UNPOPULAR OPINION: A lot of "mental health issues" disappear when bills are paid, rent is secure, and the fridge is full. Peace is expensive. And pretending money doesn't affect mental health is privilege.
one shot ✮ michael robinavitch x resident!reader ✮ 18+
summary: when robby leaves pittsburgh for a three month sabbatical, you’re left house-sitting his apartment. what starts as the occasional check-in text quickly becomes part of your daily routine, and somewhere between late night phone calls, shared photos and thousands of miles apart, neither of you realise you’re falling until it’s far too late to stop.
tags: age-gap but not mentioned massively, long distance, robby is yearning, friends to lovers, slow burn, texting, photo texts, eventual phone sex, masturbation, dirty talk, happy ending.
wc: 12.8k
a/n: i haven't included any visuals of the reader in place of where selfies are sent bc i want this to be inclusive for anyone who reads. also sorry for some of the gaps / spacing between texts n paragraphs, i hate the tumblr word block limit and ANOTHER sorry if the pics aren't transparent. i reached the end of my tether at this point
✮
"Silver key is lobby, brass is front door." The bunch jingled between his fingers. "This one is for the mailbox, you can just leave anything that comes in on the side."
You stood in front of Robby with your arms folded, letting him run through his spiel even though you were a grown woman and could probably figure out which key got you through which door. Still, you nodded along, even made a joke about taking notes that seemed to fall flat, and then he was pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket with four digits scribbled across it.
"This is the alarm code-”
"Jesus, what neighbourhood do you live in again?"
"You don't have to use it, but a young woman staying alone? I want you to feel safe."
He handed you the note. That felt sweet.
You weren't entirely sure how you'd ended up being the one house-sitting for Robby while he disappeared on a three month sabbatical. You were the newest resident, barely eight months into your time at PTMC, but for whatever reason he seemed to trust you. He liked the way you taught, how patient you were with the med students, how you somehow managed to balance nurturing them without letting them walk all over you.
You'd been a little intimidated by him when you first arrived. Robby didn't take mistakes lightly. If you fucked up, you fucked up. There was no sugar coating it.
But he'd turned out to be a better teacher than you'd expected, taking you under his wing and dragging you into procedures most residents would have had to fight to get near. Sometimes you wanted to call it favouritism but it was probably just him doing his job. Probably.
"Anything else I need to know?" you asked. "Weird neighbours, paranormal activity, stalker exes?"
You tried to keep a straight face, only for the corners of your mouth to betray you.
He shook his head, laughing. "You sure you're okay doing this?"
"Are you kidding? This is gonna be like a vacation for me."
Robby nodded once, seemingly satisfied, and dropped the keys into your palm.
"Good. Call me if you need anything."
He started backing away towards the chaos of the ER. "Hey, remember. No parties, no pets, no boyfriends. Yours or anybody else's."
You scoffed, not quite loud enough for him to hear. Party? Required more than three friends. Pets? Required energy. And boyfriend? Don't even go there.
You didn't see Robby again before he left. Maybe the apartment handover had counted as a goodbye, or maybe the ER had simply done what it always did and swallowed every spare second before anyone got the chance to wave him off into the sunset.
Either way, all you could really focus on right now was three whole months without roommates and a bed bigger than a single. Happy days.
-
You managed to slip off shift without attracting any attention from the nurses or the night shift. Robby had said the only person he'd told about the house-sitting arrangement was Abbot. If you wanted to tell people, you could, but he didn't particularly care either way.
You decided to keep it quiet.
Work wasn't really where you made friends. You had three good ones on the outside but that was mostly it. Everyone was nice enough in the ER, and there had been the occasional invitation for drinks after a shift, but by seven o'clock you were usually too exhausted to be anything but horizontal.
Your circle stayed small, mainly Mckay and Ellis within the hospital.
You worked with Cassie every day and had become close over the months, and Parker had been your person during those brutal night shift rotations when you first arrived in Pittsburgh.
Either way, you made it to Robby's building without interception. Silver key for the lobby and brass for the apartment. Just like he'd said.
The building itself was nice. Clean hallways, warm lighting, planters hanging in the windows. The kind of place that felt looked after without trying too hard about it. The apartment was even nicer. Or maybe it just felt huge compared to the place you shared with four other girls.
"Well, fuck." The words slipped out before you could stop them as you flicked on the light switch.
The front door opened into a small hallway that led into a spacious living room, all exposed brick and worn hardwood floors. A brown leather sofa sat opposite a huge TV, surrounded by shelves packed with books and an almost concerning number of CDs.
You drifted towards them automatically, scanning album titles as you went. Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Jeff Buckley. A laugh escaped you.
"Checks out."
Your finger brushed across the collection before you moved on, abandoning your investigation in favour of something far more important.
Bed.
The guest room had already been made up for you, fresh sheets stretched neatly across the mattress and extra towels folded at the end like you were checking into a hotel instead of crashing in your attending's spare room. It made you smile.
Maybe your standards for grand gestures were embarrassingly low, but between that and the hundred dollars waiting on the kitchen counter with a note that read for anything you need, you couldn't help it.
There was still plenty left to explore. The contents of his fridge, the bookshelves, photo albums (or lack thereof) and most definitely the bedside drawers. But not tonight.
You peeled off your scrubs, barely managing to change before exhaustion caught up with you. Within minutes you were under the covers, eyes heavy, asleep before your head had properly settled into the pillow.
-
Turns out this house-sitting gig was absolute heaven.
Two days in and it was already starting to feel less like a favour and more like a reward.
Today was your day off. You'd actually eaten breakfast instead of inhaling a protein bar, spent the afternoon doing absolutely nothing productive and met up with a couple of friends for drinks that evening. The friends who weren't doctors, nurses or in any way connected to the hospital.
Then you'd come home, changed into something comfortable and settled onto Robby's sofa with your book.
Life was good.
So far, the hundred dollars he'd left behind had contributed to a half-full fridge and a bottle of wine, which felt perfectly reasonable considering Robby had specifically said it was for anything you needed. It was somewhere around chapter twenty-three of your hot romance fantasy novel (not one of Robby's) when your phone buzzed beside you.
Robby:
Hey, hope you're good. Just checking in to make sure everything's okay?
You smiled before you could stop yourself. He was so proper. So formal. Even his texts somehow read like work emails. Still, you appreciated him checking since you honestly hadn't expected to hear from him at all.
The whole point of this trip was supposed to be getting away. You'd heard him say more than once that he wanted to leave Pittsburgh and everyone in it behind for a while. No calls. No emails. As close to no contact as he could realistically get. According to Robby, that was the only way to properly clear your head.
The one exception had always been Abbot, maybe even Dana. Apparently now it was the three of you.
You:
all good! your apartment is insane by the way
and thank u for the money, u didn't have to!
You took a sip of wine as you hit send. A reply came almost immediately.
Robby:
You're doing me a huge favour!
Spend wisely…
A laugh escaped you. You were a little tipsy by now. Not drunk, just pleasantly warm from the two glasses of pinot you'd had at the bar combined with the one currently sitting beside you. Which, admittedly, was a lot considering you barely drank.
Without thinking too hard about it, you snapped a picture of the glass balanced on the coffee table. Then you zoomed in slightly. Mostly to crop out the fact you weren't using a coaster.
You:
wise you say???
The typing bubbles appeared almost instantly. Then disappeared. Then appeared again. You frowned at the screen.
For some reason, a flicker of self-consciousness crept in. Maybe the photo was weird. Maybe the lipstick mark on the rim was weird. Maybe it was weird to be sitting in your attending's apartment drinking wine and texting him on a Friday night.
Before you could overthink it further, another message appeared.
Robby:
Naughty!
Your stomach flipped. It was ridiculous. The word itself wasn't even remotely suggestive. If anything, it was probably about the coaster.
But between the wine and the book currently sitting open beside you, the message seemed to land somewhere deep in your belly. You stared at it for a second longer than necessary.
"Time for bed." You said it out loud, as though hearing it might make it true.
Leaving the glass on the coffee table with a single sip left, you gathered your book and headed for the guest room.
-
Robby stared at the photo for longer than he meant to. Not at the wine or the coffee table and certainly not at the missing coaster.
His attention had landed on the faint lipstick mark circling the rim of the glass and stayed there for a second too long before he caught himself. He sat back against the headboard of the hotel bed, somewhere around Chicago, after a long day on the road.
The room was forgettable. Beige walls. Generic artwork. The low hum of an air conditioner fighting for its life in the corner. Exactly the kind of place he'd expected to find himself in.
He'd only been checking in. That was all.
You were doing him a favour and it seemed polite to make sure everything was going smoothly.
Except now he found himself picturing you in his apartment. Curled up on the couch, feet tucked beneath you. A glass of wine in one hand and whatever book had managed to distract you from answering his text in the other.
His apartment. His couch. His glass.
He exhaled through his nose. It was ridiculous. Of course you were there, that was the entire point. For the next three months you were going to be using his mugs, watching his TV, standing under his shower and sleeping in the guest room.
None of that should have felt strange. And it didn't. Not really. It had just been that split second when the photograph appeared on his screen and his brain had connected the image to a real person rather than the vague idea of someone looking after his place.
Someone he'd see almost every day at work. Someone currently sitting exactly where he usually sat. Robby shook his head once, more at himself than anything else.
Then he typed out the reply.
Naughty!
The second it was sent, he dropped the phone onto the bedside table and turned off the lamp. Tomorrow he'd have another few hours of driving ahead of him. That was what he should be thinking about.
Not a lipstick stain on a wine glass.
-
It was strange how different work felt when you had somewhere peaceful to come home to.
The shifts were still long and the patients exhausting. None of that changed. But when there were no roommate arguments waiting for you at the end of the day, no mountain of dishes that didn't belong to you and no obnoxiously loud sex through the wall at midnight, everything felt a little more manageable.
You had energy again. Energy to come home and shower. Energy to cook. Energy to actually enjoy your evenings instead of collapsing face-first into bed.
You'd always been a good cook. Your mom had made sure of that. While other kids were watching TV, you'd been standing beside her in the kitchen learning how to chop onions without crying and season food without measuring every ingredient.
Your family tree contained exactly zero Italians, but your signature dish was carbonara. Real carbonara. The proper kind. The kind that required ingredients expensive enough to make you wince in the grocery aisle.
Which was exactly why you rarely made it. But with Robby's hundred dollars quietly subsidising your lifestyle, you figured you deserved a treat.
The plan was going perfectly until you tried to turn on the hob.
"Come on."
You twisted the dial until it clicked. Nothing. You tried again.
Another click. Still nothing.
By the fourth attempt, you were staring at the appliance like it had personally offended you.
"Am I losing my mind?"
Getting a burner lit should not have been this difficult. You glanced at your phone sitting on the counter.
No. Absolutely not.
You were not texting Robby because you couldn't operate a stove. You were a doctor, a functioning adult. You could figure this out.
Another click. Nothing. "For fuck's sake." The curse echoed around the kitchen. A few seconds later, you picked up your phone.
You:
i don't want you to think i'm completely incompetent but i cannot work your hob…
Three states away, Robby's phone lit up. He'd spent most of the day hiking through some forest outside Rockford before ending the evening under a shower hot enough to steam up the entire bathroom.
He walked over to the phone, towel slung low around his waist, hair still damp. The text made him laugh.
Robby:
You have to turn and press. It's more of a button than a switch!
Also don't worry, I couldn't work it for the first six months I lived there because of that…
It was strangely comforting to know a physician widely regarded as one of the smartest people in Pittsburgh had also been defeated by a kitchen appliance.
Following his instructions, you pushed the dial inward and a blue flame immediately burst to life.
"Oh thank god."
You set a pot of water on one burner and poured oil into a pan on the other before reaching for your phone again.
You:
life saver. i was about to starve
and the great robby also not knowing how to operate a stove makes me feel better so thank u
Back in his hotel room, Robby laughed quietly at the screen. A small smile lingered as he reread your message.
He'd answered your question, technically the conversation could end there and it probably should. Instead, his thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a second.
Robby:
What are you cooking anyway?
You saw the message while stirring egg and cheese into freshly drained pasta. Not now. Carbonara required concentration and you weren't risking scrambled eggs for anybody.
Five minutes later, when the sauce was silky and clinging perfectly to the noodles, you twisted a generous serving onto a plate and admired your handiwork.
Then you grabbed your phone.
You:
carbonara!
You attached the picture before hitting send.
The photo sat open on his screen for a moment. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected, certainly not that. It looked better than anything he'd eaten in the last week.
After a moment he tapped the heart reaction and tossed the phone onto the mattress beside him. He ignored the part of himself that wanted to ask for the recipe.
-
The next two days brought two hellish shifts.
First a mass casualty then a stomach bug that seemed determined to take down half the ER.
Dana did her best to pull people in for extra coverage, Abbot came in early and somehow ended up working a double, but even that barely kept things afloat. It was chaos. The kind that left you running entirely on adrenaline until your body remembered it was human.
You finally made it home just before eleven: a personal record. The worst part was that when you dragged yourself up the stairs, peeled off your scrubs and collapsed into bed, you couldn't sleep.
You were trapped in that miserable state of overtiredness where your body was begging for rest while your brain stubbornly refused to switch off.
You hadn't looked at your phone once during the shift. Not during the mass casualty or the endless stream of patients. Not even while inhaling a granola bar somewhere around hour twelve. It stayed buried in your pocket until you stepped through the apartment door.
It wasn't until you were under the covers that you finally saw the notification waiting for you.
Robby:
I had diner food for the third night in a row tonight, your carbonara is making me look bad…
He'd given you a rough outline of his route before he left and, if you remembered correctly, he should be somewhere near Minneapolis by now. An hour behind. Not too late.
You:
trust me, my carbonara is the least impressive thing about my week
i just survived a mass casualty and half the department trying to die from a stomach bug
diner food sounds peaceful honestly
Robby:
Mass casualty?
You:
three car pile up
and before you ask everyone survived
mostly because abbot worked about seventeen hours straight
Robby:
I leave for one week…
You:
i was waiting for someone to blame
Robby:
Blame Dana…
You:
do you think i have a death wish???
that's not the attending wisdom i was hoping for
Robby:
🤷🏻♂️ ️
You stare at the screen. He's using emojis now? Something about that feels strangely significant.
The conversation probably should have ended three messages ago. Instead, another text appears a few seconds later.
Robby:
You okay?
The question catches you off guard. Not because it's particularly personal, just because he seems to actually mean it. You stare at the message for a moment before replying.
You:
yeah
just tired
too tired to sleep which is apparently a thing
Robby:
Been there. Your body's exhausted but the brain's stress response overrides it
Makes for a very restless night
You:
oh good
thought i was dying
Robby:
You're a doctor..
You always think you're dying
A quiet laugh escapes you. You weren't entirely sure why any of this felt comforting.
After one of the worst shifts you'd worked in months, you were lying awake in your attending's apartment, texting your boss from beneath the covers.
On paper, it sounded ridiculous but the knot that had been sitting between your shoulders since this morning was slowly beginning to loosen.
Your eyes felt heavier, your body sank deeper into the mattress and the first time all night, sleep actually seemed possible.
You:
night robby x
You hit send before thinking too hard about it. A second passed. Then two. Then your phone lit up.
Robby:
Sleep well!
You smiled at the screen. By the time you set your phone on the bedside table, your eyes were already closing.
Robby didn't go to sleep straight away.
Instead he sat against the headboard, phone still in his hand, staring at the open conversation. The room was quiet. Outside, somewhere beyond the hotel curtains, a truck rumbled along the interstate.
His thumb drifted across the screen and paused, hovering over the last message.
night robby x
Just one stupid little letter. It probably meant absolutely nothing. For all he knew, you signed every text that way. You were exhausted when you'd sent it, practically half asleep and already drifting off. He knew that. So why was he still looking at it?
With a quiet huff of amusement at himself, Robby locked the screen.
Tomorrow he'd drive another few hundred miles, stay at another hotel, eat another mediocre meal. Continue doing exactly what he'd left Pittsburgh to do.
And yet, as he finally switched off the lamp and settled back against the pillows, he found himself wondering whether you'd text him tomorrow.
The thought stayed with him longer than it should have. Long enough that sleep didn't come quite as quickly as usual.
-
The next few days settled into something that almost resembled normality (or at least as normal as life in the ER ever got).
The stomach bug finally burned its way through the department, leaving a trail of exhaustion and empty electrolyte bottles in its wake. Everyone looked tired and complained constantly. You included.
It was nearing the end of another shift when your phone buzzed in your pocket.
You ignored it only for it to buzz again.
And because every doctor secretly believed they were the most important person in the building, your brain immediately convinced itself it could be an emergency.
You pulled it out while waiting for the elevator.
Robby:
Rode twenty minutes off route for this
You opened it. Then frowned. Then laughed.
You:
what the fuck is that
Robby:
The world's largest prairie chicken
You:
of course it is
you rode twenty minutes out of your way to see a giant chicken?
Robby:
Yes.
You:
no further questions your honour
The elevator doors opened. You stepped inside, still smiling at your phone. Another message appeared.
Robby:
Thought you'd appreciate it!
Your lips curled at the suggestion he had taken the picture with you in mind.
You:
i'm genuinely concerned about how you're spending this sabbatical
Robby:
That's fair
For the record I did also spend six hours riding through some very beautiful countryside today
You:
and yet it was the giant chicken you sent
Robby:
Correct.
You laughed, probably too loud for the setting as others in the lift glanced over before you quickly looked away.
You:
well i'm glad my attending is making good use of his time
Robby:
You laughed didn't you?
You:
immediately
The elevator dinged and people shuffled out around you while you lingered behind, looking down at the conversation. At the completely pointless exchange.
The kind of conversation that served no purpose whatsoever and yet somehow it had made the end of a miserable shift feel lighter.
Robby:
Worth the detour then
You shook your head but the smile wouldn't disappear. It stayed with you all the way to the parking lot.
Across the county, Robby sat on the edge of his hotel bed with the television murmuring quietly in the background.
The hotels he was staying in were nice, he had the money to stay in much nicer but there wasn't much point when only passing through.
The final destination was a cabin in Alberta. That's where he'd spend the rest of the sabbatical when he got there, that he had spared no expense on.
But he didn't find himself thinking of his trip. The conversation still sat open on his phone. Nothing important, just the giant chicken staring back at him amongst a handful of messages and a stupid amount of amusement considering the subject matter.
After a minute, he locked the screen and set the phone aside. Then despite himself, he found his gaze drifting back towards it as though another message might somehow appear.
He'd be crossing into North Dakota soon and if he happened to see anything ridiculous along the way…
Well he knew exactly who he'd send it to.
-
The next few days followed suit. You and Robby started speaking like it was part of your routines without ever actually agreeing to it.
Nothing constant or heavy, just small check-ins threaded through the day. Snapshots from the road. Snapshots from the ER.
Things you'd caught out of the corner of your eye like the giant pigeon on a fire escape outside the hospital that made you stop mid-conversation just to take a picture.
Food also became a kind of currency between you. The home-cooked meals you'd send, still steaming on the plate whilst he'd drop his roadside breakfasts, gas station coffee, or whatever local specialty he'd found himself staring at that day.
You started waiting for the messages without really meaning to. Both of you did.
Robby:
This morning's view
You:
versus my morning's view
—
You:
i'm going old school and listening to your CDs
you have good taste old man
Robby:
I'll ignore those last two words and take it as a compliment...
