1. What I Need
This isn’t the first complaint I’ve had fielded to me against Aria Blaze, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be the last.
“She assaulted me, Director Redheart!”
Doctor Cross Stitch is livid, his normally dull ochre complexion is flushed with rage and embarrassment, all of which stems from the hands of one Aria Blaze.
I can’t say I’m surprised about these accusations, and I have no doubt that, knowing Aria, they’re at least partially true.
It won’t matter though, because this idiot doesn’t seem to grasp exactly how my department is run. He’s just here to clock his hours in the ED. Aria and I? We live here. This is our house, he is merely a guest, and an unwelcome one at that.
Still, I make a show of going over the complaint he’d filed.
Unbeknownst to him, the moment the complaint had touched my inbox I’d made sure to collect the statements of every nurse and orderly who had been in earshot or eyesight of the incident, and it all painted a relatively clear picture.
“My understanding of the matter, Doctor Stitch,” I stress his title with as little respect as I can manage, “is that during the treatment of a GSW, you froze, and Doctor Blaze was forced to bodily remove you from the OR in order to save a young woman’s life.”
“That’s-!”
“-the collective statements of all involved,” I overrun his argument. “In fact, the only account that seems to suggest Doctor Blaze was out of order in her decision is yours, and there are certain details that differ… significantly, from the rest of the accounts.”
“Rest of…” Doctor Stitch looks like he’s about to pop a blood vessel. “S-She rallied up her cronies against me then, is that it?!”
“No, Doctor Stitch, that is not ‘it’,” I reply, setting the copy of his complaint down on my desk and smoothing it flat. “When a complaint of this magnitude is levied, it’s natural to make sure a thorough investigation is done. The orderlies and nurses all made short statements, written and verbal, and they all agreed on the particulars.”
“Because they’re afraid of her!” Cross Stitch bellows. “She’s a barbarian! She’s not a Doctor she’s a child!”
“Doctor Blaze is the most respected member of my staff,” I reply, and even I can hear my voice turning caustic. “The number of lives she has saved with her own hands is a matter of record, and there is not a single nurse or orderly in this department that does not know that.” Before he can respond, I stand sharply from my desk and fix him with a glare. “Whereas you, Doctor Stitch, have set foot in this department little enough that I can count the times on one hand and it is eminently clear as to why!”
I straighten out and glare down at him, and despite Doctor Cross Stitch having a good inch or two on me, he still withers back. Cross Stitch is a spineless coward. The rich son of a rich man who paid for his degree. Stitch consults and diagnoses, and my understanding is that he’s not even particularly good at that. He never gets hands bloody with the real work of medicine though.
“Your inability to treat a patient nearly cost that woman her life,” I say in a level tone. “Doctor Blaze did precisely as I expect any member of my staff to do, and that is to prioritise the life of our patients above anything else, and that includes your fragile ego! Now with all due respect, I suggest that if you cannot stand the sight of blood, get out of the slaughterhouse!”
“You…” Stitch stammers then stands from his seat in front of my desk, “how dare you!” He points an accusing finger at me, but his rage doesn’t hide how much he’s shaking. “I will see to it that you're fired and that you never work in this city again, you and your dyke bitch!”
Cold rage douses the fire in my gut and settles into my bones at his threat, and it must be showing on my face because Doctor Stitch goes pale.
“Threaten me all you want,” I say softly, before stepping out from behind my desk and moving up until I’m inches from him. “But if I ever hear you slander Doctor Blaze like that again, I will personally demolish your career, Stitch, is that clear?”
He swallows audibly. The man is a coward. A spineless, bent-necked coward who was handed his degree on account of his father’s alumnus status and deep pockets.
Cross Stitch is a subpar Doctor at best, and everyone on the administrative level knows it. Senator Straight Stitch makes generous donations to keep his worthless son employed, though, and if this was any other department his threats might still have some weight.
But nobody wants to work in the Canterlot General Emergency Department. This city is guttertrash, and its bloody, viscous overflow sluices right through our doors every single night. ED work is what you get when you piss someone off, and nobody stays for long.
No one but Aria.
Emergency is my kingdom and administration is happy to let me keep ruling it the way I see fit. So long as I turn out results, keep the mortality rate acceptable, and don’t fill up their inboxes with malpractice suits, I’m practically untouchable, because none of the rich, privileged Doctors on the floors above me would touch my job with a fifteen-foot pole.
