Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the middle of it all: A Wednesday shift. Pancakes in the cafeteria. A quiet night in the ED.  Someone-someone from radiology who’s on Zoya’s hitlist. 

She replies to Genya, “But why would he --” because she and Genya are friends (apparently, surprisingly) and friends tell each other about matters of the heart (apparently, surprisingly). Zoya likes to keep it strictly about the medicine, so Genya tells her to treat it like a stomach ache. 

Run tests. Diagnose. Administer treatment. Cure. 

A gurney rushes in with a girl with cramps. Genya gives her a look. Zoya puts on her shoes and goes to the patient, leaving the nurses’ station they’re hiding out in, eating crackers and gossiping -- treating a stomach ache -- at three in the morning. 

“It hurts,” the girl says.  

The crackers are halfway empty when she comes back. Genya swivels in the swiveling chair, chewing. Zoya continues where they left off. “But why would he like me? It’s -- have you seen him?”

“I see him everyday,” Genya deadpans. “I’ll see him again tomorrow. You’ve seen him too. Tall. Blond. Hazel eyes.”

She picks a lint off her white coat. “I see him far too much. I hope I don’t see him ever again.”

“Perfect, tell him ‘Oh, Nikolai, I’m in love with you” -- Zoya casts her a look of horror-- “so you should drop out of the program so I won’t ever have to see you ever again.’” Genya rolls the printed out article on SCN5A Variants: Association With Cardiac Disorders and whacks it on Zoya’s head. 

Zoya groans, “It’s a stomach ache, Safin. I’m not in love.”

“A perforated ulcer? Appendicitis? Acid reflux? Butterflies?” Genya notices the nurse close the curtains on the girl that was wheeled in. She raises a polite hand in their general direction. “Cramps?”

.

The thing: The thing is Nikolai and Zoya work too well together to get anything -- i.e. one good, solid round of sex, maybe -- between the medicine. 

They’re a dream team. Both inhumanely driven, both blessed with the natural workings of a surgeon, both filling the gaps where the other lacks. Zoya has bad bedside manners, and Nikolai has a reserve full of backup charm. Nikolai’s brain flies off too fast, and Zoya’s the only person straight forward enough to tell him to reign it in. 

“Morning,” he yawns, placing a steaming cup of coffee in front of her on a rainy day. “Sugar, no cream.”

“For me?” Zoya asks. She doesn't know how or why he knows her coffee.

“No, for the 28-week-old kid in the NICU.”

Zoya takes it. 

She returns the favor by waking him up when she happens upon him in one of the on-call rooms, headfirst into a pillow and snoring. She’s never seen a doctor sleep through a page before Nikolai.

They do this, again and again, over and over, and it’s enough for now. 

.

The problem: Alina is fucking the attending in Neuro. Not just any attending. The attending. The one with the dark eyes, the great hair, the perfect beard. The attending whose ass looks world shattering in scrubs. 

No one can blame Alina, really, but they blame her anyway. Because, well, Alina deserves to be blamed. 

Kids are taught cause and effect at a young age. The ratio is usually one is to one, in the fifth grade curriculum. One cause. One effect. But Alina screwing the Neuro attending -- Zoya doesn’t even have the energy to think his name -- is one cause that leads to a myriad of several inconveniences. 

Since Alina’s been screwing the Neuro attending, Mal’s been insufferable. He’s been acting like a chump, a log that’s lost at sea, a dog without an owner. He’s a resident constantly glaring at attendings -- one attending, and the attending doesn’t even glare back, he just huffs in faint amusement, like Mal’s the village clown. The whole cardio floor’s taken to calling Malyen Oretsev, the second year resident, ‘Grumpy’. 

Since Alina’s been screwing the Neuro attending, Mal’s been living in Zoya and Genya’s place. Alina and Mal aren’t a couple, they’re ‘just friends that go way back’, meaning they went to high school in bumpkin-town together and left bumpkin-town together and got an apartment away from bumpkin-town that they could only afford together. It’s so much together-ness it makes Zoya’s neck hurt sometimes. 

