Overflow
"A wounded runner wakes up on her table. The payment plan is going to take a while."
I pull three bullets out of his chest before he wakes up.
The first one's lodged against his collarbone—a mess of shattered bone and shredded muscle that takes forty minutes to reconstruct. The second nicked his lung, which means I'm working through a controlled collapse while my autosurgeon units keep him breathing. The third missed his heart by two centimeters.
Lucky boy.
My hands don't shake anymore. They haven't shaken in thirty years—not since I was twenty, working my first illegal surgery in a Neo-Delhi slum, learning that hesitation kills faster than bullets. Now I'm fifty, and my fingers move with the precision of someone who's rebuilt more bodies than she can count.
He's young. Mid-twenties, maybe. Pretty in a rough way—sharp jaw, dark hair matted with blood, the lean build of a runner who's spent too many years living on synth-rations and adrenaline. His body is a mess of old scars and cheap mods, the kind of patchwork that says Undercity louder than any accent.
But underneath all that damage, there's something worth saving.
There usually is.
He wakes up screaming.
They always do—the pain hits before the drugs wear off, and there's nothing pretty about coming back from the edge of death. I let him thrash for a moment, then press a sedative hypo to his throat.
"Easy, runner. You're safe."
His eyes—grey, wild, beautiful—find my face. Confusion flickers through the pain.
"Where—"
"My clinic. Such as it is." I gesture around the cramped surgical bay, all salvaged equipment and jury-rigged systems. "Someone dumped you in my alley about six hours ago. Didn't think to leave a note."
"The job." He tries to sit up, gasps, falls back. "The data—"
"Is gone. Along with whoever shot you." I check his vitals, adjust a drip. "You're lucky I found you before the scavengers did. Another hour and you'd have been spare parts."
He processes this. I watch the calculations run behind his eyes—the dawning realization that he's alive, he's unarmed, and he has no idea who I am.
"Who are you?"
"Dr. Priya Sharma." I settle into the chair beside his bed, letting him get a good look at me. "But everyone down here calls me Overflow."
His eyes flick down—involuntary, immediate—before snapping back up. I'm used to it. Hard not to notice a woman built like me: five foot four, two hundred and sixty pounds, curves that strain against my surgical scrubs in ways that make people stare. My skin is deep brown, my hair a thick braid of silver and black, my face lined with fifty years of living hard and loving harder.
I am not a small presence. Never have been.
"Overflow?"
"Because I'm too much." I smile, let him see I'm not offended. "Too loud. Too big. Too everything. But in the Undercity, too much is exactly enough."
He stares at me for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he laughs—a rough, pained sound that turns into a cough.
"I'm Ash," he says when he can breathe again. "And I think I owe you my life."
"You owe me more than that, runner." I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "That surgery cost me thirty thousand credits in materials. Plus six hours of my time, which I value quite highly."
The color drains from his face. "I don't have—"
"I know you don't." I pat his hand. "Don't worry. I'm sure we can work something out."
He heals slowly.
The bullets did more damage than I'd hoped, and even with my mods and his body's reluctant cooperation, it takes three weeks before he can walk without help. Three weeks of him laid up in my back room, eating my food, taking my medicine, watching me work with those quiet grey eyes.
I learn his story in pieces.
Runner for twelve years. Started at fifteen, when his parents died in a factory collapse and the corps wouldn't pay out. He's done everything—courier work, data theft, wetwork when the price was right and the target deserved it. He's killed seventeen people. He's saved more than that. He's been betrayed four times, almost died twice, and has exactly zero credits to his name.
"Why do you keep doing it?" I ask one night, changing his bandages.
"It's all I know."
"That's not an answer."
He's quiet for a moment. My hands are gentle on his chest—professional, careful, even as some part of me notices the way his muscles tense under my fingers.
"Because if I stop moving, I'll have to think about everything I've done," he says finally. "And I don't think I'd survive that."
I understand more than he knows.
Week four, he starts helping around the clinic.
Small things at first—organizing supplies, sterilizing equipment, answering the door when patients come knocking at 3 AM. He's good with people, I notice. Quiet, steady, the kind of presence that puts scared Undercity kids at ease.
He watches me work. Asks questions. Learns.
"You're good at this," I tell him one night, after he's assisted on a relatively simple implant surgery. "Steady hands."
"Learned from the best."
"Flatterer." But I'm smiling.
He smiles back, and something warm flickers in my chest. Something I haven't felt in a very long time.
Don't, I tell myself. He's half your age. He owes you his life. This is not—
"Dr. Sharma?"
I blink. He's looking at me with those grey eyes, head tilted, and I realize I've been staring.
"Priya," I correct. "If we're going to be working together, you should call me Priya."
"Priya." He tastes the word like it's something precious. "Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask. Doesn't mean I'll answer."
"Why did you save me? You didn't know me. I couldn't pay. Most black-market surgeons would have harvested my organs and sold them."
I consider lying. Consider deflecting.
Instead, I tell him the truth.
"Because you looked like someone worth saving." I meet his eyes. "And I've been doing this long enough to trust my instincts."
