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You didn't really think about it, the first time it happened. You'd been halfway through a chart, awareness pitched somewhere behind you in case someone needed you — someone always did, eventually — and when you heard the name Sharkbait, you knew instinctively Santos was talking to you. She's always giving out nicknames like that, and you didn't have one yet, and people had taken to dragging you over to present for Park the Shark, because apparently you were the only one who could handle him without getting your head bit off.

You didn't really get what the big deal was. It wasn't hard to figure out how to deal with him — that's what you do, after all, assess people and then figure out how to deal with them. He wants clear, concise answers, and respect, so you give him both. Easy.

He's not the kind of person you'd joke with, or get chummy with, not unless he crossed that line first. Even then, best to tread carefully.

But he's not complicated, and he's certainly not scary the way everyone seems to think he is — though you would categorize him as intense. Focused. It's what makes him such a good surgeon.

And sure, maybe he trains his laser focus on you more than anyone else in the ED. Maybe his attention is less sharp when it settles and finds you on the receiving end.

It doesn't mean anything, surely, but that didn't stop Santos from noticing, and it didn't stop her from making a shitty nickname, and if you were thinking a little more clearly, you'd have realized that you should've shut that shit down. Park is your much older, much more attractive, incredibly no-nonsense indirect boss, not to mention, you actually kind of like the guy. He probably wouldn't take lightly to everyone going around implying he's trying to get in your pants, and even if Santos is mean, she's not evil. She'd back off if you needed her to.

But you'd been tired, and distracted, and you hadn't really thought about it that hard. And when she called out "Sharkbait, get over here!" you hadn't corrected her.

Instead, you'd tapped out the last line of your sentence and carelessly called back, "Sharkbait, ooh-haha." It wasn't even a conscious decision.

It's from some fuckass movie you watched when you were eight, and you hadn't thought about it in years, but apparently that one word had been enough to trigger the call and response you learned in second grade. It shouldn't have stuck, either, but then Whittaker had called you Sharkbait while you were talking to a patient, and you'd muttered it under your breath, and now you just can't stop.

Everywhere you went, people called you Sharkbait. Even Robby does it sometimes, when he's calling you over to observe procedures. And you, in a true show of human adaptability, do not stop to think about why it's such a mistake. You hadn't caught it the first time, and you hadn't caught it the second time, and by the third it simply became another thing in the background. Another name, another title, none of them really you.

Everywhere you went, you'd parrot it back. Mostly it was an announcement, a way to say I'm here, I'm paying attention, tell me what you need, without quite so many words. In the more serious situations, it was a half-whispered thing under your breath, a reminder that there would be time where things weren't falling apart, and you would be capable of joy and whimsy again.

Either way, it always came.

Unless Brendan Park was in the room. The Shark walked in, and suddenly everyone was calling your full name like you're George fucking Bush. Even the mention of a consult from him was enough to dissuade the use of it for a few minutes.

All of which led to twenty minutes ago, when you'd been hunched over a trash can, shoveling a granola bar down your throat with such ferocity that you felt simultaneously like a starved horse and the kind owner feeding it.

You'd caught a glimpse of Park gliding through the ED like Moses parting the Red Sea, and had stuffed the last of your precious calories into your mouth in a desperate bid to be done by the time he reached you. Even when you weren't called over to present, he rarely came down without stopping by, so you'd gotten used to putting on your best face on a dime.

You could see that Dennis was going to call you over before he actually did it, so you'd already been shuffling over to the hand sanitizer when you it happened. "Sharkbait! Whittaker says you should present this one."

Your mind knew it was a bad idea — tried to stop your mouth from following through — but habit is a bitch. "Sharkbait, ooh-haha," you fired back, just loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of the ED.

For a half-second, everyone froze.

Park turned to you, molasses slow. Arched an eyebrow. "You like that stupid nickname?"

You'd blinked at him. Refused to shrink under his gaze, or his tone, or the way it all made your blood sing and your skin burn. Forced your voice smooth and even, just as unbothered as he sounded about... well, everything. "I haven't really thought about it all that much, honestly. Mostly just reflex by now."

Maybe he genuinely believed you. Maybe it's because you've always been honest and efficient. Maybe he just doesn't think you have the balls to lie to him. Whatever it is, he hadn't commented on it further, so you didn't either.

You both pretended it never happened, right up until he disappeared back upstairs, and you allowed yourself a single moment to acknowledge the fact that you may have just lost all your goodwill with the best orthopod in the hospital.

What you don't know is that Park had been the one to start it with an offhand comment to Garcia about the ED dangling you in front of him like sharkbait every time he went down there. She'd repeated it to Santos, and soon it had spread like wildfire. Not what he'd intended, and he'd considered snapping at the mousy boy when he'd drifted by and heard him calling you that a few weeks ago — only to be stopped dead by your sweet little call-and-response, like you were fucking taunting him. Practically begging him to come bite.

The fact that you had the balls to do it with him right in front of you — and then look him dead in the eyes and call it reflex — has just cemented what everyone else already knows.

He wants you.

Ellis rips off her PPE, tossing it haphazardly into a biohazard bin. “Cover me in triage? Abbot ‘s calling me in on something.” 

You don’t need any more convincing, handing off your patient to a nurse before slipping through the doors to the ambulance bay. You get rid of your old gown, stuffing it in a bin before grabbing a new one.

The noise outside is different. It’s wind whipping past, a chorus of engines humming, and panicked crescendo of how and why– music conducted by the grim reaper. 

“Well look who decided to join me.” Dr. Shen smirks, tossing his empty cup into the trash. “You done triage like this before?” You shake your head, swinging the flimsy gown over yourself. “No. Never.” 

Shen steps behind you as you push your arms through the sleeves. “You remember your colors? Red’s for injuries needing immediate care, pink is injuries that need to be assessed and treated within the hour, yellow is serious but not life-threatening, green is minor, and black and white is–”

“Dead.” 

The knot against your neck and cold air hitting your skin punctuates the conversation. You twist your gaze to look up at Shen, who just smiles thinly. “Assess mental based on AVPU: alert, response to verbal, response to pain, unresponsive.”

“Alert, response to verbal, response to pain, unresponsive.” You repeat it twice, nodding to yourself. “Hey.” His hand clasps over your shoulder, squeezing. “You got this. C’mon.” 

You’re right behind him as a blue sedan pulls in, the driver collapsing out his seat onto the pavement, dragging his body as he begs for help. “Please! My boyfriend!” 

Shen hoists  the driver up, bearing his weight until a nurse pushes a wheelchair close enough for him to drop the patient in. His questions fade into the background, drowning in your adrenaline. The aforementioned boyfriend is in the passenger seat, groaning about his leg. No feeling in his leg, a something sharp in his leg, please fucking help him it’s his leg. 

“I’ve got a leg wound, possible femoral bleed, patient decompensating–” 

“Color!” 

Your head snaps up as Shen’s eyes bore into yours. Not mean, not annoyed, just redirective. 

“Red.” You breathe. “Possible femoral bleed is red.” 

There are nurses that slither through you to get to the patient, the current of their movement pushing you to the next car. A teenage girl is screaming about her sister in the back seat. You practically climb over the limp body the second you rip the rear door open, fingers palpating where there’s meant to be a pulse. But you never find one. Dr. Shen opens the door opposite of you, just in time for you to look up and shake your head. “Black.” 

The first hour feels like five minutes. It’s car after car, tag after tag, colors– five fucking colors are all you think about for sixty straight minutes. You barely notice Dr. Shen moving with you, riding a rhythm you set. There are a select few who find a few seconds to notice that, surprised to see an attending following the lead of an R3, but it works so who would question it? Not the nurses who take the patients in and push the gurneys out. Certainly not Dr. Robby, who hangs back by the doors, colored impressed by the efficiency that resembles him and his mentor. And most definitely not Ellis, who disappears back into the ED when she sees her presence is no longer needed out in triage.

Hour two feels slower. It’s less civilian cars and more police and ambulances. Familiar faces pass you by, barking out the hand-off to whoever would listen. You listen, slapping on a pink before they list off the next patient’s injuries. Eighteen year old, low blood pressure with a weak radial pulse, and a neck wound gushing blood. Your hand presses into her neck, already reaching for red.   

Fuck you’ve run out. 

“Shen!” 

“Got you.” 

He’s already beside you, putting a red on the girl’s wrist before pushing more colors into your pouch. You see him in your peripheral vision when he slips past you to attend to another patient, reaching for yellow before the paramedic can finish her report. There are a few seconds where the chaos is occluded, rough voices dulled down, as her focus zones in on the way he moves. It’s like watching a river current, water rippling over rocks and against the bank, but never stopping. It’s hypnotizing… appealing… it’s–

“Echo!” 

His voice is sharp again, pulling you back into the moment. “Shen?” 

“You look like you need your union-mandated break already.” 

You see a ghost of smirk, a teasing smile, one that fills you with relief and flutters of adrenaline all over again. You roll your eyes with a scoff, the middle finger on your right hand upright just for him. He laughs in a way that shakes his shoulders and squints his eyes, saying something through those deep ha-has that seem encouraging enough. 

At about half past eight, an ambulance pulls out of the makeshift triage bay leaving you, Dr. Shen, and a bunch of medical waste that needs to be taken away. The edges of your PPE are soaked in blood, torn at the seams by your waist. You rip it off your person with a soft groan, pushing it into an overfilled trashcan before leaning on a gurney. Dr. Shen takes no time to find his place beside you while he pulls off his gloves and tosses them on the ground with all the other trash. Adrenaline still pumps through your veins like you’ve still got a line of cars waiting for their color and the treatment that’s meant to follow. You flex your fingers in and out of a fist hoping that maybe they’d just stop shaking. 

“You two alright?” 

Your heads whip around at the sound of Dr. Robby’s voice behind you. He’s rubbing hand sanitizer into his palms as he looks between the both of you, waiting for a response. You nod, Shen mumbles sure. 

“Alright… I’ll let you know when we have an update from upstairs.. Let's just hope the police… whoever, has got a handle on the situation.” Dr. Robby does a piss-poor job of hiding his despair, but you appreciate the effort anyways. “I’ll let you know when I do… we could really use the help in there.” He claps his hands together, turning on his heel without waiting for a response. 

You both sit still for a moment, staring through the doors of the Emergency Department. It’s busier in there than it is out here, so you didn’t mind waiting another minute or so before going back. And perhaps Dr. Shen shares the same sentiment based on the way he rests all his weight on the gurney, making it roll just a smidge. The Pittsburgh air is a little cooler than you’d expect for this time of the year. The wind pinches your cheek and twirls your hair, and for a second you can take your mind off the jitters rippling through you. For just a moment… you feel like a girl again. 

You don’t notice the way Shen glances at you, dark eyes studying you like you’re some sort of spectacle to behold. You are– at least to him. The corners of his mouth quirk into something of a smile, suppressing any sort of fondness that might come across it. 

“You look… content.” He comments. 

You turn to look at him, your features softening a bit. “Is it bad that I’m happy to be outside?” Your head falls back with a satisfied hum, “Can’t remember the last time I was outside at night.”

Shen doesn’t have something smart to say, so he just mimics you– eyes shut, head falling backwards. It’s nice, this lull in the chaos. It makes him think about the last time he breathed. He tries to feel the way you looked when he stared a second too long, searching for that quiet gratification in the wind. But it’s not in the cool Pittsburgh breeze, or the soft hum of traffic going by in the distance. He smirks to himself, his body slumping when he realizes that what he’s looking for is found in the inches between your shoulders. It’s found with you. 

