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Robby has been a doctor a very long time, and here he thinks that he has finally figured it out, finally discovered his own midrash, perverted by his lack of faith, his lack of study. The biblical texts taught him nothing, and even as he heard his grandmother speak over him in Hebrew, even as he memorized those words and felt the power in his gut, he didn't believe.
Robby believed in people. Every single fucking day, he saw sides of humanity that no one would ever even know about. The pain and the suffering and the endurance and the resilience. Maybe he'd started this journey because he couldn't figure out how else to help people, how to stem the wound that constantly leaked in his side, his compassion and empathy spilling on the ground in crimson pulses. He'd learned to tie them up, to suture, to bandage, to reset, to listen and to heal. Each sunrise promised another day of finding a new facet to the human condition that had not existed to him the day before. He loved it.
Javadi, little Victoria who has almost certainly never had a nickname in her whole life, pouts and rails against Santos calling her Crash, but she answers to it. She perks up and flexes her sharp claws and still seeks that connection. He loves her intelligence and her stubbornness and her unwillingness to settle. He shrugs helplessly whenever Eileen comes to badger him - he knows the fortress one builds when you are questioned of your own decisions. It'll be hell trying to get her out of emergency medicine now. He thinks research might call her away eventually, her genius brain unable to rest.
Santos will take his job, once she hits high enough level. That ruthless doggedness is unmistakable and admirable. The slice of vulnerability when a joke doesn't land, when she gets something wrong, it'll be her undoing if she continues to think of failure as a weakness. He wants to shake her shoulders, tell her that to be weak is to be human, to wrench open your chest and expose the tenderness of your heart is the only way you ever learn how to be strong. It's a lesson you can't teach, no matter how he's tried.
He never properly understood Mohan, and that's his own fault. The way she wielded empathy as a tool rather than succumb to the quicksand of others' feelings baffled him. Not all doctors did a fellowship, but he knows Mohan will go into something like pain management, something difficult and kind, something necessary and so underutilized. He sees the same yawning chasm of empathy in her that has swallowed him and he hopes she can stand on his shoulders to keep her head above it.
At some point, he should've learned his lesson about not trusting McKay's instincts. She tilted a way he didn't, saw with a lens he could never wear, and every time he had paid for it. Sometimes little, minor things, sometimes - not. He should leave that note in her personnel file: exceedingly uncanny ability to suss shit out.
Whittaker, small mouse of a boy with the attitude of a beaten dog, refined through fire. Some people it burned, but Whittaker came out stronger, harder, gilded. Whittaker is one of those physicians who will die at their hospital at age 98, going to sleep and dissipating into the walls as though he was returning home.
He told Mel to go by Dr. King. She'd earned it, she earned it again every day, she fought and she continued to display such kindness he was sure the hammer of public cynicism would smash it flat. He was wrong (Robby liked to be wrong. He hated to be wrong, but he liked it. He loved for people to surprise him. He loved to find those ten people that once again let him spare humanity. There is some beauty in the world, Robby). He worried about her, her loneliness, her driven need to help others at the expense of herself. A common defect amongst physicians. He held out a hand for her but she was too shy to take it. Instead she'd...
He watches King interact with Langdon. She's explaining something, her hand gestures expansive, a smile brightening her face in flares, like the sun peeking through clouds. Frank watches her as if she discovered germ theory. As if she invented ethical human organ cloning in her kitchen yesterday. Frank follows every movement with an awe to his face that makes Robby laugh. He loves Frank, loves him more than he should - shouldn't be showing preference to any student over another - but he'd loved that swagger and that confidence and the eagerness to learn from mistakes.
He has no biological children, but he has Jake, and he has Frank. Part of Robby wants to approach, to squeeze Frank's shoulder and make a little joke, an insinuation, and watch his two lonely people blush with realization. He'd like Frank to find a real connection. King needs one too.
He keeps typing. He finished all the letters days ago, but he has to write all the thoughts he's been holding back on charts. After so many years, so much experience, he finds solutions like he's plucking them out of the air; he knows it's as frustrating as it is miraculous. Robby remembers the feeling well.
"You're giggling to yourself over there," Dana says, even as she hands off one chart for another, fishing out a protein bar for the new LVN who forgot to bring a lunch and still managing to send Robby an arched brow.
"Giggling?"
"Yeah, you got a secret admirer or what?"
"Ha!" he laughs, shaking his head. "Just wrapping up some notes on charts."
Both of her eyebrows rise, a deductive calculation in her eyes as savvy as any doctor he'd ever encountered who thought themselves above nurses. Robby, at least, had never made that mistake. He met Dana, asked her to marry him, and was at her Thanksgiving with the rest of her kids later that year. Maybe once King discovered ethical cloning she could produce another Dana or two. The world needed them desperately.
