Summary: Baran has always kept her personal life separate from work, life is easier that way. Unfortunately for her, PTMC’s annual gala requires an exception and you’re all-too eager to participate.
CW: fluff, established relationship, traditionally fem reader (reader wears makeup and a dress), possessive!Baran, insecure!Baran, kinda pervy!Baran, obsessed wives, coworkers meet the wife, reader is loved by all, smut (explicit sexual content), top!Baran, semi-public sex, fingering (r!receiving), little bit of a praise kink
WC: 4.3k
A/N: celebrating hitting 1k followers last night with this! My first real Baran piece that isn’t just headcanons 💛 Hope you enjoy!
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“You’re going to make us late if you don’t stop.”
The scold lacks heat, and you can’t even stop yourself from laughing when Baran’s lips find the side of your neck again, your hand pausing hallway through sliding the last pin into your hair.
“Maybe I don’t want to go anymore,” she murmurs against your skin as her hands settle on your waist.
“You can’t skip,” you snort. “You’re an attending, it looks bad.”
“I’ll call in sick.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“And yet I suddenly feel very unwell.”
That pulls a warm laugh out of you and Baran swears under her breath in Farsi like the sound of it does something to her. Because this right here is why she’s kept you away from the hospital for so long. It’s not because she’s ashamed of you, never that, but rather because she knows what happens to people when they meet you.
You finally finish with your hair, setting your products down before turning in her arms to face her. “You’re being so weird tonight, what gives?”
Baran sighs through her nose, just a hint of annoyance settling on her face as she looks at you. “I do not want to share you with them tonight, azizam.”
“Your coworkers?”
She nods in confirmation.
“You don’t want them to meet me?”
Her eyes narrow as her grip on your waist tightens possessively. “I do not want my coworkers looking at my wife.”
The way she says my wife sends heat blooming into your face, and though you try to hide it, you fail miserably. Baran notices immediately and her lips curve up into a smirk, obviously pleased with herself as the tips of your ears tinge.
“You’re blushing.”
“Shut up.”
The drive over is quiet in a comfortable way. The city glows outside the windows of the uber, streaks of gold and white sliding across the glass while music plays through the speakers. Your heels rest against the floorboard, one ankle crossed over the other, and Baran’s hand hasn’t left your thigh since the moment the two of you climbed into the backseat together. Not that you’re complaining, of course.
Downtown is alive tonight. Restaurants are crowded and the sidewalks are busy. And somewhere ahead, towering above the traffic, the convention center comes into view.
You can’t believe hospitals even have galas.
“You know,” you say, “when you first told me about this, I thought it was going to be in, like, a hotel ballroom or something.”
“It usually is,” Baran replies casually.
“Wait, really?”
“The hospital is celebrating some anniversary this year.” Her fingers squish the skin of your thigh beneath your dress. “Apparently they decided to go all out because of it.”
“That explains why the invitation looked like a wedding invite.”
The uber eases to a stop beneath the overhang of the convention center, and the driver bids you both a polite goodnight while Baran helps you out onto the curb with a hand at your waist. The night air is cool on your skin, and you’re suddenly jealous of the long sleeves on Baran’s pantsuit keeping her warm.
People crowd the entrance to the building in clusters of black-tie gowns and tailored suits, and you can hear laughter echoing off marble and glass as the hospital staff filter inside. You recognize a few faces from pictures on Baran’s phone or stories over dinner, but most are strangers in a sea of faces.
Baran stays close to you, her hand on the small of your back as the two of you navigate through the lobby together toward a bank of elevators down a small hallway.
“You okay?” she asks quietly as you wait for an available one.
You turn toward her, your face scrunching in confusion. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because this is a lot of people in one place and I know how you feel about crowds.”
You purse your lips, but in thoughtfulness rather than upset. “I’m okay. It’ll be better once we’re upstairs, I’m sure.”
The elevator arrives with a soft ding, the doors sliding open. Several other attendees step inside with you, conversations between coworkers overlapping. The fifth floor lights up as you reach it and the doors open to spill the gala out before you in gold.
Chandelier light glitters across floral arrangements and linin-draped cocktail tables. Warm jazz music drift through the massive ballroom beneath towering ceilings, and full-length windows overlook the Pittsburgh skyline. It’s elegant and expensive in a way that only a for-profit hospital could be.
You’re busy taking it all in when a voice catches your attention, even though it isn’t aimed directly at you.
“Dr. Al-Hashimi.”
You can feel Baran sigh next to you.
A woman in an ivory suit approaches with a comfortability that most people don’t have when approaching your wife. She’s older and polished, with nails manicured and decorated in a way that tells you this is not an emergency room doctor, but likely some sort of administrator.
“Gloria,” Baran says politely.
Gloria Underwood, you know that name. Some sort of big wig for the hospital, she interviewed Baran before your wife took the attending position, and you’ve heard Baran complain about her at least once a week ever since.
“It’s good to finally see you outside the emergency department,” Gloria says, smiling before her attention turns on you. “And you must be the elusive wife.”
Baran’s hand is on your back again, but she isn’t urging you forward and you can’t tell if it’s to ground you or herself. “My wife,” she repeats, and you can hear the undertone of pride in her voice.
You offer your hand with a smile, introducing yourself while Gloria shakes it warmly.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” she says. “I was beginning to think Baran had made you up.”
“Probably because she never lets me come to work with her,” you laugh.
“Smart woman,” Gloria says with a knowing look at your wife. “The ER would probably stop functioning.”
You don’t have time to ask what that means before Gloria turns her attention back toward Baran and the conversation drifts into hospital territory. You let yourself fade beside them, listening without really listening as your attention begins to wander.
There’s gold ribbon curled around centerpieces and champagne glasses in everyone’s hands. People are laughing too loudly near the bar already even though it’s barely dark outside, and there’s a string quartet setting up in a corner of the ballroom.
Eventually, during your trip to outer space, Baran gives Gloria one of those polite smiles you’ve only ever seen her use at work during her time at the VA.
“Well,” she says smoothly, “before you trap me into discussing staffing ratios for the rest of the evening, I should probably make the rounds.”
Gloria laughs at that. “Go socialize, Doctor. You’ve earned at least one night off.”
Baran nods in farewell before guiding you deeper into the ballroom with a slide of her hand into your own.
“Staffing ratios?” you giggle.
“This job is as much politics as it is medicine, azizam,” Baran sighs, scanning the room. She snags two flutes of champagne off the tray of a passing waitstaff, handing one to you.
You smile into the glass just another voice cuts through the crowd.
“Baran!”
A group standing around one of the cocktail tables waves her over and you can feel the change in her posture immediately. It’s not tense, exactly, but you feel the way she straightens up next to you.
These must be the coworkers.
“This,” she says quietly to you, “is the part I was worried about.”
Still, she leads you over to the table.
The group is an interesting mix, that’s for sure.
One man stands slightly apart from the others, older than the rest with tired but intelligent eyes and an air of authority about him that’s hard to deny. Beside him is another man with easier posture and a warm smile, with a drink balanced loosely in one hand. A younger man than the other two lounges against the edge of the table with the restless energy of someone who’s incapable of standing still, and the redheaded woman standing beside him looks far more composed than he does. And then there’s another woman watching the room over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip, the look in her eye almost seeming like she’s above this entire get-together.
Baran stops at the table, her eyes scanning over each of them as she greets everyone. “Dr. Robinovich,” she says first, inclining her head towards the older man. “Dr. Abbot. And Dr.’s Langdon, McKay, and Garcia.”
You know she isn’t greeting them by name because she needs to, but rather for your sake.
The older man immediately tilts his head toward the ceiling and waves a dismissive hand. “Absolutely not, Baran. If you introduce me like that, I sound old.”
Baran deadpans, “Maybe that was my intention.”
He smiles tightly at that before turning toward you and offering his hand. “Michael Robinovich. You can call me Robby.”
You shake his hand politely, but immediately dislike him. Not because he’s rude, he actually seems very nice. But because this is the man who made your wife cry after her first shift at the hospital.
You remember it vividly, Baran’s tear-streaked makeup and exhausted fury as she returned home to you hours later than she was supposed to be off, insisting she was fine while also admitting that she’d not only had her first seizure in over a year, but two. You’d held her all night, staying up long after she’d fallen asleep, both for her comfort and out of fear of a third focal seizure.
So really, you think your dislike of him is justified.
“Wow,” the one your wife called Langdon says suddenly as he blinks at you. “You weren’t kidding.”
Langdon ignores her completely, looking at you with intrigue. “Hi, Frank Langdon. I was beginning to think she made you up.”
“Frank,” three different people say at once.
“What? I’m being respectful!”
You laugh warmly, and the small group seems to relax around you as conversations break into groups. You smile at McKay when she compliments your dress, ask Abbot about the drink he’s holding, you even laugh at one of Langdon’s dumb jokes despite Baran muttering at you to quit encouraging him. And every time you laugh, every time someone’s attention lingers on you a little too long for her liking, Baran’s hand settles lower against your back. You can’t tell if she’s grounding herself or if she’s trying to stake claim.
Whichever it is, Robby takes notice right away. The smile he hides behind his glass is downright evil.
“So, he says to her as your attention is taken by a story McKay is telling. “This is why you’ve kept her hidden for so long.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Baran says dismissively.
“Sure you don’t.” He gestures between her and you. “After refusing to introduce her to us, you brought your stunning and charming wife to a party, dressed up to the nines and looking like a walking sin. Pretty irresponsible, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Langdon blurts from Robby’s other side.
“You weren’t invited into this conversation,” Baran says flatly.
You laugh at something Garcia says, attracting your wife’s attention once more as you lean into her side. Her chin rests on your shoulder as she turns toward you, her eyes scanning around the ballroom.
“Where are the baby ducks?”
McKay laughs.
“At the bar,” Abbot says.
“All four of them?” Baran asks.
“Unfortunately,” Garcia says. “Someone spilled the beans to Trinity that they have tequila. We haven’t seen them since.”
Baran closes her eyes like she’s in physical pain. “And you left her unattended?” But before she can continue mourning the fate of her unsupervised residents, a burst of loud laughter sounds out from somewhere nearby.
You turn in time to see four younger people approaching the table carrying drinks, all of them mid-conversation as they reach the group.
The woman in front stops as she reaches the table, squeezing between Garcia and McKay and setting down the second drink in her hand in front of the surgeon before turning her eyes on you.
“What the hell?”
Baran sighs like this is exactly the reaction she expected. “Behave, Dr. Santos.”
“What?” Santos says, looking mildly offended. “Your wife is hot, you didn’t say she was hot.”
Dr. Abbot coughs into his drink to hide a laugh, and the only man in this group of baby ducks (as your wife had so eloquently called them) loses the battle and snorts.
Your cheeks heat as you laugh, and you aren’t sure if it’s from blood rushing or the alcohol. Or both. “Thank you.”
“Trinity,” Santos introduces herself with a hand extended to you over the table, which you take. She then turns to Baran. “I get it now.”
“Stop that,” Baran scolds her.
“Okay, mom.”
Baran turns to Garcia then, her tone accusatory. “Just how many has she had?”
“This would be her third,” Garcia replies with a roll of her eyes.
Questions fly from the group collectively known as ducklings. How did you meet? How long have you been married? Is Dr. Al this intense at home too? And with each question, your wife looks increasingly perturbed.
She knows you don’t do this on purpose, and it’s almost never bothered her before, but…you fit too well. Don’t get her wrong, she loves your charm. It’s one of the things that drew her to you first, your ability to get along with everyone, the way you naturally convince people into loving you. And at the VA, it didn’t bother her. Maybe that’s because her coworkers there were older, older than her even, and they weren’t -
They weren’t a threat.
Does Baran feel threatened by her ER coworkers? She wants to say no, of course not, but as she watches you talk to Trinity, watches you smile at Javadi, laugh at something that Langdon does, or Abbot, or Whitaker -
With every word, your wife looks one compliment away from spontaneously combusting, and you can’t help but laugh. And unfortunately for her, you’ve become the most interesting person in the ballroom. And through it all, you notice something. Every single time someone else has your attention for too long, Baran touches you. Her hand on your waist, or your elbow. Her lips on your bare shoulder. It’s not enough for anyone to comment on, but it is constant enough that you take notice.
Especially when Langdon talks to you. It’s harmless; he’s charming in a sort of cocky way that probably works very well on patients, and he clearly finds you attractive. And at one point you laugh at something he says and Frank grins, a sparkle in his eye at the sound of your laugh.
You can feel Baran tense up next to you and it cuts your laugh short as you turn to her. “Are you okay?”
The concern in your voice makes guilt flicker through her. Because she knows you haven’t done anything wrong, you’re just being yourself. Which is, unfortunately for her, the entire problem.
She lets out a heavy sigh and then presses a quick kiss to your temple. “I’m going to get us another drink,” she murmurs in your ear.
You smile at that, tapping your empty champagne flute. “Okay.”
Baran’s hand leaves your back as she makes her way toward the bar at the far side of the room, loosening the tension in her shoulders only once the crowd thins out around her.
“Another champagne?” the bartender asks, nodding toward the flute still in her hand.
“And a whiskey,” Baran says.
She leans one forearm against the edge of the bar while he works, her eyesight drifting back toward your table.
Bad idea.
McKay is talking to you now while Santos is gesturing animatedly beside her, and somehow the entire group has subtly turned towards you like flowers turning towards sunlight. Even from across the room, Baran can tell you’re glowing, beautiful and open, charming in a way she’s never been immune to herself.
“Rough night?”
She recognizes Jack’s voice without even having to turn to look at him. Nevertheless, she does as he settles against the bar at her side.
“You followed me,” she says.
Jack shrugs as he flags the bartender down with two raised fingers, nodding toward his empty glass in wordless communication.
Neither of them speak for a moment, but as Jack glances back toward the table, following Baran’s line of sight, he smiles a little. “You’ve got a beautiful wife, Baran.” His tone stays easy and casual even as she tenses at his words. “You had to know this was going to happen eventually.”
Her tongue presses against the inside of her cheek. “I did know.”
“She seems nice.”
“She is.”
“And everyone likes her.”
She turns to look at him then, but only halfway, like she can’t really afford to lose sight of you. “And that’s a problem?”
“You’re sure acting like it is.”
Baran turns fully back toward the table just in time to catch you throwing your head back laughing at something Santos says, and her expression tightens.
Jack notices. “You know,” he says, “most people would kill for a marriage where their biggest problem is their wife is too perfect.”
Baran tsks as she glances at him out of her peripheral. “You’re being very annoying right now.”
He shrugs noncommittally. “Hey, I’m just saying, it seems like the obsession goes both ways.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She keeps looking for you.” Jack nods subtly toward the table, and he’s right.
Even while smiling at everyone else, even as you carry on conversation with her coworkers, your eyes are drawn to the crowd in the direction toward the bar. Looking for her.
By the time Baran and Jack make their way back across the room to the table, crowds have thickened around tables, conversation louder now beneath the swell of music and alcohol.
Your face softens when your eyes land on your wife again. “There you are,” you say, reaching for her as she sets the drinks down in front of the two of you.
Baran’s arm wraps around your waist as she reaches you. “Miss me, eshgham?”
Your own arms settle over her shoulders, fingers tangling together behind her head. “Of course I did.”
The group falls back into casual conversation around you as you sip your drink, half-listening and half paying attention to the knowing looks Dr. Abbot seems to be sending your wife, which she’s pointedly ignoring.
After a while, the ballroom lights dim and the sound of microphone feedback echoes from the speakers overhead, drawing attention towards the stage at the front of the room where a podium now waits beneath a spotlight.
“Oh no,” someone mutters from the opposite side of the table. “Politics.”
“Too late to fake an emergency?” Langdon asks.
“We work in an emergency department,” Robby says. “That excuse won’t hold much weight.”
Gloria steps out onto the stage a second later to polite applause from the crowd. The room settles as she begins speaking, her voice echoing through the ballroom as she talks about the hospital’s anniversary, community outreach, budget expansions, new wings, and a variety of other hospital-speak that sounds like a language you don’t know.
That’s when you feel Baran’s hand close around your wrist.
Around the room, people nod along politely to Gloria’s speech while waitstaff weave between tables collecting empty glasses and plates.
“And finally,” Gloria says after about twenty minutes, “I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge one department in particular.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the table that houses most of your wife’s department. “The emergency department has seen one of the most significant increases in patient satisfaction scores in the hospital over the last year. The Press Ganey scores alone have risen dramatically, and while every member of the department deserves recognition for their hard work, there’s one whose compassion, leadership, and dedication to patient care has had remarkable impact.”
Robby groans quietly under his breath. Individual callouts are always a nightmare.
“Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi.”
Applause starts up, people turning toward your table, searching for Baran among the cluster of emergency department staff.
Except Baran isn’t there, and neither are you.
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“Shh,” Baran whispers hotly against your ear. “Not a sound, azizam, you don’t want anyone to hear you, do you?”
Her hands are up your dress, which is bunched up against your hips by her impatient hands, her fingers hooking into the waistband of your lace panties. She yanks them down your thighs in one swift motion and you step out of them obediently, the cool air hitting your soaked core and making you shiver. She brings them to her nose for a brief second, inhaling deeply before stuffing the damp lace into the pocket of her pantsuit with a satisfied smirk.
Her fingers immediately return between your legs, sliding through your slick folds with firm pressure that has you whimpering enough for her to press her lips against yours to keep you quiet.
“So wet already,” she murmurs against your lips.
She slips a finger inside you without warning, her middle finger sliding in to the knuckle easily. A whine catches in your throat, muffled by Baran’s mouth. Her free hand roams, squeezing your ass, pulling you harder onto her hand as a second finger pushes inside you, stretching and curling deep while her thumb finds your clit with delicious pressure.
The web, lewd sounds of her fingers pumping into your soaked pussy are the only sounds in the empty coatroom, loud to your heightened senses, and your hips rut to meet her hand.
Baran grinds her thigh between your legs for leverage, her own arousal evident in the way she rocks against you. Her breath comes in hot and shaky pants against your lips, more breathing into each other’s mouths than actually kissing.
Her hand trails up your back to your hair, gripping at the base of your head to try and not mess up the pins in your hair (lest she feel your wrath) as she tilts your head back. You break from her mouth and she immediately begins kissing down your neck, stopping to suck a mark just below your ear. You feel the faint sting of her teeth and the heat of her mouth almost makes your knees buckle.
“B-ah!-Baran, you couldn’t wait?”
“Need to feel you cum on my fingers,” she pants against your neck. “Need to know this pretty cunt is only for me.”
The pace of her fingers turns frantic. Her fingers fuck into you faster, deeper, her thumb abandoning your clit in favor of her palm grinding against you with every stroke. You clutch at her shoulders, nails digging into the fabric as the fire in your belly builds, pressure coiling tightly inside of you. The risk, the possessiveness, the whines you’re doing your best to muffle - it’s all overwhelming.
Baran leans in closer, her forehead pressing against yours as her eyes lock onto your own. “Cum for me,” she demands. “Cum on my fingers, show me who you belong to.”
The orgasm rolls over you like a wave, crashing through your body and Baran has to shove a hand over your mouth in an effort to contain the loud moan you let out. Your walls clench around her thrusting fingers, slick coating her hand as pleasure floods you. You shake against her, whining into her hand while she keeps fucking you through it, drawing out the feeling until you’re boneless and gasping for air against her palm.
Slowly, she withdraws her fingers and brings them to her lips, licking them clean with a low and satisfied moan, her eyes locked on yours the entire time. Then she kisses you deeply, her tongue sliding inside your mouth and over your own, letting you taste yourself on her tongue.
You whimper at the taste, fingers bunched in the top of her pantsuit.
“Good girl,” she whispers against your mouth as she smooths your dress back down with hands that are too tender for what they’ve just done to you.
With one final possessive kiss, she straightens, offering you a hand. You take it, allowing her to pull you off the coatroom wall, leading you back toward the gala like nothing happened, though your slick thighs are evidence of your escapades, as are your panties tucked safely in her pocket.
You barely have a second to breathe as you step back into the ballroom, because one of the younger doctors - Javadi,you think you heard someone call her - is the first to spot you.
“There you are,” she says immediately, both relief and confusion mixing together as she looks between you and Baran. “You missed it, Gloria just called you out during her speech. Like, publicly. In front of everyone.”
Baran’s expression sharpens. “She did what?”
“Yeah,” Javadi says with a roll of her eyes. “It was…very flattering. Awkward timing, though, because you weren’t here.”
There’s a pause then, enough for the group to really take the two of you in.
“No fucking way,” Trinity says with a smirk, arms crossing in front of her chest as she appraises you. The slightly disheveled state of Baran’s hair, the smudge of your lipstick, the trace of redness at your throat. “Oh my god.”
“Trinity,” Garcia warns, but the warning goes ignored.
“We - we were getting drinks,” you stammer, even as your cheeks heat with the lie.
Trinity looks unconvinced, and your head swivels to your wife, desperately looking for backup.
You catch Langdon leaning toward Robby in your peripheral, whispering, “They weren’t getting drinks.”
Baran, on the other hand, looks totally unbothered, a stark contrast to the tense woman she was before the two of you disappeared. In fact, you’d dare to say she looks pleased with herself as her fingers wrap around the untouched whiskey glass and she takes a small sip.
“Anyways,” she says calmly, as if the last ten minutes haven’t fundamentally changed the light her coworkers see her in. “What did I miss?”
Summary: After Dana comes home with a black eye and bloody nose, you beg her to stay home for her own safety. To your surprise, she agrees.
CW: hurt/comfort, domestic fluff, emotional and physical caretaking, non-sexual intimacy, smut, explicit sexual content, fingering (r!receiving), strap-on use (r!receiving), readers age is undescribed so you can imagine age gap or not
WC: 7.6k
A/N: The poll-winner is here! Hope you like it!
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You leave the entryway light on.
It’s been on for hours, a little amber square above the entrance to your luxury apartment, because you knew she would be late. The news had cut into your afternoon game show with the alert: a shooting at PittFest, multiple casualties and absolute chaos downtown. You’d stared at the screen with your phone in your hand, though you didn’t bother to call or even text. She never answers during her shifts because she can’t, and if she could, it would mean something is wrong.
So you cooked dinner, cleaned up the apartment, and waited for her.
Your partner works in an ER. Late comes with the territory more often than not.
It’s partner, by the way, not girlfriend. She makes that very clear, she’d shut it down years ago, citing she was not, in her words, “a fuckin’ teenager, for Christ’s sake.” Partner was the only word you both agreed on.
Dinner is long cold by the time you portion it onto a plate and slide it into the fridge, covering it with foil and doing your best not to feel abandoned. You turned the stove light on because you can’t stand overhead lighting when it starts to get dark outside. And then you hovered around the apartment for the rest of the evening with the windows open, listening for sirens, or for footsteps out in the hall, or for the little thunk the elevator leaves when it stops on your floor.
The end of her shift comes and goes without a word.
By the time you hear the key in the lock turn, you’re relieved instead of upset.
“Dana?” you call, standing from the couch. “I made dinner, it’s in the fridge. I can heat it up if you want.”
The door shuts and there’s no answer.
You frown, pausing halfway between the couch and the kitchen. Usually she calls back immediately, a version of “Hey, baby,” or a comment about the shitty hospital food she had for lunch. Especially when she comes home to a cooked meal. Instead, there’s just movement, you can vaguely make out the scuff of shoes on the entryway tile.
“Dana?”
Still nothing.
You pivot, rounding the corner toward the entry way, and stop dead in your tracks.
She’s standing just inside the apartment, her bag still slung over her shoulder and her coat unzipped. Her hair is still half-up in her favorite claw clip, though it’s a mess. Not a surprise after a day like today.
But her face?
“Holy shit,” you gasp, moving toward her quickly.
Her left eye is swollen and bruised; skin dark down to her cheekbone. The bridge of her nose is mottled blue with faint purpling already beneath it. There’s dried blood just under one of her nostrils like she forgot to wipe it away.
“Dana, what the hell -” Your hands come up and cup her face carefully, afraid of hurting her but also unable to stop yourself from touching her. Her skin is cold, really cold. “Oh my god, what happened? Who did this to you?”
She recoils with a hiss when your thumbs brush too close to her nose, her eyes squeezing shut for a second.
“I’m fine,” she mutters, but her voice is rough from exhaustion. “Just - just long a shift.”
“Fine?” your voice jumps an octave with panic. “You have a black eye, Dana, you’re - you’re -” You swallow hard. Up close you can see just how uncomfortable she looks, her jaw is clenched, from pain you assume, and her expression is worn out. “You’re hurt.”
“I said I’m fine,” she snaps. The same tone she probably uses on combative patients, but never with you. “It’s nothing.”
It is very much not nothing.
“Dana,” you say softly, refusing to let go of her face, even as she slides the backpack from her shoulders. “Talk to me, please.”
She doesn’t respond at first, but she doesn’t pull away either. She just stands there in your hands as she sheds her coat and you watch the fight drain from her eyes.
“Angry patient took a swing,” she says quietly. “He caught me off-guard while I was having a smoke.”
“I’ll kill him.”
She huffs, a weak attempt at a laugh. “Get in line.”
You falter a little at that. You know the hospital would be dealing with it, they have security and cameras, and you’re sure Dr. Robinovich has already made a bigger deal out of this than Dana wants.
“Come here,” you murmur, guiding her further into the apartment. “Let’s sit down, shoes off.”
She tries to pull from your grip. “I can’ -”
“No,” you cut in. “I’ll bet my last dollar this didn’t happen at the end of your shift, which means you worked through it. It’s time to relax.”
She’s silent as she lets you steer her toward the couch. She lets you keep a hand on her the whole way, and you’re not sure if it’s for her or for you. And when she sinks down onto the couch cushions, her eyes flutter shut again and she almost looks relieved.
You kneel in front of her and settle your hands on her knees. “Stay right here,” you say. “I’m getting ice. And water. And - and something for the pain. Don’t move, okay?”
You hear her chuckle and are surprised to see a small but genuine smile on her face. “My own personal nurse,” she murmurs, looking down at you.
You hurry into the kitchen before she can change her mind. Ice clatters together in a ziplock baggy, your hands clumsy with adrenaline. You get her a glass of water and the entire ibuprofen bottle from the cabinet. She doesn’t even move, still exactly where you left her when you return. Slumped into the couch like someone who’s run out of fuel.
“Ice pack delivery,” you say softly.
Her eyes crack open and track the items in your hands, then your face. You gently press the bundled ice to her swollen face and she inhales quickly as she hisses through her teeth.
“Sorry, sorry,” you whisper, pulling back a little.
“No, it’s -” She steadies the ice pack on her face herself. “It’s good, it’s just cold.”
Your other hand balances the water in your palm and the pill bottle in the crook of your arm. “Here, water. And ibuprofen.”
She takes the pills without argument, which makes you much more nervous than if she’d fought you. Dana doesn’t surrender control easily or often, especially not over her own body.
The bruising is bad. You catch sight of it again as she lowers her hands to take the water from you. It makes you both sick and angry, and you want to press for details, but you don’t.
“Do you want me to heat up your dinner?” you ask, pivoting topics. “It’s still good, promise.”
Her stomach betrays her with a growl. “…yeah,” she admits. “I’m starving.”
Relief wells in your chest. It isn’t often you get compliant Dana, and you’re grateful for it tonight. “Okay, good. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
“Bossy,” she mutters, but there’s no real heat behind it.
You hover while she eats. With her plate balanced carefully on her lap, the ice pack resting against her face in between bites, she moves very slowly. You keep refilling her water before she can ask, adjusting her napkin, nudging her fork back onto the plate anytime it threatens to fall off. Your knee bounces with nervous energy that you can’t burn off. Every time she winces it causes your heart to lurch.
“You know,” she eventually says through a mouthful of food, “most adults manage to feed themselves without supervision.”
It’s a joke, but you don’t smile. “You got punched in the face.”
“It’s an occupational hazard.”
“Dana.”
She sighs, poking at the remaining food on her plate. “I’m a big girl,” she says. “You don’t have to coddle me.”
But she doesn’t push you away or stop you when you steady the plate when she shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
You practically have to force yourself not to touch her for a whole five seconds as you lean back away from her. “Okay,” you say. “Not coddling.”
She glances at you over the rim of her water glass as she takes a sip. “Mhm.”
When she eventually finishes her food, you take her plate before she can even sit up, let alone stand. You set the plate in the sink and come back immediately, perching on the coffee table in front of her. She’s leaned against the back of the couch, head tilted up and eyes closed again.
“Dana.”
She hums in acknowledgement but doesn’t open her eyes.
“…don’t go back,” you whisper.
Her eyes open slowly.
“To the hospital,” you continue, your voice trembling now that the request is out there. “Please, you’re not safe there.” You swallow hard, trying to keep your plea even. “You’re running yourself into the ground for that place, I can’t -” You stop, unable to finish the thought. I can’t watch you get hurt again. I can’t lose you. You’re being dramatic, you know, but seeing here like this makes it too real.
For a really long moment, she just looks at you. Then she lets out a quiet laugh that sounds brittle. “Relax,” she says. “I’m done.”
You blink in surprise. “Done?”
She nods. “Done. Thirty years, and I’m done. And this, tonight…” she waves her hands up toward her face, toward the bruising that’s still not even fully there yet. “…this was the last straw.”
“Dana -”
“I brought my stuff home.”
She nods toward the backpack she left in the entryway. Slowly, she slides off the couch and retrieves it, and then dumps it on the coffee table next to you: out falls her stethoscope, a few pens in her favorite cup, and the photos you know she keeps taped to the Charge Nurse computer.
You don’t know what to say. You weren’t actually expecting her to agree to not go back, this must be weighing on her a lot heavier than she’s letting on. This is real, she’s really not going back.
“…okay,” you whisper. It’s not actually okay, none of this is okay, but you’re relieved. You reach out and take her hand, the one not still clutching the backpack, and brush your thumb over the back of it.
The rest of the evening passes slowly. With Dana not going to the hospital tomorrow, and you sure as hell not going to work while your partner is like this, there’s no reason to get up early, so you allow the late evening to blur into night without rushing to bed.
You clear the coffee table, moving quietly so you don’t jostle the couch where Dana still sits with her eyes closed. She insists she’s awake, but the exhaustion is evident even in her voice and she isn’t fooling you when her head begins to tilt forward.
By the time everything is cleaned up, she’s already shaking her limbs as she stands, trying to physically rid herself of sleepiness.
The shower is her idea.
“I’m not broken, kid,” she says when you hesitate in the bathroom doorway with your arms folded across your chest. “You can get in here with me.”
You don’t bother to deny her. Dana can have whatever she wants tonight.
The shower is both long and gentle. She lets you wash her hair, either because she’s tired or because she doesn’t feel like fighting anymore.
Back in the bedroom, you both get ready for bed in a silence that doesn’t feel awkward, but is certainly tense. At least, it feels that way for you. You keep glancing at her when you think she’s not looking, taking in the bruising, the way her mouth is permanently turned down into a subtle frown, the complete opposite of the Dana you’re used to.
The bed dips when she climbs in next to you, settling on her side facing the wall. Her body is stiff even now in the comfort of her own bed. You switch off the lamp and lay beside her, trying to give her space, if her earlier annoyance over your hovering was any indicator of how the rest of this evening will go.
But to your surprise, she moves. The tiniest little backwards scoot in your direction, an invitation so rare that you might’ve imagined it.
Dana Evans is not the little spoon. You can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened over the years you’ve been together. Dana is in charge, Dana is the caretaker, Dana is the big spoon.
That doesn’t stop you from wrapping your arm over her, settling across her waist gently. Then you hear her sigh, see her body melt into the mattress beneath you, settling backwards until her back rests fully against your front.
Her hand finds your wrist and pulls it closer, anchoring it to her ribs just under her breasts. Even as her breathing evens out and she drifts off to sleep, her fingers loosen but she never actually lets go of you completely.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Week 1
Dana sleeps.
Not the half-asleep dozing she’s always done between shifts, the kind that never actually let her get through a full REM cycle; but instead a deep, heavy sleep that has her completely unresponsive all night. She sleeps through alarms she hasn’t turned off yet, she doesn’t toss or turn, she sleeps through sunlight peeking through the windows and the noise of the late-morning traffic outside your apartment. And when she wakes up, she’s disoriented like she doesn’t know where she is or why she isn’t at work already.
You take those first few days off, of course. A quick email to your boss with a vague explanation, no details. There’s no change you’re leaving her alone right now, not when she’s in a vulnerable state like this.
Most mornings she goes from the bed to the couch with your blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her hair wet from a shower or sticking up with frizz when she skips one. The bruises on her face deepen to an almost black before leaking into a sickly yellow. She eats whatever you put in front of her and her appetite is unpredictable, like her body still thinks it’s at the hospital and can’t spare the time to eat, only to be ravenous later.
