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There are days when Emery Walsh comes home from being a surgeon and finds she barely feels like a person at all. Each of her limbs moves separately from the other, and getting into her apartment, into their apartment, is based on muscle memory alone. There is no conscious thought beyond what is required by sheer force of will for the drive home, to park in the garage, and take herself up to the 6th floor.
It’s quiet when she gets home this time, but she knows Samira is somewhere in the apartment, had checked her location before she left the hospital to know exactly how fucking in her head she was allowed to get before she got home. Unfortunately, making food and forcing yourself to take real care of your physical form means more than just the bare bones of lucidity.
“Emery?” Samira’s voice floats from the office where she’s probably working on her latest research piece.
Emery grunts in response, knowing it probably isn’t audible from that far away, but she can’t force herself to do much but drop her keys in the keybowl and kick her shoes off in the general direction of the shoe rack. Organization be damned. Her backpack goes on the couch, the voice telling her about hospital germs distant as if it’s shouting over a crowded room.
By the time she stumbles into the office, she’s lost her scrubs along the way. She’ll let herself be frustrated at her messiness tomorrow, later, whenever she feels human again. Samira is focused on the computer screen in front of her, glasses perched on her nose and a slight furrow between her brows. Despite her focus, she tilts her frame towards Emery’s approaching one and smiles softly.
“You made it home.”
Emery just nods and drapes herself over Samira’s back. She lets herself bury her nose into Samira’s hair, still smelling faintly of the fancy curl shampoo and conditioner she lets Emery buy her despite the price tag. For a moment, Samira lets her sag onto her, one hand going into Emery’s hair to tug the hairband loose. Emery hadn’t even noticed she left that in her hair.
“Do you want me to take care of it?” Because that’s who Samira is, knows what Emery needs without her having to say it, to force the words out. She doesn’t even say it with any assumption in her voice, would as easily make dinner and usher Emery into a shower as she would take care of it .
A heavy sigh that Emery knows is just pushing more of her body weight into Samira, but she tolerates it.
“I need to hear you say yes.” Emery doesn’t respond, her eyes already closed as she considers falling asleep standing up and burdening her girlfriend with dragging her to the bed. “You know how this works.”
A huff, indignant. Emery would let Samira do nothing short of whatever the hell she wanted to her. People often assumed based on Emery’s, let’s say, rather abrasive personality, that she “wore the pants” so to speak. Samira held her heart, brain, lungs, all of her in her hands. Whatever Samira wanted, Emery would go to the ends of the earth to indulge.
“Emery.” It’s a warning, but not a reprimand. Not yet.
Emery knows what she wants, what she needs, there’s little sense in dragging this part out other than her own stubbornness. This part isn’t a struggle the way showering feels like it would be. Telling Samira that she wants her is easier than breathing, like her automatic nervous system knows how to do that and say yes to Samira Mohan.
Pulling her face out of her neck, Emery opens her eyes and shifts so she can look into Samira’s eyes. “Yes.”
“There you go. You do know how to be good.” Now that, that might as well be a threat. For another time, though.
Samira pushes herself away from the desk after shooing Emery off her, and reaches into the bottom-most drawer on the left. It’s mostly a junk drawer at this point, despite both of their best efforts. But nestled at the top is an unassuming white plastic container. Samira pops it open and fishes a gummy out.
Emery stands, unmoving and borderline unreactive next to her. She’s a bit cold in just her briefs and sports bra, but she’ll be warm enough soon that it doesn’t bother. She takes the gummy from Samira’s palm and pops it into her mouth. It’s always a bit surprising how little these things actually taste like the drug they contain.
For what it’s worth, she knows she shouldn’t indulge like this. That weed is still illegal federally, that a random drug test would upend her life. But Gloria hasn’t prioritized funding for random drug testing in the hospital budget in months, and it might be terrible, but she knows she’s too essential to the OR to be selected. Random, her ass.
And, when she feels like a marionette with its strings cut she can’t bring herself to care. Let her life go to shit, it feels like it might as well already be there.
“Why don’t you go and shower before that kicks in? I’ll make some food, and then we can get started.”
She gets a raised eyebrow when she doesn’t start moving, and for a moment Emery lets the warmth of Samira’s expectant stare burn through her. There’s probably all sorts of fucked up and accurate shit a therapist could say about how much it does for her to peel away all the executive function of her own brain and hand the reins to Samira. And yet, she walks out of the office and towards the bathroom without much more than another few seconds of delay.
