes, you just have a rough day! Rough night.
…Rough year.
Someone’s knocking on his door. Right. It’s two am, and he forces himself to get up. He’s pulling on a shirt in no time, hopping on one foot to drag on sweatpants and rounding the corner to his kitchen, and just past that, the front door. He pauses– just as a voice rings through the heavy wood.
“Brett! It’s me! Let me in! I can see you’re awake!”
“Reagan?” Brett asks, swinging it open in a heartbeat. “What’re you doing here? How did you know I was–”
“Your apartment’s been bugged for weeks,” Reagan says dryly, pushing past him. Brett lets her, stepping to the side and watching in mild confusion as the phrase slips over his brain and promptly is filed in the part of his mind that’s labeled To Be Dealt With Later. “Also, I know you. Unfortunately.”
Slowly, Brett closes the door. The night air lingers, prickling the back of his neck.
“You know it’s two in the morning, right?” he asks. Reagan throws her bag down on his breakfast bar, and collapses face-first into his couch. The only light is coming in through his front windows from the streetlamp outside, casting her in lines of sodium orange. Brett flicks on a lamp, and gasps. “Oh my god! You look like crap! Or– well– you look crappier than usual!”
“Thank you, Brett,” Reagan drawls, turning her head to the side. She’s in stained sweats and a sweater, two different boots on either foot. Brett blinks at her as she sits up, hair messily pulled back into a ponytail on the back of her skull. There’s a piece in the back that’s not even contained. Man. She does look bad! “My dad and I– well, I was working late, and when I got home dad was already drunker than usual and the house was a fucking mess, I swear to god. He just pissed me off so bad, Brett, I don’t understand how he’s so fucking clueless all the time. It’s like he has no regard for other people’s emotions! It’d be kind of impressive, if it weren’t so shitty!” As she talks, Reagan tugs off her boots, tossing them to the side and then strips off her sweater, leaving her in just a t-shirt.
“Uh-huh,” Brett says. “So… your dad was a dick?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re in my house?”
“Yes,” Reagan says, turning to look at him. “What part of this isn’t clicking?”
Brett stands there for a moment longer. Then: “How… How did you get my address?”
Reagan cracks a lopsided smile. “You work for the shadow government, dingus,” she says. Brett goes over and quietly picks up both her shoes, setting them on the mat by the door. The sweater gets thrown over the back of a chair, and after a moment of thought, he subtly tosses it into his laundry basket on the other side of the door.
“Right,” he says. “Right, forgot about that.”
“It’s cool if I crash?” Reagan asks, and she sounds so hopeful. God, Brett can’t say no to her. That’d be so mean! And he’s been working on the whole social anxiety thing, but he likes Reagan, and he wants her to like him too, and he thinks she might but if he says no she can’t stay over that’d be so dumb and stupid, and he could offer his second apartment across town but then he’d have to call her an Uber and– “Brett?” Reagan asks, looking a little worried.
“Yeah!” he chirps, throwing a smile onto his face. She raises a brow, clearly catching on to the insincerity of it. Dammit. She’s not supposed to notice things like that. “Sorry, uh, sorry– I’m just a little tired.”
“Right. Fuck. It is two am,” Reagan says, glancing at the oven clock. “I’m sorry, Brett.”
“No, it’s fine!” he says quickly, gesturing a bit and laughing. It sounds awkward, even to his ears. “I wasn’t even asleep, so. You’re good! You’re good! Do you need anything? Uh, drink? Pajamas? Bathroom?”
“I kinda just grabbed the first bag my hand touched,” Reagan says, standing up and going over to where she’d thrown it down. It unzips with a soft noise, and Brett meanders over to peer over her shoulder as she rummages through it. “Canned food, ammo, batteries– shit, this is my zombie apocalypse bag, not my overnight one.”
“You have a zombie apocalypse bag?” Brett asks.
“You don’t?” Reagan braces herself against the counter. “God. I do not want to run back home.”
“You can borrow some of my stuff,” Brett says placatingly, because he really doesn’t mind. Each of his apartments has separate wardrobes and amenities anyways. It’s almost like he’s got too much! Which is ridiculous, honestly. A guy can never have too much stuff. “Here, let me show you the bedroom.”
“Thanks,” Reagan says, and it’s a testament to how tired she is because she doesn’t say another word as he leads her down the hall and into his room. She doesn’t comment on his tastefully generic decor or shitty millennial minimalism, nor does she start complaining about her dad. She just grabs a clean t-shirt and sweatpants when offered, and then wordlessly makes her way into his bathroom. A moment later, the shower turns on.
Brett sits on his bed and stares at where the door is still cracked open, a sliver of bathroom tile the only thing he can see. Before long, steam drifts out of the space. Somewhere inside, a bottle clatters and Reagan curses under her breath.
Brett leans back onto the bed and tries not to think about anything at all.