Her hands go to her hips and he is in trouble. "You're a schoolgirl with a flower on her locker over charts? Pull the other one - it's got bells."
Robby raises his hands in defeat. He unfolds himself from the chair and saunters over to her, the knowing purse of her mouth faltering, teetering into a smile. She holds the line. He wraps her up in his arms, so tight he hears her exhale with the force of it. His lips find her hair before he has a chance to stop himself.
"Maybe," he says before the furrow between her brow can build up steam, "a certain charge nurse got the week and a half off in August she requested."
"You serious?" The furrow evaporates into relief, and she punches his shoulder. "You know my kid's takin me to Bali? What the hell am I gonna do in Bali?"
"Tan, I think. Drink more mojitos than your physician recommends."
She scoffs, even as her hand comes up to hold his jaw, her fingers light against his beard. "An' how many is that?"
He pretends to think on it, covering her hand with his. Her fingers are steel, and the pinky is crooked from when he hadn't been able to set it properly in one of their early early days of absolute shit. "No more than three."
"Pfft!" she rolls her eyes and grabs his chin, gives it a little shake. "We'll see about that."
He catches her wrist, just briefly, unexpectedly. He didn't mean to. Dana's eyes go soft, the look she has for him, reading him as though he were in large print and translated into the language her heart knew best. She pulls back just enough that their hands entangle. It's a bad idea, he can't let her look too long. She knows him better than almost anyone. The corner of her mouth pulls up like it's got a string attached, not quite what he'd call a smile.
"You gonna take care of yourself for me, Robby?"
He kisses her fingers, lips against her rough knuckles, and bows over their joined hands. "I'd do anything for you, Dana."
Her expression doesn't change. "See that you do."'
Robby closes out his charts. He didn't write enough. If he had time to transfer the entirety of his medical knowledge, the experience he's racked up, the mistakes he's made and the lessons he paid for in his blood and sweat and tears and years of his life - he'd ask the sun to wait one more minute before supernova.
He can't help himself. On his way out the door, he grabs Frank's shoulder and gives it a good squeeze. His handsome boy jerks back, startled, but then his face transforms, brightens, the smile creasing over it like morning dew on grass. He'd been burning that bridge for his own fucking pride and he stole time away from them.
Robby has a hard time getting things right.
"Take care of yourselves," he says to Frank and King, both of whom nod. "And each other."
Frank goes crimson - adorable - and King looks a little bewildered before she catches Langdon's reaction and turns red herself. His two lost lambs, a small flock of their own. Will Frank stay at the Pitt? Hard to guess, but he'd asked Jack to try some of his brand of mentorship toward the guy. His boy hadn't yet let go of the shame, but damned if he wasn't struggling through the caul of wretched rebirth.
Robby doesn't squeeze his shoulder again. He wraps his arms around himself, fingers digging into his ribs to stop the urge. He heads out of the ambulance bay, foregoing his locker, foregoing the helmet he perched on top. His keys are in his pocket.
Pittsburgh kicks him in the gut like it's been trying to all day, the dense wall of humidity a physical slap to his face. Breathing is self-flagellation, but Robby inhales deeply and laughs a little. She was gonna grip him tight the whole way.
You can see the PTMC from most of the city. Mount Washington gives it a beautiful background, especially in the fall. It's all green now, rolling with heat and life, the fish glinting in the Monongahela River. But he stops after only a few streets and looks back. The Pitt gleams in darkness, a beacon calling to her beaten, broken, and betrayed. He should've gone to the roof one more time, but he'd spent ten minutes the morning before up there with Jack, quiet, listening to their city wake up.
Robby had thought it would take longer to pick out the right building. Fortunately, there were plenty in the city that topped ten stories, and so he was spoiled for choice. He hadn't wanted something Downtown, anything remotely close to the Pitt. The streets should be nice, but usually empty. It was so late, he didn't think anyone would be out, especially with the city jealously clinging to the swelter of heat from the day's bake.
When he parks his bike, he takes a final look over it. He should've brought the helmet. He doesn't want someone to take it and not have one, risk their life by careening about bare-headed. He leaves the keys in the compartment under the seat. The neighborhood isn't the nicest in the city, but nowhere near the worst. There's a chance it'll still be there in the morning.
He climbs the fire escape. There's an elevator inside. He rang the doorbell earlier and someone offered to buzz him in. He could take it. But he takes the fire escape. It's a long fucking climb. He's winded and sweaty when he makes it to the top. The air is sweet, even as moist and hot as it is. Each sucking breath fills his lungs like ambrosia, like manna.
Robby runs his hand along the metal of the various cooling units, their casings wet with condensation. The smoothness is often interrupted with rivets and bolts, sometimes the pebbly surface of spray paint, the slick of plastic. When he gets to the edge, he sees her.
