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“Doctor Grace,” Stratt’s flat intonation echoes through the nearly empty hallway. She beckons him with a single bored look. “A moment, if you please.”
Doctor Grace is not very pleased to walk over and talk to her, thank you very much. Especially not when he can tell that Stratt is freezing in that thin sweater she’s wearing. The sleeves fall just short of her wrists and her poor defenseless fingers will freeze and turn red pretty soon. Ugh. A cold Stratt means a really mean Stratt. Twelve-year old girl mean. She’ll tug at her sleeves under the table during meetings and then frown at the sight of the mangled fabric for the rest of the day. Somehow, this always becomes Grace’s problem.
“Captain,” he acknowledges her request with a salute. He wraps up his conversation with one of Dmitri’s younger interns and takes off his oversized blue cardigan. The questions these kids come up with, really! He was definitely not this smart when he was their age.
“E-mail me if you have a problem with it again, alright? Alright.” He quickly presses a fruit roll-up to the intern’s palm, hoping that Stratt is too far away to see him feed her caged animals. She’s been threatening to have his sugar levels checked periodically but he’s not above retaliating by ratting her out to Dr. Lamai about her sleeping patterns. He hasn’t done so yet, though, because it’s too good of a card to waste on whether or not he’s pre-diabetic. He knows he is.
As he walks over and folds his cardigan over his arm, he reminisces on the good old days where he owned two oversized cardigans that served him well enough for any occasion. They clashed horribly with his button-ups and t-shirts, but what did that matter if wearing one made him feel like he was receiving a really warm hug? Also, nobody had really complained about his bright orange cardigan. To his face.
No, his cardigan woes began after he arrived at Stratt’s Vat and discovered a peculiar pattern. When thinking through an answer, Grace noticed that Stratt liked to rub the finger pad of each of her fingers against the pad of her thumb in a soothing and repetitive manner, one after the other, almost like she’s counting. But she will only do this if her sleeves are long enough to cover her hands. A Stratt without her usual long-sleeves means she’s cold and irritable because she’s lost a comfort and that Stratt has a non-existent threshold for dealing with annoying people. This, in part, means that she stops censuring herself so strictly and allows a few overdramatic and painful looking eye-rolls to accent her clipped retorts. Unfortunately for Grace, eye-rolls are a big part of his conversations with Stratt, and he knows first hand that if she overdoes it, she will develop cluster migraines. Grace has a flow chart of this phenomenon hidden somewhere in one of his notebooks.
Stratt Cold Hands —> Impatient Stratt Eye-Rolls —> Debilitating Stratt Migraines —> Rumored Stratt Horrors
To prevent Stratt Horrors from occurring (ex. Someone swears she threw a printer over board when it wouldn’t work for her but printed everybody else’s papers), Grace likes to nip these situations well before they bud—namely, prevent Stratt Cold Hands first and ensure her hands are covered with a longer sleeve.
His first foray into Project: Stratt Cold Hands could have gone better. He really shouldn’t have tried offering his orange cardigan, but it was the one he was wearing that day! It’s very soft and has cute little poppies that are hand stitched all over. It makes him happy and reminds him of California.
He forgets sometimes that people have no taste.
Stratt had taken one look at the bundle of fabric that he was failing to discreetly transfer onto her lap in the middle of a meeting and actually turned her nose up at it. He had gaped open-mouthed at her until she had finally exhaled one of those long and tired sighs and deigned to give him an answer.
“It does not go with my hair or outfit.”
Grace was wearing jeans with the bright yellow shirt he had worn to sleep in last night, but whatever, they have different standards. Orange doesn’t go well with a plain black turtleneck, apparently.
Later, he learns that she has no problem wearing his cardigan with the dancing foxes, even though the foxes are orange and so should then also clash with her hair—but whatever. He’s not going to make the same mistake again and accidentally start a fight with his boss about whether or not it’s rude to ask a woman if her hair color is natural or if she colors it, and he’s also not going to prolong that fight by disagreeing with said woman when she insists that her hair color is closer to blonde than red. That argument lasted thirty-seven minutes and he spent the last five of those minutes staring at the ground and nodding dutifully while she whisper-yelled in rapid German and pointed dangerously at him with her freezing finger. It took him a couple of months after that to wear his orange cardigan around her again.
After that, Grace did what any other reasonable man would do when his boss insults his limited cardigan collection. He buys more cardigans with said boss’ money. This time, he buys them in all the boring neutral colors that he knows she wears and therefore cannot reject.
(More importantly, they match his outfits, too. Because he bought those cardigans to be worn by him, Grace. Not because she won’t wear his clothes when she’s cold. Duh.)
Project: Stratt Cold Hands progresses rather nicely after that.
Today, he is wearing a navy blue cardigan with those brown leather patches that are stitched on the elbows. Grace feels very smart and accomplished in it. He wonders if Stratt will like it, if she’ll hook her thumbs over the sleeves and hide her freezing fingers in whatever body heat he’s left behind…
“That’s mine,” Stratt says immediately when he finally catches up to her and offers up his cardigan. “Why do you have it,” she asks, kind of.
“Uh, no. This one’s mine, you klepto.” He takes her coffees from her with one hand but doesn’t let go of the cardigan just yet. Something about how tightly she’s grasping it makes his eye twitch. He really likes this one.
