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rather-impertinent · 6 years

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Girl Next Door chpt. 6

A/N: [’At Last’ by Etta James plays]

Hello friends! Sorry about the wait, I got distracted by canon fanfic! Caroline comes over for a movie night... (me @ me Megan why did you make Dwight a Star Wars nerd you fkn hate Star Wars lmfao)

Dr Dwight Enys’s ears picked up a tapping noise on the door frame. He sat bolt upright and quickly peered around him; he was in his bedroom, his legs dangling off the mattress, fully clothed, with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

“What the fu…?” he whispered to himself in groggy confusion. His twelve-hour shift had morphed into an eighteen-hour one as several car crash victims had to be stabilised before surgery, and all nine of them had been rushed in just as he was about to clock off. He had gone to Tesco to pick up a sandwich for lunch on his way home, but he had evidently fallen asleep after two or three bites. He threw the now hard and stale sandwich into the bin, silently lamenting the food waste. The knock on the door came again, though more firmly this time.

He glanced at his alarm clock, which informed him it was 8:17 pm. “Just a minute!” Dwight called as he swapped his smart trousers and shirt for pyjama trousers and a band t-shirt. He walked the short distance from his bedroom to the front door and pulled it open without checking the peephole.

“Caroline!” he said in surprise, his mood instantly picking up. She stood in front of him in pyjamas, her hair worn up in a messy bun, with a Tesco carrier bag in her hand.

She looked him up and down, admiring him in his casual clothes, thinking she’d never seen him in anything other than scrubs or a shirt and tie. “Hi,” Caroline greeted, with a smile forming on her face. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” She bit her lip hesitantly, which Dwight found very distracting.

“No, no,” he lied quickly. They both smiled shyly at one another. “Come in,” Dwight invited, holding the door open for her as she sauntered by him and straight into the living room.

She gracefully sat herself down and waited for him to join her. She cleared her throat slightly. “So, Dr Enys, I thought I would test your theory. I went to Tesco and bought Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and it was even on sale!” She pulled the brand-new DVD out of the bag and displayed it.

A confused smile spread across Dwight’s face. “You want to watch Star Wars?”

She shook her head. “No, you see, I don’t want to watch Star Wars. What I want to do is prove you wrong by getting to see how truly shit it is for myself,” she explained, her light eyebrows raised in their usual taunting way.

Dwight ripped the plastic wrapping off the DVD cover and opened it. “You’re on.” About halfway through the film, Caroline’s stomach began to whine loudly, so much so that Dwight paused the movie, shooting her a somewhat concerned glance. “Are you okay?”

Her cheeks reddened slightly. “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I just kind of forgot to eat dinner,” she laughed, hiding her face behind her hand. She had been working all day; the café hosted a kids’ birthday party from 4 pm until 7:30 pm and she had been so excited all day to show Dwight the DVD that she went straight from her flat to his after she’d gotten changed from work earlier.

“Me too,” he admitted sheepishly. How were they both adults? Dwight reached for his phone, a brilliant idea forming in his head. “Dominos,” he sang, opening up the app and immediately placing his saved favourite pizza into the basket. He handed Caroline his phone. “Here, pick whatever you want.”

She accepted the phone with slight hesitation. “Are you sure? These look expensive.”

“Nah, it’s fine. It’s 2 for Tuesdays anyway,” he explained.

Caroline furrowed her brows. “What’s that?”

“What do you mean?” Dwight asked her incredulously as if everyone in the entire world should know of the famous buy-one-get-one-free pizza chain deal. “You’ve never had a 2 for Tuesdays?”

“I’ve never had a Dominos,” she admitted somewhat shyly. “It may surprise you to know that I don’t actually eat fast food very often.”

Dwight looked her slim frame up and down. “Oh, right,” he chuckled. “Well, still, you need to eat something,” he insisted.

“If I get this pizza with all the vegetables on it that still counts as being healthy, right, Dr Enys?”

Dwight’s laugh bounced off the walls of his flat. “I have done that myself more times than I care to admit!”

Caroline fiddled with his phone for another moment and then handed it back to him with an amused smile. He placed their ordered and swore at his iPhone when the estimated delivery time said 65 minutes. It was Tuesday, though. But still.

By the time the seventh Star Wars movie was over, there was still no sign of their pizzas, but the film had gotten quite exciting and so both of them had been suitably distracted from their hunger pangs.

After humming along to the theme tune for at least ten seconds, Dwight pressed stop on the film. “So, Miss Penvenen,” Caroline’s mouth twisted at the use of her formal name, “What did you think?”

