✨She Who Shines Brightly✨👑✨

with no witnesses, clark lifts all of your luggage to bring inside without breaking a sweat. you sigh as you contemplate the chaos that'll most likely ensue at the avengers compound for the fourth of july weekend.

—

a month ago, natasha romanoff had arrived in your tiny box of an apartment in metropolis without even a text of warning. it would've been something you appreciated since clark had you on your kitchen counter, gently pressing you with a hungry kiss against the overhead cabinets as dinner burned on the stove. his broad frame was settled nicely between your thighs, his lips gliding down your jaw and neck before the apartment door swings open as if the intruder had a key—

"whoops. didn't know you had company."

you gasped and peeked over clark's shoulder who instinctively tried to shield you from natasha in all her sardonic glory. "nat—?!" you had wriggled away despite clark's insistence, ducking beneath his strong arm to meet your friend in your living room. "what are you doing here? is everything okay—"

"everything's fine," nat had cut in, her sharp gaze taking in clark behind you who looks more like guard dog than protective fiance at the moment. "i just wanted to drop in. i should've called though, that was on me…"

warmth bleeds into your back when clark had stepped forward, a silent wall of support behind you. he's not unaware of your past, of your healing powers that pulled you into nick fury's orbit. while you were never made into an avenger, you were the support they all needed whether it was to be healed or just to be around someone normal. it was about a couple years ago that you finally left new york, starting fresh in metropolis as a nurse. steve had been kind enough to help the move in process a lot more smooth than it would've been alone.

"um— sorry. nat, this is clark kent, my fiance. clark, this is nat, one of my closest friends from new york although i'm rescinding that title after her break in tonight," you sigh as you wave a hand between both.

clark's still a gentleman through and through, even in the face of superspies that like to cross boundaries, and shakes nat's hand before his hand returns to your waist. "what's the occasion?"

"tony's throwing a fourth of july-slash-steve's-birthday weekend barbecue, thought our favorite nurse would like to come," nat smiles. "you can bring superman over here."

clark chokes on his spit. "i— what? i'm not— no, he's—"

you pat his chest. "honey, nat knows everything, it's literally her job. don't worry, your secret's safe with her. and i don't know, clark and i were gonna just stay in."

"sounds like fun," he cuts in and that little smile, dimple and all, knows you're about to lose this one. "i haven't gotten the chance to meet your friends, sweetheart."

every argument you have dies in the face of your fiance's eager expression and you sigh quietly to meet natasha's triumphant little grin. "yeah, okay. we'll be there. is it at the compound?"

"yeah, there's your usual room—"

"no, clark and i wouldn't wanna intrude. we'll find an airbnb or something." there's an edge to your tone that leaves no room for negotiation and natasha has enough sense to back off, nodding as she starts to head out.

when the door shuts, you groan into clark's chest who rumbles in sweet amusement as he rubs your back. "superman meeting the avengers… what can go wrong."

—

a lot of things went wrong upon entering the cabin. for one, there aren't any furniture. two, there isn't any running water. frustration begins to build but before it can erupt out of you, clark's cupping your cheek to kiss your forehead and your phone starts to ring.

"stark."

"hey, kid. don't be stubborn and bring supes on over to the compound, your room's all ready for you."

"i hate you, tony."

"no, you don't. although this confirmed my theory."

you pause. "what theory?"

"you got a thing for goody two shoes. tell me— does kent say 'language' during your rated-r rants?"

you hang up the call, cutting off tony's obnoxious laughter on the other end.

—

now that the both of you are on avengers' property, your privacy is all but secured against the general public so clark had seen no issue in just flying you and your luggage over. it's a bit unsettling to see him fly in his civilian clothes but you cling to him all the same, carried bridal style while the luggage hang from his hands. you aren't sure how he isn't losing his grip but you land in the open bay where natasha and steve is waiting to greet the both of you.

the luggage are set down first, clark still hovering and once his hands are free, his feet land with you still securely in his arms. "clark?" you prompt and your adorable, beefcake of a fiance startles as he reluctantly sets you down while nat and steve approach.

"miss romanoff," clark tips his head in polite greeting but then his voice drops slightly, taking on the 'superman' voice when he turns to steve. "captain, happy birthday."

"thank you, superman," steve greets as he offers his hand. clark takes it with a solid 'clap' and a firm shake. your eyes flitter between each of them in slight anticipation because in this moment, it isn't superman and captain america facing off.

it's clark kent and steve rogers with you caught right in the middle.

something lights up in natasha's eyes and you suddenly fear for the weekend ahead.

—

fortunately, the main living space of the compound is cleared of any superheroes in favor of setting up for the outside where the main party's happening. it leaves you and clark the space to settle in and when you step in your old room, nostalgia feels like a punch to the gut.

it's still the open space layout as before, patterned after a luxury studio apartment with your own mini kitchenette. cold and impersonal for the first few minutes of stepping in but then clark walks past you to set your luggage in, his large frame somehow bringing light to the place you could barely call home. when he turns to you, gives you that smile that you've fallen so hard for, it feels like you're back in metropolis. "what?"

you shake your head with a smile, step into clark's space and giggle at the blush that he never can tamp down when you're near, and kiss his dimple. "nothing. i just love you."

"love you too, honey."

—

after changing into something more comfortable (and doesn't smell like plane) over your bathing suits, you and clark walk hand in hand towards the noise that crests and wanes from the other side of the compound. where there had been an open field meant for training (specifically for any flight simulations or volatile powers that should not be indoors), it's been fashioned into an americana-esque backyard with an actual inlaid pool.

"what the— when did you guys install a pool?" you gape at the giant, bean-shaped pool complete with a patio and a giant cabana built above it. beside it is a familiar face manning the grill.

tony flicks his sunglasses down to peer at you above them. "a week ago. had to go all out for dear ol' cap's birthday. nice of you to join us, sweet cheeks. you gonna introduce us to your hunk of a man?"

your eyes roll but the pride in your smile is undeniable as you bring clark forward. "everyone, this is clark kent. my fiance."

an impressed whistle escapes from rhodey who tips a beer up in salute towards you. "nice rock, kid." he gives a nod to clark next. "you did good."

"gosh, thanks." clark says, rubs his neck in that sheepish way that you've found endearing every time you see it. however, it has the rest of the avengers staring in utter befuddlement. tony mouths 'gosh' in emphasis to bruce who waves his judgement away.

"cap, you got someone out for your title for boyscout," tony crows happily as he flips a patty with ease. steve, who has been lounging beneath the shade with his own lemonade, looks up from his conversation with clint and laura. when his eyes find yours then clark's, something unnameable passes through his eyes before he's striding to his feet. all six foot two of him.

clark straightens his posture. all six foot four of him.

immediately, your eyes roll. "i'm going to go say hi to the girls. you two? behave."

"honey—" clark splutters but his priority will always be you so he concedes, quietly takes the offered glass of lemonade from steve before he attempts to play nice. if he can keep civil with steve lombard at work, he can be the nicest guy in town for the super soldier that may as well be an ex with how his eyes follow you.

—

to his credit, clark gets along well with all of your friends from new york. tony's crass but he's got a heart of gold with his closest circle of friends. bruce and clint had teased him the least about his midwestern countenance while laura had been interested in his career as a journalist and as a superhero. natasha had been very impressed with his ability to juggle his secret identity on top of everything.

"so how'd she find out about your other identity?" rhodey asks later on as the two of them sit at the chaises by the pool. clark is polite but his eyes cut to you occasionally where you're splashing in the shallow end with laura and clint's kids, your laughter providing a soothing background to the chaos of tony and bruce arguing over what music to play.

"ah, well. i was fighting an imp with the justice gang, should've been an easy fight but it was evening and i'm not really at my strongest at that time. i fell on her roof and she was there reading. she… healed me." a besotted smile grows on his lips. "the day after that, she ran into me as clark but i didn't realize my biology had been something she could sense. she pulled me into an alley and just asked if i healed right."

rhodey laughs quietly. "she's a little spitfire, ain't she?"

"i wouldn't have it any other way," clark muses. the both of them turn their attention to you, nearly missing the way tony hits the top of the grill with his tongs to call out—

"soup's on!" he hollers as he gestures to the cheeseburgers laid out to the table beside him. clark gets to his feet, ready to serve you, except—

"got all your favorite fixin's," steve cuts in, that boyish half grin that's made nearly all of america swoon, as he offers you a plate. with clark's heightened vision, something ugly turns with indignance that steve did get all your favorites.

but clark will not be beat so he rushes over to the coolers, pulls out your favorite drink, and all but flies over to offer it to you. "can't forget your usual, honey," he smiles sweetly, popping the tab for you and everything. you're still halfway out the pool, one foot out and on the edge with the other still in the water, with both men offering you a plate and a drink.

"thanks, guys… mind if i dry off first?"

you carefully sidestep away from both of them, refusing to enable or participate this odd dick-measuring contest they've started. once you've dried off, you settle into an available chaise and nearly startles when steve and clark kneel on either side of you. you could barely get a word in as captain america himself carefully sets the plate down on the small table beside you and your darling fiance adds in a straw as well.

"okay, both of you shoo—" you wave them off. "seriously. i know both of you, you two can eat tony out of all of his homes so go. you must be starving."

when both men trudge off, natasha takes their place but she's got enough sense to at least wait for you to take a few bites of your food before she starts.

"you know, it's kinda cute."

"don't you start, nat."

"no, no. it is! you got america's heroes fighting for your attention like overgrown puppies. it's cute."

your eyes narrow. "… you know something."

she zips up her lips before she dives into the pool, effortless without making a splash.

you huff goodnaturedly. "show-off."

—

"come on, you two. nathan, lila, out of the pool." clint claps his hands to grab his two youngests' attention. the sun's setting behind him and even you can't deny there's a slight chill beginning to settle in.

you nod and raise your arms slightly with the intent to herd the little ones out. "you two heard your dad, let's head out. if the grown-ups say yes, we can get some s'mores started, maybe set up some lights like a campfire… what do you say?"

that gets them out and when clint gives you a thankful grin, you wave him off before padding out to clark where he's already got your towel out. "thanks, baby," you smile as he wraps it around you, bundling you into his arms to press a soft kiss to your lips.

behind your back, steve stands with a fresh towel and clark fights the urge to stick his tongue out at him. no, that'd be very immature of him.

—

despite the chill that's threatened to drive the party indoors, tony gets a bonfire started in a fire pit he had dug out from the giant warehouse storage along with some string lights from a box labeled 'christmas?'.

the kids are drawn up in a tizzy at the thought of having christmas in july, their little hands diving into the box with the sole intent of decorating the giant cabana. you're in the middle of it all, helping them all detangle the wires while tony's sent back inside to look for an extension cord of all things.

"hold on, sweetheart," you laugh as nathan tries to climb your back while you draw yourself back to your feet, watching as his little arms try to reach up and hook the lights up. in the corner of your eye, steve approaches your periphery, hands nearly raised as if he's got the intention to lift you by your hips but—

clark's hands find you first, his chest brushing against your back. "i got you, honey," he murmurs in your ear before giving nathan a little grin. you feel his strong grip brace your waist, firm but not uncomfortable, and lift you high.

then… lifts you higher.

you turn your head to see clark levitating to help you hook the lights up at eye-level. nathan gasps in excitement and nearly drops the lights in his own hand. "oops— careful, buddy," you chuckle as you hand back the wire.

"me next, me next!" lila squeals from below and you laugh as clark does as asked, nathan reluctantly set down for you to carry his older sister next while clark lifts you back up with ease.

by the time the entire cabana's decorated, the kids are returned safely to their parents.

"that was nice of you," steve hums to clark once the two of you are back on solid ground, offering two s'mores on a plate.

clark takes it, almost wary, but he sees something you don't and his spine relaxes imperceptibly. "thank you," he murmurs while he places a warm hand at the base of your spine. steve nods his head and when he turns to you, he ruffles your head.

"be good, kid," he tells you instead before he walks off.

—

although tony had intended steve's intention to be an absolute rager, it still turned out to be a family-friendly event. something that steve had been banking on.

"kid just landed," tony had remarked earlier, the both of them setting up the cabana after FRIDAY had updated him on your flight status. "you gonna say something?"

steve just chuckles to himself, readjusting the stability of the cabana's legs. "tony, i don't know how many times i have to say this. nothing ever happened between me and her."

tony's eyes roll. "i know. you two cost me $300 because of it, by the way."

"serves you right for betting on your friends' love lives, stark."

"yeah, yeah, whatever. but back to the question at hand— have you met her fiance?"

"superman? i don't know him personally, but he seems like a good man, someone good for her," steve shrugs, unsure of what tony's getting at.

