Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

On I'll pass,

dragging my huge love behind me.

On what

feverish night, deliria-ridden,

by what Goliaths was I begot - 

I, so big

and by no one needed?

Vladimir Mayakovsky

The first time Jack calls him on the road, it’s a surprise the phone even has enough battery left to buzz. Robby didn’t charge it last night. He rode the bike home, grabbed what was left of the case of Iron City in the garage fridge, and went through the side yard to the back patio, bypassing the house entirely. After spending the night out in the hammock, he and his phone are pretty much equally depleted. Still, it lets our one last gasp on the formica tabletop, rattling the flimsy spoon Robby has stirred two and a half coffees with. A picture of Jack sitting on one of the granite eyeballs at Katz Plaza is the last thing the screen displays before it dies.

There’s not really anything new Robby has to say, anyway.

The second time, it’s the next morning in Erie. He’s in the same shitty type of diner, drinking the same ulcer inducing swill, but now Robby’s phone stands a chance of surviving long enough for him to actually decide whether or not he’s going to pick up. Robby watches his phone struggle across a spill of sugar grains as it rings. He wonders if Jack would call again, if he didn’t pick up. Probably he’d text something absurd, assuming his call was getting screened, and figuring a visible statement stood a better shot at provoking a response. He’d be right. Robby goes ahead and picks up, to save them both some time.

“Hey-”

“Yo. Can’t actually talk. Just drive safe, man.”

That’s it, that’s the entirety of the phone call, other than some background beeps of the hospital. Even with as brusque as Jack tends to be, Robby stares down at the lockscreen of his phone, a bit stunned. 

Robby misses the call that comes in at 7:39 AM the next day. The same way his engine drowns out his most miserable, self-pitying thoughts, it drowns out anyone else who might be thinking of him.

(JA)

Thursday 8:13 AM

Fuck. Just realized with you outta town
I’ll have to get my own paramount sub
to keep doing Tuesday trek, like a nerd.

Life is just one indignity after another.

My password’s Hard4Pic4rd

It took me so long to forget
you wanna fuck that old man.
Now I gotta start all over.

I just think I could finish what Q
started, is all. And I hate to break it
to you, but we are older than him.

Sure, NOW.

Today 11:08 AM

I’m trying to get started early
mornings before the heat sets in.
You’re better off trying to catch
me on the other end of things.

But there’s no call later in the day at shift change, Robby notices. Maybe things blew up with Al-Hashimi, and Jack has to play some extra innings to cover for her. Or maybe he knows his avoidant audience and he’s trying to limit himself to one telephonic salvo per day. 

Doesn’t really matter, since Robby’s trying to live in the moment here, not there.

Here is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be, but at least it’s not Ohio, anymore. The only restaurant in town that’s not a McDonald’s is a place called Dopey Dough that smells great, but seems baffled that anyone would want something besides their pizza. Robby picks at a salad for over an hour, waiting for the rest of his order. If Jack had called earlier, he might have been in the mood to bitch with him a bit, but that’s not how it shakes out. 

“Hey Jack,” Robby says, pinching what feels like an especially succulent and medically necessary chicken tender in the hand that’s not holding his phone. “Uhm…”

“What’s up, Doc?”

“Sorry, but I’m starfffing,” he says with a chomp. “They jufft brought out my food… I know how ffou are wiff chewing noifffs, but I gotta eat.”

Jack grunts. “I’m slugging back those nasty ass overnight oats on my commute. So, take that,” he says. Then he somehow manages to shout a gulp into the phone.

“Jeeffus,” Robby grimaces through another mouthful. “Whaffdaffuck.”

“Hhk. Yours is worse,” says Jack. “M’gonna hurl. Stop.”

“Can’t.” Robby shakes his head, thumb hovering over the red button. “I’ll literally die of hunger. Later, okay?”

Fries. Fries immediately. Skipping lunch was a mistake.

“Fine,” Jack says, the snarl of his lip audible. “Live to gross me out another day, see if I care.”

“Ffomorrow,” Robby chuckles as he hangs up.

Wait, why’s Jack working a Tuesday? No. Nope. He doesn’t want to know.

Robby’s made it to the Central time zone now. That definitely throws him off. He leaves his phone to charge in his motel room, thinking he’ll go take a dip in the pool before dinner. While he’s in the front office getting a towel, a mom comes in with her kid who just face planted on the sidewalk. Luckily the broken tooth is deciduous, but unluckily for Robby- they’re also headed to the pool. He’s had quite enough of them by the time he and his tube of Dermabond have done their thing, so he heads over to the BBQ joint he spotted on the way in, instead.

Robby sees the missed call from Jack when he gets back to his room. Feels stupid and guilty for forgetting his sort-of promise. Feels even stupider for being drunk enough for Jack to notice if he calls back.

Maybe just make it quick?

“Hello,” Jack says when he picks up. “What’s good in the hood?”

A nurse is barking out directions for a gurney in the background. He’s busy getting night shift going. He’s only answering because he told Robby to call if he was in trouble. Is it any consolation that they’re probably both a bit anxious right now? Not really.

“Hey Jack. Just checking in.” Robby clears his throat. “It’s all good. Just... returning your call.”

“Thanks, man. It’s good to hear your voice. Without food in your fucking mouth.”

Robby snorts. “Yeah. Sorry... Well, uh. You’re at work now, so I won’t keep you...”

“You could,” Jack offers.

“Nah, I don’t wanna get in the way over there.”

“I wish,” says Jack. “Do you know how boring the board’s been? I think all the crazy followed you outta town.”

Robby looks out the motel room window to the parking lot. “Well, just in case it’s about to catch up with me, I better go.”

“All right, man. Stay frosty, stay safe.”

Nobody stops when Robby has to pull over on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. Nobody even passes. 

Figures. He shouldn’t have come this way, either. 

Most days on the road, wherever you stop there’s somebody who will start a conversation. Another biker at a gas station who wants to compare notes, or a bored waitress who hasn’t seen anyone using a Rand McNally in a while, at least. It’s a little something to wean Robby down from the dozens of new faces he generally meets in a day. Today’s been very quiet. The back roads that he’s using to scoop around Michigan City are all but abandoned. It’s enough to make Robby think he underrated how much he needs that kind of input. Without a steady drip of pleasantries and passersby, he feels like a ghost.

The scare he just had isn’t helping that mortal feeling.

Robby tends to talk to his bike in lighter moods, but his tongue keeps recoiling, holding back little comments to himself as his shaking hands check the wheel over for what sounded like a nail in the road.

A coffin nail, his shitty little sense of doom supplies.

Yeah, that’s why thinking aloud diagnostically- in any way- feels like a line Robby doesn’t want to cross right now, or else he’ll never stop. It’ll start with the bike, then the flaws of the itinerary, then the brain that cooked it up and end… badly.

But there’s no damage that Robby can see on his front wheel, or the back. That pop must have just been some gravel.

Robby rolls up to the next little patch of civilization and finds a shady picnic table from which he can scope out the entirety of the downtown, and figure out what’s next. His nerves are shot. He’s certainly not riding any further today. If he did, his timing hitting Chicago will make a two tunnel commute seem like a beautiful dream.

Maybe he can read for a while, he thinks, since it’s too early to do dinner or crash for the evening. He’d end up growling and empty again by midnight, thinking in the dark, about the dark, and the emptiness… 

Yeah, so no big surprise, but when Robby tries to get into his book, he can't retain anything he’s reading or remember what happened the last time he picked it up. He rips off his glasses and digs through his bag for something else to do. Never hurts to listen to some music and people watch, maybe even sketch a bit. Ah, but that’s right. His airpods are dead. Of course Robby could go charge them if he checked in for the night, but he doesn’t like the idea of being alone behind a closed door at the moment... He dislikes the implication of that hesitation even more.

Robby sucks in a ragged breath. 

No.

For now… just stay in public. Usually the social pressure is enough to force Robby to keep it together. If he can hang in there, study his maps, and find something to look forward to, it’ll pass.

It usually passes.

Robby spreads out the pertinent pages for the next leg of his trip on the picnic table. Ideally he would like to make it to the Des Plaines tomorrow, then follow it down Route 6, and find some place on the other side of the Chicago area to cool his heels. Someplace that doesn’t have a tear splashing on it, blurring its municipal airport into illegibility.

“Agh, fuck,” Robby huffs. He hangs his head and laces his fingers together behind his neck.

It’s not passing. It’s just getting harder to ignore. Harder to breathe. He’s sweating even worse than when he was in direct sunlight. He should have checked in at the hotel. Fucking coward. Why’s he so scared of being alone? Is privacy one of the most sacred, constantly violated rights a man has, or not? If he hadn’t been such a spineless idiot this wouldn’t be happening. He’d already be set up for the evening and washing this shitty day off. Jesus Christ, would he kill for a cold shower right now. It might shock his system back into shape, just like that! Or, if he’s really lucky, make him slip and break his fucking neck.

“Shhhh.”

This is not good.

What time is it?

Too early for Jack to call, and too early for Robby to call him first without waking him up. He could send him a message, though. That’s something. It might put a dent in the feeling that no one alive would know or give a shit if his heart just fucking gave out right now.

Robby fires off a single word before realizing how obnoxious it would be to Virginia Woolf his stream of consciousness in fragments like that. Better to commit the heinous crime of a wall of text than to make Jack’s phone go off infinitely more than it would if he just called. While Robby’s going back and forth, typing and deleting and rephrasing what is sure to be an absolute shit show of a paragraph- three dots appear. Then a reply. 

Robby clears his text box.

(JA)

I just think I could finish what Q
started, is all. And I hate to break it
to you, but we are older than him.

Sure, NOW.

I’m trying to get started early
mornings before the heat sets in.
You’re better off trying to catch
me on the other end of things.

Today 1:45 PM

Sorry.

I’ve got a bunch of blank
checks handy for you, man.

What am I supposed to
write this one out to?

I don’t know. Waking you
up. Losing track of things
with the time zone change.

Hmm, nope. That’s not it.

I didn’t know your bullshit
detector had this long a range.

I’m sorry I keep brushing you off.

I guess I'm worried if we talk,
you'll talk about work. And tell me
how important it is. And that's
what this whole fucking trip is
supposed to be for, I guess. To
not think about it. See if it helps.

Robby’s phone screen pops up a button to take an incoming call. There’s no choice but to pick up, really. He’s said too much. Jack will call and call until either Robby or his phone is dead, and even then he’ll probably get some spooky CIA buddy to find him with a drone within the hour. Without speaking, Robby swipes to answer, and the screen goes from white and blue bubbles to the picture of the closest thing he has to a loved one. Robby’s eyes well up with relief.

“We don’t have to talk about work,” Jack says, steady as a flag pole. “I’ve got plenty of personal anecdotes to blow your mind with.”

“Thanks,” Robby cries. There was no hope of hiding it, really.

“If and when you get sick of all the amazing me me me, I can follow your lead,” Jack adds, a little more somberly. “…Anything you want to talk about.”

Not a question. Just an opportunity.

For now, Robby takes the out. “I really should ask how you’re doing for once,” he groans. ”Pfffffff… Not that I’ll let you fucking talk about work and how that makes you feel! Jesus... I am such a shitty friend. Fuck.”

“Hey. It's okay if you’re not feeling up to it,” Jack says. “Wanna try being enemies for a while?”

Robby’s laugh is choked with tears, but it’s a laugh. “That could be a nice change from beating myself up.”

“All right, dude. You asked for it. I’m growing an evil clone of you to steal your identity and ruin your life. Your move.”

Jack’s not perfect, Robby knows that- clings to it for the sake of his own ego, really- but right now he may as well be made of solid gold. 

“I…see your clone, and I raise you a thwarting of your evil scheme,” Robby parries with a sniff.

“Shit.”

“Oh yeah.” Robby takes a deep breath and looks up at his small town surroundings. Restaurant. Hardware store. “I’m assembling the townsfolk to bust our way into your lab. Tiki torches and pitchforks… chanting. The works.”

But the grunted laugh on the other end of the call is not alarmed by this. 

“Too late. I just vanished in a cloud of tear gas. So, fuuuck you.”

Despite everything, Robby smiles. “What the hell? You were just here.”

“Better luck next time...”

“What am I supposed to do with all these torches? Lowe’s won’t take them back used.”

Jack hums, pleasantly smug. “Whatever you do, just remember to put ‘em out before you fall asleep,” he says. “I insist on taking you out myself.”

“You weren’t gonna have the clone do it?” Robby asks. “I appreciate the personal touch.”

“Nah, I fucked up the settings,” Jack sighs. “Clone Robby is super nice, and it turns out you’re the evil one.”

Robby’s laugh comes out in a stumble, at first hearty, then collapsing into heart broken sob.

“It feels like it,” he admits. “What the fuck’s the matter with me?! It's not getting better out here, Jack. I mean. We all knew it wouldn't, but I had to try to be sure,” he insists through his tears. “I’m not…not enjoying any of it, for what it is. Just the parts where I’m not thinking ‘cause I’m too busy watching the road to do anything else. I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not… obligated.”

Jack makes a sympathetic sound. It’s as soft as the sound of his bedding, ruffling around on the other end of the call. Is he curling up, making himself small, like they’re sharing secrets at a sleepover? For a guy built like he is, he has a real knack for making himself unassuming when it serves. And then of course zeroing in, with military precision.

“Right now, all you have to do is this,” Jack says, low, but firm. “Just hear yourself. Apply the same care I know you would if someone else came in from off the street, saying the same thing.”

“I’m so fucking depressed,” Robby spits out. “Need help.”

He doesn’t like to need anything from anybody. That’s not how it’s supposed to be, he’s supposed to be the one who’s needed, and never asks for more than what’s due.

“Yep. And you want help, or you wouldn’t have called me.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

Something about the force of Jack’s voice puts a little steel in Robby’s spine, too. “Okay.”

“We got this, Robby. Breathe.”

Robby shudders, trying to inhale properly. “You can’t fix all this over the phone, man.”

“I really wish I could,” Jack tells him, gently. Then he clears his throat, going firm again. “I will come out there, if need be. Otherwise, I’ll stay right here. For as long as you need.”

He means it, Robby knows. He’s the guy who spent three days a week sitting through four or five hours of dialysis with his wife, and then still came in and clocked twelve or more hours at work. For as restless as Jack seems while driving himself from task to task, he gets off on duty above all. That's what makes him the person Robby trusts to take on what he can’t, all the hours he can’t. It’s what makes them the same kind of sick, too.

Jack waits patiently on the other end, coaching and keeping watch while Robby tries to regulate his breathing. It’s humiliating, and it’s hard to imagine their professional relationship withstanding this without a few dents, but there isn’t anyone else alive he’d rather crumble with.

By the time he has himself under control, Robby’s phone is scorching against his ear. Whether or not he has enough battery to manage it, he’s got to put it down, put it on speaker. The phone eclipses most of the map of Chicago, replacing it with his friend’s picture. 

“You’ve known me as long as anyone… as well as anyone does,” Robby says, with an apologetic, misery ridden laugh. “Was I anything like normal when we met?” he asks.

Jack snorts. “Stupid question. I wouldn't have liked you if you were normal.”

Robby braces himself on one elbow and grips at his hair like it could pull all the bad out of his head. “I’ve tried to remember when’s the last time when things were good, but…”

The tone Jack takes is more patient than Robby deserves. “That’s depression brain, man. I’m not saying you haven’t had other shitstorms along the way in life. Ups and downs. But right now? You are impaired in your ability to assess,” he reminds him. “You know, I know it, we’re both hypocrites… But isn't that what makes us so darn cute?”

Robby jiggles his phone so the screen doesn’t go idle on Jack’s picture. “That and a backwards baseball cap,” he laughs.

“Exactly.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, but present. This isn’t as good as having Jack here in person, but it’s enough that Robby’s managed to stop crying. He gives his phone the grateful clench he would give Jack. Remembers the hug Jack gave him before he left.

“Listen... I’ll probably still be on the road tomorrow. You know- when it would make sense for a call.” Robby heaves a sigh like it’s a cinderblock. “I have to clear Chicago before I stop for the day.”

Jack yawns. “Y’don’t want to sight see?”

“I’ve been to Chicago plenty before. Besides… now that you know where I’ll be tomorrow, I gotta get the hell outta Dodge before you send in your flying monkeys,” says Robby.

“Kkshk!” Jack makes a sound like radio static. “Scrub the flying monkeys,” he orders. Then he yawns again.

His keen instinct for danger must also feel that the worst has passed.

“Jack?”

“Mm?”

It’s good timing that the phone screen goes idle again. Robby might struggle to ask if he could imagine that Jack was smiling, impressed with himself for offering something Robby actually availed himself of, twice in a row. He always tries not to take too much from Jack, as a friend. He knows Jack has his own burdens, and it’s not fair to treat him like his partner. That’s too much like wanting, which Robby doesn’t get to do.

“Would you mind....fuck. Would you mind...?” Robby half asks, painfully. 

“...Staying on the line?”

“I’ll look at my route, and you could go back to sleep,” Robby says, quickly. “I don’t-”

“That’s no problem at all,” Jack says. “Honestly, if you didn’t stay on the line, I’d be keeping an ear out, anyway. You’re doing me a favor.”

Robby rolls his eyes. “I’ll take an IOU.”

“Fair warning, though. I’m putting you on speaker and there’s a strong possibility that Nudge will lay down on top of the phone at some point. He sounds like a fuckin’ Black Hawk, but I assure you it is just a drill.”

Since Jack always comes around to Robby’s place when they hang out, he hadn’t given much thought to the reality that Jack is still knocking around his own house with his late wife’s cat. It makes him feel a little less guilty about leaving Jack to his own devices for this trip, somehow. Someone has to supply the man a daily dose of both judgemental and conspiratorial looks.

“If he comes to the phone, I’ll be polite,” Robby promises. “I’ll ask him what he’s got going on…”

“Ask him why he never cleans my bathroom, while you’re at it,” Jack grumbles.

Robby smiles. “G’night, Jack.”

(JA)

I’m gonna go get some dinner. I
deserve an unwise number of crab
rangoons for not crawling under this
picnic table. Thanks for hanging out.

No problem at all. Any time.

Today 5:35 PM

Did I ever tell you about the time I
got stuck in O’Hare overnight, couple
years ago? I was still on high alert
from flying through some choppy
weather. Couldn’t sleep. Spent the
night pacing around the airport. I was
so fuckin fried from the conference I’d
been at, trying not to come off like a
complete psychopath. I got bawled out
by an airport services guy who thought
I was his stoned employee, like I’ve
never been yelled at in my life. Swear
on my Ma, the next day my knees
were bruised just from flashing back
to scrubbing down the barracks in
boot camp. Haven’t worn a polo
shirt since.

Anyway. Drive safe. Enjoy
Chicago. Tell anyone who
messes with you they’ll
never find the body :)

While Robby’s looking for a light where he can legally U-turn, he sees something on his side of the highway much more enticing than the Portillo’s he passed. The past forty-eight hours have been grueling. Even if he’s not sure he has the energy to partake himself, the well populated environment of a Pub and Play on a Saturday night sounds like a pretty good pick-me-up.

He’s settled in at a high top between the duckpin alleys and the arcade, finishing off his last beer when Jack calls.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my sworn enemy, darkening my door,” Robby answers.

A crash of pins punctuates him perfectly, like a thunder clap over a gothic castle.

“Are you…bowling?” Jack asks. “Without me?”

He hangs up.

Robby rolls his eyes and immediately goes to call him back.

“I’m at a place with bowling, among other games,” he reports, without the preamble of another greeting. “I’m not playing. They don't do solo lanes on the weekends.”

“Yeah, see,” Jack tsks. “That’s why you should’ve called me in. I'm your other HOV lane occupant.”

“Man, I would’ve invited you to come hustle some Cheeseheads, get ‘em back for 2011,” Robby chuckles, “but you and I both know that would only further dishonor the Steelers.”

Maybe it’s because Jack didn’t grow up on duckpin, but he really is a uniquely miserable player. He can’t even get the hang of getting three rolls per frame. After two balls, you’ll find him standing around with his drink, blinking like a deer in a disco. Why is everyone yelling at me? Honestly, it's a bit of a relief from his usual physical prowess.

Jack makes a skeptical noise. “This is still a serious violation of the bachelor code of conduct. I think they put this one down in the Fifties as a capital offense."

“Only if you rent the shoes,” Robby asserts. “Then they can prove premeditation.”

Jack laughs. “…Really, I’m glad if you’re having fun out there. Fucking finally.”

“I might,” Robby shrugs. “I was thinking after dinner I could shoot some hoops until I pull something.”

“Your head out of your ass?” Jack asks, brightly.

“Nice try, but you tell me all the time that I don’t have one.”

“Damn it. I can’t argue with me... Hey. Wheres abouts are you, anyway?”

“Can’t a man have his secrets?” Robby snaps, automatically.

When Jack doesn’t fight back, he’s not sure if he should have. For all of Robby’s rankling at being monitored, at being doubted he could handle this trip alone, now that he’s a good five hundred miles away… he really does wish he had company. It would be nice to tie one on before he knuckles down.

“So, should I tell you what I spent all last night googling, or do you have keystroke spyware on my phone?” Robby asks.

“I know about the three hours you spent looking at pictures of Sid Crosby, but then my satellite went dark.”

“Yeah. After that.” Robby takes a deep sip of his beer and then clears his throat. It’s hard to tell if the tingle in it is spicy food or anxiety related. Probably both. “I found a place. When I get where I’m going, day after tomorrow,” he says. “Someplace I would be willing to do inpatient.”

Jack inhales, probably holding himself back from a smart alec reply about noncommittal wording. “That’s good news, man,” he says.

“Two weeks,” Robby tells him, nodding to himself.

That’s twice as long as he's been away already, and something about that nags at him. It’s not that he misses home and this is delaying a return, exactly. There’s just this feeling in the pit of his stomach that the more routines, the more distinctly Robby parts of himself he strips away and the longer he does it, the harder it will be to tolerate being his most bareboned self. What if he does find the guy who’s not a doctor, not a teacher or a thinker or fixer, and he just… sucks? What if his higher purpose really is all that he was in the end?

“Two weeks will get you sleeping better, get you figuring out some meds, and making some therapeutic goals,” Jack rattles off. “That’s a great start.”

