A/N: Hi! This is an attempt at a palate cleanser from the sort of thing I usually write, annnd it's about as light-hearted as I get. It will be multi-chapter, but I don't have a good idea of how long yet. It's extremely AU, but I love canon nods, so there'll be some of those. Will probably be very multi-shippy, in the most lesbian way possible.
Some of the ideas presented here were inspired by many a long and late-night rant session with Arizona Eris/Regina at thecursedstorybrooke . tumblr . com. The idea of cursed Aurora as a nurse at the hospital is not mine, but I can't remember where I first saw it.
Uhm...I think that's it. Feedback would be much appreciated!
Chapter 1 — Interrupted Slumber
Carrie Zoran could not remember the last time she'd gotten a full night of sleep. Ever since the incident with the coma patient—who, after having been just shy of a vegetable for as long as Carrie could remember, had not only woken up, but had wandered out into the woods in the middle of the night—Dr. Whale had insisted that someone with more knowledge than the volunteers be on hand twenty-four hours a day. Carrie needed the money, so she took the extra hours gratefully.
Funny, though. It seemed like every time she started saving a little money, something catastrophic happened and she was right back where she'd started. Still, she couldn't say she regretted finally moving out of her aunt's house. Carrie loved her Aunt Hyacinth dearly, but she had very little to do but to fuss over Carrie, who was nearly twenty, and who had recently begun to feel that she didn't know how to do anything on her own...aside from cooking, cleaning, and taking vital signs, which did not amount to very much.
According to the chart on Carrie's clipboard, the new patient in the corner bed was injured in the mine explosion. Possibly a minor concussion, but Dr. Whale didn't think there was anything else too serious. She'd drifted in and out of consciousness while he was testing her, so he'd decided to keep her here overnight, at least, just to be safe.
Nothing like that had ever happened in Storybrooke before.
The patient's name was Belinda Irving. She was thirty six, fair-haired and fair-skinned, and gave off the impression of being very tall and angular, though it was always hard to say with the angle of the hospital beds. Carrie approached the patient's bedside and prepared to take her vital signs, but as soon as she touched Belinda Irving's wrist, the woman's eyes shot open and she grabbed Carrie's hand roughly.
Her eyes were icy blue and glittering with alarm, and she stared at Carrie for several seconds before she blinked twice and murmured, "Oh." Her shoulders slumped slightly. "I'm sorry."
Carrie smiled nervously. "It's no trouble, Ms. Irving. I'm Carrie, your nurse for the evening."
Belinda Irving averted her eyes and let go of Carrie's hand. "What happened to me?"
"You were injured—"
"Yes, thank you for that nugget of unprecedented wisdom," Ms. Irving snapped. "In what way was I injured, if you please?"
"Oh, ah..." Carrie glanced down at her chart, not because she needed the reminder, but because she needed an escape from her patient's cold gaze. "Possibly a minor concussion. Nothing else too serious. A few scrapes."
"Very well. When will I be released?"
Carrie swallowed uncomfortably and avoided meeting the woman's eyes. "Tomorrow morning, as long as you don't have any problems tonight. Dr. Whale wanted to keep you overnight for observation. The mine explosion freaked everyone out a little." She shrugged.
Ms. Irving narrowed her eyes. "I'm being kept here overnight for observation," she repeated slowly. Carrie shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Such incompetence astounds me. It seems that Dr. Whale's position as the only trained physician in Storybrooke has gone directly to his head. What are you staring at, girl? Go on about your business. You've kept me here to observe me. Do your job."
Carrie's hands were shaking. Belinda Irving barely spoke another handful of words for the rest of Carrie's shift, but she could feel those ice blue eyes glaring at her long after she'd changed clothes and begun her walk home.
Sometimes Ruby Lucas felt like she was always in trouble.
And deep down, she understood, really she did, that Granny was just trying to protect her or show she cared or something, but if Ruby went to bed at 8 P.M. and cleaned tables all day and did everything her Granny told her to, she would lose what was left of her mind.
Staying up late, drinking a little too much, wearing clothes that barely covered the essentials, and flirting with everyone who looked her way—which was in fact almost everyone...these were the things that almost made Ruby feel...well, something. Anything. Slightly more than dead inside.
Ruby wondered how it was possible that she'd never seen the girl playing pool before. She came here a lot-it was one of two bars in town-and she mostly knew the going out habits of everyone around her age.
