Summary: Robby comes home early from his sabbatical to find you, the resident neither he nor Jack were supposed to touch, fucking the night’s shift attending.
Warnings: age gap, implied power-imbalance Smut| getting caught, unprotected p in v sex, creampie(s), voyerism, pet-names for reader, praising, Dr. Michael ‘monster cock’ Robinavitch.
“Jesus Christ”
You were on your attending’s lap, busy riding the man, completely naked, sweaty, and flushed, when Dr. Robby opened the door.
“This isn’t exactly what I imagined when I asked you to house sit for me.”
Your mouth was open in a gasp, eyes wide with mortification as you froze from embarrassment.
Dr. Robinavitch had just caught you fucking Dr. Abbot... on his couch.
“Brother” Jack grinned as he looked behind him, not even a little fazed at the interruption. “You came back early.”
You could feel your face setting on fire as you desperately tried to think of what to do.
Robby’s eyes weren’t on you anymore as he got rid of his jacket and boots… this would be the perfect time to get up and scurry away towards the bedroom… Robby’s bedroom— Shit.
Your hands went to cover your bare tits as you tried to come up with something else.
“Decided to cut my sabbatical short,” Robby was explaining, “You all were right- as it turns out, I can’t go more than a month without the ED.”
You heard and felt Jack’s snicker, his fingers absentmindedly drawing circles where he still held your waist.
His hard cock was still deep inside you, and as much as you hated having to depart from it, you really needed to get off and try to at least regain some decency.
Which is what you tried to do. You began rising from Jack’s lap, but in an instant, his eyes were on you, his brows furrowed.
“Where you going, sweetheart?”
He can’t be serious right now.
You glanced pointedly at Robby behind him, your voice barely a whisper as you murmured his name.
“It’s alright, honey, Robby doesn’t mind,” he spoke softly, his hands caressing you softly. “Do you, Robby?”
Robby’s soft chuckle came from somewhere closer than where he’d previously been.
“I sure don’t,” He was smirking once you slowly raised your gaze.
He’d walked to the edge of the couch, right behind Jack.
You felt your face burn with embarrassment- and yet your pussy clenched harder around Abbot as you caught Michael’s eyes drink you in.
“We were having such a good time,” Jack murmured, his mouth on your collarbones as he pecked your skin, “Would be a shame to stop now.”
Oh God, he was being serious.
“Jack- I-”
Were you dreaming? Was this one of the sick fantasies that materialized in your mind whenever Robby and Abbot were both on shift, and you had to squeeze your tights together at how incredibly hot of a pair they made?
Everything seemed to point in that direction, except for the fact that the feel of Jack’s fingers removing your hands from your naked chest was very much real- the same went for Robby’s voice.
“You know, sweetheart... we had a talk about you before I went away.”
You were bare again now, and Jack was making use of the space, filling it with delicious, taunting kisses as Michael spoke.
“Decided none of us were gonna try anything... didn’t wanna take advantage of you or anything….” His voice was rough and soft all at once as his hand went to cradle your cheek, “and now look at that.”
Heat bloomed low in your belly and on your cheeks as you heard yourself whimper.
What he was saying was… unbelievable. They liked you- both of them. Just as you liked them.
This was really happening- Dr. Robinavitch was watching you as you sat on Dr. Abbot’s cock. And they both looked incredibly casual, as if this were a daily occurrence.
“Since when has this been going on?”
When you didn’t answer, Jack stopped his ministrations on your neck to speak, “Just two weeks, man.”
“Is he lying to me?” Robby asked you, his head tilted in doubt.
“N-no,” You murmured as you cowered under his stare.
To that, he smirked, shaking his head as he muttered, “A week- that’s how long you lasted.”
“C’mon, man- you knew it was bound to happen.” Jack groaned, looking at you with a smirk as his mouth ghosted yours, “You’re too pretty not to do something about it.”
You felt your heart skip, and your hips involuntarily grind against Jack’s lap- causing you to whimper pathetically.
“Oh sweetheart…” Abbot cooed, his hands going back to rest on your hips, “Go on, take what you need.”
There was nothing you wanted to do more. As unusual as this situation was, you were so turned on that you feared you’d start dripping on the couch any second now.
Yet you watched the two men uncertainly, biting your lip as you went against your instinct to use Jack’s manhood to feel good.
“Go on, baby,” Robby encouraged you once your eyes settled on him, “Do as he said.”
His palm was still on your cheek, his thumb pulling on your lower lip to free it from your teeth’s grip… and you had no choice but to obey.
You started slow, shily grinding onto him, feeling Jack’s dick graze and reach all those sweet spots inside of you as your clit rubbed against his base.
Your mouth hung open as soft whines filtered through your throat. Robby’s hands held your face so you could only look at him- and the look in his eyes… the darkness in his iris and the locking of his jaw gave you all the more incentive to go faster.
You began raising yourself on Jack’s dick just to slide back down again until you found the delicious pace from before your interruption.
Your moans weren’t so quiet anymore as you struggled to keep your eyes open and gripped Jack’s shoulders for dear life, your nails probably leaving crescent moons on his skin.
“So good for me, baby,” Jack murmured against your neck, resuming his kisses on your salty skin as he thoroughly enjoyed the show. “Such a good girl.”
You cried like a desperate little thing at that, his dick hitting that spongy spot inside of you that had you feeling on cloud nine.
“Jack feels good, baby?” Robby’s voice felt muffled, as if the pleasure was acting as a sound shield.
“Y-yes,” You whined, your voice breathless, your movements more and more desperate, “B-big,” you cried brokenly.
You felt Abbot’s growl vibrate against your chest at that, and seconds later, you felt his mouth against your ear as he whispered loud enough for Robby to hear, “You’ve seen nothing yet.”
You didn’t have the brain capacity to understand what he meant by that, or to analyze the grin that spread Michael’s lips at those words, because all you could focus on was the growing sensation that sparked in your belly.
“Oh my god,” You whined, your thighs burning with the effort as the sound of your skin slapping with Jack’s echoed against the walls.
“It’s ok, baby,” Robby murmured, watching closely as your eyes almost closed and your brows furrowed in bliss, “You’re doing so good.”
You didn’t even realize you were doing it, but as Robby guided his thumb into your mouth, instinctually, your lips closed around it, sucking him in further.
“That’s it, baby,” he nodded, the weight of his finger on your tongue making you wish it was replaced by his cock. And that image… that image made your orgasm approach even faster.
Your moans were silenced by Robby’s thumb, but Jack could feel your walls gripping him like a vice.
“Let go, sweetheart,” he commanded, kissing the spot right beneath your ear. “Be a good girl and show Robby how pretty you look when you come.”
That was it.
You didn’t even have time to mentally prepare yourself that a bright white flash of pure ecstasy overtook your soul.
You came like the world would end tomorrow, your pussy spasming around Jack as he couldn’t help but follow suit.
Somewhere in the frenzy, you could hear Abbot’s groans while Robby murmured what appeared to be soft words to you, his hand never leaving your face.
The pounding of your heart thumped in your ears as you tried to calm your breathing.
Your eyes fluttered open to both the men looking at you, Jack’s eyes soft with gratification and adoration, while Robby’s irises swirled with lust and just plain need.
“You wanna switch?”
Jack’s words didn’t even make sense to you. You were still lost in the haze of what had just happened.
“Not on the couch, man.” Robby shook his head, his lips pulling into a small smile as he watched you. “Let’s get on the bed, baby.”
__ __ __
Your legs felt like jelly as Robby towered over you.
You knew what was happening, and yet your brain was still buffering.
His lips were so close to yours… just a few inches and you’d be kissing him.
But that’s not what he had in mind.
“Lay down for me, baby.”
You blinked, needing a second to understand his command and do as told.
The mattress was soft, the comfy duvet wrinkling underneath you as you laid back, your wide eyes watching him.
With a quick move, he removed his shirt, throwing it behind him… in the direction of Abbot.
Your breath hitched at the sight of him leaning against the wall, his eyes dark as he watched the scene unfold.
By the time you looked back, Robby was naked- and your lungs took another toll.
You were propped on your elbows, shamelessly eying all of him. His broad chest, the dark hair on his pecs, on his belly, until your gaze lowered just enough to catch his cock-
You were pretty sure you’d stopped breathing completely.
That’s what they’d been talking about.
You really had seen nothing yet.
You swallowed dryly as his big hand wrapped around his dick, giving it two slow strokes that had him seemingly grow even more.
Your eyes were wide as he stalked closer to you, his smirk everlasting.
“R-Robby,” you stuttered, clearly intimidated.
“’S alright, baby. I’ll go real slow.”
“I-I- How…”
“Don’t worry about it,” he shook his head, “spread your legs for me, baby.”
And even if your heart was going crazy and your brain was telling you that was an impossible fit, you did as told.
“Wider.”
You slid your feet further across the bed, opening yourself up to him completely, eliciting a delighted groan.
“Pretty,” he murmured, his palm going to your mound and his thumb moving to your folds, exploring slowly.
Jack’s come was still leaking out of you, creating a sultry mixture with your own juices.
Your cheeks heated at his unabashed gaze, but then his other hand grabbed the base of his manhood, his tip suddenly parting your folds, and all thoughts left your head.
You were whimpering already, still sensitive from your previous orgasm, and Michael would have done anything to record those sweet sounds and listen to them on repeat all day long.
“It’s ok, baby, relax for me.” That’s all he murmured, as he started guiding his impossibly thick tip inside of you.
“Oh!” You gasped, your eyes wide open as you watched him thrust into you.
He was looking at where your bodies melted into one another, watching your greedy pussy swallow him in.
The stretch burned at first- he had the biggest cock you’d ever seen after all- counting porn- but his soft growls and groans were making you all the more pliant.
His thumb started circling your clit to help you out as broken cries fled your throat.
He was retracting his hips just to thrust softly into you, over and over again, filling you up inch by never-ending inch.
“O-Oh my god,” You were crying, your hands fisting the sheets as he kept going.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” he reassured you, his free hand tight on our waist. “Stretching so good for me- such a good girl.”
Your walls tightened around him at that, causing him to hiss.
“Let me in- just like that… good girl”
You knew the moment he was in to the hilt, because you could barely breathe at the feeling of how unbelievably full you felt.
Breathy gasps spilled from your lips as your gazes met.
“Told you you could do it,” he smirked, before he started to move.
The moan you let out at the first full, deep thrust was more of a scream.
“Robby!” you gasped, your fingers gripping his forearm as he started building his pace.
His back hurt like a motherfucker from all those hours on his bike, but he’ll be damned if he denied himself this sight.
“He always makes you do all the work?”
How his voice was still so even when you could barely breathe, let alone think, was a mystery.
You want to tell him the truth, that no, Jack was usually very much adamant in his need to take care of you, to pin you beneath him and fuck you thoroughly well into the day… but all you could manage was a whine.
You watched his lips pull into a grin at the state he’d rendered you in.
“Oh, c’mon, brother, I’ve just come back from a twelve-hour shift,” Jack defended himself from his spot against the wall as your eyes found him.
You could see from the bed, even with his boxers back on, that he was hard again.
God, this was all so hot.
The way both their eyes were only focused on you as Robby’s thrusts had you bouncing up on the bed, your tits moving in tandem with his harsh movements…
“And she hasn’t?” Robby raised his brows, shooting Jack a quick, disappointed look, before coming back to you.
“You don’t have to worry about it now, baby,” he spoke softly, the thumb he still had on your bundle of nerves resuming its torturous movements. “I’ll take care of you like you deserve from now on.”
You felt butterflies in your stomach at those words.
Your hips were chasing his movements, forcing the loud smacking of his skin hitting your core over and over again to get even louder.
You could feel every inch of his dick inside you, every vein and ridge slide against your velvety walls as his tip speared you and reached parts of you no one ever could find but him.
And with a feeling like that… it was inevitable for tears to gather in your eyes, your vision blurring as a knot of pleasure tightened inside you.
“Oh baby, I know it’s a lot.” his voice was calming, soothing your overexited system.
It was a lot. He was a whole damn lot.
“Just take it,” he cooed, “Don’t think about it, sugar, just be good for me and Jack, yeah?”
You slowly nodded, tears rolling down your temples and onto the sheets as the air filled with your moans.
“That’s it, pretty girl— that’s it.”
And suddenly, it was all too much.
“I-I- Oh my-”
He groaned at how tight you got. His chest inflating with the effort not to come on the spot.
“Let go, baby,” he instructed. “Be a good girl and come for me.”
The last thing you saw was his smile; everything after that was sort of a blur.
A tidal wave of pleasure washed over your body; you were pretty sure you were moaning his name like a prayer as you experienced a mind-blowing orgasm.
Your eyes and ears started functioning again as Robby’s thrusts got sloppier, more erratic.
He grinned as you whimpered at the overstimulation, his groans getting louder as he got closer, until he spilled inside you with a feral roar.
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed after several moments, slowly pulling out of you.
Jack had gotten beside him somewhere in the meantime, and both men’s eyes fell to the release spilling out of your spent core.
“C’mere,” you whined, breaking them out of their amazed trance.
They both smiled, and it was Jack who joined you on the bed first, moving you so your head could rest on the pillow as he spooned you, wrapping his arms around you.
“You did real good, sweetheart,” he murmured to your ear, his stubble grazing your skin as your eyes fluttered shut.
You were exhausted.
You didn’t even hear Robby lying down next to you until he placed your head to rest on his chest.
“So… am I gonna have to sanitize every surface of the house?”
A soft laugh fled your throat as Jack grinned amusedly.
“The kitchen should be saf—” The look you sent Jack had him suddenly remember all the alternative meals he’d consumed on the kitchen counter. “No, yeah… the whole apartment.”
Robby has never been a fan of birthdays. This year, loneliness drives him to download Tinder on an impulse, only to come across the last person he expected to find there: his favorite resident.
warning/tags: minors DNI, p0rn with little plot, masturbating, sexting, pet names (sweetheart and good girl) robby loves talking you through it, unprotected piv, pussy eating, multiple orgasms, body hair, fingering, creampie, handjob, kinda softdom!robby, age gap (I imagined reader being in her 20s or 30s but could be in her 40s too, tried to keep it broad)
For those of you who read it the first or second time I uploaded it: during the days the fic was down, I expanded some scenes, added a bit more dialogue, and made it a little kinkier along the way. You might want to read it again for some extra content
He knew this was stupid, plainly a terrible idea. On any other day, the thought wouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but today wasn’t any ordinary day. Today was his birthday. Fifty-five years old, and he had never felt more lost in his own life. Nothing had turned out the way he’d once imagined it would. If someone had told him, back when he was a resident, that he would still be coming home to an empty apartment at this age, no wife curled up on the couch waiting for him with a tired but loving smile, no chorus of small feet thundering toward the door, shoving drawings into his hands and saying “Look what I made for you today, daddy!” he would have laughed in their face and called it a cruel joke.
Yet here he was. No relationship had ever survived the weight of the hours and the way his mind stayed trapped in the ED long after he left it. He couldn’t be present anymore, not the way a partner deserved. The job had hollowed him out in ways he hadn’t noticed until it was too late.
It had been almost a year since he ended things with Noelle, not long after he returned from his sabbatical. He’d told himself it was the right thing to do. Maybe it really was better this way. At this point in his life, trying again felt pointless, almost selfish. He was saving whatever good women were still out there from the inevitable complications of loving Michael Robinavitch.
But today the emptiness hit differently. The apartment felt quieter than usual, and his thoughts were louder, circling like a vulture. He knew it was the birthday doing this to him. Birthdays had a way of dragging the sorrows out into the light, every missed milestone, every abandoned version of the life he thought he’d have. Jack had tried to pull him out of it, offering a beer after shift, but Robby had politely declined. He wasn’t in the mood for forced cheer, for anyone raising a glass to another year of the same.
He’d made it clear to the whole department that he didn’t want any birthday cake, no cards, no presents, nothing. Still, the well-meaning murmurs had followed him all day: “Happy birthday, Dr. Robby,” each one met with a progressively wearier smile until the words blurred together. By the end of the shift, he was only managing quiet nods of acknowledgment, the kind that said thank you and please stop at the same time.
So here he was, in an apartment that was too big for himself, lying on a couch that felt even bigger, downloading Tinder on his phone. He rubbed a hand over his face, he’d tried Tinder once, maybe two years ago. Downloaded it, swiped for a week, then deleted it when the superficial nonsense started bothering him too much.
He started with the basics. Photos. Robby opened his gallery and scrolled slowly through the meager collection. Most of the images were work-related, grainy screenshots of charts, or blurry shots of trees and roads he’d taken during his bike rides. After a long hesitation, he picked a silly selfie he’d sent Jack a few weeks earlier. He was holding up the book the two of them had been texting about, half-smiling at the camera like he felt ridiculous even taking it. It wasn’t terrible, he supposed. He looked… friendly. Approachable, maybe.
Next, he chose one from the department barbecue he’d actually forced himself to attend last summer. He was wearing the sleeves rolled up on a button-down shirt, and holding a beer in his hand. He didn’t hate it, it showed a version of himself that still showed up for people, even when he didn’t feel like it. The last one was from the hospital fundraiser gala two years ago. He looked elegant in that photo in a black suit, but he had to crop Jack out of the frame, his face was still half-visible over his shoulder. Three photos, not exactly a compelling portfolio, but they were honest, he wasn’t pretending to be anyone other than himself.
He moved on to preferences. Gender: Women. Age range… His thumb froze. At first, he set it to 50–60. Women at the same stage he was, maybe divorced, maybe widowed, or just tired of feeling alone. But then something flickered in his chest, part curiosity and part desperation, and before he could talk himself out of it, he dragged the lower end down. Twenty to sixty. The wider net felt reckless, almost embarrassing. But what if the love of his life existed somewhere in that range? What if he missed her by something as stupid as a single year on a slider?
As if the love of your life was sitting on Tinder on a Sunday night, he thought. Don’t be fucking stupid, Robby.
He stared at the screen for a long moment, and with a quiet sigh that sounded too much like surrender, he tapped confirm. Now it was time for the bio. Robby stared at the blank field for a long minute. What the hell was he supposed to say? He wasn’t looking for anything specific. Company? Distraction? Someone who wouldn’t mind a man who came home at crazy hours, sometimes covered in blood and whocarried more baggage than he could carry?
He typed slowly what felt the most honest: “ER doctor in Pittsburgh. Love long bike rides to clear my head and 70s rock. Not entirely sure what I’m looking for here, but if you can handle sarcasm and odd hours, we might get along.”
He read it back. It sounded stiff, after all, he wasn’t used to this. But it was him, and so he hit save before he could overthink it more. The app prompted him to start swiping. Robby leaned back against the couch as the profiles began loading, smiling faces, pictures of holiday destinations, and bios full of lists of requirements. He swiped left on most without much thought.
Left. Left. Left. Some of the women seemed nice, but nothing pulled him in. He kept going until the endless scroll of faces started blurring together. No one stuck, just the same hollow feeling that had driven him to download the damn thing in the first place.
But then your profile appeared. Robby’s entire body froze. The photo loaded first: you, one of his own residents. You were standing in scrubs outside the Pitt with the same smirk you got after a particularly chaotic shift. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered as the heat crawled up his neck. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover what he was feeling right now.
At work you were talented and dedicated, but still green enough that he rode you hard during shifts. And here you were on Tinder, of all places. The thought that you, or anyone else from the department, might stumble across his profile made his stomach twist with embarrassment. He could already imagine the gossip: Dr. Robby on Tinder. How pathetic.
He should swipe left immediately, delete his profile, and pretend this never happened. Instead, curiosity won. Robby tapped on your profile, telling himself it was just… professional concern. Making sure you weren’t doing anything stupid. He cared about his residents. Yeah, that was it.
Your bio loaded beneath the main photo: “If you like girls who will force you to watch her Letterboxd top four and then talk your ear off for hours about the hidden meaning behind her favorite songs, then I’m your girl. Emergency med resident with zero free time. Not looking for anything serious, just fun, meeting people, seeing where it goes.”
Robby let out a chuckle despite himself, the sound was unexpected in the quiet of the moment. He had only ever seen you in the chaos of the ED, running on adrenaline and too little sleep. But this version of you felt… different. He found himself thinking about how little he actually knew you. How little he’d allowed himself to know.
He didn’t know where you were from, or what your family was like, whether you had siblings who called too often or parents you tried to make proud. He didn’t know what you did outside of the hospital besides the occasional beer in the park, or what made you laugh until your sides hurt. All those small and ordinary pieces of a life that existed outside the emergency department.
It felt strangely intimate, seeing you like this. Like stumbling across a part of you he wasn’t supposed to have access to. A version of you that wasn’t filtered through the hierarchy of resident and attending. Up until now, you had been “his resident”, contained within the professional boundaries he’d carefully maintained.
He started swiping through your photos. The second picture was you laughing in what looked like a group hike, with your hair windblown and your eyes bright. You looked undeniably pretty. Objectively, he’d always known you were attractive. The kind of natural attractiveness that turned heads in the hospital corridors even when you were exhausted and covered in sweat. But once again, he’d never thought about it. You were a resident, he’d gone down that path before, and it’d ended badly. That made you off-limits, end of story.
The third photo was of you in a cozy sweater, curled up with a book and a mug of coffee. It was cute, almost sweet. The kind of image that made the loneliness in his chest ache. He kept swiping until the last photo hit him like a defibrillator. You were on a beach somewhere sunny and sandy, wearing a bikini. Your skin was glowing under the sun, and you were smiling at the camera in a confident pose, the kind of effortless beauty that could stop any man cold. Holy fuck, your body barely contained by the fabric of the bikini, the photo capturing the gentle swell and the way the light played across your body.
Robby’s mouth went dry, the heat flooded his face and then lower down his body. He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t let himself imagine you like this, outside the hospital, undeniably a woman and not just one of his residents. His pulse kicked up, the nervousness made his hands shake and his grip slippery. He fumbled the phone, trying to swipe left fast. Swipe left, damn it, he thought.
But he accidentally jerked his thumb the wrong way, to the right, and the screen lit up with that unmistakable animation.
It’s a Match!
On the other side of Pittsburgh, you had been lying in bed, still trying to unwind after another brutal twelve-hour shift. Sleep felt miles away, so you’d given in to the guilty habit of late-night Tinder scrolling. Sure, swiping at 1 a.m. probably looked desperate to anyone else, but who cared? It wasn’t like you had much of a life outside the hospital anyway.
You swiped left with efficiency. Guy whose entire bio was just a link to his podcast. Left. Gym mirror selfies and nothing else. Left. Self-proclaimed “entrepreneur in the crypto market” with a Lamborghini in the background that probably wasn’t even his. Left.
How was it this difficult to find someone even remotely decent? You weren’t expecting to meet the love of your life in this digital dumpster, but was it really too much to ask for a man with basic social skills and a profile that didn’t scream immediate red flags? Someone whose opening line wasn’t just “u dtf?”
Guy who still clearly lived with his mom. Another left. “No feminists” in the bio, followed by a rant about “high value woman.” Left.
Then your thumb froze mid-swipe. Michael Robinavitch. Your heart slammed against your ribs. There he was, Dr. Robby, looking straight into the camera in one of the photos, that familiar half-smile you’d seen a thousand times in the ED, only now it was on a dating app.
You sat up straighter in bed, suddenly wide awake. What the hell was Dr. Robby doing on Tinder? You’d scrolled through this app for weeks and never seen him before. He must have created the profile recently. The man you’d been quietly (and not-so-quietly) thirsting over since your very first day of residency was right here. One match away.
How could you not like Robby? He was everything you’d ever wanted in a man, strong, steady, impossibly smart, and so damn capable it made your legs weak every single time he gave you a calm and yet authoritative instruction in the middle of a trauma.
You’d lost count of how many times he’d gently reprimanded you for being distracted while charting. He always assumed you were just tired from the long hours. He had no idea that you kept getting lost in vivid daydreams about him: running your fingers through the silver-flecked hair and that coarse, greyish beard, feeling those big hands wrap around your waist, pulling you close.
You loved the way his eyes crinkled warmly behind his glasses when he smiled, the way his voice dropped into that gravelly register when he needed to command attention in the ED… it did things to you. Dangerous, addictive things. Sometimes getting in trouble with him felt more exciting than it had any right to.
His Tinder bio was unexpectedly adorable. He looked a little lost, like he wasn’t entirely sure he belonged on the app but was willing to put himself out there anyway. That bike is not the only thing I’d like to ride, you thought, as a little smile tugged at your lips.
His pictures made you melt and sigh at the same time. That warm, contagious smil, the glasses that struck the perfect balance between hot and endearingly sweet. The silver threading through his beard that made you press your thighs together at the mere thought of feeling it against your skin, between your legs, specifically.
You swiped slowly through the rest of his photos. Those wide shoulders, that tall and solid frame, that soft belly under the button-down shirt… you wanted him in a way you had never wanted anyone before.
It was almost pathetic the way your heart did a little skip every time he complimented your work on a tough case. The way your thighs squeezed together almost involuntarily whenever he stepped in close during a complicated procedure, guiding you step by step, his voice low and patient near your ear. “Yeah, grab the blade like that… make a two-inch incision, softly, very gently.” “Hold the tube with your left hand, tight, don’t move it.”
It made your mind wander to dangerous places. Was he like that in bed too? The kind of man who talked you through it, calm and devastatingly attentive? In your fantasies, he absolutely was. Late at night, alone in this very bed with nothing but your hand and your imagination, you could almost hear his voice murmuring against your skin: “Keep your legs open for me, nice and wide… just like that.” “Look at you… already making such a mess. I’m gonna start with one finger, okay? Think you can be good and take it for me?”
Should you swipe right? It felt like the only logical choice. If he swiped left, which seemed like the most likely outcome, he would never even know you’d swiped on him. But if he did swipe right… then maybe, just maybe, you could end up in Robby’s bed.
Your hopes stayed low. Never in a million years did you actually expect Robby to be attracted to you the way you were to him. You would’ve noticed something by now, maybe in lingering stares, subtle flirting, or any shift in the way he treated you. But he didn’t. He treated you exactly like the rest of the residents: a young doctor he needed to teach, who could sometimes be frustratingly distracted.
Still, you couldn’t contain the tiny, thrilled scream that escaped your lips when the screen lit up:
It’s a Match!
Robby had matched with you. He wanted you too.
“Shit!” Robby dropped the phone onto the couch like it had burned him. It bounced once and landed face-up, the match confirmation still glowing on the screen. He and you had just matched on Tinder. All thanks to that goddamn bikini photo and his clumsy, nervous fingers.
He stared at it, feeling his heart hammering harder than it had during the worst trauma cases. This was mortifying. You’d seen his profile, you’d swiped right, and now you were going to see that he’d swiped right as well. Part of him, the tired and lonely part that had downloaded the app and widened the age range, wondered what you’d think.
A dozen what-ifs tumbled through his mind. What if you saw his profile and laughed? That disbelieving laugh when something genuinely surprised you. What if you messaged him first? Maybe it had been a mistake on your end too. Maybe your phone had slipped, or you’d been swiping too fast after a long shift, half-asleep and a little buzzed. Or maybe… maybe you’d swiped right on purpose, just to tease him. He could already picture the text popping up on his phone: “Oh my god, Dr. Robby. What are you doing on Tinder? lol.”
Robby ran both hands through his hair, exhaling sharply. He picked the phone back up, looking straight at the Send message button. He shouldn’t. The responsible thing would be to delete the app, pretend this night never happened, and go back to being your attending, not your Tinder match.
Instead, he opened your profile again. Robby tried to move past it, he really did, but his eyes lingered on that last photo far longer than they should have. You in a bikini, your skin glowing under warm sunlight. He couldn’t believe that was what you looked like underneath the baggy scrubs you wore every day in the ED.
It felt wrong. Like he wasn’t allowed to see you like this, like he was intruding on something deeply private, crossing a line that should never even be approached between an attending and his resident. Guilt twisted in his stomach, but it wasn’t enough to make him look away.
His body reacted anyway, a sudden heat stirring unwanted, a throb of arousal he hadn’t felt this sharply in longer than he cared to admit. He shifted uncomfortably on the couch, hating himself for it even as the reaction deepened. What the hell is wrong with you, Robby? he told himself, but the self-reproach did nothing to dull the pull. What could he do? You were a woman. A beautiful one, and for the first time, he was seeing you not just as his resident, but as someone undeniably, breathtakingly desirable.
Before he could delete his account and go to bed as he should, your message popped up.
You: hii :)
Robby’s breath hitched in his throat. For a split second, he swore his heart actually stopped. Then it slammed back into rhythm, pounding so hard he could feel it in his ears, in his temples, in the tightness of his chest. The little smiley face stared back at him from the screen, innocent and cheerful, as if it hadn’t just flipped his entire night upside down.
You had matched with him. At eleven at night. On his lonely fucking birthday. What the hell was he supposed to say to you at 11 pm. after accidentally matching with her on Tinder? “Hey, funny seeing you” here felt pathetic. “This is wildly inappropriate” felt like a lie because the rush of heat still lingering in his veins said otherwise.
He set the phone down on the coffee table for a moment, dragging a hand over his face for the millionth time. Part of him wanted to delete the match immediately, pretend it never happened, and go to bed like the responsible, professional attending he was supposed to be. But another part, the part that had been sitting alone on his fifty-fifth birthday, couldn’t bring itself to swipe left on this one unexpected connection. So he picked the phone back up and stared at the blinking cursor in the message box.
Another message came through a minute later.
You: robby? it’s me from work... guess you saw my profile too haha
Robby let out a long breath, he couldn’t avoid it now that you’d initiated a conversation with him. It was better to be direct, explain the mistake to you, and shut this down before it got any more awkward.
Robby: hey
yeah, I saw it
listen, this is embarrassing as hell, i was messing around with the app, dropped my phone and it must have swiped right by accident
sorry about that, didn’t mean to make things weird
He hit send and immediately regretted how cold it sounded, but it was the truth. The phone stayed quiet for a moment that stretched too long. He had his eyes fixed on the screen, waiting for your reply so he could shut down this awkward conversation and delete this stupid app before he accidentally matched with anyone else from work.
You: oh. so it was a mistake? damn, i thought you had swiped right on purpose. bummer.
Robby’s eyes widened. You were being direct, not beating around the bush or deflecting by saying it had been a mistake on your end as well. He could practically hear your voice saying it with a teasing edge.
Robby: Sorry about the confusion
i know it might be awkward finding me on here. probably the last person you expected, i don’t usually do this.
You: honestly it was surprising. didn’t peg you as the tinder type at all.
but hey, we all have our moments i guess
Robby: i’m not the type
this is my second time ever downloading it and i already regret it, should probably delete the whole thing before i make an even bigger fool of myself.
You: yeah i get it. i thought the match was mutual so i figured i’d say hi. sorry for texting if it was just an accident. didn’t mean to make it weirder
Robby read your message twice. Thought the match was mutual. The words echoed in his brain. You had swiped right on purpose, not as a joke, not out of morbid curiosity about your boss’s sad dating life. You had chosen him willingly. The realization of what that meant sent a confusing rush through him. You liked him, that had to be it. The thought of you… having a crush on him made a warm feeling run through his body, one he immediately tried to shove down.
Robby: What do you mean you thought it was mutual?
You: idk... i saw the notification and figured you wanted to match with me since it happened. that’s why i said hi right away. didn’t want to leave it hanging if we were both curious
He stared at the screen, his heart beating a little harder. You were so honest and blunt about your feelings, he found himself almost intimidated by it. Some rational part of his brain was trying to tell him this had to be a big joke, there was no way in hell you could like him. You were… you. What would you see in a man like him?
Robby: you wanted us to match? seriously?
You: lol yeah i did swipe right, didn’t i? your profile was actually really nice. the book pic is cute and the 70s rock mention made me smile. plus... i don’t know, you’re interesting. figured why not. no pressure though
Robby: i thought maybe you did it out of curiosity
or just to see if I’d swiped on you didn’t expect you to actually want that
You: well i did. but if it was an accident on your end then no big deal. we can pretend this never happened and go back to normal tomorrow. i won’t mention it at work or anything. promise
Robby let his head fall back against the couch, closing his eyes for a long moment as he exhaled heavily. He knew exactly what the responsible Chief of Emergency Medicine should do right now: unmatch immediately, delete his profile, and pretend the entire night had been nothing more than a lonely fever dream.
But tonight… tonight he didn’t want to be responsible. He didn’t want to be Dr. Robinavitch, the attending who had sacrificed nearly every personal connection, every version of a fuller life, on the altar of the ED. For once, he wanted to be Michael. Just Michael. The man who had matched with you on Tinder. The man who was currently staring at his phone with his heart hammering like he was twenty years younger.
Before he could piece together a polite but firm way to end the conversation and retreat back into the safety of professional distance, another message appeared.
You: i think your profile’s part of the reason i swiped right. the book pic’s really nice
He smiled faintly at that, a rare genuine twitch at the corner of his mouth. Robby leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees.
Robby: your profile’s pretty good too, better than most of the ones i’ve seen tonight
You: aww thanks. your’s so much better than the usual bullshit on here which is not that hard to be
but still finding you here is a nice change :)
Robby: you on this app a lot? seems like you’ve got the profile down
You: not really. i’ve been on a couple dates from here but it’s honestly exhausting. hard to find someone decent in this city. most guys are either looking for hookups with zero conversation or they’re boring as hell. you know how it is
Robby: fair enough.
your age range must be set pretty high if it pulled me up
fifty five isn’t exactly the usual crowd for you or is it?
You: haha yeah well
i like older men
Those four stupid words hit him square in the chest like a defibrillator. “I like older men.” Robby reread them slowly, feeling a dangerous warmth bloom low in his belly and spread outward through his chest. He was an older man, and apparently, that fit exactly into your preferences. Was that flirtation? Were you subtly implying that he was the kind of older man you liked? Or was it just a casual, throwaway comment, something you’d say to any guy on the app who happened to have a few gray hairs?
No. He was spiraling too deep, overthinking it the way he always did. Your words didn’t carry some hidden, special meaning meant just for him. They couldn’t. And yet… No matter how hard he tried to talk himself down, he couldn’t ignore the flicker of validation that lit up inside him. He felt desired, really desired. Not just by anyone, but by you: someone younger, and so strikingly pretty it almost hurt to look at your photos for too long. Someone who, in his mind, was clearly way out of his league.
Robby: It’s okay to have preferences
everyone does.
You: yeah exactly. i just find older guys more attractive than the ones my age. they’re usually more mature, know what they want, have actual life experience. it’s... hotter, i guess. plus the conversations are better
He swallowed hard, feeling his throat suddenly dry. He could practically see your face as you typed those words, maybe biting your lower lip in that teasing way you sometimes did right after nailing a difficult procedure.
Then the bikini photo from earlier flashed unbidden through his mind, and the heat in his body flared hotter. He pictured you exactly as you’d looked in that shot: sun-warmed skin, curves barely contained by the fabric. The thoughts he had no right to entertain came rushing in anyway, pulling him deeper. Thoughts of having you all to himself, of finally being able to run his hands slowly over every inch of that bare skin, tracing the line of your waist, sliding up your ribs, cupping the soft weight of your breasts. Of putting his mouth on you and every sensitive spot until you were trembling beneath him.
Robby: makes sense
i usually go for women closer to my stage of life
we have more in common that way
You: do age gaps bother you?
Robby: in what way?
You: like as a concept. are they a problem for you?
Robby: i’m okay with consenting adults doing what they want
as long as everyone’s on the same page it’s not my business.
You: have you ever been in an age gap relationship or anything like that?
Robby: i once dated a woman a bit younger than me
but usually around my age
He paused before sending the next part, he shouldn’t keep engaging in this deeply unprofessional conversation, but curiosity was getting the better of him. And you were simply so easy to talk to that he couldn’t stop himself from letting his walls down a little.
He typed before he could second-guess himself.
Robby: how much older are we talking anyway?
the men you usually like i mean.
Your reply came fast, like you’d been waiting with the phone in hand.
You: usually over fifty up until their sixties or so. around that range. but it’s just a preference, nothing crazy. i feel like older men usually treat you better. they’re more gentlemanly, know how to actually listen, and they tend to understand what a woman wants... in every way, if you know what i mean ;)
Robby read the message twice. Three times. Four. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck me. You weren’t just being polite or making casual conversation. That winky face, the implication hanging there about “every way”. You were deliberately flirting with him, there was no other way to see it. He shifted on the couch, suddenly very aware of his own body and the fact that it had been a long damn time since anyone had spoken to him like that.
He took a slow breath and replied, trying to keep some semblance of control.
Robby: do you date men closer to your own age too?
or is it mostly the older crowd?
You: i have tried guys closer to my age. some of them are sweet but a lot are still figuring their shit out. you should try dating a woman younger than you sometime though. maybe it’s exactly what you need.
Robby didn’t know what to say. The words hung there, full of possibilities around them. He was still wrestling with a response when another message from you popped up.
You: anyway sorry again for the confusion earlier. i’ll leave you alone so you can keep scrolling through profiles. i’ll go back to robbing the graves haha (joke, get it? because i like older guys... sorry that was sooo bad)
Robby chuckled despite the whirlwind in his head. The joke was cheesy, so perfectly you that it cut through some of the tension. But it also gave him an out, you were offering to back off and let this weird moment fade into nothing before tomorrow’s shift made everything awkward as hell. Part of him wanted to take the exit ramp, wish you a good night, unmatch, delete the app, and pretend none of this happened. But another part, the one that had been sitting alone on his birthday didn’t want the conversation to end.
He tapped over to your photos again, almost against his will. There it was the last one. You on the beach in that bikini, with the perfect swell of your tits catching the sunlight. Holy fuck. He wanted you, the realization hit him all of a sudden, making him switch back to the chat and move his thumbs almost on autopilot.
Robby: Nothing to apologize for
honestly you’ve kept me better company tonight than I expected
You: see? younger women can be good company too :) you shouldn’t close the door so fast. you could meet someone nice if you give it a chance
Robby: you shouldn’t close the door on guys your own age either
there are decent ones out there, you’ll find someone who can keep up with you
You: out of all the guys i’ve matched with here... you’re easily the best one. no contest
Robby: Really? that can’t be right
you’re selling yourself short.