“I’ll make sure your hours are accounted for,” I say after a long moment of staring him down. “Now… get the fuck off of my floor.”
For a moment I really think he’s going to be stupid enough to try and call what I’m sure he wants to believe is a bluff. It isn’t, though, and I think a part of him knows that. I have enough friends in administration that, even if I don’t get Stitch fired, I can definitely get him transferred somewhere decidedly more unpleasant than his cushy sixth-floor corner office.
I may not be likable but at least I’m competent. Cross Stitch is neither.
Finally, he turns on his heel and storms off, slamming my door behind him like a petulant child as he leaves. The moment he’s gone I sag and take a seat on my desk. I rub at my eyes for a few minutes, trying to head off the headache I can feel coming on.
Aria has a list of bogus complaints in her file, along with refutations mostly written by me, that would impress someone with ten times her tenure.
She’s brusque, straight-forward, and completely no-nonsense when it comes to her work, and I admire that about her. At the same time, I don’t feel like it would kill her to make at least an attempt at civility, and it would certainly make my job a lot easier.
“Wow, what a tool.”
I very nearly jump at Aria’s voice. She’s standing in the door to my office with her usual cocky smirk. Somehow, despite the fact that I know she’s been here for almost fourteen hours, there are no signs of exhaustion on her. No bags under her eyes, no dragging of her shoulders, and it’s not just her youth either, because I’ve seen nurses her age barely able to drag themselves out of the ED after just a ten-hour shift, and Aria has been in and out of the OR all night without breaks.
But then, I doubt any of those nurses ever served in hell.
Still, it’s really not fair that she just stays looking that good even after waltzing through a parade of gunshot victims.
“He’s a bastard, but he’s a rich bastard,” I reply. “It wouldn’t kill you to be polite to him, would it?”
“Bitch it might,” Aria replies as she steps inside and closes the door.
“Heading home soon?” I ask as I turn to gather up the papers, including the complaint, from my desk.
In lieu of an answer, her hands settle on my shoulders, and a moment later her thumbs dig into the sore muscles around my shoulders and start making firm circles. I let out a groan of relief as my back starts to loosen up, and I drop into the chair that Cross Stitch had been occupying moments ago.
“You need a spa day or something, ‘Hearts,” Aria chuckles as she rolls the tension out of my shoulders. “You’re practically carrying the whole fuckin’ hospital on your shoulders.”
“No time for a vacation, Doctor Blaze,” I mutter dazedly. “I’ll just make do with this.”
“Should I add ‘masseuse’ to my job requirements, then?” Aria asks wryly, but she doesn’t stop and it’s only with the smallest pit of shame in my stomach that I admit how glad I am of that.
“With how good you are at this, yes, you should,” I say.
“Yeah well, this next part is gonna be less fun,” Aria says as she lets go of my shoulders and takes my head in both hands. “Deep breath, relax, and-”
Pop!
I grunt briefly as Aria makes an odd pulling motion on my head, then jerks to the left, then the right, in rapid succession, and my neck makes a sound like a ball joint coming out of place.
And then the relief floods into me and I all but collapse onto the desk.
“You really need a chiropractor, ‘Hearts,” Aria laughs. “What happens when I’m not here to do that?”
“You’re leaving my department over my cold, dead body, Blaze,” I mumble against the faux wood of my desk.
“So you’ve said,” Aria replies as she goes back to massaging my shoulders. “Don’t worry, though, ‘Hearts. You’re pretty much stuck with me forever.”
Forever.
That would be nice.
Oh, if only Cross Stitch could see Aria and I now. He would have plenty of ammunition against me, even if he did leave Aria alone. He could claim I was abusing my authority, even harassing Aria by getting her to do this for me. It’s a poorly kept secret that Aria and I have a much closer relationship than simply Director and subordinate, but no one particularly cares.
I can’t let it go farther than this, though, even if I might want it to. It would be unethical in a number of ways.
With that killjoy thought rupturing my mood, I sit up and take a deep breath, then roll my shoulders which I’m pleased to note are significantly looser than before.
“I am heading out, though,” Aria says as she steps back. “I gotta sleep sometime, and you should too, Director.”
“Not as young as I used to be,” I reply with a bitter chuckle.
