Andrew's hands are rough gripping your waist and pulling you into another intense kiss.
"Come on," he murmurs into your mouth. "Bedroom."
His hands shift lower, preparing to pick you up. Panic flares in your chest. You instinctively plant your feet, putting a hand flat against his chest to stall him.
"Andy, wait—no," you say, the insecurity slipping out before you can filter it. "Don't. I'm... I'm too heavy."
Andrew stops instantly, but he doesn't step away. He blinks at you, his brow furrowing. His dark eyes shifts into confusion.
"What?" he asks.
"I'm heavy," you repeat, suddenly feeling very small under his gaze. "Just... let me walk. Seriously."
Andrew stares at you for two full seconds. Then, without a word of warning, he effortlessly dips his knees and lifts you off the ground.
You let out a startled gasp, instinctively throwing your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist. He doesn't stagger, doesn't strain, and doesn't even catch his breath. He just adjusts his grip, pulling you against his body.
"Not my fault you've been dating weak guys," he says completely serious.
A surprised laugh escapes your throat before you can stop it. "Andrew—"
"I'm serious," he interrupts as he starts walking toward his bedroom, carrying you like it's the easiest thing he's done. "Don't say stupid stuff like that."
He carries you down the hall, refusing to put you down until you’re on his bedroom.
When he finally lowers your feet to the floor, he keeps one hand on your waist, using his foot to kick the bedroom door shut behind him.
You open your mouth with the urge to explain yourself or apologize for the insecurity still sitting on the tip of your tongue. "Baby—"
"Shut up," he cuts in softly.
Before you can even react, his hand moves from your waist straight to your neck, his fingers wrapping firmly around the front of your throat; not tight enough to hurt, but commanding, holding you completely still.
He brings his mouth down on yours in a possessive kiss. It’s deep and breathless, completely overwhelming any thoughts you were trying to piece together. Every time you try to melt into it, his grip on your neck tightens just enough to keep you right where he wants you.
"You talk too much, bunny," he rumbles against your lips, his eyes searching yours, completely focused. "You're perfect. You hear me? Fucking beautiful." You bite your lower lip and nod, wrapping your hand on his wrist and he presses a little, making you whisper, melting for him.
He kisses you slowly and then devours your neck, murmuring against your skin, "Good girl. Stop thinking."
Summary: You had a few new shades of lipstick you needed to try, and decided that your boyfriend was the perfect canvas to test them on.
Pairing: Tim Drake x Fem!Reader
Word Count: 1.2k
Content Warning: FLUFF, Suggestive at the end, Tim is down bad, reader likes makeup, second person, no use of y/n
A/N: It’s my fav robin and almost bday twin’s birthday :P so yall KNOWWWW I had to get something out. This was a request from my wonderful dada @bat2nsignia thank you for thissssss I hope you like it <3 and as always my lovelies, I hope you enjoy
•───────•°•♡•°•───────•
“Baby,” you call out quietly.
Your boyfriend, who’s seated right next to you, hums at the nickname. It’s his way of telling you that he’s all ears for you, without removing his eyes from the monitor.
“Are you busy?”
His fingers hesitate on the keyboard, weighing the answer before finally deciding on, “A bit.”
Your eyes sparkle in your mirror before dropping the question that always makes him fold, “too busy for me?”
And like clockwork, his fingers pause indefinitely and rest on the keys before turning to you. There’s a slight upcurve of his lips, with a tease lingering in his eyes when he narrows them playfully at you.
“You know the answer to that.”
You did. It was always never.
It’s almost funny, you would’ve never imagined that Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne had separation anxiety. From the beginning of your relationship, he was the most avoidant guy you’d ever gone out with. He’d say it was fine if you couldn’t see him for a week, or went a full day without talking, or hell even going to bed before saying goodnight.
He wasn’t good at letting himself want things- not truly anyway. Then after a few months and you both got more serious, it was like a light switch flickered on.
He rarely wanted to be apart from you. He’d be with you every opportunity he could. It didn’t always have to be a date, you guys didn’t even have to talk. It was just comforting to know that you were somewhere near him, choosing to exist with him.
It was actually so serious, that when he started organizing the apartment for you to move in, he made room next to his desk for your vanity. While he would spend hours on his computer working on files or looking over spreadsheets for WE, you would spend hours testing new makeup looks. This was just another way for him to coexist with you- a parallel play of sorts.
When you both visited the manor last week, Selina gifted you a brand new lipstick collection someone sent her in the mail. After her wedding to the most eligible bachelor in Gotham, brands began to send her thousands of packages of PR.
She knew realistically, she wasn’t going to use it all. So, most of the packages ended up donated to woman’s shelters or regifted to some of the bats or bat-adjacent people, like you.
Now, after weeks of putting it off, you finally got to cleaning your vanity. While taking in your work, you began eyeing the new collection from where it rested in front of you for a few minutes; debating what to do with it when the idea hit you.
“Well, Selina gave me these lipsticks when we were at the manor last week,” you start off the pitch and he raises an eyebrow, amused.
“I remember,” he removes his hands from the keyboards. Pushing off the desk, he crosses his arms over his chest turning all his attention to you.
“And I was thinking, how on earth could I test all of these and see what I think of each shade?” opening the drawer to your left without looking away from him, you retrieve the small packet of makeup wipes from it and place it on his desk.
His eyes shoot to it for a second before turning back to you. “I don’t know darling, how do you plan on doing all that?”
A big toothy smile creeps onto your face and he mirrors it. He knew what you were planning, but it was always fun to watch him play along when you got in your moods.
“Well I just remembered,” leaning over, you drag his chair to right in front of you, “I have the perfect canvas right here.”
He laughs, it’s not loud and it doesn’t fill the room, but it fills your heart. It’s a quiet thing that eases every discomfort you’ve had through the day. This little laugh is him unguarded, it’s him giving you a part of him he doesn’t give anyone else.
There’s a small shake of his head, before he picks you up and sits you on top of him. Your legs are straddling his and a small giggle escapes you when he places a hand on your back. Leaning forward to grab the box filled with thirty different lip sticks, he moves them to his desk.
“Come on Ms. Arteest, make me beautiful.”
You can’t help the snort that escapes you. He’s relaxed back on his chair ready for you to attack him with different shades of red, pink, and mauve.
Opening the first one, you twist the bottom to apply it on your lips, and he springs into action. Carefully taking it from your hands, he whispers a quiet domestic “let me,” before applying it for you.
And that- well that, has your face burning to a red that rivals your lips. Tim was always an acts of service guy, so this wasn’t particularly new, but it was still sweet. It winded you sometimes because it always came from nowhere. It was out of the blue when you least expected it, he would jump at little things.
His eyebrows furrow together with a barely there wrinkle between them when he focuses, making sure to apply it on your lips just right.
Pulling back to admire his work, no amount of strength from you biting your cheeks could hold back the smile.
You place the first kiss on his cheek and back away, admiring the first of many. Then Tim reaches behind you and picks up a makeup wipe from your pack to clean the shade off for you, and the process repeats.
You filled his right cheek, then his left, then pinned back his hair to paint his forehead, then his neck. And when you ran out of room, you pulled over his shirt and continued going down. Giggles echoed in the vents of the apartment you shared, and Tim thought he could die happy in this chair looking up at you.
When you got to the last shade, you dropped the kiss right above his heart. His face was pink for an entirely different reason now.
Without saying anything, he holds you close to him and stands up. Your legs wrap around his waist with a yelp. He moves to look at both of you in the mirror and grins.
You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him look this happy before. In your reflections, you don’t see the mastermind vigilante Red Robin. You don’t see the boy who held the world on his shoulders. No, you see your boyfriend. You see the man who always shows up for you, the man who didn’t think he was ever going to be loved, and the man who adored you like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“What do you think?” your voice is breathless while making eye contact with him through the mirror.
“I think,” his face has still has the ghost of all your laughs lingering in his cheeks and you would treasure this sight forever, “I think that this one,” he points to the bright red stain on the center of his forehead, “is my favorite.”
Then he turns away from the mirror and starts making his way across the apartment, peppering your face and neck with kisses of his own. Sounds of Joy filling the hallways as you give yourselves a break from the world.
Arriving to the bedroom, he drops both of you on the bed. Caging you under him with his arms, he has a wicked smile before whispering above your mouth,
thinking about... divorced!frank who spent his whole marriage being told he takes up too much space at home and now it shows in all his behavior, particularly when he's sick
tags: frank langdon x reader, fluff, post divorce!frank, reader has no specified gender, illness (the cough medicine kind)
As you enter your shared apartment, you kick your shoes onto the tray by the door. You place your bag on the table, and then your keys into the tray atop it.
Usually, you'd find Frank’s belongings neatly placed into the same places. Today things are different. His work shoes are haphazardly tossed in the general direction of the tray they belong in. His keys and his work bag sit on the kitchen table next to his jacket. The coffee cups you'd sipped from that morning are still sitting on the counter. And if you've learned one thing about Frank in the months you've spent living with him, he is meticulous.
Just as you turn the lock on the door, you hear footsteps down the hall heading your way.
A very disheveled looking Frank rounds the corner, pajama clad and barefooted.
“You're home so early,” he says. He makes a few attempts to paw at the light switch before it turns on, leaving him squinting.
“Yeah,” you nod. “I got a text from Dana. She said you went home and looked ‘like death’.”
He scrubs at his face. “You didn't need to leave work.”
“Well, you do look like death, for one,” you start. “And then you didn't answer my text, so I got a little worried.”
A guilty look crosses his face. “I’m sorry. I just came home and crashed.”
“You don't need to be sorry.” You make your way towards him, intending to pull him in, but he catches your arms before you can get there.
“You should- I don't want you to get sick. I was gonna sleep on the couch, and then put the bedding in the wash so-”
“If I'm catching whatever you've got going on, it's already a lost cause,” you chuckle. “And you're in no shape to be doing laundry or sleeping on the couch.”
“I guess.”
He folds quickly, letting you slide your arms around him. His chin sits on your shoulder for a brief moment, and a tired sigh escapes him.
“Did you take something yet?”
“Uh-uh,” he mumbles. “I’ll do that, and then I'll put away my scrubs and-”
“I am so not worried about that,” you reply. “I'll grab it. You need to go get back in bed.”
He straightens, hands still at your waist.
“I'll get it.”
“Go. Lie. Down.” You retort.
He grumbles, but obliges. You follow him down the hall, ensuring he's back in bed before veering away to locate the cold medicine in the cabinet.
When you return to the bedroom, cap of purple liquid in hand, he takes it. It doesn't shock you when he tries to return it to the bathroom to wash it out and put it away.
“Dr. Langdon, you are a horrible patient,” you jest. You snatch it back from him before he gets too far. “Get yourself in bed.”
He chuckles to himself, but for once in his life, he listens.
So you put the cup away and return the bottle to its place. You take the time to wash out the coffee cups, put his work bag into its home by the door, and ensure his scrubs make it into the hamper. By the time you get into your own pajamas and settle into bed, propping yourself up in the pillows he's very much fighting sleep.
“Come on,” you gesture.
The last shred of energy he's saved is spent on the journey from his side of the bed to yours, where he places his head in your lap, with no pushback about the hands you've already put in his hair.
“Thank you,” he yawns.
“You don't need to thank me,” you say. “You're supposed to let people take care of you sometimes.”
He grumbles something incoherent before succumbing to sleep.
"supply closet sex with frank" this, "sneaking off into an empty exam room with frank" that
no...i raise you... sneaking off into a supply closet for 2 minutes of silence and hug w hands under his scrub shirt because that man needs peace and emotional regulation thrice a day
synopsisyou and john have always been cut from the same cloth, close in the way only you two could be working in the ER. but what john doesn't know- your deep love for him- can't hurt him. only you. but if you have to hear him love a girl that isn't you one more time, your heart might not make it.
warningsheavy angst, language, sex allusions
authornotei've been binge watching ER, I'm obsessed, my god its so good and of course, I love John Carter. i don't know if anyone else will care but i have to write for this man
“John! Oh John!”
John. Oh John. It was a mantra prayed upon next door to your room. It was religious, almost every other night the calling for his name.
It was damn right sinful.
When John had invited you to move in with him almost six months ago you thought all your problems were solved. You would no longer lose rent on a stuffy apartment you didn't even like, being kept up by frat parties that seemed to run all night. You'd share with Carter, be able to study together as you had since starting as med students together, be able to help each other out and share the rent.
“Oh my god, John!”
You hadn't thought about the noise. The moaning, the thudding of beds, the awkward greeting of the new girl of the week in the mornings where all you wanted to do was drink coffee and get ready for the day in peace.
Your bed was next to Carters, a wall separating the two of you.
This girl was blonde, slim, not from the hospital from what you could tell. They'd stumbled in at eleven and you'd heard him jingle at the door so you hid yourself away, running from the living room you paid rent for to offer them privacy and peace that they never offered you.
“John...” the girl had whined, you imagined her hands crawling up his chest, peeling off his coat and scarf, dragging her lips over his neck.
“Wait, wait, wait-” you heard John, probably making sure the coast was clear before he took her on the sofa. The sofa you'd paid for! He'd called your name, checking where you were. Gathering you'd hidden yourself away he carried on.
It wasn't the first night the sound of fucking next door had kept you up, in fact you'd lost count of the many of women John preferred to you. Slowly your patience was failing. Sleep as an intern in the ER was precious- like a gem stone. You shouldn't have been losing it in your own apartment.
You heard the mumble of medical procedures and thought you were in a nightmare.
“John, what are you doing?” the girl asked.
You knew what he was doing. To make himself last and drag on the night he thought about medical notes, the books you studied piled on the coffee table.
“Making it last,” you heard him say.
You wished he wouldn't.
When the low moaning started again you couldn't take it.
It was somewhere past four but you'd never known Mark Greene to turn away help.
“What are you doing here? You're not on till seven,” said Carol as you threw on your doctors coat, swinging on the stethoscope.
Outside it was dark, starting to rain and you'd drank two coffees on the way in. You weren't feeling awake but the hustle of the ER and the calls of trauma were better to hear than the moaning and slams of bed.
“Couldn't sleep, thought I'd get in early, early bird catches the.... something,” you said, eyeing the board. Abdominal pains, sores, vision blurs, the usual. There were plenty not taken up with a doctor.
“Couldn't sleep huh?” Carol asked, as familiar with the drill as you were.
“Nop.”
“And what was her name this time?”
“I didn't catch it.”
You didn't know if it was a head nurse thing or just a Hathaway thing but Carol had caught the feelings you had for John maybe even before you had.
She'd watch the two of you come in as fresh faced med students aiming for two different things. The two of you worked well on cases. You learnt how to take a more direct approach through Carters determination in surgery and John learnt to take closer care with his patients with your attentiveness in a pedes rotation.
“God, men are pigs,” said Carol.
“What have I done now?” asked Ross as he passed, leaving and picking up a chart. “You're in early,” he observed.
“I'm dedicated.”
“Wanna check out a cough in five?”
“I'll be there.”
You didn't need to stare to see Carol and Doug share a look. As you'd taken an interest in pedes work in the ER you'd been brought under Dough Ross's rather large wings. And if you were around Ross by proximity you were around Carol. And if you were around them Carter wasn't far.
It was a chain of terrible love stories.
“Eventually you'll get written up for overtime,” said Carol.
“A hospital that hates over-achievers, damn.”
“You should just talk to him.”
You turn to her, leaning on the counter. “And tell him what? I hate him having sex?”
“Well if he could be a little quieter,” she suggested.
“It's not him, it's the women.”
Carol was silent as you distracted yourself with the charts. You knew what she would say next, you knew what you would say after that and it would continue as it had for months. “You should tell him how you-”
“-no.”
“What's the worst that could happen?”
“He says he doesn't feel the same way, tells everyone, I'm left embarrassed, I lose my apartment, need I go on?”
Her eyes rolled. “No I get it.”
“Hey!” Ross called out. “Cough! Five! Let's go!”
You followed him on and used what you'd come to the Er to get: distractions. You followed Ross around from patient to patient, got called in on a trauma and even had time to change the the filters in the coffee machine before you were faced with John.
He was bright eyed, smiling with his dimples. Heck, you were even convinced his eyes lit up seeing you, with your coat hanging off, hair already falling out of its hold and he'd just left some blonde babe. Maybe she'd dropped him off at the hospital and he'd beg a lift back with you. Or he'd told her to let herself out the apartment.
Carter had no right to look at you like that.
“Hey,” he smiled. “You get in early? I thought you started at seven with me?”
“Oh yeah... I was paged in early.”
“Trauma?”
“Cough.”
He laughed. “You were paged in for a cough.”
“I know can you believe it,” you had tried to make it sarcastic, wanted it to seem like a passing comment but your lips didn't move into a smile and it fell weak into your stomach.
John leant next to you at the counter, tilting his body in a way to try to look at you. “You okay?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
“Something's up, what?”
Maybe it was how close you’d worked, going from students to interns. Or it was your living together which made you both understand each other with small looks.
Clearly you didn’t know each other well enough, otherwise he’d note the bags under your eyes or the way your body didn’t lean into his like you used to.
John jutted his hip against yours with a chuckle. “Talk to me, c’mon.”
“I just didn’t get much sleep last night.” You admitted.
How stupid could men be?
John didn’t even catch on to what you were laying down. “How about we do something tonight? Catch a movie? Get some dinner?”
You and John used to do that sort of thing often. When you'd first moved in together it was all watching films with take out, taking it in turns to order your favourites. You could hardly recall what the films were about because the two of you spoke throughout them. It took a month then you knew everything there was to know about him.
But that was almost two years ago and things were different.
You were in love with him.
He had no idea.
Instead he had love for hours a night and that seemed to do him fine.
John was still waiting for an answer. “Dinner? Movie?”
You looked at him. Over his shoulder you spotted Carol, shaking her head. “Dinner sounds great.”
John's face broke out into a smile. “Yes!” he cheered. His lips pressed to your head quick, gone before you could get a feel of him.
“Carter!” Benton called.
Benton's ordering and bossing around of Carter had grated on his nerves for months but you'd never seen him smile so wide and all but skip to him.
Maybe things weren't being so bad.
“Why would you agree to go to dinner?” asked Carol.
Why would you? Because even if he wasn't your lover, he was still your friend. You'd take that. “Was I supposed to say no?”
“You're gonna hurt yourself,” she said.
But sadly you had hope, which was probably the only thing keeping you in the state you were in.
“It's just dinner with a friend,” you said, picking up a patients chart, any chart.
Carol clocked her head at you. “It's not though is it?”
“To him it is.”
John appeared at your side, hands bracing your arms as he leant over you. For a moment you panicked, imagining that he heard it all. His grin said different. “I'll book us Nona's, your favourite Italian, I'll get it for eight.”
He disappeared, rushing around the corner. You got a last look at his scrubs and gown.
When you turned back to Carol she'd gone too.
“And so I said to him, that's not his Appendix, that's his Kidney.”
Johns laughter bounced around the restaurant. As promised he’d booked your favourite Italian, a table in the window lit by a candle and golden lights around you.
There was an empty plate from a tiramisu you’d shared and several empty glasses of wine dotted around from the evening you’d shared, lipstick of your stained glasses you’d had.
John had entertained you all night, telling jokes, talking about work. His eyes had been lit up since you both sat down, talking animated and never letting a moment of quiet. He’d even dressed up, supporting a suit as if this was some kind of date.
With the lights down low and dragging your fingers over your glass of wine, you almost imagined it was.
The waiter came by and John waved him down.
“Another bottle of white,” he ordered, sharing the last dregs of the bottle between your two glasses.
“If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re trying to get me drunk,” you joked.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he laughed. “I’ve missed you. It’s just nice that we get to do this, I didn’t see you at all yesterday. You were in bed when I got home.”
Home. Home with his date.
“We’ve been… busy,” you said.
Johns smile broke but only a fraction, some sort of disappointment floating by and marring his expression. “Yeah, I-I guess we have.”
There was a flicker of silence, the first sort there’d been in the night.
The wine was delivered.
“We should do this once a week,” suggested John, alight with the idea.
You laughed. “What, with our schedule?”
“Okay.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Once a month, surely we can manage that, right? We’re capable people, capable doctors.”
There was more laughter, dulling the ache you’d been carrying.
At some point Johns hand had come down and touched yours.
You’d expected him to pay your hand friendly, move it away and make another crack at a joke.
His hand lingered. Stayed, his fingers stayed slowly moving against the back of your hand.
John watched as his fingers drew lazy circles over your skin. There was a smile playing on his lips.
You didn’t have it in you to move away. You chuckled lightly. “What are you doing?”
John looked at you, his other hand coming up to cup his chin as he rested there. “I’ve missed you.”
It was sincere, almost loving.
You laughed it away. “You’ve said that already.”
“What? A guy can’t say it again?”
“A guy can’t say but you…” you trailed off.
“I what?” asked John pointedly, tilting his head to get a better look of you.
It was almost cruel how unaware he was, or maybe acted he was. The thought that he knew your feelings that were oh so obvious to some and were using them against you made you feel sick.
You slipped your hand out of his and took a sip of your wine. “Nothing.”
“No, what?” he asked, nudging himself closer to the table. “What were you gonna say?”
You drained the glass of wine and picked up the bottle, pouring yourself more while John watched and waited. You laughed, doing your best to brush it off. “I dunno what I was gonna say, slipped by me.”
You could tell he didn't believe you. He seemed to like to chose when he wanted to believe you.
