communist jinx

Baran sighs and sets down the folder, hands coming up to press deep into her eyes. 

“Not that one either?” Gloria muses from her left. Baran likes Gloria, at least far more than the average doctor in this hospital, but she’s been a nuisance the entire hiring process. Gloria suggests Baran calls you and asks you politely to come back. After the fourth attempt, Baran had snapped that if Gloria missed you so dearly, she could call you herself. 

“He had no previous experience in a trauma center,” Baran sighs, tipping her head back against the wall from her swivel chair. “That would be fine if we were hiring a new RN, but Y/N was an NP, so we need a new one of those.”

Gloria just stares blankly at her, and Baran is reminded how little this woman actually understands the inner workings of the hospital. She’s a glorified bureaucrat. 

“More schooling,” Baran summarizes. She’s too tired to say more. 

“There have to be more NPs in the Pittsburgh area,” Gloria says. “Why didn’t we send out a hiring request specifically for those?”

“We did. There’s a job market crisis, though, Gloria, it’s no surprise anyone even semi-qualified decides just to give it a shot.”

“Well, that seems like a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Well, you could try to sympathize with the unemployed people of Pittsburgh.”

Gloria shoots her a look at that, as do the three other men in the room whose names Baran can’t remember but doesn’t care to ask, because no one in this room cares to pronounce her name right. They can all fuck right off.

“Is there a problem, Dr. Al-Hashimi?” one of the bald men asks, and Baran wants to rip out her hair at the butchering of her name even after two years of her fronting the ER.

“Al-Hash-ih-mee,” she corrects, eyes already flipping through the next application. “Once again, it doesn’t rhyme with ‘creamy.’ I spelled phonetically on my application when you hired me, unless none of you actually read it?”

“Baran,” Gloria gasps, head swivelling to her. “Should we all take a break?”

Baran is already standing. “I think that would be wise.”

Gloria and the three men reluctantly stand and automatically move to huddle at the other side of the conference table, but Baran has no interest in debriefing with any of them. She finds the door and shoves it open open-palmed and lets her feet carry her back into the ER. 

Samira winces when they see her. “That bad?”

Baran just shakes her head, both hands running over her head to try and smooth down the hair. “It’s ridiculous. They’re all imbeciles who just want to get another body in here so this can get off their plate. Gloria didn’t even know the qualifications for the role.”

Samira grimaces, turning to survey the pitt. From an outward perspective one probably couldn’t visibly detect how understaffed they are, but ask any patient, any doctor, any nurse. They’re drowning. “What, is she suggesting we lower the requirements?” Baran huffs a laugh. “No. I won’t stand for that. They’re all just lazy, as I said, and aren’t actually interested in hiring someone with the same talent as—”

She swallows your name sourly.

Samira sighs, allowing their weight to rest against the wall as they tuck their chart under their arm. “I still can’t believe Y/N is gone. Trin and I have texted her probably no less than twenty times each asking her to get drinks or something but it’s been radio silence.”

Baran intentionally doesn’t display her surprise. “Oh, really? Nothing? What about with Javadi?”

“Nothing either,” Samira shrugs. “I can’t tell if she blocked all of us or got a new phone or what. I just hope she’s okay, finding a new job right now has to be a bitch.” 

Samira pauses, eyes going wide, “I mean—”

“I don’t care if you curse, Samira,” Baran sighed, “I agree with you. It can’t be easy.”

“Just, like, did we ever get a reason? Did she seriously just Irish goodbye all of us?”

Baran’s phone buzzes with a text from Gloria, already, asking if she’s calmed down enough to ‘revisit the agenda.’ Baran scans over the incoming admits out of some mildly masochistic hope someone will come in injured enough to offer her an excuse to ditch. But the ER, probably just to spite her, is relatively calm.

She tucks her phone away. “Y/N had personal leave. She was entitled.” 

“Sure, sure,” Samira nods. “It just doesn’t seem like her. But, maybe I didn’t know her very well.”

No, Baran thinks, maybe I didn’t either. 

ꕥ

"My lot is descending a lonely staircase to something rotting and falling apart in its exile."

You don’t have enough money to leave Pittsburgh entirely and take root somewhere new, but you have enough self-respect to know you cannot work at PTMC anymore.

Maybe it was stupid think you ever could’ve. You know yourself well enough to know how it would have grated on you, trying to balance the line between Baran as a boss and Baran as a lover. There’s a power dynamic there that you can’t ignore as much as you love her. Or, loved. Whatever. 

The past two weeks since you left PTMC have not been fun. The first three nights Baran came to your apartment and knocked for thirty minutes straight, but you just put in your airpods and blasted music and waited her out. You knew she wouldn’t stay forever because her maternal instincts would pull her back to her son, and sure enough she’d always be gone by 9. 

The fourth night you printed out a piece of paper that said “WARNING: AGGRESSIVE DOG ON PROPERTY, WILL BITE!” and slapped it on your apartment door. The millisecond you heard her first knock you pulled up a 30 minute long “angry dogs barking” video on YouTube and used that to drown her out. She stopped trying to talk to you in-person after that.

But Baran hasn’t stopped messaging you. Oh, no. Every day you wake up to at least five emails from her to your work email (you’ve blocked her number over text, no clue how she found out.) Usually two of them are long-winded pleas for you to come back to PTMC. A couple others are forwarded notices of another hospital’s job opening. Occasionally she’ll send a link to a government benefit, a detailed infographic on how to collect unemployment, a PDF of a peer-reviewed article about the psychological effects of job loss. Sometimes it’s as simple as “I hope you’re okay. Let me know if you need anything.” Those ones you delete with a shaking finger. 

It’s patronizing and oppressive but also painful because you can picture her perfectly, hip against her marble counter in the early mornings, head half-tilted to make sure Kaveh is brushing his teeth, shaky thumbs tapping out message after message out of worry. She doesn’t want you to sink. She doesn’t know if you already have.

You watch the bubbles accumulate from Donnie, Dana, and Perlah who always signs off her messages with a “heart, P & P” so you know Princess is fretting over you too. Those you answer. Nurses look out for nurses, and you know whatever you say to them won’t be passed along.

Most of Dana’s messages are light-hearted and easy. She offers to smuggle you back in, give you a haircut and dye your hair and give you a nose piercing (she reveals she had one in her teenage years, she’ll send you a photo if you come back) so that Baran won’t spot you. They’ll give you a kickass pseudonym witness-protection style. All you have to do is come home.

You answer her always, but refuse and refuse. Eventually, Dana’s messages dwindle.

Samira and Trinity you aren’t as quick to answer. You’re close in age, you’ve gotten drinks with them a few times, and Trinity introduced you to your favorite gay bar so you’ll always owe her for that. But it’s more likely than not that Baran sent them and you aren’t willing to take any chances. You’re not giving Baran a back channel into your life. 

After the third week you get accepted into UPMC Mercy, center of the city, level one trauma center. Their scrubs are nicer and their ED is better staffed and they give you a lot of command. The staff is friendly and you like the charge nurse and the chief attending is a similarly strong-willed woman, firm but kind, but you’re mercifully not in love with her. It’s almost, almost perfect.

ꕥ

"My lot is a gloomy stroll in a grove of memories, and dying from longing for a voice that says: I love your hands."

“Fuck, he’s losing too much too fast,” Langdon is panting, stuffing more gauze into the patient’s open chest. “I think I nicked something on the way in, his breath sounds are diminished on the left. Do we go FAST exam?”

“Yes, someone get the ultrasound,” Baran orders, rounding the bed in a rush, gloves snapping on, gown being tied behind her neck. “It’s either tension pneumo or hemothorax. Langdon, get the packing out of his chest.” 

He obeys and the blood comes faster, pooling in current up and out of the chest cavity and all over the floor. It just pumps and pumps and pumps.

“Jesus fuck,” Trinity whines, “This guy is gonna crash like this. Two units won’t even touch this.”

“So we call for more than two units,” Baran calls back, probe pressing into the man’s chest. “Can someone get on that?” “I’ve got it,” Samira rushes to the phone, dodging body after body to the corner. There are so many goddamn people in the room. 

Baran remembers you beside her during cases like these. You'd have already had the pressure bag primed. You'd have caught her eye once and jerked your head for which end you were gonna take so she wouldn't have to spend breath asking.

If the case went well you would’ve been grinning luminously with a slightly sweaty-face and you would’ve high-fived her because you found it so funny to watch her awkwardly lift her hand to receive it. Then you’d have ridden her ass about it for at least the next hour, because “you make such a weird face whenever I do this, B,” and she’d jokingly pout for the sake of the bit even though she really wasn’t sure what expression one was supposed to wear when being high-fived. 

She would’ve watched you giggle and ride the adrenaline high, and she too would’ve been consumed by the sheer joy that pulsed out of you. She would’ve waited thirty minutes until she was certain no eyes were on the two of you. She would’ve pulled you aside and kissed that grinning face and invited you over for dinner, and she knows you would’ve gotten that twinkly look of smug satisfaction in your eyes from the proof that she liked you and you would’ve said yes.

“Where the hell is CT surg?” 

“Who the hell cares about CT surg right now? We can tell something fucked him up, we need to stop the bleed.”

“Langdon, Santos, not now,” Baran snaps. “We need to get a chest tube in. Trinity, eyes up.” 

The resident snaps-to immediately and rushes to Baran’s side and the tube goes in, and the blood rushes up into it fast and just keeps on filling. It hits six hundred mils easily and just keeps pouring. 

Someone needs to be calling the blood bank, he’ll need a central line, he’ll need to go to the OR, he needs—

“Can someone get Y/N in here?” Baran hears herself beg, overwhelmed, and then she freezes. She physically feels all eyes slide and stay on her as everyone waits.

“Perlah, I meant,” she breathes. “Or Jesse, or Donnie. Whoever’s available. Just someone get me a nurse, please.”

Perlah and Princess fly in probably forty seconds later and immediately jump in. They’re magnificent, and so are Frank and Samira and Trinity, and somehow they keep the man on the cot from pumping out all of the blood in his body onto the floor of the room.

Baran's hands are red to the wrist in the aftermath. Absurdly she thinks of a softer set of hands. It’s not hard to recall the feeling of hard-earned callouses against the apples of her cheeks. The unique feeling of skin, of tracing your current-like veins up the length of your arms to where they disappear under your palms, imagining the life running under your skin where she would press. She really had you in the palm of her hand. 

Well, that sounds awful. She means it as tenderly as one can; her memory tilts toward you even now, how she was able to feel the proof of your living body under the press of a finger. She means it the way only a doctor can means it, because she understood that was the ultimate responsibility and because you were young, and breakable, and irreplaceable. You were so beautifully alive in her hands, and now you were gone.

ꕥ

"I plant my hands in the garden soil— I will sprout, I know, I know, I know. And in the hollow of my ink-stained palms swallows will make their nest."

This is my lot. 

There is an apartment on the fifth floor of an apartment building on the West End of Pittsburgh with no air conditioning to which she used to have the key. There is a closet in the main bedroom where she used to change into pajamas and crawl into your bed.

This is my lot.

Twice a week she reads a discharge folder from a hospital she doesn’t work at. There is a man at Mercy who owes her nothing, who only answers because she once saved his sister's life several years back. He reports you are doing well, the best hire they have had in years, and she reads it at the kitchen counter and thinks, maybe I’ll try to text her again.

This is my lot.

Voicemails she has recorded and re-recorded, voicemails she has shakily sent. Saved or deleted, she’ll never know which. A needle sliding under skin and pushing in its desperate medicine is all they were, a last-ditch attempt to revive a thing long-dead.

A life does not end because a body, however beautiful, has been lost. She likes to think of it like heat, that beauty migrates and evolves, moves to one and the next and warms each and all. That beauty must be tilled to be found, turned up the way a dark clod of earth will split open to show the pale root threading through it, the smallest, wet proof of life. 

How specific of a pain it is to know you held something beautiful in both hands and felt it warm within your palms, and now your palms are just palms again. To know a life opened itself up for you and beckoned you in, and you turned it away. 

Come morning, Baran will lean against her counter again. Her son will still turn on the vibrating tooth brush and hold it still until her head pops in and tells him to do it right. Her fingers will find her keyboard as always, pressing that pale root into the dark, and she’ll send you something more. Hope remains in her like that little bird, some poet once compared it, and she thinks maybe that’s a little beautiful too. Maybe the hope is enough. Maybe this time, you’ll reply. 

end notes: did we catch that emily dickinson reference :D i know this isn't the style that i usually write but this is actually my favorite style to write in. so depending on what you guys think maybe i'll dip into these nachos more...

The shift had been a nightmare from start to finish. The cyber attack took the computers offline for hours, forcing everyone to scramble with paper charts, runners, and shouted orders. Fireworks casualties kept rolling in, kids with burns, adults with alcohol-fueled injuries. Your residents, your ducklings, looked like they’d been dragged through hell by the time the systems finally came back up. They were slumped over their compuuters now, dead-eyed and muttering as they transferred every last note from scribbled pages into the electronic records.

You were about to tell them to wrap it up and go home when you heard raised voices from one of the side rooms.

Baran.

You moved before you even registered it, storming down the hall. Through the cracked door you saw Robby looming over her, red-faced, while she stood rigid, arms crossed tight like she was holding herself together by sheer force of will.

“Hey, hey!” You shoved the door open and pushed between them, planting yourself squarely in front of Baran. “Robby, knock it the fuck off.”

“You knew!?” Robby exploded, jabbing a finger toward her. “You knew she had these seizures and you allowed her into my ED!?”

Your blood boiled. You reached back and yanked the privacy curtain across the glass door with a sharp metallic scrape, sealing the three of you off from the rest of the department.

“Michael Robinavitch,” you snapped, voice low and venomous, “if you think for one goddamn second this is your ED and not ours, you have another thing coming. I think you need to get off your high horse and go on this journey of yours. Take the time away to really reflect on yourself. I’m handling things now. Goodnight.”

Robby stared at you, mouth opening like he wanted to argue, but you didn’t give him the chance. You turned, took Baran by the elbow, and steered her out the other side of the room before he could say another word. She moved with you, silent and stiff, the exhaustion and humiliation radiating off her in waves.

The two of you slipped through the back hallways toward the attendings’ lounge, avoiding the main pit. The department was finally quieting down, the night crew starting to filter in. You grabbed your bags from your lockers in silence, the weight of the day, of everything, pressing down on both of you.

Baran shrugged out of her scrub top first, revealing a deep red tank underneath that clung to her frame. The familiar sight hit you harder than it should have. You followed suit, peeling off your own scrubs to reveal a simple black tank, the cool air of the lounge brushing against your skin.

For a moment you just stood there, bags in hand, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Baran’s eyes met yours, they were tired, guarded, but with that old spark underneath. The one that said the professional wall you’d both tried to keep up today had already started to crumble.

You didn’t say anything. Not yet. You just nodded toward the door, and she fell into step beside you as you headed out into the night.

The parking garage was quiet this late, the kind of heavy silence that pressed in after a brutal shift. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting long shadows between the concrete pillars. Your footsteps echoed in sync as you walked beside her, the weight of the day of Robby’s blow-up, the cyber chaos, her second seizure still clinging to both of you like damp scrubs.

Baran stopped beside a dark SUV, keys already in her hand. You halted too, turning to face her. You didn’t need to speak. The worry was written all over your face: the tight set of your jaw, the way your eyes tracked every small movement she made, searching for any sign she wasn’t steady.

She met your gaze for half a second before looking away.

“You know you-” she started, voice rough.

“Please don’t say it. I know.” Her shoulders started to wobble, the strong line of them cracking under the pressure. She looked down at the keys in her hand like they might ground her. “I just got my freedom...” Her voice cracked on the last word, and it tore through you like a bullet sharp, hot, devastating.

You felt it lodge somewhere deep in your chest, right next to all the old wounds you’d never quite let heal. The surgery had been her shot at normal. At driving again. At working without that sword hanging over her head. And now, on day one back in your orbit, it was already slipping.

“Baran…” You stepped closer, the bags dropping from your shoulder to the ground with a soft thud. You reached out, slow enough that she could pull away, and cupped the side of her face. Your thumb brushed across her cheek, catching the first hint of wetness there.

“I’m not saying you can’t do this,” you murmured, voice low and steady even though your heart was hammering. “But I’m also not pretending I’m okay watching you push through another seizure in the middle of our ED. Not after everything.”

She leaned into your touch, eyes squeezing shut. That small surrender undid you. You pulled her in, wrapping your arms around her the way you had earlier in the trauma bay. Her arms came around you tightly, face buried against your neck. You felt the way she trembled, the way she tried to hold it together and failed. You rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades, breathing her in.

“I’m scared,” she whispered against your skin, so quietly you almost missed it.

“I know.” You pressed a kiss to the top of her head, lingering there for a heartbeat longer than you should have. “Me too. But you’re not doing this alone. Not while I’m here.”

You held her until the worst of the shaking eased, then gently eased back. Your hands stayed on her arms for a moment, grounding. Part of you wanted to push—wanted to tell her to come home with you, to not be alone after a day like this. But the other part, the one still carrying the scar from when she’d been the one to walk away, held you back.

You cleared your throat softly.

“I’ll follow you home,” you said, keeping your voice even. “Make sure you get there okay. Then you should rest.”

Baran searched your face, something unreadable flickering in her eyes maybe surprise, maybe relief, maybe disappointment. She didn’t argue. Just nodded once.

The drive was short and quiet. You kept close the whole way, hands tight on the wheel. When she pulled into the driveway of a modest house a few miles from the hospital, you parked behind her and waited while she got out.

She walked back to your window. You rolled it down, the cool night air rushing in.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “For today. For… everything.”

You gave her a small, tired smile. “Anytime. Get some sleep, Baran. And call your neurologist again first thing. If you need anything, anything at all you know where to find me.”

She lingered by the car for a second, fingers brushing the edge of your window like she might say more. But she didn’t. She just nodded, that familiar guarded look settling back over her features.

“Goodnight,” she murmured.

You watched her walk inside, waited until the lights came on and the door shut behind her. Only then did you pull away, the quiet hum of your engine the only sound as you drove off into the night.

You kept some distance tonight. You gave her the space and the choice to come to you this time. After all, she was the one who had ended things before. You weren’t going to be the one pushing for more than the fragile pieces you’d reclaimed today. Not yet.

☤⋆⭒˚｡⋆

The drive home blurred by in a haze of streetlights and quiet streets. You kept the radio off, the silence louder than any siren from the shift. By the time you pulled into your penthouse building, your hands were aching from how tightly you’d gripped the wheel.

Inside, you moved on autopilot keys on the hook, bag dropped by the door, scrubs peeled off and left in a trail toward the bathroom. The shower hissed to life, steam filling the small space almost instantly. You stepped under the hot spray, letting the water beat down on your shoulders, your neck, your face.

For a minute, maybe two, you just stood there. Letting it wash away the sweat, the antiseptic smell, the ghost of Baran’s shampoo still clinging to your tank top from the hug in the garage.

Then it hit.

A sob tore out of you without warning. It was raw, ugly, the kind you’d swallowed all day while running the pit, reassuring residents, staring down Robby, holding Baran together in that trauma bay and the parking garage. You pressed your forehead against the cool tile, shoulders shaking as the tears came hard and fast, mixing with the water streaming down your cheeks.

“Fuck,” you choked out, voice breaking. “Fuck, Baran…”

You missed her. God, you missed her with a bone-deep ache that no amount of professional distance could touch. You wanted her to be yours again the way she had been overseas, when the world was simpler and smaller and narrowed down to the two of you between mortar fire and saving lives. Back then it had felt inevitable. Her laugh in the dark, her hand finding yours in the dust, the way she looked at you like you were the only steady thing in the chaos.

You wanted that back. The easy intimacy. The certainty.

But here, in Pittsburgh, outside the warzone… everything was complicated. The hospital politics. Her surgery and the seizures that still haunted her. The way she’d been the one to end things last time, leaving you with wounds that had never fully closed. You’d held it together all day cool, steady, professional, but now, alone under the scalding water, the dam broke.

You slid down the wall until you were sitting on the shower floor, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around yourself as the sobs kept coming. You wanted her here. Wanted to pull her into this shower with you, wanted to kiss the fear out of her eyes and tell her you’d fight the whole damn world to keep her safe and steady. But you hadn’t pushed. You’d dropped her off. Given her the choice this time.

Because she was the one who walked away before.

The water eventually started to run cold, but you stayed there a while longer, letting the tears exhaust themselves. When you finally stood up, legs shaky, you shut off the faucet and pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes.

“Get it together,” you whispered to the empty bathroom, voice hoarse.

Tomorrow was another day in the ED. Another day of pretending the history between you was just background noise. Another day of giving Baran the space to decide if she wanted to cross that line again.

There’s only two people in the world Trinity can safely say have seen her for who she is.

One was Whitaker. It was hard not to when you lived and worked with the same person.

