Chapter Text
“Are the spoons helping?”
“You tell me.”
"Oh, no, they are not. Put them back, see if another minute works.”
“It is official. I have hit rock fucking bottom.”
Gwen made a sympathetic face and patted your head in a way that could only be interpreted as lovingly condescending. “Honestly I have seen you at rock bottom, this isn’t it.”
You were sprawled out on a funky bright green bench in the communal space of your office. It was an entire floor filled with pretty tables, lots of natural light and plants you suspected were fake but never bothered to check. It was built after the company you worked at, Alchemax, introduced their new work-life-welness-balance-strategy. Some bullshit plan outlining how much they cared about their employees' lives or whatever.
Naturally, the overworked workaholics you called your colleagues did not give a shit about a work-life balance, let alone a pretty coworking space. When they were not in the labs, they sequestered themselves in their little cubicles to crunch new data and string together reports. It was how Alchemax had become the hub of scientific innovation it is today.
Which was fine by you, because it meant plenty of privacy whilst you had yet another breakdown at your place of work.
“If this isn't it, when was it then?” You asked, pressing the previously frozen and now just chilly spoons against your swollen eyes.
“Remember when you pulled two all-nighters for that intro to bio-chem exam, was borderline delirious and pissed yourself in the prof’s office because you thought his chair was the toilet?” Gwen said instantly, casually pulling a piece off her chocolate muffin and popping it into her mouth.
You groaned at the memory “I left the door open and everyone saw, I didn’t get laid for the rest of the year after that stunt.”
“You already lost all hope for that when you walked into class wearing the ugliest pyjamas known to men.” You could hear the grin in her voice, which made this all the worse. She sounded like she was reminiscing a fond childhood memory and not a situation that had you crying on the phone to your mother the next day.
“This somehow still feels worse,” You said, your voice breaking halfway through your sentence despite your best efforts to keep it steady.
Roughly two weeks ago, your wonderful boyfriend of three years, Jonathan, had dumped you completely out of the blue. He had set you down on your pretty beige couch, in an apartment you had moved in together a few months ago, and told you he no longer loved you. There was no room for misinterpretation, by the way, he had said that verbatim.
It had felt like a punch in your stomach. Your ears had started ringing the second the words left his mouth, your mind leaving your frozen body behind on that couch. What felt like far away, he magnanimously explained that he would be moving out and that you could keep the apartment to yourself effective immediately. He would pay his part of the rent until your lease was up, and you could find something you could pay afterwards.
At that time, you thought that that had stung the most. He had been so calm about it, so organized. It meant that he had come to the decision to break your heart in advance, and had taken the proper measures to make a quick, clean exit. It had apparently been long enough, that he'd had the time to tie up all loose ends before breaking the news to you. How long had you been living together under false pretences?
Ironically, you should have appreciated it in a way, the cold meticulous manner in which it ended. You are a scientist, structure and logic were stamped in your bones. At the very least you could have expected it since he was one too. It was actually how you met, at work. You both worked at Alchemax but were working in different departments and had therefore not met until a mandatory staff party. There you'd bonded over your dislike of forced social events and the shitty quality of the snacks. There was immediate chemistry (har-har) and you had gone out on your first date a week later.
“Just say the word and I will go after him. Hobie and Miles have already agreed to help, and fuck him up nice and good.” Gwen offered coolly, 100% serious. This girl did not make empty threats and neither did your other two best friends.
“It would be too easy to trace back.” You answered her tiredly, waving the offer away with a limp hand. Deciding you needed to get yourself together before she'd go off the rails and go ahead with her plan of revenge, you sat up and took the spoons off your eyes, “if the cops would come sniffing, I wouldn't be able to hide my support for the crime.”
“They would be on your side.” She argued in a way you knew she was convinced of that herself. After blinking blearily a few times you could exactly see how intense she was staring at you. “He is fucking your neighbour, that is grounds for homicide.”
Ah yes, that little detail.
Imagine how you felt when on the third day of crying your eyes out in your bedroom, you had enough of hearing your neighbour getting her brains fucked out. Her bedroom was adjacent to yours, only a thin, cheap wall dividing your two apartments. The vibrations of her headboard thumping against the wall, her high-pitched moans and oh yeah harder, daddy’s had kept you company for every sob-filled night. Not to mention the clipped grunting and occasional dirty talk from her enthusiastic partner.
So you had stomped over there in your tattered old pyjamas, eyes swollen and nose snotty and red, to tell her to have some fucking sympathy and play some music like a civilized person. You had always liked her, she was pretty and smiled every time you passed in the hallway, but that night you would’ve set fire to her ashes.