By the third day, she’s hovering in the kitchen while you cook, leaning against the counter with her arms folded because she’s supervising you more than she’s actually helping.
“Smells good,” she says, her voice still a bit rough from her afternoon nap.
Eventually, though, she reaches for a knife to start chopping vegetables at a speed that would’ve made her coworkers laugh - Charge Nurse Dana, notorious speed demon, reduced to veggie slicing like she’s teaching a cooking class for beginners. To her credit, you’re the cook in the relationship, your boring 9 to 5 giving you more free time than she’s ever had.
Later in the week, people start checking in.
They text first, brief check-ins that you assume medical professionals do when they’re worried. Sometimes calls that she mostly ignores and voicemails she listens to on speaker while she stares at the ceiling for so long that you can almost see the war inside her.
You know she misses it, even if she doesn’t say it.
Then, inevitably, someone shows up.
You’re cubing chicken for the crockpot when the knock comes on your apartment door. Dana checks the peephole and you hear her call out that it’s Robby.
She opens the door to find him holding a paper bag from a takeout place two blocks away, the smell of greasy comfort food spilling into your entryway.
“Jesus,” he says as he takes in the swelling that’s just now starting to go down under her left eye.
Dana shrugs casually. “You should see the other guy.”
He doesn’t laugh, but his mouth does twitch. “I brought lunch,” he says as he holds up the bag like it’s proof of his usefulness. You all know it’s an excuse.
“Bribery works,” she replies. “She’s in there makin’ food, though.” You can practically hear her nodding toward you even though you can’t see them from the kitchen.
“It’s fine, this is for dinner anyways!” you call out to them.
You stay in the kitchen long past necessary, trying to give them the privacy you’re sure they need. But their voices drift in anyway.
“…shouldn’t have happened at all,” Robby is saying angrily. “Security still wants you to press charges. Administration is freaking out.”
Dana laughs, but it’s the same, ingenuine laugh you’ve heard all week. “Good, maybe they’ll fix something for once.”
There’s a pause where you can’t hear anything before Robby speaks again.
“You look like hell.”
“Feel worse.”
You grip the edge of the kitchen counter as you try to force yourself not to listen harder.
“…you serious about this?”
You know what he’s asking, and it causes your heart to beat rapidly.
When Dana doesn’t answer immediately, you imagine her staring at the floor, or maybe the wall absently. She always avoids eye contact with uncomfortable subjects, and this is one of them.
“Yeah.” There’s silence from both of them for a moment before she adds, “I meant what I said. I’m done.”
You let out a heavy sigh, careful not to be too loud. You keep your back turned to the entrance to the living room even as the tension unwinds from your body at her admission to someone other than you that she isn’t going back to that place.
Robby also exhales, like he’s been holding that breath since he walked in, the real reason he came. “Thirty years is a long time,” he says.
“Exactly.”
“You don’t have to decide right now, you can just…take some time, you know?”
You finally peek out into the living room, quickly so they don’t see you. Robby is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, like he’s seeing her for the first time – this strange version of Dana Evans who isn’t in scrubs, who isn’t a Charge Nurse, who isn’t holding people together by sheer force of will because she’s too busy holding herself together instead.
“And if you change your mind?” he urges.
Dana shrugs casually. “Then I change my mind.”
“But not today.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Not today.”
Robby nods slowly, accepting it even if he doesn’t like it. He reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. “Well,” he says, forcing a lighter tone. PTMC will survive without you. Probably.”
“Barely,” she replies dryly.
They share a small, tired smile.
You step into the living room then, handing over paper plates for the takeout Robby’s brought and pretending you didn’t hear the conversation. Dana glances up at you as she thanks you.
Later, after Robby leaves and the apartment settles back into the quiet of the afternoon, you notice her backpack is still where she always leaves it in the entryway, and you make the decision to put it away. It’s only in the hall closet, three feet from where it sat before, but those three feet make all the difference. It’s out of sight and mind, gone from your view because she’s not going to pack it up and take it to work tomorrow, and putting it away makes it not feel like a ticking clock on your sanity.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Week 2
The second week brings energy.
On the second morning of the second week, you wake up to an empty bed and have a moment of panic before you hear the sound of cabinets open in the kitchen, followed by the clatter of a mug that’s been set down too hard on the kitchen counter.
You find Dana standing at the counter in clothes instead of pajamas, hair damp from a shower, with coffee in hand.
“Good morning,” she says casually, as if she hasn’t been sleeping sixteen hours a day for the past week.
“You’re…” you stare at her as you try to figure out the right word. “…vertical.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
There’s color in her face now, real color, not the flush from feverish sleep. The bruising has almost entirely faded to yellow, much less shocking against her skin. She looks…like herself.
Later in the day, she’s pacing. She’s restless, unable to sit still that’s the complete opposite of the way she’s spent the previous 10 days. She’s wiping counters that are already clean, reorganizing the drawers in your shared dresser, cleaning things in the apartment that you already keep spotless. You catch her standing at the large window that faces the street more than once.
“Do you want to go out?” you ask finally, when you can’t take it anymore.
She looks relieved at the question, like she didn’t want to bring it up yourself. But she quickly schools her expression into a more casual one.
“Yeah,” she nods. “Yeah, actually.”
The first outing is just the pharmacy, a quick in-and-out. You hover behind her the entire time, on-edge in a way you’ve never had to be around her before. She notices, of course, but she doesn’t call you out on it. She just bumps your shoulder lightly with hers and takes your hand every time she notices you getting restless.
By the time you make it back out to the car, she’s smiling. She’s clearly missed the Vitamin D and fresh air.
The grocery store is next. It’s hilariously normal, and Dana doesn’t seem half as nervous about being out and about as you are. At one point, you turn around and she’s disappeared, and she appears only a few moments later holding up a large box of something you like with a small smile on her face.
“I thought you were the one on bedrest,” you joke.
She snorts. “I was.”
You don’t miss her use of past tense.
Errands stack up after that, and you do them together: the post office, the gas station, a quick stop for takeout since you’re tired of cooking. Nothing strenuous, just normal life stuff that you’ve been avoiding ever since she left the hospital. People look at her face, then away quickly, most polite enough to stare. And she ignores them.
At home, she starts helping more. She jumps in when you’re folding laundry, she takes the trash out before you can get to it.
That night is different too. She still curls into you, she’s still the little spoon, like she’s gotten used to being the one held for once. One time, you wake up to find her already awake, watching you with a strange look on her face that disappears the second she realizes you’re looking up at her.
“Go back to sleep,” she murmurs, brushing hair off your forehead. I
You do.
The next day, you’re putting groceries away after another trip; nothing that was urgent, just a restocking on things you use regularly. But behind you, footsteps approach you and arms slide into place around your waist.
Dana presses herself up against you from behind, her chin settling on your shoulder.
“Missed this,” she murmurs, her breath hot against your neck.
Your hands pause with a box of pasta in your hands. “Me too.”
She doesn’t let go though, if anything, her hold on you tightens. You lean back into her, relaxing into her arms and letting yourself be held.
But then you feel it.
It’s not her hands on your body or her breath at your neck, it’s lower than that. Something that’s solid, unexpected pressure on your lower back that’s definitely not something that could be explained away as an item in her pocket with how it presses into the exact center of your back, just above your butt.
You drop the pasta box onto the counter.
“…Dana,” you say slowly, because surely there’s a logical explanation you’re not seeing here.
She hums against your shoulder, far more calm than you feel right now.
You turn your head just enough to see the side of her face. She isn’t looking at you, sharp eyes looking straight ahead, but there’s a smirk on her mouth, which is still pressed into the top of your shoulder.
Your voice comes out incredulous. “Are you kidding me right now?”
Her hands move, one arm tightening around you, the other traveling to hold your hip. “What?” she asks, sounding deceptively innocent. “Too soon?”
“Too soon?” you echo, twisting in her arms as much as you can to look at her. “Dana, you’re still healing.”
She doesn’t move off you, but you can see her eyes narrow, some of the playfulness leaving her. “It’s been over a week,” she murmurs into your shoulder.
“I’m serious,” you say. “You don’t have to prove anything, I don’t want you to do too much too fast.”
She goes quiet, but whether it’s to consider your words or figure out her own, you’re not sure. Then she takes a deep breath, and you can practically feel the lecture coming.
“I don’t need you to be my mother,” she says. “I need you to be my partner.”
You’re facing the counter again, her arms locked so tight around you that turning toward her fully is impossible. But you don’t need to see her face. The conviction in her voice is enough, and you’re sure if you could see her, the expression on her face would match.
“You’ve been taking care of me for a week, and I grateful. Really,” she continues. “But I’m not broken. And I need my woman.”
You sigh dreamily despite yourself as she lifts her mouth from your shoulder and places a kiss to your neck. Your eyes close and your head tips back enough to give her room.
“Let me take care of you,” she murmurs against your skin. “I want to, I need you.”
The hand at your hip slides forwards, slipping beneath the waistband of your leggings. The fabric stretches around her wrist as she works her way inside, and you feel the pause when she realizes you’re bare underneath. No underwear. Her fingers drift lower, brushing over your mound, teasing lightly over your clit before swiping down through your slit.
“Already wet for me?” she teases, and you can hear the smile that’s returned to her face.
You nod with a shaky breath, letting your hair fall over your face. Both hands brace on the counter in front of you, your knuckles whitening instantly.
Her middle and ring finger press inside you, and you stretch easily to accommodate. She doesn’t linger, immediately moving, pumping them deep and steady inside you, curling as she bottoms out and the heel of her palm grinds against your clit.
You cry out, eyes screwing shut as she fucks you with her fingers, made only worse by her ruthless teasing.
“Poor thing, all pent up.”
“You needed this more than I do.”
“Fuckin’ love this pretty pussy.”
The kitchen fills with the sound of your ragged breathing and the obscene slick sound of her fingers moving inside you.
“Fuck, Dana,” you gasp, bending at the waist until your forehead rests on your arms.
She pulls out abruptly, leaving you both empty and aching, her fingers wet and dripping. Before you can protest out loud, though, she shoves your leggings down and fumbles briefly with her own pants, pushing them just low enough to expose what you felt earlier: the harness snug around her hips, navy blue silicone hanging heavy between her thighs. The tip notches at your entrance as she positions herself.
“Dana, pl-” The rest of the word is punched from your lungs as she pushes inside you with one swift thrust.
Her hands clamp down on your hips as she pauses to let you adjust to the intrusion. Her fingertips dig in harshly, squishing the fat of your hips in her hands.
This is the Dana you know. Dominance and confidence are rolling off her in waves. This past week, all of your carefulness and her fragility, dissolves under the weight of this Dana.
When you let out a deep breath and she watches the tension drain from your body, she finally begins to move, pulling all the way out slowly before sliding back in, her thrusts slow and controlled.
Her feet hook on the inside of yours, nudging them gently to encourage you to spread your legs for her. One hand splays on your lower back, holding you down, while the other stays planted on your hip, pulling you back to meet her hips.
“A-ah, shit - fuck, Dana -”
Your cries spark something inside her. She leans over you, her chest against your back and breath hot at your ear as her pace picks up. Her hips snap forward, harder, deeper, the strap driving into places your own fingers never could, hitting your cervix in a way that has your vision going white.
“Can’t believe I haven’t had you in over a week,” Dana grits out, her movements never slowing even as she speaks. “Missed this pussy so - fucking - much!” Each word is punctuated with particularly brutal thrusts that have you moaning loudly.
Your sounds egg her on more, her speed picking up until you can’t even think straight, and just as your last braincell tries to form a coherent thought, you’re cumming hard around the silicone, orgasm so sudden it has you letting out a loud, strangled sound. Your hips twitch wildly, running from her even though there’s nowhere to go, your hips trapped between hers and the counter.
She doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down. She just keeps driving into you, riding you through the aftershock until you’re reaching back blindly, grabbing at her hips with shaking hands, tears blurring your vision and your legs threatening to give out entirely until you’re nothing more than a puddle on the kitchen floor.
The rest of the week is no better.
Dana fucks you on every surface in the entire apartment: in the bedroom, in the shower, bent over the front-loading dryer in the laundry room, splayed out on the island in the kitchen, even in front of the window that faces the street when she’s feeling particularly voyeuristic.
Her energy has picked back up and her disposition channels entirely into ruining you every chance she gets.
She has you riding her in reverse cowgirl so she can stare at your ass while she smokes a cigarette in bed (which you chastise her for later, even though you weren’t complaining in the moment, she reminds you). She’s rubbing her own cunt against yours, or over your mouth, or your thigh, or even once over your ass while you’re face-down on the bed. She has you stretching your legs over her shoulders while she shoves you into a mating press, the captain, the hot seat; any position she can fold you into, she’s doing it.
By the end of week 2, you’re exhausted.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Week 3
Dana is restless.
Not in the way that she can’t sleep, or that she’s irritable. But it’s like she doesn’t know how to be still anymore. The apartment is too small for her, she’s pacing the boundaries of an invisible cage like a tiger. If you’re standing up, she’s standing up. If you grab your keys, she’s reaching for her shoes. A quick run to the store turns into you wandering the aisles together because she doesn’t want to go home and just be there.
She burns through energy the way she used to burn through double shifts. The restlessness spillins into everything: reorganizing cabinets and half-finished projects, long showers that end with your cheek pressed against the tile, hands that can’t stop touching you once they start until you’re both sweaty and panting. Mornings blur into afternoons, afternoons into nights, marked by the pull of her mouth and the heat of her skin instead of the time on the clock.
And when she isn’t touching you, she’s watching you.
You catch her constantly. She leans in the doorway while you cook, propped on one elbow while you answer work emails or sit in virtually in meetings, her expression unreadable and filled with something you can’t figure out how to name because you’ve never seen it on her face before.
Something big is weighing in her mind, you can feel it. It’s partially in the way she watches you, and it’s made up of the restlessness that’s written into everything she does. She doesn’t talk about the hospital, but and you don’t ask. Partially because you already know, and because you don’t want to hear it out loud.
If this is the calm before the storm, at least you’re in it together.
It all comes to a head on the night you two host a dinner party. The idea was hers, and that should’ve been your first clue. She’s testing the waters.
It’s just dinner, for three people she’s known way longer than she’s known you. Three people who have seen her at her best, her worst, her bloodiest, her most exhausted. Three people who belong to the world she’s been avoiding talking about for weeks.
In the late afternoon, your apartment smells incredible: like garlic and onion and rosemary, with meat that’s been slow-simmered and smells rich. You’re dressed up like you’re ready for a job interview, in slacks that show off your ass and a shirt that shows off your figure a little too well for someone who’s just hosting a dinner for your partner’s friends.
The doorbell rings not long after and they arrive together.
You can hear them out in the hallway, voices overlapping and occasionally a burst of laughter. Dana opens the door and everything happens at once.
Robby barrels in first with his arms open, pulling Dana into a hug that’s so tight her feelings almost leave the floor. Jack crowds in right behind him with a hand landing on her shoulder, squeezing it with a reassuring smile. Lena slips through last, jugging a bottle of wine and her purse, her expression soft once she gets a good look at Dana.
“Look at you,” Robby says into Dana’s hair, sounding relieved. “You look good.”
“Better than when we last saw you,” Jack adds dryly.
Dana laughs, still half-buried into Robby’s shoulder. “Yeah, well. It’s not a hard bar to clear.”
Lena sets the wine down and steps in, cupping Dana’s face with both her hands and turning it gently side-to-side like she’s looking for any remaining damage. Once she seems satisfied that all of the bruising and swelling is gone, she pulls Dana into a hug of her own. “Missed you, boss.”
A complicated emotion flickers across Dana’s face at that, but it’s gone before you can quite figure out what it’s called.
And then they notice you.
“Hey!” Lena says immediately, arms opening just as wide. “C’mere.”
You barely have time to register what she’s saying before you’re pulled into a hug that smells like perfume and red wine. Robby joins in from one side, Jack from the other, and suddenly you’re in the middle of a three-person squeeze-fest that’s warm and a little overwhelming.
“Thank you,” Robby says quietly near your ear, obviously suggesting it’s for more than just dinner. “Seriously.”
Jack pats your back, firmly and twice. “You kept her alive for us.”
“Ignore him,” Lena laughs. “We loved you already.”
When they release you, you’re a little flushed and touched despite yourself.
Dana is watching the whole thing with crossed arms, looking both proud and tender.
The tension that’s been living under Dana’s skin all week seems to loosen as shoes are kicked off and coats are handed over and hung up. Someone grabs the red wine and heads for your kitchen. Voices bounce off the walls and the air feels warmer, your tiny apartment that’s normally just for you two feeling more alive than ever.
Your dinner table is crowded in the best way: serving dishes are passed hand-to-hand, wine refilled repeatedly without asking, elbows bumping as everyone settles in. Dana insists on carving the roast herself, waving off your offer to help. And then she settles at the head of the table out of pure habit, you immediately to her right instead of at the opposite end where you usually land.
“This is incredible,” Lena says around a mouthful of potatoes, pointing her fork at you. “If you ever leave her, I’m available.”
“Get in line,” Robby replies immediately. “I called dibs the minute I tasted the gravy.”
Jack laughs. “You two would starve in a week, neither of you can boil water without paging nutrition.”
“I think the implication is that I would cook,” you laugh.
“Excuse you,” Lena argues. “I can make toast.”
“Burning bread isn’t the same as toasting.”
Dana laughs and shakes her head as she reaches for her wine glass. “This is why nobody invites you anywhere, Jack.”
“You invited me.”
“Against my better judgment.”
You catch the curl at the corner of her mouth as she says it - its fond, not biting.
Robby leans back in his chair, patting his stomach. “God, this beats the cafeteria mystery meat. Last Tuesday they served something that looked like a hockey puck.”
“That was meatloaf,” Jack says.
“It was a crime is what it was.”
“You all have it easy.” Lena turns to Dana. “Night shift gets the real horrors. By midnight, it’s just whatever’s left in the vending machines and the stale cookies nobody wanted during the day.”
“At least night shift doesn’t have administration breathing down your necks,” Robby counters. “Pick your poison.”
“At least admin goes home eventually,” Lena says. “I had a psych hold try to bite me last week.”
Dana’s fork pauses just before her mouth. “You okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Lena waves it off. “They missed. Mostly just ruined a perfectly good set of scrubs.”
“Occupational hazard,” Jack says. “Better than the projectile vomited across three beds.”
“Do not continue this story while I’m eating,” Robby warns.
“I’m just saying, it was an impressive distance -”
“Jack.”
“Fine, fine.” He lifts his hands in surrender, then looks to Dana. “See what you’re missing? Top-tier entertainment.”
That same look from earlier shows itself on Dana’s face again before she schools her expression into a smile again, taking a sip of wine. You feel her foot slide against yours under the table.
Lena leans forward with her elbows on the table. “We did have a med student hurl during a trauma, though. Nearly took out a whole instrument tray.”
Jack groans. “I told them not to bring him in, kid looked like he was gonna pass out during rounds.”
“Natural selection,” Robby says.
“You’re awful,” Lena tells him, but she’s laughing.
Dana shakes her head. “First rule of trauma: don’t lock your knees.”
“Second rule is not to puke in your mask,” Robby adds.
“Third rule,” Jack throws in, “if you do puke, at least aim away from the patient.”
“Jesus,” you mutter to yourself.
All four of them turn to you at once, grinning.
“Welcome to emergency medicine,” Lena says cheerfully, as if any of this is completely acceptable and polite dinner conversation.
Dana’s hand lands on your knee for a moment under the table, a silent apology paired with a small smile.
Robby raises his glass. “To Dana not being there to witness any of this.”
There’s a moment that follows the toast where it’s not exactly awkward, but it’s heavier than the conversation has been so far.
But then Dana lifts her own glass a second later. “It’s a tragic loss for the hospital.”
“May we all be so lucky,” Lena adds.
Jack nudges Dana’s shoulder with his. “Seriously, though, it’s not the same.”
Her expression is soft as she sips her wine. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “Well.”
You reach for the hand that’s on your knee, squeezing it gently.
Jack clears his throat, apparently deciding to rescue the mood. “So, has she been completely insufferable these last few weeks?”
You open your mouth but then glance at Dana, who’s watching you with narrowed eyes. “…she’s been very helpful,” you settle on.
The table erupts with laughter.
“Oh my god,” Lena wheezes. “Blink twice if you need rescue.”
Jack leans forward. “I can get you out of here in like thirty seconds, tops.”
Dana kicks him lightly under the table. “Touch my partner and you die.”
The rest of dinner is easy and light. Plates are abandoned in favor of second glasses of wine, stories are told with embellishment that makes the hospital sound like some sort of thriller movie, told with shorthand communication that comes from years of comradery. But eventually the night winds down with the slow accumulation of cues: empty glasses, phones checked for the time, the slow gathering of belongings.
Lena tries to stack plates, but stops when you insist she leave them, that you’ll take care of it.
Coats reappear and shoes are hunted down from the entryway.
“We’re doing this again,” Robby says as he pulls Dana into another hug. “Soon.”
“Yeah,” Lena adds. “Don’t disappear on us.”
“You know where we are,” comes from Jack.
Dana nods. “I know.”
Then they turn to you one-by-one, wrapping you in the same affection, promises tossed over shoulders as they disappear out your front door.
You don’t bother with the kitchen tonight, it can wait until the morning.
Instead, Dana disappears down the hall and when you join her in the bathroom, she’s already leaning over the sink, brushing her teeth with a distant expression in her eyes. You fall into the routine beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder with mint foam on your lips.
For a bit, the only sound is the rasp of toothbrushes. Then Dana spits, rinses, and sets her toothbrush down. She doesn’t look at you, instead she stares at herself in the mirror.
“I think…” she starts, but then stops as she considers her words. “I think I want to go back.”
You close your eyes for a moment, mint still sharp on your tongue.
You’ve felt it building all week. It lived in the pacing, the sleepless energy, the way she devoured the hospital stories tonight like she’s starving. She isn’t made to exist outside of that hospital for long. It’s carved into her bones, wired into who she is as a person. The woman you fell in love with is the woman that hospital made, you can’t hate it.
You rinse your mouth to buy yourself a second of time, then meet her gaze in the mirror.
“…yeah,” you say finally. “I figured.”
Dana’s eyes search yours in the mirror. “Yeah?”
“I knew it was coming.” You nod. “I know you.”
You turn to face her instead of continuing through the mirror. “I’m not mad,” you add, because you can see the question on her face. “I’m just worried. What happened wasn’t a fluke, Dana. You got hurt, badly.”
“I know.” The way she says it isn’t dismissive or defensive. “I’m not going to go back the same,” she continues. “I want a real conversation with admin. Security, staffing, protocols, all of it. Not their usual ‘we’ll look into it’ bullshit.”
You search her face, looking for the familiar stubborn denial, or for the determination that sometimes scares you. Instead, you find her thoughtful, almost resolute. Like she’ll really push for big changes.
“Okay,” you say slowly. “I can live with that.”
She looks relieved at that, and she reaches out, cupping your cheek, her thumb resting just under your ear. “I’ll be careful,” she murmurs.
You lean into her hand, closing your eyes for a second.
“C’mere,” she says quietly, pulling you to her. She wraps her arms around you, your cheek settling against her shoulder. She holds you tight, chin against your temple, and she presses a kiss into your hair.
You finish getting ready for bed quickly after that. Not because it’s awkward, but because the exhaustion of the day has wrung everything out of you and you’re tired. Lights get turned off, your doors and windows are checked.
You settle into bed and she follows, an arm wrapping around your middle, her face tucking into the curve of your neck like you haven’t been holding her the same way for weeks now. Little spoon, right where you belong.
You fall asleep before she does.
Dana stays awake with her eyes open in the dark, listening to the rhythm of your breathing.
Three weeks. It was three weeks of you doing your best to build a world inside your tiny shared apartment that she could survive in.
You took time off work without hesitation. You filled the fridge, managed the bills, you kept your home running like she wasn’t breaking down in the middle of it. You never made her feel like a burden, even when you were doing everything for her. You kept her going. Meals, medication, ice packs, clean laundry, your quiet company every second of every day keeping her sane when she couldn’t tolerate anything else.
But even now, even when she wanted to go back to the place that scared you so badly, you weren’t trying to stop her from being who she is.
Her nose brushes the back of your neck as she sighs into your skin.
You’ve been her calm in the storm, not the cage. You deserve more than the half-life you’re living around her hospital chaos.
The word girlfriend was never an option for her. She hates it, it feels juvenile, temporary, meant for people who don’t know what they want. Partner had sufficed all this time, but now it doesn’t feel like enough.
Wife.
She presses her face deeper into your shoulder, finally closing her eyes as certainty settles over her.
Summary: Six days have passed since Mel's friends left, and your friendship has been permanently affected. When a perceptive patient notices the tension between you two, her advice sparks reflection on what it means to risk everything for the chance at love.
CW: angst, lots of lesbian yearning, canon-typical medical events, minor character death (nobody from canon), grief, hurt/comfort, smut, not changing out of scrubs (ew, yes that requires a CW), fingering and oral sex (r!receiving), showering and non-sexual intimacy.
WC: 10k
Part 2 to Hold On.
A/N: this whole fic was a struggle. Figuring out how it would go was a struggle, starting it was a struggle, I got writers block after the first scene. Also, I named my patients wife Gloria because I temporarily forgot Gloria is also the name of the hospital administrator and I don’t want to go through and change it. It was my nana’s name, too, and I like it. Deal with it.
♡ ───────── ♡ ───────── ♡
Six days.
That’s how long it’s been since Mel’s friends left, since you’d stood in the doorway to Mel’s apartment and waved goodbye to them, since your life was supposed to go back to normal.
And your life was anything but.
Six days of her not responding to your texts. Six days of not sending stupid memes in the evenings. Six days of silence where there used to be constant communication. Six days of you pretending you don’t feel her absence in your heart. Your phone has never been so quiet.
At work, it’s worse.
All hospitals run on routine, and especially in an emergency department there’s an understanding that nobody gets through a shift alone. But somehow, the two of you have managed turn avoidance into an art. You take the long way around hallways, she volunteers for tasks on the opposite end of the department. Where you used to naturally overlap, there’s now intentional avoidance.
There wasn’t a fight. You can’t point to the exact moment and say “this is where everything went wrong.” There were only two kisses that were supposed to be fake and two nights spent tangled together in bed like you belonged there all along, followed by a silence that grew too big to take back. You’re not sure why Mel is avoiding you. Maybe she regrets it, maybe she’s embarrassed, or trying to protect your friendship by pretending none of it happened. The not knowing hurts almost as much as the distance itself.
But you’re not innocent either. You avoid her because you don’t know how to look at her and not want to hold her. Whatever careful little box you’d kept your feelings locked in is now blown wide open ever since last weekend, spilling your feelings out in a way you can’t figure out how to undo. You don’t know how to gather them all back up, how to tuck it neatly into the farthest corners of your heart again so you can be her best friend without wanting more from her. Being near her hurts now, like your control is hanging on by a thread and one wrong look or word from her could destroy it.
So you stay away, and she stays away, and the distance between you two stretches thin and tight every day.
You still see her, of course. It’s impossible not to, you work in the same building, in the same department, on the same days, on the same shift.
There’s a glimpse of her braid disappearing around a corner just as you turn into it, and the sound of her voice at the nurse’s station makes your head snap up before you catch yourself doing it, only to look back down at your work like nothing happened. Once, your hands touched while reaching for the same file and you both recoiled as if the contact burned you, muttering apologies to the air instead of each other because you couldn’t actually look at one another.
But when you do look, you try to be sneaky. She looks tired. More tired than usual. There are shadows under her eyes and her hair isn’t as neat in her braid as it normally is, loose strands escaping in ways you’ve only seen happen when she’s frazzled.
You don’t know what you’re supposed to say now. You don’t know what she wants, you don’t know if she regrets it, if she wishes the entire thing had never happened the same way you do.
You’re not sleeping, the bags under your own eyes mirroring Mel’s. Every night you close your eyes and remember how it felt to wake up tangled together, with the weight of her arm over your waist, her warm breath against your collarbone. Your brain replays the feeling of her mouth on yours in the bar, analyzing the way she leaned in like she couldn’t help herself. You remember thinking, stupidly, in that instance that maybe something had changed for real.
Six days is long enough for hope to thin out into glass, so brittle that it’ll break at the slightest pressure.
Six days is also long enough for other people to notice.
PTMC’s rumor mill is worse than any Middle of High School you ever went to. It doesn’t fly under the radar that you and Mel no longer talk at the nurse’s station, that conversations cut off whenever one of you approaches, or that you don’t walk out together at the end of a shift anymore.
Most of them are polite enough not to comment on it. Most, but not all. A rumor takes root, winding it’s way through the departments and across language barriers until it reaches the ears of someone who’s department gossip is equal parts rumors and facts.
Someone who saw you firsthand. Someone with sharp eyes and even sharper instincts, and a memory for details that borders on unsettling; like the way she’d pretended to stare at her own reflection in the bar mirror while pretending not to watch the two of you at all. It didn’t take long after that for curiosity to harden into certainty.
And once Trinity Santos is certain of something, she doesn’t let it sit.
By the sixth day, she decides she’s waited long enough.
Mel is halfway through reviewing a patient chart at a computer when a shadow falls across the counter as it blocks out the overhead light. She doesn’t look up at first, assuming it’s a nurse or a med student waiting to ask a question.
“Morning, Mel-tdown.”
Her pen pauses mid-stroke.
There are very few people in the hospital who think making up nicknames is funny, even less who would do it to someone with more seniority than themselves, and only one whose voice carries that particular blend of dry amusement and sarcasm. Mel looks up slowly and finds herself face-to-face with Trinity, who’s arms are folded loosely across her chest.
“Dr. Santos,” Mel says automatically with a forced smile. “Good morning.”
Trinity doesn’t return the greeting. She watches Mel with eyes narrowed, assessing her like a scan instead of a person.
“You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I’m fine.”
“Mm.” She’s not convinced. “Sure.”
But she doesn’t leave. The silence stretches just long enough to make it weird.
“Was there something you needed?” Mel asks. She cannot do her job properly with the R2 hovering over her like this.
“How’s your girlfriend?”
The question is said so casually that it takes almost a full minute to register. When it does, Mel’s stomach drops out from under her.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, your nurse,” Trinity clarifies, relaxed enough that it doesn’t sound like she’s prodding for information, which she definitely is. “I saw you at O’Malley’s on Saturday night, you two make a cute couple.”
Heat floods Mel’s face. “I’m not - she’s not - we’re not a couple.”
Trinity’s eyebrows lift, but there’s no suspicion on her face. If anything, she looks amused, like she finds this funny.
“Relax,” she says. “I get it, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I’m not explaining, I’m just -” Mel falters, reaching for something, anything, that’ll sound real. “We’re - we’re just friends.”
“Mhm.” The noncommittal little hum is somehow worse than outright disbelief.
“I’m serious,” Mel insists. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
The conviction never leaves Trinity’s face. “If you want to keep your personal life private, that’s your business,” she says. “I’m not the morality police, I don’t care what you do at home.”
“That’s not -” Mel stops, frustrated, because there’s nothing she can say that’s going to convince her. “We’re not dating.”
“Okay.”
Her fingers curl against the desk. “You don’t believe me.”
Trinity shrugs. “I saw you kissing at the bar.”
Mel swears her heart stops. Her mind races, spiraling through the logistics: who else might have seen you, how widely this could spread, what this looks like when you two have been actively avoiding each other ever since.
“We work together,” she says finally, and it almost sounds strangled. “If could get…complicated.”
“Trust me, you don’t have to explain that to me,” Trinity says dryly. “Plus, half the hospital is sleeping with the other half.”
Mel’s head snaps up, scandalized despite herself. “We’re not -”
Trinity holds up a hand to stop her. “I’m not asking for details.” She leans in, lowering her voice just enough to keep the conversation contained to the two of them. “The only reason I brought it up is because you two suddenly acting like strangers is a lot more noticeable than just dating quietly.”
Mel’s stomach twists.
“You used to be inseparable,” Trinity continues. “Now you won’t even talk to each other. People are noticing.”
Panic is crawling up Mel’s insides. Trinity actively participates in the rumor mill, if she’s saying people have noticed things changing between you two, that means people are talking.
“I’m just busy,” Mel says weakly.
“Sure you are.”
Trinity straightens up, pushing off the counter.
“For what it’s worth,” she adds, “Nobody cares who you date as long as it doesn’t affect patient care.”
Mel nods, her throat still tight. Trinity taps the counter in front of her twice, catching her attention once more.
“Take a breath, Mel-tdown. Your secret’s safe with me.”
