Chapter Text
Jules wakes up to the feeling of an arm tossed over her chest and a leg draped on top of her hips. She’s warmer than usual; the extra body in her bed simply radiating heat, and she’s more content, more well-rested; than she has been in months.
She blinks open her eyes, and sees a messy tangle of dark hair resting on her chest, tucked under her arm. Mika, it seems, sleeps like a koala, and she’s attached herself to Jules like she’s climbing a tree. Jules has no complaints. She likes the warmth of Mika, pressed up against her. She likes the puffs of breath against her collarbone. She likes the sense of security and peace she feels, that she’s not sure she’s ever experienced when waking up next to another person.
She tugs Mika even closer, pressing a kiss against her forehead. Because she feels a rush of affection for this girl, and for once, she doesn’t have to try to suppress it. It’s incredible, waking up next to her.
She realizes, actually, that this isn’t the first time she’s woken up next to Mika. There was the day of the ABSITE, when they’d fallen asleep on one of the gurney beds in the hallway, and had woken up in a panic. That morning had been frantic, spurred by adrenaline, and some confusion in her at why she’d been able to sleep so well on such a shitty bed; why it had felt so natural to wake up next to Mika.
And there was the night at Mika’s house, when they’d planned to spend the evening together but had gotten pulled in to help Kwan. That morning had been satiating, with loaded glances heavy with desires that hadn’t been fulfilled the night before, and then a confusing (and fairly awkward) breakfast with the rest of the interns as Mika stumbled through an explanation of why Jules had stayed over.
But this morning? Here, in her bed, with Mika half on top of her like a weighted blanket, it feels so right. Like they’re the only two people in the whole world. Like it’s the kind of thing Jules wants to wake up to every morning.
Last night had been… really good. They’d both gone for multiple rounds, before moving into the shower to clean off, and then having another few rounds in there as well. And sure, Jules has felt so sexually pent up this past month, but it was good beyond that; good to finally, finally, get some time alone with Mika, to get to kiss her without interruption, to get to show her how she feels.
Mika starts to stir against her. She makes a little humming sound, then rolls away onto her back. She’s wearing Jules’s t-shirt, an old tie-dyed one she’d gotten from volunteering at a farmer’s market a few years ago. It’s gotten rucked up in her sleep, revealing the soft skin of her stomach. There’s an unfamiliar stirring in her chest, something possessive and satisfied. She gets to be the one to see this side of Mika, she’s the one who gets to wake up next to her. Jules reaches out and touches her skin, slowly tracing her fingers along Mika’s side, drawing meaningless loops and patterns. She watches Mika blink awake, watches her look around, confused, until her eyes settle on Jules, and a magnificent smile appears on her face. “G’morning,” she murmurs, curling back towards Jules and resting her head next to her. “What time is it?”
Jules shifts onto her side so she’s facing Mika, then checks her watch. “Just about eight. We have two hours until our shift starts.”
Mika hums. “No rush,” she says, sounding content. She closes the distance between them, kissing Jules. The kiss, like Mika, is warm and sleepy, and when they break away their foreheads are resting against each other.
“How did you sleep?” Jules asks. The feeling of Mika’s skin pressed against her is addicting. Their chests are brushing, and their legs are tangled together. Jules reaches over to touch Mika’s arm, running her hand up and down it lightly.
Mika closes her eyes for a moment. “Best I’ve slept in weeks.”
Jules’s heart feels warm. “Yeah?”
Mika opens her eyes. They’re dazzling. Jules could stare at them for hours. “I mean, I was sleeping on a hospital chair for like, ten days, so that part wasn’t hard to beat.” She tilts her head. “But beyond that, too. I feel like I can breathe around you.”
Before Jules can let Mika’s words soak in, she’s hit with an urgent thought. “Shit, does Chloe know you’re here?” Jules asks, suddenly concerned that she pulled Mika away from important sisterly duties.
“Yeah, we’re good; I texted her before we left the hospital,” Mika says. She pulls away from Jules and grabs her phone from the nightstand, unlocking it and scrolling. She snorts. “Yeah, she responded yesterday. She said ‘Get some’ and sent a bunch of winky emojis.”
Jules nearly chokes. “What did you say to her?!”
“Nothing!” Mika protests. She reads out her text. “‘Going out with Jules tonight, I’ll see you tomorrow.’” She looks over at Jules, biting her lip. She looks almost apologetic. “She knows about us. Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay,” Jules says, shrugging, feeling a lot less stressed about that than she might once have. “She’s your sister. It makes sense that you’d tell her.”
