Work Text:
Claire overhears the argument by mistake.
Someone left the door to the locker room ajar, causing the sound of Morgan and Alex’s voices to reach her ears before it should have, and the first few words she manages to make out are intriguing enough that she decides to stay outside to listen.
That’s how she finally gets to know the truth. And directly from Morgan’s mouth, although that’s completely involuntary.
“You told Claire you made the complaint?! Why would you do that?! Wait, no, that’s not— How do you know—”
“I was a cop, for starters, but in this case I only needed to have a brain”, Alex retorts. “Shaun would never even think about it, I didn’t do it, so that only left you as a possibility and to be honest you were the obvious suspect to begin with. It was a stupid move to make, by the way.”
“I did what I thought—”
Claire decides she’s heard enough.
She finally enters the room, slams the door shut behind her, and looks daggers at Morgan without wasting a second.
“I knew it”, she seethes. “I knew it had to be you, before Alex decided to take the blame for some reason I really can’t fathom. It was an asshole move that had your signature written all over it. But just so you know? It was seriously low – even for you.”
“I don’t disagree, but—”
Claire turns to Alex, annoyed at him for trying to mediate this even now. “No. I’m settling this with Morgan and Morgan alone tonight, not with you. We’ll talk about the fact that you lied to me to my face, but later. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you left.”
“As you wish”, he replies, his hands up in surrender. “I was done anyway. Try not to say anything you’ll regret tomorrow, though, alright?”
“I already told you I don’t need your protection”, Claire says through her teeth. “I’m a big girl, I can deal with my problems on my own.”
“Okay. Again, my mistake”, Alex answers calmly. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
He turns around to look back at the tension building up in the room just before he leaves, but Claire pays his no mind. She waits until she hears the door close to march to where Morgan is standing, coming face-to-face with her, and then waits some more to get an explanation that she hasn’t been given yet.
Instead, she’s met with even more silence. Morgan hasn’t said a word since she entered the room.
“Do you find some twisted enjoyment in ruining everything?” she bites out, anger radiating off her in waves. “Is there anything you’re not willing to do to give yourself an advantage?”
“I hardly see how I’m giving myself an advantage in any way”, Morgan replies without missing a beat. “I’ve been mostly working with Lim and Shaun these days, in case you didn’t notice.”
That does give Claire pause.
“Then why?” she pushes, now thoroughly confused. “Why would you have to gain from it?”
Morgan doesn’t answer. Instead, she asks Claire a question of her own. “You do realize he’s our boss, right? Because just in case it didn’t cross your mind yet, well, that’s pretty high on the list of morally iffy things you could possibly get entangled in on your workplace.”
“Why does everyone seem to think there’s something inappropriate going on?!” Claire exclaims, shushing the little voice at the back of her mind reminding her that they kissed once and that maybe she can actually see where they’re all coming from a bit too well. It was just… He was there when she needed someone to be, and she’s not going to deny it made her get a little bit confused about what she’s feeling exactly. But honestly, at the moment, she really just needs a friend.
“If everyone believes there’s something inappropriate going on, don’t you think it shows there’s some truth to it?” Morgan challenges.
“No!” Claire replies, a bit too forcefully, but she’s really done with this conversation that has been completely derailed by now. “And I fail to see how it concerns you in any way!”
Morgan opens her mouth to answer but slams it back shut and glowers at her instead, and it gives Claire the strange feeling that she’s missing the big picture here. So rather than walking away and telling Morgan to fuck right off in the future, she goes against her instincts and chooses to take the time to analyze the situation.
One of the first things she notices is the nervous tick, or so she assumes even though she never saw her do that before, agitating Morgan’s hands. She keeps flexing her fingers, stopping well before they’re close to closing into a fist, then straightening them back, over and over again, and Claire immediately wonders why that conversation would be enough to make her restless like that. So she searches for other signs: Morgan’s set jaw, the way she keeps defiantly staring back at her like she’s daring her to do something somehow – but what that would be, Claire doesn’t know…
Until suddenly, she knows.
Because Morgan’s eyes say a lot more than her mouth does.
