Work Text:
The house was quiet in the way it only ever managed before half five in the morning.
Not peaceful, exactly. The city was already awake beyond the windows, engines hissing over wet roads, a truck reversing somewhere down the block, the low metallic clatter of bins being dragged back from the curb. But inside, it was still soft around the edges. The heating clicked in the walls. The coffee machine muttered to itself on the counter. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard complained under Jack’s uneven step.
Robby stood in the kitchen in socks and scrub pants, one hand braced against the counter, the other wrapped around a mug waiting to be filled. He was reading through the overnight messages on his phone, only skimming over them, barely paying attention.
From upstairs, there were more familiar sounds. Jack had a particular rhythm in the mornings.
One heavier step. One quieter placement. Pause. Drawer opening. Zip of a bag. The faint knock of something hard against the bedroom doorframe.
Robby glanced up as Jack came in carrying one boot in his hand, his dark shirt still untucked, tactical trousers sitting low on his hips. His hair was damp from the shower and sticking up in a way that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else.
“You look like you lost a fight with the wardrobe,” Robby said.
Jack looked down at himself, then back up. “I won.”
“Did you?”
“You should see the state of the wardrobe.”
Robby huffed into his coffee.
Jack crossed the kitchen, leaned in without asking, and kissed the corner of Robby’s mouth. It was brief, automatic. Robby caught the front of his shirt before he could move away and stole a second one properly.
Jack smiled against him. “Morning,” he said.
“Sun isn’t up yet.”
“Still morning.”
Robby let him go, mostly because the coffee machine gave a final irritated splutter and Jack turned toward it like a man answering a summons. He moved around the kitchen with the casual efficiency of someone who could find everything blindfolded: mug from the second cupboard, protein bar from the drawer Robby pretended not to know about, eggs already boiled in the fridge from whatever fit of domestic preparedness Jack had suffered the night before.
On the table beside Robby’s work bag, Jack had laid out half his day.
Radio battery. Spare gloves. Tourniquet. Penlight. Trauma shears. A small battered notebook with water-warped corners. Two sealed packs of gauze. Things that would have looked alarming to anyone else before breakfast.
To Robby, they were Tuesday.
“You’re with SWAT today?” he asked, though he already knew. Robby generously poured out coffee into both of their mugs, a necessary start to the day.
Jack glanced over while peeling an egg with one hand. “TEMS attachment. Narcotics warrant. Maybe two, depending on how the first one goes.”
Robby watched him too carefully. He knew he was doing it. Knew Jack knew too. “High risk?”
Jack gave him the sort of look that meant he was deciding how honest to be before coffee. “High enough they asked for medical embedded.”
Robby narrowed his eyes. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s a warrant,” Jack said. “It’s controlled until it isn’t. You know how this works.”
Unfortunately, he did. Robby looked back at his phone, not reading any of the messages on it. Jack came closer, his hip bumping lightly against Robby’s where he leaned against the counter.
“I’ll text when we’re clear,” Jack said.
“You always say that.”
“And then I do.”
“Eventually.”
Jack’s mouth twitched. “You’re very picky for a man who forgets lunch exists.”
“I remember lunch.”
“You remember other people’s lunch.”
Robby gave him a look over the rim of his mug. Jack only smiled wider and reached past him to steal the toast that had just popped up.
“You made that for me?” Jack asked.
“I made that near you.”
“Ah, so mine.”
“Thief.”
“Husband,” Jack corrected, and bit into it. “Legal distinction.”
Robby tried not to smile and failed. Not much. Just enough for Jack to notice.
Jack always noticed. It was one of his more annoying habits. That and the way he could turn a kitchen at dawn into something Robby would miss before he had even left it.
—
By the time Robby finally checked the clock properly, he was already late enough that Dana would start making comments about him “embracing a work-life balance” with the particular tone she reserved for impossible medical miracles.
He drained the rest of his coffee in one swallow and pushed away from the counter with a sigh. “I have to go.”
Jack, crouched near the hallway bench lacing up his boot, hummed in acknowledgment without looking up. The uniform shirt pulled tight across his shoulders as he leaned forward. Even half-dressed for work, he looked solid. And hot. Robby looked away, knowing he would get distracted and risk making himself even later for work.
Robby grabbed his bag from beside the table.
“You’ll one hundred percent be home in time for dinner?” he asked.
Jack snorted softly. “That’s a very loaded question for barely six in the morning.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Unless somebody sets the city on fire, yes.”
“Mm.”
Jack tied off the second boot and straightened with a quiet grunt, favoring his right side for half a step before the prosthetic settled properly beneath him. It was subtle enough most people never noticed. Robby always did.
Jack adjusted his belt, then looked over. “You’re staring.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s rarely good for me.”
Robby rolled his eyes and crossed the hallway toward him anyway, fingers automatically fixing Jack’s shirt that was tucked awkwardly into the waistband of his trousers. “There,” he muttered.
Jack looked unfairly pleased about being fussed over. “You know,” he said conversationally, “most people just say goodbye before work.”
“You got shot three years ago.”
“It barely counted.”
“You were literally airlifted.”
Jack considered this. “Mm. Dramatic transport. Good drugs though.”
Robby shoved lightly at his chest. “Not funny.”
Jack caught his wrist before he could pull away. Warm fingers. Familiar pressure.
The apartment had narrowed around them somehow, the way it always did in moments like this. Morning light pushing pale gold through the kitchen windows. The smell of coffee still lingering in the air. The radio strapped onto Jack’s bag crackling faintly with distant static.
Robby leaned in first this time.
The kiss was slow in the way their others hadn’t been earlier. Sleepy and lingering and a little reluctant around the edges. Jack’s hand slid to the back of his neck automatically, thumb warm against skin still damp from the shower.
“You better text me,” Robby murmured against his mouth.
“I will.”
“And if you get hurt-”
“I won’t.”
“That’s not how injuries work, Jack.”
Jack smiled faintly, forehead dropping briefly against Robby’s collarbone. “You planning to lecture me on medicine before shift?”
“If necessary.”
“Hot.”
Robby made a face at him and stole one last kiss anyway.
Then Jack opened the apartment door, cold morning air curling instantly into the hallway, and everything shifted with it. Domestic warmth retreating beneath uniforms and radios and trauma kits. The soft little cocoon of dawn folding itself away for later.