And then she walks away, leaving Mel sitting there with her pulse racing and her thoughts in complete disarray.
This is way worse than being caught. This is her being seen by her colleagues, and assumed. Assumed to be dating you, to be serious enough to hide, to be something real. And if Trinity noticed, others will too. Maybe they already have. And that means this isn’t just about hurt feelings or awkward silence anymore.
It’s about your job, your reputation. Yours just as much as hers.
Mel closes the chart. She can’t let this continue.
She has to find you.
♡ ───────── ♡ ───────── ♡
You’re halfway through explaining a medication timing issue to Bridget at the nurse’s station when you feel it: fingers closing around your arm firmly, just above the elbow. It’s startling enough that the rest of your sentence dies in your throat.
You turn, already ready to apologize, expecting some sort of patient emergency. Something urgent. Something very much not personal.
Instead, you find Mel standing there.
Your brain refuses to process it for almost half a minute. Her grip tightens when you don’t move immediately, and her gaze never leaves your face, even as Bridget asks if everything is okay.
“Can I borrow you for a minute?” she asks, her voice strained.
She doesn’t wait for a response. She’s already dragging you away, hand locked around your arm tightly as she pulls you down the hallway and around the corner into a quieter stretch near a supply closet.
Your heart is pounding for reasons that has nothing to do with how urgent she looks.
Six days. Of distance, of avoidance, of silence. And now she’s holding onto you like this. Hope sparks in your chest, both traitorous and dangerous.
Maybe she couldn’t stand it either, maybe she misses you. Maybe she’s finally going to say something, anything, that will make this awful, stretched-out silence okay again.
She stops abruptly and lets go of your arm, interrupting your thoughts. Her own arms fold tightly across her chest.
“Mel?” you say, confused. “What -”
She glances up and down the hallway, looking in both directions. She looks tense. When she finally speaks, she leans in close to you, her voice dropping to a whisper that even you can barely hear in the silent hallway.
“Trinity saw us at O’Malley’s.”
It takes a second for you to register what she’s said. “I - what?”
She looks around again, scanning for eavesdroppers even though the hall is empty.
“She saw us,” Mel repeats more urgently, like you’re the one not keeping up. “Saturday night, at the bar.”
Your stomach drops. “Oh.”
Another glance over her shoulder and then she leans closer still, volume dropping even more, like her following words are dangerous:
“She saw us…kissing.”
The whisper is almost comical, like she’s afraid it’s going to echo down the hallway and summon witnesses out of thin air. Under any other circumstances, it might’ve been cute.
But right now it just hurts.
“I didn’t know what to say,” she rushes on. “She assumed we were dating, and I told her we’re not, but she doesn’t seem convinced, and people are already noticing that we’re not - that things are different, and I just thought you should know in case anyone says anything to you.”
You blink at her.
This isn’t an apology. This isn’t I miss you, or I’m sorry I disappeared or I didn’t know how to talk to you or even are you okay?
It’s damage control.
“Oh,” you say again, because it’s the only sound you know how to make.
“I just don’t want it to become a problem,” Mel continues, her arms tightening where they’re tucked into her sides. “You know, professionally. For either of us.”
She means it as reassurance. You can see it, the worry in her eyes, you see it in the tightness in her mouth. She’s warning you, looping you in so you’re not blindsided. But all you can hear is what she isn’t saying.
She’s not trying to fix this. She’s worried about how this looks.
You force a small nod, staring somewhere over her shoulder because looking right at her would hurt too much.
“Right,” you manage. “Good to know.”
Silence follows, and she doesn’t move to comfort you. If anything, she looks relieved, like she’s delivered the message she came to deliver.
“Okay,” she says quickly. “I just wanted you to hear it from me.”
Not because she actually cares about how you’re feeling. Just because it’s relevant information.
Hope, which had flared so brightly when she grabbed your arm, fizzles out just as fast, and it leaves something colder in it’s wake.
“Thanks,” you say automatically, though it’s distant. “For the heads-up.”
Her lips tip into a frown, like that wasn’t the response she expected from you, but she doesn’t push further.
“Yeah,” she says. “Of course.”
There’s more silence and it’s awkward in a way space has never been between you two before. For a second you think she might say something else, but then she nods and steps back.
“I should get back.”
And then she turns and walks away without another glance in your direction.
You stand there for a long time after she disappears around the corner, staring at the empty space she left behind. Your chest aches with the realization that you were stupid for letting yourself hope. Not for romance, or even for answers. Even just for your best friend back.
Eventually you push yourself off the wall and head back toward the nurse’s station, careful to keep your expression neutral because now you’re aware of the looks you’re getting, especially from Princess. But you keep your voice steady when you pick up the conversation with Bridget exactly where it left off, like nothing happened.
Like six days of silence and one conversation haven’t just confirmed your worst fear:
That whatever that weekend meant to you…it clearly didn’t mean the same thing for her.
♡ ───────── ♡ ───────── ♡
It’s later in that same shift that your day goes from bad to shitty.
You’re charting at the nurse’s station when the automatic doors at the end of the entrance to the ED hiss open and Olive appears, guiding a wheelchair.
“Got another one for you,” she calls without slowing down. “Shortness of breath, mild chest discomfort. Her vitals are mostly okay, but she’s a little hypertensive.”
The woman in the chair looks up at you with clear and intelligent eyes, her silver hair escaping a long braid that’s loosened over the course of the day. She doesn’t look panicked, if anything, she looks annoyed to be here at all.
“Honestly, I feel ridiculous,” she says as she takes your hand to help her stand. “It’s probably indigestion.”
She pauses to catch a slightly deeper breath once she’s upright, one hand coming up to rest on her chest.
“I just can’t quite get a full breath,” she adds. “And there’s this pressure in my chest.”
You guide her onto the bed, noting sweat gathering at her temples and the way she shifts on the bed like she’s trying to find a position that feels better.
“On a scale of zero to ten?” you ask gently.
“Maybe a three? Four if I’m being dramatic.”
“Got it,” you say as you begin to attach monitor leads. “Three-to-four dramatic discomfort.”
She smiles at that, her eyes crinkling. Her attention drifts past you as the door behind you opens. “Uh-oh,” she says. “Here comes someone important.”
“Hello, I’m Dr. King,” Mel’s voice comes from over your shoulder, and you hear the hand sanitizer being dispensed. “Status?”
“Um - shortness of breath with mild chest pressure, onset about an hour ago,” you say, flustered as your heart starts palpitating. “She rates it a three or a four but she was hypertensive in triage. No obvious distress, she’s alert and oriented.”
There’s silence behind you as you hear Mel pause. When you turn, she’s stepping forward, her eyes lingering on your face and you watch as they soften. But then she schools her expression back to the neutral composure you’ve only seen when she’s dealing with something personal but forced to be professional.
“Okay,” she says calmly. “Hi, Ms. Burkhart, like I said, I’m Dr. King, I’m going to take a look at you.”
Ms. Burkhart studies her with open curiosity instead of the wary anxiety most patients wear. She looks briefly to you and then back to Mel, as if she’s picked up on the moment you two just had.
“Carrie,” she corrects. “Ms. Burkhart makes me sound like my mother.”
Mel’s mouth twitches. “Carrie it is.”
She moves closer to the bed, silent as she watches Carrie’s vitals on the monitor, hands steady as she listens to her lungs. She asks the standard questions, and you busy yourself moving to the other side of the bed, adjusting the monitor, and handing over supplies before Mel even asks.
Choreography that you both know by heart.
You’re careful not to look at her too much. You don’t let your voice soften when you answer her questions, doing your best not to slip back into the wordless communication that used to feel as natural as breathing. Not in front of a patient.
Your patient notices anyway.
It feels like Carrie’s observing you rather than the other way around, despite the fact that she is quite literally beingobserved. You can feel her scrutiny, and you do your best to keep your expression neutral and professional while you focus on the tasks at hand.
Mel straightens after listening to her lungs. “Any nausea? Dizziness? Pain anywhere else?”
“Not really,” Carrie says. “I just can’t seem to get a satisfying breath.” She demonstrates with a shallow inhale that ends in a frustrated sigh.
Mel nods thoughtfully. “Okay.”
Carrie’s gaze slides past her shoulder again, right to you.
If Mel notices the attention, she doesn’t comment. Instead, she redirects. “Do you have any history of heart problems? High blood pressure? Aneurysms?”
Carrie answers the doctor’s questions, but her attention seems to keep drifting back to you, especially whenever you speak. Her attention on you feels strange. You’re no stranger to attention from patients, but usually it comes from a place of attraction, which you’re always quick to brush off. Ms. Burkhart’s attention seems more like curiosity - she’s not being intrusive, she’s not even talking to you, and her gaze isn’t coming off as flirty or uncomfortable.
At one point, Mel asks you to retake her blood pressure and you step in to wrap the cuff around Carrie’s arm. As you’re leaning in, Mel reaches across to adjust a monitor lead at the same time, your hands brushing against each other. Both of you pause, neither looking at the other, but the tension is palpable.
Ms. Burkhart notices immediately. “Oh.”
“Sorry?” You glance up at her quickly. “Are you in pain?”
“No, it’s nothing,” she says lightly. “Just thinking.”
Mel has already stepped back and is jotting down notes in the patient file.
“We’re going to run some tests,” she says. “An EKG, blood work, probably imaging just to be safe.”
“Of course,” Carrie nods. “I did come to a hospital, after all.”
When you look up again, Carrie is looking at you softly, her expression almost sympathetic.
“You two work together a lot?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Sometimes.”
You both speak at the same time, the overlap hanging in the air awkwardly.
You’re quick to draw blood and excuse yourself, desperate to remove yourself from this too-small room with your fake-ex-girlfriend and a patient who’s definitely watching you too closely.
When you eventually return to check in on Ms. Burkhart, she’s alone in the room, propped up against the pillows in her bed, looking far less uncomfortable than before even though her breathing is still shallow. Mel must’ve prescribed some sort of pain relief.
“Oh good,” she says. “I was starting to think you’d abandoned me.”
“Not a chance,” you say as you move to her bedside. “Just waiting on your lab results.”
She hums in acceptance, though her fingers still fiddle with the edge of the blanket, nervous and jittery as if she can’t quite get comfortable.
“Funny,” she hums, staring up at the ceiling. “Hospitals are loud until you’re alone. Then they feel too quiet.”
You nod, adjusting her pulse oximeter, mostly for something to do rather than because it actually needs adjusting. “Yeah, it’s a lot of waiting.”
“Mm.” She turns her head to look at you, studying you. “You been doing this long?”
“A couple of years.”
“It must be hard sometimes.”
You shrug. “You get used to it.”
Carrie shifts on the bed again with a wince. “My wife hates hospitals.”
Your head lifts. “Your wife?”
“Mhm.” A fond smile softens her face. “Insists they’re where common sense goes to die.”
You smile. “Sounds like she cares.”
“Oh, she does,” Carrie’s expression warms further and her eyes go distant, as if she’s remembering. “Twenty years of caring.”
Twenty years.
You’ve seen her birthdate in her chart, you can do the math. You wonder silently if she came out later in life, or if she just met her wife later in life.
“Is she coming back to pick you up?”
“Should be,” Carrie says, glancing toward the door and then back to you. “I texted her, I don’t want her to worry but she’s got a sixth sense for these things.”
You nod as you swallow past the lump in your throat. “Good, it’s nice to have someone here.”
Carrie watches you carefully as you say it, like she’s weighing her words. “It is,” she agrees slowly. “Took us long enough to figure that out.”
“Figure what out?” you ask absentmindedly as you badge into the workstation to update her vitals.
“That we were in love,” she says simply. “We were best friends our whole lives first.”
Your heart plummets. You see where this is going, and the topic is just a little too close to home today.
“Oh.”
“We were cowards,” Carrie continues with a laugh. “Both of us, scared of ruining what we had. So afraid of our own feelings that we wasted half our lives.”
Your throat is tight, you’re unable to manage a response, but that doesn’t seem to deter her.
“When we finally admitted it, it felt ridiculous. Like - oh, of course. How did we miss this? Everyone else saw it before we did.”
You can’t do anything but listen.
“We got married at city hall on May 21st, 2014.”
The irony of the historical date for Pennsylvania doesn’t pass you by, the realization that they got married the moment they were legally allowed to.
She turns her head to look at you directly. “We always said we wished we’d been braver sooner.”
Your eyes sting and you blink hard, hoping to disperse the tears gathering there.
“You always wish you had more time,” she adds simply.
Ms. Burkhart is perceptive. You can’t tell if she’s guessing, or if she just recognizes something in you so specific, something painfully familiar to herself. Maybe she isn’t reading you at all, maybe she’s just remembering.
She’s studying you while you’re lost in your own mind. Then, very gently, she says, “You look like you’re wishing you were brave too.”
Not guessing.
“That’s not -” your voice cracks and you clear your throat. “We work together.”
Carrie’s smile is kind but also triumphant. “Sweetheart,” she says, “I didn’t say anything about work.”
You flush and turn away, trying your best to focus on the screen in front of you. But the words on it blur together in a rush of tears, the topic too painful for today.
“This isn’t appropriate,” you mutter, more to yourself than your patient. “This topic is totally unprofessional.”
“I know,” she responds lightly. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I should -” you start and then falter, clearing your throat again. “I should check on my other patients.”
“Of course.”
You waste no time slipping out into the hallway, door closing heavily behind you.
You do exactly what you said you were going to do: check on your other patients. You busy yourself checking vitals and answering questions until your eyes start to blur, even though your mind is focused somewhere else entirely. Ms. Burkhart’s voice follows you from room to room.
Scared of ruining what we had.
You always wish you had more time.
You try, and fail spectacularly, to shake it off.
At one point, you’re staring at a medication cart without actually seeing it, wondering what your life would look like at forty if nothing changes. If you kept pretending that friendship was enough for you now that you knew what it was like to have her. Would you still be here? With the same job, the same apartment, and the same aching in your chest? Would she?
By the time you realize you’re standing back outside Carrie Burkhart’s room again, you barely even remember walking over here, let alone making the decision. Her door is propped open and she’s scrolling her phone with one hand while absently rubbing the center of her chest with the other.
She looks up when you step inside and close the door behind you, her surprise quickly giving way to warmth.
“Well hello again,” she says. “Back so soon? I must be your favorite patient.”
You hesitate before pulling a chair close to the bed and sitting.
“Maybe,” you admit with a small smile.
Something in your tone makes her snap to attention immediately. She sets the phone down and turns her attention toward you fully. “What’s wrong?”
You clasp your hands together in your lap, unsure how to begin. This feels wildly inappropriate and unprofessional, even worse - deeply personal.
“How did you know?”
Carrie blinks at you. “Know what?”
“That she…felt the same.” Your hands wave in your lap as you struggle for the right words. “Your wife.”
“Oh honey,” she murmurs with a sympathetic look.
You stare at your hands so you don’t have to face the pity in her expression. “I mean, you said you were best friends your whole lives. So how did you know it wouldn’t ruin everything?”
Carrie leans back in the bed, her eyes distant with memory. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I just reached a point where not saying anything hurt more than the possibility of losing her.”
Your chest tightens.
“She went on a date,” she adds quietly. “Some man from her office. She told me about it over coffee.” A faint smile touches her mouth, rueful in nature. “I went home and cried for three hours and finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t just jealous. I was terrified.”
You glance up at that. “Terrified of what?”
“That I was going to lose the love of my life because I was too afraid to tell her that she was the love of my life.”
Your lips part as you take in her words. “So you told her,” you urge her on quietly.
Carrie nods solemnly. “Worst conversation of my life,” she says with a chuckle. “I was shaking so hard I spilled my coffee all over her kitchen table.”
You laugh despite yourself.
“I told her I was in love with her,” she continues. “I was fully prepared for her to tell me she didn’t feel that way. Then at least I could start getting over it.”
“And?”
“She just stared at me for a long time,” she says. “Then she said, ‘It’s about time.’”
You can see Carrie’s eyes shine with the memory, and she recounts it like it’s one of the best.
“Turns out she’d been in love with me just as long. Neither of us wanted to risk losing what we had, and we made ourselves miserable by not saying anything.”
You’re silent as she continues.
“It wasn’t perfect. We had to unlearn a lot of fear. Figure out how to be more than friends after so long. But god…” she smiles, radiant despite the hospital bed. “It was worth it.”
Your eyes burn and you blink rapidly. “So you think I should just…tell her,” you say, your voice trembling.
Carrie watches you with unwavering kindness. “I think you already know what you want,” she says gently. “You’re just waiting for permission.”
The truth of that strikes you painfully hard.
“I don’t even know if she feels that way,” you admit. “Things have been weird between us.”
Carrie opens her mouth to respond, and pauses. At first, it looks like she’s just searching for the right words. But then you see a crease form between her brows, and her eyes unfocus as her hand presses harder against her chest.
You lean forward. “Carrie?”
She gasps, the breath shallow. “I feel…weird,” she says, her voice tight.
The alarm must be evident on your face as you respond, “Weird how?”
She doesn’t answer as the hand on her chest begins to rub. The monitor begins to beep faster, steady rhythm stuttering.
You’re already on your feet, reaching for the call button, your professional instincts screaming that something is very wrong.
“Okay,” you say, calm tone only due to sheer force of will. “Stay with me, Carrie, the doctor will be here any second.”
Carrie nods but her face has gone pale. Her breathing is shallow and uneven, and you can hear each inhale sounding like work.
“It hurts,” she whispers.
“Where?”
She presses her fist to the center of her chest and then drags it up a little toward her throat. “Everywhere.”
The monitor beeps faster, rising in urgency. Footsteps pound in the hallway and the door jerks open as staff flood in - another nurse, then Mel, pulling on gloves as she takes in the scene.
“What happened?” she demands.
“Sudden severe chest pain, she’s hypotensive and tachy at 115,” you rattle off. “She was stable two minutes ago.”
Carrie lets out a strangled cry, her body curling in on itself. “Oh god - my back -” she chokes out.
Everything accelerates. There are hands everywhere, equipment is clattering, voices are overlapping. The monitor spikes and then dips, rhythm jagged and irregular.
You move to the bedside, taking her hand without thinking. “I’ve got you,” you say, even though the shaking is evident in your voice now. “You’re okay. We’re here.”
Her fingers clamp down on your own with a surprising amount of strength.
“I don’t -” she gasps up at you. “Something’s wrong.”
“I know,” you whisper. “We’re fixing it, we’re going to fix it.”
The blood pressure reading flashes again, lower than before.
“She’s crashing.”
Carrie suddenly stiffens, her shallow breath catching in her chest as she goes painfully still. The monitor emits a flat, continuous tone.
Mel’s head snaps up at the sound. “Pulse?”
You fumble, two fingers against Carrie’s wrist, hands slick with sweat. You haven’t even grabbed gloves. Nothing. You move to her neck, pressing too hard, or maybe not hard enough, panic is scrambling your training.
“I - I don’t have a carotid -”
“Start compressions.”
You drag the step stool to the bed with a hook of your toe around the leg, hands positioning on her sternum, and begin.
One, two, three, four -
Her body yields beneath you in a way that feels wrong for someone who was just talking. Your arms burn almost immediately with the force, adrenaline making your movements jerky.
“Stay with me, Carrie,” you hear yourself saying. “Come on, come on.”
There’s no response, no movement from the woman under you. Just her body, laying flat underneath your hands.
“Switch,” someone says from behind you.
You don’t want to stop. Stopping feels like giving up. But your arms are shaking violently and your compressions are losing depth. Hands replace yours and you stumble back off the stool, your chest heaving as you stare at Carrie’s face - it’s grey now, her lips are tinged blue, eyes half-lidded and empty in a way that makes something primal in your chest hurt.
“Check for rhythm,” Mel orders.
Compressions stop, and the monitor resumes it’s flatline.
“Asystole,” she says. “Resume compressions.”
“Shouldn’t we charge?” The voice beside you makes you jump as you realize student doctor Kwon is also in the room.
“You can’t shock asystole.” The answer comes from both you and Mel at the same time.
Your ears ring and your vision tunnels. At some point you realize you’re crying. Not sobbing, just silent tears slipping down your face, unnoticed as you hover uselessly at the edge of all the chaos.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was talking, smiling even. She was telling you about Gloria.
She was supposed to go home.
Mel glances up at you from across the bed, alarm flickering across her face - but it’s not for the patient, no, it’s for you - before she snaps back into focus.
“Another round,” she says.
No response. The monitor remains stubbornly unchanged.
Time loses shape for you. It could be minutes, it could be forever. Finally, after one more rhythm check, the room goes very still.
Mel’s shoulders rise and fall as she looks at the clock on the wall before calling out time of death.
Hands move around you, disconnecting lines and silencing alarms, covering the body with the sheet up to her shoulders. The frantic energy drains away and leaves a vacuum in it’s wake.
Carrie Burkhart lies motionless in the center of the bed, the peaceful expression on her face feeling like some sort of fucked up joke.
Less than an hour ago she was alive. Talking, laughing, even giving you advice about love.
Now she’s dead.
You feel unsteady on your feet. You grip the edge of the counter behind you to stay upright as you stare at her.
Someone says your name and you don’t respond. Instead, you shove your way out of the room, hand clamped over your mouth as your stomach lurches violently. You need a bathroom, a sink, a garbage can, anything.
You almost walk face-first into Mateo.
He gently grabs your arms to steady you, relief on his face. “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He steps aside, revealing the woman following him. “This is Gloria, Ms. Burkhart’s wife. Where did you put her? I can’t find her name on the board.”
Of course you can’t, because she’s dead.
Your vision tunnels and your throat closes. If you open your mouth, you’re going to be sick, or you’re going to scream, or maybe both. You shake your head and back away from them, one hand dragging along the wall for balance. Before you turn and walk off as fast as you can without outright sprinting through the emergency department.
You don’t make it to the bathroom.
Instead, you’re slumped on the floor, back propped against the wall outside of the family consultation room, where Dr. Robby is inside with Ms. Burkhart’s wife. Screams resonate through the air, devastating and raw, followed by sobs so guttural that they don’t even sound human. The sound carries, it vibrates through the floors even as you press your hands over your ears to try and muffle the sound.
That’s where Dana finds you.
She crouches in front of you, taking in your tear-streaked and pale face, your eyes unfocused like you’re looking through her instead of at her. She doesn’t ask you questions because you can’t answer them anyway. She just places a steady hand on your shoulder and helps you to your feet when you don’t move on your own. You move because she moves you, because resisting would require more energy than you currently possess, and because you just don’t have it in you.
Somewhere along the way she shoves your backpack into your hands. Your shift must’ve been reassigned, she must’ve emptied your locker for you. You don’t remember. Dana’s ushering you out the employee entrance, her muffled advice of “go home and get some sleep, kid” sounding like you’re underwater as it reverberates in your ears.
You make it halfway across the parking lot before you realize someone is calling your name and turn.
Mel is hurrying toward you, concern written across her face. She must’ve caught sight of you leaving early. She stops in front of you, eyes searching your face as she tries to make sense of your swollen eyes, the tear streaks that feel burned into your cheeks.
“Are you okay?”
The question is ridiculous, completely redundant. Of course you’re not.
You shake your head. “No. I’m going home.”
Her eyebrows furrow, worry deepening as she opens her mouth to speak again.
The words come out of you, interrupting her, stripped of inflection, void of protection. Nothing left inside you but the bare truth.
“I’m in love with you.”
She just stares at you for a second, stunned as she processes your words. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses, lips parted in shock as she stands frozen in front of you.
You don’t wait for a response. There isn’t one you could survive right now anyway.
You turn around and continue walking toward your car, the distance between you widening with each step across the asphalt. You keep walking until your car is in front of you, until you’re inside with the engine running and your vision blurring. Only then do you let your head fall forward against the steering wheel, your breath faltering as you break open right there in your car.
Tomorrow, you’ll have to face what you said. Today, you just have to survive it.
♡ ───────── ♡ ───────── ♡
You made it home on autopilot. Your apartment was silent and empty when you got home, and it dawned on you then how terrible an idea it was to go home to be alone in your misery. You’d collapsed into your bed, in your nasty hospital scrubs that you always strip out of the second you walk into the door, and kicked your shoes off the edge of the bed solely so that you didn’t have to wash your bedding tomorrow. The world had bled out of you in a flood of hot and unstoppable tears until your eyes stung and your face was swollen and your body couldn’t produce anymore because of how dehydrated you were.
You’ve been alone with your thoughts since then, the image of Mel’s face burnt into your mind, your own I’m in love with you echoing in your mind. The memory of saying it aloud in the parking lot replays over and over inside your head, regret filling you more each time.
Your body drains completely. Thirst and exhaustion take over where the tears leave off, but your mind refuses to rest. You zone out on your couch, staring at the ceiling. You’re suspended in the awfulness of this day, possibly the worst you can ever remember having.
Hours later, there’s a knock at your door.
You don’t move.
Another knock.
And then a voice, one you’ve heard so often that it’s completely unmistakable even through the door: “Can I come in?”
Your stomach flips and you don’t answer. You just want to curl up and disappear. But every part of you, especially the part that’s been screaming for her for the past six days, knows you can’t hide from this.
The sound of the key in the lock, and the doorknob turns.
Mel steps inside your apartment, removing her spare key from the lock. You’re still slumped on the couch, still caught in the thicket of the numbness as she closes the door behind her.
For a moment she just stands there, staring at you.
“Why are you here?” the hoarseness of your voice surprises you.
“Because…” her voice falters and she adjusts her glasses. You can see her struggling to find words. “You’re not okay.”
You scoff lightly, more out of hurt than humor. “Why do you care? Where was this over the last week?”
Mel flinches because she knows you’re right. She opens her mouth to answer, but stops, because nothing she can say would erase the gap of six days of avoidance. Still, she knows this isn’t entirely fair, you’ve been avoiding her, too.
You take a deep breath. “I…I really, really can’t do this with you tonight. Not after today.”
Before she can respond, you stand from the couch, your body taut and your muscles protesting the stretch of standing after so many hours, and start stalking off toward your bedroom.
“Y’know…” Mel says quietly, almost reluctant in tone as you pass her. “…she told me not to wait.”
You freeze mid-step, just past her. The words are familiar, Ms. Burkhart’s voice saying them to you too just a few hours earlier.
Your chest twists.
When did Mel even talk to her? You were in and out of that room multiple times and never saw her in there alone with the patient. You didn’t know they’d had a conversation, let alone the same one she’d had with you.
You turn back toward her, eyes locking with hers. Neither of you say another word, but there’s weight in the air between you as you just…stare. Then you reach out and take her hand in yours. She hesitates for a moment, then allows you to start pulling her down the hall.
You lead her to your bedroom and close the door behind you. Wordlessly, you climb into your bed, tugging the blanket up with you and she follows, taking the space next to you.
The silence that follows is painful and awkward and until Mel breaks it.
“How long…how long have you known?”
There’s no point in hiding it anymore. “From the start.”
“Before my friends came?”
“Way before,” you confirm.
Mel shifts under the blanket as she turns to face you, her eyes searching yours. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
You take a deep breath, the words heavy on your tongue. “Because I didn’t feel like your life had space for me in that way,” you admit softly. “And…having you in any capacity, even just as your friend, was better than not having you at all.”
She’s curled in close to you in your tiny bed. “And all this time, you just…hid it?”
You look down, ashamed. “I tried. I pretended it wasn’t there, but then…pretending to be your girlfriend - it made it worse. I wish I’d never even offered, because now…now I’m stuck here and I’ve ruined everything. We can’t go back to how we were before, and I can’t…I can’t pretend anymore. Not after having you like that, even if it was just pretend.”
She reaches for your arm, fingers lightly brushing over it, like she needs tactile reassurance before speaking.
“I’ve….I’ve been thinking,” she begins hesitantly, “about…everything. About the past week, and - and that night at the bar.” She pauses as she swallows, her eyes not meeting yours. “I thought…maybe it was just the moment. That whole situation with that guy.” Her hands curl around the blanket, pulling it further up her body as if it’s going to shield her. “But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just that.”
She finally meets your gaze and the vulnerability in her eyes makes your heart lurch. “I didn’t even realize it at first, I didn’t know how I felt about you until…all of this. And then, these past few days, avoiding each other…it’s been awful. But I think it was my own way of trying to…make sense of everything. Make sense of me.”
She swallows hard. “I…I think I love you too. I don’t…I don’t even know when it happened, really, but…I do. I just couldn’t see it, it didn’t make sense until now.”
Her eyes are filled with both hope and uncertainty as she searches yours for any sign of rejection, while also daring to hope for acceptance.
You reach out, cupping her face in your hand, thumb brushing her cheek. She leans against the touch, both hesitant and wanting.
You lean in toward her, your lips brushing against hers. She responds immediately, chasing you when you pull away from her. You tilt your head, parting your lips as you slide your tongue gently into her mouth. It’s instinctive, born of too much time spent in unspoken longing and pent-up emotion. Your hands fist in her shirt and you pull her against you, desperate to have her body close to yours.
But Mel pulls back away from you as you escalate, breathless and wide eyed as her eyes scan your face. “No,” she whispers with a small shake of her head. “Not like this, not right now.”
“But -”
She’s firm as she pulls your hands from her shirt. “Not while you’re like this.”
But you can’t stop, won’t stop. You reach for her waist, forehead pressing to hers, and your voice is desperate as you speak. “Please, just…I need you, I need this. Just…help me. Please, Mel. Please, I need you -”
Her resolve wavers. You can see it in the tremor of her lips, the rise and fall of her chest at your words. She wants you too, just as badly, but she’s holding back. But your pleading pushes her over the edge and her restraint crumbles. Her arms wrap around you, pulling you in as she kisses you again. You respond in kind, fingers tangling in the loose hair at the nape of her neck, letting her drag you close until your body is pressed up against hers under the blanket.
Her tongue prods at your lips and your mouth opens for her. Her fingers dig into the soft skin of your waist and her knee nudges between yours, spreading them. Her knee hovers there between your thighs, not quite giving you what you want, but there for the taking.
So you take.
You rock down against her thigh, breaking from her mouth with a gasp as friction sparks against your clit through your scrub pants. You’re wound too tight, stretched thin with grief and want and adrenaline; you could probably cum like this alone. But it’s not enough, it’ll never be enough.
You need her hands on you.
You shove the blanket down your legs and push up, climbing over her until you’re straddling her thighs while she sits back against the headboard. Her hands settle on your hips automatically, grounding and possessive as you pull your scrub top over your head and toss it aside without caring where it lands.
Your hips roll helplessly against her lap, looking for friction that isn’t there while she pulls you down into another kiss, devouring you like she’s been starving too.
When you pull away for air, she leans forward, shoving your sports bra up and over your breasts, her mouth closing around one nipple immediately, tongue circling with feverish focus. A broken sigh escapes you, your hand cradling the back of her head to keep her there, even though she shows no intention of stopping. She switches sides after a moment, giving the other nipple the same attention, and as she moves, you catch sight of her glasses, fogged from the heat and her breath. A soft giggle escapes you.
You slide the black frames from her face gently, setting them on the nightstand.
The reaction is instant. She presses her face deeper against your chest, her nose smushing into your skin, eyes squeezed shut as she suckles harder, like she needs the contact as much as you do.
Your hips start moving again, grinding against her thighs. One leg slips between hers so you can straddle a single leg more fully, and she lets you, even flexes her thigh beneath you, giving you something solid to grind on.
And god, the feeling of her underneath you. Better than your wildest of wet dreams, rivaled in emotion only by that morning you woke up with her face pressed against your collarbone, her saliva rolling down your skin as she slept on you. Bliss in opposite forms, both intimate but in completely different ways.
You’re so lost in the sensation of her mouth on your chest that you don’t notice her hand sliding beneath the waistband of your pants until her fingers brush your slit through your panties.
“Ah!” You let out a strangled little cry, pathetic sounding even to your own ears as she strokes you over the damp cotton.
Mel angles her arm awkwardly to press her fingertips against your clit, mumbling a muffled “wet” against the fat of your breast as her fingers dip through the leg of your panties and between your soaked folds.
You’re rocking down against her hand, her fingers alternating between flicking gently over your clit and sliding further down to gather your slick before resuming their ministrations against the swollen nub.
“Please,” you whimper above her.
She pulls away from your tit to look up at you, her eyes uncharacteristically dark. “Please what?”
You huff at that, causing her to press further. “Tell me what you want.”
You’re desperate to have her inside you, hips jerking against her hand, but she pulls away. You back up just enough to gawk down at her, stunned.
Mel King, being a fucking tease. An infuriating little smirk on her face as she takes in your disheveled expression.
“Need you,” you finally whine out. “Please.”