She briefly hummed in consideration, fiddling with some loose bits of hair that had fallen out of her messy bun. “It was good. I liked it,” she lied. Dwight saw through this and raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Caroline scrunched her face at him. “Well, I liked your enthusiasm – very much so,” she amended with a small smile, having enjoyed watching Dwight watch the movie more than watching the actual thing itself.

Dwight smiled in return, and before he could even filter the words through his tired brain, he whispered, “I like you very much, too.”

Caroline, for once in her life, was utterly tongue-tied. Not able to think of anything to say, she – for some unbeknownst reason – leaned over and kissed him. Dwight responded eagerly, gently cupping her face with his hand. Just as Caroline had deepened the kiss and placed her hand on his chest, the door buzzer hissed loudly. They broke apart instantly, and stared at each other, both somewhat breathless. The air in the room crackled around them.

Caroline blinked, not quite sure what was going on. The door buzzer rang three times this time, the delivery driver obviously impatient. “Oh! That must be the pizza; I’ll get it!” She practically fell off the sofa in her bid to retrieve their takeaway, or rather, in her bid to escape the situation she had now landed herself in. Sure, she didn’t mind kissing Dwight. It was nice. More than nice. But it’s not like she’d been lying awake at night thinking about doing it since their night out several months ago. Pffft.

As soon as Caroline turned her back to answer the door, Dwight could hear Ross Poldark’s voice in his head yelling ‘who gives a fuck about the pizza? Why didn’t you stop her?’ and calling him a twat amongst other profanties. Did that really just happen? Had she really just kissed him? He wiped his face and took a gulp from his glass of water, hoping it would cool his body heat.

When she returned, balancing their pizzas on her palms, Dwight held up his Star Wars DVD boxset to her. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Do you want to watch one of the originals? I already have all of them, obviously.”

Caroline placed the pizzas down on the table and firmly shook her head. “No, because then you’ll really have to go and buy an Ouija board to communicate with me because I’ll die of boredom!” She snapped her fingers, an idea coming into her head. “Ooh let’s watch Titanic instead, I’ve not seen it for ages!”

Dwight’s cackle at her clever joke quickly morphed into an exasperated groan. “Oh, my god, you are such a girl!” He took three large bites of pizza to give him enough energy to spend the next three hours of his life watching a chick flick, as though he hadn’t already seen this movie – and cried watching it – about half a dozen times.

Caroline, too, took a bite of her vegetable-laden pizza. “Well, with your caramel mochas you’re already halfway there yourself!” She covered her mouth with her hand so that her half-chewed bite of pizza wouldn’t become exposed as she laughed at him.

“Oh, will you just let that go?” he whined as he polished off another slice. He didn’t realise how hungry he was.

She grinned at him, pizza sauce around the edges of her lips. “Never!”

Dwight inhaled another slice of pizza, finishing it in just four bites, and closed the lid of his pizza box. He sank back into the sofa and selected Titanic on Netflix as per Caroline’s request. “Fine. But shut up now, your shitty romance film is starting,” he teased, nudging her arm with his own.

Caroline nudged him back and abandoned her pizza; sweeping her feet up onto the couch and involuntary leaning into Dwight’s side. “Oh, my god, I’m already going to cry, I swear. The real footage gets me every time!”

Dwight automatically wrapped his arm around her shoulder, as he had done many times before when comforting a patient or one of their family members. “Awww,” he chuckled, finding her shining, sympathetic eyes adorable, “it’s alright.” His hand froze momentarily in panic as he realised what he’d done. He resumed gently stroking the area with his thumb and rejoiced when she didn’t pull away or question it. If anything, he swore he felt her lean in closer.

They sat in comfortable silence as the characters discussed ‘The Heart of the Ocean’ necklace. Caroline said after a while: “You know, I never cared for that necklace. It’s too big; it looks kind of awkward. But I’ve always wanted one of those big, beautiful hats that Kate Winslet wears in this movie. It would be so cool to walk around wearing one!” Dwight couldn’t help but smile at the animation in her voice. “I’ve always kind of wanted to wear trousers with braces, why we did ever stop dressing like that?” He wondered out loud. “Everyone looks so smart - even the poor people!”

She examined him up and down, her close proximity and scrutinising gaze made him feel somewhat nervous. “Hmm. You’d suit braces; you should buy some,” she told him with a seemingly noncommittal shrug while she tried to rid her mind of the image of Dwight in smart trousers with braces.

“Maybe I will.” He flashed a smile at her before returning his focus to the movie with a certain degree of difficulty. He hesitated slightly but ultimately felt the thing had to be said, “You know, I actually really fucking hate the start of this movie. Can we just skip ahead until we get to the flashback?”

