A/N: Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you all have a lovely holiday season! This is my first Holby fic so there's a 98% chance that I've written slightly OOC at some point, for that, I apologise. It's just fluff and Flac cuteness. It's also written as if the shooting never happened, so Jac is well and working. Hope you enjoy, let me know :)
~•~•~•~
"It's the time of year when a million patients a day are admitted because they've choked on a turkey bone or been electrocuted by fairy lights, and you really want me to be excited?" Jac throws over her shoulder as she takes a patient's notes from her desk and walks through the ward.
Fletch follows her from her office, rolling his eyes at her renowned pessimism. "I'm just saying, a bit of Christmas cheer does wonders for the soul."
"All your Christmas cheer is doing is increasing patients' blood pressures and aggravating me." She drops the file open on the overbed table of Mrs Hope, leaving Fletch to sigh and swivel on his heel.
It's just past midday when she finds herself backed into yet another conversation with the Director of Nursing. Having finished her post-op assessment of a rather bland CABG patient, she returns to her office, blanking their parting gratitude and Christmas wishes.
"Yet another person saved to see it through the holidays," Fletch chirps from behind her. She startles slightly before dropping into the padding of her office chair.
"They'll most likely be spending it in bed, on a ward."
"Scrooge," he comments, slipping a few papers onto her desk that require her signature.
"Could be worse, I could be a pestering man-child with his puerile reasoning and season-dependent good moods," she argues back, plastering a rather insincere smile on her face.
"At least I have good moods."
She feigns offense. "You've wounded my heart."
"Would have to chisel away the ice before I could do that." He sends a wink in her direction before leaving the office once more.
She quirks an eyebrow. It would seem it's one-all.
~•~•~•~
By the time she finds a gap in her schedule for lunch it's nearly three o'clock. Having spent the past hour signing endless forms and completing digital documents, she takes her droopy looking salad from her bag and places it on her desk.
As if on cue, there's a rap on the door.
Not even bothering to respond or look up, she knows who it is before they've even entered.
Again, on cue, Fletch peeps into the room before stepping inside. "Ah, good. Was hoping to catch you."
"Where else would I be?" She asks, prodding at the curling leaves with a plastic fork.
Fletch shrugs. "It's the end of my shift and I wasn't sure if you'd be in surgery."
"Not until four. Mrs Hope decided to ignore the nil-by-mouth instructions, so we had to push back her op." She pauses in her movements, questioning when she'd started feeling the need to explain her life to him. "You should make sure your nurses pay closer attention to the nil-by-mouth patients. Especially the snackers," she adds, as though ridiculing him creates a reason for her oversharing.
At this point, it's just water off a duck's back.
"I don't have to pick the kids up for another half hour. I stupidly thought we could enjoy each other's company until then."
She frowns and slowly lifts her gaze to his. "Well... so long as you sit quietly I don't see why not."
"But you're having lunch," he objects, attempting to find an excuse for a conversation.
"And you're sitting quietly." A pointed glare is directed his way. He swallows any further remarks.
Five minutes of paper rustling and chewing pass. Then six. Then seven.
This wasn't what he'd intended when suggesting that he sit with her.
"Do you ever take a break?"
She sighs and puts her pen down before dragging her eyes up from the desk.
"Do you ever take a break from talking?"
"Seven minutes is a personal record."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're always unnecessarily smug?"
"They have, and I said it was something I pride myself on."
There's a beat as she processes his words, but then a crack… followed by a full-blown beam of a smile. She's laughing!
"I'll give you that one," she chuckles. "Tell me, how did your brain come up with such a sharp response?"
"It has its moments. You've been keeping me on my toes with your quick-fire comebacks all day."
"Fine."
"Fine what?" He asks, confused by her abrupt tone.
"You win. I have nine minutes of my break left."
Jac Naylor is taking a break. He springs from her sofa and clasps his hands together.
"Right! What do you want to do?"
"Calm down, I'm not about to go sellotaping doorways or whatever it is you did in your youth."