“I-” He'd just started to speak when his gaze drifted over your shoulder and widened at the door. “Oh god, don't turn around, don't look- don't look!”
Frowning you did just what he said not to do, wine still in hand.
Carter was busy slouching in his chair, trying to hide.
A girl walked in with two of her friends, peeling off their coats and handing them to the staff at the door. They were all large smiles and tanned skin, dresses that hugged perfectly and hands manicured. They were alight with life and not drowned in exhaustion like you.
You looked back to John and didn't even have to guess and why he was hiding from them. Your brows rose at him.
“I went to school with her,” he said, scratching at the back of his neck. “She has a massive crush on me.”
“Does she?” at least you weren't the only fool to love him.
John nodded, the front of his hair moving as he did.
You looked again and as if she sensed you, the girl turned.
“No... no... no....” chanted John as she seemed to recognise him, even half swallowed by the table as he was trying to be.
“John Carter!” the girl greeted with her arms out and her wide smile.
John was polite in standing and hugging her.
You were polite in occupying yourself with the wine.
“Oh my god, look at you it's been so long!” she said, pulling away. Her hand smoothed the jacket of his suit. “God when I last saw you you were winning horses races on... oh, what was your horses name, again?”
“Marigold,” said John.
“Marigold, that's right!” she laughed, hand slapping at his bicep and lingering.
You snorted at the obvious affection she was laying on. At least (you hoped) you were slightly more incredulous.
They both looked to you.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt,” she apologised.
John went to speak but you spoke before he had the chance.
“You didn't, actually, join us if you like,” you invited.
John's face fell. “What?”
“Oh, I mean I'm here with friends but, hey, what's one drink between old friends?” she pulled up a chair effortlessly, setting it between you and Carter.
Carter himself lingered up on his feet, pulling his jacket close and slotting a button in. He looked at you, almost with some betrayed ideas in his eyes. He sat down, deflated but his old friend from school - Samantha- was already taking his wine glass and filling it. She was already talking about the first time she met John.
You didn't know why you'd decided to interrupt your own night with him. Just as you didn't know why John seemed to perturbed that you had.
Two days later he was at it again.
“John! Oh, John!”
You didn't even get a glance at this one, you had no idea who it was. The old friend from the restaurants or a friend of hers that had joined you later in the night. Maybe it was patient or a friend or family of patients. It could've even been the new intern that had started. You didn't know.
They were all blending into one.
“John! John! John!”
You'd tried putting on headphone from you walk man. You'd tried smothering yourself with your cushion. You'd tried every trick under the sun but it was as if the sounds of pleasure had buried itself in your bones. Even if you couldn't hear it, you knew it was there and it was enough in your bones to have you tossing and turning.
“H, stands for hemolysis, the- the break down of red blood cells-”
You threw your covers off. It was nearing three a.m. The ER could always use an extra pair of hands. That's what you told yourself as you pulled on clothes in the dark, desperate to get out the apartment before you crawl out of your skin.
Perhaps turning on the light would have been beneficial.
You pulled up your pants, jumping to do so but sliding on a lose sock. You fell, hurtling to the ground and trying to catch yourself on the desk had only resulted in banging your head on the side.
For a moment, lying in the dark of your room with a new ache in your head you thought maybe you were concussed because there was suddenly no noise. No nothing.
“John-”
“- wait, shh, shh-”
Nope, still there.
You finally got your pants on without any more injury and left your room.
There were to empty beer bottles at the kitchen counter. You noticed them as you pulled kitchen roll onto your head, pulling it back you pulled open the fridge to check in the light. A little blood.
All the more reason to get to the ER.
You were just fetching your bag from the side when the squeak of a door behind you alerted you.
“Hey, what's going on?” John spoke up.
You didn't dare turn around. You knew if you did you'd find a recently fucked-out Carter, maybe his friend hanging off his arm like his other friends had two nights before at Nona's.
He called out your name.
“Nothing, John,” you dismissed, swinging your bag over your shoulder.
“Where are you going, it's like, three am?”
You didn't answer.
“Did the hospital call?”
“Just go back to bed, Carter.”
It could have been the head split, the fact you were running on little sleep as it was or that John was so insisting he cared when the noise of you falling had clearly broken him out of his blissed state.
You never called him Carter. If you did, it was a bad sign.
“Wait- wait- jus' a second, hold on-”
You turned, catching a glimpse of him retreating back in his room.
You dabbed at your cut again, seething at the pain it brought.
You doubted stitches were needed but maybe some glue. Heck, maybe you could find an on-call room and sleep off the wound.
John's door opened again and he was rushing out, tugging a shirt on with joggers already pulled up. He flicked the light on and you watched his eyes widen at the cut as if you'd been shot. “Woah-woah, hey-hey-”
“Leave it, John.”
“What happened? What'd you do?” he rushed to you, sliding on the floor as he cupped your cheeks, checking the cut in the light.
His clothes hung limp on him and you didn't even have to look close to see the blue and purple bruises at his neck, still fresh, a thin trail of kisses not yet settled. There was no slouch in him like you knew there to be in you. He was alert. The kind of attention sex required.
He was using all that energy- the energy he was stealing from you- to asses your wound.
“What were you doing, jumping-jacks?” he tried to joke.
You didn't feel like laughing. “Can you leave it, please?”
The crinkle at his eyes at his own teasing dropped. He became as dull as you felt.
“No, no I- I can't leave it,” he said, serious. “You're bleeding, you're hurt, what happened?”
You sighed. “I was dressing in the dark, I'm a clutz.”
He shook his head. “Why were you dressing at three am?”
“Because I'm going into work.”
“We're not on nights.”
“Then I'm going in for fun.”
“Like the other night when you were paged in for a cough that didn't exists?” he said. “Mark told me, so what's going on?”
You had hoped Mark Greene- your mentor- wouldn't be noticing the slow falling apart of your love life. No such luck there. “Nothing,” you told him. “Nothing is going on.”
“You running off in the night is something, in my books at least,” said John, stern. His arms fell to his side. “So, you want to tell me?”
You'd just done a thirty-six hour shift and was only reward with two hours sleep. You didn't have it in you to be kind to him while your own chest felt like it was caving in on itself. “No, I don't.”
John scoffed. “Well, I've got all night, I can wait.”
“No, you don't.”
He frowned.
At that moment his latest peeked out of the room. She'd had the decency to wrap herself up in his thin white sheet at least. Her hair was a mess, her body covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She genuinely seemed sorry to be interrupting but clearly wanted to get back to the high she was chasing.
“Hey, John, is everything okay?”
She was so un-like you. She was everything you weren't. You didn't even know who she was but she wasn't you and seeing her coming out of John's room, wrapped up in his sheet and smell and faint marks of him you were reminded of that.
You didn't know why she- an odd number in his list of conquests- broke your heart. But it did.
You chocked on a sob, turning away from them both.
John's neck snapped to you at the noise. “Hey, hey-” his hands were soft on your forearms but you shrugged him off.
“John?” asked the girl again, a lazy drawl of her voice piercing your heart.
“Just, go back in, I'll- I'll be a second,” he said, dismissively.
It some how made it all the much worse because he didn't care for the other girls feelings. It was nothing serious to him, it never was. If it was serious, if he brought a girl back and took painstaking effort to introduce the two of you maybe you could pull on a brave face, pretend to be happy for him.
But he was constantly throwing it all in your face.
“John?” the girl asked again.
“Meg, seriously, I just need to sort this out-”
Sort it out? Like you were something on a check list?
You'd managed to make it to the front door before John caught you.
“Hey, wait! No- jus'-” his hand slammed down over you on the door, closing it before you could escape. “You're scaring me now, what's going on?”
“Nothing,” your own voice betrayed you, cracking as tears escaped you.
You rushed to wipe them away but John beat you to it.
“Hey, hey.” His thumb swept at the tears, voice laced in worry and pain. “Why are you crying? What's happened?”
You knew yourself well enough from the years of stress of medical school, from losing patients that were making promising progress and dying, from months of hearing John love on a girl that wasn't you to know when you couldn't trust your voice. All you could do was duck your head and sniff.
John was still close enough for you to smell the other girls perfume on him. “Why- why don't we sit down? I'll make you some tea.”
“I don't want tea,” you chuckled dryly.
John seemed startled. Tea was always what you offered him after the hard days. “Coffee?”
“I just want to go,” you admitted.
“Go? Go where?” he asked, voice almost as broken as yours. “You want to leave, you want to get out of here?”
He asked like he was almost understanding where you were coming from.
You nodded.
“Can I come with you?”
You shook your head.
John nodded with tight lips, like his own heart was breaking. “Okay them, I- I can't let you go. Not alone.”
You cried. “John-”
“It's three am it's dark out, I'm not letting you go anywhere alone-”
“John-”
“And frankly you're scaring me right now, I can't stand seeing you like this-”
“- I just don't want to be near you right now.”
The confession hung between the two of you like a hook caught in your hearts and tearing you both down. It was one thing you hurting because of John's actions but it wasn't like you'd told him how you felt. So really, you were hurting him for nothing.
“Okay, okay,” he said calmly. Turing for a second to gather himself up, patting the back of his hair down. “Okay you don't have to be anywhere near me but can you at least stay? So I know you're safe. I'll- I'll hide in my room or something. Out there, it's-it's not and I know you hate me right now but you will give me a heart attack if you go-”
“- I don't hate you,” you uttered.
“Well you just said you don't want to be near me,” he pointed out, the first angry notes in his voice. He took a deep breath and took a step closer, his hands clenched in together. John bent a little in the knees to get a look at you. “I'm sorry, whatever I did, I'm sorry, so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
He hadn't. Nothing he'd done had been with you in mind.
John laughed at himself. “It's me, for Christ sake, I'd never do anything to hurt you, okay? You've got to believe me. You know me.... you know me!”
The door to his room opened again and in the dim light the both of you saw his girl- Meg- wander out. She was in one of his old grey shirts, flaunting herself with jutted out hips. She threw herself down on the sofa and watched, waiting.
You wiped your tears away, telling yourself to get a grip. “Can we just- can we do this later, John, please?”
You'd thought the tears and begging would have been enough but John looked at you, studying all over you. He took in a deep breath like he was getting his confidence from somewhere.
He shook his head, staring at you. “No. Okay, wait- just wait for for a second, one second.”
You did. You waited one second and watched as he returned to Meg, crouching at the sofa and talking low to her. He even put his hand on hers and spoke very calmly and clearly.
Whatever he was saying Meg seemed to not like, or really understand, her eyes flickered back up to yours accusingly.
That's when you slipped out the door and hailed down a taxi to take you to the ER.
Carol had offered to help but you said no, so did Lydia, practically following you down with the right kit to take care of the cut on your head. Genie had offered with a kind understanding smile but you'd hidden yourself away on an empty bed with a mirror.
Mark was the only one you'd let stay in the room, even then you weren't letting him get close enough to help. “We should get a CT, at least.”
“Geez, it's just a small cut,” you chuckled, putting the thin strips of tape over it to help bring it together. It was the sort of thing that wasn't even medical. Just common sense.
“Better safe than sorry,” he said.
“And do you want to be the one to tell Wheever you ordered un-neccary tests and wasted hospital rescourse and money?”
You'd thought that would have been enough to deter him but instead Mark leaned forward.
“Yes.”
Damn.
“As chief resident I don't have to have you working till you get the all cleared.”
You huffed. You could always find an on-call room to catch up on sleep but you feared you'd re-play John's heartbreak over again if you did. “Fine, book me the CT,” you said, slinging your stephscope back around your neck and pocketing your pocket mirror.
“Thank you,” said Mark and with one last look of conserved worry, he left.
But the door swung open a second later and Carter waltzed in, hands in the pocket of his lab coat. He paused and looked at you, as if you were a patient of his.
It was going on four. He'd followed you in.
You opened your mouth to say something. A sorry, maybe. An apology for ruining his sex time and for crying.
John beat you to it. “I know you said you didn't want to be around me but I'm sorry, I-” he laughed at the very idea that was true. He knew you too well for that. “I don't believe you.”
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“I want you to talk to me.” John grabbed the stool close and sat on it, pushing himself close in front of you like any attentive doctor would. He grabbed your hands. “Talk to me.”
You wondered what you should have told him first. That out of desperation for your well-being Chuni had offered up her spare room at her place till you could get a place of your own. That Mark was willing to move around the schedule and face Wheever's wrath in doing so. That you couldn't take one more night of not being the one John chose.
“I'm sorry for being mad earlier, at the apartment,” you said first, looking down to where he held your hands. His knuckles were bleached white from the tightness he held onto you to. “I'm not- I'm not mad at you.”
His body sagged in relief. “You're not?”
“No.”
“Oh - thank god.” His body curved over yours, breath fanning the envelope of your hands.
“It's just me, it's just stuff,” you dismissed.
“No, it's not just stuff,” he said, equally as dismissive. “If it's getting you up in the middle of the night, ending in you being hurt- I mean... we can sort it.”
His thumb was a delicate tough as he brushed over your cut.
It didn't feel as painful when he did.
John's gaze lingered on your cut before looking back at your eyes. There was nothing to indicate he knew what this was really about, only a small hurting sorrow that he didn't know how to help you.
It was enough to hurt you all over again.
But maybe pulling the band off at once was better than a slow, agonising pull.
You squeezed his hands. “John, I'm moving out.”
The words were like heavy stones sinking in the bottom of a lake. You saw his expression blanked, his hands release yours slowly and his face pale as if the world was ending. His eyes searched yours trying to detect a hint of amusement.
He found nothing.
Mark popped his head back in, saving you. “CT's ready for you.”
“Thanks Mark,” you said as he nodded once and left again.
John hadn't moved, frozen in place. He stared past your body.
“I'll um... I've got to go...” it was the cowards way out but the way you saw it you'd been tough a long time, lying in bed and crying yourself to sleep. Letting yourself feel pathetic for doing so when you had so much more in life to give it meaning. If you could just get away enough, create some distance so you didn't feel trapped you could at least keep his hand in friendship. At least still have the privilege of looking in his eyes everyday and know, just for a second, you once had a chance for it all with him.
When you got back to the door and looked back, John was still on the stool, eyes watering.
Three hours later your shift officially started but you were already four patients deep, a case in pedes with Ross, a trauma that had gone up to the OR, an elderly man with a nasty fall to his hip and possible schizophrenia. Your last was a young girl, complaining of stomach craps. You suspected pregnancy and was thinking as much when you glanced out the door to the front desk.
John was staring through the door at you, Carol at his side trying to talk to him also staring in at you.
It wasn't a good sign in any case, not when Carol knew everything and John knew so little. It didn't help he looked wrecked. Tie askew, hair sticking up in the way that indicated hands running through it in stress.
Then he rounded the corner and disappeared from view.
“Leanne, have you been sexually active recently?”
“With my boyfriend.”
“And how long ago was your last period?”
“Two weeks.”
“Are you late?”
“Not yet.”
You jotted it all down on the chart. “Ok, we're gonna get some blood work, start you on an IV and get a urine sample in-”
The door swung open and you and Maleek who was helping on the case looked up.
John stood there, breathless like he'd ran the ten or so paces it took to get here.
“John?” you asked.
“You love me?”
The world stilled. There was suddenly nothing but you and him. Him looking at you astonished, like he couldn't believe it. At a loss of words from the very idea.
“I'm sorry- what?”
He took a heavy step forward, a deep inahle seething. “You love me.”
It wasn't an accusation the second time.
You looked back to the fifteen year old and Maleek who seemed as startled as you. “Can we not- I'm with a patient-”
“It's okay, I got this,” said Maleek, stepping in the way.
And John Carter was still standing there, catching his breath and staring at you.
You, with little other choice, barged past him.
You heard Carol calling out for you as you marched around trying to find a private corner to have the dreaded confrontation.
“I'm sorry!” she called.
John was hot on your heels. “Don't apologise, I deserved to know!”
Benton had joined the crew of on lookers at the desk. “Do I want to know?” you heard him ask.
“Probably not,” Mark replied.
Exam room two was empty and you held the door open for Carter. He marched in, hands running over his hair again as he mumbled to himself. You closed the door behind, locking it and closing the blinds because you knew everyone was going to try to listen to your world crumble.
You gave yourself a two second head start in catching your breath before turning to him.
John stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, waiting. His lip tucked under his teeth. “You love me.”
“Who told you?”
“Carol,” he said. “I was so worried about you I asked if she knew what was going on but turns out everyone did. You know, I could've asked Doug, Mark, Susan, Genie, basically everyone I mean- was I the last one to know?”
“There was nothing for you to know.”
“Really?” he scoffed.
“Yes!” you snapped. “It was my feelings, you didn't need to know them!”
“Yes, I did! I needed to know!”
“Why?”
“Why? Because- because it's me!”
You groaned, frustration ripping through the tears you had cried that morning. “What does it matter, John? You don't love me!”
“Of course I love you!”
“Not in the way I love you, not like that!”
“Yes I do!” he all but screamed.
The room fell silent. You could hear the labour of his breath and the wheels and running outside the room. A trauma was called in yet nobody was rescuing you or John.
He stood there, exposed.
Yes I do!
It was the heat of the argument, you told yourself, as you shook the idea out of you. For a second you almost believed him.
John deflated, watching as you hugged yourself, as you didn't rush to him or smile at his confession. “Do you... do you think I don't love you?”
You levelled your gaze on him.
As if he could see the break of your heart through the windows to your soul he shattered.
“Oh my god. You think I don't love you?”
You lifted your shoulders in a tired shrug. “Was I supposed to believe you did? You fuck a different girl every night while I'm on the other side of the damn wall.” The words come out bitten and finally the penny dropped for John.
The sleepless nights, the times he knew you were tired, the way you hid around every corner, in every room. Slowly he fit all the pieces together and he didn't like what he was seeing.
“That wasn't- they were- they were nothing,” he stuttered.
It was your turn to scoff. “Yeah, it never sounded like nothing-”
“You have to believe me, okay, you- you have to-” he begged, rushing in front of you. His hands took yours without your offer and he held it close to him, over his chest where you could feel his racing heart by the palm of your hand. “- you can't- you have to-”
He clenched his jaw.
You waited for more. “Can't what?”
John screwed his eyes shut, uttering a curse before opening his eyes. They pleaded onto you. “You can't think they meant anything over you. You can't,” he said so definitely you almost believed him. Almost.
“You're not making sense.”
“I know- I- I know,” he said, moving closer to you. He rested his head on your shoulder and you didn't have the strength to move. There was no smell of any other girl, only your shampoo he used in his hair. You could feel the tremble of his body. “This isn't how I wanted this to go.”
You were still, like you were a bunny in the jaws of a lion.
John pulled back and you were shocked at the redness of his eyes, at the tears threatening to spill. “When I dreamt about this I dreamt roses and a better declaration,” he chuckled at himself.
“I'm glad you find this really amusing, John, but I-”
“I don't- I don't,” he said at once. But he still chuckled dryly. “I just think I've messed up my whole life and I- I don't know how to fix this.”
You weren't sure what he was saying because he couldn't be talking about whatever was going on between the two of you. Frankly, you weren't sure what was going on. There was confessions hanging in the air like dirty laundry and tears from him that you didn't know what to do with. None of it made sense.
Your brain went to the only sense it could make.
“You've ruined your life?” you asked, full of concern for him. “What? Is one of the girls pregnant?”
John swiped his hands over his face, roughly. “No. No, I've just realised I fucked everything up with you.”
You stared at him and laughed. “And that's your entire life ruined?”
Carter nodded earnestly.
He loved you? He was insisting he did. Looking at you like he did.
A fist grabbed your heart and squeezed. You counted every girl you'd met through him and tried to add it up to love. It only made your head hurt and you knew it had nothing to do with the cut.
“I can't- I can't do this right now,” you said. “I have patients. So do you.”
“Can we talk? Tonight. Can we- can we talk? Please. Back home,” he begged, voice quiet like you'd never heard him before. “Please don't leave me.”
You wanted to argue there was nothing to leave. That even if you were going to go you still had a room of things to pack and sort. “Okay, fine, tonight.”
For the rest of the day you and John avoided each other, only working side by side on traumas. It was the only clue anyone got about the two of you. Nobody had dared ask what was going on but as you threw yourself into work and John got back on the floor after a thorough self-pity party they were all smart enough to guess it didn't go well.
“So, you're talking?” asked Carol at the end of your shift as you finished passing off your charts.
“Tonight, yeah.”
“That's good, isn't it?”
You huffed, finding your bag. “He says he loves me, Carol.”
She didn't know whether to smile or not. “Yeah, I think he does.”
“So what were the girls?”
“Distractions? A bit of fun? Men don't always have to make sense. Even if they are in love,” she told you, knowing all too well the the ins and outs of men and stupid choices through Doug Ross and their famous on and off relationship. “But give him a chance, he might surprise you.”
A chance.
You were tired. The kind that came from a long shift and little sleep. The kind you'd become accustom to that it didn't shock you when you felt it knocking on your door.
Were you too tired for a chance?
A throat cleared behind you and Carol disappeared from your side.
John stood in front of you, sheepish, with a bouquet in hand. They were your favourite flowers. “For you.”
Ignoring the audience that was trying (and failing) at being subtle, you took them.
“Thank you.”
He nodded, shy, in a way you hadn't seen him be since the both of you first started in the ER.
Nobody knew what to say next.
“Can I, um, can I take you home now?”
You could have been petty and told him you'd catch the subway back. Or that you'd hail a cab but you were both going the same way and you'd end up in your living room, talking, one way or another.
