Title: First Aid For The Wounded Soul
Word Count: 1968
Pairing: Lenny/Yuki
Summary: In the aftermath of 'Maygate', Lenny helps Yuki to build himself back up and heal...
When they're back at the house, Yuki heads straight up to his room. Lenny doesn't really know what to do with him. Lenny's always been the fun, easygoing, caustic guy who doesn't know to put his mind before his mouth. He can't deal with emotions and feelings at the best of times; at work, he says the wrong thing about the wrong patient. Usually while their concerned family's just around the corner and within earshot.
But May's really done a number on Yuki and even Lenny can't quite forgive her for screwing up his best mate like this. There are no traces of her left in her room - the walls still stained a bright colour but no posters lining them, no books haphazardly in piles. For some reason, he feels so damn protective of this broken guy and just wants to heal him. Call it an extension of his calling.
An hour after they get back from Yuki's first shift back, an hour of Lenny watching the clock and thinking about the way that Yuki's too pale arms had looked on the hospital cot that day, he stands and makes his way upstairs to where Yuki's been sat on the floor. Looking at what used to be May's room.
Lenny genuinely doesn't know what to do. Every neuron firing is telling him to make a joke, lighten the seriousness and the dark mood enveloping but he can't. A joke would just make it worse. So Lenny does what feels right.
He sits down nexto Yuki and presses his thigh against Yuki's silently. And then they sit and Lenny waits.
The next few weeks aren't too great to say the least. Yuki messes up a few times in the ED and gets some killer looks from Jordan. Zoe's pretty sympathetic though and teaches Yuki stuff and even takes him out for coffee once to talk. Completely un-Zoe behaviour, basically. Lenny keeps as much of an eye as he can out for him - and in the evenings tries to keep Yuki from going mad by sitting in the doorway of May's room.
One night, they're sitting down there - because this is such a Friday night thing to do - when Yuki leans his head down so that it presses hard against Lenny's warm thigh. The sharp intake of Lenny's breath is barely disguised.
Lenny's not even... he doesn't... okay, maybe he experimented once or twice in medical college. Times when a guy and his roommate were a bit too wound up and a bit too drunk and just... fell together. And it totally isn't appropriate for him to be thinking about this sort of thing while his best mate is hurting over a girl and needs his friendship and support and... stuff.
But Yuki's all warm and silent, pillowed against Lenny's thigh and before he can stop himself, Lenny's hand is running mussed, soothing motions through the disgruntled mop of black hair. Yuki makes this noise like he's relaxed. Comforted.
Lenny tries to stop himself from smiling like a complete and total goofy geek. It fails horribly.
There's a lot of paperwork to be done and Lenny finds himself banging his head miserably against the workstation. He should have finished an hour ago but Tess had given him one of her 'castrate-you-with-my-eyes' looks as he'd tried to sneak out.
Yuki'd finished his stuff about fifty two minutes ago - naturally - and has been sat in the staff room, Lenny's iPod blaring stuff into his ears. Lenny could have finished the work about half an hour ago but he's been staring at the sliver of slight-tanned skin from that rides up every time Yuki leans forward to change a song.
"Almost done?" Charlie's half-bemused voice startles him out of his reverie and he silently hands over his report to Noel who's busy entertaining a seven-year-old boy with his action figures.
"He'll be fine, you know." Charlie rests a comforting hand on Lenny's shoulder and he nods. Charlie's not even aware that he's staring at Yuki for a different reason altogether.
He swings into the staff room and Yuki smiles up at him from his cross-legged position on the sofa. Lenny would kill for that smile.
"Come on, big boy. Let's get back before I decide to make you pay for your own Chinese." Lenny smirks lightly, wrapping an arm around Yuki's shoulders. They get a couple of bemused looks from Jordan and Adam as they move past but Lenny shrugs them off as Yuki starts telling him about some band on Lenny's iPod and some new medical procedure he'd read about.
A few weeks later, Yuki stops looking at May's room. The heartbreak, as someone might sing, was over. Lenny takes them out to celebrate and they join up with the others. Noel and Big Mac end up challenging Adam and Zoe to a drinking contest and Alice ends up kissing Adam. He looks thrilled though so, Lenny muses, that wasn't a bad decision.
Yuki ends up getting hit on by brassy blonde girl - out for a hen night for some of her friends who are apparently getting married dressed as either schoolgirls or naughty angels depending on who you asked - and after a few drinks, Yuki starts flirting back much to Lenny's jealous horror and to the amusement of the others.
