Work Text:
It started like this:
There were a few shifts where Victoria had to stay late. Critical patients coming in at the last second or never being able to leave well enough alone—whatever you wanted to call it—the outcome was the same. The clock would tick past her intended departure time, and before she knew it, it was an hour past when she’d meant to leave. She’d look up from a charting haze to realize the day shift had slowly trickled out, replaced by the both familiar and unfamiliar faces of the night shift.
Truth be told, she was a little scared of them. Not that she’d ever say that out loud. But like, you had to be an extra special kind of insane to want the night shift.
She’d hastily stuff her belongings in her backpack and shuffle herself out the front, dodging disgruntled patients as she weaved through the waiting room. She’d go out the back, but her bus stop was out front, so really it just made more sense. No matter how many times her mom offered to pick her up, that was one boundary she wasn’t willing to cross. It’s bad enough working at the same hospital as both of your parents; she didn’t need her waiting outside like a mom in the school pick-up line.
It’s one of those days, when she’s cursing to herself as she checks her bus app, seeing that it’s departing in 2 minutes, that she notices, for the first time, that Lupe isn’t at the front desk. It’s not like she thinks she works doubles; it’s more so that she’s always practically sprinting out the doors with no time for noticing anything. She’s not huge into after-work socializing anyway. That one time in the park satisfied that urge for a while.
Today, though, she happens to turn her head at just the right moment to see the night shift receptionist settling into her seat for the long haul. And damn. She’s like, model gorgeous. Victoria nearly gets steamrolled by an angry-looking woman with a bloody tissue pinched on her nose for all her rubbernecking.
She’s about to miss her bus, and the next one isn’t for 40 minutes, so she doesn’t have time to linger any longer. But that night, when she goes home, she can’t get her face out of her head.
It’s not creepy to want to get to know your coworkers.
She’s friends with lots of people she works with. Like Dennis. And Samira. And Trinity… Well, she’s actually not quite sure if they’re friends or not. She thinks they are. Trinity claims that being friends with the people you work with is “not just sad, but deeply depressing”, but on early mornings, she leaves matcha from the cafe down the street in the breakroom, the white cups labeled with a scrawled “V” on the side.
And she’s even friends with the night shift. She’s friends with Mateo, for starters.
(Which is a whole other thing that she’d like to never talk to anyone about ever again. She still gets a little fluttery in the stomach when he laughs at her jokes. But they’re decidedly platonic.)
Plus, the Pitt is always understaffed and overcrowded. If she sticks around a little longer, maybe on purpose, maybe not, it’s not like anyone is going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It’s just good manners to be friendly when you interact with other people at your job. It’s like… building connections, or something like that. So what if she decides to walk in front of the check-in counter on her way out? The side door is a little further from her stop, but she’s calculated that the extra steps push her just over her goal of 15,000 a day. Really, it’s the practical decision too, since patients don’t come in that way.
And since she’s walking past the window, it’d be rude if she didn’t at least smile at her (she still doesn’t know her name. She’s working up the courage to ask someone). And if her stomach flips when she smiles back, toothy and slightly crooked, well, that’s just something she doesn’t need to think about right now.
“I’ve got it!” Victoria practically jumps out of her seat when Abbot asks for someone to grab a form from the front desk.
He looks at her sideways at her enthusiasm, but she barely notices in her haste to the reception office. Chantana—she subtly asked Ellis last week— turns around with a quick grin as Victoria makes her way in. She’s never really thought about the check-in desk as an art, but watching Chantana makes her re-evaluate. She hadn’t realized how stressful it is. The line is never-ending, and not only that, but she has to decide who to prioritize and who to let wait. In the way that lives are in Victoria’s hands, they’re also in hers.
Victoria instantly spots the paper she’s meant to grab, but she feigns searching for something else, trying to work up the courage to say… anything.
Chantana’s slender fingers move quickly over the keyboard. Victoria always hated typing class in school. There’s a sweetness to her voice that calms even the most agitated of patients. A gentle soothing tone that has them apologizing for their brusqueness.
