#pardon my ancient AO3 naming conventions I’m a child of the 2010s

[saturdaynightghostclub]

also idk if you still do these 😭 but i just thought of leander working his ass off to take the reader on a trip somewhere he might’ve gone when he was younger perhaps a little something along the lines of that ? in my head i feel like hes obv very happy but maybe sometimes regrets that he can’t afford to share some of the good experiences he’s had in his life w his partner ykwim ? idk im just yappin

Never stop yappin! As I re-read your ask I realized this isn’t totally what you were describing, but hopefully you like it anyway—if not, you know I’m always down to write whatever one-shot your heart desires ♥️

The Heart and Stomach of a Sailor (or, Leander Mason Dreams of Greece)

“Wake up.”

Something soft–his knuckles grazing your cheek, then his lips–and you blink yourself awake in the heavenly recesses of Leander’s fancy duvet. A glance at the alarm clock on your bedside table tells you that it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, and your stomach flips.

“Oh, god,” you moan around the sleepy lag of your jaw, “don’t do this to me.”

Leander chuckles softly against the shell of your ear, squeezing your shoulder from his perch behind you on the bed. “You sure?” he asks, “What if it’s important?”

“It’s Saturday,” you mumble, turning your face into the pillow so that your voice is blurred around the edges, “how important can it be?”

The bed shakes as Leander lets his body fall dramatically alongside yours. With a theatrical sigh, he says: “No, you’re right. I was going to tell you all the sordid details of our upcoming trip to Greece, but I guess it can wait.”

Hold up. You move your body incrementally, rolling over to face your ridiculous love. “Run that back for me.”

“No, I shouldn’t, you’re much too tired–”

“Leander.”

Another loud sigh. “If you insist,” he says, unable to keep the goofy grin from his face, “I’m taking you to Greece. One week. Don’t give me that look.”

You check yourself, schooling your face into something that might be construed as neutral. Mask set, you raise one anticipatory eyebrow, prompting Leander to continue. “That’s better,” he says. “Here’s the plan. This coming Friday, I’ll pick you up from work and take you directly to the airport. We’ll start in Athens, then move on to Mykonos and Santorini. Eight days–I’ll have you back the following Saturday, you can take Sunday to sleep off your jetlag, and it’s back to work on Monday. Deal?” He’s doing his Accountant Voice, the one that dares you to try negotiating at the risk of personal and financial ruin.

“I have some objections,” you say. Maybe if you match his matter-of-fact tone, he’ll be less likely to shut you down.

“Proceed,” he allows. You don’t like the smug look on his face.

“My boss.”

“Handled. I called her last month.”

“And you told her what, exactly?” you ask, your mouth agape. Your supervisor is a notoriously difficult woman to please.

Leander rolls his eyes in an exaggerated display of mockery. “The truth,” he says, “that I’d planned a romantic getaway and she’d have to spare you for a week, and also that she’d need to keep it a secret because I will not have my grand gesture of love upstaged by a hardass editor I’ve never even met.”

“You didn’t–,”

“No, Professor, I didn’t. I was much nicer about it than that. She’s a romantic, though, you’ll be happy to know–she only fought me for about five minutes before she agreed to let you go.” Pleased with himself, Leander nods, waiting for your next objection.

“Fine,” you say, “where’d you get the money?”

At this, he fully grins. “Didn’t I tell you about that sweet little bonus I got?”

You sit bolt upright, turning to look down at Leander (who naturally doesn’t move an inch from where he’s reclined on the mattress). “You got a merit bonus big enough to book a weeklong trip to Greece, and you chose to spend it on a weeklong trip to Greece?”

“Yep,” he replies, his grin somehow widening, “it was literally the first thing that crossed my mind when Nancy handed me the check.”

“So you just did it?” Your incredulity pitches your voice up an octave in the way you know Leander finds hilarious, but you can’t help it.

He finally sits up, taking your face in his gentle hands and pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I know you think I’m stupid, or insane, or some mixture of the two,” he says, his voice softer now, and his lips are on your cheek–“and you’re probably right, because you’re much smarter than I am,”--now your jaw–, “but you’re going to have to trust me on this one, okay?” –your neck, your collarbone, past the neckline of your T-shirt–, “Everything is going to be alright.”

“I believe you,” you say cautiously, “but not because you’re trying to ply me with sex. Got it?”

Leander laughs, soft and warm against your skin. “Look at it this way,” he says, bringing his face back up to train his eyes on yours, “I grew up going to Greece every summer, right? My dad had this timeshare deal with some of his white-collar crime buddies or something, I don’t know. Anyway, those trips were always miserable somehow or another, but I loved the islands–I always thought I’d do it over, do it right. Take someone I love, maybe. So really you’ll be doing me a favor.”

You sigh. You have about six hundred other objections, but you know you’re fighting a losing battle with Leander. He’s the only person on Earth more stubborn than you are, and an undercover idealist to boot. “Are you always so good at keeping secrets?” you ask.

Leander knows he’s won. He kisses you hard before pulling away to answer your question. “No exaggeration, it was literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Why do you think I woke you up before eight? I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, I was actually going to explode. I wasn’t even planning on telling you until Thursday night.” His words are spilling out faster than he can keep up with. His boyish excitement is contagious, and you find yourself grinning (in exasperation, you’d like to think) while he tells you about tidepools and seaside markets, You’ve never been to Greece; really, you’ve hardly left the country aside from a quick stopover in Canada en route to Alaska when you were eight. Time will tell whether the fluttering in your stomach is anxiety or excitement; for the moment, though, Leander’s nudging you back onto the mattress, ignoring the Chicago heat to tangle his limbs with yours, and you can’t bring yourself to sort it out just yet.