It’s your turn to look at him, a similar fondness in your eyes as you watch the way he mirrors you. 

“Nice, hm?” You ask softly. 

“Yeah.” Shen hums, “it’s quiet.” 

You hiss. “You did not just-” 

His cheeks round out as he laughs, dark brown eyes opening to look at you. He of all people should know better than to say that– he’s an attending for crying out loud. You scowl, and he only laughs harder.

“Oh come on!” He breathes. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious?” 

“You’re not?!” 

There’s a look of horror on your face that would’ve had him doubled over in laughter, but a siren in the distance cuts him off. The brief moment of respite flutters away along with the warmth that you both seemed to unknowingly share. Dr. Shen throws his head back with a groan, a quiet son of a bitch, before turning to grab new gloves.

“This is your fault, you know.” You shrug on a fresh yellow gown over your shoulders,  fingers fumbling with the ties at your neck into a knot tight enough for the gown to stay put. “You did this.” You say, giving him a pointed look. 

He grumbles a soft yeah, yeah, yeah as the ambulance pulls into the bay. The wheels on the rig are still rolling when the back doors open, a paramedic jumping out and pulling at their gurney in one fluid movement. Shen is by your side in no time, bumping his shoulder against yours with a tired smile. 

“I’ll make it up to you. Promise.”

You don’t have time to question him and the glimmer in his eyes when he promises that. The moment just whips past you as quickly as he does. What could that mean? You can’t linger on the thought– at least you try not to. 

You fall into step with Shen, one hand catching the rail as it passes through the automatic doors of the ED. The paramedic spits out the vitals, treatment administered, and any other information pertinent to the patient’s care. The second you step into Trauma 2, he scoots behind you and lets you take the lead. The room shifts to accommodate you, Dr. Shen, and the dance you do. All the movement– nurses, equipment, the calls of meds being pushed– fades into something indistinct. 

You narrate your movements and all your findings, Shen reaffirming every bit of your process. His stethoscope is halfway out of his pocket when you tug at it, twisting out a kink in it before handing it to him so he can confirm what you’ve heard. He takes it without breaking stride, like the movement was planned. Your shoulders brush as you switch places, light– accidental. You both fall into a rhythm only you two can hear, gliding around each other without interrupting the care necessary to keep the patient alive.

At some point, his hand finds your wrist. A brief touch, a redirection before allowing you to continue. His fingers press lightly then disappear just as quickly, like the moment didn’t happen. Then you’re reaching across him for something on the other side of the bed, and he leans back without a word. Dr. Shen works around you, like your movements aren't a distraction to his work. Neither of you acknowledge how close you two are at that moment. It’s close enough to feel his warmth, close enough that he can smell the faint scent of vanilla on your skin. Neither of you say a word, you just take what you need and shift back. 

But where you pretend not to notice, Perlah and Jesse do. You miss the knowing smirks, those eyebrow raises that say look at them go again. They’re clueless. 

Time moves weirdly when you work with Dr. Shen. It’s measured less in seconds and more in adjustments, the half-steps in a space much too small for your dance and the audience you’ve attracted, and the natural instinct of knowing where the other is without ever needing to look. 

The patient is rolled away to the OR, Garcia saying something behind you– impressed, maybe– but it doesn't quite land. The room feels much bigger than you remember. You’ve spent however many moments with Dr. Shen in your space that now the distance (two feet at most) feels off. You’ve become hyper aware of where you’re standing and where he is, more so now than in the last however many minutes. Something shifted when the dance stopped, when there was no longer a reason to stand so close to each other. You glance down at your hands. The gloves cling uncomfortably now, the sweat adhering the latex to your skin. Fingers hinge at each joint, in and out, like you’re trying to work something out of them. Tension? Adrenaline? Fuck, you don’t know anymore. 

You peel them in one motion, turning towarding the bin. Dr. Shen is already there, holding it open as he looks at something on his phone. It takes half a second for you to drop the gloves in, the soft snap of latex against the bag breaking the silence between you. It makes Shen glance up at you, a soft inhale swelling his chest.

“Thanks,” you breathe. 

He nods like it’s no big deal. It’s probably not. 

“Good job.” he says after a beat, brushing his hands together, “You handled that really well.” 

“Yeah…” You say with a nod, your voice much softer than it has been all night. 

There’s a pause, another moment where you are suddenly aware of the proximity. If either of you moved just one step over, it’d be as it was when the room was full. You blink, once. Twice. Then you force yourself back, half a step, like that makes all the difference. Your body feels delayed– like it’s a beat behind everything else.

“Sorry. Uh. Excuse me.” You clear your throat, turning before he can respond or smile or, god forbid, take one step to his left. 

Adrenaline leaves your body in the form of tremors— you feel it in your fingers and your knees. But you don’t stop until you’re at the sink in the lounge, bracing your hands against the edge for just a moment before you dip your head to let out a breath you’ve been holding. You twist the water on, cupping your hands beneath the stream before splashing it on your face. It doesn’t make the difference you hoped it would. 

You let out a heavy exhale, stepping back against the wall and sliding down til your bum hits the floor. You aren’t sure what time it is when you find yourself in this position– folded into yourself and your throat tight with emotion. That rush you had felt however long ago dies out, leaving you a shell of a person– of a doctor– filled with a sort of grief, or maybe sadness, you’re still learning to swallow down. You want to call your mom but you haven’t seen your phone since your shift started, and you hope and pray to God that you tossed it in your locker. The staff lounge is quiet, the kind that allows the voices in your head to scream and the images from earlier to grow much brighter than you can ignore. All you see are five fucking colors slapped on wrists bloodied or broken or both. It sickens you how quickly you could deduce a person to a color, how easy it all seemed. You hate the fact that you can’t remember a face or a name, just the colors you give them in passing.  It chokes you up and blurs your vision. 

Dr. John Shen is unfamiliar with this side of you. To him, you’ve always been  a brilliant doctor– someone who understands him in ways no one else has, someone who respects him as attending, nevermind that he’s only held the title for just under a year. So he’s a bit concerned when he walks into the lounge twenty minutes after you excused yourself, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand, to see you curled in on yourself and sobbing into your knees. The Dunkin cup is set quietly on the table before he lowers himself across from you, legs crossing beneath him like a child. For a moment, he says nothing, allowing the silence to remain, giving you space to feel whatever it is you need to. He knows how unforgiving this job can be sometimes. After a beat or two, though, his hands come up and settle gently over your arms, head lowering just a smidge so that he is leveled with you. His grip tightens just enough to comfort you. At least he hopes it does. 

Your head shoots up, embarrassment flooding your senses. But the sight of Dr. Shen softens the blow, relief slipping back in. Fingers rush to wipe your cheeks, as if it might undo the last five seconds and hide the fact you’ve been crying. Something like a laugh and a cough escapes while you try to think of something– anything– to say. 

“Hey, don’t.” His grip tightens around your arms, grounding, his smile gentle. “It’s okay.” 

Your throat tightens again, his face blurring into something indistinct, like a watercolor painting left in the rain. “Sorry– I don’t even know why I’m crying. This is so stupid!” The laugh that follows is thin, unconvincing.

“No, it’s not,” he frowns, at least you think he does. “It’s okay to have feelings. Today was heavy.”

A sniffle, another swipe at your eyes. “It’s not very doctor of me.” 

“Maybe. But it’s human.” His hands fall away, only for him to shift forward onto his knees, reaching for the tissue box. A few are pressed into your palm before he settles back in front of you again, that same smile and tender gaze back on you. 

You take the tissues with a soft thank you. Instead of wiping your face, you fold it. Half into half, until it’s as small as you wish you could be in that very moment. For the first time in… well perhaps ever, you aren’t sure if you can handle this job. You aren’t sure if emergency medicine is where you want to be even though up until this very point it was all you were sure of. Now the idea of it is eerie, bone-rattling. 

But you don’t say it out loud. God, of course not. Not when Dr. Shen looks at you like that– like this is just a fleeting thing, that in a few minutes you’ll be who he expects you to be. Instead, you unfold the tissue and blot your eyes and your upper lip before letting out a breath.

“That was a lot. I’ve never…” You let out a half-amused scoff, “I don’t know what the fuck that was honestly.”

“It’s not normal, ya know. It doesn’t happen often… so I hope tonight didn’t totally scare you off.” He picks at the skin on his fingers, shrugging like what he’s saying is no big deal. Maybe it’s not.

“What if it did?” You do your best to sound unaffected, but neither of you miss how quiet you get when you ask. 

Shen stills, fingers no longer picking at themselves as your question settles over him. The air grows heavy, the noise outside the lounge fading into nothing. You watch him closely– the slight furrow of his brows, the way his gaze drifts to the wall behind you– before he slowly mirrors your position on the floor, drawing his knees to his chest, arms resting over them, chin following after. His eyes finally flick up to yours. 

“Well then I’d tell you to remember all the good we do here. I mean you could do good in any specialty I suppose. But here…” He pauses, a small smile breaking through, warm despite everything. “And if you ask me, I can’t picture you anywhere else other than here.” 

With me, he wants to add. But he omits that detail and lets his smile linger instead. 

“Today was really bad,” you whisper. “And I can’t believe you saw me cry.” Another weak laugh, like it’s no big deal even though to you, it is. God, this was embarrassing. 

He chuckles softly, the sound easing the tightness in your chest. “It's just me.” 

“Yeah. You. Dr. Shen. My attending.” You wipe your eyes again.

“Not right now,” He says gently, “It’s just me. Just John.” His hand comes to rest on your knees, giving them a soft squeeze. “And for whatever it's worth… as bad as today was, you made it less bad.” 

He smiles, and your heart stutters. Heat creeps up your neck, blooming across your skin. If him seeing you cry was bad, then whatever this is is much worse.  

“You’re a good doctor Echo,” Dr. Sh– John adds quietly. “I’m really glad that I had you by my side today.”

The way John looks at you in that moment warms your skin, his dark eyes filled with a sort of reassurance that you needed in that moment. Maybe you do belong here– at least that’s what his eyes are telling you. Suddenly the idea of leaving felt more earth shattering than staying, the idea of leaving all this behind felt wrong. 

Something like a switch flipped– the emotion in air thins out and the ED is loud again. John pushes his weight into his palms as he gets on his feet, dusting off his hands before offering you one. You reach for him, pulling yourself up and swiping smoothing down your scrubs. You feel better, maybe still a bit shaken, but better. 

“Here.” John’s voice is soft as he hands you the cup,  “Said I’d make it up to you.” 

You blink at it, a little thrown as you try to trace back through your shift. The adrenaline leaves your memory a blur, and you never track the exact moment he said he would. Your eyes flicker up at him instead, brows furrowed nervously, and fingers curling loosely around the cup . “Thanks? What is it?”

“Your usual,” He pushes it into your grasp, only letting go when he’s sure you won’t drop it, “Mocha swirl with oat milk.” 

You smile. It’s small at first, almost shy, but it lingers and grows the longer you stand there. “You know my usual?”

He smiles back– half teasing, half something else you don’t want to name. “Course I do.”

There is something that settles between the two of you that makes the comment hard to dismiss. Three words settle into your skin. Course I do, like your doubt is sillier than him knowing. You stare at the drink, unable to help the warmth that creeps into your cheeks. He noticed. 

He’s still there when you look back up. Not hovering, not expecting. Just there. You’re aware of the space, and it’s different now. It’s not something that needs to be filled or ran from, it just exists. It’s steady and quiet… It's comfort. 

