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Jack did look back.
Not for long—just long enough to catch the shape of Robby already turning away, the brief, solid contact of his hand on Jack’s shoulder still lingering like something with weight to it. It wasn’t hesitation so much as confirmation. A reflex more than a decision.
Then he turned away.
He knew better than to give a moment like that more space than it had already taken, knew how quickly something small could distort if he stood still long enough to examine it. The Pitt did not reward that kind of attention. It absorbed it, flattened it, folded it into everything else until it stopped being distinct.
If it gets dark, you call me.
The words followed anyway.
They didn’t settle heavily, didn’t demand to be turned over or understood. They sat somewhere quieter than that, just behind his sternum, threading themselves into the same place as everything else he had chosen not to deal with today.
The corridor closed around him before he could decide what to do with it.
Without the digital boards, the department felt rougher at the edges; less smoothed out, more dependent on the people inside it to carry information where it needed to go.
Voices overlapped instead of queued. Paper charts moved in uneven currents, edges curling, ink already smudged where too many hands had held them. Someone called out labs from halfway down the hall; the answer came back just as automatically, neither of them breaking stride.
Jack moved through it without thinking.
He adjusted his path before contact became collision, caught a slipping chart at the edge of his vision and passed it back into the right hands without looking, answered his name once without slowing. It was all muscle memory, the rhythm of a place he had spent long enough in that it had settled under his skin.
The only thing that didn’t fit cleanly into that rhythm was the low, persistent awareness at the back of his left shoulder.
Not pain, not exactly.
More the echo of it. A tight, dragging pull beneath the dressing where the round had grazed past, close enough to matter, not enough to count. It caught when he rotated too far, when his arm swung back without thinking, a quiet correction his body kept trying to make before he noticed it.
Samira’s hands had been efficient, impersonal, the entire interaction stripped down to function. She’d turned him slightly under the overhead lights, fingers firm at his shoulder blade as she cleaned it out, checked depth, decided it wasn’t worth the escalation he’d tried to wave off anyway. He’d sat still long enough for her to finish, long enough for her to press gauze into place and tell him, without looking at him, that he was staying put for observation.
Like he would listen.
He’d pulled his shirt back on instead, the fabric catching briefly at the fresh dressing before settling, and stepped away before she could decide he needed anything else.
He hadn’t been shot.
He had been shot at.
The distinction mattered, even if it only mattered to him.
What lingered was the absence of adrenaline. The drop after. The way his body registered the lack of urgency as something close to fatigue once it didn’t have anything immediate to hold onto.
He adjusted the fall of his shirt as he moved, more to settle the fabric than out of necessity, and stepped into the orbit of the nurse’s station without breaking stride.
Dana anchored the space.
Everything moved toward her and away again in the same breath, charts landing, questions asked and answered without ever quite forming a queue. She stood with one hand braced against the counter, the other already flipping through a file before it had fully settled, eyes moving across the page with the kind of precision that came from knowing exactly what mattered.
She didn’t look up when he arrived.
She didn’t need to.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, voice dry, threaded cleanly through the surrounding noise, “your golf swing is still shit so you decided to go play cops and thieves.”
Jack let his hand rest briefly against the edge of the counter. The contact grounded in a way he didn’t consciously acknowledge. “Yeah, well your barbecue invite got lost in the mail. This was Plan B.”
Dana made a quiet sound that could have been agreement or disapproval. When she did look up, it was quick and deliberate, her gaze taking inventory without making a show of it. It flicked sharply once toward his side, then back to his face.
“You staying on?” she asked.
“Yeah."
There was no judgment in it. Just recognition.
The space between them shifted before anything else could settle. Jesse moved through like a disruption rather than a presence, shouldering in between them to reach across the desk for a chart, the faint metallic glint of his nose ring catching the light as he flipped it open.
“Who signed off on this?” he muttered.
“Not you,” Dana said.
“Fixing it anyway.”
“Try not to make it worse.”
“No promises.”
Jesse scanned the chart, then flicked his gaze sideways toward Jack, quick and casual, like the thought had just landed.
“SWAT gig’s kinda sick,” he said. “Hell of a way to spend the Fourth."
The corner of Jack's mouth curved. “God bless America.”
Jesse huffed a quiet breath, something like a half-laugh under it as he walked away backwards. “Yeah, bet. Good to know one of us is out there.”
The space Jesse left did not remain open for long. It closed almost immediately, the gap folding in on itself as someone else stepped into it before the air had properly settled.
Jack noticed him without intending to.
It was not his face that registered first, but his height, and the way it translated into presence whether he meant it to or not. There was a faint rigidity through his posture, the kind that came from someone trying very hard to look like they belonged somewhere they had not yet figured out how to stand. The chart in his hands was held a fraction too high, tilted toward the overhead light as if the problem might resolve if he found the right angle.
“This doesn't make sense,” he said, his voice deep and just loud enough to carry over the surrounding noise, though not enough to command it. There was a slight strain at the edges of it, caught between certainty and the need to sound certain.
