Title: Coffee and Donuts
Character: Meera Malik; Donald Ressler
Summary: The routinely habits of Meera Malik and Donald Ressler.
Author's Note: Inspired by some tumblr ask thing about what people's ships to (who does the most, who asked who out first, etc.)
Disclaimer: The Blacklist and all things related are property of Jon Bokenkamp and NBC. If I owned it, the show would probably be a far better state than it is now.
Food
Meera supports two children, so she's no stranger to cooking. Considering Donald lives on his own, he's learned how to cook himself. The duty as it were is half-and-half whenever their visiting each other.
· Conflict
Fighting is a natural occurrence between Malik and Ressler, and it's primarily professional, triggered by the admonishing looks Ressler receives from Meera in the aftermath of an assignment. It makes Ressler feel like a child being scolded by a teacher, so confrontation is almost guaranteed. In rare cases, Ressler'll get roped into helping Indra with something after her mother's told her "no", or he'll make Meera angry when she refuses to talk about something and he pushes her.
· Distance
Meera spends most of her time by herself when out on assignment. She travels around, picking up trinkets she knows Deeva and Indra will like. On her off days, she spends it sleeping or hanging out with Indra, Deeva's a little too busy to hang out with her "square" of a mother. Ressler, well, most speculate he spends most of his free time working in his office or sleeping at home.
· Endearment
Meera has a nickname for Donald for every given occasion (Haircut, Slick, Suit, Officer Friendly, Trump, etc.), whereas Donald seems content to call her "Meerkat" (it was the only think he could think of that seemed remotely close to her name) or "Tiny" and "Tiny Dancer" (it seemed appropriate that one time they posed as a chummy husband and wife). The last one she doesn't like, so he tries to never use it.
· Sharing
Who decides to pay for meals or a date tends to depend on who initiates the situation. If Donald initiates the date, he typically pays for dinner. If It's just a friendly night on the town (a trip to the bar or a club), they'll pay for whatever they ask for. Meera usually prefers to eat at home.
· Thief
Meera rarely invites Donald to sleep at her house, particularly whenever her children are around. The only time they really sleep together is when they have sex or fall asleep on the couch watching movies at his apartment. The aftermath of sex is struggling to reclaim the sheets from Meera, who rolls herself up like a taco.
· Presentation
The first time they celebrated their birthdays together, the only thing Donald could think to give Meera was a custom made switch blade. Meera got him a mug with a blue tie pained on the front.
· Memory
They've been trained to never forget things, on and off the field. Where all the exits are, where a particular person is setting, the position of a mug. The little details catch their eye no matter what. Remembering special events are cakewalk. Forgetting where Ressler might've put the keys is never a problem… most of the time.
· Profanity
Donald assumes it's because of her children that Meera rarely swears, no matter the situation. The one time she uttered "shit" in the presence in Indra, she looked absolutely remorseful while her daughter just laughed and forgave her. "I'm eleven, not five. Every kid in school swears." Donald, on the other hand, has no such compulsions, especially if he's angry. While he is professional, a few drinks will have him swearing like sailor at the tiniest misstep or mistake he makes.
· Harm's Way
Depending on the severity of their injuries, there are typically three ways Meera or Donald react to harm.
Stage one: Nonchalance. Meera has noticed Donald is quite prone to cutting himself with knives in the kitchen, she'll maintain distance to observe the situation unless he asks for help. It's usually nothing to be concerned about. If she happens to cut herself, Donald will ask if she's alright and offer to help. Meera will wave him off and take care of the superficial cut herself.
Stage two: Protocol. Injury on duty is not an uncommon event, but there's nothing rehearsed about the situations where it happens. If one of them goes down, it takes all the usual self-control to check for a pulse (if they're proximity, not in the line of fire) and focus on the task at hand. Someone else will take care of them, the target is the priority.
Stage three: Hang the rules. As creatures of self-control, it takes more than a little effort to push them beyond rational borders. Even with someone with a hair trigger temper like Donald. The one time he damned his professionalism, Meera had been used as a human shield and shot in the abdomen. Donald shot the man in the forehead, almost in spite of the request to keep him alive. They had to track his down his partner under 48 hours. Elizabeth spent the better part of her time trying to figure out why he reacted the way he did. When she was straightforward, he evaded her questions and profiling gaze. When the case the solved, he disappeared and stayed with a sour, but grateful Meera, who chided him for breaking protocol until visiting hours were over and she was under a drug induced asleep.
