Work Text:
“Here.”
Mare looks up from her desk with a frown. Ned’s standing there, rocking on the balls of his feet and holding out a stack of papers, neatly stapled with a few sticky notes attached.
“What’s this?” she asks. “Am I being served?”
Ned gives her a look, then shakes the papers a little. “Just take them.” Hesitantly, she does, and he continues. “The Post-Its are to indicate where signatures are required.”
“So I am being served,” she mutters to herself, before narrowing her eyes at the cover page. “Disclosure of romant—” she begins to read aloud, and she’s cut off by an emphatic shush from Ned. When she looks back up at him, his eyes are wide.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“You’re the one who marched up to my desk at work to give me a—”
“Not. Here,” he hisses.
“Then. Where?” she asks, matching his tone with a smirk. And she’d thought today was going to be another boring Tuesday.
Ned glances around the bullpen, then nods at the unoccupied conference room. When she doesn’t immediately move to get up, he jerks his head impatiently in the direction of the room. Mare would almost find it cute, if she had any idea what he was doing. After a beat, she rises from her desk and follows him in, shutting the door behind her with a soft click.
She faces him, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the edge of the conference table. “So…?”
“So… we kissed.”
Mare grins. “That does ring a bell. I believe I was there.”
His expression softens. “You were most definitely there.”
A little shiver runs up Mare’s spine at the reminder, and she feels compelled to undercut it with a joke. “Had I known there was gonna be paperwork, I’m not sure I would have kissed back.”
Ned glares. “The paperwork is—” His eyes widen. “Wait, where’s the paperwork?”
She shrugs. “I left it on my desk.”
After one panicked moment, Ned dives for the conference room door and hightails it over to her desk to retrieve the missing packet. When he’s returned and shut the door safely behind him, he’s a little out of breath. “You can’t just leave this where people can see, Mare.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have given it to me in the bullpen before lunch on a random Tuesday!”
His mouth opens, then shuts. “Fair point.” He pulls out one of the conference room chairs and slumps into it, letting the papers thwack against the tabletop. “I’ve never done this before! I don’t really know what protocol is for when you—”
She slides into the chair across the table from his, stretching her legs out underneath it. “When you…”
Mare could swear he’s blushing.
“When you…kiss an employee in a hotel hallway after a regional award ceremony.” He shrugs. “There’s not exactly a handbook for that.”
“But there is paperwork.”
“Look, I’m a straight-shooter, Mare.” Ned rubs a hand against his temple, nudging a lock of hair out of place. It’s kind of cute. “Or at least I try to be. I like to cross my T’s and dot my I’s. You know that.”
She smiles softly. “Typo negative. I know.” His answering grin warms her through.
“So…” He stretches the word out, either to buy time or collect his thoughts, then sighs. “So, sue me. I drafted up some paperwork for us both to sign, disclosing our romantic relationship with each other for HR. To cross the T’s and dot the I’s.”
Mare pretends not to be affected by the words “romantic relationship,” and moves on. “Do we even have HR here?”
Ned wiggles his hand back and forth, the universal signal for kinda. “I figure there’s a solid 50/50 chance it’s me. But hey, at least that means we’ll be fully HR-approved, right?”
She chuckles.
“Look, just…” He leans forward and opens the stack of paperwork to the next page, pointing to a paragraph underscored by a cheery yellow Post-It note. “This is where we both sign, acknowledging that there’s a relationship going on that needs to be disclosed.”
“Is there?” Mare can’t help but ask. After all, they’d only kissed—ostensibly to get it out of their systems. And she’d been kind of on a date that night, anyway. And they work together.
“I— well. I suppose if you get into the semantics of the word ‘relationship’—”
“Very romantic, semantics are.”
He huffs. “Well, Mare, we’re journalists, aren’t we? I happen to think semantics can be pretty sexy.”
For a second, he looks like he wants to take it back. Then she nods, slowly, because he’s right. Semantics can be pretty sexy.
Ned clears his throat. “So, yeah, maybe ‘romantic relationship’ is a catch-all term for the sake of the form, but I didn’t think ‘I kissed my best reporter and I kind of want to do it again’ would fit in the little box thingy.”
There’s that warm-all-over feeling again, and Mare ducks her head to hide her smile. A moment passes, and when she looks back up at Ned, she can tell by the creases in his forehead that he’s not sure how she might respond to that. So she does the thing she knows will mean the most to him.
Mare pulls out the pen that had been tucked behind her ear and clicks it. “So, sign on the Post-Its?”
Ned’s answering smile is bright like sunshine. “Yes! Well, no, not on the Post-Its, but—the Post-Its indicate where you should—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve actually encountered forms in the wild before, believe it or not,” she jokes, but she scrawls a looping signature on the first dotted line. He pulls the paperwork from her to sign his own name underneath hers. “So, what are you going to do with this, anyway?”
He flips to the next page and slides it back over to her, pointing to another dotted line marked by a sticky note. “This one here is to indicate that we won’t let the aforementioned relationship impact our work at the Truth Teller in any way. And I’m not totally sure. I guess I just thought the most ethical thing to do would be to have something on file, no matter what happens next?”
She takes her pen back from him, still warm from his grip, and signs her name again. “Speak for yourself. I expect the full gamut of special treatment from you now. And that makes sense. So this is being officially filed into your desk drawer?”
He takes the paper back, then the pen, his thumb brushing against her fingers in the process. “Well you already get all the best assignments, since you’re obviously our best reporter. So I’m not sure what other special treatment you could want. And—yes, basically. But it will make me sleep better at night knowing it’s there, filed away.” His signature joins hers on the next page.
“Oh, I don’t know. Fancy jewelry, exotic vacations on the company dime.”
“Mm, I’ll have to check the budget for travel,” he says, flipping the cover page back on the packet of papers and handing her pen back. “Would you accept a day-trip to Waterville?”
Mare quirks an eyebrow. “Depends. Are you coming with?”
Ned almost looks like he’s blushing again, just a little, and he shuffles the papers on the tabletop before standing up. “Well. That’s all I needed. Thank you for your time.” He clears his throat and heads for the conference room door.
“Wait, Ned.”
He turns, one hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”
“Now that our relationship has officially been disclosed…I feel like we might as well go on an actual date, no? Maybe after work today?” She shrugs one shoulder. “I mean, otherwise, isn’t this just a waste of paper?”
A slow smile blooms on Ned’s face. “Well, we couldn’t have that.”
Yeah. It definitely isn’t just another boring Tuesday.