I need more people to pat me on the back for writing so im reposting on here lit rally just go to my ao3 thats where all my actually ok fics go lol also the italics are fucking gone and im too lazy to put them back in lol so i guess u dont know when im emphasizing but u would know if you go to ao3 anyway so. yeah.
Cristina was snapping at the nurses, again.
Don't get her wrong, Emma appreciated that she cared enough to boss them around and bully them into getting four blankets and six pillows. But then again, this was probably just her true nature—ordering people what to do and giving them scary death glares.
Emma was just happy to be on the giving side of it.
"Really, go home. I'll be fine."
Cristina glared at her suspiciously. "If you were fine, you'd be at home, right now. The least I can do is make sure you have everything you need."
Okay, so maybe she had a point, but she'd done more than enough already. Cristina was the best friend she could've asked for—she held her at all the right times and been invaluable for Emma during the past month. But even she could see how tired she was getting, how the bags under her eyes kept drooping lower and lower. "It's late, visiting hours ended ages ago, and you had to threaten the nurses to let you stay. Go home."
A spark of stubbornness lit in her eyes, as she muttered, "Threaten is a strong word."
Emma laughed. "What would you call telling someone that you're a fancy pants lawyer who can demolish them at any notice? You even brought Kieran into this, Tina. You've been avoiding him and his family for a week."
Her friend relented somewhat, but only by a bit. "Not avoiding him. Just, not being there at the same time he was. And I didn't have to do that today," she said, and if Emma didn't know better, she'd say it sounded almost sheepish.
"How else did you manage to stay here? Tina—"
"One of the nurses may or may not be Mark's brother."
"Woah, really? Sweetie, you have connections everywhere." Partly due to one of her boyfriends, Kieran, who happened to be a pretty big socialite and the CEO of a huge company, but also, apparently, to Mark, who's brother was a nurse. At this hospital. Put that on top of Cristina being a big scary lawyer, and she made quite a formidable force.
Emma didn't know how she got lucky enough to know her. She didn't have much of a reference point, since she was an only child, but she was certain that this was the bond that siblings had, and she always felt comforted knowing that her big sister had her back.
It was also nice that Cristina let her live in her apartment while she went off with her boyfriends.
"I'll be fine. Go get some sleep, and come back tomorrow. Tina, I love you, and I would die for you in a heartbeat, but I need to sleep and if I see that you're still here when I wake up, not even hot boyfriend's brother can stop me from fucking you up."
She didn't leave for another quarter hour, and only after making sure she had enough blankets and pillows and that Beary Potter was by her side, a bottle of water on the table next to her and the tv remote in reaching distance. "Good night," she said, kissing Emma's forehead. She turned around to leave.
"Love you!" Emma shouted at a closing door, and now her room was empty. Which meant that she was watching Spongebob to sleep.
Emma used to be perfectly healthy, but when she was eight she had a lung infection, and a chunk of it had to be removed. Which really sucked, because she had plans to be a gymnast and she was good at it, but a mostly whole set of lungs added with asthma was just too much for her parents to freak out at the prospect of her doing flips.
That didn't mean Emma stopped doing them, it just meant that it took longer for her to learn by herself.
And then her parents died, anyway, and she was sent to live with Cristina's mom. Ms Rosales was getting lonely after her only daughter left for university, and who else to remedy this other than a twelve year old with a lung condition?
Fast forward seven years, and she finds out that she has a tumor in her good lung, which might be her bad lung now. It's benign, but growing, which made it a problem. Especially since she couldn't afford to lose the other one. And then the pneumonia.
Her lungs really couldn't get any worse, could it.
So now she's hospitalized and watching Spongebob ramble about Squidward, the only relatable character in the entire series, for countless hours on end. Buried under a mountain of blankets and wrapped around Beary like a spiderweb over its victims, except she was the one going to sleep.
Emma woke up to blinding light and the sound of curtains being drawn. She groaned and turned her head, putting one of her many pillows over her eyes. "Tina, I told you that if you were here in the morning, I would castrate you." She threw a pillow—or maybe it was Beary?—in the general direction of the noise.
"It's not, actually." A cheerful, very male, voice replied. "Morning, that is. You've somehow managed to sleep until two, and I figured that someone had to step in."
Emma sat up immediately, before wincing at her muscles' complaints. It took a while for her eyes to adjust, but when they finally did, she narrowed in on a guy next to the window and the tray of food on the table between them.
As her eyes focused more, she started taking note of more of his features. Lean figure, chocolate curls the same shade as the pudding next to her, (which she immediately grabbed, of course). He had a confident pose, as tall and straight. "You seem awfully young to be a nurse."
"I am," and ugh, why was his voice so cheery. "I'm new to the job. My name's Julian, you're one of my first assigned. Your friend called, by the way. Said she wouldn't be able to make it for the next two days. Work."
She slumped back down into her mattress. Hospitals had to be the most boring place on Earth, and without Cristina, she had very little source of entertainment. Additionally, someone really had to knock the brightness out of this guy—it was beginning to hurt. She took another spoon of pudding before responding. "Fight me."
"Pardon?"
"You heard what I said. You come into my room, open my curtains, bring me pudding, wake me up. So fight me."
He moved away from the light, stepping around Beary—whoops, sorry buddy—and made it much easier for Emma to look at him without a headache. He had really nice eyes—a sort of greenish blue that reminded her of the ocean. She used to love the beach, but wasn't allowed to go after her lungs got screwed, and Ms Rosales lived pretty far away from the coast anyway.
"Sorry about that, but two isn't a respectable time to wake."
