Work Text:
It’s not like Noa didn’t expect to be working most holidays when she decided to go into Emergency Medicine, but there is something decidedly sucky about working New Year’s Eve, when her roommate and all their friends are out drinking and not caring about anything (and snap chatting her about it constantly). But, the ER is busy, the injuries are largely ridiculous and laughable (also plentiful and largely non-life-threatening) and all the residents are competing for the most ridiculous case: winner(s) drink for free after shift.
All in all, it could definitely be worse – she could, after all, be getting hit on by the same guy her roommate keeps snapping her about.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” A voice snipes warmly at her elbow, a laugh taking any potential sting from the comment.
“Taking advantage of the lull,” she quips back, not needing to turn away from the coffee maker to picture Mario’s smirk. Once her cup is full of scalding hot (also crappy and definitely overdone) coffee, she sees it anyway, lingering affectionately across his entire expression. They’ve been doing this a lot lately, getting caught together in the break room, working the same patients, finding themselves tucked up close at the nurse’s station, checking through charts and assessing triaged patients. She can’t say she minds. “And you?”
“Dying,” he deadpans, stepping forward to reach around her for a cup of his own. He’s too close in the sense that anyone else trying to edge that far into her personal space would have already been pushed out, but it’s Mario and they’ve been experiencing a lot of near misses and close quarters lately: the only thing unwelcome about it is how often their pulling gravity seems to get interrupted by something or someone else.
Noa raises a brow at his comment, dark gaze sweeping over him with a glance that is not quite the same kind of assessment she gives an injured patient; she’s pretty sure she’d get fired for looking at a patient like that. “You seem pretty alive to me.”
He laughs as he fills his cup, close enough that she feels the vibrations of it and can watch the muscles of his neck tighten and ease with the rise and fall of the sound. A shiver fights its way up her spine as she tries not to imagine what his laugh would feel like pressed a little closer, his stubble dragging rough along her skin.
Mario’s clearly too tired to notice, because he steps out of her personal space with nothing more than a raised brow and a shrug, downing a large gulp of coffee as he does so. “Tonight’s been crazy, but I’m pretty sure I’m at least going to win the bet.”
It gets her laughing as she takes a sip, refocusing her attention on work and the night and they spend their few spare minutes comparing notes on their patients so far, until Jesse pops in, head shaking, to let them know they’re edging closer to code black again and break time is over.
“Back to work,” Mario says with a sigh and a smile, throwing back what’s left of his drink.
“Just a few more hours,” she agrees, gaze skittering toward the clock. It’s twenty minutes to midnight, which would explain the uptick in patients. They both toss their cups and head for the door, but just shy of it, Noa stops. “Hey,” and the second Mario’s turned back toward her, looking curious, she leans onto her toes and pulls him down for a kiss, tugging on the stethoscope slung around his neck. “Happy almost New Year.”
She gives herself three seconds to enjoy the surprised but delighted look on his face before passing him in the doorway, grinning and calling out, "Good luck with the bet” as she disappears into the chaos of the ER.