Jack squeezed the back of his neck once before letting go. “Go save your emergency department, chief.”
Robby adjusted the strap of his bag. “I expect you to be on your best behavior today.”
Jack looked genuinely offended. “I always behave.”
Robby stared at him. Jack grinned.
And then Robby was shaking his head, stepping out into the waking city while behind him the apartment door clicked shut with quiet familiarity.
---
The walk to the Pitt took just under ten minutes if Robby cut through the side streets and ignored at least three traffic signals, which he did most mornings out of habit more than urgency.
Pittsburgh was fully awake by then.
Steam curled from street grates into the cold morning air. A delivery truck blocked half the road outside a bakery two blocks down from the hospital, someone inside yelling apologies while unloading crates at speed. Cyclists threaded through traffic with a level of optimism Robby considered medically concerning.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket halfway across the crosswalk outside the hospital.
Jack.
Robby checked it automatically.
Heading out now. Try not to adopt any more med students while I’m gone.
Despite himself, Robby smiled.
No promises.
Three dots appeared immediately.
That’s how you ended up with Whitaker.
Robby snorted quietly to himself as he shoved the phone back into his pocket and headed through the ambulance bay entrance.
The familiar smell of the ED hit him almost instantly. Coffee. Bleach. Stale vending machine food. The sharp sterile tang of chlorhexidine. Underneath all of it, the constant electric hum of too many people in too little space trying very hard not to let anyone die.
Home, unfortunately.
The department was already moving at full speed.
Monitors chimed from somewhere down the hall. EMS rolled a patient toward triage while Princess walked backward beside the stretcher, firing questions without breaking stride. Mateo was arguing with a printer near the nurses station like it had personally insulted his family. Somewhere overhead, a trauma alert echoed distorted through old speakers.
Robby hadn’t even fully crossed into the department before Dana looked up from the desk and pointed at him accusingly.
“You’re late.”
“I’m thirty seconds late.”
“Late is late. I notice.”
“You notice atmospheric pressure changes.”
Robby dropped his bag into the office doorway before stepping back out into the organized disaster. He caught fragments as he moved through the department.
“…potassium was hemolyzed again-”
“…not putting that in my note because I enjoy having a license-”
“…where’s Collins?”
“…ask radiology if they’re stupid or just ignoring me specifically-”
Normal. Comfortingly normal.
And maybe because of the morning, or the coffee, or Jack’s hand warm against the back of his neck less than half an hour ago, Robby realized he was in a good mood.
Enough of one, apparently, that Dana narrowed her eyes at him from across the station.
“What?”
“You’re cheerful.”
“I’m not cheerful.”
“You smiled at triage.”
“That could’ve been gas.”
Mateo looked up from the printer immediately. “Oh my God, date night.”
Robby kept walking. “Don’t start.”
“IT WAS date night,” Santos said, appearing from nowhere with the terrifying instincts of a shark scenting blood in water. “Wait. Did we know there was date night?”
“There’s always date night,” Dana said absently, typing. “You people just never listen.”
Whitaker blinked. “Hold on, hold on. The husband exists?”
Robby stopped dead in the middle of the nurses station and looked at him. Whitaker visibly reconsidered every decision that had led him to opening his mouth.
“Careful,” Dana murmured into her coffee. “He can and will assign you rectal temperatures for a month.”
“I’m just saying,” Whitaker defended weakly, “I’ve worked here eight months and I’ve never seen this man.”
“That’s because Robby keeps his private life private,” Mohan said reasonably while reviewing labs at the station.
“Or,” Mateo added, “the husband is fictional. Like a Canadian girlfriend.”
“He’s real,” Dana said.
Santos leaned over the counter immediately. “You’ve met him?”
Dana’s expression turned deeply unhelpful. “Maybe.”
“Dana.”
“He’s nice.”
“That’s it?” Whitaker demanded. “That’s all we get? Nice?”
“What do you want from me?” Dana asked. “A PowerPoint?”
---
The morning settled into the kind of chaos that made up the backbone of the Pitt.
Not dramatic enough for headlines. Just relentless.
By eight-thirty, Robby had already broken up an argument between two brothers in triage, approved three admissions the hospital did not technically have beds for, and threatened to personally sedate Mateo after the nurse somehow managed to crash the tracking board system by “clicking too enthusiastically.”
“It was loading slowly,” Mateo defended while IT sighed over the phone loud enough to be heard from across the desk.
“It’s a computer, not a lawn mower,” Santos snapped.
Dana slid a coffee into Robby’s hand sometime around nine without interrupting the conversation she was having with EMS about a nursing home transfer currently en route.
Robby took it automatically. He was halfway through the cup when Princess marched past muttering, “Absolutely not,” under her breath.
“What happened?” Robby asked.
Princess pointed toward bay four. “Your dementia patients escaped.”
“…patients?”
“Plural.”
Robby closed his eyes briefly.
Inside bay four, two elderly men wearing absolutely nothing except hospital socks were attempting to fight each other beside the stretcher while Whitaker stood frozen between them holding a blanket like a hostage negotiator.
One of the men pointed furiously across the room.
“He stole my wife.”
“She died in 1998, Harold,” the other man shouted back.
“She liked me better!”
Whitaker looked at Robby with the hollow desperation of a man seeing God. “Help.”
Robby pinched the bridge of his nose.
Somewhere behind him, Santos burst into laughter.
By ten-fifteen, EMS brought in a man with a pitchfork through his calf after an argument involving landscaping equipment, tequila, and “a misunderstanding about mulch.” Collins took one look at the x-ray and muttered, “Honestly impressive,” before ordering pain meds.
At ten-forty, a screaming four-year-old arrived after biting into a Tide Pod like forbidden fruit while his exhausted mother repeated, “I looked away for one second,” to anyone within hearing distance.
At eleven, McKay got trapped for nearly twenty minutes in a consult with a woman furious about infected breast implants because, according to her “Nobody warned me my boobs could smell bad.”
Mateo walked out of the room afterward looking altered. “I know things now,” he said weakly. “Terrible things.”
“You work in emergency medicine,” Dana replied without sympathy. “That’s the job.”
The department rolled onward around them in waves.
Phones ringing, monitors chiming and stretchers rattling over old flooring. Coffee appearing and disappearing with supernatural speed.
