Work Text:
Cassie should really be doing her job. Instead, she's standing at the nurse's station, watching Robby and Dana volley back and forth. God, this day needs to end. Heads are turning and then unsubtly returning to their work—they’re all gossips, the whole lot of them. And then, just as quickly as it started, Dana turns heel and starts storming off.
"Where are you going?" Robby calls after her, although he's really demanding an answer more than anything. Cassie winces—she knows exactly how that's going to go over.
As expected, Dana keeps walking, half-turned to say, "Takin' a pee, or do I need your permission to do that too now?"
Cassie watches her walk off, her hands clenched at her sides even as she looks near tears. Abandoning the task at hand—the charts can wait, it's not like she can upload them digitally right now anyway—Cassie hurries to catch up to her, falling in line for a second so that she doesn't startle Dana before she gently takes her by the elbow, urging her to turn down the opposite hall she was heading for. "Let's go this way," she suggests, even though she's really not giving Dana much room to protest as she steers them around another nurse wheeling a patient.
Dana tries to tug her arm back half-heartedly, grumbling, "For the love of god, McKay, can I please just piss in peace?"
"We're going to the single stall," Cassie explains in a hushed tone. That bathroom at least has a lock on the door. "Come on."
The family bathroom is tucked off on the far end of the hall off of South, private enough that Cassie doesn't even worry about whether anybody sees her ushering Dana into it. God forbid somebody starts a rumor that they're fucking on company time. She locks the door behind them with a decisive click the second it swings shut, drowning them in the fluorescent hum of the bathroom light and the stinking smell of bleach. Dana doesn't say a word, just lets herself be led and then immediately pulls from Cassie's grasp to brace both hands on the sink and bow her head. For one second Cassie thinks she's going to be sick. And then the next second she thinks she might put her fist through the mirror.
Instead, all Dana does is squeeze the ceramic edge of the sink and curse, once, "Fuck!"
Cassie crowds in next to her immediately, close enough to catch her if her knees suddenly give out but not really touching until she's sure it won't feel like one more demand, one more person laying a hand on her without asking, no matter the intent. "Hey," she murmurs, watching Dana kick at the ground with singular focus. The floor squeaks under her.
Dana whips her head up to look at Cassie in the mirror, glaring defiantly. "Are you gonna yell at me, too? Because let me tell you, I'm really not in the mood, McKay."
The words come out brittle and too loud in the little room, bouncing off the echoey tile floor. Dana sounds like she's trying to hold herself together by spite alone, and Cassie knows enough by now to hear the difference between Dana when she's angry because she wants to fight and Dana when she's angry because fighting is the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
"No," Cassie says, smooth and easy. She's not about to fall for goading that easy—Dana's going to have to try a lot harder than that to get a fight out of her. "Not planning on it."
Dana lets out a sharp laugh, her mean streak very evident in the dismissive wave of her hand. "Well. That'll be a nice change of pace." Her nostrils flare. For a second Cassie thinks she's going to keep snapping, maybe tell Cassie to get out or to mind her own goddamn business. But Dana's shoulders hitch, betraying her. She swallows hard. "I'm fine," she insists, reading Cassie's mind. Then, like the obvious lie tastes bitter on her tongue, she adds, "And I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay." Cassie shrugs. She's not one to press on an aching bruise just to gain a little more information.
Dana blinks, startled by the lack of resistance. It almost seems to make her angrier, the way being met with gentleness always does when she's primed for a fight. Cassie watches it ripple through her—anger searching for somewhere to land. Dana's gaze drops to the sink. Her voice comes out even rougher, muttering, "You've got patients, you shouldn't be here."
Cassie shrugs again, in a way that she knows is probably infuriatingly calm. "I'm here anyway."
Dana's mouth forms a straight line, staring down at the cracked white ceramic of the sink. "Robby is going to be looking for you."
"Robby can live without me for five minutes." She doesn't mention that he got mad at her for running off without telling anybody once already today—really, what's the harm in a second offense? Cassie plants a hand on the counter beside Dana's hip and keeps her voice level, "Y'know, you don't need to fight me too."
