Chapter Text
I. Spring, 1997
It’s the Spring of ‘97 when Michael Robinavitch is dragged into a gay bar, darker than the night that surrounds it, for the very first time. It happens the way most things happen amongst grad students at the tail-end of the semester: a crazy idea proposed over one too many drinks, taken seriously at the bottom of the next round. Pittsburgh’s the only city he’s ever called home, but Robby’s never seen inside the four walls of The Playback until tonight; a few hours ago, in fact, he might’ve bet good money he never would. Now here he stands, washed over by the staccato thud of the speakers, Janet Jackson’s voice over a steady baseline. It doesn't take long for his eyes to adjust to the lights panning over the dancing crowd in alternating hues, strobe flashes catching the sweat on strangers’ faces, slick in the dark.
For a moment, Robby’s struck by the realization that anybody could catch a glimpse of him in the fleeting light. For a moment, he envisions his grandmother wringing her hands, eyes like those of a wounded bird. Inhaling around the dull ache in his chest, he wonders what he’s doing here. He wonders what it says about him that his friends thought to bring him along with them in the first place.
Charlie, Pratt, and Rhonda are good people, Robby reminds himself. The fact that they took to each other so quickly in an otherwise cut-throat program is no small feat and that’s due, in part, because he never treated them any differently than the rest of their peers. Sure, their medical program was never going to be rampant with homophobia — Charlie and Pratt hit it off, after all, because they both volunteered for the Pitt Men’s Study, alive and well at their school after thirteen years and counting. But that doesn’t mean they have it easy, either, and Robby knows that, too.
Maybe that’s why they invited him — because he offered his friendship so easily, because he carries himself with the quiet understanding of someone who knows what it’s like to have been dealt a rough hand. Maybe that’s why they trusted he wouldn’t take offense to the invitation, why they might’ve guessed, in fact, that he’d take them up on it. Even if he’s never said anything. Even if he’s tried so carefully never to show anything.
But there’s another, more complicated possibility settled just underneath that one — a truth that, even for a young man of twenty-six years old, feels too tender for Robby touch, so he keeps it carefully out of reach.
He hears Rhonda before he sees her. “You good, man?” she says, clapping a warm hand to his shoulder. “You look like you’re fixin’ for the nearest exit.”
“All good,” Robby says, perhaps a little too quickly. “Just fixing for a drink.”
Rhonda leans back, giving him a once-over. Her voice stays easy. “Uh-huh. Well, pace yourself, Mikey. Bartenders here pour like they’re trying to send you out on a gurney.”
“Perfect. More clinical hours for us to look forward to.”
“More clinical hours for you, maybe,” she corrects. “As far as I’m concerned, my weekend’s started. I’m leaving on the gurney.” At that, Robby laughs, soft and brief, but doesn’t move. Rhonda nudges her chin toward the bar. “You want company, or you flying solo?”
He hesitates, eyes flicking to the sea of bodies between them, the long, crowded stretch of the bar, and then back to her. “Company sounds good.”
She nods. “Cool. Let’s get you something that won’t knock you sideways on the first sip.”
The crowd turns out to be too dense for them to weave through, so they play the long game, talking over the music as they inch their way closer to the bar one song at a time. It gives Robby the chance to take a proper look around. He’s not sure he’s ever seen a crowd like this before. It makes sense that one of the only gay clubs in town would cast a wide net, attracting people of all ages, all races, all walks of life. But it’s a different thing entirely to see it up close: the buzzcuts, the makeup, the joyous touching, the hungry glances.
As one song eases into another, so, too, does the tension ease out of Robby’s shoulders. This isn’t totally unfamiliar territory, after all -- gay or not, bars are just a lot of people talking and drinking. Before he knows it, the only thing he’s focused on is learning where Rhonda got matched to do her residency. It’s safer here, Robby realizes, than he thought any place could be. Safer than his high school locker rooms, safer still than his childhood in the suburbs, waiting for his mom to come back home. Here, in this windowless room with its sticky floor and trembling speakers, no one is looking at him with accusatory eyes. They’re too consumed in the moment to bother – laughing, dancing, drifting close and then closer. Except — Except —
“Don’t look now,” Rhonda tells him. “But you’ve got a fan at eight o’clock.”
Robby blinks. He angles his head just enough to follow her line of sight. Across the bar, half-lit by the amber glow of a neon sign, a pair of dark eyes lock onto his. The person looking back at him can’t be any older than Robby himself – maybe younger, in fact, by a year or two. His hair, a dark suggestion of curls, gives him a boyish quality that offset the sharp slope of his cheekbones; when he catches Robby’s gaze, he smiles.
