Chapter Text
July in Pittsburgh was a different kind of monster than the winter. The humidity didn't just sit on the city; it pressed into it, a wet, heavy woolen blanket that turned the air into soup. In the cramped, third-floor studio Frank Langdon called home, the heat was a physical weight. The single window was cracked open, but there was no breeze, only the distant, mocking hum of traffic and the smell of hot asphalt.
Frank lay on his mattress, which was now less of a bed and more of a raft in a sea of agony. He hadn't moved since he’d collapsed the night before. His body was locked in a state of rigid, shivering paralysis. Every time he tried to even twitch a finger, the nerves at the base of his spine—the L4-L5 junction that had finally given way—sent a scream of white-hot electricity through his entire frame.
His left leg was a dead weight, a cold, numb limb that didn't feel like it belonged to him anymore. But the rest of him was on fire. He was drenched in sweat, his scrubs from the day before sticking to his skin like a second, filthier layer of shame.
06:45 AM.
His phone sat six inches from his hand on the floor. It had taken him nearly an hour to move his arm that far. His breath was coming in shallow, ragged hitches; anything deeper risked a muscle spasm that he was certain would snap his spine like a dry twig.
He needed to call the Pitt. He was supposed to be at the Triage desk in fifteen minutes. If he didn't show, Robby would think he was using. He would think Frank had finally folded under the pressure.
With a groan that sounded more like a wounded animal, Frank hooked his thumb onto the edge of the phone and dragged it toward him. His vision was swimming, dark spots dancing in the corners of his eyes from the low blood sugar. He hadn't eaten in nearly thirty hours.
He found Robby’s name in his contacts. Robby. Not Sir. He didn't have the right to use that title, not even in his own head.
He pressed 'call' and held the phone to his ear with a trembling hand.
Ring... ring...
The line clicked. Call Declined.
The sound of the disconnection was louder than a gunshot in the quiet room. Frank stared at the screen, a single, hot tear tracking through the salt and grime on his cheek. Robby had seen his name and pushed the button to silence him.
It was the final confirmation. He wasn't just in exile; he was deleted.
The subdrop, which had been a slow-motion descent for days, finally bottomed out into a terrifying, hollow abyss. Frank felt light, as if his soul were finally detaching from the broken machinery of his body. He didn't want to be a doctor. He didn't want to be a pup. He just wanted the noise to stop.
But the doctor in him—the part of him that was still the star resident of the Pitt who could handle non-stop trauma for 12 hours straight—knew he was in trouble. The numbness was climbing. If the inflammation didn't go down, the damage to the nerve would be permanent.
He couldn't call Robby again. He couldn't call Dana; she was on shift, and Robby would just see him bothering her.
He scrolled through his contacts, his thumb feeling like it weighed fifty pounds. He stopped at a name he hadn't called in months.
Jack Abbot.
Jack was off-shift. Jack was a Dom who saw things others didn't. Jack was the only one who might not look at Frank with pure disgust.
Frank pressed the button.
The Hub - 07:15 AM
The morning light in the Pitt was clinical and unforgiving, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the humid air. Robby stood at the central Hub, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed on the empty chair behind the Triage desk.
"Where is Langdon, Dana?" Robby asked, his voice low and vibrating with a dangerous, controlled heat.
The charge nurse didn't look up from her monitor. "He hasn't checked in, Robby. I’ve called his cell twice. It goes straight to voicemail."
"Of course it does," Robby snapped. He felt the familiar, jagged edge of betrayal cutting into his ribs. He’d seen Frank’s call at 6:46 AM. He’d looked at the name on his screen and felt a surge of such intense anger that he’d declined it without a second thought. I am not doing this today, he’d told himself. I am not listening to his excuses or his 'I'm sorrys' while I’m trying to prep for a trauma shift.
"Maybe he's sick, Robby," Dana said, finally looking at him. "He looked like hell yesterday. I told you—"
"He looked like he was looking for a way out of the work," Robby interrupted, cutting through the Hub’s chatter. "Mel! You’re on Triage until Langdon decides to grace us with his presence. If he shows up, tell him he’s to wait for me. Do not let him start a chart."