Robby moved through it all on instinct. Exam room. Nurses station. Trauma bay. Back again. Maybe a trip to the toilet if he was really lucky.
Checking labs over shoulders. Answering questions before they were fully asked. Redirecting overwhelmed family members and quietly fixing problems before they became disasters.
And threaded through the middle of all of it, small thoughts of Jack surfaced and vanished like light catching on water. Probably clearing the first warrant by now. Probably annoyed about paperwork. Probably surviving entirely on caffeine and those fake tasting protein bars he likes.
Robby made a mental note to remind him to eat a real meal later.
The thought had barely settled before the overhead speakers crackled sharply to life.
“Attention ED. Incoming tactical activation. Multiple GSWs. SWAT officer down. ETA six minutes.”
Everyone in the Pitt knew the sound of a trauma alert. Around him, movement accelerated.
Dana straightened immediately at the desk. Collins swore under her breath and turned toward trauma bay. Princess was already barking for equipment to be prepped. Mateo abandoned his coffee mid-reach.
Robby felt something cold settle low in his chest. Not fear, not yet. But close enough to recognize its outline in his mind.
“TEMS on scene?” he asked immediately.
Dana looked up, already reaching for the incoming EMS channel. “Dispatch says embedded medic transported with patient.”
Robby was moving before she even finished speaking.
“Prep trauma one and two,” he ordered. “Whitaker, with me. Santos, get the rapid infuser ready. Collins, I want blood available before they hit the doors.”
The department surged into motion around him.
Somewhere beneath the noise, Robby’s phone sat silent and heavy in his pocket.
---
The six-minute ETA became four.
Trauma one flooded with bodies and motion, the organized choreography of people who had done this too many times to need much speaking. Santos was spiking fluids at the rapid infuser while Princess checked the thoracotomy tray with brutal efficiency. Mel had handfuls of paperwork that they will no doubt need .Whitaker nearly collided with a portable ultrasound machine trying to maneuver it through the doorway.
“Sorry,” he muttered automatically.
“To the machine?” Santos snapped.
“Yes?”
“Jesus Christ.”
Robby ignored them all, pulling gloves on hard enough the latex snapped against his wrists. Officer down. Embedded medic transported with patient. His mind kept catching on the phrasing like a tongue pressing against a broken tooth.
Not EMS. Not paramedic. Embedded medic.
Jack had texted him less than six hours ago.
The ambulance bay doors burst open before he could spiral any further.
Heavy boots. Raised voices. Radio static crackling over itself. Someone shouting for more suction before the stretcher had even cleared the doors.
Then the SWAT team came through.
Black tactical uniforms streaked with dirt and blood. Kevlar vests. Rifles already being handed off to officers peeling away toward security. One officer had blood up both forearms almost to the elbow.
And in the middle of it all-
Jack.
For one impossible half-second, Robby’s brain refused to connect the image in front of him with the man from the kitchen that morning.
This Jack was all sharp edges.
His hair damp with sweat beneath harsh trauma bay lighting. Tactical vest hanging open over blood-soaked inner layers. Gloves red to the wrists as he manually ventilated the officer on the stretcher with one hand while keeping pressure packed hard beneath the man’s ribs with the other.
“Twenty-eight-year-old male,” Jack said immediately, voice flat with focus as they hit the trauma bay. “GSW right upper quadrant. Suspected liver involvement. Lost pulses once on scene for approximately forty seconds after extraction. Needle decompression left chest performed en route after respiratory collapse. He’s had one bag of normal saline, one gram TXA, bilateral eighteen gauges, intubated and ventilated with ET tube.”
The officer on the stretcher looked horrifyingly young.
Blood soaked half the tactical uniform. Oxygen saturation alarm screaming from the monitor clipped him under his gear. Skin grey beneath smears of sweat and dirt.
Robby moved automatically into position opposite Jack. “What happened?”
“Raid went bad,” one of the officers answered tightly from the doorway. “Suspect came through a hidden room.”
“Hey,” Jack snapped sharply without looking away from the patient. “Eyes here, Mason.”
The officer on the bed made a weak choking sound. Alive. That’s a good start.
Robby caught the monitor readings in one sweep. Pressure tanking. Pulse thready. Breathing uneven despite ventilation.
“Let’s start with two units RBC,” he ordered.
Princess was already moving.
Jack shifted aside just enough for Robby to assess the abdominal wound properly. Blood welled instantly around packed gauze.
“Bullet exit?”
“None found.”
“Fast was positive in the truck,” Jack added. “Pressure responded briefly after the second then crashed again before arrival.”
Across the room, Collins arrived at speed, stopping short for the briefest fraction of a second as she took in Jack’s tactical gear.
“Combat medic?” she asked.
One of the SWAT officers shook his head automatically while helping transfer equipment across. “Tactical emergency physician.”
Jack didn’t react. Didn’t even look up. Too focused.
The patient jerked suddenly beneath their hands, monitor shrieking.
“Pressure’s crashing,” Santos warned.
“Fuck,” Collins muttered.
Jack’s voice cut clean through the noise. “He’s tamponading.”
Robby looked at him instantly.
Jack was already moving. “Breath sounds worsening left side. Neck veins distended. He took blunt impact during extraction.” His eyes flicked once across the monitor. “He’s filling.”
Robby trusted him before the thought had even fully formed.
“Thoracotomy tray,” he snapped.
The tray hit the bedside with a metallic crash. The room was loud and busy, multiple voices overlapping.
“Scalpel,” Robby ordered.
Princess slapped it into his hand instantly.
Noise receded into something distant and underwater as Robby cut through skin and muscle between the officer’s ribs. Blood flooded hot across his gloves almost immediately.
“More suction.”
Jack was already there before the request fully landed, one hand steady on the ventilations while the other guided tubing into the widening incision with frightening precision. Blood vanished fast enough for Robby to see the dark, tight bulge pressing around the heart.
“There,” Jack said tightly.
Cardiac tamponade. Fuck.
Robby widened the opening enough to access the pericardium while Collins managed medications at his shoulder. Around them the room moved with brutal efficiency, everyone suddenly operating half a step faster now that the problem had a shape.
The officer on the table jerked weakly beneath the restraints.
“Stay with us, Mason,” one of the SWAT officers muttered from near the doorway.