“I’m- I can’t convince myself to commit to a longer stay,” Robby admits, frustrated by it. “It’d be better for actually getting somewhere with antidepressants, I know, but I feel like once I take away the work and the bike and everything else I do… there’s a clock on how long I can be naked like that. When it runs out, if I’m not back on the right side, I’ll get stuck as nothing, forever.” Robby drops his face into his hand. “Why does this sound like The Little Mermaid?” he moans.

“Is this the kind of place where they throw a black bag over your head and smash your SIM card, or can I still talk to you?” Jack asks.

The question surprises Robby. He is a football that Jack has finally put across the line, and Jack is not the sort of player to do an end zone dance.

“It would be their job to make sure I don’t go off the deep end. You really don’t have to go above and beyond with the bedside manner, Dr. Abbot…”

Unless he wants to? 

Jack huffs. “Answer the question.”

“It’s a limited access facility,” Robby sighs. “They keep your phone. I know that all the nighttime doomscrolling isn’t helping me.”

“Mmm.”

“They have landlines you can call out on at certain times. After lunch and in the evening. I, uh, don’t know the schedule exactly, but that’s probably gonna be tricky timing for you,” Robby realizes.

“Call me at lunch,” Jack says, like it's not his midnight.

Robby laughs. “I don’t want to ruin your sleep schedule, or… blow your cover while you’re going commando into a turf war between rival flamethrower salesmen. Or whatever fucked up scenarios you keep putting yourself in to give me nightmares when I can’t keep an eye on you. Jesus fucking Christ...”

Shit. It’s not fair when Robby’s a few beers ahead of him like this, on top of everything else.

“…Maybe that’s why you should call,” Jack says, a bit mumbly. “Believe it or not, I’m... looking for other options to keep myself entertained.”

“Options like long distance handholding your buddy through what is sure to be an exquisitely boring two weeks?” Robby’s eyebrows have climbed so far up his forehead, they may require surgical intervention to return home.

Jack hums. “This might be one of those creative challenges my therapist is always hoping I’ll stumble into… Though I think he meant ‘volunteer to design a flyer for a staff party’...”

“Well, now I kinda wanna see what you’d come up with,” says Robby.

“Not much but clip art,” Jack assures him. “But inventing ways to keep you on your toes… Sky’s the limit.”

“Watch out. I- I really thought I was about to blow a tire and die the other day outside Chicago. I don’t know how much more excitement I can take!” Robby laughs, attempting to couch the admission.

“Jesus. Robby…”

He swills down the last of his beer.

“So. Yeah... I think I need a vacation from this vacation.”

Otherwise, regardless of his intentions, he’s a nervous wreck just begging for a literal one.

“Are you sure you don't want to come back home?” Jack asks, his voice verging towards the sort of unguarded worry he let slip the other day. “We could find you an inpatient around here.”

“It was hard enough to decide this,” Robby says, tight.

“No, yeah. Stay the course.”

“I have an intake interview over the phone tomorrow morning.”

And Robby will confirm again they can actually take him. When he imagines arriving only to find out they’re at capacity, and getting shunted to some foreign ED, it gets real bleak, real fast.

“Hmm. When’s the last time you were a stranger’s patient, anyway?” Jack asks.

Robby sighs. “When I was born.”

“Liar. I’ve stapled your head.”

“You weren’t a strange- wait.” Robby rubs his forehead and thinks back. It was a long time ago. He can’t feel the scar anymore, but he still remembers being unusually anxious for such a nothing of an injury. Was that because it was before he knew Jack was married? Or because he was getting sued at the time?

Robby’s waitress must have misheard him. She heads over to his table, expectantly. “Ope. Was there something else I could get you? Another beer?”

Instantly, Robby drops his hands in his lap, phone and all, so he doesn’t come off like some multitasking asshole. “Just the bill,” he grimaces. “Thank you very much.”

“Oh no, thank you, honey! I’ll be right back with that. Do you need a box? Tokens for the games?” the waitress asks, eagerly. “You look like you could do a bang up job with the axe throw, there.”

“How about $10 of tokens?” Robby relents. “Just the arcade, though. If you see me head toward the axes… call the cops. Sorry that’s not a- I won’t be doing that. Have a good night.”

Very normal. Not alarming.

“Oh gosh! Okay!” says the waitress, before taking off.

Jack is chuckling to himself when Robby tunes back into his phone. “Sounds like you’re wrapping up over there.”

“Yeah. In a straight jacket.”

It’s just about time for Jack to go clock in, too. 

“Go have some fun. Show that hoop who’s boss,” he orders Robby.

“I’d settle for middle management.”

“That then.”

“G’night Jack.”

“Call you tomorrow, Robby. Drive safe.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

Though this is his last night of freedom, Robby opts to spend the evening at his motel. He makes a picnic of some clamshell case entrees from Piggly Wiggly in view of the nearby lake and his bike, which he has been assured can be parked out of the elements during his stay. A little rain won’t hurt it, but it would be just his luck to get hit by a tornado, wouldn’t it? 

Before he loses the ability to, Robby takes a leisurely shower, then trims his beard so it has some hope of coming out the other side of this looking merely scruffy, rather than prehistoric. His toiletry kit will get confiscated, along with his razor, his knife, all of his hobby gear, his watch, even his Magen David. Pretty much the only things he can bring in are clothes, books, and a deck of cards. Of course Robby’s not trying to sneak anything past anyone- he has too much professional respect for that- but he can’t help feeling paranoid that every last item will get pulled for some reason or other. After he copies down any phone numbers he thinks he might need into his notebook, he seriously considers sharpieing Jack, Dana, and PTMC on his arm. Overkill, yeah- but clarifying. Then assuming they won’t be fans of his very strappy backpack, Robby packs his ‘safe’ belongings into the bag from Piggly Wiggly. He takes the titanium card that can be used as a wrench out of his wallet, and stuffs the rest of it in one of the slip-on sneakers he bought this afternoon.

That’s pretty much that.

After he’s packed, Robby takes another look at the clip art flyer Jack texted him, with monster truck looking lettering. 

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!
YOU are INVITED to A PHONE CALL

sometime between the hours
of 6-7PM EST!

PTMC assumes no responsibility for the opinions expressed by participants.

This is of course flanked by every possible image of digitally rendered phones, in varying states of margin cohesion.

He does a little googling to pick out someplace for breakfast tomorrow, and then Robby lays back on the over starched sheets of the bed, trying not to think how the linen wallpaper and faux marble trim in here reminds him of the viewing room. Maybe after Jack calls, he will get out of here. He could sit down by the lake with a book until it gets too dark to read. Then maybe past that. 

Next time Robby hears the call of the wild he ought to bring his hammock with him. It’s nice the way it hems him in, holds him still but always moving, all at once. Why didn’t he get his nervous system hooked on the thrills of some profession that can be done while swinging around in a hammock? He could have been a technical writer, iterating all the liabilities assumed by a manufacturer under a palm tree, right now. When his phone finally rings, he’s half way through imagining the MFA that would over qualify him to write user manuals for Hewlett-Packard.

“Saved by the bell. I was just about to bore myself to death in your absence.”

“Sorry,” Jack says, a bit breathless. “I’m running late today.”

“You are allowed to have a life,” Robby says.

“Not according to my HOA.”

“Oh, screw those guys. What’s their problem?”

“I’m re-doing the back yard, which I have to get approved even though it's not visible from the street,” Jack growls. “So I’ll be putting in some leafy ground cover and mulch and shit, redoing the patio- but they don’t like that I had bags piled in the driveway.”

Robby’s eyes roll harder than the duckpin bowlers last night. “How long has it even been out there?”

“Delivery was today,” Jack says, testily. “I was gonna put in some work on it the day after tomorrow when I’m off, but that wasn’t fast enough for them.”

Of course not.

“That’s an ass ache for sure, man,” Robby chuckles. “But I’ll be honest, I would just pay the fine. Two or three days can’t be that bad.”

“This HOA guy’s been pissing me off all year. I saw red, then he saw how quick I can lug around five hundred pounds of mulch.”

Robby sighs at the mental image, in which he rather reasonably assumes that Jack can manage a mulch bag per strong, sweaty shoulder.

“Seeing that would be a blow to my out of shape ego, I must admit.”

“I still smell cedar,” Jack says. “…Is it in my hair? It’s in my fucking hair.”

It sounds like a car just beeped, on his end.

“Are you driving?”

“Yeah.”

“Make yourself pretty later! Drive safe.”

“Why I oughta…”

Robby can’t help a giggle. “What ought you do? Furiously move mulch at me?”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you, you sick bastard,” Jack says, correct on all accounts. “Anyway... How’d your interview go?”

Ah, yes. Enough groundskeeping, on to the housekeeping.

“They’re holding out for a candidate with more followers on Instagram,” Robby frowns.

“I didn’t wanna say anything, but your posts have been kinda blah lately.”

“You have like, eleven followers and two of them are me.”

“And I’ll block you twice if you don’t answer the question,” Jack threatens. “No more thirst traps.”

“I don’t think that’s how I would classify pictures of your homebrew process- but it went fine. I’m all set, gave a bunch of info... As long as I don’t chicken out, I go in first thing tomorrow.”

Jack hums his assent. “And is this the place in La Crosse, or Oconomowoc?”

How the hell did he-

“Jesus, Jack. If you’re gonna ride my ass like this, at least pull my hair.”

“If it would get you a daily hit of dopamine without revving the Robbymobile, I might do it,” Jack mutters. “You want someone to fuck some self preservation into you? Let’s go.”

These remarks are simply not allowed to make contact with Robby’s memory making synapses. He slaps a hand to his forehead like that might dislodge them.

“That’s news to me, that you have self preservation to spare,” Robby says, pointedly.

“Lust for life then,” he rephrases. “Got that. And I know you’ve always wanted some…” The smirk on Jack’s face is just barely audible.

Ugh. Robby never should have let Jack corner him into admitting he was cute. In his defense, many moons ago, it was nothing short of a miracle to have a straight male friend call him out on being cagey with an ex’s pronouns and then be cool about it. There was no way for Robby to foresee Jack one day being back on the market, exponentially hotter, and his direct report. It’s fine! It’s usually fine... As long as Jack maintains his preference for cargo pants over skinny jeans, and they continue to have a microscopic amount of overlapping free time. Robby just has to remind his dick that Jack’s only making a play of flirting with him, as ever. No matter how well staged a play it is, with velvet curtains, and golden ropes…

“Don’t worry, man,” Robby laughs it off. “I’m not so desperate for it that I need to put you through a pity fuck.”

“No shit,” says Jack. “I saw you and your lady friend from fucking admin. Cheater.”

Robby groans. Apparently his is not the only dick that needs reminding. “You’re not my boyfriend, Jack. I’m just a regular traitor.”

“Yeah. You’re a traitor.” Jack huffs. Twice.

He’s actually having trouble composing himself. Jack. What the hell.

“But Robby…I’m the desperate one,” he says, like he’s ripping it out of his chest. The sincerity of it gives Robby his own pang. “I know you’re not alright right now, and you still took off, won’t tell me where you are... I just want you to be okay, man. I need you to be safe. I love you. I would do some actual crazy, even illegal ass shit to keep you alive. Going gay’s gotta be the least of it.”

Coming from a guy who followed a brother he’s not particularly fond of into a war, this is a pretty eye popping threat.

“Ooo-kay.” Robby picks a point on the ceiling to commit to memory before his brain has a chance to dream up anything he can’t unimagine. “This conversation is in danger of taking an unprofessional turn that I don’t know either of us means to engage with at the moment.”

“Yeah.” Jack pauses. “Your life is upside down enough, right now. I should stop playing with fire.”

“That would be the day, wouldn’t it,” Robby snaps, if it will take the attention off him.

Jack is quiet for another, longer moment. “I really didn’t know how much you worried about me, Robby. And the ‘commandoing’.”

Robby releases the full body clench he hadn’t noticed he’d worked himself into. “Jack… I have been so fucking stressed out for so long… I don’t know how you could have noticed through all the noise.”

“I’m still sorry,” he says.

What Jack said before- of course Robby knows. He also knows if it’s been a hell of a week for him, it has to have been rough for Jack, forced to witness it at a distance. They’ve been brothers in arms propped up against each other, back to back, for a long time. When one of them takes a hit, the other takes on some of their weight so they can both remain upright. There’s no asking for it, just doing. There’s not a lot of apologizing either.

Robby licks his lip, trying to think how to word this so it sticks in Jack’s head. He’s a fiend for malicious compliance, after all. The fewer ambiguities, the better with him. “I love you too, man, you know that,” he starts off. “And I know you’re not gonna kick the hell raising habit any time soon. But for the next two weeks… is it possible for you to keep it in your pants?”

If something happened to him and Robby had to wait seventy-two hours and a court order...

“Yeah,” Jack sighs. “…If you don’t cheat on me, I won’t cheat on you.”

No way is two weeks going to be long enough to get around to untangling that one in therapy, on top of everything else.

“Look… I will check myself in tomorrow,” Robby promises. “My clothes are already packed, and I’m actually kinda excited that they’d do my laundry for me. I also bought some very stupid looking sneakers with no laces. So. Guaranteed nobody's gonna want a piece of this, and there's no need to point out, as one medical professional to another, that promiscuity is often an indication of a mental health crisis. I know. I’m living it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jack drums his hands on something, probably the steering wheel, like he’s trying to expel the rest of whatever pent up energy has possessed him before he opens his mouth again. “I’m about to get out of the truck and go into work, so. Last call for phone sex?”

Robby’s heart skips a beat. “Change of plan. I’m going to come home just to strangle you.”

“Kinky start! So is this happening here at the hospital oooor-”

“Jack,” Robby groans.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Jack says, chastened. “Good luck.”

“Yep. Bye.”

When they hang up, Robby lays his phone on top of his chest. The hammering within pulses at his fingertips as he holds it there. As convenient as it would be to squeeze some small button to silence his body, make it easier to ignore, he can’t. Whatever switch Jack flips in him, it activates without a touch and overrides the rest. Now here Robby lies in bed, with all of his overwrought senses longing for more of his input. He wishes he could have seen when Jack had grinned and when he’d frowned. He would have liked to know how hard he stared, if they’d spoken in person. Did he run hot when he called Robby a cheater? Why did Jack have to bring up smelling like cedar? Why does he have to be so possessive of him, so intense, so easy to imagine, just a few feet to the left of reality?

So much for Robby reminding himself that Jack is just joking. His boxers are straining. As complicated as it may be to give in and jerk off about his friend, it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s kind of simple, too. After all, what is it- something like seventy percent of men on SSRIs that report dysfunction? This could be the last erection Robby gets for a while. He may as well. 

The hallway where Robby can make a phone call is the same eggshell and mint color scheme as the rest of the ward. It’s not too busy, since it's mostly dorms past this point, and the staff encourage everyone to stay awake and be social in the common areas during the day. In the other direction there’s the nurses station and one of two rec rooms, with a giant game of Connect Four, a library, and a pair of treadmills. The noisier entertainment is elsewhere.

Two phones are embedded in the wall on either side of a long bench, with a sheet of plexiglass bolted behind it to give the paint job a fighting chance against the often greasy heads and picky fingers of the ward’s inhabitants. A college aged girl- Irene, maybe- leans against the wall and details her every calorie into one of the two phones, barely noticing Robby as he comes to use the other. It’s a blast from the past, cradling the bulky receiver between his ear and shoulder while he dials in Jack’s number. It would remind him of undergrad if only the cord weren’t the extremely short, rigid sort selected for both its indestructibility and uselessness to the suicidally inclined. While Robby waits out the ringing, he sits and toys with the plastic cuff around his wrist. 

“Mmm. Hello Wisconsin Area Code,” Jack says, soft and low. Nudge is somewhere close to the phone, purring.

“Hey Pittsburgh.”

Robby smiles up at the wall opposite the telephone bench. There’s a laminated map of the United States with a gold star ‘You Are Here’ sticker and about two dozen more stars hand drawn in dry erase marker, where the people currently staying here come from. Mostly the Midwest, and a Floridian. Robby hasn’t put himself up there yet- can’t right now, given the length of the phone cord.

Jack makes an unmistakable stretching in bed noise. “How’s your first day at summer camp going?” he asks, still straining, then sighing. “Did the older kids tell you about the axe murderer who lives in the woods yet?”

“Not yet,” Robby laughs. No need to mention how few older ‘kids’ there are... “Somebody must have got me with a tranquilizer dart at archery practice, though.”

“Haldol, Lorazepam?”

“Yeah. Me and Hal and ‘Pam are getting acquainted, while they decide what else they want to pump me full of,” Robby confirms. “I feel like the Koolaid Man. Big and blasé and sloshing around.”

Jack snorts. “Oh yeaaah.”

“I don’t think I’ve been on any serious drugs since I tore my UCL walking my neighbor’s dog…”

“How big was the dog, Robby? Remind me.”

Robby flutters his eyelashes, abashed. “Who’s keeping track of a little detail like that?”

“The American Kennel Club.” Jack clears his throat. “Says here the breed standard for a French Bulldog is twenty pounds…”

“Surgery is surgery, Jack.”

“I still say you should have let me take a whack at it.”

“Maybe next time,” Robby says. He slumps back against the plexiglass. “If I ever make it out of here... It feels like I’m on an away mission to a planet with time dilation. It’s been a month here, right?”

He doesn’t have it in him to recount this morning’s exhaustive session with the psychiatrist and social worker, the tour, or the later group session where they did an exercise in mindfulness. No comment on lunch in the cafeteria either, beyond the faint praise that its overall quality exceeds that of PTMC. He trusts Jack to read his hyperbole accordingly.

“I bet you’re gonna be forced to watch TV you have no control over for the first time in… how long has streaming been around?”

“Yeah, I did not anticipate that like I should’ve...”

Someone from environmental services is coming along with a floor burnisher. Robby pulls his knees up to his chest to get his feet out of the way.

Jack hums, amused. “Remembering how it feels to just be along for the ride, couch commander?”

“When Jake was little, I did defer to his taste,” Robby objects. “…Sometimes.”

“Yeah, how’d he swing that? I wanna know, for next time I come over. See what I can get away with before your inner control freak grabs the remote.”

“Oh, y’know. Big brown eyes. Spider-Man pajamas. Hard to resist.”

“…I’ll see if I can find some in my size.” 

Somehow, Robby narrowly avoids asking if he even wears pajamas, or if he’s naked in bed, as they speak. He does not need a repeat of last night now that he has a roommate.

“Spent most of the time between sessions this morning watching a Jackie Chan movie,” he tells Jack, instead. “I came in a little late, but I have to assume it was Drunken Master because that guy was loooaded.”

Jack chuckles. “Sounds fun. Did it psych you up to fist fight a senator in a parking lot again?”

Robby nods to the guy with the floor burnisher as he passes. Hello!

“I have done no such thing,” he then hisses to Jack under his breath.

“You kinda did. At the AMC, we saw that kung fu movie with the guy who trains Bruce Lee.”

“Oh.” It’s on the tip of Robby’s tongue. It was ages ago, well before Robby was department chief, and they had settled into their preferred, opposing shifts. “One of the Ip Man movies, yeah,” he finally remembers.

“Your Honor, the defendant just admitted to knowledge only the man guilty of-”

“-I only saw Pat Toomey in the parking lot,” Robby insists. “…And yelled a little.”

This delights Jack. “Man, I wish I had recorded that,” he laughs to himself. “Next best thing. I should rewatch some Ip Man.”

The corners of Robby’s mouth pull back in a grimace. “Tread lightly. The plot with his wife is gonna play a little differently these days.”

Jack sighs, understandably dampened. “Mm. Yeah. But... that doesn’t mean the good parts aren’t worth remembering.”

Robby shoots a look down the hall to where the doctors’ and nurses’ offices are, and their countless phones ring. “I’m getting the sense that’s the sort of thing they’ll say a lot over here...”

“Yeah…I'm sure you’re getting it from every direction,” Jack says.

“Pretty much.”

“Sorry. I had therapy a couple hours ago too, so it's still sloughing off of me.”

It alarms Robby to realize he must have been the topic of conversation. Right? He spent the past three or four days losing his shit, crying on Jack’s proverbial shoulder. If that hasn’t been stressing Jack out, what has? The mulch bag saga? He doesn’t want to think how Jack would have described what happened, but he can’t help himself. 

What’s up with me this week? Well, my best friend almost offed himself, then fled town on his death trap of a motorcycle! The night before he put himself in the loony bin I accidentally told him I would fuck him, if it would help his mental state! And that was before we even got in our feelings about me getting shot at. Haha, did I not mention I'm moonlighting with SWAT? Anyway, I did seize a creative opportunity like you’ve always hoped I would. I made a clip art flyer! Are you proud?

Okay, so maybe not that verbatim, or else Jack’s therapist would’ve had him committed, too, and Robby wouldn’t have him to talk to, to keep him from feeling like he’s already as good as dead to the world at large.

Ugh.

Whatever dose Robby’s on is wearing off. Racing thoughts. Shortness of breath. Oversensitivity to the noises of the ward. The crippling certainty that he is failing and fucked and not worth the energy anybody would put in to noticing, except Jack does notice and it hurts him when Robby hurts, and that’s his fault, that’s harm he can’t stop and what is the fucking point of him if he can’t make things better?!

Robby didn’t even realize he was on his feet again until he can’t get away to someplace quieter. The phone cord is too short. He slams the receiver on the hook. Irene jumps, at the other end of the bench.

“Fuck.” Robby buries his face in his hands. “Fuckfuckfuck.”

‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’? Kierkegaard can eat shit. Robby’s lost his freedom. You can freak the fuck out anywhere.

Chapter Text

It’s been hard to get a hang of keeping an eye on the time without his watch. Robby keeps checking his wristband, like an idiot. Ever since the last session let out, he has been single minded about not missing his chance at the phone. While he navigates the hallway from the cafeteria to the phones, he flips through his notebook to find the page where he transcribed all the numbers he thought he may need. He over shoots and lands on the first page he started since getting here. A running list in one of the innocuous felt tip markers they have the patients here use for everything.

            REASONS TO LIVE:

            People who’d miss me
            Want to travel more
            Want to publish a book or two
            Little kids are amazing to meet
            See Jake's band play
            Still reading Vedas
            Haven’t finished Austen either
            See new Steelers defensive line
            Outlive that motherfucker IIII II

Robby flips back a page and swallows hard when he sees how the vivid color of marker shows through the thin of the page, filling in Jack’s name in the blank space like it's the top of his list. Who told? As Robby dials in the number, he already half remembers it from yesterday. The 667 area code, just shy of devilry, suits Jack. If only Robby’s calls came with some kind of warning label.