Dana doesn't answer that. Every line of her body is telegraphing refusal, an insistence on remaining angry so that she doesn't have to feel the dozen other overwhelming emotions swirling around in her body. Cassie lets the silence stretch.
Eventually, without lifting her head, Dana croaks, "He had her by the throat." The words come choked and sudden, like they've been forced out under insurmountable pressure.
"I saw."
"She's a baby." Dana's voice cracks and she doesn't make eye contact but Cassie can still see the reflective sheen of tears in her eyes. "She's twenty-two—twenty-three, I don't fuckin' know—and she was crying and trying to apologize to me after like she'd done something wrong by trying to take his vitals and—" Her breath catches, a sudden glottal stop on an inhale that chokes the words out of her. She grips the sink harder, knuckles whitening almost to the same shade as the ceramic under the effort.
Cassie takes a chance and puts a hand flat between Dana's shoulder blades, feeling the edges of her vertebrae under her palm and fingertips. She doesn't jerk away, so Cassie leaves it there, unmoving so that she doesn’t push her luck. "Dana."
Dana closes her eyes. Tears slip free anyway, dropping silently and quickly to the basin below. She sniffs hard, furious at herself for it, like she doesn't deserve to be upset because she wasn't the one pressed up against the wall—wasn't the victim this time around. Sometimes Cassie worries that Dana would always rather be the one hit than the bystander watching and is a little reckless because of it, egging patients into hitting her instead of her staff by always being the one at the front, telling them news they don't want to hear so that another nurse doesn't have to. Dana makes herself into a shield so instinctively that it sometimes looks less like leadership and more like self-sacrifice.
"Oh, honey," Cassie murmurs, and trails her hand up to cup the back of her neck, cool skin to the warm spot over her vagus nerve.
Dana makes a sound that is simultaneously a sob and a growl of frustration and leans, just a fraction, back into Cassie's hand. For a minute that's all there is—Dana breathing too fast and Cassie trying to exaggerate her own breaths to something slower, like Dana might unconsciously follow.
Dana's shoulders stay wound tight enough to snap, but eventually her next inhale doesn't stutter halfway in. Then the one after that comes easier. And, eventually, she finds the ability to say, uncharacteristically nasally, "I didn't even think."
"I figured." Dana has made her career on being the first to act in an emergency, always in charge, and there's no reason for this to have been any different. In fact, Cassie would expect nothing less from her.
"I just saw—" She shakes her head sharply, an attempt at clearing the image from her brain. "I just saw his hand on her and then I was there."
Cassie knows, the same way she knows that sometimes Dana wakes up from her sleep already swinging at an invisible threat. Dana's body is still vibrating with aftermath, every muscle locked up as if she's waiting for the next fight. Still, Cassie can easily parse the underlying regret there. "You got him off her."
"I hit a patient," she says with an amount of self-loathing that is almost nauseating to Cassie. She can't stand for Dana to be so down on herself, even if what she did was morally ambiguous.
Cassie lifts one shoulder in a tiny what can you do motion that Dana can probably feel through the overlapping press of their bodies. "He was assaulting somebody."
Dana scoffs, "That is not exactly the standard of care, Cassie."
"No, but it did seem awfully effective."
That gets a wet, startled huff out of Dana. Not quite a true laugh, but close enough that Cassie counts it as a win. She keeps her hand at Dana's neck, thumb tucking just behind the beginning angle of her jaw.
Dana runs hot when she's angry. Cassie has known that since the first months of her intern year, back when Dana had terrified her and enraptured her in equal measure. Dana flushes up her throat when she's mad, spots high over her cheeks, ears pinking under the edges of her hair. She'd stood at the nurses' station the same way back then too, barking orders, face pinking with carefully-controlled rage. Cassie had fallen a little bit in love with her the first time she watched her get truly angry and hadn't been able to suppress that feeling since.
The helplessness in her voice now guts Cassie more effectively than the anger ever could. Dana is so rarely helpless. Even upset, she's usually still moving and solving her way through a disaster with clipped instructions and a level stare. To see her stalled by the fact that there is nothing to do now, that the only thing left is the emotional aftermath and the humiliation of being yelled at by the coworker who is usually on her side.
