Learning To Fall
By Allison E.L. Cleckler

Author's Notes: Thanks to Dubenko Junkie for the read-through, as always.

September 6, 2005
Oh, Jesus. That idiot Morris has begun the process of moving his detritus into the apartment. When at home I've holed up in my room. The living room's already trashed and I don't even want to look in his room. Hopefully everything will get moved and shuffled around so the place won't look like a flea market for too much longer.

Over the next week, Morris managed to get fully moved into his new apartment, with occasional assistance from Jerry, one of the admit clerks in the emergency room. He didn't think he'd ever been so acutely aware of how the atmosphere smelled when it wasn't composed of ninety parts marijuana to ten of oxygen. When he noticed Allison wrinkling her nose suspiciously around him, he went through three bottles of Febreze in an effort to fumigate his belongings. He wasn't sure how much it actually helped, but it was at least a step in the direction of no longer smelling like a tobacco plantation.

He saw very little of Allison when he was at home. She wasn't actively going out of her way to avoid him, but she wasn't making any effort to get to know him, either. When she got the urge to cook something for dinner, she would make enough for both of them to eat, but that was about the full extent of any consideration she displayed towards him. She seemed to spend most of her free time on her computer or reading, both of which she could do in her room, and most days she also took her bike to the lakefront for a spin. Morris hadn't really had much of an opportunity to engage her in conversation, but he got the impression that if and when he did, she wouldn't be very talkative. When she did speak to him, it was with a healthy dose of veiled sarcasm and occasionally even derision.

Morris sometimes thought about what she had said the day they'd first met, about his reputation preceding him. He wasn't aware of having a reputation for anything besides general idiocy, so he figured she probably had a low tolerance for stupidity and had prejudged him as being full of it. He wanted to be insulted by the notion, but by then he was so used to being taken at face value that it amused him more than anything else. Still, there was that little nagging voice in the back of his head that wished Allison had bothered to form her own opinion of him instead of automatically buying into the general consensus.

Well, impressions and reputations weren't undone in a day. It had been a few months since he'd been made chief resident and begun trying to turn his image around, and the other doctors still barely gave him the time of day. Abby Lockhart had even recently called him "Chief Pain in the Ass".

Somehow, he preferred "tank boy".

Friday evening, Allison Chapman sat nestled comfortably on the couch, reading a book and musing over her day. Her coworkers in the lab, Mark and Brian, hadn't played a single practical joke on her; she'd even taken her lunch break with Dr. Stewart, a senior oncology attending she was just beginning to feel out a friendship with after harboring a crush on him for months. After her shift she'd taken her customary bike ride by the lakeshore, then come home, changed into her pajamas, and made some Hamburger Helper for dinner. She was halfway through her book, but her mind kept wandering back to her lunch with Dr. Stewart. She didn't have the nerve to tell him she liked him, but was glad he wanted to be friends with her. At the very least, it was a start.

Then she heard a key in the door and her good mood soured slightly. Looked like Morris, the pervy idiot, was home from his own shift at County.

Morris let himself in the door and made a beeline for the fridge, dropping his keys and jacket on the kitchen table as he went. His day had been completely foul—Pratt had snarked his way through a trauma with him and Weaver, per usual, had steamrolled him while making her token daily pass through admit. Now that he was home, he just wanted to drown his self-pity in a beer. Grabbing a longneck out of the fridge, he was mildly surprised to see Allison out in the living room instead of her own personal Batcave, and decided to join her.

"Hey, babe," he said in greeting, flopping down onto the couch beside her and loosening his tie and collar. "Your day suck as bad as mine?"

Allison bristled at the nickname and pointedly kept her eyes trained on the book in her lap. "No."

"Shame… we could've commiserated." After a moment's consideration, Morris held his beer out to her. "You want?"

She glanced at him and the beer, but immediately went back to her book. "Miller Lite? No, thanks."

"Suit yourself, bookworm. I didn't want to share anyway." Morris grabbed the remote control off the coffee table, turned on the television, and started flipping through the channels.

