cassie watching victoria fall to her knees to settle in the space between her legs, her sweet girl looking up at her with such adoration as she nuzzles her cheek on the inside of cassie’s thighs
imo the term "walkable" in "walkable cities" should be understood to mean "wheelchair accessible" as well, not just literally "possible to walk in". the act of walking in a city doesn't automatically make it walkable
every morning before sunrise, you find yourself in the same half-empty hospital café beside yolanda garcia, sharing burnt coffee and exhausted silence while the city outside still sleeps.
The hospital café at five in the morning barely felt real. It existed in that strange liminal space between night and day where everything looked softer around the edges, washed in pale fluorescent light and heavy exhaustion.
The overhead fixtures hummed quietly above rows of mostly empty tables while rain tapped lazily against the tall windows facing the parking garage outside, turning the glass blurry with streaks of silver and gold from distant streetlights.
Somewhere deeper in the hospital, muffled announcements crackled over intercoms every few minutes, followed by the faint squeal of stretcher wheels against polished floors and the occasional burst of laughter from overtired nurses stumbling off shift with their jackets half on and coffee cups clutched like lifelines.
The café itself smelled permanently of burnt espresso, industrial cleaning supplies, cinnamon syrup, and whatever stale pastries had been sitting untouched inside the display case since midnight. The coffee machines hissed steadily behind the counter like exhausted sighs, steam curling into the air while some half-awake barista moved through the motions with the dead-eyed precision of somebody functioning entirely on caffeine and spite.
There was always music playing quietly overhead too, soft jazz drifting through the speakers in a way that almost felt ironic considering most people inside looked one inconvenience away from a breakdown.
At that hour, the city outside remained dark and slick with rain, traffic lights blinking uselessly over mostly empty streets while the sky sat heavy in shades of deep navy and charcoal.
It made the café feel strangely suspended from the rest of the world, like time slowed down for a little while before the chaos upstairs swallowed everyone whole again. Like for one tiny pocket of the morning, the hospital forgot how to be cruel.
And every single morning, without fail, Yolanda Garcia sat at the same table beside the windows.
The first time you noticed her properly, she had been sitting alone with one ankle crossed neatly over the other, reading through hospital reports on a tablet while a paper coffee cup rested untouched beside her hand. Even at five in the morning, after what had clearly been an impossibly long shift, she looked composed in a way that almost felt unfair.
Her dark hair fell perfectly over one shoulder despite the humidity lingering in the air from the rain outside, and the sleeves of her navy scrubs had been rolled carefully to her forearms, exposing a silver watch glinting softly beneath the café lights every time she moved. She wore exhaustion differently than everyone else in the hospital did.
Most people dragged it behind them visibly, shoulders slumped and eyes hollowed out by the end of the night, but Yolanda carried it with this controlled restraint that somehow made her seem even more intimidating.
Her expression remained sharp even when she looked tired, brows faintly furrowed while she scanned lines of text on the screen in front of her with the kind of focus that made it obvious she was used to people relying on her.
There was something almost magnetic about her presence, something that pulled attention without demanding it. The kind of woman people naturally moved around in hallways without even realizing they were doing it.
You remembered standing near the sugar station longer than necessary just because you couldn’t stop watching the way she absentmindedly tapped her fingers against the coffee cup while reading.
She looked elegant even in exhaustion, expensive somehow despite sitting inside a nearly empty hospital café that smelled vaguely like overcooked bagels and cheap espresso.
And when she finally glanced up briefly from her tablet and your eyes met for the first time, the look she gave you was calm and knowing enough to make heat crawl unexpectedly up the back of your neck.
At first, you genuinely thought seeing her there every morning had to be coincidence.
Then it kept happening.
Every single morning after your shift ended, you would walk downstairs feeling half dead on your feet only to find Yolanda already sitting there beside the windows with her black coffee and stack of paperwork, always occupying the same seat, always arriving at nearly the exact same time.
Gradually, the familiarity settled into something comforting before you even realized it was happening. You started noticing tiny details about her without meaning to. The way she preferred black coffee with exactly one sugar packet but never stirred it properly enough for it to dissolve completely.
The way she rubbed lightly at the bridge of her nose whenever she was frustrated with something she was reading. The way her expression softened almost imperceptibly whenever exhausted nurses waved goodbye to her on their way out the door.
Even the rhythm of her mornings became familiar to you eventually. She would arrive first, set her coat carefully over the back of the chair beside her, skim through emails for twenty minutes, then stare out the window for exactly thirty seconds before taking her first sip of coffee.
You hated how quickly you started looking for her without thinking. Some mornings, catching sight of her sitting there somehow became the only thing convincing you to drag yourself downstairs instead of collapsing in your car immediately after shift.
And on the rare mornings where you arrived first, you found yourself glancing toward the café doors every few seconds waiting for her in a way that felt embarrassingly close to longing.
You realized she had started noticing you too the morning she looked up before you’d even reached the counter.
The café had been quieter than usual that day, the rain outside coming down hard enough to blur the entire skyline into soft grey smudges beyond the glass. Your body ached with the deep exhaustion that only came after twelve straight hours on your feet, and your scrub top still smelled faintly like antiseptic and stale hospital air.
You barely had enough energy left to function properly, mumbling your coffee order while digging through your bag for your wallet with slow clumsy movements. Before you could even reach for your card, the cashier nodded toward the other side of the room.
