Chapter Text
Evan barely listened to what Noel was saying, or at least he tried not to. It was hard, though, since the fourth floor hallway was so empty and quiet that every word Noel said seemed to bounce gently off the walls and drift right back into his ears. Worse, Evan agreed with more than half of it.
“—you know what I mean?” He asked, one hand on his hip, the other dramatically clutching his tablet to his chest. “If she hates my smoothie that much, then fine. Throw it in my face. I can respect honesty. But do not insult me by pouring it into a vase like it’s industrial runoff.”
Evan kept his eyes on the chart in his hands, though he had already read the same line three times.
“Even blind people could tell the water is green because of the rich nutrition and investment I put into it, not whatever stupidity she made up.”
He exhaled through his nose, finally, looking straight at the dietitian. “I still don’t understand why you pour your heart into the smoothies so much,” he said. “Just do it like Vale. Toast, broth, fruit cup. That’s it.”
Noel looked at him with deep offense. “Because some of us have standards.”
“Some of us have patients who’d rather drink something that doesn’t look like lawn clippings dissolved in regret.”
“It was an experimental week.”
“You’re acting like she stabbed you,” Evan muttered, looking at Noel’s little messy hair as if he had been running around the hospital arguing with kitchens and blenders since dawn.
“She did stab me, at least, spiritually.” Noel leaned closer, dropping his voice as though sharing state secrets. “Do you know what it feels like to discover your carefully balanced kiwi spinach recovery blend being used as floral support?”
The truth was, none of his patients had ever poured a smoothie into a vase before, or at least not with his smoothie, but that was not the point. The point was that he did understand, very deeply, the specific kind of irritation that came from people being difficult on purpose. He understood it every shift. He understood it every time someone refused the thing meant to help them and then acted insulted that help had been offered at all. Still, unlike certain dietitians roaming the fourth floor, he had more than one green drink problem in his hands.
“So now you know she hates it,” he said, keeping his voice flat. “Do your job and find something else for her.”
“Find something else?” Noel repeated with instant offense. “Who is she, an empress? Do I look like I have that much free time to—”
Whatever Noel had been about to say next got cut off by the soft ding of the elevator. Then came the sound.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Evan went still. He did not need to look up to know what it was. The sound was familiar by now, stitched neatly into the rhythm of Mondays and Wednesdays, always around the same time, those funny little taps would start making their way down the hallway like a tiny marching beat.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Noel turned his head toward the elevators and muttered, “Speaking of emperors.”
Evan lowered the chart in his hand as a man in a thin coat, carrying a bag far too large for one person, stepped out of the elevator.
Noel squinted down the hallway. “My Arceus, it’s still summer. Why is he wearing a coat already?”
Evan kept his eyes on the man for a second longer. Bennett, the DPT, he had never really spoken to beyond the practical scraps required by work. Something like a sentence here or two there, something about room numbers, readiness, schedules, nothing that counted as knowing someone.
“It’s almost autumn,” Evan said.
Noel raised an eyebrow. “But still, a coat?”
“He might be cold.” He gave a small shrug. “He lives with a Piplup anyway.”
That made Noel pause, then looked back toward Bennett, who was walking down the corridor with his usual quiet, slightly distracted focus, and at Piplup waddling faithfully beside him like a tiny blue shadow.
Noel folded his arms. “You know, when you say it like that, it sounds almost make sense.”
Evan glanced at him. “It does.”
“No, it doesn’t. I said almost.”
“Yes, it does. If a man chooses to spend this much time with a penguin Pokémon, he probably runs cold.”
Piplup chirped sharply from halfway down the hall, as though it had sensed itself being discussed.
Noel let out a laugh. “That thing heard you.”
“It definitely didn’t.”
“It definitely did.”
Bennett was close enough now that Evan could make out the details better. The coat really was too much for the weather. It was not heavy enough to be ridiculous, but enough to stand out when everyone else was still in lighter clothes. It hung neatly over Bennett’s frame, buttoned only halfway, with the strap of his oversized bag cutting across it. He looked put together in the way some people did when they were trying not to look tired and almost succeeding. Piplup, on the other hand, looked completely convinced the hallway belonged to it.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
It walked with its chest puffed out and its head slightly tilted upward, a tiny emperor making rounds through its kingdom. And then, for one magnificent second, the tiny emperor’s feet caught on absolutely nothing but air.
