Merry Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukkah, Diwali, Boxing Day, whatever the hell you guys celebrate this time of year!
It was Christmas Eve yet again in the infamously cold and often unpleasantly windy city of Chicago.
Young boys and girls and everything else in between were nestled in their beds, dreaming of Tonka Trucks, Barbie Dolls, and other such things made with something special, something with an L in its name.
Ah yes, that's right; CHILD LABOR.
The parents of all those little tykes, of course, were down by the fire, playing Mr. Claus and Mrs. Claus, drinking each other's milk and eating each other's cookies with a sense of sweet Yuletide joy.
Heaps of fluffy, white snow littered the streets as far as the eye could see, turning them into a vast winter wonderland of panhandlers, stray dogs, and homeless folk.
And the prestigious, hard-working, quite renowned Robert "Rocket" Romano lay in his very own heap off to one corner of the now-darkened surgeon's lounge, hardly even sitting up at all in his chair. He was still out cold after his little "mishap" with Peter Benton, his young prodigy and apparent sworn enemy, and had been relocated to prevent his drunk ass from contaminating Peter's OR and bringing the tall surgeon any more trouble that night.
Speak of the devil...
Dr. Fucking Benton strode into the room after long, shoving the door closed behind him, looking utterly fucking exhausted.
He let out a small, humorless laugh as his eyes fell on the short, bald presence, who still sat like a drunken sack of potatoes right where he'd left him not 10 minutes prior.
Immediately, he diverted his attention to the phone by the door. Picking it off the hook, he punched in a number that, by now, he knew like the back of his hand.
Peter sighed after the third or fourth ring, which inevitably led to his call going straight to voicemail.
"Hey Carla, it's me again," he began after the tone, sounding just about as ragged as he looked. "Look...I know it's late, but it looks like I'm gonna be stuck at the hospital even longer than I said earlier. Some stuff came up."
The source of said "stuff" let out a groan from his corner, obviously coming to, slowly, at the sound of the other surgeon's voice.
Benton let out yet another exasperated sigh into the receiver, half hoping it would better his case so he'd be seeing his son for Christmas sooner rather than later.
"Alright...just let me know when you get this so we can work something out. And tell Reese that I love him. Bye,"
He stuck the phone back on its hook before turning to face his still-fuming boss, who shot daggers at him through narrowed eyes. The little bald tyrant was sitting up a bit taller now, looking quite like some angry delinquent who just got caught spray painting a dick on his math teacher's car, and now has to attend 100 hours worth of detentions with them to repay his debt to society.
"You've got 15 seconds to tell me where you put my patient."
"You mean my patient?" Peter corrected, clearly enjoying this rare chance to antagonize his superior especially after the fucked up Hell he'd been put through all night. "He's down the hall, resting comfortably in post-op after a successful repair...all thanks to me."
Robert's scowl deepened, his handsome features contorting as a dull, throbbing pain on one side of his bald head came to his attention. He reached a hand up, assessing the tender bump on his head, and the big black and blue bruise there, darkening more and more as time went on.
"Fucking Hell," he grumbled. "What did you hit me with?!" Benton scoffed.
"I didn't hit you with anything," the tall man retorted, almost as if scolding a young, defiant teenager. "You hit yourself on that surgical tray, falling over in a drunken stupor. 10 seconds after having your unsteady hands in my patient, no less."
Robert glared up at Peter, who stood there still, towering over him, looking equal parts annoyed at his boss's unwillingness to admit that he'd fucked up royally, and oh-so satisfied, well aware of the fact that he could bust Romano's balls so good for this.
Only if he really wanted to, of course...
"I was not that drunk." Robert countered, still burying himself into that state of stubborn denial. "I was tipsy, maybe. Even if I was drunk, I'd probably still operate better than you,"
"And that's just assuming you ever get to operate again!" The bald man added, trying to work his way towards redemption in their latest little sparring session. "Once Anspaugh hears about you operating without an attending, you'll be lucky if you can even suction in my OR."
"Like they'll even let you step foot in this hospital once Anspaugh sees your test results."
This time, it was Robert's turn to scoff at him, with disbelief and mild amusement. He was sitting up quite a lot taller now, inspecting his wrists with just a bit too much pride.
"Yeah, right. Like you would ever have the gall to draw my blood."
"Not from there." Peter bit back, trying not to smirk as Romano searched his face, his own haughty expression melting away like an icicle on the side of a roof as he came to the devastating realization that his lowly subordinate was serious.
