Work Text:
Neither of you had meant for it to happen, obviously. When you first started working with Ray, you both thought it’d be the start of a prosperous relationship, but not a romantic relationship. Necessarily not even a friendly relationship.
Things just started happening so fast after you did your first jobs, travelling around the country collecting people’s memories. You came along exceptionally well, worked in tandem, understood each other better than most Harvester pairs did. And over a short span of time, you even managed to build genuine trust.
At first, you didn’t really pay attention to your feelings. You thought they would pass, or that they weren’t romantic feelings and you were just misinterpreting them. But it became clear within days, you were head over heels for him. And that terrified you, since most Harvesters did not appreciate their partner starting to care too much about them. It would be a risk, something that could mess up your workflow. And you knew Ray was very unlikely to let feelings interrupt his work, if he even had the ability to care about you the way you wanted him to care.
At the time, unbeknownst to you, Ray was battling the exact same thoughts. He could keep it in better though, reminding himself that his feelings getting in the way of your partnership could sabotage the workflow. So in other words, neither of you had no idea the other was just as into the other, and thought your feelings are surely one-sided.
The revelation happened when someone you were going to wipe woke up before you could do it, and attacked Ray. You threw yourself on the guy, wrestling him before Ray scrambled up and knocked him out. You were both out of breath for a moment, before Ray knelt down and started looking you over, before he let a breath.
“You’re okay,” he muttered, and looked back at the guy lying next to you, clenching his jaw. “What were you thinking? He could have had a weapon.”
You were silent for a moment, before you muttered, “Him hurting you would have disrupted the mission.”
He barked out a laugh, stepping closer to you. “And you getting hurt wouldn’t have disrupted it?”
You fell silent at that, knowing he had a good point. Throwing yourself into the line of fire, or in this case, someone who would have overpowered you if Ray hadn’t reacted as fast as he did, was stupid. In the worst case, both of you could have gotten hurt, you were taught how to handle these things and you made a reckless, stupid act when you saw the guy trying to slam himself on Ray instead of doing what you had been taught to do.
Which was digging up a needle and injecting a paralysing drug right into his neck. Definitely not a wrestling match.
But turning and starting to dig through your bag would have given the guy more time to kill Ray.
You turned away from him and crouched over the guy who was now lying on the floor out cold. “Let’s drag him back, the helmet wasn’t able to reach the memories we want to get from him.”
Ray didn’t move, and you looked over to him and saw him clenching and unclenching his fists. You stared at each other for a moment, before he grumbled, “don’t ever do anything like that again.”
You raised your eyebrows at him before you nodded towards the guys legs. “You’d find another partner in no time.”
“They wouldn’t be you.”
That made you pause and you frowned at him, but he was already grabbing the guy’s legs and helping you to carry him back over to the chair. After that, you stood there staring at him for a moment, willing yourself to not say it, to not risk it.
But you couldn’t silence the voice that was thrumming in your head, so you succumbed to it and walked around the chair to reach Ray before he could pick up the helmet, and grabbed his wrist.
“I wouldn’t get another you either,” you mumbled, before you tugged him a bit closer. “If something happened and you were laid off for one reason or another, and I would get another partner… I don’t know if I would even want to do this anymore.”
He stared at you for a moment longer, and… suddenly leaned in, his lips meeting yours. You immediately responded, your eyes fluttering shut and your hands raising up to his biceps. And after a moment, you parted, foreheads still together.
“Boss can’t hear about this,” he murmured, and you shook your head no.
Yeah. An unconventional relationship, sure, maybe a little stupid. But still so, so beautiful.