"Then you should have let me sleep in longer. Six would've been a perfectly acceptable time to wake." Emma grumbled, scraping out the last of the pudding. Her tray also had toast and eggs, fruit salad and apple juice, and she swapped her empty cup for the fruit, eating only the raspberries. The apple juice was good, too.
She squinted, deciding she was bored, and waved to the empty chair. "Talk about something."
"About what?" he said, taking the seat.
Emma glared. "Anything. Tell me about yourself. I'm bored."
"Okay."
It didn't take long for Emma to finish drinking her juice, but she liked hearing people talk so she let him ramble on. He mostly spoke about his siblings, which was sweet, she supposed. From what she heard, he had a little army of them. Two older ones named Helen and Mark, and four younger, called Livvy and Ty, who were twins, and Dru and Tavvy.
"Mark?" Emma asked. "As in, Mark Blackthorn? As in, hot boyfriend? You're the brother?"
Julian smiled. "Your friend can be scary when she wants to be. I suspect she knows this." Emma only groaned.
She can't remember the amount of times she's complained to Cristina about her romantic life—or lack thereof. Really, Cameron was never meant to last, and that cute girl at the coffee shop isn't even gay, from her careful investigation. And it was a running joke that she'd date whoever Cristina was dating's best friend or sibling. Someone up there must have it out for Emma, because what are the chances that her best friend's boyfriend's brother just happened to be her nurse? (And that he was maybe a little cute).
She was interrupted from her wallowing by a question. "You should really eat," Julian, the perpetrator, the traitor of her life said. She shook her head.
"I ate like half of it." And she did. Pudding, raspberries and juice were technically three things. She just didn't care for anything heavier.
He frowned, and she noticed he had slight freckles. "You haven't eaten all day. Aren't you hungry?"
Emma stuck her tongue out. "You woke me up less than twenty minutes ago."
"Why won't you eat?"
It was a direct question, and Emma didn't want to make up a reason. "The food smells like hospital."
"Then why did you eat the pudding?"
"I like chocolate. And raspberries."
Julian didn't look as if he liked the answer, but he accepted it. "Fair enough."
The conversation ceased for a moment, until Emma asked, "How old is 'young for a nurse?'"
Julian smiled. "Twenty-one," he laughed at Emma's gawking.
"I'm turning twenty two months later," she said. "You're a year older than me, and you're a nurse?"
"I graduated fast."
"Sure, okay." A small beeping sound came from somewhere, and Julian took out a small something or other.
"Sorry, break's over and I'm being paged." He smiled apologetically, before getting up.
Emma waved away the words, before pausing for a moment. "Could you throw me the bear?" She gestured to Beary Potter, who was lying face down where he was thrown.
Julian bent over to pick him up from his sad, sunny spot on the ground and handed him over. Emma hugged him, sinking below into her mountain of blankets and pillows once more. "What's their name?"
Emma hmmed, before realizing he was talking about the bear. "Oh," she flushed, suddenly feeling embarrassed. "Beary Potter." He grinned as he took her tray and headed to the door.
"My name's Emma," she called out, and he paused, looking back at her.
"I know," he said, and yeah, of course he knew. He was her nurse. But that wasn't the point of introducing herself.
"Pretend you didn't."
"Okay." He smiled, and wow he smiled a lot. But that was okay—he had a nice smile. Like sunshine and rainbows and all disgustingly good things. "Nice to meet you, Emma."
"Nice to meet you, too."
The next day, when she woke up, she found a tray of her breakfast with an extra cup of pudding.
The third day, Cristina showed up again, in the night time, looking exhausted and carrying a huge stack full of paperwork. Emma winced in sympathy.
"Tina, you look dead on your feet. Sleep."
Her friend groaned, and Emma could see how tempted she was at the offer. "No, thanks. I need to get this done by tomorrow."
Emma rolled her eyes. When Cristina said "tomorrow," she really meant two days later. She was always putting deadlines two days before, which has served her well in university, but was now making her do her work all in one go and driving both her—and Emma—insane.
She wriggled to one side of the bed, leaving a place vacant. Queen played on her speaker, and Emma was watching the Spiderman cartoon with subtitles and no sound, but she couldn't focus with Cristina looking like a zombie. "Come. Sleep."
She glared at Emma. "I can't."
"But Tina—" Emma whined. "I'm cold, and I don't want another blanket," she cut her off. "Come here and cuddle with me."
Cristina looked reluctant, but she often looked reluctant when she wasn't exuding confidence or certainty. It was always one or the other, no in between. She finally made her way into Emma's bed, and settled into the mounds of blankets. "The mattress is uncomfortable. I should tell them to find you a better bed."
"No."
Ten minutes later, Cristina was softly snoring with Emma tucked into her side, hugging Beary and listening to "Love of my Life" play quietly with her eyes closed. She heard some steps and the door creaking open, opening one eye to see, but the door quickly closed and she didn't want to wake up her sleeping friend.
When she woke up, it was light outside and Cristina was gone, replaced by a sticky note.
Emma read it quickly—just a short message that she didn't want to wake her up, that she loves her, and she'll be back later. She stuck it on the wall above the headboard of her bed.
The door opened, followed by a way too bright voice for an early morning. "Good morning! I see you woke up on your own."
Emma groaned. "Fight me," she said before even turning around to face the speaker. Julian, back with breakfast. He set the tray on her table, before opening the curtains. Emma, being who she was, immediately went for the pudding.
"Sorry I couldn't get you extra today, we're running out of stock. Also, you should really get in the habit of turning the TV off before you sleep."
