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Cassie is quite frankly, fucking sick of Dana Evans right now. As she watches the woman speak to her, clipped, short sentences, the minimum number of words to convey the information about a patient that she needs.
She can’t even look Cassie in the eye.
It’s not her fault that Dana kissed her almost a month ago! Nor was it her that drew back with a gasp and immediately said, “Let’s forget about that.”
And Cassie who had a dopey little smile on her face that vanished instantly as her stomach curdled at Dana’s words, couldn’t say anything in response.
Dana took that silence as agreement and nodded, to herself, “Good, shit, sorry. Let’s just pretend none of this ever happened, go back to normal.”
Then she’d had the audacity to fucking leave Cassie’s apartment before Cassie could scramble together her brain cells enough to respond.
Dana Evans had ran away from her.
And she was doing a damn good job of keeping running as much as she could whilst they still worked together.
It was grating on Cassie’s last fucking nerve. She grabbed the chart Dana had gestured to and snapped only partially under her breath, “Don’t even have the decency to look at me when you speak.” And stormed away.
It was infuriating because everyone could see the coldness between the pair of them. After months of dancing around one another, of flirtatious jokes and offers to walk each other to their cars at the end of shifts, and then one day all that warmth had evaporated.
And everyone could see that and most people presumed she was in the wrong. She supposed it made sense, she thought bitterly as she walked, why would anyone pin any blame on Saint fuckin’ Dana.
Of course it’d be her that fucked up, it’s always her isn’t it? Her entire life she’s been fucking up and scrambling to fix it. Scrambling to fix it even when it’s not her fault too, because at some point protesting her innocence became too much work for most things.
Her foul mood persists for the rest of her shift. Whenever she’s not caught up with patients, she’s replaying the feeling of Dana’s lips on hers and then the panicked, regretful expression on Dana’s face when she jumped away from her. Maybe she’s a glutton for punishment.
Or maybe, as she taps her foot waiting for the elevator, life just loves to take swings at her every opportunity.
She sees Dana, head down as she checks something on a tablet not notice her until she’s almost level. Then she watches the charge nurse try and fail to think of a way to pretend she didn’t need to take the elevator too.
It would be comical if it didn’t make Cassie so sad, so angry.
“What? Can’t even stand in an elevator with me for 30 seconds now. Does my presence hurt you that much?” She bites, takes more pleasure than she should in watching the way it rankles Dana.
“Maybe not, if you’re gonna bite my fuckin’ head off when we’re in there.” Dana snipes back and it surprises Cassie for a moment, because this Dana, fiery Dana has been distinctly absent since their kiss. She’s been cold and aloof and unwilling to engage, but she’s not been snappy.
The elevator doors ding open and both of them step to the side to let the occupants out. Cassie strides in first when it’s empty, turning round to raise a challenging eyebrow at Dana, who huffs and follows her in, jabbing at the button she needs with more force than strictly necessary.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it now?” Cassie mutters as the doors shut and holds Dana’s glare.
They make it just almost to the third floor when the elevator lurches, then judders, then stops completely.
It sends Cassie stumbling a step to the side, her shoulder hitting the metal wall. For a beat, there’s only the hum of the machinery around them. Then the emergency lights kick in, casting the small space in a sickly, jaundiced glow.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Cassie breathes, staring at the unmoving doors. She slams the heel of her hand against the button for the floor number that’s no longer lit up. Nothing. She jabs it again, then the lobby button. The panel remains stubborn, offering no solutions. “No. No, no, no. Not today. Not with her.”
Dana is already on her phone, whe holds it up, frowns. “No service.” Tucks it back into her pocket and moves to the control panel, pressing the alarm button. A shrill, tinny bell rings out into the space. Followed by the crackly voice of whatever poor soul has to sit and wait for elevators break so they can dispatch someone to fix it.
When Dana’s finished giving the disembodied voice what it needs, there’s nothing but silence left.
“Oh, great. So we just wait? Trapped? Together?” Cassie throws her hands up, irritated and tired and so fucking hurt. “
Dana doesn’t snap back, instead her gaze drops to the floor. She’s leaning against the back wall of the elevator, trying to make herself small. The posture, so unlike the woman who commands the ED, it makes Cassie’s anger wane just slightly.
She thinks about all the times she's replayed that night in her head. Late at night, staring at her ceiling, dissecting every moment leading up to the kiss. The way Dana had laughed at something stupid Cassie had said. The way Dana's eyes had lingered on her mouth for just a second too long. The way everything in Cassie’s vision had shrunk down to Dana, Dana, Dana.
And then the kiss itself. Soft, and tentative and shy. And Cassie had answered it, god, she'd answered with everything she had. Her hands had come up to cup Dana's face, and for one perfect, breathtaking moment, she was indescribably happy.
Then Dana had pulled away like she'd been burned.
Cassie's jaw clenches at the memory. She can still see the panic in Dana's eyes, the way her chest had heaved as she'd scrambled backwards, the way her hand had flown to her mouth as if she could erase the evidence of what they'd just done.
"Let's forget about that."
The words echo in Cassie's mind and she feels her anger surge again.
She thinks about the nights she's spent wondering what she did wrong. Whether she'd misread every signal. Whether she'd imagined the connection between them, the way they seemed to gravitate towards each other in every room.