He really does wonder what tangents her mind has to take to reach some of these verbal destinations.
"Uh… okay. How about Christmas?" She huffs but he ignores her protests. "What is Father Christmas getting the unappeasable Jac Naylor?"
"Unless there's something I don't know about, then nothing."
He rolls his eyes and sighs. "Fine, forget the little fat man in a red and white suit. What are you getting for Christmas?"
Her brows knit together before repeating, "Nothing."
And then he realises that her answer hadn't been said to challenge his childish insistence on Mr Claus, but rather had been said in truth. His face softens as hers only sharpens.
"No," she says. But on seeing his eyes bore further into hers, she continues. "No, Adrian, I don't want your pity."
"But it's Christmas…" He murmurs, as if that excuses his reaction.
"I'm really not bothered."
"Okay, then. What's been your favourite Christmas present?"
"I don't have one."
"You must do."
"Nope."
"Worst?"
"I don't know… Probably a dead mouse in my bed," she replies.
He's about to laugh out of habit but stops himself. Something about this doesn't quite fit in with Jac's usual ammunition of dry comedy, sarcasm and blatant disregard; her eyes are staring too harshly at her computer screen and her shoulders are tense, her frame practically rigid.
"Look, I have a lot to be getting on with-" She attempts to shrug off the comment.
"Hang on, you can't just say something like that and not expect some sort of discussion?"
"I can, and I am."
"Jac."
"Don't you have children to be hoarding or something?" She nods towards the door.
It's far too early to be collecting his kids but he gets to his feet nonetheless. "I… I didn't-"
"Goodbye, Fletch."
He pauses on his way out to glance back at her in the hopes that she'd change her mind. Instead, she continues scrawling her cursive onto the papers stacked neatly across her desk and doesn't spare him a glance at all.
~•~•~•~
Her shift had finished at seven, naturally she left at eight, and safely arrives home by nine.
She walks through her front door and into quiet; the house dark and still, due to Emma staying at Jonny's. She stops in the hallway, her back pressed against the closed front door and takes a moment to shut her eyes. Her breathing echoes in her chest and the hum of traffic is constant but distant. After a few brief moments, she lazily removes her shoes and jacket then traipses into the living room barefoot, only to curse and fumble for the lightswitch when she steps on something. Duplo. The bane of her life. She runs her thumb over the bubbly imprint of the block in her heel and huffs about the nanny not clearing up while she collects books and soft toys from the floor, eventually tipping them from her arms and into the wicker toy box in the corner of the room.
"Wine," she mumbles, saying it aloud to nobody and dragging herself to the kitchen.
Just as she dislodges the cork from the bottle, her phone rings in her pocket. Cannot catch a break. She considers ignoring it, but checks the caller ID. Fletch. He rarely calls her when they're not on shift.
"Fletch?" She says, vague concern leading to her answering the phone.
"Oh. Hi."
"Why do you sound surprised? You called me."
"I actually wasn't expecting you to answer. I kind of put my foot in it earlier."
"It's forgotten." She switches her mobile to the other hand and pours out a generous helping of wine into a glass.
He wants to disagree, he can't forget. But instead he goes along with her. "Wine O'Clock?" He asks, hearing the sloshing of the burgundy liquid in the background.
She pulls her phone away from her ear and squints at the screen. "Nine-ten."
He frowns, unknowingly repeating her action and checking the time on his mobile. "No, I said wine o'clock, not nine o'clock, you numpty."
"Oh. Then yes."
"Right… Well, I shall leave you to enjoy your evening."
Her reflexive response to end the conversation falters on her lips, but he's dialled off before she has chance to find an excuse to keep him longer.
She thinks it's probably for the best.
Half a bottle of wine later and she finds herself swinging her phone between a thumb and forefinger. She slowly taps her way to Fletch's contact info and then calls his number. She huffs and rolls her eyes as the dialling tone drags on and eventually stops.
"This is Fletch. Sorry I can't-"
"You know, I don't appreciate Christmas. This whole time of year is repulsive," she pauses when realising that he's not stopped talking.