You shift on your feet, leaning against the counter as you sip your coffee. You swear you see him move forward, closer– like he’s caught in your current. 

“Good?” He asks. 

You hum, biting down on your straw before nodding. 

“Perfect.”

“Precious is looking for you at the Nursing Station,” he informs, which— well, coming from him, is the most courteous way you will ever hear him say Get the fuck back out there and make yourself useful, to someone crying their eyes out in an on-call room.

“Shit. Okay,” you nod, trying for steadiness as you blink back tears. But your voice cracks, and the humiliation only adds to the shame of you having flinched out your skin at being caught weeping by your literal boss, alongside the exhaustion and the weariness and the grie— 

“Sorry. Just. Give me a minute.” You sniffle. Wipe your tear-stained cheeks like a child as you palpably feel Park observing (…judging?), silently, before drifting into the room.

He leans against the work table. Crosses his arms. (A shred of consideration, perhaps, if you’re hopeful to read it as such: A 6’2” beast of a man trying his best not to crowd you in a tiny room by keeping distance; keeping your space on the bed yours as much as he’s keeping his own in the corner.)

“Minute’s up,” he bluntly declares, after a beat. And just before you can open your mouth to protest:

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

You look up at him, blindsided.

Park has never been the type for small talk or inanities. A captain of a no-nonsense, streamlined, tight ship who preferred to nip bullshit in the bud. The abrupt gesture of conversation has you haywiring for a moment: He hadn’t asked it in a way that sounded fed up or impatient at all.

You shake your head. Duck your gaze to pick at the soles of your shoes. They’re stained, still, with dried blood. 

He just wants to make sure you’re not a liability, you reason to yourself. Quit crying before you ruin your image to him.

“M’fine,” you finally exhale. “Just exhausted.”

“You’ve had shittier days,” he disagrees immediately, as if he’d predicted your reply— which is true, you’ve endured longer hours than today before in your career. Park is simply cutting to the chase, like the problem solver he is; that familiar tone in his voice sparking your reflex into deference. Don’t waste my time, it feels like.

And so you yield. Unlatch the floodgate of your heart. 

You tell him about the 15-year-old who could’ve been saved with a clamshell thoracotomy had his sternum and ribs not been pulverised into too many fragments for you to pick out; about the premature twins delivered to the NICU after an 8-month-pregnant mother had suffered an Open Book pelvic crush fracture on the drive back home from their OBGYN check-up with PTMC just an hour before.

You tell Dr. Park about the other trauma patients you watch code and die on the table despite doing everything you could; and about the 12-year-old little girl with the open skull fracture, and the above-the-knee amputation you had to perform on a 17-year-old teen, and the 21-year-old man who you’re sure is going to wind up paralysed from the waist down.

That while most of your patients were stabilised enough to survive and pull through emergency surgery, they still have a long way yet to go in suffering the winding road to recovery; still have to endure the ICU anyway to fight for their life, and we both know how postoperative mortality rates fucking look like, don’t w—?

“Hey,” Park overrides sharply, cutting cleanly through the tempest in your spiralling head. 

You suck in through your teeth with a flinch. Fortify yourself. Bring the levees back up around your heart for when he spears you with a barrage of strictures; to tear into you for wallowing in your despair like a child. 

Only—

“You just said you did everything you could,” he points out incredulously, brows pinched. “That’s as high as the ceiling goes in trauma cases like these.” 

A difficult thing to hear, given his stern cadence as he harshly says it, and an even harder pill to swallow. But it works enough, surprisingly, to steady you back into some semblance of sanity. Anchoring you from going adrift. 

“Anything further is the work of God— and I don’t believe in in divine miracles,” he censures, pragmatic. “I believe in Doctors. And the good ones do everything they can.”

(That is to say: you did good. You are good— of which also says: I believe in good. I believe in you.)

It feels like a cold plunge. Shocks you into blinking up at him again, with what you can only imagine is owlish surprise, considering the way he’s looking back at your teary gaze with that same unimpressed expression he gets whenever he states something glaringly obvious: Detached. Clinical. 

You bleed out the saturated warmth welling up somewhere beneath your ribcage before it can drown you. Flood it with cerebral rationale instead:

Park the Shark does not hand out compliments, and so you ought not to foolishly consider what he implied as such. This is… charity. That scrap of validation he knows everyone seeks desperately from him. Just an off-hand lifeline thrown to buoy you through rough waters.

(Then again, you’ve never known Park to say something just for the sake of saying it. He’s the taciturn sort, and above all an unapologetically brutally honest one. So maybe—?)

You internally shake your thoughts.

“The rest is just noise,” comes his fierce conclusion. “Tune it out.”

“Did it take long?” you ask, just as the redundancy of the question had hit you. “To tune it out, I mean.”

It should’ve been a blatant no to hear from the cold-blooded Park the Shark of all Doctors— bold and hardhearted and perfectly sensible for someone who’d earned a certified specialty in Ortho-trauma early on in his career. Bone-deep certainty driving his hands and cold data clearing his head that provides infallible, utilitarian disconnect from him and other people. 

But it appears, briefly, like he’s considering something as he stares at you. It’s gone into the depths before you can make out the shape of it: A flash of something alive underneath the maritime blue of his eyes. 

“Your shift is over,” he settles stiffly, after the pensive moment. “Go home.”

That sits you up straight, diverted by the non sequitur. “What? No, I—” You must have crossed a line; must have failed some unknown test he’d been dishing out to be abruptly dismissed like this, surely? “I can keep going—”

“Go home, pup,” he repeats, in that menacing snap of finality he uses to clinch arguments. Teeth and a scrunched nose in a half-snarl. “I won’t say it again.”

“Two more consults,” you barter pathetically, sliding off the bed before you can stop yourself: You’ve planted yourself stubbornly in front the door where he’s made headway to exit after pushing off his corner. “I have four more patients.” 

You unflinchingly meet his leviathan-keen gaze when he stops short in front of you. There’s an exasperated bristle to his expression, as if you’re a pesky little sea urchin insistent in blocking his path back to the shoreline.

“You’ve been on your feet for over 14 hours.” So have you, Shark, you manage to swallow back. “Yeshua volunteered to come in early,” Park continues, visibly growing more annoyed. “You covered for him last time. Scale’s even.”

“Yeshua? He never volunteers for anything,” you scowl, only for it to hit you a moment later. Yeshua never volunteers. Park would have had to put him up to it, essentially giving you an out, and… sparing you a kindness? 

Be realistic, you remind yourself. It couldn’t be. He’s probably punishing Yeshua for something while replacing your uselessness. Two birds with one stone. Ever efficient.

“Look, alright? I’m done crying. I got it out my system,” you insist, as patiently as you can. Pointedly taking a deep breath and tucking your hair back in an attempt to back your mettle. “I’m fine. I’m not a liability, Dr. Park—”

A noncommittal scoff. As if to say Is that what this is, pup? “If you were, I’d have told you a long time ago.”

There it is again. A liferaft. The sliver of recognition you can’t help but take to heart as implied approval, like the greedy, self-indulgent girl you are. Clinging hopelessly onto the flimsy fact that his absence of criticism is the closest thing anyone can get as praise.

“Now move, or you will be moved,” he warns, dryly.

You heed him before your imagination runs wild at the idea. Step aside to let him make his way out the door. End the conversation.

But he shifts slightly to pull it wide instead, his hand coming up high against the door and above your head to hold it open for you. An easy, economic motion, stretching him into a looming figure. There’s more than enough space to let you pass if you dip below his arm just a fraction.

Hardly chivalrous. Enough, though, that it’s a dissonance to his otherwise… ungracious character.

Well? An impatient tilt of his head to the threshold. Ladies first. 

“Handover after speaking with Precious,” he orders sharply, disregarding your shy, sheepish Thanks once you finally duck past him. “I don’t wanna see you after that.”

It should’ve come across unforgivably offensive with the way he’d delivered the coarse words, but the entire exchange you’d just shared with him since he’d walked in had only served to soften the abrasiveness of his instruction into something achingly endearing in your chest.

“…Yeah,” you mumble, flustered. “Okay.”

2.

The amputation bites you back in the ass within a few months of the MCI: a teen with an athletic scholarship loses his future, an angry father’s threat to sue you comes to fruition, and PTMC’s Legal Department contacts you— and all the medical staff involved in the operating theatre that day, much to everyone’s chagrin— in regards to the case.

Dr. Brendon Park has a decorated career in medicine long enough to have faced his own line of medical malpractice lawsuits against him. You, however, do not. 

The email alone sends you spiralling.

“Quit pacing,” Dr. Park scowls. He sets the break room coffee pot down with a frustrated thud that echoes like a gavel. “You’re gonna give me a fucking headache.”

“They’re filthy rich,” you ignore, undoing your surgical cap with an exasperated rake of fingers through your hair. “They could easily take this all the way to court if they wished—”

“Then I’ll testify on your behalf,” Park dismisses, easily. He doesn’t even meet your gaze as he hisses it— delivered so scathingly yet casually; you can’t decipher if there’s any truth to it or if he’s just trying to placate you from wearing a hole through the floor. “Every doctor gets sued at least once in their life.”

You throw your hands up. “Yeah, well, I was sure as shit hoping not to join that statistic.”

“Then go get a fuckin’ job at the VA hospital,” he cuts, brutal. (It’s sensible: any lawsuit there would instead go against the government.) He’s raised his voice now, to bring an end to the discussion. “Or, you can doctor up and deal with this like everybody else has to.”

“It’s a deposition,” he says, in what you can only compare to as a verbal eye-roll. “Not the end of the world.”

Feels like it, you don’t snap back, resorting instead to a huff too deliberate to go unnoticed. Park shoots you a look sharp enough to pierce through your soul at the sound, and you find yourself shrinking back from the eye-contact instinctively.

His pager blips through the tension before he can lash out at you. He assesses it between a sip. Sighs frustratedly.

“They’re going to ask you questions,” he begins— and the coffee must’ve stilled the torrent in his veins, because his voice has shifted to something more relenting; though with no less attitude. 

“Yes or no will suffice. If you give anything more, the lawyers will poke holes— and trust me, they will find a way to— so keep it short. Stick to the facts and the data. Don’t overexplain or try to defend yourself, because that’s your attorney's job. D’you understand?”

He takes another swallow of his coffee. Watches you nod stiffly as you absorb the information. 

“ED needs consult,” Park announces, lazily. He jerks his chin. “Use the distraction.”

On any other day it might’ve been humiliating to be dismissed this offhandedly and sent away on what’s most certainly going to be a menial case— but for some reason this time feels less like blatant rejection and more like he’s giving you another out; another escape.

Distraction. It’s unusually transparent of him.

The way he’d said it hadn’t been unkind. Not exactly warm, either. Still rough around the edges in a way only Park can manage to deliver an attempt at comfort.

So you do take it.

You know better than to come back from the moment’s reprieve still being a useless worrywart; so you let his cold advice ring through your head across the days like a countdown— All the way up until Park had allowed the hospital attorney to pull you out of a simple arthroscopy procedure, and finally escort you to your deposition, of which you spend the entire time fidgeting in your seat.

“You did excellently,” compliments Attorney Morgan Stiles, in the wake of the aftermath. “You gave me infinitely less trouble than Park did, for what it’s worth.”

In the middle of the elevator ride back down, your attention snaps to the folder in hand being offered to you. Park had completed his deposition yesterday morning. He hadn’t mentioned a peep of it to anyone.

