ׂBluesnow

“I'm looking at hotels to stay in till they figure it all out,” you said.

“Your insurance going to cover that?” he asked.

You peered at him through the sleep you didn't get. “You're funny this morning, Ken, you know that?”

“Well I got an early start.”

“Hey-”

At the call of Robby's voice, you straightened like you'd been caught doing something you shouldn't.

Frank laughed into his coffee mug.

It was embarrassing, really. How quick your body reacted to Robby and his call quicker than your mind could catch up. All he had to do was appear, say your name or catch your eye and you straightened, falling to his side and doing whatever he said. Somewhere along the way of working with him, he'd trained you.

“You're late,” he said, a small tug in the space between his brows. “Not like you, is everything okay?” Robby slipped in and Frank slipped out, pulling a face behind Robby, puckering lips directed at you.

“Sorry, sorry. My car's in the garage and the uber cancelled and I didn't really sleep much last night, it- it won't happen again.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Interesting night?”

You chuckled to yourself. “You could say that.”

Robby squinted at you before his eyes caught onto the pile of your stuff that wasn't there the last time he came in for a coffee. “Moving in?” he asked.

You laughed, a little more genuine then you had at Frank. “My apartment's flooded, they're just here till I can get a hotel.”

There was something heavy in the rise of his brows, in the way his expression morphed and his eyes widened only a little.

You tried to ignore it, because it almost looked like genuine concern. Not just for his resident that everyone claimed he had a soft spot for, but for the person behind the medical training. “They'll be moved by the end of the day.”

“You get any sleep last night?” he asked.

“Do I look that bad?” you asked with a pitiful huff.

“No,” Robby said at once. “Did you?”

“Couple hours. Those that were lucky enough not to wake up on the Titanic had a few sofas available.” You'd slept on Mrs Issac's sofa for three hours before you woke to her cat curled on your chest and your phone alarm blaring. It had felt as if your head had only just touched down, your dreams had only just started to form in mindless and faceless shapes before you were being brought back out of it.

Robby looked around at the staff room that was empty besides the two of you, peeking out the jutted open door. “We're pretty slow out there. South nineteen's empty.”

You nodded. “I'll look who's in chairs, get someone in-”

“Get some rest,” he said.

At some point Robby had come close to you, leaning his arm on the counter to support his weight. The tattoo hidden behind his watch peeking out at you. He stared down, studying you.

“I'm-I'm fine,” you said, un-sure what to do under his care.

Robby shook his head, lips tugged up slightly. “Fine isn't good enough for my best resident.”

Best resident. Somewhere along the way of working with him that title had been given to you; knelt on the ground, a sword going from shoulder to shoulder and there you had your title. Whenever he could, Robby slipped it into conversation with you, saying it more than your actual name.

“Thirty minutes,” he said.

Arguing with Robby was like arguing with a brick wall.

You sighed, imagining the scratchy blankets and hard bed but your body slumping at the idea of rest. “Thirty minutes. And get me if there's a trauma.”

“Which one of us is attending?” he asked, amused at the fight you tried to pull.

“You don't have best in front of your title though, do you?”

“I don't know, you tell me?”

“Hmm, only on Tuesday's.”

“Oh, Tuesday's are special days, huh?”

Tuesdays were special days because every Tuesday the two of you worked together. You don't know how you realised it, and maybe Robby didn't even know but every single Tuesday since you'd began the two of you had always been on shift together. Days off, weekends missed, long weekends and holidays but every Tuesday without a doubt, you and Robby were there.

Robby led you out, a phantom touch of his hand ballad up in the back of your scrub shirt before it was gone again.

“You'll wake me up?” you asked again.

He nodded his head once more. “I will wake you up.”

“And if somebody needs the bed?”

“I will personally throw you over my shoulder and put you somewhere else.”

You were suddenly glad your back was to him, so he couldn't see the blush on your cheeks at the very idea of being thrown over his shoulder. In your delirious state you picture the situation you'd have to be in to be thrown over his shoulder, the behaviour it would take to have him moving you around, hauling you about-

Thirty minutes of rest you could do.

“Hope you know what you're doing.”

Robby flinched at the accent and heavy smell of nicotine mixed with mint. He didn't even satisfy Dana by glancing back at her. “What?”

She chuckled. “Nothing. I guess.”

He shook his head and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, checking the hotels around the area. There seemed to be three types: expensive, high-end and pristine. Dirty, still not that cheap or booked up. How long would you need the room for? Was your landlord or anyone going to help you out for it? He didn't know your situation exactly but he knew what it was like to be a third year resident and stuck with bills.

Dana leant on the counter next to him, smirking.

“I'm just trying to help,” he excused.

“Yeah, sure.”

He peered at her over the black rim of his glasses. “Something else to say, Evans?”

Her head titled. “Don't you have a spare room at yours?”

Yes, he did. It was plain walled and not at all decorated besides a map of Pittsburgh train lines framed and not hung up. Some old Christmas gift from Jack that he couldn't get rid of in fear of offending him. The bed was comfy because it very rarely got slept on, aside from Jack or Jake on occasion. Truth was Robby couldn't remember the last time he had a guest over.

“Cheaper than a hotel,” she added. “Unless your up-tight.”

Suddenly he was thinking about it. You, in his place. You'd been around maybe once before, he re-called, un-able to re-count the circumstances that had you around.

“You'd be doing the girl I favour, I bet,” she continued.

Robby looked at the screen then back to her. “Has she... said something?”

“Not to me, but hey, she's been asleep the last hour. What do I know?”

Robby looked back down to the time at the computer, the numbers flickering by. He knew it had been longer than his half-an-hour. Really, he had no interest in waking you from your sleep unless he really, really had to. And if he had time to sit and scroll through hotels, you had time to sleep.

He let out a breath. “Apparently everything.”

She laughed. “Hey, you said it, not me. But if you can't put her up think I heard Santos offering up a sofa.”

Robby looked around the space, trying to find Santos or Whitaker to confirm. He didn't see either of them.

It was decided in his head then that he'd have to ask you to take up his guest room. He'd act it was all under the pretence of making sure you were well-rested, had a decent bed and your own space to sleep in, assuring you could get the rest and come in bright eyed and bushy tailed. Deep down he'd know, just to himself, it was because there was a seething bite of envy at the idea of Santos having you waking in her apartment, going home with you at the end of the day.

He dragged his hands down his face as Princess called out his name, demanding his attention.

What was a couple days, anyway.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

You looked up from your tablet, handing it over to Jesse as you stepped away from exam room six.

Robby stepped in Jesse's place, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders lifted high.

“Two hours,” you said. “I was asleep for two hours.”

“Sweet dreams?” he asked.

Yes. There had been dreams and rest. The blanket hadn't felt so scratchy and as tired as you were the noises of the Pitt were muffled in your mind. By the time you woke up your body felt lighter, you could practically feel the bags under your eyes retreat. Then you stepped out and there were new sets of patients, a different lighting in the place and the hour hand had moved all away around the clock.

“I dreamt there was a long que of patients waiting for the room,” you said. “A line like at Disney, except without the pay off.”

“They fast tracked to another,” he excused. “Can I talk to you now?”

He seemed restless, fists balling up in his fleece pockets and glasses tucked away in the front. His hair was tussled slightly, as if he'd already done a full day of work while you'd slept.

You waited for him to go on, watching his mouth open and close before he shook his head at himself, a light chuckle leaving him.

“I did some research,” he said, dragging out his words, in the way he did when he was nervous. You'd seen it when he was trying to let down every one of his flings, scared it was gonna end up loud in the middle of his ER. “Hotels in the area are expensive, I have a spare room, got a bed, it's big, my place is spacious and I'm hardly ever there. No garden but there's a balcony-”

Robby listed aspects of his apartment like he was putting it up for sale.

It took some time for you to realise what he was saying. A spare room, yours, he was offering. You caught the fact he'd looked up hotel rooms and suddenly you were imagining him, phone pulled out with the glow reflecting on his readers. Was he frowning at the prices? Was he rubbing at his beard in frustration, thinking which you'd prefer.

Was he hoping to find you a room so he didn't feel obliged to give up his own?

“That's- that's very kind of you, Robby,” you said softly, letting yourself down gently. “I- I can't do that.”

He frowned. “Do what?”

“Take your room.”

“It's not my room, it's a spare.”

You blushed, thinking that he thought you were thinking about staying in his room. “No! No, I-I get that, I just- I can't put you out like that.”

Robby rocked forward on his heels. “You wouldn't. Really.”

“I'm sure I could find somewhere cheap-”

“- you can't-”

“- or I can check around with friends-”

“- Santos only has a sofa,” he said, raising his brows.

“I-I have other friends.”

Robby pressed his lips into a thin line. “Like me?”

He was insistent. Had someone put him up to it? Had he seen how tired you were and felt bad?

Every morning you woke and before walking into work you took a shovel to the feelings you held for Robby and buried them deep, deep down, plunging a sign that read remain professional into the ditch of your own creation. You called him boss and cap, reminding yourself that's what he was. Of course a friend was another title too, but calling him friend and invading his space wasn't going to do much for your feelings. Or your nerves. And you liked to think you'd done a pretty good job in keeping both in check.

Robby rocked on his feet again, almost jittering. “I don't charge rent, you'd be saving some money.”

How many more excuses could you come up with? How long could you stand here going back and forth?

“How many bathrooms?” you asked.

“Just one.”

“You live in a quiet area?”

“Very.”

“You don't have a cat do you?”

He shook his head with a small smirk. “No. I had fish but lost them.”

You nodded, arms hugging yourself. Admitting yourself into his hands wasn't just a jump, more a leap. Denying yourself had been easier in work, when glimpses of Robby between procedures and patients was all you could gauge yourself on. In his space, you'd become full.

“Say yes and I'll put your stuff in my truck.”

Future regret bubbled up in your throat.

“Okay, fine,” you said, earning a slump of relief from him. “But I'm paying rent while I stay.”

He shook his head. “I don't need it.”

“It'll make me feel better,” you said. “I have to do something.”

Robby looked past you, thinking for a moment. “You cook?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then. While you're staying with me-” he jutted his thumbs at himself, like he was proud. “You can cook dinner, if you want.”

It wasn't a terrible service. More often then not you'd seen Robby slump his way out the place, mentioning something about a restaurant he was stopping by to pick up food that might last him a couple days. It would be like taking care of him and wasn't that what he was doing here? Taking care of you?

In a friendly way, of course.

“I will cook dinner,” you agreed.

“Great.” Robby seemed to relax in front of your eyes: his hands came out of his pockets, his shoulders shrunk and the crinkles at his eyes showed in a smile. “Your stuff's in my truck already.”

“Presumptuous,” you said, calling after him as he backed off slowly.

He shrugged. “Hopeful.”

But what did he have to hope for?

“Hey,” said Santos breathless and approaching you, moving your gaze from the pull of Robby's back to her. “I've got our labs back on that guy in seven.”

“Oh- er, great, great.” The tablet takes up your attention, but your mind lingers on the crows feet at Robby's eyes, the smile you saw briefly when you agreed to go home with him.

But Trinity Santos never missed a beat. “What was that about?” she asked in an uplifting teasing voice you were all too familiar with as she looked back at where Robby had disappeared to.

“What- what was what?”

“You and Robby, huh?”

“No. No me and Robby, don't make it weird.”

She smirked. “You're doing that all on your own.”

You carried yourself over to the nurses station, clocking Robby lingering in a corner, talking something over with Samira, so instead you distracted yourself with the tablet and charting. “He just offered me a place to stay.”

Santos's brows rose up high. “His place?”

You blushed under her analyses.

“Oh my god-”

“Don't- don't make it a thing-”

“It's already a thing,” she scoffed, leaning over and swatting at you. “You're staying at Robby's!”

“In his spare room, separate living completely.”

Santos leant back on the counter, looking around dreamily. “Suuurree, until you need the bathroom and just so happen to walk in on him, towel around his waist-”

“- Santos-”

“- it's all hot and steamy from his shower,” she continued. “And you just so happen to slip, right into his arms and- oh my- the towel falls.”

“You have too much time on your hands,” you said. “Go get Garcia for a surgical consult on twelve.”

Sulking, she did so, dragging her feet across the place while you were left to debate if the dent in your bank account was worth it to spare the dent in your heart.

A life with Robby was framed in different ways.

When you first stepped through his place, your case tugged in his hand and your bag slung over his shoulder along with his own, there was a thick layer of tension blanketing over everything, mystifying the tour he gave you. It didn't give in the morning when you both woke groggy from alarms, reaching for coffee. Through the day the tension sat between the two of you through patients and traumas.

It started to feel like a terrible idea.

Until you both went back to his that night and laughed about the couple that had super-glued themselves together, the teenage boy who got his head stuck in between balcony bars. You made mac & cheese, which Robby deemed the best he ever had but considering you only found kraft cheese boxes in his cupboards, you didn't think much of it.

Then the routine built, mugs of coffee in the morning, a hearty breakfast started by whoever was up earlier in the morning, taking turns in the bathroom with only the occasional awkward bump in to each other in between brushings of teeth.

It was one morning when he stepped out, a smudge of minty white toothpaste in the corner of his mouth.

“You've got a bit of-” you'd told him, gesturing to the corner of his mouth by your own.

He rubbed and missed it completely and your hand reached out first. It was like you were watching it outside of your own body, as your thumb swiped away at the corner of his mouth, scratching at his beard.

Every morning since then Robby had walked out with that same bit of smudged toothpaste and every time you spotted it, you got rid of it for him.

Feeling the heat of his breath dance along your fingertips.

The peppermint smell of him clinging like second skin.

The wet fall of his hair, droplets dripping down to your feet.

It made every morning harder, but made every one more the while.

In work, you had your own new routine between the two of you.

In the mornings everyone in the Pitt- including those that stuck around from night long enough- lingered to watch as you and Robby walked in side by side, heading straight for the fridge in the lounge.

There, Robby would pull out two containers of leftovers from the night before while talking about.... well, sometimes nobody could really tell what it was.

“- all I'm saying is that if it was real life they'd be shut down instantly,” Shen caught Robby telling you, shamelessly lingering in the door way with Abbot and Javadi.

“It's not real life, it's Disney.”

“It's a restaurant ran by a rat!”

“It's whimsy.”

Robby grumbled under his breath. “It's un-realistic.”

You laughed and as busy as you were laughing you didn't see the look Robby gave you, a smile of his own. A soft one, because when he was looking at you, nothing had to be loud. “Just wait till you watch Cinderella, the rats sew a dress!”

Abbot was first to clear his throat. “Good morning, happy couple.”

And Robby's expression dropped, passing a glare to his friend.

As distracted as he was with the glare, he didn't see the way your face fell. The disappointment that marred your features.

“Got anything fun for me?” asked Robby, clapping his hands and getting to business, taking the night shift attendings by the shoulders and dragging them out.

Javadi entered in, a sheepish smirk on her lips. “So, how's it going?” she asked with all the air of a girl needing gossip.

“It's fine,” you said.

It had been three weeks of living inside of his apartment, of his space becoming yours, of shows he'd never think about watching slowly enrapturing him.

“Just fine?” she asked. “Isn't this supposed to be the part where the two of you get together?”

It was a few beers kind of mistake to tell Javadi on your feelings for Robby. But she was a med-student harbouring hard feelings for Matteo and you'd been desperate to bond and suddenly it turned into Javadi shooting you looks across the floor whenever Robby got too close, and he was doing that a lot recently.

“No, no, that's crossing so many lines,” you excused.

“Yeah but, he invited you to stay.”

“As a friendly gesture.”

“And how friendly do we know Robby to be?”

With you, very. With others it was more a tough game to play to get Robby to show some sympathy.

Your mouth was left ajar, stuttering on words you couldn't even come up with when Princess drummed her knuckles on the door.

“Louie's in south nineteen, asking for you.”

Never had you been so thankful to be called away on a patient run, especially when it was one of your terribly concealed favourites.

But you didn't leave quick enough to not catch how Princess crowded in Victoria, asking her what the latest was.

You managed to skirt your way over to nineteen without any more fans asking you about your new living situations. You were more than happy to hide away with Louie.

“Hey, doc!” he grinned as you let the door shut behind you.

“Louie, it's been weeks, what took you so long?” you joked, taking the stool and wheeling over to him with a smile. Really, you'd been worried when he hadn't come in- counting two months down since his last visit. It didn't give you hope that he was doing better, it filled you with dread he'd given up entirely.

He chuckled. “Sorry, doc, been busy.”

“A good busy?”

“Always.”

It was one of those slow nights when Louie came in when you and Robby were working- a Tuesday night where you were just about to go home when you checked in on Louie one more time, finding him half way through a devastating story on his life.

You'd cried in the bathroom and Robby had silently handed you a tissue when you stepped out, cold water splashed in your face.

“Hold out your hand for me, Louie,” you said, watching him do so with a tremble you could have bet your money on. “Shaky, huh?”

