call me aves

you could only gulp in response.

then, he’s rising above you, broad, muscular shoulders boxing you in as he settles between your thighs. the heavy heat of his dick presses against your sensitive, aching entrance, his incandescent gaze dragging over your face like he’s trying to memorize every expression, every shaky inhale.

mapping out your features in his mind with perfect, painful precision.

the realization that had struck him back at the temple as he looked at every mural, every worn painting and towering statue of the air nomads. they all looked like his people. familiar faces, familiar smiles, familiar eyes, familiar powers.

but none of them resembled you.

none carried the curve of your lashes or the little furrow in your brow when you worried. none had your laugh, the unique slope of your nose, your warmth, your favor for sour over sweet, your gentleness for children and particular bugs. and suddenly, the grief that sat in his chest for years changed shape entirely. because what would be the point of preserving the world he lost if, in doing so, he lost every trace of the person he loved most within it?

“this. . . this isn’t about me reviving airbenders or a duty to save my dying culture. this isn’t about avatar sonam or tagah or monk gyatso or anything that has to do with bending. this is about you and me and me wanting to start a family with you,” he states with that heavy, solid avatar voice of his. firm and sure, thumb brushing along your jaw, “this is about me making sure that a part of you will always exist in a world where the avatar exists. that your lips, your eyes, your soul. . . live on for eternity. so that every time i look into this world through the eyes of the new avatar, i can still see you. see you in our grandchildren, in our great-great grandchildren, in the people that will come to exist because we loved each other. . . to know that you’ll always be in my life someway, somehow.”

“aang. . .”

“i realize now that there will come a day where airbending returns, whether it’s in our lifetime or long after we’re gone.” he presses his forehead against yours, tone softer despite the ache in his voice. “i know that i’ll get to see that vision through the lenses of the next avatars. that if i continue down this impossible path of finding a solution, i’d lose you. that i’d waste the time we have together with all of our friends, our children. . . that i’d never give our future the chance it deserves. the thought of losing you to time. . .”

it kills him.

you feel it. the shift in him. the sincerity behind every broken word, every trembling breath. the sheer despair that claws through him at the thought of you leaving nothing behind of yourself, of the love the two of you share. the regret he’d forever live with if he only prioritized the revival of air-bending or the kids that would inherit it. and the fact that he still hasn’t left the avatar state only makes it worse, every emotion stripped raw and vulnerable beneath glowing eyes and tattoos and shaking hands.

“so i vow now that i will never neglect your life or your culture for the sake of mine. whether we have airbending children or not. . . that is up to the universe.”

his hands cup your cheeks gently as he leans in, connecting the both of you in a slow, sloppy kiss. you could only gasp as he slips his tongue in, longing to seal your fate with his.

he slowly pulls away, thick fingers easing you open as he makes room for himself. “i can live without other airbenders. i can make due with the acolyte family we’ve founded. what i cannot live without is you. what i cannot imagine not ingrained in this world beyond my lifetime is you.”

he smiles for the first time tonight, like the image in his mind was far more beautiful than anything he could’ve ever imagined.

“so for now,” he whispers, breath warm against your lips as he begins moving slowly, in and out, “all i want is a child with you. one that embodies everything that you are. one that will carry on your memory, your curiosity, your strength, your traits.” gone was the glow of the avatar state as his eyes seeps into yours, unbearably tender. “so i’m begging you. . . give me a baby that looks just like you.”

you cry out helplessly as he buries his face into your throat, holding you impossibly close. every stroke is long and deliberate, driven far less by hunger and more by an emotion too large for words. the slick of your arousal coats his balls as you helplessly grind against him, cunt fluttering around the stretch of his base. you could feel all the veins that line him, tracing your walls as he fucks you like he needs you to breathe.

you feel the dampness at the corner of his eyes as he clings to you, hands roaming your body in a worship-like trance, as though he was reassuring himself that you were real and here and present and his. to have and to hold and to sink himself into when the world is in chaos.

