Chapter Text
It had been exactly one week since Jules and Mika had almost kissed.
Jules would know. She’d been counting the days.
Mika was the first thing on her mind every morning when she woke and the last thing on it before she’d fall asleep. She replayed that moment over and over, attempting to pick it apart into tiny pieces in order to better understand it.
Who had leaned in first? Did Mika’s eyes drift to Jules’ lips the way hers did?
Her brain bounced tirelessly between convincing herself that it was all in her head to almost addressing the encounter with Mika. Every time she almost got the nerve to talk to her about it, she’d back down, not wanting to complicate things further.
What if it meant nothing to Mika? What if it was just a one-time heat of the moment kind of thing? A fluke. An isolated incident never to be repeated.
Then, of course, there was that other time when Jules had fallen asleep in Mika’s arms.
The current situation was complicated enough; she couldn’t even think of adding that to the mix.
The one thought that seemed to remain at the forefront of her mind was not ruining their friendship. Jules finally felt like she and Mika were growing closer and that there was a potential there for a really amazing friendship.
Now she wasn’t sure if that was all she wanted from it.
Jules had had a few partners in her past, each of whom she cared about deeply, even if none of them were ever that serious. That’s just the way she was. Jules always found herself opening up to people. She was a caretaker, even if she resented the fact that that role was forced upon her, it was as innate to her as breathing.
She opened herself up to others easily and always wanted to help where she could. It's what helped her get into medicine. She was good at taking care of people, might as well make a career out of it.
As she sat in the locker room trying to clear her mind of Mika and just get ready for her day, Jules found her fingers pressing into that spot on the back of her hand. They seemed to find their way there without any encouragement this past week. Unfortunately, the girl couldn't pressure point and deep breathing exercise her way out of this.
“What’s wrong?” Mika’s voice jumped at her from behind the corner of a locker.
Jules flinched. “What? Nothing,” she brushed her off, averting her eyes to the floor.
“Why are you doing the pressure point thing then?” Yasuda questioned, nodding towards her hand.
“I wasn’t,” Jules lied. She was too caught off guard to think of a better reply. The girl shoved her hands further into her pockets as if to really drive her point home.
“I literally saw you. But whatever. Be secretive if that's what you want. I was just trying to help.”
Mika laughed off the encounter, walked to her locker, and began to change into her scrubs.
Jules focused extra hard on putting her hair into a ponytail and counting the grates in the locker door. There were five. Jules was certain of that. She’d counted them at least ten times at this point to prevent her eyes from wandering over to the shirtless girl who stood beside her.
Jules had never felt more like a teenage boy.
“You coming?” Mika’s voice quickly disrupted the incessant counting.
“Yeah.” Jules said, still half in a daze.
She shook off the swirl of what ifs plaguing her mind and followed after Mika. As they were leaving the room the pair bumped into Helm. The girl was in rough shape. It looked like she’d barely slept in days.
Heartbroken, Jules thought to herself.
After the awkward stumbles and apologies that followed, Jules went to continue on her path when one sentence from Mika made her stomach drop.
“Taryn, can we talk for a second?”
Jules knew that was her cue to leave, but it was also the cue for her stomach to churn itself into knots and for her mind to go dizzy with thoughts.
Were they going to get back together?
It was easy for jealousy to creep its way into Jules’ mind. The last thing she wanted was for Mika and Taryn to rekindle their relationship.
Jules felt awful for thinking that; it was selfish. If she really cared about Mika, she should want her to be happy, even if that meant her being with someone else. But that’s not what she wanted. Right now, she wanted to curl into Mika’s arms and have her tell her that it was all okay. That she was here, and the feelings Jules had for her were reciprocated.
Jules could feel her eyes starting to well up. She hated crying, especially in front of other people. So she pushed her feelings down and tried her best to go about her shift as normal.
