Archive of Our Own ^beta

You laugh at his joke as the two of you hover near an empty patient room and chat, his hand coming up to rest on your upper arm as you smile and shake your head at him. 

The new cardiologist is objectively and admittedly an attractive man. Strong features, vivid blue eyes and blonde hair. He’s very sweet too, charming and funny in more of a ‘haha’ way than witty and dry humor. He very clearly works out and takes great care of himself and he can only be a year or two older than you. You get why most of the women of the Pitt and the hospital in general are buzzing about him.  

You can damn near feel Robby staring a hole into your back from the hub as he watches the two of you. Robby. The same Robby you’ve been pining over and flirting with and waiting for five months. 

You started as a day shift attending here over six months ago. Your co-attending is almost exclusively Robby, your schedules seeming to align perfectly either by some very great luck or by his design. You know he’s into you. He flirts back sometimes, always blushes when you flirt with him. You’ve caught him checking you out. There have been a couple of almost-kisses. And you know he’s staring a hole into your back right now because he’s jealous. 

What you don’t know is why he won’t just ask you out already. It’s not like you’re a resident. You’re both attendings. You settled in so fast here it only felt both to you and everyone else like you were new for the first two weeks. So it’s not like he’s trying to give you some space to settle in and find your footing and groove and adjust. Sometimes you feel like he’s unsure if you’re really interested in him but you don’t know how that’s possible. 

And yet it is.

Robby is pretty sure you’re interested in him. You flirt with him, enough to make him blush at times. He doesn’t think he sees you flirting with others but he can’t really be sure. And just when he starts gaining the confidence and is ready to ask you out he walks out of the break room after wolfing down half a sandwich at 3 p.m. and has to watch another man make you laugh and touch you.

He racks his brain to try and think if you laughed at the last joke he made, if he’s made you smile how the new guy has before. He tells himself to let it and you go. That if the new guy here is interested in you he has absolutely no hope in hell because the new guy is tall, blonde hair and blue eyed, fit, and born in the same decade as you. But Robby can’t let you go because he’s down hopelessly bad for you. 

You finally turn and start walking towards the hub slowly. “Well, thank you for coming down so quickly. We all appreciate it.” You offer him a sincere smile. 

The two of you are within earshot of Robby now. “Only for you.” He gives you a quick wink that makes Robby roll his eyes and grab a piece of spearmint nicotine gum from his pocket. 

You give a short and soft laugh. “Okay,” you nod. What the fuck are you supposed to say to that? 

“But seriously. Feel free to call me for a consult… liberally.” He smirks at you. “Can never be too safe about potential cardiac involvement.” 

“You really can’t. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.” You wave to him before finishing your walk to the hub and standing next to Robby, the two of you grabbing tablets and looking down at them. At least ostensibly. 

“Hi.” You glance up at him. “How’s it going for you?” 

“Oh,” Robby drawls. “It’s going. I’d ask how it’s going for you but feel free to call him for a consult liberally feels like it means it’s going pretty well.” He drags out the first syllable of pretty. 

“Please.” You roll your eyes at him.

“Can never be too safe about potential cardiac involvement,” Robby teases. Or at least he’s telling himself he’s teasing you and not jealously letting you know he heard your conversation.  

“You know, maybe I will.” You nod. It gets Robby to look at you. “Call him liberally.”

This time it’s Robby rolling his eyes at you. “It’s a waste of everyone’s time.” 

You look up at him and smirk. “He raises our patient satisfaction scores.” 

“Ha!” Robby laughs. He clutches his hands over his heart and squints in fake pain. “You wound me.”

“You’re a doctor. You can handle it.” You look back at your tablet and try to keep the smile out of your voice unsuccessfully. “Or since it’s a wound to your heart, if you need some help I could call him to come back and take a look at you.”

He snorts and you share a little chuckle. “He’s certainly into you,” Robby comments, tries to keep his tone neutral. But you can hear it. His jealousy.  

You shrug. “Eh. He’s into every woman here. Employee or patient. He’s friendly.” 

Robby gives you a look that you see with your quick glance up at him. “I’m just saying,” he shrugs, “you’re naive if you think he just wants to be your friend.”

You laugh through your nose and shake your head at him. “You know, something I love about men is how everything is always about them or another man.” You lock your tablet and shift to lean on the counter a little, facing Robby now. He raises his eyebrows at you as he does the same, facing you. “Did it ever occur to you that he and his wants are irrelevant? That it’s not about him? Because it doesn’t really fucking matter what he wants to be if I don’t want to be more than his friend.”

“Do you?” Robby fires back immediately.

You raise your eyebrows at him, caught off guard at how quickly he threw the question at you. How desperate he seems to know the answer. “Do I what?”

“Want to be more than his friend?” 

“I don’t know, Michael.” You shrug deeply. “Guess you’re gonna have to stay tuned to find out.”

Robby clenches his jaw. “He’s gonna end up asking you out.”

You tilt your head and smirk at him, raise your eyebrows almost challengingly, and take a few steps backwards as you speak. “Well, what are you gonna do about that Dr. Robinavitch?”

You spin on your heels to walk facing forward and continue to the ambulance bay doors. If this doesn’t get him to make a move you don’t know what will because you have no idea how to pull off something more come fucking get me with him. 

Robby stands there for a second as he watches you walk away. Fuck it. There’s not going to be a better time to try. He tosses the gum into the trash and stalks off after you.

Once outside you walk up out of the bay just a little, off to the side. You stand almost against the side of the building but not quite, close your eyes and look up at the sky, let the warmth of the sun seep into you. Your moment of city-noise stained peace is interrupted by heavy footsteps that have you smirking. 

You bring your head back down and open your eyes in time to see Robby walk the last few steps to you. He keeps walking, forcing you to take a couple of steps backwards until you hit the wall. His hand flies up to cushion the back of your head as his knee works its way in between your legs and spreads them until you're pressed right against his thigh. But he drops his hips to pin you against the wall so you can’t move, can’t seek out any friction. 

And then he’s kissing you, hard and possessive. The hand that isn’t behind your head finds your hip, squeezes it hard enough to bruise as he uses it to help keep you pinned. Kissing each other is everything you both wanted it to be and then some. It’s blinding and has both of your hearts racing, both of you wired for sound for the other. 

“Fucking finally,” you sigh when you break apart for air, both of you panting hard. You give him a breathless smirk. “So does this mean you want to be more than just my friend?”

Robby lets out a single sardonic laugh that’s more air than anything. He kisses you again and fuck the man can kiss. “What am I gonna do about it?” he asks the next time you break for air, ignoring your question. He leans back a little, the hand on your hip coming to hold your jaw. He gives you a small smile as he brushes his thumb across your lips. His smile turns into a smirk as his thumb presses against the seam of your lips. “Good girl,” he whispers off handedly when you open your mouth for him. Robby presses his thumb down on your tongue and brings his face back in a little closer to yours and grows serious, eyes dark and sparkling with lust, voice dropping in pitch and volume. “I’m gonna ruin you for anybody else tonight.”