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The heat had settled over Pittsburgh like something alive.
Not dramatic thunderstorm heat. Not the cinematic kind that rolled in with lightning and heavy rain and gave everyone an excuse to stand in doorways looking soulful. This was uglier than that. Heavy. Damp. The kind that crawled under your scrubs and sat there all shift, sticking fabric to skin and making everybody in the emergency department just a little meaner than usual.
By four in the afternoon, the Pitt looked like it was one power outage away from collective homicide.
“Swear to God,” Santos muttered, fanning herself dramatically with a patient chart, “if one more old man asks me why it’s hot in here like I personally fist-fought the air conditioning unit, I’m going to become a criminal.”
Whitaker made a tired noise of agreement from beside her. He was halfway through documenting a discharge and looked approximately three seconds from face-planting directly into the computer.
Santos eyed him. “You look like roadkill.”
“Mm.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Whitaker blinked slowly. “Thank you.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Across the desk, Dana snorted into her coffee.
The day had been relentless from the start. Heatstroke. Dehydration. Three separate syncopal episodes at a bus stop downtown. A toddler who’d somehow managed to burn his hand on the pavement. Every room full. Every hallway loud. The air conditioning in one section of the department had given up entirely around noon, and maintenance had essentially shrugged and gone, yeah, that sounds like a tomorrow problem.
Santos’ phone buzzed against the counter. She checked it, then immediately groaned loud enough that several people looked over. “No,” she announced to the ceiling. “Absolutely not.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. “You dying?”
“My landlord says the AC repair guy can’t come until Monday.”
Mateo, passing through with iced coffee, said, “I doubt you’ll last that long.”
Santos flipped him off without even looking up.
“It’s ninety-four degrees,” she said. “The apartment windows don’t open properly and the fridge already sounds haunted. If I go home tonight, I’m gonna die like a pathetic house plant that hasn’t been watered.”
Whitaker let out a quiet groan at that, still staring at his charting. He was already dreading the end of shift and having to head back to that overheated apartment block.
“You can both stay at mine,” Mel offered absently from the nurses station.
Santos shook her head immediately. “Baby, I love you, but your apartment is at least an hour away and your cat wants me dead.”
The conversation should have ended there. Probably would have, with anyone else.
Instead, from where he stood at the end of the desk reviewing labs with the deeply haunted expression of a man one inconvenience away from faking his own death, Robby looked up and casually said “Stay with us tonight.”
Santos blinked. “What?”
Robby had already looked back down at the chart in his hand like he hadn’t spoken. “We’ve got space and working AC.”
There was a brief silence around the station. Not awkward exactly. More… startled. Because attendings didn’t usually invite half-dead junior staff members home like stray cats caught in the rain.
Santos narrowed her eyes slightly. “You sure?”
Robby shrugged one shoulder. “Jack will be making enough food to feed a small country regardless, so you’ll be doing me a favour.”
From somewhere nearby, Dana made a soft sound that was suspiciously close to fond.
Whitaker kept typing for approximately three more seconds before the meaning of the conversation caught up to him. His head lifted slowly. “Really?”
Robby glanced over.
There was a pause long enough that Whitaker immediately started mentally preparing to explain he didn’t need anything, he was fine, really, he had an apartment, technically.
Then Robby’s gaze flicked once over Whitaker’s face. The exhaustion there. The awful grey half-sick look med students got after too many shifts stacked together. “Really, kid.”
Whitaker stared at him.
Santos looked delighted instantly. “Ooooh, class field trip.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” Whitaker said automatically.
“You’re not,” Robby replied, already turning back toward a trauma room. “Unless you set something on fire.”
“Mateo’s banned before I even arrive?” Santos called after him.
Without turning around, Robby lifted one hand in a vague gesture that could’ve meant goodbye, agreement, or surrender. And just like that it was decided. Time for a sleepover.
—
By the time shift change finally crawled around, the heat outside had somehow gotten worse. The ambulance bay shimmered under the evening sun. The city looked sticky. Exhausted. The kind of heat that made tempers short and asphalt soft.
Inside the department, everybody had hit that particular stage of fatigue where language itself became optional.
Whitaker finished his last note about a man admitted with constipation despite trying at home enema hacks he’d found online. Beside him, Santos was leaning fully against the counter, eyes half closed.
“You alive?” she asked without opening them.
“I think so.”
“Same.”