“You’re jealous”, she breathes out before she can even think to hold the words back. She can tell she’s definitely figured it out by the way Morgan flinches as soon as she hears them, but she still can’t make it make sense. “What are you even jealous about?!”
“I’m not jealous”, Morgan retorts immediately, but it’s too quick, too loud – too un-Morgan-like to be the truth.
“You are”, Claire repeats assertively, a hundred percent sure about it now. “But I don’t—”
She stops herself mid-sentence to think, really think. There’s something looming at the edge of her consciousness now; something that she doesn’t quite manage to grasp yet, but that she knows she could figure out if she only managed to find which angle she’s failed to consider so far.
So she rewinds time a little. And then some more.
All the while staring straight into Morgan’s eyes, and practically daring her to look away.
“You were there for me when my mom died”, she says slowly when she begins to get an idea what’s going on. “You were there when I kept pushing everyone away, and when I finally decided to get help, I—” She went to Melendez instead. He was there once and she turned to him immediately for support, after Morgan tried so hard to be there for her for so long before that. Morgan who she always pictured as the last person who’d go out of her way like that for someone.
Claire suddenly realizes that she never bothered considering Morgan as more than an annoying competitive colleague who rarely takes no for an answer, even during the weeks following Breeze’s death – at least not consciously. A little voice that sounds awfully like her therapist’s tells her that this is something she’ll have to think about properly at some point, especially considering how much she’s avoided even just mentioning Morgan during their sessions so far, but now is not the moment for that.
Now is the moment to kind of understand where Morgan is coming from, even though there’s still no excuse for meddling in people’s private lives out of jealousy as if they were all still in middle school.
“What you did and why you did it is incredibly fucked up”, Claire insists, “but I think I owe you an apology as well. You were pushing me to get help when I was spiraling because it was the right thing for me to do, you were trying to be a friend to me, and all I ever did in return was… well, not much. Besides telling you to get lost every chance I got. To be clear, that doesn’t justify your petty complaint in any way, but… yeah.”
This doesn’t get Claire the reaction she was expecting. She thought Morgan would be awkward or maybe even uncomfortable, considering how not great she usually is with emotions and especially people acknowledging hers, but instead… Instead, Morgan’s eyes flash with surprise before they fill with relief for a second; long enough to be noticeable, even as she immediately schools her features back into a neutral expression. And Claire doesn’t know what to make of it, because – relief? Why would Morgan be relieved she’s found out the truth?
Unless it’s not the truth. Only part of it, maybe, at most.
It almost seems as if she just provided Morgan with a way out, somehow. Although a way out of what, now that’s the million dollar question.
She’s missing something. She’s still missing something.
And on second thought, she realizes that she truly does need to dig a little deeper, because it feels very uncharacteristic for Morgan to care so much about who Claire turned to for support. Why would it matter to her anyway? Why does it?
Unless she wanted to be the one Claire turned to for some reason.
Unless…
“Don’t”, Morgan warns when Claire’s eyes fill with understanding. “Don’t.”
She ignores the warning. “You’re jealous of me and Melendez, together”, she says, her heart beating a little too fast at the realization. “You’re jealous of what you see between me and him.”
“Shut up.”
Morgan’s voice is barely more than a whisper, but there’s desperation in it and it makes Claire’s head spin, because how did she miss it all this time? How did she not see what was right in front of her from the start?
“Morgan”, she murmurs, at a loss for words. She’s pretty much forgotten all about the complaint at this point; the only thing she can think about now is that Morgan doesn’t see her just as a colleague, or even just as a friend. And that’s not something she saw coming. At all.
It’s not what’s freaking her out, though. What scares her is her own reaction to the news, because she can suddenly picture herself stepping just a little more into Morgan’s space way too easily – trapping her against the lockers, leaning in, and—
Claire’s body reacts before her brain does. It’s a few steps ahead of her mind who’s struggling to catch up, apparently, because this feels so natural it’s terrifying, and she wonders how long she’s missed the signs in herself as well. How long she’s had attraction and annoyance mixing inside of her without her realizing it was happening.
How long she’s avoided thinking about it at all costs.
She’s still not thinking about it now – she’s just acting. Stepping forward, grabbing Morgan’s hands to pin them—
Morgan wrenches her hands out of her grasp with enough violence that Claire gets shocked back into the present.