Before long, the shower turns off. There are distant sounds of someone doing… bathroom… things? What do girls even do in bathrooms? A better question is what does Reagan do in bathrooms, other than the obvious. Brett doesn’t think she does normal girl things like… eyeliner? Combing her hair? No, she does that. Sometimes. Does she moisturize? Brett does. But she didn’t have her overnight bag, which means no toiletries, which means she’s definitely using Brett’s. He doesn’t mind at all, and probably wouldn’t have said anything even if he did mind. Maybe she is moisturizing.
“Reagan?” he calls out. “Do you moisturize?”
“What?” Reagan’s head pokes out from the bathroom. Her hair is damp and down, almost brushing her shoulders and getting the fabric of her borrowed t-shirt wet. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, nevermind,” Brett says, throwing a hand this way and that. “Ignore me. Silly thoughts! Dumb thoughts.”
“Moisturizer’s a scam,” Reagan says after a second, and her head disappears back into the depths of his ensuite. “It just dries your skin out so you keep buying it.”
“Isn’t that the whole thing with chapstick?”
“Nah, moisturizer came first. Gigi thought applying the concept to chapstick would work, and it did! We make killer profits on Burt’s Bees and EOS.” The fan in the bathroom shuts off abruptly, and Brett realizes with a start it had been a source of white noise for a while now. In the sudden silence, he’s hyper aware of everything, even the sound of his own heartbeat. The soft footsteps moving across his bedroom, and the way the sheets on his bed rustle when Reagan flops down onto them.
“That’s really smart,” Brett says, definitely thirty seconds late.
“Yeah, Gigi’s the bomb.” Reagan audibly yawns. “Aw, damn. Don’t tell her I said that.”
“Yes ma’am,” Brett says, raising a hand to his forehead in mock salute. “I will indirectly keep the insubordination going by not letting them know you appreciate them.”
“Cut the sarcasm, asshole,” Reagan says, but he can tell by the tone of voice she’s smiling. “Thanks for letting me crash.”
“Anytime, dude,” Brett says. He thinks he’s about to fall asleep now, right here with his legs hanging off the bed, so after a second he pushes himself up on his elbows and stands up. “Welp! I’ll see you in five to seven hours.”
“Wait, what?” Reagan asks, and Brett heads across the room to the doorway. He pauses, turning back to look at her. It’s the first time he’s done so properly since she got out of the shower, and her hair is still damp, pushed back behind her ears. She’s wearing his t-shirt and sweatpants, and they pool around her ankles even as she sits on his bed criss-cross, picking at the fabric of his comforter. “Where are you going?”
“The couch?” he asks, cocking his head.
“Dude, you have a California King,” Reagan says, gesturing to the wide expanse of his sheets. “You don’t have to sleep on some shitty couch.”
“Hey,” Brett says, pouting a little. “I’ll have you know my couch is great.”
“Whatever. Come on, we’re adults. We can share.”
“Are you sure?” Brett asks. He hovers in the doorway, gaze flicking from her to the floor and back again. He’s never sure about things like this. He’s tired too, though, and that makes him susceptible to suggestion. Clearly Reagan knows this, because she’s using it to her advantage.
“Don’t be a pussy,” she says, and he rolls his eyes but goes over anyway, sitting gingerly back down. “What side do you sleep on?”
“The right,” he says.
“Oh good,” she says. “I sleep on the left. Perfect. It’s like we were made for each other in a lab or something, not that I would ever do that.”
“You literally made a robot boyfriend?”
“And you’re not my boyfriend, so your point is moot!” Reagan is slipping under the covers as she speaks, shifting from a whole human person into just a friend-sized lump. “Ahhh. Your bed is so comfy. I love rich people houses.”
“Apartment,” Brett corrects her, and a hand emerges from the depths of the sheets to flip him off. He gets into bed beside her, settling in and flicking off the lamp beside him. It plunges the room into darkness– the only light now is the shapes and traces of that yellow lamplight from the living room, but it’s barely there. He can’t see Reagan now at all, not until she turns on her side to face him. Even then, all he can make out is the vague shape of her. The strands of her hair like ink on his pillowcases, the sound of her breathing.
Her hair smells like his shampoo. Brett’s chest suddenly really hurts.
Oh man. He hopes it isn’t a heart attack. He really doesn’t want to have to borrow one from Cognito. They’d take it out of his non-existent paycheck.
“Thanks again,” Reagan says quietly. Her words slur a bit, exhaustion overtaking her. She gets pushy when she’s tired. Brett doesn’t mind.
“Always,” he says. He waits– for what, he’s not sure, but it feels like he’s holding his breath, staring into nothing and waiting for something to appear in the shape of it. The shape of her, maybe, the contours of her hand as it lies there in the space between them, and the curve of her shoulder covered with fabric worn thin by his own use.
…Whatever he’s waiting for never comes, though, and the moment breaks when she snores. Loudly.
Brett holds back a snicker and just smiles instead, settling into bed further. Reagan snores a second time, then shuffles and flips over, returning to fuzzy outlines and colors in the dark. Brett stares at the shape of her back for a while before flipping over himself and trying, fruitlessly, to sleep. Sleep, and not think about the girl in his bed.
Everything’s fine.
(Aw, man, he’s definitely gonna have to look into heart replacements tomorrow.)