The point is: no one’s living in Mal and Alina’s apartment anymore, because Alina’s spending the nights in the Neuro attending’s penthouse because she doesn’t want to see Mal, because Mal's giving her the silent treatment because she’s screwing the Neuro attending in his penthouse.

Mal’s hopelessly in love with Alina, and Alina’s hopeless. 

Zoya and Genya’s place, usually pristine, a dainty three-bedroom apartment with lots of natural light, has turned into the HQ of fucking Fight Club. Mal’s crashing on their couch, bringing with him textbooks and unwashed socks it makes Zoya want to scream murder. But Zoya’s working 80 hours a week and so is Genya, and come to think of it, so is Mal, so no one’s in the three-bedroom anyway.  

.

“Is that pancake syrup or piss?”

Nikolai smiles, which Zoya has no right to find attractive, but she does anyway. It’s debilitating. It’s a wound, and Zoya’s leaving it to fester. In ignorance, Nikolai smiles. “Come closer and sniff to find out, Malyen.”

Zoya glares. “Urine, Oretsev. Are you a doctor or a gang leader?”

Once Mal leaves, Nikolai turns to her. “If anyone’s a secret gang leader here, Nazyalensky, it would be you.”

Nikolai has no right to be charming when there’s a country-shaped stain near his left scrub pocket. The answer: pancake syrup. Zoya spilled some on him, and he got the tissues from her and said it was fine, if she wanted to touch him there she could simply ask and he’d set up a place since the cafeteria is inappropriate.

Zoya rolls her eyes and goes back to eating her pancakes. It’s Wednesday again. She has to get back to the CCU in ten minutes. “Not everyone can be a rich heir to medical legacy like you, Nikolai. People need side hustles.”

He’s dripping gold, Nikolai. She used to hate it about him. His watch is easily more expensive than two months of her rent. His name is on the hospital doors, in every veritable journal, in every corner of every sub-field in medicine. He stood there with her during their intern orientation, head held high and easy shoulders, no doubt about making it through. She hated him there, maybe envied him a bit. 

But then he says things like: “Gang leaders have tattoos.”

And Zoya has to fight back a smile. 

.

Zoya does have a tattoo. She got it when she was seventeen. She wasn’t stupid. There has never been a time in her life when she was stupid. Zoya Nazyalensky is a good doctor, a good student -- Zoya Nazyalensky is a genius, a force of nature. But the tattoo, she regrets. 

.

“Arm -- no, I would’ve seen it if it was there. Thighs?” 

Genya and David are lying side by side on the floor, heads leaning on the couch, almost touching. Genya’s going to be insufferable for days, once she sees the evidence. Mal’s head is on Genya’s lap. Alina is curled up in the farthermost portion of the rug like a kitten. Everyone’s passed out. 48-hour shifts do that to people. 

People, not including them. Zoya needs to study more. She’s the best in this program, and there’s no turning back. There’s nothing to turn back to. It’s here. Ahead. She guesses Nikolai has to study too, but he’s settling on teaching her the subcutaneous stitch that Tamar, the fellow at plastics, taught him. Nikolai is generous even when he doesn’t need to be. A heart of gold. A perfect heart. Zoya’s sweet spot is cardio.

“Thighs?” She makes her hands go quicker on the banana. “With an s? Two thighs?”

Nikolai lays his head on the table. The kitchenette is brighter, blue-white light against the warm tone of the living room -- Mal’s room, for three months now. He and Alina should work things out. Nikolai, as if reading her mind, cranes his head to check on their wards. He settles back down when he sees them all still complete and goes back to watching her stitch. “Two thighs would be overdoing it. Ribs, then? A trail of flowers?”

“Do I look like I went to a sorority, Lanstov?”

“I hardly know anything about you, Nazyalensky.”

They spend the entire week together, days on end seeing each other in hallways, operating rooms. He’s seen her when she hasn’t washed her hair in three days. He’s seen her with blood and urine and stool on her scrubs. She -- loves -- she likes him. She likes Nikolai a lot. She finds herself thinking about him in front of the vending machine, deciding if she should buy him Skittles for his shift. 