Thirty-eight this December. Which is just another reminder that, as I’m getting older and despite my relatively successful career, I’m still alone.
“We’ll get drinks sometime, ‘Hearts,” Aria nudges my shoulder as she steps away. “See you tonight.”
“Mm,” I grunt and nod as she leaves, and I watch her go until the door closes behind her.
I truly am an awful person.
It takes me all of ten minutes to grab my things and make my way out of the ED. By that point, Aria’s already gone, and I wince as I step out into the early morning sunlight of Canterlot. I’ve worked graveyard for far too long to stop now, and frankly, I operate best at night. The worst of the problems always crop up over the grave shift anyway, so I’d rather be there to curtail that rather than come in and find a shitshow in the morning.
Now the sun is up, the day is starting, and that means it’s time for me to go home and collapse into my bed, get some sleep, then get up and do it all again.
I trudge to my car, a zippy little Spark with far too many empty bags of fast food and plastic bags from gas stations littering the floor and back seat, and get in. The radio comes to life as the car does, and the indie rock station I have it perpetually tuned to comes on half-way through a song I used to like but have now listened to far too many times.
The drive home is uneventful. At this hour I miss most of the traffic, and the same is true when I head into work which is another reason I prefer graveyard. It’s a petty reason, but that doesn’t make it not a reason.
I sidle my Spark into a parking spot along the street crammed between a honda with more aftermarket parts than original ones, and a jacked-up pickup that’s probably never been used for anything but compensation, get out, and drag myself to the door to my apartment complex.
The complex is a locked one, which is nice one a certain level, but annoying on a lot of others. I have to swipe my card about seven times before the crappy reader will recognise it, then I have to repeat the process once I’m actually inside because it’s double-gated.
The Ponyville Commons really is a shithole.
I ride the elevator to the third floor and shoulder my way into my apartment before kicking the door shut and throwing the deadbolt. The whole place smells of strong coffee and loneliness, which is appropriate because that’s all that’s ever really produced here.
“Mrrrrow?”
My cat, a small, three-legged black mongrel I’d found outside the apartment three years ago, and which adopted me more than the other way around, greets me with an affectionate, if lopsided, rub against my leg, and I lean down to scoop her up.
“Good morning, Tipsy.” I hug her as I move to my living room.
My apartment isn’t particularly large. It’s got one bedroom, one bathroom, and a den that’s separate from the kitchen. It’s the perfect size for me and my cat, and maybe one other person if that person were… well, it’s perfectly sized for me, at least.
“Did you have an exciting night?” I ask as I cross into the kitchen.
“Mrow.”
“Oh? And how’d that go?” I continue as I grab a microwave dinner from the freeze and pop it in.
“Mrr... Mrow… Mau~”
“Well, I’m not sure why you thought that would work,” I say as I hold Tipsy up and stare into her wide green eyes. “You probably should have thought that through a little better.”
“Mrrow.”
“That’s fair, I suppose,” I say with a laugh as I tuck her back under my arm where she starts to purr.
I take Tipsy into the living room with me while my ‘dinner’ cooks, and drop into the easy chair across from my TV. Tipsy flops into my lap where she rumbles contentedly as I pet her and stare off into the distance.
“Am I a bad person, Tipsy?” I ask quietly.
My cat, predictably, has nothing useful to say, so I elaborate.
“Aria is… incredible,” I chuckle with just a touch of bitterness. “She’s beautiful, driven, inexhaustible, and…” I shake my head. “A~nd she’s half my age.”
Well, not quite half, but close enough. She’s twenty-two and some change, which makes me better than fifteen years her senior.
“Mrow mrow?”
“Yes, I know she’s my subordinate and I’m aware of the ethical ramifications therein, Tipsy,” I grumble. “It’s silly… even if I weren’t her superior I’m still far too old for her.”
I look up at the mirror that’s across the room from me. The one by the door that I use to check my hair and makeup in the morning right before leaving.
The woman who stares back at me is not the one I see in my head. She’s older and more worn down than that. It’s hard to remember how fast the years pass. It feels like just yesterday I was a young woman bitterly fighting for my doctorate and my place amongst a boy’s club of medical professionals at Canterlot General.
I had gotten so sick of being treated like a non-person as a nurse that I’d almost burned myself out completely working full time through getting my degree.
