Chapter Text
Eddie doesn’t know what he did in a past life to be stuck in the situation he was in, but it sure must have been something bad. Or at least mildly unethical. The floor around him was buzzing with activity. A fender bender here, a stomach pump there, all minor things really but it was just enough to make Eddie grind his teeth as he did his rounds. To top things off, Brenda was one of the nurses on duty tonight. Eddie doesn’t pride himself in being a negative person, but he can’t seem to shake how he feels about her. Everything she does grates on his nerves and tonight is no exception.
“Ed. The patient in 302 is calling for more meds. You planning on checking on her?”
Eddies clipboard hit the countertop a little too hard as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose. Jesus fuck she gets under his skin.
“Yes, Brenda. And please, for once, call me Dr. Kaspbrak,” he manages through clenched teeth. When he opens his eyes, he can see her smirking from her seat. He doesn’t dignify her with any other response, instead moving down the hall toward 302.
It wasn’t the worst night in the world. In fact, it could be a hell of a lot worse. Eddie has seen nights where the universe is far less forgiving than a broken arm. His patient groans as he adjusts the IV and asks routine questions. She’s alert, which is good. She’s lucky that she walked away with only a broken arm and not something far worse. He talks idly with her as he works, checking in on her emotions and asking who’s coming to pick her up in the morning. She’s sweet. It’s a shame what happened, really, and Eddie tells her as much. They bond briefly over the pains of broken bones, Eddie sharing a personal experience of his from childhood, and he wishes her well before he steps out again.
He’s always prided himself in the connections he’s able to make with his patients. He’s seen doctors so cold, so detached and it makes him sick. He didn’t get into this field to treat people like medical dolls. He’s here to help people. He’s here to save lives. And Eddie firmly believes he can’t do that without some kind of personal connection to the people he’s working with.
Like Mr. Thomas down in room 315. He’s sweet. He came in for stitches, having fallen during a night out in the city with friends. He was a little drunk and Eddie knew that other doctors would write him off as a problem patient. Eddie didn’t, though. He treated him like any other patient and Mr. Thomas had responded with nothing but drunk compliments and compliance. Eddie ran through his discharge paperwork quickly, giving his friends details on how to clean the stitches and what to do when the wound healed over. He got hugs from all of them as they left and Eddie could feel himself really sinking into his work.
Despite Mr. Thomas, Eddie still had to deal with the politics of the hospital. Inside of room 315 he could be Eddie, doctor and helper. But outside? He had to be Dr. Kaspbrak, hard-ass and professional. He could see Brenda sneering at him as he walked down the hall, ready to undermine him for any little thing she could think of. He geared himself for her attack as he approached her.
“You have a new patient in 307. Better go check him out.”
At least it wasn’t the bitter, annoyed words he usually had slung at him.
Eddie knocked gently on the metal frame of the entryway of 307 before gently pulling back the curtain. “Hello, Richard? My name is Dr. Kaspbrak. I’ll be helping you out this evening.”
“What’s up, doc?” Richard says through a toothy grin, “Are you here to relieve my anal woes?”
Eddie stops about halfway in the room and looks up from his clipboard. “I’m sorry?”
“My anal woes, get it? You know? Because I have a vibrator stuck up my ass?”
Eddie hesitates for a second before stepping fully into the room and closing the curtain. “Yes, I was informed about your, uh,” he trails of for a moment, trying to choose his words carefully, “situation.”
Richie laughs, all shaking shoulders wide smile. “You don’t have to dance around the subject, doc. It’s pretty cut and dry.”
“Right,” Eddie says, hanging his charts up next to the bed and moving around the room. “Why don’t you tell me happened, Richard?”
“Just Richie is fine,” he says as he adjusts his hospital blanket around his waist. “Well, I was home alone on this glorious Saturday night and I figured hey, I have the apartment to myself. Why not engage in a little solo Richie time?”
He waggles his eyebrows at Eddie in a ridiculous manner, winking once before continuing on. “So, you know. I get the lube out and the rubber gloves and I get to work. I spread myself out over my duvet, kinda like this,” and before Eddie knows it Richie has shifted under his blankets, straightening one long leg out and hooking an arm under the other one to bend it back into his chest.
Eddie lets out something similar to a squeak but Richie keeps talking. He just watches as he maneuvers, eyes glued to this lanky boy doing yoga in his hospital bed. “So, I’m all settled in and I start prepping. And I’m really getting into it, yeah? Like, really getting –”
“Okay!” Eddie says, a little too loud but in his defense, there was probably no other way to interrupt Richie other than by matching the gusto with which he was talking. Richie stops and looks up at Eddie with full attention, like he was some school kid about to get his ten millionth detention. Eddie might have been able to feel bad about it if it weren’t for the crimson blush he could feel burning under the collar of his coat. “We don’t need that much detail, Richie. Why don’t you just tell me how it got stuck?”
