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Robby is no stranger to bad shifts, or quiet ones suddenly turning for the worse. In fact, he can almost confidently say he was used to those being the norm in the ED. Awful days that sweep between the normal ones, making him feel like getting up from bed in the morning was pointless, a waste of effort for another dreadful day where he will make another mistake, where someone else might die by his hands. However, they’re an unavoidable fact of working this job, one in which the loses will stick around for far longer than the ones they save, and Robby will be the one carrying the weight after the day is over.
Lately, or maybe for a long time already, it feels like the years don’t pass at all, no matter the distance he might try to put between each shift and the next one, a distance that gets blurrier and thinner each passing day. Robby still remembers vividly the mess that was Pittfest even months later, the only thing that could make Adamson’s death anniversary more devastating, and that’s just one of the many others horrific days that had come before and after that one. The worse ones will always be from the pandemic, a nightmare of its own, one from which Robby could never wake up, long and exhausting shifts filled with nothing but the sounds of the respirators and beeping machines that still haunted him when he managed to scrap a few hours of restless sleep back home, TV always on in a vain attempt to drown the noise in his head.
But Robby is used to those, even if he was never ready for them and never dealt with them in the best way, a struggle that gets worse as time goes on—a memory resurfaces then, always in the back of his mind recently, of cartoon animals in the walls looking at him with pity in their painted eyes, a soft yet firm voice accompanied by a deceptively strong hand around his, gloved fingers brushing against his bare skin.
Maybe not every shift is dealt with accordingly, maybe he goes home carrying more regrets than just those from the lives he couldn’t save, but Robby knows how to hold the pieces of himself together and come back again every day. He just can’t forget about this one day in particular, for more reasons than one, and he refuses to acknowledge how many times he has thought about this exact moment in the past month, and the aftermath of it, quiet scripture and his own words thrown back at him.
Today is different from any of those days. For instance, he isn’t carrying the guilt of another patient dying in front of him when he could’ve done more to save them, nor does he have that hollow numbness in his chest after he has to tell a family their loved one didn’t make it. In fact, it has been a somewhat uneventful day in the ER so far.
Robby hates days like this, quiet and strangely calm, like right before a storm starts. This tranquility just gives him enough time between each patient to dwell deep into his thoughts, which often tend to be a dark spiral about work and what had gone wrong during the last trauma that didn’t manage to make it to the OR, the patient with something they didn't catch in time. However, nowadays those still moments are filled with something else, always drifting towards a particular topic, a certain person Robby can’t get out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried—though, admittedly, he might not be trying as hard as he should.
Just as if the universe itself enjoyed taunting him, Robby hears Whitaker laughing not far away, the sound carried away through the constant beeping and noise of the ER. He’s talking with Santos, as both of them take advantage of the slowness of the day to catch up with their charting. It’s nothing loud, nothing noteworthy, but Robby’s ears catch it effortlessly, so attuned to the younger man that he would pick up that sound over anything else.
And that’s exactly the problem here, the issue that keeps him awake more nights than not. Robby is the chief attending physician here, every doctor works under his direct supervision, each case something he should be paying attention to; residents come to him with questions and he needs to be on top of his game for whenever a trauma gets rolled in by the paramedics. He can’t be wasting his time looking around the room, searching for that familiar head of dark blonde curls and those big blue eyes that follow Robby around the hospital like he’s more important than he actually is.
It all changed during that day back in September, after that brief moment of silent reflection, as Whitaker himself put it. Maybe it was his mental state at the time, or perhaps it was something else that had been building up every hour of that catastrophic day, but Robby felt the shift between them right there, as he stared at Whitaker looming over him through teary eyelashes. However, if he was being truthful to himself—something he rarely was nowadays, when hiding from his own feelings was easier than facing them—Robby could admit that this unexpected and strong fixation with the med student had started the moment they met.
Robby had been so obvious and relentless with his hovering, with his hands always over the younger man’s body, that even Dana had to call him out the following days, and Robby didn’t have any excuse ready as to why he was doing it, he just knew he could barely stop himself from reaching out, even after being made conscious about his actions.
Whitaker had looked unsure and a bit lost when he first got here, hesitant and confused as he was pushed around by the chaos that was the ER, like drowning without a life jacket to hold him above turbulent waters. Robby knows that feeling, both in his own guts and what he has seen over the years. Every so often a med student would arrive looking just like that, perhaps even worse, and yet Robby had never acted like he does with Whitaker around them. He always tries to be there, be the mentor he’s supposed to be, just like Adamson once was to him, but he mostly lets the students find their pace on their own, guided by the senior residents.
It was Whitaker finding him in pedes and keeping quiet afterwards that fueled his inappropriate fixation, but it was the time they spent together in the following days, working in cases and dealing with diagnosis every shift, that kept this fascination burning, until Robby was all but reduced to ashes for his perverse attraction towards his own subordinate.
