#drabblesmc

The chaos level at the clubhouse had gotten to such a point that Charming PD had stopped responding to the noise complaint calls about it. They were long past the point of no return—the party was just going to have to burn itself. Which, to be fair, it usually would around 2AM or so when the booze was pretty much gone and the adrenaline started to wear off.

It was only midnight so there were still a good few hours to go before things began to fizzle. And, since there were some guys in from out of town, you knew they were going to wring everything they could out of each and every minute. Eventually the out of towners would start slinking off to whatever cheap motel room they’d booked for themselves, the local guys drifting off to their dorm rooms. Most of them would be heading off with whoever the love of their life was that night.

You didn’t have to wait for the clubhouse to empty out completely, but Happy wasn’t going to feel right leaving until things quieted down enough for him to believe that things would continue to be relatively safe after he left. And you weren’t going to go home without Happy.

“Bartender, one more,” you said jokingly as you waved your empty water bottle at the prospect behind the bar. He looked ready to quit—whether it was for the night or the club altogether you couldn’t quite be sure.

Still, he gave you a tired smile as he reached under the bar and grabbed another water bottle from the pack they kept. “Better slow down—don’t wanna get too out of control,” he said with dramatized concern as he slid it across the bar to you. The water was always room temperature because the fridges and coolers were sacred spaces reserved for beer only, but it was your only non-alcoholic choice besides the crappy coffee they occasionally had on-hand.

“Ah, let me live a little,” you said, playing into the ruse as you twisted the cap off. After taking a long sip, you asked him, “Think you can bring last call around a little earlier than usual? Get everyone outta here a little sooner? That a decision you can make?”

He shook his head. “There are no decisions that I can make.”

You laughed, knowing the truth of that statement. You’d seen plenty of prospects come and go throughout the years, and none of them ever had a single ounce of pull. As was the way of things.

“Happy won’t leave if you tell him you wanna get outta here?”

You scoffed. “Of course he will. I don’t wanna have to do that though.”

The two of you were sharing a laugh over that when you felt a hand rest on your shoulder. You knew without having to look behind you that it was Happy. Reaching up, you rested your hand on top of his before tilting your head back to get a halfway decent look at him.

“Were your ears burning?” you asked, humor laced into your tone.

The prospect chuckled at that from the safety of the other side of the bar, but when he saw the look on Happy’s face he immediately changed his tune. Suddenly there was nothing more important to him than making the sure bar-top was wiped down to perfection.

You tapped his hand to get his attention back on you. “What’s up?”

“Checking in.” He gave your shoulder a light squeeze.

You nodded, spinning around on your seat so that you were facing him. Leaning back, your back and elbows rested against the very edge of the bar. You let your legs hang wide so that Happy could easily stand between them—his preferred place to be. He took the invitation, stepping in closer to you. With practiced ease he rested one hand on either side of you before leaning in to kiss you.

You didn’t rush your way out of the kiss. When he pulled back, it wasn’t far, and you could still feel his breath against your skin. You smiled. “Doing better now,” you said, able to speak quieter than you had been since he was so close.

He nodded, stealing a quick kiss. “Good.”

Reaching behind you, he grabbed the beer bottle that the prospect had knowingly set on the bar for him. He was stepping back, turning around ready to head back into the fray. You caught his hand before he got too far. The tips of your fingers barely caught his but it was still enough to stop him in his tracks.

When he turned to face you again, there was a look of mild confusion on his face. Raising your eyebrows, a slightly pleading expression on your face, all you said was, “Hap?”

He didn’t need to ask any follow-up questions. Taking another sip of his beer, he said, “Soon. Promise.”

That was a satisfying enough reassurance. You let go of his hand, a smile just starting to curl the ends of your lips. “Thank you.”

With a nod he was gone and heading back to where most of the Redwood guys were lingering by the pool table. It’d been at least a couple hours since anyone had actually used it for pool, though. At this point in the night, it was a dancefloor riddled with shot glasses. A recipe for disaster, but that never seemed to matter to anyone.

The constant noise of clubhouse parties was something that you had learned to tune out over the years. The loud music and din of multiple conversations turned into static for the most part. You could lock into the conversations that you were part of, or that were taking place right next to you, but other than that you let it all fly clean above your head. It suited you just fine, much like staying perched either at a safe distance from the throes of it all at the bar, or the safety of sitting with Happy who would inevitably have a protective hand or arm on you.

A five-minute break from the noise sounded nice, though; even if most of it was just static to you at this point. Hopping off your stool, you started to head over towards where Happy was now camped out. While he might have swapped out cigarettes for toothpicks lately, he still kept them in an old cigarette pack. A fact that you found as endearing as you did smart. You also knew that within that pack he was currently holding in his kutte, there was a joint. One that you’d slipped in there before the two of you left for the party. It seemed like as good of a time as any to cash in on it.

Leaning over the back of the sofa where he was sitting, you rested one hand on each of his shoulders. You slid them down to his chest as you leaned lower so you could speak quietly against his ear.

“Got a lighter for me?” you asked.

He was reaching for it before you even finished the question. “What do—” he stopped himself short, the answer coming in the form of you reaching into the pocket of his kutte. He chuckled, allowing you to take it even though you would make the world’s worst pick-pocket. He snuck a kiss against your jaw as you pulled away from him. “Stay outta trouble.”

You laughed as you began to weave you way towards the door. “Always do!”

Fake pack of smokes in one hand, lighter twirling between the fingers of the other, you did your best to duck and weave through the clusters of people without drawing attention to yourself.

There were only a few more strides separating you from the door when you heard the sound of shattering glass behind you. That on its own wasn’t cause for concern—everyone was dropping and throwing and breaking things all the time. What worried you was the fact that it was followed by yelling.

Your grip tightened around the lighter involuntarily as you turned around to see what was going on. This much booze and testosterone locked up inside one building, a fight breaking out was more likely than not. Especially with guys in from out of town.

You watched it turn from a one-on-one scuffle into a multi-man brawl in real time. The sigh of exhaustion you let out was involuntary. The only upside was that when it was all SOA patches, and they were inside the clubhouse, you could be fairly certain that no one was going to pull a gun. It’d be all fists and smacking heads off tables, which would still do damage but nothing permanent.

The only thing that stopped you from still heading outside to smoke was seeing Happy get up off the couch he’d been so comfortably sitting on just moments ago. What the rest of these guys did was their own business, but Happy was yours. You shoved the pack and lighter into the back pockets of your jeans, admitting defeat for the time being.

Breaking up fights wasn’t something you made a habit of, kind of like how Charming PD didn’t bust up clubhouse parties. All things ran their course. You hung around just close enough to get Happy’s attention if you needed it, to stop him from taking things too far. He was a man with no internal off-switch, so you had to be an external one.

You lingered outside the fray. Realizing that your night was about to get longer than you had originally bargained for, the thought crossed your mind to spark up your joint right then and there. Because apparently there wasn’t going to be any peace and quiet to be found.

Your gaze dropped from the bedlam for hardly a second, just long enough to flip open the cigarette pack so you could see your joint amongst all the toothpicks. But you didn’t even get the chance to reach for it. The second your gaze locked onto it, you were getting knocked clean off your feet by someone knocking into you. The man who had gotten shoved into you hadn’t been paying attention and neither had you. It was collateral damage, or at least it had started off that way.

Staying down wasn’t an option—not a safe one anyway. You got back up on your feet quickly, the frustrated, “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” falling from your lips before you thought twice about it.

The man who had bowled you over hadn’t noticed you before, but he sure did now. He spun back on you, lip busted and anger in his eyes. “The fuck you say to me?”

You hadn’t said it to him, not really. If anything it was a statement directed at everyone in the goddamn clubhouse, Happy included. But between his tone and the way he was looking at you, you were ready to let him take it personally. “Sounds like you heard me just fine,” you snapped.

For a big guy, he moved faster than you had been ready for. You backpedaled when he tried to step in closer to you, but with his reach it didn’t end up mattering. The sting of his rings cutting into the skin of your cheek was a sharp pain, the kind that distracted momentarily from the throbbing of getting socked in the jaw. It wasn’t the kind of punch that would knock you out, but it certainly knocked you down. You were all palms and heels as you tried to back away enough to get upright again. You’d gotten halfway there when the toe of his boot connected with your stomach.

The kick knocked the wind out of you. You couldn’t get up, couldn’t even try to yell for Happy. All you could do was wait for it to be over. Shutting your eyes tight, you waited for the second blow. But it never came.

There was a grunt followed quickly by the sound of shattering glass. You caught the castoff spray of whatever had been in the bottle that had gotten smashed. Opening your eyes, you looked up to see that Happy had not only seen what had happened, but was dealing out retribution for it. Breaking the bottle against the back of the guy’s head had been a warning shot.

Rage wasn’t a strong enough word for what you saw flaring up in Happy’s eyes. The guy who had knocked you down was bigger than Happy, too, but that didn’t matter. Happy’s rings broke skin easy too, the mess he was making of that guy’s face made the cuts along your cheekbone seem like nothing in comparison. In no time Happy had the man on the floor. Happy gripped him up by the collar of his shirt, lifting him just enough so that when his next punch landed it smacked the back of his head off the floor at the same time.

The ringing in your ears was cut through only by the sound of Happy’s grunts of exertion. If the stakes had been different, this would have been the point where you would have called him off. This time, though? This time you were content to let Happy go unchecked. Every dog deserved to run off-leash once in a while.

When Happy finally let the guy drop, his head landed against the wood floors with one final thump. The guy was still breathing, but he wasn’t conscious. The sight of it gave you enough strength to try and get your feet back under you.

Happy stood upright, and for a moment you thought that was the end of it. Then he reached into his kutte and pulled out his gun. Your eyes went wide, but between your breath and your jaw you couldn’t force any words out.

“Hap!” Jax’s voice rang out above everything, although things had quieted considerably when people caught wind of just how badly Happy was hurting one of their own. Even before the gun it was far outside the realm of a typical club brawl. Jax stepped in close but wasn’t touching him. “That’s enough.”

Happy shook his head. With quick efficiency he slid his hand along the top of his gun, the click of a bullet sliding into the chamber unmistakable. “No, it’s not.”

Then Jax reached out. He firmly, but carefully, pushed Happy’s hands down so that the gun was no longer pointed at the man’s head. His voice dropped lower. “Not here.”

You could see the way Happy was grinding his teeth, a last-ditch effort to contain all the anger bubbling up inside him. One wrong word and Happy was going to be pointing that gun at Jax next. “Then where?”

There was no right answer that Jax could give him. And at a certain point Happy wasn’t going to give a damn what the flash on Jax’s kutte said—president or not he wouldn’t be able to stop Happy from getting the pound of flesh he felt he was owed.

“Happy,” you said, ignoring the throbbing in your jaw.

His attention went right to you. There was blood dripping down your cheek from where you’d been cut, and you had one hand on your stomach from the kick. The fire in his eyes didn’t die out, but it shrunk, which was all you needed. He shoved the gun back into his kutte as he stepped over the man towards you.

When he was close enough, he had his hands on the outside of your arms, his grip firm and protective. The warmth coming off his hands, the callouses on his palms, they were tiny reassurances that allowed some of the tension to fade from your muscles.

“Take me home, Hap,” you said, unable to hide your exhaustion.

You didn’t miss the split second of hesitation. You knew why—in his mind the job wasn’t done. But then he saw the tears in your eyes. Nodding, he ushered you so that you were beside him, one of his hands resting against the small of your back.

He paused beside Jax, eyes boring into his. “Handle it.”

Jax nodded, knowing that it was the only correct response. “We will.”

The two of you were standing beside Happy’s bike. Normally he’d hand you your helmet and the two of you would hop right on, but this time all you had it in you to do was collapse against him, your good cheek pressing into the smooth leather of his kutte. You shut your eyes tight as his hand rested against the back of your head. Deep breath in, deep breath out, just enough to keep you from crying.

“I’m sorry.” He murmured the words against your temple. Two words that were incredibly difficult to come by when it came to Happy Lowman. He didn’t say them lightly and you didn’t take them lightly either.

You nodded, head still pressed against him. “I know.”

He kissed the edge of your forehead. “I love you.”

You let out a weak chuckle, one that kicked up the ache in your muscles. “I know that too.” Taking a deep breath, you leaned back just enough so that you could look him in the eyes. “I love you.” You tried not to flinch as he thumbed away some of the blood on your cheek. “Get me outta here and you can clean me up for real when we get home.”