Rhonda snorts. “Jesus, Mike. I said don’t look.”
“Is that what you said? I misheard you.” Turning to his friend, he gestures towards the bar. “There’s an opening at the bar if you’re still good on ordering us drinks.”
“And what are you gonna do? Just hang back and waste that look?”
He shrugs. “That look’s wasted on me either way.”
“And why’s that?”
Robby gives her a look. “You know why.”
“Look, I know a free drink when I see one. You like free drinks, don’t you?” She smiles, turning back to the crowd. “I’m gonna see where Charlie and Pratt ran off to. Vodka soda with lime. I’ll pay you back.”
Robby tries to call after to her, tries to remind his friend that offering to keep him company ought to have been more than a ten minute deal, but the crowd shifts, the opening at the bar threatening to close, and Robby thinks he sees Rhonda walking in the direction of a girl who looks suspiciously like her ex-girlfriend. It’s a lost cause.
He’s waiting to catch the bartender’s attention when Robby feels somebody’s gaze on him. To his left, those curls again, those dark eyes — that guy who offered him a smile, only an inch or two shorter than Robby now that he’s close.
They both spot the same narrow opening at the bar — a brief, golden chance. Robby half-gestures toward it, polite, letting the guy go first. The guy does the same, mirroring him with a slight grin. Neither of them moves. In the space of their stand-off, someone else slips in, wedging between them and claiming the spot instead.
They glance at each other and laugh. Robby says, “guess chivalry’s dead.”
“You snooze, you lose.” The guy leans in a little, still smiling. “Haven’t I seen you here before?”
Robby scans his face, half-heartedly looking for a spark of recognition that he knows he won’t find. This close, Robby can take a good look at the freckles that wash across the other man’s cheeks and nose, giving his boyish face the easy air of someone who spends his days in the sun. “I don’t think so,” he says at last. “This is my first time stopping in.”
The stranger nods, taking it in stride. “Cool, man. Welcome.” Then, with a little shift of his stance, he offers a hand. “I’m Jack, by the way.”
Robby takes it. What should he offer – his first name, his nickname, nothing at all? He settles on what his teammates called him in high school basketball, the name he might one day offer to his patients. “Robby.”
Jack’s grip is steady, warm in Robby’s hand before contact breaks. “You havin’ fun, Robby?”
Robby is taken back by the question, its simplicity. “Yeah. I am, actually.” He lets the words settle, then says it again, meaning it more the second time. “Yeah.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Look’s like the bartender’s coming back round. Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m good. I’m actually grabbing one for me and my friend,” Robby explains, gesturing back towards Rhonda before the look on Jack’s face reminds him that nothing about Rhonda would explain why a man is buying her a drink in the first place. “Thanks for the offer. Seriously. I just don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
“And what idea’s that?”
Robby hesitates. “I’m, um — I’m not gay.”
“Oh, good. Neither am I,” Jack says, his voice rounded and warm, like he’s just told a joke. “Look, what’s there to get? This place is just good music and strong drinks. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Robby hears what he leaves unsaid: it doesn’t have to mean anything about you. “Do you come here often?”
Jack does laugh at that. “And here I was thinking I’m the one with the awful pick up lines.”
Robby feels his face warm, laughing, too, despite himself. “It wasn’t a line! I’m genuinely asking.”
“Yeah, on occasion. It’s a good crowd here. Not very judgmental. Just trying to have a nice time. The bartenders are great so long as you don’t get on their bad side, so half of ‘em are pretty awful to me,” Jack smiles. “There’s one thing about this place that drives me absolutely crazy, though.”
“You’re not going to say it’s me, are you?”
Jack groans. “Christ, no. Telling that that’s the first place your mind went though, man.”
“You’re the one with the bad game.” Robby pauses, looking out across the club. “No fire exits.”
Jack looks surprised at that. “You must be my kind of crazy.”
“The paranoid kind?”
“I like to call it forward-thinking,” Jack says. "If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you always need an exit strategy, Robby.” He says his name lightly, like they’ve known each other for years. Then his eyes flick past Robby’s shoulder. “And speaking of, I think I see yours.”