"hm. sure, the media definitely paints him that way," tony says. "but as her closest friends and honestly— the closest thing she has to a family— we need to make sure he's good for her."

steve pauses for a moment, gives his friend a sidelong glance. "what do you have in mind?"

"easy." both men startle at the sudden appearance of one natasha romanoff. "make him jealous. see how he reacts when steve moves in on her, it'd be enough to see his true colors."

tony snaps his fingers. "operation: battle of the boyscouts is a go."

"… i resent that name."

—

on the morning of july fifth, the avengers compound is the ultimate postcard of serenity. sun's sitting high, a gentle breeze wafting through to carry in the scent of nature. a butterfly settles upon a blooming flower bud—

"ANTHONY EDWARD STARK."

your shrill voice cuts through the peace. the butterfly flies off.

"you tried making my fiance jealous for some inane dick-measuring contest for your own fucking entertainment—?!"

"language."

"language, sweetheart."

steve and clark share a surprised glance and right as they're about to exchange a little chuckle, maybe even bro it out with a fist bump in their matching flannel pajamas, you direct your glare to the both of them.

without a word, steve backs out with a sheepish grin while clark approaches to give you an apologetic kiss to your forehead.

"it's a habit, i'm sorry," he mutters against your hair and despite tony's stupid games, you melt in your fiance's arms. "i love you."

"i love you too, sweetie." tony takes the chance to inch away as you decompress in clark's arms but you huff against his chest. "clark, i'm gonna kill him."

"... it wouldn't be very 'superman' of me to let you get away with murder, honey."

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...

AEGON II TARGARYEN

When Aegon first claimed you at the tender age of seven, he felt an immediate and inexplicable pull in his stomach, an instinctive need to stay close to you at all times, as if your presence alone could quiet the chaos in his young mind. As the years passed and his drinking grew heavier, he would often stumble toward you in your dragon form, collapsing against the warm scales of your belly where he would ramble endlessly about his mother’s suffocating expectations, his siblings’ constant judgment, and the crushing weight of the crown he never wanted, finding a strange comfort in your silent, steady presence. On the mornings he woke with a pounding headache and discovered you had shifted back into your human form during the night, he would wordlessly pull you closer, curling into your side for more sleep despite the cold, unforgiving stone floor of the Dragonpit pressing against both of you, seeking the same warmth and safety in your arms that he found when you were a dragon.

AEMOND TARGARYEN

Poor Aemond had endured years of cruel bullying from his own family when he was younger, so the day he claimed you, the oldest and largest dragon in existence, felt like the ultimate triumph, a personal victory he made sure to rub in everyone’s faces with quiet, cutting satisfaction. Yet when he discovered that you were not merely a dragon but also a woman of flesh and blood, something shifted deep inside his own bones; the fierce warrior who once sought glory in battle suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to keep you safe at home, far from the bloodshed and politics of the Dance, vowing in silence that he would never risk bringing you into combat even in your dragon form. While the rest of the court whispered and wondered why Prince Aemond so rarely rode his legendary mount, he was instead lying with you in the privacy of your shared chambers, his hands and lips tracing every curve of your human body with a desperate, almost reverent passion, finding in your embrace the peace and belonging he had craved for so long.

RHAENYRA TARGARYEN

When Rhaenyra first met you, it was in your human form during one of her many visits to the Dragonpit, and the two of you quickly became close friends over the years, though she always wondered about your mysterious nature and why you only seemed to appear when she was alone among the dragons. She would question you relentlessly about your background and your odd habits, until one day, while she was venting bitterly about how no dragon seemed willing to bond with her, you accidentally let slip that you would gladly bond with her. Confused and intrigued, she pressed you for an explanation, leading you to finally reveal your true dragon form in a breathtaking display of ancient magic. From that moment on, Rhaenyra claimed you as her dragon and the two of you went on countless flights together, strengthening the deep bond between you. As a grown woman, however, with the immense stress of her throne being usurped and the constant idiocy of her council weighing on her, she found true peace in stealing away from meetings, calling out your dragon name, and soaring through the skies around Dragonstone with you, where the wind and your powerful presence washed away all her burdens, if only for a little while.

JACAERYS VELARYON

Jacaerys had bonded with you during those fateful days in Winterfell, where he had been haunted for years by recurring dreams of claiming a legendary dragon that most believed was nothing more than a myth. From the moment he found you, he discovered boundless joy in your company whether you were in your magnificent dragon form soaring through the skies or in your human shape walking beside him, the connection between you feeling natural and effortless no matter the shape you took. He fought relentlessly until his mother finally agreed to let him be betrothed to you, ignoring the endless questions and whispers from the court about why the heir to the throne would choose a woman with such a mysterious and powerful secret. He didn’t care about any of it, he simply wanted you completely, dreaming of building a family together and creating the kind of warmth and stability he had always craved. After marrying you in a ceremony that left the realm buzzing with speculation, the court was left even more stunned when it became known that the prince’s wife and his dragon were both pregnant at the same time, many whispering in awe about the miracle of such a double blessing while Jace could only smile with quiet pride, his hand resting protectively on your belly as he looked forward to the future you would share.

DAEMON TARGARYEN

She’s been acting strange all week. Not distant, just… attentive. As always. In that quiet, calculating way of hers. Like she’s observing something she doesn’t fully understand yet. Like you’re a problem she wants to solve before it explodes in her hands.

You catch her watching you when she thinks you’re not looking. Not the usual look—it's one she gives you before a kiss, or after one, or when you’re halfway in her lap backstage with her hands under your shirt.

No one tells Alphas what it’s really like, being with an Omega in heat. They just talk about the bond—how it kicks harder. How the connection pulls tight enough to choke. How your instincts sharpen, double down. Demand.

Mira doesn’t like losing control. Not in the field, not on stage, and definitely not with you.

And you—you don’t know what version of yourself you’ll become when it hits. You’ve read the guides. Talked to a medic. You’ve even tried to warn her, clumsily, curled against her chest a few nights ago when the tension first started humming under your skin.

“I might not be... very coherent,” you’d said, voice small.

She just brushed her fingers through your hair and said, “Then I’ll listen harder.”

Like it was that simple.

You wanted more time.

Just a few more days. One more rehearsal. One more evening on the roof sharing orange soda and silence. One more night tangled in sheets with the soft hum of her heartbeat against your back. But it doesn’t wait, it never does.

It begins not with fire, but with absence. You wake up warmer than usual, feeling worse with Mira's body wrapped around yours. The kind of heat that lives under the skin, the kind that pulls a tremble from your muscles before you’re even fully conscious.

Mira stirs behind you. Instinctively.

“You okay?” Her voice is sleep-rough, but sharp.

You try to say yes. You do. But your throat won’t open for the word. It sticks there, heavy and dry and wrong. Instead, you turn your face into her chest and exhale something like a shudder.

She’s alert in seconds.

You feel it in the shift of her limbs, the sudden tension under her skin. Her hand moves to your cheek—cool fingers brushing across your heated face, then pausing.

"your scent...”

Two words, spoken low, a realization.

You nod, just once. It’s all you can manage. It’s happening. Already.

No dramatic onset. No hours of warning. Just heat curling its fingers through your bloodstream like smoke, warm and relentless. Pooling in your lungs, making it crowded, hard to breath.

Mira moves carefully, as if any sudden motion might tip you over the edge. She shifts you onto your back and settles beside you, hand cupping your jaw with something between reverence and restraint.

“You’re burning up,” she murmurs.

“I know.” Your voice is a cracked whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Her brows knit. “Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Mira leans forward, presses her forehead to yours.

“Just tell me what you need,” she says, voice rough, tender.

You breathe in. Try to speak. Fail.

What you need is her. More than anything. And maybe that’s the scariest part—how natural it feels to want her like this. How right. How normal it is to feel so hot for someone you've only known a few months, so aroused. So you cup her cheek and just nod. One word.

“You.”

She's on you in seconds. Lips capturing yours, kissing you into the mattress while she reaches up under your shirt to cup your tit. You keen, whining against her mouth and it's like something snaps inside her at the sound. At how desperate you are after something so simple. Its so much that she wonders how you'll be later, how you'll be when she's eating away at you.

She rolls your nipple under her thumb, pressing it to hear you whine more against her lips. Breath hot, scent alluring and becoming stronger the second. It feels sinful to give into it, to be affected by it.

She shuts her eyes, dazed as she kisses down your jaw. You squirm beneath her, hands clutching at her.

"off... clothes... please," you beg her, voice whiny.

She slides her clothes off, her lips still sliding down the column of your throat as she does so. She slides your shirt up, just enough to free your breasts. Next are your bottoms, slid down your legs and she has to take a second after the scent that overfills the room.

"Alpha," you call, breaking her out of her trance. She kisses you yet again, dizzily as she wraps your legs around her waist. She presses pecks from your lips, to your neck, to your chest, abdomen, inner thigh...

You keen, back pressing off the bed with a choked moan. Hands in her hair, fingers shaking as they hold on tight. "Please... please alpha. Need you so bad. It hurts..."

She shushes you as she makes her way to your cunt, licking a stripe from your opening to your clit. Your bottom lip falls open, a silent scream escaping you. And oh how you go crazy, coming embarrassingly quick from her tongue alone.

"Taste so good," she husks, bringing her right hand closer to your entrance as she murmurs against your clit. She licks there again, watching your expression as she beings her finger against your entrance. You're soaked, a mix of her saliva and your slick gathered there.

You cry out as she pushes a finger in, clenching around the digit as she begins to ram it in and our of you. Her tongue continually pressing and stimulating your clit, bringing you to another high right as she presses another finger into you. Her eyes on you, watching how you gaped when she scissored you open with her two fingers.

Having you stretched out now, she crawls over you. Your lidded eyes, full of tears, opening to find her dark ones set on yours. With a weak hand, you reach up to cup her jaw, pulling her down into a sensual kiss. A gasp escapes you, falling hotly against her lips as you feel her start to push in.

Neither of your attention is pulled away as she bottoms out, her hips flush with yours. Lips brushing each others, bodies flush with one another. Bed shaking beneath you, didn't take long for the head board to start hitting the wall. A

hand grips her hair, another gripping the headboard behind you. Your head tilted back, moaning with each thrust, each time her tip pushes against the spot. No words are spoken besides the way your bodies meet, how she kisses you, and the gasps and whines that fill the room.

It ends the way all storms do.

Not with a crash, but a slow unraveling. A quiet softening of breath. A loosening of muscles that had locked tight with want, need, desperation.

You don’t remember the last few hours clearly. Only flashes.

Mira’s voice—low and steady, even when yours wasn’t. Her hands—strong, but never rough. Her body—there, always there, even when you tried to push her away, ashamed of how much you needed.

Now you’re draped across her chest like seaweed clinging to a rock. Boneless. Hollow. Sore in places you hadn’t known could ache. Mira’s fingers are combing through your damp hair, slow and aimless.

She hasn’t spoken in a while, just holding you. Breathing you in. You tilt your head slightly, enough to see the edge of her jaw, the tension there. Like she hasn’t come down from it yet.

“You okay?”

She snorts once—quiet. “I wasn’t the one being dragged under by biology and pain and half-lucid begging.”

You flinch. Just a little. She catches it instantly. Her hand shifts to your cheek, thumb tracing a line under your eye. Noticing everything.

“Hey,” she says, gently. “You were… incredible. Brave. Even when it was awful. You let me in. You trusted me.”

You close your eyes. Let out a shaky breath.

“Wasn’t exactly sexy.”

Mira huffs out a laugh. The first real one in hours.

“Shut the hell up. That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever "survived,"” she says, and she means it.

You feel it in the way she tugs you closer, presses a kiss into your hair, and breathes in deep like she’s claiming this moment just as fiercely as she claimed your body, your trust, your bond.

A/N: celebrating hitting 1k followers last night with this! My first real Baran piece that isn’t just headcanons 💛 Hope you enjoy!

✿ ───────── ✿ ───────── ✿

“You’re going to make us late if you don’t stop.”

The scold lacks heat, and you can’t even stop yourself from laughing when Baran’s lips find the side of your neck again, your hand pausing hallway through sliding the last pin into your hair.

“Maybe I don’t want to go anymore,” she murmurs against your skin as her hands settle on your waist. 

“You can’t skip,” you snort. “You’re an attending, it looks bad.”

“I’ll call in sick.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“And yet I suddenly feel very unwell.”

That pulls a warm laugh out of you and Baran swears under her breath in Farsi like the sound of it does something to her. Because this right here is why she’s kept you away from the hospital for so long. It’s not because she’s ashamed of you, never that, but rather because she knows what happens to people when they meet you. 

You finally finish with your hair, setting your products down before turning in her arms to face her. “You’re being so weird tonight, what gives?”

Baran sighs through her nose, just a hint of annoyance settling on her face as she looks at you. “I do not want to share you with them tonight, azizam.”