As serious as a grand mal seizure.
Peter took his sweet ass time sitting down in a big, red armchair of his own right across from Romano's as the shorter surgeon hastily checked for any possible sign of a needle stick. Low and behold, he found a small, tan Band-Aid stuck right on his thigh. And he knew damn well he didn't put it there himself.
Benton 1, Romano 0.
Fuck.
His head snapped right back up as he fixed Peter with an icy gaze, his fury-stricken features colored in the soft light from one of the lounge's tall lamps sitting in one corner, illuminating the lounge in its warm, almost moody glow.
If looks could kill, the other surgeon in that room with him would have been fucking massacred, several times over.
"You son of a bitch," he snarled, now fully aware that his lowly, disobedient subordinate had him by the balls. "You had no right!"
"Actually, I had every right." Benton responded petulantly, with a certain smug undertone that made the younger man's face seem a whole lot more punchable all of a sudden.
"Yeah, just like you had every right to ruin my evening," Robert growled, leaning forward, a passionate fury suddenly rising from the depths of his clenched gut like bad acid reflux. "What'd you do with her, anyway? Dump all your scut on her so you could head home and see that drooling little wretch of yours?"
"That drooling little wretch is my son, Dr. Romano!" he rebuked harshly, rage now corrupting his former state of complacent bliss. "What the Hell are you even talking about?!"
"You know damn well what I'm talking about," his tone dropped down low as he internally recounted the real reason he tried to deck Peter in that OR. "You heard us making plans all day, and just had to stick your nose in where it doesn't belong."
And now it was Peter's turn to come to a startling realization, his weary mind lagging a bit, struggling to process exactly what Romano was getting at. Irritation, immediately followed by bemusement swept across his face before he ran a hand over it as he briefly considered leaving their conversation(and the room for that matter) all together and finally going the fuck home.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute...are you talking about Elizabeth?"
"No, Peter, I'm talking about Dr. Fucking Babcock. Who the Hell do ya think?!" Robert was yelling now, both fists clenched tightly in his lap. "Admit it! You got pissed about me dumping my entire workload onto you so I could make it to the gala and decided to blow my chances with her tonight!"
The taller surgeon gawked at him, hardly able to believe what he'd just heard. His back straightened up as his blood began to boil, any bit of amusement he'd derived from this ridiculous situation involving his drunken boss going straight out the window, frustration and deep, deep resentment taking its place. He was fed up with Robert's shit now. Frankly, he was quite fed up with this whole God forsaken holiday.
All he wanted was for it to be fucking January already.
Shooting up from his seat, Peter glowered down at his boss like he was the dirt under his immaculate white Nikes, hardly caring at all what came out of his mouth at this point. He was tired, pissed off to no end, and just about ready to strangle the everloving shit out of whoever served Romano all that damned whiskey, or who even made that vindictive, little bald trash can of a human being his boss in the first place.
His fists clenched at his sides as he let his emotions blow, not even caring one bit about how jealous Romano was of him dating Elizabeth or the fact that he could make his life a living Hell for all of this unless he quit and fled the city. He just wanted to make the elder surgeon at least a fraction as miserable as he'd been all fucking night.
So, he let the first, most scorching thing that came to mind leave his mouth, consequences be damned.
"Like you'd ever have a chance with anybody, you delusional, small-balled little prick," Peter snarled at him, only succeeding in making the bald surgeon even pissier, but he didn't care. Not after several hours of picking up his slack, only to be almost punched in the face over his own God damned patient, open on the table, his abdominal organs exposed and everything. "And for your information, I have no fucking idea what happened to Elizabeth! I was too busy taking care of all those patients that had the misfortune of having you as their surgeon while you were busy chasing her around like some sad little—"
Romano shot up so abruptly and with so much force as to stop the other surgeon mid-tirade. He closed up some of the distance between them, standing right in front of his rival, staring him down with a fire in his eyes.
Both looked ready to run right back into the scene of the crime, pluck a 10-blade off the floor from where Romano's fat head knocked over that surgical tray and jam it straight into the other surgeon's carotid fucking artery.
"Don't."
"Don't what?" Benton questioned, taking a fraction of a step closer, a subtle intimidation mechanism that proved useless against the harsh, uncoordinated rage of his boss, driven just about as mad by the various misconnections of that night as some stuck up old bitch named Debbie when she finds out she has to wear a mask into her local McDonald's in order to pick up her kids' Happy Meals during a literal global pandemic. "Don't throw the ugly truth up in your face? You've been nothing but an insufferable pain in the ass to me and her both and still expect her to just forgive and forget and go out with you, I'm surprised she'd even give the time of day to someone as small and pathetic as you!"