He nodded. “I will.”

The small smile you gave him was tired, but it wasn’t fake. “I know you will.”

(divider by @secretlysamcro 🖤)

It was crazy how history could repeat itself in such small particular moments. As Chepe walked into the basement he saw Diedra in a chair, slouched and sitting across from someone whose face was swollen from punches. Chepe smiled as the scene reminded him of when he first met Diedra. 

The painful sounds of someone being beaten and tortured filled the underground cellar. Diedra’s white shirt was practically dyed red now from the blood of the person in front of her everytime she slugged, gripped, and tortured him. It wasn’t phasing her though, it was something she was used to. She was hired hands, part of something because she had this ability to turn it all off in situations of this nature. It ran in her blood, it was in her genetics. The Lowman family traits were stoic, tortuous, and some might even use the word insane. 

“Who is that?” Chepe’s voice was intrigued as he stepped down into the cellar next to Pacho who was watching the events unfold in front of him. 

“No one you need to be concerned with.” Pacho couldn’t help the smirk on his face as he heard Chepe’s question. Both of them now staring at the woman who was in front of them beating answers out of this man. 

Diedra was no stranger to this life, it felt like her earliest memory was stained with violence and blood. If one was to look back at her life, at her family, at her journey it was pointed in this direction. This is what she was good at, what she got enjoyment out of. She knew it wasn’t normal, but nothing about her life was. 

Chepe was enthralled with her, it was rare to see women in their field of work and when he did, they definitely weren’t beating the shit out of people and from Chepe’s observation, enjoying it. 

Pacho looked over at Chepe, and it took a lot for him not to let out an obvious laugh. He was going to have to pick Chepe’s jaw up off the ground when they were finished here and poke his eyes back in his head. 

“Do me a favor and don’t get drool on the floor.” Pacho knocked Chepe’s shoulder lightly. 

“Do me a favor and tell me who she is.” Chepe was extremely serious as he spoke despite Pacho’s teasing. 

Before either of them could continue the conversation the sound of a yelp they hadn’t heard before alerted them both to look back at the tortuous scene in front of them. Somehow the man who had been tied up had gotten his left hand free and surprised Diedra with a blow to the face. The yelp was not one that she was proud of, it was rare that she’d let someone get the upper hand on her. 

Chepe instinctually took a step forward to take control of the situation when Pacho stopped him by putting his arm in front of him. He wasn’t doing it for Chepe in the way one would think. Pacho knew how the woman worked, if Chepe tried to play the knight in shining armor he’d find himself getting rocked and bound to a chair himself. 

Diedra was quick to recover from the blow and if anything she took the opportunity to have it work in her favor. Within minutes the person was giving up the information she had been digging for over the last hour. 

The woman turned around, feeling no different than before, despite accomplishing her goal. Her face was still stoic and her brows were meeting in the middle of her face. Spitting out the metallic taste in her mouth into the towel that was first draped over her backpack but now in her hands should not have been as attractive to Chepe as it was. This whole situation was. Chepe was crazy and he felt like this woman in front of him was someone who matched his passion equally, if not more.

Diedra was quick to pick up her backpack, the towel still touching up spots of blood on her face as she walked over to the two men near the exit of the cellar. 

“That guy you’re looking for is in Bogata. He lives in the square, plaza de bolivar.” Her eyes were glued to Pacho’s, not even bothering to give a morsel of attention to the other man who had joined him. She could feel his eyes on her, they were practically burning a hole into her face. Any other time, Diedra would have been quick to shut that shit down but she was looking forward to the paycheck from this job and she knew that by punching the guy who seemed to be close with the man who’d be paying her might put a wrench in that. 

“Thank you, I might have a few more jobs for you, if you’re interested.” Pacho was reaching into his back pocket to pull out an envelope. 

“Yea, I’m down.” Diedra was grabbing the envelope and placing it in her back pocket. She didn’t bother to look at it, this wasn’t her first job for Pacho, she had known him to be fair and trustworthy. 

“I’d actually like to bring you onto our team, I think you could offer more than just,” Pacho paused for a minute to look at the man who was groaning as he came to it from being passed out, “persuasion.” 

“I could.” She nodded, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder. 

“Let’s talk more tomorrow.” Pacho nodded at the girl. “Take the night to yourself, clean up, relax. I’ll have someone come by your room and bring you food.” 

Diedra nodded, at the mention of relaxing she felt the exhaustion come over her. The jet lag was catching up to her, she was covered in blood and dirt, and the pain from being punched was starting to throb and give her a headache. She was feeling happy her commute wasn’t far, Pacho had opened his home to her, one of the many unoccupied rooms in the large mansion was now where she had settled in. As she brought the towel back up to her face to spit some leftover blood into it as she made her way towards the cellar entrance. Now, she was passing Chepe, again offering no acknowledgment to his presence until he let out a sentence that boiled her blood. 

“I could help you with that.” He had lifted his hand to point at her soon to be bruised face. The first thought through Diedra’s mind was that the man was lucky that finger wasn’t pointed in her face because she’d rip them off his hand. 

Her eyes rolled as she turned, making eye contact with Pacho who was grinning and shaking his head as he looked down at the floor and then back up at her. All he did was close his eyes, shrug his shoulders, and smirk and that was all Diedra needed as a green light. It wasn’t like she needed permission, if she wanted to put this guy down she would’ve but there was something so pleasing in knowing that she could do that and not only keep future jobs but also probably get a laugh out of the guy paying her. 

“Put that finger any closer to me and I’ll rip it off and shove it down your throat.” Her voice didn’t change at all, there wasn’t any added layer of anger or frustration in her tone. Now, it did help that she tended to normally speak with a ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude. 

It had been about two years since that instance but Diedra still found herself in the same exact scenario. She’d chalk it up to being a Lowman, to never thinking ahead more than a couple days to make any real life changing decisions, but truthfully, it was more than that. She liked it here. That was a new feeling for the girl. She had felt like an outsider in her own hometown, but then again the MC didn’t leave a lot of room for anyone but themselves in Charming. Happy and her sister did their best, and she loved them for it. But everytime she looked at Kota, how different she was from her, it really hit her how much she didn’t belong here. Kota was happy, 99% of the time. She was a Lowman for sure, didn’t take shit from anyone, scared the fuck out of her boyfriend too, which always made Diedra laugh. But ultimately, she had this spirit about her, and Diedra didn’t have that. The eldest sister knew why, the trauma she had suffered that her younger sister didn’t likely stole the spirit from her and left her with whatever this was. For a while she thought maybe it’d come back, that Charming would open up a spot for her, or at least her father would. Maybe she could help out around the club–that was wishful thinking. Women didn’t become contract killers for the MC, they had specific roles for women and she definitely didn’t fit in any of those. 

That’s why she landed here, working for a drug cartel and it was the most life made sense for her. 

She probably shouldn’t have let the reminder wander for those couple seconds because it earned her a knee to the face. This time, unlike two years ago, she didn’t yelp, a grunt did escape from her mouth but she caught the knee of the man quickly and toppled him over, bringing her knife swiftly into the muscle above joint and twisted it and asked her question one more time. 

“Now you pissed me off,” the blood was dripping from her nose, there were a couple cuts across her face likely from the chains that were wrapped around his legs, “answer me right now, or I’ll kill you over and over again.” 

“That’s not even possible.” The man still had a little fight in him. 

She twisted the knife more and smiled, blood all across her pristine white teeth. “You don’t even want to know what I can make possible.” Her words continued as she explained what she was going to do to the man, how she’d bring him to look the reaper in the eye, and bring him back like an angel, just to push him right back to the edge of death. 

The man gave up his crew in seconds. Diedra left him with her own knee to his face before she lifted her shirt up to her nose that was likely broken. 

She approached Chepe, her bag hanging from her shoulder as her eyes looked at his. 

“I got the info.” She said pinching her nose now hoping that’d stop the bleeding. 

Chepe laughed at what she said, “You know I don’t care about the info.” 

“But your business partner does.” With a swift motion she was twisting her nose so it was back in it’s normal positioning and the bleeding quickly stopped but the pain was throbbing. “Fuck.”

Chepe was moving in closer, quick to place a kiss on Diedra’s forehead and throw his hand over her shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go home.” 

She nodded, allowing the man that she threatened in this very spot two years ago to touch her, in probably one of the more PG ways over the last year. While didn’t exactly melt into his embrace, she didn’t push it away, and she was truthfully looking forward to collapsing in bed with him when they got back to their house. She nodded, still messing around with her broken face as they began to step out. 

“I could help with that.” He brought his hand up and pointed to her face and it earned him a menacing look from Diedra. 

“Don’t push it.” 

________

Diedra felt her whole body ache as she walked up the stairs of her home. She didn’t realize until this moment that she was pretty banged up and bruised all over, beating someone up tended to have that effect. She jumped into the shower, the warm water was a mix of calming while also painful, a true representation of herself. The dirt and blood washed down the drain but the bruises were hard to erase as easily. The bruises were the reminders, they sat next to her scars, because the long term reminders weren’t enough, she needed short term ones too. 

With a new fresh tank top on and just her underwear, she stood back in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror. The first aid kit was scattered across the vanity, her eye scanning over the items she needed, butterfly bandages, instant ice packs that all you did was squeeze and shake for them to go cold, ointment, instant sterilizing liquid. Diedra managed to get a stiff bandage across her nose to help keep it in the same place. She had an ice pack balanced on her shoulder, easing the ache of constantly swinging and punching the last 6 hours of the day. As the more time passed, the more the ache spread and it became harder to lift her arms above her head. 

The struggle was beginning to frustrate her as she tried to clean the cuts on her forehead and cheek but struggled to keep her arm raised for more than a couple seconds. She banged her hand against the vanity in annoyance, the entire medical kit shaking as well, some of the bandages falling into the sink. Her eyes closed in defeat, and also as the pain from the hit radiated in her body like a pinball. 

A sudden knock interrupted her moment and she was snapping her neck forward to see Chepe at the door. He didn’t say anything, just casually walked in and picked up the bandages from the sink and tossed them back into the red plastic box. 

“Wanted to let you know I made you something to eat.” He spoke as he dropped the other items back in as well. 

“Not in the mood for a shitty sandwich.” Her words were pointed because it was how she felt, projection at it’s finest. 

Chepe just smiled, still packing up the box. “I made chicharron con tostones, picked up alfajores too.” 

His lack of eye contact showed he wasn’t hurt by Diedra’s bark, he knew it well, they had been living together now for just under a year. When he mentioned the dessert cookie, her eyes widened, shocked by the fact he cooked but also that he picked up one of her favorites. Chepe actually credited alfajores for the reason he could call her his girlfriend. 

He offered her one when they were out by the pool one day at Pacho’s place, Diedra had been off in the deep end, away from everyone, sitting comfortably with her feet dangling in the crystal clear water. She had her sunglasses on so no one could see where her gaze was landing, but it was obvious it was locked in on Chepe as he slowly approached her with a plastic bag. 

“Here.” He spoke, asking the girl to take from the bag. 

“Todo bien.” Suddenly, her gaze moved from the man and back to the view she was staring at trying to ignore him. 

Chepe couldn’t help but smile at the girl, he left the bag next to her, casually tossing it so it landed close enough for her to grab but far enough none of the powdered sugar would spread on her. 

30 minutes later, the empty bag was dropped on Chepe’s tanning chair, and he was looking up at her as his own sunglasses fell down the bridge of his nose. 

“What are these.” Diedra pointed at the empty bag. Despite it being a question, the way she spoke demanded the answer. 

“He took his sunglasses off, wanting to take in this moment in it’s entirety. “Agree to go out with me and I’ll tell you.” 

By the look on the girl’s face he almost considered this an utter fail. That was Chepe’s first lesson on Diedra Lowman. She couldn’t be bribed. 

“Alright,” he raised his hands, “how about, I just drive you to where I buy them. We can go weekly, stock up your supply.” His eyes squinted now, a combination of the sun and him trying to gauge her response. 

Now that got her thinking. She’d be game for that. 

“Deal.” 

And the rest was history, those weekly trips brought them here, in whatever kind of relationship this was, it wasn’t like either of them were the type to define it. 

“Do you mind–”

She was cut off by him, “I already brought it up here, it’s on a table next to the bed.” 

Her body collapsed a little at that information, grateful she didn’t have to manage the stairs again. 

“Will you let me help you now?” Chepe was about to close the kit but this time he looked up after he spoke the words, directly at the cuts on her face. 