You: no i mean it. you’re exactly the kind of man i’d usually go for. tall, older, smart... and hot
The word hot hit him harder than it had any right to. His face flushed deeper, his clothes felt constricting, his pants uncomfortably tight. Robby’s cock was already half-hard, thickening and pulsing insistently against the zipper of his jeans with every new message.
All because you’d called him hot. Just a little cheeky, playful comment, and it was enough to unravel him. The touch starvation wasn’t helping. It had been so damn long since anyone had looked at him with real interest, longer still since he’d felt this fluttering feeling low in his stomach. This rush of ego, this sharp need to be close to someone, to be wanted, to touch and be touched.
Robby: thanks i guess
you’ll meet someone worth your time, you’re a good girl
The message was sent before he could fully reconsider the wording. The second it went through, Robby winced. It sounded weirdly sexually charged, maybe it was because he was feeling sexually charged, painfully so. A Freudian slip at its finest.
You: good girl? 😏
Robby: shit i didn’t mean it to sound weird
just a figure of speech i suppose.
You: should i call you daddy then? ;)
Robby nearly dropped the phone again. The winky face, the bold suggestion, the way it played so perfectly into the tension that had been building sent a bolt of pure want through him. He could imagine your voice saying it, teasingly so, with that mischievous glint in your eyes. His mind supplied far too many vivid images: you in nothing but your skin looking up at him, you saying it in person with a flirty smile. He was fully hard. Actually hard, just from a fucking text conversation.
The professional alarm bells were clanging loudly in the back of his head. This was his resident, the age gap, the power dynamic, the fact that you’d have to face each other at the Pitt in a few short hours... it was all wrong. But god, it felt good. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel quite so alone.
He glanced down at the obvious bulge in his sweatpants, his cock straining against the fabric like a flagpole. He couldn’t believe it. One flirty text from his resident and he was rock hard. Don’t get hard for your fucking resident, he thought. She’s one of your own. Off-limits. This is insane. He adjusted himself uncomfortably, trying to will it down through stubbornness, but the ache only sharpened.
You: too much? sorry i was just messing around lol
Robby exhaled and typed back, trying to sound more composed than he felt.
Robby: Don’t worry about it
i know it was a joke, no harm done
You: it was... unless you don’t want it to be a joke
He let out a surprised laugh, his cock twitched again at the follow-up, you were relentless, and something told him you were noewhere near done.
Robby: you’re funny, i’ll give you that.
You: that’s what i’ve been told. glad you’re having fun with me tonight
Robby: Well, I guess I should let you get some sleep
early shift tomorrow and all
You: i don’t mind staying up. i swiped right on you, remember? yk for a minute i really thought you were gonna flirt with me or maybe even ask me to come over to your place or something
The words hung there. You had been excited, you had hoped he would flirt. The image flashed through his mind, you showing up at his door in the middle of the night, stepping inside and… He shifted again, pressing his hand down against his insistent erection through his sweatpants, trying to get some relief even as guilt gnawed at him. This was crossing so many lines he’d promised himself he wouldn’t cross after Heather. But the loneliness that had driven him to download the app in the first place was quieter now, replaced by an electric tension.
Robby: that would be very inappropriate
i’m your boss and there are lines we can’t cross
You: but you’re not dr. robby my attending in here. you’re michael robinavitch, 55, the guy who loves 70s rock and long bike rides. and i’m not your resident in this chat. i’m just a girl who likes movies and older men... and who is really, really into you right now
You were separating the roles so cleanly, drawing a line between the hospital and this private space. It was tempting, dangerously tempting.
Robby: you know it doesn’t work like that
we can’t just turn it off when the shift starts tomorrow
You: nah i’m pretty sure i can
Robby: No.
You: If we really can’t meet then we can do it over text, you know.
He stared at the screen trying to guess if you really meant what you were saying.
Robby: what do you mean?
You: sexting, duh
He let out a short breath, Jesus fuck you were actually gonna kill him tonight.
Robby: that’s basically the same thing.
You: no it’s not. technically we’re not doing anything if it’s just messages. no one has to know.
Robby rubbed a hand over his jaw, his mind was screaming at him to shut this down, but his fingers were already moving. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering to do this.
This was a terrible idea. What difference did it really make whether it was real sex, his hands on you, feeling your heat around him, or just describing it in detail over text messages? A line was still a line. One he had promised himself he wouldn’t cross again. He didn’t want this to end with you giving up your residency, transferring to another hospital, another city, once things inevitably fell apart.
But fuck, his cock was achingly hard, straining against the front of his pants like a caged animal that desperately needed to be freed. The thought of you right now, maybe lying in your bed in, pressing your thighs together, that sweet slick already soaking through your panties because of him… it made it impossible to think straight. He couldn’t leave you like that, so wet, so needy, aching for him.
Robby: what do you want me to say?
You: i don’t know… just say something hot. you’re goot at being hot
He hesitated, he wasn’t sure of what to say. He was scared of seeming naive and old school to you, but he wasn’t used to this whole… sexting thing. The most spicy exchange over texts had been insinuating pictures before asking someone to come over. Okay think Robby, if you can save someone’s life under extreme preassure then you can sext with a woman, just say something typical, he thought
Robby: who’s been a naughty girl?
The second he hit send he regretted it. He winced, already typing another message to backtrack when your reply came through.
You: lmao that was the best you’ve got?
Robby groaned out loud, dropping his head back against the couch.
Robby: forget it. i’m going to bed
You: nooo wait. let’s try again :(
He should’ve put the phone down. He really should’ve. Instead he waited to see if you had anything else to say.
You: you’re so good at giving orders and guiding me at work. maybe you could do that now too? tell me what to do
You were right, in theory. He was good at instructing, guiding, teaching. It came naturally to him to step into that mentoring role, he had always been the one others looked to for direction.
Robby: i feel stupid doing this.
You: pleeeease. i’ve always thought you were the kind of guy who talks people through it in bed. it’s the same here, just write it instead of saying it. tell me how you want me to touch myself
Your words hit him hard. He reread the message twice. He had never consciously thought about it before, but yes… that did sound exactly like him. Fragments of memory surfaced unbidden: the commanding tone he’d used with past partners, the way he’d instructed them. “Open your legs for me.” “Turn around.” “Look at me.” He remembered the way their breathing would change, the way they’d tremble under the weight of his voice and his hands.
Robby: you really want me to talk you through it, sweetheart?
You: yessss that was so much better. keep going
If anyone had asked you how it happened, you honestly wouldn’t have been able to explain it. You weren’t even sure yourself. One moment you were typing a slightly embarrassed apology to Robby for matching with him and the next, the conversation had taken a turn and you were the one demanding he sext you so you could get off. It was bold, stupidly reckless, and yet it felt inevitable.
Robby: good girl that’s exactly what I wanted to hear, i want you to get those pretty legs spread nice and wide for me, can you do that?
You whimpered softly and obeyed him instantly, letting your knees fall farther apart on the mattress. The cool air hit your exposed pussy making you shiver.
You: yes. they’re open
Robby: Perfect
i’d be on my knees between them right now if I could
run your fingers up the inside of your thighs for me slowly, feel how soft they are
As you trailed your free hand up one thigh, you imagined his callused palms and the scratch of his greying beard following the same path.
You: doing it… feels so good thinking about your hands instead.
Robby: that’s my girl
now slide two fingers through your pussy and ell me how wet you are for me
You did exactly as he says, gasping as two fingers glided easily through your slick heat. You were soaked, embarrassingly so, the wet sounds filling the quiet bedroom as you stroked yourself.
You: So wet… i’m dripping. all because of you.
Robby: fuck i knew you would be
i want you to circle your clit for me now
Do it slowly and imagine it’s my tongue instead, licking you just the way you need
i’d take my time, taste every inch of you
Your mons got louder, tipping your head back against the pillows as your fingers obeyed, traxing circles around your clit that sent sparks up your spine. In your mind, it was Robby’s mouth devouring you while his strong hands pinned your thighs down.
Robby: how does that feel, sweetheart? tell me
You: so good, i’m so sensitive. keep talking please
Robby: Good
now slide one finger inside that tight pussy, nice and deep
curl it up just like I would, searching for that spot that makes your legs shake
i’d be watching your face the whole time, telling you how beautiful you look spread open for me, how good you are for listening
When you pushed a finger inside yourself, you curled it upward as instructed to hit that sensitive spot while your other hand kept working your clit in circles.
Robby: add another finger and stretch yourself open
i’d be so much thicker than your fingers, but we’ll start like this
imagine me pumping them in and out while i rub your clit
Adding a second finger, you continued fucking yourself to the rhythm of his words on the screen. It was not enough, it was nowhere near enough to calm the hunger and desperation that was threatening to consume your whole being. You knew nothing would be enough, only feeling him inside of you.
You: wish it was you inside me. can’t get off like this. i need you robby please
Robby: you were the one who told me to do this
You: i know i did. but it’s not enough
send me your address
He was tempted, so tempted that for one second his fingers almost started typing on an impulse. But the reality crashed back in immediately. The risks, the morning after, the way he’d have to look at you during rounds, knowing what you’d done. He was rock hard and aching for you, but the responsible part of him still refused to crumble completely.
Robby: what for?
you’re not seriously thinking about coming over right now, are you?
You: robby i’m literally only like 2 miles away from you. are you dtf? not as dr. robinavitch and his resident, but as two adults who casually matched on tinder tonight. there’s no title or hospital here. it’s just us.
Two miles. You were so close. He stared at your message, feeling his heart slamming against his ribs. His cock gave another insistent throb, the head already leaking a little against his underwear. The thought of you actually coming over, right now, in the middle of the night, made his mouth go dry.
Robby: Send me your address and I’ll order you a ride.
You sent your address a moment later. It really was only two miles away. He confirmed the ride, watching the estimated arrival time tick down. Fifteen minutes… only fifteen minutes until you’d be at his door.
You: this is exactly what i meant earlier about older guys. so much more gentlemanly. taking care of the details instead of just telling me to get there
You had no time to get ready, and honestly, you didn’t care. Makeup? Hair? None of that mattered when you were this desperate, this aching for him. You climbed out of bed still wearing the thin tank top and soft sleep shorts you’d worn to bed, and threw an oversized jacket over everything, one that swallowed most of your body and made you look far more put-together than you actually felt.
Your hands were shaking as you grabbed your keys and phone. The rideshare arrived sooner than you expected. The drive across the city felt both endless and far too short, but eventually the car pulled up outside his building.
You stood on the sidewalk for a second, staring up at the apartment complex, suddenly hit with the full weight of what you were doing, showing up at your attending’s door in the middle of the night, soaked and trembling with need, because a stupid Tinder match had spiraled completely out of control.
But you didn’t hesitate for long, you took a deep breath, pulled the jacket tighter around yourself, walked toward his door and knocked on it.
Robby opened it right away. He didn’t say a word, the second you were in reach, you had one of his strong hands cupping the back of your neck as he pulled you into a kiss. It was electric to say the least. His mouth claimed yours with a hunger that stole your breath. His beard was scraping deliciously against your skin as he moved his lips with experienced urgency. You melt into it instantly, fisting your hands in his shirt, tasting the pure, overwhelming taste of him. Finally. Here he was, kissing you like he’d been starving for it just as much as you had.
He kicked the door shut behind him without breaking the kiss, wrapping his other arm around your waist and pulling you flush against his taller frame. You felt the warmth of his hands roaming everywhere, gripping your hips, sliding up your sides, squeezing the curve of your ass through the fabric of your shorts. In your mouth, he groaned, making a vibrating sound that went through you as he explored every inch he could reach, like he was memorizing the feel of you.
Your breasts were the next to get his attention, he was cupping them with his big hands through your tank top, brushing his thumb over your already hard nipple, while he tangles his other hand in your hair, tilting your head to deepen the kiss.
You pulled back just enough to gasp against his lips, “It took you long enough.”
Robby chuckled, the sound coming out breathless. “Took you long enough. You have any idea what it’s like waiting twenty minutes for you with a hard-on?” He pressed you closer, letting you feel the thick and insistent bulge against your stomach.
As if they had a mind of their own, his hands couldn’t stop moving, squeezing, caressing, claiming, running down your back, over your thighs, everywhere he’d fantasized about touching. Before you could respond, he bent slightly and lifted you effortlessly. You wrapped your legs around his waist instinctively.
The strength in his arms, the way his broad chest felt against you, sent a fresh rush of heat between your legs. He carried you through the house with purposeful strides. The door to your room swung open and he layed you gently on the bed, climbing on top of you immediately until his full weight pressing you deliciously into the mattress.
The kissing resumed instantly, slower now but no less intense. Robby’s mouth was moving from your lips to your neck, sucking lightly and scratching you with his beard in the most perfect way. Now his hands got bolder, continuing their exploration but this time sliding under your tank top, pressing his palms against your bare skin. He lifted the fabric higher, exposing your breasts to the cool air of the room.
“Fuck,” Robby groaned, and maybe it was your mind playing tricks on you, but you could see his soft brown eyes turning darker as he stared down at you. “Look at you. These tits… so perfect. So fucking pretty.” His voice was rough with want, the same commanding tone. He cupped them reverently, as if they were something precious, circling your nipples until they pebbled tighter under his touch. “They’re made for my hands. For my mouth.”
He leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking it gently at first, then harder, swirling his tongue around the sensitive peak. The wet touch of his tongue made you arch into him with a moan, threading your fingers through his hair as he kept lavishing attention on your breasts.
From one side to the other, Robby switched sides, licking and sucking the other while his hand massaged the first, rolling the nipple between his fingers. The dual sensation, the tingly heat of his mouth and the firm squeeze of his callused hand, had you writhing beneath him, making you so wet you were soaking through your shorts.
The humming of his mouth against your skin sends sparks straight to your core. “I love this body,” he murmured, switching back to the first breast and sucking it harder than before. “These tits are going to ruin me. I could spend hours right here.” Sliding his free hand down your side, Robby gripped your hip possessively, continuing with the worshipping of your chest, licking broad stripes, sucking marks into the soft flesh, massaging and kneading until he had you panting and grinding up against the hard line of his cock through his pants.
The age difference between you only heightened everything, his experience was showing in every skilled touch, in every perfect flick of his tongue. He was being patient but hungry, like he’d been holding back for far too long. You could feel how hard he was, he was making you feel it, pressing insistently against your thigh. The knowledge that you did this to him made you even wetter.
Robby lifts his head briefly to lock his eyes on yours. His lips were swollen and his beard slightly damp with his saliva. “Tell me if it’s too much,” he said, but his hands never stopped, squeezing and caressing, teasing your sensitive nipples with his thumbs as he waited for your answer.
You shook your head, pulling him back down. You’d rather die than stop right now. “Don’t stop. Please.”
His mouth trailed a hot path down your sternum, over your stomach, scraping you teasinglywith his beard against your skin and leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. His hands followed strong, sliding down your sides and gripping your hips as he settled between your spread thighs. The weight of him, the sheer size and presence of this man, made your core clench with anticipation.
“These shorts have been teasing me since you walked in,” he murmured with the same steady tone he used in the pitt, but now turned intimate and commanding. Robby hooked his fingers into the waistband and slowly peeled them down your legs, taking his time as he revealed more of you. “Lift your hips for me, sweetheart. Good girl.”
You obeyed instantly, lifting your hips so he could slide the fabric off completely, leaving you in just your thin panties and the tank top. Robby smoothed his hands up your thighs, spreading them wider with gentle but firm pressure. “Keep your legs open like that,” he instructed you. “Nice and wide for me. Don’t close them unless I tell you to.”
You were already moaning softly, and he wasn’t even touching your core yet. Robby dropped his eyes to the damp spot on your panties, making the fabric cling to your pussy lips, and he let out a groan of desire and hunger. He cupped you over the fabric with one hand, pressing his palm firmly against your heated pussy while his thumb found your clit through the material and began rubbing slow circles.
“Oh god,” you moaned, twitching up your hips into his touch, seeking more of the contact. The friction was simply perfect, it was teasing, and it kept building higher and higher. Robby’s callused thumb was applying just the right pressure on your swollen nub.
He watched your face intently through his hooded and lustful eyes as he worked you higher. “Feel good?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady even as his own breathing grew heavier. “You’re so wet already. Soaking through these panties for me. That’s it… rock against my hand, sweetheart. Show me how much you need this.”
Your moans only grew louder and more unrestrained, as he kept rubbing your clit with precision. The fabric added a delicious layer of friction, and every circle sent sparks shooting up your body. He got you gripping the sheets, your thighs already trembling as you fought the urge to close them around his hand.
Robby leaned down to kiss the inside of one thigh, scratching your skin deliciously. “You want my mouth? Want me to taste this pretty pussy? You gonna wrap these gorgeous legs around my neck while I do it?”
“Yes,” you gasped, nodding frantically. “Please, Robby. I need it.”
He hooked his fingers into your panties and tugged them down slowly, revealing your glistening, bare pussy to his hungry gaze. “Fuck… look at you. So wet and perfect.” He kissed along your inner thighs, taking his time, brushing his lips and beard against the sensitive skin as he worked his way closer. “Wrap them around me, sweetheart. Lock your ankles behind my head if you need to. I want to feel you holding me right where I belong.”
You did exactly as he said, wrapping your legs around his broad shoulders and pressing your heels into his upper back. The position left you completely open to him, vulnerable and exposed. Robby groaned, the sound vibrating against your core as he finally leaned in.
The first lick of his tongue was broad and slow, dragging from your entrance up to your puffy clit. The sensation was overwhelming, and it made you cry out loudly, threading your fingers into his greying hair as he began to devour you with the same intensity he brought to every procedure at work. He licked and sucked with precision, alternating between long and flat strokes to tight and quick circles around your clit.
His beard was scratching your inner thighs and outer lips in the most delicious way, adding a kind of texture that made your toes curl. “Robby… Oh fuck, that feels so good,” you moaned, rolling your hips against his mouth.
He hummed in response, pulling back with his lips glistening with your arousal just so he could speak to you. “Tell me how it feels, sweetheart. I want to hear it.”
“So good… your tongue—oh god, your mouth, Robby. It’s driving me crazy. Don’t stop, please.”
“You’re being so good for me,” he praised, diving back in to suck your clit into his mouth, flicking it rapidly while applying suction with his lips.
Before you could register it, he teased your entrance with two thick fingers, slowly sliding them inside you, letting your own greedy hole swallow them. Once he curled them upward to find that perfect spot, the sensation had you moaning loudly and arching off the bed.
Robby pumped his fingers steadily, matching the rhythm of his tongue with his digits. A few moments later, he stopped again briefly, looking up at you with lust-filled eyes and shiny lips. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this. Spread open for me, taking my fingers so well. This pussy is perfect, made for me. Keep moaning for me. Let me hear how much you love my mouth on you.”
You obeyed, your moans spilling freely as he returned to his task with renewed hunger. The pleasure built fast and faster, making your thighs tremble around his head and your feet dig into his back as you held him exactly where you needed him. Robby gripped your hip with his free hand, holding you steadily while he worked you closer and closer to the edge with expert skill. Every command, every praise, every flick of his tongue pushed you higher.
Robby didn’t relent, he kept his mouth latched onto your clit, sucking with rhythmic pressure, devouring you like a man starved. “Robby—oh fuck, yes!” The pleasure was overwhelming, every single nerve ending in your body was alight as he worked you higher.
“Keep those legs open for me, sweetheart,” he growled against your clit. “Don’t you dare close them. I want to feel you squeezing around my fingers while I eat this pretty pussy.” He added a third finger slowly, stretching you wider, the burn blending perfectly with the pleasure. “That’s it… take three for me. Feel how full you are? You’re doing so well. Such a good girl taking everything I give you.”
The wet sounds of his fingers plunging into your dripping pussy and his mouth sucking hungrily on your clit filled the air. You were soaking his beard, his chin, his wrist, but he didn’t care. Robby slid a hand under you, grabbing a firm handful of your ass and lifting your hips slightly off the bed. The new angle let him bury his face even deeper, working your clit with more precision while he fingerfucked you harder. “Just like that,” he praised you between licks. “Grind on my tongue, baby. Use my mouth. Show me how bad you need to come.”
You obeyed helplessly once again, rolling your hips and bucking them against him as the coil in your belly tightened unbearably. The pleasure built in powerful waves until your thighs started to shake violently around his head. Robby kept talking you through it, pushing you closer to the edge.
“You’re getting so close, aren’t you? I can feel this tight pussy clenching around my fingers. Come on, let go. Cum all over my tongue. I want to taste it. I want to feel you fall apart for me.”
The orgasm crashed over you with blinding intensity, making your back bow off the bed, a loud and broken cry tearing from your throat as your pussy spasmed hard around his digits. Your thighs were squeezing his head tightly, your heels digging into his back as wave after wave of pleasure ripped through you. Robby didn’t stop though, he kept sucking your clit through the peak, curling and thrusting his fingers to draw out every last shudder.
You came harder than you ever had. So hard that your vision went white for a moment as the pleasure bordered on overwhelming. Your moans turned into whimpers as the orgasm slowly ebbed, leaving you limp and gasping on the bed.
Robby finally eased back, gently lowering your hips and kissing softly along your inner thighs. He looked up at you with dark and satisfied eyes. “That’s my girl,” he murmured. “So beautiful when you cum for me.”
You lay there panting, your thighs were still twitching, completely wrecked and already aching for more of him. Robby climbed back up your body, kissing you deeply so you could taste yourself on his tongue. He was so close that his hard cock was pressing insistently against your thigh through his pants.
“That was… amazing,” you whisper with your voice hoarse from moaning. “So much better than I ever imagined.”
Robby chuckled softly, the sound warm and genuine against your neck as he pressed a kiss there. “Yeah? Better than your hand?” His eyes were sparkling with lust.
You laughed breathlessly, nodding. “So much better. Your mouth… God, Robby. I’ve never felt anything like that.”
He hummed in satisfaction, grinding his still-clothed erection slowly against your bare, sensitive pussy. The thick ridge of his cock was being pressed perfectly against your clit, giving him some much needed relief while teasing you both. “I loved doing that for you,” he murmured. “You were so good for me, sweetheart. The way you moaned my name and squeezed my head with those pretty thighs… fuck, you have no idea what you do to me.”
Robby rolled his hips deliberately, the friction making you whimper and arch up into him. You could feel how achingly hard he was and how much he’d been holding back. You slid up your hands down his chest, feeling the soft flesh beneath his shirt.
“I want you,” you breathed, looking up at him with need. “Please, Robby.”
He stilled for a moment, as if to pulling himself together. “Tell me what you want. Be specific.”
You bit your lip, feeling the warmth invade your cheeks. “Your cock. I want you to fuck me. I need you inside me.”
Robby let out a groan, sitting back on his knees between your spread thighs. He reached for the waistband of his sweatpants, drawing out the anticipation. You sit up slightly, eager to help, moving your fingers to tug his pants down along with his underwear.
“I’ve been dying to see you,” you confessed as you pulled his pants down his hips. He caught your wrists before you could push his boxers down.
Robby looked almost nervous, a faint flush creeping up his neck. “Wait… I, uh—” He cleared his throat, flicking his eyes away for a second. “I haven’t trimmed down there in a while. This whole night was… unexpected. I would’ve cleaned up if I’d known we were gonna end up here.”
He said it like it was something to be embarrassed about. Like it might actually make you want him less. It made you soft, you cupped his jaw, turning his face back to yours.
“Robby. Do you honestly think I give a damn about that? It’s just hair.”
He let out a self-conscious breath, still looking a little defensive. “I know. I know it’s just hair. It’s just… it’s probably a fucking jungle down there right now. You don’t have to— I mean, you don’t have to do anything if it’s too much.”
The way he was trying to give you an out was almost painfully endearing. You shook your head. “Just let me see you,” you whispered.
You slid his boxers down his thighs and freed his cock, it sprang out, thick and hard, the head flushed in a dark red with arousal. It was beautiful, so long, girthy, with a slight upward curve, prominent veins running along the shaft. Exactly like he’d warned, there was a thick, dark mat of coarse hair at the base, dense and untrimmed. He looked completely natural, it was so him, deeply masculine and unpolished.
A fresh rush of wetness slipped down your inner thighs. Your fingers twitched with the need to touch him there.
You looked up at him through your lashes “I love it,” you slowly carded your fingers through the thick hair at the base of his member. “You look so fucking hot like this. I like every single inch of you.”
Robby’s whole body shivered under your touch. “God…” he rasped as he stared down at you. “You’re gonna kill me tonight.”
Almost with instinct, you wrapped your hand around it, stroking the shaft slowly from base to tip, feeling the heat and weight of his member.
Robby hissed in pleasure, twitching his hips forward into your grip as he watched your hand move up and down his cock. “Fuck, your hand feels good,” he groaned, letting you stroke him for a while, savoring the sight of your smaller hand working his thick length, making a bead of precum leak from the tip.
After a few moments, he gently stopped you, wrapping his fingers around your wrist. “Lay back down for me, sweetheart. Keep those legs open nice and wide. Just like before.”
You obeyed, lying back against the pillows and spreading your thighs for him. Robby reached over toward the nightstand, stretching one arm past you as he pulled open the top drawer. He rummaged through it for a few seconds, before his hand closed around what he was looking for.
A moment later he sat back, a condom held between his fingers. He held it up, searching for your eyes with his. “I’ve got this if you want me to wear it.”
You shook your head, reaching up to touch his arm. “No. I want you bare. I’m on the pill.”
You both knew it might not have been the smartest option, doing it raw, with nothing between you. But there was a deep, unspoken trust between the two of you, forged through long shifts, that made you feel safe. And in that moment, that trust felt solid enough to lean on.
The hunger that had taken over both of you made anything else almost unbearable. The need to feel each other completely bare, skin on skin, heat on heat, with nothing separating you, was overwhelming.
“Fuck, you’re gonna kill me.” He tossed the condom aside, leaning down to kiss you deeply again. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” you whispered against his lips. “I want to feel all of you.”
He groaned, positioning himself between your legs and nudging the thick head of his cock against your slick entrance. The anticipation felt electric, this was the culmination of over a year of longing, of hours of texts, and now all that was left was this desperate connection. Robby gripped your thighs, spreading you wider as he looked down at you with hunger.
The night is only beginning, and the way he’s looking at you promises he’s going to take his time ruining you in the best possible way.
As his cockhead was being rubbed up and down your folds, teasing your clit with every pass, coating itself with your juices, the sensation felt maddening, promising everything you’d fantasized about for so long. You whimpered, twitching your hips up instinctively to chase more contact.
“Eyes on me, sweetheart,” Robby commanded you softly, the same authoritative tone that had guided you through countless procedures was now guiding you through this. He cupped your chin gently, tilting your face so your gazes locked. “Keep looking at me the whole time. I want to see you while I fuck you.”
You nodded shakily, unable to look away even if you wanted to. Robby continued rubbing the head of his cock against your entrance, coating himself in your wetness, drawing out the anticipation until you were squirming beneath him.
“That’s it,” he whispered against your mouth. “So wet for me already. This pussy is going to take me so well. Breathe for me, relax and let me in.” He pressed forward slowly, breaching your entrance with only the tip. The stretch was immediate and intense, opening you up inch by inch as he sank deeper. Your mouth fell open in a silent moan, but you forced your eyes open, locking them on his as he watched every flicker of pleasure cross your face.
“Easy, baby,” he cooed, stroking your thigh soothingly while the other braced beside your head. “You’re doing so good. Feel how you’re stretching around me? So tight and warm… fuck, you feel incredible.”
You moaned loudly as he continued sliding in, the deliberate thrust filling you completely until he was buried to the hilt, until his hips were flushed against yours. The fullness was overwhelming, his thick cock stretching your walls like nobody had stretched you before, pressing against every sensitive spot inside you.
Robby stayed still for a moment buried deep, resting his forehead against yours as he looked straight into your eyes. “There you go. All the way in. You took every inch.” He started to thrust with deep rolls of his hips that drag his cock along your walls with exquisite friction. “Wrap your legs around me. Hold me close while I fuck you.”
You did as he said, locking your legs around his waist and digging your heels into his lower back. The new angle let him sink even deeper, and you cried out in pleasure, digging your nails into his shoulders. Robby kept talking you through it, just like he knew you liked.
“That’s my girl. Feel that? I’m hitting that spot inside you, huh?” He angled his hips slightly, grinding deep on every stroke. Robby slid one hand up to cup and squeeze your breast, rolling your nipple as he thrusted harder.
Robby moved his hand from your breast to cup your chin. His grip was gentle enough not to hurt, yet firm enough that you felt every one of his fingers pressing against the bones of your jaw. “Look at me. Don’t look away. I want to see how good my cock feels inside this tight pussy.” He tilted your face up and held it there, leaving you no choice but to meet his eyes.
And God… what a glorious sight he was. This handsome man, with his face flushed, his brow glistening with sweat, devouring you with his gaze as he kept driving his cock into you.
His face was only inches from yours, and he kept fucking you in long strokes while he held your chin like that, as if he were starving for every single expression that crossed your face. He loved watching the way pleasure wrecked you. The way your lips parted around helpless moans, the way you bit down on your lower lip only for it to slip free again with a broken sound. The way your eyes went glassy and pleading, silently begging him for more even as your body trembled around his cock. He drank it all in like a man who had been thirsty for years.
With his free hand, he gripped your waist, holding you in place so he could drive into you with more power. Every slide of his cock stretched you perfectly, dragging the fat tip along your g-spot like that was what it was made for.
“Robby—oh god, yes!” You moaned loudly, raising your hips to meet his thrust and tightening your legs around him. Your tits were bouncing with every powerful stroke, and he leaned down to suck one nipple into his mouth again, flicking his tongue as he continued fucking you.
“You feel so good,” he groaned against your skin, switching to the other breast. “So tight and wet around me. This pussy was made for my cock, wasn’t it? Taking me so deep.” His hand on your waist slid down to grip your ass, lifting your hips slightly to change the angle as he thrusted harder. “Lift your legs higher for me, sweetheart,” he said against your neck,kissing and nipping the sensitive skin there. Ronny held the back of your thigh, helping guide your leg up. “That’s it… over my shoulder. Let me get deeper.”
You whimpered as he assisted you, hooking your leg over his shoulder. He did the same with the other, folding you nearly in half beneath him. The new angle allowed him to sink impossibly deeper, until he was pressing the head firmly against that perfect spot inside you with every thrust, grinding against your g-spot relentlessly.
“Fuck—Robby, it’s so deep like this,” you moaned, fluttering your eyes shut for just a moment as the intense sensation washed over you.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he chided gently but firmly, cupping your jaw with his hand to tilt your face back to his. “Eyes on me, sweetheart. Keep them open. I want to watch you while I fuck you like this. Don’t look away.”
You forced your eyes open, locking onto his hungry gaze as he continued hammering into you. The eye contact made everything more intimate and overwhelming. The feeling of his hand leavinf your jaw and sliding down between your bodies made you shiver. Robby found your swollen clit and began rubbing tight circles in time with his thrusts.
The combined stimulation was devastating. The pleasure was burning higher in your core, so close to finally exploding. Your body was arching and squirming beneath his frame as you scratched down his back and trembled over his shoulders. Every thrust, every rub of his fingers on your clit, every moan and grunt that escaped his mouth pushed you closer to the edge.
“That’s it,” Robby groaned, never removing his sight from yours. “Look at you taking my cock so deep. You’re getting close again, aren’t you? I can feel it. Cum for me, baby. Let me feel you cum all over my cock. Keep your eyes on me when you do.”
You bowed your back off the bed as your climax took over your body. A loud cry tore from your throat as your pussy clenched rhythmically around his length. Your thighs shook violently over his shoulders and you dug your nails harder into his back when the waves of pleasure crashed through you. Robby sekpt thrusting through it, drawing out your orgasm with deep strokes and continued pressure on your clit.
“You look so beautiful when you cum for me… that’s it, sweetheart. Give it all to me. You’re being so good.”
By the time he finally slowed and gently pulled out of you, you were still trembling and gasping. Robby layed back on the bed beside you, with his cock hard and glistening with your release. “Come here, baby,” he said. “Get on top. I want to watch you ride me.”
He helped you shift positions, gripping your hips firmly to guide you as you straddled him. “Easy, sweetheart. Take your time… that’s it. Feel me right there? Let me watch you take every inch.”
You positioned the head at your slick entrance and began to sink down, inch by inch. The stretch was intense all over again, his girth opening you up as you lowered yourself onto him. Robby kept his hands still on your hips to steady you, stroking your skin soothingly while watching every expression on your face.
“Fuck, look at that,” he groaned. “You’re doing so well. Keep going… take a little more. Feel how full you are?”
Louder moans left your mouth as you sank lower, the fullness was overwhelming in the best way. Bracing your hands on his broad chest for balance, you finally took him to the hilt, resting your ass against his thighs. Robby squeezed your hips encouragingly. “Ride me. Roll your hips like that… yes, just like that.”
Whn you started moving, rolling, and grinding your hips in a steady rhythm, the pleasure built quickly. His cock was dragging along your walls as you found a rhythm that made your tits bounce and your clit grind against his pelvis.
Robby kept moving his eyes are everywhere, watching where your pussy stretched around his shaft, sliding up to your bouncing breasts, then locking onto your face. He reaches up with both hands, cupping your tits and rolling your nipples as you ride him.
“You’re so fucking beautiful. You’re doing so well, sweetheart. Keep going… faster if you want. Take what you need from me.”
Without a word, you grabbed the hem of his shirt and tugged it upward. He sat up just enough to help you pull it off, and the second the fabric cleared his head, your hands were on him.
God, you loved his body. Your moved your palm slowly over his chest, feeling the coarse hair and the thud of his heart beneath your fingertips. You dragged your hands lower, mapping the soft, rounded curve of his belly with desire. It turned you on more than any gym-honed torso ever could. As you pressed your palms into the softness, your fingers dag in gently. Then you smoothed your hands over it again and again, savoring the way it yielded under your touch.
You were mumbling praises and moans between gasps, completely lost in the sensation. “Robby… you feel so good… so deep… fuck, I love your cock inside me…”
At one point, Robby planted his feet firmly on the bed, bent his knees, and started thrusting up to meet you. The change felt devastating, he was now fucking you from below with powerful strokes that made you cry out loudly as he droveinto you.
The slap of skin on skin grew louder when the slamming into you intensified. “Fuck—Robby!” you moaned, letting your head fall back as the pleasure overwhelmed you.
“Eyes on me if you can, sweetheart,” he growled, moving his fingers down to rub your clit again. “I’m getting close. You feel too good. You’re gonna make me cum.”
You were a moaning and squirming mess on top of him, riding and grinding as he thrusted up harder. His fingers on your clit and his cock hitting deep pushed you toward another peak, but it was his impending orgasm that had you focused on him.
“I’m gonna cum,” he groaned, snapping his hips up faster. “Fuck—can I cum inside you? Please, I want to fill you up.”
“Yes,” you gasped, riding him desperately. “Cum inside me, Robby. I want it. Fill me up. Please—”
With a deep groan, Robby thrusted up hard one last time and came, pulsing nside you, flooding your pussy with thick and warm ropes of cum. He held you down on him, gripping your hips tightly as he emptied himself completely. The feeling of him cumming inside you, fully claiming you, triggered your own smaller orgasm, making your walls clench rhythmically around his pulsing cock.
You both stayed locked together, panting. Robby stroked your back and thighs as you came down from the high befor pulling you down against his chest, kissing your forehead, keeping his cock still buried deep inside you as his release slowly leaked out around him, so much that you could feel the hot nd sticky evidence of his climax.
There were no more walls, just the two of you, finally giving in to everything you’ve both wanted and repressed for so long. You stayed draped on top of Robby for a long stretch of time, both of you catching your breath as the intensity slowly ebbed. Eventually, you lifted your head and looked at him. “That was… amazing. I wouldn’t even have dreamed that it’d be that good.”
He hummed in agreement, continuing his soothing path along your back. “It was. Better than I let myself imagine. You felt perfect.”
The praise made a warm feeling bloom in your chest. After a few more quiet moments, Robby gently helped you sit up, easing you off his cock with a shared sigh. You both winced slightly at the loss of connection and the feeling of emptiness, but he pulled you down beside him on the bed, wrapping his arms around you again as you cuddled into his side.
“So… you don’t regret it, do you?”
He met your eyes as a small smile began tugging at his lips beneath the beard. “Right now? I can’t regret having amazing sex with you. My mind is still somewhere up in the clouds.” He pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow when reality hits, but tonight… no regrets.”
You nestled closer, throwing one leg over his. The cuddling felt easy, natural, like you’d been doing this for years. For tonight, the outside world, the hospital, the guilt, the what ifs didn’t exist. There was only the two of you, and Robby might be right about reality hitting tomorrow, but right now, in the darkness of his room, everything felt right.
A/N: Two attempts at posting this fic, and two times Tumblr’s stupid AI mistakenly flagged it😭 I’ve spent days trying to figure out what was causing the problem and doing everything I could to finally get this fic posted for all of you. So if you’re reading this, it means it worked. Hopefully.
If you end up enjoying the fic, I’d really appreciate it if you could help me share it with a reblog (only if you enjoyed the fic) cause I’ve put a lot of work on it
Well, I hope you enjoyed this little something I worked on when inspiration finally struck me. I don’t know if I read it somewhere or if we all collectively decided it, but Robby absolutely feels like the type of guy who talks you through it. You’re telling me the man who spends all day teaching med students and residents how to do procedures wouldn’t also be guiding his girl in bed? It’s literally in his nature!!! This TikTok also got me inspired because, yes, he absolutely looks at you through it too.
I also think Robby’s canon texting style is weirdly inconsistent. In that scene in season one where he’s texting Jake, sometimes he starts messages with capital letters and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he ends sentences with a period, sometimes he doesn’t. In my head, he has perfect grammar but deliberately tries to sound Gen Z and chill when he’s texting someone younger than him lol. Anyway, I tried to replicate that here too.
Thank you all so much for your patience. I really appreciate it, and I hope I can stick around for good this time🩷
summary: robby tells you he wants to keep things casual after you catch him flirting with noelle. he's less enthusiastic when he finds out you've been seeing his best friend. (5k)
characters: michael robinavitch / fem!reader, jack abbot / fem!reader, trinity santos, dennis whitaker, mel king
contents: established relationship, friends with benefits, jealousy, mutual pining, angst, possessive!robby, allusions to smut
FIC #5 / 20 FOR 20
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
You and Robby were not together. Not officially, and definitely not publicly. You were hardly together privately, if you were being real honest with yourself — aside from a few stolen nights after particularly draining shifts, where he’d show up at your place with takeout and exhaustion sitting heavy in his eyes and promises of distracting you from the hard day; where he’d then wake up before sunrise and leave before you had the chance to miss him.
