What's Right For Me Ain't For You Who: Lita Singh and Nick Choi. Where: Nick’s office, the LBJ. What: Lita and Nick navigate the choppy seas of friendship by returning an ancient relic to its proper owner. When: March 7, 2019, early afternoon.
I'm not trying to forget you I just like to be alone come and give me the space I need and you may and you may and you may find that we’re alright…
Lita leaned back in Nick’s swivel chair, propped her feet up on his desk, and flipped through the open resources ledger on his desk. Forgot to carry the one, Lita critiqued, tsk-ing aloud to herself, as she looked over the neat columns of numbers Nick had painstakingly inked into the logbook. She hadn't intended to visit the LBJ on the one, hard-earned day off she had all week; but, then again, she hadn't expected to find a relic from her past holed up in the deepest depths of her closet.
It was a University of Texas Austin hoodie: balled up, musty, and forgotten underneath a mountain of discarded clothing and accessories. She had been searching for a shoe that had seemingly been sucked up into the void. Instead of finding the Burberry Wellington she was looking for, Lita found an artifact from a long-dead, informal arrangement of convenience.
Lita let herself into Nick’s office, garment in hand, using the keys she still had to both his work space and his apartment. She had to search for them but she knew what to look for: two silver keys on on a “Ice Castles in Eden Prairie” keychain. She didn't know what stupid ass ice castles they referred to or where the hell Eden Prairie was but the keychain was familiar, well worn and used quite often once upon a time.
Lita would have to scold him for his shitty arithmetic on these resource figures and, considering the sound of familiar, impending footfalls, she wouldn't have to wait for long.
Today wasn’t a day to write home about, which in Nick’s book was actually a damn blessing. After their zombie scare, quiet days were to be cherished and enjoyed. Although he couldn’t necessarily say he had been enjoying trying to reorganize their resource area, and he really needed to make some kind of note for the scouts that changing up where things are kept is actually not helpful or amusing to him. Which was what he planned to do once he reached his office. The note of course would come off more “Minnesota Nice” than Nick would want, but that was just a byproduct of where he was from. You could take the boy out of Minnesota, but you can’t take the Minnesota out of the boy it would seem.
Nick was muttering notes to himself as he walked, his booted feet echoing off of the hallway of the LBJ as he moved towards his office - a place he had snatched as his just shortly after being given the job as head of resources. It wasn’t an impressive office, but it as comfortable and his. So what if papers were strewn everywhere, old medical textbooks lay open and his resource ledger was always open on his desk. His mother wasn’t around to nag at him to keep his space clean, and even if she was he would have told her it was clean enough for him to find things.
That was the state he expected to find his office in when he opened the door and let Holly and Runt scoot into the space ahead of him. What he was not expecting was to find Lita lounging in his chair with her feet on his desk. A year ago this would have been a welcome sight, but now it just left Nick with a little voice inside his head going “Don’t check her out, don't check her out.”.
“Lita,” Nick finally spoke while he kicked the door closed behind him. “I, ah, wasn’t expecting to see you,” He continued, again urging himself to keep his gaze on her face and not think about how this little surprise might have gone back when they were, well, whatever they had been. “Are you here to see Savannah and just thought you’d drop by?”
Lita looked up from the ledger and cocked her head to the side, sizing up her former FWB.
“Nicholas,” she said neutrally. She turned her head to the animals Nick insisted on having with him at all times. “Holly, you’re looking well,” she addressed the labradoodle as it snuffled against her hand. “Other dog,” Lita tacked on belatedly to the Blue Heeler.
“Shit, the use of my full name generally means trouble, so what the hell did I do?” The question is meant as a joke, but there’s a part of him that wonders if there was something he did in fact do - though they've barely spoken in months so he has no idea what that ‘something’ might have been. Nick’s curiosity was definitely piqued even more by the sudden and unannounced arrival of Lita. He of course didn’t voice this aloud, instead watching the interaction between Lita and his two dogs, a grin barely hidden as the two interacted with their guest.
