The next day, she entered the clinic again. By the Goddess's fortune, it had rained so the work she had to do was cut in half, giving her the much needed spare time.
"Holly," Ford announced in surprise. He checked his watch, "You know my clinic hours aren't over for quite some time…"
Holly bat her eyelashes sweetly. "I know, there was just a book I wanted to read in your library… am I still allowed to?"
He looked surprised but that quickly transitioned to pride, "Ah yes of course! Feel free to make some tea too if you wish." He smiled, "the theanine and caffeine content makes tea great for improving alertness and memory."
She grinned affectionately to herself, what a nerd. "Well then, maybe I will."
She turned to the stairs but was stopped by his voice, "Oh Holly, by the way."
She paused at the base of the stairs, one hand already on the handrail and glanced at him curiously.
"I apologize, it was quite egregious of me to have let you leave the other day without a farewell, I got so wrapped up in thought and when I came to, you were gone." He said.
She laughed. "That's just who you are- my spacey boy," she winked.
He looked appalled.
"Besides," she said, "how could I be mad when you were thinking so intensely about me?"
His expression softened, and she stiffened up, she hadn't made the proper preparations yet for this conversation. She needed to evacuate immediately. "Anyway, get back to work ya lazy coot!" She grinned and tore up the stairs before he could respond.
She started to regret those words a moment later. She knew the age thing was a sore point for him. Which was ridiculous because, through all of this, he only was about five years older. She had pointed this out to him before and he went off about how the life expectancy of males and females were already separated and that the difference in these averages should be accounted for in the age gap.
She didn't call him an old man because of his physical age though, it was because every time she went into his apartment she had to acknowledge he had the decorating taste of an eighty year old man. Like Rory's grandparent's place in Gilmore Girls. He stuck to a very traditional-type of interior design with a lot of dark polished wood with ornate embellishments. He had those old-people chairs with the tight leather over minimal padding. She supposed if you always sat up as straight as he did that maybe they would be more comfortable than a La-Z-Boy, but she was a sloucher. If he ever moved in with her, those were staying at the clinic
Not wanting to waste any time, she quickly rushed over to the floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves and scanned through the titles. She knew she had seen it yesterday… A mischievous grin crossed her face as she found what she was looking for and she pulled out the thin book eagerly. She quickly rushed over to one of the antique love seat by fireplace and nestled up against the armrest where she remained with the book for hours.
She couldn't recall ever studying this hard in highschool. She flicked away the passing thought that she might have actually done well in school if she hadn't been pursuing a suite of boys whose heads were only good for crushing beer cans.
Well, it didn't matter either way. Her dream was to become a farmer. Her bad grades were partially intentional, her parents would have forced her to go to university for something unrelated to her dreams if she could get in, and she'd have had an even harder time convincing them this was what she was meant to do.
"Thank you Doctor," Ford's final patient ducked her head slightly and left the clinic not nearly hasty enough for his liking.
This was not one of his troublesome patients, but he had to admit, he was especially eager to retire upstairs before Holly decided to leave. It was rare to get an entended amount of her time and her coming over and staying two days in a row was entirely unprecedented.
Then again, the rains pounded outside. He was relieved she wasn't going to work through it as she had often started doing.
He headed upstairs as fast as he could without rushing and found Holly at one of the couches, legs tucked in, reading the pages of a book intently. It was wholly adorable the way she nibbled at the ends of her hair while she concentrated.
"How was your day?" He asked her and she jumped, seeming to have not have noticed him come up the stairs. She quickly put down the book, book spine facing away on the far side-table from him. Interesting…
At the very least, she too seemed confused by her actions. There was nothing in his book collection that should have made her respond with such embarrassment. She shook her head. "Good, and you?"
He sat at the couch across from her, "Good. I must admit though, I am particularly fond of rainy days."
"Oh," she said inquisitively.
He gave a conspiratory smile, "they seem to be the only thing that can trap you inside with me. I anticipate I will be missing you a lot in the summer."
She smiled a little, not giving him any false promises. "Had you figured anything out?" She asked.
"Pardon?" He responded.
"After your little experiment yesterday…" she said with an unmistakable glint in her eye.
"Oh yes, I do apologize, I am not quite sure what came over-"
"I don't want an apology," she laughed, "I want to know your results."