“Your coworkers?”

She nods in confirmation. 

“You don’t want them to meet me?”

Her eyes narrow as her grip on your waist tightens possessively. “I do not want my coworkers looking at my wife.”

The way she says my wife sends heat blooming into your face, and though you try to hide it, you fail miserably. Baran notices immediately and her lips curve up into a smirk, obviously pleased with herself as the tips of your ears tinge.

“You’re blushing.”

“Shut up.”

The drive over is quiet in a comfortable way. The city glows outside the windows of the uber, streaks of gold and white sliding across the glass while music plays through the speakers. Your heels rest against the floorboard, one ankle crossed over the other, and Baran’s hand hasn’t left your thigh since the moment the two of you climbed into the backseat together. Not that you’re complaining, of course.

Downtown is alive tonight. Restaurants are crowded and the sidewalks are busy. And somewhere ahead, towering above the traffic, the convention center comes into view.

You can’t believe hospitals even have galas.

“You know,” you say, “when you first told me about this, I thought it was going to be in, like, a hotel ballroom or something.”

“It usually is,” Baran replies casually.

“Wait, really?”

“The hospital is celebrating some anniversary this year.” Her fingers squish the skin of your thigh beneath your dress. “Apparently they decided to go all out because of it.”

“That explains why the invitation looked like a wedding invite.”

The uber eases to a stop beneath the overhang of the convention center, and the driver bids you both a polite goodnight while Baran helps you out onto the curb with a hand at your waist. The night air is cool on your skin, and you’re suddenly jealous of the long sleeves on Baran’s pantsuit keeping her warm.

People crowd the entrance to the building in clusters of black-tie gowns and tailored suits, and you can hear laughter echoing off marble and glass as the hospital staff filter inside. You recognize a few faces from pictures on Baran’s phone or stories over dinner, but most are strangers in a sea of faces.

Baran stays close to you, her hand on the small of your back as the two of you navigate through the lobby together toward a bank of elevators down a small hallway.

“You okay?” she asks quietly as you wait for an available one.

You turn toward her, your face scrunching in confusion. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Because this is a lot of people in one place and I know how you feel about crowds.”

You purse your lips, but in thoughtfulness rather than upset. “I’m okay. It’ll be better once we’re upstairs, I’m sure.”

The elevator arrives with a soft ding, the doors sliding open. Several other attendees step inside with you, conversations between coworkers overlapping. The fifth floor lights up as you reach it and the doors open to spill the gala out before you in gold.

Chandelier light glitters across floral arrangements and linin-draped cocktail tables. Warm jazz music drift through the massive ballroom beneath towering ceilings, and full-length windows overlook the Pittsburgh skyline. It’s elegant and expensive in a way that only a for-profit hospital could be.

You’re busy taking it all in when a voice catches your attention, even though it isn’t aimed directly at you.

“Dr. Al-Hashimi.”

You can feel Baran sigh next to you.

A woman in an ivory suit approaches with a comfortability that most people don’t have when approaching your wife. She’s older and polished, with nails manicured and decorated in a way that tells you this is not an emergency room doctor, but likely some sort of administrator.

“Gloria,” Baran says politely.

Gloria Underwood, you know that name. Some sort of big wig for the hospital, she interviewed Baran before your wife took the attending position, and you’ve heard Baran complain about her at least once a week ever since.

“It’s good to finally see you outside the emergency department,” Gloria says, smiling before her attention turns on you. “And you must be the elusive wife.”

Baran’s hand is on your back again, but she isn’t urging you forward and you can’t tell if it’s to ground you or herself. “My wife,” she repeats, and you can hear the undertone of pride in her voice.

You offer your hand with a smile, introducing yourself while Gloria shakes it warmly.

“It’s lovely to meet you,” she says. “I was beginning to think Baran had made you up.”

“Probably because she never lets me come to work with her,” you laugh.

“Smart woman,” Gloria says with a knowing look at your wife. “The ER would probably stop functioning.”

You don’t have time to ask what that means before Gloria turns her attention back toward Baran and the conversation drifts into hospital territory. You let yourself fade beside them, listening without really listening as your attention begins to wander.

There’s gold ribbon curled around centerpieces and champagne glasses in everyone’s hands. People are laughing too loudly near the bar already even though it’s barely dark outside, and there’s a string quartet setting up in a corner of the ballroom.

Eventually, during your trip to outer space, Baran gives Gloria one of those polite smiles you’ve only ever seen her use at work during her time at the VA.

“Well,” she says smoothly, “before you trap me into discussing staffing ratios for the rest of the evening, I should probably make the rounds.”

Gloria laughs at that. “Go socialize, Doctor. You’ve earned at least one night off.”

Baran nods in farewell before guiding you deeper into the ballroom with a slide of her hand into your own.

“Staffing ratios?” you giggle.

“This job is as much politics as it is medicine, azizam,” Baran sighs, scanning the room. She snags two flutes of champagne off the tray of a passing waitstaff, handing one to you.

You smile into the glass just another voice cuts through the crowd.

“Baran!”

A group standing around one of the cocktail tables waves her over and you can feel the change in her posture immediately. It’s not tense, exactly, but you feel the way she straightens up next to you.

These must be the coworkers.

“This,” she says quietly to you, “is the part I was worried about.”

Still, she leads you over to the table.

The group is an interesting mix, that’s for sure.

One man stands slightly apart from the others, older than the rest with tired but intelligent eyes and an air of authority about him that’s hard to deny. Beside him is another man with easier posture and a warm smile, with a drink balanced loosely in one hand. A younger man than the other two lounges against the edge of the table with the restless energy of someone who’s incapable of standing still, and the redheaded woman standing beside him looks far more composed than he does. And then there’s another woman watching the room over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip, the look in her eye almost seeming like she’s above this entire get-together.

Baran stops at the table, her eyes scanning over each of them as she greets everyone. “Dr. Robinovich,” she says first, inclining her head towards the older man. “Dr. Abbot. And Dr.’s Langdon, McKay, and Garcia.”

You know she isn’t greeting them by name because she needs to, but rather for your sake.

The older man immediately tilts his head toward the ceiling and waves a dismissive hand. “Absolutely not, Baran. If you introduce me like that, I sound old.”

Baran deadpans, “Maybe that was my intention.” 

He smiles tightly at that before turning toward you and offering his hand. “Michael Robinovich. You can call me Robby.”

You shake his hand politely, but immediately dislike him. Not because he’s rude, he actually seems very nice. But because this is the man who made your wife cry after her first shift at the hospital. 

You remember it vividly, Baran’s tear-streaked makeup and exhausted fury as she returned home to you hours later than she was supposed to be off, insisting she was fine while also admitting that she’d not only had her first seizure in over a year, but two. You’d held her all night, staying up long after she’d fallen asleep, both for her comfort and out of fear of a third focal seizure.

So really, you think your dislike of him is justified.

“Wow,” the one your wife called Langdon says suddenly as he blinks at you. “You weren’t kidding.”

Baran’s eyes narrow. “That sentence already concerns me.”

Langdon ignores her completely, looking at you with intrigue. “Hi, Frank Langdon. I was beginning to think she made you up.”

“Frank,” three different people say at once. 

“What? I’m being respectful!”

You laugh warmly, and the small group seems to relax around you as conversations break into groups. You smile at McKay when she compliments your dress, ask Abbot about the drink he’s holding, you even laugh at one of Langdon’s dumb jokes despite Baran muttering at you to quit encouraging him. And every time you laugh, every time someone’s attention lingers on you a little too long for her liking, Baran’s hand settles lower against your back. You can’t tell if she’s grounding herself or if she’s trying to stake claim.

Whichever it is, Robby takes notice right away. The smile he hides behind his glass is downright evil.

“So, he says to her as your attention is taken by a story McKay is telling. “This is why you’ve kept her hidden for so long.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Baran says dismissively. 

“Sure you don’t.” He gestures between her and you. “After refusing to introduce her to us, you brought your stunning and charming wife to a party, dressed up to the nines and looking like a walking sin. Pretty irresponsible, don’t you think?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Langdon blurts from Robby’s other side.

“You weren’t invited into this conversation,” Baran says flatly. 

You laugh at something Garcia says, attracting your wife’s attention once more as you lean into her side. Her chin rests on your shoulder as she turns toward you, her eyes scanning around the ballroom.

“Where are the baby ducks?”

McKay laughs. 

“At the bar,” Abbot says.

“All four of them?” Baran asks.

“Unfortunately,” Garcia says. “Someone spilled the beans to Trinity that they have tequila. We haven’t seen them since.”

Baran closes her eyes like she’s in physical pain. “And you left her unattended?” But before she can continue mourning the fate of her unsupervised residents, a burst of loud laughter sounds out from somewhere nearby.

You turn in time to see four younger people approaching the table carrying drinks, all of them mid-conversation as they reach the group.

The woman in front stops as she reaches the table, squeezing between Garcia and McKay and setting down the second drink in her hand in front of the surgeon before turning her eyes on you.

“What the hell?”

Baran sighs like this is exactly the reaction she expected. “Behave, Dr. Santos.”

“What?” Santos says, looking mildly offended. “Your wife is hot, you didn’t say she was hot.”

Dr. Abbot coughs into his drink to hide a laugh, and the only man in this group of baby ducks (as your wife had so eloquently called them) loses the battle and snorts. 

Your cheeks heat as you laugh, and you aren’t sure if it’s from blood rushing or the alcohol. Or both. “Thank you.”

“Trinity,” Santos introduces herself with a hand extended to you over the table, which you take. She then turns to Baran. “I get it now.” 

“Stop that,” Baran scolds her.

“Okay, mom.”

Baran turns to Garcia then, her tone accusatory. “Just how many has she had?”

“This would be her third,” Garcia replies with a roll of her eyes. 

Questions fly from the group collectively known as ducklings. How did you meet? How long have you been married? Is Dr. Al this intense at home too? And with each question, your wife looks increasingly perturbed. 

She knows you don’t do this on purpose, and it’s almost never bothered her before, but…you fit too well. Don’t get her wrong, she loves your charm. It’s one of the things that drew her to you first, your ability to get along with everyone, the way you naturally convince people into loving you. And at the VA, it didn’t bother her. Maybe that’s because her coworkers there were older, older than her even, and they weren’t -

They weren’t a threat.

Does Baran feel threatened by her ER coworkers? She wants to say no, of course not, but as she watches you talk to Trinity, watches you smile at Javadi, laugh at something that Langdon does, or Abbot, or Whitaker -

With every word, your wife looks one compliment away from spontaneously combusting, and you can’t help but laugh. And unfortunately for her, you’ve become the most interesting person in the ballroom. And through it all, you notice something. Every single time someone else has your attention for too long, Baran touches you. Her hand on your waist, or your elbow. Her lips on your bare shoulder. It’s not enough for anyone to comment on, but it is constant enough that you take notice.

Especially when Langdon talks to you. It’s harmless; he’s charming in a sort of cocky way that probably works very well on patients, and he clearly finds you attractive. And at one point you laugh at something he says and Frank grins, a sparkle in his eye at the sound of your laugh.

You can feel Baran tense up next to you and it cuts your laugh short as you turn to her. “Are you okay?”

The concern in your voice makes guilt flicker through her. Because she knows you haven’t done anything wrong, you’re just being yourself. Which is, unfortunately for her, the entire problem.

She lets out a heavy sigh and then presses a quick kiss to your temple. “I’m going to get us another drink,” she murmurs in your ear.

You smile at that, tapping your empty champagne flute. “Okay.”

Baran’s hand leaves your back as she makes her way toward the bar at the far side of the room, loosening the tension in her shoulders only once the crowd thins out around her.

“Another champagne?” the bartender asks, nodding toward the flute still in her hand.

“And a whiskey,” Baran says.

She leans one forearm against the edge of the bar while he works, her eyesight drifting back toward your table.

Bad idea.

McKay is talking to you now while Santos is gesturing animatedly beside her, and somehow the entire group has subtly turned towards you like flowers turning towards sunlight. Even from across the room, Baran can tell you’re glowing, beautiful and open, charming in a way she’s never been immune to herself.

“Rough night?”

She recognizes Jack’s voice without even having to turn to look at him. Nevertheless, she does as he settles against the bar at her side.

“You followed me,” she says.

Jack shrugs as he flags the bartender down with two raised fingers, nodding toward his empty glass in wordless communication.

Neither of them speak for a moment, but as Jack glances back toward the table, following Baran’s line of sight, he smiles a little. “You’ve got a beautiful wife, Baran.” His tone stays easy and casual even as she tenses at his words. “You had to know this was going to happen eventually.”

Her tongue presses against the inside of her cheek. “I did know.”

“She seems nice.”

“She is.”

“And everyone likes her.”