“I’m sorry, I—” she immediately starts to apologize, wide-eyed and thoroughly bewildered at her own actions, but then her mind processes with a delay that she heard a hiss of pain more than she felt a rejection and she’s back to being totally lost. “What’s wrong with your hands?”
“Nothing!”
She should leave it at that, she really should; she should pretend she believes Morgan and get away so that they can both pretend none of this ever happened, but something holds her back. Something in the form of the memory of all the times Morgan didn’t let her get away with pretending she was fine after her mom died.
“What is it?” she pushes.
There are tears in Morgan’s eyes now, and that’s what Claire finds more worrying than anything else. To get her to react like that… it must be awfully serious.
“Morgan, what’s going on?”
“You need to go. None of this… None of this is right. We both messed up, we—”
Claire’s heart is still beating a little too fast, and holy shit the last five minutes gave her enough material to fill her next three therapy sessions at least, but she does know that she refuses to let this go now. She refuses to take the easy way out.
This is far from trivial; she can feel it.
Slowly, she extends her arms to grab hold of Morgan’s hands again, but she’s feather-light about it this time. She doesn’t want to cause any pain – she just wants to examine them. Strangely enough, Morgan lets her, even as she’s blinking back tears.
There’s nothing obvious to see. No wound, no bruise, no burn – nothing. Whatever is going on, it’s internal.
“It’s not something you can just guess”, Morgan says. She sounds defeated, like she’s lost a battle she doesn’t have the strength to fight anymore. “I’ll tell you. Just… not here. At my place, where no one else can hear.”
She pulls her hands away from Claire’s and grabs her backpack, then heads outside without another word. It feels like Morgan is issuing a challenge somehow – is Claire going to follow? How much does she truly care?
She falls into step behind her without a single second of hesitation.
Claire has never been to Morgan’s place before. Truth be told, she doubts that many people have gotten an invitation before her, considering how much of a private person Morgan seems to be.
In any other context, she would have curiously looked around and tried to make sense of what she sees, but at the moment she’s too on edge for that. The heavy silence between them during the bus ride didn’t provide a single distraction to take her mind off the realization that she’s a lot more into Morgan than she ever expected to be, and all she knows is that it’s going to take her forever to process that. Everything is getting jumbled up in her head; she can tell she won’t manage to make sense of it all on her own, so she keeps reminding herself to schedule another appointment with her therapist next week as soon as she’s back to her place. She’ll need it. So much.
And yet, the thought flies out of her head as soon as Morgan turns to face her with tears in her eyes once again. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of her attitude, which is closer to looking like she’s holing herself up behind high walls as she prepares for battle, and Claire is getting more and more worried abut what it all means by the second.
“I have rheumatoid arthritis.”
Claire doesn’t manage to answer right away. She wasn’t expecting to hear that – she did guess it was bad news, yes, but she hadn’t anticipated it would be a chronic illness. And she doesn’t quite know what to say. “You— When did you—” she stutters, incapable of putting enough words together to form a full sentence.
“A few months ago. Only Glassman knows so far, and if you say a word of it to anyone, I swear to god, Claire, I will make you regret it every day for the rest of your life”, Morgan bites out threateningly, although the tears almost spilling from her eyes make it that much harder to take it too seriously. “Have I made myself clear?”
“You—” Claire starts to answer, but then she changes her mind. “No. Priorities. Are you in pain right now?”
The question causes Morgan to stare at her with shock. Of all the responses she was expecting, this was apparently not one of them.
“I— Yes.”
“Okay. What helps?”
“Why do you—”
“We can get to the questions in a minute. But first, is there anything that will help lessen the pain right now?” Claire insists. “Do you have ice, maybe?”
“I usually mix ice cubes with cold water”, Morgan finally answers. “That way, I can put my whole hands in the bowl.”
“Alright. Where’s your kitchen and where is that bowl?”
“You don’t have to—”
“Where?”
This time, Morgan shows her the way.
