Rating: K+
Disclaimer: I don't own ER or Rolodexes.
Note: I hesitated getting into this one. To me, Neela/Ray is sort of depressing...but I haven't written for the better part of a year and I figured this was as good a place as any to try this thing again. The story assumes Neela had some sort of teenage phase, like I'm sure most of us have.
You knew you were getting old when your tolerance level for the unexpected, the uncalled for, dropped dramatically. You remember your parents and their fed-up expressions, bordering on 'what possessed us to reproduce?', when you'd come home with a dozen friends, or when you left with the same number after midnight, or threw a tantrum, or...
At one point in your life, unrequited love, a forbidden relationship...would be a godsend. A respite from the mundane, something to obsessively look forward to, something to piss off your parents with. And every stolen moment, all physical contact, anything and everything that happened between you, would be filed away into some ever-expanding mental Rolodex.
That was when you were young.
Now, it's a constant irritation.
You would like to get home and be able to go straight to bed, without the distraction of your freshly showered roommate, hair still damp, on the couch, staring blearily at the TV, having clearly stayed up waiting for you.
You would like to get to the fridge without being uncomfortably close...having nearly collided into him.
You would like to walk out of the bathroom in nothing more than a towel without being stared at.
You would like to fall asleep without the aforementioned Rolodex spitting out images unconducive to slumber.
And most of all, you would like to have noticed all these things before you grew up and got married.
You're not young anymore.