Showering is a race against time. At this point, Emery knows herself and her tolerance well enough to know that on a semi-empty stomach and her body basically running on fumes, she has about thirty minutes before she starts feeling high. Still, she’s slow in the bathroom. She spends maybe a full minute staring at her own face before the clang of a pot from the kitchen startles her.
On a whim, she makes the bold decision to decide to wash her hair. She knows it’ll mean cutting it really close on timing but all of a sudden the oil of her hair is all she can think about. When she gets out of the shower, there’s a t-shirt and a new pair of briefs on the counter for her. She hadn’t noticed Samira come in.
By the time she emerges from the bathroom, steam following her like it wants to know her, she can feel her heart rate starting to elevate slightly and the moisture leaving her mouth. Still, she lets herself plaster a plaintive expression on her face and commits herself to eating at least some semblance of a real meal after forty eight hours of work.
They don’t really converse as Emery eats standing up and Samira balances on a bar stool, watching her carefully. She didn’t push the whole eating standing up thing, and Emery’s grateful that Samira knows her well enough to know when to leave well alone despite the circumstances.
“Wanna brush my teeth after this.”
It’s the most words Emery’s said since she clocked out, since sent a haphazardly recorded voice note to Samira summarizing her shit shift and letting her know she confirmed a few days off later in the month for their weekend trip.
She’s well and truly on her way to being high when she finds herself in the bathroom again. She remembers she wanted to brush her teeth after eating, but at this point it doesn’t seem so important. Still, Samira had nodded and agreed that it might be a good idea. And she was going to after putting the dishes away.
So Emery makes herself floss and do all the things dentists swear will keep your teeth clean before she finally, finally gets into the bedroom. It feels like peeling the final layer of everything back.
Here, it’s only her and Samira. There is absolutely nothing else she has to think about. There are no ghosts, no patients she’s lost, no idiot interns, just them.
Samira didn’t give her explicit instructions on what to do while waiting for her, so Emery decides that laying down is probably safe. She climbs clumsily onto the mattress before realizing she didn’t pull back the duvet. As she feels her blinking really slow down, she fights to push the duvet to one side of the bed.
When she finally feels like it looks right, she starfishes in the center of the bed and closes her eyes. She likes the feeling of sinking into and through the mattress. She can feel each fiber of the briefs hugging her hips and the worn Yale t-shirt on her chest. Somewhere, distantly in her awareness, she can hear the tap running in the bathroom and then Samira padding into the bedroom.
“You ready?” Her voice is closer than Emery expected, but she doesn’t open her eyes. “Emery.” That’s closer to the tone of a reprimand.
Shame or something like it curls low in her gut. “Yeah, I’m ready.” Her mouth is starting to get so fucking dry.
There is nothing after this moment for Emery to process consciously, that’s how this works. Her job is to do exactly what Samira tells her to do, to take what Samira gives her, what she knows she needs.
And god does Samira know what to do. Because of course she does.
So Emery lays there, eyes just barely closed as she feels Samira straddle her. She lets her tweak her nipples and groans softly at the way the sensation buzzes through her. It’s not much more stimulation than that and the grounding feeling of Samira’s weight on her pelvis, but sometimes that’s enough. Through the shirt and with the way her high is swelling in her, each pass of Samira’s fingertips over her hardened buds is amplified by a thousand times.
At a particularly insistent pinch, Emery yelps and her eyes fly open. Samira is gazing down at her, expression intensely focused in that way she uses when reading a confusing article or trying to figure out how to deal with a particularly difficult patient. Emery’s limbs are too heavy to react beyond finally looking Samira in the eyes.
“More. Please.” This, Emery is allowed. To ask for what she wants. It’s up to Samira to decide if it’s what she gets, what she needs. Each word feels like it takes the energy of every cell in her body to produce.
Samira twists her other nipple and Emery screws her eyes shut, mouth open and panting. She flinches when she feels Samira’s bare hand on her stomach, not expecting the sensation more than anything else. Part of the point of starting clothed is it helps Emery adjust, helps her feel like she’s in her own body again. But sometimes Samira decides that there are things she needs above their usual routine.
“You’re doing so good for me, Emery.” Samira has one over the shirt and one under, and Emery wonders if she’s still getting any oxygen with the way she’s gasping.
