Chapter Text
art by @agarthanlaboratory
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#pittwhumpweek2026 #pittwhumpday1
Prompt: tied up
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Ahmad has a small crowd around him at the door to the security booth when Robby walks in, and despite the fact that the hub and board are relatively calm that is never, ever a good sign.
"Bet or crisis, Ahmad?" he calls out, still halfway through the process of digging his headphones case out of his pocket and pulling out his pods.
"Crisis incoming, maybe?" Ahmad responds; next to him Antoine and Paolo are looking both impressed and twitchy. "Some SWAT situation. We're trying to triangulate whether it's in our catchment."
Robby steps closer, cranes over Ahmad's shoulder, and has to resort - much earlier in the day than he'd been planning - to a bland list of coping mechanisms and mantras in his head as he reads the scanning chryon on the local news station. EMERGING POLICE ACTIVITY: PITTSBURGH SWAT NEGOTIATING WITH PERPETRATORS BARRICADED -
Robby turns to the hub; he slips his headphones back into his pocket, pulling out his phone instead. Dana is waiting for him, iPad on her hip, peering at him over the edge of her glasses.
"Any messages?" she asks, immediately clocking the increase in Robby's pace.
"No missed calls. You?"
"Nothin'. You gonna try?"
It only takes a moment - Robby's favorited phone numbers list only has a few permanent residents. The first indication that his day is about to take a turn for something very much worse is that the call is picked up within half a ring.
"You Doctor Robinavitch?"
Robby can sense Dana watching him as his free fist clenches. "Yes. This isn't Jack. Where is he?"
"Ah, hell. You're the emergency contact we have on file, I was literally dialing this number when you called."
"Is he okay?"
"Unclear."
"What - " Robby gestures to Dana, grabs her elbow and walks them both into the nearest empty room, pulling its curtain across the door. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"Sir, this is Captain Enzo Morales with Pittsburgh SWAT - though I'm guessing you might've known that. We've had a complication develop in an ongoing operation. Abbot and another officer are missing in the field. We suspect they're being held hostage."
Robby puts a hand out to steady himself - on anything, the wall, the room's empty bed - and finds Dana reaching to him, clasping his hand hard in both of hers as her eyes get wider. "I've never - no, I've never had contact with his police colleagues before. Where is this happening?"
"You know I can't answer that, sir. Technically speaking I'm skipping a couple of steps in even calling you, but Doc Abbot is important to us, and we know he's important to you all at the hospital. We are doing everything we can to diffuse the situation."
Robby squeezes Dana's hand. She's staring at the phone pressed to his ear, and a brief moment of clarity tells Robby that there's enough sound leaking out from it that she's gotten the gist of the conversation.
She squeezes back, and Robby makes up his mind.
"Need a doctor?"
Which is how he ends up here, being unfussily strapped into a set of kevlar clothing that makes him feel like a Michelin man, while Morales - an enormous, rangy Black man in his forties with a permanent and well-earned furrow of frown between his eyes - points him through the schematics of one of the many half-derelict warehouses perched on the edge of the Allegheny.
"Most groups of thieves around here are small-timers, even if they're armed. Roughing up police, even if it started by accident, is a major escalation. Abbot and Sergeant Sanchez were here - " a tap on what looks to Robby's untrained eyes like a random corner in the maze of moveable, internal divisions of the structure - "ready to breach as needed. They were able to radio in that they had a 10-33 - emergency with immediate help needed - but by the time we got other bodies to their location they were gone. We obviously had to withdraw and re-assess, hence this fucking mess," he ends, waving at the group of officers who are practically bouncing on their toes as they pace and mutter in the assembly point under a couple of spreading oak trees - behind which is another veritable army of regular police vehicles and officers with their lights flashing, burrowing a headache into Robby's skull.
"You are going to be last in line. Hey. You hear me, Dr. Robinavitch?" Morales says, tone hardening with every word. "I am breaking every rule in the fucking book even letting you be on-site, let alone going in unarmed, and I'm only allowing it because I know you are the best at what you do - and that Doc Abbot would do the same for you. You so much as breathe in the wrong direction, I will send you out."
Robby shrugs, not knowing what else to do and definitely knowing there's nothing he could add to make Morales, who is clearly a competent and dangerous man, feel better about his decision. "You're right," he murmurs. "About him - about us. But it's always up to you."
Morales's eyes narrow with understanding.
Robby does as he's told. The kitted-out men in black and camo around him (or rather in front of him, because Robby was more than happy to follow the order to be last in line) move startlingly quietly, the massive rubber soles of their boots making only the slightest squeaks under their light, efficient movements as they crouch and scuttle through half-light. Behind them there is the droning din of a police PA system ordering the warehouse's occupants to emerge.
There's a different noise that's seeping through to Robby, little crackles that his brain seizes upon and turns over nastily, narrowing to a sharp point. Cursing, unspecified. Spits of displeasure.
Heavy thumps of a boot impacting flesh.
