xp_logs | North and Felicia (New Years Naps)

Felicia is just trying to take a nap. The universe is going to be a bitch about it.

Heavily backdated

New year. New you. New hangovers where you came into work because you had forgotten that while you loved tequila, it didn't love you. Felicia sighed, pressing her iced coffee - it was winter in New York, this was several levels of difficult for her - against her temple and making a quiet hissing noise. It'd been at least three hours of daylight where she was awake before noon, and she was nocturnal. She deserved a stolen couch nap.

But the door to the office she had taken shelter in swung open before her eyes could shut, admitting a man with a stack of files balanced precariously in one hand. He stopped short, framed by the doorway with bloodshot eyes partially obscured by disheveled hair.

Felicia was clearly the last person North was expecting to see in Kevin's office. Though, he thought to himself, she certainly looked at home on his couch. "Hi," he rasped, finally. One of the first words spoken directly to her outside of work in months. "Happy new year."

Had there been a camera to break the fourth wall to, expression entirely done, she would have. Instead, Felicia pushed herself up, using the motion to hide the steadying breath she took. "Happy new year," she replied. Her feet were bare, shoes delicately lined up on the floor next to the couch, and tucked up under her, hiding dark green nail polish. "You look terrible."

North almost smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling by just that little bit before he seemed to catch himself. "Thank you," he said, tone angling somewhere between dry and wry as he stepped toward the large desk on the other side of the room. He glanced around, as if double checking that its usual occupant was not around. "You look the way I feel." Tired.

"Well fuck you too," Felicia replied, allowing a brief, half grin. She looked away, then back, as he did. Old habits. "I look like I need a nap. You look like you need a mortician. Should someone be fussing over you?" Her jaw clenched, feet coming down to the floor. "Nevermind, that's-"

"Most probably," North replied, before there was much of a silence to fill. With his back to her, North hefted the load in his arms onto the desk with a loud thud before stepping back to survey the stack of files. He should probably have had one of the others digitise them. They could have avoided this encounter. But it was difficult to deny that seeing her settled something inside of him. Just a little bit. In the centre of the roiling mess of other Things he mostly chose to ignore in favour of work, coffee and alcohol in a steady rotation.

Felicia gave a small huff, using his back to fidget with her hands, a light click of nails, unnoticed. "I guess when you're bombarded by Jubes and whatever she thinks is helping I had nothing to do with it, then."

"She bought me ice cream," he said blandly, turning back to face her. "If you say anything more she may start cooking and then we would not have a building left."

"It's made of stone, I'm sure it'll be fine," Felicia replied with a slow, worn out blink and a half smile. "The structure is sound enough they could rebuild, surely. But I'll hypothetically keep that in mind. On the other hand you could self care and cut out the middle person. All options."

The corners of his lips curled up by a fraction, mostly hidden by an overgrown (but thankfully clean) beard. "I am fine," he said, caught uncomfortably between having too much but nothing to say. "Had to square some matters away before my flight out to North... Carolina."

Felicia made a soft scoffing noise, not bothering to hide the roll of her eyes at the obvious lie. "Woooow. I mean, sure. Right. North Carolina. Say hi to the Biltmore for me."

There was a quiet sigh as he glanced ruefully out the window, knowing that she knew better than to believe him. The silence that followed was brief but dense, broken only when he turned to exit the room, footsteps heavy even against the carpeted floor. "Take care of yourself, Schatz."

"I always do," Felicia replied woodenly after a beat, a small flinch at the pet name, as something inside her screamed. She allowed herself to look away, blinking. "Try defying the odds and do the same."

It felt like those odds had not been stacked so overwhelmingly against him since his first escape from the Motherland. Naturally, North's response was to chuckle, as though she had told a particularly funny inside joke. But the sound was low and strangely bleak, cut abruptly short by the door swinging firmly shut behind him.

Felicia pretended Kevin wouldn't notice the unlikely hairline fracture that had appeared radiating out from the frame.