AN - So it turns out that glitter is in fact very bad for the environment. Who knew? Well, me now, as it happens. I would like to stress - the acts of arsehole teenage boys in this fic should not ever been done in person to random strangers on the street. That would be cruel, and possibly worthy of police interaction. I am wagging my finger sternly, do not do them. However, to your friends, have at it. Pick a day they don't have a job interview. Or, you know, a week. For the purposes of this fic, Jess simply does not exist, even though I love her. I don't know if anyone is actually into this not-yet-pair, but it intrigued me, so I wrote this. Read as you like.
She showed up at his door, soaking wet, bruised, and covered in glitter.
Claire was late.
Out of all his residents, Shaun was the worst offender (but the only one that caught the bus), though Jared did have the occasional late start, usually with sunglasses that were barely hiding red eyes and a hangover.
But Claire was never late. Never. He usually arrived on time himself to find her already there, coffee in hand.
It was making his skin itch.
Giving into temptation, he jogged quickly outside to look up and down the street, letting out a huff of frustration when he couldn't see her in either direction. Melendez stalked back inside in frustration, letting out a small growl as he thumped the iPad down on the desk. Turning on his heel as he buttoned his coat up, he threw out a hand to catch the attention of the woman working the desk. "When Dr Browne gets in, send her up to my office immediately", he snapped at Nurse Fryday as he stomped out to his other two residents in the corridor. "First thing, I don't care what her reason is."
His underlings were both wise enough to keep up and their mouths closed as Melendez quickly ran through the days tasks, brandishing patient files at them like a Roman Emperor giving seals of office as he snuck one last glance at the entrance doors.
"Kalu, make sure the girl's family doesn't get in the way today, she doesn't need any more hassling over her decisions", he ordered, before turning to Shaun who was staring at him like he was a mildly interesting museum specimen. "Murphy, you're watching your people skills again. It should be fairly hard to screw up talking a 74 year old man through a standard skin cancer check, but don't start waffling about possible outcomes for different types of cancers."
They both nodded, a little reproachfully on Jared's part, before taking off, Shaun looking hesitantly over his shoulder at Melendez as he and Jared began a low conversation that definitely included the phrase 'nails in his bed this morning'. Probably congratulating Claire for not being there and not having to weather what had been not-so-secretly dubbed his 'bitch hedgehog mood'.
Insubordinate underlings.
He did vaguely register that he was being a bit unfair, but banished the thought from his head as he stomped off toward the elevators, unable to stop the hopeful reflex of looking back towards the doors.
The boys reappeared outside his office before too long had passed, and he allowed himself a private groan, letting his head fall to the desk before picking himself up, and rearranging his face to a look of bored irritation before haughtily summoning them in.
The plan for the morning's most important surgery, an emergency lung resection on a child with cystic fibrosis was long and complicated, made more difficult by the child's barely stabilized condition from multiple injuries, and his grief stricken mother's clouded judgement. It was the kind of case where even the bedside manner had to be carefully thought through before physically seeing the patient, and with residents in tow, the planning was even more crucial.
He quizzed them on several aspects of both the case, the surgery, and patient/family dynamics, pleased and a little proud when Shaun held his own, and volunteering to defer to Melendez when speaking to the mother, speaking to the roof as he surmised the woman would likely be most comfortable hearing about the procedure from the most senior member of the team. Jared, more comfortable with small children than both of them threw out a couple of suggestion on how the boy could be made as comfortable as possible to keep him calm before re-entering the theatre, that Melendez nodded along with in approval.
Wrapping the discussion up, doing his best to ignore the little voice that was marching up and down his cortices yelling 'Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire, CLAIRE, Claire, Claire, Claire, CLAIREEEEEE, with a bloody accompanying drum, he was about to boot them both out to give himself a final moment of peace before the rest of the morning kicked in when someone hammered heavy handedly at the door.
Annoyed, he barked out his permission to let them enter, screwing up his Face Of Wrath so whoever was at the door would just know that this morning wasn't the time or place and to just go away, only to stop short at the sight in front of him.
Not alone in his amazement, Jared's head snapped up twice, in a dramatic double take while Shaun stared at her with comically widening eyes like he was seeing a double-headed alien in a horror film as she slunk further into the room, arms laced tightly across her chest.
Claire's scrubs were soaking wet, the navy fabric turned almost black from it's drenching, clinging to every rise of muscle or curve on her body. There was a bruise on her temple, her hands were scraped and there were bits of gravel clinging the fabric over her knees. And most notably, almost every inch of her was coated in a fine spray of blaring, shining, glitter; a veritable kaleidoscope of colour. It was obnoxiously and maliciously beautiful.