The Pitt. He can just make out the arch of her roof. There are two figures up there, he thinks, black silhouettes so close they might as well be merged. A helicopter flies over, blades chopping up the symphony of car horns and rushing water. He shakes his head. He lost so many lives today, but the city never failed to keep going, the beat of her heart a million hearts, the cacophony of existence.
A wind picks up, a cool caress over his cheek and Robby closes his eyes. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe the city gives him the kiss on Dana's hair, the squeeze to Frank's shoulder, the press against Jack's forehead. The farewell.
He doesn't have long before midnight. He gave himself just past the day. Breaking his body like a champagne bottle against the hull of dawn. He's given his soul and his heart and his mind to the people - what burden is the flesh? Don't the Christians have something about that?
Eat of my body; drink of my blood. Consume me and part of me lives in you.
Robby is tired. He's been on his feet eighteen hours now, and his dumb ass climbed ten flights of stairs like he's 23 instead of 53. He'd been eaten piecemeal for thirty years - he could hardly expect peak performance. He sits and lets his legs dangle over the edge.
It's stupid for him to be surprised when he hears the voice, but he is.
And then, he isn't. Of course. Of course.
"Seems like you found yourself on the wrong roof, brother."
He closes his eyes momentarily, unable to avert his gaze for too long. When he opens them again, a figure stands to his left, shadowed in the twilight of rooftop lighting. Robby sighs.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Neither are you.”
“I –" but words don’t come. His tongue stills in his mouth, his throat swallowing reflexively, like something is poured into him, viscous.
“Come on, man. You gotta give me something more than that.”
It garners a little laugh out of him, and Robby glances up, a rictus smile on his face. Jack has his hands in his pockets, dark wash jeans that fit him so much better than scrubs, sleeves pushed up on a jacket that disperses the wind whipping over them. He’s staring directly at Robby, mouth a tense slash.
Jack Anthony Abbott, honorably discharged from the U.S. Army Medical Corps as a Major, Purple Heart recipient, amputee, Taurus, overachiever, trailblazer, rogue, genius, Polaris, friend. Or, Robby allows himself, the nearest thing to a soulmate the world could manage.
He shrugs, unable to maintain eye contact. Jack Abbot always sees through him the way no one ever has, and it's been both his bane and his boon in the years since they met. It's given him some peace, in a way, that he was known. Every bit of him, the hidden or the highlighted.
"How did you find me," he rasps, the gyrating flash of red and blue lights catching his attention, something to focus on other than Jack's discerning eye.
"Math."
It's not the answer Robby expects. He glances back, confusion and amusement in his voice. "Math?"
Jack rocks back on his feet, running his hand over his mouth before returning it to his pocket. The tension in his arm pulls the jacket taut, the flexor ulnaris stark. "Yeah, math. The height of the building you'd need, far enough away an ambo doesn't try to take you to the Pitt but close enough you can see it, the wind tunnel that might increase air friction if the buildings are too close together."
Robby's distracted from his distraction, and he's unsteady even sitting down. "Really?"
"No, you luddite. We've been sharing each other's location since cell phones became a thing. I followed your little fucking dot from the hospital."
Jack throws his cell phone at him and Robby fumbles before catching it. The screen is unlocked, shows two overlapping dots blinking in sync. Incredible how ubiquitous the phone became, something he didn't even think about anymore, despite not having one for so long. All his meticulous planning, and such a small mistake.
He looked at their dots again, feeling his phone in his pocket, sure enough, right where GPS placed him. He closes the app and opens Jack's gallery. It's a lot of screenshots of medical articles, occasional gory photo of something intriguing encountered in the ED. Then his own face, candids from a hike they took two weeks ago. As he flips through them, he realizes there's a lot. He realizes that there's a tilt to the camera, a framing where the sun continually outlines him in gold, every angle of his various smiles and shit-eating grins and the moment he'd taken to breathe in fresh air and no responsibility, for whatever miniscule second it lasted.
His thumb lingers over one, a selfie at the end, both of their hair dark with sweat, Robby laughing at something, and Jack looking his way. It's almost -
"Did Dana call you?" he asks instead.
Jack lowers himself to the ground, slowly so all his muscles bunch and tense, swings his legs over the edge so they're sitting side by side, the lingering heat of the day nothing compared to the warmth between their thighs.
"You've been throwing out tells for months. You think I suddenly remembered dozens of therapist names to recommend? I never thought to fish out at North Park before this summer? That Cassie and John and Parker and Dana and fucking Emery just figured out you existed as a person outside of work?"
Horror ripples through him. He often gets invited to things, people trying to make friends outside of work where they spend so many hours together. He usually declined, and the invitations dried up. But they were persistent these past few months. He hadn't realized. He hadn't put it together.
The expression he slants Jack's way has to be pathetic, eyes stinging, mouth twisted. "They all knew."