Besides, one of their first nights living together after Whitaker had moved in the pair had devoted to setting roommate boundaries. That combo’d with far too many glasses of wine had Trinity spilling her guts about her sexuality and defensiveness.

And the other was you.

You fit in Trinity’s life like a puzzle piece.

You broke down her persona at work and created a space where she could be herself. You were her perfect other half.

Whitaker himself saw the transformation in Trinity. He saw how she worked so incredibly hard to prove herself at work contrasted to the way she can finally let her guard down when you’re around.

But truthfully, Whitaker loved living with lesbians.

While his and Trinity’s apartment was very evident of what they could afford as residents, it felt like such a home.

You were bright and eccentric and filled the apartment with feelings reminiscent of growing up with his older brothers.

You decorated their apartment to make sure they had somewhere nice to come home to after their grueling shifts and meal prepped so they always had lunch to bring.

Whitaker even started receiving the same sticky notes with doodles that Trinity does.

It was safe to say you completely transformed the roommates lives.

Trinity had two whole days off for what felt like the first time in forever.

Whitaker was spending the weekend at Amy’s and she had already asked if you wanted to spend the weekend at hers.

You would be waiting for her when she got home from work. Unfortunately, that made the day feel 10x slower and the cases were 10x worse.

She gets off late because of course charting took forever.

When Trinity finally walks through the apartment door, her shoulders sag as she drops her bag.

She could faintly hear your Tame Impala vinyl spinning on the record player you insisted on setting up in the living room.

Dressed in just a big t-shirt and lacy panties, you nod your head to the beat of the song as you stir dinner.

It was already driving Trinity crazy.

Trinity’s eyes fall to the kitchen table where a vase of fresh lilies sit. Her favorite. And they were certainly not here this morning.

“Hi babe!” you greet once you spot your girlfriend.

Exhaustion is written all over her face.

“How was your day?”

Trinity sighs. “Long. Glad it’s over. How was yours?”

You grin before turning back to continue cooking dinner.

“It was so good! I got out of work early and Dennis brought me fresh eggs from the farm,” you pause your ramble to turn around. You bring a spoon of the sauce up to Trinity’s lips. “Need anything?”

“Maybe a little salt?”

And then you’re back to talking about your day, voice loud enough for Trinity to hear with your back turned. “I found a recipe for protein banana chocolate chip muffins that I wanna try for you guys next week. Oh! Remind me to text Amy about seeing If I can get some milk because-“

You’re stop talking when you feel Trinity press against your back and wrap her arms around your stomach.

“Missed you pretty girl,” Trinity mumbles against your shoulder.

You relax in her hold, bringing your hands down to rest on top of hers.

“If you wanted me to stop talking you could’ve just said do,” you muse.

“Never. Just missed you.”

You turn around in her hold and wrap your arms around her neck. Trinity squeezes your hip.

“Two whole days of just us, babe.”

Trinity smiles. “Can’t wait.”

You lean your head into her touch. You feel her lips press gently against your neck. A dangerous game.

“Trin,” you mumble. “Kiss me properly, please.”

“Only because you asked so nicely.”

Her lips press against yours with a certain kind of desperation. Warmth floods your body as Trinity nudges you until your back hits the counter. She ducks down to kiss your jawline.

“Up,” she commands softly.

The counters are cold and when your bare legs hit the surface, you shiver.

But then Trinity’s smooth hands are gripping your ass to pull you flush against her. Her lips find yours immediately.

She kisses you deeply, soft hands digging into the plush of your skin.

Before Trinity can make any further move, you place your hands on your shoulders to gently push her away.

“I’m not having sex with you before you shower,” you start. “You smell like hospital.”

“How romantic,” Trinity sighs.

You slide off the counter. “I gotta finish up dessert anyway.”

Trinity’s heart swells. Of course you wanted to make desert.

She kisses you one final time. “Be back soon.”

True to her word, Trinity appears a short time later. Her hairs wet and she’s changed her hospital scrubs for linen shorts and a tank top.

You loved when she dressed like this. Her full tattoos were on display. You would be able to spend as much time exploring and kissing the ink that danced across her skin.

“Dinners ready,” you inform her as she towel dries her hair.

“You wanna smoke before?”

You grin. “That’s my favorite question.”

Trinity goes ahead to open one of the windows that leads out to the fire escape. You grab your lighter and pre-roll before following her out.

The sun is just setting over their city apartment.

Trinity’s beer opens up with a satisfying hiss. You spark your lighter twice before the flame finally appears.

A friday night always brought plenty of people out. It was great people watching as you smoked.

You stretch your legs out to rest on Trinity’s lap.

She can’t help herself and wraps her cold hands around your ankles. You squeal.

“You’re evil,” you roll your eyes.

You take a few hits of your joint as you listen to the noises below: a car horn, a loud laugh emitting from a group walking by, and one of their neighbors dog barking.

Trinity doesn’t say anything but shoots you a smile as she rubs her thumb against the bare skin.

“You know this might be the perfect night,” you giggle as your hooded eyes meet Trinity’s stormy ones. “Love when we get to do this.”

Trinity shakes her head with a small smile. “You’re just too good for me.”

You frown. She was using her defense mechanisms.

“Not at all. You deserve nothing but love Trinity,” you spoke.

You sit up and scooch forward, scrunching your body to sit parallel to her. Your blunt is still emitting smoke and you’re careful to keep Trinity out of the haze. You nudge her shoulder.

“I mean it Trin,” you start. “You don’t gotta hide around me.”

Trinity takes a long drink of her beer. You want to give her space but at the same time your high is making you feel incredibly physically needy.

Finally, she’s putting her bottle down to interlock her arms with yours. You match it but leaning your head on her shoulder, smiling when Trinity places a long kiss on your forehead.

“Love you, pretty girl.”

“Love you more, Trin.”

Then there was Trinity, who was drowning in charge, the punching bag for Robbie’s bullshit, and getting into petty fights with Frank. She understood why, though, especially when the R2 cornered her and asked if she knew he was coming back. Of course, she didn’t. Today was her first day back in months, but she was doing her best to keep an eye on the girl without showing favoritism. Trinity made you happy, and that was all Dana wanted for her girls. So she was gonna look after your happiness when you couldn’t.

Which led to Dana’s second belief. She had really good fucking eyesight, even though she was pushing 60; nothing got past her. That was why she was staring at Trinity, who was standing by the emergency room cart. “Come on, kid,” she mumbled. “Don’t do anything stupid.” If anyone else were watching her, she would have gotten away with it. But it was Dana, and Dana knew and saw everything, even with her eyes closed. The movement was so subtle as Trinity grabbed a disposable scalpel and slid it into her scrub pocket.

Dana closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. When she opened them, Trinity was gone. Shit, double shit. Another shift from hell because of the potential cyber attack, and now her daughter’s partner was taking a scalpel to do God knows what with.

Maybe Benji was right; she should have waited another day.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

All she needed was a two-minute fucking break - from Al-Hashimi, who wasn’t breathing down her neck about charting, Robbie, who had to have a stick up his ass and where no one was looking at her like she was the villain for doing the right thing on her first fucking day, no less. It pissed her off that Langdon was allowed to come back to work. Because if it were her, Samira, or Cassie in his position, they would have been fired and their licenses revoked. But he was Robbie’s golden boy, so he had been given a slap on the wrist and welcomed back with open arms.

Sighing, she stood up from the toilet, flushed, and left the bathroom stall, where she wasn’t expecting to run into Dana. “Jesus Christ,” she yelled, placing her hand over her heart. “You scared the shit out of me, Mama D.” The charger wasn’t amused as Trinity walked around her to wash her hands. “I’m still waiting in labs for my patient in Bay Three.” She glanced at your mom through the mirror, who was staring at her intently, like she was trying to figure her out. It was unsettling. She grabbed paper towels, dried her hands, and turned around to come face-to-face with Dana, her hand outstretched.

“Give it to me,”such a simple sentence that turned her blood cold. There was no way Dana saw her take it. It was impossible. The charge was just fucking with her.

“You want a high five,” Trinity teased, but Dana remained standing. “Dana, I got charting I have to catch up on.” But the nurse refused to move.

“You have two options, kid. One, you give me that thing in your pocket that we both know is there.” Trinity’s stomach drops like she was on a roller coaster. “Or I call her, and you give it to her, your choice.” You were working today, still finding your footing after returning from your recovery. She couldn’t pull you away from that, but she couldn’t admit to your mom what was in her pocket.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Dana.” She walked past and bumped her shoulder against your mom’s. She wasn’t going far when Dana grabbed her wrist to stop her.

“Trinity, please.” Dana pleaded. That was Trinity’s undoing. The R2 turned around slowly and faced her. She was pleading, begging for Trinity to trust her. Her throat started to burn, but she went into her pocket to pull out the scalpel. She dropped it in Dana’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, baby.” The term of endearment shattered Trinity’s already fragile heart. Dana slipped the scalpel into her pocket. The nurse grabbed both of Trinity’s hands. “Did you use it?” She opened and closed her mouth like she was a fish out of water, but Dana was patient.

“No,” Trinity lied. She could still feel the sting of the two simple lines on both of her thighs. They rubbed against the fabric of scrub pants. Dana kept her face open, unguarded, as she looked at Trinity up and down. Dana stood in front of her with a soft look that Trinity had seen her give to you and your sisters. During family game night, while the three of you bickered over rules. When Elizabeth had her son on her hip. This look appeared when you went off on a tangent about a case. It was soft, warm, and so full of love that she had never received from her own mother.

“I,” she shook her head to stop herself from lying. “Yeah,” her voice shook, her throat burned, and her head started to pound from holding back tears. “Yeah,” she started again. “I wasn’t supposed to, because I promised her I stopped and would call if the noise got too much.” She couldn’t stop talking if she tried. Dana took it all well, kept her face unchanged, and gently rubbed her thumbs across Trinity’s hands. “But the noise is loud, and everything hurts, Mom.”

Now Dana’s face changed. It crumbled as Trinity let the tears fall, and she was quickly brought into Dana’s arms.

There was one thing Trinity hated more than anything, and that was crying. But crying in front of others, that was her 13th Theresa. She hated the vulnerability, the attention it brought to her. It made her skin crawl, happy tears, sad tears, and angry tears. She hated it all. She only cried in front of you twice, once on the anniversary of her best friend’s death. Every year, she requested it off, but she got called in and had to work on a really hard peds case that brought up too many memories.

The second time was more recent. After you were cleared from the hospital and back in your shared bed, she allowed herself to cry. You allowed her to lay her head on your chest, listening to the sound of her, of your heartbeat. She felt so stupid for crying against Dana, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop when she thought the tears had settled. Dana hugged her tighter, and more tears fell. Dana smelled of bad hospital coffee, nicotine, and vanilla, everything Trinity associated with home.

“Okay.” Dana pulled back slightly, cupping Trinity’s face in her hands. Trinity almost whined from the loss of warmth. “Okay, sweetheart. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” Dana’s thumb pushed away her tears. “We’re gonna go into the locker room, and I’m gonna make sure you’re okay.” Trinity opened her mouth to protest, but closed it when Dana gave her a look. “Do it for me, kid.” Dana placed a hand on her heart. “My heart isn’t as good as it used to be.” Well, Trinity couldn’t say no to that. She nodded her head. “Good.” Dana smiled, kissing Trinity’s forehead. “Come on.”

Luckily, they made it to the locker room without an issue, and it was empty because everyone was running around the ED. Dana grabbed a simple first aid kit. “Okay,” the nurse smiled. “Can you show me where they are?” Trinity hesitated. Her hands turned into fists at her side. She was desperately trying to ground herself.

She was standing in the locker room at the PITT, not in the locker room at her gymnasium, where she fell in love with and out of love with the sport. She wasn’t a little kid anymore. She was in control.

Sighing, she undid the tie of her scrubs and pulled them down to just below her knees. She sat on the bed before Dana could say anything. The charge nurse pulled over a chair and sat in front of Trinity. The R2 couldn’t look at her. She closed her eyes as she heard Dana put on the gloves. She tried not to flinch when the nurse’s hands touched her thighs. “They don’t need stitches.” Trinity knew that she knew the correct amount of pressure to feel the hurt without cutting too deep.

Her hands have been steady during chest compressions, IVs, and stitches given to little kids. They were also steady when she placed that scalpel to her skin. The slow hiss escaped past her lip as the disinfectant hit her skin. “Are you gonna report me?”Trinity opened her eyes at Dana’s sigh

“No, not going to help you.”

“Are you going to tell her?” Dana glanced up to see Trinity already watching her.

“I’m not gonna lie to her, but I won’t outright tell her.” Trinity nodded. That was good. That meant Trinity had time to come up with a story. “But,” Dana said slowly. “I wouldn’t keep this from her. That girl loves you, every part of you.” The last bandage was placed.

“I love her too.” Trinity pulled up her pants, not tying them yet, as she sat back down. “Uh, thanks, Dana.” The nurse smiled.

“Of course, you are one of my kids, okay? My job is to look after you and make sure you’re all right.” Tears started to swell in Trinity’s eyes. She was so tired of crying.

Then the door opened. “Mama, Trin.” Their heads snapped to look at your sudden appearance. Well, this is awkward.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

You stepped through the ambulance bay on your own two feet. It wasn’t the first time you walked in since Pit Fest. Mostly just to see Trinity and your friends. It sucked the wind out of your lungs. “Look at what the cat dragged in.” Donnie was the first to see you through the chaos. “How have you been?”

“Good.” You hugged the man. “A lot better than you guys here, I see.” Donnie huffed out a laugh. “Mercy is equally a mess.”

“Feel like I’m back in the Stone Age when your mom first became a nurse.” You punched him lightly in the stomach.

“I’m telling her you called her old.” He shrugged like he accepted his fate.

“See you around, sound bird.” he went back into the chaos with the ED. You looked around for your two favorite people, but couldn’t spot them. You figured they were working a case together. Sighing, you walked towards the big room when a voice stopped you.

“Hello, do you need help with something?” You turned around to see a woman with curly hair held back by a clip and a Lululemon jacket over her scrubs. She looked put together, but you could see the toll the day was having on her.

“No,” you remembered, Trinity texting you about a new attending starting today to cover Robbie’s sabbatical. “I’m looking for my mom, Dana Evans.” Realization dawned over the woman’s features, and her shoulders relaxed slightly. She nodded.

“You must be Songbird.” You had to stop yourself from rolling your eyes. “Dr. Robinavitch mentioned you in passing.” She held out her hand. “Baran Al-Hashimi.”

You introduced yourself and shook her hand. “How’s your first day?” You followed her to the nurses’ station, waving at Mel and Samira as you walked by.

“It’s been challenging. The potential cyber attack has not helped.” You nodded your agreement as your fingers tapped against the counter. You were getting anxious. There was still no sign of Trinity or your mom. “I saw your mom with Dr. Sanchez headed to the locker room.” She looked at you over the report, which she was reading.

It was a mix of feelings that raced through your chest, all of it masked with worry. Why were they in the locker room? “Thank you.” You smiled. “It is nice meeting you, Dr. Al-Hashimi. I look forward to seeing you again.” You meant it, especially since she was going to be your girlfriend’s new supervisor.

“Likewise.” You waved goodbye and headed to the locker room, squeezing Princess’s shoulder as you walked past. You swung the door open. The greeting stuck on your tongue as you saw the scene in front of you. Trinity was sitting on the bench with your mom in front of her. “Mama,Trin,” their head snapped like they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. There was no hiding the discarded medical supplies and the dry tears on your girlfriend’s cheeks

“Are you okay?” You rushed over, looking for any signs of injuries.

“I’m fine,” Trinity gritted, which you had a hard time believing. You heard your mom cleaning up the discarded medical supplies.

“I’m going to check on your patients; take all the time you need.” Dana kissed the top of your head, but you weren’t paying attention to her, which you would apologize for later. Your attention was on your girlfriend, who refused to meet your gaze. You sat in the chair that had previously been occupied by your mom.

“What are you doing here?” Trinity asked.

“I had a half day. I’m not cleared for full shifts yet at Mercy.” Physically, you passed all tests, but you weren’t cleared on the psych level yet. Trinity nodded. “Can you tell me what happened, baby?” Your hand took hold of hers. She allowed it. Trinity’s jaw clenched. You could see the struggle she was facing.

There was no injury to her face or arms. That meant whatever Dana cleaned up was hidden. Without thinking, your eyes look at her thighs. Trinity watched you the entire time. “Baby,” you said softly. “Did you hurt yourself?” Trinity’s lips started to tremble, and all she could manage was a small nod. You almost missed it. Your heart shattered, but you had to focus. This wasn’t about you. This was about the girl who looked utterly destroyed. You’ve never seen her so small. Rationally, you knew she was safe. Your mom would have made sure of it. Still, you were terrified. “Okay,” you said.

Finally, Trinity locked eyes with you. “You aren’t mad?” You shook your head.

“No, baby, I’m not mad. I’m,” you sighed. “I’m sad you didn’t come to me. And today made you feel like you had to do this.”

“It’s been a really shitty day.”

“I know.” You pulled her into a hug, and she slumped against you. “I’ve got you. Everything is gonna be okay.” You let the hug go on as long as she needed it. Do you want to go home?”

“No,” Trinity said, ending the hug. “Today’s been a mess, and I can’t leave them short-staffed.” You glared at her. “Besides,” she said. “I can’t let them win.”

“Okay,” you pulled her to your feet and kissed her cheek. “Then I’m saying, too.”

“What? No, absolutely not.” You giggled at her reaction. “I’m not having you stay here in the break room.”

“Who said I’d be in the break room?” You tilted her head. “Looks like you guys could use some help out there.” You walked towards the door.

“No.” Trinity grabbed your hand. “You aren’t clear for full days of work.”

“Technically, it would be a half day at the PTMC, which I can work half shifts.” You smiled. “Besides, Gloria has been trying to poach me from Mercy since my R1 days.” Your girlfriend groaned, and her head hit the wall behind her.

“I’m not winning this, am I?”

“Nope.” You popped the ‘p’ for extra emphasis. “I love you, though.” Finally, Trinity smiled.

“I love you too.” And she kissed you. You’ve missed the feeling of her lips all day. “However, I’m not protecting you from your mom.” You laughed. The sound filled the quiet room, and Trinity’s smile only grew.

“I’ll handle my mama.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“What do you have for me, boss?” Dana looked up from the chart she was reading to you, a smile on her face that screamed trouble. You looked like you got away with something. Then her eyes flickered to the badge around her neck. It was a PTMC bag with a visiting doctor on it. She could see your name and picture on it. Dana frowned.

“Absolutely not.” Your smile remained.

“Gloria has already approved it.” Dana scoffed. Of course, she had. That woman had been trying to get you to work here since you started medical school.

“You’re only allowed to work half days.”

“Half days at Mercy,” you clarified. “Which I did, and now I’m working a half day here.” Dana narrowed her eyes at you, and you matched her glare. Dana faintly heard Princess and Perlah talking in a language she could not understand, but she knew it was about the standoff. “Besides, wouldn’t it be fun to work with your favorite daughter?” Dana rolled her eyes.

“I’m telling your sisters you said that.” She handed you the chart she was reading, giving in to a fight she knew she could not win.

“They’ll get over it.” You opened the chart and began to familiarize yourself with the case. Dana had to admit it was nice to see you in your element in the ED setting. She had seen you stressed about a case at the kitchen table or on the phone. You were at ease with the chaos around you.

“You realize she’s never going to give you back to Mercy.” You laughed.

“Heard from the grapevine that Samira is taking a position at the VA.” You said all this without looking up. “Garcia may have offered me the open spot.” Dana raised an eyebrow at you. The option to work at the PTMC was always there for you, but you wanted to pave your path without your last name giving you special privileges. Dana respected that.

“Are you thinking about accepting it?” You shrugged. Instead of looking at her, your eyes fell on Trinity. She was working a peds case with the kid who broke his arm.

“It wouldn’t be so bad to have all your kids under the same roof, right?” You looked at her.

“Get to work, Dr. Evans.”

“Apparently not.” 

“Is that all you came over here for?” you ask, turning again. “Are you that concerned about my bedside manner, Dr Al-Hashimi?” 

She steps closer to you, leaning down to place one arm on the back of your chair and the other on the table as if she’s looking at something on the computer. But all of her focus is on you, every bit of it, and there’s a raspiness to her voice that you’re able to understand the cause and implications of. 

“Are you free tonight?” she asks. 

You swallow hard, looking down at your hands on the keyboard. You itch to reach one over and take hers on the table, but you’re still at work, and you’re not sure if that amount of softness would be welcome in the first place. 

You give a quick nod. “Sure, but can we go to yours?” 

“Why?” 

Because her home is everything yours is not. It is big and cozy and it smells like the rosewater candles she lights. Her bed is giant, the pillows are soft, and you have become attached to the crochet blanket at the foot of the bed. 