Casual. That was the point. Because he was an attending, and you were his resident, and Robby had already made the mistake of blurring those lines once before. “It gets messy, sweetheart,” he murmured against your bare shoulder one night, voice heavy with sex and sleep alike. “And when it ends, it… It really fuckin’ ends, you know?”
You didn’t know what he meant by that, actually. You figured he was saying that dating within the hierarchy tends to crash and burn in some way or another, but you didn’t press him on the issue then. Though now you think that maybe you should’ve.
You should’ve told him to give this a name back then — whatever this thing was between you — because at least then you’d have a name for the feeling searing in your chest just now, as you’re forced to watch Robby flirt with Noelle on the other side of the workstation.
You’re examining the chart glowing from the iPad in your hands, trying hard to ignore the ache in your lower back and the fact that you haven’t eaten since six that morning, when the sound of Robby’s sudden laughter graces your ears — finding you despite the buzzing chatter of the crowded E.R.
You glance up automatically and find him leaning against the counter, with the sleeves of his undershirt pushed up to his elbows and his stethoscope looped lazily around his neck, towering several inches over Noelle.
“You’re getting less grumpy in your old age, Robinavitch,” the older woman quips beneath a quiet smile and the faint flush coating her caramel-colored cheeks. She arches a manicured brow in his direction, dark eyes glimmering beneath long lashes. “Something been improving your mood lately? Or some-one?”
Your palms go clammy around the tablet in your hand. You never wanted anyone to find out that you were dating your attending, but god, your heart stops beating just to hear your name fall from his lips.
Robby laughs instead, a sharp exhale from his nose.
“You always think you know everything,” he says with a shake of his head, though you can still hear the smile in his voice when he tells her, “I’m not sure your new boyfriend up in ortho would like you asking about my love life, Hastings…”
“Oh, I stopped seeing him ages ago,” Noelle scoffs. “He kept calling himself an alpha male unironically, and I— couldn’t take it anymore.”
Robby physically recoils. “Jeez… And here I thought your taste in men improved after me.”
Their laughter entwines and lingers in the air for several lingering moments. It’s more familiar than flirtatious, but your stomach twists with a sick feeling anyway. Because Noelle was, to put it simply, everything you weren’t. She was effortlessly gorgeous and carried all that confidence in her matching pant suits and pulled-back curls. She was much closer to Robby’s age, too, and their lengthy history is one you know you couldn’t compete with if you tried.
You feel a little like a child as you watch them talk in hushed voices. You flare with all the embarrassment of one, too, when Robby’s eyes lock suddenly with yours.
You turn away a beat too late, just in time to catch the look that flashes suddenly across his weathered features — as if he’d somehow been caught. You pretend not to notice, or otherwise care, when he dismisses himself from Noelle and closes the distance between you. He towers over you the same way he had with her, smelling like a mixture of his cologne and your bed sheets.
“Hey…” he says, all casual, stuffing his hands into his scrub pockets and nodding to the tablet in your hands. “You get that CBC back on Central Eight?”
“Yep,” you deadpan, still without looking at him.
He flinches slightly when you shove the chart suddenly at his chest with a less-than-gentle hand. His brows lower in confusion when you turn on your heel and walk away a second later, with considerably more ire than you had that morning. (‘Cause you’d been complaining about some mild insomnia for a while now, so Robby fucked you to sleep the night before. He figured you’d be in a better mood today accordingly. But alas.)
“So I take it you’re not helping with this endoscopy?” he calls after you, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket for a better view of the screen in his hand.
“Nope,” you call back, already halfway down the hall — not as his resident, but as a woman halfway scorned.
Whitaker’s eyes dart back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match — between you, Robby, and the bloodied head wound he’s watching you stitch up with practiced hands. There’s a heavy tension he can feel simmering in the air, snatching all the remaining oxygen out of the room. Even from where he stands behind you, peering over Trinity’s shoulder, he feels hardly shielded from the building stress.
“Call ortho for a consult for me, will ya?” Robby asks you, or rather politely commands, without looking away from the chart in his hands.
You, similarly, don’t glance up from your sutures as you tell him, “You have a pair of free hands, don’t you, Dr. Robby?”
The man’s eyes dart to you in an instant, peering at you over the top of the glasses sitting low on his broad nose. His dark brown gaze glimmers with a mixture of amusement and shock as a faint smile flickers beneath his beard.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll do it!” Whitaker blurts, half-strangled by the tension, as he rushes for the red phone across the room. It’s quite telling, the younger boy finds, that he’d rather suffer a call with Park the Shark than watch this lover’s quarrel unfold.
Robby squints as he takes a slow step towards you. His eyes flit from your deadpan face, to your gloved hands, to the balding head of the unconscious patient you stitch up.
“Have you eaten today?” he wonders aloud.
“Are you gonna ask if I need a nap next to?” you scoff. “I’m not a child.”
“Well, you’re kinda acting like one,” Robby says within a breathless chuckle. “So do you wanna maybe dial the attitude back a notch?”
“Sorry, Dr. Robby,” you say flatly, tying off the final stitch with sharp, methodical movements. “I’ll remember to stroke your ego next time— Maybe then you won’t accuse me of being a bitch.”
“I wasn’t—”
A laugh sputters suddenly from Santos’ mouth before she can help it. She hides it behind her fist when Robby glares at her and pretends to cough instead.
The tension between the two of you doesn’t snap until around the tenth hour of the shift, when you’re hiding from the chaos of the E.D. with the excuse of fetching more supplies from the walk-in closet. Robby enters like a dark cloud, mixing with your own storm, and threatening to create a most fatal concoction when he corners you against the shelf. (You hadn’t stopped moving for about four straight hours, to be fair — this was his only real chance of getting you alone.)
“What the hell is your problem today?” the older man says in lieu of a greeting.
You huff and roll your eyes, shoving at a pack of saline flushes a little harder than necessary when they threaten to fall from the shelf and on top of you. Robby watches with narrowed eyes and a pair of weathered hands splayed on his hip.
“Did I do something to you? ‘Cause you’ve been acting crazy all day—”
You slam the cabinet door shut with a resounding clang, so hard it refuses to latch,before spinning on your heels to face the man behind you. The glare you give him almost makes him flinch before he swallows down the instinct to.
“Crazy?” you echo through a tense jaw. “You flirt with Noelle all day, right in front of me, and now you’re calling me crazy?”
Robby blinks owlishly back at you for several long moments.
You almost think you see a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth beneath his mustache, before a chuckle sputters suddenly from his lips. You flinch at the intensity of his laughter, and at the distant mania glimmering in his dark eyes.
“Oh, my god—”
“Don’t laugh!” you exclaim, face burning under the weight of your embarrassment.
“—That’s what this is about?”
“Yes! It is. Because I thought I was enough for you.”
His weathered features soften with a heavy sigh, though traces of his amusement still remain — equal parts fond and exhausted.
“Oh, c’mon… You know this wasn’t supposed to be anything serious,” Robby croons gently, taking slow steps towards you. “That was the agreement, right? Casual. So we could avoid all… This.”
You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes when he plants himself in front of you. You try not to melt when you catch a whiff of his dizzying cologne. “This?” you echo.
“Yeah… You know, all the… jealousy and the— arguments,” he huffs with a lazy shrug and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “I’ve been through this before, kid. Trust me. This is… This is what’s best.”
Your chest sears with a mixture of red-hot anger and ice-cold jealousy. Your jaw tightens at how detached he sounds, how rational, as if he were discussing policies instead of real actual feelings. (If he was even capable of those). You want him to feel this, too — this awful, wretched jealousy clawing at your ribs from the inside out.
You fold your arms tightly across your chest, forcing your voice into a deadpan as hurt simmers somewhere beneath the words. “So I can see whoever I want?” you ask him.
Robby’s expression flickers slightly, almost imperceptibly. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, but his dark gaze never once wavers from yours.
“Of course, you can,” he tells you, though his taut voice threatens to betray him. “We’re casual. That was the deal.”
“Okay,” you nod once and turn away from him again, giving him very little to play off of as he tries and fails to call your bluff.
Robby’s forced to stare at the back of you while you pull a large pack of lap pads from the shelf. His brows knit in confusion when you spin back around to face him, mostly back to normal again, with a ghost of a polite smile dancing the edges of your mouth.
“Run these to Trauma 1 for me, will ya? Dr. Al-Hashimi needs ‘em for a trauma patient coming in.”
You press the package to Robby’s chest before he can answer and walk past him for the exit before he can blink.
Three days after the fact, you’re sitting in a crowded bar a block away from the PTMC, drowning your post-shift sorrows in half-priced beers.
In those three days, you haven’t seen Robby once outside of work. There were no more stolen kisses in empty elevators, no more lingering touches in stairwells, no more “come over” texts sent in the dead of night. And Robby thought it was strange, because the two of you weren’t even fighting anymore — not technically, anyway — and yet you were more distant now than ever.
“Question,” the man murmured casually from the other side of the desk while you finished up your charting at the monitor. “Is it me you’re avoiding or just my apartment?”
“What?” you scoffed, still typing. “I’ve just been— busy, Robby.”
“Hm…” he sighed, less than convinced.
You didn’t spare him a second glance — not then and not when you took Santos’ offer of happy hour and Friday night karaoke. The girl herself returns now to the cracked pleather booth in the corner of the dingy bar, where you sit with Mel and Whitaker, after butchering another Alanis Morrissette song.
Her chest heaves with panted breaths under her black tank top, pale skin sticky with a thin layer of alcohol-induced sweat.
“Okay, what’s with the long faces over here?” Trinity jokes as she steals a room-temperature fry off your plate, talking through the mouthful. “I know you and Robby are fighting or whatever, but I just gave the performance of a lifetime up there.”
You slurp nosily at the remnants of your fruity drink and nearly choke on it at the accusation. “What?” you cough with the thin straw still in your mouth. “We aren’t— fighting. What are you talking about?”
“Oh, please,” Trinity scoffs and reaches for her beer. “You’re both been acting like a couple of… divorced parents at soccer practice.”
“Okay, I don’t even know what that means—”
“Playing nice in front of everyone as not to evoke suspicion, which inevitably turns the obvious tension between you from angry to sexually charged,” Mel rambles matter-of-factly. Her blonde hair sways around her jaw as she nods, left slightly crimped from her undone braid.
Your eyes flit to Whitaker then, who nods much more solemnly in agreement.
Your face burns red-hot in response. “Well— we’re not even, like, together or anything, so…”
“Mhm…” Santos hums with a knowing look that makes you shift uncomfortably in the booth. She takes another quick swig from the amber bottle in her hand before her gaze zeroes in on an unfortunate Whitaker. “C’mon, Huckleberry. You’re up.”
His light eyes widen, glassy with exhaustion and alcohol alike. “I’m… Up?”
“Yeah. You’re doing karaoke with me. Let’s go,” Trinity says as she slides once more off the weathered vinyl. She frowns when she rises and finds the boy still sitting in place. “Let’s go, I said! We gotta get back in line before the spots fill up—”
Whitaker scrambles to follow the girl towards the stage despite his better judgment. You use that as an excuse to get another drink, tugging the skirt of your dress further down your thighs as you go. You weave through the crowd of strangers and coworkers alike until you reach the sticky wooden counter.
You lean your elbows against it and flash the bartender a kinda smile. “Can I get another aperol spritz, please?”
“Put that on my tab,” a familiar voice says from beside you.
Your head whips to find Jack sitting there, one chair down and nursing a sweaty amber bottle of cheap beer in his pale hand. He looks more relaxed now than you think you’ve ever seen him — camo pants baggy around his legs, black t-shirt untucked from the belt, warm around the edges from the alcohol.
You feel very suddenly overdressed in your form-fitting velveteen number and cross your arms over your chest to hide beneath the loose cardigan you wear over top of it. “Oh, you don’t have to do that—”
“I insist,” the older man smiles. “You deserve it after that canthotomy you did today. You were a real trooper.”
The bartender slides a cocktail glass across the wooden surface over to you. The orange liquid threatens to slosh over the thin rim. You give him a polite grin in return. “Thank you,” you tell the man, then grow considerably shier when you turn back to the attending sitting a stool down from you. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”
“Jack,” the older man corrects before bringing the lip of his bottle back up to his mouth.
“Jack,” you echo softly.
The man shifts on the hard stool, keeping his prosthetic limb stretched slightly ahead of him beneath the bar. A not quite silence settles between you then, filled by the buzzing bar all around you. Your eyes cut to the stage on the far side of the room, where Santos belts the lyrics to “You Oughta Know” and Whitaker stumbles over himself to get the foreign words out.
“I think Shen is looking for a karaoke partner,” you quip, nodding your head towards the doctor standing by the stage and flipping through the binder of song choices there.
The dim overhead lighting turns Jack’s silver curls a softer golden shade when he turns his head to follow your gaze. He grimaces instantly at the thought. “Yeah, absolutely not.”
“Why?” you laugh softly, with the thin straw dancing against your mouth. “You scared?”
“Yes,” the man answers without a second thought. “And I’ve been shot at before— Today, even— And somehow karaoke still feels more terrifying.”
Your eyes squint in his direction, glittering with something foreign. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t ya think?”
“Eh. Maybe a little.”
You scoff and slide into the bar stool beside him. “You don’t strike me as someone who embarrasses easily, Dr. Abbot.”
“That’s because you only know me at work,” he quips halfway into his beer, before licking the amber sheen from his mouth. “Where I am equal parts competent and mysterious.”
“Mysterious?” you repeat skeptically.
“Mm,” Jack nods with narrowed eyes and a faint smile twitching the corner of his lip. “Very tortured, you know? Very brooding.”
“Ah, yes…” you sigh with alcohol glittering on your lips like gloss. “The very brooding, tortured doctor who makes dinosaur noises to win over scared children in pedes.”
Jack pauses mid-sip, pale eyes narrowing. “Well, this is new…” he hums.
Your stomach flips at the way he’s looking at you. Heat crawls instantly up your neck. You feel very suddenly suffocated by the heavy cardigan on your shoulders. “…What is?”
“I don’t know,” he answers with a lazy shrug, though his heavy eyes dart once down your form and up again. You don’t realize, until then, that this is his first time seeing you in anything other than your dark black scrubs. “You… Flirting with me.”
You exhale a breathy laugh, if only to dispel the anxiety clawing at your chest. “Flirting? Is that what this is?”
“Hey— You’re the one who called me mysterious.”
“Actually, I was clarifying if you thought you were mysterious.”
“Still counts.”
“Does it?” you squint.
Jack smirks behind the lip of the beer bottle against his mouth. His adam’s apple bobs with a short sip before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know… For a while there, I thought you hated me… Considering you never talked to me unless you had to.”
“You work nights, Jack— I don’t talk to you because I see you for, maybe, twenty minutes out of my day,” you scoff, and don’t realize you’ve called him by his first name until his eyes glimmer with amusement. You turn away with a shake of your head as your face burns, bringing the straw back up to your mouth. “Though, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t consider it…”
“Oh, really?” Jack hums with raised brows. “What’s the verdict now, then, huh?”
You let your gaze drag over him deliberately as you ponder the question, biting at the straw between your teeth. You scan over his toned biceps, his lean stomach caged beneath his form-fitting tee, and his spread thighs that make your head spin, before meeting his eyes once more.
“Now,” you hum sweetly, “I think I’m starting to understand the appeal…”
Jack stares at you for a long moment before he lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. The lamplight shines in his greying curls as he shakes his head. “Yeah? And how does Robby feel about that?”
Your eyes harden in an instant.
Jack raises a free hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m just sayin’— He looks like he wants to put his fist through a wall any time another attending talks to you for more than thirty seconds.”
Your chest tightens unexpectedly. You swallow hard to fight the strangling feeling — of Robby, and of his laughter in the supply closet — as you shrug a lazy shoulder in response. You don’t bother to lift your cardigan when it slips softly down your arm.
“It’s casual,” you tell him.
Jack studies you for a long moment. The corner of his mouth curls into a slow half-smile, and you feel your heart stuttering behind your ribcage.
“Casual, huh?” he hums and brings his bottle back up to his mouth. “Interesting…”
Morning arrives slowly through the veiled curtains of the quiet bedroom, where pale golden light cuts softly over hardwood floors and rumpled sheets. You rouse gradually, cocooned beneath strangely heavy blankets that smell differently from your own back home — like unfamiliar detergent, cedarwood, and musky cologne.
For a blissful wink of a moment, you don’t remember where you are. Not until you stretch your tired limbs and brush a scruffy leg with your foot, anyway.
Your breath catches. Your heavy eyes snap open. Your body prickles with heat as flashes from the night before return to you at once — of the walk home from the bar, of Jack’s laugh against your throat, of his stubble scraping your skin, of the teasing murmur in his velvety voice as he told you to cum for him.
Your thighs clench together at the memory, while a lingering ache pulses pleasantly low in the pit of your stomach.
You lift your head from the pillow and inhale sharply through your nose as your eyes scan the foreign bedroom, which you had been too busy to do the night before.
There’s an expensive-looking record player in one corner, sat beside a crate of well-loved vinyls. There’s a bookshelf lining the far wall — cluttered with medical textbooks, old paperbacks, and framed photos from his military days. His camo bag, etched with his name, slouches by the entrance, and over the foot of the bed, you can see his prosthetic limb lying beside your shoes.
Other than that, it’s strikingly empty, with very little decoration on the wall or bedside tables. It makes sense, you figure, for a man who is working far more than he isn’t.
Your head turns in the opposite direction to find Jack sleeping soundly just beside you. The gentle rays of morning light brush over the canvas of his bare back, turning his freckles there a deeper shade of golden brown. He’s got one arm shoved beneath the pillow he folds into his cheek and the other lying loose across the mattress — from where your waist must’ve been before you slithered out from underneath it.
Your chest pinches at the sight of him. With pride, maybe, at having conquered him. And with a pang of white-hot guilt that twists when your mind inevitably drifts to Robby.
You slide out of bed, careful not to let the mattress give too much beneath your weight. You grimace when the fabric of your t-shirt twists uncomfortably around your form, only to find that you’re wearing Jack’s shirt, which had seemingly been given to you at some point last night. It falls over your thighs when you stand, bare feet padding as you gather your discarded clothes.
You bend down to drag your underwear back up your thighs and wince when your head throbs from last night’s cheap cocktails. With your dress and knit cardigan balled in your arm, you toe your shoes back on. Your breath hitches when the mattress shifts with a soft creak.
Jack squints when he raises his wild head. His mouth twitches when he finds you at the foot of the mattress. “Y’know…” he rasps, voice rough with sleep. “I’m at least grateful you’re not robbing me before sneaking out. That’s very courteous of you.”
“I’m not sneaking,” you scoff. “I just… didn’t want to wake you.”
The man inhales sharply as he twists onto his back, charcoal sheets tangling around his waist. You force yourself to look away from his lean stomach and the red claw marks you left on his scruffy chest when he stretches his toned arms above his head.
“That’s sweet,” he says with a wince. “But unfortunately, I wake up if somebody breathes wrong in the next room.”
You exhale a soft laugh.
Jack’s eyes soften around the edges at the sound of it. “You workin’ today?”
“Yep, in about…” Your eyes flit to the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Half an hour.”
“Brutal,” he scoffs.
“You’re fault.”
“Don’t say that like you didn’t have a good time,” he teases with narrowed eyes, then softens slightly when you turn away. You fumble with the stubborn back of your shoe, and his chest twists at your silence. “Do you… Do you regret it?”
“No,” you answer instantly.
“Good,” he hums, relaxing visibly once more into the sheets. “Me neither.”
Your stomach blooms with warmth. You shift awkwardly on your feet before him, even still. “So, uh… What— What now?”
“Well, feel free to use my shower, if you want—”
“I’m serious, Jack,” you insist gently, then add, more sheepishly. “But I will be using your shower, actually, thank you…”
Jack inhales deeply, considering. “Well,” he starts carefully, “I like you. Obviously.”
Your pulse rushes like a teenage girl.
“But,” he continues, as relief and disappointment tangle in your chest all at once. “I also know that neither of us is in the right spot for a relationship right now…”
“So… Casual?” you offer lightly, mouth lifted in a tired smile.
“Casual,” Jack agrees with a firm nod and glassy eyes.
You wear the night before all over, despite your desperate attempts to hide it.
Robby notices it the moment he sees you — how relaxed you are, how happy you seem to be. Whatever had been plaguing you before is now long gone, and that alone should be enough to comfort him. But still, he can’t shake the feeling that someone had gotten rid of all the aching for you — fucked it out of you the way only he could.
“You’re in a good mood today,” he observes while signing off on the chart you’d given him.
“Am I?” you hum.
“Yeah,” he nods, clicking his pen with his thumb. He glances at you over the top of his glasses before averting his gaze once more. “What’d you get up to last night, huh?”
“Nothing,” you shrug. “Other than watching Santos butcher Alanis Morrissette’s discography at karaoke… Maybe I just slept well.”
“You usually only do that at my place.”
Your brows furrow when he passes the clipboard back to you. “I’m sorry— Are you accusing me of something, Dr. Robby?”
His mouth opens to respond — to tell you that he can smell the foreign body wash on your skin, far muskier than the delicate sweet-vanilla he’s used to. But the automatic doors across the station swish open and shut before he can.
Jack enters with his camo pack slung over his shoulder and brings a cool evening breeze in with him. Robby can’t help but notice how your eyes find each other’s almost instantly, clicking like magnets and lingering together like there’s a secret that only the two of you know about. His stomach swirls with jealousy.
“Look alive, degenerates,” Jack announces in lieu of a greeting, then quiets slightly when he reaches your side. “What’d I miss?”
“I was just briefing Robby on last night at karaoke,” you answer with a polite smile. “And how I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette after Santos’ crimes last night—”
“Fuuuck you,” Trinity drags out from the desk beside you, still sluggish from the long day and the hangover that won’t seem to leave her.
“Don’t drag me into this,” Jack quips. “I took an oath as a physician to do no harm.”
You exhale a quiet laugh. The man’s eyes soften around the edges, as though pleased at having earned the sound, before walking off towards the locker room. He leaves a trail of musky cedarwood as he goes, and Robby’s heart drops when he finally places the scent — the one he’s been smelling on you all day.
The realization hit him like a truck.
His expression darkens instantly when he turns back to you.
“Supply closet,” he mutters lowly as he walks past you. “Now.”
Your stomach drops at his tone. He takes all the remaining breath from your lungs with him as he goes. Your chest stings accordingly — with a surge of pride at his jealousy, and with a pang of distant regret at his hurt. You follow behind him down the long hallway to the supply closet like a scolded child. He barely waits for the door to click shut behind him before rounding on you.
“You slept with him?” he shouts, eyes wide and wild.
You cross your arms tight over your chest, with your head tilted inquisitively to your shoulder. “Aren’t you the one who said I could see whoever I want?”
“Yeah, I meant random assholes at the bar,” he snaps. “Not my best fucking friend!”
An incredulous laugh sputters from your lips. “Oh, so now we have rules? What happened to just being casual, huh? If you can flirt with your coworkers, why can’t I?”
Robby’s dark eyes narrow as he takes a slow step towards you. You catch a faint upward flicker of his mouth as he asks, “So that’s why you did it, huh? You just wanted to piss me off?”
Your anger spikes instantly. You feel it prickling red-hot beneath your scrubs. Because he’s an arrogant asshole, maybe, or maybe because a distant part of you knows that he’s right.
“No, actually,” you tell him anyway. “Because not everything’s about you, Robby. I did it because Jack wanted me. Because he didn’t treat me like I was just another one of his dirty secrets—”
“Yeah, alright,” Robby scoffs a breathy laugh and turns away, running a pale hand through his chopped brown hair.
“Because being with him made me feel good—”
“I said alright!”
“Aw, what’s wrong, Robby?” you coo, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Does it bother you that somebody else wanted me?”
Robby exhales another one of his stupid laughs.
Your chest swells with a burning feeling that makes you feel like crying. “Why is it so hard to admit that you care about me?”
“I care about you! Of course, I fucking care about you!” he exclaims, red in the face. “Because I’ve spent months trying not to screw this up.”
“Oh, please,” you roll your eyes. “Says the man who practically shoved me into someone else’s bed.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Robby squints.
“Do what?”
“Act like this is what I wanted—”
The words die in his throat when the silver knob to the closet door clicks suddenly behind him. The hinges open with a quiet squeak a second later. Your heads whip in sync to find Santos in the threshold, rubbing at her tired eyes as she steps into the room. She doesn’t realize the two of you are in there until the door shuts behind her again.
Her wide eyes dart back and forth between the two of you for a moment. “…Why does it feel like I just walked into a hostage situation?” she quips in a monotone.
“Now you know how I felt last night,” you joke back weakly.
She flips you off and walks further inside. Neither of you says a word as she retrieves a case of saline flushes and four-by-fours from the shelves. The plastic crinkles loudly in the silence.
“Please. Feel free to continue,” Santos deadpans as she leaves. “I definitely won’t be listening with my ear pressed against the door.”
The entrance shuts behind her with a dull click that sounds much louder in the quiet. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as Robby pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. When he lifts his head against, his eyes zero in on you.
“We’ll finish this when we get home,” he tells you, firmly.
“Can’t tonight,” you shrug, lying through your teeth. “I have plans.”
“Yeah, not anymore, you don’t.”
Your stomach does a back flip at his words, at his very sudden act of dominance that makes you feel like melting into a puddle at his feet. And judging by the newfound glint in Robby’s dark eyes, he notices it, too.
MICHAEL ROBINAVITCH is a boob guy, and has to make it everyone's problem.
CONTAINS: 3.6k words, SMUT 18+ MDNI, subby!daddy!robby, boob guy!robby, heavyyy use of daddy, reader cries from pleasure, squirting, fingering, insane dirty talk, not proofread! based on this post <3
MASTERLIST | INBOX | LATEST WORK
It starts with the clack of your pretty kitten heels along Robby's hardwood floor. The sound is Pavlovian to him at this point, you can tell by the way his neck is already craning towards the hallway, from which you exit in a brand new dress.
A soft, buttery yellow cinches your waist, flows around your hips. You flex your hands at your sides, a sort of presentation for your lover— clad in plaid pajama pants, a loose university tee hanging off his broad shoulders, round glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"What do you think?" You chirp, giving him a little spin.
By the time you've completed your 360, his head is hanging back, Adam's apple bobbing as he squeezes his eyes shut.
"You look perfect, honey," he coos, and your belly warms.
"Thank you, handsome," you reply, sauntering over to the couch.
Perching yourself on his knee, you get comfortable as a big hand reaches out to steady your back. You wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him in to rest your forehead against his.
He puckers his lips, and you place a finger over them.
"Not now, lip gloss," you whisper, and he groans.
"Baby, y're killing me," he croons, ghosting his lips over your face.
Scrunching your nose, you giggle as you try to dodge him, only for the sake of your meticulous makeup.
"Mikeyyyy," you whine, wiggling around on his lap. "Spent too much time on this face, no kisses!"
Your heart breaks as his face falls, a small pout jutting his lips. You mirror him, glossy lips teasing him as you squeeze his bicep with your manicured fingers.
"Love you so much, Mikey," you purr, tracing a nail up his skin. Goosebumps erupt across his skin at your touch, and your heart flutters with love, and a small sense of pride. "So patient," you praise, and his eyes flutter shut.
"Love you, my sweet girl," he whispers, burying his face in your neck.
His lips ghost over your skin, a shiver unzipping your spine. The tip of his nose follows, dragging up the length of your neck, then back down again.
"Can I kiss you here?" He asks, placing a tentative kiss to your collarbone. "Don't got any shit on down here, do you?" He asks, dotting kisses along your chest.
Closing your eyes, you arch your back into him, emphasizing his favorite parts of you. Your plush tits rustle against the silk fabric of your dress, nipples peeking through the fabric.
Robby catches this, and it seems to snap him out of whatever reprieve your perfume put him in. The room turns cold, but not dreadful. In fact, a jolt of excitement races up your spine, the darkness in his eyes all too inviting.
"You're going out without a bra on?" He growls, sinking his teeth into the curve of your breast.
All he's afforded are the parts that peek out of the low cut fabric, the plush upper cut of your tit nearly hypnotizing him.
"Yeah," you answer, scraping your nails along the back of his neck. "That okay, Daddy?"
"Fuuucckk," he rasps against your skin, nipping and sucking along your neck. "Can't fuckin' say that to me when we don't have the time for me to rip you apart."
His hand slides up your thighs with his words, resting at the apex of them, just to tease you. Butterflies erupt in your tummy at his touch, the sweet, sadistic twinkle in his eye.
"I look pretty?" You goad, knowing the answer.
He tells you this, his head craning to the side before he confirms your question anyway.
"So pretty, honey," he presses another kiss, now to your shoulder. "My pretty girl, yeah?"
"Yeah, Daddy," you whine, your earlier teasing completely removed from your tone now.
He chuckles, a mean, low rumble in the pit of his chest. You wiggle on his lap, whining and squeezing him closer to you.
"You're really gonna go out like this, baby?" He asks, playing with the flimsy strap of your dress. "Gonna really go show your tits to everyone? Thought those were just for your daddy."
He's pouting, eyes shining as he rests his cheek against your chest. He looks up at you through his lashes, and your heart positively pounds against your ribcage.
"Love you, Mikey," you coo, stroking his cheek. "They're always for you, y'know that, honey."
He pouts, closing his eyes and pressing his lips against your skin.
"But you're leaving," he whines, and your breath is knocked from your chest.
This is a new side of Robby, his whining, his thrashing underneath your thighs. His hard length is prominent, too, rubbing against your dress, desperate and heady.
"Yeah, I am," you mutter, sticky sweet and dripping with syrupy love. "But you're gonna be okay, hm?"
He nods against you, wrapping his arms around your waist, squeezing you tight.
"Gotta wait so long to cum, baby, fuck," he complains. "So mean to me."
"I know," you pout, pinching his sweet cheek. "I'm so mean…so unfortunate that you have a hot girl half your age on your lap sticking her tits in your face."
He barks a laugh at this, your joke breaking him out of his seemingly-subby daze. You can't help but join in, a wide smile cracking your lips, heart immensely full with the love you hold for the man worshiping you.
"Don't be long," he mutters, releasing you from his grip. "I'll be thinking about you the whole time."
You look down at him, your skin warming above his intense gaze.
"Same here," you quip, heart shining with his affection. "I love you, Mikey."
"I love you too," he calls back on your way out.
"Keep the Viagra nearby!" You chirp on your way out, chuckling to yourself at his heady groan.
-
A few hours later, you stumble back across the threshold, the little bit of tipsiness wearing off with each step. Robby's still in the same spot you left him in, though this time he's got his phone to his ear, pouty lips and glossy eyes.
"Oh thank God," he groans, rolling his eyes and hanging up the phone, tossing it on the other side of the couch.
"Hi, baby," he smiles up at you, hands crawling over your hips. "Missed you so much, Jack was about to kill me."
You giggle, cupping his face in your palms.
"Were you on the phone with him this whole time?" You ask, brows shooting into your forehead.
"I made it about ten minutes before I called him, but basically, yeah," he mutters, cheeks tinting pink as he settles into your tummy.
"Love you, Mikey," you whisper, pressing a kiss to his head. "Missed you."
"Missed you so much," he whimpers, pressing a kiss into the silky fabric of your dress. "So pretty, missed this body, honey."
"I was only gone for a couple hours, big boy," you tease, knowing full well you missed him just as much.
You sink to your knees, in between his legs, now at eye level with him. You take a moment, reveling in his desperate face. Wide, brown eyes, pouting lips, tired brows.
"Still missed you," he rasps, leaning forward to bury his face in your neck. "Missed your pretty tits, honey."
He cups you through your dress, his callous hands rasping through the thin fabric.
"Just walked around letting anyone see you like this? So fuckin' unfair, baby," he groans, pressing sloppy kisses to your skin. Your eyes flutter shut atop your cheeks, a deep breath racking your chest.
"Bunch of guys your age…" He rambles, slinking your dress strap off your shoulder. "Probably looking at my girl's tits…" He mutters, the other strap coming free. "Wishing they could get their mouth on you…"
"Michael-" You whine, and he tuts his tongue.
"Am I wrong?" He cuts you off. "Am I wrong? Look me in the eyes and tell me guys weren't staring at you."
You twist your lips, knowing you can't, and he sees it in your eyes. He smirks, an evil, sardonic expression that takes over his entire face.
"Y'wanna know how I know that, baby?" He asks, pushing the dress down your torso, standing you up to bury his face in your tummy again.
"How, Mikey?" You relent, shaky and watery.
"Because," he peppers kisses across your tummy, massaging your tits. "I see how guys look at you when we go out. I see the men who look at you on my arm, who wish they could take you from me."
You shudder, butterflies erupting in your tummy at his words, his rough palms dragging along your nipples.
"Imagining it when I'm not there?" He laughs at the sheer thought. "It's enough to make me sick, baby. You're just so pretty, can't fucking help it."
He looks up at you then, eyes shining with a desperation you don't think you've ever seen before. It breaks your resolve, that look, crashing your lips to his.
You melt into each other, frantic hands sliding your dress the rest of the way off, leaving you in nothing but a lacy white thong.
Robby pulls away, registering what lies before him, before letting out a long, tortured groan. He buries his face in your tummy once more, pressing kisses along the waistband of your panties.
"You're so fucking pretty, baby, oh my God," he moans, hooking his finger beneath the waistband, letting it snap against your skin.
You jump, a small whimper falling from your lips. This satisfies Robby, who places his two, large hands on the globes of your ass, pulling you onto his lap.
You slot into his body like a puzzle piece, eager to get him undressed, inside you. You lick your lips as you look down on him, his hands gathering at your breasts once again.
Pressing your foreheads together, your heart flutters at the proximity. He's so close, his woodsy cologne and smoky aftershave flooding your senses — a devastating combination that leaves you weak in the knees, and wet between your thighs.
He shoves his hands there, next, delving into your wetness with a selfish greed that sends your eyes rolling into your skull. Expert fingers find your clit, swirling over your nerves with fervor.
"Ah!" You whine, clutching his neck in your arms, wrapping yourself up in him. "Mikey, that's so good."
It's whispered against his neck, sends shivers down his spine. You smile against his skin at the way he reacts to you, pressing sweet kisses along his thick shoulder.
"Love you honey," he confesses. It's breathy, his eyes fluttering shut with his words.
"Take my panties off," you beg against his neck, kissing and kissing and kissing him. "Please, wanna feel all of you."
"Got you, baby, I got you," he assures, slipping the fabric down your legs. "Don't ever gotta beg with me, understand?"
You nod against him, and he lands a harsh crack on your ass. You lurch further into him, a whine ripping from your throat.
"Words, princess," he demands. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Daddy," you whine, wiggling your hips further into his touch. "I'm sorry, feels so good."
The newfound freedom Robby finds with your panties off is exhilarating, his fingers maneuvering your folds any way he likes.
"Good job," he coos, sweet and loving. "So good for me, always so good. Love you so much, hm?"
You nod against his neck, murmuring a sweet, "Love you too, Mikey, love you so much."
"Yeah?" He whines, his still-clothed length throbbing against your thigh. "You do? You love me so much?"
You nod, desperate and eager.
"So much, angel, you're my guy, love you so much," you croak, watery from the pleasure.
"God, fuck!" He nearly shouts, squeezing his eyes shut as he turns his head, pressing a kiss to the first piece of you he can find. "I'm your guy, baby? I'm your fuckin' guy?"
"Yes- oh!" You gasp, the tip of his middle finger pressing into your entrance. "Yes! Yes! The only one for me, my only guy, I love you."
"That's what I like to hear, baby," he croons, pressing sweet kisses along your shoulders, your back. "You're my girl, you know that? My best girl, I love you so much honey. So fucking lucky to have you, you have no idea."
Tears prick at the back of your lids, a culmination of the pleasure and love Robby brings you. It's overwhelming, and yet you can't get enough.
"Please, I need more, Mikey, please give me more," you whine, sinking your hips further onto his hand.
"Yeah? Want another finger, honey?" He asks, slipping in his ring finger before you can give him an answer.
"Oh my God!" You wail, squeezing your eyes shut as the tears finally fall. "Thank you, Daddy, thank you, thank you-oh!"
You jolt, his fingers pressing into your sweet spot with just the right amount of pressure.
"I love being your girl, Daddy," you whine against him. "You were right, y'know? Guys were looking. Some even approached me-ooh!"
Robby's fingers speed up, electricity running through your veins.
"Are you fuckin' serious, baby?" He growls, cracking hand down on your ass.
You sniffle, whining at the pleasure that courses through you.
"Yeah," you say, sweet and innocent. You rest your cheek on his shoulder, enough to look up at him, and for him to look back at you.
He melts when he sees your watery eyes, the mascara streaks down your cheeks. He presses some kisses there, tongue darting out to trace the dark tracks along your face.
"Yeah," you sigh. "There were a lot of them, maybe six different guys tried to buy me a drink."
He growls under his breath, thumb finding your clit to get you even closer to the edge. He ruts his hips up into your ass, his length hard and bulbous, throbbing against your warm skin.
"All I could think about was you, Daddy," you finish, the coil in your belly pulling tight. "Told them all no, told them my old man was waiting at home for me."
He groans, squeezing his eyes shut and throwing his head back.
"Fuck!" He shouts, fingers moving now at lightning speed. "You already have me fucking close, baby, holy shit."
You breathe out a laugh, pressing a kiss to his jaw.
"Love you Daddy, can I cum?" You ask, just to push his buttons a little more.
He presses his thumb into your clit a little more, unzipping a shiver down your spine as you creep closer to the edge.
"What did I say about fuckin' askin' me questions?" He growls against your temple. "Hm? You gonna cum? Please, honey. Want to taste you, you gonna let your old man taste this pretty pussy?"
"Oh fuck, oh Jesus, fuck yes, there, just like that, yes!" You wail, squeezing your eyes shut, a fresh wave of tears rolling down your face as you give in to the ache, the release.
