Work Text:
Gwendolyn Bouchard is not a rash woman. She likes organisation, she likes being right, and she likes control. Recklessness of any kind is not conducive to these things, and so she makes sure to carefully consider any and all actions she thinks of before she performs them.
She knows it makes her seem like a bitch. The others never quite look at her as a friend. They invite her out on birthdays and other events they deem special, of course, but they don’t actually like her. This is fine. She knows what she wants, and if she has to sacrifice the chance at a few friendships to get it, well, it doesn’t keep her up at night. Her job does that well enough on its own.
All of which is to say, Gwendolyn Bouchard is a calculated, careful woman. Or she tries to be, at any rate.
So when she looks at her manager one day and her treacherous mind supplies the thought God, I’d love to shut her up, she does not act on it.
Instead, Gwen walks out of the eerily empty office as quickly as she can, refusing to wonder what kind of personality Lena was hiding behind the blankness, and sits down at her desk. Alice must make some sort of quip about the colour in her cheeks, but Gwen doesn’t hear it. It must seem odd to Alice — despite Gwen’s best efforts, she always manages to get a rise out of her — but she thankfully doesn’t comment.
Gwen carries on with her work as usual. These things always pass, in her experience. It’s not as if her mind could occupy itself with the thought of Lena’s dark, dark eyes forever. She just has to tough it out for a few nights, and then she’ll never again have to think about what Lena might look like with her hair down. It will be fine.
She finishes up another file and quietly congratulates herself for being able to work just as well as normal. This momentary lapse in judgement will not affect her, not if she has any say in it. She types up the incessantly long string of letters and numbers and prepares to send the case off, probably never to be seen again.
Teddy walks past her and glances at her screen. “Oof,” he winces in sympathy, “another clown one? We’ve been getting a lot of them lately, haven’t we?”
Gwen looks back at the screen. The case is indeed about clowns. So why was she about to file it under Fire, Flamingoes?
She scowls and hits the backspace button harder than she needs to. This does not bode well for her accuracy rate.
________________________________________
It has not gone away.
Gwen is not equipped to deal with these sorts of feelings, and she is not happy with the effect they are having on her. It’s difficult enough to do her job with Alice and Teddy taking nothing seriously, and Colin complaining about the tech every opportunity he gets, but now she has to deal with whatever has taken root in her brain and made it impossible to be normal around Lena. They go out for drinks one morning after their shifts; it’s a Friday, and they all want a break from the voices in their computers which showed up on Tuesday and haven’t left them alone since.
Gwen has agreed to come along because while she may not be friends with her co-workers, she doesn’t despise them enough to turn down a few free drinks after a long week.
She was not informed that Lena would be coming too.
Gwen allows herself a little internal panic, for no more than ten seconds. She goes to shoot a smile at Lena, before remembering that she has never smiled at Lena, and tries to make it into a perfunctory nod at the last second. It comes out as more of a grimace and a jerky tilt of the head.
Gwen wants to crawl into a hole. She thinks she’d rather be stuck in the Windows software with the voices.
She’s not even sure why she cares about Lena’s opinion of her. It’s not as if she has any power to promote her, not if the job she wants is the job Lena herself has. But Gwen desperately wants Lena to know that she is better than the rest of the employees. She’s not like them: loud and boisterous and content with their meagre lives. Gwen is special, and even if Lena doesn’t feel the same fluttering in her stomach when their eyes meet, surely she sees that.
________________________________________
They’re all a few drinks in, and Alice won’t stop spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories that even she doesn’t believe. That doesn’t stop Teddy from adding to them though, and Colin from smacking him on the shoulder for encouraging her. When Colin storms away to the bathroom after they try to convince him that the Illuminati actually consists of cats, (“—they get everywhere, Colin! And haven’t you seen how they just sit and stare at you sometimes? Creepy as hell—”) Gwen decides she’s had enough.