—
Robby:
Got caught in a thunderstorm on the road today
You:
😭😭😭 😭 😭 omg
just know i'd be laughing if i were there
—
You:
robby
a guy came in today with an action figure up his ass
and dana made whitaker deal with it
Robby:
Nothing says good evening quite like a HIPAA violation
You:
i know you won't tell x
—
Somewhere between shifts and miles, the apartment stopped being the reason you spoke. It just became something that existed in the background, as if you'd both forgotten the house-sitting gig and this was all normal.
An excuse that had quietly turned into a habit. You didn't really notice the shift until one night you didn't text him at all.
Not on purpose, because of pure exhaustion. A shift that ran too long, a body too tired to think in sentences.
And on his end, Robby found himself checking his phone more than he liked to admit. Each time with a little more irritation than the last.
"Stupid." He muttered under his breath, tossing the phone face-down on the bed.
It didn't stay there long since he picked it back up a minute later.
His trip was still everything it was supposed to be. Long stretches of highway and peaceful mornings. Mountains, towns, weather that changed without warning.
It was all the kind of distance he'd been looking for and for the most part, the noise in his head had settled. It wasn't gone, he needed more than a solo road trip to fix that but it was quieter.
It was at its quietest when you text. Or when he took a picture and thought, without really meaning to, that you'd probably laugh at it.
Then his phone buzzed.
You:
sorry
today's been awful
The irritation disappeared immediately and he sat down properly on the edge of the bed.
For a moment, he stared at the message longer than he needed to. His first instinct was practical, to ask what happened and if you were okay. But it was nearly midnight your time and he knew, instinctively, that whatever you needed wasn't a barrage of questions.
Robby:
Do you want to talk about it?
You:
think i just need bed
speak tomorrow
He stared at the screen a moment longer than he meant to, leaving the chat open, your name sitting at the top of it. He didn't reply.
There wasn't anything else to say that wouldn't feel like too much.
-
The next day didn't actually bring a text. Or the day after that.
Shift patterns blurred together in the ER anyway, time measured in admissions and discharge paperwork rather than hours. You were exhausted, that was your excuse for not texting Robby. But by the second night, you were wondering what his excuse was.
It wasn't anything dramatic, just… absent.
No photos from the road or pointless updates about whatever strange thing he'd stopped to look at. There'd been no diner food commentary that made you roll your eyes while smiling at your phone.
You told yourself it made sense. Robby was on a bike somewhere between states and you were drowning in back-to-back shifts. There wasn't always going to be time.
Still, your phone felt heavier in your pocket than usual.
On his end, Robby told himself the same thing.
He'd spent most of the day on the road, miles of open highway stretching out ahead of him, the kind of silence he'd gone looking for. It should have felt good and it did, mostly. But every time he stopped for fuel, or pulled off to check a map, his hand drifted to his phone out of habit.
There he would find no new messages and he told himself that was normal.
It was normal. Until it wasn't.
-
It happened on a night that started like any other.
You'd left the hospital later than you meant to, fatigue settling into your bones in that familiar way that made everything feel slightly delayed.
The apartment was quiet when you got back.
You climbed the stairs and only realised something was wrong when your keys didn't turn properly in the lock. You tried it once, twice, three times and nothing. You paused then tried again but the lock didn't budge.
"Oh come on," you muttered under your breath.
You stared at the door for a second, exhaustion making it harder to think than it should have.
Of course this was happening now.
You pulled your phone out, looking who to burden with your troubles and force to come to your rescue. For a second, you considered calling Mckay but her shift had been just as rough as yours and Ellis' night was only just starting in the ER, suddenly you were out of options.
Your thumb hovered. Then moved.
In some hotel in one of the Dakotas, Robby's phone lit up on the bedside. His brow furrowed slightly, not expecting to see your name across the screen.
"Hello?"
Your voice came through slightly breathless and oh so tired.
"Hi," you said. "I have a problem."
He sat up a little straighter without thinking. "Are you okay?"
You let out a short laugh that didn't quite sound amused. "Your lock hates me." There was a pause.
Then, quieter, "Which one?"
"Front door."
"Right," he said. "Stay there."
"I am there."
"No," he corrected. "I mean don't try anything else. Just- stay."
You leaned back against the wall, sliding down slightly until you were sitting on the floor outside his apartment door.
"Robby," you said, "I am physically incapable of breaking your door at this point. I'm too tired to commit crimes."
That earned a small exhale of something that might have been a laugh.
"Good," he said. "I prefer it that way."
There was movement on his end. Fabric shifting, something being set down.
"Okay," he added. "Walk me through what happened."
-
The locksmith said he'd be there in twenty minutes which, judging by his tone, probably meant thirty. You thanked him anyway before ending the call and letting your head fall back against the apartment door.
"Well," you sighed, stretching your legs out in front of you. "Guess I live here now."
The laugh that came through the speaker was soft. You'd heard Robby laugh a hundred times at work, usually in passing conversations or when Dana pulled it out of him, but hearing it through the phone felt strangely personal.
"Could be worse."
"How?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"I'll let you know when I think of something."
You smiled. For a while, neither of you said anything.
The silence wasn't awkward, which surprised you. You could hear faint traffic somewhere on his end of the line, the distant sound of a television through a hotel wall perhaps.
"Where are you?" you asked eventually.
“Just outside Sioux Falls."
"Fancy..." You shifted against the wall, tucking one knee up towards your chest. "How's the trip?"
There was a pause. Not because he wasn't going to answer, but because he seemed to actually think about it.
"Good." You waited. "Actually, really good."
"Wow."
"What?"
"I don't think I've ever heard you sound that enthusiastic about anything."
"That's not true."
"Robby, I've worked with you for eight months."
"And?"
"The highlight of your emotional range is usually a nod."
That earned a proper laugh. The kind that made you grin before you'd even realised you were doing it. Why were your cheeks getting hot at the idea of making him laugh?
"That's harsh."
"I think you mean accurate."
"I'll have you know I've been having a great time."
“The giant chicken gave it away."
"Don't mock the chicken."
"I'll mock the chicken all I want."
He sighed dramatically. "This is exactly why I send you things."
Your smile lingered, you weren't entirely sure why. Like even if you wanted to get rid of it you couldn't. Maybe because it was nice knowing someone saw something during their day and thought to share it with you. Or maybe because lately, you'd been doing the same thing.
"Seriously though," you said. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."
The teasing slipped away a little and you could hear it in his voice when he answered.
"Yeah. I think I needed it more than I realised."
You looked down at the floor. You'd thought that yourself. The difference in him was obvious, even through a screen. The texts were lighter. There was an ease to him that hadn't existed back in Pittsburgh.
"You sound happier."
He didn't answer immediately.
"Maybe."
It wasn't much of a response. Coming from Robby, it felt like a confession.
The conversation drifted after that. Work came up eventually, because it always did. You told him about the latest departmental disaster and he laughed harder than he probably should have at Whitaker's expense. Then somehow you ended up talking about music, and when you admitted you'd been making your way through his CD collection, he spent five minutes defending an album you'd called objectively terrible.
Before either of you realised it, headlights swept across the apartment parking lot. You glanced through the stairwell window to see a white van pulling in.
"Oh."
"What?"
"That's him." You pushed yourself to your feet, brushing imaginary dust from your scrubs. "The locksmith."
"Right."
You checked the time. Nearly forty minutes since you'd spoken to him on the phone.
For a moment, neither of you said anything. Then you laughed softly.
"I don't think we've ever actually spoken like this before."
"Spoken like what?"
"Just…" You searched for the right words. "Talked."
He huffed a laugh. "We talk all the time."
"About work."
"Hmm. True."
You shook your head. "I know more about a giant prairie chicken than I do about you."
"Now that's probably not true."
"It definitely is."
The locksmith was already making his way towards the building entrance. You tightened your grip on the phone.
"Thanks for staying on the phone with me."
The words slipped out before you could think too hard about them and for a second, there was only the sound of his breathing on the other end.
"Of course." Robby said it with such ease, as if there'd never been any question about it. Something in your chest warmed at that.
"I should go."
"Yeah. You should."
Neither of you hung up immediately. You smiled even though he couldn't see.
"Night, Robby."
"Night."
-
Robby eventually made it to Alberta, trading motels and roadside diners for a cabin tucked between trees and more open sky than you'd ever seen in one place. The photos changed after that. It was less giant roadside attractions and more mountains, lakes so still they looked painted. Sunrises taken from a porch with a mug of coffee balanced somewhere just out of frame.
Your own contributions remained considerably less scenic.
You:
this mornings view
Robby:
Stunning!
You:
i know
thinking of getting it framed
Robby:
You should. Really ties a room together
The conversations drifted in and out of your days. Sometimes twenty messages. Sometimes two.
But there was rarely a day that passed without hearing from him. It had become your normal and that probably should have concerned you more than it did.
One afternoon you were halfway through a grocery shop when your phone buzzed.
Robby:
What's for dinner?
You snorted. Most days he was interested in what you were cooking, never quite getting over how good that carbonara looked weeks ago.
You:
demanding aren't we?
Robby:
I've been living off campfire food
Let me live vicariously
You balanced the basket awkwardly on your hip. Typing with one hand was becoming increasingly impossible so after a moment you sighed and held down the microphone button.
"Okay, so technically I haven't decided yet," you said, navigating around a woman studying avocados with suspicious intensity. "But I was thinking maybe chicken, potatoes, something easy because I had a twelve hour shift and Mckay spent most of it arguing with a guy who was convinced Red Bull counts as water."
You stopped recording and sent it, immediately forgetting about it as you continued to shop.
Robby was sitting on the cabin porch when the notification appeared. A voice note.
For a second he just looked at it before pressing play. Your voice spilled through the speaker, lighter than he was used to hearing at work, less hurried.
He could hear the wheels of a shopping cart somewhere in the background, people talking. The automatic doors opening and closing. It felt strangely intimate. Like being invited into a moment he wasn't supposed to be part of.
Before he knew it, the recording had ended and he found himself smiling Then replaying the first few seconds just to hear it again.
Robby:
Red bull absolutely counts as water
You:
you're part of the problem
-
A few days later you sent him a photo of a coffee shop you'd stumbled into before work. The picture was supposed to be of the ridiculous chalkboard menu, pretentious and completely overpriced.
Unfortunately, the reflection in the window caught most of your face and you didn't even notice before pressing send.
But Robby did.
He was halfway through replying when he stopped and stared at the photo. Then stared a little longer.
It wasn't as though he'd forgotten what you looked like, he'd worked beside you for months, seen you almost every day and yet somehow seeing your face appear unexpectedly on his screen felt different. Like it was more personal than bumping into you across an ER.
He zoomed in without meaning to then immediately felt ridiculous.
Robby:
That coffee costs more than my first apartment
You:
i knew you'd focus on the important issue
He didn't mention the photo but it stayed open on his screen longer than necessary.
The next Saturday night, you went out with friends.
The three you socialised with maybe once a month, the ones you'd gone out with on your first week at Robby's.
The evening disappeared beneath cocktails, bad music and stories that got funnier with every retelling. By the time you got home, your shoes were in one hand and your keys were in the other.
Your phone buzzed before you'd even made it upstairs.
Robby:
Survived?
You:
barely
my feet are filing formal complaints
Robby:
Worth it?
You:
yeah
free drinks always help
There was a pause before the typing bubbles appeared then they seemed to disappear before appearing once more.
Robby:
Free drinks?
You:
some guy at the bar bought them
either he was being nice or I looked desperately in need of a margarita
Robby stared at the screen. For reasons he couldn't quite explain, he found himself reading the message twice.
Some guy.
An entirely normal sentence since people bought drinks for each other every day. It meant absolutely nothing. Yet his thumb hovered over the keyboard.
Robby:
Which was it?
The message sent before he could overthink it and he immediately regretted it. Not because it was inappropriate, just because he sounded interested.
And he wasn't sure why he was interested.
You:
definitely the margarita
he started talking about crypto ten minutes in
That pulled a laugh out of him. An actual laugh.
Robby:
My condolences
You:
thank you
it was a difficult time
The conversation moved on after that. But later, after you'd gone to sleep and the cabin had settled into silence around him, Robby found himself thinking about the message again.
Not the drinks. Not the guy. But the fact that he'd wanted to know. And the fact he still wasn't entirely sure why.
-
You hadn't really talked about the house sitting arrangement to anyone at work.
It never seemed relevant and, if you were honest, you quite liked having something that belonged entirely to you. That was until Abbot casually asked how it was going in front of Parker and Shen. Both of them had turned so quickly you would have thought they'd rehearsed it.
John loudly slurped through his straw.
You immediately regretted coming into work.
You'd spent the next five minutes trying to explain that, yes, you were staying at Robby's apartment and no, it wasn't a big deal. At the same time, you were reassuring Abbot that everything was fine and that the place was still standing.
Parker wasn't convinced. She waited until the handover was done and everyone had started drifting away before falling into step beside you as you gathered your things from your locker.
You'd only just pulled your phone out when it buzzed. The smile arrived before you could stop it and Parker saw immediately.
"Message from your boyfriend?"
"Just Robby-”
You stopped and looked up to see her already grinning.
"Oh."
"Oh indeed."
"Haha. Very funny."
"I'm just saying," she replied, holding her hands up in mock surrender. "That man hasn't been here for nearly two months and I've heard his name more than I have some of the attendings who actually work here."
You rolled your eyes. Except the comment lingered because you didn't talk about him that much. Did you?
Sure, you texted most days, you snapped pictures when something made you laugh. You answered when he called and never made a secret of it because, in your mind, there was nothing to hide.
But maybe Parker had a point.
You were always quick to tell people where he was, what he'd been up to, what ridiculous thing he'd sent you that morning. You were also one of maybe three people who actually knew how his sabbatical was going and that felt strangely significant when you stopped to think about it.
Which was exactly why you decided not to think about it. Instead, you bumped your shoulder into Parker's arm.
"Leave me alone."
"Never."
You laughed despite yourself, waved goodbye to everyone and headed out through the main doors.
-
Even without a department full of doctors reminding him, Robby found himself thinking about you more often than he probably should.
Alberta was beautiful, exactly what he'd imagined.
The mountains seemed endless, the lakes impossibly clear and every evening the sky stretched so wide it barely looked real.
He'd come here to breathe. To remember what it felt like to wake up without immediately carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
For the first time in years, it was working and yet every time he stumbled across a view that took his breath away, he caught himself reaching for his phone.
The bear he'd spotted at the edge of a trail or the river he'd nearly slipped into while trying to take a photo. The sunset that turned the entire lake gold. All of it was filed away somewhere in the back of his mind. Something to show you, to tell you later.
He enjoyed those moments for himself, he really did, but there was always a second thought afterwards. A quiet one of she'd like this.
And that was dangerous territory for a man who had left Pittsburgh specifically to be alone.
-
Today had been a bad day for absolutely no reason. Work hadn't been worse than usual. There was no mass casualty or outbreak, no disaster waiting for you.
You'd left almost on time and the handover had been unusually smooth yet, somehow, by the time you found yourself curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine balanced on your knee, you felt like you might burst into tears.
You probably wouldn't but it was comforting to know you could if you wanted to.
The apartment was quiet. A CD hummed softly in the background while the evening light spilled through the windows. You'd been enjoying the solitude for weeks now.
Your phone lit up. A text from Robby. It was just a small update about his day, a picture of a lake with a note underneath telling you there was a viewpoint about a mile from the cabin that you would absolutely love.
You stared at it for a second and then pressed call without thinking.
The phone rang twice.
"Hey, you okay?" He'd answered immediately.
Not because he'd been expecting the call but quite the opposite.
You almost smiled at the concern in his voice.
"Hey. Yeah, I'm good."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." A pause. "Can you talk?"
On the other side of the continent, Robby was sitting on the cabin porch with a beer bottle in hand, watching the sky darken over the mountains.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I can talk."
You exhaled. You weren't entirely sure why. Just hearing his voice had already made something feel lighter.
"Bad day?" he asked gently.
"A little."
"Want to talk about it?"
You considered it.
"Not really."
He laughed quietly. "Fair enough."
You took a sip of wine.
"Does it sound stupid if I say I just wanted to hear your voice?"
The words slipped out before you could stop them.
For a moment, all you could hear was the wind moving through the trees on his end of the line. Then Robby shifted in his chair.
"Well," he said, amusement colouring his voice, "I sure feel special."
You groaned. "Don't make it weird.”
"I'm not making it weird."
"You absolutely are."
His laugh settled something warm in your chest.
"I can tell you about the bear I saw today if you need a distraction."
You smiled. "Yes please."
And he did. He told you about the trail, about spotting movement through the trees and realising it was considerably larger than he'd first thought. Halfway through the story your phone buzzed with a picture he'd sent while still talking.
You put him on speaker to zoom in, immediately informing him that he was insane for getting that close. He disagreed.
You told him he was objectively wrong then somehow you were refilling your wine while he wandered into the kitchen for another beer and the conversation simply kept going.
Hours slipped past unnoticed. The topics changed every few minutes. Canadian wildlife became grocery shopping.
Grocery shopping became work which became Dana. Dana became the night you'd gone out with your friends. It felt effortless.
Like no matter what either of you said, the other would find it interesting, as if there were no rush to end the conversation.
Eventually, somewhere between your third glass and his third beer, Robby circled back to something you'd almost forgotten.
"So," he said casually. "Any more plans to go out and let random men buy you drinks?"
You scoffed. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds suspiciously like jealousy, Michael."
Using his first name felt deliberate. The kind of thing you couldn't take back once it left your mouth.
For a moment he didn't answer and you could almost hear him thinking.
"I think I'm just curious."
"Curious?"
"You mentioned him." His voice was careful now. "And then I spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering whether you actually liked him."
Your stomach flipped unexpectedly.
"And did you come to a conclusion?"
He laughed quietly. "Yeah."
"Which was?"
"That anyone who talks about crypto for ten minutes straight probably doesn't stand a chance."
The warmth that spread through you had nothing to do with the wine. You sank further into the sofa, smiling into your glass.
"Good answer."
For a second neither of you spoke. The silence felt different now, like an awareness blooming.
On the other end of the line, Robby stared out across the darkening lake, suddenly very conscious of the weight in his chest and the dryness in his mouth. He wasn't entirely sure when the conversation had become the best part of his day.
He was even less sure what that meant.
On your end, the wine bottle was looking considerably emptier than when the call had started.
"How much longer have you got out there anyway?" you asked eventually.
He leaned back in his chair.
"Couple more weeks."
You hummed. "A couple?"
"Three."
You did the maths automatically. Three weeks. For some reason that felt shorter than it should have.
"That's weird."
"What is?"
"You coming back."
Robby laughed softly. “I haven't left forever."
"I know."
You picked absentmindedly at the label on your wine bottle.
"Still weird though."
He understood exactly what you meant. The cabin had become normal, so had the mountains. Waking up and sending you a picture of whatever he'd found that day had become normal too.
The thought settled uncomfortably somewhere in his chest.
"Yeah," he admitted quietly. "It is."
For a moment neither of you spoke. The silence wasn't awkward, if anything, it felt too honest.
"You'll probably be sick of Pittsburgh again within forty-eight hours."
He laughed.
"Probably."
"And I'll have to move back into my shoebox apartment."
He laughed again.
"You laugh, but I've become accustomed to luxury."
"My apartment is not luxury."
"It has an en-suite."
"It does."
You smiled into your glass.
"I'm gonna miss it."
The words came out before you really thought about them and then, after a beat, you added, "The apartment, I mean."
Robby looked out across the lake. The moonlight stretched across the water in silver streaks. He wasn't entirely sure why that qualifier felt necessary.
"Yeah."
Because he was going to miss something too, he just wasn't sure it was the apartment.
"I'm glad I gave you the keys."
The words slipped out naturally.