“It says—no, that’s not,” he stopped, eyes tracking the same line again as if repetition might force clarity where there wasn’t any. Jack let his weight settle lightly against the edge of the counter, his presence quiet, observational.
Jack watched the way the student, because that was what he was, even without checking, re-read the same section, each pass less convincing than the last.
Princess did not slow when she stepped in. She moved with the same efficiency she always did, already halfway into her next task before this one had fully resolved.
“It says two of ceftriaxone,” Princess said, without ceremony. The stack of charts against her chest shifted as she leaned in just enough to glance at the page in his hands, her eyes flicking across it once, quick and decisive. She was already reaching past him for another chart. “Stat.”
The student straightened slightly, the adjustment small but deliberate, as though something in him resisted letting the correction settle cleanly. “That’s not a two.”
He tipped the chart closer to the light, brow tightening as he tried to force the handwriting into compliance.
“That’s a squiggly line pretending to be a number.”
Princess did not look at him.
He hesitated, caught between what he was seeing and what he wanted to be seeing. His grip shifted on the page, fingers pressing harder into the paper than necessary.
“That’s written like a seven.”
That was enough to bring her attention back.
She turned her head and looked at him properly this time. There was no irritation or defensiveness in her expression, just a quiet finality, as though the conversation had already concluded and he was the only one who had not caught up.
“It’s a two,” she repeated gently, and then she moved on.
Jack saw the moment it shifted, when uncertainty hardened into insistence, when the need to be right outweighed the quieter instinct to reassess. The student’s gaze moved deliberately, searching for reinforcement, and landed on Jack. The look he threw Jack was brief and expectant, the kind that assumed authority would settle the argument in his favour.
Jack straightened slightly and stepped in. He had not planned to involve himself, but the invitation had already been made. The student held the chart out to him without hesitation, the motion almost eager.
He read around it. Medication, dosage patterns. The surrounding orders filled in what the ink did not clearly provide. His thumb paused briefly at the margin as his eyes moved once more across the line in question. There was no ambiguity.
“It’s two,” he said, handing the chart back. The student blinked, the resistance still present but already beginning to recalibrate. “Trust the nurses,” he added, his tone even, quiet but steady. “They’ve already read it before you got here.”
The words landed without sharpness, but they carried weight. The student’s grip shifted on the chart, his posture adjusting by degrees—not fully conceding, but no longer pushing.
“What’s your name?” he asked. The question landed differently than the correction had.
The student blinked, caught off guard by the shift in direction, then straightened—not defensively this time, but with something closer to instinct.
“Ogilvie,” he said. “James Ogilvie. MS4.”
Jack nodded once.
“Abbot,” Jack said, because it was easier than letting the silence stretch in a way that turned formal. He let his attention drop briefly back to the chart still in Ogilvie’s hands, then lifted again, the moment already moving on.
“If you can’t read it,” he added, his tone still even, matter-of-fact rather than corrective, “don’t guess. That’s what people are here for."
Ogilvie’s grip adjusted again, this time more deliberately, his shoulders settling by a degree that hadn’t been there before. Someone called out his name from Central 12, snapping him back to reality. “Right,” he said, already walking backwards in the direction of the call. “Thank you. Sir. Dr Abbot.”
The moment between Jack and Dana folded back into place like it had never been interrupted.
He didn’t need to force it.
“Any beds I can steal for a few hours?” he asked, the question slipping into the space between two other conversations.
Dana didn’t answer immediately.
She looked at him properly this time, something measured settling behind her expression. Thirty years of watching people push past limits they pretended not to have, and knowing exactly when to step in.
“Down here?” she said. “Not a chance. I've already kicked Ellis out of one before 2PM.”
Jack didn’t react.
Dana held his gaze a fraction longer, then turned back to the spread of paper in front of her, even as she added, almost as an afterthought, “Fourth floor. End of the hall. Last door on the right.”
He felt the corner of his mouth lift slightly. “Lock sticks?”
“You’ll manage.”
“I usually do.”
“Set an alarm,” she said. “Nobody is coming to get you.”
“You would.”
“I would,” she agreed. “But I’d be annoyed about it.”
He pushed away from the counter before Dana could decide to add conditions to the favour and let the current of the department carry him toward the hall. The noise followed for a few steps before thinning, not disappearing so much as losing density as he moved beyond the orbit of the station.
It didn’t ease once he left the station. If anything, the flow thickened—bodies crossing at uneven angles, charts moving hand to hand, voices rising and falling without ever quite resolving into silence. Without the digital boards, everything had to be carried, repeated, confirmed out loud. It made the air feel crowded.
He was almost clear of it when Al-Hashimi fell into step beside him.
“Dr. Abbot.”
He didn’t slow immediately. He didn’t need to. The voice matched his pace without effort, falling into step beside him like it had always intended to be there.
“Dr. Al-Hashimi.”