“It’s already been paid for.”
You blinked once in confusion before following her gaze directly toward Yolanda.
She didn’t even look embarrassed about it.
Sitting there beside the windows with steam curling from her coffee cup, she simply lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug before returning calmly to whatever report sat open in front of her like buying your coffee had been the most natural thing in the world. Warmth spread embarrassingly fast through your chest despite your exhaustion.
You carried the drink toward her table feeling suddenly hyperaware of everything, the soft scrape of your shoes against the tiled floor, the low hum of the refrigerators behind the counter, the smell of espresso thick in the air around you. When you finally sat down across from her, she glanced up briefly over the rim of her cup.
“You looked like you were about to fall asleep standing up,” she said simply.
Her voice was lower than you expected. Smooth. Calm. Still roughened faintly by exhaustion.
You stared at her for a second before letting out the quietest laugh. “So your solution was caffeine.”
“My solution,” Yolanda corrected without missing a beat, “was preventing a potential workplace injury.”
“Wow. And here I was thinking you secretly liked me.”
That finally made her pause.
Only for a second.
But you noticed it.
Her eyes lifted properly toward yours then, dark and steady beneath the low café lighting while the faintest hint of amusement pulled at the corners of her mouth. Steam curled lazily between the two of you from fresh coffee cups, carrying the scent of espresso and vanilla through the quiet space around you.
“I can multitask,” she replied smoothly.
Your stomach flipped so hard it was genuinely annoying.
After that, mornings slowly became something shared between you instead of merely coincidental.
The conversations started small at first. Quiet observations exchanged over coffee while the sky outside gradually shifted from black to deep blue beyond the rain-streaked windows. Complaints about impossible shifts turned into teasing remarks and lingering conversations that stretched longer every morning without either of you acknowledging it directly.
Yolanda started saving the seat beside her instead of across from her. Sometimes you would arrive downstairs to find your coffee already waiting there too, prepared exactly the way you liked it without her ever having asked. The first time you noticed, you picked up the cup slowly before turning toward her with narrowed eyes while she continued typing something on her tablet.
“That’s either thoughtful or deeply unsettling.”
Yolanda didn’t even glance up immediately. “You order the same thing every morning.”
“That still means you were paying attention.”
This time she did look at you then.
Those dark eyes lifted slowly from the screen toward your face, steady and unreadable in a way that always made your chest tighten slightly under her attention.
The café lights reflected softly against the gold flecks hidden inside her irises while steam drifted lazily upward between the two of you from fresh coffee cups.
Outside, dawn had only just begun creeping weakly over the city skyline, pale blue light stretching slowly across wet streets below.
“I pay attention to important things,” she said quietly.
The sentence settled heavily somewhere beneath your ribs.
And the worst part was she didn’t even seem to realize what she was doing to you when she said things like that.
Some mornings, Yolanda vented softly about hospital politics while the café slowly filled with tired overnight staff filtering in and out around you. You learned quickly that she hated board meetings with genuine passion.
The sound of her voice dropping lower with irritation while she complained quietly about budget cuts or staffing shortages became strangely endearing to you over time.
One morning, after a particularly brutal shift, you found her leaning back in her chair with visible exhaustion etched across her face for the first time since you’d met her.
Her coat hung open loosely over wrinkled scrubs, dark circles shadowed the skin beneath her eyes, and her untouched coffee sat cooling beside her while rain battered against the windows hard enough to drown out the soft jazz overhead.
“I had three attendings arguing in my office for almost an hour,” she murmured tiredly while rubbing lightly at her temple. “One resident cried. Someone apparently vomited on an MRI machine. And I’m fairly certain Dr. McKay threatened a surgeon.”
You snorted tiredly into your coffee. “Only fairly certain?”
That finally broke her composure.
The laugh that escaped her was quiet and low and real, softer than you had ever heard from her before. It loosened something in her entire posture instantly, tension easing from her shoulders while she shook her head faintly under her breath.
God, she looked beautiful when she laughed. Not polished or intimidating or impossibly composed like everyone else saw her. Just tired and human and warm in the soft glow of the café lights at five in the morning while rain painted the windows silver behind her.
“You’re staring,” Yolanda murmured after a moment, voice softer now.
You blinked once before lifting your coffee toward your mouth to hide the smile threatening to form there. “Can you blame me?”
One of her brows lifted slowly.
“That sounds dangerously close to flirting.”
“Maybe it is.”
For a second neither of you looked away.
The noise of the café faded strangely into the background after that. The hiss of espresso machines, the quiet chatter from nurses near the counter, even the rain hammering softly against the windows all blurred together beneath the weight of her gaze resting steadily on yours. Something warmer settled between you then, something quieter and infinitely more dangerous than casual conversation over coffee before sunrise.
You didn’t realize how close you’d drifted toward her until your shoulders brushed lightly together.
Neither of you moved away.
The contact stayed there quietly between you while the city slowly woke outside the windows.
And when Yolanda finally tilted her head slightly toward yours, close enough now that you could smell the faint mix of expensive perfume, coffee, and hospital soap lingering against her skin, her voice dropped into something softer than you had ever heard before.
“You know,” she murmured quietly, “you’ve become my favourite part of the morning.”
Your entire chest tightened painfully around the words.
Outside, dawn finally began spilling gold across the skyline.
