sin! it's free!

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.

Night shift starts loud. Not dramatically loud. Not cinematically loud. Real loud—the kind that gets under your skin before you’ve even signed in, settles behind your eyes and stays there. Phones are ringing before anyone has fully settled in. Monitors chirping in uneven rhythm. Wheels rattling over tile. The printer at the central station is coughing out labels like it resents being alive. Someone in triage is asking for a blanket while already wearing one. Someone else is asking whether he can smoke if he does it “near, but not technically inside” the ambulance bay. The board is half full before sign-in. And somehow, morale is still offensively high. Because nights are built differently—half feral, half functional, and loyal enough to make up for both.

You’re halfway through your second year.

Long enough that you don’t think about it anymore.

You just move.

The best shift in the hospital, according to everyone currently working it and several people who should probably know better. You stand at the nurses’ station, loading your scrub pockets with the things people always seem to need from you. Penlight. Trauma shears. A couple of hemostats. Extra pens. Hair tie. Granola bar. Three kinds of chargers. You check each pocket automatically, fingers moving with the efficiency of ritual. It is less preparation than compulsion at this point. A habit built from too many shifts where someone needs something, and you can hand it over before they finish asking. Useful first. Everything else later. Maybe always.

Across the desk, Lena watches with narrowed eyes and a clipboard tucked against her chest.

“One day,” she says, “I’m going to unzip those pockets and find an entire urgent care clinic.”

You tuck in one last pen. “Only if you get a warrant.”

She snorts once, which, from Lena, counts as open affection.

The ambulance bay doors hiss open. Shen walks in, carrying a cardboard drink tray like a man transporting contraband.

“I bring offerings,” he says, expression flat.

A cheer goes up anyway.

Crus reaches first. “That’s my attending.”

“You’re not my resident,” Shen replies, handing him a coffee.

“Close enough.”

At the computer bank, Ellis keeps typing. “Can someone emotionally intubate room six for me?”

You laugh. It escapes more easily here than it does anywhere else. Shen stops in front of you and offers the last drink. Iced shaken espresso. Brown sugar. Oatmilk. Perfect.

Cold through the cup. Condensation gathering against your fingers. “You remembered.”

He glances at you. “I remember everything. It’s exhausting.”

“That’s why you’re my favorite,” you say, already taking the cup.

“Ouch. Hostile workplace,” Crus mutters, shooting a hurt look at you, already halfway into his own coffee.

“Document it,” Ellis says.

Lena claps once. The sound cracks cleanly across the station.

“Where is Abbot?” As if summoned by administrative irritation, Jack Abbot steps through the bay doors—dark jacket over scrubs, badge clipped straight, calm stride. The kind of presence that makes a room unconsciously recalibrate around it before he says a word. He isn’t loud about authority. Never has to be. He just arrives, and the department seems to remember its spine. 

He takes in the drink tray. “Shen brought coffee?”

“Try to keep up, old man,” Crus says.

Abbot ignores him completely. He lifts one hand. “Alright, night crew.” 

Everyone closes in automatically around the station like a football huddle. You shoulder in between Shen and Ellis, coffee in hand, already smiling.

“We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because—”

The team answers in one voice. “We are the weirdest and wildest of them all!”

“That’s right, now go get some!” 

“HOOHAH!” The shout bounces off tile, glass, and every remaining shred of professional dignity in the room. Then the shift breaks apart in motion. Charts grabbed. Phones answered. Doors opening. Shoes already moving. Family, if family came with trauma shears and caffeine dependency. You didn’t expect to find that in residency. You definitely didn’t expect to need it.

By 8:14 p.m., you have already handed out two chargers, found a missing hearing aid, passed meds to a nurse whose hands were full, and talked a terrified teenager through her first IV. Externally, you are calm. Inside, your thoughts move fast enough to spark.

That has always been the split.

Cool, collected, reassuring on the outside.

Internally, one long ribbon of contingency plans, pattern recognition, and the quiet conviction that if you stop helping for too long, you might disappear.

A call light flashes in room four. Then room eight. Then the triage lights up red. The charge board updates twice in under a minute. Normal.

A woman in her sixties is furious because her husband refuses to admit the chest tightness brought him here and insists it was only “a little pressure.” A college kid in room seven has a laceration over his eyebrow and keeps asking if he is still hot. A toddler with a fever screams every time anyone in scrubs gets within five feet of her.

You move through all of it in pieces. A hand on a shoulder. A blood pressure cuff reset. A blanket tucked higher over an old man’s knees. A joke offered at just the right moment to a scared mother whose hands won’t stop shaking. That part matters to you. Maybe more than it should. Not the joke—the release after. The moment people unclench.

At 9:03 p.m., Mateo jogs over from triage, holding a chart and looking harried. “Room ten says his stomach pain is from a curse.” 

“That’s differential-worthy,” Ellis says.

“Did you ask who cursed him?” Crus adds.

“His ex-husband.”