The car ride was quiet with John trying to find a radio station that didn't grate on him and ended up in silence.
When he pulled up in front of your apartment building he rushed out the car like it was on fire. He pulled open your door before you got the chance and helped you with your bag and bouquet.
In the apartment it was just as un-touched as it had been in the morning.
You didn't realise until you saw it so that you'd been expecting a lingering guest.
But there was only signs of you and John.
He was watching you while he set both your things down. “Do you want a drink?”
“No, no thanks I think I should be sober for this,” you said. Amicable ground was trying to be found, keeping your voice neutral was the best you could do. “Do you want a drink?”
“No, no.”
The silence was invasive. An un-wanted guest.
You would start it, as you had with all your messed up feelings. You could finish it even if it hurt. “If you love me what were all the girls?”
John seemed to leap at the chance to defend himself. “Nothing. They were nothing, they were-” he paused, taking time to think about his next words. “They were just distractions. Meaningless. To get you out of my mind.”
“Cheap, John.” It was almost word for word what Carol said.
“Nothing I say can defend myself, I'm not trying to defend myself I'm trying to tell you the truth. I need you, and if I've ruined this I'm not letting you go without fighting.”
He approached you, giving you space and time to step back or flinch away. You didn't.
“I've loved you since I met you. Ever since you came up to me thinking I was a doctor and knew where labs were, I knew it. Love at first sight- if you think that's bullshit- I don't care because I knew it. But you made it clear, very clear you were here to be the best doctor you could be and I wanted that for you, I still do- I always will,” he said.
You remembered John years ago, tailored white coat and hopeful. You'd gone up to him because you were supposed to meet Doctor Greene in labs and had no idea where that was and he was the first person in a white coat and clipboard you'd seen.
You did twelve hours next to him that day, competing on stitches and sutures.
“You know, I had an apartment when I heard you were looking to move in with someone, cheap rent and that,” he said, laughing at himself. “I moved out of that apartment and got another one within the week with a spare room just so I could ask you to move in.”
The apartment you were stood in.
“What?”
John nodded like he knew it was ridiculous. “It worked.”
You knew the Carter family was rich beyond imagination. You'd always wondered why John insisted on a room mate when he could afford to live comfortably without one.
“When you told me you were thinking of moving in with Anna god I had a heart attack, practically begged her to back off.”
John had helped you pack your old place, had carried your stuff with care into his apartment. It had looked so much like him, so lived in you wouldn't even think to wonder how long he'd lived there. You'd never have guessed only a week till you invaded with your stuff.
“It was the closest I could have you without having you.”
“Why didn't you tell me then?” you asked.
His face screwed up like he regretted it. He did, you guessed. “Because we both get tired. We get irritable. I hate failing patients and you take on so many that you can't give yourself a minute to think during the day.”
You weren't sure if it was a compliment or not.
“We work together, we live together, take patients together I figured we'd crash and burn if I told you how I felt,” he admitted. “And- god, help me- if I had to live only being your friend it was better than living without you at all.”
But you and John had never argued. The both of you had figured out how to silently read each other. How to know when he needed space or a hug and a shoulder to cry on. He knew when you needed an extra pair of hands or to just put a stupid movie on to fall asleep too.
The nights you'd fallen asleep in his arms on the sofa and woke in your bed. The mornings where you were on and he wasn't but he was still up to get you a coffee. The days you worked close together and ignored everyone else. It all meant something else now.
“The girls were to forget,” said John. “It didn't work, hardly. All I could think about was you. And I know- I know it's wrong. I had to recite medical facts to myself just to get the thought of you out my head.”
“I thought you did that to make it last for them,” you admitted, realising now how silly it's all been.
He shook his head. “I didn't mean to hurt you. I'd rather cut off my own hands than make you cry. And I've made you cry and hurt you so just get a knife and-” he made a chopping motion, chocking on a laugh.
John wiped his tears with the back of his hand and he looked at you. “If you want to leave then leave but I can't let you go. I'll be around, I'll be really hard to get rid of.”
The both of your rooms stood behind you. Both dark. Both separate cages for the two of you.
“All I could think about when I saw you with those girls was how much they were never like me,” you spoke, quietly. “I thought you'd never... you know... think of me that way.”
John's hands were firm on your cheeks, gaining your attention. “It was always about you. You didn't deserve that, you didn't, I wish I could take it all back and tell you. But why didn't you tell me?”
Why? Because you were afraid. Knowing what you knew now it didn't seem a strong enough argument.
You laughed. “Are we stupid?”
John grinned through his own tears. He nodded, caressing your cheeks. “I think we are, I think so.”
Your foreheads leaned against each other as you laughed.
Slowly, it faded as he pressed his forehead into yours harder.
“I'm so sorry, baby.”
“I'm sorry,” you said, hands coming to hold his face, feeling the rough stubble in your palms.
“No, no, you have nothing to be sorry for, it's me, it's me,” he uttered, eyes closing. “If I've ruined this forever please tell me.”
You couldn't say he didn't have a point. Working long hours made you both difficult at times but never to each other. You couldn't say the girls wouldn't hurt you for some time more, that your insecurities weren't something you had to work on yourself.
Yet, you couldn't say you could manage without him.
“I don't think you have, no.”
John breathed out against you. “No?”
“No,” you shook your head against his. “I think if we love each other-”
“- we do, we do-”
“ -we should at least give it a try.”
“I'm not trying with you, I'm not trying- I'm doing,” John assured you, hands still moving along your cheeks, your hair, anything to hold you. “I'm not messing it up again, I'm not. I'd propose right now if you asked me to.”
You pulled back enough to stare at him seriously. “Don't.”
“Okay, okay, I won't,” he said. When he opened his eyes back at you he smirked, a twitch to his brows. “At least not today.”
There was laughter in place of tears and you knew that if you slept tonight there'd be no need to hurt. Maybe, instead, time to heal.
“Not for a long time,” you told him.
John nodded along, mockingly going along with you. “But eventually right?”
“Maybe you should kiss me before we get that far?”
The laughter died quietly. You were slowly brought into his arms as they wrapped around you, hands moving down your back without going further.
There was a gentle breeze of his warmth and the tips of his hair tickled you as he tilted his head, your own neck moving back to meet him.
It was soft and sweet. A small press of his lips like he was too scared to break you. It was your hands around his neck that brought him closer, it was his whimper that moved him on as his hands held your waist. You stayed pressing into each other, promising silent things as you did, until you both recognised the burn in your lungs for breath.
“I love you,” he said, slowly dragging his lips against yours again.
Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x mom!wife!reader x twins!toddlers
Warnings: stressed toddler, crying, fluff, domestic, exhaustion, implied intimacy.
Summary: After making a mountain of muffins, the family treats night shift before facing a tearful kinder drop off.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ Twins power 🐻
A/N: Where I live some kindergarten are in schools, that's why I wrote kinder and school as the same place.
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
🎀 based on this request 🎀
more dad!abbot fics
You were wrapping up some work in bed, propped up against a mountain of pillows. Jack was halfway through his night shift. And you had finally managed to get the twins tucked in and asleep by nine.
Or so you thought.
The bedroom door creaked open. You looked up from your screen to see Lily. Her eyes were half closed and her hair was a wild nest. When she shuffled closer to your bed, you noticed her bottom lip trembling.
"Lily?" you murmured, setting the laptop aside. "What’s wrong, baby? You're supposed to be fast asleep."
Instead of climbing in for a cuddle, Lily buried her face into the side of your mattress, a muffled sob escaping her. "I- I fogot, Mama."
"Forgot what, princess?" You shifted, gently smoothing down her messy hair.
She lifted her tear streaked face, her big eyes wide with anxiety. "F-For 'morrow! Is Friday and my tun for snack day. My brain is loud cause I forgot tell you!"
The panic in her voice was heartbreaking. To your four year old baby, forgetting a classroom promise felt like the end of the world.
"Oh, come here," you said softly, scooping her up into your arms and pulling her onto the bed with you. She clung to your neck, her body shaking anxiously. "What did you want to bring?"
"Muffins!" Lily wailed into your shoulder. "But the stores are closed!"
"It’s okay, princess," you murmured, pulling back to wipe the tears from her cheek. "We can make them."
Lily blinked, hiccuping. "Now? But it’s sleep time."
"Yes but we have a kitchen and I think we have everything we need," you smiled at her. "We can work something out."
The anxiety on her face instantly melted.
She nodded rapidly. "With the sweet chips!"
A few minutes later, you were in the kitchen. Lily was perched on a barstool, her chin resting in her hands as she watched you rummage through the pantry.
You managed to find a bag of flour, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, baking powder.
"Perfect," you said. "We’ve got muffins covered. We can start and you mix while I look for the chocolate chips."
Before you could pull out the mixing bowl, steps came from the entryway of the kitchen.
You turned to see Luca standing by the doorframe. He was wearing his matching star pajamas, dragging his stuffed animal, a plush dog, by one leg along the floor. His eyes were heavy with sleep.
"Hi, you," you said softly, walking over to kneel in front of him. "What’s wrong, bug? Why are you awake?"
He pulled his thumb out of his mouth and blinked up at you. "Can't sleep," he mumbled softly with sleep. He glanced over at Lily on the stool, then looked back at you. "Was alone."
Your heart completely melted.
Ever since they were babies, they had slept in the same room. The moment Lily’s side of the room went empty, Luca’s woke up because his other half was missing.
"Oh, buddy," you cooed, scooping him up into your arms. He immediately buried his face into your neck, his plush dog trapped between you.
"Let's make muffins, Lu!" Lily called out from her stool, her voice was... pretty loud and excited.
Luca tightened his grip on your shirt and gave a slow nod against your shoulder.
"Looks like the whole team is awake," you whispered, kissing his temple. "Let's make some muffins."
-
"Alright, my little bakers," you said, setting the large glass mixing bowl on the counter. "Luca, you’re in charge of the recipe card. Lily, you’re on pouring duty."
You pulled up a second stool so Luca could sit right next to his sister. He sat up straight, holding his stuffed dog under one arm while proping up the handwritten recipe card with his free hand.
He couldn't actually read words yet, but he knew numbers and forms perfectly, tracing the bold numbers with his index finger.
"Two cups of this," Luca read aloud, adopting a very professional voice that sounded exactly like Jack.
"Of flour" you said behind him, knowing the receipt perfectly.
Lily grabbed the plastic measuring cup, scooping it into the flour canister. "Two!" she echoed, dumping the powder into the bowl.
"Now the sugar," you indicated to them. "Then put the baking powder."
"One cup." Luca commanded.
While the twins were focused on their highly official assembly line, you turned around, hunting for the bag of chocolate chips. "Where did this man hide the sweet ones..." you muttered to yourself.
"Wait, it's-" Luca screamed then whispered "Uh-oh."
In parent language, uh-oh spoken in that specific tone was an universal code for: disaster.
You turned around. Lily was holding the baking powder container completely upside down over the bowl.
"She put all of it," Luca reported, his eyes wide as he looked from the bowl to you.
"I wanted make sure it was enough," Lily explained, her bottom lip poking out as she realized she might have made a mistake.
You stared at them and shook your head with a smile. If you baked it like this, the muffins would probably explode in the oven.
"It's okay, baby," you said, stepping back over and pulling the container from her small hands. "We just have to fix it now."
For the next twenty minutes, the baking session turned into a science experiment. To balance out the amount of baking powder, you had to double measures, crack more eggs, and pour more milk.
Luca went from reading the numbers to counting how many scoops you were adding to save the muffins. By the time the batter was finally balanced, you had enough batter to feed an army.
Later, the sweet aroma of vanilla filled the kitchen. The clock now read 11:50 PM.
Golden and chips muffins sat cooling across the counter. There were easily three dozen of them, far too many to bring to kindergarten.
Both toddlers were blinking slowly against the lights, looking exhausted.
"Look how many you two made." you said, wiping flour off Lily’s cheek.
"Lot of muffins!" Luca mumbled-screamed.
"We can't take all of them, you're only 15 on your class," you smiled, looking at the muffins. But then, an idea struck you. "Hey, what if we do something special tomorrow morning? We could take some these to daddy's work."
"Exactly," you nodded. "I bet daddy and the nurses are going to be super hungry after their shift. We can drop off a big breakfast for them before we head to school."
"Muffins for Daddy!" Luca chimed, he liked the idea of taking care of his dad.
"Yeah! Muffins!" Lily cheered softly, clapping her hands.
"Alright," you wrapped your arms around both of them and kissing the tops of their heads. "But now both of you need to get back to bed and get some sleep. It's pretty late."
Luca grabbed Lily’s hand and they run back to their room, ready to dream about the surprise they had waiting for Jack.
When the alarm went off at 6:30 AM, it felt entirely too soon. By 7:15 AM, the three of you were walking through the doors of the ER.
The twins were a funny contrast of sleep and excitement.
Lily was fiercely clutching a bakery box, walking by your side. Luca, on the other hand, had completely lost the battle to his late bedtime. He was dead to the world, his arms wrapped around your neck as you carried him.
The ER was in that moment where the night shift was exhausted and the day shift was just starting to trickle in.
"Well, look who it is," a familiar voice called out.
Dana was by the central desk. Her eyes crinkled with a smile as she took in the sight of you carrying a sleepy Luca and an anxious Lily beside you.
"Don't tell me Dr. Abbot forgot his keys again," Dana teased quietly, walking to greet you.
"Luckily no," you laughed, shifting Luca’s weight on your hip. "We had a midnight baking emergency and thought we'd bring muffins to the staff."
"We made chips muffins!" Lily announced loudly as she held the box up like a trophy. "For Daddy and nurses!"
Dana’s jaw dropped as she peeked inside the box. "Oh, you are an absolute angel. You just saved the whole department."
"Daddy here?" Lily asked, looking around the room.
"He’s wrapping up in the breakroom," Dana whispered, winking at her. "Why don't you go surprise him? I'll take this box and make sure we don't eat them all before he gets one."
Lily proudly handed over the box to Dana, then reached up to tug on the hem of your shirt. "Luca, wake up, let's find daddy!"
"I think Luca is staying right here, sweetpea," you whispered, kissing the top of your son's head as he let out a tiny yawn against your neck. "Go ahead. Lead the way."
Lily didn’t need to be told twice. She took off and you followed her. She stopped outside the staff breakroom, pushing the door open with both hands.
Jack was sitting at the table, staring blankly at a half-empty cup of coffee. He had already changed his scrubs, so maybe he just needed something to drink before going home.
"Daddy!" Lily squeaked, ignoring all hospital volume rules.
Jack snapped his head up. "Princess?"
Lily sprinted across the room and threw herself against him. Jack chuckled, scooping her up into his lap and pulling her tight against his chest. "What are you doing here, mh? Aren't you supposed to be getting ready for school?"
"We made muffins!" Lily beamed, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Lot of them! For snack day!"
"Is that so?" Jack looked up, his eyes locking onto yours as you stepped in. Luca stirred against you and rubbed his eyes with the back of his fist before he blinked them open. He spotted his dad with sleepy smile.
"Hi, Dad," Luca mumbled and reached out one arm toward his father.
"Hey there, buddy," Jack murmured softly.
Holding Lily in his arm, Jack stood up and walked over to you. He pressed a kiss to Luca’s cheek, making the little boy giggle.
Then, Jack shifted his gaze to you.
He leaned in, his lips meeting yours in a slow peck, his free hand coming up to gently cup the back of your neck.
"You baked at midnight?" Jack whispered against your lips, his thumb tracing your jawline.
"This miss forgot to tell me it was her snack day turn," you said leaning into his touch. "And we had an uh-oh with the baking powder, so we bring some of them before dropping off."
"You have to eat one! Right now!" Lily interrupted, breaking the romantic bubble you and Jack had just settled into.
"Alright, alright. Let's go see if they left any for me." Jack said and the four of you walked back toward the central nurse's station.
The box of muffins was already open on the counter.
"Dana! Muffins!" Lily called out.
Dana looked up from the computer, a half eaten muffin in her hand. "Abbot, your daughter is an absolute culinary queen. These are better than the cafeteria's by a mile."
"Heard we have muffins this morning." Robby walked in to start his shift.
"Uncle Robby!" Lily squeaked. To the twins, Robby wasn't just one of Jack's colleagues; he was Uncle Robby.
"Well, good morning to my favourite princess," Robby grinned "What’s in the box?"
"Muffins!" Lily explained proudly, leaning out from Jack's grip so far that Jack had to tighten his hold on her overalls. "Made lot of them, snack day!"
"No way," Robby gasped. "Did you bake these all by yourself?"
"Mama and Luca helped," Lily conceded, nodding toward you.
"And she did a lot of pouring," Jack added dryly, catching your eye with a smirk as he reached into the box and pulled out a muffin.
He took a bite, chewing thoughtfully while his daughter watched him anxiously, waiting for the final verdict.
Jack’s eyes went wide. "Oh, wow, babygirl, this is the best muffin I have ever had in my entire life."
"Yeah! Muffins!" Lily clapped her hands in absolute delight.
Robby grabbed one for himself, taking a bite and humming in approval. "Mmm, absolutely elite. Hey," Robby shifted his attention, leaning over slightly to look at the quiet bundle in your arms. "Are you hiding from me, Lulu?"
Luca, who usually loved wrestling with Robby, was feeling shy. He peeked out with one eye, his cheek still pressed flat against your shoulder and tightened his little arms around your neck.
"He's a little tired today, Robby," you explained softly, shifting Luca's weight and rubbing his back. "He was the official recipe reader."
"Ah, the brains of the operation, I get it," Robby smiled gently, reaching out to give Luca's small foot a playful squeeze. "You did a good job, boy."
Jack took one last bite of his muffin and dusted the crumbs off his hands before turning to Dana. "I'm officially signing off. If anything catches fire in the next hours, call someone else."
"Go home, Abbot," Dana smiled, waving him off. "You've earned it."
-
After searching for his bag, Jack reached into his pockets, looking around the parking lot. "Where did you park your car?"
"Actually, I didn't drive. We took an Uber here."
Jack stopped in his tracks. "An Uber? Why?"
"Because I knew your shift was ending right about now," you explained softly. "And I wanted us to drop the toddlers off. Maybe you'd want to be there to see Lily hand over her muffins."
He looked at you, his heart visibly swelling. "You really are the love of my life, you know that?"
The drive to the kindergarten was calm. But the peace didn't last. The moment the car engine cut out in the school drop off line, the reality of the late night caught up.
The sight of the colorful playground completely revived Lily, who scrambled out of her seat, eager to show off her muffins. But for Luca, it was too much. As Jack unbuckled him and lifted him out of the car, Luca’s face crumpled.
The exhaustion hit him all at once.
"No," Luca whimpered, his voice instantly cracking as tears welled up in his eyes. "No school, Daddy. I want to sleep."
"Oh, buddy," Jack murmured, he picked him up, holding him tight against his chest as he walked toward the doors. "I know you're tired, Lu. But you're going to have so much fun with your friends today."
"No, my eyes hurt," Luca sobbed softly, tears soaking into the collar of Jack's shirt. He reached out blindly for you, his tiny hand trembling. "Mama... please."
You stepped in, your heart breaking as you took his hand. You pressed a warm kiss to his palm. "I know, my sweet boy. But Miss Honey is going to let you take a long nap at quiet time, okay? I promise."
Miss Honey walked towards you, her face softening with sympathy as she saw Luca's face, though she smiled brightly when Lily proudly held up the massive box. "Oh, Lily, these smell absolutely delicious!"
"We made them!" Lily said proudly.
"I see, sweety. Morning to you too Luca, are you tired? I have your soft pillow waiting just for you for nap time."
Luca let out a shuddering sniffle, unlocking his arms from Jack's neck.
"My blue one? With the stars?"
"Yes, that one."
Jack kissed his son on the forehead as he lowered him to the ground. "You hear her? Your favourite one. Be a big boy, alright? Daddy will be waiting right here to pick you up later."
Luca gave a nod, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt as he took Miss Honey's hand. Lily immediately grabbed his other hand, guiding him gently into the school.
You walked back to the car in silence, the echo of Luca's quiet cries still lingering in the air. You stared out the passenger window, watching the kindergarten entrance fade from view as Jack pulled out into the street. Your heart ached, the image of your little boy’s tear-streaked face replaying in a loop.
Jack caught the shift in your posture immediately. He kept one hand on the steering wheel, reaching with the other to take yours.
"Hey," he said softly. "Talk to me, beautiful. You’ve got that look on your face."
"I feel terrible," you admitted. "Leaving him like that when he was crying… it breaks my heart. He has such a hard time during the day when he doesn't get enough sleep."
Jack gave your hand a comforting squeeze. "Miss Honey is great with him. He’ll be asleep before nap time even starts. Why is he so tired? Did Lily wake him up for making the muffins?"
"No, she didn't. She was really quiet. He woke up completely on his own because he realized her bed was empty."
Jack glanced over at you curiously. "Really?"
"Yeah," you nodded, leaning your head back against the headrest. "He came looking so lost, and the first thing he said was, 'Was alone.' It’s that twin thing again. It’s like his internal radar alarms him the second she leaves the room. He just... he relies so much on his sister. I worry sometimes that he depends on her too much."
Jack listened quietly. He pulled the car up to a red light and turned his head to look at you fully.