But Lena beats her to it. “Why don’t you two go and grab another round of drinks for us? Perhaps some non-alcoholic ones, this time. I think we all need to sober up a bit.”
Well. That’s a tactful way to get rid of them for a few minutes. Also, kinder than what Gwen would have said.
Gwen is so absorbed in the thought of her co-workers finally leaving her alone for a while that she doesn’t realise she is alone with Lena. Gwen stares at her, wide-eyed and curious, wondering if she did this on purpose, wondering if she could make an excuse to leave the table.
But she can’t now. Lena would see through it, of course she would. She would assume that Gwen didn’t like her, that she didn’t want to be alone with her. But if Gwen stayed much longer, Lena would realise that the truth was much too far from that to be considered professional.
“Are you quite alright, Gwen?” Lena asks, her hand twitching as if about to reach out and touch her.
Gwen puts both of her arms under the table before Lena can even think about it. She doesn’t know what she would do if Lena touched her now.
“I’m fine,” she says bluntly.
Lena’s brow furrows, and she stares at Gwen unflinchingly. “I don’t think—”
“Well, we’re not at work, so you don’t have to.” Her interruption is probably out of line, but like she said, they’re not at work. Gwen swallows and goes to take another sip of her drink before she remembers that it’s finished; Alice and Teddy have gone to get more drinks. Her mouth feels uncomfortably dry.
“You seem a bit lost,” Lena says, and something bleeds through in her voice. Something other than the cold, professional tone she always takes with them. With the rest of them. But not with Gwen, not tonight.
“How could I be lost? I haven’t moved,” Gwen says, and she immediately wants to kick herself. That’s not what Lena meant.
“I see,” Lena says carefully, and she licks her lips. Gwen sweats.
“You do?” she asks, and she doesn’t even know what she’s saying anymore. She looks around to try and find the others — what could be taking them so long? — but they’re nowhere to be seen.
“Gwen,” Lena says, and her hand is on Gwen’s. When had she put her arms back on the table? Gwen wants nothing more than to wrench her hand away (she wants nothing more than to hold Lena’s, but she freezes.
Suddenly, the table seems too small. Lena has gotten closer, and she’s looking at Gwen, searching, curious, and Gwen is staring back, unblinking, hoping Lena sees nothing and hoping Lena knows everything all at once.
Lena’s hand tightens over Gwen’s, and her thumb brushes across Gwen’s skin.
Gwen moves forward.
She’s always been tall. She was taller than most of her classmates when she was younger, though some caught up by the time puberty hit them too. But Gwen never really found anything hard to reach.
She doesn’t find the back of Lena’s neck hard to reach either. It feels like no time at all before she’s leaning across the table, pulling Lena closer, and it’s all too easy to reach her lips.
As their lips brush, Gwen feels something in her chest ache to pull Lena closer, to kiss her properly, to show her why she should look at Gwen, why she needs Gwen, why she deserves Gwen.
But something else tells her to flinch back. So she does.
It’s a good thing, too, because the others suddenly appear out of thin air.
“We’ve got the drinks!” Alice yells, almost spilling half the liquid onto the table.
Gwen flinches back and moves to sit with her back against the wall, pulling her hand back down into her lap. She can’t decide if Alice has the best or the worst timing.
She does not look at Lena for the rest of the night.
________________________________________
Lena calls Gwen into her office first thing on Monday. Gwen wishes she hadn’t come in at all. But she would never skip a day of work for something as trivial as embarrassment. Sure, the… event on Friday didn’t go exactly like she had planned, but that’s no reason to hide away in her apartment. She’s spent all weekend doing that already.
She opens the door to Lena’s office and stands awkwardly in the doorway, letting the sound of office banter flow in. Normally, it would annoy her, but today she finds she’d rather not be alone with Lena.
“Close the door, please,” Lena asks.
Never mind, then.