She turns to look at him then, but only halfway, like she can’t really afford to lose sight of you. “And that’s a problem?”

“You’re sure acting like it is.”

Baran turns fully back toward the table just in time to catch you throwing your head back laughing at something Santos says, and her expression tightens. 

Jack notices. “You know,” he says, “most people would kill for a marriage where their biggest problem is their wife is too perfect.”

Baran tsks as she glances at him out of her peripheral. “You’re being very annoying right now.”

He shrugs noncommittally. “Hey, I’m just saying, it seems like the obsession goes both ways.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She keeps looking for you.” Jack nods subtly toward the table, and he’s right.

Even while smiling at everyone else, even as you carry on conversation with her coworkers, your eyes are drawn to the crowd in the direction toward the bar. Looking for her. 

By the time Baran and Jack make their way back across the room to the table, crowds have thickened around tables, conversation louder now beneath the swell of music and alcohol.

Your face softens when your eyes land on your wife again. “There you are,” you say, reaching for her as she sets the drinks down in front of the two of you.

Baran’s arm wraps around your waist as she reaches you. “Miss me, eshgham?”

Your own arms settle over her shoulders, fingers tangling together behind her head. “Of course I did.”

The group falls back into casual conversation around you as you sip your drink, half-listening and half paying attention to the knowing looks Dr. Abbot seems to be sending your wife, which she’s pointedly ignoring.

After a while, the ballroom lights dim and the sound of microphone feedback echoes from the speakers overhead, drawing attention towards the stage at the front of the room where a podium now waits beneath a spotlight.

“Oh no,” someone mutters from the opposite side of the table. “Politics.”

“Too late to fake an emergency?” Langdon asks.

“We work in an emergency department,” Robby says. “That excuse won’t hold much weight.”

Gloria steps out onto the stage a second later to polite applause from the crowd. The room settles as she begins speaking, her voice echoing through the ballroom as she talks about the hospital’s anniversary, community outreach, budget expansions, new wings, and a variety of other hospital-speak that sounds like a language you don’t know.

That’s when you feel Baran’s hand close around your wrist.

Around the room, people nod along politely to Gloria’s speech while waitstaff weave between tables collecting empty glasses and plates.

“And finally,” Gloria says after about twenty minutes, “I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge one department in particular.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the table that houses most of your wife’s department. “The emergency department has seen one of the most significant increases in patient satisfaction scores in the hospital over the last year. The Press Ganey scores alone have risen dramatically, and while every member of the department deserves recognition for their hard work, there’s one whose compassion, leadership, and dedication to patient care has had remarkable impact.”

Robby groans quietly under his breath. Individual callouts are always a nightmare.

“Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi.”

Applause starts up, people turning toward your table, searching for Baran among the cluster of emergency department staff.

Except Baran isn’t there, and neither are you.

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“Shh,” Baran whispers hotly against your ear. “Not a sound, azizam, you don’t want anyone to hear you, do you?”

Her hands are up your dress, which is bunched up against your hips by her impatient hands, her fingers hooking into the waistband of your lace panties. She yanks them down your thighs in one swift motion and you step out of them obediently, the cool air hitting your soaked core and making you shiver. She brings them to her nose for a brief second, inhaling deeply before stuffing the damp lace into the pocket of her pantsuit with a satisfied smirk.

Her fingers immediately return between your legs, sliding through your slick folds with firm pressure that has you whimpering enough for her to press her lips against yours to keep you quiet.

“So wet already,” she murmurs against your lips.

She slips a finger inside you without warning, her middle finger sliding in to the knuckle easily. A whine catches in your throat, muffled by Baran’s mouth. Her free hand roams, squeezing your ass, pulling you harder onto her hand as a second finger pushes inside you, stretching and curling deep while her thumb finds your clit with delicious pressure. 

The web, lewd sounds of her fingers pumping into your soaked pussy are the only sounds in the empty coatroom, loud to your heightened senses, and your hips rut to meet her hand.

Baran grinds her thigh between your legs for leverage, her own arousal evident in the way she rocks against you. Her breath comes in hot and shaky pants against your lips, more breathing into each other’s mouths than actually kissing.

Her hand trails up your back to your hair, gripping at the base of your head to try and not mess up the pins in your hair (lest she feel your wrath) as she tilts your head back. You break from her mouth and she immediately begins kissing down your neck, stopping to suck a mark just below your ear. You feel the faint sting of her teeth and the heat of her mouth almost makes your knees buckle.

“B-ah!-Baran, you couldn’t wait?”

“Need to feel you cum on my fingers,” she pants against your neck. “Need to know this pretty cunt is only for me.”

The pace of her fingers turns frantic. Her fingers fuck into you faster, deeper, her thumb abandoning your clit in favor of her palm grinding against you with every stroke. You clutch at her shoulders, nails digging into the fabric as the fire in your belly builds, pressure coiling tightly inside of you. The risk, the possessiveness, the whines you’re doing your best to muffle - it’s all overwhelming.

Baran leans in closer, her forehead pressing against yours as her eyes lock onto your own. “Cum for me,” she demands. “Cum on my fingers, show me who you belong to.”

The orgasm rolls over you like a wave, crashing through your body and Baran has to shove a hand over your mouth in an effort to contain the loud moan you let out. Your walls clench around her thrusting fingers, slick coating her hand as pleasure floods you. You shake against her, whining into her hand while she keeps fucking you through it, drawing out the feeling until you’re boneless and gasping for air against her palm.

Slowly, she withdraws her fingers and brings them to her lips, licking them clean with a low and satisfied moan, her eyes locked on yours the entire time. Then she kisses you deeply, her tongue sliding inside your mouth and over your own, letting you taste yourself on her tongue.

You whimper at the taste, fingers bunched in the top of her pantsuit.

“Good girl,” she whispers against your mouth as she smooths your dress back down with hands that are too tender for what they’ve just done to you. 

With one final possessive kiss, she straightens, offering you a hand. You take it, allowing her to pull you off the coatroom wall, leading you back toward the gala like nothing happened, though your slick thighs are evidence of your escapades, as are your panties tucked safely in her pocket.

You barely have a second to breathe as you step back into the ballroom, because one of the younger doctors - Javadi,you think you heard someone call her - is the first to spot you.

“There you are,” she says immediately, both relief and confusion mixing together as she looks between you and Baran. “You missed it, Gloria just called you out during her speech. Like, publicly. In front of everyone.”

Baran’s expression sharpens. “She did what?”

“Yeah,” Javadi says with a roll of her eyes. “It was…very flattering. Awkward timing, though, because you weren’t here.”

There’s a pause then, enough for the group to really take the two of you in.

“No fucking way,” Trinity says with a smirk, arms crossing in front of her chest as she appraises you. The slightly disheveled state of Baran’s hair, the smudge of your lipstick, the trace of redness at your throat. “Oh my god.”

“Trinity,” Garcia warns, but the warning goes ignored.

“We - we were getting drinks,” you stammer, even as your cheeks heat with the lie.

Trinity looks unconvinced, and your head swivels to your wife, desperately looking for backup. 

You catch Langdon leaning toward Robby in your peripheral, whispering, “They weren’t getting drinks.”  

Baran, on the other hand, looks totally unbothered, a stark contrast to the tense woman she was before the two of you disappeared. In fact, you’d dare to say she looks pleased with herself as her fingers wrap around the untouched whiskey glass and she takes a small sip.

“Anyways,” she says calmly, as if the last ten minutes haven’t fundamentally changed the light her coworkers see her in. “What did I miss?”

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Baran was irritated.

No, she was infuriated.

As a matter of fact she despised you right now.

The two of you had woken up relatively early that morning, limbs tangled with each others and your slow breath against Baran's neck.

It had started harmlessly. You had walked out of the bathroom to Baran in her scrub bottoms and singlet, sorting her hair. She had looked irresistible in the morning light. You approached from behind, hands settling on her waist while your lips brushed her jaw.

You couldn't even remember how Baran ended up laying back on your shared bed with your hand between her thighs and lips connected to her neck.

She had gotten so close. Hands gripping the sheets tight, the coil in her mid-section about to snap when you pulled your fingers out suddenly. She had whined and in turn you cocked an eyebrow.

"We should probably get going" you mused nonchalantly. Baran sat up and watched in bewilderment as you just straightened out your scrub top and exited the room.

The drive to the hospital was just as excruciating for Baran. You insisted on driving like you usually do, scooping up your keys and opening the passenger door for her. Once you started the car your hand found her thigh, giving her knee a quick squeeze. It wasn't exactly a long drive to your shared work but you made it hell for her.

Your hand would inch up ever so slowly until your fingers were resting right next to where you knew Baran needed you. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing heavy when you looked over at her.

"You okay baby?"

Your voice was unnaturally sweet as you feigned obliviousness. She just hummed, eyes remaining forward which drew a smirk from you at her uncharacteristic quietness. You fingers began moving in slow circles on the inside of her upper thigh. Baran made a low noise which she masked by clearing her throat. You hadn't missed it though.

The two of you went your separate ways upon arriving to the hospital. You left Baran with a quick kiss and lingering hand on her lower back, the heat of it remaining long after you left.

She was thankful the two of you worked on different floors. She knew she wouldn't be able to handle seeing you work in the condition she was in. Your toned arms and stern but warm demeanour when dealing with patients and staff alike. She had been going fine until you came down for a surgical consult, something you rarely if ever did.

The knowing smirk playing on your lips as you entered and found her eyes was enough to let her know you were doing this on purpose.

"What's up everybody, doctor Al-Hashimi" you nodded in her direction. She gave you a brief glance, cheeks flushed before one of the residents gave you a run down. You had looked over the patient, confirming the diagnosis before arranging for an OR to be freed.

You caught Baran leaving the trauma room from the corner of your eye and you were quick to excuse yourself and follow her.

"How's your day beautiful" you murmured, shoulder brushing hers. "Good, you?" She didn't look at you once. Her jaw was tight and you huffed a laugh. "It's fine. I'll see you later?" She nodded and you had pressed a chaste kiss to her cheekbone before disappearing back upstairs.

Now Baran is laid back in bed, hand shoved down the front of her pants. She had received an apology text from you saying you were going to be stuck in surgery.

That was a couple hours ago now.

She had tried to busy herself with house work, reading, online shopping, literally anything to keep her mind off the growing ache between her legs but she was fighting a losing battle.

The house is quiet when you enter. The lights are off and Baran's presence is missing. You drop your bag and kick your shoes off, placing them neatly onto the shoe rack next to Baran's. You wander down the hallway when you hear noises coming from your bedroom. The door is pulled closed which is unusual. You push it open cautiously to see Baran layed out in bed, whining as she pumps her fingers in and out of her soaked heat.

Your eyes widen, a shiver running straight down your spine as your body heats up at the sight. You take a moment to collect yourself before announcing your presence.

"Need a hand?" Her eyes shoot open and she looks over at you, nodding meekly. That's all you need before closing the distance and tugging her pants and underwear down in one swift motion.

The sight you're met with makes your mouth water. Her glistening cunt all swollen from the time she's spent trying to make herself cum to no avail. Your hands find her thighs as she lifts her legs up, running up and down the exposed skin. You drop a kiss to her knee.

"You just couldn't wait for me to get home, huh?"

"No. Not after this morning" she grumbles, clearly still resentful. "I'm sorry baby, I'll make it up to you".

You push her legs apart and level your mouth with her core, meeting her gaze before licking a stripe up her folds. Baran lets out a shaky sigh, her hand coming to the back of your head to grip your hair.

"Shit azizam" she mutters. You only mess with her for a moment before giving her what she needs, your tongue pushing past her folds. The taste of her makes your stomach flip as the familiar heady scent clouds your mind. Her fingers tighten in your hair and you moan in response, the sound vibrating into her. She attempts to tighten her thighs around your head but you hold her legs apart by her hips as you practically devour her pussy.

Her hips begin to rock against your face, her other hand grasping at the sheets as her body begins shaking.

"Fuck— eshgham" she gasps, hips writhing against your jaw. Your fingers dig into the soft flesh of her waist, pulling her impossibly closer as your tongue works inside her.

You free a hand to slip under the thin material of her singlet to grope her breast. "Ey Khodā" she groans, hand abandoning the bed sheet to reach up and cover your hand with her own. Baran glances down at you, the sight pushing her closer to her climax. Your head buried between her thighs, eyes shut and completely focused on her.

Baran can feel her body humming with pleasure as she throws her head back, soft breaths falling from her lips. You pull a gasp from her when your fingers comes in contact with her sensitive clit, rubbing in firm circles.

"So good baby, 'm so close" she stammers.

She comes quick, likely from all the pent up frustration of the day. Her back arches off the bed while her legs convulse around your head and her hand pulls at your hair. Your mouth stays on her, eagerly receiving her pleasure as her vision goes static momentarily.