"Sweetheart," Jack murmured. "They’ve been sharing a space since they were in the womb. It’s not a bad thing that he relies on her. Didn't you see them at the door? The second he nodded, Lily took his hand. He protects her and she grounds him. They look out for each other." He paused to smile at you. "He is always so aware of her. Think about it." Jack chuckled. "He’s basically our security guard for our troublemaker princess. We should be thanking him."
You laughed thinking of how Luca always take care of Lily when she is up to something. "A four-year-old security guard who works for muffins?"
"Exactly. The perfect one," Jack grinned.
The light turned green, and he rolled the car forward, keeping his grip on your hand firm.
"You did good, Mama," Jack whispered, lifting your hand to press a kiss to your knuckles. "No more worrying. We have a date with our bed."
"Deal," you looked over at him as he steered the car toward your home. "You have such a happy face when it's my day off," you teased softly.
"Of course I do. It means I don't have to share you with anyone else for the next hours."
"Oh, is that it? You just want me all to yourself?"
"Absolutely," Jack murmured, he smoothly guided the car into your driveway and cut the engine, the sudden silence inside the vehicle making the space feel intimate.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned fully in his seat, leaning to trap you against your headrest. His eyes darkened as they traced your face, a deeply affectionate but thoroughly pervy grin spreading across his face.
"The kids are at kinder until four," he whispered, his hand cupping the back of your neck. "Which means no interruptions, no tiny feet running into the bedroom and no toddler emergencies. I have very specific unprofessional plans for how we're spending the first hours of our date, beautiful."
You let out a shy laugh as you reached up to tangle your fingers in his wild hair. "Dr. Abbot, are you taking advantage of your exhausted wife?"
"One hundred percent," he grinned, leaning down kiss you deeply. "Let's get inside before I decide the backseat is perfect enough." he whispered against your mouth.
Pairing: Dr. Jack Abbot x mom!wife!reader x twins!toddlers
Warnings: stressed toddler, crying, fluff, domestic, exhaustion, implied intimacy.
Summary: After making a mountain of muffins, the family treats night shift before facing a tearful kinder drop off.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ Twins power 🐻
A/N: Where I live some kindergarten are in schools, that's why I wrote kinder and school as the same place.
Disclaimer: This story is pure fiction and written solely for entertainment purposes.
🎀 based on this request 🎀
more dad!abbot fics
You were wrapping up some work in bed, propped up against a mountain of pillows. Jack was halfway through his night shift. And you had finally managed to get the twins tucked in and asleep by nine.
Or so you thought.
The bedroom door creaked open. You looked up from your screen to see Lily. Her eyes were half closed and her hair was a wild nest. When she shuffled closer to your bed, you noticed her bottom lip trembling.
"Lily?" you murmured, setting the laptop aside. "What’s wrong, baby? You're supposed to be fast asleep."
Instead of climbing in for a cuddle, Lily buried her face into the side of your mattress, a muffled sob escaping her. "I- I fogot, Mama."
"Forgot what, princess?" You shifted, gently smoothing down her messy hair.
She lifted her tear streaked face, her big eyes wide with anxiety. "F-For 'morrow! Is Friday and my tun for snack day. My brain is loud cause I forgot tell you!"
The panic in her voice was heartbreaking. To your four year old baby, forgetting a classroom promise felt like the end of the world.
"Oh, come here," you said softly, scooping her up into your arms and pulling her onto the bed with you. She clung to your neck, her body shaking anxiously. "What did you want to bring?"
"Muffins!" Lily wailed into your shoulder. "But the stores are closed!"
"It’s okay, princess," you murmured, pulling back to wipe the tears from her cheek. "We can make them."
Lily blinked, hiccuping. "Now? But it’s sleep time."
"Yes but we have a kitchen and I think we have everything we need," you smiled at her. "We can work something out."
The anxiety on her face instantly melted.
She nodded rapidly. "With the sweet chips!"
A few minutes later, you were in the kitchen. Lily was perched on a barstool, her chin resting in her hands as she watched you rummage through the pantry.
You managed to find a bag of flour, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, baking powder.
"Perfect," you said. "We’ve got muffins covered. We can start and you mix while I look for the chocolate chips."
Before you could pull out the mixing bowl, steps came from the entryway of the kitchen.
You turned to see Luca standing by the doorframe. He was wearing his matching star pajamas, dragging his stuffed animal, a plush dog, by one leg along the floor. His eyes were heavy with sleep.
"Hi, you," you said softly, walking over to kneel in front of him. "What’s wrong, bug? Why are you awake?"
He pulled his thumb out of his mouth and blinked up at you. "Can't sleep," he mumbled softly with sleep. He glanced over at Lily on the stool, then looked back at you. "Was alone."
Your heart completely melted.
Ever since they were babies, they had slept in the same room. The moment Lily’s side of the room went empty, Luca’s woke up because his other half was missing.
"Oh, buddy," you cooed, scooping him up into your arms. He immediately buried his face into your neck, his plush dog trapped between you.
"Let's make muffins, Lu!" Lily called out from her stool, her voice was... pretty loud and excited.
Luca tightened his grip on your shirt and gave a slow nod against your shoulder.
"Looks like the whole team is awake," you whispered, kissing his temple. "Let's make some muffins."
-
"Alright, my little bakers," you said, setting the large glass mixing bowl on the counter. "Luca, you’re in charge of the recipe card. Lily, you’re on pouring duty."
You pulled up a second stool so Luca could sit right next to his sister. He sat up straight, holding his stuffed dog under one arm while proping up the handwritten recipe card with his free hand.
He couldn't actually read words yet, but he knew numbers and forms perfectly, tracing the bold numbers with his index finger.
"Two cups of this," Luca read aloud, adopting a very professional voice that sounded exactly like Jack.
"Of flour" you said behind him, knowing the receipt perfectly.
Lily grabbed the plastic measuring cup, scooping it into the flour canister. "Two!" she echoed, dumping the powder into the bowl.
"Now the sugar," you indicated to them. "Then put the baking powder."
"One cup." Luca commanded.
While the twins were focused on their highly official assembly line, you turned around, hunting for the bag of chocolate chips. "Where did this man hide the sweet ones..." you muttered to yourself.
"Wait, it's-" Luca screamed then whispered "Uh-oh."
In parent language, uh-oh spoken in that specific tone was an universal code for: disaster.
You turned around. Lily was holding the baking powder container completely upside down over the bowl.
"She put all of it," Luca reported, his eyes wide as he looked from the bowl to you.
"I wanted make sure it was enough," Lily explained, her bottom lip poking out as she realized she might have made a mistake.
You stared at them and shook your head with a smile. If you baked it like this, the muffins would probably explode in the oven.
"It's okay, baby," you said, stepping back over and pulling the container from her small hands. "We just have to fix it now."
For the next twenty minutes, the baking session turned into a science experiment. To balance out the amount of baking powder, you had to double measures, crack more eggs, and pour more milk.
Luca went from reading the numbers to counting how many scoops you were adding to save the muffins. By the time the batter was finally balanced, you had enough batter to feed an army.
Later, the sweet aroma of vanilla filled the kitchen. The clock now read 11:50 PM.
Golden and chips muffins sat cooling across the counter. There were easily three dozen of them, far too many to bring to kindergarten.
Both toddlers were blinking slowly against the lights, looking exhausted.
"Look how many you two made." you said, wiping flour off Lily’s cheek.
"Lot of muffins!" Luca mumbled-screamed.
"We can't take all of them, you're only 15 on your class," you smiled, looking at the muffins. But then, an idea struck you. "Hey, what if we do something special tomorrow morning? We could take some these to daddy's work."
"Exactly," you nodded. "I bet daddy and the nurses are going to be super hungry after their shift. We can drop off a big breakfast for them before we head to school."
"Muffins for Daddy!" Luca chimed, he liked the idea of taking care of his dad.
"Yeah! Muffins!" Lily cheered softly, clapping her hands.
"Alright," you wrapped your arms around both of them and kissing the tops of their heads. "But now both of you need to get back to bed and get some sleep. It's pretty late."
Luca grabbed Lily’s hand and they run back to their room, ready to dream about the surprise they had waiting for Jack.
When the alarm went off at 6:30 AM, it felt entirely too soon. By 7:15 AM, the three of you were walking through the doors of the ER.
The twins were a funny contrast of sleep and excitement.
Lily was fiercely clutching a bakery box, walking by your side. Luca, on the other hand, had completely lost the battle to his late bedtime. He was dead to the world, his arms wrapped around your neck as you carried him.
The ER was in that moment where the night shift was exhausted and the day shift was just starting to trickle in.
"Well, look who it is," a familiar voice called out.
Dana was by the central desk. Her eyes crinkled with a smile as she took in the sight of you carrying a sleepy Luca and an anxious Lily beside you.
"Don't tell me Dr. Abbot forgot his keys again," Dana teased quietly, walking to greet you.
"Luckily no," you laughed, shifting Luca’s weight on your hip. "We had a midnight baking emergency and thought we'd bring muffins to the staff."
"We made chips muffins!" Lily announced loudly as she held the box up like a trophy. "For Daddy and nurses!"
Dana’s jaw dropped as she peeked inside the box. "Oh, you are an absolute angel. You just saved the whole department."
"Daddy here?" Lily asked, looking around the room.
"He’s wrapping up in the breakroom," Dana whispered, winking at her. "Why don't you go surprise him? I'll take this box and make sure we don't eat them all before he gets one."
Lily proudly handed over the box to Dana, then reached up to tug on the hem of your shirt. "Luca, wake up, let's find daddy!"
"I think Luca is staying right here, sweetpea," you whispered, kissing the top of your son's head as he let out a tiny yawn against your neck. "Go ahead. Lead the way."
Lily didn’t need to be told twice. She took off and you followed her. She stopped outside the staff breakroom, pushing the door open with both hands.
Jack was sitting at the table, staring blankly at a half-empty cup of coffee. He had already changed his scrubs, so maybe he just needed something to drink before going home.
"Daddy!" Lily squeaked, ignoring all hospital volume rules.
Jack snapped his head up. "Princess?"
Lily sprinted across the room and threw herself against him. Jack chuckled, scooping her up into his lap and pulling her tight against his chest. "What are you doing here, mh? Aren't you supposed to be getting ready for school?"
"We made muffins!" Lily beamed, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Lot of them! For snack day!"
"Is that so?" Jack looked up, his eyes locking onto yours as you stepped in. Luca stirred against you and rubbed his eyes with the back of his fist before he blinked them open. He spotted his dad with sleepy smile.
"Hi, Dad," Luca mumbled and reached out one arm toward his father.
"Hey there, buddy," Jack murmured softly.
Holding Lily in his arm, Jack stood up and walked over to you. He pressed a kiss to Luca’s cheek, making the little boy giggle.
Then, Jack shifted his gaze to you.
He leaned in, his lips meeting yours in a slow peck, his free hand coming up to gently cup the back of your neck.
"You baked at midnight?" Jack whispered against your lips, his thumb tracing your jawline.
"This miss forgot to tell me it was her snack day turn," you said leaning into his touch. "And we had an uh-oh with the baking powder, so we bring some of them before dropping off."
"You have to eat one! Right now!" Lily interrupted, breaking the romantic bubble you and Jack had just settled into.
"Alright, alright. Let's go see if they left any for me." Jack said and the four of you walked back toward the central nurse's station.
The box of muffins was already open on the counter.
"Dana! Muffins!" Lily called out.
Dana looked up from the computer, a half eaten muffin in her hand. "Abbot, your daughter is an absolute culinary queen. These are better than the cafeteria's by a mile."
"Heard we have muffins this morning." Robby walked in to start his shift.
"Uncle Robby!" Lily squeaked. To the twins, Robby wasn't just one of Jack's colleagues; he was Uncle Robby.
"Well, good morning to my favourite princess," Robby grinned "What’s in the box?"
"Muffins!" Lily explained proudly, leaning out from Jack's grip so far that Jack had to tighten his hold on her overalls. "Made lot of them, snack day!"
"No way," Robby gasped. "Did you bake these all by yourself?"
"Mama and Luca helped," Lily conceded, nodding toward you.
"And she did a lot of pouring," Jack added dryly, catching your eye with a smirk as he reached into the box and pulled out a muffin.
He took a bite, chewing thoughtfully while his daughter watched him anxiously, waiting for the final verdict.
Jack’s eyes went wide. "Oh, wow, babygirl, this is the best muffin I have ever had in my entire life."
"Yeah! Muffins!" Lily clapped her hands in absolute delight.
Robby grabbed one for himself, taking a bite and humming in approval. "Mmm, absolutely elite. Hey," Robby shifted his attention, leaning over slightly to look at the quiet bundle in your arms. "Are you hiding from me, Lulu?"
Luca, who usually loved wrestling with Robby, was feeling shy. He peeked out with one eye, his cheek still pressed flat against your shoulder and tightened his little arms around your neck.
"He's a little tired today, Robby," you explained softly, shifting Luca's weight and rubbing his back. "He was the official recipe reader."
"Ah, the brains of the operation, I get it," Robby smiled gently, reaching out to give Luca's small foot a playful squeeze. "You did a good job, boy."
Jack took one last bite of his muffin and dusted the crumbs off his hands before turning to Dana. "I'm officially signing off. If anything catches fire in the next hours, call someone else."
"Go home, Abbot," Dana smiled, waving him off. "You've earned it."
-
After searching for his bag, Jack reached into his pockets, looking around the parking lot. "Where did you park your car?"
"Actually, I didn't drive. We took an Uber here."
Jack stopped in his tracks. "An Uber? Why?"
"Because I knew your shift was ending right about now," you explained softly. "And I wanted us to drop the toddlers off. Maybe you'd want to be there to see Lily hand over her muffins."
He looked at you, his heart visibly swelling. "You really are the love of my life, you know that?"
The drive to the kindergarten was calm. But the peace didn't last. The moment the car engine cut out in the school drop off line, the reality of the late night caught up.
The sight of the colorful playground completely revived Lily, who scrambled out of her seat, eager to show off her muffins. But for Luca, it was too much. As Jack unbuckled him and lifted him out of the car, Luca’s face crumpled.
The exhaustion hit him all at once.
"No," Luca whimpered, his voice instantly cracking as tears welled up in his eyes. "No school, Daddy. I want to sleep."
"Oh, buddy," Jack murmured, he picked him up, holding him tight against his chest as he walked toward the doors. "I know you're tired, Lu. But you're going to have so much fun with your friends today."
"No, my eyes hurt," Luca sobbed softly, tears soaking into the collar of Jack's shirt. He reached out blindly for you, his tiny hand trembling. "Mama... please."
You stepped in, your heart breaking as you took his hand. You pressed a warm kiss to his palm. "I know, my sweet boy. But Miss Honey is going to let you take a long nap at quiet time, okay? I promise."
Miss Honey walked towards you, her face softening with sympathy as she saw Luca's face, though she smiled brightly when Lily proudly held up the massive box. "Oh, Lily, these smell absolutely delicious!"
"We made them!" Lily said proudly.
"I see, sweety. Morning to you too Luca, are you tired? I have your soft pillow waiting just for you for nap time."
Luca let out a shuddering sniffle, unlocking his arms from Jack's neck.
"My blue one? With the stars?"
"Yes, that one."
Jack kissed his son on the forehead as he lowered him to the ground. "You hear her? Your favourite one. Be a big boy, alright? Daddy will be waiting right here to pick you up later."
Luca gave a nod, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt as he took Miss Honey's hand. Lily immediately grabbed his other hand, guiding him gently into the school.
You walked back to the car in silence, the echo of Luca's quiet cries still lingering in the air. You stared out the passenger window, watching the kindergarten entrance fade from view as Jack pulled out into the street. Your heart ached, the image of your little boy’s tear-streaked face replaying in a loop.
Jack caught the shift in your posture immediately. He kept one hand on the steering wheel, reaching with the other to take yours.
"Hey," he said softly. "Talk to me, beautiful. You’ve got that look on your face."
"I feel terrible," you admitted. "Leaving him like that when he was crying… it breaks my heart. He has such a hard time during the day when he doesn't get enough sleep."
Jack gave your hand a comforting squeeze. "Miss Honey is great with him. He’ll be asleep before nap time even starts. Why is he so tired? Did Lily wake him up for making the muffins?"
"No, she didn't. She was really quiet. He woke up completely on his own because he realized her bed was empty."
Jack glanced over at you curiously. "Really?"
"Yeah," you nodded, leaning your head back against the headrest. "He came looking so lost, and the first thing he said was, 'Was alone.' It’s that twin thing again. It’s like his internal radar alarms him the second she leaves the room. He just... he relies so much on his sister. I worry sometimes that he depends on her too much."
Jack listened quietly. He pulled the car up to a red light and turned his head to look at you fully.
"Sweetheart," Jack murmured. "They’ve been sharing a space since they were in the womb. It’s not a bad thing that he relies on her. Didn't you see them at the door? The second he nodded, Lily took his hand. He protects her and she grounds him. They look out for each other." He paused to smile at you. "He is always so aware of her. Think about it." Jack chuckled. "He’s basically our security guard for our troublemaker princess. We should be thanking him."
You laughed thinking of how Luca always take care of Lily when she is up to something. "A four-year-old security guard who works for muffins?"
"Exactly. The perfect one," Jack grinned.
The light turned green, and he rolled the car forward, keeping his grip on your hand firm.
"You did good, Mama," Jack whispered, lifting your hand to press a kiss to your knuckles. "No more worrying. We have a date with our bed."
"Deal," you looked over at him as he steered the car toward your home. "You have such a happy face when it's my day off," you teased softly.
"Of course I do. It means I don't have to share you with anyone else for the next hours."
"Oh, is that it? You just want me all to yourself?"
"Absolutely," Jack murmured, he smoothly guided the car into your driveway and cut the engine, the sudden silence inside the vehicle making the space feel intimate.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned fully in his seat, leaning to trap you against your headrest. His eyes darkened as they traced your face, a deeply affectionate but thoroughly pervy grin spreading across his face.
"The kids are at kinder until four," he whispered, his hand cupping the back of your neck. "Which means no interruptions, no tiny feet running into the bedroom and no toddler emergencies. I have very specific unprofessional plans for how we're spending the first hours of our date, beautiful."
You let out a shy laugh as you reached up to tangle your fingers in his wild hair. "Dr. Abbot, are you taking advantage of your exhausted wife?"
"One hundred percent," he grinned, leaning down kiss you deeply. "Let's get inside before I decide the backseat is perfect enough." he whispered against your mouth.
synopsis when your and Robby's son joins PTMC he sees just how much his parents have to deal with, including Myrna, the gift that just keeps on giving, and she thinks trading in the older model for the younger is a good investment (4.1k words)
warning language. parents reader with robby, mom!reader, preganant reader! general hospital stuff, allusions to smut, allusions to sex work!
authornote a very lovely anon pointed out that Myrna would love to tease Carter because he looks so much like his dad and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I love Myrna. I tried finding out more about her for this and all I could find was that she's apparently a sex worker? I don't know how true that is but there's hints to it in this fic. Thanks to anon for the idea! robby gif credit to @emziess, john carter gif credit to @erotizmas
pitt masterlist! part one 'the kids aren't alright'!
“VIP, room twelve asking for you,” was never a good thing to hear. VIP's meant family and friends, or on the other hand - frequent flyers that had been in enough to know their favourite doctors and nurses faces and names and who to ask for.
You hung your head and sighed before dragging your feet over that way.
“Might want to take the cuffs,” Dana added, sending you on your way.
You pushed open the door to twelve and was greeted with cigarette breath and stale perfume.
“Hey, sugar tits!”
“Myrna,” you greeted. “I thought we agreed we'd stop meeting like this.”
She chuckled, showing off teeth that weren't particularly white anymore, stained by years of smoking and drinking. “What can I say? I can't get away from you hot stuff.”
Myrna was around enough you were shocked she didn't have her own room. She did have her preference of wheelchairs, the one that had the smoothest wheels she deemed that made pushing around the Pitt and chasing doctors easier.
“What are we in for today?” you asked, folding your hands over her age old chart and keeping to the end of the bed.
Her brows rose. “Aren't you gonna come any closer?” she teased, crooking a finger into her as best she could from where they were restrained softly to the bed.
“Myrna you know I'm married.”
“Happily?”
“Sadly.”
“To the fruitcake?”
“Still,” you said with an amused smirk. Sometimes when you wanted to annoy Robby you'd call him fruitcake and watch his face twist up.
Myrna scoffed. “Pathetic.”
“You had another seizure?” you asked, knowing already her usual tricks.
“Yeah.”
“Who brought you in?”
“Some guy.”
“And what was his name this time?”
“Antonio. Italian. Handsome,” she said with a drool. “Looked great in his uniform.” Myrna pulled at her restraints again as you walked around her, checking the vitals another nurse (most likely Dana) had already took. “Are these really necessary?”
“They are when police bring you in.”
“Is this because I grabbed fruitcakes ass?” she asked.
“No, Myrna,” you said, checking her IV. “It's because you grabbed my ass.”
As if she were proud of herself, Myrna grinned and chuckled.
The door behind you pushed open gently, two bodies, one tall and lean and the other slightly rounded blocking the doorway.
“And this is, Myrna. Seizure activity, or so she says,” said Robby as he gestured from his son next to him to the lady in the bed.
Carter's med student days had been spent mostly in Presby, in order to avoid such conflicts of interests like working with his mom and dad in the ED. However, Presby was closed for up to two weeks due to a viral outbreak and quarantines that Robby insisted Carter come do days in the Pitt.