"Because I've been such an excellent tenant?"
"Questionable."
You laughed. "Rude."
"You locked yourself out and you don't use coasters."
"That happened one time. And yes I do."
"One time that I know about. And, no you don't."
You shook your head, laughing. "So why are you glad?"
The question hung there. For the first time that evening, Robby didn't answer immediately. He could have made a joke and he probably should have but instead he found himself telling the truth.
"Because otherwise…" He trailed off and you waited. "Otherwise I don't think we'd have ever talked like this."
Something in your chest tightened, just enough to make you still. The sounds around you seemed to disappear for a second. The music, hum of the refrigerator, everything.
"Yeah."
It came out quieter than you'd intended. Because he was right.
Without the apartment, he would've stayed your attending, you his resident. You would've chatted during shifts and maybe grabbed a beer with a group after work once or twice.
But this? The hours spent on the phone, the daily messages, knowing what the other person had for dinner. Sharing parts of yourselves that had nothing to do with medicine.
None of that would've happened.
"I guess not."
Robby stared down at the bottle in his hand. His pulse felt oddly loud.
"Would've been a shame."
The words were barely above a murmur. Honest enough that neither of you quite knew what to do with them. You swallowed. Suddenly very aware of the warmth spreading through your stomach.
And not because of the wine.
Another silence settled between you but this one felt different. It felt full. Like there was something sitting quietly between the two of you that hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had and neither of you had looked directly at it until now.
"Yeah," you said softly. "It would've."
For a second, neither of you spoke, neither of you hung up either.
Somewhere between Alberta and Pittsburgh, with a lake outside one window and city lights outside the other, it felt like the conversation had shifted onto unfamiliar ground.
Not enough to turn back yet not enough to move forward. Just enough that both of you knew something had changed.
-
The next morning arrived with a headache.
Not a catastrophic one, just enough of one to remind you that two glasses of wine had somehow become four and how you clearly couldn't handle your booze anymore.
Thank god it was your day off. You'd spent most of the morning moving slowly, making a trip to the store for supplies before returning to the apartment with a bag full of groceries, painkillers and absolutely no intention of leaving the house again.
After a shower, you pulled on an oversized t-shirt, climbed into bed and put something mindless on the TV. You weren't really watching it. Your attention kept drifting back to your phone. In between doom scrolling TikTok, you kept flipping to your messages.
Nothing from Robby.
You told yourself it was normal since he was a couple of hours behind. He could still be asleep or hiking, he could be doing literally anything.
Still, your thumb hovered over the conversation and you found yourself thinking through parts of last night's call. Especially the end.
Would've been a shame.
You groaned and tossed the phone onto the bed beside you. "Get a grip."
The phone buzzed almost immediately.
You grabbed it so fast it was actually embarrassing.
Robby:
Morning
You:
afternoon actually
Robby:
Right
How's the hangover?
You:
presumptuous much?
Robby:
I'll take that as confirmation
You:
i’ve survived worse
Robby:
Doctor approved medical assessment
You:
exactly
The conversation stayed comfortably familiar at first. Small things, nothing important. What he'd done that morning and what you were doing now. The weather in Canada versus Pittsburgh. The coffee he'd burnt.
You laughed quietly at something he'd sent and snapped a quick picture in response.
Mostly intending to show him the disaster of snacks you'd surrounded yourself with on the bed.
You hit send before really looking at it.
A few moments passed, longer than usual. You frowned.
You:
???
The typing bubbles appeared.
Robby:
You know you're in that photo right?
You opened the image again. Your stomach immediately dropped.
Between the blankets and the snacks was a very obvious stretch of bare leg disappearing beneath the hem of your t-shirt. If you zoomed you could definitely see the edge of lace from your panties.
Heat crept into your cheeks.
You:
well
too late now
His reply took a little longer this time.
Robby:
Suppose it is
Something about the message felt different though you couldn't have explained why.
The conversation slowed. Not because either of you wanted it to end but because both of you seemed suddenly aware of it. Aware of each other.
You:
you're being weird
Robby:
I am not
You:
you absolutely are
Robby:
And what if I'm just thinking?
You:
dangerous
Robby:
That's rich coming from you
You laughed and the tension eased for a moment then returned just as quickly. The phone sat warm in your hand. Neither of you quite saying what was on your mind.
Both of you hovering suspiciously close to it.
Then-
A knock sounded at the apartment door. You sat upright.
"Oh for god's sake."
You:
one sec
Robby:
What?
You:
someones here
terrible timing honestly
Robby:
That sounds ominous
You:
don't go anywhere
Robby:
Wasn't planning on it
You tossed the phone onto the bed and headed for the door.
When you pulled it open, Abbot stood on the other side with two coffees in hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
"Jack?"
"Good afternoon."
You stared. He stared back.
"Why are you here?"
"Robby asked me to check the place hadn't burned down."
You folded your arms.
"And?"
Jack looked past you.
"Still standing."
By the time Abbot eventually left, the afternoon had slipped away with him. He'd actually brought you coffee because he was passing by, knew Robby cared about you and wanted to check in. Sweet actually.
Your conversation with Robby had fizzled into a couple of harmless messages before disappearing entirely which somehow felt worse. Because now you were thinking about it and judging by the phone call that arrived later that evening, so was he.
You answered on the second ring.
"Hello?"
"I can't believe you left me hanging like that."
You laughed immediately. "Excuse me?"
"We were having a conversation."
"Jack showed up at your apartment."
"And somehow that's my fault?"
"Everything's your fault."
His laugh crackled through the speaker.
"You know," he said, quieter this time, "I did actually spend the next few hours wondering what happened."
Your heart stumbled slightly.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
There was a pause. Comfortable but dangerous.
"Well," you said, settling deeper into the sofa. "Lucky for you, I'm free now."
The silence on the other end lasted just long enough to make your stomach flip. Then Robby laughed softly.
"Good."
The word settled somewhere low and God you hated that it did. Or maybe you loved it. Either way, you found yourself smiling into the darkness of the apartment.
"You sound very pleased with yourself."
"I am."
You laughed softly.
"Because I answered the phone?"
"Because I was beginning to think Abbot had kidnapped you."
"Trust me, if he'd kidnapped me, you'd know about it."
You eased into conversation again, tucking yourself deeper beneath the blanket, listening to him talk about a trail he'd found that morning. He was halfway through describing some impossible view over a lake when he suddenly stopped.
"Can I ask you something?"
You frowned. "Depends."
"That picture earlier."
Your pulse immediately betrayed you. "What about it?"
There was a pause. "Nothing."
You laughed. "That's not how questions work."
"I know."
"So?"
Another pause. You could practically hear him weighing his words.
"I just didn't realise you'd sent it like that."
Heat crept up your neck.
"Like what?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
Unfortunately, you did.
The worst part was how carefully he was speaking. How neither of you was actually saying anything and yet somehow both of you knew exactly what the other was talking about.
"It was an accident."
"I figured."
"You sound disappointed at that."
The silence that followed lasted a fraction too long. Your breath caught, just slightly. Then Robby laughed low and quiet.
"That's a dangerous thing to accuse me of."
You stared at the ceiling. Very aware of the oversized t-shirt you were still wearing and how your nipples were suddenly hard beneath it.
"I think you've become a lot more confident since Alberta."
"Oh yeah? Is that a bad thing?" he asked.
"No, it's kinda sexy actually." You laughed, so did he. Then a second passed and you felt the boldness creep in, so much so it decided your next move. "Do you want me to send another?"
You could practically hear Robby choke on his own breath and in the time he tried to get on top of his words, you'd pulled the blanket away, your phone up high with the front camera on, snapping a pic that showed a lot more than the last.
This time it was the bottom of your face, lips plump and pouty, your t-shirt tugged 'innocently' higher to give way to the band of your panties flashed across your hip. Your legs were crossed, not for the picture but to try and ease the now insatiable ache between them. As for your nipples? There was no denying they were the star of the show.
You sent it before thinking twice.
"Fuck." Robby breathed and you knew he was looking right at you.
"Is that better?"
You heard him take a deep breath and could imagine the blush on his cheeks. "You're gonna be the death of me."
You couldn't help but smile. His voice had gotten lower, a little huskier, almost like he was out of breath.
"Robby?"
"Yeah?" He breathed.
"What are we doing?"
He took a minute to answer. Not sure of what he should say, what he wanted to say. "I don't know." You couldn't see but he rubbed his face over his hand, coming to rest at the base of his neck. "I don't fucking know."
He was sat on the sofa at the cabin. The fire was going, lights dim and warm. Ever since you'd sent that first picture he'd been tight against his jeans but then you sent another and fuck, his hand came to adjust himself over the denim.
"But I'm not sure I can pretend I'm thinking of anything other than that picture right now."
You felt a little smug. That was, after all, why you sent it. It was so nice to feel sexy, for someone to be looking at you the way he was, someone you wanted to see you this way.
"Yeah? What you thinking about?" You knew what you were doing. Knew how it would draw the last breath out of him but you also knew you'd crossed a line and there was no going back. Not that you wanted to.
Your hands trailed over yourself, light touches over the cotton of your t-shirt. Your body jolted when finger tips ghosted the outline of a nipple, trailing left to pay the other as much attention. Fuck, it felt good.
Robby knew the pair of you were in dangerous territory but god, he wanted to be there. His head fell back in disbelief, as if he were mad at himself for what he was about to tell you over the phone.
His resident.
"You touching yourself in my apartment." He paused, waiting to see if he'd taken it too far only to hear a quiet moan from you in response. "Playing with yourself in the guest bedroom..."
"I am." Your hand snaked from your tits slowly to your panties, cupping yourself over the lace and that's when you felt it. "Fuck Robby I'm really wet…”
Jesus Christ. He felt himself jolt against his own hand, the one that was palming the growing outline of his cock.
"Fuck, baby. You're really trying to kill me huh?" He huffed a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief that this was happening. Almost three months of texts, phone calls, voice notes. A camera roll shared, bad days eased by mindless humour and companionship. A relationship built on all of that.
"You want me to go to your bed?" You almost panted down the line as you moved against your hand. "Fuck myself in your sheets?"
"Shit," He exhaled.
"You want that?"
"Yeah…" His reply was too fast and he cursed himself for it. But all he wanted was the image of you, two fingers deep, coming to his voice while soaking his bed spread. "Please baby, do it for me."
And with that, you got up. He heard rustling down the line as you made your way from the guest bed to Robby's. It wasn't a room you'd gone in much. You'd said you were going to snoop through his drawers, his closet just to be nosy but turns out you had too much respect for his privacy. That was months ago. Now you were crawling onto the bed, setting your phone on speaker next to you as you positioned yourself right in the middle.
Robby was waiting patiently. He'd done no more than rub himself a few times over his jeans, grinding a little into his hand but then knowing it'd be too much and he'd end up blowing his load like a teenager. Instead, he waited. For you. To enjoy you.
You laid your head back against his pillows, inhaling him as if he were right next to you. "Mmm, smells like you in here." You said quietly. "It's like you're here."
He wished he was there. You did too. Wished it was his fingers swiping through your wetness, dipping into your panties and feeling how worked up you'd got from sending him one (not even) dirty photo.
"Tell me what you're doing." It felt like an order even though it wasn't and your pussy jumped at the idea. "Wanna hear you."
"Fuck. 'M rubbing myself over my panties." You whispered lightly. "Wanna take them off."
"Take them off baby." He'd hoped you'd throw them to the side and forget, only for him to find them on his return. "Spread your legs, let me hear."
It'd be hard for him not to hear with how soaked you were.
It was amazing how one phone conversation and suddenly this is how you found yourself, legs open for Michael Robinavitch.
With your panties gone, you anchored your legs apart. Fingers sliding through your dripping slit, gathering your arousal to swirl it in tight circles around your clit. The slick sounds filled the room, they filled the cabin too.
Robby couldn't take it anymore. You heard the sound of metal, a belt unbuckling before a zip slid down in haste. He freed himself, pulling his cock from his boxers, thick and hard. He was leaking from the tip, all red and worked up just from listening to you. It felt so fucking good when he finally stroked himself.
"Oh fuck." He tried to bite it back, failing miserably.
That was music to your ears.
"You hard for me Robby?"
"You have no idea. Feels so fuckin good, thinking about you." He fucked his fist nice and slow, wanting this to last and despite his cock not being inside you, he wanted you to cum first.
You decide it wasn't enough. After all this time, the calls and the pictures, you needed to see him. And you wanted him to see you.
"Wanna see you." You picked up your phone, hand still working your pussy. "Can I face- face time you?" Your words faltered a little as your fingers sped up, rubbing your sensitive clit.
Robby froze for a second. He'd got this worked up just by thinking of you in such a state and now, you were actually going to show him?
"Mhmm, yeah."
And within a second you'd pressed the button the change this to a video call. When he accepted, he saw the dark room lit by a single bedside lamp. You'd slowed your motions for a second, to pick up the phone properly and see him for the first time in months.
"Hey." You smiled, like it didn't matter what the pair of you had been doing just seconds ago. You were so happy to see his face. The slight tan he'd caught, his greyed out beard and stubble around the neck.
"Hey." He couldn't help but smile too. Knowing your hands were down your pants but not being able to get past the heat in your cheeks, how your hair had fallen across the bed and despite stating you had a hangover, you were fucking glowing.
He pondered it for a second, how he might have not noticed this before. The way your eyes narrowed when you smiled, how you looked at him.
"You look beautiful."
That might have turned you on more than anything in the last fifteen minutes. You were breathless, a little wrecked, in disbelief at any of this.
Then you set the phone down on the bedside table to free up your hands. That's when you pulled off the t-shirt entirely, leaving your perfect tits in plain view for Robby to see.
His eyes grew wide as he surveyed every inch of your skin before you laid back into the cushions as you were before, shifting to your side facing the phone.
"Is this what you were thinking about?" You snaked your hand back down to your cunt, dipping in but not all the way, just enough for Robby to hear the slick mess.
"Even better." His hand slowly started to work on himself again, matching your rhythm as he held the phone in front of him.
Your mouth parted when you finally sank a finger inside, then another. Two digits curled deep in your pussy, rolling your hips against them and you never took your eyes off him.
"Fuck Robby." You sped your motions a little, so did he. "Wish it was your fingers, wish it was you inside me."
You weren't sure where it came from. The filthy tongue, the boldness. You weren't shy in bed but he was your boss. The boss you were innocently house sitting for until you decided to get attached.
"Christ." He bit back a moan at your obscenity. "Imagine it's me baby." He started fucking his fist faster, wishing it was your pussy. "Imagine it's my cock deep inside you, I'd fuck you so good, make you feel so fucking good."
It dropped from his tongue with little effort. He thought about how much he wanted to be buried inside you, how he'd wanted that for a while and was too scared to admit it.
"Mmmph Robbyyyy." You whined his name, breathing hard, riding your fingers as you felt the coil tighten in your belly. "Let me see you."
He did the same as you, positioning the phone on the side table that sat at the same height as the sofa. It left him in view from the waist up, free hand roaming his covered chest, the other pumping his cock hard.
You watched him intently. Heard the sounds of precum slickening his strokes as his hips drove up with every beat.
"Fuck I'm close-” You worked yourself with both hands, two buried to the knuckle and the other rubbing your clit with such ferocity. "Really fucking close Robby I think I'm gonna cum soon."
"Cum for me angel, let me see. Such a good girl."
Your hands worked even faster and suddenly, the coil snapped with words of praise and you were coming in Robby's bed.
"Oh my god oh my-” Then silence, your body went rigid as you clamped your hands hard, riding out the most intense orgasm you'd had in years.
You were a sight for sore eyes. Mouth wide open, tits bouncing with every movement and all it took was your guttoral moans for Robby to feel himself close to the edge too. He was fucking himself so hard and fast, it was almost a blur on screen until you heard him pant, a strangled "Uh uh uh" and then-
"I'm gonna cum baby oh fuck-”
You watched him spill his load all over his hand. Thick white ropes dripped down his knuckles, marking his jeans as he stroked himself through it, twitching at his now very sensitive cockhead.
You were both left breathless and sweaty, each reaching for your respective phones.
"You-” He was trying so hard to catch his breath. "-are something else."
You both laughed breathlessly. Fuck, this felt good.
You stayed on the phone for hours after until he ordered you to bed. Told you to sleep well, that he'd be thinking of you.
And that night was the best sleep of your life.
-
Everything felt different after that night except it also all stayed the same.
You spoke every day. Called most nights, FaceTimed, voice noted when you were cooking dinner or carrying groceries. But now it seemed like nothing was left unsaid, that you were both being honest with each other. It was amazing.
The only thing eating away at you right before you fell asleep was the idea this might end. When the three weeks crept closer, when the sabbatical would end. Would everything go back to how it was before?
"Hey can I ask you something?" You broke mid conversation.
"Anything."
"When this is over. Your sabbatical I mean. When you come back and I'm not here." You trailed off slightly. "...Will this all go away?"
There was silence on the line for a second.
"Not if I have anything to do with it."
Your smile reached your ears. Good because-” You inhaled deeply. "I don't think I can go back."
-
You worked like a dog over the next four days.
At one point you'd even picked up a double because Lena had practically begged for night shift cover, and despite every intention of saying no, somehow you'd found yourself agreeing anyway.
It meant you barely saw daylight all week and you didn't get to speak to Robby much either. Not in the way either of you would've liked.
You checked in between shifts, during breaks and whenever you made it home with enough energy to keep your eyes open. He'd send the occasional text during the day, but most of your conversations happened at night. Sometimes a quick call, sometimes longer if exhaustion didn't drag you under first.
It was a brutal four days. By the end of it you were running almost entirely on caffeine and stubbornness, convinced you'd briefly developed double vision somewhere around shift three.
When you finally crawled into bed at the end of it all, you slept hard.
Since your FaceTime call, you hadn't stepped foot in the guest room. Every night you ended up in Robby's bed instead, tangled in his sheets and surrounded by things that smelled faintly like him.
He loved knowing that.
Day five arrived with something close to actual rest. You woke around nine and, for the first time all week, didn't feel like death.
After a shower you made coffee, pulled on some loungewear that wasn't technically pyjamas and settled onto the sofa with every intention of finally finishing the book you'd started at the beginning of all this.
You'd texted Robby before getting in the shower. There was still no reply. You assumed he was asleep or hiking or somewhere without signal. Either way, you weren't worried.
Twenty-five minutes later there was a knock at the door. You sighed immediately.
It had to be Jack.
Apparently nobody trusted you to spend three months in an apartment unsupervised.
Already preparing your speech, you marched towards the door and pulled it open.
The words died in your throat.
"Robby."
For a second your brain simply stopped working. Because Robby was supposed to be in Canada. Robby was supposed to be another two thousand miles away. Robby was supposed to be a voice coming through your phone speaker. Not standing in front of you.
"Hey."
His smile spread slowly across his face, tired and genuine all at once. His cheeks were pink from the road and his eyes looked glassy around the edges, like he'd spent too many hours behind the handlebars and not nearly enough sleeping.
You stared. "What are you doing here?"
He laughed softly. "Good to see you too."
"No, seriously." You gestured vaguely at him and the doorway. What are you doing here? You were in Canada. That's like-" Your brain searched desperately for a number. "It's like five thousand miles."
"Not quite."
"Robby-”
He kissed you.
Just stepped across the threshold and kissed you.
His hands came up to cup your face as he guided you backwards into the apartment, the front door swinging shut somewhere behind him.
Every thought disappeared. All the questions and confusion, gone.
Because he was here, after months of messages and phone calls and hearing his voice through a screen, he was finally here. The last four days worked in his favour, you being so busy. He'd hit the road almost immediately, covering far too much mileage to be considered safe. All to make it back to you.
