AN – Hi guys, look at me go! Less than 3 days apart. Thank you for all those who sent me prompts, please feel free to continue to send them, I love receiving them :) On a quick note, if anyone out there would be interested in helping me as a beta, with my future stories I would love it if you could let me know either here or at my tumblr: radpeacharbiter. I have taken vast liberties on internal hospital politics, but I hope you all enjoy this. Also, on a quick bragging note I was so excited to just watch Jared ask out Celez – kudos to my prophetic friend who prompted me to write that.
Over the years he'd lost count of the number of times he had stridden down a hall barking demographic patient information at other people, but shifts in emergency were not avoidable no matter how high up the ladder you climbed, and truth be told he still enjoyed the unplanned adrenaline rush.
"28 year old male brought in from a construction site with multiple puncture wounds to the chest from a nail gun. We'll need an x-ray, check to see whether there were any fractures or scratches to the ribs, but vital signs on route indicated that nothing pierced the pericardial sac or the lungs, so it should be a fairly standard job to remove debris and start countering infection."
Yanking open the curtain he got his first good look at the patient, big and broad in the way tradesmen tend to be but otherwise a relatively unassuming young man, apart from the mess of bloody nails partially embedded in his chest.
"Mr Lloyd", he said with a brief smile, quickly checking the name against the tablet he was holding. "I understand you haven't had the best day at work today."
The guy looked like he might have laughed, if he wasn't trying to keep as still as possible. "You could say that", he agreed, with a weak bob of his head. "Wasn't really plannin' on becoming a porcupine."
"How did this happen?"
The man looked a little embarrassed. "Sat down to have my lunch break and I accidently knocked my water bottle onto the electric nail gun… Blew a fuse and the cache exploded. Stupid thing to happen."
Another quick smile. "Well this is Dr Browne, and Dr Park, they'll be cleaning that up for you today. You've been quite lucky to have missed the heart and lungs. We were a little concerned about your liver, but you still don't feel particularly weak, nauseous, dizzy…?" The guy slowly shook his head, lifting up a hand in a 'hello' gesture at Claire and Alex.
"Okay then, make sure to notify someone if that changes, but based on how you're presenting you've avoided organ damage, we just need to remove the nails and stitch these closed." His pager went off and he sighed in annoyance. "I need to attend another patient at the moment, but I'll leave you in capable hands and be back to check on your progress shortly".
…
All in all, Melendez usually considered himself a pretty alright guy. Surgeons had a well-established reputation for being snobs and classists, self-important people in shiny cars who looked down on the little guys. Not really something he usually went in for, even if the car thing was true.
Today however, he would have been very happy to see every builder in the US take a swan dive of the Golden Gate bridge.
This might have had something to do with the alarmingly large patient he came back to for the second time in twenty minutes, who was flirting with Claire even as she pulled 2-inch nails out of his chest. A very tall, attractive, patient with perfect teeth who had clearly never skipped leg day, or arms day, or chest day or any other day in his life at the gym.
Who was currently flashing those pearly whites admiringly at his resident as she wielded a pair of sterilized tweezers.
Claire was actually blushing a little bit as the douche made some comment about 'very graceful hands'.
You would think it would be in the patient's best interest not to try and distract the doctor pull shrapnel out of their trunk. Not that he cared if this guy took a jab to the chest.
"So I was wondering…" the guy started slowly, "there's a jazz club downtown at the moment, a little pop up thing a mate was playing in. Any chance you'd like to go with me sometime this week, some night you're not working?"
What the actual fuck?
No.
No.
NO.
Claire laughed, her blush returning in full force as she stripped off her gloves and dropped them on top of the bloody wipes.
"Mr Lloyd…"
"Oh call me Doug."
"Uhhm… I'm not sure how ethical that is, to go on a date with one of my patients," Claire smiled.
'Doug' grinned. "That's not a no. And I won't be your patient in a week," he pointed out cheekily.