I’d been in my twenties back then, though. Back when my body was still made of rubber and magic and I could work two days straight through without sleep provided I had enough coffee and energy drinks on hand.
If I tried that now I’d probably end up in the morgue.
No, the woman in the mirror today is one who has been through a lot more life than she remembers. The shadows of crow’s feet have started to imprint themselves at my eyes which are less blue than I recall, and there are lines on my face from the stress and strain of my job. My pink hair is drab and hanging around my face now that I’ve pulled my hair tie out, and my complexion is definitely suffering. Powder white? More like bone-white.
Give me a few more years and I’ll probably look twice as ragged.
Ding
“Fries are done,” I say with a blunt laugh before standing, picking Tipsy up, and draping her over my shoulders.
I collect my meal, some low-fat pasta dish I’d picked mostly out of necessity from the freezer aisle at my local grocery than out of any desire to actually eat it. I stirred the noodles around to mix the sauce as I walked back to the chair and slumped down it.
Eating is a mechanical process, lately. I can’t even remember the last time I had a meal with somebody. I work too much and I have too few friends, and the ones I used to be close to have all drifted away.
Hell, my last relationship imploded almost two years ago, and she dumped me for a completely valid reason: I was never around and was just generally kind of a bitch.
‘The only thing you really love is your fucking work!’
That was the last thing she’d screamed at my face before storming out of this very apartment. She blocked my number, unfriended me, and that was that. I never spoke to her again.
Two and a half years together, and I ruined it because I couldn’t figure out my priorities. Either that or I did figure out my priorities and came to the unpleasant conclusion that my job ranked higher than she did.
To this day, I’m not really certain which actually happened.
And I can’t fault her for leaving, either. She deserves someone who would make her a priority and that obviously wasn’t me.
I set the empty plastic container aside and sigh as Tipsy rumbles contentedly in my lap.
I have no right to feel the way I do about Aria but, at the same time, it’s a small comfort that it was probably inevitable. She has a lot of admirers on and off the floor. Her cool attitude, incredible competence, and unflappable demeanor make her the type of person who it’s easy to idolize.
And the majority of her admirers don’t know the half of it.
Aria had lived through literal hell.
Most of the story had come out when the girl that Aria called ‘Sunset Shimmer’ was brought into the ED two months ago.
The person I saw on that gurney was a horror… she looked like someone had spliced a normal teen girl with a monster out of a slasher flick. Her fingers ended in silver blades, her teeth were sharp and ragged, and her skin… it was a patchwork of rubbery red and smooth amber, and she had a temperature that would have killed any normal human.
Once things had settled, I’d demanded to know what I’d walked into, and Aria had warned me to just walk right back out.
She told me that this was not something I wanted to know anything about and that if I did it would put me in a firing line more dangerous than anything on the streets of Canterlot.
But I refused to accept that. I forced Aria and Sunset both to tell me the truth, and they did, or at least the most pertinent parts.
The Trials. The Entity. Dark Magic.
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate. But then again, they did warn me, and I didn’t listen, and I’d be lying if I said that a part of the reason I didn’t listen was that I wanted to know more about Aria.
Where she came from.
Who she really was.
Aria fascinates me still, and I’m worried it’s starting to become more of an unhealthy obsession.
Maybe this is just my midlife crisis, who knows? Most doctors going through that just buy a glitzy sports car and drive off to Las Pegasus for some debauchery. I managed to fall in love with a woman fifteen-plus years my junior and… well, I guess an illicit love affair is one of those things that checks the ‘crisis’ box.
Not that an affair is even on the table. That would require Aria to have even the remotest interest in me, and even given just her looks alone, to say nothing of her brilliant mind, I’m certain she has far better options than a bitter old maid like me.
“Alright, Tipsy, time for a bout of blessed unconsciousness.” I scoop up my cat and carry her with me into my bedroom where I dump her unceremoniously onto the covers.
While Tipsy makes herself comfortable, I peel out of my scrubs, dip into the bathroom for a shower that’s really more of a quick rinse than anything because frankly I can’t be asked to do more, then stumble out, lead-limbed, to fall into bed and crawl beneath the sheets.
It’s a cold, empty place, my bed, but to be fair I made it that way, and as I curl up I let myself imagine just for a brief, brief moment that Aria is laying across from me.
Right, as if.