Across the station, Dana glanced up from her paperwork. “You two heading out?”
“Eventually,” Santos muttered.
Whitaker rubbed at one eye hard enough to leave a red mark. He had sweat dried at the collar of his scrubs and felt vaguely like he’d been dipped in fryer oil.
The automatic doors hissed open nearby.
Robby walked back into the department. His stethoscope already packed away, bag slung over his shoulder, hair damp at the temples from the heat. He glanced between them both. “You done?”
Santos pointed toward the back. “I gotta grab my bag.”
Whitaker nodded quickly. “Me too.”
“Five minutes,” Robby said. “I’m parked in staff.”
He said it like this happened every day. Like attendings routinely ferried exhausted residents and med students around after fourteen-hour shifts.
Whitaker found himself weirdly anxious as he headed for the lockers. Not bad anxious. Just… uncertain.
He hadn’t had many interactions with Robby’s husband, night shift attending Dr Jack Abbot. And he’d had even less one on one conversations with the man. A passing dialogue in the ED hallway months ago after Jack had come by with food for Robby during a double shift was as in depth as it got.
Santos, meanwhile, looked entirely unbothered.
“You think Dr Abbot cooks well?” she asked as they walked out toward staff parking.
Whitaker stared at her. “That’s your concern?”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“You say that now,” Santos replied, “but if I walk into that house and there’s garlic bread? I’m never leaving.”
The evening air hit them like opening an oven door. Robby was leaning against a dark SUV a few rows down, one hand in his pocket, the other scrolling through his phone.
Whitaker noticed, distantly, that he looked tired too. Not resident tired. Older than that somehow. Worn down at the edges. The kind of exhaustion that settled into bone.
The second he saw them approaching, Robby shoved the phone away. “You still hanging in there?”
“No,” Santos said immediately.
“Good. Honest answer.”
Whitaker climbed awkwardly into the backseat while Santos claimed the passenger side with the confidence of somebody boarding public transport.
The car was blissfully cold.
Santos actually groaned. “Oh my God.”
Robby snorted softly as he pulled out of the parking lot. The radio played quietly. Downtown Pittsburgh slid past outside in gold evening light, hazy with heat. For a few minutes, nobody spoke much.
The car hummed softly beneath them, air conditioning fighting a valiant battle against the heat still radiating off the roads. Outside, Pittsburgh drifted past in streaks of gold-orange evening light, the skyline hazy and wavering.
Whitaker could feel himself sinking steadily toward unconsciousness in the backseat.
Santos, unfortunately, still possessed the ability to form sentences. “So,” she said, turning slightly in her seat, “does Dr Abbot actually know we’re coming, right?”
Robby’s mouth twitched faintly. “Nope.”
Whitaker lifted his head slightly. “Wait, seriously?”
“He’ll survive.”
“That feels like something you should warn a person about,” Santos informed him.
“He’ll find out eventually.” Robby shrugged one shoulder, completely unbothered. “Yankl likes feeding people. You’ll be fine.”
Whitaker frowned faintly at the nickname, rolling it around in his head quietly. He’d heard Robby use it before, usually low and fond and absent-minded, but never asked about it.
Santos, possessing absolutely no survival instinct, did. “What’s a Yankl?”
Robby glanced at her briefly before looking back to the road. “My husband.”
“No, I got that part,” she said. “What does it mean?”
Something in Robby’s expression softened around the edges. “It’s Yiddish. He hates when people call him Jacob,” Robby added. “So naturally I do it constantly.”
“Ah,” Santos nodded wisely. “Love.”
“Harassment,” Robby corrected.
The city thinned gradually around them as they drove. Older neighbourhoods. Brick houses stacked close together. Trees heavy with summer.
Whitaker rested his head briefly against the cool window.
“You really don’t mind us staying?” he asked quietly after a minute.
Robby snorted softly. “We’ve got room.”
“Big house?” Santos asked.
“Too big,” Robby replied immediately. “Jack’s fault.”
“Oh my God,” Santos said delightedly. “You say that like he’s got an addiction to DIY or something.”
“Pretty much.”
Whitaker laughed under his breath.
Robby tapped his fingers once against the steering wheel before continuing. “We bought the place years ago. Needed a lot of work. And apparently giving Jack unrestricted access to hardware stores was a huge error on my part.”
“So he renovated it himself?” Whitaker asked.