You kissed him back immediately, both hungry and relieved. Like you were making up for every mile that had sat between Alberta and Pittsburgh.
When he finally pulled away, it was only far enough to look at you, forehead resting against yours.
"Two and a half thousand miles," he corrected quietly.
You laughed.
For a moment neither of you spoke.
"You know," you murmured, fingers still wrapped around his wrists, "this is a very dramatic way to get your keys back."
Robby laughed, the sound warm and familiar.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
His thumbs swept across your cheeks.
“Good thing I never came back for the keys”
Your heart squeezed.
And this time, when you kissed him, neither of you had anywhere else to be.
"All because my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried so hard to suck out
—the cure, Olivia Rodrigo
summary: you’re the ray of sunshine and overly dependable smiling intern the night shift crew has been needing. But a certain attending begins noticing you might need more help than you let on.
wc: 11.7k (a short one sorry guys)
warnings: crippling perfectionism, high-key people pleasing, reader is bright and bubbly to compensate for how awful she feels day to day, one vomiting scene, service dom jack, santos is on nightshift bc i love her and i wanted her in this fic. trinity and dennis and reader r basically siblings, jack’s characterization in this is DEF andrew pope cody-esque panic attacks, mental health struggles, reader is an intern again but i swear it’s just cause i watch a lot of greys and interns r the only stage of medical career i know enough about to write semi-well T-T
acknowledgments: once again a round of applause for @wesandresons for the lovely gif, and @uzmacchiato and @cursed-carmine for the dividers!
a/n: i’m not rlly sure i like how this turned out but oh well @leeknowpegger i hope this keeps you company
masterlist
When you first get to the PTMC, Jack can’t decide what he thinks about you.
He vaguely remembers you— you’d done a rotation here, some time ago. One of the unfortunate ones who’d drawn the short stick and been stuck on the night shift. He has a hazy recollection of your face during an MVC, your jaw hard set and a permanent smile to your face. He vaguely remembers, at the time, the only thing he’d really though was:
Jesus, this kid needs to dial it back.
The sentiment, of course, remains the same when it’s handoff time, and Robby is telling him all about what an awful fucking day it’s been, and of course now he says “Oh, remember that med student you got stuck with awhile back? Smiley-face? You must’ve done something right, because she matched into the ED for her residency. She starts today.”
Not exactly the news an attending wants to hear right after the horror show the day has been so far. Especially when intern/baby resident in question is… charismatic.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ellis says, her eyes trained on you as you soothe a crying teenager who just got wheeled in. “If you ask me, we could use someone who actually smiles. Bit too dark and dreary in here for my taste.”
“You like dark and dreary.”
She gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow. “So? We can’t all be doing it. Like, we’ve got Shen, but his is more iced-coffee induced than actual smiling charm.”
“I can be charming when I want to be.”
“No, you can be flirty or suggestive. There’s a difference.”
Jack does not justify her response with one of his own, instead choosing to look down at his tablet and pretend to chart while he listens to how you’re interacting with the patient. The teenager seems to be calmed down, and the parents don't sound frantic or worried.
Maybe Ellis is right. Unfortunately, this tends to be the case fairly often.
He sighs and focuses on the chart he’s supposed to be doing and attempts to wipe his mind of bright smiles and glittering eyes.
—
The PTMC and Emergency Medicine in general was not, actually, your first choice. It wasn’t even your second, or your third.
First was surgical. Everybody wants to be surgical. You wanted surgical. It’s flashy, it pays well, and it’s cool as fuck. Plus, unlike some of your classmates, you actually have the stomach for it (one of the many things that eventually translated well to emergency medicine.)
Second was Ortho. Because bones are cool. Ortho surgeries are fun too, when they’re not arthroscopy after arthroscopy.
Third was any kind of unit like Burn or ICU. A high stress program that wouldn’t let you think, let you run on adrenaline all day.
But then you did your rotation in general surgery and absolutely fucking hated it.
Surgeons are assholes. Surgeons are uptight nerds who like to subject anyone they consider beneath them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Even in during the short duration of your rotation through surgery, it almost killed you. You could practically feel the light in your soul dimming at every pointed comment, every sharp correction, every barked insult and something or other cruel word.
And then there was the PTMC. The stupid ED that wasn’t supposed to fun, was supposed to be grueling and exhausting (especially since you’d gotten assigned to the night shift.) But instead of awful you got amazing, which sucked.
Seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.
You wanted to like surgery enough to power though. But not a single rotation after the ED even came close to measuring up. The speed, the action, the gore, and the kind but firm guiding direction from the attending’s and residents.
Matching into the PTMC was an event actually worth celebrating. As in, you decided to un-tense minutely and splurge on actual champagne that you drank in your apartment while dancing to your favorite music.
And now, you’re here. Determined to not fuck this up. To keep moving, keep going, and be a fucking excellent ED doctor.
Except your attending, Dr. Jack Abbot, one of the reasons you joined the ED in the first place, keeps giving you funny looks when he thinks you’re not looking.
You’re not sure if he’s aware that you know that he’s staring at you. You do have a wider than normal field of peripheral vision, so maybe he doesn’t know that you can still see him out of the corner of your eye?
Regardless of if he knows or not, it’s unnerving. Because he’s your boss. And you know he’s capable of being an incredible doctor and mentor, because you see it every single day.
Just not directed at you.
He’s not really mean, or standoffish, or anything like that, he’s just… not necessarily kind. Not in the way that you see him with the other residents on his service or even with you, during your rotation as a med student.
Hell, he’s nicer to Santos than he is to you.
“Did I like, say something to offend him and I don’t know?”
Trinity makes a face at you from over the edge of the monitor. “Isn’t that more my area of expertise?”
“No. You offend people on purpose.”
“True.”
You prop your head on your hands, resting your elbows on the counter above her. Your keycard, attached to your breast pocket via a red, heart-shaped badge reel is lovingly adorned with pink rhinestones and cute stickers. The pocket itself is filled with several glitter gel pens (and regular pens, just in case.)
“I just don’t get it. I’m nice, right?”
“Disturbingly so.”
“Exactly. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve messed up or something, but it’s Dr. Abbot. He’d tell me if I did. He doesn’t exactly hold back.”
“Do you really need me for this conversation?”
You level her with a look, but she just groans.
“Why do you even care? So what, one guy doesn’t like you, boohoo.”
“He’s not just some guy. He’s my attending. And you might’ve secured your spot here, but i’m all shiny and new. I can’t exactly earn people’s respect if our boss doesn’t like me.”
Trinity doesn’t immediately respond with a scathing remark, which usually means that you’ve made a valid point.
“Should I talk to him?”
She sighs. “I think you’re overreacting. You’ve only been here for like, two weeks? Three? He’ll probably calm down the more you work together.”
“Did he stare at you all weirdly when you first started?”
“Well, no, but that’s because I don’t suck at my job.”
Now it’s your turn to glare.
“Sorry. I guess you’re not completely hopeless.”
You roll your eyes. “Thanks, Trin.”
She scrunches her nose up at the nickname like you knew she would, because she hates it, which makes it one of the only weapons you have against her.
Trinity wasn’t as helpful as you’d hoped, and night shift means no Dana to ask for advice. There’s Dr. Ellis, but she’s pretty close to Dr. Abbot, which means there’s a high chance that whatever you ask her will make it back to him. You aren’t really close enough to Dr. Shen to ask him “Hey, how come Dr. Abbot stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking and isn’t as nice to me as he is to you guys?”
The question is stupid and kind of pathetic, so really, you shouldn’t be asking anybody, but you’ve always been crippled by an intense need to be well-liked. It feels like winning, and it feels good and safe. Safe is good. Safe is great.
Wanting the guy who's essentially your boss to like you is completely rational, right?
You just wish he’d tell you what you’re doing wrong, so you can fix it.
Also, it’s just driving you crazy.
Even if he just legitimately didn’t like you, and made that apparent, it’d be something. You could work with that. You could figure out what it was he didn't like via intense pattern recognitin and fix it. Problem solved!
But he isn't obvious about it. He behaves indifferent and detatched- like you could die tomorrow and he wouldn't care.
It’s the not knowing. If you could just ask him, if he could just give you an answer, then you’d know where you stood, and everything could be fine.
What changed? You want to beg, What happened after my med student rotation? Do you even remember that? What did I do? Where did I go wrong?
It eats away at you over the course of the week. It has been since you noticed, which was pretty much on day one. You don’t show this outwardly of course, because you’re pretty sure you can get through to him and level out the wrong-footedness you feel around him through stubborn determination. Surely, at some point your unwavering nature will win out and he’ll finally see there isn’t anything he needs to hate about you. This is an incredibly healthy mindset to move through life with.
The week closes with an MCI around 5pm, which is just everyone’s favorite thing in the world. The night shift gets called in, minus Trinity, who was already there working a double, and everyone sets in for the long haul. You do your best to focus on the patients and do not at all think about the ease and camaraderie between Mohan and Abbot, because that would be a very fucked up progression of priorities.
Eventually it’s all over— patients are stabilized, some aren’t. Overtime ends with phantom blood on your hands and being strong-armed into drinks in the park afterwards.
You feel awkward, because you don’t work with the day shift people that often, so you’re not really sure how best to be yourself and not come across as weird. Neither of your “safe” people (Trinity and Dennis) are present, so there’s no way in hell you’re going to be capable of relaxing.
You take the beer that’s tossed to you, even though you think beer is gross (why does it taste like that? Why do people enjoy it?) and sip on it excruciatingly slowly, trying to hide a grimace and occasionally chiming in with mentally rehearsed and carefully crafted jokes and comments.
It’s exhausting, and not at all how you wanted to spend your night after an MCI. In a dream world, you don’t have the social backbone of a wet paper bag, and you say no, and you go home to your house and shower, then watch one, maybe two episodes of a tv show, scroll through Pinterest, and then go the fuck to bed.
But for the low low price of much needed rest, you get to drink one of the most disgusting alcoholic beverages known to man and worry if everyone thinks you’re being weird! Yay!
Also. Side note. Minor comment. Little issue.
Jack Abbot is sitting next to you. Like, right next to you on the bench. Because he came late and it was the last spot open. So he’s just right there. Posture loose and open and not at all like he didn’t just help you try to save a girl your age who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like two hours ago your elbows weren’t brushing, elbow deep in a man’s organs, saving his life.
Jack, unlike you, looks comfortable to be at the park with everyone. He doesn’t look like he’s analyzing conversation to determine the best thing to say next.
Jack isn’t looking at everyone. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s looking at you.
You turn, give him a little smile.
Again.
Maybe he doesn’t know you can still see him out of the corner of your eye. (No, he’s a vet, he’d definitely also have wide peripheral vision. But maybe he thinks that you don’t have it, because you’re not a vet.)
(You’re probably thinking too much about the peripheral vision.)
Jack doesn’t stop staring at you. Instead, he reaches over to where your barely-drunk beer is in your hands, and says:
“Here, give me that.”
And then he just. Takes your beer. Straight out of your hands.
Jesus fucking fuck he so hates you.
—
“He took your beer?”
“Yes,” You groan from the kitchen island in Trinity’s apartment, “He said ‘here, give me that’ and then just took it. He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night.”
She lets out a low whistle. “Maybe he doesn’t like you. What could you have possibly done to make him not like you?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you better fix it. Having your attending hate your guts will like, majorly suck.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. That’s what i’m over here for. To brainstorm.”
“I thought you were here to steal the cookies Huckleberry made?”
Dennis peeks his head up from the couch. “Wait, what?”
You wave a hand. “Semantics. Focus.”
“Okay,” Trinity taps a pencil on a notepad, “Have you tried sleeping with him?”
“He’s like, probably over twenty years older than me.”
“So? I know your type.”
You roll your eyes. “As if he’d go after me, Trin. He doesn’t like me.”
“Hate sex is a thing.”
“Name one time hate sex solved the hate part.”
She purses her lips. “Touché. What about like, baking him shit, like Huckleberry does for—“
“Shut up Trinity!”
You both snicker.
“No dice,” You sigh, “I can’t bake for shit. Recipes never have enough context. They’re never specific enough.”
“Two tablespoons of sugar isn’t specific enough for you?”
“You’re not helping.”
Trinity holds up her hands in mock surrender. “To be fair, I never agreed to help. I just said we’d both be here if you wanted to come over.”
“I think you should just ask him.” Dennis pipes up.
He shuffles off the couch and slides into the second chair at the kitchen island adjacent to you. “Dr. Abbot is a straightforward guy. He appreciates honesty. Doesn’t beat around the bush. I can’t imagine him being truly upset that you tried to fix a problem.”
“I want to, but that’s like. Too straightforward. What if—“
“Oh my god,” Trinity moans, “Just ask him. Or fuck him. Do something so I don’t have to hear about it anymore.”
You frown, opening your mouth to object, then close it with a sigh.
She’s right.
You have to just move on. Either deal with it or deal with it by… not dealing with it. Talk to him or don’t.
Easier said than done.
—
It takes two more shifts of unrequited awkwardness for you to finally reach your limit. At a certain point, probably when you almost snapped at him for hovering (doing his job) while you were trying to intubate a patient, you realize that you cannot, actually, just get through to him via stubborn determination.
Damn.
So when you have a second, you corner him in one of the quieter hallways. The conversation has the potential to be horrifically embarrassing and mortifying, so it’s best if there’s no audience.
“Do you have a minute, Dr. Abbot?”
He glances down at his watch, then crosses his arms and leans against the opposite wall.
He doesn’t talk (unnerving, annoying) and his sharp, ever analyzing gaze makes your skin prickle as you cross your hands behind your back and mirror his position, leaning against the wall.
He’s so irritating. He won’t even give you a fucking inch. There’s nothing to go on.
“Did I do something wrong?”
For the first time since you became a resident in the ED, he makes an expression: surprise.
“Why do you think you did something wrong?”
“Because you won’t fucking talk to me!” You hiss, absolutely fed up with Dr. Jack Abbot, “Half the time you only look at me when you think I won’t notice. You don’t talk to me unless it’s required for teaching, and even then, it’s short and stilted. I’ve seen how you interact with literally every other person who works here. I know you can be nice. You’re just not nice to me, and I’d like to know why.”
You pause. “And you took my beer!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then there’s a breathy, almost wheezing sound that takes you a minute to place.
He’s laughing.
Jack fucking Abbot starts laughing.
You honest to God want to kill him.
“Sorry,” He says, eyes sparkling with mirth and shoulders loose, “I can see how all of that can be taken negatively—“
“How else was I supposed to take that.”
Jack levels you with a look, and you shut your mouth. “But it was not my intention.”
He just stops speaking there, like that’s a perfectly adequate explanation and not at all vague and almost more disconcerting.
“So…,” You drawl, “What was your intention?”
Something interesting, a little more heated than just analytical sparks in his gaze, and he tilts his head, eyes flicking up and down your body.
Under the silence and scrutiny, you resist the urge to squirm in place, hands squeezing themselves in an effort to subdue the itch.
“You hate confrontation.”
Your chest feels like a cinder block just slammed onto it. “What?”
“You,” He levels a finger at your chest, “Hate confrontation. You hate it so much that you lie about yourself to people instead of saying things they might not like.”
You laugh nervously, voice high and reedy. “A lot of people do that. I don’t think that’s a crime.”
“It’s not. But it doesn’t exactly make me want to trust you with my residents. With my team.”
“You’re worried I’ll what? Get somebody in trouble? Do something shitty?”
“I’m worried that something is going to happen to you, and you won’t tell anyone about it.”
The hallway grows silent. In this distance there’s beeping, someone shouting orders, a child crying. But not in the five feet of space you, Jack, and the conversion currently occupies.
“Why do all of this?” You gesture vaguely to the space between you two, unwilling to be more specific. He does not deserve the itemized list you assembled in your head.
“I wanted to see if you’d confront me about it or not. Confirm my suspicions.”
“That’s—“ You wrinkle your nose, “Actually kind of shitty of you.”
Jack just hums.
“So what now? Did I prove myself to you?” Your tone is mocking.
He scoffs, “God, you really hate confrontation, don’t you?”
Your skin prickles again. “No.”
“Lying again.”
“Shut up.”
He knows how uncomfortable he’s making you. He’s doing it on purpose. And right then and there, you decide you don’t care what Jack Abbot thinks, because if Jack Abbot is going to be a self-assured asshole, Jack Abbot can go fuck himself.
Your pager going off saves you from verbalizing any of this, and with one last glare, you’re gone.
—
If Jack was an obnoxious lurker before, it doesn’t hold a damn candle to how he behaves now.
He’s just. Everywhere. Around every corner. Driving you crazy.
When you bring this up to Trinity, she looks at you like you’ve finally lost it.
Which. Okay. You probably have. But that’s beside the point! The point is…
…The point is that Jack Abbot is getting on your last nerve and you really don’t have any to spare. Life has been stomping all over the other ones, so the singular nerve Jack is stabbing with his annoying pointed looks and almost lingering touches and stupid little questions (“Hey, that was a rough one, are you alright?”) is just worn out. It doesn’t have anything left to give. You don’t have anything left to give.
But, like you were brought up to do, you keep right on giving. And working. And smiling.
Because it goes a little something like this: There’s no one to pick you up if you fall. You pick yourself up when you fall, and you’ve gotten pretty fucking good at it. All of your friends (read: Trinity and Dennis and maybe Mel) are doctors, which means you all have shitty work/life balance and no one would even be available if you called and said “Hey, every morning I lie awake and stare at the ceiling and convince myself to get up while listening to Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley, after which I will inevitably cry on the bus to work. Would you mind helping me with my laundry?”
Okay. Well. Trinity would probably show up if you asked because once she decides that you’re her friend she’s really intense about it (she’s a bit like a Doberman or some other dog like that, not that you would ever tell her) and Dennis probably would too, but only because he never says no when someone asks for help so it kind of just feels like you’re taking advantage of him. Mel is far too busy juggling being an ED doctor and caring for Becca for you to even think about asking her without feeling intense, soul crushing guilt.
So yeah. You don’t really have a best friend, unless one would count the singular romance book you’ve read so much the spine is completely fucked and the pages are yellow from years of travel and rereading. Counting any book as a best friend is probably very pathetic. But hey, don’t fix what isn’t broken.
So you have a system and a method and crying before and after work every single day is totally, completely normal, healthy, and sustainable. Probably even more so in the medical field, and especially since you’re a PGY1. Interns gotta suffer and all that jazz.
Jack Abbot does not need to make the suffering worse by existing near you constantly. Things are really honestly bad enough.
“Hey,” Trinity grabs your arm as you’re going by during a mellow shift, grip not tight enough to hurt but enough to be a bit past uncomfortable, especially for a girl not used to physical contact, “You good?”
‘No,’ You want to shout, collapsing on the floor in a heap of bones and tears, ‘I haven’t done laundry in so long that I’ve started wearing my cleanest dirty socks instead of washing more. I don’t have the energy to spend my days off doing anything productive, but every time I sleep instead of doing chores the anxiety eats me alive. I can’t sleep at night because the guilt makes me so nervous sometimes I throw up. Sometimes I don’t wash myself in the shower and I just stand in the water until it gets cold. Every day I wake up with the same headache, and then I take medicine for it, but by the time it’s gone I’m going to bed and then I wake up with it all over again. I think my liver is shot from over-the-counter medication usage. Everything hurts. I’m so tired.’
Trinity needs you to be okay. Trinity is too busy and under too much stress to worry about you. She needs you to be okay. Everyone needs you be okay.
“Mhm!” You nod, lips spread wide, “Pretty good day actually, all things considered.”