Cassie moves closer until their hips bump in a warm jolt through their scrubs. "You saved her." When Dana just presses her lips together and remains silent, she insists, "You did."
"I hurt somebody," Dana reiterates, like she's convinced Cassie is simply choosing to misinterpret the situation.
"You stopped an assault."
"He's still a patient. He's sick."
"And Emma doesn't deserve to get hurt for doing her job." Cassie wants to say, and neither do you but she's not sure that Dana would really appreciate that in this moment. She hopes it's implied though.
Dana's eyes close again, like she can't bear to confront the situation with all of her senses intact. "Don't make me the good guy here, Cass. I feel much too haggard for it."
"Oh, D." Cassie slides her hand from the back of Dana's neck down to the top slope of her shoulder. "You are many things. I promise, haggard isn't one of them."
Dana's face pinches at that, a combination of shame and the relief of being told she isn't as monstrous as she believes. Cassie knows that look intimately, has seen it countless times in many other scenarios. Dana's moral code is so rigid that sometimes it cuts her open with its edges and leaves behind the intrinsic belief that she is culpable for every perceived wrongdoing. Cassie has seen it happen over much smaller things—Dana blaming herself because a patient died after they had already done everything, or lying awake because she was unfair to a tech on a truly atrocious shift, or when she once cried in Cassie's bed because she couldn't call one of her daughters back during her shift and by the time she did her daughter had already figured her problem out herself. It is one of the many things Cassie loves about Dana and one of the things she hates most for her, this impossible insistence Dana has that if she could just work harder, then maybe nobody under her care would ever get hurt. It's an impossible responsibility to bear.
Dana leans forward into the sink so that the curve of her iliac crests press into the surface, looking at the ceiling as if willing God to offer her a divine intervention. Very quickly switching topics, Dana grumbles, "I'm pissed Robby spoke to me like that in front of everybody."
Cassie resists the urge to point out that he's been doing that all day, just not to Dana until right now. Now is not the time for her own complaints. Instead, she sighs softly. She knows how Dana feels about having her authority undermined. "I’m sure."
"I know he's the fucking boss or whatever other bullshit he—"
"Dana."
"I get it," Dana says again, deflating into a quieter tone at Cassie's warning. "But I wasn't trying to be some cowboy asshole. He was hurting her. And now Robby is pissed about the fuckin' assignment like that's somehow the priority here."
Cassie tilts her head for a moment, shifting her arm a little as it starts to ache from being held up for so long. She moves it down to Dana's elbow as she takes a deep breath and makes up her mind, always eager to solve a problem if it makes Dana's life any easier, "I'll take him, okay?"
Dana blinks, head whipping around to finally look her in the eyes. "What?"
"The patient," Cassie gestures vaguely, not being able to recall his name. "I'll take him, do all of his wound care and stuff."
"You're not a nurse. You know that's just going to piss Robby off if he feels like we're wasting resources." The vitriol in her words aimed at Robby is almost impressive in its ferocity as her upper lip curls into a sneer.
"Sure but I can at least help so you can stay out of that room." She keeps her voice purposefully level, hoping Dana will be more inclined to agree with her if she poses the suggestion as something completely reasonable. It's definitely not protocol, but Cassie can't bring herself to care about that or the fact that it'll be adding even more stuff onto her list of things to do. "Besides, I can't imagine he'll need much anyway, he's just a concussion protocol. I'll do his neuro checks and everything."
Dana stares at her blankly, gaze flitting rapidly between each of Cassie's eyes like she's trying to find some hidden truth in the reflection of them. "What makes you think that if I don't want any of my nurses in there, I'll be okay with you going in?" She challenges, always so fucking stubborn.
"I'm volunteering." Cassie reaches for both of Dana's hands, urging her to fully turn towards her now that she doesn't seem to be avoiding eye contact, thumbs moving lightly over the strong extensor tendons there. Shockingly, Dana does actually allow herself to be turned. "You can sit outside anytime I'm in there and watch. We'll make it work. Please? Let me do this."
