Brothers Raising Brothers

Dinner was nice. Mindy had prepared all the American essentials, padded by the dishes brought by her guests. It was a quintessentially warm Thanksgiving event. Mindy had finally pulled it off: an office event in her apartment that didn't end in rows of tequila shots or tears.

Progress was made this evening in the little things. Danny felt overly alert at first, and then, as the evening went on and the table was cleared, he relaxed. Sitting around Mindy's dining room table overwhelmed Danny with a real, tangible feeling of thankfulness.

He was grateful to have these colleagues. Nothing sappier than gratitude, but still a firm feeling of appreciation.

Whiskey on the rocks, this gratitude, and his upbringing forced Danny into the kitchen to fill Mindy's sink with water and wash dishes.

Grapefruit scented dish soap, he noticed. Sometimes it was little things, little personal, mundane things about Mindy that Danny liked to know. Maybe it was because he'd never know them if he didn't go to her house, and going to her house meant that they were more than just two doctors who co-owned a practice.

Things like Mindy coming up to Danny while he was washing dishes, resting her hand on his shoulder, and thanking him in bewilderment – almost mockingly – for cleaning up, were the reasons Danny liked being around her so much. She made him feel like his presence was noticed and wanted.

It was also her ease: her willingness to naturally herd everyone into the living room and to suggest they take things into the night and watch a movie. Jeremy and Betsy both passed on the movie, but Morgan immediately sat in front of Mindy's DVD collection, riffling through the wicker baskets of plastic cases.

Mindy was already sitting on her couch, glancing back at Danny still in the kitchen. She called over to him: "You going to come hang out or what?"

Yeah, he was. Danny wiped his hands on a red heart printed tea towel.

So that was how he spent his Thanksgiving. Watching National Lampoon's Thanksgiving Family Reunion with Mindy and Morgan, nearly falling asleep opposite of Mindy on her couch.

.

Progress continued from there. Danny found himself willing to go beyond his comfort zone, to experiment in the parameters of what he could get away with and still be platonic. He didn't measure this in a physical sense; getting too grabby felt, to Danny, a little invasive. He didn't want to be some creepy frisker.

Instead, Danny did little gestures; things that he figured would go unnoticed. He was wrong, though. Danny didn't know that he was wrong at the time, but one evening in the doctor's lounge, Danny's acts of kindness were finally addressed by Mindy.

Danny had paid for her lunch on more than one occasion, but Mindy had reciprocated. So how was that out of the ordinary? Danny had told her she looked nice while she changed for a date in the office, frantically trying to hide a run she had just gotten in a pair of sheer pantyhose. He'd coolly kept up to date with Mindy's three date arch of a relationship with some realtor, assuring her that, when it ended, she was better off. He'd accepted the phone number of the cute barista at the coffee shop that he and Mindy frequented in afternoon, right in front of Mindy. She'd high-fived (though perhaps with slightly forced enthusiasm, riddled with insincerity?) him for scoring the digits of a total babe and they went about their day like the friends that they were.

Danny never called the woman, throwing out the napkin with her name and number on it immediately.

They spent a good handful of evenings together at the hospital, sort of rehashing surgeries or deliveries and asking one another for opinions or advice. They'd watched The Royal Tenenbaums together in the doctor's lounge, both admitting that they weren't totally sure if they really got Wes Anderson films.

"Like, they kind of all look the same, don't they?" Mindy had asked, comfortably sprawled out on the couch. "I just feel like everyone always dresses up as Margot and Richie for Halloween and it's just kind of like, yeah, I get it: you watch 'indie' movies with the Wilson brothers. Cool, man."

.

One evening in the doctor's lounge, Danny acted on impulse, making his romantic inclination toward Mindy extremely clear. He'd shown his feelings physically and irrevocably, and Danny worried about it for days after he'd done it.

He'd been in the doctor's lounge again, eating an apple, laying on his back, and reading a newspaper from a few days prior. It was late, likely around one or two in the morning. Both Danny and Mindy had taken to always, always using the same doctor's lounge, knowing that they'd meet one another in there at least once a shift.

At least, Danny had assumed that Mindy kept purposely using that lounge. He thought that she must have preferred being in his company rather than being alone, or with other staff members in different rooms or on different wards.

Mindy came into the lounge with her beeper in her hand. To get a snack, she'd told him.

Danny nodded at this, continuing to read his newspaper. Mindy went over to the vending machine and bought a Nature Valley, circling over to the couch to sit next to him. She sat on the opposite end of the couch and, in what felt to Danny as a comfortable, intimate gesture, lifted his outstretched feet onto her lap.

There were certain things that Mindy did that made Danny run cold. He was an adult man, previously married, and relatively sexually active, but still, little things done by a woman with whom too much intimacy felt forbidden and beyond their relationship, made him feel nervous. He got inside his own head too much; he was barely listening to her describe how she was biding time before a patient was ready to begin pushing. As juvenile as it was, all Danny could really focus on and look at was Mindy's bare arm draped over his ankles, peeling back the cellophane wrapper on her granola bar.

And, just as he couldn't articulate to Richie when his feelings for Mindy really began, he wouldn't be able to articulate when or how he decided to sit up from that couch just then, scoot over to her, slip his arm around her waist and pull her into him.

Danny hadn't necessarily meant to kiss her quite so hard, but he had. For a moment, his entire body felt frigid, waiting in suspended time for her to respond or pull away. It was just a second, this waiting, but Danny felt his beat what felt like a thousand times.

Thank god her reaction had been to kiss him back. It was just that brief hesitancy, and then the two surged together, each snaking their arms around one another haphazardly. Danny had no idea what he was doing or how he was going to explain this, but he truly didn't care about it for those few minutes that he and Mindy were pressed against one another.

It was only after Mindy's pager went off and she sputtered that her patient was ready to deliver that Danny began to feel the dread of explanation sneak up on him. Mindy looked at the antiquated device in her hand, completely thrown off. She looked up at Danny, totally mystified, and told him, like he had no idea what a beeping pager meant.

Wordlessly, Danny nodded, lifting his hand to gesture to the door. Mindy raced out, her scrubs slightly twisted on her body from the firm grip Danny had just had on her.

Easing back into a regular sitting position on the couch, Danny just stared at the door. He stretched his arms out across the back of the couch as though what had just happened had physically exhausted him.

It had, I guess. His adrenaline was pumping and he absolutely no clue what he would say to Mindy when he saw her next.

Absolutely no idea.

Tbc