It took everything in Diedra to agree, and she couldn’t even say the words, she just gave a kurt nod and stood still so he could help. 

Chepe also knew better than to boast, he similarly gave a nod and shuffled through the kit to pull out what he needed before quickly moving to touch the girl’s face. Her winces were miniscule, the real pain being the aches over the cuts. She’d always take a slice over a bruise. The sting felt more thrilling than the pulsating of a blow. 

“They shouldn’t scar.” Chepe spoke up in a whisper. 

“Wouldn’t care if they did.” It was spoken as she exhaled. 

Chepe laughed. “You say that because you know you’ll still be as beautiful as ever.” 

That made Diedra smile, it took her a while to warm up to the compliments Chepe would feed her but eventually they made her smile. 

“Why don’t you come to New York with me for a couple weeks. I think you could use the break.” He was so dangerously close to her, but it felt normal, it felt comforting. His hands were lightly on her skin, bringing one side of the cut closer to the other as the butterfly bandage pressed each side together. 

“Pacho needs me for something in a couple days in Medellin.” The excuse was spoken so quickly it was like she had it prepped and loaded. 

“You know if you asked he’d say yes in a heartbeat, and if he didn’t he can’t say no to me.” 

“Because who could say no to that charming, smug face.” It was as close as a compliment that she’d say out loud, but she showed her appreciation for him in other ways, just as he did for her. 

“Just think about it.” He moved his hand to her chin and tilted her head up so she was forced to look into his eyes. Chepe wasn’t asking for confirmation, he did it so he could place an intimate kiss on her lips, one that said everything for him. 

As he pulled away his eyes fell on a cut that was on her neck. “Let me just clean this one real quick.” He was bringing the qtip up in a matter of seconds so he could wipe any stuck dirt and dried blood from it, and that’s when his eyes caught the scar not too far off. 

Diedra had a lot of scars along her body, some he was aware of, and many others he could only guess. This being one of the latter. 

“Don’t think you ever told me about this one.” He didn’t dare to touch it, with where he was looking she’d pick up on what he was talking about. 

“Don’t think I ever will.” Her eyes were on the mirror, staring at the scar in question, but what she was seeing was a flash of a memory she really tried to bury, her father coming to her rescue in a little gas station bathroom, the blood, the words she could barely get out as she explained everything to Happy.  

“Whenever you’re ready, you just give me a name, a description, and I’ll make what you did to that man earlier today look like nothing.” His eyes were on Diedra through the mirror, his arms wrapping around her body, lightly so as to not make her ache in anymore pain. 

“Easy killer.” She turned around now, the ice pack beginning to fall down her shoulder until Chepe caught it and pressed it a little harder against her skin, sending shivers down her body that didn’t make her flinch in the slightest. “Let me eat dinner first and then we can talk about wiping out all the people who’ve ever wronged me.” 

She was squeezing out of his grip and making her way to the bedroom so ready to eat the food he had prepared. 

“And then maybe we can talk about New York?” He called out down the hall, still in the bathroom so he could clean up the rest of the mess before joining her. 

They were an hour deep into the shift when he thought he heard her voice. Things were just starting to really pick up, the rush from the nursing home had been handled, and everyone was hitting their stride as they started filing in some more people from the waiting room. Beds were filling fast and it wasn't long before they heard the ambulance pulling up outside.

With all of that going on, and the constant stream of thoughts running through his head, Robby was certain he had just misheard it. The overlap of voices made things confusing. People sounded like other people all the time. He shook his head at himself as he pulled off his third pair of gloves for the morning and started towards one of the North rooms to see the next patient and slip into his fourth pair.

Then he heard Dennis say her name. He was trying to be kind and firm all at once, and he was only really good at one of those these days, so Robby knew that she would be brushing right past him and limping her way out the door if no one else tagged in to assist. He let his chin drop for a moment. Taking a deep breath, he turned on his heel and made his way in the direction of everything that sounded far too familiar for his liking. At least at eight in the morning.

Breezing into the room with a comfort he didn’t quite feel in his bones, Robby braced himself for whatever was about to happen next. Whatever it was, wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened to him. He'd always have that going for him.

At the sound of a new pair of footsteps, Dennis glanced back over his shoulder. His relief at a helping set of hands was apparent on his face. “Dr. Robby,” he chirped, not taking his eyes off of him.

Robby nodded in greeting. “Whitaker.”

Dennis didn’t waste time with further pleasantries. He gestured to the woman laying on the bed. Or, well, she was supposed to be laying on the bed. What she was actually doing was sitting up and dangling her legs off it as she prepared to try and make a break for it.

“This is Ms.—”

Robby cut him off as he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “I know who this is.” He looked at the woman with a knowing smile, something that didn’t quite match all the emotions swirling around in his eyes. Interlocking his fingers, he let his hands drop in front of him. “How'd we end up here today, Mrs.—”

It was Robby's turn to get cut off. She shook her head and was immediately waving him off. “I know you aren't calling me Missus anything, Michael.” She scoffed. “Absolutely not.”

Dennis couldn’t help but to raise his eyebrows. “Michael?” he parroted quietly. He could count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people he'd ever heard refer to his attending by his first name.

Robby didn’t comment on any of it. He walked over so that he was standing in front of the woman, blocking her exit but also allowing him to get a closer look at her. “When I'm at work, it's important that I—”

“Don’t give me that.”

He chuckled as he gently maneuvered her back onto the bed the way she was supposed to be. “Are you going to let me finish any of my sentences any time soon?”

“Maybe. When you've got something smart to say.”

Robby shook his head but there was a smile starting to tug at his lips. “You're just like your daughter,” he said with a weary affection in his voice.

Dennis went from amused to confused. “Who's her—” He cut himself off as recognition flashed across his face. “Oh.”

Robby shot Dennis a glance. “Last name didn’t clue you in?”

He shook his head, face starting to turn red knowing that there was no good defense. “I just wasn't thinking…she didn’t say that she had any next of kin to call.”

Robby crossed his arms over his chest as he looked back at what was now effectively their patient, not just Whitaker’s. “You didn't call her?” The woman refused to respond, refused to look Robby in the eye as she twisted her hands in her lap. “Angela.”

“Oh, sure, now you know my name.”

“I've always—”

“Don’t you go callin' her. I don't want her worrying. Bad enough she's been having to work nights.”

“She chose—”

“Can't you do something for her on that? Don't you run this place or something?”

Robby sighed. Looking at Dennis, he saw that the kid was doing his best not to look amused at what was playing out in front of him. He hardly ever looked anything but exhausted but Robby could see how entertaining all of this was. Extra entertaining, probably, since Dennis had been fighting a completely different if not equally frustrating battle with her before Robby inserted himself into the situation.

Turning back to the patient in question, Robby repeated the question he'd been trying to ask from the beginning. “What brought you in here today, Angela?”

“An ambulance,” she answered bitterly as Robby looked her over.

He hummed in amusement as he tried to deduce what he could from just looking at her. The bandage on the side of her forehead and the scrapes that he could see on her forearm and knees gave him a decent idea. He still didn’t know the cause, though.

“Dr. Whitaker,” Robby said, not looking at the man he was talking to, “care to fill me in since our patient won't?”

He snapped to attention as he stepped in closer. “Uh, yeah. Right. Ambulance brought her in. Good samaritan called when they saw her take a fall on the sidewalk. She hit her head, was completely out until right after the—”

“Yeah,” Angela spoke up indignantly, “and once your 9-1-1 buddies showed up, I was fine. And they still brought me here.”

Robby shook his head as he carefully turned her arm over to get a better look at it. “They wouldn’t have brought you here if you were fine.” He paused, waited for her to look him in the eye before he continued to speak to Dennis. “Any idea what caused her to pass out, Whitaker?”

“N-no. Not yet. Waiting for the blood test results to come back. And the CT’s backed up, so…”

Angela was still shaking her head. “There's nothing wrong with me. I'm perfectly fine.” She yanked her arm away from Robby. “You doctor's just want somethin' to be wrong with all of us.”

He kept his tone even as he moved on to looking at the scrapes on her legs. “That's actually the opposite of what we want.”

She did her best to slide her legs away in defiance, not that she could go very far while remaining on the bed. “Should you even be treating me? Thought it was against the rules to treat family.” She tried to wave him off. “Go on.”

Whitaker's eyes widened as he tried to figure out who knew what, and what he was allowed to say versus what he was supposed to say. “I, uh, I think at this point it's—”

Robby got to it before he did, before he got backed into a corner with no escape plan in place. “Doesn't work like that.”

He saw the genuine worry start to creep into her features. It was then that he realized how long it'd been since he last saw your mother. He counted back the weeks, no, months now that had passed since the two of you broke up. And he hadn't seen her since well before that. Not a ridiculous amount of time, he supposed, but enough time for him to see differences he might not have before. Like how she was finally letting her grays grow in. Aside from the scrapes and the little flecks of dried blood on her tank top and the cycling shorts that she wore for her walks every morning when the weather was nice, she looked as physically well as Robby had ever seen her. Tired, but that could've been from the events of the morning if nothing else. She might have lost some weight, but she didn’t look sickly. She'd fainted though, so something wasn't quite right.

“You think I won't call my daughter and tell her that you won't stop staring at me, Michael?”

Robby was shaking his head as he took his gloves off and tossed them in the trash. “No, I don't.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Because then you'd have to tell her that you're here.”

Angela's eyes went wide. “Don't you call her! There's no need to wake her up and get her all worried.”

He continued to backpedal towards the door. “You didn’t call her, so now I have to, Angela.” He looked at Dennis as he did his best to tune out the woman's protests. “Don't let her leave, alright? Or it won't just be me that you're stuck dealing with.”

Dennis swallowed so hard it was visible, but still he nodded. “Got it.”

The extra bit of distance Robby put between himself and your mother was so that she couldn’t hear what he was about to say to you, of course, but it was also so that hopefully you wouldn’t hear her bickering with Dennis in the background. If Robby could pick her voice out of a crowd, he knew that you’d have no problem doing the same.

The first call rang out all the way until your voicemail started playing in his ear. He knew that you never shut your phone off, or even put it on silent. Back when you both shared a bed and a sleep schedule it was a nuisance. Now he was banking on it. There was no point in leaving a voicemail, so he hung up and called again. He only got two rings deep before your voicemail message started—that meant you were awake and rejecting his call. He wondered if you even bothered to look and see who it was that called before turning it down. His gaze wandered back over to Whitaker and your mother as he called again.

Halfway through the third ring you picked up. No greetings needed, you kicked off with a grumbled, “I’m not coming back in, Robby. Call Abbot if you need a night—”

“I don’t think you want me calling Abbot about this,” he said, a lilt in his voice as he tucked his free arm across his chest.

He heard rustling on your end of the line and he pictured you rolling so that you were lying on your back and staring at the ceiling. “I think I do. He loves coming in on his off-days for you.” Robby’s only response to that was a deep sigh. You decided to give him a little bit of a reprieve. “What’s going on, Dr. Robinavitch?”

Circumstances aside, you referring to him like that got a brief flash of a smile out of him before reality sank in again. In an attempt to get and keep himself on track, he cleared his throat. “You really should come back.” He heard you take a breath to argue and beat you to the punch. “Your mom got brought in this morning.”

He could hear how you shot straight up at that. “What? Why the fuck didn’t you lead with that?!”

There were thuds and static and he knew you were getting out of bed and scrounging around to get half-clean clothes to wear off your floor. “Hey, hey.” He wanted to speak loud enough so that you could hear him if the phone wasn’t next to your ear, but he didn’t want to yell. “Hey, you there?”

“Yes,” you huffed.

“She’s stable, alright? She’s good. She’s,” he looked over and saw Dennis shaking his head at something she must have said, “giving Whitaker a run for his money right now as we speak.” He heard the tell-tale sounds of you letting out a deep breath, the kind you paired with counting to ten when you were trying not to lose your shit. He waited for you to get to the bottom of the exhale to say, “I’m calling you because she wasn’t going to, not because it’s that bad. But you should still come down here.”

There was a tiny waver to your voice but you kept it together as you said, “Okay, okay. Yeah. I’ll be there sub-twenty.”

Robby nodded. “Whitaker will be thankful.”

You chuckled, which made both of you feel better. “Thank you for calling me.”

“Of course.” He paused a beat. He knew what he wanted to ask next but he also knew it wasn’t the right time to bring it up. But, he quickly reasoned, there wasn’t really ever going to be a right time so he might as well ask at the wrong one. “Quick question before I lose you.”

