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Outside these four walls is purse chaos, Robby thinks to himself.
Machines beep in the distance, patients scream out in pain and residents bark orders back and forth. Paging ortho, pushing epi, beginning compressions. It’s fucking a zoo. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is a zoo. It’s an environment that Robby thrives in, sure. One he has to thrive in. But it’s a zoo.
So what does that make him?
Right now, he certainly feels like an animal. One in a cage.
Robby takes a deep breath in through the nose, then out through the mouth, slow and smooth like he’s blowing through a straw. Just like the psychiatrist taught him.
Outside is chaos, but in here, I’m safe.
Sleeping has become less and less of a given, as it turns out. It’s why he keeps opting for doubles, why he keeps insisting Dana puts him on the schedule for two shifts in a row. He doesn’t sleep much anyway, and after working a double he’s usually guaranteed at least four to six hours of catatonia while his nervous system resets. It’s not great, but it’s working. Well, working well enough.
It’s just that Dana makes him take a break between the shifts whenever he’s on for a double. Like he’s a dog crate-training, or a goddamn toddler who needs his naptime. Or time-out, he shudders. She remands him to an on-call room and shuts the lights off. Honestly, she stops just short of giving him a warm bottle of milk and singing a lullaby. It’s good for you, Robby. She laughed when she first suggested it. Good for me, too. Gets you outta my hair.
So Robby’s ‘naptime’ has become part of the routine. Most days he ends up scrolling on his phone, unable to get down, but occasionally he manages a twenty-minute power nap. If it can even be categorized as powerful, he scoffs.
Robby tosses and turns on the tiny cot, hearing his every miniscule movement echo in the tiny room as he shifts atop the plastic-coated springs. It’s a shitty bed, thinner and shorter than even a regular twin. Beside it sits another equally shitty cot. Sometimes, he considers pulling the two beds together for a little more comfort, but then he thinks again. It’s a fucking hour. He can survive an hour confined to a tiny cot.
Only, this time Robby actually does want to sleep. It’s a college graduation weekend in Pittsburgh, and there’s bound to be drunk drivers and overzealous party-goers that stroll (or rather, roll), through the ER doors in a couple hours’ time. He’s been on since two o’clock this morning, and it’s nearing six o’clock in the evening. Fourteen hours into his twenty-four. Almost showtime. In an hour or so, the accidents would begin streaming in, and Robby wants to feel refreshed. He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut, and feels the tension locking up in his body. He tries to breathe again, in and out, counting to four and holding it at the top and whatever else, but it’s no good. There will be no sleeping on this break if he can’t get it together quick. Which only makes him feel worse, actually. Guilt thrashes up in his gut as he thinks about his colleagues out there on the floor, working regular hours because they’re regular people, who can regulate their little lives enough to leave this fucking place to go home and relax there, instead of whatever torture he was subjecting himself to.
Robby’s beginning to spiral. He nearly gets out of bed and walks right out of the tiny room and into his second shift, but he holds himself back knowing that Dana will get Kiara involved if he doesn't keep his distance from the ER floor for a full hour. Dana even has a fucking kitchen timer set up on her desk that she winds up with a sly smile every time he goes on his ‘break’. He doesn’t feel like incurring either of their wrath today.
Robby turns from his side onto his back, laying flat in the bed. His mind unhelpfully supplies a suggestion on how to get to sleep, one he almost brushes away immediately, if it weren’t for how effective it’s been in the past.
You always sleep better after you come.
He isn’t a fucking kid anymore, though. He’s not an animal.
He can’t even think of the last time he’s touched himself, run ragged with work, and life at home being nothing but brief breaks between shifts. It doesn’t take long, though, for Robby’s cock to wake up beneath his scrubs at the mere thought of an orgasm. As though his libido has simply been waiting for the first excuse to come out of a long hibernation.
He’s hard now, not offensively so, but enough to stroke himself slowly. He gets there in a second though, full masted, rigid in his own palm. Robby tugs on himself a few times, feeling that old familiar fire begin to crackle in his belly. His heart starts pounding, and he can feel it in his throat, hearing the blood rushing in his ears. It won’t take long, maybe ten more pulls and he’ll be there. He’ll worry about the cleanup after he’s done. If this puts him out for even twenty minutes, he won’t care if he spends the rest of the shift with stiff boxers. His fist passes over the swollen head of his cock faster now, slicked with precum and spit, and he’s close, he’s so close, and then–
Light blinds him for a moment, but it’s not the white heat of release. No, it’s the horrifying reality of someone opening the door, the light from the ER floor shining in on the dark room.
“Fuck,” Robby groans, tugging the poor excuse for a blanket back over himself as the door to the on-call room shuts again a second later.
“Sorry,” the intruder breathes, a voice Robby instantly recognizes as Abbot. “Gloria’s making the rounds.” He hears the lock to the door quietly click shut.
“Fuck,” Robby says again, sitting up in his cot. “Did she–”
“She didn’t see me,” Abbot supplies, looking over his shoulder, peering through the drawn blinds of the on-call room door. “She’s on a warpath, though.”
“Right, yeah,” Robby replies, breathless. He’s still hard, hot and throbbing in his palm. His eyes readjust to the darkness after the flash of light, and it’s in that moment that he realizes his hand is very obviously down the front of his pants, and there’s a good chance the room smells a bit. At least it’s just Abbot.
Fuck, he feels like an idiot. A feeling which morphs into panic and embarrassment when he watches a smile curl Abbot’s lips.
“Are you–?” Abbot smirks, his eyes scanning Robby’s form. He’s leaned against the door, arms crossed. All business, if it weren’t for that smile.