“Mostly.” Robby sounded simultaneously long-suffering and deeply fond. “Started small. One room. Then another room. Then suddenly he was teaching himself plumbing at two in the morning because he decided the upstairs bathroom needed to be completely redone and couldn’t possibly wait.”
“That’s insane behaviour.”
“You should have seen the early years. No heating. Leaking roof. One functioning bathroom.”
Whitaker smiled despite himself, exhaustion loosening something quiet in his chest. The conversation felt… easy. Not forced. Not attending-and-resident careful. Just people talking.
“He likes projects,” Robby said after a moment, voice softer now. “Keeps his hands busy. Keeps his brain busy too. He’s good at it,” Robby continued. “Especially after…” He gestured vaguely. “Everything.”
Whitaker’s eyes flicked briefly toward the front seat. Toward the subtle edge of protectiveness tucked carefully into Robby’s voice.
“He still overdoes it,” Robby muttered. “Leg acts up and suddenly he remembers he’s not actually thirty anymore.”
“Neither are you,” Santos pointed out.
“Unnecessary.”
Robby sighed dramatically. “You’re both exhausting already. We haven’t even fed you yet.”
Whitaker blinked. Fed you. Like that was already assumed. Like somewhere between leaving the hospital and getting in the car, this had shifted from obligation to hosting.
Outside, the neighbourhood changed again. Quieter streets now. Older houses. Warm porch lights blinking on one by one in the evening dark.
Robby turned down a narrow tree-lined road. “There,” he said simply.
Whitaker looked up. The house sat halfway down the block beneath enormous old trees, warm light spilling from downstairs windows onto the porch.
Not pristine but a very nice house. Lived in.
The porch steps looked recently repaired. One upstairs window was open despite the heat. There were plants crowded near the front steps and what looked suspiciously like lumber stacked near the side of the house.
Santos leaned forward immediately. “Oh, this is rich people nice.”
“It absolutely is not,” Robby said.
“You have a porch.”
“That means nothing.”
Robby killed the engine, but made no move to get out the car, suddenly feeling the awkwardness of bringing your junior colleagues home.
For a second, nobody moved. Santos stared up at the house. “You absolutely have money.”
“Yankl bought it during the housing crash because the foundation scared everyone else away.”
“That somehow makes it more concerning.”
Robby snorted quietly as he climbed out. Whitaker followed more slowly, legs aching with the heavy stiffness of fourteen hours spent standing. The evening air wrapped around him immediately, hot and damp even this late.
Up close, the house looked even more lived-in. Not magazine perfect. Real.
There were tools stacked neatly beside the porch steps. A pair of work boots near the front door. Wind chimes hanging crookedly beside the railing. One section of siding clearly newer than the rest.
The second Robby unlocked the front door, cooler air spilled out to meet them.
Not aggressively air conditioned. Just shaded and comfortable. The house smelled incredible. Garlic. Butter. Fresh herbs. Something roasting.
And underneath it all; wood polish, old books, laundry detergent, the faint dusty smell of an old house still being worked on.
Robby kicked the door shut behind them with practiced ease. “Shoes off,” he said automatically.
Whitaker bent down immediately, suddenly hyperaware of the state of his scrubs, the dried sweat and blood on his scrubs, the fact he was currently standing inside his boss’s house holding the world’s saddest backpack.
Santos, meanwhile, was openly looking around.
The hallway was narrow and warm-lit, old hardwood creaking beneath their feet. Framed photos lined the walls beside half-finished renovation projects. One doorway had fresh paint swatches beside it. There were books stacked on nearly every surface. A toolbox sat abandoned near the stairs beside what looked suspiciously like several lengths of pipe.
From somewhere out of view came the sound of music and pans clattering.
“Hey, honey.” Called a familiar voice, soft and unguarded.
Robby toward it automatically, leading his newly acquired ducklings further into the house.
The kitchen opened up suddenly at the back of the house, large and bright and clearly renovated compared to the rest. Old exposed brick ran along one wall. Wide windows sat open above the sink despite the AC humming quietly somewhere nearby. A huge wooden island dominated the middle of the room, cluttered with chopped vegetables, open cookbooks, prescription bottles, and what looked like three different cordless drills.
At the stove stood Jack Abbot. Shirtless.
Whitaker’s exhausted brain stalled immediately.
Jack had his back half turned toward them, moving around the kitchen with easy familiarity. One hand stirred something in a pan while the other reached for chopped vegetables from a bowl beside him.