Normally it takes me a while to get to sleep. Winding down from ED work is a helluva thing, but I must be more exhausted than I realised because almost as soon as I start to get comfortable, my brain just shuts down, my eyelids droop shut, and blackness closes in.
My last notion of reality, if that’s even what it is considering how tired I am, is that I swear I hear the husky, quiet laugh of a young woman.
Pressure on my bed is what wakes me up.
My old spring mattress depresses under a slight weight, and for a moment I think it’s Tipsy coming back from the litterbox. I’m about to admonish her from tracking grit across the room when the weight increases.
Adrenaline spikes through me as I snap my eyes open and turn in bed. Panic rolls through me as a shape resolves in the darkness. Panic and… recognition?
“Ssh,” Aria’s soft voice comes from the shadows, followed by her hands coming to rest on my shoulders and press me back down to the bed. “It’s just me.”
“W-What?” I stare up at Aria as she crawls over me. My heart is pounding in my chest, and it doubles over when Aria’s limber, toned legs come to rest straddling my hips. “A-Ar-... D-Doctor Blaze what are you-?!”
“Call me Ari’,” she says with that confident smirk of hers that always does pleasant things to my heart.
Then she leans in, slow as a blade slipping between my ribs, and presses her lips to mine. They’re soft and supple, and I moan quietly against them as her tongue probes against my mouth. I give in to her, lay back, and she drapes her weight over me as I wrap my arms around her.
She’s naked, I realise belatedly. Her warm body is soft against mine, and her fingers leave little electric tingles along my sides, belly, and down my legs.
For once, I feel no shame at my age or body. Wrinkles and stretch marks be damned, Aria clearly doesn’t care.
I gasp as she pulls back from me, drinking in gulps of air as she stares down at me with those entrancing amethyst eyes of hers.
“Do you want me?” Aria asks quietly.
This is a dream. It has to be a dream. There’s no way Aria got into my apartment. She couldn’t have gotten past two double-locked doors, up a key-coded elevator, and into my locked apartment in the middle of the day without someone noticing.
And if it was a dream then… then it didn’t matter that it was unethical and wrong for me to want her this way, because it was all in my head.
There’s nothing wrong with a dream.
“Yes,” I say, and my voice cracks with a quiet sob. “I want you… I want you so badly.”
Aria’s grin turns almost predatory, and without another word, she leans down to brush her lips to my neck. Her hand goes between my legs, and I part my thighs to let her in as she kisses along my collarbone and up my jaw.
It’s just as I feel her fingers where I’ve wanted to feel them so desperately for far longer than I’m comfortable admitting, that I see them.
Eyes.
In the darkness beyond the edge of the bed, I see a pair of eyes like burning, teal embers and I-
-snap my eyes open.
I’m drenched in sweat and panting hard as I stare up at the ceiling of my room. I can’t tell what time it is thanks to my blackout curtains, but better that than being woken up by the cursed light of day.
I start to fumble for my phone, and as I do I realise exactly where my hand ended up, stop, and sigh quietly as I reach for some tissues near the side of my bed.
The notion that I’m going to have to look Aria in the face tonight after having had a dream involving her that my right hand was all too on board with participating in is not my favorite thought.
I can barely even remember the dream other than the fact that it involved Aria topping me hard enough to make my eyes cross, which is, admittedly, a pleasant way to spend my sleeping hours.
“Now what time is-” I choke as I pick up my phone.
The screen reads nineteen-hundred.
I scramble out of bed with a wordless cry, grabbing my set of clean scrubs that I hung from the bathroom door and pulling them on while doing my best to tame my hair into a semblance of order before swearing viciously, giving up, and just tying my hair up like a prisoner of war and sprinting back out of the bathroom and into the living room.
For the first time in years, I’m late for work.
The fact that my lateness will be due to the fact that I slept through three alarms while having a wet dream about my subordinate is something I am absurdly grateful that no one else knows.
My egress from my apartment is less than ideal.
In an attempt to get some food down and brush my teeth I accidentally swallowed Listerine, which was vile, but at least it killed my appetite. I barely managed to feed my damn cat before I got out.
Whatever. I can always hit the cafeteria if I’m really starving somewhere through the night.
At least I slept well. It was one of the nights where it feels like I laid my head down, closed my eyes, and just skipped time, except every other time that’s happened I’ve woken up feeling like I didn’t sleep at all. This time I actually feel well-rested, so despite being late I can at least be thankful for the smallest mercies.
