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The shift ends the way most shifts do: not with closure, but with a kind of fraying.
Someone is still crying in South 16. The overhead lights hum like they’re tired too. Robby signs off his last chart with a stiffness in his wrist that feels older than he is.
Somewhere behind him, a monitor still beeps. Someone laughs too loudly. A stretcher squeaks down the hall like it’s announcing its own exhaustion.
Across the nurses’ station, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi is leaning against the counter, not quite sitting, not quite standing.
“You good?” he asks, because that’s what you ask.
She huffs something that might be a laugh. “Define good.”
He considers it. Doesn’t answer.
They’ve been orbiting each other all day — passing instruments, passing patients, passing looks that mean I see what you did there or don’t you dare crash on me right now. Efficient. Professional. Almost frictionless.
Almost.
After a few months of working together, he can finally admit to himself: she’s good. Very good.
Not just competent — plenty of people are competent. She’s exact. Economical with words, deliberate with attention. When she focuses her attention on something, it tends to stay focused.
It’s — useful.
At least, he tells himself that’s what he’s noticing.
At the charge station, Dana Evans is tapping away on her phone with purpose, her readers balanced precariously on her nose.
Not working.
Planning.
Dana: i’m thinking of inviting a couple of colleagues over tonight
Benji: no
Dana: you don’t even know who
Benji: i know you
Dana: rude
Benji: accurate
Dana: it’ll be nice. civilised. we’ll be normal people for once
Benji: that sentence alone tells me something is wrong
Dana: robby and baran
Benji: oh absolutely not
Dana: :)
Benji: dana
Dana: benjamin
Benji: if this interferes with my cooking i will file a complaint
Dana: you love me
Benji: i do. i also fear you
Dana smiles to herself.
Then looks up.
Targets acquired.
“Hey!” Dana’s voice cuts clean through the lull. Commanding, as ever. “You two. Don’t disappear now shift’s over.”
“We’re not prisoners, Dana.”
“You are tonight,” Dana says, already halfway to them, already deciding things for everyone involved. “Dinner. My place. Eight o’clock.”
Baran blinks. “I’m sorry?”
Robby doesn’t even look up from the computer. “No.”
“Not a question,” Dana says.
“We just finished a twelve-hour shift,” Baran replies, voice uncertain.
“Exactly.”
“That’s not an argument in favour of this.” Robby grumbles.
“It is in my house.”
“Why.” comes the flat response.
Dana crosses her arms. “Because Baran is new to town. We’re being civilised. You’re both coming.”
Robby finally glances up. “I didn’t agree to—”
“You will,” Dana says, with the calm certainty of someone who always gets compliance in her ED. “Benji’s cooking.”
There’s a beat.
Finally, Robby asks: “…what kind of cooking?”
Dana smiles, sharp and satisfied.
Baran notices. Files it under Dana Is Like This. Not under This is a setup. Not yet.
INTERLUDE: 7:30PM — DANA & BENJI, KITCHEN
Benji Evans is chopping garlic with the energy of a man who knows he’s already lost the battle. Dana is pacing behind him, sipping on a pre-dinner party glass of wine.
“This is going to work.” his wife says, with certainty.
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“They’re both too in their own heads. You’ve said it yourself.”
“That’s why I’m helping.”
He pauses, gives her an incredulous look over the rim of his glasses. “You are not helping. You are meddling.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t intervene in people’s personal lives like you’re running a code.”
Dana leans against the counter beside him. “I absolutely do.”
“You shouldn’t.”
She tilts her head coquettishly. “You didn’t complain when I intervened in your personal life.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“You cornered me in the bathroom. The men’s bathroom.”
“And it worked.”
“That is not a scalable strategy.”
Dana grins. “We’ll see.”
Benji sighs, and returns to his chopping. “I married a menace.”
“You love me.”
“Deeply. And against my better judgment.”
Dana and Benji’s house is warm. Not just in temperature — though that too — but in a way hospitals can’t be. Lamps instead of overhead lights. Music low and unintrusive. The smell of something delicious on the stove.
Baran hesitates in the doorway, one hand still curled around her car keys.
It’s subtle. A fraction of a second.
Robby notices anyway.
“You can leave if it’s a trap,” Robby whispers, just behind her. “Which it almost certainly is.”
She glances over her shoulder. “You came anyway.”