Carter was pressed in his fresh and light coloured scrubs, a polished stethoscope slung over his shoulders and a pep in his step. Looking at him, you wouldn't have thought he was roaming the halls he ran through as a child, talking to Dana as if he didn't use to babble incoherently at her.
“Myrna, say hello,” said Robby, passing you a nod.
Instead, Myrna dragged her tongue over her teeth and growled.
Carter all but jumped back.
“Fruitcake, you've multiplied,” she smirked.
“Don't worry, Carter,” you said. “She's harmless.”
“She's-she's tied to the bed.”
“Exactly. So she's harmless,” you said. “Just don't get too close if you're examining her, she bites.”
At first Carter laughed but when nobody- not even Myrna- laughed with him, he fell silent, looking between his dad and you. Robby only nodded, confirming that fact.
“Who is this tall, lean, fresh blood?” Myrna asked, eyeing him up.
“Myrna, this is Carter. Our kid. He is doing a emergency medicine rotation and is here to learn,” said Robby.
Carter's chest puffed out, his hair that was soft to the touch and bounced around like Robby's used to do, fell in front of his eyes.
Myrna shifted in her bed. “You need to do a physical, huh?”
“He does not,” said Robby. “Rest easy, we'll be back soon.”
Robby held the door open, letting you and Carter out first as if to protect you from her 'abuse', but he didn't close it quick enough, the nicknames sugar tits and fruitcake floating out behind you.
“What-what was that?” asked Carter, frowning at the names he could have sworn he heard.
“Nothing, don't think about it,” said Robby, a firm had clamped on his shoulder and stirring him away.
“Fruitcake?” he laughed, probably thinking of every way he could use it against him.
“I said don't ask.”
“Don't worry about Myrna, just keep your distance,” you advised.
Carter looked between you and Robby, the both of you in doctor and nurse mode. It was the sort of thing he'd caught glimpses of throughout his life but never seen so much of. The both of you shed the scrubs like skin when you got home, pulling off the medical practices and putting on everything you'd learned about being parents. It was a fine line, Robby had decided, between happiness and work and he wasn't going to drag the dead and the sick into the home he'd created.
“You guys put up with her a lot?” he asked.
Robby huffed. “She comes in to avoid the cops.”
“She's here so often we're thinking of inviting her to thanksgiving next year,” you teased.
“But she doesn't actually bite, does she?” asked Carter, laughing at the very idea.
You and Robby shared a look, ignoring him.
“Just don't find out the hard way, son,” advised Robby, leaving him to it and letting him go.
Carter nodded. “Is she the reason you came home with a bite mark on your shoulder last week?”
He regretted asking almost immediately as he watched your cheeks grow pink and watched Robby fight a smirk down at you. He reached for you, turning you around as you walked away laughing.
“Yeah, sure, son.”
Carter was at the nurses station, leaning over the cool counter and watching the rest of the ward work. He watched nurses float around him, Dana be called off on different ventures, traumas being wheeled in and pushed through doors. Nobody was calling his name. He was waiting to be called, to be rushed into the action.
At some point he watched you and his dad be called around, the two of you taking patients like it was a tag team mission. He watched Robby's hand ghost the small of your back as he directed you around, he watched your careful words console him after tough patients.
So, that's what love was.
The squeak of wheels from behind him sounded, dragging over the floor closer and closer.
“Doctor, doctor, I got a bad case of loving you,” said the drag of a voice.
Carter turned, looking down at the wheelchair. “Oh, I'm not a doctor. I'm a med student.”
“Younger, even better,” she smirked, licking her lips.
“You're Myrna, right?” said Carter, looking around him for help before he was cornered by her.
“Call me mama,” said Myrna.
Carter gulped, eyeing the handcuffs that gleamed in polished silver. She was attached to the wheelchair. Could she still bite him? “Is there anything I can help you with, Myrna?”
“You could make my time worth while,” she said with a lur of desire.
Presby had been a different kind of chaos to PTMC. There'd been a blur of patients and an over crowded hall way of equipment, less put back and clean and darker than here. He could see Myrna in daylight, the ragged pull of a dressing gown which seemed to be strictly hers. The dark colour of exhaustion under her eyes. Hadn't he been told she came here to hide from the cops?
“I need the bath room hot-stuff,” she said, as if catching his hesitation.
“Oh. Right. Yes, course, let me just-” Carter looked around desperately, hoping to catch a face he could put a name to. He drew a blank.
“Come on, sweet-cheeks,” she said, a low droll of her voice. “Never seen a real woman before?”
If he said yes would word get back to his mom? If he said no would word get back to his dad?
Finally, a small doctor in a neatly combed-back braid and glasses walked by, focused and clear of mind.
“Hey! Um, hey! Wait, Can I-Can I get some help?”
She looked back to him, eyes alight. “Oh, Doctor Robby! I mean not-not our Doctor Robby, a Doctor Robby, our third, really,” she frowned at herself and shook her head. “I'm Mel, D-Doctor King.”
“Hey, nice to meet you, Doctor King,” he greeted with a bright smile. “Myrna needs the bathroom and I-”
Mel caught on quick and took over the charge of Myrna who was less than enthusiastic later.
“Strip down and get on my bed, sailor!” she yelled.
Carter's cheeks blazed.
It was one of those days where things seemed quiet for you and Robby. Where patients came in with small complaints that could be handed off to med students and residents, carefully supervised of course.
So carefully supervised from Robby's place in the lounge, you perched on his lap with his arms tightly around you. You were only blocking his view a little bit, he'd know if anyone was dying at least, it was basically a sixth sense.
But with you in his lap, tracing patterns in his hands, Robby didn't seem to care if outside was on fire.
“You know, if this one's another boy,” he said, resting his head on your shoulder, hands pressing into the small, nearly un-noticeable swell of your stomach. “We might have to call him Jack.”
You smirked. It was a running joke that with three sons and one daughter not one of them was named after Jack, even if he was there for the births of them. Once when Robby was not.
“He might start thinking we hate him.”
“But if we have a girl I am not calling her Jaqueline,” you said.
Robby huffed a laugh into your shoulder. “No, definitely not.”
“I think if it's a girl, we should call her Stacey,” you suggested.
“Stacey?” asked Robby, trying to go through everyone you knew to understand why Stacey was an important name. He came up blank.
“So I can be Stacey's mom.”
Robby knew there was a joke there that he didn't understand.
You backed up, peering at him. “You don't know Stacey's mom?”
The door squeaked open, flashes of the Pitt startling the two of you as Dana walked in, pushing her glasses up into her hair.
“There you two are! Hiding out here while the rest of us do your dirty work!” she said, smiling at the sight.
“Is somebody dying, Dana?” asked Robby, smug and still secure with you in lap.
She scoffed. “Yeah, your kid.”
You shuffled in Robby's lap, sitting up straighter. “Carter?” anxiety clawed at your nerves, turned over the little breakfast you'd eaten.
“Myrna's got her claws in him, poor kid,” she said with a show of no sympathy. The truth was all of them had to put up with Myrna at some point. It was always best to get it out the way in the early days. Let Myrna have her fun then she usually left you alone.
Except you. And Robby. By a common trend, Carter might not be so lucky either.
Robby's hands squeezed your thighs, a subtle signal that you were both going to have to get up. “All part of the hazing programme.”
The three of you crept to the door, huddled close and looking out the slim window at the door.
In his scrubs still yet to be strained, Carter was crowded at the counter, Myrna and her wheelchair up to his feet, practically rolling over his toes in the trainers you'd brought him. He was laughing awkwardly and trying to climb up the counter to get away from her. You'd never seen someone so afraid of an elderly woman in a wheelchair.
Robby's chest rumbled in a chuckle as he lingered over you. “He's your son.”
You swatted his chest.
“C'mon,” tutted Dana. “He's doing good. Says he wants to go inter surgery.”
“We taught him where the money is.”
Across the way the three of you noticed you weren't the only one watching the show. Hiding by an exam room, a curtain pulled close you could see Santos and Whitaker watching. Trinity was doing a bad job at hiding her grin while Denis was a decent guy, he looked bad.
“Shouldn't we be helping him out?” you pondered.
“Are you kidding?” smirked Dana. “This is the most fun I've had in years.”
“You think he gets treated better at Presby?” you asked.
Robby shook his head. “Presby doesn't have a Myrna.”
Carter had just stitched up a gruesome cut in a leg, finally staining his scrubs in a speck of blood. It was small but made him feel like a real doctor.
He was just walking past an exam room when he heard calling. He supposed it was for him, though it wasn't his name.
“Hey! Pussycat!”
He paused past the exam room, hand grasped at the doorframe to steady him. Sweet-cheeks. Hot-stuff. Pussycat. Carter dreaded to think what she could come up with next.
Carter stepped back. “It's-It's Carter, or Robinavitch.”
“Yeah, yeah, plenty of them,” she said, holding up her arm as far as she could while restrained. “I got an itch.”
“Okay?”
Her restraints jangled again as she proved a point. “I can't reach.”
He was stuck in spot, wondering if Myrna had been paid by his parents to make his day harder. With a sigh he took a step in at her bed side, making an exaggerated move in tugging on powderless, latex gloves.
She watched and rolled her eyes.
Carter was tempted to pull on a mask to prove a point. “Where's the itch?”
Myrna tugged a little at her gown, exposing the curve of her thigh. “Right here,” she said, as seductive as she could.
Carter stared down at the skin, veins a deep blue and a wide purple bruise forming over where she needed the itch. He drew a stool closer and settled, drawing a delicate circle around the mark. “When did this happen?”
“When the cops caught me, itch!”
Gently, Carter started to drag his fingers over the mark she emphasised. He eyed the bruise still, trying to find the best way about it. Had anyone else examined her? “I could get you a band for that,” he said. “To help with the inflammation. Some elevation and that-”
“Higher!” she said.
Carter looked to see if she had listened to him. It seemed she had not. He moved half an inch further, knowing where his hand would end up if he went any more, or even if she shifted.
“You know know one's been this high up to me since my third husband,” she said.
“What happened to the other two?”
“I killed them!”
When Carter looked up at her she seemed only smug and proud of herself. It was impossible to tell what was a lie.
Myrna rose her brows in challenge.
Carter itched a second more before slowly taking away his hand, yet she latched on like a snake sinking in its claws when his hand brushed hers. “Is your... itch satisfied?”
“Not yet sugar,” she smirked. “You want to see my Vagina?”
Carter felt his cheeks rise up in heat.
“Myrna,” you appeared in the doorway, leaning there with your pleasing smile, the sort reserved for patients. At home, the kids got a different one. And Robby got another one. “Are you behaving?”
“Me? Please. I'm a good girl,” she said with a wink, releasing Carter.
He fell to your side quickly, like you could protect him.
“Really? Cause we've had a complaint from a nurse saying you grabbed his ass,” you said.
Her face fell. “That grey-haired pussycat? There was nothing there for me to grab, please.”
“So you're keeping your hands to yourself?” you asked.
“Urm, mom- I-I mean Nurse Robinavitch,” said Carter with a clear of his throat. “Miss- Mrs, er-”
“It's just Myrna, Carter.”
“Oh, okay.”
“She won't tell us her last name,” you added, looking to her pointedly.
“It changes!”
“Myrna has a pretty bad coloured bruise on her thigh,” he said. “I suggested a band to help with the swelling and elevation.”
You nodded. “She knows all of this. We put a band on her when she came in with the bruising, she just choses not to.”
“You want to see my vagina?” asked Myrna.
Carter looked back to you. “And she keeps asking that.”
“I'd be worried if she didn't.”
“Can I see yours?” she asked.
Carter suddenly really didn't want to be in that room.
You patted his shoulder, gently leading him out the room. “When you become a doctor, Myrna and I have a problem you'll be the first I go to, I promise.”
You closed the door behind you and chuckled quietly, shaking your head.
“Is she- is she a real patient?” Carter asked. “Or has dad paid her to do all this?”
“Myrna is as real as they get. Just wait till you meet Earl.”
“Who's Earl?”
“Don't ask.”
It was only one hour later when Carter knew what all the warnings about Myrna had been about. Why Jesse had complained about her hand and his butt. He knew it in the cigarette breath, the scratch of a wheelchair against the floor and the pinch in his ass.
“Ah- what the-”
Myrna was still looking down at him when Carter turned, biting his tongue. “You have a much better ass than your daddy.”
“Okay, Myrna, that's-”
Before he could erupt about how wrong it was to flirt, to pet name, to touch, two doctors slid up on either side of her.
“Hey, pussycat,” said Santos, taking the bars of the wheelchair and pushing her away. Next to her Javadi accompanied and Carter followed slowly to see what happened to her. “We've got your discharge papers.”
“Fuck off,” she grumbled.
“Ah, my own term of endearment.”
“So you're like-” started Javadi next to Carter. “The prince of this place?”
Carter was surprised it had taken this long for someone to bring up his name. To bring up the fact he was a Robinavitch. “I mean, I don't know about prince.”
“Please,” said Santos with a scoff as she pushed the door open to Myrna's room with her back. “You're set to inherit this place when Robby retires. Or if.”
He didn't think Robby would ever retire. There were days his dad relaxed, always easier when with you. If the both of you had days off, which seemed to be the only days you and Robby took off, Carter could usually find the two of you at each other's side. It was all romantic but as the child to witness the stolen kisses in the kitchen, the moments you both thought you were being sneaky in making excuses as to why Casey shouldn't come in their room for ten minutes, it was also embarrassing.
In PTMC it didn't seem to change that much.
Robby still touched you all the time. Still looked for you when he left every exam room, still called for you at every trauma. He almost envied anyone else ever trying to get in Robby's good books because your name took up the whole thing.
Robby wasn't leaving this place without you.
“I'm thinking about surgery, actually,” he said.
Victoria's eyes widened. “Surgery. Woah. That's- that's really cool,” she said with a dusting of pink on her cheeks.
Santos's eyes rolled. “Surgery, yeah, great.”
“She's got a lover up in surgery,” said Myrna as she moved herself back into bed.
Carter's brows rose. “O-oh?”
“You know,” said Javadi as he looked back to her. She was staring up at him, a sparkle in her eyes. “It's-it's like they copy and pasted Doctor Robby.”
“Yeah, I- I get that a lot.”
“Goin’ into medicine like them?” Said Myrna with a cheap Ha! Punctuated at the end. “What’s the point? I won’t be around forever to watch out for you Robinavitch’s.”
“Don’t say that, Myrna,” Trinity said with an air of boredom, like she’d had this conversation a hundred times before. “You’re gonna live forever.”
Myrna chuckled dryly.
“I-I’m thinking of psychiatry,” said Victoria, still to Carter. “Emergency psychiatry.”
Carter nodded. “Cool.”
“You think so?” She blushed.
“Crash, you can’t flirt with Carter,” said Santos. “That’s like flirting with Robby.”
Victoria stuttered, ponytail swooshing as she looked between her and Carter. “I’m-I’m not flirting. What? No, I-I would never and that’s totally- totally-”
“Honey,” said Myrna. “This is painful.”
With some dull excuse, Javadi scrambled away quickly, Carter still trying to figure out just what had happened as he watched her go.
Santos looked at where she’d left. “Damn. Crash crashed.”
You were hunched over at the nurses station, chasing up labs for Robby as he always knew how to ask sweetly. In the dim reflection of the glow of the screen you saw Myrna creeping closer, regular clothes adorned.
“Myrna,” you warned.
“Can't a girl say hello?”
“So long as your hands are to yourself.”
“Then how are we supposed to shake hands?” she hummed, the gruff sort.
You shook your head and fought of a smile as you slowly turned to her. “I'm sure you'll be shaking something. Are you going home?”
Myrna smirked. “The city doesn't sleep for anyone.”
It wasn't a secret to you what Myrna did that had her being brought in so often enough you typically always had a gown and room ready, even her favourite snacks in the lounge. She'd maybe never said it in so many words but you knew the streets were her domain, the hospital her sanctuary. You'd offered to help, dropped of pamphlets on her first few visits before you realised she only used it to dump her gum.
“So, I'll be seeing you soon?”
“You know I can't stay away from you, Sugar Tits.”
“Don't I know it,” you said, walking her out to the doors. The real VIP treatment of passing through the ambulance bay.
“Your kid is good,” she grumbled.
You smiled to yourself. “You think so?”
“He's on a tight leash. You must have warned him about me?”
“That we did.”
She rolled her eyes, her mascara smudging at the edges. “He'll be an annoyingly good doctor. Just like his daddy.”
“Who knows, maybe the next time you're here he'll be around to patch you up.”
The automatic doors slid open as you walked her outside, letting her give her flirtatious smiles and winks to the paramedics on call and a special blow of the kiss to Ahmed.
“Yeah,” said Myrna in the dying light of the day. “I left him a little something to remember me by, just in case he forgets me.”
You chuckled. “I don't think he'll be forgetting you.”
When she was far away enough, Myrna popped a cigarette between her cracking lips and lit it up. Though she may have squeezed the asses of any hospital worker close enough, she respected the rules enough to stand out of the no smoking zone and light one up.
“Well, see you around sugar tits!”
You watched her slowly walk off, the click-clack of her heels fading as she went.
The doors behind you sounded and Robby's arm slowly slid over your shoulders.
“Was that Myrna?” he asked.
“Yeah, she's off to fight crime and defend our streets,” you teased.
“You worry about her?”
You worried about everything. Really, it was your job as a nurse. Your regulars who came in, Earl with his sandwich requests, Louis and his stories, Myrna with her nicknames. You worried that every time you saw them it would be your last.
Robby drew you in closer to his chest, caving you in in his warmth. “She'll be back, then you'll be sorry.”
Behind you the ambulance bay doors slid open and closed again and a distressed voice called out.
“Why is this in my bag?”
The both of you turned to Carter who was pink in the cheeks and hands trembled as he held up a thin and stringy lingerie set. It was pink with bows, saggy in all the wrong places and teared slightly at the seems.
You chuckled as Robby stared, almost as alarmed as Carter. “That's Myrna's gift. From her to you.”
You had a felling she'd be back for that.
taglist (if you want to be added or took off just say the word!): @oldbaddies, @mafercita101,@tiddieshakeshownu, @mismwaa, @annabethpotter221b, @elizamoe133, @delicatedragonflower, @mysatnin, @cherbicdollie, @macbaetwo, @cod-guys-slvt, @rach2602
punching above his weight...or is he? - dennis whitaker x f!reader
summary: once your relationship is no longer a secret, the emergency department starts to see just how perfect you and dennis are for each other, and they realize that you may not be as far out of his league as they initially thought.
aka dennis can fucking PULL okay.
pairings: dennis whitaker x RT!reader (respiratory therapist)
word count: 4.2k
cw/tags: swearing, no use of y/n, typical pitt warnings (blood, intubation, depictions of a motorcycle crash victim), you're (affectionately) nicknamed 'hot shot' by most of the department, dennis is obsessed with you, you're obsessed with him, what more could you ask. you have hair long enough for the top half to be tied back in a nondescript way. light inappropriate conduct in the workplace but it's all in good fun and no one's feelings are hurt!
more dennis x hot shot guys i told you i couldn't be stopped! inspired by this ask and @libbyqypu :)
secure chat for anyone who doesn’t know is basically a messenger system that is patient privacy compliant and integrated into the charting platform!!
MASTERLIST
OTHER PARTS HERE :)
TAGLIST(S)
Victoria’s killing a bit of time in the main foyer before her shift starts one day when the two of you arrive.
Dennis pulls the door open for you, as usual, holding it while you walk inside. He does the same with the inner door, despite having to speedwalk in order to get there before you. She notices that he’s carrying your backpack, the strap slung over the opposite shoulder from his own. He reaches out as you walk towards the elevators, fingers pinching the side of your shirt, gently pulling you closer to him. It’s subtle, and Victoria’s certain she’s the only one who notices that your hands now brush against eachother’s as you move.
“You coming up?” You ask, reaching forwards, hitting the button.
He checks his watch, then nods. “Still got time.”
You bite back a smile as you step into the elevator, doors closing behind you, blocking you from Victoria’s probing eyes. The ICU floor is much quieter than the ED, especially since it’s still early, most of the patients still sleeping as the hospital starts to wake up. You swipe your badge against the sensor, and then step through the double door together, like you always do.
Dana’s standing at the central desk when you come in, talking to the charge nurse there, trying to get some boarders moved before dayshift officially takes over. She clocks both of you immediately, her sentence coming to a stop when she hears your soft laughter. She turns around, watching as you approach, smiling at her.
“Dana,” You greet. “Are you finally leaving the ER to join us up here?”
“You wish,” She says, looking past your shoulder, where Dennis is waiting a half-step behind you. “Whitaker, fancy seeing you here.”
The ICU charge scoffs, laughing a bit. “What do you mean? He’s up here every morning.”
Dana raises an eyebrow, a tiny smirk on her face. “That so?”
He shrugs, cheeks flushing a light shade of pink, both bags on his back lifting with the motion. “Pretty much, yeah.”
You, wanting to save him from any further embarrassment, turn around and give him an opening. “I can take my bag, you can head downstairs.”
He frowns, shaking his head. “I got it, I’ll be right back.”
He walks over to the locker room, his figure disappearing through the door. One of the nightshift RT’s comes out of a room, and Dana doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up at the sight of you. He ignores everyone else at the desk as he approaches, saying your last name with way too much enthusiasm for six-thirty in the morning.
“You should’ve seen this patient last night,” He starts, diving into the story as soon as your eyes are on him, a small smile on your face as you genuinely listen.
