rileeee

She chokes on her next inhale, coughing out the smoke and shoving the blunt back into your hand. 

You sit up in bed a little, head swimming for a second and vision going spotty, and then once the haze clears you look down at her with furrowed brows. “Hey, are you okay?” 

Baran turns on her side, still coughing, eyes watery and red. 

“Try to breathe,” you say gently, running a hand up and down her back. “You have to breathe through it, I know it’s hard.” 

She takes in a labored breath, then releases it shakily. She clears her throat once, then twice, trying to find the way back to normality. 

“You’re okay,” you continue. “It happens.” 

“It burns,” she murmurs. Her voice is raw from coughing so much. 

“I know.” You lie down next to her again, half on your side, and your hand goes still on her back. “Have you ever smoked weed before, Baran?” 

“You asked me that earlier. I said yes.” 

“Yeah, but now I feel like you were lying to me.” 

She’s quiet for a long time. You hear the shakiness in her breath and hope it is just an effect of her coughing spell. 

Your hand on her back trails up her shoulder, up her neck, into her hair. You run your fingers through her curls lazily, in a motion that soothes you as much as it does her, and you think you could fall asleep like this if given the chance — lying in bed late at night with the promise of a day off work tomorrow, Baran right next to you. 

“It’s been a while,” she admits. “Since college, maybe.” 

You smile, then raise the joint to your lips and take in a little more smoke. 

She rolls over onto her back again and turns her head to look at you, raising a hand to your face and tracing the line of your jaw. “It hasn’t been that long for you, though.” 

“No, it hasn’t.” 

She looks up at the ceiling and a laugh bubbles up from her, light and warm in a way that makes you wonder what she thinks is so funny. 

“Are you okay?” you ask. You reach down for her hand beside you and entwine it with your own. 

She stares up at the ceiling, blinking slowly, and you can tell now that she’s properly high. 

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I think so.” 

“You think so?” 

Baran smiles, she looks nostalgic. “I forgot how this feels.” 

“It’s a good feeling, right?” you ask and sit up again, checking on her. You don’t feel as high as she does, mostly because your tolerance to the drug has grown over time, and you still feel tethered to the earth in a way Baran does not. 

“It is,” she says. “It’s really fucking good.” 

After one more long intake of smoke, you reach over and put the joint out in the ashtray on the bedside table. You think you should cling to some semblance of sobriety, no matter how small, so you can keep watching over Baran. 

“Our sheets are going to smell like weed,” she complains. 

“We can wash them in the morning. We were going to do it anyway.” 

She hums in agreement. “Yes, we were.” 

You study her, taking in the softness of her face, the way her gaze flits to different parts of the ceiling in a way that reminds you of lying in the yard trying to find shapes in the clouds above. She looks properly relaxed like this, for the first time in a very long while. 

“I want to go outside,” she says suddenly. “I want to go swimming.” 

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea.” 

“No?” 

You shake your head. “I think we should stay right here.” 

But she can feel it already, the way she would sink into a pool or a lake or even an ocean somewhere, the cool water enveloping her and the warm sun on her face. She can almost smell the bitterness of sunscreen, feel the dampness of her hair. 

She thinks it would feel nicer than anything else in the world. 

“I should sell this house and buy a new one with a pool,” Baran says. “I used to spend summers at my aunt’s when I was in college, and her house had a pool. In-ground, giant…” she trails off. 

You hum in response, closing your eyes and picturing it. You imagine lying down in a white lounge chair beside the pool, letting the sun warm you and lull you to sleep. 

“I have the money for it,” she continues. “We could lounge by the pool all day in the summer and be the rich fucks everyone in the neighborhood is jealous of.” 

“We could make cute drinks with those tiny umbrellas.” 

This elicits another laugh from her, one that comes from deeper in her chest and has her rolling around in the sheets, even though you don’t think what you said was funny enough to deserve such a reaction. 

Once she calms down a little, she turns and meets your eyes. “The other day, an elderly man came into the ED. He had fallen off his pool raft and bumped his head. He was slurring his words, couldn’t walk properly. His wife thought he was concussed, but when we took a look at him… he was just drunk.” 

“Shit,” you murmur, and for a second her earlier fit of laughter threatens to spread to you. 