The tension builds slowly.
It's in the way he watches me—not the quick, embarrassed glances of the first week, but something longer, deeper. It's in the way he finds excuses to be close: handing me instruments during surgery, standing behind me while I work, his body heat radiating against my back.
It's in the way I find myself thinking about him at night. The lean lines of his body. The quiet intensity of his attention. The way he says my name—Priya—like it's a word he's been waiting his whole life to learn.
I'm fifty years old. I've had lovers—plenty of them—but nothing serious in over a decade. I'd made peace with that. Made peace with being too much for most men, too old for the rest, too wrapped up in my work to care.
But Ash doesn't treat me like I'm too much.
He treats me like I'm exactly enough.
It happens on a Tuesday.
I'm elbow-deep in a surgery—emergency amputation, gangrenous limb, the kind of brutal work that leaves you shaking afterward—when Ash appears at my shoulder with a cup of tea.
"You've been at it for seven hours."
"I know."
"You need a break."
"I need to finish this."
He doesn't argue. Just sets the tea where I can reach it and stays—a quiet, solid presence at my back while I work through the night.
When I finally close, when the patient is stable and sleeping and I've stripped off my gloves and my hands have stopped shaking, he's still there.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?"
"For staying."
He looks at me—really looks, the way he's been looking for weeks—and something in his expression shifts.
"Priya."
"Ash."
"I need to tell you something."
I should stop him. Should remind him about the age gap, the power imbalance, the thousand reasons this is a terrible idea.
Instead, I say: "Tell me."
"I'm not staying because I owe you." He steps closer. Close enough that I can feel his breath, see the flutter of his pulse at his throat. "I'm staying because I can't imagine being anywhere else. Because you're the most incredible woman I've ever met. Because every time you touch me—even just to check my bandages—I feel like I'm being put back together in ways that have nothing to do with surgery."
My heart hammers against my ribs.
"You're twenty-six," I manage. "I'm fifty."
"I know."
"I'm—" I gesture at myself, at the body I've spent decades learning to love despite everything. "I'm not what you should want."
"You're exactly what I want." He cups my face in his hands—rough hands, runner's hands, hands that have killed and are learning to heal. "Priya. I've spent my whole life running. You're the first thing that's made me want to stop."
I should say no.
I say yes.
He kisses like he's drowning.
Like I'm air, and he's been underwater his whole life, and this is the first breath he's ever taken. His hands find my hips—grip, squeeze, pull me against him—and I feel twenty years dissolve into nothing.
"Bed," I gasp against his mouth. "Now."
We don't make it to the bed.
We make it to the surgical table instead—cleared, sterilized, cold metal against my back as he lifts me onto it with a strength that makes me gasp. He's still healing, shouldn't be doing this, but when I try to protest he silences me with his mouth.
"I've spent three weeks watching you save lives," he breathes against my throat. "Watching your hands work miracles. Watching your body move and wanting—God, Priya, you have no idea how much I've wanted—"
"Show me."
He shows me.
His mouth finds every inch of me. The soft curve of my belly—he kisses it like it's sacred. The thick rolls at my sides—his hands grip them like handles, holding me steady while his tongue traces lower. The heavy fall of my breasts—he buries his face between them, groans like he's found religion.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he says, and it doesn't sound like a line. It sounds like truth.
When he finally pushes inside me, I understand why they call me Overflow.
Because there's too much—too much sensation, too much pleasure, too much of everything I'd told myself I didn't need anymore. I'm overflowing, spilling over, drowning in sensation while this beautiful broken boy moves inside me like he's trying to heal me the way I healed him.
I come three times before he does.
Each time, he watches my face like he's memorizing it. Like my pleasure is the most important thing in the world.
When he finally lets go—buried deep, my thick thighs clenched around his hips—he says my name like a prayer.
Priya. Priya. Priya.
After, we lie tangled on the surgical table—uncomfortable, ridiculous, perfect.
"So," I say, tracing patterns on his chest. "About your debt."
He laughs. "I was wondering when you'd bring that up."
"Thirty thousand credits. Plus interest."
"How do you want me to pay?"
I prop myself up to look at him. He's smiling—loose, open, younger than I've ever seen him.
"Stay," I tell him. "Work with me. Learn what I know. And when you've learned enough to save lives on your own—when you've paid back every credit in work and skill and dedication—you can decide if you want to leave."
"And if I don't want to leave?"
"Then you stay anyway." I lean down, kiss him soft. "And we see what happens."
His hand finds my cheek. Strokes gently.
"I'm not going anywhere, Priya. Debt or no debt. You're stuck with me."
"That sounds suspiciously like a commitment."
"It is." His grey eyes are serious now, all the humor faded. "I meant what I said. I spent my whole life running. But you—you're the first thing I've ever wanted to run toward."
I should be skeptical. Should protect myself. Should remember all the reasons this can't last.
Instead, I kiss him again.
And somewhere in the Undercity of Neo-Delhi, a fifty-year-old surgeon with more curves than most men can handle learns that too much is exactly right—when you find someone who's hungry enough to appreciate the feast.