“Hey, Jack.” Robby coughs. He didn’t plan what he would say if he didn’t answer; didn’t even plan what he’d say if he did. “I, uh, I don’t know. I’m at… I don’t know. Some place in upstate New York.” He kicks at the ground. Loose dirt tumbles over the edge of the cliff. “Nice views. Mountains and whatever.”
He sighs. “I’m fucking exhausted. Don’t feel like you need to call me back or anything. Can’t guarantee I’ll answer. Anyway, um, bye.”
Robby ends the call with a groan and kneads the kink in his neck. Though he loathes to admit it, everyone was right; starting his ride after a long shift was a bad idea. His bike is parked outside a last-minute room he booked at some shoddy motel with an unsuspectingly good view. Though maybe this is what it’s like outside of a city. Without traffic and apartments to block the horizon, the world grows.
Robby crawls under the scratchy covers of the motel bed and lets the day catch up to him. Within seconds, he falls into a dreamless sleep.
He wakes hours later when the sun is high in the sky, streaming yellow beams into his room. His body aches from the lumpy mattress, and humid air is winning the fight against the crappy air conditioning. The thought of sitting on a leather seat that’s been baking in the sun all morning and riding in a thick jacket is wildly unappealing. Not even a full day in, and he’s already regretting this trip.
He gets dressed and heads outside. Next to his bike is a familiar black truck. Strange.
Muffled shouting breaks through the walls of the main building as Robby approaches to return his key. A deep frown etches itself on his face; that voice can’t belong to whom he thinks it does.
“Please! Please! Ma’am,” the voice says. “I’m not some creep, or a crazy person, but I really, really need to know. If you could please—“
“Sir,” the receptionist says calmly. “I’ve already told you; I can’t give out guest information.”
“You don’t have to tell me the room. Just tell me if he checked in here. I know that’s his bike outside—“
Robby is close enough now to see through the window; he’d know that stance anywhere. “Jack?”
Jack whips around just as Robby steps through the door. Quick as lightning, he latches his arms around Robby’s shoulders. “Fuck, Mike. Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me.”
“I— what’re you doing here?”
“You left me that fucking voicemail. I thought…” he shakes his head, and hides himself in Robby’s neck.
Robby tentatively wraps his arms around Jack’s middle. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the receptionist take the opportunity to leave. “You drove all this way because of a voicemail?”
“Was barely six hours,” Jack mutters. His lips brush against Robby’s skin.
Robby checks his watch. 10:30am. “You only got off work three hours ago?”
Jack takes a step back, but keeps a firm hand on the back of Robby’s neck to balance himself. “Shen said he was good on his own, so I left early.”
“Why?”
“I called you back, and you didn’t answer.” Jack’s chin wobbles.
“I was asleep,” Robby laughs shallowly. “It’d been a long day.”
“You said you wouldn’t answer.” The wrinkles around Jack’s eyes contort with the scrunch of his nose as he holds back tears. “I couldn’t risk it.”
“I just meant because I might be on the road.”
“Don’t,” Jack says sharply, “act like I’m overreacting. You know why I was scared.”
Robby’s shoulders slump. “You must be tired. I still have a room.”
Jack nods. “Then we’ll go home.”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
Robby considers the dread that filled him at the thought of riding further out this morning. “Yeah. Really.”
Jack nods, eyes locked on Robby’s like he’s looking for the rug that could be pulled from under him. When he decides to trust the answer he’s been given, he wraps an arm over Robby’s shoulders and leans his weight on him.
“Leg bothering you?”
“I’ve had a long day too.”
“Don’t doubt it.” He happily takes Jack’s bulk and guides him back toward the room. “How’d you find me?”
“I’ll always find you.”
A laugh breaks through him. “How romantic.”
“I have my moments.” For the first time all morning, Jack smiles. “And I hid an AirTag on your bike.”
Robby sucks in a breath and digs his fingers deeper into Jack’s waist. “I’m going to let that slide for now.”
Summary: The roomies want to make it feel just a little more like home.
Word Count: 4k
Warnings: no use of Y/N
A/N: Hello everyone! Happy Pride! I am hoping to write a fic a day for Pride Month, so if you have any ideas for any of the people I write for, or even someone new, send them my way!
Masterlist
The apartment door sticks like it always does.
Pittsburgh humidity has swollen the wood again, so you have to shoulder it open with the last bit of strength you have left. Thirty-six hours at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center has worn you down to muscle memory. Shoes off by the door. Bag dropped near the entry table. Scrubs wrinkled, body aching, brain still halfway inside the ER.
The apartment smells like old coffee, laundry detergent, and the burnt toast Dennis made that morning before leaving for the hospital. It’s not a bad smell. It’s familiar. Lived in. Yours, almost.
Trinity is already home, curled into the corner of the thrift-store couch she dragged all the way home from the store because, as she said, “It’s ugly, not useless.” Her hair is pulled back messily, and she’s staring at the wall across from her as if the beige paint would magically change color.
She doesn’t look up when you come in.
“Hey,” you say, voice rough.
“Hey.” Her voice is flat, but not empty.
You take that as a win.
You collapse onto the other end of the couch with a groan. Trinity finally glances over.
“That sounded brutal.”
“It was.”
“Want me to call Robby?”
“Only if he’ll write me a note excusing me from all future shifts.”
“He’d laugh in your face.”
“He would. Then he’d hand me a chart.”
Trinity’s mouth twitches. It isn’t a full smile, but it’s close enough to make the apartment feel a little less heavy.
For a while, neither of you speak. The ancient refrigerator hums from the kitchen. Someone upstairs plays music with too much bass. Outside, a siren passes, and both of you go still without meaning to. It’s instinct now, one the Pitt has carved into you.
Then the siren fades.
You both exhale.
The apartment is small. Too small for three exhausted people with terrible schedules and too many medical textbooks. Three bedrooms barely bigger than closets. One bathroom that requires strategy. A kitchen where only one person can stand comfortably at a time. A living room with the couch, an ugly armchair, a wobbly coffee table, and not much else.
It was supposed to be temporary.
That was what Trinity said when she let Dennis move in after finding out he’d been sleeping in unused hospital space. It was what you all told yourselves when the lease was signed. Just until everyone got steadier. Just until residency made more sense. Just until life stopped feeling like something you were surviving instead of living.
But temporary things can still become important.
“We should do something,” Trinity says suddenly.
You turn your head. “Something like sleep?”
“No.”
“Something like eat?”
“Also no.”
“Then I’m out of guesses.”
“With this place.” She gestures around the room. “We should make it less depressing.”
“You mean clean?”
“No, I mean decorate.” She sits up straighter, and there it is. That spark in her eyes. Trinity Santos deciding something means everyone else just has to keep up. “Make it ours.”
The words settle in your chest.
Make it ours.
You look around again. The beige walls. The crooked blinds. The empty hallway. The bookshelf full of medical texts and half-read novels. The whole place looks like people sleep here, not like people belong here.
“What did you have in mind?” you ask.
Trinity’s smile starts small. “It’s June.”
You stare at her.
“Pride Month,” she says, like you’re being difficult. “But not like a parade exploded in here. Just color. Warmth. Something that feels like us.”
Something soft unfolds in your chest.
There were so many places where you couldn’t have done that. So many rooms where you learned to hide pieces of yourself. You think Trinity knows that feeling too, even if she rarely says it out loud. You think Dennis does as well, in his own way.
“We can’t spend a ton,” you say.
“I know.”
“And we can’t damage the walls.”
“I know.”
“And Dennis is going to make this weird.”
“He makes everything weird.”
You smile. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Trinity’s smile widens. “Good. Because I already started a list.”
“Of course you did.”
“I’m efficient.”
“You’re terrifying.”
“I can be both.”
Dennis arrives twenty minutes later, loud before he’s even fully inside.
“Please tell me someone loves me enough to have ordered food, because if I eat another vending machine protein bar, I’m going to start seeing God, and I don’t think He wants to talk to me under these circumstances.”
He kicks the door shut behind him and drops his keys on the entry table. One bounces onto the floor. He looks at it for a second.
“Nope,” he says. “Tomorrow Dennis can handle that.”
Then he rounds the corner and stops.
His eyes narrow at you and Trinity sitting on the couch with phones out and Trinity’s notebook open on the coffee table.
“Why do you both have committee faces?”
Trinity looks up. “Committee faces?”
“Yes. You look like you’re either planning a surprise party or deciding who gets eaten first in a survival situation.”
“You wouldn’t be first,” you tell him.
Dennis presses a hand to his chest. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”
“We’re decorating,” Trinity says.
“For Pride,” you add.
Dennis’s whole face lights up.
The exhaustion doesn’t disappear. He still looks like a fourth-year med student running on caffeine, willpower, and denial. But something bright breaks through it.
“Oh, hell yes.” He drops into the ugly armchair, which squeaks under him. “Finally. This place looks like a dentist’s waiting room got trapped in a basement.”
“That’s basically what I said,” Trinity says.
“You said beige prison cell.”
“Same family.”
Dennis pulls out his phone. “Okay. Are we thinking subtle gay, cozy gay, or aggressively arts-and-crafts gay?”
“Cozy,” you say.
“Warm,” Trinity adds.
Dennis nods seriously. “So, fairy lights, too many pillows, and at least one object that makes people say, ‘Oh, that’s cute,’ before realizing it’s gay.”
“Exactly,” Trinity says.
Dennis has a way of making the apartment feel fuller. Not always happier, because you know better than to assume he’s always happy, but lighter. Like he’s decided that if he has to carry hard things, he’s at least going to carry jokes too.
The three of you crowd around the coffee table. Trinity searches with focused intensity, the same way she approaches procedures. Dennis finds dramatic decorations and reads the worst reviews aloud. You balance your laptop on your knees and try to find things that won’t destroy your budget or your security deposit.
Rainbow string lights. A small Progress Pride flag for the bookshelf. Colored glass jars to catch the sun in the kitchen window. A cheap woven blanket with soft pink, orange, and white stripes that Trinity pretends not to immediately love. Throw pillows in blues, pinks, and warm yellows. Temporary wall decals shaped like stars and little moons. Cheap canvases and acrylic paints.
Then you find the print.
It’s Pittsburgh’s skyline in soft Pride colors, the bridges and buildings glowing against a bright sky. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t look like party decor. It looks like someone took the city and made it gentler.
“Oh,” you say.
Trinity leans closer. Dennis comes around the back of the couch to look.
For once, he doesn’t joke.
“That one,” Trinity says.
Dennis nods. “Yeah. That one feels like us.”
Your throat tightens.
Maybe because it’s this city. This hard, gray, beautiful city that gave you the Pitt, brutal shifts, terrible cafeteria coffee, and somehow each other. Maybe because the print feels like proof that you’re staying, even if not forever. Staying in this life. With these people.
You add it to the cart.
“Okay,” Dennis says, clapping once. “Now we discuss financial ruin.”
“Responsible spending,” Trinity corrects.
“Same family tree, different branches.”
You all say what you can contribute. None of you has much, but together there’s enough. Enough for lights. Enough for the print. Enough for paint, canvases, a blanket, and maybe pizza if everyone is careful.
“This is financially questionable,” you say.
Dennis nods gravely. “But emotionally necessary.”
Trinity points at him. “Exactly.”
When she places the order, Dennis throws both hands up.
“Operation Make This Place Gay But Tasteful begins tomorrow.”
Trinity closes her eyes. “That is somehow worse.”
“It’s descriptive.”
“It’s terrible.”
“All my operation names are terrible. It’s part of my charm.”
You lean back, still exhausted, but warmer now. The apartment hasn’t changed yet, not physically. The walls are still beige. The lights are still bad. The coffee table still looks one wrong move away from collapse.
But you can picture it now.
Color. Warmth. Proof.
Dennis’s eyes slide toward you.
You recognize the look immediately.
“You know who would probably have excellent decorating advice?”
You stiffen. “Don’t.”
“Mel King.”
Trinity’s shoulders start shaking before Dennis even finishes saying her name.
You glare at them both. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m just saying,” Dennis says, pretending innocence badly. “Mel would have thoughts. Real thoughts. Sensory-friendly thoughts. She’d probably explain why overhead lighting is hostile.”
Trinity points at him. “He’s not wrong.”
“He is wrong, because he’s speaking.”
“You should text her,” Trinity says.
“I’m not texting Mel about Pride decorations.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Trinity says. “It’s normal.”
Dennis nods. “Very normal. Very casual. Very, ‘Hi, Mel, I value your brain and your face, please come perceive my apartment.’”
You grab a pillow and throw it at him. He catches it mostly with his chin.
“Violence,” he says, delighted.
You roll your eyes, but your face is warm.
Mel is easy to talk to at work. Easier than most people. She’s direct and bright and so completely herself that it makes you feel seen in ways you’re not always ready for. She hums when she concentrates. She notices details other people miss. She feels things deeply, and she never pretends not to. You’ve seen the way she speaks to patients, the way she gives them her full attention, the way fear seems to enter her body and become something useful.
You like that about her.
You like too much about her.
Dennis’s voice softens. “You light up when you talk about her.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” Trinity says.
“You’re both awful.”
“We’re supportive,” Dennis says.
“You’re meddling.”
“Supportive meddling.”
Trinity nudges your knee with her foot. “Just ask her what kind of lights she’d use.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” she says.
Dennis lifts a finger. “For now.”
Later, after Trinity showers and Dennis retreats to his room with a bowl of cereal, you sit alone in the living room with your phone in your hand.
Mel’s name is near the top of your messages.
You stare at it for too long.
Then you type before you can talk yourself out of it.
“Hey, random question. If you were decorating an apartment for Pride, what would you prioritize if you wanted it subtle but still warm?”
You hit send and immediately regret being alive.
The typing bubble appears almost instantly.
Mel: “Oh fun! Definitely lighting first. String lights are better than overhead lights because they’re softer and the color feels less aggressive. Maybe colored glass in the windows too, if you get good sunlight. Are you decorating your apartment?”
You smile.
“Yeah. Me, Trinity, and Dennis decided it needs to look less like no one has ever felt joy here.”
Mel: “That sounds dramatic, but probably accurate.”
Mel: “I’m very pro decorations.”
Mel: “A home should feel like the people who live there. Otherwise it’s just a storage unit with beds.”
You laugh quietly.
“That’s exactly what it feels like right now.”
Mel: “Then yes. Lights. Art. Texture. Maybe one meaningful Pride thing instead of a bunch of random decorations. Something personal usually feels better than too many symbols at once.”
“We found a Pride print of the Pittsburgh skyline.”
Mel: “Oh, I love that. Specific is good. Specific feels real.”
Your chest does something complicated.
Then another message appears.
Mel: “I’d like to see it when you’re done, if that’s okay. I like seeing people’s spaces. They tell you things people don’t always say out loud.”
You read it three times.
“Definitely. I’ll send pictures. Or you could come see it in person sometime.”
The typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.
Mel: “I’d like that.”
Mel: “I’m happy you asked me.”
You press the phone to your chest for one ridiculous second.
From Dennis’s room comes a muffled, “Did you text her?”
“Go to sleep!”
“That’s a yes!”
Trinity’s door opens. “Did she answer?”
“You’re both terrible!”
Dennis calls, “That’s also a yes!”
You’re laughing when their doors close again.
The apartment goes quiet, but not lonely.
The packages arrive the next morning at 11:47, which Dennis declares “close enough to noon to count as punctual.” He drops to the living room floor and starts tearing into boxes like a kid on Christmas morning.
Trinity stands above him holding scissors. “We own scissors.”
“I have hands.”
“You’re going to cut yourself.”
“I work in a hospital.”
“That doesn’t make you immune to cardboard.”
You’re still in pajamas, coffee warm between your palms. For once, no one is rushing out the door. No one is checking a patient board. No one is swearing at a missing badge. The day feels suspended, like the three of you have stolen a few hours from the chaos.
Trinity makes a plan because Trinity always does.
“Lights around the living room window. Pittsburgh print above the couch. Blanket over the armchair. Small Pride flag on the bookshelf. Jars in the kitchen window. Canvases wherever they look least terrible.”
Dennis raises a hand from the floor. “Can we gay the chair?”
“With the blanket,” Trinity says.
Dennis smiles proudly. “Tasteful chair rehabilitation.”
Music starts a few minutes later. Dennis connects his phone to the thrift-store speaker, and the first song blasts through the apartment too loudly.