A crack rang out suddenly, and Claire jumped, spinning around as he let out a short curse, now suddenly holding a fistful of plastic shards from the cheap pen that had just shattered in his grasp, splattering ink all over his hand and sleeve.
He dumped the mess in the nearest bin, still swearing under his breath as he wrenched a couple fragments out of the skin of his palm, reaching out to take the handful of tissues Alex offered, futilely trying to scrub ink off his palm.
He waved away the other's sudden concern, hastily saying something about dodgy old pens being the only ones left when you're on the mid-afternoon shift. Giving the mess up for a bad job, he dumped the blue-stained wad in the bin, angrily thinking that coat may as well join it.
He muttered out a grim goodbye before stalking out the door, but not before accidently looking Alex in the eye. Alex, who was giving him a strange look, eyes narrowed in consideration.
So he snapped a fucking pen.
Not like he short-fused a defibrillator.
…
His mood, having taken a sharp downwards dive since this morning did not improve upon finding Morgan waiting for him outside his office. Could he not have just five minutes to himself between surgeries?
When it became immediately clear that she was only there to complain to him about Shaun's bedside manner and doctor-patient communication skills, he only became angrier.
"Between Murphy's autism and surgical residents who naturally have no sense of compassion and empathy, I would still choose Murphy. Yes he gets it wrong sometimes and pisses off a parent, but believe it or not, you are all residents because you did not graduate knowing everything there is to know. You are still expected to learn."
Morgan actually opened her mouth to argue with him in a stunning display of a total lack of self preservation before he did what he'd been longing to do for weeks, and shut her down hard.
"Now I know it's actually hard to believe, but I am your attending and as far as your petty squabbles between each other go I really do not care."
He actually threw the files he had arrived with on his desk, knocking the phone off the other end and wheeled around, his pissy mood now steaming out his ears and his vocal cords, filled with an insane desire to rip Morgan's stupid swishy blonde hair off her head. "So shut up, stop whining to me about this, and go and prep the OR for the Papadopoulos kid. And if your hair isn't tied back properly before you get to the washroom, Reznick, so help me I will put you on scut work for as many days as it takes for you to learn to put your hair up. Understood?"
She glared at him for a single moment, her jaw clenched with anger and resentment before giving a short nod and walking out of the room stiffly.
Probably not how he should have handled that, but at the moment, he didn't care.
…
The anaesthetist announced the patient was under just as Morgan appeared to scrub in, washing up quickly before joining the party around the operating table. He wondered if Claire realised she had shifted a little closer to him when the blonde came through the doors, and scowled at the thought.
"Reznick", he acknowledged in an icy tone. "I see you're capable of doing your hair properly for work after all." He smiled to himself a little at the way she was seething at him behind her surgical mask as she gave a clipped, one syllable reply.
Claire's eyes went wide from her place beside him, her head ducking down for an instant as her shoulders shook minutely, almost like she was forcing a cough to try and cover up a laugh.
He rubbed his thumb down the handle for a moment, before flipping it in his palm to offer it end-first to Claire. "Dr Browne you're first assist, Dr Reznick, second assist" he said flatly, leaving no room for comment.
He raised his voice. "Pressure?"
"Holding stable," came the smooth reply. "We are good to proceed."
He nodded, moving a little to give the Claire the extra room. "Ready when you are, Browne."
…
Deciding the residents were capable of handling what was left of today's post-operative care without him, he took the opportunity to sign his way through a mountain of paperwork in his office, where he could have his sulk in peace.
When an enquiry came through on his tablet, he thought for a brief moment before switching Morgan and Claire, so Morgan would be the one to discharge Doug the Builder.
Ugh.
He barked out an "Enter" when someone knocked on the door, only to relax a little when Alex appeared with the day's case files, completed and signed. There was something to be said for mature age residents, no matter how prestigious the college everyone came from.
After a couple of minutes of pleasant chat about nothing in particular, Park went to let himself out before pausing by the doorframe.
