GUESS WHO'S BACK, BITCHES!

To make a long ass story filled with about 4 or 5 months worth of unfortunate events short and sweet, let me just put it all this way...

I hit my head. Got a concussion and couldn't write for two months. Got distracted. Didn't write for like another two months. Went to Kentucky. A meth head tried to seduce me in a McDonald's parking lot. And now I'm here, trying to write and post again with whatever brain cells are left that aren't still scraped against the table I hit my fucking head on in the first place.

So without further ado, here's another chapter of everyone's favorite Romenton trainwreck that I started way back in February or something. And didn't finish until, like, today :)

It was around 5 o'clock on yet another horrendously cold and windy morning in the city of Chicago.

The sun hadn't even risen yet, and was still busy shining down on Florida or England, or wherever the fuck else it hit before Middle America, and the skies were still dark and dismal, with plenty of clouds in the sky.

The birds were still fucking asleep, dreaming of...WHATEVER BIRDS DREAM ABOUT AT THIS UNGODLY HOUR.

And the taller of our two surgical heroes was currently dragging ass down the length of his hallway, looking about as fit as a coke addict, fresh from a night of sleeping in an overfilled dumpster behind his local Taco Bell. His knees were weak and his palms were sweaty, and he'd just spent the last 10 dreadful minutes of his life puking his guts up for only the fifth time since the fucking sun had set the previous night.

Not even halfway back to his bedroom yet, Peter opted to take a quick pit stop against the wall, resting his back against the hard, painted material as he fought to keep his head from spinning faster than it already was. The tall surgeon was smart enough to know damn well that he didn't need his dizziness getting the best of him and making him fall over and smack his head on the cold, hard ground, earning him a concussion and giving him something else to worry about.

As soon as he was at least half sure he could make it down the hall without busting his head open, Peter staggered forward. With only another small handful of steps(which felt like a couple million in his current state) he finally reached his goal. As quietly as he could manage, Peter turned the knob of his bedroom door, determined to sneak back into bed without waking his handsome, bald lover...

...which would have worked out just fine, had Robert not been awake already, eyeing him from where he sat at the foot of their bed, looking nearly as sleep deprived as Peter.

"Well, would ya' just look at what the EMTs dragged in!" he announced to himself before Peter had even stepped into the room fully, giving the poor surgeon a scare as he flinched, not expecting to see that familiar set of tired, brown eyes staring back at him upon his grand re-entrance.

"What are you doing up?" Peter asked quite dumbly, as if he hadn't just spent the whole night tossing and turning uncomfortably, and wishing to God he'd gotten his stupid fucking flu vaccine.

"Oh, I don't know..." Romano began to snark, pulling himself up from his spot on the bed, walking up to Benton slowly. "I figured I was just sleeping so well all night long I though, 'Why not get up extra early this morning, and see what it's like doing my job with even less sleep in this weak flesh prison than usual!'"

He came to stand in front of Peter then, and before he could even reach his hand up all the way up to feel the man's forehead, Peter grabbed him by the wrist, holding it there in a firm grip.

"I'm not sick." He grumbled.

"Yeah, right. And I've still got a full head of luscious, red hair."

Peter sighed, letting go of Robert's hand, bringing his own up to run it over his face.

"Alright, I'm sick. But I'm not that sick," Peter said, soon doubling his efforts to vindicate himself upon receiving one of Robert's looks. A look he really only saved for his most hopeless surgical residents, and the many, many stupid questions they tend to ask over and over, like the world's most annoying broken records. Or even for the late Kerry Weaver, when she said or did literally anything at all in his godly presence.

"I've got a big surgery today, Robert! There's no way I can call in sick!" he protested, his voice getting up to that whiny tone that brought Romano way back to when they both worked at County and fought over treatment plans constantly. "I'll only be in the OR 5—6 hours tops! Then I'll pass off the rest of the day's work to someone else and head home. It's no big deal."

"You're talking about the girl with the atrial septal defect," Romano uttered, suddenly understanding why Benton was so hellbent on going in on that dreary morning, in spite of the fact that his skin felt just about as hot as a freshly microwaved burrito. "You sure her family's gonna be too happy with you passing out over her open chest cavity?"

"I'll be fine." Peter told him, already stumbling over towards the closet to fetch his clothes for the day, remaining defiant that he would make it through at least one major surgery without dropping like a fruit fly in a cold kitchen.

"An anti-inflammatory and some Gatorade and I'll be just fine. Trust me Robert, this isn't the first time in my entire medical career that I've gone in sick!" He continued to give the bald man a whole slew of excuses as he slipped off his tank top.

Robert, of course, had other ideas. Taking advantage of the fact that the taller surgeon had his back to him, he walked over to the phone that sat atop the nightstand, punching in the number for Northwestern's main office.