He had never felt like this before. Sure, there was Collins a long time ago, but what they had started before she even worked under Robby, and even then, she wasn’t like Whitaker—barely out of med school and half his age, a fact that should sober Robby up, yet it does the opposite instead.
At the very least, Robby will be going on his sabbatical soon, and then he won’t be seeing Whitaker for a long time. Three months isn’t that much, in the eyes of someone who has lived over fifty years, but out of sight, out of mind. Or that’s what Robby keeps telling himself, trying to hold onto something to keep afloat, even if he hasn’t managed to keep the young doctor away from his thoughts ever since that first day; not even when Whitaker finished his rotation at the ER and went away from so long that Robby wondered if they would ever meet again.
During that period of time, Robby lingered around Santos—she’s a great doctor, Robby genuinely enjoys her sharp sense of humor, and they share a wound shaped around Langdon that pushed them closer, but it wasn’t only that. Perhaps Robby would’ve felt guiltier about it, if guilt wasn’t a stemple feeling in his chest already, hand in hand with his feelings towards Whitaker.
He tried to listen to glimpses about their shared living spaces, trying to picture how Whitaker acted outside of the hospital, how he might look in those situations his roommate complained about. It was never anything too personal, nothing that Robby would’ve paid attention to if it was about someone else, and definitely something he would’ve shut down quickly otherwise, telling his gossiping staff to focus on the patients. It was about an accident where Whitaker used someone else’s toothbrush, the details blurry, then about the one too many times where Whitaker ate something he shouldn’t. There was a particular instance where Santos arrived at work with bags under her eyes darker than usual, a result of their faucet breaking and Whitaker having to stay up at night fixing it, since their landlord refused to cooperate—the man ended up drenched in result, and Robby tried to see the pictures Santos was showing Princess, for no reason in particular, only to end up disappointed when Whitaker was barely in those, for no reason either.
They were never anything substantial, just the day to day of living with someone that Robby sometimes heard about in passing, and yet, it was everything that kept him going for months, when the shifts started to become longer and the nights back at home darker.
And when Whitaker finally came back as an intern, just like Robby expected him to do, just like Robby hoped he would, nothing really changed. Whitaker took to the ER like a fish to water, much like he did during his previous rotation at the place, and he kept following Robby around like a lost puppy. Everything was the same old, except for Whitaker.
Not that his personality changed, or not that much at least. He flourished, his confidence as a doctor grew yet he was never arrogant, still treating each case with that naïve optimism of his that made Robby felt both old and rejuvenated. What went through a small but evident change was his appearance—he looked healthier, his face tan and speckled with freckles after spending time under the sun, the muscles of his arms evident against the tightness of his scrubs, and his hair…
Robby wasn’t sure how the hairstyle was called; he had never been the most versed on in fashion or trends. He didn’t even know if it had a name, or if Santos had just sat Whitaker in front of the mirror one night and done it herself, it seemed like something she might do. The only thing he knew, and the only thing he cared about, is that the hair was driving him crazy—has been driving him crazy ever since Whitaker returned.
Throughout Whitaker’s rotation in the ER, Robby had a recurrent thought, one that he tried and failed to pay attention to, but Whitaker was undeniably cute. It wasn’t something he should be thinking about a med student, that much he was aware of, but he couldn’t stop himself from doing so either. Perhaps the idea was caused by those big wet eyes, the ones that always followed Robby around looking for his input, or those pink lips that curled up sweetly whenever Robby threw in some praise, or maybe it was something about his awkward haircut back then. Or, more likely, it was a bit of everything, a fatal mix concocted exclusively for Robby so he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands to himself around the boy.
This new hairstyle and his raising confidence made Whitaker look different—perhaps more mature, if Robby wanted to be one of those men who hide their perversion behind that flimsy excuse. In truth, it just made him attractive; not that he wasn’t before, but now it was harder to ignore, harder to pretend he wasn’t all Robby thought about when he had a moment for himself.
These days, Robby can’t stop thinking about how those golden curls bounce as Whitaker did CPR, how they stuck to his forehead after a long shift, the way they twisted upwards at his nape. And then, when he was alone at night, he would imagine how those same curls would feel around his fingers, how he could grab Dennis’ hair and twist his head back, the younger man following easily, just so Robby could trail kisses down his neck, leaving marks right where neither his scrubs nor his hair could cover them.
Just like everything else related to Whitaker, these thoughts were both expected and surprising, leaving Robby feeling warm all over and almost trembling, if only he were a weaker man. The only trembling that actually occurred were his own hands as he restrained himself from reaching towards the boy, from steering him around the ER like he did when Whitaker was still a student, or from praising him with a firm hand over his shoulders. Robby craved those casual touches, even if they were laced with something else, something heavy and hungry from his side, but he always tried to control himself. He kept his distance from Whitaker, as much as an attending and the new intern could in a place like this; he stopped dragging Whitaker to every interesting case with him, stopped overly praising him after every intervention and, most importantly, stopped touching him all the time.