Lena points with her pen. “Y/N, room ten. Shen, triage. Crus, stop being helpful in that tone of voice.”

You take the chart and head for room ten. Abbot falls into step beside you without a word. You notice that too. Not because it’s unusual for him to jump in on an interesting case. Because your body recognizes his presence before your brain finishes processing it. That is inconvenient.

“What do we know?” he asks.

You glance down at the chart. “Forty-eight. Acute abdominal pain. Vitals stable. Says the onset was sudden after dinner.”

“What was dinner?”

You skim. “Hot wings.”

“Of course it was.” He responds. 

The corner of your mouth twitches. His eyes catch the reaction. A beat passes.

Then he pushes the curtain aside. Room ten smells like sweat, peppermint gum, and anxiety.

The patient is curled on his side, groaning dramatically while his boyfriend apologizes to everyone in sight. Abbot’s whole demeanor changes at the bedside. Shoulders loose. Voice warm. Questions asked in a tone that people trust immediately.

Show-off.

“Vitals?” he asks.

“Stable,” you say.

You’re already moving.

He’s already where you need him to be.

You don’t have to look.

You never do.

You move to the monitor while he gets the story. “When did it start?” Abbot asks.

“After wings.”

“How many wings?” you ask.

The boyfriend answers quietly. “Thirty.”

You and Abbot look at each other at the same time. “There it is,” you say.

The patient lifts one hand weakly. “I’m dying.”

“No,” you tell him. “But you are committed to the performance.”

His boyfriend laughs into his sleeve.

Abbot takes the clipboard from your hand. His fingers brush yours in the exchange. Brief. Incidental. Still enough that you notice. The contact registers a second later, heat rising after it’s already gone.

He glances at the chart. “Let’s rule out something surgical before we blame poultry. Gallbladder’s still on the table.”

You nearly smile. 

Outside the room, he gestures toward the labs.

“Differential.”

You do. Fast, clear, ordered. He asks two follow-ups you should have anticipated. Annoying. Then he nods once. More annoying. It’s always like this with him.

“You two are weird,” Crus mutters, watching the two of you move around the bed.

“Efficient,” Jack corrects.

You don’t correct either of them.

You feel more capable around him and more sharply aware of every place you might fail. Not because he makes you feel small. Because he never does. Because he treats you like someone worth pushing. That’s worse.

By 10:21 p.m., the stomach pain turns out to be less of a curse and more of a gallbladder issue. You arrange imaging, reassure the boyfriend, and get the patient laughing just enough to stop catastrophizing. When you step back into the hallway, Abbot is waiting with another chart in hand. “Bed three’s repeat vitals?” he asks.

“Improved.” You answer, grabbing another chart.

“Room six?” 

“Still dramatic.” You grab a pen out of your pocket.

He nods once. “Good.”

That should not feel like praise. It does anyway. The next two hours go by in the rhythm of the night shift. Flu complaints. Laceration repairs. One septic workup. A drunk who swings at security and misses by enough to become funny later. A woman with a migraine who cries when you dim the lights and says no one ever remembers that part. At some point, while you are charting at the central station, a protein bar lands beside your keyboard. You look up.

Crus is already walking away. “You haven’t eaten,” he says.

“I’m fine.” You say.

“That’s not what I said.” He disappears into trauma before you can throw it back.

You stare after him.

Shen glances over his monitor. “Eat it.”

“You all are deeply controlling.”

“We love you,” Ellis says without looking up.

The answer lands lightly. Too lightly for how much it means.

You unwrap the bar. 

At 11:48 p.m., a psych hold tries to elope through the ambulance bay.

At 12:06 a.m., Bridget catches a critical potassium before anyone else sees it.

At 12:43 a.m., the board flips red.

Single vehicle rollover. Hypotensive on arrival. Decreasing responsiveness. The room narrows instantly. Gloves snapping on. Monitor cables stripped loose. EMS report coming fast over the movement, half-heard and fully understood. You move to the airway before anyone asks, already reading the jaw, the blood, the way the chest is trying and failing to compensate. Abbot is opposite you at the bedside. 

No wasted motion.  No hesitation.

“Large bore access.”

“On it.”

“Pressure?”

“Dropping.”

“Prep blood.”

Already done.

It’s not something you think about.

It just… works.

You pass instruments before he asks. He redirects before you need to ask. The rhythm between you is so practiced it almost feels visible. No one comments on it. No one needs to. At one point, you reach across the bed for suction at the same time he reaches for gauze. Your forearms slide briefly against each other. Warm skin. Brief drag of contact. Gone immediately. Neither of you reacts. Your pulse does, a beat late. The patient crashes once and nearly takes the room with him. You catch the airway before it collapses into something harder to recover. Abbot secures the central line. Ellis calls for blood. Shen clears the doorway with one sharp instruction. Lena reroutes a nurse from another bay without even raising her voice.