“please,” he croaks hoarsely into your neck, voice cracking around the word, and the raw vulnerability in it makes your chest ache more than anything else ever could. “say you’ll give me a baby, sweetheart. say you’ll give me this one thing. even if they come without air-bending.”

a broken sound leaves your throat as you cling to his shoulders, nodding desperately against him, back arching into his warmth. “yes,” you breathe out shakily, fingers curling around his nape. “yes, yes, yes. of course, i will.”

the words— your defining proclaimation— undo him entirely. he groans into the curve of your neck as he cums in sync with you, holding you so tightly it hurts, every breath hot and cold and hot again against your skin. his tattoos begin to faintly glow once more as he shivers, hips still pumping his seed deep into you.

when he finally pulls back, his eyes are in its natural state, shining, filled with something far more softer than desire.

devotion, perhaps. a need to always keep you safe. to give you— and your children— a world that offers everything and takes nothing.

“i love you,” he murmurs softly, brushing the damp strands of your hair from your face. he rests his forehead back against yours, closes his eyes as his heart, for once, is at ease. “thank you.”

though your words alone could never fully capture the depth of everything you’ve given him.

The sound of sizzling bacon and a knife hitting the cutting board surrounded Jack in the kitchen, where he stood in front of the stove—chopping away at strawberries and grapes.

Your second and youngest son, Clay, strapped to his chest in a baby carrier he was quickly outgrowing. Too quickly for his poor old man’s liking. Still, Jack would put him in there until that day came.

He found himself humming softly, his nose nudging at Clay’s soft hair.

“What’dya think, Clay boy? Would Mama want bananas too?”, Jack asks aloud.

Clay looks at him with fierce determination. At almost one—the words are almost there—but not quite making their way out yet. Instead, Clay huffs a gurggly noise that sounds close enough to an answer for Jack.

He nods once; “Yeah, I thought so too.”

So Jack starts peeling a banana, cutting it up into bite size pieces and holding a piece of it out to his small son, who happily takes it with drool covered hands and gums at it with the few teeth he has. A happy shrill fills the kitchen.

Jack laughs, eyes wide; “Shh buddy, you’re gonna wake your Ma.”

Clay pays him no mind, going back to smacking on the now mushed banana that’s half against Jack’s shirt.

He moves through the kitchen like it’s second nature—mindlessly talking to Clay like he’s half expecting an answer back as he reaches for the pancake mix on-top of the fridge; when the sound of small bare feet padding down the hallway gets his attention.

Your oldest son, Noah—who’s just barely two, comes padding out into the kitchen rubbing his eyes sleepily. The blanket he’s had since he was a newborn half trails on the floor behind him; fist gripped tightly around it. The tot finds Jack quickly, wrapping both arms around his lower leg and pressing his face into it.

“Morning, sweetie”, Jack says softly, ruffling the toddler’s deep auburn curls; “Did you sleep good?”

Noah lets out a soft and muffled “mhmph”, against Jack’s shorts, making him laugh.

Jack reaches for a spatula, making the toddler stand on his tippy-toes to see what he’s doing.

“Where Mama?”, Noah asks.

“She’s still sleeping”, Jack says, reaching for the counter side toddler steps and putting them into place next to him; “Today’s a very special day for her. Clay thought we should make her pancakes…wanna help?”

Noah’s eyes light up; “Pancakes??”

Jack nods; “Mhm.”

“I help?”

Jack pats the wooden stairs next to him; “Cmon up, bud.”

Noah’s quickly standing next to Jack, level enough with his height that he can lean against his shoulder; now making faces at Clay.

Slow mornings like these never fail to make Jack’s heart clench.

The EKG detected signs of a previous heart attack, one that had occurred with little to no symptoms, which had undoubtedly been adding to the young man’s strengthening chest pain anyway. The discovery bumped up his prioritization and opened up a room in the O.R. for him, before he could have another, potentially more fatal MI.

“I wasn’t trying to go over your head, Dr. Robby, I swear!” you rambled in a single breath, talking anxiously in your hands, certain you were in for a scolding from the older attending. “But I went to school with this girl, Beth Wildfire— We were on the soccer team together, and she had a heart attack at seventeen because she was training too hard and none of the doctors would take her seriously about her chest pain—”

“Breathe, kid… You’re not in trouble here, alright?” Robby had laughed, hiding his smile behind his fist, because Gloria had sent him to scold you, after all. “You just need to work on that savior complex of yours, alright?”

You flinched in offense, chin jerking as your mouth parted to argue.

He continued before you could. 

“You were right this time. I get it. But you’re not gonna be right every time, and we can’t waste resources just because you have a hunch… You can’t save everyone, kid.”

He patted you softly on the back as he walked on by, smelling of a foreign cologne you could feel sparkling in your chest.