"I… am still not quite sure," he admitted.
"Well, obviously," she shrugged.
"And what prey-tell is that supposed to mean?" He asked indignantly.
She ran a finger along the length of her seat's arm thoughtfully. "Don't you think… your experimental design was a bit flawed?"
He blinked in surprise.
She gave him an accusing look, "I don't think you were taking it seriously at all! What were you going to find with two data points with different fixed variables!"
"What are you getting at here?" He asked her, that ever-familiar feeling in his chest returning. He could not say what was making it act up now. It may have just been a primal defence instinct coming forth at the way she stared at him from across the coffee table. Like a feline eyeing her prey.
Holly smiled a little in false comfort but it didn't carry the same characteristic lightness that usually shone off of her face and she stood up, brushing the creases out of her skirt.
"Holly?" He asked, feeling himself back a little further into his seat, for reasons still unknown.
She walked slowly around the table and sat down next to him on the small two seater. "It seems I'm going to have to take over this project," she sighed. "Although seriously Ford, you can't always expect me to step it up, you know how busy I am with my farm, I can't also be the scientist."
He opened his mouth but she stopped him with a single finger to his lips.
"Let's start by increasing the sample size."
"Holl-!" He started to object with a scandalized tone as she removed her hand but couldn't even complete the reprimand as her lips fluttered across his own, swallowing up the sound in his throat.
Her lips started off caressing his in a feather-light and tender motion. She separated each kiss with a small display of affection. first a loving glance- to which he had never seen her blue eyes up so close, then she stuck to smaller gestures as she never quite pulled that far away again. First was her thumb stroking his cheek then her forehead pressing against his own. Her eyelashes tickled for a moment on his cheekbone, their noses brushed. He vaguely could feel her hands finding his tie.
Then things changed. She tugged him forward violently and was suddenly attacking him with an onslaught of deep impassioned kisses.
He had never seen her like this before. She clasped at him, pulled at him, anything to get him closer to her. Her hands ran across his back, balling fistfuls of his lab coat. Her chest was pressed against his and he could feel her heartbeat pounding through the thin material of his dress shirt.
That same pounding feeling was reverberating in the back of his skull and he realized that was the echoes of his own heart beating. Their lips smashed together, and it took every fibre of his being to resist melting into the lustful obscenity.
She held off for a short moment and he finally unclenched his jaw to breathe but then he felt the tips of their tongues touch. He should have been disgusted…. He should have been disgusted. She slowly swirled her tongue around his once and he realized the only reason she had been able to perform such an action was that he still hadn't pulled his back.
Tongues are a petri dish for bacteria, but her warm breath tasted like mint...
She parted from his lips which were still traitorously open.
She looked at him with hooded eyes, looking entirely self-satisfied. They weren't how they had looked just a short while earlier. They didn't have their usual inexplicable sparkle- now they were dark and unreadable. He once embarrassingly described her eyes as galaxies with stars but that was in the wondrous sense of looking up at the milky way. Now they were like the cold reality of the dark void astronauts in pictures float through above the pale blue planet. Somehow no less alluring...
"There was something else wrong with your experiment," she said.
"Oh?" What all he could say, still breathless, still floating in her dark pools.
"You were testing to see the feeling of lips against lips but how can you say definitely the same feeling wouldn't emerge if I kissed you… elsewhere?"
She started to lean forward again and he snapped to and shook his head, "That's quite enough."
Her ever impressive selective deafness did her well here, she continued to inch over. "I propose a univariate analysis," she explained. "We just need to give each spot a number…"
She kissed his lips one more time. "One," she said softly.
He glared at her, entirely scandalized but she leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on the flesh below his ear. "Two," she breathed.
He tensed up and he felt her smile on his neck in response. "Holly!" He protested, and found he didn't recognize the sound of his own voice.
She continued on that spot for a moment and, finding the position uncomfortable, swung around to straddle him and get better access.
The sound he made in response to that was entirely unintelligible garble. His breathing speed as she nipped and sucked at the spot he never realized could be so sensitive. "Please… Holly…." He said again weakly, his voice no longer sounding convincing.
She just continued over, landing at his throat which flexed against her lips as he swallowed deeply. "Three…" She purred with her lips still planted on his skin.
