Work Text:
Archie is very comfortable with her sexuality, thank you very much, so to be asked if she has a boyfriend is quite an insult to everything she has worked so hard to exude in her daily appearance. However, to be asked if her best friend is her significant other is a whole other thing that she doesn't even want to get into.
It all starts when a pretty hijabi with the deepest brown eyes Archie has ever seen (as cringe-inducing as it sounds) sidles up to her as Archie watches Will dancing with Robyn on the makeshift dance floor. She smiles at Archie as she comes to a stop, the fabric of her sleeve brushing against Archie's arm.
"Hi," she greets, bending awkwardly to make eye contact. Archie smiles back in way of greeting but finds herself distracted from the insanely pretty girl momentarily as Will picks Robyn up and spins them around. Her smile widens, and the girl waves a hand in front of Archie's face. "You still there?"
Archie's eyes shift back to the girl. Her hijab is a deep blue-almost-black colour embroidered with a silvery-gold thread, looping itself into a beautiful intricate design. Her dress is the same, a long floaty piece, and she holds two cups of what looks like Coca Cola. She shyly pushes one towards Archie. "I'm Salima, I work in the maternity ward at Holby. I thought you could use a drink, I haven't seen you get one yet."
Archie raises an eyebrow as she accepts the drink. "I'm Archie."
"I know."
"You do? Have you been stalking me or something?" Salima blushes into her cup as she raises it to her lips, laughing slightly.
"No, we work in the same hospital."
"I know," Archie teases, mirroring Salima's earlier words. "What brings you over here anyways? I feel like you didn't come over just to give me a drink."
"Well--" she starts, but is disrupted by an uproar of laughter from the dance floor. They look over to see Will and Robyn on the ground, laughing hysterically. Duffy is wiping tears from her eyes, Charlie is offering a hand to Robyn to pull her off of Will, and Ethan is filming it. Will is up on his feet not even a few seconds later, making his way over to Archie and Salima's standing table.
"Did you get that for me?" He asks, taking the drink from Archie's hand and downing the thing in one. "Cheers!" He kisses Archie on the cheek, glances at Salima, winks at Archie and disappears into the crowd of drunk hospital staff.
Salima is giggling and Archie can't take her eyes off of her. The corners of her eyes crease when she smiles and the deep brown of her eyes looks brighter somehow. Archie almost rolls her eyes at herself for acting like the main character in one of those stupid rom-com films Will makes her watch.
"What?" She asks, smiling but confused. Why is Salima laughing at her? Did she say something wrong?
"Oh, nothing. It's just..." She trails off, diverting her gaze. It seems as if her cup is suddenly more interesting. Is she embarrassed?
"Just... what?" Archie reaches across the table to where Salima is now standing and presses her hand against Salima's arm softly. Salima blushes and seems to relax into the touch. She leans forward across the table slightly, and Archie thinks her heart might have skipped a beat (of course she knows it hasn't, but this girl is doing things to her and she suddenly feels like a schoolgirl with a playground crush again and—oh, she's talking).
"Is he... your boyfriend?"
Archie feels like she's going to scream. This has happened way too many times. She can't count on two hands how many times this has happened because she'd run out of fingers to count on. She can't even count her toes along with her fingers because she'd run out of digits altogether. She makes a mental note of 3 things:
1) to not scream and scare off the pretty girl.
2) to never go on a work's night out that Will is attending ever again.
3) to tell Will to get a boyfriend already so that she can stop being asked stupid questions like this.
Alternatively – to get a girlfriend already so that she can stop being asked stupid questions like this.
She realises she has taken too long to reply to Salima, so she shakes herself out of it and schools her features to be more neutral. "No, I, um- no," she stutters, struggling to form a sentence as Salima moves around the table to stand at her side.
"So what is he then?"
"I- he's, uh, my..." She trails off. She knows Salima won't believe her if she says Will is her friend. No one ever does. Salima watched him kiss Archie's cheek, for Christ's sake. Suddenly, she has an idea. It's a terrible, terrible idea and she knows it is the least believable lie she's ever come up with, but she feels it's her only option by this point. "He's my brother."