After cleaning her up with your mouth you trail your lips up her body before finding her lips in a sweet kiss. Baran pushes you back, dark eyes fixated on her slick that still coats your mouth. Her tongue darts out to lick it away and your fingers brush her midsection.

"That was—".

She gasps when you push three fingers into her, her walls clenching around the sudden intrusion. She grips your shoulders, breath hot against your swollen mouth as you lean down to kiss her. Your tongue swipes her bottom lip and she's quick to open her mouth, allowing your tongue free range to tangle with hers.

"Is this okay?" you ask softly after leaning back. Baran nods and you kiss her cheek. "I want to hear you say it" you mumble against her skin. "This is okay—" she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. "Fuck it's okay". Her voice is hoarse and it makes your stomach flip as you start moving your fingers slowly.

She's warm against your fingers. The wetness from moments ago allowing her to take your digits easier. "You’re so perfect" you murmur before kissing her cheek and burying your face in her neck, tasting the skin there.

She arches into you, eyes squeezed shut. "Shit" she breathes out.

Her arms slide down from your shoulders to your neck and bicep. Baran guides your head out of her neck to kiss you. It's messy when your lips meet, a mixture of saliva and cum. It makes you shiver.

You know she's close when she starts huffing against your lips, almost whining when you quicken your ministrations. Soon enough you're pulling another orgasm from her. Baran's body twitches beneath you as you slow your movements. You proceed to do this two more times, alternating between using your mouth and fingers until Baran is a whining mess.

Baran's eyes flutter closed and her chest is rising and falling rather quickly as you retreat from the bed. She barely registers the sound of you shuffling around the room while grabbing your harness and a rather modest strap for your wife. You carefully step into the harness and adjust the strap before approaching her, kneeling at the end of the bed.

You slowly position yourself so the dildo is lined up with her entrance and you watch as her eyes shoot open once she feels it brush against her. Her eyes land on it between her legs before she looks to your face.

"Azizam I don't think I can" she practically whispers, her voice completely spent. You bring a hand up to caress her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone. "I think you've got one more in you, don't you?" You watch her eyes, clearly mulling over the decision before nodding.

You press a soft kiss to her jaw, hand absentmindedly stroking her side as you push in slowly, allowing her to get used to the toy. Baran moans low against your ear as you bottom out inside her. You wait for a second, eyes watching her face closely. Tears gather in her eyes and a pang of guilt shoots through your chest. You lift up your hand to brush an escaped tear with the pad of your thumb.

"Are you okay?" "Yes" she breathes out quietly with a barely noticable nod.

You begin to move after a moment and she whines beneath you, fingers digging into the skin on your shoulder.

"Tell me if you want me to stop". She shakes her head.

"Don't stop" she husks.

That spurs you on as you begin to find a steady rhythm and stick to it, the sound of Baran's wet cunt as you thrust in and out of her filling the room. Each sweet noise that leaves Baran's mouth gives you more motivation to make her feel good.

"Harder" she groans as you hit a certain spot inside her.

You obey and allow your movements to match the intensity of earlier, her body jolting as you pound into her.

"Is that good my love?"

"Yes— so good. You feel so good in me azizam" Baran chokes out and you smirk, head dipping down to suck at the soft skin of her neck. She's too distracted by the overwhelming feeling inside her to tell you not to leave any marks. Oh well.

You're sure she's broken the skin on your shoulders as her head falls back to let out a moan. You drag your tongue over the darkened marks on her neck, feeling Baran shudder beneath you. You look down at where the silicone is sliding in and out of her cunt with ease and a throaty sound leaves you.

"Taking it so well baby, my beautiful girl" you utter against her neck.

Your words seem to push her over the edge as a spasm wracks its way through her body, toes curling as it dies down.

You drop down next to her, dildo still buried inside her as your hand finds her waist where her singlet has ridden up. You run your fingers up and down her side, waiting for her breathing to slow as you place gentle kisses to her jaw.

"Water?"

"No... just stay" she mutters and you nod. Your hand finds its way under her singlet, splaying out against her warm skin and Baran holds onto your forearm. You utter quiet affirmations against her skin, Baran sighing contentedly.

After a moment Baran shifts and whimpers at the feeling of you still inside of her. You adjust yourself and slowly pull out, Baran's mewls tugging at your heartstrings. You remove yourself from her embrace, pushing her whimpers to the side.

"I'm sorry baby, I'll be right back" you murmur, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. You rush into the bathroom, chucking the used dildo to the side to clean later before grabbing a cloth and wetting it with warm water.

You walk back into the bedroom, hand landing on Baran's leg to let her know you're there. "This might be uncomfortable" you say softly as you nudge her legs open and gently clean up the mess. Baran's breathing changes momentarily at the sensation around her sensitive core.

You leave once more to the bathroom to put the cloth into a hamper before returning to your wife, kneeling next to her.

"What can I do?"

"I just want to feel you".

You nod at her words, already pulling your top off and aiding her in slipping out of her singlet. You lay back against the pillows and allow Baran to nestle into your side, welcoming the feeling of your skin on her own. Her hand lands on your chest, firm and grounding and your fingers move lazily up and down her back. Your legs tangle with hers instinctually like they've done a million times before. Her forehead is rested against your chin and you tilt your head to leave a quick kiss there.

"You okay?" "More than" she confirms.

A moment of comfortable silence passes before Baran takes a deep breath. "Don't think I'll be able to walk tomorrow though" she mumbles which earns a laugh from you, Baran chuckling along with you.

"I promised I'd make it up to you didn't I?"

"Hm, that's true. You'll have to do that again sometime".

You raise an eyebrow. "Will do".

This wasn't the first time this had happened.

It was always men, and it was always the ones who just didn't seem to get it. You liked to think you were a nice person—you genuinely tried to be, tried to lead with warmth and give people the benefit of the doubt—but maybe that was exactly the problem. Maybe the polite nod and the friendly smile read as something other than what it was, which was you being too kind to say what you actually meant, which was: please stop talking to me. Please take your cologne and your name-dropping and your incremental lean and redirect them toward literally any other person in this building.

Kate and Yelena had been gone for twenty-three minutes.

You'd clocked what they were up to the moment they'd both excused themselves to the bathroom at the same time, with the poorly concealed urgency of two people who had been eye-fucking each other across the table for the better part of an hour. You'd checked your phone with resignation, having seen this coming from the moment Yelena had suggested this particular bar—which had, you'd noted upon arrival, a single-occupancy bathroom that locked from the inside. You were happy for them. Genuinely, completely happy that they were in love and passionate about it in bar bathrooms on Friday nights. You were also alone now, your drink getting low, with a man standing approximately eight inches closer to you than he'd been when he first materialized at your elbow, and the gap was still shrinking.

He had been talking for a while now. You'd stopped absorbing the content of it around the five-minute mark, somewhere in the middle of his third celebrity name-drop, which you were fairly certain represented a one-time encounter he'd since promoted in his memory to a close personal friendship. Since then you'd been performing the minimum facial expressions required to sustain the impression of a conversation—a small nod here, a neutral sound there—turning your glass slowly on the bar and waiting for literally anything else to happen.

"—so at that point I just told him, look, I know more about this than you do—"

"Mm," you said.

"—and honestly the numbers backed me up completely—"

"Hm."

He shifted his weight, leaning further on the bar in a way that angled his whole body toward yours, and you noticed immediately. He had the confidence of someone who had never seriously entertained the possibility that this conversation might be going worse than he thought, not aggressive but something almost worse than aggressive, simply and completely certain of himself in a way that made your skin prickle. He'd had you at hello, if you were being honest with yourself. You had thought he was nice and this would simply be a casual conversation.  And then he'd opened his mouth, and here you were.

He leaned in slightly when he laughed at something he'd said, and his breath reached you, and you thought very privately that he could use a mint. Several, maybe. A whole pack and a lifestyle change.

"You know what I mean?" he said.

"Totally," you said, having retained nothing.

He smiled, encouraged—the wrong reaction on your part, you knew it the moment his posture opened up—and his eyes dropped to your mouth in a way he'd been doing periodically for the last ten minutes, a recurring check that had started to make the back of your neck prickle. He looked back up and seemed to think the eye contact was going well.

"So what's your sign?" he asked.

"Stop," you said, laughing it off because it was a little funny, like a stop sign. You were still trying to be nice.

He laughed too. "You’re a funny one. Can I buy you a drink?”

"I'm good," you said, lifting your current one to demonstrate.

"Come on," he said, with the smile of someone who had decided your no was a negotiating position rather than an answer. "Let me get you something. I know the bartender."

You looked at him steadily. "No, thank you."

He smiled again, wider, like your refusal was a move in a game rather than a conclusion, and you thought if you had a dime for every name he'd dropped tonight, for every thinly supported claim, for every moment of this conversation—you'd be somewhere considerably more pleasant than this bar stool. He said something else, something about a rooftop bar nearby, and you were doing the math on how bad it would actually be to just text her, whether that was the nuclear option or just the sensible one, when his hand settled at your hip.

He wasn’t aggressive about it, not trying to hurt you or restrain you. He genuinely thought this was a reasonable course of action based on the way he perceived the conversation to be going.

It wasn't.

You went very still, but he kept talking. You weren't hearing it anymore. You pulled out your phone, angled it away from him, and typed. You knew she’d be able to decipher the words being typed, so it didn’t worry you that you couldn’t quite see the entire keyboard as your thumb slid against it.

Bar n Clement. Kate and Ylena in bthroom. Man tlking to me 

The three dots appeared before you'd finished the sentence.

Are you okay?

He wont take th hint

On my way.

You locked your phone, tucked it away, and turned back to the man with the polite expression of someone who had just quietly solved the problem and was simply waiting for the solution to arrive.

"Sorry," you said. "You were saying?"

He was saying something about interest rates. You chose to sing the ABC’s in your head to pass the time.

(-)

You heard the motorcycle before the door opened.

It cut through everything—the music, the hum of conversation, the man who had now progressed to telling you about his apartment—and it didn't go to your ears so much as land somewhere lower, somewhere that didn't require conscious processing. A sound you'd learned to recognize the way you recognized her voice. Your body knew it before your brain had finished the sentence, some deep-wired thing that had developed over a year and a half of her arriving places and your nervous system treating it like a fixed point.

The door opened and she was moving before you'd fully located her in the room.

The leather jacket was the dark one, worn soft at the elbows and fitted to her like it had been made specifically for the geometry of her shoulders, which knowing Natasha it might well have been. Dark jeans, her boots, her hair down and longer than it had been last spring. She had all her ear piercings in, the small silver ones climbing the curve of her left ear, the simple ones in her lobes. When she was just herself, the version of herself that existed in the spaces between everything else, and you thought every time you saw her like this that it was your favorite version, which was saying something because you were partial to all of them.

She wasn't scanning the room. She already knew where you were. She'd known before she walked in.

Her eyes found you and she read the situation in the two seconds it took her to cross half the distance—the man at your side, the placement of his hand still at your hip, the careful neutral set of your face that she knew was not relaxed neutrality but managed neutrality, which were two different things and she had always been able to tell them apart. Something in her expression did a thing, like the physical look of a decision completing itself. She was already done deliberating before she reached you.

Natasha didn't look at him at all.

Her hand came to your jaw—warm, certain, the cool familiar weight of her rings—and she kissed you. You tasted coffee and underneath it the warmth that was just her, and you felt it move through you from the point of contact outward. Down your spine, into your fingertips, somewhere warm and low. The man ceased to be a factor you were tracking for several consecutive seconds.

Her thumb moved once across your cheekbone when she pulled back. Those green eyes, darker in the bar light, asked their question without asking it out loud.

You were fine. She already knew you were fine. She was checking anyway, because she always checked, because that was who she was underneath everything else.

The man had recalibrated. You could hear it in the way he broke the silence. "Okay, so—" his hand hadn't moved from your hip, and now his other arm was beginning to move, angling toward Natasha— "if you're both—I mean, I'm very open-minded—"

Natasha looked at his hand on your hip.

Then she looked at his face. The sequence of it was very controlled, very still, and you watched something happen to his expression in real time—the beginning of the understanding that he had fundamentally miscalculated something—and then his arm finished its motion, trying to loop around toward Natasha's shoulder.

She caught his wrist. One hand, smooth and immediate, and then she had his head and it met the bar with a sound that made the nearest tables go completely quiet. The efficiency of someone who had done this many times and saw no reason to perform it. He made a sound that was both startled and pained. She let him start to straighten and her knee found his stomach before he'd finished the motion, and the air went out of him entirely, and he folded. She stepped back and looked at him on the floor for a moment with the expression of someone completing a checklist, and then, almost as an afterthought, she placed one boot on his crotch and applied just enough weight to make her feelings on the matter clear.