Emma glared at him, but continued to shovel the pudding down her face. "I'm serious, fight me. I can take you. I'm a highly trained assassin sent here to disguise myself as a patient and waiting for the moment you let your guard down, mister. I'll win."
"Maybe so, but clearly you aren't that good in the spy department of assassination if you're so willing to give away information," He replied smoothly.
"I'm not without honour. I won't kill a man unarmed—so arm yourself, fool."
"I would be more foolish to arm myself only to get killed rather than refuse and leave you either unable to harm me or depleted of your morals."
"I will throw my breakfast at you." She figured she could spare the limp looking bacon.
He paused for a moment, looking at her, and Emma shifted uncomfortably. "You really should eat, you know."
If her hands weren't occupied, she would crossed her arms. "I am eating. Or, drinking. I'm absorbing nutrients." His eyes crinkled as he smiled.
Julian sat on the bed, and Emma nearly jumped. She looked at him quizzically. "I'm checking your vitals," he said, grabbing the clipboard attached to her bed. He fiddled with the paper, and looked back and forth between it and the monitor for a while. "Well, you're not dead, so at least that seems about right."
She squinted at him. "Are you sure? I kinda feel dead. I'd feel a lot better if you let me fight you."
Julian hummed. "Are you feeling any pain? Any discomfort?"
"Just the indistinguishable itch to throw these hands." Her lungs felt a bit sore, but she didn't think he had to know that since it was barely there.
"Anything I can do for you?"
Emma stared at him. "I think you know the answer to that." Julian stared right back, and they only had the match for a couple seconds, but Emma started giggling. She felt a bit self-conscious, considering that she giggled, hard, but Julian just smiled again like he was amused.
It really was a nice smile.
"Okay, then. I'll leave you to eat." He made the move to get off the bed, and Emma suddenly felt—well, she didn't know how she felt. It was the emotional equivalent of sticking one's tongue out, really.
"Can't you stay? I'm going to be alone all day, and I get bored." She wasn't sulking. She wasn't.
To his credit, Julian looked sorry for it. "I have rounds to do."
"You're leaving me by my lonesome. You owe me. Tonight, nine o'clock. In the parking lot. I'm gonna fuck—sorry, mess you up."
"I'll ask my mom if I'm allowed." He made his way to leave, and Emma suddenly hated how she realized that her last words with people were always them leaving her room and her calling behind them.
"At nine, tonight, we duel!"
At eight thirty he showed back up in her room with an armful of blankets. "Not in the parking lot yet, I see."
Emma huffed, ignoring her achy throat. "Just getting ready to kick your sorry ass." The bastard grinned, setting them down on the edge of her mattress. "Please don't tell me that Cristina threatened to sue a nurse over tax evasion for more blankets."
"Nope. Just changing them." That was good. Although technically, Emma could leave her bed, she really didn't care enough to. She always was at home, in her bed, when she wasn't seeking thrill or excitement in the city. In the hospital, though, she mainly didn't leave because of the people. For one, even though her pneumonia was mostly better by now and they were just waiting the final stages out before prepping for surgery, it was still contagious, so she was confined to her room. There wasn't many places to be in her room other than her bed, so that's where she stayed.
The sheets were changed every week, but blankets were a bit more irregular. Fresh blankets were welcomed with open arms.
She helped him gather up all six of her old ones and quickly settled into the new one. It felt heated.
"This doesn't let you off the hook for fighting me. I'm not going to go easy on you just because you brought me blankets."
"I know."
Julian didn't make a motion to move, although she imagined that he still had some work left to do. "Don't you have more patients?" Emma asked, buried in her blanket.
He shook his head. "You're the last one on my rotation."
"You should sit on the bed, then."
"Okay."
There was a pause. Then, "Do you know when they're planning on doing the surgery?"
Julian grimaced slightly. "I'm not really allowed to say. Your doctor will come talk to you about it soon enough. Once the pneumonia fully goes away, which hopefully will be soon, it should be good to go."
"Alright," Emma pulled on a strand of her hair. It felt like there was a frog at the back of her throat. While it'd been slightly uncomfortable before, it was prominent now and hurting like a bitch. "Can I fight you before that?"
"No."
"Goddamnit, Jules, fight me—"
The frog seemed to start jumping around, or maybe it was made of knives, because Emma started hacking and coughing uncontrollably. It hurt, as if she was trying to cough up razor blades. "Emma?" Julian sounded like he was in another room, as he grabbed her arms. Emma just kept coughing.
She doubled over, leaning off the bed and towards the ground as she coughed. Julian caught her, keeping her hunched and holding her up. She could hear him say something, but couldn't pay attention to it as her lungs seized.
She coughed something out, and Emma half thought that it really was a frog before she got a look.
Unless frogs were red and disgusting, she was gonna go ahead and assume that it wasn't a frog.
She felt Julian grasp her more tightly as the door opened again and somebody else came in. She tried to say that she was fine, that somehow the pressure in her lungs and throat was slightly relieved now that the frog was out. She could breathe again, which was always a good sign.
"Slow breaths, Emma. Come on." The figure she now recognized as Dr Connell said. She took a raggedy breath in, the air only getting caught slightly, and had a wet exhale coming out.
"I'm fine," she said, and winced at it. Her voice sounded hoarse even to herself, and it felt like the insides of her throat had been scrubbed raw with salt. "It feels better now."
"That's good. That was just some mucus and blood. There must've been a mucus build up in your lungs, which isn't good, but it's not the end of the world. It does mean that your pneumonia hasn't gone away and might've worsened slightly. We're going to up your antibiotics for now, is that okay?"
She nodded, reaching blindly for the table where there was a bottle of water. It burned, slightly, when it was going down, but the soothing effects made it much better.