Piplup pitched forward and went face first onto the floor. Evan and Noel flinched at the exact same time. The sound was just a soft little flop against polished tile, but in the quiet hallway it landed with the weight of a public disaster. Noel’s mouth twitched violently. He was trying, truly trying, not to laugh, but the effort was visible in the way his lips pressed together and his shoulders gave one dangerous shake. Evan only raised an eyebrow, more curious than anything else now to see what Bennett would do.
The therapist stopped short so quickly. Without a word, he crouched and scooped Piplup off the floor in one smooth motion, as if this sort of thing happened often enough that he had long ago developed a technique for it.
Piplup made an immediate, deeply offended sound that was so sharp and indignant that Noel nearly lost the battle right there. Evan smacked the back of his arm before the laugh could properly escape him. Noel coughed into his fist, badly disguising the sound.
But it was too late. Bennett’s head already turned.
Bennett was still too far away to hear anything clearly, but there was no way he had missed the shape of the laughter. He looked toward them just briefly, and even from the nurse station Evan could tell he had felt it. For one second Evan thought he imagined it, but no, there was a faint flush climbing across Bennett’s face against the calm set of his features. He looked so… embarrassed from being caught in that unfortunate moment where dignity had slipped on the floor right along with his Pokémon.
Bennett lowered Piplup carefully back onto the ground. But he did not just set him down. He actually took a second to make sure the little penguin was standing properly, one steady hand at its side, as neat and matter of fact as if he were settling a patient before stepping back. Then Bennett stood, adjusted the front of his coat, and gave the Pokémon a smile nod that seemed to say something like let’s all pretend this never happened.
Unfortunately, Piplup, did not help. The second its feet were back under its body, it started to march off in almost entirely the wrong direction. Noel folded in on himself with silent laughter so hard his shoulders shook. Evan hit his arm again, and this time was sharper.
“Stop,” he muttered under his breath.
“I’m trying,” Noel whispered, which wasn’t hard to tell that it was a lie.
Ahead of them, Bennett closed his eyes for the briefest possible moment, then he bent slightly and touched two fingers to the top of Piplup’s head just to give it a gentle redirection. The penguin stopped, turned the proper way, and gave an outraged little chirp.
Noel made a strangled sound into his fist. Evan was losing his own battle now. Not because Piplup had fallen. That part had only startled him. It was Bennett. Bennett, with that composed face and those careful hands, treating the whole disaster with such quiet seriousness that it somehow made the scene much worse.
Bennett glanced toward them one more time. This time his expression was flatter, more contained, but the pink still lingered at the edges of his ears. Then he straightened, shifted the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder, and continued down the hallway with Piplup beside him once again, though now the little emperor’s stride had a touch less majesty and a touch more mortification.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
For three whole steps, Piplup behaved before puffing its chest out again as if nothing had happened.
Noel finally let his head drop against the counter for half a second, shaking with suppressed laughter. “How does it always look offended by gravity?”
Evan shoved his head off with the corner of the chart. “You are twelve.”
Noel turned on him at once. “You laughed too.”
“I did not.”
“You did. That was a laugh.”
“That was air.”
“That was joy.” Noel leaned closer the counter again, lowering his voice even though the DPT was still far away. “Seriously,” he said, eyes fixed toward the elevators, “is he good?”
A moment of silence from Evan almost made Noel believe that the guy wasn’t that good, but the truth was Evan didn’t know the answer either. He never really discussed about him with any patients, but also never heard anyone or even their relatives complaining.
“If he wasn’t good,” he said at last, “he wouldn’t have worked here this long.”
Noel made a doubtful sound. “I mean,” he said, tilting his head, “that Pokémon does not help his case.”
Evan glanced at him. Noel had one elbow hooked on the outer ledge of the counter, body angled halfway into the station as if gossip alone gave him clearance to enter restricted staff space.