She let out an excited gasp, jumped out of the grip of his arm and then hit the limb repeatedly in agreement. “Oh, my God, yes! Thank you! No one ever understands when I say that!”

Satisfied, he fast-forwarded the film to Kate Winslet’s first appearance in the movie. He placed the remote control on his somewhat untidy coffee table before clutching his calf muscle. “Ow, ow, shit! Cramp. Ow. Shit. My leg. Ow.” He hissed and rubbed the offending muscle and removed his legs from where they were resting casually on the table.

Caroline looked at him in alarm. “Uh, here, rest your legs on the sofa.” She shuffled away from him slightly, much to his dismay.

He held up his hand to dismiss her worry. “No, no, it’s fine. My legs are too long anyway, they’ll take up the whole couch, and you’ll have nowhere to sit!” He huffed a laugh.

She considered this for a moment, biting the inside of her cheek. “Well, why don’t we lie down? Then there’ll be room for both of us,” she offered lightly, despite the ongoing calculations in her head.

Dwight blushed and prayed that his flat was dark enough to disguise it. “Sure, why not?”

Caroline casually lay on her side in front of Dwight, and as he resumed the movie and put the remote control back on the coffee table, Caroline gently caught his arm and held it across her mid-rift. She was quite impressed by her boldness.

Dwight was completely tongue-tied but thankfully the poker scene – one of his favourites – was on and so he had something to focus on other than the fact he had his arm around Caroline, and that she had put it there herself. And here he was, a twenty-eight-year-old man, with his heart racing like a fourteen-year-old boy.

‘Somebody’s life’s about to change – Fabrizio?’ ‘Niente.’

“Niente,” Dwight and Caroline repeated simultaneously, causing them both to giggle.

“Nice Italian accent,” Dwight complimented.

Caroline looked over her shoulder, an amused smile on her face. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, Dr Enys.”

She shivered as she moved, and Dwight frowned at the goose-bumps that formed on her arms. “Oh, are you cold?”

She laughed slightly. “Yeah, a little. Could you grab my bag so that I can get my blanket? I think it’s just at your feet.”

Dwight’s face scrunched in confusion, and he breathed a laugh. “You brought a blanket over?” She sat up and looked at him as though bringing a blanket everywhere was the most everyday thing a person could do. “Why?” he asked as he passed her the reusable bag-for-life.

“Do you have a blanket?” she asked in return as she accepted the proffered bag.

Dwight opened and closed his mouth. “Well, no, but–”

“Exactly,” she gloated with a smile, tugging the large, fleecy pink cover out of the bag. She settled back onto the sofa and began unfolding it; pausing to take Dwight’s hand and rest it where it had previously been, motioning for him to lie back down.

Dwight obliged without complaint, and slightly tightened his hold on her. He could only see the back of her head, but he swore he felt her smile. He sighed happily, relaxing into their position. Caroline wordlessly flung some extra blanket over her shoulder to ensure Dwight had enough. He didn’t want to think about how much of Horace’s hair was probably on it, but he wrapped it over his shoulder anyway. It was very fluffy.

Too fluffy, in fact, he realised when he woke up on the couch four hours later, with the DVD menu playing in a continuous loop. Caroline was fast asleep; her eyelashes fanned out above her cheekbones, her lips parted as she breathed quietly.

Should he wake her? He really should wake her, right? But she looked so peaceful – and annoyingly beautiful. Plus, she might be mad if he woke her up. She definitely seemed like the type of person to be annoyed if anyone disturbed their sleep. Yeah, he would just leave her. He glanced at the clock on the wall which told him it was 4 am. He didn’t know if she was working later, so he held his breath and gently sat up, reaching over her to get his phone on the coffee table. Miraculously, she didn’t seem to register that he’d moved at all. Despite the light of his mobile phone initially assaulting his retinas and making him momentarily blind, he managed to set an alarm for 6 am, which would give her enough time to get ready if she had a shift in the morning. Satisfied, he put his phone back down and slowly resumed his position on the couch, pausing to turn the TV off which then plunged the room into darkness.

The change of lighting seemed to rouse Caroline, and she stirred her legs. Dwight carefully shuffled a bit so that he was lying down again. Caroline turned over and slid an arm over Dwight’s torso, before gently resting her head on his chest. “Mm, night,” she mumbled, still mostly asleep.

What was going on? Was he dreaming? He would have to ask Demelza about this on Sunday; maybe she could give him some advice. But for now, he was going to go back to sleep. And cuddle into Caroline, that too.

#girl next door au #poldark fanfic #carolight

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