Maybe she was imagining it but Lita thought Runt had the good enough sense to look insulted. Lita had never been an animal person; or, perhaps more accurately, had never had the chance to become one. Her parents had loathed pets of any kind (filthy, smelly creatures they had insisted) and had forbidden any from gracing their pristine, perpetually white-carpeted domicile. Holly had been around when Nick and Lita had engaged in their adult sleepovers and during that time the doc and the dog had brokered a sort of cautious truce. Runt had come along after she and Nick parted ways and so Lita and newer canine had no reason or occasion to bond. Lita resolved to be wary toward the relative newcomer and it seemed the feeling was mutual.
“I’m not here to see Savannah,” Lita said, placing Nick’s ledger openfaced where she had found it. She lowered her feet from the desk’s surface, crossed her legs in front of her, and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m here to see you. Can’t a girl just stop by to say hi?”
A beat passed, and then two before Lita let out a snicker, unable to keep up the ruse. She very much doubted Nick was fooled by it on any level but it was worth a shot.
“Oh my God, can you even imagine if I was like that?” Lita scoffed, rolling her eyes. “But seriously, I am here to see you. I found something of yours today. Thought you might like it back.”
While he would go to his grave denying it, Nick felt a jolt of intrigued at Lita’s behavior. One he quickly attempted to shove back into whatever dark little corner of his mind it had come from. They hadn’t slept together in, well, long enough that he couldn't even place when they had stopped. Running a hand through his hair, stalling before he had to actually speak. Nick watched Lita closely. Watched and tried to remind himself they were friends - something that got a hell of a lot easier when Lita gave up that act.
“Well, I could imagine it, but honestly I like this version of you better,” Nick answered, a grin creeping it’s way onto his face. “Something of mine and you came all this way to return it?” He paused. “Honestly, if I haven't noticed it missing yet, it probably wasn’t something you had to trouble yourself coming all the way over here with.” Nick knew Lita’s free time was limited, so he felt just a touch guilty she had come all this way to return something that he couldn't even tell you what it might be if he tried.
When Nick put it that way coming here sounded like a bigger deal than it actually was. Still, she’d already made the trip and if Lita was being honest with herself, she wanted Nick to have his stuff back. Even though he hadn’t noticed the hoodie was missing and she hadn’t realized she still had it, once she had it seemed completely out of place in her apartment.
“You know if it had been a pain in the ass I wouldn’t have done it,” Lita said, shooting her former paramour a knowing look. What Lita got in return was a chuckle and a nod, he knew that Lita wouldn’t have come all this way or put herself out if it was really any kind of hassle to do so. There was something about Nick that had always put her at ease. Even now, he had a calming effect on her. Lita wondered if she had ever told him that. Well, if she hadn’t, she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it now.
“With summer coming up I doubt you’ll need it,” Lita said, reaching down into her bag and drawing the UT Austin hoodie out. She placed it, more or less folded, on the desk. “But I thought in case you were ever feeling nostalgic about your old college days, you’d want it.” Lita shrugged to emphasize how not a big deal this was. “Besides, it was taking up valuable real estate in my closet. One of these days I’ll be able to get to my old penthouse downtown and I’ll be able to liberate all my old couture. Your ratty old sweatshirt would just look sad in comparison.”
Nick was still racking his mind for what exactly it could be that Lita was returning, and the summer comment didn’t give him much of a hint. His gaze followed her movements though and he laughed outright when she set the old UT Austin hoodie on his desk. “Truthfully I assumed I’d lost it or it had disintegrated in the wash the last time I put it through,” Nick remarked as he reached forward to touch the sweatshirt, an amused grin still on his face. “Hey, you won’t get any argument from me there, this thing has seen better days,” he paused. “But it’s damn comfortable and in my life probably qualifies as the longest relationship I’ve ever had.” If his memory served him right he had acquired the sweatshirt during his Freshman year, so the cotton sweatshirt was well into the double digits in age.