“What’s up?”

Robby looked at your mother out of the corner of his eye. “Is your mom...aware?”

You scoffed. “You’re the one who talked to her, Robby. You tell me.”

“N-no. I don’t mean in general. I mean...does she know?”

“Know what?”

“About us?”

The long pause you let grow was followed by false urgency in your voice as you said, “Is now really the time for this conversation?”

“It’s not a conversation,” Robby countered. “It’s a yes or no question.”

“I’ll see you in a sec,” you said, your refusal to confirm or deny all the answer he needed.

He only got out the see in, “See you soon,” before you hung up on him.

General Fic Warnings: 18+, language, exes, angst sprinkled throughout, reader's mom included in the story, reader's dad mentioned (specific warnings will be listed at the start of each chapter)

Chapter List:

-- Chapter 1

-- Chapter 2

-- Chapter 3

-- Chapter 4

-- Chapter 5

-- Chapter 6

-- Chapter 7

-- Chapter 8

Richie came to when the sound of someone banging on his apartment door finally echoed into his room. He groaned, trying to ignore it at first. It took a minute for him to wake just enough to realize that the pounding sound was someone at his door.

Prying one eye halfway open, he glanced at the alarm clock next to his bed. 12:37am. He shut his eyes again. Face half smooshed into the pillow, he yelled out, “Fuck off!”

There was a pause, a silence. He was already drifting back to sleep, thinking that whoever it was had either given up or realized they were at the wrong door. In the morning, he would have a hard time figuring out if it was real or just a snippet of a strange dream.

Then it started up again. Rolling onto his back, he took a deep breath before dramatically throwing the blanket off his legs. He didn’t even bother turning the lights on as he made his way towards the door. His eyes were still half-shut as he begrudgingly tried to rub the sleep from them.

“I swear to GOD,” he yelled as he approached the door, “if you’re still standing there when I open this fuckin’ door I’m gonna—”

He stopped mid-sentence when he pressed his eye to the peephole. His vision was still blurry, but even so there was no mistaking that it was you. His frustration ebbed slightly, having to make room for his confusion.

The few seconds that it took him to flip the deadbolt and slide the chain weren’t enough for him to figure out what he was thinking and feeling about whatever it was that was happening. When he pulled the door open, you went from leaning against the doorframe to falling and tumbling into his arms.

“Whoa, shit.” He scooped his arms underneath yours so that you didn’t collapse to the floor. “Fuck. Alright.”

You were slumped against him, allowing him to support a majority of your weight as you looked up at him. “Richard,” you said, trying to sound serious, but between the thickness of alcohol in your voice and the smile starting to tug at your lips, you weren’t fooling anyone.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, helping you get upright enough so that he could shut and lock his apartment door.

You were still leaning against his side. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s one in the fuckin’ morning and you’re shitfaced. What the fuck are you doing?”

You pressed your palm against his chest, fingers trying to tangle themselves into his shirt but you couldn’t swing it in your current state. “I’m here to see you!” you said.

You were staring at him intently, or as intently as you could while you fought all the liquor coursing through your veins. As he looked at you, trying to figure out what to do or what to say, he started to see the full picture. He saw the way your eyes were glassed over and not just because you’d been drinking. He saw the way they were rimmed with red. You had your jacket on but it wasn’t zipped up and he could see the fading stain on your shirt from a drink spilled before you had decided to make your way over to his place. He saw the way your lipstick smeared upwards from your top lip. Too many glasses drank.

Once he put it all together, the scene felt all too familiar. All of a sudden you weren’t just you anymore. In the big picture, of course it was you. But in the details. The mess. The eyes that were looking at him but not quite focused on him. That was all Mikey. And it wasn’t fair of him and it was fucked up, but in that moment he couldn’t separate the two of you. Showing up in the dead of night, too fucked up to really understand what was going on, acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. He was used to that from Mikey—it was a new look on you.

The realization made his limbs feel heavy. He couldn’t keep looking at you. Taking a deep breath, he tried to get you fully upright and supporting yourself. When he figured you were stable enough, he stepped away under the guise of getting you water. At least it was something that you actually needed.

“Had to come and see me in the middle of the fuckin’ night?”

You shrugged, not noticing his discomfort. “It was on my way home!”

He scoffed as he unscrewed the cap from the water bottle. “That’s a fuckin’ lie.”

Unfazed, you took it from him. “Alright, fine. Maybe. Like I said,” you took a sip of water, “I wanted to see you!”

Any smart remarks he normally would’ve had locked and loaded were gone. Trying to have any sort of a real conversation with you would be futile and he knew it. Part of him wanted to shake you, ask you what the fuck you were thinking getting yourself all fucked up like this, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy. Plus he didn’t want to make you cry. He definitely didn’t have the energy for that.

He nodded towards the water bottle. “Drink some more of that. I’ll grab you a blanket and whatever the fuck else. You can crash on the couch.”

“The couch?”

“What? You want me to drive you home or some shit? It’s one in the morning.”

“Yeah,” you struggled to get the cap back on the water bottle, “so you keep saying.”

He took the bottle from you and got the cap on correctly. He decided it wasn’t worth it to try and tell you again to drink some more of it. You’d just have to face the consequences of your actions in the morning like everyone else.

“I’ll be right back.” He dragged his hands down his face as he went back towards his bedroom. “Don’t fuckin’ hurt yourself on anything.”

When he came back out to the living room, all he could do was sigh and let his chin hit his chest. In your defense, you did follow his one extremely simple instruction. You didn’t hurt yourself on anything. In the short time he’d been gone, you’d kicked off your boots, left them turned on their sides on the floor. They sat there right next to the tiny heap of clothes that contained your jacket, your socks, and your jeans. You were sprawled out on his couch in just the tank top you’d worn out, and your underwear. He’d gone to grab you a spare pillow from his bed, but you seemed to be perfectly comfortable using the extra throw pillow that came with the couch. At least the blanket that he’d gotten for you would still be useful.

You hardly even twitched when he draped the blanket over you. He smoothed it out over your shoulders and made sure that it didn’t go up so high that it covered your lips or nose. His hand lingered on your shoulder, and he had the urge to jostle you awake, to ask you what the fuck you thought you were doing to yourself, to him, showing up like this. But he didn’t.

He swiped your coat off the floor. Out of habit, he shook it out as he brought it over to the hooks that were by the door. He draped it over the hook right beside his own jacket—his nice one, not the countless ones made of windbreaker or athletic material that took up about half the space in his bedroom closet.

Content in thinking that this was the last he was going to have to worry about you until morning when you woke up with the most vicious hangover headache known to man, he started turning off the lights. A trail of darkness lingered behind him as he finally made his way back towards his room.

His eyelids were already growing heavy again as he walked past the couch. When he walked by you, he let his fingertips glide across your shoulder as he mumbled a quiet, “Goodnight,” out of habit.

Before he could take his hand away, yours was on top of it. It got him to stop in his tracks, even if inwardly all he wanted to do was let out a sigh of frustration. Worried that the next words out of your mouth were going to be along the lines of ‘Hey I’m about to puke all over your couch and living room floor,’ he asked, “You good?”

Making sure not to let go of his hand, you managed to get yourself from your stomach to your side. There was just enough light coming from his bedroom that you could see him, half his face illuminated, yours too. Still enough light for him to see the red lines marring the whites of your eyes.

“I’m sorry,” you said, voice still slick with alcohol. It sounded sincere enough though.

He shook his head. “It’s, you know, it’s fine.”

You smiled, weak and exhausted as you threw his words back at him, “That’s a fuckin’ lie.”

Even in situations like the one you were in, you still somehow managed to get him to laugh. “Yeah, guess we’re both doing that shit tonight, huh?”

Silence set in. Richie wanted nothing more than to go and lay back down in his bed, but he could feel how tightly you were still holding onto his hand. If he tried to pull away, you weren’t going to let him go.

“Gonna make me stand here and stare at you till the fuckin’ sun comes up?” he asked. “Or are you gonna tell me what the fuck happened to you tonight?”

You looked away from him. If it had been anyone else, Richie would be afraid of prying or pushing too far. But at this point, prying and pushing were some of the only things that the two of you had left. Neither of you would be so bold as to take it away from the other.

“At first I just, I didn’t wanna be at home anymore.”

“Why not?”

Richie knew why he didn’t want to be home much these days anymore if he could help it. He used to have a real home, a house with a wife and a kid. Sometimes even Mikey, sometimes you and Mikey. Now he had a two-bedroom apartment and the second bedroom was only occupied every Thursday night and every other weekend.

You shrugged, trying to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. As though your current state didn’t undermine that from the start. “Sox were on.”

He looked at the ceiling as the realization washed over him. “Right. Fuck.”

You nodded and wrangled yourself into a sitting position, Richie’s blanket pooled in your lap. “Yeah. Felt weird watching it at home alone when we all…” You cleared your throat. “Anyway. I thought going out and watching it at a bar would be better.”

He chuckled, not to be cruel but because he understood. “And that went really fuckin’ well I see.”

Your face was warm and you weren’t sure if it was the lingering effects of the liquor or embarrassment. “Yeah.”

“You should’a fucking called me.”

You looked up at him. “Made it here anyway, didn’t I?”

He shook his head at you. “You can’t be going out there and getting fucked up like this.”

“But—”

“No!” he cut you off, finally pulling his hand away so he could gesticulate the way that he wanted to. “’Cause I’m not gonna fuckin’ lose you too. Not to alcohol poisoning or some fucking drunk driving accident. You can’t do that shit to me too! Not after everything else!”

Your brows knit and for the first time all night you looked almost sober. “Richie, I didn’t—”

“No one ever thinks it’s gonna get that bad until it does,” he said, a waver creeping into his voice.

Tossing the blanket towards the far end of the couch, you stood up. Richie was shaking his head at you and it was anyone’s guess what specifically it was about. You stood and waited for him to look at you before you started speaking.

“I was just trying to feel normal, Richie. You remember what that’s like?”

He scoffed. “Fuck off.”

“What? You’re telling me that you’ve been feeling like yourself lately? That you’ve been feeling good?”

“No, but—”

“Me neither!” you snapped, tears in your eyes again. “That’s, that’s all I was trying to fucking do.”

The sense of familiarity made his stomach churn. He’d had this conversation on his own front steps at the same odd hours with Mikey when he showed up all fucked up on things that Richie didn’t even want to think about. Sometimes he’d let Mikey in, hoping that he would be up and out before Eva was awake the next morning. Other times Richie shuffled Mikey into the shotgun seat of his car and brought him back to Donna’s. Either way the two of them would go round and round the way that the two of you were very close to doing. He couldn’t take another loss. He couldn’t go down this road again, not with anyone but definitely not with you. Mikey was a loss he didn’t think he was ever going to come back from, and he didn’t want to think about what would happen if he lost you too.

“Talk to me, please,” you said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

He shook his head at you, sadness battling it out with anger. “You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want because it might make you feel fuckin’ good for a few minutes. That’s how people end up in the hospital. Or, or the fuckin’ morgue.”

You rolled your eyes. “Richie, come on, it was one night of—”

“I don’t fuckin’ care!” He grabbed you by your shoulders now, his gentle touch from earlier gone and replaced by sheer urgency. “You can’t start doin’ this shit to me too! You can’t make me watch myself fuckin’ lose you. I have lost fuckin’ everything, alright? Everyone’s left.” His voice grew quieter. “You…you don’t get to leave too.”

The fight drained out of you. “I’m not leaving.”

The smart remarks that reflexively shot to the tip of Richie’s tongue stopped only because of how defeated you looked. He knew it wasn’t true, but it looked almost like his hands gripping onto your shoulders were the only things keeping you up on your feet. Like if he loosened his hold on you, you’d fold down to the floor like a Raggedy Ann doll.

So he didn’t let you go. He pulled you into a bone-crushing hug. The kind that people only give out when it feels like the world is falling apart. There had been more of those going around in the last few months than there had been for years before. It was as sad as it was comforting.

Richie got to allow himself to feel like he was still the one keeping you up on your feet, while also hiding all of the emotions that were shining through his eyes right then. His arms snaked around you, palms pressed against your back so hard it felt like you were going to meld right into him. Cheek and ear pressed against his chest, you could hear how quickly his heart was thudding.

Wrapping your arms around his middle, you allowed yourself to lean into him. You pulled in one deep breath after another. The spinning sensation that was trying to rear its ugly head was beaten into submission only because of your steady breaths and the fact that you closed your eyes. A reminder that despite the sobering argument the two of you had just trudged through, the alcohol was far from done with you.