“Volume, Huckleberry!” Trinity calls.
Dennis lowers it by one notch.
“That wasn’t meaningful change.”
“It was symbolic change.”
“Try again.”
You start with the string lights.
They’re soft rainbow lights, not too bright, not too flashy, and they take all three of you to untangle. Dennis somehow wraps half of them around his own arm. Trinity stares at him like he’s a walking anomaly.
“How did you do that?”
“I became one with the ambiance.”
“You became one with poor impulse control.”
You help unwind him, laughing despite yourself.
The lights go around the living room window and along the doorway. When Dennis plugs them in, soft color spills across the beige wall. It isn’t overwhelming. It’s warm, gentle, almost sleepy. The whole room changes without looking like it’s trying too hard.
Trinity goes quiet.
Dennis does too.
“Oh,” you say softly.
Trinity nods. “That’s really good.”
“Mel was right about the lighting,” you say before you can stop yourself.
Dennis freezes.
Trinity turns slowly.
You close your eyes. “Don’t.”
Dennis clasps his hands. “Mel was right about the lighting.”
“I said don’t.”
“You said her name voluntarily.”
“It was relevant.”
“It was romantic,” Dennis says.
“It was lighting.”
Trinity lifts a brow. “Both can be true.”
You leave the room while they laugh, but you’re smiling too.
The Pittsburgh print goes above the couch. It takes five tries, two command strips, and Trinity saying, “No, stop, that’s crooked,” at least four times before it’s up.
All three of you step back.
The skyline glows softly against the wall, Pittsburgh’s bridges and buildings washed in color. It doesn’t scream Pride. It just looks like home seen through kinder eyes.
Dennis is quiet for a second.
“This feels like us,” he says.
No one teases him for it.
The small Pride flag goes on the bookshelf, tucked between emergency medicine textbooks and a half-dead plant Dennis insists is “still emotionally present.” It’s subtle there. Not hidden, but not overpowering either. Just a small, steady reminder.
The kitchen gets the colored glass jars. Pink, blue, green, yellow, and violet sit along the windowsill between Trinity’s neglected basil plant and a mug full of pens. When the sun hits them, they scatter color across the counter.
“That’s pretty,” Trinity says.
Dennis gasps. “A genuine compliment from Trinity Santos. Someone document this.”
“I’m going to throw you out the window.”
“We’re on the third floor.”
“Then it’ll be memorable.”
The hallway gets little star and moon decals near the light switch, just enough to make the narrow space feel less forgotten. Your room gets the extra strand of warm lights above your desk. Dennis drapes the striped blanket over the ugly chair, and somehow, against all odds, the chair starts to look intentional.
“I hate that the chair looks good,” Trinity says.
Dennis pats the armrest proudly. “She just needed someone to believe in her.”
By late afternoon, there’s paint on the floor, wrappers all over the coffee table, and color catching on nearly every surface. You paint cheap canvases on newspaper. Dennis makes a messy bi-colored abstract piece and gets purple paint on his cheek. Trinity paints something in pink, orange, and white, her old gymnast precision showing in every careful sweep of her wrist. You try to paint a clean rainbow, but the colors bleed at the edges.
You like it more that way.
“It’s messy,” you say.
Dennis looks over. “So are we.”
Trinity nods. “He has a point.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dennis says.
The pizza arrives as the sun starts to lower. You eat on the floor because the coffee table is covered in drying canvases. Dennis gets sauce on his shirt. Trinity steals two crusts from his plate and denies it while actively chewing.
The apartment smells like paint, pizza, coffee, and warm lights.
It smells like home.
As evening settles, the room softens. The string lights glow brighter. The Pittsburgh print looks warmer in the dimness. The colored jars still catch the last bit of sun. The ugly chair sits proudly beneath its blanket, suddenly less ugly than beloved.
Trinity leans against the couch, sitting on the floor with her legs stretched out. She has paint on her forearm and one sock half off.
“I didn’t realize how much I needed this,” she says.
You and Dennis both look at her.
“A place that feels safe,” she continues. “Not just somewhere to sleep. Not just somewhere to keep my stuff.” Her jaw tightens for a second. “I’ve never really had that.”
Dennis doesn’t joke.
He looks down at his paint-stained hands. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Same.”
Trinity reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. He leans into it without thinking.
You look around the room. At the lights. The crooked print. The painted canvases. The one small flag on the bookshelf. The colored shadows in the kitchen. The proof of all three of you everywhere.
“I’ve had places to live,” you say. “But I don’t think I’ve had this.”
Dennis shifts closer until his shoulder presses against yours.
“We should make a pact,” he says.
Trinity turns her head. “A pact?”
“This place stays safe,” Dennis says. “Bad shifts, bad dates, terrible cafeteria food, emotional breakdowns, whatever. This is the safe place.”
Your throat tightens.
Trinity’s face softens with something fierce. “Deal.”
“Deal,” you say.
Dennis lifts his hand. “Pinky swear.”
Trinity stares at him. “Absolutely not.”
Two seconds later, all three of you are pinky swearing in the softly lit living room.
Dennis nods solemnly. “Legally binding.”
“That’s not how law works,” you say.
“It is here.”
Later, after Trinity and Dennis disappear into their rooms, you stand alone in the living room.
The string lights are still on. The couch looks softer with the pillows. The print hangs above it, just slightly crooked. The small flag rests on the bookshelf, quiet and certain. The whole apartment seems to breathe easier.
Your phone buzzes.
Mel: “How did decorating go?”
You take a picture of the room before you can overthink it. The lights. The couch. The print. The drying canvases. The colored glow in the kitchen.
You send it.
Mel replies almost immediately.
Mel: “Oh wow.”
Mel: “That looks beautiful.”
Mel: “The lighting is really good. Soft but still colorful. It makes the room feel warm instead of busy.”
You smile.
Those were your suggestions.
Mel: “I’m glad it worked. I love the skyline print too. It makes the whole room feel anchored.”
Mel: “Sorry, I’m analyzing your apartment.”
“Please do. It’s cute.”
The typing bubble appears, then disappears, then appears again.
Mel: “I’m glad you think it’s cute.”
Your face goes hot.
“I do.”
Another message appears.
Mel: “I like talking to you outside of work.”
You press your lips together, smiling.
“I like talking to you too.”
Mel: “Good.”
Mel: “Also, your apartment looks like love lives there.”
You stop for a second.
Because that’s it.
The apartment isn’t perfect. The fridge still sounds like it’s plotting something. The coffee table is still unstable. The kitchen is still too small. But love lives here. It lives in Trinity’s blunt care and Dennis’s terrible jokes. It lives in the crooked print, the paint on your clothes, the warm lights, and the one small flag tucked safely on the shelf.
You type carefully.
“You should come see it in person. Maybe next weekend? We could do dinner. All of us.”
The typing bubble appears.
Mel: “I’d really like that.”
Mel: “I’m off Saturday.”
“Saturday works.”
Mel: “Is this a friend dinner or a date dinner or a group dinner with possible date implications? I’m asking because I like clarity, but I’m okay with any of those answers.”
You laugh softly.
“Possible date implications, if that’s okay.”
For a second, nothing happens.
Then:
Mel: “That’s very okay.”
Mel: “I’m smiling a lot right now, and I need to go listen to music because I’m getting overwhelmed in a good way.”
“Same.”
Mel: “Goodnight. Your apartment really does look beautiful.”
“Goodnight, Mel.”
You set your phone down and cover your face with both hands.
From Dennis’s room, muffled but unmistakable, comes, “Did she say yes?”
You laugh. “Go to sleep, Dennis!”
“That’s a yes!” he shouts. “Trinity! Mel’s coming over!”
Trinity’s door opens. “Really?”
“Really. Saturday.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then Trinity says, warm and smug, “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Dennis gasps. “Does that make me Dad?”
“No,” you and Trinity say at the same time.
“Deeply hurtful,” Dennis says.
“Goodnight, Huckleberry,” Trinity calls.
“Goodnight, emotionally unavailable lesbian.”
“I heard that.”
“You were supposed to.”
Their doors close again, and the apartment settles.
You look around one more time.
The lights. The art. The color. The proof that you were here and that you were no longer hiding.
This is the safest place you’ve ever had.
Not because nothing bad can reach it. The hospital will still follow all of you home sometimes. The world will still be sharp. There will still be bad shifts, grief that sticks, and mornings where the alarm comes too early.
But this place is yours.
Yours and Trinity’s and Dennis’s.
A place where Trinity can be blunt and soft in the same breath. Where Dennis can be loud, scared, ridiculous, and loved anyway. Where you can text Mel King with your heart in your throat and somehow get tenderness back.
A place where love lives.
You turn off the string lights and walk down the hall to your room.
The extra strand above your desk glows faintly. The city hums outside the window. Somewhere down the hall, Dennis laughs at something on his phone, and Trinity tells him to go to sleep.
Tomorrow, you’ll go back to the Pitt. Back to trauma bays, alarms, patient boards, too much coffee, and the strange ache of helping people on the worst days of their lives.
But you’ll come back here.
To the ugly chair with its soft blanket.
To Trinity’s hammer by the door because apparently one of you is an adult.
To Dennis’s terrible operation names.
To the warm lights.
To the safest place any of you have ever had.
As you drift toward sleep, smiling into your pillow, you think that maybe home isn’t something you find all at once.
Maybe it’s something you build.
One light, one joke, one crooked picture, one brave text at a time.
tags: mentor jack abbot x mentor michael robinavitch x mentee reader, angst, hurt/comfort, burnt out reader, only child, high parental expectations, judgmental parents, it has to hurt before it can get better, the need to run to grow
notes: well....after orbiter i kinda binged listened to more noah kahan, so if you demand paid therapy talk to him not me, like always if you enjoy getting your emotions pulverized and built back together, putting my phd in daddy issues to good use, please comment on this post to be added to my permanent taglist!
extra: made sure to get all the h's in Pittsburgh for my anon here
word count: 8.5k
The Pitt existed in a constant state of controlled disaster. Every hallway carried noise. Every room carried urgency. It breathed around you like a living thing with stretchers rattling over worn tile floors, trauma pages shrieking overhead, nurses calling for labs over the phone while exhausted residents moved from room to room with coffee-stained charts tucked beneath their arms. The overhead light cast everything in the same washed-out brightness that made it impossible to tell whether it was four in the afternoon or four in the morning, and by the twelfth hour of your shift, time itself had begun to feel slippery and unreal.
You had learned to survive inside the madness long before you had learned how to survive anywhere else.
Only a year into residency, most people in the department knew you as the resident who never stopped moving. You picked up extra shifts before anyone could ask. You stayed late without complaint. You volunteered for difficult patients, difficult procedures, and even more difficult families. If someone needed help, you were already there before your name was called.
Nurses adored you for it. Attendings trusted you because of it. Med students followed after you like ducklings because despite your exhaustion, despite the permanent shadows beneath your eyes and the way your hands occasionally shook after eighteen-hour shifts, you were patients with them in a way few residents still had the energy to be.
But Jack and Robby knew better.
That was the most unfortunate thing about being mentored by two men who noticed everything.
You had somehow ended up under both of their wings during your first terrifying months at the Pitt, though neither of them would probably describe it that way aloud. Jack had claimed you first, in a sense. He had been the one to sit beside you after your first patient death that happened to be right as he walked in for handoffs, talking softly while you stared blankly at the vending machine in the waiting area because you couldn’t stop hearing the flatline in your head. Somewhere between that moment and now, he had somehow become the person who checked whether you’d eaten, who remembered the names of your difficult patients, who bumped his shoulder against yours after bad shifts and told you quietly that you did good work before your brain could convince you otherwise.
Robby had been different.
Robby mentored you the way sharpened steel honed another blade: precise, observant, relentless in a way that had terrified you initially because he missed absolutely nothing. He corrected your charting with brutal efficiency, expected excellence without excuse, and had a habit of standing silently behind you during procedures until your nerves nearly gave out completely. Yet somehow, beneath all of that intimidating composure, he had become one of the few people whose approval genuinely mattered to you. Maybe because it had been hard-earned. Maybe because when Robby praised someone, it actually meant something.
Together, the two of them had slowly turned into the closest thing you had to stability inside and outside the hospital.
Which was dangerous, really, because it meant they noticed things you desperately wanted hidden.
“You’re doing it again,” Jack’s voice cut through your concentration softly enough that you nearly missed it beneath the noise of the department.
You looked up from the computer at the nurses’ station to find him leaning against the counter beside you, early like always, salt and pepper curls slightly flattened and damp like he’d just stepped out of the shower and only ran a towel over them without any added products. There was a coffee cup balanced carelessly in one hand and a familiar look on his face that instantly made your stomach sink.
“What?”
“You’re clenching your jaw.” He pointed toward your face. “You only do that when you haven’t eaten like biting your cheek is going to magically fill your stomach.”
You looked back down at the chart in front of you, tearing your eyes away from his hazel ones. “I ate.”
He snorted quietly. “You are genuinely one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.”
“I had half a muffin,” you confessed.
“Was that before or after noon?”
You didn’t answer and that in itself was answer enough to make the man sigh dramatically before reaching into the pocket of his jacket and producing a protein bar that he slid across the counter in your way. The gesture was so practiced now it almost embarrassed you, because somewhere along the way, Jack had apparently decided monitoring your nutritional intake had become his person responsibility.
“You know,” he said casually, “most people usually eat more than vending machine crumbs during a twelve-hour shift.”
“I’m busy.”
“So is everybody else.”
You finally glanced up at him, an argument resting on your tongue, but the words died behind your teeth because he was looking at you with that same unbearably gentle concern he always wore whenever he thought you were running yourself into the ground again.
It disarmed you every single damn time.
Before you could force out another excuse, a trauma alert rang overhead sharp enough to snap the entire department into motion.
“Trauma two, ambulance bay. ETA two minutes.”
Jack straightened automatically. Across the department, you caught sight of Robby (who was supposed to already be gone) already moving toward the trauma room while barking instructions to a nurse beside him, his expression shifting seamlessly into focused command.
“Come on,” Jack said, but you were already following.
Moments later, the patient arrived unconscious after a multi-car collision, blood soaking through gauze wrapped hastily around his abdomen while paramedics rattled off vitals over the anxiousness of the group. The trauma room exploded into movement the second the stretcher crossed the threshold. Nurses shifted around each other with practiced efficiency, monitors shrieked intermittently, and beside you Robby’s voice remained impossibly calm.
“Pressure?”
“Dropping.”
“Get another line in.”
You slipped into place near the patient’s shoulder, adrenaline replacing exhaustion as your gloved hands moved through familiar motions. Your mind always quieted during trauma cases. There wasn’t room for self-doubt when someone’s life was actively bleeding out in front of you.
Robby glanced toward you briefly while adjusting his gloves. “You’re on airway.”
You nodded once.
Years ago in med school, the assignment would’ve terrified you enough to make you freeze even with an attending helping you through it. Now you moved through muscle memory, repetition overriding fear. To your left, Jack handed over supplied before stepping in to stabilize the patient’s chest.
The three of you worked together seamlessly by now: one of the problems with mentorship built over too many sleepless nights and too many near disasters; you learned each other’s rhythms too well. Jack knew exactly where your confidence faltered during procedures. Robby knew when you were overcompensating by volunteering for more than you could realistically handle. Both of them knew the particular silence tat settled over you after difficult phone calls from home.
Neither had ever pushed too hard about those.
That is until now.
The trauma stabilized eventually after what felt like hours compressed into minutes. Once the patience was sent upstairs, the adrenaline drained out of your body so suddenly it left you dizzy. Your head pounded faintly behind your eyes. You realized belatedly you were running entirely on caffeine and anxiety.
No one noticed when you slipped quietly down the hallway toward the supply closet near the back of the ER.
Or at least, you thought no one noticed.
The closet was cramped and dimly lit, packed floor-to-ceiling with stacked saline boxes and extra linens. It smelled faintly like antiseptic and cardboard. You leaned back heavily against the shelving unit with your eyes closed, fingers pressing hard against your temples while you tried to steady your breathing.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale—
Your phone buzzed wildly in your pocket, and the same lighting up the screen had your stomach dropping.
Mom.
For a brief moment, you considered ignore it entirely. But years of guilt and obligation had conditioned your body to respond before your brain could argue otherwise.