Gwen shuts the door and lingers on the handle. She doesn’t want to get any closer to Lena, because if she did, she’d have to sit down, and the last time they were sat across from each other, she’d almost made a mistake.
Lena raises an eyebrow at her, looking pointedly from her to the seat.
Gwen raises an eyebrow back.
Lena sighs and removes her glasses, folding them and setting them on the edge of her desk. She stares at Gwen, those irises so dark Gwen can’t tell where they end and the pupil begins, and Gwen hopes that her own glasses hide the way her eyes widen.
“I think we need to talk, Gwen.”
“I don’t see why,” she fires back, entirely too quickly to be believable.
Lena is not impressed. “About Friday.”
“What about Friday?”
“You weren’t that drunk, Gwen. I know you remember.”
Gwen grits her teeth, and she realises that this is going to be unpleasant no matter what, so she might as well sit down. Her new shoes are killing her. She thought being just that little bit taller would help her feel in control today, but it never does. She hates wearing heels, God only knows why she wears them anyway.
“What about Friday?” she repeats, the chair creaking underneath her.
Lena places her hands on the desk, clasping them together. Gwen can still feel the ghost of her touch, Lena’s hand on hers. She hates that she can’t stop thinking about it.
“Gwen, how do you feel about me?”
And isn’t that just the question? Because Gwen knew how she felt about everyone and everything except Lena Kelley. She could categorise her life into little files, put those files into their respective boxes, and know where each and every relevant file was and what it contained. At a very young age, Gwen learned the tragic truth that she couldn’t possibly know everything, so she instead resolved to know everything about herself, her life, and everything that could affect it.
So, when they met, Gwen had made a little file named Lena Kelley and shoved it somewhere in a box for Employers or Bitches or People Whose Jobs I Want. But now, Lena doesn’t quite fit any of those. Well, she fits all of them, but there is something missing. Something more. And Gwen doesn’t know where on earth to file it.
“You’re my manager,” she says, as if that isn’t perhaps the biggest oversimplification in history.
Lena sighs again and looks at some papers on the edge of her desk. It’s quite a big pile.
“If you don’t want to talk, Gwen, I won’t waste my time. I do have other things to get to.”
And Gwen should leave. But every time Lena says her name, she feels glued to her seat. She wants to hear Lena say it again. She says it so often, but it’s never enough. Gwen wants more.
“We can talk,” she says, and her voice comes out much softer than she intended.
Lena smiles at her, just for her. And Gwen knows Lena sees just how special she is.
________________________________________
When Gwen finally leaves Lena’s office, it’s almost half an hour later. Her hair is definitely not as neat as it was when she left the house, but she didn’t bring a comb with her, so she fixes it with her hands as best she can. She stumbles out the door, blaming her imbalance on her new heels, and falls into her seat beside Alice.
“What took you so long?” Alice asks, an undercurrent of suspicion in her voice.
“Lena had some paperwork for me,” Gwen says.
“Those are some odd-looking papercuts,” Alice says, glancing at Gwen’s neck.
She scrambles to pull out her pocket mirror, almost dropping it in the process. Her hair was fine, her clothes were on properly, her lipstick was perfect — what had she missed?
Gwen sees the marks forming on her neck, and curses herself for forgetting to buy concealer over the weekend.
________________________________________
There’s never a dull moment with Lena, Gwen finds. There are quiet ones, of course, sweet words whispered into pillows and blankets, eyes shaping the words their tongues won’t form. But there’s always so much feeling. Sometimes, it boils over. Those moments are less quiet.
Neither she nor Lena are the type to yell. But what they lack in volume, they make up for with ferocity. Quality over quantity, and all that. Lena’s remarks are always sharp, cutting, and Gwen matches her every time. Their fights never actually get resolved. Just forgotten.
But Gwen’s had a little trouble forgetting, lately.
________________________________________
“Gwen, we’re going to be late.”
“We have an hour, we’ll be fine.”