It’s not a total lie. The headache relief you’ve been taking religiously is kicking in faster than it usually does today.
Trinity scans your face, looking for signs of a lie, and she must find something (not shocking, it’s very hard to pretend that everything isn’t awful when Everything Is Really Awful) because her grip tightens minutely and she does that pursed lip thing she does when she’s worried and about to express it through anger or bitchiness.
“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want to find out you’re like, doing drugs or something stupid like that. If you’re having a hard time—“
“Trin,” You interrupt, skin prickling uncomfortably as she implies that you’re not capable of handling things on your own, “If I need help, I know I can ask for it. And look,”
You tap your unbroken collection of glitter gel pens still intact in the front pocket of your scrubs. “It’s gotta be a good day. I still got my glitter.”
She wrinkles her nose, but drops your arm. “I don’t even know why you keep those. You can’t use them on like, anything. It’s against hospital policy.”
You shrug. “Glitter is a great motivator and mood elevator. Plus, kids love ‘em.”
You manage to feign something important coming up and duck out of the conversation and then, when the coast is clear, dart into one of the lesser used bathrooms and tuck yourself in the darkest stall.
Even in a hospital, toilet seats are disgusting, but you can’t quite summon any actual disgust as you plop down on the white porcelain, only lightly cracked, and cradle your exhausted head in your hands.
You have to keep going. There is no alternative. There is no other option.
Your chest feels tight and loose at the same time, and your skin feels clammy and wrong. Everything feels wrong. The lights are too bright and the material of your scrubs is scratchy and awful, and the longer you sit in the stall the more you want to throw up.
Someone knocks on the door before you get the chance to move down to your knees and start worshipping the porcelain altar. Assuming it to be Mel, who sometimes has a habit of showing up at the wrong time, you open the stall door to reveal none other than Jack Fucking Abbot.
You stare at him blankly for a few beats, too bewildered to feel sick. “You’re not allowed to be in here.”
“In the men’s bathroom?”
“This isn’t the men’s bathroom.”
“The sign on the door would say otherwise.”
Embarrassment brings the nausea back tenfold. You hold the stall door in a white knuckle grip to keep yourself upright and from hurling onto your boss.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t do this on purpose—“
Jack raises an eyebrow, his hands folded behind his back. Military man, right.
“Clearly.”
You stumble forward. “I need to go—“
“Woah, down girl. I didn’t knock because I cared which toilet you use. You work here. Use whatever toilet you want. Preferably not the one in the attending’s lounge.”
“There’s an attending’s lounge?”
“No.” He grins, a devilish upturn to just the corner of his lips.
“Oh,” You pause, then catch up to the rest of what he said, “Then why’d you knock?”
“Cause it kind of sounded like you were dying in there, and I’d rather if you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The paperwork, for one. Two, Santos would probably shank me.”
“Ah.”
“Also,” He shrugs, “I’d miss you.”
You scoff. “No you wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You don’t like me. You don’t even trust me.”
Jack gets this pinched look on his face; his lips pull down, his brows furrow and he narrows his eyes, just a bit.
He opens his mouth to respond when the door bangs open.
Jack doesn’t even look up before he’s barking:
“Find another bathroom.”
“But I have to—“
“Find another bathroom or I’ll cut your dick off.”
The guy grumbles away, but Jack never takes his eyes off you. It’s unnerving— to be the sole focus of his attention.
You’re the first to break the now tense silence of the bathroom.
“That seemed a bit extreme.”
“I’m not a man who does things by halves.”
“No,” You sigh, “I suppose you’re not.”
Jack cocks his head to side, almost predatory. More methodical than anything. He looks at you— really looks at you. Shamelessly drags his eyes up your body, likely cataloguing every mystery bruise, frown line, eye bag, freckle, and all the million lines of exhaustion that seem etched on your very being, right down through the bones and marrow.
He sighs, crossing his arms before leaning back on the opposite wall of the bathroom.
“What am I going to do with you?”
His words instantly have you on edge, bristling at all the unsaid things behind his tone.
“I’m not something to be dealt with. I’m a person, not some fucking—“
“You’re like a stray cat,” He interrupts, “Always hissing. Do I need to win you over with treats? Should I start bringing canned tuna?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re drowning.”
Just like that, all the humor gets sucked from the room, replaced with the cold, sharp grip of reality. Suddenly exhausted by the weight of it all, you drop back down onto the toilet seat.
Jack gives you a few moments to respond, get angry, or defend yourself, but you don’t. He’s too good at reading you, it seems. What is there to say?
When you don’t speak, he does.
“Did you think no one would notice?”
“No one has.”
“Am I no one?”
You lean back, closing your eyes and awkwardly resting the back of your head against the wall and the back of the toilet.
“You’re nosy.”
If this were any other moment, any other scenario with any other person, you would never ever act so contrary. But you’re tired and Jack seems to bring out the worst in you.
He makes an amused huffing noise. “You’re good at what you do, I’ll give you that.”
“What, exactly, am I doing?”
“Pretending.”
You scoff. “Fuck off.”
“Come on, sweetheart. How much longer are you going to do this to yourself?”
You lift your head off the back of the toilet. “You act like I’m killing myself:”
“You are,” His inclined his head, “Just really slowly.”
You scrub a hand down your face.
“Look. I understand why you think you have to care, but you don’t. I’m just going through a rough patch. I’ll get through them like I always do. I’m not gonna crash and burn or endanger myself or do whatever it is you’re worried I’m going to do, okay? So you can leave me alone. I’m fine.”
Jack doesn’t get to respond, because the second the words are out of your mouth the nausea that’s been churning in your stomach since you made it to the bathroom rises all at once, and you barely have time to slide off the toilet and turn before you’re throwing up hard enough to almost choke.
The worst part is that you forgot to eat lunch so your stomach is woefully, painfully empty. You’re throwing up nothing but bile, throat burning and tears streaming down your face.
“Alright, come on,” A warm hand rubs soothing circles on your back, and if you weren’t busy hurling your guts out, you’d marvel at the feeling and juxtaposition between the Jack you know, who’s all cold indifference, and the Jack currently holding your hair out of your face while you vomit.
“Let it out,” He soothes, hand still rubbing, “Don’t fight it. It’ll be over soon.”
“I hate throwing up.” You choke, coughing and gasping.
“No one does. But you’ll feel better when it’s over.”
Over feels like it’s never going to come. But eventually your stomach stops clenching, you manage to stop heaving, and you’re slumped over the toilet, sucking down gulps of air, sweat beading on your forehead and the back of your neck.
“This,” You mumble in between gasps, “Means nothing.”
You can’t see Jack’s expression, but his response is so quiet you almost miss it.
“Okay.”
You can’t see his face, but you know this isn’t over.
—
Jack sends you home once you’re capable of standing on your own two feet without shaking like a newborn fawn.
(“You can’t send me home.”
“Yes I can. You’re not allowed to come back to work after throwing up in the bathroom.”
“We both know I’m not the only person to do it.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t caught the other people in the wrong bathroom and held their hair back while they vomited.”
“…”
“You only have two hours left anyway. Go home.”)
The problem lies in the fact that the buses aren’t running yet, which means that you can’t, actually, get home. Your house is an hour away on foot. An hour you’d normally be capable of walking, but your phone is almost dead, you’re exhausted, and you still feel a little weak because of the vomiting.
So after retrieving your things from your locker, you find yourself sitting on the little bench outside the PTMC, waiting for the minutes to tick by. If you didn’t bring at least one book with you everywhere you go in case of emergencies (like this one) you probably would have just walked into oncoming traffic.
It’s cold out and your jacket is cheap so you have to burrow into it, hood up to retain any semblance of warmth. It would be almost cozy —huddled in your jacket, watching the city go by, tucked into your favorite romance book— if the shift hadn’t gone the way it had and if a grueling bus ride and half mile walk didn’t await you once the buses finally start running. Waiting for you beyond that is just chores and an empty apartment.
Your fingers tighten on the edges of your book.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
You jolt in place, cracking your neck over to the side and blinking blearily.
Jack. Again.
He makes an expectant face at you as if to say ‘Well?’ when you don’t answer immediately.
Your eyes dart back and forth nervously, even though you know you haven’t done anything wrong. “The buses aren’t running yet. It’s an hour walk to my house.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face and curses under his breath.
“How long until your bus gets here?”
You check your phone. Shit. Only four percent left.
“And hour and a half. Maybe a little longer if it’s running behind more than usual.”
He seems put out by your answer, as if the bus’s heavily fluctuating schedule is of personal consequence and offense to him.
“Um,” You start, both uncomfortable at having been caught reading a romance book in public and at the general air of frustration Jack seems to be venting at the moment, “I’m fine. I have my book. I don’t mind waiting.”
Jack just sighs.
“Do you really think I’m just going to leave you out here, in the cold, after you threw up in the bathroom, to wait for the bus, for nearly two more hours?”
You wince. “Well, it doesn’t sound great when you put it like that.”
He works his jaw. “Have you eaten?”
“No…?”
He shakes his head.
“Come on. You’re coming with me.”
—
“I have to admit, this isn’t where I thought we were going.
Thirty minutes later finds you seated on the cracked vinyl seat of a booth in a cheap diner, staring at a menu and rationalizing spending your last $15 on what will probably be mediocre pancakes.
Jack is seated across from you, already two mugs of coffee —black, but oddly enough, decaf— and not even bothering to pretend to look at his menu. He either comes here often or doesn’t care to act like he isn’t staring at you.
Probably both.
“Where did you think we were going?”
Steam curls out of your own untouched mug of coffee —ordered for you by Jack, also unfortunately decaf— and you debate just getting up and running out of here.
Too bad you’re too exhausted to run anywhere. Jack’s probably banking on that.
“I don’t know,” You shrug, setting the menu down, “Maybe to Gloria’s office to write me up or something.”
“What would I even be writing you up for?”
“Disobeying direction? I’m sure you could come up with something.”
The waitress chooses that moment to appear, notepad in hand. “Are we ready to order?”
Jack rattles off his order, and then two sets of eyes turn to you expectantly. Before you can order the single fruit bowl you were planning on getting (the cheapest thing on the menu) Jack pipes up:
“Order whatever you actually want. Not whatever you think is cheapest or easiest.”
The waitress, a middle aged woman who has probably seen much worse than whatever the two of you have going on, just chuckles lightly under her breath.
You hesitantly list the item you’d been eyeing and thank the waitress.
It isn’t until after the menus have been taken and Jack’s coffee re-upped for the third time that you manage to courage to speak.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean,” your fingers curl on the edge of the table, desperate for something to hold onto, “I can’t— It’ll be awhile until I can pay you back. I barely made rent this month.”
“Do you think I would take you to breakfast and then make you pay?”
“Yes…?”
“You’re not touching the bill, kid. I’m a gentleman.”
“Oh,” You didn’t really see that coming, “Okay.”
Jack gets a funny expression on his face, then resumes his drinking coffee and glancing out the window routine.
“So,” You say after a beat, “Was there something you wanted to talk about…?”
The silence just feels so awkward. It’s killing you.
He raises a brow. “Do you want to talk?”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m asking you what you want to do. What do you usually do when you come out to eat?”
“I don’t? Eating out is expensive, so. But when I do it’s usually by myself, so I end up just reading.”
Jack gestures to your bag beside you. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“What?”
“Read your book.”
“But that’s— isn’t that boring for you?”
He sets his mug down. “I didn’t bring you here because I wanted something from you. I brought you here because you had a shitty day and it seemed like you could use some cheering up. If reading makes you feel better, then do it.”
You have to look out the window to avoid his gaze. You don’t understand how your perfectly crafted facade just crumbles into fucking dust around him. How he manages to see right through you at every turn, how he manages to uncover every lie and every half truth.
“How did you even know I like diner food?”
“Because I pay attention to you.”
You finally look back over at him, arms folded across your chest; not really defensively, more like you’re trying to hold your entire body together by sheer force of will.
Jack’s lips twitch. Not really a smile, but almost. “You bring it up every time Santos wants to get food after a shift. She always says no, because she hates it, but it never stops you from suggesting it.”
It’s just one detail. One tiny, inconsequential detail that he’s apparently memorized and held onto because to him, it’s important. For some impossible to understand reason, he seems to care.
"Also," He shrugs, "I'd miss you."
You scoff. "No you wouldn't."
"I would."
“Do you hate me?”
Jack looks back at you, seemingly startled by the abrupt question.
“No.”
You take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay.”
—
“You did what?”
You wince from your spot lying face-down on Trinity’s couch.
“Not so loud, Trin. I have a headache.”
She ignores you, seated on the floor almost directly in front of you. “So you’ve gone from hating each other to going on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date,” You groan, “We spent almost the entire time in silence. I read my book and he stared out the window and did… whatever it is men like him do when they stare out the window.”
“Brooding,” Trinity says, “He paid. That means it’s a date.”
“No it doesn’t!”
It doesn't. It totally doesn't. Just because Jack said he doesn't hate you doesn't mean he likes you either. There are a lot of emotions in between hate and love. Like toleration, for example. Mild amusement. Exasperation. An appropriate amount of annoyance.
Trinity pokes you on the back of your head, having none of it.
"He likes you. Why else would he willingly hang out with one of us after work?"
"He goes out for drinks in the park sometimes." You mumble.
"Yeah, after an MCI."
What Trinity doesn't know is the events leading up to breakfast at the diner, because that would involve telling her about the whole throwing up from anxiety in the men's bathroom directly after a mini-panic attack because she confronted you about your unhealthy lifestyle (which all just sounds a lot worse than it is), so there isn't really a way to give her the kind of context necessary to get her off your back and dissuade her from her (insanely insane) belief that Jack likes you. Romantically.
"Trust me Trin, he was just being nice. Nothing romantic about it."
It was kind of romantic. Just eating surprisingly good food in the company of someone you don't need to pretend around, enjoying being in the company of another human being without worry or expectation.
Not that she needs to know that.
"Jack doesn't do nice. Have you seen him? What happened to the hating?"
You shrug. "You'll just have to ask him, because I don't know."
You do know. He told you. Explained it.
It doesn't make sense.
Trinity throws her hands in the air dramatically.
"Whatever. You two are impossible."
She finally withdraws, leaving you to wallow in your headache-induced misery by yourself on her couch.
Your phone vibrates on the floor next to you, and you groan, rolling further over to hide yourself in the crack of the couch, shunning the light like the reclusive vampire you are.
Your phone vibrates again.
“Dennis,” your voice is muffled by the couch cushion so it ends up sounding more like ‘denim’, “Can you please see who’s texting me and tell them to fuck off?”
Dennis, who was eating cereal at the tiny table near the kitchen when you first showed up fifteen minutes ago and has pointedly stayed silent throughout the entire exchange between you and Trinity, finally speaks.
“Your phone is two inches away from your hand.”
“I have a headache I don’t wanna look at the screen.”
You feel rather than actually see him roll his eyes, but then there’s the clink of a spoon against a bowl and the faint sound of socked —you’ve genuinely never seen him ever be barefoot under any circumstances, no matter what, he’s always wearing socks— feet as they make their way over to your temporary pit (couch) of despair.
There’s a quiet rustle as he picks up your phone off the floor.
“Oh.”
You whine, dramatic and upset. “What?”
“Um,” He grabs your shoulder, slowly rolling you over and away from the back of the couch, “It’s Jack?”
“What!?” You screech.
You throw yourself up, wincing as you immediately regret it when the pain in your head doubles, take a steadying breath to ignore it, and then grab the phone from Dennis’s outstretched hand.
You turn on the phone and— yep. Sure enough. A text from Jack, complete with the stupid picture of a dinosaur you made his profile picture. Because he’s old.
(It was funnier at the time.)
Somewhere behind you there’s a crash, and then the thump thump thump that can only mean a person running towards you at dangerous speeds for sock covered feet on cheap linoleum.
“Incoming,” Dennis mutters.
“Did I just hear that right?” Trinity gasps, nearly giving herself blunt force trauma via the back of the couch, “Did Jack just text you?”
“I don’t know!” You cry.
“How do you not know! Your phone is right in your fucking hands!”
“I’m tired! Stop yelling at me!”
“Guys!” Dennis shouts, holding up his hands, “I refuse to spend my day off listening to you two argue over the validity of romance with our attending. Give me the phone.”
He snatches the phone without waiting for a response, quickly typing in your password (if there was ever a moment you regret telling him in case of emergency…) and opening the text.
He makes an incredulous face at the phone before saying:
“He asked what you’re doing today.”
Trinity claps once. “Fucking called it!”
“Trinity!” Dennis snaps, before sighing and tapping at your keyboard, “I’m telling him that you have a headache and you’re at our place and to please not text again—“
“No!” You squeal, launching yourself off the couch, arms outstretched, but your legs tangle over each other and you fall and slam, gloriously and beautifully, face first into the coffee table.
“Oo!” Trinity winces, covering her mouth.
“Oh my god!” Dennis balks, “Are you okay?”
“Just give me the fucking phone.”
Peeling your face off, you grab the phone, squinting at the screen and ignoring the black spots in the corner of your vision.
hi, you type, I’m at Trinity and Dennis’s. Did you need something?
You hit send before you can talk yourself out of it.
“We,” You haul yourself to your feet and stagger over to the kitchen table, “Will never speak of this.”
“I definitely am. When I’m the maid of honor at your guys wedding, I’m gonna give a speech and be all ‘you guys, she gave herself a concussion the first time he texted—‘“
“There will be no wedding!”
“That’s just what you think.”
Your phone vibrates again, signaling a response.
Just wondering how you were doing. Surprised to hear you’re not holed up in your apartment reading something.
Ah, sexy old men and their correct grammar and punctuation when texting. Shouldn’t be endearing.
“What’s he saying?”
“Go away!”
You tap out a quick response.
Not today unfortunately lol I have a headache so no reading for me
Isn’t this the sixth day in a row you’ve had a headache? Should I give neuro a call?
You stomach flips.
nooo I’m fine i get them all the time
That’s not exactly reassuring.
I went to the doctor for them awhile ago apparently they’re normal
Who?
if I tell you, are you going to call him and make him send over my chart?
Yes.
Your heart is starting to pound a fluttering beat in your chest, and you hunch over your phone.
then i’m not telling you. it’s fine, really
they usually go away when i take over the counter stuff
So your plan is just to destroy your liver?
pretty much
We need to work on your planning skills.
we?
I’m not doing all the work.
Now stop looking at your phone. Drink some Gatorade and take a nap.
this is a resident apartment there’s no gatorade here just redbulls
Have either of them buy you one. I’ll pay whichever one it is later. Go to sleep. You need it.
You turn off your phone, shuffling back over to the couch and flopping down onto it.
“I’m taking a nap. Jack wants one of you to go buy me a Gatorade. He said he’d pay you back later.”
“He said what?”
—
You end up sleeping the entire day away, which should have screwed up your sleep schedule, but thankfully you live in a state of perpetual exhaustion and are fully capable of falling asleep anytime, anywhere, no matter how much you last sleep. It’s a gift.
Shockingly, the shift you work the next day is actually much easier to survive and your smiles aren’t nearly as forced. Go figure. Who knew that getting an appropriate amount of sleep would be so helpful?
“Somebody’s in a better mood today.” Jack mutters as you sidle up next to him under the board.
“I’m pretty sure I slept for like, fourteen straight hours. Thanks for the Gatorade, by the way. I woke up around hour three, chugged it, and then went back to sleep. No headache when I woke up!”
“Wonderful,” He drawls, “It’s almost like taking care of yourself is actually beneficial.”
“I take care of myself plenty.”
He casts you a sidelong glance, expression pinched.