Jack glanced sideways just long enough to confirm it, then let his gaze return forward, tracking the path ahead—an orderly cutting across with a linen cart, a nurse pivoting sharply to avoid him, a patient being wheeled through the opposite direction with a monitor that chirped insistently until someone reached over to silence it.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
Jack stepped around the linen cart without breaking stride, angling his shoulder just enough to avoid clipping it. “That sounds vague.”
“It is,” she said easily. “I was disappointed not to meet you at handover this morning, but I suppose this works as an introduction."
There was a slight pause before the word, the kind that suggested it had replaced something sharper. A voice cut across their path before Jack could answer.
“Hey, can I get an attending in Trauma Two?”
The question was directed broadly, thrown into the air with the assumption that someone would claim it.
“On my way,” Robby called from somewhere behind them, his voice carrying cleanly over the noise, already moving before the words had fully landed.
Jack’s gaze shifted anyway, briefly.
Robby was halfway across the floor, already pulling gloves on as he moved, his focus narrowing toward the bay without breaking stride. There was nothing uncertain in it, nothing searching. Just motion, direction, intent.
Jack’s attention lingered a fraction longer than necessary before he looked forward again.
Beside him, Al-Hashimi had noticed.
Not in a way that interrupted the moment. Not even in a way that acknowledged it outright. But there was a subtle recalibration in her attention, a quiet filing-away of something that hadn’t been there a second ago.
“Ogilvie looked like he was bracing for impact,” she continued, as though the interruption had been part of the conversation all along.
Jack stepped aside to let a gurney pass, one hand briefly flattening against the metal rail to steady it as it clipped too close to the wall. “Did he? Med students misread rooms all the time."
“Maybe.”
They moved again, the corridor bending slightly as the density of the department shifted rather than lessened. A cluster of nurses stood near the supply cart arguing quietly over something that didn’t sound quiet at all; someone laughed too sharply from one of the bays before it cut off mid-sound.
“I’ve only been here a few hours,” Al-Hashimi said, adjusting her pace without looking at him, matching his stride as easily as she had fallen into it. “But people talk. You get a sense of how someone fits into a place pretty quickly.”
Jack didn’t answer.
He sidestepped a resident backing out of a room without looking, catching the door before it swung too far and sending it back with a light push. The movement pulled at his shoulder again, sharper this time, and he let it pass without acknowledging it.
“What I heard,” she went on, “and what I just watched aren’t the same thing.”
Jack let out a quiet breath. “You watched a med student struggle with handwriting.”
“I watched you not make it worse.”
That landed somewhere closer than he expected.
Ahead, the corridor opened toward the elevators, the noise shifting rather than fading, spreading out into something less concentrated but no less present. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, steady and indifferent.
“That's a pretty low bar,” he said.
“Not as low as you think.”
She glanced at him then, briefly, her expression composed but attentive in a way that suggested she was still building the picture rather than presenting it.
They reached the edge of the main flow, the movement around them thinning just enough that they no longer had to angle themselves between bodies with every step.
Al-Hashimi let the quiet sit for a beat.
“You ever think about coming on days?” she asked, her tone shifting just enough to signal the turn without forcing it.
Jack didn’t look at her this time.
“Robby’s got it covered.”
The answer came easily because it was true.
Al-Hashimi’s gaze stayed on him. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
“He’s got it,” Jack repeated, quieter now. “He doesn’t need me on top of him.”
“Maybe not,” she said. A runner with a stack of lab results cut between them, forcing them apart by half a step before the corridor folded them back together. “But with Robby away, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to have two attendings during the day.”
Jack let out a breath through his nose. “I prefer nights.”
She was quiet for long enough that he knew she was deciding whether to leave it there.
“That’s interesting,” she said, carrying on. “Because I overheard that you wouldn’t mind taking day shifts at Presby.” She let that sit for a beat, then turned her head slightly toward him.
“So I’m wondering whether this is actually preference,” she said, “or whether you’re just very deliberate about where you place yourself."
Jack kept his expression even. The elevator doors at the end of the hall reflected a warped, dim version of the corridor back at them, all fluorescent light and worn linoleum and movement just out of frame.
“There are a lot of reasons to prefer nights,” he said.
“I’m sure there are.”
She didn’t push harder than that. The question had already done what she wanted it to do.
Jack said nothing.
The obvious answer, the real one, was not something he was going to hand over in a corridor after a SWAT call gone sideways and the lingering feel of Robby’s hand on his shoulder still sitting where he had left it
Working with Robby was not impossible. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that it would be too easy to stop pretending he was unaffected by it.
Al-Hashimi spared him one last glance before they reached the elevator.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “you’re harder to read than most people.”
Jack looked at her. “That meant to be reassuring?”
That almost got a smile.
“Try to get some rest, Dr Abbot,” she said instead.
Then she stepped away, leaving him with the elevator, the quiet pull in his shoulder, and the distinct impression that she had understood rather more than he’d said.
By the time the doors opened on the fourth floor, the department had loosened its grip.