As a patient signs their signature on a form, Victoria realizes she’s been hovering for far too long. Her cheeks flush, and she nearly knocks over a cup of pens when Chantana turns to her.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” Victoria squeaks.
Chantana opens her mouth to say something else, but she doesn’t get a word out before Victoria flees, Abbot’s requested paper long forgotten.
Victoria avoids her the next time she stays late. She keeps her eyes trained strictly forward, and she goes out the front door.
But then, a few weeks later, she’s walking past the door that connects to the emergency department when she smells something so fucking good she can’t help but go investigate. It’s really not her fault; she can’t be blamed. It was so hectic, she didn’t get a chance to even eat her protein bar, and her stomach is angrily reminding her of that fact. Practically on autopilot, her feet lead her towards the smell of food.
Of course, it’s Chantana. She honestly hadn’t even intentionally stayed late tonight. It really had just been a superbly busy day.
“What are you eating?” Victoria asks, ignoring the nerves that shoot up through her.
“Pad Kra Pao,” she says, tilting the container to show her a drool-inducing combination of meat, some sort of aromatic green, and a fried egg all over rice.
“Jesus,” Victoria mumbles. “That looks delicious.”
“Thanks,” she says with a smile. “I made it.”
“I can’t cook anything but grilled cheese,” Victoria replies.
She laughs, a real, genuine thing, and Victoria feels like she just hit the jackpot on one of those arcade games where you spin the wheel for a prize.
“I’m sure you’re not that bad.”
“Trust me, I am.”
There’s a brief pause, and Victoria wonders if she’s overstayed her welcome.
Then—
“Do you want some?”
“Oh my god, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to try to like, steal your food,” Victoria stammers.
“Relax,” she smiles. “I’m offering. I have extra anyway.”
Victoria knows she should say no, she really does. But she’s thinking with her stomach here, not her brain, so she lets Chantana spoon some out onto a paper plate for her. She practically moans at the first bite. Her cheeks flush again, and she’d almost swear Chantana’s do too.
But that would be crazy. Probably just a trick of the light.
The next morning, she feels guilty for eating her food and slips a twenty under the keyboard labeled with a pink sticky note for her.
Thank you :) So so yummy. Have you considered becoming a full-time chef?!?
She comes in the next morning and stops in the breakroom to shove her water bottle into the fridge. She’s stopped short by a tupperware container with a pink sticky note.
Vic–
(She goes tachy at the sight of the nickname)
I’m glad you liked it :) I almost went to culinary school, actually, but I worked in a restaurant in high school and the people just aren’t as nice in the kitchen. At least not as nice as the people here.
P.S. Keep your money!
She lifts the sticky note up to reveal the twenty she left, folded crisply into a heart.
From then on, it’s either a container in the fridge when she gets to work or a paper plate loaded to the top waiting for her at the end of her shift. Chantana tells her the names quietly, between patients. Papaya salad. Gai Yang. Khao soi. Each better than the last, if that’s even possible.
It’s become a running joke between them. Victoria offers her twenty bucks for the food, and Chantana always declines. She sits with her, sometimes, while she eats and they talk about everything and anything.
Victoria tells her about med school as a teenager, her parents, and how she’s not sure she’s really meant to be in emergency medicine.
Chantana, in return, regales her with stories of the rudest patients she’s seen and how she wanted to go into pharmacology but had to stop to take care of her grandmother when she got dementia. Her grandma taught her the family recipes in those last few months of her life. She tells her about the mundane too, the books she’s reading, the parties she went to in undergrad.
It’s a comfortable co-existence, as long as Victoria doesn’t think too hard about it.
If Mateo was Utah, then Chantana’s the whole fucking West Coast.
Other people are noticing as well, to Victoria’s simultaneous pleasure and horror. Trinity, who always has a keen eye for situations like this, is the first to notice, of course.
She sees the containers of food, the unnecessary trips to reception when they’re both working late. Clocks the goofy grin on her face, the way she smiles a little easier now, laughs a little less nervously.
“Crash has a crush,” she says in a sing-song voice as they lean against the nurse’s station, waiting for CT results.