Dana's expression turns so suddenly that it nearly gives Cassie whiplash, tears starting to gather in her eyes as her chin just barely trembles. It's a heartbreaking look, and her words even more so as she practically begs, "Cass, if you get hurt—"
"Security is outside, he's restrained. I will be fine," she soothes, trailing her hands up to run across Dana's biceps. Her mouth quirks in fond amusement as she continues, "Besides, I think you rang his bell hard enough that he won't have the coordination to try anything."
Dana scoffs, an embarrassed flush rising to her cheeks. "I did no such thing."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, plausible deniability and all that." Cassie grins in triumph when she actually manages to earn a laugh from Dana, no matter how disbelieving it is. Still, her eyes drift down to where Dana has fisted her hand into each side of Cassie's jacket like it's physically tethering her to the ground. "Can I check your hand? Make sure you didn't break anything precious?"
"Don't you think I would know if my bones were broken?" Dana huffs but she still brings her right hand up between them, palm facing the floor so that Cassie can examine the blooming bruises over her MCP joints.
Cassie traces carefully around the swollen knuckles without pressing, feeling for any deformity that she can't see visually. Once she's satisfied there, she falls back into a more clinical mindset as she asks, "Can you make a fist?"
Dana complies, although not fully. She hisses as the skin around her knuckles starts stretching, the motion faltering at about three-quarters complete.
Needlessly, Cassie asks, "Does that hurt?" Dana gives her a flattened look and doesn't even bother to open her mouth to respond. Cassie's mouth quirks, despite herself. "Okay, okay, stupid question."
Cassie lifts Dana's hand closer to the light anyway, turning it back and forth gently. There's swelling but no obvious deformity. The skin over the knuckles is already going dusky, a raised smear of purple under pale skin. Protective fury rises anew and scorchingly hot in Cassie's chest. She imagines Dana's fist connecting with that asshole's face and the awful choice behind the movement—his face or Emma's airway.
Cassie raises Dana's bruised knuckles up the last couple of inches so that she can press the lightest kiss to the least swollen one, between her pinky and ring finger. Dana stills with a soft, surprised look she still gets sometimes when Cassie treats her gently in the middle of more practical moments. As if she expects care in private moments, in bed, at home, with low light and nowhere to be. But tenderness in a hospital bathroom while her face is blotchy from crying and her hand is swelling from decking a patient still catches her off guard. Cassie would spend the rest of her life chasing that look if she let her.
"You're icing this as soon as we get home," she says with a pointed glare, not opening herself up to any objections.
Dana smiles wryly, slipping into a more familiar flirtatious tone as she asks, "Doctor's orders?"
Cassie grins right back at her, pleased that she's managed to bring back some of Dana's more carefree personality. "Mm, if that's what it takes for you to comply." She brings one hand back up to Dana's face, brushing away the lingering dampness at the corner of her eye with her thumb. "Did anybody check you over after everything happened?" She can't hope for much with the answer, considering it seemed like Dana almost immediately got into a second fight after punching a dude. God forbid she slow down for a minute to let herself be cared for.
Dana rolls her eyes. "I'm fine."
"That's not what I asked." Cassie is unamused by Dana's avoidant tendencies, even now. She may look a little pitiful like this, red-rimmed eyes and trembling body, but she's also not going to risk her bodily safety.
"I said I'm fine, Doctor McKay."
If Cassie were a weaker woman, she'd give up trying to force Dana to admit any amount of weakness. As it stands, she stares at her a beat, calculating, before she finally asks outright, "Did he hit you?" Dana hesitates just long enough that Cassie's stomach drops. "Dana, are you serious? What the fuck."
"He caught me on the shoulder," Dana defends. "That's all."
"Show me," Cassie demands immediately, eyes already assessing for anything she can see with all of the fabric in the way. Her heart feels like it's in her throat all of a sudden, and she has to remind herself that Dana is standing in front of her, relatively unharmed.
Dana mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously vulgar, but she shifts anyway, turning to the side enough for Cassie to fully inspect her left shoulder. The scrub fabric hides most of it. Cassie reaches up and tugs the neckline down just enough to expose the slope where neck meets shoulder when it becomes apparent that Dana isn't going to do it herself. She finds the start of a bruise there already, an angry red mark that will become blue-purple by the time they wake up tomorrow morning. Suddenly rage doesn't feel like a severe enough word to describe the emotions swirling in her stomach.