That’s what she was waiting for. She presses a hand flat to your sternum, guiding you backward just enough to hook her other fingers into the waistband of your scrub pants, tugging them down your thighs. You lift off her lap obediently, kicking them off along with your panties before settling back over you.
Mel’s legs part just a bit, enough to keep you spread open above her as your knees bracket her own. One hand takes hold of your hips, guiding you down onto her awaiting other. Her ring and middle finger slide inside you easily, wetness dripping down her digits the second they start to slip inside, you desperation laid out for both of you to see.
You whine again as you sink down onto them, and she curls them as you reach her knuckles. The pads of her fingers rub against the spot inside of you that causes your brain to shut down, and you rock against them to rub against it repeatedly. Her thumb finds your clit, solid against the nub as you rock against her fingers, riding her.
A guttural moan tears out of you. You’re already teetering on the edge, too overwhelmed to hold back. You ride her fingers harder, chasing release without shame.
Below you, she watches with blown pupils and parted lips, tiny whimpers of her own escaping her. She tries to hide them against your skin when they threaten to grow louder.
The spark ignites inside you, all-consuming and white-hot like fire. It warms your body, tingles in your toes, pleasure winding tighter and threatening to spill out of you like water. Your back arches as you cum, release spilling over her hand as the walls of your pussy pulse around her fingers.
Your mouth is dry as you come down from your high, folding inward on yourself until your forehead is pressed against hers. She slips her fingers from inside you as you sag against her, panting.
“Open.”
Her wet fingers prod at your lips and you part them obediently, taking her into your mouth and tasting your own release. Your tongue swirls around them, eyes closing blissfully until she rips them from your mouth and presses her own mouth to yours, tongue shoving into your mouth to get a taste herself.
Her hands grip your sides tight like a vice, pulling you off her and subsequentially under her on the bed until she’s hovering over you.
You sit up just enough to start pulling at her clothes, but she stops you with firm hands and a shake of her head.
“No.”
You look up at her, searching her face, confused. “But I want you to -”
Her eyes are set, leaving no room for argument as she shakes her head again. “This is about you.”
Now it’s your turn to shake your head, eyes wide. “Mel, no. I don’t - I don’t want you doing this just for me, just because I -”
She cuts you off with a press of her lips to yours, both hands grasping your face to hold you to her. When she pulls away, she breathes, “This isn’t just for you. This is about you. You need this…and I want you. I want this.”
You search her face for doubt, for hesitation, for anything that might indicate she isn’t being entirely truthful with you. But there’s nothing there but want, raw and unmistakable.
So you give in.
Satisfied with your submission, Mel slides down your body until she settles between your spread legs. Her arms hook around the outside of your thighs, holding you open as her tongue drags slowly up your slit.
The sensation pulls a moan from you, your head tilting back on the pillow as she latches onto your clit. The world narrows to the slide of her tongue, her confidence growing as she begins to pull sound after sound from you.
Mel is content like this, her face buried in your pussy, no glasses to fog up as she breathes heavily through her nose. Not even willing to break from your clit to take a full breath of air. She starts slow, dragging out your pleasure until the sounds falling from your lips become too tempting, she needs to hear more, needs to watch you cum from only her mouth.
When she glances up at you, your eyes are rolled back, thighs shaking around her head, hands gripping her hair to hold her in place as your hips roll against her face, chasing the feeling.
You’ve never felt like this before, another orgasm building so quickly, so desperate for her as you whimper, as you beg her for more. Your fingers tangle in her braid as the feeling consumes you and you cum again against her mouth, pussy fluttering around nothing as you let out a breathless cry. It feels like eons as you ride out the aftershocks, finally collapsing into the bed, spent.
Mel releases you, drawing back, her face shining with your slick. You reach for her, your hands clasping around her arm to pull her down next to you on the pillows. She comes willingly, collapsing next to you without a fight.
You curl into her automatically. “Are you sure I can’t return the favor?”
“Not tonight,” she says, still catching her breath.
“What can I do for you?” you ask. “Tell me, give me something.”
She’s silent for a moment as she ponders.
“I could use a shower.”
She doesn’t move right away, and neither do you. The bedroom is quiet except for the sound of your breathing. Then you squeeze her hand.
“C’mon,” you murmur.
She lets you pull her upright. Your own legs are shaky, like they belong to someone else as they wobble underneath you, but her hand is firm around yours as you lead her down the hall to the bathroom. The light is too bright at first and it forces your eyes to squint as you reach in and start the water.
You share the shower in a comfortable silence, neither of you speaking much. There isn’t anything left that needs saying.
She’s naked. You try not to stare, you really do. But your eyes keep drifting anyway, drawn helplessly to the familiar shape of her body that’s suddenly new without layers of clothes in the way. Each time she catches you looking, her cheeks flush a deeper shade of pink, followed by a shy little duck of her head before she does her best to pretend like nothing happened. It only makes you want to look more, both equal parts awed and nervous of making her more self-conscious.
When you finally exit the shower, it’s been much longer than necessary, neither of you seeming to want to leave the comfort of the hot water. But exhaustion pulls at you both and you wander out to the bedroom, hair still dripping as you pull clothes for both of you from your drawers.
Whether she stays here or not tonight, you know Mel won’t want to get back into her dirty scrubs immediately after a shower.
You sit on the edge of the bed while she gathers her wet hair from her face, and only then does the reality of the hour seem to take root in her mind.
“Becca,” she says quietly, more to herself than to you.
Right. Becca is at their apartment. Waiting.
The bubble you’re in shifts, prepared to fully burst wit her next action.
Mel steps closer to you, stopping when she’s just within reach. Her hands hover before settling lightly on your shoulders and she sinks down to her knees in front of you.
“I can’t stay,” she says softly. “But I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”
Your eyes lift to hers, surprised.
She hesitates, but not like she’s uncertain. More like she wants to make sure you really hear what she offers next:
“Come home with me,” she says. “Stay the night. Actually, stay as long as you want.”
The impact is enormous. An invitation into her real life, more than just her best friend, more than her fake girlfriend. An intimate space inside her world, created just for you.
Carrie’s voice surfaces in your mind again.
Don’t wait.
Your fingers catch in the hem of your own shirt on her body. “Are you sure?”
Her expression is soft, relaxed in a way you rarely see on her. “I’m sure.”
Emotion surges so suddenly within you that it steals your breath, relief coursing through your veins until you can’t hold it in and it comes out in words.
“I love you.”
Her eyes close for a moment, like she can physically feel the words. When she opens them again, there’s light inside them.
“I love you too.”
She stands, but leans back down, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “C’mon,” she murmurs against your hair. “Let’s get you out of here.”
♡ ───────── ♡ ───────── ♡
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@li22ie2017 and @somemetallyillbitch both asked to be tagged in this, so here you go 💛
Summary: After a brutal shift in the OR, drinks with your attending and her fellow seem harmless enough. Until the conversation turns…educational. Turns out some surgeons are very committed to hands-on teaching.
CW: smut, explicit sexual content, wlw threesome, dom!emery, top!yolanda, bottom!r, strap sex (r!receiving), fingering (r!receiving), face sitting (y!receiving), scissoring (e!rec, f!rec), mentor/mentee and power play dynamics, porn without plot.
WC: 3.4k
A/N: I didn’t know I needed both of these women at the same time until this request came in, now I can’t stop thinking about them. A special thank you to this request for the prompt:
✶ ───── ✶ ───── ✶
You didn’t actually intend on ending up at a bar together. At least, that was the story you’d stick to after tonight.
After a shift like this one - non-stop GSW trauma cases from Pittfest, all 25 ORs running nonstop, and everyone half delirious with exhaustion - someone had suggested drinks. And it wasn’t just you three, the entire surgical floor had gone, or at least, those who weren’t staying on for night shift. People had peeled off in groups as the night went on, heading home to catch some sleep. Until somehow it was just you, Dr. Garcia, and Dr. Walsh left at the table with a third round sweating on the wood.
Dr. Walsh is halfway through recounting one of the more labor-intensive surgeries from earlier in the night when Dr. Garcia snorts into her drink.
“God,” Yolanda says to you with a shake of her head. “You should’ve seen Walsh in the OR tonight. If you think she’s intense during rounds, you have no idea what you’re in for with her as your teacher.”
Across the table, Emery lifts an eyebrow in offence. “Intense?”
Yolanda shoots her a knowing look. “That’s the polite word for it.”
You laugh, glancing between them. “Good to know I should start preparing now.”
While Emery scoffs, Yolanda laughs, “Her idea of teaching is throwing you into the deep end and seeing if you drown.”
Emery leans back in her chair. “And yet,” she says smoothly, “my fellows all seem to survive somehow.”
“Yeah, in spite of you,” Yolanda mutters.
You smile, enjoying a much more friendly banter than you’re used to on the surgical floor.
“Tell me something,” Emery says, her attention settling on you. “How do you feel about hands-on learning?”
You pause, confusion flickering across your face as you try to understand the question. It hangs in the air long enough for Yolanda to laugh.
“She means that literally, by the way,” she adds. “Walsh here is a big believer in demonstrations.”
“Careful, Yolanda,” Emery warns, though her tone is tempered with amusement. “If you’re volunteering to assist, you’re responsible for supervising the intern.”
You nearly choke on your drink, your head whipping back and forth between the two.
Yolanda grins over the rim of her glass as she takes another sip. “I could do a lot more than supervise.”
You’re so focused on the implication of Dr. Garcia’s words that you don’t notice Dr. Walsh sliding into the booth on your other side until she’s pressed up against you.
“You hear that?” Emery asks quietly, leaning in so close that you can feel the warmth of her breath against your ear. “You have two surgeons offering to teach you.”
In the moment, you’re convinced this is all a joke. But neither of them is laughing.
Dr. Garcia tips her head, studying you like she’s waiting for some sort of reaction. Meanwhile, Dr. Walsh is just…watching.
…and that’s how you ended up here, naked and sandwiched between your attending and her fellow.
“Dr. Wa-ah!-alsh!” You can’t get a single coherent word out; your brain is too fuzzy, too overwhelmed by sensation to form anything intelligible.
Emery kneels behind you, her mouth working at the sensitive junction where your neck meets your shoulder. One arm is wrapped securely around your body to keep you upright, the other hand busy between your thighs as her fingers circle your clit in slow strokes.
Yolanda kneels in front of you, kissing your swollen lips over and over while her hands grip your ass with bruising force. One hand travels upward, settling gently around your throat as she holds, but doesn’t squeeze.
“Emery,” the mutter comes from behind you, correcting you.
“E-em…” you do your best to repeat, pulling away from Yolanda’s mouth long enough to try and get her name out.
You barely notice Yolanda moving away from you on the bed, because Emery’s fingers suddenly press harder against you, two slipping inside you as she angles her wrist so her thumb can replace them on your clit.
Your head tips back just as Emery bites down on the side of your neck hard enough to drag a cry from your throat. Her body moves with yours as you grind helplessly against her hand, chasing friction as your orgasm builds quickly.
“Hurry up and get her off,” Yolanda says from somewhere off to your right. “I want my turn.”
Head lolling to the side, you’re met with the sight of her buckling on a harness so quickly it’s clear she’s intimately familiar with it. The sight sends a thrill through you, one that sparks a physical reaction as you practically gush against Emery’s fingers.
“Don’t rush me,” Emery snaps from behind you. Her fingers curl inside of you with a surgical precision worthy of her profession and the only reason you don’t double over is because you can’t, not when she’s holding you up against her, deceptively strong for her size.
“OhmygodEmery -”
Release rips through your body, pussy spasming and your whole body convulsing under Emery’s hand. She slows her movements, pistoning her wrist to fuck you through the waves of pleasure until you’re shoving her hand away, chest heaving.
When she finally releases you, you collapse forward onto your hands, panting.
Behind you, the bed shifts - lifting and then dipping again as someone climbs onto it.
Hands settle on your hips.
You whip around, startled, only to find Yolanda settling behind you, the silicone length of her strap grinding slowly against the curve of your ass.
“W-wait,” you pant. “I just came, I can’t -”
“Oh, I think you’ll find you can,” Yolanda interrupts with a smirk. “You’re learning from the best, aren’t you?”
Her hand presses flat between your shoulderblades, all but shoving your chest down onto the bed, causing you to let out the least sexy “oof” you’ve ever heard.
“That’s it,” she coos, holding the base of the toy as she rubs the tip through your slick folds, coating it thoroughly. “Good girl, deep breath now.”
Your brain is so thoroughly melted that you don’t even question the command. You inhale slowly as she pushes inside you, splitting you open in a single, slow thrust. The stretch makes your back tense immediately.
Yolanda bends over you, her breasts pressing up against your back as she whispers in your ear, “Relax.”
When she bottoms out, she pauses, giving you time to adjust to the intrusion. Surprisingly considerate for someone so controlling. But once she feels the tension slowly ease from your back, she leans upright again and begins to move.
And oh, fuck, if you thought Emery’s hands were skilled, Yolanda’s expertise with a dick are unmatched. Between the slow thrusts that are somehow angled to hit your g-spot every time and the circular grinding motion she’s making when her hips meet your ass, you’re pretty sure whatever god is out there didn’t give her one of her own because she’d be absolutely insufferable about it.
A string of curses spill from your mouth, dissolving into pathetic whimpers that break into repeated cries of “ah-ah-ah!” every time she buries herself deep inside of you. Your moans split the room, jumping an octave when Yolanda decides she’s had enough of going slow and speeds up.
“Shhh.” You can practically hear the smirk still on her face as she leans back over you. “Don’t want my neighbors to hear you whoring yourself out to your boss, do you?”
“Don’t shush her.”
Fuck, you’d almost completely forgotten about Emery.
“Pretty soon,” she continues, “you won’t be able to hear those pretty little sounds at all.”
You lift your head just enough to see her standing at the edge of the bed, hands on her hips. A harness circles them now too. Her hand slides lazily over the dildo attached to it, stroking it like she can actually feel it.
“C’mere, baby.” Emery’s voice is light as she shuffles forward and takes your chin in her hand, lifting your head up further as she taps your cheek with her finger. “Open up.”
Your mouth falls open, tongue sticking out as Emery guides the faux cock past your lips.
“Look at you, already learning.” The words are condescending and said with a satisfied smile adorning her face.
Yolanda slowly resumes her thrusts, pulling you back by the hips to bounce off her. Every push into you shoves Emery further into your mouth and you gag as she hits the back of your throat, tears springing to your eyes. It only seems to spur the attending on, though, as her hand slides into your hair, gripping a handful at the back of your head to prevent you from going too far.
You whine around the silicone as Yolanda’s speed ramps back up until she’s driving into you with enough force that your cervix will probably bruise.
Emery, meanwhile, uses her grip on your head to hold you still as she bottoms out in your mouth and grinds her clit against the base of the strap.
You can’t breathe around the silicone, the lack of oxygen causing heightened sensations all over your body and you can feel the build-up toward another orgasm climbing inside you again. When you’re so deprived of oxygen that you start seeing black spots in your vision, Emery withdraws from your mouth completely and you gasp for air.
“Flip her over, Yo-yo,” Emery demands, “I wanna see it in her throat.”
Yolanda pulls out from inside you entirely and you whimper at the loss of your impending orgasm. She pays your sounds no mind as she lifts one of your legs to turn you over until you’re lying on your back between them, your head hanging upside-down off the edge of the bed.
She slips the strap back inside you with ease this time, reveling in the squelching sounds your pussy makes as she sets a steady rhythm, just enough to keep you moaning like a whore while your mouth is empty.
Your arms reach up above your head blindly, searching until they come into contact with Emery’s plush thighs and pulling them toward you. When she’s close enough to look up and see her face, you find her watching you with half-lidded eyes and her tongue poking out between her lips.
Your lips part as you pull her closer, desperate to have her back in your mouth.
“Fuck, baby, am I not enough for you?” Yolanda chuckles. “You need Walsh to fuck you too? So greedy.” She hoists one of your legs up over her shoulder and leans further so she’s hovering over you.
The slight shift angles you perfectly, her thrusts ramming your g-spot head-on with every movement. You can’t help but moan loudly in response.
Emery seizes the opportunity with your hands on her thighs and awaiting mouth, sliding inside with a satisfied little groan. “Look at that, so eager to learn.”
She watches your throat intently as you take as much of her strap as you can, obediently angling your head back to give her a better view. The outline of her cock against the inside of your throat has her biting her lip, one hand sliding gently over it to feel the movement.
“Doing so good,” Emery coos as you gag. “I think she deserves a reward, don’t you?”
You can’t make out what Garcia says in response, but she must agree because the next thing you know she’s lifted your other leg up over her shoulders, folding you in half underneath her, fucking into you at a ruthless pace that steals the air from your lungs.
Your orgasm quickly builds up again, amplified by the earlier edging, and spikes when Yolanda reaches a hand between you two to flick her thumb over your clit. The movement frantic but precise as she spreads your slick over the nub. You can feel every ridge and fake vein of her strap as it stretches you out, and Emery feels the moment your throat constricts around her strap, cries muffled by the toy in your mouth.
She pulls free from your mouth with a wet pop, a string of spit connecting your mouth to the tip.
Your back arches, and Garcia uses the leverage to latch onto your nipple, sucking harshly as she continues to bury herself inside you with fervor.
“Beg her.” Emery squats at your head and you keen at the order. “Come on, you want to cum, don’t you?”
You respond to her with a desperate nod.
“Then beg.”
“Ffffffuck, Y-Yolanda - please!” you gasp.
Yolanda releases your breast, wrapping her free arm up under your shoulder to use as leverage as she fucks you with abandon. The silicone drags in and out of you relentlessly, driving you closer and closer to your peak.
The bed dips beside you again, Emery climbing up next to you and reaching out to tangle her fist in Yolanda’s curls, pulling her head back to meet her eyes.
“Make her cum.”
Mouth agape, Garcia lets out the tiniest whimper, dragged involuntarily from her throat either by the force of Emery’s hand in her hair or by the commanding tone of her voice, it’s hard to tell. But that one tiny sound of submission to your attending has you toppling over the edge, your body writhing under Yolanda as her hand abandons your clit in favor of grinding the base of the strap against you.
When she releases you, sitting back on her haunches, chest heaving from the exertion, you’re boneless on the bed, still twitching from the aftershocks.
Emery appraises you and Yolanda with a satisfied glance.
“You need a minute, or are you ready for that reward yet?”
What?
Summoning enough energy to lift your head, you look at her incredulously.
She sits next to you, the smallest smirk on her face as she reaches over and lands a sharp smack right on your clit, causing you to yelp. “C’mon, this pussy’s got more in it.” She glances up at Yolanda. “What do you think?”
Yolanda pauses at the edge of the bed, hands resting on the straps of the harness, halting her removal. “I think she can handle one more.” She shrugs.
Walsh turns back to you, tongue wetting her lips playfully. “So, what’ll it be? You want a taste, or do you want to cum again?”
Your lips tremble as you gasp, looking between them as your cheeks heat.
“Can I…can I have both?”
Emery lets out a half-scoff, half-laugh as she exchanges looks with Yolanda, who returns her smirk with her tongue in her cheek.
“What did I say?” Yolanda teases, climbing back onto the bed. “Greedy girl.”
You reach both hands out, one on each woman as you tug lightly at the straps around their hips. “Want these off,” you mumble.
“Off?” Yolanda repeats, surprised.
Your hips wiggle as you settle deeper into the bed. “Want you both to get off, too.”
The two surgeons exchange another look, then both shrug, loosening the buckles of their respective harnesses until they can step out.
You reach for Yolanda, fingertips grazing her thigh as she climbs onto the bed. When she’s within reach, you grab at her hips, guiding her up toward your face.
“You sure, baby?” She pauses next to your head. “This is supposed to be your reward.”
You pout. “Then let me have what I want.”
Yolanda’s lips part with a chuckle as she glances back at Emery, who shrugs. She climbs up over your head, thighs bracketing your face, not shy in the slightest as she lowers herself down onto your waiting mouth. You lap at her reverently, eager to give back what she’s made you feel.
While you’re distracted, Emery shuffles to the other end of the bed, straddling one leg while lifting the other, opening you up to her. The muscles in your thighs protest the stretch, but the whine you let out is muffled by Yolanda’s pussy and cut off as your own cunt comes into contact with something warm and wet.
“Oh fuck yeah, that’s it,” Emery’s voice drifts from behind Yolanda as she lowers herself between your legs. “So wet, baby.”
You groan louder, arms wrapping around Yolanda’s thighs so that your fingers can spread her open as you suction onto her clit.
She lets out a laugh, though it’s more out of surprise than amusement. “God, Walsh, her mouth is incredible,” she says, tossing her head back as her hands trail up to toy at her own nipples. “What a little munch.” She grinds against your mouth, panting heavily as your tongue flicks rapidly against her clit.
You whine, hips bucking up against Emery’s, but she lets go of your legs to pin your hips down with both hands as she tuts, “Nn-nn, this is a lesson, not a test. See one, do one, teach one, right?”
Her words may be teasing, but she’s grinding her clit against you desperately, the tiny mewls she’s letting out betraying her own approaching orgasm.
A damp heat presses against your hairline and you open your eyes to find Yolanda bracing her palm against your forehead, holding you still as her hips speed up, moving rapidly against your mouth. You stick out your tongue obediently, flattening it to give her a solid surface to grind on. She lets out a string of curses, cut off by a strangled groan as she cums against your mouth. You lap at every drop, careful not to waste any even as it dribbles down your chin.
With shaky legs, she climbs off your face, chest heaving. Though she doesn’t go far, shuffling down your body until she’s next to Emery.
“Intern,” she practically barks at you. “Another lesson, take note.”
You lift up onto your elbows, watching as Yolanda climbs behind Emery, her chin on her shoulder. Her arms wrap around Emery’s torso and hands plant themselves on the surgeon’s heavy chest, gently rolling her nipples between fingers.
Emery’s hips falter and her head tilts back against Garcia’s as she lets out a dreamy sigh and you feel her pussy gush against yours.
Up until now, they’d both been focused solely on you. But watching Yolanda tweak Emery’s nipples, slide her hands along her body, even gently grip her throat, it’s clear she knows exactly how to play her. The sight of them together - Emery using your cunt to get off while Yolanda nips at her earlobe - has you reeling as a third climax overtakes you, pussy clenching around nothing. Your body shudders through overstimulation as Yolanda whispers teases in Emery’s ear, meeting and holding your gaze over her shoulder. Emery’s shoulders fold inward, convulsing as she spills against you.
But it’s more than that, Yolanda holds Emery’s back against her chest, continuing to whisper in her ear and even as she stops moving, the fellow’s fingers are on her clit, rubbing gentle circles over it until Emery is jerking away from her touch.
Emery exhales hard, collapsing forward until she’s lying next to you. For someone who’d spent the last hour acting completely in control, she suddenly looks thoroughly wrecked - her hair a mess, her chest still heaving as she catches her breath.
Yolanda drops down beside you a moment later, rolling onto her back with a tired groan before slinging an arm lazily over your stomach.
For a moment, none of you move. The room is quiet except for the sound of three uneven breaths slowly finding rhythm again.
You stare up at the ceiling, brain still fuzzy and your body pleasantly boneless.
Summary: Cassie McKay recognizes your voice long before she recognizes your face, and once she does? It’s all over for her. You’re just along for the ride.
CW: fluff, mutual pining, workplace romance, canon-compliant medical event descriptions, takes place before S1 so no Pittlings, Cassie’s ankle monitor is mentioned but we’re ignoring its use, addiction very briefly mentioned, confident!reader, flustered!Cassie, reader is so down bad for Cassie, smut, service top!reader, bottom!Cassie, cunnilingus and fingering (c!receiving), strap sex (c!receiving), strap referred to as a cock a couple of times, aftercare.
WC: 11.6k
A/N: Breaking my hiatus to bring you this Cassie McKay fic. Huge thanks to @rozmrazaradelfinow for the request and for being insanely patient and gracious about waiting for it. I don’t know very much about medics or emergency services so my assumption that flight medics can be EMTs who are cross-trained might be wrong. This fic also reminded me that I can’t spell “restaurant” to save my life and I rely heavily on autocorrect.
For anyone interested, I wrote the entire smut sequence listening to Do It For Me by Rosenfeld and Apartment by BOBI ANDONOV over and over.
For some reason, Tumblr refuses to allow me to add a screenshot of the request, so it’s based on this request:
“Hi!
Your fics are amazing, especially the Mel ones. I would like to please request any lady from The Pitt (but specifically Cassie McKay if that's okay with you) with a paramedic! reader or where reader is one of those chopper medics (don't really know what they're called). But basically the reader is new and sees Cassie (or any other lady) and starts to seek them out any chance they get.
From there - whatever you want. Could include smut if you feel like it (with reader being a top if that's alright)
Thanks!”
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
Cassie McKay learned a long time ago that voices matter more than faces.
Faces blur for a multitude of reasons: behind masks, with time, behind shields, they change with exhaustion and lighting and haircuts and weight loss, with grief and with sleep deprivation. Faces lie and change under the weight of so many different things.
Not voices.
A voice will come stripped of everything except the truth: lie about smoking for twenty years? Your voice will tell on you. You can hear urgency, confidence, fear, things a good poker face can hide but a voice cannot.
A voice can become familiar long before you ever meet the person attached to it. Some you would recognize anywhere, and some live in your head long after they’re gone for good.
The bay doors slide open before the wheels of the ambulance have even fully stopped.
“GSW, left chest,” you’re calling as the stretcher pushes into the emergency room. “Twenty-eight year old male, found conscious but deteriorated en route.”
Hands reach towards you, or probably towards the patient or the stretcher, you aren’t really sure which. But someone grabs the gurney frame and someone else is attaching monitor leads, so maybe it’s both. The lights in the ER are too bright in your eyes after the lower lighting of the rig, and they bleach everything white in a way that hurts to look at.
“Single penetrating wound, I couldn’t find an exit. Breath sounds diminished on the left. We needle-decompressed at the five-minute mark. There was brief improvement, then his pressure started tanking again.”
The receiving team falls into formation around the stretcher as your partner guides it into place.
A man with silver at his temples meets you at the head of the bed, already gloved. You know him, Dr. Robby, you’ve seen him a hundred times, though never without the visor of your helmet before. He looks more weary under the harsh light.
“BP?”
“Eighty systolic, last manual. Heart rate is one-forty and climbing.”
“Fluids?”
“Two large-bore IV’s, a liter of saline in. We started blood ten minutes out.”
Dr. Robby nods his head in approval. “Good call.”
That’s when you notice her.
She’s stepping in on the patient’s left side, hair pulled back into a ponytail though her bangs fall into her face. She’s younger than Dr. Robby, but she doesn’t look nervous at all, she looks focused. Her hands are steady as she takes up the trauma shears. You recognize her, not only physically, but by the feeling in your chest and the heat in your cheeks that always accompanies her arrival.
You know her too: Dr. McKay.
She’s already looking at you when you notice her, but it’s quick, her eyes drop back down to the patient the moment you catch her staring.
You assume she’s evaluating your report, or maybe she needs more information, so you add: “Patient was GCS fourteen on pickup, dropped to twelve about seven minutes ago. He’s still protecting his airway but tiring. We held off on intubation to keep scene time down.”
You look at her expectantly to find her looking at you, again.
She isn’t saying anything, and now that the patient’s clothes are cut off, she isn’t really moving anymore, either. She’s just looking at you with a strange expression, almost confused. You stand there, waiting to see if she needs clarification.
But it’s Dr. Robby who fills the silence. “Prep for a chest tube.”
The sound of her Attending’s voice seems to snap her back into focus. “Breath sounds diminished,” she reports, turning to the instrument tray beside her.
You step in with them as they transfer the patient to the hospital bed, automatically shifting to the position that keeps the lines untangled. You’ve done this dance too many times to count.
Dr. McKay reaches for an IV line at the exact same moment you adjust the pump and your hands touch. She seems to startle, but it’s not dramatic, just a tiny jerk of her hands back toward her body.
It’s weird. She’s usually more steady than that.
Dr. Robby is already gloving up. “Pressure?”
“Seventy-eight,” someone - the Charge Nurse, you can never remember her name, you don’t work with her enough - announces. “…and dropping.”
“More blood, let’s go.”
Dr. McKay’s focus is clear now, hesitation and weird disposition about you both gone. She anticipates Dr. Robby’s demands before he voices them, from the scalpel he asks for down to suction ready.
This is the Dr. McKay you’re familiar with.
You ease up, giving them space to work while staying close enough to answer any more questions they might have. It isn’t often you have the leisure of following a patient through more than dropping them off at the ED, especially when you’re working on the CCT. You’re ready to jump back in if you’re needed.
“Anything else from the field?” Dr. Robby asks without looking at you.
You run through your mental checklist. “Negative, Dr. Robby.”
He nods, and your handoff is officially complete.
From the other side of the table, Dr. McKay looks up again, her eyes settling on you. There’s nothing soft about the way she’s looking at you, she doesn’t even look relaxed; very un-Mckay, compared to the way she’s treated you in the past. She looks like she’s trying to solve a puzzle.
You give her a small smile, as reassuring as you can make it without flushing under the weight of her gaze, and she blinks, as if thrown off.
“Doctor?” Nurse Dana prompts gently as she passes McKay an instrument.
Dr. McKay looks down like she’s forgotten what she was doing, and then resumes with renewed focus.
Okay…that’s new.
You strip off your gloves, chucking them into the biohazard bin.
“Good hands,” you say quietly as you take another step back. It’s not a compliment so much as professional acknowledgement, you’ve said versions of it to her (and every other doctor in this Emergency Room) before. Usually through a visor or over rotor wash, sometimes already halfway back to the aircraft.
Her head snaps up like you’ve said something shocking.
You’re already turned toward the doors. Behind you, your partner is resetting the stretcher, the sound of metal clanking following you. The trauma bay swallows the sound as the doors close behind you.
You take a single glance back and find Dr. McKay outright staring now. She’s looking at you, her eyebrows drawn together with confusion, eyes narrowed like she’s looking at some sort of stran–
Oh.
It dawns on you.
Oh, that’s rich.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
Cassie is having a weird day.
It started before she even opened her eyes, with an alarm she slept through on accident. By the time she woke and found her phone to shut off the second - or was it the third? - alarm, she felt like she missed something important.
Which she did, because she overslept.
There was no time to shower, which would have been fine because she took one last night, except that her hair was still damp from that one. She’d twisted it into a knot on top of her head that never fully dried while she slept.
And when she finally raced down the hall, Harrison was sitting on the edge of his bed, awake but somehow not dressed, staring into space.
His backpack was missing. His homework was only half-finished the night before. He didn’t want the granola bar she practically threw at him, but when he (begrudgingly) ate it, crumbs rolled down his shirt, sticking as they go. When she finally got him to the bus, her coffee had already gone cold on the kitchen counter, but she was too far behind to drink it at that point anyway.
Traffic was worse than usual, and by the time she pulled up to the hospital, she had a headache and she hadn’t had a second to breathe.
Weird day.
Dana had called her out the moment she walked through the door with a loud, “You’re late.”
And just when she’d finally been settling into her routine in the hospital, finally feeling like she was back on track, her ankle monitor went off. It’s not bad enough that they watch her everywhere she goes, but the shrill alarm caused heads to turn and conversations to stop.
Later, after the chest tube is in and the blood is hanging and surgery has taken the GSW patient up to the surgical floor, Cassie finds herself standing in the aftermath with her hands finally clean and a moment to rack her brain.
She knows she knows you.
She’s worked with you before, your voice is familiar to her, she just can’t figure out why. Robby had greeted you, and you’d used his name. You seemed comfortable enough in the ER, you knew where you were going as you came in, you’ve obviously been here before.
And then there was “good hands.”
She’s heard that before, she’s definitely heard that before.
Cassie stands near the nurse’s station, watching where you’d disappeared out into the ambulance bay.
“Who was that?” she asks, turning toward Dana.
Dana pauses what she’s currently doing, throwing her a confused look. “Who was who?”
“That medic,” Cassie says impatiently. “The one who brought him in, I haven’t seen her before.”
Across the station, Collins also stops what she’s doing except for her head turning in Cassie’s direction. Langdon, who’d been lingering, tries to hide his laugh behind a cough and his hand.
“What?” Cassie asks, looking around.
“Are you serious?” Collins asks.
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
Langdon turns away, pressing a fist to his mouth, silently laughing hard enough that his shoulders are shaking.
“Frank,” Cassie snaps, “if you laugh -”
“I’m not -” he chokes. “I’m not laughing.”
“You’re laughing.”
“It’s just -” He lets out a hard breath, running a hand over his face. “Wow.”
Cassie looks between Langdon and Collins, and Dana, who’s still staring her down with eyebrows raised.
Dana’s arms cross slowly. “You’re telling me you have no idea who that was?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking!”
