CH 15

Mindy stared down on a still sleeping Danny. In repose he looked much younger. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, chin resting on an arm propped on her knee. It was a position she'd been in for at least ten minutes. When she'd awoke, she'd been facing him, their bodies aligned head to toe. Her chest had been pressed up against his, her face nestled into the hollow of his neck.

He was still on his side, one arm tucked under the pillow resting against his cheek, the other thrown out in front of him, fingers splayed against the coverlet. This was yet another side of Danny she was seeing for the first time. Sure, she'd seen him asleep before, in the lounge while on call, but even then there'd been a guarded expression on his face, as if his body knew it could be jerked awake at any moment. Now it was like watching a child sleep.

In the moments after she'd roused from her sleep, she hadn't been able to form coherent thoughts. A delicious warmth had surrounded her, and she'd burrowed into it briefly before realizing its source. When she'd remembered that it was Danny dozing next to her, a flood of self-consciousness swept over her. She knew she looked a mess. No makeup. Her hair was a rat's nest. The wrinkled scrubs bunching in all the wrong places.

She'd carefully slipped out of Danny's embrace. He'd still been sleeping heavily, even faintly snoring a bit still. Just when she'd been about to rise from the bed and head to the bathroom, she'd glanced down at him. Here she was, ten minutes later, still looking.

There was something so familiar about the way he looked right now. She was sure she'd never seen him like this, but an odd sense of awareness permeated her. Before, she'd perceived two Danny Castellanos. One was the impossibly arrogant, impossibly cocky, man's man that drove her insane. The other was the sweating neurotic mess that sometimes needed her for moral support.

It hadn't been until their date-that-wasn't-a-date that she'd begun to see him for who he might really be. Being presented with yet another facet of his personality overwhelmed her. He grunted in his sleep and rolled over onto his back. She could see his whole face now, and it suddenly occurred to her where she'd seen him like this before.

This was the relaxed expression he wore on his face right before he became aware of her presence. She'd seen it countless times and not even comprehended it. Those times she had just barged into his office, words already pouring from her mouth and he would look up at her, for the tiniest of moments, with this expression, before a mask settled down over it.

Did she do that to him? She felt a little bit guilty. Their relationship was prickly at times, but she'd always thought she was reacting to the way he behaved, not the other way around. She frowned.

She laid her hand on the coverlet beside his, timidly brushing the tips of his fingers. The slight touch sent a shiver up her arm. She was so engrossed in staring at his hand that she nearly squeaked in surprise when he moved it to grasp hers.

She looked up at his face. The relaxed expression was still there, the upward curve of his lips brightening it. She felt a flutter in her stomach and cleared her throat. "Danny." She felt so strange right now. It was as though she were missing some integral part of her brain that distinguished dreams from reality. "I'm sorry."

The slight smile on his face disappeared and was replaced by a look of mild puzzlement. He sat up in the bed, propping himself up against her headboard, still not breaking the hold on her hand. "As much as I love to hear those words coming from you, along with 'you're right,' I have no idea what you're apologizing for." His thumb traced lazy patterns across the back of her hand.

She searched her mind, trying to figure out the right way to phrase it. "Sometimes I'm unnecessarily mean to you." She squeezed his hand. "Don't get me wrong, there are times when you're totally asking for it." She smiled. "But, most of the time it's just this knee jerk reaction I have, and you don't deserve it."

He laughed. "We do fight like middle school kids sometimes." He reached up with his free hand and playfully yanked on a length of hair falling over her shoulder.

She nodded. "That's exactly it, for me anyway. When I'm around you, I feel like I did when I was thirteen." She scooted closer to him, leaning back against the headboard too. They were side by side, hands entwined, each one staring intently ahead into the mirror on the dresser in front of the bed. She looked at his reflection. "Suddenly, I'm this tubby little Indian girl using her wit to make sure the cute popular boy knows that it doesn't matter if he doesn't like her, launching a preemptive strike." She looked away from his reflection. Admitting insecurity was something she did not do. "I didn't even realize I was doing it to you."