"Douglas Lloyd should be discharged at around 8, he was supposed to leave a few hours ago, but he had mild anaphylactic reaction to the lidocaine shot. Figured it was better to keep him here for a few more hours, just watch to make sure he came out of it alright."
He grunted.
Alex drummed his fingers against the doorframe a few times before continuing. "Claire gets off at 8 tonight."
Melendez slowly raised his head and the two men stared at each other for a long moment, as Alex shifted one hip against the doorjamb, a small smile on his serene face.
"That information is of no consequence to me," he managed to croak.
"Of course not," Alex agreed, hoisting himself back onto his own two feet. "Claire's car has been at the garage for the past few days, so she's been taking the 406 bus to work, the one that pulls up just outside the main entrance. But that's of no consequence as well, so… Goodnight, Dr Melendez, I'll see you for tomorrow's night shift." And with that he just left, offering a polite wave of goodbye as he walked off.
What?
Confused, tired, and utterly sick of dealing with his feelings, he did what he did best in these situations, and continued on with his work.
…
Incidentally, when he next looked up at the tiny clock on his computer screen, the little 8:02pm was practically swimming in front of his tired eyes.
Fucking fuck.
He took a single moment to consider what his life was going to be like if he had to hear Claire merrily discussing her relationship with a builder to Shaun for the next how many months. And then he got out of his chair and raced down the corridor.
Okay. Maybe Park knew what he was doing after all.
Slowing his speed to the half-run accepted by all medical staff everywhere, no-one even blinked at him as he shot down the stairs two at a time. He could see Claire's bright red beanie even at the top of the stairs, but while it wasn't strange for a surgeon to be running around without an explanation, his colleagues might become a bit suspicious if he was seen sprinting down the stairs yelling Claire's name.
He still had a full flight to go when he suddenly saw the beanie stop. Douglas Lloyd, dressed in his own trousers and a papery gown over his bare chest was striding toward her, one arm strapped to his opposite shoulder with a ridiculous grin on his face.
He didn't go any further down the stairs.
He stood there for a lot longer, as it happened, watching Lloyd motion towards some hypothetical building in the distance and saw Claire nod.
He stood leaning on the railing, nearly two floors above them as he watched the couple walk out of the hospital together.
…
He woke up the next morning with bruised knuckles and a truly impressive headache that meant scotch was off the shopping list for a while.
Mentally slapping himself as he peeled himself off the bed and into the shower, he listed the variety of reasons it was a stupid idea.
He was Claire's attending.
He was less than year out from breaking off an engagement.
He was older than Claire.
He was sometimes kind of a dickhead to people.
He was frequently a dickhead to his residents.
He did give himself a light whack across the face when the little voice in his head piped up to remind him that Park seemed to approve. He only had to picture Morgan's face before he was forced to get out of the shower in disgust and go see what he could rustle up in the way of hangover cures in his kitchen.
It had been awhile since he'd gotten blackout drunk in the privacy of his own home, but a truly revolting tumbler of virgin Bloody Mary mix that had seen him through his college days got his eyes all the way open again.
At least he could say he'd done the responsible thing and not drunk himself stupid while he was on call. He should back to normal before he was back on shift. It was a sad fact of life that he knew he could name quite a few surgeons who had operated at some point in their careers in a state that wouldn't have blown 0.00 in a breathalyser, but there was stupidity and there was stupidity, and he was only the first kind.
Collapsing messily into a barstool he scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. The one person had actually wanted to be with right now and it was his younger female resident; and the only reason he'd figured that out was he'd gotten so jealous over a patient who had flirted with her he'd broken a pen and revealed himself to the other resident.
Fucking fantastic.
…
Nine hours later he was back on the floor, drinking coffee like it was the only thing keeping him alive and pretending he couldn't see Park. The man had a face that was extraordinarily expressive while managing to be completely neutral and non-judgemental at the same time.
Claire arrived on time and in a great mood, Shaun arrived 35 seconds late and looking like he'd rather go and drown himself than be at work at 12am. However, in the absence of Morgan he generously decided not to call Shaun on his tardiness, and instead sent him off to pathology, where he could flirt with Carly or do whatever it was that made him take forever up there.