When Richie spoke up again, you could feel the brush of his lips and the movement of his jaw against the edge of your forehead with each word. The light scratch of his beard that he’d been letting grow out just a little longer than usual these days. “It’s,” he paused, fingertips pressing a little harder into your back as he gathered himself enough to say what he was thinking, “it’s impossible to be fuckin’ normal or okay anymore. About anything. I know that. Believe me I fuckin’ know that, alright? But I did this shit once and I'm not gonna do it again.”

You wanted to pull away, just enough so that you could look up at him. You wanted to tell him that he didn’t have anything to worry about. That whatever worst case scenario he was picturing in his head wasn’t going to happen. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Partially because his hold on you was so tight that if you tried to pull away you weren’t going to get very far, but also because no matter what you said, none of it was going to get through to him. You were drunk enough to want to keep arguing anyway, but sad enough and tired enough to not give into the urge.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled against his chest.

You meant it. He could tell that you meant it. He shut his eyes, and his next breath was so unsteady that for a moment he was worried the sob building in his chest was finally going to escape. If he had a dime for every time he’d heard those words over the last couple of years, he wouldn’t be living in a two-bedroom, working at a sandwich shop, procrastinating putting his name down on divorce papers.

Part of him wanted to argue too. That was something that would feel normal, at least. It would feel like something. Better than the emptiness that took hold whenever the sadness wasn’t so overwhelming. Getting into it with you, with Tiff, with anyone that gave him a hint of a reason was better than drifting through the limbo filled with nothing but grey. Fighting came so easy. He didn’t let it get there though. For you. You’d both said your piece.

“I know,” he said when he got his emotions as under control as they were ever going to be. One hand was now resting on the back of your head, the other still against your back holding you close.

The kiss he pressed to your forehead was done purely out of reflex. He’d done it a million times before and neither of you thought twice about it. After this he would undoubtedly do it a million times more and there would be nothing amiss.

This time, though. This one singular time, a drop in an unending ocean, you both let it mean something that it didn’t.

He was going to rest his head back against yours, content to hold you there until you decided you were finally ready to let yourself collapse onto the couch and go to sleep. Just as he was about to settle against you, though, you pulled away enough to look up at him. He could see the desperation in your eyes, the intensity in the way you were staring at him. He felt the slide of your hands from his back to his sides until your palms were resting against his chest. He tried to do the right thing, the smart thing. Or at least, he did enough to tell himself after the fact that he tried. Sort of.

Hands resting on your hips now, he held you in place but took a small step back. “You should get some sleep.”

You took a step towards him, erasing the gap that he’d created. “Richie.”

There was supposed to be more to that sentence. He knew that. But you didn’t even have to say it. The two of you could read each other in the midst of utter silence and darkness. That’s how it was with Mikey too. Before he died. Before the pills. Before everything.

He shook his head, hands about to drop and leave you for good. “Go to bed.”

When he stepped away, finally separating himself from you, you were quick to grab his hand before it got out of reach. “Richie, please—”

He tried to pull his hand away from you but all it did was pull you into him as he said, “Don’t fuckin’ do—”

The rest of his sentence was extinguished by you crashing your lips into his. It was rough and careless, and your lips still tasted like the liquor you’d been taking shots of at the bar before stumbling your way to his place. Your eyes were closed but his weren’t. It took him longer than it should have for him to push you away, holding you at arm’s length.

“What the fuck are you doing??” he asked, surprisingly not yelling. His tongue darted along his lip as he waited for you to answer.

“I just wanna feel good, Richie,” you said, wanting to scream but your voice came out soft and sad. “Just for once. Just for a little while. I, I just,” you went to step in, relieved when he let you get close to him again, “I wanna feel good again.” Bringing one hand up, you rested it on his cheek. “Don’t you?”

Of fucking course he did. He’d be willing to give up his left arm if it meant that he could feel good and balanced and okay again. But this wasn’t going to do it. This wasn’t worth the arm, or whatever else it was going to end up costing the two of you in the process. This was a band-aid that wasn’t even going to be big enough to cover the bullet wound you were trying to force it over.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning into the warmth of your palm against his face. That type of gentle affection that had been lacking for longer than he wanted to think about or admit. He shook his head at you, not yet pulling away. “Yeah, but c’mon, who the fuck are you kidding right now? What’s this gonna fix?”

You shook your head. “It’s not. It’s not gonna fix all my broken pieces, or your family, or any of the other shit that will still be waiting in the morning. But, fuck, it just,” you kissed him, dragged it out like you were proving a point, “we deserve that, don’t we?”

Richie didn’t know if he deserved that, the temporary solace that you were offering him. But your lips were so soft, your palm so warm against his cheek. It wouldn’t be the first time that he let himself get talked into doing questionable things for some instant gratification by people who were more short-sighted than he was. If Mikey was gone, he supposed you were just picking up the slack. Who was he to fight against nature?

He should’ve said something, anything really. But your question was one that he could answer without speaking at all. Instead, he leaned in and kissed you again, pulled you into him so that he could feel your body pressed against his all the way down. The moan of victory you let out sent vibrations through him, both your hands now needily cupping his face as you slipped your tongue into his mouth.

Turning the two of you, he started walking you back towards his bedroom. One hand staying on your hip, he slapped the lights off as he went. His apartment was dark and the hallways were quiet once more. The only unrest existed inside the walls of his bedroom now.

It was quick work, getting you down into next to nothing, considering you’d left half your clothes in a heap on his living room floor to begin with. Richie pulled your top off over your head and unclasped your bra with a quickness you would’ve asked about under any other circumstance before he got you lying on your back in the middle of his bed.

He was down to just his t-shirt and boxers, you in just your panties. He hovered over you, lips locked onto yours as his thumb traced back and forth across your breast. You arched into him at the contact, a whine building in the base of your throat as you writhed trying to get more for yourself. He had one leg slotted between yours and you tried desperately to pull him close enough to earn yourself just a little bit of friction against his thigh but he wasn’t letting you have that yet.

Sliding his hand up from your breast, he let it rest against your throat, thumb underneath your chin as he continued to kiss you. Richie kissed like he did everything else in his life: with full commitment and reckless abandon. His teeth pulled lightly at your bottom lip, and when he heard the moan of pleasure it got out of you he did it again, a little harder this time before breaking the kiss.

He pulled away far enough to get a good look at you. Seeing you in the patchy light coming through the window from the streetlamps outside would’ve been romantic if literally everything else had been different. Your eyes were glassy, your puffy kiss-bruised lips pulling down into a slight frown as you waited for him to come back and kiss you again. He watched the deep rise and fall of your chest as you tried to catch your breath. He looked for any hint of hesitation or regret in your eyes and found none. That tracked.

He kissed you again, one hard lip-lock after another. You balled your fists into his shirt and tried to pull him flush against you. When he pulled his lips from yours this time, he didn’t go far. He ran his thumb along your bottom lip, anchoring himself in the warmth of your breath as it fanned across his face.

Hand pressed to your face, he kissed you again. When he spoke, his voice rougher and quieter than it’d ever been with you, he could feel his lips brushing against yours with each word. “You wanna feel good?” You whined, nodding in answer to his question. He shook his head, kissed you again. “C’mon. You want me to make you feel good?”

“Please,” you said, panting.

"Whatever you want,” he said, landing a fleeting kiss against your lips before lifting his head away from yours. Using the pad of his thumb, he lightly pulled at your bottom lip. He could feel all of the desperation that he had spent weeks trying to bury clawing its way up to the surface. “Open up.”

You did as he asked without hesitation. He could feel you trembling beneath his touch as you parted your lips for him. He let it go to his head, let it feel good in a way that he’d nearly forgotten. Slipping his pointer and middle finger into your mouth, he felt his breath hitch in his throat at how readily you wrapped your lips around them. Eager to wet them for what you knew was coming next.

“Fuck.” The word slipped out involuntarily as Richie watched your eyes flutter shut. He’d hardly even touched you yet.

He dragged his hand down the center of your chest, then your stomach at a glacial pace. Using the time to revel in how your breathing got faster the lower he wandered. The patchwork of lights and shadows allowed him to see the goosebumps that rose across your skin. You let slip a whine as his hand slid behind the waistband of your underwear. He dropped his head so that his forehead was pressed against yours.

Then both your hands were cupping the sides of his face, pulling him into a kiss that was all tongue and teeth. Something like encouragement. Richie gave it right back to you and let you wait just a few seconds longer before giving in and giving you what it was you had shown up looking for in the first place.

He couldn’t help but moan as he traced his fingers along your folds, feeling how wet you already were for him. “Jesus,” he murmured against your lips.

When you tried to earn yourself more than he was ready to give you, when you tried to buck your hips against his hand for a little more contact, he pulled out of the lip lock you had him in. His teeth dragged against your lip as he went, his lips then leaving a ghost of a trail behind as he brought them beside your ear. The brush of his stubble against your skin had you squirming with anticipation as he pressed a kiss right below your ear.

“You came to me, right?” he whispered against the shell of your ear. He felt you nod, your hands gripping his shoulders now. “Because you knew I could make you feel good?” The manufactured conceit in his voice sounded convincing, would’ve been bulletproof, if it weren’t for the fact that he knew you could feel how hard he was, his cock pressing against your thigh.

You didn’t use it against him, though. Too distracted by how he had his fingers pressed lightly against your center. You swallowed hard as you nodded in answer to his question, forcing out a, “Yes,” that was weak and desperate in a way that made his dick twitch against you.

That was the right answer. He kissed your ear, then your temple, then your cheek before his lips were hovering above yours again. The two of you were too close for him to see the look in your eyes, but he knew that they were open in anticipation. “Then you gotta fuckin let me,” he said, kissing you hard on the lips before saying, “Alright?”

The shaky breath that you let out alongside your nod was enough of an answer for him. When he kissed you again, he could feel the way you were fighting the urge to pull and push him to right where you wanted. You made up for it by slipping your hands up underneath the fabric of his shirt as he kissed you. Your nails bit into the soft skin between his shoulder blades. Richie knew it was going to sting when you raked them down his back—he also knew that he’d want you to do it again despite that.

When it felt like you were about to dig your nails in enough to draw blood, Richie pushed his fingers into you. He was rewarded with no resistance, you moaning into his mouth in relief. He swallowed the sound, drank in the feeling of you trying to wrap yourself around him and pull him as close as possible.

He started slow, dragging out each movement of fingers in and out of you. Not that he was particularly known for his patience, but the way you pulled and clawed at him, the way your whines of, “Please, Richie, please,” without ever saying what you were begging for, it had him willing to take his time.

Then he started to go a little faster, thumb grazing against your clit with every motion. And you hungrily arched into his touch, glad for the new rhythm. In between ragged breaths you managed a, “Fuck yes,” that had Richie smirking into your kiss.

“Told you,” he said as he felt your legs starting to shake, “I fuckin’ got you.”

“Richie,” you panted, one hand gripping onto his wrist, “d-don’t stop. Fuck. Don’t—I’m—”

You had lost track of where your sentence was going before Richie kissed you. You were whimpering into his mouth as you came. The release, the feeling of his hands and lips on you, the ragged breathing on both your parts, all of them making up a tiny tower of relief that you each still had the ability to feel good. At least about this, at least for now.

Your fingers were interlocked, resting on the back of his neck as he kissed you. The motions of your lips against each other were slow, almost lazy as he stroked you through the last waves of your orgasm. Slowly sliding his fingers out of you, he rested his hand on your hip. He kept kissing you as he dragged his hand along the waistband of your panties before allowing his fingers to press along the dampened strip of fabric between your legs. You shivered at his touch, still sensitive.

He could’ve left it at that and been alright. Part of him was expecting that, for you to get what you’d asked for and let the curtains close. He would’ve been alright with just being needed, wanted. So when he settled onto his side on the mattress beside you as he kissed you, that’s what he had been readying himself for.

Then he felt the light touch of your fingers curling over the top of his boxers. Felt the way you went to slide them down off his hips. Pulling away, he was getting ready to say something along the lines of, “Are you sure?” or, “We don’t have to,” but you didn’t let him get that far.

You got his waistband down enough so that you could easily wrap your hand around his length. You killed any of his protests or uncertainties with, “C’mon, don’t tease.”

He briefly thought that reducing the pool between your legs down to a tease didn’t seem fair, but rather than arguing the semantics of that, he finished what you started by kicking off his boxers the rest of the way.