The world stops on its axis as you explode into the pleasure. A blinding ache rolls through you, guttural whines racking through you as you wiggle your hips against Robby's fingers.
"That's it, thaaat's it, good girl, good girl," he coos, pressing endless kisses against your temple as the waves shock your body.
"Oh, fuck, oh my God," you whimper, the last few trails of fire running through you.
Slumping against him, you let him chuckle, lift you and bring you to your bedroom. Locking your legs around his waist, you cling to him and let him maneuver you.
He plops you on the bed, ripping his shirt over his head as you prop yourself up on your forearms. His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek, a sardonic smile forming.
"Get your pants off, old guy," you tease, his brows shooting into his forehead.
"Ohhhohoho," he chuckles, sliding them down his hips. "First the Viagra, now this?"
He kneels on the bed, the sheer size of him imposing, dizzying. You nod, teeth sinking into your lip.
"Bad fuckin' girl," he rasps, stroking his cock once, twice, three times before lining himself up with your entrance. "But you like being my bad girl, don't you?"
You nod, resting your cheek on your palm, looking up at him with your sweetest eyes.
"Love it, love you, Daddy," you breathe, puckering your lips for him. "Love being with you like this."
That last part is a whisper, a soft confession of your affection, your devotion.
"God," he breathes, shaky and raspy. "Love you so much, God, you're fuckin' perfect. Do you know how perfect you are?"
You shake your head, cheeks heating, still not used to his ever-present love for you, your body.
"That's so fucked up," a sardonic chuckle escapes his chest. "Maybe I'm not lovin' on you enough. 'S that it?"
He pushes his head in, your jaw going slack, a gasp echoing from your throat. Your eyes flutter shut, head falling back into the pillow.
"Hey, look at me," he demands, a sweet little tap against your cheek breaking you out of you reprieve. "Look up at Daddy, look at me and answer my fuckin' question."
"No, God! Daddy it's enough, you're enough, Daddy, love you so much," you wail, wiggling your hips in a sad attempt to swallow more of him.
"Ooh, we're desperate tonight," he coos in awe. "I love you, baby. but y're lyin' to me. Clearly I'm not doing enough, or else you'd realize how sexy you are."
You're so distracted by his words, that you barely even register that he's bottomed out inside you, brain fuzzy.
"Daddyyyyy," you draw out, lips pouting. He kisses it away, starting to rock his hips.
"I know, I know, honey," he coos, tilting his head to the side. "Such a good girl, my fuckin' good girl."
You nod, digging your fingers into his shoulders as he finds his rhythm. Jaw going slack, your eyes flutter shut as his thick length works you out.
"God, you should fuckin' see this, baby," he grunts, eyes trained on his cock slipping in and out, in and out. "Pussy swallows me up so perfectly, so proud of you, love you so much."
You whimper, clutching his plush hips, pressing him further into you. This new angle sends his tip right into your g-spot, punching out a sharp whine from your lips.
"Ooh, there's your spot, good job, honey, way to take what you want," he rambles, dipping his tongue into your collarbone.
He picks up his speed, not changing his angle so he pounds into you over and over and over again. You're dazed, light headed and drowning in the pleasure, even dizzier when he stimulates your clit.
The pressure is unrelenting, intense as you thrash underneath him, kicking your legs out while your tummy flips.
"You got it," he encourages, knowing your body better than you do. "You can do it, please let go for me, baby."
You whine, brows furrowed sweetly. He coos, kissing you all over your face.
"Daddy, it-I feel like I'm gonna pee," you look up at him with wild eyes, the pressure in your lower belly almost too much.
"That's okay," he coos, kissing your nose. "Tell me if you want to stop, but even if you do pee, I don't care. As long as it feels good, get Daddy as wet as you need."
You squeeze your eyes shut, relenting into the pleasure that continues building inside you.
"I know you're close, you can do it. I love you so much, can you show me how much you love me? Can you cum on Daddy's cock?" He asks, voice sticky sweet.
The release is intense, more so than normal. Squeezing your eyes shut, you groan, desperate and guttural. You relax into the mattress as a warm, gushy splash echoes between you and Robby.
"Holy shit! Oh fuck, ohhh fuck! Good fucking girl, I'm gonna cum, yes! Fuck!" Robby grunts, hips stuttering into your own as his cock throbs inside you.
"Yes! Yes, Daddy! Oh God, Daddy, it's so much, feels so good," the tears are back again, rolling down your cheeks as you wail, thrash around him.
The pressure of your release is unrelenting, all consuming as it wracks through you. Luckily, Robby's there, kissing you and cooing at you and shushing you.
"Fuck yes, pussy's so sweet, baby, squirted all over me, good fuckin' job," he grunts, hips stuttering as he comes down from his own high.
It takes a moment for his words to sink in to your brain, and when it does, your eyes shoot open.
"I squirted?" You ask, only earning you a laugh from the man above you.
"Yeah, y'did baby, so proud of you," he leans down to kiss you, and you melt into him.
An intense relaxation falls over you, your eyes unable to open, even after he pulls his lips away.
"Love you, Daddy," you whine, wrapping your arms around his neck, keeping him close. "Love making you proud."
"Yeah, you do, everyday, you're my good fuckin' girl," he praises, running his hands up and down your thighs, up to your ass.
He slips his length out, and you whine at the new wave of vulnerability that hits your pussy, the cool air making you shiver.
"Oh, honey," he frowns, sardonic and condescending. "Oh my sweet girl, I'm gonna get you cleaned up in a little bit, here, just gotta watch this for sec, good God."
You whine, thrash around the bed as his spend leaks out of you, his animalistic gaze refusing to let up.
"I love you, Mikey," you whine, and he smiles.
"Love you too, baby," he slots over you once again, pressing a sweet kiss to your lips. "Wanna go shower? Maybe I can lick you clean while we're in there."
You're out of bed in record speed, tugging his wrist towards the bathroom. You're in for a long night.
❝ NO OTHER HEART ! ❞ michael “robby” robinvaitch x wife!reader ( 1.4k blurb)
synopsis : robby takes care of your daughter in the middle of the night when she seems adamant on keeping the both of you awake.
warnings : literally nothing except for tooth rotting domestic fluff. michael robinavitch finally goes to therapy and gets his act together alternate universe. english is NOT my first language so sorry if there is weird grammar somewhere.
a/n : robby is a girldad and i will die upon this hill<3 also him singing a lullaby in hebrew is actually inner child healing behavior so take this is an au where everything goes okay and he gets over his commitment issues (unrealistic i know) anyway, hope you enjoy reading 🤍
masterlist
you were woken from your slumber when a high pitched wail tore through the peace of your moonlit bedroom. your two month old daughter’s familiar little cry filling the otherwise quiet air as you groaned into the pillow.
the sound of her sobs grew louder and louder by the second — clearly agitated. her distress only intensified in the dark, signaling a need that didn’t care neither for your, nor robby’s sleeping schedule.
you felt your husband stir beside you just as you were about to brace yourself and sit up.
you were still in the thick of it all; learning to navigate these long nights of comforting, feeding, and changing. a task that was proving to be more demanding and difficult than any patient in the ptmc emergency room had ever been.
robby had come home earlier that evening after his shift — having stayed at the pitt overtime as he usually did. although, since the two of you had welcomed your baby girl into the world, he’d developed the habit of not lingering a second longer than absolutely necessary. which was applaudable for a man as dedicated to his work as robby.
it couldn’t have been later than 2am, and you didn't want him disturbing the already scarce sleep he got.
you knew how adamant he was about helping with everything concerning the baby, especially with you in this fragile postpartum state. but you wanted him to rest. and properly rest at that. not fuss around you all the time.
"it's okay… i've got it.” you assured him, your voice still thick and groggy with sleep.
before you could properly shift to soothe the crying child, you felt a warm, gentle hand settle on your forearm. stopping you in place.
"no, it's fine. i'll take care of her." the words were slightly hoarse, a low rasp in the dark, but to your surprise robby sounded far more alert than you did.
which could only mean one thing; he had stayed up late again, undoubtedly overthinking the events of the day.
you sighed; under any other circumstance you might have protested, argued that he needed his strength for tomorrow. but the persistent ache in your bones fought the idea of slipping from the sanctuary of your warm sheets.
"michael—"
"uh-uh." he gave your hand a firm squeeze and was already slipping out of bed. “you need to get rest.” and with that the sheets rolled over to your side as he stood up carefully.
you realized quickly there was no point in arguing with him when he set his mind on something. typical robby.
so you begrudgingly slumped back into the pillows.
"okay baby, it's okay…" you heard him murmur. his voice a soft coo as he moved toward the crib where your daughter lay.
“daddy's coming." she was still wailing ferociously when he reached her. he quickly scooped her into his arms with practiced tenderness.
"oh… what is it, sweet girl? huh?" he adjusted her against him. his large hands dwarfing her tiny form. it looked as though he was holding a delicate loaf of bread and not the human being the two of you had created.
"what's bothering you so much?" he cooed and rocked with experienced gentleness. checking the fabric of her onesie to ensure it wasn't soaked through.
he sensed no wetness, no sharp scent of a messy diaper, yet her cries of irritation persisted.
he squinted a brow. "shhh…" shifting her so she was splayed completely against his chest, beginning to pace the room.
the floorboards creaked beneath his heavy weight, a familiar noise as he treaded around the perimeter of the moonlight.
your sleep-addled mind perked up when you heard him start to sing. a soft melodic tune and a stream of hebrew seeping from his lips.
it was a lullaby. undoubtedly a fragment of his childhood. a song his grandmother had lodged into his heart. your own squeezing at the thought.
you silently watched from the shadows of the bed as your husband cradled your daughter with one hand. silently praying his warmth and steady lullaby would be enough to anchor her.
"you certainly have a pair of lungs on you, huh," he chuckled pressing a light kiss to her forehead.
"it's alright. i hear you just fine. don't have to wake the entire neighborhood though. especially your mommy… she needs to sleep sometimes too you know."
even in your half-consciousness you couldn’t help but smile meekly at his words.
“oh… i know… i know…” she desperately clutched the star of david which hung from his neck.
he moved to reposition her, laying her carefully along the length of his forearm.
his almost thirty years of experience, from both life and medicine, came in especially handy when handling his fussy daughter. even if he wasn't a pediatrician, he still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
how many babies had he seen during his years at the pitt? how many newborns had he cradled or helped usher into the world? how many terrified parents had he calmed with a steady look and a few carefully measured words?
yet none of it compared. none of it could even graze the surface of what he felt while holding her. his daughter. your daughter. the physical evidence of a love he had always thought himself incapable of. unworthy of.
he patted her back gently, awaiting the small release of air.
after a series of soft pats and a few final indignant cries, she finally relented. the small belching noises finally escaped her. the tension seemingly bleeding out of her tiny frame.
"there you go…" he praised, carassing the small tuft of dark hair on her scalp.
her sobs weakened into tiny whines before lulling into quiet puffs of air. "there you go honey."
he brought her back to his chest, silently padding back to the crib.
he stood there for a few long moments, just holding her in the silver light, admiring the small, miraculous creature the two of you had created.
she was the light of his life. the carving of his very soul made flesh.
she was born from your shared love, a quiet victory after so many hardships, so many sleepless nights, so many arguments you had weathered through to get to this fragile peace.
what had he done to deserve this? what had he done for god to grant him such a precious, untainted gift? what could a man so scarred and weathered by the world do to merit such grace?
he couldn't find it in himself to understand.
and then — for the first time perhaps, dana’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.
you're a good man, michael robinavitch.
his lips pressed into a thin line and he let out a silent, shaky hum. her words playing in his mind.
he gently tucked the baby into the soft sheets.
as he was adjusting the blanket she cooed up at him. her dark round eyes opening for a fleeting second. eyes that mirrored his own so perfectly.
he felt the corners of his lips tug upward into a soft, irresistible smile.
he offered a finger and her tiny palm encapsulated it with a ferocity which caught him off guard. a silent testament to her resilience.
you watched him from the bed. your chest blooming with an incredible, sweeping sense of warmth and pride as he leaned over the wooden crib. it was in moments like these you found yourself falling for your husband all over again.
admiring with such affection and tenderness he took care of your daughter.
he remained slightly bent, watching as her eyes finally drooped for good. her breathing steadying into a familiar unbreakable rhythm.
as he gazed down upon her, a feeling of love so ferocious and overwhelming washed over him. a sensation he thought had been lost on him years ago.
but that was before you. before you had come into his life. before he had tentatively and fearfully accepted all the good you had offered him. all the goodness he thought himself undeserving of.
he bit the inside of his cheek, feeling his eyes shimmer with a sudden heat before he shook himself out of the reverie.
he didn't know if he deserved this life, but he knew that every day for the rest of his years he would work to earn it.
when he was certain she was fully adrift in the land of dreams, he turned and padded back to your sleeping form in the bed.
you heard the soft rustle of fabric as he slid under the covers, pullng the warmth back over his body.
"thank you…" you whispered drowsily, turning toward him in the dark.
your eyes were half-shut when you felt him pull you into the curve of his chest. pressing a quiet lingering kiss to the crown of your head.
"nothing to thank me for.” he murmured against your hair. feeling your form relax in his arms. and you gradually felt sleep began to take you back.
you mumbled something indecipherable. perhaps a soft sound of contentment.
and michael felt another swell of unrestrained love engulf him. this time he didn’t try to suppress it.
because truly, he should be the one thanking you.
you had given him the greatest, most cherished gift of his life.
your daughter. your family. and for the rest of his life, he would make sure you knew exactly how much he appreciated this little world the two of you had built together.
— i love you, thank you, i forgive you, please forgive me too. after a truly hellish day on top of the 'Pitftest' shooting, you tell Robby he can stop by to see your four-year-old, so why does he end up staying the night? and why does he say everything you wish he had before you separated? (14.8k)
pairing: michael 'robby' robinavitch x ex-wife!reader, nurse!reader,
warnings: “ex-wife” reader, smut with plot (lots of it), set after season 1 mass-casualty, mentions of sh**ting and child death by drowning, generalised depression and ptsd, co-parenting, angst between two adults with unfinished business (they're both as bad and love-sick as each other), unprotected piv, breastplay, pussy eating, fingering, multiple orgasms, personification of female sexual organ, one use of “good girl”, age-gap (I imagine reader being in her early thirties, that's just me. Also, they refer to each as ex-wife/ex-husband despite not actually being divorced... neither of them filed)
note: this is not baby's first fandom but this is baby's first time posting on tumblr, please be kind xo
Aside from porch-light, the house is dark and quiet. You know it’s been left on for you, so you can see the way home when you turn onto the street, and you appreciate the touching makeshift lighthouse after the storm you’ve just trekked through. You like it so much you leave the light on for Robby to have, too. That feeling that he’ll show up tonight doesn’t waver. You don’t question it. You don’t even shoot off a text, with yet another reassurance from you that it’s okay if he stops by tonight. After what happened, you guess once is enough for him to listen.
You hope it is, anyway.
Do you even have hopes after tonight? You don’t think any of the prayers you sent up tonight, during the shift from hell, came true. They go unanswered even now. You know as much when you slip off your trainers and see blood.
“Shit.”
It’s worked its way into the map of the soles. The blood doesn’t look old yet. It looks too wet, too fresh to your exhausted eyes. You gather its in your car now, up your porch steps and outside your front door, into your welcome home mat. It repulses you, but, more importantly, it breaks you down.
The tears fall shortly after you put the trainers in your downstairs bathroom’s sink. You use the running tap as a cover for them. As sobs wreck your body, what you’ve gone through tonight becomes more clear. It’s not a hazy rush you had to get through. Blinkers on, don’t think about, just do your job. That doesn’t exist here. You’ve brought it home with you like the blood you’re washing out of your trainers. How can you not? It was a horror show. It was just like Robby said it was: the worst of humanity. It’s not often you, in the ED, get to see people on their best days, or even good ones, but, today, that you’ll count as one of the worst days of your life. You’re sure it’s the same for others, too.
You wash at your face before you go upstairs. You tell yourself to get a grip and force the tears back. If you’re going to kiss Romi, like you promised, you don’t want her to see you upset. You don’t even want her to be close to your body right now; these scrubs that have seen death and carnage. But you have to check on her. Hers in the first face you want to see. And yet, when you reach her door, you can’t bring yourself to enter while covered in tonight.
Instead, you watch her.
Just watch her.
For a while, you stay in the doorway and admire her sleeping figure. It looks like she’s tossed around and has been thrown into bed with how she lies there, arms thrown up above her head and face smushing into the pillow. It manages to bring a smile to your face, a soft one. You know you can’t kiss her right now. You feel too dirty and she’s too pure. You don’t want to risk rubbing whatever’s on you onto her innocence, tainting the moment with Romi you’ve been building all day from the time of death was called on a child, but, for now, you can watch her breathe and knows she’s safe.
Eventually, you pull yourself away to go shower. Once you’re clean, only then, do you go in; past the door with your daughter’s name on it. You sneak across her pink, carpeted floor and settle down on a patch of it at her bedside. You kiss her head, soft, just enough pressure for Romi to smile in her sleep. There, on her floor, you sit and admire her over. You’re watching Romi like you’re amazed she’s real. In awe, you monitor her breathing carefully. How many parents heard their child’s stop today, in the span of your shift? How many were close to losing them? The thought of it terrifies you. It cuts at your heart, although, you’re certain it’s out of your chest and sleeping soundly now. All your goodness is wrapped up in her, bundled under a mermaid duvet and strangling her beloved, floppy bunny under her arm. The most devastating thing that can happen to her is if the morning she wakes up and ‘Bun-Bun’ is on the floor. She won’t comprehend the demons crawling around in your head as you look at her now.
It’s well past ten when you hear keys in the door. You’ve been away from Romi’s bedside for less than thirty minutes and your scrubs are in the washing machine — tablet and detergent in, just waiting for Robby’s to join. You’re right to wait. You’re right to leave the porch-light on. You’re right that he’ll stop by.
There’s a couple steps before the turn in your staircase, following the corner of your house. You sit on there with a glass of wine in your hand. You’re not really drinking it. It’s wine, so you can excuse it by saying you’re just nursing it, but you both know it’s not true. Robby knows because he barely finished the beer he shared with Jack and a few others in the park before he was walking home, then driving to yours.
“I needed to see her.”
Your eyes meet the sorrow in his. You’re a matching pair. You save your, ‘I know’ for another time. You tuck it away safely the same as you tuck Robby into your home. “Shoes off, give me your bag.”
He does exactly what you say. Robby doesn’t speak while he obeys. He’s too broken. His tiredness is bone-deep, and he can surely argue that he can do it himself. But here you are offering, caring for him the way you do the patients in The Pitt. Robby wonders if you think he’s ill like they are. He wonders it himself after tonight, after he choked.
When you have his belongings, you tell him, “Go on up.”
Robby does as you say again. He leaves his boots by the door and his bag in your lap. Your glass of wine is forgotten about. You leave it in the windowsill by the stairs while you go into the downstairs toilet. In there, your now-clean trainers are resting on the radiator to dry, and you start to clean Robby’s boots. Like yours, there’s blood on his soles; over the cuff of his shoes. You’re lucky they’re leather. If they were suede, they’d be ruined. You wouldn’t even bother cleaning; they’d be going straight in the trash.
You don’t cry again when you’re watching the blood wash away. It swirls in the running water and circles your drain. You make sure to clean it with a piece of tissue and flush it afterwards. You’re not having the risk of Romi finding blood in the room she washes her hands before breakfast, lunch and dinner. Things like that scare a young child. Hell, they scare you. But Romi knows what your job is — what Robby’s is — and she knows it’s not always safe. She understands it can be dangerous. You remember the fear in her brown eyes that time you came home with violently burst capillaries in the white of your eyes after an aggressive patient strangled you. You’ve got the feeling Romi’s expecting something vile like that after you didn’t make it home for bedtime. It doesn’t sit well with you.
It doesn’t with Robby either. None of it does. What happened tonight, he can’t ever explain. He doubts he’ll be able to tell Romi years later. It’ll just be a story he never tells, that he’ll keep locked up until it kills him. Like Nick Bradley. Like Amber Phillips. Like Mr Spencer. Like with Dr Adamson. Working the anniversary is a mistake, Robby knows now. He’s captivated by the anguish. He can’t outrun it. It’s in him. It’s part of this day forever now.
“I did that, too.”
The sound of your voice breaks him from his sombre trance. “Huh?”
“When I came in to be with her, first thing I did was watch her breathe,” you confess. “Watch her chest rise and fall. I had to make sure it wouldn’t stop on me.”
Out of Robby comes a fragile, small, “Sometimes, I don’t think she’s real. Sometimes, I think she’s a dream of mine, that I’m going to wake up and she won’t have existed.” His gaze stays on her as he tells you, “The worst part is when it happens and I’m all alone. I’m at mine and she’s here, and I can’t watch her breathe. I don’t know she’s real.”
An ache knots at your chest. You can’t deny the separation has you thinking all sorts of depressing things too. The first night Robby had Romi alone, and the house was quiet, you slept with the television on; you were just grateful Robby took your call, in the middle of the night, to talk about Romi. He never calls you crazy when every so often you get the urge to phone him when Romi's at his to check in. He calls you sweetheart and tells you something funny or smart or brilliant Romi did that night.
“Come on,” you say, “you can use my shower.”
He’s shaking his head at you. Again, his eyes are on Romi, but they travel to you while he speaks. “No, I don’t want to put you out,” Robby justifies. “I’ll just stay here for another minute and then I’ll head out. You need sleep anyway.”
“Robby,” you say. “Shower here, please. I want to hug you, but I don’t want to do it when you’re still in those.”
It’s enough to shake him loose from the idea he has to leave. You’re giving him reasons to stay longer. God, he wants to hug you too. He wants to grip you tight, bury his face in your neck and never let go. After today, he wants to hold onto you — and Romi —forever.
You take his hand. “Come on, I wanna wash my scrubs,” you excuse. “I’ll do yours while I’m at it.”
Right now, despite it being where his mind goes, Robby doesn’t bring up the implication of your words. How he can easily be swept up by this meaning you’re allowing him to stay — stay longer, anyway. First, he’ll shower; then, he’ll wait for his scrubs to be washed and dried. He ignores the sensible part of his brain that tells him he has plenty of scrubs at home, that he doesn’t actually have to wait for them to dry before he leaves, and you doing this doesn’t mean he stays. Robby switches his reasoning off because he doesn’t want that right now. He wants you. This. Him being able to shower in the bathroom attached to his old bedroom. You nearby. Just you in general.
Neither of you seems to mind there’s no privacy between you. What is privacy to two people who’ve known each other as intimately as you have? Robby doesn’t flinch when you enter the bathroom behind him. You’ve got a t-shirt and sweats in your arms, placing them down on the closed toilet seat. They’re his, but Robby considers them yours. You stole his clothes so much that he recalls choosing to leave some behind for you; he doesn’t tell you how he took the last of your perfume with him when he moved out, calling it a fair trade. He keeps it in his master bathroom; has done since the split, but you never have a reason to go into it, so you’ll never know. He knows about these, however, and you know he knows.
You gather out a fresh towel from the linen closet while Robby starts to strip down. Every move of his is tired. It tells you exactly of his exhaustion. You feel it, too, especially tonight and you will again tomorrow. Because what sleep are you getting tonight? How will you close your eyes and not see red stain behind your lids?
As the shower starts to run, and Robby steps in, you whisper, “Take your time.” After you scoop up his scrubs, you leave. The bathroom door is left agar by you, but you make sure to shut the bedroom one when you go downstairs. You don’t want to wake your mother, who currently sleeps in the guest room, or, worse, Romi. It’s the excuse you give yourself to why you invited Robby to shower in your bathroom and not the family one across the hall. People are sleeping in your house; if you close Robby in your room, it serves as a separate space. Another world. A parallel plain. Somewhere safe for the pair of you to exist in loneliness, misery and tragedy together.
Half of you wonders how much of it is true when you return to the bedroom, after putting on yours and Robby’s washing, and find yourself at the foot of the bed. You just sit there. The door is shut again. You’ve brought up two glasses of water; your wine in still on the windowsill at the bottom of the stairs. It’s not long until the shower stops, maybe twenty minutes, and Robby is joining you in the clothes you had laid out for him. The collar of the t-shirt is damp, so is his hair, which he then rubs the towel over, sadly thinking it’s dry enough for whatever abhorrent thoughts are tucked inside his head.
And, awfully, your own mind slips too. For a second, you’re not thinking about the mass-casualty and all the blood anymore. You’re wondering if Robby thinks you’re weird to have collected up his underwear with his scrubs to wash as well, that you now know not just from the outline through his sweats but because you choose to do it to him, that Robby’s not wearing anything under the sweatpants he wears. Still, there are some boundaries between the two of you that remain.
Robby stays on that side of the room, a couple metres away from where you are. He sits down on the stool to your vanity. “I had to talk to Leah’s parents before I left,” Robby tells you, and you think you can hear his shattered pieces rattle together. The survivor’s guilt spikes in him. “She had my ticket. I gave her my pass, and I knew that as I had to tell her parents that we weren’t able to keep up with the blood loss, that a bullet had tore through her heart.” His voice becomes thinner. He squeaks while tears consume his eyes. All Robby has his guilt eating away at him. “Jake hates me. He blames me for Leah dying. For not saving her. And you know what,” he sniffles and wipes under his nose, “I’d blame me, too, if I was him.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” you say it confidently. Robby’s not looking at you. He’s keeping his drenched eyes from you, shielding himself from the humiliation of breaking down. He’s mortified it’s happening again, and you can see him fight the inner-turmoil. You rise from where you’re sat. “You’re not responsible for Leah dying, the person who shot her is.”
Robby can’t hear the logic. He grows too weary with his self-flagellation. “I couldn’t save her, he’s right.”
You won’t listen to it anymore. It’s not just an entirely hopeless feat that he’s given himself, but it was absolutely unfair. Robby is tearing himself apart with a responsibility nobody should have to carry, least all all him. You’re in front of him to stop his self-harm. “It wasn’t possible to save her. You’re a doctor, Robby, not god.” Your fingers lift his chin so you can look at him; pin your eyes to his tearful ones. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I was supposed to save her,” Robby sobs, and it wrecks you. “I was supposed to save her for Jake. He trusted me to do my job and—”
“And you did,” you cut in. “Robby…” Both your hands come up to cup his face. “Please,” you say. “You did your job. You did more for Leah than you did anyone else on that hospital floor, okay? I saw it. Everyone saw it. Even Jake.”
Robby hisses at the mention of his step-son. He’s in pain, rolling around in it, reeling from how he thinks he failed.
“Jake learnt tonight that, yeah, you aren’t a hero, but you don’t pretend to be,” you say to him. It sounds harsh, but, right now, you think what Robby needs is brutal honesty from you. “None of us are heroes. We’re definitely not treated like we are, anyway. And Jake’s just a boy. He’s a scared, frightened, hurt boy, who thinks the worlds of you.” You grip Robby’s face harder when he goes to face away. You force him back to you. “Who will still think the world of you when he isn’t so scared or frightened or hurt,” you assert and it almost sounds like a promise.
Your ex-husband can very nearly trick himself into believing it if it isn’t for the haunting words of Jake’s that toy in Robby’s head currently. The thing that sets him off again. The too real, too close to home reminder that makes Robby go cold. “He told me to fuck off. To fuck off because I’m not his dad.”
Inside, your heart clenches. Fatherhood has always been a sensitive topic for Robby. You know this better than anyone. You’re the one with his kid. You’ve had too many deep conversations, long and late into the night, where Robby’s opened up about how he once envisioned his life. It wasn’t ever the way it was with you, especially not how it ended. You weren’t what he saw for himself. Robby wasn’t what you pictured for yourself either. But it’s what you both have and it’s not a regret to either of you.
Maybe how you ended is.
“Oh, Michael, lovey,” you softly say, your fingers scratching at his skin through his beard. “Well, that’s anger for you. That’s a teenager. That’s a hurt, angry teenager, who has just gone through the scariest night of his life, who’s had his first, most devastating heartbreak.”
You’re easily giving Jake the benefit of the doubt —because it’s what he deserves. It’s what Jake needs: someone to defend him privately, in rooms he’s not in. Most importantly, where it lands on Robby’s ears. It serves nobody to be cruel, dismissive and utterly destructive to an already pierced relationship. The broken man in front of you is someone who deserves the same treatment also.
You do promise Robby this time, “It won’t last.”
His tears are starting to both dry and well up again the longer Robby looks up at you. You’re not distant. You’re not something out of reach to him. In fact, you’re in perfect reach to him. When Robby realises that, his hands begin to twitch. He flexes his fingers down the length of his thighs, aware of how you’re between his parted legs. Even without touching you, your own hands just on his face, it feels intimate to Robby. In the sanctuary of what used to be a room you both shared together, Robby reacts to how he craves more. To savour this, with you. And his large hands find their way home to your hips.
First, they rub at your sides through your loose shirt, then, his roaming causes the material to lift. Bare skin peaks out, just a slither, and Robby is ravenous for it. His thumbs circle the exposed flesh until, gradually, his warm palms are pressed to your skin. Now Robby’s hands are under your shirt. They hold you closer. They're splayed over as much of you as you're giving him in this moment. that you're allowing him to have. He pinches the left side of your shirt between his thumb and lifting a little. Robby leans his head forward in your own hands. His rests his forehead to your front. just below the valley of your breasts. And Robby buries himself there.
A kiss is planted to your stomach. and your eyes flutter shut. All of it feels too raw. too sore. As Robby lays another kiss to your clothed stomach, lower now, you wonder if you should let this continue. It'll complicate things. It'll throw a wrench into the co-parenting you have down. Romi is at the centre of this and you have to think of her first. This is the biggest, most head-fuckery of a mixed signal you can be giving your ex-husband.
Lord, he’s not even your ex-husband yet. Neither of you have gone to a lawyer; have petitioned a court for legal separation. In your head, you know that’s probably actually the biggest, most head-fuckery signal you’re giving Robby. By not really divorcing him, by keeping Robinavitch as your last name, you tell Robby every day there’s a chance he can be back here, in this bedroom, being held by you, holding you back, as your husband.
You should stop it. When Robby places a third kiss, you should stop it. You don’t. You let Robby carry on peppering kisses down your stomach until he reaches where he’s lifting up your shirt. His hand holds it up and his mouth is on your naked skin next. There’s no longer a barrier between you and him in that one spot. His kisses are open-mouthed, slow, sensual. His teeth nip at you slightly, and you’re whining at the sensation.
“Robby,” you say, and you hate the fact it sounds like a moan. It’s weak. You’re too pathetically pliant at just a few kisses. Your head starts to shake. There is still some resolve left in you and it begins with your daughter’s name. “We can’t… Romi… It’ll be too confusing for her. It’s confusing to me. Robby,” you say. “Robby.” He doesn’t stop. In his defence, you haven’t told him to. You have to find strength first, against the delicate kisses your ex is working up your bare side and stomach. “Robby, no. No.” You’re shaking your head again and pushing him away on top of it. “No, no, we can’t. We can’t.”
As he glances up at you, your ex-husband looks wrecked. Robby’s eyes are hazy, full of a hunger that only you can feed. His pupils are blown wide. The black of them swells when on you, making those sad, pretty browns appear darker. You’re certain they are. You can’t say yours aren’t the same. You can see them reflected back you and you spot how you’re wavering. This can take the pain away. A handful of kisses and you’re sure you feel less broken than you did when you first came home.
The same passes over Robby also. His brain is swimming in grief. He feels it’s drowning him and his head keeps bobbing under the water. You’re the only thing keeping him afloat. For you, Robby is coming up for air. He’s trying to tread water. Robby can think of several moments like that he’s had only today, where water had gotten into his mouth and his legs stopped kicking. It was triggered most in that room. In pedes. Among the cartoon animals painted on the walls. Where Mr Spencer passed away with his adult children at his bedside and where Robby had to make the choice to let Dr Adamson die.
After the latter, the Robby you’d come to know, then, love changed. He got dark after the first anniversary; broken after the second. Robby was lost in it, and he lost you after. Lost this. You in his grasp; you in this bedroom, this house you bought together; calling you his wife and hearing you call him your husband; raising Romi together under the same roof. Robby has lost it all, and he’s realised now he is in mourning because of it. To help him cope, Robby speaks the first thing that allows him to stay above the surface. Earlier he told people it helps in the first stages of loss; now he’s aware you’re his loss.
“I love you.”
You feel your mouth part. Your lips slip open and your eyes well up. When is the last time Robby told you that? When is the last time you felt it?
“Thank you,” he says next. “Thank you for today. For being a great nurse and hearing me when I said I needed you. For making me take the time to talk to Romi on the phone right before we got slammed, because you knew I needed to hear her voice. Thank you for putting that photo of her by my desk, above my computer, after we lost that nine-year-old drowning victim today. Thank you for telling me that Jake’s hurt and scared, because, honestly, I feel the same right about now. For… For…” Robby’s voice catches painfully, “Thank you not taking her away from me.”
That’s the part that makes you react, but it’s not what Robby wants. “I would never take Romi from you…”
“I know, I know,” says Robby gently. He’s tender with his tone. He’s tender with you. His mind goes over the next step. I forgive you is what’s next. Robby has to think carefully about what he says for this because the last thing he wants is for it to sound like he’s accusing you of something. Or his thoughts have before. But Robby wants to finish this. There are things he wants to forgive you for — things he has already forgiven you of. “Let me… I forgive you for…” Robby takes a very real, very nervous swallow. “For wanting better than me. For not sticking this out with me, for giving up. Because…”
Robby closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Because it’s what you had to do. I forgive you for everything you had to do, even if it hurt me, even if you said things, did things, ripped my heart out of my chest and it felt like you were chewing on it every time you walked into work. I forgive you for switching to the night-shift when we first split, I forgive you for switching back to the day-shift, then flip-flopping back-and-forth, back-and-forth, all while it drives me fucking insane because I have to wait until I get the schedule to see if your face is something I’ll be seeing all throughout my day or just for ten minutes.” His voice is charged, fully warped with exasperation. He’s frustrated and hot-headed and stubborn to a fault because he knows he won’t have admitted this if it isn’t for today, for the practice of reconciliation his mentor taught him chipping away at him. “And I forgive you for not knowing which is worst.”
He uses this time to catch his breath. The next stage is the hardest. Robby clenches his jaw and bites his tongue. “Please forgive me, too, for shutting down, for clamming up. For not letting you in even though you begged. You begged me, sweetheart, and I let you,” he recalls cruelly for the both of you, tears blurring you from him, “and I— I caused you to let us go because I wouldn’t let myself be broken with you. I was too broken for you. Please forgive me for thinking that and for being angry at you. For all the comments I make about how Romi could have both her mom and dad back if you just let me come home, that I make you feel guilty for that and I play on it because, yeah, I want you back. Forgive me for that, too,” he pleaded helplessly. “Please forgive me for breaking your heart. For being the one to make the first crack in our marriage and then blaming you because you were brave enough not to wait around for the whole thing to shatter.” Robby takes a pause, holds your gaze and says, “Please forgive me for not working through it with you when that’s all you wanted. If I had, things would be different. We would be different. I,” he finally puts, “would be different.”
Silence has you gripped. His words have you fixed to the spot. Robby paralyses you and you’re wavering. There isn’t a shift between you and him, but a slip happens either way. You don’t need things to change tonight. You’re not even sure they ever will change, but hope flares in your chest that it will, that Robby will. It sounds like he will. He feels like he’ll continue to lay down on his sword for you, to stay here with you.
His hands are still on you, on your skin. Robby stares up at you. What you see is honesty shining in his eyes; devastation in his soul and it oozes out of him in pools. It runs out of him straight into you. Robby’s touch moves with it, travelling slowly over your sides and around your back. He’s reeling you in and you’re caught in whatever web or trap this might feel like tomorrow. Robby’s trapped in your snare too. He has been for years, hooked on the drips of affection you give him; whether it be a reassuring hand on his shoulder, a smile over his charts at work, a hug hello sometimes during drop-off and pick-ups. Now, it’s this. His chin nuzzles against the top of your ribcage, staring up at you from the bottom of your covered breasts with brown eyes you can sink into. His hand puts mild pressure onto the small of your back and causes you to arch into him. Robby is so close.
You’re breathing slow. Your breathing hitches. It’s too late now, you’ve softened perfectly for him. The body that’s yours no longer feels like it’s holding you up —that’s Robby’s job. You’re without bones. You’re just flesh and blood and it aches for him. Every inch of you belongs to Robby in this moment, just as you’re certain he belongs to you. Anything you want, he’ll give you. But there’s only one thing you want now and that resolve you have left, that pushed him away before, is fading fast.
You love him. You’re thankful for everything he’s just said. You forgive him for what he’s done to you, across you and mistakenly for you. You’re just hoping he’ll forgive you for what you’re about to do to him, to each other… Please.
“Please,” tumbles out of you as well. It’s vocalised. You hear it come out and he hears it land on his ears. Your hands pet at his head, at his still slightly damp hair. You cradle him to you and find the weak strength to lean down. Before you know it, you’re kissing Robby.
It’s not his mouth on yours, it’s yours on his. You’re controlling this. He’s at the direction of your will, and you’re just willing this to happen.
The grip you have on him slips into his hair and you tug. It’s causes Robby’s mouth to part with a breathy, “Ah,” and a tsk when he realises your tongue licks into his mouth deliciously. It’s fun, playful; a jarring difference to what brings you together, what has happened tonight. There’s an extreme hunger to Robby. He’s finding his way to devour you. His kisses are harder, much needier than yours. Robby has wanted it longer. He wants revenge for that feeling that’s been tormenting for fifteen months since your split.
His hands are up your shirt now. They’ve made their way up and around the blades of your shoulders as you lean down into him. The two of you haven’t stopped kissing. You’re too scared to let your lips leave him — stop moving with his — in case rare sensibility hits you and you have to say ‘we can’t’ again. That thought terrifies you now when Robby’s touching you again after so long and you’re folding into him.
You step backward, stretched to keep up with the open-mouthed kisses, and you knock his legs together. Robby’s confused by the action, but when you slink down into his lap, he’s not. Robby is on you once more. His steady hands come down from your shoulders, after his fingers traced the expanse of your skin, and he pulls at the length of your shirt. You know what he wants. You want it to. That fear you have goes from your eagerness to keep going. Plus, if Robby gets you topless, you can work on doing the same to him.
