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“Dr. Abbot?”
Jack hasn't moved from his spot by the nurses station.
He knows he should.
He needs to get out of here. Go Home. Catch up on some sorely needed sleep before what will be the inevitable shit show of his night shift.
Jack hates the Fourth of July.
Honest to fucking God, he well and truly does.
But he feels stuck.
Rooted.
Like if he moves from this spot something catastrophic will happen.
“Can I talk to you?”
Whitaker seems breathless when he comes up to him. Pale. Blue eyes wide and worried. Jack is distracted by them for just a moment. It’s difficult not to be. They really are a lovely color, and Jack thinks it’s a travesty he doesn’t get to see it more often.
“Sure.” Jack says. “What's up?”
Whitaker bites his lip.
Rolls it between his teeth.
Jack grows distracted by this too.
“Can we, uh–” he gestures vaguely behind him, in the direction of the family rooms.
Jack nods.
It takes effort to move his feet, to pull them up and away from the floor. Still. He manages. Forces it. Makes himself go. Tries not to think about the manic edges of Robby’s smile and the empty look in his eyes. Follows Whitaker to the family room that’s empty.
Someone else is in the other one.
Whitaker slips in first, nervous and twitchy.
Jack follows, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Whitaker lifts a hand, tugs nervously on an errant curl. Jack wants to reach out, to take the younger man’s hand in his, to give him something else to fiddle with in time to the swelling tide of his worry.
Jack does not.
“Is everything okay with Dr. Robby?” Whitaker asks softly.
Jack's heart thuds painfully against his sternum.
“Why do you ask?” He deflects instead of answering.
“It's just–” Whitaker looks around the room, then down at his feet. He shuffles, drags his hand to the pale line of his throat. Jack watches in idle curiosity as Whitaker curls his fingers like he’s trying to hook them into something. There’s nothing there but the collar of his shirt, and all he ends up doing is leaving bright red lines down the pretty slope of his neck. They’re not deep enough to bleed, but they look like they sting. “He said something weird to me? In the break room? I–maybe it’s nothing, but it was so–”
Jack pushes himself away from the door.
Whitaker falls silent.
“What did he say?” Jack walks closer to him until there is hardly any distance left between them.
He doesn’t tower over Whitaker like Robby does, but he still has to tilt his chin up ever so slightly to properly look at Jack.
For a moment, neither of them move.
“He asked me to house-sit while he's gone.” Whitaker finally says, and that's a little strange, but not entirely out of bounds. Robby is fond of their little resident. And Jack gets it. Whitaker is young. Bright. Kind to a fault. Pretty in a way that seems almost effortless. It’s easy to fall into his orbit and hard to pull out of it. Jack can’t fucking fathom how Robby thinks he’ll be able to do it. That’s not true. Jack can fathom it. He just doesn’t want to. “And then he said that–that if he didn’t come back I could–fuck, I don’t know, keep the apartment? I think he meant it to be a joke but it–the way he said it–”
Jack kisses his tongue to his teeth.
Whitaker’s face falls more than it's already fallen and, oh, Jack hates that.
“...he's not okay.”
It's not really a question.
“No.” Jack answers it anyway. “I don't think so.”
Whitaker looks away.
“Did he say something to you too?”
Jack shakes his head. “Not exactly. I–uh, was talking to him about his trip. Told him to come back. And he just...”
He trails off.
He doesn’t need to elaborate.
Whitaker bites his lip hard enough that Jack is surprised he didn’t draw blood.
He tugs at his hair again, only once, in a motion that’s far too quick to be anything other than painful. And then he’s dropping his hand to his neck, fingers curling around his throat again, searching for something that Jack doesn’t think has been there in a long time.
Jack does reach for him this time.
He’is reaching for Whitaker before he can think any better of it, taking the younger man’s hand in his own, holding it against his chest and over his jackrabbiting heart before the kid can hurt himself again.
Whitaker blinks, clearly surprised.
His eyes dart down to look at their hands.
He doesn’t pull away.
Whitaker flexes his fingers. It’s more of a twitch than anything else, an unconscious movement that Jack locks onto. Jack flips his hand, presses his palm to Whitaker’s, works his fingers between Whitaker’s like a suture, like it might fix the mangled muscle and flesh Robby is slowly hacking open with a dull scalpel.
“He’s not coming back.”
This isn’t really a question either.
It’s spoken like a fact.
Like Whitaker has seen this before.
Like this is not the first time he’s gone through this script.
“He is.” Jack says it hard, putting as much conviction in his voice as he can manage. Because he believes it. He has to believe it. He squeezes Whitaker’s hand, tugs it a little closer, drops a dry kiss to the back of it without realizing. “I’ll drag his ass back kicking and screaming if I have to.”
It gets Jack a smile, however small and sad it may be.
Whitaker’s smiles are just as pretty and lovely and distracting as his eyes.
Even the sad ones.
There’s a knock at the door.
Dana pokes her head in a moment later.
“Oh–good, you’re still here.” If she’s surprised at how close Jack and Whitaker are she doesn’t show it.
She just looks grateful.
Relieved.
A little guilty.
“What’s up?” Jack asks.
“Water slide collapsed at one of the parks.” For a brief moment, her eyes flick down to Jack and Whitaker’s hands. She blinks once, takes in the odd intimacy like she’s taking in the chaos of the ED. Quickly and efficiently and calculating. She looks back up at Jack, tilts her head ever so slightly in question, and then moves on. “I couldn’t convince you to stick around, could I?”
Jack feels a sharp stab of guilt at how relieved he feels to suddenly have an excuse to stay.
“Consider me convinced.” He says.
“Wonderful! Because we’re about to have a roof drop off in five minutes and I need someone to be up there to meet them.”
“We’re on it.”
Jack doesn’t realize he’s still holding Whitaker’s hand until they’re in the elevator and he has to let go.