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Seven Swipes for Shirayuki, Chapter 6

[Read on AO3]

Obiyuki Trope Madness 2024, Semifinal #1: Bodyguard Crush

“Yuuta.” Names have never been Shirayuki’s forte; she struggles with Sarah and Sara, crosses her fingers when she comes across a Siobhan or a Ciaran, and now labors to decipher whether this is a ‘u’ sound or an ‘oo’ sound— gosh, it might even be a ‘uu’ situation, which is a whole other disaster entirely—

“Does he have a last name to go with that?” Obi murmurs, just loud enough for her to catch it. Well, so she hopes. “Or maybe you could just ask him for his number. Skip the whole swiping song-and-dance and just get down to—”

“Could you spell that for me?” she asks, a hair louder than necessary, hoping her smile doesn’t flicker under pressure the way old fluorescents do . “The patient’s name, I mean.”

“Oh! The…the patient’s…” Her well-meaning visitor shuffles, pink flaring up right under the spray of small freckles across his cheeks. It really is just like being back at the old B&B again, trying to smother a laugh as the sweet retriever from down the street keeps bringing back the wrong ball. “Right, of course. You need the patient’s…god, sorry, I wasn’t even thinking…”

“Happens all the time.” She bites back a smile as pink blooms into carnelian red. “We don’t tend to see people at their most put-together here.”

“Haah, right, makes sense.” His tanned hand digs into the tousles mass of his hair, sending it wild. It's a charming look, she has to admit. Makes her wish there were Beggin’ Strips for people too— he looks like he could use a treat. “Just feels a little stupid, that’s all. Not like you could look me up. In a patient registry, I mean.”

“You got a Tinder, though?” Obi crosses an knobby ankle over his knee, pant leg riding up enough to show the chili peppers on his socks. “OkCupid? Plenty of Fish?”

"Uh." The man blinks, first at him, then at her, as if she might confirm that this line of questioning is somehow part of the official visitor registration process. It's not. “Y-yes?”

"Ooh?" Obi pitches forward, fingers poised over the app store. “Which—?”

“Obi.”

“What?” Having reached the end of his leash, her wayward hound finally comes to heel. With a tug of his coat, he slouches back, not a hint of contrition lingering in that smirk of his. “I was just wondering.”

She lets her glare do the heavy lifting as she repeats, “What was the name again?”

“Ah, my dad’s? Katsu. Katsu Baudin.” The man coughs, clearing his throat. “And I’m, uh, his son. Yuuta.”

“We know,” Obi chirps helpfully as she puts in her login. It shouldn’t work— IT’s supposed to update the registry at midnight, and she’s been legally off payroll for three days— but the system only takes a long, hard think and rolls over, displaying patient information with the same enthusiasm as a dog wagging its tail. “With two ‘u’s?”

“Uh…”

Her visitor— Yuuta— glances at her, but she’s too busy tallying the number of security and privacy regulations violated to give him much more than, “Katsu Baudin, Room 7760.”

There should be some palpable relief on the air, or at least the barest whiff of gratitude, but instead their wayward visitor shuffles awkwardly behind the counter, not flushed but— strained, maybe. “Um, sorry, I don’t mean to be a pain or anything, but do you think—?”

“Two floors down.” Wistal is hardly as labyrinthine as Wirant— built into a hill, each wing designed to be the magmum opus of architects thirty years apart, resulting in atria so beautiful they graced the covers of Architectural Digests and hallways so nonsensical as to be be hostile to human life, with entrances on every floor between the first and the fourth besides the third— but with each level laid out exactly like the last, it’s easy to get turned around. “If you go straight out from the elevators, take your second right. 7760 should be down that hall on your left.”

“Ahh, right, thanks. That’s…a huge help.” He hesitates, gaze fixed down the hall as if it were a thousand yards instead of five. His fingers fingers drum nervously on the counter top. “I don’t want to— I mean, it’s just—”

He hangs his head, dark eyes huge and pleading as they peer up from under that fluffy flop of hair, as helpless as a dog that’s found a door it can’t nose open. “I suck at directions.”

It takes every last ounce of her self control to keep only the corners of her mouth twitching. “That’s no problem at all. Just let me call down to their desk and give them the heads up that you're coming. Then you can go there and have someone take you right to the room.”

“Oh!” His head snaps up, eyes so wide she can nearly see a waggling tail behind him. “You can do that? Er, I mean…I wouldn’t want to put you out…?”