It’s a sharply inhale as you part. You let Robby quickly yank your shirt up over your head while your fingers grasp at his own, the shirt you gave him less than ten minutes ago. The speed of which you do is shocks you because, before you know it, your flush to Robby’s bare, hair-speckled chest and your lips are hot on his again.
You’re messier now. His hot breath pants over your face and in your ear. Robby starts to track his kisses on your jaw and neck, down the column of your throat. Those kisses get wetter, louder, more heated. His saliva sticks to your skin and, god, do you want more of it. You want everything. Tangling your arms around the back of his head is easily done. You crave Robby closer now. You’ll stitch yourself to him if you can find a way. And you want to. As your head tips back and your mouth parts with the first moan of many you’ll have tonight, all rational is lost. You’re in this now. You’re in this moment. All you can think, breathe and kiss is Robby.
His mouth meets your naked breast, causing your pulse to jump. This is the wettest kiss yet. All of the slick of Robby’s tongue is curling around your nipple. It’s warm, loving; you can just feel the top of his teeth skim over where you crave roughness. Robby teases your nipple into his mouth while a hand holds the swell of your opposite breast. The thumb of his hand traces over the the other nipple. It pebbles under his touch, and Robby rolls your peak between his thumb and index finger. He flicks it twice, and you let out this drawn out moan.
“Oh.” You’re a hushed whisper in your own bedroom, upon his lap, where the bludge of his cock stirs. You can feel the heavy shape of it through his sweats and through your thin sleep-shorts. They’re too thin. You’re starting to feel your dampness create a wet spot in the centre. You’re leaking too much already, and all he’s done is kiss you and play with your nipples.
It’s all you need.
There’s a string of saliva that spread across your chest when he moves to pay attention to your left nipple now. Your right is soaked. It’s covered in Robby. You gasp at the sensation of his fingers toying with the slippery nipple that’s been in his mouth before, for longer. It breaks down your resolve further. Impatience is leaving you while the horniness fogs your brain; while Robby whispers out, “Good girl,” against your chest.
It has you going. You’re drenched below, and you need Robby to know. You need him as helpless as he’s currently making you. Your grind down on him. He grunts around your nipple, the nipple he’s got his lips around and is sucking into his mouth, that his tongue is soothing over and his teeth tease. Your centre is pressed down on him. There’s two layers between your pussy and his cock, and you can feel the stiffness of it as your roll your hips and drag yourself down over him. Your mouth fills. Warmth pools in your belly, spreading lower, exactly where you need him.
All you’re doing it panting and whining while Robby makes you a mess. “Robby,” you whimper. “Robby, please.”
“'Please'?” Robby likes the sound of that. His voice is dark, husky as it vibrates over your increasingly sensitive skin. His mouth is working its way up again, up the length of your tipped back throat. You coo at the feeling of both the tip of his nose dragging against it and his beard scratching at you. The friction is a good burn, and it’s eased by how you can feel him smile against your skin just before he nips at your neck. “You begging me now?”
You are.
You actually are.
Part of you should be disgusted at yourself for falling well and truly down this hill with Robby, but you don’t mind it so long as he's just as desperate as you are. You have to make it even.
“You’re loving this,” you say, as you return your head to its normal position. It’s not falling back anymore. You’re not giving up access to all of your neck and chest while you hold onto Robby’s shoulders for support. Not anymore. Your hand slips between you. “You’re loving having me… in the palm… of your… hand.”
Trailing out, building up the anticipation, your words are whispered against his ear and make the moment your hand lands on Robby’s crotch more perfect. You palm at Robby — at his dick. You feel how achingly hard it is under your touch and you smirk when it’s his turn to feel powerless to you. When Robby grunts then whimpers, you think heavens have opened. You feel like a god.
The freedom is grants you is enough for you to take control of him. You feel the thick, bulbous head to his throbbing penis through his sweats and you rub until you’re smiling wickedly. There’s a subtle wet spot forming at Robby’s own crotch, under your hand, where you’re touching. The damp sensation melts into your hand. You suck his earlobe into your mouth and bite down. Robby winces when it happens and his immediate reaction is to jerk up. You feel yourself squirm on top of him. But you can’t lose by Robby’s accidental thrust up into you. Your hand adds more pressure, the heels of your palm rubbing at Robby while he hisses your name as some of warning prayer.
“Come on, sweetheart, no need to play dirty here,” Robby tells you. “I want you too badly to tease you. I want you so fucking much. Want to be inside you already.”
As you attach your mouth to that sweet spot beneath his ear, you know it’s to cover an embarrassingly loud moan at what he says. But it’s works. You’re satisfied to know Robby’s patience is fast waning like yours already has. Robby doesn’t like not being in control either, so it’s worse for him than you. He wants equal turf. He knows exactly where that is. He peers at it over your shoulder right before you palm him firmer again and his teeth fix to that same shoulder of yours he just glimpsed over.
His large, gifted hands track around your thighs. You think he going to grab at the plush flesh of your ass, to dig his fingertips into it until he leaves either a dent or impression. Robby always likes it when your bruise a little and he can see where he’s been. Yet, that’s not what he does. Robby locks his arms around your thighs, and you die to feel the constraint of his muscles flush to your legs. Before you can let out another moan, you’re up.
Robby’s up. He’s kissing you again. You’re carried several strides away from your vanity and dropped to the bed. Your bed. His bed. Once, your bed together. All of it is pressed out of you when Robby is. Those hands that held you up are yanking at your sleep-shorts. Shoving them down to find you bare and drenched for him. Robby inhales, slow. He engulfs your scent, the aroma of your heat. You’re burning up for him as he puts tiny, little pecks up the inside of your legs, not yet parted them. He’s taking his sweet time with you, and you’re close to thrashing about to get a slither more attention.
“Michael…” slips out of you. If he’s toying with you, then you’ll toy with him back. You know the power you possess when you first-name him. You’re one of the few people who use it. You’re the only one to use to against him, especially like this. “Michael, please. Do something. Anything. Touch me. Eat me. Fuck me stupid. I don’t care, just do something before I lose it.” You’re lifting yourself up and grabbing his face away from giving your thighs those torturous kisses. “I’m losing it.”
You glimpse that greedy, cocksure half-grin he gets when he’s entirely too confident. Robby even gives a breathy chuckle at your neediness, an action that some spiteful part of you wants to shove him away for and make that vanity chair of yours a new voyeur seat so he can watch and not touch, but his mouth descends on yours next. His hand has cupped the back of your head and Robby pulls you in for a passionate kiss. His tongue dominates yours. The force behind it has you weak, and that part of you, that might have put him in a chair across from the bed, knows it would’ve ended with you inviting him back when your fingers don’t feel like his; when your vibrator isn’t hitting the spots that Robby hasn’t in fifteen long months since your split.
His lips are still on yours. They slant to the right of your mouth, then, your jaw, then your neck again. Lowly, rumbling against your skin, Robby whispers, “Lie back. Let me care of you.”
Your brain spins. You’re dizzy from him, shaking in anticipation of what’s about to happen. You’re dripping. Soaked. You feel your own slick smush between your legs, at the top of your thighs. It doesn’t disgust you, and the last person who will be disgusted is Robby. He loves this stuff. He loves seeing the flooding reaction he gets out of you. He drinks it up like a sponge. This is the stuff that always got him going more. It is now because you can feel the angry shape of his erect cock up against your calf as he sinks down.
Eyes holds yours while he kisses your body. It’s like Robby refuses to miss a favourite spot. When one is delivered to your engorged breast, just skimming your glossy, hardened nipple, you moan and arch your back. You shiver when he reaches you hipbone and the soft pouch above where your pussy is furiously begging for attention. His kisses stop for a beat. Robby runs his palms down, past the tops of your legs and find their way under. He grips just beneath the back of your knees, kissing the other side of it before he parts your legs.
Glistening, your hole leaks for him already. Your vulva is covered in your own arousal, having built up in your make-out session and his expert way to peak your nipples; you grinding down into him to speed up the moments that lead to this. A growl is stuck deep in Robby’s throat. He feels it travel from the base and get trapped in the back of his mouth. “Oh, she’s still so pretty,” Robby says of your drenched, slickened pussy. He keeps getting closer, inch by inch, tortuously slow much to your impatience. He puts another kiss to the inside of your upper thigh, licking softly when he realises it’s damp too, but his eyes — they remain on you, on her.
He drags a finger down her. He started at the top of your vulva, above your clit, and gradually swipes his finger through your folds. A broken, “Uhh,” moans out of you, and you buck your hips to feel more, to have more, to get it.
“Looks just as needy for me as she always did,” he observes, as his hand that’s not teasing your wetness snakes under where your leg is lifts. Robby winds it around and curls his palm over the back of your thigh, spreading your legs further, digging in. “Bet she missed me. I missed her, so much,” Robby shares, just as he circled his index around your weeping hole and dips in with his final remark.
“Oh, yes,” you hiss, feeling the tip of finger poke through. He slips it in deeper, curling towards the front. “Oh, my god, Robby.”
His smirks knowing he’s melted you. He’s got proof of your puddle leaking down his finger that angles in and out of you. More strangled moans are elicited out of you, and Robby soon follows it up to get louder ones, ones from deeper parts of you, when he adds a second finger.
“Fuck, shit, yes, yes.”
You’re purring even before Robby sets a pace. Two fingers plunge in and out of you, over and over and over again. The best part is when he adds his tongue. The pleasure you feel electrifies you. As you bite down into your bottom lip, Robby sucks at your clit. Your hand grabs at the sheets either side of you. You hold it tightly, squeezing as your walls do his fingers. Your pussy is so wet, it squelches. It cries for Robby as it clenches. The sound is obscene and gratefully contained to your bedroom. It’ll be mortifying if it isn’t so hot. Robby worships the sounds, too. It’s his favourite one, especially when you’re moaning for him; his name just keeps falling out of your mouth, over your lips.
You cum hard and fast, and Robby doesn’t stop. It’s not over for him. Even when your thighs clench around his head and you try to scooch away, retreat up the bed to get away from him, Robby’s arms are looping under and around your thighs again. He uses that leverage to yank you back. His broad tongue swipes at your folds more furiously, down towards your beating hole. It whirls around it, sinks inside, and Robby laps at you like he’s starving. You cry out in pleasure. It catches in your throat.
Somehow you find the strength in your shaking, tingling arms to lift one. Your hand lands on his head after you reach down between your legs. You tap at his him. You tug at his hair. “Rob—Robby, stop. I can’t. Enough. Enough, I— Oh, my fucking god! — Yes!” Your grip tightens on the short length of his hair. You tug harder as you grind down on his face. The tip of his nose catches your clit and you bite harder on your lip to stifle a scream. Your head thrashes to the side, mouth parting when Robby continues to work his skilled tongue in you now with his two fingers stretching your hole wider for him. “Yes! Shit, you’re so good at that.”
He hums against you. You feel it echo up into you. Robby is so close to being fully inside of you that you’re crooning while his tongue does the work. He swirls it around as his fingers curls upwards, harshly hitting that sweet spot inside of that that makes you loose any sense of things that aren’t pleasure. You’re sparking alone with it. And when Robby persists with an urgency to get you there, to climb higher, you’re soon mewling before a second orgasm heads your way.
“Fuck, I’m— I’m cumming,” you say with a moan so loud that you have to let go of Robby’s hair to slap a hand across your mouth. You feel yourself let go. Complete bliss envelops you up and your legs go weak. They buckle and you lose the ability to keep your head up. It falls back against the pillows and your throat is so damn dry compared to his.
When Robby is satisfied — him, satisfied, despite that being all about you — he releases that hold. His grip slackens; it loosens around the plump meat of your thighs, and Robby, as he lifts his own head, meets your foggy, love-drunk gaze and wipes one palm over his mouth. He swipes your arousal into his beard. It dampens the coarser hair. If it’s softer tomorrow, that’s the magic of you. He proves it after he shoves down his sweats immediately, faster than ever has before because he’s afraid you can stop this at anytime. There’s a slap when his dick stands fiercely erect, hitting his stomach, and Robby crashes his lips back on yours. His hand is at the back of your head, holding you in place while he kicks the sweats down to his ankles and off. Robby is over you again; you can feel what’s between you.
“Pr—Protection,” you muster, because, honestly, you've not too far gone to remember that safe sex is paramount.
But it had Robby hesitating. He blinks at you, down at your face that under his; your naked body trapped under his own now. “I didn’t bring any with me.” He shoots you a tired smile and a rough laugh as he honestly tells you, “I didn’t think I was getting lucky.”
“Shit.” The condoms in your drawer, they’re his. Yours. They’ve been there for over fifteen months. Longer perhaps. You don’t know if they’ve expired. What you do know is the pining in your system is making you lose responsibility. “Fuck it. Go raw.”
Your desperation has never been clearer to Robby. His eyes widen briefly, stunned at the risk. After Romi, you took every precaution not to have a second accidental pregnancy. Now, you are one step away from begging, dripping, if it means Robby is not in you in the next ten seconds. He kisses you again. Robby makes sure his lips are moving with yours, in perfect sync, when he reaches down between you both and finds the base of his cock.
It’s instinct to him. An action he’s done countless times before. Robby never stops kissing you while he guides his dick into you. Even as both your mouths part with soft, needy moans, Robby still classes it as kissing you. His breaths go right into your open mouth. He pants into it as he sheathes himself in your wet warmth.
“Fuck,” he says, and he’s slowly sliding his dick all the way in.
The stretch is delicious. You let out a moan so pornographic that you’re convinced in another life this is what you and him are meant to do forever, all the time, for a job — over making seriously ill and injured people feel better.
“Oh, my god, Michael.”
“That’s it. Say my name. Say it, sweetheart.” He withdraws his length, almost pulling fully out. The tip is still in you, toying with your pulsing hole, then, Robby pushes back in. He sinks firmly into you, and you both grunt into each other’s mouths as your walls flutter.
“Michael.” He does it again. He rocks in and out, and you’re gripping at shoulders to attach yourself to him. “Oh, Michael.”
Something about this being one of the few times you call him 'Michael' has him thrusting harder. His best is the only acceptable response. “Yeah, baby, it’s me.” Robby’s head burrows into the crook of your neck. His forehead presses against it, half-shut eyes on the sweat that glistens across your stomach. “It’s me.” From this angle, Robby peeks at where your two bodies connect. He can see himself enter you. In and out, in and out; and at a pace that has you rising your hips from the bed. He can see it, but he feels it more. How warm and wet and responsive you are. “God, you feel so good,” he groans. “I’ve missed this, baby. Missed you. You’re perfect. Perfect. Nobody better.”
He starts to pick up the pace. His hips snap forward and you cry out at the impact. Your back arches up off the bed to feel him be so rough with you. Robby thinks that position of you is an advantage to him. An arm of his slithers under your back. He holds you up and to him with it. The pair of you are flush again. You’ll be forgiven for thinking this makes you one. From it, Robby is back to a rhythm he recognises with you. He rocks into you. The curve of his dick is delectable, you swear you’re drooling out the corner of your mouth. Then, Robby hits two spots inside of you: dragging the head of his dick against a spongy one when he pulls back and then bullies back in deep, driven into extra sensitive one next your cervix like he’s on a mission to bruise it.
“Oh, my— Fuck.” You let a series of strangled mewls. “Shit, Robby, right there. Right there.”
“That’s it, that’s my girl.” His nose tracks down your sternum, between the valley of your breasts. He nips at the side of your left one. “I got you, I got you.” Robby peppers kisses on your chest and collar as he grunts. “I know, baby. Fuck, those pretty, little sounds you make drive me crazy,” he pants at you, while he makes his way back up to your face. He smiles at you, drunk on lust for you. “Thought I was never gonna hear ‘em again. I’m so lucky.” Robby sucks at your jaw. “I’m so lucky.”
His repetition has you in a haze. Your hands cup at his waist, then, his ass. You dig into his cheeks as you force him to make those thrusts hurt. You want to hasten his actions. “Go faster,” you whisper.
Robby starts to plough into you. It’s not just faster, it’s deeper. It’s perfect and exactly what you need. You’re moaning wildly now. “Fuck, Rob— Michael! Michael! Michael!” Panic hits you. It’s frantic as it pounds through your blood. Your clammy hands work their way home to his face. You lift his head out from where he’s pinned to your neck. You grab at his bearded chin, eyes blown wide in sopping hunger. “Kiss me. Kiss me.”
He obeys. Of course he does. Robby won’t risk messing this up. He’s got you now, he’s not letting you go. Part of Robby wonders if he’s dreaming; if this all just a big, extremely vivid dream he’s had after knocking out after a couple beers on a truly abhorrent day. After today — Jake, the mass-causality, the teen with a fentanyl overdose, an accidental drowning of a kid, too many deaths — Robby’s convinced he can hallucinate that his hands are touching yours. That his fingers are threaded with yours while drills into you. It’s akin to dreams he’s had before, filling his head while he sleeps. The only reason he knows it’s not is because your nails claw at his shoulders like you want to draw blood and the heels of your feet dig into the small of back to dive him down further. A broken cry comes out of you when he reaches and thrusts at that spot that makes your eyes roll in the back of your head.
Skin pressing into skin, Robby is on fire. His body has never worked better than when he's fucking you. He’s alight with insatiable need. Roasting as he pants into your mouth and his teeth clash with yours. The bed that you once shared holds the weight and the force of how hard he’s fucking you. Robby’s only doing that to make it feel more real. Every time his hips thrust, yours chase that thrust. He’s sharing your bed again. He remembers going shopping for the frame and mattress prior. Your joke about which was better to have sex on messes with him now. Robby uses it to distract himself for blowing too early. He goes over the day in his mind. You both went on about how noisy the headboard would sound as it furiously knocks into the wall — that’s why you chose the upholstered, thick headboard. You tested every mattress for its firmness and its ability to muffle the sounds of him fucking you into it, meanwhile, your daughter sleeps down the hall. This one has always been good to you both on that front — because you and Robby were never quiet.
And that upholstered headboard, the one you specifically wanted in that plum velour fabric so he paid extra for and got made-to-measure, Robby now uses as leverage. His grip snaps to it and Robby has it tightly in his grasp as he uses it to fuck you harder. He crashes his hips into you, it’s super charged. And cruel. It allows him to roughly drill at that spot again.
Over and over.
In and out, at a brutal pace.
You clench around him again, and Robby beams. “That’s it, you’re almost there,” he says like is a huge victory for him. “I can feel it. Let me feel you. Let go, sweetheart.” His face brushes up to your temple, pressing an open-mouth kiss to your cheek. His breath is hot on your face. It fans over you while he whispered out his instruction, “Let… go.”
You listen. Your body listens. It never stops when it comes to Robby. His instruction is gold. For the third time, you contract around something belonging to Robby. This time, it’s his dick and it’s the most perfect thing to ever be inside of you, making you feel things you’ve only ever felt with him. He’s made for you. You’re made for him, and you’re a vice wanting to milk him dry.
“Ahhh-eghhh, fuck! Oh, my fuck.”
Robby feels you pulse around him. Your warmth draws him in tighter. When you clench and lock and flutter; a thick, creamy rim around the girth of his cock, and Robby touches the edge as well. “Fuck!”
It happens together. An explosion. You’re sparking alive. Your body shakes and your vision spots white. Robby’s hips jerk forward with his orgasm. His pace stumbles, and he thrashes out of the routine that got you both there. He comes undone the same as you do. While you cum around him, trembling, Robby spills inside of you. You feel it fill you up and you don’t care because this is the greatest you’ve felt in months. In a year. In fifteen lonely months. You shake and shudder and you swear you can’t feel your face until Robby is kissing you again.
Your lips are numb. Tingling. And both you and Robby are breathless as your bodies give out like everything else. He collapses on top of you. You wonder how his back is holding up as he finally lets go of yours. Your legs loosen from around him as well. You can’t keep your heels digging into him forever. Robby can’t stay inside of you for the rest of the night, but you won’t put it past him if he tries.
You’re willing to try also.
The breaths you share are erratic. Your chest rises and falls fast, laboured. In the moments after, post-pleasure, you’re not totally sure you’ll ever catch your breath again. It happens. It will eventually happen, because you’ve come down from these kind of amazing highs with Robby before, but you’re savouring it while it lasts. You don’t care that your skin is sticky — that Robby’s is too — as it draws you both closer. It makes you the same. You’re just two people, connected by your parts, and that makes you one. One being. One entity. One collection of atoms that have collided with each other.
“Fuck,” Robby says again and, then, he’s laughing in awe. His eyes shine with disbelief. He wonders if some part of him did imagine this; he’s not completely convinced this isn’t a dream. The only way he knows it’s real is when he tried to un-bury himself from between your legs and your pussy acts as a vice once more. It locks him in, and Robby can’t deny it where he wants to stay too. He’ll die here if you’ll let him. It’s a good place to die. To Robby, who denied he was religious earlier today to one of his med students, this is heaven. You’re a god-given gift and that sex was the best of his life. “Jesus Christ,” he utters, thready, physically exerted from what you’ve just done. “That was… Amazing. Just like I remember. Better than I remember,” he corrects after a small, barely there beat.
“Uh-huh,” is you’re only agreement. You're not sure you can add more; your voice is too ran-through and used up currently.
A groan leaves Robby while he eventually slips out of you, and you whimper at the emptiness. But you’re not empty. The remnants of Robby are dripping out of your pussy. You feel it gush like Robby has taken away the plug; and beneath you now, rolling down between your cheeks is both ropes of Robby’s cum and your flooding wetness. The slick sensation of stickiness blends with wet spot on your sheets. If you aren’t still so turned on, you’ll be repulsed. You’re not. You gag for the feeling.
You’ve missed it.
You’re missed Robby.
Tears brims your eyes. They sting and swirl, and you’re wanting to cry after such a massive wave of too many overwhelming feelings. The bed rocks on the side you’re not on and you’re reminded you’re not alone, so you can’t cry. You see Robby’s completely bare frame track over to your bathroom. It’s a sight you’ve seen many times before, but rarely through tears. You feel one slip from your eyes and roll horizontally down the side of your cheek to the pillow. The tap’s running, you can hear it, and you swiftly wipe the fallen tear away. You push back any sign you’ve upset yourself by reminding yourself that you miss Robby, that you miss this with him and having amazing sex with him.
He returns with a wet rag. He’s cleaned himself up, he’s coming to do the same for you now. It’s sweet, thoughtful. It’s Robby. Your Robby. It’s something he just does and that sensitive pull, that’s made you cry once, returns. You can cover it better, however, when he cleans you and you whine at the touch. Especially when Robby murmurs to you, “I think I was too rough with her.”
It brings a laugh out of you. It’s cosy and wraps your ribs up in a blanket rather than a cage. “I don’t know, I think I can safely say she enjoyed it,” you express teasingly. A coy smile dances on your lips. “Oh, sh—shit,” hisses out when Robby does another thorough wipe of your most sore area. Then, you’re laughing again. Your palms cover your face, the heat of your inflamed face burns brilliantly. “My god, I can’t believe we did that.”
“I, for one, are very happy we did that,” he claims, and you’re made acutely aware this is triumph for your ex-husband. You’re not stupid to pretend he hasn’t wanted this since your split. There’s been 'almosts' before. None this big. None that come close to ending like this. The closest Robby has gotten before is his hand cupping your clothed mound and his hardened groin pressed into you. Today’s loss and tragedies served as the perfect catalyst — bouncing off a point — to be end up with Robby crawling up next to you in your post-sex bliss. “We’ve still got it,” Robby tells you, a tender kiss place to your bare shoulder.
The least surprising part of what’s happened is how you find comfort in the moments after. In that sweat, musky heat is perfectly hazy over you. There’s a barrier between you and reality. It befalls the pair of you. You and Robby. Together, once more. So long as you’re in this bed, lying in the wet spot, sticky sweat blending with his, limbs tangling while he holds you, you can stay. Robby can stay.
But it doesn’t last long.
You and Robby exist for ten minutes outside of what happened. Until you can no longer smell sex in the air. Until your breathing recollects. Until the barrier is broken and that wet spot doesn’t feel so wet anymore. Your sweat isn’t pricking at your skin and his isn’t dampening more of you. Robby still holds you, but you know he can’t stay the night like he’s planning to.
There’s an excuse already playing in your mind, circling around, getting the wheels turning. You’ve both had sex to be able to say you’re human together, that you’re alive. It’s only now a problem come morning and Robby’s still next to you. His side is pressed up against yours, one arm snug around your shoulders, folded over your bare chest with delicate fingers just skimming over your breast still. The weight of what’s been done starts to crush you. This is going to mess up your arrangement. The co-parenting plan you’ve nailed for your daughter.
Romi.
Her name starts to chant in your head. You feel like a monster. A well fed, thoroughly pleased and excellently fucked monster. Your hands drag down you face as she shame washes over you. There’s a pit in your stomach at what you’ve done. The thing you silently begged for Robby to forgive you for is right on the tip of your tongue, the tongue you’ve had in your ex-husband’s mouth not ten minutes ago.
“You have to go.” It leaves you and you hate yourself for it. “I don’t want to risk Romi waking up and finding you here, in my bed.”
A real, genuine laugh rumbles out of Robby. He cranes his neck down to be able to see you properly. “You’re joking. You’re kicking me out?” His eyebrows lift. “After that? After all that?”
The corners of your mouth quirk up along with his. You find the same humour in it as he does. “Don’t do that,” you say while you shove at his chest. “You know why I said it. We can’t risk confusing her. She’s a creature of habit on the nights she doesn’t see me come home.” It’s routine, and you recount the cycle for him, “Romi gets up and she comes in here to check I’m home and awake, and she snuggles with me until her stomach growls and she demands breakfast. If she comes in here and sees you—” you poke at his hairy chest, “what do you think she’s going to think?”
The smug smirk on his face annoys you. Robby’s glinting with mischief when he replies, “That daddy came home, too.”
You want to laugh. You have to really fight it back. “Robby, please. No joking.” Rolling onto your side, you face your ex. You stare up at him and meet his eyes and that very real smile on his face, that, soon, you’ll wipe off. “You know I’m right about this.” You remind him, “We have rules in place. Boundaries.”
“And we broke all the rules and crossed every one of our boundaries last night,” Robby counters back at you. For now, he’s smiling still. The skin by his eyes is crinkled. He’s happy with himself until he isn’t happy with you. His expression falters. The victory he won might be lost in ten minutes. “Jesus Christ, you can’t just kick me out. This is my house too, sweetheart, my name is still on the lease. In fact, my name is still on you as well,” Robby chooses to recount in this moment.
The laugh you’ve been holding back chokes out of you incredulously. “You know why that—”
You don’t finish. You don’t get to finish. The strong argument you have is swallowed up by Robby with a kiss. His arm around your shoulders locks; it brings you in closer to him. Your hand falls to his chest as Robby continues to press his mouth to yours. He kisses you harder. He forces all his hopes into these, trying desperately to sway you around to him like he has done earlier.
When his lips finally leave yours, a “Fuck,” whispers past yours.
That smirk of his is back. His grin is bearing down at you like he’s proud his point is proven. “Exactly.”
“Fuck…” Your head is angled up at him and you grind your jaw mildly, “you, Robby.”
He takes your thin threat, that’s wavering by the second, and pulls you to be completely flush to him. “Moan it next time, I might believe you,” he says into your ear. “Because the only thing I believe right now is how if I slip my fingers between your legs, I’ll find just how much you want to keep me in our bed.”
“It hasn’t been our bed in over a y—year…” While you speak, Robby manages to cut you off. His free hand, the one not trapping your body to his, cups your centre. His middle finger parts your folds and he finds that pretty, little bud of yours with extreme ease. “Oh, my god.”
“There? Right there, yeah.” Robby plays with you. The tip of his finger rubs circles around your clit. He doesn’t even need any lubrication to make those fantastic, electrifying circles feel smooth; you’ve gotten wet between the clean-up because of how turned on you still are. “I can feel you wanna go again, baby. This perfect pussy of yours is soaked and that’s not the sign you want me gone…” he says confidently. “Not yet.”
It’s a yelp that causes you to struggle to get his name out. It splits on your tongue. It catches in your throat, the only dry part of you. “Rob—by.”
The circles change. It’s not his finger toying it your clit now. His finger has slipped down and, along with his index, enters you. What’s circling your beating clit is the pad of his thumb and it’s wonderful. It’s got just enough pressure, just enough coarseness, to make you mewl again.
Again, Robby’s mouth hovers over yours, which parts with a silent moan. “I promise you, I’ll help you get off now. Then, I’m going to fuck you again,” Robby asserts to you, and you know he’s not lying. “And I’m going to remember to wake up an hour before our kid does, because I know she’s a creature of habit too and that girl of ours hasn’t woken up before six since she was a toddler or unless she’s ill— Is she ill?” asks Robby, and you shake your head. You pant into his mouth while those fingers move in and out, in and out. He curls them up against the front wall of your vagina, and Robby says, “And she hasn’t been a toddler in a while, so.” Robby’s fingers work harder. They thrust into you slower, more forceful, and Robby delights when you moan directly into his mouth. It drives him on. He gets a resurgence of authority over you. “So, I’m going to make sure I wake up an hour before six and I’m going to fuck my wife again. Because if I’m walking out of my house, then, you best believe I’m doing it after I’ve had you twice more and I’ve slept tonight in the bed that we bought.”
A raw whisper wrecks you, “Okay.”
Robby’s brown, lust-fuelled eyes land on yours. He holds you glazed stare while he checks, “Okay?”
You become too eager. You’re nodding fast as your walls flutter around his fingers and he adds speed to how he swipes your clit. “Okay.”
“Good. Now cum,” Robby orders, and you obey with a long whine that he captures up with his lips again.
It’s a problem for you. True to his word, Robby does precisely what he tells you he will. Unlike last night, this morning feels riskier, too dangerous. What happened before, the twice he had you in the dark, that’s kindling compared when daylight arrives. This is playing with fire. And Robby encourages it. He stokes it. He tends to the flames like he wants to be caught, like he wants to traumatise your child when she discovers years later that her daddy wasn’t ‘play-fighting’ with mommy at all and ends up in therapy because the sight of his naked ass while he drills into you isn’t one she can push back into a box once it’s out.
The clean-up after is swift. You shower again. Less than eight hours ago it was to get rid of the stench of death and blood that clung to you. Now, it’s because you covered in Robby. He offers to shower with you, but you turn him down because you’re cutting it too closely after he spent twenty minutes teasingly eating you out when you both woke up.
You think if you go in the shower, Robby will take it as your invite out of here. Your quiet way of pushing him out and along. However, Robby either doesn’t get your hints or is actively choosing to ignore them. The latter seems more like the Robby you know, but any ire you hold for him when you see he hasn’t left yet disappears when you spy his helpfulness. You exit the bathroom to find a now-dressed, in the same clothes you gave him last night, Robby has stripped the bed and remade the bed for you.
Shaking your head, you mention, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“We’re less than fifteen minutes from six,” Robby tells you, “I saved you a job.” He shrugs off his good deed like it’s nothing. He’s stripped and changed this exact bed hundred of times before. Robby thinks he’s missed the chore so long as it’s this bed he’s making. So long as it’s you he’s making it for. Committing himself to that, silently in his head, Robby travels over to your freshly showered and now dressed figure. His arms snake around you, hands settling on your lower back as he hugs you to him, acting like what you have between you is romantic. “Because I’m guessing you don’t want our daughter to be snuggling in the same sheets we ruined last night.”
“I want no association between last night and our daughter,” you inform him, bordering on serious. There’s still, however, a playful lilt to your words. But it doesn’t linger long. “Unless,” you start, “it’s to rehash our boundaries.”
Something about the mix of the three times you’ve had sex in the recent hours, how you’re allowing his hands to venture lower even now and how Robby never quite takes you wholly serious in moments paired with the first two anyway, causes him to find humour. He jokes with you, “Ah, the boundaries. And rules. Let’s not forget the rules. I seem to remember you said something about rules, that we broke,” Robby points out, reminding your exactly of how it all went down.
Still, you don’t waver even if your head spins with all the lewd memories of what you two did in the bed behind you. You accuse him right back, “You broke.”
At it, Robby guffaws. “Me, alone? By myself?” He’ll be laughing at you if it doesn’t seem so mean in this moment. “I broke the rules without any help from you?” His brows lift above enlarging eyes and his head bobbles side to side as he considers what memories he has of his own flashing in his head as he looks at you. It makes him double-down on his teasing. “Well, I have a different recollection, but I do remember doing most of the work," he says, ducking down to conclude the last part as a husky whisper in your ear.
You shove at his chest. It lands with a hard thud. “Ugh, you pig,” you curse him out, disgust clipping at your tongue, as you go to shove him again.
Yet, Robby’s quicker. He predicts you’ll go in for a second hit and Robby grabs your wrist first. His hold burns. It fiercely winds around your wrist and Robby yanks you back to him, forcing you to collide with his large chest. “I liked doing most of the work.” His eyes pin you to the spot, unflinching. “I will do most of the work every time in the future if we talk about this, properly.”
The last part clenches at your heart. This is the part you dreaded when you let your body silence your mind and take control. That you prayed Robby would forgive you for. At the way this is going, you know there’s plenty of forgiveness he won’t give you.
“Robby, there is nothing to talk about,” you say, as you try to let your ex-husband down gently. “Last night, while it was great—”
“Amazing,” he cuts in. That smile of his is back and he’s nodding far too much, the way he does when he’s hiding just how upset or frustrated he is. “I remember amazing was used.”
It’s making you exasperated. He’s making you feel crazy for defending yourself — for arguing against this. You hate the feeling so you throw back at him, “By you, yes.”
Craning his neck back, Robby bears down at you. He questions what you’ve said, your words, your slightly wavering responses. “You don’t think it was amazing? Because we can run this back right now if you…”
“Stop.” Your eyes are clenched shut. What happens is a yelp, halfway to scream. Your palms are laid flat to his chest and your push, just a little, just enough to have him pause. “Stop. Robby, please.” You shake your head and fight how your tiredness makes you want to drop your head right in the place where your hands rest. But that doesn’t happen. You don’t do what your body tells you to do now because you can’t quieten your mind anymore. “I don’t want to have to do this with you now. Not when Romi’s about to wake up. Not when we’ve had this same conversation before.”
“But we haven’t—”
“Yes, Robby, we have,” you interrupt, arguing once again. “And—”
“Last night was different,” Robby defends, harsher. "It was different than the times before. What I said." He’s like a whippet with it. He’s too quick and what he’s bringing up shuts whatever you want to say down. “You’ve heard that from me? Because I promise you, you didn’t up until last night,” Robby avows to most definitely. “What I said to you—Jesus fucking Christ, I opened up to you,” he now accuses. “I said I love you and I apologised for all those things I did.”
Hotly, mainly because you feel targeted, you retort, “Did you?” It stills him for a moment. The shock pierces Robby, and he drops his stake on you. His touch, too. “Did you apologise, or did you ask me to forgive you? Because there’s a really big difference.”
Robby shaking his head at you, mouth pressed in a thin line. “That’s not fair. Last night—”
“—Last night was hell,” you intercept. It paralyses Robby. He stumbles back, stunned despite how well last night went in his head. But that’s not what you’re referring to. You’re putting everything else together — the things before the two of you. Your hands clasp together in a prayer and you say, “We had both gone through so much, seen too much, and we found comfort in each other, Robby. That is what happened.” You think you come on too strongly. You’ve been too harsh with him. You can see it now as his eyes start to fill and your guilt spreads. You reach for him. “Robby, I love you. Listen to me, I love you,” you tell him sincerely, as you grab at his face, fingers scratching through his beard. “I care about you. I care about you so much. I don’t regret, I—I just can’t…” You trail off, weakening, as tears brim your own gaze. Your defeated hands fall from him. “I can’t go there with you again. We have Romi to think about.”
There’s reluctance in him; it’s easy to find. Robby wears it all over his features, threaded through every line. His eyes have only looked this sad and broken twice before: the day Adamson died and the night you told him your marriage was over — and he didn't fight it. It’s probably the same as what Robby thinks about now because he looks off to compose himself, to not give too much of himself away just like he did that night. Although, you’ve already seen it. He made himself vulnerable to you last night, you saw the worst of it leak out of him, and now Robby has to pretend he had plug it again. It feels a lot like drowning to him.
So, he nods and, in distress, Robby runs his hand over his beard. “Right,” he sighs.
“She comes first, Robby,” you tell him, not that it feels good, not that you want this.
But Robby repeats it for you so you know he’s heard you, so you know he’s respecting your choice. “She comes first.”
Your throat tightens. Your eyes swim with tears, and you whisper, “Thank you.”
The two of you go quiet. Your bedroom doesn’t feel as loved anymore. Its space feels as though it is sucking you through a vacuum-pack and you can’t breathe. Robby must share your feelings because he sucks in a sharp breath and struggles to release it.
When he looks at you again, finally looks at you, he looks resigned. He knows he’s lost that victory, the one he celebrated too early. “I should go,” he says. “Romi will be up soon.”
“I’ll… make sure I get those scrubs back to you,” you reply, unsure if you have anything else you can say to him. Nothing you have will make this better for Robby. You’ve just snipped his last rope to the life-raft.
After a beat, Robby says, “Thanks,” and then, he breaks for the door.
You don’t know why you can’t stop yourself from following him down. In your arms, you have the proof of last night. You hold the laundry basket with sheets, covered in both you and Robby, completely aware that you can’t leave them in that room. Your room. You can’t go back to bed and pretend Robby wasn’t lying with you in it forty minutes ago. You can’t wait to hear the front door shut from that spot either.
Robby finds his boots where you left them in the downstairs toilet. They’re clean. He thanks you for it again. The wine you didn’t finish still sits in the windowsill where you left it. It makes you feel sick. You hate the remind of unfinished things. It feels like poking a stick at your marriage, at your love for Robby. But he’s never loved you without Romi being here. He didn’t love you enough to do what he did last night when you begged him for it before, where you screamed at him to open up and Robby firmly padlocked the door on whatever ate him up. It’s the reason you’re here. It’s the reason he’s not here. It’s why he’s leaving the house you once shared together.
“Mommy?”
Behind you, your head goes back up the stairs. You hear Romi’s little voice, all tired and sweet. In the middle of the staircase, Romi slumps down in her rainbow-striped pyjamas, rubbing the sleep from her eyes while holding on tight to Bun-Bun’s leg. Her confused, tiny face looks so innocent as her stare drags from you to the front door, which is open, and Robby stands beside.
