Work Text:
Samira is not a person who has a lot of fun. She loves her job. She loves researching, writing, working. It’s invigorating, and it’s rewarding, but even she can admit that it isn’t fun. The Samira of three years ago would’ve told you that fun was overrated. That fun and passion are two different things and life is perfectly fulfilling without seeking out dopamine hits just because.
Samira of now wishes she could shake Samira of then. She might not partake in ‘fun’ as her colleagues-she-can’t-quite-call-friends describe it, but Samara has learned how to have fun her own way. No one and nothing can convince her that ending a twelve in an overcrowded bar is the height of ‘fun’. Fun is curling up on her couch, take-out in hand, laptop resting on her thighs, with the salty evening breeze blowing through the open windows of her apartment. Fun is finally reaching the career level of being able to clone herself. Fun is making Robby for the third time, and accidentally taking the ladder out of the pool…for the third time.
This is how Andrew finds her, having let himself in as he often does at this point. He’s settling into the couch cushions next to her, spine just rigid enough to imply discomfort, and so Samira absentmindedly shifts, pushes her toes under his thigh, smiles to herself as she feels the tension bleed out of him. Or, well, at least some of it.
She lets out a frustrated huff, jabs a little harder than necessary at the thumb pad, attempting to get Samiracle to pick up the damn book so she doesn’t piss herself again. She really needs to rework this hallway.
“What are you doing?” Andrew asks, and Samira stares blankly at her screen, takes a measured breath as they both watch Samiracle piss herself in the middle of her own hallway.
“Video game, uh, it’s called the Sims,” Samira mutters distractedly as she finally gives up and switches to build mode, deletes the stupid book, shifts the doorway slightly to hopefully prevent this from happening a fourth time, and switches back to play mode.
Andrew doesn’t say anything else for a while, simply sits almost against her and watches Samiracle try and fail to cook eggs. She never remembers to level up her character’s cooking skills. It’s almost ridiculous how much carries over. The third time she swears under her breath, he lets out a confused why?
“Because it’s fun,” she responds stiltedly through gritted teeth. She can feel his eyes burning into the side of her face, knows he’s probably giving her that stupidly soft expression he does whenever she confuses him, finally feels the weight leave as his eyes wander back to the screen.
“Is that supposed to be you,” Andrew drawls, watching the pink figure with suspiciously Samira-like features and suspiciously Samira-like hair and suspiciously Samira-like clothes burn a second plate of eggs.
She doesn’t bother to answer. His responding huff is quiet, and Samira feels her lip twitch, always does when his resting brooding face slips for a moment and his crooked smile or breathy laugh make an appearance.
It’s another few minutes before her other Sim comes home, and she feels him shift closer, glances to the side to watch the way his eyes narrow, brows furrow.
“Who’s that supposed to be?“ He asks, but they both know he can tell.
“That’s Andrew,“ she says, not looking at him—not because she can’t, just because she’s very focused. Obviously.
“What’s with my stomach?” He finally adds as they watch an embarrassingly accurate Andrew…minus of course The Stomach…stalk through the kitchen and take over cleaning and cooking. Samira clears her throat.
“Uh, he’s pregnant,” she says, still focusing, and she can practically hear the incredulous look she knows is spreading across his face.
“How did that happen?“ A pause. “Wait, why are you pink?“ he is still so close, and she tries to stifle a laugh at the dramatic arc of his brow she can just make out in her periphery.
“That’s Samiracle, she’s an alien who crash landed. I managed to bring her to the lab, but she killed me and my assistant—I had cloned myself— and is now trying to disguise herself as me so she doesn’t get caught. She. Uh. Impregnated you,” Samira monologues, as if explaining a difficult diagnosis to a patient, as if he hasn’t been watching her control these Sims for the better part of fifteen minutes and must have picked up how the game works by now. She finally turns to look at him.
He’s staring, which is nothing new, but he’s looking at her like she’s fascinating, like she’s a particularly interesting case report he wants to understand, and she feels caught in it, stuck, and she forces herself to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat.
“Okay,” he says, leaning back, intense eyes leaving hers to focus back on the screen, and it’s like she’s been released, her own gaze automatically shifting back down to where Samiracle is stupidly trying to ‘study human behavior on the television’ right next to Andrew. She cancels the task, makes her go shower so she doesn’t blow her cover. She’s still getting used to the alien mod. It’s stupidly fun. She can’t lose another character this fast, though. It took ages to make herself the first time, to level everything up. And it was all gone. She would not make the same mistake twice.