"Hey," Jack says sternly. He grabs the back of Robby's head and holds tight. "I told'em you were trying to find your way out of a bad breakup. None of them know you like me. Dana excepting."
He slumps into Jack's grip, steadfast and unwavering. "She knew - when I was leaving. I saw it in her eyes."
Jack's fingers rub through the short strands of Robby's hair, nails not quite catching. "Wish I had that kind of delusion. She called me at nine am."
Robby barks out a laugh. Underestimating nurses: when will doctors ever learn?
"She said -" his grip tightens, gets a grunt out of Robby "said that you were coming in smirks and quips. Unfazed, not even by the replacement."
He searches his friend's worried face, trying to unravel the emotions tangled in the pucker of his brow and the clench of his jaw. "It's a bad sign that 'happy Robby' is reason for concern."
"'Happy Robby' is compassion and teasing and a little bitchy and outrageously pedagogical. Manic is something else." His hand slips down, cups Robby's neck instead, thumb pressed into the hollow of his clavicle. "I stopped by the house."
Robby grimaces. "Christ."
"Considerate of you to sort things out for everyone. Color-coding seems a little crass, but what do I know." Jack's other hand comes up and he's curling his fingers around Robby's jaw, bringing them closer together. "Didn't see a letter for me."
This choked laugh doesn't quite disguise the sob behind it. "There's nothing you don't know. It would've said 'I love you Jack, please forgive me' a thousand times."
Jack shakes him, just a little. They're both given to humor, exceptionally black in Jack's case, and playfulness, but his friend has always done better with bald-faced emotions. He cries and rages and laughs without the undercutting worry of acceptability, of status or reputation. Robby's seen despair written across those features only a few times, each one devastating in its execution, each one heralding a dramatic shift to their lives.
"Brother, I don't forgive where there's no trespass. We stopped keeping score a long time ago." He dips his head to catch Robby's eyes that have dropped. His expression is merciless. "It's not our first time. You said I only had one choice - I had to stay with you."
The blind panic had worked in his favor that day, unable to even imagine life without Jack beside him. Selfish, but it worked, made Jack laugh for the first time in months.
Jack pokes his chest, hard enough to make him wince. "I'm more generous than that. You get two choices. You can stay with me, or -"
He leans heavily on Robby's shoulder to haul himself up, stretching, shirt lifting high enough to expose the tanned line of his belly. When he looks down, hand extended, there's a wry smile on his face. "I go with you. Either way, we're sticking together. What do you think, a running head start?"
Robby didn’t make this decision lightly. He didn’t take the time to sort out his belongings, what he thought would be useful or sentimental to certain people, arrange them in piles on his countertop. He didn’t write out letters, in intelligible print rather than his doctor scrawl. He didn’t call up his lawyer to confirm his will was current. He didn’t spend his last shift saying goodbye to everything he loved. He didn’t do all that on a whim.
The decision tore him apart. The deduction, the conclusion, it cracked open his ribs and extricated his heart, and despite all that, it had been a relief. The first breath of fresh air he’d had in months.
His expression changes or falters, because the smile on Jack’s face dims. His hand stays outstretched.
“Robby -"
“I don’t know what else to do,” he confesses. Jack squats down, that seeking hand covering his forearm and drawing him forward. The common understanding amongst the hospital is that Robby is the stubborn one and Jack is laidback, easy-going. And that façade has persisted mostly because their arguments happen outside of the Pitt walls. Robby concedes long before anyone hears the spiel.
He has no doubt that Jack will follow him, as he has for years, over the edge if necessary. Jack draws Robby to standing, close enough that the sticky night air is cooler than what’s between them. The sturdy foundation of Jack Abbot’s belief lies under everything Robby has built since they’ve known each other. He placed stone after stone, expecting a crack and it’s only grown stronger. Robby curls his hands in the lapels of his friend’s jacket, knuckles pressed against a heartbeat.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he says again, voice breaking on the repeat. He positioned himself in a place where he always has a plan. Where he always has a solution. People look to him for answers and Robby’s liked that. He’s holding on to so many things and they keep slipping, breaking apart when he’s trying to fix something else.
“If we stay,” Jack says, unblinking, not a trace of mirth to him. “Then you let me carry enough that you can breathe. I don’t give a fuck what it is, I got it. And if we go, then it doesn’t matter.”
There is a chalk outline on asphalt that already contains his remains. Visceral ejecta in a monochromatic arc of scarlet; the human body is tender and delicate for all its resiliency. An EMT will pass out at the scene; teeth will be found six months later. Maybe he'll land intact, and it's only when they try to lift him, they will find him a bag of fractured eggshells.
Robby bites his cheek, hard enough that iron stains his teeth, and clings unsuccessfully to an expression that is not devastated. He thumps his fist against Jack's chest. His voice hasn't recovered, still shattered into pieces of strength and dignity. "It's not going to be that easy."