His shoulders gleamed faintly with sweat in the warm kitchen light. Reading glasses sat crookedly on his nose as he glazed over to check the pages of a recipe book. A dish towel hung over one shoulder while music crackled softly from an old radio near the sink.
Robby had stopped dead in the doorway like a man unexpectedly confronted with his own husband. And was very much pleased about it.
Whitaker watched his expression shift almost imperceptibly.
Tiredness easing. Shoulders dropping. Something warm and deeply fond settling into place.
Jack reached down absently for a bottle near the stove, frowned when he grabbed the wrong thing, and muttered to himself “If this is fucking cumin again I’m giving up right now.”
Santos made a tiny choking noise beside Whitaker.
Jack looked up immediately. There was a brief beat as he registered his audience. Then his eyebrows lifted. “Well,” he said. “You brought me company.”
Robby finally moved again, crossing the kitchen without hesitation to press a quick kiss against Jack’s cheek as he passed. “Heatwave refugees,” he said.
Jack hummed thoughtfully, glancing between Santos and Whitaker over the top of his glasses.. “Mm. Tragic. Guess I’ll make more pasta.”
Whitaker became abruptly aware that he looked approximately one step from death.
Jack seemed to clock this instantly. “There’s cold drinks in there somewhere if my other half hasn’t stolen them all.”he said to Santos, pointing vaguely toward the fridge,
“I heard that,” Robby said, already opening cabinets.
“Honey, you were supposed to.” Then Jack looked at Whitaker properly. “You look done in, pretty boy.”
Whitaker opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“Don’t flirt with students please, Yankl.”
“I’m not flirting,” Jack replied. “I’m being welcoming.”
“You called him pretty boy.”
“Oh, so you don’t think he’s pretty?”
Whitaker stared at the floor immediately while Santos looked seconds from cardiac arrest from sheer enjoyment. Jack grinned lazily, enjoying the reactions he was getting.
Jack stepped away from the stove to get some plates out of the overhead cupboard. And Robby used this as his opportunity to steal some grated cheese that was waiting to be added to the pasta and shove it into his mouth as quickly as possible.
Jack slapped his hand away without even looking. “You absolute menace.”
“You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
Robby stole more cheese anyway.
Whitaker stared. Not at the affection exactly. At the ease of it. The softness. These were attendings.
And yet somehow the whole house felt… gentle.
—
Dinner happened gradually. Not formally.
Nobody announced it. Nobody set a table with painful politeness or tried to make Whitaker and Santos feel like guests. The evening just seemed to unfold around them naturally, warm and easy in a way Whitaker couldn’t quite stop noticing. Nonetheless, Whitaker and Santos found themselves sitting at the nearby dining table, waiting and watching.
At some point while the pasta finished cooking, Jack disappeared upstairs briefly and came back down wearing an old black t-shirt softened with age, much to Robby’s obvious disappointment.
“You’re ruining my evening,” Robby informed him from where he was perched against at the kitchen island.
Jack snorted, reaching around him for the wooden spoon. “You say that like you weren’t mentally undressing me already, in front of the children no less.”
“These children are adults I think you’ll find.”
“The children,” Jack repeated firmly, nodding toward Santos and Whitaker.
Santos looked conflicted by this classification and Whitaker concentrated very hard on the condensation running down his glass.
The kitchen filled with movement and noise as dinner came together.
Jack moved easily around the space despite the slight hitch in his gait, pulling trays from the oven and stirring sauce one-handed while Robby automatically stepped around him in practiced patterns that spoke of years together.
At one point Jack reached absentmindedly toward a high cabinet and Robby, without even looking up from where he was cutting bread, got there first.
“Yankl.”
“I know.”
No discussion. No fuss.
The table was being filled with food and it smelled so good that Whitaker was salivating. He watched the two trauma attendings plate the meal with the strange feeling of witnessing something deeply private and completely ordinary at the same time, choosing instead to focus on the dinner.
Santos, meanwhile, had entirely abandoned subtlety. “So,” she said, accepting a bowl from Jack, “how long have you two been married?”
“Officially?” Jack asked with a smirk as he poured out four glasses of chilled wine.
Robby sighed immediately. “Oh no.” He settled himself down in one of the empty chairs at the table.
Jack grinned. “Ten years.”
Whitaker nearly choked on his water.