This girl, whose satiny dress clung to her curvy figure and whose silky, light brown hair half-veiled a wicked, red-lipped smile, seemed impossible to have overlooked, and yet, could she be new? Emma Swan was the first person who had ever even visited Storybrooke in Ruby's lifetime. It seemed sort of unlikely that another beautiful young woman should breeze through so soon thereafter.
Suddenly the wicked, red-lipped smile was directed at Ruby, and she realized she'd been caught. She smiled good-naturedly and turned back to her seat at the bar, as though their eye contact had been accidental and not the direct result of Ruby's rudeness.
Not a minute later, Ruby felt a light tap on her shoulder. "Do you come here often?"
Apparently the unidentified pool player was not so easily fooled. Ruby turned around to face her, trying to push her awkwardness out of her mind as she shrugged. "Now and then. I've never seen you here before, though."
"You would know, I'm sure," said the girl, still smiling, her greenish-blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "You've gotten a good enough look at me by now."
Ruby couldn't remember the last time she had blushed. "Sorry," she muttered. "It's weird, seeing strangers here, you know?"
The girl tilted her head to the side, twirling a lock of shiny hair around her finger. "You think I'm weird?"
"I—no, I didn't mean..."
She giggled and Ruby wondered how she was going to make her escape. She'd never felt so embarrassed in her entire life.
"I was only teasing," she said. "I'm Lacey. Lacey French. Now I'm not a stranger to you anymore."
"Oh." Ruby narrowly avoided stupidly repeating her name back to her a few times. She settled for mulling it over in the safety of her own mind, and after what was possibly a slightly awkward pause, she came up with something reasonable to say. "Any relation to Mo French?"
Lacey looked away and waved to the bartender while she nodded. "He's my dad," she said simply, then ordered a drink, effectively cutting off that line of questioning.
"Oh, ah...I'm Ruby," said Ruby after another awkward pause. "Ruby Lucas."
"And now you're not a stranger to me anymore," said Lacey, taking the drink the bartender offered her and raising it in Ruby's direction.
Violet Zhu awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of nothingness. A fraction of a second later, there was a light, hesitant rapping at the window of her second-story bedroom. She later decided that the sound and not the anticipation of it was what had woken her.
She all but rolled out of bed and opened the window that led to the fire escape, where Carrie Zoran was kneeling awkwardly and shivering. "What time is it, even?" she muttered sleepily.
"I d-don't know...I-I'm sorry..."
"Come in. It's freezing." She offered her hand to help Carrie over the windowsill and then grabbed the comforter from her bed and wrapped it around Carrie's shoulders. "Is something wrong?"
Carrie wrapped the comforter tighter around herself and sat on Violet's bed. "Couldn't sleep," she said. "I got to bed so late anyway and then...I kept having these weird nightmares."
Violet closed her window and sat next to Carrie, propping herself up against her pillow and trying to fight her drowsiness. She glanced at the clock—4 A.M. She'd have to be up in a couple of hours, anyway.
"Anything noteworthy?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
"Weird things...fire...dragons...thorns? I don't know. Also this new patient who was injured in the mine explosion. I kept seeing her face over and over. And I kept hearing her laugh."
Violet frowned. "Did she laugh a lot when you talked to her?"
Carrie shook her head. "She didn't laugh. She was actually kind of...cold. Unkind, almost. I couldn't tell you what I thought her laughter might sound like, but I could hear it in my dreams. God, I'm losing my mind..."
Violet patted Carrie's shoulder in a drowsy and somewhat awkward attempt at comfort. "No, you're not. People have weird dreams sometimes. It happens."
"I guess she'll be gone in the morning and I won't have to deal with her anymore."
"Who, the rude new patient?"
Carrie nodded.
"Well. Good, then."
"Sorry to wake you."
"It's okay," Violet said with a shrug which was anything but nonchalant. Carrie was the only person she'd ever really considered a friend. Didn't friends sometimes wake each other up in the middle of the night? "Do you want to sleep over?" She felt sort of uncomfortable asking for some vague reason she wouldn't be able to articulate if she tried, but she didn't want Carrie to get sick or something. "It's really cold."
Carrie nodded. "Thanks, Vi."
Violet smiled briefly and moved over to one side of her bed, readjusting her pillow. The bed and the pillow were really too small for two people, even small people such as Carrie and herself, but she reasoned that she'd be up again soon, anyway, and didn't friends sometimes have sleepovers in beds that were too small?