“Daddy?” Romi blinks twice, checking, too much like Robby. She realises he’s real and she’s not dreaming him up. “Daddy, what you doin’ here?”
You’re caught. Busted by a four-year-old. Your panicked lips part with an answer you’re ill-equipped to give and she’s far too young to understand.
Yet, you’re not alone. You don’t have to flounder and search for a convincing lie to tell your daughter because Robby’s already thought one up. “I’m here for breakfast, lovebug,” Robby claims, and your eyes snap to him. “Yeah, breakfast. You want pancakes and bacon, right? Plenty of maple syrup.”
He speaks it like this has always been the plan. He says it so naturally, so believably, you wonder if this is just something that’s slipped your brain. And worse, it works. Romi’s getting excited. She warms up into it, steadily losing the rest of her just woken up state to see that her daddy’s come over for breakfast.
“Really?” Romi comes down a couple more steps, a grin slowly pulling at her face. “Why you early?”
“Gotta be early to have breakfast, don’t I?” Robby returns, and it’s the most perfect reply.
Romi slips in by you first. Your hand worms around her head, stroking her frazzled curls out of her face, and you use the gentle hold you have on her head to bring it in. You lean down and kiss her forehead. “Good morning, lovebug," you greet, using the same affectionate nickname you and Robby long settled on for her.
“Good mornin’, Mommy,” Romi says to you, still half-asleep but very happy. To her, this is the single, most greatest surprise. It’s the type of thing you and Robby have done for her before, just never this early and never after three rounds of sex with your ex. Romi gives a big yawn, telling you that she needed those extra ten or so minutes you and Robby stole from her when she no doubt heard the pair of you either bicker or go downstairs. Her eyes squeeze shut with it and she holds her small hand to her mouth.
“Oh, that is a sleepy girl,” Robby comments. He crouches low and Robby holds out his arms for her. “Come here, my sleepy girl, come give me a cuddle. I miss your cuddles,” he says, as he beckons your daughter to him. It doesn’t take much for Romi to step off and into her father’s arms. There’s practically nowhere she’ll rather rest her head. And with the way she drops it straight to his shoulder, you have a sneak suspicion that Romi will drop off back to sleep for those stolen minutes really soon.
You accept that this is the next turn in your morning. You’re not getting rid of Robby so easily today, which, honestly, ease your guilt for both rejecting him and sending him to spend the day alone after a mass-casualty. He’s planted himself in your home and, because of it, you shut the door. “Guess you’re staying for breakfast,” you mutter, as you pick up the laundry basket again. “Funny how that all works out for you, huh.”
They’re behind you again. They’re following you through to the kitchen where you dump the laundry basket on the counter, a touch more peeved than you’ll like Romi to see you. Not that she sees anything past the fabric of her father’s t-shirt. You hope, as you pour the detergent into the drawer of the washing machine, Romi won’t notice he smells like you. Like this house. Like her. Like you.
Robby acknowledges her while he watches you fondly from the doorway. He sways with Romi in his arms, her bottom resting against his strong arms and his little arms stretching around his neck. “Hmm?”
“Shoes off,” Romi says.
“Yeah, that’s the rule. No shoes on in the house,” Robby returns softly.
With a tiny shake of her head, Romi says, “Nuh—oh, Daddy. Shoes already off,” she states, puzzled as her smaller brain tries to make sense of what her eyes previously soaked in. “Off when I come down. Off when I say mornin’,” yawns Romi, and afters she does, her eyes flutter close. She taps her father’s chest twice and sleep peacefully takes her again.
From it, you look over to Robby. Your eyes lock with his. His are already pinned to you, knowing too well that your smart daughter has noted something you both never think she will, that you think you can get away with. As Robby holds your shared child, half of you and half of him so beautifully blended, a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. You scoff a laugh and exchange the washed scrubs from yesterday for the spent sheets you both ruined last night and this morning. It doesn’t matter if you draw the new line, course-correct those boundaries and create a few more rules, what’s done is done, and Robby knows that you know that.
And Romi might know it, too.
(because i heard Garcia say, “you’re gonna make a great ex-husband one day, robinavitch” and i took that personally)
゛ ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆ THERE WHEN SHE CRIED | 𝓜 ❝ robby ❞ robinavitch
part 1 ╰┈➤ lynnie's coffee shop ╰┈➤ request guidelines
SUMMARY ⋮ ⌗ ┆The grumpy day shift attending isn’t as gruff as he seems. He’s everything you’d asked for and more, and a month of his irrevocable love for you leaves you drowning in him. But life’s taught you there’s always a catch, always. Your catch is the father he’s trying to replace.
PAIRING ⋮ ⌗ ┆grumpy!michael robinavitch x sunshine!reader
CONTENT WARNINGS ⋮ ⌗ ┆18+ SMUT AHEAD. MDNI. age gap. (r! is in her mid 20’s, robby’s in his late 40’s). r’s father’s a deadbeat. r! has anxiety. hurt comfort. r! argues with her father. medical inaccuracies. angst. fluff. r! and robby both cry. slightly self-indulgent on this one. established backstory. established relationship. other pitt characters make an appearance. description of a nasty head injury on a patient. sensitive!reader ⤷ ゛ ˎˊ˗ soft!dom!robby. sub!reader. afab!reader. use of several pet names. major daddy kink. praise. kinda crybaby!reader. use of “little girl” more than once. pussydrunk!robby makes a return! sir kink if you squint. fingering (r!receiving). cunnilingus (r!receiving). multiple orgasms. short aftercare scene ♡
WORD COUNT ⋮ ⌗ ┆10.2k
ּ֯ . ❥ ּ֯ ┆꒰ YOU SAVED HER LIFE ꒱
“THIS IS GETTING WEIRD,” Santos deadpanned beside you. She wasn’t speaking to you directly despite not minding you being in earshot. Instead, it clicked that she was speaking to an engrossed Mel who was typing away at her desk.
“What’s getting weird?” you both said simultaneously. You knew Santos was never the type to mind who she gossipped to, anyway. Less who she gossiped about.
“Robby. He hasn’t looked like someone pissed in his cheerios for over a month now.”
You shook your head and laughed. Point proven.
“I don’t know about weird. Isn’t that. . .good?” Mel said. She leaned in to whisper. “But it is nice to see him look less uptight.”
“You’ve taken notice of his behavior? How thoughtful,” you teased, looking up at the board. “I’m picking up the concussion in Central 6. Join me?”
“Sounds fun. And Mel, amen, sister,” Santos said before falling into step with you.
“But as I was saying,” Santos continued, “either he won the lottery, is being blackmailed, or found a really nice lady to bang.”
“Okay, that is wildly inappropriate to even suggest,” you giggled as you led the way to Central 6. “It doesn’t do anything for us to speculate, either.”
“I’m just saying. But no complaints from me. I’ve been getting out on time for two weeks straight and I do not want to lose my streak now.”
You hoped your face wasn’t giving away just how interested you were in Robby’s business. Hell, the fact that you were Robby’s business. In the month you’d been seeing each other, people had been talking. Over nights out after work, morning coffee runs, mid-shift gossip. You’d heard all the buzz: Somebody had taken Doctor Robinavitch and virtually altered his brain chemistry.
Was it a promotion? Mysterious source of income? Were they finally hiring the staff to run the ER beds? Raising the nurse’s salaries? Or, of course, the fan favorite theory: Robby was seeing somebody new.
He’d looked so much happier lately according to your colleagues. So much. . .looser. That usual gruffness was gone, replaced by a softer, almost sweeter demeanor, one that was much more digestible than the former.
It was getting harder each day to pretend you didn’t know the reason why. That you weren’t the reason why.
After shaking the thought off, you and Santos entered the room side by side, met by the sight of a woman with red locks and tan skin who was holding an ice pack to her head. You slipped a pair of gloves on and smiled, approaching the bedside.
“Hi, there,” you said to the woman, introducing yourself. “This is Doctor Santos. What’s your name.”
“Um, it’s Kara.”
“Hi, Kara. What happened to your head?”
“I was making dinner for my daughter. Slipped on some oil I dropped, and. . .”
“I see. Accidents happen. Do you mind moving the ice pack so I can see it?”
Kara removed the ice pack to reveal a large boil in the side of her forehead, pulling a small “Woah” out of Doctor Santos. You made a poorly hidden face of your own at the oozing wound.
“Um, okay, I see. What did you, um, fall on?” you asked as you probed it gently.
“The side of the counter. Then the floor.”
“Got it. That looks pretty severe for a hematoma.”
“A what?” said Kara.
“It’s a pool of clotted blood under the skin that can present as bumps or bruises on the surface. You likely had a smaller bump before you arrived here, but since you waited in triage so long. . .” you trailed off. “It might now be infected.”
Kara looked alarmed. “I- Is that bad? Can you fix it?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s good that you’re here. We’ll need to drain the hematoma surgically to avoid further infection and provide you with some antibiotics,” you said. “Let me get my attending, Doctor Robinavitch. I’ll consult with him about next steps.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Of course,” you said. You left the patient to Santos and did a quick scan of the ER as you approached the front desk. When you didn’t find him on your own, you signaled for Dana to come over.
“Hey, hun. What’s up?” said Dana.
“Hey! Have you seen Robby? I have a case to present to him.”
“Mmm, last I saw, he was in the break room. On his seventeenth cup of coffee.”
“Got it. Thanks, Dana,” you said, turning to leave. But before you could, Dana said, “Hold on,” signaling for you to approach the desk again.
Dana stepped around the desk and leaned in to whisper in your ear so that only you could hear her next words. “Please tell me he’s being good to you.”
You were instantly alarmed at her comment, spluttering a frantic, “W- Wait, what?”
Dana looked amused by your response, chuckling. “C’mon, hun. The way Robby’s been looking at you? Hell, way he’s been floating like a damn unicorn ‘round this place. Wasn’t that hard to put two and two together,” she said. “You kids speculate too much. Us adults know the answer’s always right in your face.”
“Hey! I am an adult,” you said with faux offense.
“Really? Still look like a baby to me,” Dana smiled. Her tone went more stoic then as she tilted her head at you. “But, seriously, Robinavitch. He good?”
You nodded, unable to resist confessing. It was Dana of all people, and besides, it felt nice to finally have someone to talk to about your newfound relationship with Robby. “So good, Dana. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more loved.”
Dana smiled. “Good. Let’s keep it that way. I don’t want to have to bench him,” she said. “If he’s keeping our lovergirl happy, s’all I care about.”
You smiled at the familiar nickname that’d been bestowed on you after your first month at PTMC. For your care, your attention to detail, and above all, your empathy—the way you considered the people around you and cared for them accordingly. But since you’d started seeing the man who ran the ER that’d given you the endearment. . .it felt like it had an entirely new meaning.
“Thanks, Dana. You’re the best.”
“You got it, kid.”
You excused yourself and made your way over to the breakroom. Sure enough, there stood Robby in the blue quarter zip you’d picked out for him this morning, drinking a cup of joe by the coffee machine. You closed the door and cleared your throat.
“Robby?”
Robby turned to look at you, his face softening when you made eye contact. “Yes, sweet—uh, yes?”
You giggled at his correction, stepping closer to him. Memories of the meltdown you’d had a month ago that’d wound you in this relationship to begin with flashed in your brain as you took in the familiar room, the familiar scene, one that involved you and Robby alone within it. Only this time, the circumstances weren’t so devastating. This time, it felt safe.
“You can say it, Robby. It’s just us.”
Robby smiled and set his coffee down, pulling you in by the hips. “You never know. These walls aren’t that thick.”
“Well, I don’t care who hears. They’ll know you’re the best boyfriend ever,” you smiled, wrapping your arms around his neck.
Robby pressed a soft kiss to your lips and cupped your cheek with one of his large hands. “Did you lock the door?”
“Did I—yes, but—okay,” you tried and failed to tell Robby you hadn’t come in here for one of your stolen kisses, which had become routine since the two of you had started seeing each other privately. You lost your train of thought as he started to pepper kisses down your neck, the scruff of his beard tickling your skin.
“Robby,” you giggled, squeezing his shoulder blades. “You didn’t let me finish.”
He pulled back and kissed you again, smiling against your lips. “Sorry, my love. What were you saying?”
“I was saying that I didn’t come in here to kiss you,” you said, but, oh, fuck, the whiny furrow in his eyebrows at your statement made you really wish you had. “I came in here because I have a case. And you are still my attending.”
“Right, right,” Robby said, like he really didn’t remember. That was just the effect you seemed to have on him. “What’s the case, honey?”
“Infected concussion-induced hematoma. It looks like it could get serious if she doesn’t have immediate surgery. I want your thoughts.”
“Sounds like fun. I’m on it,” Robby said. He pressed his lips to yours one more time for good measure, then let you go with reluctance. “You have your granola bar yet?”
“My granola bar? No, not yet. Haven’t worked up an appetite.”
Robby raised an eyebrow. “We had breakfast, what. . .five hours ago? You need to eat, sweetheart.”
“I will! Soon.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that one before,” Robby said. He went into the breakroom fridge to find the lunchbox he’d packed for you, pulling both the bar in question out as well as a water bottle. “Don’t come out until you’ve had both things. Understood?”
You sighed, accepting both things with fake exasperation. “Yes, sir.”
“Good girl,” Robby hummed as he pressed a gentle kiss to your temple. “Where’s the case?”
“Central 6. Santos should still be there.”
“Great. Thanks, honey,” he said. Then he left.
That was the other thing about your new relationship with Robby. It hadn’t only been a month since your father called you and induced panic in you on shift, to which Robby had then played your knight in shining armor. It’d been a month since Robby had made true on his word to taking care of you. To being your father’s replacement. To doing whatever he could do. You almost hoped the no contact would be eternal, so that you could never forget what it was like to feel this way.
You didn’t take the bus anymore. Robby came and picked you up without a care for the distance. He made sure you ate before coming in to start the day and would bring you home when all was said and done, though most nights he was just sleeping at yours or vice versa.
He made sure your fridge was always stocked. That your bed was made before leaving. That you had snacks on every shift. That your water bottle was always full. That you were tucked in at night. Doted on in the morning. He made sure you didn’t doubt his love for you, his complete and utter adoration, like a real father would. All while managing his own job as chief attending.
Robby felt. . .too good to be true.
You’d never seen this side of him. Didn’t even know it existed. It was no wonder none of your coworkers had shut up about his complete 180 in behavior. Behind closed doors, Robby had a heart so sweet you were starting to get cavities, ones you never wanted filled.
You finished up your granola bar and somehow swallowed down a full water bottle, before walking back over to Central 6.
“Nice of you to join us,” Robby said when you entered the room, like his hands hadn’t just been all over you.
You nodded and put on another pair of gloves, feigning indifference. This secrecy act couldn’t work without equal contribution. “Thoughts?” you replied.
“You’re definitely right about the infection,” Robby said. “We’re going to need to drain this.”
“I’ll get some extra hands,” said Santos before leaving the room.
You approached the bedside again, smiling at Kara. “How are you feeling, Kara?”
“A little woozy. The room’s kind of spinning.”
“Side effects of the concussion. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some medicine for the pain,” you said. “Then we’ll get you comfortable for surgery.”
“Thank you,” said Kara.
“Of course,” you said. Your phone buzzed in your pocket then, and you would have ignored it if it wasn’t paired with a missed call and your noisy ringer. You muttered an awkward, “Sorry,” and quickly checked it, your heart dropping at the notification.
Missed call from Dad
Dad: “Hey baby”
Dad: “Call me when you get a second”
“Everything okay?” Robby asked almost immediately. You hated how quickly the man could read you.
“Yeah. Fine,” you said. You didn’t have enough willpower to make it convincing, but luckily, Robby couldn’t scrutinize you with a patient in the room. “Lay back, Kara. Let’s get you comfortable.”
“Take sl- slong sur?”
You did a double take at Kara’s slurred sentence, your eyes widening. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Surgery?” Kara said. “Long time?”
“Kara? Are you feeling okay?”
“Head. Woozy,” she managed to stutter, seconds before her eyes were closing, her head going slack against the bed.
“Oh, shit,” you exclaimed. “Um, I’m going to need some help in here! Get a surgeon!”
Santos came sprinting back into the room with Collins and Javadi in tow, beads of sweat coming down her face. Her eyes widened just as yours had when she caught a glimpse of your now unconscious patient. “Shit, what happened? I came as fast as I could!”
“Major dysarthria, could hardly get a word out,” you said. Robby stood and started to page for a surgeon on the speaker in the room. “I need everyone to prepare for surgery. This has to get drained now.”
As you commanded your colleagues and readied yourself for the procedure, you tried not to think too hard about your father’s sudden reemergence after a month of no contact. Did he need money again? Was he in trouble? Or was this another one of his routine check-ins so he was still eligible for the mediocre father of the year award?
But there was no time to think up the answer to any of those questions. Right now, Kara needed you, and you had a responsibility to be there for her.
“Why didn’t you get me sooner? This looks fucking serious!” Garcia yelled as she gloved up, ever the blunt, egotistical surgeon she’d always been. You’d’ve been too distracted to even notice her entrance had she not made it known.
You huffed as you slipped a pair of surgical glasses on, laying Kara back on the bed. “She was talking fine just a minute ago!”
“Oh, this needed to be treated more than a minute ago,” Garcia said.
“Well, you’re here now, right? So let’s get this show on the road,” you replied. Santos and Javadi shared a look of surprise at your attitude. It was completely unlike you to be so snappy, albeit it being a smaller comment.
“Fucking show,” she scoffed. “You think this is—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Garcia!” you snapped. For real, this time. You felt every eye on the room upon you, Robby’s the heaviest of all, but you didn’t let up. You’d never been one to snap at anybody, especially not so brashedly—but right now? It felt like everything was getting under your skin, and you were one more incident away from a meltdown.
“Do you care more about belittling me or saving the patient?” you finished. “For fuck’s sake.”
Garcia only scoffed in response, putting her own glasses on. Robby’s browns were boring into you without shame from across the bed, but now wasn’t the time to entertain his stare. Right now, it was time to get to fucking work.
By the grace of goddess, the five of you worked a miracle in restabilizing Kara—Robby was pulled away to work on another case—easing the hematoma on her forehead and sending her to surgery to have it completely removed. You didn’t say a word to anyone when the job was done; only took off towards the breakroom—this was starting to become a problem, you realized—to ignore the elephant in the room.
You closed the door behind you and took a breath when you found yourself alone. But like cosmic karma had been watching, your phone rang again in your pocket, the same contact filling the screen.
Dad.
You sighed. What’s the worst, right? It’s not like you could ignore him forever. Even if you wished you had the strength to.
“Hello?”
“Hey! You do know how to pick up.”
You sighed. “Funny. I’m at work, Dad. What’s going on?”
“I know, I know, you’re a busy girl. I’ll be quick,” he said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What?”
“I’m in town.”
That gave you pause. Your father hadn’t come to visit you once since you’d moved to Pittsburgh a few years ago. “In. . .town? As in, here, in Pittsburgh?”
“Well, you’re not in San Francisco, are you? ‘Course I’m in Pittsburgh! Got some time off work,” he explained. You don’t know why or how he did, considering he still leaned on you to make due on bills. But, as always, you didn’t voice that to him as he went on. “I’d love to see you, baby. When are you free?”
“Oh, um. . .I don’t know. I’m really busy at the hospital, Dad.”
“Come on, kid. You can’t spare a second for your old man?”
You let out a quiet scoff. Like he ever did the same for you. “I just wasn’t expecting this, Dad. I don’t know when—”
As you were speaking, the door to the breakroom opened. Robby stepped through and closed the door softly behind him when he realized you were on the phone. He maintained his silence even more when he caught the ‘Dad’ part of your sentence.
You sighed. “What did you have in mind?”
“There’s a little diner I’ve been eyeing since I got here. Percy’s Place. You heard of it?”
“Yeah. That’s not too far from the hospital.”
“Okay, cool. So, we’ll meet there, then? You free after your shift?”
“If I’m not running late.”
“Great. See you then, baby.”
“Love you,” you said reflexively. The words tasted sour on your tongue.
“Love you, too,” he returned. You then hung up.
Robby put his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’d ask about your not-so-little bite at Garcia. But I think I can take a guess as to what it was really about.”
You put your phone away and shook your head, crossing your arms. “I can’t believe he’s in town and just. . .dropped it like that. With no regard for my time or schedule. And I still made plans to see him.”
Robby took a step closer. “He’s your dad, sweetheart. ‘Course you wanna see him. As much grief as he gives you, I know you miss him. And you never know. Maybe he’s ready to turn a new leaf.”
“I doubt it,” you said. You let your shoulders drop. “But I do want to try. Is that bad?”
Robby shook his head and stepped closer again, until your cheek was in reach and he cupped it with his usual softness, calming the rapid beat of your heart. “Why would it be bad, my love?”
“Because,” you shrugged. “I always tell you that I don’t think he’ll change. I still feel like it’s mostly true. But then I turn around and make plans with him? And then. . .”
Robby raised an eyebrow. “And then. . .what?”
“I have you now,” you said.
Robby smiled at you. He pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, letting his other hand rest against the small of your back. “You’re still my girl no matter what, honey. Nothing’s going to change that,” he said. “But I have no reservations about your dad. He’s your dad, biologically, anyway. And if you want it to, then that still counts for something.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Robby said without question. “Let’s try to have a good rest of shift, yeah?”
You nodded. “Okay.”
“Oh, and try not to bump into Garcia for a while. She’s fuming.”
Robby had a point, because Garcia, who was basically always fuming, would probably strangle you if she could get you within reach right now. “Noted.”
After the punctual conclusion of your shift—you couldn’t believe you’d been subtly wishing you didn’t get out on time—you met Robby in the parking lot, hopping into the passenger side of his truck.
“Oh, look at you. My adorable girl,” Robby cooed at your cuteness. You raised an eyebrow as he pinched your cheek, considering said cuteness was the pink tank top that’d been under your scrubs and a pair of jean shorts you’d never bothered to take out of your locker.
“Robby,” you giggled as he cupped your cheek. “You’re so weird.”
“And you love it,” Robby replied triumphantly. “Where to, my love? Percy's Place, right?”
You nodded in response. Robby put the car into drive and settled a hand onto your thigh as he pulled out onto the road.
The drive was short, no longer than ten minutes. You’d come to this diner a few times with coworkers, especially considering they were open 24/7. Robby turned to look at you when the first red light came.
“You alright, honey? You nervous?”
You shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I don’t know. I have a weird feeling.”
“Like what?”
“Like this isn’t about wanting to see me. It never is,” you said. “This is the thing dads are supposed to do for their daughters. Check up on them, make sure they’re not on, I don’t know, the brink of death. Then they reserve the right to completely evaporate because their work is done, for now.”
At the realization of your ramble, you sighed and looked away. “Sorry.”
“You know you don’t have to apologize for anything. Not with me,” Robby said. “But I get it. You feel like an obligation, not a priority. And your father hasn’t done much to convince you otherwise.” Robby squeezed your thigh here. “Still, it can’t hurt hearing him out. You might regret it if you don’t.”
You took your hand in his. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I guess we’ll see.”
A few minutes later, you pulled into the parking lot of the diner. The family-owned business was characterized by fluorescent lights, hues of various pinks and reds emanating off the building. Out front was a light-up sign that read Percy's Place in all capitals, as well as retro decorations of things like milkshakes and fries.
“I’ll leave you to it, sweetheart. Call me when you’re ready, okay?” Robby smiled at you.
You pressed a kiss to his lips. It felt like cherishing the last moments of calm before the storm. “Okay. I will.”
Stepping out of the car on your own felt weird—Robby usually never let you open the door for yourself, but you hadn’t wanted your father to see him—but you did so anyway, walking up to the door of the place with false confidence. You shot one more look at Robby before going inside.
“Baby!” exclaimed an unmistakable voice from the bench beside you as the man atop it stood up to greet you.
“Hey, Dad,” you said with a nervous laugh. You let the man pull you into a hug. “Good to see you.”
“You, too. How are you, monkey?” he teased.
The childhood nickname instantly threw you off-kilter. You didn’t think you’d heard him say it in a long while. “Um, not bad. My shift went pretty smoothly. Got out on time.”
“Glad to hear it,” he returned. “Let’s grab a seat?”
“Sure,” you nodded.
After the waitress showed you to your table, you did a brief scan of the menu, but quickly decided you’d order your usual. You stared awkwardly at your father, who was browsing it for the first time.
“So many choices. Have you been here before?”
You nodded. “Plenty of times. Burgers are pretty good.”
“Noted,” he said. “So, what’s new with you? You like it here? The hospital?”
“I like Pittsburgh. And the hospital is chaos. But the work I do is good, and that makes it worth it,” you said. “Just started the social work aspect of it about three months ago.”
“And how’s that treating you?”
You went into detail about the work you did at the hospital. How you’d only been a doctor but were asked to shadow Kiara to take some weight off her shoulders. That you had the best of both worlds, and the newfound position had ultimately made you a better doctor. Your father listened with intent interest, and the thought of that made you feel good. But you couldn’t shake this weird feeling of déjà vu. Hadn’t you told him this story before?
“Yeah, that case was a wild one. But the parents should get to keep custody by the grace of goddess,” you were saying with a light chuckle. “I didn’t tell you all this before?”
“You might have. Not too sure,” he shrugged while he took a sip of his soda. You nodded. Right. When had he ever been sure of anything when it came to you?
“But I’m glad you’re doing good, monkey. I miss you.”
“Dad,” you said reflexively. You tried to swallow the lump in your throat that formed at the thought of reciprocating the notion. “I. . .miss you, too.”
“Why don’t you come home anymore, honey?”
Your eyebrows furrowed at the sudden query. “Why don’t I—you don’t invite me to come home, Dad. It doesn’t even seem like you want me there.”
“What? Honey, of course I want you home,” he said. “You don’t need an invitation. You’re my daughter.”
You wanted to laugh. You hadn’t known he was familiar with the concept.
“I know,” you said through gritted teeth. That poker face you were so familiar with was beginning to come through, because god forbid you be the villain in this. God forbid you be the one to blame. “But it feels like you don’t care sometimes. Maybe if you were actually around, I’d come home of my own accord.”
“I do care. Of course I care. I’m just so busy with work and. . .and other things that. . .it’s hard to find time. Balance.”
“Balance. Other things,” you repeated. “What, like your wife who lives on the other side of the globe?”
There was that, too. A detail you’d completely omitted to Robby. Your father had gotten married to a woman who didn’t even live on this continent—how it’d happened exactly, you hadn’t the faintest idea—but since they’d wed years ago, it felt like he’d always cared about her more than he did you. He flew out to see her, flew her in to see him, would call her constantly when you used to visit home, and spent what was likely half his income on her.
The audacity, the nerve, to ask you for money on top of that, had always left a bitter taste in your mouth.
“Sweetheart—“
“Don’t do that,” you interrupted. The waitress came back with the fries the two of you had decided to share, but your appetite was fading by the minute. “You can’t waltz back into my life whenever you want and pretend to be a father. That’s not how it works.”
Your father stayed silent as you spoke. You hadn’t known what’d gotten into you and quickly understood this wasn’t the place to be having this conversation, but your words were pouring from your lips like heavy rain on a dreary day, and it looked like the POP was 100%.
Forget the facade. Fuck the poker face. You deserved this. He deserved this.
“I need consistency, Dad. I can’t do this back and forth thing anymore. I’m tired,” you admitted. “You don’t call for weeks on end, then crawl back when you remember I exist. You do the occasional big gesture so I’ll forget your absence. And you think it’s enough. It’s not.”
“Listen, kid. I get you’re frustrated. And maybe I could pick up the slack sometimes,” he returned. “But it’s not exactly one-sided. You could pick up the phone and call.”
You scoffed. “And listen to you lie about how much you miss me, your empty promises to do better? Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll pass.”
You shook your head. Stood up from your chair. Soda and fries completely untouched. Appetite but a mere memory. So was any good thing you’d ever had going between you and your father.
“You know what? This was a mistake. I should go.”
“You can’t run from your problems.”
You slammed a $20 bill down on the table. “Well, guess what, Dad? I only have one problem. And he’s sitting right in front of me.”
He scoffed. “You’re not exactly daughter of the year. I try to be a dad, but you make it so hard sometimes,” he scoffed. It was here you realized that people were starting to stare, but it was too late to back down now. “You always want more from me. I can’t give you everything.”
“I don’t need you to give me anything, Dad. Because you were everything to me. And you couldn’t even hold onto that. You think I want your money? Your grand gestures?” you scoffed. “No. I want a fucking good morning text. Check-ins that don’t feel like routine. I want you to call me because you want to, not because you have to. Jesus Christ, I just want the bare minimum. And you act like it’s such a chore.”
“You make it a chore, honey. You want me to be honest? You’re a sad excuse for a daughter sometimes. You can never see things from my point of view. That’s the way it fucking is,” he snapped. “You’re right. This was a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He stood up and brushed his jeans off. “I’m going back to Boston tonight.”
“Good! Leave!” you said. “It’s all you know how to do, anyway.”
With that, you spun on your heel and took off, storming through the door of Percy's Place. You realized you’d have to call Robby to come get you, but the thought of facing your boyfriend when you were struggling with your emotions probably wasn’t the best idea. He wasn’t a far walk, anyway. Maybe you needed to clear your head.
You felt so angry. Uncharacteristically angry. That’s what that little go at Garcia had been about earlier. It wasn't the heat of the moment. You were genuinely upset, furious, even. Because no matter how much you begged for things to be different, for him to be different, your father was what he was—a deadbeat incapable of change.
What was making you so angry was that you still had hope that he would.
Like you hadn’t gotten a good enough taste of cosmic karma earlier, thunder boomed loudly through the cloudy skies ahead of you. If you didn’t call your boyfriend, an Uber, or pick up the pace of your feet, then you were going to get soaked.
Your GPS told you Robby’s was a twenty minute walk. It was foolish to hold out hope that the sky would wait for you. But, what the hell, you already maintained plenty of that for the man who’d wound you in this situation in the first place.
When you finally arrived at Robby’s, rain water was dripping from every inch of your body. Your clothes were soaked through with the aftermath of the storm. To make matters worse, like a mockery, it’d cleared up as soon as you’d walked up to the front door.
Robby had his readers on when he opened the door. He let out a small gasp at the sight of you, immediately pulling you inside. “Sweetheart,” he said worriedly.
“It’s just rain, Robby. Don’t worry,” you said flatly. Your voice lacked your usual light.
“Just rain? You could get sick,” Robby said. He immediately felt your forehead, checking for a fever. “You’re back so early. Did you walk? You should have called me.”
“W- We finished early,” you said. You were trying not to break, but Robby’s consideration was eating your brave face away. “I’m going to go shower. I haven’t had one all day.”
“Just like that? You didn’t tell me how your day was. How it went,” Robby said with a slight frown. Even after spending hours together at work, you always debriefed your day with Robby, because that was just how much he cared about you. To break that ritual was his first sign that there was more to this.
“S- Sorry. I just feel gross. I’ll tell you all about it after,” you said. Your lip was starting to wobble like the absolute traitor it was, and if you didn’t get out of this compromising position soon, your facade was going to crack.
“What’s wrong, baby? You look upset,” Robby said. God, what kind of sorcery was it that he could read you like a novel only a month into being your boyfriend?
Is this what unconditional love felt like?
“No, I’m fine,” you still tried pitifully, but tears were about to join the shake of your lip and tremble of your shoulders, and there was absolutely no hiding that amalgamation from Robby.
“Don’t do that.”
“Wh- What?”
“Act like your feelings aren’t important. Or like I don’t want to hear about them. It’s my job to listen to you, sweetie. You know that,” Robby said. “Tell me what happened.”
You sniffled as he cupped your cheeks, stroking them with his thumbs. He wiped every tear that fell, and his look of love made you feel like you could weep. You shook your head and let the tears fall, because you realized now that this was a safe space to do that. That it always would be.
“He was so mean, Robby. He said I was a sad excuse for a daughter,” you cried. Robby held the back of your head as you cried into his chest, stroking your hair.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Robby whispered.
“He said i- it was a mistake to come see me. Th- That he’s trying so hard to be a dad, but having a daughter like me makes it hard,” you cried. “What did I ever do to him?”
“Oh, my sweet girl, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Robby cooed. He rested his chin atop your head. “You deserve so much better than that. He’s the sorry excuse for a father, making you cry like this. It’s not right.”
“I just wanted to be loved by him,” you sobbed against Robby. You must have been compartmentalizing these feelings for weeks, because it felt like your shoulders were lightening with every word you spoke. “Is that so bad?”
“No, not bad. Not bad at all,” Robby hummed. “And he should love you. You’re bright. Caring. You make the people around you smile. You love wholeheartedly, and that’s not easy to come by these days.”
You looked up at Robby as he cupped your cheeks again. “You’re a reliable friend,” he said, pressing a kiss to your forehead, “an even better doctor,” a kiss to your nose, “and a beautiful lover, inside and out,” he finished with a final kiss to your lips. “Don’t let anything he says convince you otherwise. Okay?”
You nodded. “Okay.”
“That’s my girl,” Robby said. “I promise I’ll love you in all the ways he couldn’t. I swear it, honey.”
“Pinky?”
Robby chuckled and looped your pinky through his. “Pinky.”
You let out a giggle, wiping your tears. “How bad do I look right now?”
“Absolutely terrible,” Robby smiled at you. “Kidding, my love. You’re beautiful. You’re always beautiful. Now, come on. Let’s get you freshened up.”
You nodded and held Robby’s pinky as he guided you up the stairs. This felt synchronous to the first time he’d brought you here, when he’d cared for you in your vulnerability and showed you how a real man should treat you. It felt all the more special knowing Robby didn’t make it feel like a chore.
Robby led you into the bathroom that was attached to his bedroom. “Just stocked up on that body wash you like. And your towel and washcloth are still here. I’ll go get you some clothes.”
You nodded. Robby returned with a shirt of his and a pair of shorts a few minutes later, setting them down on the counter. “Okay, angel. You let me know if you need anything.”
“Wait,” you said. You grabbed hold of the doorknob just before he could close it.
“Yes, baby?”
“Can you help me, Daddy?” you said, feeling silly as the words left your lips. But the thought of being alone with your thoughts again didn’t sound too enticing.
Robby, however, didn’t mind. He never did. He nodded and stepped back inside, and you noticed that his demeanor had changed. He looked what could only be described as protective, and that was no doubt due to the smallness of your tone, but also the fact that you’d never called him that name outside of bed. “Of course, honey. ‘Course I can.”
You lifted your arms so Robby could remove your shirt, then let him take your jean shorts off. You felt exposed when you were finally stripped naked, even though this wasn’t anything Robby hadn’t seen before. Except it’d never been this way, so vulnerable, so delicate.
You saw in the way he looked at you, that he knew it, too. Because there was nothing sexual in the way his eyes met yours. Nothing at all. It was everything to do with how enamoured he was by the woman he got to call his.
“My beautiful girl,” Robby cooed as he kissed your cheeks. “Let me get the water started.”
“Could you wash my hair, too?” you asked meekly.
“Of course I can, babygirl. What else am I here for? Come on, step in.”
After rinsing you off and getting your hair wet, Robby ran a bubble bath for you. You stepped back in and sank into the water happily, the warmth of it wrapping around you like a blanket.
“Comfortable, baby?”
You nodded. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome. Now let’s get your hair brushed, huh?”
Robby sat at the edge of the bathtub while he brushed through your hair, working out every knot that he could. You closed your eyes and tried to relax as it simultaneously washed your worries away.
“Sweetheart,” Robby said suddenly. “You know how special you are to me, right?”
You looked up at him and smiled. “No. Tell me.”
“I’d do anything for you. Anything. It kills me to see you sad. I want to protect you from every bad thing. Don’t want anything or anyone making you feel this way again. Hell, I think I’d die for you,” Robby admitted quietly. “Is that bad?”
You hadn’t realized you were crying until Robby wiped a tear from your eye. But you quickly shook your head. “No, it’s not. Not bad,” you said, using his usual words when you’d ask him such a question. “It actually scares me how much I’m falling for you, Robby. It feels so fast, and sudden. Too good to be true. But when I look at you, I see everything I ever asked for. And I know that you’re worth it.”
Robby’s teary eyes mirrored your own, and he nodded. “I think I needed to hear that.”
“I like a man in touch with his feelings,” you giggled through your tears. Robby chuckled and looked visibly looser as he started to brush your hair again.
“Oh, that makes me feel worlds better,” he laughed.
Robby was gentle with you as he finished washing your hair, lathering it with shampoo and conditioner and working out every tangle. Such a process was usually excruciatingly long for you, but Robby didn’t bat an eye. That fact that he never did was as terrifying as it was endearing.
He lathered lotion onto your body once he’d dried you off from the bath, then helped you put your—his—clothes on. When you reached your hand out so you could walk to bed together, he didn’t even take it. Only lifted you into his arms, pressing a kiss to your lips.
“Robby!” you laughed, wrapping your legs around his waist. “I’m too heavy.”
“Too heavy? No such thing,” he smiled. He opened the bathroom door and carried you to bed with ease, setting you down gently.
You cuddled up against him when he laid down beside you. He pulled you close to him, kissing your forehead.
“Did you get to eat at the diner?” Robby asked.
You shook your head. “Started arguing before that.”
Robby frowned. “I’m sorry, babygirl. You hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, I didn’t eat since that granola bar,” you said meekly.
“Then you definitely need to eat,” Robby said. “What are we in the mood for, princess?”
You felt your cheeks heat up. Robby had called you that nickname teasingly at first, but now he said it with a fondness that always had your heart lurching. “Um, pizza?”
“Sounds good. I’ll order it now.”
That was the thing about Robby. He never asked questions. Never made you second guess yourself. Sure, it was just pizza, but it was the simple fact of knowing you wanted it, that you needed it, really, that made him order it without hesitation. He did everything without hesitation.
Was it that difficult, Dad?
“All set. Should be here within the hour,” Robby said. “I got you some dessert, too. They have—princess? Y’okay?”
“What? Yeah. Fine,” you replied, turning your head to the side. Fuck. It was exhausting to be this in tune with your feelings.
“Thought we agreed on this, babygirl. No hiding feelings,” Robby said. “Look at me, sweetheart. What’s’matter?”