It doesn’t take long for Claire to fill the bowl with water and pour the ice cubes into it. Morgan watches her do it, standing there awkwardly like someone who’s not used to being cared for at all (then again, Claire supposes she isn’t), and five minutes later they end up on the couch in the living room without either of them truly knowing what to say next.
Claire sits closer to Morgan than she usually would. Physical closeness is the only way she can think of to provide some semblance of comfort at the moment.
“You need to tell Lim about this”, she says when it becomes clear Morgan isn’t going to break the silence first.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s the smart thing to do”, Claire insists. “She’ll help you. She knows all too well what it’s like to fight against the odds.”
“She also made it very clear she wouldn’t hesitate to fire me – any of us – if she had a good reason to. I’m not going to give her one!”
Claire looks at her sternly. “How long do you think you can pretend nothing’s wrong? How long until your stubborn refusal to tell the truth causes you to be in a surgery you shouldn’t be doing because your arthritis is flaring up that day – how long until you put yourself in a position to make a mistake and Lim truly doesn’t have a choice but to fire you? Does this sound like a better option to you?!”
“It might have happened already!” Morgan shouts back, loud and desperate. The water slouches dangerously high in the bowl she’s put on her knees, and Claire can see her hands start to shake in it despite the ripples and the ice distorting the refracting light.
“What?”
“I… I made a mistake in a surgery once already. The patient ended up being fine and we didn’t disclose what happened, but… I messed up. And I couldn’t tell if it’s because of my arthritis or not, but I do know that I’m not taking the risk of having Lim wonder if it impacted my abilities too!”
Claire turns so she can face Morgan fully. “Actually, that mistake is exactly why you should tell her now – before it happens again and the outcome isn’t as great this time. Because if it does, she won’t be able to save you then.”
“It won’t happen again”, Morgan retorts through gritted teeth. “I can work through this. I won’t let anything stand in the way of what I’ve worked so hard to achieve – especially not something I inherited from my mom.”
This is when Claire realizes why Morgan isn’t listening to reason. It should have been obvious to her from the start, really.
Morgan is in denial. She managed to convince herself that her diagnosis doesn’t change anything besides pills to swallow and hands to ice on more days than not – to the point where she can’t even admit she might be putting patients’ lives at risk by pretending she doesn’t have a serious chronic condition.
And Claire gets it. She has no idea what she’d do, how she’d react, if she got the same diagnosis as Morgan right now, but she knows that it would crush her. It’s horrible news to hear, especially for someone so young who’s worked tirelessly to become a surgeon, and having to process it must be very similar to going through a grieving process – letting go of the idea of the career you might have had to accept the reality of having to carve yourself a slightly different path.
And Morgan seems to be stuck at the first stage: denial.
That very same denial Morgan found her in after her mom died.
With the strange feeling of going through a role reversal, Claire takes a deep breath and calls her out on it.
“I know you don’t want to hear that, but you shouldn’t be pushing through the pain. It’s irresponsible, both for you and your patients, and you’re going to have to face that at some point”, she says gently. “You have a chronic condition; you’re going to have to find a way to work with it, not in spite of it.”
For a second, Morgan looks ready to shout something back at her, but then the first tear escapes and the anger immediately disappears to leave sobs in its wake. It breaks Claire’s heart, to see her like this.
“I don’t know who I am if I’m not a surgeon”, she admits quietly, anguish lacing every word breathed out between two hiccups. “I don’t want to be anything other than a surgeon!”
“I didn’t tell you to give up!” Claire immediately replies, heart constricting painfully in her chest. “I’m telling you you’re going to have to make adjustments – and they’re never going to happen without Lim’s help for the time being!”
“What adjustments could account for the fact that I may never be able to trust my hands again? What’s a surgeon without their hands?!”
Morgan’s wet voice breaks at the end as more and more tears continue to streak her cheeks, and Claire has to resist the urge to wipe them away. She wants to wrap her arms around Morgan and hold her until she calms down, but she can’t bring herself to do it; until they figure out what might be going on between them or at least sort out their feelings on both ends, she thinks it’s best if she abstains.