You answered quietly. “Hi.”
“There you are,” you mother said, her irritation bleeding through the speaker. “I’ve been calling.”
You closed your eyes harder. “I’m at work.”
“Well, forgive me for wanting to hear from my daughter.”
In the background, you could hear the television from your parents’ living room playing faintly. The sound hit you with sudden painful familiarity. You could practically picture the entire scene despite being hundreds of miles away: your father in his recliner, your mother pacing the kitchen while holding the phone too tightly.
“How’s the hospital?” she asked.
“Tiring.”
Your father’s voice cut in from somewhere behind her. “Still pretending to be a hotshot doctor?”
His words landed exactly where they always did, making your bottom lip wobble before you trapped it under teeth.
You swallowed carefully. “I’m not pretending.”
He laughed once under his breath. “Right.”
Silence stretched. The voices on the TV laughed. You slid slowly down the unit until you were sitting on the floor between the shelf and stacked boxes, exhaustion suddenly pressing into your bones with unbearable heaviness.
“We just worry about you,” your mother continued, though the concern in her voice always came wrapped in something sharper. “You sound miserable every time we talk.”
“Everyone’s the same, Mom. That’s residency.”
“No,” your father snapped, voice now closer and louder in the phone. “That’s what happens when somebody spends their whole life chasing things they were never meant for.”
Your chest tightened painfully as footsteps approached quietly down the hallway outside the supply closet. You didn’t notice.
“You could’ve stayed here,” your mother said. “You could’ve worked somewhere smaller. Normal. But no, you always just had to prove something.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“Aren’t you?” your father snarked back. “You think these people actually see you as one of them? You think you belong in that fancy hospital?”
Your throat burned.
No matter how many patients trusted you, no matter how much Jack and Robby praised your work, no matter how many lives you helped save, some small broken part of you still believed him.
You stared numbly at the floor tiles beneath your shoes, eyes blinking away tears and failing.
“I have to go,” you whispered.
“Of course you do,” your mother replied sharply. “Work matters more than family again.”
The call ended before you could pull the phone away from your ear. Quiet swallowed the room afterward so completely that the distant sounds of the emergency department suddenly felt muffled and far away. Your grip tightened painfully around your phone while humiliation and exhaustion tangled together so tightly in your chest it became difficult to breathe.
When the closet door opened suddenly, your head jerked upward.
Jack stood there first, one hand resting against the handle. The concern on his face hit you like a physical blow because it wasn’t pity. Somehow thought, pity would have been easier to stomach instead of the open heartbreak painted across his face.
Robby stood just behind him, arms folded tightly across his chest, jaw visibly tense beneath his incoming beard.
Neither man spoke right away, which told you that they heard enough. The thought made heat blood your face.
“I’m fine,” you blurted out, the response almost automatic and reflexive.
Jack’s expression only softened further. “You’re sitting on the floor of a supply closet.”
You tried to laugh weakly. “Needed a minute.”
Robby’s gaze remained fixed on you with clinical precision, but there was anger simmering under his composure now. You could tell it wasn’t directed at you but outwards to the voices he’d overheard tearing pieces of out of somebody he had spent years trying to build back up.
“How long has that been going on?” he asked quietly.
Your eyes went back down to the flooring. “It’s not a big deal.”
Jack exhaled slowly through his nose. “You don’t believe that.”
The gentleness in his voice nearly undid you more than the phone call itself had. You always hated this part most, the unbearable vulnerability of being seen clearly by people you respected. Jack and Robby had watched you become a doctor piece by piece. They had seen you at three in the morning after losing patients. Seen you shaking before procedures. Seen you exhausted, angry, frightened, overworked. And along the way, they had also noticed the deeper wound beneath all of it:
The one you spent most of your life trying to hide.
Robby stepped forward and crouched slightly so he was closer to eye level, his voice remaining calm and even in the way it always did when he was trying very hard to not overwhelm patients.
“You are one of the best residents in this department,” he said plainly. “You know that right?”
The laugh that followed came out thin and humorless. “Sure.”
“I’m serious.”
“I think as my attending you have to say that.”
“No. I really don’t.”
Jack stepped further inside the closet before leaning back carefully against the shelves opposite of you. “You stayed two hours past shift last week helping an uninsured patient figure out medication access because you knew nobody else would. You caught a pulmonary embolism every other resident missed in triage. Half the med students here want to be you when they graduate.”
You stared down at your hands because looking at either of them suddenly hurt too much. Whatever they said didn’t matter against the voices you’d been hearing your entire life. Robby seemed to recognize that quickly as sadness settled under his frustration.
“They’re wrong about you,” he said softly. “So very wrong”
Tears now burned at your eyes because, honestly, no one had ever said that to you before. Not friends. Not professors. Not even yourself.
Jack’s voice softened even further. “You do not have to destroy yourself to prove that you have the right to be here.”
Your face must have cracked at that because both men went still as the terrible truth sat openly between all three of you: you genuinely didn’t know how to exist without earning your worth first.
_______________________
Robby’s office always smelled faintly like burned coffee and old paper.
You noticed that before anything else when you stepped hesitantly through the partially open door, your stomach already twisted tight with anxiety from the brief message Dana had relayed twenty minutes earlier.
Robby wants to see you in his office.
Which, in your experience usually meant one of three things: you charted something incorrectly, you had forgotten something important, or someone had died.
By the time you reached the office, your pulse had worked itself into a miserable rapid flutter under your ribs despite trying to convince yourself you were overreacting. The Pitt swallowed the rest of the noise, leaving behind a small ringing in your ears. Robby’s office felt strangely isolated from all of it.
Behind his desk, Robby sat with his reading glasses low on his nose, flipping through a stack of papers with the same composed concentration he approached nearly everything with. The desk lamp cast warm yellow light across the room, softening the harshness of the hospital fluorescents filtering in through the blinds. A half-finished cup of coffee sat forgotten near his elbow beside several patient charts and an open laptop screen crowded with emails.
He looked up when you entered.
“There you are,” he said warmly. “Close the door.”
Your stomach dropped further.
You obeyed instantly, fingers tightening around the strap of your bag as the door clicked softly shut behind you. For a moment, neither of you spoke. Robby returned his attention firefly to the papers in front of him while you remained awkwardly hovering near the doorway trying not to catastrophize every possibly outcome.
Your brain, against your best wished, supplied several anyway.
You replayed the last few shifts rapidly in your head searching for mistakes. Had you missed a lab? Forgotten an order? Spoken too sharply to a nurse during trauma intake? The anxiety sat so naturally in your body now that panic felt less like an emotion and more like muscle memory.
“You can sit down,” Robby said after a moment, finally glancing back up at you.
“Oh. Right.”
You skittered across the office and lowered yourself carefully down into the chair across from his desk, posture still rigid with apprehension. Robby watched you for a long moment over the rim of his glasses.
“You think you’re in trouble.”
His observation landed embarrassingly accurate.
You opened your mouth automatically. “Am I?”
To your surprise, something almost amused flashed briefly across his face. “No.”
The tension in your shoulders loosened slightly, though not fully. Years of criticism had taught your nervous system not to trust relief too quickly.
Robby leaned back in his chair slowly, folding his hands together atop the desk. “How long have you been considering fellowship programs outside Pennsylvania?”
Your breath caught. The question hit so directly you genuinely didn’t know how to answer for a second. The trust was humiliating in its own way. You had been considering them for months in secret, in the privacy of late nights and exhausted internet searches and moments where Pittsburgh suddenly felt too small for the life you wanted but had never allowed yourself to reach.
Sometimes after difficult shifts, you would sit alone in your apartment scrolling through fellowship programs across the country just to imagine it for a moment. California. Seattle. Boston. Places so impossibly far away they barely felt real. Hospitals attached to research institutions and trauma centers bigger than anything you’d ever known. Places where no one knew your parents. Places where your entire history wouldn’t already be waiting for you before you arrived.
But then guilt would settle almost immediately afterward.
You would close the tabs, delete the searches, and clock in the next day without thinking of leaving. Because wanting to leave felt selfish. And because some part of you still couldn’t imagine being brave enough to actually go.
Your hands folded tightly in your lap. “I haven’t really.”
Robby remained entirely unconvinced. “You’re a terrible liar.”
The words startled an unwilling laugh out of you despite your nerves. Jack was the one to usually say that not him. At the sound, Robby’s face melted before he reached for a folder sitting near the corner of his desk.
“I got a call last week,” he said hesitantly, almost like he was testing the waters. “From a colleague at Harborview.”
Your heartbeat stumbles.
Harborview.
Seattle.
Clear across the country.
You stared at him silently as the office suddenly became too warm.
He slid the folder across the desk toward you, the paper catching slightly against the grain before stopping directly in front of your hands. You looked down slowly, eyes catching and widening at the sight of the logo at the top that belonged to one of the most prestigious trauma centers in the country.
And below it, your name was written in Robby’s perfect penmanship.
Something cold and electric moved down your spine all at once. Your fingers hesitated against the edge of the folder before opening it carefully. Inside sat printed information about the fellowship program alongside a letter clipped neatly to the front.
A recommendation letter.
Signed by Michael Robinavitch, MD
Your eyes caught only fragments at first because your pulse had become unbearably loud in your ears. What he had written brought tears to your lash line.
Exceptional clinical instincts . . .
Among the most promising residents . . .
Demonstrates rare emotional intelligence under pressure . . .
Would excel in any institution fortunate to train them . . .
Your throat tightened at you looked up too quickly. “You—”
“I submitted it three days ago,” Robby confessed quietly.
Shock hit first. Then confusion. Then something dangerously close to hurt.
“You sent this without asking me?”
Robby held your gaze steadily. “Yes.”
It felt almost impossible to breath because this—this was the dream, wasn’t it? This was something you had secretly wanted for so long it physically ached sometimes. An escape route handed gently into your trembling hands. A chance at something bigger than the life you’d been told to settle for.
So why did it suddenly feel a little like grief too?
“You want me to leave?” you asked before you could stop yourself.
Robby’s face dropped slightly. “No.”
“Then why would you—”
“Because you were never going to do it yourself.”
You looked back down at the letter because suddenly meeting his eyes felt unmanageable. You had spent so long imagining leaving that you never truly prepared yourself for the possibility someone else might believe you capable of it too.
Robby leaned forward in his chair, head tilting to try to meet your eyes. “You belong somewhere like this. You know that.”
You laughed under your breath, the sound fragile in and of itself. “My parents would lose their minds.”
Robby’s jaw tightened as he said your name. “This isn’t about your parents.”
Except it always was. Every choice, every opportunity, every dream carefully cut down before it could grow too large to reach.
You swallowed hard against the sudden pressure building in your throat. “Seattle is across the country.”
“I’m aware.”
“I don’t know anyone there.”
“You would.”
The certainty in his voice hurt unexpected because it implied something you still struggled to believe yourself: that people would want you there. You stared down at the recommendation letter, vision beginning to blur slightly.
“You really think I could do this?”
“I think,” he started, “you’ve spent your entire life making yourself smaller for other people.”
Your breath hitched again.
“You are one of the best doctors I’ve had to privilege to train,” he continued. “And if you stay here because you’re afraid of disappointing people who will never be satisfied anyway, you’re going to wake up in ten years from now wondering what happened to your life.”
His words landed with devastating precision because deep down, under all the fear and guilt and fatigue, you had already wondered that yourself.
Robby’s kind, brown eyes held yours. “You’re getting smaller here.”
The office felt unbearable quiet now except for the faint hum of his fan and the occasional muffled announcement from the ER outside.
Finally, your voice came out barely above a whisper. “What if I fail?”
He looked at you the same way he looked at difficult trauma cases; not dismissing the fear but refusing to let it dictate the outcome. He wasn’t going to let you walk away from this because you were scared.
“Then you fail,” he said simply. “And you survive it.”
Failure had always sounded catastrophic in your parents’ voices. Permanent. Proof that they had been right all along.
But with how Robby said it, it felt like it was survivable and human.
For the first time, the possibility of leaving didn’t feel entirely impossible anymore. It felt terrifying yes, but also maybe worth it all anyway.
_______________________
The emergency department had somehow managed to pause for you.
Not fully, of course. The Pitt never truly stopped moving. But for once, the chaos had shifted itself long enough to make room for something softer.
You stood near the center of the department feeling almost painfully aware of yourself while half the ER crowded around the nurses’ station holding vending machine snacks, cafeteria cupcakes, and paper coffee cups lifted in celebration. Someone had dragged over a flimsy folding table covered in sheet cake with GOOD LUCK written across it in slightly smeared blue icing. Balloons bobbled lazily near the ceiling tiles, looking deeply out of place in the harsh lighting.
It was absurd, embarrassing, and almost humiliating. And somehow it nearly made you cry.
“You look terrified.” Jack’s voice appeared beside you through the noise, warm amusement threading easily into his words.
You glanced sideways to find him balancing two plastic cups of terrible hospital punch while watching you with barely concealed fondness. “I hate this,” you muttered under your breath.
“You absolutely do not.”
“I’m being publicly perceived.”
Jack snorted softly before handing you one of the drinks. “Tragic.”
Across the department, several nurses had cornered Robby near the charting computers demanding he say something resembling a speech. Judging by the look on his face, he would’ve preferred active physical violence.
“You trained them,” Dana was insisting firmly.
“So did literally anyone else here,” Robby replied.
“Yeah, but you’re the scary one, so it’ll mean more.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the staff nearby while Robby looked profoundly unamused by this logic.
Your chest tightened unexpected as you watched your surroundings unfold in the familiar faces, the exhausted laughter, the warmth threaded through the department despite another endless shift looming only hours away. The Pitt had become something dangerously close to home somewhere along the way. Not because the work was easy—God knew it wasn’t. But because these people had seen every broken terrified version of you and stayed anyway.
And now you were leaving them; the thought still felt surreal even after the acceptance calls, even after signing the paperwork, even after the official announcement against your will that you would be joining one of the most prestigious trauma fellowship programs in the country at Harborview in Seattle.
Seattle.
The word still startled you. It was so far from Pittsburgh that it barely felt attached to your real life at all.
A resident from across the department raised his coffee cup toward you. “You know how insane this is, right?”
Heat flooded your face. “Please don’t start.”
“No, seriously,” Perlah chimed in. “Do you know how many people would kill for that placement?”
“You’re representing the Pitt now,” Princess added proudly.
Her sentence lodged itself awkwardly beneath your ribs. Representing the Pitt. You weren’t escaping it, weren’t abandoning it, but representing it. You looked instinctive toward Robby. As if he sensed it, his gaze lifted from across the room and settled briefly on yours. His features softened for a half a second before Dana shoved a plastic knife into his hand and demanded he cut the cake already.
Jack bumped his shoulder lightly against yours. “You should probably enjoy this.”
You laughed weakly. “I’m trying.”
“You’re spiraling internally.”
“I’m always spiraling internally.”
“Fair enough.”
The familiar ease of the conversation helped settled your nerves slightly, though not enough to stop the overwhelming ache building slowly in your chest. You kept catching yourself looking around the department like you were trying to memorize it all before it disappeared: the trauma bay doors, the faded blue walls near triage, the nurses’ station where you had spent countless night charting beside Jack while Robb criticized your caffeine intake with hypocritical seriousness.
This place had watched you become someone, and now it was letting you go.
A few hours later, after the cake had been mostly demolished and the department slowly returned to its normal rhythm, you found yourself cornered near the supply station by Perlah and Princess aggressively insisting you take leftovers home.
“You’re too skinny for Seatle,” Princess informed you.
“I don’t think that’s how geography works,” you replied.
Before they could continue, Jack appeared suddenly at your elbow. “Borrowing them,” he announced.
Perlah narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “For what?”
“Secret attending business.”
“That sounds fake.”
“It is fake,” you admitted.
Jack ignored the three of you and jerked his head toward the hallway. “Come on.”
Confusion washed over you, but you followed him anyway. A few feet ahead, Robby waited near the elevators with his hands tucked into the pockets of his zip up jacket. The second he saw the two of you approaching, he pressed the button for the elevator without explanation.
You frowned slightly. “Am I being murdered?”
“Probably,” Jack teased.
“Good to know.”
Robby simply shook his head tiredly as the elevator doors slid open. Neither man explained anything during the ride upward. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but it carried a strange weight to it that settled gradually over your shoulders the higher the elevator climbed. Your pulse quickened with anticipation and something sadder underneath it.