“Robby?” Jack’s pitch is a bit on the high end.

“Yeah. Hey.”

“You all right?”

Robby sighs and flops his notebook onto the bench. “I’m all right, I’m just an asshole,” he says, hand on hip and shaking his head at himself. “I did the thing again where I’m a bad friend who flips out and runs away.”

“Well. Running away is perfectly reasonable behavior if we shift into enemy mode,” Jack says, with measured indulgence.

This middle of the ‘night’ Jack guy is a real softie. How is Robby supposed to feel hard done by people who bail on him if he doesn’t get trashed a bit for doing the same?

“You don’t want to hold me accountable?”

Jack yawns. “Of course I do. That’s why I loosed the dogs on you. After stuffing a steak down the back of your pants.”

Robby gnaws on his lip, thinking. “I think the smart move here is to take advantage of my camp ground surroundings. I’m grilling the steak for them, and winning their loyalty.”

“Ah, fuck.” There’s a soft thud, timed like Jack shrugged and then dropped his arm back into the bed. “Once somebody is loyal to you, that’s pretty much it. Not that I'm speaking from experience,” he hurries to say. “Some other guy who’s not your worst enemy said it.”

Whether or not he deserves to, that makes Robby smile. He turns to finally sit on the bench, gathering his notebook in his lap.

“I panicked when I thought- probably you told your therapist what a fucking mess I’ve been. And I know it’s stupid,” Robby explains, shutting his eyes, “but I thought he’d tell you to lose my number.”

Jack draws a preparatory breath. “I did mention I was concerned for you,” he says, matter of fact. “He wishes you well. He hopes that I will remember to be this gentle with myself when I’m struggling, as I try to be with you.”

Robby dabs away the beginnings of a tear from his eye. “Well. You nail it. So, maybe listen to him on that part.”

“Mm.” Jack is quiet for a long moment. It’s impossible to say if he’s waiting for Robby or reflecting on himself. Knowing his capacity for multitasking, likely both. “Feel better?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

Robby sighs a laugh. “Jack, hold on to your hat. I am going to briefly bend my No Work Talk rule, which you may take as permission to talk about one case of equal frivolity."

“I accept your terms,” Jack says readily.

“The psychologist who runs the big mindfulness group here reminds me of that intern who wore shoes with toes. Do you remember him? Maybe eight or nine years ago.”

“Oh man,” Jack snorts. “That knucklehead...”

“What the hell was his name? I can’t remember and it’s killing me. Something with a T, like Tyler, but no. We had a Tyler after that.”

“Tyson.”

Robby laughs and scratches his head. “He washed out quick, but I’m still mindful of him all these years later, so maybe there is something to it,” he says.

Jack chuckles and then moves around, making his bed squeak. “Can I tell you the best thing I saw last night, now?” he asks, eagerly.

If only the bench was long enough for Robby to activate slumber party mode with him, chin in hands and feet kicking in the air. Well, maybe it is, but Irene has just arrived for her chance at the other phone. 

“Proceed,” Robby tells Jack.

“This teen was brought in, orbital fracture, partially scalped…soaking wet from the shoulders up,” Jack starts off. “He was roughhousing with brother, put his head through a fish tank. Two hours and forty staples later? Pukes up two live goldfish, right in my face. They spent the rest of the night swimming around in Shen’s iced coffee.”

Oh how Robby wishes he could say that’s the first living creature he’d ever heard of being regurgitated in the Pitt. It’s probably the most charming to imagine, though.

“It’s not every day they bring in one patient and you save three,” he smiles.

“And before you ask, yes I took a picture,” Jack says. “I’ll send it. You’ll see it when you get your phone back.”

“You know me well,” Robby grins. “Who ended up getting the fish?”

“Nudge.”

“I can’t believe you made that sweet boy an accomplice to murder. You’re darker than I am. How are you my guy for this shit?”

Jack laughs into his pillow. “I have no idea who got the fish. The cup disappeared right around the same time one of the nurses came back with a Dunk’s run.”

“I miss coffee,” Robby pouts, a pathetic thirty hours into his detox. “Even iced. I’d chance it.”

“Manage to sleep last night?” Jack asks, though he seems to already know the answer.

Robby groans and rubs a lingering kink in his neck. “Not much. Bed’s weird. There are beeps all night. No TV.”

“You’ll probably go into a coma tonight, then.”

“It’s your day off, you gonna Trek it up without me?” Robby asks.

Most nights at home he puts on something he’s already seen a thousand reruns of to fall asleep to. On most Tuesdays Jack will swing by, and maybe some other guys from day shift, or Jake. Robby will throw on whatever old Star Trek feels right and they’ll goof on it for a bit, and unwind. Jack always stays the latest, and shuts things down when Robby finally conks out on the couch about four episodes in. Before he left, Robby figured Jack’s moaning about a Paramount subscription was just his way of guilting Robby for going away, but who knows? Being a creature of ritual and routine, maybe Jack really will carry on, seeing as they’re about three years deep into this particular observance.

“After I do some yardwork, yeah,” Jack says. “I’m thinking Enterprise.”

“Mmm. I’m fondly remembering the time Scott Bakula retweeted me,” Robby hums.

“Name dropper.”

“I do not drop that name, I lay it down respectfully like a wreath,” Robby smiles, serenely. “But that’s an interesting selection from you. I would have thought Voyage Home or straight to TOS.”

Jack makes an ambivalent noise. “Well, I don’t want to waste some Trek I really like on a day you’re not around.”

“Wouldn't it make more sense to use my incredible presence to offset a lackluster Trek?” Robby asks.

“Oh, there’s no lack of lust on Enterprise,” Jack rumbles, low. “That Dr. Phlox? Meow.”

Robby blinks. “I think you’re the first person alive to utter those words in that order.”

“What?” Jack snickers. “He doesn’t do it for you? You love the aliens. You’d probably bone literally any one of those Deep Space lizard guys.”

Okay! Robby was not aware Jack was keeping notes on this, but good pattern recognition.

“Maybe it looks like I would bone some alien races more indiscriminately than others, but it’s really down to the performance,” Robby quibbles. “And the teeth,” he frowns, thinking of the Ferengi.

Amazing timing for Robby’s psychiatrist to have popped out of an office door. Robby lifts a sheepish hand in hello. Why does he ever open his mouth?

Meanwhile, Jack is still pondering the contours of his xenophilia. “Dr. Phlox has normal teeth…I think.”

“Eh,” Robby shrugs. “But he’s got no edge.”

“Huh. So no nice guys for you, just tough guy aliens.”

“The heart wants what it wants,” Robby relents.

“I guess so.”

But probably the less said about that, the better.

“Look,” Robby sighs. “I don’t want to short change you when we’ve finally managed to have a call without a total meltdown, but I think I ought to let Dana know where I am.”

“That I am willing to sacrifice some of my Robby allowance for,” Jack says, very charitably. “Who knows why, but she misses you.”

Robby chuckles. “I’ll call some other people too, say I’m headed into a ‘retreat’ with no phones. One that molds my personality into something more missable, with any luck.”

It wouldn’t be great if somebody like Jake or Whitaker couldn’t get a hold of him in an emergency and whipped up a frenzy. Gloria’s office should get a memo that he’s incommunicado. His attorney’s office should probably get let in the real deal, though. 

Jack grumbles something Robby doesn’t quite hear, but just enough to guess.

“What was that?” He feigns a gasp.

“For the record,” Jack enunciates more clearly, “I do miss you.”

“‘For the record’,” Robby chuckles. “Just in case anyone is recording this and you’re later implicated in my disappearance?”

“Just covering my tracks.”

“That kind of forward thinking- that’s why you’re my guy for this shit. Right, right.”

“I knew you’d figure it out.”

“Miss you too, Jack.”

The pleasant hum on the other end makes Robby smile.

“All right. I’ll let you go. Nudge is losing his mind that the breeze blew the door shut, anyway.”

“Bye.”

To do a dull thing with style is preferable
To doing a dangerous thing without it

When Robby first came in here, he promised himself he wouldn’t wear his pajama pants outside of his dorm. Alas, that version of Robby had never had his ass handed to him by the forcible wrangling of his serotonin levels. This morning he declined the Zofran he was offered alongside his Zoloft, in a classic case of tossing out an umbrella today because he didn’t get wet yesterday. All day, he’s been in and out of waves of nausea, on top of having zero energy to show for the ten hours he slept last night. It was everything he could do to stay awake for his one-on-one session this morning. Now he lumbers along the hallway, his hands in his pajama pockets, in no rush to the phone bench. Both receivers are tied up, anyway.

He should put his name up on the map while he waits. ‘667’ Robby writes at first, before catching himself. Not yet. He got too cocky about memorizing Jack’s number. After a cleaning swipe of his fingers, Robby finally gives ‘⛥ Michael R’ a point of origin. Not too far off from ‘⛥ Christa’ from somewhere around Cleveland, who’s struggling with auditory hallucinations, but otherwise has a good gut instinct for when simmering tension between patients is about to boil over into blows. The main cluster of stars are Wisconsinites, of course, and a handful of Iowans and Minnesotans. Robby’s roommate Clyde is from Illinois. He’s one of the frequently swinging fists of the ward, but seeing as Robby has largely been unconscious in his presence, he has yet to inflame his temper.

Finally Alan, one of the Iowans, hangs up his phone. Robby nods hello to Irene on the other phone, dials, and then drops his sluggish body onto the bench.

“Mm? That you, hon?” Jack answers blearily. “Not hon. The other thing. Man.”

A single puff of a laugh is all Robby can spare at the moment. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh good.” Jack clears the sleep out of this throat. “I keep thinking one of these days I’m gonna pick up the phone all groggy and say something weird to my boss...”

Robby rubs the start of a grin off his face with one hand. “Why stop now?”

“At this point?” Jack burrs his lips. “We’re probably in too deep.”

“Force of habit.”

Jack’s chuckle at that is lazy, yet giddy. “Do you know how long I thought the expression was ‘horse of habit’?” 

“Oh, hon. That’s adorable,” Robby coos at him. 

There, now they’re even.

“I made it all the way to fucking Iraq thinking it was ‘horse’, Robby.”

Robby blinks as he adjusts his Unified Field Theory of Jack just a bit. “Talk about disillusionment.”

“Horse. No wonder everyone thought I was a hick from the sticks.”

“Ah, behold the unearned urban confidence of the average New Englander...”

“I know it's not a huge city, but they do have books in Bangor,” Jack objects. “It's kind of the main export, so I don’t know what fucking crack I slipped through.”

“I’ve always assumed the shower drain, same as It,” Robby says.

“Takes a clown to know a clown,” Jack shoots back.

Robby snorts. “It’s okay. No one from outside of Pennsylvania has any clue where Pittsburgh is, either... One of the nurses here was absolutely certain I was European until I opened my mouth.”

“So, three whole seconds into your stay?”

“Da, verno.”

The sound of Jack’s relaxed sigh cuts through to Robby’s weary core. If he can stand down, it’s okay for Robby, too. He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, ignoring the sea sick feeling in his head.

“You sound tired,” Jack notices.

Robby nods, slow and unseen. “New meds are doing a sleeper hold on me.”

“I’ll make you some room in the bed, I guess.”

“Mm. Thank you.”

“So. Day three on the inside,” says Jack. He makes a stretching sound. “Are you climbing the walls yet?”

“Eh, I’m sure I’ll get there soon, but not yet,” Robby answers. Ugh. He has to open his eyes again. His head’s too swimmy, otherwise. “They’ve got enough acronyms to keep me busy for now.”

“Such as?”

“DBT, TIPP, ABC PLEASE,” Robby spells out. “It’s basically Sesame Street, between that and all the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 mindfulness… Not that I’m knocking Big Bird, mind you.”

Jack chuckles. “I do 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

“Yeah?”

It’s hard for Robby not to suspect he’ll find these exercises grating when his whole brain is up and running again, but if it works for Jack, that’s promising.

“Hmm. I see… the smoke alarm. The dimmer switch. The cat. My chair.” Jack pauses. “And either a rat, or a sock that missed the laundry bin. That’s five.”

Robby grins. “I’m rooting for rat. My entertainment options are limited.”

“What’s your place look like?”

“Uhh. There’s a big dry erase board on the wall across from me. Has a map on it.” Robby glances around for things he hasn’t appreciated before. “A key card reader… Checker board tiling on the floor that has a bit of glittery speckle to it. Some red, white and blue garland around the fire doors... Aaand a hand rail.”

There they go, five things they can see, each.

Jack clicks his tongue. “That’s a hospital, all right,” he says. “What about four things you feel?”

“Nope. You have to go first, you started this.”

“Grrah.” Jack moves around noisily on his end. “This is always my worst one…”

“Too bad,” Robby chuckles.

You know, this grounding exercise might not be so dull if he thinks of it as one of their games.

“Well,” Jack says. “I feel fucking cat litter in the bed, for one.”

“Ah!”

“But my thermos is cold,” Jack follows up, with a sip and a smack of his lips. “And I feel the ceiling fan moving the air. Hmm. And I feel hungry, actually...”

Robby sweeps out his arm, in permission. “Don’t let me stop you, Jack. If you wanna go get a midnight snack, I’ll come along for the ride.”

“Yep.” Jack lets out a puff of effort as he transfers into his wheelchair from the bed. “Putting you between my legs,” he announces. “Behave.”

No chance of that. Robby is instantly the most awake he’s been all day. “I feel... warm and hairy!” he grins.

“Giving you that for free,” Jack mutters. “My own fault…”

“And I feel…the stitching of the bench I’m sitting on.”

“Move it or lose it, Nudge.”

Foggy headed as he is, Jack’s house is just as real to Robby as anything in this drab hallway. He can’t help but imagine them duking out a traffic jam on the way to the kitchen. An oblivious Nudge swishing his fluffy tail in the middle of a doorway while Jack fumes. Those grumpy dimples that bracket his frown.

“And…I’m running outta things to feel, Jack. I can’t touch my own toes with this phone cord.”

“What’re you wearing?” Jack asks.

“What am I wearing?” Robby bats his eyelashes, titillated by such an easy set up. “Lingerie, obviously.”

“That’s funny, I thought we agreed you weren’t gonna be a tramp while you’re in there...”

Heat floods Robby’s cheeks. Not in front of Irene, man, c’mon. He drags a hand down his flustered face, and something pokes his cheek. Oh.

“My wristband is scratchy,” Robby supplies, instead. “And my pajama pants that I didn’t want to resort to are soft.”

Jack snorts. “I hear you, and my wheels… and the hum of the fridge.”

“And I hear you, the person next to me, and the rain,” Robby shoots right back.

There’s a bonus sound on Jack’s end. The separating of the seal on the refrigerator door?

“I can smell mulch through the window,” Jack reports. “And lemon Pledge.”

But all good things must come to an end. Robby shrugs, unable to offer anything in return.

“I’m out of moves, man. I can’t smell or taste anything,” he tells Jack. “You win.”

“Don’t take it too hard. I’m an old pro.”

“They should make varsity jackets for this.”

“Meh. I have enough of those.”

Robby sighs dramatically. “Go ahead, take a victory lap... What’ve you got to eat over there, anyway?”

“Just a shake,” Jack chuckles. “I taste strawberry.”

“Bottoms up, baby.”

He’s been sitting back, more or less resting his eyes and daydreaming of Jack’s kitchen, but suddenly Robby gets the sensation that he is being stared at. He turns his head and sees Irene looming at his side.

“What is he eating?” she asks, ignoring the phone clutched in her own hand.

This is the most exhausting part of being here. More so than the side effects of the drugs, or explaining his biography. How can Robby the patient ever get a break when he can’t turn off his clinical response to the illness of the other patients around him?

Boundaries.

“I can see you’re curious, Irene, but I’m not going to answer that question.”

Irene frowns. “Why not? It’s not like I’m eating it.”

Robby knows the best response for her is distress tolerance, not reassurance, or else he is reinforcing her compulsion. But he can’t just tell her to fuck off.

“I’d like to respect my friend’s privacy,” Robby says. “The same way I’m sure you’d like to respect mine.”

Irene huffs. “For a freaky old gay guy you’ve got negative aura,” she says. But she finally turns around to get back to her own conversation. “This guy who always sits next to me will tell anyone he’d fuck an alien, but god forbid I ask him a question…”

Jack is laughing in Robby’s ear. “You making friends with the other campers?”

“Oh yeah! Everybody loves me here. And my roommate wants to teach me karate.”

“What’s that mean?…PTSD, throwing hands?”

“Mhmm.”

This hum of Jack’s is more dour than most. “Been there,” he says.

However brutal his pastimes may be, Robby has always thought of Jack as physically restrained, and of that restraint as its own kind of passionate practice. He’s an adherent of old school chivalry, who knows his capacity for force, and yet brandishes gentleness more readily. It’s hard to imagine him lashing out like Clyde, but as far back as he and Jack go, they don’t go all the way. There must have been a before.

Robby’s teeth grind, both holding in his morbid curiosity, and trying to propel the question forward. He doesn’t want to know things about Jack that would disappoint him. He doesn’t want the way he’s pulled to Jack to be coming from the same dark place that puts him on a bike, barreling down the highway without a helmet. But that chosen ignorance is selfish. It protects Robby, while Jack is left alone with his demons by someone who claims to love him.

“Did you ever have to do this, then?”

Jack inhales. “I wasn’t a daily psych patient, but when I was rehabbing my leg… that’s the first time I saw someone. But when I got back home, I was still in bad shape,” he says, heavily. “Put enough holes in Ma’s walls that she still didn’t want to move in with us when she retired a few years back... I don’t blame her.”

Robby’s heart sinks. Jack’s mother barely showed up when Sondra died. He remembers actively trying to meet her at the funeral, half-hoping for the sort of warmth the mothers of his childhood friends once had for him, and not getting much more out of her than a handshake. Of course, Robby doesn’t want there to be blame on Jack, but he can well imagine her side of it, after a lifetime of patching up frightened mothers and angry sons. Robby doesn’t have to use his imagination at all to know it would weigh on someone as innately loyal as his friend. He knows for himself how that kind of breakdown between two people hurts. He just doesn’t have holes in the wall to point at.

“That sounds really difficult. I’m sorry,” Robby says. 

“Me too,” Jack sighs. “Took a few years and a few lost security deposits, doing group therapy like you’re doing to get a grip… Obviously, there are still ups and downs,” he concludes.

“You did groups with the VA, I assume?”

“Yep.” As easily as he understands any of Robby’s obliquities, Jack then reads between the lines. “…It’s too bad they don’t have hospitals for patient doctors."

“That would be a real treat, wouldn’t it?” Robby shudders at the thought. “But it’s not the same. I mean, I’m just mentally ill, I’m not also injured on top of it. That’s harder.”

“Don’t downplay it,” Jack says, taking a tougher tone with him than usual. There’s some of that force of his… “Your life was in danger. Has been before now, too. We get some rough customers. And Covid? Fuck.”

Right.

Robby scratches his head. “I just don’t know that playing the victim’s the healthy route, either.”

“Robby,” Jack says, drawing him back to his point. “You deserve the help and care you’re getting.”

Robby groans. “Thank you, Dr. Abbot…”

“Not saying that as a doctor.”

“Oh man.” Robby almost draws blood dragging his clawed fingers down the side of his face. “It’s so much worse if you have to say it as a friend! May as well ambush me on Queer Eye like I’m some chronically self-subsuming mother of five.”

“All right, back to doctor mode,” says Jack. “What’s the difference between you and the guys who haven’t even had a physical in two decades?” he asks. “Dog years?”

“…Approximately.”

Jack huffs in exasperation. “You do believe you deserve the same basic human compassion as everyone else, right?”

“Well…” Robby hesitates to answer Jack. Instead he smothers himself with the heel of his palm.

“Because that’s a real fucking problem that you need to work on if you don’t,” Jack insists.

“…Yeah.” A lump threatens to climb up Robby’s throat faster than he can swallow it back down. “But. What if it’s even worse than that?”

Jack softens by half, down to somewhere just below his usual wry baseline. “Tell me,” he says. “Get it out.”

When Robby opens his mouth again, it all comes in an inelegant gush. “I don’t think anybody cares about anyone else but themselves anymore!” he admits. “There used to be a consensus that was good, but it feels like a switch flipped and now it’s just a fucking free for all, nobody has to care who they hurt anymore, and I’m the only idiot who didn’t get with the program, still out here, fucking killing myself over an extinct moral code.”

Speaking the grim truth dispels the feeling Robby might puke, at least.

“And if that were true,” Jack says carefully, “you think that makes it irrelevant if you deserve to be cared for?”

“Right!” Robby says, relieved to have this heart break understood. “Nobody wants to help anybody, never mind me, so- oh fuck.” Robby drapes his hand over both his eyes, but he’s not really blinding himself. He wants this realization to be indelible. “That’s so fucking fucked up now I say it out loud... To say it to you of all people....”

Jack is silent except for a tacit exhale. Yeah, dude. That’s a bad way to think.

“I should know better. I do know better, I just... ‘I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake’,” Robby says with borrowed words.

It’s grim, having his attention called to the faulty wiring in his mental attic. This place should have gone up in flames long before now.

Jack clears his throat. “Not to get all after school special on you, man, but… There’s plenty of problems with the world, Robby. You taking up space in it is not one of them. It’s one of the things I like about it, even.”

Just because it’s pat doesn’t make it not nice to hear.

With his eyes shut, Robby tries like hell to internalize what Jack is saying, then finally peers out from under his hand, down the hall to the dorms. “Ugh. I thought I was too cool for school, and I didn’t need my notebook to remember your number. Hhhff. I should be writing some stuff down so I can talk about it later…”

“You need to go?” Jack asks.

“I don’t wanna use you and lose you like this, but…”

There are no hard feelings in Jack’s chuckle. He sounds relieved, too. “It’s okay, Robby, this is why you’re there.”

Robby knocks the phone receiver against his temple and sighs. “Thanks, man.”

“Not gonna lie, I’m proud of this one,” Jack says. 

He must be. He sounds like Nudge.

“Now, now. No one likes a show off.”

“Eh. Speak for yourself… Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Robby smiles. “Bye, Jack.”