“Isn’t that our whole job?” you asked before he could get too far. “Aren’t we supposed to save people?”

“The ones that can be saved, yeah,” he nodded with a heavy huff as he spun in place to face you again, pushing the sleeves of his white undershirt up to his elbows. “But sometimes watering a plant too much— you know, loving it too much— can kill it, right?”

Your brows lowered in confusion. “But… People aren’t plants…”

He exhales hard through his nose. “It was a metaphor.”

“Oh…”

Robby choked back the instinct to smile again.

“In here— you’re their doctor, alright? Not their mother, not their sister, not their friend. Just help the ones you can,” Robby said before turning on the heel of his sneaker and sauntering off in the opposite direction. Over the chaos of the crowded E.R., he called to you over his shoulder, “Don’t over water your plants, kid!”

You realized, then, that that’s probably why you had a tendency to stick around in bad relationships for far longer than you needed to; why you were always so patient even when people didn’t deserve it, especially when they didn’t deserve it; and why you’ve always been so strikingly tender in the face of so much cruelty. Because you were over watering your plants, as it were.

Because you’d suffocate an innocent thing to death just to prove how much you love it. Because you’d strike a match on yourself if it meant keeping everyone else warm.

You figure that’s also why you take the rowdy patient in South 4 that no one else wanted — all bloodied from a fall and far too gone on pills and booze to realize how badly he was hurt. He’s sallow-skinned, glassy-eyed, and smiling lazily despite the blood in his teeth. He spends an hour shifting anxiously on the bed, all twitchy with a pent-up aggression.

He’s like a stray dog in a shelter, with “Don’t touch me, I’ll bite” written outside of the cage.

You reach out to pet him, anyway. 

Connor Stevens was young, just a few years older than you, dressed in a nice suit with a glittering Rolex on his wrist that cracked in the fall. He had a long history of drug use in his chart, and a longer history of reckless behavior that borders on masochistic. A number of falls, car crashes, DUIs, fist fights; each of which had landed him in one E.R. or another.

You create a fiction of his life story inside your head — of a young boy with a nice trust fund, working at his parents’ million-dollar firm, slipping into the same cycle as the father he despised, and using drugs and pain to forget how much he hated his life. 

You can’t help but see a version of yourself in him. You choke on your want to save him accordingly, and work with gentle hands to clean the scrapes on his pretty face. It feels like teaching an aggressive dog what it means to love again.

“You smell nice…” the young boy murmurs distantly, inhaling sharply through his sloped nose while you lean over to wash the dirt from a deep cut on his jaw. “What is that?”

“It’s drugstore perfume,” you confess with a sheepish laugh. “It was barely five dollars— I’m not entirely sure it even has a name.”

The cheap scent is hardly enough to drown out the smell clinging to the man below you, who smells overwhelmingly of whiskey, sweat, and cigarette smoke — a bitter, sour sort of concoction that hit you the moment you walked into the room.

“Let me guess…” he says and shifts on the bed. He doesn’t seem to notice, or otherwise care about, the dark black bruise on his right elbow as he props his weight on both of them. “My friends always say that I have a really good sense of smell—”

You jerk back on instinct when he leans in too close, nostrils stinging at the bitter scent of blood and alcohol clinging to his breath. 

“Jeez…” he scoffs, blonde curls flopping over his forehead as he jerks his chin back. “Didn’t mean to scare you...”

“No, you— you didn’t scare me,” you stammer with an awkward laugh, voice shaking in an unconvincing waver. “I just… Wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

“No, I did,” the boy insists, with an observant squint in his dark brown eyes. “Look at you, you’re trembling…”

Your breath catches in your throat when he reaches suddenly for your hand, halting your movements over his jaw with five cold, long fingers caging your wrist. 

His thumb digs hard into your pressure point and cuts off the blood flow to your fingers almost instantly. A sharp ache blooms where his fingers press into the bone. You twist your hand to free yourself without escalating, but he only holds you tighter.

“Please, let me go, sir,” you try to plead in an even voice, but clear your throat a second later when the words get stuck there.

“Sir?” he mocks with a gritty laugh, smiling with all of his bloody teeth. His canine is cracked and weeping crimson from the fall he took, not that he seems to notice.

He laughs harder when your head whips over your shoulder, peering anxiously through the glass door on the other side of the room, hoping to find someone looking back at you — hoping to find Robby.

But the emergency department is far too busy. 

You might as well be invisible just now.