Danny's heart was in his throat. The soft feel of her palm pressed up against his filled his thoughts. He turned his face to her. "You think I don't like you?" Genuine concern wiped the puzzled expression from his face.

She cast him a shrewd look. "Don't pretend you didn't beg Shulman not to hire me." She smirked at him when his mouth fell open. "He told me on my first day. Something about 'changing the carefully cultivated tone' of the office."

Danny shifted uncomfortably beside her. This was the perfect opportunity to broach the subject of their relationship. He could tell her that he'd begged Shulman not to hire her because he was afraid of her gregarious personality. He'd been daunted by her sunshine and rainbows. He'd always sort of had a raincloud disposition, and he knew people would gravitate toward her. He'd been afraid of being pushed aside.

But there she'd been, pulling him reluctantly into the middle of everything she did. He could never quite regain that storm cloud hovering over him. As much as he wanted to grump about making paper snowflakes for the office party or stopping for pastries on his morning run, there was always a part of him filled with warmth when he realized she'd thought of him.

"Hey, what was I supposed to expect? You showed up for your interview in a neon yellow dress with tiny little bears on it." He squeezed her hand. "I should have known better though, I'd seen you in the delivery room before. To be honest, I'd always been jealous of the rapport you have with patients."

Mindy pursed her lips and looked at him thoughtfully. "I don't know, Castellano, you seemed pretty ticked off sometimes, and over things that were so intrinsically me." She tilted her head toward him. "Like when I brought my armoire into the office. We had a thirty minute argument about its practicality."

"Now that you mention it, my irritation with you may have had a less than innocent cause." He lifted her hand to his lips and laid a gentle kiss on the back of it. "I like curvy Indian girls, and it drives me crazy when they insist on dating other people, especially when they do it so often that it becomes necessary to bring half of their wardrobe to the office. You could fit Narnia in there." That was probably the closest he would get to telling her what he felt.

He searched her face for a reaction. How was it so quiet? Traffic noises floated up from the street, the distinct clamor of people coming home for the evening, before they got ready to head out again. He could hear his own heartbeat thumping away, his slightly rattling breath landed harshly on his ears. He cleared his throat. She smiled and he let out a breath.

"Narnia, Danny? You've seen that movie too? What a surprise you are." She reached the hand not holding his across her body and squeezed his upper arm. "You can totally be my new movie buddy."

He laughed. "No, not the movie. The book. Elena gave it to me when I was a kid, for Christmas or something." Her eyes were sparkling. She was messing with him. He sighed. "Yes, I've seen the movie too. I'm kind of surprised you've seen it. It's not exactly a rom/com."

She was so close to him. He could smell the faint leftover perfume she'd put on hours ago, combined with the flowery scent of whatever laundry soap she used. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. "Are you kidding me? James McAvoy plays Mr. Tumnus. Although, I couldn't really drool over him as a half-goat thing."

She yawned and reflexively arched against him. "God, I'm still tired, but I have to take a shower. I'm completely disgusting right now." She made no move to push away from him.

He released her hand and put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in closer. "I don't know, Lahiri, you still smell like flowers, and your scrubs don't even have blood on them. I don't think you've quite made it to disgusting." He took her chin in his hand and lifted her face up to his. He started to kiss her gently, but before his lips could make contact with hers he felt her hand slide up his neck. Her fingers plucked tenderly at his ear, searching for a handhold.

The punch of desire that shot through erased all thoughts of gentle kisses and he hungrily captured her lips with his. She slipped her other arm up around his neck and pressed her chest up against his, almost climbing into his lap.

Danny grunted in displeasure when she leaned back and withdrew her hands, but when they flew to the edge of his scrub top and began impatiently tugging at it, he was quick to help her out. Tearing at each other's clothing like hormonal teenagers, Danny pulled her top up over her head, her hair crackling with static electricity when it came off.