Group therapy was surprisingly engrossing today. Robby coasts on that high into lunch, and then into one of the rec rooms with a gaggle of his fellow patients. He thinks he’ll just pick out a book or two to page through later, but instead he ends up in a heated game of giant Jenga that he loses only because he startles a little at the sight of Alan of Iowa, come to join the festivities.

If Alan is off the phone, that means-

Robby grabs his books and dashes down the hall, to the phone bench. While he dials he notices that Irene is using her time to get an update on one of those The Bachelor type shows, rather than her usual self flagellation. Good for her.

“Hellooo,” Robby singsongs into the phone, the moment the line picks up.

“Hello,” comes a warm, sleepy voice.

“How’re you?”

Jack snorts. “Can’t complain. I’ve only been awake for five seconds. How’re you?”

Robby sits and stretches his legs out ahead of himself in mid air. “I’m amazing, I just lost at Jenga.”

“Congratulations.”

“Okay! Well, that’s all I woke you up to say,” Robby grins. “Adios! Hanging up n-”

“Get your ass back over here and have a nervous breakdown or something,” Jack huffs. “Fuck’s sake...”

“No thank you, I’m just about cured now.” Robby sighs musically, as tranquil as a teacup at the moment. It’s nice. “Good thing that’s not all you keep me around for, huh?” he jokes to Jack.

But as soon as he says it, a bolt of fear runs down Robby’s spine. No. Jack isn’t just caught in his orbit because he’s a walking, talking crisis, and Jack's a junkie for any situation that might explode if he looks at it crosseyed. Right?

“Nah, there’s no curing being a major dork.” Jacks says, easily soothing his worry. “But that’s okay. Balances out a guy like me…”

Robby bats his eyelashes as though he has never heard this before. “I’m a dork?”

“What’s your position on Halloween costumes, Robby?” Jack asks.

“They should be scary,” Robby says, hackles immediately raised. “If you want to play dress up with your favorite show, that’s great, but buy a ticket for a convention like the rest of us, don’t dilute the reason for the season and cheat yourself with a half assed Office costume. Get out the food dye and corn syrup!”

“You care so much about it,” Jack says. “Like a dork.”

“Ironic detachment is killing art, Jack.”

He snickers. “I love it when you call TV ‘art’...”

Robby bites his lip. “You’re baiting me, I recognize it, and I’m rising above it.”

“Hey, I’m with you,” Jack claims. “It is not bad to like things. 'Down with guilty pleasures’, like you say.”

“Thank you!”

“And I know you’re classy, too,” Jack says, with eye rolling fairness. “I’ve seen all your old books, and the opera in your CD collection...”

Well. If Jack likes his plumage, Robby can’t resist preening a little.

“It may interest you to know, I made an attempt at my own bit of artistic expression today,” he says, feeling along the edge of his notebook. An irregular paper shape pokes out between the clean cut pages. “It’s no masterpiece or anything, like your clip art… but I enjoyed making it.”

“Yeah?”

“At least until I have to explain it to Dr. Kemper later, anyway.”

Jack hums. “Doesn’t art speak for itself?”

“Only if the artist can pull off a black turtleneck, and I didn’t pack mine,” Robby laments.

“Run it by me first, then,” says Jack. “What is it, a haiku or something?”

“Uhh.” Robby pulls it out of his notebook and scrunches his nose in consideration. “I guess it’s mostly a collage? They gave us magazines and markers to ‘create our perfect day’ so- I found some pictures to rip out, and drew it all together into something I’m calling Sunrise Over a Couch Made of Babies.”

“Oh, so they’ll be upping your meds.”

“Ha.” Robby rolls his eyes. “Not when I explain it, of course.”

“It’s killing me that you can’t send a picture of this,” Jack chuckles. “All right. What the fuck is your perfect day then, you sick, sick puppy?”

Robby sits back against the wall and crosses his ankles. “Well, it starts off with watching the sunrise on the roof, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jack agrees. “But maybe don’t mention the roof to your doc.”

“Good point.” Robby scratches his head, recalibrating. “Uh. Then I go inside- from the ground level- and do nothing but deliver healthy babies all day,” he smiles. “To break things up, maybe a few babies of yesteryear come in to say ‘hi’ with a dislocated shoulder, or an allergic rash, or something.”

“…Is this how you’re telling me you’re switching to obstetrics?” Jack interrupts.

“Nooo, that would get boring. This is just a wild coincidence," Robby says, waving a hand. “Snow shut down the city for a week, nine months back.”

“Hang on, I’m looking up the record,” Jack says. “Looks like…Dr. Mohil Patel, with twenty four babies in an eighteen hour shift.” He whistles.

“But it’s my perfect day, so I do it in twelve,” Robby grins.

“Slacker.”

“Don’t forget I’m running and gunning all those dislocations on the way to and from the bathroom,” Robby reminds Jack.

“All right, I guess,” he grumbles. “Then what?”

“Then I get home with enough energy to make something tasty, with plenty of leftovers to bring to the breakroom the next day,” Robby says, smoothing the wrinkle out of a picture of a casserole. “Watch a movie or two while that’s cooking... Cuddle up on the couch with an enormous blanket, and then wake up without a single cramp to do it all over again.”

Jack hums thoughtfully. “What day of the week is this perfect day?”

Caught off-guard, Robby’s heart flutters. There’s only one day that Jack would have a stake in.

“I guess it could be a Tuesday, if you’re angling for an invite.”

“Mmphmaybe. Depends what you’re cooking,” Jack says.

“Okay, tough guy, you think you can improve on my perfection? What would you wanna do?” Robby teases. “Die Hard?”

Jack scoffs. “If I get to pick a movie, I’m picking Top Gun.”

Sure, that fits for Jack. High octane. Punchy dialogue. Unintentionally homoerotic.

“As long as I’m not Goose in this perfect day of yours…”

“No,” says Jack, “I mean a movie to watch on your couch.”

“Oh.”

“If Your Majesty will allow someone else to touch the remote...”

That flutter in Robby’s chest magnifies seismically. “Next time we get together, you can do whatever your little heart desires,” he promises, stupidly.

“That’s a binding verbal contract,” Jack notes. “Our attorneys are gonna have a field day...”

Of course, it doesn’t mean anything but solidarity that Jack wants to be part of his paper thin fantasy. Robby has to remember that. It would bore Jack to live at his speed, imagined or real. Keeping up with Robby like he’s doing right now is something he has already deemed a non-interruption to his sleep! What is there for them to even discuss? Robby already said that this exercise didn’t convince him to change his specialty. That wouldn’t repair his broken relationship to work. Robby doesn’t need to confer with Jack or Dr. Kemper to know Sunrise Over a Couch Made of Babies is about a desire for balance to his grief. A desire for comfort. What he doesn’t know is how to seek that without setting his sights on the unattainable. There’s no such thing as a day without death in the Pitt, just like there will never be a night of romance on the couch with Jack.

It’s time for a conversational bucket of cold water.

“Hey, anything going on in the news I oughta hear about?” Robby asks. “I know about the Wisconsin tornado from the nurses, but otherwise the latest news around here is the six year old People magazines we tore up this morning. I was hoping maybe that DOGE guy’s car fell into a sink hole, or something...”

“Mmmnope, not tellin’ you shit. I’m not that stupid.” Jack pauses. “And did you just say you got hit by a fucking tornado?” 

“Not me, personally. Two hours away.”

“Jesus Christ… I’m adding weather alerts for your area to my phone.”

Robby grins. “You gonna come out here and scare it off if another one shows up?”

“Not me, personally,” Jack says, exactly matching Robby’s supercilious tone. “I’ll send my flying monkeys. If the tornado doesn’t kill you, they’ll finish you off.”

“Now, hang on.” Robby crosses his arms. “How come you always get to be the one on attack?”

“I thought that’s how you like it.”

“Well. It can really cheer a boy up to be the center of attention,” Robby says, only half able to keep the prurient smirk out of his voice. “But everything in moderation. I might like to have you at my mercy, once in a while.”

“Why does this sound so sexy?”

So much for cooling off. Robby holds his breath a moment, lest he sigh too tellingly.

“What can I say? Villainy is a passion project.”

Jack makes a noise of thoughtful consideration. “Y’know, I could use some cheering up, ever since my best friend ditched me,” he says.

“Oh no,” Robby frowns. “When did Nudge take off?”

“You dick,” Jack snorts.

“I’m sure he had his reasons...” As Robby giggles to himself, another patient named Shelly comes along, giving him a sideways look. As much as she can, she keeps her distance as she picks up the phone Irene left vacant today. Robby reels himself in a bit, hushing his voice. “If nobody’s watching your back, it would be the perfect opportunity for me to destroy your secret lair, wouldn’t it?”

“You don’t know where that is. It’s a secret. It’s in the name.”

“I put an air tag on one of your flying monkeys,” Robby grins into the receiver.

“…Oh shit.”

“Yep.” Robby strokes his bearded chin evilly. If not now, when? “All I have to do is wait for nightfall to get a clear view, and then I’m going to shoot down the moon,” he tells Jack.

“Hey! I was using that.”

“How unfortunate that it had to come to this… for you. Not for me,” Robby hums. “I like watching you squirm.”

“Are you taking me prisoner?”

“Yep. Back to my evil lair.”

“Mmm. Big mistake taking me behind enemy lines, buddy,” Jack tsks on the other end. “Now I’m perfectly positioned for revenge,” he says. 

Very annoying that Jack is right. This is how Robby likes it. 

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Whatever you do, don’t touch the cobwebs,” Robby says, holding up a hand in plea. “They pull together the whole dark and twisted atmosphere.”

“Man, they’re already toast. I found your vacuum.” Jack sucks a breath through his clenched teeth. “You’ll be sorry you ever messed with me, when I’m all up in your dishwasher, loading it weird.”

Robby crosses his legs and bounces his foot. “How do you know that wasn’t my plan all along?” he smirks.

Jack starts giggling. “Hey, I’m trying to undermine you, you control freak. Don’t enjoy this.”

“You’re manhandling my appliances,” Robby swoons. “I can’t help it.”

“Hey.”

Another pair of slip on sneakers even more obnoxious in color than Robby’s steps in front of the phone bench. Robby looks up at Dwight, the lone Floridian.

“Oo. Is it 1:20 already? Sorry.”

“Yeah.”

Robby sighs into the phone. “Hey, Jack. My phone time’s up.”

“All right,” Jack sighs too. “I was starting to feel sorry about the beat down I was giving you, anyway…”

“Don’t. We can pick that right back up, any time.”

“Later, Robby.”

“Don’t trip into the moat on your way out!”

After the morning’s one-on-one, Robby fills out  his tracking worksheet. There are boxes for various symptoms, goals, and techniques to help give an at a glance impression of his treatment. He has been dutiful, checking off daily use of every technique, just as soon these tools have been prescribed to him. The daily goals are still forming, but are up to him. Read/Watch Something New. Write. Play a Game. Call Jack. He’s on track with those, so far. But symptoms?

Fuck, does Robby hate this quantitative shit. He can practically hear Gloria’s sensible heels trailing along behind him in the hall on the way back to the dorms.

Robinavitch, we need to talk about your numbers. Ability to concentrate is down. You’re not meeting the target for Racing Thoughts. Tearfulness is rocketing out of control. Dailies on Ideation is creeping back over 50%.

As he passes her, Christa gives Robby a wide berth. He’s so miserable, so frustrated, he’s irradiating the fucking ward. Great.

Group is not mandatory, so Robby skips it. He sits on his bed and plays a few rounds of solitaire instead. He doesn’t feel like eating lunch either. Doesn’t feel like he deserves it, after slugging around most of the morning. He switches to a pyramid game, pairing nines and fours, threes and tens, jacks and twos until Clyde comes in, looking sweaty.

Agitated? Or has he just been out in the courtyard, in the sun? There was some whooping of a crowd, a few minutes ago. If there had been a fight, it’s unlikely the nurses would have let him get this far, but it is a Friday. Most hospitals, your best staff are going to have the seniority to take off for the weekend, and things tend to get a little lax. It’s best not to assume one can relax on a traditional ‘day off’… Then again, if Clyde intends anyone here harm, Robby would rather it be him.

“Afternoon.” Robby smiles tight, making only fleeting eye contact before he continues his game.

“Hey Mike.”

Robby does not remind him that he would prefer Michael to Mike. Save it for later, when he’ll deserve a black eye.

Clyde goes straight to his dresser and finds himself a fresh tee shirt to change into. Then plastic crinkles as he grabs the water bottle on his shelf and downs what’s left of it. Empty, it squeezes and twists in his hands until he can wring no more satisfaction from it. Finally, the rubber cover of the mattress groans as Clyde flops back onto his bed. He seems as inert as he ever is with the lights on. It’s group settings with shifty dynamics and night terrors that tend to trigger Clyde’s aggression.

Robby gets stuck on his pyramid, with his stock empty and six cards unwilling to budge. He gathers everything up and then riffles and bridges the deck a few times, as he is prone to do.

“Man, you’re fast,” says Clyde, without moving.

“Hm?”

Robby glances at Clyde, who is still staring up at the ceiling.

“Doing the shuffle like that,” he clarifies.

“Oh. It just takes practice.”

“You weren’t at group.”

Robby starts dealing out another pyramid. “No, I was here,” he answers.

“But it’s good practice, too.”

After a careful exhale, Robby thinks better of beginning a new game. If Clyde is gonna lay there spouting off the same trite shit he avoided by skipping a session, he might start throwing things. He was trying to lose himself in the cards. He wanted to get so absorbed by them that he forgot about his phone time, so he could point at it, like some kind of proof.

See? I’m an ungrateful asshole. Sometimes life doesn’t turn out exactly like I hope. So what? I take what I have for granted. Talent. People. Opportunities. That’s why I can’t be happy. It’s hardly a locked room mystery. I ruin it for myself.

Robby’s not too late, though. He has plenty of time to gracefully exit and even go to the bathroom. Phone time is a more appealing option than to go socialize with the other patients, for whom he still feels he has to perform a practitioner's neutrality, on some level. If he’s going to force small talk with someone, at least he can let his hair down a little with Jack. Get in one last laugh just in case Clyde does wring his neck one of these nights.

After he punches in the phone number, Robby lays down on the bench, one knee tucked up so he can fit on its length, and his other foot braced on the ground. If Irene shows up, they can fight about him being a hog. Whatever.

“Hi,” yawns Jack, when he picks up. “G’morning.”

Robby makes a sullen noise. “Mmn. Not really.”

“…Not good, or not morning?”

“Take your pick.”

For a moment, all Robby hears is Nudge purring nearby. He wishes he could just curl up with the two of them in bed and say nothing, but that’s not really how waking someone up for a phone call works.

“Mornings are overrated, anyway,” Jack says.

Robby just sighs. Dead air. Why did he bother reaching out when he so desperately wanted to crawl into a corner, again?

“Can I tell you something?” Jack asks.

Please. Tell me I’m not the useless piece of shit I feel like. I’m sorry how often I need to hear it.

“I’m all ears… and not much else,” Robby says.

Jack takes a breath. “I’ve been sleeping in the spare room a lot, past few years. Like. Pretty much all the time… King size is just too much bed. Especially when it's light out.”

“Yeah,” Robby agrees. Not that he’s loving the lumpy twin he sleeps in here, but he gets it. “I only upgraded from a queen when I was with Janey… I sleep on the couch a lot, now. Doesn’t feel so exposed.”

“Well, that’s why your spine's a pretzel," Jack says. “At least get yourself one of those influencer dog beds.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Robby muses. “What a life. What I wouldn’t give to be some social media star’s rescue dog… Brand deals out the wazoo.”

“The fuck do you think I’m doing? ‘My Dog’s in a Wisconsin Psych Ward, Part 14’ is blowing up TikTok,” Jack claims.

Robby snorts a laugh. “More power to you, that backyard reno’s not gonna pay for itself.”

“Anyway,” says Jack, continuing toward his point. “The air circulation’s better in the master bedroom, so I’ve been forcing myself to sleep here in the summer more.”

“Mm. Sure.”

“…It’s helped, I think, getting the five star hotel wake-up service from you,” Jack tells Robby. “Y’know. Making positive associations and all that.”

Here Robby was, assuming he made somewhere between no to negative impact on Jack’s well being, lately. Maybe it’s just a guy sleeping on one perfectly fine bed instead of another, but Robby is definitely in a position to appreciate the psychological value of having a comfortable place to rest.

“I guess I’m glad I could help?”

“It’s funny though,” Jack says, and he does laugh… “There’s nothing on earth Sondra hated like me getting paged in the middle of the night, or middle of dinner, whatever. If she could have laser beamed the phone with her eyes, she would’ve.”

Nope. Robby’s back to feeling unmitigatedly shitty. A lot of times, it would have been on his orders that the phone was ringing. How many hours of his finite time with Sondra did he rob Jack of?

“Sorry for that…”

“No,” Jack says, promptly. “My jumping at the gun for work is not your fault.”

Robby huffs. “Then who’s fault is it?”

“Being a Behavioral Economics professor, Sondra liked to blame capitalism.”

His throat is prickling in warning, but at that Robby chuckles just a bit. “Right on, sister.”

Jack makes his customary stretching sounds on the other end, then clears his throat. “So, if it’s not a good morning, I’m guessing you hit the wall today.”

As they speak, Robby is indeed rapping his knuckles against the plexiglass covered cinderblocks behind the phone bench. He folds his arm back over his chest with a groan at his predictability.

“Had two good-ish days, then…bam.” Robby slaps his sternum, but it barely registers through the stinging of his eyes and throat. His airway feels like someone’s tightening a zip tie around it, and when his voice comes out, it's so pitiful to his own ears it makes him tear up. “I hate everything and I don’t want to. I don’t- I don’t want to be here.”

“Robby...”

“I don’t mean- I do, but I don’t,” Robby struggles to say. “I wish I could just have a break,” he begs with a sniff. “Be anywhere else.” He shuts his eyes and molten tears run from the corners, down his face into his ears. He could wipe his eyes as fast as he can generate tears, maybe, but then his nose gets runny, too. “I expected the backslide, I know that’s part of it,” he cries to Jack. “It just felt like- or I thought- stupidly… that admitting I was in a hole meant it couldn’t get any deeper! And of course, they want me to talk and think about it, and I know I’m supposed to, that’s the ‘working on it’, but I’m digging in, and in, and in…and now here I am, and…!”

He runs out of breath.

“I’m sorry Robby,” Jack says, calm and gentle in his ear while he cries. “It will pass. The feeling will pass. Time will pass. You won’t be in there forever.”

Robby takes a big gulp of a breath to argue but he can barely get it back out as words. He’s drowning in himself. He can’t lay like this and breathe so he has to move. He tries to slide to sit on the floor, but of course the stupid fucking too short phone cord won’t let him, so he clambers back up to sit on the bench. Robby balls up, heels dug into the edge of the seat, knees under his chin, and his spare hand gripping into his hair, then rubbing down his neck. But even his most primal attempt at self soothing is wrong. When he rubs the back of his neck, there’s no stethoscope, not even a chain.

“I let them- let them take away everything I had to balance myself out,” he blubbers into the clunky- now slick with tears- receiver. “My bike, my- my phone, my fucking jewelry? Used to have my work and my shit to keep it from crushing me all the way down,” he tries to explain. “I had a pocket. You know? Like when that place in Hamnett collapsed? That old man’s bookshelf kept it from bludgeoning him. All he needed from us was- was some fucking antiseptic on some scrapes,” Robby laughs in hysterical disbelief.

“Yeah, I remember,” says Jack, listening but not laughing.

“Now every minute here feels like it's just… flattening me more and more under the weight of this- this dark inside of me.”

“Hey,” Jack says, softly. “Right now. This is your pocket, Robby.” He can hear Jack swallow, like he’s managing his own watery condition on the other end. “It can’t crush you all the way. It’s my shoulders against the bookshelf, all right?”

Robby wraps his arm around his knees, huddling in. “Yeah,” is all he can croak out.

“What would you do if you had your phone?”

“Call you.”

There’s a quiet beat.

“Okay,” Jack chuckles out. “You managed to pull that off, anyway. What else?”

It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. Robby almost wasted his chance, languishing in the dorm. That was the only control he could exert. He doesn’t want it to be dictated to him when he gets to talk to Jack. He wants to be able to have him all the time. And this is where he keeps getting into trouble, craving some kind of eternal certainty out of things. It’s not bad to want security, but it’s hurting him to put that kind of pressure on everything.

Rein it in. Focus on right now. 

Robby thinks of the next thing he’d do with his own phone in his hands.

“Music. I’d play some music,” he tells Jack.

“All right, now that I can definitely facilitate.” The bed creaks on Jack’s end. “Let me grab my laptop…”

A rush of relief washes through Robby’s body, just at the prospect. How did it take this long for them to do this? Of course he’s been listening to the radio in the rec room, which is occasionally serendipitous in its offerings, but like any audiophile, Robby has his go to selections to suit or soothe his every mood.

“So, I’ve got Spotify pulled up here,” Jack reports in his dry manner. “What are we thinking? Lean into the moping, do some Louder Than Bombs, or veer off in the opposite direction?”

Robby blinks away some slightly less miserable tears. “What on earth do you think is the opposite of that?” he wonders of Jack, specifically. “Beastie Boys?”

“The Beach Boys,” Jack says like it’s a no brainer. “That’s melty ice cream that you have to finish before you can get into the car music. That’s as surefire a shot at ‘lighten the fuck up’ as it gets.”

What spirit moves Jack to come up with these darling little things he sometimes says, Robby will never know.

“Uhm,” Robby rubs his eyes. “I do have a playlist with a Beach Boys track, actually. Ugh, but you’re going to have to sign into my account to find it, and you… are probably going to make fun of me.”

There are eager typing sounds on Jack’s end of the phone, as he undoubtedly logs out of his own account to sign into Robby’s.

“Definitely, but do you want your contraband or not?” Jack grunts. “Same email as usual?”

“Yeah,” Robby sighs, accepting the inevitable. “Password’s Hall, capitalized. The number 2. Oates like John Oates, not like the breakfast… First album I ever bought, if you’re trying to read into my psyche over there…”

“Always.”

“Great.”

The keys and mouse click along, so any second now Jack is going to get a real eyeful.

“Jesus Christ, you have a lot of playlists. And the titles... hmph!”

