Chapter Text
chapter one - a hug
“
Mom, you don’t get it!”
“Oh? Tell me Victoria, what is it that I don’t understand?”
All the fight left her at once, like a rush of air, no, a gust of embarrassment. Because what she was about to say didn’t make her feel strong. Or mature. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“I had a really hard day.” God, she didn’t look like she was going to cry, did she?
Her mother definitely looked pained. Her expression was pinched; the sigh she let out was resigned.
“Victoria. You’re better than this. Don’t let me catch you with her again.”
———
Before
Okay, so her mom found her in the stairwell in Dr. McKay’s arms.
No!! Not like that!!
She just needed some comfort, she guessed. The whole week had been a disaster, her last patient of the day crashed, almost died, and so … yeah.
Maybe Cassie had seen her standing on the edge of a panic attack at the top of the stairs and thought she was going to throw herself down them. Whatever. A moment of weakness.
But McKay’s strong, bare arms wrapping around her had felt so good. McKay’s after-shift tank top was soft and comforting. She’d turned into the embrace and pressed her nose flush against the older woman’s neck without thinking. The contrast of warm skin and that cold metal chain against her face calmed her in a way that little else could. She’d panic about that later.
The point is that her mother had come looking. Because she’d come down to the ER to quiz her some more about her life probably - because of course- and Dr. Al Hashimi had pointed her to the stairs.
Unseemly- her mother probably thought- for the daughter of Eileen Shamsi to be seen bolting for the stairs like a child on the verge of a tantrum at the end of a typical workday.
What she found instead was worse than she could have imagined. And it was worse for Javadi too, because her mother didn’t feel her racing heart, or see her flushed face, or know the crisis her daughter would be having as she lie awake at night later. And still, without being a mind reader, her mother was upset. Still, even though she was only hugging a coworker, Javadi felt ashamed, afraid, embarrassed. Her mother had cleared her throat and glared in a way that sent McKay returning onto the Pitt floor with an apologetic, secretive look of care to Victoria. And then she was gone.
Affection was too needy. Comfort? Too impure.
Victoria Javadi wasn’t meant to have anything that she didn’t fight for. And she shouldn’t fight for love like some kid. This had always been her lesson to learn.
————
Present
Victoria held her head high, her shoulder blades tightening towards her back. She left the stairwell and only paused at the nurses station long enough to grab her Stanley cup of water before fleeing to the changing room.
Oh god, she hugged her coworker in stinky, sweaty scrubs.
Fwump.
Oh god, she’d run straight into the very same coworker in the doorway. Would these past 20 minutes of her life ever end?
“Victoria?” Dr. McKay questioned gently, holding her by the shoulders and studying her so, so intently. The eye contact was almost too much to bear. Hadn’t she flayed herself open in front of this woman enough?
“Honey, are you ok?”
Javadi cough-choked through her reaction at being called honey, taking a sip of water too quickly, and answered belatedly:
“I’m totally fine.”
And then,
“I’m sorry for hugging you by the way. Haha. That was weird.”
Cassie dropped her arms to her sides, and then crossed them,
“I hugged you, first of all.”
She frowned, “and second of all, you’re allowed some comfort. This job is hard.”
Javadi scoffed,
“Not for my mother it isn’t.”
McKay shook her head, sat down on one of the locker room benches, and patted beside her until Javadi sat.
“Actually you may not want to hear this, but I think this job is so hard on your mother that she doesn’t treat you fairly.”
Victoria rubbed her hand over her eyes without thinking about how unsanitary an action it was. She groaned.
“Ok. But still. She’s fine. I’m fine. We’re fine. And I didn’t mean to cross any boundaries or whatever.”
The older woman rolled her eyes, “again. I crossed them. That was my choice. I wanted to.”
‘I wanted you’ falsely echoed in Victoria’s addled mind, and she bit her lip in shock at herself; an action that McKay luckily took as pondering, or hesitation.
“Come here,” rasped - no, said! Said McKay, before wrapping her arm tightly around the younger woman’s shoulders and pulling until they were flush, side to side on the bench. Their legs brushed, one of the many pockets of Cassie’s cargo pants catching on her scrubs and prolonging the contact.
Why did she notice, or think about that, like *that*? What was wrong with her?!! Cargo pants are totally unremarkable, especially on her coworker. Tacky even! Yep!
She groaned and Cassie thankfully once again misread the action, rubbing her arm firmly, soothingly.
Only then did she realize how limp she had gone in her mentor’s embrace. *Again*.
She bolted upright.
“Sorry! Sorry!”
This time when McKay rolled her eyes at her, she swore there was a heat to it that paradoxically made her shiver.
“Oh baby,” she cooed, just on the edge of appropriate, only barely platonic, but the tenderness shone through, making Victoria blush and shudder, “what are we going to do to fix this for you?”
Victoria was going to die. That would fix everything for sure.