“Do you know who he made me think of?” 

You shake your head. “Who?” 

“Yolanda.” 

“Me?!” Yolanda says from the doorway, and the two of you look over to see her leaning against its frame. You’re not sure how long she has been there. 

“Not because he was drunk,” she claims, sitting up beside you and shifting closer to rest her head on your shoulder. “He just had a certain demeanor, you know?” 

She pushes off the doorframe and shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “I don’t care, that doesn’t bother me. Not when it’s compared to your snoring problem.” 

“My snoring problem?” 

“Yes,” Yolanda crosses her arms. “You’re forty and you snore like a ninety-year-old man. The amount of sleepless nights I’ve had lately are going to start impacting my health.” 

“You can buy your own earplugs, then. Not my problem,” Baran says. 

Dressed in a plain black t-shirt and shorts after her shower, hair still damp, Yolanda climbs into bed to sit between you. The smell of her lotion wafts over you — warm vanilla and coconut — and you think the weed makes it smell so much stronger to you than usual. 

“Give me the blunt,” she demands, looking between you to see who has it. “I can smell it and I’m so fucking tired, I need it.” 

“I put it out,” you say. “Sorry.” 

“Seriously?” 

“You were taking so long in the shower that I didn’t think you wanted any,” you shrug. “Relight it if you want, it doesn’t matter.” 

“When don’t I want any? I’m serious, name an instance. How many times have we smoked together? A thousand? And Baran is new to it, but she gets some and I don’t?” 

You roll your eyes. “You’ll be fine without it. It’s not good for you.” 

Yolanda looks at you for a second, studying you and trying to determine your level of intoxication before looking over at Baran and doing the same. “It’s not good for the two of you, either,” she says eventually. 

“No, probably not.” 

Yolanda reaches across your lap to grab the TV remote off the bedside table. Then she leans back into the pillows stacked against the headboard, turns on highlights of the World Cup match none of you were home to watch earlier, and reaches for the heavy crocheted blanket you keep at the end of the bed. 

You lean forward and look across the bed at Baran, checking on her again. You see her looking up at Yolanda reverently, brows pulled together as if she’s trying to commit the image of her like this to memory. It’s a look that’s so soft, so caring, and Yolanda has no idea. 

“You parted your hair differently,” Baran murmurs, and you can just barely hear it. You watch her bring a hand up to Yolanda’s hair, ghosting over it.

“I did,” Yolanda says. She looks at Baran and something softens in her face, tension releasing that she seems to carry chronically. “You noticed.” 

“Of course.” 

She leans over to kiss Baran, domestic and soft, hand coming to rest on her chest to feel the steady beating of her heart.

She doesn’t expect the eagerness Baran returns it with. She doesn’t expect Baran to let out a quiet sound against her mouth, or for her to trail a hand just barely beneath the fabric of her shirt. 

They part briefly, meeting one another’s eyes. You are still watching from beside them. 

Baran leans in, but Yolanda stops her with the hand still on her chest. 

“What’s wrong?” Baran asks. Her voice is thick and maybe it’s from want, maybe it’s from the weed. “Yolanda…” 

“Later,” she replies. “Not right now, not when you’re high and I’m not.” 

“But—” 

“Later,” Yolanda repeats. She turns to you for backup. “Don’t you think so?” 

You nod. You offer Baran a small smile and reach out a hand for her, and you’re not sure what you’re expecting, but it’s not for her to move and lie down across both your laps — which is exactly what she does. 

“No pool, no sex,” she sighs. “Fine. That’s fine.” 

Yolanda clears her throat to keep from laughing. You shove her shoulder lightly. 

“Hey,” Baran says, “would you grab me a bag of chips?” 

“Which of us are you asking?” you say. 

“I’m asking whoever will get it for me,” she replies. 

“I’ll get it,” Yolanda says. “Anything else you need?” 

“A house with a pool.” 

“Great, I’ll see if we have one in the fridge.” 

“I appreciate it.” 

“Grab one for me too,” you say, and shrug when she flips you off. 

thank you for reading!! ik in canon baran wouldn't be able to smoke weed but i wrote the first half of this fic a long time ago, and then added yolanda and finished it recently to tie it up. sorry for the inaccuracy but i didn't want to let this rot in my drafts.