between my finger and my thumb

CHAPTER ONE — NINE ⋅˚₊‧ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅ completed ❪ 18.9k words ❫ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ act one follows the reluctant tension-filled evolution of jack abbott and a quiet, anxious morgue tech. it begins with exhaustion, mutual annoyance, and an unfortunate first impression. it ends ( temporarily ) in confessions, broken rules, and hands brushing too long by the trauma bay sink and a single earth shattering kiss. best read in descending order for understanding!

⟢ cold and predictable ⟢ cold storage ⟢ a cold shoulder

⟢ too cold to touch ⟢ cold cut ⟢ caught in the cold

⟢ cold hands ⟢ left out in the cold ⟢ let in from the cold

CHAPTER TEN — NINETEEN ⋅˚₊‧ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅ ongoing ❪ tbd words ❫ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ act two follows post-confession. you’ve admitted too much. jack’s heard too much. and yet neither of you knows what to do with the silence that follows. you keep pretending. he keeps showing up. the hospital keeps getting hotter. best read in descending order for understanding!

⟢ heat source morgue notes - 001

⟢ heat on contact morgue notes - 002

⟢ after the heat ⟢ heat in your hands

⟢ the sound of heat morgue notes - 003

⟢ held in heat ⟢ heat flash ( coming soon )

⟢ heat bitten ( coming soon ) morgue notes - 004

⟢ heated words ( coming soon ) morgue notes - 005

⟢ heat of the moment ( coming soon ) morgue notes - 006 morgue notes - 007 morgue notes - 008

˚₊‧ 𐙚 THE APPENDIX ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ NIGHT SHIFT — MORGUE NOTES

˚₊‧ 𐙚 *part one ˚₊‧ 𐙚 part two ˚₊‧ 𐙚 *part three ˚₊‧ 𐙚 *petnames from jack ˚₊‧ 𐙚 *petnames for jack

You sat in silence for a while, just watching Bill and Ava, trying to soak it all in. It would never be like that again and you were already dreading having to explain all of this to her. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” you whispered, fighting against the tears as you looked at Frank. He smiled softly at you before he came closer, kissing your forehead. 

Four years earlier

You knew he could tell when you were lying. He would know with one look at you that you were full of shit telling him that this was not working for you anymore. Whatever this between you was.

Joel and you had known each other since before the outbreak. You had started babysitting Sarah to earn some extra money while you were finishing you degree when she had just been nine years old and you had moved in next door.

You had been there on outbreak day. Next door, still living at home to take care of your sick father. You would never get the picture of his infected body lunging at you out of your head the night the world changed. 

You and Joel… You didn’t know what Joel and you were exactly. 

You loved Joel, you knew that. And you were pretty sure he loved you too. You just wanted… more. Most people did not allow themselves to love so openly anymore. And in Joel’s case? Losing Sarah had changed him. After fifteen years the man who had been Sarah’s father was gone, replaced by a man that still had his face, but was missing the warmth and comfort Joel Miller had once provided. 

You could see it in glimpses, whenever his hand would rest on your back when he passed by. When he fell asleep in your arms deep in the night. When he kissed your forehead before he headed out for work. 

Loving Joel Miller was easy. 

Being loved by him was close to impossible. 

You never really labelled your relationship, mostly because you did not think of it as important. You trusted him more than any other person on this planet. It’s why you ignored the way he had started looking at Tess. It’s why you did not question him when he stayed away at night. You ignored it all, opening your arms for him when he chose to come home to you, letting him in your bed just to feel close to him. To feel something. 

The jealousy was killing you slowly, making you reckless when you let him have his way with your body. 

But once you had missed your period the first month, and then the second, you knew that there was only one possible answer to your dilemma. You had never been late before. A ration card swapped for a twenty year old pregnancy test had your worst fears come true. 

You were pregnant with Joel Miller’s child. 

Fifteen years after you both buried his daughter. The daughter he never got over losing. 

You could already see his reaction. The eyes you loved so much empty before he would tell you to deal with it. 

You could not face his anger or disappointment, but mostly you could not face him not caring. So you packed your little belongings once he had left you in the morning, sneaking out of your bed without a word.

You did not leave a note, just fled the QZ, making your way over to Bill and Frank, hoping your friendship with Frank would make them take you in. 

Of course Bill hadn’t want to, but once he saw your stomach swell (and tasted the sweets you baked in his kitchen) he had put all his work into making the house next door into your home. 

“Mama, can we go get Strawbebbies?” you chuckled, holding her hand as you walked with her on your daily walk by the fence. 

“Strawberries, baby,” you tried to correct her. Ava pouted at you, her dark curls swinging in the wind, her brown eyes so much like her fathers. 

“That’s what I said!” she put her little hands on her hips and you smiled. 

She was definitely her father’s daughter.

“Okay, baby. Let’s get some Strawbebbies,” you picked her up, making her shriek with laughter. Once again you were glad you made the decision to come here. She could grow up like a child was supposed to. 

Even though now that Bill and Frank were gone it was getting kind of lonely. You had all enjoyed a last dinner together before Bill and Frank had tucked Ava in for one last time and read her a story. 

You had tried to keep the tears at bay as Bill had reminded you of the folder full of instructions of how to take care of things around here for you. 

After dinner you had walked them to the gate, opening the fence for them as they took their last walk. You had watched them until they had disappeared into the dark woods before you made your way back to their house. You had cleaned the dishes and tidied everything up, before with a heavy heart, you had turned off all the lights and closed the door behind you before you walked to your house, allowing yourself to cry yourself to sleep as you sat on the floor next to the bed of your daughter, watching her sleep. 

That night was almost three months ago. The days were getting shorter, the nights colder. You’d have enough firewood for this winter but come spring you would have to find a way to make more. 

You had just finished making breakfast for Ava when the motion detector alarmed you that someone was at the gate. You froze, telling Ava to eat her fruit salad before you made your way downstairs to check out what was happening. 

Your heart was pounding against your chest, once you noticed his face. 

Joel Miller. 

And a…. Teenage girl?

The gate swung open after he put in the code and you allowed yourself fifteen seconds to panic. You knew this day would come. The day after Bill and Frank had gone you had checked the basement, finding that Bill had put on 80’s music, the distress signal. 

Even though you had turned it off immediately deep down you knew he would show up at some point. 

You just did not think it would be that soon. 

You grabbed your gun, checking if it was loaded before you made your way back upstairs. You did not think you would need it, but it was better to be prepared. 

“Ava? Remember when Uncle Bill played hide and seek with you and showed you the best place to hide?” you asked, hiding the gun in the back of your jeans as you got to your kitchen. She nodded. 

“I want you to hide there until I come and get you,” you said. 

“Hide?” she asked. You nodded, kissing her cheek. 

“Take Sluggi with you,” you smiled. Sluggi was the stuffed plush slug Bill had gotten for her. She nodded and ran out of the kitchen and upstairs, You heard her door to her room close and took a deep breath, calming yourself. 

You knew this day would come. You knew one day you would have to face Joel Miller and you knew you would have to face his reaction. 

You never regretted your decision to leave. Life has definitely been better here. That did not mean you had just stopped loving him, no matter how much he had hurt you in the past. 

Stepping towards your front door you could see him walk towards Bill and Frank’s house. 

You closed your eyes, taking a calming breath before you opened the door and stepped out. 

His head snapped towards you once he heard the door opening, eyes widening for a split second before he pulled the girl that was with him behind his back. 

He was protecting her. 

“What are you doing here? Where are Bill and Frank?” he asked, his voice low. 

“They’re dead. Frank got worse and… he couldn’t…” you shook your head, lost of words. He just looked at you before he shook his head, trying to put in words what he wanted. 

“I just… We need some…” he took a deep breath, looking up at you, a million emotions playing over his face. 

“Are you hungry?” you asked the girl behind him. 

“Starving,” she replied and you smiled a little.

“There’s some fruit salad left on the kitchen counter if you want?” you asked. She stepped around Joel and he looked at her. 

“It’s safe. There’s… there’s no one there,” you lied. He gave her a nod before she walked past you into your home. 

It had been years since you’ve been alone with him. He did not really change. His hair maybe a little grayer, the lines around his mouth a little deeper, but he was still Joel Miller. 

“You left,” he said. 

“I did.”

“Why?”

You took a deep breath. You looked past him towards the house the girl had walked in, hoping your little girl continued to hide. Knowing her she had was working on her puzzle. She would be okay for a moment. 

You knew she was safe. You just needed a little moment alone. 

“You can have some fruit salad too. I am going to get some vegetables for dinner,“ you gave him a nod, before you turned around and walked towards your garden, ignoring him as he called after you. 

With a basket full of salad, cucumbers and some tomatoes you pushed the door of your house open. Joel was sitting on the stairs, across the door, already looking at you. 

The girl walked past the both of you towards the living room, an apple in her hand she was munching on. 

„This is so fucking weird,“ she shook her head and you snorted while Joel hissed at her. 

„What? It is weird,“ she said, her head turned towards him. 

You smiled a little as you looked at her, before you walked towards the kitchen, setting the basket down. You had to go up to check on Ava. 

And you had to talk to Joel.

You couldn’t hide her from him, even though you wanted to do nothing more than that. 

You took a deep breath when he walked into the kitchen. 

„Is it okay if Ellie takes a shower?“ He asked, knowing that there was warm water around town. 

„That’s her name. Ellie,“ he clarified.

„Oh. Of course, yeah,“ you nodded and Ellie walked in, snorting as she looked up at Joel. 

„You could use one too dude,“ she said and you had to fight hard against the grin as you watched the look on Joel’s face. 

You were about to offer her to show her to the bathroom when you heard a door upstairs click open, followed from little footsteps, your eyes widening. Joel frowned, his hand immediately searching for his gun, his arm putting Ellie behind himself. 

He raised his gun, taking a step forward as you ran around the counter, the knife you had put out to cut the salad now in your hand. 

„Gun down,“ you hissed and his head snapped to you, his eyes widening when he saw the knife in your hand. You stood in front of him. 

„I will not repeat myself, put the gun down, right now or I will put this knife in your thigh,“ you fingers flexed around the handle of the knife. The footsteps came closer as you kept eye contact with Joel until he slowly lowered his gun. You nodded at him once you saw him put the gun back to wherever it came from, then looked at Ellie who was looking at you with wide eyes, before you let the knife fall down to the floor just in time as Ava jumped the last step down, rounding the corner. 

„Potty?“ She whispered shyly, looking up at you with big eyes and you sighed, before you nodded, the people behind you forgotten as you picked your daughter up. You risked a glance at Joel as you turned towards the stairs, your daughter in your arms.

His lips parted as if he wanted to say something, before you practically ran up the stairs. 

„Who is the man mommy?“ Ava asked as she was finished, washing her hands like you taught her, making as many bubbles as possible as she rubbed her hands together. 

You sucked your bottom lip in as you watched her, your hand brushing over her soft hair. 

„That is an old Friend of mommy,“ you explained, and she nodded. 

„And the girl?“ She asked. 

„That is a friend of him, I think. I am not sure.“

She finished washing her hands and you handed her the towel, her little face full of concentration as she dried her hands, making you smile.

You got down on your knees in front of her, your hands on her shoulders. 

„Do you think she’s gonna play with me?“ She asked, hopeful.

„We can ask her,“ you said with a smile.

You weren’t prepared for the sight in your kitchen when you came downstairs. Joel was standing at the counter, the sleeves of his shirt rolled back as he cut the tomatoes with the knife you had threatened with him not only ten minutes ago. 

He didn’t look up as you entered the room, but Ellie did. You looked between them warily. 

„I’m Ava,“ your daughter chirped and you took a deep breath, Joel still not looking up. Ellie looked at him with a frown, before she sighed, rolling her eyes, and walked towards you.

„I’m Ellie,“ she said and smiled a little and bend down to her knees. Ava looked first at her, then at you. 

„Ellie, do you like sea turtles?“ You asked and the girl looked at you. 

„Uh…. I guess?“ She said and you smiled. 

„Because Ava loves them. Her whole room is full of them,“ you said and saw interest flicker in her eyes.

„Can I see?“ Ellie asked and you nodded. 

„You wanna show Ellie your sea turtles?“ You asked Ava and she nodded eagerly. 

„Awesome,“ Ellie said, taking Ava’s hand before you could offer to show them, the girls already walking upstairs towards Ava's room. 

Which left you alone in the kitchen with….

„How old is she?“ Joel asked, still not looking at you as you turned to face him. He grabbed the cucumber after he had used the knife to put the tomatoes in the bowl you had prepared for the salad, beginning to slice them. 

You took a deep breath. 

„She turned three last month,“ you said, watching him nod slowly, the knife hitting the cutting board the only noise in the room. 

„She has my eyes,“ he finally said and you sucked your bottom lip in, nervous. 

„Yeah she has,“ you agreed and he finally looked up at you, setting the knife down, his hands spread out on the counter, resting his whole weight on them. 

„Why didn’t you tell me?“ He asked, his voice quiet. 

„I didn’t know how. Joel…. You were barely acknowledging me outside of when you were inside of me. You spend all your time with Tess doing god knows what. How would you have reacted if I told you that I was pregnant? You never even acknowledged what we…“ you stoped yourself, shaking your head. 

„You should have told me. I could have…“ he stopped himself, searching for what to say and you looked at him, waiting. 

„I could have helped you. I would have….“ He shook his head, his hands shaking. 

„I’m gonna need a moment. Can you watch after Ellie?“ He asked and you nodded, confused and he nodded back before he walked past you and out of the house. 

You just didn’t think it would be almost two days before he got back. You were outside in Bill’s garden, letting the girls help you pick everything that was ready from the garden when you noticed him walk towards the house. 

You knew he was still inside the little locked up town Bill had made his safe haven. None of the alerts had went off, indicating he had left. And yeah you could have searched after him, but what good would it have done?

You’ve known him from almost twenty years, and you knew that he needed time to process certain things. 

He hadn’t talked to anyone in almost a year after the outbreak and what happened to Sarah. 

„Look what the cat dragged in,“ Ellie said as she spotted him and Ava perked up, her little head turning towards where Ellie was looking. 

Joel nodded at the girls before he looked at you. 

The sun was already setting and you had dinner prepared inside. 

„How about we have some dinner and then Ellie can read you some more of the story you started yesterday?“ You asked and both girl smiled at you. Ava ran past Joel who looked after her as she disappeared into the house, Ellie following her. 

„Next time you ditch me, at least tell me?“ She glared at him before she walked back into the house. He sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. 

„Can we talk?“ He asked. 

„After dinner?“ You said, getting up and grabbing the basked full of fresh vegetables. 

„Yeah. Yeah okay,“ he nodded and you walked towards the house, giving him a hesitant smile when he grabbed the basket from you and walked inside after you. 

It was two hours later that you found yourself on the left corner of your couch, your legs tucked under you, a glass of wine in your hand. 

Because this conversation needed some alcohol. 

And not only because of what you were about to talk about, but because of the man who was sitting on the other side of the couch, similar glass of wine in his hand. 

Because he looked so damn good.

He had showered while you put the girls to bed after dinner, the whole scene feeling so domestic. Like a dream you had many many times before when you were still dreaming. 

Dreaming of a normal future. 

Dreaming of a normal life. 

Dreaming about how it would feel like if Joel Miller loved you back. 

Because no matter how much he may have hurt you in the past, you just could not stop loving him. 

„I’m sorry,“ he whispered after a while and you turned your head to look at him, his eyes already on you. 

„I’m shit at talking about those things….“ He stopped.

„Those things meaning feelings?“ You helped and he groaned. 

„Yeah. Always sucked at it. Even before….“ 

He sighed. 

„Sarah would be so angry with me with how I treated you,“ he whispered and your eyes softened. You could count on one hand how often he had brought Sarah up ever since she died. 

And while you thought you could understand him in the past, you loved her like yours after all, now that you had Ava, you realised that loosing her would kill you. 

It would be something you could never come back from. 

But he did. 

„I never cheated on you. I know you thought I did, can’t blame your for it. Tess was just…. Fuck, how do I explain this?“ He sighed, his fingers rubbing over his chin. 

„I never deserved you. You’re too fucking good for me. For everyone really. Because even after the whole world went to shit, you still had some kindness left for everyone around you. I know how much you hated what we did in the beginning. And I hated myself for putting you through it. I hated myself for putting you through everything I did to you since the moment Sarah died…“ he said and you could see his eyes watering. 

„Can’t blame you for hating me and leaving. And not telling me about….“

„Joel….“ You said, setting your glass down and getting closer towards him, your hand reaching for his. Slowly he turned his hand so you could put yours in it, his fingers wrapping around your hand softly. 

„I’m not gonna lie and tell you that it’s okay. Cause I was hurting. You were hurting me. Every time you left in the morning without a word. Every time you passed out drunk and drugged after you came back. It was like living with a ghost and it was killing me. That was the reason I decided to leave when I found out. I could…. I couldn’t bring a child into this. And I knew I wanted her before I even met her. Even though it seems crazy to bring a child into this world. But… She was half you. And the thought that there was even the possibility that you didn’t wanted her….“ You took a deep breath. 

„Honestly? I can’t tell you how I would have reacted. I was… I was really fucked up in the weeks before you left. I was taking too many drugs. Drank too much. Got too fucking reckless. But that changed when you left,“ he said and squeezed your hand. 

„Not right away. It might have gotten worse first but… I got better. Not perfect, but better. And I… Fuck I even talked through some shit with someone. Made me realise I never even told you how much I love you,“ he said and you were pretty sure you stopped breathing as he looked at you, a small smile tilting his lips up. 

„Pretty sure I fell for you the first time you walked through my door wearing that pretty baby blue dress. Even though you were way too young for me. Still are. But…. I hope you knew, know. I really fucking love you,“ he said and you felt a tear running down your cheek. 

„Can you tell me about her? About Ava?“ He asked before you could form an answer to his confession. And so instead you told him. 

You told him about how you craved strawberries your whole pregnancy. How Bill traded one of his guns for the seeds from Tess.

You told him that she only slept through the night in the beginning, when Bill put her to sleep. 

You told her how much she reminded you of Sarah when she smiled at you. 

You told her how every time you looked at her you saw him. 

Hours went by where you two talked, you ending up leaning against Joel’s side, his arm around you. His fingers brushing over your arm, his other hand still holding yours. His lips brushing over your skin when he told you about how Ellie ended up at in his care. 

How he wanted to take her to Wyoming to search for his brother who might know how to find the fireflies. 

„Do you know where he is?“ You asked and he shrugged. 

„Not exactly. I know he messaged me from the Cody tower, so that’s where we’ll be going,“ he mumbled and you nodded. 

„We could take Bill’s truck,“ you said and he stilled. You looked up at him. 

„We?“ He asked and you chuckled, sitting yourself up so you were facing him, your hand now on his cheek. 

„You really think I’m gonna let you go now?“ You asked with a smile. 

And then you finally kissed him. 

It was decided that you would leave within the next 5 days, giving you enough time to make a list (You always made lists) of everything you had to pack. 

Which was a lot. Getting four people across the country on a trip that hopefully would be just like you remembered road trips to be, took a lot of supplies. 

And while you were preoccupied deciding which food was best to take, Joel had asked you if he could spend some time with Ava. He wanted to get to know her. And of course, you agreed. Watching him, Ellie and Ava walk towards the garage where they spend hours doing god knows what. 

It was almost dark outside when they walked back in, your heart melting as you watched Joel carry a very sleepy Ava inside who told you all about how seatbelts where very scary, something you would make sure to ask Joel about as you took her upstairs, putting her to bed. 

The days went by quickly like that.

Joel quickly became Ava’s favourite person which could have to do with the fact, that she was always allowed to sit on his shoulders. Ellie had been confused, yet delighted at the change in the grumpy man she had left the QZ with. 

He even got his Dad jokes out, making the teenager groan in mock annoyance throughout the day. Ellie also spend a lot of time with you, wanting to learn everything you offered to teach her. Starting from making protein bars for the trip down to how to properly braid her hair. 

Even though she preferred you doing it. 

You got the impression that she never really had anyone how just… listened to her or wanted to spend time with her. She told you she grew up in FEDRA School and that her mother had died while giving birth. 

She had no family and her best friend (though you got the impression Riley had been more than just a friend) had died not that long ago. 

That the only thing she had left in life was her purpose to save the world. Joel had told you that she was immune, Ellie showing you the healed scars to confirm it. 

„You know that that’s not the only thing you have left, right?“ You asked her, sitting on the porch next to her, enjoying one last sunset, watching Joel and Ava play soccer. Her little feet chasing after Joel with happy squeals. 

„What do you mean?“ Ellie asked and you looked at her with a smile. 

„You have us, Ellie. You think we just gonna let you go?“ You asked and she stubbornly shook her head. 

„I have to do this. It’s my purpose. I have to save the world,“ she said and looked away from you. 

„Are you saying this because you feel that way, or because someone told you so?“ You asked and she looked at you. 

