“Come on.”
“Uh?”
Diane looks up as Naomi stands and holds out her hand as if this isn't a ridiculously careless thing she's asking her to do, as if neither of them has the good sense to mention that neither one of them has any idea what they're getting themselves into. As if neither of them might be walking straight into a trap of their own making, or nothing much will change at all and they'll forget about each other in a month, or a few days. As if it's a risk worth taking to find out which.
As if there's anything else to do today.
“I'm not going to the hospital.”
“I know.” Naomi reaches a little closer. “I have a first aid kit at home.”
Enough to get them through, that's all. Enough for now.
“You know how to wrap it?” Diane asks as she takes Naomi's hand to pull herself up, as though the answer might change her mind somehow. Naomi smiles a little, as though she knows it just as well that it won't.
“Yeah.” She sets Diane's hand down on her shoulder. “It's not far, come on. I'll carry you down the stairs.”
“You'll drop me.”
“I will not.” Naomi urges her forward, along the concrete path out of the park. “I mean I'm just offering, I don't have to.”
It's a nice gesture, though, isn't it? It was a nice thought.
They walk slowly down the street, stepping more or less in sync past the general store with the baking supplies just past the doorway, turning at the corner to walk toward the coin laundry that's open even at three in the morning and also on holidays. A hand-drawn poster in the window of the discount shoe store across the street loudly advertises VACUUMS REFURBISHED while a Times New Roman printout on the telephone cubicle in the middle of the block offers “suitable compensation” in exchange for willing test subjects, No Questions Please; a few steps farther along stands an apartment building that somehow looks like it's missing a couple of stories, and Diane shifts her weight to her good leg as Naomi steps away to fumble with the lock on the front door.
“It's the door on the left,” Naomi says, the door sticking only slightly as she shoves it open. “When you get to the basement.”
She opens the first door on the right, a stairwell that only leads down.
“Upstairs is that door over there, but I don't know any of the neighbors, so. I'm not gonna introduce you to anyone.”
That's fine. Diane doesn't want to know any of them, either.
Naomi walks down the stairs first and doesn't try to carry her.
“Bathroom's at the end of the hall,” she says. “The taps aren't broken, the water's just cold when it's cold outside and warm when it isn't, but if you let it run for a little while, it'll...fix itself. And make sure you don't touch the water heater, it's metal and it gets really hot sometimes.”
Diane clutches the wooden banister nailed to the wall as she limps her way down and wonders how much of all this she's supposed to remember. All of it, probably. It isn't very complicated.
Naomi unlocks the door on the left and holds it open.
“You can sit on the bed.”
It's good of her to offer. It isn't much of a bed, really, more of a mattress pushed into the corner, but that isn't exactly a surprise, and it's good of her to offer all the same.
“Thanks,” Diane says, a little too late to seem quite natural. Naomi hums a disinterested acknowledgment and doesn't seem to mind.
“Take off your shoes.”
Diane promptly unties her sneakers, placing them on the floor beside the bed as Naomi kneels in front of her with a roll of ACE bandage in her hand and her eyes focused on Diane's ankle like she's the only attending physician in the entire complex who doesn't have better things to do with her time than tend to something as trivial as all this. Diane should count herself lucky the timing worked out the way that it did.
Lucky, was it? It's about time.
The single bulb in the overhead light flickers a little as if a public execution has just disrupted the power grid, or someone's turned on too many air conditioners at once and blown a fuse a few floors up.
“Don't worry about it,” Naomi says. Diane doesn't bother to assure her that she wasn't.
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wait, Derin how did your leaving make the hospital shut down?
I used to work as a live-in nanny for a pediatrician.
Now, the thing about hospitals in my country is that they are massively understaffed and massively underfunded. This is especially true outside the major cities. The staff are worked to the bone and receive little to no help in things like finding accommodation or childcare, making working in rural areas a very uninviting prospect; staff come out here, get lumped with the work of three people (because there's nobody else to do it), burn out under the workload and leave, meaning that those remaining have even more work because that person is gone. It's unsustainable and the medical staff are doing their best to sustain it, because people die if they don't, so to the higher-ups it looks like everything's getting done and therefore everything is fine.