The look on her face was mutinous, as she glared venomously at her shoes without speaking. Water was slowly rolling off the dark fabric, dripping with a miserable little plop onto the carpet as she stood there shivering and covered in goose bumps.
No one said anything.
Refusing to allow his eyes to settle on where the navy fabric was molding around Claire's body, Melendez hastily cleared his throat and pushed his chair backwards, reaching out an utterly useless helping hand before thinking better of it, and stepping backwards in perplexion. What the hell? What did one even do in a situation like this. Thankfully, he caught himself before he started walking around his desk to stand in front of her even more uselessly, only to end up staring at where vivid green glitter was outlining the end of her collarbone.
"Would you like me to find you a towel?", Jared hesitantly offered, stretching out a hand like he was trying to calm a rampaging animal. She nodded, still glaring lividly at the carpet as Jared backed sideways out of the room, before having second thoughts and pulling Shaun out of the potential blast zone as well, fleeing to safety.
If it was done as some kind of living art decoration, it would have looked fantastic. Her head was shining, water droplets heavy with gold as they continued to slide off the end of her ringlets, the glue-heavy clumps of glitter wrapped around the curls like someone had gleefully gone overboard with tinsel on a Christmas tree. One side of her shirt was splattered with the same shocking green that outlined her collarbones, the other looked like someone had come at it with a paintbrush full of white and silver glitter. The short sleeves of her scrub shirt showed where multi-coloured bursts of violently pink and purple streaks had been smeared in elegant, finger shaped sweeps up and down her arms, which she had clearly (and futilely) tried to scrub away. The rest of her clothing was a spot-fire mess of every other colour under the sun, the sodden clothing clearly having no effect on the glitter's staying power. If her eyes hadn't been attempting to set the carpet alight beneath her, it would have been absolutely beautiful. To Melendez, trying to take in the sparkling mess before him without being alternately worried and inappropriately breathless, it was anyway.
The room now empty bar the two of them, Melendez resolutely kept his eyes from wandering down the damp, sparkling trails of glitter snaking down his resident's body while Claire continued to stare just as resolutely at the floor. Eventually, she let out a little sniffle, smearing more glitter across her face as she reached up to rub her nose and he all but leapt to offer her a tissue, relieved to have something bordering on useful he could finally do to help.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?", he enquired delicately, using partially-buried social skills (sub category – possibly upset female, not work related) to try and work out what the hell had happened. When she didn't say anything, he tried again, switching to a statement.
"You look like you could use a chair, sit down", he prodded. She blew out a breath and shook her head, but finally looked up at him, face still screwed up in discontent.
"No thanks", she muttered. "I'll just get crap all over it too. I've already tracked it all over the floors and the carpet".
Oh.
He took a quick look at the floor, then the path from the doorway to the patch of floor where Claire was standing, and sent up a quick thanks that he was a surgeon and not a cleaner. Thanks to his sister's childhood glee of using glitter in all forms of artwork, not limited to paper he did in fact know that it was easier to clean up fecal matter, blood and bits of flesh from an emergency room bay than it was to get glitter out of carpet, and he mentally delegated the task of informing the cleaners to the receptionist at the end of the hall.
They only stood there awkwardly for another minute until Jared reappeared with the proffered towels, and Claire finally started to unwind a bit as she wrapped one towel around her shoulders, and put the other directly over her head, huffing out a sigh heavy enough to make the thick fabric flutter. Jared dithered in the doorway, before offering to get a head start on prepping the OR, backing out with relief as Melendez nodded his consent.
Still unsure how to help, he perched on the edge of his desk and watched as she wrapped her hair up in one towel, rubbing her head vigorously before doing that thing that girls can do when they make it into a twisty hat. No longer sopping wet, she scrubbed the second towel up and down her body, squeezing water out of the dark fabric before she draped the clean side of the towel on the edge of the chair and sat down gingerly.
He cleared his throat, and tried again. "So what happened?"
Thankfully, she no longer looked like she was about to cry, just limp and bedraggled and colourfully miserable as she looked back down at the floor.
"It was just a stupid thing", she muttered in the direction of his shoes. "I walked from the station today, and I didn't realise it was Muck Up Day for the high schools in the city. Got caught by a bunch of year 12's on the street."
Ah yes, okay, this was starting to make sense.
"And they glitter bombed you", he said, to get a clear confirmation. "The bruises?"
She nodded, still not looking him the eyes as she stood up and backed away from him. "They tripped me as I tried to run away", she said flatly. "Dumped buckets of water over me. I got done twice before they let me up. Hit one of them in the groin with my water bottle."