„Because it should be your decision what to do and what not. And… think about it, even if they are somehow able to make a cure out of your blood, do you really think they will be able to make enough to make a vaccine for everyone? Who will decide who gets it? And if they end up deciding on giving it to everyone…. There are so many bad people out there. Do they deserve to be saved too?“ You asked and you could see her thinking about your words and you smiled softly at her. 

„Even if you don’t like hearing it, your a kid Ellie. You should grow up and live first before you make a decision like that. You don’t even know how they would get whatever they needed from your blood. If I remember correctly Cordyceps grow in the brain, what if they have to get into your brain to get out whatever they need?“ You said and her eyes widened. 

„But Marlene….“ She whispered and you reached over her, taking her hand. 

„I don’t know how well you know Marlene, but I’ve known her for more than ten years. I know how she manipulates people to get what she wants. You wouldn’t even notice it,“ you said and she sighed. 

„I’m gonna think about it,“ she said finally and you gave her a small smile. 

„That’s all I ask about. Now how about you get upstairs and take one last long hot shower before we are on the road for days?“ You asked and she nodded, standing up and turning away from you to walk inside the house before she turned back to you and hugged you quickly.

After saying good night to Ellie later you walked towards your daughters room, her little suitcase for her toys laying open next to her bed, waiting for Sluggi to be put into the next morning. She was already in bed, Joel sitting on the floor next to her, reading to her. 

You wished you could take a picture of this. Unfortunately the Polaroid camera had broken earlier this year. 

„Mommy!“ A tired Ava smiled as she saw you, her arms raised towards you. Joel looked up and smiled at you as you walked over, climbing into the bed behind your daughter, pulling her into your arms. 

„What story is Joel reading you?“ You asked. 

„The little mermaid,“ she said and you found Joel’s eyes. You had been thinking about it for the last days now. Telling her who Joel really is. He slipped into your life like the missing piece, the man you had fallen in love with all these years back seemingly falling right back into his role as being the best father there ever could be. 

So before you could talk yourself out of it you said

„Your sister loved that one too.“

Joel gulped, his eyes growing sad for a moment, before he looked at Ava. 

„I have a sister?“ She asked you, her eyes big.

„Mmmh…. Her name was Sarah. She watched the movie every single night before she went to bed,“ you explained and Ava pursed her lips in an ooooh motion. 

„There was a movie?“ She asked in awe.

„Oh yeah there was. And a cassette with the music. Can’t remember how often she made me listen to it“ Joel said and smiled softly. 

„Where is Sarah?“ Ava asked and your smile went sad. 

„She’s where Uncle Bill and Uncle Frank are. Watching over us,“ you explained and she hummed. 

„I wish I could hug her,“ she whispered and you nodded, tears in your eyes, squeezing her against your chest, your hand reaching out Joel’s hand finding yours as you kissed her forehead, looking at him who had tears in his eyes. 

„Me too baby. Me too,“ you whispered before taking a deep breath.

„You know Joel is her daddy,“ you finally said and she looked at you. 

„He is?“ She asked and you nodded. 

„I bet he is the best daddy,“ she sighed and you chuckled at Joel’s cheeks turning pink. 

„Yeah he is. What would you say if I tell you that Joel is your daddy too?“ You asked and her big eyes looked at you first and then her head turned towards Joel. 

„My daddy?“ She asked and both you and Joel nodded with a smile, her smile getting wider, before she jawned.

„I always wanted a daddy,“ she whispered before her eyes dropped close. 

You were walking down the stairs to Bill's basement after you showered, finding Joel checking if he could manage to take any more guns. The supplies had all been packed into the truck already, but he just couldn’t bring himself to leave anything of value behind. 

He looked up when he heard your footsteps, giving you a small smile. 

Walking over to him you were surprised when he reached for you, pulling you into his lap, one of his arms looped around you, his other hand on your cheek, his fingers brushing over your skin. 

„I didn’t know you were gonna tell her,“ he whispered and you smiled. 

„She deserves to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell her sooner. If I would have stayed you wouldn’t have missed so much…“ he stopped you by kissing you softly. 

„None of that. We both know I would have fucked this up. I would have said some really fucked up things and hurt you even more. So, there’s nothing you have to be sorry for, okay?“ He looked at you, his eyes pleading. 

You released a long breath, bringing both of your arms up to cross behind his neck. 

„Have I told you lately that I love you, Joel Miller?“ You whispered with a small smile that he mirrored. 

„Don’t think so. But I don’t blame you, I gotta say it a lot more often than you to make up for all the years I didn’t tell you. I do love hearing it though. Love you,“ he mumbled before he kissed you again. His lips moving on top of yours slowly, his hand tilting your head up a little so he could deepen the kiss. 

With a little sigh you parted your lips for him, his tongue dipping into your mouth, a deep moan coming from him, his arm pulling you closer against him. 

There had been lots of making out in the last days, stolen kisses when the girls weren’t in the room, secret touches under the table while you had dinner. 

But you haven’t slept together. 

And you were ready. 

„Joel,“ you mumbled, parting from his lips. He hummed, his lips running down your jaw. 

„We aren’t gonna be alone for a while,“ you whimpered, your head tilting up to give his wandering lips some more space. 

„What are you proposing?“ He asked, playfully nibbling on your neck. 

„I’m proposing that you fuck me, Miller. Right here,“ you gasped when you felt his other hand slip between your legs. 

„Right here?“ He asked, his fingers over the seam of your slick panties. 

„Mmmmhh….“ You closed your eyes, biting your lip when he pushed the fabric to the side, his fingers dipping between you slick folds, lazily teasing you. 

„All that for me?“ He asked and you opened your eyes, crashing your lips against his. 

„It’s been almost four years Joel. Please don’t tease me,“ you whined and his eyes softened before he picked you up and set you down on the table behind him. Within the next minutes you were both naked, your hands in his hair as you kissed him as he stood between your parted legs, the heavy weight of his cock resting against your stomach. 

„Gonna need to prepare you,“ he hummed, his hands on your ass. You shook your head. 

„Please just fuck me. You know I can take it,“ you whined, one of your hands wrapping around his cock, making him hiss. He groaned, sucking your bottom lip between his before he slapped your hand away, his dark eyes fixed on yours as he held his hand out to you. Waiting. 

Feeling your whole body heat up you spit in his hand and the left corner of his mouth twitched. 

„My good girl,“ he praised you and you couldn’t stop whimpering. 

He brought his hand down to wrap it around his cock, coating it in your saliva, before he lined himself up. You had dripped on the table you were sitting on, more than ready to take him. 

„I love you,“ he whispered and you looked at him with a soft smile, your lips parting when he slowly pushed his cock into you. Filling you inch by inch, both of you starring into each others eyes. 

„Missed this,“ you moaned. 

„Missed you,“ you crossed your legs behind him, giving him a little push, his cock finally filing you up completely. 

„Fucking Perfect,“ he groaned kissing you again before he began to move, pumping into you slowly. 

You let yourself fall back down against the table, stretching your arms over your head, your back arching, your tits moving every time Joel fucked into you. 

He licked his fingers, bringing it down between your legs, his thrusts getting harder as he rubbed your clit, your pussy clenching around him. 

„Yes… Baby… Just like that….“ You moaned, your hands coming down to play with your tits. 

„You gonna be a good girl and cum for me?“ He asked, moving faster, his skin slapping against yours every time he moved.

Nodding, you moaned, your eyes rolling back as you came, your whole body shaking as he fucked you through it. 

„Shit….“ He groaned, both of his hands now coming to rest on either side of you as he leaned down, fucking into you deeply, chasing his own orgasm. 

„Want you to cum again,“ he grunted, kissing you, drilling his cock into you, the whole table moving over the floor. 

„Want you to cum inside me. Let me feel you,“ you whimpered, your hands in his hair, trying to meet his thrusts. 

„Fuck that is…. Not a good idea….“ He laughed and you grinned. 

„I don’t care. Wanna feel you. Cum for me, Joel. Cum inside me,“ you whispered and he groaned, fucking into you a half dozen times more before you felt him twitch inside of you, filling you, making you cum for a second time. 

Both out of breath you looked at each other before Joel leant down and kissed you. 

„Sleep in bed with me?“ You hummed against his lips. 

„As long as you let me,“ he answered against your lips before you both sneaked upstairs. 

Against all odds after six days of a rather boring trip across the country you reached the radio tower in Cody. And two days later a group patrol of people on horses found you, asking you all kinds of questions before a man pulled the bandana that had been covering his face down, revealing Tommy Miller in the flesh. 

By now you were living in Jackson for almost a year. 

Ellie had decided to stay and live her life, the constant threat of someone looking for her still on the horizon, but it was decided that the town was not in immediate danger. Patrols kept an eye out for fireflies, but they haven’t spotted anyone. 

You were living a happy life all things considered. 

Ava went to pre school, Ellie went to normal school. They really became sisters in the last year, spending a lot of time together. 

Even though Ellie started to spend more and more time with a girl called Dina you suspected was more than just a friend. 

Joel was always working on improving the house. 

He had changed the most, back to the man he had been before the outbreak. Yes, he still was the protector when he needed to be, but most of the time he was just Joel. Your husband. 

„Yellow?“ He asked, holding the can of paint up.

You walked over to him with a smile, nodding.

„It’s a happy colour. I like happy colours,“ you shrugged and he chuckled, setting the can down on the floor before he put his arms around you, pulling you against his chest.

One of his hands came to rest on your growing belly, the baby inside kicking up a storm as if it could sense their dads hand, making you both smile. 

„Still think it’s gonna be a girl?“ You asked and he nodded, before he kissed you softly. 

you're immediately fussy and grumpy at being woken up just to be pawed at. "nooo," you grumble.

he hums with amusement at that whining, the way you sound all groggy and bitchy and adorable. he knows you can get cranky when he wakes you up so early, but he can't resist the urge to rile you up right now. he squeezes the bare skin of your side, the one that he knows is a little ticklish. "come on, princess, wake up for daddy."

"whyyy?" you whine, burying your face in his neck as your legs kick in frustration.

"'cause daddy said so," he rumbles against your ear before nipping gently at the shell of it with his teeth. "he wants your sweet pussy right now."

"why now?" you whine again, petulant and overtired as you writhe in his arms.

"because i've been waiting for this all night," he seethes, his patience with your protests growing thin. his hand drags up to pinch at the soft curve of your ass through the fabric of your panties before adding gruffly: "... and 'cause i know my little one likes it when her daddy tells her what to do."

and it's true. you can't really deny that at all, that you're loving this as much as he is. "... okay," you acquiesce limply.

"good girl," jack practically growls, triumphant and impatient, his fingers hooking into the waistband of your panties and yanking them down your thighs. "that wasn't so hard now, was it? bein' all bitchy for no reason, lemme show you what i want." his palm smacks against your bare ass once, making you yelp, before sliding between your thighs with a deep groan.

"goddamn," he mutters as his thumb drags between your dripping folds, the wet squelch louder somehow in the dim room. "why the fuck were you bein' such a brat n puttin' up a fight? you're beggin' for me."

"daddy," you whine, overstimulated already.

"yeah?" jack rasps, watching your face closely as he finds your clit with his thumb, rubbing slow circles over that sweet little spot. "you like it when daddy touches you like this? when i tease my angel 'til she's all messy and needy?"

you huff, kicking against the mattress in indignation. "i'm tired!"

your little kicks just make his grip on you tighten. "yeah, you're tired," he agrees as the edge in his voice darkens into a hypnotic command. "but you're gonna be a good girl and make daddy feel good right now. okay, baby?"

you huff again irritably, feeling a protest form in your throat. jack knows that sound, the way your shoulders tense as you get frustrated, the way your pretty little mouth starts to pout out into a sulk. his hand tightens on your hip.

"hey," he snaps, his tone suddenly rougher, more authoritative. "i asked you a question, little one. you gonna be a good girl for daddy and let him have that sweet pussy?"

"...yeah," you mumble back reluctantly, and that's enough for him. his thumb immediately drags down your slit and nudges at your fluttering cunt, just teasing, before sliding back up to your throbbing clit.

"there's my girl," he mutters as he feels just how wet and sensitive you are for him. his other hand grips your chin to tilt your face up toward his. his gaze is dark, prideful. "now keep them pretty eyes on daddy while i make 'em leak."

jack loves the way you look at him with those wide eyes, all needy and submissive and obedient. he's obsessed with you. your hips begin to rock into his touch, and when you let out those soft, sleepy, shy moans of not daddy, but dada, he grins.

"you gonna make a mess for dada?" he coos, his thumb still circling your achy clit as his eyes burn into yours. he is so madly in love. he leans in close, his lips so close to yours that his breath brushes against your mouth as he speaks. "you gonna make dada proud, little one?"

your whole body shivers. he's making you feel so good that all you're capable of replying is a whimpered "mmmn..."

he lets out a huff of a breath that's almost a laugh as his thumb speeds up, mercifully bringing you closer to your orgasm.

"use your words, baby," he murmurs, the roughness gone from his voice, replaced by something more tender as your body start to shake. "tell dada if you're gonna make him proud."

Originally, you'd planned to spend the night on the couch with your tabby cat, Brutus (named in such a way so when he inevitably destroyed your furniture or knocked your favorite mug off the table you could at least find some whimsy in crying "Et tu, Brute?" theatrically), and a movie that you'd heard would make you cry. You'd been meaning to cry for a while now, but hadn't been able to find the time. You supposed you could push it to another night, depending on how long you ended up being in the hospital tonight.

You hummed along to the playlist you'd started on your speaker as you prepared a blood smear from the sample you'd been called in for.

Jack Abbot was the attending on shift in the ED this evening. You had only met him in person once or twice, but you were glad it was him and not Michael. Or, Robby, it seemed he was going by these days. You hadn't yet run into him since being back at PTMC, but you were not eager to reminisce with him, especially since it was becoming more and more clear that he had no recollection of you.

It shouldn't have bothered you so much. It had been two med school rotations and one extremely disappointing hookup when you'd both gotten too drunk after shift. But he had been instrumental in you picking pathology for residency. At the time, the decision had been full of complicated emotions, resentment, a complete misunderstanding of who you were and what you wanted. But now, well, you thought maybe you owed him your gratitude.

Your phone pinged while you were prepping your slides and you eyed it and found it was a notification from Hinge.

From Robby.

You inhaled slowly and looked away as your screen went dark. You had no idea what the fuck you were doing, chatting with Robby on a dating site. You told yourself you just were curious when your thumb tapped the heart on his profile. Middle aged looked really really good on him, you wouldn't deny that, but you still saw the baby faced, skinny rod of a med student when you looked at him. And when he'd first initiated the chat, you realized very quickly he didn't remember you.

You found yourself preening under his attention, how he complimented your photos and your mind through conversations. The both of you established early on that you didn't want to discuss work beyond confirming that you were both doctors working in PTMC. But you repeatedly dodged his attempts to meet up and grab a drink. You weren't sure how long you could keep it all up without admitting that you knew him already. Intimately, even.

You suspected soon enough, he'd get tired of trying to get you to meet up with him and move on to the next thing. But thus far, he'd been persistent, going on weeks now.

But you didn't have time for him right now so you turned your attention back to your slides. Slipping one beneath the microscope, you focused the knobs slowly, letting your world narrow to the blood sample, the blood cells.

This was why you loved your job. How easy it was to slip outside yourself and into whatever sample you were looking at. There was always a clear answer hiding in the shape of the cells, just beneath the surface. There was always a clear path to diagnosis, to treatment, to healing. Everything made perfect sense under the light of a microscope.

And this sample, as always, made perfect sense after just a few minutes. You sighed, "Shit."

You couldn't risk just sending this back via the online portal for whenever the doctor deigned to check the chart next so you picked up the phone. It rang and rang and rang.

You shook your head and put the phone back on the receiver. As quickly as possible, you documented the chart, still trying to get ahold of someone, but no one was picking up the phone. What the fuck was going on down there?

Impatient, you decided to head down yourself after saving your changes in the chart. You walked briskly towards the elevators, rocked on your heels as you waited.

The second the elevator doors opened you were knocked practically on your ass by the noise and the chaos of the ED. It was rare you came down here at all and every time you did it felt like being thrown back to med school rotations. Suddenly you were again the floundering med student constantly being expected to be on the lookout for the daggers of the other students as well as practice medicine efficiently.

But you were an adult now, not the twenty year old naive kid genius walking around on wobbly legs. Pushing your shoulders back, you shook it off and headed for the hub. Luckily, Dr. Abbot was right there.

"Your phones not working down here or something?" You asked without preamble, hands on your hips.

Abbot looked up at you slowly and then over to the phone. You followed his gaze and saw that the phone was lying off the receiver, "Ah, shit, sorry." He put the receiver back on the hook, "What could be so urgent it coaxes path from the comforts of the cave upstairs?"

You smirked, "Your patient has TTP."

He sighed and picked up an iPad, "Fuck," he muttered when he pulled up the chart you'd just updated, "Okay, um," He shook his head, "I don't think we have the resources down here to start TPE."

You frowned, "Okay… Admit to ICU, then."

He laughed, "Yeah, right. Good luck getting the charge to agree to admit a patient on a Saturday night."

You bit your lip, and then sighed, "Alright, give me… fifteen minutes and I'll be back down here with an apheresis machine, I'll run it."

He raised his eyebrows, "Really? You'd do that?"

You shrugged, "I could run apheresis in my sleep."

Slowly Abbot nodded and smirked at you, "Alright, great. Thank you."

Later, you sat in the hub of the emergency department after setting up the patient for TPE and finally opened your messages from Michael—Robby, you corrected yourself.

What's my favorite homebody up to this evening? Any way I can convince you to grab a drink?

You stifled a smirk and typed back, I'm on call tonight. Sorry, cowboy.

"Hey," You looked up to see Abbot leaning over the counter to look at you, "Seriously, thank you for staying."

"No problem," You eyed the chaos around you, "Seemed like you guys could use the help."

"Always." He laughed and nodded, "Listen, some of us in the ED are getting together for a poker night next Friday, would you… be interested in coming?"

You blinked up at him, unsure of what to make of the offer. Was he flirting or just being nice? You'd heard that Jack Abbot flirted with everyone, so likely he didn't mean anything by it at all. While you were trying to figure it out, your phone pinged again. Robby. You flipped your phone facedown on the workstation desk.

"Why not?" You said and smiled up at him.

"Great," He unlocked his phone and handed it to you, "Here, put your number in and I'll text you the details."

Having entered your information, you returned his phone to him and then he was off. Sighing, you turned back to your phone to open Robby's latest message.

They're working you too hard. I thought path was supposed to be easy?

You rolled your eyes at this, but were unsurprised. For as much as you remembered him complaining about surgeons during your rotations, that they had a superiority complex, he had the same issues. And so had you, once upon a time, but you had grown out of it.

Having a work-life balance doesn't make the whole specialty "easy."

Almost immediately, a reply was on your phone: Sorry, I didn't mean to diminish your specialty. The ED would cease to function without collaboration from path, I know that. And your diagnoses have saved our asses on multiple occasions when we were busy chasing zebras.

Well. That was new. An apology without hesitation that seemed to drip through with humility and sincerity.

Though, it also was not lost on you that he had incentive to be nicer to you in the context of a dating app considering he'd been trying to fuck you for the last few weeks.

Apology accepted, you texted back, I know your true frustration lies with the inability to have your way with me tonight. You stifled a smile after hitting send. It reminded you of being in college, the casual flirtation. You hadn't had time for this sort of thing in med school or residency, doing your best to just survive. Then, when you were finally an attending, you were so burnt out you remembered practically sleep walking through the first couple of years. By the time that was all over, you felt so out of practice you'd mostly isolated yourself until now.

You'd had a few one night stands since creating a Hinge profile, but since you and Robby had begun chatting he had taken up all of your mental space. This irritated you greatly on top of the fact that he didn't seem to remember you.

And here I thought I was doing an excellent job at concealing my desperation.

You huffed a laugh and shook your head, Could you show me just how desperate you are for me?

You fidgeted with your fingers anxiously as you waited for his response, wondering for just a few moments if you had been too brazen, too forward—The phone pinged.

You slid open your phone and felt lightheaded as you took in the photo he'd sent you. His fist was wrapped around the considerable length of his very erect cock, dark tufts of hair at the base of his fist. You had both been pretty drunk the time you'd hooked up in the darkness of Robby's messy studio apartment and as he'd had trouble maintaining an erection that night, you'd never gotten a good look at it. Not like this.

There was a lump in your throat and you swallowed hard as another message came through: The photos you sent in that pretty lingerie set will have to do for tonight.

You felt your cheeks heat and blinked the steamy feeling from your eyes. Locking your phone, you placed it face down in front of you and stared off into the distance for a while.

And after a minute or so of this, when your galloping heart slowed and lucid thinking began to ease its way behind your eyes again, you had only a single thought:

Oh, no.

***

An unseasonable heat wave had domed around Pittsburgh the last couple of days and so when Robby headed to Jack's place for poker night that Friday, the sun had gone down, but the residual heat warmed him enough that he didn't need a jacket.