In Wilant there would have been some grumbling, some pointed questions about just how many times his parents had dropped him on his head as a child if he couldn’t go two floors down and take a turn without getting it all twisted, but here—

Shirayuki glances across the hall, catching a flash of pale hair above a designer button-down, of a profile that has graced more covers of GQ than she’s got fingers on one hand. As exceptional as Izana is, she doubts that’s even the most impressive statistics on the floor. There’s a husband just around the corner she’s pretty sure has a collection of Super Bowl rings. Recent ones, considering all the rubbernecking outside their door.

“They’re used to worse,” Obi offers, so helpful as he scrolls. “A little hand holding isn’t going to break the scale.”

Yuuta blinks down at him. “Er, all right. If you’re sure.”

“Please,” he scoffs, slouching further into the ergonomic plastic. “Unless you’re bringing your mistress to watch your wife go through labor, no one's even going to—”

“Just a minute!” Shirayuki smiles as she picks up the phone, refusing to acknowledge anything over her shoulder. “Let me see what I can do.”

There may be no phone trees or music on internal lines, but there’s still plenty of waiting, especially with no voicemail for stale calls to be shunted to. Still, it’s only a few minutes before someone picks up— a nurse fresh from shift change, happy to take of ‘that old charmer’s baby.’ Watching Yuuta’s back disappear into the elevator makes a nice ending to an unplanned long night, and Shirayuki—

“What, you aren’t going to go with him?” Obi leans back in his chair, straining the ergonomic claims of those cushions. “Make sure the prodigal son makes it back home? Maybe hold his hand a little?”

“I think he’ll manage just fine.” She blows out her cheeks as she sits, letting her mouth settle into her sternest frown. “Now, I trust you deleted that thing?”

“Me? No. I’ve swiped right on three real studs already. And let me just say” —he presses a hand to his chest, the silk of his tie rumpling under the pressure— “I chose better for you than you choose for yourself.”

“Obi!” It’s a strangled noise, one she just barely keeps to quiet-hours guidelines. “I told you that I wasn’t interested in—!”

“Trust me, Miss,” he soothes, entirely too smug. “You’ll be interested in these guys. Or at least their traps.”

“I thought we agreed that—”

“We didn’t agree on anything.” His eyebrows may twitch up to angelic heights, but his attempts at innocence are ruined by the downright sly curl his mouth takes. “You said I should, and I declined to take your advice.”

All at once, the fight seeps out of her, leaving only the weariest sigh in its wake. “Obi…”

“Aww, come on, now, Miss. No need to go borrowing trouble yet. It's not like you've matched.” His lips twitch. “Yet. But let’s be real, who could say no to a knock-out like y—?”

“You are going to delete that,” she informs him with all the authority of a limp dish rag. “Right now. While I can watch.”

“Aw, Miss,” he whines, using only the most pitiful pitches. “I’m just helping.”

Shirayuki stares. “You think this is helping?”

“Of course.” His shoulders twitch, halfway between a shrug and a shield. “What better way to recover from a bad break up then having someone blow out your—?”

“Ah, no!” Her hand flies up, the flimsiest barrier between them. “Don’t— don’t finish that thought.”

“But, Miss—”

“I appreciate your…consideration,” she informs him, gracious. “Really, I do. But I think that maybe you and I process this sort of thing differently. Very…very differently.”

“I didn’t say you had to jump right into bed.” Though he sounds dubious on that order of operations. “But you could let someone take you out, treat you right. And then maybe on date three, you—”

“Three?” It’d taken almost six months for her to even kiss Zen, let alone even think about the sort of activities that might require the removal of clothes. And by then, it took them three months of planning to even get them in the same room. “Do people really…?”

“You know how it is, Miss.” Obi’s sprawled across the chair, lounging in a way its ergonomic bullet points were never supposed to accommodate, but there’s nothing casual about the way his eyes settle on her. “People are busy nowadays. Not much time to take it slow.”

“I have time.”

Shirayuki nearly jolts straight out of her chair. “Ryuu?”

(Shirayuki’s not given to believe in the supernatural— not ghosts, not ESP, not sixth senses that seem to only work in hindsight— but she’ll give Yuzuri this: her ability to locate her anywhere in this rabbit warren of hallways is downright occult.