Robby sliced carefully into the swollen sac around the heart.
Blood spilled free.
The monitor changed instantly. Not fixed but better.
A pulse hammered back across the screen.
“There we go,” Jack murmured, still manually bagging the patient with steady measured squeezes. “Come on, kid.”
Robby glanced up briefly then. Jack looked wrecked.
Not physically, not obviously. He was still standing solid, still focused, still moving with terrifying competence. But now that Robby was close enough to really see him, little details started surfacing through the adrenaline haze.
Blood crusted along Jack’s hairline near his temple. Too high up to belong to the patient. His left sleeve hung strangely beneath the tactical vest. And every few breaths, almost invisible, he shifted weight off his prosthetic side. Pain.
Robby’s stomach tightened hard. Not now. Later. Patient first.
“Pressure improving,” Collins said.
“Prep OR,” Robby replied immediately. “He needs surgery now.”
Jack nodded once sharply in agreement.
Surgery arrived in a rush of blue gowns and controlled urgency, taking over transport prep almost immediately.
As they transferred Mason toward the OR stretcher, the young officer remained unconscious beneath the ventilations, endotracheal tube secured in place with bloodstained tape across his face. The cardiac monitor still screamed every slight fluctuation like it personally objected to the concept of instability.
Jack never stopped moving with him.
One hand steady on the bag valve mask assembly attached to the tube, measured squeezes timed perfectly with the rise and fall of Mason’s chest. The other stayed braced against the side rail as the stretcher rolled.
“He’s tachy,” Collins said, checking the monitor while surgery crowded in around them.
“He’s stable enough for us to take,” the trauma surgeon replied grimly.
The SWAT officers followed close behind, streaked in blood and sweat and drywall dust. One of them hovered nearest the doorway, eyes fixed on Mason with the hollow look of someone replaying the last twenty minutes on a loop.
“It should’ve been me on that breach,” he muttered suddenly.
Jack’s eyes flicked up sharply. “Don’t.”
The officer scrubbed a hand down his face hard enough to redden skin. “He jumped the stack before clearance.”
Whitaker looked over immediately. “He what?”
“Mason saw movement through the secondary doorway,” another officer explained tightly. “Thought suspect was running.”
“He broke formation,” the first officer said. “Went through before shields repositioned.”
Jack kept ventilating steadily, but Robby saw the tiny tightening in his jaw again. The anger buried under the adrenaline. Not theatrical rage. Worse. Fear after the fact.
“He’s twenty-four,” the officer added quietly, like that explained everything and nothing.
Jack finally spoke without looking away from Mason. “He’s alive,” he said flatly. “You can yell at him when he wakes up.”
The officer let out a rough breath that almost sounded like a laugh. The surgery team took over transport fully then, rolling Mason toward the OR doors in a rush of blue scrubs and swinging IV lines.
Jack stayed beside the stretcher until the last possible second, manually ventilating all the way to the threshold before surrendering the bag to anesthesia with obvious reluctance.
“Call the second he’s out,” he told the surgeon immediately.
The surgeon nodded once. “We will.”
Then the doors shut behind them. And the adrenaline broke.
Robby turned fully toward Jack for the first time since the ambulance bay doors had opened. Up close, it was worse.
There was definitely blood matted near his temple now that the overhead lights caught it properly. Bruising already darkening beneath the edge of his vest. His pupils looked just slightly uneven.
Jack met his eyes and clearly recognized the exact moment Robby noticed.
“No,” Jack said immediately.
Robby stared at him. “You’re concussed.”
“I’m busy.”
“You’re bleeding.” Robby stepped closer, voice dropping into something low and dangerous. “What happened?”
Jack hesitated for exactly half a second too long. And one of the SWAT officers betrayed him instantly. “Doc took a hit off the stack shield when Mason went down,” the officer said. “Smacked his head pretty hard.”
Jack closed his eyes briefly like a man reconsidering all of his friendships. Robby’s expression did not change- which was significantly more frightening than if it had.
“Exam room,” he said calmly.
Jack actually had the audacity to look offended. “Michael-”
“Now.”
The word cracked through the trauma bay like a snapped cable.
Jack opened his mouth again, probably to argue, which was unfortunate for him because Robby was already moving. He caught Jack hard by the upper arm and propelled him toward the hallway with enough force that even Jack stumbled a step.
“Robby-”
“You are concussed.”
“I’m fin-”
“You are bleeding on my floor.”
Around them, the trauma bay had gone eerily still, everyone was now listening.
Jack dug his heels in for half a second near the doorway. “I need to check on Mason when he gets out of surgery.”
“You need a CT scan.”
“Michael.”
Robby stopped so abruptly Jack nearly walked into him.
When he turned around, the expression on his face made Whitaker immediately decide silence was the key to survival.
“You scared ten years off my life walking through those ambulance doors,” Robby said, voice low and razor sharp. “You do not get to argue with me right now.”
Then Robby shoved open the nearest exam room door and physically steered him inside. The door slammed shut behind them.
Silence held for approximately two seconds.
Then one of the SWAT officers stripped off his gloves with a low whistle. “Guess the chief noticed Doc got his bell rung.”
Another officer laughed under his breath while grabbing discarded gauze from the counter. “Told him hiding a concussion was a bad plan.”
“Yeah,” the first officer said. “That’s what happens when you marry the ED chief.”
The entire nurses station froze.
Whitaker blinked. “…marry?”
Santos looked from the closed exam room door to the officers and back again. “Hold on.”
Mateo looked genuinely scandalized. “No. No, absolutely not. That’s the husband?”
Dana pressed her lips together so tightly they nearly disappeared.
Mohan stared down the hallway with dawning comprehension. “Well,” she said slowly. “That explains why Robby looked like he was going to be sick everywhere.”
Princess snorted loudly from trauma one, where she was already flipping the room, ready for the inevitable next case. “Honestly? Kind of romantic.”
Whitaker looked seconds away from a medical event. “The SWAT doctor is the secret husband?” he whispered.
One of the officers frowned at them in confusion. “You guys seriously didn’t know?”
Dana was the first one to recover. “Alright,” she said briskly, clapping her hands once. “Unless any of you want Robby coming back out here and killing us all personally, we’re moving.”
The department startled back into motion.
Princess pointed toward the remaining officers still lingering near trauma. “Anybody bleeding that isn’t supposed to be?”