She wants to say she hasn’t done anything yet, hasn’t even come like she’s supposed to, but Samira doesn’t let her get a word in. She talks her through her first orgasm, a gentle shivering thing that Emery barely registers mentally despite how much she feels every physical sensation. It almost passes her by as the cottony feeling pushes against her eardrums and makes her nose feel warm.
Warm hands withdraw from her skin and she whines, unable to conceal her annoyance at losing Samira’s hands on her. It’s not true frustration, just the subconscious taking over if even for a moment to voice its opinion.
“Patience.” And Emery lets herself sink back into the mattress, manually relaxing every single one of her muscles where they’d tensed up from exertion.
The second orgasm is something fierce and hungry. Her jaw is too heavy, tongue too laden, to really voice any thoughts as she turns her head to watch Samira lean off her to reach into the nightstand and pull out a vibrator. Deceptively small thing.
She climbs off Emery and slides down her body to sit between her spread legs. Samira doesn’t even bother with taking the briefs off, just kneels between Emery's legs and turns the vibrator on. She presses it between her legs where she knows Emery’s clit is, shushes her as she mewls and whines and her legs twitch.
She’s more keyed up than she thought she was from her first orgasm. But the physical always breaks through before the mental.
There’s no reprieve. She wouldn’t be able to ask for one if she wanted it. Instead she closes her eyes and chokes back a sob as Samira angles the tip of the vibrator just under her clitoral hood and holds it steady as Emery comes. She doesn’t let up either, knows she likes it with an edge of too much, knows she needs it to burn through her again.
“Can you give me another?” Emery doesn’t open her eyes, just whines her assent and nods. Her head is so heavy she’s sure it looks nonsensical to the point of comedy, but Samira accepts it.
The work up to her next orgasm feels something like going down the tallest hill on a rollercoaster ride. For how long, she doesn’t know, but Emery feels suspended in the air. Her chest heaves and she desperately wants to be in control of her own limbs enough to touch her nipples where they’re still hard against her shirt, but if Samira didn’t–
This is like the fall, the first moments of suspension, when you’re sure you might fly out of your seat for even just a moment. Her eyes open, wide as if in absolute shock as her orgasm bursts like a white hot star, spreading through her abdomen and thighs till it reaches the tip of each extremity. Her ears are ringing, she’s sure, and she’s unsure of all the sounds she’s been making in the last few minutes.
Between her legs, Samira holds her thighs open with a surprisingly strong grip and her own knees. The vibrator clicks off as soon as she hears her whines reach a fever pitch, and Samira is climbing up her to press their lips together.
This, Emery can muster physical strength for. She lets one hand thread into Samira’s hair, lets herself lick into her mouth and taste the mint toothpaste they share. Samira kisses her back with an equal intensity, holding onto Emery’s face with one hand so she can angle their faces together.
As they continue to kiss, a thought starts to bubble up through the mental haze. She knows it’s important, but she doesn’t want to stop kissing Samira to voice it.
But because she’s Samira, has never missed a thing, always thorough, always observant, she pulls away. One thumb brushes over Emery’s cheekbone as she licks her lips. “I know what you want, don’t whine too much.” The smile that graces her features after she speaks is so gentle and loving it breaks her heart.
Emery lets Samira go as she slides off the bed to undress. The sweatpants are shucked off with little preamble. The loose shirt proclaiming Samira’s allegiance to the gay agenda comes off slower, as if Samira is reminding Emery to look, to enjoy. Then she’s just in a pair of plain black panties. Her chest is bare, breasts full and nipples dark and peaked. She has to be the most beautiful thing Emery has had the privilege of looking at in her sorry life.
When she turns around, Emery goes to protest until Samira tucks her thumbs into the waistband of the panties and starts dragging them down her long, long, legs. She lets herself fold almost in half as she pulls them down her thighs and past her knees. Emery wants nothing more than to get her mouth on her, to lick the wetness she can see glistening between Samira’s legs, smearing the dark curls with a glistening shine.
Samira laughs when she turns back around to face Emery fully naked. “Enjoy the show?”
Emery feels silly doing anything but nodding. Even in something like this, she can’t imagine doing anything but acquiescing to Samira’s every whim and demand. Saying yes to her every question.