“Have I got the goss for you, girl,” she squeals, stealing a baby carrot out of her lunch box as she slips into the empty seat beside her. It’s all empty seats in the break room right now, but Yuzuri rolls even closer, voice pitched low. “Word on the street is that Ryuu’s got something going on with the new intern.”

“In Imaging?” It’s hard to picture her— she’s a shy thing, always disappearing behind a white coat as a cart turns a corner, just a blonde ponytail above pink scrubs. “I guess they’re around the same age.”

“Same age,” Yuzuri scoffs, gnawing on her ill-gotten gains. “Is that what you think people care about? The same age? No, this girl is like…his type.”

That doesn’t sound quite right, not to her ears. “I don’t really think Ryuu has—”

“Of course he does. Everyone has a type, Shirayuki, even you.” Her voice drops to mutter something that sounds suspiciously like, “Even if you don’t realize it.”

“I just mean that Ryuu hasn’t shown much interest in…anything like that.” Romance, she means. But if she says it, Yuzuri will probably counter with something about sex, and quite honestly, she’s not sure if she can handle Ryuu and... and that idea in the same sentence. “I’m not really sure he wants to, either.”

“Yeah, yeah, normally I’d agree with you,” Yuzuri says with a dismissive wave. “But this girl is like, smart. And super cute. Like freckles everywhere! And her laugh— seriously, you have to hear it. He like, smiled and stuff.”

Well, the smile is a start. “Is that what his type is? Smart and cute? Freckles?”

“I mean, basically right?” Her hand flop open into something between a slouch and a shrug. “That’s what you’re like.”

It’s a good thing there’s no silverware involved in eating hummus, otherwise it would have clattered to the floor. It’s sad enough that she’ll have to toss out this baby carrot casualty. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” Yuzuri presses on, as if she didn’t just drop a detail more devastating than an atom bomb. “It’s not about you. It’s just that every guy wants to fuck their mom or whatever. Freudian stuff.”

Shirayuki has opinions on Freud— capital ‘O’ Opinions, as Obi likes to call them, along with, the kind that don’t get us asked back to the country’s finest conferences— but all she can manage is, “I think I’m more like a sister than a mother.”

Yuzuri shrugs. “Same difference.”)

“Ryuu.” Her hand slaps to her chest, as if that might keep her heart beneath it better than own her ribcage. Which might be true, from how hard its pounding to get out. Shirayuki can hardly blame it. “What are you…? Ah, I mean, were you…?”

It’s still strange to have to look up to meet his eyes, to see the way his face furrows with the beginnings of annoyance. “It’s now or not until after four. Should I come back?”

“Wha— oh, the ultrasound.” Now that she’s on her feet, she can see the cart at his side, loaded up with one of the mobile units he must have requisitioned from Imaging. “Are you doing it?”

“I said I would.”

There’s no humble shrug to go with his words, no inflection to imply emotion, just a simple recitation of the facts. “Well, yes, but I thought you would have one of the techs on shift come up and—”

“I had time.” His shoulders settle into stern angles as his chin lifts, as imperious as any MD. “Is there a problem with that?”

There’s a half dozen, starting and ending with how he’s the Attending today; someone who has a thousand more pressing responsibilities than doing some investigative ultrasound for her patient. But as much as she might try, the words won’t stick together in her mouth, won’t let her make anything but the most unconvincing sputter. “N-no, it’s only—”

“Aw, come on, big guy.” Obi saunters up to the counter, elbow brushing her shoulder as he furls himself up for a lean. It’s nice; steadying. “You know there’s no one else Miss would trust to do this more than you. But don’t big shots like you have busy schedules? I wouldn’t think you’d have the time to come help little old us.”

A stubborn red that clings to the tips of his ears. “As I said, I do. Is it in that room, there?”

His head bobs toward the door. There’s no one behind the window now, just a straight view from hall to window, blinds strung tight across the glass.

“Yes, 9060.” He’s already wheeling the cart towards it when she adds, “Izana should be with her, too.”

The cart squeals to a stop.

“Oh.” His knuckles blanch so white she can see bone where they grip the handle. “Then maybe I should come back. Later. After…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. Shirayuki frowns. “I don’t see why. Is there something wrong with—?”

“Oh, I get it.” Obi’s smirk stretches long into a leer as he leans toward her, voice pitched to be heard as he whispers, “I think he’s afraid of Her Majesty. Intimidated by laying hands on America’s Sweetheart. Little too famous for his blood, I—”

“I didn’t say that,” Ryuu grumbles, sullen. “I’m not laying hands on her anyway. It’s only the probe that will—”

“So it’s His Majesty then,” Obi amends, so considerate. It’s a struggle to keep her mouth from twitching, giggles straining behind her teeth. “Can’t say I blame you for that one, little guy. That guy makes me break out into a cold sweat.”