“Well it is eight a.m,” he grinned.

“We'll start you with fifty of Librium, as always. Anything else bothering you, Louie?”

“I had some aching in my side, right there-” diligently he showed you the pain, wincing as he pressed down on the pain.

You tugged on gloves and did an exam, finding the are bruised.

“You been in any trouble recently?” you asked, knowing that if Louie ever was in a fight, it would never be started by him. He was happy to drink silently.

“Not that I remember, maybe with a stool,” he joked.

You smiled with him, testing out spots of his chest and asking him to breathe in, listening down the stethoscope. “Everything seems fine but we'll get an ultrasound in to check you over.”

He waved you off. “Don't rush, doc, I like to watch the people go by sometimes.”

You entertained him. “Course, I'll be back shortly.”

You got Perlah on the case, someone just as happy to see Louie as you were, the duo that took the best care of him. Then you were occupied with slowly ticking off the board, discharging simple cases, working harder on the demanding ones.

At some point in the morning Robby slid in next to you, taking his place casually.

“I think I win for most interesting case today,” he said.

Happily, you looked up from your charts. “I didn't realise it was a competition?”

“Competition keeps you young,” he said, head nodding side to side.

“I'm not the one that needs to be kept young,” you teased.

There was smirk of shock that gave way to darkening eyes and a straighter back when he pulled himself up.

“You wanna play that?”

“I'm playing that,” you said. “I'm surprised you don't have an old mans seat when you shower.”

“I didn't realise you thought about me showering.”

It took you so off guard your elbow slipped, taking down someone's abandoned coffee.

“Shit!” You cursed, clamouring to the shards and spilt liquid.

Robby was still chuckling to himself when he knelt next to you, collecting the bits of mug in his hands, taking what you had in yours to his also.

“I- I don't think about you showering,” you said, quietly. “Of course I don't, I just- I just meant- a joke. It was a joke.”

Robby inhaled, tilting his head to get a look at you. “Really?”

“Yeah, yeah, god, I-I didn't-”

Your name was cried out and the shards of China fell back to the ground as Perlah helplessly stood outside of Louie's room. Almost slipping on the coffee, you took off in a run, Robby hot on your heels as you burst through the doors.

“He just- he just started-” Perlah panicked among the blood.

He lay still, un-responsive and you didn't miss a beat in jumping up, pumping down on his chest with gloves, without a gown, just the need to save a life that had been drilled into you.

His blood got on your hands, under your nails as with every pump down on his chest, you pumped more blood out.

“Get an intubation tray, crash cart and suction, now!” Robby called as a flood of nurses assembled around you. He was intubated and a bag put in place, a nurse came in for suction and the heavy rolling wheels of the crash cart sounded.

It fell upon you muffled as your arms shook while pressing down on his chest.

“We can swap out,” Robby offered quietly from behind you.

“No, no, I- I got this,” you said through the gasps and slow bead of sweat beginning down your temple. “C'mon Louie, c'mon-”

Perlah stretched over, slamming down pads on his chest, under the gown that practically had his name on it from how often he visited. “Pads in place!”

“Hold compressions!” said Robby.

You backed up enough to get a reading, getting a dull feeling of Robby's hands on your arms as you trembled. “Still V-Fib,” you said, climbing off the bed. “Charge to two hundred!”

“Charged!”

“Clear!”

So it went on, maybe only for minutes, maybe for an hour. A continuous rhythm of your chest compressions, the push of epi, the constant let down of no pulse, the flow of blood. And Robby's eyes only fumble from you to check on Louie before returning to you.

Everyone in the room hung on the thread of the flatline.

“Do we push more epi?” asked Perlah.

There was a silence behind you but you could picture the slow shake of Robby's head. You'd seen it in dozens of patients, in several helpless cases.

“Robby?” you called out helplessly, without knowing what you were calling for.

He was slow in his approach to you but you could feel him closer, know he was reaching out. “We've done everything we can.” It wasn't harsh. It wasn't kind. It was fact and sometimes fact was neither thing.

His hand was gentle on your shoulder, not squeezing or pulling. Just there. It was enough for you to feel everything deep down in your bones, the pressure of trying to bring him back to life making you weak and Robby's touch helping you give up.

You didn't recall the calling of his time of death, or the stumbling out the room, the wiping down of his blood on your scrubs. You didn't know anything until you made it out to the ambulance bay, drinking in gulps of fresh air that seemed to poison you more then help.

It clamped down on your chest and choaked at your throat-

“Hey, hey- it's okay, you're okay-”

Arms were tugging at you, pulling you into a chest you'd grown knwon with.

You pushed back. “No, no, I'm bloody, I- I can't-”

“Shh-” Robby cooed.

He embraced you tightly, suffocating you into his chest like he was trying to tell the rest of the world to go away, to shield you from the hospital and ambulances would inevitably come by. Robby stood there, arms strong and protecting you. He rocked slightly, lips pressed to the top of your head like it was a natural thing to do. Like you'd never felt them there or anywhere else before.

“I'm sorry,” you sniffed into his chest.

“No, don't be- shh,” he whispered into you. “You did everything you could.”

“He's gone, he's gone,” you mumbled.

Robby held you until he felt he could let you go, which proved a while. By the time you'd dragged yourself back in, red faced and teary eyed word had spread about Louie. Robby remained behind you, a hand curling against the lower parts of your back as he guided you through to the scrub bin, daring anyone to stop and ask you what happened.

He was a dog ready to bite.

“Take some time,” he said in the same air he'd used to ask you to stay with him. With no room for arguments.

You changed scrubs, met Perlah in the middle of the nurses hub for support. When Louie's body was took to the viewing room, Robby stayed stuck at your side, fingers brushing yours as he let everyone who wanted to say goodbye, say it.

By your side he stayed for the rest of the day, with biting breaths and lingering looks. His touches became every other moment, every spare second he knelt next to you, checking in.

“I'm fine,” you told him repeatedly as the day went on, as new patient names clouded your mind and traumas stole your attention.

“We'll get out of here, tonight,” he promised, hand edging closer to yours. Closer to something he wouldn't be able to take back. “No cooking tonight, we'll pick something up.”

“I can- I can cook-”

Robby shook his head. “And you can pick the movie.”

You smiled, though it was tainted from the pain. “Even if it has talking animals?”

His eyes rolled playfully as he sighed, pushing himself up. “If you must.” His hands were gentle on your shoulders as he squeezed, moving by.

When you looked back up you weren't surprised to see the fleeing eyes of Dana over her glasses.

She knew you'd caught her but only turned and walked off. You didn't know how you knew she was still smiling, but you knew.

By the time you and Robby got home- back to his- the sky had darkened and the Thai was procured on the drive back.

He'd let you shower first, knowing you still felt the need to scrub the phantoms of the day from you. You'd been so desperate you'd left your own wash bag in your room, your own robe there. So you bathed in Robby's signature smell, washed your hair in his shampoo that wasn't a two in one.

You wrapped yourself in a towel that was fluffy and smelt like him, wiping down condensation from the window before letting yourself sit with the grief.

It was never a good idea, alone in your own apartment to let the day haunt you. In Robby's place, surrounded by a smell that was all his, you safely let yourself remember the wobble in your arms, the pain in your heart and ache in your body.

You stood, re-tucking the towel around you when the door burst open at once.

“Shit- shit-”

You grasped at the towel as it slipped down your body, clutching it to your chest before it could expose everything.

Robby stood, frozen in the doorway, his lips parted slowly. “Shit- sorry, I thought you were done.”

“I'm- I'm finishing up,” you gulped.

Robby nodded, hand clenched on the door.

You watched his eyes catch a glance past your shoulder, seeing something there that had a blush creeping up his neck and ears. Something that made him bashful and looking away.

A chill ran down your body, from the toll of the day, the lack of clothing around you or the look Robby gave you.

“I'll, er- just...” you trailed off.

Robby closed his eyes, breathing deep. “Yeah. Yeah.”

The door inched closed slower. Before it shut completely you were sure Robby paused, sure you heard him inhale and sigh before you caught the retreat of his footsteps.

You body sunk in on itself, catching the electricity buried under your skin by just being looked at by him. At the idea that he could smell him on you.

It wasn't until you turned, catching a glimpse of yourself in the wiped down mirror that you realised.

Wiped down.

When Robby glanced behind you- to the mirror- he'd blushed at the sight of that part of you left bare. The slope of your back, the dimples that sat just above your ass and the curve of you.

He'd got a glimpse of it. Not just a glimpse by the way he paused- an eyeful.

“Fuck.”

It was bound to happen, maybe, with how long the two of you had been in co-habitation. But the day had been messy enough. Navigating the corners of yours and Robby's changed relationship.... you didn't have the nerve, though it felt alight by his look.

Maybe he hadn't seen anything, you told yourself as you dressed.

He probably didn't even notice, you said as you threw your damp hair up.

Just don't bring it up and he probably won't, you repeated as you stepped out.

When you came back out Robby was hiding in the kitchen, tucking himself right into the counter as he set up several dishes of all the food you'd ordered. His head was tucked low but there was a new sheen of sweat at the expanse of his neck still poking out from his scrubs.

“Sorry for taking so long,” you apologised, slipping into a stool across from him.

He shook his head and shrugged without looking at you.

“Smells good!” you said, reaching for the food that lay between you.

Muscles in Robby's jaw moved. Tightening.

You watched his tongue run over the bottom of his lip before he stepped back from the counter, a finger running over his lips as he excused himself quickly.

It was just a glimpse you thought you caught, something tightening in his scrub pants exenterated by his hands trying to be discreet in covering it (and failing).

Only when you went back to the bathroom an hour later, to brush your teeth did you notice the very, very cold setting of the shower. But if he didn't bring it up, neither would you.

Robby was only supposed to be passing. It had been ten minutes since he last caught a glimpse of you and he decided that was nine minutes too long.

He couldn't pinpoint when exactly the obsession started, if he wanted to call it that. It could have been when your things started to pile up at his, your favourite mug that you drank from sitting comfortably next to his every morning, or the cook books you went back to like it was your bible. It might've been before you'd even effectively moved in with him. Maybe when he saw the way you commanded a room around a trauma, never once doubting yourself.

Whenever it began it only increased with every good morning he got, every night and gentle touch he felt.

And finding you in that bathroom, a blink and miss it moment when your towel started to fall. The expanse of everything behind you that you were so un-aware of.

Robby felt dirty for the erection he supported most the night, even after the coldest shower of his life and taking care of it in his bed when you were sure you were asleep.

It had taken every bit of taught and measure self-restraint to keep his hands off you. You'd had a tough day, Robby throwing himself at your mercy wasn't going to help.

But it had been a week since then, a week of near misses and close calls in the bathroom the two of you were treating like a battleground. The splotches of toothpaste he let linger on him got further and further along his mouth, the playing clueless became more silly. The brushed past each other in the kitchen when there was plenty of room became more telling.

It was all supposed to be going somewhere.

“ - while she is playing house with her boss,” he caught Santos saying, hers, yours and Javadi's backs to him as he slowed his approach.

“It's messy,” said Victoria.

“Oh, would you- the two of you stop,” you said. “It's not like that.”

“No?” asked Javadi.

“It's not like what?” he heard the teasing uplift of Trinity's voice.

“Like what you're trying to say,” you argued. “Robby and I are friends, just friends.”

Santos nodded, head lowering. “Sure. Friends. Friends with house mate benefits.”

“What are house mate benefits?” asked Javadi, looking over to you enough that Robby could catch a grin.

“Oh, use your imagination,” said Santos. “One bathroom, two people, trips to get water from the kitchen, in nothing but skimpy little-”

Robby could practically see the face you were pulling.

“Oh, can we not talk about this?” you said. “Nothing like that has happened, nothing like that will happen. We're friends, just friends.”

Robby didn't realise how badly he must have wanted it to be more until he heard you dismiss it out of hand. Until he heard the mocking chuckle of his doctors at what you were saying. That nothing was ever going to happen, essentially admitting you didn't think about the escapade in the bathroom as much as he did.

Why would you? You probably thought it was odd and gross how he lingered. How he acted the rest of the night- withdrawn and ashamed- probably didn't help.

What? Did he think that after spending more time with him, living with him, you'd grow to care in a way he had for you. In a way he'd tried to ignore for months?

Did he really think he stood a fucking chance?

He was hyper aware of himself, standing there like an idiot with the fading mark of his heart on his sleeve. Soon somebody would call his name, his game would be up and the three of you would turn to him, catching him there.

Robby cleared his throat and shouldered between you and Victoria, practically tossing the tablet down. “Guy in five needs a surgical consult on a blood clot.”

Santos held up her hands to be clear of it and Javadi was walking away at once.

Robby watched you take it and he left.

It was time to start re-building his heart.

“Hey,” you said, quick to follow him. “I was thinking of trying a carbonara tonight, do you like it?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Cool. You know if we have parmigiana?”

“I have more pressing things to think about then what's in my fridge,” he said.

You were quiet for a moment and he hoped he'd scared you away. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.”

“Are you sure? Has something happened?”

“No,” he huffed, halting at the door to trauma two where a car crash victim was under the scope of three capable doctors. What was one more? “Now instead of pestering me can you go do you're fucking job?”

The flash of hurt in your eyes was almost enough to have him apologising. To have him cave and tell you he didn't want to just be friends, that he couldn't go a day without feeling you and being calmed instantly.

Almost.

Your lips pursed and you held the tablet up to your chest like it was a shield. “I will get right on that, boss.”

The tension that began at his house when you first joined him in the space of his walls falls returned, un-invited, with a vengeance.

After Robby's snap at you you figured it was a bad day, that things had piled up and him and he didn't want to talk about it. He still waited for you at the end of his shift, still drove you home but in a silence that was stale. He went to the bathroom first and you started on dinner, making two plates of the pasta you'd promised.

He never left his room that night and his dinner was still sitting on the counter in the morning.

It continued for three days. No blushing meetings outside of the bathroom, no movie's he'd fall asleep to and miss the end- though insisting he was only resting his eyes- it all stopped, quickly.

So quick you had no time to think of what had gone wrong.

“Hey,” said Victoria, lingering next to you as you went back to your search for cheap hotels that didn't have complaints of bug bites.

“Hey.”

“Your leftovers smell so good.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn't even pack lunch today,” she added, a small smile bitten back.

You huffed a laugh. “You can take Robby's, I don't think he's hungry.”

“Really?” she said. “He's usually very punctual about your lunches.”

He was, until a few days ago when you'd tried to find him to see if he was hungry, so you could sit down to your leftover together as you had done. But he'd brushed by you, telling you he wasn't hungry. He did so every day you asked.

“Has something happened?” asked Victoria.

Yes, something had clearly happened but you didn't know what.

“No, just.... Robby being Robby I guess.” You shrugged it off but the indifference hurt because it wasn't just Robby being Robby. You'd found a different Robby, the one that wasn't snapping and grumpy every day, the one who coaxed you to your room when you were too tired to move from the sofa, the one who let you hum along to the songs in the movies you'd pick, the Robby that made you coffee just the way you like. You'd never even had to tell him.

“Oh. I'm sorry,” she said. “You know if I didn't live with my parents I'd let you stay, of course.”

You smiled. “I know. Thanks.”

The hotel you settled on wasn't in the top ten in the city and it was nearly forty minutes out of your way. Earlier mornings were a small price to pay.

You let Robby drive you home without conversation, let him tirelessly switch from one radio to the other. Your fingers curled and un-curled against your knees in anxiety.

“My-urm- apartment is up and running again,” you said.

Robby's knuckles bleached white on the steering wheel. “Oh yeah?”

You nodded. “Yeah. I can get my stuff packed up and be out your hair.”

Robby didn't say anything. You glanced at him, seeing the tightness of his body and the eyes he kept plastered on the road. “It's late,” he said, mouth moving to say something else before he closed it again and thought. “I can give you a lift over.”

“You- you don't have to,” you said. The idea of one more tense car ride was enough to have you thinking about jumping out the moving vehicle. “I can book an uber.”

“It's late.”

Robby kept himself busy while you packed up the clothes you'd un-packed in the wardrobe in his room. He packed up your toiletries and your kitchen things that had slowly wound themselves in his cupboards.

You were already at the door, your case and bag standing next to you, your phone warming in your hand as you checked your hotel booking and uber confirmation.

Robby walked out from the bathroom, your toiletery bag in hand.

“I've got an uber booked,” you told him, quickly. “It's been a long day, I didn't want you to have to drive anymore.”

He nodded, slowly, handing you the bag. “Okay.” His hands retreated back to his pockets.

You loitered. You still had ten minutes before your uber on the way. “I'm sorry if I out-stayed my welcome.”

He shrugged, shaking his head. “However long it took to get your place fixed.”

“Still, I didn't mean for it to take this long.”

Robby didn't reply and his gaze faded away from you.