He had been waffling back and forth on whether or not to skip the night all together. The week had been crushing him, slowly, a boulder rolling incremently into a brick wall, an unstoppable force.

There had been a few patients they'd lost that really stuck with him this week. They'd been short on residents which meant he'd had to do a bit more hands on care than usual.

And more and more when he found things growing particularly dark, he'd reach for you. You, with your gorgeous smile and silly cat and constant, almost oppressive optimism.

He'd tease you about it, but really he admired it. How no matter how bleak of a day you had, he had, you'd find a way to turn it on its head.

Sure, you'd had to stage the breast cancer of a woman in her thirties and the news wasn't good, but you'd gotten to hold her hand and tell her about all the ground breaking treatment that was available to her. Sure, you'd cried about her for days later, but she'd sent you a card the next week thanking you for the simple act of holding her hand. Of showing her kindness. And maybe you'd get to see her through to remission as you'd done for countless others.

That was your favorite part, you'd tell him. Diagnosing sucked, but treatment plans and seeing people through to the other side, sliding biopsies under your microscope to see healthy tissue. Remission.

"That's why you're so miserable down there," You'd told him, "You mostly see people on their worst days, you don't get to celebrate with them when they make it to recovery. You don't get to see the returns."

He craved your perspective, wanted desperately to have it himself. But he wasn't sure it was possible for him the way it was for you. With your nine to five and weekends off and time to date—though apparently, not time for him.

He had thought at first that you were simply waiting him out, waiting to see if he'd lose interest. You'd been open about the fact that your time on dating apps had largely led you to become disillusioned with the possibility of a real, fulfilling relationship. He felt the same, mostly. The only thing the apps had ever been good for was a night or two to fill the oppressive silence of his house.

But he continued trying with you, which had led to the two of you sexting and him being as open as he could remember being in recent years about how badly he wanted someone. Still, you avoided him.

He'd texted you earlier to see if you were around tonight and you had left him on read, so begrudgingly, he'd be going to poker night instead. Anything other than being alone with his thoughts tonight after they'd lost a woman with eclampsia and her baby.

But when he walked into Jack's living room, a beer in hand, he was stunned to see you sitting on the couch, immersed in conversation with Mckay and Al Hashimi.

Your eyes darted to his and then quickly away, but he saw the way your eyes widened and your chest swelled. You didn't know he was going to be there.

"Hey man, you made it," Jack clapped Robby on the shoulder, "Glad you came."

But Robby couldn't tear his eyes off you, "You invited path?"

Jack followed his gaze, "Oh, yeah, she helped us out last weekend with a TTP patient. Figured it was only polite. Honestly, I didn't think she'd come. Why, do you know her?"

With effort, Robby tore his eyes away from you, "Wha—? Oh, no. No more than you do, you know, the rare occasion path comes down."

Jack narrowed his eyes at Robby, "Right," he said slowly, "Okay. Well, can I interest you in a round of Blackjack?"

Robby chuckled and shook his head, "No thank you, learned my lesson years ago not to play cards with you."

Jack smirked and watched as Robby's gaze flitted back to you, "I think she's too well adjusted for you."

Robby's head whipped back around, a hot flush crawling up his neck, "Excuse me?" He said through nervous laughter.

Jack shrugged, "I'm just saying, she seems like she wouldn't tolerate your bullshit and you'd probably get bored at how… normal she is."

Robby blinked at him, "Who said I'm interested?"

Jack rolled his eyes, "Please, don't insult me, brother. The last time I saw you look at a woman like that was the first time you met Heather. And you'll recall she also was unwilling to put up with your bullshit."

He knew Jack was mostly being playful, but it stung nonetheless, the thought that someone else besides himself thought he was incapable of being in a healthy and loving relationship. That no one in their right mind could want to stay with him.

For just a second he was eight years old again wondering if he was such a terrible, rotten son that it'd pushed his mother to end her own life—The thought rushed up against the dam in his brain and just as quickly receded. He wouldn't think about that. Not now. Not here.

He forced a smile for Jack, "You don't need to remind me. I remember."

After a moment Jack squeezed his shoulders, "But what do I know, hm? Go shoot your shot."

Robby rolled his eyes, "You have far too many Gen Z staff on your shift."

But still, Robby wandered over to you eventually, surprised to find that he was a bit nervous, "Is this why you didn't answer my text earlier?" He asked quietly as he sat down.

You turned just a bit towards him, "I didn't think you'd be here, honestly. It doesn't seem like your scene."

He laughed, "Meaning?"

"Meaning it's too… jovial," You teased.

He ran a hand over the back of his head, "Well, I'm glad I came. It's nice to finally meet you in person."

You grimaced, "Yeah, we've met before, Michael."

He frowned and turned fully to you, "What're you—? No we haven't."

You nodded slowly, "We have, yeah. We went to med school together. Did rotations together."

For a moment he paused and tilted his head, turned your name over in his head, "No… No, you're too young to have gone to med school with me—" His eyes caught on your wrist as your fingers tapped lightly against the glass of your beer bottle. A tattoo in looping scroll that read As you wish. With a dagger beneath the words. The feeling of nostalgia almost violently overtook him. There was only one other woman he'd ever met who had that tattoo of a quote from The Princess Bride in that exact spot.

"Bambi?" He asked, sounding almost breathless.

You wrinkled your nose and turned away from him, "I always hated that nickname."

But Robby couldn't tear his eyes off you. There were a million thoughts running through his head as suddenly images flashed behind his eyes, the two of you twenty years younger and constantly at each other's throats, desperate to prove you were better than the other. But the first thought that he blurted out of his mouth was, "You went into pathology?"

You laughed and shook your head, "I knew you didn't mean it when you said you respected my specialty—"

"That's not what I meant—"

"What else could you have meant by the condescension dripping from your tone right now?"

He opened and closed his mouth before hanging his head, "I'm just… Surprised, is all. You were… a force in the ER. You could have had your pick of any emergency medicine residency in the country, surely."

You stared ahead for a few moments, tightlipped and eyes glossy, "Emergency medicine nearly burned me out just at rotations, I imagine I would have been… a shell of myself had I stayed. And at the time, you certainly agreed."

He huffed in indignation, "That is categorically false, I thought you were brilliant."

"Well you sure had a funny way of showing it. Talking over me, talking down to me in front of attendings, basically celebrating every mistake I made—"

"Everyone else practically worshiped you. I was just trying to make sure I wasn't overlooked. You know how cutthroat it was down there—"

"Exactly," You nodded, "Which is why I'm actually grateful for the way you treated me. It wore me down enough that I knew if I couldn't get through even a rotation or two, there was no way I'd make it through a residency. Not in that environment."

He pressed his lips together and looked down at his hands, "Look, I'm… I apologize… For how I spoke to you back then, I was a stupid kid, I was just trying to survive as best I knew how. It's not an excuse, I just. I'm sorry."

You didn't seem upset as you looked at him, eyes gently passing over his face. You lifted the beer bottle to your lips and he watched the lights refract off the glass.

"It's fine," You said eventually, "You were far from the only reason I went into path."

"Why didn't you say anything? When we—When we started talking? Why didn't you tell me?"

You shrugged, "I thought maybe you'd forgotten me altogether. Or worse, that remembering me would mean you'd no longer be interested."

You carefully avoided looking at him when you said this, but screwed your mouth down to the side as you chewed your cheek.

Robby sat back and took a sip from his own beer, "It seems like I should have been the one to worry about that. Since I was the one who treated you so horribly."

You cleared your throat and turned back towards him. He was struck again by a sense of nostalgia at the intensity in your gaze. He had nicknamed you Bambi all those years ago because of your skittishness, the way that everything seemed to terrify you. Despite how smart you were and how clearly gifted a doctor you would become, you were easily startled and easily overwhelmed by the din of the emergency room. It hadn't been all that uncommon to find you in the ambulance bay after a hard case, slouched on the ground against the wall, hands trembling as they cradled your face.

But it had also been the intensity in your eyes, how every emotion was always so clearly reflected in their glossy pools, that had been the real inspiration behind the nickname. He had never intended it to be cruel, though it appeared that's how you'd interpreted it. It was something he had admired about you, the ease with which you'd connected with your patients because the empathy was so clear on your face. Of course, he had never told you that. Afraid to let on to any perceived weakness around you.

He suspected, though, that you hated the nickname because he had also used it as a weapon against your naivete. He remembered the ways he'd called attention to your age and when the Bambi nickname had spread there had been no way for you to escape it.

Now, though, your eyes were glossy again and he felt bowled over by the way you stared at him, a wistfulness in your expression, "Are you actually sorry or is it just that you think I'm hot now?"

He was so surprised by your question, he gave out a short laugh, "Please, I thought you were hot then, too."

You snorted, "Well, now I know you're lying."

"The nickname Bambi, if nothing else, implies that I found you adorable at the very least."

You rolled your eyes, "Even if I agreed with that assessment—which I don't—it was very clear from that one time we slept together that you were uninterested—"

"Woah—woah—woah— back up. When we slept together?"

You looked at him blankly for a few moments, "Oh my God," You said quickly, seemingly embarrassed as you looked away from him, "You don't remember. It was so bad you don't even remember."

Robby's brain was still working overtime to catch up with you, "Hold on—I would remember sleeping with you."

You stood up from the couch, and he remembered this about you—You had been spooked, you were about to dart back into the woods, never to be seen again. But he stood at the same time, towering above you, "Don't go," he said quietly, "whatever happened was twenty something years ago, it doesn't mean anything—"

"It does to me." You said firmly, "Excuse me," And you forced your way past him.

Robby watched you walk away for a moment, then turned his head to see Jack shaking his head, a slight smirk on his face. A very blatant I told you so if Robby'd ever seen one.

"Shit," Robby muttered under his breath and hung his head.

***

TWENTY SOMETHING YEARS AGO

Michael was being very touchy that evening and overly kind, paying for your drinks and wrapping an arm around you in the booth. It was making you shy. Despite the way he talked to you, at you, over you, there were cases every now and then when you caught him looking at you with what looked like awe or reverence. But just as quickly, it'd dissipate and you'd be left wondering if you'd imagined it.

"Let me walk you home," he said, slurring only a little, his words just slightly stumbling into one another like dominos. He wrapped your jacket around your shoulders as he spoke.

"I'm fine," You smiled at him, "I think you're the one who needs to be walked home."

He held up his hands in mock surrender, a boyish grin on his face, "You got me. I do need to be chaperoned home if you would be so kind."

You rolled your eyes, but secretly you were pleased. You wanted to be his friend, wanted him to respect you so you didn't have to keep having panic attacks alone in the bathroom. You were still very much like a scared little kid in that way, just wanting at least one other person to just see you, truly.

So you allowed Michael to swing his arm around your shoulders as he directed you towards his place. It was just a couple of blocks from the hospital, but when you got to the building, a rundown, brutalist slab of concrete, you frowned, "You live here?"

"Now, don't sound so disgusted, princess," he teased and pulled you along behind him inside the building, "Not all of us have wealthy parents to fund our gorgeous apartments in buildings that have doormen."

You felt your cheeks heat, "That's not—That's not entirely true." He looked at you dubiously, eyebrows raised, and you furrowed yours, "I pay for my utilities," You grumbled.

He chuckled and ran a hand over his jaw before sliding his key into his door.

"If it's not too revolting to you," He said softly as he pushed the door open, "You're welcome to come inside for a drink."

Something changed in the tone of his voice and as you tried to place it, you saw the way his eyes roved down your body.

You had never had sex with anyone before, had never had the time. You were in college by the time you were fifteen and because you were so young no one really wanted to hang out with you. You didn't get invited to parties or study sessions (unless someone was trying to inadvertently get you to do their homework). Once you got to medical school, you were still only seventeen, still too young for any of your peers to show much interest.

When you turned twenty one, the shift had been subtle. But suddenly, you were being included to go out for drinks. Then people raised their eyebrows less when you said you were in med school. The stares lingered longer and traveled farther.

And now Michael was looking at you like that, too.

Maybe you should've thought it over more, said goodnight and gone straight home. But you were so painfully lonely. You should've hated him for the way he'd treated you, but it only spurred you on. You were used to having to compete for scraps of love from people who seemed to not like you much. Had been doing it since you learned to talk.

So you followed him inside.

It was freezing inside his apartment. So cold, in fact, your breath was beginning to cloud in front of you.

"Jesus Christ, Michael, is your heat broken or something?"

"Uh, no," He said from the kitchen. You heard the sound of glasses and bottles clinking before he reappeared, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other, "Just… trying to conserve. But we can turn the heat on for you, princess." He said with a wink.

You sat on his couch with your arms crossed and felt your lip jut out in a pout, "I'm not spoiled, you know. I just—It's just as cold outside as it is in here. Can't be good for you. Or the pipes."

"Many of us," He said as he poured you each a glass, amber liquid sloshing up the sides, "Had to learn to live without. I didn't grow up in a mansion like you."

You scoffed, "I'm not the sort of rich you think I am, I grew up in the suburbs. My parents still have to work for a living. Yes, it was comfortable, but we're not fucking millionaires. We don't have, like, a fucking second house in the Hamptons."

He nodded, "Still seems pretty rich to me."

You rolled your eyes, "Well, what do your parents do then?"

That insufferable smirk finally fell from his face and for a second you felt vindicated.

"If you must know," He started, staring intently at the liquor in his glass, "I don't know who my father is, never met him. And my mother killed herself when I was eight. I found her swinging from the rafters one day when I got home from school."

You stared at him, stunned, while he knocked back the rest of his whiskey and poured himself another, "My grandparents took me in after that and then when I was sixteen, my grandfather died. When I was twenty, my grandmother joined him. So now it's just me."

He raised his glass, forced smile on his face, "May their memories be a blessing." He said, and tossed back the entirety of his drink in one go.

"Michael," you said softly, reaching for him when he began to pour more whiskey, "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

Not unkindly, he pushed your hand away, "You know, I've been thinking that I want people to start calling me Robby."

You frowned, thrown by the change in subject, "What?"

"Yeah, I just, people have trouble with Robinavitch. And Adamson asked me, if he could call me Robby. And I—I really like him and I want him to like me so I think—I think I'm just gonna have everyone call me Robby. It sounds friendlier, don't you think? Once I become a doctor? Doctor Robby."

You felt a sort of tenderness towards him now, after he'd revealed so much of himself to you. You had the distinct urge to hold him, cradle him to you, tell him it was all going to be okay.

"I like Michael," You said quietly, "If it's alright with you."

Finally he met your gaze again and his eyes softened just slightly. Slowly, as if afraid to scare you off, he reached a hand out to cup your cheek. When you leaned into his palm, he stroked his thumb against your cheek bone.

"Sure, Bambi. You can still call me Michael."

You couldn't say which of you closed the distance first, just that the next thing you remembered, his warm, wet mouth was on yours.

At first, the kisses were slow and hesitant. You remembered it was you who deepened it, a whine clamoring out of your throat and into his mouth.

Before you knew it, you had climbed into his lap and pushed him down into the couch. You felt him harden against you and it felt instinctual, the way your hips ground down against him, chasing the friction.

"Fuck," he breathed into your mouth, his hand cradling the back of your neck, "This good?"

You nodded fervently, "Do you have a condom?"

He raised his eyebrows, "Are you sure?"

You nodded again and so he pushed his hand between you, pushing his hand into the pocket of his jeans to pull out a foil packet.

You blinked, "Were you… planning this?"

"No," He said and teared the packet open with his teeth, "But I like to be prepared just in case."

Rolling your eyes, you pulled back to allow him to push his jeans and boxers down. His cock sprung up between you and you felt your breaths grow shallow as you watched him work the condom on.

Carefully, you hiked your dress up to your hips, hoping he didn't notice the way your hands shook. His eyes stayed on yours as you shifted your underwear to the side and slowly lowered yourself onto him.

"Oh, God." He sighed, sounding just a breathless as you felt at the stretch of him. It burned for just a moment, almost pleasantly, "Look at me," He said and your eyes locked back on his.

You leaned your forehead against his as you slowly moved your hips along the length of him, "Is this—Is it good?" You asked, your voice small and uncertain.

"Yeah," He said quickly, pushed his mouth up into yours, "So good," he whispered into your mouth.

But less than a minute later, the sensation changed. It was difficult to move against him, in fact, you weren't even sure he was inside you anymore, "Did you—I mean—Are you—soft?" You could hear your own panic and desperation in your voice as your hips slowed.

A scarlet flush was creeping up his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, as if to avoid your gaze, "Yeah, I—I think so. S'probably whiskey dick." He finally opened his eyes and maybe sensed your impending humiliation, "Hey—hey—it's not you," He cupped your cheeks with both hands, "It's not you, I swear, you're perfect."

He pulled your face down to his again and you allowed yourself to get lost in the taste of him again, "It's me," he murmured between kisses, "I'm fuckin' defective, it's my fault."

"Michael—"

"Come up here, sit on my face," He said abruptly.

You raised your eyebrows, "Wh—what?"

"Please," He said, sounding desperate, "Please, I wanna taste you. Lemme take care of you."

You sighed and hid your face in your hands, "You don't have to, like, make it up to me—"

"I want to," he said again, "If you do, too. Please."

You couldn't deny that the idea of it had embers of arousal stirring in your belly. You hadn't prepared for the possibility of someone's mouth on you like that, but you didn't want to admit that to him. You didn't want to have to explain the depth of your inexperience lest it kill whatever remained of his desire.

So, you swallowed and moved your way up his body, let him position you, his arms wrapped around your thighs and pulling you to his mouth.

You were immediately overwhelmed by the sensation, gasping and whimpering when he moaned against you, your whole body twitching as it reverberated through your core.

But again, it wasn't long before things slowed, and then—stopped completely. Blinking, you looked down and saw that Michael had fallen asleep.

No, he couldn't have—could he? You leaned in a bit closer, leaning back to fully pull yourself off his face. Oh my God, was that drool on the corner of his mouth?

Mortified, and at a loss for what else to do, you carefully and quietly climbed off him, grabbed your things, and slipped out of his apartment. Heels in hand, you paused outside of his door and exhaled in relief.

You left his apartment feeling even more conflicted about him than before and also feeling a bit dejected. This was the guy who had once tripped you up in a trauma and then said "Don't worry Bambi, it's normal to be a bit wobbly on your legs when you're still just a fawn."

It shouldn't have surprised you at all that he found you unattractive, that obviously he had only allowed you to initiate because you were sat in front of him, willing and able. Like an idiot. Like the naive little kid he had told everyone you were.

You felt stupid and humiliated. And God knew you didn't believe in the fucking patriarchal construct of virginity, but you couldn't deny it made you feel a bit bitter that you had wasted it on Michael Robinavitch. You wouldn't make such an idiotic decision ever again.

He could say a lot about you, but you'd never made the same mistake twice. You didn't intend to start now.

***

Robby watched you through the glass, leaned over Jack's balcony with your arms wrapped around yourself.

This had to be a new record of how quickly he could fuck things up with a potential romantic partner. Once he'd recognized you, he'd felt stupid that he hadn't recognized you immediately when he saw your profile. And maybe there had been some familiarity there, something he'd mistaken for instant attraction and chemistry.

That said, he had wracked his brain and the two of you sleeping together he was near positive had never happened. Or at least, for the life of him, he couldn't remember it. And yes it was true he'd always given you a hard time, but he had also always been enamored by you. Honestly, he'd thought it'd been obvious, especially towards the end of M4.

So he found it hard to believe that he wouldn't remember that. But he also didn't think that you were a liar.

Carefully, he slid the glass door open and stepped outside. The night had cooled significantly since his arrival and as he got closer to you, he saw goosebumps along your arms. You didn't startle when he came up next to you and positioned himself at such an angle as to shield you from the breeze.

"I'm sorry that I don't remember," He said softly after a few moments, "But I'd like you to tell me about it, if you're up for it."

You shook your head, "It's not your fault. It was really horrible, I don't blame you for not remembering."

He groaned, "You know, you could say a lot of shit about me and I wouldn't blink, but hearing I'm bad in bed is a new one for me and I'm not a fan."

You laughed and turned to him, "Oh yeah? You've become something of a casanova in your old age?"

He winced, "Not that old."

You hummed and turned back towards the treeline, "What was it? That made you finally remember me tonight?"

"The Princess Bride tattoo."

You looked at your wrist, "Huh. I would've thought this was one of the things you picked on me for behind my back. Called it childish."

He shook his head, "Nah, The Princess Bride's a classic. I actually always really liked it, thought it was romantic."

You rolled your eyes at that, as if you didn't quite believe him, but didn't comment further. After a moment you sighed, "It was during MS4. We were almost done with our last rotation in the ER and some of the residents invited us out for drinks."

"Oh," Robby said, frowning, "I do remember that. I got really drunk and you walked me back to my apartment."

You nodded, "Right."

"But we didn't… I invited you in for a drink and…" He trailed off. He was drawing a blank, "Did you come inside? I just thought… You never liked me, I thought for sure you declined. I don't remember anything after that."

You narrowed your eyes at him and then sighed, "Well, you did down something like three fingers of whiskey in quick succession once we got in your apartment so I guess it's possible you blacked out."