She keeps stitching. “My aunt’s name is Liliyana. She raised me. And sometimes, when I miss her, I call her on the phone.”

He smiles -- he smiles a lot, it makes her heart pull itself at its strings -- like it’s an acceptable form of introduction. “My brother’s name is Vasily, and he’s a prick.”

Zoya snorts. She heard Vasily Lanstov got his medical license revoked after malpracticing. Lanstov doctors, notorious for all different things. Great things, an empire built on bones. The problem with empires is that their shadows are enormous. Nikolai doesn’t rest, even after 48-hour shifts. She pushes the banana towards him, along with the sutures. “Your turn.”

Chapter Text

On the day the Neuro attending becomes the Neuro chief, Alina brings a cake. 

“I hate cake,” says Mal, making his way to the other side of the resident lockers, away from Alina. 

Alina’s face falls. She sets the cake down. Nikolai finishes his laces and stands beside Zoya. “Is it an ass tattoo?”

“Thinking about my ass?”

“It’s my favorite thought.” He nods, watching the impending storm. That is — Alina has decided she has had enough. 

“She’s about to make a scene,” whispers Genya in awe, standing on Zoya’s left in their cute line of three little (gossiping) piglets (residents). “Good morning, Nikolai. Zoya has an ulcer. Thought you ought to know.”

Nikolai, bless him, believes Genya. Zoya cuts before he opens his mouth, “She’s a liar.”

“No—”

“The hell is your problem, Mal?”

“Oh, there we go,” Nikolai says under his breath. Zoya crosses her arms across her chest and watches it like one would watch an open heart surgery. Genya winces at the ring of Alina’s voice. 

Mal turns away. “I told you, I don’t like cake.”

“You like cake, so can you just tell me what the hell your problem is?”

Zoya snorts. “There’s real poetry in this.”

“Not if the cake is for your boyfriend’s promotion — which, congratulations, by the way, Alina. Instead of this whole mess just being inappropriate, I’m pretty sure what you’re doing is illegal now!”

Pre-rounds are in two minutes. A screaming match at 4 in the morning. Genya gets to be in cardio. Nikolai is a prick who managed to snag a whole week in trauma. Zoya’s in geriatrics.  Not a bad start to what is about to be a bad day. 

Alina turns beet red. “I bought the cake because it’s your birthday today, you fucking prick!”

Zoya finishes her braid with an elastic band. Nikolai throws the plastic of his granola bar in the nearby trash can. Genya tucks a pen into her white coat pocket. Alina stalks away. Mal is left gaping. David notes, without malice or ill intent, “You forgot your own birthday?”

Everything is somehow worse, when it comes from David’s mouth. 

.

Zoya doesn’t mind the Neuro attending -- chief -- actually. She knows he’s a bona fide cunt that likes throwing his weight around, but he’s also rumoured to be on the Nobel shortlist by the time he’s 45. 

It's an equivalent exchange, for one being cannot be too perfect. In exchange for surgical finesse and medical brilliance, one has to give up his moral compass. A moral compass that, for all its morality, points decidedly away from dating residents.

.

When all this started -- this being the program -- two years or so ago, Zoya made a little list.

The list:

1. Genya should admit that she’s not cut for surgery and head to derm;
2. Alina should stop acting like she’s the main character in a medical drama when she can’t even locate the subclavian;
3. Kostyk should stop altogether;
4. Mal should realize that medicine is not for male bimbos;
5. Lanstov should quit being a cocky, nepotistic asshole. 

At the end of intern year, feeling half-dead in the on-call room Alina’s currently camping out in for a nasty rotation, Zoya amends, well, everything. 

.

She owes David about fifty cups of coffee, give or take, because of a certain shift in oncology that her pride doesn’t like talking about. David Kostyk might be a bit stand-offish, but Zoya would pry the workings of his brain apart if she could. The prying-apart being strictly platonic, because Genya obviously , but also, Zoya’s already smitten by someone else, and also, David, just… no.