“Look at you,” the boy chuckles with amusement. “I am scaring you.”

“I just want you to let me go,” you say, voice cracking, but firmer still.

His dark eyes narrow in a daring squint. The chocolate irises dart over your features like he’s studying them, like he’s enjoying every ounce of fear he’s etched into your face. 

“Say please…” he croons.

You lose your breath when his grip tightens. The pain flares hotter, sharper, and your fingers go numb with a tingling feeling.

“Please,” you spit through gritted teeth.

His smile grows. His hold slips from your wrist. 

You jerk your hand to your chest, curling the fingers of your opposite hand around the ache spreading beneath the skin. Your feet shuffle back on instinct at the sly look he gives you — like he’s debating on how to torture you next. You’re rushing out the door before he can utter another word.

You can feel your pulse hammering in your throat, strangling all the sharp breaths you struggle to gulp into your lungs. The chaos of the E.R. muffles to a low droning sound in your ears, drowned out by the sound of your thundering heartbeat. Everything falls too bright, too fast, too much. 

But anywhere is safer than in that room — anywhere is safer than with him.

“You alright, kid?” you hear a familiar voice call from beside you, though it sounds like you’re hearing it from underwater.

Your head snaps in the direction of the sound, and you go dizzy in an instant. You blink away the haze clouding your vision to find Dr. Abbot sauntering towards you, in his black shirt and camo pants, with his brows lowered in a look of visible concern.

“Yeah,” you answer on instinct, through a series of strangled breaths. “I was just— I was just gonna get some air…”

He nods slowly. His attentive eyes dart over your twisted features, and then to where you cradle your wrist to your chest. “Did you hurt your arm?”

“No, but…” You gulp down another breath. “But my chest feels— a little funny… I think— I might be having an MI—”

Your vision goes distant in a flicker, like you’re suddenly watching your reality play out on a cinema screen. You feel Jack’s hand wrap around your shoulder and underneath your arms to keep you steady, then the warm breeze of a summer’s day brushing like honey over your skin.

Robby feels his phone buzz twice in his scrub pocket from where he stands at the back of the room, watching Santos walk the interns through a patient with an ankle fracture. There are only three contacts he keeps notifications on for during the day, and he drags the device from his pocket in hopes of seeing your name on the screen.

He does, just not in the way he had hoped.

It’s Dr. Abbot’s contact info that he sees first, right over the first message, which is short and hastily typed — your name, ambulance bay, asap — Robby makes out through the typos. The second text, in all caps, says: GET HERE NOW!

Robby forgets to dismiss himself as he rushes out halfway through Santos’ presentation. He weaves through the bustling emergency department with a tunnel vision concentrated only on the exit doors ,and the worry of what he might find outside of them. The distant calls of his name turn into muted buzzing in his ears as he rushes out to find you.

He spots Jack first, kneeling on the sidewalk and looking up at something Robby can’t see until he turns the corner. Then he finds him crouching in front of you, from where you sit on the ledge before the older man, cradled by the strong hands he keeps around your shoulders. 

You rub at an ache in your wrist that Robby can’t see from here and try hard to even out your breathing. His footsteps quicken at the sight.

“What the hell’s going on?” he blurts in lieu of a greeting. “What happened— Are you okay?”

Your eyes widen at the sight of Robby when he takes Jack’s place in front of you, kneeling with a quickness and snatching the stethoscope from around his neck. You have to keep reminding yourself to breathe when he presses the cool chestpiece against your burning skin, just above the dip in the V-neck of your scrubs. 

You had been avoiding him all day, in truth — avoiding him and yet hoping to run into him all the same. Because your conversation from the night before hadn’t ended on the best of terms. No conversation the two of you had ever had about his hiatus ended on good terms, actually, but this one felt especially world-ending

“I’m not just gonna wait around for three months and just hope that you’ll still want me when you come back, Robby!” you’d said, while the boiling water on the kitchen stove began to boil over.

“Is that really how low you think of me?” the older man scoffed with a disbelieving look on his smiling face as he leaned over the kitchen counter. “What? Am I not good enough to wait for?”

“Depends— Am I not good enough to stick around for?”

Neither of you could answer.

The silence felt deafening at the time.

But he forgets to be mad about all that now, as his head fills only with thoughts of taking care of you.