What you hadn’t expected to see, was your ex-boyfriend opening the door out of breath. He was sweaty, a pair of boxers pulled on haphazardly and his bare chest still heaving. Whilst his eyes had widened for a second, his casual ‘Oh hey, what’s up?’ had been the nail in the coffin.
Yes, you had been dumped by your boyfriend only for him to move into your neighbour’s place.
“They fuck every. single. night. Gwen.” You said, putting the spoons on the table with an obnoxious clang. Deciding you needed to soothe yourself from the bubbling rage, you took the herbal tea between your hands. Usually, you wouldn't bother with this grass-simmered bath water but drinking coffee right now would only skyrocket your already destructive anxiety.
The sound that left your friend was somewhat empathetic “You know that new drug that your department was developing, why don’t you test it on him?” She then suggested, referring to that new pill you had tried to develop that hadn't passed clinical trials for risk of 'liquidating the human bowels for unknown periods of time'.
It was ridiculous enough to pull a rusty, dry laugh out of you. Your throat was sore from all the sobbing you had been doing over the past few days, and you felt like not a drip of moisture was left in your body to cry out. You were pretty sure that if you'd sweat right now it would just be pathetic puffs of air getting pushed out of your pores.
“I was thinking a swift kick in his balls and a carefully worded email to his bitch of a mother,” You answered before pointing at your eyes, hoping that the frozen spoons your best friend had put in the communal freezer had reduced the swelling “Better?”
“Yes honey, you look beautiful.” She cooed looking straight into your eyes with those piercing blue irises. A lie if you've ever heard one.
But it felt like the swelling had gone down when you patted the skin of your eyelids, careful not to smudge away any of the makeup you had applied that morning. The layer of skin-toned products you had patted on was thick enough to cover your messed-up skin. No one would see the redness when you eventually lost it again.
A rumbly voice made you and Gwen look up in surprise. Whilst you had been wallowing in self-pity, you hadn’t noticed the man come up to your table. For a second you had been scared it was Jonathan, who would usually be on a different wing of the building working as a physicist for Doctor Octavius on gods-know-what. But his voice had never sounded this deep.
“Another coffee break?” Doctor O’Hara huffed, looking down at the mess of empty muffin wrappers that littered the table between your drinks. He loomed over the two of you, his arms crossed and that sceptical eyebrow pulled up high over his sharp eyes.
The world hated you.
“Hi Doctor O’Hara” Gwen said kindly, professionally. Two tones that were usually absent from any interaction you had with this particular person. She was physically able to be nice because she did not have to work with the most overly workaholic and obsessive-compulsive man on this god-forsaken planet.
"Hello Miss Stacy,” He said just as infuriatingly nicely, with a tone of voice he had never used on you even once.
“It is my first break of the day, O’Hara.” You grumbled, taking a sip of the (ginger and... something?) bath water instead of facing him. You still looked like you had cried five minutes ago in the toilet, which you had, before texting Gwen to bring the frozen spoons to the coworking space. He didn't need to know any of that, "also it's five p.m."
“Your team has not released their report on the results for the last stages of the clinical trials yet even though I asked for it multiple times." He answered, always deaf to your rebuttals, "You know I need it to proceed with the development stage.”
Right now, you did not need his condescending, micro-managing tone directed at you. The world could be on fire, Alchemax could be seconds away from sinking into hell itself, and you would still not take a single shitty word from the big oaf next to you. The last sip of tea soothed your raw throat, and after putting the empty cup down more aggressively than you needed to, you looked up at him with the most neutral expression you could manage.
“You know it is coming" You mimicked his snappy way of speaking because you were not above being a little petty. It was the exhaustion that had you adding, a bit more calmly "We spoke about this in the department meeting on Monday, the report is due on Friday. We have two more days to deliver it to you.”
His eyes flickered between yours, and those thick eyebrows that were perpetually frowning pulled together into that now-familiar scowl that made your blood pressure rise. You kept staring at him evenly, not shying away from that expression that scared everyone but you into doing his bidding.
“You don’t seem to be focused on this at all, do you even know how far along the work is?” He kept talking down to you, both literally and metaphorically, sounding as frustrated as you were beginning to feel.
Both of you let the R&D departments of Alchemax, focus on drug development, drug discovery, genetic engineering and personalized medicine. It had been hate at first sight. You had been newer than him, greener, and very excited to meet the great Doctor O’Hara, whose work you had admired all throughout university, doctorate and post-doctorate. He was a certified genius and had pioneered a handful of new research techniques that had set him apart from anyone in this generation. With a broad and nervous smile, you had gone up to him, thrilled to even be in his near vicinity.
This man had been a god to you.
All of your excitement had fizzled out, like a campfire smothered by a bucket of water, when his eyes had trailed up and down your body and looked away in disinterest before you had even introduced yourself. It had confused you, but you had only gotten angry when throughout the entire meeting, even during your introduction to the team leaders he had been glued to his phone.