Mel nodded, looking a little uncomfortable at the order. Even the interns could feel the tectonic plates shifting between the Chief Attending and his former golden boy.
Robby turned his back on the desk, his jaw set. He was doing this for Frank’s own good, he told himself. He was providing discipline. He was showing Frank that his actions had consequences.
He didn't realize he was actually just building a coffin.
The Studio - 07:45 AM
Jack Abbot didn't knock. He knew the state Frank had been in when he’d called—the slurred, breathless "Jack... please..." followed by the sound of the phone hitting the floor.
He used the spare key Frank told him about, hiding under the doormat. The moment the door swung open, the smell hit him—the stagnant heat of a July morning and the unmistakable, sour scent of a body in high-stress shock.
"Frank?" Jack called out, his voice steady but layered with the authority of a Dom who had just entered a crisis zone.
He found Frank on the mattress. The sight made Jack’s stomach turn.
Frank was curled into a tight ball, his face a ghastly shade of gray-white. He was shivering violently despite the eighty-degree heat in the room. His eyes were open but unfocused, the pupils blown wide.
"Don't... don't touch me," Frank rasped, a fresh wave of tremors wracking his frame. "I don’t deserve it."
Jack dropped to his knees beside the mattress. He didn't listen to the words; he listened to the physiology. He pressed two fingers to Frank’s carotid. The pulse was thready and fast—tachycardic. He felt Frank’s forehead; it was clammy, despite the sweat.
"Talk to me, Frank. Where does it hurt?"
"Back," Frank whimpered, his voice breaking. "L4... L5. I heard it pop yesterday. Sir... Robby told me to stay at the desk. I tried. I really tried to stay in the chair."
Jack’s jaw tightened. He knew about the exile to Triage. He’d seen Robby acting weird over the last few days whenever someone mentioned Frank’s name during shift changes. But seeing the result—seeing a man of Frank’s talent and heart reduced to a shivering heap on a floor-mattress because he was too afraid to ask for help—made Jack’s blood run cold.
"I need to move you, Frank. I need to see the inflammation."
"No! Please," Frank gasped, his hand clutching Jack’s forearm with a strength born of pure terror. "If you call an ambulance... he’ll think I’m relapsing. He’ll think I’m looking for the meds. Don't tell him, Jack. Please don't tell him."
"Frank, look at me," Jack commanded, his voice dropping into a low, resonant frequency that cut through Frank’s panic. "Look at me."
Frank’s eyes flickered, eventually locking onto Jack’s.
"You are a doctor," Jack said firmly. "And you are in neurological distress. I am not calling as your friend. I am calling as an attending who is looking at a patient with a potential spinal cord emergency. Do you understand?"
Frank’s eyes filled with tears, and he let out a broken, sobbing breath. "He’s going to hate me. He’s finally going to hate me for real."
"Let him try," Jack muttered.
He pulled out his phone. He didn't call a private transport. He called 911. Frank was six-foot-one and paralyzed by pain; Jack couldn't carry him down three flights of stairs without risking further injury to Frank or to himself.
"This is Dr. Jack Abbot. I have a thirty-year-old male, acute spinal trauma, suspected L4-L5 herniation with neurological deficit. He’s hypotensive and showing signs of severe subdrop-related shock. I need a rig at 12th and Penn. Level one transport to PTMC."
He hung up and looked at Frank. He reached out and, for the first time since Frank’s been back, placed a firm hand on Frank’s shoulder. It wasn't the nape touch Frank wanted, but it was a status check—a confirmation that someone was finally watching over him.
"I’m staying with you, Frank. You aren't going in there alone."
The Hub - 09:15 AM
The Pitt was a beehive of activity. A multi-vehicle accident on the Parkway had filled the trauma bays, and Robby was in his element, directing traffic with surgical precision. He had pushed Frank Langdon to the very back of his mind, buried under a pile of lab results and triage charts.
He was standing at the Hub, discussing a patient’s CT with Santos, when the red landline phone on the desk began to ring.