"Okay. Don't worry about this. We'll just make sure to keep a closer watch on you for a while. Everything should be fine, things just might take a little more time than we thought." There was a small fuss of cleaning and getting her settled down again, but soon, Dr Connell had left and Julian was alone in her room again.
"Don't you have anything better to be doing?" Her voice sounded rawed.
"Nope." Julian seemed slightly anxious, but he was sitting on her bed and she was too tired to think too much about it. "I'll keep an eye on you for a while. My shift ends in four hours, and it's a slow night, anyway."
"Okay." Emma's eyes were drooping, and she didn't feel like fighting sleep. "Aren't you tired?"
He smiled softly. Emma decided, in her tired state, that it was the best sight in the world. The eighth wonder. It was soft and sweet and warm.
"Nurses are allowed to take naps through the shifts and breaks if they're on double-shifts, as long as we're done our work and not needed. If something comes up, they'll page me."
"Then you should sleep. I can make room if you want."
Julian hesitated, and Emma could've sworn he sputtered. "That would be a bit unprofessional of me. And you should sleep on your side, or propped up. It'll help you breathe."
Emma turned slightly to the side and felt her airways clear a little. "Huh. Thanks." Emma's words were starting to slur with sleep.
"No problem."
"Hey, Jules? Why won't you fight me?"
There was a bit of silence, with Emma too tired to speak and Julian not knowing what to say.
"I'm not going to fight you because I know you're going to win."
Emma smiled and went to sleep.
When Emma woke up to a sound at the door, Julian was leaning into the chair and dozing off. She only had just enough time to turn around and making the shushing motion at Cristina as she walked in, and in surprise, found that her chair was taken.
Her friend, thankfully, got the memo, but once she sat down next to her, Emma's ears were hurting from all of the harsh whispers she was giving her.
"Emma!" She hissed, swatting her shoulder. "Why is Mark's brother asleep in your room?"
Emma rubbed her shoulder, shooting her a pointed look. "Had a moment yesterday, needed to keep an eye on me. His shift must've ended so I guess he accidentally fell asleep."
"What if he tried to take advantage of you while you were asleep? Then I'd have to kill him, of course, but what if Mark sides with him and not us, so then I'd have to kill him too, and then once Kieran got word of this, I could have to kill him as well! Those are three murders that could've easily been prevented by not doing whatever you did!"
"Please, Julian could barely hurt a fly. Plus, he gives me extra pudding." Emma swung an arm around Cristina, and kissed her temple. "Thank you for murdering my hypothetical attacker, though."
"You're very welcome."
They sat like that, propped up against the headboard, Emma's head on Cristina's shoulder. It was the position they'd taken many times before, since Emma was twelve and Cristina eighteen. Back then, they hadn't been extremely close. Cristina scared Emma, Cristina didn't quite know what to do with someone so young. They became closer as they got older, as six years apart didn't mean twelve and eighteen but nineteen and twenty five.
Cristina wrapped an arm around Emma's torso, and they cuddled. Or maybe hugged. Emma couldn't quite tell. It was pleasant, and warm.
"Are you okay?" Cristina whispered, and Emma nodded. "What happened yesterday?"
"The pneumonia got worse for a while, I guess. I think it's better now. I feel a lot better, anyway."
"What about the surgery?" Leave it to Cristina to pinpoint all the causes of Emma's anxieties.
Emma sunk in deeper into Cristina's hold, squeezing tightly. "Oh, honey," she murmured, kissing the top of her head then resting her chin there.
"It's fine. It's just going to be delayed for now, I think."
"That's good, isn't it? Everything's fine. In a couple months, you won't even remember any of this."
"But why is it taking so long? Pneumonia shouldn't take this long. All the times I had it before, it took two or three weeks at most. We're coming in at four, now. How much longer until I get to go home?" Emma hated it. Absolutely despised it. Even worse was how her eyes were stinging, because Emma hated to cry.
Cristina brought her closer. "You'll be fine. It won't take that long for the surgery to happen. And then, you just have the recovery period and then it's all done. You'll be home in time for the next school semester, too. You could be out of this hospital in two weeks!"
"I just want to go home."
"I know, honey. I know."
They stayed entangled together for a bit longer, before Emma sniffed. "I should probably wake Julian up before breakfast gets here."
"First name basis, are we?"
"Aren't we technically siblings-in-law?" Emma wasn't sure if it worked that way. Cristina, her sister, had two boyfriends, whom she might as well be married to, (even though Cristina was avoiding Kieran because of his family arriving,) and one of their brothers is Julian. Mark is her brother-in-law, and Julian is Mark's brother, so does that mean they are siblings-in-law?
Emma could see Cristina go through the same thought process, and pouted. "Well, that's no excuse." Emma stuck her tongue out.
"Tina, you should wake him up."
Her friend looked scandalised. "Me? Why me? You know him better!"
"I'm confined to my bed whereas you are free to roam. Wake him up."
"Liar," she muttered, as she hesitantly got out of bed. Emma grinned smugly at her as she tapped Julian's shoulder once slightly, then again more insistently. "Um, you should wake up now. Breakfast should be coming soon. So yeah, wake up." Emma snickered at her tone—if only because Cristina rarely sounded so uncertain.
Julian shot up, looking disoriented and confused. Cristina looked just as lost and out of place, and Emma was smothering her laugh as she waved. "Good morning," she said cheerfully. "If I'd known you'd fall asleep, I would've offered to share the bed."
Julian's face was red, which only made it all even more amusing. Cristina still looked unsure of the situation. "You did," he muttered. "I declined."
