Title: Optimism
Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a Time or its characters.
Summary: Graham and Emma are residents at the same hospital in Boston. Just past midnight on Christmas, they share in the loss of one of their patients.
Note: Completely AU. No fairytales, no past lives. Prompt from anon: "Doctor verse, during the holiday's they experience a hard loss but are there to comfort each other."
Emma slammed her hand into the locker, the clatter ringing around the empty room. She pressed a tight fist to her mouth, fighting back against tears as her body shook.
"Emma."
She looked up sharply, immediately met with soft blue eyes. She swallowed past the tightening in her throat and turned back to her combination. "Shift's over," she said woodenly.
She could hear the subtle shuffle of his weight as he came to stand a few paces away. "I know. Mine too. Four hours ago, really, but …." He trailed off, and they both knew why. They had been waiting for midnight, waiting to see his little face light up.
She chanced a glance over to him as he spun his own lock. His jaw was tightened and his collar messy, like he'd been tugging at it uncomfortably. Her gaze downturned, she yanked her coat off her body. "Thanks, by the way."
He was silent as he placed his stethoscope inside, laying it gingerly on the shelf. Finally, he shook his head. "Didn't help."
"Still," she pressed. She didn't know if she could have stood it without him there. She can still see the faces of the family, that slow dawning of what she was saying, the cross of devastation on their faces. Their sobs echoed somewhere deep within her.
She listened as Graham's breath hitched slightly beside her. She gripped the door of the locker and watched him. She felt almost relieved to know that this loss was as hard for him as it was for her. Like, somehow, it meant something more that it was acknowledged.
"He almost made it," she said softly.
His face tightened and he turned to lean heavily against the lockers. He checked his watch. "Two hours more, and he would have been celebrating with us, instead of … this."
She blinked and leaned over to check his watch. She was surprised to see he was right; it was after midnight. "Not as merry a Christmas, is it?"
He shook his head. "I thought being awake for fifty-nine hours as an intern would be the worst one."
She laughed a little mirthlessly, even though the joke had fallen flat. "Are we only counting adult Christmases, then?"
He gave an accepting nod. "Well, even those childhood ones may edge out this year."
She felt like linking into him somehow, making contact along skin to offer her support. This was the third Christmas they'd basically spent together, but all three had only been in the last years of interning and residency. Those Christmases were also spent completely on the job: candy canes between codes, paperwork in one hand and festive-flavored coffee in the other, shinning ornaments along the nurse's station.
The time they'd spent in the same home when they were twelve was in the late winter to early fall; he was transferred before there had been a single turned leaf and with him the closest friend she'd had to date. And some homes had tried on Christmas, they really did, but it was never enough to impede the loneliness and separation she'd felt from everyone else.
However bad those years were, though, she had to admit that this one seemed harder. Maybe it only seemed that way because this time fate hadn't landed on her. She knew what life could throw at her, had built up reinforcements to stop the blows from landing too hard.
Not for him.
She saw the flash of a gap-toothed grin in her mind's eye, quickly replaced by red Spiderman pajamas contrasted with blue fingertips. She knew that the happy kid who she'd gotten close to over the last two months was somehow linked to her idealizations of what childhood could have been like if. But he'd also been his own person, so bright and desperately, desperately optimistic.
It hurt, that lash of pain still so new and fresh. "He just wanted Christmas," she said hoarsely.
He sat down on the bench between them and pulled his hands through his short hair. It was mussed in a way that proved this wasn't the first time he'd done the nervous gesture. He let out a shaky exhale. "You'd think we'd be used to this."
"What, death?" she asked, and collapsed heavily beside him. She stared blankly at her hands for a minute, the ones scrubbed dry and raw over the last few hours. The ones that couldn't keep his too-large heart beating.
Graham was right, she knew. There was hardly a day passed without someone near death or passing on the CICU. But it wasn't his death that was affecting her, though, not really. She had been prepared for his death. His parents were as well-prepared as parents could be. It was no real surprise (and yet, she had believed, hadn't she? She believed in his pure-hearted convictions that he'd see Christmas Day).
He shook his head. "No, not death. I mean we should be used to the … the unfairness of this all," he clarified.
She glanced up and tilted her head before nodding. "Yeah. You'd think." Their combined lifetimes would show too many instances to count; they should have been enough to firmly hold their pragmatism in place. Perhaps their hearts were still soft, despite it all, because somehow it had been shaken, once again.
Maybe that's why they were both drawn to the boy with the bright eyes. He trudged along with a beaming smile despite his prognosis, to the point where two orphans could believe in miracles again. No wonder they took the reality so hard.