"He's your what?"
"Yeah, I get that a lot. I'm black and have an English accent, he's white and has an Irish accent." She knows how stupid it sounds but she's dug the hole now. Might as well keep digging. "Well, I say he's my brother, he's my stepbrother."
"Must have been a shock to your parents to get two doctors in the family," Salima observes.
"Oh, uh, not really. They kind of expected it. Wanted us to be the best we could be and all that."
"And now you work at the same hospital? Doesn't that get super competitive?"
"Well, yeah." Archie smiles, knowing that isn't a lie. She remembers the day they both started at Holby; constantly trying to outdo each other, get the most interesting cases, treat the most patients.
Salima suddenly leans in and kisses Archie's cheek, pressing a piece of paper into her hand. "Bye, Archie." She smiles and backs away into the crowd, leaving Archie to stare at the piece of paper. In an elegant scrawl it has her phone number, "Salima Masri, Holby Maternity Ward" and "call me if you want to go out properly some time x". She smiles, shakes her head and tucks the piece of paper into her phone case.
She picks up Salima's abandoned drink and takes a sip. Coca Cola, as she thought. As she drinks, she scans the room. Ethan is talking with some girl she doesn’t recognise, but she seems a lot younger than Ethan. She makes a note to keep an eye out for the girl and hopes and prays to whatever God out there that he doesn't end up kissing that girl (a tiny part of her knows he will anyway because Ethan is not a rational guy, but she wants to stay optimistic). Charlie and Duffy are dancing together. A bit of an odd couple, if you ask her, but she's in no place to judge. She's still looking for Will in the crowd when she spots a man pulling someone closer to him and kissing them. Something clicks all of a sudden and she realises that the man pulling someone towards him to kiss him is Will, and the man being kissed is Sean Engel, someone she went to university with. She didn't know he was gay. She doubts he knew she was gay either.
She had long hair back then.
-----
"Wait, hang on. You what?"
"I told her you were my brother."
Will barks out a laugh. "You do realise how bloody stupid that sounds, right?" Archie lets herself laugh along with Will, who has his head on the tables, shoulders shaking as laughter ripples through his body.
"I know, I know, but I panicked! We spend so much time together so it was the only possible explanation!"
"You could have said we were friends!"
"Yeah, but when has anyone ever believed that?" Will nods in way of response, raising his glass to her. "You kissed my cheek, I had no way to explain it!"
"Did you at least get her number?"
"Did you get his number?" She deflects, trying to hold back a blush.
"Already had it," Will states bluntly, taking a sip of beer nonchalantly.
Archie's grin gets even bigger. "What?!"
Will shrugs as if it is absolutely no big deal whatsoever. "Yeah, I've been seeing Sean for a while now."
Archie punches his arm. "And you didn't tell me about it?"
"You didn't tell me about Samantha!"
"Salima, you idiot."
"Yeah, Salima."
"Because I only met her today!"
"Still..."
"You have no argument here, Noble."
Will sighs. "We met at a work thing last month and we hit it off, I gave Sean my number, he called me, we went for drinks and the rest, as they say, is history."
"Impressive. So are you dating now or is it just a casual thing."
"Uhhh..." He blushes.
Archie perks up. "You're dating! Aw, my tiny protégé is going up in the world."
"I am not your protégé! I've been dating way longer than you."
"Will, I'm literally two years older than you."
"You know, the way we argue, it's no wonder people think we're siblings." There is a lull in the conversation where Will smiles at a text on his phone – Archie assumes it's from Sean – and they sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
"I was giving you a minute to text her back!" Will sighs, exasperated. "Text her!"
Archie pulls her phone out of her pocket. "Hey, it's Archie from the awards night. Fancy a drink sometime?" She reads aloud as she types. When she's finished, she presses send quickly before she can regret anything, waves the phone in front of Will's face as proof, and downs the rest of Will's beer.
"You better tell me how this all goes, Archibald."
"Same for you, William."
"Don't call me William."
"Don't call me Archibald."