“It’s closer,” you say, “and closer is more convenient.” 

Baran is quiet for a second, as if she might have preferred the answer you kept to yourself. But eventually she hums in agreement, gives your shoulder a squeeze, and walks off. 

— 

“What’s going on with you and Al-Hashimi?” Trinity asks, nudging you with an elbow as the two of you change clothes in the locker room. “You two are always talking, always taking cases together… I saw you leave in her car the other night, you know.” 

You shake your head, zipping up the bag you keep your belongings in and slinging it over your shoulder. “I was having car trouble, that’s all.” 

“Oh yeah? That’s it?” 

You sigh, running a hand over your face. You’re tired and you wish you were with Baran already. “It’s nothing, Trinity, really. It’s so casual that it’s not even worth talking about, and I don’t want it to become work gossip. We keep things professional when we’re here.” 

Trinity crosses her arms. Her hair is loose, she looks more at ease than she does on the clock. “So there is something.” 

“It’s not serious.” 

“The way you look at her seems pretty serious.” 

You frown at that, stepping away toward the door. “That doesn’t matter.” 

“She looks at you, too.” 

“Yeah, everyone is fucking looking at everyone else all the time, Trinity. We work in an emergency department.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” Trinity says. She shakes her head. “Listen, I don’t know your situation, but from an outsider’s perspective… it sure looks like a little more than what I have with Yolanda. That is casual.” 

You walk the rest of the way out the door and try not to let that fully sink in. 

— 

“Are you okay?” Baran asks. You sit at a red light close to the street her house is on, with a takeout box in your lap that’s still hot. “You’ve been quiet.” 

“It’s been a long day,” you say. “I’m tired, that’s all.” 

She nods, sitting with that for a moment before replying. “Do you want me to drop you off at your place?” 

Immediately, you decline. You don’t want to be alone tonight after the day you’ve had, and you think it would do you good to have a distraction. All you want is to be with her, to feel the soft warmth of her skin against yours and the steadiness of her hands on you, grounding you to reality. 

“No,” you say, offering her a smile as reassurance. “I’m fine, really. It’s okay.” 

Baran reaches across the center console for your hand and gives it a squeeze. She runs her thumb over your knuckles soothingly. “Okay.” 

The light turns green and Baran’s hand slips out of yours, going back to the steering wheel. You can’t help the feeling of emptiness that comes over you with the absence of her hand in yours. 

“Baran,” you say quietly, glancing at her briefly as she drives. “What would you think if someone from work found out about us?” 

She tenses visibly. “Why? Has someone found out?” 

“I don’t know,” you lie. “I was just wondering what you would think about it if they did.” 

She pulls onto her street, then into her driveway, and she takes the time to park the car before answering. 

“That depends,” she says. “If we were serious, I wouldn’t mind. I would like people to know. But this, right now… it’s not serious, is it?” 

You look down at the takeout box in your lap. You think that no, your relationship is not serious, but it feels like it when you know her favorite order from her favorite restaurant and pay for it every time even when she sternly tells you not to. It feels serious when you ride home together with hands joined at stoplights, and it feels serious when compared with Trinity and Yolanda’s relationship the way it was earlier. 

Baran places a hand on your shoulder, swiping a thumb over it through your shirt. “Look at me.” 

You don’t want to, because you think every single thought you’re having about the state of your relationship could be read in your eyes right now. 

You look at her anyway. You meet her eyes because they are so beautiful and warm, studying you as if you are the only person she has any interest in looking at for the rest of her life. 

“What’s going on with you?” Baran asks. Her tone isn’t sharp or accusing, just curious. “Talk to me.” 

Your heart hammers in your chest as you raise a hand up and sweep some of her hair from her face, her curls soft beneath your fingertips. Then you trail it over her face, letting your knuckles brush over her cheekbone, then down to cup her jaw. 

You lean over the center console and lean in, meeting her in a kiss that is meant and taken as a distraction. 

“I don’t want to talk,” you murmur against her lips, and then lean in again to close the space. 

Baran pulls you closer, snaking a hand around to the back of your head. She makes a low, needy sound against your lips, tired but wanting, and for a second both of you forget what you had been talking about beforehand. 

The takeout box nearly falls out of your lap, but you pull out of the kiss and catch it. 

“Sorry,” you say quietly, smiling. “Come on, it’ll get cold, and if we have to cook a frozen pizza—” 

Baran pulls you in one more time, rougher than before, tongue slipping into your mouth and swiping against yours. You feel a fuller hunger from her now, a hunger that is more demanding, and it makes your head spin. 

“Backseat,” she says firmly. 

“We’re literally in your driveway, Baran. Let’s go inside.” 

“Get in the backseat,” she insists. “Balance the food on the dash, we’ll be quick.” 

You don’t put up any more of a fight. You would do anything for her if she asked, anything at all, so you balance the box of food on the dashboard and crawl into the backseat. 

Baran joins you, climbing into the backseat before lying down across the seats and pulling you down on top of her. It’s not the first time you’ve found yourselves here like this, Baran kicking off her pants beneath you on the leather seats while you make quick work of your top and bra. 

“Come here,” Baran reaches out for you, pulling you between her legs before leaning up a little to meet you in a kiss. One of her hands guides one of yours to her thigh, and you drag it teasingly upwards. 

You slip your other hand beneath her burgundy tank top, feeling her shiver when you cup one of her breasts, and she inches closer to you on the seats. 

“Fuck, I needed this,” she says shakily. “After dealing with those fuckers from surgery all afternoon…” 

“And banana peel guy,” you smile, leaning to press kisses down the column of her throat. 

“And you,” Baran adds. “You and those looks you gave me all day, you little shit… I noticed, you know.”  

You roll your eyes, if not at her accusation then at the amount of swearing. She almost never swears while on the clock, and sometimes it feels as though she tries to make up for it after work. It’s so very millennial of her, but she never likes it when you say that. 

“Let me make it up to you,” you say, and when she nods you slide your hand the rest of the way up to feel the wetness gathered between her thighs. It makes your breath hitch, the sheer amount of it, and it convinces you that she really was as affected by you today as she said. 

“Look at this,” you say, dragging it up to her clit. You rub tight circles against it, relishing the low groan she gives you. “All for me?” 

“Who else?” Baran asks. She sounds breathless, she sounds like she’s yours. 

“I don’t know. Like you said, this is just casual.” 

“Oh, fuck off.” 

“Don’t make me stop.” 

She reaches down to hold your wrist in place, as if believing for a moment that you really would. “Don’t stop,” she pleads. “It feels so good, don’t stop.” 

You slip two fingers into her easily, feeling the way her walls stretch around you and watching the way her back arches off the leather seats. She gasps, grip on your wrist tightening for a second before releasing entirely. 

“Relax,” you murmur. “Let me take care of you.” 

She nods, hips jerking up, and gasps when you hit especially deep. She pulls you closer to her like she needs your stability, needs you to be grounded so that she can let herself submit to the ecstasy, and you lean down to press a kiss to her shoulder as if to reassure her that you’re not going anywhere. 

Baran pulls your head up so you’ll look at her, and when you meet her eyes you can see just how far gone she is. 

“You’re mine,” she says, voice strained. “You know that, don’t you?” 

Instead of answering you lean down to kiss her, and when your lips meet hers you feel her tense around your fingers and she moans into the kiss, thighs clamping down on your wrist, and she tips her head back as she rides out her orgasm. 

The car goes quiet afterwards, the silence broken only by the sound of her ragged breathing and the creaking of the seats as she shifts to sit up a little. 

You pull her into you, letting her lean against you and nuzzle her head into the crook of your neck. You run a hand up and down her back as her breathing levels out, leaning down once to press a kiss to the top of her head, and let her rest. 

“We should go inside,” Baran says eventually, but she doesn’t move to get up. “Think the food will still be warm?” 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” you say. With one hand you tilt her chin up and lean down to kiss her, and then you part from her and study her as if committing this image of her to memory. “You are so fucking beautiful.” 

She leans back down to let her head retake its place, and closes her eyes. 

You hold her as long as she lets you. 

— 

Baran’s home is comfortable in a way that is distinctly different from the sterility of the emergency department and the persona Baran puts on while there. It is a place of warm lighting, table lamps and rosewater candles, and family pictures on every available surface. 

You asked her once why she still keeps pictures displayed that have her ex-husband in them. You know it’s not due to a lack of pictures without him in them, because you’ve seen her family photo collection personally, but there’s a presence of him in the decor around her house that you find surprising considering their divorce. 

‘They remind me of the good times,’ Baran explained when you asked. ‘Kaveh’s father isn’t a bad man, we simply weren’t right for one another.’ 

‘Why not?’

She shrugged, sipped her mug of tea. ‘Time changes people. It hardens some, softens others. He hardened.’

‘You didn’t.’ 

She followed your gaze to a picture on an end table by the couch of her and her son in the park, Baran tending to Kaveh’s scraped knee while he sat on a swing. 

‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t.’ 

Now, you sit on the couch and look at that same picture. 

“Car sex, takeout, and you still look tense,” Baran says, sitting down next to you. “Is it time for round two, or are you finally ready to talk?” 

You sit back against the couch cushion, letting it bear your weight. “Trinity got in my head today.” 

“About what?” 

“Us,” you say. Then you fabricate a bit of the story, because you don’t want to tell Baran that Trinity knows about the two of you. “She was talking about her relationship with Yolanda, and what they have seems so much more strained than what we have. For them it’s just sex.” 

Baran crosses one leg over the other and looks down into her lap, anything to avoid looking at you. “What do you think we are?” 

“Not that.” 

“No?” 

You shrug and look up at the picture on the end table again. “How can you do casual relationships? Why do you want it that way?” 

Her tone is defensive. “I’ve already gone through one divorce, I don’t need to experience another. I’ve had my fill.” 

“Not every relationship is destined to fail.” 

“No,” she agrees, “but many do. And I like you, I really do, but if you’re having second thoughts about this…” 

“No,” you say quickly. “No, it’s fine. I was just wondering what casual actually entails, since we never really discussed it.” 

“We discussed that what happens between us is meant to be a way to decompress,” she says. “That’s all it was ever supposed to be. We were very clear about that in the beginning.” 

“But is that still what this is?” 

Baran still hasn’t looked at you. She suspects just like you do that what you have now is very much not a casual arrangement, but the thought of that scares her. After her divorce, she shut the door on the idea of any other long-term relationships. 

Then you came into her life. You with your softness and your care, you with your way of pulling at her heartstrings, you who she can secretly see herself growing old with — not that she plans on admitting it. 

“I’m not him,” you say quietly, and then she tenses and you know you’ve gone too far. You keep pushing anyway. “I’m not your ex—” 

“I’m not doing this with you,” she snaps, standing up and rounding the couch. “This isn’t a conversation we need to have.” 

“How is it not?” 

Baran shakes her head, unable to come up with a good answer but still not wanting to let you win. “It just isn’t. We aren’t anything worth talking about.” 

“Are you sure?” 

No, not in the slightest. “Yes.” 

“Do you want me to leave?” 

She doesn’t respond. 

“I can leave,” you say more firmly. “Say the word and I’ll go.” 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

Because I care about you, she wants to say, but she doesn’t. It would feel like letting you win, and by extension it would let in a little of the love for you that she’s been trying so hard to suppress. 

“It’s late,” she says simply. “I won’t make you leave, but I’m going to bed. You can sleep here.” 

“On the couch? Like we’re an old fucking married couple, and I’ve been banished to the couch for the night?” 

Shit. 

“That’s not what I was implying,” Baran tries, “but where the fuck else are you going to go tonight? I drove us here, your car is still at work, and I’m not letting you call an Uber this late. Sleep on the couch, sleep on the floor, sleep on the fucking roof!” 

You scoff. “Like Santa Claus?” 

“Santa Claus doesn’t sleep on the roof,” she deadpans. “He just parks his sleigh there.” 

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” 

She shakes her head, giving you one last assessing look before walking off. 

—

The drive to work the next morning is tense, quiet, and long. You don’t speak much and neither does she, both of you still being on edge about the night before, and once you get to the hospital you part ways quickly. 

It’s mid-morning when Dana finds Baran in the break room between patients, sipping coffee from a paper cup and trying desperately to keep her head above water. 

Dana doesn’t waste time with formalities. “So, what’s up with your girlfriend this morning?” 

Baran pauses for a moment, then lowers the cup down onto the table she sits at. “She’s not my girlfriend, Dana, and this is unprofessional.” 

“If she’s not your girlfriend,” Dana says, “then how did you know who I was talking about?” 

She doesn’t have a good answer to that. 

“She’s not acting like herself this morning,” Dana continues, then shrugs. “Thought I’d ask if you knew what was up with her.” 

“Her business is her business. I’m out of the picture.” 

Dana doesn’t believe that for a second. She’s seen the way you and Baran are together, the lingering touches and long glances, the way you’re the one person in this ED who can make Baran’s stern front falter. She keeps you steady and you keep her from driving herself into the ground, and that’s the way it has always been. 

It’s more than a relationship between colleagues, and it’s more than what exists between people who aren’t dating. 

“We get drinks after shifts sometimes,” Baran says. 

“No, I don’t buy that. I know you don’t drink.” 

For once, she wishes Dana was less perceptive. It would make this whole thing a lot easier. 

“We’re friends.” 

“Try again.” 

“It’s a way to take the edge off after long shifts,” Baran finally admits. “I take her to my place, she takes me to hers, we have dinner, we…” she trails off. “Really, it’s no one’s business.” 

Dana comes and sits down across from Baran, reaching a hand out to squeeze one of hers. “Listen, babe. Like it or not, you two are kinda the office romance around here. And you might not know that, but there are whispers, and all of us here… Well, to put it frankly, we see something I think you don’t want to.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Baran asks, but she knows exactly what it means. 

“It means you should go talk to her. I wouldn’t overstep like this, but she’s unfocused. She could hurt somebody.” 

“Then I’ll send her home early.” 

“Yeah? What about tomorrow, gonna tell her to stay home?” 

Baran hadn’t thought about that. 

“You pack each other’s lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Dana accuses. “Don’t think for a second that I don’t notice the matching pink containers in the fridge.” 

“I’ll talk to her.” 

“You better.” 

“I will,” Baran says, and tips back the rest of her coffee. 

— 

“Are you free tonight?” 

You sigh, sitting back in your chair. This is exactly how it started last night, how it always starts before Baran is about to invite you over. 

“No,” you say simply, without looking at her. You try to focus on the computer, the chart you’re finishing up. 

“Are you angry at me?” 

“No,” you say again, and it’s not really a lie. If anything, you’re angry at yourself. 

“Are you sure?” Baran asks. She steps closer to you, then taps your shoulder as if that might convince you to turn around. 

Unfortunately, the gesture is so childish that it makes you smile. You have to try extremely hard to keep beneath your cloud of doom and despair. 

“Why are you smiling?” 

“You’re funny,” you murmur, “that’s all.” 

She frowns. “How am I funny? I’m trying to talk to you.” 

You stand, stepping away from your chair. “I know. I’m sorry.” 

“I want you to come over,” Baran says. “I want to talk to you about last night.” 

“What is there to say? I fucked up, I shouldn’t have implied—” 

“Let’s not point fingers,” she interrupts. “You were pushy and you apparently don’t know anything about Santa Claus, but I can look past that. We need to talk, and I’m taking you home with me to do so. There’s only one hour left in the shift.” 

“My car is going to get stolen if I keep leaving it here overnight.” 

“Good,” she says. “I’m happy to keep driving you.” 

“Are you flirting with me right now? I thought we were fighting.” 

“We’re not fighting. We’re confused.” 

“I’m not confused,” you say. You step closer to her, keeping your voice low enough that only she can hear. “I know exactly what I want.” 

She takes in a breath as if to respond, but before she can a new patient is being rushed into the ED and she’s being called over to help. 

All she can do before leaving is reach out, give your shoulder a quick squeeze, and nod to the clock on the wall before rushing away. 

One hour, her look seems to say. 

—

“Trinity,” you say, “where’s your pet country bumpkin?” 

Trinity looks up from her charts. “Huckleberry? He’s off today. Went farming. Why?” 

“I’ve been calling him and he hasn’t picked up. I was gonna make him run an errand for me,” you tell her. “He seems like the kind of guy I could make do my bidding if I promised him a croissant.” 

“A croissant?” 

You nod, leaning back against the counter of the nurses’ station. “Baran and I are going to have a talk tonight. Her favorite cafe is close to your apartment, and I thought maybe I could start things off on the right foot if I met her in the parking garage with tea and a scone.” 

“And you wanted Huckleberry to go get them for you.” 

“Exactly.” 

Trinity shakes her head. “You’re fucked, aren’t you?” 

You scoff. “Me?” 

“You’re in love, you’re in love, you’re—” 

“Don’t you dare say it again,” you warn. 

“But it’s true.” 

You look down at the floor, sighing. You don’t understand why everything has to be so complicated. “Maybe.” 

Trinity rolls her eyes. “Don’t maybe me. You’re in love with your boss, and everyone can tell. You’re the office romance.” 

While you don’t admit it out loud, you know as well as she does that it’s true. 

— 

You meet Baran at her car. You get into the passenger seat and she takes the driver’s side, and you sit in silence for a while as you both come down from the day. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” you ask. “We’re both tired, and I don’t want this to end in an argument.” 

Baran reaches across the center console for your hand, entwining your fingers. She squeezes lightly. “This is a conversation we need to have.” 

“You didn’t think so last night.” 

“I’ve changed my mind,” she replies. There’s an edge to her voice. “Are you going to listen to me or not?” 

“Sure,” you nod. “Sorry, I’m a little…” 

“I know,” she says, and you believe her. “I understand.” 

You look down at your joined hands. You don’t know what to say, so you wait for her to take the lead. 

“I don’t want to love someone again,” she tells you. She sounds tired, defeated, like love is something she has been fighting back for a long time. “Like I said last night, I’ve already been through one divorce. That relationship was meant to last forever, and it didn’t.” 

You’re silent, giving her the time to form her admission piece by piece. 

“I don’t want to shake the life I’ve built for anyone,” Baran says. “I refuse to risk it for anyone.” 

You understand now. This is a breakup (if you can call it that) and you have ruined everything. You try to pull your hand from hers, but she holds on tight. 

“Anyone but you,” she finishes. She tips her head back and rests it against the seat, letting her eyes fall closed. “And I can’t believe I’m admitting to that, but I think we both know that what we have is hardly casual anymore.” 

You take a moment to let that sink in, releasing a breath. You are so relieved but at the same time still so nervous, still guilty for pushing and hoping she’s not jumping through hoops just because you want her to. 

“Are you sure about this?” you ask. “I don’t want to push you into anything you don’t want, or that you’re not ready for.” 

“I’m ready.” 

“You don’t have to be.” 

“I’m in love with you,” Baran blurts out, opening her eyes. Her voice is level, professional, as if she’s diagnosing an illness. “It’s not a feeling I’ve been open to embracing, but not letting it in seems to have worse consequences.” 

It’s all such a contrast to last night. You remember how lonely you felt lying there on the couch, wishing you were in bed with her, imagining her uttering the words she is now. 

“One of those consequences is hurting you,” she continues, “and that’s the last thing that I want, besides losing you.” 

She looks at you and you see the anxiety in her eyes that she’s trying so hard to disguise. You wonder if her heart is beating frantically in her chest like yours is, if she’s trying to keep her palms from sweating like you are, if she is stunned by the words coming out of her own mouth. 

“Do you have anything to say about that?” Baran asks. 

It comes to you like a reflex. “I love you, too.” 

She sits with that, you sit with it, the moment is soft and yours. 

“Good,” she nods. Her voice shakes and her hand still squeezes yours. “I’m glad we settled that.” 

“Look at me, Baran.” 

She does, and her eyes glisten. She allows you to reach a hand out just like you did last night to run the same path from her cheekbone down to her jaw, and just like last night she allows you to lean in and kiss her. 

“I want to see where this goes,” she murmurs against your lips afterward, then leans forward to rest her forehead against yours. “I want quiet nights in. I want to be able to sleep next to you through the night just for the sake of it. I want to introduce you to my son.” 

It sounds so beautiful. You cling to the vision of it, let her set the scene. There’s nothing else you could want more. 

“I want that, too.” 

Baran leans back in her seat and a small smile ghosts over her lips, wry and remembering. “Backseat?” 

You laugh at that, sitting back. It cuts through the tension. “Not here. We’ll get caught.” 

“Isn’t that half the fun?” 

“Can’t you wait fifteen minutes until we get to your place?” 

“Fifteen minutes,” she shakes her head. “More like thirty, forty, an hour if traffic is bad...” 

“I think you can make it.” 

Though she wants to argue some more, she doesn’t. She has all the time in the world with you now, and she intends to enjoy every second of it. 