“I had no idea you were so oblivious, Cassie,” Collins says casually, but with a small smirk. “You can’t even tell when people are flirting with you.”
Cassie blinks in surprise. “What? No she wasn’t.”
There’s a shared look among the three.
“Maybe not this time,” Langdon says with a roll of his eyes.
“She wasn’t.”
“Baby,” Dana says with a scoff, “that woman has been making eyes at you for months.”
“That is not true.” Cassie stares at her incredulously. “I’ve never even seen her before.”
Langdon fully loses it, turning away to hide his laughter.
“It is true,” Heather insists. “Honestly impressive considering she had to do it through a visor.”
Cassie’s brain stalls out. The lights are on but nobody’s home, even as she racks her brain. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she says slowly. “I would’ve noticed someone looking at me.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“Clearly not.”
Dana and Heather exchange a look.
Cassie sighs, frustrated. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“That,” she says, gesturing wildly with her hands. “That thing where you know something and you’re not telling me.”
Langdon is fully here just for the hilarity of it all, existing only to laugh at her dismay.
She whips around to look at him warningly. “Frank.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, very much not sorry at all. “It’s just…you’re usually so observant.”
“I am observant.”
“Mhm.”
“I am!”
“Cassie,” Heather says, leaning back against the counter as she folds her arms across her chest, “you’ve never noticed the paramedic who’s been staring at you like she forgets how to act every time she rolls in?”
Cassie opens her mouth to argue and then promptly shuts it. Because no, of course she hasn’t, she’s certain you’ve never brought a patient in before. She has to know you from somewhere else, you’re not even -
“She’s not one of ours,” Cassie voices the thought out loud. “She’s county, I saw the rig, it says Allegheny County Emergency Services. I would remember if someone external was -”
“Flirting with you?” Langdon offers when she cuts herself off.
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“But it’s true.”
Dana cuts in before Cassie can argue with him again, using the tone typically reserved for her own children when she’s guiding them toward an answer. “Robby trusts her.”
That gets Cassie to switch her focus off Frank. “What?”
“He didn’t ask a single follow-up question during that handoff,” Dana says. “Not one. When does he ever do that?”
Cassie frowns, missing her point. “When the report is good?”
Dana nods, making a sound of confirmation. “And when he knows the person giving it.”
Replaying the scene in her mind, Cassie tries to focus. The way you moved, the way you spoke, the way you said -
“Good hands.”
That causes her pause.
She hears Collins speak distantly. “There it is.”
She knows those words.
“I’ve heard that before,” Cassie says slowly. “Why have I heard that before?”
Dana has an all-knowing smirk on her face as she tilts her head at Cassie. “You’ll figure it out.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
Cassie groans, exasperated. “Why won’t you just tell me?”
In an infuriating way that’s definitely meant to piss her off, Dana just smiles. “Because I’m gonna enjoy it more this way.”
Across the counter, Langdon mutters, “This is the best day ever.”
Cassie ignores him, snatching the patient clipboard from Dana’s hands.
She’s furious. Recognition has taken root in her mind, but it’s just out of reach, like she’s barely grasping at it with the tips of her fingers. She’s angry at herself, she knows she knows you. She even looks back toward the doors to the bay like she’s willing you to walk back in.
You don’t, of course, because you’re probably on your way back to your dispatch station, or out on another call already.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
It’s two whole days before she sees you again.
It’s ridiculous that she knows that, really, she’s aware of it. She’s worked back-to-back shifts, managing full patient loads both days, she’s discharged more people than she can remember, and still…you linger in her mind.
It’s not constant, there’s no way she could do her job if she couldn’t think properly. But you’re there, especially in the quiet moments. She can’t sleep, because when she closes her eyes, there you are. But never all of you. It’s mostly your voice, and your eyes. You’re bright, and focused, and younger than she expected, somehow.
This is stupid.
She doesn’t fixate on people like this. But she can’t get the way you look at her out of her mind. She knows that Heather and Dana are right, she can see your eyes looking at her the way they’ve described, but again, it’s ridiculous because she can’t even remember where she’s seen you before.
It’s been a weird two days.
“Dr. McKay!”
Cassie looks up.
Robby is already halfway across the ER, calling back to her as he goes. “There’s an incoming trauma, MVC, two minutes out,” he says. “I need you to help unload, then you can get back to your patients, you’re maxed out right now.”
“You got it,” she says, following him. She snaps on gloves, yanks a gown from where they hang. “You ever going to take a day off?” she asks, throwing a look back at the coffee cup Robby left on the counter at his workstation.
He snorts. “Bold coming from you.”
“I took one,” Cassie protests as he helps her tie the gown around her back.
“When?”
“…recently.”
“Uh-huh.”
The doors to the ambulance bay slide open and they’re greeted with the cool air that comes with late fall in Pittsburgh. They’re shielded from the light rain that falls from grey clouds overhead by the roof over the bay.
“You look like shit,” she adds, though it’s good-natured.
“Thank you,” Robby throws back. “That’s actually very grounding.”
Cassie chuckles, adjusting her gloves under the sleeves of the gown. “Just saying.”
They take their usual positions near the doors, waiting for the sirens they can hear in the distance to arrive.
Robby glances sideways at her. “Harrison good?”
She flexes her fingers, though the tightness of her jaw is noticeable. “Yeah. He’s good.”
“You seen him?”
“A couple of days ago,” Cassie nods. “Before my shift.”
Robby nods along. “…and Chloe?” he carefully prods. He’s pushing it.
Her tongue prods the inside of her cheek. “Still exists.”
“That bad, huh?”
“She filed another complaint last week,” Cassie says. “Nothing came of it.”
His mouth flattens into a line. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
That’s his cue not to push any further.
Breaking the tension, Langdon’s voice carries through the doors. “If this patient dies because you two are bonding over personal stuff, I’m not filling out the paperwork.”
Cassie doesn’t turn to look at him. “You don’t fill out paperwork anyway.”
“I delegate to my interns.”
“You avoid responsibility.”
“Same thing.”
Robby chuckles and shakes his head. The R3 and R2 are known to bicker constantly - scratch that, Frank tends to bicker with everyone he sees, Cassie is just no exception.
An engine roars through the conversation as the ambulance turns into the bay, breaks squealing a little as it comes to a harsh halt in front of them. The words Allegheny County Medical Services are printed in bold letters across the side.
Cassie’s stomach flips.
The back doors of the ambulance fly open and you jump down from the back of the rig, reaching for the stretcher before the doors have fully cleared.
“On my count,” you’re saying, breathless with urgency. “One, two -”
The stretcher yanks out fast as your partner joins from the front of the rig. The second the wheels hit the ground, you’re climbing. You grab the side rail and plant one foot on the lower bar, hauling your body up to align yourself over the patient in a motion that’s so smooth it’s almost like gravity doesn’t apply to you. Your shoulders stack over your hands, your elbows lock, and you begin to push.
Cassie is watching you do something she’s seen literally everyone else around her do at some point or another, something she herself has done a thousand times. Compressions. But holy shit, for some reason when you do it, it’s hot.
“Get out of the way!” you demand loudly, not even looking up at her.
She’s so entranced by you that she doesn’t even realize she’s standing in the way of the stretcher.
“Move!” your partner yells, nearly shoving the stretcher into her.
Cassie shakes her head as she snaps back into motion, grabbing the side to help guide the stretcher. Robby is at the head, Langdon at the other side, and your partner takes the other end to pull.
“Status?” Robby asks.
“Cardiac arrest, likely secondary to blunt trauma,” your partner answers him. “She lost a pulse two minutes out.”
“Do I have an airway?”
“Supraglottic in place,” you confirm from atop the stretcher.
The doors slide open to let you into the ER, and you distinctly hear one of the doctors yelling “Clear!”
Dr. McKay shoves one of the doors to a trauma room open, keeping it in place as the stretcher rolls into the bay. You don’t stop your compressions.
“Switch on my count,” you say, glancing up at Dr. Robby as he takes stance across from you. Your eyes slide over everyone, making sure they’re all in place, and they finally land on her. Where they stay. “One, two, three. Switch!”
You step back just long enough to help with the transfer, and then Robby has taken over compressions on the table.
“Run me through it,” Robby says, his eyes still on the patient but his ears on you.
You nod. “High-speed MVC, this is our driver,” you start. “Found unresponsive on the scene with agonal respirations. Lost both pulses shortly after extraction.”
Cassie pauses with lines still in her hands as you present. The familiarity of your voice, even just the cadence of the way you speak, she knows it, she knows you, if she could just place it.
“CPR ongoing from the lose of pulse, total downtime approximately six minutes prior to arrival.”
“Obvious injuries?”
“Chest trauma,” you confirm. “Steering wheel deformity with severe bruising.”
You step out of the way to give Dr. Collins room without needing to be told as she enters the trauma room. She doesn’t even look up when she takes your place at the side, like she trusts you to be where you’re supposed to.
Like she knows you.
Cassie is going to scream.
You glance up at her again, and hold her gaze when you catch her already looking at you. Then there’s the tiniest lift of one corner of your mouth. Smirking, you’re smirking. Somehow, you know, you know she can’t figure out who you are, and Cassie is horrified at the realization that you seem to think it’s funny.
“Got it,” Robby nods at the end of your presentation. And then he adds an afterthought: “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing you without the flight helmet.”
Cassie freezes.
Flight helmet.
The words settle in her brain slowly and take too long to register as understanding dawns on her. The first thing that comes to her is the sound of rotor wash, hearing your voice through the noise without ever seeing you clearly. Your voice is familiar because she has heard it so many times before, but never without the sound of helicopter blades accompanying it. And then there’s your eyes, the only other part of you that’s familiar to her, because you’re always wearing a full-face helmet with your visor down and your voice filtering through comms. She remembers a single moment when you lifted your visor just enough during a handoff, just barely high enough that she could catch your eyes before you turned back toward the patient and finished offloading. And then the final nail in the coffin, the one that settles in place like the very last piece of a million piece puzzle:
“Good hands.”
Not once, but every time you offloaded a patient on the roof. The same words in the same tone, said at the same point during every single handoff you ever did. Words of trust that the Emergency Department would take care of the patient that belonged to you long before they got their hands on them.
And Cassie understands that she had not been meeting you for the first time two days ago. She has been recognizing you in pieces for months without ever having the full picture.
“Oh,” she says out loud, though it’s quiet and nobody pays it any attention.
But when she turns her head, she finds you already looking at her, that same smile on your face, though she can see certainty on your face now and has no doubt you’ve just watched her realization in real-time. Cassie can’t help the heat in her cheeks, and she’s not sure if it’s from embarrassment or shame. Maybe it’s both.
When the trauma bay finally begins to settle into a more controlled version of an emergency, when the worst has passed and the patient begins to stabilize, everyone seems to sigh in relief at the same time.
“Alright,” Robby says finally as he steps back from the table. “I think Dr. Langdon and I have this. Doctors Collins and McKay, you’re both dismissed, thank you for your assistance, go reset.”
Cassie doesn’t need to be told twice. She’s already leaving the room, desperate to get away from her own embarrassment.
Your partner and yourself step out of the trauma bay a moment later, stretching your shoulders and trying to rid them of the stiffness that always comes with compressions lasting more than two minutes.
Your partner is already walking back toward the rig, checking his phone. “Meet you back in the truck?” he calls over his shoulder with a knowing look past you.
“Yeah,” you confirm without even looking at him.
Cassie doesn’t even see you approaching her in the central ED. You slow when you catch up and do your best not to surprise her. “Hey.”
She jumps and turns quickly, which proves to be a mistake because she’s now looking at you directly and suddenly remembering things she doesn’t want to be remembering quite this vividly. Like your voice and your face, in her head, in the bay. Even worse, in her bed, every time she tries to close her eyes.
“Hi.” She almost chokes on the word.
You tilt your head and your lips curve up into a smile. “I wanted to apologize,” you say. “For earlier. You know, in the bay.”
Cassie blinks, obviously confused.
“I…yelled at you?”
Oh yeah. Right.
She clears her throat. “No, um…I was in your way. Sorry for that.”
She hopes that’s the end of it. But it isn’t, of course not. You’re still staring at her, looking amused at the way she seems to struggle with words.
Cassie shifts her weight on her feet almost absently. It’s kind of cute. “I um…also didn’t realize it was you.”
There it is, out in the open. She immediately regrets it.
Your eyebrows lift and your smirk widens. You didn’t expect her to actually say it out loud.
She can feel the tips of her ears turning red. “I mean,” she says quickly, “you were wearing the helmet. And the - everything -”
“The everything?” you repeat, amused.
Mocking her, you’re making fun of her and Cassie is horrified. She shuts her eyes tight for just a moment before opening them, hopefully with some composure this time. “You know what I mean.”
You laugh then, and it’s genuine and filled with warmth, all traces of your former smirk gone. “I do,” you say. “And I find it kind of flattering.”
“Flattering,” Cassie deadpans.
“You didn’t recognize me,” you say, completely unbothered with that giant grin on your face as you look her in the eye. “And now you’re embarrassed about it. It’s kinda cute.”
Cassie’s mind grinds to a halt at that. “I’m not -” she starts defensively.
Your smile just widens. It’s like you’ve decided for her that she’s not actually mad about any of this. “I’m not judging you, promise. I think it’s funny.”
“You think it’s funny,” she repeats, her face falling and her eyebrows furrowing.
“I sure do,” you say. “I’ve been making eye contact with you through my visor for months. I’m kind of offended it took you this long to look at me too.”
Cassie sputters for a moment. “I - you…you think I’m looking at you?”
Leaning in, your voice drops to spare both of you from the prying ears you know are everywhere in this hospital. “I know you’re looking at me.”
You stare her down, and to Cassie’s credit, she holds your gaze without backing down. Then she lets out a laugh in disbelief. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s not a no,” you shrug.
She laughs again, and this time it doesn’t sound upset in the slightest. She shakes her head, and when she looks back at you again, she’s not flustered in the defensive way anymore. She’s flustered in the interested way.
There’s a little pause where neither of you speak, and the silence makes you very aware of your partner waiting for you back in the rig.
“Give me your phone.” You hold your hand out toward her expectantly.
This time, Cassie doesn’t hesitate. “Bold.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she pulls it out of her back pocket and hands it to you, unlocked.
You take it, typing your number in quickly and adding yourself as a contact to her phone before handing it back to her. On the screen, just above your number where your name should be, sits The Cute Paramedic.
“Are you always this confident?” she asks, looking up from the phone to your face.
“Only when I know what I want,” you say, turning toward the sliding doors.
“See you around, flight crew,” Cassie says, testing out the sound.
You spare her one last look over your shoulder. “I hope so.”
She watches you go with her phone still in her hand. She looks far more pleased than embarrassed now.
Behind her, Dana’s voice rings out. “Well that was quite a show.”
She turns and Dana is standing there with her arms crossed and a smug smile on her face.
Cassie puffs out her cheeks, turning back toward the doors where she can still see you as you climb back into your ambulance. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Dana replies defensively.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
Cassie McKay is not going to text you.
Not in general, just not that same day. She can’t. That’s desperate. And she will not look desperate, even if she is.
She gets home and immediately changes out of her scrubs before making dinner. She answers texts that actually matter, like the one she got from Harrison on her drive home. He’s just gotten his first phone and is already using way too many emojis in every single text.
She’s tired. It’s been a long day, it was a long shift at work. She’s not thinking about anything in particular. Especially not you.
She does other things instead. She takes a shower, turns on a documentary she doesn’t pay a lick of attention to, she absentmindedly scrolls through TikTok on her phone.
But at some point she can’t hold herself back any longer and she opens her messages. There’s your contact, The Cute Paramedic, even though she knows your name. She types up a message, something neutral even though her thoughts are anything but, and then deletes it. She should play it cool, Cassie wants to be cool.
so do you always flirt with doctors or am I special?
She sends it before she can overthink it. She immediately locks her phone like that’ll spare her from having to think about it. Which it doesn’t, of course. But it helps.
After that night, it stops being coincidence every time she sees you in the ER.
You texted her back right away, almost as if you were waiting next to your phone for her (which, let’s be honest, you were). You were just as flirty over text as you were in person, and Cassie is immensely grateful that you weren’t there in person to witness just how red she can turn. In her defense, she’s pathetically out of practice with flirting.
She learns that you’d requested less time with the CCT because flight hours were unpredictable, and even though you earned more money as a flight medic, your desire for a healthier work-life balance demanded the more favorable EMT schedules.
You appear more in the ER as weeks pass by. You’re at the hospital more often than coincidence would reasonably explain, though neither of you directly acknowledge it. Like saying MacBeth in a theatre, if you say it out loud, something will inevitably happen and you’ll be called away.
When you’re there, Cassie seeks you out without doing it on purpose. She drifts towards the central ED, spending more time there than she usually does, just hoping you’ll walk through the doors. Sometimes during a trauma intake, she’ll hear you before she sees you; sometimes she catches sight of you near the nurse’s station, talking to Dana or gossiping with Princess.
When you notice her, you never hesitate or pretend not to. You’re already beelining to her half the time she spots you. And when she sees you first, she does the same without even meaning to.
It entertains everyone you both work with. The gossip train has left the station and Cassie is pretty sure there’s a secret betting board on the two of you underneath all the papers in Ahmed’s office.
The day you finally make a move is the day a patient assaults you.
Cassie arrives late to the trauma.
She was caught up with a talkative elderly patient and missed Robby calling for her. It wasn’t until Dana popped her head into the patient bay and told her she was needed that she was able to make her getaway.
When Cassie enters the trauma room, it feels uncomfortably charged. It’s not loud in the way it usually is when a patient is combative, but it feels tense. That kind of post-incident silence where everyone is still ready for a fight.
On the bed, the patient is restrained and sedated, his chest rising and falling evenly underneath monitoring leads.
Dr. Robby is at the foot of the bed giving instructions to nursing staff. “His vitals are stable now, but keep him monitored at all time.”
Cassie grabs a pair of gloves from the wall, snapping them on her hands. She’s ready to ask if she’s even still needed here when she sees you.
You’re sitting flat on the floor behind the head of the patient’s bed with your back against the wall and one hand braced on your propped-up knee. Your left eyebrow is split open, blood leaking down onto your eyelid. But aside from the obvious injury, you don’t look like someone who’s hurt, but rather just annoyed.
Dr. Collins is crouched in front of you. “Hold still,” she says, holding gauze to the cut. “Unless you want me to make it worse.”
“I’d prefer you don’t,” you reply curtly.
Cassie pauses just inside the room, realizing she’s missed more than just a patient intake.
Robby glances up and notices her. “You’re late,” he says simply.
Cassie takes a deep breath. “I was with a patient.”
“We’ve got it handled,” he cuts in, already dismissing her.
Dr. Collins nods toward you. “She decided to test a combative patient’s right hook.”
“I didn’t decide anything,” you argue. “It happened very fast.”
“That’s what they all say,” Collins replies with a roll of her eyes, but there’s no bite to it and you can tell she’s just giving you shit.
Robby sighs. “She needs a workup.”
“I do not need a workup.”
“Hospital policy,” he says, raising his hands in self-defense. “It’s a head injury, even if it’s minor. A split eyebrow counts.”
Heather looks up at Cassie. “Why don’t you take her?” There’s something to the tone of her voice and the look on her face as she says it, something that even gives Robby pause, and Cassie throws her a warning look.
Cassie nudges your foot with her shoe. “C’mon, I’ll get you a chart started.”
“The paperwork is gonna fucking suck,” you grumble as you stagger to your feet. You’re a little wobbly and Cassie immediately moves to steady you, her hands hovering at your arms.
She leads you out of the trauma bay and to a chair in an open bay. “What happened?” she asks as you take a seat.
You look up at her from the chair. “He came in drunk and combative,” you say. “He got worse during the transfer and I got in the way of a swing. He grabbed for a nurse first.”
Cassie moves closer to you, professional instinct taking over as she wraps a blood pressure cuff around your upper arm. She does a quick visual, checking your pupils and taking your other vitals.
“Are you always this reckless?” she asks, breaking the silence.
“I try not to make it a habit.”
She finishes her assessment quickly, and you’re relieved when you hear your eyebrow won’t need stitches. It’s as she’s bandaging the cut that you speak again.
“Would this be a bad time to ask you to go to dinner with me?”
You can feel her fingertips pause at your forehead. Her eyes trail slowly down the short distance from your eyebrow to your eyes. “…are you seriously hitting on me right now?”
You don’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Cassie chuckles, shaking her head. “You just got punched in the face.”
“You seem like you like the rugged type.”
She stares at you with narrowed eyes, like she’s trying to figure out if you’re messing with her. “This is not normal behavior,” she says slowly. “You know that, right?”
“Does that mean no?” you ask innocently.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
As it turns out, that does not mean no.
You and Cassie don’t go out to dinner that night. Or the next, or the one after that.
That first night is professional. Cassie insists on finishing your workup properly, and while your “injury” (if you could even call it that) is minor, she makes it very clear that it’s non-negotiable. Something something something “not rewarding reckless behavior with immediate gratification.”
You don’t argue. You could, but you don’t. Because she’s not rejecting you, she’s just postponing.
After that first day, it becomes about logistics. Your schedules don’t line up, her shifts run long, your calls run long. You pass each other in the Emergency Department, not bothering to hide the eyes you’re both now throwing at each other very publicly.
You talk when you can. You text even more.
It’s just enough that when a night finally opens up, a shared gap in your schedules that isn’t filled with personal lives, it happens.
And when it does happen a little more than a week later, you plan for it obsessively.
This is the first time Cassie is going to see you outside of the contexts that she already knows: you’re not in a flight suit, not in an ambulance, not with blood on your clothes or your hands or your face.
You take your time getting ready. You change your clothes no less than four times, trying on everything in the mirror in your tiny, one-bedroom apartment, doing multiple 360’s to make sure whatever you choose looks good from every possible angle.
You even make a reservation at the restaurant. She left it up to you, so you chose somewhere cozy that’s quiet enough to talk, but not quiet enough to leave room for awkward silence. A high-rise restaurant in an expensive part of town that leaves no question about whether or not you think she’s worth it.
When Cassie arrives, she says it almost immediately like she needs to get it out of the way before it’s said under pressure: “I don’t drink.”
Your face scrunches up with a small smile, like you don’t understand why she felt the need to say it. Or why she looks so anxious saying it. “Okay.”
“You can, though. I don’t mind if you do.”
There are lots of different reasons people don’t drink. Bad experiences, sobriety from other substances, medical conditions. And you know she has an ankle monitor, so you do your best not to make assumptions. It’s not exactly uncommon, and you suspect she’s had bad experiences, either with peer pressure or people thinking it’s weird.
You consider her offer for a moment and then shake your head. “I’m good,” you say.
She’s silent while she looks at you with narrowed eyes like she’s trying to figure out if your response was automatic or intentional.
It was intentional, but you don’t tell her that.
There’s only a brief glance at the reservation list when you give the hostess your name before she leads you to your designated table.
You let Cassie follow first, oblivious to the shiver that runs up her spine when your hand ghosts over her lower back as you let her pass in front of you. You follow close behind, weaving through the restaurant until you reach a booth that’s only available upon special request (and an even more special credit card).
Tucked away in the back to give the illusion of privacy, it sits in the corner next to the windows. The city is spread out 30 stories beneath you, looking down out the floor-to-ceiling windows to the skyline of soft golds and moving headlights in the dark.
“Here you are.”
You thank her, sliding into the booth across from Cassie.
As the hostess leaves you alone, you take a moment to really look at your date. This is the first time you’ve seen her in something other than scrubs, too, and you’re relieved as you realize that probably isn’t a one-sided worry. But Cassie seems to be looking anywhere but you; her eyes are traveling around the low-lighted restaurant, over the bar, over the other patrons, over the skyline. And she looks…almost worried?
“…this is nice,” she finally says quietly.
Your face falls. “Is it too much?”
She shakes her head quickly like she’s worried she’s offended you. “No, not at all, it’s just -” She takes a deep breath and then leans in over the table. “I’ve never actually been somewhere like this,” she admits. “Like…ever.”
You can’t tell if it’s embarrassment in her tone or if it’s just awareness. Of a space like this, if she’s feeling some type of way about being in a high-end restaurant, if she feels like she doesn’t quite fit.
You don’t make it a thing, instead choosing to nod along. “Okay.” You’re careful about keeping surprise out of your voice.
“I feel a little underdressed,” she adds with an awkward little laugh.
You don’t hesitate. “You look beautiful,” you say.
She looks from the table back up to you, like she’s looking for any exaggeration or dishonesty, but there isn’t any to find.
“You’re -” she starts, then she stops. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
You shrug, reaching for your glass of water. “I know what I want.”
Cassie’s lips press together in a vain attempt to conceal a smile.
The server approaches your table and it eases the moment.
You’ve barely had a second to look at the menu, but you don’t mind. “I’ll have a mocktail.” There’s a small pause before you add, “I’m driving.”
The server nods and turns to Cassie.
“I’ll do the same,” she says.
The server nods and disappears back toward the rest of the restaurant.
Minutes pass while you both look at the menu in silence before you flip yours closed, mind made up.
Drinks arrive and the conversation keeps moving. It starts light with work stories, the kind you only tell to people who can actually understand. Which, admittedly, has not been any of the dates you’ve been on in the last few years. It’s nice, being able to relate to someone for once. But it doesn’t stay light banter for long. Cassie talks about Harrison, and though it’s not the first time you’ve heard about her son, it is the first time she tells you anything of substance. She talks about med school, about how hard of a transition it was after getting clean (which she pauses after mentioning to see if and how you’ll react - you keep your face neutral, putting the puzzle pieces of her response to alcohol together).
She’s not the only one who talks. You talk about your family, your lackluster dates prior to meeting her. You talk about how you got into the CCT, about how you’d been training for your Solo Pilots License before the process stalled out due to complications with your medical clearance.
Cassie doesn’t push, just like you didn’t push with her addiction.
Because this isn’t about learning every last bit about each other tonight. That would be a little too heavy for a first date. No, this is about how familiar the feeling is, sitting across from someone who understands what it feels like to be looked at through the lense of risk before being seen as anything else.
Dinner winds down and the conversation dwindles. When the check arrives, Cassie reaches for it but you’re quick to snatch the booklet, card in hand before she can argue. You’ve already angled the check and card back toward the passing server as subtly as you can manage, handing it off efficiently.
When you escort her down the elevator and outside the restaurant, the air is cold and you linger as Cassie calls her uber. Her ride is close, only two minutes away.
You’re standing close together, partially for warmth but mostly because the vibes have been just right. She’s watching you almost expectantly, like she knows what you’re thinking but isn’t willing to make the first move. And just when you think you see her uber rounding the corner ahead, you cross your fingers that you haven’t read the situation wrong as you reach for her.
Your hand comes up to her face, angling her toward you the way you’ve been thinking about all night as she sat across from you, guiding her lips to yours. She’s warm and soft and her arms wrap around your body, holding you close as her mouth moves against yours. There’s a second where you pull apart and scan her face for any sign of regret. When you don’t find any, you lean in to kiss her again.
The second kiss is more desperate, her fingers gripping the back of your shirt like she doesn’t want to let you go. She tilts her head to fit better against you and your mouth opens for her tongue to slide inside.
When you break away from her a second time, you’re still lingering, wanting more. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that she does too.
“Cancel your ride.”
The words don’t sound like a demand when you say them. It instead sounds like you’re trying very hard not to plead them, and you’re not doing a very good job.
“Let me take you home.”
The uber idles at the curb behind her, patient in a way that you are not.
Cassie isn’t dumb, you’re not just offering to drive her home. She knows what you’re really asking. But you’re giving her both an exit and an invitation. She nods, pulling her phone out and hitting the black Cancel button, and you both watch as the car pulls away from the sidewalk and disappears into traffic.
The decision is made to go to your apartment instead of hers. She doesn’t work tomorrow and neither do you; and privately, she isn’t ready to let someone new into the home she shares with her son every other weekend. The drive back to your apartment is both fast and quiet. She sits in the passenger’s seat of your car with the seat warmers on, her knees drawn up and her body angled toward you, and though you keep your eyes on the road, you can feel hers on you the entire way.
By the time you’ve parked and you reach your front door, your restraint is frayed. You’re fumbling with your keys because Cassie’s lips on the back of your neck feel too good and you feel like you’re melting. But when you get it open, you nearly fall through the doorway, pulling Cassie with you.
She kicks the door shut hard behind her and is reaching for you again in an instant, pulling you against her and kissing you with almost bruising force. Your arms wrap around her shoulders and you sigh against her mouth, content to follow her lead for now.
You do pull away from her long enough to mumble a quick “not here” against her mouth, pulling her toward your bedroom.
Cassie follows, her hand in yours as you guide her down the short hall, and only then does something dawn on her.
“Hey, um,” she falters a bit in her step and you stop to look at her. The lack of confidence that’s suddenly graced her voice gives you pause, and you wonder for a moment if she’s changed her mind. But instead she says, “I haven’t done this in a while.”
“A while?” you repeat. You’re unsure what this means for her, or for you, if she wants to continue or if you should stop.
“I haven’t been with anyone since my ex-husband,” Cassie admits.
That has you worried. You knew Cassie had an ex-husband, she has a kid, this isn’t a surprise to you. But to be a first after someone she’s bound to for the rest of her life? Tough act to follow.
“D-d’you want to stop?”
“Oh god, no,” Cassie laughs nervously, pressing a hand to her chest. “I just…don’t want you to be disappointed. In me.”
Disappointed in her? The thought is so ridiculous that you have to prevent yourself from laughing. Laughing right now would be disastrous, even if you don’t mean it that way. She’s shy, maybe even a little insecure. She doesn’t need humor, she needs you to lead.
So instead, you use your hand, which is still wrapped around hers, to pull her close until she’s flush against you. She stumbles and nearly falls against you, trapping you between her body and the wall next to your door.
“How could I be disappointed?” you mumble, hands finding her waist. Your fingers dig into her sides, her back, her ass, anything you can reach from this angle. “Have you seen yourself?”
Your lips find hers again and you blindly push open your bedroom door, pulling her inside with you.
You can’t find it in yourself to be embarrassed about your unmade bed, mostly not having planned for the evening to end up this way. You definitely didn’t think Cassie would be seeing your messy comforter haphazardly tossed sideways and a little rumpled like you’d jumped out of bed without worrying about it. Because you had.
But Cassie doesn’t seem to mind, if the groan that’s torn from her throat as you tug at her hair is any indication. Her head tilts back with the pull and your lips trail down her throat. You shove at the hem of the pretty blouse she’d worn to dinner until she takes pity on you and pulls it over her head, mussing her hair as it goes.
Your own shirt follows suit, and then your bra, as you chuck both haphazardly somewhere in the vicinity of your laundry basket.
She seems just as eager, already kicking her pants down her legs, revealing to you her matching underwear. The full curve of her breasts straining against the fabric, waistband of her panties tight against soft skin. Black lace, the kind that’s not meant to be worn all day. Or be comfortable at all.
Oh. She was prepared for this too.
You waste no time reaching for Cassie, your hands begging to feel the lace on your skin; and you indulge, dragging her to you by the hips. You pull her in for another desperate kiss, wasting no time running your tongue along her lips, moaning when she opens up for you.
Backing up toward your bed, Cassie follows, desperate to not lose the feeling of your mouth against hers. Your hands run along her figure, dancing lazily over the lace cups of her bra.
When your fingers ghost over her nipples, hardened beneath the fabric, you let out a groan of your own. “Wore this just for me?” you mumble against her lips.
“I didn’t want to assume,” she chuckles back.
You turn the two of you around so that Cassie’s knees hit the bed and she stumbles for a moment, having to sit to avoid falling. She reaches for you, her knees parting to make space for you to stand, and her hands trail up your bare sides. She leans in, capturing your left nipple and tugging it into her mouth, tongue laving expertly over the bud and you arch into her, your hand wrapping around the back of her head. She kneads your other tit in the palm of her hand, and your imagination runs wild with the thought of her touching herself the same way.
Physically shaking your head of the thought, you gently push her away, down onto the mattress, and she comes off your breast with a soft pop. But she lets you guide her down. You climb over her, a knee between her thighs to steady yourself.
She looks almost surprised as you lean down to kiss her again, and you’d imagine that someone like her - both a doctor and a parent - is used to always being in charge, either because she wants to or has to.
You focus on the task at hand, unclasping her bra, before trying to gather words to address her shock. Thankfully it clasps in the front, and you’re quick to twist and unhook the clasp between her breasts, allowing her to shrug free of the straps.
“Wanna have you tonight,” you breathe against her skin as you start to trail kisses down her neck and over her collarbones. “Been thinkin’ about it forever, please let me just have you.”
