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They never should have met, is the thing, not really. See each other in the halls, sure. Smile (her) and nod (him) to one another? Sure.
But it was a total diametric alignment of the universe that led to them having a conversation, and that fact wasn't lost on him.
Every year the ED ran a Secret Santa exchange, and every year they opened it up pro forma to other staff in the hospital that wanted to participate. Department by department was different, but people didn't usually stray from their day to day home base. Everyone had their own traditions of potlucks and happy hours.
The point is, no one is supposed to take them up on it. Not seriously, at least.
There's no way to know how Dr. Park's name was included. Was it a joke? A misspelling? A prank?
But here his Secret Santa stands with a smile on her face and Brendon holds a crochet goldfish the size of a small cat.
The stunned silence between them stretches on, and then on.
Emma, the aforementioned Secret Santa starts to look uncertain— shifting on her feet, twisting her hands together before trying to stuff them in her pockets.
"You— your card said you liked anything goldfish...?" she said, voice timid and hesitant.
"I think there's been a mistake." Someone is definitely pranking him. Or both of them. He doesn't like the thought of someone doing that to his Secret Santa.
Brendon balances the crochet fish on his palm in front of him between them, blinking at it.
"I didn't sign up for the, uh, Secret Santa exchange," he tells her, trying to be gentle. He steps to the side, angling his broad shoulders to allow room for her to enter his office.
"Awww, man!" She covers her face with her hands as she shuffles inside. "I knew there was something fishy about it."
She pulls off the reindeer antler headband as she collapses on his couch.
He can't help it. He snorts. She'd been so sincere, unaware of the pun she'd made. He starts laughing and she joins in with a pained groan.
"Ugh, of course you didn't sign up!" she says once their laughter dies down and he sits next to her.
The fish observes them from his table, a silent chaperone.
"That's pretty impressive," he tells her, gesturing at the animal.
"Thanks," Emma shrugs, sounding a little exhausted. "This explains why you missed the party. I was just coming to deliver it because I didn't see you there."
It's so, just... genuinely nice. It's refreshing. He smiles and turns to her, clearing his throat.
"That's really kind of you, Emma."
She blinks at him, unable to hide her surprise at his words. Brendon laughs wryly. She's not exactly wrong about that assessment. But he is an actual human being.
"Sorry—" She shakes her head, waving a hand generally in front of her and between them.
"Don't worry about it, seriously."
They sit in another comfortable silence, Emma glancing with open curiosity around the office before landing back on the fish.
"Where are you going to put him?" she asks, gesturing to a couple of possible locations.
"Him?"
"George," she says, like it's obvious. His lips quirk with a suppressed laugh.
"I don't know, what do you think?"
He leans back, stretching one arm across the back of the couch and extending the other, inviting her to choose a place of honor for George the Goldfish. He gives her shoulder a pat of encouragement as she gets up to pace.
After some rearranging of books, George is standing sentinel behind Brendon's desk, and he nods his approval to her.
It's maybe one of the strangest and nicest things anyone has ever done for him.
It's ridiculous, but they end up exchanging numbers. Ostensibly so that Brendon can keep her apprised of how George was acclimating to life with The Shark.
So, that's how it starts. Innocent enough. Somehow it escalated faster than anyone expected.
- × -
They keep in touch in fits and starts the way that occasional coworkers do. She's almost always the one to text first, but he smiles when he sees it and replies almost always immediately.
It's all very innocuous, right up until it isn't.
- × -
Sleepy days in the ED always have an ominous sort of energy to them that everyone pointedly notices and does not comment on. Somehow, this one snuck past them all. No one really notices, there are no furtive glances of concern. It's just busy enough to keep them all humming along until there's a lull around 5:30.
Emma is the one to notice. She's typing up a note from one of her regulars, taking the time to debate the phrasing of something when she realizes that she doesn't feel rushed.
"Hmm."
It's barely a sound. Totally unconscious. She doesn't even mean for it to come out.
Looking around slowly at the controlled order of the normally chaotic ED, Emma eventually drags her gaze over to where Dana is flipping through a stack of paperwork and muttering under her breath. Three decades of sixth sense has her pause and glance over at Emma. Emma's eyes go wide and she hurriedly turns back to her station to look busy. But it's too late, the spell was broken. The phone on the desk rings, almost on cue.