“Yeah, yeah…”

Jack lets out a few chuckles as he scans the webpage without Robby there to throw himself bodily in front of the screen. “‘Trip to Gettagripsville’… `Jane Fonda Would Love This Workout’… I think I’m gonna have to save ‘So, You’ve Been Sued For Malpractice Again’ in another tab if you don’t mind...”

“Stop ogling!”

“`Let’s Pay Michael Stipe’s Mortgage.’ Oh, Robby. I’m sure he squared that away a long time ago…”

“I don’t know. You hear horror stories about New York City real estate,” Robby huffs.

The specific sort of anxiety this is causing him is kind of a surprise. It’s not like he has a playlist called ‘Permission to Fantasize About Jack For Exactly 30 Mins’. But that’s probably only because he’s just starting to realize he should.

“What’s the one you want?” Jack asks.

“‘10ccs of Everything’s Alright’. It’s probably in the recents.”

“I assume you want me to shut up for this?”

“It’s not long,” Robby says. “Just pretend it’s another fundraiser we’ve been muzzled at.” 

“Roger that.”  

The playlist is sort of perfect for squeezing into his remaining window of opportunity, just a bit less than fifteen minutes. That is- fifteen minutes of being listened to by Jack, while listening to music specifically selected for its very surface level sentiment. He may as well use his telephone time to take out a front page newspaper ad asking to be pet and kissed on the forehead. Robby’s not sure if Jack even still gets a paper delivered, but with how synchronized he generally is to Robby’s needs, if he doesn’t, he’d be sure to pick one up on a whim.

Firefall starts singing in fuzzy lo-fi, thanks to the phone as an intermediary. Maybe that’s how it should be, like it's a call coming from the past. The crappy speakers of whatever the most economical model of car was, in that same ‘No food in the car!’ era of Robby’s life. Never mind ice cream, he wasn’t allowed to eat so much as a stick of celery. Now, was that because he was a distinctly messy child, or was that just the blanket policy of the day? Robby doesn’t remember being all that unruly when he was a boy, just a bit nervous in a way that might make him accident prone. Otherwise, he was a good student and polite to strangers, always conscientious of the rule to bring a fresh plate up for seconds at the Chinese buffet- that sort of thing. Robby has wondered if maybe he was more trouble when he was too little to remember, and that was only how he was after. He tried very hard not to give his grandparents grief, as they already had enough heartache.

Robby can remember straining to hear the car radio from the back seat. Straining not to seem too happy to hear a song his mother would have sung along to, like it might be coming from her. He remembers training himself not to cry, either.

When you feel like crying, but the tears won't come
When your dreams are dying, and when you're on the run
Just remember, I love you, and it'll be alright
Just remember, I love you, more than I can say

The playlist is all like that. Music from the wheel house of a typical teenage girl from the back half of the Sixties, before he was born and ruined her life. Don’t worry baby, everything will turn out all right. Each night before you go to bed, my baby, whisper a little prayer for me, my baby. Baby, ev'rything is alright, uptight, clean out of sight.

For a long time, Robby thought all her sung reassurances were for him. Then he grew up.

Just remember I love you, and it’ll be alright
Just remem-

The music stops abruptly.

“Nudge! You get to have the whole other side of the bed. Get off. Get off the laptop, man. Unless you want to start managing my inbox, it is not yours.”

“Don’t yell at him,” Robby laughs, a bit relieved to be derailed from his reverie. “Maybe he has a better song selection in mind?”

Jack grumbles again, much closer to the microphone. “Sorry, I’ll bounce him from the club, then fix it…”

It takes a minute, seeing as Jack has to catch the cat and then somehow wrestle them both into his chair to shut him out of the bedroom. In Robby’s mind’s eye, this banishing has all the charm of the The Flintstones gag.

“You still there?” Jack asks, when he comes back.

“You don’t have to hurry to undo whatever the hell Nudge did,” Robby insists with an amused hum. “That was…nice to try. Maybe another time.”

“Okay... Are you okay?” Jack checks. 

Robby takes a moment to decide on how fully he’s answering this one.

“I’m…trying to take apart this whole thing where I think no one cares about me, and uh… really getting into the weeds about it,” he admits, rather baldly.

He had the crying outburst he needed to have, and then a bit of a reality check. Someone does care. Jack cares. Annoyingly, this is becoming a pretty reliable recipe for getting somewhere. Maybe now, with Jack, Robby can put into words something that’s been swirling around in the dark with him.

“You want some weedkiller?” Jack asks. “I’ve got plenty from my project out in the backyard.”

“I don’t know if I can actually kill them,” Robby frowns, “but maybe, if you don’t mind… you can stick around while I pull a few out?”

“Of course, man.”

Robby takes a shaky breath. Fuck, this is rooted deep. Never seen the light of day, ever before deep. He’d be terrified to remove it, terrified that dislodging it would cause him to sink even deeper in his hole than he already is. But Jack promised this is a pocket.

“They talk a lot about attachment to outcome here. Stop banking on something particular happening. They’re all about acting on your values, then letting go. Radical acceptance of the outcome,” Robby starts to explain, unsure of what school of therapeutic thought Jack is familiar with. “And it just makes me… shut down.”

“Hmm. I could see that,” Jack says. “You’re already skilled at managing expectations. That’s part of your gig.”

“Yeah. Right!”

But also, no. It goes back farther than being a part of work. All of this does.

Robby shakes his head. “Like this story about first year of med school that I keep telling myself... How I saw the kids around me making themselves sick for the A, and I said ‘Not me. I’ll be happy with a B+ or two, I promise. I’ll aim as high as possible, but I won’t want it.’… I thought that kind of mindset would prevent all of that kind of crisis… winding up with pneumonia, having a nervous breakdown… So, I thought it should have prevented my car crash, the night before an exam. A missed exam that gets a zero, and ultimately an F in that class- a failure that makes me melt down and want to die for the first time. First time I can remember, anyway.”

He was the exact same age she would have been, when she wanted out. Would it have been easier on everyone if she’d taken his route?

Jack makes a sorry noise. “Oh, Robby.”

“But that story’s not entirely true,” Robby laughs. “The car crash was me already trying! It wasn’t the F. I made up the credit the next semester, no problem.” Robby stops to breathe through a hesitant tremor. “It was the letter from my mother’s friend saying that she had died, that I got a few weeks earlier,” he says. “That’s just how long the fuse took to burn down.”

Before he has a chance to speak, Robby already knows what Jack will say. What happened to you in that car crash? Holy shit, yeah that’ll do it. It’s amazing you got the rest of the school year back on track. Maybe if he’s really on the ball he’ll ask what Robby hit.

“What do you mean you found out by letter?”

O-kay. That is not a follow up question anyone had for Robby at the time. Not his roommates, or his advisor, or the guy he was hooking up with. They all thought it was sad and they should give him some space. That he should probably take some time off. They didn’t know the funeral was impossible to attend because he couldn’t go back in fucking time, however many days- no- years of his life it would take to relive and cause that to be an obvious, uncomplicated choice for Robby to make and follow through on. As it happened, he didn’t know if he would have wanted to go. He didn’t get to decide. The same way he got shunted around between relatives as the remains of the Robinavitch family crumbled, the letter bounced around from one old address to another. So, he missed that one funeral. And yet how many has he been to since?

“We’d been estranged,” Robby tells Jack. “My mother and I. For seventeen years.”

“Jesus,” Jack hisses under his breath. “Robby. You must have been young. Not in med school. I mean, before that.”

The best Robby can do is put it out there. He can’t focus on it.

“I wasn’t even driving the car,” Robby starts again with his story. “But it was this same… passive shit. Stacking odds against myself.”

“What were you doing?”

While Jack keeps up, Robby knows it's highly unlikely he’ll let his discovery go unremarked upon forever.

“I got hooked on studying in my car back in undergrad when I had a roommate who would sexile me all the time. Private, not a lot of distractions. Usually I parked in the middle of the block near my apartment. But then I got that letter.” Robby has to stop to clear his throat or he might get untidy again. “Started parking on the corner,” he says lightly, like it’s not the opposite. “I knew wrecks kept getting towed from there. I’d already heard three accidents from my apartment that semester.”

“What the fuck was up with that corner?” Jack mutters. “Bad visibility?”

“Yeah, probably,” Robby realizes. “I couldn’t see my written notes. I just listened to my lecture tapes over and over, late at night. I figured if no one hit me, I’d do pretty good in all my classes… If I got killed, I wouldn’t be… I don’t know. Whatever it is that she made me, anymore.” Robby sniffles back a drip in his nose. “Of course, the medium case scenario happened. I only got clipped. Just a broken nose, arm, broken collar bone.”

“‘Just’.” Jack huffs. “So after the crash everybody ‘just’ saw an unlucky guy, not a guy in crisis?”

Robby nods. “I guess so.”

Jack makes an indignant noise. “You know, that wasn’t luck, her being gone,” he says.

“…She left.”

“Then you were wronged, Robby,” Jack insists.

“Not any more than anyone else in the situation!” As Robby speaks, his voice goes shrill. “It wasn’t good for her at home...”

“Other people also having a shitty time doesn’t change that something bad happened to you.”

Robby has to ignore it. Keep forging ahead. That’s the only way he got this far.

“After I snapped out of it again, I still didn't let myself want the A, but I aimed high,” he tells Jack. “I studied. I tried to park some place safe. Got the A when it really counted. But sooner or later no matter what you do… Everybody gets clipped,” Robby says, shrugging his shoulders and then dropping them in defeat. “I just take my broken collar bone to the exam before the hospital, now.”

“Robby,” Jack reacts, louder than he usually speaks. “Going to the exam, going to school at all is wanting the A! It is not bad to want things for yourself. It doesn’t make you a fool to not get them. Wanting is why we keep waking up in the morning. Or afternoon,” he adds, on a personal note.

Robby’s head falls back against the wall with a thud. “Well, right now I barely know what I want without looking at a list on a piece of paper to remind me.”

“Look. I think for us? The thing we want most is the meaning the work provides,” says Jack, not for the first time. “Other people are not gonna be thrilled by that order of priority, but it’s what we are. It just can’t be the only-“

“No work talk, Jack.”

Right away, he goes quiet.

“Sorry. Your rule is important to me if it's important to you,” Jack says.

“It is.”

But just as soon as Robby is firm with Jack, he wants to bend. He wants to prove that he is right to trust him. He wants Jack to know that he does.

“I'm- I’m talking about that stuff here in therapy,” he promises Jack. “But I think I like it being out of your hands for now. I need a me that’s not a doctor, just me, I think... And he needs a friend.”

An exhale on the other end.

“Okay,” Jack says. “…I am kind of glad you made your rule, actually. I like not working with you... Not that I’m glad you’re gone or anything- fucking miss the hell out of you- but…” Jack pauses to wrestle with his wording. “You know. It’s got us talking about other things. Got me thinking about things differently.”

“Like that I’m actually a huge sad sack?”

“Stop it. You know what I mean.”

Robby blushes at being scolded. He knows better- or he’s trying to. Truly.

“It has been good talking to you,” he agrees, really smiling for the first time all day. “And... somehow managing to get a little closer, considering we’re two guys who’ve already lived half of the plots of General Hospital at this point...”

Jack makes a comfortable noise on the other end. “Yeah. I think you’re going to be okay, Not Doctor Robby.”

“Maybe. Eventually,” Robby rolls his eyes. He catches a flash of Dwight, coming down from the direction of the dorms. “Time’s just about up for today, though… I guess I should go make some notes for therapy.”

“Maybe get some fresh air, while you do?” Jack proposes. “And shower. Get your outsides sorted out, same as the inside of your head.”

“You saying I smell?”

“Yeah,” Jack laughs. “Through the fucking phone. Been meaning to tell you, you don’t need onions on every meal of the day, dude. Lay off.”

Robby grins harder. “I am rubber and you are glue. What you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”

Even as stupid as the comeback is, Jack snorts. “I love you, Robby. Hang in there,” he says.

As Robby’s tongue hits the back of his teeth to form an ‘L’, his nerves jump like some far greater impact has just happened. Another drunk driver from the bar up the road, misestimating the corner, maybe? Or maybe it's closer to whacking his skull on an overhead lamp in the ED, and here comes the smirky new hire with a stapler. What’s for sure is that something has burst open, and the idle, friendly little crush Robby’s had on Jack is escaping those safe confines. He can’t fire out a quick, reciprocal ‘Love you too, man’ without feeling like someone’s shaking his heart in a coffee can with a fucking rock.

Shit.

“Love you too,” Robby breathes out, quickly. “Call you tomorrow.”

If Jack says anything to confirm that, Robby doesn’t hear it before he drops the receiver back on the hook like it was a snake.

Chapter Text

It’s nice to see that Irene is back at it. Not the calorie counting- but she’s back at her station, already on the other end of the telephone bench when Robby arrives. He could use some normalcy. Things have been a little chaotic, what with the expected, but excruciating soul plumbing, recently compounded by a bout of unscheduled heart searching. One might say there is a hazardous amount of psychological inventory piled up in the backroom of Robby’s shop, but he’s determined to get out on the sales floor and try to move some of it without letting on that he has an avalanche at his back.

After a deep breath, Robby dials in Jack’s number and then leans his shoulder into the wall. What he wouldn’t give for the spiraling kind of phone cord he could wrap around his finger. He needs something to sink some of this agitation into.

“Mhhm. Hey,” Jack sniffs when he answers. “What’s up?”

“Hey. Can you put the cat on, I had a question for him.”

“Oh. Well. Excuse the fuck out of me for thinking otherwise. Nudge. Phone for you.”

In demonstration of his customary commitment to the bit, Jack puts the phone up close to his purring bedmate.

Robby grins. “Hello Mr. Nudge! This is such an overdue conversation. I just wanted to say, love you, love your work. Your comedic timing is so deliciously understated. Are you by any chance hiring?”

“He already has someone on staff and he doesn’t pay me,” Jack grumbles as he reclaims his phone.

“Sounds like somebody got up on the wrong side of the cat tree.”

Jack sighs a little too testily. “I’ll live.”

“You sure about that?” He tries to keep the question up beat, but Robby’s fake-it-til-you-make-it smile melts by a degree. 

Something’s up.

“Robby. I need you to stay calm,” Jack says, his voice tinged by alarm. “But I may have fallen short of my promise not to inflict any injury upon myself while you’re locked up.”

Robby’s hand clenches around the receiver so hard the two halves of its shell creak at the seam. When did Jack even find the time to put in a shift with his stupid side hustle? They’ve been talking every day, right in the middle of his down time from PTMC! Surely that must have been a speed bump in his usual race towards risk.

“What happened?” Robby demands.

“I thought I could get away with putting in a few extra hours the other day,” Jack confesses. “I took precautions, but the situation was highly dynamic, and-”

Robby blankets his eyes with his hand. His pulse is already throbbing with stress at his temple. This can’t be happening.

“Jack,” he pleads. “You’re at home so I know it can’t be something someone else deemed critical, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t try to fix it yourself and bleed out in bed. So please tell me you’re okay, because I really can’t handle you dropping dead on me right now!”

“I’m so sorry Robby,” Jack says, his voice weakened. “But I… got poison ivy from the backyard.”

Robby’s heart slides back down his throat. He grabs the receiver with both hands like he could throttle Jack through the phone. “If I request a discharge now, I could be there to drown you in calamine by Tuesday!” he shouts. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jack…”

While Jack laughs, Irene’s head whips around to look at Robby.

“I’d ask, but…”

“He’s fucking impossible!” Robby points at the phone.

Irene turns back to her call. “The people here are nuts, Jeannie. That alien guy and his boyfriend are at it again.”

Robby pushes off the wall and twists around to look in the opposite direction.

“You… Hahahaaohboy…” he seethes at Jack.

“I wouldn’t have tried it if you weren’t being such a little ray of sunshine today, I swear,” Jack chuckles.

“Yeah, that’s me! Perky and not at all pissed off.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I am crazy itchy,” Jack says. “I had on garden gloves, thankfully, but my left arm and leg are fucked. I’m just lucky I didn’t get a rash on my stump or I’d have to call out sick and really lose my mind.”

Apparently Robby hasn’t been out back at Jack’s in a while, as he can’t imagine what leafy bramble could possibly have done this. It was just grass and two or three trees, last he checked. He rubs his forehead, disconcerted by his own neglect. 

“I don’t feel- no. I know I’m not as there for you as you are for me, but I don’t want you to suffer, man…”

“Like I said, I’ll live. I just don’t know how I’m ever gonna show my face back home again.” Jack huffs a laugh. “My first job was groundskeeping at Mount Hope. Fucking rookie mistake…”

“What’s Mount Hope? Not a hospital…”

“A cemetery,” Jack clarifies. “I was fifteen, and I convinced myself it was a hardcore, punk rock place to work,” he says with gentle reproof for his younger self. “Punk or not, at least it kept me in skateboard parts...”

Just like that, all is forgiven. The extremity of Robby’s grin could put the Grinch out of business.

“I love everything about this,” he gushes. “What were you doing with your hair? You have to tell me if you had a haircut.”

Jack’s exhale sounds fiery enough to boil a lobster pot. “In the summer, when there was no school dress code... I did have a mohawk.”

“This is amazing information. I can’t believe you’ve just been sitting on this for years.” Robby tries to wipe the smile off his face before he really gives away how bad he has it for him, but c’mon. Punk baby Jack is the best thing he’s ever heard of in his life. “Now was this all just landscaping and ollieing off the clock, or were you digging a grave and then gettin’ some air over it, too?” he asks, fascinated.

“Oh yeah, they had me using a backhoe underage on the sly and everything. Shh.”

“I think the statute of limitations is probably up on that,” Robby notes. “But it does add to the allure…”

Not that Robby’s imagining Jack working a shovel in a chopped up tee and ripped jeans or anything. He means the power trip of using heavy machinery. Mostly.

“Perfect job for me then, honestly. I was still in my skulls and spooky shit phase from after Dad died,” Jack says. “And I like getting in the dirt with all the… great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts.”

“Somebody’s got to,” Robby nods. “May as well get paid!”

Jack snorts in agreement. “…But I think I mostly did it because my jackass brother spent a few summers working there, too.”

“I mean. That all sounds like it factors in,” Robby says, realistically.

“And they filmed Pet Semetary there a couple years before…”

Robby’s eyes go wide. “Dr. Abbot. Did you think you were going to DIY a zombie with unfettered access to the grounds?”

“No…I wanted to keep an eye on the situation. Just in case someone else tried,” Jack claims.

“Suuure.”

“What was your first job?”

Robby blows a raspberry. “Does hosing down my Great Aunt Olga’s butcher shop for cash under the table count, or do you want the low down on bagging groceries at A&P?”

“Now there’s a lost art.”

“Tell me about it.” While Robby tries to set a good example with his colleagues by refraining from generalizations about the youth, he fears on this topic he will fail. “Would it kill the kids these days to put more than one object in a bag? If so, medical science should be working towards a cure.”

Unfortunately, Jack’s juvenile snicker is all the encouragement Robby needs to reoffend in the future.

“Ugh. Sorry-”

“I won’t tell on you. I don’t have enough phone time.”

“-but I’m going to rip my skin off,” Jack groans. “This fucking rash, man.”

Robby scrunches his nose. “I’ll abstain from giving my medical opinion, but if you need to go…”

He’ll be very sorry to cut this short.

“Hey, I’m still signed into your account over here,” says Jack, upbeat. “What about a musical interlude so I can shower and lube up again? Then we can keep going.”

“Yeah! Sure.”

“Any requests?”

“Dealer’s choice,” Robby hums, too grateful to care about the particulars.

There’s the tell tale sounds of moving around on the bed while Jack retrieves his laptop. “All right... I’m gonna shuffle one of your lists,” he says. “If you can guess it by the time I’m back, I owe you a burger.”

Chatting about their youthful employment history, enjoying some music, the promise of burgers, bets, and now Jack’s gonna get naked? This is basically an ideal first date. If Robby wasn’t sure he was smitten before, catching himself mentally framing things this way definitely clinches it.

He settles in on the bench next to Irene to appreciate his private radio station, and try to riddle out Jack’s selection. A lesser played Jon Secada? Probably only on two or three of his playlists. Now Aphex Twin? This is too easy. Robby sits back with his eyes closed, arms cozily crossed, and the receiver snugged up on his shoulder until he hears Jack’s voice pipe in over a suddenly dimmed ‘Nightswimming’.

“Thaaat’s better…”

“No Pain, No Loans, Nokia No.1,” Robby rattles off, immediately.

Jack scoffs. “I didn’t think I’d be this disgusted until I had to listen to you hork down a burger, but I stand corrected.”

“I have the inside track here. It was never a fair bet,” Robby smiles. “But if you wanna play against the house, I also like gyros, burritos, samosas… what else?”

“You like being a know it all,” says Jack. “Almost as much as you love to hork food down with an open fucking mouth, Robby!”

“Ah, yes. Now tell me something I don’t know,” Robby counters, one eyebrow hiked.

Jack laughs himself silly while the song continues on.

Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon-

When he sobers up again he clears his throat in preparation. “I’ve never been skinny-dipping,” he says.

“Whaaat?” Robby busts out in giddy laughter. “You’re a card carrying prankster who grew up in the ‘burbs. On the coast. How is that humanly possible?”

“I was too nervous to when I was young and dumb,” Jack says, shruggingly. “Then the logistics of getting in and out without getting caught got even more tricky and I was still dumb.”

“You’re not dumb,” Robby tsks. “If anything you’re tricky.”

“Thank you,” says Jack, very proud of this.

What a fucking dreamboat. Gotta get this guy in the water.

“I have a proposal for an amendment to the ADA,” Robby says, solemnly raising one hand. “Full amnesty for skinny-dippers. Soon as they pass it- you, me, the Allegheny.”

However off kilter he is, and despite his current confinement, Robby doesn’t think he could possibly be having a more pleasant time, just now.

“Why wait? Some E. coli and an indecent exposure rap would go great with this rash,” Jack laughs, proving Robby’s fallibility.

“Yeah, let’s live a little.” Robby chuckles along with him, his heart swelling.

“If I really wanted to, I could fit a pool out back, maybe. A smaller one.”

“You could definitely fit a hot tub.”

“Hmm. Tempting. Really tempting.”

“If you’re already submitting plans with your HOA, you may as well,” Robby reasons. “If they say no, and you didn't really want it, eh. Nothing lost. You might even ‘sacrifice’ it to bargain for what you do want if they’re being withholding."