The roof access door creaked loudly when Jack shoved it opening, causing the cold night air to hit your face.
Pittsburgh stretched endlessly around you under the dark sky, the city glittering gold and white against the streets below while ambulance sirens echoed faintly off in the distance. The hospital roof had become something sacred over the years for exhausted staff members needing five minutes away from the noise downstairs. You had come up here after bad shifts before, after losing patients, about pulling doubles that left you too hollowed out to immediately drive home after.
Tonight, though, it felt different.
You stepped further onto the roof slowly while Jack let the heavy door slam shut behind him. The city wind tugged lightly at your jacket while your eyes drifted toward the skyline. Seattle suddenly feeling impossibly far away.
“You know,” Jack said quietly behind you, “you almost turned this down.”
You huffed softly. “I know.”
“And you’re still thinking about it.”
“I know.” The honestly slipped out before you could hold it back.
Despite everything—the excitement, the honor, the impossible opportunity—fear still lived stubbornly in your body. Fear of failing. Fear of disappointing everyone. Fear that your parents had been right all along and eventually someone at Harborview would realize they had made a mistake choosing you.
You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself against the cold. “I keep waiting for somebody to figure out I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Jack and Robby exchanged a brief glance behind you.
Robby sighted softly through his nose like the words physically pained him. “You know,” he said, “most arrogant doctors are the most terrible doctors.”
You glanced back toward him.
“However, the ones who question themselves,” he continued, “the ones who worry about failing . . . they’re usually the ones who care enough to become great doctors.”
You swallowed tears down thickly.
Jack stepped closer, pulling something oblong from the pocket of his jacket. “We got you something.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“We know,” Jack interrupted gently before holding the item out for you to take.
Your eyes dropped toward the object in his hands, and your heart fluttered.
A stethoscope.
It wasn’t hospital-issued, wasn’t cheap.
The instrument was beautiful with dark blue tubing catching faint city light beneath the skyline while silver detailing gleamed softly near the chest piece. You stared down at it wordlessly. For a second, you genuinely couldn’t breathe as you took it from him, fingers rubbing along the soft rubber.
“There’s something engraved on it,” Robby added softly.
Your fingers trembled slightly as you turned it over. Near the tubing junction, etched carefully into the metal in precise lettering, were four simple words:
Still in your corner.
The world blurred, and you swallowed hard against the sudden painful pressure in your throat while your thumb brushed shakily over the engraving again.
“Oh,” you whispered.
Neither Jack nor Robby spoke, which somehow made it all worse.
Your eyes burned fiercely as a tumble of emotions crashed through you all at once: gratitude, grief, fear, love so deep and overwhelming it physically hurt to carry.
“You take this with you,” Jack spoke softly but sternly. “Every interview. Every trauma. Every shift from hell.”
“And when you’re convinced that you’re failing,” Robby added, “you hold onto it and remember that two old guys from Pittsburgh already know exactly how capable you are.”
Your composure broke as you tried to laugh through the tears threatening your voice, eyes looking back down because crying in front of them still embarrassed you despite all the versions of you they’ve seen before.
“This is unfair,” you muttered, back of your hand wiping aggressively under your eyes.
Jack smiled sadly. “Yeah, probably.”
The stethoscope felt heavier in your hands than it should have only because of what it meant.
For so much of your life, support had always felt conditional, fragile, something that disappeared the second you disappointed people. But standing there on the hospital roof with a glowing Pittsburgh and cold night air nipping your skin, Jack and Robby were handing you something terrifyingly unfamiliar:
the certainty that even thousands of miles away, even if you struggled, even if you failed sometimes, even if Seattle became lonely and overwhelming and difficult, you would not lose them.
You pressed your fingers tighter around the tubing, Robby’s features softening as he watched you.
“You’re going to do extraordinary there,” he whispered.
Your eyes burned harder not because you fully believed him yet, but because you finally found yourself wanting to.
_______________________
The Pitt had changed in a thousand tiny ways over the years.
Some changes were obvious. Different residents moved through the halls now, newer faces slipping into routines that once belonged to people long gone from the Pitt. The trauma bays had newer monitors. The waiting room chairs had finally been replaced after years of complaints. Dana had somehow gained even less patience despite everyone previously believing that impossible.
Other changes felt quieter.
The kind you only noticed in passing moments.
Like how Robby still occasionally looked toward room six whenever an especially difficult trauma rolled through because that had always been your room somehow. Or how Jack still brough an extra coffee on his way in before remembering halfway through the line that you weren’t there to steal the extra one anymore.
Absence settled strangely into places once someone left them behind especially when they had mattered.
“Whitaker, if you touch that central line tray with your bare hands again, I’m revoking your ability to speak.”
“I literally wasn’t touching it. I merely glanced in its direction.”
“You were thinking about touching it.”
“I can’t believe this is my work environment.”
The familiar noise buzzed around Robby as he stood near the nurses’ station review labs on a tablet, exhaustion pressing heavily behind his eyes after hours’ worth of chaos. Nearby, Dana looked personally victimized by Dennis’s existence while Trinity tried unsuccessfully to hid her laughter behind a patient chart.
Victoria glanced up from the computer beside them. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I think Dana actually likes bullying him.”
Dana didn’t even look up from her paperwork. “Correct.”
Dennis pointed accusingly. “See?”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“That feels entirely unrelated.”
A tired smile tugged briefly at the corner of Robby’s mouth despite his best effort not to seem interested in the banter.
The newer residents had settled into the Pitt in their own messy way over the past year. Samira moved through rooms with sharp instinct and too much emotional attachment to sad patients. Frank boasted too much when nervous and somehow ended up charming most of the nursing staff because of it. Trinity hid startling clinical intelligence beneath dry sarcasm and exhaustion. Dennis had slipped into the department like he belonged there from the beginning, steady and observant in a way Robby respected immediately. And Mel blessed the Pitt with her soft voice that never seemed to sugar coat things but still had the ease to bring patients down from panic.
Different from your class but good.
Still, every once in a while, one of them would do something that reminded him painfully of you. Usually it happened when they stayed too late helping patients who technically weren’t their responsibility anymore.
Dana finally looked up from her charting. “You heard from your golden child lately?”
Robby sighed softy without looking away from the tablet. “They are not my golden child.”
“Sure they are.”
Dennis looked between them curiously. “Wait, who?”
Dana said your name as she casually leaned against the counter. “Former resident. Robby and Abbot’s favorite.”
“We—I don’t have favorites.”
“You still bring them up during trauma reviews.”
“It’s educational.”
“No, Cap, that’s emotional attachment.”
Robby shot her a flat look while several residents nearby became more interested.
“Hold on,” Frank said, glancing up from his chart. “This is the one from Seattle, right?”
His sentence caught everyone’s attention; even Jack’s, who had just wandered back into the department carrying two coffees and the stagger of a man who maybe got 5 hours of sleep before heading back into work.
“Who’s talking about Seattle?” he asked.
Dana pointed toward Robby. “I asked how your kid was doing.”
“Oh,” he answered, face dropping all sharpness and melting into something melancholy at the thought of you.
Trinity blinked between the two attendings. “Okay, now I need context because both of you suddenly look like divorced parents at a graduation.”
Samira, bless her heart, nodded along. “Seriously. Who are they?”
The two men glanced at each other before taking breathing out a synchronous sigh before Robby set the tablet down against the counter.
“They were probably one of the best residents the Pitt has had,” he said.
Mel’s eyebrows raised. “That good?”
Robby crossed his arms loosely and nodded. “Top of their class. Exceptional under pressure. Trauma instincts most attendings would kill for.”
“And terrifyingly hardworking,” Jack added while handing one of the coffees to Dana. “Like, genuinely concerning levels of hardworking.”
“I once found them charting with a concussion,” Dana mentioned.
The small group all looked horrified.
“That cannot be real,” Trinity spoke.
“It was absolutely real,” Jack confirmed. “They tried to tell us they were ‘fine’ while their head actively bled through gauze.”
Victoria let out an impressed laugh. “Okay, that’s kind of iconic.”
“It was deeply annoying,” Robby corrected even though there was an unmistakable fondness in his tone. “The kid wouldn’t just stay down.”
Mel tilted her head slightly. “So why’d they leave?”
Jack leaned back against the counter next to Robby, hazel eyes drifting absently toward the trauma bay doors like you’d step through them in the next moment. “They got offered a fellowship at Harborview. Trauma surgery.”
Trinity’s eyes widened. “Harborview?”
“Yeah.”
“Holy shit.”
Frank looked genuinely stunned. “That’s insane.”
The corner of Robby’s mouth tugged upward. “They deserved it.”
Mel studied the two attendings quietly for a second before speaking. “You miss them.”
Jack huffed something similar to a quiet laugh. “Turns out when somebody spends years haunting your ER, you noticed when they’re gone.”
Trinity pointed her pen toward him. “See? Divorced parents.”
Jack’s eyebrows pinched. “Nobody’s divorced.”
“You’re coparenting emotionally.”
Robby pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly while Dennis nearly choked laughing.
However, underneath all the humor, their ache remained. Because the truth was you’d been gone for years. Seattle had become your life. Harborview. Research publications. National conferences. Cases more complex than anything the Pitt could ever offer Every once in a while, Dana would forward an article mentioning your name, and the entire department would pass it around like proud relatives.
Look at them!
Look how far they’ve made it!
Yet whether you’d ever come back was always a lingering uncertainty that threaded with their pride.
Jack stared absently into his coffee for a moment before smiling faintly to himself. “You know they still call Robby before major procedures.”
A look of irritation crossed Robby’s face. “That happened once.”
“Three times.”
“Four,” Dana corrected helpfully.
Robby looked personally betrayed.
Samira grinned. “Wait, seriously?”
Jack nodded. “Middle of the night sometimes. They’ll panic about a surgery complication and call him like he’s Google MD.”
“That is adorable.”
“It is not.”
“It’s extremely adorable,” Dana cheesed.
“Seems like you really love them,” Dennis added after watching Robby try to hide a fond smile.
Robby simply shrugged. “They’re worth loving.”
Everyone in emergency medicine understood what he meant. To train someone, watch them grow, lose sleep over them, fight for them, and let them leave anyway because loving them properly meant wanting more for them than you could personally give had to mean something.
“They’re doing good things out there,” Jack said softly.
Beneath their sadness of missing you, beneath the uncertainty of whether Pittsburgh would ever become home for you again, there was still steady, undeniable, endless, and unwavering pride that blossomed in their voices whenever your name came up.
And that was more than some could even wish for.
_______________________
The Pitt sounded exactly the same.
That was the first thing you noticed standing just outside the ambulance bay entrance beside Gloria, fingers curled tightly around the strap of your bag while your pulse thudded unevenly beneath your ribs. Even through the sliding doors, you could hear the department breathing in a familiar rhythm with distant overhead pages crackling through speakers, monitors beeping deeper into the ER, phones ringing near the nurses’ station, and voices overlapping one another beneath the constant movement of gurneys against tile floors.
For years after leaving Pittsburgh, those sounds haunted you a little like a phantom limb and memories stitched into your nervous system.
Seattle had its own rhythm. Harborview had become home in many ways over the years in its trauma rooms, its residents, the skyline outside your apartment after long shifts. You had built an entirely life there; a very successful one; the kind of life younger you used to ache for so badly it hurt.
But the Pitt still lived deep in your bones.
You swallowed thickly.
Gloria glanced sideways at you as she pushed open the ambulance bay doors. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I might,” you answered truthfully.
“That’s reassuring from our new attending.”
“I haven’t been back here in years.”
“You’ve also performed surgery on people with rebar through their chest cavities without breaking a sweat.”
“That was highly dramatized.”
Gloria laughed softly before stepping fully into the department.
Warm light spilled over your instantly. The familiar smell of antiseptic, coffee, and stale hospital air wrapped around your senses so quickly your chest tightened. The ER stretched before you exactly as you remembered. And somehow, despite all the years apart, your body still knew this place instinctively.
No one noticed you at first which was good; you weren’t entirely sure your heart could survive being perceived so quickly.
Gloria guided you quietly toward the side of the nurses’ station while staff rushed around nearby. A sleepy looking blond stood half-asleep beside a computer while a brunette argued with Dana about discharge paperwork. A young, dark-skinned med student leaned against the counter drinking matcha with an expression of someone reconsidering every life choice that brought her into emergency medicine.
And across the department, Robby stood at the center of handoff looking so tired enough that your chest ached on instinct for him. He looked older than when you left, all worn down in the way emergency medicine wore people down eventually. His sleeves were rolled unevenly to his elbows, stethoscope hanging crookedly around his neck while he scanned through a chart with quiet concentration. The sight hit you harder than expected because memories came rushing back all at once.
For years after the move, there were still moments you caught yourself thinking: I should ask Robby what’d he do.
Some habits never left.
He looked up briefly while continuing handoff, entirely unaware you were standing barely twenty feet away watching him.
"We’re short two nurses today,” he said tiredly, glancing between the residents gathered around him. “Which means nobody gets to psychologically unravel until after noon.”
The sleepy blond raised a hand weakly. “Can I schedule mine in advance?”
“No, Whitaker, you cannot.”
“That feels very anti-worker.”
“You’re lucky we feed you,” Dana spoke up without looking away from her board.
Whitaker (now that his name had been provided) blinked. “We’re getting fed?”
Nearby, the brunette laughed while a man with a hairline people would fly to Turkey for shook his head behind a patient chart with visible amusement.
At the sight, a warmth settled low in your stomach. You had missed this—the Pitt and all its ramblings and teasing and ability to make someone feel comfortable in their own skin.
Robby flipped absently to another page in the chart before continuing. “Also, administration finally approved another attending for day-shift trauma coverage.”
That caught everyone’s attention.
The brunette straightened slightly. “Wait, seriously?”
“About time,” Dana muttered. “You’ve been stretched thin for far too long.”
Whitaker looked suspicious. “Are they normal?”
“No normal person willingly works here,” the dark-skinned med student said around her straw.
“Fair.”
Robby sucked in a deep breath, shaking his head. “I haven’t met them yet, but apparently they’re starting this morning, so please try not to scare them off immediately.”
Dana finally looked at him. “You say that like it’s our fault people quit.”
“It usually is.”
A ripple of tired laughter moved through the group.
Robby opened his mouth to say something again as he lifted his gaze, but his words died instantly on his tongue as his eyes found yours.
For one suspended second, the entire department seemed to blur around his face’s expression that changed through confusion first, then disbelief, before settling on something so sharp and emotional it nearly knocked the breath from your lungs even from across the room.
The chart lowered slowly in his hand, his feet already shuffling slowly toward you while everyone looked between you and him with confused wide eyes.
Michael Robinavitch didn’t freeze for anyone.
You smile before your nerves could completely betray you. “Hi, Robby.”
Whitaker frowned, eyes glancing between you too as he leaned closer to the brunette. “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m watching something deeply important?” he stage whispered.
Robby didn’t hear him. He stopped and stared at you like the floor had disappeared beneath him. “Kid?”
The nickname hit hard. No one in Seattle ever called you that. There, you were doctor, attending, colleague. Somewhere along the way, you had become someone polished and capable and frighteningly respected.
But one word from Robby and suddenly you felt twenty-six again, exhausted and terrified and trying desperately to prove you deserved to exist in this department.
“You’re here,” he said softly.
You giggled, eyes bright and glossy. “That’s usually how jobs work.”
That seemed to finally know him back into motion as he wrapped his arms around you and brought you into his chest. You all but melted into him, the smell of his cologne hitting warm in your nose. His cheek rested on the top of your head.
“You didn’t tell me,” he murmured.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, congrats; color me very surprised and very happy.”
Around you, the rest of them had gone nearly silent watching the interaction.
Dennis glanced wildly between everyone. “Hold on.”
Trinity’s eyes grew even bigger. “Oh. OH!”
Victoria slapped a hand over her mouth. “That’s them.”
Mel blinked slowly. “The Seattle one?”
You pulled back from Robby and looked over at Dana. “Am I hospital folklore?”
She nodded, eyes also glossy as she took you in over her silver frames. “You absolutely are.”
Dennis looked scandalized. “Wait, this is the resident you two keep talking about?”
Robby sighed softly without taking his eyes off you. “Apparently.”
