A/N: Happy New Year!
For those following the missing moments/Evan POV series, I have to apologize. The last few eps have practically dashed any inspiration to continue exploring a potential Evan-Cat romance, and well, I just can't write about Heather either. So I'll be incorporating canon details into alternate scenarios. These stories won't exactly follow show timeline.
Dedicated to astoria26, a reader I met on this board, and fellow Evan-Cat shipper.
Awakening
"This isn't murky, Cat. It's simple, okay?"
-Evan Marks to Cat Chandler, referring to their dinner date at Per Se
Sometimes the key to happiness is expecting a little bit less of life. That way you'll never be disappointed. And your heart never gets shattered.
As Evan strode away, back to the bowels of the precinct where his office was situated, he thought about what he just said to Cat. Was he really going to be patient? After another date rudely forgotten, another promise conveniently broken? Last night he spent an entire evening talking to a plethora of beautiful women besides Cat, and then took a solitary cab ride back home after seeing her dash off to a strange man clearly not dressed for or interested in joining the gallery crowd.
Evan settled heavily in his office chair and turned his computer on. He suddenly felt weariness wash over him: he was so tired of asking, of hearing her come up with excuses, of seeing her rejection in her body language and in her eyes. All of it told him in a hundred different ways: no. It was exhausting playing it cool and collected—pretending that none of it affected him—whenever Cat reminded him that he was only ever going to be her colleague and friend. But didn't even friendships take work? Lately Evan felt as though he was the only one pulling the weight on their relationship, always being there for Cat whenever she needed him. He stared at his email Inbox and saw a message from Claire Sinclair, subject line: Nice meeting you (eom). Evan sighed audibly and ran a palm over his face. Great, he was also one of those jerks who promises a woman a post-date phone call and never makes it. Claire's message only reminded him that he was so preoccupied with the birthday kiss and then the dinner date that he hadn't even given her a second thought.
You're a first-class wanker, he thought to himself. He almost clicked the message to reply apologetically to Claire, but what would he say? Suddenly the ever-witty Evan was at a loss for words, and he swiveled around in his chair. Just a few minutes ago he had offered Cat his most charming smile and uttered lines, so well-rehearsed, delivered without missing a confident beat. Sometimes he said things with more self-assurance than he felt. When you're faking the confidence you don't feel, too much bravado is never a bad thing. But perhaps the perception that he was just a self-absorbed flirt had gotten the better of him. In a flash of sudden, blinding clarity, he realized that the stars did not align for him and Catherine, and his frayed heartstrings will never sing for the beauty who did not see him for what he really was.
"Time to get down to brass tacks, Marks," he said aloud in an attempt to shake himself out of despondency. As he pulled on his lab coat and another case file from the docket, his black and white perspectives came sharply back into focus—love should not have to be this complicated.
And he wasn't going to wait for it to rain.