It's bad. It's really bad.
They're not even especially close to the site of the MCI but it's large enough that they're activating multiple hospitals. A passenger train derailment that spilled onto a nearby roadway and hit several vehicles. Patients are being airlifted, multiple patients in an ambulance in some cases.
Emma feels like she's drowning listening to the details being announced.
Surgeons quietly appear behind Robby. Emma picks out multiple specialties as she listens. Neuro, cardio thoracic, trauma, pediatrics, ortho. She looks over to see Brendon already looking at her.
His expression shifts imperceptibly, a softening of the tension in his brow. She gives him a small, sad smile.
Good to see you, shame about the circumstances, huh?
They need docs on site of the accident. Abbot has materialized at the hub like he teleported there, and is appointed to fly back with the medics when they arrive with the first patient. Park is picked out by Robby specifically as being needed and he just nods, his expression somewhere between solemn and grim as the muscle in his jaw shifts.
Their first patient arrives screaming, a large piece of shrapnel lodged in her abdomen, and Perlah is immediately at her side with reassurances shouted as she steers them into the trauma room.
The screams are muffled as the door closes behind them.
Emma breaks out of her trance when she registers Abbot and Park bustling off to a nearby closet for flight and field gear. Dana is assigning nurses to zones and Emma feels her heart jump in her chest as she realizes this is her chance.
"Wait— Dr. Park—!"
He glances back at her quickly when he hears his name and then again in confusion. "Emma?"
"I want to come with you," she announces breathlessly. "If there are serious orthopedic injuries, possibly requiring amputation or open fracture stabilization, you'll need an assist. A nurse is better than a paramedic for that and it'll free others up that can treat independently."
She sees a gleam in Brendon's eye and a whisper of a smile tugging at his mouth. He looks to Abbot with a brow raised who just gestures for her to follow along.
"Dana, we're takin' Emma!" he calls over his shoulder.
"What—!" Dana starts to try to intercept them but Emma picks up her feet, racing after the men stalking down the hallway towards the gear.
Emma pulls on her own pale pink knitted scarf and the fleece she keeps in her locker. It's February, and all three of them get into the field jackets that the hospital stocks for calls like this. Rarely used and not particularly warm, Emma is swimming in the smallest size until Brendon helps her adjust the waist and cuffs with a fond smile.
He claps her on the shoulder when they're both ready and cocks his head toward the elevator, Abbot already halfway down the hall. Getting on the elevator with the flight crew, Emma feels her belly clench anxiously. She doesn't notice her hand start to shake until she feels a large gloved grip close over it.
She looks up at Brendon who models taking a deep breath. He takes another and she joins him, nodding to the unasked question. She can do this.
He holds her hand in the helicopter the whole time, while Emma focuses on breathing and not throwing up or panicking by looking out the window. He doesn't ask if she's okay. She can tell that he trusts that she is, and that she'll tell them if she's not.
At some point, they thread their fingers together, hands tangled in a gentle knot. Emma gasps as they start to descend and the accident site comes into view.
Abbot lets out a whistle at the scale. A whole fucking train. A half dozen vehicles on the highway. Chaos, and it's starting to snow.
"Fucking hell," Brendon whispers, voice strained.
"Yeah," she whispers back.
A breathless welcoming party is waiting for them when they deboard the helicopter. Brendon's hand steadies her as she hops down, landing with a thump against his side. The fire chief has him pegged for the ortho surgeon immediately, thumping him in the chest lightly as he leans in to be heard over the roar of people wailing, machinery, hovering helicopters and sirens.
"Got a man pinned! He was lifting passengers out of an emergency window when a bearing broke! Whole train car tipped over! Son of a bitch almost made it, but the lower third of his legs are crushed!"
Emma's brain snaps into focus as she listens to the report, checking her kit for what they would need to initiate MTP in the field. She leans in before Park can.
"Take us to him!"
- × -
Danny Boyle is a third generation Pittsburgh Firefighter, and he's currently pinned beneath a passenger train car.