You hear her gasp just as you latch onto a nipple, at the exact same moment her hips wiggle looking for some sort of friction, and her center finds your thigh. She’s soaked through those little black lace panties, immediately smearing her arousal onto your pants, so wet you can feel it spa through to your skin. She shudders against you and it’s exhilarating, having this woman you’ve pined after for so long practically begging for you.
Her hands fumble at the waistband of your pants and you huff a laugh out through your nose, taking pity and helping her shove them down and off, along with your underwear. You break from her chest and kiss her once, swiftly, before kneeling on the floor in front of her and hooking your fingers into the sides of her panties.
Your eyes flick up to her face. Her eyes are half-lidded as she looks down at you, her breath just the tiniest bit labored, pupils dilated with lust.
Everything about Cassie McKay is enticing. And it isn’t just the way she looks. Her drive and resilience, the compassion that seems to flow from her without end. This feeling bubbling inside you is more than just liking her, it’s more than just want. You want her wrapped around you, to sink your teeth into the softness of her flesh, to hear her screaming your name. You want to lead her.
She lifts her hips in permission and you slide the lace off of her. Her pussy is exposed and slick, evidence of what you felt earlier now staring you in the face. She’s dripping with want, want for you, and you can’t indulge fast enough.
Your face buries between her thighs so fast it makes her head spin. You drag your tongue in a broad stripe from her soaked entrance up to her clit, sealing your lips around the swollen nub. Cassie cries out, her hands darting to your head, fisting your hair like she thinks you’ll disappear if she doesn’t.
“Fuck, baby,” she whines, and you peer up to find her head tilted to the side, eyes screwed shut in concentration. “Just like that, don’t stop, please don’t stop -”
You won’t, you swear you won’t. Your arms wrap underneath her thighs and around to her hips, holding her tight against your face as your tongue moves between her clit and her hole, lapping up her essence like it’s nectar from the gods. Your own eyes are practically rolling to the back of your head, and if you were any louder, Cassie would be able to hear the quiet whimpers coming from your throat.
She’s close. You can feel it as your tongue spears inside of her, the way she clenches and the way she’s writhing above you, the way her thighs are unconsciously tightening around your head. She’s letting out a slew of curses above you and her hips roll against your face, unsatisfied to just receive, trying to take. You’re desperate for it, you need her to cum against your face, to see what she looks like when she lets go completely. Your competent and beautiful doctor, composure lost to you, and only you.
You need to be inside her.
One arm releases her hips and she whines above you at the loss of the grounding feeling. But the whine ends in a choked sound when your fingers prod at her entrance, sliding inside her and immediately curling up into the spongey spot inside of her.
“Ngh!”
Oh, you need that sound again. It’s made of desperation, torn from her vocal cords in a way that’s uncontrolled. You devour her like your life depends on it, your tongue circling her clit fast while your fingers curl, barely moving in and out of her at all.
“Fuck yes, just like that, don’t you dare stop.”
Then she’s cumming hard against your face, riding your fingers as her orgasm peaks. You fuck her through, drinking up her arousal like you’ll never get enough. Sweat is dripping down her forehead as she comes down from her high.
You pull away from her core, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. You move to leave the bed, but her hand darts out, catching you by the wrist and pulling you back to her. She pulls your lips to her own harshly, still panting into your mouth as she tastes herself on your tongue.
You smirk against her mouth. “Greedy,” you chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’ve got more for you.” Pulling away again, you don’t go far, reaching for the drawer of your nightstand.
Cassie sits up on her elbows to watch as you pull out a sleek black box, popping the edges of the plastic wrapping on it.
“Is that new?”
You pause the opening of the box, turning to look at her. “I don’t re-use sex toys,” you say simply, even though it feels like you’re breaking the moment. “Not with different partners.”
The medical professional in both of you appreciates it.
You slide the toy out of the box, purple silicone gleaming in your hand, and pull the harness out of your drawer next. It slides over your legs with familiarity, your confidence shooting through the roof when you look up to find Cassie watching your every move with wide eyes. The strap slides into place, hanging heavy between your legs. You pick up the bottle of lube, smirking more to yourself than her before holding it up for her to see.
“I don’t think you’ll be needing this, do you?”
Her eyes narrow and you swear you see the faintest blush on her cheeks, even in the dim light of the room. You toss the bottle back into the drawer and nudge it shut with your thigh.
Returning to the bed, you find Cassie with her arm thrown over her eyes, hair disheveled and frizzy from where it’s rubbed against your comforter. You pull her arm from her face, pinning it to the bed beside her head.
“Don’t hide from me,” you hiss, leaning close to her ear. You settle between her legs, rubbing the strap between her folds until you’re satisfied with the schlick sound it makes. “You hear that?”
Your name escapes her lips via whine in response as she lifts her hips to meet yours, nudging the tip of the dildo against her clit. Her hands latch onto the bulge of your arms where they hold you above her, blunt nails digging in hard enough to scratch.
“Please.”
It’s quiet. So quiet you barely hear it, maybe you’ve imagined it. You would think you imagined it if it wasn’t for the tightening of her hands on your arms, a frustrated little pull at them to move you where she wants you. Cassie’s legs widen, demanding you to fill the space, to fill her.
“Please?” you echo, trying to contain the smirk that threatens your face.
Her brow furrows and she huffs, unamused.
Your hips fit between her thighs perfectly, the tip of the strap notching at her entrance. You pause and open your mouth to ask for permission, but before you can get a word out, her legs wrap around your waist and pull, trying to force you in.
“Okay, okay,” you soothe, appeasing her as you finally slide inside.
The resistance backs up her earlier claim: she hasn’t been with anyone since her ex-husband. She’s tight around your cock, her walls protesting the intrusion as you’re slow to push in, not wanting to hurt her. She gasps, mouth open and expression slack. She’s so full, she can feel every ridge and vein of the silicone as your hips meet hers, the tip nudging her cervix.
You stop there, letting her acclimate to the fullness. She’s panting when you lean down to kiss her again, tilting your head to slot your mouths together. Her breath is hot against your skin, eyes still screwed shut in either concentration or satisfaction, you aren’t really sure which and aren’t willing to push it. You’ll wait as long as she needs.
When Cassie’s brow relaxes and she opens her eyes to look up at you, you don’t need her to say it. Move. You’re slow to pull out, and slow to push back in, silently watching for any signs of discomfort. She seems to be watching you in return, the intensity of her eyes on you almost too much to bear, like you’re on top but she’s still somehow in charge. You’d bend over backwards for this, for her.
She sighs against your mouth, her hold on your arms relaxing. “Fuck, that’s so good.”
Cassie’s pleasure is quiet, it requires your focus and observation, searching her face and body for telltale signs: the stuttering sighs, the tightening of her abdominal muscles, the parting of her lips and occasional words when you nudge her g-spot just right. Yours, however, is not. You whine when you bottom out and the base of the dildo rubs against your clit, moan when you catch sight of the way her cunt grips you every time you pull out, and when you angle her hips upward and lean over her to bury your face against her neck -
“Holy shit, oh my god!” you whimper into her shoulder, grinding both the tip into her g-spot and your clit against the silicone simultaneously. The overwhelming fire building in your belly brings heat to your face and tears threaten to fall from your eyes.
A chuckle sounds out from underneath you, and you lift your head enough to look Cassie in the eyes. Cassie, who looks way too composed, like she’s not the one getting fucked right now. “You’re a mess, baby,” she murmurs, wiping sweat from your temples.
You’d be embarrassed if it weren’t for the way you’re holding her body against yours, the plushness of her thighs around your hips as you thrust into her at a steady pace, your strap pressed so deep inside of her. “You feel so good,” you moan, rolling your hips faster. “Taking me so good.”
And Cassie isn’t unaffected, you can tell by the way her fingertips dig into your back, nails leaving little crescent marks, not long enough to break the skin but enough that you can feel them. And it feels good, the littlest bit of pain mixed with the pleasure as you focus on driving both of you to the edge. Your arms wrap underneath and around her shoulderblades, using the leverage to fuck her harder.
You need to cum, you need to cum, but you desperately need her to cum first. And your prayers are answered when she speaks next, the sound a choked-out groan.
“Don’t stop ~!”
“Never wanna stop,” you whine in response. You slide a hand between your bodies, lifting away from her just enough to get your fingers on her clit, drawing a low moan from her. “Wanted you for so long.”
Your lips press against her jaw and she tilts her head, eyes closing again. “Want-fuck!-wanted you too.”
You press harder on her clit, circling heavily around it. “Only since you saw my face,” you whisper against her cheek. Your hips piston into her harder and she cries out, clenching around your strap, your pace turning brutal. “Wanted you from the moment I first saw you.”
She doesn’t respond, or maybe she just can’t, not with the way you’re fucking into her with a desperation that she can taste. But you can’t seem to stop babbling, the words flowing from you shamelessly.
“You feel so fucking good.”
“So tight around my cock.”
“Wish you could see yourself, Cass, you’re so hot.”
But you’re gone when she starts talking back. She’s so close to the edge when she lifts her hips to meet your thrusts, forcing you into the perfect angle to ram that spongey spot inside of her, huffing words back at you. “Oh my god, baby, faster, please, faster.”
You can’t help but oblige, the slap of skin on skin sounding downright sinful, watching her breasts bounce in time with your thrusts, your hips fast and rough and your fingers on her clit making her brain go fuzzy with the pleasure.
You can feel it before she says anything: the way her body tightens under you and the hitch in her breath. Like she’s right there. And you slow.
Cassie groans beneath you, rolling her hips to try and pull you back into that same rhythm. “Don’t - don’t stop, please -”
You lean in close again, steady as you whisper, “I’ve got you,” and then you’re giving it back to her all at once, pace picking back up.
Sweet moans fill the room, both yours and Cassie’s, as you push both of you towards the edge. Your breath is hot and heavy on her shoulder as you try to stave off your own orgasm, you won’t cum, not until she -
“Fuck, I’m cumming!”
Swear to god you can feel her tighten around your strap as she cums, her eyes shut and head thrown back against the pillows, you’ve never seen a prettier sight in your life. You fuck her through it, pace never relenting even as she grabs your wrist to stop your fingers at her clit. You continue to drive into her, overstimulating her as the strap shoves into her g-spot repeatedly, and her pitch jumps up an octave with the sensation.
“Just -” you pant heavily, grinding your own clit into the silicone, desperate for your own release, “just wait a second, baby, I’m - fuck, I’m almost there -”
Cassie’s voice is calm through the deep breaths as she responds, “Take what you need.”
“Fuck!” You’re practically humping the blunt end of the strap, you wish you’d had the sense of mind to add a bumpher or buy something double-ended, but maybe another time. You grind against the flat surface, digging your own nails into the fat of Cassie’s hips as you finally, finally, feel your own orgasm wash over you. You rut into her through the waves of pleasure, stilling as the aftershocks subside, before collapsing beside her on the bed.
The bedroom is quiet in the aftermath. You drape yourself over Cassie, pressing your forehead into her arm just below her shoulder. There’s sweat cooling on your skin and the air smells like sex and skin. It’s not subtle, but neither of you care.
“Are you…are you okay?” you manage to breathe out.
Cassie lets out a little hum. “I’m really good,” she says with a small smile.
You push up onto your elbows to press a lingering kiss to her mouth and she meets you easily, her hands taking place on either side of your jaw as she tilts her head to deepen it, her tongue sliding into your mouth.
Groaning, you separate from her, standing up off the bed to shove the harness down off your hips. “I’ll be right back,” you mumble, heading for the master bath.
You return a minute later with a washcloth, warm and damp, and climb back over her. Cassie parts her legs for you, and you’re gentle about cleaning her.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
You smile down at her as you chuck the washcloth over your head toward your laundry hamper. “It’s part of the deal.”
Settling back against her on the bed, Cassie turns toward you and hooks a leg between your own and an arm over your waist as you both settle deeper into the mattress.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
The elevator doors burst open before the ding has even sounded.
“Clear, let’s go!”
You’re already in motion, heavy boots hitting tile hard as the stretcher rolls forward. Your partner is at the foot, Dr. Robby is on one side and Nurse Kim on the other, all of you moving as a single unit. The patient is strapped down tight, oxygen mask tight in place on her face, the iron smell of blood trailing behind you as you rush the central ED.
Now that you’re out of the sound of rotor wash, you begin filling the receiving team in.
“Single vehicle rollover down into a ravine,” you call, voice muffled behind your helmet. “Prolonged extraction, found unresponsive, intubated in the field -”
Heads turn in your direction. They always do.
The ER parts for the flight team like it knows better than to get in your way, because it does. Eyes track the movement of the team, non-urgent cases stopping to stare at the weight the flight team always carries. CCT means emergency in the way most things in the Emergency Room do not.
And across the floor, Cassie recognizes you.
She knows it’s you instantly now, no question in her mind even beneath your visor and helmet. It’s not just your voice anymore, it’s you.
“BP’s holding for now, but she’s circling,” you continue. “Possible internal bleed, her abdomen’s rigid.”
The team rolls into Trauma 1, Robbie counting for the transfer. It’s smooth, you’ve all done it a thousand times.
You step back as the room fills around the patient, no longer your patient as other hands take over.
You don’t hang around, you rarely do when you’re in full gear. Your gloves come off, snapping free and nearly ripping as you strip them from your hands and toss them cleanly into the bin by the door.
“Good hands,” you call back as you exit the trauma room.
Cassie hasn’t moved from the workstation she was at, her eyes lingering on the doorway you’ve just come out of. They follow you as you and your partner step back into the elevator with the stretcher, and even though she can’t see your eyes beneath your visor, she can feel you looking back at her. She doesn’t need to see your face to be able to tell.
Langdon bumps her shoulder lightly as he saddles up next to her, grinning like he’s been waiting for this. “There’s your girl,” he says jokingly.
Cassie doesn’t look away right away, keeping her eyes on you until the elevator doors shut and she doesn’t have a choice anymore. But even as she watches the elevator doors long after you’re gone, she smiles.
May I request walsh x reader?💘 over the moon for anything you're in the mood for, maybe even a follow up to "ouch"? Bonus points for the pitt crew appearing and emery being mean (can you tell I'm still hung up on that fic) have an amazing dayyy x
Mine
Emery Walsh x girlfriend!reader
Summary: months after your little trip to PTMC, a familiar face strolls into your work and wreaks havoc on your relationship. And the worst part? You don’t even know it’s happening.
CW: fluff, angst/comfort, established relationship, one-sided Jack Abbot x reader, flirting from a man, Jack is the catalyst but there is no bashing here, completely oblivious!reader, jealous!Emery, insecure!Emery, protective!Emery, very minorly suggestive at one point but not explicit, implied bisexual!reader (in reference to a past with men).
WC: 6.6k
Technically a part 2 to Ouch! but can be read separately without too much confusion.
A/N: I received three asks for Emery Walsh, no specific stories just requesting fluff and angst/comfort, so we’re hitting all three here! Hope you enjoy. Ps. Tedra Milan, the Pitt misses you please come home 💛
✺ ───── ✺ ───── ✺
The bell above the café door is less of a jingle and more of a chime.
It suits the place.
The whole shop is white and blush and made of pale wood, clean without feeling sterile. The walls are painted the faintest shade of pink, warm enough that the late afternoon sun turns everything honey-soft through the massive front windows. The gold light fixtures glow even when they aren’t in use and there are tiny vases with baby’s breath on every table. Someone once described it as “aggressively feminine” and you’d laughed because they weren’t wrong, it was so in every stereotypical sense of the word.
It constantly smells like vanilla and coffee and sugar crusting over on fresh pastries.
It also makes, objectively, the best coffee within a mile radius of PTMC. Which is why doctors keep wandering in despite themselves.
You’re alone behind the counter, like always on the closing shift. Your boss swears the evening rush “isn’t a real rush”, which means three nights a week it’s just you from five until close. You don’t mind, you actually prefer it. The quiet gives you something to do without being overwhelming. And if you’re being honest, staying up late lines your schedule up with Emery’s night shifts.
Speaking of Emery, she’s insistent you don’t need this job.
“You know I make enough for the both of us, right?” she’d said once, leaning against the kitchen counter in her scrubs, arms crossed. “You could quit tomorrow.”
You’d shrugged noncommittally, insisting that you enjoy your job.
Which is true.
You like the rhythm of it. The hiss of the steam wand, the satisfaction of getting latte art right on the first pour. Your regulars who order the same thing every single day.
It’s six on the dot when the door chimes.
You glance up automatically, already pasting on your best and most polite “customer service” smile. One time, your boss caught you without it, and you were treated to a ten minute lecture on how “service with a smile” is the pinnacle of customer satisfaction.
The man entering hesitates just inside the door like he’s walked into the wrong building.
He’s tall, with silver hair and a hospital badge clipped to his shirt that reads Doctor. He wears black scrubs under a jacket that looks a little too light for the weather.
You recognize him immediately. Him, it takes a second.
His eyes narrow as he looks at you, stepping toward the counter, and you can see the cogs inside his head turning. “Have we -”
“Yes,” you say brightly, leaning on your forearms on the counter. “You stitched up my arm a few months ago when I fell.”
Understanding clicks across his face, followed by a mild look of embarrassment. “Oh, god. Right.” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I see a lot of people.”
“I would hope so,” you tease lightly. “Otherwise that would be a bit concerning for your job security.”
That pulls a laugh out of him, easy and warm. He seems like the type who’s used to charming his way through awkwardness, and he does it well.
“How’s the arm?” he asks, nodding toward you like he expects visible damage.
You hold it up obligingly, turning it so the faint, pale scar near your elbow catches the light. “Healed. You did great work.”
You avoid mentioning your girlfriend, who’d hovered over his every move, critiquing the whole way through your stitches.
He leans in a little to look, his professional instinct overriding the human ones. “Yeah?”
“Ten out of ten,” you say seriously. “Would have you stitch me up again.”
He hums in acknowledgement, his eyes flicking from your arm to your face. “Good. I aim to please.”
You grin, missing the double meaning entirely.
“So, what can I get you?” you ask, reaching for a cup.
He studies the menu like he didn’t even consider ordering coffee in a café before you suggested it. “I was told this place has the best coffee within walking distance of the hospital.”
“We do,” you say without hesitation. “Who told you that?”
“Shen.”
You brighten immediately. “Dr. Shen? He gets the iced oat milk lavender latte.”
That seems to genuinely surprise him. “You know his order?”
“He comes in every day,” you shrug. “You’d be surprised how well you get to know someone when you see them daily, even if it’s just to make them coffee.”
That earns you another laugh.
“Okay,” he says, leaning on the counter to mirror you without realizing it. “Well, what would you recommend?”
You launch into your usual spiel, both animated and comfortable in your environment. He watches you like you’re fascinating. Like he has nowhere else to be.
When you’ve finished your little rant at him, you grab a marker. “So what do you like? What’s your usual?”
“Black.”
You wrinkle your nose. “That’s boring.”
“Wow,” he says, his eyebrows lifting. “Way to make a guy feel good about himself.”
“I’m kidding,” you say quickly. “Kind of. But if you’re going to branch out, this is certainly the place to do it.”
Half of his mouth lifts up in a sideways smile. “You trying to change me?”
You don’t even notice the tone shift.
“I’m trying to improve your quality of life,” you correct, completely earnest.
He studies you with something akin to amusement on his face. Curious, almost. “And what would improve my quality of life?” he asks.
You reach up above you without looking, tapping the menu with the marker. “A brown sugar cinnamon latte, extra hot. Trust me.”
“Trust you,” he repeats, like he’s testing the phrase on his tongue.
“I have excellent judgment.”
“Do you?”
“I sure do.”
He smiles again, slower this time. “Alright. Let’s do it, then.”
You turn to the espresso machine, missing the way he watches you instead of the menu. You miss the way his gaze lingers when you tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.
You miss the way he seems far more interested in you than the drink.
When you slide the latte across the counter, foam art carefully poured into a clean little tulip, he looks at it and then back at you.
“That’s impressive,” he says.
You beam. “I know.”
He takes a sip and there’s a small pause as his tongue darts out to catch the foam on his lips.
“Alright,” he admits. “That’s excellent.”
“Told you,” you say, pleased with yourself.
He chuckles a little, shaking his head. Then, without looking away from you, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded bill, slipping it into the glass tip jar beside the register.
You straighten immediately. “Oh - no, you don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he says easily.
“You really don’t,” you insist, leaning forward like you might reach in and fish it back out. “It’s one drink.”
“And it’s a good one.”
“That’s my job.”
“Then you’re very good at it.”
The way he says it almost makes it sound like it’s about more than coffee.
He takes another sip of his drink, and then winces faintly.
You notice immediately. “Too hot?”
“No. It’s -” He glances at the cup, then back at you. “I hate to ask this.”
“What?”
“My shift starts in thirty minutes.”
You nod, completely missing the point. “Okay.”
“I’m going to need it in a to-go cup.”
You look down at the perfectly-poured tulip blooming in the ceramic mug between his hands, gasping softly. “You’re going to destroy her?”
He laughs. “I feel bad.”
“You should.”
He holds the mug out toward you, almost apologetic. “I promise to appreciate her while she lasts.”
You take it back with reluctance that’s exaggerated for the bit. “This is tragic.”
But you’re already moving, dumping the latte back into a metal pitcher to save the espresso shot. The steam wand hisses again as you reheat the milk.
He stays at the counter instead of stepping aside, not that he’d need to, being the only customer in the shop for now. Still, it's intentional on his part.
You slide the fresh to-go cup onto the counter and pour carefully, less intricate this time but still neat. You pop on a lid with a soft snap.
“There. Travel safe,” you say, pushing it toward him.
He takes the cup, hesitating for a moment before stepping backward toward the door.
“I’ll be back,” he says lightly.
“For better coffee?” you grin.
“For better company.”
You laugh like it’s a joke.
“Have a good shift, Dr. -” you falter, realizing you don’t actually remember his name.
“Abbot,” he supplies.
“Right, Dr. Abbot.”
“Jack,” he corrects after a second.
You blink. “Oh, okay. Jack.”
He smiles at the sound of his name like he’s won something.
“See you soon,” he says.
The bell chimes softly as he leaves.
You shake your head a little, amused at yourself for forgetting his name, then turn back to the espresso machine.
You do not, at any point, even consider that he might have been flirting with you.
The rest of the evening is business as usual.
A pair of nursing students come in around seven, still in scrubs and whispering over flashcards while you make them matching caramel lattes. One of them spills half her drink on the counter because she’s so tired and overly caffeinated that she’s vibrating. You hand her extra napkins and a cookie “on the house” and she looks like she might cry about it.
An older couple wanders in near eight-thirty, clearly lost and asking if the bookstore that used to be here five years ago is still somewhere around here. It isn’t. You make them tea anyway.
At nine-fifteen, a man in business casual stands frozen in front of the menu silently for a full two minutes before admitting that he’s never actually ordered anything but drip coffee in his life. You gently guide him toward a vanilla latte and tell him it’s a safe gateway option. He tips you three dollars like you’ve changed his life.
It never gets busy enough to overwhelm you, just enough to keep your hands moving.
You wipe tables, restock napkins, and rotate pastries in the display case. The sky outside the massive front windows deepens from golden to black, the hospital down the street glowing like a second moon. You can see several upper floors lit bright white and you try to remember which floor is surgery. Emery’s in there somewhere.
At ten-thirty, you flip the sign on the door to Closing Soon.
At eleven, you lock it.
The quiet after close is your favorite part.
You turn off the lights to the pastry case first, and then the gold fixtures one by one until the café goes dark. The music is turned off last to save you from the silence. You’ve already mopped, counted the register, tallied the tips, and texted your boss the nightly numbers.
You shoulder your purse, double-check the locks, and step out into the cool night air.
The hospital is only a block away. Close enough that you can hear the wail of an ambulance pulling in somewhere around the side.
You start walking.
The sidewalk is mostly empty this time of night. Save for a few scattered people in scrubs outside on their breaks, a delivery truck or two rumbling past, and a couple straggling unhoused people who hover near the hospital because they know it’s the only place this time of night they might get something to eat.
You pull your phone from your pocket and hit Emery’s contact. It only rings twice before she answers.
“Hey,” she answers, and you can already tell she’s distracted. You can hear the hospital in the background.
“Hi,” you say, smiling even though she can’t see you. “You on break?”
“For about six more minutes. Or until someone calls for me.”
“Wow, very generous of them to give you six whole minutes.”
“Don’t mock the system that feeds me.”
You laugh, adjusting your bag on your shoulder. “I just closed up.”
“How was your shift?”
“Easy. Quiet.” You hop over a crack in the sidewalk. “Oh! One of your ER guys came in tonight.”
There’s a brief pause before Emery repeats, “…one of my ER guys.”
“Yeah. Tall, greying hair, looks like he hasn’t slept at all this decade.”
Another pause, slightly longer.
“Abbot?”
You snap your fingers even though she can’t see them either. “That’s it! I could not remember his name, the one who sewed up my arm.”
“What did he want?”
“Coffee?” you giggle, amused. “What do you think?”
Emery hums noncommittally on the other line.
“He said Shen recommended us,” you add. “Which is high praise.”
“It is,” she says shortly.
You don’t notice the shift in her voice at the mention of her coworker. You’re too busy watching the ER doors of the hospital slide open and closed across the street.
“He was nice,” you continue. “Felt bad about ruining my foam art because he needed it to-go. Very tragic.”
There’s a small sigh on the other end of the line.
“Tragic,” she repeats.
“Mhm. I handled it bravely.”
“I’m sure you did.”
You smile at the dry edge to her voice, and it dawns on you then that maybe layering on work-talk while she’s working might not be the best use of her break.
“Anyway, I’m on my way home. How’s your night?”
“Fine.”
“You sound busy.”
“I am.”
“Okay,” you say, softening. “I won’t keep you.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“You can keep me,” she says, quieter now. You can hear the smallest trace of a smile in her voice.
Your steps slow a little at that and you glance up at the hospital again, at the glowing floors where you know she is.
“I’ll stay on the line until your pager goes off,” you decide.
She lets out a small chuckle at that. “You’re insufferable.”
“You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
You grin to yourself and keep walking, unaware that several floors up, something ugly has already begun to take root inside of your girlfriend.
And that you’ve just handed it a name.
✺ ───── ✺ ───── ✺
Your bedroom is almost completely dark.
It’s not like nighttime dark, more like the thick and muffled kind created by the blackout curtains that are pulled tight across your windows.
Your phone says 2:07PM when you blink at it and for a second you’re disoriented.
Your body protests the sudden wake up. You’d stayed up as long as you could last night, curled up on the couch with the TV going while you waited for Emery to get home. But four o’clock had been the absolute limit before your eyes refused to stay open any longer.
She must’ve slipped into bed with you when she got home.
The weight of her arm across your waist, the puffs of air against your back as she exhales. The warmth of her entire body following the shape of yours from behind.
Emery.
You move a little, trying to be careful not to wake her, but her arm tightens around you instinctively and it doesn’t take long for you to realize that it wasn’t a sleepy reflex.
She pulls you closer, smushing her face into the back of your shoulder like she’s making sure you’re not trying to go anywhere.
“Hi,” you murmur with a smile, your voice still full of sleep.
“Hi.”
Her voice sounds rougher than usual, low and almost a groan from exhaustion.
You roll onto your back slowly so you can see her.
Even in the low light you can make out the signs of a brutal shift: shadows under her eyes, her curls messy and piled on top of her head in a scrunchie, the crease between her eyebrows that only shows up when she’s pissed or overly tired.
She watches you for a moment before leaning in and kissing you.
Not unusual, Emery kisses you all the time, but this one lingers a little longer than normal.
And when she pulls back, she doesn’t go far. Her hand slides up to cup your cheek as she pulls herself back in and kisses you again.
You let out a surprised laugh against her mouth. “Good morning to you too.”
She hums something and kisses you again anyway, and again.
By the fourth one, you’re smiling too much to pretend you’re not noticing.
“Em.”
“Mm?”
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
The answer comes from her immediately, but her arms tighten around you as she says it, burying her face into your shoulder.
It’s…a lot. Not unwelcome, just unusual for her.
You settle, wrapping your arms around her as she tucks her face against your collarbone. Your hand drags up and down her back slowly and you press a kiss into her hair just above her forehead.
She responds with a kiss to the base of your neck.
And then another.
You tip your head back to look down at her again.
“You had a rough night,” you guess gently.
Her lips purse. “Something like that.”
You hum sympathetically and rub slow circles against her back.
“That’s okay,” you say after a moment. “I don’t have to work today, we can rot on the couch and order food and watch trash TV.”
She pulls back just enough to look at you again.
“Rot on the couch.”
“Yes.”
“Compelling.”
“I know.”
Her eyes linger on your face for a while like she doesn’t want to look away. Her arms tighten around your waist, possessive enough that you notice but not enough to really worry you.
And you, still half asleep under the warm blankets, just assume she’s had a hard night at the hospital.
The rest of the afternoon is just what you’d offered her: a chance to move slowly, to just rot and enjoy each other’s company.
The apartment stays dark even after you leave the bedroom, the blackout curtains in the living room pulled halfway closed so the afternoon sun filters in soft and muted. Emery moves slowly like she hasn’t decided whether she’s actually awake yet. But she never strays far from you.
Normally after a shift she collapses on the couch and disappears into a dead-to-the-world sleep for at least another hour or two after you’ve gotten up, only leaving the bed to stay close to you. But today she doesn’t. She settles beside you instead and then, after a moment, she pulls you with her until you’re tucked against her side.
You’d assume she’s cold, except the apartment isn’t cold.
She drapes an arm around your shoulders, fingers idly tracing slow patterns against your arm while the television murmurs quietly in the background. At some point her hand slides down to lace with yours, her thumb brushing circles over your knuckles.
It’s not unusual for Emery to be affectionate. She’s just not usually this constant about it.
At one point, when you stand to grab water from the kitchen, she follows only a few seconds later. When you reach for a snack, she’s already opening the cabinet for you. When you move back to the couch, she settles right beside you again.
Later, she disappears into the bathroom and you hear the water start up and you expect her to shower and then come collapse back into the couch. Instead, she pokes her head back out a minute later and gestures you toward the bathroom.
For a very confusing moment, you wonder if she’s trying to say you smell. You even lift your sleeve to your nose just to check, mildly offended.
The shower ends up taking much longer than usual, mostly because Emery keeps pulling you back under the spray with her and her hands find their way between your thighs no less than three times.
It’s…clingy. Especially for her.
You assume it has something to do with her hard night at the hospital. She gets this way sometimes after losing a patient, or dealing with something difficult that she doesn’t want to actually talk about. So when she seems more than just a little reluctant to let go when you move away, you don’t question it.
You just settle back against her.
✺ ───── ✺ ───── ✺
The bell chimes right at six on the dot.
Dr. Abbot - Jack - is back, stepping inside the door just like he did the first time, pausing as his eyes adjust to the warm light of the café.
When he spots you behind the counter, you can almost see his posture relax. He walks up and splays both hands out on the counter in front of you like he belongs there.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” you reply brightly. “Brown sugar cinnamon again?”
A smile pulls at his mouth. “You remembered.”
“Of course I did,” you say with a shrug. “I’m the one who recommended it, after all.”
He nods even as you turn your back to begin making his drink.
“You weren’t here yesterday.”
You blink, surprised he noticed. “Oh. Yeah,” you say, grabbing a to-go cup. “I only work three nights a week.”
His eyebrows lift at that. “Three?”
“Mhm.” You shrug, reaching for the espresso beans. “I’m only part-time.”
He watches you work, leaning against the counter.
“Which three days?” The question is casual, like he’s just making conversation.
You pause mid-reach, thinking. “Oh, it changes,” you say, grinding the beans. “My boss rotates us. Sometimes it’s the beginning of the week, sometimes the end, sometimes it’s split.”
“So you don’t have a set schedule.”
You shake your head. “Nope. It keeps things exciting.”
“I bet.”
You laugh, missing the way he looks at you like he’s thinking.
“Honestly, I barely keep track of it myself,” you add. “I just show up when I’m told.”
The steam wand hisses as you start the milk. You move through the motions automatically, tamping and pouring, wiping down the counter between steps.
Jack doesn’t look away from you as you work. He’s fixated on the brightness of your expression, the way you seem so happy doing something so simple. Like your own little ray of sunshine inside this shop.
“Guess I’ll just have to get lucky,” he says.
You glance up at that, catching his eyes. “With what?”
“Catching you here.”
You smile, assuming he means catching the café open. “Well, we’re open every day.”
His mouth curves as you hand him the drink.
“Good to know.”
After that, he becomes a regular.
He shows up the next time you work, right around six again, just like he did the first two times. You greet him with a smile, already reaching for the brown sugar syrup before he even orders.