It was a heavy goodbye. The longer you'd stayed with him the little time you gave to thinking how leaving would work. You wouldn't be escaping him, no, he'd be stuck in your mind and lingering in the corner of your gaze. You'd still remember how he looked when he was falling asleep, how his shower smelt and the way he stretched in the morning.

They'd all be happy memories of another time.

You took it with you like extra baggage into the uber and into the two star hotel.

Robby knew he was ingraining himself into the night shift longer than he needed to but since you left a week ago his apartment was cold, empty and he loathed it.

He hated that there was no other noise, no other mug sitting next to his, nobody to talk to. Hated it so much he was choosing the taunting walls of the Pitt over heading back.

“You thinking of joining the night crawlers?” Jack asked, finding Robby stretching at the hub of the Pitt.

“Nope.”

“Oh. It's just, you're still here, so I assumed,” Jack teased.

“I get it,” said Robby in a sing-song voice.

“It can't be that bad, can it?” asked Abbot. “You see her tomorrow.”

Robby wished he could say he didn't know what Jack was talking about but it was painfully obvious to everyone that he couldn't deny it himself. There was no more coming in together, in fact, you'd been coming in late but he was doing his best to avoid you he couldn't talk to you to find out why. He no longer had a tub of well-cooked food or your teasing invitation to eat with you.

It felt like he had nothing all over again.

He looked down to the nurses counter, picking at a mark on there. “It's just...” he trailed, trying to think of a word to sum it all up.

“Yeah?” asked Jack, leaning next to him.

“Quiet.” He decided on.

Jack nodded, slowly. He glanced away before frowning at whatever he'd found. “What happened anyway? The pipes at her place were fixed so you just kicked her out?”

“No, she wanted to leave.”

“So you guys can't just, hang out?” he asked, holding his hands behind his back.

Robby made a pfft noise. “Hang out?”

“Well, Dana says-”

“- Dana-” he scoffed.

“Dana says the two of you can hardly look at each other,” said Jack. “Seems to be a change from what I'd heard before.”

Robby looked at him. “And what did you hear before?”

“You laugh,” he said, like it was a rare phenomenon. “Heard you joke. Saw you smile. Saw you happy.”

He thought about you, grinning with Santos and Javadi as you told them you were just friends, that nothing had happened and nothing was going to happen. He remembered how you looked at him first thing in the mornings and last thing at night, how you were- and still- were on his mind as he laid his head down and pushed himself up in the morning.

“She... she made it clear that nothing was going to happen between us,” Robby admitted.

“And you wanted more?”

Robby was still, the flecks of the stain coming off under his nail.

“Want more?” Jack corrected.

He nodded.

“And did you tell her that?”

It was rather annoying, sometimes, how well Jack knew him.

“I didn't have to.”

“I think you did. You still do,” said Jack. “Just talk to her man, tell her how you feel-”

Robby shook his head at once. “- no-”

“Robby. Brother,” said Jack with a firm pat on his back. “I've seen how you look at her. I've seen how she looks at you. Take it from me, it would be a waste to let that go.”

He didn't want to let it go, but Robby didn't know how to hold on either.

“Hey, big bosses!” Lena called. “Got major trauma's coming, hotel caught fire. We're the closest hospital, Westbridge can only take two traumas and ten minors.”

“Send them our way, I'll round up the crawlers!” said Jack already sliding into his professionalism.

“I'll hang around then,” said Robby, almost spitefully proving a point to Jack. That he didn't need to go home.

“I'm giving you an hour.”

An hour was all he needed.

A flood of people, most in their sleep wear, robes hastily thrown and tied up flooded in. Many were covered in ash, faces grey or pale. They were checked over for smoke inhalation, nobody got through without a stethoscope to their chest and back. There was a family of four who's father was being treated for bad burns. An elderly man with cancer that was put up to south eighteen, chefs from the small hotel kitchen that were being seen for burns, damage to their lungs and everything else.

“I told you! I told you!” one of them shouted, accent foreign to Robby. “That place is a death trap! It was just waiting to go up in flames!”

Robby stepped out and decided to let them argue, tugging of gloves and fetching another pair from the always stocked box on the wall. “Is that everyone?”

“Just one more, pulling up now!” said Lena, yelling over the chaos the ED had turned into to.

Just one more. That heavy set of exhaustion was starting to settle in his feet, making them ache. It was nearing one in the morning, in five hours time he'd need to be up and heading in.

He thought it was the need for sleep that had him hearing your voice.

“Mark Tellon, on his seventies, severe smoke inhalation and asthma attack. No signed nasal hair, his pulse ox is at eighty-four wet crackles bilaterally!”

There was no such thing as dreaming.

Robby stumbled at the sight of you in bottoms that were too long for you, in a cartoon character he couldn't name, in a shirt that drowned you. He guessed it was once white but was stained in ash and smoke, as was your face and hair.

You wheeled in the man with the paramedics and Robby stepped just ahead.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“Hotel caught fire, quick evacuation, this is everyone,” you listed, clinically.

“You were there?”

You glanced up at him as the bed of the old man was wheeled by the two of you. He watched your face fall, smudging ash as you wiped at your forehead. “Er-”

Robby didn't care for the answer. Well, he did but not when your eyes were hazy, skin clammy and smoke and ash covered you. His hands climbed at your cheeks, holding you there and looking into your eyes. “Have you been checked over?”

“Urm, no I'm fine-”

“C'mon-”

“What? Robby!” you protested even as his fingers wrapped around your forearms, dragging you across the floor and past patients waiting for consults and doctors and nurses clearly rushed off their feet.

There was no spare room available but the family room so Robby took you there, where it was empty, and closed the door behind him.

You were stuck, again, alone with Robby. Exactly the place you'd tried not to be. But he'd closed the door behind him, zoned in on you with that tight crease of worry between his brows.

You stood there, holding onto yourself.

Robby made you follow his finger with your eyes, his other hand steadying your cheek as he watched you. “Any dizziness?”

“No, I'm fine.”

He took his penlight out from his pocket of tricks next, shining the light and checking your pupil response, you knew how it all worked and let him go through the motions. “You inhaled smoke?” he asked.

“Probably. I was trying to make sure everyone got out, first.”

There was a tut from his lips but a small upturn in his cheeks.

“Course you were,” he mumbled, ditching the pen light when he was done with it.

“Honestly, I'm fine, I'll just need a shower.”

Robby was already making his way behind you, warming up the drum of his stethoscope in the palm of his hand. Still, when you felt the brush of his rough fingertips skirting over the skin of your back and the metal pressing along, you shivered. “Breathe in.”

You took a deep breath in, Robby's eyes burning a hole in the back of your head.

“Breathe out.”

You did everything he said.

He moved so he was in front of you, sliding the stethoscope down the front of your shirt, closer over the drum of your heart.

Robby's eyes remained lower, not meeting your gaze. “Breathe in.”

Your chest expanded into his hand.

“Your heart's racing,” he observed.

You swallowed down the feeling of him so close. “Yeah. Probably. Been a crazy night.”

Gently his hands smoothed down your arms, sitting you down on the leather chairs as he set himself on the small coffee table in front of you.

“Want to tell me why you were at the hotel to begin with?” he asked, elbows rested on his knees and hands clasped together. “Cause I can come up with my own ideas and I don't like them.”

Lying to him had proved a silly task time and time again.

“My apartment isn't actually ready to be lived in yet,” you admitted, low in your throat and looking down to his hands. The only update you had from your apartment was that it would take another week, followed by a hopefully.

“No?” he said in fake disbelief.

You shook your head. “I just guessed I'd out stayed my welcome, you wanted to be alone.”

“No,” he said. “No, you didn't. You could've stayed.”

You eyed Robby. “You didn't really seem like you wanted me there anymore.”

You watched as he sighed, shoulders slumping.

Robby's fingers thread and un-thread. “It wasn't like that.”

“I mean did I- did I do something?” you asked, a spew of words ready at the barrel of your gun. “I thought we were okay.”

“So did I,” he said, bringing up his gaze and taking a deep, shuddering breath. “So did I.”

“Then what?”

Robby pushed himself up, hands flying to the back of his head and patting down his hair. His boots scuffed against the floor as he paced the area small and not built for pacing. “I thought things were going really well,” he admitted, hands making a weak gesture between the two of you. “I thought there were moments.”

“There were!” you opposed, quickly.

Was this a chance you'd been looking for? Was he wanting you to say there was something more? That the touches and everything else meant something.

He looked at you, arms pulling over his chest. “But we're just friends, right?”

There was a way he was saying it, a bite to his words like a dog barking, trying to make a point. Just friends.

With your head spinning you remembered another time of saying those words. You remembered Santos's teasing (really it was hard to pick one particular moment out from it all) and Javadi there too. You remembered their teasing grins, asking you about benefits-

And how Robby forced the tablet in between the three of you.

Your head hung, hands wiping away the stress. “Oh god.”

Robby waited.

“Oh god,” your voice came out muffled by your own hands. “Robby-”

“Yeah, I started to like you,” he said, trying to make it all seem like it was no big deal, body moving to shake it of. “I shouldn't, I know. I'm your boss, you're the resident, you were staying with me as a guest.”

“Robby, I-” you pushed yourself up, making your way around the table.

“- and you made it very clear to Doctor Santos and Doctor Javadi-”

“- they were teasing me, it was- it was nothing. I didn't mean it! I mean, they'd been teasing me for weeks, they were just annoying me.”

His body moved in his breath as looked at you. “You don't have to lie.”

“I'm not!”

“You lied about your place. Instead you chose a hotel, one that was a death trap, apparently.”

“I thought you hated me!”

“No, I want you!”

“And I want you!” you yelled.

“You didn't tell me.”

“Well, you didn't tell me.”

Robby scoffed. “Yeah, I'm the one who's supposed to have communication issues, sweetheart.”

Within seconds you had thrown yourself into Robby's arms, practically leaping atop him and kissing him. His lips were frozen, body waking up slowly as his arms curled around your back, holding you in. You could feel the scrunch of his noise and the scrape of his beard as he didn't kiss you back.

You pulled away, keeping your eyes down.

Just because he wanted you, because you wanted him didn't mean throwing yourself at him (literally!) was going to work.

“I-I'm sorry, I thought-”

His hands drowned your face as he pulled you back in, head dipping low to lick his tongue into you. He pressed his mouth into your, letting his tongue in your mouth. His hands tilted your head back, thumbs brushing your cheeks as he reacted to you at once.

Your hands tugged a hold of his hoodie, bending him further along you while his hands slowed down your body, cupping your backside and digging his fingers in.

Some noise made its way out the back of his throat, groaning into your mouth.

“Are we-” you said against his lips. “Mmp; are we doing this right now?”

“Doing what?” He mumbled, tilting his head to nudge your mouth open deeper.

You smiled against him. “Making out in the family room?”

“God, I hope so.”

His mouth was open, warm and welcoming as he kissed you harder, finding parts of you nobody had ever found before.

“I meant it,” said Robby against you, his tongue running over the tip of your lip. “I want you.”

You nudged your nose with his, arms coming to wrap around the back of his neck. “I mean it. I don’t- we’re not just friends, Robby.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, smirking. “I don’t think think friends kiss each other the way I’m about to kiss you.”

“Yeah. M'fine.”

Langdon joined your side, eying you as you stretched your neck back to the sky. “You sure?”

“I'm peachy,” you said, in a way that could tell anyone you were not. You looked over at him. The bags under his eyes, the slight dishevelment to his hair. “Are you okay?”

His lips pursed in a grimace. “Peachy.”

“I coined it, you can't have that one.”

“It's been a rough day, I'd let it slide if I were you,” he shrugged.

You eyed him. “Rough? That's all you're calling it?”

Frank squinted at you, a small smirk pulling at his lips. “Pretty fucking horrible, shit, terrible.”

“Yeah,” you laughed, feeling the edges of insanity clouding your mind. Or exhaustion. Whichever one claimed you first. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“You should hear what my kids catch from me.”

You'd known Frank for years. Known him as the asshole Resident most of the time. You couldn't stand his cockiness when he first started the same year as you, jumping into traumas you were already on and answering every question asked of you. He'd pick and chose every case that came through from triage like it was a raffle.

He'd got better as he got older, as he became a dad. But he was always going to Collins for laughs at his jokes, or Dana to bug, or even Mohan to talk to.

You favoured Robby's side more and now you were miserable.

But still, the last few weeks had been a hard- harder than usual and since Frank came back from his rehab days he'd been better in more ways than one. At your side before you'd even asked for help. Talking instead of teasing and asking if he could refill your coffee for you before you even realised it was empty.

It was a different sort of Frank you weren't used to, but a nice one.

So when you heard about his divorce and custody battle on going after all the work he'd put in to be better, you genuinely were sorry for the guy.

“So what'd you think about the guy who thought wrenching his finger off was better than a hanging nail?” he asked, turning to you and folding his arms over his chest.

“I think you've never known the pain of a hanging nail.”

“But he didn't even get the finger off right?”

“Desperate times.”

He chuckled, clocking his head. “The worst of times.”

“Swiftie?” you asked, peering closer at him and the beaded bracelets on his wrist.

“Dickens,” he corrected.

You screwed your eyes shut. “Yeah, I-I know Dickens was the writer of the phrase, you know I knew it wasn't Taylor Swift, I was just, doesn't your daughter like her?” you rambled.

“Tanner actually. Penny's thing is Spider-man right now.”

“Respect.”

The two of you lingered in a silence of your own creation. You weren't sure you and Frank had ever had such a long conversation that didn't include something about ETA's and chest tubes.

“I've been trying to make amends,” said Frank, straightening up and focused on you. “Saying the sorry's I need to say-”

“- you don't have to say anything to me-”

“I was a dick, to you,” he said. “To a lot of people, but to you. I could stand here and say it was because I thought you were my competition which was true but it-it doesn't excuse how I treated you. I could blame it on the benzos but it still means nothing so I just want to say... sorry.”

You stared and took it in. You'd never expected Langdon to apologise. You thought Langdon was just Langdon. He couldn't apologise for himself anymore than a dog could for barking. Maybe you were wronged, twinged by the ten months of annoyance Robby had dripped into your ear.

“I'd actually kinda like us to be friends,” added Frank, glancing back to the bay doors. “I seem to be in short supply of them and you were the only one who ever reached out when I was in rehab so.”

It shocked you to hear. Had nobody thought about him, like you had? Wishing him the best, like you'd hoped? When it came out in Robby's angry rants about Frank and the pain-killers you first felt bad before you felt everything Robby did.

“Everybody was thinking about you,” you said, even if you didn't know that. When he left after the Pittfest mass casualty, nobody spoke about him, moving around the absence shaped like him.

He looked at you like he didn't believe you. He looked like he was about to say as much when a sleek black car rolled up.

Frank tensed up, rubbing at his temple. “Here we go,” he mumbled, the pale line over his ring finger glowing at you.

For a moment you stood confused before you spotted Abbey- his ex-wife- jumping out the drivers seat. She was well-put together, a blonde woman that you could imagine on the arm of Langdon. You think you'd seen pictures in passing, heard of her only in name.

“Frank, it's way past their bed time,” she said with an air of annoyance.

You wished it was past your bedtime.

“I know, I know,” he sighed, heading over and taking the bags she was handing him. “I couldn't help it.”

“They need to go straight to bed.”

“Believe me, so do I.”

You stood there, un-sure whether you should leave but un-able to take yourself away from doing it.

Abbey glanced over Frank's shoulder at you and you did your best to smile and wave but it probably came off half hearted from the exhaustion you moved your limbs with. Watching, you saw her make her mind up about you from the first glance.

The temptation, the other woman that Frank had fallen onto it.

Frank looked back to you before snapping his neck ahead again. There were mutters you couldn't quite catch to her, probably in your defence.

He swung the kids bags over his shoulders and shook off every bad thing the Pitt threw onto him. When he opened the car door he was all smiles and gentle voice as he helped down his son and daughter. “Hey guys! I missed you today,” he said. “What you been up to?”

Tanner had Frank's hair, Penny her mom's but they both seemed to have his smile as they greeted him, talking animatedly in spite of it being past their bed time.

You didn't even know you knew his smile until you saw it in his kids.

Frank went to collect the last bits of information from Abbey, leaving you and the kids in an awkward stand off.

As the adult it was down to you to break the ice.

Hurt kids were easier; you had a mutual interest to talk about and work toward. These kids were Langdon's, different.

“I like your shirt,” you said to Penny who stood in her spiderman top that looked like it was once her brothers, with a thick chunk of hair in her mouth.

“Spiderman,” she mumbled through the hair.

“He's very cool.”

“Do you know spiderman?” asked Tanner full of the six year old curiosity.

You nodded and crouched down, trying to act as casual about it as possible. “Don't tell anyone but I actually helped him out one time.”

You saw Penny smile.

“Do you work with my daddy?” asked Tanner.

“I do.”

“Are you a doctor? Like him?”

“Slightly better.”

“Hey,” Frank returned, gentle hands down on his kids backs as Abbey got back in the car. “Are we ready to go or what?”