"It tastes like dishwater," she muttered, turning a page.

Settling on a rerun of Baywatch, Morris tossed the remote back on the coffee table. It slid across the metro section of the previous day's newspaper and off onto the floor. "You would drink dishwater," he shot back. If she wanted to be bitchy, so would he. It might help him let off some steam. "It would explain your personality, anyway."

Allison's gaze slid back over to him, her eyebrows raised in disdain and indignation. "Excuse me? Dishwater personality?"

Morris gave her a like glance, deciding to opt for the blunt approach. "You're always acting like you've got perpetual PMS or something." Around me, anyway. "It's no wonder you're single and only lusting after that doctor guy of yours."

At that, Allison slammed her book shut and glared at him, her face red. "Oh, that's really rich, dumbass," she snapped, getting up to stalk into the kitchen and pull a Sprite out of the fridge. "And you know what? My love life is none of your business."

"What love life?" Morris retorted, putting his empty beer bottle on the coffee table and following her into the kitchen to get a fresh one. "Last time I checked, lusting and personal hand jobs didn't count as one."

I could give you a real love life, the little voice in his head whispered, and he mentally slapped it away.

Allison suddenly slammed the Sprite down on the counter and rounded on him; Morris took a step back out of her personal space. "You don't have any fucking clue what you're talking about," she snarled. "So why don't you go back to jacking off to Playboy or whatever it is your love life entails?"

Damn, she's something when she's angry, the voice piped up, and Morris blinked. Okay, maybe I'm enjoying this a little more than I should. He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Hey, whoa, calm down, I was just yanking your chain. But, since you asked," he added, a touch snidely, "my love life consists of going out on actual dates. You should try it sometime. You know, go out, meet someone, get a little drunk, have a good time if you even know how to."

Still seething, Allison glared at him for a moment longer before snatching her drink up and striding back to the couch. "Find something else to yank it about," she muttered in the general direction of the television.

Mostly unperturbed, Morris made a mental note that her (lack of a) love life was obviously a sore topic as he followed her back to the couch, fresh beer in hand. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes as they settled back down on the couch again. Seeing that Baywatch was over, Morris resumed flipping channels, while Allison did a poor job of pretending to be absorbed in her book. Finally, she muttered sullenly, "How did you know about Dr. Stewart, anyway?"

Morris grinned. "I listen to the nurses when they gossip."

Allison practically gaped at him, and it was all he could do not to snicker. Apparently she thought she'd been keeping her crush on the down low. "They what? But you're—and I'm—"

"Yeah, they've got this whole network, didn't you know? They know everything about everyone." He was finding the expression on her face entirely too comical. "I don't get it. If you want to hook up with the guy, why don't you say something? You'll never score if you don't."

She couldn't decide whether to be flustered or annoyed. Who did he think he was, to be giving her dating advice? Her bosom buddy? She only had one of those, and her name certainly wasn't Archie Morris. "Because—because—you wouldn't understand," she settled for mumbling, staring resolutely at her book.

Morris eyeballed her. "I resent that," he said mulishly. In reality, he was still enjoying the exchange quite a bit. "What wouldn't I understand?"

Rolling her eyes, Allison heaved a sigh, flipped her book shut, and got to her feet. "You want to know what?" she snapped derisively, narrowing her eyes at him. "Wanting someone for something besides sex. You're just like every other stupid male your age—you're all infantile sex-obsessed black holes who can't carry an intelligent conversation to save your measly little lives, and you're only interested in three things from women: breasts, ass, and whether or not we put out. And you wonder why I don't date."

With that, she flounced off to her room in a huff, shutting the door none too gently behind her.

Morris worked his jaw for a minute, eyebrows quirked in vague amusement, looking at the TV with unseeing eyes. Law & Order was on. "Do you put out?" he finally muttered, half to himself, half to the closed bedroom door across the way. "Might improve your mood if you did."