My friend (and boss) worked one week on, one week off, swapping out with another pediatrician. This was necessary because it would not be physically possible for one person to handle the workload for longer periods of time. The one single pediatrician had to hold up the entire pediatrics ward, which was not only the only public hospital pediatrics ward in our town, but also the one that served all the towns around us for a few hours' drive in all directions. I regularly saw her go to work sick, aching, tired, or with a debilitating 'I can barely make words or see' level migraine, because if she took a day off, twenty children didn't get healthcare that day, and some of these kids' appointments were scheduled weeks in advance. She'd work long hours in the day and then be called in a couple of times overnight for an hour or two at a time (she was on-call at night too, because somebody had to be), and then go in the next day. Sometimes she would be forced to take a day off because she physically could not stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time, meaning she couldn't drive to work.
Cue my niece's second birthday coming up in Melbourne. I'd been working for her for about 3 years, and she (and the hospital) had plenty of advance warning that I (and therefore she) needed one (1) Friday off. That's fine, we'll find someone to work that Friday, the hospital said. Right up until the last week where they're like "oh, we can't find a replacement; you can come in, can't you?"
No, she tells them; I don't have anyone to watch my kid that day.
Oh, surely you can hire a babysitter for this one day, they say. Think of the children! We really really need you to work that day. I know we said it'd be fine but we need you now, there's no one else to do it.
There are no other babysitters, she told them. Unless you can find one?
That's not our responsibility, they said.
But I'm not changing my plans, she's got plans by now as well, the hospital knew about this one day weeks in advance, and with absolutely no reserve staff they're forced to reschedule all pediatrics appointments for that Friday. Not a huge deal, it happens on the 'physically too overworked to get out of bed' days too. I go to Melbourne, she goes back to her home in Adelaide for her recovery week, all should be on track.
My niece gives me Covid.
This was way back in the first wave of the pandemic, and there were no Covid vaccines yet. The rules were isolate, mask up, hope. I had Covid in the house, and it would've been madness for my friend and her toddler to come back into the Covid house instead of staying in Adelaide. There was absolutely no way that a pediatrician could live with someone in quarantine due to Covid and go to work in the hospital with sick children every day. And no support existed for finding another babysitter, or temporary accommodation, so the hospital was down a pediatrician.
The other pediatrician wasn't available to do a three-week stint. They were also trapped in Adelaide on their well-earned week off.
Meaning that the only major pediatrics ward within a several-hour radius had no pediatricians. They had to shut down and send all urgent cases to Adelaide for the week. To the complete absence of surprise of any of the doctors or nurses; of course this would happen, this was bound to happen, it presumably keeps happening. But probably to the surprise of the higher-ups. After all, the hospital was doing fine, right? Of course all the staff were complaining of overwork and a lack of resources in every meeting, but they could always be fobbed off with the promise of more help sometime in the future; the work was mostly getting done, so the issue couldn't be too urgent.
It's not like some nanny who doesn't even work for the hospital could go out of town for a weekend for the first time in three years, and get the only public pediatrics ward in the area shut down for a week.
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Chaotic fem. reader/Best friend Bakugo
"I'm ready to be a mother," you stated out of nothing.
Bakugo was obviously taken back by your comment.
"Did you see something on tiktok that made you think that?" he looked at you while you kept scrolling in your phone. "You need a partner to procreate dumbass,"
"I know I need a man to procreate, but I thought that you could help me on that one," you bit your nails, showing less interest than a rock.
He left his phone aside so he could analyze you properly if you were talking seriously or not.
"I'm not going to introduce you to my side kick, He's like twenty," he tested.
"Twenty??? I'm almost twenty eight, that's still a reasonable age gap, " you gasped because his side kick didn't look like he was twenty. You thought that he would at least be twenty-three.