"Mikey," Jack says, eyes focused, his hands around Robby's jaw and dug into the edges of his beard. "It's simple, not easy. That's why you're always gonna have me."
Even as he chokes out a laugh, Robby lets his head fall back. The moon is barely a sliver. The sky is rife with bursts of color, the sound of fireworks finally breaking through the droning noise inside his head. Jack wipes something from the corner of his eye.
"You - fucking asshole - you would really jump with me."
Jack mashes their foreheads together, chuckling. "That's it baby, the insults are so fucking sexy."
He laughs, and then - "I can't-" the words shake apart in his mouth.
"I know. I know. Come on." Jack presses a hard kiss to his head and wraps his arm around Robby's waist. He's always been the stronger of the two of them, leftovers from the Army training, but it's the pedicle screws holding a fusion together and he clings to it.
Robby isn't surprised to see his bike is gone. He is surprised when Jack says he paid some kid fifty bucks to help him put it in his truck. "I'm not waking my ass up every day to give you a ride to work."
Jack's condo isn't far from the Pitt. Close enough to walk for the motivated. He parks in his space out front, and they sit in the quiet, flashes of green and white and blue painting them in the darkness.
"You've been dodging me on therapy."
Robby closes his eyes. "I know."
"It's non-negotiable."
"Yeah."
"And you're moving in here. No one expects you for the next three months so you can chauffeur me to work. And hire some movers, for Christ's sake."
He rolls his head along the back of the headrest, taking in the flattened mouth and narrowed eyes of his friend. "I'm moving in here?"
"You didn't spend fifty grand on accommodations, so yeah." Jack reaches over to fold his strong hand around Robby's arm, a squeeze. "We're too fucking old to live alone anymore. I wanna come home to somebody. Don't you?"
His eyes sting and he nods, done with fighting the raw hurt that's been a bird beating against the cage of his ribs. Something in Jack relaxes. He pats Robby's cheek.
The walk to the front door is as known to him as his own. He's crashed here a thousand times, the sights and smells and sounds of the place so familiar. Jack planted hyacinths outside his door, white and pink and purple, the green scent soft and welcoming. The inside has sea-blue walls and abstract art (Kandinsky - it's a soldier thing, Jack said) and a plush storm cloud of a couch. It's not the bland beige and white of Robby's home, a place that Jack made to live in and be comfortable.
Jack's always worked hard at living. Even when he went through the worst, the months of PT after the IED, even when fell to his knees in front of Robby and laid down his revolver ("give me a reason to stay"), even when he nearly succumbed to the siren call of oxy, Jack fought to live. He wanted it, and that dedication ran through him in fucking spades. When Jack turned the aperture of his interest toward you, there was no escape. Robby had been fooling himself to think he could jump off a roof without Jack fucking Abbot at his side.
"Come on. You better still snore like a goddamn sawmill 'cause I don't want to hear those fireworks all night."
He's supposed to protest here. The bubble of tension has popped, emotional contents spilling out, desaturated. He's supposed to have a come back, and they'll get ready for bed, and argue over which side, and he'll wake up in two hours when Jack has a nightmare because his best friend tried to kill himself and the bang of fireworks is just like the bang of explosions -
Jack notices he's not following procedure. He's got his jacket off, black button-up already halfway undone. The twist to his eyebrows is more confusion than concern, but not a little concerned.
"We could stay up, watch some bullshit," he says softly. When Robby reaches out, he falls into it, expecting a hug.
Robby rubs his palms against the start of stubble. Then, breaking character, he leans in and kisses Jack.
Jack jerks back, just enough there's the wet sigh of their lips parting. A stone drops in Robby's gut - it'd been an impulse, a reaction, something in him desperate for closeness with the one person he knew understood him.
Robby pulls his hands out of Jack's hair, leans back.
With a sudden movement, one Robby briefly thinks intended to make space, Jack pushes him toward the front door. And Jack follows.
He slams Robby into the door, the weight of him solid and warm, one hand tight in the sparse length of his hair, the other at his waist, slipping around, holding. Jack slides their mouths together in a hot open press, lips moving, then tongue, bold decisive licks, soft whines escaping from his throat.
Robby can hardly keep up. He runs his hands over Jack's shoulders, the muscle of his deltoids thick and functional with a touch of vanity. His waist has given in to the truth of their age, but the softness only reveals how velvety strong the rest of him is. Robby slumps against the door, letting Jack hold him, making them of equal height, fitting Jack between his legs.
He thunks his head against the door when Jack trails kisses outside of his mouth, along his cheek, teeth raking through the forest of his beard. He bites - hard - at Robby's jaw and he whimpers; they'll be able to make a dental impression from that. Jack follows the line of his neck, slow sucking mouthfuls. His face will be scratched to hell and Robby will have so many hickies he won't be able to explain.