He was getting ready to go and track the blood work down himself when he heard Claire ask Park if he liked jazz music.
When he eventually stomped into the corridor Shaun was meandering down, the younger man took one look at him and got the fuck out of the way.
The mood was catching.
…
When Claire asked Shaun if he'd like to accompany her to the new jazz club downtown next week, Melendez nearly smashed the tablet he was holding by dropping it over the sink.
"I thought you were going with that guy from the other day," he said in a tone of voice that was impressively mild, given his internal state of utter chaos. "Floyd, or whatever his name was."
"I don't think so," she laughed. "I let him buy me a drink as a thanks and called it a night, but that was about it."
"But… I thought he asked you out?"
It was a dumb question, yes, but he was practically gaping in shock and was only maintaining a tenuous grasp on the tablet. Claire looked at him like he was an idiot, which certainly wasn't that far away from the truth.
"Well yeah, but I didn't want to. So I said no," she said slowly. "He was an alright guy, I guess, but there are a lot of alright guys. I don't want to go out with all of them."
He was an actual dumbass.
Opening his mouth with absolutely no clue what he was about to say, he was saved from making more of a fool of himself by Claire's pager, and she ran off to Lim, shooting him an odd look before she disappeared.
Motion caught his eye, and he turned around to see Park leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
Alex smirked.
"You knew," he said dumbly.
Alex's smirk grew wider.
"I knew," he confirmed with a nod of his head.
Fucking Alex.
…
In a small act of divine mercy, the conversation went entirely over Shaun's head, given that Shaun still wasn't very good at understanding unspoken romantic subtext that people didn't admit to. Melendez threw the patient file of the most currently interesting patient he had at him, and told him to go wander off and see what he could make of the diagnosis.
And then he had small meltdown inside the privacy of his own head against the wall, until another voice snapped him out of it.
"What everyone does in their own time is their business," Alex said quietly. He was looking away from Melendez, but was clearly speaking to him. "I don't even think you realise how much you watch her when you think no-one can see. Every time she looks back at you, you turn your head the other way."
He wet his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. "It doesn't mean anything," he said, just as softly. "I'm her attending, I'm your only attending. It can't work."
Alex shrugged. "It's not specifically illegal, within hospital policies. Only if there's favouritism. And besides… who would know, if you didn't want them to?"
Melendez was still opening his mouth when Alex continued. "You know Shaun won't pick up on it, if you're careful. Jared won't either, he's happy with where he is these days and I won't say anything, because I don't care. I guess you might have to quietly speak to someone in the higher-ups, but other than that, who's stopping you?"
He cleared his throat. "On my end no-one," he admitted. "But Claire's end? Would you want people to think you slept your way through residency? And you left Morgan off that little list."
Alex snorted, thrusting his hands in his pockets. "Morgan gives a shit about what she can use to give herself a leg up. But she's only one resident, and if you had the board's approval behind you… That's the kind of temper tantrum that only makes herself look bad, and she doesn't indulge in those. But who said she was even going to be able to find out?"
His heartbeat was probably audible without a scope. "You're talking like this is already a thing," he said, a little frustrated. "Like it's simple and easy."
Alex shrugged again, the rare grin dancing over his face as he looked him in the eye for the first time during the conversation. "You can't get jealous at every patient she touches with gloves on for the next 4 years."
"Besides," he continued, spinning a pen between his fingers as he pushed off the wall, "I guess when you've seen what I've been seeing… It does look simple."
…
Finishing up on time for once, he found himself unconsciously walking towards the front doors without meaning to go there. He waited for a few minutes, trying to look casual as he stood by the automatic hand sanitiser and fiddled with his phone.
He had no idea what the hell he thought he was doing.
"Hey!" a cheerful voice suddenly greeted him. "I would have thought you would have disappeared by now, you've been on call every night this week, right?"