It never quite slept up here, but it came close.
Sound carried differently up here. It no longer stacking on itself, just stretching thin along the corridor.
A monitor chimed somewhere down the hall, steady and unhurried, the kind that signalled stability rather than crisis. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, constant and indifferent. The air held that faint, sterile coolness that never quite reached comfortable, just enough to keep everything preserved.
The room Dana had pointed him to looked exactly like every other temporary solution the hospital offered—functional to the point of impersonality.
A narrow bed pushed against one wall, thin mattress dipped slightly at the centre from years of use, a guard rail on either side that had been raised and lowered so often the hinges clicked even when they shouldn’t. A chair sat in the corner at an angle that suggested it had been moved and not put back. A folded blanket, institutional grey, rested at the foot of the bed like an afterthought.
Jack had not bothered with the blanket.
He lay on his right side, close to the edge of the bed, his body angled inward just enough to keep his balance. The position wasn’t comfortable, just sustainable—his left shoulder kept carefully forward and protected, the dressing pulling faintly beneath his shirt if he shifted too far back.
The guard rail was up along his spine.
He’d pulled it there without thinking, more habit than intention, a quiet insurance against the kind of half-sleep drift that ended with a hard edge and a worse wake-up. Not fully raised but just enough that it pressed lightly along his back, a boundary he could feel without having to look. His right arm was tucked in close against his chest, keeping his weight contained. His left rested along the narrow strip of mattress in front of him, fingers brushing the sheet where the bed dipped toward the centre.
It left just enough space behind him.
It was far from generous or remotely comfortable, but it was usable.
Sleep had come quickly, the kind that dropped cleanly through him the second he stopped moving. It wasn’t deep, not really. More a suspension than a shutdown, his body taking what it could without fully letting go. The rhythm of the hospital still threaded through it—distant sounds registering without meaning, movement outside the door filtering in as something his brain noted but didn’t act on.
Until—
The handle turned.
It was a small sound. Soft, almost careful.
Jack was awake before the door had fully opened.
Something in him snapped taut, awareness sharpening in a way that cut clean through the edges of sleep. His breath stalled for half a second, attention narrowing, mapping the space around him in the absence of sight. The angle of the door, the weight of the air changing as it opened, the presence in the room before it had fully crossed the threshold.
Then—
A familiar exhale. Sharp. Tired. Impatient in a way that had nothing to do with him.
The tension dropped.
Jack’s hand loosened slightly against the rail as the door closed behind it, the quiet click settling into the room. There was the soft scrape of shoes against the floor, the shift of fabric, the brief metallic rattle of the curtain being dragged across its track.
The sound cut through the room with a dry, grating pull.
Jack’s eyes stayed closed.
“Absolutely—”
The mattress dipped.
“—not.”
Robby didn’t hesitate.
There was no negotiation in the movement, no pause to check whether the space had been offered or not. He climbed onto the bed like it had always been intended for two people, the frame giving a quiet protest beneath the added weight. The mattress shifted, the dip deepening as he settled, the thin structure of it doing nothing to disguise the fact that it had not been designed for this.
Jack’s entire body registered it.
The shift in balance. The redistribution of weight. The proximity.
His foot nudged out on instinct, catching Robby’s shin with enough force to be felt, not enough to be effective.
“Get off.”
Robby exhaled again, longer this time, like he had been holding it in for the past twelve hours and had finally found somewhere to put it. He adjusted once—shoulder, hip, a slight shift to make space where there wasn’t any and then went still in a way that suggested he had already decided this was happening.
“No.”
Jack cracked one eye open despite himself, just long enough to catch it.
Robby was on his back, one arm folded behind his head, the other resting loosely across his stomach. His scrubs were creased in ways that had nothing to do with how they had been put on that morning, the fabric pulling slightly at one shoulder where something had dried and stiffened. There was a faint shadow of something darker along the sleeve; blood, probably, though whose was unclear. His hair had been pushed back at some point and left there, the shape of it disrupted just enough to make the lines of his face look sharper than usual.
Tired didn’t quite cover it.
It was there in the slackness at the corners of his mouth, in the way his eyes had closed almost immediately despite the movement, in the quiet, steady rise and fall of his chest that suggested he had reached the point where stopping for even a minute was no longer optional.
Jack watched him for a second longer than necessary.
“This bed’s not big enough for both of us,” Jack rasped, closing his eyes.
“Feels fine from here,” Robby replied easily.
Jack could hear the smile in his voice without needing to look.
“I’ve got three hours. Go somewhere else.”
“Don't get crabby. Have you never shared a bed in your life?” Robby asked, voice roughened slightly at the edges but otherwise intact.
Jack resisted an eyeroll. “You know I don’t like sharing anything.”
There was the faintest shift beside him; something that might have been another smile, felt rather than seen.
“Too bad,” Robby said, easy. “Has that ever stopped me?”
The callback landed somewhere quiet.
Jack didn’t move.