ORAL DEPOSITION TRANSCRIPT, reads the document, once you curiously accept it. You skim the unnecessary information— dates, names, summaries, confidentialities— and jump to a random page: 

(Somewhere in the end-half of the deposition, you figure. You can picture it in your mind’s eye; the austere hospital courtroom, with Dr. Park seated sentinel and glacially calm as usual, voice answering steadily throughout the examination in that unabashed impatience and contempt reserved for people taking up his time.)

A: That’s the nature of traumatic cases. What you’re doing is conflating a poor outcome to poor medicine, which isn’t the case, because some of PTMC’s best trauma surgeons were operating on this patient.  Q: And would you agree a different Senior Attending Physician, such as you, Dr. Park, may have altered the outcome for this patient had they been present? A: No. I’d have done exactly the same thing as my Resident did from bedside to theatre. Q: And so you maintain your Resident did not err in her decision to amputate above-the-knee? A: Yes. Q: Would you classify her decision as a judgement call, given the circumstances of the mass-casualty? A: Didn’t we just clarify this? [Sighs] No. Q: Are you confident in your answer, Dr. Park? A: Confidence is sure as hell what it takes to work as an Orthopaedic Surgeon in a Level-1 Trauma Center, isn’t it? MS. JENN WALTERS: That’s nonresponsive, Doctor. A: Jesus christ, yes. I’m certain. Q: If confidence is needed for an Orthopaedic Surgeon, as you’ve said, why did your Resident reportedly appear distressed following the case? MS. MORGAN STILES: Objection. Relevance.  Q: It regards to the confidence of the standard of care the physician delivered-- A: Excuse me? No, absolutely not. It regards to her being a Doctor with a fucking conscience. Q: Be professional, Doctor. You’re on the record. A: You undermine my Resident, Sir. A trained and capable surgeon who recognised the acuity of the injury, escalated accordingly, and executed it appropriately to standard of care. That’s exactly why I signed off operationally, and that’s why I’m here. If you challenge her decision, you challenge mine-- Q: [crosstalk 00:44:21] --As established, yes-- A: --Her “poor confidence” post-operation doesn’t indicate the level of competence she performed in that OR whatsoever. If you’re gonna try her as guilty for showing a little heart after an evidently difficult case amidst an MCI, then you should be trying me, the entirety of the Surgical Department, and the goddamn rest of PTMC too for every tear we shed on a loss, don’t you think? Q: Carry on, Doctor. MS. MORGAN STILES: Objection. Asked and answered. You’re not required to continue, Dr. Park. A: Yeah? Well, I want it on the record anyway-- Good medicine begins with good character, and hers has never once been in doubt to me. I don’t-- I wouldn’t want to lose her. Any doctor worth their salt wouldn’t want to lose someone like her.  Q: Alright. Well. Shall we say you acknowledge all of what you said, Dr. Park, as your personal opinion? A: [Pause 3s] It’s a professional one.

You blink, dumbfounded. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

Attorney Stiles shoots you a discerning look as she studies your flustered expression. 

“That page you’re reading,” she repeats slowly, taking the transcript back with a knowing smile as the elevator descends, “I was saying, that for all the times I’ve had to represent Dr. Park, he’s never once failed to acknowledge the competency of his colleagues. He is, for all intents and purposes, a man of honesty.”

That makes you deflate more than you’re willing to allow yourself. Professional opinion, you remind yourself. That’s all it is. 

“But,” she continues, and this time you do glance at her with a flash of hope in your eye too bright to ignore, “I’ve never seen him jump to anyone’s defense the way he did for you that day. He took off on a tangent. You can’t gauge the tone in his transcript, but he was angrier than he sounds here. Angry for you.”

Something treacherous flits behind your ribcage. You smother it before it can take flight. “He’d have done it for anyone, I’m sure.”

A snort. “I’ve represented him multiple times across the years. He never has,” she says, brows raising at you. “Dr. Park has always been a man in control of his emotions especially when it matters most— but that deposition was the first I ever witnessed him lose his cool. You must be a pretty good doctor, aren’t you?”

The elevator dings. Sound akin to a lightbulb going off in your head when you decipher the smirk on her face.

“Like he’s mentioned: he was just…” You shrug unconvincingly, laughing it off with an awkward smile as she slips out to her floor. “He was just being professional.”

She winks as the doors shut. “Sure. Whatever floats your boat, Doc.”

3.

“…ith the systems out. Spectralinks are down. Paging departments will be done by the hospital landline or in emergencies by mobile phones,” Park explains, before raising a clipboard with a sticky-note attached. “This is my number. Only contact me if it’s urgent, unless you want an early fucking grave.”

But that’d been over a week ago. Within specific context of a literal cyberattack sending everybody offline and analogue.

Here, now, with your phone in hand and vision swirling after forcibly hurling the contents of your stomach out in the dingy bathroom sink of a bar— You hit send on your text before you can backpedal and wonder if this too could even count as an emergency to Park’s eyes:

Stranded in a bar, your last long island iced tea sweating on a cocktail table had tasted glaringly off; And it must be paranoia kicking you into overdrive, vulnerably surrounded by a posse of drunkards, but you’d decided to empty your stomach just in case before you could talk yourself out of it.

Maybe it’d been a heavy pour, you’d tried to convince yourself, Or just a flat drink, or the fact you’ve been nursing alcohol on a relatively empty stomach after a 6 hour spinal fusion cas—

Your heart stumbles. Notification chirping.

You’d expected him to not open your long-winded, over-explained S.O.S messages from you at all. Maybe leave you on read. Hell, blocking your contact would’ve been less of a surprise than a straightforward reply going:

9:55 | Address and live location.

Straight to the heart of the matter, as usual. You know better than to argue. Too late to take it back without making further a fool out of yourself.

➤ …You started sharing your Location with Park the Shark 🦈.

9:51 | [Live Pin📍631 Suismon St. Pittsburgh, PA 15212.] 9:51 | Its ok rlly i can just call an uber. U can ignore this

He calls you two minutes later, saving you in the nick of time from being inveigled into a game of pool with the ragtag group of strangers you’ve been held socially-hostage to by proxy of your now-missing friend. (You should’ve known better than to thirdwheel her and her partner.)

Ten minutes. Stay on the phone, Park orders, You okay?

The abrupt bound of your heart at the question feels ill-timed given the situation, but you feel the unbidden surge in your gut anyway: Here is Park the Shark, beastly and brutal, asking if you were okay.

“Oh. Yeah, I—”

“Yo,” comes a new voice. It’s the ginger who’d cornered and badgered you into the game, a drunken grin on his face as he leans on his cue stick, eyes obviously wandering. “Who’re y’on that call with? C’mon, join me.”

Your grip tightens around your phone.

“My boyfriend,” you blurt reflexively, anything to throw up a boundary to ward off or deter anyone else from encroaching further into your seemingly-inviting space. “He’s on the way to pick me up.”

A beat.

The lie catches up to you a moment later. Has blood rushing to your face and your ears when you remember, mortifyingly, that Park is overhearing everything over the line. 

Fuck. Whatever. It’s done. You’ll deal with the fallout later, you figure. Endure the humiliating consequences he’ll put you through and the inevitable snarl of a lecture. The all-too-familiar trademark wrath of Park the Shark that you’ve survived before—

Park hums. A half-breath that escapes as an… amused huff. (You’re probably mistaken, right?) Makes your pulse rabbit further. “That shake him off?”

You’re caught off guard. Glancing sideways at the group prowling your periphery, half-waiting for you to rejoin them for the night. “Not really,” you admit. “How close are you?”

“Seven minutes. Just keep talking to me. What’d you drink?”

You obey dutifully. Answer whatever he asks: why you’d been out tonight, where your friend had gone, and about the little clique that had invited you into a round of pool with less choice than they made it feel like. 

Park doesn’t interrupt you when you make an off-hand lament about your heels digging at your ankles, nor about your addled drink; rattling to him that no, no, I threw it up. I’m a little queasy but I’m fine, really. I can still just call an Uber and power through the hangover tomorrow morning— 

His voice keeps you company. Occupied. Distracts you just enough to make the short wait less insufferable; That by the time you’re looking up from where you’ve been picking distractedly at a drink coaster, you witness Park’s leviathan shape slice through the bar and part patrons like water to a prow, not sparing a drop of attention to the turned heads as he sails past the pool table into a dead-reckoning towards you.

Let’s go, is all he snarls. Abrasive. Canine-sharp and a flashing glint of jagged teeth as he delivers his classic shark-stare to your fishy onlookers. And if the inebriated ginger and his shoal of drunkards had any suspicions about Park being with you, it’s promptly dashed by his hovering hand behind your back as he weaves you through the revelling crowd; his leading presence and angling body enough to shoulder and be a proverbial breakwater for you all the way out the door.

It’s drizzling out tonight. Chilly. When you exit the bar, the dark sleek of his car is idled (Read: parked illegally) and waiting at the slick curb. He strides ahead just enough to open the passenger door, hand on the roofline as he guides you to duck into your seat. It’s a welcome warmth of pressure behind your back, and then again when the crown of your head brushes his palm. 

A shield from clipping the frame. Startles you more than the touch itself. 

“Hey. Eyes on me,” he orders, in that maddeningly level tone of his, once he’s sure you’ve settled properly and clipped your seatbelt on. “If anything changes— you tell me before you decide to throw up in my car, or I’ll leave your ass on the street. Got that?”

“God forbid.” Your smile is tight-lipped and sheepish. “Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Park.”

He doesn’t answer until much later, when he’d put in your address and let the murmuring humdrum of the radio fill in the space, that he stiffly reminds: 

“Didn’t I tell you before not to get used to me playing nice?” 

Your mouth opens, then shuts in contemplation before you let yourself slur your words. “I know. I’m sorry. This was highly unprofessional and I, I shouldn’t’ve called, but I just figured…”

He’s white-knuckling his steering wheel. You can see the masseter in his jaw flex. “Don’t make it a habit,” he snipes.

“I won’t,” you start, fumbling for your phone in your purse. Your vision is muddling as the seconds fly and your soberness begins to ebb once more. “I’ll delete your contact, if you want—”

“I meant the unsafe drinking,” he amends, pointedly. 

You blink. Battle with yourself, fleetingly, on whether he knows what he’s just unintentionally implied; how dumb it would be to ask Does this mean I get to keep your number? as your lockscreen winks back to sleep again. Does this mean you care? Does this mean—

“It was a personal opinion, wasn’t it?” you find yourself blurting out. 

The car rolls to a stop at the red light of an intersection. Nothing but the steady, pitter patter of rain threading the silence with a melodic lull. It unwinds you more than you realise, has you unconsciously sinking into the comfort of your seat. There’s no taking back what you’ve asked now. No escaping. In for a penny…

“What you said about me in your deposition, I mean,” you continue. I don’t want to lose her. That’s what he’d stopped himself from saying, hadn’t it?

The traffic light blinks go. Sea-green floods through the windshield and washes over Park. Reveals him in a way you’ve never witnessed before: caught out; a fish out of water. There’s a few loose strands over his forehead that somehow only makes him the most domestic you’ve ever seen him— and frustratingly attractive.

Someone honks. (That hopeful part of you is digging its watery grave again: taking his distracted hesitation as something else that could be entirely different.)

“You’re lucky you’re drunk,” he comments, once he remembers to move. Blank. You can’t read him. Can’t gauge the depth of the ocean-blue in his eyes from where you’ve been metaphorically walking the plank.