“Ice cream?” asked Penny with eyes wide in hope.

You stood, watching Langdon battle with the fact he knew it was their bedtime, knew sugar wouldn't help and battled with her wide set eyes.

“We can talk about ice cream in the car, you ready?” he asked, earning a chorus of yells from them. Frank looked back at you. “Do you need some help with hand offs?”

“No,” you said, shaking your head. “Head out, you're good.”

“I can stay,” he insisted. “Help you get caught up, chart, maybe Earl could keep the kids company.”

You chuckled. “It's fine, I'll probably make sure we're all handed over, charts are fine and head out myself.”

Maybe it was because of your infamous relationship with Robby that lasted all of five minutes that had people looking to you for help and advice more than they were going to Al-Hishimi. She was new, you weren't. You were an extension of Robby. Just another reason you can be mad at him.

“Oh, you-you want a lift back?” he asked, as if he'd smelt your lie.

You planned to stay as long as you could, before Abbot physically dragged you out. Beat going back to your apartment where you'd packed Robby's stuff up in a box and left it at the door, un-sure or not if you could trust yourself not to set it on fire.

“No, no, don't worry about it,” you said.

“You sure?”

You hummed.

Frank took his kids in each hand, slowly walking backing away. “Okay well, have a good night, I owe you!”

You waved them off, waiting till they were around the corners and gone before taking a deep breath. Slowly, you retreated back into your self-made hell.

It was thirty-three days ago, you remembered it exactly. The day Robby chose not to stay.

He'd been talking about the sabbatical for so long you and everyone else had forgotten how it first came about. You just remembered one day Robby came by your place to pick you up and instead of the alerting honk of a horn there was the dangerous rev of a motorbike.

No- he'd never come to your door and knock because that was too definite and you and him were not definite. He gave you lifts to and from work when your schedule's aligned. He took you to your favourite coffee place on the way in without you having to say and three times after work you'd invited him up for a beer and all three times he ended up waking up in your bed, bare chested and smelling faintly of the last nights activities.

It wasn't where you thought you'd be in life, but you also didn't ever think the computer systems would be shut down and an abandoned baby would be found all in the same day.

You'd been in the room with the affectionately named baby Jane Doe when Robby tip-toed in, swinging his travel coffee mug in hand.

You eyed him and the mug and the clock on the wall as you rocked Jane Doe in your arms. “Are you going?” you asked. If he walked out now, just passing you a nod it'd be like ripping off a band-aid. The pain would sting for a moment but then be gone. It would've made things easier.

Of course, Robby didn't come into your life to make things easy.

“Just heading out,” he said. “Why is she crying?”

“Isn't that the million dollar question,” you huffed, continuing to bounce.

You were already dead on your feet from the extra hours pulled, fingers cramping after trying desperately to get everything from paper back into the system and finish off the charting you'd left abandoned when hell broke loose. You didn't put up much of a fight when Robby rounded you, throwing off his stethoscope and gently setting baby Jane Done back in her hospital obliged cradle.

“Why are you crying?” he cooed, un-knowing to how you lingered behind him, stretching out your neck. “Did you need to be swaddled again? I wish someone would swaddle me.”

You tried not to let his words get to you but everything he'd been saying got to you that day. From when he picked you up with one helmet and insisted you wear it- that he could go without, every small hint he'd give to people that he wasn't coming back, every snap he made set you on edge. You'd watched everyone's attempt at talking to him, and watched them walk away defeated.

Robby cradled the baby close, resting her against his chest and rubbing her back. “You got off to a bit of a rough start, didn't you, little one?”

He'd turned away from you, rocking lightly but you could hear the choke in his words.

“Robby,” you said, slowly.

His head turned enough for you to catch sight of the redness around his cheeks and eyes, the quick flutter of his lashes that showed someone's un-wavering need to not cry.

“Don't go.”

Jack had tried. Dana had tried. You were sure even McKay had said something.

“Don't go,” you repeated. “Tonight just come back to mine, we can- we can do nothing. I can cook, you can rest.”

His head shook. “I'm going,” he said quietly.

“Why? Because you've told everyone you're going? Because you need to get out?”

“Yes.”

“Then get out,” you begged. “Take a break from this place but don't go off on a motorbike, to a place nobody's ever heard of before.”

Robby still wasn't looking at you, using the slowly falling asleep baby on his shoulder as a shield to avoid your gaze. “Did Jack put you up to this?”

“No. I'm worried about you.”

He bounced again, turning from you. You heard him sniff, saw the tilt of his head to wipe away emotions on his scrub top.

“Tonight, just don't go tonight. You've been working twelve hours, have you even packed anything?” you asked. “Just for tonight, you can come back to mine.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I can't-” his voice broke and he took a moment to compose himself, his hand continuing its slow circles on Jane Doe's back. It was as much a comfort to the baby as it was him. “I can't do that to you.”

There'd been no problem when you first invited him up, each of you sinking down your beers before Robby leant in and kissed you after some stupid joke you made. When it happened again, Robby following you up after an emotional exhausting day just to make sure you got up okay but ended up slowly peeling off your scrubs and kissing over every inch of skin his knuckles grazed. He'd never complained then. He'd never seen anything wrong that deemed he couldn't do it a third time with you.

“I just need to get away,” he said in the quiet.

“From what?” you asked, circling around to look at him. Still, Robby's gaze was locked to some mural painted on the wall behind you. “From the Pitt? From me? Yourself?”

“I can't be there for you,” he said.

Your lips turned down to a frown, where they'd been most of the day. “I've never asked you to be there for me?” had you? You'd asked for help on patients sure, it was your job and he'd offered the lifts when he realised he passed you at the bus stop every day. Had you ever put him in a position where he felt he had no choice with you?

“But I want to,” said Robby, louder than he wanted. He winced as the baby shuffled on his shoulder. He looked at you. “I want to be there for you, to be counted on but I can't. And I can't stand around and be around you when I can't- I can't-”

“- can't what?”

“I can't love you.”

The words paralysed in front of you, stuck in your head.

Three weeks ago you'd told him you loved him to which you guess maybe started all this. It had come out in bed, with your head on his chest and his hands slowly winding a strand of your hair.

You'd said it because you meant it. You'd told him he didn't need to say it back because you guessed he didn't love you back and meant it.

Loving Robby was like being cold, dying for the heat, craving the feel of the flickering flame upon your fingertips and knowing it would burn when you reached out to touch. You knew you were going to get hurt, but you had been so cold.

Robby moved slowly, with heavy limbs as he set baby Jane Doe back down, assuring she was swaddled tightly and sleeping.

“Robby I am not asking you to love me, I know you can't-”

“I should be able to,” he said, a tear falling as he stared down at the baby. “I feel like something's being leeched from me. Something I can't get back. I should be able to love. I'm un-able to.”

You shook your head, un-sure whether you should reach for him or not. “You're not incapable of it.”

He nodded, his shoulders shaking. “I am, I am.”

“You come in here every day. You save people, the best and worst of them. You hold their hand when they need it, you talk to their families, you sit with them, read out monologues they have prepared when they can't,” you listed.

“And it's killing me,” he said, turning to you with un-steady hands rested on his hips. His face was equal parts red in cheeks and pale behind. “This place... these people... they're taking things from me and I- I don't know if I can get it back.”

In desperate attempts you stepped closer to him, hands reaching for his arms. His head still turned down but there was a glimmer of glossy tears there.

“You can get it back, you haven't lost it, Robby, you haven't,” you said, your own heart rate picking up. You knew why Dana had almost cried when she told you it felt like she wasn't going to see Robby after that day. Why Abbot and reached and hugged Robby, muttering words to him. “Talk to someone-”

His head shook and your hands came up to his calloused beard, holding his cheeks.

“- go to Abbot, go to Caleb. Stay with someone, stay with Jack. Stay with me.”

He didn't say anything but his body softened just enough to let you know there might have been a way out.

“Robby I-I love you, don't do this.”

“And I care about you but I have to do this- I can't stay here-”

You reached up and kissed him, pressing your lips to his. You waited for the fever that usually took over with your kind of kisses but there was nothing. No rush of blood from him, no reaching hands, just a still body and incorporating lips.

You pulled away first, licking the taste of him from your lips. “Robby?”

“I've got to go,” he mumbled, picking up his mug again, leaving his stethoscope and left.

You watched him duck his head and avoid anyone's calls as he fled.

Dana found you that night as the clock struck eleven and as Robby pulled away from everything he knew.

That day was one of the worst in Pitt history, an agreement everyone came to without a discussion. So technically things could only go up from there.

“Hey,” Lupe said, heading straight to you.

You groaned, fingers pausing over the computer keys. “I dealt with the dead person in chairs last time, this one isn't mine.”

She chuckled. “Nobody's dead. Have you seen Langdon?”

“Langdon?” yeah, you'd seen him two days ago when he'd found you outside, contemplating your life and showed you his two beautiful kids. You'd seen him every day after that when he slid up next to you first thing in the morning. “He's, er, upstairs, some drug test protocol.”

“His kids are in chairs,” she said. “His daughter's took a fall from a swing, babysitters freaking out.”

“Oh, okay.”

You don't really know how it happened. How you ended up following Lupe back out to chairs where you were greeted with an angry mob demanding to know why they hadn't been seen yet. In the middle you found his kids and babysitter who truthfully didn't look much older than Tanner.

“Where's my daddy?” Penny asked.

“He's busy on something very important right now but he's on his way down. Can I see?”

It was a nasty gash on her knee which explained the tear streaks down her cheeks. You ended up carrying her back, securing a room for her and telling Dana to page Frank.

“I swear I- I looked away for a second,” the baby-sitter fretted, just as she had the whole way back to the ED. “Tanner needed help with his shoe-laces and she- she really wasn't going that high when I left and-”

“I can do my own laces!” Tanner objected, following at your side.

“Hey, Princess!” you called out.

You set the babysitter off with her, to get a coffee and to yap Princess ear off instead (she was used to it). You promised the sixteen year old the kids would be well looked after.

“Is get a coffee grown up talk for go away?” asked Tanner as you set Penny down on a bed, letting Tanner settle on the edge.

You settled on the stool and pushed yourself over to them. “You are a very smart kid, has anyone ever told you that? Okay Penny, I'm gonna check your knee now, okay? Is that alright?”

“I want my daddy,” she whined.

Kids came into the Pitt all the time needing help and you managed every time, winning them over or just trying to get through their treatment. These kids were different, they were Langdon's. VIP's.

“You daddy is heading down now, he's on his way,” you assured, cringing at the taste of daddy on your tongue. “In the meantime you think I could take a look? I promise I'm a good doctor, these are Spiderman healing hands.” You held up your hands, wiggiling them.

She let you check on her state of knee, finding the cuts and little bits of dirt in there. She was very brave and you told her so when she cried no more.

“Is that an Ipad?” Tanner asked when you pulled out the tablet to chart down her information. “Are there games on there?”

“I wish, bud.”

“Then what do you do on it?” he asked.

“We keep files on patients and doctors, so we know how to help and who's been helped. Your dad's probably on here,” you said, coming up with a wicked idea. “Do you want to see if we can draw on his picture?”

They grinned and nodded.

You settled in the middle of them, finding some drawing icon and Langdon's profile. You were half way drawing a red moustache above his lips when the door swung open and the man of the hour rushed in.

“Oh my god, are you okay? What happened?” he fretted in the only way a nervous dad knew how, rushing to Penny's side first and pecking the top of her head before getting a look at her knee. “Oh, baby, that looks painful.”

“She's very brave,” you said, shuffling up from the bed and hiding the tablet.

Langdon looked back to you, only then realising you were there. “What happened?”

You stood there silent before realising he was waiting for you to answer. “Oh-um, something about a swing? I think she fell of it.”

“Where's their babysitter?”

“With Princess.”

Once he'd checked in with his kids, assessed her injury himself and her chart (successfully you'd hid the changes of his profile from him) he let out a breath, shoulders slumping in relief.

“It should just need a clean, no stitches,” you said to her. “But I think for being so brave you should get a lolly, how about that?”

Penny smiled for the first time since you'd met her and nodded eagerly.

“Coming right up,” you said, leaning to Frank to utter to him. “Stay with your kids, I'll take your patients.”

His brows were furrowed, looking at you. It was unusual, for sure. Families weren't allowed to look after each other but for his kids you'd make an exception. While Robby wasn't around to say anything different, you insisted. “Thank you. I owe you, again.”

“Well, you can buy me a drink to say thanks.”

The words slipped out before you even realised what you were saying. Before you understood what the words meant.

Frank's brows rose. In surprise, amazement, disgust, you couldn't read it.

“I just- I meant a coffee, not- you know-”

“Coffee it is,” he said with an affirming nod.

With a distracted mind you nodded and left, carrying yourself in a daze to the nurses station and falling back to your seat for charting.

“What's the matter with you?” asked Dana, peering at you over her glasses.

What was the matter with you? “I think I just asked Langdon out on a date.”

Dana didn't scoff, she didn't frown at you or ask anything else. She smirked and set down her tablet, taking a careful step over to you. “Well, it's nice to see you getting back out there,” she said. “You know, he might not be coming back.”

The fact hit you like a bullet. You did know that maybe Robby wasn't coming back. Nobody had heard from him, not a picture or a hello, not a postcard or a letter. Still, you stared at the box of his things and imagined him coming to collect it. You went to bed imagining all the things you'd say to him when you saw him again.

At least in the dreams, he always came back.

There was a time on his sabbatical where Robby couldn't picture coming back into the Pitt. He thought about the waiting room full of people, or the sliding doors of the ambulance bay that never stayed shut for long and his chest would get tight, his palms sweaty. So he stopped thinking about it.

Instead he thought about you and it didn't stop the beating in his heart but it helped focus his mind.

By the time Robby made it back to PTMC, stepping a foot through the ambulance bay, it was like he'd never been away.

Ahmad greeted him, lingering in the way with paramedics. The walls of the place hadn't changed but they seemed maybe lighter than when he'd left. The patients from that night three months ago had all gone, replaced with new faces and names and identities.

“Robby!” as expected Dana was first to greet him, approaching slowly.

But when her arms wrapped around his shoulders and she hugged him, Robby knew he'd worried her with how hard she squeezed, as if she was trying to share some of that pain.

“Hey, you're back!” said Whitaker next, with a grin.

“I'm back,” he affirmed, saying his hello's to everyone that greeted him, trying to make his way through the crowd to get to the nurses desk. He didn't want a big send away and he didn't want a big come back either.

“Doctor Robby!” Javadi smiled. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.”

“Yay, he's back,” said Santos, trying to sound as un-caring as she could but saying it with a tiny smirk. “Didn't throw yourself off a cliff then?”

“No I did not.” The truth was as soon as he got close enough to a cliff and looked to the bottom the idea of ever leaving home seemed stupid.

All he could think about when standing at the precipice or a cross roads was your face as he left, was your face when he told you he couldn't love you. Acceptance. Like you knew that and still wanted to love him anyway. And no matter how much he tried to convince himself it was on you to chose him, he couldn't find it in himself to be annoyed that you had.

It was something lighter stirring in his heart.

“Where's our gifts then, huh?” asked Jesse from the back of the group.

“Okay, okay,” said Dana, waving her hands out at everyone. “Let's not smother him, not before he's had a chance to get us caught up with the board.”

It was as simple as that, his welcoming. Pats on the shoulders, welcome backs and so forth.

Robby peeled off his jacket, slinging it over the chair where he liked to sit. Not one thing seemed to be out of place there. Maybe they'd kept his desk just as he left it, for him.

He stretched out, turning his head around and scanning the floor.

“She's with a patient,” said Dana, watching him with a keen smile. “Room three.”

Robby didn't pretend to act ignorant. He was looking for you. He peered into room three, finding an elderly lady in the bed, blankets tucked up high as she smiled at something you said.

Just the back of your head had Robby taking a deep breath. He lived those three months with you as memory. With the faint idea of what your hair felt like twined between his fingers, going to sleep in crappy motels every night trying to think of your head rested in the crook of his neck, the rhythmic falling of your breath against his skin when he began to panic.

Everything you made him feel rushed back to him like a truck hitting him.

He was still stuck there waiting when you turned with a laugh from the patient, leaving the room with an amused shake of your head and he felt himself smiling.

Your trainers squeaked to a stop on the other side of the desk, finding him standing there, looking at him like you were seeing a ghost.

“Robby. You're back.”

He gave a nod, wincing at himself. What did he say when all he wanted to say was sorry? What did he do when he just wanted to reach for you?

He was never given the time as suddenly rushing feet sounded closer and small voices were calling out your name.

Robby watched helpless as you turned, throwing on a grin and kneeling to catch the small girl that threw herself at you. He watched as you wrapped your arms around her like it was familiar for you to do so, picking her up and setting her on your hips and affectionately messing up the boys hair.

“Robby, hey.”

He followed the voice to Langdon who approached slowly, clad in jeans and a jacket.