“She was having some trouble breathing, and had some pain in her right hand,” Jack explains for you, grimacing slightly as he adjusts his prosthetic to rise to full height again. He towers behind Robby’s crouched figure with his arms crossed over your chest. “She was tachy for a bit, but it’s even now— I think she was having a panic attack.”

Robby brows lower as he concentrates on the sound of your heartbeat in his ears. He hears a faint flutter in your pulse, and his eyes dart from the chest piece he holds between his fingers to your anxious face. 

“A panic attack?” he echoes, plucking out the earpieces and twisting the stethoscope back around his neck.

“I don’t know…” you shrug shyly.

“Well, have you eaten anything today?” 

“Yeah, I had a protein bar in the break room.”

“What about water?” he asks and ducks his head when you try to look away. “You staying hydrated?”

“Mostly.”

“Any chance you could be pregnant?” he hears himself ask, getting lost in the basic questions he would ask any patient, and quickly forgetting that he’s talking to you. 

You, who he’s been seeing for close to a year now — you, who he fucked within an inch of your life in the center of your bed just last night, an hour or so before you fought.

Your eyes widen and dart wildly between the two attendings standing before you.

You swallow hard and shake your head.

“It’s not— It’s not like that, okay?” you assure him, breathing deeper when you feel the oxygen growing thinner once more. “It’s just… been a hard day, you know?”

“What happened?” he presses.

“Nothing!” you lie and struggle to meet his gaze. “I just… I got a text from my ex-boyfriend yesterday— I haven’t heard from him in a year, not since the—” Protection order, you try to say, though Robby’s already arguing before you can.

“Your ex?” the older man scoffs with the same amused smile the kid in South 4 had given you. “That’s what this is about— You’re having a panic attack over some boy trouble? Is that why you picked a fight last night? Seriously?”

“What?” you exclaim, features screwed in offense. “No!”

“Jesus!” Robby chuckles as he rises to full height, blocking the golden sun as he towers over you like a storm cloud. “Do you need to go home? Is this job too much for you?”

Your jaw clenches as your eyes burn. “It’s not like that,” you choke through unshed tears.

“Yeah, I think it is,” the man scoffs, stumbling backwards with his hands splayed before him. “Go home, alright? I don’t need this liability— Not today.”

“Liability?” you echo, though your voice breaks halfway through. You shake your head and turn away, before Robby can see the emotion glinting in your eyes.

“Brother, c’mon…” Jack cautions lowly, boots heavy on the worn sidewalk as he rushes to catch up with the man’s longer strides. His shoulder nudges into Robby’s as he mumbles in his ear, “You guys are fighting or whatever. I get it. But you don’t get to talk to her like that when you were the one breaking down in pedes last year.”

Robby scoffs in response. A cynical smile curls slowly at his mouth as he shakes his head. “That’s not the same thing—”

They cross the automatic doors and enter the air-conditioned ER. Jack stops the man with a firm hand on his shoulder, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Yeah, because no one gave you shit for it the way you just did to her.”

Robby softens his hardened edges, but only slightly.

“Look…” Jack sighs. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you, man— but she’s still your resident. She needs you right now.”

Robby shakes his head again — too proud to admit when he’s wrong, too stubborn to face the fact that anyone would be counting on him these days; least of all you.

“No, she doesn’t, brother. Trust me,” Robby says in the usual sarcastic lilt he does when there’s an emotion he’s trying hard to bottle up. He just smiles and walks on ahead of him. “She made that extremely clear last night…”

Your first mistake is not going home like Robby told you to. Your second one is not telling anyone about the aggressive patient in South 4. Your third is believing the man inside when he tells you he’s sorry, like you’re a kicked puppy that doesn’t know when to stop coming back.

You make the mistake of doing what you always do — the exact thing Robby warned you about the day you met. You convince yourself that you’re the only one who can help him; the only one who could possibly understand the weight of this man’s situation. You’d tell them what he did, and they’d call the cops; they’d restrain him, sedate him. No one would truly listen; not the way you would. 

You convince yourself you’re the only one who could give him the help he needs, and you realize very quickly what Robby meant when he said you had a savior complex. 

“I really didn’t mean to run you off, you know?” the young man mumbles, gaze averted to where he picks at pills of cotton on the white blanket beside him.

He winces slightly while you test the range of motion in his knee. His long, scruffy legs hang off the edge of the bed while you hold his dirtied foot in a gloved hand, bending his bruised knee before straightening it again.