“I’m serious.” Noel pointed vaguely down the hall. Evan’s eyes widened for a split second and hurriedly pushed it down before Bennett or his Pokémon saw it. “If you had just operated on your knee, would you let a PT with a penguin take care of you?”
Evan looked back toward Bennett and the absurbly unstable Piplup with its tiny feet.
“That thing can’t even walk straight,” Noel went on. “How is anyone supposed to trust their bodies with that thing involved?”
“That thing is not the point,” Evan said.
Noel turned to him immediately. “Of course that thing is the point. If he can’t even train that thing, how’s he going to train your knee?”
Evan let out a slow breath through his nose. “The Pokémon is not doing the therapy.”
“It is representing the therapy.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything.”
Evan inhaled sharply and chose not to answer that. Meanwhile down the hall, Bennett slowed for a second. Maybe to check the patient list in his hand or maybe because Piplup had drifted too far ahead again. Evan could not tell from here. He only saw Bennett stop, and Piplup, after two more proud little steps, realize it had been left behind by its own human for once. The little Pokémon turned in a quick wobble.
Noel saw it too and made a soft, delighted noise. “Look at it.”
Piplup hurried back with short, urgent steps, before it reached Bennett again.
Slap, slap, slap!
Evan had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek, trapping the laugh before it could escape. The tiny, quick patter of steps skittered across the floor and nearly clipped straight into its trainer’s legs. For a few seconds neither of them spoke. They just watched the Pokémon shuffling its feet like it was their new hobby before someone pressed an emergency button. Noel folded his arms on the counter ledge and lowered his chin onto them, still staring. “I still think it’s strange.”
“What?”
“The coat. The bag. The penguin. The whole picture.” He tilted his head, eyes still locked down the hall like he was studying a particularly confusing painting. “He looks like he belongs in three different jobs at once.”
Talking with Noel was one thing. Keeping up with what Noel was actually talking about was another entirely. Evan blinked a little too fast, trying to sort out whether the dietitian was critiquing the penguin, the human, or the concept of both combined. “There’s nothing wrong with the bag,” he said, defaulting to the safest target. “They always have huge bags.”
“No, they do not always have huge bags,” Noel said at once. “Harveys never carries anything bigger than a notebook.”
“Harveys is a lazy ass. He still borrows my pens every time he comes here.” Evan blindly felt the pocket on his shirt just to make sure that there were still pens there, mumbling, “and never gives them back.”
Noel huffed a laugh. Evan looked back down the hall. The bag really was too big. It was even bigger up close than it had looked the first few times he’d noticed it. The strap cut diagonally across Bennett’s chest and sat hard against one shoulder, enough that even from here Evan could see the line of weight in the way the coat pulled slightly under it.
“Maybe he had something for the Piplup inside.” He shrugged.
“Or another Piplup.” Noel snorted
Evan did not laugh, but the image appeared anyway, a second one unzipping itself out of the bag like a backup assistant. It might be smaller somehow, but angrier if that was even possible.
“That would explain the weight,” Noel added.
“It could be equipment,” Evan said.
The therapist was close enough now that the details of his bag had sharpened. The side pocket hung slightly unzipped. A corner of something soft was tucked inside, maybe a towel, maybe a folded cloth. A metal water bottle was clipped near the back. The whole thing looked too full for half a day on one floor. And then Evan noticed the keychain. It was attached to the main zipper, small and bright against the black fabric, swinging back and forth with the rhythm of Bennett’s walk. Just a round blue thing at first. Then it turned, showing a Piplup head.
Evan’s lips twitched.
Of course, the man with the Piplup had a Piplup keychain hanging from his giant mystery bag.
Noel saw the shift in his face immediately and started to turn toward him, already ready to ruin it, but fortunately for Evan, Bennett had reached the nurse station at last.
“Morning,” Evan said.
Bennett looked up. His eyes widened just slightly. The reaction was so quick most people would have missed it, as if he had not expected to be greeted first or maybe had not expected Evan to be the one doing it. And then, just as quickly, came the tiny pause too short to be rude, but too long enough that Evan knew exactly what it was.
The name.
It was always the name.