Dana notices and instantly says, softer, "Hon—"
"Don't ‘hon’ me. I'm pissed."
Dana, incredibly, looks a little fond at Cassie's protectiveness. "Worth a try," she offers with a shrug.
"It wasn't," Cassie says flatly. She leans fully into Dana's space now, not caring how close she's getting when they're technically on the clock, and brushes the pads of her fingers around the bruise, so careful. Dana inhales sharply through her nose. "That bad?" Cassie asks attentively, not willing to let that moment of weakness slide.
"No."
"Liar." Dana shrugs and then immediately winces when all the motion does is serve to press Cassie's fingers further into the bruise. Cassie moves her hand away from the red area and instead to the top of her biceps, steadying. "Easy."
For a moment they just stand like that. Cassie is taking inventory now, the way they all learn to do in medicine, one way or another. Dana stares at her for a long second. Her throat bobs up and down in an unreadable motion. Then she moves, fast and sudden, and kisses Cassie. Dana, stripped down to gratitude and love and aching hurt, pressing all of that against Cassie's mouth for one trembling second. Cassie kisses her back just as softly, a hand coming up to cradle her jaw, professionalism be damned.
When they part, Dana rests her forehead briefly against Cassie's, inhaling her exhale. "You always somehow make me feel less crazy."
Cassie smiles, eyes stinging unexpectedly. This day has fucking sucked and somehow, this moment has made it a little bit worth it, no matter the context that led them here. "That's because you're not crazy."
"That's up for debate. I did just hit a man."
"Dana, be serious."
"Fine." She takes a long breath, trying to suppress a grin and failing miserably. "You win."
Cassie kisses the corner of her mouth this time, quick and still a little worried they're somehow going to get caught like this. "Good." She pulls back, albeit reluctantly.
Dana drags a hand down her face again, wiping at the last tears with a roughness that makes Cassie want to smack her own hand away and do it gently instead. Dana straightens a fraction, shoulders squaring the way she does when she's about to put herself back together.
Cassie takes the hint, feeling their conversation come to a close. They've probably already been gone for too long. "Ready to head back out there?"
"I actually did need to pee,” Dana admits sheepishly.
Cassie laughs. "That probably works out better, anyway. Wouldn't want anyone seeing us walk out of here together, would we?" She waggles her eyebrows, earning a smack to her upper arm.
"I don't know," Dana muses, feigning seriousness, "that might take the heat off of the very public crime I just committed."
"Self-defense," Cassie reasons, a little bit heartened to see Dana joking about the incident so soon after it happened. "How about one more kiss for the road?"
Dana shakes her head like she's appalled, but she leans in anyway, one hand curling back in to the front of Cassie's jacket. The kiss this time is shorter and more controlled now that they're both more emotionally steady, Dana's mouth warm and a little chapped against hers. Cassie chases her for half a second when Dana pulls back, earning herself another laugh.
"Control yourself, McKay," Dana scolds. "We'll be home in less than two hours."
"And thank god for that," Cassie sighs, finally building up the strength to fully pull away from Dana's touch. She stays just within reach to be able to smooth a hand over the collar of Dana's scrub top where she'd tugged it askew to look at the bruise. Then, she straightens the neckline of her undershirt and pats once at the center of her chest like she's sending her back into battle. "I'll see you out there?"
"You can count on it."
Cassie gives her arm one last parting squeeze and then takes a step back. "Take your time," she says as she heads for the door.
Dana rolls her eyes to Cassie's retreating form, stubbornly saying, "I'll be done in a minute."
Cassie nods, not bothering to argue. The whole department will be better for it once Dana returns and they both know it. She unlocks the door and slips out, pausing only long enough to glance back once. Dana is standing a little taller now, watching her with softened eyes. It'll have to be enough for now. Two more hours until they can go home and let every other responsibility fall away, just for a little bit. Cassie pulls the door shut behind her and heads back into the familiar noise of the department, with the promise that this shift isn’t going to last forever.