"You always made me nervous so it's no surprise I drank so much."

You opened and closed your mouth for a moment, but then shook your head quickly, "Yeah, I guess that was it."

"Then what happened?"

You sighed, "We really don't have to rehash this—"

"Please," he pushed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, "I want to know."

You shook your head and then shrugged, "Fine. About a minute after you put it in, I was riding you and you went soft. So then you… you asked me to sit on your face instead. Which I did. And a minute or two later you… fell asleep."

Robby was silent for a moment as he processed what you'd said. You were deliberately looking away from him, running a hand nervously over the back of your neck.

"Wow," He said finally, "And you still liked my Hinge profile decades later?"

You gave a short laugh, "I was curious if anything had changed, I guess."

He hummed, "A lot has changed, I would say." He ran a finger lightly over the back of your arm and watched as goosebumps spread—But you didn't move away, not even when he bent to your ear and said lowly, "I'd like a chance to make it up to you."

You swallowed and then turned to face him, your faces impossibly close, "Have you ever been married, Michael?"

He frowned and pulled away marginally, "Um… no? Have you?"

You shook your head and looked off into the distance over his shoulder, wistfully, "I got close, once." You sighed, "Listen, I'm too old to be doing this… friends with benefits, situationship, whatever, bullshit. Sex is great, but I have plenty of vibrators that do the job just fine and without the emotional turmoil. So I'm not interested in casual sex. I'm looking for a partner, not a dildo. If you want me you'll have to romance me and mean it."

Robby's eyes roved over your face. Maybe it was your shared memories or the fact that you knew him before he was broken beyond repair, but he felt a tender ache in his chest looking into your eyes. Just as warm and inviting as he remembered.

There were few people these days who could entice him to commit to anything. A real relationship meant having to open himself up to someone else. Allowing them to see the ugliest parts of himself and hope they didn't leave. It usually ended in him lashing out instead so at least he had some semblence of control over the end of the relationship.

Or at least, that was the hypothesis of his last therapist, who he still wasn't entirely sure wasn't full of shit.

But either way, when he thought about pursuing a real, full relationship with you, he didn't feel his usual urge to run. Instead, he felt a curiosity. The need to take you apart, to learn you like he would a medical procedure.

Maybe he wasn't broken after all. Maybe he could have full, healthy relationships like everyone else.

He brought one of his hands up to your neck, watched how you tried to stifle the urge to lean into his touch—Good, you were touch starved, just like him—and his thumb lightly toyed with one of the hoops hanging from your ear.

"'As you wish'." He said softly, a smirk on his face. You rolled your eyes, but the corner of your mouth tugged upward.

"What? You don't believe me?" He tilted his head downward to force eye contact with you, "I've been the one begging you to go on a date with me for weeks."

"A date?" You raised your eyebrows, "They're calling a drink at the bar before taking someone to bed a date now, are they?"

He scoffed, "What, so you want a string quartet and a night out at the ballet?"

You furrowed your brow, "And so what if I did?"

He stared at you for a moment and then chuckled, "Then I'd tell you to wear your favorite dress."

You narrowed your eyes, but then shook your head, "Just dinner would be more than enough."

He nodded, "I can do that. Would you allow me to cook for you?"

You smirked and ran your hands up his forearms, "Sure, but it has to be at my place."

He grinned, ran his thumb back and forth across the skin just below your ear, "Friday night?"

You tilted your head a bit, "You're serious about this?"

"Yeah," He said softly, eyes heavy lidded from both alcohol and desire as he looked into your face, "Are you?"

Your tongue darted out to wet your lips as your eyes darted back and forth between his eyes, assessing. You still didn't quite believe him, he could tell. You had always been distrustful, convinced everyone was out to hurt you to a nearly paranoid level. The decades it seemed had done nothing to smooth that over.

But still, you nodded and leaned forward, pressing a warm kiss to his cheek, "See you Friday, Michael."

He watched as you walked back inside, conscious of the heat that pulsed against the skin where your lips had been just moments before.

***

"What do you think, Brutus?" You asked, your cat sidling between your legs as you looked at yourself in your floor length mirror. You had chosen form fitting, but simple clothes. A ribbed black sweater and your favorite pair of jeans. "Do you think he'll like it?"

Brutus trilled and stood up on his hind legs, stretching his front paws against your legs, a very clear request to be picked up. You looked down at him and smirked, "You're gonna get cat hair all over my sweater."

He mewled again, claws gently pricking at your jeans before quickly receding. You sighed, already defeated. You could never say no to him. You bent to scoop him up to your chest, pressing your nose into his face as he immediately began purring, "I know you don't like guests, but you have to be on your best behavior tonight, okay? No knocking glassware over if I'm not paying attention to you," You peppered kisses all over his head, "It's not polite."

The doorbell rang and you quickly lowered Brutus back down, running your hands over your sweater in an attempt to brush off the cat hair.

Sliding across the hardwood in your socked feet, you took one deep breath before pulling your front door open.

There in your doorway stood Michael Robinavitch in a button down and jeans, one hand holding a thermal bag you assumed was full of groceries, the other a bottle of wine.

He grinned when you opened the door, his eyes trailing lazily down your body, giving you a once over before meeting your eyes again.

"Hi," You said and stepped to the side, "Come in."

You watched him take in your home as he walked in, kicking off his shoes by the door without you having to ask.

Without a partner to appease or children you'd spent a lot of time creating a calming, beautiful space just for yourself. It resulted in a lot of warm lighting and soothing colors. Lots of windows and cozy nooks. The kitchen was big and open with huge bay windows looking into your backyard behind the sink. As you padded gently behind Robby, you watched him take stock of the sun setting through those windows.

"This is gorgeous." He said, eyes on the fresh tulips that sat in a vase on the island.

"Thank you," You said, and took the wine bottle from his hand, "It's my favorite place in the whole world."

He smirked as he placed the groceries on the counter, "Now I understand why it's so hard to get you to leave."

You took wine glasses down from your cabinet and opened the wine he'd brought, pouring you each a glass and bringing his over to him as he began unpacking the groceries he'd brought.

"What're you making?"

He pulled out a loaf of Challah bread and offered you a piece as he spread everything else out in front of him, "Um, some salad, roast chicken, and potato kugel."

You hummed, "Where'd you learn that?"

He began prepping the veggies and you watched his hands. You remembered from med school you had always been enamored by watching skilled hands at work, especially in the ED. Watching him now you had that same feeling as the wine began to warm you from the inside out.

"They're my grandma's recipes. She used to make this every Friday for Shabbos dinner."

Your mouth fell open slightly in surprise and immediately, you felt touched, "That's… really lovely, Michael. I'm honored that you'd share them with me."

He looked up at you for a moment, smiling, but shrugged his shoulders, "It's the only meal I really know how to cook well because she taught me. I don't do much cooking these days."

You tried not to let his dismissiveness disappoint you, "Do you still… I mean, are you observing Shabbos this weekend?"

He shook his head, "No, no, if I was I'd already have broken the rules," He jerked his head towards the bay windows, where the sky was beginning to bruise, "No cooking after sundown. I don't really practice anymore, but I sometimes go to synagogue on High Holidays."

You let a few moments pass in silence before speaking again, "Can I help?"

He shook his head, "No, you just sit there and look pretty."

The two of you made small talk about work, discussing funny patients or over eager med students, until he put his dishes in the oven.

"Do you want to sit on the porch?" You asked as he washed his hands.

"That sounds lovely," He said, drying his hands on your dish towel before following you outside with his glass of wine.

You tucked your legs underneath yourself as you sat on the love seat, the chill of the spring night had you reaching for the throw blanket. But Robby got there first, gently draping it over your legs and then his own lap. You pretended not to be flustered when he pulled your feet into his lap, tenderly kneading his fingers into the arch of your foot as he sipped his wine.

Over the years, you'd brought men to your place many times. You'd even had the occasional relationship that grew to the point of your partner moving into your place, because it was a nonstarter for any partner to suggest you sell your house, something you were always clear about at the start of the relationship. Maybe it would be the reason you never had a lifelong partner, but you had put an enormous amount of work into this house to create a sanctuary of sorts. It was where you were happiest. You had no desire to live anywhere else. You doubted you'd ever love anyone as much as you loved this house.

But Robby being here, it felt different than it had felt with all others. It felt natural to have him here, like this, cooking dinner in your kitchen, sitting on the porch with you while you told him about the study you'd just been awarded a grant to start. After residency, you'd sworn off dating doctors all together. But there was something refreshing about discussing renal cell carcinoma with Robby and him asking follow up questions that were more complex than "what's a renal cell?"

It felt like he fit here with you, like he could slot into your life effortlessly. But you supposed that could just be the forlorn romantic in you desperate for anyone to desire you again.

"Where'd you go for your residency?" Robby asked.

"Chicago," You said, "Northwestern Memorial. What about you?"

"New Orleans. Big Charity Hospital."

You opened and closed your mouth, thinking silently for a few moments. Trying to remember what years the two of you had gone off to residency and when you would have finished. And the realization of when had your stomach slowly sinking. "Wasn't… Wasn't Katrina during residency?"

He wasn't looking at you, staring off into the darkness of the trees behind your house. His face was partially lit by the candles you'd brought outside. When he nodded, you couldn't get a good read on his expression, but it suddenly felt very cold around you. As if the ghosts had lowered around his shoulders.

"That must have sucked," You said softly, "I'm sorry."

He cleared his throat and looked down at his wine glass, "It was a long time ago."

One thing that had changed about Robby was his openness. Years ago, in med school, you only needed to get him a single beer deep before he was pouring out his most intimate thoughts. Obviously, the time you'd slept together, that had been the most he'd ever revealed to you. About his parents and grandparents. But even before that, he'd opened up to you about his insecurities as a doctor and even when he was having trouble with significant others.

Now, he seemed to be dismissive of his troubles. Never wanting the focus on him for too long. He used to be what your mother would call a peacock, charming to an almost offensive degree. He was impossible to dislike and had everyone thinking they were his best friend. That had all changed. You could feel the barrier he'd put up between you. What had happened to him between then and now to have changed him so drastically?

Likely, you supposed, it started with Katrina.

Another reason you had decided against going into emergency medicine had been that you knew you were too soft for it. Just the rotations had been so detrimental to your well being. You had thought you loved it while you were in it, but the second you were out of it, you realized you had been in survival mode the entire time. Outside of it, you cried for weeks straight, grieving every person you'd watched die and especially the ones that had died on your watch. The heaviness of that responsibility was too much. A lifetime of it would've broken you.

It would break anyone, you imagined. And as you watched Robby curiously, you realized for the first time since reuniting with him just how haunted he had become. You had thought with his easy charm and smile that he was still the same kid, but he had changed. The years had slowly eroded him, smoothed some edges and sharpened others.

A timer went off a few moments later and Robby flashed you a quick smile, carefully removing your feet from his lap, "You hungry?"

"Starved," You said, allowing him to take your hand and gently pull you to standing.

The food was delicious. You caught Robby staring at you more than once over the candles when you licked your fingers or groaned in pleasure, mischief in his eyes.

You had to fight him to let you do the dishes, insisting it was only fair since he had cooked. He protested for a bit until you sternly repeated that you'd be doing the dishes and since he was a guest here, you demanded he relax on the couch while you cleaned up. Eventually, he gave up, sighing heavily and pressing a sweet kiss to your cheek, "Thank you," he murmured, sounding bone tired.

When the last dish was loaded in the dish washer, the cookware washed, the counters wiped down, you found Robby nearly fast asleep, stretched out on your couch. Brutus had come out for the first time since he'd arrived and was now hesitantly sniffing at his hand which hung over the edge of the couch.

"What d'you think, Brutus?" You whispered, "Is he good enough to eat?"

A chuckle rumbled deep in Robby's chest and Brutus scampered off, sufficiently frightened by the sudden movement. Robby cracked an eye open to look up at you, reaching with both arms towards you, "C'mere before I eat you."

You hesitated for just a moment before crawling over him, sighing contentedly as his arms wrapped tightly around you, your ear pressed to his chest.

You were reminded again of that one night with him decades ago, you atop him not unlike this, trying to warm yourself with his body in the frigid apartment.

"It's strange," you said softly, "I don't really know you anymore, but I feel like I understand you more now than I did then."

He hummed, "That's funny. You're still just as much a mystery to me as you were twenty years ago."

You lifted your head from his chest so you could see his face and felt his breath fan your cheeks, "I'm an open book, you just have to ask."

"Why pathology?"

You pursed your lips, brow furrowed in thought, "I liked the simplicity of it. That there were rules and structures and always a correct answer. There's always a clear path to and from diagnosis."

He shook his head, "I know you applied to the emergency medicine residency at Big Charity. I was the second choice, they wanted you."

You felt your cheeks heat, "I—It was so long ago, it doesn't matter—"

"No, you're right, it doesn't matter anymore," He ran a soothing hand down the back of your head to your neck, "It certainly mattered to me then. I was so pissed off at you those first few weeks of intern year when I found out. I tried calling every emergency medicine department in the country I could think of to find you."

You smirked, "You looked for me?"

He nodded, "Never crossed my mind that you would've gone into a different specialty. And pathology even? I never would have guessed. You were so good in the emergency room. A natural. I bet if I threw you in my ED now you'd do just as good as most of my residents."

You gave a short laugh, "Absolutely not, I don't even remember most of my rotations. Honestly, they were so hard for me I think part of my brain blacked it out."

He narrowed his eyes, "Yeah, they're hard for everyone, it's the emergency department."

You nodded, "I know. And I didn't want the rest of my life to look like that."

"Look like what?"

You opened your mouth for a moment and then sighed, "Like I was struggling to stay afloat in a sea of constant compounding grief."

He shook his head slowly, "I remember those rotations, you helped save a lot of people."

You nodded, "At the expense of my sanity, yeah."

"You don't think it would be worth it?"

You tilted your head slightly, "To martyr myself? Do you?"

He sighed and looked away from you, "I used to think so, yeah."

Robby used to come alive in the emergency department, as you recalled it. You knew he was empathetic and had his own struggles because he'd told you on occasion and because you'd seen it. Maybe he hadn't broken down visibly as often as you, but you recalled finding him at least a couple of times out in the ambulance bay, eyes red rimmed and wet.

But you had never doubted that he would thrive in the emergency room. You had been so busy feeling like an imposter yourself and he had made everything look so easy, it had never crossed your mind that maybe he had been struggling the same as you. He just hid it better, even from himself.

"You've lost a lot," You said softly, "the last twenty years, haven't you? Not just patients."

His eyes floated slowly back to yours and it didn't matter what he said, it was sitting there in his eyes as he looked at you. All the ghosts that haunted him, clawing to get out just behind his eyes. He looked tired. He looked shattered.

After a few moments he brought a hand up to your face, brushed the backs of his knuckles across your cheek, "I don't want to talk about that tonight." When he spoke, his voice hitched just slightly, but you politely acted as if you hadn't noticed.

It was a first date, after all. He didn't need to crack open his chest for you tonight, though part of you wished he would. You had never been one for small talk and you were always all in long before anyone else was. You were used to this, being the one kept at the perimeter, debating whether to ignore the Beware of Dog sign and hop the fence.

But he looked so tired and sad. You could be patient for now. Maybe befriend the dog while you waited, tossing treats through the hole in the fence, whistling gently on the wind.

"Okay," You pushed yourself up so your face was closer to his, "We don't have to talk."

A moment passed, two. Your eyes stared longingly at his mouth until his hand slipped to the back of your neck and pulled you to him, mouths crashing together.

You sighed at the feel of his lips on yours, simultaneously soft and rough from the scratch of his beard. It chafed against your chin, but still you pushed yourself closer, the new, but still somehow familiar taste of him intoxicating.

He still kissed the same, teeth digging desperately into your lower lip, tongue stroking against yours almost sweetly. But it was more refined, somehow. Like he'd perfected the art of kissing over the decades.

You'd had many lovers over the years, but few who would make out with you like this for very long without it quickly escalating. Robby's hands, hot and needy, worked their way beneath your shirt, thumbs stroking just below your breasts. Then, one of his hands slid down until it was on your ass, squeezing and groping over your jeans. It was at this point that he whimpered into your mouth and you felt yourself clench instinctually around nothing at the sound.

It had been a long time since you'd been touched like this and longer since you had enjoyed it this much. Usually, it was other partners that acted impatient, that were already tugging at your pants when you were nowhere near warmed up yet, but now it was you who had started grinding on his thigh, searching for friction. You who was frantically pulling at the buttons on his shirt, trying to get it off. You who was now fumbling for his belt when Robby finally stopped you.

"Mmm—Hold on—Wait." Easily, he secured your wrists in his hands and pinned them to his chest which was rising and falling rapidly as you both attempted to catch your breath.

"Are you—Are you sure? I don't want you to think—I'm happy to just end the night like this. I can go home right now—"

You pressed your mouth to his again, kissing him deeply before playfully nipping at his lip, "Do I seem unsure to you?" You asked, nudging your nose against his.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, "No," He said and kissed you again, fervently.

"Do I… need to beg you to fuck me?" You asked, sucking lightly on his neck as you spoke, "Because I can do that."

Robby sighed and gripped your ass tighter, "Fuck."

You dragged your center across his thigh, "Not an answer."

His hand gripped the back of your neck, forcing you to meet his gaze, "You would beg for me?"

You weren't exactly thinking straight as you looked at him, wild with want. You would have done anything he asked in that moment, you were sure of it. But still, looking at him now, you were dragged back twenty years to his icy apartment. To the way he'd opened up to you and then swiftly rejected you. He denied it now, chalked it up to alcohol, but somewhere in you was still that dejected girl, begging for any scrap of affection.

It'd been a while since you felt her, small and weak, at the edges of your consciousness. She'd been shortsighted and easy, pan handling for love on the side of the road. You still loathed her, felt she was pathetic. Robby could still pull her out of you. It felt easy to slip into her and her wants. You remembered insisting to yourself after that night with him that you'd never let him that close again.

And yet you found yourself tangled in him yet again. You were different, you assured yourself, lied to yourself. In reality, he already had you wrapped around his fingers. He could break you with a single word, a change of expression.

You pushed all that out of your mind, suffocating it with your mouth on his, his all consuming taste in your mouth, "Is that what you want?"

"I want," He said, hand still firm on your neck, kissing you between his words, "Whatever you want. Just want to make you feel good."

You sighed, "Then take me to bed."

Quickly, he sat up, keeping you in his lap. He kissed up the column of your throat to your earlobe, sending chills down your spine, "Lead the way, sweetheart."

On your bed, he undressed you carefully, taking his time in a way you weren't used to. After the way you'd been talking over texts and swapping photos back and forth, you thought he'd be ravenous. And he was, you could tell from his groans and whimpers, but still, he remained steady and patient.

Once you were topless, both of you kneeling across from each other on the bed, you reached to unbuckle his pants before he could get to yours. Robby had been competitive as you remembered it, but in bed it seemed he was fine with handing over the reins. He watched you with heat in his eyes as you spat in your hand and reached down his pants to fist his cock.

As your hand stroked his shaft down to his balls, his eyes rolled back and he swore. You were on fire watching him, his desire seemingly contagious.

"Please," He whimpered after a minute of so of this, "Please, can I… Can I suck on your tits?"

Your belly somersaulted at the thought and immediately you were nodding, scooting closer to him.

As his lips puckered and pulled at your nipple, he was whining more loudly than you were with each stroke of your hand. He muttered praises and pleas into your breasts, heat bubbling up at the sound from your belly to your chest to your neck.

Looking down at his cock in your hand, you noticed the small amount of precum beginning to leak. You leaned down to lick it off, but Robby stopped you before you could.

"No—Wait. Need to take care of you. Please." He was breathless and flushed pink. Needy and desperate to please. You weren't sure that anyone had ever been this desperate to please you.

You gave him a short nod and released him. Immediately, he kissed you, the momentum pushing you flat against the mattress.

As he crawled over you, you opened your eyes to look up at him. There had been times when you were students that he had been vulnerable with you, but that had only been under the heavy influence of alcohol. Mostly, he had been very guarded. And still, earlier this evening you'd sensed the same guard up, though it had been reinforced throughout the decades.

But now he was looking at you with a gentle, almost tender look on his face. Before you could fully digest what that meant, he had leaned back down to kiss along your jaw, rough fingers gently grasping your chin to kiss down your neck.

He kissed all the way down your body, looking up at you occasionally through heavy lids whenever you made a noise he particularly liked.

Down at your waist now, he carefully unbuttoned your jeans and wriggled them down, you lifting up your hips to assist.

In just your panties now, you watched the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he looked at you, ran his rough hands over your soft thighs, kissing and nipping gently at your hips, "So, so pretty for me." He murmured into your skin.

The man in front of you now so at odds with the boy you had imagined was revolted by you. Now he worshiped your body with lips and tongue and teeth. He kissed you now over the fabric of your panties, slowly and methodically, until you felt the fabric begin to soak, both from his saliva and your arousal.