Donald and Aram had gone missing. Reddington suspected it was a work of an operative working under Tom Keen's order. Meera never showed it, but she was concerned. When they caught the middleman, Elizabeth was an unfortunate spectator of her quiet anger. Elizabeth watched her toy with a man in the interrogation room "at her discretion" and on Cooper's order (according to Meera) until he gave her what she wanted. Twenty nails and two kneecaps later, Elizabeth was relaying information on the run, and holding onto her seatbelt for dear life when Meera's GMC barreled down the road, siren roaring overhead. A SWAT team followed closely behind. The plot was foiled when they found them, half drowned, fingers sticking out of a steel grate in some obscure warehouse turned sleeper cell. After they pulled them out of their watery hole, outwardly, Meera appeared calm. She finished her report and disappeared from the blacksite altogether. Donald, stuck in the hospital until the following morning, earned himself a hug (she wasn't quite sure if she should kiss him at the time) and a simple request, "Next time, wait for backup, you dolt."
· Would Be Lover(s)
Nothing seems quite organic between them. There always seems to be some manufactured reason for the things that happen between them. Donald pretended that Meera's interest in him was a mere passing appraisal, especially with how he fouled up in the parking lot. Meera looked for reasons not to act on her feelings, the vague notion that she might get back together with her ex (but she didn't want to), that her kids might not like him (especially her eldest) and that he could be a tosser at the best of times (what an awful temper).
It takes an undercover job and a simple dance at some hot-spot of a party at a gala for them to drop any pretense. She hated the comparison, but the chime of the clock and the way he swayed as he held her, felt like something out of Indra's favorite fairytale. She found herself kissing back, fingers stroking the back of his neck. When she pulled away, he smiled, his lips one shade redder thanks to her lipstick. Meera went to bed, hot and frustrated, and a little more than annoyed with herself that enjoyed that kiss as much as she did.
· Landing Approach
The aftermath, of course, was long absences and awkward avoidance's from Meera, who seemed content to contemplate what entering a relationship with Ressler meant if she decided to peruse it. Maybe Elizabeth noticed, maybe Aram asked what was going on. It was hard not to when Meera seemed to leave every time he was in mid-sentence of asking her something, and focusing on something on her laptop. "Did you blow her cover or something?" Aram inquired, puzzled. "No," Donald replied, indignant.
He caught her on the way to her car one night, plans to drown his frustration in pizza derailed. He closed the car door loud enough for her to hear and waved on approach. "Can we talk?" He asked her, tone even. Meera sighed, face sinking behind her scarf. "What about?" She replied. "The kiss," Donald was straight forward, not in the mood to play guess games. Meera kept her face obscured by the scarf, but her eyebrows raised as if to ask 'are you serious?' "I liked it, kissing you," Donald confessed.
When she didn't say anything, he added, "I got the feeling you liked it, too." She rolled her eyes. "It was a cover, it was a supposed to be convincing, Ressler."
"That can't have been just a cover. I've been kissed by undercover agents; they don't kiss like you did."
"No, no, it wasn't," Meera said. "Are you saying you're interested in me?"
"Yeah."
"After making very clear we're not here to be friends or get to know each other?"
Donald had the sense to look embarrassed. "Okay, I was an asshole. I'm sorry."
"Well, it's good you can admit that, I suppose."
Donald frowned. "A guy can change his mind… right?"
"Of course, it just strikes me as odd is all."
"It strikes you as odd?"
"Well, let's say I said what you said to me and later, I parked out in front of my car and waited for you, asked you out because we happened to kiss because out of a mutual attraction on one mission. That wouldn't that the least bit odd?"
He seemed to think about it for a moment. "Yeah, maybe."
"Well, then you can't blame me."
"Can I make it up to you over coffee?"
"It can't hurt," Meera sighed. "Throw in a box of donuts and you've got a deal, at least for tonight."
"Alright, I can do that."
"I can't be out too late, though. I promised a friend I would call at four."
"We're just going to a donut shop, not a night club. Relax, Malik."
· Falling
After the first night together with coffee and donuts, it became a daily routine after work (if neither of them were concerned about their waistlines). The talking part was something of a bumpy road if wasn't connected to work. There were things they rather keep to themselves, detrimental as it was to their communication, so they talk about the rudimentary things. What's your favorite color; Meera's was lavender, Donald's was "plaid", to which Meera contested plaid was a pattern not a color, but he argued it counted anyway. Favorite holiday? Donald was partial to St. Patrick's Day (not that he needed an excuse to drink copious amounts of alcohol), Meera liked celebrating her daughter's birthdays.
Meera admitted that years in her profession had made her keen on "people watching"; making up stories about absolute strangers, which in turn helped her with cover identities if she was allowed to assist in that area of her job. Donald was slower about being forthcoming, but admitted he liked - or tried to like - fishing up until the hook got caught in the middle of his hand. He swore off fishing afterward and stuck to admiring cars he couldn't afford to own all at once.