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Jack tells him. “That sort of diplomatic finesse must be why they pay you the big bucks.”

“Ohhh, don’t you worry,” Robby sighs, well accustomed to doing so on others’ behalf. “I’m sure you’ll get to be the breadwinner in this relationship after I pay for my little out of network excursion here...”

Jack huffs, as he is no great lover of insurance companies. “Well. Do any more arts and crafts over there lately? I need something to balance out Sunrise Over a Couch Made of Babies when I hang it on my fridge.”

Robby shakes his head at his empty lap. He forgot his notebook due to his general loopiness these past twenty four hours. The piece they worked on in group today is off to a good start, but he needs more time to flesh out the finer details and finish it to his artistic satisfaction.

“You may be in luck if you’re one of those people who gets all hot and bothered about bridges,” Robby lets Jack know.

“Are we talking covered bridges?” Jack asks. “Suspension? Cantilever?”

“That you can name three types of bridges off the top of your head answers my question, I think.” Robby bites his lip, hard pressed to think if he knows what sort of bridge he drew. Arch has to be a type, right? “Anyway, we were supposed to draw a ‘Bridge Between Then and Now’. Not a wishful thinking thing, like the couch,” he clarifies. “Its about a painful experience... It’s supposed to help us make meaning of the actual things, behaviors, and people that got us through the transition.”

“Mm.”

Even with the music in the background, Robby can read the familiar note of Jack’s hum. It’s similarly easy to imagine his serious face, nodding ever so slightly. He has a way of expressing his understanding with very little expenditure that has always put Robby at ease. What else can be said, but that he is a rock. Robby’s rock. It wouldn’t be wrong to let him know that.

“Honestly, the first thing I put on the bridge was you. So...?” Overcome by a sudden wave of bashfulness, Robby struggles to regulate his smile and becomes hopelessly fixated on smoothing his hair. “Thank you for that,” he coughs.

Oy. Those body language experts on Youtube would have all sorts of blazing yellow arrows on the thumbnail for this one.

MAN OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE WITH BEST
FRIEND! (Very Awkward Timing)
BodyLangGang • 2k views • 1 min ago

“You’re welcome,” Jack says, in his signature placid sincerity. “…What was the experience?”

“Ah. Work stuff,” Robby frowns. “The topic du jour was Grief.”

“It sounds like you’ve had a fair amount outside of work, too.”

“We all have,” Robby acknowledges. “Uh. I’ve been meaning to say- I’m sorry if when you needed a bridge, I wasn’t there.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“I do,” Robby insists. “I haven’t been around your place enough to notice you have a poison garden, for one.”

Jack clears his throat on the other end and then shifts around noisily. They’ve been on a different song for a while, and now its volume goes down a few more clicks. Was Robby letting EMF’s ode to lopsided intimacy subliminally influence him? Oops.

“When exactly would you have come over to pity party with me?” Jack asks, but there’s no venom in it. “We work opposite hours. On my one day off I go over to yours. You invited me, keep inviting me for Trek Tuesdays. Ever since Sondra.” Somehow, Jack pauses to laugh. “If I have a bridge, it's the one on the Enterprise.”

It’s a bittersweet ache under Robby’s breastbone, but he’ll take it. It beats the cavernous emptiness he started with when he came here, by miles and miles. Almost as many as ones separating him from Jack. How could he have left him behind like this? How did Robby not realize the depth of their connection when he tore it away? It’s practically a double ended intubation.

“Okay.” Robby blows out a relieved breath. “If I’m on your bridge, I just hope the uniform is flattering. Yellow drains me.”

“Oh c’mon. Of course you’re in Command red,” Jack scoffs.

“…Thank you,” Robby says, giving the bottom edge of his hoodie a Make It So adjustment.

“We didn’t draw them, but my therapist and I talk a lot about islands,” Jack shares, then.

“Those psychologists do love their metaphors, I’ll say that for them.”

“Sometimes an island sinks. Wife Island, let’s say. Leg Island,” Jack gives as examples. “So you can’t go there anymore. Trying to tread water forever, waiting for it to come back is no good.”

“Right.”

“But what did I want out of Leg Island, ultimately?” Jack asks. “To keep running around. Work. Play sports... Good news is there’s still plenty of sports islands. They’re just BYOL resorts, so pack accordingly.”

Robby can’t resist. “Is ‘BYOL resort’ your joke or your therapist’s?”

“Mine,” Jack growls, lest Robby forget he is territorial.

“Oh, phew.”

Robby almost had a love triangle on his hands.

“Now, Wife Island is harder to lose. Obviously,” Jack admits.

“Of course.”

“I’ll always mourn her. But…there are other islands that have closeness,” Jack says, his voice lifting. “There’s an island somewhere, where I won’t die alone. So, no need to lose myself in mourning those things, right?”

While his eyes have gotten a bit damp, Robby’s mouth has run dry. Not too dry to speak, though.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he assures Jack.

He can only hope that's half as meaningful for Jack to hear as the many heartfelt offerings he has made in Robby’s most vulnerable moments.

Jack hums agreeably. “I’d definitely rather you than the hypothetical orphan my therapist floated as an example.”

“That was the best he could come up with to avoid dying alone?” Robby tsks. “Seems like a failure of imagination. You and me could round up some other old fogies and do our own Golden Girls spin off, at least.”

“Or wither away behind bars together for our serial skinny-dipping.”

“Or start a cult,” Robby says brightly.

Jack laughs. “Now you’re talking. Sounds like you’ve already got the stupid looking shoes for it.”

Robby smiles down at his feet. “And you've got the knack for discipline... Now we just need some kind of bizarre requirement to really hook people.”

“Gotta walk backwards everywhere,” Jack supplies.

“Ooo.” Robby pivots in his seat, getting into the spirit of it. “Ritual greeting is ‘Kiss my ass’.”

Jack chuckles. “I might have to road test this.”

“Next time the HOA guy shows up in your driveway, at least,” Robby beams.

What Robby wouldn’t give to see them square off. He can’t wait to get home. Woah. First time he’s had that impulse.

“Agh. Fuck me.”

Speaking of impulses. Probably not uttered in the spirit Robby would hope.

“Not tonight, I have a headache.”

“Man,” Jack groans. “Just noticed you’re almost out of phone time over there. I should tell you. I’m doing some extra hours tomorrow, so I won’t be around. Working on the 23rd, too.”

Robby lets out an unvarnished, petulant sigh. “I have no idea what day is what anymore, you’re gonna have to warn me again the day before,” he frowns at the receiver. “Might leave you a voicemail anyway, just to save face in front of Irene.”

“Who’s that?”

“The one that thinks I have negative aura,” Robby says, giving her usual seat the side eye even though she took off a few minutes ago.

“...You’re gonna have to translate the youth speak for me. What the fuck does that mean?”

He sounds just as contemptuous as Robby is of Jack’s HOA guy. That’s what friends are for.

“I think it means that I'm a pill.”

“Aw. You are. But I’d swallow you,” Jack says, very kindly.

“Hm! Thanks,” Robby chuckles and scratches his head. “That’s pretty much Irene’s impression of you.”

“Oh yeah?”

Is it a good sign, worth pinning his hopes on that Jack is never uncomfortable with people’s assumptions, only amused?

“I suppose, if you were only hearing one side of our conversations, it might seem that I am just a bit intimate with this Jack guy I’m always talking to,” Robby says, in all fairness.

“Imagine if she heard us both.” Jack chuckles. Then he sighs. “Well, sweetcheeks… Try not to miss me too much tomorrow...”

“I’ll keep it at a level where it's evident that I care, but no one’s rolling their eyes.”

“Perfect. Love you, Robby.”

Robby thunks his head back against the wall in an effort not to whimper.

“Sweet dreams, loverboy,” he bids Jack.

No need to inform him that their audience has wandered off.

If Robby thought following up with Dr. Kemper on his 'Bridge Between Then and Now' was a real shot of shit, today’s discussion of other losses was a suitable chaser. It’s no news flash to Robby that spending his childhood amongst hospice patients was a hardship. He didn’t expect to have it tied back to his ongoing identity crisis, though. While the session didn’t put him in the worst of the worst moods, it does leave him feeling a bit rudderless.

Robby was mostly joking about leaving Jack a voicemail, but it’s not like there’s a ton of entertainment options around here. The TV’s been set on Rachel Ray all day, which is kind of cruel when he has no access to a kitchen. Robby wanders past the phones on his way to the dorms to see if he can rope Clyde into a board game, now that he’s leveling out. Sees the phones. Reconsiders.

Irene is recombubulating herself after finishing her call. Shirts layered just so, fuzzy slippers toed back on, one at a time. She raises an eyebrow at him as she ties back her hair.

“I thought you were gonna miss your phone time. What happened?” she asks. “You get dumped?”

“It’s one of our little games,” Robby shrugs, hands in his pockets. “We take turns crawling back with a grand romantic gesture.”

Irene screws up her mouth. “Uh huh. Well. I hope it works out, Michael. Can’t imagine there’s too many crazies out there who would have you.”

Robby crosses his fingers. “You’re getting discharged tomorrow, right?”

“Finally.”

“Good luck to you, Irene,” Robby says, spinning on his heel to go and grab the phone. “Stick with outpatient. I avoided shrinks all my life and look at me.” He grimaces and waves a hand at his whole deal, per example.

She cringes too. “Ugh, great point.”

As he leans and waits for Jack’s phone to ring all the way through to voicemail, Robby watches Irene walk away. He can only hope that whoever gets assigned to this time slot next will be such a natural, unwitting cheerleader. It really added something to this whole ordeal.

Finally, the beep.

“Hi Jack. It’s your worst enemy. I was just walking past the phones on my way to start a coup and I figured I’d drop a dime, see if I can torment you a bit,” Robby grins. “I figure if I slip up a little on my No Work Talk rule while you can’t reply I’m in the clear. Mwah ha ha, as they say. Anyway… Got into it with my doc today about not having much of a life outside of work. I mean, I knew that, but I hadn’t really thought much before about how specifically it all lined up. By the time I was first getting my feet wet in a hospital- I didn’t have any family left, really. First my grandfather, who I called ‘Sir’, died… Hhhwooo. That’ll leave a mark, yeah... Then my Bubbe started deteriorating while I was in high school. She died in undergrad. Already told you about my mother… Great Aunt Olga hung in there until I was a resident, though! Just barely. But she wasn’t exactly the warm and cuddly type before the dementia... My one cousin moved abroad the minute the Iron Curtain was down… So. One day there was this guy who had- maybe not the most lively family around- but something resembling a family, and then the next day there was a doctor with literally nothing else going for him. Same as before and after 2020. That was my bridge thing. I’m sure you worked that out already. But… Yeah, no wonder I feel like nothing I do matters but work, right? What else was there? Only when I said that, oh, he fucking got me. ‘What did your grandmother do for work?’ Well, nothing by the time I was around. ‘Didn’t she matter? Wasn’t she worth having around?’ and people are more than their output, et cetera. Hhhfff. Can’t believe Irene was right about me. I’m the alien guy. This is all about alienation, isn’t it?… Jesus Christ. Anyway. Yeah, you get it… Now I have another list. Things that matter to me. Doesn’t have to matter to the whole world. Mattering to me is… enough. Supposedly. And before you ask, yes, you can be on my list. And I hope your rash isn’t getting any worse. Not that I’ll knock you off the-”

Aaand Robby gets cut off by the end beep.

Definitely would be overkill to call again just to leave a not so tongue-in-cheek sprinkling of endearments. Not gonna do that. Probably should pull back on that, actually. It’s been a fun weekend of madness, but Robby is way too old to go chasing after straight men. Friendship can be enough. It can be enough just to matter to each other as much as they do.

He fucking hopes.

For the most part, things are trending in the right direction on Robby’s tracking worksheet. He does feel pretty low on energy, but maybe that’s just because there’s a few new patients on the ward, and trying not to try and figure them out diagnostically is more exhausting than just going ahead and doing it. Except the guy with a screamingly obvious case of ChatGPT psychosis. Impossible for Robby to blind himself to.

Just one other blemish.

He got pretty weepy last night, but Robby wasn’t spiraling, or anything! Crying doesn’t really count when it’s art induced. The girls won the vote on movie night, so they broke out the popcorn and watched The Bodyguard. For whatever reason, Robby had remembered it ending differently- and if Kevin Costner’s not dead then it seems stupid they can’t figure out how to be together- but that’s beside the point. Anyone who can withstand the full force of Whitney Houston without shedding a tear ought to be on a psych hold.

It doesn’t look like any of the new patients have been assigned to Robby’s same time slot with the phone, yet. Maybe they’re too pissed off at whoever committed them here to call, or maybe they’re just too zonked out on meds to take advantage. Either way, he has the place to himself, except for Jiri working the floor burnisher.

Robby dials in Jack’s number and then takes a seat, crosslegged to keep out of the way. It’s better to keep his arms and legs to himself. He just has to remember that.

“Hi Robby,” Jack answers the phone, with just a touch of singsong. There’s already some bluesy rock playing in the background on his end.

“Hey Jack. You getting into my music stash, over there?”

“…It’s not like you’re using it.”

“You sneaky bastard.”

“Once a room snooping little brother, always a snoop, I’m afraid.”

Robby blows out an exasperated breath. “How does that work, with you being as... you as you are?”

“What’s ‘me’?”

“Territorial,” Robby says, flat as a sheet of A4.

“Oh. Finders keepers,” Jack says, brightly.

“Of course... Well, I’m surprised you’re already up and kickin’,” Robby says as he finger combs his hair, super casual. Not thinking about if Jack is investigating his music, thinking about him off the clock. Not at all. He won’t be giving in to such things anymore.

“Mm. Couldn’t get to sleep after therapy this morning.”

Robby can only shake his head. “Man, we are built different. If I did a double back to back with a dissection of my brain I would be in a coma until Wednesday,” he tells Jack.

Jack hums a piqued note. “I didn’t take you for the sort who rolls over right after.”

“I don’t- know what you’re talking about…”

“Okay. Guess we’ll see,” Jack chuckles.

Fucking when?

No. Nope. Arms and legs inside the vehicle.

“You get along all right without me, yesterday?” Robby asks. “Skipping a dose comes with expected symptoms of laughlessness, boredom, and being out of the loop on hot new trends in what five things I see.” 

“Honestly?”

Robby swallows. “…Yeah. Lay it on me.”

Jack pauses to turn down the music. Why? How serious is this? Did Robby say something horrific in that voicemail and black it out? It’s not that strange to call someone born in the 1800’s ‘Sir’.

“I kept thinking about what we were talking about last time,” Jack says.

“Oh yeah?” Robby winces and drags his suddenly clammy hand down his face.

Which part of the conversation should they retread? The ‘Let’s go skinny-dipping’, the ‘I’d swallow you, sweetcheeks’, or Robby’s barely disguised lust for landscapers?

“I don’t wanna die alone,” Jack says. “That’s not happening for a long time, hopefully. But right now? I don’t think I like living alone, either."

Robby peeks out between his fingers. “Really?”

Surely the strong silent types crave some amount of solitude. Though if the past few weeks have proven anything to Robby, it may be that he has had Jack’s type wrong.

Jack’s mouth makes a nonchalant click. “I never lived alone until now. I always had roommates, the military, my folks, my wife...”

“Pffh. Wow. That’s kind of unimaginable to me,” Robby admits. “I’ve been rattling my chains in empty houses on and off since I was sixteen.”

“Well…” says Jack. “These last few years have been my first shot going solo. Can’t say I’m crazy about it.”

“It’s not for everyone.”

“It doesn’t sound like you love it either, man.”

Robby bites the inside of his cheek. “Mmh. It is what it is.”

Jack clears his throat pointedly. “Robby. That’s what people say when they hate something but they feel like they can’t own it, or else they’ll have to start saying what they actually fucking want for a change.”

The speed of Robby’s fluttering lashes could quite possibly beat that of the hummingbirds native to The Island of Dying Old Together.

“Jesus, Jack, twist the knife a little harder next time, I think there’s still blood left in me.”

“What would you think about moving in with me when you get back into town… just through your sabbatical?” Jack asks. “You could help me re-do the backyard, then break it in.”

It’s hard not to immediately jump at the chance to do something solid for Jack in return for everything he’s done for Robby. But living within arm’s length of the categorically disinterested man he’s currently lovesick for… what could possibly go wrong?!

“A trial run of the Golden Girls plan,” Robby hears himself say.

Jack laughs. “Yeah. Maybe it’ll knock some sense into me, and I’ll realize how good me and Nudge actually have it.”

As ever, some gentle mockery activates Robby’s fight or flirt instinct. He has no say in the matter.

“What if you like living with me too much?” Robby grins. “Won’t you have to kidnap me when my sabbatical’s up? I wouldn’t press charges, but they might still take your license to practice.”

“Nah.” Jack smirks back at him through the phone. “By then you should have left enough of your DNA laying around, I could try out the Robby clone.”

“Hm. I look forward to hearing your notes. I’d try out Clone Robby myself, but I’m too self loathing,” Robby frowns.

“That,” Jack snorts. “Or maybe I’ll finally convince Ma to move out here. The new pope’s had her in a pretty good mood lately... We can lean into a Bates Motel kinda deal.”

Robby squints. “See, I’m pretty sure you’re joking, but I’m hallucinating violin screeches that may be interfering with my judgement.”

“Quick, while your higher function is offline. Yes or no?”

Nice try Jack! You’re not going to pin him down that quick.

“Uhm.” Robby clears his throat, stalling. “Can you offer better than a lumpy twin bed and a roommate who occasionally thinks my hoodie is a demon?”

“You know I have a spare room. And I would make your hoodie feel very welcome,” Jack promises.

He’s being too earnest for Robby to keep toying with him. Enough is enough.

“I like the idea,” Robby says, carefully. “But I think I need to wait until I’m back in Pittsburgh to decide for certain.”

Jack pauses thoughtfully. “That’s okay. Cooler heads prevail, right?”

“But. Timing wise… I’m glad you brought it up. Home.” Robby lets loose a load bearing exhale. “I want to come home after this,” he admits.

Of course. It would be ridiculous to try and do outpatient on the road. If Robby’s going to con himself into actually doing therapy, the path of least resistance will do, thank you. He will find exactly one new local specialist, and then continue using the same pharmacy he’s had an account with for the last fifteen years. And if he’s honest with himself? He’ll get home and get discouraged when he doesn’t automatically click with that one doctor. He’ll flame out again. But at least Jack will be nearby to care-shame him into the next waiting room. Who would check in on him in fucking Montana? Yogi Bear?

“Great,” says Jack, allowing himself to let out a puff of relief. “We’ll be happy to have you back.”

But Robby’s teeth clench. He’s actually shivering a little, he’s so nervous to ask what he needs to ask. “And I have… a request.”

“Oh? Besides freeloading off me and Nudge?”

Robby’s shaky hand flies to his forehead and pinches his brow. “Jack, you know this is physically painful for me.”

“Thankfully I’m a trauma doctor, so no matter how banged up you get, I can handle it.”

“You already know what I’m gonna ask,” Robby groans.

“Yeah,” Jack says, sly. “But this is good practice for you. Ask me.”

Want something, Robinavitch. He wants you to ask. He's going to say yes. You are not a huge inconvenient piece of shit. Not for this, anyway.

Robby exhales, even though it feels like it might break his brittle body. “Would you please come out here and pick me up when I get discharged?” he forces out. “I know it’s an ordeal to find coverage, and there’s logistics I still have to work out with the bike, but… I’d feel a lot better if I weren’t on my own.”

“Good job.”

“Jack.”

Oh, what Robby wouldn’t give to be transmogrified into stone just now. Jack not being able to see him as he blushes is not enough distance from how agonizing it is to be understood by him. It is grievous bodily harm. It’s just fortunate that the sound of Jack’s soft chuckle is a curing balm.

“Of course me and my flying monkeys are coming to get you, Robby. I haven’t been banking favors at work for nothing.”

Robby buries his face fully in his palm. “Ffhanks,” he muffles out.

“Let me know your discharge date ASAP and I'll be there.”

“Okay.”

“Do you need to go beg someone for a Tylenol, now?”

“Yeah.”

Jack hums. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then. Go unclench.”

“Man, I hate you right now,” Robby sighs.

“No you don’t.”

“…No,” Robby agrees.

“Love you too, man.”

“Bye Jack.”

Robby’s discharge date is set. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s one of those infinitely polka dotted, mirrored room installation pieces at the Mattress Factory. This recent bottle-necking of his life, forcing him to narrow his focus and look inward is not the end all be all. There are options again. He’ll go home and appreciate the fuck out of them. Robby could reengage with some of the hobbies he let gather dust the past few years. He could call up some of the people he regrets losing contact with. He could get a foothold researching the book he’d like to write. He could help Jack with his yard, and eventually someone else will turn his head, and it won’t go back to normal between them, not exactly- they’re even closer now- but it won’t hurt so much to know it can’t be the love he wants.

When Robby goes home, he’ll try and let it be home. He’ll do what he can to make it a reflection of his regard for himself, not treat it like a pit stop for his body while it waits to get back on the racetrack. He’ll try and take actual care of his body and his mind. And when he inevitably runs out of initiative to do so, he’ll have fail safes in place.

Nothing gets the social worker here excited like people being proactive about outpatient treatment. After they scout out some options and make a few calls, Denise even lets Robby use her laptop to price check a piece of gear he doesn’t own, but will need for the trip home.

When he calls, Jack’s phone rings more or less the usual amount, then is answered by the sound of a creaking bed and sleepy hum.

“Hey!”

“Hi man…” Jack clears his throat. “How are you?”

“I’m being so productive today, it’s making me a little jittery, actually. Muscle memory from the before times, when the elixir of the bean still flowed in these veins…”

“Uh oh,” Jack chuckles. “You’re supposed to be doing R&R. Cut that out.”

Robby can practically feel his own eyes sparkle. “Cut out what? A cyst? A superglued Q-tip? Some long lost road rash? Hand me a ten, I’m on fire, baby.”

“This feels dangerously close to work talk,” Jack mutters disapprovingly.

“Only working on myself,” Robby says, dismissing Jack’s concern with a wave of his hand.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’ve got some appointments set for when I get back to Pittsburgh,” he tells Jack dutifully. “And I have a discharge date. The 28th.”

Jack makes a downward noise. “I thought maybe the 25th.”

“Wishful thinking because you can’t stand an extra three days without me?