“No, seriously,” Trinity cut in, staring openly now. “You’re like . . . Pitt mythology.”
A snort flew loudly through your nose. “That feel so dramatic.”
Hearing you laugh again seemed to physically settled something inside Robby as his face morphed into something prideful. His arm raised and wrapped around your shoulders, effectively pulling you back into his side with a smile.
It looked like everyone was dying to interrogate you further, but before they could, the trauma alarms screamed overhead. Dana, who had picked up the station phone, lowered it.
“GSW incoming. SWAT raid gone wrong; officer involved. ETA two minutes,” she announced.
Like a clack of thunder, the department exploded back into motion. Nurses rushed toward the bay, and the residents scattered for more supplies all while monitors flickered awake. Gloves snapped loudly in the air into place around wrists. And without even thinking about it, you set your bag down on the station and grabbed a pair yourself.
“Mind if I join in?” you asked calmly.
The newer residents went slightly quiet at the confidence in your voice while Robby looked at you fully. You weren’t the frightened resident he used to know you as. Now, you were a physician standing tall beside him. Another wave of pride washed over him.
“Yeah,” he said awestruck in a way. “Please do.”
The trauma bay doors slid open moments later. Paramedics and uniformed SWAT members wheeled in a bleeding officer while voices overlapped through the commotion.
“GSW through the shoulder—”
“Pressure is dropping—”
“Move, move—”
Then, another familiar and sarcastic voice cut through the others. “If one more drop of blood gets on my new shoes, I’m actually going to file a complaint against veteran discrimination.”
Your head snapped in his direction as Jack stepped through the ambulance bay doors half-covered in SWAT gear, helmet tucked beneath one arm while blood stained the bottom of his pant leg. He looked irritated and entirely focused on the patient—
Until his eyes landed on you, causing him to freeze instantly. Everyone watched as disbelief, relief, and love flashed so quickly across his face it almost felt too intimate to witness. Your composure nearly shattered on the spot.
“Hey, Jack,” you said, voice loud enough to carry over.
The words had barely left your mouth before he crossed the department toward you quickly. He didn’t seem to care about the motion around him, didn’t seem to even notice he had an audience.
Once second you stood there clutching your blue, latex gloves in trembling hands and the next Jack had pulled you tightly against him, one arm wrapping around your shoulders hard enough to nearly steal your breath entirely.
“Oh,” he whispered quietly against your hair. “Hey, kid.”
Your eyes burned while your arms wrapped around his middle, familiar warmth and exhaustion and home hitting all at once beneath the light.
“You came back,” he murmured softly.
“Yeah,” you whispered back.”
Suddenly, the years of distance, Seattle itself, phone calls, missed birthdays, research conferences, and lonely apartments after terrible shifts didn’t matter because Jack still held you exactly the same way he used to after nights in the Pitt, carefully like something precious that had exhausted itself by trying too hard for too long.
Somewhere nearby, Dennis whispered, “Oh my gosh, they really are their kid.”
No one corrected him.
Jack finally pulled back enough just to cup your face briefly in both hands, hazel eyes moving over you like he was trying to memorize every changed detail all at once. “You look good.”
Healthier his expression implied. Lighter
You swallowed thickly. “You look tired.”
“That’s because Robby keeps aging me prematurely.”
“Liar,” Robby muttered nearby, though his voice had gone suspiciously soft.
The patient groaned loudly behind all of you, shattering the moment but snapping the motion back into place. You stepped toward the trauma bed first.
“Okay,” you said, pulling gloves on. “Let’s save this guy before Dana kills us for emotional loitering.”
Dana pointed toward you across the room. “See? They did come back healthier.”
Laughter rippled quickly through the bay as you, Jack, and Robby moved together in a seamless action just like no time had passed at all.
"All because my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried so hard to suck out
—the cure, Olivia Rodrigo
summary: you’re the ray of sunshine and overly dependable smiling intern the night shift crew has been needing. But a certain attending begins noticing you might need more help than you let on.
wc: 11.7k (a short one sorry guys)
warnings: crippling perfectionism, high-key people pleasing, reader is bright and bubbly to compensate for how awful she feels day to day, one vomiting scene, service dom jack, santos is on nightshift bc i love her and i wanted her in this fic. trinity and dennis and reader r basically siblings, jack’s characterization in this is DEF andrew pope cody-esque panic attacks, mental health struggles, reader is an intern again but i swear it’s just cause i watch a lot of greys and interns r the only stage of medical career i know enough about to write semi-well T-T
acknowledgments: once again a round of applause for @wesandresons for the lovely gif, and @uzmacchiato and @cursed-carmine for the dividers!
a/n: i’m not rlly sure i like how this turned out but oh well @leeknowpegger i hope this keeps you company
masterlist
When you first get to the PTMC, Jack can’t decide what he thinks about you.
He vaguely remembers you— you’d done a rotation here, some time ago. One of the unfortunate ones who’d drawn the short stick and been stuck on the night shift. He has a hazy recollection of your face during an MVC, your jaw hard set and a permanent smile to your face. He vaguely remembers, at the time, the only thing he’d really though was:
Jesus, this kid needs to dial it back.
The sentiment, of course, remains the same when it’s handoff time, and Robby is telling him all about what an awful fucking day it’s been, and of course now he says “Oh, remember that med student you got stuck with awhile back? Smiley-face? You must’ve done something right, because she matched into the ED for her residency. She starts today.”
Not exactly the news an attending wants to hear right after the horror show the day has been so far. Especially when intern/baby resident in question is… charismatic.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ellis says, her eyes trained on you as you soothe a crying teenager who just got wheeled in. “If you ask me, we could use someone who actually smiles. Bit too dark and dreary in here for my taste.”
“You like dark and dreary.”
She gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow. “So? We can’t all be doing it. Like, we’ve got Shen, but his is more iced-coffee induced than actual smiling charm.”
“I can be charming when I want to be.”
“No, you can be flirty or suggestive. There’s a difference.”
Jack does not justify her response with one of his own, instead choosing to look down at his tablet and pretend to chart while he listens to how you’re interacting with the patient. The teenager seems to be calmed down, and the parents don't sound frantic or worried.
Maybe Ellis is right. Unfortunately, this tends to be the case fairly often.
He sighs and focuses on the chart he’s supposed to be doing and attempts to wipe his mind of bright smiles and glittering eyes.
—
The PTMC and Emergency Medicine in general was not, actually, your first choice. It wasn’t even your second, or your third.
First was surgical. Everybody wants to be surgical. You wanted surgical. It’s flashy, it pays well, and it’s cool as fuck. Plus, unlike some of your classmates, you actually have the stomach for it (one of the many things that eventually translated well to emergency medicine.)
Second was Ortho. Because bones are cool. Ortho surgeries are fun too, when they’re not arthroscopy after arthroscopy.
Third was any kind of unit like Burn or ICU. A high stress program that wouldn’t let you think, let you run on adrenaline all day.
But then you did your rotation in general surgery and absolutely fucking hated it.
Surgeons are assholes. Surgeons are uptight nerds who like to subject anyone they consider beneath them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Even in during the short duration of your rotation through surgery, it almost killed you. You could practically feel the light in your soul dimming at every pointed comment, every sharp correction, every barked insult and something or other cruel word.
And then there was the PTMC. The stupid ED that wasn’t supposed to fun, was supposed to be grueling and exhausting (especially since you’d gotten assigned to the night shift.) But instead of awful you got amazing, which sucked.
Seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.
You wanted to like surgery enough to power though. But not a single rotation after the ED even came close to measuring up. The speed, the action, the gore, and the kind but firm guiding direction from the attending’s and residents.
Matching into the PTMC was an event actually worth celebrating. As in, you decided to un-tense minutely and splurge on actual champagne that you drank in your apartment while dancing to your favorite music.
And now, you’re here. Determined to not fuck this up. To keep moving, keep going, and be a fucking excellent ED doctor.
Except your attending, Dr. Jack Abbot, one of the reasons you joined the ED in the first place, keeps giving you funny looks when he thinks you’re not looking.
You’re not sure if he’s aware that you know that he’s staring at you. You do have a wider than normal field of peripheral vision, so maybe he doesn’t know that you can still see him out of the corner of your eye?
Regardless of if he knows or not, it’s unnerving. Because he’s your boss. And you know he’s capable of being an incredible doctor and mentor, because you see it every single day.
Just not directed at you.
He’s not really mean, or standoffish, or anything like that, he’s just… not necessarily kind. Not in the way that you see him with the other residents on his service or even with you, during your rotation as a med student.
Hell, he’s nicer to Santos than he is to you.
“Did I like, say something to offend him and I don’t know?”
Trinity makes a face at you from over the edge of the monitor. “Isn’t that more my area of expertise?”
“No. You offend people on purpose.”
“True.”
You prop your head on your hands, resting your elbows on the counter above her. Your keycard, attached to your breast pocket via a red, heart-shaped badge reel is lovingly adorned with pink rhinestones and cute stickers. The pocket itself is filled with several glitter gel pens (and regular pens, just in case.)
“I just don’t get it. I’m nice, right?”
“Disturbingly so.”
“Exactly. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve messed up or something, but it’s Dr. Abbot. He’d tell me if I did. He doesn’t exactly hold back.”
“Do you really need me for this conversation?”
You level her with a look, but she just groans.
“Why do you even care? So what, one guy doesn’t like you, boohoo.”
“He’s not just some guy. He’s my attending. And you might’ve secured your spot here, but i’m all shiny and new. I can’t exactly earn people’s respect if our boss doesn’t like me.”
Trinity doesn’t immediately respond with a scathing remark, which usually means that you’ve made a valid point.
“Should I talk to him?”
She sighs. “I think you’re overreacting. You’ve only been here for like, two weeks? Three? He’ll probably calm down the more you work together.”
“Did he stare at you all weirdly when you first started?”
“Well, no, but that’s because I don’t suck at my job.”
Now it’s your turn to glare.
“Sorry. I guess you’re not completely hopeless.”
You roll your eyes. “Thanks, Trin.”
She scrunches her nose up at the nickname like you knew she would, because she hates it, which makes it one of the only weapons you have against her.
Trinity wasn’t as helpful as you’d hoped, and night shift means no Dana to ask for advice. There’s Dr. Ellis, but she’s pretty close to Dr. Abbot, which means there’s a high chance that whatever you ask her will make it back to him. You aren’t really close enough to Dr. Shen to ask him “Hey, how come Dr. Abbot stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking and isn’t as nice to me as he is to you guys?”
The question is stupid and kind of pathetic, so really, you shouldn’t be asking anybody, but you’ve always been crippled by an intense need to be well-liked. It feels like winning, and it feels good and safe. Safe is good. Safe is great.
Wanting the guy who's essentially your boss to like you is completely rational, right?
You just wish he’d tell you what you’re doing wrong, so you can fix it.
Also, it’s just driving you crazy.
Even if he just legitimately didn’t like you, and made that apparent, it’d be something. You could work with that. You could figure out what it was he didn't like via intense pattern recognitin and fix it. Problem solved!
But he isn't obvious about it. He behaves indifferent and detatched- like you could die tomorrow and he wouldn't care.
It’s the not knowing. If you could just ask him, if he could just give you an answer, then you’d know where you stood, and everything could be fine.
What changed? You want to beg, What happened after my med student rotation? Do you even remember that? What did I do? Where did I go wrong?
It eats away at you over the course of the week. It has been since you noticed, which was pretty much on day one. You don’t show this outwardly of course, because you’re pretty sure you can get through to him and level out the wrong-footedness you feel around him through stubborn determination. Surely, at some point your unwavering nature will win out and he’ll finally see there isn’t anything he needs to hate about you. This is an incredibly healthy mindset to move through life with.
The week closes with an MCI around 5pm, which is just everyone’s favorite thing in the world. The night shift gets called in, minus Trinity, who was already there working a double, and everyone sets in for the long haul. You do your best to focus on the patients and do not at all think about the ease and camaraderie between Mohan and Abbot, because that would be a very fucked up progression of priorities.
Eventually it’s all over— patients are stabilized, some aren’t. Overtime ends with phantom blood on your hands and being strong-armed into drinks in the park afterwards.
You feel awkward, because you don’t work with the day shift people that often, so you’re not really sure how best to be yourself and not come across as weird. Neither of your “safe” people (Trinity and Dennis) are present, so there’s no way in hell you’re going to be capable of relaxing.
You take the beer that’s tossed to you, even though you think beer is gross (why does it taste like that? Why do people enjoy it?) and sip on it excruciatingly slowly, trying to hide a grimace and occasionally chiming in with mentally rehearsed and carefully crafted jokes and comments.
It’s exhausting, and not at all how you wanted to spend your night after an MCI. In a dream world, you don’t have the social backbone of a wet paper bag, and you say no, and you go home to your house and shower, then watch one, maybe two episodes of a tv show, scroll through Pinterest, and then go the fuck to bed.
But for the low low price of much needed rest, you get to drink one of the most disgusting alcoholic beverages known to man and worry if everyone thinks you’re being weird! Yay!
Also. Side note. Minor comment. Little issue.
Jack Abbot is sitting next to you. Like, right next to you on the bench. Because he came late and it was the last spot open. So he’s just right there. Posture loose and open and not at all like he didn’t just help you try to save a girl your age who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like two hours ago your elbows weren’t brushing, elbow deep in a man’s organs, saving his life.
Jack, unlike you, looks comfortable to be at the park with everyone. He doesn’t look like he’s analyzing conversation to determine the best thing to say next.
Jack isn’t looking at everyone. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s looking at you.
You turn, give him a little smile.
Again.
Maybe he doesn’t know you can still see him out of the corner of your eye. (No, he’s a vet, he’d definitely also have wide peripheral vision. But maybe he thinks that you don’t have it, because you’re not a vet.)
(You’re probably thinking too much about the peripheral vision.)
Jack doesn’t stop staring at you. Instead, he reaches over to where your barely-drunk beer is in your hands, and says:
“Here, give me that.”
And then he just. Takes your beer. Straight out of your hands.
Jesus fucking fuck he so hates you.
—
“He took your beer?”
“Yes,” You groan from the kitchen island in Trinity’s apartment, “He said ‘here, give me that’ and then just took it. He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night.”
She lets out a low whistle. “Maybe he doesn’t like you. What could you have possibly done to make him not like you?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you better fix it. Having your attending hate your guts will like, majorly suck.”
“I don’t know how to fix it. That’s what i’m over here for. To brainstorm.”
“I thought you were here to steal the cookies Huckleberry made?”
Dennis peeks his head up from the couch. “Wait, what?”
You wave a hand. “Semantics. Focus.”
“Okay,” Trinity taps a pencil on a notepad, “Have you tried sleeping with him?”
“He’s like, probably over twenty years older than me.”
“So? I know your type.”
You roll your eyes. “As if he’d go after me, Trin. He doesn’t like me.”
“Hate sex is a thing.”
“Name one time hate sex solved the hate part.”
She purses her lips. “Touché. What about like, baking him shit, like Huckleberry does for—“
“Shut up Trinity!”
You both snicker.
“No dice,” You sigh, “I can’t bake for shit. Recipes never have enough context. They’re never specific enough.”
“Two tablespoons of sugar isn’t specific enough for you?”
“You’re not helping.”
Trinity holds up her hands in mock surrender. “To be fair, I never agreed to help. I just said we’d both be here if you wanted to come over.”
“I think you should just ask him.” Dennis pipes up.
He shuffles off the couch and slides into the second chair at the kitchen island adjacent to you. “Dr. Abbot is a straightforward guy. He appreciates honesty. Doesn’t beat around the bush. I can’t imagine him being truly upset that you tried to fix a problem.”
“I want to, but that’s like. Too straightforward. What if—“
“Oh my god,” Trinity moans, “Just ask him. Or fuck him. Do something so I don’t have to hear about it anymore.”
You frown, opening your mouth to object, then close it with a sigh.
She’s right.
You have to just move on. Either deal with it or deal with it by… not dealing with it. Talk to him or don’t.
Easier said than done.
—
It takes two more shifts of unrequited awkwardness for you to finally reach your limit. At a certain point, probably when you almost snapped at him for hovering (doing his job) while you were trying to intubate a patient, you realize that you cannot, actually, just get through to him via stubborn determination.
Damn.
