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The first time it happened, nobody thought much of it. The night shift had been brutal. Two codes back-to-back, one pediatric drowning, an intoxicated trauma patient who’d tried to bite Shen hard enough to need a tetanus booster. By eight in the morning the whole ED looked like the aftermath of a small maritime disaster. Coffee cups everywhere. Half-dead residents drifting through fluorescent fog.
By the time that Robby was a few hours into his shift, the day staff had managed to clear the worst of it and were on track for a good day (shock horror). Robby checked in with his team and slipped away to his rarely used office, in the hopes of taking this rare opportunity to catch up on some paperwork. Instead, he opened the door and stopped.
Jack Abbott was asleep on the couch.
Really, properly asleep. Folded there awkwardly in a way that cannot be comfortable.. One arm hanging toward the floor, neck bent at an angle that made Robby’s own spine ache in sympathy. His prosthetic leg leaned against the desk beside him. Chart notes were still trapped loosely in his hand and next to him on the floor. The office lights were off except for the desk lamp, throwing everything gold and soft.
Jack looked… wrecked. Not visibly injured, mind you, just worn down to threads.
Robby stood there for a second too long.
Because seeing Jack asleep was a rare thing. Jack dozing in trauma rooms for eleven minutes between admissions didn’t count. Jack closing his eyes during CT scans didn’t count. Jack was always in motion. Hell, even on his days off he was out as a SWAT medic, unable to be stationary for too long.
Robby quietly crossed the office, took the chart from his hand, and draped his own hoodie over him without waking him.
Then he closed the door and let him sleep. Paperwork can wait.
It happened again three days later.
Then again the next week.
Nobody commented on it directly, but the Pitt was a place that noticed things. People noticed Robby started checking his office before asking where Abbott was. People noticed an extra phone charger appeared beside the couch. People noticed somebody had smuggled in an actual decent blanket instead of the scratchy hospital ones. People noticed the pain meds in Robby’s desk drawer.
Not narcotics. Just the good anti-inflammatories Jack preferred. Heat patches. Electrolyte powders. Tiny survival offerings.
Like someone leaving supplies at the mouth of a cave where a wounded animal kept crawling to rest. Nobody said anything because everyone understood exactly what they were looking at.
Jack was struggling. And Robby was trying to catch him before he hit the floor.
The office changed slowly.
A hoodie over the back of the chair became two hoodies. Protein bars appeared in the drawer beside the printer. Robby brought in a better pillow one day and acted deeply offended when Langdon caught him fluffing it.
“Jesus Christ,” Langdon muttered. “You’re nesting.”
“Get out of my office.”
“You gave him orthopedic lumbar support.”
“It came with the pillow.”
“You’re basically his wife.”
“Leave.”
Langdon grinned like a raccoon and vanished.
Robby still left the pillow. And if Robby has been secretly online shopping for a comfier couch, that was between him and his laptop.
Jack tried not to acknowledge any of it outright.
There was a brief conversation one morning after handover, where Jack finally admitted that sometimes after a grueling shift, he didn’t feel ready to drive home. So he napped on Robby’s couch in his rarely used office. Made a joke that someone might as well spend some time there. And this was true for the most part. Oftentimes Jack would be gone by midday, sometimes as early as 10am, the latest being about 4pm.
But the “nesting” and gifts weren’t discussed.
If Robby handed him pain meds directly, Jack would grin and deflect and insist he was fine. If Robby cornered him about his limp getting worse, Jack would make some stupid joke about being structurally unsound from the waist down.
But if things simply appeared? The blanket. The charger. The protein bars.
He accepted them silently. And didn’t talk about it.
It became routine in the strangest way.
Around three in the afternoon, Robby was dictating notes while soft jazz drifted from his phone speaker low enough not to carry into the hallway. Rain tapped against the ambulance bay windows. The ED buzzed beyond the office walls in that constant electric rhythm hospitals had.
And on the couch, Jack slept. Half-conscious sometimes. Barely awake enough to grunt complaints.
“Your music sucks,” he mumbled once without opening his eyes.
“You’re drooling on my blanket.” Robby bit back.
“Mine now.”
Robby looked over his laptop at him. Jack had one arm flung over his face, hair sticking up everywhere, socked foot hanging off the couch. Exhaustion had sanded all the sharp edges off him. He looked younger like this. Softer.
Dangerous, Robby thought. This domestic little orbit they’d slipped into. Dangerous as hell.
The pain flare started getting worse in October.
Robby noticed it before anyone else because of course he did. Jack stopped taking stairs whenever possible. Started bracing his hand on counters when he thought nobody was looking. His prosthetic came off faster after shifts now, irritation visible around the socket line.
And he was sleeping harder.
One afternoon Robby found him sitting alone in the locker room staring blankly at the floor while he massaged shaking hands into his thigh. “You okay?”
Jack looked up too fast. Smiled immediately.
There it is, Robby thought. That fucking mask.
“Peachy.”
“Bullshit.”
Jack shrugged. “Just tired.”