“Yeah. I’m wasting away,” Jack sighs.

Don’t do it. Don’t imagine Jack laid back in bed, one freckled arm flung overhead in languid disarray… And stop saying things that get these sorts of replies!

“I went back and forth between Friday or Monday, since they don’t do turnover on weekends here. I decided I don’t want to cheat myself of the two week minimum I set out to do,” Robby explains.

“I guess I can be strong, then,” says Jack, his voice indulgent. “…I’m really glad you’re taking your needs seriously, Robby.”

Well. The warmth in Robby’s chest at that is not entirely fueled by his infatuation. His gratitude to Jack is too tangible to be doubted, and has been for years.

“You’ve been a strong shoulder all along, Jack,” he tells him. “It’s helped a lot.”

“Any time. Anything you need.”

“Well, I’ve thought my way through the problem of getting my bike home, which you can help with, of course.”

“Does it have Voltron capabilities?” Jack asks. “Because then we can just combine it with my truck and march back across the Midwest.”

“Let’s make that Plan B!”

Jack chuckles to himself. “Good. Plan A?”

“While I was in a ‘Fuck it all’ mood I thought about selling it at a loss to a scrapper, or shipping it, paying someone to drive it back- but I put a lot of energy into it and… I think I should value that, maybe, while I’m trying to give a shit about things outside of work?” Robby scratches his head. “Y’know. I should make sure it’s safe in transit myself, and when I’m in a better headspace, if I wanna sell it, get what it’s actually worth.”

“Mm. Understandable,” Jack hums. “So does that mean us caravanning home, or what?”

A chill spreads across Robby’s scalp and then runs down his spine. That was never an option he considered. What if he hit a real nail this time, while Jack was following him? What if someone changed lanes without looking and swept him off the road, or stopped short, and Robby had a crash right in front of him? He’d see everything, the shattered metal, his twisted body, the pool of blood. What if he survived long enough to die on Jack when he stopped to help? What if it happened while they were still far from home, or Jack’s truck was involved in the wreck? After everything he’s said, there’s no question it would break his heart. What if Jack was finally destroyed too, by his constant grief? Robby would deserve to be-

Fuck. 

“Robby?” Jack calls out to him. 

He blows out a trembling breath, slow, and then breathes back in, one, two, three, four. Again, out. Again, in.

Jack recognizes what’s happening, of course. “It’s all right, Robby. Just breathe. Out... And in,” he guides him. “…It’s all right.”

Robby sniffs and wipes his eye when he gets a handle on himself. “Sorry. Sorry… Just psyched myself out thinking about being back on the bike. Ugh. Going to have to put a big fat X on my tracking sheet,” he groans.

“It happens,” Jack says. “It’s not the end of the world, I promise.”

“I know, I just want to get past this. I just want to get home and be normal.”

“You’re recognizing what’s happening sooner when your anxiety’s triggered, and that’s not nothing,” Jack insists. “You’re still learning to regulate yourself. Being ‘normal’ takes more time… Especially when you were never all that normal to begin with... Remember? That’s how we like it.”

The smirk in his voice picks Robby up by the scruff of his neck and gives him an invigorating shake. Jack doesn’t need him to be perfect. He just wants him to be himself.

“Yeah. Okay. So, no caravan,” Robby says, and lets out one last windy exhale. “We can load ‘er up in the truck with some equipment. I’m guessing you have ratchet hooks and loops. If you don’t own a ramp, I’ll pay for one. I have a wheel chock in my garage.”

“Got it. Got all that,” Jack says, automatically. “I’ll google whatever the fuck a chock looks like and go find it next time I’m headed past your place.”

“Thanks,” Robby says. “You’re gonna make your way out here under the cover of darkness, right?”

“I am the night.”

Robby snorts. “Then you’ll get to La Crosse before they release me, Batman.”

“Yeah, I’ll get a room so I can crash for a while before we hit the road again.”

“I dunno what time they’ll actually let me out, so I’ll have to call you for pick up on the day. I’ll have my phone back.”

“Sure.”

Robby shakes his head and clenches a hand in his hair. His scalp is still sort of prickling so he feels better with a hand on the wheel, so to speak. “It has been so bizarre not having it, Jack. Remember how we used to live? Wondering when the hell ping pong was invented and then having to just carry on with our day in ignorance...”

“Mm. 1925.”

“Did you just look that up?”

“Nah, I’m just guessing,” Jack says, lazily. “I like the idea of Prohibition guys with fancy mustaches inventing beer pong the next day.”

Robby laughs. “The truth is probably overrated.”

“I remember, though,” Jack says with a stretchy yawn. “Waiting to tell people things until you got home. I don’t love texting but it sure beats phone tag.”

“Unfuckingbearable.”

Jack groans in agreement. “It’s felt a little like the old days again, this past week. Not being able to talk to you whenever I want. Having to wait.”

Don’t analyze that. Robby wouldn’t want to be held to everything he said within ten minutes of waking up. Stop doing it to Jack.

“Maybe when I get out of here I’ll trash my smart phone, get a dumb little plastic flip phone again,” Robby says, bulldozing on past his pining. “If I really want to look something up, I’ll just call you instead, and you can take a wild guess.”

Jack snorts a laugh. “‘Hey Robby, we’re ordering lunch from that new Thai place. Whaddaya want?’ ‘Hang on let me Jack it.’ ‘Not in the workplace, man. C’mon…’”

Robby's face blanches again. He rubs his forehead as the rest of him shuts down, refusing to let free the laugh he would laugh any other day. 

“Sorry,” he huffs. “That’s funny, I just feel weird today. Kind of edgy."

“…Wanna do 5, 4, 3, 2, 1?” Jack asks.

Robby pinches his eyes shut. “Is this a ploy to ask me what I’m wearing again?

“What are you wearing right now?” Jack chuckles, apparently deciding to stay the course of a comedy cure approach. “Besides those cult sneakers and the lingerie, I mean.”

Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth…

And let anything that might be construed as flirtatious in one ear, and out the other… 

“Can you put Nudge on, again? I have to ask him to claw your eyes out.”

“Okay, but that might make it difficult for me to see the road when I come to get you…”

With another few uncontrollable huffs, Robby curls in on himself. He draws his legs up onto the phone bench and hugs his knees. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Jack.”

“It’s all right... Would you like some music?”

Robby nods. “Okay.”

“No foreplay this time, I’m going straight for the big guns,” Jack decides. “Beach Boys or bust.”

“Uh oh.”

“What?”

Computer keys click around, on Jack’s end.

“Just… a lot of firepower.”

There must be some mercy in the universe, because either Jack or the shuffle function doesn’t go straight for the jugular. A topically lightweight, but finely crafted tune for cruising around in a convertible is a much needed breath of air. Consider Robby’s mood a few inches farther from the bottom of the pit than before. Still, he feels sort of nauseous. It could be he’s been too in his own head, and he’s disregarding the other option.

“Maybe I caught a bug.” Robby frowns and touches the inside of his wrist to his forehead to get some sense of his temperature. “One of the new patients might’ve tracked something in.”

And he was pretty run down yesterday…

“But you’re not swapping spit with any of them, right?” Jack asks, leadingly.

The stomach flipping feeling that this question induces clouds some of Robby’s diagnostic clarity.

“No,” he says, coolly. “I’m saving that for marriage.”

“Do you have chills, a fever? Eat anything that was maybe off?”

Robby drops his feet back to the ground and his head back against the wall with a warning groan. “Dr. Abbot…”

Jack takes this reprimand with a grunt. “I’d prefer you to be in mint condition when I come to collect you. I’m a Robby snob.”

“You’re going to have to settle for ‘Used In Original Box’,” Robby tells him. “But don’t forget. I’m still a one of a kind,” he smiles.

“You’re forgetting about Clone Robby.”

Robby snaps his fingers. “Damn it. How is he, anyway? Are you two going to enact an evil plot on your night off, or just stay in and watch some Trek?”

“Nah, I’m covering Day tomorrow,” Jack says, sounding disappointed. “Consider this me reminding you I’ll be busy.”

“Shit. Again?”

“I know. How dare I.” Jack makes a low, sorrowful sound.

“I should take this as a sign to call Dana again,” Robby says. “...But that doesn’t mean I’m replacing you, like you’re doing with Clone Robby.”

“Still friends?” Jack checks.

“Of course not. I will destroy you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“That’s good to hear. Glad you’re feeling motivated.”

Robby has a split second impulse to ask Jack who he’s covering for and what the hell is going on with his emergency department right now, but then the following thought comes. He doesn’t want to think of all the people who get to see Jack, touch him, move around him. For all he knows there could be some hot and heavy development brewing, with one of the new faces flying through while the regulars are taking their summer PTO.

“Well, there’s no rest for the wicked,” Robby reminds himself. Even if they maybe have a stomach ache from missing someone. “While you’re off saving lives… I’ll be putting the final touches on my time machine.”

“This oughta be good,” Jack says. “Are you gonna go back in time and make sure I was never born?” 

“Now where’s the fun in that? I’d still like to spar with you from time to time,” Robby assures him. “I’m simply going to neutralize the threat you pose to me by offering you an alternative career path.”

“In what?”

“DJing. No more derring-do from you. Just spin, spin, spin.”

Jack snorts. “That might slow me down, yeah,” he says. “…But it could backfire on you.”

“Oh? How so?” Robby asks. He chews his lip in eager anticipation of a reversal.

“I’ll have the power to broadcast nothing but ‘The Thong Song’ until you surrender,” Jack says. “Day in, day out, nothing but dumps like a truck, truck, truck.”

“This is why I miss being able to see your face.” Robby shakes his head. “Without a read on your dimples I can’t always tell whether you’re trying to charm or horrify me…”

Even with the music playing in the background, Jack isn’t quite able to hide his snickering. 

“I know the feeling. Seeing your face takes the edge off when you say shit like ‘derring-do’.”

Robby scoffs. “I know it's unthinkable that some of us did Lit minors in undergrad, but we deserve rights, the same as you Bio purists.”

“The right to be a huge dork?”

“You do believe in improving the human condition, don’t you?”

“…You know I do,” Jack says, seriously.

Of course.

Robby takes a breath to center himself despite his roiling insides. “I have long held that examining the human condition by way of our race’s most enduring byproducts- literature, music, art- makes for a worthwhile lab when working towards that goal. ‘Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts, Medicine is magical and magical is art’...”

“Okay. I follow you,” Jack says.

“Yeah, you have a habit of that.” Robby clears his throat to continue. “...And there’s no question that people before us have lived unimaginably difficult lives. No vaccines, no anesthetic, no plumbing, no long distance communication. They’ve been enslaved, been slaughtered... but they made art! It’s time travel, it’s pain relief, a friend, freedom. Anyone can do it. Everyone needs a dose.”

For a moment Jack considers this quietly. “Mmm. So by your logic, appreciation of ‘The Thong Song’ makes you a better doctor?” he questions.

Eyes closed, teeth clenched, Robby knows he must stand by his beliefs.

“Yes. It’s actually quite a sophisticated piece of music.”

Jack sighs. “You have a beautiful mind, Robby.” 

Robby palms his face, feeling rather flushed again. “Thank you. I paid for med school by trademarking right before the movie.”

“What’d you get up to as a Lit minor anyway?”

As much as Robby would love to sit here and talk books, the laptop playing music in the background shuffles to the next track. And now here they go.

Here’s the problem with the Beach Boys... Jack is not wrong about the irresistible pick-me-up power of a bright harp-like guitar riff, painstakingly engineered harmonies, and over the top producership. Those boys can make you smile whether you like them or not. But it’s not just music a child can be happysick on, wolfing down ice cream in the buzzing sunshine. It’s stridently romantic, made for an era when you could still run through airports and marry strangers the same day you met them. Everybody from a tough old bird like Monica to a schmuck like Adam Sandler knows that. Everybody except for Jack, maybe.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Yes! Of course! And it's more than Robby can withstand, head on. He already feels like he might throw up. He has to get out of here.

“Hey, man. Sorry, but I have to go,” he tells Jack, standing up from the bench. He sways a little on his feet, woozy. “I think- yeah. Feeling kinda sick…”

“Aw. Sorry, Robby.”

“See you later.”

“Yeah. Probably out of time anyway,” Jack says. “Feel better, man.”

“Thanks,” Robby says, leaning into the wall by the phone hook. Still, he doesn’t hang up.

He’s actively running away from it. He’s not the one who’s been saying it first. It doesn’t mean what he wants it to, but he feels like crap and that’s when you really wanna hear it, right?

“Love you, Jack.”

“I love you, too.”

This entire experience has been a trip through the looking glass. Robby’s the patient. He’s a stranger in a strange land. He’s re-encountering things he thought he knew about himself and seeing how warped they’ve become while his back was turned, or how they’ve reflected on other smooth surfaces, repeating and repeating until he can’t tell when he’s walking into a solid wall.

Is this the same shit he did when he was in his twenties, all over again? Robby had a roommate he was so head over heels for, but so unwilling to acknowledge his attraction to, that he was plagued by migraines all year. It made studying for the MCAT twice as miserable as it had to be. Never mind that his topic of study convinced him that the migraines signaled certain doom, until it all cleared up a week after his roommate moved out… Then when he got his test score back, Robby went out to party, got laid by a guy who looked exactly like Nick, and resolved himself not to let that sort of stress foul him up again. What was the alternative that was so horrible, compared to the migraines, anyway? A single black eye? An awkward month of pressing his ear to his bedroom door to avoid running into Nick in the common areas? Just go for it, or go for something else. It's the same as with Jack’s islands. No sense in treading water if you refuse to go ashore.

When did he forget?

Robby has tried enjoying the flirtation with Jack, and he’s tried avoiding it. Jury’s out on if that and a dodgy day at the cafeteria made him physically ill, or if it really was the forty-eight hour flu. Today, he’s still feeling anxious and unsettled about it, even after doing grounding exercises and playing some basketball in the courtyard with the other patients. When the others go back inside after the game, Robby grabs his notebook and water and decides to set up camp in a shady corner instead.

He’s journaled about a lot of people. Some particularly troubling patients he worked on, and his mother, his grandmother, and Adamson, of course. He’s written about things he wished they’d lived to see, or things he wishes he had said to them. Things they might say back. He’s journaled about all the balls he dropped in 2020, and how at fault he feels for it all, despite the historic circumstances. He’s reflected on his many brushes with depression, both in himself and loved ones. While addressing these topics, Robby has of course mentioned Jack, either as a character in past events, or as the sounding board he is now. But he hasn’t really journaled about Jack.

              He doesn’t like having to wait to talk to me. He said I have a beautiful mind. He says he loves me, would fight to save my life, commit a crime to do it. He doesn’t like it when I sleep around. I promised him I wouldn’t fuck anybody here, so its not like I can do that to get over him. He never flinches when someone assumes we’re a couple, or tries to belittle either of us for some supposed failure of heterosexuality. He leans in. He laughs along with me, over everyone else. I don’t know what that is. Desire for it to be true? A personality flaw? It would be so much better for my broken fucking blinking string light nerves if Jack didn’t say things like that. But he does. And he means them. And he always stands by me. That wouldn’t stop, I don’t think. If I told him how I felt, to get it out of the way.

              WORST/MIDDLE/BEST Case Scenarios

              WORST: You have completely misread our brotherly bond and that disgusts me. I can’t work with you anymore. Find your own ride home, die in a ditch, I don’t care. 

That’s not Jack

              MIDDLE: That's beautiful, but unfortunately I can’t reciprocate what you feel. I am still your friend and will give you whatever space you need to lick your wounds about this, but then when you come back, I'll cool it with the sex jokes for a while if it makes you more comfortable, you ridiculous dumbass.

              BEST: I love you like you want. I want to satisfy you, and I can be satisfied by you. You can trust me not to say something like that without care. Because when it comes to life and death, big picture shit, you can trust me to be honest. Maybe not always right! But whatever I say, I believe.

              WORST: I think I love you, too. Let’s get caught up in the momentum for a few months before I come to my senses. Then I’ll notice you’re a complete mess, or the novelty will wear off and I’ll realize I don’t actually want to fuck a man for the rest of my life, let alone one as high maintenance as you. Let’s go back to being friends, but never again as close as we were this summer.

Obviously Jack is not going to say any of these things because he isn’t an omniscient firehouse of id, or playtesting his messaging like he’s got a fucking PR team. And also the whole sexual incompatibility thing, of course. But... at least it’s out of Robby’s skull for the moment. He’s not at the radical acceptance part of this yet by a long shot, but maybe he stands a chance of getting there if sticks to what has worked in the past. He’ll figure out when the right time is at the tail end of the trip home, say what he needs to say, then disappear into his house with his tail between his legs for a few days, soak up some comfort watches, call someone else... be totally normal about Jack again by the time his sabbatical is over. In the meanwhile, he should consider applying Middle Case Jack’s wisdom and fucking cool it.

Chapter Text

Whatever bug is bouncing around the ward, it significantly depletes the numbers of the morning’s group session. The survivors go around and around the circle, talking about examples on the topic of the day, each getting multiple chances to share. Not all group sessions are created equal, really, but this one did seem to be especially beneficial to those of Robby’s fellow patients who needed to get some things off their chest, and have very little support outside these walls. Robby shares too, with less urgency perhaps, but with more appreciation for the gift he has in someone who listens.

It certainly didn’t sound like Nalan- the newcomer to Robby’s phone time slot- has anyone who listens. Robby invites him to walk over to the bench together after lunch, and lets him spew some of his anxieties about the upcoming phone call home. He’s already sobbing by the time they get to the bench to wait their turn, which likely hastens the end of Alan and Molly’s conversations by a few minutes.

Robby gives Nalan a good luck fistbump and then turns away to give him some semblance of privacy while he makes his own call.

The phone rings for quite some time, longer than it usually does, and Robby starts to worry he’ll be leaving a voicemail that sounds like it was left by an ambulance. Luckily, when Jack finally answers, Nalan has let up.

“Hi!” Jack huffs out. “Sorry.”

“I thought maybe I got the days wrong, and you were working,” Robby says.

“No! Ha. No, I’m home,” Jack says, rather breathlessly.

“Are you being chased through it? You sound… bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Robby chuckles. “Did I not wake you up?”

“No. Yes.” Jack sniffs. “What’s the right answer?”

Robby can only wonder at this oddity. “What are you up to, dude?”

“That’s personal.”

“More personal than spilling my guts to you while I'm in treatment for being suicidally depressed? Wow.”

“Robby. I was already awake and breathing heavily in my bed. You do the math.”

Oh!

“...In front of Nudge? Now he’s gonna need therapy...” Robby jams a hand over his mouth to try and shove the corners of his grin back into a neutral position.

“It’s time for him to learn the facts of life,” Jack retorts.

“Well… This seems apropos.”

“What, somebody just caught you jerking off, too?”

Bless Nalan for starting up the waterworks again and dampening any eroticism inherent to this turn of events. Because pardon the presumption… but is there any chance Jack was already up, steeped in the anticipation of his phone call with Robby when he decided to do what he just did? A thought to file away for later. Much later, and only if Clyde is having a peaceful night.

Robby clears his throat. “Today’s group topic was Shame. So, I assure you, I have already heard some variations on this theme.”

Jack sighs in a way that speaks to deliberate patience. “Yeah… Sunday School did a number on a lot of people.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. Your book got it from my book, you know.”

“…Do you have any shame you wanted to share with me?” Jack asks, expectantly.

“Aside from running away from our last phone call to find a toilet?” Robby putters his lips. “Tricky to answer because of the No Work Talk rule… Uhh. I feel bad… about how I’m centering myself in a mass tragedy."

Again Jack sighs, but this time in sympathy. “I can personally assure you, you were not doing that during the tragedy, Robby.”

“That was more or less the response I got from the guy who looks like Tyson Toe Shoes.” Robby makes a thumbs up. “Still feel like shit doing it now, though!”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “It’s hard enough to carry some things around before you talk about them. And then you do, and that’s an entirely different strain.”

“Who wants to hear me bellyache about this horrible thing I got away from unscathed, actually?”

“Mm. That which doesn’t kill you makes you minimize your ass off?” Jack suggests.

“Hah.” Robby casts his eyes up to the ceiling. “Don’t tell the weight loss influencers. This sounds like one of those 'One Weird Trick Doctors Don’t Want You To Know About'.”

“Yep, time to close ranks,” Jack agrees. “…Are you still sick?”

“Just in the head,” Robby smiles. “Thank you for asking. How’s your poison ivy?”

“Getting better,” Jack says absently, on the way to getting back to his larger concern. “You know, if you want to talk to someone with more context than Tyson Toe Shoes about what’s bothering you, I won’t keep score,” he says. “I’m not looking for equal air time about work.”

“…Maybe.” Robby’s plastered on smile slowly droops. He lowers himself to the bench and sits with his elbows on his knees, away from his benchmate. “Yeah?”

“Okay,” Jack says, a little warily. “Can I ask you something first?”

“Shoot.”

“Have you told other patients what you do for a living, or do you file the serial number off when you’re in group?”

“Ha.” Robby shoves his fingers back through his hair and gives his scalp a scratch. “Not really, no. I say I work in the medical field and leave it at that.”

“All right. It’s your choice.”

That he’s pointing at and making Robby second guess, like a jerk! A wise, thoughtful jerk.

“Well it's- it’s hard, Jack. I can’t deal with thirty-some-odd deeply hurting people treating me like a caregiver, right now,” Robby mutters. “But yeah, I imagine that makes it difficult for people to relate, as intended, when I’m already keeping myself at a distance like that…”

“That you don’t want to tell them you’re a doctor if they’re gonna treat you like one is understandable, but that’s not the only thing you are,” Jack reminds him. “You’re a teacher. And I know you care what these kids take away from all the horrible shit that happens around them.”

Robby frowns. “They have to be in our shoes, someday. It doesn’t look like it's going to be any easier by then, does it?”

“We are not alone in that anxiety,” Jack hums.

“I-” Robby’s jaw works wordlessly. “I didn’t think about how maybe, yeah. Maybe leveling with some other teachers might be good for me.”

Isn’t Christa a college professor?

“Now you’ve thought about it,” Jack says. “And while doctor hospitals are thin on the ground, there are definitely support groups made up of teachers. Sondra had one at CMU when she was sick.”

“Did it only just occur to you, that I’d been holding back in group?”

Jack huffs a laugh. “It has recently occurred to me that you hold a lot back, all the fuck over the place.”