She thinks about the way she'd started to let herself hope. Just a little, enough to hurt when she was proven wrong. She'd been so careful for so long, keeping her walls up, not letting anyone in.
She'd let herself believe, for one stupid, hopeful moment, that maybe she deserved something good. That maybe Dana was the something good she'd been waiting for her whole life.
And Dana had ripped it away.
Cassie looks at her now, at the woman who's been avoiding her gaze for a month, at the woman who kissed her and ran, at the woman who is now trapped in an elevator with her and still trying to pretend she's not there.
The anger and the hurt are tangled together in her chest, a knot she can't untangle. She wants to scream at Dana, to shake her, to demand answers. But more than that, she wants to understand. She wants to know why what should’ve been on of the best moments of her life turned into a month of hell.
Cassie can hear her own heartbeat, can feel it pounding in her ears. She's been holding all of this in for so long, letting it fester, letting it eat at her from the inside out. And now, trapped in this tiny box with the woman who broke her heart, she can feel it all rising to the surface.
She thinks about the way Dana looked at her in the moments after, like Cassie was the biggest mistake she'd ever made.
And she can't hold it in anymore.
"You kissed me."
The words come out before she can stop them, and they're not angry, not the way she meant them to be. Cassie hates how vulnerable she sounds.
But she can't take them back now. And she's not sure she wants to.
“You kissed me and then you told me to forget about it like that was possible and then you ignored me for a month.” Cassie says in a great rush of breath.
Dana flinches as if struck. She closes her eyes, her brow furrowed in a deep frown. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then explain it to me!” Cassie demands, her own voice a plea. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s pretty simple. You were there, you were…you were you, and you kissed me. And I thought…god, Dana, I thought for a second that maybe…”
The humiliation of her own hope is too much.
“You thought what?” Dana asks, her voice a hoarse, bitter whisper. “That I wanted you? That I was brave enough to do anything about it?” She lets out a choked laugh. “I’m a divorcee in my late fifties, Cassie. The life I spent decades building is gone, I go home to an empty house. I am too old to be starting over, I am not built for…this.” She gestures vaguely between them. “I am not built for something new, it was selfish of me to pretend I am.”
Cassie wants the elevator to plummet to the centre of the earth and put her out of her misery.
“But then,” Dana continues, “there was you.”
And Cassie is frozen, pinned in place by the intensity of Dana’s gaze. She’s never heard Dana speak this much, this openly, about anything personal.
“The kiss,” Dana says, and her voice hitches. “It wasn’t planned. We were laughing, and you were so close, and I just…I didn’t think. For the first time in my entire life, I didn’t think. And when I did, I panicked. I panicked because it was perfect, Cassie. It was the most natural thing in the world, and that is the most terrifying thing I have ever felt.”
“So your solution was to freeze me out?” Cassie asks, but the sharp edge is gone from her voice. “To treat me like I was invisible? What about talking to me? Telling me any of this then.”
“It was the only thing I knew how to fuckin’ do, I was scared.” Dana admits. “I have been hating myself for it every single day. But I thought that if I just…created enough distance, I could forget about it all. And maybe eventually we’d laugh about all this shit like it never happened.”
“Dana,” Cassie says softly. “Why didn’t you just tell me you were scared?”
“Because saying it out loud made it real,” Dana whispers, a single tear finally escaping to trace a path down her cheek. She swipes at it angrily, frustratedly. “And if it was real, then I had to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with the fact that I’m falling for someone I have no right to fall for.”
Cassie’s heart stutters in her chest. “No right?”
“I’m old-” Dana starts.
“You’re not,” Cassie cuts her off, a little desperate. “And even if you were, we all get old if we’re lucky, what difference would it make? You think I haven’t thought about this? About all the reasons it could be complicated or messy or a bad idea? I have. And I’m still standing here.”
Dana lets out a shaky breath, her defensive posture crumbling. She properly meets Cassie’s eyes, and for the first time in nearly a month.
Cassie reaches out, her fingers gently brushing against Dana’s clenched fist. Slowly, carefully, she unfurls Dana’s fingers, lacing her own through them. Dana’s hand is cold, and trembling.
“Good,” Cassie whispers, her thumb stroking over Dana’s knuckles. “I’ve missed you.”
Dana’s eyes flood with a fresh wave of tears, but this time, there’s a hint of a smile trying to break through the wreckage on her face. “God, one word from you and I’m a fucking sap McKay.”
Cassie’s laugh is drowned out by the sound of distant voices and a metallic banging. The elevator jolts again, and the lights flicker back to full, blinding brightness.
“Hello in there!” a muffled voice shouts from beyond the doors. “Fire department! We’re gonna get you out, just hang tight!”
The urgency of the outside world rushes back in. Dana’s fingers tighten around Cassie’s.
“When we get out of here,” Cassie says, her voice low even though there’s no way the fire crew working above them could hear, “we’re not going back to normal. Definitely not the normal of the past few weeks, normal was fucking awful Dana. No more, normal is over.”
Dana barks out a laugh, a sheepish smile following. “Fine by me,”
The doors are pried open by the firefighters, flooding the elevator with light from the hallway, a face peering down at them from where a fire fighter is lay on his stomach to get a look at them to make sure they’re okay.
Dana doesn’t let go of Cassie’s hand.