You Will Be Folding Stars
There is something to be said of sleeping a colleague who is so similar to yourself in terms of ambition and abrasively strong personality. It was like looking into a cracked mirror and you were too self-centred to walk away from that kind of affinity. You are sure that Elliot would have some profound and tiresome metaphor to offer you on the situation but you hope you never get to hear it.
Your mind starts to wonder as you kiss her, if this speaks more about you than it does her. You have no doubt that one of the main reasons she responded to your advances towards her was that you are a means to forward her career somehow. But you are able to accept that without it becoming a deterrent, it was something you expected. You started this and you were using her as much as she would try and use you.
And there is something akin to amused pride at the lack of surprise or uneasiness in her reaction when her female boss pins her against the nearest wall and kisses a line down her neck. You never realised that you had started to regard the younger woman fondly rather than just a dangerous manipulator.
She tastes like coffee, latte you decide, rich and bitter and perhaps more addictive than you ever thought. You have been with other women before, experimented in your wilder teenage years, and once in a while you are attracted towards the softness of the female form. So it is not entirely new as your gracefully skilled hands work the buttons of her trousers.
You are sure that she has done nothing like this with another woman before. You are still confident enough in you ability to understand people that you think you understand a woman you have known professionally for a good few years. You have seen that she does not relate to other women easily or have any female friends (and yes that might be another area you see similarities between the pair of you). You feel it in the slight hesitation when she starts to touch you in return. But she is a fast learner and you are a good teacher so that you are confident that she will be able to make you forget.
And you have so much you want, or need to forget. Your past had tangled with your present and reminded you of the person you used to be. In a rush to separate the two versions of yourself you had failed badly; fell further than you ever feared you could fall. You have so much to be sorry for and you try to pour it all into the younger woman, command her to take the burden as you bent her to your will. Here you are the predator, strong and confident with your sexuality and its only later that you realise that unconsciously this is you trying to reclaim your desired identity.
It's only after a little time passes that you start to think of anything other than yourself and you remember that she is probably hurting too. And then you are conflicted again. Part of you, a vicious part, delights that at least you have a daughter and a father that want you. Another part immediately feels guilty and you want to silently apologise and show her that people are actually capable of kindness.
You know your hospital (you always like to think of it as yours even as the doubt creeps in), and as you once told her you have eyes and ears everywhere. You had read between the lines of the vague comments Michael had made about an uncharacteristic selfless act and an absent mother. For once you wish you did not know so much because everything about her slips neatly into place and makes a map only you can read. You understand how her vicious tongue and cold heart were defences made by a little girl who never been shown enough love. The depth of your understanding is unsettling and it bothers you that you care too much so you can't let go entirely.
She is attractive enough while she's not talking with that poisonous little tongue. Your teeth grazing her lower lip is enough of a warning that you do not want any words tumbling out of them. She's still young enough and naturally striking in a way that means she doesn't have to make much of an effort. You had never really bothered to look before but she had always been a pleasing form under the simple tailoring of her clothes. You had watched as she betrayed and break the heart of the most naïve surgeon you had ever met but that did not matter because she would never touch your heart and she would never let you touch hers.
She is all long limbed and slim paleness. Her hair is frustratingly perfect all the time even as you run your fingers through the long strands. It falls through your fingers like a red velvet waterfall, falls across the pale narrowness of her shoulders and she seems more open than you thought she ever could.
Her skin hot under your touch and direction and you can not help but to catch the way her breath catches when you come across her scars. A thin line in gentle curve of her side, you trace a thumb over it, feel how the healing tissue is raised and think that you can read it like brail. She places her hand under your shirt before you can make more of an issue out of it. And then there is the jagged blemish on a knee that reminds you that she does not wear skirts since the motorbike accident. Then for a brief moment of insanity you feel a twinge of jealousy that out of all your esteemed colleagues you are the only one never to have operated on her.
You both know you will never talk about this and it will more than likely never happen again. It is just that you are both so lost and you understand the need for physical gratification, for skin against skin and the starburst that is enough to make you forget even if it is just for a moment.
Once it is over and your legs stop shaking with delicious aftershocks you start to dress and dismiss her in sharp tones. She dresses silently, a smug grin pulling at the corners of her lips like you knew it would but there is a vulnerability in the stormy grey of her eyes. Nothing has changed, neither of you had been magically healed, but for now, it was enough.