He was being a good attending, a proper mentor, and yet it felt so wrong all the time. Robby knew why, even if he wasn’t willing to admit it to himself, or anyone else soon. He was used to dealing with worse, he could endure this, whatever this was. What was harder to handle was the way Whitaker looked at him these days, like Robby had kicked his puppy and told him he was going to lose his job because he wasn’t a good enough doctor, all at the same time. He still stared at Robby with those blue eyes that seemed to hold the sky in them, but when they met Robby’s gaze now, they were tinged with sadness, rather than with helpless devotion like they once were.
It would be hopeful wishing for Whitaker to not notice his actions. The boy was attentive, that was one of the things that made him so good at this job, and he always seemed to be extra observant to whatever involved Robby—eyes following him quietly around the ER whenever Robby felt himself slip for a moment, a silent inquiry that he never met head on. That was just another fact about the younger man that Robby shouldn’t think about so much, that he shouldn’t notice and allow it to fester in his heart like the sweetest poison.
“Robby, wake up,” Danna interrupts his walk through the memory lane, red phone in hand as she listens to whatever is being said on the other end of the line. “GSW victim, ETA 5 minutes.”
“Got it,” he stands up from his spot with a groan, his back cracking as he looks around the ER, trying to find who is available for the task. Of course, his eyes land on the pair that he had been paying special attention to all morning, to the man he can’t stop thinking about. “Santos, Whitaker, with me.”
The pair doesn’t even think before standing up to attention, following Robby to the ambulance bay while asking about the situation. As the paramedics arrive, listing the vitals and giving information about the patient, Whitaker and Santos take over quickly, experienced and confident already.
The patient is clearly agitated until he goes under, and the wounds look nasty, but it’s nothing they haven’t seen before, nothing they can’t save. Robby mostly stares, watching as his crew work together seemingly, and when things start to turn rougher, he intervenes.
In the end, they manage to make it through until the man is stabilized and ready for surgery.
“Well done, everyone,” Robby says as he watches the patient get rolled for the OR. He discards his gloves as he looks around the room, nurses and staff already moving everything out of the way, getting things ready for the next patient that will arrive sooner than later.
Despite acting colder towards Whitaker—or just more professionally, more like Robby does with the rest of the doctors working under him, they had naturally gravitated closer during the trauma. They have worked well together from the start, like a well-oiled machine; Whitaker always seemed to know what Robby needed before he even had to say it, and the younger man never failed to listen to what Robby said, following his orders with such an eager precision that it left the attending feeling dizzy.
And now Whitaker is looking at him away, those blue eyes that had never looked at Robby with pity or disdain, despite having seen him at his lowest. Whitaker is staring at Robby like he doesn’t know him, and that’s partly true, he doesn’t know what Robby thinks about when he looks at him, what he thinks about Whitaker when he’s all alone and the pile of reasons why Robby had to push him away. He looks at Robby with a nervous expression, like he has done something wrong but it’s unsure of what it is, and now he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Robby can’t tell Whitaker that the one who had done anything wrong is him, that Robby is always the one fucking things up, fucking up every good thing in his life, and he can’t allow himself to do that to Whitaker.
But Robby is weak in front of those eyes, weak for the man who has known him at his weakest moment and never strayed, so he decides it won’t be that bad to give in one last time before his sabbatical. It’s just a gentle pat on his shoulder, something Robby has done multiple times before—he’ll do it and then he’ll go back to feeling like a perverted old man for the rest of the shift, recalling how Whitaker’s hidden muscles would feel beneath his palm.
It all happens quickly and unexpectedly. One moment, Robby is extending his arm to place his hand on Whitaker’s shoulder, a casual gesture, something that could come from a mentor who does not harbor any kind of irresponsible feelings about his protegee. And then, a miscalculation on his part, a shift on Whitaker’s, caused by Santos moving around behind him.
Despite his growing confidence and an attitude that could put up with the chaos of the ER, sometimes it feels like Whitaker is still that nervous and gawky med student that he was during his first day. He stumbles, losing his balance for just a second, but everything added together is enough for Robby’s hand to end up in his head, instead of its original destination.
It’s a mistake, an easily laughable one, but not a single person in the room makes a sound, or maybe Robby doesn’t notice anything else beyond the hair beneath his hand, the one he has spent far too long fantasizing about. It’s even softer than he thought it would be, like clouds melting under his fingertips. Perhaps it’s the accumulated exhaustion after the entire shift, or maybe it’s the adrenaline after a successful intervention that hasn’t worn off yet—or even more realistically, he has just wished he could do this for a long, long time, and that’s the reason why Robby finds himself petting Whitaker’s curls.