You whined and tried to lift your hips, but he quickly braces an arm over your thighs, "Michael, please." You whimpered.

He groaned against your cunt, sending shockwaves through your body.

"Sorry, baby," He murmured and began tugging your panties down your hips as well, "You need my mouth on you properly, is that it? Need my tongue inside you?"

You nodded, a burning in your eyes from embarrassment or pure desperation, you weren't sure.

Panties out of the way, he ran a finger down your slick folds to separate them. As he sighed, your eyes rolled back, jaw going slack.

"Gorgeous," he murmured, fingers running slowly and gently around your entrance.

It didn't feel like teasing, but admiring. Your hips jumped when he pressed a chase kiss to your puffy clit. You had barely begun to whine again when he licked, long and slow, from the bottom of your entrance up to circle your clit.

The sensation was dizzying as he continued to repeat the motion, moving faster and applying slightly more pressure each time.

"Okay, sweetheart," He said breathlessly, your juices glistening all over his beard, slowly, he slipped his middle finger inside you, stroking the spot deep inside you that had your abdomen tightening in anticipation, "Think you can finish for me?"

Unable to form coherent words, you writhed against him, whining until he relented and lowered his mouth back down to your clit.

It was over quickly after that, though his tongue kept working you until you lightly tugged at his hair, pulling him off you. He wiped his mouth on the back of his forearm and crawled back up to you, pressing kisses all over your sweaty face.

Without preamble, you reached for his cock with the intention of lining it up with your entrance, but he pulled away, "Not yet." He said mildly, propped up on one elbow as he looked at you, his free hand stroking the backs of his knuckles gently against your cheek, "I'm not done with you yet."

You were still a bit dumb from the aftershocks of your orgasm and you blinked blankly at him, "What?"

"I figure I owe you at least three orgasms before I get to cum, that should wipe the previous horrendous encounter from your memory, no?"

A slow, sleepy smile spread across your face and he traced his thumb across your lips, "It's gonna take a while for me to cum again, never mind twice more."

He nodded, "That's why I'm giving you a break, sweet girl."

Flustered, you looked away from him. Who would have thought one man had the potential to be both your best and worst sex?

***

TWENTY SOMETHING YEARS AGO

Your eyelid was twitching as you sat at central, a phone receiver pressed to your ear as you listened to your mother drone on. As she spoke, your eyes drifted to a fresh blood stain on your white sneakers from the man who'd died maybe an hour or two ago from several gunshot wounds to the chest.

"I hear you, I just—" You tried and failed to scrub the bloodstain out with a wet wipe from behind the desk. The grueling twelve hour shift had ended something like forty five minutes ago with you crying into your hands in the ambulance bay. You were exhausted. "I just don't think now is the time for this conversation—"

"Well," Your mother huffed, "Maybe if you ever answered your phone at home we wouldn't need to have this discussion now."

You ground your teeth together, "I appreciate all the support you and dad have given me—"

"You know, I don't think you do. We clawed our way through law school with no help from our families, started our own firm, saved thousands just so you could be as educated as you wanted without having to struggle like we did—"

"—And I'm immensely grateful for that privilege—"

"Then why would you throw it back in our faces by choosing pathology, essentially a glorified lab technician—"

"That's not what it is at all—"

"You should be in neurosurgery."

You had had this argument what felt like a thousand times over the last few weeks when you had first admitted interest in applying to path residencies. Your mother's insistent argument that she knew best and neurosurgery would provide you with the best career and would utilize your strengths—an excruciating attention to detail and laser-like focus—in a way no other specialty could.

But you disagreed. And what you could never admit to your mother was that your emergency medicine rotations had proven to you that you would crumble under that sort of pressure.

"Hey, Bambi," Michael leaned over your desk, "Get off the phone and glove up, incoming MVA in two minutes."

You gave him an incredulous look, "Our shift ended almost an hour ago."

"Okay…" He said slowly, pulling on a clean pair of gloves, "So you're gonna let me just take this one myself? What if it requires intubation? You're gonna pass up that opportunity? You still haven't done one by yourself."

You were so burnt out and frustrated and once again on the verge of bursting into tears, you didn't have the energy for this, "So, what, you're keeping tabs on my procedure log now?"

He pretended to think about it, furrow between his brow, "Yeah, guess I am."

Neither of you had spoken about the night you'd slept together—if you could even call it that—and Michael had been acting like it never happened. Occasionally he'd reference the night it happened, but always before you went home with him. This was fine with you, it saved you from the embarrassment. Though, sometimes, it had you wondering if maybe you'd somehow hallucinated the entire thing.

"Who are you talking to?" Came your mom's tinny voice in your ear.

You hurriedly said that you had to go and hung up the phone, knowing it would lead to more phone calls later, but you had taken to leaving your phone off the hook when she began calling repeatedly like that. Which was often. It was the only way to ensure you got enough sleep.

Normally, you would jump at any opportunity to try to show up Michael in a trauma, but you were barely holding it together right now. The thought of watching another person die on the table today had you fighting back the instinct to dry heave.

You rested your elbows on the table in front of you and kneaded lightly at your temples, "You can have the MVA, I'm going home."

"That your mom on the phone?" Michael asked, leaning forward and apparently ignoring what you'd just said, "Is she waiting at home for you with a fresh meal and a warm bath?" He taunted, "Bambi needs to be pampered? The ER is too rough for the princess?"

Slowly, you tilted your face up to look at him, "You jealous that I still have a mother who takes care of me, Robinavitch?"

If you weren't as tired, you wouldn't have said it. As it was, your stomach churned when the smile melted off his face. Yes, he had taunted you and teased you and tortured you for most of both MS3 and 4, but you shouldn't have sank to his level. Really, you had sunk below his level, you thought. Even with how cruel he could be, he'd never mocked you when he found you crying out in the ambulance bay. On occasion he'd actually silently stood next to you or offered you a cigarette.

Your relationship was strange as he could be downright abusive in front of attendings or other colleagues, but when it was just the two of you it was like being on hallowed ground. He had only ever been nice to you when it was just the two of you with no one else around to hear. Something you struggled to reconcile. And now you had weaponized one of the only times he had opened up to you.

He shook his head, but otherwise didn't say anything, ducking away from you, "Michael—Wait—"

"It's fine, Bambi," He called over his shoulder, "Go home. As you've so astutely pointed out, not all of us have one of those."

Later, after you'd crawled into bed and couldn't sleep despite your exhaustion for the guilt that wracked you, you picked up the phone next to your bed and dialed Michael.

It rang for a while and you thought he might let it go to voicemail, but when he finally picked up his voice was rough with sleep.

"Hello?"

You hesitated, then breathed softly, "Hi."

A moment of silence passed, "Bambi?"

"Yeah."

"It's… late."

You sighed, "Yeah, um, sorry. Did I wake you?"

You heard him stifle a yawn, "You did, yeah." Silence again, but for the sound of both your breathing, "Um, did you need something?"

"I—Yeah, I, um… I couldn't sleep."

"Okay," He drew out the word, long and smooth, "Have you tried… Counting sheep?"

You huffed a laugh, "No, I—I can't sleep because I feel horrible about what I said to you earlier. About—about your mom. I'm so, so sorry, Michael. It was awful and—and it was unacceptable and unprofessional."

He was quiet for a moment, then, "It's alright, Bambi. I've said worse to you. You didn't know about—It was just a lucky shot."

Your mouth fell open slightly, confusion clouding your brain, "What?"

"You—What you said earlier hit a nerve, but you couldn't have known. I've—I've never spoken about my mother to anyone."

You stared at the popcorn ceiling of your apartment, mouth still agape. Did he not remember?

And you were nothing if not a coward, so you kept quiet. Didn't correct him. The fact was, what you said was so much worse knowing what you knew. And he didn't even know you knew.

"Right," You said, swallowing, "Well either way, it was a really shitty thing for me to say. So I'm sorry."

"I appreciate it and I'm sorry for pushing you earlier."

You exhaled slowly and closed your eyes, "Thank you."

"Think you can sleep now, princess?" Despite the nickname, his tone was playful, almost gentle in your ear. You had the insane thought that you'd like to hear him talk you to sleep.

"Yeah. Goodnight, Michael."

"Goodnight, Bambi."

***

Robby shot up in bed, his skin tacky with sweat and his chest heaving, lungs struggling to fill. Nightmares were common for him, but what was so disorienting this night was that at first, he wasn't sure where he was. The bed sheets were unfamiliar to him where they stuck to his skin. They felt more expensive than what he had at home, reminded him of hotel sheets. The mattress was softer as well.

And then there was the soft sigh the came from the pillow next to him. His eyes followed the noise and he saw you laying beside him, fast asleep. At the sight of you, his panic began to recede just slightly. He was in your bed. Had shared a lovely dinner with you and slept with you and spoke in hushed whispers across pillows until you'd fallen asleep.

When he had nightmares at home, he would often get out of bed, crack open a beer or smoke a cigarette, unable to properly fall back asleep. But looking down at you, he feared he'd wake you if he did that. The last however many hours he'd spent with you had been the most at peace he'd felt in recent memory. Even with the nightmare, he already felt his heart rate slowing, just watching the even rise and fall of your chest.

He sank back down into the mattress and laid his head down on the pillow, his forehead nearly touching yours.

Unable to help himself, he rested his hand against your neck and ran his thumb over your cheekbone. You mewled and then your eyes began to blink open.

"Sorry," He said immediately when your eyes opened into his, "Didn't mean to wake you."

You gave him a sleepy smile and nudged your nose against his, "S'okay… It's almost nice to wake up in the middle of the night when there's someone else here."

Lying close to you, he allowed himself to believe that he deserved love like this. That he deserved a life like this. That you could love him and stay despite the ugly parts of him he'd try like hell to keep from you.

He kissed you then, to avoid thinking about all the ways in which he was bound to disappoint you if this continued. And you kissed him back, pulled him closer, your hand at the nape of his neck and he catalogued it—the feeling of your gentle fingers stroking the back of his head.

"Mmm," You hummed and pulled away from him slightly, your brow furrowed, "Is it raining?"

Sure enough, as both of you stilled, there was the sound of rain tapping against the windows, "Sounds like it."

You grinned at him, "Would you like to drink tea and watch the rain from the porch?"

You seemed already giddy by the idea so he couldn't say no, not that he wanted to. It was so simple, really, the act of watching the rain. But you stood outside wrapped in a throw blanket, your hands warming a mug of tea, and looking out into your yard with awe as the sun started to stretch over the horizon, lighting up the storm clouds from behind.

He wanted to see the world like that. To be enamored by simple pleasures, the way you were.

"You seem so happy," He said into your ear.

You hummed, "I am."

"Is this what it's like being you? In this stunning house? Just a cup of tea while it rains can bring joy?"

You turned slightly in his arms to see his face and he recognized it when you scanned his face: You were trying to gauge if he was making fun of you. Old habits died hard, he supposed.

Seemingly satisfied that he wasn't mocking you, you turned back toward the rain, "It's a lot nicer when there's someone to share it all with."

You said it casually, but he heard the note of sadness in your tone, "You've been alone for a while?" You nodded, "What about family? Your parents?"

You stiffened in his embrace and he almost regretted it. He knew what happened when you got like this, if someone moved too quickly or suddenly—you bolted.

But after a moment, you softened, "We don't really talk much anymore."

"Oh," He said softly in surprise, "Sorry, I thought—You always seemed close when we were in school."

"You mistook financial support as love. And even if it was, they promptly cut that off the second I moved to Chicago."

He frowned, "You haven't spoken since residency? Why?" In the silence that followed, he sensed your hesitancy, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I don't mind," You said softly, "I just haven't thought about it in a while. We have talked since, but sporadically. It's mostly just happy birthday texts now." You sighed heavily, "The short answer is that they wanted me to go into neurosurgery and treated me going into pathology as some personal affront to them. It felt like they only ever saw me as some sort of investment instead of their kid."

Robby had been guilty of assuming that you had it all. After thinking it over more, he'd come to the conclusion the way he treated you had had more to do with jealousy than anything else. You always seemed so put off by talking to your parents, your parents who took care of everything for you. What he would have done to have anyone like that in his corner when he was in his twenties. He felt you were ungrateful.

But now, having done a lot of growing up himself and watching residents with all sorts of parental issues come and go through his ER, he understood that just throwing money at a kid was no way to raise them.

"I'm sorry," He said again and leaned down slightly to kiss the back of your neck, "You deserved better than that."

You turned in his arms to face him, "Do you really believe that? That what I do is just as important as what you do? Or neurosurgery?"

"Yes," He said immediately, "If it was me I might be… bored out of my mind, but we need pathologists. The ED needs them, surgery needs them, oncology needs them, hematology needs them, you're absolutely vital to all of us. But that's not what I meant. I meant that you deserved better parents."

Though you had changed over the years, not so skittish and quiet, there were things about you that remained. Your anxious state, bordering on paranoia the way you worried that others would betray you. Your quiet but desperate need of approval—of love. Your empathy, the way you felt everything so deeply and openly, even when you tried to hide it.

Right now, you were scared. Of him, of his ability to hurt you. He was also scared of his ability to hurt you. Terrified, really.

But still, you swallowed and looked away from him, "Thank you," you said quietly and tugged his arms tighter around you.

Bambi—his fawn—now stable on your own two feet. It'd be you that would have to keep him steady now, keep him from running.

***

When Robby was at work now, when the shifts got bad, he excused himself for just a moment and closed his eyes. He'd conjure your home in his head, your cat Brutus, the sound of your laugh, watching rain from your covered porch while drinking coffee, waking up to the smell of your shampoo on the pillow, movie nights on your couch, long showers and your hands on his skin.

It had been weeks now since your first date and things had moved quickly. It hadn't been discussed explicitly, but Robby spent most nights at your house now. The simple domesticity of it, of having someone to come home to, had felt nearly life changing. You often asked if he wanted you to stay at his place for a change to which he always turned down.

He loved everything about your place, from the way it always smelt like something delicious, to the fact that Brutus was always there, to just how lived in it felt. Just last weekend the two of you had spent entire days digging up the garden beds so you could start planting vegetables and fruits and herbs. You talked about cucumber salads and fresh baked pies and it all felt so… domestic. Mundane. And it was the only place he felt peace.

Today's shift had been horrible. And so after calling time of death on a patient that he'd worked on for far longer than was clinically appropriate, he told Dana he'd be outside for a few minutes. In the ambulance bay, with silent tears streaming down his cheeks, he tried to slow his breathing. In through his nose, out through his mouth.

Closing his eyes, he willed the images of the woman away, of her child. Instead, he pictured you, the sleepy smile on your face when he woke up first in the morning, whispered in your ear that he was going to make pancakes. He pictured you fast asleep on your couch, a paperback abandoned in your hand and Brutus snuggled up on your chest. He pictured you spinning around your backyard in the rain, green rain boots up to your knees and your wild laughter.

As his breathing slowed, the sound of the ambulance bay doors sliding open had him turning his attention to the doors to see Abbot walking toward him.

Silently, Jack stood next to Robby and crossed his arms, "Your girlfriend's down here looking for you."

Robby sighed and ran his hand over the back of his neck, "She's not my girlfriend."

"Sorry, your pathologist."

Robby huffed a laugh, "I guess she is sort of my girlfriend."

"Well, you better watch out because I hear all the nurses warning her about your… 'seven week itch' I think they're calling it."

He shook his head, "She's not the type to listen to rumors."

Jack hummed, "She might start if you keep her waiting much longer."

"Alright, alright," He sighed and pushed himself off the wall, "I'll go find her."

"'Atta boy," Jack said and clapped him over the shoulder, the two of them walking back into the Pitt.

Robby's eyes found you almost immediately, talking to Dana, and you, as if sensing his gaze, looked up to meet his. There was concern all over your face and Robby didn't even have the time to properly wonder if Dana had filled you in about the terrible shift they'd had before you were marching over to him.

You were apparently so intently focused on him, you didn't notice the puddle of water on the floor and before Robby could warn you, you'd slipped.

Your feet went up over your head and your back hit the ground—hard.

Instantly, Robby was there, a hand on your shoulder to stop you as you tried to sit up— "Hey, don't move, don't move."

"Ow," you groaned and tried to push him out of your way, "I'm fine, Michael."

"Did you hit your head?" His penlight was already out, ready to assess.

You sighed, "I don't know, I don't think so."

"Dana," he called over his shoulder, "What's open?"

"Central 11."

"I just wanna go home," You said softly, "I'm fine, I swear."

But seeing you fall like that after the shift he'd had, he couldn't seem to slow the spiral he was beginning to fall down. What if you had a concussion? A brain bleed? Untreated one could lead to irreparable brain damage and the other, death.

"It'll be quick," He said, "Promise. Just… Please, it'll make me feel better."

You tilted your head slightly, doe eyes out in full force. Like you were concerned about him. But you nodded anyway, conceded to him, even when he insisted on a wheelchair to transport you.

When it was just the two of you and he had started your exam, you continued to watch him carefully.

"Did something happen today?" You asked softly, "During shift?"

He hummed in question, gently turning your head this way and that, "What d'you mean?"

"You're being… hypervigilant. I'm just wondering if something happened today to trigger that."

The two of you had discussed covid and Adamson. You had been back in Pittsburgh at that point, but at Westbridge. Robby had felt a pang of resentment at first, thinking that you likely hadn't had to be on the front lines like he had.

But then you told him about the autopsies. How there were so many bodies that you, who had built a career off studying cancers and blood, had had to assist with autopsies. You told him how you hadn't really done an autopsy since residency, but now with how many you'd had to do during the pandemic, you could do them with your eyes closed.

"It fucked with me," You'd told him, "I saw those bodies everywhere, even if I wasn't in the hospital. I could smell them no matter how many candles I lit at home. I dreamt about them for weeks after. I cried for months."

And when you'd divulged that, the flood gates had opened for him. He told you everything, from covid to PittFest. When he got choked up, he found himself instinctually reaching for your hand, needing you to anchor him. Without hesitation, you practically pulled him into your lap, cradled his head to your chest and whispered soothing words in his ear.

So then it shouldn't have surprised him that you would catch on so quickly. For being so young when you went through med school, he had assumed upon first meeting you that you'd have no idea about anything. But it had struck him immediately how emotionally intelligent you were, how you had from the very beginning been able to read even the most closed off of patients.

Still, he felt himself recoil at your assessment, "You fell," He said, "I'm just making sure you're alright."

"Well I'm also a doctor and I'm telling you, I'm fine. There's no tenderness at the back of my head, no nausea, no dizziness—"

"I'm ordering you a head CT."

Your mouth fell open, indignation in the tug of your lips. After a moment, you scoffed, "I don't want that so please get me the AMA forms to sign, if you don't mind."

He raised his eyebrows and finally met your eyes, "Really?"

"You're exposing me to unnecessary radiation when I have zero symptoms—"

"You don't remember if you hit your head—"

"Robby?" He whipped his head around to see Dana in the doorway, "The cops are here, they wanna talk to you about the boy and his mother who—"

"Yeah, okay, I'll be there in a minute."

Dana left and he hung his head, braced his hands against his legs, hoping they didn't shake, "I would really appreciate it… if you could please stay for a CT."

He felt your gaze even as he avoided it, "Why are the cops here?"

He sighed, "A kid's here with no parental guardian."

There was a pause, then, "What happened to his mother?"

"I really can't talk about this right now—"

"Then I'd like the AMA forms, please."

He made an exasperated groan and looked up at you, tried pleading with his eyes, but you stayed firm, expectant, until he sighed, "A woman was brought in today with her ten year old son who'd found her unresponsive in the bathtub when he came home from school today. She'd slashed her own wrists. We couldn't get a pulse back." He ran a hand along the back of his neck, "The kid doesn't have anyone else."

In a moment, you were on your knees in front of him, his hands clasped in yours, "You worked the resuscitation?"

He nodded, and to his surprise salty tears fell onto your clasped hands. Embarrassed, he tried for nonchalant as he spoke, "It's uh—It's been a long day, but that happened almost first thing this morning. I don't know why I can't shake it."

"Well… That's unsurprising." You said slowly, "Considering your childhood."

His entire body stiffened and he pulled away, "What'd you say?"

You opened and closed your mouth, still lowered to the ground in front of him. He watched as you seemed to calculate your misstep too late and then rush to correct, "I just, um, I remember you telling me once that… that your parents weren't really… present in your life."

Robby shook his head, "I never told you about that."

You bit your lip for a moment and then shrugged, "You told me… everything, Michael. The night we slept together in med school. You were very drunk."

He bristled and scoffed, "Right, we got drunk, I told you that my mother killed herself, and then we fucked?"

It seemed absurd. The truth that he was so ashamed of, that he'd held so close to his chest, that he hadn't allowed anyone to know, he had told you. His grandparents had been the only other people to know and when they died they took it with them. He had assumed he would do the same. But here you were, this contradiction to the one fundamental truth he'd had. That no one would ever need to know the ugly truth that the single person on this Earth who was supposed to love him unconditionally had abandoned him with such violent permanence.