Robby leaned against the lockers. “You know the department won’t implode if you admit you’re in pain.”
“That’s not what worries me.” The answer came fast.
Robby’s chest pulled painfully. “Jack.”
“If I slow down,” he said quietly, still staring at the floor, “people start compensating for me.”
“No one minds helping.”
“Until they do.” His voice stayed calm but exhausted underneath it. The kind built from years of having to prove he was still useful. “If I become the guy everyone has to work around…” He shrugged once. “That’s how you become dead weight.”
Robby felt something vicious and protective rear up inside his chest. “You think anybody in this department sees you as dead weight?”
Jack laughed softly without humor. “Robby, half the reason I work this hard is so nobody asks if I still can.”
Suddenly the office naps made sense. The hidden pain. The exhaustion.
Jack wasn’t running himself into the ground because he wanted to. He was terrified to stop.
After that, Robby got mean about it. Not cruel. No, never cruel, but ruthless.
He started stealing heavier patient transfers before Jack could volunteer and ordering him to sit during charting. But this was only what he could do at shift change. So he got creative. He’d rallied members of the night shift to his cause, as even when Robby was asleep at home between shifts, someone was always topping up Jack’s drinks and keeping an eye on him. Robby also turned down as much of the overtime requests Jack put in as he could afford to and still keep the ED afloat.
Jack complained constantly. “You’re bullying me.”
“Yes.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“You’re very bossy for a man built like an exhausted math teacher.”
“And you’re very sassy for someone limping around this place like a poor Victorian orphan boy.”
Jack flipped him off from a wheelchair beside triage.
Progress.
The nightmare happened during another storm.
The ambulance bay windows rattled under heavy rain. The ED lights dimmed briefly with thunder before emergency power kicked in for half a second. Robby always held his breath whenever this happens, convinced that one day the back up generators would fail completely and it would be time to practice medicine in the dark.
Robby was finishing notes around dawn when he heard it. Sharp breathing and movement.
He looked over.
Jack was twisting in the couch blankets, face tense with pain or panic. One hand clenched so tightly the knuckles had gone white.
“No,” Jack muttered hoarsely.
Robby stood immediately.
“Jack.”
Another sharp breath. Robby crouched beside the couch carefully. “Jack, wake up.”
Jack jerked violently. His arm came up fast, pure instinct, years of military reflex firing before consciousness caught up.
Robby barely caught his wrist before the swing connected. For one horrible second Jack looked genuinely feral and disoriented. Then awareness slammed into him. “Oh fuck.”
His breathing turned ragged instantly. “Jesus Christ, Robby, did I hit you?”
“No.”
Jack shoved himself upright too quickly, panic written all over his face now. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“Jack.”
“I didn’t know where I was.”
“I know.”
Jack pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough to hurt. The office sat wrapped in dim gold desk-lamp light and rain noise. Robby reached out slowly this time. Gave him room to pull away.
Jack didn’t.
Robby rested a hand lightly against the back of his neck. He could feel the tension there. Flesh like steel cables under skin.
“You’re okay,” Robby said quietly.
Jack laughed once, broken around the edges. “Debatable.”
“You’re safe.”
Another long silence. Then, exhausted beyond pride, Jack leaned forward until his forehead rested against Robby’s shoulder. Robby held him there.
Outside, thunder rolled over Pittsburgh.
Inside the office, jazz hummed softly from a dying phone speaker while the ED kept moving beyond the walls.
The morning started quietly enough that nobody trusted it. That was the thing about emergency departments. Silence was rarely peace. Usually it just meant the universe was loading a cannon somewhere offscreen.
Jack was asleep on Robby’s office couch when the shift started tilting sideways.
Not deeply asleep. The kind of exhausted half-sleep where pain kept dragging him back toward consciousness every twenty minutes. He’d kicked the blanket halfway off sometime around nine. His prosthetic leaned against the desk beside a growing collection of Robby’s unofficial care packages. Evidence of a problem neither of them had formally acknowledged.
Outside the office, the Pitt churned through morning chaos.
Admissions piling up. Ambulance radios crackling. Langdon trying to sweet-talk radiology into giving him scan results faster. Santos loudly threatening violence against the printer. Normal stuff really.
Until central nine.
The patient came in ambulatory. Mid-sixties maybe. Teacher. Stable vitals. Deep laceration across his palm from tripping while holding his morning glass of orange juice.
Nothing dramatic. Just another injury in another endless shift. Robby took the case mostly because everyone else was drowning.
The guy was chatty at first. Adrenaline-bright. Talking too fast while Robby irrigated glass from the wound. People often get talkative when they are nervous.
He was talking about a student of his, one he wants to take on into his mentorship programme. He talked about how much he loves teaching, how he keeps going even though he’s coming up for retirement.
Robby mostly nodded along. Sometimes it's nice to sit and listen to someone talk about their passions. Come to think of it, this man is starting to remind him more and more of….
Something cold slid silently through Robby’s chest. Not enough to stop him functioning. Just enough to make the room feel suddenly smaller.
Adamson.