He was aware, distantly, of the way their shoulders almost aligned. Of the narrow strip of space between them that existed more by intention than by design. Of the fact that the guard rail along his side pressed lightly against his forearm, a barrier that meant nothing now that Robby had simply bypassed it entirely.
“How did you even find me?” he asked after a moment, his voice low, still carrying the weight of sleep he hadn’t fully shaken.
Robby huffed, the sound softer this time, more breath than amusement. “How do you think, Columbus?”
Jack didn’t answer but his mouth twitched faintly against the pillow. “Original.”
“I try.”
Another small adjustment of weight as Robby settled more comfortably into the space, his shoulder brushing the mattress just enough to shift the tension through it again. The bed creaked in quiet protest, then held.
“You’re not the first attending to crash here,” Robby added, as if this needed to be explained.
“Here I thought I was special.”
Robby snorted a laugh. "If she plays favorites, I’m not worried.”
“On account of being the problem child? That tracks.”
Silence stretched between them, not empty, not strained—just present. The kind that came when neither of them felt the need to fill it immediately, even if neither of them was fully relaxed inside it either.
Jack adjusted his hand slightly against the rail, the movement small, contained. The awareness of Robby beside him did not fade, but it shifted—settling into something his body began, reluctantly, to account for.
The mattress dipped again, almost imperceptibly this time, as Robby exhaled and let himself sink into it properly.
Jack stared into the dark behind his closed eyes.
Then he stopped trying to push against it.
“You okay, man?”
“Just five minutes. Promise.”
Jack stayed where he was, eyes closed, breath evened out into something that passed for rest if he didn’t examine it too closely.
It didn’t last.
Not with Robby there.
Not with the quiet weight of him occupying the same narrow strip of space, close enough that Jack could feel the heat coming off him through the thin cotton of their shirts, close enough that every small shift translated through the mattress and into his own body whether he wanted it to or not.
He let it sit for a moment longer.
Then—
“She propositioned me,” Jack said.
Robby made a low, questioning sound, not opening his eyes. “Who did?”
“Al-Hashimi.”
That got a reaction. It was small; just a shift of breath at first, the corner of Robby’s mouth tipping before the rest of it followed, but it was there.
Jack cracked one eye open despite himself.
Up close, it was worse.
The overhead light caught just enough of Robby’s face to soften it rather than sharpen it, the usual tension worn down into something quieter in sleep-adjacent stillness. There were lines there Jack knew well at the corners of his eyes, at the edge of his mouth, but they sat differently like this, eased open instead of pulled tight by responsibility or irritation or whatever version of command he wore out on the floor.
Robby was smiling.
It did something inconvenient to Jack’s chest.
“Yeah?” Robby said, voice roughened with fatigue but threaded through with quiet amusement. “And?”
Jack let his eye fall closed again.
“She asked if I would do days.”
The words settled between them, light on delivery, heavier underneath. Robby huffed out a soft breath, the smile shifting but not disappearing.
“Of course she did.”
Jack didn’t move.
“You don’t sound all that excited," Robby added after a beat, the line easy, familiar, pulled straight from a conversation that had already happened somewhere else, sometime earlier, when neither of them had been lying shoulder to shoulder in a bed that wasn’t meant for this. "Thought you said you liked her.”
Jack felt the corner of his mouth twitch faintly against the pillow.
“I do.”
“Mm,” Robby hummed, like he was filing that away, turning it over without any real intention of letting it go. “Sounds like she likes you too.”
There was something in that that could have been teasing.
Jack shifted his hand slightly against the rail, the movement small enough not to disturb the balance of the bed but enough that he felt the pull in his shoulder again, a quiet reminder of where he’d been earlier.
"Not enough."
Jack felt Robby's head turn as the pillow they were sharing dipped slightly, bringing them a fraction closer than before. "Yeah?"
This time Jack quirked a smile as his eyes remained close. "Not enough to take your place."
Beside him, Robby went still in a way that wasn’t sleep. Then, a quiet, almost disbelieving breath followed.
“Wow,” Robby murmured, soft enough that it barely carried. “You always this charming when you’re half-dead, or am I getting a special edition?”
He could feel it the shift in Robby’s attention, no longer diffuse, no longer drifting at the edges of rest. It had settled on him now, direct in a way that would have been harder to ignore if he opened his eyes.
“Speaking of charming,” Robby said. “I asked Whitaker to house-sit for me while I'm gone.”
“Yeah?" Jack said, shifting slightly to ease the numbness creeping into his right shoulder.
“I told him about your naked yoga habit. The look on his face.”
This snapped Jack out of his pretend nap. When he opened them properly, he was facing Robby’s side profile.
And the asshole looked absolutely pleased with himself.
“Excuse me?" Jack said, incredulous. “That was your idea.”
Robby didn’t even try to hide it. The satisfaction sat openly on his face, easy and unrepentant, the kind of expression that only ever showed up when he knew, without question, that he’d landed something clean.
