Open Heart One Shots (Choices)

All This Time (Bryce x Kyra)

Summary: Bryce Lahela wonders if it's too late to shift the dynamic from friends to something more when Kyra Santana tells him she's almost cancer free.

If there was one thing that Bryce Lahela could count on in his life, it was his confidence. Good looks too (it went without saying), but he was realistic enough to know those were temporary and a luck of the gene pool. Confidence though, that had been hard earned after everything with his family.

Kids at school calling him Dirty Cheat Lahela? He'd shrugged it off. An adult wanting to pick a fight with a teenager because their family had lost everything because of his? He'd learned to walk away from the hateful words said in anger and despair.

Going to college on the mainland had been his escape. The first of many decisions he made to get his life on track. The headlines had followed but muted by distance and eventually time. Going to med school and discovering the pure technical mastery of surgery had been his saving grace.

As his skills developed and the praise from his professors piled on, his confidence only grew until, some said, it became overinflated. Once he started his surgical residency at Boston's famed Edenbrook Hospital, as far as Bryce Lahela was concerned, everyone and their dog could suck it.

He was finally becoming someone he could be proud of. If that made him an unsufferable meathead, he'd take that as a compliment. The only wrinkle in his journey to self assurance had come from a petite, dark-haired beauty named Kyra Santana.

She'd barrelled into his life as a patient battling an aggressive form of cancer that required surgical intervention. She'd stayed in it as a dear friend ─ part of the gang ─ and he saw his chances of wanting something more slowly slip away as they settled into a friendly routine.

He wasn't averse to light flirting (he was human after all), but he was always careful not to tip his hand. There wasn't any ethical dilemma from her being a patient. Once she'd been discharged from his care, she was fair game. But the bonds of friendship that tied them had grown too strong.

Now, leaning against a column on the far side of the atrium, he watched her schmooze with donors at the Hopeful Hearts fundraiser wearing an off-shoulder black dress that accentuated her toned muscles. And he wondered what it would take to break those ties and explore new ones.

Did she even think of him in that way? Or would he forever be a memory she associated with the darkest times in her life? After all, he had her cracked open on his table; literally held her heart in his gloved hands as he cut away the disease strangling her life, one cell at a time.

She had trusted him to take a gamble with an experimental procedure, and he'd owed it to her to keep his feelings professional. To hide the fear that he could lose her in an instant if he wasn't careful.

When he'd nicked her during surgery, distracted by the attack on another friend, all he could do was fall back on his confidence and ride out the emotions that threatened to paralyze him.

"What are you doing, hiding away in the corner?"

Bryce refocused as Kyra walked towards him. A small smile on her face, she handed him one of two champagne flutes. He'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't realized he'd lost track of her in the crowd.

"Just watching a master at work," he quipped, taking a large gulp of the sparkling wine to wet his dry mouth.

He underestimated the amount as bubbles hit his throat wrong and he began to sputter and cough. He felt Kyra clap his back and his eyes teared up as he sputtered and coughed some more before finally managing to catch his breath.

"Are you okay?" she asked, eyes worried, a hand still resting on his back, slowly moving up and down in comfort.

He nodded, trying to fall back on his confidence in an awkward situation but failing when his mind went blank. He slowly inhaled and exhaled, his other fallback for when he wanted to collect himself and let his mind settle.

Eventually, he found his center, that feeling he got only in surgery or on a surfboard. He straightened away from the column, nonsensical words at the ready. But then he saw the grin creeping up on her face and his mouth quirked in response.

And then they were both laughing, heads close, attracting confused glances from those close enough to have witnessed his coughing fit.

"I'm sorry," she said, dabbing the tears at the corner of her eyes as she tried to control her laughter. "It's just...your body was having a fit, but your face had this look like it was saying, 'Come on, man. Get it together.' And neither was cooperating."

"Just call me Dr. Smooth," he smirked, taking another, much smaller, sip this time.

"Never change, Bryce," she said as the laughter died down. "Never change."

"Well, maybe with just less sputtering," he countered, eyes sharpening as he watched her go still. He'd made an intimate study of her face these last two years and knew every line, every emotion. "Everything okay?"

"Can I get real with you for a second?" she asked with a seriousness he hadn't heard except before her surgery.

"If you must," he sighed dramatically, trying to lighten the mood. He saw dismay cross her face and knew it had been the wrong tack to take. "I'm sorry, Kyra. Knee jerk. I'm listening."

"My doctors seem to think that I might have actually beaten this thing," she said, pointing to her chest as she shifted to face him, her back to the crowd behind them.

"They're hopeful even if it might take a couple more months to declare me cancer free, but," she paused, closing her eyes for a second. "But I wouldn't be here, even cautiously optimistic, if it hadn't been for you. If you and your gorgeous brain and those masterful hands hadn't found a way to cure me. So, thank you, Bryce. Thank you for giving me back a chance at a new life."

Bryce inwardly cursed as he felt his opportunity with her slip away with every word. Her love for him, if it could be called that, would always be one of gratitude, for someone that had saved her life. And never anything more.

"You're welcome, Kyra," he replied when she continued to look at him. "You're one of my closest friends. And if I can't use all this," he lifted his hands, "to help the ones I love, what's the point of it all?"

He felt his heart skip as she hugged him, savoring the all too brief sensation of having her in his arms before pulling away.

"Just to be clear," he said, purposely keeping his tone flirty. "The rest of me is gorgeous too, right?"

Her peal of laughter rang out as they walked back, arm in arm, towards the dance floor where the rest of their friends waited. As the music kicked up and his friends pulled him in close, Bryce Lahela knew he could count on more than his confidence to get him through.