She didn’t even want to think about the hours she’d spent making Andrew. It was easier to ignore it. She couldn’t risk all those hours of work going to waste either. Samira knew her posture was getting terrible, didn’t care, just needed to finish the day before she could log off. It would be silly to save now just to have to send them to bed next time. It wasn’t her smartest move to have Samiracle go home to Andrew, though. She’s made him accurate. Scary accurate. He could sniff out something off a mile away, and he was going to fuck it all up. She just needs to get him to trust her, just needs to—
“What are they doing?” His voice comes low next to her ear, and she doesn’t shiver. She doesn’t, it’s just starting to cool outside, and there was a breeze, and she’s used to the gravel in his voice, she used to the low gritty timbre of it, she’s used to the way he drawls, the way he gets too close, the way he doesn’t understand personal space when it comes to her.
She turns, their noses nearly brushing, to find his eyes already on her, brow raised, lips twitching.
“Uh,” she says stupidly, and he blinks, turns back to the screen, cocks his head to the side, turns back to her.
“Samira,” he says, gravelly, always so fucking gravelly, and she swallows again.
“Fighting probably,” she croaks out, and Andrew stares at her, daring.
“Really? Because there’s hearts on the screen. Seems odd,” he says in that monotone that always comes across as just slightly mocking, that never fails to make her skin crawl pleasantly, and it’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. She’s playing a video game inside while the ocean is literally feet away because that’s the height of a good time to her, and he’s sitting here with her because that’s the height of fun to him, because he’s her best friend, because he likes her, and she can be brave. He’s looking at her like he wants her to say it, like he hopes she’ll say it, and she opens her mouth, and he looks at it, and he likes her, she knows he does, he can’t hide it, he can never hide shit from her, and she says it:
“They’re woohooing.”
“They’re what?”
——
Samira is a fun person. She’s a fun person who has fun, and because she’s extra good at it, she does it routinely, like clockwork. She’s so good at having fun because she studies and she practices and she masters everything she tries.
Her routine was fun before, but it's downright delightful now. It goes like this:
She gets home from a shit shift, collapses on her couch until Andrew lets himself in, and while he cooks for her, she deals with her work emails and updating her to-do list and working on any papers she’s in need of reviewing or co-authoring until she registers the lack of movement in her kitchen and glances up to see him awkwardly hovering between rooms, always so hesitant to disturb her.
They eat, and she tells him about her day, and sometimes he offers something back, but mostly he just listens, and watches, and listens, and stares some more.
When they’re done, she makes a valiant effort to help with the dishes, but always ends up sitting on the couch instead, powering up her ancient laptop while she watches him.
He comes over, and sits almost against her, and watches her play, occasionally offering clipped suggestions about their new child’s name, or makes offended huffs when she gets his Sim to do gross things just to get a rise out of him—I would not have sex on a toilet. Under no circumstances. Stop—Samira!
It’s fun, and she looks forward to it, and she’s laughing all the time now, and she has a best friend, and she’s pretty sure he likes her, but she doesn’t really want to change anything. Everything is lovely and she doesn’t need to push him and she’s happy, which is new, and more exciting than wooh-sex ever would be, so she doesn’t push.
Just keeps sitting with her foot or knee or thigh pressed to his denim-clad one, and watches the mini versions of them she lovingly made make love and babies every couple days.
She’s never really had a best friend before. Maybe this is normal. She doesn’t think so though. She doesn’t really have any data to compare it to, as she often tells herself, so she is still hesitant to draw premature conclusions. It would be irresponsible.
——
He’s always watching her. It’s his thing. He stares, and stares, and stares, and drives her crazy, and she’s super normal about it, but she just needs a break today. Can’t take the weight of it, the awe and love and devotion she’s started to notice in his eyes lately, just needs to relax without unpacking all of that.
She slides the laptop across their legs, onto his own, ignores how small the laptop looks on his thighs, the size difference, the way they stretch and pull at the denim of his stupidly tight jeans and—
He just looks at her, confused, and she grins at him, switches the controls to the Andrew Sim that hasn’t returned from work yet. She’s pretty sure he’s stealing the royal diamond or something today.
“Don’t look at me like that, I know you know how to play at this point,” she says, lips curling up when his own tug down, because he’s always acting like she’s bringing up something unknowable whenever she acknowledges the way he watches her, studies her. Like it’s something he’s hiding. It’s so endearing she can’t think about it for very long without wanting to do something… irresponsible.
He does know how to play, takes over seamlessly in a way that makes her smirk. He likes watching her hands. Likes watching her fingers on the keys. Does he actually think he’s subtle? Does he know the meaning of the word?
Samira doesn’t know why she thought this would somehow make things easier, though.