You seemed a bit embarrassed at his hostility, lifting yourself back up to your feet again, "Look, you don't have to try to humiliate me just because you don't believe me. I'm sorry I brought it up, I was just trying to let you know that I understand why that case was difficult for you."

"Yeah, well, it's not your fucking place."

He thought he saw you flinch, but just as quickly, you became stoic, "I think it's time for me to go and I'd prefer it if you stayed at your own place tonight."

You left without waiting for him to respond and immediately, the anger left him in a rush, replaced with shame. When he walked back towards central, you were gone, Dana looking at him now with a question in her eyes, "Your girl left in a rush, I thought you were leaving with her?"

He sighed, ran both hands over his face, "Where's the kid?"

"BH1," She said and leaned closer to him, "It's her birthday today and you let her leave here without you?"

Fuck. "It's her birthday?"

Dana nodded, "You don't know your own girl's birthday?"

"She's not—How do you know it's her birthday?"

"She told me about ten minutes ago."

Unbelievable.

"Well," He said, fingers interlaced at the back of his neck, "I don't think she'll want to spend it with me now."

Dana watched him for a moment, "Tell you what, Baran's still here, I'm sure she wouldn't mind handling the police. You should go. Get her a cake and flowers and apologize. You had a hard day, she'll understand."

You had understood, but he thought you'd likely be heaps and bounds less understanding now.

But hadn't he promised himself, when he first agreed to date you, seriously, that he'd be different this time? That he wouldn't fall back into old habits? That he wouldn't push people away when they got too close?

You already knew the worst of him, apparently. Had known it for decades it seemed and still, you wanted him. And as always, he'd hurt you anyway.

So, he was really prepared to grovel when he finally got to your place, a bouquet of tulips and white bakery box in hand. He knocked gently on the door and waited until he heard the twist of the doorknob, and then saw you. You were in sweats and a tank top and you crossed your arms over your chest when you saw him.

"Hi," he said softly.

"I thought I asked you not to come here tonight."

"I know, and I'll go, I just, Dana mentioned that it was your birthday so I got you a cake and some flowers and I just wanted to say that I'm—I'm really sorry. I just, I've never told… anyone about her, or so I thought, and it just caught me off guard. But, I shouldn't have spoken to you that way, you were only trying to help."

You stared at him for a few moments, mouth twisted to the side and bounced on the balls of your feet, "You got me a birthday cake?"

His mouth twitched into a smirk, but he fought it, "Yeah, but I didn't know what sort of cake you like so I—I got you funfetti cake. It reminded me of you."

Now it was you fighting a smirk, "Funfetti cake reminds you of me?"

He nodded, "Yeah, you're bright, colorful, pretty, happy—You're everything. Funfetti."

You uncrossed your arms and interlocked them behind your back instead, "You can come inside."

Ten minutes later, you both sat on the couch with a slice of cake, "No one's ever gotten me a birthday cake before."

Robby balked, "What?"

You shrugged, "My parents were always too busy to celebrate my birthday. I think they forgot most years. And I didn't have many friends growing up. And then when I got to be an adult I just… stopped telling people when my birthday was. To avoid being disappointed."

He felt an ache in his chest for the child he saw in his head, the kid he used to know. How lonely you must've been. "Why'd you tell Dana?"

"One of my students is a bit of a kiss ass and found out it was my birthday from the internet. Got the whole class to sign a card for me. Dana just happened to see it."

He sighed, "I'm really sorry if I contributed to your day being shitty."

You shook your head, "I really don't even think about it much anymore, truly. And anyway, it sounded like you had a much harder day than I did."

"That's not an excuse."

You put your plate on the coffee table and turned your attention fully to Robby, taking his face gently in your hands, "You came here and you apologized," You said softly, "And I've forgiven you. So enough with the self flagellation, hm?" You stroked your thumbs gently over his cheekbones, "And why don't you tell me about the mother that came in today."

Again, he felt the involuntary raise of his hackles at the suggestion that he discuss today. But there was warmth and tenderness in your eyes. Your fingers ran through his hair and scratched at his scalp gently, and his eyes fluttered closed, hackles falling.

And so the words flowed out of him. He recounted the horror and fear that reverberated through him as the woman was rolled in, her son shaking and sobbing at her side. How difficult it was for him to focus on anything other than this boy, this baby, now alone in the world. It was frightening, really, to come face to face with the boy he used to be. How young he was when his mother had passed, something he'd been unable to appreciate at the time.

He'd done a lot of work to forgive her for leaving. Had studied up on suicidality and bipolar depression. In his career he met many people who reminded him of his mother and his empathy had stretched and grown and while he'd thought he'd forgiven her, there was still just a kernel of bitterness deep in his chest.

He had never been confronted with himself, with the child he used to be, until today. How his heart bled for that child. He could recall every memory of that day, every smell, every sound, every touch. The world had fractured and reassembled for that boy today, much like it had for him so many years ago. And he'd had to listen to his colleagues all day, talk about that boy as if he was the one who had died and it pissed him off. That they could so easily written off that kid's future because of a single day, because of the choices his mother had made.

But then came the small, nagging voice at the back of his head, But wasn't it true? Aren't you broken beyond repair? Isn't that the one truth you've been running from all this time?

"You're not broken," You said softly to him when he'd finished speaking, still holding him tightly to you, now with one hand beneath his shirt and running your nails soothingly up and down his back.

You repeated it to him like a mantra until he leaned up, captured your soft, warm mouth with his. And whenever he opened his eyes to look into yours, he knew you didn't believe your own words. Walls that you had begun to deconstruct over the last few weeks were now built back up. Now, barbed wire adorned the walls like vines.

He had the distinct feeling that you'd never allow him to see over the walls again.

***

"Well I heard from Edith who heard from Sam who sometimes has lunch with Dana that Robby's been staying late and picking up more shifts again, since he bought that motorcycle… You know what that means."

"The seven week itch has struck again. That motorcycle's a breakup motorcycle if I've ever seen one."

You sighed heavily as you adjusted your microscope, "You guys are not being as quiet as you think you are."

Your students giggled at your admonishment, "Sorry, the drama is just way more fascinating in the Pitt than it is up here."

You were silent after that and their whispers died down, but never completely. You had never paid much attention to rumors around the hospital until you and Robby started seeing each other. The women in the hospital loved gossiping about him. And more and more it ate away at you.

Things hadn't been quite right between you since your birthday. You had forgiven him for how he'd acted, but still there was a cold dread in your stomach that seemed to intensify every time you saw him. You felt yourself overcompensating, looking for reassurance. You had convincingly kept up the illusion of confidence, but now it waned.

You had the feeling he had sussed it out, how desperate you were. Before, for any companionship. Now, specifically, for his. You were frightened by the way your heart squeezed when you woke up to him beside you in the morning. The way he had slipped into your routine so effortlessly. Helping you out in the garden on the weekends. Putting the kettle on at exactly 9PM for tea before bed. Trying all your desserts even after insisting he needed to watch what he ate. Recently, he'd began reading your well-worn, tattered copy of The Princess Bride aloud to you, using character voices that got more and more ridiculous until you were crying with laughter. More and more regularly, he fell asleep on the couch, glasses askew and Brutus on his chest.

It was terrifying how easily he slotted into your life. This was what you'd wanted, what you'd always wanted, had wanted so badly at times you'd forced relationships you knew would never work.

And you kept waiting, day after day, for him to leave and not come back. The day he'd been short with you in the ER, you'd been flung back to an earlier relationship. Remembered in vivid details the ugly fights you'd had.

"You're not listening to me!"

"Maybe I just don't like the sound of your voice."

It didn't matter how he apologized after, the words had burrowed deep in your head. They stuck with you from relationship to relationship and you'd heard similar disdain from Robby that day.

So with all of this, you were already struggling before the rumors and before the motorcycle. You felt him pulling away from you inch by inch and you clung to him harder, certain if you just enticed him the correct way he'd want to stay.

And for a while, you thought it was working, until dinner one day on the porch. The vibrant strawberry sky was beginning to bruise with dusk as you each sat in silent after cleaning your plates.

Then Robby cleared his throat, "You know how I've been fixing up the motorcycle with Duke?"

You nodded. You knew the fact that you were jealous of a sixty year old biker spending time with your boyfriend was not healthy. You were glad he had picked up a hobby outside of the ER, it was good for him. And still, you couldn't help the way dread curdled in your gut every time he spoke about it. What it really felt like was an escape plan. No matter how you tried to convince yourself it wasn't, you couldn't stop the constant spirals. The souring of your mood whenever he stated he was going to Duke's or he couldn't make it tonight because he stayed too late at Duke's so he'd just sleep at his own place. You knew he noticed the shift in energy whenever the motorcycle was brought up, but he never commented on it.

"It's finished," He gave you a wry smile, "It's rideable now, in really good shape."

"Oh," You said, "That's… great."

Again, he ignored the uneasiness in your tone. Or maybe he truly was oblivious. Because next he said, "I was thinking about taking some time off from work and doing a cross country ride."

"Oh," You said again, feeling dumb at your sudden lack of vocabulary, "For how long?"

"I don't know," He avoided looking at you as he said, "Three months?"

The pain in your chest was spectacular. Again and again you were reminded of how unlovable you were. You tried so hard and it was never enough, not for your parents, not for friends, not for every other partner who left quickly and quietly. Your eyes burned as you pushed back from the table and picked up your plate, "You don't have to flee across the country to get rid of me, you could just break up with me like a mature, grown man." You said bitterly and walked back inside.

Assumedly shocked at your outburst, it took him a minute before following you back inside, "This is not about us," He said quietly over your shoulder as you dropped the dirty dishes unceremoniously into your sink.

"Frankly, it doesn't matter if it isn't," You said turning to face him, "If you leave for three months our relationship is effectively dead. And you know this."

He scoffed, "Three months is not that long—"

"Three months is not that long when you've been in a relationship for a decade, it's everything when you've barely even been together that long."

He watched you and slowly shook his head, "It doesn't have to be. You could come with me."

You laughed and pushed past him, "What, and bring Brutus as well? Let my garden wither away? You don't really want me to come, you're just offering out of guilt."

"That's not true, I—I want to be here with you, being with you is the only thing that feels right in my life right now. I don't want to lose that."

"Then why are you running away?" You asked, exasperated and humiliated when tears began to blur your vision.

You were sitting on the couch now and he crouched in front of you, looked at you with his big wet, brown cow eyes. Eyes you adored, crow's feet you wished to sink into, freckles you'd counted and memorized over many nights.

"I feel like…" He said slowly, "Like… if I don't get out of that hospital, of this city soon that I'm a ticking time bomb."

You nodded and sniffed, pushed the heels of your hands into your eyes, "And I feel like if you leave I'm never gonna see you again."

He tilted his head to the side, eyebrow furrowed and watery eyes studying you. You waited and waited for him to say it wasn't true, but he obviously couldn't. Instead he cupped your cheeks in his hands and gently brushed away your tears, "C'mon sweetheart, don't cry. It's okay. I've got you."

Leaning in, he gently kissed your forehead, the tops of your cheeks, your nose, then your mouth, his beard scratching the soft skin of your face. Stifling the cries that attempted to crawl up your throat, you kissed him back fiercely, wondering if it would be the last time you got to do so. He matched your fervor, groaning into your mouth as you deepened the kiss—and then his hands were everywhere.

He hoisted you up and around his waist and walked you to the bedroom, a path he knew well at this point, could do it with his eyes closed. He placed you down and then crawled over you, arms bracketing your head as he kissed your lips swollen and raw. The smell of him, the taste of him, had become so comforting to you it was agony to imagine a time when you couldn't have them whenever you wanted. That he would be so far away from you, your house lonely and empty once again. And it was this thought that had you burst promptly into tears.

"Wh—What's wrong? Sweetheart—Do you wanna stop? We can stop—"

"No, no," You said quickly through hiccuping sobs and opened your eyes into his, "Please—Please don't stop, Michael, please—"

"Okay," He kissed all over your face again as your sobs began to quiet, "Okay, baby. I'm right here—" In response to his words, you pulled him closer until his weight was almost fully on you, "I'm right here." He repeated.

When your tears dried, he slowly undressed you, his kisses painfully tender and eyes that melted you. It took everything in you not to rush him along. The need to have him inside you, to fill you up, felt almost primal. You needed to be close to him, as close as you could be. Soon he'd be gone and all you'd have was the ghost of a feeling.

He leaned his forehead against yours as he slowly pushed inside you, both of you sighing into one another, "So perfect," He murmured and kissed you, "Feel so perfect, baby."

"Please," You kept saying over and over as he pushed himself in and out of you. You weren't quite sure what you were begging for, for him to fuck you? For him to stay? For him to love you?

Pulling out of you, he turned you onto your stomach, positioned your hips until you felt him press into you again, his belly against the small of your back and the cold chain around his neck falling against your shoulders, sending a chill down your spine.

The feel of him inside you was exquisite, like nothing else you'd experienced before. He pushed his hand beneath your belly until his fingers found your swollen clit and this coupled with the way he filled you up was too much, the sensation overwhelming. You were coming before you even had the chance to warn him, unraveling as he moaned and kissed the back of your neck when he felt your walls pulse around him.

The pleasure was so overwhelming and the feel of him so stifling, it was almost involuntary when you blurted out, "I love you, Michael, I love you."

With your face partially obscured by the mattress, you hoped he hadn't heard it. But his hips stuttered for a second and panic seized in your chest until— "Oh, God, fuck—" he came inside you.

His skin stuck to yours as he caught his breath, still inside you as he softened. You laid like that for a while in silence, spooning in your bed. The sun had still cast shadows in your room when you first came in here, but now it was nearly pitch black.

"You're still leaving?" You asked, voice steadier than you felt, unwilling to hope.

He was quiet for long enough that you wondered if he'd fallen asleep. But then came the soft, "Yes," in your ear.

You said nothing else that night. Neither of you spoke about what you'd confessed during sex and when you woke in the morning, he had left. There was no trace of him left in the house. He'd taken his toothbrush, his beard trimmer, his duffel of clothes and other toiletries. All gone.

He left a single t-shirt—by accident or not, you couldn't say—draped over your hamper. When you picked it up and brought it to your face, it smelt like him.

You sank to the floor of your closet like a child and cried.

***

Robby saw you everywhere and in everything. He thought about you most mornings when he put on a pair of pants and noticed how they were a bit too snug—Having regular meals most days at your place had meant he'd put on a few pounds while dating you. He thought about you and Brutus whenever Trinity showed him pictures of her new kittens. Whenever he had a cookie or a slice of blueberry pie, he remembered the sweet buttery smell of your house whenever you were baking.

He missed you with a devotion that felt almost religious, but he never picked up the phone. After having made you cry and then hearing you admit that you were in love with him, he'd been absolutely certain he couldn't have you. He'd thought in the beginning, he'd been able to delude himself that he could have someone like you. That he deserved someone like you, so sweet and gentle and loving. But despite his precautions, you'd still crumbled to dust in his hands.

He was terrified that if he didn't leave he'd repeat his mother's mistakes and leave you even more devastated than you were now.

But when you looked at him and said you didn't think you'd ever see him again, he'd wondered if you'd understood. If you'd understood his fears and instead worried that if he did leave he'd become his mother.

He didn't want to think about that and so as he packed up his gear and clothes and whatever else he thought he might need onto his bike, he tried and failed to stop thinking about you.

As he left town, he rode by your house knowing you'd be at work. He rolled slowly, memorized every detail he could of the house, the only place he'd ever felt at home besides his grandparents' house. In a last minute decision, he pulled out his phone and took a quick photo.

This was when he saw Brutus in the window, watching him, tail swishing back and forth. He'd miss that little rascal, too, even if he had broken his favorite mug. He gave a quick salute to Brutus and then he left before he could change his mind.

For a while, being on the road felt as freeing as he hoped it would. Everyone before he left seemed so worried he was about to kill himself, but honestly, with new air in his lungs, he felt great. For around four hundred miles.

He was a few days into the trip, having only driven something like a hundred miles each day, and closing in on Chicago when the fatigue really began to set in. Every part of his body ached. He had been very careful not to let his mind wander to you since he'd left, but it wandered anyhow. Now he thought of the Epsom salt baths you insisted on whenever he had aches and pains. He wished more than anything that you'd be there in Chicago, waiting by the hot bath, pretending to resist when he coaxed you in with him. You'd sit between his legs, back to his chest as you told him about your day as he gently kneaded your shoulders with his thumbs. You'd talk about the study you were working on. Or, since it was a Saturday, maybe you'd spent time in the garden, pulling weeds as you listened to an audiobook for a new mystery novel.

Robby was so immersed in the fantasy, he didn't register the oncoming headlights until it was already too late. Still, as the car crossed the double yellow line into his lane, on instinct, he jerked the bike away from the oncoming collision.

He was able to avoid the car, but lost control of the bike, skidding off the road and into a guardrail. He felt it when the gravel tore through his pants, then his skin, the weight of his bike pinning him to the ground as he came to a complete stop.

Robby was so used to watching other people die, he thought he knew what it'd be like when his time came. Stupidly, he thought he'd made his peace with his own mortality, his inevitable demise. But in the split second it took for him to see the oncoming headlights and jerk his bike out of the way, he understood immediately and with complete clarity that he didn't want to die.

As he felt his skin being torn up and his leg being crushed, time slowed, and he saw your face. Heard your voice tell him you loved him. The sound of your laugh. The smell of your shampoo.

And just as quickly as it happened, it was over, and the pain exploded throughout his body.

Pain, glorious pain, and as he categorized it all he understood it meant he was alive and he laughed, wildly. The paramedics that showed up afterwards and told him how lucky he was likely thought him insane as he laughed and laughed.

He was alive. He was fucking alive. And the realization filled him with indescribable joy. Logically he knew most of this was due to the adrenaline rush, but he couldn't help but feel like this had to have been some divine intervention. And soon enough, as the adrenaline fled him and the pain meds kicked in, he couldn't stop crying.

The nurses and doctors looked at him with sympathy and one nurse, Angela, asked gently, "Is there anyone we can call?"

The only person he wanted to call right now was you. His bike was totaled and he found he didn't even care. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to play chess on your porch while it rained. He wanted to play hide and seek with Brutus while you giggled from the sofa, watching him. He wanted to let you pick a movie for movie night only to have you unceremoniously fall asleep in his arms less than ten minutes in. He wanted to beg your forgiveness. He wanted to tell you he loved you, was in love with you, like he should have before he left. He wanted to go home.

But he shook his head, wiped his eyes and asked if he could have his phone. He would be waiting a while for imaging on his leg. The thought for sure something was broken and based on what he felt when he went down, he concurred with that opinion. He thought it possible he might even need surgery, though they hadn't said as much yet.

Angela returned with his phone and a smile, repeated as he looked at his cracked screen that she'd be happy to call, but he thanked her and waved her off.

His phone seemed to be working fine and he immediately scrolled over to his photo album where he pulled up photos of you. Photos of the two of you together, you making a silly face at the camera and him with a toothy smile on his face as he looked down at you. Happy.

He felt suddenly very stupid for how he'd handled everything. Wished he'd listened to you when you asked him why he seemed to be sabotaging the one good thing in his life.

The answer was that he didn't think he deserved anything good, least of all, you. He was destined to a miserable life and a miserable death and he had no desire to bring you down with him.

But looking at this photo, it was becoming more and more clear to him that you had changed him. He thought he was destined for tragedy, but you'd rewritten his ending. Only he'd been much too stupid to see it.

Eventually, he worked up the courage to call you, not expecting you to answer. As the phone rang he could picture you in your pajama set, sleepytime tea on your nightstand and Brutus curled up in your lap as you stared at the caller ID with rage in your eyes.

But you surprised him. You picked up after just three rings.

"Hello?" You sounded a bit breathless and a lot confused.

"Hi."

"Michael?" He closed his eyes at the sound of his name, always so sweet from your mouth, "What's wrong? Where are you?"

"Why are you assuming something's wrong?"

"Because I haven't heard from you in weeks," You said bitterly, "And I can hear beeping monitors in the background and I know you're not at work because Abbot told me you left for your sabbatical days ago."

"So you've been asking about me?" He said, teasing lilt to his voice.

You sighed, "Michael, so help me, I will hang up this phone—"

"Alright, okay, sorry, sorry, you're right," He ran a hand over his face, "I'm sorry—I—I'm in an emergency room in Chicago and I just wanted to hear your voice."

"Why are you in an emergency room?" He could tell you were fighting to keep your voice level from how slowly you asked the question.

"I totaled the bike," He scratched at his beard, "I was driving too late and I was tired and a car drifted into my lane and I swerved and went into a guardrail."

"Oh my God—Fuck—Are you—Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I have some pretty bad road rash and think maybe my leg's broken—" He heard movement on the other end of the phone, "What're you doing?"

"Packing." You said matter of factly, "If I leave now I should get to Chicago by morning."

He felt his eyes burn immediately. That after everything you'd still go to him without hesitation. Again, he felt that pang in his chest, that overwhelming ache that said he didn't deserve you.

"You shouldn't drive this late," Was all he said, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

"Please," You said dismissively, "Do you need anything from your house? I can stop on my way."