“I’m not afraid of Izana Wisteria.” The name snaps between his teeth, cold. “I just thought that if she has a visitor, she might not want to be interrupt—”

“You know, Miss.” It’s hard to call something as languid as Obi’s lounging aggressive, but that’s what it is— weaponized slinkiness, the way a cat weaves through legs at dinnertime. “If Ryuu thinks that this is too rich for his blood, you should really just get someone else to—”

“I’m doing it.” The cart squeals as it angles toward the door, wheels grinding with the same single-minded focus as Ryuu’s teeth. “I— I’m already going!”

He doesn’t so much march as storm over, shoulders hiked like pickets by his ears as he knocks at the door. “Excuse me,” he says, swinging it open. “Name and birth date, please.”

It shuts before she can hear Haki’s answer.

“Boo.” Obi doesn’t so much sit as he does slump, a puppet with all his strings cut. “He coulda kept that door open a smidge longer. I've heard that America’s Sweetheart fudged the date on her birth certificate to get that role in Mean Girls.”

“I doubt that.” Shirayuki spares him the flattest stare, fingers striking the keys with a pointed power as she logs out from the system. “Her family’s a big deal, aren’t they? Hollywood Royalty, isn’t that what Yuzuri called it?”

“Miss.” His shoulders shake along with his head. “Only you could ask if the Arleons were a big deal.”

Years ago she might have blushed, might have stammered out excuses about the how cable didn’t run out that far until she was in college, and the combination post office/movie theater in town only ran movies two years out of date, but now— now she simply says, “That proves my point, doesn’t it? There were probably newspaper articles about it. An entertainment Weekly birth announcement? Something. It can’t be much of a mystery.”

“There was also some website that counted down to her eighteenth birthday.” He shrugs, casual, as if that isn’t the most horrifying thing he’s ever heard. Then again, knowing Obi, it probably doesn’t even make the top thirty. “But you know, once you get a thing like that in your head…”

He lets his grin do the rest of the talking. Like all of his outrageous behavior, she simply ignores.

“Thank you for that, by the way.” One of his narrow brows hikes up toward his hairline, and she clarifies, “With Ryuu. You’ve always known how to handle him better than I do.”

“You do just fine.” The seat creaks as he tucks his thigh against its arm, elbow lazily hooking over his knee. “He just needs a little heat to get him into the kitchen sometimes. And you’re not someone who’s comfortable with turning it up. Especially when it comes to Ryuu.”

Shirayuki doubts her interns would agree with that particular assessment, but she simply says, “Thank you anyway. If you hadn’t been here, I think we really would have been waiting until four.”

Obi hums. “Oh, I’m not sure about that, Miss. Seems like you handled it just fine the other day.”

She blinks. “The other day?”

“You know.” His shoulders twitch, the laziest suggestion of a shrug. “Ms. Luteal Cyst?”

(The cart wheels catch on the threshold, casters making a nasty ka-crack as they struggle over the metal strip. The noise alone has got her grimacing, but when she sees the close-cropped dark hair, so like Obi’s now that all the curls have been left on the barber shop floor, her mouth pulls thinner still.

“Ryuu.” He’s supposed to be on days this week— at least according to the schedule posted up in the break room— but yet he’s here, wincing as the last wheel wails across the floor. Ah, and he’s gotten the squeaky cart. “I didn’t think you’d be…?”

In, she wants to say, but doing the tech’s job keeps trying to elbow its way out at the same time, and instead the question just hangs, awkward.

“Oh, Shirayuki.” He blinks, first at her, then as he leans out the door, as if—

“This is the right room!” she assures him, a laugh startling out of here. “It’s just a slow shift, so I though I might keep my friend here company while she waited.”

“Oh.” The girl sinks further into her pillows as he stares, withering under the stern furrow of his brows. Shirayuki’s half-tempted to tell her that it’s not personal, that without regular reminders, Ryuu’s face defaults to forbidding. “The gel’s going to be cold.”

“I-I don’t care.” She lifts her chin, defiant; a challenge if he means to make it one. “Anything’s fine as along as my baby’s okay.”