Reaching over you, it was nothing short of a herculean effort to find the handle of the drawer in his bedside table. Between your hand stroking him and your teeth nibbling at the column of his throat, it was nearly impossible to think about anything else. He managed it by the skin of his teeth. Eyes screwed shut tight and his other hand gripping onto the pillow you were resting your head against. He fumbled around for a moment until he felt the smooth foil of the condom wrapper beneath the pads of his fingers.

He ripped it open with his teeth, spitting the corner of it away like he was some sort of caveman. He didn’t care about that and the way you were pulling your panties down your legs he figured he was safe in assuming that you didn’t care much either.

You pulled him into you so fast that he didn’t have time to overthink it. The feeling of sliding into you felt better than anything else had in a long, long time. So good that he got halfway through moaning out the word, “Fuck,” before base instinct took over and he sunk his teeth into the space where your neck met your shoulder instead.

He buried his face into the crook of your neck, panting into the sheen of sweat that was covering your skin. You locked your legs around him, sliding your arms underneath his so that your hands could splay across his shoulder blades. It felt like there wasn’t a single part of him that wasn’t being touched by you.

Each whimper and moan you let out was an act of encouragement. He could feel your breathing as much as he could hear it with the way your chest heaved against his. It was hard for him to tell where he ended and you began, both of you just a mess of limbs and sweat and breath’s stolen from each other’s air.

You pulled his face to yours so that you could kiss him hard on the lips. When you spoke, it felt like each letter was interrupted by another connection of your lips but you weren’t fazed. “Don’t stop,” you begged, somewhere between a whisper and a whine, “Please don’t fuckin’ stop.”

Richie didn’t even have himself together enough to come up with any kind of response. All he could do was kiss you and thrust into you a little harder. He felt you move your hips to meet him as he did, the way you pulled at him, gripping onto him wherever you could to keep him close to you.

He wondered if it was even him that you were thinking about when you were pleading and leaving dark marks on his shoulders. Maybe you weren’t thinking of him—maybe you were just thinking about how good it felt. How it shut out all the noise and the heaviness and the hopelessness. He wouldn’t blame you for that. He could lie to himself and say that he was doing all of this for you, and maybe there was a little bit of truth to that. But most of it came down to the fact that you were right, that it was nice just to feel fucking good for once.

You were kissing him, tongue running over his when he felt you tighten around him, another orgasm rushing over you. You moaned into his mouth as it happened and Richie swore that for a split second he blacked out. He knew that he wasn’t going to last much longer. Considering how long it had been since he fucked anything besides his own hand, he was impressed that he’d lasted this long.

With each receding wave of pleasure, you clenched and sent Richie tumbling faster and faster towards his own release. He pulled his lips off of yours as he got close, instead burying his face into the crook of your neck as his thrusts became fast and sloppy. He knew that you could tell he was close too, the way you were whispering, begging him to come for you.

Richie was a people pleaser underneath all the different layers of sarcasm and aggressive hand gestures, so he was all too happy to do exactly as you were asking. A few more thrusts and he was spilling into the condom with a long string of groans and curses. The pleased hum you let out had him fighting the urge to let out a laugh into your shoulder.

He collapsed on top of you, spent in every sense of the word. Your legs were still wrapped around him, your hands still flat against his back. For a minute he couldn’t even make himself lift up his head to look at you. Each breath he took came heavy and slow. He managed to snake his arms around you, almost like he was hugging you. His eyes were closed, face pressed against the soft warmth of your skin. As he laid there and felt your fingers racing up and down his back, he felt a lump grow in the back of his throat. He didn’t open his eyes, didn’t dare blink, but he knew that he was pressing tears into your shoulder. He wasn’t sure if you didn’t notice, or if you didn’t care.

The embarrassment of it reared its ugly head. Never in a million years did he think that hew as going to be the type of asshole who cried after sex. But this wasn’t like that, not that cliché type of shit. Once the wave of insecurity began to recede, and he got out of his own head about it, he realized that that felt good too. That wasn’t the type of good he could talk about, though. At least not now, not when he could hear the rapid beating of your heart against his chest.

He finally pulled himself up so that he was looking down into your eyes. The selfish part of him was looking for any trace of regret—he didn’t find any. He saw the tearstains left behind at the corners of your eyes though. Saw the way that they ran down your temple and disappeared into your hair. You were getting more than one kind of release out of this too. Against all odds with how your night together had started, Richie found himself glad that he wasn’t alone.

Your eyes were glassy, and whether it was from the alcohol, the tears, or everything else he wasn’t exactly sure. You didn’t look away from him though. He had been waiting for you to waver, for the aftermath to make you rethink everything. You were steady. Hands warm against his back, palms pressing just enough to let him know that you weren’t ready for him to pull out of you and leave you just yet.

He wanted to kiss you and he found himself hesitating. Which felt stupid considering he was still inside you. You brought one hand to the side of his face, running it through his beard before bringing it to rest on the back of his head.

“Something like that?” he asked, surprising himself a little bit with how low and quiet his voice had become.

You nodded, lightly raking your nails along his scalp. “Yeah, something like that.”

He finally let himself kiss you again. You drew it out, long and slow as he softened inside you. Your lips felt soft against his, but still needy. He knew, as he wrapped his arms around you, that you weren’t going to be getting out of his bed tonight and you weren’t going to let him slink away to the couch. This was part of it, part of feeling good, of feeling safe and whole again just for a little while.

A contented sigh slipped through your lips when he broke away. When he started to pull out of you, away from you, you locked your legs a little tighter to try and stop him. He let out a tired chuckle as he braced his hands against the bed and straightened his arms out.

“I’ll be right back.”

You either believed him or were too tired to put up a fight about it. Dropping your legs back to the mattress, you let Richie hop off the bed and excuse himself to the bathroom to clean himself up and get himself in order.

He stood at his bathroom sink in nothing but his boxers. He gripped the sides of it with both hands, staring down into the porcelain for longer than he could keep track of before finally turning the sink on. He scrubbed his hands clean, splashed some water on his face. Shaking his head at himself, he finally looked up and into the mirror.

Exhaustion was still prevalent in every single one of his features. Now it was just accompanied by the marks you’d left behind on his shoulders, on the soft skin between his neck and his collarbone. Turning so that his back was to the mirror, he looked to see the damage done, the maze of red lines that crossed over his shoulder blades and down his back. He tried to reach with his own hand with limited success.

He shook his head, sort of at you and sort of at himself. “Fuck me,” he muttered, not that he sounded particularly upset about it.

When he went back into his bedroom, you had gotten yourself under the covers. He didn’t see your underwear resting on top of the blanket anymore, so he felt safe in assuming that you’d put them back on. You didn’t move or say anything as he made his way over to the bed. He crawled in beside you, wanting to say something, wanting to pull you into him.

You saved him the trouble. Rolling so that you were face-to-face, you put your hand on his side and scooted to close the small gap that he’d left between you. Your noses were almost touching. He could feel the warmth of your breath as you exhaled.

“Thank you,” you said in a tired whisper.

He chuckled. “Well, you’re fuckin’ welcome.”

You swatted at him as you let out a quiet laugh. “Shut up. You know—”

“I know what you meant,” he cut you off.

He dropped his forehead so that it rested against yours and you let out a hum of approval. “We’re gonna be okay, right?” you asked.

Richie sighed, his mind already beginning to pick up speed once more as reality began to encroach on his room again. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”

Your eyes widened and you pulled away from him. “Wh-what?”

His brows knit in confusion. “What?” Recognition washed over his features as he realized what you’d really been asking. “Oh. Shit. Fuck. You mean,” he shook his head and pulled you back close to him again, “sorry.” He hooked his chin over the top of your head. “We’re fine. We got, you know,” he angled his head so that his lips brushed against you as he spoke, “we got real shit to try and deal with. This is…we’re okay.”

“You aren’t mad?” you asked, drowsiness creeping into your voice.

He took a deep breath. “Not at you.”

“Promise?” You pulled yourself tighter to him.

He returned the gesture. Shutting his eyes tight, he tried to focus on your slowing, steady breaths. Everything that was a mess before would still be a mess later, but for now he at least had you here. He could know that you were safe. He could take some small comforts in the fact that he was able to give you respite, keep you from flying completely over the edge where he’d failed with Mikey before.

“Yeah,” he gave you a light squeeze, “I promise.”

The Bear Taglist: @garbinge @darqchilddaydreamz @withmyteeth @narcolini @hausofmamadas

Robby had gotten pulled into assisting with another patient before he could report back to your mom and Dennis about you being on your way. It was just as well, since all it would have done is bother her more.

By the time you got to the hospital and made it back into the wings of the Pitt, Dennis had gotten absorbed into another case, one that had more pressing time constraints. He was kind enough to make sure that a nurse stayed close by your mom to make sure she didn’t try to duck and run.

You were shaking your head as you crossed the floor to where she was sitting on the hospital bed. Part of you was shaking your head at the sight in front of you, part of you was still pissed and shaking your head at the man who had accosted you in the waiting room, loudly asking why, “This lady just gets to go right on back there and the rest of us are still stuck here waiting?!”

You could have played the family member card, but it was much more satisfying to shove your badge in his face and say, “Because this lady works here. So if you want to be seen soon I’d sit down, shut your mouth, and let me do my job.” The man sat. Lupe laughed from behind the desk, knowing that you weren’t here to work but also knowing it didn’t matter. You pushed through the doorway with no other interruptions.

Once your mother caught sight of you, she started shaking her head too. Two peas in a pod in all the best and worst ways.

You dropped your backpack next to her bed and wrapped her in a hug before she could get a word in edge-wise. She tensed for a moment, wanting to hold onto her annoyance, but moments later she relented and hugged you back just as tight.

Cheek smushed against her shoulder, you spoke, words muffled from the pressure. “How’re you feeling, Ma?”

She gave you a few affectionate pats on the back before pulling out of the embrace enough to get a decent look at you. “I’m fine. I told him not to call you. I told them I wanted to leave!”

You chuckled even though you felt tears starting to well in your eyes. If you could feel them, you had no doubt that your mom could see them. You shook your head. “They were right to keep you, especially when we don’t know why you fell.”

“I must’ve tripped! Look,” she pointed to the bandages on her legs, then her arm, then her forehead, “they patched me up. They can let me leave.”

She wasn’t leaving without some answers, not if you had anything to say about it. You also knew that the longer she had to sit there and wait the more you were going to be arguing with her about it all, though. You weren’t exactly in the position to be moving mountains, but you could ask around to check and see where they were at with everything, see if anything could get nudged along. Worst that could happen is that everyone would say no.

You did a cursory glance around to see if there was anyone near by that you could try to nettle for answers. While you scanning the hall outside you asked, “Want me to get you some ice chips or something?”

She tried to wave you off. “I don’t need that. Just get them to let me go on home.”

You should’ve known that answer was coming. Pressing your hands onto your knees, you got up from your chair. “Fine. Sit here with a whole lotta nothin’ while I go and figure out where they’re at with your tests,” you said with a laugh.

Your mother huffed but you could see the smile trying to pull at her lips. “Fine.” She looked out into the hall just like you had. “Michael should know, shouldn’t he? Go find him.”

You were nodding as you turned and started to head off. “Trust me, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

You loved your mother more than damn near anything else in the world. For that reason exactly you knew better than to trust her. Both of you had habits of getting into trouble when left unattended. Popping by the nurses' station, you asked them to keep a loose eye on her while you tracked Robby down. They would have said yes to you anyway, but when you explained that she was your mother they gave you that extra reassurance that you needed.

The maze of the ER made sense to you these days in a way that you never would have dreamt of back when you first started. You navigated through the wings with ease as you looked for Robby. With no scrubs on, it wasn’t as though you were going to be barging into every room that you walked past, but you did your best to crane your neck to see.

He saw you before you saw him. Whether it was bravery or pity for you, he didn’t turn and try to run the other way. He said your name just loud enough to be heard above the din. Spinning on your heel, you went from wide-eyed to relieved at the sight of him.

The two of you met in the middle, and without taking time to think about it, Robby draped his arms around you in a hug and you melted into it with the same lack of hesitation. For a split second you heard his heartbeat against your ear as you took a breath to stabilize yourself. You allowed yourself a few seconds of pretending reality was anything other than it was so you could enjoy the closeness. Then the real world closed in on you again and you peeled yourself away.