Every single time, the visits are the same. A drink, a little conversation while you make it, a tip you insist he doesn’t need to leave because your boss actually pays you a fair wage. And then the bell rings behind him a few minutes later as he disappears back out toward the hospital.
You don’t think anything of it.
Then he shows up the next time you work. And the time after that.
Eventually, you start expecting the bell around six. More often than not, he walks in right on cue.
Almost always wearing scrubs, always looking like he’s never slept a day in his life. Every day, he leans comfortably against the counter while you make his drink. The order never changes, nor does the routine.
Sometimes he stays a little longer if the café is empty, and sometimes he leaves quickly if the hospital pager clipped to his waistband buzzes.
After a while, you start to notice something strange.
He’s there every single shift you work. Not most of them, all of them.
At first you think it’s just coincidence. The hospital is practically across the street, after all. And doctors need coffee, especially the night shift ones. You see Dr. Shen nearly every day, after all.
But your schedule rotates constantly. Mondays one week, Thursdays the next, sometimes weekends, sometimes not. Even you don’t remember it half the time without checking the calendar your boss texts you.
But somehow, Jack is always there every time you are. Right around six, every single shift. A couple of times you find yourself wondering if he’s coming in on nights you’re not there, too. It almost feels impossible that your schedules would line up this perfectly otherwise.
You decide it must just be good timing. After all, you do make some damn good coffee.
Meanwhile, Emery stays…different.
It’s not in a bad way, in fact you’re quite enjoying it. She’s just consistently more attached to you than she’s ever been.
The extra affection from that first morning never fades over the following weeks. If anything, it becomes a subtle part of your routine together. She pulls you closer on the couch while you watch TV, she presses soft kisses into your hair every chance she gets. Sometimes she holds onto you a little longer than necessary when she hugs you.
You assume the hospital has been rough on her lately.
Night shifts stack up. Surgeries run long. Sometimes emergency consults pull her out of bed at odd hours even on her days off.
So when she steals you away into the shower again or insists on cooking dinner for you even though she barely slept that day, or when she drapes herself across the couch so you’re practically pinned beneath her while she falls asleep against your shoulder, you don’t question it. You just let her.
The two halves of your life settle into their own rhythms.
Evenings at the café with soft music and warm light.
Mornings, afternoons, and nights at home with Emery, curled up together like nothing exists outside of your little apartment.
Down the street, the hospital lights burn twenty-four hours a day.
And at six o’clock, every evening, the bell above the café door rings.
✺ ───── ✺ ───── ✺
Emery’s pager buzzes almost the second she clocks in.
Surgical consult in the Pitt.
She groans softly into her collar as she digs the device from her pocket, thumb flicking the screen to read the note. It’s barely seven, she hasn’t even had time to settle into her shift, and already the ER is messing with her schedule.
She straightens her scrub top, splits her ponytail and pulls to tighten the elastic against her head, and heads toward the staff elevators. The fluorescent lights of the hallway glare against the ID badge clipped to her chest.
The elevator doors slide open with a metallic whoosh. She steps in, pressing the button for the ER, and leans back against the wall with her arms crossed. Her mind is already ticking through possibilities: minor trauma? Broken bone? Appendicitis? The page wasn’t 911, which almost always means they’re not sure if she’s actually needed or not.
She doesn’t really care what it is, she just wants to get it over with.
She steps into Trauma-2 just as Robby is finishing up vitals on the patient - a man in his late thirties with severe bruising across his lower abdomen that’s suspicious but not cause for immediate alarm.
“Abdominal trauma,” Emery states the obvious flatly, dropping her bag onto the counter. “Tell me what I’m looking at.”
“You’re looking at someone who thought sprinting down a staircase while carrying a coffee table was a good idea.”
“Great,” she deadpans, kneeling beside the patient. “And the bruising?”
Jack Abbot leans against the counter, hands in his pockets as he peers over Robby’s shoulder. “We’re concerned about internal bleeding. There was too much blood on the ultrasound to make a clear determination.”
“With this much blood just beneath the surface, I’m not surprised,” Emery replies, eyes narrowing at him. “Could also be nothing. No reason to scare the patient when you don’t actually know what you’re looking at.”
Jack chuckles, clearly enjoying her sharpness.
Robby grins. “Come on, Walsh, don’t pretend surgery doesn’t love a little suspense.”
She straightens, crossing her arms as she looks at them both. “I love suspense. I don’t love being patronized while assessing someone who might actually die.”
“Watch out, Walsh, you’re scaring me,” Jack teases, leaning a little closer.
“Good,” she snaps lightly. “Maybe you’ll learn some humility before you get sued again.”
The patient grunts as she palpates the bruising, his eyes flicking between her and the ceiling. “It hurts here,” he says softly, pointing just below his ribs where the bruising is the worst.
She frowns, her fingers careful but precise. “It’s tender, yes. Guarding. But nothing that screams surgery. Jut bruising, that’s it. There’s no internal bleeding, no lacerations. You’ll be sore for a few days.” She stands upright, eyeing Robby and Jack. “I’m not operating.”
Jack tilts his head. “Are you always this blunt in front of patients?”
“Only when you make it obvious you’re trying to impress,” she shoots back dryly.
Robby snorts. “Two-on-one and she still doesn’t back down.”
“I always win,” she says, stepping back from the patient, her arms crossed over her chest.
Jack smirks but shrugs. “Fair enough, I like a challenge.”
“You really shouldn’t,” Robby says to him, rolling his eyes. “She eats doctors for breakfast.”
Emery shakes her head, typing her consult notes into the chart. “Not breakfast, more like lunch. Sometimes a late snack if you’re lucky.”
As she finishes her exam, she tells the patient what to expect: mild soreness, over-the-counter pain relief if the ER isn’t prescribing something stronger, watch for any signs that are actually serious.
Jack is lingering, watching her chart on what will become his patient once the handoff is complete.
“So you still haven’t asked her out?” Robby’s tone is casual and low as he speaks to Jack with a smirk on his face.
Emery isn’t trying to listen in. Her attention is on the patient’s chart, on his tenderness and bruising, on the notes she needs to hand off.
“Working on it,” Jack says casually.
“Dude, you’ve been working on it for three weeks.”
Her mind registers the tone but not the target. It’s just the low hum of conversation behind her, the usual banter in the ER. She keeps her head down, finishing her instructions to the patient until Jacks words catch her ear.
“She works evenings at that little coffee shop down the street.”
Something in her brain clicks at the mention of your café and her hands pause on the chart. The words coming from Abbot aren’t just background anymore. She keeps her expression neutral, but her mind is suddenly all over the place.
She hands the chart to the incoming nurse and straightens, trying to shake the unease twisting in her chest.
She had noticed it the first night, that night you called her on your way home from work. Abbot had been there, and she’d felt the familiar tug of possessiveness, the smallest flare of jealousy over nothing. She’d done her best to shrug it off. But then you told her he’d become a regular, every single shift you worked he was there, and he tips generously.
A cold little bubble of suspicion rises in her chest.
He’s trying to ask you out.
Her jaw tightens, but she says nothing. Professionalism is her armor. She smiles tightly at the patient, nods at Robby, and gives Abbot a neutral but assessing glance. “All set here. Thanks.”
Jack smirks, apparently unaware of the tension that’s practically radiating off her. Robby just smiles as she stalks out the doors to the trauma room and back into the ER.
“Later, geniuses,” she mutters, though it’s loud enough to carry. There’s a clipped edge to it that wasn’t there five minutes ago.
Inside, her mind races.
Are you flirting with him? Do you even notice he’s trying?
She shakes it off immediately. No way. You’re the most oblivious little thing when it comes to flirting, you hardly even noticed when she asked you out on your first date. There’s no way you’re entertaining him.
And Abbot might be a prick, but he’s not the type to go after a colleague’s girlfriend.
But he is.
He’s comfortable enough to seriously think about asking you out.
Her hands tighten on the tablet and she leans against a workstation, blinking rapidly, trying to force her brain to focus on something besides the twist in her stomach, the anger bubbling up in her gut.
“Dr. Walsh?”
A voice cuts through her spiral.
She startles, looking up to see the Charge Nurse, a woman with sharp eyes and a no-nonsense tone that makes Emery feel both chastised an observed.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Emery says quickly. “Just busy.”
“Just busy?” The nurse’s eyes narrow in obvious disbelief. “You sure? You look like you’re about to pass out over there.”
Emery forces a nod. “I’m fine.”
The nurse doesn’t push further, giving her a pointed look before moving on. Emery sighs heavily, fidgeting with the tablet as she drags a hand over her face.
“Em?”
Fuck, can someone please just give her a break already?
But it’s not just somebody, it’s you coming through the ER doors, a little breathless, carrying a large pink box that Emery knows is used to carry pastries from your café. Your cheeks are tinged from the cold, but there’s a smile on your face regardless.
“Hey,” she says, trying to keep her tone neutral, but the crack in her voice has her failing. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
You shake your head. “The power went out about an hour ago and my boss let me go home early. I didn’t want these to go to waste, so I was bringing them to you for your team. I didn’t know you’d be down here though, I was headed up to surgery.”
Emery blinks, confused. “Surgery?”
“It’s late,” you shrug. “Reception said I had to come in through the staff elevators in the ER because the lobby isn’t open.”
She swallows, a strange mix of relief and renewed panic twisting in her stomach. She’s happy to see you, of course she is, but her mind is replaying the conversation she’s overheard and the insecurity that’s been plaguing her over the last few weeks has boiled to the surface.
She’s never felt like this before, this ugly, gnawing insecurity. She’s always been sure, confident of herself, and in command of every situation. But now? Her heart is racing and she’s unsure of herself, and for a terrifying moment she wonders if she’s losing herself - losing you - in something she doesn’t understand.
Your voice snaps her back to reality.
“Em, are you okay?” you ask gently, concern etched into your features.
She’s about to answer, about to tell you the truth, but then she sees movement out of the corner of her eye: Jack Abbot stepping out of the trauma room, looking confident and casual with a clipboard in hand.
Without thinking, she grabs your arm just above your elbow. “C’mon.”
You blink, startled. “Uh, okay?”
You let her usher you down the hallway and through an open door into what you assume is a staff lounge. Once inside, she shuts the door and leans against the counter next to the fridge, taking a shaky breath.
“Emery, what is happening right now?” you ask, setting the large box down on the table.
“I -” she starts, then shakes her head, running a hand over her hair.
“Hey.” You step closer, hands bracing on her arms and ducking your head to try and look her in the eye. “Look at me…what’s going on?”
She swallows hard, trying to loosen the knot in her throat. “It’s Abbot,” she spits out. “He’s been coming into your work all the time. He doesn’t care about the coffee, he wants to see you. And I - he’s comfortable enough to seriously think about asking you out.”
Your eyes widen. “What?”
Emery looks anywhere but at you, her eyes settling on the ceiling. “I overheard him and Robby while I was assessing a patient. He’s been flirting with you this whole time, he wants to ask you out.” Her hands twist in the edge of her scrub top as she continues to ramble. “I hate feeling like this, I never get like this, but I can’t stop thinking about why he feels comfortable enough to think he has a shot with you.”
Her gaze is fixed somewhere between you, not on you, and you can feel the storm swirling inside her.
“And…and I don’t know…” her voice drops into a whisper. “…sometimes I wonder if maybe you - if you miss…” She falters, biting her lip, face coloring. “…if you miss men.”
You freeze, shock filling you. Your history with men had never been a topic of conversation before this moment. “What?”
Emery doesn’t stop, she can’t stop this hole she’s digging herself into. Her words tumble over each other, tinged with a panic that matches her face. “I mean - you’ve been with men before. Maybe…”
“Wait,” you cut in firmly, holding the sides of her shoulders. “Stop right there. Do you think I’m going to leave you for Jack Abbot?”
Emery takes a shaky breath. “No. I mean -” her hands fly up in a stop motion, backtracking. “I’m not saying that. I know you’re with me. I just…I can’t help thinking, maybe - maybe you miss it sometimes…” she trails off, clearly embarrassed.
“Em.” You shake your head with an exasperated little sigh. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? You’re not losing me.”
Her eyes close and leans into you, forehead resting against yours. “I know, I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I just don’t like feeling like this.”
“I know,” you murmur, your hands trailing down her arms until you’re holding hers. “But I don’t want anybody else, Em. Just you.”
You lean in further, angling your face to press your lips to hers. At first it’s just meant to be reassuring, a quick kiss to make sure she’s okay before you order her to go back to work. But Emery melts into it, her hands tangling in your hair, pulling you closer. There’s a heat to it that makes the room feel smaller, like the rest of the ER has disappeared.
Her hands move to your waist with a domineering edge as she pulls you flush against her. You respond in kind, looping your arms around her neck as your lips part for her.
And then the door swings open.
Jack Abbot freezes in the doorway, eyes wide at the two of you. Behind him, upon looking over his shoulder, Robby is trying and failing to suppress a laugh.
Emery pulls back enough to look over your shoulder. Her eyes narrow at Jack as she uses her grip on your waist to move you to her side possessively. It radiates off her in waves, her posture practically screams don’t even think about it.
Jack’s brain clicks like a switch, recognition flooding in.
The sutures on your arm.
“Your student isn’t learning on my girlfriend.”
“I had no idea you were such a softie, Walsh.”
“I’m not, I just don’t let people fuck with her.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again.
Emery pulls you tighter against her, her eyes still fixed on Jack as she watches realization take root. It’s impossible to misinterpret the look on her face as she stares him down.
Jack nods his head and you can make out his tongue poking his cheek. “Ah…I see,” he says, his voice calm despite the subtle edge of embarrassment. “Well…clearly…I was mistaken.”
He straightens his posture and, without another word, steps back out of the lounge. Robby lets out a quiet chuckle and the door shuts behind them as he follows Jack out.
“See? Nothing to worry about.” You giggle, heart still racing, and bury your face into the crook of Emery’s neck. “Are you okay?”
You feel her nod against the top of your head and her hand brushes over your cheek. “Yeah, better. Thanks for…you know.”
You sigh contently, nudging your face further into her skin.
Summary: After her art gallery date with Brian, Cassie McKay comes back to the ER and finds her best friend avoiding her like the plague.
CW: fluff, angst/comfort, miscommunication, you’re kind of a brat and bad at feelings, jealous!r, jealous!Cassie, a date with a man, post-4th-of-July, friends-to-lovers, mutual pining, discussions of sex but nothing explicit.
WC: 4.2k
A/N: Frazzled and redheaded McKay is my favorite McKay! This is significantly more dialogue-heavy than I usually write and I don’t hate it. Also, the title of this is definitely based on the song by Xana.
Based on this request:
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
It turns out the Emergency Department is pretty peaceful right before the shift change.
You wouldn’t call it quiet, it’s never actually quiet and even the mention of the word will earn you death glares, but it’s definitely subdued compared to both the day shift and the middle of the night. Like the way you yawn and stretch in the morning before you get up for the day.
A few nurses are clustered at the station with coffee cups in hand, chatting about their personal lives while someone else laughs at something on their phone. You’ve claimed a workstation for the day, the chocolate croissant you’re currently calling breakfast sitting on a napkin staking your claim.
The shift change doesn’t happen for another forty minutes, you aren’t even supposed to be here yet. Which is exactly why you are.
Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you check it out of habit.
You alive? Haven’t seen you in like two days.
You lock the screen without replying.
Coward.
“Jesus, you look like you lost a fight with a wild animal.”
You glance up. Trinity leans on the counter across from you, eyeing what you assume are the dark circles under your eyes and your frizzy hair with open judgment.
“I had a hard time sleeping,” you say with a roll of your eyes.
“It shows.”
Before you can respond with a snarky comeback of your own, another voice cuts in.
“Why are you here?”
Your stomach drops. You don’t have to know who it is, you hear that voice in your dreams, but you do anyway.
Cassie stands only a couple of feet away, hair wet like she’d rushed out after showering, her backpack slung over a shoulder. She looks…bright. Unaware that she’s currently ruining your emotional stability.
She shouldn’t be here yet either, that’s the whole reason you’re in early.
“I could ask you the same thing,” you say, aiming to sound casual but it comes out defensive instead.
Cassie frowns as she steps up to the counter next to you. “You start at seven.”
“So do you.”
“I told Ellis I’d come in early so she could go home, she has some personal stuff going on.”
Of course she did, because the universe is conspiring against you.
Trinity’s gaze flicks between you two like she’s watching tennis. “I’m going to go check on bed four,” she says, even though you know she has no reason to be anywhere near bed four.
Traitor.
Cassie moves into the space Trinity had vacated, resting her hands on the counter. “You didn’t text me back.”
You stare at the monitor in front of you. “I’ve been busy.”
“You aren’t supposed to be working yet.”
“I can be busy outside of work.”
“Doing what?”
Crying. Spiraling. Imagining you hooking up with a former patient in an art gallery bathroom.
You can’t say that, so instead you shrug. “Stuff.”
Cassie doesn’t respond, instead staring at you for a long moment. You can feel it even though you aren’t looking at her, the weight of her attention.
“Did I do something?” she asks, lowering her tone to avoid attracting the attention of the neighborhood rumor mill.
“No.”
“You’re being weird.”
“I’m not being weird.”
“You’re here early.”
“I needed the hours.”
“You ate lunch with Mel yesterday.”
You blink, surprised that she noticed. “I’m allowed to eat lunch with other people.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.” She sounds hurt. Great. Fantastic. Add that to the list of reasons you’re being the world’s shittiest best friend right now.
You finally look up at her from the computer, trying your best to keep your feelings off your face. “Is there a point to the interrogation, Dr. McKay?”
Her mouth tightens just a little, you can see the tiniest purse of her lips and the crease in her forehead. She hates when you pull rank formality on her, neither of you do it unless something is wrong.
“Yeah,” she says. “The point is that I miss you.”
Ouch. She might as well hit you, it’d probably hurt less.
You look away first.
“Well,” you say thinly, “you’ve been busy.”
Cassie’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Busy?”
“Yeah,” you pick at the flakes of your croissant. “With art galleries and stuff.”
There. Out in the open and totally not loaded with subtext.
Realization dawns on her, like she suddenly understands why you’re so hostile and she’s relieved. “Oh, yeah, last night.”
Your heart hammers in your chest.
Abort. Abort mission, you don’t want to know, don’t tell you.
Cassie smiles a little, clearly expecting you to say something else. When you don’t, she starts speaking, like she’s offering you something.
“It was actually kind of -”
A chair scrapes loudly behind you and you seize the interruption like a lifeline.
“Hey,” you call to a passing nurse, even though you have absolutely nothing to say to her. “Do we have the labs back on the chest pain in three?”
The nurse blinks, caught off guard by the sudden interruption in whatever she was doing. “Uh…I think so?”
“Great, I’ll check.”
You practically jump away from the workstation before Cassie can finish her sentence, your heart hammering enough to make your hands shake.
Coward. Coward. Coward.
“Hey,” Cassie says, following you for a few steps. “Can we talk later?”
You don’t stop walking, knowing eventually she’ll have to stop to put her backpack away. “We’re talking now.”
“No, we’re not.”
You force a quick smile that doesn’t fool even yourself. “I’ve got patients to see.”
“You don’t even have an assignment yet.”
“I’m being proactive.”
Cassie stops walking and the hurt on her face is noticeable. “You’re avoiding me,” she says.
“I’m not.”
“You won’t even stand still to talk to me.”
That’s harder to deny.
You slow and then stop, arms folding automatically across your chest like it’ll shield you from your own feelings.
Cassie’s looking at you like she’s cornered a scared animal that might bite her. “If something’s wrong, you can just tell me.”
If you open your mouth right now, you’re going to say something awful and irreversible, something you can’t take back that might destroy the single most important relationship in your life. So instead, you shrug.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Cassie searches your face for hint of the lie. “…okay,” she says finally, even though it’s clear she doesn’t believe you. “If you say so.”
You both stand there for a moment, staring each other. Involuntarily, your eyes flicker from her face to her neck, looking for evidence of her escapades last night.
You can’t stand the silence or the idea that you might find what you’re looking for. So you do what you’ve been doing for two days: you flee.
“I should go check those labs,” you say, even though you’ve been here long enough to know the nurse has already handled it.
Cassie doesn’t try to stop you this time. “Yeah, okay.”
You make it around the corner where she can’t see you before your composure cracks, pressing a hand to your forehead to try and steady yourself.
She went to the gallery. She had a good time, she even tried to tell you about it, and you couldn’t be bothered to listen to her because of your own stupid feelings about it.
Some best friend you are.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
You spend the entire morning following Dr. King like an anxious puppy.
The ER is in full swing now, with gurneys holding patients lining the walls and non-stop movement in every walkway.
Through all of it, you stick to Mel’s side.
If Mel moves, you move. If Mel grabs a snack from the vending machine, you grab a snack from the vending machine. If Mel ducks into a patient room, you’re at her shoulder with a chart and a hopeful expression.
At first she assumed you needed help, but by the time noon rolls around, she knows better.
“You know,” she says without looking up from the computer she’s currently typing patient notes into, “most people don’t shadow someone this aggressively unless they’re being evaluated.”
You’re slouched beside her workstation with your stethoscope twirling loosely around your fingers. “We’re friends,” you say, chin propped in your palm and your elbow on the desk. “Aren’t we?”
“We are,” Mel confirms, not stopping her typing. “But that’s not why you’re here. You’ve dodged three cases with Dr. McKay by clinging onto me.”
“I am not dodging.”
Mel glances up at you warily, looking sympathetic but also very tired of your nonsense. “You can’t keep doing this.”
You frown. “Doing what?”
“Hiding behind me.”
You stand up straighter, offended. “I am not hiding.”
Across the department, laughter rings out above the general noise. A cackle you’re way too familiar with.
You shoulders tense, muscles pulling tight under your scrub top as they lift toward your ears. You don’t look, instead trying to focus very hard on the condensation sliding down the outside of your water bottle.
Mel notices. “You haven’t even talked to her,” she says.
“I talked to her this morning.”
“Trinity says you ran away from her mid-sentence.”
That earns a glare from you, in Mel’s direction but aimed at Dr. Santos’ gossip. “That’s rude.” But your anger isn’t real, or if it is, it’s not aimed at Trinity. You let your forehead drop onto the desk with a little thunk, the laminate cold against your skin. “I can’t do this.”
Mel stops typing at that. “Do what?”
“Be in the same building as her.”
“That seems very inconvenient given your job,” she says with a small quirk of her lips.
“Mel.”
“Sorry.”
You lift your head just enough to look at her through your hair. “Did she…say anything?”
Mel hesitates, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Her lack of response makes your stomach drop.
“Mel.”
“She asked if you were mad at her.”
Your guilt intensifies and your stomach lurches. “I’m not mad at her,” you say thinly.
But you can say it all she wants, you know Cassie won’t believe you, and neither will Mel. You’ve been acting like she personally wronged you instead of just going out with someone who isn’t you.
You drag both hands over your face, pressing your palms into your eyes until stars flicker behind them. “I hate this.”
Mel leans back in her chair, staring at the ceiling as she sighs, “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” You blink the black spots from your vision as you look down at her. “You got shit going on too?”
Mel is silent for almost a full minute before: “My sister has a boyfriend.”
The topic pivot is so abrupt it takes you by surprise. “Becca?”
“Mhm.”
“Is that…are we happy about that?”
“It’s great for her,” Mel says immediately, sitting forward again. “It’s great, I’m sure they’re great together. She’s happy, she says she’s happy with him, they spend a lot of time at the day center together and they’re having a lot of s-” She stops abruptly, her jaw clenched. “I’m very happy for her.”
“But..?”
“I didn’t know, she didn’t tell me.” She sighs deeply. “I had to find out yesterday, here in the hospital, through Dr. Langdon.”
“Jesus Christ,” you laugh out at the situation.
Across the room, Cassie looks up immediately at the sound of your laugh.
You don’t see it, but Mel does.
“You know she’s staring, right?”
Your sympathetic smile collapses. “Don’t.”
“She looks upset.”
“I said don’t.”
Mel sighs, her shoulders slumping. “Avoidance isn’t a long-term strategy.”
“It is if I commit to it.”
“Forever?”
“If necessary.” You pick at a loose thread on the sleeve of your undershirt, unraveling it inch by inch. “I just don’t want to know.”
“Know what?”
“How her date went.”
Mel tilts her head. “Maybe she won’t even bring it up.”
“She tried to bring it up this morning.”
Her brow lifts. “And?”
“Trinity already filled you in on what happened next.”
“Ah.”
You lean closer, voice dropping like you’re telling her a secret. “What if she tells me something that I can’t unhear?”
Mel doesn’t answer.
“What if she’s happy?” you add quietly.
Understanding relaxes Mel’s features as she takes in your words. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
For a moment, you let the noise of the department distract you. Gurney wheels rattling, the shrill of the annoying red phone in the nurse’s station. None of it feels real, like you’re not actually in the hospital, instead watching some sort of Greys Anatomy-style medical drama featuring you and all you want is for McDreamy to look your way.
Mel says quietly, “Becca looked like that when she told me. Happy, I mean.”
“See?” you sigh. “I can’t handle that.”
“But you want her to be happy.”
“Of course I do,” you say defensively. “Just…not with someone else.”
Mel is quiet for a long while, but when she speaks again, her voice is gentle but carries a harsher undertone. “That’s not very fair to her.”
You flinch a little. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” She turns her chair away from the monitor to face you. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
You flush. “I didn’t say she did.”
“Then why are you punishing her?”
Your head snaps up. “I’m not punishing her.”
“You won’t talk to her, you won’t look at her. You keep volunteering for anything that keeps you away from her.” Despite the harsh reality of her words, Mel’s voice remains quiet. Like she’s reciting facts, not judging you. “That’s a punishment.”
“I just -” your voice cracks. “I can’t pretend I’m fine with it.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” she says. “But you’re not acting like her friend.”
Your pitiful expression falls. “I am her friend.”
“Friends don’t disappear when things get hard.”
Your eyes sting and you blink fast, dispersing the tears. “I just don’t know how to do this,” you whisper.
Mel’s neutral expression softens with sympathy. “You could start by talking to her.”
“And say what?” you ask helplessly. “‘Hey, sorry I ghosted you at work because I couldn’t handle you going on a date?’”
Mel considers that. “Honestly? That would probably help, yeah.”
You laugh, ingenuine. “Not happening.”
Across the department, Cassie isn’t typing. Her patient chart sits untouched, cursor blinking on an empty line. Her focus is on you instead.
Watching you lean toward Mel, with your shoulders almost touching. Watching as your expression changes: pained, then defensive, then something else she can’t quite make out from so far away. Watching you laugh and give attention to someone else when she’s used to that attention belonging to her.
A nurse asks her something and she answers automatically, her eyes never leaving you.
Then you laugh at something Mel says.
Cassie stands up so abruptly her chair slams backward into the wall.
Both of you look up.
She’s not looking at you now. She just grabs a chart with more force than necessary and stomps off down the hall with rigid shoulders.
Your stomach sinks.
“Okay,” Mel says as she watches Cassie go. “Now she looks mad.”
You let your head drop back onto the desk again, your cheek pressed to the cool surface. “This is a disaster.”
Mel nudges your water bottle forward until it bumps your arm. “Hydrate.”
“I want to be sedated,” you whine.
“Not medically indicated.”
A laugh escapes you despite everything. “Why are we both like this?”
Mel doesn’t look at you as she smiles, her tongue poking the inside of her cheek. “Because my sister has a partner and you’re avoiding yours.”
You don’t correct her as you take the seat next to her, instead choosing to close your eyes as you lean against her for support.
On the other side of the room, Cassie pauses at the end of the hall and looks back.
You’re leaning against Mel now with your eyes shut, your temple resting against her shoulder like you’re too tired to hold yourself upright. Mel murmurs something she can’t make out.
Cassie’s jaw tightens.
This morning she was worried. Now she’s just angry.
◆ ───────── ◆ ───────── ◆
It boils over near the end of your shift, when everything and everyone is running on fumes.
You’re taking a two-second break from the nonstop chaos in the locker room, sitting on one of the wooden benches. The door is half-open, noise from the hall spilling in while you do your best not to focus on the overhead call for another incoming trauma.
“Are you kidding me right now?”
Your stomach drops out of your ass.
Reluctantly and slowly, you turn around.
Cassie stands in the doorway, her chest rising and falling a little too fast and her hair coming loose out of her ponytail. Her eyes are alight with anger that’s definitely not professional.
There’s nowhere for you to go. No Mel-shaped shield or nurse-shaped escape hatch. Just you and her and your two days worth of damage.
“I’m working,” you say, bracing your hands on your knees as you stand.
Cassie steps inside and kicks the door shut behind her with an alarming amount of force.
“No you’re not,” she says. “You’re hiding from me. Again.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“You’ve been hiding for two days.”
You fidget with your hands in front of you, trying to avoid the shake of adrenaline. “I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, busy avoiding me,” she snaps. “You switched assignments, you’re joining cases that aren’t yours, you volunteered to help turn over South-22! That’s not even your job!”
Your jaw clenches as you search your brain for an excuse. “Maybe I’m trying to be a team player.”
“Bullshit.” The word comes out with a humorless laugh.
She takes a step closer to you and you take a step back, backing up until your spine hits a locker.
“Did I do something to you?” she demands. “Because if I did, I’d really love to know what it was.”
“You didn’t.”
“Then why are you acting like I’m contagious?”
“I’m not -”
“You won’t talk to me,” she snaps, cutting you off. “You won’t look at me, you’re practically sprinting in the opposite direction anytime I get within ten feet of you.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and you can feel her anger giving way to hurt.
You stare at some point over her shoulder just so you don’t have to look at her.
“That’s not nothing.”
“I just…” Your eyes screw shut tight, your head tilting toward the ceiling. No avoiding it now. “I didn’t want to hear about your date, okay?”
Cassie pauses, and if your eyes were open, you’d see the way the anger on her face dissipates. “My date?”
“Yeah,” you say, crossing your arms. “Your date, last night, with that soccer player with the ankle sprain. You went out and had a great time, good for you.”
Her eyes widen, but it’s not relief or even satisfaction in them. It’s offence. “You think I had a great time?”
You shrug, finally opening your eyes only to look at the floor. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t.”
You blink rapidly, looking up at her despite yourself. “What?”
Cassie throws her hands up as she begins to pace in a tight line like a caged animal. “He spent twenty-five minutes explaining a portrait to me,” she says incredulously. “Twenty-five minutes, like I’d never seen art before, like I don’t know what impressionism is.”
Your brain stutters, trying to keep up with her. “Impre - what?”
“Brushstrokes,” she says, exasperated. “He mansplained brushstrokes to me.”
You laugh and immediately clamp a hand over your mouth to stop.
Cassie stops pacing, staring at you like she can’t decide if she’s still angry or just offended. “I kept thinking about how much you would’ve hated it,” she adds. “You would’ve made a face at me across the room, or we would’ve side-eyed each other like we do every time someone says something that we’re going to talk about later.”
Your chest hurts as guilt creeps back in.
“I went home early,” she says. “Alone.” She gives you a very pointed look with that last word.
“Oh,” you manage.
“Yeah, oh.” She hones in on you, stepping closer. “So why are you acting like I cheated on you?”
You flush. “I’m not.”
“You’ve been moping and avoiding me, and don’t think I didn’t catch you looking at my neck this morning like you’re checking for bite marks.”
Mortification floods you. “I was not -”
“You were.”
“I just -” you stop yourself and start over. “I just didn’t want proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That you were with someone else!”
Cassie’s brows draw together. “Someone else?”
You realize what you just said a little too late. “Nothing,” you say quickly. “Forget it.”
She takes another step closer, so close that you could reach out and touch her if you wanted. “No, don’t do that. Don’t say something like that and shut down.”
You shake your head, pushing back against the locker like you want to climb inside it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Your chest twists and you let out a sound that’s embarrassingly close to a whimper. “I thought…I thought you were happy. And I didn’t think I could watch that and pretend like it doesn’t bother me.”
She’s looking at you like she’s seeing you for the first time. “Why would it bother you?”
“Seriously?” You laugh weakly. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yes, seriously.”
Because you want her. Because you think about her too much, because the idea of her with someone else makes you want to throw up.
You don’t say any of that.
Instead you say, “You’re my best friend.”
Her expression hardens again. “Am I?”
“Yes!”
“Then why didn’t you just talk to me?”
“Because I didn’t trust myself to.” Your voice comes out small.
“To what?”
“Not say something I couldn’t take back.”
She takes one final step forward. There’s barely any space left between you now. “Like what?” she demands.
You can feel your pulse in your neck.
“Like that I didn’t want you going out with him,” you admit quietly.