A chorus of deeply unconcerned responses answered her.
“Probably.”
“Define bleeding.”
“I think my shoulder’s dislocated but, like, a little.”
Whitaker was still staring at the closed exam room door down the hallway. “He’s married.”
Santos grabbed a suture kit hard enough to make the packaging crinkle. “Oh, we are absolutely discussing this while I stitch somebody.”
---
The second the exam room door shut behind them, Robby turned around and pointed at the bed. “Sit.”
Jack stayed standing. Not defiant exactly. More like a man hoping if he remained upright long enough the situation might resolve itself naturally. “Michael-”
“Sit down before I make you.”
Jack looked deeply unimpressed by the threat. Unfortunately, he also looked pale beneath the blood and grime streaked across his face, which significantly weakened his position.
For a long moment neither of them moved. Then Jack sighed through his nose and lowered himself onto the exam bed with all the enthusiasm of a man attending his own execution.
“There,” he muttered. “Happy?”
“No.”
Robby yanked gloves from the wall dispenser hard enough the cardboard box rattled. His pulse still hadn’t settled properly. Now that the trauma was over and Mason was in surgery and Jack was sitting still under bright hospital lighting instead of moving at full speed through adrenaline and chaos, every injury stood out in vicious detail.
Bruising under the edge of the tactical vest.
Blood in his hairline.
The slight unfocused delay when his eyes tracked movement.
And exhaustion. God, he looked exhausted.
Jack watched him carefully as Robby stepped closer.
“You’re scowling,” Jack said.
“You hid a head injury, Jack!”
“It wasn’t hidden. You found it.”
Robby shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass. Jack had the decency to look mildly ashamed for almost half a second.
“What happened?” Robby asked.
“Ballistic shield clipped me during extraction.” Jack leaned his head back briefly against the wall behind the bed. “Caught the edge when Mason went down.”
“You lose consciousness?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Vision changes?” Jack hesitated. Robby went very still. “…Jack.”
“Little blurry in the truck,” he admitted. “It passed.”
Robby closed his eyes briefly like a man communing with higher powers for patience. “You absolute idiot.”
“You married me with full knowledge of my decision-making skills.”
“And it stopped being charming after the third concussion.” Jack’s mouth twitched faintly despite himself. Robby ignored it completely and reached for the straps on the tactical vest. “Off.”
Jack either was going slow on purpose to add to Robby’s headache or it was a symptom of his head injury. Either way Robby lost his patience very quickly and unfastened the vest himself.
The thing was heavy. More equipment than armor at this point, weighed down with medical pouches and trauma supplies and extra magazines and radio gear. Robby lifted it carefully over Jack’s shoulders and set it down in the corner chair.
Underneath, Jack’s dark undershirt clung damply to skin from sweat and blood and whatever the hell else had gotten on him during the raid. Robby quickly pulled it off over Jack’s head, not even giving Jack a chance to do it himself.
The bruising across his ribs was already turning ugly. Robby’s jaw tightened.
“Any chest pain?”
“Bruised.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It hurts when I breathe deeply. Happy now?”
“No.”
Jack snorted softly at that, then winced immediately afterward.
“There it is,” Robby muttered.
“I hate when you’re right.”
“You should’ve thought about that before marrying an emergency physician.”
Jack tipped his head back against the back of the exam bed again, eyes closing briefly, feeling the moment the adrenaline started bleeding out of him.
His shoulders loosened fractionally. His breathing changed. The rigid tactical focus that had held him upright through transport and thoracotomies and trauma resus finally beginning to crack around the edges now that someone else had control.
Robby’s anger softened instantly beneath the fear.
He stepped closer without really thinking about it and pressed careful fingers against the side of Jack’s neck, checking pulse out of habit as much as reassurance.
Jack opened one eye lazily. “You checking my vitals or grounding yourself?”
“Yes.”
That earned him a tired little smile. For one brief second, the room felt very small and very quiet around them. Just fluorescent lights humming overhead and Jack alive beneath Robby’s hands.
Then Robby noticed fresh blood trickling slowly down behind Jack’s ear. His stomach dropped straight to the floor. “Don’t move,” he said immediately.
Jack sighed toward the ceiling. “That sentence has literally never worked on me.”
Robby reached for fresh gauze and cleaned the area, already mentally working through the rest of the assessment.
Concussion. Possible rib fractures. Bruising from impact. Observation and imaging whether Jack complained about it or not.
Jack shifted forward slightly on the exam bed while Robby disposed of bloodied packaging into the sharps bin beside him. Which allowed Robby to see what was on his back.
Low across the right side of Jack’s back, half-hidden beneath smeared blood and the waistband of his tactical trousers, was a dark wet streak Robby knew immediately had not come from Mason.
Fresh blood. Not much but not nothing.
“Lean forward again.”
Jack glanced over his shoulder. “Why?”
“Jack.”
Jack sighed and leaned forward obediently this time, bracing his forearms against his knees.
The movement pulled bruised skin taut across his ribs and exposed the injury properly.
A long torn groove carved across the lower edge of his back and side, angry and swollen and still slowly bleeding beneath streaks of dried blood. The skin around it was already turning deep mottled purple where the vest had absorbed most of the impact.
Bullet graze.
Robby stared at it for one horrible second too long.
Because suddenly he could see the trajectory in his head with awful clarity. Higher and it could have punched through lung. Inward and it maybe could have got a kidney. Different angle, different day, different ending.
“Michael,” Jack said quietly. Robby swallowed hard. “It looks worse than it is,” Jack added.
“That,” Robby said evenly, reaching for saline with very controlled movements, “is not currently your call to make.”
Jack wisely shut up after that.
The room filled instead with small practical noises. Gauze tearing. Saline splashing softly into the metal tray. Jack inhaling sharply through his teeth when Robby cleaned grit and fabric debris from the wound.
“Hurts?” Robby asked flatly.
Jack looked faintly betrayed. “You’re literally disinfecting a bullet wound.”
“Answer the question.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“That’s deeply concerning behavior from a physician.”
Robby ignored him and pressed fresh gauze carefully over the graze before securing the dressing firmly against bruised skin.
Up close, exhaustion was starting to win. Jack’s shoulders had dropped fractionally. His focus softer around the edges now that the adrenaline had somewhere to go. The sharp tactical precision bleeding slowly back into simple human tiredness.