"-leave a message and I'll get back to you." And then the beep of his voicemail echoes down the line.
She clears her throat and starts again. "I'll tell you a secret, but you have to promise that you won't badger me about it. Promise? I'm gonna say that you do. So, I have a motorbike. Do you know why? Because I like speed. I'm like Lightning McQueen. Have you seen that film? You should definitely see that film. Anyway... Cars are too expensive and a waste of a good engine, so I got a motorbike. And I know they're expensive too, but shut up.
"I always wanted a fast car. I especially wanted one of those stupid remote control toys. That's what I wanted for my birthday and Christmas five years running. So there. Now I've told you, you can stop asking me about Christmas, because I know your next question was 'what did I always want from Santa?' Don't deny it! I know you better than you think, Fletcher. Huh, I thought these things usually had a time limit? I was hoping I'd be cut off before now-"
She frowns and looks at her phone. "It cut me off! What the hell?!"
She falls asleep on the sofa ten minutes later. She really can't take her drink anymore, it goes straight to her head.
~•~•~•~
The next morning will go down in history. Only one man on the ward started his shift prepared for the battle. Hell hath no fury like a hungover Jac. (Although she blatantly refuses to admit that she's paying the price of last night's drinking.)
"Good morning," Fletch chirps, walking into her office for the first time today.
Her eyes close and when they open again they're shooting daggers straight through his. "What?" She snarls.
"Forms. Coffee." He holds the items up in turn before placing them on her desk.
She says nothing, her hands in her lap, as she waits for him to leave. Once her office door has clicked shut, she continues rubbing at her temples with one hand, as the other reaches for the folder he'd just delivered. Flipping the cover open, she's surprised to find a sheet of aspirin tablets tucked into the inside pocket. She can only wonder how he seems to know her ailment…
~•~•~•~
The lunchtime influx of patients is dealt with surprisingly efficiently and all surgeries have been reasonably straightforward. As she leaves theatre, she removes the bobble keeping her hair in place and shakes it out, carding her fingers through the golden tresses to set them in place around her shoulders.
"If it isn't Lightning McQueen," Fletch calls from behind the computer screen at the nurses' station as she walks past.
She jolts to a stop and spins to face him, her brow furrowed as a memory niggles at her mind. "What do you mean by that?"
He acts as though he's only just noticed her presence and swivels on the chair to face her. "Sorry?"
"What do you mean?" She repeats, her tone harsher and her eyes boring into his.
"That's your fourth surgery today."
"And?"
"You're whipping through them. A need for speed, our Jac Naylor. Lightning McQueen."
She casts him a baffled look, then continues to her office.
~•~•~•~
She's just finishing her last post-op assessment of the shift when she hears a low, incessant hum coming from the direction of her office. She glances over her shoulder and squints in the dim light of the ward at night but can't see anything untoward through the open door, so resumes her perusal of the patient's notes. It stops for the remainder of her check-up and she thinks no more of it.
But then it starts again as she's walking away from the bed, except it's louder than before… Increasingly so. She makes it to the nurses' station, aggravation growing on her face, when she suddenly jumps and lands with her feet nearly a metre apart.
"What the hell!" She shouts, looking behind her to see the tailend of the toy car that had gone whizzing between her legs. "This is a health hazard! What in God's name made you think that driving one of those things around on a busy ward was a good idea?! Imagine the damage that could have been done!" She has no idea who she's lecturing, but she doesn't care. Right now, she's fuming. "This is unbelievable. Immaturity at its peak."
Just to taunt her, the car skids into a U-turn and shoots past her feet again. She slams the folder in her hands onto the desk and stomps after the toy. She's about to start cursing when it mockingly cruises through the threshold of her office, but then she spies a figure in her peripheral vision. And then the tell-tale snickering of the hospitals D.O.N pierces the silence and she finds him nearly doubled over in a fit of laughter.
"What are you playing at?" She scorns, crossing her arms and turning to face him.