“Frank,” he greeted with a nod, stealing a sheepish look at the kids- his kids- greeting you.

“Yeah sorry,” said Frank, smiling back down at you. “They wanted to come by and see you, drop you off some muffins they made last night.”

Your mouth fell open in a dramatic gasp. “Muffins? What flavour?”

“Chocolate!”

“Chocolate! My favourite!”

“With pink icing!” said the girl happily.

You gasped again. “Pink! My favourite again! How's the knee?”

Robby watched, un-shamelessly so as you checked in on Langdon's daughters knee, patiently listened to her and his son as they both spoke at you at the same time. Was he intruding? Probably, but he couldn't bring himself to turn away.

“Okay, okay,” said Frank, setting a tub of muffins on the side that Donnie immediately started sniffing around. “We just came to say hello, school run, remember guys!”

The boy groaned and you laughed, whispering something to him.

Robby thought it couldn't get worse, that the scene in front of him couldn't get sweeter but next Frank brought out a coffee cup, leaving it next to the muffins. The stamping from your favourite cafe that the two of you frequented together glaring at him.

He tried to look away as you said bye to the kids, stepping closer to Frank and talking to him quietly. Langdon seemed to ask you something and you nodded, a pinch to your lips. He watched Langdon nod at you, heading out with the kids and glancing at Robby.

“Good to have you back,” he said, stiff.

“Good to be back.”

Langdon looked at you once more before stirring the kids away.

The rest of the Pitt played around you, nurses calling out for labs, patients complaining.

Robby may as well have been miles away as your gaze met his again.

“Got one coming in hot!” Dana announced. “ETA five minutes!”

Santos chucked you a gown and dragged you out to the ambulance bay in a move Robby heavily suspected was to spare you from any more awkward stares.

“They Frank's kids?” he asked, turning around to find a herd of nurses lingering.

Donnie had already peeled back a muffin from its wrapper, spreading crumbs everywhere. “Yeah. Damn good bakers, too.”

“She knows those kids,” shrugged Dana, trying to make it less of a thing for his sake. “Little girl came in with a bad knee one day, they come in every now and then with fresh bakes to say thanks. Donnie, spare some for the rest of us!”

Robby felt a pang when he saw you all those months ago walk into the Pitt with a wailing baby in arms. Abandoned, you'd said. He saw a baby in your arms and was reminded of what he didn't have. What he wanted. Startled that he only saw that baby in his future with you holding them.

Would the baby he dreamed about be like him? Troubled. Would you be left with two broken Robinavitch's to look after? How could he do that to you?

Yet, seeing you with two kids that weren't his didn't help either.

“Seems things have changed since I was last around,” he said, trying to joke and rubbing the back of his hair.

“Yeah, since when were they close?” Perlah wondered, staring off to where you and Frank had left from.

“Since Frank came back,” said Princess like she had the day memorised. The day Robby also left. “She's been helping him out since the divorce.”

He looked between the two, knowing the answers to all his questions could be answered between the looks of Princess and Perlah. He looked at their raised brows and wide eyes, smirks dancing on their lips.

“Hey, Robby,” said Dana. He hadn't realised she was close until her hand was at his back, leading him away. “Let me give you the tour, in case you forgot some things.”

Robby let her lead him away, one last warning to Donnie who was already reaching for another.

“You're all good,” she said when they were far enough. “They're plantonic, nothing going on, I'm assured.”

He stared out in front of him, humming. “What?”

Dana scoffed with a roll of her eyes, pocketing her glasses. “C'mon, don't act dumb, doesn't look good for you or me.”

“I'm just trying to get through my first day back,” he said with a un-easy chuckle, remembering the words falling from Langdon's lips when he first came back after ten months. He was left in that position, left to clean up the mess he thought he could ditch.

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say, Cap,” said Dana. “Listen, her and Frank got close after you left because they both missed you. They both were lost, both felt abandoned and were both going through a divorce-”

“I was never married to her,” Robby corrected.

“You may as well have been. And she's been miserable since you left. She's been worried about you- we all have!” said Dana, lingering at the counters. “But I think she deserves an explanation before the rest of us.”

The roof was the easier escape from hell. Directly to the top where you couldn't hear the bustle, where it would take people so long to get to you they may as well not have bothered.

Night air welcomed you as you stood leaning on the railing, letting the wind caress and cool you. You'd felt hot all day with Robby's eyes lingering over you. They found you in the morning and didn't stop after that. From leaving every exam room to the storage closet to the bathroom, he was like a magnet attracted to you.

Once where you'd wanted that, now you feared what it meant.

There was a gust of wind that sent shivers down you, a welcomed cold.

“Hey.”

The wind hid Robby standing behind you.

You looked back at him, taking in every bit of him like you had every time you found him.

His skin was sun-kissed, hair a little longer than usual and his beard the same with new flecks of grey. He held himself up lighter, shoulders pushed back. There was new skin, a new glitter in his eyes but the same old Robby.

“Hi.”

To give you enough time he approached slowly, leaning next to you and waiting for you to say something.

But you wanted him to speak first, to know where to start from.

Another gust of wind pushed back your hair, had your skin pick up in trembles.

“Are you cold?”

You hadn't a chance to say anything. He was already pulling the zip of his hoodie down, peeling it off quickly to get it around your shoulders before the cold could leave you.

It still smelt the same. Like the box of his stuff you'd slowly dragged into your room.

“Thanks.”

Robby hunched over the rail, looking out to the skyline. “Not often I'm on this side of the rail,” he said. “Views nice from here.”

“Your trip teach you that, or have you just come up with it?”

“Just trying to find something to say,” he admitted.

You shook your head, pulling his hoodie closer around you. You could take it home, maybe, add it to the pile of him you were to weak to give up. “You don't have to say anything.”

“I do.”

“Robby-”

“I haven't got it rehearsed,” he said, holding out his hands as if to prove they're empty. They were slightly smoother, less calloused then before. “I haven't thought about what to say. I just want to talk to you.”

You turned to him, looking at him. In all of three months your heart didn't change when you found his gaze. “You've just come back, don't you want to settle in before we talk.”

He shook his head. “No. No, I don't want to waste anymore time.”

You bit down on your lip. “So, things have changed since?”

“A lots changed.”

“Do you- are you feeling better?”

His head tilted side to side. “Maybe. I don't know. There was a lot of time to think. To dream. To figure out what I want.”

You listened, watching his fist clench around the railing.

Robby sighed deeply. “I want you.”

A thousand times you must have dreamt of those words from his lips, in a hundred different scenarios in millions of different ways. It seemed just like another dream, where the city lit your backdrop, where his hoodie smothered you.

The dreams faded with work. With Frank.

The coffee you went for never turned to more. The idea of more played with, toyed with in lingering stops at each others place, when he dropped you off at yours and you didn't leave straight away.

It was all a painful reminder of Robby.

“I really want you,” he said again, eyes peering, head low. “I knew it before I left, I know it for a fact now.”

“I- I wish that was enough,” you found yourself saying. “I don't want to just be wanted anymore. It's- It's not enough.”

“Well, it's a good thing I love you too then.”

Your breath stuttered.

He stared at you, a small smile on his lips and a crinkle next to his eyes. “You couldn't count on me to love you then, you couldn't count on me to be there- you can count on me now. You can.”

You spent so long telling yourself you couldn't, that him not loving you back was okay that telling yourself to accept his words, to take them for what it was was foreign to you. “It's been three months. Things have changed.”

There was the first flicker of un-certainty in his gaze.

“Langdon?” he asked, puffing out his chest and preparing himself for pain.

“No,” you shook your head. “I mean.... maybe? Maybe there was something. But I'm so hung up on you how could I do that to a freshly-divorced man.” You leant back on the rail, counting every flicker of light.

The wail of ambulances and honking of cars punctured the silence.

Robby's knuckle turned white with his grip on the rail. “I'm glad.”

You glanced at him.

“Sorry,” he said, supporting a look that was decidedly not sorry.

You tried to hide your smile in a bite of your lip but Robby caught it and leant closer next to you, smiling too.

“I love you,” he said again, face creasing in adoration. “I love you, I don't want you to ever spend another minute thinking I don't.”

“You didn't love me before you left.”

“I did. I did I just... I didn't know how. But it was there.”

It was there? Was it in his kisses and the way he pressed you into his mattress, saying your name like a prayer into the skin of your neck. When he got you your coffee order, extra hot on the colder days, was their love in his touch when he offered it to you.

“I thought you knew, I really thought you knew,” he said.

There was still nothing you could have said.

From the corner of your eyes you saw him glance down.

“You don't- you don't love me anymore?”

“It'd make my life a lot easier not to love you,” you admitted with a sigh. “Wouldn't have spent three months worrying out of my god damn mind.”

His shoulders shuddered, his hand relaxing on the rail and heading deep into his pant pockets, trying to retreat, trying to hide himself.

You looked at him, counting the wrinkles at his eyes, matching your breath with his. “I don't know how to not love you, Robby.”

Robby looked back up at you, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “Do you want to?”

You answer was tested.

Your hands were half drowning in his hoodie as you reached up and grabbed him, bringing him into you and kissing him. Unlike the last kiss you shared, in the dim lights with the ghosts of the pedes room, he kissed you back, breathing you in. His hands were firm at your hips, holding tight.

Robby's neck tilted, muscles working to kiss you deeper, to hold you in closer. He parted your lips to take a breath and prodded in his tongue, drinking you up.

The both of you shivered into the kiss and into the cool night air around you.

“I'm not-” said Robby, voice muffled by the lips he refused to give up. “I'll never leave again.”

You kissed him again. “Don't make promises you can't-”

His nose brushed yours when he kissed you. “- I promise. You can count on me, you can love me, I'm....” he grasped your cheeks, thumbs brushing against you as he pulled you back to get a look in your eyes, brushing back your hair. “I'm begging you to love me. Be mad at me, scream at me, push me off this fucking roof. But please don't stop loving me.”

He had your hands grasped in his as he peppered a slower kiss on your lips.

“I never stopped loving you.”

When Robby kissed you again, breathing a sigh or relief against you you felt every word he'd said, every dream you'd made turned real and every hope came true. The promises he made were laced in the new softness to him and you learnt to trace those vows.

When Robby gave himself into love, it was the sort of love he'd never take back.

He did, however, get first pick at the guest list. They were frat parties, of course, but sophisticated enough to have a guest list. And top of his list was always one name: yours. Which seemed an odd choice to his housemates as you never turned up.

“Party tonight, you know the place,” said Jack, pushing himself up from the wall that was his. His because he waited there for you every Friday. Waited to follow you, pestering you all the way down corridors and halls, up and down stairwells.

“I know the place, loud, rowdy,” you listed, a heavy looking book tucked under your arm. “I'll be sure to avoid it.”

“No, the open door means come on in, not hurry by.”

“I must have missed that class.”

“You? Miss a class? Nah.”

It was routine for Jack to do this: get the details of the latest party from Derran, run to whatever class you were still stuck in and wait for you to come out to invite you to the party.

The party where he'll linger by the door and let everyone think he was being a diligent owner, welcoming them in, handing them off to the kitchen were drinks were being downed already. Really, he lingered and waited for you. One day you would turn up and he'd back away into the crowd, making his way over all nonchalantly and bump into you, saying some practised line like “Oh, you came!”

“Speaking of class, you were later than usual coming out,” he noted, hands in his jersey jacket pocket.

“Do you ever hear yourself and think how creepy you sound?” you pondered.

“No, not really. I do catch myself in the reflection though and think, woah, you're a good looking guy.”

“Before it cracks right?”

Jack grinned. It was his favourite part of his days, when he got to see you and have this one on one. You bit back to his words and a lot of girls blushed at his teasing, tucking back hair in hopes Jack would catch the drift and do it himself.

He didn't know what it was about you that had you not falling for him. It drove him mad. He loved it. He was crazy, thought his friends, you clearly weren't interested, they were trying to get it through to him. And still, he persisted. Because when he saw you one day, narrowly missed getting hit the face with a soccer ball and instead of slick by you proceeded to yell at every player, and since he couldn't stop seeing you in crowds, finding you in libraries.

When he got talking to you and found you could keep up with him- well, he was smitten.

“What's the book today?” he asked, gesturing to the brick that was tucked under your arm. “Some Latin, some Greek.”

“An old Greek classic. It's in English, I just don't think you can read.”

Jack chuckled and followed you onto into the fields, where the sun beamed down. “Looks heavy, you want me to carry it for you?”

“No, I want you to stop stalking me.”

“I'm not stalking,” he denied, holding up his hands in surrender. “I was just passing by, I swear.”

“You seem to pass by every Friday, which is odd because you don't have classes over here on Fridays.”

Jack's hand darted out. He stopped you with a grin. “Now who's the stalker?”

You frowned, a roll to your eyes like you just couldn't be bothered with him. Yet he knew if that was fact you'd have already avoided him. You liked the bite as much as he did. “What?”

“How do you know my class schedule, huh?” he teased, tongue poking out and running over the bottom of his lip. “Unless someone's been looking.”

There was a stutter on your lips and he stood there, giddy.

“No. I-I just, I mean, my room mate has a friend who's studying medicine and he's not here on Friday's,” you argued.

Jack nodded along with you, rocking slightly back and forward on his heels. “Oh yeah? What's his name?”

You shook your head. “You wouldn't know him.”

Jack doubted, he doubted this guy was even real. It lightened him up to have you wanting to know things about him. That maybe you'd asked around to know his schedule, looked it up, actually spared moments out of your day to think about him while trying to act like you weren't.

Quickly, he followed after you as you took the long way around the pitch.

“Is this guy coming to the party?” he asked, just to entertain the conversation a little longer. “Maybe you can third wheel your roommate and him.”

“Yeah, sure, that sounds fun.”

“Well I'll be there to keep you company, don't worry.”

“Oh good, I feel assured.”

“C'mon,” he said, taking a jog to keep up with your long strides. “What's one night of relaxing, huh?”

You chuckled, dryly. “You and I clearly have a very different idea on what relaxing is.”

“You're a more book and a bath kinda person, am I right?” Jack asked.

You glanced at him, a small frown between your brows like you were trying to figure out how he knew. “There's nothing wrong with that,” you said, almost defensively.

“I didn't say there was. I enjoy a bath myself.”

“With the walls shaking? With all the noises and company? Not a moment's peace?”

Jack smirked, leaning in closer to you. “Just what kind of baths do you think I have?”

Your lips parted, a fresh sheen of gloss over the pink of them. Your tongue clicked as you shook your head, tucking it down but he still caught the corners of your lips tilting up that you tried to hide. One day you might just admit you found him funny, that you thought about him outside of your little coincidental meetings.

“Jesus,” you breathed out, turning from him and taking a path back to your dorm.

“That's what they all say!”

You were making your way down the path hurriedly.

“Think about it!” Jack's hands cupped over his mouth as he yelled after you.

You yelled back. “I've thought about it!”

Jack watched you until your form became a blur and he had pretty good eye sight so he must have been watching you a while. By the time he tore his gaze away from the long way you'd gone he saw jocks on the field, girls preening at them and looking at him with bitten back smiles.

All he thought was how you'd never bitten back a smile. Maybe you tried to hide your smiles around him but he'd seen you grin big before, when you were unabashed and un-afraid to be seen.

He wanted that smile to be his, one day.

The party was already in full swing by the time Jack abandoned his post at the door, trying to make peace with the fact you clearly weren't coming. It was going on midnight and he'd been keeping his spot in the entryway since well before the sun set, wearing a patch into the carpet that would definitely need looking at with sober eyes.

Jack allowed himself a flicker of disappointment before he replaced it with resolve. Next time, maybe he'd even just invite you out somewhere, try to get you on a date instead of carrying on the pointless crusade of dragging you to a party you clearly weren't interested in.

Girls lifted up their plastic red cups to him as he passed, guys clapped him on the shoulder yet none of it felt as rewarding as it should of.

“Jackie, boy!” yelled Derran from his own post of guarding the beers.

“Derran!” he called back with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Derran spotted his glum look and empty side. “Better luck next time, bro!”

Jack nodded and continued on his venture.

Was it just him you didn't like? He'd seen you at a party before, Stacey M from psychology. He'd caught sight of you, little black dress, taking to someone he didn't know but wanted to if they were stealing your attention. He'd spotted you across the room and hadn't said anything because he didn't want to scare you away. He didn't think you'd seen him.

So, you could party. It must have been Jack you were trying to avoid.

He was thinking as much when he saw Kev.

Kev was Derran's buddy but even that was too generous a statement. He was more like a pestering fly you just couldn't get rid of and Jack spotted him buzzing around someone, animatedly.

“Geez, lighten up!”

“Lighten up? You were about to take a girl who could hardly stand upstairs!”

“She was literally begging for it an hour ago.”

“And now she can hardly string a sentence together!”