Not TEMS doctor now. Not battlefield medicine. Just Jack.
Just his husband sitting half-dressed on an exam bed with dried blood on his skin and a concussion he’d tried to hide.
Robby finished smoothing the tape down over the dressing before stepping back. “You need imaging.” Jack made a quiet unimpressed sound. “You need observation.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m going to surgery once Mason’s out.”
“No.”
Jack looked up at him then with that particular stubborn expression Robby knew far too well. “Michael.”
“You took a ballistic impact to the head,” Robby said evenly. “You are concussed and you have a bullet graze across your back.”
“I’m aware. I was there.”
“You are staying for observation.”
Jack’s jaw tightened. “I’m not.”
Robby peeled his gloves off slowly, deliberately, then dropped them into the trash.
“I think,” he said quietly, “you’ll find you are.”
---
The exam room door opened and the conversation across the nurses station faltered almost immediately as Robby stepped out carrying a prosthetic leg tucked securely beneath one arm.
The department noise continued around them, phones ringing somewhere near triage, monitors chiming distantly down the hall, but the immediate space around the nurses station went strangely still.
Whitaker stared. Mel blinked twice like her brain had temporarily lost connection to the server. Santos looked one step away from physically pointing.
Robby shut the exam room door behind him with his free hand, entirely unfazed by the silence.
Then he caught all of them looking. And immediately sighed.
“Before any of you say anything,” he said, voice taking on the unmistakable cadence of an attending about to teach, “removing a disabled person’s mobility aid without consent is generally inappropriate, medically unnecessary, and ethically questionable in most circumstances.”
Whitaker nodded automatically despite clearly having no idea where this conversation was going.
Robby shifted the prosthetic higher against his side. “It reduces autonomy, creates further vulnerability, increases distress, and should be avoided whenever possible.”
Mohan, to her credit, seemed to realise there was a trap approaching.
Unfortunately Langdon got there first. He pointed at the prosthetic. “What’s that then?”
Robby looked him dead in the eye.
“That,” he said calmly, “is preventative medicine.”
Mateo made a choking noise.
“I temporarily removed access to an assistive device,” Robby corrected. “Because Jack will absolutely abscond from this department if given even half a chance.”
As if summoned by the accusation, Jack’s muffled voice carried through the closed exam room door. “I can hear you.”
Robby didn’t even turn around. “Good.”
Whitaker looked visibly torn between horror and fascination. “You can just… take it?”
Robby gave him a long look. “No,” he said patiently. “In most situations you absolutely should not remove somebody’s mobility aid.”
Mohan leaned back slightly against the counter, arms folded. “But.”
“But,” Robby continued, “Jack has a documented history of ignoring medical advice, leaving before discharge, not completing treatment, returning to active duty too early, and generally behaving like OSHA regulations are a suggestion at best.”
Langdon snorted, loving every minute of this.
Santos pointed toward the closed exam room door. “So this is allowed?”
“This,” Robby said, lifting the prosthetic slightly, “is harm reduction.”
Mateo stared at him. “You stole your husband’s leg.”
“I temporarily interrupted his ability to make catastrophically stupid decisions.”
“By stealing his leg.”
“Yes.”
Whitaker still looked stunned. “That feels… ethically grey.”
“It is ethically grey,” Robby agreed immediately. “However, Jack currently has a concussion, a bullet graze, possible cracked ribs, and the survival instincts of a screwdriver.”
Langdon pointed a pen at him. “You’ve done this before.”
Robby did not answer quickly enough. The entire nurses station erupted at once.
“Oh my God, you have.”
“No way.”
“That is insane.”
Mateo looked delighted. “How many times?”
Robby pinched the bridge of his nose. “That is not relevant.”
“It’s super relevant,” Santos argued.
Dana watched all of this over the rim of her coffee with deep satisfaction.
Mohan shook his head slowly. “You know, this is somehow both deeply concerning and incredibly affectionate.”
“That’s marriage,” Langdon said.
Robby ignored him completely and moved behind the nurses station, setting the prosthetic carefully out of sight behind the desk.
Santos was still staring at the exam room door. “I cannot believe the secret husband turned out to be a SWAT doctor.”
“Tactical emergency physician,” Mohan corrected absently.
Mateo pointed accusingly at Robby. “You buried the lead massively, by the way.”
“My personal life is not a departmental group project.”
“Your husband came through the ambulance bay covered in blood carrying a ventilated cop,” Santos said. “It became our business at that point.”
Dana’s phone rang at the desk before Robby could say anything else. She checked the screen immediately, raising the phone to her ear. “OR update.”
Robby’s posture changed so subtly most people probably missed it. But Dana saw the way his shoulders tightened before he even spoke. “How is he?”
Dana listened for a moment. Then nodded once. “Still in surgery. He made it through induction stable, good work team.”
---
By the end of the shift, the adrenaline had burned itself out of the department, leaving behind the familiar exhausted ache that always settled over the Pitt by the evening.
Mason had made it through surgery. A hell of a recovery ahead of him, but alive. Stable in SICU. Expected to keep being alive. Good enough.
The rest of the SWAT team had filtered out gradually over the evening, one by one peeling away toward home, paperwork, showers, or stiff drinks. They’d checked on Jack before leaving. Checked on Robby too, though less obviously.
One officer had paused beside the nurses station on the way out. “Thanks for bullying him into staying,” he’d told Robby quietly.
Robby had looked through the exam room window where Jack was pretending to nap. “Trust me,” Robby said dryly. “This was the easy part.”
Now, hours later, the department lights felt dimmer somehow. Softer around the edges.
Dana intercepted Robby near the lockers while he shrugged into his jacket. “He’s cleared?”
“Mm.”
“Concussion precautions?”
“Yes, Dana.”
“Pain meds?”
“Yes, Dana.”
“Is he actually going to take them?”
Robby looked at her.
Dana nodded thoughtfully. “Right. Stupid question.”
When Robby opened the exam room door, Jack was sitting on the bed fully dressed again except for the tactical vest, boots unlaced, prosthetic back on, arms folded across his chest with the expression of a man who was unjustly imprisoned.
“You look smug,” Jack informed him immediately.
“You’re medically cleared.”
“I know.”
“You’re still concussed.”