"Sweetheart, I'm—I'm so sorry for leaving. You were right, you're the only thing that matters and I thought I didn't deserve it—Deserve you and so I ran away. I'm a coward. And I don't expect you to forgive me, but I'll beg for it anyway. I love you so much and I just want to be with you, if you'll still have me."

There was silence on the other line and then a soft sigh, "You're on so many drugs right now, aren't you?"

"What? No—Well, yes, but that's not why—"

"We can talk about it in a few days when you're not high out of your mind. Do you need anything from your house?" You repeated it like you were talking to a petulant toddler and he felt stupid again. He hadn't considered what this would look like to you. And yes, his accident had forced him to confront what he was actually doing and feeling, but that didn't make it less true. He'd known he loved you long before he left, long before you even said it. He thought he'd likely been a little bit in love with you since med school.

Your caution was understandable, though, so he wouldn't push.

"No," He said finally, "No, thanks. But would you mind sharing your location with me since you insist on driving through the night? Would make me feel better if I can follow along."

"Sure," you said, and he heard the way your voice softened at his concern, "Goodnight, Michael."

For a moment, time seemed to crunch like an accordian and he was back in med school, your voice in his ear in the middle of the night, asking for his forgiveness. He felt a bit fuzzy at the edges.

"Goodnight, Bambi." He murmured and his phone slipped from his hand.

***

Michael was asleep when you got to the hospital and had been admitted to Ortho upstairs for surgery.

Your emotions were all over the place, but seeing him in a hospital bed, a bit bloodied up and hooked up to monitors, you felt your defenses falling. You wanted to be angry with him, but how could you be? When you had been so close to losing him for good?

As you got closer, you noted that he'd let his beard and hair grow out a bit longer since the last you saw him. It made him appear softer. You had been pleased before he left when his cheeks began to fill out a bit having made him eat properly since you began dating. That weight was still there, if not as obvious as before.

The rush of affection that filled you upon seeing him was nearly suffocating.

As you pulled up a chair to his bedside, he began to wake and you smiled at him with watery eyes, "Hi."

He smiled back and reached a hand out for you which you immediately took and brought to your lips.

"I'm sorry," He said immediately, but you dismissed him with a shake of your head.

"What did the doctor say? Why do you need surgery?"

"It's… shattered. The bike fell on it, crushed my leg. Have to screw it all back together."

You frowned as he grimaced, "Are you in pain? Let me go get a nurse—"

You stood to go, but he wrapped a hand around your wrist, "No, no, don't. I asked them to… take me off the meds."

You stared at him, mouth agape, "Why would you do something like that?"

"So that I could tell you how in love with you I am with a clear head."

You nearly laughed, "Michael Robinavitch, have you lost your goddamn mind?"

"You said we should wait," He shook his head, "I don't want you to go another second thinking that I don't love you."

Your eyes watered, but you shook your head, "It's gonna take a lot longer than you saying it once for me to trust you again."

"I know that," He grimaced again, "I just wanted to say it now."

You brought a hand to his cheek and scratched lightly along his jaw, "Can I go grab a nurse now if you're done with the dramatics?"

He smirked and nodded and you hid a grin as you stood and walked from the room.

It was a day or two after surgery that Robby was finally cleared to go home with you. On the way home, high on pain meds, Robby read The Princess Bride to you in his silly voices to keep you entertained.

At home, you set him up in bed with strict instructions to Brutus to keep him company while you made him food.

And slowly, the two of you settled back into the usual rhthym. He told you he loved you many times a day. Even when he didn't say it, he'd run his fingers over the tattoo on your wrist, or say something just to make you laugh. He watched you with an expression on his face that you'd never seen before and when you asked if something was wrong, he shook his head, said "Everything's perfect."

As he got back on his feet, you took slow walks to and from the park, fed the birds. Robby even downloaded an app on his phone that could identify the birds by thsid song. His face would light up with joy whenever the app told him a bird he didn't recognize was around.

Life was quiet and peaceful and love found a way to fill every crack and crevice in each of your hearts.

A year later, when Robby's leg had healed entirely, when the only pain was used to predict the rain, was when he asked you.

"Sweetheart?" Your head was in his lap on the sofa, you watching TV while he did a crossword. You hummed in response so he knew you were listening, "I've been thinking and I think it's time I put my house up for sale."

You sat up slowly and looked at him. Your eyes instantly scanning for deception.

Robby was a great roommate. He was pretty handy and so could usually fix most minor wear and tear problems without having to call in an expert. He took care of Brutus and the plants. He loved gardening with you. He never let the chores go too long without being done. Always washed the toilet because he knew it was your least favorite chore.

You had no qualms about living with him. But you always assumed, even though most of you had grown to trust him again, that he'd keep his house as a backup plan. It was realistic, you told yourself. Relationships all had expiration dates.

"Really?"

He nodded, "The last year I've only ever gone home to to make sure nobody's broken in. I've moved everything I use here already. My clothes, my toiletries, my tools, my books, my records—everything's here. It's a waste, don't you think?"

You opened and closed your mouth, ran your fingers absently over the tattoo on your wrist, "What if… What if we fight and you want space?"

He shrugged, "I don't think that would happen, but I could always get a hotel for a night. I still have the cabin in the mountains."

You swallowed and looked down at your hands, "If we break up you'll hate me because you sold your house."

You felt the couch shift as he sat up and took your hands, "If we broke up, I could never hate you. Besides, this is my decision. You didn't pressure me into it. I also figured this way it was only fair that I start helping out with the bills here. Now, if me permanently moving in feels like too big of a step to you—"

"No," You said quickly, "No, I want you to. I love having you here, it's been…" You shook your head, "It's been the best year of my life."

He smiled and brought your hands up to his lips, "Mine too."

And as the two of you talked over a bottle of wine about the logistics of moving the remainder of his things into your house and calling realtors and what you should do with the extra money (Should you travel? Put it into retirement?) it was like the final piece of your previously shattered heart was glued back into place.

Before Michael, you often wondered if you were too picky. If your standards were too high as your mother loved to tell you and that's why you'd end up a spinster. Alone and bitter, always denied the one thing you wanted and craved most in the world: love and companionship.

But as you and Michael talked late into the night and fell asleep in each other's arms, you knew you'd been right to wait.

You should’ve told him to give this a name back then — whatever this thing was between you — because at least then you’d have a name for the feeling searing in your chest just now, as you’re forced to watch Robby flirt with Noelle on the other side of the workstation.

You’re examining the chart glowing from the iPad in your hands, trying hard to ignore the ache in your lower back and the fact that you haven’t eaten since six that morning, when the sound of Robby’s sudden laughter graces your ears — finding you despite the buzzing chatter of the crowded E.R. 

You glance up automatically and find him leaning against the counter, with the sleeves of his undershirt pushed up to his elbows and his stethoscope looped lazily around his neck, towering several inches over Noelle.

“You’re getting less grumpy in your old age, Robinavitch,” the older woman quips beneath a quiet smile and the faint flush coating her caramel-colored cheeks. She arches a manicured brow in his direction, dark eyes glimmering beneath long lashes. “Something been improving your mood lately? Or some-one?”

Your palms go clammy around the tablet in your hand. You never wanted anyone to find out that you were dating your attending, but god, your heart stops beating just to hear your name fall from his lips.

Robby laughs instead, a sharp exhale from his nose. 

“You always think you know everything,” he says with a shake of his head, though you can still hear the smile in his voice when he tells her, “I’m not sure your new boyfriend up in ortho would like you asking about my love life, Hastings…”

“Oh, I stopped seeing him ages ago,” Noelle scoffs. “He kept calling himself an alpha male unironically, and I— couldn’t take it anymore.”

Robby physically recoils. “Jeez… And here I thought your taste in men improved after me.”

Their laughter entwines and lingers in the air for several lingering moments. It’s more familiar than flirtatious, but your stomach twists with a sick feeling anyway. Because Noelle was, to put it simply, everything you weren’t. She was effortlessly gorgeous and carried all that confidence in her matching pant suits and pulled-back curls. She was much closer to Robby’s age, too, and their lengthy history is one you know you couldn’t compete with if you tried.

You feel a little like a child as you watch them talk in hushed voices. You flare with all the embarrassment of one, too, when Robby’s eyes lock suddenly with yours.

You turn away a beat too late, just in time to catch the look that flashes suddenly across his weathered features — as if he’d somehow been caught. You pretend not to notice, or otherwise care, when he dismisses himself from Noelle and closes the distance between you. He towers over you the same way he had with her, smelling like a mixture of his cologne and your bed sheets.

“Hey…” he says, all casual, stuffing his hands into his scrub pockets and nodding to the tablet in your hands. “You get that CBC back on Central Eight?”

“Yep,” you deadpan, still without looking at him. 

He flinches slightly when you shove the chart suddenly at his chest with a less-than-gentle hand. His brows lower in confusion when you turn on your heel and walk away a second later, with considerably more ire than you had that morning. (‘Cause you’d been complaining about some mild insomnia for a while now, so Robby fucked you to sleep the night before. He figured you’d be in a better mood today accordingly. But alas.)

“So I take it you’re not helping with this endoscopy?” he calls after you, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket for a better view of the screen in his hand.

“Nope,” you call back, already halfway down the hall — not as his resident, but as a woman halfway scorned.

Whitaker’s eyes dart back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match — between you, Robby, and the bloodied head wound he’s watching you stitch up with practiced hands. There’s a heavy tension he can feel simmering in the air, snatching all the remaining oxygen out of the room. Even from where he stands behind you, peering over Trinity’s shoulder, he feels hardly shielded from the building stress.

“Call ortho for a consult for me, will ya?” Robby asks you, or rather politely commands, without looking away from the chart in his hands.

You, similarly, don’t glance up from your sutures as you tell him, “You have a pair of free hands, don’t you, Dr. Robby?”

The man’s eyes dart to you in an instant, peering at you over the top of the glasses sitting low on his broad nose. His dark brown gaze glimmers with a mixture of amusement and shock as a faint smile flickers beneath his beard.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll do it!” Whitaker blurts, half-strangled by the tension, as he rushes for the red phone across the room. It’s quite telling, the younger boy finds, that he’d rather suffer a call with Park the Shark than watch this lover’s quarrel unfold.

Robby squints as he takes a slow step towards you. His eyes flit from your deadpan face, to your gloved hands, to the balding head of the unconscious patient you stitch up. 

“Have you eaten today?” he wonders aloud.

“Are you gonna ask if I need a nap next to?” you scoff. “I’m not a child.”

“Well, you’re kinda acting like one,” Robby says within a breathless chuckle. “So do you wanna maybe dial the attitude back a notch?”

“Sorry, Dr. Robby,” you say flatly, tying off the final stitch with sharp, methodical movements. “I’ll remember to stroke your ego next time—  Maybe then you won’t accuse me of being a bitch.”

“I wasn’t—”

A laugh sputters suddenly from Santos’ mouth before she can help it. She hides it behind her fist when Robby glares at her and pretends to cough instead.

The tension between the two of you doesn’t snap until around the tenth hour of the shift, when you’re hiding from the chaos of the E.D. with the excuse of fetching more supplies from the walk-in closet. Robby enters like a dark cloud, mixing with your own storm, and threatening to create a most fatal concoction when he corners you against the shelf. (You hadn’t stopped moving for about four straight hours, to be fair — this was his only real chance of getting you alone.)

“What the hell is your problem today?” the older man says in lieu of a greeting.

You huff and roll your eyes, shoving at a pack of saline flushes a little harder than necessary when they threaten to fall from the shelf and on top of you. Robby watches with narrowed eyes and a pair of weathered hands splayed on his hip. 

“Did I do something to you? ‘Cause you’ve been acting crazy all day—”

You slam the cabinet door shut with a resounding clang, so hard it refuses to latch,before spinning on your heels to face the man behind you. The glare you give him almost makes him flinch before he swallows down the instinct to.

“Crazy?” you echo through a tense jaw. “You flirt with Noelle all day, right in front of me, and now you’re calling me crazy?”

Robby blinks owlishly back at you for several long moments. 

You almost think you see a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth beneath his mustache, before a chuckle sputters suddenly from his lips. You flinch at the intensity of his laughter, and at the distant mania glimmering in his dark eyes.

“Oh, my god—”

“Don’t laugh!” you exclaim, face burning under the weight of your embarrassment.

“—That’s what this is about?”

“Yes! It is. Because I thought I was enough for you.”

His weathered features soften with a heavy sigh, though traces of his amusement still remain — equal parts fond and exhausted. 

“Oh, c’mon… You know this wasn’t supposed to be anything serious,” Robby croons gently, taking slow steps towards you. “That was the agreement, right? Casual. So we could avoid all… This.”

You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes when he plants himself in front of you. You try not to melt when you catch a whiff of his dizzying cologne. “This?” you echo.

“Yeah… You know, all the… jealousy and the— arguments,” he huffs with a lazy shrug and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “I’ve been through this before, kid. Trust me. This is… This is what’s best.”

Your chest sears with a mixture of red-hot anger and ice-cold jealousy. Your jaw tightens at how detached he sounds, how rational, as if he were discussing policies instead of real actual feelings. (If he was even capable of those). You want him to feel this, too — this awful, wretched jealousy clawing at your ribs from the inside out. 

You fold your arms tightly across your chest, forcing your voice into a deadpan as hurt simmers somewhere beneath the words. “So I can see whoever I want?” you ask him.

Robby’s expression flickers slightly, almost imperceptibly. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, but his dark gaze never once wavers from yours. 

“Of course, you can,” he tells you, though his taut voice threatens to betray him. “We’re casual. That was the deal.”

“Okay,” you nod once and turn away from him again, giving him very little to play off of as he tries and fails to call your bluff. 

Robby’s forced to stare at the back of you while you pull a large pack of lap pads from the shelf. His brows knit in confusion when you spin back around to face him, mostly back to normal again, with a ghost of a polite smile dancing the edges of your mouth.

“Run these to Trauma 1 for me, will ya? Dr. Al-Hashimi needs ‘em for a trauma patient coming in.”

You press the package to Robby’s chest before he can answer and walk past him for the exit before he can blink.

Three days after the fact, you’re sitting in a crowded bar a block away from the PTMC, drowning your post-shift sorrows in half-priced beers. 

In those three days, you haven’t seen Robby once outside of work. There were no more stolen kisses in empty elevators, no more lingering touches in stairwells, no more “come over” texts sent in the dead of night. And Robby thought it was strange, because the two of you weren’t even fighting anymore — not technically, anyway — and yet you were more distant now than ever.

“Question,” the man murmured casually from the other side of the desk while you finished up your charting at the monitor. “Is it me you’re avoiding or just my apartment?”

“What?” you scoffed, still typing. “I’ve just been— busy, Robby.”

“Hm…” he sighed, less than convinced.

You didn’t spare him a second glance — not then and not when you took Santos’ offer of happy hour and Friday night karaoke. The girl herself returns now to the cracked pleather booth in the corner of the dingy bar, where you sit with Mel and Whitaker, after butchering another Alanis Morrissette song. 

Her chest heaves with panted breaths under her black tank top, pale skin sticky with a thin layer of alcohol-induced sweat.

“Okay, what’s with the long faces over here?” Trinity jokes as she steals a room-temperature fry off your plate, talking through the mouthful. “I know you and Robby are fighting or whatever, but I just gave the performance of a lifetime up there.”

You slurp nosily at the remnants of your fruity drink and nearly choke on it at the accusation. “What?” you cough with the thin straw still in your mouth. “We aren’t— fighting. What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please,” Trinity scoffs and reaches for her beer. “You’re both been acting like a couple of… divorced parents at soccer practice.”

“Okay, I don’t even know what that means—”

“Playing nice in front of everyone as not to evoke suspicion, which inevitably turns the obvious tension between you from angry to sexually charged,” Mel rambles matter-of-factly. Her blonde hair sways around her jaw as she nods, left slightly crimped from her undone braid.

Your eyes flit to Whitaker then, who nods much more solemnly in agreement.

Your face burns red-hot in response. “Well— we’re not even, like, together or anything, so…”

“Mhm…” Santos hums with a knowing look that makes you shift uncomfortably in the booth. She takes another quick swig from the amber bottle in her hand before her gaze zeroes in on an unfortunate Whitaker. “C’mon, Huckleberry. You’re up.”

His light eyes widen, glassy with exhaustion and alcohol alike. “I’m… Up?”

“Yeah. You’re doing karaoke with me. Let’s go,” Trinity says as she slides once more off the weathered vinyl. She frowns when she rises and finds the boy still sitting in place. “Let’s go, I said! We gotta get back in line before the spots fill up—”

Whitaker scrambles to follow the girl towards the stage despite his better judgment. You use that as an excuse to get another drink, tugging the skirt of your dress further down your thighs as you go. You weave through the crowd of strangers and coworkers alike until you reach the sticky wooden counter. 

You lean your elbows against it and flash the bartender a kinda smile. “Can I get another aperol spritz, please?”

“Put that on my tab,” a familiar voice says from beside you.

Your head whips to find Jack sitting there, one chair down and nursing a sweaty amber bottle of cheap beer in his pale hand. He looks more relaxed now than you think you’ve ever seen him — camo pants baggy around his legs, black t-shirt untucked from the belt, warm around the edges from the alcohol.

You feel very suddenly overdressed in your form-fitting velveteen number and cross your arms over your chest to hide beneath the loose cardigan you wear over top of it. “Oh, you don’t have to do that—”

“I insist,” the older man smiles. “You deserve it after that canthotomy you did today. You were a real trooper.”

The bartender slides a cocktail glass across the wooden surface over to you. The orange liquid threatens to slosh over the thin rim. You give him a polite grin in return. “Thank you,” you tell the man, then grow considerably shier when you turn back to the attending sitting a stool down from you. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”

“Jack,” the older man corrects before bringing the lip of his bottle back up to his mouth.

“Jack,” you echo softly.

The man shifts on the hard stool, keeping his prosthetic limb stretched slightly ahead of him beneath the bar. A not quite silence settles between you then, filled by the buzzing bar all around you. Your eyes cut to the stage on the far side of the room, where Santos belts the lyrics to “You Oughta Know” and Whitaker stumbles over himself to get the foreign words out. 

“I think Shen is looking for a karaoke partner,” you quip, nodding your head towards the doctor standing by the stage and flipping through the binder of song choices there.

The dim overhead lighting turns Jack’s silver curls a softer golden shade when he turns his head to follow your gaze. He grimaces instantly at the thought. “Yeah, absolutely not.”

“Why?” you laugh softly, with the thin straw dancing against your mouth. “You scared?”

“Yes,” the man answers without a second thought. “And I’ve been shot at before— Today, even— And somehow karaoke still feels more terrifying.”

Your eyes squint in his direction, glittering with something foreign. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t ya think?”

“Eh. Maybe a little.”

You scoff and slide into the bar stool beside him. “You don’t strike me as someone who embarrasses easily, Dr. Abbot.”

“That’s because you only know me at work,” he quips halfway into his beer, before licking the amber sheen from his mouth. “Where I am equal parts competent and mysterious.”

“Mysterious?” you repeat skeptically.

“Mm,” Jack nods with narrowed eyes and a faint smile twitching the corner of his lip. “Very tortured, you know? Very brooding.”

“Ah, yes…” you sigh with alcohol glittering on your lips like gloss. “The very brooding, tortured doctor who makes dinosaur noises to win over scared children in pedes.”

Jack pauses mid-sip, pale eyes narrowing. “Well, this is new…” he hums.

Your stomach flips at the way he’s looking at you. Heat crawls instantly up your neck. You feel very suddenly suffocated by the heavy cardigan on your shoulders. “…What is?”

“I don’t know,” he answers with a lazy shrug, though his heavy eyes dart once down your form and up again. You don’t realize, until then, that this is his first time seeing you in anything other than your dark black scrubs. “You… Flirting with me.”

You exhale a breathy laugh, if only to dispel the anxiety clawing at your chest. “Flirting? Is that what this is?” 

“Hey— You’re the one who called me mysterious.”

“Actually, I was clarifying if you thought you were mysterious.”

“Still counts.”

“Does it?” you squint.

Jack smirks behind the lip of the beer bottle against his mouth. His adam’s apple bobs with a short sip before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know… For a while there, I thought you hated me… Considering you never talked to me unless you had to.”

“You work nights, Jack— I don’t talk to you because I see you for, maybe, twenty minutes out of my day,” you scoff, and don’t realize you’ve called him by his first name until his eyes glimmer with amusement. You turn away with a shake of your head as your face burns, bringing the straw back up to your mouth. “Though, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t consider it…”

“Oh, really?” Jack hums with raised brows. “What’s the verdict now, then, huh?”

You let your gaze drag over him deliberately as you ponder the question, biting at the straw between your teeth. You scan over his toned biceps, his lean stomach caged beneath his form-fitting tee, and his spread thighs that make your head spin, before meeting his eyes once more. 