And that was all Robert needed to suddenly decide that, despite it all, his bruised-up, battered and drunken body still had some fight left in it.
The bald surgeon, notably red in the face and shaking incessantly from just how badly he wanted to shove his subordinate into the frigid waters of the fucking river outside right now lunged, shoving the other man straight against the wall, his back hitting its hard surface with a loud thud. Peter's usually sharp reflexes, now dulled significantly by exhaustion and mental and physical stress, and the constant annoyance of his boss(who apparently thought he was Bruce Lee) failed to keep up with the quickly escalating situation as his head hit the wall, pain clouding his senses as Romano came up on him. One hand knotted in the chest of his royal blue scrub shirt, holding him there with a tight grip as his other clenched into a fist. He drew it back, with full intent of launching it upward and hitting the larger of them square on the mouth that he'd been running just a bit too much for his liking.
It must have been some miracle of God that Benton caught up with the loose cannon just in time, catching Romano's right wrist in one hand, only a couple of inches from where it would have met his face, holding it tightly. Romano didn't back down, though, and brought up his other from where he'd been holding him against that large expanse of pale-green painted drywall in another miscalculated attempt to hit the poor surgeon, only to end up with both wrists in Benton's vice-like grip and nowhere else to go.
Forcefully, Benton wrenched himself away from that wall, reversing their positions so that Romano was left breathing heavily from his attempted assault, pressed against its surface from the back of his head, down, his wrists pinned on either side of his shiny, bald head against it. He could feel the other man's hot breath hitting him as it came and went at a quick pace, they were so close to each other.
Peter looked down at him, all but challenging him to just try and strike back at him again, or spit right in his face, knowing damn well it would better his case assuming he took this thing all the way up to administration. He could feel Robert's pulse against both palms from the veins in those wrists, strong and rapid, matching up perfectly with the intense, soul-crushing glare he fixed Peter with as he held him there longer and longer.
"It's not wise to hit someone who holds the future of your career in the palm of his hand," he informed Robert, his tone low. Intimidating, even. "What happened here tonight, along with all the shit you've pulled around me...let's just say I'll have quite a slew of these incidents to fuck you with. All I've got to do is take a walk right down the hall."
"You wouldn't have the guts," he growled right back, his voice just as low, just as oppressive, unwilling to forfeit their latest pissing match. Not this time. "You were hardly enough of a man for her, and you're hardly enough of a man for me. And the day you fuck me and my career is gonna be the day Hell freezes over and starts selling popsicles. So why don't you just let me go, and you go out there and finish up with my patients for the night, and maybe then I'll let you off the hook."
Peter tightened his grip on the bald tyrant's wrists significantly, quickly making his clenched surgeon's hands grow cold. He was so close to Robert now that he could smell the aged scotch on his breath, rich and musky and sweet, like brown sugar, burnt to perfection. The heat he felt radiating from the man's pale skin, splattered throughout with little dark freckles of varying shades, reminded Peter of just how much they'd cut heating costs this year. It was a pleasing contrast to the open air around them which was, more or less, for the lack of a more eloquent phrase—colder than Jack Frost's shriveled up nutsack.
"I'm man enough to fuck you as hard as I want, and you know it, Robert. Your ego just won't let you accept that fact," he told the elder surgeon, leaning just a little closer to him, still trying his damnedest to appear larger, bolder, more powerful than the latter, quite literally backing Robert into a corner in every sense of the word. "All it takes is a quick turning of the tables like this...as soon as I get the results of your blood test, I'll have you on your knees, begging me to forget the whole thing and chuck my report to save your reputation."
At that, Robert tried hard to wrench himself from Peter's clutch, squirming, pulling his hands against the offensive force. But Peter wouldn't let him budge, not one bit. Nor would those large hands release any bit of pressure on his wrists as he clamped down harder. Despite himself, a soft whine came out of him, his eyes shifting down a bit to the V-neck of his scrub top, eyeing the little bit of exposed skin on his upper chest. In that moment, Peter's hands hardly felt as though they were even fit for bagging groceries, never mind a profession requiring as much care and dexterity as surgery, they were being so rough with him.
He tore his eyes away from the tuft of wiry, black chest hair peeking out from the edges of rough, blue fabric, looking Peter right in the eyes once more...those smoldering, dark eyes, like perfect little pools of rich, chocolate syrup.