“Oh,” you murmur humorously, letting him off the hook for ignoring the question, “you’d know if I was drunk, Park, believe me.”

“Yeah? What the hell are you right now, then?”

“Sleepy?” you offer, before shaking your head. “No. Not that.” Head over heels, you don’t answer, turning to gaze outside the window instead. Watching raindrops race as the city flickers past. “…I’m struck.”

A beat.

You can feel him spare a pensive glance as you let your head tip back into the carseat, eyes fluttering heavily for a moment’s reprieve between your tipsiness; Can feel him like a brand on your skin, gaze searing into your profile. Judging you, perhaps, between the streaks of streetlights passing rhythmically across your face.

You can hear him in your head, even if the words never leave his mouth. The hell’s that supposed to mean?

Silence. 

You must have let it stretch too long, though, because something shifts in the tense air that you can reflexively pick up after years of working hand in glove with him in the OR: Stillwater. Doldrums. A calm before the storm.

Park’s attention has sharpened to a scalpel’s point.

Somewhere between the syrup-thickening haze of sleepiness, your thoughts have quietly muted out, and your eyes slowly slip shut into the diaphanous beginnings of a fever drea—

His hand lands on you.

Presses on the inside of your wrist.

(Who knew Park the Shark could be so gentle, comes your candid thought.)

It’s enough to startle you, lazily cracking one eye open to peer at him through the gossamer of exhaustion: Park’s got an arm across the console reaching easily for you, gaze focused— not on you, not quite, but on where his fingers meet your pulsepoint.

He’s… counting your heartbeat.

(You hope he doesn’t notice your pulse skip at the contact; at the dreadful idea he’d discover your girlish fondness over him—)

“You said you threw it up,” he says, evenly, turning from another red light to warily chase your half-lidded gaze. “Hey. How long after?”

“Mh,” you hum, susurrus. “Soon, I think.”

“Pup,” he asserts. Then your proper name. (You take a deep breath in at that, hope he doesn’t feel the goosebumps line your skin at the bass of his voice.) It stirs you awake.

“I’m fine,” you muse drowsily, flattered. “Just… tired. S’been a long night. Had that spinal case today, remember?”

Park glowers. Withdraws his hand back. He doesn’t look reassured or humored when that same sea-green light from traffic bathes him soft again. 

“I’m driving you to the ED. Keep your eyes open ‘til we get there,” he orders, already checking his blindspot as he makes a sharp turn when you begin to protest. “And shut up and stop arguing with me.”

That was that.

He’d firmly ceased the conversation from any possible attempts of dispute, and drove you to the ER to hand you over to a rightfully stunned Dr. Shen, while ignoring the prickle on his skin from half the medical staff curiously watching the scene take place. 

Then Lena is asking you questions, though your thoughts are a little gummy around the margins. Park answers where he can. Ever the one to make the situation efficient. She called me to pick her up from a bar. I’m worried her drink might’ve been spiked. It’s been roughly twenty minu…

(I’m worried. The words pass so fleetingly it could’ve been imagined by you. It probably had been.) 

And then IV lines, and a bed, and the turn of Park disappearing behind the curtains of North-4, and—

Come morning, there’s a white paper bag set at the foot of your bed by your zipped purse. The label and symbol emblazoned below its handles is recognisable: it’s from PTMC’s Gift Shop. 

You peer into it to find… slippers.

Slippers? Not the standard-issue hospital ones that are rubber-soled and thin, but the plush ones; meant for visitors or nit-picky patients unexpectedly admitted overnight: Pale blue, absurdly comfier than necessary. There’s neither a purchase receipt nor a tag in sight.

Your heels are tucked neatly by the wall instead of being kicked someplace else. For one disorienting second, you expect to see Park posted by it in that impossibly statuesque stillness of his— nose down, arms crossed and folded, expression predatorily severe in that way it always gets before he launches into a scathing lecture.

…He isn’t there, of course. That would’ve been ridiculous. Park had no reason to stay once you were in capable hands; once you were safe.

(His absence leaves a stubborn hollow in your chest regardless.)

“Oh, hey,” you begin, when Lena checks in on you sometime later. “I’m feeling way better. Thank you. But, uh, can I just ask— Who bought me the slippers?”

Her brows are raised as she peeks at you over her spectacles, half-amused. “Who d’ya think, sweetheart?”

+ 1.

By the (alleged) third HR report that quarter, Gloria does a shakedown in regards to the infamous Park the Shark.

It pisses him off even more than usual. It pisses off everyone in Orthopaedics, in fact. On one hand because an angry Dr. Park means a shorter fuse and more tongue-lashing; And on the other: because everyone in Ortho defends each other’s throats like they were their own.

The in-fighting between departments have never been anything but off-hand retorts and petty remarks; but now that someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who’d bribed a guy managed to catch wind on which specific departments have reported Dr. Park— well. It hadn’t taken long to figure out the names.

“And yet, somehow, not a single peep from any soul in the Ortho Department,” points out Gloria, after she’d stolen you into her Director’s office for a ‘brief conversation’ one Monday morning. You have a feeling you might not have been the first person buttoned into this situation today— let alone the month.

“Oh,” you say, failing to hold back the bubble of laughter at what her tone is setting up. “You think we’ve been Stockholm’d?”

“I think Dr. Park is a six-foot-two white man who has an intimidating presence to match with his terrible reputation and notoriously curt behaviour.”

You make a face. “He went toe-to-toe against Precious and lost.”

(This time Gloria makes a face. She knows well and clear the spitfire of a personality your charge nurse Precious— a four-foot-eleven Filipina who’s been running the Ortho floor like the Navy itself long before you or even Park joined— carries around. )

“Well,” she relents comically, sinking into her office chair. “Precious is an outlier.”

“So you think everyone else is just too afraid to speak up?” you conclude.

“Doctor, I need you to take this seriously.”

Right, you inhale, making a theatrical show of straightening up. Gloria looks expectantly at you as you gather your thoughts with a sigh.

“Do you remember when Dr. Lee lost his youngest daughter back in June?” you begin, glancing at the back of a framed picture on her desk. “It was a car accident. Quick and painless. Common for her age group; Common emergency case for a Level 1 Trauma Center like ours.”

“Funnily enough, after he buried her— Dr. Lee didn’t encounter a single paediatric trauma case for the remainder of the year, you know?” you continue, meeting Gloria’s gaze. “Somebody else was always mysteriously available to take the patient away from Lee’s hands.”

If Gloria got the hint, she didn’t show.

“And on Ramadan, Dr. Arif never worries about whether he’ll faint toughing out an 8-hour operation like he did in his intern year,” comes your next story. She knows this one, surely: Park had infamously kicked him out the theatre for it. “That’s because ever since that day, trauma cases during that month are redirected to somebody else if it overlaps with the only time Arif gets to break his fast.”

“There’s also Suren, one of our best and most senior scrub nurse, who had to step away from work to return to Mongolia and dedicate her time taking care of her dying mother. She left just last month with a collection enough to help her tide over anything: hospice, funeral, even travel.”

Gloria interjects with a finger— “Precious started that fund,” — which only serves to make you snort.

“You really think our nurses here are paid enough to pool together almost, what, ten grand on a week’s notice?”

“Okay, alright, I get it,” she instantly says, sounding unbelievably incredulous. It grinds your gears more than you expect.

“So you think Dr. Park is responsible for all this… charity? You think he goes out of his way to order cases to be rescheduled or redirected for others; That he’s the type of man who would reassign personnel for their benefit— that he’s somebody who’d go the extra mile?”

“I don’t think. I know,” you correct, matter-of-fact. “He’s a good man. He may be an asshole, and the furthest thing from being nice— but that doesn’t mean he’s unkind.”

Gloria’s mouth purses at your defense. The uncharacteristic flash of ferocity and canines you’re baring is, undoubtedly, an unconscious trait of mettle you’ve inherited from the Shark. Protective; territorial.

“When you work with Dr. Park long enough, there are two things you learn quickly. One: is that he values efficiency. Tact to him is for people who have time to waste. If there’s a path of least resistance that gets him the results he desires— that the patient needs, above all— he’ll do it.”

Gloria gives you a stare that looks like, and secondly?

“Second: he’s fair. Consistent. He’ll tear you apart for a shitty postop note, sure, but he also never humiliates people for things outside of their control. He’ll bitch about the circumstances, ofcourse, but doesn’t everybody? He doesn’t care to be liked. He sure as hell doesn’t look for approval.”

There’s a myriad of things you can add on that you curb yourself from saying: My first year of Residency I didn’t have to endure the blatant misogyny for long because he drilled respect into my peers' skulls. In every case where there was an escalation or combative patient he would already be standing ahead of me like a bulwark. Whenever I come home to the blue pair of slippers he bought me because I complained about my heels once in passing, I’m reminded he picked me up when I had no one to call and drove me to the ER. 

You shake your head. Draw steel into your voice. 

“It’s difficult to tell the difference between whether Dr. Park is inconvenienced or concerned,” comes your conclusion, “until you eventually realize that with him, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Gloria’s office chair squeaks as she sinks back.

“You sound very certain,” she says, after a defeated pause.

The smile you give her is deceivingly sweet. “I am.”

Recognition comes by Thursday evening in the breakroom, thanks to nursing chatter.

“A little birdie told me you stuck your neck out for me,” says a low voice. 

You shut the refrigerator door. Turn around to see the broad back of Dr. Park, busying himself with pouring what looks to be his third coffee. 

“I’m sure everyone on the floor did,” you answer, leaning to the counter adjacent to him. “Especially Precious, I heard.”

“Little lady chewed Gloria’s ear out over nursing staff shortages and safety measures instead,” he muses. “She was locked in that room with Precious. Not the other way around.”

A punch of a laugh escapes you. “I could never.”

“But you did,” he allows, making you look at him in surprise. “Whatever bullshit you said to Gloria three days ago in that office seemed to convince her I’m worth the HR-trouble of keeping around. I got off with a slap on the wrist.”

(Which roughly means: he’ll keep his head down for awhile until the storm has passed, before he’s back to biting the heads off whoever he deems incompetent again.) 

“It wasn’t bullshit,” you deny. “I won’t bore you with the details. But I just told her the truth.”

“That I’m an asshole?”

You shrug at his deadpan expression. “Well, we can’t all be perfect.”

A beat. 

And then— Park laughs.

Laughs.

Curling at his lips and dimpling into his cheeks. Slight, brief, but candid. It’s a mellow, breathier sound than you would’ve ever expected. Knocks the air from your lungs in an instant and damn near startles your brain into short-circuiting. He’s never looked more roguishly handsome than he is now:

Privately smiling. Slicked-back hair now boyishly tousled from the surgical cap he must’ve yanked off after that 7 hour scoliosis case, eyes crinkled at the corners and half-weary from exhaustion as his arms lazily uncross to grab his mug. It feels alot like you’d managed to peer behind the drawn curtains; like you’ve just met the glimmer of Brendon Park.

“Don’t expect a thanks,” he scoffs, too tired to deliver it seriously, and you find yourself wishing you could continue memorising his smile when it finally vanishes behind a long sip of his coffee.

“I don’t. I wouldn’t have said what I said professionally if I didn’t believe it all personally,” you dismiss, as if it’s obvious.

His mug eventually lowers. It takes all the willpower in you not to watch the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows his drink. Again, there’s that curious flash you catch momentarily in the watercolour blue of his eyes, diving away from sight.

“Guess that answers your question, then.”