“It’s just. . .” you sniffled. “I don’t understand why he can’t do the things you do. Why I had to beg the universe to replace what I never had, and why I’m having such a hard time accepting it now that it’s finally here. I feel totally insane.”
Robby sat up when you did, rubbing your back. “You’re not insane, my love. And trust me, I know what it’s like. I really do. I tell people I don’t want another mother. . .” he trailed off. You looked at him, allowing him space to speak. “But the truth is, you never fill the void that forms when a parent leaves. You learn to jump over it, go around, cast it aside. But you never seem to close it.”
“That leaves you wondering, why me? Why not all the truly evil people in this world who deserve worse things? Who’d I piss off in a past life to deserve it?” Robby said. “But you drive yourself crazy with the questions, honey. None of ‘em have a good answer. Because the truth is? You didn’t do anything wrong. You showed up when he didn’t. You wanted to be a daughter and he didn’t take responsibility. That’s not on you. Don’t think for a second that it ever could be.”
“Robby. . .” you said with stray tears coming down your cheeks. Robby cupped them as he stared at you with blurry eyes of his own. Yet he didn’t wipe his own. He only catered to yours.
“I know, baby. I know. And I know you’re scared of this, with me,” he said. “But I can only say so much. I want to show you. I want to give you everything, because you are everything to me. I could tell you how badly I’ve fallen for you, how I fall more everyday. How you’re always on my mind, even when you’re not around me. How I want to spend the rest of my life making up every moment you missed with your father. But none of that stuff matters if my actions can’t attest to it. . .
. . .so be patient with me. Because I’ll always, always, always do the same for you. Okay?”
You nodded. “Okay.”
“That’s my girl.”
You didn’t say another word as you wrapped your arms around his neck, climbing into his lap the same way you had the first time. And right now? It felt like it did before. Safe. Secure. Vulnerable, but secure.
“My sweet, sweet angel. It’s going to be okay. I promise,” Robby cooed, rubbing your back. “Gonna keep you safe forever. Never letting anything bad happen to you.”
You felt the weight of Robby’s words around you like a weighted blanket. But there was nothing suffocating about the implication. It was all comfort.
When Robby finally shushed your tears away, he pulled back to look at you, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips. “Let’s get a movie on, baby. Lighten the mood a little, yeah?”
You nodded. “I- I like the sound of that.”
Robby nodded and pressed one more kiss to your cheek before laying you down beside him again. He held you close as he flicked the TV on, picking a movie he knew you’d like before turning to cuddle you fully.
The two of you laid together in silence as the movie played. Some illy timed comedy flick that had you smiling your way out of the sadness that’d settled over you in the last few hours. But you could feel Robby’s eyes anywhere but the movie out of the corner of your eye.
They were entirely fixated on you.
“What?” you said playfully.
“Nothing. It’s just good to see you smiling again,” he said, stroking your cheek with his thumb. “You’re so pretty when you do.”
“You know what it does to me when you say stuff like that, Robby,” you giggled, unabashedly nuzzling into his touch.
“And what does it do, angel?”
You hummed. “I dunno. Makes me feel things.”
“Things, huh? Of what kind, I could never imagine,” he said just as playfully, but there wasn’t anything playful about the subtle slot of his knee between your legs, which had you shivering. “Am I on the right track?”
“Y- Yes, I’d say so,” you said with a little moan. You didn’t think you’d get here tonight all things considered, but now that you were, you realized how badly you’d been craving it.
You were still intimate with Robby, but not nearly as rough as before. You’d wanted it like that the first time you did it, desperately needing to forget the events of the day—but as Robby explored you, worshiped you, learned all the things that made you tick and burned them into memory, he was gentle, so, so gentle. He’d tell you how precious you were to him, how lucky he was to have you. How beautiful you were while he had you pliant and vulnerable for him.
You quickly realized that this was definitely one of those times. No matter how often you came to him in pieces, he’d always put you back together again.
“Tell me what you want,” Robby cooed. He was getting you to work on using your words—it was easy to feel so timid around him—so before he did anything with you, he always asked you the same question.
“Can you kiss me, Daddy?” you asked softly.
“Good girl,” Robby praised. He then leaned in to press his lips to yours. The closeness had his knee slotting even further between your legs, brushing against your clothed core.
Robby kept a hand on your waist as he kissed you, the movie filtering throughout the room as no more than background noise. As much as you loved sex, everything about kissing, especially with Robby, was arguably more alluring. The way his lips worked flawlessly against yours. The scratch of his beard against your chin while the two of you made out. All the ways he’d grab you while his tongue melted into your mouth. It made you impossibly wet every time, embarrassingly so. But that was the way Robby seemed to like you.
You ground helplessly against Robby’s knee, whimpering into his mouth with every rock of his thigh into your pussy. He loved to watch you take your pleasure, always cooing at how well you were doing, how much he adored when you showed him what you wanted. It had him rock hard every time, like he was against you right now.
You started to guide his hand downwards, trying to hint that you wanted more, but Robby only laced his fingers through yours, shaking his head.
“Ah-ah, sweetheart. Big girl words. You know that.”
“Daddy,” you whined.
“Don’t ‘Daddy’ me. You know better,” he said without malice, but the smug look on his face still suggested condescension. “Talk to your Daddy.”
“Mmm. . .want your fingers inside me. Okay? There, I said it.”
“Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Robby hummed. He slipped a hand under your shorts—his shorts—and tugged them down with ease, considering how loosely they settled around your hips. He rubbed his fingers between your folds and groaned at your wetness, which you might have thought was embarrassing if he wasn’t already used to how quickly you got worked up. “Now my girl can have whatever she wants.”
“Ah—thank you, Daddy,” you whined into his neck.
“Such a polite girl. Already can’t think, my love?”
“Um,” you whimpered against him, “maybe?”
Robby let out a chuckle, the sound making you clench around absolutely nothing. Yet. “S’okay, angel. Your Daddy’s gonna do all the thinking for you. You just sit there and take it, alright?”
You nodded at that. It felt good to not have to think for yourself. To let the worries of the day wash away while your boyfriend took care of you. And for once? You felt like you deserved it.
You whined as Robby teased you between your folds, rubbing your aching clit in little circles. The man now knew exactly what buttons to push and how to make you sweat, and you loved and hated that he got to use it to his advantage.
“Mikey. . .inside? Please?” you asked softly.
Robby usually reprimanded you if you used his name while he had you like this, but that new nickname of yours, Mikey, was just too sweet to correct. “Look at that. Someone does know how to use their words. So proud of you, babygirl.”
“You’re so mean,” you giggled, but it was short-lived as Robby began to spread you open with his fingers, before slipping one inside you. You let out a little gasp at the stretch, or lack thereof, considering your own juices were working as the perfect lubricant.
“Mhm. Tell me how mean I am, sweetheart,” Robby cooed, crooking his finger inside you, finding that spongy spot within your walls. “When I dote on you,” kiss, “buy you whatever you want,” kiss, “and fuck you the way you like. Mhm, tell me how mean I am.”
“I- I—” you whimpered, shaking your head. “You’re not mean to me. You’re so nice.”
“That’s right, babygirl. I am. And you should be nicer to me,” he hummed. He slipped a second finger inside you, picking up the pace ever so slightly.
“Sorry, Daddy. Promise I don’t think you’re mean,” you moaned. “You’re only nice t’me.”
Robby chuckled. It was true. As chief attending at the hospital, he’d always been on the gruffer side, upholding his stoic demeanor. But behind closed doors, you stripped him down to his soft center, the one he reserved for you and you only.
“Only you deserve it,” he replied. He pressed a little kiss to your nose, his thumb starting to flick against your clit now. “You’re special to me, honey. Want you to know that.”
“I do, Mikey, I do,” you panted. Your legs parted ever so slightly, allowing him to press his palm against your mound while his fingers worked inside you. You could explode at any moment now with his thick digits pumping in and out of you while his calloused palm rubbed the whole of your pussy. “Ah—feels so good.”
“Yeah? S’my little girl like that?” Robby cooed. He used his other hand to press against your belly, the pressure making your legs shake. “You feel my fingers in here, baby? Filling you up real good?”
You could only nod in response. This was the only part of sex where Robby didn’t mind you evading words.
“You’re doing so well, sweetheart. Just keep being good f’me.”
Robby’s praise and his sultry touch were starting to make your head spin. You were overwhelmed in all the right ways, and ready to go over the edge with him like you had so many times, but the pressure in your low belly was joined by another feeling.
Tears were starting to sting your eyes.
“Daddy, Daddy,” you whimpered into his neck. You let yourself cry softly into his shoulder, because you knew he’d hold you through anything—even when you were putting the most vulnerable parts of yourself on display. “Don’t stop, please, please. Want you. Want you to make me cum.”
“Oh, my sweet angel. I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you,” he hummed, pressing a kiss to the top of your hair. He worked his fingers inside you with renewed precision and equal pace, trying to bring you to your pleasure. “You’re doing so well for me. My good girl, my babygirl. Daddy’s right here, I promise.”
“Fuck,” you whispered into his neck. Tears were surely soaking the side of it, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care about that right now. All that mattered was every thrust of Robby’s fingers into your pussy, the way your legs were shaking with your impending orgasm, how your thighs were starting to close around his hand—
How he pried them back open as you finally gave in.
“Ah-ah, let Daddy see, honey. That’s it, there’s my girl—fuck, you look so pretty cumming for me,” he was saying. The words were making you dizzy with need as he fucked you through your orgasm, your pussy clenching around his digits. He slapped your pussy until your legs were trembling violently, watching your juices stir and spit off your core like a faucet. Only when you started to cry from the overstimulation did he stop, lick his fingers clean, and pull you in for a kiss.
You tasted yourself the slightest bit as his tongue slipped into your mouth. You threw your leg over his waist without a care for the mess he’d created, whimpering into his lips. You could feel Robby smiling against yours as he pulled you in by the small of your back.
“You did so well, princess,” Robby cooed finally, pressing one more kiss to your nose for good measure. “I’m so proud of you. You know that? For everything.”
You smiled and cupped his face, planting a peck of your own to his cheek. “I’m proud of you, too, Mikey. Thank you. For everything,” you repeated. You perked up suddenly when a thought struck you. “S’that pizza still coming?”
Robby chuckled. “Should be, angel. Maybe in the next, I don’t know, twenty minutes? Why?”
“Because I’m still hungry,” you smiled.
“That’s funny. Me, too. And we still have some time. . .”
You raised an eyebrow. “Robby, what are you—”
You didn’t get a word more in before he was settling between your legs without warning. You knew what his sudden ascension up your thighs would lead into—his beard scratching against your skin, and his lips pressing kisses up to your core. “Can’t leave you messy like this, babygirl. Need to clean you up before dinner.”
You let out a shaky laugh as you looped your fingers through his hair. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to have dessert after, silly.”
Robby chuckled against your thigh, and shook his head at your observation. “And you know me to be a rule follower?” Robby chuckled.
You shook your head. “N- No. I guess not.”
“Such a smart girl,” Robby cooed. He began to press kisses up your thighs again, savoring your pretty moans and the taste of your skin with every scattered suck. You were beginning to realize that between your legs was one of Robby’s favorite places to be.
Shit, scratch that—maybe his favorite place to be.
The ruggedness of his beard between your legs and lips against your inner thighs was driving you wild—but the second he latched onto your clit, you felt like an animal. You instinctively wrapped your legs around his head, sandwiching him between your thighs.
“F- Fuck. . .Mikey,” you whimpered while he started to suck on your clit. “You’re supposed to be—agh—cleaning me up.”
“Am I?” Robby muttered against your pussy like he really didn’t know. “Guess I forgot.”
“Daddy,” you chided.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Robby said with a little smirk. He started to lap up the juices from your previous orgasm like he was supposed to be, but you knew he wouldn’t stop there when all was said and done. “Can’t help myself. Fucking love this pussy.”
“S’all yours, Daddy.”
“Damn right, it’s all mine,” Robby said gruffly in response. He continued to suck the evidence of your last orgasm into his mouth, cleaning you up like he was marking his territory—but just when you thought he was finished, he started to suck at your clit again, pulling a surprised moan from your lips.
Robby didn’t let you get another word in before he was slipping his fingers back inside you, your hole already wet and pliant from your last orgasm. You instinctively shut your thighs around his head, which only made him grip one hard as he started to eat you out.
“Daddy, fuck, feels so good,” you whimpered as his fingers curled into that sweet spot inside you. Any remnants of overstimulation had transformed into pleasure, filling your veins like the sultriest honey.
“Yeah, babygirl? Your Daddy making you feel good?” he cooed between your legs, though it felt more like he was talking to your cunt than he was you. “You’re clenching so tight around me, sweetheart.”
“Can’t help it. Love the way you make me feel,” you admitted without shame. With Robby, it was like you never had any.
“There’s my good girl, my sweet little girl,” Robby moaned against your pussy, licking languid stripes between your folds. The man had studied you like an art and learned exactly how to please you—what your breaking points were, the things that made you pant and whine for more. It was exhilarating to know he could now take advantage of the knowledge when he pleased. “You got one more for Daddy, sweetheart?”
You nodded rapidly, pulling him closer to your pussy. “Y- Yes, sir. I do.”
“Fuck,” Robby groaned. “That’s my girl.”
That being said, Robby latched his mouth onto your already aching clit, working with a renewed fervor to bring you to your pleasure. You took it without reservation, squirming on the bed and squeezing your thighs around his head the harder he fucked you with his tongue. It felt like your entire being was on fire, less from the stimulation and more from the way Robby was so drunk off your pussy, like he needed this more than you did.
Shit, like he was the one taking his pleasure.
Minutes of his restless attack on your pussy, filled with determined suckling against your clit and his calloused digits inside your weeping hole lead to you finally crying out a strangled “Daddy” as you release for a second time that night.
Robby pressed a few kisses to your sensitive cunt, a stark contrast from the somewhat rough treatment he’d given you prior. When he pulled back, his beard was marked with the evidence of his ministrations, a mix of spit and your own juices visible on his lips.
“You did so well, princess,” Robby cooed, the sappiest smile plastered on his face. You giggled.
“You know, m’starting to think you enjoy that more than me,” you teased.
“Oh, I plead the fifth,” Robby laughed in return. He pressed one last kiss into your skin, this time to your belly, before standing up. “Now we can really get you cleaned up.”
He returned minutes later with a small cloth, his face now wiped clean. He sat down on the edge of the bed and settled his hand between your legs again, only it was for a completely different reason. You shivered at the feeling as you were still recovering from the orgasm, but Robby only cooed at you, talking you through his movements.
“Shhh, s’okay, babygirl. Almost done,” he was saying. He made sure he carefully attended to every spot he’d touched, the thoughtful gesture making your cheeks heat up. When he finished, he discarded the towel in his laundry hamper, then climbed back into bed with you.
“Come on. C’mere,” he hummed.
Robby didn’t have to tell you twice. You curled up against him like a cat, laying your head on his chest. Robby rubbed the small of your back and pulled you close, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.
“Thank you, Mikey,” you mumbled sleepily. You hadn’t realized how tired you were until your body found comfort in the familiar sanctuary of his arms.
“No need to thank me, baby. That’s what I’m here for.”
You nodded. Then, without thinking—
“Mikey?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it bad if I think I love you?”
Robby only pulled you closer at that, chuckling. “No. Not bad,” he replied. “I think I love you, too.”
You closed your eyes and hummed in contentment at his answer. You felt even more elated when it struck you that you had an answer to your earlier query.
This is what unconditional love felt like. And Michael Robinavitch was ready to spend the rest of his life showering you in it.
It was just a normal morning.
An overworked, emotionally exhausted single father snapping at his daughter.
A stubborn, defensive teenage daughter snapping back.
Three words that should have never gone unsaid remaining unspoken.
Just a normal morning - until a boy brought a rifle to school.
Part 1 | Part 2
Words: 13,2k
Content: School shooting, Hurt/Comfort, Gun violence, injury, single dad!Robby, Reader!daughter, No major character death
No use of Y/N
Read on Ao3 or below the cut:
A/N: Heavy angst incoming :D
I got guns in my head and they won′t go
Spirits in my head and they won't
I've been lookin′ at the stars tonight
And I think, oh, how I miss that bright sun
I′ll be a dreamer 'til the day I die
And they say, oh, how the good die young?
But we′re all strange
And maybe we don't want to change
- Spirits by The Strumbellas
“Morning.” Jack chirped, far too cheerful for it being seven a.m. and him having just worked a twelve-hour shift on - presumably, but also most probably - three hours of sleep.
Robby merely grunted in response as she stripped off his jacket and reached for his thermos.
“Who pissed in your cereal this morning?”
Determined to drink his coffee while it was still hot, Robby took a large sip, just to scrunch up his nose and almost choke. He forced the scorching hot coffee that’d been desecrated by the violet coffee syrup you used for the cold brewed teas you made at home down, fighting his own gag reflex.
“Ah.” Jack said with a smirk he didn’t even bother to conceal. “Robby jr.”
“Nah, she lost the right to my name.” Robby scowled at the thermos but not without a healthy dose of heartbroken yearning.
There went his only shot at good coffee for the next twelve hours.
Jack took a sniff of it and chuckled. “Coffee-based warfare. She must be pissed, brother. What happened?”
“When,” Robby said after a longsuffering sigh and braced his underarms against the counter, peering up at Jack with tired eyes. “Did it somehow become acceptable to go to school with one’s entire midriff out? Not to mention that it’s against dress code and I can’t be driving up to her school in the middle of the day to pick her up because she earned yet another violation!”
“Urgh, I hate that I can’t find any shirts that aren’t cropped anymore.” Javadi sighed. Mel next to her nodded along eagerly. Jack and Robby turned at the same time, staring the unsuspecting med student down. She looked up, realised she had said that out loud, blushed and scurried away. Mel followed closely behind.
At least those two had enough shame to run and hide when caught eavesdropping, the same could not be said about one Trinity Santos.
“Honestly, power to her. School dress codes are dumb.”
Robby blinked, slowly, like a frog on sedatives as he tried to process Santos’ audacity he might never get used to.
“Be that as it may, I expect my seventeen-year-old daughter to wear more than what’s basically a glorified sports bra to school. Shouldn’t you be finding Cruz and Ellis for handovers? And when did this become a public conversation anyway?”
“Gee, sore spot I guess.” Santos muttered and sauntered off. She had barely even looked up from her tablet the whole time.
Had Robby lost his bite?
Jack watched her leave for a moment before turning back to Robby. “So, I’m guessing you told Robby jr in your usual soft and understanding way to change, and she blew up for no reason?”
“May not have been very soft or understanding.” Robby grunted and pressed his fingers into his temples to ease the whisper of a headache sneaking up on him. That was the last thing he needed today.
“Mhm.” Jack sounded as if he had already expected that answer.
Robby grunted again. He sighed and folded his arms against the counter to hide his face against them. “Nobody warned me a teenager would be worse than the defiant phase of toddlerhood. You didn’t know her then, Jack, but fuck, I wanted to throw the whole kid away and start over.”
“Amen.” Dana murmured with a quiet chuckle. “Raised three of ‘em and still don’t know how I survived it.” She peered at Robby over the brim of her glasses. “And I didn’t have to do it alone.”
Robby bristled. As much as he talked about you, fawning over you and how proud he was of you every damn chance he got, he didn’t speak about that part.
Dana and Jack knew he was a single parent. The rest assumed he and your mum were separated, but not that the sole responsibility of raising you rested on him.
Only Jack knew all the details of your mother walking out on both of you when you were just five. He’d been at work, unaware that his whole life was about to change. Unaware of the irreparable damage being done to you that he would spend the next twelve years scrambling to somehow fix. He was at work, back when Dr Adamson was still with them, before he became department chair, when he wasn’t yet drowning in work and paperwork as he was now. He was still working a lot, too much, but not the way he was now.
Robby went home after a long, gruelling shift, excited to see his family. His chest was lighter then, even when he lost patients, even when everything went to shit. Coming home to you and your mother was the best he had ever experienced, and after growing up without his parents, with only his grandma trying her best, he swore to himself you would not go through that.
He swore to himself you would have a real family, stability - everything he didn’t get. And in the end he could give you none of it.
He unlocked the door and found you, five years old and so small, so young and innocent, but no longer bright-eyed, curled up by the front door with your blanky, sobbing so miserably he was afraid you couldn’t breathe.
He found your mother’s note on the kitchen counter while you sniffled into his shoulder, tiny hands clinging to his filthy scrubs.
I’m sorry, Michael. I just can’t do this anymore.
Robby knew she wasn’t happy. Not exactly. He was trying. He was a good partner! For her, he had been a good partner. Getting groceries after work, cleaning, laundry, taking you to parks and playgrounds and the doctors. He knew what size you wore and what food you liked that week and your vaccination status. He was a good father, a great father, and a good partner, back when he still knew how, but it hadn’t been enough.
Your mother didn’t want children. You weren’t planned, and even though Robby left the decision up to her, and even though she chose to keep you, she never grew into her role as mother.
She regretted not getting out of the car outside the clinic Robby had driven her to the whole five years of your existence.
And then she left. She didn't reach out. She didn't talk to him. She pretended everything was fine until one day she just... disappeared from both of your lives.
She locked the door so you wouldn’t wander away and just walked away, leaving you home alone for nine hours while Robby was at work. The thought of all the things that could have happened to you still made him wake in a cold sweat at night all these years later. What if there had been a fire? You would have been trapped. What if you fell and hit your head?
He would almost call it lucky that all you’d done was cry for hours on end, waiting for your mother to return, terrified and lonely. The show your mother put on before leaving was not nearly enough to keep a five-year-old from realising she was home alone, all alone…
And just like that, Robby had become a single parent without a fucking clue how to navigate any of it.
Not for the first time, Robby wondered whether things would be… easier if you still had a mum. How was he supposed to relate to the daily hurdles, big and small, of being a teenager frighteningly fast on her way to being a young woman?
This felt so much worse than the period disaster…
Jack braced his hands against the counter and leaned forward, chasing eye contact with Robby in that infuriating way of his. He had the habit of stripping him off his defences just by looking at him, and Robby really didn’t need that to happen in the middle of the goddamn ER.
“It’ll be fine, man. You both are stubborn as mules, but no matter how much you clash, it never lasts long, does it? You’ll be out of each other’s hair for the coming twelve hours, that’ll give everyone time to cool down. You’ll see. Pick up some KFC on the way home, and all will be forgiven. This-” He gestured towards the thermos and the ruined coffee within. “-tells me it’ll be okay. Robby jr doesn’t do shit like that to people who pissed her off so bad she doesn’t care about them anymore. She doesn’t waste her energy on them. She did this so you’d think of her every time you take a sip. Remember the time she put neon pink hair dye into my shampoo and curl cream because I ruffled her hair in front of the boy she had a crush on, right before sending her into school?”
“You had pink hair for weeks.”
Jack was grinning, looking as if it was one of the fondest memories he had.
"And I rocked that shit!"
He always loved your mischievous side, ever since he met you when you were just five years old, shy and frightened and shut off in a way you had never been before. Jack somehow managed to get you out of your shell, a little bit more every time you met. Robby had already gotten on well with him then, new to the team and still a little bruised and battered from war, but seeing the way you responded to him was the true kickstart to their friendship.
“No girl wants to be told what to wear by her dad. We’re boring, brother. We’re embarrassing and lame. And she has an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex because she’s a teenager and can’t gauge the full scope of her decisions yet, so lame af Dad sometimes has to step in. She knows this, even if her nervous system in the moment didn’t let her see it. You’ll see, come tonight you’re both sitting on the couch watching one of her shows together - like always.”
Jack slapped Robby on the shoulder and, probably deeming this conversation a job well done, walked away to help an intern who looked like he was about to cry.
Robby did not deem the conversation a job well done.
He fiddled with his phone, staring down at the dark screen between his fingers - his nails filed, oiled, and cuticles trimmed thanks to your inability to watch a show without occupying your hands (manicures were better than those black peel-off face masks that felt like they were skinning him alive at least) - and tried to figure out why the heavy, gnawing pit in his stomach remained.
Jack was right. Your coffee warfare, past fights, and just the overall good relationship you two had (a far better relationship than he’d ever have expected from a father and his teenager daughter, if Robby was being honest - perhaps he had done some things right after all, judging by the late nights you spent huddled together on the sofa, discussing gossip from the Pitt and school with whatever mocktail creation you came up with that day) all pointed towards this just being a fight.
A stupid fight between a daughter who was getting ready to leave the nest, discovering herself, testing boundaries and a father who, perhaps, was a little too willfully ignorant of that impending change, but also saw too much shit every day to not be at least a little overprotective of the one good thing in his life.
And you were.
You were everything.
You were the reason Robby sat on the couch with you after a shift so gut-wrenching, so brutal it left him feeling raw for days to come instead of taking that step off the roof.
You were his greatest joy, his biggest pride, his treasure, his whole world.
Perhaps it was the lesson his grandmother instilled in him, and Robby in turn instilled in you. ‘Never go to bed angry.’ which Robby turned into ‘Never part ways angry’ since he often didn't get to tuck you in at night, and eventually ‘Your parting words may be the last you ever say' because Robby had seen too many parents, spouses, friends - you name it - part ways while angry and wound up reuniting here in the Viewing Room.
No matter how furious Robby was, he never left without saying that he loved you.
Not when you set fire to your curtains with a scented candle and called him at work, all panicked instead of using the fire extinguisher that’s been in the kitchen since you were six! Not when you lied to Jack that Robby allowed you to go dirt biking with him and ended up needing stitches on your chin. Or when you incited Jake to start a secret, rigged betting ring at your middle school with you.
When he had to leave for work, it was always with a ‘I am so angry right now, but I love you, and I will always love you’ as his parting words.
Always.
For seventeen years.
He didn’t say it today.
Robby couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t said it. He went over the morning in his head over and over, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that still sat deep in his bones after his last shift, exhaustion of a thousand shifts over the years piling higher and higher. Maybe the fact he’d been sleeping worse and worse for weeks now. Stubbornness and pride because you were in the wrong, and maybe, just maybe, after fighting to keep the peace at work for twelve hours every day, he didn’t want to be the one keeping the peace at home too!
You wanted to act and walk around like a grown-up, then perhaps it was fucking time for you to start acting like one too. Maybe if you did, Robby wouldn’t have to be on your ass all the time!
Robby ran his hand over his face and down his beard and unlocked his phone. He was greeted by the wallpaper you’d set up, a picture of you and Robby making faces at the camera during one of the rare occasions he had taken time off work to take you on a trip. Robby opened your chat and pulled up the keyboard, thumb hovering over the screen-
“Dr Robinavitch?”
“Yeah.” Robby locked his screen and shoved the phone into his pocket as he turned around to the expectant R3 waiting for his help.
He was swallowed by the ER after that. Without his coffee, he was in a foul mood, but not yet desperate enough to surrender to the fate of breakroom coffee.
He was getting there though.
Jack stuck around, for one reason or another, Robby wasn’t entirely sure. Jack just… pulled a double sometimes for no reason. He didn't use to while his was still alive.
He wasn’t going to complain, not when the department was already a mess, Gloria hounding him for some paperwork he’d entirely forgotten about and he… well, he missed working with his friend. Was that a crime? With Jack banishing himself to the nightshift, Robby barely got to see him anymore. It had its good sides, sure. You and Jack were spending a lot more time together now, and Robby was glad to know you weren’t hanging out at the apartment all alone all day, or god knows where with your friend, even if he sometimes envied Jack when you sent pictures of the two of you out and about, at your weekly laser tag date or just grabbing lunch after school.
It was doing Jack good too.
About three hours into his shift, Robby’s feet found their way into the break room after all. He poured himself a cup of shitty coffee and slumped down on the sofa, out of view of the little window in the door to catch a moment of quiet and peace - just a moment. He wasn’t asking for much! But at the first sip of coffee he took, coffee that was not brewed from his favourite coffee beans, you were back. A ghost in his mind, or more like a pesky little mosquito.
His mind dragged him back to the drive that morning. How you sat next to him in the passenger seat, stiff and refusing to take your eyes off the road, arms crossed in front of your chest. You’d put on a different shirt under your hoodie - his hoodie, actually - but you were making your displeasure known by refusing to talk.
Driving you to school was never so quiet. It felt… eerie. Wrong. You were always talking, telling him about this and that while Robby understood approximately one out of five words that left your mouth - what was a red flag, and why was your best friend’s boyfriend saying she and you were spending too much time together one? - or you were giving running commentary to some podcast you put on. Or ranting about politics. Robby couldn’t remember being so political at your age. A lot was going to shit around him, but seeing the way you and your peers rose amidst all the shittyness was nothing short of inspiring.
You wore a whistle around your neck. You had ever since ICE made more and more appearances on the streets. Your whole friend group spent an entire weekend handing them out at the mall alongside laminated cards educating people on their rights in different languages.
He and Jack had been in Jack’s truck in the parking lot keeping watch over you the entire time, just in case some asshole wanted to start some shit - he never told you. You never saw him.
Robby’s hands had been curled tightly around the steering wheel the entire drive, anger and exasperation running hot in his veins. It was a reasonable request, Robby still thought so, to tell you to mind the school’s dress code. It wasn’t even that Robby policed what you wore. If you wanted to wear that skimpy half-shirt when you met your friends, knock yourself out! But you had to learn there was an appropriate and not-appropriate way to conduct yourself at school, and later college, and after that work. School wasn’t a goddamn fashion show!
And he knew pressure on young women was different in this time than it had been when he was young. And he knew some boys at your school were huge assholes. And he knew the manosphere podcast bullshit was doing damage - both to boys and the psyche of girls.
But Robby thought he raised you to be above that kind of shit!
Before Robby knew what he was doing, he had his phone in his hand again, your chat open, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
It was simple.
Two words. Seven letters. One apostrophe.
It should be simple.
I’m sorry.
He could have handled things better, he was sure of it because lately… lately he could be handling everything better. His grandmother spent his whole life trying to teach him to be the bigger person. That it took less effort to be kind than it did to be an asshole. To own up to his mistakes, and you were his daughter. If Robby couldn’t even get over his pride and apologise to you, how were you ever supposed to learn to be the kind of person who can put their pride aside and say I’m sorry. Would you end up learning to accept this behaviour as normal from a future spouse? Was Robby messing you up the same way he was messed up?
You were stubborn and prideful and infuriating sometimes, but really, who was to blame for that?
The speakers calling out a code blue tore him from his ruminating thoughts. His coffee was forgotten instantly. His phone locked and back in his pocket - the words he never typed, never sent still tingling at the tips of his fingers.
The gnawing pit in his stomach remained.
Robby was just leaving the trauma room an hour later when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Faster than usual, and not without Dana noticing the hurried gesture, Robby pulled it out to check the message.
I’m sorry.
Robby slumped against the counter, staring at the phone in his hands, brows furrowing.
He watched the three dots dance under the bubble with your text, and dance- and stop.
The pit in his stomach grew to the size of a fucking boulder.
“Brother?”
Robby hadn’t noticed Jack looking up, nor that he’d been watching Robby stand still and silently stare at his phone for several minutes.
Robby didn’t react. Jack quickly put his tablet back into the charging port and rounded the counter, coming up next to Robby.
“What’s the matter?”
Robby tilted the phone towards him.
“That’s… I mean, that’s good, right?”
Jack didn’t sound convinced. Jack knew you almost as well as Robby. You would not apologise in a text. Not like this.
Something was wrong.
Robby felt physically sick. He barely heard the red telephone ringing. He stared at the screen of his phone and waited for the dancing dots to come back. For you to send the message you’d been typing.
“She’s at school.” Jack murmured next to him. “She probably- she probably just doesn’t have time to- to do her big voice message thing.” He shifted uncomfortably next to Robby. “She’s not even supposed to have her phone, isn’t she? Maybe a teacher-”
“Yeah.” Robby whispered, unconvinced.
“Oh god-”
Both men looked up at the same time, meeting Dana’s horror-stricken, pale face. Her hand trembled when she hung up the red phone. She cleared her throat, trying to find her voice again, something that he, in all his years working with Dana, had never seen.
Robby felt a cold shiver run down his spine.
His grip tightened around his phone.
The feeling of impending doom that had been following him all day crashed into him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs.
I didn’t tell her that I love her.
“We- There’s a school shooting. We don’t know how many injuries to expect but- but we should prepare for the worst.”
“Which school?”
Robby’s voice was tiny compared to the shocked, distraught murmur cutting through the ER, momentarily silencing all background noise.
Dana was still calling out orders, preparing her nursing staff for the expected influx of patients the same way Robby should be doing with his doctors, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t-
He stared down at his phone, at your message in its blue bubble right beneath the meme you sent him last night. He knocked on your door because he didn’t understand it. You were sitting in your bed already, reading the book you picked up from the library earlier when Robby and you went out to buy new gym shoes for you because you had gym class today and of course you forgot to tell him you needed new shoes. You always did-
“Dana.”
The charge nurse did not turn around.
“Dana!” Robby slammed his hand down on the counter. “What school?!”
Dana’s shoulders sank, and Robby knew the answer.
He knew the answer before she opened her mouth.
A picture of you flashed through his mind. You slamming the door of his car and taking a step towards your school. You hesitating, turning around, looking at him through the rolled-down window, waiting.
Waiting for him to say it.
Robby had only gripped the steering wheel tighter, lips pressed into a thin line beneath his beard, and stared at the road ahead of him. Your shoulder sank, just like Dana’s had a moment ago. Sadness flashed across your face for a split-second just to instantly be replaced by renewed rage. You turned on the spot and marched away.
Robby watched you go.
Robby watched you go, knowing he’d made a mistake, but not doing anything to rectify it.
And he drove away. Just like that, he drove away.
I didn’t tell her that I love her.
Robby shook his head. It wasn’t true. If he didn’t accept it then- then it wouldn’t come true-
“Hers.”
The sound that left his lips was that of a wounded animal, raw and bleeding, wrenched from the very depths of his being. His knees gave out under him, and if it weren't for Jack next to him, he would have collapsed on the ground like a puppet whose string had been cut.
Jack barked orders that Robby didn’t hear over the buzzing in his ears. People around him moved, gathering supplies, moving patients, calling in support, and all Robby could do was clutch his phone to his chest, the taste of bile on his tongue and slowly slip to the ground with his back to the nurses’ station.
You almost missed the first shot.
You’d been buried deep in your own thoughts, the hallway pass - a ridiculously big rubber ducky your history teacher found hilarious (he was right, it was iconic, not that you’d admit it) - tucked under your arm as you leaned against the sinks in the girls’ bathroom.
It didn’t sit right with you how you and your dad parted ways that morning.
Why didn’t he say it?
He always said it!
Had you finally gone too far? Pushed too hard?
You didn’t even really want to wear the stupid shirt! Mira wanted you all to match, including the guys in your group, to make a statement against the stupid, sexist dress code. Robby was going off on you before you had any chance to explain and then… well fuck him. What happened to sorting out your issues like adults? Which he talked about just last week. What about innocent until proven guilty? He made you feel like a stupid little girl who couldn’t be trusted to dress herself, and you- you just closed up. Like a clam deciding this shit wasn’t worth her time.
You got defensive and bitchy and then froze him out, refusing to talk or even look at him. A part of you was pissed because you told him how difficult it was to find a shirt that wasn’t cropped lately. Even sweatshirts! Who wanted a cropped sweatshirt?
What right did you have to feel upset now because he didn’t say I love you after you acted like a bitch?
You hated that you’d have to sit with this pit in your stomach until this evening. You even contemplated visiting him at work after school, but that would probably not go over well, not with how angry he must be if he didn’t even tell you that he loved you.
He always did.
You of course knew that Gloria had been hounding Robby more than usual and budget cuts were affecting the staffing of the ER, which led to him doing more overtime. He’d been barely sleeping since PittFest too, not that he’d ever admit as much to you, but you could hear the TV in his room at night, and you overheard Jack trying to convince your dad to go to therapy more than once.
You knew he was struggling, and you understood it when he was more exhausted or a little less patient than usual with you - but to not say I love you? Over a stupid shirt?
The shot tore through your thoughts.
You flinched and almost dropped your phone you’d pulled out of your pocket as you considered just texting your dad, just clear all this shit up instead of carrying it with you for the rest of the day. It wasn’t worth it. This stupid argument wasn’t worth any of the stomach ache it had given you.
The door to the bathroom was pushed open, and a frantic, harried-looking Mira stumbled in.
“What’s going on?”
Mira flinched so violently at the sound of your voice that you knew, you just knew something terrible had happened. Mira rushed towards you without explaining, hands trembling- was that blood?!
“Shh-” Mira hushed you, one hand pressed to your mouth and dragged you towards the stalls.
“Mira-”
“He’s got a rifle. A fucking rifle!” She hissed through her teeth. Tears were running down her cheeks in thick rivulets, spreading her mascara over her skin.
The words sent a chill down your back. You grabbed Mira’s wrist and got her to climb up on the toilet seat with you.
“We have to lock- lock the-”
“No.” You whispered and shook your head. “We lock it and he knows we’re in here. Just be- just be quiet.”
With trembling hands, you tapped your code into your phone. Your fingers were too sweaty for the sensor to recognise your fingerprint. It always did that in summer, but your father refused to get a newer model for you while this one was still working.
You barely saw the chat with your father through the tears clouding your vision.
I’m sorry.
You’d been so stupid. So silly. You didn’t even want to wear the damn shirt. It was just Mira’s idea to make a point against the dress code, which you knew wouldn’t even work. It would just get you in trouble, and your dad couldn’t come pick you up from school in the middle of the day. And the guys chickened out anyway.
I love you.
The bathroom door hit the wall hard from the force with which it was thrown open. You pressed your hand to Mira’s mouth and forced yourself to be quiet. You pressed your forehead to Mira’s, her trembling arms slung around your shivering body, clutching you as tight as she could. Tears burnt in your eyes. You missed the send button by a hairbreadth, but you didn’t know that. You thought you sent it.
Steps sounded heavy against the tiles, the noise amplified by the tiled room. You heard the mechanical click of the assault rifle. You knew that sound. You knew that kind of weapon. Your godfather Jack took you to a shooting range a few times, something your father didn’t know.