“When was the last time you drank water without being prompted?”
“That’s different.”
“Okay,” He dips his head, “When was the last time you ever felt truly relaxed?”
You give him a beaming smile, so wide it hurts. “We’re not going to talk about this right now!”
“You started this conversation. I’m trying to do my job.”
You snort. “You’re waiting to see if someone else is going to take the sunburn guy.”
“Are you accusing an attending of cherry picking?”
“Of course not. Just observing, sir.”
Jack’s turned to look at you now, head tilted up, hands folded behind his back.
When you say sir, his eyes flick down to your lips, and then his jaw tightens.
The air suddenly becomes charged, the space between you two filled with something too electric to be air.
It smells like aftershave, hospital antiseptic, wanting, and something that’s distinctly masculine.
You look away first, swallowing hard past the sudden dryness of your mouth.
“You know,” You say, crossing your arms and looking up at the board, “Trinity thinks you like me. Romantically.”
“Mm.”
“I told her that was dumb,” You babble, “Obviously it’s not true, but. She won’t let it go, so if she says something, just ignore her. Or not. Whatever you want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
You whip your head around so fast you’re pretty sure something cracks. “What?”
“I mean,” Jack’s voice is gruff as he shrugs once, “Is that really so unrealistic?”
“Of course it is,” You sputter, “You don’t like me.”
“I’ve actually never said that. That was a conclusion you came to on your own. I distinctly recall telling you that I don’t hate you.”
“Just because you don’t hate me doesn’t mean that you like me, let alone— like that.”
Jack tilts his head, almost predatory, and all that sharp tension rushes straight back in.
“Like what?”
Something hot and dangerous is starting to unfurl in your chest, untethering from where it was previously lodged deep behind your ribs, out of sight, out of feeling.
“Code Blue en route, ETA two minutes.”
Jack jerks his head in the direction of the ambulance bay. “You gonna go get that?”
“Uh,” You’re pretty sure you’re stroking out, having a seizure, or something, because the only thing you’re capable of comprehending is the fact that Jack just not-so-subtly implied to actually liking you. Romantically.
“Get going then.”
You scurry away, hot all over and absolutely done with emotions in their entirety.
—
The rest of the week is hell on Earth. Perks of being in your twenties.
Things could be worse though!
Kind of.
It’s just that it’s been several days since Jack basically confirmed Trinity’s suspicions on romance and you can’t stop thinking about it. Obsessively.
It’s bad.
Bad enough that when Mel asked if there was any way you could cover her shift, you said yes.
“Okay,” Dennis stage-whispers as you’re downing your third coffee of the day, miserably charting at the nurses station, “I feel the need to ask how bad things can possibly be if you’re covering a day shift.”
“Mel asked.”
Dennis blinks incredulously. “You love Mel, but not enough to work a day shift voluntarily.”
“What exactly are you asking me here?”
“Did you and Jack hit a rough patch or something?”
“Keep your voice down!” You hiss, ducking your head as if you can hide from Princess and Perlah, “And for your information, no. We didn’t. I just wanted to do something nice for Mel.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to believe me.”
Day-shift crawls on in a whirlwind of chaos and a level of dumb-fuckery that can only be achieved from the hours of 8 a.m to 8 p.m. As usual, the place is understaffed, overcrowded, and filled with a lingering sense of impending doom.
By the time night-shift starts filtering in, you’re ready to completely give up and start a new life a sheep rancher in New Zealand. It’s always been the plan if being a doctor didn’t work out.
Jack finds you in the locker room once the handoff is over, sitting on the little bench in the same position Dennis found you in earlier. Face in your hands, heels in your eyes, methodically counting breaths and wondering if that fluttering feeling in your chest is from caffeine consumption or sleep deprivation.
It’s fine. Your fine. Everything is fine.
“You don’t look too good.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t say you’re fine.”
“But I am,” You grit, “I just need a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s the distinct sound of Jack’s slightly uneven footsteps, and then there’s a warm weight pressed against your side.
You take another shuddering breath that feels less like breathing and more like placing a single brick in a wobbly foundation.
“Shouldn’t you be out on the floor?”
“I don’t work tonight.”
You raise your head just enough to look at him. “You don’t? I thought I saw you on the schedule. Why are you here if you don’t work?”
Now that you’re looking at him and not starburst patterns on the back of your eyelids, you can see that he’s wearing casual clothes, not scrubs, and he doesn’t have his usual army-issue backpack with him.
“I got Shen to cover me. I came here for you.”
Your next breath in almost gets stuck in your chest, air struggling to move past that alive and wriggling thing that keeps moving every time Jack is around.
“What’d you do that for?”
The barest hints of a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Dennis called me. He said you’d need picking up after your shift.”
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment flood your veins, turning your blood into sickly-sweet poison that makes your stomach roll and twist.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I have no idea why he did that. You really didn’t have to drive all the way over here, I swear I didn’t tell him to call you or something like that—“
“I know you didn’t,” Jack soothes, voice a rumbly, smooth timber that washes over your permanently-frazzled nerves like a balm, “Which is why I came.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jack stands, pulling your bag and change of clothes out of your locker.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me, so you don’t have to answer it again. Can you do that for me?”
You nod once.
“Words.”
“Uh— yeah. Yes.”
“Good.”
Thank god the locker room is empty— everyone’s either on the floor or already left for their homes.
He closes your locker down, shoulders your bag, and hands you your clothes.
“Is it easier for you to accept help when you don’t have to ask and don’t get the chance to say no?”
It sounds so pathetic, hearing it laid out like that. The ugly guts of you; cut open, laid bare, and marked for research. Exhibit A, the inside of the girl no one ever needed to worry about.
You don’t want to agree. You want to laugh it off, maybe run away from it. Sit up straight, wipe your face, take the bag from Jack and explain that this is all a big misunderstanding and you’re perfectly fine and he can stop worrying about you now.
“Yes.”
Jack doesn’t verbally acknowledge your response besides a single dip of his head, like he knows that if he does anything more it’ll turn your response into a confession and that’s just too vulnerable for the hospital locker room.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t mean to be this way, you know.”
The passenger seat of Jack’s car isn’t somewhere you’d ever imagined yourself being. Not even late at night or on the bus when you’re pretending to be someone else who’s better at chasing what they want.
“It stopped being intentional a long time ago,” your hands are fisted into the material of your sweatpants, nails digging into the fabric, “It was just the natural progression of things. I like being liked.”
What you don’t say, what becomes an unspoken truth that lingers in the air despite not being verbalized, is the survival aspect of it. Why and how a person fuses this kind of thing to their personality; to their life. The circumstances that makes the natural progression of things end it being better for everyone if you just don’t have needs.
“I know.”
“I know you know, I just… needed to tell you. Myself.”
It’s odd seeing Jack illuminated by streetlights instead of fluorescent overheads. It’s odd being able to watch his hand flex on the steering wheel, watching his forearm tense as he shifts gears in his old stick-shift.
“You like being told what to do.”
Your face heats, but you’re determined not to lose face now. Especially after managing to survive being emotionally flayed open, willingly, by him.
“It feels safe. If I know what yo— someone wants, then I can’t mess it up, and I can relax.”
You can practically see the gears turning in Jack’s mind.
“Makes sense.”
The rest of the drive is quiet, the silence only filled by the sounds of Pittsburgh around you and the gentle crackle of something from the radio turned down too low to hear.
And for the first time in longer than you can remember, you begin feeling something that approaches calm.
Jack doesn’t have any expectations. There isn’t any one particular way he wants you to act or expects you to behave like. There’s nothing he wants you to do.
So you do what you want to do.
You relax.
—
In the weeks following Jack driving you home, there is a quantifiable shift in behavior between the two of you.
He starts pulling back.
It strikes you as odd first, and your natural inclination is to pull back too— to guard the soft, vulnerable bits you’ve showed him in case he throws them back at you.
But then you realize what he’s doing.
Instead of telling you how to proceed on a case when you come to him for advice, he asks you questions and steers you to the answer. He holds back when he’s evaluating a case with you, patiently following your lead and only interjecting when necessary.
He’s making space for you try new things and learn without fear of rejection. Building your confidence bit by bit.
It feels more intimate than sex.
After much deliberation, screaming into your pillow, and Reddit forum searching for HR violations, you decide to get him a card. Because he’s actually been really kind and helpful and he makes you feel like you can actually survive residency.
“What’s this?”
“A thank you card.”
You’re staring at your shoes, eyes flicking up and down between Jack’s face and the floor.
“What for?”
“It says it in the card.”
You scurry away, attaching yourself to the closest patient to avoid seeing Jack’s face when he does finally open it.
But when you look back, he’s just staring at it, a small smile on his face.
—
It’s the card that does him in.
Jack hasn’t made his feelings for you a secret, despite your unwillingness to see him as anything other than standoffish in the beginning.
He came on too strong at first— that was his fault. He didn’t yet understand how imbedded your need ran and how long it’d been since anyone bothered to look deeper.
He’d hoped, at least, that you were letting Whitaker and Santos help, and though you let them closer than most, it was clear you still seemed intent on holding up yourself and everyone around you on your own.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the way you oozed kindness— like it was a byproduct of your existence. He watched you get so wrapped up in being the perfect resident, perfect friend, perfect person, that no one ever stopped to let you know how good you were just by being.
He hadn’t planned on developing feelings or anything of the sort. At first, you’d just been one of his residents. Smart and capable but lacking confidence in yourself to fully commit. Then there was that MCI, and drinks in the park afterwards where he’d painfully watched you sip a beer you clearly hated, and everything just clicked right into place.
He never intends to flirt with you. It just happens. He can’t help himself. He’s a weak fucking man when it comes to you.
And then you bring him a card. A fucking card. To thank him for doing his job as an attending, a job he should’ve been doing better from the start. It has an illustration of bananas on it and says “Thanks a bunch!”.
He knows he’s completely gone, then. He was capable of being in denial before, could delude himself into thinking that what he felt was casual, but the sight of you before him, hands nervously wringing, your glitter gel pens sparkling as they caught the light was just the final nail in the coffin.
He allows himself a modicum of flirting on a day to day basis, mostly because if he couldn’t tease that real smile out of you at least once per day, he’d lose his mind.
Sometimes he takes you back to the diner, especially on longer days where none of your smiles reach your eyes and you start obsessively uncapping and capping your gel pens.
Even though you think it “looks dumb” you’ve also taken to sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in the booth, and he pretends he can’t see you sneaking fries off his plate because he knows how much effort it takes you to ask him if you can sit with him instead of on the opposite side.
Then he starts driving you home during a string of bad weather after you start sneezing from walking in the rain everyday, but even after the storm passes and the weather clears up he still finds you at the lockers, every day, car keys in hand. No matter how many times he does it, you always look so happily surprised that he’s still offering.
As if he’s not wrapped around your finger.
One day, after things have been mellow for awhile, Whitaker calls him and says that neither he nor Trinity have seen you in three days and you called out of work.
So naturally, as a calm and collected man, he showed up to your house.
You’d answered the door after the third time he knocked (which was great, because he was gearing up to force the door open) and you just looked miserable. Your hair was a mess, you head blanket wrinkles imprinted onto your face, and your eyes were puffy.
“Jack?” You’d mumbled, squinting your eyes against the not very bright light in the hallway, “Why are you at my apartment?”
“No one’s heard from you in three days.”
You wince. “I swear I meant to text Trinity. I just have a bad headache.”
His fingers twitch towards a penlight he doesn’t have. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Like a seven on the pain scale?”
“Jesus— I’m coming in.”
“Nooo,” You cry, but shuffle back from the door and put up very little fight as he ushers you to the couch.
Your apartment is….. exactly as messy as he’d imagined a resident who lives alone would be. For someone who doesn’t drink enough water, there are an incredible amount of beverage bottles and cans littered about.
“Do you have headache relief?”
You gesture to the kitchen. “Cabinet furthest to the left.”
While rifling through your very disorganized medicine cabinet, he spies an orange prescription bottle with your name on it, dated for the previous year.
“Why do you have a prescription for a high level antihistamine?”
“Stop snooping. It’s for my migraines.”
“You’ve had a prescription this entire time and you’ve been taking all that over the counter shit?”
“Stop being mad,” You mumble into the couch cushion, “My migraine meds put me to sleep, so I can’t take them when I’m working. Plus I don’t have any refills left so I save them for when it’s really bad.”
“You called out of work and haven’t left your apartment in three days and you don’t consider this bad?”
“Could be worse. Could be throwing up.”
He sighs. Sets the bottle on the counter, breathes in once, then lets it out slowly. Imagines all the ways he could murder whoever made you think suffering alone for three days is preferable to asking for help.
“I’m going to help you back to bed,” He starts, voice low as he rounds the couch, “And then you’re going to drink some electrolytes, have a snack, and take your meds. Okay?”
The migraine has clearly taken it out of you, because you put up zero fight as he manhandles you to your feet and helps you drag yourself back to your bed.
“M’ sorry my apartment is a mess. I was supposed to clean it.”
“I’m not judging, sweetheart,” He says, tucking the blankets up around you, lips twitching as you make grabby hands for a giant triceratops plushie that looks to be the size of your upper body. “I’m gonna make you a snack, so try to stay awake until I come back. Can you do that?”
“Mhm. I’ll try.”
“Good girl.”
He manages to find a cucumber in your fridge, cuts it into slices and then adds a few pieces of lunch meat for protein. Last but not least, he snags a bottle of blue Gatorade from your pantry.
(He only knows they were there because he bought them for you a few weeks ago.)
He doesn’t make you sit up to eat, but instead scoots you a little ways away from the edge of your bed so there’s space for the plate.
You slowly nibble your way through, taking little sips of Gatorade when he nudges the bottle into your hands.
You finish the cucumbers, eat most of the lunch meat, and drink half the Gatorade before burrowing back into the blankets and declaring yourself done.
“Can I have my sleep mask please? I think it’s on the floor under my nightstand?”
“Of course you can.”
After your face mask is on and the curtains closed, he gives you the correct dose of your meds and gently shuts the door to your bedroom.
He fires off a quick text to Whitaker (he doesn’t have Santos’s number) that says you’re fine, stuck in bed with a migraine, and that he’s handling it.
And then he gets to work.
Two hours later your apartment is clean, your laundry is started, and Jack’s relaxing on your couch, aimlessly watching the news.
He hears the door creak open but knows you hate feeling on the spot, so he keeps his gaze trained on the tv even as he hears the sound of you shuffling over to the couch.
And then you pause.
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“Did you clean my apartment?”
He finally looks over to you, and when his gaze reaches your face his stomach drops.
You’re crying.
He hauls himself off the couch (he’s thankful that he put his leg back on a few minutes prior) and stops in front of you, arms twitching at his sides with the need to fix, help, to stop whatever it is that’s making you cry.
“What’s wrong? Did I overstep?”
“No,” You warble, voice wet, “I just haven’t had the time or energy to clean in here for so long, and it’s been stressing me out so bad I avoid staying here during my off days. It’s just really, really nice of you.”
You look at him, eyebrows pinched and eyes wide with worry, “I— I’m not sure how to repay you for all of this. I know you said going to the diner was fine, but this is— a lot.”
“Sweetheart,” He starts, bracing one hand on the side of your face, thumb deftly sweeping across your cheek and wiping away the quickly drying tears, “I’m not doing any of this because I expect you to repay me. I’m doing it because I care about you and I want to see you happy.”
You sniff hard. “This is a lot of work, though.”
“I like doing it. I like taking care of you.”
Another sniff. “It doesn’t seem very fun.”
“I told you. You’re like a cat. Had to coax you over and now look at you,” he thumb rubs circles over your cheekbone, “Practically purring.”
You wrinkle your nose. “I don’t know if I like this metaphor.”
“Get used to it.”
You sigh, dramatic and long.
“I suppose I’ll allow it.”
“Oh, you’ll allow it, huh.”
You fold your hands behind your back, rocking back and forth on your heels. “Yes. I’ll allow it.”
“Well, aren’t I lucky.”
Later, when you’re lying on the couch, two movies into what Jack thinks is an unofficial early 2000s rom-com marathon (your favorite genre) you turn to look up at him from your spot tucked into his side.
“This is romantic, right?”
He presses a lazy kiss to your forehead, because he knows how much you like physical affirmations as well as verbal ones.
“Yes.”
“You’re serious about this?”
“You need confirmation?”
“I’d rather have it in writing, but this will do for now.”
He huffs a breathy laugh, tucks you closer to his chest.
“I’ll put it in writing for you later.”
You hum, pleased, and snuggle back into him, letting out a content sigh.
new dad jack abbot who is just absolutely obsessed with newborn scrunches…like to the point he will fight/race reader to be the first one in front of the bassinet the second your baby moves or makes any noise.
those scrunches are HIS.
he’ll pick the baby up sooo gently, cooing at them as they make all the baby noises, and the second that baby scrunches up to stretch jack is a puddle on the floor. don’t even bother mopping it up cause it’s just gonna keep happening every time that baby wakes up.
the baby’s little legs curl up into their bottom, arms stiff and stretched out, back curved a little and the cheeks…good lord those chubby cheeks get all squished against their arms and their eyebrows raise. their tiny face gets red as their fists flail a little bit.
jack’s got the biggest smile on his face, so soft and warm for his mini me.
“biggggg stretchhhh”, jack will coo, eyebrows dancing in his hairline as he gasps softly when the baby finishes stretching and looks right at him.
“there, much better”, jack says softly, pulling his baby close and letting them rest against his shoulder; “yeah i know…feels so nice to stretch out, huh?”
reader just watches the entire thing unfold with nothing but love in their eyes. half ready to pounce on jack and not wanting to interrupt the moment. reader has no idea how many videos of that exact moment they have on their phone by now. at least a dozen.
when the baby reaches that stage in between three and four weeks old where they technically aren’t a newborn anymore, jack is distraught. his baby is growing up and he doesn’t like it. even more so when he goes to pick the baby up and they just…don’t scrunch.
instead their arms go all the way above their head, stretching out the same way jack would…like a full grown person. their tiny body is still a little arched, but not the same way it used to be. not in full scrunch, legs still dangling below their little body.
jack freezes, almost immediately. he just…stares…loses it. blinks once, then twice before a soft breath comes from his mouth, brows already furrowing before he can stop them.
“um excuse me bean, where the heck is your scrunch?”
his voice almost wavers. bean stares back at him, blinks once before chewing on their fist, unsure why jack’s still got them held out into the air. clearly the scrunch isn’t coming.
bean grunts in protest.
jack brings them close, cradling their tiny head and letting his lips brush against the soft downy hair on top of their head.
“can’t believe you lost your scrunch…when did you get so big?”, he whispers into their skin.
he inhales the new baby scent, which is thankfully—still fully in tact.
jack tells reader dramatically about the events when they emerge from the shower. hands waving in the air. he’s fully dissatisfied and appalled that bean dared to loose their scrunch. not when it was his favorite thing.
“it’s ok honey, now bean has the cute baby stretch”, reader assures him.
jack let’s put a noise that almost sounds like a grunt, but sighs anyways; “It is kinda cute…”
“see? it’s ok”, reader tells him, caressing his hand with their thumb; “we’ve got lots of videos too, jack.”
jack nods, eyes flicking over to look at bean who’s chilling in their bouncer chair. he points at them, eyes narrowed with a quiet humor that’s decorated with a slight seriousness; “you”, he says; “need to stop growing so fast.”
so yeah, he’s a little distraught and has a mini existential crisis…and maybe he watches those videos of every scrunch bean every did later that night in bed while reader is fast asleep next to him. maybe his eyes are a little glossy, sue him. that’s his baby.
synopsisyou and Robby had been going steady for a few months now but when a betting board is made on who your mysterious male friend could be, Robby is not happy with the outcome.
warningslanguage, smutish- allusions to smut, jealous Robby, mention of shooting- GSW
author noterobby x reader but platonic frank x reader, can you tell santos is my favourite cause i include her in basically everything i write
Santos had had a day.