She held it for a moment. Then she stepped off when she was satisfied.

The bar was very quiet.

Natasha reached past you for a cocktail napkin. She wiped her hands—methodical, unhurried, the way she did most things—and set it down. She looked at her hands briefly, checking, and then looked at you with an expression that had loosened around the edges, the loosening that happened when the thing she'd been carrying since your text had been handled and set down.

"Ready?" she said.

You looked at the floor. You looked at her. "We should probably—"

"No," she said.

"But—"

"No." Her hand found the small of your back, steady and familiar through your shirt, and she steered you toward the door with the calm certainty of someone who had already closed the chapter.

Outside, the night air was cool and smelled like the city, and the motorcycle sat at the curb where she'd left it, and Natasha was already pulling the spare helmet free and holding it out.

You took it and stood with it in your hands, looking at her in the low light from the bar window—hair loose around her shoulders, rings catching the light, the leather jacket, the small silver piercings along her ear—and felt the thing that had been sitting warm in your stomach since the sound of the engine on Clement Street.

"Nat."

She raised an eyebrow.

“Aren’t you—”

"He had it coming," she interrupted. The corner of her mouth twitched into her familiar smirk.

The laugh arrived before you could do anything about it. "Okay," you said. "Okay. But are we—should we be worried about—"

"Get on the bike, baby," she said.

You didn’t argue with that tone. She swung on in front of you with the easy automatic grace of someone who had been doing this for decades, and you wrapped your arms around her waist and pressed your face between her shoulder blades and felt the warmth of her through the leather, the solid reality of her back against your chest. The engine came alive beneath you both—low and certain, a sound you felt in your sternum—and just before the helmet went on, she paused.

"The cops know better by now," she said.

You didn’t question it.

(-)

Natasha kept her eyes on the road and let the rhythm of the bike work through her the way it always did, stripping things down to their simplest version.

She'd been moving before she'd finished your text. She had just grabbed her jacket and her keys without deliberation. The whole ride over she'd been running the numbers on how long you'd been sitting there being polite while some man who didn't deserve a minute of your time had taken twenty-four of them, and by the time she'd walked through that door she'd already decided.

She hadn't been angry, exactly. Anger was loud and imprecise and she'd never found much use for it. What she'd been was certain, in the way she was certain about things that mattered to her—clear-eyed and calm and entirely, completely sure of what was going to happen next.

You pressed closer against her back through a long curve and she felt your arms tighten at her waist and one hand press flat against her stomach briefly, just a moment of contact, and it moved through her chest and settled there warm in a way she'd stopped trying to catalog because the catalog had gotten too long.

Mine, something in her said, the way it always said it. Simple and blunt and not interested in being argued with.

Yeah, she told it. I know.

(-)

The apartment was quiet when you got in, smelling like home, and Liho appeared from the hallway within seconds—black cat, hazel eyes. She wound around Natasha's ankles with focused thoroughness and then, after visible deliberation, extended the same courtesy to you.

"Hi, Liho," you said. “Have you behaved?”

Liho walked away, which was the typical response you got.

Natasha hung up the leather jacket and turned, finding you watching her with an expression she recognized—that look, the one you had when you were feeling something large and hadn't decided what to do with it yet. She crossed the room, taking your face in her hands and kissing you. You got your hands into the front of her shirt, and she walked you toward the bedroom without breaking the kiss.

She sat you on the edge of the bed and stood in front of you in the lamplight and just looked at you for a moment, really looked, the way she let herself look in rooms like this one when there was no performance required of her. She'd seen you in lamplight hundreds of times by now, in this room and in rooms that weren't this room, and she should have been past the part where the sight of you did something to her chest. She wasn't past it. She suspected she never would be.

She reached for her own shirt first and pulled it over her head, set it aside, stood there in the unselfconscious way she'd arrived at gradually over years—the scars, the map of everything she'd survived written into her skin, none of it something she needed to manage or explain. You looked at her the way you always looked at her and she felt it land in the place it always landed, which was the place she'd never thought to armor because she hadn't known anyone would aim there.

She reached for you, undressing you with careful hands, each piece of clothing removed deliberately, her eyes following what her hands uncovered with the focused attention she gave to things she found worth her full care. By the time she pressed you back against the pillows there was warmth in her chest alongside everything else, something she'd stopped trying to name because naming it hadn't ever done justice to it. She settled over you and looked at your face again in the lamplight.

She kissed your throat first, finding the spot below your ear that she'd mapped the very first time and committed to memory because your breath changed there without fail. She let herself stay there for a while because she wanted to, her mouth warm against your pulse point, feeling your heartbeat quicken under her lips while her hands moved down your sides in long, slow strokes. She found your breast and her thumb traced circles against it until you arched into her hand, and she kept the pace deliberate, not rushing toward anything, letting the warmth build at whatever pace it wanted to build.

She kissed down your body after—your collarbone, the center of your chest, the soft curve of your ribs—pressing her lips to each place with intention, spending time where your breathing changed. She found the birthmark at your hip and pressed her mouth there, acknowledging it, and felt the small sound you made above her move through her chest. She kissed along the inside of your hip where the skin was thin and sensitive and felt you shift against the mattress, and she took her time there too, not because she was teasing but because she was here and she wanted to be here, wanted every part of this the way she'd wanted it since the first time she'd understood that she wasn't going to stop wanting it.

She pushed your thighs apart gently and settled between them, looking up at you with dark eyes that seemed to explain everything she wanted to do to you.

She slid her hand up the inside of your thigh and found you through your underwear and pressed, and the sound she made at what she felt there was involuntary and entirely sincere—quiet and satisfied, something low in her pulling tight in response. She pressed again, feeling the soaked fabric give, and felt your hips tilt toward her hand before you'd decided to move them.

"Christ," she said softly, almost to herself. She rubbed slow circles against your cunt through the fabric, learning the pressure that made your thighs tremble, and listened to the sounds you were making above her get less managed. "You're soaked through. All of this is for me?"

“Natasha—please—"

"I know,” she said, grinning at you.

She hooked her fingers into your underwear and drew them down and off in one smooth motion, and then her hand was back and there was nothing between her and you. She slid through your folds slowly, thoroughly, the way she always started—learning you again even though she already knew every part of you. She pressed two fingers to your entrance and felt you clench toward them and held them there, not pushing in yet, just letting you feel the promise of it.

"You did a good job,” she said. “Texting me tonight. I hate that you had to deal with that.”

"Natasha," you said. "Please—can you just—”

She pushed inside, both fingers deep and immediate, your back coming off the mattress before she'd finished the motion. She curled them on the first stroke, finding the right place with the accuracy of someone who had learned you completely, and the sensation of that curl dragging against your inner walls made you make a sound that filled the room entirely. She held that angle and started to move—not slow, because tonight wasn't a slow night, because she could feel how wound up you were and had been since the bar—purposeful and steady, the curl on every stroke deliberate, her thumb finding your clit and pressing in circles that matched her rhythm. Her free hand spread flat across your lower stomach and she felt the movement of her fingers from the outside and you clenching around her.

"Natasha—" Your voice was already broken at the edges. "I'm already—I'm going to—"

"Not yet." She eased the pressure by a fraction, held you right at the edge with the particular patience of someone who found the edge interesting. "You can wait."

"I really—I genuinely—Nat—please—"

"You can," she said, against your hip. "You're going to be so good about it." Her fingers pressed deeper and you made a sound that wasn't a word. "Aren't you?”

"Yes—yes, please—I'll wait—"

"Good girl." She felt you clench hard at that, the immediate response you always had, and the pull in her stomach went sharp and low. She added a third finger gradually, feeling you stretch around them, heard the sound you made—different from the others, fuller—and held there for a long moment, just letting you feel it, before she began to move again. The fullness of all three, the curl on every stroke, her thumb working your clit without mercy,  was intoxicatingly intense and you were gripping the sheets in both fists, making sounds that had moved well past language.

She built it and held it and built it and held it—watching your face the whole time, reading every shift and sound and the way your expression kept cresting toward something and falling back—and when she finally pressed her thumb hard over your clit and curled her fingers one final time and said "okay", the orgasm that broke over you came from somewhere compressed and suddenly released, rolling through you in long deep waves. Your back came fully off the mattress, your thighs locked around her hand, and she worked you through every second of it without stopping until you were trembling and pulling weakly at her wrist.

She slid free, looking at her hand for a moment. Then she started moving down your body.

Her lips at your ribs, your stomach, the soft skin below your navel, each place acknowledged with the warm press of her mouth. She found the mark she'd left at your hip and pressed her mouth there briefly, and then settled between your thighs and looked up at you.

She let the spit gather slow in her mouth and released it—warm and deliberate, landing directly on your cunt—and the sound you made was completely undignified and she felt a low pull of satisfaction move through her at it before she lowered her head.

The first press of her tongue was thorough and exploratory, moving through your folds like she was relearning something she already knew. She didn't go to your clit first. She mapped the rest of you with slow attention, the taste of you moving through her, and you found her hair with one hand and held on without directing. Her tongue moved and she heard every sound you made in response.

Then her hands slid under your thighs and pushed them wide.

She was strong, and the experience of her using that strength to hold your thighs open and simply keep them there—while your body tried instinctively to close them against the overwhelm and found that it couldn't, that she was simply holding you where she wanted you without apparent effort—registered in a category entirely its own. She held you wide and lowered her mouth to your clit and the sound you made was loud enough that she was briefly aware of Liho somewhere in the apartment making a mildly concerned noise, and she didn't slow down at all.

She worked your clit with focused attention, in tight circles that varied just enough to keep your whole body chasing, pressure building and redirecting, her arms locked around your thighs. Then she sealed her lips around it and sucked once, brief and precise, and the sound you made filled the room completely.

She pressed the flat of her tongue against you and held. She didn't move and your hand in her hair was not gentle anymore and she didn’t care. She held your thighs wide and stayed exactly where she was, your back coming fully off the mattress again. The orgasm arrived enormous and deep, rolling through you in long waves that started in your chest and moved outward, and she stayed through every second of it—licking you through each wave, easing gradually as the oversensitivity built—until you were trembling and making sounds that were nearly the word stop.

She lifted her head, looking at you. You were flushed, your chest heaving, barely coherent—exactly what she loved seeing. She crawled up your body again, strong biceps supporting her weight over you. She cocked her head to the side, an idea visibly forming on her face.

"Say ahh," she said, her voice very close to a coo.

Your brain processed that slowly and opened your mouth.

She grinned in satisfaction, leaning over you and letting the spit gather and fall from her lips to your tongue in one slow, warm drip. You felt it land on your tongue, the weight of your taste left in her mouth and the thought of what had just happened at the same time, and then she kissed you—deep and slow, her tongue moving against yours. You barely kept up, your body still reacting to the act in ways you didn’t know how to explain. She pulled back and looked at you for a long moment with that open expression, the one that only surfaced in rooms like this one, and then she reached for the nightstand.

She got the harness on with practiced efficiency, no ceremony, the way she approached everything she'd already decided. She checked the reservoir carefully, ran her thumb along it, and came back between your thighs and looked down at you in the lamplight.

"Still with me?" she asked.

You made a sound that was approximately yes.

"Good." She settled her weight, lining the strap up against your entrance, and she pressed forward slowly, watching your face the entire time. She felt you stretch around the strap as she pushed inside, the ridging catching at your entrance and dragging along your inner walls on the way in, each ridge distinct and registering clearly in your oversensitized body. 

Once she bottomed out inside of you, she held there for a long moment—both of you breathing, the strap fully seated, the base of the harness against her clit—and she let you feel the fullness of it, the warmth of what was already inside you, before she started to move.

The rhythm she built was deep and deliberate, long strokes that gave you everything on every push forward, the ridging dragging back along your inner walls on every pull. She felt the base grinding against her clit on each stroke and the accumulation of it was something she had to focus through, the pleasure building steadily alongside yours. At the deepest point the strap filled you completely and she held there on each stroke for a half-beat longer than necessary just to feel it, just to hear the sound you made at the fullness of it.

"You feel incredible," she said in a low tone, and she meant it completely. "So perfect. Taking me so well." She moved deeper and you made a sound that went straight through her. "Mine. You understand that? All of this is mine."

"Yes—" Not really a word.

"Good—fuck—good girl." She kept the rhythm steady and deep, her breathing going less even with each stroke, the base working against her. The sounds you were making were just sounds, incoherent and unmanaged, filling the quiet apartment. She groaned softly on a particularly deep stroke, the sensation of the base against her clit sharp and exact, and she felt your nails in her back at the sound.

Natasha was shaking slightly with the effort of maintaining herself through it, the base relentless, and she pressed the mechanism at the bottom of each deep stroke, small measured releases, and felt more fake cum filling you each time. Every time she bottomed out she could feel it, the increasing warmth and fullness of you around the strap. 