"I'm sorry. To be fair, that didn't go entirely as planned. And this isn't me badgering, I swear. But Merry Christmas, Ms. Naylor." He does a slight bow and swoops his hand out to signal to the remote control car on the floor.
"What?"
Her confusion and agitation make him pause. "This is a present for you. I was going to do a far better presentation ceremony but for some reason I forgot to take into consideration your indisputable concern for health and safety on the ward."
He's uncertain of her reaction as she stands before him with a perfectly neutral face. She's watching him, studying his features, but he can't tell what's going through her mind.
"It's the end of my shift," she states and begins to leave.
"Wait-" Fletch says, but stops when she closes the door and turns back to face him.
"Don't want to come across unprofessional, do we?"
His eyes widen. "Is this you giving in to fun?"
"I can have fun, I usually just prefer to do it safely and in private." She nods her head at the remote control in his hands and wiggles her fingers. He places it in her outstretched palm and watches as something lifts from her face. He can't quite name it, or even describe it, but a shift happens and suddenly he wants nothing more than to see her happy. And when he does see her happy, with a hesitant grin spreading across her face as she fiddles with the controls, he then wants nothing more than to touch her. He clenches his hands into fists and then stretches them out, hoping the action uses up the energy tingling in his fingertips.
"What exactly did I say last night?" She finally asks, popping his reverie. Noticing his silence, she looks up from where she'd had her eyes steadily trained and takes his expression as one of confusion. "I'm assuming I must have called you after you'd hung up."
He clears his throat. "I was asleep, it was nearly one in the morning. You left a voicemail."
She grunts in embarrassment. "Look, I remember… mentioning some sob story about my childhood. I mean, it took me until lunchtime to recall, but…" Her words and train of thought disintegrate as he steps closer and she can feel the gentle brush of his fingertips on her forearm. Her palms get a little sweaty and her heart beats a tad quicker as he hooks his baby finger around hers. Something about the way he tugs their pinkies makes her feel safe and in control, not pressured.
Jac's always been a passionate woman. She rarely has moments like this… Moments where she's aware of everything, instead of acting before she can think it through. It's slow and quiet and wonderfully settling. A moment of calm in the torrents of her life.
She eventually looks up at him and offers a soft, wavering smile. "This better not be a sympathy vote," she whispers. He huffs out a chuckle and shakes his head, the smile still on his face as she reaches up to join their lips. It's chaste and sweet and kindles a warmth inside that she's not felt in a long time. Her arm finally slips over his shoulder and he doesn't flinch when the weight of the remote control bumps against the top of his spine. He can feel the heat of her skin through the blouse beneath his fingers and gathers the courage to curl his hand further around her waist. When they break apart she somewhat shyly retrieves her arm from around his neck and tries not to laugh when she accidentally knocks the base of his skull with the remote. Trust her to crash a peaceful moment! He mirrors her smirk and bops her on the nose with his finger.
"Did you seriously just boop my nose?"
"Only because you biffed me with the remote!"
"Please, never do it again."
"The booping or the kissing?" This question earns a pregnant pause in the banter and she narrows her eyes at him, refusing to rise to his challenge.
"Wouldn't you like to know," is the response she settles on. He snatches the remote from her and drives the car so it bumps into her feet, but she doesn't even flinch. "Besides, I'm not sure you could handle it."
"Try me."
He barely gets the last syllable out before her lips are on his again, but this time it isn't as soft. He gasps in surprise at the sudden crash of her against him and he presses a hand to her back to stabilise them. This time they only separate when the frantic buzz of the car's motor jumps them and they start laughing. He repositions the remote so that his thumb isn't pressing against one of the joysticks.
"Seems neither of us are very good at maintaining the atmosphere," she comments, going behind her desk and collecting her coat and bag.
"It's a wonder we had one to begin with," he chuckles and picks up the car.
"Are you going home now?"
"Yep. Want to walk out together?"
"We have for most of our shifts recently, why stop now?"
He smiles and she follows him to his office where he collects his own stuff before they head to the car park.