“Now,” you hum sweetly, “I think I’m starting to understand the appeal…”

Jack stares at you for a long moment before he lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. The lamplight shines in his greying curls as he shakes his head. “Yeah? And how does Robby feel about that?”

Your eyes harden in an instant.

Jack raises a free hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m just sayin’— He looks like he wants to put his fist through a wall any time another attending talks to you for more than thirty seconds.”

Your chest tightens unexpectedly. You swallow hard to fight the strangling feeling — of Robby, and of his laughter in the supply closet — as you shrug a lazy shoulder in response. You don’t bother to lift your cardigan when it slips softly down your arm.

“It’s casual,” you tell him.

Jack studies you for a long moment. The corner of his mouth curls into a slow half-smile, and you feel your heart stuttering behind your ribcage. 

“Casual, huh?” he hums and brings his bottle back up to his mouth. “Interesting…”

Morning arrives slowly through the veiled curtains of the quiet bedroom, where pale golden light cuts softly over hardwood floors and rumpled sheets. You rouse gradually, cocooned beneath strangely heavy blankets that smell differently from your own back home — like unfamiliar detergent, cedarwood, and musky cologne. 

For a blissful wink of a moment, you don’t remember where you are. Not until you stretch your tired limbs and brush a scruffy leg with your foot, anyway.

Your breath catches. Your heavy eyes snap open. Your body prickles with heat as flashes from the night before return to you at once — of the walk home from the bar, of Jack’s laugh against your throat, of his stubble scraping your skin, of the teasing murmur in his velvety voice as he told you to cum for him.

Your thighs clench together at the memory, while a lingering ache pulses pleasantly low in the pit of your stomach.

You lift your head from the pillow and inhale sharply through your nose as your eyes scan the foreign bedroom, which you had been too busy to do the night before. 

There’s an expensive-looking record player in one corner, sat beside a crate of well-loved vinyls. There’s a bookshelf lining the far wall — cluttered with medical textbooks, old paperbacks, and framed photos from his military days. His camo bag, etched with his name, slouches by the entrance, and over the foot of the bed, you can see his prosthetic limb lying beside your shoes.

Other than that, it’s strikingly empty, with very little decoration on the wall or bedside tables. It makes sense, you figure, for a man who is working far more than he isn’t.

Your head turns in the opposite direction to find Jack sleeping soundly just beside you. The gentle rays of morning light brush over the canvas of his bare back, turning his freckles there a deeper shade of golden brown. He’s got one arm shoved beneath the pillow he folds into his cheek and the other lying loose across the mattress — from where your waist must’ve been before you slithered out from underneath it.

Your chest pinches at the sight of him. With pride, maybe, at having conquered him. And with a pang of white-hot guilt that twists when your mind inevitably drifts to Robby.

You slide out of bed, careful not to let the mattress give too much beneath your weight. You grimace when the fabric of your t-shirt twists uncomfortably around your form, only to find that you’re wearing Jack’s shirt, which had seemingly been given to you at some point last night. It falls over your thighs when you stand, bare feet padding as you gather your discarded clothes.

You bend down to drag your underwear back up your thighs and wince when your head throbs from last night’s cheap cocktails. With your dress and knit cardigan balled in your arm, you toe your shoes back on. Your breath hitches when the mattress shifts with a soft creak.

Jack squints when he raises his wild head. His mouth twitches when he finds you at the foot of the mattress. “Y’know…” he rasps, voice rough with sleep. “I’m at least grateful you’re not robbing me before sneaking out. That’s very courteous of you.”

“I’m not sneaking,” you scoff. “I just… didn’t want to wake you.”

The man inhales sharply as he twists onto his back, charcoal sheets tangling around his waist. You force yourself to look away from his lean stomach and the red claw marks you left on his scruffy chest when he stretches his toned arms above his head. 

“That’s sweet,” he says with a wince. “But unfortunately, I wake up if somebody breathes wrong in the next room.”

You exhale a soft laugh. 

Jack’s eyes soften around the edges at the sound of it. “You workin’  today?”

“Yep, in about…” Your eyes flit to the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Half an hour.”

“Brutal,” he scoffs.

“You’re fault.”

“Don’t say that like you didn’t have a good time,” he teases with narrowed eyes, then softens slightly when you turn away. You fumble with the stubborn back of your shoe, and his chest twists at your silence. “Do you… Do you regret it?”

“No,” you answer instantly.

“Good,” he hums, relaxing visibly once more into the sheets. “Me neither.”

Your stomach blooms with warmth. You shift awkwardly on your feet before him, even still. “So, uh… What— What now?”

“Well, feel free to use my shower, if you want—”

“I’m serious, Jack,” you insist gently, then add, more sheepishly. “But I will be using your shower, actually, thank you…”

Jack inhales deeply, considering. “Well,” he starts carefully, “I like you. Obviously.”

Your pulse rushes like a teenage girl.

“But,” he continues, as relief and disappointment tangle in your chest all at once. “I also know that neither of us is in the right spot for a relationship right now…”

“So… Casual?” you offer lightly, mouth lifted in a tired smile.

“Casual,” Jack agrees with a firm nod and glassy eyes.

You wear the night before all over, despite your desperate attempts to hide it.

Robby notices it the moment he sees you — how relaxed you are, how happy you seem to be. Whatever had been plaguing you before is now long gone, and that alone should be enough to comfort him. But still, he can’t shake the feeling that someone had gotten rid of all the aching for you — fucked it out of you the way only he could.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he observes while signing off on the chart you’d given him.

“Am I?” you hum.

“Yeah,” he nods, clicking his pen with his thumb. He glances at you over the top of his glasses before averting his gaze once more. “What’d you get up to last night, huh?”

“Nothing,” you shrug. “Other than watching Santos butcher Alanis Morrissette’s discography at karaoke… Maybe I just slept well.”

“You usually only do that at my place.”

Your brows furrow when he passes the clipboard back to you. “I’m sorry— Are you accusing me of something, Dr. Robby?”

His mouth opens to respond — to tell you that he can smell the foreign body wash on your skin, far muskier than the delicate sweet-vanilla he’s used to. But the automatic doors across the station swish open and shut before he can. 

Jack enters with his camo pack slung over his shoulder and brings a cool evening breeze in with him. Robby can’t help but notice how your eyes find each other’s almost instantly, clicking like magnets and lingering together like there’s a secret that only the two of you know about. His stomach swirls with jealousy.

“Look alive, degenerates,” Jack announces in lieu of a greeting, then quiets slightly when he reaches your side. “What’d I miss?”

“I was just briefing Robby on last night at karaoke,” you answer with a polite smile. “And how I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette after Santos’ crimes last night—”

“Fuuuck you,” Trinity drags out from the desk beside you, still sluggish from the long day and the hangover that won’t seem to leave her.

“Don’t drag me into this,” Jack quips. “I took an oath as a physician to do no harm.”

You exhale a quiet laugh. The man’s eyes soften around the edges, as though pleased at having earned the sound, before walking off towards the locker room. He leaves a trail of musky cedarwood as he goes, and Robby’s heart drops when he finally places the scent — the one he’s been smelling on you all day. 

The realization hit him like a truck.

His expression darkens instantly when he turns back to you.

“Supply closet,” he mutters lowly as he walks past you. “Now.”

Your stomach drops at his tone. He takes all the remaining breath from your lungs with him as he goes. Your chest stings accordingly — with a surge of pride at his jealousy, and with a pang of distant regret at his hurt. You follow behind him down the long hallway to the supply closet like a scolded child. He barely waits for the door to click shut behind him before rounding on you.

“You slept with him?” he shouts, eyes wide and wild.

You cross your arms tight over your chest, with your head tilted inquisitively to your shoulder. “Aren’t you the one who said I could see whoever I want?”

“Yeah, I meant random assholes at the bar,” he snaps. “Not my best fucking friend!”

An incredulous laugh sputters from your lips. “Oh, so now we have rules? What happened to just being casual, huh? If you can flirt with your coworkers, why can’t I?”

Robby’s dark eyes narrow as he takes a slow step towards you. You catch a faint upward flicker of his mouth as he asks, “So that’s why you did it, huh? You just wanted to piss me off?”

Your anger spikes instantly. You feel it prickling red-hot beneath your scrubs. Because he’s an arrogant asshole, maybe, or maybe because a distant part of you knows that he’s right.

“No, actually,” you tell him anyway. “Because not everything’s about you, Robby. I did it because Jack wanted me. Because he didn’t treat me like I was just another one of his dirty secrets—”

“Yeah, alright,” Robby scoffs a breathy laugh and turns away, running a pale hand through his chopped brown hair.

“Because being with him made me feel good—”

“I said alright!” 

“Aw, what’s wrong, Robby?” you coo, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Does it bother you that somebody else wanted me?”

Robby exhales another one of his stupid laughs.

Your chest swells with a burning feeling that makes you feel like crying. “Why is it so hard to admit that you care about me?”

“I care about you! Of course, I fucking care about you!” he exclaims, red in the face. “Because I’ve spent months trying not to screw this up.”

“Oh, please,” you roll your eyes. “Says the man who practically shoved me into someone else’s bed.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Robby squints.

“Do what?”

“Act like this is what I wanted—”

The words die in his throat when the silver knob to the closet door clicks suddenly behind him. The hinges open with a quiet squeak a second later. Your heads whip in sync to find Santos in the threshold, rubbing at her tired eyes as she steps into the room. She doesn’t realize the two of you are in there until the door shuts behind her again. 

Her wide eyes dart back and forth between the two of you for a moment. “…Why does it feel like I just walked into a hostage situation?” she quips in a monotone.

“Now you know how I felt last night,” you joke back weakly.

She flips you off and walks further inside. Neither of you says a word as she retrieves a case of saline flushes and four-by-fours from the shelves. The plastic crinkles loudly in the silence. 

“Please. Feel free to continue,” Santos deadpans as she leaves. “I definitely won’t be listening with my ear pressed against the door.”

The entrance shuts behind her with a dull click that sounds much louder in the quiet. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as Robby pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. When he lifts his head against, his eyes zero in on you. 

“We’ll finish this when we get home,” he tells you, firmly.

“Can’t tonight,” you shrug, lying through your teeth. “I have plans.”

“Yeah, not anymore, you don’t.”

Your stomach does a back flip at his words, at his very sudden act of dominance that makes you feel like melting into a puddle at his feet. And judging by the newfound glint in Robby’s dark eyes, he notices it, too.

You couldn’t hide from him if you tried.

“Wanna see the topic of conversation? I don’t know how it got so busted. The drum’s about to fall right off.”

Robby follows Jack down the hall and makes sure to give no reaction to the framed photo on the wall of his brother and Sunshine at what looks like the hospital fundraiser six months ago. There’s glitter on your cheeks, eyes bright. He’d expect nothing less. 

If Abbot has to put up one photo in his place, of course, it’s gonna be of you. 

Robby keeps his smile thin as he makes way to what’s obviously the door to the garage. 

“Abbot, you do know that you may as well be speaking Dutch when you’re talking shop to me, right—”

…There was no way he wasn’t going to choke on his words once Jack pushed the door to the garage open. Well…it’s not really a garage. 

It’s a fucking shrine to you, and it’s a shrine that happens to contain weights and dumbbells.

It’s not an amateur’s makeshift gym. Dumbbells line a rack against the wall, not a speck of dust on any. There’s a squat rack next to a punching bag that’s obviously been used. A lot. The treadmill doesn’t look like it's just there for decoration either.

The whiteboard opposite the wall that’s going to make Robby black the fuck out is just lists upon lists, what he thinks is supposed to be Jack’s meal and workout plan for the week. 

Opposite to the whiteboard, the cause of Robby’s oncoming heart attack is…photos.

Framed photos—lots and lots of them—arranged with precision. And in every frame is you. 

They’re not cutesy candids or anything like that. It’s you…blown up and glossy, drowning in lingerie and cheeky, sultry looks. A lot are in black and white. Soft lighting. Posed. Styled. Intimate. Sexy, which—fuck, that’s the only other word Robby can think to use! That’s not his fucking fault, Jack. 

…Slutty’s another word that feels suitable. God. What an inside joke to have with you—

“Um—”

It’s not Robby’s fault. No, no—considering he’s pretty fucking sure the photos on the end are you fully naked. 

I’m gonna collapse for reasons I don’t want to collapse for. 

“Uh…Jack.”

It’s a Sunshine boudoir exhibit, and Jack’s just gesturing to the spring above the garage door like he didn’t just escort his best friend into a scandal. 

“There it is. Busted as hell.”

Before Jack can close the door on this absolute, filthy—romantic—filthy and pretty romantic shocker, Robby realizes it’s not just the black and white, sweetly posed sunshine-sleepy-myfavoritenurse-sex on film that’s framed for what he can only assume is Jack’s…motivation. 

Obsession—

“Anyways, not much to look at if I might as well be speaking Dutch to you every time I talk shop. Save it for the handyman.”

…He somehow missed the full-on, pin-up beer-girl parody poster of you next to the whiteboard. Don’t know how that wasn’t the first thing to catch his eye. 

You’re in a pin-up pose, sitting on an actual barrel with a flannel cropped by a tied knot right below your tits. You’re smiling nervily, like you’re in on a joke and holding a beer bottle to your chin like it’s a prop. It is. It’s a…very well-made poster. 

The cherry on top is the slogan at the bottom in retro font. 

“SLEEPY’S LAGER // KNOCKS YOU OUT, KEEPS YOU COMING BACK.”

...Holy shit.

“Ho-Lee-Shit—”

Jack slams the door. 

He keeps walking, unbothered. 

Like he didn’t just—like he didn’t fucking just—okay.

“Want more coffee? I can put on a pot. Was gonna make some eggs.”

…Is he really not going to talk about it? Be smug? Be gross? Throw some of that Abbot humor onto whatever the hell he just showed him? 

“...Kid’s got a sense of humor, I’ll give her that, Abbot.” 

Robby weakly shoves his hands into his pockets. 

“Poster’s a home run.”

There’s not a universe where he’s not going to at least jab at Jack for whatever the fuck he just showed him. 

The guy simply rolls his shoulders, putting the coffee cup on the dining room table, because somehow, they’ve made it to the dining room table without Robby bursting out in laughter and what-the-fuckery with just a bit of denial that it could be anything more when he thinks about those photos of you. 

“Seriously, Robby. Eggs or not? I need to know how much I should make before she wakes up.”

Jack walks into the kitchen, and he pulls out a pan from a cabinet. 

…You’ve got to be kidding me. 

“Jack—are you shitting me right? You just—”

Jack cuts Robby a look over his shoulder, flat. Almost irritated. Again. Like he didn’t just show him the wall of sunshine in silk with her nipples just a little too visible under it.

Not that he’s still thinking of your nipples—not that he ever has—

“I just what?”

Jack turns, pan in hand, and face blank. That’s the same face he uses on families when he wants them calm. Bastard. 

Robby frowns, a deep sigh escaping him. His lips purse. 

“You just showed me—”

“Showed you what?”

Jack interrupts with a tone too mild. Like Robby’s being dramatic. 

Like, again—again. Again. Like Jack didn’t show him a boudoir shrine of his favorite nurse. 

Robby’s stomach dips, and he can’t help but be caught between laughing and getting genuinely pissed.

“Jack, why are you…gaslighting me right now?”

It’s an overused word, but it seems pretty fitting right now, Abbot. 

“I’m not.” 

He’s not just caught between laughing and being pissed, he’s being crushed as Jack’s mouth twitches. 

His eyes flick up to Robby’s face, and for one single second, something cracks through. Something disgustingly smug and quietly stunned by his own pleasure that he’s obviously getting from this. 

“Eggs or not, Robby?”

Robby snorts. 

He guesses there is universe where he’ll let Jack get away this. 

Sly, sly bastard. 

“...I'll take eggs. Thanks, Jack." Robby coughs. "Maybe I should start working out. I'm starting to sound like my knees every time I get up."

Jack fires up the stove.

"Mm."

"Wouldn't be too hard to get started with that motivational poster wall you've got up--"

"Shut up."

"You okay, Jack?"

Jack shrugs, shifting Chubby in his lap. It’s a children’s book---"

"Da...beeee."

She smacks the book again. His hands grip its spine.

Da can mean any of a number of things. It's usually reserved for Jack, but it's an interchangeable demand, really. She uses da when she wants something opened or given to her. But if you know your daughter as well as you think you do, you're sure it's her demand for Jack to read the damn book right now.

"Alright, alright. I'm picking up the pace. Here we go."

Jack opens the book. The first page is the paper bear standing in a nursery, holding his arms out to his cub.

"Daddy’s arms are big and strong."

His voice comes out low and steady, a little raspy from the long day and the way Chubby keeps curling her toes against his forearm. But that's just your guess.

"They hold me when the day feels long."

You slow in your folding when Jack clears his throat and turns the page quickly. The next picture is worse for him.

The dad bear is carrying the cub through a storm, holding an umbrella over her. She's smiling, and her papa is looking down like the only thing that matters is that she's dry.

Jack stares at it.

Well. Fuck the bear.

Chubby whines, impatient. "Mmmm."

"I’m getting there. Be patient. See? When the thunder rolls and the skies turn gray..."

Jack swallows.

"Daddy keeps the fear away."

...He needs to check the thermostat again. It's too hot in here. He'd open the window if it wasn't a safety risk. He'll just have to be warm while getting jumped by a ten-dollar book from Target.

Daddy keeps the fear away. Ha. What a stupid fucking lie to put in a baby book.

He doesn't keep the fear away. He installs too many cameras and gets mad that there are still blind spots. There shouldn't be. But Dad doesn't keep the fear away. He's full of it, just like he's full of his own shit.

"Jack, keep going."

"I'm letting her process the material."

Jack's chubby excuse shifts in his lap, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. Her hand finds his thumb as she fusses, cause she has processed nothing but the fact that his voice has stopped.

Jack turns the page. It's a bedtime scene of the bear and cub in a rocking chair, not unlike him and Chubby in the glider right now.

This is so fucking cruel. You're cruel. He reads the line in his head.

Daddy’s voice is low and deep. It sings me safely into sleep.

No. No, that’s not—

Jack sighs heavy. Chubby tips her head back against his chest, her eyes just as heavy with sleep.

"Daddy's voice is..."

...He can't.

"Daddy's voice is low and deep. It..."

The rest doesn't come. He hates this book. He hates the stupid papa bear. He hates that his breathing turns shallows enough that you stop what you're doing.

"Hey, you don't have to finish it."

"I can read a damn book for infants. It's just..."

"I know you can, doc."

God. He'd rather have kiddo argue. Your faith in him is more murderous than the little doubt you have.

He looks down at the daughter you've given him again. She blinks slower. He forces his voice back into place.

“It...it sings me…”

No. His voice is all the worst parts of him trying for protection, but it's been cruel, and it's snapped. It's made you flinch. His voice is the thing she'll copy, if he isn’t careful.

You cross the nursery and put warmth on his shoulder by settling your hand there.

"Let me?"

There's no point in not letting you, is there? He hands you the book, his movement is stiff.

You sit on the arm of the glider, one hand coming to rest on the back of Chubby's head. She blinks up at you. You smile. Jack tries to disappear into the chair while still holding the weight of your little girl.

"Mommy's got you. Daddy’s voice is low and deep. It sings me safely into sleep."

Your voice is soft and pretty, and that's why neither of you understands why her little face trembles into a whine, the one that always comes before her wail. Jack, for a moment, thinks she's just tired.

Yeah, me too.

"Oh, sweetheart--"

But Chubby turns in Jack's lap towards him, twisting clumsily as she grabs at his shirt.

"Daaaaaa!"

Your and Jack's eyes meet when she fusses harder.

"Daaaaaa! Da...BEE-DA!"

"...I think she wants Dada, right now, Jackie."

Apparently. Not the softer, perfect voice. She wants awkward pauses and his stupid-as-hell commentary? Why?

Because she knows you're perfect and wants you sometimes as much as she knows Jack as himself and wants him all the same?

Why?

Jack takes the book back, and his hands are not steady when he does. You slide off the arm of the glider, kneeling beside it instead, resting your cheek against his knee.

Chubby settles the second the book is back in his hand, though she keeps one fist locked in his shirt to make sure he doesn’t attempt book abandonment again.

...Two girls he doesn't deserve, loving him anyway. What else is he supposed to do but do whatever they want? Least he can do.

Jack clears his throat.

"Alright, I’ve got it. It sings me safely into sleep."

Chubby relaxes, just like that. He stares down at the top of her head before turning the page.

It shows the papa bear kissing the cub's forehead with a moon in the window. It's too sentimental, aggressively so. And no, he's not just thinking that cause looking at it makes him feel like his organs out falling out through his sternum.

"Daddy’s hug is where I stay…"

His voice catches again. You kiss his shin.

"In dreams until the morning day."

He almost gets through it in a way where he's confident enough to make a promise. I'll be here forever. But..he knows better. He's seen too many parents leave without meaning to. How many families have been ruined by a heart suddenly stopping or a car running a red light? He can't promise anything.

He presses his lips to her head.

"I'll be here for as long as I can be. That'll be enough mornings."