Emma raised her eyebrow. "Then I do suppose it's all your fault that you're gonna have the worst crick in your neck today."
If it were possible, Julian blushed harder. "Maybe so," he mumbled.
It was too much. Just, the sight of Julian embarrassed and Cristina looking like a fish out of water the way she so rarely does—Emma laughed. Really, really hard. She laughed while another nurse came in with her food, pausing just long enough to wonder what Julian was doing in there before deciding that as long as Emma was fine with it, she didn't want to know. She giggled when the nurse headed out, and even harder when Julian muttered, "Hi, Sarah," abashedly.
Emma was nearly crying tears of laughter—and okay, it wasn't that funny, but she has had shitty entertainment for nearly a month now, and the more she laughed, the redder Julian got, and the angrier that Cristina became.
She was fairly certain that Cristina was ready to chop her head off.
When the laughter finally died down, Emma gestured Cristina over to sit next to her as she opened up her cup of pudding. Cristina wriggled around her, hugging in a way that might've looked strange or awkward but was actually very comfortable. She relaxed into the hold. "Shouldn't you be home? How much did you sleep last night?"
Julian flushed—it didn't seem like that was going to stop anytime soon. "I'm sorry about that, by the way. I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"Don't be," Emma said at the same time that Cristina said, "Good."
"My next shift isn't until tomorrow," Julian said, fiddling with the hem of his nurse shirt. "I'll be fine."
"Good. Then you can keep me company." Emma was in a cheerful mood now, for some reason, despite the whole beginning of a breakdown to Cristina. Maybe it was just that she had grown so accustomed to boredom lately, that having two people visit her was unthinkable. She was joyfully spooning back her pudding, as Cristina grabbed a piece of toast from the plate and took a bite.
"Bleh. Smells like hospital." She made a face.
"Right?" She said, grinning at Julian. "Don't eat the raspberries."
"Why? Are they bad?" Cristina said, eyeing the fruits with distrust.
"No," Emma said, picking out the raspberries from the fruit. She dropped them into the pudding, seeing Cristina's nose crinkle from the corner of her eyes. "They're just mine."
Julian smiled slightly. "If you want, I can probably sneak you more," he offered, but Emma waved it off.
"You should sit. Or get me chocolate. But mainly you should sit."
Cristina sighed. "I need coffee. I'm going to get coffee. I didn't bring any today because I don't have work to do, so I didn't think I'd need it. But knowing you, I can't believe I thought any différent."
"Tina! I'm hurt! There's a cafe on the outskirts of the hospital. Sneak me some food." Emma winked at her.
Cristina mimicked tipping her hat to her. "Do you want anything?" She asked Julian.
"Just a coffee, thanks. Black." Cristina slipped out with the orders.
Emma immediately turned to Julian. "Coffee for breakfast? Shame on you."
He shrugged. "I don't have much time for breakfast unless I'm with my siblings. My schedule's always messed up because of work, anyway."
Emma made a show of making a big gasp and putting a hand on her chest. "You don't eat breakfast, and yet you get on my case about icky hospital food? I'm hurt. I'm affronted. Who would've thought that Julian Blackthorn is a hypocrite?" He smiled weakly at her, somewhat sheepishly.
"How are you feeling?" Julian asked, surprising Emma as she sipped her juice. "Does anything hurt at all?"
"Nope. I think I'm fine. How about you?"
He smiled crookedly, one side of his mouth lifting up more than the other. "I'm fantastic."
"Well, that's good."
"It is."
"You should still get some more sleep, though." Emma poked at him from under the blankets with her foot. "What if you're doing something really important and then you just conk out right in the middle of it and when you wake up something bad happened and you'll be like, 'Damnit, I knew I should've listened to Emma.' And then you'll come find me, sobbing, saying, 'You were right, I'm sorry.' And then I'll be like, 'Go to bed,' and you'll say, 'Yes Ma'am,' because you would not have me incur my wrath upon you."
"Ma'am? You're a ma'am now? I think you have to at least be able to round up to thirty to be a ma'am." Julian said.
"I'm twenty!" Emma protested. "Ish. This isn't fair, you're a year older than me."
"Exactly my point. You're more 'little girl' than 'ma'am.' Maybe you qualify as a miss." His eyes were glittering, like how the ocean gets slightly silver in the sunlight.
"Go to sleep or I'll throw Beary Potter at you."
"I'll go home after twenty minutes, and I can sleep then."
"Fine."
"Fine."
And then Cristina, being the hero that she is, came back. Two coffees, and a slice of chocolate cake, set down on Emma's lap.
"Cristina, I would die for you. I would take a bullet for you any day of the goddamn week, just ask me to be there and I will—"
"Just eat your cake, Carstairs." Emma beamed.
She finished the cake in record time, with Julian looking amused, and Cristina somewhat worried, pestering him about whether she should even be allowed to eat this much sweets.
"Relax, it can't be that bad. Besides, consider it your apology for not letting me go to the beach." Emma said around the cake in her mouth.
"That's because you were too sick to go to the beach!"
"Tsk tsk, no excuse."
It seemed far too soon when either of them had to leave, but Emma all but kicked Julian out when she saw how red his eyes were, and Cristina could put off her work to watch cheesy royal christmas movies only for so long.
It was a week later when Emma got the news. She'd had to go into an X-ray and get a blood test on her kidneys and liver as soon as the pneumonia was almost completely broken.
The tumor had grown even more. Still not cancerous, but still dangerous.
They were removing it two days later.
Emma was ecstatic.
Finally, she could go home.
The next night was the night before the surgery.