Their hands don't stop moving, exploring, and Jack reaches to cup Robby's ass, hoist his leg over his hip so their groins meet. Over fifty, his cock takes its sweet time, but Jack is half-hard against him already, jeans hiding the true line of him, and Robby bucks against the sensation, desperation stealing the breath from his throat and making him gasp.
Stepping closer, hitching up Robby's leg and truly testing the boundaries of his flexibility, Jack lines them up, the rough fabric of his jeans almost too much against Robby's scrubs, the friction and enthusiasm taking him from interested to fucking straining sooner than it has in years. Robby pants, swallowing and unable to catch his breath as Jack sucks at the hollow of his suprasternal notch, laving up the beads of sweat that try to collect there.
Jack kisses up the other side of Robby's neck, rubs his nose against Robby's cheek, then noses together, panting breaths into each other's mouths. His throat clicks like he's going to say something, and then he kisses Robby again, tongue sweeping through intensely, studying. He leans their foreheads together and shakes his head slowly.
"Determined to make a life-changing mistake tonight?"
Robby opens his mouth to protest, but Jack kisses him again, frustrated grunt, pressing harder, as if he can't help it, as if he has no control over the painful grip he has in Robby's hair, or the hand cupping Robby's ass and shifting further inward, pointedly.
"You think -" he's barely able to string consonants together "it's a mistake?"
Jack pulls back just a little, mouth wet and gleaming in the soft porch light, fireworks of white and cerulean and emerald sparkling in his hazel eyes. His face is pink from beard burn. He stares right at Robby, but the focus is hazy and his gaze keeps drifting down, like every moment he's not sticking his tongue down Robby's throat is a moment wasted.
"You only fuck women."
Robby feels his face grow warm. "And you."
A small snort. "Furtively jacking each other off is not fucking- "
He plays dirty and presses his hand against Jack's cock, the outline of it trapped in his jeans. His fingers are trying to undo the buttons even as they argue. Jack groans, drops to lean against Robby's chest, panting.
"You're right," Robby says, holding a man's dick and catching his eyes, head forced back from the iron grip in his hair. "I want to come home to someone I love. Trust."
The grip releases, and Jack cups his cheek, brows furrowed, mouth twisting. "I won't be able to let go, you know that."
Robby smiles, sets his thumb in the slight hollow beneath Jack's lower lip, pulling it open to see the red inside. "Brother, there was never any changing that." He kisses the edge of Jack's mouth, eyes falling closed. "Think of the regular sex."
Jack laughs, bright and airy, disbelief. He kisses Robby, his hand holding Robby's cheek taut, unable to get any real purchase, messy, his teeth raking over Robby's lower lip.
"I'm not fucking you against the door, it'll tweak my back." He pulls away, then leans in for another kiss, to Robby's lips, then cheek, then temple. When he turns, he pulls off his shirt, unerringly headed to the bedroom. Robby nearly trips over himself following those deep Veneral dimples, heedless of anything else.
Jack's stripped down to his black boxer briefs. He's stretched across the bed, the supple length of him a long line of tan and freckled skin as he put away his prosthetic and sleeve. The grin he throws over his shoulder is both cocky and incredulous.
Robby spent his day convinced he would end it at the bottom of a long fall.
Instead, he ambles closer, steps not as sure as the move that enticed him to kiss his best friend. An eyebrow climbs up as Jack watches him. Robby always thinks himself an enigma, or akin to one, not as easily read as his eager students. Open, empathetic, demonstrative, but restrained and professional. With Dana busier than he is and Jack only crossing his path an hour or so at a time, he forgets that some people understand the structure of his prose as if they'd crafted the lines.
"Here it is," Jack murmurs. A smirk crosses his face lined in disappointment and chagrin. Robby closes the distance between them.
"Jack -"
"It was a mistake to go to a second location." He scrubs his hands through his hair vigorously, the muscles in his arms flexing. In the low light of the bedroom, freckles spiral down his shoulders to chest to stomach, not merely sun damage but inherently part of his coloration.
"No -"
"Mikey, it's been a helluva day. We could just -"
His hand fists in the thick messy curls before he realizes he's taken the steps. It's easy to see why Jack likes this, the control. "No."
Jack chuckles, low in the chest, the column of his throat bobbing when he swallows. "Ok, baby, you got me. Whaddya gonna do with me?"
Holding Jack stretched and taut, Robby smears his thumb across his lower lip, the skin reddening, ripe. When he pulls at the corner, the wet softness of his mouth opens, parts with a sigh. Jack turns his head just enough to capture Robby's thumb in his mouth, running his tongue over the calloused knuckle, sucking it gently, then harder, the edge of his teeth pressing into it.
Their mouths crash together, thumb dragging Jack's mouth open, the collision of their tongues sloppy. A soft desperate thing escapes his throat and Jack moans.