He’s sitting on the couch, shoulders curled in ever so slightly, and she’s propped on her elbow in order to take him in, his profile and the screen visible to her. His brows are pinched as he scrolls through his options, as he opens all of her settings and scrolls through her packs, and he’s taking this so seriously, like it’s some kind of test, like he needs to prove something, and she loves him.
So much for not unpacking everything.
For his part, he doesn’t seem to notice her epiphany, too dialed in, face intense as he plays, every once and a while murmuring a question out of the side of his mouth. Can I move this? Can I buy this? Precious with her things. Precious in a way he is with her every day, every way. She loves him. She loves him. She loves him.
She’s not paying attention to anything, just humming in agreement when he offers a dry comment, humming in authorization when he asks a question, not really caring what’s happening on screen for once. In her precious game. She trusts him, too. She trusts him with this. She doesn’t trust anyone with this. They don’t understand. Or they probably wouldn’t. She doesn’t really know. Or try. Or offer. It’s really just him. She lets him in because she trusts him, and she doesn’t know when it started or how, but it’s baked into her and it’s as horrifying as it is exhilarating.
Samira is startled out of her thoughts when he finally sits back, and the room is decidedly darker now than it was a minute ago, and there is a look of quiet pride on Andrew’s face that he’s trying and failing to hide.
“I’m done,” he says, accompanied by a short nod she’s pretty sure isn’t purposeful, and she grins. He gingerly places the laptop back on her, rough palms and calloused fingers gentle where they brush her exposed thigh, and she really needs to stop leaving the windows open, the breeze is always messing with her and making her cold and shivery.
“Want me to—“ she starts to say, sending the cursor up to the save button, but he clamps down on her wrist, just enough to stop her, and he looks embarrassed when she looks over.
“Umm. Let me—“ he forces out, focused intensity returning, and he leans in close, shoulder brushing her own, warm through the layers of their t-shirts as he clicks on Samiracle, selects give gift, pulls something she doesn’t register out of Andrew’s inventory and over to Samiracle’s, and they both watch the short cut scene play out. Andrew with nerves radiating off of him, Samira with a dry mouth and sweating palms.
Andrew is gifting Samiracle a specimen jar of dead pink whale. Samira has been trying to complete her collection for months, has complained to him for weeks, and when she looks at him, the look of pride has vanished and he’s looking at her like he needs her desperately to understand. She thinks she does.
Samira grabs her laptop out of his grip, tosses it onto the coffee table, and is shoving at his shoulders, barely hearing the little yelping noise she startles at him before she’s on him. Their legs are tangled, one of his stretching out on the couch under her, the other hanging off the side, and they are chest to chest. She’s not bothering to hold herself up, lets all of her weight sink on top of him, and he’s looking at her like she isn’t real. Sliding her hands from his shoulders, she cups his face in her hands, strokes her thumbs over his cheeks as she meets his wide-eyed gaze.
“I love you too,” she murmurs, fervent, needing him to get it too, eyes helplessly dipping to where his lips part on a shaky exhale. “I love you too,” she whispers into his mouth, into his cheeks, into his temple, his forehead, his eyelids when they flutter closed. His hands are resting on her ribs, gently, as if she is fragile, and he’s just watching her, disbelief plain, as if he hadn’t just professed his love in the clearest way, and it's not until the third time that her lips press against his own that he surges up after her, chasing her when she goes to pull away. His fingers drag, and then they’re gripping and pulling her in, nearly bruising, and she’s sighing into him, kissing him and kissing him and kissing him until her lungs burn and she needs to breath, and she suddenly rears back, eyelids heavy as she watches his neck crane after her, eyes glazed.
“Hang on, I’ve got to save it,” she says, climbing off of him, fingers shaky as she hits save, watches the little wheel turn and turn and turn until it's finally done, slams her laptop shut and whips back around.
Andrew is lying there, face turned to her, raw and open and still dazed, and as much as her body is screaming at her to jump him again, she make herself sit for a moment, memorize the details, watch the way his flush spreads down his neck, into the collar of his t-shirt under her attention.
Slower this time, she crawls back up, situates herself between his legs, slides her hands up his chest, over every inch of him she can just to hear the way his breath hitches, the way he keeps letting out desperate little gasps. It’s curious, the way he just lies there, looking up at her like he’s waiting for instructions, hands slowly finding their way to her hips, flexing slow and controlled on them when he does. It’s curious, and she files it away, stores it somewhere safe before leaning down and losing herself in him completely.
She files away a lot of new data points over the course of the next forty-five minutes, and she was silly for ever thinking this wouldn’t be as fun, as exciting. She thinks they might have to add this to her routine.