The red phone has a direct line to the EMS dispatch. It was the “all hands on deck” phone, reserved for incoming traumas that required immediate, high-level attention or involved hospital staff.
Dana picked it up on the second ring.
Robby didn't pay attention at first. He was pointing out a shadowed area on the scan to Santos. "See this? If we don't decompress this—"
He stopped.
The silence coming from Dana’s side of the desk was absolute.
Robby turned his head. Dana was still holding the receiver to her ear, but her face had gone the color of ash. Her hand, the one not holding the phone, was pressed hard against her mouth. Her eyes—usually so sharp and full of fire—were wide and shimmering with unshed tears.
She looked at Robby. Not with anger, not with professional distance, but with a raw, jagged grief that made Robby’s heart stop in his chest.
"Dana?" Robby asked, his voice suddenly sounding very far away. "What is it?"
Dana didn't answer him. She spoke into the phone, her voice trembling. "Understood. We’re clearing Trauma 2. I’ll alert surgery to come down right away. Bring him in."
She hung up the phone. The sound of the plastic hitting the cradle echoed like a gavel.
"Dana, talk to me," Robby said, stepping toward her. Voice already trembling with fear.
"It’s Frank," Dana whispered.
The name hit Robby like a physical blow. He felt the air leave his lungs. "What? Did he... is it an OD? Is he—"
"No," Dana said, and the coldness in her voice was sharper than any scalpel. "It’s not an OD. It’s his back. Jack is with him. He found him in his apartment. He can't move, Robby. He’s been down for over twelve hours. Jack says he’s in a severe subdrop shock."
The Hub seemed to tilt. Robby looked at his phone, which was sitting on the desk. He thought of the call at 6:46 AM. The call he’d declined.
Frank had been calling for help. He had been paralyzed, alone, and in agony, and Robby had pushed a button to silence his pup when he needed him the most, because he was too busy protecting his own pride.
"He called me," Robby whispered, the realization shattering his defensive wall into a million jagged pieces. "This morning. I... I didn't answer."
"He’s three minutes out," Dana said, already moving toward the ambulance bay doors. "Jack said his vitals are crashing. He’s been starving himself, Robby. He hasn't been eating. He was trying to work through the pain because he was afraid of what you’d think."
Robby didn't move. He couldn't. He looked at his hands—the hands of a Dom, Frank’s Dom, who was supposed to provide grounding, the hands of an attending who was supposed to notice the gray tint of their best resident’s skin.
Dumping the scan to Santos immediately, he sprinted for the ambulance bay, his heart screaming Frank’s name with every beat. He pushed through the double doors just as the sirens wailed into the driveway.
The lights were blinding, reflecting off the humid July asphalt. The back doors of the ambulance swung open, and Robby saw Jack first, his face a mask of grim fury as he helped the paramedics slide the gurney out.
And then he saw Frank.
Frank was strapped to a backboard, his head immobilized. He looked half-dead. His eyes were closed, his skin a translucent, sickly yellow-gray. He was hooked up to a cardiac monitor, the beep... beep... beep... sounding frantic in the heavy air.
"Frank!" Robby gasped, reaching for the gurney.
Jack Abbot’s hand shot out, slamming into Robby’s chest, pinning the day shift attending against the brick wall of the ambulance bay.
"Don't you touch him," Jack growled, his eyes burning with a righteous, Dom-level rage. "You’ve done enough, brother. You let him starve. You let him break. You stay the hell away from him until I say otherwise."
"He’s mine, Jack!" Robby shouted, trying to push past.
"He was yours!" Jack countered, his voice booming. "But you treated him like a stray. And now he’s a patient. And as a doctor, I’m telling you: you are too compromised to be working this. Stand down, or I’ll have Ahmad remove you."
Robby froze. He looked over Jack’s shoulder at the gurney as it disappeared into the trauma bay. He saw Frank’s hand—thin, pale, and trembling—hanging off the edge of the gurney.
He had declined the call.
He had let his pup fall into the abyss.
Robby sank onto his haunches against the cold brick wall, his head in his hands, as the humid July morning swallowed the sound of his first, jagged sob.