Mika laughs. “That’s the thing, though. I never actually told her anything. She figured it out on her own.”
Jules raises her eyebrows. “Oh really?” she asks. “And how did she do that?”
Mika trains her eyes to the ceiling. She reaches an arm up, rubbing the back of her neck. “I, uh, may have been talking about you a lot. When it was me and her in the hospital room.”
A rush of warmth runs through Jules.
“Wait. What were you saying about me?” she asks. She pokes Mika in the shoulder. Mika bats her away. “Mika!” She props herself up on an elbow to look down at her.
Mika’s face has reddened. It’s delightful. “You know, that you and I had been spending a lot of time together. And that you were my favorite of the interns. And that you were being incredible, even when I was mean to you.”
Something melts in Jules. “Am I really your favorite?” she asks. Her voice comes out a little more delicate than she meant.
Mika rolls back over, looking at her again. “Well, yeah,” she says, like it’s an obvious fact. “Even before all this,” she says, gesturing between the two of them, “you were my favorite. I mean, it helps that I’ve lived with the rest of them, so they’ve had more time to annoy me. But yeah. You’re smart, and you’re good at surgery, and you push me, but you always supported me, too. You’re my favorite.” She narrows her eyes. “Wait, am I not your favorite?”
Jules laughs. She leans forward, kissing Mika. Mika opens up for her, warm and eager. Jules lets herself sink into it, lets herself enjoy something slow and good and easy. “I think Adams might be my favorite,” she says when she pulls away. “But you’re a close second.”
“I’ll kill him,” Mika says, deadpan. “I will.”
Jules kisses her again, short and sweet. “You’re my favorite, too,” she tells her. “Ever since our first day. I was having a really painful conversation with Lincoln before I saw you and escaped. He kept trying to apologize for ghosting me. You rescued me.”
Mika gasps. “Oh shit, I totally forgot you’d slept with him!” Her eyes are wide, and she looks far too excited about this. Jules immediately regrets bringing this up. “We weren’t really friends back then, and I didn’t know who Lincoln was, so I never thought to ask how it was. But now I need to know. Was he any good?”
“I’m not answering that,” Jules tells her, shaking her head. She can’t help the laugh bubbling in her chest.
Mika gasps again. “And you slept with Kwan, too! Oh my god, Jules, was I better than him? Please, you have to tell me if I was better than Kwan.”
“Mika,” Jules scolds. There’s an embarrassing lack of heat to it.
“You have to tell me,” Mika says, leaning forward and looking into her eyes. “It’s really important for me to know if I’m better than Kwan at having sex with you.”
“Better at sex in general, or better at sex with me?” Jules asks. She really shouldn’t be enabling this. She can’t help it.
“Either. Both. The ‘with you’ part is the most important, though,” she clarifies.
Jules looks at her and wonders why she’s so charmed by this.
“Well?” Mika prompts. “If you don’t answer I’m going to assume it’s him.”
Jules sighs and relents. “It’s you, Mika,” she confirms.
Mika closes her eyes and tilts her head back, relishing in her success. “Fuck yeah,” she whispers, looking far too smug about it.
“But it’s a little unfair,” Jules continues. “Because you have a big advantage over him.” She traces her hand along Mika’s upper arm, feeling the muscles of her bicep.
“What, because I’m a woman?” Mika asks. “Jules, that’s on him.”
Jules exhales, weighing how much she wants to reveal. She moves her fingers up to Mika’s hair and starts playing with the strands between her fingers; allows herself to keep her eyes on that instead of the woman next to her. “With Kwan, it was always just sex. I was never really interested in having anything more with him. I never let myself,” she lets out a breath, “have feelings for him.” She resolutely doesn’t look at Mika.
But Mika reaches up and catches Jules’s hand in hers. “Jules,” she says, soft. Her other hand touches Jules’s chin, tilts it so Jules has no choice but to look at her. “I feel the same way, too,” Mika says. “About the feelings, I mean. Not about the sex with Kwan. I would never do that.” Jules rolls her eyes. “But I really like what we have going here. It means a lot to me, too.” Mika is looking at her so fondly. She’s not used to someone looking at her like that. She’s not used to liking it. She wants to look away. She wants to stay in this spot forever.
Mika shrugs her shoulder and continues. “Last night was the best sex I’ve had in my life, by the way. In case you wanted to know.”
