Thank you so much to TheBeautifulNerd and the guest reviewer, you both made me smile yesterday! Hope you both like this one, it's a lot more fluffy!
Not just an ordinary game of Scrabble
Ethan has a question to ask, but he doesn't know how. (Lily and Ethan are already a couple in this one)
Never before had Ethan appreciated the feeling of something burning a hole in his pocket, the way this little blue box managed to. He had been in possession of the delicate engagement ring for a little over two weeks, but he'd known that he'd wanted to ask for much longer than that. He knew that he wanted it to be perfect, an occasion befitting of the woman he wanted to marry, but what did 'perfect' look like anyway?
"Penny for your thoughts, Ethan?" Zoe asked as she flicked the switch on the staff room kettle. The registrar had come in looking like his thoughts were definitely elsewhere. If he'd had a shift anything like hers, which had knocked the 'Friday Feeling' right out of her, then she'd be happy to lift some of the weight on his mind. As it stood, she'd come into this room with the express intention of not leaving again until she was dragged out by the Clinical Lead. She hadn't stopped to eat a thing all day, and a cup of coffee was also long overdue.
Ethan looked slightly conflicted. "Well, I – I'm just thinking about a lot, that's all."
Zoe smiled. If Ethan spent any more time inside his own head, he might disappear. "Cup of tea, then?" When he nodded in response, she pulled an extra mug from the cupboard at eye-level, then plucked the packet of biscuits from beside the kettle. "Whose idea was it, to leave chocolate digestives next to the kettle?" she asked rhetorically, rolling her eyes. She offered them to Ethan first. "I think you deserve first dibs, even if they are slightly melted. You look like you've got the world on your shoulders!"
"Thanks," Ethan replied quietly. He removed his right hand from the pocket of his scrubs, reached for the offered biscuits, and quite by accident threw a little blue box across the linoleum floor. He froze for a second, gripped in shock.
The box landed at Zoe's feet. She bent down to pick it up, trying to disguise her amusement.
"Don't open it," Ethan said urgently.
"Wouldn't dream of it, don't worry. Is this what I think it is?" She looked at him, holding the box out on her palm.
Ethan took the ring-box from her and returned it to its safe place in his pocket. He considered his response carefully. He looked behind him to make sure that Lily wasn't about to appear in the staff room. "Yes," he replied. "I'm embarrassed to say," he added, "that I've been carrying it around for a little while now. I just don't know how to ask. I want it to be just right."
"Of course you do, but don't let the specifics drive you crazy." Zoe waited for the kettle to click off, before pouring the water into the two mugs she'd set out, one containing her instant coffee grounds and the other with a tea bag. The coffee smelled fantastic. "I've had one of those awful days where all I seem to do is deliver bad news to people who don't want it. In this job, you realise every day that you never know how short life is until you regret the things you never said. Ethan, you have someone who loves you and whom you love in return. You have no idea exactly how lucky you are. You don't need pomp and circumstance to show her how important she is to you – it'll mean more to both of you if you just do it your way and make each other happy."
Ethan accepted the cup of tea and began thinking again.
As usual, Zoe left the hospital that evening with Dylan. They walked in silence until they had put fifteen minutes between themselves and the E.D.
"Mark my words, there will be a wedding in our E.D., before the year is out," Zoe said, sounding pleased with herself.
"How can you possibly know that?" Dylan retorted. His voice was as derisive as ever, but this didn't stop him discreetly checking his best friend's left hand, just in case.
"How can you possibly not know that? Haven't you seen the way Ethan and Lily are with each other? His eyes follow her everywhere."
Dylan looked slightly blank. "Do they?"
"Seriously? Fine, call it my intuition, or something."
"I'm more inclined to or something," Dylan said, watching Zoe judiciously select a cigarette from her packet. "You're grinning like the Cheshire Cat. You only ever look like that when you've been meddling in something. I'm sure you think you're Holby's answer to the fairy godmother."
Zoe lit the cigarette. "Better the fairy godmother than the troll under the bridge!" She threw back her head in laughter.
In their cosy little flat, Ethan was trying to convince Lily to play Scrabble. They were sitting on the sofa, one at each end. Facing each other, their knees were drawn up with their lower legs slightly tangled together.
It had been a long week. Coming home from work that night, Lily had wanted nothing more than a quiet night in, and it was unfolding to be just perfect. After dinner they'd sat like this, reading to further unwind from the week behind them, until Ethan had suggested they get out the Scrabble board.
"Are you sure?" she asked, trying to contain her delight. She closed her book in her lap and looked at Ethan intently. "Have you not been put off yet?"
"Of course not," Ethan replied. He smiled, pushing away the memory of being thrashed in the last four games, at least.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire." Lily's voice was gentle and sing-song. "It's not me who has a habit of flipping the board." She bit the end of her tongue, holding in laughter but unable to stop herself smiling. Ethan, beautiful, fantastic, calm Ethan, was also madly competitive. Their colleagues had no idea.
Ethan's ears turned pink. His book slid out of his grasp and hit the carpet, concertinaing a lot of the pages. To an outsider looking in, it might have looked as though he had dropped his first-born child, the concern written on both their faces was so severe. Ethan leaned down and picked up the book, pressing it shut to flatten the pages.
"Yes," he replied, "but that's only because you have the best memory for obscure vocabulary of anyone I've ever met. Please can we play though? I've got a good feeling about tonight."
"You say that every time," Lily said wryly. She stood up. "You sort the board, and I'll make tea. Don't give yourself all the good letters. I'll notice, if you just give me the Q and the X and a load of other unhelpful consonants."
"You'd probably know a word to use them all in one foul swoop anyway," he teased gently, stopping her heading into the kitchen straight away by taking her hand in his. He stood up. "I love you, Lily. You know that, don't you?" His heart was thundering in his chest. The ring-box was safely tucked behind a cushion at his end of the sofa.
As part of her answer, Lily pressed her lips to his, her hands caressing both sides of his face. Her fingertips stroked his hair, and her thumbs rested on his cheeks. At last, when they pulled apart from this tender kiss, she verbalised her response. "Oh, I think so."
Lily didn't take long in the kitchen.
When she came back into the living room, carrying two mugs, she saw that all was not well with the Scrabble board. The official Scrabble dictionary was beside the board on the coffee table, as always. She rarely needed it but Ethan was a beast for checking that her obscure words were, in fact, allowed. The two letter racks were loaded with tiles, one on either side of the table. As she had expected, her rack was made up purely of the letters Ethan hated.
But there were already letters on the board.
"What have you been doing?" she said, shaking her head as she crossed the room. She set the mugs down on the table, then looked at Ethan quizzically.
He didn't reply, but looked back at the board.
Lily looked more closely at the words he'd spelled out, and covered her mouth. The little yellow tiles were laid out to say, "Will you marry me," but Ethan had replaced the 'o' with a beautiful, elegant ring. Lily sat down beside him on the sofa and was rendered speechless. All she could do was look at him through eyes filling with tears, and nod, before he enveloped her in a hug.
In the end, Zoe was right, as she often was. There was no raucous celebration, no excitement, no pomp or circumstance. There were simply two doctors; two people very much in love, who didn't need the whole world behind their decision to spend the rest of their lives together.