“Oh, yeah!” Richie says and bounces back into his animated state. He lowers his leg as he’s talking, shifting again in the bed. “So, I’m getting down and dirty, yeah? And it feels good. I’m talking real good. So naturally I got kind of carried away.”
Eddie pauses for a second, gives Richie space to continue, but the room fall silent. This Richie is a real character. Eddie hasn’t seen someone so animated and full of gusto on his floor in a good couple of weeks, and even then, no one is quite like this patient. There’s something about Richie that both makes Eddie want to turn around and walk out of the room, of the floor, of the entire hospital, and then something that makes him want to stay. He almost doesn’t know how to handle it. It takes him another beat to skip back into conversation, shaking his head gently before asking, “Carried away how?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Doctor Hottie?” Richie says, voice low and eyes gently raking over Eddie’s form. It’s not enough to make Eddie feel uncomfortable but it is enough to let him know Richie is looking him over, really taking him in. It makes him want to squirm under the gaze. When Eddie doesn’t reply right away, Richie’s next statement is very matter of fact. “I slipped it in a bit too far and now it won’t come out, really killed the mood. I mean, it was great for a second because it’s jammed against my prostate but trust me, it ain’t so fun after you shoot your load, if you know what I mean.”
“I understand,” Eddie says, trying to remain professional. It’s more difficult than he expected and he can feel the edges of a smile creeping onto his face. This only seems to spur Richie on even more.
“Are you gonna help me, doc? I’m just so pent up, I think I might explode.”
Richie waggles his eyebrows and Eddie can’t really find the correct words to reply with. Eddie isn’t used to patients having much of an effect on him, but Richie seems to be catching him off guard more than he’s used to. It doesn’t help that Richie is so blasé about the whole thing. Like, really. Come on. Usually Eddie at least has the upper hand in the maturity department.
But to make matters worse, to really put the icing on the shit-cake, Richie is attractive . He’s got curly waves of back hair framing his face and bright blue eyes that probably hold a million ridiculous stories just like this one. He thinks maybe he could get lost in those eyes if he let himself. He can’t, though. Ethics and power dynamics and on the clock and blah, blah, whatever.
Reminding himself of the ethical code makes it easy to detach from the situation. He has had hundreds of attractive clients, this one is no different.
Eddie coughs twice in a feeble attempt to cover up his apparently awkwardness and manages to flip his switch from flustered human being to Doctor Kaspbrak. “On a scale from one to ten, tell me how much discomfort you’re having right now.”
“I think maybe a six?”
“A six isn’t too bad. We can work with a six,” Eddie reassures. “Now, let’s take a look, shall we?”
“Uh,” Richie’s voice cracks and Eddie watches as Richie falters for the first time since he entered the room. He shifts again and Eddie can swear he sees a faint blush creeping up Richie’s neck. “Sure, yeah. I know you’re probably dying to get all up in this ass.”
Eddie smirks at the way Richie fumbles with his words. It gets worse as Eddie washes his hands, slowly and deliberately, and then snaps on a pair of rubber gloves. “Alright, I’m gonna need you to put your feet in these stirrups for me. Is that okay?”
Richie nods and moves his feet to the stirrups. He keeps his gown tucked between his legs as Eddie moves about the room, getting a bottle of vaseline and a pair of forceps to put on the table. This is the part Eddie can handle. Its clinical work. He’s seen more body parts than he can even remember. Richie’s brash personality may have caught him off guard but Eddie knows that Richie’s got the same anatomy he’s been dealing with for his entire career. There are no surprises under this belt. Well, sans the vibrtor.
He moves closer to the bed and removes the stethoscope from around his neck. “I’m just gonna give your heart and lungs a quick listen.”
Richie doesn’t say anything back, so Eddie takes this as a window of opportunity to move in and start his brief examination. He motions for Richie to sit up straight, which he does, and then presses the base of the stethoscope to his chest. “Okay, now breath – wait,” Eddie quickly removes the stethoscope and steps back for a moment. “That’s weird. It almost sounds like your heart is buzzing.”
Richie makes a noise similar to a squeak before shooting a bashful smile up at Eddie. “Oh, did I not tell you? It’s maybe, kind of, sort of, a little bit still on.”
Eddie finds himself speechless for the second time in ten minutes as he looks into Richie’s eyes. Okay. Yeah. That’s fine. The toy was still on. He was suddenly able to realize why Richie was acting so strange. All the shifting, the crack in his voice. God, he must be so uncomfortable.