“I know,” you nod with a kind smile, though you hardly believe it yourself. “I’m just glad you’re letting me help you now, Mr. Stevens.”

“Mr. Stevens?” the boy scoffs and adjusts his hospital gown when it slips off his pale shoulder. “That’s what they call my dad.”

“How’s your relationship with him?” you wonder tentatively, twisting gently at his ankle. “Your dad, I mean?”

“Shit,” he answers without missing a beat. “Why?” 

“No reason,” you shake your head. “I just… had a hunch.”

“What? You tellin’ me you’ve got an asshole for an old man, too?”

“My dad…” you trail off with a sigh, trying hard to find the right words. “…Tried his best. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

“Yeah, well, my dad’s best made me a fucking lunatic,” the boy confesses with a dry laugh. You notice his pupils are less dilated as his gaze flits everywhere but at you. “I was addicted to cigs when I was twelve, coke when I was sixteen, sex when I was seventeen… My dad thought he was preparing me to take over the firm, but… Really was destroying my whole fucking life, so…”

Another laugh sputters suddenly from his pink mouth.

Your eyes soften around the edges as you set his leg gingerly back into place, tugging your gloves off with two quiet pops. “I can have a social worker come talk to you if you want. Kiara’s the best; she’s been working with people with addictions for years—”

“I don’t want a fucking social worker,” the boy snaps. “I don’t need to be fixed.”

“I-I’m sorry!” you blurt and shake your head at yourself. “I didn’t mean to… I just wanted to say that people are here to help you— that I’m here to help you.”

“Yeah, last time I heard that, I was shipped to a psychiatric hospital for two months,” he confesses, dark eyes hardening a flicker. He jerks his strong chin backward, looking very suddenly skeptical of you. “You’re not… You’re not gonna send me back there, are you?”

“No!” you squeak out. “O-Of course not!”

“You are…” he nods slowly. “You are. That’s why they brought me here. To send me back.”

“Sir, I promise, I’m not here to—”

The words get stuck in your throat, in the very most literal sense. 

The man rises to his feet in a flash, despite the purple-black bruise on his ankle, and closes the brief distance between you before you can blink. 

You feel his cold fingers snap around your neck first, then your feet stumble over themselves second, then your back slamming hard into the nearest wall with a heavy thud third. 

You try to gasp, but the oxygen fails to fill your lungs. You just whimper instead, and attempt to pry the man’s strong hand from around your throat. Your features twist in anguish when he leans in close, grimacing at the scent of blood and whiskey on his breath as his it fans over your chin. 

The tip of his nose brushes the bridge of yours as he mumbles through gritted teeth: “I’m not going back there. I’ll die before I go back there—”

You don’t have the oxygen to tell him that you have no plans to send him back there, wherever there is — or that you’d still fight to get him real psychiatric help, even after all this. Your mouth just parts to gulp down breaths you couldn’t take if you wanted to, while you keep trying to move his fingers from the bruises they dig into your neck. 

Black spots begin to invade your vision. You go from red-hot to ice-cold in a flicker. You lose feeling in your hands first, then your eyesight next. There’s a bright white, a staticky black, and then nothing at all.

You don’t see Dana rush in when she catches sight of the altercation. You don’t see her trying and failing to pull the man off you while she shouts for backup. 

You don’t see Robby pushing through the crowd and over to you. You don’t see him wrench the patient away with a strong hand on his neck; or the way Robby traps the struggling boy in a headlock on the ground to force him into submission. You do think you hear his voice, though, as your mind floats in and out of consciousness from where Samira scoops your crumbled body into her arms.

His shouting filled the suddenly crowded room:

“Stop! Stop now, or I swear to fucking god, I will break every finger you think you can lay on her, do you hear me?” Robby had threatened, voice low and lethal. 

It took both Ahmad and Abbot to pull the man away, and three more security guards to pin down the screaming patient.

You trace your fingers over the dark splotches on your neck — four on the right and one on the left, from where his thumb dug in to cut off your air supply. You can still feel the man’s fingers on your throat with every breath in; colder than ice, stronger than steel. You force yourself to look away from the blooming blotches on your skin, dragging your eyes instead to where Robby looms behind you in the bathroom mirror.

He passes you a fresh icepack to wrap around your neck, and you let your fingers linger against his for a few moments before you take it from him.

“You gonna answer my question now?” he wonders quietly, voice bouncing off the tiles of the empty bathroom, as he meets your gaze in the mirror.