"Hi, Danny — I'm Emma," she says loud enough to be heard over the ambient cacophony. She hopes she managed to still sound friendly. "And that's Dr. Park—"
"Brendon, please. We're about to get to know one another very well."
It's starting to snow lightly, but the wind is the real issue. The ground is too soft to support a jack, and the wind is too bad to be able to operate a crane and lift the car. Which left exactly one option to separate Danny from the train car.
"Can you do it below the knee?" Emma asks, low enough to only be heard by Brendon. He looks over his shoulder, shaking his head uncertainly.
"The left, maybe? Probably not the right."
She just nods, hanging some FFP and red cells. She clears her throat, drawing up enough Versed to knock out an elephant.
"You want Versed?"
"No, can't risk suppressing his respiration like that. He's already been bleeding for a while, and we got a while to go. Ketamine, two per kilo."
This procedure will take longer than any of them would like for it to. Even the most basic of field amputations would take hours in these conditions.
"Hey, Danny? We're gonna give you some Ketamine to take the edge off, and Emma is gonna help hold you up while I give you a shot in your spine. It's going to numb your lower half and you'll feel a little better, man."
The scream he lets out when they shift his position to do the spinal block will haunt her. She holds back tears as she makes soothing sounds in his ear, gripping him tightly to keep him in position.
Their hands move in intuitive tandem as Emma helps him prep the first leg, and she already has the ten blade ready to go when he asks for it.
Danny Boyle is passed off to PTMC surgeons at 11:07pm, with one below knee and one above knee amputation.
Emma cleans herself up in the surgery locker room with borrowed toiletries from Dr. Walsh. She vomits in the shower when she remembers trying to cover Danny's ears while Brendon used the saw and the way that he sobbed and begged them to stop.
Winding her damp hair into a low bun with plenty of leave in conditioner, she sits on the bench in her towel for long enough that the hair at her temples is starting to dry when she finally gets dressed.
She's going to be processing tonight for a very long time. There's a hollow feeling in her chest but also the physical exhaustion of a job well done, and she doesn't know how to reconcile the two. She can't talk about tonight, not yet. She knows that it changed her as a person, and she thinks it might have changed him too.
It's that thought, murky and undefined but burning in her chest, that has her racing to the door hoping to catch Dr. Park before he leaves. Only to find him waiting for her outside.
"Hey," he greets her, pushing off from where he’s been leaning against the wall.
"Hey."
The locker room door softly closes behind her, pressing against her back as he steps closer.
"How are you?" She looks at him for a long moment, searching for the words to answer him before she finally just shrugs. Brendon nods. "Yeah. Me too."
It's been a couple of months now since she gave him George, and they had recently settled into a comfortable acquaintanceship. Not quite friends, but more than random coworkers. It was nice, made Emma feel grown up, steady, settled. One look at Brendon's wrecked, open and exhausted expression made it clear that was over now. Whatever they were to each other now is something new.
"C'mon, I'll give you a ride."
He doesn't say where and she doesn't specify a preferred destination, just nods and follows him. In the parking garage elevator, he takes her hand again.
They end up at his townhouse, Brendon pulling into the driveway and turning to look at her for permission before cutting the engine. Emma takes her seatbelt off and he nods, leaning in to kiss her temple.
Inside the house, he tries again, valiantly.
"Did you want me to show you where the guest room is?" he asks, holding her hand at the top of the staircase, muscles coiled and ready to pull her into his orbit.
Emma shakes her head. "No, thank you."
His fingers tighten around hers, both of their knuckles going white. He doesn't speak as he leads her down the hall to his bedroom. The sturdy king size bed dominates the attention of the room.
Emma drags her gaze over it. Half made, straightened out quickly in the morning but not tucked and draped. It paints a picture of where he was that morning, running late for some unknown reason, fingers threading through his hair as he jogged to the door. Her heart stutters softly beneath her breast.
"I'm going to get in the shower," he tells her, his thumb brushing her cheek. Another invitation without pressure.
"We showered at the hospital," Emma murmurs, kissing at the part of his neck she can reach with little pecks.
"Mm-hmm," Brendon hums, his hands settling at her neck, her collarbone. "This isn't about getting clean. Night like tonight? Gotta do something to regulate your nervous system."