Dennis comes back out of the locker room just as he takes your wrist in his hand, turning your arm so your palm faces the ceiling, gesturing to your forearm as he explains the IV situation the patient had. He mimes the action of fluids spewing, retelling the moment it came loose as he was in the middle of intubating.
Your face scrunches, but you’re still smiling, and he’s pretty sure you say ‘oh, gross!” before slowly pulling your arm away, tucking both hands into your pockets. He comes up behind you, setting your stethoscope and water bottle on the desk. The other RT loses all steam at the sight of him, and he immediately takes a step back, stuttering over his words for a second. You feel a single finger twist into your waistband, making you look over your shoulder, seeing Dennis and your belongings.
“Thank you,” You say, fully spinning around. He drops his hand back to his side, nodding.
“Yeah, uh, no problem,” He says. “I’ll see you later?”
“Hopefully,” You say. “Good luck down there.”
“You too,” He says, then he heads back through the doors and down the hallway. You loop your stethoscope over your shoulders and put your water bottle by your workstation before returning to the nightshifter, a tablet in hand now.
“Catch me up,” You say, the rest of his story long forgotten.
Dana follows Dennis out, still smirking, putting both hands on his shoulders as she comes up beside him.
“You’re a sweet kid, you know that?"
Around eleven that morning, the higher-ups send donuts down to the ED as a ‘thank you’ for all their hardwork. Robby’s in the breakroom when Dennis walks in, admiring the spread, trying to decide if he actually wants one or not.
“Anything good, boss?” He asks, stepping closer to the tables, looking for something specific.
Robby shrugs. “Would be nicer if they could just pay my staff what they deserve.”
“Oh, definitely,” Dennis says, spotting what he’s looking for, grabbing one of the napkins nearby. “Gotta’ take advantage though, right?”
He picks up a donut, setting it neatly on top of the napkin and putting it down on the table. He opens the fridge, pulling out his lunch and unzipping the bag. Robby watches as he places it on top of whatever’s in there, then puts it back in the fridge, brushing his hands off and closing the door.
“Worthy of saving for later?” Robby asks, slightly teasing. Dennis lets out a small laugh, already halfway out the door.
“Yeah, uhm, trying to be optimistic about getting a break today,” He jokes, stumbling over the words. He’s still getting used to joking around with his boss.
Robby shakes his head, following him back outside. “Oh, you know better than that by now, Whitaker.”
They step out just as the ambulance bay doors open, revealing two paramedics wheeling a gurney in. They both rush over as Dana directs them to an open trauma room, examining the patient while one of the paramedics gives handover.
“Twenty-three year old male, motorcycle versus guardrail,” She says. “Helmet off at the scene, significant facial trauma, breathing on his own for now, but it’s not pretty.”
They swing the door to the trauma room open. Nurses flood in behind them, taking their usual spots around the room, clicking monitors on and hooking them up to the patient.
“Hey, can you open your eyes for me?” Dennis asks, shining his penlight into them when he gets no response. “Pupils equal and reactive, GCS six.”
“Sats eighty-seven and falling,” Mateo says.
“Bag him,” Dennis instructs, setting his stethoscope against his chest, moving it around. “Decreased breath sounds bilaterally.”
“This is gonna’ be a complex airway,” Frank says, having come in a moment after them. “Let’s get respiratory down here.”
You’re adjusting some vent settings for one of your patients when your pager goes off, making you pluck it off your scrub pocket, glancing down at the tiny screen.
EMERG. DEPT. TRAUMA #3 - STAT PAGE
You shove the pager back into place, already running out of the room, calling for the other RT on shift to finish with your patient as you fly by. You take the stairs down to the ED, shoving the door open at the bottom, gripping your stethoscope in your hand so it doesn’t fall. You grab a pair of gloves before opening the trauma room door, trying to assess the situation as best you can in a few seconds. You can’t even see the patient from how many people are in there, crowding around the bed.
“Sats down to seventy-nine,” Perlah says. Garcia already has sterile gloves on, holding her hands up and shaking her head as she looks over Dennis’ shoulder. He’s holding the laryngoscope, watching the monitor, trying to get a good view of the anatomy.
“We need to crike,” She says.
“Woah, hey, I’m here, what’s going on?” You say, grabbing a gown, shifting towards the head of the bed. You look towards the patient’s face, or what’s fucking left of it, exhaling sharply. “Jesus.”
“Motorcycle versus guardrail,” Frank says. “His jaw’s completely unstable, we couldn’t get a seal with the mask, he’s bleeding like crazy.”
“Move, please,” You say, kind but firm, needing to get a closer look. Dennis pulls the tool out, stepping back, his hands up so they don’t get caught on any of the IV lines. Mateo holds the suction as you do your exam, running through options in your head. He’s already using the biggest suction that he can, and the patient's sats are still falling.
The room seems frozen around you as you think, everyone waiting on your next move. You nod to yourself when you decide on the best course of action, a small way to hype yourself up.
“I’m going in through the nasal passage,” You say.
“Blind?” Frank asks. “That’s-”
“No, not blind,” You correct. “I need a lubricated three-point-five.”
The tube is placed into your hand five seconds later. “I’m gonna’ try and advance just past the tongue, see if I can use it as a guide.”
You glance up, making eye contact with Frank, then Robby, waiting to see if either will object to your plan. Robby gives you an affirmative nod.
“Do it.”
You look to Dennis, who’s already watching you. “Could you listen for breath sounds please, Dr. Whitaker?”
“Oh, Dr. Whitaker,” Garcia repeats. “Is that what you call him in the bedroom?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” You shoot back, smirking.
“Behave,” Robby says, but you don’t need to look at him to know that he’s fighting a smile. Dennis gets into place as you use your free hand to put your own stethoscope in, settling the diaphragm against the patient’s neck, moving it around until you hear what you’re looking for. Then, you slowly advance the tube through the nostril, eyes flicking towards the chest every few seconds to check for rise.
You start to get some resistance at fourteen centimetres, and the chest twitches. You hear a small amount of air pass.
“Minimal movement,” Dennis says, focusing on what he’s hearing.
“Bag it,” You instruct, and Jesse does, squeezing. The patient’s chest rises again, and Dennis looks back at you, nodding, confirming that he can hear at least some remnants of breath sounds.
“Sats up to eighty-five,” Perlah announces.
You shine your penlight into his mouth, studying the passage that the nasal tube is barely revealing, committing the location of his tracheal opening to memory each time the suction clears enough blood for you to see it.
“I can intubate now,” You say.
“Are you sure?” Frank asks, taking a look himself, seeing nothing but blood and a small clearing where the tube sits. “You still can’t visualize most of the landmarks.”
“I don’t need all the landmarks,” You counter. “Do you want a real airway or not, Dr. Langdon?”
Dennis’ breath catches in his throat, eyes wide. You’re looking at Frank expectantly, waiting for a decision. He steps back, nodding. Garcia smirks, speaking before he can.
“Blade to hot shot, please.”
You take the tool in your hand, turning on the light and sliding it into place. You don’t bother looking towards the monitor, knowing that you won’t be able to see where you’re going.
“Seven tube,” You say, reaching for it once it’s passed over, positioning it where the nasal tube already sits. You wait for the suction to expose the clearing again, not hesitating when it does, sliding the tube into the airway. You’re almost certain that it’s in the right place based on how it feels as it clears the epiglottis. “I’m in.”
The cuff is inflated, and Jesse moves the bag from the nasal tube onto the new one, nodding. “Yellow on end-tidal.”
“Good breath sounds bilaterally,” Dennis adds.
“Sats up to ninety-four,” Perlah says. The tension in the room fades as you look at Dennis, failing to contain a grin when you make eye-contact. He gives you a tiny, proud smile and a subtle nod, silently saying ‘nice work.’
You don’t realize that everyone else catches it, too.
“I’ll get him up to CT,” Garcia announces. “Glad you were here, hot shot.”
“Excellent work,” Robby says, followed by your last name. The patient is wheeled out of the room, and you’re all left behind, pulling off gowns and gloves.
“Thanks,” You say. “It’s what I’m good for.”
Dennis holds the door for you as you leave, exhaling once you’re out. Frank holds his fist up.
“Sorry for doubting you,” He says. You smile, tapping your knuckles against his.
“No harm, no foul,” You insist, waving him off. The adrenaline of the trauma starts to wear off as you move towards one of the computers, wanting to get the charting out of the way before you go back to the ICU—as long as none of your patients crash. Goosebumps splinter over your arms, despite the long-sleeve you’re wearing under your scrub top, making you shiver.
Dennis is shrugging his fleece off before you even sit down, handing it to you, already focused on the board to figure out where he should head first. He’s about to walk away when he remembers, spinning back around and leaning towards you over the desk.
“Oh, hey, there’s something for you in my lunch,” He says, voice quiet, but everyone in the vicinity hears him. They started watching the second he passed you his jacket without a single word. “You can grab it before you head back up, if you want.”
You close your hand around his fleece, trying to get your brain to function again. All work is abandoned by the people around when, for the first time possibly ever, you’re speechless. Not because this is unusual behaviour, just because he’s never done it so…publicly before.
“Okay,” You finally say, the single word breathy and faint. “Thank you.”
Everyone is staring at the two of you like it’s their favourite TV show.
“Yeah, ‘course,” He says.
He walks off, you take a seat, pulling the fleece over your head and sticking your badge to the front pocket before logging on to the computer. Your heart is racing, but you do your best to hide it from your colleagues.
“You ever wonder how they ended up together?” Frank asks, watching the interaction from afar, the question aimed at Mel, who has no idea what he’s referring to.
“Who?” She asks, barely looking up from her tablet.
“Whitaker and Hot Shot,” He clarifies. Mel looks up now, still confused.
She says your real name like it’s a question. Frank nods.
“Yeah, Hot Shot,” He emphasizes.
Mel shrugs. “I didn’t know everyone called her that, I thought it was just Garcia.”
“Doesn’t matter,” He says, moving on. “Labs back for twelve yet?”
Trinity comes back into the department twenty minutes later, having gone outside for a breather, stopping just behind your chair as she walks by. She squints, realizing that you’re definitely wearing Whitaker’s quarter-zip, the one he wears pretty much every single day once it starts getting colder. She goes straight to Victoria, who’s talking to Cassie while they wait for one of their patients to get back from CT.
“He gave her his fucking fleece,” She says, eyes drifting towards you. Victoria and Cassie look over.
“Oh my god, that’s so cute,” Victoria says, pouting slightly. “He’s so sweet to her.”
“Have you seen her?” Trinity asks, rhetorical. “He’s got to be in order to keep her around.”
Cassie raises an eyebrow. “I think it’s probably just because he loves her.”
“Or he knows he’s punching above his weight,” Trinity counters. “I love the kid, but she’s practically a supermodel.”
“Well, maybe that’s what drew her to him,” Victoria suggests. “You know, she’s so used to people tripping over themselves to impress her, maybe she liked the fact that he doesn’t make a fool out of himself to get her attention.”
Trinity thinks about that for a second, cocking her head slightly as she looks at you. “Huh. Never thought about it like that.”
“Has no one considered the idea that she just thought he was attractive?” Cassie asks. “He’s a good looking guy!”
Victoria shrugs. “Doesn’t matter either way, they clearly love eachother.”
You barely even realize that your head’s starting to hurt before a pill cup and your favourite donut are placed on your desk. You tug your eyes away from the screen, almost done with your charting, blinking a few times to clear your fuzzy vision. There’s two ibuprofen tablets in the cup, and you see Dennis standing beside you, holding his water bottle out. Robby watches from his workstation a few feet away, smiling, remembering how he watched Dennis set that donut aside a couple hours ago. It wasn’t for him, it was for you.
"Headache?" He asks.
“How…?” You ask, taking the bottle from him and opening the lid.
“You’re blinking more than usual,” He says, as though anyone would’ve picked up on it.
“Oh,” You say. “Yeah, it's not too bad, though. Thank you.”
You take the pills and a few extra sips of water before passing it back to him. He sets it on the counter, folding his arms over his chest as he leans back.
“You should eat something,” He suggests.
You nod. “I’ll eat this in one second, thank you so much, Denny.”
Robby looks towards Dana, mouthing ‘Denny?’ to her, and she mouths ‘I know!’ back.
Dennis nods, taking a seat at one of the computers across the hub. You finish your own charting a few minutes later, standing up and walking over to one of the nearby sinks, washing your hands thoroughly. You pick up the donut when you get back to the desk, tearing it in half, holding one side out towards him.
He’s so wrapped up in his work that he barely glances up when he takes it, then he does a double take, brows furrowing before he looks at you. He’s about to protest when you give him a look, one that let’s him know that you’re well aware he hasn’t eaten since his shift started. He keeps his half raised up, tilting it towards you, and you tap your own portion against his. You both take a bite at the same time, and Princess raises an eyebrow.
“Did they just…cheers with a donut?” She asks.
“You haven’t seen ‘em do that before?” Dana asks. “They do it with everything—granola bars, apple slices, sandwiches. It’s sweet.”
“I saw them do it with goldfish once,” Mateo says, spinning around in his chair to face them. “Pretty sure they made them kiss.”
You stretch your arms above your head a few minutes later, leaning against the back of your chair. A few people glance over, hoping to get a glimpse of something, but Dennis’ fleece keeps everything covered. You gather a portion of your hair in your hands, reaching towards your wrist for a hair tie.
It snaps when you go to loop it around, making you frown.
“Ow,” You murmur, dropping your hair. Victoria goes to offer you a new one, but she’s cut off by Dennis pulling one off his own arm, slingshotting it across the hub, a solid twenty feet or so. You catch it in your palm like it’s second nature, sticking it between your teeth, smoothing your hair back again.
She malfunctions for a second, trying to see if anyone else witnessed that. Most people have gone back to work, eyes focused on screens or notepads, including Dennis.
“I…how did you do that?” She asks.
Dennis doesn’t even look over. “Do what?”
“The—the hair tie thing,” She stutters. He shrugs.
“She’s always losing them,” He says, as if that remotely answers her question. She’s close enough to see his screen, catching a new secure chat rise to the top of the list that he’s working through answering. It’s your first and last name followed by ‘RRT,’ the profile photo you in scrubs, standing against a white wall.
heading back up
She glances over at you, still sitting across the hub. You’re looking at your computer, scanning some new orders for your ICU patients, face neutral as you mess with your necklace. She looks back at Dennis’ screen.
He signs the note he's working on before opening the conversation.
Come here a second
You log off of the computer, pick up your stethoscope and walk over to him. It’s casual—comfortable. His hand lifts from the keyboard once you’re close enough, reaching over and flipping the collar of his fleece out from where it’s folded in on itself. You raise an eyebrow as he pats it twice, the simple touch of his palm to your collarbone intoxicating.
“How long has that been bothering you?” You ask, teasing and quiet. The volume has picked back up in the department, so Victoria shuffles a bit closer to try and hear the conversation.
He pretends to think, glancing at his watch. “How long ago did you put it on?”
You laugh under your breath. “I didn’t realize I was causing you such distress.”
“Yeah, you should probably be more careful,” He says, the corner of his mouth twitching up, but his eyes are wide with concern. “Are you warm enough? I think I have a long sleeve in my bag if you want it.”
You do want it, but not because you’re still cold.
“No, I’m okay, thank you,” You say, trying to get your feet to move, but his presence is sucking you in. You’re tempted to wedge yourself into his side, knowing that he’d probably respond automatically, arms wrapping around you and his lips brushing your temple like they would at home.
“Okay, just come grab it if you change your mind,” He says. Your pager beeps from your pocket, and you grimace, face scrunching up in disappointment.
“I will,” You say, checking it quickly before putting it back. You’re still hesitating, not taking a step away from him. He smiles.
“Go,” He insists, softly. “They need you.”
You look at him for another second, pursing your lips. “Yeah, alright, going now, Dr. Whitaker.”
Victoria’s eyes widen as she rereads the same line on her tablet for the millionth time. A blush blooms on Dennis’ neck, and he brings a hand up to try and cover it immediately, his blue eyes following you as you get closer to the doors, filled with adoration.
He gets another secure chat five minutes later. Victoria squints to see what it says.
made it :)
don’t work too hard while im gone
He types back right away.
Yes ma’am
Victoria gasps. Dennis glances back at her.
She brings her elbow up to her face, pretending to cough a few times, clearing her throat once she’s done with the performance.
“Sorry, dry in here today,” She says, trying to give him a reassuring smile. He nods once, unconvinced, but he doesn’t press her on it.
Her own secure chat lights up.
TRINITY SANTOS, MD
smooth, crash
Seven finally rolls around, signalling the end of your shift. You go back downstairs, waiting outside the ER, like usual, backpack on and changed out of your scrubs. Dennis comes out ten minutes later with Trinity and Victoria trailing behind, his eyes softening when he sees you.
“Hey, ready to go?” He asks, making you look up from your phone. You nod, greeting his friends before falling in step beside him, bumping your shoulder against his.
“Oh, gross,” Trinity says, frowning at the heavy rain that’s pouring outside. “You want a ride, Crash?”
“Yes, please,” Victoria says, already bracing herself as Trinity opens the door, turning back to you and Dennis for a second. “Goodnight.”
“Night,” You both say, giving her a tiny wave as they step out into the rain, running to Trinity’s car.
Dennis pulls his keys out of his backpack, squeezing your wrist quickly. “Stay here.”
You smile. “I know.”
He goes outside, rounding the corner and speedwalking away from the doors. You stay inside, waiting, until you feel someone stop beside you.
“Waiting for Whitaker?” Robby asks. “I swore he left a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, yeah, he did,” You confirm. “He went to grab the car.”
Robby hums, chuckling. “Of course he did.”
You laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs, hands in his pockets. “He just really loves you, is all.”
Your chest and neck start to heat up, making you look towards the ground, scuffing your shoes against the floor. “Yeah, he does.”
“Well, have a good night,” He says.
You smile. “Goodnight, Robby.”
He walks off just as Dennis pulls the car in front of the doors, shifting it into park as he leans over, gripping the inside handle of the passenger side door. You tense up the moment you’re outside, rain pelting against you, thankful that you still have his fleece on as you run to the car. He opens the door right before you make it so you can just jump inside, slamming it shut behind you, wiping some water off your face.
You’re both soaked, him more than you, obviously—but he doesn’t care. He leans over the centre console, hand looping around the back of your neck and pulling you close, kissing you. You kiss him back, smiling into it, wrapping your fingers around his wrist. He kisses your forehead after, then pecks your lips again for good measure.
“Love you,” He says.
“I love you,” You echo, still smiling.
A/N - i love that u guys love dennis and hot shot bc i think about them constantly
⭑.ᐟ I WISH YOU LOVED ME LESS ── Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch
summary: you put all your efforts during the holiday weekend trying to convince your husband that his three-month sabbatical doesn’t have to end in the unspoken fatality he has been hinting at since it was announced. whilst robby puts all his efforts into pushing you away. (wc: 9.3k)
pairing: michael ‘robby’ robinavitch / f!reader
content: angst with a happy ending. fluffy parts. established relationship. wife!reader. an argument that happens the whole shift. s2 spoilers (the timeline of the show is jumbled for the plot) jealous!robby & jealous!reader? mean!robby. mental health struggles, hints to suicidal intentions, tension in a marriage, death and medical inaccuracies. beating a dead horse with this trope! 18+ suggestive content + smut (fingering and cunnilingus—f. receiving. minor breeding kink. robby is a little delayed in getting it up. unprotected p in v, dirty talk, light dom!robby & creampie)
Dana approaches you somewhere in the hour of 12PM. She looks at you over the rim of her glasses, all blonde strands of hair and each wrinkle in her forehead lined with concern for someone, more or less, adjacent to you. It makes you sink in your seat. You had been residing at the main workstation with three of the residents painfully assorting patient files since the CEO in his Fourth of July garb had made the announcement of preemptively shutting off all computer systems; leaving the ED without electronic health records, connected charting etc.
(You know, all the stuff that makes the department chug on like a semi-well-oiled machine.)
Being somewhat of a specialist in the art of expressions and the silence that comes with it, you were able to conclude that Dana Evans—the guardian of the PTMC—was not approaching you for a long-overdue chinwag.
Quite the opposite, actually.
“You need to talk to him.” Dana commands in her usual gravel tone.
It makes you nervously scratch at your brow-bone. “I know. I’m getting round to it. Just after—”
“Now.” Dana interjects. She leans her whole body into the workstation, her voice drops down to barely a whisper, “He’s acting up. Being a real Fourth of July spectacle. All this before he hops on that godforsaken motorcycle for three months. You’ve got the most Robby jargon out of all of us. Put it to use.”
You let out a deep exhale. “Fine.”
You stand at full height and Dana gives you a half smile that was a tamer version of amusement.
Things were not fine. In fact, things were so far out of the ballpark of fine, that you would never put Robby and the definition of ‘fine’, or ‘okay’ or, overall just ‘good’ in one sentence. He was a man on the precipice of a life-altering decision that those around him would suffer the consequences that he had made; much longer after his three-month sabbatical on the road came to a screeching halt.
The signs had been there. Ever since you had begun at the PTMC as a fresh-faced attending with a basket full of naivety. It just took a couple of years for the signs to start catching up to you. And by then, your efforts to salvage the good pieces of Michael Robinavitch, had fallen through the cracks of a prepaid tombstone.