Jack stared at him for a second, properly this time.
It was a mistake.
At this distance there was no room to soften anything, no space for the small distortions that made people easier to look at. Every detail held.
The faint roughness along Robby’s jaw where his beard had grown out unevenly over the shift. A smear of something darker near the collar of his scrub top that hadn’t quite washed out. The crease at the corner of his mouth that deepened when he smiled like this; genuine, unguarded, entirely too pleased with himself.
Robby shifted slightly onto his back again, one arm folding across his chest as if settling in more comfortably now that he had Jack’s full attention. His other hand came up, fingers dragging absently through his beard, catching for a second before smoothing it back down. He didn’t rush the movement, or look at Jack while he did it.
Which somehow made it worse.
“You should’ve seen him,” Robby said, voice still threaded with quiet laughter. “Kid looked like I’d just handed him a live grenade.”
“You told an intern that I do naked yoga.”
“Well,” Robby said, lifting a finger slightly without opening his eyes. “I probably should have said you practice mindfulness through movement.”
Jack exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Did you tell him it was your idea to start with?” Jack crossed his arms, frowning.
“I did it once,” Robby said. “You’re the one who took the concept and ran with it. I don’t even know how you’re that bendy with all that muscle.”
Robby’s mouth twitched, but his eyes opened this time, just enough to glance sideways at him.
At this distance, there was no buffering it. No movement, no distraction, no room for anything to blur at the edges. Jack was right there, close enough that the lines of him resolved in full. The breadth of his shoulders even half-turned into the mattress, the quiet, contained strength in the way he held himself even at rest.
The kind of build that didn’t come from a gym routine so much as repetition.
Robby let his gaze flick away before it could settle too long.
“Don’t act like you didn’t commit,” he said lightly.
The smile lingered for a second longer than it needed to before it shifted, settling into something that didn’t need to perform.
Robby let out a slow breath, the last of the laughter leaving with it, his hand dropping back to rest against his chest. For a moment he didn’t say anything, his gaze drifting somewhere just past the ceiling like he was tracking a thought he hadn’t quite decided how to phrase.
Jack felt the change before it fully happened.
“Hey,” Robby said after a beat, his voice lower now, worn at the edges but steady. “Thanks for meeting Stanley.”
Jack didn’t open his eyes. His arms were still folded in tight against his chest, a compromise between comfort and containment, his back pressed lightly into the raised rail behind him.
“Yeah.”
Robby shifted beside him; not much, just enough that the mattress dipped differently beneath their combined weight. His shoulder brushed Jack’s again, closer this time, the contact lingering for a second before settling.
“I know it’s a pain in the ass,” he went on. “Paperwork. Signatures. All that.”
“It’s not,” Jack said.
Robby huffed softly, unconvinced but not pushing it. “Still,” he added. “I appreciate it.”
Jack let that sit.
The room held steady around them; the low fluorescent hum, the distant rhythm of a monitor somewhere down the hall, the soft rattle of wheels passing the door. The hospital hadn’t stopped. It had just… thinned around them.
“What exactly did you tell him?” Jack asked after a moment.
Robby’s mouth twitched faintly. “That I needed someone who wouldn’t freak out.”
Jack huffed at that. “Enter: Jack Abbot.”
“Yeah,” Robby said. “You made the cut.”
Jack shifted his forearm slightly where it had been pinned between his chest and the narrow strip of mattress, the movement small but necessary, creating just enough space to breathe properly.
“You told him I’d make decisions if you can’t.”
“Yeah.”
Jack opened his eyes then, just enough to look at him.
Robby didn’t look back.
He was still flat on his back, one arm folded loosely across his chest, the other resting along his side, fingers tapping once against the mattress near Jack’s hip. Close enough that Jack could feel it through the thin give of the bed.
“If something happens while I'm out there,” Robby added, quieter now. “You handle it.”
There was no performance in it.
Jack held his gaze on him a second longer. “Nothing’s happening.”
Robby’s mouth tipped faintly. “Probably not.”
Jack didn’t like that word. He shifted again, more deliberately this time, freeing his hand properly and nudging forward just enough that his knuckles pressed lightly into Robby’s ribs.
Not quite a shove, just contact.
“Hey.”
Robby’s breath hitched faintly at the touch, his head turning toward him now, finally closing the gap of eye contact.
“People care about you,” Jack said. It came out quieter than intended. I care about you remained unspoken, but it didn’t need to be.
Robby held his gaze, something in his expression shifting; brief and unguarded.
“Yeah,” he said.
Jack didn’t pull his hand back straight away. It stayed there, resting lightly against Robby’s side, close enough that he could feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing.
“You disappearing off the map,” he added, tone easing but not losing its edge, “that’s going to go over well.”
Robby let out a quiet breath, something like a laugh. “If anyone’s going to overreact, it’ll be Dana.”
“That’s not funny,” Jack said. The thought of Dana worked up over it sat wrong immediately. “You need to tone down on the ‘riding to my death’ vibe.