Robby turns just as Rhonda comes into view, weaving towards him with Charlie and Pratt trailing behind her. When he glances back, Jack is already stepping away — easy, unbothered, just a half-smile left behind. “Go get your drink,” he says over his shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”
And just like that, he’s gone — swallowed by the crowd, as if the whole conversation had been a brief detour in a longer night. The music throbs through the floorboards, some synth-heavy remix that blurs into the pulse of the room. Robby gets pulled toward the bar, then the dance floor, then somewhere in between. After a round of drinks, it all gets incrementally easier, more loose-limbed and fun, but some small part of him never quite settles.
Every now and then, through the blur of lights and music, his eyes catch on Jack. He spots him dancing with other men, fluid and easy, that same effortless charm on display. He watches Jack lean in to say something right into another guy’s ear, the kind of close that requires familiarity or confidence or both. The guy beams up at him, eyes wide and wanting, and Robby feels something strange twist low in his chest.
He’s got a nice laugh, Robby thinks, surprised by the observation. He watches the way Jack’s nose crinkles when he grins, the way his teeth flash in a charmingly imperfect line. He’s not even sure how long he’s been watching until Jack disappears again, swallowed by bodies, by motion, by the night itself.
Robby blinks, glances around. Pratt and Charlie are gone. Rhonda’s in the back, some blonde’s arms looped lazily around her neck. The music shifts again, and Robby’s left standing alone in the press of the crowd, scanning faces, suddenly and acutely aware that he doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he realizes he can’t find it.
Knowing nobody will go looking for him, Robby makes for the exit — to do what exactly, he isn’t sure. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. On his way out, he spots the guy Jack had been talking to, already draped over someone else. Robby doesn’t know why that pleases him, but it does — quiet and certain, like the door shutting behind him as he enters into the open night.
The first thing Robby notices is the air: crisp, metallic cold in his lungs. It’s misting now — not quite rain, just a fine sheen in the air that turns everything glossy and soft.
And there, halfway down the alley, stands Jack.
He’s hunched slightly under the lip of a fire escape, one hand cupped around a cigarette, the other flicking a lighter that won’t catch. Jack mutters something under his breath, shakes the lighter, tries again.
Robby watches for a beat. There’s something strangely tender about the sight of him this way – this guy who seemed so effortless inside The Playback, suddenly a little more human, a little frustrated, shoulders curled in against the mist.
“Need a hand?” Robby calls, stepping forward.
Jack glances up, eyes narrowing like he’s trying to place him before recognition softens his face. He leans back against the wall with a tired grin, still holding the useless lighter. “You again.”
“Figured I’d check for fire hazards out back.”
Jack huffs a laugh. “You and me both.” The lighter clicks healthily at last, flame catching orange at the end of the marlboro in his hand. “You smoke?”
“Not if I can help it,” Robby says, coming closer, drawn in despite himself. “But I’m a big fan of dramatic exits.”
Jack tilts his head, amused. “Wasn’t trying to be dramatic.”
“You really don’t think this," Robby says, gesturing towards Jack's whole deal, "is a little Rebel Without A Cause?”
Jack lets out a low chuckle. “Fair point.”
They stand together in easy silence, mist collecting in their hair, both of them listening to the muffled bass behind the wall. When he's sure he won't get caught, Robby carefully glances over, studying the slope of Jack’s profile, the way he flicks ash from his cigarette with ease. “You always disappear like that?” he asks eventually.
Jack takes another drag before answering. “Only when I think someone might come looking.”
Robby doesn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t looking for you, he almost says, but he stops himself. It’ll sound untrue, he knows, even to his own ears.
“So, you don’t smoke,” Jack says, moving on, offering a smile as easy as anything. “And you don’t go to bars. What do you do for fun?”
“I never said I don’t go to bars. I just haven’t been to this one.” It’s a half-truth, of course. You don’t climb to the top of your class by having a rich personal life, but this guy doesn’t need to know that. “I don’t have a lot of time for fun.” When Jack looks at him with a question in his eyes, Robby adds: “I’m in school.”
“You’re a little tall for high school.”
“Med school,” Robby supplies.
Jack whistles. “A doctor. Most guys would’ve led with that, y’know.”
Robby lets out a laugh. “Not a doctor yet. Not till I’m walking across that stage with the diploma in hand.”
Jack shrugs, not unkindly, as if to say close enough. “There but for the grace of God go I.”
“You, too?” Robby asks. “You don’t go to Pitt. I’ve never seen you.”