It felt like hours passed, hours of standing there, mere inches away from death, from some person who decided to bring a fucking gun to school and shoot up the place. And not even some stranger, you thought bitterly. It was never a stranger, was it? Or rarely. Too rarely to matter in this moment as you stared at the closed stall door and wondered which of your fellow students had been planning to run fucking amok in your school.
Your school wasn’t the greatest. It was a school. It had shitty lunch and a shitty dress code and some of the teachers acted as if they hated kids but- but it wasn’t awful.
You couldn’t make sense of this.
This couldn’t be real- couldn’t be happening.
The door opened again. Closed again. Silence. Stretching long like taffy, suffocating, drowning. Then - gunshots in the distance.
“Oh my god.” Mira whispered after peeling your hand away from her mouth. “Oh my god!”
“Calm down.” You muttered, panicking yourself but already unlocking your phone again. You closed the chat with your father without looking at it, your brain running on autopilot.
You dialled 911.
“Fucking reception!” You hissed and, tentatively, fearing an attack despite knowing the attacker had moved on, pushed the door of the stall open. Nothing. The room was empty, aside from the bloody boot prints on the ancient tiles.
You ignored them.
Forced yourself to ignore them.
“Give me a lift.”
Mira, and you really had to hand it to her because she didn’t have a lowkey crazy uncle who liked to use your weekly laser tag date as active shooter drills (he thought you didn’t notice, but you did), managed to gather herself quickly and rushed over to you. With her help, you managed to pull yourself up on the narrow ledge beneath the small window. You cracked it open, back bent at a painful angle to accommodate the ceiling right above you and tried again.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Oh thank god.” You exhaled through your teeth. “My reception is crap, but- fuck, there’s an active shooter at my school. He- he has a rifle- Mira!” You looked down. “What did he wear?”
“What?”
“What did he wear!?”
You passed along Mira’s description to the 911 operator. Jack always said that precise information was the most useful thing a witness could contribute. Anything could become important, and often people held back important details because they thought they were unimportant.
“It was Jeremy.”
“What?”
You stared down at Mira, stunned.
You knew Jeremy.
You caught yourself when the operator said your name, asking whether you were still there.
“Jeremy Connors. The shooter is a boy called Jeremy Connors. But I don’t know whether he is alone.” You gave them his address. You didn’t remember the exact house number since you’d never been at his place, but you figured it was better than nothing, though you weren’t sure how it would be helpful.
“Can- my dad works at PTMC. Dr Robinavitch, and- and my godfather, Jack Abbot, he works there too, but he’s a SWAT medic as well. Can- can someone-” tell them I’m alright, was what you were going to say, before you realised that by the time any message would reach them you might, with increasing probability, not be okay. How many students were killed at the school shooting in Arkansas last week? Three? With ten mortally wounded? How many people were injured during PittFest?
“These things get recorded, right?” You sniffled. “Because- because I had a big fight with my dad this morning and I- I just want to tell him I love him.” You bit back a sob that threatened to choke you off. “I love you, Dad. I love you, Jack- fuck- I’m sorry I was being such a bitch, daddy. I’m not mad at you. I’d never really be mad at you. I love you-”
The line beeped. You wiped away your tears to glance at your phone.
No reception.
“Fuck.”
You jumped down onto the ground and shoved your phone into your pocket before pulling it out again to turn it on silent. Mira did the same.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not mine.” She whispered, sounding hoarse. “Should we- stay here?”
“I- don’t know.”
“He shot Dwayne.” Mira sniffled. “He just- he came out of nowhere and shot him. I ran as fast as I could, but- how could I just leave him there?”
You shook your head. “You did the right thing.”
“He’s probably still lying there! And I left.”
“We-” You licked your lips. Your chest tightened with the thought. It wasn’t wise. You probably shouldn’t. Jack would want you to find a place to hide and wait for the police to arrive. You called 911, now it was time to hide, but you couldn’t.
The thought of Dwayne lying somewhere out there, wounded, maybe already dead-
“I have a- I have a med kit in my locker.” You whispered. You had one in your bag too, but that was still in the history classroom because your teacher didn’t let anyone take it to the bathroom. “Come.” You took Mira’s hand into yours, and together you crept out of the bathroom. The bloody boot prints led away from the bathroom and in the opposite direction of your locker.
“He’s heading deeper into the school.” You whispered to nobody in particular. “Probably the cafeteria.”
Anything the shooter drills the school did every once in a while tried to teach you was gone, evaporated from your brain the second you realised what Mira’s terrified expression meant. You weren’t supposed to be running around in the hallway, you thought, very distantly and not for very long, not when there was someone bleeding out and needing medical attention.
Were you medical attention? Barely, but you watched all seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs and ER, your father and godfather were emergency physicians, and you practically grew up at PTMC after your mother abandoned you.
You knew how to stop some bleeding.
In theory.
You thought you could stop some bleeding, in theory.
You miraculously reached your locker and peeled the med kit out from under your books. You closed the door of your locker as quietly as you could and turned-
“That’s Jeremy’s locker, isn’t it?”
Mira followed your gaze.
“I think.”
You bit your bottom lip, contemplating for a moment.
“Give me a bobby pin.” You were already on the way towards the locker in question. Mira, the true ride-or-die that she was, handed you the pin without asking questions. You picked Jeremy’s lock with relative ease - thanks to Jack - and inhaled a sharp breath when you opened the door.
“Knew it.”
“Is that-”
“Ammunition.” You nodded. “Help me get that shit out. We’ll- fuck it, we’ll put it in my locker. Just- just away from him. Let him run out, right?” You glanced at Mira, hoping for an answer that would put your own anxiety at ease.
“He probably has more on him.” She whispered. “He always wears those hoodies with the big pockets.”
“Yeah, but- we can’t leave this here?”
As quickly and as silently as you could, you gathered the boxes of ammunition and brought them over to your locker. It felt illegal to put so much ammunition into your (however technical) possession, no matter how good your intentions were.
“Is that a gun?”
Mira whisper-called from Jemery’s locker. You joined her.
“Yep.” You picked up the handgun and checked the magazine. “Probably a back-up or something.” You put on the safety and shoved it into the waistband of your trousers.
Mira hissed your name. “Are you insane?”
“No. But my godfather is.” You closed Jeremy’s locker. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You can’t take that!”
“Why not? Why should he be the only one who gets to shoot at us?!”
Mira looked like she wanted to argue, but you were already making your way down the hall, following the bloody trail, med kit clutched in your hand. She ran to catch up with you.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?”
“Yep.” You let the p pop. “Told you Uncle Jack is lowkey insane.”
“Does your dad know?”
You emitted a nervous chuckle. “God, if my dad knew everything I do, I’d already be grounded until I’m sixty.”
Despite your casual conversation, both you and Mira were hypervigilant of your surroundings. Mira used her handmirror to peer around corners ("What? Saw that in a movie"), and your hand never strayed far from the handgun digging into the small of your back. You weren’t sure whether you’d actually be capable of shooting at another person, but that gnawing pit in your stomach was at least slightly eased by its presence.
“Dwayne!” Mira hissed through her teeth and, forgetting all previous caution, ran towards the closed door a thick trail of blood led to.
“It’s us.” You said, knocking softly against the door. The curtain covering the window in the door was pulled back, revealing Oliver’s terrified, pale face. You waved. The faint click of the door echoed through the silent hallway, and you were ushered inside.
While Mira and Oliver worked to block the door again, you rushed towards Dwayne, who sat in a corner of the room, pallid, trembling, so very weak.
Your eyes roamed over him quickly, assessing his state as best as you could. Your head felt as though wrapped in cotton. It was difficult to reach through the fog and find the information you needed, but you knew it was there. Pounded into you by your father and Jack and growing up in the ER.
You knew your first aid.
“Okay.” You murmured and wiped the back of your hand across your forehead. “Come on, Jack doesn’t call you Robby jr for nothing. Come on…” You grabbed your med kit and quickly slipped on gloves before searching the depths of the once-organised kit for some gauze. Hemostatic gauze specifically.
Dwayne’s lips and fingertips were already turning blue, you realised with increasing panic. His breathing was shallow and strained. His skin was cold and clammy, and he was barely conscious at this point.
“He’s in shock, I think-”
“You think?” Mira squeaked.
“I’m not a paramedic!” You hissed back. “Here, put this in his mouth.” You gestured towards a thick wooden ruler. “Oliver, hold him down. His shoulders aren’t injured, dunce! Hold him down. This’ll hurt like a motherfucker.”
You loosened Dwayne’s belts and any other tight clothing before grabbing a pair of safety shears from the kit to cut open the hole the bullet tore through his pant leg. Beneath lay the gunshot wound, deceptively small but bleeding continuously.
“The bullet is still in, but I can’t do anything about that.” You whispered, more to yourself than your friends. You knew you had to keep a clear head now or Dwayne would not make it to the hospital. Who knew when police would arrive. How much time had passed since you made your call? What was the response time for these things? You thought to remember reading once that it was 20 minutes, but was that applicable to downtown Pittsburgh too?
You ripped open the gauze package and started pushing the gauze bit by bit deep into the gushing wound with your fingers. Mira wrinkled her nose and looked away.
“Shouldn’t we- I don’t know, put his belt around his thigh or something?”
“A tourniquet?” You muttered. “Do you know how to safely use a tourniquet? Because I sure as fuck don’t, and I think this is way too far up anyway. This gauze is hemostatic, don’t ask me what that means, but it helps with clotting or something.”
Dwayne groaned softly and tried to move away from what you imagined must be excruciating pain, having someone shove gauze into an open gunshot wound without any meds, but Oliver did as you had told him and kept his hands firmly on Dwayne’s shoulders, keeping him from twisting out of your grasp.
“There.” You wrapped a bandage around his thigh, over his pants and over the packed wound, before pressing your palms down on the now covered wound to wait for the clotting agents to - hopefully - do their job. “Can you get the sharpie from my kit, please? Don’t worry, I think Dwayne is unconscious.”
“Is that bad?”
You shrugged. “He can’t feel the pain now?” You took the pen and wrote down how much gauze you used. You pressed your fingers into his neck and stared at the watch by the door while counting his heartbeats. You wrote his heart rate down on his leg as well, next to the current time.
“He’s lost a lot of blood.” Mira whimpered.
“It’s difficult to estimate liquids on the ground. It’s probably not as much as we’re thinking.” You didn’t even convince yourself with that one. “Fuck.”
“Jeremy blocked the doors.” Oliver said. “I was hiding in here after he hit Dwayne. Saw him do it.”
“What did he use?”
Oliver shrugged. “Mostly zipties, I think. And bike locks.”
“One with numbers? Or a key?”
“Key, I think.”
You and Mira exchanged a look.
“You’re crazy. We’re never gonna make it!”
“We have no idea how long it’ll take the police to start their sweep! If Jeremy locked all entrances or if he’s taken hostages, it could be hours, you do realise that, right?”
“This isn’t happening-” Oliver muttered, burying his face in his hands and smearing blood onto his cheek in doing so. “You were hanging out with him, why didn’t you realise this-”
“Oh, it’s my fault he’s shooting up the fucking place?” You hissed. “I barely hung out with him! I- fuck, I took pity on him, okay? He’s always alone and kinda weird, I figured- jesus, I figured he was autistic or something and people just couldn’t handle it. I was just being nice! And no! I didn’t realise he was going to do this. He barely even fucking talked to me.”
You thought you were extending a helping hand to some loner, some bullied kid the whole school had already forgotten about. You didn’t like seeing him sit all by himself every lunch and recess. He looked sad. So you- you just started sitting next to him. You tried talking to him, not that he ever replied much. He didn’t leave either, or told you to fuck off, so you figured he didn’t mind? Dwayne, Oliver and Mira eventually started to join you because they were tired of you always missing from their conversations.
You never thought being nice to the weird kid would end with this…
“Dwayne can’t wait for help.” You decided as you fumbled with the packaging of an emergency blanket.
“I’ll go check if the coast is clear.”
You left, instructing Mira to lock the door behind you. You crept along the deserted hallway, blood pounding in your ear, Dwayne’s blood sticky against your bare legs.
You found the closest door. Oliver had been right, though the bicycle lock was one of those cheap ones and easy enough to pick. You cut the zip ties with your emergency shears.
Time acted strange, warping and shifting around you. The way to the doors had felt like it stretched on forever, but the way back was over within the blink of an eye.
Dwayne wrapped in the thin, silvery film of the emergency blanket, you and Dwayne all but carried him to the door. You heard sirens in the distance, and relief washed over you.
One foot already out of the door, you stopped.
Oliver whispered your name. His panicked eyes flicked from you to the dark hallway behind you. “Come on!”
“I-” Your mouth felt dry. Shots and screams echoed behind you, had for the whole time it took to scout the hallway and then bring Dwayne here.
It was how you knew Jeremy wasn’t anywhere near you.
“I can’t.” Your voice came out small and pained. You winced at your own words, even as you felt them reverberate through your chest and heart.
“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t?!” Oliver snarled. “There’s a fucking shooter in there! He isn’t going to care that you offered him some chips during lunch!”
“Who knows how long it’ll take them to go in? What if- what if more people are hurt?”
“And what- you are the only one who can save them? Are you shitting me?”
You licked your lips and gave a small shrug. “Who else is there? Look- you go. Take Dwayne, get him help, but- but I can’t leave.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yeah.” You sighed, because he was right. Common sense was screaming at you to run, to save yourself and never look back, but you’d watched your whole life as the two most important adults in your life threw themselves into madness over and over to save lives.
How could you walk away now?
“If you’re staying, so am I.” Mira stepped forward. She interlaced her fingers with yours and did her best to put on a brave face.
Oliver shook his head slowly. “I don’t know whether you guys are dumb or hella fucking brave.”
You shrugged again, grip tightening around Mira’s hand. “Depends on whether we survive this, I guess.”
The chaos of the Pitt was different today.
A collectively held breath pressing in on all sides. Tensed, as if waiting for the first punch to land but not knowing when or how hard it would.
Nobody knew how many patients to expect. One or two? Or another PittFest? How many shooters were in the school? The school was on lockdown and surrounded by police forces, but information was scarce.
Robby could not take his eyes off the TV playing the new broadcast. A helicopter shot footage from above. There was no audio, but his head supplied the gunshots all on its own. Somewhere in there were you. Somewhere in that building he drove you to for years, you were fighting for your life.
And Robby wasn’t there.
He couldn’t do anything. He felt like the greatest fucking failure. Wasn’t a father supposed to protect his child? Not that Robby knew much about fathers…
He thought he knew how to be your father. He thought he had done a decent job at it, for the most part. You were the only thing besides his work here that still mattered in his life. The only good thing. The only thing Robby ever even left the hospital, because he knew you’d be waiting for him at home, eager to tell him the latest school gossip or internet drama.
But, he supposed, he was always bound to mess it up.
Everything he touched caught fire sooner or later, and Robby had never had a woman in his life who wasn’t worse off after having the misfortune of being important to him.
His mother, his grandmother, your mother, Janey, Heather… even Mohan he had managed to fuck over…
“My SWAT commander just called me.” Jack said softly, stepping up next to Robby. “Robby jr called 911.”
Robby inhaled a sharp breath.
“Shortly after texting you. She was in the bathroom at the time the shooting started.”
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard. White spots danced before his closed lids. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t right. She should be in a classroom that could be locked down. She should be in a school that was safe! She should never have had to partake in a goddamn active shooter drill just to get her education, much less be dragged into an actual shooting!
“He told me she was with a friend. She- Robby she left a message. She said she loves you, and that she’s not mad. That she’s sorry.”
Tears crept past Robby’s hands and rolled down his cheeks, disappearing in his beard. You used to find it hilarious to pull and tug on it when you were little… He felt the sudden, overwhelming desire to shave it off. To be rid of every reminder of your affection, remove you before the world could take you because if he had some semblance of control over the decision, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
“She gave a description of the shooter and even his home address. She did really well.”
“Don’t you dare.” Robby hissed through his teeth.
“She is a smart girl, brother. She’ll-”
“What?!” Robby snapped, swirling around to stare at his best friend he could not recognise at this moment. Was he truly standing there and telling him you would be fine?! “Last I checked, bullets don’t give a rat’s ass about how smart someone is! This is going to scar her, Jack! Even if she miraculously makes it out physically perfectly fine, she’ll be scarred for life!”
“Losing ourselves in worst-case scenarios isn’t going to help her.” Jack said with infuriating calmness. It pissed Robby off all the more. His daughter, his little girl, was trapped in a building with a monster who wanted to maim and kill as many as he could before cowardly ending his own life - optimism felt like a fucking slap in the face.
“Easy to say about another man’s child, isn’t it?” Venom dripped off every word. That finally cut through Jack’s iron composure that had once been forged in desert dust, IED explosions and bullet rainstorms.
“She’s my goddaughter. You made her my goddaughter, Robby. She isn’t mine, but I love her as if she were. Don’t stand there and pretend that isn’t true. That this isn’t tearing me apart just like it does you.”
Robby knew he’d gone too far, just like this morning, but he couldn’t stop.
“What the fuck are you even still doing here?!” His voice boomed through the department. It enraged Robby how much everyone was moving like this was just another day, just another fire waiting to be put out. How they were tiptoing past him like he was a loose canon they were afraid of setting off and not a father experiencing the worst pain he’d ever felt.
“If you insist on being a fucking self-martyr with your goddamn SWAT hobby, at least make yourself fucking useful and save my daughter!”
“I am leaving.” Jack said softly. “As soon as Al-Hashimi is here.”
Robby scoffed. “You think I can’t take care of my department without a babysitter?”
“Not right now, you can’t. You shouldn’t be here, Robby.”
"Where else am I going to be?” Robby whispered, rage and hurt and terror deflating, leaving behind an empty shell, exhaustion and deep, gut-wrenching fear. “My baby is out there-” His voice broke.
“I know.” Jack put his hand on Robby’s shoulder and ducked to catch his gaze. “And we’ll get her back, brother. We will. Losing faith now solves nothing.”
“I told her-” Robby inhaled a trembling breath. It stung in his throat, burning with the aftershock of the words he hurled at you this morning with such unjustified anger. It was just a shirt.
Just a stupid fucking shirt!
Robby grasped at Jack’s arm as if that would stop him drowning. As if anything could right now while those words played in his head on a loop, followed by the expression on your face. The anger, the disgust, the pain.
“I told her she’s just like her mother.”
Robby tilted forward precariously, colliding with Jack who stood firm and unmoving, even as Robby’s arms curled around him, hands grasping helplessly at his scrub top. He sobbed, suffocated, broken wails filling up his throat until he couldn’t breathe.
“The last thing I said to her- I don’t why I said it- I didn’t even fucking mean it.”
“She knows that.” Jack soothed, holding Robby. “She said she’s not mad. She loves you, Robby. She’ll be fine. Come on, brother. Your kid is one tough nut.”
“GSW to the upper thigh, two minutes out.” Dana called over to them.
Robby bristled. How many gunshot wounds had he treated in his career? More than he could ever begin to recall, though every single one treated in the Pitt during PittFest would be forever seared into his brain.
This was worse.
“Do we know-?”
Dana didn’t need him to finish.
“Male, seventeen. That’s all I know.”
He nodded weakly. He felt awful for even having asked. As if a patient that was not his daughter was any less of a fucking tragedy. He kept thinking about Jake and his girlfriend. Kept thinking how he couldn’t save her and the almost debilitating fear he felt knowing Jake was at PittFest all alone, when Robby had been supposed to be there with him.
Why was this worse?
It shouldn’t be.
Was he a horrible man? That the threat to the life of his daughter terrified him more than the threat to his quasi-son had?
He raised Jake for several years and stayed a fixture in his life even after the breakup with Janey. Robby just never managed to commit to a woman the way he’d committed to your mother again; Janey came closest to it though. You and Jake were as close as siblings. He used to come over every Sunday for basketball well after the separation, while you usually went out with friends or planned something with Jack.
Robby had been afraid you could be jealous to share your dad with another kid, but you just shrugged it off.
Janey would do the same for you in a heartbeat, and Jake would ‘share’ his mother with you just the same, without hesitation or jealousy, but you just never managed to trust another female caregiver figure again.
In school, you’d always been wary of female teachers, especially the passionate, devoted kind every other kid adored. It had taken years for you to be at ease around Dana again, and perhaps you only managed that because you’d known her before. Before your mother left.
Whenever you came into the Pitt to do your homework in the break room or drop off some baked goods when you were experimenting with recipes again, you did your best to avoid Baran. You were cordial with Perlah and Princess, but you’d never be more. You didn’t get along with Santos at all. Whenever you two were in a room together for too long, it ended in disaster.
Something about her personality and your trauma just didn’t mix.
Out of all the residents, you got along best with Mel. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising. Everyone got along with Mel.
“You should be sitting this one out, brother.” Jack muttered as he fiddled with his safety goggles. “Nobody would think less of you.”
Robby sniffed, arm tightly crossed in front of his chest, swaying restlessly on the spot. “I have to do something. I can’t- I’ll lose my damn mind if I just sit around.”
The ambulance bay doors opened. The brief moment of silence crumbled under the calls of the EMTs and the stench of blood and panic.
“Male, seventeen, GSW to the right upper thigh. Reported signs of beginning shock, but his condition has been stable since he’s been with us. First aid was administered on scene by another student.”
“Oliver?” Robby had noticed the blood-stained boy trailing behind the EMTs.
“It’s Dwayne.” He sniffled. “Jeremy just fucking started shooting at him out of nowhere. And- and- she- she patched him up and picked a lock so we’d get out-”
“Where is she?” Robby craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the ambulance bay, waiting for you to stumble in and crack one of your jokes you always used as a shield against all the heavy shit of the world.
But you didn’t come.
Maybe you never would again…
Oliver swayed precariously, and Robby reached out to hold the trembling boy by the shoulders to steady him. The shock of the day clung to him like a thick, heavy cloak.
A weight far too heavy for such a young man to carry.
He knew Oliver. He knew him well. Robby knew his parents and his pizza order. He could recognise his shoes when they were blocking his door when Robby came home after a long shift just to find you, Oliver, Dwayne and Mira lounging on his sofa, your homework long forgotten. He was a good friend. The kind of friend a father would want for his daughter. He picked you up at the door when the whole group went out and made sure handsy guys stayed away from you. Once you’d gotten shitfaced at a house party and Oliver called Robby. He stayed with you by the curb and didn’t leave your side until you were strapped into the seat next to Robby.
“I told her to come with us!”
Jack reappeared at Robby’s side. Robby barely noticed.
“But- but she said she couldn’t.” Oliver wiped his snotty nose with the back of his hand. “That she had to stay and help the others who got shot. There were so many shots. Just- the entire time. In the background. Bang bang bang- and screaming- she- she stopped the bleeding. Said she used something- hemo-something and just shoved it in.”
“Hemostatic? Did she use hemostatic gauze?” Jack asked.
Oliver nodded weakly. “Said it would help clotting. Will Dwayne be okay?”
“We gave him blood, and now he’s going straight up to the OR. He’s in good hands.”
Jack gestured for Perlah, who swooped in with a warmed blanket she put around Oliver’s shoulders before gently pulling him away to get checked over by Whitaker.
“She could have left…” Robby murmured, hands trembling again now that there was no patient to focus on. “She could have gotten out, but she went back in.”
“I call her Robby jr for a reason.” Jack replied dryly, earning a glare from Robby. Jack shrugged. “You’re not known for turning your back on people who need help, brother.”
“I am not one to run towards bullets!”
“Yeah.” Jack shoved his hands into his pockets and shot Robby an apologetic look. “I might not set the best example there.”
“Stupid.” Robby hissed under his breath and crossed his arms again. “Stupid, brave- wonderful girl. Fuck! Why- why can’t she just have some common sense?”
“She has plenty of that, brother. But she also has your heart.”
“I wish she didn’t.” Robby whispered, because when had his stupid, ever-bleeding heart ever not brought him pain?
Yes, you were just like him, and most days… most days Robby tried to figure out how he could ever ask your forgiveness for that, because Robby could not think of a worse fate than to be Robby jr.
Jack never told you that the worst part wasn't the bullets or the screams.
It was the silence.
Silence so consuming it felt like it was a living, breathing thing. A creature born of terror and darkness that knew nothing but to feed to stay alive. Feed on your resolve, your hope, the very essence of your person.
It was deafening, stretching on and on and on until you thought it was finally over, just to be interrupted by a new wave of bullets and screams.
Mira was clutching your hand as tightly as you were hers. The cuffs of her blouse were stained pink from blood, the same blood that coated the bare skin of your legs. You wished you had put on a pair of jeans instead of these shorts, just so you would have to feel it.
The situation seemed to grow more bleak by the second. You could hear the sirens outside and helicopters whirring above. Occasionally the light of the police cars and spotlights fell through the windows, but it felt distant and cold.
You’d patched up four more kids with Mira’s help. Two terrified freshmen, one junior and another one of your classmates. Every deserted hallway you carefully made your way through was littered with bullet holes. In the walls and the lockers, bullets stuck in the bulletproof glass in the doors…
You wondered whether Jeremy had already noticed he had no backup ammunition…
You still could not wrap your head around any of this. Jeremy was quiet and weird, and at this point it was almost a meme that the weird loner kid was secretly a psychopath, but Jeremy?
He never even made a strange comment that would reveal something darker, more sinister lurking under the surface.
What could drive a person to do something so horrible?
You had a couple of teachers try to make you stay with them and their class, stay behind a locked door, hidden from sight, and a part of you wanted to do nothing more than that. Just… find a blanket and hide under it like you did when you were five years old, and you were still waiting for your mother to come home, but you couldn’t.
How would you ever live with yourself if people died here today and you hadn’t tried what you could to help?
You weren’t an idiot. You knew your fragmented knowledge of medical emergency measures would not guarantee anyone made it out of here alive, but to stop bleeding was better than to not stop bleeding! You could pack a wound. Robby and Jack showed you how and let you practise on the training mannequins the hospital had for the interns and residents when you were stuck at the hospital and bored out of your mind. You knew the signs of shock and what to do until paramedics arrived. You knew more than your classmates and probably more than most teachers, so did you not owe it to them and their families and yourself to try?
You hoped Dwayne was okay.
“Why aren’t they coming in?” Mira whispered next to you, glancing at the flashing blue and red lights filtering into the hallway. “Aren’t they- I don’t know, supposed to come in? Engage the shooter as quickly as possible?”
You shrugged. You really had no idea what the protocol for these things was. “If he’s taken hostages, they wouldn’t, right? Like… to not put them in danger? Hostage situations take forever, Uncle Jack said that once.”
“Do you think he has?”
“I don’t know?! How would I know?”
“Don’t snap at me!”
“Sorry.”
You kept walking. There hadn’t been another shot fired in a while. You wanted to feel relieved, but something in you couldn’t let go of that tension, that anticipation.
You bit back a laugh. Mira looked at you as if you’d lost your mind.
“I just realised we’re just like Yang and Mer in that episode of Grey’s Anatomy with the shooter. Where they just causally stroll through the locked-down hospital.”
“Oh my god, you’re right.”
“And Derek finds them and can’t believe they thought it was just a drill.”
“I feel like that’s exactly how your dad is going to react.”
You winced. “And Uncle Jack… though… yeah, no. Not Uncle Jack. He’s more likely to give us a high-five.”
“He’s such a bad role model.”
“The worst.” You couldn’t help the smirk sneaking onto your lips despite everything.
Both of you fell silent the moment you saw the thick, bloody drag mark leading towards the cafeteria.
Faint noises grew louder the further you followed the bloody trail. You crept forward slowly, staying pressed against the wall and out of sight. Through the windows set into the cafeteria doors, you watched movement - Jeremy, pacing frantically. He looked unstable, physically. He was swaying and muttering to himself, clenching and unclenching his hands around the rifle strapped to his chest. Unraveling.
That’s not good, you thought, biting your bottom lip bloody.
“That’s why they aren’t coming in.” You whispered and nodded towards the injured pair of police officers sitting slumped against one of the tables.
“Fuck…”
Your principal knelt in front of Jeremy. His hands had been tied behind his back with zip ties. Duct tape covered his mouth. He was bleeding heavily from a wound on his forehead.
“No.” Mira hissed, already realising what had gone through your head. "Absolutely not. Do you have a death wish?”
But any chance to make a decision was taken from you when Jeremy suddenly swirled around and spotted you just as you tried to duck and hide from his gaze.
He called your name and pointed his rifle at the principal.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
An ice-cold shudder ran down your back.
You subtly made sure your hoodie - your dad’s hoodie - concealed the gun still pressing into the small of your back and gripped your medkit tighter, stepping forward and into the cafeteria.
The stench of iron bit into your nostrils.
“You!” Jeremy hissed at Mira. “Get over there.” He gestured towards a cowering group of students, lunch staff and teachers in a corner with the muzzle of his rifle.
You peered at Mira and nodded, lifting your hands to make yourself seem like you weren’t a threat. You were a meek, compliant, submissive little thing. You didn’t have a gun in your waistband. Nope.
“Jeremy, what are you doing?”
You could tell the fact that the school was surrounded by police and the constant assault of sirens was stressing him out. Whatever his plan had been, it had gone off the rails a long time ago. He now was nothing more than a wild animal pushed into a corner about to consider chewing his own limb off to escape.
“They deserve it.” He spat. “My brother went to this school. Did you know that? Five years ago.” Jeremy swirled around, shoving his rifle into the principal’s face again, who flinched. “He killed himself! He died because of you! Because you didn’t stop them! All you had to do was do your job and stop the people tormenting him every fucking day!”
Your principal flinched and squeezed his eyes shut. A muffled whimper made it through the tape stuck over his mouth.
“Jeremy.” You said, keeping your voice soft and soothing, the same way you’d heard your father comfort frantic patients moments away from becoming violent. Jeremy glanced at you from the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry about your brother. That’s horrible.”
Jeremy’s jaw clenched and unclenched. Whatever determination and thirst for revenge had led him at first, it was quickly waning, replaced by the reality of what he had done and the fear the police presence outside struck into his heart.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone else. Just him.”
Liar, you thought, remembering well the weight of ammunition in your hands as you removed it from his locker. Why bring so much fucking ammunition when all you wanted was to kill a single person?
If this was about revenge, about the place he blamed for the loss of his brother, then he wanted the entire school, the whole staff and county to feel the same pain he had been in.
“Of course.” You said anyway. “You’re a good person.”
“I knew you’d understand.” Jeremy muttered and resumed his pacing. “You’re the only one- the only one here who understands.”
Not that he ever truly spoke to you. Is this what you get for trying to make the weird loner kid feel included? Ending up at the centre of some nutjob’s delusion?
“This is very scary, Jeremy. Can you put the gun down?”
He whirled around, raising his rifle and pointing it at you. You felt all warmth leaving your body, blood freezing in your veins, breath stopping-
The principal screamed behind his gag. Mira emitted a panicked shriek somewhere behind you. Shock and fear rippled through the assembled group of hostages.
You kept your hands lifted, your posture submissive, but you let the fear show on your face.
“Jer?”
Jeremy blinked. As though in a trance, he lowered his weapon. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” He said it with a scoff, as if it was ridiculous you’d even think he would.
You looked at the police officers. “May I help them, Jer?”
Submissive, meek, cooperative, non-judgemental.
“They’re going to go easier on you if you let me. You’re a good man. You don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it, I know you don’t. Please? I don’t want them to hurt you because they are too stupid to see that.”
Jeremy gave you a tight nod after a moment of consideration. Without taking your eyes off him, you walked towards the police officers. You knelt down on the bloody ground and opened your med kit with trembling hands.
One of them was dead.
Jeremy watched you. He realised it the same moment you did. When your trembling fingers left his clammy, cold neck where no pulse thrummed beneath his skin to still the bleeding of the second officer.
Jeremy pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and cursed, pacing even more frantically than before.
The second officer had been hit on the neck. A grazing shot that luckily missed all major arteries, but he’d been sitting here for a long time and lost a lot of blood. You gave the officer a tight-lipped smile and opened one of your last packs of gauze to press to his neck wound.
“What’s your plan, Jeremy?” You asked after a while of silence, only interrupted by fearful whimpering, the sound of his boots against the ground and the sirens outside. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t.”
“If you go out now, unarmed, and with your arms raised, they aren’t going to shoot you.”
“Shut up, you dumb bitch!” Jeremy snarled. “You don’t know shit! I’m not making it out of here- I-” He stomped over to the principal and pressed the muzzle of his rifle against his forehead. He stared down at him, finger curling around the trigger-
Jeremy screamed, pent up and frustrated, and dropped his rifle against his chest before stalking away again, resuming his pacing.
It’s easier to shoot at running kids than execute a grown man, huh, you thought bitterly while bringing the officer’s hand to his neck to hold the gauze in place himself. He tried to grab your wrist and shake his hand, but you were already on the move.
“You can still make it out of here alive.” You said softly, keeping a deliberate distance from Jeremy. He was wearing tactical gear. Shooting him with a handgun, even from close range, would not slow him down enough. The impact of bullets on body armour still left bruises at the very least, or even broken bones, but he had his rifle strapped to his chest. Unless you aimed for his head, and miraculously hit, you couldn’t stop him.
And you couldn’t shoot somebody point-blank in the head.
Not even Jeremy, who had the object of his full hatred kneeling at his feet, after shooting down countless people, could do that.
“I don’t want you to die, Jeremy. Your mom already lost one son…”
Oh, you were not the only one with mommy issues in the room.
You realised your mistake right away, but the words had already left your mouth, and you could not stop them or take them back. Jeremy’s eyes grew hard and cold. He made two steps towards you, drawing himself up to his full height and glared down at you with all the hatred of a starved, abused, radicalised animal.
“And what would you know about mothers, huh? What makes you think mine is any better than all of them, huh?! Fucking kike bitch.”
Your jaw set, nostrils flaring as you tried to contain your rage. Your star of David necklace you inherited from your great-grandmother burnt against your sternum. It was part of a set. Its twin had been proudly worn by your great-grandfather for many, many years and now hung around your father’s neck.
You saw movement from the corner of your eye. Men in tactical gear, closing in on the cafeteria. Panic and rage surged alike inside you.
Jeremy was spiralling. He was losing it, and if the SWAT team moved in now, he’d start shooting blindly. And there were so many civilians around. Would they return fire?
Your body moved before your mind could catch up with the situation.
You punched Jeremy - square in the face, using every bit of momentum you could get to generate force and smashed his nose in, just the way Jack taught you how.
The slur he hurled at you after you’d done nothing but be nice to him all year still had your blood boiling. You grabbed his shoulders and buried your knee in his groin. Jeremy went down with a muffled groan. You were on top of him immediately, pushing him to the ground with the weight of your body. You reached behind you, drawing the gun to shove it in his face and keep him down or- something.
You had no idea what you were doing!
Your body was running on instincts, survival and primal fear.
Jeremy recovered much faster than you anticipated. He grinned at you with blood-smeared teeth.
“You’re not going to shoot me.” He hissed and, proving his words right, tried to grab the gun from you.
The problem was that you wanted to live - and Jeremy only cared about not dying before killing the principal.
You grappled for the gun. SWAT stormed the cafeteria. Shots were fired. You scrambled to get away, but Jeremy already reached out to grab you. He dragged you to your feet with him and pressed the muzzle of the handgun against your temple.
Your eyes met Jack’s across the room.
He was covered from head to toe in tactical gear, and between the mask and helmet, only his eyes were really visible, but you knew those eyes.
He stared at you intently, then, lifted his fist to stall the team. He nodded at you, once, and you knew what to do.
You widened your stance, took a steadying breath and grabbed the barrel of the gun to yank it away from your head as quickly as you could, catching Jeremy by surprise and breaking his grip on the handle. He tried to reach for the gun, but you grabbed his wrist with your free hand and slammed your elbow into his face. You scrambled away. Jeremy went after you.
Jack fired five shots, each one hitting Jeremy square in the chest. He collapsed.
It was almost comical.
As if someone had dropped a fabric doll from a set of stairs.
How could something so menacing stop being terrifying from one second to the next?
With trembling fingers, you removed the magazine and ejected the bullet from the chamber before dropping everything to the ground.
You didn’t want that thing in your hand.
You never wanted it in your hand in the first place.
You became painfully aware of all the drying blood clinging to your skin and clothes. Your father’s hoodie you’d stolen and not taken off despite your fight now ruined. Maybe he knew some tricks to clean it. He got blood on his clothes all the time despite the PPE. Sometimes there wasn’t time for PPE. Maybe Dana would know something…
A shuddering, painful sob tore through your throat, a sob you’d been holding back all day, pushing the trauma and fear to the very back of your head and ignoring all the physical symptoms in favour of helping other people.
Controlled chaos erupted around you. SWAT members helped carry the injured officer out and free the principal from the tape and zip ties. The terrified hostages were led outside. Jeremy was searched for weapons.
You stood in the cafeteria, the same place you sat in with your friends for years, complaining about the food and cracking jokes. The usual loud atmosphere of lighthearted jokes and animated chattering was now forever replaced by the sounds of bullets, shouts and screams - and the stench of blood.
You didn’t know if Jeremy was still alive as you stared at his unmoving body.
A part of you didn’t care. Another, meeker, almost ashamed part of you, the part that had honestly tried to help a lonely, excluded boy feel less alone, did care. It cared a lot, despite everything he had done and everything that had happened.
You could not consolidate either part with the other.
“Hey, Robby jr.” Jack secured his weapon and stepped up to you. He brushed a strand of sweaty hair out of your face. Finally, the tension coiled tightly around you since Mira stormed into the bathroom, covered in blood, evaporated. You sagged against Jack. He caught you with ease, keeping you upright.
I’m so glad to see you, you opened your mouth to say, your brain already having sent the order to your tongue and lips, but only a gargled noise made it out.
Blood trickled down your chin.
You watched Jack’s face shift from relief to utter terror. The strength in your legs disappeared. You were dragged down by the earth’s gravity. Pain exploded through your insides, dragging a groan to your lips that was accompanied by the taste of old, rusted iron.
Jack was calling your name, but it sounded distant. As if someone had stuffed cotton into your ears.
You felt his hands on you, tearing down the zipper of your ruined hoodie that had been concealing the blood spreading across your stomach fully.
Adrenaline truly was a remarkable thing… your brain mused as it was already powering down.
You hadn’t felt it… three gunshot wounds tearing through your insides, and you hadn’t felt them until you were safe in Jack’s arms…
Final Part
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