"I told you to get off him, motherfucker - "
A harder stamp. The resulting grunt is louder this time, through gritted teeth. The sound is wet, as though the mouth it emits from is already full of blood.
"Fuck this shit," the unfamiliar voice says. "You - fucking get up - "
There's a snarl of protest as cloth and skin is pulled across concrete, and out of the corner of his eye Robby sees one of the kneeling SWAT members straighten up like some venomous snake launching out of its burrow - and take his shot. It's loud, setting Robby's ears ringing, and then several other men are on their feet, overlapping roars of BREACH-BREACH-BREACH filling the air as they rocket around a corner and into the warren of chainlink fence. One of them stops half-in and half-out of Robby's view, his neck craning, and then he lets go of his trigger and beckons.
"You're up, doc! We got two casualties."
"Ah, fuck," Robby says to no one, and scrambles forward half on his knees. When he turns the corner and makes his way tentatively through the busted-open metal door, it's to the sight of another officer standing at the far end of what looks like a storage room, guarding another open door with his body; there are clearly further spaces in the warehouse beyond still being cleared, as heavy footfalls and shouts from the rest of the team recede into the distance. And in the middle of the floor -
"I specifically told you not to bring any of my colleagues in on my shit, you fucking jackasses," says a thick, furious voice.
Jack has uncurled a little where he's lying, from where Robby imagines he had covered himself as the team rampaged through. He's disheveled, hair wild and sticky-red on his left temple, stripped down to his camo pants and his t-shirt, holster and vest and all of his equipment ripped away and left tossed out of reach; his feet (both flesh and carbon-fiber) are bare. Robby's eyes catch at the edge of his shirt - it has rucked up over his chest, and it's there that Robby sees the proof of what he'd been hearing: black bootprints already blooming into deep, purple bruises across his ribs and stomach.
His wrists are ziptied and his hands covered in blood, and that's when Robby sees the other officer down, ten feet away from where Jack has been dragged, and the ragged bullet-torn mess of the man's throat with hand- and fingerprints visibly swirled in the tissue, the imprint of Jack's attempts to keep pressure already tacky and drying.
"Mike," Jack rasps.
Robby moves, immediately, following the pained desperation and instruction in Jack's voice - to Sanchez's side, checking for a carotid, checking for a femoral, whipping out his flashlight and checking for anything behind the eyes.
"Mike?" Jack asks, louder, his voice cracking.
Robby shakes his head, and when he turns back to look at him Abbot has recoiled into the filthy floor with a groan, his still-tied hands rising to press the heels of his palms against his eyes.
"God fucking damn it - "
"Hey, hey," Robby says, knowing he's soothing himself as much as anyone else in the room (the two officers guarding them are bright-eyed and stiff-jawed, and Robby has to imagine Sanchez was well liked on top of being a teammate). When he settles at Jack's side he has to swallow hard to keep down all the things he suddenly wants to say - chief among them Thank god it wasn't you and At least it wasn't you and I couldn't have borne it if it was you, none of which he imagines will go down well for a hot minute.
Instead he busies his hands with pressing gently at the lines of Jack's ribs, palpating for obvious hematomas, and then he turns to his backpack and draws out the portable ultrasound as efficiently as he can, dragging his phone out from his back pocket.
"I'd like to do an EFAST."
A ghost of a smile crosses over Jack's bruised cheeks. "You stole my stuff?"
"Yeah I stole your stuff. Where's your knife?"
"Fuck if I know, they ransacked us pretty good."
Robby finds it, tucked halfway under the splayed ankle of the dead thief, whom he resolutely does not look at, and carefully, more carefully than he would even in a sterile field with a team of OR assistants watching, works the snapped-out blade between Jack's swollen wrists. The plastic ziptie thankfully gives quickly under the slightly serrated edge of the Bowie blade, and then -
- well, then Jack grabs Robby's collar and just hauls himself inwards, face pressed to Robby's chest like he intends to be buried there.
"Fuck," Robby says again, even more helplessly. He doesn't know where to put his hands that wouldn't cause pain, and that makes his throat stutter with the agonizing relief of it all.
Steady footsteps behind them, and there's Captain Morales, almost filling the makeshift door in his hulking armor.
"Hey, Doc," he says, and Robby can hear the affection in it, the concern, the brotherly love. "You gonna be okay?"
Jack takes a deep, shuddering breath, damp along Robby's neck, and sits back straight, visibly recollecting himself. He doesn't take his hands, or his eyes, off of Robby.
"Yeah, Cap. I will be."
"Let me take you home," Robby murmurs. "After we get you checked out."
"Please," Jack whispers, sad and strangely small. Then he rouses, as Robby knows he would and will, and gives him a distantly assessing, disapproving look. "You and I are gonna chat, later, about the fact that you're fucking here."
Robby shrugs, letting himself smile as he tilts his head back at Morales. "Multiple people today have told me you'd do the same."
Jack snorts out something that sounds like the afterthought of laughter, and despite the blood under his fingernails Robby's never been so grateful for anything, for everything, in his life.
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TBC
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