“Benji’s cooking.” Robby says, as if that explains everything.
“That’s not a real justification.”
“It is to me.”
That earns a smile. Robby smiles back.
It is Benji who greets them, bustling out from the kitchen and grinning at them like he’s been expecting exactly this level of skepticism.
“Ah,” he says. “The reluctant guests.”
“We were threatened,” Robby tells him.
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
Baran offers a polite nod and holds out the bottle of wine she brought. “Thank you for having us.”
“Thank her,” Benji says, jerking his thumb toward the kitchen. “I’m just here to prevent disaster.”
“I heard that,” Dana calls.
“Good.”
Baran glances down at her shoes — still faintly marked with something she hopes is iodine — and slips them off carefully by the door.
The domesticity feels… unfamiliar. Not unwelcome. Just — strange, like trying on a coat that might fit if you wore it long enough.
Dinner begins normally.
Suspiciously normally.
There’s food — a strawberry feta salad Benji is testing out which Robby knows he will be fantasising about the next time he buys a sad granola bar from the hospital vending machine — and conversation that stays in the safe realms: the Evans’ daughters, Baran’s son, their colleagues, work.
“— and then he tried to discharge him,” Baran is saying, “without repeating labs.”
Robby groans. “Of course he did.”
“I asked him what his plan was if it wasn’t nothing.”
“Let me guess,” Robby says. “He didn’t have one.”
“He had a feeling.”
Robby leans back. “Feelings are not a plan.”
Baran nods. “Exactly.”
They share a knowing look.
Dana kicks Benji under the table.
“Ow.”
“Shh,” she whispers.
“I’m eating.” he hisses back.
Leaning away from her husband, Dana smiles across the table at Robby. “It’s been nice lately, seeing you two getting on so well at work.”
Robby shrugs. “Easier when we agree. And when we’re right.”
Baran arches an eyebrow. “You mean when I’m right.”
“Debatable.”
“Not really.”
Dana watches them the way she tracks vitals. Polishes off her wine as Baran and Robby get stuck back in.
Benji leans toward her. “They’re arguing.”
“They’re flirting,” Dana whispers.
“They are discussing lab protocols.”
“It’s foreplay.”
Benji chokes on his drink.
INTERLUDE: 8:50PM — DANA & BENJI, KITCHEN
“This is not working.”
“It is working.”
“They’re debating methodology.”
“They’re engaging.”
“They are colleagues. Your colleagues.”
Dana narrows her eyes. “You’re being negative.”
“I’m right.”
“They just need a push.”
“They need to notice it.”
Dana pauses.
…considers this.
“…okay, that’s fair.”
Benji smiles. Brief. Smug.
Dana points at him. “Don’t get comfortable.”
“I am absolutely not comfortable.”
“I will fix this.”
“Oh, I'm excited to watch you try.”
Left alone in the dining room, Robby leans back in his chair. “You don’t have to stay,” he says quietly, to Baran.
“You don’t want me to?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He hesitates. Which, in their ED, he never does.
“I’m saying,” he starts, slower now, “this isn’t exactly — neutral territory.”
A corner of her mouth lifts. “You think I’m intimidated?”
“No,” he says, immediately. “I think you’re… not.”
Something shifts.
Subtle. But there.
Baran leans back too, mirroring him without realising it. “Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” he says, “is that Dana doesn’t do anything without intent.”
As if summoned, Dana reappears, carrying the bottle of wine Baran brought them.
“Top up?” she offers brightly.
“No,” Robby says, clamping a protective hand over his half-full glass.
Baran gives Robby a sly look before knocking back the dregs of her own wine, and holding her glass out to Dana. Dana hoots and unscrews the cap.
Benji appears behind her, a plate of food in each hand, and watches his wife with something akin to alarm as she fills Baran’s glass almost to the brim. “Maybe we dial it back until we’ve carb-loaded, hon.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I’m married to you,” he says. “I’m exhausted.”
Baran laughs — unexpected, unguarded — and Robby feels it like a shift in pressure.
Of course it is Dana who moves them swiftly onto not-so-safe topics. Robby, meanwhile, is eating like a man who has not yet realised he is part of a social experiment.
“So,” she says once dinner is served and she is already on a second glass of wine. Or was it third? Eh, who’s counting? “Are either of you seeing anyone?”
