Chapter Text

saute, lapin, saute

A great white shark bears some three hundred triangular, serrated teeth at a time. Each one is fated to be lost, replaced, and forgotten, again and again, until nearly twenty thousand have come and gone over the course of its life.

Brendon Park pulls back his lip to expose his gums. They are light pink, as healthy as ever. His teeth are white, sharp, and straight. (He owes that to his mother, strict as she was about him not sucking his thumb.)

He leans closer to the bathroom mirror, inspecting each tooth in turn.

Sharks lose theirs without consequence. He cannot afford to lose even one.

Some nights, Emma has trouble sleeping. She tosses and turns for hours to no avail. White noise doesn’t help, nor do the melatonin gummies she picked up from Walmart. They taste like berries, which is nice, but she’s fairly sure they have more sugar than melatonin, which kind of defeats the point.

She buys expensive pillow sprays. The chamomile is her favourite, if only because the lavender one made her come out in a rash. She makes sure to get the ones formulated specifically for omegas; the scents are subtle enough not to irritate her nose. They don’t help her sleep, but at least they make her nest smell nice.

In nursing school, her bouts of insomnia had at least been somewhat useful. She used the extra hours to study and take practice exams. It was harder when she had clinicals the next day, but she’d become a bit of a caffeine addict in her first year; helped along by the campus café that sold the best vanilla iced lattes in the entire world. And if things got really bad, like the time she nearly fell asleep during orientation, she could always rely on her clinical partner to have a spare Red Bull in her backpack.

Now that she’s graduated, she doesn’t enjoy the sleepless nights anymore; they just bleed into exhausted shifts the next day. Dana worries when Emma shows up with dark circles under her eyes and starts scolding her for not getting enough sleep, so Emma buys a better concealer with her first paycheque.

On the first Tuesday of her second month at PTMC, Emma perches on the curb outside the ambulance bay and digs through her backpack. She’s looking for her phone, which has, as it always does, slipped to the bottom.

She’s halfway through a ten-hour shift and running on empty. The night before had been one of those sleepless ones, and Dana had mentioned ordering coffee in, which sounded nice, except Emma had only just paid off her latest round of student loans, and she’s fairly sure her account is hovering somewhere near zero.

She chews on her bottom lip and draws her knees up to her chest. Her scrubs crinkle and she scratches lightly at her collarbone, where her undershirt, light pink with tiny white stars, has shifted and started to irritate the edge of her scent patch.

She opens her banking app and, yep, she’s hovering dangerously close to her overdraft. It would be easy enough to message her papa and ask for some help, but Emma is determined to get by on her own.

She can do it. She really can.

It’s just that her rent was raised without warning, and she hadn’t realised how soon she’d have to start repaying her loans. There had also been so many things she’d needed for her first shift; a new backpack, a new prescription for heat suppressants (which, even with insurance, still cost almost half a week’s wages), and a new pair of hospital approved sneakers.

She swallows down a thick knot of emotion and takes a few steady breaths. Phone back in her backpack, she twists the end of her braid and forces herself to think of the good things.

She lives independently; though she does get lonely, and she’s fairly sure she’s only a few weeks away from full-blown touch starvation.

Good things, Emma. Good things.

She has a degree. Her family and friends are in good health. It’s November and the sun is shining. She’s a nurse, just like she’s wanted to be since she was a pup. Her supervisor is kind and she seems to fit in well with her colleagues.

There’s so much good. And she’s always been good at holding onto the good for long enough to drown out the bad.

Pushing to her feet, she shoulders her backpack (pink, with a little fluffy bunny keychain dangling from the side) and heads back into the ER.

That night, she sinks into a hot bubble bath and stares at the patches of mold creeping across the ceiling. She has a spray under the kitchen sink that’s meant to kill it and stop it coming back, but it was clearly a waste of money.

She’s asked her landlord about it, but he’d only brushed her off and told her it was her fault; that she obviously wasn’t opening the window enough when she showered.

Which, for the record, she does, all the way, every time, even though it makes her shiver.

She scrolls through Instagram and smiles as she watches her sister’s story. Frankie is almost thirty, a beta, and travels the world as a cruise ship entertainer. She’s always somewhere new and exotic, and Emma lives vicariously through her.

Eventually, she puts her phone aside and gets out of the bath. She shivers until she’s in her thick, fleecy pyjamas, and then climbs into her nest. She shifts around, tugging at the blankets, pressing into familiar corners until it feels right. She’s decided she doesn’t like the pillow spray anymore. It’s too artificial, and even if it doesn’t make her nose itch, it doesn’t make her happy or sleepy, so what’s the point?

Her throat tightens before she can stop it. It’s stupid, really. She’s fine. She’s always fine. But there’s this strange ache sitting in her stomach that just won’t go away.

She blinks hard at the ceiling, then rolls over and reaches for her iPad. She puts on an episode of The Simpsons and doesn’t let herself think past Bart’s dumbfoolery.

Emma doesn’t have a car. She hasn’t got her licence yet, and even if she did, she couldn’t afford one anyway. So she takes the bus to and from the hospital every day.

She sits in the same spot, curled up against the window, hugging her backpack to her chest. She listens to an audiobook on her phone with one EarPod in, always half-aware of her surroundings.

It’s a rare pocket of calm before the inevitable chaos of her shift. There’s hardly a day that goes by without something going wrong at PTMC, and it’s exhausting trying to keep up with it all.

“Baby Deer,” is what people have started to call her. It fits, she supposes. Still wide-eyed. Still a little too soft around the edges. Still startled by every new thing that comes through the ER doors.

She watches the city blur past the window and tries to hold onto the quiet for a few more stops. She startles when an alpha sits down beside her, mostly because the rest of the bus is nearly empty. She goes very still, shoulders tight, breathing carefully through her mouth until her stop finally comes.

She practically jumps up, hurries off the bus, and keeps glancing over her shoulder as she walks away, nerves still stretched too tight under her skin.

She’s halfway across the hospital car park when she nearly collides with someone.

A wall of an alpha; tall, broad, completely immovable in the way he stops her momentum. She only registers the height first, then the presence of him, close enough that her vision goes fuzzy at the edges.

“Sorry,” she blurts, stepping back too fast, eyes darting anywhere but his face.

His hand comes out to steady her near the elbow. Firm, rough, not unkind, but not exactly gentle either. More of a warning than a hold. And his scent hits her properly then, clean and deep and grounding.

“I—sorry,” she repeats, faster this time, voice thin with panic she can’t quite control. She ducks her head, desperately wishing that she could disappear into herself. “Sorry, I just—I’m going to be late for my shift.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply. She slips past him and hurries into the hospital, far too aware of her own heartbeat, of the way her skin feels too warm, and her throat is tight, and her scent patch suddenly feels like it’s suffocating her.

It isn’t until she locks herself in the nearest bathroom stall that she realises her hands are shaking.