Bennett came up here every week. He spoke to Evan every week. Even though their conversation was never more than a few practical words at a time, but often enough that by now he absolutely should have remembered his name. But the damn DPT with a funny Pokémon seemed to have a Hippocampus of a Magikarp. Or if he didn’t, he never trusted himself enough to say it. And for some reason, that was one of Evan’s favorite things about him.
Right on cue, Bennett’s eyes dropped to Evan’s chest, searching for the ID badge clipped to the pocket of his scrubs. That always happened too. There was always that brief glance, the polite attempt mixed with quiet panic and hidden behind a neutral expression. But from Evan’s understanding, Bennett was a creature of habit, so his effort had never succeeded.
And because Evan was, on rare and private occasions, a bad person, he shifted just slightly behind the counter and turned enough that the badge disappeared from Bennett’s angle. The poor therapist furrowed his brow almost immediately, giving the look of a man who knew the answer existed somewhere in front of him and had just watched it get covered by fate.
For one whole second, Bennett seemed to consider whether he could recover this. Whether he could somehow ask without asking, glance without obviously glancing, salvage whatever professionalism remained. Then, as always, he gave up eventually. A faint trace of embarrassment flickered across his face, so quick it was almost nothing, and he said, a second too late, “Morning.”
Evan kept his face perfectly straight, though his heart leaped with small satisfaction.
The paper in Bennett’s hand trembled just slightly when he looked down at it. Without looking back up at Evan, he said, “I’m here for room 412. And 418 later.”
Evan glanced at the paper, then at Bennett. The man seemed too shy for his profession. Sometimes Evan wondered if he was like this with patients too, but probably not. As far as he knew, Bennet owned his own clinic and he had worked here long enough that people clearly trusted him. If the man were really this awkward all the time, he would not have lasted. Not in a hospital, and not in rehab, where half the job was getting people to listen to you when they wanted to do absolutely anything else.
Either way, Evan still could not work out why Bennett always seemed so… embarrassed at the nurse station.
He frowned faintly. No, that was wrong. Bennett did not act like this here. He acted like this with him. Did Evan look uptight? Maybe. Unfriendly? Maybe that too. But no one had ever really said that before. At least not like it was a problem. And besides, he had heard Bennett laugh with Nurse Claudia once. He had seen him smile at Nurse Kim too, which on its own was almost a medical event. So to say was, this guy was not incapable of warmth. He just never seemed to use any of it on Evan. And the stupid thing was that Evan felt irritated by the fact.
He reached for the clipboard. “Both of them are ready. I can check 418 again when you’re finished with 412.”
Bennett nodded slowly. “Alright.”
Because of the height of the counter, Piplup had already disappeared from Evan’s view. For a second there was only Bennett standing there with his paper, his too big bag, and that careful, slightly guarded expression he always seemed to wear. Then Evan saw a small blue shape extremely slowly rise from the other side of the counter. The top of a round head appeared first… then two dark eyes… then a flipper reached up toward the bowl of wrapped candies sitting near the edge of the desk.
Evan looked down at it. Piplup looked up at the candy bowl with complete concentration like this was a serious mission. Without really thinking about it, and with all the well meaning ignorance of someone who knew almost nothing about Pokémon beyond the obvious, Evan slid the bowl a little closer. Noel made a noise under his breath at the exact same moment Bennett moved.
Fingers came down gently but immediately to the top of Piplup’s head and pressed it back below the edge of the counter.
“Down,” Bennett murmured.
The blue head vanished. There was a brief, offended chirp from somewhere below desk level.
Noel lost his balance for half a second, laughing into his own shoulder. “That was the fastest correction I’ve seen all week.”
Evan’s hand stayed on the candy bowl. He looked at Bennett. “Why?”
“It can’t have those.” Somehow Bennet looked apologetic about it as if he were the one who should be embarrassed that his Pokémon had just attempted petty crime at the nurse station.
Evan looked down at the bowl, then back at the trainer. “Right.”
From below the counter came another soft insistent tap. Piplup’s flipper appeared again, this time patting blindly against the counter like a tiny burglar reconsidering his options.
Bennett closed his eyes for a second. “No.”
The flipper disappeared.
Two seconds later, the top of Piplup’s head began to rise again from the edge of the counter, slower this time more carefully like it was testing its fate. The nurse and the dietitian watched it happen.