If Nick’s longest relationship had been with that ugly, comfortable sweatshirt, Lita wasn’t about to tell him whatever they had together was hers. At any rate, Lita actually liked Nick’s old hoodie. It was soft, threadbare and warm; if she had known it was still there lurking in the back of her closet, she might have still worn it. Not in public, obviously. She did have standards after all.
After a moment’s thought, Lita threw the set of keys on top of the shirt. She hadn't thought about returning them, but now, it didn't seem right to keep them.
“Might as well have those, too,” Lita said a bit stiffly. It wasn't as if she entertained any thoughts of them taking up with one another again; her love life was shambles even without Nick thrown into the mix. Even so, it was a bit like hammering a nail in the coffin of the whole thing.
“Wouldn't want to walk in on you doing any weird sex stuff to yourself we never got the chance to do.”
Lita smiled and it was genuine.
The spare set of keys joined the sweatshirt on his desk and Nick could admit that felt far more definitive as an ending than the returning of his sweatshirt had. Of course he knew that what he and Lita had had was over, long over, but there had always been that part of him that questioned if it was. Nick wouldn’t necessarily call it hope, because even when they were, well, whatever they had been, the idea of it turning into more had never once crossed his mind. No, he would categorize it more as curiosity -- a question hanging in the air, would Lita call him up some night at 3AM and start up whatever it was they had been doing? Now though, this was the gavel dropping on whatever they had had and in truth it was nice to be able to set the curiosity and questions aside.
“I was doing really damn good with not thinking about you and sex in the same sentence,” Nick began, nothing if not honest. “Quick, what is it you’re supposed to think about to get your mind off of sex? Baseball stats or some shit like that, right?” The tell tale signs of a smirk toyed at the corners of his mouth, a clue that his mind wasn’t nearly as ‘in the gutter’ as he was making it out to seem.
“Personally, I’m going to think about how awful it would be sharing a bed with you and not one, but two dogs,” Lita said, ruffling Holly’s fur as fondly as her pride would allow. She chuckled under her breath. “That’s enough to put me off for a good, long time.”
“You’re behind on the times Lita, I made those two their own bed a while ago,” This just spoke to the amount of time that had passed since Nick and Lita had shared anything more than a brief greeting upon the latter’s trips to the LBJ. Running a hand through his hair, which was getting kind of shaggy, Nick added. “This whole friends without benefits thing is going to be weird at first, isn’t it?”
A lull fell for a moment before Lita responded. “Yeah, probably,” Lita agreed ruefully.
She had never tried to be friends with a guy after she had been with him biblically. She hadn’t ever been able to see the point of it but with Nick she had to admit to herself it might be worth the effort to try. Lita snagged the resource ledger from where she had pushed it earlier and pulled it in front of her again, running her finger down the page until she found what she was looking for.
“But the transition will be easier when I sit here and correct your math on these figures,” Lita said, picking up a pencil. “Gotta carry the one, Nicholas.”
There was the Lita he had come to know, the woman who wasn’t afraid to call someone out on their mistakes -- a trait he actually appreciated. The fact that she still felt comfortable enough to critique his math was actually strangling reassuring and Nick was laughing as he replied. “Must have missed the day they taught that in math class,” he paused a beat. “Thank god you’re here to correct my mistakes, Lalita.” While his tone might have been joking, Nick was glad she had come and he did secretly appreciate a second set of eyes looking over his supply notes.
She looked between Nick and the medical supply notes in the margins he had scribbled and started rattling off on how the different medications should be separated, what needed to be refrigerated, whether or not it should be categorized by expiration date. Minutes turned into an hour or more with the doctor and the head of resources falling into the easy back and forth of people who knew each other all too well. Lita knew it had all the potential to turn weird at the at the drop of a dime but, for the time being, maybe this friends without benefits thing wasn’t so bad after all.