Chapter Text
Being captain of Station 19 made Maya Bishop feel so alive, like the energy that coursed through her veins when her feet hit the track, like the fireworks that exploded in her chest when she crossed the finish line. After the promotion, her characteristically stormy expression had been replaced by a glint in her eye and a blinding grin. Maya hoped that her enthusiasm would be infectious, inspiring the rest of the team to achieve the greatness she knew they were capable of. They needed a strong leader, one who wasn’t afraid to push them beyond their limits.
The plans that she had been drafting since she joined the department were finally being implemented. She put together an excellent training regimen. The station was tidy, the engine was sparkling, and the schedule was perfectly organized.
However, despite all her hard work, it wasn’t turning out to be like she had imagined. Instead, the team’s morale was desperately low. Maya had managed to run her station into the ground and drive her friends to hate her in the span of a week.
Then, Pruitt Herrera suggested she take everyone on a camping trip. Maya wasn’t convinced, at first, but she tried. It would be a good opportunity to get the team back into shape, she thought. However, Andy, her best friend, was freezing her out, her icy anger erecting a mile-high wall between them, and the evening had otherwise been terribly awkward on all counts. Their fun seemed to grind to a halt every time Maya tried to insert herself into the conversation.
Maybe she did need to loosen up a little. Maya thrived under pressure. It made her better. But it clearly wasn’t working for everyone else. Everything she thought she knew about leading a team was turning out to be wrong. Combined with their trip getting cut short due to an encounter with a bear and Maya having to literally run a detached nose to the hospital, it had been an incredibly long day.
Sitting alone at the bar, Maya swirled the whisky around in her third glass of the night, already feeling a little buzzed. Failure crawled around in her brain like a swarm of ants and seeped into her lungs like she was drowning in motor oil. Lost in thought, she almost didn’t notice a woman sliding in next to her despite the whole row of empty seats and ordering a glass of white wine.
“You look… familiar,” the woman said, drawing Maya’s attention.
A smooth accent rolled off her tongue, each word pronounced like a paintbrush swept across a canvas. The sleeves of her black blazer were rolled up to the elbows and the v-neck of her pale yellow blouse cut low down her chest.
“Oh, um, I drink here a lot,” Maya said with a thinly-pressed smile, just to be polite.
“Uhhh, no…” the woman replied. “Were you at the… hospital… earlier?”
Oh, great. A few hours ago, Maya had burst through the emergency room doors of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital drenched in sweat, demanding the front desk nurses find a surgeon so they could reattach a bloody, severed nose to a man’s face.
She was a damn good paramedic. However, it wasn’t exactly her top choice as far as first impressions go. She chose to remain vague on the off chance the stranger hadn’t witnessed the evening’s events.
“Yeah, I was,” she said. “I’m a firefighter. I was… bringing something.”
“Oh my god!” the woman’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Yes! You were the one who ran in with the nose.”
Shit.
“Yeah, yeah…” she laughed awkwardly. She figured she at least owed the woman an official introduction. “Captain Maya Bishop.”
“Dr. Carina DeLuca,” she replied, shaking Maya’s extended hand. “Well, okay. If I buy you a drink, would you tell me the story of how you ended up carrying a nose in a plastic bag?”
Competition was built into Maya’s very being. It was endless, and she felt its tight grip on her even now, long after she had stopped racing. Maya loved it. She felt most like her true self when she was competing. If there was no one to run against, she ran against herself.
The only reprieve she used to get was when she was sleeping. But one shift at the scene of a fire, she was so high-strung that she snapped at then captain Pruitt Herrera and broke the nozzle of a fire extinguisher, getting herself benched for the rest of the call and causing the team to stage a literal intervention.
“Maya, we think you should take a break, or at least do something to relax,” Andy said, everyone gathered in the Beanery, Maya effectively cornered by the D shift fridge. “We never see you outside of the station. You never even come out to the bar with us, anymore. We’re worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Maya replied. “I just like being here. Is that a problem? I don’t need whatever this is.”
Maya didn’t take breaks. She didn’t need them. To suggest otherwise was insinuating she was weak.
“You’re clearly not fine.”
“You’re here before shift starts and you’re the last to leave,” Captain Herrera said. “I’ve seen you come in when you’re not working. Even I don’t like firefighting that much.”
“I can literally see how tense your shoulders are from here, girl,” Vic said. “You need, like, a massage, or to get laid.”
