Chapter Text
2023.
From the first time he was called “Doctor,” Carlisle had full-heartedly loved his profession. There had yet to be a moment he did not adore his work with every fiber of his being. This love is what resulted in days like the one he was currently living where the deaths outnumbered the survivors, where the miracle that is modern medicine was only able to prolong suffering, and where he was nothing but helpless.
By the time he clocked out of a forty-eight-hour shift — driving three more hours to get to his home — the idea of ever returning to the cold hospital was as draining as the idea of walking into the house he called home. He sat in the garage, listening to Reba McEntire’s I’m a Survivor drifting from his wife’s office and the soft tap of her foot keeping with the beat.
I’m a Survivor faded into a pop song he had not previously heard, as he garnered the nerve to move. The clock read thirteen minutes later when he managed to open the car door.
He moved through his routine like a wind-up toy soldier, throwing his scrubs into the washing machine, changing into one of the clean outfits he kept stashed in the laundry room, and taking the stairs two at a time.
“Hi Lover,” Esme said as he stepped onto the second floor.
“Hello,” Carlisle said, leaning on the door jamb. He waited there for a good minute, content to get the rare glimpse of her at work.
While Esme had worked, in some form, throughout most of her life, the work-from-home movement had revolutionized her world. She was no longer limited to working on renovations she could complete herself or submitting art to galleries and begging her loved ones to pretend to be her pseudonym when public appearances were required. At the moment she was consulting for a half dozen firms, working full-time for a firm based out of San Francisco specializing in historical preservation. He believed she also sat on a handful of committees for nonprofits working on sustainable architecture, but he could not name them if Edward’s life depended on it.
Workaholic was an understatement, although when he first told her this — only partly in jest — she aptly pointed out — not in jest — the same could be said about him, tenfold.
“Are you going to come inside?” Esme asked, before even glancing up from her three computer monitors.
If unwarranted dread was not sitting in his stomach like a fishing weight he would have made an unbecoming smart remark and she would have rolled her eyes. Instead, he took the invitation and walked into her office.
He kissed the top of her head hello, peering over her to see her desk. It looked straight out of NASA headquarters. There were multiple CAD screens open, an application called Slack, Spotify, and about four email inboxes. She pressed “send” on a strongly worded email — in which she used the phrase “as I previously stated” three separate times — and finally looked up at him. “You look awful,” she said, nose scrunching, as he attempted to lean in for a proper kiss hello.
“I feel it,” he laughed humorlessly, pressing the rejected kiss to her cheek.
It had taken a hundred and two years of marriage to let this interaction happen. Over a hundred years of constant reassurance, she wanted him to be vulnerable, needed him to trust her.
She pushed her mouse forward and turned in her chair to face him, taking his hand in both of hers. “I can offer you fifteen undivided minutes right now but will have to work for the next two or three hours. Or you can give me one hour to finish everything I need to and then I’m yours for the entire evening.”
This new element of their relationship was exhilarating and unimaginably irksome. For decades he was accustomed to her dropping everything. He still operated under the assumption if he came home from work and needed to be held for the rest of the day as the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders — for just a moment — she would be there. Now there were deadlines and coworkers and commitments which momentarily trumped the one they made one snowy night in 1921.
If he asked any couple he knew, who did not share his last name at some point, they would be appalled by a change in dynamic. Part of the appeal of an eternal union was the promise of an unchanging comfortable forever. Of course, he — nor his wife — was ever content to follow their kind’s example.
“The latter, please,” he said. She nodded, dropped his hand, and turned back to her screens.
“Es,” he muttered after a minute. “Can… would it…”
“Do you want to sit with me while I work?” She asked, pushing her chair out from her desk before he even answered. Carlisle nodded, climbing into the chair with her.
“I don’t think you’ll fit in my lap,” she said, as he brought his legs over the arm of her chair.
“You wound me,” he attempted to tease but couldn’t manage the levity.
After a minute of futzing he managed to contort his body to fit in the chair, grateful she refused to use a normal swivel chair and instead insisted on a bulky antique armchair.
She rolled her eyes, putting a hand under his knees and scooting him so he wouldn’t fall off the chair. “Comfortable?”
He nodded, closing his eyes and letting his head fall on her chest.
His mind drifted, lulled by the quick clicks and taps of his wife’s mechanical keyboard, the scratch of a stylus on a drawing tablet, and the eclectic playlist playing from the desktop speakers.
“Does the music bother you?” She asked quietly. He shook his head. She resumed her work and he returned to trying to stave off thoughts of dying breaths and the shrill beep of a flatline.
He’d say forty minutes went by, the existential dread now a dull but persistent ache, when Esme sighed.
“Are you alright?” Carlisle asked quietly.
“I’m fine, my coworkers are acting like teenagers and thus I am logging off early for the night.” She typed a quick message and started to close a few of her screens. She powered off her computer and glanced down at him. “Do you feel any better?”
He nodded slightly, sitting up. “I don’t know how you do it.” It was one of the most surprising elements of marriage, after centuries alone, simply being around someone, her, could ease the weight of the world.
“Sorry I couldn’t stop earlier,” she said, placing her hands on either side of his face.
He turned to kiss her palm, “Your work is important. What’s your current project?”
She smiled, her eyes lighting up as they only did when she got to discuss her renovations. “You will not get out of talking about your feelings that easy. But an old mill town is hitting the market this month so I’ve been…”
She trailed on about plans and proposals, the unique challenges presented by renovating abandoned buildings, and her well-known hatred for painted brick. He nodded along. While their work was wildly different, he was struck — not for the first time — by the passion in her voice, one that so closely mirrored his own, and returning to that cold, but architecturally magnificent, hospital didn’t seem quite as daunting.