Nights move like that when it matters. Like one organism. The patient stabilizes after twenty brutal minutes and two rounds of everyone pretending not to hear how hard they’re breathing. When the room exhales, Abbot strips off his gloves and looks at the line you placed. “Nice work.” Simple words. Professional tone.

They still land lower than they should. A second later, he is already asking Bridget for updated vitals on the other room, as if the moment never happened. You strip off your own gloves and force your breathing back into something normal. 

Later, while you’re entering orders, Ellis drops into the chair beside you. “You two are getting weird.”

You don’t look up. “That is not actionable feedback.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“I don’t, actually.”

She studies you for a second. “Sure.” Then she steals your pen and leaves.

At 2:05 a.m., the night crawlers have quietly rerouted three tasks so Abbot doesn’t have to cross the department more than necessary. Not because he asked. Because everyone else noticed the slight hitch in his gait after trauma and adjusted around it without discussion. Mateo grabs supplies. Bridget handles a discharge. Crus volunteers for transport for once in his life. Abbot says nothing. Just keeps moving. You watch the whole exchange with something warm and complicated in your chest. This place is impossible. So are the people in it.

Near three, you’re reaching for a chart on the top rack when someone steps in behind you. Close enough that you feel the heat of him before you turn. A hand reaches past your shoulder and lowers the chart.

Your breath catches before logic arrives. Abbot hands it to you.

“Thanks,” you say.

He nods once. Then his eyes flick briefly to the untouched water bottle on your desk. “You haven’t taken a drink since sign-in.”

You blink. “Were you monitoring my hydration?”

“I was monitoring your bad decisions.” He walks away before you can answer. 

You stand there holding a chart you no longer remember needing.

At 3:37 a.m., the emotional case of the night arrives in room fourteen.

Teenage girl. Seventeen. Shortness of breath. Chest tightness. Hands shaking so badly that she can’t get the words out in a straight line. Her mother hovers so close it looks painful, caught between wanting to help and making it worse. When you walk in, the girl’s eyes lock onto your badge, then your face.

“I can’t—” she says, breath catching. “I can’t—”

You know that look. You’ve known it in other people for years—the body panicking before the words can catch up. Panic can look like a lot of things before anyone names it correctly. You lower yourself onto the stool beside the bed so you’re not standing over her.

“Okay,” you say softly. “You don’t have to get all the words out at once. Just look at me for a second.”

Her breathing stutters. Her hands clench harder in the blanket. You keep your voice even. Calm. Deliberately slower than the room outside.

“Can you do one breath with me?”

Her mother starts to speak. You lift one hand gently without taking your eyes off the girl.

“Just a second.”

The mother goes quiet. You breathe in slowly. Out slowly. Again.

The girl tries to follow. Misses. Tries again.

By the third attempt, the worst of the spiral has loosened just enough for the rest of the exam to begin. Abbot steps into the room midway through, reads the situation in one glance, and stays back. No interruption. No takeover. When he finally speaks, his tone is quieter than usual. “Any chest pain?” The girl shakes her head. You do the workup anyway. EKG, labs, history. Rule out the dangerous things first because reassurance is useless if you haven’t earned it. By the time the medical concern narrows back down to panic and exhaustion, the mother is crying more than the girl is. 

You stand in the hallway explaining discharge steps and follow-up resources while the mother keeps apologizing for “making a scene.”

“You didn’t,” you tell her. “She was scared. You were scared. That’s allowed.”

The woman’s eyes fill again. “Thank you for not making her feel stupid.” Something in your throat tightens unexpectedly. You nod once. When you turn back toward the room, Abbot is standing by the charting station just outside, watching you. Not the mother. Not the room. You.

“What?” you ask, quieter than you mean to.

He blinks once like you pulled him back from somewhere.

“Nothing.” His voice is level. It still sounds a little rough around the edges.

He looks toward the room, then back at you. “You handled that well.”

There are a dozen ways he could mean it. The problem is that all of them matter.

By 7:15 a.m., the waiting room finally thins. The fluorescent lights feel harsher in the last stretch of the night. Everyone gets quieter. Even Crus. 

You’re finishing a note when Shen appears beside you with his jacket on. “You know he likes you.”

You nearly drop your pen. “What?”

Shen takes a sip of melting ice. “Relax. I meant as a doctor. Probably.”

“That was evil.” You jab your elbow into his side.

“I contain multitudes.” He leaves before you can retaliate further.

Across the department, Abbot glances up as if he knows he’s being discussed.

Your eyes meet.

For one second, neither of you looks away. Then a call light goes off. The moment breaks. By sunrise, the board is manageable. You rub the ache out of the back of your neck and gather your things. As you pass the station, you find a fresh lid snapped onto the coffee you forgot was still there. No spill. No note. Just fixed. You stop. Look up automatically. Abbot is at the far desk, discussing handoff to the day shift. He doesn’t glance over. Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe he did. Maybe that uncertainty is becoming its own kind of problem.