Santos looked equally startled. “Ten?”
“Mm.”
“You act disgustingly in love for people married ten years.”
“That’s because Michael’s obsessed with me,” Jack said easily, sitting down beside Robby with his own bowl.
Robby took exactly half a second before replying: “You literally followed me across state lines in 2014.”
“You invited me.”
“You showed up with a duffel bag and a bunch of flowers.”
“You sounded so lonely though.”
“The flowers set off my hay fever so bad I sneezed in your face when you tried to kiss me.”
Whitaker watched them stare at each other for a second across the table. Not dramatic. Just familiar. Like this conversation had existed in different forms for years.
Jack finally looked away first, reaching for his glass. “He still married me,” he informed Santos solemnly.
“That’s because I was young and stupid.”
Jack smiled into his wine, soft around the edges. “No, honey. I wouldn’t call forty-two young enough to be classed as ‘young and stupid’.”
Something warm settled quietly over the table after that. Not silence exactly. Comfort. The kind built slowly over years.
They ate family-style, passing bowls around the table while the kitchen fan hummed overhead. Outside, the windows stood open to the heavy summer night, cicadas singing somewhere beyond the porch lights.
Whitaker found himself relaxing inch by inch without meaning to. It was the strangest thing. He couldn’t remember the last time dinner had felt like this. Not rushed between shifts. Not eaten standing up over charting. Not microwaved at midnight over textbooks. And that’s not even thinking about his childhood family dinners which are their own category of trauma.
Just… people talking.
At one point Robby got distracted midway through a story about residency and stopped eating entirely until Jack nudged his knee under the table. “Food, doctor.”
“I am.” Robby insisted.
“You’re philosophising at your pasta, instead of eating it.”
Santos pointed her fork suddenly. “You absolutely met at work, didn’t you?”
Both men looked offended instantly.
“We met at a specialist training programme,” Robby corrected.
“Which is work,” Santos replied.
“It was an exchange style programme about trauma stabilisation in extreme circumstances.”
“That is somehow worse.”
Jack laughed softly beside him. “He gave me a thirty minute lecture about triage protocols the first time we spoke.”
Whitaker looked genuinely startled. “That worked?”
Robby looked deeply affronted. “I’m charming.”
“You were furious,” Jack corrected. “Somebody insulted your presentation and you nearly hit them.”
“They deserved it.”
“You were in love with me by breakfast on day two, I swear.”
Robby muttered something in Yiddish under his breath that made Jack grin like sunlight.
Whitaker watched them for another quiet second. The ease between them. The history. The softness tucked into every argument. And somewhere, slowly and unexpectedly, something inside his chest unclenched a little.
—-
By the time dinner ended, Whitaker felt dangerously close to falling asleep face-first into the remains of the pasta bowl.
The heat outside still pressed heavy against the windows, but inside the house everything had settled into a slow, comfortable rhythm. Music still drifted softly from the old radio near the sink while Jack and Robby moved around the kitchen cleaning up in the loose, automatic choreography of people who had been doing this together for years.
Whitaker tried to help. Actually, he stood up with every intention of helping. Unfortunately, the second he straightened fully, the room tilted slightly.
Jack looked over immediately from where he was loading the dishwasher. “Easy there.”
“I’m fine,” Whitaker said automatically.
Robby, who was wiping down the kitchen counters, made a soft sound that translated universally to ‘sure you are’.
Santos pointed at Whitaker with the deep seriousness of somebody two glasses of wine deep. “He’s got the posture of a sick TB infected child.”
“I hate you all,” Whitaker muttered.
“No you don’t,” Jack replied easily. Which was irritatingly accurate.
Jack nudged the dishwasher shut with his hip before looking between them. “Alright, babies. Bedtime.”
Whitaker blinked. Santos gasped theatrically. “Oh my God, we’re being put to bed.”
“You say that like it’s not clearly necessary.”
Robby snorted softly into the dish towel. Whitaker felt heat creep up the back of his neck as Jack crossed toward the hallway, gesturing vaguely for them to follow.
“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show you where everything is before you both collapse somewhere inconvenient and we have to put our manual handling training into use.”
Jack ushered them towards the creaking staircase. It was, however, clear that the master bedroom wasn’t upstairs with the others.
Its door sat tucked off the main hallway downstairs instead, half visible from where they’d come up the stairs. Whitaker wondered about it briefly until Jack, catching the direction of his glance, said easily: “Stairs and prosthetics stop being friends after enough fourteen hour shifts.”
