Chapter Text
“Hey, Cap! We are out of almond milk,” Paul greets Owen as he walks into the kitchen.
He raises his hand in a greeting of his own, only partly registering the other man’s words as he opens the fridge door. He blinks, yawning slightly. He is in desperate need of coffee after the night he had – spent tossing and turning for no apparent reason – but there is something wrong with the contents of the fridge.
He stares at fridge light for a moment and hopes he is hallucinating. That is because he was going to make himself a cup of coffee before the start of their shift but there is a slight problem with that plan of his.
The spot where the almond milk should be in the fridge shelf is alarmingly empty.
Paul pats him on the shoulder as he walks past him, setting his cup in the sink. “Told you Cap, we are out of that almond milk of yours.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Owen answers, closing the fridge door little awkwardly and very much aware of the eyes of his team on him.
“I can swing by the store and get some?” Marjan suggests as she finishes the last of her breakfast.
Owen takes a quick glance around the room before pulling out his phone. “No need. Judd isn’t here yet so I will give him a call and ask him to make a stop at the store. Anything else we need?”
After taking another glance around the room and hearing no affirmative response of them being out of anything else than the almond milk. He clicks his phone open, scrolling through his contacts and looking for Judd’s name.
“I’m going to my office, someone catch me when my knight in shining armor arrives,” he jokes, earning himself a few tired chuckles so early in the morning.
Owen heads to the stairs and his office, trying to recall how much paperwork he has left to do. He doesn’t usually touch any of it before his morning cup of coffee but he might as well try to get a head start on it. There are storm clouds brewing in the horizon and he fears the day will end up getting too busy for him to get anything done later.
He yawns, half way up the stairs and thinks about the undoubtedly long day they all have ahead of themselves as he finally finds Judd in his contacts and hits the call button.
“Hey, babe,” Judd’s voice answers after the fifth ring.
Owen freezes.
The words please get almond milk on your way to the station are on the tip of his tongue but all of a sudden, he can’t seem to remember how to talk anymore. All he manages to get out is a little surprised cough.
“Oh,” is all Judd says to that and then he too is quiet.
He is not sure how long they stay on the call like that, the only sound the low murmur of Judd’s car and the distant chatter from downstairs. It could be just few seconds or literal hours but at some point, Owen finally remembers how to move his legs and manages to make his way up the rest of the stairs and into his office.
He sinks into his office chair with somewhat shaky feeling legs. And he absolutely refuses to even glance into the direction of anything remotely reflective in fear of seeing his own, possibly blushing, face looking back at him.
Why would he be blushing is beyond him, after all he is no longer young school boy, but his face feels suspiciously hot. Perhaps he has fewer, he thinks, feeling little hysterical about everything that is currently happening.
Never before has he even considered the fact that it could be nice if his office walls weren’t glass. But right now? He desperately wishes it was a brick so no one walking by could see him.
Eventually Judd clears his throat, reminding Owen of the fact that the call is still very much on going.
“You called, Cap?” The other says, trying and failing for casual tone.
At least it’s not only feeling out of his depth all of a sudden.
“It’s umm,” Owen clears his own throat. “It’s nothing actually. See you in a bit?”
He ends the call, not waiting for the other’s reply and sets his phone down to the desk with a groan.
He tries telling himself that it was just a slip of a tongue, that surely Judd meant to say boss or that he didn’t look at the caller id and just assumed it was his wife. Unfortunately, it does absolutely nothing to help his stupid heart to calm down.
Oh no, it’s already fluttering in his chest exactly like it did when he met his wife at the altar. The first one, not the second – that was a mistake he hasn’t quite yet managed to figure out why he made it in the first place. But this is no love of his life, right?
This is Judd, out of all people in the world. Judd, his best friend. Judd, who is also very much happily married.
A part of him wants to crawl under his desk and hide there the rest of the shift. Judd can be the acting captain today and Owen can go back home, drink his morning coffee in peace there while he loses his mind over the phone call they just had.
Though he knows he can’t do that. It would be stupid, quite literally nothing happened. This is like when you accidentally called your teacher a mother in school as a kid. Expect back then he just felt a bit mortified over the fact but could soon laugh about it with his friends.
This? There is something that feels suspiciously like butterflies in his stomach.
With another groan, he thinks he is much too old to be acting this way. Then he promises to forget all about the phone call – truly, what phone call? He hasn’t called anyone this morning – and buries himself in the paperwork.
His plan works just fine until Judd finally arrives to work over twenty-five minutes later. He comes with multiple bags of groceries in town. He even bought the almond milk Owen didn’t manage to ask for. At the sight of it and the man holding it, his treacherous heart skips a beat.
Owen fears that this almond milk situation is going to be a lot bigger headache for him than he could have ever anticipated.