He closed his eyes for moment and breathed slowly through his nose at the thought of Claire on ground, struggling on the ground as a bunch of dickheads laughed and pelted her with micro plastics. He made a mental note to check which high schools were in the area, see if a stern phone call from the local hospital wouldn't get a few jocks into trouble on both ends, if Claire had already made one regret not wearing a cup to school. He'd seen the water bottle she was talking about. Solid stainless steel, a good choice for braining asshole teenagers.
"Sorry", she said, still addressing the hems of his pants, "I didn't mean to be late. Give me a minute to wash up and I'll meet you in surgery."
Honestly. He'd spent his entire morning snapping at his other two residents in worry over the fact that Claire wasn't here, now she was here, looking as miserable as he'd ever seen her, apologizing to the floor over something she didn't need to apologise for and all he wanted was to send her to the on-call rooms for a sleep. And also possibly to join her, he thought with a wince.
Only one thing for it.
Stepping forward, he touched her shoulder gently, giving the slightest shake to get her to look up at him and actually meet his eye, before opening his other arm out in invitation and holding it there.
Her eyes flitted up to his for a moment, checking he was serious before she took hesitant step forward, wrapping her arms around him as lightly as possible like she was trying not to get glitter on him. Huffing, he pulled her firmly into the hug, wrapping his arms around her smaller frame as she gave up on politeness and hugged him back like she meant it, tucking her head into his shoulder as she laughed on exhale, held tightly against his chest. He allowed himself a single moment to let his head fall so his lips were pressing into the crook of her body where neck met shoulder, before turning to tuck her wet head under his chin, closing his eyes as he clung to her.
When he finally, and reluctantly let her go, she looked almost entirely back to her usual self, just significantly more decorated than usual. He was still a little mesmerised by the glitter, she was positively… Shiny.
Oh. Hmmm. Time to subtly rearrange his lower body, it would seem. Damn it, he was at work, this was not the bloody time or place.
Thankfully, he had more control over his autonomous body parts than all of his residents combined, which was a bit sad, and telling himself to calm down in a stern voice actually worked. One of the perks of having an iron sense of will power, he thought wryly, before visibly grimacing as he forced himself back to the situation at hand.
Ugh. Time to be a boss again. God being a boss to unfairly attractive residents was irritating.
"Hit the showers Dr Browne, and meet me in OR 4 in thirty minutes", he gently ordered, making a concentrated effort not to sound as though he was ready to call someone to cover today's work so he could take her home and pull her into his shower. "Get what you can out of your hair and then just net it and wrap it for the rest of your shift." He nodded in the direction of the door, trying to subtly dismiss her without coming across as rude.
Clearly, he managed it a little too well, given that the smile she gave him as she backed out was enough to send him edging behind stack of files on the edge of his desk, giving her a reluctant smirk in return as the colourful mess on legs disappeared from his office.
He waited until she had closed the door, leaving to go clean up before he stripped off his shirt, tugging the fabric gingerly over his head and letting it fall on the floor before yanking out a fresh one from his bottom drawer, still clean and sterile in packaging. Kicking the contaminated shirt into the corner, so it wouldn't look quite so much like he'd had a quick and dirty fling in his office when someone inevitably barged in to talk to him about something, he looked at himself quickly in the reflective glass of the bookshelf and winced. He looked like he'd been kissing Tinkerbelle. He was going to have to be imposingly grumpy and god-like to his staff for weeks before anyone respected him ever again, if they saw him and connected his glittery lips and sparkling five o'clock shadow to Claire.
Hustling now, he descended to the lower floors and marched in to the patient's room, leaving Jared and Shaun scrambling as he swept through an elegant and pleasingly soothing explanation of the procedure to both patient and mother. He left both residents in the dust as he strode haughtily out of the private room, letting them half run behind him to catch up, even with Jared's unfairly long legs, while signaling to the orderlies to move the patient in for theatre. Firmly booting the mental picture of Claire scrubbing glitter off herself in the shower out of his mind until his arse hit his bed tonight, he barked out orders to the theatre staff and did a quick appraisal of the necessary equipment before denoting Shaun as his second – "you'll swap with Kalu for the oophorectomy later today" – grounding himself for the concentration necessary for the complex procedure. Gown on, gloved up, and glasses in position, his concentration firmly in place Melendez reached for the scalpel decisively, sending half an eye to note the vitals on screen before tracing out the cut, fully in the zone.
And if either of his male residents had noticed him scouring the lower half of his face and his chest to remove tiny particles of dangerously beautiful foreign material as he scrubbed in and gowned up, they both had the sense not to say anything, though Jared had clearly forgotten that scrub masks did not hide dancing eyebrows and crinkling laugh lines.
God damn it.
AN - Thank you for reading! I'd love to know whether you liked it or not, if you have time to drop me a review. Otherwise, sparkle on friends, and practice safe glittering.