Every fibre of his being tells him to pull him away from Sandy or Sandra or Serena or whatever the hell her name is but Lenny doesn't. He knows that he can't have Yuki - recently broken Yuki who'd spent months grieving a girl who'd messed him around and almost ruined his career.
Lenny downs another shot offered by Zoe. And he tries to forget.
Lenny remembers the blonde in the club longer than Yuki - although Yuki does mention her in passing every so often and nearly forces Lenny to snap whatever he's holding.
The really ironic thing, Lenny's realised, is that by all rights, he shouldn't even be feeling this. They'd both been infatuated with May and her sweet strawberry smell and her blonde hair and her vivaciousness. And now Lenny thinks that the way that Yuki smiles when Lenny tells a joke is the best thing God ever created or the way his jet-black hair curls at the nape of his neck is a temptation just waiting to happen.
Ultimately, they just get on with it and they pass their exams and end up getting positions in the ED together, so that's all good. And Lenny definitely doesn't spend a worrying amount of time wondering what Yuki's mouth tastes like properly (he's drunkenly smacked him one on the lips before but was a drunken blur of nothing).
Then something happens. There's a shout-out at some industrial complex, newly built in the City that was targeted by some eco-terrorists or something and everyone's out. Lenny and Dixie are helping haul a pair of trapped bankers out of rubble, Adam and Polly grabbing about seven reporters from dangerously close and sharp glass shards and everyone else scrambling for survivors.
All of a sudden, there's an almighty creak and Dixie and Jeff screaming in his ear to bloody move or else and then they're scrambling for movement and bursting out into blessed daylight as the building finally collapses in on itself.
Euphoria evaporates however, when they notice that there's a very distinct and terrifying lack of Yuki available there. Lenny's heart catches like a vice in his chest and then he's tearing across rubble for any sign of life or something.
"Yuki!" He screams like a benediction. Silence.
Then there's a small movement of rock - and the sight of one Converse sneaker, wriggling his way free of masonry appears close to Lenny. He drops to one knee and he and Adam and Jeff start hauling the brick free as they find Yuki.
Dazed, confused, glasses-broken and rubble-around-him but very much alive Yuki.
Lenny doesn't believe in God, hasn't since he was six years old and his grandma died - but he sends up a silent prayer anyway: thank you for saving him.
Lenny's taken off shift for the next couple of days or so - Jordan gruffly acknowledges that he's in no state to work and even though Yuki got away with some scratches and a sprained wrist, he demands them both take a couple of days off at least to recuperate.
Yuki's one of the cubicles when Lenny strides in, holding a huge bar of chocolate and his iPod.
"What... what are you doing?" Yuki asks as Lenny sits down next to him on the cot. Lenny rolls his eyes.
"I'm waiting for Tess to get your strapping for your arm done, you moron." He says lightly, teasingly. A genuine smile flits on Yuki's lips as Lenny hands him an earphone and plugs in some of the Boys Like Girls that he knows Yuki secretly likes.
And then Lenny looks over. He's seen Yuki a million times but something in him clicks - his Yuki, his brilliant, brave, lucky, sweet, adorable Yuki. That light could have been extinguished.
So he leans over and kisses Yuki just because. Yuki freezes for a second and then relaxes into the kiss, hand gently touching his bare arm and sending sparks into the melded mush that was Lenny's brain.
They break apart and then all of it comes flooding back - the pain of seeing Yuki upset, the very real possibility that they ruined their friendship... then Lenny remembers that Yuki kissed him back.
"Wha-what-? You kissed me back." Lenny's mind has officially turned into jelly. It's actually official. Yuki manages what might be the Yuki-equivalent of a sly smile.
"I did. Because... because I'd wanted to do that for a long time." Lenny's mouth drops open. All this time... all the time they've wasted, it makes Lenny hurt in more ways than one.
Then the penny drops that he could be spending his time doing something much more pleasurable and kisses him again. It lasts for a long time - or so it seems when Tess enters and coughs. Loudly.
There's a big, dumb, goofy grin on Lenny's face as Tess applies Yuki's dressing. She barely hides a happy, little smirk and when the pair exit the cubicle, Polly and Dixie are sending little smirks and grins their way.
Lenny's arm is flush around Yuki's waist, fingers curled tight and needy in one of Yuki's belt loops as they move through the department. Noel and Big Mac whistle, Alice gives them both sweet, grinning hugs and even Jordan manages a smile.
Lenny doesn't see any of it however as Yuki nuzzles into the nape of his neck as they step out into the cold, wet Saturday night.
They don't look back.
Fin.