But he is brilliant, even if he’s burning through her pockets because he’s a maniac who can drink seven cups a day if he’s not occupied enough.

.

“You should talk to him,” Zoya brings up out of the blue. 

“Bechdel test,” Genya reminds, as if they don’t talk about the textbooks 99.97% of the time.

Alina rolls her eyes. She takes a sip from her water bottle. “But we’re whores. Men are all we think about.”

Zoya turns off the stove. “Starkov,” she says, then casts her an even look, one that says, yes, sometimes, in your case especially .

“Oh, fuck off, Zoya.”

“We talk to each other,” Genya mutters, eyes far away, finger twirling a strand of her red hair. “He’s nice to talk to.”

There’s no use. It’s a lost cause. All of them are.

.

Zoya’s not above punching anyone. The white coat, the carefully applied face powder, the gold studs all can’t shake off how she was raised in a one-bedroom in the bad part of Pachina. Zoya knows her way around her fists. She knows what a broken nose feels like, both given and taken. 

“Nikolai,” Vasily Lanstov is starting to make a scene, in the middle of the nurses’ station too. She’s never seen Nikolai more uncomfortable, easy chuckles trying to hide how he wants to sock his brother. But he very well can’t, can he? “Don’t be a fucking sissy, sign the documents --”

“I’m not signing the documents--”

Zoya doesn’t know what documents they’re talking about, but she listens behind the computer where she’s charting nonetheless. It’s hard not to listen, really. Vasily Lanstov sounds like an ambulance.

“Dad was right about you.”

“Oh, fuck off--”

“Don’t be an ungrateful bastard--”

Maybe it’s how the word bastard rolls around his tongue, the way he means it. Zoya doesn’t appreciate how he’s embarrassing his brother in front of a whole department, so she stands up and she grabs him by the back of his collar, and she can smell his cologne faintly. Spice and Wood. Disgusting. Sleazy piece of shit. She doesn’t give him time to process. Her fist comes in contact with his jaw. Vasily Lanstov stumbles back, red slowly spreading from the spot she hit. He recovers within a second, and brings a hand to her face. 

.

Alina brings leftover cake at the apartment. Lefotver being the whole cake. She and Mal have come to a reluctant truce since his birthday, so they greet each other with terse nods. Alina brings the cake to the kitchen where Nikolai is holding an ice pack to Zoya’s cheek. 

“Is she fired?” Alina asks Genya like one would ask a guardian about a dying patient. 

Zoya snaps up so quickly, sending a glare in her direction. 

“What happens if she gets fired?” David asks, present at the impromptu get-together. Zoya's going away party. Zoya: Night Before Jail. Nikolai must have dragged him over. At least Nikolai's making himself useful, icepack and all. David is sitting on the floor, sorting through Genya’s battered copy of An Introduction to Neurology, asking incessant questions about Zoya's career.

“They can’t revoke her license,” Mal chimes. “Can they?”

“What if they do?” Alina challenges.

The four of them bicker. Alina and Mal because they won't allow themselves to talk without venom, even if they agree, Genya because she gets snappy when she's anxious, David because he keeps fighting for the possibility that yes, Zoya might get sacked.

Zoya turns to Nikolai, the only sane person in the room, uncharacteristically quiet, and whispers, “He deserved it.”

It’s endlessly stupid, what she did, but he bumps his shoulder against hers, and she guesses it’s alright. If anyone told intern Zoya that she'd take a bullet -- though it's not exactly taking a bullet as it is taking a gun and launching the bullet -- for Nikolai, she'd insult them and then laugh. Now though... now. Vasily Lanstov deserved it. She stands her ground.

“I know some people down at HR,” he tells her, a small, almost comical reassuring nod accompanying.

A smile breaks from her face. “Ah, there he is. My friend in high places.”

“I already talked to them earlier.” Of course he would. He’s like that. Of course. Of course. “A slap on the wrist, nothing more. I got your back.” 

Zoya breathes a sigh in relief. She gives one last look, which he gives back. Then she claps her hands, “Happy fucking birthday, Malyen. Let’s eat cake.”