Sympathy for the Martyr
"Coffee. NOW."
Nick Vera couldn't quite keep himself from smirking as he slid the cup across the table. "Long night?" he asked, eyebrows raised in undisguised curiosity.
Kat Miller knocked back the coffee with a grimace. "You could say that, yeah." She pointedly ignored his eyebrows, and set about reorganizing the paperwork on her desk. Not because it needed reorganizing, he knew, but because she knew he was watching her.
"Well?" he asked, not wasting any time.
She rolled her eyes in the direction of the coffee machine. He grunted and set about refilling her cup. Oh, she was good at this. Never volunteered information until she'd made him work his ass off to get it. No wonder Stillman had wanted her on the team.
"Veronica has the flu," she offered, finally. Tired and cranky, the corners of her lips nonetheless lifted a little bit as she took in his obvious disappointment.
"That's it?" he demanded, feeling more than a little cheated. She nodded, shrugged, and went back to reorganizing the paperwork that had been so much more organized before she'd started messing about with it. "No hot date? No end-of-the-world disaster?"
"Nope," she replied, and he could see the ghost of a smile begin to spread. "Gotta make coffee for Scotty if you want that kind of excitement."
He grumbled under his breath, and spent the rest of the morning deliberately ignoring her. No point in busting a gut making sure her stupid coffee cup was filled, if all the gossip she had to offer was a sick kid. He was dating a nurse, for Christ's sake. He got enough whining about sick kids on his days off. If she didn't have anything interesting to say for herself, then she could damn well keep her own coffee cup filled.
Later that day, he'd tell himself that he had just happened to see the glittery pink 'get well soon' card (the one with the pretty ballerina on the front), on his way back from a pointless interview. He'd tell himself that he was still mad at her for not having an exotic story to go with the dark circles under her eyes. He'd tell himself that the slight flutter in his chest, when he sauntered back into the office to find her slumped half-asleep over some piece of evidence or another, was simply annoyance at her inability to keep her work and her personal life separate.
He'd remind himself countless times that he was still the big man on campus, that he didn't give the time of day to women and their pointless family drama. But then she took the card and, through the exhaustion and the dark circles and the knowledge that she was set for another sleepless and lonely night when she got home… through all of that, for just a single precious moment, her entire face lit up. And, despite all the things he'd told himself, he couldn't quite keep from lighting up a little bit, too.