#but neighbors can not be choosers I'll have to roll with it! ha ha ha

[newbornwhumperfly]

what water says as it plummets...

i'll be honest, fellas? 🥺💖🥺 this one is a plot point i'd built up for a long time and it sort of poured out of me all at once in this chapter 💖 it's a little rougher than i'd like due to sleepiness but i'm so happy to bring this character to my audience in this @whumpmasinjuly prompt - day 15: a soft reprieve - cause i'm sure you'll love her. 🥰

title insp. by the poem "interview" by jordan kapono nakamura - "i have extensive experience in studying what water says as it plummets..."

~

“Okay, honey, you can hop up on the table whenever you’re ready.”

Sarai has found that Morja, as a patient, generally prefers orders. That’s to be expected, for sure. It’s usually safer to be told what to do when you’re told what to do every day of your life and Morja has often frozen, still and quiet, when offered an option right away. So, the best way to start these appointments is to sort of sound like she’s telling him what to do. 

Every patient is different and has different needs from their doctor. In this way, every patient is the same.

Sure enough, Morja’s shoulders go down a notch from their raised tension as he hoists himself to sit on the bench. He’s been…less tense with each visit, especially recently. He even took one of the candies Sarai offered without protesting. 

But today, something is…different about Morja. Or, moreso, something is the same, some pattern that has been shifting is fixed, cold and solid, in place in Morja’s countenance.. There is a way that Morja holds himself, tight, rigid, that comes and goes, but there is something even worse that she’s observed - it was the dead, resigned bracing in his face when he first got an exam. It was as if he was locked in around the certainty of a terrible thing, his body merely a vessel which would carry whatever was to come. 

He looks like that now, his hands and the mass of scar tissue they hold not clenched loosely or folded politely, but laid palm-up in his lap, still but for the twitch of a finger, and it sends the familiar pulse of knowing down Sarai’s spine. 

Knowing isn’t the only thing that is pulsing in her body - the tidal wave is cresting earlier than usual. 

The familiar ocean of pain, her vision of it, has crept up on her, busy with setting up shop, with answering messages, with putting in another order that wasn’t refilled because prescriptions are delayed and not being a civilian is not much of a fucking advantage with medication the past two months. The whirlpool centers at her spine, radiating down the leg in a strong current, and she winces as she rubs her thigh. Okay, we’re doing things a little differently today. 

“Hey, Morja? Would it be okay if we did some of our appointment stuff on the couch today?” She thinks about leaving it at that. Remembers, with a slow, purposeful inhale, how vulnerability is a gift to others, as well as yourself. You’re not exempt from being nice to yourself, girl. “I’m having some, uh, bad pain today and I think the exam would be easier in my office, if that’s alright with you?”

At that, change ripples through Morja’s body. Under the industrially bright bulbs, his strained face falters, briefly, but what comes in place of listlessness is…a sort of determined expression. Not bracing, only…something, Sarai’s thinking wavers under the fog rolling off the water. It’s something. 

“Of- Yes, Doctor.”

The crinkle of the gown, the rustle of climbing off the table, the shuffle of feet in socks across the floor as Sarai turns herself towards her office. Luckily, her warm corner is only a few feet away and the couch beckons like a haven. It’s a shitty couch, sure, but military bases can’t be choosers and it’s new, which means its firmness holds up the parts of her body that need it. She actually sighs as she sinks down into the cushions, pats the neighboring cushion in a sit gesture. 

The careful exhale of breath beside her as Morja sits, careful and precise as he always is, tells her that the softness of cushion is a relief from the hard plastic of the table as much as the relief for her being off her feet is. She smiles at him to let him know his moves were right and lays her cane to rest against the companion side-table, stretching out her limbs to make room for the little streams of voltage pinpricking her skin from the inside. She can tell, now, just by the way he didn’t try to stand at attention, hands clasped behind his back, that she did the right thing. 

In the softening shadow of her purple-shaded lamp, Morja looks so small on the couch. For all his bulk, the muscle that has been so pounded into those broad shoulders, the wide torso hard and sturdy as a sack of potatoes, he doesn’t fill up the space much at all. Tucked into the corner, folded neatly, compact, trying not to draw attention. 

Sarai lifts the stethoscope, the warmed metal a comfort in hands that move with shaky slowness, deliberate and obvious when pressing it against Morja’s back, her murmured breathe in for me, please, now out, now in, very good a rhythm she could say in her sleep, her focus on the measure of his pulse. Listening to this man’s lungs make it impossible to not listen to other parts of his body. How the texture of scar rises to meet the shirt that covers it. How even those ridges are and how they rise with his breathing into her hand. There are so many. 