The crowd dispersed around the shouting, looking back and to each other with pulled faces. They were hoping for a fight. Someone always was. As they parted, Jack could finally make out who Kev was talking to.

You stood across from Kev, in a dress that demanded Jack's attention, your cheeks flushed and arms crossed over your chest. You were there, at his party, arguing with a guy notorious for being a huge dick.

“What the hell is it to you, anyway?” said Kev.

Jack shouldered past everyone, falling into the conversation. “Hey,” he said to you.

Your eyes moved from Kev's to his and softened. “Hey, Jack.”

Jack. He liked hearing it from your lips, instead of stalker.

“Jack, hey pal,” greeted Kev in a stony voice typical for him. “Get a hold of your fucking girl, would you?”

You scoffed as Jack took a step in front of you. “Excuse me?”

“She's not my girl, man,” said Jack. “And she's right. If a girl's too drunk to keep her eyes open she's way to drunk to commit to anything.”

“She wants it, bro! I can tell!”

“I guarantee you, she does not.” Jack watched Kev roll his eyes and guessed he wasn't a guy that took being told no easily.

“Whatever man,” he said, waving his hand in a dismissive sort of gesture as he turned. “Just get this bitch out of my face.”

Kev tried to go but Jack was hot on his heels. You were hot on his.

“What did you just say?” snapped Jack, yelling over the noise of the music that rattled in his bones and his own heartbeat he could hear pounding in his ears.

“You heard me!”

“Yeah, and I'm really hoping I fucking didn't!” Jack grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. He was taller than Jack, bigger than Jack and heavier than Jack. But Jack was willing to bet he had only a tiny dick. “Say you're sorry.”

“Jack-” you interjected behind him.

“Apologise,” he ordered, standing his ground, ignoring the forming crowd.

“Fuck off, man. What the fuck is your problem anyway? Your girl not giving you any pussy so you have to go and ruin mine?”

Jack froze.

He didn't know how it happened. One minute, Kev was running his mouth, the next, your fist flew past Jack and a sickening crack sounded.

Kev was on the floor, cradling his broken and bleeding nose with a whine.

You brought back your fist, shaking it off. “Shit-” you seethed.

Jack was back at your side, quickly. “Ooh- are you okay?” Gently, he took your trembling hand, cradeling it in his as he would a hurt bird. There was a redness spreading along your knuckles, blood blooming at the tiny cuts.

Around the two of you, the party crowd that had formed and watched it all happen started to applaud.

“Let's go!”

“Whoop-whoop!”

“Dude, Kev just got knocked out by a girl!”

If Jack were anybody else he might have cheered to. He might have been apart of the crowd, clapping. But he was only himself. He was only focused on you and your had still held in his.

Your cheeks were flushed with spring time pink as you tucked your head low, leaving him to lower his own closer to hear you. “Is... is there... is there somewhere...”

It took Jack just a moment to realise what you were trying to ask.

“Yeah. Yeah, c'mon.” Jack kept a hold of your wrist as he dragged you past Kev still rolling around on the floor and moaning in pain. He pushed through the crowd that were meandering back to their drinking and dancing. He led you through and up the crowded stairs.

You were silent till Jack stopped the two of you in front of a locked door.

He fished the key out his pocket. “It's my bedroom.”

You stiffened under him.

Jack's eyes widened. “Oh! Oh no, I- it's ensuite. I'd take you to the other bathroom but I can promise you do not want to see what's going on in there. I just want to take a look at your hand, is that okay?”

Your lips pursed and you nodded.

Jack waited. “Words, please.”

“Yes, Jack, you can take a look at my hand,” you said, cheeks still red.

His room was organised, trophies from several sport competitions standing high and polished on shelves. Whenever his parents came around they made sure to keep them clean and straighten them up. On his desk there was a tall pile of medical textbooks, thick enough to act like building blocks and his half finished mug of coffee was left there next to them.

He flicked the lights on and finally let go of your wrist. “You can, sit, make yourself comfortable.”

Jack rushed into his bathroom that was a little less tidy, kicking towels on the floor and dirty boxers into a pile behind the door and reached under his sink to find his first aid kit.

You were stood at the end of his bed, looking around at the walls, at the posters of bands on the wall that he put up when he first moved in and didn't tear off. Your eyes scanned over sheets of paper he had stuck up, post-it notes full of medical terms that were like a different language if you didn't know how to read it.

Jack lingered and watched you study everything that made him, him. Suddenly he was very aware he didn't really listen to any of the bands plastered up on his walls, that his wardrobe doors were hutting open from a draw not closed properly.

“You used to play soccer?” you asked when he appeared again.

Jack eyed the trophies you stared at. “Er, yeah.”

“I didn't know that.”

Jack smirked. “There's a lot you don't know about me.” He held out his hand to his bed, inviting you to sit on the edge as he sat on his desk chair, switching on the lap and moving the neck till the gold glow was on your hand. He was lucky his room was small enough to accommodate the two of you close together.

You splayed out your hand.

“Nice throw,” said Jack as he took a cotton swab and dabbed lightly at the beads of blood.

“Thanks,” you mumbled.

“Where'd you learn to punch like that?”

“Self defence classes,” you told him. “When I thought about coming to your party I figured I best take another one, might come in handy.”

“Glad to know it wasn't me you were planning on punching the day lights out of,” he said.

“I'd have gone easy on you,” you shrugged. “Oh my god, I assaulted him!”

Jack chuckled at the sudden dawn of realisation on your face. “He had it coming. He's a dick anyway.”

The two of you fell silent again as Jack gently looked around your knuckles, checking for any injuries that he could see as if he was already a qualified doctor.

“It's probably the nasal bones you hit,” said Jack. “Might have fractured it.”

“Is it gonna harm is breathing?” you panicked.

“No. His nose will just be bruised for a while. Might have given him a free nose job, too.”

Your other hand combed back your hair. “He could report me for assault.”

Jack shook his head, glancing up through his lashes at you. “He won't. He'd have to explain how the fight began, how he wanted to have sex with a girl that couldn't say no, let alone yes. And besides, Kev wouldn't admit he was hit by a woman.”

“Some company you keep at these things,” you mumbled.

Jack swallowed away guilt. “I'm sorry, Kev just turns up to these things. Usually the parties aren't so bad,” he explained. “This is still going down as one of the best, in my books.”

“Because Kev got punched?”

“Because you showed up.”

Your gaze was hard on his, not un-kind but just watching him to try to catch out the lie. There was none. He was waiting to tell you.

“How come you changed your mind anyway?” he tried to distract you as he ran an anti-septic wipe over the small cuts.

Your hand still tensed and curled up. “Ow- Jesus!”

“Sorry,” he cringed.

You shuffled on the edge of his bed, pulling the hem of your dress back down. Not that he was looking. “My roommate was going, thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. And that way I didn't have to drive.”

“Where's your roommate now?” he asked.

“She and a couple other girls went to take the other drunk girl home, make sure she gets back safe and is okay.”

Jack smiled down at your hand.

“So much for sticking together,” you sighed with a little huff of laughter.

“You need a ride home?” asked Jack, perking up.

You raised your brows. “Haven't you been drinking?”

He shook his head. He'd never been happier to not be a big drinker. “I'm a med student. You think I can get drunk and the next day dissect a rat.”

Your lips pulled into a frown. “I thought dissecting rats in class was band in the fifties?”

“Who said anything about being in class?”

You laughed and Jack wished he could go back in time, make the joke again and savour it anew. He wanted to know what else he could say to make you laugh. What else made you smile. He wanted to know everything that made you happy and be apart of it.

He ditched the wipe on the side and went back to holding your hand. His eyes scanned over the expanse of the back of your hand as if he was trying to find factures or bruising when he just wanted to have an excuse to hold your hand a little longer and try to remember what it felt like.

“So, am I gonna live, doc?” you whispered, head ducking low and closer to his.

Jack raised a brow. “It's doc now, not stalker?”

“I guess I'm the one in your bedroom, I feel like the stalker now.”

“I really didn't have another agenda to this,” said Jack, stony at once at the implication he came up to his room with you for another reason. “You can leave at any time, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I don't.”

It was perhaps the longest conversation you'd had together without you walking off and him wondering if he'd see you again. This was different. You were sitting, letting him touch you and look after you in a room that surmised him.

“Your hand should be okay,” said Jack. “You might want to ice it when you get home. Or I can get you a bag now?”

“Will I make it if I wait till I get back?”

Jack tilted his head to the side, holding your hand in his and leaning back. “I dunno. Let's see-”

Studying your hand side to side, Jack slowly brought it up to him, making sure to leave you enough time to retreat. You didn't. He kept his eyes lowered as he brought it up to his lips and kissed it gently. It was just a press of his lips, not a brush or a bite. He just held himself there and felt your pulse under his fingertips race.

He was enjoying this medical training thing more when he could use what he learnt on you.

“You'll make it,” he said, letting your hand down onto your lap.

You shivered and held the hand he'd just kissed in the other. “Thank you, Jack.”

“Thank you for punching Kev and putting him in his place,” he said. “Think you can stick around till three and get everyone out of here?”

“Three is a little after my bedtime.”

“Bath and a book?” Jack asked. He found his voice naturally lifting in his flirting sort of way but there was genuine curiosity underneath it. He wanted to see you room and not in a creepy way. He wanted to know what posters were up on your walls, or what colour they were painted. He wanted to know the photos you had framed and books you had stacked on your bookcase.

You glanced at him, a degree of shock that he'd remembered. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Jack figured you'd be surprised to know he remembers your favourite sweater you wore when the weather was cold, the Margaret Atwood book you carried with you more than any other. The fact you preferred the south corridors because there was a breeze in the north. That you wore one colour more than any other.

If he admitted it you might just tease him again.

He could live with it though.

“I can give you a lift back, if my cars not blocked up,” said Jack, spinning his keys around his finger.

“Oh no,” you said, standing up with him. “I can't ask you to do that.”

“You didn't ask,” he pointed out. “I'm asking you.”

You looked around his room again, trying to find an excuse.

“C'mon,” said Jack, nudging you. “If I were to let you get home some other way I'd only be worried, I'd get no sleep, then how would I study the next day?”

“At least the rats would be safe.”

Jack waited still, holding his hands behind his back and rocking.

You sighed. “Sure, fine, if your cars not blocked in.”

Jack was willing to ram into any car he needed to to get you home.

And so Jack took you home that night and for the rest of the week thought about you more than usual. After all, now he knew how soft your hands were, fingers slightly rough from the constant turning of your pages. He knew what your hair smelt like closer up and how your body relaxed with the vibrations of a car. He knew so much and so little but Jack was on a mission to know everything.

Decades later and Jack had memorised the touch of your skin when trailed by his own fingertips. How warm it felt in the morning sun and the slight tremble when it was night. He'd seen shades of your hair through the years and the lengths you changed but he always remembered how it looked in the gleam of the afternoon sun. He knew- when he could once only dream of knowing- every secret dent and tint of your body, knew your curves like it was a road he took down every day.

You knew where Jack was starting to grey, when his leg hurt him more than usual. You knew the roundness of his stomach and kissed down it when he realised he wasn't as lean as he was when he was younger. You could map every freckle on his body and join them dot-to-dot with your eyes closed. It was the sort of knowing one only got from years of dedication.

That was why Jack knew he needed you to run into the ED when he'd only been there for an hour.

“Jack?” you were wind-swept, coming in through the ambulance bay doors that had seen you come in and out almost more than it saw emergencies.

He would ask you to come in to share some crappy dinner he'd prepped the night before, wonder if you were driving by in the morning to your own job at teaching English just so he could steal a kiss and taste your morning coffee on your lips. Any excuse, Jack was asking for you.

You were always happy to deliver.

He smiled as you stepped up to him and he grabbed your hips, bringing you closer and kissing him.

“You're so in love, I hate it,” said Nurse Vivi from Lena's side.

“You're adorable,” cooed Lana.

Jack pulled back, brushing your hair and framing your face. He peeked with a smug smile at Lena. “Thank you very much.”

“What's going on?” you asked. “You said it was an emergency?”

“I didn't want you to miss this-” he took your hand, the one branded with the two rings he'd slid on there and dragged you to an exam room.

You knew the floor planning almost as well as Jack did. He'd given you a tour of the place after only a week of working, introducing you to Dana and Lena, showing you off to Robby who couldn't believe Jack's wife was... well, you... that he'd stared, mouth agape for at least ten seconds.

The both of you like to tease him about it now.

“Miss what?”

Like he was showing you a show he'd rehearsed, Jack held out his arms to the glass windows of nine.

Two young women, alike in look and stature, stood over a bed. They were talking down with anger between their brows to a man slouched in the bed, a crooked nose and black eye, beard long and ill-kept-

Jack watched your eyes widen and brows raise. He grinned.

“No,” you gasped.

He nodded and chuckled to himself. He tried to keep his back straight, holding onto the reigns of composure he kept for his night shifts. Yet, with the dazzle of amusement in your eyes he couldn't stop himself from the boyish grin only you ever brought out.

“Is that- is that Kev?”

Jack nodded. “He's here for a conference. That-” he pointed to the woman on his right. “- is the conference and that is his girlfriend.” He gestured to the other.

“Some people don't change,” you chuckled.

“No they do not.”

He let you study Kev. The length of the beard was one thing, the scraggle of it another. The hospital gown in white and grey did nothing to flatter him, nor did the black eye and crook in his nose. He was balding at the top and reseeding on the sides.

“Wait, isn't this a breach of some patient confidentiality?” you asked, a hand on his bicep.

Jack pulled his lips down and shook his head. “I don't think he'll say anything.”

Kev's eyes flickered from the girls (because they were very much younger than he was) and found you and Jack standing there on the other side. He shrunk back in his bed and rubbed over the crook in the bridge of his nose.

No, he wouldn't say anything.

Jack leant over the counter at you, peering through squinted eyes. “Disappointment? I think you've just made my night.”

There was a blush on your cheeks as you looked away, studying the Pitt to find something to distract yourself with.

“You might regret that. We've got a lorry car collision, ETA ten minutes out,” you explained, dropping the granola bar into your scrub pocket. “I might just be your bad luck charm.”

Jack loved working with you. He loved getting your opinion on cases that didn't need a second opinion. He liked the quiet moments in the night shifts you covered where it was just the two of you and the night sky. He liked being able to make you blush, to make you laugh in the middle of the darkness.

Because there was a darkness lingering in you. The sort only the Pitt could latch onto a person.

He'd seen it in Robby.

He despised seeing it in you.

There were some nights you covered- because you were always the first to volunteer to do a double- you started with a sparkle in your eyes and ending the night in despair, dragging yourself home. You'd return hours later, not at all long enough to have had a good sleep.

Jack worried, but he liked having you around to keep an eye on you.

Jack shook his head. “Nah. The bad luck is this place. You're the good.”

You laughed, hesitantly.

Lena patted your arm, kindly, the way a mother did. “I'll go get the guy from trauma two moved.”

“You want some help?” you offered.

“No, sweetie, I got it.”

You looked around like you needed to make myself busy. Like you couldn't be alone with Jack. He'd seen it in the ED many times, even in the military, the need for people to stay busy instead of succumbing to a sort of numbness.

It had been him some years back before he managed to deal with his demons.

“Any interesting cases in the ED today?” Jack asked, following you around with his hands behind his back, restraining himself from guiding you through with a hand on your back.

“Well, we had a woman who didn't realise she was eight months pregnant who gave birth today. A priapism-”

Jack seethed. “Ouch.”

“- and a man with a toothbrush stuck up where the sun don't shine.”

“Double ouch,” he said, checking the side of you. “So you had quite an interesting day, huh?”

“You could say that,” you mumbled. “There's also a girl in five with Fancomi anemia. She came in four hours again and we're still waiting to hear from her parents. She has a half sister half way across the country that might be a bone marrow candidate that they've never tried.”

Jack nodded, listening and catching the far away look in your eyes. “You're doing everything for her,” said Jack. He didn't even have to ask to know you would be doing everything possible for the girl. Even if it meant exhausting yourself.

Jack nodded to himself, debating with himself if he wanted to know the answer to his next question. The devil and angel arguing on his shoulders. “A little birdie told me you had a date,” he said, the both of you knowing the little birdie was, in fact, Robby. “How'd it go?”

You sighed and stopped in the middle of the corridor.

He cut you off before you could start. “I'm just asking to check you're okay. That... that he was nice.”

You nodded slowly, not meeting his gaze as your hands rested at your hips. “He was- he was fine.”

Jack ignored the wince of pain as he crouched to get a look at you. “Just fine?”

If Jack couldn't have you, he loved you enough to just want you happy.

It was only four months ago you'd broken up with him, after seven months of beautiful moments. Of coming home to you in his sheets, making a coffee and waking you up to it. He wanted to steal every moment with you, choosing sleep when you went to work, spending the morning just watching you get ready. The lunch dates where he'd turn up to the ED, the place he could never escape, with a delicious home made lunch for you and sometimes extra for Robby who kicked up a fuss that he got nothing and had known Jack longer.

