The Mindy Project fic: Landing in Turbulence (3/3)
Danny was usually the first doctor to arrive at the practice in the morning; he liked to stay on top of his paperwork and look over his patients’ files before seeing them. But on Wednesday, for the second time that week, he let himself sleep in a little and take a longer than usual shower, giving the sharp streams of water extra time to slowly beat the cobwebs out of his head and trying not to think about that night a few weeks ago when Mindy had been standing in here with him.
If this kept up, he was going to have to remodel his bathroom.
Of course his “late” was Mindy’s “right on time,” which he realized as soon as he was approaching the elevator and saw her already inside.
He stopped in his tracks for a second, and Mindy’s eyes widened before she scrambled to hit a button-a split second later, he found out she was holding the door for him, not the opposite.
That was something, at least. It could have gone either way.
He stepped onto the elevator and felt immediately enveloped in tension-and not a pleasantly buzzing beginning-romance tension, but an awkward, things-are-never-going-to-be-the-same kind of tension. It made him nervous.
Mindy was alternately staring at the floor numbers lighting up and sneaking furtive glances at him, which weren’t so furtive because he was watching her too. She looked just as jumpy as he felt.
“Late night. I accidentally slept in,” he said, by way of explaining why he’d shown up just in time to make her elevator ride as uncomfortable as possible.
“Yeah, same,” she said, giving him a weird, half-amused look, and he realized how silly he sounded since they’d been together for that late night. And he’d just reminded her of that.
Not that she would have forgotten.
The elevator landed on their floor, and he followed her out to the reception desk, where she put on her reading glasses to look at the messages Betsy handed her. She seemed to be making a point of acting normal, which was what he should probably be doing too, but at the moment, he couldn’t remember what normal was.
“Good morning, Dr. C,” Betsy said, “there’s someone waiting for you-”
His heart skipped a beat, and Danny glanced quickly back toward his office, but no ghosts from his past were there this time.
“-in exam room 2,” Betsy was saying. “A Mrs. Miller, a new patient. Morgan’s in taking her history, and they should be ready for you in a few minutes.”
He breathed out. “Good, that’s good,” he said. “Could you go check on Morgan for me, make sure he’s not doing anything weird … or weirder than usual?”
After Betsy walked away, he could feel Mindy watching him, and he felt suddenly self-conscious about the fact that he didn’t really have any reason to be standing here. Then again, she didn’t either at this point, and he didn’t want her to walk away just yet.
“You look nice today,” he stalled, and she did look good-more monochromatic than usual, and he wondered if that was for him. “I like the glasses.”
He meant that-she wore her glasses when she worked, and she was good at her work, focused and smart, and that’s how she looked when she had them on.
Mindy narrowed her eyes at him, not unhappily necessarily, but suspiciously. “They’re prescription,” she said.
“I know.” He smiled softly at her and lifted a hand to brush the side of the frames with his thumb, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
Her mouth opened, and he jerked his hand backward, putting it into his pocket. He watched her mouth snap shut and then open again.
“Okay, that’s enough,” she said abruptly. “Get in here.” She jerked her head toward her office, indicating he should follow her there.
“I have a patient,” he protested weakly, even as he was following her. Mrs. Miller could wait a minute.
Mindy shut the door behind him, and he looked at her expectantly, surprised she was choosing to be enclosed in another small space with him after the whole elevator awkwardness.
“Okay, Danny, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you have to stop.”
“What, what am I doing?” he said defensively, even as his plausible deniability was drying up fast-even to himself.
“You know what you’re doing,” she said in a hissingly loud whisper. “I know this thing with your ex was difficult, but you can’t just go around working out your issues on other people’s faces! I’m nobody’s rebound girl.”
“I wasn’t …” he started to protest, but honestly, he couldn’t say for sure that that wasn’t exactly what he was doing. The idea made his uneasy-like it might put him the same category of dick that she usually ended up with. He didn’t know what he wanted to be to her, but he definitely didn’t want to be that.
“I have a boyfriend,” she hissed. “And no, he’s not perfect, but who is?” Danny flinched as she gestured vaguely toward him as she said that. “And he likes me. And I think I like him. And you don’t know everything about it.”
He wondered fleetingly if this meant the Empire State Building thing wasn’t happening. Not that he wanted that to happen. You can’t schedule a time and a place for something like that, like it’s a racquetball game or something.
It occurred to him she’d never mentioned a specific date or time, and he’d never be able to ask.
“I never said anything about it. Just … forget it, okay?”
He threw his hands up and turned away from her toward the door, to mask his disappointment. Disappointed about what, he wasn’t sure-it wasn’t like he’d wanted her to dump Casey and start dating him. They’d fight all the time. They’d annoy each other constantly. She wasn’t even Catholic. It made no sense.
“No, don’t …” Mindy trailed off, and he paused, waiting for her to say something. “Look, what are you doing for lunch today?”
That threw him.
“Lunch? I don’t know … probably order a sandwich, eat in my office. I have some paperwork to catch up on.”
“Good!” Mindy said, sounding more excited than the information warranted. “I’m working through lunch too. We should get some sandwiches, hang out.”
“Hang out?” Danny asked, dumbfounded. “After …?” He gestured vaguely between them, once again reminding her of the thing he didn’t want to remind her of.
“So we made out! Okay, it happens. It’s not like we hooked up.” She sounded a little desperate, like she might be trying to convince herself it wasn’t a big deal as much as him. “I don’t want things to be weird. I mean, we’re friends still, right?”
The way she was looking at him, that actually seemed really important to her, and there was something that struck him as kind of amazing about that-that as much as they got on each other’s nerves sometimes, she wasn’t willing to throw it all in because of some awkwardness.
Which he didn’t want to do either. Between the Sante Fe trip and the whole weird date thing, he’d actually gotten pretty used to having her around.
So, what then? They were friends who happened to be attracted to each other-okay. He thought he might be able to ignore the second part if he could keep the first.
“Yeah, okay … lunch then.” To prove how okay he was with this idea, he took it one step further. “You go ahead and order. You know what I like.”
It was a rare person he’d let order his sandwich. And as bizarre as it was, that person was Mindy.
“It’s a date!” She grinned at him, before realizing how that sounded and sucking in her lips self-consciously. “I mean … not an actual date,” she amended.
Almost choking on nothing, Danny nodded and let himself out.
On his way to see Mrs. Miller, he stopped by his own office to just quickly drop off his briefcase, put his hands to his face, and let out a quick silent scream. Then he straightened up, took a few calming breaths, and set off for Exam Room 2.
One thing hadn’t changed, at least. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to survive being friends with Mindy Lahiri.
-30-