You swallow hard through a prickling throat. Your voice is still raspy from the assault as you tell him, “I have answered every question you’ve asked me… For the last ten minutes, Robinavitch…”

You watch the man fight back the urge to smile, though his dark eyes soften with it anyway. He crosses his arms and tilts his chin to his chest as he repeats, “Why didn’t you tell me that the patient was aggressive? That he hurt you before you went back inside— You said it was your ex that—”

“Because that’s who Mr. Stevens reminded me of,” you answer through a ragged breath. “My stupid ex. That’s why I freaked out.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t listen,” you rasp. “He’s only aggressive because he’s scared— He needs more than a doctor, Robby, he needs a friend.”

“I know you have this condition where you only see the best in people, and you don’t know when to stop helping them—”

“You used to call it over watering my plants,” you quip with a faux-bitterness.

Robby continues with a smile. “—But you know I wouldn’t have let you handle all that by yourself if you had just told me.”

“It’s not my fault that—”

“I’m not saying that it is.”

“No, I’m saying it’s not—” You cut yourself off with a huff and wince at the ache it puts in your throat. You turn around to face him and tilt your chin to keep his gaze at the proximity between, which makes his musky cologne swaddle you like a shroud. “I’m saying it’s not my fault that you make it impossible to talk to you sometimes.”

Robby’s scruffy features soften with hurt.

“I didn’t want to tell you about the patient because I knew you wouldn’t listen to me about getting him proper psychiatric care,” you say before clearing your scratchy throat. “It’s the same reason I didn’t want to bring up your sabbatical last night, because I knew you’d just fly off the handle without even trying to understand where I was coming from.”

“You’re right,” Robby concedes with a firm nod.

“And I know what you’re gonna say— Oh,” You cut yourself off when his response finally hits you. “I didn’t— I didn’t expect you to agree with me so quickly.”

Robby exhales a quiet laugh despite the stinging in his chest. 

“No, you’re right. You always are,” he tells you and lifts his calloused palms to your neck, cradling the icepack to your skin to give your hands a break. His stomach swirls with warmth when you rest your palms against his chest. “If I wasn’t so goddamn stubborn, this wouldn’t have happened to you—”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you argue firmly, though your voice is still a bit weak.

“I know it’s not. ‘Cause you’re too nice for that,” Robby hums with a solemn shake of his head. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

You swallow hard and struggle to meet his gaze as you wonder meekly, “What’d they do with him? Mr. Stevens, I mean.”

“Well, I took you off the case while you were in North 1 with Dr. Mohan and Dr. King,” Robby tells you, faking an apologetic grimace. “So unfortunately, I can’t give you all the details without Mr. Stevens’ permission.”

Your eyes narrow in a challenging squint. “How long have you been practicing that one?”

“About the entire time I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question,” Robby grins. “But he’s safe. And we’ve got him on meds to keep him calm— not sedated. I’ll make sure he gets the psychiatric care he needs, I promise.”

Your eyes glaze over with fresh tears. 

“Thank you…” you murmur, voice cracking.

A quiet smile blooms beneath his mustache as the pads of his thumbs smooth over your burning jaw, from where his fingers cradle gently at the sides of your neck. “And I think you’ll be very happy to learn that the rest of the E.D. is now calling me your guard dog, so…”

“That does make me happy, actually,” you say with a giggle, though it comes out a little more raspy than normal. You twist a rogue thread on his scrub top as you go suddenly shy. “Maybe my guard dog should stick around for a little while, then… You know, keep me safe and everything…”

Robby’s dark eyes narrow in a playful squint. 

“You didn’t plan this whole thing just to keep me from leaving, did you?”

“…I really didn’t want you to find out this way,” you quip with a fake grimace.

He smacks his lips against his teeth and shakes his head. “You’re lucky I love you, you know that?”

You jerk your chin back when he ducks down to kiss you.

“Love?” you echo in a fragile voice, wet eyes dancing between his darker ones. 

“I probably would’ve killed that guy for hurting you if they hadn’t pulled me off,” he confesses with a scoff, before tilting his head to his shoulder. “And all the poets say love makes you crazy, don’t they?”

“Yeah…” you nod. “I'm pretty sure that was the acclaimed poet Beyoncé, actually.”

“That’s the one,” Robby laughs before ducking down to kiss you, hard, like he should've been doing this whole time.