She pulled out and grabbed your hips and flipped you, and before you'd finished registering the position change she pushed back inside from behind. The angle was entirely different—deeper, more direct—and you dropped onto your forearms with a sound that filled the room. She grabbed a handful of your hair, gentle enough not to hurt, tilting your head back slightly, and she felt you push back toward her, your body asking for more before you could have formed the words.

She gave it to you. Of course she did.

She moved fast from here, the rhythm she'd been managing coming loose, her hips striking yours with a sound she felt in her sternum. She was groaning on the deep strokes—the base against her clit, the feeling of being inside you, the sounds you were making below her all layering into something she was losing the edges of.

Her hand came down on your ass—clean and sharp—and she felt you clench hard around the strap at the impact and she hissed through her teeth and smoothed her palm over the heat before doing it again, lower. You made a sound that was not a word and she groaned at it and reached around to find your clit with her fingers.

"Come on," she breathed. "Give it to me. You're so—god—" Her rhythm stuttered slightly and it took her longer than either of you expected to steady it. "So perfect. Mine. Say it."

"Yours—" Not quite a word. "Yours—please—"

She felt you clenching toward another orgasm and moved harder and you came apart. She groaned through it with you and then pulled you upright—her arm hauling you back against her chest, the strap still buried inside you, your back against her front. She held you there with one arm across your chest and her hand splayed across your stomach, and you grabbed her forearm with both hands and held on.

She rolled her hips slow and deep and from this angle the strap hit somewhere new and the sound you made against her throat was broken and helpless. You both loved it.

"I've always protected you," she said, into your ear. Low and certain, nothing performed in it, just true—the way the truest things came out of her, plainly, like stating something decided long ago. "I'll always protect you. You know that."

It was said in desperation, like she needed you to know. She needed you to understand it. You were hers, and she would never let anyone harm you. She’d slam every man who annoyed you into a bar, and she would break any law she needed to, if it meant you were safe and happy.

"You're mine," she said. "So fucking mine." Her hips thrusted deeper and you sobbed. "And you're going to feel that. Right now. You're going to feel exactly who you belong to."

You came completely apart.

She held you through every wave and then eased you down—one hand gentle between your shoulder blades, pressing you forward until your face was in the pillow and your hips were up—and she moved with everything she had left. Her arms were trembling on either side of you with the sustained effort of it, the base of the harness grinding against her clit on every stroke, and her groans were real and uncontrolled as she approached her own orgasm. Each thrust brought her close, and it was the way you arched into her even in your current fucked-out state that allowed her to fall over the edge.

She pushed deep and held there, pressing the mechanism for the last time, giving you the full release. Her whole body was shuddering, her breaths uneven through her parted lips, beads of sweat forming on her brow.

Natasha’s forehead dropped to the back of your shoulder, both of you breathing in the quiet apartment. When she could move without falling on top of you, she pulled out slowly, shushing you softly when you whined.

She reached between your thighs after removing the strap—gentle now, entirely gentle, the shift from one thing to this happening without a gap or an announcement, just a change in temperature—and felt where the fake cum had begun to slip out. She pressed it back in slowly, two fingers careful and deliberate. You made a small sound, and she kept going, until she was satisfied.

"There," she said softly. Maybe it was to you. Maybe to herself. Maybe just to the room.

She cleaned you up with a warm cloth from the bathroom—careful with every mark, her lips pressing briefly and without comment to the ones at your hips—and got you into the sheets with the efficient tenderness she brought to this part every time. She lay down beside you, and you turned into her immediately. She let you, her arm coming around your back, her chin at the top of your head. Her fingers began their slow arcs along your spine.

You lay there in the warmth of her and felt your heart rate making its slow return to something resembling normal. The city outside did whatever cities did, and in here there was just the lamplight and both of you breathing.

The mattress dipped, and Natasha smiled into your skin.

Liho landed with the authority of a cat executing a decision that didn't require anyone's input. She walked the full length of the bed, assessed the situation with hazel eyes that missed nothing, turned in a precise circle, and settled against Natasha's side. Her small warm weight pressed against you both. 

One small black paw extended and came to rest on your neck, and you didn't move it.

Natasha's hand migrated from your back to Liho's fur and then back, the same slow rhythm for both without any apparent awareness that she was doing it, and you felt that somewhere in your chest in a way that didn't need explaining. The tenderness of being included in the same motion as something else she loved and would never fully admit to loving.

A long quiet settled. Liho purred. Your eyes were closed.

"She’s beautiful, isn’t she?" Natasha mused quietly to Liho, the way she talked to Liho when she thought you were asleep. 

Liho purred once, an agreement.

"There was a man," Natasha said, with the serenity of someone reporting mild weather. "He had his hand on her hip." The hand in your hair stilled briefly. Then resumed. "He made a miscalculation."

Liho made a small sound, and Natasha interpreted it as a knowing laugh.

"She's mine," Natasha said, the way she said things she had decided were simply true and required no further support. "And I’m glad she trusts me with that.”

Liho flexed her small paw against your neck.

"Think I’ve been softened up," Natasha laughed, sighing at the end as she stared at the ceiling for a few moments before her eyes came back down to Liho. “Did you ever expect that?”

Liho purred again. Natasha could’ve sworn the cat said “yes, I did”.

Natasha laughed once again, closing her eyes and burying her face in your neck. You smelled like yourself, but you had her scent as well, and that comforted her in a way nothing else could.

Liho was the last to fall asleep, settled against both of you like she knew it was right where she belonged. 

And somewhere, probably at home with his golden doodle named “Gracie”, the man from the bar held a bag of frozen peas to his crotch and whimpered with every breath he took.

He still probably didn’t take the hint.

you were called downstairs in the morning, and just outside the elevator, you met dr. al—hashimi, who asked you to come with her to help with an abandoned child.

"does she has a name?" you asked, catching a glimpse of yolanda, but before you could even smile, baran placed her hand on your lower back, leading you toward the pediatric ward.

"jane doe. her vitals have stabilized, but i… wanna make sure."

you both walked inside together, and then you noticed a little girl fidgeting restlessly in her crib. baran stayed by your side for a while before her pager goes off. she leaves, promising to return in a bit. after one last glance at her, you fuss with the child for a few more minutes, making sure there are no problems or life-threatening issues.

after finishing, you immediately prepare to leave to return to pediatrics, but something about this girl touches you deeply. so small. so innocent.

"and who abandoned you, princess?" with a heavy sigh, you gently place one arm under her fragile head and the other under her back, lifting the little girl. she squirms in your arms for a few seconds before cooing something incomprehensible and snuggling into the bare patch of your warm chest. some time passes, and you relax, trying to breathe slowly and steadily until quiet footsteps catch your attention.

garcia had been there for several minutes, watching how calmly this troubled child lay in your arms, how you spoke to her as if she were your own. god, it made her chest tighten painfully, her throat dry. you looked so attractive, so tender, that she felt ashamed of her thoughts. "are you peeping, dr. garcia?" you say quietly, turning to her with a bright smile on your face. she swallows hard, maintaining an impassive expression. she walks steadily until her figure towers yours. "it's not every day i see my girlfriend holding an abandoned child in her arms," ​​she says, leaning sideways against the doorway.

"she's adorable, isn't she?" you look at little jane doe again, running your thumb over her cheek. "poor, poor baby…" yolanda's stomach nearly flips as she hears your voice change, taking on a deeper, sweeter tone. she imagines you talking to your own child like that.

"yolo? are you okay?" you tilt your head, looking at her with mild concern, and that look makes her dizzy.

"yeah, i… it's just a shitty shift today, you know," she sighs, pushing away from the doorway to come closer. "have fun with the babies, hermosa. i'll go do adult things." yolanda smiles teasingly, leaning down to press a soft kiss to your forehead and gently run her finger down your cheek, making you smile, quietly saying "i love you" as goodbye.

while you're absorbed in your work, garcia's thoughts continue to drift back to the moment she saw you in the children's ward. god, no one had ever made her feel like this, and it was suffocating her…

yolanda's kisses were too dirty, too passionate, she was so loud. her hands roamed your naked body, greedily claiming every inch, not knowing where to linger for more than a few seconds. "fuck, fuck… mi amor..."

her hips slammed against your ass with every thrust, driving the thick strap deeper into your tight pussy until you felt her begin to turn your insides to mush.

the fabric of her jeans scraped against your skin because she didn't even bother to undress, throwing herself at you with a passion you'd never seen before.

"yolo—yolo, oh my god… fuck!" your back arches so hard it lifts off the bed as her hands slide over your biceps femoris before she puts your legs on her shoulders, bending forward and literally folding you in half. the angle forces the strap to sink even deeper, taking your breath away, a ragged cry of pleasure ripping from your chest that leaves you almost choking.

garcia looks down to where her cock disappears inside you, and her stomach twists again. if only it were real. if only she could come inside you, put her baby inside you, and then again and again, until the feeling of carrying her child is imprinted on your body. and then it comes.

"i wanna get you pregnant." your eyes widen, trying to focus on her face and not on how perfectly she's destroying you. "w—what…?"

garcia swallows hard, moving lower, stretching your muscles further until her lips are inches from your ear. "i want you to carry my child, no… my children… all swollen and round with my baby. i wanna make you pregnant, you hear me? i want you to give birth to my child. i want…" her breath catches in her throat as another particularly rough thrust sends shivers of pleasure through her body. god, she was desperate. so were you.

"fuck…" forming thoughts in your head was nearly impossible with the things she was saying and the way she was touching you. loud moans are replaced by silent cries and whines, your hands grabbing her shoulders, sliding to her neck to pull her in for a kiss. you instantly take her tongue into your mouth, letting her take control. kiss, bite, suck until your lips go numb.

"i wanna carry your child…" you whisper against her lips, holding her face close to yours. "i want—oh my god…! i wanna give you as many children as you want…"

yolanda's eyes light up with something darker than passion, something primal, as she moans loudly, attacking your lips again until you feel a metallic taste on your tongue and warm tears of pleasure rolling down your cheeks.

You have been waiting for March since October. You're three weeks out.

She texts you on a Wednesday afternoon: Are you free Sunday? There's somewhere I'd like to take you.

Of course you're typing out and sending yes before you've finished reading it. The attention to punctuation and capitalization would make you shit your pants if the message was from anyone else, but that's just how Baran talks, and by extension, types. You've gotten used to the formality of it all by now.

Sunday comes and she's at your door in dark trousers and a coat that probably cost more than your rent, and she smiles when she sees you.

"Hi," you breathe, a giddy smile on your face. "Sorry, I just have to grab my shoes and we're good to go."

"Take your time," she encourages easily, but she doesn't step into the threshold of your doorway. You shoot her a look.

"I'm not diseased, I promise," you joke, still light, still high on the anticipation of spending an evening with the beautiful doctor, but your smile fades when she just tilts her head and doesn't enter.

You pause, give her a chance to come in. She doesn’t. 

"Okayyy," you say slowly, slipping on your slides. "Well, nevermind. I'm ready. Let's go."

She takes you to a wine bar twenty minutes from the hospital. You sit across from each other in low lighting and dutifully do the first-fifteen-minutes-of-a-date thing, the catching up, the small careful questions. A server comes. Baran orders sparkling waters for you both. 

You look at her, tracking those careful hands once the bottle comes and she’s pouring it into two glasses for you both. She'd ordered you a glass of something you hadn't even known you wanted in September and gotten it exactly right, and tonight she is ordering sparkling water? 

You feel a wave of nerves crash over you and it’s then you notice how weird the restaurant she’s chosen is. It can hardly qualify as such, it’s more of a bar. Every other patron is in a suit, but not a date night suit, business attire. They all look like lawyers and bankers. There’s not a couple in sight, no candle-lit intimacy. People seem like they’re coming here for deals. 

You swallow. "No drinking tonight?”

"Early morning tomorrow."

Her fingers press white against the glass, the knuckles bloodless, and you watch her look at the table instead of you. The nothing taste of having not eaten enough today sits at the back of your throat, sharp and hollow as your tongue finds the inside of your cheek nervously.

"Baran—" you start.

"There's something I need to tell you," she says, at the same time.

Baran wraps both hands around the glass and you watch her do it.

"They've offered me the permanent position," she says. "Full-time department head. I accepted on Friday."

The chair beneath you is the kind that looks comfortable and completely isn’t, the hard edge of the seat digging into the backs of your thighs, your vertebrae, sending a painful twinge up your back.

You blink. “I’m sorry?”

"I wanted to tell you in person. I thought—" She stops, looking down at her hands. "I thought we should talk about it."

"When did they come to you?"

She pauses and takes a deep breath. "There had been some preliminary conversations. Back in October."