Robby turned a little more toward him—not fully, not yet, but enough that his shoulder angled in, narrowing the already limited space between them.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m not doing anything stupid.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of everything they weren’t unpacking in a hospital bed that wasn’t meant for this.
Robby’s gaze softened slightly. “You’re the backup plan,” he added, lighter now. “Congratulations.”
Jack huffed. “Always wanted that on my resume.”
It could have ended there. It should have.
Jack’s eyes had already started to close again, his body settling back into the careful stillness he’d been holding, the rail firm against his spine, Robby’s presence a constant heat along his front.
But—
“You’re all I’ve got too, man.”
Jack didn’t open his eyes when he said it. His hand was still there at Robby’s side.
“Don’t bail on me.”
Robby didn’t answer immediately.
Jack felt it before he saw the shift.
Robby moved, not abruptly, but with intention, turning onto his side to face him. The mattress dipped further under the redistribution, the already narrow space collapsing into something tighter, more immediate. Robby’s knee pressed lightly against Jack’s thigh, his arm drawing in between them where there hadn’t been room for it before.
Jack’s eyes opened a fraction.
Robby was right there now, close enough that there was no softening anything, no distance to blur the edges. The fatigue sat plainly across his face, in the fine lines at his eyes, in the slackness at the corner of his mouth but his focus was clear.
Fixed on Jack.
“I’ll come back,” Robby said.
No deflection.
No shrug.
Jack held his gaze. There was a reflex in him, old and practiced, that wanted to turn it into something easier. Robby’s expression eased slightly, something settling as he said it. His eyes flicked once—briefly—to Jack’s mouth, then back, holding there.
“I’ll come back to you,” he added, quieter.
That landed.
Jack exhaled slowly, his hand shifting slightly against Robby’s side—not pulling away, not quite staying either. Just… there.
“Yeah,” he said softly, accepting the shape of it.
Robby held his gaze a second longer, then let himself settle again, not rolling away so much as relaxing into the space between them, like he trusted it to hold.
Jack closed his eyes.
Robby stayed where he was, close enough that the space between them had stopped feeling like distance and started feeling like something held—deliberate, fragile in a way neither of them acknowledged out loud. Jack could feel the warmth of him through the thin cotton of their shirts, the uneven rhythm of his breathing where fatigue hadn’t quite evened it out, the faint shift of the mattress every time Robby settled a fraction deeper into it.
For a second, it looked like he might let it go.
“…one for the road?” Robby said.
It was quieter than anything he’d said so far. Not joking or careful either. Like he already knew what the answer might be and had decided to ask anyway.
Jack didn’t open his eyes straight away.
He felt the weight of it first, the way the question landed low and close, threading itself into everything that had already been said in this too-small space. His hand was still resting lightly against Robby’s side, fingers curved just enough to feel the steady rise and fall of his breath. He hadn’t moved it. Hadn’t thought to.
“We’ve already said goodbye,” he said.
The words came out even, and entirely undermined by the fact that he didn’t move. Robby didn’t pull back either. The moment stretched into a stillness that only existed when both people knew there was an exit and chose not to take it.
“Yeah,” Robby said, softer. “I know.”
That should have settled it.
Jack felt something shift anyway.
It wasn’t a clean decision. There was no clear point where he chose this over the alternative, no moment where he stopped and thought it through. Just a quiet, almost instinctive adjustment of his shoulder angling forward, the narrow space between them collapsing that last fraction of an inch—
—and then his mouth was on Robby’s.
It landed firm. Direct. Not tentative so much as contained, like he’d committed to the action before he’d decided what it meant. The kind of kiss that could have passed for brief if it had ended there.
For a heartbeat, it did.
Then Robby exhaled.
The sound was soft, startled, like something in him had given way without warning, and his hand came up on instinct, catching at Jack’s side where it already rested, fingers pressing in; not pulling him closer so much as refusing to let him go.
And then he answered it.
The kiss shifted under it, the careful edge Jack had started with softening as Robby leaned into it, not rushed, not careless, just… present. Warmer. Intentional in a way that made the first contact feel like a precursor rather than the thing itself. Jack felt it in the way the space between them disappeared completely now, in the way his own control slipped a fraction without permission, the line he’d drawn dissolving under the pressure of something he hadn’t planned for.
For a second, just one, it held.
Then the door opened.
The sound cut through the room sharp and immediate, the handle snapping, the shift of air abrupt enough to register before the moment had time to settle back into anything safer.
Robby reacted first.
It was instinct. Too fast, too unfiltered to be anything else. He jerked back hard, his body trying to create space that didn’t exist on a bed that had never been built to hold both of them in the first place. His weight shifted the wrong way, the narrow edge disappearing under him as his foot searched for something solid and found nothing at all—
—and then he was gone.
The thud was solid.
For half a second, Jack didn’t move.
Then the laugh hit him.