Robby gives her a withering look, and doesn’t even dignify that with a response.
Baran, on the other hand, sets her fork down with deliberate precision. “Is this relevant to Benji’s wonderful pasta?”
Benji beams across the table at his new favourite guest. Dana shrugs, as nonchalantly as she can. “Just making conversation.”
All three of the others give her looks.
“What?” she says, all innocence. “I’m curious.”
There’s a silence that stretches just a little too long.
Then Robby says, flatly, “No.”
At the exact same moment Baran says: “It’s complicated.”
They both stop.
Look at each other.
Benji actually laughs.
Dana’s eyes light up like she’s just been handed a live wire.
“Complicated,” she echoes, delighted. “I love complicated.”
Baran regrets everything. Robby shovels another forkful of pasta into his mouth.
It gets worse before it gets better.
(It has to.)
Benji brings out dessert — a dark chocolate tart topped with flaky sea salt. Robby’s eyes track him the entire length of the room, from doorway to table.
“God, Robby, stop salivating,” Dana says, a little repulsed.
“No, please don’t,” Benji quips, placing down dessert and producing a knife to cut it.
“Benji, have I mentioned lately that I love you?” Robby asks, taking the first plated slice from him and dropping it in front of Baran. “I would appreciate you like Dana never could,”
Dana throws her balled-up napkin across the table at him, cackling when it bounces off his temple. Robby looks ready to retaliate when Benji hands him the next plate, effectively distracting him.
Picking up her fork, Baran takes a bite of dessert and stills.
“This is—”
“Good?” Robby offers through the half a slice of chocolate tart already in his mouth.
She looks at him.
Really looks.
“…yes,” she says slowly. “But I suspect that’s not a sufficiently descriptive term.”
Benji snorts.
“What?” Robby asks, looking between them.
Dana ignores him and takes a bite of dessert.
“So, Baran. Have you actually seen any of Pittsburgh yet?”
Baran laughs. “I’ve seen the hospital.”
“That doesn't count.”
“I’ve seen my apartment.”
“That also doesn't count.”
“What about the Cathedral of Learning?” Benji asks.
“No.”
“Phipps?”
“No.”
“The Strip District?”
“No.”
Dana looks horrified.
“Oh, honey. We have failed you.”
“To be fair, I work sixty hours a week.”
“Excuses.”
“An objectively good excuse.”
Benji points his fork at her.
“The zoo.”
Baran nods.
“I’ve heard of that one.”
“It's fun,” Dana says. “Especially when you have your little one.”
“The Science Center’s probably a better bet than the zoo.”
Everyone looks at Robby.
He pauses, looking up from scraping any remaining chocolate off his plate.
“...what?”
Baran frowns slightly.
“Why?”
Robby shrugs.
“Because Zayd’s seven. Good age for it.”
Baran pauses. “You remember that?”
Robby shrugs. “You told me.”
She studies him for a second.
“Right.”
Dana slowly lowers her wine glass.
“The planetarium’s good,” Robby adds. “He likes space, doesn’t he?”
Silence.
Baran blinks.
“...how do you know he likes space?”
“You said so.”
“That seems like the sort of insignificant small talk that would go in one ear and out the other,” Baran says lightly. At least she tries for light. It doesn’t quite hit.
“You kidding? What guy doesn't remember his space phase? Mine lasted about fifteen years,” Robby grins. “Or the robotics camp. God, I’m in my fifties and I’d still like to go to robotics camp,”
A pause.
Dana is watching them with her best impression of an anthropologist. Robby finally starts looking uncertain.
“What?”
“The robotics camp?” Dana repeats.
“Zayd’s robotics camp, this summer.”
Benji is trying very hard not to laugh.
Dana is trying very hard not to climb onto the table and start shaking her boss.
“And what else has Baran mentioned in passing over the last few months?” she asks.
Robby scowls at her.
“That sounds like a trap.”
“It's not.”
“It is.”
“It absolutely is,” Benji says.
Dana glares at her husband.
With astounding obliviousness, Robby returns to the original subject.
“When you have Zayd, do the Science Center one day. Maybe the Aviary.”
Baran shakes her head, amused.
“You've put more thought into this than I have.”
Robby points his fork at her. “You know what? You’d like the independent cinema downtown.”
“You’ve never mentioned that place.” Baran looks like she has whiplash.
“No, but you’d like it.”