“I’m aware.”
Robby held out his hand. Jack looked at it for a second before taking it anyway, allowing Robby to pull him upright from the bed. The movement made him wince. Robby noticed immediately.
Jack saw him notice and sighed. “I’m sore, Michael. I got hit by ballistic armor and almost crushed under two hundred pounds of SWAT officer.”
“You also got shot at.”
“That part was honestly less painful.”
Robby ignored him and guided him out toward the staff exit before someone else could find another reason to keep him there.
The Pitt crew watched them go with varying degrees of fascination.
Santos gave Jack a two finger salute from the desk. “Try not to get shot before we properly interrogate you.”
Jack, somehow still upright through sheer will power alone, pointed lazily back at her. “No promises.”
“Jack,” Robby warned.
“I’m literally agreeing.”
Mateo grinned. “See? He’s already lying to us.”
---
The evening air outside the hospital hit cold against overheated skin. Jack exhaled slowly beside him as they started the walk home, shoulders finally beginning to loosen now that there were no monitors screaming at him and nobody actively bleeding nearby.
Halfway down the block, Robby quietly took the go-bag from his hand.
Jack glanced over. “I can carry that.”
“I know.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The aggressive nurturing.” Robby kept walking. Jack bumped lightly against his shoulder. “Michael.”
“You got a concussion and hid a bullet wound.”
“It was a graze.”
“You’re lucky it was a graze.”
Jack went quiet after that. Tired.
By the time they got home, exhaustion was hanging off him heavily enough that even he seemed to realize fighting was becoming medically ambitious.
Robby got him inside and immediately pointed down the hallway.
“Shower.”
Jack blinked slowly. “You say that like I rolled in something.”
Robby pointed at the dried blood still streaked up his arms. Jack considered this, and decided to give in.
The bathroom filled quickly with steam and soft yellow light, the mirror fogging around the edges while Robby adjusted the temperature hotter than usual. Partly for the bruising. Mostly because Jack always ran cold after adrenaline crashes.
Jack sat briefly on the closed toilet lid while tugging his shirt carefully over his head, movements slower now. Less tactical precision. More plain soreness.
The bruises looked worse under proper lighting. Deep violet shadows spreading across ribs and shoulder. The dressing on his lower back stark white against battered skin.
Robby tried not to stare too long. Jack caught him anyway.
“I’m okay,” he said quietly.
Robby folded his arms. “You were shot at today.”
“Technically near shot.”
“That’s not better.”
Jack’s mouth twitched faintly.
Robby reached up automatically, fingers gentler now against the bruised side of Jack’s face. “You scared me,” he admitted finally.
The humor faded out of Jack’s expression almost instantly. For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Jack leaned forward slightly until his forehead rested briefly against Robby’s shoulder. “I know,” he murmured.
It wasn’t an apology exactly. Closer to regret. Robby exhaled slowly and pressed a kiss into his damp hair before nudging him toward the shower properly.
“Go wash SWAT off yourself.”
Jack snorted softly, finished taking his leg and clothes off and transferred to the shower chair, settling under the spray. The water turned pink around his feet almost immediately.
Robby stayed nearby anyway, sitting on the closed counter beside the sink while Jack showered.
Jack tilted his face up into the hot water with a low sigh that sounded almost painful in its relief.
“You hovering again?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Yes.” Robby watched steam curl through the room for a while before speaking again. “Mason’s going to be okay.”
Jack nodded once beneath the spray. But Robby saw the tension ease fractionally from his shoulders anyway.
“He’s a good kid,” Jack said quietly after a moment. “Just moved too fast.”
“You worked with him before?”
“Mm.”
“You kept him alive,” Robby said firmly.
Jack was quiet for a long moment. “Yeah.”
The water drummed steadily against tile. Eventually Jack reached for the shampoo with a wince sharp enough that Robby immediately stood up.
“Don’t.”
“I can wash my own hair.”
“You can barely lift your arm.”
Jack looked offended by the accuracy of this statement. Robby took the bottle from him anyway.
“This is deeply undignified,” Jack informed him while tilting his head back obediently beneath Robby’s hands.
“You’re being very dramatic for someone who claims he’s fine.”
Jack closed his eyes as Robby carefully worked shampoo through damp dark hair, fingertips avoiding the bruised swelling near his temple.
“I can’t help it,” he murmured sleepily.
By the time they emerged from the bathroom wrapped in warmth and clean clothes, the sharp edge of the day had softened slightly around them.
Robby got him settled onto the sofa almost by force, setting his crutches nearby. Blanket. Water. Pain medication pressed directly into his hand while Robby stood there waiting until he swallowed it.
“This is ridiculous,” Jack muttered.
“You’re very brave.”
“I’ve been in a war zone before, you know.”
“And now you’re taking ibuprofen. Life comes at you fast.”
Jack snorted softly despite himself and sank deeper into the cushions. The apartment was warm. Quiet. Safe in that deeply ordinary way hospitals never were.
Robby disappeared into the kitchen before Jack could protest further. He made dinner mostly because feeding people was easier than sitting still with fear. Soup reheated from the freezer. Toast. Tea.
Simple things. Things he could control.
When he came back balancing two bowls of chicken soup and bread, Jack had drifted half asleep against the arm of the couch, eyes heavy beneath the warm glow of the lamp beside him.
This morning Jack had walked out the apartment door in tactical gear and kissed him goodbye like any other day. A few hours later Robby had seen Jack walk into his ED with blood on him, some of it his own. The delayed horror of it kept catching up in waves.
Jack blinked awake as Robby sat beside him. “You cooked.”
“I reheated.”
“Still counts.”
Robby handed him the bowl carefully. Their fingers brushed briefly.
Jack ate slowly, quieter than usual. The edge had finally drained out of him completely now, leaving behind pure fatigue and painkillers and the inevitable crash after sustained adrenaline.
By the time dinner was finished, he was barely keeping his eyes open.
“Bed,” Robby said gently.
Jack made a vague disagreeing sound from where he’d gradually collapsed sideways against Robby during the movie neither of them had really been watching.
“Jack.”
“M’fine here.”
“You’re going to destroy your neck.”
“Add it to the ever growing list of issues.”
Robby rolled his eyes softly and pushed himself upright. “Come on.”