You blink. What?

Park stares. Waits for it to register. Nothing comes, however; Not until he easily shifts forward, suddenly stepping proximally close into your space, enough you can smell the coffee steaming from his mug as he slightly corners you in an attempt to reach with his other hand—

The drive to the ER, you suddenly remember. 

The realisation of it all comes to you in the zip of electricity that travels up from where Park has now (deliberately?) brushed his hand against the skin of your wrist— your pulsepoint: He’d been reaching for his pager left ontop the counter behind you, it appears.

I don’t want to lose her. That’s what he had stopped himself from saying that day. You’re sure. The evidence had been right there; it’d been the furthest thing from being professional. It’d been intimate.

It was a personal opinion, wasn’t it? You remember tipsily asking. A nondescript way of asking if you matter at all in the way he matters to you. If it had been something more— and now: I guess that answers your question, then.

“Oh,” you say, like an idiot, as if his confirmation hadn’t just brought up a thousand other questions in your mind. 

His eyes tarry. Always something so jarringly intimate in the way they cut clean into yours. Lets it take up your speechlessness.

You wonder if the there-and-away flicker of his gaze to your lips, just before he’d turned to leave the breakroom, was just a feverish figment of your imagination.

Delusion, you convince yourself, when the door clicks shut. Surely.

The night shift ran on coffee, but you hated the stuff. You'd grimace through it when you had to, but Jack began leaving a thermos of chai on your desk—sweet, cardamom-laced, exactly how you liked it.

The first time, you blinked at it, then at him across the room, where he was pretending very hard not to watch for your reaction. You took a sip and he smirked into his own mug like he'd won something.

You fell into a rhythm without ever discussing it. He'd nudge an extra sandwich your way when you forgot to eat. The other residents called you "Mom and Dad" behind your backs.

It wasn't just the little things—it was the way Jack could glance at you mid-chaos and know, instantly, if you were drowning. A tilt of his head toward an empty room was all it took for you to slip away, steal five minutes to breathe before jumping back in.

The first time you called him Sheru to his face, it slipped out during a particularly brutal trauma case—a motorcycle accident with too much blood and not enough time.

Jack had been elbow-deep in the mess, barking orders with that razor-sharp focus of his, when you caught the way his hands hesitated for half a second before clamping down on a bleeder.

"Hey," you murmured, pressing a fresh clamp into his palm, your fingers brushing his wrist. "Sheru, look at me." His head snapped up, startled, but you held his gaze.

"Breathe." And he did. Later, he wouldn't remember why it grounded him so thoroughly, only that it did, and that he'd started answering to the name without question.

Sona and Sheru stuck like the paperclips in Jack's pockets. Jack called you one evening when you stumbled into the break room, eyes bleary from a double shift.

"Sona," he'd said, deadpan, sliding a container of your mother's leftovers toward you—because of course he'd somehow sweet-talked your mother into sending him home with food.

You had groaned, thunking your forehead against the table. "You're insufferable."

"And yet," he said nudging the food closer, "you tolerate me."

Across the ER, Shen watched you with wide eyes as Jack plucked your stethoscope from your shoulders without asking and looped it around his neck.

"Uh," Shen whispered to Mateo at the med cart, "are they...?" Mateo didn't glance up from the IV bags. "Don't ask, man."

The unspoken rules piled up like snowdrifts. Jack’s coffee was to be made with exactly two sugars, no more, no less, or he’d drink it black with that particular quiet sulk that made the interns nervous.

Your trauma bay was always stocked with spare gauze tucked behind the suture kit because you hated turning away to grab more mid-stitch.

Then came the night the ambulance brought in Mr. Velasco, seventy-two years old and gray as old dishwater, his breathing ragged. Jack took one look at the EKG and went very still.

You saw the flicker in his jaw—the same tell he’d had when his hands hesitated during that motorcycle accident months ago. Without thinking, you stepped into his space, your shoulder pressing against his bicep as you reached for the man’s wrist.

"Sheru," you said softly, so only he could hear. The pet name hung between them, heavier than usual. Jack exhaled sharply through his nose and snapped into motion, calling for epinephrine, his voice steady again. But his fingers lingered against yours for half a heartbeat as she passed him the syringe.

The syringe slipped from your fingers just as Jack’s hand closed around it—a clumsy, sleep-deprived fumble that should’ve sent it clattering to the floor. Instead, his palm cupped yours instinctively, trapping the plastic between your skin.

For a breathless second, the ER’s chaos muted around you. Then Mr. Velasco groaned, and the moment shattered. Jack administered the dose with practiced efficiency, but you caught the way his thumb brushed your knuckle before pulling away.

Later, when the shift bled into that hazy 4 AM lull, you found Jack slumped in the break room, his forehead resting against the vending machine’s humming glass.

You wordlessly pressed a cup of chai into his hands—his, this time, steeped bitter and strong—and leaned against the machine beside him. Your shoulders touched. Neither moved away.

"You good?" you asked, staring at the ceiling’s flickering fluorescent light.

Jack snorted. "Peachy." He sipped the chai, made a face, then drank deeper. "You?"

You let your head thunk back against the vending machine, the vibration of the motor humming through your skull. "I think Diaz thinks we're sleeping together," you muttered.

Jack choked on his chai. "What?"

"He asked Ellis where we—" You waved a hand between you "—keep the condoms. Apparently she thinks the supply closet is for more than just saline bags."

The silence that followed was thick enough to suture. Jack stared into his cup like it held the secrets of the universe. Then, with the gravity of a man delivering a terminal diagnosis, he said, "We don’t even have a supply closet hookup spot. Amateur hour."

You burst out laughing. Jack’s mouth twitched, then split into that lopsided grin that made the nurses’ station collectively sigh. "I mean," he continued, swirling the dregs of his chai, "if we’re gonna get accused of workplace indecency, the least we could do is commit properly. Supply closet’s got that leaky pipe, it’s basically a workplace hazard—"

"Stop," You wheezed, pressing your palms to your eyes. Your shoulders shook. "I can’t—the mental image—"

Jack nudged your foot with his sneaker. "What, you don’t dream about me and rusty plumbing?"

You peeked through your fingers. His grin was all teeth, but his ears had gone pink.

Your laughter faded into a breathless silence, your fingers still half-covering your face. The vending machine hummed between you, its fluorescent light flickering across Jack’s cheekbones in a way that made your stomach do something inconvenient.

You dropped your hands, suddenly aware of how close you were.

Jack cleared his throat, abruptly fascinated by his chai cup. "So," he said, dragging a thumb along the rim. "We should probably address the elephant in the room."

Your pulse skittered. "Which one?"

"The fact that Crus has a betting pool going on when we’ll finally—" He made a vague gesture with his free hand.

Your breath caught. “A betting pool?”

“Twenty bucks says we kiss by Christmas,” Jack said, his tone carefully neutral, but his fingers tightened around the cup. “Diaz put money on New Year’s. Parker is holding out for some dramatic trauma bay confession.”

You snorted, but your ribs felt too tight. “And what do you think?”

Jack finally turned his head, his gaze skimming your face like he was memorizing the slope of your nose, the way your lower lip always caught between your teeth when you were nervous.

“I think,” he said slowly, “if we’re gonna prove them right, we should at least get a cut of the pot.”

Jack's words hung there—teasing but edged with something you couldn’t name. The vending machine’s hum filled the silence as you studied his profile, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed.

You should say something flippant, something safe. Instead, you heard yourself whisper, "What if I don’t want to share?"

Jack went perfectly still. The cup trembled faintly in his grip before he set it down with deliberate care. When he turned to face you fully, his knee bumped yours, and neither of you pulled away. "Sona," he started, then stopped, his voice rougher than usual.

The overhead light flickered again, casting his expression into sharp relief—the way his eyes darkened, the tension in his jaw. Your fingers twitched with the urge to smooth it away.

Jack exhaled sharply through his nose, his fingers curling around the edge of the vending machine. "You're killing me here, Sona." You watched the way his throat worked as he swallowed, the pulse jumping beneath his skin.

You should’ve looked away. Should’ve deflected with a joke about shift delirium or the hospital’s terrible ventilation. Instead, you reached out and plucked a stray paperclip from his scrub pocket, holding it up between them like a question.

"You’ve been stealing these since my first week," you said, your voice steadier than you felt. "I never asked why."

Jack’s gaze dropped to the twisted metal in your fingers. "They’re useful," he muttered. "Good for—" He gestured vaguely. "Things."

"Things," you repeated flatly.

Jack’s fingers closed around yours, paperclip and all. His palm was warm, calloused from years of sutures and late-night charting. "Alright, fine," he said, voice low. "I keep them because they’re—" He hesitated, then huffed a laugh. "Because the first time I saw you, you were fixing the hem of your scrubs with one. Bent it into a hook like it was nothing. I thought, Damn, she’s resourceful."

You blinked. That had been months ago, during your very first shift. You'd forgotten entirely. "You remember that?"

"Remember?" Jack’s thumb brushed the inside of your wrist, hesitant. "I noticed. Every damn thing. The way you hum when you’re concentrating. How you tap your pen twice before signing off on charts. That you take exactly three sips of chai before it’s cool enough to drink properly." His grip tightened, just shy of painful. "I notice, Sona. Too much."

The confession hung between them, raw and unvarnished. Your pulse thundered in your ears. "I noticed you stealing them. Left extras because I liked watching your face when you found them."

Jack’s grip on your hand went slack with surprise. The paperclip clattered to the floor between them, its metallic ping absurdly loud in the quiet break room. For a heartbeat, you both stared at it—this tiny, twisted thing that had somehow become your silent currency—before you lifted your gaze to his.

His expression was unreadable, but his breathing had gone shallow. "You—" He stopped, swallowed. "You left them on purpose?"

You didn’t blink. "Every time."

Something fractured in Jack’s posture then—the careful, clinical distance he wore like a second skin. His free hand came up to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of her cheek with a reverence that made yout knees weak.

"You’re killing me," he’d said, but it was your chest that ached, yout ribs too tight around a heartbeat gone wild. The paperclip lay forgotten at your feet.

You curled your fingers into the front of his scrubs, the fabric soft and worn under your grip. "Sheru," you whispered, and watched his pupils dilate at the name.

Jack exhaled sharply, his forehead tipping forward to brush against yours. "Say it again," he murmured, his breath warm against your lips.

"Sheru," you repeated, softer this time, testing the shape of it between them like a suture pulling skin together. His fingers tightened imperceptibly against your jaw.

Your thumb brushed the hollow of his collarbone through the thin fabric, and Jack broke. "You know what you do to me," he rasped, forehead still pressed to yours, eyes squeezed shut like he could ward off the truth. "You’ve always known."

Jack’s laugh was rough, self-deprecating. "I kept the damn paperclips because they were yours. Because for one second, I could pretend you left them just for me." His thumb traced the curve of your ears, achingly tender. "Pathetic, right?"

His thumb still traced your cheekbone with a hesitancy that belied his usual confidence, as if she might dissolve beneath his touch.You leaned into his palm, your grip on his scrubs tightening. "Pathetic?" you echoed, your voice barely above a whisper. "Sheru, I did leave them for you."

Jack went rigid against you. His exhale shuddered against your lips. "Don’t—"

"Every single one," you continued, pressing closer until your foreheads bumped. "Because I wanted to see that stupid smirk when you found them."

Your fingers uncurled from his scrubs to flatten against his chest, feeling the frantic thud beneath his ribs. "Because I noticed you noticing me."