It broke out of him sharp and immediate, his shoulders shaking before he could stop it, the movement pulling at his injured side in a way that should have hurt more than it did. He dragged his hand up over his face, pressing his fingers hard into his eyes like that might contain it, but it didn’t even come close.
“Jesus—” The word fractured under the edge of it. “I told you—”
The curtain ripped open.
Dana filled the doorway, her gaze sweeping the room in one efficient pass that took in everything—the bed, the disarray of it, Jack half-curled against the raised rail still shaking with laughter, and Robby on the floor where gravity had very clearly placed him.
There was a beat.
“…what the hell are you two doing?”
Jack tried, he really did, but the laugh just caught again, dragging through him as he dropped his hand enough to look properly, to take in the full, undignified picture of Robby still halfway down beside the bed, one hand already coming up to the back of his head like he was only just remembering it existed.
Dana’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you serious?” she asked Robby flatly. “You fell off a stationary bed.”
That nearly finished Jack.
He folded harder into himself with the force of it, shoulders shaking helplessly against the mattress.
“I might need a head CT,” Robby muttered, pushing himself up onto one elbow with a wince that didn’t quite hide the fact that he’d absolutely earned that.
“The horrors persist and so do I,” Dana said. “You’ll live.”
Jack lost it again.
“I warned you,” he managed, voice wrecked with laughter, one hand bracing against the mattress as he tried and failed to pull himself back together. “Bed’s not big enough—”
Robby shot him a look that might have had more bite if he weren’t still on the floor.
“Yeah,” he said, dragging himself the rest of the way upright, brushing at his scrubs in a way that suggested he knew it was pointless and did it anyway. “Enjoy this, you dick.”
Dana still hadn’t looked away from him.
“I send you up here for five minutes,” she said, “and somehow you make it everybody’s problem.”
Robby opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again.
“We need you downstairs,” Dana said. “Try standing upright this time.”
She turned before either of them could answer, the curtain snapping back into place with a sharp metallic drag that felt like punctuation rather than closure.
The room settled again as she left.
Jack let his head fall back against the pillow, one last breath of laughter escaping him as he dragged his hand down over his face, the echo of it still sitting somewhere in his chest.
Robby stayed where he was for a second longer, standing at the edge of the bed like he was recalibrating around the aftermath of it—around the fall, the interruption, the fact that neither of those had actually undone what had happened a second before.
“You’re a terrible person,” he said finally, quieter now.
Jack cracked one eye open.
“Got the kiss, didn’t you?”
Robby paused. It was brief, but it was there, the flicker of something that hadn’t quite been smoothed back into place yet.
“…yeah.”
Jack’s mouth curved faintly.
Robby huffed a breath, shaking his head as he reached up to rub at the back of his neck, the motion dragging his focus away and then back again like he hadn’t quite decided what to do with any of it.
“Hey,” he said, softer, motioning Jack to come over.
Jack pushed himself upright more carefully this time, the pull in his shoulder sharper now but manageable, his balance catching against the edge of the mattress as he swung his legs down. The rail pressed briefly against his back as he moved past it, the boundary he’d set earlier now irrelevant in a room that had already shifted around them.
Robby stepped back just enough to give him space.
Jack glanced up at him where he stood, something quieter settling under the last remnants of laughter.
“Get some sleep,” he said, softer than anything he’d used all day.
“You gonna be here when I wake up?” Jack asked.
Robby smiled properly, the grin reaching his eyes.
“Yeah,” Robby said, softer. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Robby didn’t move straight away. He just stood there, looking at him in a way that didn’t ask for anything, didn’t push, didn’t try to make the moment into more than it already was.
A beat later, he reached out, slow enough that Jack could have pulled back if he’d wanted to. His hand came up, fingers brushing lightly at Jack’s temple, a brief, steadying contact that felt more like placement than touch. He leaned in after it, close enough that Jack felt the shift of air before anything else—
—and pressed a quiet kiss to his forehead.
Robby didn’t linger after that.
He stepped back once, like he was giving the moment somewhere to settle that wasn’t directly under his hands, and then he was gone; quietly, efficiently, the way he did everything when he’d already decided on it.
The curtain dragged once more along its track, the sound brief and unceremonious, and then the room folded in on itself again.
Jack stayed where he was.
The mattress had already leveled out beneath him, the shallow dip erased, the narrow strip of space beside him cooling by degrees he could feel without looking. The air shifted differently without a second body in it. Lighter, thinner.
He leaned back anyway, slowly and controlled. The pull in his shoulder caught as he settled against the pillow, a sharp, dragging reminder under the dressing that forced his breath to hitch once before evening out again.
Make sure you come back.
The words surfaced without effort but they didn’t land the same way.
Robby would come back. The certainty of it sat low and steady, not something he had to convince himself of, not something that needed repeating to hold. It was already there.
Jack’s eyes stayed closed this time, not because sleep was coming, but because opening them wouldn’t change anything.
The hum of the lights continued overhead, constant and indifferent.
His shoulder ached.
He let it.