When you stepped back, Robby quickly crossed his arms over his chest. You put one hand on your hip, using the other to facepalm with as you got all of your thoughts and questions together.

“Did you find her already?” he asked. There were a handful of other questions on his mind, but it wasn’t the time or the place to ask them.

You nodded. “Yeah, yeah. She told me she wants to leave and I told her we can’t do that until you guys run your tests. Then she said I should go and find you. You know,” you let out a tired chuckle, “since you apparently run the entire hospital.”

Robby smiled and shook his head. “Right. Well, blood tests should be back soon—I'll check and see where they’re at. CT scan is still pretty backed up though.”

“Always is.” You sighed, propping both hands on your hips now. “She tell you what happened? She told me she tripped and fell, but I don’t believe that.”

He frowned but still agreed with you. “She didn’t have any marks on her hands—I don’t think she even tried to catch herself. Which means—”

“She was out before she hit the ground, not because she hit the ground.”

Neither of you said anything as the implications of that statement sank in. Robby didn’t need to tell you all the possible diagnoses; you ran the same differentials for people day in and day out that he did. Maybe it was nothing, just a side effect of aging and not enough water. That would be best case, but you knew better than to bank on that.

When Robby grabbed the tablet and pulled up your mother’s blood test results, you didn’t even let him get a good look at anything before snatching it away from him. He wanted to argue, but it wasn’t going to get him anything. He contented himself with looking over your shoulder at the test results.

You let out a disappointed sigh as you turned and placed the tablet in his hands. “You wanna talk to her about it? Now that she’s sent me to find you, she’s not gonna want to hear anything from me.”

He nodded, only his eyes giving away his amusement at what you were saying. You’d always said that once Robby came around your mom demoted you to her second favorite child. He never believed it but the running gag of it never got less funny to him or less frustrating to you. For that reason alone he figured it would’ve been worth it for to you to tell her that the two of you had broken up. There wasn’t time for him right then to think too deeply on it.

“Yeah, we can do that.” Taking a step back in the direction of the wing your mom was in, he nodded for you to follow him. “C’mon.”

“So?” your mom said as the two of you walked back to her bedside. “Can I go home now?”

“You still need your CT, Mom.” You sat down on the edge of her bed, just glad that it didn’t look like she’d tried to make a break for it.

She gave you an annoyed look before turning her attention to Robby. “Is that true, Michael?”

He flicked his eyes up from the tablet just enough to look at your mom and smile. “Your daughter is a very good doctor, Angela. You can listen to her. You should listen to her.”

She pointed to his hands, the screen that was tilted and she couldn’t see. “What’s that say?”

“It says,” Robby began as he pulled a stool over and sat down by the head of her bed, “that most things look pretty good.”

“Then why—”

“But there are a few things nearing out of normal range that I want to check out. Plus it looks like your blood pressure was high when you came in here.”

“That’s because I don’t want to be here,” she retorted matter-of-factly.

You and Robby both laughed at that. He nodded in agreement. “You’re not the only one. But even with that, I still want to get your head checked out. And the rest of you.”

You watched the look on your mother’s face closely. With both you and Robby telling her the same thing, you knew that she wasn’t going to put up as much of a fight. She’d still grumble and groan, but you weren’t worried that she was going to get up and try to take off again. Which reminded you that at some point over the next couple of days you would have to thank Dennis, and apologize.

Robby handed you the tablet with the lab results. “I’ll let you hold onto that.” Standing up, he rested a gentle hand on your mother’s shoulder. “Let me go see what I can do about getting you a little farther up in the line for the CT.”

She patted his hand with her own. “Thank you.”

Both of you watched Robby walk off to try and grease a few wheels for your mother’s benefit. Since there weren’t all that many time-sensitive concerns with her, you doubted that he would be able to do much. But you also knew the fact that he was going off and asking would placate your mom a little bit. Robby knew that too, which was undoubtedly why he did it.

Once he was out of sight, your mom started peppering you with questions about what the blood work results you were holding told you. The minutia of it wouldn’t make very much sense to her, but you could explain the broad strokes. Depending on what the CT showed, and any other tests they decided she needed, some of this might be more relevant to her than it used to be. Plus, all that aside you knew that she just needed to talk about something to keep her busy. She might have been putting on a brave, if not annoyed, face, but you could see the way she kept twisting her hands. She was tough, but she was also smart enough to know that she wasn’t invincible. Hence the walks every morning no matter the weather.

“I take good care of myself,” your mom said defensively as she looked at the array of numbers in front of her.

You chuckled and nodded. “I know you do, Ma. That’s why all of this looks as good as it does.”

She looked from the paper over to you. The longer she looked at you, the more worried her face became. A frown, brows knitting together. You didn’t ask what had her looking like that, but she told you anyway. “You look tired.”

Because you were tired. Exhausted, even. You’d barely gotten forty-five minutes of sleep in after your ten-hour shift when Robby called. You hadn’t thought about that until now. Suddenly the hospital bed seemed pretty damn comfortable.

“I’ll be fine,” you said instead of getting into all of that.

“I told him to let you sleep. Actually,” she rested back against the pillows stacked behind her, “what I told him was to take you off the nightshift.”

“Mom, Robby didn’t—”

“It can’t be good for you! Keep doing that and then you’ll be the one sitting here instead of me.”

You smiled. “Yeah, well, if that happens I’ll at least do you the favor of calling you myself instead of making Robby do it.”

She tried to look mad but it quickly devolved into humor. You shared a laugh as she shook her head. “You both worry too much,” she finally said.

You couldn’t argue that. You did your best to ignore the weight in your chest as you said, “I know.”

You were shaking your head as you walked back over to the side of the picnic table that Tyler was sitting at. You had a beer bottle in one hand, the other resting on Tyler’s shoulder as you stepped in so you could plop back down beside him at the table.

“I’m still trying to figure out what you guys told Lily to say,” you gestured to Lily then Kate with the bottom of your beer bottle before taking a quick sip, “to get Kate to cave so quickly.” You gave Lily a playful smile. “What’d you say to convince her? Hm? ‘Cause lord knows it wasn’t either of these two,” you said as you nodded to Tyler first, then Boone.

Both men looked at you with dramatic looks of offense. “What?” Tyler asked, grin starting to curl his lips as he spoke. “You don’t think we were charming or convincing enough on our own?”

You rolled your eyes as he draped his arm around you. “No, I don’t.”

It got another wave of laughter. Tyler took the momentary distraction as an opportunity to lean in and kiss your temple. “Seemed to work just fine on you.” He reached across and stole your beer bottle from you, taking a sip before allowing you to snatch it back. “And you said yes to a way more dangerous proposition.”

You shook your head even though you were smiling, even though you could feel your cheeks warming. It was no great secret, or even breaking news at this point after the last few years you’d spent married to the ridiculous man sitting on the picnic table bench next to you. Sometimes, though, you couldn’t help the cheesy grin that crossed your face when you became a little more aware than usual of the wedding band on your hand.

“That’s different,” you said, not that it mattered, not that it helped your case at all as Tyler continued to nettle you good-naturedly.

“How’d you two meet, anyway?” Kate asked.

It was a fair question. You didn’t chase with the rest of them, never had. You’d met and fallen in love with Tyler before he decided to make a career out of it. The journey wasn’t always a smooth or easy one, but you never doubted him, or your relationship, not even for a second. Even in the hard times. A lot can happen over the course of six years, but you still clearly remembered when you first met him.

Tyler had started watching you the second he realized where Kate’s question was going. He watched the little twitches and shifts of your hands and facial expressions as you went rapid-fire back down memory lane. When you ended up with a little smirk on your face, he knew that you were all too happy to tell the story.

You took another drink from your beer bottle before just handing it back to Tyler, rather than trying to make him steal it again. “When I met Tyler, I’d say about, oh, seventy percent? Yeah, seventy. About seventy percent of his face was covered in bruises and bumps. Fractured cheekbone, split lip.” You turned and looked at him even though you were talking to Kate. “He was lookin’ real cute.”

She laughed, but you could see the mild confusion in her eyes as she looked back and forth between the two of you. “You find him after a rough chase, or…?”

You smiled and shook your head. “We met back before he was the infamous Tornado Wrangler.” Leaning forward, you braced your arms flat on the picnic table, Tyler’s hand sliding from your shoulder down to the center of your back, his palm warming you through your tank top. “They brought him to the hospital that I work at after he got stomped out by a bull at the rodeo.” You felt his fingers drumming against your back and your smile stretched a little wider. “I wasn’t even supposed to be checkin’ in on anyone in the wing he was in, but the nurse who was supposed to help discharge him had to leave.”

Tyler had a cocky little smirk on his face. “Lucky for you though.”

You gave him a look that didn’t pack nearly as much of a punch as it should of since you were grinning. “Yeah, real lucky for me that Jay’s kid got in a fight at school so he had to leave and he left you to me.”

Tyler laughed. “He was cute but I gotta say, I think you’re a little cuter.”

You gave him a playful shove, which he responded to by looping his arm around your waist and pulling you closer again. You shook his head at him before looking back at Kate. “Anyway, as I was saying. I go into his room to talk through some of the paperwork with him, and with one eye practically swollen shut still this man right here is tryin’ to get my number.”

“Actually, if I remember right—”

“You were concussed into next Tuesday—I doubt you remember much of anything right.”

“If I remember,” he repeated with a laugh, “I was actually tellin’ you that you should just jot my number down from my patient forms so you could call me sometime.”

You looked at Kate with a feigned nonplussed look. “Told me somethin’ about making a ‘house call’. Real bold for a man who was about half an inch away from some serious brain damage.”

“Probably what gave him the confidence to ask in the first place,” Lily piped up with a laugh.

Everyone was laughing, and listening. Kate might’ve been the only one in present company who hadn’t heard the story before, but it wasn’t as though it was something that the two of you were constantly rehashing all the time. The two of you usually kept the retellings amusing enough anyway, allowing the rest of the crew to throw in their two cents even though they hadn’t been there when it all started. After all, Tyler might’ve been the one you met first, and under some pretty dire conditions, but you’d been around to help out the rest of the team plenty of times since then. Whether you were making sure they were all alright after a rough chase, or meeting up with them in the towns that had been blown through to see who you could help even if you weren’t off the clock. You might not have chased with the rest of them, but you were still part of the team.

“How long did it take for him to wear you down, then?” Kate asked.

 The shit-eating grin on Tyler’s face grew tenfold. He lightly bumped his shoulder against yours. “Go ahead. Tell her.”

You dropped your forehead so that it rested on top of your forearms for a moment before looking up and at Kate again. “I gave him my number after I pushed him to the lobby in his wheel chair.”

“Doctor’s orders, by the way,” he interjected with a shake of his head. “I didn’t need it.”

You rolled your eyes but kept going. “He was pretty persistent the whole way down, so I told him if he still remembered my name and number by the time his fractures all healed up, I’d meet him for a cup of coffee or somethin’.”

“Cup of coffee ended up bein’ a split six-pack and a failed bonfire at her cousin’s place, by the way,” he added on with a chuckle.

“Yeah, and your lip still wasn’t fully healed.”

He smirked. “Didn’t stop you though.” You lightly swatted his chest with the back of your hand but you didn’t say anything to refute his statement. “So really, what I’m hearin’, is that you shouldn’t be havin’ any doubts about our charms.”

“Sayin’ yes to a date is nothing like—”

“You also said yes to marryin’ him,” Lily added on, always happy to stir the pot just a little. “Y’know, with the ring that he almost lost in a chase.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “If I left it at home I was sure she’d find it!”

“Yeah,” Lily laughed as she argued, “and if the chase went wrong somebody on the other end of the county would find it. Then what?”

Tyler laughed and shrugged. “Corner store sells Ring Pops.”

You had no shot at tamping down your smile. “Prob’ly still would’ve said yes, too.”

(divider by @saradika 💞)

It was more dumb luck than it was Robby pulling any strings when your mom got brought up to the CT scanner within the next hour. It should’ve been a win. It was to you and Robby because you both knew how long people had to wait for things like that most of the time. Your mom, however, was too stuck on the fact that she wasn’t being allowed to walk there.

“I don’t need a wheelchair,” she said as Robby pushed one over. “I’m not that old.”

“No one said that you need to use the wheelchair because you’re old,Mom.”

“Then what else is it for?”

You jerked your thumb in Robby’s direction. “You want your pride to be the reason Robby gets sued?” You were tempted to throw in an “Again?” for the hell of it but you figured that wouldn’t help your cause right now. When your mom shook her head no, you nodded. “That’s what I thought. Please get in the chair.”

