After a week of cold showers, very limited bathroom time, and the sound of high-pitched laughter, Alex has decided that sharing a house with three women, plus George, is not good for his sanity.

Especially not when he’s slept with two out of three of them.

Especially not when it’s thirty minutes before he’s supposed to leave and he’s just now getting into the bathroom and Lexie, little miss late to rise, rushes in before him, still in her pajamas, making no apologies.

“Shouldn’t the people who actually live here get dibs on the bathroom first?”

She talks around the toothbrush in her mouth, “I’m the guest; you’re supposed to be hospitable.” He watches the way her shorts hike up her legs just slightly as she bends over the sink to spit, tears his eyes away with some effort. “And it’s not like you pay rent or anything. You live in George’s room.”

“George’s old room. It’s mine now.” He reminds her, surprisingly defensive about stupid little details like that.

“Yeah, emphasis on now.” She’s showing no signs of leaving the bathroom, fixing her hair in the mirror, so he just moves past her, inside, not willing to wait in the doorway any longer and risk being late. “What are you doing?”

“You want to stay in here, fine, I have to shower.”

She laughs at him, right up until she realizes that he’s not kidding and will probably be stripping down any second now. “Are you kidding?”

He raises an eyebrow, and slips his shirt over his head. “Want to stay and find out.”

There’s some kind of internal disagreement, then, “No.”

“Sure you do.”

“No, I don’t.” She tells him, although it definitely sounds like she’s convincing herself more than anything else. And suddenly, he stops caring about the shower because he’s having too much fun with this, too much fun watching her try to focus on her own reflection, only to have it inevitably drift back to his. “I really, really don’t.”

Except for the fact that she ends up turning around into him and pressing her lips to his, long and hard, a hand coming up and looping itself around his neck, into his hair, steadying herself. And this? So much more fun than that shower.

And then she pulls away.

She stops herself, with a wide-eyed look like he totally made her do that, which is also probably the story she would’ve told had anyone seen them, and says, “I’ll leave you alone so you can take that shower.”

Somehow, she collects herself enough to walk out the door (which is very, very unfair in his opinion), his eyes on her retreating back, and he can’t stop himself from calling out, “Tease.”

She gives him a wry smile, one that insists that she may now hold all the cards, and he’s not sure how they switched hands that quickly, but he’s fairly sure they did, as she replies back, in like, “Ass.”

She can’t find the bandages.

She knows they have them because Jack is, you know, still alive, so therefore still overly precautious and prepared. Like a boy scout. Though she’s fairly sure he never was.

But she can’t find the damn band-aids. Which means she ends up in his tent, digging through his stuff, looking for them. It would be easier if she could just go ask but if she were to do that he’d automatically go into overprotective overdrive and, really, it’s just a cut. A sizeable cut that probably needs more than band-aids back home, but here she doesn’t have that luxury. Here it’s about band-aids.  

Five minutes go by and she’s about to give up, empty handed, and then a voice comes out of nowhere. “Kate?”

It’s the same concerned, confused tone as the one she finds in Jack’s voice. But it’s not Jack. Very much not.

Juliet stands there, flap of the tent pulled closed behind her, watching her.

“I’m um...” Kate drops her eyes. “I’m looking for the bandages.”

And wouldn’t it just figure that Juliet knows exactly where to find them. Ten seconds go by and she’s got them. But she doesn’t hand them over like Kate was hoping for. She starts asking questions. “How bad is it?” Kate gives her a look, confused. Juliet motions to her, “Your injury. How bad is it?”

She keeps her arm hidden behind her back, as she answers, “It’s fine, I just don’t want it to get infected.”

Still, Juliet doesn’t hand them over. “Let me help you. I can bandage it up.”

“No, it’s fine, I can do it myself.” Kate isn’t too keen on spending time with Juliet and, while it would be easier if she had someone do it for her, that someone is not going to be Juliet. Or at least that’s what she tells herself.

“I’m a doctor, Kate.”

“Fertility doctor.”

It doesn’t deter her, even if she does look down, trying her best to remain calm. “I know you don’t trust me Kate, but I’m only trying to help you. Let me do this.”

There’s sincerity in Juliet’s voice, the kind that, even if Kate thinks she’s probably lying, she still finds soothing. So she drops her arm to her side, in plain view, and Juliet nods, taking in the wound with her eyes.

“How did you do that?” Juliet motions for her to sit down, sitting across from her when she does, taking her arm in her hands, running her fingers lightly over the red line that snakes up Kate’s forearm.

“Does it matter?” Because there are some things that Kate doesn’t feel like sharing with Juliet.

“Alright,” she drops her head, stops looking at Kate, focuses on her arm, grabbing for the antiseptic and the bandages. She doesn’t tell Kate that band-aids aren’t going to do the trick exactly, kind of lets it slide, and that makes Kate relax, just a little bit. “I’ll be done in a minute. I know you just want to get out of here.”

Kate doesn’t deny it, though she feels a little bit bad about that. She just gives a mumbled, “Thanks.”

Juliet smoothes the last bandage over her arm, right at the part where the cut tapers off, leaving unblemished skin. “There. Done.” Her hand falls away from Kate’s arm, falls to rest on Kate’s thigh, which, as unintentional as it probably was, is incredibly noticeable to Kate. And Juliet doesn’t move. “You need to be more careful.”

“Yeah.” And Kate isn’t moving either. Her head is telling her to get up, to leave. Then again it’s also telling her that Juliet is really, really close to her at the moment, and this is suddenly oddly intimate. Her fingers are tracing patterns on Kate's jeans, and she's fairly sure Juliet doesn’t know she’s doing it, that she’s just fidgeting, but Kate's body is having an interesting reaction.

The next thing Kate knows, she's kissing Juliet. The tension in her body, the tension in Juliet's, in the air, all breaks in that moment, transfers into that kiss. Her hand is moving higher, still with those patterns that are making Kate a bit crazy, and Kate’s hands are working their way up her shirt, and this has the potential to truly be disastrous.

They’re in Jack’s tent. In the middle of the day. And this is not the way to sort out all the tension between them.

But it is a way.

A way that involves Juliet’s hands that are currently working Kate’s jeans off, and slipping in between her thighs, and there.

Juliet does this like she’s done this many times before. Which figures because she’s a woman, she’s a freakin’ doctor, she knows women’s bodies, she knows how to get them off. And the part of Kate that would normally be telling her to stop, that this is wrong, that their going to get caught, shuts down right about here, as Juliet’s fingers curl inside of her.

Fuck it. She’s going to see this through.  

She bites back a moan, as Juliet hits something inside of her, like flicking a switch, and she comes, her teeth biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood, her hips arching.

Juliet’s got the slightest hint of a satisfied smile on her face, and Kate kind of regrets giving in, because Juliet almost looks like this was planned. So Kate forces her breathing to even out, straightens her clothes, pulls her jeans back on, and tries to pretend that that didn’t feel as good as it really did. That she didn’t kind of need that. Because Juliet does not get to win.

Not surprisingly, Juliet follows suit, lets the smile fall away and tells her, in a perfectly calm, neutral voice, “You should really have either me or Jack check on your arm in the next day or two. To make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

Kate nods, says nothing.

“Of course, if you go to Jack you’ll have to explain it, so you’re probably just better off coming to find me.” Kate knows exactly where she’s going with this. “So I’ll see you soon.”

She hates herself for saying it, but she does anyways, making eye contact. “Yeah, I guess you will.”