— 

Stepping into her house after work again feels right. It feels like a natural progression, a step toward more, even though it’s only the second day in a row that you’ve come home with her. It’s undeniable that a different feeling has been attributed to what you have with her now. 

She sits down on the couch and releases a sigh, letting the day seep out of her. She holds onto so much when she’s at work, you can see it when you’re with her at the ED, the tension she carries constantly. 

“We should’ve picked up food again,” she says, and it concerns you a little because Baran Al-Hashimi is not a woman who surrenders to takeout two nights in a row. “The last thing I’m interested in doing right now is getting up to cook.” 

You slip onto the armrest beside her. You expect her to push you off, maybe make a comment about preserving the structural integrity of her furniture, but she doesn’t. “Let me cook for you.” 

Baran raises a brow. You’ve cooked for her before, simple meals after sex where the two of you make the most out of what she has in her fridge, but this is different. This is a more intimate form of care. 

“Stay here,” you tell her. “I’ll cook us something.” 

You start to move off the armrest but she pulls you back, wrestling maneuvering you into her lap. 

“Baran…” 

“In a second,” she says. “I’ll let you up in a second. Right now I want you here.” 

There’s softness in her voice that makes you stay right where you are. You wouldn’t move for anything, not unless she asked you to, and it doesn’t seem like she’s planning on that. 

Baran presses a kiss to the side of your neck, then leans up to press another to your jaw. She holds you close enough that you can feel the steady rise and fall of her chest against your body, and you let her guide your breathing into a similar rhythm. 

“I love you,” she says, because she can say it now. She has allowed herself to. 

1. The Coffee

The first time Trinity Santos flirted with you, she did it over a burnt cup of hospital coffee.

You were standing in the break room at 6:43 in the morning, half-awake, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other scrolling through patient notes on your tablet. The ED was already loud beyond the door. Monitors beeping, residents calling for labs, nurses moving with the sort of speed that made the whole place feel like a hive someone had shaken.

Trinity came in still tying her hair back, black scrubs wrinkled in that very specific I slept for three hours and woke up angry about it kind of way.

She stopped when she saw you.

“Wow,” she said.

You looked up immediately. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Your brow furrowed. “Is there something on my face?”

Trinity’s mouth twitched. “No.”

You lifted a hand to your cheek anyway, because people always said “nothing” when there was, in fact, something. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She moved past you toward the coffee machine. “You just look good in the morning.”

You blinked at her.

Then you looked down at yourself.

Your scrub top was slightly untucked. Your badge was twisted backward. Your hair had been put up in the dark and had mostly surrendered. There was a pen tucked behind your ear that you didn’t remember putting there.

“I look exhausted,” you said.

“Both can be true.”

You stared at her for another second, waiting for the joke to finish forming.

It didn’t.

So you nodded seriously.

“Thanks. You look tired too.”

Trinity paused with her hand on the coffee pot.

Slowly, she turned her head toward you.

You offered her a polite smile.

Her lips parted like she was going to say something, then closed again. She poured her coffee with the expression of someone deciding whether or not to walk into traffic.

“You’re killing me,” she muttered.

You looked back down at your tablet. “I can switch the coffee out if it tastes bad.”

Trinity stared at the back of your head for a full three seconds.

Then she laughed.

Not loudly. Not enough for anyone else to notice.

Just this small, helpless thing that made her shoulders dip.

“No,” she said. “Coffee’s fine.”

You hummed, already reading again.

Behind you, Trinity leaned against the counter, watching you like you were a puzzle box with no visible seams.

“You’re really something,” she said.

“Thanks,” you answered automatically. “You too.”

She smiled into her mug.

You still had no idea.

2. The Scrub Cap

The second time, it was during a psych consult.

You’d been called down for a patient who was refusing treatment, paranoid and overstimulated from the chaos of the ED. Trinity was the resident assigned to the case, standing outside the room with her arms crossed, explaining the situation fast enough that most people would’ve missed half of it.

You didn’t.

You listened, nodded, asked two questions, and then went in.

Twenty minutes later, the patient was calmer, sitting on the bed with a blanket around her shoulders and a cup of water in her hands. Trinity watched you through the glass with something unreadable on her face.

When you came back out, she stepped aside to let you through.

“That was impressive,” she said.

You tapped something into the chart. “She needed less stimulation, not six people talking over each other.”

“Yeah, but you got her to trust you in, like, two minutes.”

“She was scared.”

Trinity tilted her head. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make it sound simple.”

“It was simple.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Trinity moved closer, voice lowering. “You’re just good.”

You glanced up.

There it was again. That look. Warm. Sharp. Like she’d found something she wanted to touch but knew better than to reach for in the hallway.

Your brain politely sorted it into professional compliment and moved on.

“Thank you,” you said. “You handled the clinical side well.”

Trinity blinked.

Then her eyes narrowed slightly, amused and offended all at once.

“You’re complimenting me back?”

“Yes?”

“Like this is peer review?”

You frowned. “Was I not supposed to?”

She huffed a laugh and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Okay. Let me make this easier.”

You looked at her fully now.

Trinity reached up and tugged at the edge of your scrub cap. It had slipped slightly, probably from you running your hand over your hair too many times.

“There,” she said, smoothing it into place. Her fingers lingered just long enough to be noticeable to anyone with a functioning sense of romance.

You did not have one of those.

You immediately touched the cap yourself.

“Oh. Was it crooked?”

Trinity’s hand dropped.

Her face went blank.

Then she looked away, biting the inside of her cheek.

“Yeah,” she said. “Terribly crooked. Medical emergency.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I did, in my own way.”

You nodded. “Thanks for fixing it.”

Trinity inhaled slowly through her nose.

“Anytime.”

And because you were you, you added, “It’s good to know you’re observant.”

Trinity stared at you.

Then she whispered, “Unbelievable.”

You smiled faintly, assuming she meant the patient case.

3. The Ambulance Bay

The third time was in the ambulance bay.

It was raining hard enough to turn the pavement silver. You’d gone outside for air after a difficult consult, the kind that left something heavy sitting behind your ribs. You weren’t crying. You weren’t even close.

You just needed the world to be quieter for two minutes.

Trinity found you anyway.

She always did that, somehow.

The door opened behind you and she stepped out, immediately making a face at the weather.

“Gross.”

“You can go back inside.”

“And leave you out here looking tragic and beautiful?” she asked. “No thanks.”

You glanced at her. “I don’t look tragic.”

“No. You do.”

You considered that.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Trinity looked at you like you’d just handed her a scalpel blade-first.

“No,” she said slowly. “That was not the part I expected you to question.”

You tucked your hands into your scrub pockets. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You were about to.”

She smiled then, soft and lopsided. “Maybe I just wanted to stand next to you.”

That should have done it.

That should have clicked.

The rain. The quiet. The way Trinity had stepped close enough that your shoulders nearly touched. The way her voice gentled only when she spoke to you.

Instead, you glanced toward the parking lot.

“Are you avoiding someone?”

Trinity’s smile fell open into disbelief.

You kept going, because unfortunately, once you found a possible explanation, your brain liked to trot after it like a little hound.

“Because if you are, I can stand here longer. Make it seem like we’re discussing a patient.”

Trinity pressed her lips together.

Her eyes dropped to the ground.

For one strange second, you thought she might be upset.

Then she laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth.

You stared.

“What?”

She shook her head, rain catching in the loose pieces of hair near her face.

“Nothing. Nothing. You’re just…” She looked at you again, eyes bright. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m trying to be helpful.”

“That’s the problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.”

You frowned harder.

Trinity softened.

She reached out, carefully brushing a raindrop from the shoulder of your scrub top.

“Come back inside before you freeze.”

“I’m not cold.”

“You’re shivering.”

You looked down at your own arm.

You were, actually.

“Oh.”

Trinity’s smile returned, smaller this time.

“Yeah. Oh.”

She opened the door and held it for you.

You walked in first.

Behind you, Trinity murmured, “One day, I’m going to flirt with you so directly you’ll have no choice.”

You half-turned. “Did you say something?”

“Nope.”

4. The Dinner Invite

The fourth time, she brought food.

That was serious.

You were in your office with the lights dimmed, your shoes kicked off beneath the desk, and a stack of notes glaring at you from the screen. It was past the end of your shift. Technically, you could leave.

Realistically, the charting goblin had its claws in your ankle.

A knock sounded at the doorframe.

You looked up.

Trinity stood there holding two takeout bags.

“Are you busy?”

“Yes.”

She lifted the bags.

You paused.

“Less busy than I was.”

She grinned and came in like she’d won something.

You moved a pile of papers so she could put the food down. The smell hit first. Warm rice, grilled meat, garlic, something spicy enough to make your stomach wake up and file a formal request.

“You didn’t have to get me dinner,” you said.

“I know.”

You looked into one of the bags. “Did someone order too much?”

“No.”

“Did the restaurant mess up?”

“No.”

“Did a patient’s family bring this?”

Trinity stared at you.

“I bought you dinner.”

You looked up.

“Why?”

The question came out genuinely.

Trinity’s expression did something complicated. Amusement first. Then fondness. Then a little flicker of exasperation.

“Because I like feeding you.”

You absorbed that.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Still incorrectly.

“That’s very kind.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Kind.”

“Yes.”

“I brought you your favorite.”

“You know my favorite?”

“You get the same thing every time we order from there.”

“That’s pattern recognition.”

“That’s interest.”

You nodded. “Both can be true.”

Trinity dropped into the chair across from your desk and rubbed a hand over her face.

“I swear to God.”

“What?”

She looked at you through her fingers. “Do you think I bring dinner to everyone?”

You thought about it.

“You’re friends with Dennis.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“And Mel.”

She lowered her hand. “You are dodging the point so hard it’s becoming athletic.”

“I’m not dodging. I’m answering.”

“You’re not answering the right question.”

“What’s the right question?”

Trinity leaned forward, elbows on her knees.

Her voice softened.

“Why do you think I know your favorite order?”

You opened your mouth.

Closed it.

The answer that came first was practical. Because you worked together. Because she noticed things. Because doctors noticed patterns. Because residents learned people’s habits when they were sleep-deprived and trapped in the same building for too many hours.

But Trinity wasn’t looking at you like this was about sesame chicken.

She was looking at you like she had been standing at a door for weeks, knocking with flowers, fireworks, a brass band, and a handwritten sign, and you had kept asking if the noise was maintenance.

Your face warmed.

“I don’t know,” you said quietly.

Trinity’s gaze flicked across your face.

For once, she didn’t make a joke.

“Think about it,” she said.

Then she pushed one container toward you and picked up her chopsticks like she hadn’t just rewired half the room.

You did think about it.

For the entire meal.

For the rest of your charting.

For the drive home.

For two days after.

+1. The Time You Did

The time you finally noticed, Trinity wasn’t even trying.

That was the ridiculous part.

It was late again. Of course it was. The ED had been brutal all day, one long unraveling thread of chest pain, psych holds, trauma alerts, and family members crying into vending machine coffee.

You found Trinity sitting alone in the nearly empty break room, head tipped back against the cabinet, eyes closed.

For once, she looked truly tired.

Not cute-tired. Not Trinity-tired, with sarcasm sharpened and ready.

Just tired.

You stepped inside quietly.

“Hey.”

Her eyes opened.

The second she saw you, her face changed.

Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone else to catch.

But you did.

Her shoulders eased. Her mouth softened. Something guarded in her expression loosened, like her body had recognized you before she decided whether to allow it.

“Oh,” she said, voice rough. “Hey.”

Your stomach flipped.

Small.

Dangerous.

Warm.

You stood there with one hand still on the door.

And suddenly, all of it came back.

You look good in the morning.

You’re just good.

Maybe I just wanted to stand next to you.

I like feeding you.

Think about it.

You had thought about it.

Apparently your brain had needed to receive the evidence, organize it, mislabel it, archive it, retrieve it, then finally set it on fire.

Trinity rubbed at one eye. “You okay?”

You walked farther into the room.

“I think you’ve been flirting with me.”

Trinity went very still.

Then she sat up.

Slowly.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve been flirting with me,” you said again, more certain this time.

Her expression cracked.

A smile crept in at one corner of her mouth.

“Have I?”

You gave her a look. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend you haven’t.”

Trinity leaned back in her chair, now far too pleased for someone who had been half-dead thirty seconds ago.

“I don’t know. This is a pretty serious accusation.”

“You told me I looked good in the morning.”

“You did.”

“I looked like I’d been dragged through a supply closet.”

“Still worked for me.”

Your face heated.

Trinity noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Her smile softened into something less smug and more careful.

“You finally caught up,” she said.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Don’t be.” She shrugged, but the movement wasn’t casual enough to fool you. “It was kind of cute.”

“I thought you were just being nice.”

“I am nice.”

You stared at her.

She sighed. “Fine. Nice adjacent.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

Trinity’s face changed again.

That was when you really knew.

Not because she flirted. Not because she teased. Not because she brought you dinner or stood too close in the rain or looked at you like you were the only steady thing in a collapsing hospital.

Because when you laughed, Trinity looked relieved.

Like she’d been waiting to hear that sound all day.

Maybe longer.

You stepped closer.

Her eyes followed you.

“Are you flirting with me right now?” you asked.

“No,” she said.

You raised an eyebrow.

Trinity smiled.

“Now I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to decide what you want to do about it.”

The room went quiet.

Beyond the door, the ED kept roaring. Phones ringing. Wheels squeaking. Someone calling for an attending. Life continuing in all its fluorescent chaos.

But inside the break room, everything narrowed down to Trinity Santos sitting in front of you, watching you with that impossible mix of patience and nerve.

You took another step.

Then another.

Her smile faded, but only because her lips parted slightly.

You stopped in front of her.

“I want you to flirt with me again,” you said.

Trinity’s eyes darkened with amusement.

“Yeah?”

You nodded.

“But more directly this time.”

She tilted her head back to look up at you.

“Okay,” she said softly. “I want to kiss you.”

Your breath caught.

There it was.

No room for misinterpretation.

No clinical loophole.

No colleague-shaped excuse to hide behind.

Just Trinity.

Just wanting.

Just you, finally understanding.

You swallowed.

“I noticed that one.”

Her smile returned.

“Good.”

Then she stood, slow enough for you to move away if you wanted.

You didn’t.

Her hand touched your waist first, careful and warm through the fabric of your scrubs. Your fingers curled lightly into the front of her scrub top, exactly where you’d wanted them for longer than you had allowed yourself to admit.

Trinity leaned in.

Paused.

Still giving you a way out.

You closed the distance yourself.

The kiss was soft at first. Almost questioning. Then Trinity made this small sound against your mouth, half relief and half finally, and you forgot every clever thing you had ever almost said.

When you pulled back, she stayed close, forehead nearly touching yours.

“You know,” she murmured, “for a psychiatrist, you are impressively bad at reading romantic cues.”

You breathed out a laugh. “In my defense, you’re very sarcastic and I’m very autistic.”

Trinity paused.

Then her expression softened so quickly it almost stole the air from the room.

“Okay,” she said, thumb brushing once over your waist. “Fair defense.”

“In my other defense, you’re very pretty and that makes your sarcasm harder to decode.”

Her grin came back slowly.

“There it is.”

“What?”

“You flirting back.”

Your face warmed. “Was that flirting?”

“Baby,” Trinity said, delighted now, “that was practically a love letter.”

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling.

“In my defense,” she added, “I bought you dinner.”

“I understand that now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Because I can do it again. For clarity.”

You smiled.

Trinity’s thumb swept once over your waist.

This time, you noticed.

This time, you leaned closer.

“Dinner sounds good,” you said. “But I think I need more evidence.”

Trinity’s grin turned slow.

Dangerous.

Delighted.

“Oh, I can provide evidence.”

Masterlist | Stranger Things Masterlist

The first time it happened, you were studying in your bedroom. 

Sprawled out on the floor surrounded by textbooks, flashcards, and enough notes to make your eyes hurt. Robin lay beside you, dramatically draped across your rug as she ranted about the scam of exams. 

“They’re literally just schools finding increasingly creative ways to torture teenagers.” 

You hummed absentmindedly, highlighting a paragraph in your textbook.

“No, seriously. Think about it. They spend months teaching us things and then one day they're like, ‘Quick. Tell us everything you've ever learned or your future is ruined.’”

“Mhm.”

“That's insane.”

You nodded, eyes never leaving the page. “Completely.”

Robin propped herself up on one elbow. “You're not listening to me.”

“I am.”

“What did I just say?”

You highlighted another sentence.

“Something about the educational system being oppressive.”

Robin pointed at you. “Exactly.”

You smiled despite yourself. 

A moment passed. Then, “Can I have some gum?” 

You handed it over without thinking. Twenty minutes later, a folded wrapper landed on your notebook. 

“Robin!” you admonished. 

“Open it,” she replied with a cheeky grin. 

Inside was a drawing of herself. Or at least what she claimed was herself.

The figure had six hairs, one giant eyebrow, and a speech bubble that said:

I LOVE CRIME.

—R.B.

You laughed so hard you nearly choked.

Robin looked entirely too pleased with herself.

The next day she did it again. 

You were sitting with your friends at lunch when she asked for another piece of gum. A few minutes later she slid the wrapper across the table — a doodle of your favorite animal. You smiled, tucking the wrapper in your jacket pocket. 

The day after that was a dinosaur wearing sunglasses. 

The day after that, a sketch of your face with the words: YOU LOOK PRETTY.

And somehow from there it became a thing. A weird little ritual that belonged entirely to the two of you.

One piece of gum.

One doodle.

Every time.

No exceptions.

Some were elaborate. Some made absolutely no sense.

One was just a poorly drawn shark.

Another simply said: STEVE :(

No further explanation.

You still have that one. 

You still have all of them.

Every single wrapper — carefully folded and tucked away inside an old tin hidden in the back of your closet.

You hadn’t planned to collect them. You just couldn’t bring yourself to throw them away. 

Every doodle felt like Robin.

A tiny piece of her day. A tiny piece of her attention. A tiny reminder that she'd thought about you for thirty seconds and decided to make you smile.

So you kept them.

All of them.

Unbeknownst to your ridiculously charming girlfriend. 

She would never let you live it down if she found out. You could already imagine the look on her face. The dramatic gasp. The inevitable, “Oh my god, you’re obsessed with me.”

Which may not be far from the truth. 

The point is that Robin doesn’t know. And you plan on keeping it that way. 

“You got gum?”

You don’t even look up from the book in your hands. 

“No.”

A beat passes before you hear her whine, “Baby.”

You sigh, slowly lifting your head. 

Robin is standing in front of you with her hands tucked behind her back and the world’s most innocent looking smile stretched across her face. 

It’s a terrible performance.

“What happened to the pack of gum I bought specifically for you?”

“I like yours better,” she says with a grin. 

“It’s the exact same brand.”

She shrugs, eyes remaining locked on yours — wide and pleading. She knows if she stands there long enough, you will cave. You hate that she’s right. 

“You’re the worst.”

“Aw, you love me.”

You roll your eyes as you pull out your pack of gum, handing her a piece. Robin accepts it with the enthusiasm of a kid let loose in a candy store. 

“Thanks, babe.” 

The kiss she presses to your cheek is quick — casual. Enough to make your heart do the same stupid doubletime it does every single time.

Then she's gone.

Back to your desk where she was allegedly working on her fifth language. Back to pretending she wasn't moments away from dying without your gum.

You shake your head, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

Somehow, after all this time, she still manages to make your chest feel warm over something as ridiculous as sharing a piece of gum.

You try to return to your book, but you can’t help peeking over the top of it.

Robin is already hunched over, tongue poking out slightly in concentration as she works on whatever doodle she's planning this time.

Your chest warms.

You've seen that look a hundred times by now. The furrow between her brows. The way she leans a little closer to the page. The sheer intensity of her focus. 

And somehow you still find it impossibly endearing.

Feeling your gaze on her, she looks up and catches you staring. She raises an eyebrow and you immediately look back down at your book. 

Her laugh is soft. Fond. And even after all this time, it still gives you butterflies.

Three minutes later, something bounces off your leg — the wrapper. You smile before you even close your book to pick it up. 

You unfold the wrapper carefully. Inside is a stick figure with giant hair and a tiny crown. The speech bubble beside it reads: WORLD’S BEST GIRLFRIEND.

You snort, trying to fight the smile spreading across your face. 

Robin looks up immediately, grinning when she catches your eye. You hold the wrapper up and she gives you a thumbs up. You shake your head as you place the wrapper on your nightstand, making a note to move it to the closet tin when Robin leaves. 

She beams at you. 

The wrappers keep coming. 

Robin asks for gum during one of your visits to Family Video. You get a doodle of Steve with hair so large it takes up the entire wrapper.

Robin asks for gum while you're waiting in line at the movie theater. You get a drawing of an anthropomorphic popcorn. 

Every single one ends up in the tin. And your collection continues to grow. 

At some point, the little tin you'd started with stopped being enough. You had to find a bigger tin to store them all in.