Jack missed the kisses in the night and the morning. He missed holding you when he had a night off. He missed when you'd think he was asleep and map his freckles, tracing I love you into his skin.

Because the tender moments were always there, yet gradually they began to hide themselves in the cover of night, when you thought he was sleeping.

Jack knew things weren't perfect. With both your schedules it was hard to balance but you tried to make it work. Then the light in your eyes started to fade and when you told him it isn’t working anymore, I love you, I'm sorry, he hadn't thought to keep your relationship alive. He'd just been fighting to keep you.

He was terrified he'd lose you.

Then what would he do?

He wouldn't survive it.

“Just fine?” he asked again.

“Don’t sound too pleased.”

“I’m not,” he denied but bit back a smile.

You looked up to him, shuddering a deep breath. “He was just... whatever.”

“Just a whatever kind of guy?”

“Why are you asking so much?” you asked, mildly annoyed.

Because he still loved you? Wasn't it painfully obvious? Weren't you just trying to act like you didn't know he was helpless for you to spare him embarrassment.

“Just, checking in on you.”

You looked down at your shoes, scuffing them on the floor. “It- he was nice but... I dunno, not what I wanted.”

Jack hummed. “No?” did you still want him? He'll be honest, he didn't think he'd hear about you going on a date. Least of all with some guy from Pedes. When you'd broke up with him he expected it had something to do with you wanting to focus on you. Rest up. The sort of stuff like that. Then he had to hear from Robby that you were going out for dinner.

There was only a small bite of anger before Jack felt sorry for himself.

“No,” you sighed.

There were deeper circles under your eyes than usual, sharp half moons dark in colour lingering there. Your eyes were dark and lifeless, scrubs hanging off you.

“Is there anything else going on?” he asked, tugging at your arm slightly to hide yourselves at a corner.

You looked up to him, lips pulled down in a frown as you shook your head. “Nope.”

His brows rose, eyes looking at you, pleading. “You can talk to me if there is, h-” the pet name he had no right to almost slipped from his lips. He gulped it down and felt it sting down his throat. “You can tell me.”

“We're...” you hesitated. “We're not together anymore, Jack. You don't have to do all this chivalry thing.”

“Can't help it,” Jack shrugged. “Not when it's you.”

Your hands wrung together and Jack looked down. There was flakes of dry skin on along your fingers. He knew the sanitiser in the ED could be harsh on your skin, but he also knew he'd replaced your hand moisturiser in your locker just two weeks ago and that you should have plenty. It was a nervous habit you had, to rub your hands together like so.

Jack remembered it from your first date. He’s used it as an excuse to reach over and take your hands.

“I'm just tired,” you mumbled.

Jack nodded, slow and listening. “That it?” he prodded gently.

He'd heard countless doctors slip those words out in answer to the everything okay type questions. He'd seen Robby break as the words chocked in his throat. You said them without emotion. Without even trying to prove your lie.

“Why don't you go home? Get some rest-”

“Ellis is-”

“- we'll manage,” he insisted. His hand had un-consciously started to move up and down your forearm in comfort.

You winced as you turned your head aside, thinking about it.

Jack didn't know how much he really wanted you to go home. He wanted you to rest, yes, but preferably in the family room with a blanket thrown over you where he could drop by and check in on you. Check you were okay.

Check you weren't doing something stupid.

He knew that not everyone felt like a ticking time bomb. That not everyone's mind would wonder as dark as his did sometimes.

But he feared you weren't far off.

“Go rest-”

At the same moment Jack spoke the ambulance doors were pushed open and two bodies were pushed through on gurneys, bloody and broken. Stats were yelled out and Jack was called for.

At the same time, Matteo popped out of five, calling for you.

“She's crashing!”

You rushed over, falling into the room with the young girl and Matteo.

With a heavy sigh, Jack followed the other path of emergency responders and doctors.

He and the team worked on them. A father and son involved in a lorry crash that ploughed right into the side. The kid was only seventeen with a broken leg and collapsed lung. The father was much better off. The boy would need surgery and Walsh was already down and wheeling him up.

It was all done in a quick blur of thirty minutes. He took care of it all clinically like ticking through a to do list, not looking to close at the kid to remember shades of hair or lines of the face.

By the time Jack was stepping out the trauma room, Crus at his side, you still had not returned to the floor of the ED.

“How does she seem to you?” Jack asked Crus, the two of them pulling off their gloves and gowns. He said your name in clarification.

“Hot!” said Crus with a shit-eating grin.

Jack glared at him. He should have known not to expect a serious answer from Henderson. Or at least he hoped that wasn't the serious answer.

“I don't know man, how do you want her to seem?” asked Crus.

“She seems tired. For a while now,” Jack noted.

“Aren't we all chasing sleep?” he asked him, leaving his side with a pat on his back.

Jack found himself at the nurses station, leaning over.

Lena's glasses slid down her nose, a chart in hand and her red hair messily pulled back. She ditched all efforts to seem busy however when he beckoned her over. “She's been in there the last thirty-five minutes,” she told him. “The little girl she'd been looking after crashed.”

“Nothing back?”

Lena shook her head.

Jack shook his head. “Shit.”

With a heavy heart he dragged himself to room five, already hearing the stillness of the monitor, the hard breathing and orders.

“Push another round of epi and charge to two hundred.”

The room smelt of septic cleaning products and the faint aroma of sweat. There was a faint burn smell from the defibrillators that had apparently already been charged and used.

Jack lingered in the doorway.

Your body was curved over the small girl, knees denting into the crappy hospital bed that hadn't been updated in years. Your hands were cupped over her chest, pumping down as Matteo pushed another round of epi. Catching Jack's eyes, he shook his head.

Jack tutted, quietly to himself. “Hold compressions, check for a rhythm.”

It took you a second but you stopped, looking to the monitor in hope.

There was nothing but a flat line.

Jack didn't tell you to resume compressions but you did anyway.

“Charge to three hundred,” you said to Matteo.

He was caught in the middle, looking toward Jack for confirmation.

Jack nodded and Matteo got the paddles, warming them and handing them to you.

Your grasped them in an all too familiar hold. “Clear!”

The small girls body lurched before flopping back on the bed. Everyone in the small room waited for a rhythm. There was nothing in answer.

Jack had no time to tell you not to carry on before you were. He took a slow step in, patting Matteo on the shoulder, in a silent gesture to have him leave.

The nurse gave a sad look before leaving, closing the door gently behind him.

There was Jack and you over the girls body.

He said your name, slowly.

You didn't react.

“Honey, come on,” said Jack. “She's gone.” He could see the tremble in your arms from the compressions you hadn't given up on.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“Her parents aren't even here,” you said. “They didn't even pick up their phone when Dana called. We-we left a message. They deserve to see their daughter one last time.”

Jack nodded. “They will.”

You glanced up at him. “Alive.”

He clocked his head to the side. “That's not gonna happen. It's been forty-five minutes. She's gone.”

Losing kids were the hardest. Losing anyone was hard but kids weren't supposed to be found in hospital beds, tubes poking out of them. If they had to be found in a hospital, they deserved loved ones around them. Not strangers in black and blue.

Jack knew you were trying to do the right thing. Sometimes there was no right thing to do.

“Come on.” Jack was slow in moving around the bed to your side. He gave you time to slow down, to feel the exhaustion in your arms. His own hovered over you. “Come on.”

You shuddered when his arms fell over you, holding you softly as you slumped back into him, falling from the bed on feet that weren't ready to catch you. His arms were; strong where you were weak.

“It's okay, it's okay,” he mumbled into your hair, peppering kisses there. “You did everything you could.”

Neither of you knew how long you stood there in his embrace. Somewhere between the consoling you and you slowly leaving his arms- like it was paining you physically to do so- Jack called the time of death so you wouldn't have to, pulling the plug on the monitor to kill the sound of dying.

When he turned back you were stuck at the door, eyes downcast as if you couldn't bring yourself to look at the small body he pulled the cover over.

He returned to your side, hand gentle on your arm. “Go take some time in the family room.”

You shook your head, a tear betraying your words. “I'm fine.”

Jack reached up and cupped your cheek in the palm of his hand. He looked at you like you were still his whole world. You were. To him. His thumb delicately wiped the tear away as your gaze reached his. “Ten minutes, please. For me.”

It took some time, some great mental calculations sparring inside of you but you nodded and Jack led you from the room, closing the door behind him.

His hand was a gentle breeze against the small of your back as he led you out, giving a gesture of a nod to Lena about the room. It was enough for her charge nurse bells to go off as she nodded and sent someone over.

“Take all the time you need, okay?” Jack whispered to you.

You nodded, stepping out his hold and slowly walking to the family room.

Jack waited and watched closely, marking every step you took to the room. He only let out a sigh when he saw you close the door behind you.

“Everything okay?” asked Lena as he slouched over the counter.

His face scrunched up as he fought his own pain. Pain for the little girl but a greater pain chocked at him as he closed his eyes and pictured the heartbreak marring your face, taking over your entire body. He sniffed back his own grief. “No. No, not really.”

Slowly he explained the situation to Lena. He re-encountered the break up that had took the night crew by shock. They were all so sure it was happy ever after for the two of you. When Jack had to slowly explain the break up (he lied and said it was mutual, it was very much not) there were distraught faces as if the night-crawlers were all going through a parental divorce. He told Lena he knew something was going on with you. He told her about the girl that had just died.

“And I just-” said Jack, chocking on a cry that threatened to escape the lodge in his throat. “Sometimes when I see her, it feels like I'm gonna be seeing her for the last time.”

“Hey,” Lena whispered and reached for his hand, squeezing it. “None of that. She'll be okay.”

Jack nodded, repeating the words to himself. “Yeah, she'll be okay. Keep an eye on here?”

“Already on it.”

By the time Jack next had the spare moment to check his watch he found thirty minutes had flickered by since he last saw you. When he passed by the family room you weren't there. Instead Caleb was, talking to a family.

Jack went in search of you, checking the board for your initials. He didn't see anything up on there, nothing that jolted his heart with the usual sparks.

“Shen!” he called in passing. “Have you seen her?”

“Er, no, sorry.”

Jack cursed. He was turning around the ED, spinning on his heel and looking around every corner for you. You weren't by the lockers, weren't out in the ambulance bay. Trauma one was empty and trauma two had a large team in there already, devoid of you.

His heart beat like a drum in his chest, growing louder and louder, the thud of the bass growing the more time went on and he couldn't find you. Had you gone home without a word? Were you hiding away somewhere else?

Jack was losing hope, running on anxiety when he pushed back the curtain to fourteen hard enough to almost tear the thing.

You looked up at him from your place on the stool next to your patient, a middle aged woman with an ankle not as it should be.

“You're here,” he said, breathless.

“Er, yeah?” you said with a small chuckle. “I'm just telling Mrs Greene here about the surgery to reset the bone in her foot.”

Jack nodded, looking from you to your patient.

He wasn't an idiot. Your eyes were scratched and red, cheeks flushed. Yet you'd tried to put yourself back together. You'd scraped back your hair in a neater pin up, had clearly splashed cold water on your face, maybe even dunked your face in a bowl of it. You sat with your hands in your lap, a leg kicked over the other, caving in on yourself.

As soon as you left the room, chart in hand, Jack was hot on your heels.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

You startled, looking at him. “Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?”

“You lost a patient,” Jack reminded you, a small frown pulling at his lips. “It's tough on all of us.”

You glanced down to the chart, lifting your shoulders. “We lose people all the time. It's the job.”

He surveyed you as you slid into a seat, logging into the computer in front of you. No eye contact, distractions pulling at you. Jack knew your tactics; they were everyone else's. Ignore the pain till it went away before mounting up and crashing down at the worst time possible. Heck, he was chair of the club.

“Sure,” he mused. “Doesn't make it any easier.”

You sighed, pulling your lips up into a strained smile. “Jack, seriously, I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me.”

Jack leant over the counter. “Well, you want to know a secret?”

“What?”

“I'm always worried about you.”

“I don't think it's much of a secret,” you said, moving your fingers quick over the keypad.

He wondered if your hands were steady. Or even if you were writing anything with meaning, or just trying to occupy yourself. “If you need to go home-”

“- I don't-”

“- take some time-”

“- I don't want to take time,” you huffed.

“You’re starting to sound like Robby.”

“Now that’s insulting,” you huffed. There was a moment were you fell silent, your body slumping under the weight of the argument. You dragged your hands down your face. “Jack, please.”

When you're a kid they teach you that manners are an important basis in the human condition. A show of respect. A nicety. They don't tell you the effects the simple words hold when used on the tongue of a loved one. When someone you love is begging you to leave them alone, even against your better judgement.

Jack never liked to hear you beg as it was.

He hung his head in surrender. “I'm staying close.”

“You'll be loitering.”

“Observing,” he corrected.

He loitered around you the rest of the night. He checked your name on the board every time he passed. When the parents of the young girl arrived five hours later Jack spoke to them, he didn't even tell you they had arrived but somehow you knew. A silent nod of thanks was passed. The sun started to rise and Jack had counted three coffee's, two over your usual. The granola bar he'd handed you was left abandoned at your station and before Jack could find you to make sure you eat the rest, Crus had taken it in one bite.

Six am was a blessing. The night hadn't been full of patients, no more than usual at least but it had been more stressful to Jack.

Every time you moved and he couldn't find you he was worried. Even if it only lasted a minute or two. It was the same blind panic he'd felt the day Robby left for his sabbatical, yet the relief when he saw you didn't last.

Jack had left to go to the bathroom in the morning. When he came back Robby was there, fleece pulled up and talking to you. He couldn't tell what was going on, only that Robby's hands were clasped together in a prayer like motion.

Then he saw you nod and Robby sigh before giving you a high five and leaving.

“What was that?” Jack asked, falling at your side.

“What?”

“What were you and Robby talking about?”

“Er,” you hesitated. “Langdon can't make it, there's something at home, I don't know his kids are sick or something, Abbey's away visiting family.”

Jack was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “So?”

“He's asked me to stick around for a bit, help him out-”

“You've just pulled a double,” Jack snapped.

“It's only a few hours,” you shrugged, as if you weren't the walking definition of sleep. “Beats going home.”

“I'll cover.”

“Then you'll be pulling a triple,” you pointed out. “I'm younger, more spry.”

His jaw pulled tight, hands falling on his hips. “I'll talk to Robby.”

“I've told him I'll do it,” you said, firmly. “I don't want to go home and sit with this, I'd rather be here.”

“For how long?” he asked. “You gonna stay here forever now? You can't run away from this.”

“I can't sit with it either,” you snapped back, heat rising up your neck. “I'm not like you, Jack. I can't leave the shift at the door and go home and just sleep it off. I need to... I need to do something.”

Jack stood and listened. He knew you all processed things differently. He knew that you were never good at staying still, always rising early in the mornings even if you weren't working, cooking before he'd even said he was hungry. Siting still and thinking didn't work for you.

You took a deep breath and squeezed your eyes shut. It took you a couple moments to drag your eyelids open. “I'm gonna go sleep through hand over. I'll see you soon, okay?”

Jack didn't bother saying anything as he watched you go.

Your place was taken up by Robby. He looked down the way you'd walked.

“You had no right to ask her to stay,” Jack argued.

Robby chuckled low in his throat. “You have no right to be mad that she said yes. She's not yours anymore, Jack.”

“She's exhausted!” he grit.

“Then she wouldn't have said yes.”

“She wouldn't have said no, either!”

Robby grit his teeth and backed up a step. “Brother, I know you care about her. I'm only asking a couple hours to figure things out. She's a grown up. She knows what she's doing. I don't think you do.”

Robby walked off then, leaving Jack to it.

The worst part was, Jack knew he was right. He had no idea what he was doing.

It was two days later and Jack wasn't even supposed to be in.

It was only three in the afternoon, he had at least three more hours of snooze time, lying back in his bed, counting the flecks of paint in his ceiling- if he hadn't been out on the SWAT team.

A bunch of boys- punks really- were holding hostages for a total of six thousand dollars and a PS5. Considering the wars and losing his leg and the shoot outs it was a relative easy thing to deal with. Still, when the larger one of the trio took a run at him and landed his shoulder square in the chest, pushing Jack to the floor, it still hurt.

He'd pulled up his shirt, caught a glimpse at the bruising and thought it better safe than sorry. Best to get it checked out by your hands.

Any excuse really to feel your hands touch him.

“Hey,” he greeted, walking through the ambulance doors.

It was like walking into a morgue.

Dana and Javadi were at the nurses station, both turned to look at him in shock. “Jack, honey, what are you doing here?” she asked without her usual smile.

Jack clocked his head aside. “I took a tumble, thought I could get a look at, you know.” He was hoping she'd catch just who he wanted examining him without saying your name.

Javadi gasped at her side, hands flying over her mouth. “Oh my god.”

Jack looked to her. “What?”

He glanced around the Pitt.