“Why?”
“Because they do those foreign film festivals.”
“How do you know I like foreign films?”
“You spent half a shift the other week arguing with Langdon that subtitles make movies better.”
“That was weeks ago,” Baran says.
“Okay?”
Dana pushes back from the table and stands. “Right. Excellent. Who wants wine?”
“Hon—”
“I'm getting wine.”
INTERLUDE: 10:15PM — DANA & BENJI, KITCHEN
The moment the kitchen door swings shut behind them, Dana grabs Benji's arm.
“Did you hear that?”
“Unfortunately.”
“He remembered her kid’s robotics camp.”
Benji drops his armful of dirty plates onto the counter. “Well, he once remembered our daughter’s birthday before we did one year.”
“That is not helping.”
“I'm just saying. The man’s memory is terrifying.”
“He remembered the subtitles argument.”
“Yep.”
"He remembered the movies she likes."
Benji sighs. “Right.”
Dana points triumphantly.
“He likes her.”
Benji glances back, towards the door to the dining room.
“...she likes him.”
“What?”
“Did you see her face?”
A beat.
Then Dana slowly smiles.
“Oh, this is going to work.”
Benji immediately points a spoon at her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re about to ruin your own plan.”
“I don't have a plan.”
“You absolutely have a plan.”
Dana beams. Benji groans.
Back at the table, Dana settles into her chair looking entirely too pleased with herself.
Robby notices immediately.
“Oh no.”
“What?” Dana asks innocently.
“That face.”
“What face?”
“The face that means you’re about to make my life difficult.”
Benji snorts into his coffee. “He’s learned.”
Dana ignores both of them.
“So. The independent cinema.”
Robby closes his eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
Baran hides a smile behind her mug.
Dana points across the table. “You’ve been there?”
“Once.”
“Once?”
“It was raining.”
“Uh-huh.”
“...and I fell asleep.”
Baran laughs.
“There it is,” Robby says, gesturing toward her. “See? That’s why I don’t tell people things.”
“You fell asleep during a foreign film?” she asks.
“It was in Swedish.”
“And the Swedes put you to sleep, do they?”
“Historically, no. This time, apparently.”
Dana, predictably, chooses violence.
“Maybe you should take Baran along sometime.”
The table falls silent.
Robby stares at her.
Benji drops his head into one hand.
Baran nearly inhales her coffee.
“Dana,” Robby says carefully.
“What? You said yourself, she’d love it,”
Benji mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘unbelievable’.
Robby looks toward the ceiling as though appealing for divine intervention.
“Dana.”
“What?”
“Dana.”
“What?”
She smiles.
Robby immediately knows he’s lost. Baran is staring into her coffee like she might find an escape route in there.
Dana leans forward.
“Could be a good team building exercise.”
Benji lets out a low groan.
“What?” Dana asks. “I’m making conversation.”
“You’re orchestrating a hostage negotiation.”
Baran laughs despite herself.
“I hate this house.” Robby says.
“We know.”
Then Dana says, far too casually:
“I mean, if you weren’t working together, would you?”
Silence.
Complete silence.
Robby stares at her.
Baran goes very still.
Benji slowly sets down his mug.
“Dana,” Robby says carefully, “what the hell kind of question is that?”
“A hypothetical.”
“It’s a bad hypothetical.”
“Why?”
“Because—” he stops.
Baran is still looking at him.
Waiting.
And now — this is different. He wishes she would say something.
Robby exhales.
“It’s not a no,” he says.
Baran’s breath catches.
Robby immediately grimaces. “…that came out wrong.”
“It did not.” Benji mutters.
Dana looks moments away from ascending to another plane of existence.
Robby scrubs a hand over his face.
“I mean—”
Nobody helps him.
Traitors.
“Yes,” he says finally.
Quietly.
“There. Yes.”
Baran pushes her chair back and stands up.
“I should go.”
Her voice is steady. Her expression is not.
Dana lights up internally.
Externally: “Oh — no, you don’t have to —”
“I do,” Baran says quickly. “I have an early shift.”
“You don’t,” Robby says automatically. The next day was Saturday — they were all off.
She shoots him a look.
“…er, I mean. You might,” he stammers a correction.
And then: “I’ll walk you out,” he adds.
“You don’t have to.” Baran says.
“I know.” Robby says. He does anyway.