Jack's hands won't stop touching him, smoothing over his ribs, scratching his beard, up under his shirt to rake through his chest hair. Those nimble fingers grab the edge of his scrubs and yank them down. Robby gasps when the fabric catches on his straining cock. The smile growing in Jack's mouth makes their kiss even messier.
With a soft chuckle more tremor in his throat than noise, Jack pulls just enough to speak, their lips still brushing. "Mikey, you know how long I've wanted your fat dick in my mouth?"
He traces over the arch of Jack's quirked eyebrow and those hazel eyes focus, zeroing in, not wavering. Jack leans forward, the grip on his hair loosening, one hand finding the groove between thigh and ass and settling. Jack sinks down on Robby's cock, eyes fluttering as he fights to maintain his gaze. That moan rattles through Robby's body, pinballs in his chest and he curls in like someone's sucker-punched him.
Jack tongues the frenulum, traces down the turgid vein, sliding ever forward until his mouth hits pubic hair. He snorts, a rush of heat against Robby's groin, and he cups Jack's face. His fingers linger over his jawline, the stubble just enough to catch. With a slight turn of his head, Jack presses Robby's cock against his cheek, bulging outward, pulling back to suck on the head, take a loud panting breath.
"Jack," he groans, his thumb skating over Jack's lip, saliva and precum coating his skin.
The beatific smile on Jack's face skews upward, his eyes glittering. "Man, if I ask you to fuck my face, will you do it?"
Robby's hips involuntarily jerk forward and Jack laughs, shakes his head.
"No, no. Come 'ere, come 'ere." He tugs and scoots back until Robby's falling onto the bed, barely placing a knee before Jack pulls on him. He coaxes him to lie down atop him, their bodies flush, cocks slotting together in heat and sweat.
Even as Jack sucks Robby's fingers back into his mouth, he scrambles at his nightstand until he flings open the drawer and emerges triumphantly with his prize: lube. Robby's fingers leave his mouth with a pop, lube a cold replacement on them, until Jack threads their fingers together to work it over, warm it up, disappearing the mess of it down between their bodies.
He's eager to touch Jack's dick, to feel the texture of extra skin, to slide it in his slicked hand, hot and smooth.
Their fingers twine again as Jack finds his mouth, kissing a concept so far removed their lips only passingly catch.
Robby gets one knee under him, the cocoon of their bodies maintained, hot and humid, and he thrusts into their hands. Jack flings his head back, throat glistening where the moonlight creeps in, limning him entirely in silver and Robby wonders how he'd missed something so obvious in their years of companionship.
"You're beautiful," Robby murmurs, and Jack laughs - high, breathy. Then he comes, a rush of warmth between them. His grip tightens on Robby, jerks him harder and slicker with come coating his fingers, and Robby follows him soon after. He bites down on that beautiful throat so hard Jack whimpers.
"Fuck, fuck," Jack says, free hand pinning Robby to him.
He can't move. He's sweaty and sticky and heavy but he relishes the rapid heartbeat beneath his ear, the heaving chest, the way Jack's knees dig into his hips like he doesn't want them to part.
Something wet plops down near his face and he opens a bleary eye to see a mound of white cloth.
"Wipe yourself off, then sleep, old man." The wipes are cold from being in Jack's air-conditioned house, but he's woken up enough times with come gummy in his body hair to know he's better off.
Some truly olympic maneuvering gets them beneath the sheets. Jack's hair is a fucking disaster and he knows he's not keeping the amusement off his face the way Jack rolls his eyes. He hooks a hand around Robby's neck and settles them close, foreheads touching.
Two hours later, like clockwork, Robby wakes to a soft moan, low and thready like a wounded animal. He rubs his eyes.
"Jack, wake up."
There's no change. Robby knows not to touch him, one black eye was enough, thank you.
"Jack! Wake up!" The moan cuts out as if it's been swallowed, inhales shuddering in. Jack wakes with a gasp, shooting up and clutching at the sheets, at the place his leg used to be.
"Fuck," he whispers. He grinds his palms against his thighs, then casts his eyes askance to meet Robby's. A smirk sardonically spreads in his mouth. "Bet you didn't miss that."
Robby refuses the bait. He brushes his fingers over the red marks he's left on Jack's neck and a little harder into the one gone black in the low light. The path meanders to Jack's chest, settling over his sternum. "Wasn't sure which one of us was gonna have it tonight."
With a shaky laugh, Jack pumps his fist triumphantly in the air before rolling toward Robby, swinging his leg over Robby's hips, the rounded edge of his stump settling into the divot of Robby's knee, their bodies folding in like the tumblers of a lock. It's the vulnerable, velvety weight of Jack's flaccid dick that makes a sob catch in Robby's chest, expand through his lungs and muffle in his mouth before escaping.