“First of all, this is a woman’s cardigan. I’ve owned it for ten years.” She yanks hard on the fabric and Grace’s elbow is forcibly extended when he doesn’t let go. “This is not yours.”
“Nuh-uh.” He yanks back. “I got this cardigan when we flew to London last April, remember? I lost your credit card? It has these elbow patches that make me look all academic and stuff.” He twists his elbows around to try and show her.
“No,” she doesn’t bother to yank the cardigan this time, just takes a tiny step closer to him. “I put those patches there when the fabric started fraying from overuse.”
“Wha—you don’t even…look, what color is this?” He is 98.7% certain that Stratt has never worn this shade of blue. He is also aware that he is standing in the middle of a hallway gripping one half of his cardigan and playing tug-of-war with a dictator. Somehow he is still balancing both of Stratt’s coffees in the crook of his elbow.
“Black. I’ve been looking for this for weeks.”
“Stratt.”
“The patches are grey.”
“Stratt. Oh, my god.” His grip slackens and she takes advantage of this by yanking the darn thing from him. Grace recovers quickly. She hates it when he repeats himself for comedic effect. “I think you’re color blind.”
People continue to walk around them. Grace can’t remember if he’s been using his inside voice or not.
Stratt huffs and puts the cardigan on in one move. She turns around and he automatically steps up behind her to sweep her hair out from where it’s caught. When he’s done, she starts walking and he quickly falls in step with her.
His mind goes blank. He just touched Stratt’s hair. Why did he even do that for? He doesn’t even have enough hands available to pull off that maneuver. Is this chivalry? He just touched Stratt’s hair. It was still kinda damp at her nape, too.
“I am not color blind, Doctor Grace. This is my black cardigan,” she continues to walk towards…actually, he doesn't know where they are going. Hadn’t she called him over for something? “And you will stop stealing my clothes.”
That accusation brings his attention fully back into the conversation and he is so taken aback by the blatant lies that he actually starts spluttering.
“M-me?! Stealing?! I have never—! Don’t you dare—!” His voice has gone up in pitch and several people give him weird looks when he clutches at his chest. He’s not even trying to be dramatic this time, he’s genuinely shocked at her audacity because… “You still have my gloves!”
“I put them back in the pocket of your blue cardigan.”
“That IS my blue cardigan!” He hears someone greet him and he waves distractedly.
Stratt makes a big show of patting the two large and empty front pockets and shrugs condescendingly when she comes up with nothing. He’s so busy giving her his best and nastiest side-eye that he fails to realize they’ve walked in to a conference room that is clearly in the middle of a meeting. The lights are off and someone is already presenting at the front. Grace doesn’t care. Kleptomania is a serious disorder.
As they find their seats (who’s running this meeting? Isn’t it almost lunch time?) he spots a weird bundle on top of a table that’s hidden in the corner. It can’t be…can it?
Oh, how perfect!
He starts to smirk and finds it difficult to stop once he starts—he can’t stop it from growing wider! He hopes he doesn’t look like the Grinch but knows he’s failed when Stratt nudges his foot with hers and raises a judgmental eyebrow. He reaches over and scribbles on the margins of what looks like a pretty important paper of hers. Grace vaguely hears the presenter clear his throat.
See anything familiar on the empty table to your right?
Her brow furrows as she scans the room and he sees the exact moment she spots her poor black cardigan discarded on the table. Her lips purse. Grace fights the mad urge to giggle into his hand as Stratt very pointedly closes her eyes and turns her body to face the front of the room again, effectively cutting him off.
Grace has to let out a little giggle. It’s not often he gets to rub something in her face. The presenter keeps droning on and on. What even is this meeting about? He finally starts to pay attention to who’s speaking and squints to read the information on the Power Point slide.
Hey!
He e-mailed her yesterday saying that he didn’t have anything to contribute to this meeting and she agreed and taken it off his schedule! When—how..!
Maybe he should talk to Dr. Lamai about Stratt’s sleeping patterns.
Oh, Dr. Lamai, I’m just so worried. She’s forgetting conversations we had just the day before and she keeps mixing up words and colors. She’s even misplacing her things! Do you think it’s serious?
Yes, an appropriately evil plan. It distracts him for the rest of the presentation.
When the meeting ends, he turns his head away from Stratt when she tries to lean over and whisper something mean, probably. He swears he hears her sharply exhale when he ignores her and stands up to retrieve the gosh darned cardigan from the other side of the room.
When he comes back, Stratt is buttoning up the last button of his gosh darned cardigan—ah, so she’s not going to give it back, huh? That’s fine, Grace has never shied away from feminine-looking clothing.
Never breaking eye contact, he slips one arm through the sleeve of her black cardigan. Her eyes narrow. Grace thinks someone calls her name. She ignores them. Second arm in now, oh—it’s a little tight. That’s still fine, he’s always been told he’s got nice arms.
He can tell she is trying not to smirk.
“You’re still color blind,” he reminds her petulantly as he gathers up his things. He feels something bump against his hip. “Can’t believe you left this behind, though.”
“Yes, well.” She doesn’t elaborate more as she seems to realize that there’s several people waiting to speak to her and they’re all giving them funny looks. It’s probably not a good idea to advertise the fact that they’re wearing each other’s clothes.
Oh, the rumors this will start. He sighs as he reaches into a pocket to deposit a pen and—
“—my gloves!”
Stratt spins on her heel and speed-walks out the door.