Outside, the air is cool and quiet.
Baran exhales.
“That was—”
“A disaster,” Robby says.
“I was going to say something else, but sure.”
A pause.
Then she turns to him.
“She set that up.”
Robby frowns. “Set what up?”
“The entire dinner. This was her plan all along,”
He blinks.
Looks back at the house.
“…oh,” he says slowly.
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
She laughs — soft, incredulous. “You really didn’t see it.”
“I thought she was just being… Dana.”
“She was being Dana.”
“Fair.” Robby laughs. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “She means well.”
“Does she?”
“Yes,” he says, with absolute conviction. “That’s the problem.”
Baran smiles to herself, glancing down at her hands. “You’re comfortable here. With Benji and Dana. In a way that… implies history.”
Robby stays quiet, mulling this over. If he really thought about it, he supposed the Evanses were the closest thing he had to family in Pittsburgh, them and Abbot.
“Yeah, I guess it does,”
“And I’m not part of that,” Baran says quietly, not meeting his gaze. The words land more heavily than she meant them to.
“You could be,” he says. Too quick. Too honest.
A beat.
Then—
“You said yes. To her question,” Baran says, so quietly he has to strain to hear her.
Robby exhales. “Yeah.”
“Not very subtle.”
“I didn’t get the impression that ‘subtle’ was an option.”
Baran smiles.
“So that’s your answer?”
Robby looks down at her, meeting her gaze steadily. “Yes.”
A pause.
Then: “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she repeats.
She steps closer.
Robby doesn’t move.
Not until she does, lifting her hands to his face and drawing him down to meet her. The kiss is brief and chaste, a brush of her lips against his. Robby is very still, the moment feeling fragile around them.
Baran’s eyes open when he doesn’t respond, and he sees them flicker with uncertainty. Robby huffs a quiet laugh, and raises his hands to cup her elbows.
“She’s going to be insufferable if this is what she thinks it is,” he murmurs, tilting his head towards Dana’s house. Baran blinks for a moment, processing this, before she laughs too.
“Robby, that’s quite enough about Dana,” she tells him, and raises herself to her tiptoes, fitting her mouth to his. Robby’s hands tighten on her arms, pulling her closer, pressing his body to hers like he needs to confirm she’s actually there. She tastes like salty chocolate and wine and something undefinable underneath.
Baran’s hand slides to his collar, gripping just slightly, enough to ground herself. Robby groans involuntarily when she sucks his lower lip into her mouth, and that causes her to break the kiss, pulling back with a sharp intake of breath, suddenly cognizant that they were in public, on the street outside their charge nurse’s family home. Robby’s cheeks have flushed pink, and he looks at her with his shining, soft brown eyes.
They’re quiet for a long moment, catching their breath but not stepping apart. Eventually, Baran tilts her head, looking up at him.
“You’re going to have to find a better word than ‘good.’”
“Yeah,” Robby says softly. “I’m working on it.”
Inside the house, Dana is pressed to the window, watching as two very tired doctors figure something out under a streetlight.
“I told you,” she whispers, as Benji hands her another glass of wine.
“You are unbelievable,” he says, fond and long-suffering.
She turns to him, triumphant. “You doubted me.”
“I doubted your method.”
“And yet—”
“And yet,” he concedes, “you got there.”
Dana grins.
Benji shakes his head, then leans in and kisses her — warm, familiar, a little amused. Dana winds her arms around his neck.
“You’re still a menace,” he murmurs against her lips.
“You love it.”
“I do.”
Pulling away from the kiss but not the embrace, Dana glances back over her shoulder out the window, satisfied.
“Worth it,” she says.
Benji sighs, runs the tip of his nose along her cheekbone and smiles.
“…yeah,” he admits. “Worth it.”
Back outside, Baran is ordering an Uber, the blue glow from her phone briefly illuminating her face in the darkness.
Robby watches her from beside the curb.
“Two minutes away,” she says once the app confirms the ride.
“Good.”
A pause.
“Good.”
Baran glances up.
Robby immediately looks away.
The silence that follows is easy. Comfortable. The kind that had become increasingly common between them over the last few months.
Then:
“You still have that early shift?”
Baran's eyes narrow.
“You sold me out on that, remember?”
“Right.”
“In front of witnesses.”
“Right.”
A beat.
“Worth checking.”