Before the little Pokémon could get high enough to see the bowl again, Bennett reached over without looking and set his hand lightly on top of its head. Piplup froze where it was, half visible now, little beak just peeking above the counter edge.
“Down,” Bennett repeated.
Piplup gave a tiny, deeply aggrieved warble. Evan bit the inside of his cheek.
Noel did not even pretend anymore. “I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “That thing is unbelievable.”
“It just likes shiny wrappers.” Bennett pushed the bowl slightly farther out of its reach.
Piplup still managed to inch itself up despite the fingers resting on its head, just enough for its eyes to clear the edge of the counter again. It looked straight at the bowl of candy, then at Evan, then back at the bowl.
“You can’t have it.” Evan stared back at it.
Piplup chirped once in protest.
Noel clutched the ledge dramatically. “But it asked so politely.”
“It did not ask anything.”
“It absolutely did.”
Bennett’s mouth twitched. “It knows better.”
Evan looked down at the stubborn blue head pinned gently below legal candy level and, before he could stop himself, said, “Seems like it doesn’t.”
The color in Bennett’s face changed all at once as his eyes snapped up to Evan. Red climbed fast across his cheeks, up to his ears, so sudden that Evan understood his own mistake only after it had already landed too far.
He had let his mouth move ahead of his brain and, in one dry little sentence, managed to imply two things at once that Bennett could not control his own Pokémon, and worse, that he did not even know him that well.
For half a second Bennett looked both offended and mortified, which was somehow worse than if he had just been angry. Then, because apparently the man would rather die than stop being polite at the nurse station, he turned his face slightly away and murmured, “My bad.”
The words landed wrong in Evan’s chest. He cleared his throat. “I mean—”
But Bennett had already drawn himself back into that careful, distant shape of professionalism he always used when he wanted out of a conversation without making it obvious. “I’ll let you know when 412 is finished,” he said quietly. Then he gave Piplup a small nod that did not quite count, and turned away from the station.
Noel smacked Evan hard on the upper arm the second Bennett started walking.
“Man,” he hissed, “what the hell?”
Evan exhaled slowly through his nose. “Shut up.”
“No, seriously. What was that?”
His mouth had moved faster than his head, and now Bennett was walking away with his face still red, shoulders slightly too straight, like he had tucked himself behind his own shell and closed the door behind him. Maybe this was exactly why he never smiled at Evan, or why every conversation between them died as quickly as possible and left behind nothing but schedules and room numbers. Maybe Bennett had judged him right from the beginning.
“You insulted his parenting.” Noel stared at Evan like he had personally ruined public morale on the fourth floor.
Evan did not bother correcting him anymore because maybe Noel was right.
His eyes stayed on the hallway. Then, suddenly, Bennett caught his foot on absolutely nothing in the kind that happened when someone’s mind was somewhere else and their body paid for it. He caught himself almost immediately, one shoulder jerking, one foot stepping out too fast, the bag swinging at his side. Piplup stopped and looked up at him.
Very slowly, with the doomed instinct of a man who already knew the answer but still had to suffer it, he turned back toward the station to see whether anyone had noticed. Unfortunately for him, Evan was still staring. And somehow Bennett’s face, already pink from before, managed to go redder.
For one strange second neither of them looked away. Evan knew he should have dropped his gaze to the chart, pretended to be busy, offered the man at least the dignity of being unseen, but he didn’t. He just stood there behind the counter, caught by the sight of Bennett caught in return. The embarrassment on his face was so plain now, so helplessly human, that the guilt in Evan’s chest twisted into something softer and warmer and infinitely more dangerous.
Then Piplup lifted one little flipper and smacked it lightly against Bennett’s leg. The man blinked, broke eye contact at last, and started forward again with whatever remained of his dignity gathered in both hands.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
This time he did not look back again. Evan just watched the therapist in a coat in summer, with a bag too big for one person and a small blue assistant marching beside him down the quiet hallway.
The floor settled again. Evan lowered his eyes to the clipboard, then, without quite meaning to, his lips curved into a small smile like something had just begun in his heart.
🐧🐧🐧