Always Been You (Ryeji Converted)

Chapter 16

Yeji sat in the lab, daydreaming about Ryujin. The brunette's pre-med summer program was a ten week rotation through research lab work, supplemental coursework and seminars, with some clinical staffing at Manhattan General Hospital. She got the lab rotation first and was assigned to an immunology research team focused on viral immunomodulatory proteins. The brunette didn't know too much about this particular discipline, but data entry and database management was something she could handle.

"You shouldn't look this happy reconciling an excel file with thirty tabs in it," mused her supervisor.

Yeji turned, "I love excel!"

Aaron shook his head, "It's your first week -- you'll be wanting to punch a hole in that screen by the time you're done. Nobody here wants to go anywhere near that thing."

"Why is this even in excel? Don't you guys use the MedBase platform to pull data from participating hospitals?"

"Yes, but we do our analytics on Healthlytics, and it doesn't talk to MedBase. Excel is the translator."

"I'm just the idiot intern, and I love a good excel model, but it seems like there should be a better way."

"Yeah, probably. But it'll cost money we don't have. Unless you know a coding whiz who would be willing to help us for free, this is the status quo," Aaron cocked his head, "Why are you smiling like that?"

"Because I know a coding whiz," she grinned.

"Will he help us out pro bono?"

"She." Yeji lifted an eyebrow, bristling at Aaron's mistaken assumption, "Girls can code too, you know?"

Aaron looked appropriately admonished, "Yes, yes. Okay, point taken. Seriously though, would she help us out?"

"I can ask," Yeji nodded.

"For free?"

"I think I can convince her..." Yeji nodded again.

And that is how Ryujin found herself in the basement of the Barnes Medical Research Center the next evening.

"There are no windows down here," she looked around.

"I won't get skin cancer!" Yeji shrugged, "It's only for three weeks. No biggie. It's only been a couple days, but I know for sure that I don't belong in a lab."

Ryujin plopped down in front of a computer, "This one?"

"Sure," Yeji leaned over her shoulder and clicked open the relevant files and applications.

The blonde shifted just a little so their cheeks would touch, and Yeji gave her a quick kiss before turning back to the screen, "Here are the two databases. This is the monster excel data dump that I don't want to reformat and rename column headers for. Do some magic and make it go away."

Yeji looked at the blonde and realized that the girl wasn't looking at the screen, but at her.

"Ryujin," she whispered, "Stop looking at me like that."

"I can't help it..." Ryujin wiggled her eyebrows and let her gaze move from Yeji's hazel brown eyes, down her neck, until her eyes reached the neck of her shirt, which gaped open as the brunette leaned forward.

"Ryujin!" Yeji tried to sound stern, but she loved that the girl was checking her out.

Ryujin watched two subtle bumps form under the brunette's bra. She reached for one of them.

Yeji slapped her hand away, "Ryu, stop it. I mean, temporarily... the faster you figure out my computer problem... the faster you can have all of this." She gestured at her body.

Ryujin ran her eyes up and down the girl's body, "We can skip dinner?"

"Depends on how much database pain you take away from me."

The blonde tore her eyes away from her lover and turned to the computer, "Okay. I'm not going to solve this tonight -- I need to figure out which backends they use, but..." she plugged in a flashdrive, "it shouldn't be a huge lift."

"So you can get the two databases to talk to each other?"

"Databases are just big dumb buckets of data. What we need to do is figure out if we can use or create something in the existing App or API..."

"Are you really going to waste time dorking out on this?" Yeji sat down on a chair, undid two buttons of her blouse, and leaned forward once more.

"Fair point," Ryujin's eyes lingered on the brunette's cleavage, "You are such a tease."

"Perv," Yeji shot back, "But I confess that I quite like it when you stare at my boobs."

Ryujin opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself, "Hold that thought. Let me just..."

The blonde turned back to the computer after giving Yeji a quick wink. Meanwhile, Yeji was gripping the seat of her chair, holding herself down from the urge to launch herself onto Ryujin's lap.

"You need to breathe, Yeji," Ryujin murmured as she typed, "I work better when I can hear you breathe."

"Stalker!" The brunette chuckled.

"Maybe. I've always liked hearing you breathe. In the non-stalker sense..." Ryujin kept toggling between screens.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," the blonde shrugged, "Doing homework with you when we were in school was one of my favorite things -- we would be together, doing our own thing, and I liked hearing you breathe near me. It's the next closest thing to hearing your heart beat."

Ryujin pulled up a new screen and started typing. When the brunette didn't say anything in reply, she looked over, "What?"

Yeji shook her head, "Nothing -- just finish what you need to do, okay?"

"As you wish," Ryujin smiled.

The brunette tried to collect her thoughts, which were hyperactively bouncing around in her brain, partly due to the happiness of being in a room with Ryujin, but mostly because of what the blonde had just said about needing to hear her breathe. There was something so enormous, and scary, and enchanting all mixed up in that sentiment. Scarier, still, Yeji loved it. She loved that Ryujin's ears were attuned to her breathing. She loved that it's been something that the blonde had internalized since forever ago. It felt intimate in just the right way. I love it so much. And I love... her... Yeji's eyes widened with her silent confession. Of course you do! said the voice inside her head, her thoughts still whirling.

Ryujin, meanwhile, was trying to focus on the task at hand. It was true, what she said about doing homework with Yeji. Back then, it really was the proxy for how desperately she had wanted to be with the girl. Now, she heard a slight hitch in Yeji's breathing and it was all she could do to not revel in it, because she understood that it meant that Yeji's pulse was climbing too. It thrilled her to know that Yeji was reacting to her. The past week had been a continuous recalibration of fantasy and reality for Ryujin, with reality proving to be exponentially more amazing than her yearnings ever yielded.

"Okay!" Ryujin closed out the windows and extracted the flashdrive. She turned to see Yeji staring at her, her eyes a darker shade than earlier.

"Really? You're done?" Yeji ran her tongue over her bottom lip. If the lab didn't have security cameras installed, she'd already be naked.

Ryujin nodded, her brain stalled; the brunette was looking at her like a cat waiting to pounce.

"Take me home, Ryujin, right now."