But it’s killing her to see Morgan like that. She looks so vulnerable and terrified, the exact opposite of the Morgan who’s been showing up every day at work for months without letting anything show, and Claire hurts for her. How long has she been having those thoughts, alone in her apartment? How many evenings has she spent trying to shove the doubts as far away as possible to avoid dealing with her diagnosis – how many evenings has she failed and sobbed her heart out already?
“You still do have hands, Morgan”, Claire reminds her softly. “They may not be well-suited for precise, direct handiwork if your arthritis deteriorates, but you still have them. I don’t know how much you’ll be able to do, I don’t have a miracle solution to offer you out of the blue, but there are options! Sticking to surgeries that won’t require hair breadth precision? Doing part-time research so you don’t have to operate when your flares are too strong because you have something else to turn to then? Becoming a specialist in computer-assisted surgery? I don’t know, but the point is – you can still fight to be a surgeon, even with your diagnosis! But you won’t be able to do it alone. You’re going to need support from higher up, and the quicker the better.”
“But what if—” Morgan cuts herself off and closes her eyes before continuing, the words barely audible as they cross her lips: “What if it turns out it’s all just too much for me? What if I try to fight and it ends up being for nothing?”
Claire thought, she really thought for some reason, that Morgan would be immune to feeling those kinds of insecurities, and it shocks her to hear them said out loud. They’ve always been polar opposites when it comes to letting their emotions show, after all, and on some level Claire knew Morgan had to have doubts sometimes despite the confidence she always projects, but she still wasn’t expecting them – much less to be the one to hear them.
And yet, somehow, she doesn’t have to think for long before she knows what to answer.
“You’ve already lost if you don’t fight”, she points out first, perhaps unhelpfully, before continuing: “Also, you? Letting something tear you down? I already know that’s not going to happen. You’re the most stubborn and competitive person I’ve ever met – usually I wouldn’t mean it as a compliment, but right now it’s actually a good thing. You’re always relentless until you get what you want, so… be relentless this time too. If anyone can get through this, it’s you.”
“Why— Why are you being so nice to me?” Morgan asks, gaze firmly fixed on her hands in the bowl where the ice is starting to melt and avoiding Claire’s eyes at all costs. “Why do you even care? We’re not friends – we’re not even really close – and you’d literally have something to gain if I left, since it’d mean less competition. So why are you going out of your way to help me? You should be pissed at me because of the complaint, not in my apartment giving me a pep talk!”
Claire can’t hold back an eye roll at that. Of course that’s the angle Morgan would be approaching this situation from.
“Because I care about you, you idiot”, she replies without needing to give it a second thought, and she realizes as she says it just how much she means it. (If anything, this is one more proof that she should have taken some time to consciously analyze what she feels towards Morgan before today. Lots of things to unpack now… so many things.) “And don’t get me wrong, we’re not done talking about that complaint, but I also have a semi-decent sense of priorities and I’m not going to get angry at you when you’re in tears in front of me.”
That gets Morgan to crack a small smile. “I appreciate it.”
They sit side by side in silence for a little while after that while Morgan gets her tears under control, and once she seems to be done crying, Claire leans sideways to knock their shoulders together gently.
“Do you feel better?”
“I think I do, actually”, Morgan answers gratefully. “I feel… less alone.”
Claire shakes her head. “I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with this all on your own for months. You do know that bottling everything up all the time is extremely unhealthy, right? There are much better ways to deal with stressful situations – you’re a doctor, I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”
“Look who’s talking”, Morgan retorts pointedly.
Claire snorts with laughter. “Point taken. But! I did go back to see my therapist eventually. Have you ever even seen a therapist?”
Morgan shrugs evasively. “I’ve revealed enough personal things for one day.”
“What a very you thing to say”, Claire sighs. “Alright, I’m letting this go for now, but you should really consider it.” She hesitates after that, not sure the question she wants to ask next is going to be understood the right way, but then decides to go for it anyway: “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”
“I— No. I’ll be okay”, Morgan promises. “I’ve taken enough of your time as it is.”
“You didn’t take anything; I offered”, Claire rectifies. “And if you ever need help or someone to talk to again, don’t hesitate, okay? You were there for me after my mom died and I really didn’t give you enough credit for that, but now I’m here for you in return. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“So the old you is really back, huh?” Morgan jokes weakly.