Despite herself, Baran laughs.
Robby's shoulders loosen fractionally. The streetlight catches the corner of his smile before he looks away again.
And suddenly it occurs to her that for all his certainty in the emergency department, for all the confidence he carries through twelve-hour shifts and impossible decisions, he is currently standing on a suburban sidewalk looking unbelievably awkward.
It is, admittedly, a little endearing.
The distant glow of approaching headlights appears at the end of the street.
Baran slips her phone back into her pocket.
Then she takes pity on him.
Stepping closer, she closes the space between them until their chests are nearly touching.
Robby stills immediately.
“Come home with me.”
For the first time all evening, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Okay.”
Simple. Certain. Something warm unfurls in Baran’s chest.
The Uber pulls up to the curb a moment later.
Robby opens the rear door and folds himself into the backseat beside her. The movement is awkward enough that she has to bite back a smile.
The driver pulls away from the curb.
Neither of them says much.
Neither seems particularly capable of it.
Halfway down the street, Robby’s hand settles carefully on her thigh.
Tentative.
Like he’s giving her every opportunity to move away.
Baran doesn't.
The simple weight of it is distracting.
She finds herself looking down at his hand.
Then up at him.
Robby is staring determinedly out the window.
Like he isn’t touching her at all.
Like his pulse isn’t visibly hammering in his throat.
Baran smiles to herself and shifts a fraction closer.
Without looking away from the glass, Robby’s fingers curl slightly against her leg.
Neither of them says a word.
Neither of them needs to.
The rest of the night blurs together after that.
Later, Baran would remember fragments.
The sound Robby made when she backed him against her front door.
The way he said her name.
The way he kissed her — patient one moment, utterly single-minded the next.
The way he looked at her when she climbed into his lap, like he still couldn’t quite believe this was happening.
His hands settling at her waist. Her hips. The small of her back.
The feel of his heartbeat beneath her palm.
The way he kept reaching for her afterwards, as though some part of him was checking she was still there.
Everything else softens around the edges. Those things don’t.
She wakes with the first morning light filtering through the curtains, which is fortunate. Zayd’s father would be dropping him home before lunch.
Beside her, Robby is still asleep.
One arm is draped across her waist, his face half-buried in her pillow.
In sleep, he looks younger somehow. Less burdened. Almost boyish.
The sight of it makes something unexpected twist in her chest.
Carefully, Baran eases herself free and reaches for her phone on the nightstand.
The screen lights up immediately.
Two unread messages.
Both from Dana.
The first reads:
Please tell Casanova he left his wallet, keys AND phone here when you two ran off into the sunset last night. A little forward planning would not have gone amiss.
Baran presses a hand over her mouth.
The second message was timestamped five minutes later. Long enough that she could picture Benji attempting — and failing — to confiscate Dana’s phone before she hit send.
Hope y'all had fun. Can't wait for the deets on Monday. 😈
Baran snorts.
The sound escapes before she can stop it.
Beside her, Robby startles awake immediately. Instinct learnt from years of emergency medicine apparently refuse to surrender entirely to sleep.
He blinks once.
Twice.
Looks around the room.
Then at her.
His hair is sticking up in approximately six different directions.
“What?”
Baran dissolves into helpless laughter.
And although much of the night already feels pleasantly blurred around the edges, she suspects she will remember that expression for a very long time.
EPILOGUE: NEXT SHIFT, MONDAY – TEXTS
Dana: situation report
Benji: i’m afraid
Dana: they’re being weird
Benji: define weird
Dana: robby has been smiling all morning
Benji: ?
Benji: okay that’s suspicious
Dana: baran corrected him in front of the residents
Benji: of course she did
Dana: he let her
Benji: oh
Dana: OH
Benji: this is your fault
Dana: this is my success
Benji: same thing
Dana: they just had a 3 minute conversation about coffee beans
Benji: nerds
Benji: foreplay?
Dana: RIGHT
Benji: i’m proud of you
Dana: you should be
Benji: please don’t do this to anyone else
Dana: no promises :)
Across the department, Robby hands Baran her coffee.
She takes a sip.
Considers.
“…this is good,” she says.
He rolls his eyes. “I hate that word.”
She smiles.
“Me too.”
Dana: final update
Benji: i’m ready
Dana: they’re unbearable
Benji: success
Dana: success :)