I cram myself into my Spark and sidle out of my parking space, roll into the street, and get moving. Fortunately, the hospital isn’t far, but I’m still going to have some explaining to do.
Mostly to Aria.
If I’m lucky she’ll be the only one who notices I’m coming in an hour and a half late.
I pull into the employee parking, get out, and do my best to not look like I’m running to the ED entrance which mostly means I’m power-walking there. Hopefully anyone who sees me just assumes I’m pissed off about something, since that’s not necessarily out of the realm of possibility.
And I am, it’s just that I’m pissed at myself.
The ED is quiet when I get which is a bonus. If I’d walked into a disaster I would have had a lot of explaining to do.
“Hey, ‘Hearts.”
I freeze, then sag and sigh before turning to face a smug-looking Aria Blaze who’s smiling around the stem of a lollipop.
“Sleep late?” Aria asks.
“Yes, I did,” I reply sharply, and Aria frowns. “I don’t know why but I slept straight through all of my alarms… is everything alright here?”
“Some dumbass in Whitetail fell of his roof taking down some Christmas lights,” she reports. “But that’s it… all quiet on the Canterlot front.”
I sigh again and relax. “Good, I’m sorry I snapped… I don’t like being late.”
“Not your fault,” Aria says quietly. “Sometimes ya gotta sleep.”
Great. I’m late, I’m pissed off, I’m hungry, and now I’ve taken a completely unwarranted swing at my best Doctor. Shaking my head, I gesture for her to follow me back to my office. We walk through the ED in silence, and I catch her glancing at me with a furrowed brow every so often.
She’s worried about me. God, I’d almost forgotten what it was like for someone to actually care how I’m doing that seeing the look on her face actually hurts a little.
“Director?” Aria speaks up as we reach my door, but I just nod for her to come in.
I unlock my office and I set my things down on my desk before taking my seat, and Aria shuts the door to lean against as I get settled.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Again, I mean… I think this was just a reminder that I’m not getting any younger. I’m wearing out, and that’s an unpleasant thing for anyone to face.”
“You’re not wearing out,” Aria says heatedly. “You work more hours than anyone but me! And even I barely keep up with you! You’re only human, Hearts, cut yourself some slack.”
I lean back in my chair and rub at the bridge of my nose. “That’s nice to hear, Doctor Blaze, but the truth of the matter is that I am getting older. We all are, it’s just how human’s work. We can’t all be twenty-two-year-old prodigies, I’m afraid.”
“There’s… there’s nothing wrong with getting older, you know,” Aria says quietly, and I flinch. I try to hide it but she sees it, I know because I see a flash of hurt cross her face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean- no, y’know what? Fuck it!”
Her tone makes me start as she stomps up to my desk and slaps her hands down on it.
“So what if you are getting older? Who gives a shit?” Aria is all but raging now. “You’re more competent than any ten doctors in this hospital put together! You’re not just getting older, you’re getting smarter! You’re getting better!”
I chuckle at that. “Maybe, but I’m also getting more ragged.”
Because of my tardiness, I hadn’t had time to put much makeup on, just a layer of foundation that didn’t quite mask the lines that were building up, and I run a finger over the shadows beneath my eyes to prove my point.
“I exercise, and I hydrate, even if I eat like crap,” I say quietly. “But I’m wearing down, and even though I’m aware that’s not the sole measure of my worth, I’ve always been a little… overly vain. It’s a personal foible, that’s all.”
I’m not sure what I expected to see when I looked back up at Aria, but what I see on her face is nothing less than agony. She looks like she’s in genuine pain for a moment before the expression vanishes under her usual cool exterior and she steps back from my desk and over to the door.
For a moment I think she’s about to leave, which would have hurt even if I’m not sure why, but rather than open the door, she locks it, then turns around to face me again.
“Hey, ‘Hearts,” Aria beings a little awkwardly, which doesn’t sound at all like her. “We’re… good right? A good team?”
“I like to think we’re better than good,” I say with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure by this point the ED wouldn’t know what to do without the two of us running things.”
“Heh, y-yeah, it’d definitely fall apart,” Aria agrees.
Her laughter is something I cherish. Aria laughs so seldom that sometimes I forget what it sounds like, but on the very rare occasions she does laugh, it warms from my toes to my nose. It’s even better when we’re both laughing, like we are now, even if it’s a little brittle.