A strangled noise escaped him. His fingers slid into your hair, twisting gently at the roots as if to anchor himself. "Baby," he breathed, and it sounded like surrender.

Jack’s fingers trembled against your scalp, his breath uneven against yourlips. Reshma could feel the way his pulse raced under your palm—wild and untamed, like the first time you'd seen him in a trauma bay, all sharp focus and controlled chaos.

But now, here in the break room’s flickering half-light, he was unraveling at the edges, and it was your doing. The realization sent a thrill down your spine.

"You noticed me noticing you," he repeated hoarsely, as if the words were a revelation. His thumb brushed the corner of your mouth, feather-light. "That’s—" He swallowed hard. "That’s unfair."

You arched an eyebrow. "Unfair?"

"Yeah." Jack’s voice dropped to a rough whisper. "Because now I have to say it out loud." His grip tightened in your hair, not enough to hurt—just enough to feel.

"I’m in love with you. Have been for—hell, I don’t even know how long. Since before the paperclips. Since before Sheru. Since you walked in here with your stupidly perfect sutures and that damn humming—"

You kissed him.

It wasn’t graceful. Your noses bumped, your teeth catching his lower lip in your haste, but Jack made a sound low in his throat and pulled you closer, his hands sliding down to grip your hips as if you might vanish.

The vending machine rattled behind you, its humming drowned out by the blood rushing in your ears. You tasted chai and exhaustion and something indefinably Jack—sharp and warm and familiar as the scrubs twisted in your fists.

When you broke apart, Jack’s pupils were blown wide, his lips parted like he’d forgotten how to breathe. You pressed your forehead to his, your own breath coming in short, unsteady bursts.

"Say it again," you murmured.

Jack huffed a laugh, his fingers flexing against your waist. "Which part? The ‘I’m in love with you’ or the ‘your sutures are stupidly perfect’?"

You pinched his side, grinning when he yelped. "The important part, Sheru."

He caught your wrist, pressing your palm flat against his chest where his heart still raced. "I love you," he said, slower this time, savoring the words like they were stolen. "Even when you’re stealing my paperclips."

You snorted. "Your paperclips?"

Jack kissed you again—softer now, lingering at the corner of your mouth where his thumb had brushed moments before.

"Yours," he murmured against your skin. "Mine. Whatever." His lips traced the hinge of your jaw, the shell of your ear.

"Just don’t stop leaving them."

ᯓ★'s P.S. hes so ooc in this i hate it😭😭

don't forget to comment and reblog if you enjoyed!

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“Yes, sir.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s what she said”

Other

Tyler Owens Masterlist

Glen Powell

Mrs. y/l/n,

While I appreciate your concern for your students, it would do better if you were to double check your facts. 

After looking at his latest report card myself, he is doing more than alright in your class as well as others. I do not take kindly to having to do other people's jobs. 

Bruce Wayne

CEO/Chairman of the Board of Wayne Enterprises 

Mr. Wayne,

I assure you I’ve been looking at the correct report card. If you need me to, I’m sure I can forward it to you as well. After all, I’m the one with access to all of my class files. 

If you are so certain he is doing well, have you asked him yourself? I know that at their age, my students are fairly mischievous. It has happened once or twice that they've fibbed to either me or their parents regarding one thing or another.

Sincerely, 

Miss y/n y/l/n

History Teacher of Wayne Academy

Miss y/l/n,

Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding your tone but I would have to beg for a little respect. After all, I am the one who manages your position for my academy. 

I have not been able to inquire Damian about this mishap but when he returns home I will, if only to have this matter closed. I am a man of many responsibilities, I’ll have you know.

Bruce Wayne 

Your Employer 

Mr. Wayne,

You read my tone correctly and at this point, I am not feeling up to par to amend it. 

Unlike some educators, I am invested in the success of my students and I wouldn’t have come to you unless this was a troubling issue. I teach eight classes a day with more than one hundred students so I can assure you I can sympathize with the weight of responsibility. 

Miss y/l/n

It had been two hours since you’d sent the last attachment with no reply. Surely by now he was filing the paper for your dismissal and finding a better, less feisty, replacement. Even if you were out of a job, you wouldn't regret not sending a proper farewell. The man needed to be knocked down a peg.

From what you had heard about Bruce Wayne, he was an efficient businessman and incredibly charming. What the press didn’t add was that he was awfully passive aggressive over email and would rather believe his thirteen year old teenager than an adult teacher.

How disappointing.

You had so much respect for him before this unfortunate encounter. 

It had been an easy going night before he'd responded. You had been catching up on grading and emails with your favorite show in the background, a soft-smelling candle lit, dresses in your comfiest pajamas and a pint of ice cream at your elbow. It was the perfect Friday night.

Until Bruce Wayne.

It wasn't a huge deal--students failed classes all the time--but you'd grown fond of Damian Wayne and knew he was capable of completing his work. You sending that godforsaken email shouldn't have ended with an upset parent and a fretting teacher. If anything, he should have apologized and promised to make his son try better.

You sighed heavily and shoved a large spoonful of Ben and Jerry's in your mouth and about closed your laptop when an idea sprung to mind.

Hesitantly, you opened a new tab and searched up 'Bruce Wayne'. A million pictures and suggestions popped up and you clicked on the first one which just so happened to be a gossip magazine.

The beginning of the article had a photo of the man himself dressed in a clean, no doubt, expensive, tuxedo and a gorgeous woman in a silk dress hanging off of his arm. You couldn't deny that you found him attractive. Tall, dark, and handsome was most everyone's types. You scrolled down until a cluster of words caught your attention.

'...despite popular belief, billionaire Bruce Wayne denies any romantic relation with the mysterious Selina Kyle. Many witnesses claim seeing them together often and in compromising positions. But who would dare to question the words of a powerful businessman?'

You would. And you had.

You looked at a few more photos of Mr. Wayne, most of them having caught him unawares in causal attire or with his sons. He really was a beautiful man but you didn't know how much of that was lucky genes or money. He had a head full of raven hair, masculine features, a broad build, and dressed impeccably. Beautiful indeed.

You smiled to yourself at one particularly unfavorable photo of Damian glaring at the hidden paparazzi while wearing pajamas. If you were a meaner teacher, you would have used that as blackmail to make him work better. Alas...

You closed the search tab with a sigh. There was no reason to continue exploring. You were supposed to be mad at the man, not admiring.

To fuel that rage, you noticed a new notification in your email browser. With a thumping heart, you opened it to find a new message from him:

Miss y/l/n,

Upon further retrospect, I will be coming to meet with you at the school this following Monday after school lets.

Yours,

Bruce Wayne

Huh. At least you had the entire weekend to look for a new job.

Bruce didn't pride himself on the way he'd handled things with Damian's teacher last night. He could have blamed it on being frustrated with the boy as it was or the fact that he was being put down in all corners of his life with work and home but the reality was that he had been a jerk.

After sending that curt email, he had spent some time investigating by pulling up the official records from Damian's portfolio and found that he had, in fact, been pulling the wool over his eyes. With raising three boys previously through their teenage years, Bruce thought he could see through all of their secrets and tricks but navigating Damian had been by far the worst. Not even Jason had been as sly. No thanks to the League of Assassins.

To let off some steam and get away from the pressure, Bruce decided to spend his Saturday morning at a quaint cafe he'd found some years ago where he could relax without being disturbed by eager busybodies or paparazzi.

He ordered himself a black coffee and a pain au chocolat and sat in the furthest corner to people watch and do some Sudoku.

"Is this seat-oh."

He looked up from his paper to find a rather attractive young woman standing before him, her mouth pulled down in a frown. He immediately--much to his surprise--moved over and gestured to the freed space. "Not at all."

She hesitated. He could see it in the way she took a moment to look around and then her shoulders dropped in resignation as she sat down. Bruce discreetly looked at himself in the nearby window to make sure he hadn't forgotten to brush his hair or had something on his face. It was rare that a woman wavered in being near him.

He tried to go back to solving his puzzle but he found himself stealing glances at the woman. She had pulled out a book and was reading it as she took intermittent nibbles at her breakfast croissant. He noticed that she was also pressed up against the opposite end of the couch as much as she could. How odd.

After two minutes of being unable to focus, he turned toward her, not missing the way she stiffened. He proceeded, "Whatever you've read about me is most likely not true."

"Okay," she said slowly, eyes glued to the words on her page. He doubted she was even reading it.

"The media tends to come up with absurd stories to make popular people look back." He continued, strangely eager to make her look at him. "I can honestly tell you that I've never been in a relationship with The Daily Planet's Clark Kent and I don't keep groups of orphans beneath my manor."

You huffed through your nose, the only sign you were amused, and he decided he needed to see more.

He put his arm on the back of the couch behind you. "Do you come here often?"

"I live nearby." You offered.

The ends of your hair brushed against his forearm and he resisted the urge to lean in and smell the scent of your shampoo. Would it be fruity? Or rich like your perfume?

"It's a homey little place, don't you think?"

"Not as extravagant as you're used to, huh?"

Judging by the soft quirk of your lip, he figured it had been a joke. He chuckled himself. "So you do speak."

You closed your book and turned toward him. Obviously, he hadn't been ready for the intensity of seeing your full face because the hair on the nape of his neck stood at attention. Among other parts of his body.

Bruce had been around plenty of beautiful people but looking at you had him rethinking his prior fancies. You seemed so sure of yourself in an unpretentious way that had him drawn to you. He really felt like he had to prove himself to be something other than the playboy people made him out to be.

"Do you flirt with every girl you come across? The tabloids are adamant that you charm the pants off anything with a heartbeat."

He chuckled at that. "I'll admit, I'm not too shy to talk to pretty women but I do have to be wary. If I say something wrong to one person it could bite me later."

"And your employees?"

"What about them?"

"Are you as understanding an employer as you're made out to be?"

A strange topic to be sure but Bruce wanted to continue hearing your voice. "I try to be as understanding as my position lets me. I never do anything to intentionally offend them of course but I am in charge of a lot of people that sometime it's unavoidable."

"How invested are you in Wayne Academy then?" you pressed, eyes connecting with his. "What with you as it's benefactor and everything."

Bruce took tactful inventory of her person to make sure you weren't some undercover presswoman. Why else would you be so specific? He proceeded lightly. "Any organization I am involved in, no matter how big or small, receives my full attention. What makes you so curious about my business?"

You shrug, indifferent. "Force of habit when I meet celebrities."

That didn't feel so jokey as the last one had but Bruce had to smile at your witty jabs. He admired anyone who had the guts to humble him without fear of repercussion.

"What do you do for work then?" he moved onto a different topic.

"Uh, well, I work with kids, you know?" you squirmed in your seat, eyes focused on the coffee cup in his hand.

"Like a teacher?"

"Well, yeah."

"I'm very appreciative of teachers. I can hardly handle children myself." He said, wanting to make you feel comfortable.

You met his eye, a hint of disbelief coloring your features. "You have four sons."

"I still don't know how that happened." He laughed and you joined in softly. God, he really liked that sound. "My butler says there's a correlation between me being orphaned so young and being sympathetic for other orphans."

"That could be true." You relaxed slightly, causing Bruce to exhale a relieved breath. "Damian always says- I mean, I read that your son always talks about how great of a father you are."

Bruce paused. "Where did you read that? I might need you to forward the article to me so I can frame it."

You smiled at that. "He's a teenage boy; he's not going to be as forthright with his feelings with you. They're pretty mischievous at that age."

Strange. Bruce could have sworn he'd heard that before.