When Julian came into the room with blankets in tow, he crept around in a way that meant he thought that Emma was asleep. And, well, she didn't give him a reason to think otherwise. For a while she just lay there, completely silent, completely still. She couldn't hear him move, for a while, so he figured that he was debating whether to change the blankets or not, so she decided to take pity.
"Hi."
"Hey." Julian edged closer, putting the blankets down in the corner of the bed. "How're you feeling?"
"Okay." And she was. She was. It was just, she didn't think that she would feel anything other than relief when she heard about the surgery. Over and done, then she can go home. She didn't think she'd feel—whatever this was. Doubt, maybe? Like the atoms in her body were becoming frazzled at the edges and were about to combust into even smaller particles.
"Are you sure?" His voice sounded so soft, like he was walking on velvet.
"No."
He sat down next to her, and she felt the bed shift as it adjusted to his weight. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay."
They didn't talk about it, but only for a while.
"You know," Julian started, with a hesitant tone, "It's perfectly normal to feel a bit nervous before a big surgery. Even scared."
She shot up. "I'm not scared. I don't get scared."
He put his hands up in the sign of surrender. "Never said you were."
They lapsed into silence again, but then Emma suddenly threw herself onto him, wrapping her arms around his torso. She could feel him tense up, and she was about to peel herself off and apologize, but he relaxed into it and placed a hand on her back.
"I'm sorry," she muttered into his leg anyway.
"That's okay."
"Apparently there's a small chance that something in the surgery could go wrong. I could die or something, I guess. I don't really want to die."
"I don't think you will."
"But what if I do."
"The surgery will probably go fine. The mortality rate is low, Emma."
"But what if something happens?"
"Then you'll fight it. And you'll win." His thumb was rubbing soothing circles on her shoulder blade, making her shiver. "You can already beat me in a fight anyday. Some weird cells can't take you." She just hugged him tighter.
"I really am sorry about this," Emma said, but not loosening her grip on him.
"Don't be."
"But I am. I'm sorry you have to deal with all of this," she said, waving her hand above, gesturing at all of her.
"I like all of this," he said, gesturing at all of her. "This is the best part of my day."
"Then your life must be really sad," Emma noted, "to like having to look at a wall and be bored out of your mind all day."
"Or maybe I'm just really happy," Julian contradicted. "It's not boring—I have you to talk to."
"I'm pretty boring."
"I don't think so."
There really wasn't a way to express how the silence lapsed between them from time to time. They both knew that there was something they needed to say, and yet they both somehow individually came to the conclusion that it didn't matter enough to break the quiet. It could wait for another time.
It was like they were two trees, spindling out of a forest, and their leaves just barely shied away from touching each other, growing around to leave some space where they could both meet, but only when the wind was strong enough. Other times, they were simply happy to have that small layer of air, like a second skin, hugging both of them at the same time like a warm embrace.
Emma didn't think there would ever be a way to accurately describe silence. Silence alone was actually not quite silent at all, but rather deafening. It made it easier to hear her own thoughts, as well, which somehow made it both even more silent and more deafening. But silence with Julian felt easy. Like a held breath let go, or a whistle, or a hum.
"Do you have to go?" Emma asked. It was the only thing worth breaking the stillness for—whether he would be able to spare a few more moments. She didn't care to be alone at the moment, and she didn't want the quiet silence to become loud.
"I can stay if you want." Julian said. His hand migrated slightly upwards from her back, and he fiddled with a strand of her hair.
She closed her eyes. "Maybe just for a little while."
"Okay." Emma could feel her hair being pushed around, the softness of his touches. Between her arms, his breathing seemed to slow, maybe hitching.
"Jules?" She said, cracking open her eyes for a moment and reaching out to touch his cheeks. His lashes seemed impossibly long from her angle, and her fingertips just slightly touched his hair. Chocolate curls, she remembered. And eyes like the ocean.
"You should take me to the beach when this is all over." Emma finally settled on, hand fluttering back down into his lap.
"I'd love to." His reply was soft—everything about him was soft, gentle, sweet.
"Because my birthday's coming up soon," she said, eyes slipping closed again.
"I remember." His thumb traced the back of her neck, entangled in her hair.
"And I haven't gone in years."
"I know."
"And your eyes remember me of the water." She paused, before rambling on. "The place where the blue water just starts to melt into greenish turquoise, and the light shines on them just right. It's unfair—you can't just remind me of the ocean and then not take me."
She felt him exhale fully before responding. "I will, I promise."
"They're my two favourite things, you know? In the world. Chocolate and the ocean. Like your hair and your eyes. And when you smile." She beamed brightly, albeit lazily. She couldn't see him, but she could feel him. "I think I'm going to sleep now."
"Okay."
The soft touches didn't stop, and Emma sighed into it. She felt warm, and safe, although there was never a danger to begin with. It was the way she sometimes felt with Cristina—as if the danger was simply life itself, and being with her made her feel as if a pair of eyes she didn't know was watching her had vanished.
"Jules?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
Emma wasn't as calm as she'd have liked going into to the surgery. She kept fretting and worrying at her blanket, trying to collect her frazzled edges.
"You'll be fine," Julian said to her, before he had to leave to do his work. She pretended not to notice, but she saw him chewing on his lips and biting at his nails.
Cristina was there, ready to support her through it all. She was going to stay the entire time, which Emma really insisted wasn't necessary, that phones existed for a reason and the surgery would take hours, but Cristina was formidable as it was.
After a brief overview of what exactly was going to happen, Emma was wheeled away into the operatic room. A mask was put on her face, and she could hear Dr Connell telling her to count down from a hundred.
"100….99….98…."
She didn't even reach seventy when she was knocked out.