His hand slips down to take hers, leading her into the bathroom.
"I invested in a very nice shower for this exact reason and purpose. Ever since residency, nothing helps keep me off the ledge like a shower."
"Yeah, I sometimes feel like a new person when I get out," she agrees, stripping off her scrub top.
Brendon has turned on the steam and is setting the sprayers to the configuration he wants for them. There's still a chill in the room, and her nipples pebble and tighten up, just this side of painful.
He notices, watching her as he strips off his own raglan and jeans. Emma had exchanged her scrubs for a new set, and just thrown away her undershirt, sports bra, and panties. Everything was grimy with dirt and salt and snow and sweat. Probably a little piss with how terrifying parts of the night were.
Brendon nods for her to come closer, and gently unties the bow at her waist. The pants slip down to her ankles easily and Emma steps out of them to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders. She's naked in his arms and his boxer briefs are soft against her skin, barely covering the hard length of his cock. They kiss, slow and exploratory with the water pattering behind them, before he steps back to shuck his briefs off and toss them in the direction of the hamper.
Emma gets in the shower, cupping her hands under the hot spray to bring the water up to her face. She's keeping her hair up, it'll still be damp enough to braid when they finish in here. Brendon is moving around his bathroom, digging in a drawer, looking in a cabinet, reaching into a hutch.
She looks over her shoulder at him as he climbs inside and closes the door to seal them in. He sets a few things on the wide shelf next to the bench and holds her hips as he squeezes past her to sit down.
Brendon spreads his legs, one of them in front and the other behind her. His cock is half hard and for a while he just watches her warm up under the water. Her hands glide over her tits and the slope of her belly. Her entire body starts to tingle when she feels his hand close around the back of her neck, massaging the muscles there that had looked down at Danny Boyle for six straight hours.
Emma moans. Soft at first before she thinks about how she can be as loud as she wants. She lets out a deeper moan, her hand steadying herself on his shoulder.
Almond bath oil fills his palms and Brendon starts a methodical exploration of her body. His slick hands grip her hips to position her, and she lets him. Something thrills her about that, giving over the control to him, knowing she can take it back any moment. In a second.
His hands drift up her abdomen to cup her breasts. She watches his cock harden as he tests the weight of them, murmuring something about the left being heavier, and his thumbs flick at her nipples. She runs her fingers through his hair, pulling a few strands forward and to the side. He looks younger this way, softer and more like the person she's come to know so well.
By the time he's tracing her areola with his tongue, his foreskin is stretched taut, a third of the way down his shaft. Emma cradles the back of his head with a gasp, biting her lip as she watches him play with her nipple. His teeth gently drag across the sensitive flesh, Emma feeling a pulsing release of slick and creamy arousal in response. When he takes it into his mouth and suckles; hard, like he's expecting to get something in return, she can't help but moan. It comes from somewhere deep in her core and he keeps going, tongue curled tightly around her swollen nipple. His sharp nose digs into the soft flesh obscenely, a thick blue vein running parallel to him.
"Oh fuck—!" Emma whimpers urgently, sounding genuinely panicked when she comes, harder than she has in months, just from his attention to her tits.
She holds herself up by a bar in the wall, gasping and feeling her core twitch and pulse. He rolls the condom on in what must be a world record. The lube is a thick gel that won't get washed away by the spray and bless this man for being self aware enough to know she would need it. Emma feels slightly delirious as she watches his hands, how he touches himself and reacts. She wants to remember every second of this.
He chooses to have her sit back on his cock first, wedging it into her pussy from behind, her knees slotting over his. His hands close over her breasts to steady her, toying with her nipples to help her adjust to his size.
It isn't long before she's squirming and wriggling in his lap, little disgruntled whimpers as she tries to chase pressure and friction against her clit. The left side is especially responsive, and she cries out with a gasp when she's able to shift her hips to stimulate it.
He's letting her use him, letting her take what she wants while the back of her brain registers the praise falling helplessly from his lips.
“That's my girl, you take it, use that hard cock to get that sweet clit nice and fat.” She comes hard, shaking as he cradles her against his chest to whisper in her ear. “I could live in your pussy, so fucking hot and tight.”