He clenched his seat.
Then… there was nothing for a moment. He glanced down, regaining his wits and saw her looking at the high neck of his collar in disappointment, like a puppy whose toy was taken away. With the lab jacket, petticoat, shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar and tie, the rest of his body was an impenetrable stronghold.
Even he'd admit undressing at night was a bit of a chore, but he had never been so grateful. He put a hand on either of her shoulders and directed her off of his lap. He stood up, adjusted his glasses which had become unevenly strewn across his face and willed for the embarrassing heat radiating across his cheeks to dissipate, facing away from the little vixen still seated on the couch.
He could hear her laugh nervously. "Ford?" she said with worry. "On a scale of 1 to 10… how angry are you right now?"
His whole body was burning but it didn't quite feel like anger fueling it.
Still, there was what was proper to consider and there were standards he believed everyone should hold themselves too so he turned to her and tried to give a strict face, crossing his arms and looking down at her.
Her face dropped. "You look… disgusted," she said.
He sighed, "what has gotten into you? This isn't like you."
Unaware of the weight of his words he watched her shrink.
He gave her a moment to answer and when she finally did, it wasn't what he expected. "You remember when you said you didn't know why you loved me?" She asked giving him a weak smile. "Well, we let it be like that for then but now… I need to know."
He shook his head, "Holly, I don't understand."
"I don't think you love me," she said then cut him off as he was on the verge of protesting, "I know you think you do, but I don't think you really know me. Or at least not all of me… So when I don't know what you even like about me, I don't know how quickly you might turn when you find something you think is… less than desirable."
He just shook his head stupefied, trying to unravel everything she had just said.
"You looked so disgusted…" she said again quietly. "What would you do if that display was just like me?"
"Holly, what are you even talking about?" He asked in confusion.
"Did you know I'm not a virgin?" She asked, then seemed to reflect back on her statement and laughed a little at the understatement. "Like, I haven't been active in a while but I'm certainly not what I think you expect."
He wasn't really sure how to respond to that. He was used to patients prattling off their sexual histories to him, but none had ever looked at him after and waited for him to give them his opinion.
She shuffled a little as he searched for words. "I don't believe I mislead you, since it's not something you'd just talk about to a male friend back before we were dating, but I still get it… if you…" She couldn't finish. She stood up and walked over to him.
She lifted one of his hands and slowly slid off his glove before entwining her fingers through his. Despite it all, she gave a soft smile to the sight of their hands clasped together in a way that hadn't happened since the day in the clinic where they had fallen in love. "After everything we did today, it's funny, I still like this best."
He finally gave her his response, he lifted their hands, and kissed their interwoven fingers.
She turned bright red, which now seemed highly unusual to him given her experience.
"I love you Holly," he said simply.
"Ford…" Holly said with star filled eyes.
He let go of her hand and quickly put his glove back on. His glasses glinted, "Now…" He said in dark admonishment.
Holly nodded ruefully through the length of Ford's very thorough lecture about consent, proper etiquette and time and place. She slowly got antsy and hoped he would not find out about that slowly bruseing area on his neck until after she managed to book it out or else she was going to have to hear another earful. Finally, and even more embarrassingly, he began off on a tangent about the importance of a young and active female such as herself undergoing regular check-ups. He referred her to a gynecologist just out of town and gave her the STD talk that seriously sucked any of the residual romance out of the air.
Well… at least it didn't look like he was going to break up with her.
Actually, she had gotten some very interesting and promising sounds and faces from him over the duration of her experiment.
Her boyfriend's cheeks were still partially red despite his stern expression.
As he finshed up his final thought and gave her permission to leave like a school teacher at the end of class, she quickly darted up and scrambled to collect her things.
Proving to have not entirely taken all of his reprimands to heart, she let her hand skim his thigh as she walked past to leave in a motion that could almost be mistaken for unintentional.
He let out a high pitched squeak and she grinned devilishly. Maybe he really had corrupted her. After all, she had developed from this relationship, a very healthy interest in scientific research. She wondered what other sounds she could have him make…
After she left Ford noticed the small textbook left on the table. He turned it over. He didn't think he was ever going to be able to think of biostatistics the same way again…