Julian wasn't there when she woke up, but Cristina was, lightly dozing at the chair by her bed in the way she'd grown much accustomed to. It was such a familiar sight that Emma nearly thought it was just another day.
And then she felt the bandages bulking around her chest and torso.
She jerked fully awake, causing Cristina to wake, too, and touch her shoulders. "Hey there, sleepy. Don't worry, everything's fine. Dr Connell should be coming in some time to check up on you. He'll explain everything."
"Thanks," Emma said. Her voice was hoarse again, and scraped. Cristina turned on the tv, flipping over to cartoons, and prodded her hand into Emma's.
It was not so soon, when Dr Connell showed up, nearing their fourth bugs bunny episode. She walked into the room with a smile, which eased Emma up slightly. "Just gonna check your vitals for a minute, hon," she said, as she reached for the clipboard and examined far more devices than she was used to having by her bed.
"How did it go?" Emma asked. Dr Connell smiled down at her, and thank God because she wasted no time in reassuring both Emma and Cristina that everything went to plan.
"Everything went ideally. We'll keep you on the IV for just a while longer, and get you some lighter foods. Some moderate observation and check-ups for now, but it'll get lighter with time. If all goes well, you should be back home in two weeks at the very most. You are now tumour-free."
Cristina threw herself on Emma, smothering the breath out of her, but Emma could only laugh. She had never wanted to go home so badly, ever in her life. It didn't feel quite real; there was no way that Emma could be finally going home. But it was fine, and the surgery went fine, and she was going home.
Emma would deny it until she died that she hadn't made a few suspiciously wet sniffles.
Dr Connell excused herself and left the two girls on the bed, hugging and laughing. Emma was bouncing so violently that she was practically vibrating at the prospect of going home, of wearing her own clothes.
They stayed in that exact position for a very long time.
Julian showed up after Cristina had left, looking a mix between worried, sheepish and apologetic.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be there. I had to take care of something."
Emma smiled. "That's okay."
"Does anything hurt? Do you need anything?" He looked so unsure of what to do that it melted her heart. It was times like this when it struck her how young he was. A year older than her, and taking care of sick people. She was sure that he looked steady and confident to everyone else, but to her, he looked like a kid in baby blue pajamas. It was endearing.
"Just for you to sit," she said, flicking her hand at the spot on her bed next to her. They were in the position they always seemed to be—Julian, sitting at the foot of the bed, body turned slightly to the side. Emma, slightly propped up against the headboard with the help of a ridiculous number of pillows, wrapped snug underneath a mountain of blankets, holding Beary in her lap.
"You know," Emma started. "This will be one of the last times I'll tell you to sit on the bed."
One side of Julian's lips quirked, into a grin. "What if I like it like this? Why can't I sit on the bed every once in a while?"
"You can sit on my bed whenever you want, but it's going to be my bed."
He smiled, brightly as the day she first met him. "That's a very fair point."
Emma hummed. Another pause, then, "Jules?"
"Emma?"
"Today's a good day."
"Yeah, it is."
"You should hug me."
"Okay."
"Tell me about yourself. I barely know you," Emma said, curled up into Julian.
"I think you know more about me than you think." Julian was fiddling with her hair again, twirling it between his fingers.
"But that's still not enough," Emma scowled. "Tell me everything about you. Not your siblings, just you."
Julian paused for a moment. "I don't think there's enough for me to talk about myself. I'm a bit boring."
"Bullshit," Emma said, gently shoving his shoulder. "If you tell me something about yourself, then I'll tell you something about me. We can have a tradeoff."
"But what if I already know everything about you?" Julian asked, and Emma raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'll think of something. Just talk."
Julian, for some reason, insisted that he was an artist, and Emma refused to believe him.
On a sticky note, he drew her a rose, a la Beauty and the Beast, on a glass platter and hopefully preserved forever.
He said he wished he had paint, that when he painted was when his art really came to life.
She told him that it was beautiful as it was.
When she tried to give it back to him and he was about to crumple it to throw away, she looked personally affronted, and stuck the note next to Cristina's, on the wall above her bed.
And then she kissed his cheek, and they talked some more.
"Julian?"
"Yes?"
"Shouldn't you be working?"
"My shift ended three hours ago."
"But you came here three hours ago."
"Yeah."
When Emma was asleep, her head on Julian's shoulder and body curled instinctively towards him, she didn't know that Julian was still playing with her hair. Or that her hand placed gently on his hip made his heart skip beats, and the other one resting on his shoulder sometimes bumped into his neck, jawline or hair. She didn't know that while she was turned towards him, that he was also leaning into her.
She also didn't know when he placed a feather-light kiss on her forehead.
A week and a half later, she was discharged.
Her lungs would never be able to hold up to the same standards as others, but they were healthy.
She was home.
ONE MONTH LATER
"Cristina, what's the point of coming to the beach if you're not going to swim?"
"I didn't want to come to the beach in the first place," she said, which they both knew was a lie. "I don't even have a swimsuit."
"Well, neither do I. You can go swimming in shorts and a t-shirt."
Cristina scowled. "I don't care too much for water."
"Tina—" Emma dragged her name out for as long as she could, tugging on her friend's arm.
Cristina grumbled, "You're a child," until Mark lifted her up from the ground, carrying her bridal style and running towards the water as she shrieked.
Emma had met Mark and Kieran, whom Cristina had now forgiven for daring to having a family so strange, almost immediately after the discharge. Once they got the whole, "You hurt her, I hurt you," talks aside, they had gotten along fairly well.