Robby had been standing by silently for the entire exchange, eyebrows raised and hand strategically placed to cover up the amused smile creeping onto his face at the two of you. Bickering came so easy but it died down just as quickly. Usually it was happening across the dinner table, or while you both stood at the counter cooking together. He liked the familiarity of it despite it happening in the middle of the hospital.

When the two of you got to the room that housed the CT scanner, you let Robby do most of the talking. Part of it was because at this point that was very much his job—he was her doctor and you were a family member. But that aside you knew that she wouldn’t give him as hard of a time as she would you if you had been the one trying to tell her what was going to happen and how it all had to go. Both of you helped get her situated as comfortable as possible on the scanner.

You gave her hand a squeeze. “We’ll both be just on the other side of the glass there. If you talk, we’ll be able to hear you and we have a microphone so we can respond, alright?”

She nodded. “Alright.”

The scan itself wasn’t going to take that long. Then it was just a waiting game for the results. However, what you were so used to pitching to patients and family members as a, “quick and non-invasive procedure,” felt like the exact opposite for you in that moment and you weren’t even the one getting scanned. You and Robby weren’t looking at each other, instead he looked at the screen that had no images yet, and you looked at your mom as she did her best to lay as still as possible on the scanner.

Even though it had only been a few minutes, you were still surprised that Robby hadn’t been called away yet. You wanted to make a joke or a comment about it, but you believed in jinxes just like most of the team in the Pitt. You knew the tide could turn at any moment, but you were thankful to have him there while you could.

“So,” Robby said, eyes fixed on the monitors in front of him like they were telling him something, “never thought to tell Angela about what happened?”

You exhaled sharply, pushing the air past your teeth. There was no way you were going to get through the day without addressing that particular elephant in the room. Now you were wishing someone would call him away.

You pressed your fingertips along your browbone. “There just…hasn’t been a good time.”

Robby chuckled and shook his head. “No good time in the last, what’s it been now? Two months? Almost three?”

You muttered under your breath, quiet enough that he would know you said something but he wouldn’t know what. “But who’s counting.”

“What?”

You shook your head. “Nothing. I just, I didn’t know how to tell her.”

“So, what, she just thinks that I’ve been avoiding her? Neglecting you?”

You gave a small, embarrassed smile when he looked over at you. You shrugged. “Kinda.”

“Unbelievable.” He quiet laugh he let out as he spun in the chair so that he was fully facing you took the bite out of the one-word response. “Can you at least tell her that you asked to work nights? I think she thinks I’m punishing you.”

“If I tell her that, she’s gonna ask why.”

He held his hands out. “Perfect opportunity to tell her the truth. Then she can know for sure that you are the one avoiding me, and not the other way around.”

“Robby…” you trailed off, a hint of an edge to your voice. The two of you had figured things out well enough, could get along for the most part especially since you didn’t share shifts anymore, but some of your wounds were still tender to the touch. There were still some patches of thin ice between you. You sure as hell hadn’t switched shifts because things were perfect.

His face softened. “Sorry.”

You shook your head. “Whatever.” You turned side to side in the chair. “The next opportunity that presents itself, I’ll tell her, alright?” You sighed. “Make her pass out all over again.”

He had a comment locked and loaded but he didn’t get the chance to fire as the CT scanner beeped to let you both know that it was done. When you got the full results of the scan back, you’d have a better idea of what was going on.

Robby had just gotten her situated back in the wheelchair when his phone started going off. He gave you an apologetic look that you tried to wordlessly let him know wasn’t needed. You knew what the job was—you weren’t going to hold it against him. It was nothing short of a miracle that he’d been able to stay with the two of you as long as he had.

If it had been any other parent and child, he would have found a nurse or doctor to walk them back. But it was the two of you, so he gave an apology to your mom and headed off towards wherever he was needed next.

As you started to bring her back towards the ER, she asked, “That means I gotta wait some more, right?”

You chuckled and nodded as she looked up at you. “Yep. Sure does.”

Back in the glass-walled room that the two of you had started off in, you locked the brakes in place on her wheelchair. Offering your hand out, she hesitated before taking it. Both of you were thinking similar things, but neither of you were going to speak them aloud until you got some answers. Viewing the same worry from different sides, you each thought about what life was going to look like if this wasn’t some small, easily fixable thing. But there was no point in talking about it, perseverating on it. That was about as bad as a jinx as far as you were concerned.

Rather than voice her worries, your mom tried to divert the conversation away from herself. “You’re the one who needs to rest—you should get up there on the bed. I can sit in the chair.”

You were tired enough to contemplate it for a split second. “If I get that tired, I’ll squish you over to the side and hop in there with you. Don’t you worry about that.”

Once she settled, you pulled a chair over that was more comfortable than the stool Robby had been sitting on. Plopping down into it, you leaned so that your forearms were braced on top of the hospital bed. Your chin rested on the backs of your hands as you looked upward at your mother.

It was quiet between you at first, but then you got to talking the way that you always did. You had been planning on making it over to her place within the next couple of days anyway; you were due for a lunch or dinner with her. It’d been harder to find the right pockets of time to stop over now that you worked nights, which was a short-coming of your own that had nothing to do with your mom. Regardless, the two of you had plenty of things to talk about and catch up on. You did your best to make sure that none of it involved Robby.

By the time that Robby had handled whatever it was that needed handling, and the results of the CT came back, your eyelids were heavier than you wanted to admit and your mother was beginning to border on hangry which you couldn’t blame her for. Her typical routine of wake up, walk, shower, eat, had been horribly disrupted.

You forced yourself to lift your head up from the mattress so that you could properly look at and listen to Robby. He had a tablet tucked underneath his arm as he rubbed sanitizer into his hands. Motions that none of you even thought about anymore, didn’t even notice when you were doing them.

He sat down on the stool, positioning himself in front of both of you, but a little closer to the bed. After looking at each of you, his gaze settled on your mom. “How we feeling, Angela?”

“Hungry,” she said as she folded her arms across her chest. “Tired. I would like to go home.”

Robby smiled and nodded. “Status quo, then.” He glanced over at you. “Stable is good.”

It got a smile and a hum of amusement out of you as you melted back into the chair a little farther. The adrenaline of the morning was almost completely gone, and you were going to need something to tag in and replace it soon. First stop when you left here with your mom was going to be to grab a cup of coffee.

“Tell me what’s going on so I can leave.” Your mom paused, having to work harder than usual to force out, “Please.” She nodded in your direction. “By this point I’m probably fine and you’ll have to put her in this bed instead. They used to keep people awake as torture, you know.”

“Ma,” you chided, laughing even though you didn’t really want to.

Robby took it all in stride, as usual. Taking the tablet out from underneath his arm, he pulled up the images. They were presented in rows, multiple of them at a time. Your mom was getting ready to say something about not knowing what the hell she was supposed to be looking at or for when Robby chose one in particular to zoom in on.

“The good news is, we can get you out of here pretty quick and you shouldn’t have to change too much about your day-to-day.”

You both let out sighs of relief at that. Keeping the worst-case scenarios to yourself had its benefits. Your mom held out her hand for you to take, which you did. She gave it a small squeeze, the gesture enough to let you know that despite the front she’d been putting on, she had been battling the same worries as you.

He allowed the two of you to share the moment of relief before continuing on. “See these tiny white dots right here and…” he trailed off as he shifted his finger to a different part of the image, “here?”

He pointed, and while you had a trained eye that could pick them out with ease, your mom squinted. She looked at Robby. “It’s all black and white, Michael.”

Nodding he managed to keep sounding professional which was more than what you would have been able to do in his position. You knew he wanted to chuckle at least. He zoomed in a little more and pointed again. “There.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Alright, I see it. What is it?”

“Those are blood clots.” Your mom took her hand from yours, holding both out to Robby in a wordless ask to hold onto the tablet and look closer at the pictures. “That’s what caused you to faint while you were out on your walk today.”

What had happened to your mom wasn’t uncommon in the slightest, but it was different when it was happening to someone you knew, someone you loved. You were already running through all the different courses of treatment. Your only comfort at the moment was that you didn’t think she was going to need surgery. If that had been the case, Robby would have led this conversation off very differently. Just because you knew what was coming, though, didn’t mean that the woman in the hospital bed beside you had the same sense of preparation.

Her brows furrowed in concentration. “So I had a stroke? Blood clots cause strokes, right?”

“They do,” Robby said, that careful softness in his tone that you’d heard him use with countless patients before, “but that’s not what happened to you today. You had a clot that ended up in your lung. Your lungs weren’t getting the oxygen that they needed because of it, and that’s what caused you to faint.”

“Is it gonna happen again?”

“We’re gonna give you a dose of clot-busters here, and then we’re also going to get you on a prescription for some blood thinners so hopefully it won’t happen again. And I’m gonna suggest that you come back for another scan to make sure the medication is doing what we need it to do.”

It was about as good of an outcome that you could have hoped for. People fainted all the time for all sorts of reasons, some reasons didn’t show up on a CT or in a blood panel. Your mom having to go on one medication that could solve all of her problems for the time being was about as close to a home run as you could get.

“Thank you, Robby,” you said, knowing that your mom was still processing through everything that was being thrown at her.

He nodded. “Of course.”

She finally handed the tablet back to him. “Do you know why this happened? I,” she looked back and forth between you and Robby, “I never had any kinda health problems. I take good care of myself, you know. And after…” she trailed off, neither you nor Robby able to meet her gaze as she shook her head, “I just, I’m careful, is all.”

“I’m sure you are,” Robby said, and he meant it. With other patients he couldn’t ever really be sure, but he knew Angela. He knew how meticulous she was even before your father had passed away, how she’d gone and doubled her efforts after. Those efforts were what stood between her and surgery, or more intensive medications that she definitely wouldn’t want to take. “But unfortunately it can still happen when people are careful.”

You waited for Robby to look at you. When he did, you nodded slightly in your mom’s direction, silently prompting him to say something more about the cause of it all. You could explain it all to her on the drive home but she wasn’t going to want to hear it from you.

 “The truth is, as people get older, they’re just naturally at a higher risk for stuff like this.”

Warmth and humor crept back into her features as she shot Robby a look. “You wouldn’t be callin’ me old, now would you, Doc?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I would never and will never say such a thing.”

“Hmph. Good.” She kept stoic for a moment before she laughed.

The fear had all but completely disappeared from the room. Answers. A plan for moving forward. All good things.

Robby stood up off the stool. “Let’s get the meds you need for here, and I’ll take care of your script.” He looked at you. “It should be ready to pick up by the time you finish the discharge paperwork and get out of here.”

You finally peeled yourself off the backrest of the chair. Your elbows hit your knees as you asked, “Which—”

“I’ll send it to the one right by your apartment,” Robby said, already knowing what you were about to ask.

There was exhaustion in your eyes but a softness, too, as you said, “Thank you.”

Samira poked her head into the room with the intention of getting Robby’s attention. What she hadn’t realized, unable to see from the angle that she’d approached at, was that the patient and family member he was talking to was you and your mom. She got Robby’s name out and nothing else when she realized what she had walked into. There was no hiding the surprise on her face, or the confusion that followed.

“We need you in South 20 when…when you’ve got a second.”

He nodded, the twist in his gut on the inside not showing in his expression on the outside. “I have a second.” He turned back to the two of you, more specifically your mom. “I have to go, but I’ll put your prescription in, and someone will be here soon for the—”

“Am I gonna have to stay overnight, then? Because of whatever shot you’re gonna give me?”

You managed not to let your groan escape. She probably wouldn’t have to stay overnight, but you knew they liked to keep patients for a couple hours at least to make sure they weren’t any adverse reactions to the medications they were getting. You’d let Robby break that news to her.

He looked over at you, sympathy in his eyes before he diverted back to your mom. “Not overnight, no. We typically have people stay for a few hours so we can monitor them,” he saw the shift in your mother’s face and tried to get the rest of his sentence out before he got interrupted, “but since you’re leaving here with a doctor, I can see if they’ll cut you loose a little early.”

You both let out sighs of relief, but your mom spoke up first. “Thank you, Michael.”

He nodded as he reached for the door. “Of course.”

He wasn’t even out the room yet and your mom had turned her attention back to you, a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue. Robby lingered for a moment, seeing the relief battling it out with the exhaustion on your face. He didn’t know you were keeping track of him out of the corner of your eye, and he didn’t know that you let out a small sigh of relief when the door shut behind him after he left.