Her eyes are scanning your face up close, looking for answers. “Why?”
You stare at her mouth. Big mistake.
“Because I didn’t like it,” you finally whine out. “I don’t want you to go out with him.”
Cassie’s gaze flicks between your eyes, then your lips, then your eyes again. Her voice is so quiet you can barely hear her.
“Are you jealous?”
You don’t answer, but your face twists into a pout - your brow furrowing, chin tightening as you draw your bottom lip up.
Her expression softens. “God,” she murmurs. “You’re fucking impossible.”
“Me?” you echo.
“I thought you were pulling away because you were tired of me,” she says. “Or because I did something wrong.”
Your breath stutters. “Cassie -”
“I went out with Brian because I thought I should try,” she continues. “You were acting like you didn’t want me around all day yesterday.”
“I heard you,” you blurt.
Cassie blinks at that, drawing her face back just a bit. “Heard me what?”
“I heard you talking to Dr. Mohan.”
Confusion is written on her face as she racks her brain for what you could’ve possibly overheard. Then horror dawns her face. “Oh my God,” she says. “You heard that?”
You flush again. “Hard not to.”
Cassie drags a hand down her face. “That was - I didn’t mean -”
“You said you needed to get laid,” you cut in sharply. “So yeah, I figured you weren’t exactly pining over your best friend while you went gallery-hopping with a hot patient.”
She stares at you, stunned. “You thought that’s why I went out with him?”
“What else was I supposed to think?”
“That I was venting,” she insists, “to a coworker about being single, like a normal person.”
“You don’t usually ask patients out right after announcing you need sex.”
Her jaw drops. “I did not ask him out for sex.”
“But you said -”
“I was frustrated!” she snaps. “And lonely, and you were acting like you didn’t want me around anymore.” Both hands fly to either side of her head and she looks like she’s trying hard not to rip her own hair out. “I figured I should stop waiting for you to act like I matter to you!”
“You always matter,” you say immediately, voice breaking as your face crumples.
“Then stop acting like you don’t care.”
“I do care.”
“Good.”
Her hands come up, gripping your black scrub top like she needs something solid to hold onto.
“Because I care too,” she says, both fierce and shaky all at once. “And you’ve been driving me insane.”
Your heart is pounding so hard that you think she can feel it through your shirt. “Cassie -”
She kisses you.
Her mouth crashes against yours, warm and desperate as she fists your shirt so tight you couldn’t pull away even if you wanted to. Your brain blanks out completely before instinct takes over. You kiss her back, hands sliding to her waist to hold her in return. You’re still pressed up against the lockers, trapped between them and Cassie’s body, soft against yours.
When you break apart, both of you are breathing hard. She leans her forehead against yours, her eyes still closed like she’s afraid to open them.
“Oh,” you breathe, eloquent as ever.
Cassie lets out a little laugh. “Yeah.” Silence falls before she adds, “You’re still a terrible friend.”
You wince. “I know.”
“But you’re my terrible friend.”
Relief and affection bloom in your chest, swelling with emotion.
“Brian never stood a chance,” she mutters.
You huff, aiming for a chuckle but it falls flat. “Good.”
Her eyes open as she takes in your disheveled state. Then she leans in again, slowly, like she’s giving you space to pull away if you want.
Summary: Dana has been trying to find the right time for weeks now, if she could just make everything go perfectly for once. Alternatively: 4 times Dana tries to propose, and the 1 time she finally does.
CW: fluff, 4+1 trope, description of allergic reaction, reader wears makeup and has hair long enough to pin back
WC: 6.3k
Sequel to Three Weeks.
A/N: this request is from @tiredbisexualwithadhd 💛 Thanks for the request and the idea and for being so patient, I hope it lives up!
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
The emergency department feels like it’s trying to tear itself apartment.
Patients are arguing in the waiting room, one is throwing a fit in triage, and hospital staff are running through the emergency department so frantically that they’re nearly colliding with each other.
Dana barely notices. “Has anyone seen Dr. Garcia?” she calls openly into the ED.
“She’s over in radiology.”
“Of course she is.” Dana runs a hand over her face. “Okay, don’t let her go back upstairs yet, Mohan needs her for a consult. Where’s Langdon?”
Dr. Whitaker pauses, having been speed-walking past the nurse’s station when Dana asks. “I think I saw him headed toward the break room a minute ago.”
“Tell him I need him to pick up another patient asap, he’s not as fast as he used to be.”
“Dana.”
“What?”
Robby appears beside her with a coffee in hand and an expression that’s way too calm for the state of the emergency department around them. “You’re yelling,” he says.
“I’m aware,” Dana says, smoothing a hand over a few stray strands of hair that have falling out of her claw clip.
“You’re scaring my med students.”
Dana leans back just far enough to look past him to see one of said med students immediately look away.
“Good, fear builds character.”
Robby chuckles at that, leaning against the workstation counter as he watches Dana sign off on another chart. “You seem more stressed than usual,” he says before taking a sip of his own coffee.
Dana rolls her eyes. “Not everybody can disappear on a three month sabbatical when they start spiraling.”
He shrugs. “Some of us develop healthier coping mechanisms than others.”
Dana levels him with a look. “Name one.”
“I bought a motorcycle.”
“And then you never wear a fuckin’ helmet, that’s not healthy, Robinovich.”
Robby watches her for a moment before saying calmly, “I think work isn’t the only reason you’re stressed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs, taking another sip of his coffee before answering. “Don’t act like we both don’t know what’s hiding in the bottom of your backpack right now.”
Dana freezes before rounding on him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You going through my stuff now?”
“No,” he says quickly, “I just know you’ve been carrying it around ever since you bought it because you can’t figure out how you’re going to do it.”
Her eyes are still narrowed in suspicion when she sags in defeat. “Is it that obvious?”
“To anyone who knows you? Yeah.” Robby leans in with a smug little smile. “How long has it been now?”
Lips pursing, she sighs. “A week.”
He looks taken aback. “You’ve been carrying an engagement ring around the hospital for a week?”
“Lower your fuckin’ voice,” Dana hisses, looking around to make sure Princess and Perlah aren’t listening in. “I just haven’t had time.”
“You haven’t had time to figure out how you’re going to propose to your girlfriend?”
“Don’t call her that,” she snaps, running a weary hand over her face. “This is a big deal and I just wanna get it right.”
Robby watches her cautiously for a moment before landing a heavy hand on her shoulder. “You know she’s going to say yes, right? You’re overthinking this.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Before Dana can continue to argue, someone from the nurse’s station calls her name urgently.
Robby steps aside so she can move past him, but he catches her arm briefly before she goes. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she’s gonna care where you ask.”
There’s no humor in the laugh Dana gives him in response, and she doesn’t even look at him as she says, “Easy for you to say.” Then she disappears in the direction of the nurse’s station, more stressed than she was before.
Robby is left smirking to himself as he watches her go, and is still in the same spot he’d been standing in when the automatic doors to the ambulance bay slide open, this time with no paramedics rushing in.
Dana doesn’t even notice. She’s halfway across the department, slamming down the red phone to announce the chest pain that’s coming in via ambulance when she looks up and sees you.
You’re stepping through the doors balancing at least three pizza boxes in your arms, with plastic bags hanging from both wrists, and two cardboard drink trays balance precariously on top of the boxes.
Suddenly, you have the attention of the entire department at once.
“Is that food?”
“Please tell me one of those coffees is mine.”
“You’re my favorite person.”
You laugh breathlessly. “If somebody could maybe help me before I drop all of this, that’d be great.”
Langdon appears from nowhere (which brings an immediate scowl to Dana’s face), relieving you of the drink trays, and Mateo is on your left, lifting the pizza boxes from your arms, leaving you with only the bags around your arms.
“Oh my god, are those donuts too?”
“You people work like fifteen-hour shifts, you don’t eat unless somebody makes you,” you laugh. “Trust me, I know the drill. Help me get all of this to the break room.”
You follow Langdon and Mateo, laying it all out on the tables in the lounge and quickly snagging Dana’s coffee from the tray before anyone else digs in. You weave your way out of the room just as the rush of doctors and nurses start heading in past you. Some clap you on the shoulder as they pass, murmuring a sincere “thank you.”
You make your way back to the nurse’s station and slide up beside Dana, sliding the coffee toward her. “This one’s yours.” Medium roast, two sugars, with a splash of oat milk. You don’t have to say it and she doesn’t have to ask, you know how she likes it. “You didn’t have breakfast this morning.”
“It’s been a busy day.”
“Mmm,” you nod in agreement, more placating her than anything. “When is it not?” From your own bag hanging from your shoulder, you pull a small paper bag, folded over on itself. Inside is an everything bagel, toasted, with cream cheese.
Dana suddenly feels disconnected from the rest of the ER. The sounds of footsteps and her coworkers around her fade into the distance, because this - this stupid coffee handoff in the middle of the emergency room feels unbearably intimate and she could kiss you right here if she knew she wouldn’t pay for it later with hospital gossip.
You notice Dana staring off into space and your expression twists into concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says too quickly. But her eyes travel toward the hallway leading to the lockers. She could go get it, right now. Right now would be good.
You tilt your head, trying to get into her line of sight. “Dana?”
The thought arrives to her, sudden and without warning, to ask you. The ring is fifty feet away, she could do it now, in the ER, surrounded by some of the people she’s closest to -
“Shit, I gotta get back.” You’re looking down at your watch, a grimace on your face.
Dana’s heart plummets. “What?”
“I’m already pushing it on my break,” you say apologetically. “I just wanted to make sure you ate something.”
Dana squares her shoulders, irritation blooming in her mind. Not at you, of course, but at her own indecisiveness. “Right now?” she asks.
You’re surprised by the question. Dana isn’t usually one to want you to stick around, she usually does her best to keep you out of her ER. “Yeah?”
Robby is watching the entire interaction with thinly-veiled amusement, like this is the best reality show he’s ever seen. He saw all of it happen in real time, the moment that Dana very clearly decided this could be it.
You reach out, your hand landing on Dana’s arm. “Don’t look at me like that,” you say with a smile. “I’ll see you tonight when you get home, alright?” You lean in and kiss her cheek quickly, acutely aware of how much Dana is not fond of PDA.
She opens her mouth and it almost looks like she’s going to argue with you for a moment, but in the end, nothing comes out. If she asks you to wait, you’ll know something’s up, and if she runs to her locker for the ring, you’ll definitely know something is happening. So instead, she just watches as you back out of the department, waving goodbye to the rest of the staff while several people yell thank-yous after you.
That was it. The moment had been right there, and she let it slip through her hands.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
The next attempt is made four days later.
The apartment is low-lit and warm, with music playing from the Bluetooth speaker connected to your phone in the kitchen, where you’re posted up, making dinner. You’d seen Dana’s location begin to move from the hospital about twenty minutes ago and started food right away, knowing she’d be both tired and hungry when she got home.
And you’re right.
On the other side of your apartment door, standing in the hallway that leads to your apartment, Dana stands on the other side of the door with her key in her hand, heart racing and mind moving a million miles per hour.
Because tonight, she’s going to ask. No more waiting for a perfect moment, or rehearsing in her head until she talks herself out of it. And no more carrying around this stupid ring, it’s just begging to be stolen. She’s just going to do it and get it done.
She unlocks the door and steps into the apartment.
“Hey,” she calls out into the apartment as she drops her bag on the floor in the entryway.
“In here,” she hears you call from the kitchen.
Dana walks further in, rolling her shoulders out of her jacket as she goes, hanging it on the coatrack behind the door. And as she rounds the corner into the kitchen, she sees you.
You’re wearing only a sports bra and pajama pants that sit dangerously low on your hips, your body is so soft that it should be illegal at the end of a day like the one she’s had. Barefoot, unbothered and relaxed in a way Dana could only dream of being right now. You’re stirring whatever’s in that pot on the stove with one hand, scrolling through your phone with the other.
Dana stops in the doorway, completely forgetting what she came home with the intention of doing.
You look over your shoulder at the sound of her footsteps shuffling in. “You look like you got hit by a truck,” you tease.
“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” she says flatly. “Whatcha making?” She cranes her head to get a look at the pot.
“Pasta,” you say, the tiniest bit of tension lacing your voice at what you know is to come.
Dana pauses. “…you break the noodles again?”
“They don’t fit in the pot otherwise!” you whine, childlike, waving around the spoon you were using to stir. “Besides, you’ll eat it anyways.”
“I’ll eat it anyways,” she repeats with a laugh.
She saddles up next to you, one hand reaching out and settling on your back against your bare skin, and you unconsciously lean back against the warmth of her palm. Dana doesn’t usually dawdle after work, she almost always disappears to shower right away, which is your first clue that something is off.
“Bad shift?” you ask, glancing over your shoulder at her.
“Long shift,” she corrects with a sigh.
You nod, understanding the difference without asking for details, because you know she won’t want to give them when she’s tired like this. “Go. Shower. Food will be almost ready when you’re done.”
Dana nods, even though she doesn’t want to go shower. If she leaves this room right now, she might lose her nerve, and then who knows if she’ll find it again? Nevertheless, the ick at the thought of staying in her scrubs for much longer wins out, and she disappears into the master bath for the fastest shower she’s ever taken.
She makes it back in record time, not quite feeling as refreshed as she usually would after a post-shift shower, but better than still smelling like sick people.
You don’t even have to turn around to know she’s returned. “I got that sauce you like, the one with the -”
“Sun-dried tomatoes,” Dana says, finishing the sentence for you.
“Yeah, that one, I remembered this time!”
You don’t see the fond smile that crosses Dana’s face as she stares at your back. “Of course you did.” You don’t even hear the weight in it. You’re already hustling around the kitchen, plating both her food and your own.
This is it, she thinks. The exact moment, when there’s no interruption, just the two of you in the kitchen, in soft clothes.
Dana takes a deep breath. “I was thinking -”
You cut her off with a yawn.
Well, you don’t cut her off, not in the rude way that interrupting would. But you yawn and it stops her in her tracks as you stretch your limbs and roll your shoulders.
“Sorry,” you say quickly, blinking it away. “I just can’t shake the tired today.”
The words stall in Dana’s throat and she curses internally as the moment fades away.
You move past it like it’s nothing, because you don’t know that it’s not nothing for her. “Okay, we need to eat, like, right now, because I need to sit down before I fall asleep standing up.”
“…alright.”
You pause, glancing over at her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
But you’re looking at her like you always do when you know she’s not telling the whole truth, a scrutinizing, questioning look on your face. But instead of pushing her for the truth, you kiss her cheek as you pass with both plates full of pasta in your hands and head toward the living room.
“Good,” you say, “because I missed you today.” You set the plates down on the coffee table, clearly already having decided that tonight was the night to forego the formality of your dining room table and instead eating on the couch.
Dana joins you a second later, settling into the spot next to you as you talk. You talk about your coworker, you talk about the traffic on your way home from work. The mindless topics that couples talk about after they’ve been together for so long that there are no more big topics left.
And yet, you’re the one talking.
Now don’t get you wrong, that isn’t uncommon at all. Most days, Dana comes home too exhausted to keep up conversation, and frankly, she’s tired of talking at other people. It’s nice to come home and listen to the pleasant tone of your voice as you tell her about anything and everything that crosses your mind. She usually even asks you to keep talking when you stop, when you’re worried about talking too much.
But you can see that something’s on your partner’s mind. Dana doesn’t usually wear her emotions on her face, except for those moments when she’s too tired to hide them, and that’s where you find yourself now.
You move a little on the cushion, angling yourself towards her. “What?”
Dana blinks like she’s coming back to the conversation, like she had forgotten you could see her. “Nothing.”
You laugh, because that’s the least nothing “nothing” ever. “Dana.”
She sighs, pursing her lips. “You ever think,” she starts thoughtfully, “that maybe people make too big a deal out of things?”
You raise an eyebrow. “That’s vague.”
Dana smiles, looking down at her bowl. “Yeah, well…” The ring is still in her bag, but she could go get it. Or she could ask and then go get it. No, no, she needs it first, she can’t ask without presenting you with a ring.
You wait patiently for her to continue without pushing.
Dana swallows, trying to find the words. “I just mean…sometimes people spend so much time trying to make a moment perfect that they end up missing it entirely.” She laughs shortly, moreso at herself.
Maybe this is it. Maybe she doesn’t need the speech she practiced in the car a few days ago, maybe she doesn’t need candles or reservations, maybe she just -
You yawn again beside her, sleepily enough that your head tips toward her shoulder afterward. “Sorry,” you mumble. “Keep going.”
Dana’s face melts into a smile. “You’re falling asleep,” she says, nudging you with her elbow.
“I’m listening,” you insist, but it’s weak.
She looks down at the top of your head for a moment before choosing to go on. “I’ve been thinking that lately that maybe there are some things I don’t say enough.”
“Mhm.”
Dana’s thumb brushes against your arm as she reaches to touch your skin. “I think maybe…” she starts again, but the sentence trails off. Not because she’s lost courage, but because she feels your weight heavier against her side.
When she glances down, even leaning forward to look at you, she finds that your eyes have closed and your breathing has evened out completely.
Her expression twists in disbelief. “Seriously?”
You do not respond. You can’t, because you’re fast asleep, still with a nearly-full bowl of pasta in your lap.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
For once, the emergency department is quiet.
Multiple people would slap Dana if they even knew she was thinking the q-word, but she can’t help it. There’s no way it isn’t on everybody’s mind. Chairs is under control for once, nobody’s bleeding in triage, and nobody in the entire department is actively dying. It feels unnatural.
Dana leans back in her chair in the nurse’s station while rough-drafting next month’s nurse rotation schedule because for once it’s calm enough in here that she doesn’t have to do it at home.
Robby slides up beside her, leaning against the desk and glancing around the department suspiciously. “I don’t trust this.”
Dana doesn’t look up, adjusting her reading glasses. “Neither do I.”
“It’s too calm.”
“Well, because you said that, it won’t be for long.”
“Maybe everybody in the city decided to stop making bad decisions all at once,” he jokes.
Dana tsks and the slight shift in her posture causes the weight in her scrub pants pocket to shift. Her hand reaches down to steady it automatically before she can even think about it.
The movement doesn’t go unnoticed by Robby. “What is that?” he asks slowly.
“Don’t,” Dana warns, her eyes never leaving the schedule.
“Are you carrying it with you right now?”
“I always carry it.”
“No,” Robby corrects, sitting up straighter. “Usually you carry it in your backpack, today you’re carrying it in your pocket.”
Dana finally glances up at him, pulling her reading glasses off her face and lifting an eyebrow.
Robby’s face breaks out into a smile. “Oh my god,” he says. “You’re actually gonna do it.”
Looking back down at the schedule in front of her, Dana can’t help the smug smile that begins to make it’s way across her face, giving her away instantly. “Tonight,” she confirms. “I’ve decided, I’m done overthinking it. I just need to do it.”
“That’s very grown up of you,” Robby says, clapping a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t ruin this for me.”
The red phone rings and Robby, closest to it, picks it up without hesitation. He listens for a moment before hanging up. “EMS incoming, allergic reaction with epi administered in the field. Three minutes out.” He pushes up off the desk with a stretch. “Nothing good ever lasts.”
Despite Robby’s comments, allergic reactions aren’t usually complicated once epi’s been administered, especially if done quickly. While epi-pens are handy, they only delay issues, and most allergic reactions are standard aftermath procedure rather than acute emergency.
The paramedics are wheeling a stretcher inside the bay doors quickly, though nobody is running, the lack of urgency confirming that this is most likely aftermath.
“Shellfish exposure at her workplace,” one of them is saying. “Patient self-administered epi-pen approximately eight minutes prior to arrival. Airway remained open throughout transport but hives have been worsening -”
Dana freezes, recognizing the jacket on the stretcher. Because she hates that jacket, she only ever keeps her mouth shut about it because she knows that specific shade of golden yellow is your favorite -
Everything else in the ER fades into white noise as Dana catches sight of you sitting upright on the stretcher. Your skin is flushed, with blotchy hives climbing up your neck, and you look terrified as your eyes scan the inside of the ER, looking for her.
Dana is at the side of your stretcher in an instant. “What happened?”
One of the paramedics starts to answer, telling her your vitals, about your airway, but she waves him off with a hand in his face, looking at you expectantly.
“Mandy brought food in,” you rasp. “There was shrimp in one of the dishes, she forgot I was allergic and I didn’t ask.”
“How much did you eat?” she demands.
“Not a lot.”
Dana is silent for a moment as she assesses you. “Get her into North-3, I want another set of vitals and respiratory on standby.”
The paramedics obediently move you into said room, Dana beside the stretcher the entire way. She helps with the transfer, despite your insistence that you can move yourself from the stretcher to the bed without help.
You’re stable, that’s the important part. Your oxygen levels are good, your blood pressure is recovering, the swelling never even fully compromised your airway. The second dose of antihistamines is already making the hives fade from the angry red to a just slightly pissed-off shade of dark pink.
Logically, Dana knows all of this. But emotionally, she’s one tight breath away from ripping apart your coworker with her bare hands.
“You need to stop glaring at her monitor,” Robby says from beside her.
Dana doesn’t look away from your room. “I’m not glaring.”
“Are too.”
Through the glass, you’re sitting upright in the hospital bed, blanket pulled over your legs while you scroll absently on your phone. You look exhausted, and you’re still flushed.
“She’s okay,” Robby adds.
“I know.”
That doesn’t stop her from drifting towards North-3 every few minutes, checking on you. Just in case.
Once, while she’s watching you from her normal spot inside the nurse’s station, you look up and catch her eye through the window and smile brightly at her, like you aren’t sitting in a hospital bed after being brought in by ambulance. Like this is normal and fine.
And there it is again: that unbearable warmth in her chest every time you smile at her - no, every time you look at her. The ring box presses against her thigh from inside her pants pocket again. Tonight, that little voice in the back of her mind whispers.
She looks at you again, at the hives scattered across your neck, at the hospital gown and the bracelets around your wrists: the hospital details, the red allergy warning, and the yellow Fall Risk one sitting just above the red.
Absolutely not, you would kill her.
If Dana proposed to you while you were sitting in an ER bed covered in hives, you would never let her live it down.
Of course this would happen today.
“I’m starting to think the universe might have it out for you.” It’s meant to be empathetic, but all Robby’s really doing right now is pissing her off.
“I’m glad my suffering is entertaining for you.”
“No, no,” Robby says, trying to hold the smile off his face. “I’m just imagining you trying to propose while she’s hooked up to a pulse ox. You know she’d still say yes, so why are you making such a big deal of this?”
“That’s not the point.”
No, it isn’t. Dana doesn’t want you to say yes out of fear or adrenaline, and certainly not just because you’re relieved you aren’t dead. She wants you laughing in your kitchen, or warm in your shared bed, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re safe. She wants the moment to just belong to the two of you and apparently the universe keeps taking that personally.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Three weeks pass before Dana tries again.
Three weeks of the ring sitting in the bottom of her backpack to make sure that you don’t come across it accidentally. And it’s not because she’s changed her mind, definitely not, but rather because apparently every time she decided to propose, the universe responded by waging war. Either on your life or her psyche.
Dana calls it “pattern recognition.”
Robby calls it “avoidance.”
“You do know that your girlfriend surviving an allergic reaction is not a sign from the universe, right?” he’d said at one point, when she told him she was taking a break from the pressure she’d been putting on herself.
“Don’t call her that.”
And now somehow, despite all of that, Dana is standing in your shared bedroom buttoning the cuffs of the black blazer she’s wearing over her dress tonight with hands that are just a little too shaky, while trying very hard not to think too much about the velvet box hidden inside the pocket of this very jacket.
Tonight. Again. For real this time.
You appear in the bedroom doorway halfway through Dana wrestling with the cufflinks. She should’ve been smart enough to do this without putting the jacket on first.
Dana looks up briefly from her cuffs to you and does a double take, stopping her wrestling with the jacket to stare.
You don soft blue satin, with sleeves low enough on your shoulders that the sight of your collarbone almost causes Dana to forget her own name. Your hair is half pinned back, with just the tiniest bit of makeup on.
Beautiful.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” you ask with narrowed eyes.
Dana recovers quickly. “You look nice, am I not allowed to look at my own partner?”
Your laughter fills the room as you step further inside the bedroom, reaching out to help Dana finish buttoning her cuffs. “You look good too.”
Dana looks down at the dress that had been your idea. Black with long sleeves, not overly formal, but short enough that she had to wear opaque tights with it in case she happened to be on one knee at any point this evening. She didn’t really feel like flashing the entire restaurant. She lets you fix the collar of the jacket, your fingers smoothing along the base of her throat.
“Are you nervous?” you ask casually.
Dana almost chokes on her own spit. “What?”
“You’re doing that thing with your jaw,” you say, gesturing toward her mouth. “You grind your teeth when you’re stressed, I can see you clenching.”
She forces herself to unclench immediately, and you grin like you caught her doing something embarrassing.
You giggle at the look on her face before leaning in to kiss her. “We’re just going to dinner,” you mumble against her mouth.
Well, for you it’s just dinner. For Dana, this evening feels balanced on the edge of changing the rest of her life. Luckily for her, you pull back before she can spiral too hard.
“Ready?”
The restaurant is perfect for the occasion, the one you don’t even know about. It’s got low lighting and real candles on the tables and live piano music from somewhere in the restaurant. It’s the kind of place where the menus don’t list prices because if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. The kind of place where people get engaged.
You love it. It’s like a romance movie.
“Dana,” you whisper as the hostess leads you to a table, “this place is insane.”
Dana nods with a smug smile that doesn’t at all give away the fact that she spent two weeks trying to get this reservation. When you reach your table, she pulls your chair out for you before you can even reach for it yourself.
You grin up at her after taking your seat. “You’re being weirdly gentlemanly tonight.”
The waiter appears almost immediately with water, menus, and a bottle of wine that Dana doesn’t remember ordering but apparently selected during the online reservation process.
Everything is perfect. The restaurant is beautiful, you look incredible, the ring is in the pocket of the jacket that hangs on the back of her chair. Everything is lined up exactly the way she planned it, but somehow, Dana feels less prepared than ever.
Casual conversation, you’ll have dinner, and then the proposal around dessert. It’s easy.
Except the waiter interrupts twice while Dana’s trying to ask you about your day, and then your order comes out totally wrong, and the couple beside you is having what sounds like the final argument before a divorce.
When your food finally comes out (correctly this time), you’re studying Dana over the rim of your wine glass as you take a sip before finally deciding to say something. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“You’re being really weird tonight, what is up with you?”
Dana’s hands twitch toward her jacket pocket before she can stop herself, like she didn’t even mean to. You don’t seem to notice, or if you do, you don’t say anything about it.
“Are you okay?”
She hates how much she wants to answer that question honestly. Because the truth is that she’s terrified. Not that you’ll say no, she knows you’re going to say yes. But that somehow, she’ll fail to explain what this means to her. That the words she has won’t feel big enough, and that this moment, as planned and rehearsed as it is, still won’t hold the enormity of how much she loves you.
“I’m okay.”
You don’t look convinced.
But before either of you can continue, the waiter reappears carrying another tray, and everything goes wrong at once.
It happens very fast. There’s an apology as someone bumps into the waiter, a metal tray slipping from a flat hand, and the tilt of a wine glass, and suddenly red wine spills directly down your front. Pale blue, now complimented by a deep red.
Every table around you freezes. Even the couple at the table next to you pause their argument to watch.
“Oh my god,” the waiter breathes, horrified.
Dana’s eyes go wide.
And you burst out laughing. Not polite or embarrassed laughter, but full belly laughter as you stare down the front of your clothes.
“Well,” you say as soon as you can get a breath in, wiping your eyes to avoid your mascara running down your face. “At least nobody can accuse this place of having small pours.”
The waiter looks like he’s literally about to die from embarrassment.
Dana stares at you, taking in the wine dripping down your dress and the candlelight catching your genuine smile and the way you’re trying to reassure the waiter instead of getting upset. And her shoulders slump as she relaxes for the first time all day. The perfection is ruined.
Thank god.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ♠ ━━━━━━━━━━━
You escape from the restaurant almost immediately. Mostly because the moment the initial shock wears off, your embarrassment catches up to you all at once and you both agree it’s time to get out of there.
So the waitstaff boxes up your food and you decline the free dessert, but you do accept the restaurant’s horrified offer of a discount, getting 40% off the food you’re definitely going to go eat at home on your couch.
You make it home in record time, Dana driving like a bat out of hell so that you don’t have to sit in wet clothes longer than necessary. But even as you pull into the apartment parking lot, you’re both laughing, and Dana realizes something important: that this, you rambling beside her in ruined clothes while takeout cools in the back seat of the car, feels way better to her than the version of the night she worked so hard to plan.
As soon as you’re back in the comfort of your own apartment, you disappear into the bedroom, and you strip out of your ruined clothes while bundling them in your arms. Dana slips into the kitchen to get your food out of the boxes and onto plates, and she lays her jacket across the island to hang up later. The ring box is still tucked safely inside the pocket, waiting.
“Babe? Is this shirt yours or mine?”
Dana looks toward the hallway, but you don’t appear. “Depends, are you gonna give it back if you put it on?”
“…no.”
“Then it’s yours.”
“Great, thanks!”
Dana smiles to herself as she plates both your food and her own, and it still looks just as good as it did in the restaurant.
You emerge a minute later wearing one of Dana’s oversized t-shirts and a pair of pajama shorts so short that wearing them in public would be a hazard. Your hair is messy where you’d slipped your old clothes off without worrying about fixing it.
Dana looks up and catches sight of you, and there it is again, that feeling, and suddenly she isn’t listening to you anymore, she has no idea if you’re even talking. Everything has gone very quiet inside her.
You notice. You notice everything about her. “Hey, are you okay?”
She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. “I was going to wait for something else.”
The fork is halfway to your mouth when you pause. “Wait for what?” you prompt.
“I thought…I kept thinking if I didn’t do it perfectly…then it wouldn’t mean enough.” She sighs again, opening her eyes to look at you. “But that’s not how you and I work.”
You put your fork down. “You’re not making any sense right now -”
“You take care of me.”
You blink at the sudden interruption, so out of left field. “I mean, yeah, you do the same for me.”
“No,” Dana says, shaking her head. “You bring me food when I forget to eat, you wait up when I’m late even though you’re tired. And you don’t just do it when it’s easy, you do it when it’s scary. When I’m not…the easiest to be around. When I shut down or get in my head or pretend I’m fine when I’m not.”
You open your mouth to respond, but Dana shakes her head again. “Let me finish.”
She takes another breath, still shaky. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, since I took some time off last year,” she admits. “About how you’ve shown up for me in every part of my life I didn’t think anyone would want to stick around for.”
She doesn’t have to say it out loud: you know how much it hurt her when Benji told her he couldn’t continue to watch her burn herself out at the hospital anymore, that it was him or her career.
“I’ve been trying to do this for weeks,” she says. “And I realized tonight that there’s just never gonna be a perfect moment. There’s always gonna be something that interrupts us, or messes things up, or ruins the mood.”
Dana lifts her jacket from the island and digs into the pocket, and this time she doesn’t hesitate as she places the box on the island between the two of you. There are no candles or fancy restaurant, no onlookers there to witness. Just the two of you in a kitchen that smells like takeout.
“I’m not going to ask you a question.”
That makes you pause, and you eye her cautiously as you wait for her to continue.
“Because I already know the answer,” she continues. “I want to spend my life with you, and I’m hoping you want that with me too.”
For a long minute, you just stare at her, and she returns the eye contact expectantly. Your breath catches once, then again almost immediately.
“Oh my -” you start, but your voice breaks halfway through and you take a frustrated breath to try and steady yourself.
Dana’s eyebrows lift. “Hey.” That’s all she says, like it’s her version of “it’s okay.”
Your eyes flick down to the box on the counter and then back to her, then back to the box again. “You -” you try again, but this time your voice actually cracks. “Oh my god.”
Her expression twists into concern. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay, don’t cry.”
But you’re already shaking your head, tears stinging at your waterline, laughing at your own absurdity. “No, I just -” you try to swallow the lump in your throat. “I can’t believe you waited until I changed into pajamas.”
That catches Dana off-guard. “What?”
You gesture down at yourself, like it’s obvious. “I was in nice clothes. Ones you made me put on, ones that survived wine. And you let me change into this ratty shirt and -” your voice pitches up a little, incredulous even through tears, “-this is when you decide to do it?”
Dana stares at you, her own eyes wide. “…that’s your takeaway from this?”
You laugh again but it’s wet now, and you’re made completely a mess. “You are unbelievable,” you say as you step toward her, your hands coming up to her face. “I love you so much.”
And this time, when she leans in and kisses you, it doesn’t feel like interruption or timing or luck or anything else that tried to get in the way before. It’s just right.