The day he knew Meera was serious about their relationship, she told her daughters, Indra and Deeva, she was seeing him. It was a week or so after he arrived unannounced at her doorstep with a present. He hadn't expected to find anyone at the house except her, to be greeted by a teenage girl glaring daggers at him suddenly put him on alert. Meera stood next to the chair he sat in, as if to act as a moderator whatever was likely to happen.
"Isn't this your fiend before?" Indra asked, tapping her pencil against the little pad on her lap.
"It is, yes," Meera said.
"And you're dating him?" Deeva was the one to speak that time.
Meera looked down at Donald then back her daughter. "Yes, we're seeing each other."
Deeva rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair. "Unbelievable."
"Mum, what about dad? Didn't you say you were trying to work things out with him?" Indra said.
"I did say that, yeah."
"So, what's changed? What makes him better than our dad?"
"Nothing- I'm dating Ressler because I like him, not because he's better than Emerson," Meera responded. "Emerson and I, we tried to work things out, but he didn't think we could go back to the way were. He didn't want to peruse a relationship with me and I have to respect that."
"Did you even try?"
"Yes! I spent months talking to him-"
"Months, that's it?"
"Well, how long would you have liked me to take? Years?"
"If that's what it takes, yes."
"Well, I'm sorry, people don't work like that. Now you're father and I are still friends, we don't hate each other, and you're not being separated from him-"
"But he can't live with us anymore?"
"That is his choice, and besides, that's what a divorce is. A separation. I thought, maybe you'd be reasonable about this."
"Reasonable? About you dating this ponce?"
"Watch your mouth, Deeva," Meera snapped.
"Whatever, I don't have to deal with this," Deeva stood up from the couch. "Have fun with my mum, I guess."
"Hey," Donald stood up that time, nearly knocking Meera over in the process. Deeva glared at him, a spitting image of her mother. "I get that you're upset, kid-"
"Don't call me kid, I have a name!"
"Deeva, I'm sorry," Donald amended. "Don't disrespect your mother like that. You wanna badmouth someone, you badmouth me."
"Fine, you're a tosser and your plaid shirt is ugly," Deeva stormed out of the living room and made her way out of the house, swinging the doors open hard enough that they clashed against the frame. "Deeva. Deeva, get back here!" Meera followed after her daughter, paying no attention to the Donald and Indra.
There was a stretch of silence before Indra stood from the couch. Donald watched her, a little more embarrassed he'd been caught between mother and daughter. "Sorry about that, Deeva was really hoping… well, you know what she was hoping," She said.
Donald nodded. "And you?"
"Yeah, I was… kinda," Indra shrugged.
"Kinda?"
"Dad wasn't really around when I was little, so I don't remember him like Devi does," Indra clarified. "So, kinda."
"Look, I'm not trying to break your family- your mother and I… we like each other."
"You don't love her?"
"I- um," Donald bit inside of his mouth. "I'm not sure yet?"
"But you're serious?"
"I'm committed to our relationship yeah."
"Mum wouldn't introduce you unless she was serious about it, at least I figure she wouldn't," Indra clarified.
The front door opened, Meera entered the house with her eldest daughter in tow by the arm. Deeva struggled to get out of her mother's grasp. "Go up to your room and cool off," She told her. "I don't want you on streets until your head is clear."
"My head is perfectly clear," Deeva snapped.
"Get upstairs, now."
Deeva stomped up the stairs, hands wiping the tears from her face.
"Anyway, I'll be upstairs. Nice meeting you again, Mr. Ressler," Indra ran out of the living room.
"You too, Indra."
Scooting past her mother with a tight-lipped smile, she hurried up the stairs. Moving away from the chair, Donald approached her, not sure what to do.
"Well, I botched that."
"It could've gone better," Donald responded. "I probably made things worse."
"No, you didn't do anything wrong," Meera sighed. "Next time, I'll just prep them a little better."
"You got another guy waiting somewhere?" Despite how she was feeling, Meera found herself smiling at his joke.
"Hey, you never know," She pushed him playfully. "You wanna drink?"
Before he could answer, Michelle Branch's "Are You Happy Now" started playing loudly above their heads. A door opened and footfalls rumbled above them toward the stairs. "Mum! Deeva's playing her awful music again," Indra complained. Donald and Meera exchanged weary glances.
"No, I think I should just take off. Let things cool off here. I'll talk to you later, okay?"
"Yeah," Meera replied as Donald leaned slightly for a kiss.
The following weeks weren't pleasant for Meera, even with someone like Ressler to lean on.
FIN.