Thankfully, this one wasn’t especially eventful and at the end of the night, after a boiling hot shower Jules could crawl back into bed and sleep. Her thoughts were filled of Mika, of what to say to her, what she would do if she and Taryn fixed their relationship, and finally, as Jules’ mind fell into the lull of sleep, what Mika’s lips might feel like against hers and how it would feel to fall asleep in her arms every night.
Jules smiled as she drifted further and further into sleep.
***
The next thing she knew, Jules was standing in an empty operating room, the sterile environment unusually quiet. Gone was the familiar hum of medical equipment and the bright overhead lights, replaced instead by a warm glow emanating from nowhere in particular. The usual chatter of the other surgeons was also absent. She didn’t question the serenity that filled the space; she just wondered why she was here.
As Jules looked around to take in more of her environment, she slowly realized she wasn’t alone. She focused her eyes towards the edge of the light. Mika was there, her figure outlined against the soft yellowy-orange glow. She looked different. Her eyes, usually sharp and focused, were softer, filled with an emotion that reminded Jules of their encounter that day on the gurney.
Mika moved closer, her footsteps oddly silent as she crossed the room. Jules watched, her breath catching in her throat. There was something different about Mika in that moment, something Jules had only caught glimpses of before in the scarce moments where two were alone—vulnerability. Mika stopped just a breath away, close enough that Jules could see the slight rise and fall of her chest and feel the warmth radiating from her.
“Mika…” Jules’s voice was barely a whisper, the name echoed through the empty room.
Mika’s smile was soft. It was disarming, and Jules felt her defenses crumble.
Without a word, Mika reached out, her fingers brushing against Jules’s cheek. Chills radiated down her spine. But still, Jules leaned into the touch, closing her eyes as she drank in the feeling of the other girl’s skin against hers.
When Jules opened her eyes again, Mika was even closer, their foreheads almost touching. Jules could see the way Mika’s eyes flickered down to her lips, just as they had the day on that gurney.
Jules tilted her head slightly, finally closing the small distance between them, her lips brushing against Mika’s kissing her gently. The kiss was tentative, hesitant, as if both were afraid that the moment would shatter if they pushed too far. But the hesitation quickly evolved into something more.
The kiss deepened and Jules felt like she was falling, the world rushing around her as wind filled her ears, but she wasn’t stuck waiting for a crash. She knew that Mika was right there with her, ready to catch her if she fell too far.
When they finally pulled back, Jules felt a sense of calm that had been absent in the past week, like everything had finally clicked into place. Mika’s hand was still on her cheek, and Jules placed her own over it, holding it there, grounding herself in the eyes of the other girl.
“I’ve been wanting to kiss you like that for the past week,” Mika murmured, her voice soft but filled with sincerity.
“Me too,” Jules replied, her own voice trembling.
They stayed like that for a moment longer, just looking at each other, before the room began to shift and fade away. The warmth of the operating room gave way to the darkness of her own bedroom.
Jules blinked, disoriented, as she found herself awake in her bed, her heart still racing. She lay there, her mind reeling from the vividness of the dream, and before she could realize what had happened, she began to cry. She reached desperately out in front of her trying to find the soft skin of Mika’s cheek but was left with nothing but air.
Jules was completely alone again.
As reality set in, all Jules wanted was to fall back asleep. To bring herself back to that moment where she belonged to no one else except Mika Yasuda.
She was left feeling empty and broken. The dream had been one of those dreams that was so incredibly vivid that she grieved the moment as if it were a true loss. As if she and Mika had actually kissed. As she closed her eyes and recalled the memory, Jules could have sworn it was as real as any other moment with the girl.
“Take me back,” she cried helplessly into her pillow, pleading with sleep to wrap her back into its embrace.
The tears she had held back earlier today seemed to bubble to the surface in her sleepy, distraught state.
She had no idea how she was supposed to work in the morning let alone how she would even look at Mika without breaking down.
Jules turned over to her alarm. The dim red light glowed with the numbers 3:57 against the darkness of the room.
At least she still had a few hours left until she needed to be up.
She closed her eyes, blinking away the tears, and hoped that she would be reunited with the girl consuming every one of her thoughts.