Robby blinked hard. The patient was still talking. Robby abruptly realized he’d stopped irrigating the wound entirely.
“Dr. Robby?”
The room tilted unpleasantly. He finished the sutures on autopilot. Clean work. Efficient. Calm voice. Nobody looking at him would’ve thought anything was wrong. But by the time he stripped off his gloves, his pulse was hammering hard enough to hurt.
Dana caught him in the hallway.
“You good?”
“Yep.” He snapped back quickly.
Her eyes narrowed immediately.
Robby kept walking. Because if he stopped moving, he thought he might actually come apart a little.
The office door shut behind him harder than intended. Inside, dim morning light stretched across the floor.
Jack stirred immediately on the couch, years of trauma making him wake at changes in sound before consciousness fully arrived. “…Robby?”
Robby didn’t answer right away. He stood with both hands braced against his desk, head lowered, breathing carefully through adrenaline that had nowhere logical to go.
Jack pushed himself upright slowly. One look at him and the sleep vanished from his face. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Jack snorted softly. “Right. And I’m six foot four.”
Robby laughed once despite himself, thin and frayed around the edges. Jack shifted further upright with a grimace, blanket pooling around his waist.
“Talk to me.”
For a moment Robby considered lying. But exhaustion won.
“I just spent twenty minutes cleaning and suturing a hand,” he admitted quietly. “A teacher. Very passionate about teaching. And being a mentor.”
“Adamson,” Jack guessed softly.
Robby nodded once, wallowing in the horrible lingering aftershock of memory. Like his nervous system had briefly forgotten that here and now Robby is Chief of Emergency Medicine, not Adamson. Because Adamson is dead.
Jack held his gaze for a long moment. Then he lifted the blanket. “C’mere.”
“That couch is tiny.”
“You are tiny.”
“I’m literally taller than you.”
“Spiritually tiny.”
Robby collapsed onto the couch with all the grace of a tranquilized elk. Jack immediately reached for him, drawing him even closer. One hand sliding behind Robby’s neck. Thumb rubbing once slowly beneath his ear. Grounding him.
“You’re here,” Jack murmured. “You’re safe.”
Robby closed his eyes briefly. Jack’s voice had always had this strange effect during bad moments. Like hearing someone talk you back across a bridge your brain accidentally crossed.
“I know,” Robby said quietly.
“Your nervous system does not.”
“Unfortunately my nervous system is an asshole.”
“True.”
Jack tugged gently until Robby finally gave in and slumped sideways against him. The couch creaked ominously.
“You’re bony,” Jack muttered.
“You literally sleep in my office like a gremlin.”
“Answer the accusation.”
Robby’s forehead settled against Jack’s shoulder eventually. The tension in him still lingered, but softer now. No longer sharp enough to cut. Jack rested his cheek lightly against Robby’s hair. Neither of them spoke for a while.
Eventually Jack murmured sleepily “You okay?”
A long pause.
Then:
“Better.”
Jack nodded once against him.
Somewhere in the middle of the next silence, both of them fell asleep.
About forty minutes later, Dana marched down the hallway with Santos, Langdon, and Whitaker trailing behind her like poorly supervised ducklings.
“I’m telling you,” Santos whispered, “if Robby’s hiding in there doing admin while we drown, I’m legally allowed to fight him.”
“He’s either crying or alphabetizing trauma shears,” Langdon said.
Whitaker looked concerned. “Should we maybe not ambush him?”
“No,” Santos replied immediately.
Dana sighed. “Just be normal for once.”
Dana opened the office door quietly. And stopped.
The others nearly piled into her spine trying to peek around her.
The office was dim and peaceful.
And on the world’s smallest couch, Jack and Robby were dead asleep tangled together under the blanket.
Jack was half on top of him, face buried against Robby’s chest. Robby had one arm wrapped around Jack so tightly it looked instinctive.
The whole scene looked painfully domestic. Like they’d accidentally wandered into a retirement-home marriage twenty years early.
Santos clapped a hand over her mouth.
Whitaker made a tiny strangled noise.
Langdon whispered, absolutely delighted: “Oh my God. They’re hibernating.”
“Look at Abbott’s leg just fully launched off the couch,” Santos whispered back.
“Robby’s gonna need spinal surgery.” Whitaker pointed out, wincing in sympathy.
Dana slowly turned toward them with the expression of a kindergarten teacher moments from committing homicide.
“Out,” she mouthed silently.
“But Dana,” Langdon whispered, “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I need to take a picture”
“OUT.” Not louder, but firmer.
Whitaker was openly smiling now. “They look kinda happy.”
“They look sedated,” Santos corrected.
Dana shoved all three backward into the hallway before they woke either of them. The door clicked shut again softly. For a moment she just stood there looking through the little office window.
Then she smiled to herself. She ushered the ducklings back down the corridor, telling them to get back to work, before she finds them an enema to do.
Alone standing outside the office, Dana folded her arms smugly.
“I won the betting pool.” Dana glanced back at the couch once more, expression softening around the edges. “Pool money’s buying them a bigger couch.”