Emergency Medical Dad

XXXVIII: early july, present

Kaz shrugs, "don't look at me, I'm not the moderator here."

"Good," Ian tips his head back, looking up at Pitty. "I dare you to go get me a hoodie, please."

Pitty raises a solitary eyebrow, "that's your dare?"

"Yes, chop chop."

With a low grumble, Pitty pulls himself forward and peels back the flannel he has on, pulling it down off his big arms and then wrapping it like a towel around Ian, bundling him up in red and black fabric.

"Does that work?"

"That works wonderfully," Ian nestles back into him, wrapped up and content, "I love you."

"Mpfh," Pitty wraps an arm around him and looks around at the rest of us, half interested, half not. "Jorgen."

That gets his ears to perk up and his eyes to break their contact with the fire.

"Truth, it's been a year since we've asked. Do you remember what happened the night you got shot?"

Jorgen shrugs, "yes, this time, I do. Ben Peters. Accidental slamfire in his father's gun. I don't blame him. I don't want anything to do with blaming him. That's what happened and it's done now."

"Who's Ben Peters?" Kaz asks, rubbing his arm absently in the spot he, too, has a bullet hole from that night.

"Ben Peters was my ex's older brother," I mumble, looking down at my lap. "Evan had just found out that I was going to have someone else's kid. He was mad. He meant only to threaten Jay and it went south."

The group is quiet for a second but Duke, thank God he's a little bit more stoned than the rest of us, lets out a soft little noise, "well I mean, fuck him, I guess."

"Agreed on that, fuck that guy," Luka juts his thumb backward toward Duke.

"Duke, truth, who was the last person you liked?" Jorgen asks, propping his foot up on the end table across from us.

Duke shrugs, "I dunno, a coworker, I really liked this girl from work for a while. It stopped when we fucked in the walk-in freezer on a random shift and she smelled like old sausage."

"That was a lot to take in," Jorgen mumbles. "First of all, don't go into walk-in freezers and shut the door. Second, you fucked someone in the walk-in freezer, while on shift?"

Duke lets a lazy smile drop onto his face, "it was the skeleton shift, we were bored, we fucked in the freezer, the door was propped open with the brick, it was fine. But it's great, now whenever I work a graveyard shift with her I get laid. All wins in the end."

Luka is frowning, "you worked a graveyard shift before we came up here. You napped in the car."

Duke grins and yanks off his swim shirt, showing off his chest, tattoos, and long cat scratches down his stomach and upper back. He wears a swim shirt as to not aggravate an eczema outbreak but today it appears there were other motives as well.

"Holy shit," Kaz mutters, "she a fucking tiger or what?"

"Fake nails," he shrugs. "Ow."

"Is this like a thing where you get on shift and immediately go for it or is there like, buildup or-" Luka has his eyebrows almost so far up you can see them under his floppy hair.

Duke slips the shirt back on again, "yesterday I made her wait until the bosses were gone and all that because I don't really want to get fired and then we went for it then, then again during break, then again after I clocked out."