He shook his head, looking as somber as she'd ever seen him. "I couldn't stop it," he murmured.
She was surprised to find that the feeling from before, that want to touch him, was growing. She wanted to lean into him, to share in his sorrow and dejection, to comfort him and herself both at the same time. Something like the last time they had shared their feelings about loss.
Usually, she kept a blockade between them.
Oh, not physically, and not even socially. They were colleagues, of course, and saw each other almost daily. They were even close enough that she considered him her friend, and not just because they knew each other as kids.
For everyone else, he was an enigma: nice but somber, quiet but with conviction, removed but protective. For Emma, he was no such puzzle. He was someone who understood better than anyone else how constant abandonment seared into present interaction, someone who could reminisce and empathize. There was no façade around her, his soul open for her to inspect as she pleased. And every bit of that vulnerability allowed her to open right back up to him … at least to a point.
He pressed his lips together and leaned back with a sigh. "He got me hoping again, you know? Believing in the impossible." His muscles shifted under the thin cotton, and she was met with the desire to be held by him. He was so warm, so real, so tenderly compassionate; his embraces would be the same, wouldn't they?
"Yeah, I know," she murmured finally, responding to his statement after the long beat. "All the other times it worked out for him. Halloween, Thanksgiving, birthday. At least he got those."
"We should have known better. But … but it was nice to feel that way, wasn't it?"
She nodded. "A little different then the way we usually are."
His cobalt eyes met hers, holding onto them with an undercurrent of something that wasn't hard to place. He quickly let them dart away, back down to where their hands were separated by mere inches.
Graham had edged around his feelings for her before, but he never pushed. He never made her uncomfortable about them, never forced her to acknowledge them. He would simply make it apparent, a gentle offering of something more if only she wanted it.
Emma always felt she couldn't deal with the kinds of emotions she had for Graham tied to something romantic, not when she still felt so fragile from past hurt. So she kept her distance, knowing that it would be easy to get even closer to Graham. Physical attraction was far overshadowed by the thread that tethered them, and thus giving in would mean too much.
Maybe because of their shared history, maybe because he had been such a steady piece of the last three years, maybe because of the aching reminder of mortality, she had been feeling lately like it would be okay to let go.
Around Graham, it was becoming more and more apparent that she felt like the ground wouldn't fall away beneath her feet, pebble by pebble. Perhaps getting close to him would feel like her damaged soul could be pieced back whole, the cracks of her past matching up along those in his.
She remembered how it felt to kiss his cheek that once, two months ago. She remembered feeling the rough stubble against her skin, the warm scent of him enveloping her, comforting her. She recalled the surprised raise of his eyebrows coupled with the tuck of his arm at her back, reluctant to let her leave.
Somehow easing the tension between them, even in such a minimal capacity, had helped ease the burden they carried. Because even though they had lived lives that knew not to get too attached, their hearts carried a different agenda.
It terrified her to want to put her trust in him, it truly did.
But she wanted that feeling on this cold, dark Christmas Day.
His eyes flickered downward, fingers drumming against the bench. "I—I don't want to stop holding onto it completely. Not again."
Trapped in this aching vulnerability, she found that she couldn't put forth the effort to yank that wall up between them again. Not today. Not when she was reminded that time wasn't promised to any person, no matter how hard they wanted it.
Today deserved honesty, in action even more so than words.
She licked her lips and grabbed his fingers in hers where they rested between them. He met her gaze with only a trace of surprise. Something palpable passed between them, charged with electricity. Seemingly as one, they drifted closer, until his forehead met hers. She almost sighed in relief as she shut her eyes to revel in the feeling.
"I'm glad I was there," he said finally. His breath was hot against her lips, the smell of peppermint coffee lingering on his tongue.
She nodded and kept her eyes closed. "Me too," she whispered. It was the one comfort this evening, knowing that he had been in the same state as she, working hard to try to make the boy's hope reality.
With that memory came the final burst of assurance. She let herself come the fraction closer, her lips just barely brushing against his.
His palm met her jaw, tilting her face to easily deepen it to a real kiss. She took his lead and kissed him back hard, letting every bit of her conflicting feelings temper into the one real, tangible emotion: longing.
After hours or seconds, he released her, though he kept close in her space. "Merry Christmas, Emma."
She laced their fingers together again, a wash of insecurity flowing out her like a sieve before she finally voiced her request. "Spend it with me?"
He nodded with a brush of his thumb over her knuckles. "I'd like that."
And in that moment she knew she was letting herself fall, wholeheartedly and with all the bravery she could muster.
Because sometimes optimism could be worth it.