You try not to think too hard about what that says about you.

“Babe, we're gonna be late,” Robin's voice drifts down the hallway.

You glance at the clock and immediately wince. 

You’d promised Dustin and Steve that you’d actually arrive on time for this movie. A promise that was becoming increasingly difficult to keep.

You shove your wallet in your back pocket and walk toward the door.

“I'm ready!”

“Liar!”

A laugh escapes you.

“I'm mostly ready!”

You reach for your jacket and keys and realize the jacket is absent. 

“Crap.”

“What?” Robin asks.

“I forgot my jacket,” you tell her as you turn toward your bedroom. 

“The green one? I’ll go get it,” she says, already disappearing into your bedroom. 

Three seconds pass. Then four. Then suddenly there’s a loud clang. 

Your heart drops to your stomach as the keys slip from your fingers. 

You know that sound. You know that exact sound. 

“Uh…” Robin's voice drifts out from your bedroom.

And panic detonates in you. You are already moving before she says another word.

“Robin, don't—”

But it’s already too late.

Robin is sitting cross-legged on your bedroom floor — the lid of the tin resting beside her. Gum wrappers are everywhere, scattered across the carpet, spreading like confetti.  

You stop dead in the doorway.

For a moment, neither of you says anything. 

Robin looks down at the wrapper in her hand, then back up at you. Her eyebrows pull together.

“Is this a shark?”

You close your eyes.

Of course that's the one she picked up.

Out of the hundreds of wrappers currently decorating your bedroom floor, she somehow found the shark.

“Please don't.”

You hear another wrapper unfold.

You don't open your eyes.

You don't need to. You know exactly what's happening.

“Oh my god.”

You risk a glance. Robin is holding another one.

STEVE :(

“Robin.”

Robin unfolds another wrapper. And another. And another.  The dinosaur. The frog. The self portrait. The little crown.

Months of doodles.

Months of gum wrappers.

Months of Robin.

Robin stares at you. Then at the wrappers. Then back at you.

And for a moment, she looks completely speechless — an unsettling rarity. Robin Buckley is never speechless.

Ever.

“Baby.”

“Before you say anything—”

“You kept these?”

“I can explain.”

“You kept all of them.”

You groan. “Can you stop saying it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like I buried treasure in my closet.”

Robin gestures wildly at the floor. “Because apparently you did.”

You bury your face in your hands.

This is it.

This is how you die.

Not in a tragic accident. Not while saving the world. But because your girlfriend discovered your secret hoard of gum wrappers.

What an embarrassing obituary.

When several seconds pass without further teasing, you cautiously peek through your fingers. Robin isn't laughing. She's looking through them.

Really looking.

One after another.

A smile flickering across her face every few seconds as she discovers a doodle she'd forgotten existed.

“You kept the blanket fort one.”

You blink. “I liked that one.”

“You kept the frog.”

“You drew it because I had a bad day.”

Robin unfolds another. 

And another.

The smile slowly fades into something softer. Something that makes your chest ache.

The room goes quiet.

Your embarrassment stumbles to a halt. Because suddenly this isn't funny anymore.

Or rather—

It's still funny.

But it's something else, too.

Robin turns another wrapper over in her hands.

Careful.

Like it's fragile.

Like it matters.

“I don’t even remember drawing half of these.”

Something twists inside your chest.

Because that's exactly why you kept them.

Not because they were masterpieces. Not because they were important. Because they were little pieces of her.

Little moments.

Little reminders.

And maybe she forgot them.

But you never did.

“Why?” she asks softly.

Your stomach drops. Of all the questions she'd could've asked, somehow that one feels the hardest.

You shrug — a useless gesture.

“I don't know.”

Robin's eyebrow lifts. You both know that's not true.

A laugh escapes you.

“Okay, that's not entirely true.”

“No kidding.”

You roll your eyes.

Robin smiles — just a little. Patient. Waiting.

You look down at the wrappers scattered across the floor. At the collection you'd spent months carefully hiding. And suddenly you're not sure why you're embarrassed.

They're just doodles.

Just gum wrappers.

Just Robin.

“I liked them.”

Robin snorts. “Baby.”

“I did.”

“You kept hundreds of them.”

You groan.

“Can you stop bringing that up?”

“No.” 

The corner of her mouth twitches, but she doesn't look away. Still waiting. Still watching you with that soft expression that's always made it impossible to hide anything from her.

You look back down at the wrapper in her hand.

The first one.

The one that started all of this.

And before you can overthink it, the truth slips out.

“Because they came from you.”

Robin goes still.

Your face immediately grows warm.

Great.

Fantastic.

Wonderful.

You would now like to launch yourself directly into the sun.

“I know it sounds stupid—”

“It doesn't.”

You stop.

Robin is staring at you — her eyes suspiciously bright, her expression completely unguarded.

“It doesn't sound stupid at all.”

Your chest tightens.

For a moment neither of you says anything. Then Robin looks down at the wrappers scattered around her.

A small laugh escapes her — shaky around the edges.

She shakes her head. Like she still can't quite believe it.

Then she smiles.

Soft.

Fond.

The kind of smile that always feels like being wrapped in a blanket fresh from the dryer.

“You're such a dork.”

Relief crashes through you so fast it nearly makes you laugh.

“Says the girl who drew a shark on a gum wrapper and called it art.”

“It was art.”

“It looked like a potato with teeth.”

“It was an abstract shark.”

“It was a potato.”

Robin gasps — offended.

You laugh at her theatrical reaction. 

And just like that, the awkwardness dissolves. The embarrassment. The panic. All of it.

Leaving only the two of you. And a bedroom floor covered in months of affection.

Robin reaches into her pocket.

You narrow your eyes.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You literally have your own gum now.”

“That's not the point.”

“It is exactly the point.”

Robin ignores you. As usual.

She unwraps the gum and pops it into her mouth. Then grabs a pen from your desk.

“What are you doing?”

“Creating.”

“And somehow that answer told me nothing.”

Robin flashes you a grin before bending over the wrapper.

You watch her work. Tongue peeking out slightly in concentration.

The same way it always does.

A few moments later, she folds the wrapper in half and holds it out.

The familiar gesture suddenly feels different — heavier somehow. 

Softer.

You take it and carefully unfold it. Inside is a doodle of a tin, overflowing with wrappers. Beside it stand two stick figures — one with giant hair, one holding a piece of gum — holding hands.

Your vision blurs.

And then you spot the words written underneath: THANKS FOR KEEPING ME.

Your breath catches.

Slowly, you lift your head.

Robin's cheeks are pink. 

Her smile small. A little shy. A little nervous. Like maybe this confession isn't any easier for her than it was for you.

You stare at her for exactly two seconds before launching yourself across the floor.

Robin yelps. 

Then laughs. 

She wraps her arms around you as you nearly knock her over.

“Hi,” she says into your shoulder.

“Hi.”

“You crying?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Shut up.”

Robin presses a kiss to your temple. Then another. Then another.

And somewhere beneath the laughter and the teasing and the warmth of her arms around you, a folded gum wrapper rests safely in your hand.

Your new favorite.

Though you'll never admit that to Robin.

Some secrets are worth keeping.

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Soft music plays in the apartment, creating a comforting atmosphere that you know for a fact would not last long. light chatter around the room, a few clinks of wine glasses, the occasional laugh.

green eyes bore into your skull as you sit down at the table, three people across from her. You feign innocence, knowing that the lack of attention you give her only makes her more irritated. She knows you can feel the intensity of her gaze. Her cheeks have a flush to them like they always did when she’d drink. 

To say you didn’t notice her arm candy when you walked into the dinner would be a lie. Of course, you noticed the blonde sitting next to her, one whose eyes twinkled so innocently as Wanda toyed with her fingers. The poor girl had no knowledge of the history you two shared; she only knew that she had never seen you two speak.

Neither was your date aware. The short-haired brunette sat idly to your left, a polite smile on her face as she made passive conversation with your friends. The few of you who showed up for the birthday dinner at your friend's apartment made easy chatter amongst yourselves.

Your date presses a kiss to your temple after you crack a joke, and Wanda just about drives her knife into her plate with the amount of pressure she puts into cutting up her steak. The scrape of metal against porcelain cuts through the conversation for a split second. 

The blonde, whose name you can’t be bothered to remember, eyes her from the corner of her peripheral vision. She gently takes the knife from Wanda’s hand and begins cutting her food for her.

You roll your eyes at the sight, fighting a menacing smirk. Wanda paints a forced smile as her supposed girlfriend cuts the food for her, something you know she’s never been a fan of having done for her.

In fact, Wanda insisted on having a specific way her food was prepared and cut. something this new girl was very obviously unaware of. She preferred to cut the fat from first, then creating bite size pieces to pair with her sides. something her girlfriend has apparently not learned. 

Instead of acting on maturity, you swing an arm across your date’s shoulders and whisper in her ear, your fingers playing through the hairs on the nape of her neck. She smiles against your cheek, body leaning into yours. 

Wanda’s fingers tighten against the stem of her glass.

The sweet nothings flow from your lips with practiced ease, words you know you meant at one point, but not for the girl you’re whispering them to. 

Her brown eyes look into yours, and you have to convince yourself you’re looking into the light eyes of the girl you loved not too long ago. It becomes increasingly difficult to hold her, knowing that you can hear Wanda’s light laughter just a few feet away from you. Whether fake or not, your heart still knows it’s not with you. 

You notice that both of your glasses are empty, and you offer a refill, which she accepts sweetly. Somehow, almost planned, Wanda happens to arrive in the closed-off kitchen with you away from the rest of the guests. 

You smell the expensive perfume before she’s even within your line of sight. The expensive cedar fills your senses, and your chest tightens at the memory. It’s the same scent that would linger on your bedsheets after Wanda stayed the weekend with you. 

“You know, for someone who really enjoyed pulling on my hair, hers is pretty short, isn’t it?” She stands a few feet away from you, a tilted head with an accusatory expression on her face.

Of course, she’d follow just to get you for a moment for herself. It comes as no surprise that she’d find any reason to get under your skin. 

Your lip tugs between your teeth before you allow yourself to turn and face her, “and for someone who really loves control, you gave it up so willingly.”

Wanda’s accusatory expression turns to one of cockiness, something you enjoyed seeing after she downed a few glasses of wine, “You never complained.”

Her voice is just above a whisper, eyes taking over your body. You roll your eyes and hit her shoulder with enough force to make her hold her left arm with a pout. You let out a huff of laughter as she continues on with what she entered the kitchen to do.

“Careful,” you muse as you lean against the counter while Wanda fills the glasses of wine placed between the two of you, “your little friend might think you’re flirting with me.”

Wanda rolls her eyes and sets the wine bottle down with a bit more force than necessary, “Maybe because you keep looking over at me every two minutes to see if I’m looking at you with little Miss What’s her face.”

You scoff, pushing off the counter, “Please, you’ve been shooting daggers at me all evening like it’ll change anything.”

“You’re the one practically putting on a show, basically on her lap with the whispering, almost on the table-“

“So you were watching.”

With your arms crossed against your chest, she places the two wine glasses in your hands with a huff. You grab them from her, purposefully brushing your manicured fingers against the back of her palms with a cheeky grin. The two of you fall into a practiced rhythm, muscle memory keeping you two too close for comfort, where there shouldn’t be any left.

Wanda scoffs, as if she can’t believe you’d say such a statement like that, “You’re basically on her lap.”

“So is blondie over there.”

“She has a name.”

At that statement, you tense up. The idea of Wanda defending this new girl is enough to make your stomach twist over and over. You stay quiet, allowing Wanda to walk back over to where the guests are sitting.

Wanda watches as you stare her down in thought, and she takes it as a silent victory. She glances back to where you’re standing in the kitchen, “she kisses you too much,” she says suddenly.

“What?” Her voice pulls you out of your haze.

“The brunette,” she nods her head back to where she is sitting with your friends, “it looks too forced.”

You laugh at Wanda, “You’re unbelievable.”

Wanda only grins just before she returns to where the party is. You throw your head back in frustration, bothered at how easily both of you fall back into your usual banter. It takes you a minute before you return to your seat, green eyes following you every step of the way. 

Rolling over, Baran frowned when her hand met cold sheets. It was Sunday, her day off, and all she wanted to do was sneak in a couple extra minutes of sleep snuggled next to you. Reluctantly, she peeled her eyes open, squinting slightly against the rays of summer sun.

Before Baran could call out to you, she heard the faint sound of dishes clinking together along with the soft hum of your voice coming from the kitchen. Then she remembered. It was Sunday—not only her day off, but also recipe day.

Slipping out of bed and into her pair of slippers, Baran followed the smell of butter and sugar wafting from the oven. The house was still cool, goosebumps forming next to the freckles on her shoulders, but the sight of you holding out a spoon for her son to sample whatever you were making was enough to warm her up.

Kaveh spotted her first. “Maman!” His eyes lit up as Baran approached the island. “You have to try this!”

“Good morning, azizam.” Baran kissed his temple, letting her fingers run through his curls. “You’re up early.”

“It’s Sunday,” he said as if it were obvious, and when Baran looked at you with a raised brow, you could only shrug, amusement pulling on your lips.

Rounding the counter, Baran hooked her finger into the front pocket of your apron and pulled you in for a kiss.

“Good morning, eshgham,” she mumbled, sighing when she tasted a hint of cardamom lingering on your lips.

“Morning.” You pecked her lips once more before lifting the spoon to her mouth. “Taste?”

Never one to refuse you, Baran leaned forward and wrapped her lips around the wooden spoon. The flavors of cardamom and cinnamon danced on her tongue, and she let out a satisfied hum.

“Delicious.”

“Yeah?” Your eyes widened at the praise. Ever since you and Baran had started dating, you wanted to incorporate more Persian and Iranian flavors into your recipes. It took some experimenting, but luckily you had two samplers at hand to give you feedback.

“Tastes just like home,” Baran confirmed with a soft smile, which you mirrored. “What are you making?”

She slid past you to grab a mug from the cabinet, and you turned back to tend to whatever was steaming on the stove.

“Cardamom cinnamon rolls,” you answered, stirring a small pot, “with brown butter cream cheese frosting.”

“And there’s ham and cheese croissants in the oven,” Kaveh chimed in, clearly excited about his favorite pastry.

Baran frowned slightly as she poured herself a cup of hot water. “How long have you been up?” she asked you, walking over to take a seat in the stool next to her son.

“Only like an hour,” you replied as you clicked off the burner. Turning around, you leaned back against the stove and took a sip of your coffee. “I prepped the croissants and the dough for the rolls last night.”

“Was that before or after you made us homemade pizza?” Baran wore an easy smirk, but the slight edge in her voice told you she was chiding you for overworking yourself.

“It’s fine, darling. Food is my love language.”

Before Baran could push the issue further and remind you of the time she found you fast asleep with your head buried in a pile of flour, the oven timer beeped.

“Saved by bell,” she quipped under her breath, and by the look she gave you, you knew you were probably only getting to two of the four other recipes you’d had lined up for this afternoon.

As you pulled the tray of croissants from out of the oven, Kaveh hopped off his stool and scurried over to your side.

“Can I have one?” He stood on his tippy toes trying to get a peek of the flaky pastry.

“Maybe in a couple minutes. We have to let the cool first,” you explained patiently. Noticing the way his shoulders deflated slightly as he fell back onto his heels, you quickly added, “How about you help me with these cinnamon rolls?”

Like a switch, Kaveh’s face lit up again, and you laughed.

“Go grab the stool.”

Quickly, he hurried over to the pantry and returned with the step stool in hand, climbing up the two steps so his head was now at your shoulder level. As you spread the cardamom-cinnamon-butter mixture across the sheet of dough, you spelled out the next steps to him.

“After I spread the filling, I’ll cut the dough into strips.” You picked up the pizza slicer to do just that. “Then we’ll roll each strip up into a little bun.”

You used your two fingers to gently roll a strip of dough, picking it up to show him the spiral. “Like this. See?”

Kaveh nodded eagerly. “Cool!”

As the two of you assembled the rolls, Baran sipped her tea, a tender smile forming on her face. The smell of freshly baked pastry, the glowing morning sun, the easy banter between you and her son mixed with the faint music you’d put on— she never felt more at home.

“Maman, come try one.” Kaveh wore a wide smile as he proudly held up one of his rolls for his mother to see.

Before Baran could protest, or even explain that she’d made dozens of cinnamon rolls before herself, you chuckled and took the roll from his hand.

“Let your mother rest, kiddo,” you said, nudging him with your elbow. “She had a long day yesterday.”

Now it was your turn to give her a knowing look, your eyes telling her that you’d noticed the way her shift seemed to weigh heavier on her last night. Baran couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from twitching up, as she remembered how much detail with which you cared for her.

“Besides—” you shrugged casually— “she’s going to help me later with the halo-halo buns.”

“I am?” “Halo-halo?” Baran and her son spoke at the same time, their confused expressions comically identical.

“They’re for Perlah’s birthday,” you clarified before turning to the young boy. “Halo-halo is a Filipino dessert with shaved ice and fruit. It’s sort of similar to a sundae.”

“Can you save one for me?” he asked, bouncing his knees.

“Of course.” You ruffled his curls before playfully pinching his cheek. “Why don’t you go wash up and get dressed? Then a croissant will be waiting for you when you get back.”

Kaveh didn’t need to be told twice, and without another word, he was off the stool and running down the hall back to his bedroom. Shaking your head with amusement, you plucked his unfinished roll off the counter and dropped it next to the rest of the batch before moving the pan over to the stove.

“How do you know when Perlah’s birthday is?” Baran asked as you rounded the kitchen island. She swiveled the stool to face you, and you moved to stand in between her legs.

“She mentioned it last week when I brought in those sandwiches for you guys,” you replied nonchalantly, leaning in so your lips were hovering over hers. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she whispered, eyes flitting down to your mouth, as she finally realized the two of you were now alone.

Closing the gap, she kissed you slowly and softly, cherishing the taste of you on her tongue.

“I missed you,” you hummed against her lips as you started to pull away, your hands still resting on her thighs.

“I missed you too, eshgham.” Baran lightly brushed a loose hair out of your face, her eyes tracing every detail of your face, almost as if she were scared she was going to lose this moment.

You could sense her thoughts were drifting so you gently squeezed her leg. “You with me?”

“Always,” she murmured.

Nodding, you smiled, a faint twinge of concern still flickering in your eye. “How about after I put these rolls in, you help me with the Halo buns then we go picnic in the park?”

Baran furrowed her brows and frowned slightly. “Don’t you have some other recipes you want to try?”

She knew you usually spent all day Sunday in the kitchen, pouring over new techniques and flavor combinations.

Shrugging, you made a noncommittal sound as you twirled the end of one of her curls in between your fingers. “You’re more important. You and Kaveh.”

The ease and finality with which you said this made Baran’s throat tighten, and in that moment, there were a million things she wanted to say.

She wanted to say ‘thank you for integrating my son so seamlessly into your life, for knowing what to say at all the right moments, for knowing me so well.’ She wanted to tell you much your words meant to her, how your actions meant even more. She wanted to say ‘I love how you always make me feel appreciated and seen, how you’ve made this love for us and turned it into a home.’

Opening her mouth, Baran wanted to say all of that, but the words died on the tip of her tongue.

As if you could read her thoughts, your eyes softened. “I love you.”

Baran nodded with a smile, her own eyes glistening as she swallowed the knot in her throat.

Natasha waits outside in her car, just like you’d asked her to do the night before. Despite knowing she was one of the coolest Avengers, to you she was just your embarrassing older sister. A part that Natasha was more than happy to play. She can’t help smiling to herself when you finally emerge from the house, still wearing your pyjama top with the jeans that you’d worn yesterday, your hair messy with dark bags beneath your eyes. You throw your backpack into the back seat before climbing into the passenger seat next to her.

“Good Morning,” Natasha says brightly, pulling away from the kerb. “How was it?”

“Yeah it was good. For something called a ‘sleepover’ though, we didn’t do much sleeping.”

Natasha laughs, “Yeah that sounds about right. Tell me everything.”

“Is Yelena okay?”

“Yes, she’ll be back round for dinner on Monday, with Kate this time. She said to quit worrying about her, that you can go to her apartment whenever you want. Now come on, I wanna hear everything about your first sleepover.”

“It was good.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and reaches over to nudge your shoulder, “Come on, that wasn’t everything. In fact, that was barely anything. I want all the details.”

When you’d told Natasha you’d been invited to a sleepover, she’d probably been more excited than you. Since Natasha had become your legal guardian you’d moved into the Avengers compound and had started at a local High School, quickly making friends with three girls about your age – Lisa, Anna and Margot. You’d started hanging out with them outside of school – at the mall, the movie theatre, the park, all the usual teen things that you should’ve been doing for years if you hadn’t been stuck in the Red Room. Last night had been your first sleepover and Natasha had watched you worriedly packing your backpack, not knowing what to expect because despite the fact you’d shared a dormitory with several other girls your entire life, you’d never had a proper sleepover.