That possessive thing inside her purrs, content. “I know,” she says casually, like this isn’t life-altering information for her; like she doesn’t want to print those words out and frame them on her wall.
“What? What do you mean you knew?” Mika says, furrowing her eyebrows.
“You kept being like, ‘Oh, Jules, keep touching me, you’re so good at head, I’ve never felt like this before’, so I kind of put it together.”
Mika whacks her on her arm. “I do not sound like that!” she protests.
“You sounded like that last night,” Jules tells her.
“I hate you,” Mika says. She rolls on top of Jules, legs straddling her waist, hands on either side of Jules’s head.
“I’m your favorite intern,” Jules reminds her. Her mouth feels suddenly dry.
“It’s a low bar,” Mika says, then leans down and kisses Jules. Out of all of their kisses this morning, this one is the most heated, the most alive. Mika presses down into her, running her hand along the side of Jules’s shirt, tucking under the hem and moving up against her skin. Jules arches her back, trying to feel more of her.
Mika’s phone buzzes. She lets out a frustrated sound from the back of her throat that sounds almost like a growl. Unfortunately, it sends a shiver down Jules’s back. Mika pulls back a few inches.
“You should check that,” Jules says. “It could be Chloe.”
Mika rests her hands on Jules’s sides a moment longer, then begrudgingly shifts her weight, rolling away to grab her phone.
“It’s Griffith,” she says, flopping onto her back. “She wants to know if I can pick them up on the way to the hospital.” She glances over at Jules, like she’s asking for permission.
“That’s fine,” Jules says. “It’s your van. It’s up to you.” Mika, however, looks unsure. “What?” Jules asks.
She huffs out a breath. “I dunno, I just liked the idea of driving in together, just you and me,” she says. Something in Jules melts at the simplicity of it. “And, I feel like when they see us together, they’re going to know about us.”
Jules pushes a loose strand of hair out of Mika’s face. She lets her hand linger. Mika leans her face into it. “I think they’re going to find out pretty soon. Especially if we start spending nights at each other’s.”
Mika still looks a little unsure; a little worried. And yes, it goes against almost all of Jules’s instincts, but she’s ready to stop fighting this thing between them. She wants to give it the space to grow.
“And when they do find out?” Mika asks.
“Maybe we… maybe we don’t need to be a secret,” she says. She moves her finger against Mika’s temple, feeling Mika’s pulse under her thumb. It’s grounding; reminding her why she’s doing this.
A smile tugs at Mika’s mouth. “Yeah? And that’s something you’d be okay with? People knowing that we’re girlfriends?”
Jules’s breath catches in her throat. Mika looks panicked. “I mean… friends who have feelings for each other and who have really great sex. You’d be okay with people knowing that?”
“Girlfriends?” Jules repeats, ignoring Mika’s ramblings. It’s been a while since she was anyone’s girlfriend. The term always felt confining, like she was forcing herself into a position that didn’t feel natural. But with Mika it feels— it feels like potential.
“Girls who are friends. Like how straight women say it,” Mika says, not looking Jules in the eyes.
“Mika, do you want to be my girlfriend?” Jules asks. She can’t keep the smile off her face.
Mika pauses. “In a straight way or a gay way?”
“Mika,” Jules says.
“What? Jules, you’re really hard to read sometimes.”
Jules huffs out a breath, and scooches closer to Mika. She grabs her hand, linking their fingers together. “Mika Yasuda. I really like you. Do you want to be my girlfriend, in a gay, romantic kind of way?”
The smile that blooms on Mika’s face is the most magnificent thing Jules has ever seen. She wants to bottle it up and store it somewhere safe, so she can look at it again if she’s ever having a bad day. “Yes. Yeah, I would like that,” Mika says. She pushes forward, kissing Jules, and Jules could spend the rest of her life here in this moment and be the happiest person on earth.
Far too soon, Mika pulls away, breaking off their kiss. She lets out a sigh. “Do we have to pick up the other interns, though? Or can we just let them deal for today?” she asks.
Jules rolls her eyes. Nothing can stop the smile on her face. “Yes, we’re gonna go pick them up. You can tell them all that I’m your girlfriend, if you want. Adams will get a kick out of that.” Mika perks up at this. Jules pushes off the bed, and reaches her hand out to Mika. “Now come on, let’s get some breakfast before we have to go.”
Mika smiles back up at her. She takes her hand.