***

A little over a week later, you’re halfway through your trip and stumbling giddily into a hotel room in Mykonos with a tipsy Leander draped around you and your cheeks flushed pink. You’re laughing hysterically, but neither of you can remember what was funny in the first place.

“Go…go sit,” Leander gasps, out of breath from his fit of laughter, “sit right there, and I’ll…I’ll get wine. More wine.”

More wine is the last thing either of you needs, but the world is rosy and the man you love is gliding about the room in a beautiful haze, so you sit on the sofa he’s pointing vaguely at and watch him work.

Two high-pours later, Leander collapses beside you (practically on top of you, actually), miraculously keeping both glasses intact without spilling a drop. He hands one to you, and you hold it delicately by the stem, taking a long sip to get it down to a reasonable level.

“Scoot,” he mumbles, nudging you gently to the side only to pull you back in with an arm around your shoulders. He lets his hand fall idly down your arm, fingers stroking up and down your skin in an absent rhythm.

You turn your head to gaze up at him. “Hello,” you say softly, almost shyly, reveling in the way your stomach flips when he looks down at you.

“Hello, my love,” Leander murmurs, his shy smile mirroring your own. He heaves a sudden, deep sigh and drops his head, letting his forehead rest against your temple.

You laugh softly at his theatrics before you say, “What’s this?”

Leander lets his head fall further, slouching to lean on your shoulder. “I’m feeling so much,” he says softly. His voice is thick with emotion. With the hand that’s not holding your wine glass, you run your fingers through his soft hair. He’s stopped styling it so much since you’ve been here, claiming the salt water will just screw it up anyway.

“Good or bad?” you ask.

“Good,” he murmurs, “just a lot.”

“You wanna tell me about it?” This is your pattern, the two of you. Experience something new, work it out together. Nine times out of ten the “something new” in question is just a completely healthy reaction to something you’ve never experienced in its entirety, but that’s beside the point.

At last, Leander lifts his head. As he often does before he dives into the deep end of a conversation, he kisses you. He breathes you in, red wine on his lips, and you feel yourself melt just a little bit before he pulls away. It’s his way, you think, of letting you know that whatever’s about to be said doesn’t change anything, doesn’t have to be a big deal. Maybe it’s also to ground himself, who knows. He sets his wine glass down and you follow suit. “It’s just weird being back here,” he begins, lifting one of your hands to his lips to kiss your knuckles before continuing, “like, earlier this week we walked past this pier, right? Just this rickety old thing, you probably didn’t even look twice at it, but I swear I remember standing at the end of that exact pier when I was fifteen, just waiting for my dad to finish screaming at me so I could jump in the water. I don’t even remember what he was mad about–honestly, I probably wasn’t even paying attention at the time. I just wanted to swim away, and the water was so blue…did you see the water, honey? It looked like sapphires, it was so blue.”

You nod, resisting the urge to kiss him again. Sometimes it’s all you can think to do. “It was beautiful,” you agree.

“Anyway,” Leander says, “we walked past that stupid pier, and I swear for a split-second I felt it again. Like I just wanted to jump in and get as far away from all my problems as I possibly could.”

“And?” you pry, worry creeping into your voice.

“And then I realized I don’t have any problems,” he replies in his matter-of-fact way, “I mean it, look at me. I’m wine-drunk in a hotel in Mykonos. I’ve got a beautiful woman in my arms, and it’s only a matter of time before that beautiful woman becomes my wife. Earlier today, I swam in the ocean. And the best part is that it doesn’t have to end when I get back to Chicago.”

“You sure you want to swim in the Chicago River?”

Leander pokes you gently in the ribs. “You know what I mean. When I was a kid, everything was so high-stakes, you know? Coming to Greece felt like a way to escape my life, and even when I was here I constantly felt like I needed to get away. I have nothing to escape anymore, Professor.”

Now you do kiss him again, just because you can’t contain it any longer. “You had me going there,” you say, breathlessly, as you pull away. “I was really worried for a second.”

“I never want you to worry about me,” he says, so sincerely that your whole body aches for him, “I know I’ve put you through the wringer, my Professor. That’s why we’re here, though. Because I wanted to be the one taking care of you for a change.”

“Leander…”

“I know. Just humor me, okay? I’m drunk, just go with it.”

You sigh. You can’t just go with it, and he knows it. “I wouldn’t be the person I am if not for you,” you say simply, “I’m not even sure I’d be a person at all.”

At that, Leander locks his gaze on your face, and you hold his bright eyes with your own. It’s the same silent battle of wills that the two of you engage in semi-regularly (less frequently lately, but there’s still the occasional bout of insecurity). The tension usually dissipates once you realize you’re essentially arguing about how much you love each other, and if that’s not a perfect depiction of your relationship then you don’t know what is. Now, as usual, he takes a deep breath and relents.

“Never stop giving me shit, okay?”

“I promise.”

It’s a vow you intend to stick to, and you’re sure he wouldn’t have it any other way; he needs you, you know, to rein him in, and you need him if only to have someone around who doesn’t mind being lightly needled every now and then.

Leander stretches his body across the length of the sofa, lanky frame draped over your lap like a cat, and resumes his drunken diatribe about the waters of Greece. For your part, you resolve to ask your boss about a promotion. Maybe next year you can try Italy.