“I don’t really know what to tell you. It was just… Normal I guess.”

“Okay but I’ve never been to a sleepover and as your older sister it’s my job to live vicariously through you now. I want every detail, no matter how big or small.”

“Well,” You relent, “Margot’s Mom ordered us all a pizza, we each got our own one and we got to pick the toppings. Then there were snacks, they’d all brought some, and I got to join in because you’d given me the popcorn.”

Natasha smiles, glancing at you. Although Natasha herself had never been to a teenage sleepover, she’d secretly consulted Kate who had told her to make sure you took snacks with you. She’s glad that Kate hadn’t been wrong and that she’d been able to help you out, even with something as small as popcorn.

“I didn’t know what we’d do until bedtime but Margot had games consoles, two of them. They played this one first with controllers and I didn’t know how to use them but I got around it by saying I was having fun watching because she only had one controller that they passed back and forth. Anna says she has one with two controllers so we can all play next time.”

“So you didn’t take a turn?”

“No, I didn’t want to look stupid in front of them. They already kind of think I’m weird. We played a different console next, Margot had this game called ‘Just Dance’ but that was easy enough because you just hold the remote and follow the dance moves on the screen. There were four remotes for that one so we all played and it was fun, we laughed a lot. But then we played this game, ‘Mario Kart’, and that was harder and I kept losing. Luckily we all just laughed about it and they did try to help me.”

Natasha nods thoughtfully. Although Widows were raised on how to use technology, why would they bother teaching you how to use a games console? You could probably hack your way into a government database with a computer but an XBOX or a PlayStation were foreign to you. “Tony probably has an old games console around the compound somewhere if you want to practice,” Natasha says. “Then next time you can join in.”

“That would be good! The game they were playing was fun, it was this little girl in a yellow coat and she was running around, and it was really scary, there was this guy with long arms-” You animatedly tell Natasha about the video game before moving on to the rest of the night. “They wanted to watch a scary movie so we ended up watching ‘M3GAN’ which I didn’t think was that scary but it was still funny. Anna kept squealing whenever she thought something scary happened and we kept laughing at her.”

Natasha grins, reaching over to nudge your shoulder, “And then you ended up barely sleeping?”

“Margot’s Mom came in and said it was time to go to sleep so we switched the lights off but everyone kept talking for hours and hours. Lisa fell asleep first, she snored a little and we all laughed. There was a lot of laughing, my stomach hurt by the morning. Then Margot’s Mom made us chocolate chip pancakes, they were really tasty. They all go to swim class on a Saturday morning so they’re all going straight there.”

Natasha nods, “You could’ve gone too if you wanted. I could sign you up.”

You shake your head quickly, “Nah, I don’t really like swimming.”

Natasha swallows and nods again, remembering the issues she’d had with getting you to have a bath when you’d first moved in. Showers were less difficult but Natasha suspects something happened in the Red Room that left you feeling afraid of the water. She’d had to sign a form to get you out of swimming lessons at school, after you’d cried and begged her to, refusing to tell her the real reason why but getting so wound up about it that she’d just relented.

“They said it’s Anna’s turn to host the next sleepover and then it should go back to Lisa but now that I’m in the group it’ll be my turn,” You say, turning to look at her. “But I can’t really have a sleepover at the compound, can I?”

Natasha hesitates. Your friends had been around for dinner but even that had been a bit of a logistical nightmare of background checks, guest passes and then making sure an adult was with them at all times, even having to escort them to the bathroom. Although the compound was your home it was also technically a government building with tech and information that the public shouldn’t have access to. Dinner had been difficult, the four of you hadn’t been able to talk freely though Natasha had tried to give you all as much space as possible.

If Natasha had her own place, of course she’d let you have your own slumber party. Would put up with the lack of sleep, coming into your room if you guys got too rowdy but otherwise accepting that none of you were going to get much sleep. The other Avengers took their sleep seriously though and wouldn’t put up with four teenage girls giggling into the early hours of the morning, even if Natasha could find a way to keep you all contained in your room without having to stand guard all night.

“I’m sure we can think of something,” Natasha eventually says. “If you want to host one.”

“Well, it’s only fair. If I don’t host maybe they’ll stop inviting me.”

Natasha nods thoughtfully, “I’ll speak to Steve, he might have an idea. Leave it with me, okay?”

You nod, trusting her completely. Although you didn’t have any memories of living with her and Yelena when you were tiny, you were just so ecstatic to be attached to a family of some kind. If this awesome woman said she was your older sister then fine. Living with Natasha and the other Avengers was far preferable to living in the Red Room.

“You had a good time though? They were nice to you?”

“Oh yeah, they were really nice. I didn’t tell them I’d never been to a sleepover though; they might’ve thought that was weird.”

You hadn’t told your friends the truth about your upbringing, something Natasha could understand. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to connect the dots. You were Natasha’s younger sister after all, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume you had also been raised in the Red Room but for now, you were just Y/N, their friend from school. That was how you deserved to be known.

“Wanna stop at Wendy’s on the way back for some lunch?”

Your eyes light up and you grin, “Yeah, I’m starving.”

A couple of weeks later Natasha stands back as the two of you finish pitching the tent in the backyard of the compound. “Are you sure they won’t think this is weird?” You ask worriedly.

“No way,” Natasha reassures you, squeezing your shoulder. “This is going to be the best slumber party they’ve ever been to, I promise. You’ve got a clear night ahead and we’ll put fairy lights up in here so it’ll be nice and bright all night. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“We can’t watch a movie or play video games though like we did at Margot’s.”

“No but you can tell scary stories and share secrets, and I’ll bring in some board games and lots of snacks.” Natasha sees the worried look on your face and wraps her arms around you, pulling you in for a hug, kissing the top of your head. “Kid, I promise that you’re gonna have an amazing sleepover, your friends will love it. Steve even said he’d do a campfire for you all so you can roast marshmallows if you want. It’ll be so much fun.”

You wrap your own arms around her, letting her tuck your head under her chin. You can still remember the way you’d jumped back fearfully the first time she’d tried to hug you. It had taken you weeks to let her, and now you love her sisterly affection. Natasha kisses your forehead, “You’ve got really lovely friends. If they decide they do want a movie we can always set up my iPad or something. I’ll only be in the common room if you need me.”

The common room was by the patio doors to the backyard, and that was where Natasha was going to spend the night in case any of the girls needed the bathroom or there was any kind of problem. Natasha already knows she probably won’t get much sleep but she doesn’t mind too much. She has a new book to read and TV shows to catch up on. Yelena also said she’d facetime her at some point. The most important thing was making sure you could have your slumber party.

“Thanks for sorting this out,” You mumble.

“Anything for my little sister,” She replies.

That makes your eyes water but you blink quickly, not wanting to cry. You’d spent so long fending for yourself and it was still difficult sometimes, knowing that there was someone you could rely on now if you needed them. It wasn’t just Natasha, you had Yelena too, and Yelena’s girlfriend Kate, and all the other Avengers in the compound who seemed fond of you. So many people you could go to with your problems. And now you even had friends too, friends who were coming round to your place for your first slumber party! You want everything to be perfect and you can see that Natasha’s idea is a good one, that it’s unique. Hopefully your friends will love it too.

Natasha kisses the top of your head, “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

“I love being your big sister,” Natasha says, leaning back to cup your face with both of your hands. “You’re such a great kid, you make me proud every single day.”

“Nat… Don’t make me cry before my friends get here.”

Natasha grins and kisses your forehead. “I won’t bother you tonight. Don’t wanna cramp your style.”

“Well actually… Maybe you could toast marshmallows with us? My friends think you’re awesome.” You hesitate, giving her a small smile. “And so do I. You could tell us about some of your Avengers stuff? If you want.”

Natasha can’t stop the beam that appears on her face as she ruffles your hair, “Yeah… Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“Who are you looking for?” a voice drawls behind her.

Natasha jumps before she can stop herself and turns to look over her shoulder.

Maria Hill stands there, arms folded and expression carved with amused curiosity.

Natasha straightens at once, face smoothing into a practiced calm. 

“Just assessing the agents you brought with you,” she says coolly, crossing her arms.

Maria’s brow arches. 

“Mm. And your assessment requires hiding behind a wall?”

Natasha goes to defend herself when the sound of approaching footsteps makes her glance over Maria’s shoulder. She then turns to the wall and lifts a hand to shield her face, staring at the metal plating as if suddenly deeply fascinated by the wall’s infrastructure.

The footsteps pass by without stopping. 

Natasha slowly lowers her hand and sighs softly in relief when she sees that it wasn’t anyone familiar.

Maria watches this entire display with open delight.

“Ah,” Maria hums. “So. Who are we avoiding?”

“No one,” Natasha snaps defensively.

Maria raises a brow, giving her a pointed look at her response. 

Not wanting to explain herself, Natasha turns to leave, eager to put this whole situation behind her—only to collide with a figure rounding the same corner at the same time.

Her hands act on reflex, steadying you with a firm, sure grip. Only to jolt back the second her brain catches up with her body. She drops her hold on you like she’s been burned, fingers hovering inches from your sleeves. 

Your eyes, also wide and startled, lock with hers, recognition flashing across your face before anything else. Then, just as quickly, something colder settles in.

You step back, composing yourself.

“Hey,” Natasha breathes softly, almost tentative in her tone, like a request for a peace offering disguised as a greeting.

You look at her for a lingering second before dismissing her just as quickly. You turn to Maria instead, voice steady and professional.

“I have the reports you asked for, Commander.”

Maria’s lips curl into a grin she doesn’t bother to hide. She takes the tablet from you, glancing pointedly between the two of you.

“Well, hello, ‘no one,’” she says under her breath to Natasha in a singsong tone.

Natasha stiffens before throwing a warning glare at the other woman, but Maria just chuckles in response before gesturing for you to follow her to the conference room.

You walk away without another glance at her.

The rejection lands sharply in Natasha’s chest, but she doesn’t chase it. She watches instead as the door closes behind you, cutting her out.

Natasha shifts her weight, gaze drawn to the narrow pane of glass alongside the door. Inside, you stand across from Maria, already focused on the briefing. As if sensing her, your eyes lift and meet hers through the glass.

No surprise this time.

Only cold acknowledgment.

Then in one smooth motion, you reach up and slide the privacy screen down, shutting her out completely.

A quiet exhale slips past Natasha’s lips. She looks away, jaw flexing once.

You deserve that, she tells herself. You’re the one who disappeared.

~~~~~~~ ⧗ ~~~~~~~

The hum of quiet conversation dwindles as Steve steps forward, tapping the screen behind him to display the layout of a distant Hydra compound. Lights dim. The atmosphere shifts into focus. Everyone directs their attention toward the front.

Everyone but Natasha.

Despite her best efforts, her gaze keeps drifting to the other side of the long conference table to where you are. 

You sit upright, attention locked on Steve, eyes deliberately avoiding the left side of the room where she is. 

Even from here, Natasha can see the tension in your shoulders, the way your jaw tightens every time Steve mentions the two teams working together.

A low, quiet sigh escapes her before she can stop it. Then a nudge at her elbow draws her attention.

Maria leans slightly toward her, voice pitched just low enough to blend into the shuffling of papers and muted voices around them.

“So,” Maria says, sounding almost casual, but Natasha catches the glint of mischief in her eyes. “Want to tell me what all that was earlier?”

Natasha’s brows pull together. She crosses her arms, posture defensive. 

“Not particularly, no.”

Maria huffs in amusement. 

“I don’t think you have a choice here,” she says.

Natasha scoffs and shakes her head lightly in disbelief.

“And why’s that?” 

Maria holds up a finger. 

“One: she’s one of my agents. And I need to know if there’s going to be any problem here.” A second finger. “Two: she had you—Natasha Romanoff—hiding behind walls.” A third finger. “And three: I promised Fury I’d mess with you at least once while we’re here since he can’t anymore. Something about tradition.”

Natasha slowly turns her head to stare at Maria with an unimpressed look.

Maria only smiles.

Natasha exhales sharply through her nose and glances back toward you, only to find your eyes already on her. The contact is brief and immediately electric. 

However, your expression hardens on instinct, gaze sharpening into a glare before you turn away, chin lifting slightly in silent dismissal.

The reaction is expected. But that doesn’t make it sting any less.

You used to smile when you looked at me.

That thought makes Natasha lower her eyes to the table, fingers worrying the corner of the mission dossier. She can’t seem to keep them still.

“We…uh…” she murmurs under her breath.

Maria tilts her head, listening patiently.

Natasha’s lips press together. There isn’t a word that feels right. Dating was too small a label. Together too uncertain. Neither of you ever defined what it was.

But the outcome is the same, regardless of the label you two refused to give.

“I don’t know,” she finishes quietly, almost to herself.

Before Maria can respond, Steve’s voice cuts back through the room.

“Alright,” he says firmly, clicking the remote to shift the slide. “We’ll be working in joint units with SHIELD on this one.” He nods toward Maria. “Commander Hill will give assignments.”

Maria stands and moves to the front, clipboard in hand. 

Natasha forces herself to sit up straighter, though she can feel dread coiling low in her stomach, a premonition she can’t quite shake.

Names are read. Agents are paired.

She barely registers them until she hears yours.

“Agent Y/l/n,” Maria announces, “you’ll be with Romanoff.”

Stunned silence hits Natasha like a physical force.

Across the table, you stiffen. Your chair scrapes softly as you sit up, eyes snapping toward Maria in immediate protest. Your hand starts to rise, ready to argue, refuse, do anything to prevent this.

But Maria has already moved on.

You slowly lower your hand, fingers curling into a fist on your lap. Then your head turns, not toward Maria, but snapping directly toward Natasha.

The glare you level at her is sharp enough to make her wince.

Behind the raised clipboard, Maria flashes Natasha a discreet thumbs-up.

Natasha groans internally.

It’s not fair. This isn’t even her fault.

But as she risks one more glance at you and sees the fury, the betrayal, and the pain you don’t bother hiding, Natasha knows that whether it’s her fault or not doesn’t matter.

Because she’s the one who ran away first.

~~~~~~~ ⧗ ~~~~~~~

Snow crunches beneath Natasha’s boots with each step, the air growing colder with the silence stretching between you. Frost clings to the dark branches above, and the pale moonlight breaks in fractured beams across your shoulders as you lead the way. The only sound is your steady breathing—measured, controlled,…and entirely devoid of any acknowledgment of her presence.

Your avoidance becomes obviously deliberate to her. 

Every time Natasha speeds up, you quicken your pace. Every time she slows, you pull further ahead. It’s not just silence. It’s punishment.

And she deserves it.

But you’re also the only other member of this infiltration team. If you don’t work together, the rest of the Avengers won’t even make it past the perimeter of the Hydra base.

Natasha takes a slow breath, watching it cloud the air before deciding this has gone on long enough.

“We need to work together on this,” she says quietly, matching your pace again. “You can’t avoid talking to me forever.”

You stop so suddenly that she almost walks right into you. Muscle memory kicks in as her hands lift instinctively, hovering inches from your back, her body swaying as she catches herself before making contact. Natasha steps back quickly like she’s burned.

You pivot slowly, eyes sharp at her. Your gaze flicks to her raised hands, then back to her face, disbelief curling your lip.

“You’re one to talk, Natasha.” You jab a finger into her shoulder. “You ghosted me first.”

Natasha freezes, breath catching. She opens her mouth, a response forming, then failing. The truth stands between you like a wall she built with her own hands.

You huff a quiet, bitter laugh. 

“And of all the underhanded tactics…” You gesture vaguely, as if the entire mission briefing is still hovering over your head. “Now you’re forcing me to be with you on this mission.”

Natasha’s jaw tightens. Hands slowly lower to her sides, fingers flexing once before curling into loose fists.

“Hey, this was not my fault,” she says, frowning. “I had nothing to do with this. If it were my choice, I wouldn’t have chosen you—”

You scoff in disbelief, cutting her off and turning your back to her.

“Right. Great talk.”

Realizing how her words landed, Natasha reacts on instinct. She steps forward quickly, boots crunching through the snow as she moves to intercept your path.

The cold air stings her lungs, but not nearly as much as the panic rising in her chest. She lifts her hands to stop you—not yet touching—her fingers splayed in midair as though even the ghost of contact might shatter whatever fragile boundary still exists between you.

“Wait,” she says, voice softer now, no longer the practiced calm of the legendary Black Widow. There’s something raw in it. Something unarmored. “I didn’t mean—”

Her throat works as she swallows, eyes tracing over your features like she’s memorizing them all over again. A flicker of vulnerability slips through her usually unreadable gaze.

“I just meant I wouldn’t have made you put up with me. Again. Given our…history.”

The word falls hesitantly into the space between you. A quiet, unspoken acknowledgment of everything you two used to be. Everything she walked away from.

You stare at her in silence, expression unreadable. Then your gaze lowers to her hands. Suspended between you. A breath away from your jacket sleeve. So close. Trembling.

Natasha tries to hide it, curling her fingers back into her palms, but you already saw. 

When you finally speak, your voice is gentle. Soft and devastating.

“What history?”

Natasha’s breath hitches. No enemy’s ever thrown her off the way you do with just two words.

“Last I remember,” you continue, taking a step toward her as if challenging her to deny your words, “You said it was nothing.”

Natasha flinches, not outwardly, but she still feels it like ice through her bloodstream. A familiar shame crawls up her spine, the same shame she felt the moment she said those words to you. Words she didn’t mean. Words she used as armor. Words that did exactly what they were designed to do—create distance.

Except now she has to live in that distance.

Natasha’s gaze falls to the ground as you walk past her, your shoulder brushing so close she can feel the warmth radiating from you in the freezing air. Your footsteps pause beside her. 

And when you speak again, your voice is quiet. Barely more than a whisper. But it carries more impact than a shouted accusation.

“Stop acting like it ever meant anything to you, Natasha.”

You continue walking without looking back.

You don’t see the way Natasha stops moving entirely, her lungs forgetting how to draw breath. Her eyes fall closed, lashes trembling. A faint gasp escapes her, not from physical exertion but from the emotional blow she didn’t even try to dodge.

Because the truth is—

It was something to her.