For the most part, colleagues would acknowledge the mental health problems that trickle down from behavioural changes from their peers, and then they’d be able to go home without the additional weight of it upon their shoulders. No skin off of their noses if they weren’t the ones paying for the extensive therapy sessions.
However, for you, that wasn’t the case. Since—
“He’s your husband.” Dana calls after you.
You throw a hand up in retaliation, the sizeable rock on your ring finger catching the hazy overhead light. “Thank you, Dana.”
The reminder wasn’t needed. Everyone—including the one who married him—was well aware that Dr. Michael Robinavtich had managed to be tied down. Motorcycle and all.
You had fallen in love prior to the catastrophic events from COVID, that had been the pipeline to Robby's mental health downfall. It had been exhilarating, and sometimes still was, at the beginning of the inner workings of a relationship that was blossoming beneath Gloria Underwood’s watchful eye. All the sneaking around, keycards slid beneath clipboards, kissing on company time. The pair of you felt like giddy teenagers copping a feel.
He proposed to you within two years. Now, you were waltzing around the PTMC with a double barrel surname that was seemingly quite the tongue twister for those who took the time to read it. (This including Dennis Whitaker who went beet red when you had corrected his feeble attempt of reciting it back to you.)
You peer into Pedes to find him as predicted—coddling Baby Jane Doe.
Robby’s head turns as you speak, “Hi,” you tilt your head and smile softly at the infant lazily dozing on your husband’s shoulder. “How is she doing?”
“Oh, just lonely.” he lilts.
You nod, smoothing a finger back and forth against her cheek, “She likes you.”
“Well…she’d be the only one.” Robby mumbles as he places the infant back into the hospital cot. You smother the growing frown on your face when he straightens to full height. “You need me for something?” he asks quietly.
I need you to come back to me.
You settle for, “Just making sure you’re okay. You know—After how we left things this morning.” you say, deciding to take the brunt of whatever force you may be hit with—taking Dana out of the collateral damage.
Things had been left on a sour note in the apartment you both shared in the downtown area of Pittsburgh. The looming presence of Robby’s three-month sabbatical with his cognitive well-being balancing on the line of a fraying thread had made quite the topic of conversation over his black coffee and your nourishing choice of breakfast. Therapy was always at the centre of your tedious endeavours to ensure Robby came back to you in one piece during the early hours before work; and getting him to listen was no easy feat.
Your last ditch attempt to undertake your husband’s reluctance to get help was thrown back at you beneath venom and animosity. It had almost given you whiplash. Robby escaped the confines of the apartment with a slam of the door after insisting that if you put more of your efforts into ‘minding your own business’, you’d be able to resolve whatever unearthed issues you had rolling about in your mind—such as your unrelenting desire to help those who don’t want it.
The motorcycle ride without the helmet must’ve given his head a good shake, because when you entered the sliding doors of the PTMC; Robby began loitering around you enough to make it obvious he felt a little guilty on how he had left things.
(Never go to bed angry. Never hop on a death trap after searing your wife with the hot iron rod of your pent up anger. Or, something like that.)
Robby takes a deep inhale, there’s a sort of playful glint in his eye as he speaks, “You know, when you continue to ask someone if they’re okay, it starts to get a little repetitive.”
“Marriage is repetition.” you don’t miss a beat, the lightheartedness that swoops the conversation feels a little foreign; considering the circumstances. “Sue me for taking my vows seriously.”
“Hm.” Robby hums, the blue latex gloves snapping off his hands, “Is this a welfare check?”
He shrouds your personal space for a moment. Not enough to seem intentional, but you knew his actions were the end result of your magnetic presence—hence why he married you. You watch him cock his head in a roguishly handsome way, crows feet beside brown eyes exposed when he scrunches on eye shut. Michael Robinavitch was many things; but dense was not one.
His flirtations were consciously placed.
The room fills with the bustle from the central area of the ED when Robby pushes the door open, wedging it open with one foot to allow you to depart from Pedes. He looks down the slope of his nose at you, a faint smile catches at the corner of his lips when you size him up in passing.
“Are you open to one?” you bump your elbow into the softness of his stomach, habitually holding your hand beneath the sanitiser. It takes all your efforts to not look up at him.
You begin to walk together.
“Uh…nope.”
His answer takes a subtle jab at your heart. “Then consider it as me just being nosy about how you’re feeling.”
“That—” Robby halts you both, his fingers ghosting your elbow to allow a gurney to roll past. His eyes follow it as he continues, “—Is just a less fancier way of dressing this up as a welfare check. Have you seen Dana?”
She’s the one that sent me, is what you want to say.
“She’s talking with Emma.” you reply nonchalantly, “Robby, can you just…talk to me? Please? You’re deflecting.”
“No, I’m running an Emergency Department.” Robby retorts, placing a hand on your back to keep you with him as he wades through the chaos of going analog. His eyes flit to you for a second and he softens at the melancholy you carry in your expression. “Sweetheart, I’m fine and sort of in the middle of something. Pin this conversation for later, okay?”
“Sure.” you murmur when he walks away. Dana takes up the rear-end of the conversation, slotting herself shoulder to shoulder with you—an iPad balancing in the crook of her elbow. You don’t look at her when you say, “That went well.”
“Plenty of time, honey.” Dana grits, patting your back, “You’ll get through to him. As for now, I’ve got a case in South 15. Right up your alley. Lookin’ real pretty for a distraction, hm? Come on.”
Robby is distracted when he returns to the central hub. The patient chart is a mere prop in his hands. The information untouched by his plethora of clinical knowledge, because all he can hear is you laughing at something that the handsome Radiologist—Dr. Barker—has said. It hadn’t bothered him when his staff members, Princess and Javadi, had been stood gawping at the man from afar. Was it a little inconvenient considering the circumstances the ED were squashed under? Yes.
Until it became a hinderance to their performance; it wasn’t his problem.
As for you…it was different.
There was no overt behaviour that would lead anyone to believe that you were doing anything but being friendly until the wet reads came through for your patient in South 15. At an arms length from the guy, but still conversing in a way that shows off two of Robby’s favourite things about you: your genuine toothy-grin and the nose scrunch do when you find something funny.
When Dana throws him a look in passing, he reverts back to the patient chart. Then your laughter carries across the room a minute after, and Robby decides that’s enough time spent with the pretty boy from upstairs that has set up camp in the middle of the ED.
He idles up next to you with all the curiosity of a Chief Attending and not a husband that reeks of jealous intrigue.
(Professional before personal. The walls of the PTMC were a shield to the outside noise.)
“Dr. Robby.” Barker greets.
You turn your head to see Robby practically flush with your back. “Oh—Hi.”
“Dr. Barker.” Robby glances at you from his peripheral and chooses to ignore the mild perplexity that sits in the crease between your brows. His hands clutch his elbows when he crosses his arms across his chest, head tilting at the Radiologist. “How long on this patient’s imaging?”
“Another fifteen minutes. Tops.” Barker answers after checking the process.
“Then I assume you can circle back on the jokes in fifteen minutes.” your head whips to glare at the Chief Attending-gone-rogue on being tactful around his professional peers, “Catalogue of patients on that whiteboard. They won’t treat themselves.” he chides.
You give Dr. Barker an apologetic look and walk by Robby who follows like a dog on a leash. Once the Radiologist is out of ear shot, you speak freely, “Are you seriously time-keeping my conversations?”
“No.” Robby drawls, “Just making sure one of my best Attending still has her head in the game.”
“That’s rich.” you scoff with minimal malice, “Dr. Barker is a good guy. The way you spoke to him back there—”
Robby interjects. “Ho-ho, sounds like you like him.”
“I do.”
“More than me?” he angles his body into yours to make room for an oncoming nurse. (He doesn’t miss the small but wicked smile on your face.)
You mull it over when you reach the board. “Only time will tell. You’re still on probation from your morning tantrum.”
Robby lets out a rare cackle that spreads the amusement across his weathered features and you beam up at the sight of his crows feet making an appearance under the circumstances of lighthearted humour. The palm of his hand rubs the span of your back as you stare at the whiteboard, making it a sight to behold for the forthcoming med students.
“I—Uh,” Robby starts, removing his glasses and scratching the skin behind his ear, “I want to apologise for how this morning went.”
“Mhm.” you only look at him when you feel his eyes bore into your side-profile, “I forgive you. Doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be mad at you, Robinavitch.” you remark setting the base layer tone as nothing short of sarcastic.
Robby inhales and speaks on the exhale, his voice only just audible to you, “Would…a five minute break in an on-call room make up for any of it?”
He looks hopeful.
You pray he shares the same sentiment on his three-month sabbatical. Unlikely, but negativity didn’t pay the bills.
The insinuation is clearer than glass. On-call rooms were meant for a sole purpose of providing the staff at the PTMC a safe space to rest in privacy. It required a keycard to gain access to.
It was also the same space that Robby and you took advantage of for displays of affection that were crossing the boundaries classified in the Human Resources pamphlet you were both given on how to navigate an appropriate workplace relationship; and the power imbalances that could come with it.
Gloria Underwood would turn in her ivory white tower if she knew what the pair of you got up to behind that particular closed door on the company dime.
Robby’s offer was tempting. His handsome face and optimistic eyes were even more.
“I’m happy where I am.” you advise him, without sounding too pained at the sacrifice.
Robby surrenders. “Happy wife, happy life.” he states with his hands up, then deciding to give Ogilvie and Joy a show by pulling you in by your shoulder and pressing a chaste kiss to your temple. It was the least he could do, if the on-call room was off the menu. “Shout if you need me.”
“Shout.” you whisper when he trails off, leaving you with the ambient hospital noises. (And, Joy and Ogilvie.) You point at them, “You two. With me.”
Eventually you return to the middle of the Pitt, swiping two patients off of the white board with two fingers—too lazy to find the eraser. You weren’t sure what part had soured your mood. Either from the med-student Ogilvie’s unwavering need to put his foot in his mouth in front of patients and plummet those all important patient satisfaction scores, Louie’s passing, the foreboding presence of your husband’s three-month sabbatical; or catching the loose ends of Noelle Hastings and Robby’s conversation.
He catches sight of you in passing—your face providing nothing but the word: hypocrite—whilst he absentmindedly bobs his head along to Hastings sugary rambling over McKay’s patient case. His forehead creases as she speaks, scratching at the nape of his neck nervously. Robby’s eyes flit over to you in the hopes that just this once, you may be a figment of his own imagination.
Despite jealously being relatively beneath you in your marriage to one of the PTMC’s eligible bachelors, without being too presumptuous, Robby feared that seeing him converse with his non-committal ex, may be the cherry on the cake for how your day was going.
(Hastings always had a habit of lingering. Which made it look even worse.)
Perlah comes up beside you, patient charts in abundance in her grasp.
“Not bothering you?” she asks with a subtle jerk of her head in Robby and Noelle’s direction.
You shuffle through some results, “Give it a couple of minutes.” you murmur.
Perlah lets out a laugh that catches both Noelle and Robby’s attention nearby. Their heads turn at the abrupt sound, which in turn breaks up their train of thought over the long winded discussion. Noelle squeezes Robby’s bicep before they go their separate ways, and suddenly your patient’s results need to be read millimetres from your face; when Noelle strolls into the workstation with a content expression on her pretty face.
“You did that on purpose.” you whisper to Perlah behind your clipboard.
Perlah shrugs innocently and departs to ask Robby for a second-opinion.
The case manager perches at the edge of the workstation you happen to sit at, happily tapping at the surface of the workstation.
The thing about Noelle Hastings was, that she was neither a friend nor a foe to you. She was simply an extension of Robby’s history of avoidant attachment that extended the length of seven-weeks. There was zero animosity toward her as some would anticipate you to have. She was kind, assisted you in insurance cases on the best outcome for the patient and even when she stepped over the invisible boundary that separated a fleeting situation from a marriage, with nostalgic remarks over her shared time with Robby; Noelle Hastings well-manicured nails were always far from digging into your husband.
She was aware of this. Respectful. Part of you assumes she was trying to find a middle ground to bond over with you. Understandably, it could get a little awkward when your previous sexual endeavours’ wife is waltzing around the workplace.
Even more awkward when she catches herself going all gooey whenever she was within close proximity to his charm. (Worked on her for years. It wasn’t going to stop now. Even if it wasn’t intentional on his part.)
She speaks in the direction of Dana, “You know what Motorcycle Mike’s sabbatical is really about?”
Dana remains unbothered, “I never try to guess what’s going on in that head of his.”
You shift in your seat, and it highlights yourself to Noelle.
“You’re not going with him?” Noelle tosses the net with a polite smile and you’re suddenly pulled into the conversation, no longer a bystander pretending to be busy.
“Uh, no.” you shift, rubbing the palms of your hands against your thighs.
Dana also responds, “You kiddin’? We’d go cuckoo bananas if we lost her to a three-month sabbatical too.” she peers over the brim of her glasses at Noelle, “Behind every great man, is a greater woman.” she proclaims.
“I don’t doubt it.” Noelle laughs. There’s a thought that churns over in her head and you’re left surrendering yourself to yet another boundary crossed when she decides to vocalise it. “It’s just…That’d drive me crazy. You know? Him being off the radar for three whole months. The man couldn’t sleep without the TV on in the bedroom. How is he going to survive all that silence?”
You take the comment in your stride, shutting the monitor off and standing. Dana throws you an empathetic look as a woman has been in the game for thirty years. Someone like that learns to become observational when being patient-facing means the little expressions matter.
And with the rise and fall of your chest; Dana can come to the conclusion that you’re upset by Hastings throwaway comment.
So, she defends where you won’t.
“Little respect, Hastings.” Dana is casual in her directness. She glances at the pretty woman, “It goes a long way.”
Noelle looks mortified. “Oh—No. I’m sorry. I overstepped.”
“It’s fine.” you reassure her, gulping at the tightness in your throat, “You made an observation that has stood the test of time. Robby is a big boy. Three months to reflect, alone, is healthy. TV on or not.”
Now, you’re irritated.
It’s enough for the conversation to not chase you when you depart the workstation—Dana left to lowly chuckle in amusement at the underlying sharpness in your tone. You weave through bodies on autopilot, ears ringing from the seed of doubt planted by Hastings over Robby’s time away. It made you think that perhaps you had been too enthusiastic over the idea of a three-month sabbatical with little to no contact with a man on the brink of catastrophe. Too laidback in putting the power in the hands of his mind that had nothing but malicious intent over his body.
It had sounded like a good idea at the time. Neither you or Robby could recall an official vacation that he had partaken in—aside from your honeymoon. Now? You weren’t so sure.
Everyone else had told you otherwise ever since it had been announced.
“Everything okay?” by some hideous trick of fate, Robby matches the strides in the walk you were taking around the parameters of the department.
He had spotted you from the window of South 22 and excused himself with the reassurance from Dr. Al-Hashimi that she could hold down the fort. Being married to you came with unlimited perks, one being that Robby was able pinpoint your tells that signalled a combative mood. Not necessary toward him; but the idea wouldn’t be so far fetched.
(It was all in the downturn of your lips. And the tightness in your jawline.)
“You tell me. Does having to listen to your ex question my decision to not saddle up on a three-month sabbatical with my flight risk husband, whilst also sorely reminding me that she also knows you leave the TV on through the night, make a good case for everything to be going okay?” you quip, narrowly avoiding Ahmed’s call to the betting pool.
Robby blows out hot air. “Could’ve said devoted husband.” he jokes. It crashes and burns when you spare him a stern glance. “Okay. How about we take in some fresh air in the Ambulance Bay?”
“Lead the way.”
It doesn’t take much further and the summer air of Pittsburgh clings to your bodies in all the wrong places. It preemptively sets the tone as you scuff your feet against the ground, arms tightly bound across your chest in an effort to translate your hardened exterior from the events of the day.
Honestly, it felt close to dogpiling once Hastings became—unintentionally—involved.
Robby takes in the scenes of the empty Ambulance Bay, his eyes find his beloved motorcycle still in tact at the side of the building. He takes a step forward in order to block it from your line of vision.
After a moment, an arm wraps around your shoulder and you’re suddenly curled into your husband’s side. His lips find your temple and they stay pressed against your skin to resolve some of the bad feelings running about in your chest.
You close your eyes as Robby repetitively presses chaste kisses to the same spot, relishing in the physical affection that you will be deprived off for three months. Or further; depending on how far Michael Robinavitch was willing to go.
The thought alone makes you recoil out of his touch.
Robby’s brows quirk in confusion. “Too hot?” he asks naively. Unprepared.
“We—” you sigh, “—We need to continue the conversation from this morning.”
“No…we don’t.” Robby informs, his expression still unwavering in adoration, “It’s water under the bridge. I apologised.”
“I’m talking about the part where you accept the therapy sessions on this sabbatical.” you start, feeling the prompt shift in the atmosphere, “Jack has given me all the information for his therapist—”
“Sweetheart. I am begging you not to start this shit again.” Robby has the palms of his hands flush against each other in a begging motion that’s sent in your direction. “I don’t need a therapist on this trip.”
“Throw me a bone here, Robby.” you exasperate, “You’re obviously not well. Is it really so bad that I’m making sure I get you back by the end of this?” you feel your patience chip, the skin of your neck prickling with frustration.
Robby chuckles. “Oh, you’ll get me back. I’ll make sure of it.”
The morbidity of his answer makes you pause.
You blink at him, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means…stop telling me how to feel.” Robby narrows his eyes, throwing a sarcastic smile your way.
“Then what are you feeling, Robby?” you snap at him, the humid summer air clinging to your skin.
He chuckles lowly, “I really don’t need you to be my shrink.”
You shake your head, “This isn’t what a shrink does. You would know that if you just see one for two days of the week whilst you’re away. Jack’s therapist does virtual appointments—”
“I already gave you my answer to that.”
“Holy shit.” you clench your fists and tap them against your forehead to relieve your frustrations, “I’m not asking you to lobotomise yourself on this sabbatical, Robby. It’s fucking therapy.”
Robby sneers, “No? This—” he gestures to the space between you in circles, “—feels an awful lot like a lobotomy. Cut it out.”
“Cut it out?” you repeat, “I’m not a child.”
“Are you sure about that, sweetheart?” Robby crosses his arms, the argument was beginning to feel like being inside a pressure cooker, “You’re upset over this morning. Over the sabbatical, clearly over whatever bullshit Hastings said to you. About Louie. You can’t regulate your own emotions at work and you have the nerve to tell me I need fucking help? That is fucking hypocrisy.”
“Oh, quit projecting.” you look around for a minute to take a break from the intense stare down.
“Why…are you doing this right now?”
You watch Robby rub at his temples. “Why? Because you’re lashing out. You’ve been doing it to Mohan, Dana and Al-Hashimi all fucking day. You’re upset that Langdon is back and you’re punishing him for your own feeling of failure.”
“Mohan is tough love.” Robby cherrypicks.
“Cut the shit, Robby. You’ve been wearing her down and you know it.” you gesture to the ED just beyond the sliding doors, “She had a panic attack and you belittled her over the same shit you did last year in Pedes!”
Robby shakes his head in disbelief, “You’re really bringing that up right now?”
“Yes. I am.” you retort plainly, “Robby. Can’t you see this is all happening because I love you?” you collect your voice beneath a whisper when an EMT strolls by you.
Robby waits until they vacate the premises to speak as he drags his fingers along creases in his forehead. “Yeah. I do. And, right now…I need you to love me less.” he conveys cruelly.
Your worry ebbs into hurt. Fingers curling tight enough that your nails are pressing crescent moons into the palm of your hands. His words lay flat against your chest like wet cement. Any further rebuttals you had lined up dissipate and you’re left with a blank slate, jaw slack as you try to make sense of it all.
The Ambulance Bay plunges into icy waters. Robby nervously drags his thumbnail across the top of his brow bone as he cranes his neck to look inside the building. It wasn’t evident to you at the time, but his inner turmoil flares at the sight of your broken expression.
Even when you gather yourself up with watery eyes and a wobbling bottom lip, Robby does nothing. He allows you the action of brushing past him to escape the jaws of his verbal brutality, throwing yourself back into the chaos of a holiday weekend.
He’s left with the whir of ambulances in the distance.
Robby watches you leave, mumbling a ‘shit’ under his breath. He drops his head back to take in the humid air through his nostrils; the brief solitude condemned when Baran Al-Hashimi appears.
“Robby?” Baran calls from the doors, offering a hesitant smile, “Perlah has notified me that Ms. Kovalenko—the burn patient—is ready to be seen again.”
Robby swings his hands around his body, releasing the tension by smacking his palm against his other hand that was curled up into a fist. He strains a smile, “I’ll be right there.”
Robby takes a shot at a breath to exhale any leftover poison on his tongue from your spat—being wise to the fact that patient satisfaction scores would increase without personal baggage. The dispenser spits the sanitiser into his hand and he chooses to open the door with his back; checking for any sign of you amongst the sea of people marching about.
The pit in his stomach grows when he can spot you in the middle discussing a case with McKay. Your back is turned, but Robby has been with you long enough to see the tension taught across your shoulder blades from the deep laceration he had caused by projecting his frustrations for a second time that day.
He takes a mental note to make amends by any means possible. And promptly too.
He enters the room with one last look at you. “Hello. How’s it going in here?”
“We were just discussing your wife.” Perlah informs with a friendly smile, fingers busy with the task at hand. When Robby looks inquisitive about how the topic turned to you in his absence, Perlah adds, “She just came to find me for a patient. Said hello. Ms. Kovalenko was curious about the double-barrel surname on her badge. It got us talking. All good things.”