"Hi, this is Doctor Rocket Romano, calling for Peter Benton..." he began to explain to the receptionist, quietly, as to avoid alerting the younger physician of his evil plot. He failed, telltale by the way Peter whirled around from where he was trying to pick out one of his button-down shirts for such an ill-fated day in his current state of delirium. "He can hardly walk in a straight line across the room, let alone perform surgery. You still want him to come in?"

By now Peter had dropped the shirt he'd been considering and crossed the room, trying to snatch the phone from the bald man, still in denial even as he almost fell over trying to grab the thing from where Robert held it just out of his reach.

"Yes, yes. Thank you for understanding." Romano uttered as he hunched up against the wall, his whole right side pressed all the way up against it as Benton fought for custody of the phone. The bald man used his short, pale little body to the best of his abilities to block the phone from the taller man's reach, struggling to finish the brief phone call without giving the receptionist the wrong idea.

"Yes—" he grunted as Peter finally got one hand on the corded phone, trying to wrench the thing from his grip. Robert gave it a swift yank, gaining it back with ease from the half-dead surgeon, who then sat down on the side of the bed, hitting the thing like a pile of bricks, their little skirmish taking almost as much energy from him as the walk back from the bathroom.

"I'm sure a day or two's rest will have him back in the OR in no time." His back was facing the taller man now. Peter's eyes bored into the soft fabric of the threadbare, old T-shirt Romano was wearing, his eyes narrowed as he sat, listening to the man prattle on.

"I'm sure that Dr. Stark would be happy to take over his schedule until he comes back. Why wouldn't he be? His paycheck's on the line!"

He said his goodbyes and set the once-coveted phone back on the hook, turning to face the other man sitting on their bed. Peter looked about as pissed off as a middle-aged bitch named Becky, who just found out that the elementary school her unvaccinated little cherub had been attending for 6 years is holding a free vaccine clinic instead of handing out pine needle tea and essential oils like God intended.

And God damn it, she was determined to write a 2000 word essay on the infringement of her civil rights to post on her Facebook page, right after she got out of Bible study.

"You know I'm twice as qualified of a surgeon as Stark for every last procedure on the board today. That was completely unnecessary!"

"Oh, get over yourself Honey," Robert mocked, coming to sit beside his pissed off lover. "It'd be a liability for you to even dispense needles to diabetics and heroin junkies, let alone pick up a scalpel!"

"You still could've given me a chance," he grumbled, finally starting to give up on the idea of walking among the living that day, leaning his head heavily on Romano's shoulder. "You coulda at least waited until I took an aspirin or two before handing my load off to that pompous little weasel."

The bald idiot simply wrapped his arm around his companion, pulling him close. The heat from Benton's sickly hot skin soaked into his clothes as the tall surgeon wrapped both arms around him, burying his face into the crook of his neck.

"Something tells me all the aspirin in the city wouldn't keep you standing for more than 3 minutes at a time," Romano found himself with his hand on Peter's lower back, running it up and down lazily, trying to quell the overall feeling of malaise the man had—one that likened to the way Prince Phillip looked a mere 4 months before he keeled over and died.

And so, a few more snide remarks from the younger surgeon, a shopping trip to Walgreens, and a couple of bottles of Gatorade later, Robert found himself curled up on the couch, watching some old reruns of The X-Files. Absentmindedly, he ran his hand against Peter's soft, dark hair, his eyes flicking down to where the man lay on top of him every now and again to ensure that whatever beast of an illness he'd picked up from some miserable cunt in their city hadn't yet killed him.

At some point, when Robert's dark eyes fell back onto the TV screen after a particularly lengthy commercial break, during which Sally Struthers trekked across the ground of a developing country whilst begging for any nickel and dime the privileged American people could cough up for those without even a pot to piss in—her attire alone probably being worth enough to feed 6 of the families she nearly tripped over for a week or two—and Billy Mays advertised some kitchen gadget that'd make a really great Christmas gift for some distant family member that you really couldn't give a shit about, but were socially obligated to see at least once a fucking year—his gaze was drawn towards the window, and he noticed that it had started to snow.

It was a pain in the ass really—that thick, heavy sort of snow that seemed exclusive only to Chicago in April that made the streets into a big, insufferable mess, right after the harsh winter weather's been gone for a while and he would foolishly begin to think that the snowy season for the Windy City was over, and that he'd be able to go without driving in it for a while.

But on that cold morning as he lay there, in that living room, his lover's head buried into his chest as he slept off the cold and flu meds that he'd so happily taken from the man, listening to the sound of his slow, even breaths and letting his eyes follow a lone snowflake every so often as it drifted down, down, until it was out of his line of view beneath the window, only to land among the millions of others sitting in a cold, melty pile in the backyard...

The untimely spring snow was actually quite welcome to him. If only for that morning, when he could stay cooped up in that warm living room, instead of nearly slipping to his death as he tried to navigate the city streets in such wet and messy weather.

TBC