“You pushed for it, now deal with the consequences”, Claire replies with humor as well.
Morgan laughs softly for a second. “Fair enough.”
Silence falls between them again, comfortable and soothing, and Claire can’t deny that she feels a sort of kinship with Morgan now. Or maybe it’s been there for a while – ever since Morgan helped her with Breeze and the man they thought were her abuser, perhaps –, and she just never noticed. She doesn’t know what she feels anymore; she’s going to need to think about it in depths before she figures it out.
There are so many things she’s going to have to process, so many conversations they’ll need to have in the future – about the complaint, about the feelings Morgan apparently has for her, about whatever it is she feels in return –, but none of that will happen tonight. Tonight, they get to just exist together for a little while, for a moment outside of time until tomorrow when they’re back to work and Morgan puts on her armor as usual.
Claire wonders if they’ll ever even talk about the conversation they just had again or not. She wouldn’t put it past Morgan to pretend it never happened, just so she doesn’t have to face its consequences – admitting to having, much less showing, weakness, has never seemed to be her strong suit after all.
“Are you going to go talk to Lim?” she asks, pressing the matter one last time.
Morgan evades the question. “If I don’t, will you do it instead?”
“No. It’s your life and career that hangs in the balance – it’s your choice and I won’t take it away from you. But for what it’s worth? I think you’re going to do the right thing. You’re not going to give up on your dream. And then you’re going to become an amazing surgeon no matter what life throws at you.”
“You’re going to be an amazing surgeon one day too”, Morgan echoes, giving an honest compliment for once. “I mean, maybe not as good as me, but… it’s going to be close.”
Claire shakes her head and laughs, but she’s too relieved to hear Morgan make a cocky comment to even pretend to be mad. It’s too good to see her start to get her confidence back.
She also does take notice of the way Morgan is looking at her, though, and she wonders how many times she had such soft eyes directed at her before without her ever noticing it was happening. Maybe she wasn’t ready to deal with it.
(Maybe now she is. Because it doesn’t make her feel uncomfortable – just warm.)
“I should go”, she says.
She doesn’t have a good reason to stay anymore; Morgan is obviously doing better, and on her end she badly needs to go crash down onto her own bed while her mind runs through a million different things at once. There are so many things she’s going to have to untangle, both with regards to Morgan and to Melendez, and even though she doesn’t look forward to it, she knows it’s going to have to happen. Because until she’s figured out where she stands with the both of them, she won’t be able to be clear about what she wants – friendship? something physical? romance? – and it won’t be fair to anyone.
She really needs to call her therapist ASAP.
Except Morgan doesn’t seem to be moving and she doesn’t want to leave if her presence is still needed, but…
But she might be an idiot and that might not be what’s going on at all.
“Do you want me to go get you a towel?” she asks, looking at Morgan’s hands still in the bowl of cold water and refraining from reminding her that asking for help is okay, Morgan, damn it.
“If you don’t mind?”
Claire shakes her head, half-exasperated but also half-amused at this point, and goes up from the couch to head to the kitchen where she remembers seeing a towel laid across the back of one of the chairs earlier. She comes back with it immediately and hands it to Morgan, then gives her some privacy while she dries her hands and wipes away the remaining tears tracks on her cheeks by bringing the bowl back to the kitchen, where she sets it down next to the sink. She doesn’t empty it out, though, just in case Morgan needs to use it again once she’s gone.
When she walks back into the living room, Morgan has gotten up from the couch and is waiting for her. She looks a lot more like her usual self than she did half an hour ago and Claire finds it both relieving and worrying at the same time, but she supposes the only thing she can do now is wait and see what Morgan will choose to do in the near future.
She still can’t stop herself from saying one last thing, once they’ve walked to the door together and it’s time for them to say goodbye.
“Be smart about this”, she advises. “You’re always smart about everything, so be smart about this too. Don’t let your fear control you until it’s too late.”
“Good night, Claire”, Morgan whispers back.
There’s nothing else she can add after that.
(They don’t talk about that night at work the next day. Or for a full week after that.
But when Morgan finally tells Lim about her diagnosis at the end of said week? Claire is the first one to know.
Things are going to be okay.)