Princess and Perlah were in the corner, talking in Tagalog quietly while glancing at him. Others were looking at him but Robby wasn't. He wasn't around. He counted: neither Samira, Whitaker, Santos or McKay were there.

Nor were you.

Dana slowed around the counter, lifting an arm to him. “Why don't we get some coffee? I can take a look at you-”

But Jack had already found trauma two, where all the doctors he was looking for were.

Robby stilled, gloved hands and gown covered in blood. At his side Samira was much the same, behind him Whitaker too. “Jack! Get out!”

It took him a minute to realise why everyone was looking at him, why the ED had felt colder than usual. Why you'd been missing from the floor.

The blood surrounding everything was yours.

“Jack!” Robby yelled.

You were on the gurney too still, so un-natural for you. Had he not been complaining you wouldn't take a break just forty-eight hours ago?

Jack looked to each face that was frozen, wondering what to do. Whether they should work on saving you or work on getting rid of him.

Jack made their choice for them, throwing off his jacket and pulling on latex gloves over the sweat of his palms. “Talk to me!” he yelled to anyone in the room.

Robby gave one un-impressed shake of his head and a groan. “We found her in the bathrooms. Stab wounds to the left chest, two to the belly, right and left upper quadrants.”

Jack was over you know, looking down.

You were pale, eyes dark and closed and not opening as he pressed a hand to the top of your head, feeling around just to be able to touch and know you were there. It was a relief to know as much as it was a nightmare to see you. He inhaled but it was shaky.

“She- she was stabbed?” he asked.

“We think it was a patient,” said Santos from behind him. “Or-or a relative of a patient, we don't know.”

Jack shook his head, brows creasing. “Oh god.”

“Pule ox eighty-two!” called out Donnie.

Jack snatched the central line tray away from Robby, lying it out and doing it all himself. He looked at you and saw a patient. For the sake of your life he was looking at you and cutting you open like he didn't love you. “Call- call someone,” he said.

“What?” asked Whitaker.

“Robby,” said Jack. “Call- call her emergency contact. A friend. A family, I don't know just get her someone! She-she doesn't like patients being alone so for gods sake, call someone!”

Robby was adamant to argue. It was evident in the lines in his face and the frown on his lips but Jack heard the sharp tug of elastic and the sound of him giving up.

He remembered how distraught you'd been when the little girl had no family with her. You weren't going to die- you weren't. But Jack wanted someone you trusted to be with you.

“BP's ninety over fifty!”

“Okay, c'mon, c'mon, honey,” said Jack as he carefully and skilfully intubated you, the bag going on. “Don't do this to me.”

Robby had pulled over the computer, logging in and typing away.

“Pulse ox is dropping!”

“Belly is distended,” said Whitaker. “Probably an intra-abdominal bleed!”

“Get four more units of O-neg in here!” ordered Jack.

“Pressure's down to sixty!” yelled Samira.

“Oh... god,” Robby uttered, staring intently at the computer screen.

There was a harsh beeping screaming through the room and everyone looked.

“We've lost her pulse!”

By the time Mohan had finished announcing it Jack had already climbed up, compressing down on your chest.

“No. No,” he said, harshly. “You are not doing this to me. You're not! Push a round of epi!”

There was another beeping that would haunt Jack for the rest of his life.

“She's in V-fib!”

Jack grunted. “Charge to one hundred!”

“Stop!” Robby called out. His head was hung low between his shoulders, one hand held up. “Stop.”

Jack did not stop pushing down to your chest. Over you, Donnie did not stop pressing down on the bag. Nobody was stopping. “Robby, What the fuck do you think you're doing?” he snapped.

Robby was pale, his eyes down cast as he turned his body to the room but didn't have the strength to look at anyone. He rested a hand on his hip, the other stretched out to the cart with the computer to steady himself. “Her chart. She's DNR.”

Jack didn't hear him, not right away. Or he did but didn't want to. He knew the letters DNR. Sometimes a mercy for the elderly that had lived a long, good life and wanted to go out on their terms. For the terminally ill who didn't want to live the rest of their life in pain.

You were young. You were healthy. You were not dying.

“What?” said McKay.

“You're kidding,” said Denis.

Robby shook his head, spinning the computer to them.

“Doctor Mohan!” Jack called, a silent plea for her to take his place. With steady hands, she did and Jack stumbled down next to Robby.

He stared at your name, your birthday. Your file sat there staring at him, the DNR mocking all the love he held for you.

“She's DNR, Jack, I'm sorry,” said Robby, a hand on his shoulder. “We have to respect that.”

His fingers moved around the keyboard till he highlighted the DNR.

You'd signed a DNR. You'd never said anything. Why had you signed a DNR?

Jack moved around on the keypad and did the only reasonable thing. Everyone behind him waited with bated breath.

Jack dragged his finger to the bin icon and deleted your file.

Robby stared at him in shock.

Jack looked away from the now empty computer screen and didn't so much as glance at Robby as he returned to your side. “Charge to one hundred.”

A wave of shock rippled through the doctors and nurses as Jack marched back to your side. There was disbelief that you, someone so young, would ever be a DNR. That Jack- who they'd all argue was a little bit more responsible than their own Doctor Robby- would erase a file!

Jack looked around at them all. “Charge to one hundred, now!”

Santos and Whitaker were the first to jump to attention, charging and handing over the panels.

“Clear!”

The waiting room was colder, quieter and whiter than Jack was accustom to. He was used to working down in the Pitt, with its white walls and ghosts but there was always noise. Always monitors going off and names being called, usually there were wails or cries of relief.

In the waiting room there was nothing.

Only lines and lines of chairs, a fish tank that last time he'd counter had a dozen or so goldfish and a clock that ticked by every second you lay under the knife.

Every second ticked away and nobody came to fetch him, to update him.

Every second Jack was left alone to guess why you'd have a DNR order.

The door creaked open and the only other waiting woman and child in the room looked up. As did Jack.

Robby walked in, boots shuffling, lips tilting up into an apologetic smile as he raised a hand to the mother and daughter. He found Jack. “Anything?”

He shook his head. He learnt almost two hours ago not to trust his voice from shaking anymore.

Robby settled in the chair next to Jack, stretching out his legs. Not to impose but just to press his boot next to Jack's and assure him he was there. It was a small move but none the less appreciated. “The guy was only came in for a headache,” he explained quietly in the silence. “We were waiting on a psych consult from some erratic behaviour-”

“- he should've been restrained,” said Jack, through eyes that were heavy in tears. He knew that most patients came in erratic, that they didn't always have to be tied down but he still he remembered your blood all over the trauma room, your blood on everyone's gloves.

Jack had to get a change of scrubs from the lockers just to get out of his clothes stained in your blood but as he looked down at his boots he found a spec of your blood.

“The guy had no infection, we've no idea how he got the knife. He ran after the attack. Word is he's at Westbridge being treated for schizophrenia.”

“How long?” Jack asked, a shake in his voice as he angled his head down to Robby. He gulped. “How long do you think she was lying there, alone, bleeding to death before anyone found her?”

Robby's own inhale was shaky, his body wracked with it. “I don't know.”

Jack's breath shuddered. He hunched over himself, resting his elbows on his knees.

Had you been conscious? Aware of the fact litres of your blood were leaving without being able to call for help. Were you trying to call for help but un-able to find your voice? The thought had Jack's stomach churning.

“What if-”

“Don't-” warned Robby.

“What if she doesn't make it?”

“She will.”

Jack tried to imagine a world without you but he couldn't. He tried to picture walking into work and not finding your face, smiling or on the verge of collapse. He imagined not being able to text you just to say he was thinking about you and for you to just reply, don't. He couldn't imagine the last photo he'd have of you on his phone was the morning you broke up with him, when you were sleeping and he thought you looked so beautiful and at peace that he had to capture the moment.

He wanted to tell you there'd be no peace on the other side. Not if you left him.

“Two stab wounds to the belly,” Jack sniffed. “Could've been the spleen.”

Robby didn't try to sugar coat it. He only nodded and listened. “It could.”

“It could've got the heart, she was stabbed in the chest.”

“Maybe.”

They sat in silence.

Jack saw Robby watch the clock for an entire minute.

“Do you know why?” asked Robby. “Why she had a DNR?”

Jack winced at the memory. The stamp standing out to him. It was offensive to him, that you'd do such a thing. He rested back in his chair. “No. She.... she never said anything about it, not to me.”

Robby nodded.

“She's healthy,” said Jack.

“Maybe... maybe it's something else,” Robby uttered.

Jack didn't need to ask what he might have meant. They knew it better than most.

Maybe it wasn't a want to die, but an indifference to live.

Yet, a DNR wasn't an indifference. It was a choice that if anything happened to you you'd never want to come back from it.

“I can't do it,” said Jack, looking down to his boots. He struggled to put the rest of it into words. “I can't... without her- I can't. And I want nothing more than for her to wake up. But... I'm so angry she's done this.”

There was grief, despair also behind that anger but the fury masked it.

“So am I,” said Robby. He was the closest thing to a mentor you had, someone to look out for you when Jack wasn't around. “When she wakes up-”

Jack shook his head. “We don't know that.”

Robby's body hunched over, focused on Jack. “When she gets out of that OR you get to argue with her first.”

Jack dared to hope in the silence that paraded between them. “You think she knows?” he asked. “That we brought her back?”

It seemed Robby didn't even have to think about it.

“She knows.”

There was another tick of the clock before the door opened again.

“Doctor Abbot.”

He shot up at the call of his name, pushing through the door with Robby following behind. Out in the hallway the lights radiated a ghostly white and Jack felt haunted already.

Garcia stood there, a mask lose around her neck.

“How-how is she?” he asked.

Garcia looked between them. “Recovering. There's a long road ahead of her, but she's stubborn. Far more stubborn than the two of you combined. She's going to make it.”

Jack let out a shudder of a breath of relief, his entire body curling. He felt the need to throw up all the words he'd wanted to say to you and hadn't. That coil in his stomach released and his last good leg trembled.

He felt Robby's hand on his shoulder and dully heard him and Garcia talk about what had gone on in the operating room but it was as if Jack was under water.

A score of surgeons started to wheel you out, pushing you into recovery.

Jack saw you in a new gown without blood, bandages around you. You were still asleep but that's all it was, a sleep. Your skin was still pale but there was the smallest bit of life in your cheeks. You moved so slow, or maybe that's how he was seeing you, trying to slow it down to memorise you.

When you disappeared Jack came back to with enough time to thank Garcia and rush off after you.

By the time you woke up Jack had gone through his mind a thousand times, trying to think of a way to approach the topic of you seemly wanting to die without coming off as angry and afraid as he felt.

You woke slowly with flutters of your eyes and your hand coming up to rub at the sleep only to be held down by the IV in your hand.

Jack jerked at the movement, claiming your hand and holding it in his, squeezing. “Hey. Hey, you're okay, it's okay,” he said, coaxing some comfort into you.

You turned to find him, eyes groggy as you blinked at him. Your lips parted, dry and chapped, just barely mumbling his name.

“Yeah, yeah, it's me,” he said with a watery smile as tears sprung to his eyes. “It's me, you're okay, you're safe.”

You glanced around the room in post-op. The blank walls with cards about various health hacks, at the monitors all around you, then down to yourself in a gown, the blanket that Jack had asked Robby to bring from his place gently tucked close to you. Selfishly, he'd wanted to keep just one thing when you left. You gulped. “What-what happened?”

Jack steadied himself. “You were- you were stabbed, one to the chest. Tw-two to the belly.”

You blinked, taking in the information. Slowly, your free hand rose and rubbed over your heart. “My-my chest-”

“Does it hurt?” asked Jack, ready to begrudgingly let go of your hand and rush to get someone.

You shook your head, closing your eyes and resting your head back in the cushions. “It... aches, a little.”

Jack knew the pain from other people winces. From the jutting of chests when they were shocked to the burn marks left there after. He'd seen your wince on hundreds of other patients, often described as a pain like being kicked in the chest.

He wondered if his heart breaking was a similar pain.

“Your- your heart stopped. We lost your pulse. We had to bring you back,” he said slowly, studying your face for any sign of grief. “We had to shock you.”

He waited.

You only slowly closed your eyes and opened them again. “Oh.” Your hand gave his a little squeeze.

Jack gulped down his troubles, shuffling closer and resting his arms on the bed, caressing your hand close to his chest. “We had to go against the DNR. Your DNR.”

You looked at him, a small knot of confusion between your brows before it quickly smoothed over. He watched you slowly avert your gaze, turning away to stare at the ceiling instead. You didn't cry- in rage or relief- you didn't say anything for a while leaving Jack to guess if you wanted him to bring you back.

“Why?” he asked, a crack in his voice. “Honey- why was there a DNR order on your file?” deep down he knew he should have been letting you rest, taking care of you and whispering soothing words but he couldn't see past the order on your file. He couldn't forget the way he watched your body lie still and bloody without breath and the dread that filled his chest when he found out you didn't want to be brought back.

You blinked a tear. “I don't know.”

Jack shuffled closer still, his knees digging into the bed. “Baby... honey, please. You-you can tell me,” he begged, holding the back of your hand to the stubble growing in stress. “Please, honey. I... I thought I was gonna lose you forever.”

His salty tears rolled onto the back of your hand and like it was acid, you cried, the sort that had your bottom lip jittering.

“I-I really don't know,” you uttered. “I guess I was young and-and stupid. I didn't want to die... didn't care much about living either. I just put there as a.... as....”

Jacks thumb slowly soothed your hand, resting it on his cheek as he listened. “As a what, honey?”

You glanced his way before your expression turned pain and you stared down at the blanket instead. “A failsafe. I didn't think anything would happen to me... but if I did I guessed it was life's way of telling me to be done.”

Jack took a deep breath that didn't reach deep in his lungs, it sat and burned. He knew it wasn't about him and he wasn't trying to make it so but he'd had a long time to think about life without you while waiting for you to come out of surgery.

Who else was he supposed to talk to if he didn't have you?

Who else was he supposed to laugh with if you weren't there?

Who else would take up all the love he had if you didn't have it?

“I did it ages ago, Jack, I swear, I forgot about it. Things were different, when-when I was with you. I just... I...”

He nodded, trying to hide his tears. He turned his head to wipe his cheek against his shoulder.

You squeezed his hand again.

“You didn't- you never said anything,” he mumbled.

You lips parted and hung open lamely. “I'm sorry.”

Jack shook his head again and looked at you with his best, un-stable, smile. “I just don't know what I would've done without you.”

Your finger tapped his hand, almost pityingly. “You'd have been okay.”

He scoffed. “Like fuck I would have,” he said, looking at you. “Do you realise how scared I was when I saw you in trauma? Do you realise what my life means without you? Nothing. Nothing, it means nothing.”

You frowned. “But I... I broke up with you?”

Jack shrugged. “So? You think I was gonna stay away long?”

You looked down at the blanket again, the one you'd picked up at a store- Jack couldn't even remember what store- he just remembered you'd seen it and said it would look good at home. At his. It was the first time you'd said his place as home and the first time he realised it could have been just that. “I dunno, I'm kind of a mess.”

Jack looked at you like you were the stars in the sky. “So am I, baby. That doesn't change anything.”

He thought to how sad you'd looked breaking up with him, like you didn't want to. All the extra shifts you'd been carrying, the silent pain. “You can't carry on like this. Being distracted, running from the pain. You have to... talk about it, face it.”

You swallowed, bitterly, as if even thinking about doing just that was the last thing you wanted to think about.

“If I hadn't been there today, I... I don't even want to think about what could've happened,” he admitted, quietly.

“How- how did you do it?” you asked. “Go about the DNR?”

Jack looked up sheepishly. “I deleted your file from the records.”

There was the smallest hint of a smirk on your lips.

“Gloria's not gonna like that,” you warned, pulling at his hand.

Jack chuckled to himself. “Gloria can kiss my ass.”

You laughed. It was small and pained but it was the first laugh from you Jack had heard in months.

He smiled at the sound.

“Jack?”

You pulled on his hand, beckoning him closer.

Jack hovered over you, checking where he could rest as to not hurt you. He rested his arm over yours, gently stroking back your hair while keeping your hand in his, resting it over your chest where the firm and promising beating of your heart lay.

“Thank you,” you said. “I don't... I don't think I'd want to have died. I know I act like it some times with... with all the work and the distance-”

Jack nodded along. It was a good start, a fresh one that he could build with you.

“But I want to be alive. With you.”

“Well that's good,” he said, tasting the own salt of his tears on his lips that were bitten down on in anxiety. “Because I want you to be alive. With or without me.”

You smiled up at him.

Jack stroked back your hair again. “But I'd prefer with.”

“So would I.”

Jack kissed you gently and slow, letting you set a pace of push him off. You did neither. Your lips puckered and were light against his but he grew solid then, an un-moving block at your side.

And you'd start again with each other, gentle and slow.

if you need help or related to the dark ideas in this fic, please talk to someone!