Crawling back onto the bed, Samira straddles her waist again. Emery can just reach her thighs, and moves her hands so she can run her fingertips over the warm skin of Samira’s calves, knees, and thighs. She has a scar on her left knee from when she skinned her knee as a child. Something silly about trying to wiggle between two pool chairs when she was little, just trying to get to a toy someone had thrown into the grass behind them.
Now, Emery traces the pale scar tissue with her fingertip. A quiet voice in her brain starts reciting the layers of skin she would’ve torn through in her youth, expected healing times, and–
Samira tucks her fingers into the waistband of Emery’s briefs, looking pensive for a moment. Then she moves Emery’s hands aside so she can start crawling up Emery’s body. Deciding to leave Emery clothed while she’s naked is something Samira decides on with the predictability of a divining rod. Still, Emery likes it when she does. The mild discomfort of the lingering wetness kept between her legs grounds her, reminds her that she’s human, that she feels. That she’s more than a set of dexterous hands ready to cut someone open.
Emery lays flat on her back, unmoving as if any small twitch will startle Samira into leaving. She pauses when their faces are level, when she can tell Emery wants to lean up so she can press their lips together.
“One for the road?” Her hair is tickling Emery’s cheek as she leans in.
Before they can kiss, Emery finds it in herself to breathe out, “Going far?”
“Never.”
Samira pulls away before Emery wants her to, still chasing her lips as Samira sits up. Then she finally moves to where Emery has wanted her since she clocked out.
By the time Samira settles herself on Emery’s face, she feels slightly more human again. No less intoxicated but more present. Her mouth waters at the smell of Samira’s arousal, at the way she can see her inner thighs are slick. The anatomy of it all fades away, surgeon, specialist, M.D., Dr. Walsh—none of it is real at this moment.
Emery wondered in college if it was too much of a cliche that she was a lesbian who loved going down. At this point in her life, she’s decided that even if it is, she’ll weather whatever pop culture nomenclature they throw at her if she gets to keep doing this .
Her arms are too heavy to do much but hold Samira’s ankles. Still, she makes an enthusiastic effort with just her mouth, her lips, the way she swirls her tongue around Samira’s clit. Part of this is for her, to do something she enjoys above all, to get to taste .
Samira’s in no rush either. She threads one hand into Emery’s hair and sighs softly. Emery opens her eyes to find Samira with her eyes closed above her, hand resting on the headboard in front of her. At this angle, Emery can see the fine hair that starts at Samira’s pubic bone and leads in an ambling trail up to her belly button. The roundness of her tits is more pronounced from where Emery is, and another time, when sober maybe, she’d put her hands on one, roll the nipple between her fingertips.
Emery’s technique at this point leaves perhaps something to be desired, but she’s in tune with Samira’s body, the way her pussy reacts when Emery does something she likes, the way her breath hitches when Emery tongues at her hole. Time feels suspended as Emery tastes her. She lets herself fuck Samira with her tongue, as if it’ll substitute her own saliva with Samira’s arousal if she gets her wet enough.
When the hand in her hair starts to get more insistent, Emery knows Samira’s not just getting close but getting demanding. And who is Emery to deny Samira a single thing. She doubles down on the way she’s suckling at her clit.
Samira grinds her pussy down onto Emery’s tongue as she comes, her thighs trembling as they squeeze in. Her voice is soft breathy moans punctuated by a low, long moan as she comes down but Emery flicks her tongue over her clit one more time.
She goes to loosen her thighs from around Emery’s ears but she tightens her shoulder muscles, keeping Samira exactly where she is.
“Want another?”
Always, always. Today, tomorrow, and as long as you’ll let me. “Yeah,” but it’s muffled by the way she’s keeping her face buried in Samira.
For a moment, they just look into each other’s eyes. Samira pets Emery’s hair, tender and soft, her hands so gentle in comparison to how she was just yanking.
“I love you, Emery Walsh.”
It’s a strangely delicate thing, with the way Emery still has her face between Samira’s legs. The way that the fabric still hugging Emery’s hips is cold from the lingering dampness. The way however long ago, Emery popped an edible and stepped into the river to take her where it may. She whines in response, unwilling to have Samira lift her hips or shift.
“I know. You show me every day.” It’s not a one sided conversation because Samira knows her, knows what she would say, what she’s trying to say.
Emery breaks the moment with her impatience, closing her eyes again so she can block out all sensations but the one of her tongue licking into Samira and dragging the tip of it up her slit til she can move it around her clit. The whimper and rocking of Samira’s hips is all the affirmative response Emery needs.