He barely moves his hand, opting to use his fingers instead, slightly scratching Whitaker’s scalp at the same time he played with those soft and messy golden strands. Robby is suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to tug Whitaker’s hair, to twist his neck until he was staring at Robby, those blue eyes fixated on him and nothing else, and then—
“Dr. Robby?” Whitaker asks, voice uncertain and a tinge nervous, still not moving from this awkward position they both have found themselves in.
It’s only then that Robby becomes conscious of what he has been doing, of what he is currently still doing, and in a rush to hide what has been going on for longer than professionally acceptable, he plays with Whitaker’s hair. It’s nothing like the gentle touch he had been doing before, he moves his hand to the sides roughly, like aggressively petting a dog, messing with the younger man’s already messy hairstyle.
“Good job, Whitaker,” he says, voice low and rough and desperate with something he refuses to name, and that he hopes nobody else catches, before turning around to leave without seeing the younger doctor’s expression—or anyone else’s. “Finish up and go home.”
If Whitaker doesn’t leave soon, Robby will be the one to take on the offer, itching to be away from the sight of big blue eyes and blonde curls, and the memory of how those felt under his palm that will surely follow him back to his apartment. Perhaps he should quick start his sabbatical.
“What the fuck was that?” Santos’ muted voice comes from behind the glass walls, loud enough that Robby can still hear her and the evident bewilderment in her tone.
“I—I don’t know!” Comes Whitaker’s confused shriek right after, making Robby walk away even faster.
Robby doesn’t run, but it’s a close thing, until he ends up in his usual spot by the nurses’ hub, staring at the computer screen like he can hide between the black lines of text and mindless charting. He rubs one of his hands over his beard, the same one that was playing with Whitaker’s hair just a moment ago. The touch now isn’t soothing nor mind shattering, but Robby hopes that the rough texture of his facial hair will wash away the feeling of Whitaker’s soft strands.
“Really smooth back there, Robinavitch,” Dana says, giving him an unimpressed look from over her glasses as she leans against the desk. Robby isn’t exactly sure how she knows about what happened in Trauma 1, if she was even around to watch it, but he isn’t surprised either; as the charge nurse, she always finds out about everything that happens in the ER, it’s only a matter of time. “What are you playing at, Robby?”
“Not a word,” he groans, turning around in his chair to face the blank screen again, instead of facing Dana’s serious voice. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
Dana sighs through her nose, crossing her arms over her chest. “Ignoring it doesn’t mean it will go away, you know?”
Oh, he’s deeply intimate with that notion, but it doesn’t hurt to try either, just like he has been trying to ignore what he feels about Whitaker for months already. Robby is a man that has spent a great deal of his life running away from his feelings, secluding them until he was numb, and he has lived a long life doing so already (too long, if he has any say about it), so he knows it won’t be of any help in the long run. But the opposite course of action will be for the worse, if he’s allowed to break his restraints and ends up not hurting only himself, but also Whitaker.
“He really looks up to you,” Dana continues, her comments idly yet deep, and she doesn’t need to specify about who she’s talking about.
“I’m aware,” Robby grunts, his tone an obvious hint for the conversation to end.
But Dana has never been stopped by him throwing a fit, so she keeps talking. “And he has just started his career.”
“I’m aware,” he repeats, firmer this time. “Are you just going to tell me about the things I already know, or can I finish my job in peace?”
Dana glares at him with a raised eyebrow, silently staring at him before throwing her hands up in defeat. “Just be careful with what you’re doing.”
Robby runs a helpless hand over his beard one more time, sighing into his palm and closing his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids does nothing to quiet the constant hum around the ER, but it allows him a short respite from everything else. Not his thoughts, no—he can never escape them, and sometimes, he both desperately needs to and, at the same time, wants to drown in them, especially when they involve a certain intern.
His hand moves toward his hair, making it stick in a different direction, short strands tangled after a long day of doing this to decompress. Dana might be aware of Robby’s inappropriate feelings towards Whitaker, or part of them. She might be the reasonable adult here and figure out that Robby is somehow taking advantage of him; and he is, in some ways, putting far too much on his plates, so many responsibilities for a boy that has just gotten out of med school. And yet, at the same time, nothing he does is enough. Robby is constantly torn between wanting to push the younger man away, running from him and what he makes Robby feel, and wanting to keep Whitaker so close to him that their bodies and souls fuse together, until Whitaker needs him to breath just like Robby needs him to keep going.
He sighs, again, heavier this time around. Whitaker leaves the room not long after, with Santos following close behind, but Robby only has eyes for him, his messy hair that he hasn’t bothered fixing and flushed cheeks that Robby hopes weren’t caused by him. His sabbatical truly can’t come any sooner.