"Where do you work?" he asked.

You looked at your wrist--with no watch--and exclaimed, "Look at the time! I've got a hair appointment that I really cannot miss."

"But you-" he started.

"It was nice to meet you." You gathered your belongings and left without another word.

Bruce could only sit there, oh so confused and oh so beguiled.

3:27.

You had three minutes until Bruce Wayne came to your classroom for the meeting and you were freaking out. Obviously he hadn't told Damian about it because the boy told you nothing and spent class being a little imp like regular.

You went to the cafe near your apartment complex on Saturday morning to forget about the emails and who did you just so happen to bump into? And who invited you to sit with him? And who gave you his undivided attention?

Yeah. You were screwed.

Truthfully, you had been enjoying yourself while conversing with him. He was charming but it wasn't as debauched as you were led to believe. He'd made you laugh despite not wanting to and you found yourself liking his company.

Until he brought up work again.

You could have told him that you were Damian's teacher and had the meeting done and out of the way but you hadn't wanted to break whatever connection had been building. For that day at least. But as time dragged on and after school on Monday approached, you grew more and more regretful that he had to find out this way.

You were facing the window when the door opened and closed behind you. You braced yourself as you heard someone near.

"Miss y/l/n?"

You really liked his voice. It had been one of the things you'd enjoyed when speaking with him. It was so deep and clear...

You slowly turned around and took him in in all his glory.

He was a good head taller than you and you'd bet that he could wrap himself entirely around you. His face lit with recognition as you faced him and you smiled wryly. "Good afternoon, Mr. Bruce. Please sit down."

The irony of your offer didn't pass you as you both took a respective seat.

"This is why you left?" he began, head tilted to the side curiously. "You didn't want to tell me that you were the one I was being jerk to?"

You had a reasonable explanation on the tip of your tongue but it died as you absorbed his words. "Jerk?"

He put down two papers on your desk--your discharge papers?--and gave you a bashful smile. "I did some digging and I found the report card Damian gave me and the one on his file. I apologize for not believing you. It's taking me some time to realize that my son's aren't always as truthful as they lead me to believe."

Your mouth gaped open like a fish and you numbly grabbed the papers and looked them over. Sure enough, the plagiarized version had high marks. You had to give the boy some credit; he was ingenious when he wanted to be.

"I should be apologizing for being so snarky." You explained, wincing as you remember your written words. "I was at home relaxing and then it shattered when we exchanged messages."

"I'd had a difficult night and took it out on you, unfortunately." He looked genuinely sorry and you decided to accept it.

"I only want what's best for my students," you explain, hoping he can understand.

His blue eyes held yours as he nodded. "Damian worries me sometimes."

"I think he's a wonderful boy, really, I do. I just thing he's..."

"Lost?" he offered.

You nodded.

Seconds or minutes flew by as you both stared at each other, tension growing thick between you both as it had on Saturday. There was something so sturdy about Mr. Wayne that had you wanting to know more. Wanting to see more. Wanting to taste more. You could feel your body respond to his rapt attention in ways you'd only ever read about. Truly, what was happening?

You cleared your throat, cheeks shyly pink. "Well then...I think things are cleared up. So if you could encourage Damian to try in class that would be very helpful and I hope-"

"Go out with me?"

"-that you-what?"

Mr. Wayne turned over one of the report cards and produced a pen from his suit pocket. "Put your number down here."

You blinked. "I don't know what-"

"I want to make up for being an ass but I also just want to take you out. Would you please give me your number? I don't want to have to beg but I will." He gave you a lopsided smile that had your stomach flipping.

You considered writing your number but you couldn't bring yourself. First of all, he was the parent to one of your students. Secondly, he was your employer. And thirdly, he was Bruce freaking Wayne. Writing your number would be setting yourself up for humiliation in some form or other.

You shook your head with all the strength you had. Your hands itched to pick up the pen. "I can't."

"It's simple, really. You just-"

"Mr. Wayne." You interrupted. "It wouldn't be appropriate."

He searched your face and sighed. "I don't give up easily when it comes to things I want."

What?

He continued, "I'll have your number by the end of today and I'm going to get you to go out with me by the end of this week."

You chuckled in disbelief. "Mr. Wayne-"

"I always get what I want." He reiterated, standing. You tilted your head back to look up at him. He smiled down at you wolfishly. "Good afternoon, Miss y/l/n."

And with that he left.

You sat back in your chair.

What had your got yourself into?

a/n: welcome to the fic i've been thinking about for almost a year!! i am beyond excited and terrified to finally start sharing this. if you want to get notified whenever i post a new chapter, you can follow @intrepidacious-fics and turn on notifications or follow along on my ao3 💚

✨ this series is finished as of 12 july 2025

my chapters are on the long side so they will also be posted in parts for easier reading in the app; the parts and the full chapters are identical contentwise

one: turn back the clock ↳ Bucky gets killed during a mission and you accidentally start a time loop | 6.0k

part one

part two

two: twice upon a time ↳ You struggle to cope with your new situation and meet a sorcerer | 8.2k

part one

part two

three: every day’s a holiday ↳ Ten days into the loop, you finally decide to ask for help | 10.1k

part one

part two

part three

four: groundhog day ↳ Library heists, bad ideas, and a decision | 9.2k

part one

part two

five: carousel ↳ Bucky has a secret and you have a revelation | 10.9k

part one

part two

part three

six: butterfly effect ↳ You go back to the start, and something changes | 12.8k

part one

part two

part three

part four

seven: spellbound ↳ There's a problem with this day | 11.1k

part one

part two

part three

eight: edge of tomorrow ↳ The truth comes out, and you scramble to fix things | 12.3k

part one

part two

part three

nine: out of the past ↳ Some ill-advised choices and a road trip | 12.9k

part one

part two

part three

part four

ten: about time ↳ The fallout, some truths, and time being really weird | 12.2k

part one

part two

part three

eleven: tomorrow we live ↳ How to end a time loop | 9.8k

part one

part two

part three

twelve: serendipity ↳ Something's weird about today | 11.2k

part one

part two

part three

epilogue ↳ Saturday: what a concept | 3.5k

bonus chapters

these are mostly set outside of the time loop; not required reading, but there will be some nods to these in the main story. bonus chapters can be read in any order and without knowing the main story

frequently asked questions about time travel ↳ Five times people asked you something about time travel, and one time you’re desperate for an answer yourself

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ↳ One day in Bucky's time loop

57 seconds ↳ How Bucky met Twelve

somewhere in time ↳ a bantery little snippet that was cut for time from the main story

cause and effect ↳ How Bucky fell in love with Twelve: Slowly, and then all at once.

alpine's pov ↳ set during chapter 8

fun stuff

🎵 series playlist

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moodboards by @barnesafterglow 💚

moodboard by @sweetascanbee 💚

moodboards by @idkitsem 💚

moodboards by @treatbuckywkisses 💚

The night of the op finds you in a fancy hotel room somewhere in St. James, several floors above the charity event. You're set up into adjoining rooms: one for you and one for the rest of the team. The other room will serve as the communication hub while you and Gaz - because Price saw how your scent was affecting Soap, the doe eyes he turned on you when you weren't paying attention, and didn't trust him to be able to focus on the op if he were at your side - go to the auction to find Arella.

You'd gone shopping with Adam several days before, under Kate's orders to get appropriate attire. The dress he put you in is more extravagant than anything you would ever have selected, but after a few quick photos to Kate who deemed it perfect, it was off the rack and in your hands. Strapless with a fitted bodice with enough structure to hold you and a skirt that flowed like water, except because it's steel grey, it moves more like liquid metal. There's a sizable slit, up to your thigh but is mostly hidden in the folds of silky fabric, which allows you quick access to the tiny holster you strapped there.

Fashion was never something you were interested in, so Adam took it upon himself to find some simple YouTube makeup tutorials, then made sure you had all the necessary products. You were annoyed about the hassle with the makeup, so Adam made sure the hair tutorial was simple yet elegant and didn't require a mountain of products to pull off.

Though you were going in without scent blockers, Kate didn't plan to risk you, even with the support of a beta, to an alpha's teeth. She had Adam buy the most intricate collar necklace you'd ever seen. Geometrically structured with metal rods, it seemed more like a piece of art than a piece of jewelry. When you draped it across your neck and collarbone, it prevented an alpha from getting his teeth on your scent gland but still allowed you to project your scent unencumbered.

Being undercover didn't allow for the traditional communication hardware, so the boys had come up with an ingenious pair of earrings whose large geometric wrap both matched the necklace and served as an earpiece. They also fitted a mic into the structure of your necklace. The whole task force would be with you all night.

When you finish getting dressed and fixing both hair and makeup to the best of your ability to follow Adam's selected videos, you knock on the door between the room you'd been assigned and where the rest of your pack task force is preparing. You need both your escort and your comms before you head for the lift.

An hour later and you're on your second circuit of the room, Gaz at your elbow, holding your drink. There will be some expectation to drink while you're here, but Price had taught you ways to make it look like you were drinking or as though you did not need a refill during those trainings at the pubs around base. Static crackles in your ear and you hear Price's baritone come through as if he were standing beside you. You've practiced not reacting when the comms go off, but you're still a little startled. "No sign of Arella yet, but Spinner's on the far side a' the room, left a' the bar but looking out on the dance floor."

Neither you nor Gaz is in a position to see him, so Gaz lightly takes your hand and guides you toward the balcony door with a hand low on your back. It allows you both to get quick glimpses of the man, older, polished, and with a petite blonde dressed in ice white standing very close. Though you're too far to see any potential mating mark, she's wearing a collar necklace not dissimilar to yours.

"I think Spinner's got an omega with him," you say. "I might be able ta get information from her if I get her alone. "

"Appreciate the initiative, Ren," Price rumbles, "but she's not our priority. Technically, neither's Spinner, but it's good ta keep eyes on 'im just in case." He pauses momentarily before coming over the comms again with, "Not going ta tell ya not to talk ta her if the situation arises, but stay on mission."

"Copy that, Captain," you respond.

Waiting for Arella gets frustrating especially as you watch people continually approach Spinner, who's taken up residence at a high top table on the outskirts of the party. You snatch the champagne flute from Gaz's hand and quickly tip the contents back. Squaring your shoulders, you look at him and say, "Dance wi' me." For a moment all he does is look at you, and you can't read the emotion in his eyes. You power through and tell him, "If we're dancing, we can get closer ta Spinner's table and pick up snatches of conversation. "

Pulling back, you search his face. "I know ya've got the hardware on yer phone ta clone Arella's device with some prolonged exposure, but is it possible fer it ta pick up short bursts a' data off other phones it's near?"

Gaz looks at you in awe. "Ren, that's brilliant! Cap, ya hear that suggestion?"

"Affirmative," Price replies, "but I'll be damned if I understand it."

"Just get the systems on yer end ready fer a massive data dump. It's gunna be fragmentary. Laswell's analysts are gunna have a hell of a time going through it. We may need ta send them some whiskey and good cigars, but honestly, if this pans out even a little bit, we'll be able to get a ton a' information on the kinds of people Spinner's meeting with. Maybe Arella's is not the only one who's dirty."

Once they get to go ahead from Price, Gaz pulls you close and takes to the dance floor. You'd learned how to dance once, long ago, but it's clear this man is trained. He waltzes you through the crowd near to the edge where Spinner's settled, and you hope to hell this idea works.

next

an: this is sort of what I envisioned for Ren's necklace, but more modernist straight lines

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