But hey, he’s a busy man, he had lots of things to do. He was probably answering pesky emails and inventing the ultimate cure to cancer in his mind. Of course, he wouldn't have time for a newbie. You still respected him.
Then you had started working with him, and your image of him had gotten flushed down the fucking toilet. Miguel O’Hara was a grumpy micromanager who hated everything about you. He hated how you organized your team, how you enforced deadlines, and how you spoke to all of your colleagues. You were too friendly, too loose, and too unfocused in his opinion. And the big guy took every chance he got to come up to you unprompted and remind you of this.
Well, the joke was on him, together you had made the department the most successful in the entirety of Alchemax. How bad could you be if you helped achieve that? WIth that inner confidence you had gone head to head with him over and over again, knowing that he would one day understand and leave you alone.
But today you were too tired for the usual bickering, tired of being at odds and being angry at people. Your reserves for extreme emotions had been depleted, all your fight had been punched out of you, and Miguel O’Hara was the least of your problems right now.
So you sighed, deflated like an old balloon animal and nodded slowly "Look, O'Hara, I spoke to Peter yesterday, he has everything under control and the team is reviewing the last bits of data. If you’d like, I can send an unofficial version to you tonight so you can start looking it over before we submit it on Friday.”
Gwen looked at you with raised eyebrows, impressed with your calm answer. Usually, you would've answered something like 'Come pry that report out of my cold dead hands' or something more office-appropriate along the same lines. Miguel’s frown only deepened, because nothing was ever easy with him.
“You’re not focused.” He repeated slowly, making the need arise to knock his forehead and see if anyone was home. How this man had been crowned the best scientist of your generation you did not know.
Gwen seemed to be reading your thoughts because, in one swift motion, she collected the mess the two of you had made, stuffed it into her empty little to-go mug and pushed herself away from the table “We are both very focused and about to get back from our company-mandated 15-minute break, aren’t we?”
Grateful for the excuse to leave this death spiral of a conversation behind you nodded, pushing your hair behind your ear before getting up as well. Once on two feet he still loomed over you, but it didn't stop you from looking up at him with the calm you reserved only for interactions with him.
“If you need me for anything else send an email or swing by my office, I will be in until late and will answer as much as I can.” You said tiredly, a small crick in your neck from looking up at him.
God was he big.
Honestly, you used to have a crush on him for years throughout uni (along with the rest of the female population). He was incredibly tall, looked like he lived in the gym and had his genetics blessed by a higher power. When you had first seen him in person you had felt your heart pound like a drum, afraid you wouldn’t be able to speak to the most handsome man you had ever seen.
Now every day at work you just dreaded your every interaction with him, working your fucking ass off, stubbornly bent on proving your work to a man who had once been your idol.
Gwen and Miguel exchanged polite goodbyes as you walked away, whilst you barely managed to nod in his direction, not waiting for the answer that would never come.
As you stood in front of the doors of the closed elevators, you leaned your head against her shoulder, closing your eyes. “I don’t know what to do, Gwen. I can’t move out and break the lease, I am not allowed to sublet and it’s so exhausting to walk around with noise-cancelling headphones, or run through the hallway so I will not run into them on my way home.”
She leaned her cheek on the top of your head and slung her arm around your shoulders “You can only make him regret it, and make it hurt until you can get out. In the meantime, you can stay at mine, if you want.”
It was a kind offer and one she had made many times over these weeks, but you could not take her up on it. She lived in a tiny studio apartment with her new boyfriend Miles, who you were also close with. Cockblocking them for three months, the time it would take until you could move out, was wildly unattractive.
“Just keep throwing me revenge ideas that won’t end up with me in jail.” You answered as the elevator doors slid open soundlessly. “Or keep telling me the illegal ones as well, they help me get through the day.”
You both stepped into the elevator, and you turned around.
There you saw Miguel’s large frame standing where you had left him, hands in his pockets and eyes still trained on the two of you. It tickled something in your chest and you evenly stared back, not allowing him to make you his bitch. The robot was probably checking whether you were actually going back to the correct floor. Control freak.
Your eyes were locked with his when Gwen interrupted your stream of thoughts.
“Jonathan's ego is as fragile as a crystal decanter, so there is a simple way to get his soul crushed and shattered.”
“What might that be?” You asked her, breaking eye contact as the doors slid close.
The look on her face? Evil. There was no other word for it.
“Give him a taste of his own medicine, get laid so hard and loud that he'll regret every choice he’s ever made.”
You blinked at her slowly, mulling over her words. A smile mirroring hers spread over your face.
Now, that was a good idea.