“What, no,” Victoria sputters. “I don’t.”
Trinity just cocks a brow at her.
“Don’t argue with Lesbian Jesus,” she says as she walks away.
Victoria calls after her.
“I thought that was Hayley Kiyoko!”
Santos doesn’t turn around but points back at her over her shoulder.
“The fact that you even know that is your answer!”
It’s not like Victoria never considered the possibility that she could like girls. She knew she was probably… something. She’d had crushes on girls in college, girls who were much older than her and barely glanced in her direction.
But she’d always sort of seen them as sparks in the night, tiny flutters of attraction that would always sputter out quickly. She’d had all-consuming, bonfire crushes on boys and that made those little moments seem so inconsequential, insignificant.
This though? This was a goddamn wildfire, and come hell or high water, it was not going to be ignored.
“Hey,” Chantana says, about a month or two after she first started sharing her meals.
Victoria is instantly on edge. She knew this was too good to last.
“What’s up?”
“I had an idea… and you can tell me if you hate it…”
Victoria braces herself for the worst.
“Would you maybe want to come over tomorrow, and I could teach you how to cook?”
Victoria lets out a sigh before she even registers what she said.
Chantana. Inviting her over. Just the two of them. In her apartment.
There are images flashing in her mind against her own volition.
Oh.
Oh.
“Yes.”
She doesn’t think twice.
Chantana picks her up after her shift. Victoria finds she doesn’t mind sliding into the passenger seat when it’s her at the wheel. Her dark hair is fanned loosely around her shoulder blades as soft music pours from the speakers. She runs her hands through it, and Victoria almost faints at the sweet floral scent it emits.
They drive in a comfortable silence across town to Chantana’s apartment. Victoria changes out of her scrubs in her bathroom and resists the urge to see what shampoo she uses. She’s crazy, but she’s not a stalker.
In the kitchen, Chantana is humming along to the radio while she preps vegetables. She promised they’d start easy with a simple stir fry. Victoria is sure she’ll find a way to mess it up anyway, but she’s choosing to trust the process.
Chantana smiles at her as she pads into the room.
She gestures with her knife to a second cutting board where a freshly washed and peeled carrot is waiting for her. Victoria takes her place in front of it and grabs her own knife.
“Here,” Chantana says, walking behind Victoria.
Her breath hitches as she presses up against her ever so slightly, holding her hand over Victoria’s from behind. Her breath is warm on the back of her neck and Victoria is positive she’s about to slice off her own finger; that’s how distracted she is.
“Like this,” she says, guiding Victoria through the motion of slicing it in half, then into thin strips.
She steps back, and she immediately misses the warmth of her body. She has to take several deep breaths to settle herself before she starts back on the carrot. You’d think as a doctor she’d be better at this, but her cuts are uneven and slightly jagged. Chantana just laughs and says it doesn’t matter how it looks, just how it tastes.
Slowly, the rest of the dish comes together. She heats oil in a pan over the stove, and Victoria carefully adds in the vegetables, the seasoning, the noodles, and the sauce. Chantana demonstrates how to flick the pan upward to toss the contents in the air and toss them, but Victoria shakes her head furiously and sticks to just stirring.
“Try it,” she says when it’s done, twisting noodles around a fork and stabbing at the veggies. She holds it out to Victoria to feed it to her. She lets herself be fed, chewing intently and swallowing.
“Good,” she says. Chantana brightens.
“See! I knew you could do it.”
“It’s missing something, though,” Javadi says.
Chantana’s expression turns confused.
“Did we forget to add something?”
Javadi just nods before doing the bravest (or maybe stupidest) thing she’s ever done.
She closes the distance between them, rests one hand on the side of Chantana’s face and wraps the other around her waist as she pulls her in and kisses her deeply.
Kissing her is like coming home after a long shift. Her whole body softens, and she smiles at it as she pulls her closer. It deepens and Javadi thinks, yes, she could get used to this.
When they finally pull apart, lips swollen and chests heaving, Javadi grins.
“Now it’s perfect.”