Carrie covered Violet with the comforter and then climbed under it, herself. Violet shivered involuntarily when she felt the bed shift under Carrie's weight and the warmth of another body so close to hers, but she was too tired to think very much about the feeling, and she quickly succumbed to a decidedly pleasant, if unpleasantly short slumber.
Lacey awoke, to her immense displeasure, with the sunrise. She frowned and squinted and realized that the reason she'd awoken to something so vile was that she wasn't in her own room. Her taste in men really must need some tweaking if she was going home with strangers who liked sunlight in their eyes first thing in the morning.
She covered her eyes with her arm and hoped to God it wasn't that creep Gold. He was very nice to her—too nice. It was unnerving, and she sometimes worried that she might finally give into his ardently awkward advances after a few too many shots of tequila.
Oh well. Better to know sooner rather than later. Rip it off, like a Band-Aid, Lacey, she told herself. Quickly, Lacey uncovered her eyes and turned her head to inspect the warm body next to her. She raised her eyebrows.
Well.
Her bedfellow certainly wasn't Mr. Gold. A mass of long, shiny brown hair, so dark it was almost black, gave that away right off. If that weren't enough to convince her, the legs which had been exposed when Lacey shifted the blankets to avoid the harsh light of morning, were pale, smooth, and distinctly feminine.
Lacey blinked a few times, trying to clear up for herself the events of the previous evening. After some consideration, she remembered a beautiful, dark-haired girl with a warm smile who'd been staring at her. She couldn't remember when they'd first kissed, but rather, her memory picked up again right in the middle of a series of fiery kisses which had resulted in the shedding of clothes.
Lacey felt the slightest bit disappointed that she couldn't remember more, because the few brief flashes that came to mind seemed extremely pleasant. Still, perhaps she hadn't missed very much more, because she, at least, was still wearing her bra and panties. She decided against removing the comforter from the body of her new friend, whose slumber remained thus far undisturbed, to assess the status of her undergarments.
Lacey considered maneuvering the comforter so that it would shield her eyes from the rising sun in the hopes of catching another hour or two of sleep, but she quickly decided against that, as well. Presuming her bedfellow was indeed Ruby Gorgeous-smile, she was a heavy sleeper, and Lacey had the unique opportunity of avoiding an awkward morning after encounter. Storybrooke, Maine was not a large town. If she wanted to run into Ruby again—and she most certainly did—she wouldn't have to try very hard.
It was a little after six when Lacey had donned her dress and jacket and collected her bag, and the streets were mercifully deserted. A bit too early for the teachers and schoolchildren to be about, way too early for everyone else. People slept late in Storybrooke, for lack of anything else to do. Lacey only passed one person on her walk of shame, the beautiful Asian woman with the eternally solemn demeanour, whose name was some kind of flower (Rose? Pansy?) and who taught spinning classes at the gym. Lacey wondered who exactly attended her 6:30 A.M. class, but this was not the morning she planned to find out.
When Lacey finally made it back to her small apartment, she made short work of her dress and heels and forced herself to hop in the shower before she crashed again.
She was bartending tonight. She didn't mind the job other than the occasional creep. (She hoped Gold wouldn't be there all night, staring at her like a lost puppy, offering over and over again to walk her home.) It paid the bills, anyway, it gave her something to do, and her drinks were free whether her boss wanted them to be or not.
Still, there was something slightly depressing about sleeping the day away. She never went to bed at a normal hour, and she probably wouldn't be able to if she tried. As a result, by the time she felt even marginally rested, most of Storybrooke was rolling up the sidewalks for the evening. She had to set an alarm and make a special trip to complete simple tasks like going to the bank or buying groceries, often while coaxing herself out of a killer hangover.
Her father's suggestion—which he was more than happy to offer up in a variety of unhelpful ways—was to stop drinking. Lacey found it unfathomable that he, a heavy drinker, himself, couldn't understand why this simple solution was so completely ridiculous. Lacey could barely handle her life now, when she spent the better half of it intoxicated. The idea of facing each day—the monotony, the aimlessness, the strange sensation that she was trapped in some kind of endless cycle...well, it made her want to go back to sleep, to be sure.
After the least refreshing shower of her life, Lacey grabbed the nearest comfy clothes she could find, closed the blinds extra-tight against the offending light of day, and burrowed under her comforter to ignore everything that was wrong in the world for as long as possible.