Addison rests her free hand on the back of a chair outside the hospital. The day's been wild, intense.
"At least sit in the shade, you're pale and will burn." Addison's lips part, and she tilts her head to the side, taking in her companion's appearance briefly.
"You're just as pale." A smirk plays at the edge of the woman's mouth, despite her not looking up from her work, penning something quickly upon a line.
"I'm Italian. The sun submits to me, not the other way around." Addison can only shake her head, wetting her bottom lip with her tongue before scraping her teeth over it. She shouldn't feel so awkward, she's already let the woman fuck her brains out.
"Addison Montgomery. Neonatal surgery."
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance properly, Doctor Montgomery." She flips her page back again, slowly, and Addison's transfixed on her fingers. She can almost still feel them digging into her hips from the day before. "I was getting worried about you, when I didn't receive a page." And then she looks up, and Addison's resolve weakens for a moment. "About the triplets, of course." Her gaze is gray, darker than storm clouds, swirling as though the eye of that very storm.
"There's been a lot of… drama today. A lot of history between this… place and I." Addison admits, dropping her glasses to her nose as an excuse to look away, drawing her department files from her bag.
"So I've heard." She finally answers, and the two of them sit in silence for a while, Addison watching from over the edge of her glasses. She understands the name, finally. With unparalleled focus between paperwork and in the operating theater, Doctor Reyes hardly seems to breathe across from her, much less be a living human being. "You're called Satan on my floor."
"I prefer the ruler of all that is evil." Addison pauses, a quote from so long ago sticking to her tongue. "Though I do answer to Satan. Occasionally." Her companion smiles at that, and Addison can't help but count that as a win, though the victory is small.
"So, ruler of all that is Evil. What may I do for you today?" She lays down her pen, crossing her arms over her paperwork. Addison looks up, her mouth suddenly dry. It's unfair for someone to be quite so attractive.
"I… wanted to apologize. For-"
"Let me stop you there." She holds up a hand, interjecting. "An apology seems highly unnecessary. I don't make a habit of putting myself in situations I don't have an interest in being a part of." The corner of the anesthesiologist's mouth is tilted upward, and Addison can't keep herself from watching her, transfixed. The other woman is fighting a smile too, her eyes sparkling with mischief as they match gazes across the table. She flushes, and looks away as she crosses her legs beneath the table.
"You're called a cyborg. It just doesn't seem accurate to me." She adds an afterthought. "I don't have anything else to call you."
"Ah." Papers rustle, and she's back to her work. "Intimidation tactics. I hate interns, I work them hard or someone's patient will die. We all have a front we wear, that makes it appear as things don't bother nor faze us." Addison doesn't look up, her mind clouded with the intoxicating feeling of hands on her waist, guiding her back down from her high as she shakes with pleasure. They're gentle, soft. Full of feeling. The farthest thing from robotic. They're the same hands that she can't help but desire on her again, and again, and again. The same hands that cradled an infant as he came down from an analgesic high beside her in NICU. She swallows. "Cyborg is only accurate so far as the suite is concerned." There's no way she can know what's going through her mind, Addison thinks. Yet it's as though she does, her tone softening. "You didn't seem to have any complaints."
"None." The word escapes her lips alongside her breath as though a pressured force.
"Too rough?" She's tonguing the words carefully, quietly, completely motionless. The way she sits at her machines. Puzzling through it.
"No." Addison's face turns red.
"Did I push you too hard?"
"Also no." Of course not, though the bruising on her back is uncomfortable, it'll pass. And she wants it again.
"Rule addendum?" Addison's head snaps up, and she finds the woman with one brow raised, quickly turning her attention back down.
"Not… yet."
"Damn." Addison's face heats, hard. If she didn't know better, she'd guess she turned the same shade as her hair. "Not enough, then?" This woman's got her number, and damn well knows it. Addison can't find the words to respond.
And then, with a certain level of infamy, her pager sounds off with its own unique shriek, and her gaze turns steely once more as she turns her eyes to the sky. Addison breathes a sigh of relief, saved by the proverbial bell.
"For the love of-" Doctor Reyes stands, sweeping her documents back into a bag. "It was a pleasure meeting you properly. Truly." She grimaces, rolling her eyes slightly. And then she's gone. Addison sighs softly, when there's hands on her shoulder, lips by her ear. "It's Kaira, by the way. Kaira Reyes. Come up when you have time to talk to me about your… case. I'll be there." The hands squeeze, just hard enough to be felt, and Addison can't suppress her shiver. "And… embarrassment isn't a good look on you. Confidence, Addison. You have nothing to apologize for." Thumbs rub her shoulders, and squeeze again. "I'm right where I want to be."
And then Kaira's gone, for real, back off into the luminescent lighting of the hospital.
It's the middle one, again. Geoffrey. Addison drops her pager into her pocket, and she's back to NICU without so much as a second thought to her discarded lunch. She's barely eaten, hardly slept, and can't get more than a half cup of coffee at a time at this rate. But she can't give up on him. On any of them.
Her pager stops because she hits it, and she's moving, fast. Yet for the first time, she's not the first one there.
Her companion looks up briefly, though without shock, as she wraps herself in protective gear and enters the room anyway, sashaying through three incubators slowly.
"You look like crap." Kaira greets, her voice soft, her arms taken up with a blanket bundle.
"I do not." Addison retorts, and she lifts the third triplet against her shoulder before checking on the middle one. She then squints at herself in the window, acknowledging briefly that she does not, in fact, look great.
"He's sedated." Kaira just continues, using the same tone, repeating out blood pressure and stats, all the while bouncing the fussiest of the three until he's cooing with sleep. Addison can't help but watch the exchange, inserting her hand into the intensive care unit housing their third patient as she listens, registering and responding to information as she receives it.
Kaira's circled around her at some point, in the silence that finally befalls them, and Addison can't resist the sigh that escapes her lips when a hand rubs her forearm, chest pressing into her back. Fingers massage the back of her hand, passing over the insides of her fingers every few strokes. She only stops when the baby grips hard onto her as well, clinging to the place where Kaira's middle finger overlays Addison's fourth.
"His grip's strong." Kaira whispers, and Addison only nods softly. "When's the last time you slept?" Addison tilts her head back, fishing for an answer she ultimately can neither find nor give. "Thought so." Thumb rubs the radial side of her wrist, back and forth, intoxicating. "Let me put them up, and I'll meet you in our place."
"I can-"
"Addison." Kaira's got that voice, the stern one she uses when someone on her floor has pissed her off and she's about to raise hell. "Go upstairs. Lay down. I will come up and check on you and if you are not at least trying to sleep, so help me God."
"Going to make me?" She can feel Kaira's smile against her hair, even if she can't turn enough to see it.
"If that's what it takes, you can bet your ass." The hand covering hers squeezes, and Addison has the strong desire to stay there, to let Kaira hold her. To break her own rules and slip into a long- learned bad habit of falling too hard and too fast. She swallows. "Paperwork-"
"On the charts? I'll fill it out." Squeeze. "I too am a doctor. You need to rest." The infant in Addison's arm shifts slightly, and she feels the one Kaira's holding do the same. "I'll even bring you a copy." Pause. "If you're good."
"If." Addison snorts, and Kaira's laughing softly. Still, she coddles the infant, holding him close to her chest, and can't seem to drag herself away from them. Kaira moves around her, humming a little tune as she lays her charge back into his unit, scooping the third out of Addison's grip with little more fight out of the red head. And Addison goes, because there's a certain level of trust between the two of them, wrapping her arms around herself as though she can keep herself from crumbling apart by sheer force of will alone.