Claire's face was flushed with happiness under the tall coat collar, her ridiculously, impractically, beautifully red beanie standing out like a strawberry against the dark rows of curls.
He had only managed to stutter back a quick hello before Claire's stomach growled and she looked away in embarrassment. "Sorry," she muttered. "Didn't manage to eat tonight. I guess I had better be going."
Melendez looked at his watch, 6am on the dot. And then he pushed his shoulders back, found his backbone, and did something he'd wanted to do for the past fortnight.
"There's a nice place around the block, they do a pretty good breakfast buffet, open really early. Would you… like to come to breakfast with me?"
He waited with his heart in his throat as Claire suddenly stared at him with such a hopeful expression on her face it was nearly painful to watch. What had he even been paying attention to for the last few months?
"You're asking me to breakfast - with you?" She asked carefully.
He grinned. "Yeah," he nodded, "with me. I know it's not dinner and a jazz band, but…"
Claire was full on smiling now, shuffling on the balls of her feet as she shifted further towards him. "I've never really liked jazz that much," she admitted. "I just asked Shaun because I thought it might be the type of thing he might enjoy."
"The same way you don't really like builders?"
He cringed a little as she threw her head back and laughed. "Oh God, you were so weird that day, I thought I was imagining it!"
He chuckled as well. "Finally got the pen off my fingers," he said, holding his hand out to prove it. "Took forever, even with surgical grade soap."
They both fell quiet for a moment, and Claire twisted her hands to interlock them, folding her arms together before grinning at him from up under her eyelashes.
"I would love to come to breakfast with you."
…
It had been awhile since he'd been on date. He wasn't sure this was even technically allowed to count as a date, what with the total exhaustion and them both in their scrubs, the lack of dinner and dancing and music. But holding Claire's hand, sipping coffee with her over a plate of waffles while they watched the sky change colour with the sunrise, he didn't actually care.
He dropped her back off at her flat, tempted to ask her back to his place but know that was really just a bad idea for multiple reasons. He didn't have a lot of self control within the walls of his bedroom. Also, she looked ready to pass out.
Because he was a goddamn sap, he kept their hands entwined for the entire ride back, driving one-handed as he absently stroked his thumb back and forth over her palm while he navigated the early morning traffic. They were both quiet, Claire slowly drifting off against the seat as she dozed in the still-faint light, courtesy of winter.
Apparently he didn't have a lot of self control full stop, as proven when she asked him if he'd like to come up with her.
The climb up the staircase was slow, both of them still dazed from the recent breakfast and the late night, their hands continually brushing against each other as they climbed. That changed from 0-60 the moment Claire got the front door unlocked. She slammed into him, catching his lips in a fierce kiss as they tumbled through the door. He held himself back just long enough to let the door bang shut behind them before he pushed her back against it, catching her bottom lip between his teeth as she yanked him forward by his shirt, hooking one leg around the back of his knees to grind his pelvis against hers, and they both groaned at the contact. He swallowed the small moan she let out when he slipped his hands under her shirts, hands circling around her stomach to rub the warm skin at the small of her back, kissing his way down her neck to her collarbone, hidden under the navy V-neck of the scrub shirt. When he got to the junction between her neck and shoulder he felt Claire's knees give out beneath her a little and smirked into the crease, scraping his teeth against the base of her neck before opening his mouth and biting down softly. And then Claire's legs really did give out from under her.
She tangled her hands in his hair as he used the opportunity to push her firmly back against the door, groaning as she bore down on his shoulders to wrap her legs around his waist. He felt her fingers brush against his bare back as she desperately pulled his shirt over his head, taking the hint and ripping his arms through the sleeves as he flung it away from them and immediately pressed up against her again, fucking his tongue into her mouth.
It was around the time he felt her heels pushing down his pants from her position hitched over his waist, while still firmly pinned against her own door as he rolled his hips against her pelvis that he brought things to halt. He bit back an actual whine as he pulled back, Claire chasing after his lips as he moved one hand in between them.