She laughed at the hairs floating away from her and patted them down. "Oh, god I must look a hot mess."

He reached forward and plunged his hand into her locks. "The hottest mess I've ever seen." He pulled her to him again and kissed her soundly. His hands wandering from her hair down her back, stopping briefly at the hook of her bra, unfastening it.

For a moment, the normally bold and brash woman in front of him looked a bit unsure of herself. It took Danny by surprise. He lifted his hand to her face and brushed away an unruly lock of hair. "You are so beautiful." He had meant the words to simply be reassuring for her, but they'd come with a hushed sense of awe.

A slow smile spread across her face. She shrugged off the lingerie and tossed it to the floor, reaching out to him. His arms encircled her and pushed her down into the bed. He relished the feel of her skin against his, slowly reaching down to slip off her pants. He hooked a thumb underneath the elastic and drew them down, surprised by the smooth feel of bare skin. "Commando, Mindy, really?" He quickly yanked the garment and tossed it to the floor with her top.

She laughed. "I didn't have time. You saw how tight that dress was. I was obviously not wearing them before we got to the hospital."

Reminded once again of the date she had been on earlier, Danny growled a little and locked her in a kiss once again. She gasped against him and ran her hands down his back, slipping underneath the elastic of his scrubs. She pulled out of his kiss, leaving a trail of nips along his jaw line, stopping by his ear. "Looks like you didn't forget yours. Why don't you get rid of them now?"

Danny pulled back and divested himself completely. The teasing expression in her eyes faded away and left only the intent gaze of longing. She reached out for him. "Dan—". Cutting her off, he was swiftly on top of her once again, this time nudging apart her legs with his knee, trailing hot kisses down her neck.

His hands travelled across her body, momentarily stopping for a caress here and a squeeze there, jumping from place to place, as though he couldn't decide where he wanted them to be. He wanted to feel every bit of her, all at once. Finally resting at the place they'd wanted to be all along. Cupping her gently he laid a few gentle kisses on her breasts and began to suck gently.

She sighed and arched against the hand between her legs. He took it as an invitation and slipped inside of her, hot and slick against his hand. He lifted his lips from her skin and peered at her face. Her eyes were closed, and her expression slightly contorted with pleasure.

Feeling the absence of his lips, her eyes flew open. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She grasped his shoulders and pulled his face to hers. He could have kissed her, but instead pressed his forehead against hers, continuing to stroke. She let out little pants, hot breath surging out against his mouth.

Danny could feel it. He could see it. The quickening pulse at her throat, the increasing pace of her breathing, even the slight glow caused by her heart pumping blood out to her extremities. The inarticulate noises, ghosts of words, issuing from her mouth begged him. "P-please.."

Her plea disintegrated his last remaining degree of patience. He buried himself in her, crushing his lips against hers, devouring her gasps. Her hips rose to meet his and her legs wrapped around him, urging him forward. The feel of the soft skin of her inner thighs against his hips only intensified the pleasure Danny felt with every sigh and whimper he elicited. The gently rocking quickened, climbing to a frenzied pace.

She let a strangled cry as her hands dug into his shoulders. Her legs at his hips clenched around him as he plunged into her again and again. Then, just as he knew it would, the pleasure crashed into him like a wave, and he was drowning.

He stilled, resting atop her, putting most of his wait on his forearms arms. Their heavy breathing the only sound in the room. Their chests bumped with each deep inhalation. She raised her hands to his face, place one on each cheek, staring at him in wonderment. "Danny." She said his name as if she'd never said it before.

He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her softly. When he withdrew, she was still looking at him strangely. The dimly lit room was getting darker with the onset of evening. She smiled broadly. "I KNEW you were obsessed with me." The words she'd said so many times before didn't quite carry the same acerbic tone they usually held.

He slipped one arm beneath her and rolled onto his back, carrying her with him. "Yeah? So what else is new?" He pulled her in closer and she rested her head on his chest.