Work Text:
Have you ever read a word over and over so many times that it didn’t even seem like a word anymore? Did the letters start to look a little less like the alphabet you learned in kindergarten and more like ancient runes from some far-off alien planet?
After reading the same equation over for approximately the two hundredth time that night, that was how Ava felt.
Usually, when the numbers started to look less like numbers and she could barely understand 2 + 2 anymore, she would call it quits. Take a break. Go out to the parking lot with a cigarette and stare up at the stars while, for once, not trying to calculate their trajectory in relativity to the nearest major celestial body.
Not tonight, though. She could feel herself nearing the cusp of something- some breakthrough- and she held it with an iron fucking fist.
Ava was in the kind of situation most physicists had wet dreams about. Being inside an interspatial anomaly 24/7? Getting to observe it up-close and personal any time you want? Yeah. That’s the stuff. And she decided not to let it go to waste. Which led to nights like tonight, where she scribbled at a notebook like a madman by the light of the shitty dollar store reading lamp that she got in her stocking during a Christmas that seemed way too far away now.
A faint crackle of static made her raise her head (the back of her neck hurt like hell, she realized) and look over to the table near the counter, where the radio sat.
“Ava, shouldn’t you be gettin’ to bed?” The hushed voice of a (unnecessarily, thought Ava) concerned Effie whispered through the speaker. “It’s, quite frankly, an ungodly hour of the morning. And I say this only because I believe even He is not awake at this time.”
“Five more minutes,” she mumbled, turning back to her notes. Wow. She barely even understood what she was writing. Was that supposed to be a 4?
“You and I both know that isn’t true, dear.” Ava sighed, rolling her shoulders back and wincing. The back of her neck and shoulders ached like hell. Her hands, too, she realized- and now that she realized, she wouldn’t have so easy a time tuning it out anymore.
Shit.
She decided to try anyway. But just as she thought she might be able to-
“Ava?”
Goddamn you, Caspar, she thought as she looked towards the counter. Not an unusual thought for her to have.
He stood from his place behind the counter, fumbling around atop it for his glasses for a few moments before finding them and putting them on. A little crooked, but on nonetheless. His brown hair was tousled and matted from sleep, and if she wasn’t so busy Ava would be making fun of him for it. Right now, though, she wanted him gone more than anything.
“Go back to bed, Caspar,” she said before turning back to her work, hoping the frustration in her voice carried through and overpowered the exhaustion.
“Okay- first of all, no, fuck you, I have to pee. Second of all, shouldn’t you be going to bed?” He asked, looking a little more concerned than she liked. “It’s like- three in the morning.”
“I can sleep when I’m done with this.”
“Or now. Now works too.”
“Hmm… no. No, I don’t think it does.”
Caspar sighed, walking over to her booth. “You can’t keep doing these all-nighters, Ava.”
“What do you mean, ‘keep’? This is only the- what, third one this week?”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“We exist in an inter-spatial anomaly, Caspar. Wednesday doesn’t exist.”
“By that logic, neither do weeks.”
Ava raised her head to look him in the eye while arguing- asserting dominance and all that- and made the terrible mistake (? Is it a mistake if it’s involuntary?) of wincing. Whoops.
The concern on his face instantly went from a 2 to a solid 7. “Are you- are you okay?”
“What, me? Yeah. No. Fine. Just a little stiff. I’ll be okay. Didn’t you have to pee?”
“Yeah. And you better be asleep when I get back.”
She was, in fact, not asleep when he got back. He wasn’t surprised. She was, though, rolling her head in slow circles in an attempt to alleviate the pain in her neck. It wasn’t working.
Instead of coming over to berate her again, Caspar made a beeline for the kitchen. She sighed in relief. He was getting a snack, and going back to bed to leave her in peace for the rest of the night. Hopefully.
A few minutes later, he emerged from the kitchen and… walked right past the counter. Towards her. Goddamnit.
He approached the table and, before Ava even had the chance to tell him to get out, he put a shape on the table, looking rather proud of himself as he did. That was the best way she could describe it. A shape. A weird, white, lumpy, oblong shape.
“What- Caspar, what the hell is that?”
“It’s a sock.”
“Either you need glasses, or something is very wrong with your feet.”
“No, it’s- it’s got rice in it.”
“Why.”
“Gloria was telling me that the one heating pad we have almost electrocuted her the last time she used it, so-“
“Okay? What makes you think I need one?”
“Ava. C’mon. You’ve been sitting there working for like- days straight and you’re obviously sore. Just use it.”
She was, despite all the denying she was about to do. It was a problem she’d always had- sitting and working for too long made the back of her neck and shoulders sore as hell. Coat hanger pain, she thought it was called. She didn’t know. She’s not a doctor. Nevertheless, she commenced the denying.
“I’m fine, Caspar. I don’t need your- hot sock, or whatever.”
“You do. You do need the hot sock.”
“I do not want anything that is referred to as a hot sock.”
“YOU’RE the one who called it a hot sock.”
“Yeah. Because I don’t need it.”
Caspar raised his eyebrows at her, conveying an extremely clear message of really?
“Ava, I am being 100% serious when I say I will sit here and hold this thing on your shoulders if I have to.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m gonna.”
“Don’t.”
Her words very obviously fell on deaf ears. He draped it over her shoulders, keeping his hand on the back of her neck to hold it in place, and she really didn’t want to admit how much better it made her feel.
“Ava.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you falling asleep?”
Fuck. Why didn’t she shove him out of the booth while she had a chance?
“No. Fuck you.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
He reached his free hand over to her, taking her glasses off and setting them down on the table.
“You’ve gotta rest so you can keep inevitably pulling all-nighters despite literally everyone telling you not to.”
Ava didn’t dignify him with a response— not a verbal one, at least, but her leaning forward to rest her head on the table was all the answer he needed.
She hated it when she wasn’t right. She especially hated it when she wasn’t right and Caspar was.
Maybe, though, she could let him be right. Just this once.