Your brain helpfully supplies a mental calendar of October: the forehead against yours, her eyes closed, one minute, two minutes, the promise of March was in October, the first dates, if that’s even what you can call them. 

"Preliminary conversations?" you repeat, voice rising.

"Nothing was decided then," she says quickly, and there's something almost pleading in it. "I swear, Y/N, it was just conversations. Feeling things out. I didn't know if I was even going to take it."

"But you knew it was a possibility."

"Yes." She looks pained. "Yes, I knew it was a possibility."

"Regardless, did you think I didn't need to know that?"

"I didn't know what to say." She leans forward, and you can see the tension in her shoulders. "I was trying to figure it out. The job, us, all of it. I didn't want to worry you about something that might not even happen."

"Worry me?" You stare at her. "Baran, we were—I thought we were—"

"I know." She reaches across the table like she might take your hand, then stops. "I know what you thought. What we both thought. But this position—it's permanent. It's stability for me and for my son. I can't just—" She stops, frustrated. "You don't understand the pressure I'm under."

"Then help me understand, Baran."

"You're young," she says, and it lands wrong immediately. You watch her realize it, watch her try to backtrack. "I don't mean that as—I just mean you're in a different place. You don't have a child depending on you. You don't have—" She stops. "This job is everything. It's my career. My son's tuition. Our health insurance. I can't risk that for—"

She doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't say for you. But you both hear it.

"So what was I, then?" Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. "Just something you were trying out until you got what you actually wanted?"

"No." She looks genuinely distressed now. "No, that's not it. Y/N, I care about you. I do. But I have to be realistic about what I can afford to lose."

"And I'm not worth losing anything for?”

"That's not what I'm saying." Her voice rises slightly, defensive. "You're twisting this into something it's not. I made a career decision, a good one at that, one I had to make. The fact that it affects us doesn't mean I was trying to hurt you."

"But you knew it would,” you reply. “You had to know it would.”

She's quiet for a moment. "I knew it would complicate things."

"Complicate." You laugh, and it sounds bitter even to your own ears. "Yeah, okay.”

"I said if circumstances changed—"

"But you knew they weren't going to change!" Your voice breaks. "You knew in October that they weren't going to change, so why the fuck would you dangle that in front of me to begin with?”

"I wasn’t certain!" She's getting frustrated now, you can hear it. "I was trying to see if there was a way to make both things work. I didn't lie to you, Y/N. I just—I didn't know what to do."

"So you did nothing."

"I did what I had to do." There's an edge to her voice now. "I made the choice that made sense for my life. I'm sorry if that hurts you, but I can't—" She stops, takes a breath. "I can't put my entire future on hold for a relationship that might not even work out."

You gape at her. “Do you really — do you seriously have that little faith in me? Do you trust me that little?”

“Can you let me talk? You’re not being fair.”

"I'm not being fair?" You stare at her. "Baran, I have been waiting for you since October. Don’t pretend you don’t know that’s true because I’ve told you that, and you’ve kept taking me out on dates, and—" Your voice cracks. "And you've known the entire time that it was never going to happen."

“I was trying to figure out if there was a way—"

"There wasn't." You pick up your bag. "And you knew that. You just didn't want to tell me."

"Y/N, please—" She reaches for you, and you pull back.

"I need to go."

"Can we talk about this?" she huffs. “Y/N, come on.”

"I think you've said everything you needed to say." You stand up, and your hands are shaking. "Congratulations on the position."

You watch something in her face go through a door and shut. She doesn't try to stop you and doesn’t follow you out.

When you glance back through the window, she's still sitting there, staring at her untouched water.

—

You show up Monday because you have to show up Monday, because Baran Al-Hashimi is your department head now, permanently, indefinitely, and the department doesn't know what happened in a wine bar on Sunday. The department just needs you there, so you are there. 

She doesn't treat you differently. She keeps with your last name in briefings, first name in the hallway, she defers to your clinical judgment when it's relevant, and you have no idea what it costs her and you are not going to ask. You have learned how to stop asking things. You should be given something for it.

Three weeks in she falls into step beside you between the supply room and the east corridor and says how are you doing.

"Fine," you say.

"You don't seem fine."

You completely ignore that, turning toward the nursing station where you can see Trinity and Dennis talking to Robby. You know Baran won’t do anything with an audience. 

Predictably, she stops several feet away, grabbing your arm to get you to stop too.

"I'm not trying to—" She stops. "I'm asking because I want to know."

"I frankly don’t care what you want,” you reply face intentionally void of emotion. “Please let go of my arm.”

"Y/N, I know you’re upset," she says, all quiet, big eyes trailing over your face. She drops your arm cautiously as if testing to see if you’ll dart. "I don’t want you hurting.”

"That’s not how it works,” you shoot back, “I’m trying to do my job without letting this get in the way, so how about you grow the fuck up and do yours.”

Baran’s eyes go a bit wide at that, plush lips dropping open as she scans your face in shock. “You're being entirely unfair."

You bark out a laugh. "That’s rich.”

"I never promised you a relationship, Y/N."

You stare at her. "Seriously?"

"I promised you that if circumstances changed, we could explore one."

"And are those oh-so different to you?” Baran straightens up. “Yes, Y/N! Those are two very different things!”

"So what line are you drawing between them? What, you'd keep me on a leash? Just far away enough so you could test out if you were actually willing to be with me? What was I to you, Baran, a free trial?"

Baran's expression sharpens immediately.

"No," she says. "And you know that's not what this was.”

"Don't tell me what I know." Your voice rises despite yourself. "You don't get to decide what this feels like from my side. You don't get to spend months building something with me and then act shocked when I have a reaction to finding out you've been making plans I wasn't even aware existed!”

"I’m more surprised by how determined you are to interpret everything in the worst possible faith!"

"The worst possible faith?" you repeat. "You sat across from me in that bar and told me you'd known since October there was a possibility you'd stay. October. Do you understand how insane that sounds to me now?"

"You are an adult," Baran says, voice clipped now. "With your own agency. I did not manipulate you into developing expectations."

You take a step closer before you can stop yourself. "Oh, sure, you just conveniently benefited from them, right?"

“Y/N—”

“Fuck all the way, off, Baran,” you snap. “You’re my boss permanently now, remember? So unless it’s for work, leave me the hell alone.”

—

April arrives, March bleeds out. The two of you are still in the same building, in the same department, wearing the same laminate badges in the same fluorescent light, and all the waiting was for nothing, has soured into a cold-hard nothing, and will stay that way. It sits in a lump in the corner and rots, rots, rots. 

—

It’s Lena Handzo, the night shift’s charge nurse, who tells you that Dr. Al-Hashimi turned down a conference in Boston last month. 

"Said she couldn't leave the department for that long," Lena says, eyebrows raised and smirking, and you make a noncommittal sound go back to your work. 

Lena frowns. “What’s up with you? You love gossiping with me.”

“Long week,” you reply sympathetically, not looking up from your computer. “I’m behind on my logs, too, and if I hear one more Attending bark up my ass I think I’ll just have to quit.” Lena tsks. “Let’s not do that.”

“I won’t, if I can get these done,” you say. “Thanks for the update, Handzo.”

She nods, patting your shoulder. “Honey, you know it’s my pleasure. I’ll see if I can keep everyone off your back.”

You are still thinking about it three hours later when Baran spawns right behind your swivel chair. You smell her before you see her, something deep and earthy and vaguely antiseptic and painfully recognizable. 

"Do you have a patient in bay seven?" she asks.

"Doctor Mohan has a patient in bay seven," you reply shortly. “I’m just assisting.”

"Do you want me to take a look?"

"Suit yourself.”

You hear the sharp intake of breath behind you. You imagine her power stance, hands clasped behind the lululemon, the curls that couldn’t quite be contained with the claw clip. You fight every animal instinct that begs you to turn around and snarl. You imagine you must look like an animal on edge, ears perked up in attention, waiting for a sign that she’s gone—

"I heard you covered the Delgado case this morning," she says.

Your eyes stay trained on the keyboard, fingers pressing the keys, clicking one, then another, then another. "I did."

"That was above and beyond. You didn't have to stay for that."

“Well, I did.”

"I believe it turned into a twelve-hour shift," she says. "You were only scheduled for eight."

"Mhm.”

She is quiet for a moment. "Are you sleeping?”

“Are you meant to be asking me that, Dr. Al-Hashimi?”

"I'm asking as someone who—" She stops. Recalibrates. "Yes. As your department head. Who notices when staff are working themselves into the ground."

"Then I appreciate your concern for my wellness." The words come out flat, professional, empty. "I'll make sure to log my hours appropriately."

"That's not what I—"

"Perlah," you call out, louder than necessary, swiveling your chair just enough to address the nursing station without looking at Baran. "Would you pass along the updated labs for bay seven when you get a chance?"

Perlah glances up, then past you to where Baran is standing. Her eyes flicker with confusion before she nods. "Sure thing."

You turn back to your screen. Baran hasn't moved.

"You look exhausted," she says quietly. Too quietly for anyone else to hear over the ambient noise of the station—Dennis on the phone, Trinity’s keyboard clicking, the distant beep of monitors.

"I'm fine."

"You're not. You look exhausted."

"With respect, Dr. Al-Hashimi, I don't think my appearance is really—"

"Y/N." Her voice has an edge now. "Stop.”

"Stop what?"

Her jaw tightens. "This little pity party. As your department head—"

"Already pulling rank? How's that working out for you, by the way? The career move, I mean. Worth it?"

"That's not—"

"Because you look tired too, if we're doing wellness checks." You tilt your head, examining her with clinical detachment. "Actually, while we’re on topic, when's the last time you slept?"

Something flashes across her face. Hurt, maybe. Good.

"We are not doing this here," she says, ice chilling her voice.

"Doing what? Having a conversation? Isn't that what you wanted?" You turn back to your screen. "Or did you just want me to say 'yes ma'am, thank you ma'am' and make you feel better about—"

"Watch yourself." Her voice drops, sharpens. "I understand you're tired, but you need to watch your tone right now."

"Or what?" You spin around. "You’re gonna put something in my file?" You're talking faster now, the words tumbling out. "You already have access to that anyway, so—"

"I said that's enough." Her voice is quiet. Deadly quiet. Samira has definitely stopped typing. "You're not in a state to be here right now. Go home."

That catches your attention. You gape at her.

"I have four hours left on my—"

"I'm aware of your schedule." Each word is precisely placed. "As your boss, I am telling you to go home. Clock out. Leave."

"On what grounds?"

"Because you're exhausted, acting immature, and you're disrespecting your superior in front of the entire station. This is not a discussion. Go home before I have to make this official.”

The worst part is she's right, to some degree. But what cuts is the way she is using the position, the authority, the thing she chose over you—to send you away. To protect herself. To prove that she can.

"Fine." You stand up too fast, chair rolling backward. "Anything else, Dr. Al-Hashimi?"

Something flickers across her face. But her voice stays steady. "No. That's all, Y/N."

You grab your bag. You don't look at Perlah. You don't look at anyone.

You definitely don't look at Baran as you walk past her toward the exit.

But you feel her watching you leave.

—

"Dr. Al-Hashimi? Can I borrow you for a second?"

"Of course." Baran doesn't look up immediately. She finishes the lab she's reviewing, hands it off to Langdon, sets down her pen. Baran follows the woman who she is slowly recognizing as Melissa from HR three steps away from the station, just far enough that the noise covers their voices.

"We received a resignation letter this afternoon," Marissa says. "Effective immediately. I wanted to let you know before processing it."

"Who?"

Marissa says your name.

Baran goes very still. "What?"

"It was submitted about two hours ago,” Melissa supplies. "It surprised me too. But I just wanted to check if there were any performance issues we should document, or if—"

"No." Too fast. "No, nothing like that. She’s—she’s an excellent nurse."

Marissa nods slowly. "Okay. Then I'll process it. We'll need to arrange an exit interview, but given the circumstances—"

"Yes. Fine. Whatever the protocol is."

Marissa hesitates, blinking at the tone. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Thank you for letting me know." Baran's already turning back toward the nursing station. “Excuse me."

She beelines down the east corridor, past the supply room, into the medication room at the end. It's empty. She closes the door.

Her hands are shaking. She presses her palms flat against the counter and tries to breathe. 

She pulls out her phone, fingers hovering over your name in her contacts. She hasn't texted you in weeks, the most recent message still the invitation for dinner, and your eager response with its exclamation points and little beaming emojis.

She types: What are you doing? You're throwing your career away over this? You worked so hard to get here.

She stares at the words, thinks about nursing school, the late nights you told her about, the clinical rotations, the NCLEX. How proud you were when PTMC hired you. How much this job means to you.

Her thumb hovers over the send button.

She presses it.