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The first thing Robby was aware of was the edge.
Specifically, the edge of his own bed which he was currently balanced on, one shoulder angled toward the floor, his elbow hanging in open air. He blinked at the ceiling. Or rather, at the darkness where the ceiling was. His clock read 2:47 AM in sharp red numerals and somewhere beneath all of his carefully regulated irritation, the part of his brain that was still, somehow, an attending physician, noted that he had gotten approximately four and a half hours of sleep, which was three and a half more than he'd expected after the shift they'd had.
The second thing he was aware of was the warmth pressed firmly against his back.
Which was, he took a slow inventory, an arm. Draped over his side like he was a body pillow. And a knee, tucked neatly behind his knee. And somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder blade, a forehead.
Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, it turned out, was a cuddler.
He lay very still for a moment, staring into the dark, doing a careful calculation of exactly how much of his own bed he was currently occupying. The answer, by his estimate, was approximately eighteen percent.
Four times, he thought, with the grim resignation of a man being slowly pushed off a cliff. This has happened four times.
He shifted just slightly, just enough to test whether there was any give, any possibility of reclaiming a reasonable share of the mattress without waking her. There wasn't. She had the structural commitment of someone who had claimed a territory and fully intended to defend it, even unconscious.
He tried again, more deliberately this time, beginning the slow, careful process of leaning back toward the center of the bed.
Baran stirred.
He went completely still.
She made a small sound, something unintelligible and then her arm tightened. Just a fraction. Like she was adjusting her grip.
Robby stared at the ceiling and thought about the choices that had led him to this moment.
---
It had started five weeks ago. Maybe six. Time had that quality lately, where shifts blurred together until he couldn't quite remember which catastrophic day was which.
They'd had a mass casualty event a multi-vehicle pileup on the parkway, twelve patients in various states of critical, and the ER had turned into controlled chaos for the better part of fourteen hours. Somewhere around hour ten, he'd found Baran in the supply closet, standing perfectly still with her eyes closed, just breathing.
He'd almost backed out. Should have backed out.
Instead, he'd stepped inside and closed the door.
"Rough one," he'd said, which was possibly the most inadequate summary of the day imaginable.
She'd opened her eyes. "I lost count of the chest tubes."
"Five," he'd supplied. He always kept count. It was a particular kind of mental mathematics that kept him grounded when everything else was falling apart.
After the shift, he offered to drive her home so she didn't have to take an Uber.
And that had been it, really. No grand plan. No discussion of what it meant. They'd both been too tired and not wanting to be alone in an empty apartment with nothing but the replay of the shift running on loop in their heads. They both fell asleep on her couch.
The second time, after another brutal shift this one a pediatric case that had gutted them both she'd looked at him in the locker room and said, "Your place or mine?"
His, this time. Because it was closer.
This time she'd made it to the bed. He'd offered to take the couch. She'd looked at him like he was being deliberately obtuse and said, "It's a king, Robby. We're both adults. Get in the bed."
So he had.
And they'd slept. Just slept. The kind of deep, dreamless unconsciousness that only came after your body had been running on fumes and adrenaline for fifteen hours straight. There was something about another person's presence another person who understood exactly what kind of day it had been, who didn't need explanations or conversation, who just needed to not be alone in the aftermath that made sleep actually possible.
It wasn't about anything except the very specific comfort of knowing someone else was there, breathing steadily in the dark, equally exhausted and equally unwilling to process anything beyond the immediate need for rest.
Except.
The thing was, and this was the part he hadn't fully accounted for when this arrangement had started, when they'd fallen into it out of pure logistical necessity after yet another shift had turned into this. She wasn't angling for something or waiting for him to have some kind of realization. She was just. Here. Relaxed in the way she rarely was at work, where she was always sharp and deliberate and running three steps ahead of everyone in the room.
He was aware, with some precision, that she'd trusted him with something real by letting him see this version of her.
He was also aware that somewhere between the second time and the fourth time, the purely practical arrangement had started to shift into something he couldn't quite name yet.
---
"okay, okay, I'm awake."