“And, you and me, I mean… we’re good, right?” Aria asks.
I frown at that. “Of course we are… I can’t stay mad at you even if I tried, Doctor Blaze, I think that’s become obvious by this point.”
As I said before, that Aria and I are closer than co-workers is apparent to anyone who works with us. She and I get along exceptionally well, and I’m happy to call her my friend, even if, sometimes, I wish she were more.
“Okay, so then, this hopefully won’t sound as weird as I think it sounds in my head,” Aria begins as she walks over, moves around my desk, and sits down on the corner of it right near me.
Close enough for me to be able to pick up the subtle scent of lavender and cheap hand sanitizer.
“Doc-... Aria?” I couldn’t read the look on her face. It’s strange, she’s almost… hesitant.
She sighs, turns away, and mutters something under her breath that I’m certain she didn’t mean for me to hear, but all my work in the ED has given me very sharp ears.
‘Man I hope you’re sure about this, Red…’ she whispers before looking back at me.
“Look, ‘Hearts… you know I’m sharp, right?” Aria says, and I nod. “So, let’s say I, uh, I know how you feel about me.”
A cube of ice forms in my stomach at her words. I realise I haven’t exactly been that subtle, I do let her get away with a lot, but… had I taken it too far? The massages? The long conversations?
Shit.
Panic overwhelms me as I scrabble for something, anything, to say to salvage our relationship. If I lose Blaze I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.
“D-Doctor Blaze, I assure you I-!” I start but she waves me off.
“Stop it, ‘Hearts, I’m trying to say I feel the same way!” Aria snaps, then curses, and runs her hand down her face. “Shit, I’m sorry, I… look, ‘Hearts, I really like you. I wanted to say something before but I never… crap, this isn’t going how I wanted it to.”
“Aria you… what?” I work my jaw, trying to find a word or a phrase to help me understand what she’s saying.
She… feels the same way?
Does she know how I feel? Really know I mean? Does she know that every time I see her half of me just wants to pin her to the wall and make out like we’re college freshmen?
Aria cards her fingers through her short, two-tone bob of hair before looking over at me and shrugging. “I want to give something like this a try, ‘Hearts, that’s what I’m saying, and I want it to be with you if you want to take the chance on me, that’s all.”
I lean back in my chair and rub at my eyes, trying to work through all of this in my head.
“Aria you… you’re barely into your twenties,” I say bitterly. “I’m better than fifteen years your senior, you can certainly do better than me!”
“Bullshit, who are you to decide that?!” Aria snarls, and I jump at her tone. “You ever think maybe I just want a woman who knows what she’s doing? Someone who knows what life is like? You think I haven’t given this a lot of thought and that I know exactly what I want, and that it’s you?”
“I’m your direct superior, Doctor Blaze,” I retort angrily. “This is unethical!”
For the life of me I can’t say why I’m fighting this. It’s like some rebel part of my brain is choosing this moment to just sabotage any chance I have at happiness as hard as it possibly can. I’ve literally dreamed of the moment when I might one day have Aria to myself, and here she is offering herself to me, and I’m saying no?!
What. The fuck. Is wrong with me?!
“Who cares?!” Aria barks. “You know what I went through! Do you really think I give a damn about ethics in this stupid situation?”
“I’m almost forty!” I shout back.
“I. Don’t. Care!” Aria claps her hands sharply at each word. “If you don’t want to try this, then say it! But don’t give me those bullshit excuses, ‘Hearts!”
My brain is racing but it’s filled with silence. I’ve never understood the concept of deafening silence before but now I get it. It’s like the image of sheet music where the notes indicate that everything should be quiet but the notes keep getting closer together the further down the measures it goes indicating that the silence should be going faster. It’s like the visual representation of anxiety and I get it now.
I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
“W-Why?” I choke the word out from the sudden ball of panic. “Y-you could do b-better… I’m old and angry, and bitter, and-”
“-beautiful,” Aria says softly.
The word cuts through my panic and drops me right into startled speechlessness.
“Look, I’m not saying my tastes are normal, okay?” Aria continues, “but I seriously think you’re sorta hot.” She chuckles and rubs the back of her neck. “You’re a brilliant doctor, ‘Hearts, plus you’re stubborn as hell and kinda crazy, which I like, so yeah, cut me some slack here, alright? I don’t care if you’re older.”