“Well,” Eddie manages, “let’s get this process moving then.”
Eddie listens to Richie’s heart and lungs, professionally ignoring the buzzing sound that rings through his stethoscope.
“You sound almost normal,” he teases, motioning for RIchie to lay back again and rolling a chair over to sit between his legs. “Are you ready?”
Richie nods again, having gone uncharacteristically quiet. He watches intently as Eddie lubricates the forceps, eyes growing just a hair wider when Eddie grabs the hospital gown and moves it aside.
“I’m sorry!” Richie blurts out as soon as the gown is moved. Eddie almost asks him what’s wrong but he figures it out quickly enough. It isn’t hard to miss the way Richie is hard against his own stomach, tip slightly red and small beads of precum leaking out of the tip.
Eddie chuckles gently before reassuring him. “This is a perfectly normal bodily reaction, Richie. You have a sex toy designed for pleasure inside of you right now. There is nothing weird about having an erection because of it.”
Richie doesn’t respond so Eddie settles back into the task at hand. And there it is. Well, Eddie can’t see the vibrator, but he can see how Richie is slightly open. “I’m going to insert my fingers a little bit to see how deep the vibrator is,” Eddie says. Richie makes a noise of confirmation and Eddie presses one gloved finger gently into Richie’s hole. Eddie can feel the way Richie tenses under him, he can hear the increase in breath.
Eddie’s pressed in to the second knuckle when he finally feels the hard plastic. Now that he can feel it, he can really feel how it’s going full throttle, likely turned up to one of the higher settings. Part of him feels bad for Richie but another part of him feels distinctly warm. He tries not to think about it as he presses in a second finger alongside the first one and scissors, stretching out the already loosened entrance to try and get a grip on the toy. All he succeeds in doing is bumping the toy, pressing it slightly further in and causing Richie to make a muffled noise above him.
Eddie would be lying to himself and the holy spirit if he said he wasn’t at least a little bit affected. He couldn’t help it, though! Who’s dick wouldn’t twitch at something like that?
Eddie grabs the forceps and slides them in, keeping one finger inside of Richie. He spends maybe five minutes jostling the toy, bumping it, and attempting to get a grip. With every passing second Richie grows more and more restless above him.
“Uh,” Richie says, voice somewhere between a light moan and a urgent question. “I don’t think this is working.”
Eddie gently removes the forceps and his finger. “I think you’re right. We’re gonna have to put you under to remove the vibrator.
When Eddie stands and looks at Richie, he can see the way his entire face is flushed and the way his eyes are slightly unfocused. It’s infuriating attractive.
Now that the technical part of his job is over, Eddie finally has a second to really look at Richie. He takes in the frizzy hair and blue eyes again but this time he really lets himself look. Richie’s got his eyes closed as he takes deep, steadying breaths and Eddie watches the rise and fall of his chest. He’s got a white knuckles grip on the edge of the bed and Eddie knows that he’s probably fighting his body to stay calm, to come back down from the edge.
He takes in the way Richie’s legs are propped up on the bed and thinks about how he might look somewhere else, in a different bed, in a different room, with something else deep inside him. By the time Richie has calmed down and opened his eyes, Eddie has buttoned up his white coat to hide his own erection.
Fuck. Okay. No. This is not happening right now.
“I’m going to a run a quick blood test and we’re gonna get you X-Rayed to make sure you’re cleared for minor surgery.”
Richie complies and Eddie draws blood to send away to the labs before having a nurse wheel Richie off to the X-Ray station. They exchange a few more pleasantries, Eddie walking Richie through what’s going to happen before the nurse takes him away.
Eddie makes his way through the floor again while they wait for Richie’s X-rays and bloodwork to come back. He makes the necessary calls to get Richie set up for minor surgery and goes on with his rounds. Someone’s too drunk, someone cut their hand cooking, someone has chest pains. Eddie moves through all of them with ease. Stitches for you, Mrs. O’Neal! A comprehensive chest exam for you, Mr. Roberts! The further away he gets from Richie’s room, the more regulated he feels. His little problem has completely faded by the time he hit the second room. He might even push a little more work onto the nurses than usual, but he blames it on the insistent itching in his chest. That little nub of curiosity telling him that Richie should be back in his room by now. He wants to get there quickly, knowing how uncomfortable he must be. The faster Eddie can move through his usual work, the faster Richie will be able to go into minor surgery.
At least, that’s what he tells himself.
“What’cha thinkin’ about, Eddie?” Brenda says as she passes him by the nurse’s station. “You seem a little bit… preoccupied. Got anything to do with that rock-solid cutie in 307?”
Eddie chooses not to dignify her with a response, but this seems to be the wrong choice because soon her cackle is ringing out across the floor and grinding on every last one of Eddie’s nerves.