Lena never likes adapting. Gwen found this endearing at first, a sort of reflection of her own stubbornness, but she soon grew to feel otherwise. Lena always has plans she likes to follow. They’re usually for the benefit of both of them, like her plan to always arrive at work a few minutes apart. Gwen knows it’s for both of them. But that doesn’t mean she has to like it.
Sometimes when Lena speaks to her, her voice becomes slow, emphatic. Like she thinks Gwen doesn’t understand. Like she doesn’t know just how much Gwen understands about her. “Gwen, we agreed we’d get ready early so we wouldn’t have to arrive together.”
“I know what we agreed!” Gwen snaps, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to condescend to me.”
“I’m just making sure you haven’t forgotten,” Lena says. It’s meant to reassure her, but it doesn’t sound like it.
“Well, I haven’t.”
“Then why aren’t you letting me get ready?” Lena asks, and a hint of annoyance shines through. It should deter Gwen, but it’s the first emotion she’s gotten out of Lena in hours, and she’s desperate for more.
“Maybe I just want to spend time with my girlfriend. Is that too much to ask?” Gwen says acidly, expecting Lena to hit back with some scathing quip.
There’s a beat.
“Girlfriend?” Lena asks, and Gwen’s insides go cold.
“I—” Gwen says, but the words get stuck in her throat and she swallows them down, feeling them cut her as they go. “I thought—”
“Is that what you thought?” Lena asks, stepping away from the bed. And she sounds so innocent, so honest, so bland that Gwen wants to grab a knife and cut her open to see something red and beating and bloody in Lena’s chest, to prove she has a heart, even though she tries so hard to pretend not to.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Gwen hisses, and it’s so unlike her to lose control of herself but if Lena won’t admit to her emotions, Gwen has enough for the both of them. “You knew what this was right from the start, you were the one who wanted to talk.”
“But we never actually did much talking, did we?” Lena muses, and Gwen sees right through her apologetic pretence. Lena is scared. Of what, it’s unclear. Of Gwen, maybe. Gwen has always been ambitious, dangerously so, and perhaps Lena finally sees her for the threat she is. But Gwen thought Lena had always known that. She thought Lena understood.
“Fine then,” Gwen says, grabbing Lena’s hands and pulling her towards the bed. “Let’s talk now.”
“I don’t think so.” Lena twists her hand out of Gwen’s grip and reaches for her suit, pressed and ready, immaculate. Just like Lena. “We’ll be late.”
“You can stand to be late for once.”
“No, you can stand to be late, Gwen. I’m your manager.”
“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment, then?”
Gwen’s tongue doesn’t suit vulgar words. She hates that Lena brings it out of her. The words come out much harsher than she meant them, or maybe they’re not harsh enough.
It hardly matters either way. Lena does not return to Gwen’s apartment.
________________________________________
Lena goes back to acting like Gwen isn’t special. Gwen knows she’s acting, but she can’t prove it. Lena is infuriatingly good at pretending. That, or she’s just good at avoiding Gwen.
Alice doesn’t catch on, for a while. It’s not like Gwen’s going to tell her. But one morning, when Lena sends for Gwen, Alice shoots her a wink. Gwen’s expression must be really foul, because Alice’s face morphs into something like realisation, and she stops, turning back to her work. Small mercies, Gwen supposes.
When she leaves Lena’s office, Alice pulls her aside.
“Hey,” Alice says, and the voice that usually grates on Gwen’s nerves is uncharacteristically kind. “You alright?”
Gwen glares at her. “I’m fine, Alice. Whatever gave you the impression that I wasn’t?”
Alice shrugs. “Just a hunch.” She glances towards Lena’s office, and back at Gwen. She opens her mouth to say something, then appears to think better of it. With a small squeeze to Gwen’s arm, she is gone.
________________________________________
It's not that Gwen isn’t sad to see Teddy go, but she does breathe a sigh of relief at the thought that the new guy might not indulge Alice’s ridiculousness. She finds out she was wrong quickly enough, but it was a nice thought.