It still is.

~~~~~~~ ⧗ ~~~~~~~

She had pulled you into a corner to scold you, but with you standing between her and the hallway her patience waned. As Dana looked at you, acting so similar to her youngest sister, she tried not to let her emotions take over. 

“This is our place of work. Don’t think that just because you’re my niece I won’t write you up. Stop acting like a child.” You rolled your eyes, unable to contain your anger. Pulling the niece card was something she did far too often and that was your professional and familial opinion. 

“Oh please, let’s not pretend like you care whether we’re family here or not. Everyone treats me differently because you never let them forget I’m your precious little niece.” It was the truth. There hadn’t been a day that went by at PTMC where someone didn’t mention the family tie in one way or another. 

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” She was clearly in denial and it only riled you up more. 

“Oh come off of it Dana. They’ve all tiptoed around me since you reprimanded Princess for flirting with me.” Dana huffed in aggravation and placed her hands on her hips. 

“God forbid I protect one of my nurses when they look uncomfortable.” It was a ridiculous excuse and you knew it. She was arguing just for the sake of arguing at this point. 

She had reprimanded Princess like an aunt, not a charge nurse. 

“Princess flirts with everyone! It was my first fucking day. You treated me like a little kid and now none of them even look at me if they can help it. It was embarrassing!” You were practically shouting at this point and were sure you’d draw a crowd soon, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

It wasn’t your intention to cause a scene, but you were done biting your tongue. You’d been working at PTMC for just over a year and it hadn’t gotten any better since Dana put her foot down. 

“What’s embarrassing is you parading around the department like you didn’t benefit from being my family and haven’t been practically pissing everywhere, laying your claim since you and Al-Hashimi started dating. I’m not the only one who’s getting tired of you showing off like a child.” 

Dana’s voice was dangerously low. That was the second time she’d alluded to your relationship with Baran and it did not settle well. 

Dana was being such a hypocrite. All she’d done was lay her claim on you around the ED. She’d acted like your overbeating aunt from the minute you walked in, not like a professional charge nurse. 

She was clearly biased and couldn’t see the truth. 

“Go home and maybe take a look in the mirror.” You felt like a kicked puppy as you moved away from Dana and left the hospital. There was only so much you could say without ruining your relationship with the woman forever. 

You were tired physically and emotionally. You knew if you continued arguing it would only hurt more in the long run. You weren’t sure if you were more worried about hurting Dana or getting hurt yourself. 

Whatever the case may be you were sure Dana had succeeded in getting under your skin in the worst way possible. You hadn’t doubted your relationship with Baran before, but hearing it from Dana’s mouth definitely made you second guess yourself. 

It was obvious that you were younger than the attending, but it had never even been something you two felt the need to call attention to. It really wasn’t an issue for either of you, but Dana was never wrong. 

She was always scarily on the nose with her assumptions and observations. As a kid you’d appreciated that she didn’t dance around the truth, but now it hurt more coming from her. 

It was hard to discern the truth from Dana’s thoughts that were worming their way into your brain. You wanted her to be wrong, but it was difficult fighting her words and your own racing mind. You’d always had a wild imagination.

As you drove home your thoughts swirled and you replayed every moment you’d shared with Baran recently. Of course at work she was professional. You were well aware of the standard she held herself to. She’d also been very clear about her expectations for your relationship in the ED.

You’d gone into the relationship knowing it wasn’t going to be easy being constantly around her while maintaining consistent professionalism. But it was something you’d talked about extensively before making everything official. 

You followed the rules you set together to a tee until you’d had a terrible day earlier in the week.

It wasn’t easy being an empath in a line of work that toyed with your emotions, but when you lost a kid you couldn’t help the panic that took over your body. 

You could feel the bile rising in your throat and as you rushed to the bathroom for the safety of an enclosed space. You wanted to look for Baran, but your body was shaking too much. 

You were able to text her, asking for help, but she was stuck in a trauma and couldn’t check her phone. She recognized the vibration of your message immediately, but assumed it was about the date she’d planned for later that night. 

You were eventually able to get your bearings and stumbled upon Baran when you left the bathroom. She still hadn’t checked her phone, losing a patient of her own, and she’d reprimanded you when you tried to pull her away from the floor. 

You took it in stride, but it still hurt. 

When Baran finally had the time to check her phone and realized what had happened she immediately apologized. You understood and accepted her apology. You didn’t have your date night and opted for holding each other instead. It was a cozy night that ended in little sleep. 

You’d thought the night went well all things considered, but you couldn’t help trying to think of any mistake you might’ve made since or before then.

Baran’s house was quiet when you entered, but you could smell the stench of cleaning products the second you walked in. You took off your shoes and emptied your pockets in the bowl by the door absentmindedly.

Your stomach lurched as you looked for her. She was stress cleaning. You’d only ever seen her do this once and it was when she had to have a tough conversation with you. 

Your throat tightened as you walked through the house and found her in the en suite bathroom to her bedroom. What caught your attention was all of your clothes laid out on the bed. It was various items you’d brought over in the last six months of dating. Some of the items you hadn’t even seen since you brought them. 

Besides your clothes everything else was spotless. It was clear she’d been cleaning practically the entire day. She’d had the day off and didn’t have her son. It was probably the perfect day to clean in her mind. 

The perfect day for her to clean you out of her life apparently. 

You clenched your jaw as you walked into the bathroom and saw her standing on the toilet, cleaning on top of the cabinet. She could barely reach even on her tippy toes.

As you entered you accidentally startled her, causing her to almost fall. You rushed over to her to help steady her. 

“What are you doing here?” She huffed, catching her breath. Baran hadn’t meant anything by the question, but it felt like a punch to the gut. Anxiety immediately settled in and you could feel the need to retreat into yourself. 

You quickly let go, as though you were burned, and took a step back. Your throat was painfully dry. You wiped your hands on your thighs and clasped your hands in front of your body to stop from twitching. 

“Long day, got to leave early.” Baran barely looked at you as she continued to clean. You felt like you were intruding in her space. You bit your lip, unsure of what to do with yourself. 

“Do you need help?” You offered. Maybe being useful would help to at least keep you busy. You weren’t necessarily sure it would make you feel better, but you had to try something. You didn’t enjoy cleaning like Baran, but you didn’t want to be rude either. 

“Absolutely not.” That stung. You could feel tears prickling behind your eyes as you rocked on the balls of your feet. You puffed your cheeks and tried to think of something to do that would be useful. 

“I’ll go start on dinner then.” You turned on your heels as quickly as you could. You didn’t want to cry in front of her. It was clear something was very wrong and you didn’t want a fight to add to whatever was going on.

“Already done, it’s in the oven.” Your breath hitched as you left the bathroom. You could feel the pounding in your chest increase. Seeing your clothes on the bed again sent you into a full tailspin. 

Normally when you felt like this you’d run towards Baran, but now it felt like an impossible task. You looked back at the bathroom one more time before leaving the room as quickly as you could. 

You wanted nothing more than to hide. If you were being truthful you knew you wanted the pressure of being held, but you couldn’t bring yourself to ask. Everything felt like a series of wrongs. 

Before you knew it you were outside. 

You wanted to leave her house entirely, but knew you were in no state to drive. You’d barely been able to pull your shoes on before you were stumbling over your own feet down her street. You were sure you looked like a helpless fawn on ice, but it didn’t matter. 

You weren’t sure how long you walked before you found yourself at a park. You vaguely recognized it as one you’d taken Baran’s son to before. No one was there which you were grateful for as you sat on one of the swings. 

You didn’t pump your legs, but you enjoyed the feeling of being off the ground. You didn’t exactly feel light, but something about being off your feet for the first time all day was a small comfort. 

It took a while, but you were able to come back to yourself after some deep breathing and staring into space. It was only then that you noticed you didn’t have your phone and the sun was starting to set. It had been at least an hour since you left the house. 

You walked back to Baran’s house, bracing yourself for the inevitable on the way there. It was over. Dana had been right. You’d made too many mistakes and now it was time to pay for it by losing the woman you loved.  

The front door was still unlocked when you entered. Baran was nowhere to be seen. The house smelled more like food and less like cleaning products now, but it still felt wrong. 

It didn’t feel like you belonged there anymore. 

You went to the kitchen and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge when you heard Baran practically running down the stairs talking to someone on the phone. 

“I don’t know. I came downstairs and she was gone. Her car’s here, but her phone was left by the door. I don’t know why she…” Baran stopped talking when she made eye contact with you. She took a deep breath before telling the other person on the line you were back. 

Baran rushed over to you and took you in. She turned your face in her hands and checked your body to make sure nothing had happened to you. Oh how wrong she was because everything had happened.

“Where the hell have you been?” Baran was practically shouting in your face, but you barely reacted. You carefully pulled her hands off your face and put some distance between the two of you. 

“The park.” Your brain was short circuiting as you tried to protect yourself. You were protecting yourself from the inevitable, not her. Some part of you still knew Baran would never physically hurt you. 

You hoped that by answering her question quickly and without any added details she’d stop yelling. You were exhausted and everything felt like an attack. 

“What were you thinking?” You were thinking too much. That was the problem. Everything felt wrong. You didn’t even feel like yourself anymore. You weren’t sure if yourself was even good enough. You weren’t sure it had ever been. 

Baran took a moment and looked at you for the first time all day. Her eyebrows furrowed. You weren’t looking at her. You were staring over her shoulder, just to the right of her. 

What she noticed more than anything was that you looked small. You were practically crushing yourself into the kitchen counter opposite of where you once had been. You looked scared. 

Baran took a small step towards you and you flinched. Her heart ached for you. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she didn’t want to cause you any more harm. You knew she wasn’t actively trying to hurt you, but you felt raw. 

“Hey, azizam. Look at me.” The words snaked around your heart and clenched. You looked up to the ceiling to try and stop the tears from falling. 

“Please, don’t call me that.” Your voice came out just above a whisper. Baran’s throat constricted as she looked at you. Something was seriously wrong and she was kicking herself for not noticing sooner. 

“What’s wrong?” The question felt like a stab in the chest. So many things were wrong, but you didn’t think she cared. You clutched your water bottle to your side and took a deep breath. A few deep breaths actually.

“Baran, it’s okay. I understand. You don’t have to pretend anymore. I know I’ve been clingy and childish and you’ve had enough. I’m sorry I didn’t realize soon enough to fix my behavior. You don’t have to beat around the bush. You’re allowed to change your mind about me.” 

It was sad, but it felt like the truth. People were allowed to change their minds. Would it break you having to leave her, yes. Would you need to leave PTMC, yes. Would it feel like the world ended, yes. But you’d do it if it meant she was happy.

Life was full of ups and downs and you guessed it was just your time to go through a rough patch alone. Baran could see the emotions swirling in your eyes even though you were somehow able to keep your voice scarily even. 

What got to her the most was the use of her name. You always called her every pet name under the sun, but she hadn’t heard you use her government name outside the hospital since your first date. 

She stared at you for a moment and replayed the day in her head since you’d gotten home. She’d been so focused on using cleaning as a distraction that she hadn’t registered how sad you sounded earlier. How broken. 

Baran bit her lip as she tried again, but this time it took everything in her not to move her body towards you. She also kept her voice as soft as she could. 

“Eshgham, I have not changed my mind about you.” You slowly looked her in the eye, not sure if you believed her. Baran could see the hesitance written on your features as she continued. 

“There is nothing about you that needs to be fixed. You drive me absolutely crazy and I love that about you. I fell in love with you the moment you spilled your coffee on me outside the hospital. I will never get tired of having you close to me. I'm not sure what's going on, but I have a feeling I unknowingly added to the stress of your day. Can we please sit down and talk?” 

Your throat bobbed as a new wave of tears threatened to fall. 

“You don’t want to break up with me?” You squeaked out as you shifted on your feet. It was a nervous habit you’d had since you were a child. 

“No, I don’t want that at all. You’re stuck with me unless you tell me otherwise. I’m not going anywhere.” Baran relaxed when she saw you release the breath you’d been unconsciously holding. You were still too scared to move, but she could see your fingers reaching towards her. 

“Can I hold you nafasam?” You nodded to her, your fingers still twitching. Baran slowly walked towards you so she wouldn’t spook you before wrapping you in her arms. You immediately melted into her chest and clung to the hem of her shirt. 

Baran made sure to keep firm pressure around your torso as she raked her fingers through your hair. You buried your face into her neck and she held you until she felt your breathing even out. 

You were the first to pull away, but you didn’t go far. You couldn’t bring yourself to release her shirt either. Baran looked at you with such affection it hurt. She rubbed her palms up and down your arms. 

She didn’t say anything as she led you to the couch. She coaxed your hand free from her shirt and replaced it with her own as she sat down before pulling you into her lap. You easily went wherever she moved you, grateful for the closeness. 

“Dana and I had a fight. That’s the real reason why I came back early. She said some things that I couldn’t shake and made me doubt myself. I thought maybe I was too much and that you were tired of our relationship, among other things.” Baran rubbed your back and brushed her thumb over the knuckles of the hand she’d been holding.

She kissed your temple, but didn’t stop you from talking. She knew you had to let out all of your thoughts or they’d continue to consume you. She didn’t want that to happen any longer. She also knew you needed reassurance in the form of touch and she was happy to give it.

“When I got here, you were cleaning and all my clothes were out on the bed. I thought… I thought you were cleaning me out of your life. The only other time you cleaned like that was when I crossed a boundary. Then I…” Your heart was racing again and your body was practically vibrating with nerves. 

“Then you offered to help me and when I told you no it was just another nail in the coffin.” You nodded as you relaxed into her again. It felt good to let everything out. You hadn’t always been able to talk things through with other people, but Baran always encouraged it. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to see what was going on. I was so wrapped up in my own world I didn’t realize you were struggling. I’m so sorry, azizam. Your clothes were out because I was making room for you to have your own space because I want you here with me permanently.” Your eyes widened. This was a lot for your fuzzy brain to process.

“You mean?” Baran gave you a dopey smile and nodded as she rested her forehead on yours.

“Yes, I want you to move in. I’ve only hinted at it a million times over the last two weeks. And for clarity’s sake, I didn’t take up your offer for cleaning because I know it’s stressful for you which is the complete opposite for me. Besides, you shouldn’t have to come home and clean after a long shift even if it did get cut short.” You wrapped your arms around her neck and nuzzled your nose into her temple. 

“I feel so stupid. I should’ve tried to talk to you…” You mumbled. Baran shook her head and held you close. She was not having you blame yourself any longer.

“No, don’t say that. It’s not your fault. I wasn’t very inviting when you came home and didn’t give you a chance to even try.” You hummed and felt Baran shift underneath you. She lightly tapped your back twice, her way of silently asking you to look at her. 

“Is there anything else I can do to ease your worries?” You stared at her before looking away nervously. You bit the inside of your cheek as your eyebrows furrowed. Baran lightly pressed her thumb between your eyebrows and kissed your chin. 

“Do you think I’m too young or immature for you?” Baran kissed your cheek tenderly before answering honestly. 

“No, not at all. I love that there are things that make us different because of our ages. It means I get to see the world from a different perspective. Seeing the world through your eyes is something I will always cherish. Besides, just because you’re younger doesn’t mean I don’t have stamina too.” You giggled as you puffed out a breath of air. 

You felt slightly better, but you knew the conversation wasn’t over. There were still some difficult things swirling in your brain. Dana had really gotten under your skin whether she meant to or not. 

Baran pursed her lips and nodded at you in silent question. She could practically see the gears still turning in your brain. 

“Aunt Dana, she said something that has been bothering me. Honestly she said a lot of frustrating things, but I’m trying to figure out how to articulate them. It’s hard because it still hurts.” Baran nodded as she silently scolded the older woman. The blonde seemed to have a knack for upsetting you and it was really pissing her off. 

Intrusive thoughts were natural, Baran had plenty of them herself, but it seemed like Dana being your boss was definitely a conflict of interest. At the very least she thought having a talk with the woman would be beneficial even if the charge nurse was a powerhouse at work.

Baran was a powerhouse too and thought no one should ever make you feel this way. You didn’t deserve it. You were a damn good nurse and she’d make it known until she was blue in the face. 

“She kept alluding to the idea that maybe you weren’t happy with me or our relationship. Which, I know, is something that you’d bring up to me if it bothered you, but she kinda made it seem like maybe you two had been gossiping about my behavior or complaining about me showing off.” 

Baran grit her teeth. She knew exactly the conversation Dana had been referring to and it was clear that she blew it way out of proportion. 

Baran hated that this had been weighing on you, even if it had only been a few hours she knew how hard you were on yourself. Baran clicked her tongue before speaking again. 

“Dana and I overheard a conversation you and Trinity were having the other day by central seven about…”

“Our attending girlfriends.” Your eyes widened as you realized where this was going. 

“While calling me a milf is quite on the nose it wasn’t appropriate at work. I was embarrassed, yes, but not because of you showing off about me, but rather by the blush that spread on my face when I practically spit my water out onto Dana’s computer.” 

Your mouth hung open as a blush spread up your neck and on your cheeks. You’d never expected anyone to hear that conversation let alone the two women who did. 

“Oops.” 

“Yeah, oops.” Baran joked as she stole a few soft kisses on the corner of your mouth and your nose. 

“I promise that if it was something that truly bothered me, I’d bring it up to you. Like I said I wasn’t embarrassed by you. If anything I was embarrassed by how turned on I was at work.” You blushed again, hiding your face in Baran’s neck. 

She smoothed out your hair as you melted into her embrace. You felt more like yourself now and less like your aunt’s puppet. 

You could feel your heartbeat sync with Baran’s. It was comforting for a few minutes before your brain screamed at you again. 

You’d done a lot of talking about your own feelings, but realized Baran said she was wrapped up in her own head when you got home. The only problem was Baran hadn’t talked about it. 

You wiggled in her arms and threaded your fingers into her curls. You nipped at her jaw playfully before a serious look spread on your face. Baran raised her eyebrows at you in question. 

“Baby, why were you cleaning?” Baran sighed and drummed her fingers on your thigh and knuckles in thought. It kind of tickled, but you tried not to distract her from the moment. A small part of her relaxed at the sound of the pet name leaving your mouth. She took a deep breath as she snaked her arms around your middle. 

“My maman is coming to town.” Your eyes widened. You’d never met Baran’s mother, but you knew enough to know she idolized the woman. You found yourself trembling again, but for a completely different reason this time. 

Baran giggled from under you as she gave you an affectionate squeeze. It was going to be another long week, but it felt like you were moving in the same direction this time. 

“I’m glad we had this talk.” You whispered as your eyes fluttered closed for a minute. The emotions of the day were starting to take its toll. You knew you needed to go to bed soon. It was a comforting thought that Baran would be by your side.

“Me too, we should do it more often. I love listening to your voice and being able to ease some of those scary thoughts. I hope you know you deserve the world zendegim.” You smiled sleepily into her neck and returned the squeeze.

“I’m really starting to believe it.” 

***

“And which one are more you?” He tapped his finger to his lips as he looked at the different flowers in front of them. He pointed at some pink roses in the very back of the display and you nodded. 

You grabbed all three bouquets of flowers, some filler bits, and a couple of vases. When you and Kian got home he insisted on creating his own bouquet. You cut the stems to size for him as he arranged them and decided the perfect place for them was the living room table. 

You agreed it was the perfect place as you put the remaining two bouquets on the kitchen counter and dining table. You liked that you could see the flowers from every corner of the house. 

When Baran got home that night Kian had been picked up by his father and it was just the two of you in the house. She immediately smelled the flowers when she walked in. You were taking a lasagna out of the oven when she arrived and didn’t see or hear her come in. 

But when you heard sniffles you quickly turned around and saw Baran crying. You turned off the oven and rushed to her side. You caressed her arms and searched her eyes, trying to figure out why she was crying. 

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Baran blubbered for a few minutes and gestured to the flowers. 

“You got me flowers?” You smiled at her and relaxed. 

“Yes, actually Kian chose them and even made you a little bouquet. It’s in the living room.” Baran clutched her heart before grabbing your face and pulling you into a rather wet kiss. 

You smiled into the kiss nonetheless and wiped away her tears. 

“This is the first time anyone’s ever bought me flowers.” Your eyes widened as Baran’s watery doe eyes stared up into yours. Your jaw dropped. The thought had never even crossed your mind. 

“What do you mean?” She shrugged as she pulled you into the kitchen and served you both a portion of lasagna. You sat at the dining room table with her and brought two glasses of water. You were both sitting next to each other, angled towards one another as you ate. 

“Mark always thought they were stupid so he never bought them.” She was so nonchalant about the whole thing it made you angry. 

“He may be a good dad, but damn that man was such a crappy husband. I will now be budgeting for flowers for the rest of our lives. I’m going to add it to my spreadsheet now actually.” Baran chuckled at you. She thought it was adorable that you had an expenses tracker. 

“The rest of our lives?” You blushed as you realized what you said, but knew you meant it. Baran stared at you quietly as you put your phone down after adding it to your spreadsheet. 

“Yes. I loved choosing them with Kian and you deserve flowers.” Baran’s eyes softened as she grabbed your hand. 

“Good. Do you think Kian would enjoy choosing flowers for our wedding?” You almost spit your water across the table. Baran wholeheartedly laughed as she kissed your hand. 

Your heart was racing as your face flushed again and your palms began to sweat. 

“Don’t worry azizam, I’m not proposing. Not yet anyway.” Baran smiled into her water watching you squirm in your seat. This woman was going to be the death of you and somehow you were right where you wanted to be.

***

The alarm clock rings beside your bed, immediately causing you to groan and slowly open your eyes. The first thing you see; Baran Al-Hashimi, smiling down at you. Clearly, your wife had already been awake for hours. As per usual.