I shudder, letting my feelings wash through me. I fought against my feelings for Aria for over a year and now having it thrown in my face like this feels almost obscene. But at the same time, I want this. I want it so badly it hurts, and Aria is sitting here, right in front of me, telling me it’s okay and in the background my idiot brain is screaming at me that it's a trap.
“What if I drive you away?” I ask quietly.
The way I’ve driven everyone else away. The way I drove away my mother and father by refusing to be a proper woman, get a respectable job, a husband, and settle down. The way I drove away both of my siblings for being the most successful of us, despite being the middle child, and always throwing it in their faces when we argued. The same way I drove away every girlfriend I’ve ever had because I couldn’t figure out that I needed to take some time off work to actually be with them once in a while.
Aria lets out a snort of derisive laughter.
“Okay, I get what you mean, ‘Hearts, but let me lay this out for you…” She pulls up her phone and flicks it open, then turns it to me.
On the screen is a picture of three girls, and one of them is clearly Aria. The other is her sister Sonata, although in the picture she looks so much more lively and bright than she does now in her hospital bed. The third is a robust young woman with a gamboge complexion and a brilliant poof of orange curls, and her smile makes Aria’s look positively demure.
“Those are my sisters, Sonata and Adagio,” Aria says, “ and they’re the most insufferable pair of fucking morons on the planet. Sonata can’t keep focus without one of us pinning her to the floor, and Adagio has an ego the size of the Atlantic Ocean, and I have lived with them my entire life and I would die for either one of them.”
I can’t even imagine sticking around one individual person my whole life, much less two.
“You’re not going to drive me away, ‘Hearts,” Aria says as she puts her phone away. “If anything, I guarantee you’re never going to be as bad as either of my sisters, and you’re definitely not going to be worse than the two of them put together.”
“I…” I trail off and start chuckling weakly. “I don’t even know why I’m arguing, I’ve never won an argument against you, Aria… I don’t know why I thought I would this time.”
She chuckles at that, then says something that stuns me.
“Ari’,” she says quietly. “The people I’m closest to? They call me Ari’, so, y’know, when it’s just us, call me that, okay?”
Call me Ari’
The exact same words as my dream.
I’ve never believed in the power of prophecy before, and certainly not in the idea of prophetic dreams, but tonight?
Well, if I was having to deal with other dimensions populated by horror movie murderers and demon gods, then I suppose allowing for prophecy isn’t necessarily the silliest thing in the world.
“Ari’,” I test the word, and I think I like saying it. “Alright then, I… I do want to try this, Ari’, but the last thing I want is for you to regret it.”
“I won’t,” Aria says with such ironclad confidence that I can’t help but believe her.
“Even when I get old and gray ten years ahead of you?” I try to say it like a joke but it comes out weak and brittle.
I’m scared, I realise. I’m so scared of that.
I wish I weren’t so vain.
But Aria just laughs and shakes her head.
“Nah, gray hair and wrinkles don’t put me off,” Aria says dismissively. “Humans are all kind of weird-looking in the first place. I’m here for you, ‘Hearts, and that isn’t gonna change.”
Odd… the way she said ‘humans’ struck me odd. I don’t necessarily disagree that, as human beings, we all look kind of strange if you consider it objectively, but somehow it doesn’t feel like that’s what she means. It feels like she's speaking from outside the human race itself.
I’ll ask her about that later, maybe. I don’t want to push it.
“Then… let’s try this,” I say as I stand up from my chair.
Aria’s smirk could have lit up a dark room. She kips up to her feet before I can say anything more, moulds herself against me, slips her arms around my waist and pulls me close as she presses her lips to mine.
I let out a quiet groan of relief as I wrap my arms around her.
This time it isn’t a dream. Her lips are as soft as I imagined, and her lithe, limber form is hard and soft in all the right places. Aria Blaze is a beautiful woman, and for whatever reason, be it providence or poor decisions on her part, she’s decided that she wants to be with me.
I’m not sure if I’m in love. I’m not sure that Aria is in love with me either. Maybe we’ll get there eventually. I certainly think she’s the sort of woman I could fall deeply in love with though, and I hope… I pray that I’m that way for her as well.
Maybe I’m not too old after all.