So when you have a second, you corner him in one of the quieter hallways. The conversation has the potential to be horrifically embarrassing and mortifying, so it’s best if there’s no audience.
“Do you have a minute, Dr. Abbot?”
He glances down at his watch, then crosses his arms and leans against the opposite wall.
He doesn’t talk (unnerving, annoying) and his sharp, ever analyzing gaze makes your skin prickle as you cross your hands behind your back and mirror his position, leaning against the wall.
He’s so irritating. He won’t even give you a fucking inch. There’s nothing to go on.
“Did I do something wrong?”
For the first time since you became a resident in the ED, he makes an expression: surprise.
“Why do you think you did something wrong?”
“Because you won’t fucking talk to me!” You hiss, absolutely fed up with Dr. Jack Abbot, “Half the time you only look at me when you think I won’t notice. You don’t talk to me unless it’s required for teaching, and even then, it’s short and stilted. I’ve seen how you interact with literally every other person who works here. I know you can be nice. You’re just not nice to me, and I’d like to know why.”
You pause. “And you took my beer!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then there’s a breathy, almost wheezing sound that takes you a minute to place.
He’s laughing.
Jack fucking Abbot starts laughing.
You honest to God want to kill him.
“Sorry,” He says, eyes sparkling with mirth and shoulders loose, “I can see how all of that can be taken negatively—“
“How else was I supposed to take that.”
Jack levels you with a look, and you shut your mouth. “But it was not my intention.”
He just stops speaking there, like that’s a perfectly adequate explanation and not at all vague and almost more disconcerting.
“So…,” You drawl, “What was your intention?”
Something interesting, a little more heated than just analytical sparks in his gaze, and he tilts his head, eyes flicking up and down your body.
Under the silence and scrutiny, you resist the urge to squirm in place, hands squeezing themselves in an effort to subdue the itch.
“You hate confrontation.”
Your chest feels like a cinder block just slammed onto it. “What?”
“You,” He levels a finger at your chest, “Hate confrontation. You hate it so much that you lie about yourself to people instead of saying things they might not like.”
You laugh nervously, voice high and reedy. “A lot of people do that. I don’t think that’s a crime.”
“It’s not. But it doesn’t exactly make me want to trust you with my residents. With my team.”
“You’re worried I’ll what? Get somebody in trouble? Do something shitty?”
“I’m worried that something is going to happen to you, and you won’t tell anyone about it.”
The hallway grows silent. In this distance there’s beeping, someone shouting orders, a child crying. But not in the five feet of space you, Jack, and the conversion currently occupies.
“Why do all of this?” You gesture vaguely to the space between you two, unwilling to be more specific. He does not deserve the itemized list you assembled in your head.
“I wanted to see if you’d confront me about it or not. Confirm my suspicions.”
“That’s—“ You wrinkle your nose, “Actually kind of shitty of you.”
Jack just hums.
“So what now? Did I prove myself to you?” Your tone is mocking.
He scoffs, “God, you really hate confrontation, don’t you?”
Your skin prickles again. “No.”
“Lying again.”
“Shut up.”
He knows how uncomfortable he’s making you. He’s doing it on purpose. And right then and there, you decide you don’t care what Jack Abbot thinks, because if Jack Abbot is going to be a self-assured asshole, Jack Abbot can go fuck himself.
Your pager going off saves you from verbalizing any of this, and with one last glare, you’re gone.
—
If Jack was an obnoxious lurker before, it doesn’t hold a damn candle to how he behaves now.
He’s just. Everywhere. Around every corner. Driving you crazy.
When you bring this up to Trinity, she looks at you like you’ve finally lost it.
Which. Okay. You probably have. But that’s beside the point! The point is…
…The point is that Jack Abbot is getting on your last nerve and you really don’t have any to spare. Life has been stomping all over the other ones, so the singular nerve Jack is stabbing with his annoying pointed looks and almost lingering touches and stupid little questions (“Hey, that was a rough one, are you alright?”) is just worn out. It doesn’t have anything left to give. You don’t have anything left to give.
But, like you were brought up to do, you keep right on giving. And working. And smiling.
Because it goes a little something like this: There’s no one to pick you up if you fall. You pick yourself up when you fall, and you’ve gotten pretty fucking good at it. All of your friends (read: Trinity and Dennis and maybe Mel) are doctors, which means you all have shitty work/life balance and no one would even be available if you called and said “Hey, every morning I lie awake and stare at the ceiling and convince myself to get up while listening to Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley, after which I will inevitably cry on the bus to work. Would you mind helping me with my laundry?”
Okay. Well. Trinity would probably show up if you asked because once she decides that you’re her friend she’s really intense about it (she’s a bit like a Doberman or some other dog like that, not that you would ever tell her) and Dennis probably would too, but only because he never says no when someone asks for help so it kind of just feels like you’re taking advantage of him. Mel is far too busy juggling being an ED doctor and caring for Becca for you to even think about asking her without feeling intense, soul crushing guilt.
So yeah. You don’t really have a best friend, unless one would count the singular romance book you’ve read so much the spine is completely fucked and the pages are yellow from years of travel and rereading. Counting any book as a best friend is probably very pathetic. But hey, don’t fix what isn’t broken.
So you have a system and a method and crying before and after work every single day is totally, completely normal, healthy, and sustainable. Probably even more so in the medical field, and especially since you’re a PGY1. Interns gotta suffer and all that jazz.
Jack Abbot does not need to make the suffering worse by existing near you constantly. Things are really honestly bad enough.
“Hey,” Trinity grabs your arm as you’re going by during a mellow shift, grip not tight enough to hurt but enough to be a bit past uncomfortable, especially for a girl not used to physical contact, “You good?”
‘No,’ You want to shout, collapsing on the floor in a heap of bones and tears, ‘I haven’t done laundry in so long that I’ve started wearing my cleanest dirty socks instead of washing more. I don’t have the energy to spend my days off doing anything productive, but every time I sleep instead of doing chores the anxiety eats me alive. I can’t sleep at night because the guilt makes me so nervous sometimes I throw up. Sometimes I don’t wash myself in the shower and I just stand in the water until it gets cold. Every day I wake up with the same headache, and then I take medicine for it, but by the time it’s gone I’m going to bed and then I wake up with it all over again. I think my liver is shot from over-the-counter medication usage. Everything hurts. I’m so tired.’
Trinity needs you to be okay. Trinity is too busy and under too much stress to worry about you. She needs you to be okay. Everyone needs you be okay.
“Mhm!” You nod, lips spread wide, “Pretty good day actually, all things considered.”
It’s not a total lie. The headache relief you’ve been taking religiously is kicking in faster than it usually does today.
Trinity scans your face, looking for signs of a lie, and she must find something (not shocking, it’s very hard to pretend that everything isn’t awful when Everything Is Really Awful) because her grip tightens minutely and she does that pursed lip thing she does when she’s worried and about to express it through anger or bitchiness.
“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want to find out you’re like, doing drugs or something stupid like that. If you’re having a hard time—“
“Trin,” You interrupt, skin prickling uncomfortably as she implies that you’re not capable of handling things on your own, “If I need help, I know I can ask for it. And look,”
You tap your unbroken collection of glitter gel pens still intact in the front pocket of your scrubs. “It’s gotta be a good day. I still got my glitter.”
She wrinkles her nose, but drops your arm. “I don’t even know why you keep those. You can’t use them on like, anything. It’s against hospital policy.”
You shrug. “Glitter is a great motivator and mood elevator. Plus, kids love ‘em.”
You manage to feign something important coming up and duck out of the conversation and then, when the coast is clear, dart into one of the lesser used bathrooms and tuck yourself in the darkest stall.
Even in a hospital, toilet seats are disgusting, but you can’t quite summon any actual disgust as you plop down on the white porcelain, only lightly cracked, and cradle your exhausted head in your hands.
You have to keep going. There is no alternative. There is no other option.
Your chest feels tight and loose at the same time, and your skin feels clammy and wrong. Everything feels wrong. The lights are too bright and the material of your scrubs is scratchy and awful, and the longer you sit in the stall the more you want to throw up.
Someone knocks on the door before you get the chance to move down to your knees and start worshipping the porcelain altar. Assuming it to be Mel, who sometimes has a habit of showing up at the wrong time, you open the stall door to reveal none other than Jack Fucking Abbot.
You stare at him blankly for a few beats, too bewildered to feel sick. “You’re not allowed to be in here.”
“In the men’s bathroom?”
“This isn’t the men’s bathroom.”
“The sign on the door would say otherwise.”
Embarrassment brings the nausea back tenfold. You hold the stall door in a white knuckle grip to keep yourself upright and from hurling onto your boss.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t do this on purpose—“
Jack raises an eyebrow, his hands folded behind his back. Military man, right.
“Clearly.”
You stumble forward. “I need to go—“
“Woah, down girl. I didn’t knock because I cared which toilet you use. You work here. Use whatever toilet you want. Preferably not the one in the attending’s lounge.”
“There’s an attending’s lounge?”
“No.” He grins, a devilish upturn to just the corner of his lips.
“Oh,” You pause, then catch up to the rest of what he said, “Then why’d you knock?”
“Cause it kind of sounded like you were dying in there, and I’d rather if you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The paperwork, for one. Two, Santos would probably shank me.”
“Ah.”
“Also,” He shrugs, “I’d miss you.”
You scoff. “No you wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You don’t like me. You don’t even trust me.”
Jack gets this pinched look on his face; his lips pull down, his brows furrow and he narrows his eyes, just a bit.
He opens his mouth to respond when the door bangs open.
Jack doesn’t even look up before he’s barking:
“Find another bathroom.”
“But I have to—“
“Find another bathroom or I’ll cut your dick off.”
The guy grumbles away, but Jack never takes his eyes off you. It’s unnerving— to be the sole focus of his attention.
You’re the first to break the now tense silence of the bathroom.
“That seemed a bit extreme.”
“I’m not a man who does things by halves.”
“No,” You sigh, “I suppose you’re not.”
Jack cocks his head to side, almost predatory. More methodical than anything. He looks at you— really looks at you. Shamelessly drags his eyes up your body, likely cataloguing every mystery bruise, frown line, eye bag, freckle, and all the million lines of exhaustion that seem etched on your very being, right down through the bones and marrow.
He sighs, crossing his arms before leaning back on the opposite wall of the bathroom.
“What am I going to do with you?”
His words instantly have you on edge, bristling at all the unsaid things behind his tone.
“I’m not something to be dealt with. I’m a person, not some fucking—“
“You’re like a stray cat,” He interrupts, “Always hissing. Do I need to win you over with treats? Should I start bringing canned tuna?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re drowning.”
Just like that, all the humor gets sucked from the room, replaced with the cold, sharp grip of reality. Suddenly exhausted by the weight of it all, you drop back down onto the toilet seat.
Jack gives you a few moments to respond, get angry, or defend yourself, but you don’t. He’s too good at reading you, it seems. What is there to say?
When you don’t speak, he does.
“Did you think no one would notice?”
“No one has.”
“Am I no one?”
You lean back, closing your eyes and awkwardly resting the back of your head against the wall and the back of the toilet.
“You’re nosy.”
If this were any other moment, any other scenario with any other person, you would never ever act so contrary. But you’re tired and Jack seems to bring out the worst in you.
He makes an amused huffing noise. “You’re good at what you do, I’ll give you that.”
“What, exactly, am I doing?”
“Pretending.”
You scoff. “Fuck off.”
“Come on, sweetheart. How much longer are you going to do this to yourself?”
You lift your head off the back of the toilet. “You act like I’m killing myself:”
“You are,” His inclined his head, “Just really slowly.”
You scrub a hand down your face.
“Look. I understand why you think you have to care, but you don’t. I’m just going through a rough patch. I’ll get through them like I always do. I’m not gonna crash and burn or endanger myself or do whatever it is you’re worried I’m going to do, okay? So you can leave me alone. I’m fine.”
Jack doesn’t get to respond, because the second the words are out of your mouth the nausea that’s been churning in your stomach since you made it to the bathroom rises all at once, and you barely have time to slide off the toilet and turn before you’re throwing up hard enough to almost choke.
The worst part is that you forgot to eat lunch so your stomach is woefully, painfully empty. You’re throwing up nothing but bile, throat burning and tears streaming down your face.
“Alright, come on,” A warm hand rubs soothing circles on your back, and if you weren’t busy hurling your guts out, you’d marvel at the feeling and juxtaposition between the Jack you know, who’s all cold indifference, and the Jack currently holding your hair out of your face while you vomit.
“Let it out,” He soothes, hand still rubbing, “Don’t fight it. It’ll be over soon.”
“I hate throwing up.” You choke, coughing and gasping.
“No one does. But you’ll feel better when it’s over.”
Over feels like it’s never going to come. But eventually your stomach stops clenching, you manage to stop heaving, and you’re slumped over the toilet, sucking down gulps of air, sweat beading on your forehead and the back of your neck.
“This,” You mumble in between gasps, “Means nothing.”
You can’t see Jack’s expression, but his response is so quiet you almost miss it.
“Okay.”
You can’t see his face, but you know this isn’t over.
—
Jack sends you home once you’re capable of standing on your own two feet without shaking like a newborn fawn.
(“You can’t send me home.”
“Yes I can. You’re not allowed to come back to work after throwing up in the bathroom.”
“We both know I’m not the only person to do it.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t caught the other people in the wrong bathroom and held their hair back while they vomited.”
“…”
“You only have two hours left anyway. Go home.”)
The problem lies in the fact that the buses aren’t running yet, which means that you can’t, actually, get home. Your house is an hour away on foot. An hour you’d normally be capable of walking, but your phone is almost dead, you’re exhausted, and you still feel a little weak because of the vomiting.
So after retrieving your things from your locker, you find yourself sitting on the little bench outside the PTMC, waiting for the minutes to tick by. If you didn’t bring at least one book with you everywhere you go in case of emergencies (like this one) you probably would have just walked into oncoming traffic.
It’s cold out and your jacket is cheap so you have to burrow into it, hood up to retain any semblance of warmth. It would be almost cozy —huddled in your jacket, watching the city go by, tucked into your favorite romance book— if the shift hadn’t gone the way it had and if a grueling bus ride and half mile walk didn’t await you once the buses finally start running. Waiting for you beyond that is just chores and an empty apartment.
Your fingers tighten on the edges of your book.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
You jolt in place, cracking your neck over to the side and blinking blearily.
Jack. Again.
He makes an expectant face at you as if to say ‘Well?’ when you don’t answer immediately.
Your eyes dart back and forth nervously, even though you know you haven’t done anything wrong. “The buses aren’t running yet. It’s an hour walk to my house.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face and curses under his breath.
“How long until your bus gets here?”
You check your phone. Shit. Only four percent left.
“And hour and a half. Maybe a little longer if it’s running behind more than usual.”
He seems put out by your answer, as if the bus’s heavily fluctuating schedule is of personal consequence and offense to him.
“Um,” You start, both uncomfortable at having been caught reading a romance book in public and at the general air of frustration Jack seems to be venting at the moment, “I’m fine. I have my book. I don’t mind waiting.”
Jack just sighs.
“Do you really think I’m just going to leave you out here, in the cold, after you threw up in the bathroom, to wait for the bus, for nearly two more hours?”
You wince. “Well, it doesn’t sound great when you put it like that.”
He works his jaw. “Have you eaten?”
“No…?”
He shakes his head.
“Come on. You’re coming with me.”
—
“I have to admit, this isn’t where I thought we were going.
Thirty minutes later finds you seated on the cracked vinyl seat of a booth in a cheap diner, staring at a menu and rationalizing spending your last $15 on what will probably be mediocre pancakes.
Jack is seated across from you, already two mugs of coffee —black, but oddly enough, decaf— and not even bothering to pretend to look at his menu. He either comes here often or doesn’t care to act like he isn’t staring at you.
Probably both.
“Where did you think we were going?”
Steam curls out of your own untouched mug of coffee —ordered for you by Jack, also unfortunately decaf— and you debate just getting up and running out of here.
Too bad you’re too exhausted to run anywhere. Jack’s probably banking on that.
“I don’t know,” You shrug, setting the menu down, “Maybe to Gloria’s office to write me up or something.”
“What would I even be writing you up for?”
“Disobeying direction? I’m sure you could come up with something.”
The waitress chooses that moment to appear, notepad in hand. “Are we ready to order?”