She pushes off with shaky thighs and feet she can barely feel to shuffle around and slide into his lap with her legs splayed across his and their nipples dragging together. His hands eagerly cup her ass to help her maneuver, and Brendon pants in her ear before letting out a faint whine.
“Tell me when you're about to come,” she says urgently before leaning in and meeting his mouth in open kisses, their tongues taking turns tasting the other's mouth, committing the moment to memory.
She rocks against him for what feels like forever, her cries getting more and more desperate and breathless. She's just started to come when he lifts her off his lap with a pained grunt, letting her sob collapsed against his side with his hand on her clit.
Emma gets to her knees in the shower, her core still pulsing and clenching around nothing, and slips the condom off his erection. Her hand is slick with her own arousal and she strokes Brendon until he's groaning, voice strained, painting her tits and torso with his semen.
She doesn't give him a chance to recover, her hands moving to her breasts to massage his come into her skin. She wants to absorb him, to smell like him, to take him into her and have part of him forever. She moans and whimpers as he blinks at her hazily, cock still twitching.
Brendon pulls her flush against him again, this time dipping his head to clean her chest off. His tongue is huge and velvety as he flattens it to lave across her nipples and drag up through a drop on her sternum.
When she's on the bench with her ankles crossed behind his head, holding him flush against her cunt, Emma realizes that the tongue inside her is covered in his seed. It's that thought which sends her over the edge with a whimper, her overstimulated clit rock hard and swollen between his warm lips.
Emma is still gasping in fits and trying to stop shaking when Brendon grabs the spray wand and the bath oil again. He gently cleans her off, worrying his thumb over spots here and there, whispering about being too rough with her. She lays back on the shower bench to let him finish his inspection with a fond smile, both of them knowing that she can take a lot more.
She rebuffs the offered high school swim team t-shirt, instead sitting nude in the bed to braid her hair into a thick rope while Brendon goes downstairs to turn on the alarm and do assorted other little odd and end tasks.
Emma burrows her face into his pillows, wrapping herself in his sheets and duvet. Surrounded by his scent, she's asleep before he gets back.
- × -
"Hey, uh..." Danny's cheeks go pink, pale skin showing the flush immediately. He chuckles, nervous. "I was wondering if, when I get out of here, I could take you out for a cocktail. As a-a-ahh... thank you?"
Behind her, she feels Brendon go still, holding his breath. Her heart is pounding in her ears as she tries to force herself to stay casual about this.
"I actually have this thing going with a really great guy. It's new and kind of poorly defined, but... I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes."
Danny doesn't bother hiding his disappointment.
"Well, if it doesn't work out, call me any time."
She's already standing as he finishes the sentence, leaning down to kiss his cheek and give him an awkward hospital bed hug.
"You know it. Good luck with your recovery. Keep Dr. Park and I in the loop on how you're doing."
"Absolutely," he promises, shaking Park's hand with a firm grip. "Thank you, both, so much… for everything."
She counts one, two, three, four steps down the hallway before he breaks the silence and she smirks.
"A thing with a really great guy?" he asks cheekily, pushing the button on the elevator panel and leaning his shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed to wait. "Anyone I know?"
She punches a solid block of muscle ineffectually.
"Don't be an idiot.”
In the elevator he laughs and tugs her closer by the bow of her scrub pants.
"Sorry, I forgot, I have a really great guy rep to live up to now." He chuckles as he kisses her neck. His hands are moving up and down her ribcage before they stop at her waist with a contented sigh she feels her body respond to immediately. The elevator stops and he pulls back, holding the door open for her to get out first.
They walk together to his office where she stashed her bag this morning, Emma feeling brave enough to lean heavily against his side for the last stretch of hallway.
“The fuck? Why is my knee replacement being rescheduled?” A few days of this routine has taught her that he's not actually expecting her to respond, Emma flopping on the couch with George in her lap to scroll while Brendon gathers his shit up muttering to himself.
A few minutes later he's tugging on her hand as they head to the garage together, and in the elevator Emma still can't resist pressing little kisses to whatever part of him she can reach.
fin.