As she walks away, Eddie takes one steadying breath in through his nose and releases it, turning back to the computer to check if Richie’s test results came back. As soon as Richie is cleared, Eddie is on his feet and knocking on the doorframe to Richie’s room. As soon as he hears a noise of confirmation, he’s through the curtain and into Richie’s room.
Richie looks worse for wear. His blush has crept up from his neck and is now covering his face. He’s got a thin sheen on sweat on his forehead and a glazed over look in his eyes. He looks exhausted and slightly out of breath as he looks up at Eddie with a pleading expression
“Oh hey, Dr. K.,” he says but the life in his voice is faded. “Are you an angel? Because I think you just fell from heaven.”
Despite the awful pick up line, Eddie finds himself chuckling slightly. “I think you might just be over tired from your situation.”
“What, me? No way. I’ve got the stamina of a horse. You should try me out sometime, take me for a ride,” Richie waggles his eyebrows and winks at Eddie and even through the exhaustion, Eddie can see that playful, ridiculous side seeping out.
“I don’t think that would be very appropriate of me,” Eddie responds and then they’re both laughing. Well, Eddie is laughing and Richie is letting out little puffs of air around a smile. It counts, though.
“Give it to me straight, Doc,” Richie says, changing the atmosphere from gentle tension to dramatic flair. He drapes an arm over his eyes and lets out a small, wanton moan for dramatic effect.
“Well, your bloodwork came back just fine and the X-Ray gives us a clear picture of what’s going on. We’re gonna put you under so we can extract the toy. It’s a simple procedure and it’ll be finishing within the hour.”
“So, I’m gonna live?” Richie asks, peeking out from behind his arm.
“Yes, Riche. You’re gonna make it,” Eddie says back, playing along.
Richie lowers his arm completely and lets out a sigh of relief. His eyes linger closed for a moment and Eddie watches as his face contorts into something between pain and discomfort. Eddie couldn’t imagine being in that spot. He doesn’t particularly have a kink for overstimulation and he imagines Richie doesn’t either but he quickly stops himself from thinking any further.
This is his patient, for fucks sake. There is no world in which it is appropriate for him to be thinking about Richie on his back, legs up in that position he had them in earlier, and with a lot less clothing.
No. Jesus fuck. What the hell is wrong with him?
Instead, he circles the bed and presses a comforting hand on Richie’s shoulder. Eddie opens his mouth to say something, reassure Richie that this will all be over soon, when suddenly Richie’s entire body arches back off the bed. One hand flies up to cover his mouth as the other grips Eddie’s forearm and then he’s muffling a long, deep moan.
Eddie watches, he can’t help it. For the first second he has no idea what’s happening but then it dawns on him. Richie squirms on the hospital bed beneath him as his orgasm overtakes him. It seems to last forever and Eddie takes the whole thing in: the way Richie’s brows furrow, the way his foot twitches, the way he pulls his bottom lip into his mouth as his hand falls away. As Richie comes down, Eddie can feel himself grow hot under the collar.
He thanks whatever God there is in this universe that Richie was at least quiet.
Richie doesn’t open his eyes. Instead, he slowly brings his hands up over them and lets out a groan. This one isn’t full of pent up pleasure, though. Eddie can hear the embarrassment in it.
“Are you okay?” He asks, removing his own hand from Richie’s shoulder crossing the room. He gets a cold glass of water for both himself and Richie. He needs something, anything, that will bring his temperature and he reckons Richie needs the same.
“Oh, other than the fact that I just creamed my pants in front of this incredibly hot doctor and that I have vibrator stuck in my ass that’s still going full speed? Yeah, I’m fine,” Richie says and even though the words are strained, Eddie is thankful to hear Richie’s lighthearted tone behind it all. It breaks some of the tension in the room and Eddie can release his own breath, slow his own rapidly beating heart.
“Don’t worry. We’re gonna get that second part squared away real quick. As for the first part? I can’t really help you there,” Eddie laughs, stepping back and heading for the door. “Maybe you can find comfort in the fact that I’ve seen a lot worse in this line of work.”
“So you thought my ‘O Face’ was bad?” Richie calls as Eddie grabs the curtain.
Eddie lets his hand linger on the curtain as he debates his answer. By the time Richie is back from his procedure, Eddie will be off the clock and probably already home. He’s got nothing to lose by being honest. “Quite the opposite, Richie.”
He hears Richie laugh as he exits the room. He calls the people who will be in charge of Richie’s procedure and gets it all squared away before beginning his final rounds for the night. When the clock hits 2am and his patients have been tended to, Eddie hands off to the next doctor and heads home.