This time the build up is more frantic, has an urgency to it the way Samira always gets when she gets her first orgasm out of the way.
When Emery had first heard her describe it as “getting out of the way”, she’d assumed it was some allusion to a shitty ex boyfriend, some ex girlfriend, who was too obsessed with their own pleasure to realize what gift they had in front of them. Samira had smiled and shook her head–”I say get the first one out of the way because it’s like the first kilometer of the 5k. Once you’ve got one down, you might as well get a few more done too.”
There won’t be that many, not tonight, not with the way she knows Samira’s had a long day. That makes this second one all the more important in Emery’s mind as she finally manages to get enough awareness into one of her hands to work her fingers in alongside her mouth. The way Samira groans when Emery slips a finger into her, the way she clenches and rocks her hips down makes her think she might have another orgasm in her. But that’s immaterial.
Instead Emery focuses on pumping her finger in and out of Samira at a steady pace. Not hard, just insistent in its consistency. She slows the pace so she can, if just briefly, curl her fingertip towards herself, to feel the way Samira twitches above her. Her tongue works in circles around Samira’s clit, relishing in the way it seems to pulse between her lips when she lets another finger slip into Samira’s hole.
A high, loud whine echoes around the room when Samira comes again. Emery doesn’t let up, working Samira through her orgasm, her fingers and tongue working in tandem. Distantly, somewhere in between the sensation of Samira fluttering, hot, and wet around her fingers, mixed in with the sweat from Samira’s thighs easing the motion of her legs on Emery’s face, she registers that Samira is chanting her name above her. It makes the way she can already feel her heartbeat feel like a sledgehammer or maybe feels like a hummingbird’s.
Eventually, Samira exhales and her body relaxes. The weight of her presses down onto Emery in a comforting way as she slips her fingers out, holding them aloft as her hand goes to Samira’s thigh. There isn’t enough room and the angle is too awkward for her to put them in her mouth but she feels like she can be patient in that moment as she kitten licks at the lingering arousal between Samira’s legs.
“I’m going to get off you now, Emery.” And she’s swinging a thigh over Emery’s body, shifting so she can slide off the bed and stand on wobbly legs.
The high has settled in her head and chest so she has enough awareness to look annoyed as Samira makes her way into the bathroom. She licks her fingers clean as she hears Samira run the tap.
She lets herself be stripped of her briefs, relieved as she comes back into her body and mind, to be free of them. She goes to sit up, to walk herself to the bathroom, but Samira shakes her head. So Emery stays put, lets Samira wipe her face and then between her legs with a gentle hand.
Emery’s cold again. The warmth of her clothes and of Samira on her, around her, was keeping something emotional at bay. She blinks hard, unable to really school the way her eyes burn.
Samira draws back, and covers Emery with the duvet. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
It’s impossible to resist the temptation of the way her eyes are threatening to close, especially when Samira hits the lights and the room plunges into darkness. Another click, and the lamp Samira thrifted forever ago that lives on her nightstand turns on, bathing the room in a warm glow.
After a few minutes, she feels the rush of chilly air as Samira slides back into the bed with her. Before she lays down, she twists so she can turn off the lamp, once again covering her face in shadows.
Then they’re laying together, Emery flat on her back with the arm on Samira’s side is splayed out, the other on her stomach. Samira curls on her side, head cushioned on Emery’s bicep, legs entangled. She wraps her other arm around Emery’s waist after she picks up Emery’s hand to place it on her waist. At this point Emery probably has the wherewithal to do it herself, but the gesture is out of love and knowledge rather than anything else.
“That wasn’t fair, earlier,” Emery finally says, feeling slightly less high for a brief moment. Enough for her to voice the thought that’s been floating around in the back of her mind.
“Hm? What wasn’t fair?” Samira’s yawn interrupts her last word, as she cuddles closer.
“You told me you loved me earlier, when I couldn’t respond.” It really is stupid, she really shouldn't be paying attention to that of all things. But she feels sort of like a newborn foal then, her legs unsteady underneath her.
Samira’s laugh is a sparkling thing, not cruel. “I’m sorry, Em. You can say it now, and I won’t be able to say it back. How’s that?”
“I love you.”
And then, because Emery always wants to hear it back, no matter what, “I love you.”