Jack rattles off his order, and then two sets of eyes turn to you expectantly. Before you can order the single fruit bowl you were planning on getting (the cheapest thing on the menu) Jack pipes up:
“Order whatever you actually want. Not whatever you think is cheapest or easiest.”
The waitress, a middle aged woman who has probably seen much worse than whatever the two of you have going on, just chuckles lightly under her breath.
You hesitantly list the item you’d been eyeing and thank the waitress.
It isn’t until after the menus have been taken and Jack’s coffee re-upped for the third time that you manage to courage to speak.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean,” your fingers curl on the edge of the table, desperate for something to hold onto, “I can’t— It’ll be awhile until I can pay you back. I barely made rent this month.”
“Do you think I would take you to breakfast and then make you pay?”
“Yes…?”
“You’re not touching the bill, kid. I’m a gentleman.”
“Oh,” You didn’t really see that coming, “Okay.”
Jack gets a funny expression on his face, then resumes his drinking coffee and glancing out the window routine.
“So,” You say after a beat, “Was there something you wanted to talk about…?”
The silence just feels so awkward. It’s killing you.
He raises a brow. “Do you want to talk?”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m asking you what you want to do. What do you usually do when you come out to eat?”
“I don’t? Eating out is expensive, so. But when I do it’s usually by myself, so I end up just reading.”
Jack gestures to your bag beside you. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“What?”
“Read your book.”
“But that’s— isn’t that boring for you?”
He sets his mug down. “I didn’t bring you here because I wanted something from you. I brought you here because you had a shitty day and it seemed like you could use some cheering up. If reading makes you feel better, then do it.”
You have to look out the window to avoid his gaze. You don’t understand how your perfectly crafted facade just crumbles into fucking dust around him. How he manages to see right through you at every turn, how he manages to uncover every lie and every half truth.
“How did you even know I like diner food?”
“Because I pay attention to you.”
You finally look back over at him, arms folded across your chest; not really defensively, more like you’re trying to hold your entire body together by sheer force of will.
Jack’s lips twitch. Not really a smile, but almost. “You bring it up every time Santos wants to get food after a shift. She always says no, because she hates it, but it never stops you from suggesting it.”
It’s just one detail. One tiny, inconsequential detail that he’s apparently memorized and held onto because to him, it’s important. For some impossible to understand reason, he seems to care.
"Also," He shrugs, "I'd miss you."
You scoff. "No you wouldn't."
"I would."
“Do you hate me?”
Jack looks back at you, seemingly startled by the abrupt question.
“No.”
You take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Okay.”
—
“You did what?”
You wince from your spot lying face-down on Trinity’s couch.
“Not so loud, Trin. I have a headache.”
She ignores you, seated on the floor almost directly in front of you. “So you’ve gone from hating each other to going on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date,” You groan, “We spent almost the entire time in silence. I read my book and he stared out the window and did… whatever it is men like him do when they stare out the window.”
“Brooding,” Trinity says, “He paid. That means it’s a date.”
“No it doesn’t!”
It doesn't. It totally doesn't. Just because Jack said he doesn't hate you doesn't mean he likes you either. There are a lot of emotions in between hate and love. Like toleration, for example. Mild amusement. Exasperation. An appropriate amount of annoyance.
Trinity pokes you on the back of your head, having none of it.
"He likes you. Why else would he willingly hang out with one of us after work?"
"He goes out for drinks in the park sometimes." You mumble.
"Yeah, after an MCI."
What Trinity doesn't know is the events leading up to breakfast at the diner, because that would involve telling her about the whole throwing up from anxiety in the men's bathroom directly after a mini-panic attack because she confronted you about your unhealthy lifestyle (which all just sounds a lot worse than it is), so there isn't really a way to give her the kind of context necessary to get her off your back and dissuade her from her (insanely insane) belief that Jack likes you. Romantically.
"Trust me Trin, he was just being nice. Nothing romantic about it."
It was kind of romantic. Just eating surprisingly good food in the company of someone you don't need to pretend around, enjoying being in the company of another human being without worry or expectation.
Not that she needs to know that.
"Jack doesn't do nice. Have you seen him? What happened to the hating?"
You shrug. "You'll just have to ask him, because I don't know."
You do know. He told you. Explained it.
It doesn't make sense.
Trinity throws her hands in the air dramatically.
"Whatever. You two are impossible."
She finally withdraws, leaving you to wallow in your headache-induced misery by yourself on her couch.
Your phone vibrates on the floor next to you, and you groan, rolling further over to hide yourself in the crack of the couch, shunning the light like the reclusive vampire you are.
Your phone vibrates again.
“Dennis,” your voice is muffled by the couch cushion so it ends up sounding more like ‘denim’, “Can you please see who’s texting me and tell them to fuck off?”
Dennis, who was eating cereal at the tiny table near the kitchen when you first showed up fifteen minutes ago and has pointedly stayed silent throughout the entire exchange between you and Trinity, finally speaks.
“Your phone is two inches away from your hand.”
“I have a headache I don’t wanna look at the screen.”
You feel rather than actually see him roll his eyes, but then there’s the clink of a spoon against a bowl and the faint sound of socked —you’ve genuinely never seen him ever be barefoot under any circumstances, no matter what, he’s always wearing socks— feet as they make their way over to your temporary pit (couch) of despair.
There’s a quiet rustle as he picks up your phone off the floor.
“Oh.”
You whine, dramatic and upset. “What?”
“Um,” He grabs your shoulder, slowly rolling you over and away from the back of the couch, “It’s Jack?”
“What!?” You screech.
You throw yourself up, wincing as you immediately regret it when the pain in your head doubles, take a steadying breath to ignore it, and then grab the phone from Dennis’s outstretched hand.
You turn on the phone and— yep. Sure enough. A text from Jack, complete with the stupid picture of a dinosaur you made his profile picture. Because he’s old.
(It was funnier at the time.)
Somewhere behind you there’s a crash, and then the thump thump thump that can only mean a person running towards you at dangerous speeds for sock covered feet on cheap linoleum.
“Incoming,” Dennis mutters.
“Did I just hear that right?” Trinity gasps, nearly giving herself blunt force trauma via the back of the couch, “Did Jack just text you?”
“I don’t know!” You cry.
“How do you not know! Your phone is right in your fucking hands!”
“I’m tired! Stop yelling at me!”
“Guys!” Dennis shouts, holding up his hands, “I refuse to spend my day off listening to you two argue over the validity of romance with our attending. Give me the phone.”
He snatches the phone without waiting for a response, quickly typing in your password (if there was ever a moment you regret telling him in case of emergency…) and opening the text.
He makes an incredulous face at the phone before saying:
“He asked what you’re doing today.”
Trinity claps once. “Fucking called it!”
“Trinity!” Dennis snaps, before sighing and tapping at your keyboard, “I’m telling him that you have a headache and you’re at our place and to please not text again—“
“No!” You squeal, launching yourself off the couch, arms outstretched, but your legs tangle over each other and you fall and slam, gloriously and beautifully, face first into the coffee table.
“Oo!” Trinity winces, covering her mouth.
“Oh my god!” Dennis balks, “Are you okay?”
“Just give me the fucking phone.”
Peeling your face off, you grab the phone, squinting at the screen and ignoring the black spots in the corner of your vision.
hi, you type, I’m at Trinity and Dennis’s. Did you need something?
You hit send before you can talk yourself out of it.
“We,” You haul yourself to your feet and stagger over to the kitchen table, “Will never speak of this.”
“I definitely am. When I’m the maid of honor at your guys wedding, I’m gonna give a speech and be all ‘you guys, she gave herself a concussion the first time he texted—‘“
“There will be no wedding!”
“That’s just what you think.”
Your phone vibrates again, signaling a response.
Just wondering how you were doing. Surprised to hear you’re not holed up in your apartment reading something.
Ah, sexy old men and their correct grammar and punctuation when texting. Shouldn’t be endearing.
“What’s he saying?”
“Go away!”
You tap out a quick response.
Not today unfortunately lol I have a headache so no reading for me
Isn’t this the sixth day in a row you’ve had a headache? Should I give neuro a call?
You stomach flips.
nooo I’m fine i get them all the time
That’s not exactly reassuring.
I went to the doctor for them awhile ago apparently they’re normal
Who?
if I tell you, are you going to call him and make him send over my chart?
Yes.
Your heart is starting to pound a fluttering beat in your chest, and you hunch over your phone.
then i’m not telling you. it’s fine, really
they usually go away when i take over the counter stuff
So your plan is just to destroy your liver?
pretty much
We need to work on your planning skills.
we?
I’m not doing all the work.
Now stop looking at your phone. Drink some Gatorade and take a nap.
this is a resident apartment there’s no gatorade here just redbulls
Have either of them buy you one. I’ll pay whichever one it is later. Go to sleep. You need it.
You turn off your phone, shuffling back over to the couch and flopping down onto it.
“I’m taking a nap. Jack wants one of you to go buy me a Gatorade. He said he’d pay you back later.”
“He said what?”
—
You end up sleeping the entire day away, which should have screwed up your sleep schedule, but thankfully you live in a state of perpetual exhaustion and are fully capable of falling asleep anytime, anywhere, no matter how much you last sleep. It’s a gift.
Shockingly, the shift you work the next day is actually much easier to survive and your smiles aren’t nearly as forced. Go figure. Who knew that getting an appropriate amount of sleep would be so helpful?
“Somebody’s in a better mood today.” Jack mutters as you sidle up next to him under the board.
“I’m pretty sure I slept for like, fourteen straight hours. Thanks for the Gatorade, by the way. I woke up around hour three, chugged it, and then went back to sleep. No headache when I woke up!”
“Wonderful,” He drawls, “It’s almost like taking care of yourself is actually beneficial.”
“I take care of myself plenty.”
He casts you a sidelong glance, expression pinched.
“When was the last time you drank water without being prompted?”
“That’s different.”
“Okay,” He dips his head, “When was the last time you ever felt truly relaxed?”
You give him a beaming smile, so wide it hurts. “We’re not going to talk about this right now!”
“You started this conversation. I’m trying to do my job.”
You snort. “You’re waiting to see if someone else is going to take the sunburn guy.”
“Are you accusing an attending of cherry picking?”
“Of course not. Just observing, sir.”
Jack’s turned to look at you now, head tilted up, hands folded behind his back.
When you say sir, his eyes flick down to your lips, and then his jaw tightens.
The air suddenly becomes charged, the space between you two filled with something too electric to be air.
It smells like aftershave, hospital antiseptic, wanting, and something that’s distinctly masculine.
You look away first, swallowing hard past the sudden dryness of your mouth.
“You know,” You say, crossing your arms and looking up at the board, “Trinity thinks you like me. Romantically.”
“Mm.”
“I told her that was dumb,” You babble, “Obviously it’s not true, but. She won’t let it go, so if she says something, just ignore her. Or not. Whatever you want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
You whip your head around so fast you’re pretty sure something cracks. “What?”
“I mean,” Jack’s voice is gruff as he shrugs once, “Is that really so unrealistic?”
“Of course it is,” You sputter, “You don’t like me.”
“I’ve actually never said that. That was a conclusion you came to on your own. I distinctly recall telling you that I don’t hate you.”
“Just because you don’t hate me doesn’t mean that you like me, let alone— like that.”
Jack tilts his head, almost predatory, and all that sharp tension rushes straight back in.
“Like what?”
Something hot and dangerous is starting to unfurl in your chest, untethering from where it was previously lodged deep behind your ribs, out of sight, out of feeling.
“Code Blue en route, ETA two minutes.”
Jack jerks his head in the direction of the ambulance bay. “You gonna go get that?”
“Uh,” You’re pretty sure you’re stroking out, having a seizure, or something, because the only thing you’re capable of comprehending is the fact that Jack just not-so-subtly implied to actually liking you. Romantically.
“Get going then.”
You scurry away, hot all over and absolutely done with emotions in their entirety.
—
The rest of the week is hell on Earth. Perks of being in your twenties.
Things could be worse though!
Kind of.
It’s just that it’s been several days since Jack basically confirmed Trinity’s suspicions on romance and you can’t stop thinking about it. Obsessively.
It’s bad.
Bad enough that when Mel asked if there was any way you could cover her shift, you said yes.
“Okay,” Dennis stage-whispers as you’re downing your third coffee of the day, miserably charting at the nurses station, “I feel the need to ask how bad things can possibly be if you’re covering a day shift.”
“Mel asked.”
Dennis blinks incredulously. “You love Mel, but not enough to work a day shift voluntarily.”
“What exactly are you asking me here?”
“Did you and Jack hit a rough patch or something?”
“Keep your voice down!” You hiss, ducking your head as if you can hide from Princess and Perlah, “And for your information, no. We didn’t. I just wanted to do something nice for Mel.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to believe me.”
Day-shift crawls on in a whirlwind of chaos and a level of dumb-fuckery that can only be achieved from the hours of 8 a.m to 8 p.m. As usual, the place is understaffed, overcrowded, and filled with a lingering sense of impending doom.
By the time night-shift starts filtering in, you’re ready to completely give up and start a new life a sheep rancher in New Zealand. It’s always been the plan if being a doctor didn’t work out.
Jack finds you in the locker room once the handoff is over, sitting on the little bench in the same position Dennis found you in earlier. Face in your hands, heels in your eyes, methodically counting breaths and wondering if that fluttering feeling in your chest is from caffeine consumption or sleep deprivation.
It’s fine. Your fine. Everything is fine.
“You don’t look too good.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t say you’re fine.”
“But I am,” You grit, “I just need a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s the distinct sound of Jack’s slightly uneven footsteps, and then there’s a warm weight pressed against your side.
You take another shuddering breath that feels less like breathing and more like placing a single brick in a wobbly foundation.
“Shouldn’t you be out on the floor?”
“I don’t work tonight.”
You raise your head just enough to look at him. “You don’t? I thought I saw you on the schedule. Why are you here if you don’t work?”
Now that you’re looking at him and not starburst patterns on the back of your eyelids, you can see that he’s wearing casual clothes, not scrubs, and he doesn’t have his usual army-issue backpack with him.
“I got Shen to cover me. I came here for you.”
Your next breath in almost gets stuck in your chest, air struggling to move past that alive and wriggling thing that keeps moving every time Jack is around.
“What’d you do that for?”
The barest hints of a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Dennis called me. He said you’d need picking up after your shift.”
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment flood your veins, turning your blood into sickly-sweet poison that makes your stomach roll and twist.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I have no idea why he did that. You really didn’t have to drive all the way over here, I swear I didn’t tell him to call you or something like that—“
“I know you didn’t,” Jack soothes, voice a rumbly, smooth timber that washes over your permanently-frazzled nerves like a balm, “Which is why I came.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jack stands, pulling your bag and change of clothes out of your locker.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me, so you don’t have to answer it again. Can you do that for me?”
You nod once.
“Words.”
“Uh— yeah. Yes.”
“Good.”
Thank god the locker room is empty— everyone’s either on the floor or already left for their homes.
He closes your locker down, shoulders your bag, and hands you your clothes.
“Is it easier for you to accept help when you don’t have to ask and don’t get the chance to say no?”
It sounds so pathetic, hearing it laid out like that. The ugly guts of you; cut open, laid bare, and marked for research. Exhibit A, the inside of the girl no one ever needed to worry about.
You don’t want to agree. You want to laugh it off, maybe run away from it. Sit up straight, wipe your face, take the bag from Jack and explain that this is all a big misunderstanding and you’re perfectly fine and he can stop worrying about you now.
“Yes.”
Jack doesn’t verbally acknowledge your response besides a single dip of his head, like he knows that if he does anything more it’ll turn your response into a confession and that’s just too vulnerable for the hospital locker room.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t mean to be this way, you know.”
The passenger seat of Jack’s car isn’t somewhere you’d ever imagined yourself being. Not even late at night or on the bus when you’re pretending to be someone else who’s better at chasing what they want.
“It stopped being intentional a long time ago,” your hands are fisted into the material of your sweatpants, nails digging into the fabric, “It was just the natural progression of things. I like being liked.”
What you don’t say, what becomes an unspoken truth that lingers in the air despite not being verbalized, is the survival aspect of it. Why and how a person fuses this kind of thing to their personality; to their life. The circumstances that makes the natural progression of things end it being better for everyone if you just don’t have needs.
“I know.”
