mylittleredgirl | Flashficlet Friday: Jake 2.0

Prompt from

calleigh_j: Jake, Diane, and a pencil.

When her fourth lab coat is ruined by an exploding pen (he has got to learn to control the nanites, for God's sake, because the man can cause damage even while doing the TV Guide crossword), Diane is at her wits' end.

"Jake," she says, as sternly as possible, as she pulls off her lab coat and ignores the sheepish expression on his face (which would melt her if she weren't ignoring it quite so hard). "What are you even doing here?"

She doesn't really mind, per se, that he spends his off-the-clock time loitering in her lab. Medically, it allows her to keep an eye on him. Personally... well, he's nice to look at, while she's keeping an eye on him.

Practically, though, he's driving her bonkers. She has about eighty pages of reports due before the next morning, and if Jake isn't asking ten thousand questions, he's complaining about being bored. If he isn't poking nosily through her desk drawers (there are personal things in there -- not to mention top-secret research), he's using the nanites to interject words into the reports she's typing, just to see if she'll notice.

She told him to bring his own toys, so he brought a TV Guide crossword book from some checkout counter or other, and his pre-nanite habit of pushing his thumb against the end of the pen while he thinks has turned her lab into an ink-stained nightmare.

"I'll help you clean it up!" he says, reflexively ducking his head like she's actually going to take her clipboard and smack him (the thought had occurred to her, but that would violate her hippocratic oath).

"Jake, can you just go home?"

He pouts, and then settles back to his crossword like she didn't say a word.

She waffles back and forth between her two choices (start shrieking like a harpy or just ignore him), and goes with the latter, until his hand drifts toward the pen on her desk, the one her father gave her as a graduation gift-

"Jake!" she shrieks like a harpy. "Get out! Now! Now now now!"

**

It doesn't surprise her much that he's scarce the next day; Jake's the type to hide out and lick his wounds after being scolded. She doesn't even have the chance to feel guilty about it, either, because there's an escaped-mouse crisis and eighty more pages of reports have been requested by the office of the executive director.

Still, she has enough time to be surprised when Jake turns up at 5:30 with his accursed crossword book and a microwaveable dinner.

He holds up the frozen dinner box like a shield. "Serves two!"

"What is that, lasagna?" She can't hit him when he's bringing her food. "All right. Come in."

He pops the box in the microwave and activates the timer with his brain. The JMD buzzes in her pocket.

"Show-off," she chides, but kindly. She doesn't include in her eighty-page reports how Jake uses his nanite-enhanced superpowers recreationally -- starting the microwave, or changing channels on the cable box when he loses the remote. She likes to think of that as their little secret.

She plucks the box out of the trash. "Should I be concerned that this is an Office Depot brand frozen dinner? You know, they have invented actual grocery stores..."

"Haha. No. I was there anyway. I bought you a present."

He hands her the plastic bag, and she pulls out... "Jake, the last thing I need is more pens for you to break."

"Those are for you. To replace the ones from yesterday." Jake reaches over her shoulder and pulls out another packet. "And pencils for me. No ink." He pulls out a mechanical pencil and clicks it a few times to demonstrate. "Truce?"

"Pencils?"

He shrugs. "Have you got a better idea?"

She can't stay mad at him. She has tried before, and it never lasts. "Yes, yes, truce. Now pass the lasagna."

Jake beams.

Hi Diane types out on her computer screen, right in the middle of a long equation.

"Stop that!"

Sorry.

She smacks him with her clipboard, but lightly. She's sure Hippocrates would understand.

*end*