The tension between the two in that moment was so damned thick, you could slice it with a steak knife. Just which kind of tension was present, though, became more and more vague with each moment their conversation escalated.
And then everything came to a head the next time that horrid little turd opened his mouth.
"Well, fine. Go ahead and fuck me, Peter." Robert told him huskily, intently. Fully aware of just how those words sounded. He flexed his hands in a vain attempt to restore blood flow. "Compared to everyone else around here who's tried...it might actually feel kind of good."
And suddenly, those words made it all hit the tall surgeon at once, like a damned freight train. The fact that they were so close they each were practically breathing in the air the other let out on each exhale, the power he felt, pinning him there, the strongest part of him at his mercy against that wall...
His response was short, and quick, but it ended their conversation entirely.
In the verbal sense, at least.
"Bastard..." he uttered shortly, breathily, before seizing Robert's lips like they were his, closing up the short distance between them, getting just about as close to the man as he possibly could. At last, he relented, the tight grip on his wrists moving to become a much more manageable hold on his hips. Peter nipped at his bottom lip before thrusting his tongue all the way into his mouth, craving the taste of whiskey and the sweet, woodsy scent of Robert's cologne.
The shorter man whined into the kiss, unable to help opening his mouth for him as he just took what he wanted, and then some. Surprised, if not a bit frightened, but unwilling to pull away, Robert clutched the sides of the same scrub top he'd been looking down not several seconds earlier, his palms tingling as circulation was restored in them once more.
Benton shoved his boss even closer up against that wall as both hands migrated away from Romano's hips, coming up to hold his bald head in place as he ravaged him, caressing Romano's tongue with his own. His boss gasped sharply, moving to clutch Benton's broad shoulders, sliding them across as he admired the man's strong, robust form with his hands.
They continued on in this holly, jolly way for what seemed like hours, some of the only sounds in the room coming from their own quiet little corner of that surgical lounge.
The sliding of rough, blue scrub fabric sliding against scrub fabric as they moved against each other, leisurely, as the kiss grew more drawn out and slow as they took their time, exploring and probing, the night's events—which were growing more and more ludicrous by the minute—escaping them completely as they carried on with reckless abandon.
A soft moan that spewed from the depths of Robert's chest as Peter wedged his knee between the man's legs, feeling him arch his back in response, awakening something almost feral in him as he grew more fervent in his actions. His hands moved down to Robert's lower back, pulling him closer, craving the heat coming off him and the intoxicating scent of his cologne.
The wind outside, raging on and on, beating against the side of that concrete behemoth of a building as the snow fell faster that your narrator's expectations for 2021 at the notion of a skimpy $600 stimulus package that she and plenty of other tortured Americans will be lucky if they obtain by Easter.
The doorknob turning all of a sudden as that poor, unsuspecting charge nurse named Shirley opened the large wooden thing, who only gave them another couple minutes or so before she burst into the lounge like the fucking Koolaid Man, wielding Romano's incriminating test results on a clip board.
"Dr. Benton! A certain drunk bum of ours failed his blood test with flying colors! He shouldn't even have driven over here, let alone—"
She cut herself off abruptly, stopping dead in her tracks upon entering the room entirely, gawking at the scene laid out before her;
Robert fucking Romano, his back pressed up against the wall as he locked lips with Peter fucking Benton, the two looking as if they were seconds away from tearing each other's scrubs off and getting themselves involved in a serious case of workplace misconduct.
Only they had since pulled away from each other now, looking like a pair of deer caught in the headlights of a MACK truck. Two pairs of dark brown eyes riddled with terror trained on the bewildered nurse, then shifted to the floor or towards their now very wrinkled scrubs as they put some distance between each other. A vain attempt to normalize the situation at least a little bit, in spite of the fact that Shirley had seen fucking everything.
A long silence ensued before any of them spoke again, filled only partly by the howling wind outside.
"Okay..." she said quite awkwardly, quickly just abandoning Romano's chart on a nearby table before retreating back towards the door, looking almost as if she'd witnessed a murder. Almost as soon as she'd arrived was she gone again, most likely sprinting down the hall, ready to either gossip about the two until her lips fell off, or get black out drunk in a desperate attempt to forget the fine details of that entire evening.
Again, silence filled the room, before it was broken by chuckling from a rather flushed, well-kissed Rocket Romano.