More traumas than she could deal with and a young girl who came in with bruises that suspiciously looked like abuse. She’d had just about enough when she realised she’d have to give another two hours to the place to get her charting done.
When she came home she knew Whitaker was at Amy’s and you should have been home. She watched you practically bolt out the place. Santos hoped it’d be a night of crappy food and shitty movies.
So when she ditched her keys at the kitchen counter and listened out the last thing she expected to hear was moaning.
“What the?” she called out for you.
Maybe you were having a self-care night. Charged up a vibrator and such.
Santos chuckled to herself as she made to tiptoe past your room.
There was the unmistakable sound of another.
“Oh fuck.”
Trinity paused.
You and her were close, she could admit that. You were maybe her only friend. So she knew you had been going through a dry patch. Because you were making it everyone's problem.
She listened in.
There was deep groaning from a man and your moans, the soft thudding of a bed against the wall. Trinity thanked the heavens again that the head of your bed was against Denis's wall and not hers.
“Deeper, harder,” she heard you moan.
“Oh, fuck me,” the guy groaned deep. She didn't recognise the voice. Did she?
Curious she tried to listen to the mans voice, wondering what she could tell. He must have been busy as little else was said other than groanings.
Where had you met this guy? Had this been happening longer than she knew? Is this why you hurried out?
Santos thought you weren't one of one night stands. Were you proving her wrong?
She snook into her room and knew she had to tell someone, at least Whitaker.
Robby collapsed next to you on your bed, catching his breath as you pulled the sheets up to cover your slightly sweaty bodies. The bed creaked under his weight as he moved around, getting himself comfortable.
Your bed was a small double, not really built for anyone more than one. Let alone Robby.
“You want some water or something?” you asked.
Robby chuckled, the bed creaking again as he turned on his side to face you. “Aren't I supposed to be asking you that?”
You lifted your shoulders, tucking your hands under your head to admire him. “Well you're the senior citizen with the... bad back?”
His brows lifted. “Oh that's how you want to play it.”
He grabbed your hip and pulled you close.
You were still trying to recover from the multiple orgasms Robby had ripped through your body as soon as you'd stepped through your apartment door. But that didn't stop his hands from crowding around your body, pulling you into him as all his hardness turned soft.
His lips found yours as easy as one found home, kissing you the way he knew you liked to be kissed. Head tilted to reach deeper, nose moving against your cheek.
There was a sudden shriek in your apartment.
You pushed Robby off, sitting up quick in bed.
“What?” he asked, far less alarmed then you as his arm fell around your waist.
“Trinity.”
Robby hummed. “Thought you said she was at Garcia's tonight?”
“I thought she was,” you uttered as if she was in the room.
The dating with Robby had started maybe three months ago when you'd had a disastrous date at the same bar Robby frequented with his buddy Duke. He'd seen the distress you were in with your date when he wouldn't stop talking about why sports people should actually get paid more than health care workers.
From there you had drinks with Robby.
From there he asked to see you again outside of work.
From there you ended up in his bed and he in yours on the occasions you had the place to yourself, which with two room mates didn't happen often.
You'd thought tonight was one of them.
“You should go,” you said, throwing the cover back to find your clothes in the dark.
“What?” Robby laughed, without moving. Instead he got himself comfortable, throwing an arm around the back of his head and tugging the covers down to his waist.
“Yes, do you want Trinity to know?”
“She doesn't sleep in your room though does she?”
Still, you tried to find some clothes.
The word around the PTMC was that Robby was a seven week itch kind of guy, the sort to never tie himself down. So though you'd been on dates with him and though he'd brought you flowers before and held your hands in bars and took you to a fancy dinner, he still fucked you like a guy that could move on the next day.
And you didn't want to scare him away with talk of serious dating. A bit of Robby was better than none of him.
You just didn't want your friends to judge you for that.
“Hey-hey-” Robby moved over on the bed, arm darting out to wrap around your waist and tug you back in.
You couldn't even protest before he was pulling you into him, hooking one of his large legs over yours and trapping you in. Your quilt was pulled up and his head rested next to yours.
At least when you and Robby were done with the sex you never kicked each other out of bed. But you did go into work separately.
“But-”
“-I'll be out of here first thing in the morning.”
With his arms around you and his calming breath you didn't think you could push him off you if you wanted to.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Robby kissed the blade of your shoulder and for the rest of the night that was how you were and when you woke in the morning with two hours to spare before your shift started, Robby was already gone.
“So who's the lucky guy?”
You chocked on your coffee, peering next to you at Trinity. “What?”
She smirked, leaning on the locker next to yours. “Oh come on, I heard you last night.”
The bitter taste of black coffee turned to ash in your stomach. She'd heard. Or worse, she'd been up to see Robby sneak out in the morning.
“What-what do you mean?” play it cool, you could totally starve of the humiliation. Maybe you could persuade her it was a dream, a nightmare, that she was sleepwalking and actually heard/saw/knew nothing.
“I heard you last night,” she said. “Quite the dicking down from what it sounded like.”
You felt the heat in your cheeks. “Oh my god.”
“Hey, I think its good, you deserve it,” said Santos as you hid yourself in your locker, taking great care in peeling off your jacket and finding your stethoscope inside. “So is it someone I know, or...”
She didn't know. You rejoiced silently before realising she still knew there was someone. “That is none of your business.”
“Oh come on, you know Garcia!”
“Because she works here.”
“Does he work here?”
“No!” you close the locker door, not as amused as Trinity was clearly finding this situation. “Please, he's just... a guy.”
She leaned in closer for the gossip. Few things got her as excited as gossip did. “A boyfriend guy or a sleep around guy?”
Wasn't that the golden question.
“Oh my god, you don't know.”
“Santos!” the call of her name should have saved you. Not when it was Robby calling for her as he stood between the two of you. “Pelvic exam in three.”
She groaned but gave a salute. “You got it boss,” she said to him before aiming a finger at you. “This isn't over.”
Santos had turned, leaving and you hardly waited anytime to turn back to the lockers and bash your head into them. Not enough to hurt but enough to erase the terrible fact that Santos had heard you.
Robby liked hearing you moan and you liked Robby so you always moaned loud.
And she'd caught enough of it.
Usually, you wished for Robby to be a bit louder in bed. You were glad he hadn't been.
The cold metal of the locker was replaced on what might have been your twentieth go at hitting yourself with the back of a rough hand.
“Everything okay?” asked Robby, coming to stand next to you, leaning on the lockers. His eyes creased with concern.
“She knows.”
His brows shot up, which didn't indicate a good reaction. “She knows?”
“Not about you, don't worry,” you said with a light scoff. “She knows that I had a good time with a guy last night, she doesn't know who.”
Robby nodded in consideration. “So we're in the clear?”
You screwed your eyes shut. You hadn't realised just how bad you wanted him to shrug it off, tell you he didn't care if Trinity knew, that of everyone in the ward knew, that he only cared about what it meant between the two of you. You only realised when he didn't give you that option.
He wanted to be sure he wasn't affiliated with it.
“Yeah, you're in the clear.”
You left Robby at the lockers before suspicions could grow. Nothing wrong with a resident talking to their attending and so far you and Robby had done a good job at not having any suspicion- not even from Dana.
The least you could do for the guy was keep it that way.
“You had a hot date last night?” Princess slid up to your side before you were even half way across the ward.
You groaned. “Santos told you already.”
“Why didn't you say anything?”
“Say anything about what?” Javadi's voice suddenly came from Doctor McKay's side. The older woman tried to act uninterested but her keen eyes were watching you from over the computer.
“She had a date around hers last night,” said Perhlah, coming up to your other side.
“And she won't tell us who it was,” added Princess.
Javadi's smile grew and her jaw hung open. “Who?”
You shook your head and stared at your shoes. “This is the worst day of my life.”
“Okay!” Robby's voiced boomed out. He clapped his hands, gaining everyone's attention. “We have patients, how about we go ask them some riveting questions?”
Mel frowned from somewhere in the crowd that had formed. “We should go ask them if they know who the guy is?”
She realised quickly that wasn't quite what he meant.
Perlah and Princess walked off together, quietly scheming. “Men just don't get it.”
You gulped down, smoothing your hand over your head and where the growing headache was forming. “Thanks.”
Robby said nothing but there was the brief feel of his hands on your shoulders as he squeezed before moving past you.
It was going on lunch, you'd just gotten a trauma through and up to the OR when you spotted bright post-it notes stuck up on the board in Ahmed's office. The betting board, his mini kingdom had been put back together.
Three titles.
Who?
How long?
Casual or dating?
“Oh my god!” your shriek echoed around the Pitt.
“What? What is it? What?” Robby was at your side in an instant, body almost slamming into you with how quick he slid next to you. He steadied himself, holding on.
“That!”
Ahmed had set up a betting board based on your love life.
The who column was spread with names and the name of those that had bet scribbled underneath. In the middle there was how long had it been going on for, some thought it was only a few weeks, others guessed up to six months.
The last column, wondering if it was a casual thing or serious was filled with almost every post it note saying 'casual'.
“Oh,” Robby chuckled.
“It's not funny,” you argued. “Has every body here bet?”
“Not me, I had no idea. Besides I think that's kind of cheating, right?”
“I see you've found my latest and greatest,” said Ahmed, approaching behind the two of you. “We got this up and running two hours ago, you want me to break it down for you?”
“Holy shit,” you uttered, scanning the board. It was a great and easy way to find out what everyone thought about you.
Robby nodded, leaning on the door next to you. “Holy shit.”
“How much money's in the pot?” you asked.
Ahmed grinned like he was just waiting for you to ask. “Five-hundred and five dollars!”
Robby chocked on a breath next to you as your jaw hung open.
Someone was gonna make money of your guys' sex lives and none of that was going to come to you.
“And I'm guessing I can't get in on it?” you asked.
“No," said Ahmed. “Unless, you know, you wanna tell me who it is and I'll split the money between us.”
“And who do you think it is?” asked Robby. He asked casually, still leaning on the doorframe like he couldn't care less. If he was a girl in a rom-com he might have even checked on his nails or twirled his hair. But you'd studied him close the last couple months, you'd worked all his emotions out into your own little Robby dictionary.
There was a hint of jealousy.
“Well, I've gone with the fan favourite,” he said, plucking off his post it note to show you. “Frank. Three months. And serious.”
“Langdon!” Robby announced.
Uh-oh.
“Yeah, man,” he said. “More than half these notes say it's him.”
On further reading you noticed it did. On yellows and pinks and greens Frank's name was written in quick scribbles or thought out curves.
Frank? Sure the two of you were close. You'd worked close together for a year- nearly two. You worked coordinated well in traumas and with patients you always knew what the other was thinking.
Since his divorce with you'd been helping him as much as you could. You had a friend who was a good lawyer and when he had a chance to see the kids you always covered.
You knew, of course, everything that had happened with the benzos.
You knew Robby still wasn't back to being best-buds with the guy.
You didn't know everyone thought you and Frank were together!
Donnie side stepped past you, coming in with his bets. “I got it, I got it-”
Robby snatched them from his hand, scoffing at whatever was written.
“Langdon. Two weeks and serious.”
“Et-tu, Donnie?” you asked.
“I got fifty in the pool, looking to get a new tv, you know.”
Robby stormed off.
Donnie watched. “He got a bet in?”
“Not yet, sorry, you don't mind?” asked Ahamed.
You scoffed. “Do I have a choice?”
You left them to it, finding Robby sitting at the nurses station at a computer. His jaw clenched and fingers worked furiously over the keypads. You evaluated the area before leaning in. “If you put a pool in we could split the money?”
“Should I put a bet in for Langdon?” He didn't look up to you as he slid on his glasses.
It angered you because he seemed annoyed at something he knew not to be true and because he slid on the glasses that made him even hotter than he already was.
“Is there something wrong, Robby?”
“No.”
“You seem-”
“- I'm not,” he snapped.
He was.
Robby wouldn't admit how much he let his emotions rule, especially anger. He used to be terrible for it but for a while he'd been better, lighter on his feet, patient. Since about.... well, since you started seeing each other.
“Hey.” Langdon joined your side.
You noticed a vein in Robby's neck twitch. “Hey.”
“You seen what everyone's saying?” asked Frank. “Apparently we're seeing each other?”
“Yeah,” you said, turning to him. “I had no idea.”
“You think I should buy a ring next?” he teased.
Robby slammed his hands on the counter, pushing himself up and storming off without so much as a glance.
Frank watched. “What's his problem?”
What was his problem? You'd love to know. “He had a bet on someone else,” you excused.
“Oh bummer,” said Frank. “You think he lost a lot of money?”
You didn't have time to come up with another lie as you spotted Santos and Whitaker walking by. Politely, you ditched Frank, promising you'd catch him for lunch.
“Did you start a betting system on my sex life?” you asked Trinity.
She smirked. “That wasn't me, I had nothing to do with that, seriously!”
“It's true,” said Denis. “But she was the first to put down a bet on Frank.”
You looked at her. You knew the history between her and Frank. Why would she want you to sleep with him? “You hate Frank?”
She shrugged. “So I guessed you were sleeping with him and didn't want to tell me because you know I don't like him.”
You shook your head. “I didn't want to tell you because it's none of your business.” You considered Whitaker. “Who'd you bet for?”
“I-I didn't, I-I wouldn't-”
“He bet on Nick from radiology.”
All of this from Robby sleeping with you in your apartment. Next time- if there was even gong to be a next time- you were doing it at his.
By the end of your shift anyone that hadn't placed a bet had.
Franks name had doubled and the pot was up to one thousand dollars (the highest bet in Pitt history). Frank found it funny, cracking jokes about it all day, throwing arms around you and dragging you onto cases saying 'couples that save lives together, stay together.'
Any other time you'd have laughed.
But when Robby was around every corner, glaring yet refusing to talk to you you couldn't find amusement in it.
The night had come and you were catching a break at the ambulance bay, sitting down on the curb. You were home in an hour, Denis had already gone to Amy's to deliver a lamb or something and Santos was supposed to be at Garcia's tonight.
But you highly doubted you'd have company.
“Hey,” Jack greeted, walking over to you in his midnight scrubs and bag slung over his shoulder. “How's my favourite day shift resident?”
You smiled a tired one at him. “How much money do you have in your wallet?”
Without a beat Jack fetched it and offered you what he had. Because that's the kind of guy Jack was.
“No, no,” you chuckled. “I don't need your cash. There's a betting pool on about who I'm sleeping with. I just- I was gonna ask you to not place a bet.”
Jack laughed, setting next to you on the curb, stretching out his prosthetic leg. “Would be a bit unfair seeing's as I'm best pals with the guy you're dating.”
“Not dating,” you corrected. “Probably not even seeing each other after today.”
Jack listened as you explained the distance, the glares, the snapping that returned to Robby. He didn't jump to defend his friend, he listened to you and took notes mentally. “The guys an emotional wreck. You know that. I know that.”
“But I thought he was doing better?”
“He was- is. Since he started dating you,” he said. “You ask me he's dealing with some emotions he doesn't know how to process. Jealousy. Greed. What's the other deadly sin?”
You rolled your eyes playfully. “Lust?”
“Yeah. That.”
“So I'm supposed to what? Let him be a dick all over again?”
“Oh fuck no,” said Jack firmly. “Put him in his place.”
Admittedly you didn't want to. You wanted to go back to being whatever it was you had with Robby. You wanted to hold hands and share beers in shitty bars at least an hour out of town so it was kept a secret. You wanted the brush of hands between the rush of patients and the discreet meetings at his or yours.
But how far were you willing to bend before you broke?
“So who's everyone putting bets on anyway?” Jack asked.
“Frank.”
Understanding of the situation hit him. “Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah.”
Suddenly the wail of an ambulance cut through the quiet.
The doors burst open, Robby, Santos, King, Jesse all pouring out.
“GSW to the chest, forty-two year old male, weak pulse, un-conscious on the ride over,” said Robby tugging on his gloves as you and Jack jumped up. He spared a glance at the two of you before the ambulance pulled up.
You jumped into it, wheeling the gurney ahead into trauma two. Everyone working around the man.
“Okay we move him on the count of three,” said Jack as you all got a hold of the patient. “One... two... three!”
He was heavier than some, not that it would effect your level of care but it made moving him just that but more difficult. There was a breath of air and struggle from Jack and Robby, the noises you had to drown out.
“Lets get an intubation tray going!” called Robby.
The two of you crossed each other, swapping sides.
“Can we talk later?” he uttered as he paused for only a second.
“Whatever, Robby.”
He sighed heavy.
The rest of you carried on gaging the extent of his injury.
“So do you want me out the apartment tonight so your man friend can come around?” asked Santos at your side.
“I want you out cause I'm annoyed at you.”
“Ouch.”
“Okay we need to turn him to see if it went through, on my say!” yelled Robby.
The team had thinned as orders had been barked, there were two of you on either side of him: Robby and Jack, and you and Santos.
Robby passed a nod. “Okay, roll!”
You and Trinity pulled while the men on the other side pushed but maybe Robby didn't have a good grip or maybe he hadn't expected him to be so heavy.
Robby grunted and groaned. “Ah, urg-”
“Not through,” Jack grunted.
You tried to lower him as slow as you could but it wasn't slow enough as Robby's hand got trapped under.
“Oh! Fuck me!”
You and Jack lifted the body quick and Robby released his hand.
Santos was frozen.
The whole room seemed to pause for a second.
“Oh my god!” Santos cheered, arms thrown wide. “Oh my god, oh my god!”
What was wrong with her?
It took you a second to realise, memory of last night coming to you.
Robby over you, thrusting careful.
Your body moved with his thrusts but you wrapped your legs around him, pushing his pelvis in till you felt the length of him deep. “Deeper, harder,” you'd begged.
Robby had groaned out loud, just the way you liked to hear him. “Oh! Fuck me!”
He'd uttered the words into you as he pressed his weight down, squashing you onto your squeaky bed. He'd wrapped his hands around your neck, squeezing just enough to have your walls fluttering around his cock.
Santos had been home longer than you'd thought.
Now, she was practically jumping up and down, smirking. “Oh my god!”
“Trinity can I talk to you outside please?”
“It's- you- and-” her arms were waving around.
“Outside, please, Trinity!”
Everyone was staring.
“Trinity, outside!” You guided her out and she let you, abandoning the trauma and ripping off her gown. You returned, finding Robby's gaze and Jack's amused grin as he tended to the patient. “Sorry, Doctor Robby, may I talk to Santos outside for a moment?”
Robby must have jumped to the same conclusion as you. “Er yes, yes! Of course, go!”
You rushed out, nudging Trinity into an empty exam room as she laughed. You closed the door and pulled the curtain over the glass.
“It's Doctor Robby!” she said at once. “It's Doctor Robby! You're sleeping with Doctor Robby!”
“Can you keep your voice down?”
Santos laughed again, a full belly laugh. “Oh my god, this whole time I thought it was Frank. Oh, I'm so happy.” She wiped at amused tears.
“Hey!”
“How long have you been sleeping with him?”
You shook your head, tugging off your own hospital gown. “It doesn't matter.”
Finally Trinity considered you. Her laughter died. “What-what do you mean?”
How could you explain that what she'd heard last night was over hardly twenty-four hours later.
The door pushed open and Robby stepped through, gown and gloves already gone.