Her annoyance at this leads to her being slightly more bitter towards Lena than she should’ve been, which is how Gwen finds herself in Lena’s office yet again. She sits at Lena’s command, not because she wants to, but because she’d rather not drag this out for the sake of being stubborn.
“Another ‘performance review’? Can we make it a bit quicker this time?” she asks, coating her voice in that sugary mock politeness that Lena always hated.
Lena is not happy about it. “You’re aware you are significantly behind your caseload?”
Gwen seethes. As if Lena doesn’t know why she might be finding it difficult to be as efficient as she used to. “Because I’m actually trying to process them correctly. You can have it right or you can have it fast.”
But it turns out that this isn’t what Lena is upset about. For one, unlikely moment, Gwen thinks Lena might want to talk about what happened. It’s been weeks since they’ve even alluded to it, but maybe she’s finally ready.
“Last night at Teddy’s leaving event, you were openly disrespectful towards me in front of the new hire. This is not acceptable.”
Of course not.
Gwen’s surprise shows in her voice, replacing the venom for a few seconds. Of all the things she could have picked, this is how Lena chooses to reprimand her?
But Lena’s tone is calm and unbothered, as ever. “I’m well aware you dislike me, Gwen, and that’s entirely your prerogative—” Gwen rolls her eyes. How generous of her. “—but I am still your manager and undercutting my authority in front of a new team member is deeply inappropriate.”
Gwen has had enough of this. She heard all of this the day Lena left, and she has infinitely better things to do than sit and listen to people repeat themselves. “Understood. Now, if that’s all—”
“It’s not. Sit down.”
Gwen sighs to let it be known that she does not like this. She sits anyway.
“If you hate working here so completely, you are perfectly within your rights to resign. No one is forcing you to stay here.”
Gwen sneers. Does Lena really think she’s getting rid of her that easily? “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Lena looks at her, and Gwen almost flinches back with how blank that stare is. Like Lena has drawn the blinds on herself, and Gwen can’t see in anymore. “Honestly, it more or less balances out.” That’s a lie. It has to be. “You are difficult to manage—” Gwen stifles a laugh. That’s true enough. “—but hiring new staff is always something of a pain.
“What do you actually want, Gwen?”
Gwen leans forward, her seat creaking in protest. Gwen never wanted to tell Lena this, back when they were together. If “together” is even the right word. But she sees no reason to hide it now, so she does not hesitate.
“Your job.”
Lena is finally, blissfully silent for a moment. It’s short, but it’s there. Gwen always liked catching her off guard.
“You think you could do it better?” Lena asks, as if she doesn’t believe it.
“I do.”
Lena considers this for a moment. Gwen always thought Lena knew, on some level, what Gwen wanted. Perhaps she did, and just hoped it wasn’t true. Either way, Lena doesn’t seem comforted by Gwen’s admission.
“I’ve always known you thought you were slumming it down here, but I never actually considered you might think of this as the first step of a career. Most people simply move on within 12 months or so.”
“I’m not most people,” Gwen says, and no matter what Lena says, Gwen knows she agrees.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Unfortunately, I know what climbing this particular ladder entails, and you don’t have what it takes.”
Gwen rolls her eyes again, deciding that the wall deserves her gaze more than Lena does. Does she really think she can dissuade Gwen from this? Perhaps they never really knew each other after all. “Surprise, surprise.”
“I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but I really do fear your ambition is misplaced here.”
She’s not sorry at all. Neither is Gwen, as she stands to leave.
“Mmhm. Well, good talk as always. Excellent use of my time. Let me know if you have any other gems of wisdom you want to spit in my face.”
Gwen tosses her hair as she leaves. It’s a pettier move than she’s used to. Beneath her, really. But it’s satisfying, nonetheless.
So is ignoring Lena’s protests and slamming the door shut.