Actually, Vic kind of had a point. It had been forever since Maya had been with someone, maybe even since before joining the department. She didn’t have the luxury of getting involved. Romance was complicated and took up too much valuable time she could spend training. Being a woman in firefighting, she had a lot more to prove and many more opportunities to mess up. It was going to be that much harder to climb to the top. She couldn’t let anyone down — herself, her father, or the other female firefighters in the department, Andy and Vic included.
But her team was right. She was stressed and overworked, and it was causing her to make mistakes in the field, which was unacceptable. Maybe a little rest and recovery was an important part of any good training schedule. Plus, no one ever said anything about romance. No-strings-attached casual sex wouldn’t cause her to fall behind at work, would it?
“Fine. Drinks, tomorrow. But you’re buying,” she said pointing at Vic.
That night, under the influence of one-too-many beers, she went home with a relatively good-looking guy and left without getting his number in the morning. She didn’t even remember his name when she woke up.
That was how self-care Wednesdays started.
Maya knew only two ways to relax: running and sex (the occasional drunken make-out, too, if she and her chosen partner for whatever reason didn’t make it home from the bar). But tonight, Maya was not in the mood. She wanted to sit alone and drink until she could no longer hear the critical voice in her head.
“Sorry, I’m drinking alone tonight,” she said to the woman sitting next to her at the bar, turning back to her whiskey.
“Okay,” Carina said. “Are you… sure?”
Well… here was a not unattractive person clearly interested in her company and openly flirting with her. The way Carina leaned towards Maya, her head cocked to one side and her tinted red lips forming a warm smile, was unmistakable. However, in other ways, it was unfamiliar.
Maya hadn’t been with a girl since high school. She was studying with a friend from the track team on her bedroom floor when suddenly the girl leaned over their shared textbook and kissed her. It had taken Maya by surprise, but she felt a little flutter in her stomach — the simultaneous excitement and fear that came with doing something her father had forbidden, she was certain. So, her hands shaking and her mouth dry, Maya kissed her back. The small act of rebellion was exhilarating. They climbed into her bed in a tangle of limbs, and the girl had just lifted Maya’s shirt off her torso when Lane burst through the door and yelled at her friend to get out of his house.
Her door was unscrewed from the frame because she couldn’t be trusted to be alone in her room unsupervised, and Maya was forced to run an extra five miles every night for a week. On the last day, her father pushed it to seven. But he was right. She earned first place and beat the school record in the race that qualified her for nationals. If that girl kept distracting her, she could have lost. Maya told her they couldn’t be friends anymore, after that. It never happened again.
But tonight, she had no race to run and no medals to win. And talking didn’t exactly have to mean anything. They could just have a normal, platonic conversation — a firefighter and a doctor, chatting about medical emergencies. If something were to happen, what harm would it do? She was entitled to a little bit of fun. Sue her. Maya willed the pounding in her chest to quiet as she accepted the request for her company.
“Mm… maybe not.”
Talking to Carina felt so easy, Maya thought, the light-hearted banter almost instantly lifting her mood. Carina said something Maya found amusing and she honest to God giggled. Even so, a nagging uncomfortable feeling persisted throughout their conversation, one that Maya was trying her hardest to ignore. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and everything in her body was telling her to bolt, to run hard and fast until she didn’t feel or think anything anymore. She was nervous — Maya Bishop didn’t get nervous. Yet, something magnetic was keeping her in place several feet apart from the woman sitting next to her. She downed two more shots of tequila, then another, in an attempt to loosen the hold of whatever invisible forces were at play and to make the feeling in her stomach dissipate.
Their chatter slowed as they reached a natural pause in the conversation and Carina caught Maya’s eye. Carina’s irises sparkled, reflecting the string lights above the bar.
“Dance with me?” she said.
Maya felt the word ‘yes’ escape her lips before she could say she didn’t dance, that actually she was exhausted and needed to be getting home, any excuse she could think of. The room spun slightly as they stood from the barstools and she took Carina’s offered hand, the woman leading her to the center of the room.
Carina began swaying her hips side to side to the rhythm of the upbeat song that was playing and pulled Maya in close, encouraging her to loop her arms behind her neck and rest them on her shoulders. They were pressed chest to chest and Carina’s hands were brushing lightly up and down her sides, Maya acutely aware of every inch their bodies were touching.