"No it's not"
After almost ten years of being friends, Bakugo was so used to your shit. The time that you wanted to go surfing? He laughed at your face when you didn't make it to the ocean because you were afraid of sharks. What about the time when you wanted a hamster? He said no, but you got it anyway, so when you lost it, obviously, he gave you shit about it, but after that, he was on all four looking for your little pet in the dorms.
"Fine." That wasn't your main goal, so you let it go. "Actually, I was thinking of you doing a quick hand job in my bathroom and giving me your sperm"
The silence between the two of you couldn't be more unbearable. Bakugo's eyes twisted in your direction while his cheeks were slowly growing a clear shade of rose.
"What? No!"
He was absolutely losing it. The impact of your sayings got him standing from his seat, almost panting. You and him? In his best dreams, but you didn't need to know about his secret intentions.
"Think about it. It's a great idea." You stepped out of your couch and went to his side.
"How are you going to explain that your kid has similar features with your best friend?" he flinched when you approached him. You were so close that your scent invaded him whole.
Bakugo was trying with all his heart and mind to think logically, but you, your body next to him, and your puppy eyes were making it so hard, in both ways.
"I don't know, and I don't care, I'll run away from the country, and you'll never see us again"
You were one of the best students from UA, right after him and Yaoyorozu, but right now, he was doubting if it was just an act.
"That's so clever." he rolled his eyes at you and walked to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, hoping that you would drop the subject and hop onto another like getting a bunny or going sky diving.
"I know, right? Now go in there, do the nasty job, and I'll put it inside of me, I'll even turn my body upside down so it sticks, " you jolted in joy, missing his usual sarcasm.
He almost spilled the water from his mouth to your face.
"Who the fuck told you that?" he spated obnoxiously.
"Kaminari," you shrugged.
"Are you even listening to yourself!?"
When he thought that that couldn't get any worse, you named the only person who could make him go crazy just by opening his mouth.
"I'm desperate. It made sense when he told me"
He could believe anything at this point. He was actually thinking that he was dead because what was happening between you two was a complete nonsense.
"So you are telling me this is something you've had in mind for a while?
You simply nodded, and he stayed quiet, considering everything you said. He wasn't looking for anything serious because of you. He passed for all seven stages of grief when he realized that he was in love with you and your silliness, so he decided long ago that he wouldn't date anyone because he wasn't interested in anyone but you.
"I know that look on your face," you smiled and danced around the kitchen.
You weren't looking for anyone either. Having Bakugo as a male figure in your life left the bar very high for others to match. They didn't meet your expectations anymore like Bakugo did, always by your side, laughing at your bad jokes and giving you his hand when you most needed, buying food and cooking for you, he has even bought you flowers for half a decade on valentine's day, a large bouquet of red roses every year since then.
"I'll do it," he told you, and you jumped excited on him. He grabbed you by your thighs, catching you on the fly. "Two conditions"
"Yeah, just name it," you batted your eyes at him.
"I'll take you on a proper date first, and you won't run away with my kid, got it?"
Bakugo thought that he was only doing you a favor, but he never saw coming that it only took one date to make you fall for him in the way he always wanted.
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"first day"
fluff, happy fushiguro family, slice of life, megs' first day of school send-off
Synopsis: you've been dating toji for a while now and megumi subconsciously calls you mom for the first time on his way out the door
to sum it up: you adore the little family you've come to be a part of
WC: 1,701
Warning(s): none
"Megs!" you call out, standing by the front door awaiting the dark-haired boy's arrival. He soon shuffles around the corner from his room, throwing a bag over his shoulder with a tired expression on his face.
His father turns to watch him walk in, crossing his arms as he leans against the counter. "The hell were you doing in there that took you so long?"
"Nothing," Megumi grumbles, moving to brush past the two of you to rush to the door. "I just wanted to look presentable, that's all."
"So you took thirty minutes to get ready?" Toji quirks a brow.