“Or when somebody ignores every warning sign his body gives him,” Robby added dryly from where he was trailing behind them.
Jack waved one hand dismissively. “Anyway. Ground floor bedroom. Very glamorous. Very sensible. Occasionally necessary when I’m having a no-leg day.”
He said it so casually Whitaker almost missed the meaning entirely. Not embarrassment. Not self-pity. Just fact. Built into the architecture of their lives the same way the softened stair edges and extra railings suddenly were once you noticed them.
Whitaker noticed immediately that the second floor felt different from downstairs. Less finished in places. One section of hallway had fresh plaster near the ceiling. A door at the end of the hallway stood open to reveal stacked lumber and a folded tarp beside shelves full of tools.
“Told you,” Robby said. “Never stops renovating.”
“It’s enrichment,” Jack replied.
“For who?”
“For me.”
Whitaker smiled quietly to himself.
Jack led them down the hallway. “This one’s free,” he said, pushing open a bedroom door.
The room inside was simple but comfortable. Old hardwood floors. Pale walls. A wide bed with mismatched quilts folded at the bottom. Open windows letting in the sound of cicadas outside.
Whitaker stopped in the doorway slightly. The room didn’t feel like a guest room. It felt… used. Ready. Like people have stayed here before.
Jack leaned against the doorframe loosely. “Bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” he said. “Clean towels are under the sink because my husband refuses to believe linen cupboards should exist.”
“They shouldn’t,” Robby said immediately.
“They absolutely should.”
“Waste of space.”
Santos wandered past them toward another room further down the hall. “Oh this one has a window seat,” she announced immediately. “I call dibs forever.”
“You say that now,” Jack called after her, “but the radiator beneath it screams like a haunted woman every winter.”
“I can fix her.”
Robby looked tired just hearing that sentence.
Whitaker stayed where he was for a second longer, backpack still hanging awkwardly from one shoulder. Something about this whole evening felt strange. Nobody had expected anything from them since they walked through the door.
Just:
eat.
sit down.
sleep.
Jack noticed him lingering almost immediately. “You alright there?”
Whitaker nodded quickly. “Yeah. Just—”
He stopped. Didn’t actually know how to explain it.
Jack’s expression softened slightly in understanding anyway. “Long day,” he supplied gently.
Whitaker let out a small breath. “Yeah.”
For a second nobody spoke. Then Robby stepped forward, reaching automatically past Whitaker to switch on the bedside lamp.
The gesture was absent-minded. Domestic. Like preparing rooms for exhausted people was something he did all the time.
“You can sleep in tomorrow,” Robby said. “Neither of you are on until afternoon.”
Whitaker stared slightly. Sleep in. The words landed strangely hard after weeks of dragging himself upright before sunrise.
Jack pointed vaguely toward the bed. “Mattress is good,” he said. “I tested it personally after accidentally falling asleep in here when I was working on the window frame.”
“You fell through the ceiling six hours earlier,” Robby reminded him.
“In my defense, that ladder was vindictive.”
“That ladder was completely stationary?”
Jack ignored him completely.
Whitaker laughed before he could stop himself. Real laughter this time. It startled him slightly.
Jack smiled faintly at the sound. Then, gentler now: “Get some sleep.”
Something in Whitaker’s chest tightened unexpectedly. Not painfully. Just… warm.
Robby lingered another second in the doorway beside Jack, both of them framed in soft hallway light and old wood and the quiet creaks of the house settling around them.
For a strange moment, Whitaker had the absurd thought that this was what it might have felt like to come home from somewhere difficult.
Then Jack pointed at him lightly. “And if either of you pass out in the shower, at least do it dramatically so we’ve got a good story tomorrow.”
The moment broke instantly. Whitaker huffed a laugh as Santos shouted from down the hall: “No promises!”
—
After that first night, nobody really intended for it to become a habit.
That was probably why it happened so easily. At first it was practical.
Another heatwave shift followed by another offer of dinner and somewhere cool to sleep. Santos stayed because the apartment continued to resemble a slowly simmering death trap, while Whitaker stayed because Santos did and he tended to follow her around like a lost puppy.
Then it became convenience.
An overnight bag appeared in Santos’ chosen room after she declared hauling scrubs back and forth “completely unnecessary.” Whitaker left a phone charger behind by accident and discovered Jack had quietly bought a better one within the week, one that wasn’t held together by tap and sometimes sparked when it was plugged in.