“Doctor?”

Sarai is almost startled by the sound of Morja’s voice. He is so quiet, often, in the examination room. She wonders if it is the softly-lit enclave of her office nook which prompts him to speak first or the intensity of whatever state he’s in. Sarai smoothly folds her hands in her lap, visible and also at a safe distance. 

“Yeah, Morja?” Her voice is slower, the tide catching up to her a little, dragging the lilt away a bit, and she doesn’t quite swallow back a wince at the depth her pain is dragging her voice down to. Morja doesn’t seem to get snagged on the roughness though, his body leaning forward, brow wrinkling up in an intense concentration expression and Sarai tries hard to be alert. She’s so glad there is no sterile smell or bright light to distract her. “What’s up?”

“...Your cane is…pretty. Why, Doctor?”

Damn. So it’s that kind of mood. Huh. 

Fuck, she’s watery, the pulsing little hammers at her temples, her knees, her back, are trying to pull her away from the conversation. But she breathes in, out, in a hum that lets him know she heard, she’s thinking. 

“Great question, Morja.” Sarai says softly, at last, making a rainwater of her voice, flowing with the pain and the rolling mists. Working with her body, not against it. The bright hues of the cane pull her focus and she lets that be her guide. She was feeling…blueish, today, and her blueberry earrings, her sea-deep dress, mirror the cobalt-on-white, delicate patterns on mimicking porcelain teacups, spiral up to the sturdy handle, its blue velvet cushion, anything but fragile as a dish. “Pretty things make me feel better. And…since my cane is me, ya know, it makes sense that it makes me feel better. I hurt a lot some days and, uh, I figure I deserve all the help I can get, so, gotta give it to myself.” 

Her gaze drifts back to Morja’s face and his eyes are deep wells that meet her own. A groove of emotion carved deep into the valleys and ridges, scar after scar, rough terrain hiding buried treasure. So dark in their brown they approach black and the color is what guides her brain again, guides her to recognize the furrow between those eyes, the shadows beneath. The spasm of pain in her chest is not from any illness, only an emotion. The weight of pretty as it fell out of his mouth is the weight of his body on this couch. A luxury Morja  (believes, so strongly believes he) can’t have. 

It only lasts a moment, less than a heartbeat, before Morja looks away and Sarai is unable to swim after it. She’s quite sure he never meant to look her in the eye. She’s quite sure that he wanted to. Morja’s mouth is no longer slack and a frown is an expression, better than nothing. 

The fog thickens around the corners of her eyes, head going all syrup again, thick sugar, bitter as burning caramel, and she breathes out, out, out through a cluster of needles up and down her neck. Fuuuuuuuck. The back of her head thumps against the wall, the darkness of her lids pressing back the dizziness. 

“Hey, Morja? I’m a little out of it- I’m okay, it’ll pass, but do you want to sit in here with me or sit in the exam room? No wrong answers, honey.” 

Her voice is a rumble in her chest and she breathes out the wince, the tremors rocking the tilt behind her lids precariously. 

“Can I…change back into my clothes?”

Oh, honey. 

Her lid cracks, as does the corner of her mouth, and though he’s blurry, she wants the sunlight of how pleased she is of him asking for a thing to break through her cloud of exhaustion. 

Fuck, her head hurts so much, but she’s proud and glad, ouch ouch ouch. 

“‘Course, Morja, gra’ me a can’y when y’get yourself on, pl’se...” 

The rustle of Morja leaving and returning is close together, time doing its foamy thing while she counts her breaths, but the press of a wrapped peppermint, round and crinkly, in her palm is so gentle. 

The couch sinks and settles into the shape of another body, doing the thing she is doing, leaning back into the firm crevices that hold you up. The soft-crunch sounds of the wrapper as she squeezes her fist around it, as Morja unwraps his own candy, as she tries to just kind of be as Morja is on the spot beside her. 

The office is dark and cool and quiet and they’re both in good company right now. 

“...It’s nice. The candy.” 

A flat whisper, halting and small and brave, fumbling across the inches in the dark. 

A flat answer fumbles back, warm and limping and still good enough to greet him.

“I'm glad, Morja. It's really nice.”

~

sincerely hoped you all enjoyed this venture into my story 🥺💖🥺 sarai baptiste is the team's medic who is stationed at base forthill and she's disabled and kind and badass as hell and deserves the world 😢💖✨😍

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have a very merry @whumpmasinjuly everyone! 💖💖💖

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