"Believe it or not, dad, some would say that's not enough time to get ready in the morning."
"Not at all, actually," you agree.
Toji tugs the corner of his mouth in judgment. " Well, you should know," he says to you. "You spend at least ten years in the bathroom when we have somewhere to go."
You scoff, rolling your eyes. "That's such an overreaction. I never take any longer than an hour." Megumi and his father exchange knowing looks and you place your hand on your hip. "What?"
"Don't worry baby," Toji assures you. "It's okay to be in denial."
"We've timed it before. The last time we all went out to dinner as a family, you took two and a half hours to get dressed," Megumi adds.
"That's only because I had to shower and pick out an outfit then do my hair and makeup," you defend.
"Isn't that a little overkill? It takes me half that time to shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and get some homework done."
"Whatever. Your sister would understand," you sigh.
"Unfortunately, she may be worse than you."
"Women," Toji tsks. You slap his bicep and he pretends to flinch, smirking down at you playfully. "Ouch."
"Alright, well, I'm ready now. I don't wanna be late," the sixteen year old says, turning back to reach for the door handle.
"Ah ah ah, wait!" you stop him. "You're not going anywhere without me getting a good look at you. Turn around, I wanna see how the uniform fits."
Megumi lowers his head and complies, turning back around stiffly for you to admire him. You press your hand to your lips to conceal your smile, eyes gleaming with pride as you look over the sharp navy jacket and pants he adorns.
"Awwww," you coo. "It fits perfectly! How does it feel?"
"Pretty good," Megumi nods, moving his arm around slightly to show his mobility in the fabric. "It's comfortable too. It shouldn't be a problem during missions."
"I still can't believe how quickly time has gone by," you muse. "You're already going into your first year at Jujutsu High! Are you excited?"
"You better be," Toji grunts. "Your uncle Gojo hasn't gotten off my ass about your enrollment for years. At least now, he'll finally shut up."
"I still don't understand why I have to have him as a teacher. He's such a moron, I doubt he'll teach us anything useful," Megumi mumbles.
"Moron or not, he's the strongest sorcerer of the modern age and he's helped out so much. I'm sure he'll be able to give you a good experience," you say positively.
"We talkin' about the same Gojo here? The one who trashed my house playing tag with Megumi and the dogs in the living room?" Toji points out and his son grits his teeth at the memory.
"Oh come on, Satoru was like twenty one back then. I can only imagine the crazy shit you've with the kids when you were raising them," you tease.
"You don't even want to know," Megumi exhales.
"Please, you came out just fine, didn’t ya?” Toji says, reaching out his hand to ruffle at Megumi's spiky hair. The teen recoils, craning his head away and shielding himself with his arm.
"Quit it. I'm not five anymore."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're all grown up now, I know. Gonna be a first-grade sorcerer before I can even blink an eye."
"Who said that I would be first grade? I'm only a first year."
"Yeah, and look at who your pops is," Toji grins. "Plus, you got an advantage that I never had. You'll do just fine."
Megumi hums indifferently, doubting himself momentarily but accepting the words nonetheless. "Alright, are we ready?"
"No, not yet!" you pull out your phone quickly and open the camera. "I need to get pictures."
The blue-eyed boy slumps. "(Y/n), I gotta go."
"I know, I know, just a few," you promise, holding your camera up to capture his awkward figure in the frame. "Okay, smile."
Megumi doesn't, and of course you don't actually expect him to. Instead, he calmly stares at the camera with his arms at his sides, unsure of what to do with themselves. Toji moves to stand behind you, leaning down to take a peak at the million pictures you're snapping.
"Toji, go stand with him so I can get one with the both of you."
The two groan simultaneously. "Doll, can we just focus on gettin' the kid to school?"
"It's fine. His stuff is already moved into his dorm. We have time."
"But-"
"Shut up and go stand with your son, now," you glare firmly up at the green-eyed man and he huffs.
"Yes, ma'am."