Nobody mentioned either thing. The house simply absorbed them a little at a time.
Whitaker started waking to the sound of Robby downstairs making coffee before dawn, the old floorboards creaking softly beneath careful footsteps. Santos learned exactly which cabinet Jack hid the good snacks in and began raiding it with the confidence of a long-term tenant. Somewhere along the line both of them acquired favourite mugs.
Jack pretended not to notice. Robby absolutely noticed.
He noticed when Santos stopped asking before opening the fridge. When Whitaker started leaving textbooks spread across the kitchen table between shifts. When he added extra coffee to brew in the mornings for their guests. And instead of discouraging it, Robby seemed to quietly adjust around them.
“Stay again tonight,” he’d say after rough shifts, already reaching for his keys before either of them could do the awkward dance of pretending they weren’t exhausted.
Or:
“You’re back on at seven tomorrow anyway.”
Or simply:
“There’s leftovers at the house.”
Like the decision had already been made. Whitaker slowly realised Robby worried in practicalities. Not emotionally loud. Never that. But he was always checking shift schedules and making sure people ate before driving home.
Jack cared openly but Robby cared like a man trying to quietly reinforce a collapsing structure before anyone noticed the cracks.
The house adapted around them inch by inch after that. Santos acquired a drawer in the upstairs bathroom after Jack got tired of finding her things scattered everywhere. Whitaker accidentally left spare scrubs in the laundry room and discovered them folded neatly on his bed two days later.
One morning Whitaker came downstairs after sleeping nearly twelve hours straight post on-call shift and found Robby standing in the kitchen staring at a smoking frying pan with visible distrust.
Jack sat at the table drinking coffee, with his leg off, and watching with the kind of serene calm usually reserved for hostage negotiators.
“You told me it was easy,” Robby accused.
“I said eggs are easy.”
“These are trying to kill me.”
“They’re scrambled eggs, honey.”
Whitaker stopped halfway into the kitchen.
Robby noticed him first. “Morning,” he said immediately, like Whitaker appearing in his kitchen at eleven in the morning was the most normal thing in the world. “There’s coffee.”
Jack pointed lazily toward the stove. “Save him, sweetheart.”
“I can cook,” Robby said defensively.
“You have previously set pasta on fire.”
“That pot was faulty.”
Whitaker, still barely awake, made the mistake of looking at the pan. “…is that black?”
“It was eggs thirty seconds ago,” Jack informed him.
Santos wandered in wearing one of Jack’s old Pitt t-shirts like she’d always lived there. “Smells like shit.”
“Thank you,” Robby said flatly.
Jack grinned into his coffee. “Atta girl.”
The mornings became something Whitaker started craving before he realised that was happening.
The kitchen warm with sunlight and the sound of somebody moving around before shift. Jack cooking using his crutches with music playing softly from the old radio while Robby sat at the island reading or answering emails badly one-handed.
Some mornings were quieter than others.
On bad leg days, Jack moved slower, leaning more heavily against counters or even straight up hopping from one side of the kitchen to the other. Those mornings Robby became impossible to argue with, but that doesn’t stop Jack from trying.
“Sit down, Yankl.” Robby would say in his most commanding ‘ED Chief’ voice.
“I am sitting down.” Jack would snark back, while totally not setting down. But then he’d do as he was told and sit down anyway.
Whitaker learned quickly that Jack’s version of listening involved dramatic complaining followed by immediate compliance. Mostly.
Santos adapted fastest of all.
She started bringing groceries home without asking. Started yelling goodbye when leaving for shifts. Started greeting Jack with “What’s for dinner?”
Like she’d been doing it her whole life. Jack never seemed bothered.
If anything, he looked amused by the gradual invasion of his home.
One evening Whitaker came downstairs after a shower to find Santos and Jack sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by paint samples while Robby looked on with the exhausted expression of a man losing a war slowly.
“You said one accent wall,” Robby said.
“It is one accent wall,” Santos argued. “With a few other accent walls so it doesn’t feel singled out, duh.”
And maybe that was the strangest part. How natural it all started to feel.
Nobody sat them down and said: you’re welcome here.
The house simply kept making room for them until one day Whitaker realised he no longer packed an overnight bag before shifts.
There was already one waiting upstairs.