Her voice was sleep-rough, a full octave lower than her usual register, and she pulled her arm back with the slow blink of someone re-entering consciousness from a significant depth. He felt her shift behind him, felt the mattress adjust, and finally finally rolled onto his back and looked at her.
Baran Al-Hashimi was propped up on one elbow, hair loose, squinting at him with the expression of someone trying to determine whether reality was trustworthy.
Then she looked past him. At the edge of the bed. At the approximate distance between where he was lying and where a person should theoretically lie.
Her mouth curved.
"Did I..." she started.
"You took up the entire bed," he said, flatly. "My bed. In my apartment."
She pressed her lips together in a way that suggested she was making a real effort not to smile and failing completely. "That seems like an exaggeration."
"I was on the edge."
"You're a big guy, Robby. You take up a lot of space."
"I was on the edge."
She laughed low and quiet, the kind that was mostly exhale and pushed herself upright, scrubbing a hand through her hair. "Okay, okay. I'm moving. Look. I'm moving." She scooted toward her side with theatrical ceremony, giving him a sweeping gesture as she went. Your kingdom, restored.
He reclaimed his space roughly half the mattress, which was all he'd ever wanted and resettled onto his back with the dignity of a man who had earned this.
A beat of silence.
Then she was back, curling up against his side, her cheek coming to rest near his shoulder.
He went very still again.
"Al-Hashimi."
"Mm."
"You just moved."
"I did," she agreed, pleasantly.
"So what exactly is this."
A pause. He could feel her weighing whether to answer sincerely or to deflect, and he knew which one she was going to pick before she opened her mouth.
"Your thermostat," she said, with complete seriousness, "is set to fifty-four degrees."
"It's sixty-eight."
"It feels like fifty-four."
"That is not possible."
"And yet," she said, pulling the blanket up around herself more firmly, "here we are." She shifted slightly, finding what was evidently an acceptable angle, and settled again. Her hand curled loosely near the front of his shoulder. Just resting there. Not demanding anything.
He looked at the ceiling.
Four times, he thought again. And somehow it keeps going like this.
The thing was, in those first few times, they really had just slept. Collapsed into unconsciousness the moment their heads hit the pillow, too exhausted to be anything but grateful for the presence of another person who understood. No conversation. No analysis. Just the simple comfort of not being alone.
But tonight maybe because the shift hadn't been quite as catastrophic, maybe because they'd actually gotten a few hours in before his territorial bedmate had staged her unconscious coup, tonight felt different. Like there was space for something other than pure survival.
He was aware, with some precision, that she'd trusted him with something real by letting him see this version of her.
He was also aware that she was, in fact, cold, because he could feel it where her hand rested against his shoulder.
He sighed.
The sound was very deliberate. Pointed. He wanted it noted, for the record, that this was happening against his better judgment.
He reached up and pulled her arm properly around him, adjusting until she was tucked against his side with something approaching structural logic, and settled his hand over hers.
The silence lasted about four seconds.
"Robby."
"Go to sleep."
"Did you just..."
"I am trying," he said, with great patience, "to get four more hours. I am requesting, professionally, that you let me do that."
Another pause. He could feel her trying to decide how to play this whether to push, whether to deflect again, whether to make the joke that was clearly sitting right there waiting to be made.
Instead, she didn't say anything. She just exhaled slow and quiet and her hand turned under his, loosely, fingertips resting against his palm.
Not grabbing. Not making it into anything. Just.
There. Comforting each other.
He stared at the ceiling for another minute or two. The apartment was quiet. Outside, Pittsburgh was doing whatever Pittsburgh did at three in the morning, which mostly involved the distant sound of a truck somewhere and the settling of an old building doing its thing.
"Still fifty-four degrees," she said, very quietly, after a while.
"It is sixty-eight degrees," he said, with equal quiet.
A pause.
"Feels warmer now, though."
He didn't say anything. But some of the tension he'd been carrying since around hour nine of the shift finally cautiously let go.
"Get some sleep," he said.
---
End Notes: They're going to have a conversation about this eventually! I loved flirty Al-Hashimi in the beggining of Season 2 <3