Life's fucking hard when you're the one cockblocking yourself.
"We should… we should leave it here," he panted, trying not to look at her lips, swollen from being kissed and bitten. Claire's eyes were hazy and her cheeks flushed, limbs still wrapped around him like she was climbing a tree. All he wanted was to take the stupid navy blue shirt by the neck and rip it from collar to hem, let her push him backwards into her bed and her life and never come up again.
As she slowly lowered her legs back to the floor, still holding onto him for balance, Melendez closed his eyes and did his best to try and mentally squash his erection. Given his job, it should have been a hell of a lot easier than it was, even with Claire still in his arms.
"We have to be back at work in 8 hours" he said softly. A curly head thunked into his shoulder in reply.
He groaned as he peeled himself away from her, holding back a wince at the sudden rush of cool air hitting his bare chest. Looking back at Claire he grinned. She was pulling her pants up from where the waistband had been pushed down to her thighs (when did he even do that?) and he'd yanked the neckline of her shirt down so low that she was nearly falling out of it. The little trail of red patches disappeared as she pulled the neck of her shirt back into place, and he rubbed a palm over his jaw, gauging the stubble that was past 5 o' clock shadow but not yet fully fledged scruff.
He slowly rucked his shirt back over his arms, pulling it down from behind as she stepped back toward him, pulling him back into a welcome embrace, feeling the length of her body against his again.
"First date," he said into her hair.
He felt, rather than heard the groan into his chest, warm breath ghosting over his nipple as he shivered. Claire slowly rolled her head back on her neck as she looked him in the eye.
"The only reason I'm going to buy that as an excuse is because that means we have to go on more dates."
He huffed in amusement, and then had to hastily pull back at the mass of tiny curls that tickled at the base of his nose, threatening to make him sneeze.
"Just – stay? Please?" Claire asked. "You don't want to rush into anything, and ok, I get that, but just stay for today. Just get some sleep with me."
He shouldn't. He should go back to his own apartment, get a shower and a change of clothes and sleep in his own bed where his dick couldn't potentially start anything without him.
But he was doing lots of things he shouldn't today.
"Okay."
…
As was entirely expected, he woke up twenty minutes before the alarm went off in Claire's bed, as a mostly asleep Claire was minutely rocking back and forth against his dick, fully hard once more. Tangled in a nest of sheets, clad only in boxers which were loose to begin with, he bit back a curse at the warmth currently flooding his groin and picked his head up to twist over and look at her face, still lax and peaceful with sleep.
Trying to pull away without waking her up for a last few minutes of precious sleep failed immediately, and instead Claire crawled over the top of him and they lay like that, lazily grinding against each other as they kissed; lips smearing over collarbones and pulse-points and the delicate flesh of a nipple. She traced the outline of the stag's antlers with her fingertips as he ran his hands up and down the smooth skin of her thighs, leaving a delicate line of bruises between her neck and her shoulder, smirking as he felt her shiver and arch against his body as he caught the sensitive areas with his teeth every time.
And then the alarm went off.
…
They made sure to walk into the hospital through different entrance doors, a full nine minutes late, Claire looking immaculate in clean clothes and freshly braided hair, with only slightly swollen lips as a visible flaw in her appearance.
In direct contrast, Melendez walked into his shift late, in two-day old clothes following a 60 second frigid shower with a unshaven face full of beard scruff and a head of hair that had proudly refused to be disguised as anything other than sex hair.
Alex took one look at him from where he was leaning against the admissions desk with his travel mug of coffee and laughed.
He scowled as he snatched his own mug of coffee, pulling on his coat with a superior air as Claire gave Alex a quick hug, to Shaun's horrified confusion. He took two rather large steps back when she greeted him, clearly concerned the hugging thing was universal this evening.
Neatly dressed (sort of) once more, topped off with sex hair and with the elixir of life in one hand and his ever-present tablet in the other he smirked at them all, where they were loosely clustered around him.
"Let's get started."
...
AN – If you liked it, I'd love to know!