Ryuu shoots her a wary glance across the bed— don’t let this girl have emotions on me, it says, loud and clear— before he turns back to the computer, fingers clacking pointedly across the keys. That leaves her to help the girl lift up her johnny, rearranging blankets and drop cloth so her legs and clothes are covered, terrible mesh underwear and all.

“I’m surprised to see you here.” The words might be for Ryuu, but Shirayuki keeps smiling down at her patient, trying to keep her in the conversation. “Usually we don’t have doctors doing untrasound, but Dr Goldregen sometimes helps out when there’s a bit of a scheduling back up—”

“Or when the tech no-shows.”

Her smile stiffens. “O-or that.”)

“Ah…” Shirayuki shakes her head. “That didn’t have anything to do with me. Mihaya was late for shift change—”

“Must be nice to have a wing of a hospital named after your family,” Obi muses, head tilted over the back of the chair. “Then you can just waltz into work at any old time, and everyone just says ‘thank you for your time.’”

“I don’t think anyone says that to him,” she snorts. “And he does a passable job when he’s here, so—”

“So no one can fire him.”

Shirayuki struggles against a smile. “So no one can fire him. Ryuu just got here early for shift change and saw there had been a request pending for over an hour. It had more to do with being efficient than helping me.”

Obi hums, unconvinced. “I think you underestimate just how much that kid likes to please you. Maybe he didn’t know it was your patient or whatever, but I bet he showed off once he knew you were there. Probably had good bedside manner and everything.”

(The girl yips at the first touch of gel on her stomach, but Ryuu doesn’t even flinch, already pressing the probe down to spread it around. “It’s cold!”

He sends her a sidelong look. “I did warn you.”)

“Not…measurably.” It’s effort to keep her tone even. “Ryuu respects my opinion, but he’s really not the sort of person to give special treatment just because—”

“I’m done.”

“Ryuu!” Zen used to joke about putting a bell on Obi— or at least he did, before Obi sent him an Amazon link to a few human-sized collars— but Shirayuki is beginning to wonder if they might need to find one for Ryuu. Last thing they need is for him to startle someone into coding. “A-already?”

He nods. “One sac.”

Shirayuki frowns. That’s hardly what she expected. “Are you sure? Sometimes it’s tricky to see if—”

“I checked for a posterior placenta too.” His shoulders twitch, the barest shrug. “Sometimes hyperemesis gravidium is just hyperemesis gravidium.”

“I guess.” There’s just something unsatisfying about saying it’s hormones; something that feels dismissive rather than diagnostic. “I just could have sworn…”

“What I said before.” Ryuu clears his throat, looking like he’d rather be anywhere than right here, standing in front of the nurse’s desk. “About not doing it again.”

“I know, I know.” She sighs, waving a hand. “It was already kind of you to do it this time— and personally too. I won’t ask again.”

“No, that’s not…” His lips press tight, a white line cutting across his face. “I mean, I’ll do it, if you really need it.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“In a few weeks,” he tells her, stern, as if she might turn around and tell him to go back in there. “There’s things that might not show up now. Rare things. But…things.”

“That’s really kind of you, Ryuu.” For anyone else, she might reach out— pat their shoulder, shake their hand— but for him, she just smiles. But the way he straightens, it’s enough. “But I’d hate to bother you after—”

“It’s not a bother. If you think something’s wrong, I believe you.” It’s been ages since he was the boy genius, a teenager that trembled when he walked onto the floor. But there’s shades of it now in the way he looks at her, gratitude and trust and affection all tangled up into something that makes it hard to look away from his too-blue eyes. “Garrack always told me that you have good intuition. My own experience agrees. It would be foolish to deny that based on something so subjective as statistics.”

It must be a little too earnest even for him, since he shakes himself, quickly adding, “I have other things to do today. Goodbye.”

He rolls off, squeaky cart wheel wailing, and all she can do is stare at his back.

Obi snorts. “No special treatment, huh?”

She’s not sure how to answer, but she’s saved from having to figure it out when Obi’s phone blings obnoxiously. “What’s that?”

He glances down at the screen, mouth unfurling into a terribly devious grin.

“Why look at that, Miss,” he drawls. “Looks like we got a match.”

#Shirayuki is surrounded by menaces #just every single word out of Obi's mouth #and then Yuzuri #just saying all the quiet stuff out loud #Ryuu is such an awkward sweetheart #that intern had better watch out #sabraeal

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