“I’m not okay,” Robby chokes out, the words a leaden weight on his tongue. Jack curls around him even more, elbows digging into his shoulders, chin against his temple. Some overeducated shrink said to him that admitting weakness, asking for help, would bring relief. Instead, the confession sinks into his gut, drags his insides like a hernia, like a perforation, aching and misplaced. Jack’s body hair is sparse, but the scratchy-soft feel of his chest against Robby’s cheek grounds him, anchors him to the real, the dimensions of his being.
Jack cradles his face, pulls back so the intensity of his gaze is direct rather than implied. He’s compelled residents to switch disciplines with that focus. Robby might be used to it, but he surrenders to the tide rushing out from underneath. Standing in the current only drowned him.
“Take some time to figure it out. Stay here, change shit to your liking and then we’ll argue about it forever. Learn pottery or something.”
A smile struggles to appear on his mouth but collapses midway. “Pottery. Maybe yoga, Pilates, if I’m gonna be your housewife.”
“Hell yeah, get flexible,” Jack says, immune to his bitchiness. “You could come back after a month; I know you can’t leave work that long. No one expected you to last the whole three months of sabbatical.”
Robby huffs, though concedes that if he’d actually gone to a sabbatical, it’d be to work at another hospital, volunteer or learn. Of course, he had planned to be a new Jackson Pollock.
“We’ll figure out therapy. Whatever we gotta do. You could talk to Caleb, at least.”
“Conflict of interest.”
"I don’t give a fuck. Conflict of interest is better than walking off a building.” The softness of his voice doesn’t match his words. Jack’s thumbs gently smooth the collection of crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, smearing tears across his skin. It’s almost too much, the confines of his body stretched, swollen like an abscess, the miasma of his thoughts a poison he’s been unable to neutralize.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sick with it. “Thank you.”
Jack shakes his head and brushes their lips together, the barest hint of a kiss, stubble catching. “I said no one’s keeping score, so knock it off. You can’t get rid of me.”
Robby leans into the kiss, if only to disguise the hitch of his breathing. “In sickness, health, all that?”
“Guess it’s easier the second time,” Jack says, and his voice carefully does not betray anything. When Robby pulls away enough to see his expression, it’s also blank, though his mouth is a mess of blush.
He cups Jack's scapulae in his palms, thick muscle over hard bone. His blunt nails dig in, scraping, will leave red marks that linger. "I'm such a fucking mess."
Jack leans into him, presses his shoulders flat, pinning him. The smirk on his face has infuriated Robby in the past. "Tell me something new."
He digs in harder, hears Jack grunt. "It's always gonna be one foot off the edge."
"I'm used to it."
"Jack -"
"What the fuck do you want me to say?" he asks gently. Jack's fingers trace along his neck, blood rushing beneath the skin, carotid and jugular framed. His thumbs trace the hyoid firmly, almost too firmly; Robby swallows. "You want me to marry you, Michael Robinavitch? I'll fucking marry you. You want me to let you whore around? Sure. You want me to move to day shift? Go to fucking Shabbat? Buy you a dress? Buy me a dress? Convert? Whatever you want, baby. Whatever you want."
That's the problem. To want is to anticipate. To want is to believe there will be a later. To want is to deserve. He wants to die. Or, less distinct, gauzy, gossamer, he wants to cease existing. Become hollowed out and blank. What kind of person thinks that deserves such devotion?
In the thin glow from the edges of Jack's curtains, he can only just make out the gleam of his eyes, the confidence on his face arresting. There is a dark pit that bears Robby's name. It always calls to him, has since his father killed his mother when he was fifteen, has since he wandered through the streets of Kicukiro a prodigy doctor who could not stop government nor genocide, has since he first proposed and she said he was just too much. And the black pitch of it didn't need horrific things to sustain. It built itself out of his doubts and his fears and every mistake he made and if he could pour light into that chasm, if he just made the right call, knew the right procedure, elevated enough young doctors to clear his ledger, he'd be cured. He sent hundreds of patients - thousands - to psych, to voluntary commitment, to medication and CBT and every time he built them up another inch of tar crept over his skin. Anyone who sees him, anyone who knows him, takes a step into that maelstrom.
He realizes, for the first time, that Jack is waist-deep with him. They're shackled together, and that stubborn asshole won't swim.
"Don't leave me alone," he says, small, pathetic, a whimper of a plea.
Jack settles on Robby's chest, forearms framing the clavicle. His hands haven't moved. It takes seven pounds of pressure to break the hyoid. Less, in older, ossified bones. He is older, ossified.
Leaning in, heavy on the ribs, Jack kisses Robby, wet but delicate. "Never. You're in the marrow, Robinavitch."
Robby clenches his hands, and they're slippery; he's dug enough to cut, to draw blood. With the weight of Jack atop him, twined around him, his chest expands and he can take a full breath.