“Good morning, azizam.” She says softly, leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead, gently brushing your hair to the side. “Work in an hour, okay?”

You and Baran have been working at the PTMC for a week and a half now. Neither of you were sure about the job when you were offered the position of interim Chief of Surgery—filling in for a Dr. Allan, who is now out on maternity leave—until Baran was offered her position as the new attending for the hospital’s ED. It was like the stars had aligned. You two started together that same week.

No one at work knew about the two of you. You’d agreed to keep your marriage quiet just to avoid the gossip you two knew would come with a relationship as coworkers. It had been working. Mostly. Well, other than with two of the doctors from the ED. Dr. Mohan and Dr. King. Samira knew the second you came down to The Pitt to help with a case. She recognized you from some photos Baran had shown her when they worked together, of you with her son. Samira, being Samira, was just happy to see you. She pretty much figured your relationship was a given after her work with Baran in the past. You hadn’t been coworkers back then, but, still, Samira was nothing but supportive. Dr. King figured it out… a little differently, having never actually met or seen any photos of Baran’s wife in the time they worked together. When you were leaving the ED after coming to “check on a patient” (Baran’s son was sick and you had to tell her before leaving to go pick him up) Mel spotted the two of you. Mid kiss. Then watched you pull away, staring at Baran with lovesick eyes, hands slid into her hair, holding her close. She actually let out an audible “awww” at the sight. When you both had turned to look at her, she just smiled, gave an awkward thumbs up, mouthed a quiet “sorry” and headed out to go catch her bus. Similarly to Samira, Mel just assumed your relationship was a given. A really cute given.

After the two women were in the loop, work was even easier. Baran had already been close with Samira, but now found herself checking in on both her and Mel more than the other doctors. Almost… maternally. With such trust and care that the two women always thought of Baran first for advice—in and outside of work. And with you? They actually got a little gossip about Baran. Well, not necessarily gossip. More like… stories about dates, about your family trips with your son, all the sickeningly romantic insights into Baran’s personal life that she usually kept far from her work life. Plus, you obviously weren’t too bad at giving medical advice. You and Baran showed up as support like water in a desert for two young doctors who both desperately needed something of a loving mother figure in their lives.

“There you are.”

Baran’s voice comes out softly from behind you in the hospital locker room. The day had gone by fast—only a few major surgeries today along with some smaller cases—and, of course, Baran found you as soon as she could slip away from her shift after night shift handoffs.

“Ready to go, my love?” She asks as she comes up behind you, arm sliding around your waist, lips pressing to the side of your neck.

“Ready.” You nod back, tilting your head to catch her lips in a kiss. Baran responds immediately, smiling against your mouth, curls—messy from her shift—brushing your neck as she leans in.

“Alright.” She mumbles as she pulls away for just a moment. “Kaveh is waiting at home with the babysitter. I told him we’d read him his book tonight for his reading journal for school.” Baran leans back in for another chaste, soft kiss between every word, even when she’s trying to be serious about planning her son’s nightly routine. “And I'm confident most of the ED staff has already left. So I'm sure we’re good to go.”

Baran finally pulls away after one last lingering kiss. She’s got a soft smile on her lips. The kind she always has when she looks at you with those big, loving eyes. Especially when she catches you like this, practically melting into her touches.

“Perfect.” As you sling your bag over your shoulder, you take Baran’s hand, leaning in for one quick kiss as you walk off towards the staff parking lot.

The sun is already almost fully set as you step outside. Baran is telling you about a case as you walk hand in hand towards the car. It’s quiet. Just the two of you, walking together, debriefing the day like usual.

Except it’s not like usual. Not exactly. Because, across the parking lot, leaning against her car is Princess. Sharing a bag of fruit snacks with Perlah, both gossiping in low voices as they watch the city. And then Perlah looks up. The first thing she sees is her attending… hand in hand with the chief of surgery. Her eyes go wide. She nudges Princess immediately, snapping her out of the story she was telling about Dr. Robby and Whitaker. Princess lets out an audible gasp at the sight. No one in the ED knew anything much about Baran’s personal life. And now she’s here, sliding into her car with her coworker in tow. They come to their conclusion in a matter of seconds:

Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi is fucking the chief of surgery.

For the next week, Princess and Perlah really try to keep it quiet. Dana is the first to hear. Just because of a little slip up! And then Trinity. That one… well, that was on purpose. Their gossip circle doesn’t keep any secrets. Especially not ones this juicy. And then, like dominoes falling into line, Dennis figures out. And Javadi.

Yeah, it actually only takes 6 days for half the ED to think that their attending is sleeping with their chief of surgery. Not even an entire week. It’s a shock that by the time two weeks pass of everyone on the staff trying to catch you and Baran together, no one’s let anything slip in front of Baran.

But of course that dam had to break eventually.

When you’re leaving after coming down to help with a case—some idiot teenager having fallen off a skateboard—Trinity finally asks what everyone has been thinking.

“Okay, are you two…” She gives Baran a look, raising her eyebrows. It’s pretty fucking clear what she means. “…or do you just give goo-goo eyes to every new chief of surgery?”

The room goes quiet. Samira, who is just taking off her gloves, looks totally confused. Everyone else is watching Baran.

“We are sleeping together, if that’s what you’re asking, Dr. Santos.” Baran says it so casually. With an almost smug smile on her face. And without any kind of further explanation, she tosses her gloves into the disposal bin and heads for the door. “I’m going to go check in on that asthma case.”

Trinity’s eyes are wide as she watches Baran leave the room. She turns to Samira with her jaw slack. “Dr. Al is fucking the chief of surgery. No fucking way.”

Samira just blinks. “Well, yeah.”

“Yeah?” Trinity scoffs. “Come on, this is big news for Robo-doc.”

“But, I mean… they’ve been married for 16 years. It’s not that surprising that they’re still… active.” Samira looks around the room, brows furrowing when she sees the shock on Trinity, Cassie and Dana’s faces. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“16 years.” Dana’s the one who perks up next. “Dr. Al’s been married for 16 years? And didn’t think to mention that to anyone?” She shakes her head, a real smile on her lips. “I’ll be damned.”

“You mean you guys didn’t know?” Clearly, Samira had been a little out of the loop with the circulating gossip.

In the following weeks, you practically become a member of the ED staff. Every time anyone passes you in the hall, they give a warm smile and a quick hello. Trinity even goes as far as to stop you and ask if Baran’s been keeping any other major secrets she can tell Princess and Perlah. Baran stays professional, as always, at work… but gets a little less careful once her shifts end. She kisses you outside the doors to The Pitt before leaving, long and slow after rough shifts, not caring who sees anymore. Robby even sees Baran playfully slap your ass one time as you’re leaving the department. He chooses to say nothing.

Trinity didn't even have sex with you. Just languid, sporadic kisses and exploratory hands skating over sensitive skin. Trinity ended up sleeping on her side that night, facing you, nose tickled by your hair. Your fingers pressed lazy, deliberate circles into the plush over her hipbone. It was the most wanted she'd felt in a very long time.

It's been three weeks since you showed up at the hospital, after Trinity ghosted you. Not quite a Shakespearean tragedy, but discovering Trinity was the one who reported your brother for stealing meds from the ER while you're bleeding from the head?

The look on your face was enough to send Trinity into a downward spiral of self-destruction. She can only imagine what you were thinking. How much you must have hated her in that moment.

She's not relapsed, not yet, but the urge has bubbled up like acid in her stomach more than once. More urgent matters have distracted her for now.

Huckleberry nearly setting the apartment on fire by way of a frozen pizza and a wayward oven rack.

Javadi asking her for advice on a patient through the stall door.

Garcia's brusque-yet-efficient 'you up?' texts.

The last of which is how Trinity ended up on her back, feeling like a stranger in her own bed, a thin sheen of sweat over her glassy skin.

Garcia pants beside Trinity, and the two share a breathy laugh as they recover.

The afterglow's always the best part with Yolanda, Trinity thinks. That five to ten minutes where neither of them has anyplace to be but right here, no agenda to serve because they've both already gotten what they want.

All body warmth and slick skin and a distinct lack of pressure.

Trinity isn't sure why she reaches for Garcia's hand, but she does, and of course Garcia jerks away.

"Whatcha doing?" Garcia laughs in that humorless way, arching a brow at Trinity.

"I dunno," Trinity looks away, going pinker. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Garcia shrugs it off, then moves to plant her feet on the ground. She reaches for her shoes. Trinity is certain this has all to do with her silent request for affection.

That's the thing about Garcia. Nothing's a problem, until it is.

And once it is, then you'd better make sure all the furniture's nailed down. Because she's about to whip out of there with the same urgency as a tornado.

"I'll see you at work tomorrow," Garcia clears her throat as she steps into her pants. Her dark curls stick out all over the place. She adjusts the waistband, then shoves her feet into her shoes. "Have a good night, Trinity," she adds, then disappears out the door as quickly as she came in.

The top sheet falls down Trinity's chest as she rubs her hand over her face, feeling as empty and bare as she looks.

She slides on a t-shirt and jeans, then grabs her keys off the hook without so much as a glance back to her bed.

When you open the door, you're surprised to find what is decidedly not the Indian food you ordered, but one Dr. Trinity Santos.

"You're not Saffron Palace," you say dumbly, blinking at her while your arms flop to your side.

"No, but I walked up the stairs with the delivery guy," her lips stretch out, thin and uneasy, before she lifts her hand to reveal the tied plastic bag. "Saw your name on the ticket, offered to bring it to you."

You frown. "I usually tip when they get here."

"I gave him twenty bucks," her throat bobs. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Could we talk, maybe, while you eat your dinner?"

It's an imposing request, one you'd deny if you didn't have so many questions for this specific person. Warily, you pluck the bag from Trinity's hand, leaving the door open behind you in place of an answer.

Trinity's eyes shift in the open doorway while she selfishly drinks you in. Sweatpants hang off your hips as you slink towards the sofa. Cropped t-shirt curling at the ends, messy braids trailing down your neck.

This is as good of an invitation as any, right?

She crosses the threshold into your teeny apartment, closing the door and locking it behind her.

You've set up shop on the sofa —more of a slightly extended loveseat, really— with your back against the arm and legs out in front of you. This leaves Trinity no other option but the ottoman on the opposite side of the coffee table. She sits, forearms braced over her thighs, lips pressed into a narrow, pink line.

It's not lost on her that she sits this same way when she's about to break bad news to a patient.

As you unearth the styrofoam box from the bag, you wear an uncertain expression, avoiding eye contact.

"How's your head?" Trinity asks, eyeing the scar on your temple. It's been three weeks since you wound up with a laceration on your forehead in the very ER where Trinity works. She can see from where it pokes out of your hair that the skin has rejoined itself.

Nothing more than a pink scar remains, then pretty soon all evidence of your visit to the hospital will disappear altogether.

Like it never happened.

You resist the urge to make a dirty joke, instead busting the spoon from its plastic wrapping. "It's fine." You leer up at her. "Is that why you're here, Trinity? I didn't realize the ER did home visits now."

"All part of a new effort to boost our patient satisfaction scores," Trinity replies, and you have to blink before you realize she's joking.

You lob a pointed hum at that, then dig your foil-wrapped garlic naan out of the bag. You set it on the small, open spot of cushion beside your leg. When you crack open the styrofoam container, the savory, rich smells of butter chicken infiltrate your nostrils and fill your mouth with saliva.

"What spice level do you get?" Trinity makes conversation like you're old friends, her hands clasped between her open legs.

The spread is balanced both impressively and precariously in your lap. You scoop your spoon under a piece of sauce-dripped chicken, using your other hand as a spillguard while you raise it to your lips.

"Five," you say, covering your mouth as you chew.

"Impressive," she muses.

You sigh between bites. "What are you doing here, Trinity?"

"I just…" she fiddles with her fingers. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh, you mean like we did in the ER? Where you accosted me for trying to understand why you straight-up ghosted me?"

She noticeably grimaces at this. As though she wasn't prepared to dive right into all of it.

You shovel one more bite into your mouth, then snap the container shut. You plunk it onto the coffee table.

When you allowed her inside, you were determined not to let Trinity ruin your appetite, but your confusion and anger looms to large to ignore. "How'd you even know I was home?"

"I, uh," she curves in on herself, her back in a distinct C shape. One hand shoots up to rub the back of her neck. "I went by the restaurant. They said you weren't working today."

"So you're stalking me now."

Trinity doesn't find any of that familiar teasing behind your eyes, Just a blatant statement.

She blinks.

"Well, no… not exactly," she blusters. "I think stalking is more like following you around." A hardened seriousness crosses her face. "Which I'm not doing, to be clear."

You swing your legs over, then plant your sock-covered feet on the rug. "Why don't you just say what it is you came over here to say," you suggest with a perfect curve of a frown. "So that I can eat my dinner in peace."

"Yeah," Trinity relents. "OK, well I wanted to apologize, first of all, for being so…" she waves her hand around, searching for the word.

"Emotionally constipated?" You offer without hesitation.

She frowns. "Not exactly the phrasing I would use, but—"

"But it's pretty fucking accurate, huh?" You cut in, crossing your arms over your chest. Your head cocks to the side, lips stretched in a flat line in that overly confident, all-knowing look Trinity has only ever seen once before.

The day of Pitt-Fest, at the hospital. On your brother's face. While he was bitching her out in a trauma room in front of eight other people.

This would all be so much easier if she could hate you. If she could box you in with your brother. Must be a Langdon thing, she'd croon to whoever would listen (probably only Huckleberry).

Her stomach tangles into even more knots. Maybe she should have jotted her thoughts down before coming here.

She doesn't like being out of control, and she thought —foolishly, she's now realizing— she could waltz in here and lob an apology at you rather than actually face the consequences of how she'd acted.

But you're right. She wasn't being kind, and you'd done nothing to deserve it.

"Did you just come here to ease your conscience?" You ask before she can say anything. Your eyes steel into hers. "Because if so, let me reassure you. I was fine before we spent the night together, and I'm fine now. Nothing to repent for."

Trinity's jaw tightens, her lips pursing. She's all angles again, jagged and untouchable. "I came here because I thought I owed you an explanation."

"You explained yourself perfectly at the hospital, remember?" You bite back. "Something about how I take up too much space, just like my brother? And how you expected me to hate you the second I found out about you reporting him?"

Trinity recoils at the reminder. Clasping her hands behind her neck, she hangs her head. There's silence for a long time, maybe a full minute, before she speaks again.

"What do you know about your brother's dismissal from the hospital?" She asks, braving to meet your eye once again.

"I know he was asked to leave the day of PittFest," you say, crossing one leg over the other. You sit all pretzeled now, various attempts to protect yourself with your own limbs. "I know he was swiping benzos off his patients. And, if my deductive reasoning is up to par, you're the one who called him out on it."

She absorbs this with a slow nod. It's more information than she expected you to have. She only spent one shift with the guy, but Frank Langdon struck her as the type of guy who wouldn't self-enforce accountability, especially not when it's an immediate threat to his precious ego.

But if knowing you has taught Trinity anything, it's that people can be surprising.

A long silence hangs between the two of you. It's taut and polarizing, but Trinity only notices it when she realizes she's waiting for you to reprimand her for reporting your brother.

You don't.

"That's all true," Trinity picks at the fabric of her jeans. "I don't regret reporting him, either," she adds in a stubborn grumble.

"I didn't ask you to apologize for it," you look like a restless toddler as you shift around, the plane of your stomach peeking out from your shirt. Frustration leaks out of your voice like air from a tire. "I'm not going to buy you a fruit basket or anything, but you did the right thing. My brother's getting the help he needs for a problem nobody knew he had."

The words are blunt, prompted by frustration, and yet they hit something in Trinity, reverberating through her like a gong.

You did the right thing.

She's been ostracized at the hospital for weeks, everyone whispering when they think she's out of earshot. But she hears them, calling her a snitch. Ambitious. Steamroller. She's kept the details to herself because it's none of her business, but god, has it been hard.

If she could just explain to everyone that Langdon was stealing, then they'd understand why she blabbed on him. She's gone through it a million times in the past two months.

She was labeled a pariah the second she started asking questions, so she's not sure what good spilling the beans would do.

Someone saying she did the right thing, and Langdon's sister, no less, patches a wound she didn't realize was bleeding. Relief floods her, the feeling so overwhelming that she has to screw her eyes shut.

When they open, you notice they're glassy with tears. Those seagreen eyes, wet with unshed emotion, clear away all the brambles guarding your heart in an instant.

"Trinity?" You're taken aback by the sudden shift in emotion. But a realization dawns on you shortly after. Of course.

PittFest was her first day at the hospital. She'd told you that. And yet, she challenged an authority figure. A young woman who'd yet to establish any kind of rapport with anyone, sticking to her principles. She prioritized what was right over any sort of standing among her fellow physicians.

"I don't hate you, Trinity," you state, because it feels important. Slowly, you untangle your limbs and rise to your feet. "I couldn't hate you, not for this."

"Not everybody sees it so black and white," Trinity sniffs. The tears don't fall, but they linger in the corners of her eyes. "People were really pissed at me once word got around."

"I don't think it's black and white at all, actually," you disagree, gathering your takeout. You head for the kitchen. It's a whopping eight steps, but it might as well be a ditch between your body and hers. "Life exists almost exclusively in grey areas. People don't do things for one singular reason."

You don't look back just yet, but words keep spilling out of your mouth before you can think better of them.

"So what is it, then?" You ask. "You don't like being reminded of Frank when you see me? You hate him so much that you hate me by association?"

"I don't hate you," she shakes her head. As she stands, you shove your takeout in the fridge.

By the time your back hits the closed refrigerator, Trinity's already trailed after you into the kitchen.

She's come to the brutal self-realization in the past few weeks that she's almost constantly thinking about power. Who has more of it in an interaction, how she can use the dynamic to her advantage. But all she can think about right now is your soft midriff peeking out from your crop top, and how she's never felt so desperate for someone to forgive her. Until now.

"So we don't hate each other." Your voice tugs Trinity back to the present.

"That about sums it up," is her lame response. Her cheeks are almost ashen, lacking color in the warm kitchen light. She looms like a tree in the doorway, as though she's forgotten how to operate her own body.

"Why'd you come here?" You ask from your perch against the refrigerator. It comes out soft, hoarse, tired.

"I told you, I wanted to apologize," she murmurs.

"No, I mean, what… what led you to coming here?" You swallow. "It's been three weeks."

Trinity's tongue juts out to rest between her lips. She'd be lying if she said her trip here wasn't at least partially fueled by a craving to kiss you again. You left this sweet aftertaste on Trinity's palate that no amount of casual hookups with Garcia could cleanse.

She recalls the text you sent after she panicked and left your apartment the morning after the two of you spent the night together.

Trin, I spent my entire shift thinking about you. I know that's earnest and people don't really do that anymore, so I hope that isn't weird for you to read.

Earnest is not a word often used to describe Trinity Santos.

Calculating. Overconfident. Emotionally stunted. Certainly not earnest.

Now's as good a time as any to give it a shot, she supposes. Oh, what the hell.

"I-I think you're really amazing," Trinity says, taking a wobbly step into the kitchen. Her forearm flattens on the countertop, using it for support. "I think about that night a lot. And I was with…" she trails off, glancing at the floor guiltily. She draws a line along the linoleum with her shoe.

"I was with my… situationship, I guess you could say, and I just felt so empty afterwards. I missed you. I don't know that I've missed someone I've spent less than twenty-four hours around before."

You arch a brow, crossing your arms over your chest. Something mean and dark boils under your skin at the thought of Trinity with someone else, and you know you have no right to feel this way, but you still do.

"What exactly are you saying?" You manage to croak out.

"I guess I came here tonight, to, like… feel this thing out," she meets your eye, providing a fruitless gesture between her body and yours. "To see if you hate me, to offer some kind of explanation. To tell you that I was a dick when you were at the hospital. And that I'm sorry."

You twist your lips in the side of your mouth, mulling over the words she's imparted.

The moment stretches the walls of your tiny kitchen.

"Can you say please something?" Trinity asks after a solid minute, nibbling on her bottom lip.

All you can do is shrug. “I don’t know, Trin. Maybe it’s… maybe it’s better we went through this now.” Your eyes fix on the floor. “Stop the bleeding before it has the chance to hemorrhage.”

An airy, uneven laugh. “Are you using a medical metaphor?” Her lips quirk up, like the puppeteer just barely tugged on the string. 

You nod, still not meeting her eye. 

“Is that what you want?” Trinity asks, stepping closer. She doesn’t touch you. She doesn't feel that brave yet.

You shake your head, shrug your shoulders. Every noncommittal gesture in the book, you make it. “I don’t know,” you whisper. 

“Can you look at me?” Trinity’s voice drops to match yours. Then your name rolls off her tongue so delicately, caught in a breeze. 

When your eyes find hers, she’s positioned right in front of you. She glances down at the minimal space between her body and yours, then flicks back up. Seeking permission. 

Your chin dips. 

Trinity tugs you by the forearms til you shuffle closer. One hand graces the small of your back, the other bends at the elbow over your shoulder. 

You lean in to her embrace, shields coming down. Her sharp corners melt into round ones. 

You have to slouch a little to fit under her chin, but then you slot right in. Arms tucked against your chest at first, but then you slide them around her middle. You missed this. You only had it once but that was enough to get you hooked. 

Trinity holding you like this is a relief you never knew you needed. 

Holding you like this is a warmth Trinity never knew she could provide. 

The two of you stand like that for a while. Trinity’s hand swipes up and down the soft cotton of your crop top. The warmth seeping beneath the fabric is so tempting. 

“I missed you a lot,” Trinity whispers after your heartbeats sync up. “I don’t know that I’ve ever actually wanted somebody’s company this much.” 

“Maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong people,” you murmur. 

“Yeah,” Trinity agrees, sucking one of her front teeth. “That’s probably it.” 

You pull away after another minute, but Trinity’s hands stay loosely on your forearms. The question hangs heavy and unspoken between you. 

“I’m not sure, Trin,” you sigh, though instinct screams at you to just kiss her and be done with all this. To ignore the cracks in the foundation and keep building. “This really sucked.” 

She nods. “I know, honey,” she agrees. The endearment is a gut punch, but the only reaction you give is a faint twitch of your lips. “Can we…?” Her eyes flash up to the ceiling before reluctantly dragging back down to yours. “Can we try being friends?” 

You feign a gag at the word. 

“I know,” her laugh melts into yours. “It’s gross, right?” 

“Cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard,” you snicker, tugging your hands back. Trinity does the same, and the space between you, though it was less than before, becomes a chasm. “But yeah,” you add. “I would love to be your friend, Trin.”