Robby squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Fuck,” he groans for a third time. “Just… just tryin’ to get to sleep.”
When Robby opens his eyes, Abbot stands up straighter against the door and cocks his head to the side.
“Well, don’t stop on my account,” Abbot teases, but he’s adjusting himself in his pants. There’s a bulge there now, tenting his scrubs, and it’s not easy to miss.
“Jack,” Robby winces, and Abbot scoffs. He pushes up off the door, leaving, finally, Robby prays, but his horror only grows when Abbot takes a step deeper into the room, towards the other cot.
Abbot lowers himself down onto the other flimsy mattress. The plastic squeaks beneath his weight. Robby is mortified, he’s frozen with panic, but still somehow his cock is still thick and insistent in his palm. It’s humid down there, between his legs and inside his scrubs. Robby squeezes hard at the root, hoping it’ll keep his arousal at bay, tamp down whatever feelings are bubbling up in his gut, but it has the opposite effect. Now all he wants to do is keep stroking.
Abbot leans back on the other bed, propping his head up on the meager pillow. He reaches for his groin, smoothing a hand over the front of his scrub pants once before tugging the waistband down.
He takes his boxers with him.
Robby can do nothing, it seems, besides stare at Abbot’s cock. He’s full and thick, with a length that curves a little to the side. A few rivers of violet veins travel up from the root, getting lost somewhere towards the fleshy hood that covers his tip.
Abbot’s uncut, which Robby supposes shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s just been a while since he’s seen a dick other than his own. Other than a patient’s. Most people are uncircumcised these days, he guesses. It’s not really anything new. He just doesn’t see that when he looks down in his own lap.
But he can’t stop staring at the way Abbot’s foreskin is pulled back tight around his swollen tip. He can’t stop staring as Jack takes himself in hand and tugs up and down. Can’t stop staring as the soft skin slides over his length, practically kissing every time it meets and encloses the ruddy red head.
Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have one, a foreskin, that it holds his attention. Robby tries to convince himself that that’s what it is, that’s why he’s so affected.
It’s then that he realizes Abbot is stroking himself, sincerely. It’s then, only then, that Robby realizes he is, too.
“You ever done it with a friend?”
Abbot’s voice is thready, dry. Like he’s already worked himself over, when he’s only barely just begun. And he’s grinning.
“Uh,” Robby scoffs, shaking his head a quick no. “Can’t say I have.”
Abbot snorts, hand still passing over his cock in a smooth rhythm.
“We did it all the time in Iraq,” he explains, with a shrug of his shoulder and a little nod towards his lap. “S’fun. Better, even, if you ask me.” He drags his fist over the head of his cock with a bit more vigor now, letting his head fall back against the lumpy pillow.
“It’s natural,” Abbot adds, smiling as he stares at Robby. “To wanna feel good with your buddies.”
It’s natural.
Jack’s words echo in Robby’s head as he starts to pump himself in earnest. It feels good, it feels fucking good, and he’s riding right on the edge. Saliva builds up on Robby’s tongue the more he stares at Jack’s fist pumping his cock, the more his flushed red head peeks out from beneath its pale pink hood. It’s natural, he reminds himself as his lips part, as his jaw unhinges just a little. He’s just a man, or less than, even. Reduced to mere biology, horny and hungry and chasing release. A dog on a bone. Fire churns in Robby’s belly, licking up his spine. Jack lets out a guttural moan as his body goes rigid, pumping his last before he finally comes. His release shoots out in a white arch that lands on his black scrubs in a flash. Abbot’s smiling with an open mouth, tongue wagging, chest heaving, and then it’s Robby’s turn. He’s coming before he knows it, before he means to, seed seeping between his knuckles and drooling out onto his groin, into the hidden, wiry dark curls of his pubic hair.
Robby sighs, his eyes fluttering shut as his head falls back against the pillow. He feels the tension fleeing his body, his joints loosening at the elbow, the shoulder, the jaw. His brow unfurrows, and he sucks in another deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. He feels it working, now. Finally.
He hears Abbot let out a weak laugh, and Robby’s eyes flick open, his head turning towards the other cot.
“Good?”
Jack’s still smiling. He looks good like that. Happy, and sated. Robby shakes his head once as if to jostle the thought out of his mind, but it’s a stubborn thing. And it’s not the first time he’s thought it. Jack looks good.
“M’good,” Robby replies with a curt nod. He smears his release on his boxers within his scrubs, watching Abbot do the same, tucking himself away. Maybe they should keep the on-call rooms stocked with tissues, he thinks idly. For next time.
Not that there will be a next time. But, still. People must come in here to cry, from time to time. Right?
Abbot groans a little as he rises from the cot, and the memory of that same sound falling from his lips a moment ago strikes through Robby like lightning.
It will do him some good to keep his distance from Abbot for the rest of night shift, Robby resolves.
“Well, good night, sleeping beauty,” Abbot offers as he heads for the door. He turns as he’s got his hand on the doorknob and smiles. “Catch you in an hour.”
Robby nearly misses it, but the old bastard throws him a wink as he turns the doorknob.
Maybe he won’t keep his distance.
He lets out another long, low sigh, laying his clean hand on his warm forehead. He’s gotta be too worked up to sleep now, he thinks for a moment, before a yawn takes over all body function. Another one comes in quick succession, and he’s turning over onto his side, curling up, pulling his knees in and tucking his hands beneath his head. Robby lets his eyes droop shut, his shoulders dropping from his ears, teeth unclenching.
Another deep breath shudders through his body, and he’s out.