Robby hums warmly. “A conversation I’m always happy to partake in.” he perches himself on the nearby stool—both Perlah and Ms. Kovalenko watching as he fixes his posture.
“Beautiful.” Ms. Kovalenko states.
“Very.” Robby concurs earnestly—he wants to say that you are the eighth wonder of the world.
(The argument puts that sort of compliment on hold for the time being.)
“Too good for you.” The red-haired woman quips.
“Ooh. I’ll have to agree there too.” he lilts, the pang of guilt smothered behind a professional glaze. He pats the tops of his thighs, “Did I miss all the gross stuff?”
“Timed it perfectly.” Perlah replies.
“Excellent. My job is all about delegation and time management.” Robby chides with a brave face; hoping his emotions weren’t too raw on his face over the mention of you.
Perlah and him get into a lighthearted back and forth over his imminent departure at the end of the twelve-hour shift, which piques Ms. Kovalenko’s interest over the finer details.
“He’s leaving us for three-months. On a motorcycle.” Perlah shifts in her chair, happy to invite Ms. Kovalenko further behind closed doors.
Kovalenko’s brows raise to her hairline. “Motorcyle? You’re joking.” she whips her head round to stare at Robby, “Why would you do this?” she asks sternly.
“Why? Why? Because…uh—”
“You’re a middle aged man. Don’t be stupid.” she spits back, “What about your wife? Is she happy about this decision?”
“She is…moderately humble about it.” Robby rolls closer to the sharp-tongued patient, narrowly averting his gaze to the injury concealed beneath a thin cloth.
“Moderately humble.” Kovalenko repeats sardonically with a few nods of her head. “Forgive me for being blunt but, do you think that is the equivalent to being happy, Dr. Robinavitch? I pity your wife. Very sad.”
Robby hangs his head and huffs out a laugh, “We cannot stop the world from spinning just because one person doesn’t like the way it goes round, Ms. Kovalenko—How about we focus on your care?”
There’s a significant pause.
“Us women are what make the world go round,” her lips quirk in satisfaction when Robby’s brown eyes drift from her burn site, “Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Robinavitch?”
Once the elderly, fiery-haired patient with a nasty burn on her thigh is discharged from Robby’s care—not without a stern lecture and some wonderful insight about his lack of appreciation for women in general—it’s evident that all signs are pointing to resolving the conflict that had transpired between you two.
If there was one person Robby was not willing to part with on a sour note for three whole months…it was you.
The better half of him. The center of his gravity. The only person strong enough to flip the heavy hourglass in time before he drains himself entirely.
Also, the woman that was apparently hard to track down in a department he knew like the back of his hand.
(He worries you left. But that wasn’t in your nature. Hurt feelings or not.)
“Where—“ he pauses, “—is my Attending?” Robby checks the surrounding areas as he speaks directly to Dana who was standing at the workstation with Monica Peters—the Pitt’s once renowned cynical clerk until things went south over technology.
Dana lets out an amused scoff, looking down at the clipboard pressed against her stomach; strands of blonde hair loose around her face.
“She’s been demoted to just Attending? What’d she do?” she quips in her usual tone that has Robby flaring his nostrils, “She’s writing up the death note for Javadi. McKay’s cancer patient—Roxie—she passed away.”
Robby frowns, “Where’s McKay?”
“MIA.” Dana drawls, now fiddling with the prescribed box of nicotine gum, “She seemed pretty upset coming from the Ambulance Bay. Anything you want to tell me?”
“It’s been a long day.” he calls flippantly, already parting through the sea of pandemonium.
He puts the plethora of questions about McKay’s whereabouts on the back burner for the time being.
Dana raises her voice over the hospital buzz, “Make amends, Cap.”
He gives the charge nurse a two-finger salute.
For once, he makes it to his destination uninterrupted by an emergency that requires his presence in the trauma room. The door to the room that had been dimly lit aside from the salt lamp glow, clicks open as Robby arrives; finding you slipping out the gap and closing the door quietly behind you.
You haven’t seen him yet.
For observational purposes, the Chief Attending watches you press your forehead against the cool glass of the narrow window of the door. His stomach sinks when he can see your shoulders shudder as you take a deep breath to fill your lungs with air that kept evading you.
He doesn’t feel like there’s ever going to be an appropriate time to speak to you in order to rescind his previous declarations. Even more so now, as you conceal the notion of silently weeping in the middle of the ED.
“You need a coffee?” Robby’s voice makes you jolt. For once, he shrinks in confidence under your unsteady gaze. His tired eyes take in the vision of your watery ones and his expression melts into tenderised sympathy. He nods, “Come on.”
The staff room is empty when you enter, aside from the manikin that Nurse Jesse took great pleasure in decorating, before he was wrongfully detained by ICE agents for intervening with patient care at the core of his interests—just another reason to confirm that the holiday weekend had been nothing short of twenty car pile-up that you were being forced to look at.
The box of donuts from upstairs is empty, the clock above is ticking closed to the end of the day shift; even when the job wasn’t truthfully done at the stroke of 7PM. You take the seat closest to the wall, muscles sighing from the imminent relief of pressure.
Robby stands at the coffee machine—if you can even call it that. It sputters a watery version of coffee into a styrofoam cup, and he dumps two packets of sugar into the liquid in order to salvage some sweetness amidst the bitter tone of the room.
He slides the cup over to you and fishes a protein bar from his pocket, patting it to emphasise the notion that dinner had been served.
Your stubbornness prevails as you push the bar away from you, despite having not eaten for almost seven hours.
Robby sighs at that. The refusal doesn’t surprise him. You were always prone to a petty hunger strike when it came to Robby providing you with food to nourish your body after an argument. It was sort of his way to build up to an apology.
He drags the spare seat across the flooring and plants it in front of you.
The fabric of your scrubs brush against his when his knees bumps yours as he sits. The close proximity invites his scent into your bubble, the undertones of his aftershave prominent enough for you to recognise the fragrance as the one he wore on your wedding day.
Robby rests his elbows on the tops of his thighs as he lean into your space.
As the words form on his lips into a coherent icebreaker that he was easing into, the door to the staff room whips open to reveal Trinity Santos.
You look up at her. Robby doesn’t.
“I need an Attending.”
Robby answers for the both of you.
“Go find Dr. Al-Hashimi.” he sings.
Santos mutters under her breath, rolling her eyes as she shuts the door behind her. You give Robby a certain look—one he’s been given before—that tells him you weren’t in favour of brushing off the RS2 in favour of squashing the hostility that he brought upon the both of you.
He gives you a meek but crooked smile. Crows feet prominent as he tries to warm the atmosphere.
“I need you…to understand something here.” Robby starts, his hands falling to the sides of your kneecaps. He can barely look at you when he talks, “If I don’t go on this sabbatical, I am not so sure it’ll stop me from…” he trails off.
The room falls silent.
He can barely say it himself because verbalising it would make that little more of a tangible thing.
You can’t conjure up the fight to protest; so you hang your head.
“What upset you about Roxie’s case?” Robby takes a different approach. He tilts his head like a curious dog when you look back up from your lap.
You mull it over. “Do you ever stand in a room with a wife and a husband, one of them is dying in front of the other’s eyes. And they just have to watch it happen at their bedside?”
Robby gives a curt nod.
“Do you ever put yourself in their shoes, Robby?” you question, “How that would feel? To have the most meaningful part of you slip through your fingers and you don’t have the control to stop it. This—” gesture with your finger between your bodies, “—Is how that feels for me.”
“Yeah—”
“No.” you shake your head, “You don’t get to sit there and tell me you know how it feels from my perspective. I love you in ways that you aren’t reciprocating. You know why?”
“Why?” Robby whispers.
You continue, “Because, if we loved each other equally, there wouldn’t be a shadow of a doubt to get the help that you fucking need.” your voice trembles, “I cannot keep pushing through this fog around you, Robby.”
“I know.” Robby’s expression melts. Brown eyes softer than ever. “I know.”
“Then get help. Please.”
Robby cups the back of your head when tears begin to shed from your eyes. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it.” he presses his lips to your forehead, “I’ll do it. I’m sorry.”
The moment is held sacred against your hearts. There’s a particular weight that lifts off of your shoulders when Robby gives in, but even then…your heart was still heavy from the outcome of your previous argument in the Ambulance Bay.
Maybe three months apart would mend those open wounds. (Absence made the heart grow fonder. Apparently.)
Robby finally pulls back with a pained expression on his face; as he memorises your features close-up. “What I said before—I didn’t mean it. I’m not sure how I’d do in life if I didn’t have you up my ass about everything.”
“I hear Montana has a lot of fresh oxygen. You can use all of that up with consistent apologies during your sabbatical.” you grouse, wiping at the wetness that Robby misses when he drags his thumb across your cheekbone—ridding you of a lash that had latched onto your skin. “You know, people divorce for less.” you say.
Genuine laughter ripples from Robby’s chest, the moment of reconciliation solidified in your acerbic intonation. (Part of him wonders how many lives he has left before the reality of divorce comes to life.)
Instead of answering back, Robby forgoes professional protocol by pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. It takes a few swallows to dislodge the lump in his throat, smothering his own upset when you pull away to meet his gaze.
The door opens for a second time.
Dana holds onto the handle, staring at the scenes before her over the rim of her glasses. “Would you look at that. It’s a Fourth of July miracle. Can this wrap up so we can do rounds and get the hell out of this godforsaken place? Two more minutes, lovebirds.”
Robby stands at the foot of the bed. It’s well after midnight and whilst you have shed into the comforts of your sleepwear, Robby is clad in a thick Carhartt jacket and dark jeans with his bag slung lazily over one shoulder. He is looking like the epitome of a reckless motorcyclist about to venture on the open road after a gruelling twelve—and some additional hours—shift at the Emergency Department.
You are sat with your legs dangling off the edge of the bed. Ready to bid your husband goodbye; praying it’s rather a ‘see you soon’ sort of farewell.
His confirmation in the Staff Room didn’t sit all that well in your stomach.
“You have got everything?” you ask, twiddling with the hem of his jacket, “Wallet? Phone? Cash? The list of phone numbers I wrote down for you?” Robby nods along as you list it off, “Toothbrush? Phone charger? The little First Aid Kit I bought?”
“Check.” Robby affirms.
There’s an unfamiliar feeling rolling about in the air of your bedroom. Robby and you had rarely spent time apart—as unhealthy as it may sound to other couples, it just works for you. Nothing more than a week, when you decided to take a well-earned break from the seventh layer of hell named the Pitt.
Three months would feel like a lifetime.
You sigh deeply, “Call me. Or text me when you arrive at the first hotel. I love you. Kind of.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” Robby leans down to kiss you sweetly. His hand captures your jawline to deepen the kiss to gratify his needs. He barely pulls back to look at you, “I’ll miss you.”
“I’d hope so.” you kiss him again. Your hands rest against the broad-line of his shoulders, whilst his free hand clutches your back to press your body into him. You whisper against his feverish kiss, “You’re running late to get on the road.”
“I’ve got time.” Robby answers back.
The change in pace happens abruptly. One minute you’re exchanging a bittersweet goodbye, and the next, your t-shirt has been yanked over your head, leaving your chest exposed; nipples hardening from the cool air.
Robby bends to capture a nipple into his mouth, his beard creating a sweet fiction alongside his tongue swiping at your bud. He groans against your tit, and you take the opportunity to slide his bag from his shoulder—his jacket coming off quickly after.
Once he pays attention to your neglected nipple by repeating the same actions, he pulls back with his hair sticking up in all directions as a result of you tugging at it.
His pupils are blown wide.
“You want me to take care of you before I leave, hm?” Robby asks, his tone dripping in saccharine.
You nod, breathless.
He dips his head to press wet kisses down your navel whilst you instinctively lift your hips when his fingers hook at the sides of your flimsy excuse for underwear; which he stuffs into the back pocket of his jeans for later. The air thickens, the silence filling with lewd groans from Robby’s mouth as he lifts and parts your thighs, pressing them up to your chest to expose your slick core.
His callus palms smooth across the length of the backs of your thighs, creating goosebumps in his wake. Brown eyes drift from your aching pussy, up to your face to observe your reaction when he drags two fingers from your seeping hole and upward to your sensitive clit.
You jolt and whimper from the sensation and Robby clicks his tongue, shushing you as he repeats the same action.
Once he gathers enough of your juices on his two fingers, he applies pressure to your clit and begins to rubbing in slow circles. You whine, legs making effort to drop down to relieve the pressure; only for Robby’s free hand to pin them against your chest again.
“Robby…” you manage to say.
Robby cocks his head to the side to watch your hole clench around empty air. “That feel good?”
Your brows pinch with your eyes fluttering shut. Instead of answering his question, you bring a hand to bite down on—which Robby promptly swats away.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. Let me know.”
You nod, “Uh-huh.”
“Good. Fuck, look at you.” Robby drags his fingers down to your hole and eases them in with little resistance. He groans when your walls clench tightly around his digits, “How can I leave this?”
Unable to respond again, your hips tilt when Robby curls his fingers upward into you, enough to make your jaw clench. He presses his thumb-pad against your clit, rubbing at a pace that he’s well aware that you appreciate.
Long-term commitment does wonders to mapping out the hot spots of your anatomy.
The room fills with a schlicking sound with Robby pumping his fingers in and out of you at a gentle pace.
“I’ve got you.” Robby mumbles, jaw slack at the sight of you arching your back off of the mattress. He takes his free hand that had your legs pinned and applies weight to your lower stomach, picking up the pace with his fingers. “Ooh. There it is.” he says as your walls fit snug against his fingers.
“I’m—Fuck.” you whinge, spots lining your vision. “Robby, please.”
Robby bobs his head a handful of times, arm beginning to ache from the relentless back and forth motion. His restraint is minimal, quick to shift himself halfway off the bed so his eyes are level with your swollen lips. You’re soaked. He can see at the base of his fingers collects your cream, which allows his thought process is thrown out the window.
Suddenly, Robby has all the time in the world before he has to leave.
When his mouths latches onto your clit, that’s when things become a little more desperate. His moans vibrate against you, sending you squirming; stomach tensing as he sucks at your swollen nerves—if anything, he wants to leave a lasting impression upon his departure.
Robby swaps between kitten licks and suckling at your clit—his tongue occasionally dipping to taste the closeness at your hole. His thick fingers work at your insides. Eyes flit up to see your mouth open, bare chest panting from the coil in your stomach on the precipice of snapping.
It is Robby’s favourite things; watching you come undone.
His own hips find friction against the mattress as you let out a guttural moan from the back of your throat, body curling into the orgasm that your husband pulls from you.
You push at Robby’s head when he sucks at your clit out of greed. Too sensitive, you slump into the mattress with the palm of your hand lying flat against your forehead.
Robby straightens up at the end of the bed with a smug smile, eyes twinkling. “You okay?”
You wordlessly give him a thumbs up, whining when he pulls his two fingers from your vagina.
After a minute, you rest on your elbows to watch your husband fiddle with his belt. “Let me help.” you advise, moving onto your knees to assist him.
You’re brought into a bruising kiss as you tug the belt from the belt loops, tossing it to the ground with a ‘thunk.’ It’s light work—removing Robby’s jeans and boxers in one swoop—as you had been in this very position several times throughout your relationship; able to visualise the steps in which Robby matches your nudity.
As you look down, Robby huffs, “Give it a second, sweetheart.”
His cock still semi-soft, he wraps a hand around the hardened base and gives himself a few pumps so the rest of his shaft could catch up.
He sheepishly chuckles, “If I was a few years younger—”
“I don’t care.” you kiss him to halt the self-deprecation, “Means I get to steal more time off of your sabbatical.”
It had always been an explanation during sex. The first time it had happened, Robby insisted his level of attractions toward you hadn’t depleted, rather it was just his age showing at the worst possible time—something he’d take more gray hairs and wrinkles over any day.
Never stunting his performance, nor was it a deal breaking factor for you, every time since Robby’s delay in stiffening; you had to remind him there was nothing wrong with it.
Slow and steady wins the race.
You lick your lips, watching Robby work his shaft in his hand, his wedding band catching the warmth of the salt lamp at your bedside. He lifts his free hand whilst you watch, the two fingers that had been deep inside you now edging their way into your mouth.
His fingers leave your mouth with a faint ‘pop’ and it seems to do the trick as Robby’s tip is flushed red, his slit beginning to bead with precum.
You lower yourself back down onto the mattress with Robby following you. His callus palms come to the plushness of your hips, and he turns you over so your front is lying flush against the tousled sheets.
He dips to press a kiss between your shoulder blades before hiking your hips upward so you are resting on all fours.
Robby hums as he drags his cock through your wetness, “I’m going to miss you.”
Your fingers curl into the cotton sheets, goosebumps trailing up the length of your spine. Robby kisses your back again, the tip of his cock nudging at your hole. He gives you both a minute before sinking himself in inch by inch; his lips pressing to your skin to smother the groan eliciting from his throat.
There’s no rush in his movement. There’s around thirty seconds of adjusting before he sinks further into your pussy, his head dropping back when he is to the hilt.
Robby stays in your warmth without moving for a minute.
After a minute or so, his hips begin to shift, the softest part of his stomach pressing to your ass when he buries himself deep. Stabilising himself by grasping onto your ass cheeks, fingers digging into your flesh; Robby’s brows furrow from the searing pleasure as he looks down to see his shaft already coated in your arousal.
You hang your head, letting out a whimper from feeling so full.
“Jesus—You feel good.” Robby grits behind you. He watches your back muscles tense when he slides his cock out slowly, “Are you going to miss this, baby?”
You can’t answer. The tip of Robby’s cock plunges into a spongy part, and your vision is lined with white spots.
Robby gives you a second and repeats the motion until his desire to hear you reaffirm his question takes over. He frees a hand from grappling at your backside, his fingers curling around your throat to tilt your head back to look him in the eye.
“Tell me.”
You almost cry, “Yes—fuck—yes, I’ll miss this.”
“Uh-huh.” Robby grins, “You will.”
The hand being used to force eye contact is removed and you whine when Robby fully pulls out of you. He flips you back over onto your back with ease, folding your legs up to your chest again before sinking back into you without warning.
Your back arches as much as it can from being pinned; Robby dips to smother it with a sloppy kiss.
Your hands curl around his neck, whimpering when you feel him pulse inside you. Well aware that it wasn’t going to last long.
His thrusts are shallow and restricted to contain his own climax for a little while longer. The tip of his cock brushes against a sensitive part, and he’s left breathlessly chuckling when you tighten yourself around him.
“You’ll make me cum doing that.” Robby lifts his head, eyes squeezing shut. He drags himself out of you until the tip of his cock is at your opening. You clench to suck the majority of his shaft back in. “Shit baby. Fuck it. Keep squeezing me like that. Just like that.”
“Fuck, Robby.” is all you can muster, hands clawing at his back when he picks up his pace.
Robby folds your legs back up to your chest for a third time that night. His thumb catches your clit—unsure if he can drag another orgasm out of you with little recovery time. “Let me fuck you right there. You feel it? You’re so fucking tight.”
“Robby—” you babble.
“Hm? What is it, sweetheart?” Robby pants, the slapping sounds echoing in the room.
You free your legs from his grasp and wrap them around his middle. “I want—I need you to cum inside me.”
“Fuck. Don’t say shit like that.” Robby laughs, his pace faltering. He looks at your expression and realises you’re being serious. “Is that what you want? For me to cum inside you? What if you get pregnant?”
“I don’t care, I don’t care.” you plead.
Robby shakes his head, “Okay, okay. I’ll cum inside you.” his thrust start to get sloppy at the thought, “Are you going to lay here, long after I’m gone, with my cum leaking out of you? Is that what you’re going to do?”
You nod vigorously.
“Fuck. Ask me nicely.” he commands.
“Please, Robby.” you breathe out, “Please.”
Robby nods, sweat beading his hairline from the exertion. He dips his head to bring you into a searing kiss, “I love you.” he mumbles against your lips.
There’s fewer words spoken after that. The bed creaks as Robby begins to pound into your pussy with one goal in mind. His soft stomach brushes against your pubes as he barely pulls out of you, hungry with need to stay deep within your walls.
Your legs lock around his middle and Robby lifts your hips, his fingers digging into the flesh of your backside as he brings your lower half up; fucking into you with desperation.
You babble his name, “I’m going to cum again.” you repeat over and over with the hot feeling returning in your stomach.
“You can do it, sweetheart.” Robby encourages, thumb applying pressure to your already sensitive clit. “Give me one last one before I leave. Let me feel it around my cock.”
The climax ripples through you for a second time at his words. Walls clenching around him so tightly, it made thrusting into you near impossible. Robby continues as best as he can, watching your face twist in painful pleasure.
It’s enough to send him over the edge with you.
“Fuck, fuck!” Robby grits out before his words are smothered beneath deep groans as he shoots hot ropes deep inside you. His body weight slumps on top of you, skin slick with sweat as he ruts into you a few more times for good measure.
You can feel his cum seep out at your opening, around his shaft that was still tucked deep in your pussy. Robby twitches inside of you, moving deeper a few times to ensure you’re stuffed to the brim.
He kisses the side of your face as he pants out, “I have no idea what I’ll do without you for three months.”
The familiar melancholy returns to your stomach at the realisation that this was the conclusion before three months without him.
“…Just come back to me, Robinavitch.”
A/N: thank u to my sweet @novatheory for listening to my rambling over this fic and reading the snippets of drafts i would send at random times. mwah!!!!
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