The hospital at night always felt like another world. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead echoed faintly in the empty corridors, and every footstep Lexie took seemed to bounce back at her, amplifying her solitude. It was nearly midnight, but she wasn’t ready to leave. She never was. The work gave her purpose; the quiet gave her space. Her bag hung loosely from her shoulder, and her ponytail had loosened after hours of running between charts, cases, and simulations she insisted on practicing alone.

Her eyes, sharp but tired, scanned the hall like someone convinced she was the last soul still awake in the building. She liked it that way—being unnoticed. The world, the hospital, could belong to her for a few precious hours.

Until it didn’t.

She slowed near one of the larger windows that looked out over the city, its lights blurred by the fogged glass. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts—about patients, about cases, about you—that she didn’t notice the faint glow of another office spilling into the hallway ahead. Only when she stepped closer did the sound of a page turning, soft and deliberate, meet her ears.

Her stomach tightened.

You were there.

In the pool of lamplight, seated at your desk, you looked like you belonged to the night itself. The dark suit jacket discarded over the chair’s back, shirt sleeves rolled neatly to your forearms, hair slightly disheveled from hours of focus. The lines of exhaustion softened nothing about you; if anything, they made you sharper, more magnetic in a way she wished she could ignore. Papers spread across the desk caught shadows, and the pen balanced between your fingers moved with unconscious precision.

Lexie stopped short, caught in the threshold, and for a moment forgot to breathe. She hadn’t expected anyone else, least of all you. The air seemed to shift, pressing against her ribcage, as though the walls themselves were reminding her she shouldn’t be here—not like this, not watching you when you weren’t supposed to notice.

But she couldn’t move.

Her gaze lingered too long on the slope of your shoulders, the faint tired crease between your brows, the way the lamplight traced your profile and turned it into something sculpted, deliberate. She hated herself for how her chest tightened, for how her pulse quickened, for how the thought pressed in: he’s my teacher.

And yet.

A part of her—the reckless, vulnerable part she rarely let out—thrummed at the idea of being near you when the rest of the world was asleep. When the rules felt looser, like shadows blurring the edges of the lines drawn between student and mentor. The same part of her that had started to notice details she shouldn’t: your hands, your voice, the ease with which brilliance seemed second nature to you.

She shifted her weight and clutched her bag strap tighter, almost as if the leather could anchor her to something safe. But her eyes betrayed her; they searched you again, drinking in the evidence of long hours, the hints of weariness, the gravity you carried even when no one was watching.

Lexie Grey was not naïve enough to mistake this for anything other than what it was: a dangerous admiration, a crush that had rooted itself too deep in her chest. But in this still, late hour, when it was just her and you and the quiet hospital, she let herself feel it for once.

And that terrified her almost as much as it thrilled her.