“Is everything okay in here?” he asked, looking between the two of you.
“You and you?” Trinity confirmed, finger gesturing between the two of you.
Robby ran his hands through the back of his hair.
“I just can't believe it,” she said. “You guys are dating?”
Robby sighed out a “yes” at the same time you shook your head, “no”
Now, Robby looked at you.
Santos folded her arms over her chest, smirking and watching like the two of you were her favourite show. “Oh.”
Robby's hands fell to his hips as he looked at you. “What do you mean, no?”
“What do you mean, yes?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” he chuckled.
Your rubbed at your temples. “I'm so confused.”
“You're confused, I'm confused,” Robby scoffed.
“Wait- I'm confused,” said Santos. “You guys don't know if you're dating or not?”
Robby's eyes squeezed shut in frustration. “Doctor Santos, please. Go make yourself useful.”
Trinity didn't move. She looked at you, waiting for what you wanted. Because yes, Robby was her attending but you were her friend. When she was insecure about Garcia you were there telling her how much better she could do.
In the hospital Santos was guided under Robby.
At home, she was guided by friendship and care for you.
You gave her a nod and she dismissed herself.
You didn't know where to look, didn't know where to touch.
Outside the usual routine of the Pitt carried on.
Robby sighed, hands going into his fleece pocket. “You didn't know we were dating?”
No, you really didn't. “Was I supposed to? You never asked.”
He shook his head, looking down with a chuckle. He started to list things off, counting them off on his fingers. “Flowers, dinners, day trips, was that not enough?”
“But you never said!”
“I thought it was obvious!”
“Obvious to who?”
“To us!” His hands fell to your forearms.
“No to you maybe!”
“So the dinners... the flowers, you thought it was all just, just sex?” he asked.
You'd hoped it was more. You'd dreamt about it when his weight kept you down on his bed after you kissed and made love for hours. Love...
“I... yeah.”
How long had you thought him the bad guy? Were you the one that had been distant, pulling away?
You carried yourself away from him, sitting on the edge of the bed. You never realised how uncomfortable those things were.
Robby laughed to himself, standing for a moment longer. He checked that nobody was around through the curtain before he settled next to you. He shuffled, his bodies attention focused on you. He laid a hand on your knee, tilting his head to try to look at you. “I should have asked, properly.”
“It would've saved confusion,” you admitted.
Robby's hand came up, cradling your face and drawing your attention to him. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over your cheek.
You looked at him, finding nothing but warmth in his gaze. The only thing that had been there for three months. “But today, you... you could hardly look at me.”
He took in a deep breath. “I was...” his jaw ticked.
You smirked. “Jealous?”
His eyes flickered back to yours. “Nobody on that board thought I could be dating you.”
“Till about two seconds ago I didn't even know we were dating,” you joked.
Robby shook his head, wetting his lips. “We are.”
“You're not even going to ask me?”
“I don't need to,” he said. “We're dating, that okay with you?” His face inched closer.
“I don't know, I might have to ask Frank that one,” you teased.
Robby leant back, a dark look to him. The hand caressing you fell to your neck, keeping you looking at him. “You think that's funny?”
“Everyone else thinks so-”
He pulled you in by your neck and kissed you, hard, the imprint of his teeth felt through your lips.
You held onto him, kissing him with a new need. Kissing your boyfriend. Your hands wound around his head and you brought him down on top of you.
Robby climbed atop the bed that was not made for heavy make out sessions. He held the edge with one hand and the other fell down your body till it could crawl up your scrub top, un-tucking it and holding onto your hips.
He bit down on your lip and used the opening of your mouth to slide in his tongue.
“This is un-professional,” you said against his lips.
“I've been wanting to be un-professional for months.”
You were so lost in the feel of each other you didn't notice the curtain being yanked back until you heard.
“We got him stable,” said Jack, casually. “Oh and you've got an audience.”
You looked over Robby's shoulder as he looked back to see nosey nurses and night shifters along with half the day staff all looking at you.
You tapped his shoulder and though resigned to, Robby slowly climbed off you.
“Who put down Robby?” Ahmed called. “Did anyone bet Robby?”
The crowd that had watched you both suddenly rushed to the board, scanning the name.
Eventually you and Robby joined, waiting.
“Oh my god.”
“There he is, Robby, one vote!”
Robby's head perked in confusion.
“Who is it? Who?”
Ahmed collected the money and made his way through the people. To the one who had made a bet on Robby. “Doctor Robby, three months, and serious.”
He delivered the money- to everyone's shock- to Frank.
Your jaw hung open as Frank collected the money.
Everyone looked at him, silent.
You couldn't tell if next to you Robby was okay with it or angered.
Frank looked around at everyone. “C'mon, nobody else saw it? He's been happier for three months and can't take his eyes off her.”
Clealry, nobody had.
“I thought you didn't bet?” you asked him.
Frank shrugged, bashful. “Yeah well, couldn't help myself. Here-” Langdon held out the wad of cash to Robby's hand, practically forcing it in. “Take her somewhere nice.”
You wished you had a camera to capture Robby's shock.
“Okay folks! Show's over!” called out Dana. “Day shift let's pass on to night so we can get out of here to have some fun!” she winked your way.
Slowly the crowd dissipated, shaking their heads in disappointment.
Ahmed was already pulling off the notes and rubbing away at the board.
Robby waved the cash in front of you. “What do you say, you gonna let your boyfriend treat you tonight?”
Pairing: Michael "Robby" Robinavitch x doctor!reader
Summary: A slice of life in the ED between the chief attending who would rather do anything than admit he cares more than he should, and a flu-ridden doctor who doesn't really know when to quit.
Word count: 1.5k
Warnings: unrealistic depiction of the workplace (this scenario would probably never happen irl, but lets pretend), medical inaccuracies, friends to lovers!robby and reader, reader is described to have a handful of freckles, robby being a dick (if you squint), fluff, very light angst
a/n: after a years long hiatus from writing, i'm back again! first robby fic yeyyyy! enjoy readinggg
divider by @chrisssiren
It was hard not to risk a look at Robby when all he’s done is silently monitor you for the past two hours.
It was just as hard for Robby not to stare when you were, to his irritation, still benched in the central hub, charting with an IV line in your hand when he specifically told you to clock out early to get some much needed rest.
But the ED never lets anyone stop to catch their breath…or have a conversation with a very hardheaded doctor who refuses to let themselves be vulnerable from time to time. The hypocrisy of it isn’t lost on him, but he will continue to insist that it’s different, and you will continue to call him out on his bullshit. And, much as he wants to have that conversation right now, he doesn’t have the time, and neither do you, not when you're busy trying to keep yourself from passing out and making sure your patient charts are up to date.
It was thirty minutes later when Robby’s backpack dropped next to your chair, followed by his green fleece being wrapped around your shoulder.
You speak nothing of it, and neither does he.
You keep your eyes trained on the screen, willing yourself to focus on the words you're typing from a case earlier this afternoon instead of Robby, whose chair is now seated close to yours, who is most likely contemplating on whether or not he should speak to you as the chief or speak to you as a friend.
“Staring isn’t gonna help me get better, Robinavitch.”
“No, but going home, getting rest, and drinking your meds will. Like I told you, 3 hours ago.” Robby countered, disapproval clear in his voice, his head tilting to the side to try and catch your gaze.
Not this again.
Okay, breathe in through your nose.
And out—
Taking that deep breath was a mistake as the air sputters inside your lungs, your chest rattles with a wet cough, your throat burning with every heave as you try to clear your airway from phlegm. Robby’s hand instinctively goes to soothe your back, and before the awareness comes, he’s already reaching for his travel mug to hand to you.
“Here.”
You drink from it without hesitation. Like the mug you’re drinking from doesn’t belong to the man you’ve been admiring from afar since your senior residency, like it doesn’t belong to the man who looks back with quiet affection at every stolen glance, or shares quiet moments of respite with you on the roof after a rough shift, like it doesn’t belong to your boss? You knew from the very beginning that this was an HR nightmare waiting to happen, but the implications of it on your career can wait until after you’re done almost dying on Robby.
His other hand lands on your arm, the warmth of it seeping through your scrubs. His voice is softer when he says. “Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay. Keep drinking.”
Before you can hand his mug back to him, the cold metal of his stethoscope is already pressing on your chest. Through your bleary vision you see his frown further deepen into concern.
Your hand comes atop his to pry his stethoscope away from you. “Robby, I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You look like you’re about five seconds away from passing out in my ED.”
“No, what I need is glasses.” you cleared your throat, your back straightening as if you weren’t just keeled over your attending seconds ago. “Can I borrow your glasses? I forgot mine in my bag, and Dana threatened to kill me if I moved—”
“Y/N, you are sick and the last thing that I need right now is you contaminating our patients—” Robby argues.
“Well, I am not handling patients right now.” you snapped, turning in your chair to face him. “Dana banished me here hours ago, so don’t worry Michael, I’m not gonna contaminate anyone.”
Robby is silenced by your words, but his gaze is no less defiant.
Your shoulders loosen. “Just give me the glasses, please?”
His eyes lingers on your face before he gives up the fight that he knew he wasn’t gonna win with you. His resolve breaks and hands you his glasses.
You slide them over your nose, your vision clearing instantly. A relief for you because you wouldn’t have to squint as much while charting, but with Robby’s glasses, you knew they were gonna make your eyes look larger than they were. Something Robby often teases you for, but right now it was silent on his end.
“Y/N, your labs are back.” a nurse from the nightshift rounds the desk with your chart in hand.
“Thanks.” you reply, but Robby takes the ipad from her hand before you could even reach it.
You glared at him before going back to charting.
“Your results look good. Nothing we don’t already know, just mild dehydration.” You could feel his pointed stare on the side of your face when he said it.
“How's your temp?” he asked, his eyes still set on your chart.
Something blunt pokes at your arm.
A thermometer.
You stare at the thermometer in his hand. “Are you serious?”
Robby finally gets a glimpse at your eyes. The corner of his mouth ticks slightly upwards.
“It’s either this or go home.” he offers with finality.
You sighed, snatching the thermometer from his hand and begrudgingly placing it under your tongue.
You started typing again as you answered his question earlier. “It’s been steadily going down over the past two hours, but still a bit high.”
“Okay.” he nodded. “You eat anything yet?”
“Yeah, just had dinner.” and it was the truth, had Ellis not forced you to eat earlier, you’d been lying straight through your teeth right now.
“Any headache, dizziness, nausea?” you chuckled lightly at his question, a bit endeared that he’s genuinely taking the time to assess you over a low-grade fever.
His eyes snap to you at the sound, your chuckle lightly loosening the coil of worry around his heart. There you are.
“None of the above.” you answered.
The thermometer beeps. He slowly pulls it out.
“101.2.”
“Are you done doctoring me now?” your head turns towards him, your voice softer, more quieter.
After he types something on your chart, he looks up. Your typing slowly halts.
“Not until you’re feeling better.”
Your heart stutters at his words, and you hate that it does. You hate how easily something like that comes to him, how instinctive it was. You could blame it on the fact that he was a doctor; taking care of people is second nature to him, but the hopeful part of you wishes that he does it because he cares.
“You sure you don’t wanna go home?” Robby asks, placing the ipad down on the desk. He’d offer you a ride home in a heartbeat.
“I just…” you hesitate.
After the day you’ve had, the two patients you lost to illness and faulty brakes, you’re not sure if you do.
“I really don’t wanna be alone tonight.”
You both understood more than most what it’s like to bear the weight of a patient's passing. How unfair it all could be. How patients acted like candles, waiting for that final gust of wind to snuff out the light or fan it into an even bigger flame. For some of your patients it was the former, and oftentimes you find yourself trying to look for a silver lining. You tell their families that they didn’t suffer, that they felt no pain, that they’re at peace, and you tell yourself that you did everything right, that there was nothing you could’ve done to save them, but will their families believe that? Will you ever believe that?
He doesn’t say anything right away, you know it’s not for the lack of words but from shared understanding. He just reaches out, mindful of the IV line on your hand and wraps his arm around your shoulders. You let yourself lean into his warmth, your head finding rest on his shoulder as the heaviness of your shift drains out of you. Salty tears fall on his scrubs as you take a shuddering breath, there was no fanfare, no sobs, just the bustling noise of the ER and the sudden weight of his lips on your head.
He stays with you, absentmindedly rocking you back and forth until your tears dry, until you feel like you can breathe without the needles of grief prickling in your heart.
“Come over to mine.” Robby suddenly murmurs into your hair, his hand slowly moving to soothe the skin on the back of your neck. Your skin prickles with warmth.
“What?” you asked, your brow furrows as you lifted up your head to look at him.
He pushes the crooked glasses up your nose, affection curls at his lips at the sight. He can see your eyes more clearly now, more so the handful of freckles littered near your eyes. His eyes slowly map them, fighting the urge to trace them with his finger one by one. He thinks them akin to the stars in the sky.
“Robby, you don’t have to…”
“I want to.”
“Come over to mine.” he repeats, eyes lifting back to meet yours, silently pleading.
Please do not fight me.
“Okay.” you nod softly.
I won’t.
You are the best thing that has ever happened to Robby. You are everything he could ever want: sweet, patient, understanding, on top of being the most stunning person he's ever laid eyes on. The unfortunate tradeoff is that... well, you drive him insane (you think a salt lamp has healing properties).
Michael Robinavitch x Reader | 1k+ | cw: gender neutral!reader, quack!reader, rage baiting as a love language, stressed!robby, no one save him fr he's exactly where he wants to be, fluff, typos, etc.
A/N: some ENABLER, not naming names, keeps sending me TikToks of him. I just thought of this and couldn't stop LAUGHING. hopefully yall laugh too, and if you do please comment/reblog/inbox me because I wanna know what you think cos I literally don't go here | crossposted on ao3
Tagging: @roguelov who is definitely NOT an enabler
His shift had been long, and Robby was more than relieved to come home to his bed, to you. Relieved he was when he saw your sleeping form on the bed, nuzzling into a pillow he knew was a substitute for his missing form.
He pads through the bedroom with nothing but the flickery light of the lamp on your bedside table, the same one he keeps forgetting to replace. He changes quietly then sighs deeply as he pulls the pillow out of your arms with about as much care as he would an open wound he was stitching up.
Once he is in his rightful place against you, your arms tighten around him, as if you can tell he's there even in your subconscious. He believes you do. He almost instantly falls asleep when he closes his eyes.
The next thing he knows, he's reaching out for a body that was no longer beside him.
Robby groans as his eyes squint open to confirm what he had dreadfully already known: you were already awake. He scratches his eyes rougher than he ought to and snatches a pillow, hugging it tightly against himself.
He stays like this for a few minutes before sighing. It's just not the same.
He groans as he decides to wake up. He groans on his way to the bathroom. He groans as he follows the scent of coffee to the kitchen.
"You're not supposed to be awake yet," he groans again, arms circling around you as you wash dishes.
He feels you chuckle against him as he bends over to press his forehead on your shoulder.
"I'm supposed to be sleeping in for the day," he grumbles, "doctor's orders."
You push him back with your bum, "then go to sleep, doctor."
He whimpers at how you brush up against him. His arms tighten around you, forcing you to stop what you're doing. He presses his beard against the crook of your neck, "yeah, right."
You squeal when he begins to drag you back, hands woefully reaching for the tap to close it, "baby, stop."
He grumbles, borderline growls, "I find that offensive."
You can't help but laugh as he incessantly drags you back, though you knew he wasn't actually using his full strength to do so.
"I need you in bed to be able to sleep!"
"Ha!" you scoff, "sleep, says Pinocchio!"
"I won't be lying if I sleep after I pin you down and fu—"
The door bell ringing and the knocking on your front door make both of you go still.
"My package!" you say, swatting your captor off, who then reluctantly releases you.
You run off to get your package, and something in the way you jump a little makes him suspicious of whatever it is you got delivered. Robby takes the opportunity to pour himself a cup of coffee, though his eyes quickly flicker back to you. He forfeits a sip from his steaming drink when you very giddily run back to him with a largish box.
You set the parcel down, the arrow on its side behind a FRAGILE sticker, paired with your grin makes him nervous, "guess what I bought!"
His forehead curls, "somehow, I can tell that I really shouldn't."
You growl and run off to grab a knife.
Your already stressing lover nearly spits out his coffee with how you stab the box open, "geeeeeez, honey, please be—"
His words go dry when you pull out a large crystal, mounted on a plastic disk with a cord attached to it.
He realizes a few seconds later that it was a lamp for the bedside table.
"TADAA!" exclaims the love of his life, who he should have never doubted, "it's a salt lamp!"
He puts his mug down and takes the lamp from you, finding it slightly heavy in his hand. He hums, heart aching with how excitedly you wait for his reaction. He smiles back, his gaze softer than cashmere, "it'll go well on the bedside table."
"Yeah!" you grin and nod, "why don't we go try it out!"
A chuckle leaves him as you drag him to the bedroom. He follows obediently, half the ache in his heart morphing into guilt, as it was his promise to replace the flickering lamp.
Robby doesn't wait, he swiftly unplugs the old lamp and replaces it with a new one, making you jump for joy and clap your hands when it lights up.
He hums, "the light is yellow."
"Yeah," you reach for the switch, "it's supposed to be healthier."
His eyes narrow at the statement, but he lets his slide.
You adjust the intensity of the light, turning it on and off a few times, before turning to him with a smile, "so... you feel better?"
He raises his brows and looks suspiciously around the room.
You place your hand on the salt lamp, "this has healing properties."
Immediately, his eyes shut and his jaw slacks with a sigh. There it is.
You cannot withhold your smile as the man before you crosses his arms. You hum, squeezing his bicep as you bite your lip.
Robby ignores it, but does give you his signature stare.
You are unfazed, in fact, you flourish beneath it, "what? It's what it says on the website."
He blurts out your full name, hyphen Robinavitch included. It does not have the effect he wishes it would. Your belly merely tingles and you return his stern look with wide and very innocent eyes.
"It's supposed to help you recharge faster!" you pat the object, "the salt is supposed to absorb the fatigue in the air—"
"Absorb the fatigue?!"
"— and!" you raise a finger, "it's supposed to replenish your electrolytes!"
His face falls. He slaps a hand on his forehead, dragging it roughly down his face. Oh, fuck, is this what an aneurysm feels like?
You chew your lower lip as you watch him sigh. You bite your fingernails as his chest heaves and his nostrils flare. You decide to take his hand and press it to the lamp.
He immediately pulls it away, calling your name warningly.
"Let it replenish you!"
"Reple— honey," he clutches your cheeks, "I can forgive your overpriced skincare, your excessive supplements, your damn light therapy—'
He covers your mouth when you try to open it.
"But a healing lamp? Really?"
You pull his hand off you, "actually, it's a healing salt lamp."
He groans under his breath, something about not being able to believe his ears and how he wants Jesus to strengthen him.
You lick your lips, chuckling softly at how he crosses his arms again, "why don't you just give it a chanceee!" You wrap your arms around him and bat your lashes.
He glares back, undeterred by you and your stupidly pretty face.
"Even placebo has its place in medicine!"
You gasp when he suddenly grabs you by the hair, pulling your head back a bit, "so you know it's placebo?"
Your stomach rolls, "... placebo for you."
"Fuck," he rolls his eyes nearly to the back of his skull and releases you, "it's too early for this."
"It was 11:40 when I started doing the dishes."
He pulls away completely and walks off, "too damn early."
ER 30th Anniversary Celebration
Favorite Character ► Carol Hathaway (2ᶮᵈ Place → 19.2%)
You know my family. What's a little humiliation when there's free food and drink?
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
gummygunk
izzy806
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janainaart
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