Toji raises a hand to his hip and tilts his head boredly as he stands beside Megumi, the two of them sharing the exact same blank stare as they look into the camera. You squeal happily. "You two are so cuteee!"
"We done, now?"
"No, I wanna get one more with Megs, and then I'm good." The boys give you a look, but you wave them off. "I mean it! Gosh, here Toji. Take our picture."
Toji obliges, grabbing your phone from your hand as you rush over to the tall boy. His expression melts into serenity as you place your hands on his shoulders and lean your head against his arm, smiling widely at the camera as a hint of a smile touches Megumi's lips.
Toji's heart warms at the sight, watching the way his son grows comfortable in your presence. The picture of the two of you looks so natural t to him like you are meant to be a part of his family, which he knows you are.
He snaps the photo and nods. "Got it."
You exhale, turning to face Megumi. You brush your hands over his shoulders to straighten his jacket, ridding it of any lint and wrinkles. "Okay, Megumi, please remember to be safe."
"I know. I will," he nods.
"And don't be too reckless when it comes to training."
"I won't."
"And try to make friends. I know how easy it is for you to push others away."
"I'll try."
You press your lips together with a final sigh, looking over Megumi's face warmly. You wrap your arms safely around him into a hug, your emotions getting the best of you. You have spent the past year caring for Megumi like your own, and watching him head off to achieve his goals makes your heart swell with joy and fear all the same.
"Text me or your father or Tsumiki if you need anything. Anything at all," you tell him. He returns your hug gently.
"Okay," he chuckles lightly and you pull away. "Don't worry, I'll be fine."
"...I know you will..." you pout. "Okay, I'll let you go. Good luck. I hope you have an amazing first day. I'll see you at the end of the week, yeah?"
"Mhm. I'll call you to let you know how the day went later."
"Please do."
Toji hands you back your phone and walks toward the door with Megumi. "Let's get a move on," he says. He leans over quickly to peck your lips farewell. "I'll be back in a few."
"Don't speed, Toji."
"Speeding gets you places quicker," he winks and you suck your teeth disapprovingly. Megumi opens the door, his dad gripping the frame.
"Bye, boys. Stay out of trouble," you wave, eyes glassy as you watch Megumi walk out.
"See ya, doll."
"Bye, mum."
The three of you freeze the second the words hit the air, everyone stilling in their tracks.
You feel your heart burst as overwhelming happiness consumes you. Megumi keeps his face forward, hiding his reddening cheeks as he processes what he has just said. Toji stares at the back of his son's head, eyes wide, before he turns to look at you to find your shocked, giddy face.
You don't have any time to reply when Megumi clears his throat suddenly, sweat dotting his forehead, and he walks rigidly out of the house and swiftly down the hall without looking back.
Toji stays behind, keeping an eye on you when you look up at him, stunned. "Did he just...?" you murmur.
"Yep."
Your eyes immediately well with tears and your lips wobble, your hands flying over your mouth. "He sees me as his mom?" you whisper.
Toji chuckles, ducking down to you with his hand still gripping the door. "Of course he does. He's always adored you. Him and Tsumiki."
"I'm gonna cry."
The assassin chuckles softly, pressing his thumb to the corner of your eye gently. "You're already cryin.'"
"Shut up," you sniff. "God, I love those kids so much. I just wanna give him all the hugs in the world."
"And you'll be able to. There isn't a better woman on this planet to be there for the kids," he kisses your cheek. "That's why I plan t'marry you someday."
"Fuck you, Toj. You're gonna make me cry even more."
"Sorry, baby. Can't help talkin' about it," he leans back to the doorway. "Let me get the kid squared away and make sure he's not dyin' of embarrassment, then I'll be back to talk to ya about makin' this official."
"You're being for real?"
"Of course I am."
You lower your hands and beam. "Tell Megumi I love him and get back here soon."
"I will," he hums. "But I thought you said no speeding?"
"Just- make sure the two of you at least get to the school in one peace."
He smirks. "Will do, doll."
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