“I got one of those faces you’d remember?” Jack asks. Robby rolls his eyes at that, thinking lamely again of James Dean, thinking that this is the kind of thing you see people fall for in movies: a handsome guy in an alleyway, sharing glances with him in the dark. It all should feel embarrassingly cliché, but goddamn if Jack doesn’t know how to sell it. “Nah, that makes sense,” Jack adds. “You’re finishing, I’m looking to start.”
“Where’d you apply?”
Jack gives him a look – not a mean one, not one of offense exactly, but there’s something there in his expression that suggests a kind of delicacy, like Robby unknowingly pressed against something tender and raw. “In an office on McKnight and Houston Road.”
Robby tries to keep a neutral face. There’s a recruitment station there. “You thinking about enlisting?”
“Not just thinking,” Jack replies. “I’m headed out to Georgia next month.”
Robby nods. Ships in the night, he thinks. Come June, Jack will be in Fort Benning. Come July, Robby will be in New Orleans. “So, you’re interested in combat medicine?”
“Interested enough. My dad’s a vet,” Jack tells him. “And med school’s expensive. Where are you doing your residency?”
“NOLA,” Robby answers. “New Orleans Charity Hospital.”
Jack laughs — laughs enough that he almost chokes on it, coughing around the smoke. It’s almost unfair. On anyone else, it’d ruin the charm – but instead Robby thinks, there’s that laugh again, that crinkle in his nose. “Oh, fuck you,” Jack says, around another bout of laughter.
Robby feels his face flare up spectacularly with warmth, knows himself well enough to count that it shows. “What?” he asks, voice pitched with embarrassed laughter of his own. “What’d I say? What’s so funny?”
“You,” he says, gesturing to him with the cigarette. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man. Tall, dark, and handsome wasn’t enough – had to be a doctor and a saint on top of that.”
“I’m no saint."
“Not from where I’m standing.”
Why does Robby do what he does next? Is it the alcohol in his belly that emboldens him, the tepid high of being sleep-deprived and tipsy at 2AM? Or is it the way Jack looks at Robby just then, the way the nearest streetlight casts its pale glow on the muscles of his neck? Whatever the reason, if there is one at all, Robby reaches across the space between them and takes Jack’s cigarette away from him, lifting it instead to his own lips.
He inhales, enjoying the bitterness of the taste all the more because he tastes it under the gravity of Jack’s gaze. He watches as the other man watches him, Jack’s eyes flicking down towards his lips — too fleetingly to be intentional, too hungrily to be anything but. For better or worse, Robby knows the effect he has on women. He's been praised for his looks since he was a boy. But, between men, he knows the impossibility of shared glances, the importance of being invisible in order to be safe.
“You really think I’m handsome?” Robby asks.
Jack takes the cigarette back from Robby, the pad of his thumb brushing again the flesh of his bottom lip, before taking a drag from the cigarette himself. “Is that what you heard?”
“That’s what you said.”
“Fuck you,” Jack says again, with a laugh, and Robby thinks – terrifyingly, the words almost spill out of his mouth – wish you would. But maybe it doesn’t have to be said or maybe, just maybe, he says it aloud after all. Later, when Robby replays this moment over in his mind so many times that it starts to blur at the edges, he won’t remember who moved first, or whether Jack touched his face before or after their mouths met. Only that one second they were talking, and the next, Jack stepped into his space, crowding him, and Robby didn’t stop him.
The kiss comes sweet, unhesitating — beer and tobacco on Jack’s breath, a sudden heat in the cold air, the scrape of brick against Robby’s spine grounding him in the moment, affirming that this is real. At first, Robby can’t quite stop his thoughts from unspooling. He thinks of his father the winter before left, his oppressive silences at dinner. Of his mother’s tight smile, never quite reaching her eyes. Of the way his hands used to tremble whenever he was in trouble at school or at home, until he learned to tuck the shaking away somewhere nobody else could see.
Robby could end this now. He could step back, push Jack off of him, disappear into the story he’s spent his whole life memorizing: the perfect Jewish son, the golden boy, the good doctor. A man shaped entirely by what other people want from him. But then, he thinks, he wouldn’t have this: the warmth of Jack’s lips against his own, the cigarette discarded between their feet, the softness of his hair in Robby's hands — how easily it gives way to carding fingers, how well-made it seems for tugging.
So instead, Robby stays. Instead, he kisses Jack back, deep and wanting and heavy, and it feels like loosening something clenched so long he forgot it was a fist, like confessing a truth without having to speak it.