Jack grumbled under his breath the entire way to the bedroom but came willingly enough, leaning subtly into Robby’s side once the dizziness from standing hit him. That more than anything told Robby how bad the day had really been. Jack hated leaning on people.
In the bedroom, Robby helped ease him carefully into bed, mindful of bruises and dressings and the sharp hiss every time Jack moved wrong.
“You know,” Jack muttered while Robby adjusted the pillows behind him, “most people buy flowers after traumatic experiences.”
“You got soup.”
“Devastating romance.”
Robby finally smiled properly for the first time all day.Then he climbed into bed beside him and pulled Jack gently in against his chest before he could argue about that too.
Jack melted there almost immediately. Heavy and warm and exhausted. Alive.
Robby pressed a quiet kiss into his hair and felt some horrible tight thing in his chest loosen just slightly when Jack’s breathing finally started evening out against him.
---
Robby left for work the next morning reluctantly enough that it was almost embarrassing.
Jack was still asleep when he woke properly, sprawled face-down across most of the bed with one arm hooked loosely around Robby’s pillow like he’d lost a fight sometime around three in the morning.
The bruising across his shoulder and ribs had darkened overnight into ugly shades of purple and blue. The concussion hadn’t helped either. Every time Robby had shifted during the night, Jack had made some low unhappy noise and immediately burrowed closer in his sleep like an injured oversized cat.
Now, in the pale morning light, he looked younger somehow. Softer.
Not tactical medicine. Not battlefield calm. Not the man who’d walked through ambulance bay doors covered in blood. Just Jack.
Robby stood in the doorway for a long moment after getting dressed, coffee cooling slowly in his hand while he watched Jack sleep. Eventually he crossed back to the bed quietly and brushed careful fingers through dark hair away from the bruised side of his temple.
Jack made a sleepy sound without opening his eyes.
“Go back to sleep,” Robby murmured.
“Mmf.” Very articulate. “You’re concussed.” Another grumble.
Robby smiled despite himself and leaned down long enough to press a kiss against his forehead before finally forcing himself out the apartment door.
The Pitt, unfortunately, remained the Pitt.
By eleven-thirty, Robby had already:
- broken up an argument in triage
- overridden a surgical consult
- confiscated three energy drinks from Whitaker
- threatened Mateo with paperwork
- consumed approximately half a granola bar
Normalcy had settled back over the department, but now there was an undercurrent threaded through it every time someone looked at him. Not gossip exactly but curiosity.
Santos especially had developed the expression of a woman waiting patiently beside an unexploded bomb.
“You know,” she said while leaning against the nurses station, “keeping a whole husband secret for years is objectively insane behavior.”
“I didn’t keep him secret.”
“You literally did.”
“I simply didn’t discuss my personal life at work.”
“You buried the lead,” Mateo agreed. “The lead being: your husband is a SWAT doctor who apparently gets shot.”
“He doesn’t get shot often, in his defence.”
Whitaker looked up from charting. “Can we meet him again?”
Robby stared at him.
“Not like-” Whitaker flailed vaguely. “I mean properly. Not while he’s covered in blood holding someone’s chest cavity together.”
“That is a very specific sentence,” Mohan observed.
Before Robby could answer, the ambulance bay doors slid open. And there was Jack. The entire nurses station went silent almost instantly. Not tactical gear today.
Just dark jeans, boots, a long sleeved charcoal henley pulled over broad shoulders, and a Pittsburgh Pirates cap shoved low enough to partially hide the fading bruising near his temple.
A large paper drink tray balanced in one hand. Two takeout bags in the other. He looked unfairly good for someone who’d had a concussion less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Robby felt his entire stupid heart immediately do something embarrassing inside his chest. Jack spotted him near the desk and smiled slightly. That same warm expression from yesterday morning in the kitchen.
Not the TEMS doctor. Just his husband.
“Oh my God,” Santos whispered beside Robby. “He brought snacks.”
Dana looked deeply unsurprised. “Told you he was nice.”
Jack crossed toward the nurses station carefully enough that Robby immediately noticed the stiffness still lingering in his gait beneath the prosthetic.
Apparently everyone else did too now.
Whitaker looked momentarily guilty for staring yesterday.
Jack rescued him immediately.
“You must be Whitaker, right,” he said while setting the coffee tray down. “Robby says you have this startled mouse look.”
Whitaker blinked. “...I do?”
“Mm.” Jack handed him a coffee. “I agree with him.”
Santos pointed accusingly. “See? This is weird. You know things about us.”
Jack looked genuinely confused by the accusation. “You work with my husband fourteen hours a day.”
“As opposed to you,” Mateo said, accepting a sandwich with visible delight, “who apparently works in Call of Duty.”
Jack snorted softly. “Pretty much.”
Mohan stepped forward next, offering a hand. “Dr Mohan.”
“Jack.” He shook it carefully with his free hand. “Thanks for helping yesterday.”
“You’re welcome. Mason’s doing well?”
“Still in SICU, but stable.”
The relief that crossed Jack’s face at that was brief but unmistakable. Robby saw it immediately. So did Dana.
Jack finally looked back toward Robby properly then, eyes flicking quickly across him in a once-over so practiced most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. Checking. Automatic.
Robby felt warmth bloom stupidly in his chest all over again. “You’re supposed to be resting,” he said, because several members of staff were watching him with horrifying interest.
Jack handed him a coffee. “I brought bribery.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s sandwiches, Michael.”
Santos looked delighted. “He calls you Michael.”
Mateo clutched his chest dramatically. “This is the best day of my life.”
“Your standards are appalling,” Collins informed him while stealing a coffee from the tray.
Langdon appeared from seemingly nowhere, eyeing Jack thoughtfully. “So. Tactical emergency physician.”
Jack nodded once.
“You meet Robby through work?”
Robby immediately regretted every life decision that had led to this conversation.
Jack, traitorously, looked amused. “Trauma conference,” he answered easily. “Chicago. He yelled at a neurosurgeon.”
“I did not yell.”
“You absolutely yelled.”
“The man was wrong.”
“He was deeply wrong,” Jack agreed. “It was very attractive.”
Dana nearly choked on her coffee. And Robby, standing in the middle of his emergency department while his concussed husband flirted with him over a tray of sandwiches, felt something soft and helpless settle in his chest.
Embarrassing. Completely unbearable.
And very, very loved.