Peter looked at him, that whole Christmas Eve feeling like a heavy dose of both fantasy and reality. He felt as if exhaustion had finally set in to the point of him just passing out somewhere, and expected to wake up any minute now, torn from some obscure dream in which he'd made out with his boss and find himself lying on one of the gurneys in the hallway.
Or, Hell, maybe even the OR floor.
"Well..." the bald tyrant began, shaking his head in slight disbelief as he licked his now kiss swollen lips. "I don't believe she'll ever be looking at either of us the same way again!"
"No...no, I don't think she will," Peter concurred, once again letting out a humorless laugh at the expense of his ongoing ordeal, glancing back at the door Shirley had just ran out of. "If we're lucky, she might just be as drunk as you are already, and brush the whole thing off on long hours and expired liquor..."
He earned another laugh from Romano, who nearly fell over, still tipsy as Hell, his collision with that surgical tray now more evident than ever, telltale by the striking size of that bruise on his fat head.
"So...I suppose that chart's headed straight for Anspaugh's desk," Robert wondered aloud as his gaze shifted to the hastily placed chart on one of the tables, a smug grin plastered to his face, despite the fact that the damn thing might just get him demoted to lunch lady in the hospital cafeteria. "And we won't be seeing each other again for a while, if at all. Assuming risk management goes as far as revoking my privileges, anyway..."
Peter looked at the chart right along with Romano, remaining quiet for a moment before ambling over to that table and plucking it off, coming back to stand in front of his boss with the thing in hand.
Thoughtfully, he reviewed what that sheet had to say.
"Your BAL was .12..." Benton noted, looking back up at Romano, who remained complacent, his hands on his hips as he eyed the taller surgeon, still looking like a young delinquent, one who just got caught sneaking his father's booze in the attic, a bottle of Jim Beam in one hand and a Playboy magazine in the other, having a jolly old time. And he was not sorry.
"I could do a lot of damage with this information, you know. My patient could even sue you for malpractice if anything went wrong. You'd be lucky to be dispensing Viagra at the CVS down the road after tonight."
"Looks like you've got me right where you want me, Dr. Benton." Romano said, mischief in those coffee-stained eyes as he put one hand on the chart Benton was holding, pushing it down, lowering it from his field of vision, replacing the thing as Benton's key subject of interest. "Now what do you want to do with me?"
Benton gazed at him, amusement dancing in his own dark eyes, a smile playing at his lips just a little bit.
Defeated by his boss in this particular sparring session, yet not recalling himself ever having been so content about it, Peter yanked that sheet from where it'd been clamped to that clipboard, tearing it up into a good amount of small, disorganized pieces(much like the writers of this damn show did to your beloved narrator's heart and soul) before dumping them in the trash, doomed to be forgotten like last week's tuna casserole after having been shoved to the back of the fridge. The clipboard was met with the same fate as it was tossed haphazardly to make a loud crack against the nearest stool.
His attention was back on Robert now, as he leaned back towards him, savoring the heat coming off him as he kissed his cheek, folding him into his arms, dreading the thought of having to leave him soon and take a long, cold trek to his car in the parking garage. He drew it out nearly as long as he could, before moving up, vindictively pressing a kiss to that dark mark on his head, making Robert wince from the sweet, sharp pain that arose from such a small action.
Peter held him at arms length after another long minute, moving his hands up and down the length of his upper arms in a gentle caress, those cocoa-colored eyes of his sparkling like wavy sea water, shimmering in the sunlight on a hot summer's day. He gave the man a quick once over, savoring the glint that shone back at him in Robert's own eyes before pressing another short, sweet kiss to his lips.
"Merry Christmas, Robert."
And then he let him go, leaving Robert alone in that room as he showed himself out, antsy to get home and finally, mercifully sleep the night away.
Our beloved, bald trashcan looked at that door for quite a few beats after Peter left, pondering the night, which left him feeling warm and buzzed, much like that aged whiskey had back at the gala.
"Well, Merry fucking Christmas to you, too, Peter!" He snarked to nobody but himself in that room, before taking that same door out, presumably to go home and have a gab session with his dog about the cute boy at work who just bloody kissed him.
And they all had a lovely holiday season ever after...
Well, all except for Kerry Weaver, who got an entire fucking trashcan and its putrid contents thrown at her by some drunkard posing as Santa Claus, who hated her because he thought red heads were EVIL. She had to spend her Christmas Eve in the hospital showers trying to get the trash juice and vomit off of her, with little success.
FIN