Maya’s breath shuddered. Carina felt… God, she felt so… Maya couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. She didn’t understand anything she was feeling — the electricity running across her skin, the fire burning in her chest — in fact, she felt a little unwell.
Underneath it all, a spark of panic was rising rapidly and turning to bile in her throat. Maya broke eye contact with her dance partner and her eyes darted around the bar. Multiple other groups of women, presumably friends on their girls’ nights out, were dancing with each other in similar proximity. No one seemed to be looking at them; either they didn’t care or they were too busy to pay them any mind. Maya let herself relax a little, the panic subsiding for the moment, and turned her attention back to Carina.
“I lost you for a second there, bellissima,” she said. “Where did you go?”
“I was just thinking, I’m sorry,” Maya said. “I didn’t mean to get distracted. That word… that you called me… what does it mean?”
“It’s Italian. It means you are very beautiful.”
“O- oh.”
“Is that okay with you?”
Normally, when men hit on her in the bar and called her beautiful, Maya could tell it was only because they wanted something in particular, something she was all too willing to give. Maybe that’s why it didn’t bother her too much. Somehow, this woman felt entirely genuine, and yet, it made her skin crawl with anxiety.
Still, friends called each other beautiful all the time as a platonic term of endearment, right?
“I don’t see why not,” Maya said.
Their faces were inches apart, their breath mingling in the air between them. Carina smelled heavenly, like warm vanilla and rose. Maya’s heart was beating out of her chest. Her mind was becoming fuzzy — from the alcohol, surely.
“Can I kiss you?” Carina said.
Before she could stop them, Maya’s eyes drifted to Carina’s lips. She felt a jolt of panic, again. People in the bar would see them, and if her team found out, her credibility and authority as captain would be shattered.
But her stomach fluttered, and she felt hot all over, and God did she need some stress relief, so she forced her doubts back down.
Screw it.
Maya surged forward and crashed her lips into Carina’s. The woman moaned in surprise, and as the kiss deepened, her hands tangled into Maya’s hair to pull her impossibly closer.
“Would you like to come back to my place?” Maya said.
“I thought you would never ask.”
They stumbled drunkenly into Maya’s apartment locked together, only pausing briefly for air. Carina pushed her towards the bedroom and didn’t hesitate to tug Maya’s letterman jacket off her shoulders, the rest of their clothing quickly following.
As Carina moaned Maya’s name, as she fell apart in her arms, as she traced patterns across Maya’s skin with her tongue, Maya thought there was nothing quite like this feeling in the world.
After Maya came crashing back down to earth, Carina peeked out from underneath the covers from between Maya’s legs.
“Wow,” Maya said.
“Mm, yeah, I get that a lot,” Carina said. She nestled in next to Maya, Carina’s bare skin warm and soft against her own.
“You’re awfully cocky.”
“I prefer to call it ‘confident,’ and confidence is sexy, no?”
“I don’t disagree,” Maya said.
Carina stared into Maya’s eyes as they basked in the afterglow and Carina dragged her fingers absentmindedly across her chest.
Before was a rush of scrambling hands and bodies keening for touch. But now, the world seemed to slow down around them, and instead, it was Maya’s thoughts that were racing.
Maya knew one thing for certain: she wasn’t gay.
So why was her heart threatening to beat out of her chest? Why did it feel like she couldn’t breathe unless she was touching Carina, as if she were the oxygen filling her lungs?
“I have an early shift tomorrow, so I have to be going,” Carina sighed, startling Maya out of her trance.
Relief crashed over her that she didn’t need to make up an excuse to get the woman to leave her apartment. Carina hesitantly got out of bed and slipped her clothes back on, then she handed Maya a crumpled piece of paper with a string of numbers written in black ink.
“Here is my phone number,” she said. “Call me, and maybe we can pick this up where we left off. Have a good night, Maya.”
Carina leaned over to kiss her softly on the lips before exiting the apartment through the front door, leaving Maya on the bed alone once again with only her thoughts for company. It all felt entirely too intimate — the delicate touches, the goodbye kiss — and discomfort bubbled in Maya’s stomach.
However, she quickly brushed it off. Her rapid heartbeat and struggle for air were probably just from physical exertion. It didn’t matter that she had slept with a girl because it didn’t mean anything. It was just a bit of fun.
Tomorrow, she would forget about it, and everything would return to normal.