“I know you know, I just… needed to tell you. Myself.”
It’s odd seeing Jack illuminated by streetlights instead of fluorescent overheads. It’s odd being able to watch his hand flex on the steering wheel, watching his forearm tense as he shifts gears in his old stick-shift.
“You like being told what to do.”
Your face heats, but you’re determined not to lose face now. Especially after managing to survive being emotionally flayed open, willingly, by him.
“It feels safe. If I know what yo— someone wants, then I can’t mess it up, and I can relax.”
You can practically see the gears turning in Jack’s mind.
“Makes sense.”
The rest of the drive is quiet, the silence only filled by the sounds of Pittsburgh around you and the gentle crackle of something from the radio turned down too low to hear.
And for the first time in longer than you can remember, you begin feeling something that approaches calm.
Jack doesn’t have any expectations. There isn’t any one particular way he wants you to act or expects you to behave like. There’s nothing he wants you to do.
So you do what you want to do.
You relax.
—
In the weeks following Jack driving you home, there is a quantifiable shift in behavior between the two of you.
He starts pulling back.
It strikes you as odd first, and your natural inclination is to pull back too— to guard the soft, vulnerable bits you’ve showed him in case he throws them back at you.
But then you realize what he’s doing.
Instead of telling you how to proceed on a case when you come to him for advice, he asks you questions and steers you to the answer. He holds back when he’s evaluating a case with you, patiently following your lead and only interjecting when necessary.
He’s making space for you try new things and learn without fear of rejection. Building your confidence bit by bit.
It feels more intimate than sex.
After much deliberation, screaming into your pillow, and Reddit forum searching for HR violations, you decide to get him a card. Because he’s actually been really kind and helpful and he makes you feel like you can actually survive residency.
“What’s this?”
“A thank you card.”
You’re staring at your shoes, eyes flicking up and down between Jack’s face and the floor.
“What for?”
“It says it in the card.”
You scurry away, attaching yourself to the closest patient to avoid seeing Jack’s face when he does finally open it.
But when you look back, he’s just staring at it, a small smile on his face.
—
It’s the card that does him in.
Jack hasn’t made his feelings for you a secret, despite your unwillingness to see him as anything other than standoffish in the beginning.
He came on too strong at first— that was his fault. He didn’t yet understand how imbedded your need ran and how long it’d been since anyone bothered to look deeper.
He’d hoped, at least, that you were letting Whitaker and Santos help, and though you let them closer than most, it was clear you still seemed intent on holding up yourself and everyone around you on your own.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the way you oozed kindness— like it was a byproduct of your existence. He watched you get so wrapped up in being the perfect resident, perfect friend, perfect person, that no one ever stopped to let you know how good you were just by being.
He hadn’t planned on developing feelings or anything of the sort. At first, you’d just been one of his residents. Smart and capable but lacking confidence in yourself to fully commit. Then there was that MCI, and drinks in the park afterwards where he’d painfully watched you sip a beer you clearly hated, and everything just clicked right into place.
He never intends to flirt with you. It just happens. He can’t help himself. He’s a weak fucking man when it comes to you.
And then you bring him a card. A fucking card. To thank him for doing his job as an attending, a job he should’ve been doing better from the start. It has an illustration of bananas on it and says “Thanks a bunch!”.
He knows he’s completely gone, then. He was capable of being in denial before, could delude himself into thinking that what he felt was casual, but the sight of you before him, hands nervously wringing, your glitter gel pens sparkling as they caught the light was just the final nail in the coffin.
He allows himself a modicum of flirting on a day to day basis, mostly because if he couldn’t tease that real smile out of you at least once per day, he’d lose his mind.
Sometimes he takes you back to the diner, especially on longer days where none of your smiles reach your eyes and you start obsessively uncapping and capping your gel pens.
Even though you think it “looks dumb” you’ve also taken to sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in the booth, and he pretends he can’t see you sneaking fries off his plate because he knows how much effort it takes you to ask him if you can sit with him instead of on the opposite side.
Then he starts driving you home during a string of bad weather after you start sneezing from walking in the rain everyday, but even after the storm passes and the weather clears up he still finds you at the lockers, every day, car keys in hand. No matter how many times he does it, you always look so happily surprised that he’s still offering.
As if he’s not wrapped around your finger.
One day, after things have been mellow for awhile, Whitaker calls him and says that neither he nor Trinity have seen you in three days and you called out of work.
So naturally, as a calm and collected man, he showed up to your house.
You’d answered the door after the third time he knocked (which was great, because he was gearing up to force the door open) and you just looked miserable. Your hair was a mess, you head blanket wrinkles imprinted onto your face, and your eyes were puffy.
“Jack?” You’d mumbled, squinting your eyes against the not very bright light in the hallway, “Why are you at my apartment?”
“No one’s heard from you in three days.”
You wince. “I swear I meant to text Trinity. I just have a bad headache.”
His fingers twitch towards a penlight he doesn’t have. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Like a seven on the pain scale?”
“Jesus— I’m coming in.”
“Nooo,” You cry, but shuffle back from the door and put up very little fight as he ushers you to the couch.
Your apartment is….. exactly as messy as he’d imagined a resident who lives alone would be. For someone who doesn’t drink enough water, there are an incredible amount of beverage bottles and cans littered about.
“Do you have headache relief?”
You gesture to the kitchen. “Cabinet furthest to the left.”
While rifling through your very disorganized medicine cabinet, he spies an orange prescription bottle with your name on it, dated for the previous year.
“Why do you have a prescription for a high level antihistamine?”
“Stop snooping. It’s for my migraines.”
“You’ve had a prescription this entire time and you’ve been taking all that over the counter shit?”
“Stop being mad,” You mumble into the couch cushion, “My migraine meds put me to sleep, so I can’t take them when I’m working. Plus I don’t have any refills left so I save them for when it’s really bad.”
“You called out of work and haven’t left your apartment in three days and you don’t consider this bad?”
“Could be worse. Could be throwing up.”
He sighs. Sets the bottle on the counter, breathes in once, then lets it out slowly. Imagines all the ways he could murder whoever made you think suffering alone for three days is preferable to asking for help.
“I’m going to help you back to bed,” He starts, voice low as he rounds the couch, “And then you’re going to drink some electrolytes, have a snack, and take your meds. Okay?”
The migraine has clearly taken it out of you, because you put up zero fight as he manhandles you to your feet and helps you drag yourself back to your bed.
“M’ sorry my apartment is a mess. I was supposed to clean it.”
“I’m not judging, sweetheart,” He says, tucking the blankets up around you, lips twitching as you make grabby hands for a giant triceratops plushie that looks to be the size of your upper body. “I’m gonna make you a snack, so try to stay awake until I come back. Can you do that?”
“Mhm. I’ll try.”
“Good girl.”
He manages to find a cucumber in your fridge, cuts it into slices and then adds a few pieces of lunch meat for protein. Last but not least, he snags a bottle of blue Gatorade from your pantry.
(He only knows they were there because he bought them for you a few weeks ago.)
He doesn’t make you sit up to eat, but instead scoots you a little ways away from the edge of your bed so there’s space for the plate.
You slowly nibble your way through, taking little sips of Gatorade when he nudges the bottle into your hands.
You finish the cucumbers, eat most of the lunch meat, and drink half the Gatorade before burrowing back into the blankets and declaring yourself done.
“Can I have my sleep mask please? I think it’s on the floor under my nightstand?”
“Of course you can.”
After your face mask is on and the curtains closed, he gives you the correct dose of your meds and gently shuts the door to your bedroom.
He fires off a quick text to Whitaker (he doesn’t have Santos’s number) that says you’re fine, stuck in bed with a migraine, and that he’s handling it.
And then he gets to work.
Two hours later your apartment is clean, your laundry is started, and Jack’s relaxing on your couch, aimlessly watching the news.
He hears the door creak open but knows you hate feeling on the spot, so he keeps his gaze trained on the tv even as he hears the sound of you shuffling over to the couch.
And then you pause.
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“Did you clean my apartment?”
He finally looks over to you, and when his gaze reaches your face his stomach drops.
You’re crying.
He hauls himself off the couch (he’s thankful that he put his leg back on a few minutes prior) and stops in front of you, arms twitching at his sides with the need to fix, help, to stop whatever it is that’s making you cry.
“What’s wrong? Did I overstep?”
“No,” You warble, voice wet, “I just haven’t had the time or energy to clean in here for so long, and it’s been stressing me out so bad I avoid staying here during my off days. It’s just really, really nice of you.”
You look at him, eyebrows pinched and eyes wide with worry, “I— I’m not sure how to repay you for all of this. I know you said going to the diner was fine, but this is— a lot.”
“Sweetheart,” He starts, bracing one hand on the side of your face, thumb deftly sweeping across your cheek and wiping away the quickly drying tears, “I’m not doing any of this because I expect you to repay me. I’m doing it because I care about you and I want to see you happy.”
You sniff hard. “This is a lot of work, though.”
“I like doing it. I like taking care of you.”
Another sniff. “It doesn’t seem very fun.”
“I told you. You’re like a cat. Had to coax you over and now look at you,” he thumb rubs circles over your cheekbone, “Practically purring.”
You wrinkle your nose. “I don’t know if I like this metaphor.”
“Get used to it.”
You sigh, dramatic and long.
“I suppose I’ll allow it.”
“Oh, you’ll allow it, huh.”
You fold your hands behind your back, rocking back and forth on your heels. “Yes. I’ll allow it.”
“Well, aren’t I lucky.”
Later, when you’re lying on the couch, two movies into what Jack thinks is an unofficial early 2000s rom-com marathon (your favorite genre) you turn to look up at him from your spot tucked into his side.
“This is romantic, right?”
He presses a lazy kiss to your forehead, because he knows how much you like physical affirmations as well as verbal ones.
“Yes.”
“You’re serious about this?”
“You need confirmation?”
“I’d rather have it in writing, but this will do for now.”
He huffs a breathy laugh, tucks you closer to his chest.
“I’ll put it in writing for you later.”
You hum, pleased, and snuggle back into him, letting out a content sigh.
au where jack and robby were together before jack was deployed. when he was officially stateside after his honorable discharge from losing his limb in combat, he gave his dog tags to robby. (secret relationship btw)
“What’s with the necklaces always peeking underneath your shirt, Dr. Robby?” Santos asks in the midst of handoff between day and night shift. With a sigh, Robby thinks leave it up to Trinity to ask the personal questions. He always admired her honestly and straightforwardness, he would never tell her that, though, because it would only make her already bad bedside manner worse. Yet, her personality out of the hospital was infectious, even if now Robby was stuttering trying to find an answer.
To many, the Magen of David he wore around his neck wasn’t a secret. In fact, during outings with coworkers after long shifts, he often allowed the chain onto the front his shirt rather then keeping it hidden underneath. But, to those who looked hard enough, a silver ball chain could be seen on his neck, peeking out of any shirt he wore.
It was in 2013 when he first started wearing the secret chain, a gift from his now husband whom no one — besides Dana and Lena — knows is Jack.
Before gay marriage was legalized in the state of Pennsylvania and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in place, Robby and Jack had grown used to keeping their relationship a secret. There wasn’t any bad intent behind it, but when you are with someone for over 25 years, and more then half of those years you were practically forced to keep it on the down low, it becomes instinct.
The two of them are more then content with how their relationship works, often finding that the absence of prying eyes on their relationships makes both of them more comfortable.
Yet, after Jack came back from deployment, missing a leg and parts of himself he never got back, he put his dog tags into Robby’s palm, giving him the option to either wear them, store them somewhere, or get rid of them.
Robby, forever enamored by his partners bravery and strength, wore them. And, Jacks selling point was that it was the next best thing he could give Robby that wasn’t a ring given that it was 2013 and legally they couldn’t get married. A year later, Robby was the one to officially propose, and Jack pulled out a ring, complained that he wanted to be the one to propose, and quickly slid the ring onto the chain that Robby rarely takes off as it made a distinct cling once it hit the metal.
And that was that. They told very few people, and many just assumed they were extremely close friends — Jack got a good chuckle out of that from time to time.
But now, standing in the heart of the ED, staring at Santos who is looking back with pure curiosity and interest, Robby wants to shout his love from the roof top. He could easily tug the chain from underneath his shirt, display the tags and ring for everyone to see and leave it at that. However, he doesn’t know if Jack wants that.
So, with a quick turn of his, he finds Jack who, of course, heard Santos’ question and was already looking at Robby with a fond expression as he knows exactly what is underneath his shirt. With a small nod and smile as confirmation, Robby smiles back, mouths “I love you,” and loops his finger around the cold silver and brings it up over the neckline of his shirt.
With the eye contact and the dog tags, no one even has to wait for Robby to say anything. The small crowd that has formed as day shift does charts and night shift looks at the board is now looking at both Robby and Jack with their mouths agape. It isn’t until Dana snorts and rolls her eyes that people seem to unfreeze themselves.
“They were no where near subtle, how did no one figure it out?” Dana comments with a fond smile looking at her two boys who have been through thick and thin with each other.
“I won the fucking bet!” Ellis shouts, eliciting a loud laugh from both Jack and Robby who are now just staring at each other fondly. Almost thirty years of history together and they still look at each other like that.
au where jack and robby were together before jack was deployed. when he was officially stateside after his honorable discharge from losing his limb in combat, he gave his dog tags to robby. (secret relationship btw)
“What’s with the necklaces always peeking underneath your shirt, Dr. Robby?” Santos asks in the midst of handoff between day and night shift. With a sigh, Robby thinks leave it up to Trinity to ask the personal questions. He always admired her honestly and straightforwardness, he would never tell her that, though, because it would only make her already bad bedside manner worse. Yet, her personality out of the hospital was infectious, even if now Robby was stuttering trying to find an answer.
To many, the Magen of David he wore around his neck wasn’t a secret. In fact, during outings with coworkers after long shifts, he often allowed the chain onto the front his shirt rather then keeping it hidden underneath. But, to those who looked hard enough, a silver ball chain could be seen on his neck, peeking out of any shirt he wore.
It was in 2013 when he first started wearing the secret chain, a gift from his now husband whom no one — besides Dana and Lena — knows is Jack.
Before gay marriage was legalized in the state of Pennsylvania and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in place, Robby and Jack had grown used to keeping their relationship a secret. There wasn’t any bad intent behind it, but when you are with someone for over 25 years, and more then half of those years you were practically forced to keep it on the down low, it becomes instinct.
The two of them are more then content with how their relationship works, often finding that the absence of prying eyes on their relationships makes both of them more comfortable.
Yet, after Jack came back from deployment, missing a leg and parts of himself he never got back, he put his dog tags into Robby’s palm, giving him the option to either wear them, store them somewhere, or get rid of them.
Robby, forever enamored by his partners bravery and strength, wore them. And, Jacks selling point was that it was the next best thing he could give Robby that wasn’t a ring given that it was 2013 and legally they couldn’t get married. A year later, Robby was the one to officially propose, and Jack pulled out a ring, complained that he wanted to be the one to propose, and quickly slid the ring onto the chain that Robby rarely takes off as it made a distinct cling once it hit the metal.
And that was that. They told very few people, and many just assumed they were extremely close friends — Jack got a good chuckle out of that from time to time.
But now, standing in the heart of the ED, staring at Santos who is looking back with pure curiosity and interest, Robby wants to shout his love from the roof top. He could easily tug the chain from underneath his shirt, display the tags and ring for everyone to see and leave it at that. However, he doesn’t know if Jack wants that.
So, with a quick turn of his, he finds Jack who, of course, heard Santos’ question and was already looking at Robby with a fond expression as he knows exactly what is underneath his shirt. With a small nod and smile as confirmation, Robby smiles back, mouths “I love you,” and loops his finger around the cold silver and brings it up over the neckline of his shirt.
With the eye contact and the dog tags, no one even has to wait for Robby to say anything. The small crowd that has formed as day shift does charts and night shift looks at the board is now looking at both Robby and Jack with their mouths agape. It isn’t until Dana snorts and rolls her eyes that people seem to unfreeze themselves.
“They were no where near subtle, how did no one figure it out?” Dana comments with a fond smile looking at her two boys who have been through thick and thin with each other.
“I won the fucking bet!” Ellis shouts, eliciting a loud laugh from both Jack and Robby who are now just staring at each other fondly. Almost thirty years of history together and they still look at each other like that.
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