With Mark came his siblings, of course. Cristina had already met them all twice before, but it was Emma's first time. It was somewhat chaotic—Tavvy, the youngest, had appeared to take a strong liking to Cristina before, and so did Dru, which resulted in her friend shooting pleading looks to her while trying to get a moment alone with her boyfriends.
Emma gave her a shit-eating grin and shrugged her shoulders.
In a turn of events, the cute girl at the coffee shop did, in fact, turn out to be gay. Just much too old for her, and wearing a part of a matching set of wedding rings. With Helen Blackthorn.
Cristina had shambled into laughter when Emma swatted her arm, hissing, "That's the girl! The one at the coffee shop! What the fuck—"
And at Julian's quizzical looks, she laughed harder, and Emma kicked her shins.
Emma had never seen Julian act so fatherly before, rushing around to get everyone settled. Actually no, she had. How else could she explain how caring he was to everyone, how sweet and gentle. How he finally stepped in on the pitiful sight of Cristina entertaining his two youngest siblings and directed their attention elsewhere.
It was a side of Julian that she really grew to love, whenever he was with his siblings. He was protective and caring and had so much love for them it melted her. Even on the beach, reminding them to wear sunscreen, Setting up a shady spot for Ty, making sure that he was okay alone or that he was with someone so that Livvy could get in the water for a while, too.
She stepped towards him. He hadn't gone into the water, yet, and was wearing dry clothes. Emma, on the other hand, was soaking wet.
"Hugs!" She yelled, before throwing herself onto Julian, collapsing into his arms.
"Emma," he huffed, holding her up and getting wet in the process.
She blinked up at him innocently. "Not my fault you weren't getting in the water quick enough." She pulled away and looked out at the beach, where Cristina was on Kieran's shoulders and Livvy on Mark's, and they were having a wrestle match of a sort, with Helen and Aline cheering the teams on. Dru and Tavvy were building some sort of sand structure, and Ty was going back and forth between reading his book and watching the match unfold. "We should go join them. By we, I mean you. I already have joined them. Now it's you."
"But—"
"Whatever you were going to say, shut up," Emma said, grabbing his hand and dragging him into the water. It was an inviting cold, like the cold of waking up after a particularly strange dream. As if things finally make sense, and the cold is proof of that.
As soon as she got herself deep enough, she plunged her head under, emerging back up freshly dripping. Julian, for all of his previous complaints, seemed pretty compliant to her will. He was smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he looked at her. She felt like right now, in that one beach in Los Angeles, surrounded by the biggest family she had ever seen, they were absorbing the radiance of the sun. Soaking up the sea water in their blood. Storing all of it inside, so they could revisit this any time they wanted to.
The theory was definitely tested and approved by how blue Julian's eyes were—they were somehow becoming more piercing, brighter, a mirror of the ocean. And his hair sprung in adorable wet curls.
She was so caught up in the moment, that she almost didn't register the splash of water at her face. She sputtered, whipping around to face the perpetrator, only to see Julian grinning.
"Fight me?"
Emma smiled wickedly. Oh, it is on. "I've been waiting so long for this moment."
They chased one another, slowed down by the water and laughing as they tripped, and Emma jumping on Julian's back, tackling him down, breaking apart only to chase each other again and splashing the other like children.
Soon enough, the entire family had joined in. Ty was yelling commentary from the sand as everyone ganged up on each other, unconsciously making teams but also opponents. Emma's main target, however, was Julian—even if she did help Cristina dunk Kieran a couple times.
They were both panting, tired out but not wanting to stop, when Emma finally got him down once and for all. She crashed into him, and they both toppled over before she grabbed Julian's arm and holsted him upwards.
"I hate you," Julian said, coughing. She might've felt guilty for it, if she didn't see how he was already scheming to get back at her.
She beamed. "No, you don't. You love me. And I did tell you that I would win."
He tried to give her a glare. "And I never said you wouldn't."
She took a step closer to him, feeling the radiance of his heat in the air between him, through the wet clothes that cling to him. She kissed his cheek, tiptoeing slightly to reach it. "Thanks for bringing me here."
"I wanted to." He smiled at her, resting his hands on her arms.
"Still. I'm really happy right now, Jules. So thank you."
There was a pause. Then, "My father used to call me Jules."
Emma's heart beat faster. "I'm sorry, I didn't know—"
"No, that's okay," he said, smiling sweetly at her. "I like hearing you say it."
She moved into his arms. "Jules. Jules." She fit her head into the crook of his neck, whispering onto his skin. "Julian, Julian, Julian." She paused, her hands just drifting on his back.
"Emma," he said, letting his body droop like a sigh to fit with hers.
"Thank you. Really. For everything."
"You don't have to—"
"I've been trying to for so long, and you've waved it off each time. So let me have this. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
There was a short, breathless moment when they just looked at each other, and then they were kissing, and there was salt on his lips, and Emma thinks she could've felt him smiling through it. It was everything that he was—soft, slow, sweet, gentle. She moved her hands up to rest on his neck, his curls wrapping around her fingers. His hands held her hips, holding her and keeping her steady, as they both slowly ran out of air above water.
When they finally broke away, breathing hard and smiling, Emma saw his eyes glitter. Like a thousand mirrors were reflecting the sunlight off in every direction. He was smiling, soft and slow and gentle and sweet, and Emma moved closer to him, feeling the warmth of his skin cut through the cold of the ocean.
Julian's fingertips just barely touched her cheeks as he studied her the same way she was studying him. His face seemed as if he was concentrating very hard on memorizing every detail, but he didn't stop smiling. She thought she was smiling, too.
Finally, the silence was broken with a whisper.
"Happy Birthday, Emma."