Oh babe, you don’t know the half of it.

“…Another thing I’m ashamed of!” Robby beams.

“What’s the first thing you’re ashamed of, then?” Jack asks. “How are you making the pandemic about you?”

The heat of guilt boils up Robby’s throat. This is not the main reason Robby has forbidden Jack to talk about work, but it’s near the top in the rankings.

“...We lost so many people,” Robby acknowledges. “Adamson. Karim. Wong. Linh. Janey’s dad, who was Jake’s hero… And then of course me and her fell apart, so then he was down yet another father figure… Sondra was diagnosed around then, too. Everything was shit for everybody. But then I get a fucking promotion.”

“You didn’t exactly gun for it,” Jack points out. 

Robby hangs his head down, practically between his knees. “Not wanting the job’s part of the shame, Jack.” Robby sighs and rubs his neck. “Took a job I didn’t want, wasn’t suited to, because a delirious, dying man I couldn’t save asked me to.”

“Who says you’re not suited to it?”

“I dunno, my star sign?”

“Robby.”

Robby sighs. “If I were really meant for it, it stands to reason I wouldn’t have torched my personal life to do it. And that sucks, I’m an asshole for caring about that. The fucking greater good was on the line! That’s what should matter, here. People’s lives, not my fucking break up.”

Everyone made quarantine plans to keep from bringing the virus home. Robby went over the top. After losing Doc, he wasn’t about to put the Pitt in free fall all over again. If other people wanted to have backyard get-togethers and risk infection and reinfection, he couldn’t stop them. He could only control himself. No more cohabitating with Janey, no dinner dates on patios, no cuddles on the couch with her and Jake, even if he tested clear. All that left was strained Zoom calls that revolved around trying to keep Jake’s spirits up, more than anything resembling relationship maintenance. They’d been together long enough, the conversation should have been about finally making things permanent, making them a functional family despite things. Instead Robby disappeared, and like so many others, Janey was right to decide she could live without the little he offered. Jack knows the gist of this, already. And of course, he had his hands full protecting his immunocompromised wife. But he managed to both work and not leave her twisting in the wind.

“Do you remember what I said about how other people also having a shitty time doesn’t mean you’re not?” Jack asks.

Robby sighs. “Yeah.”

“...It had to have really hurt, on top of everything else,” Jack says, after a pause. “But I know you did what needed to be done at the hospital. Honestly... I’m grateful you did, man. There was a while there... it looked like either of us could have been tapped for the big job. I would have tried, but I don’t know how I would have coped,” he admits.

Robby’s fingernails dig punishingly deep into his neck. “As it's said in Of Human Bondage, it’s easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.”

“Mm. True.”

“…Do you think with this gig it's always one or the other, and never both?”

“What do you mean?”

“Having a personal life.” Robby laughs, in despair. “Adamson never married, either. Never had kids.”

Jack immediately makes a doubtful noise. “He had us,” he says. “We have each other, and all your little duckling doctors.”

“Whatever kind of brotherwives that makes us, I can live with. But the next generation?” Robby sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve been a dead beat lately.”

Jack chuckles. “Well then, honey. Maybe send the kids a damn postcard.”

With an eye over his shoulder at the weepy Nalan, Robby sighs. “Yeah. Good idea.”

“All right, that's enough circle of shame,” Jack declares. “Now help me out here Robby, because I’m imagining leather. What the fuck is Of Human Bondage?”

Robby scratches his head. “But you just said we were done with the circle of shame!”

“Maybe not,” Jack smirks through the phone.

It's both annoying and sweet how invested Jack gets. Mostly sweet.

“It’s a Edwardian novel about a doctor, by a doctor," Robby relents. "A very…hhh… interpersonally challenged doctor.” 

“Hmm!” Jack says.

Robby may as well tell him, to get out ahead of Jack’s itchy trigger finger for research. “-He has no mother, was raised by religious elderly relatives, strings this poor woman along because he’s attached to her kid... and almost kills himself,” Robby winces.

“...So you’re on your fifth reread, is what you’re telling me.”

“Second!” Robby protests. “Just to process some stuff I didn’t get the first time around...”

Like that the author was closeted.

Jack snickers. “Okay. Should I read it? You know how I enjoy getting in the head of a fucked up doctor.”

Robby bares his teeth in a grimace. “…I don’t think I could stand the competition.”

The hum on the other end is one of Jack’s more yielding ones. “We did promise not to cheat,” he says.

No cheating! But turnabout is fair play, is it not?

“Maybe if I got to read a book that you based too much of your personality on at a formative age, I could let it slide,” Robby offers.

“Pick a detective, any detective,” Jack says, like a card trick.

“Oo. Huh. So did you get into Doyle, Hammett, and Chandler, I’m guessing?”

“All those and then some,” Jack hums. “Thought I was a Hardy boy… Not that my brother ever wanted to play along.”

“Aww.”

That makes loads of sense, though. Detective fiction is riddled with Jack-like sensibilities of both justice and the macabre. Lots of astute, observational prose, and snooping around. Closure after trauma.

“…Didn’t you tell me once that you wanted to do pathology, originally?” Robby squints. “It’s alllll coming into focus now, with this little peek behind your kimono... The job at the cemetery, your latent stalker tendencies… Should I be concerned you’re digging up your backyard for forensic reasons?”

“Haven’t found any bones yet,” Jack says wistfully, “but a man can hope.”

That settles it. Robby has got to see Jack in this heretofore secret element of his before the summer is out.

“Maybe I can toss a Halloween decoration in there for you,” Robby grins. “Give you a thrill.”

“Speaking of Halloween decorations. I’ll swap you some bones for a black cat.” Jack moves around on the other end, probably rolling over. “Nudge. Fuck off. I don’t- hey. You’re gonna give me fucking pink eye. Rrghh.”

“Aww... Let him cuddle with us!”

Eventually Jack prevails and returns his attention to the call. “Hey. Robby. I don’t want to pressure you about staying with me or anything, but you might like to know. I have a delivery of stones for the backyard, August 1st. Gonna be pretty fuckin’ lit.”

Somebody’s been busy! It really does make for a nice change of pace that while Robby imagines Jack’s still exhausting himself in his downtime, the hazards are minimal. Just some noxious weeds and roving HOA hotheads.

“If you need help getting them out of the driveway, man, count me in,” Robby says. “…Sorry I’ve been iffy about your offer in general. I just, uhm. Beware when opening the over-headshrunk compartment, you know? Contents may have shifted during flight.”

“No, that’s fair,” Jack says.

“Besides, what if I say ‘yes’ and then you realize I’m just an even huger Nudge, and you start to hate me?”

Jack snorts. “‘Start’?”

“All the poor guy wants is to sit on your face. Who among us?”

Damnit, that one slipped right out.

“I don’t really hate him,” Jack laughs. “That’s- that’s just the joke with Nudge. Nudge is this book by some asshole Sondra had beef with.”

“Oh!” Robby rubs his forehead, but he can’t remember the name. “I know it, I just didn’t connect the two.”

“Yeah. And since cats are dicks, you’re always justified going ‘Ugh. Fucking Nudge...’”

This is terribly romantic, Robby thinks, as difficult as that is for him to acknowledge. He already knew that Jack will always love his wife, even now she’s gone- but being a hater on her behalf is another level of eternal devotion. Does holding tight to her grudges along with his love mean Jack has too fast a grip on his heart to give it away again, like Robby would hope? He doesn’t know. Maybe. Does it make him yearn to be likewise enshrined, in all his pettiness, so that if he did outlive Robby, Jack would have the full spectrum of his fiery passions to keep him warm? Most definitely.

“Well.” Robby clears his throat. “Tell Nudge I won’t hold his namesake against him, and we can form an alliance against your tyranny,” he says. “…If I come to crash with you guys.”

“I hope you do,” Jack tells him, with the perfect soft touch.

The way this call has been going, Robby is doomed to have one of his ‘completely normal’ not at all desperate ‘need for intimacy’ moments that Dr. Kemper claims to be essential to a healthy emotional life.

Oh? You respect my boundary? I can trust you? That’s so fucking sexy. Here, come put your hands all over it. You can shove up against it a little, even. Mmm, harder! Oops, now I have no wall there, and I’m bleeding out through it.

“I think, once we get back home, after eleven straight hours in the truck together, talking about whatever we talk about, if you’re not like ‘Jesus, I gotta get some space from this guy,’ then... Yeah. Probably I’d move right in.” Robby shrugs and grins and shakes his head all at once. An inelegant gesture to match the statement, to be sure. “Actually, uhm… tomorrow I have a care team meeting about my discharge,” Robby goes on. “As a matter of course, they like to Zoom a patient’s household when they can, so. If you want in on that...”

“Zoom?” Jack perks up. “You mean I’d get to see how busted you’re lookin' without a haircut?”

“It’s supportive statements like that, that they’ll be very comforted to hear.”

“I got loads more zingers. When is this?” Jack asks.

“Uh. Three o’clock, my time. Four, yours.”

“I can swing that.”

And to think, Robby wasn’t even going to mention the potential Zoom. 

“I’m pretty sure Tyson Toe Shoes will be there, so you can see the resemblance for yourself.”

“Are we absolutely sure that he didn’t change his name and move states?” Jack asks.

“Nah, this guy is much shorter.”

“I was six foot five before I lost my leg. You never know…”

Robby cracks up so hard and so suddenly, he spits a bit. “I know you’re full of shit!”

“Hm. Verbally abusive. This is a concern that I’ll be raising in the meeting,” Jack tsks.

“Well, censor the profanity if you’re going to quote me directly,” Robby laughs. “And your own! I’d like them to think at least one of us has some sense of decorum...”

Jack laughs a well worn laugh. “Man, this is dinner with my high school girlfriend’s parents all over again…”

Okay, Robby doesn’t hate the comparison…

“How’s that?” he blinks, innocently.

“They already know we’re not virgins, Robby.”

“That’s why you’re gonna have to lay it on thick,” he purrs back at Jack. “Lots of ‘Sir’s and ‘Ma’am’s so they forget what you did to me.”

“But how am I supposed to forget what we did with you sitting there, all dolled up?”

Robby bites his lip to hold back a moan. Apparently he’s forgotten his determination not to joke like this, but he certainly hasn’t forgotten the way Jack sounded when he picked up the phone. Jesus Christ.

“Keep this up tomorrow, I’m gonna rip my clothes off in front of everybody,” he tells Jack.

“It’s a psych ward,” Jack reminds him. “…You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Maybe I won’t get any points for originality, but I’ll make up for it in technical execution,” Robby insists.

He’s got to take a deep breath and force himself to settle down a bit. Stop it. You’re not really in high school. Time’s almost up, and Robby doesn’t have his notebook with him, and he’d really prefer not to walk away as a visual aid on the topic of the day. 

“You’ll probably win Best Dressed, anyway,” Robby tells Jack. “What are you wearing tomorrow?”

“I was just gonna roll out of bed naked and hit the Join Meeting button,” Jack says.

“Cute! But I think it would be tacky for us to match.”

“If you say so.” Jack hums a salacious note. “What do you want me to wear?”

“Whichever shirt you own that best conveys your concern for my mental health,” Robby says, rather responsibly. “But not a light button down.”

“Circle Jerks band tee,” says Jack. “Got it.”

“That would put a smile on my face.”

“See?” Jack grins through the phone. “...Why not a button down?”

“I don’t know, they make you look... squeaky clean in a weird way.”

“Maybe that’s why people kept asking if I was a Mormon in residency...”

And here comes Dwight, cruising around the corner. He had a pretty rough time in group today, so Robby would rather not rub this fabulous mood in his face.

“I have bad news, Jack,” Robby frowns. “We’re just about out of time.”

But Jack doesn’t sound too disappointed. “That means you’re twenty minutes closer to being out of there.”

“That is true.”

Twenty minutes closer to seeing each other in the flesh again, and all the potential that entails. It’s enough to make Robby a bit lightheaded. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t second guess himself at all.

“I love you, Jack. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, his smile evident in his voice. “I love you too, Robby. Bye.”

As Robby’s time here nears its end, his schedule starts to shift to accommodate newer patients that need the consistency more than he does. He is Jack’s ‘horse of habit’, though. Even without his usual morning one-on-one, his brain prances out to the corral. Robby journals through what would have been his appointment, in his dorm. It’s quiet enough to really lose himself in it, as Clyde is out, no doubt drumming up more interest for the card game Robby promised later. So Robby just about jumps out of his skin when Dr. Kemper knocks on the door frame.

Some time after Jack told Robby about his history with group therapy, Robby related his comment about hospitals for doctors, which Kemper took to heart. He invites Robby to sit in on one of the facility’s clinician check-ins, where the bulk of the staff get together to have their version of a debrief. It’s a less frequent occurrence, he learns, but predictably scheduled and more structured. Like in the group mindfulness sessions they run here, everyone is given space to share where their head is at, and uses the same tools as their patients to regulate the stress inherent to their work. It’s not a format that Robby could simply transpose from one hospital to the other- the turnover of the PTMC patient population alone would break this method’s back- but it is eye-opening. The practicing of what they preach is more communal and therefore more accountable. There is no expectation that they might disband at any moment for an emergency. And there is certainly something to be said for the neutrality of gathering around an actual table when it’s discussion time. Nothing will convince Robby not to hold a moment of reflection at the bedside of a lost patient, but maybe… they could at least retreat to the staff lounge to talk, in the future.

After a thoughtful lunch with Christa, Robby rounds up Nalan from the back corner of the cafeteria and encourages him to give the phone another shot today.

“Don’t call your parents. Call your sister,” he suggests.

Nalan stares at him. “I don’t know her number.”

Ah. That one’s on Robby. The kids don’t memorize those anymore.

He turns Nalan around by the shoulders and points him at the nurse’s station. “Go talk to Lola with the green glasses. Tell her Michael R thought she could help check your phone for you.”

“Oh.” Nalan scratches his head. “I didn’t realize they would do that.”

“You’re new, so I don’t know if you’ve caught on to the secret agenda here, but they really like it when people seek support.”

With that, Nalan heads off, and Robby goes to the bench to call his own support person, who sounds very surprised to hear from him.

“Robby?” he asks, more alert than usual. “Is everything okay?”

Robby cocks his head to one side. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

Jack lets out an exhale. “I don’t know why, but I guess I thought I wouldn’t hear from you before the Zoom.”

“I know, I know! Twice in one day, what a luxury. You worried you’ll get sick of me?” Robby chuckles.

“I already work hours long shifts with you, man,” Jack reminds him. “It turns my stomach, but I've learned to put on a brave face over the years…”

Robby smiles and leans one shoulder against the wall. “Aw, Jack. You still give me butterflies, too,” he coos.

“Is that what that is?” Jack laughs. “…Glad everything’s okay over there, man.”

“Yeah. I think so.” Robby sighs. He lets his head connect with the wall, too. “Had sort of a heavy but productive morning over here. Working on work stuff.”

“Oh... Hmm.”

“What?”

“Just occurring to me, your docs might have heard about me,” Jack says. “You know. From when you talk about work with them.”

Robby can’t help but smirk. For once, Doctor Jack Abbot is getting a taste of his own medicine. Hopefully he won’t flip out and hang up like Robby did at the mere idea of being mentioned in therapy.

“However insane I may have made you sound, I promise they think I’m ten times worse,” he reassures Jack.

“Mmgreat,” Jack hums, to resume his usual cool composure. “I hope I live up to the hype.”

A little too cool.

“Jack.” Robby furrows his brow. “Are you worried about the Zoom? It’s not a requirement of my discharge, or anything. If you’d rather not, or you need the sleep-”

“No. I want to,” Jack says immediately. “I wanna see you. And the people who’ve helped you out.”

“Okay,” Robby says.

“Just woke up a little tense…”

“Did something happen? Something at work?”

“No.”

“You’re not just saying that because you don’t want to stress me out?”

“No.”

As much as Robby wants to help shake whatever this is off, he doesn’t want to hound Jack. These past few weeks, Jack has opened up to him on some very vulnerable topics. If he can’t articulate himself, it’s not for lack of trust between them. Jack’s always had his bad days, the same as Robby, or anyone else. If they were at home they’d probably go have a beer about it.

Long distance? They have a little something else.

Robby bounces himself away from the wall and casts his eyes to the ceiling as he rocks back and forth from heel to toe. “Hey… How would you like it if I did something evil right now?” he grins.

Jack lets out a low growl. “Go ahead, hotshot. Do your worst.”

Robby eyes the fire sprinkler overhead, with its little wire shield. “After a thrilling game of cat and mouse, I now have you imprisoned in my lair, in a dangling cage... over a shark tank,” he says, with vicious enunciation.

“Classic,” says Jack.

“If it ain’t broke...”

“I really appreciate your commitment to your craft, Robby.” Jack clicks his tongue. “Building an indoor shark pool means contractors, a marine biologist on the payroll… Some really challenging climate control.”

“The humidity is murder on my electronics, but if you can’t torment your enemy in style, what's the point?” Robby sighs.

“Agreed...” But after some consideration, Jack hums a down note. “I almost feel sorry for you, that I’m gonna bust outta here by blasting you with my amnesia gun. You’re not gonna remember how impressed I was.”

Robby staggers and crashes his back into the wall, getting a strange look from Nalan, who has returned with a slip of paper. “Who said that?” he giggles. “Who’s there?”

“Your worst nightmare,” Jack says, rumbling like the engine of his bike between his legs.

“Oh no. I hope I don’t lose my upper hand…”

But Robby never stood a chance against one of Jack’s more satisfied chuckles. His knees feel weak.

He wants so badly to be playful with Jack in person again. This game, or any game. He actually loves it when they get ambushed on a Trek Tuesday by Donnie with yet another convoluted board game. He always has a great time when they bowl, or join a pick up game in the PTMC parking lot. He doesn’t care who wins... as long as they were a team against everyone else. Robby wants to make Jack laugh and feel him laugh, up close. Failing that, he just wants to make him happy.

“Isn’t ‘worst nightmare’ kind of an oxymoron?” Jack muses. “If it’s so bad at being your nightmare, shouldn’t it horseshoe back around to being a dream?”

Robby nods along. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don't think we’re going to move the needle with the wider culture on this one.”

“…I had a dream,” Jack finally admits. “A nightmare? Whichever. It threw me off.”

“Ah. Yeah,” Robby sighs. “They can do that.”

“I couldn’t even tell you what happened in it, I dunno, really. I just- I’m glad you called.”

“Me too,” Robby says, closing his eyes a moment.

Imagining Jack laying there and wanting him- even just to be a voice on the other end of the line- is compounding Robby’s desperation to be in control of his own life again. Not just to not be an admitted patient, but to rise above the sickness inside of him, so when Jack needs to borrow strength, he knows he can always turn to him.

“Maybe when our time’s up I’ll go out back for a bit, until it's Zoom time,” Jack says. “Burn some energy.”

“Not a bad idea, if you can’t sleep anyway,” Robby hums. “How is it looking out there, in your little patch o’ paradise?”

Jack lets out a dubious laugh. “Uhh. It’s pretty gnarly right now. I don’t like leaving things part way done like this...”

“I had the same feeling every time I left my bike with her guts dangling out. No nurse? No call button?”

“Exactly,” says Jack. “I’m about to make the yard a chart in case it has a seizure and someone else has to figure out what the fuck happened…”

“It can’t be that bad,” Robby laughs. “…Are there flames? I’m imagining a geyser of some sort.”

Jack snorts. “I rented a sod cutter and ripped out the grass and the weeds. Started planting some bushes. Marked out how I want to shape things with stakes and string in the dirt. Things like an in-ground spa…” he dangles.

“If the HOA says no, it sounds like you already have a mud spa,” Robby teases.

“You want one, too? I still have the sod cutter, I can go rip out your yard, right now.”

“Ahaha, nooo.”

“HOA said ‘yes’, by the way.”

Robby moans, nearly ecstatic. “This changes everything, Jack. I might not just move in. I might chain myself to a tree.”

“Even if I leave the rest of it looking like a BMX course?”

“I like bikes!”

Robby can feel Jack rolling his eyes all the way here in Wisconsin.

“I want to do flagstone and gravel looping around the trees. Seed some moss and micro clover, flowers, off the path,” Jack goes on. “Then I’m putting down the mulch under the bushes and whatnot, along the fence. Getting some stones and cutting into the slope to make some steps, and a retaining wall... Then I’ll make a nice little place to sit, up in the back corner... And the spa, I’ll excavate myself, and I’ll redo the patio to make it all tie together.”

“This sounds like a lot of sweaty work,” says an already appetized Robby, eyebrows raised.

“Meh. Eventually it will be a low maintenance no mow.”

“Eventually,” Robby ribs him. “You might just break your back in the meanwhile.”

“Well, I figured you’d rather a back sprain than blood spatter,” Jack says, offhand.

It punches the heady wind out of Robby’s chest. He drops onto the phone bench to sit.

“Jesus, Jack.”

Obviously Robby is fine with blood in concept, he does blood all day, every day, but the idea of Jack’s blood is another matter.

“…I have to tell you something,” Jack says then, his voice sounding a bit dire.

“Yeah?” Robby swallows down the lump in his throat. 

It’s not enough. Yard work can’t distract Jack from all the things that haunt him. He gave it a shot, but he’s taking more shifts at the Sucking Wounds And Trauma factory. Robby gives his forehead a preparatory rub.

“I only decided to rip up the backyard after you left,” Jack mumbles out. “I might’ve... made it sound like it was something I’d been chipping away at in the background. But, no. I was mowing the next morning, and thinking about mowing around the open graves when I was a kid... How it feels like I’m still going around Sondra’s, Dad’s, Doc’s, everybody else… Not yours and mine yet, though,” he says, decisively. “We gotta stay up here.”

Robby dabs the tears starting to rim his eyes with his sleeve. “Maybe even enjoy the scenery a little bit?” he adds, hopefully. 

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Exactly. So I cancelled with SWAT. Ordered some mulch.”

“Mulch is just as badass, I hear,” Robby grins. “Punk rock, even.”

If only Robby could see the smile he can hear Jack breathing through. If only he could taste it.

“Honestly, except for the poison ivy, it's been nice-”

“-Getting back to your roots?”

“That was beneath you, Robby,” Jack snorts.

Robby grins. “Just like roots...”

“I’m hanging up.”

“No, now you’re thinking of climbing ivy,” Robby sighs happily. “How about some of that, out back?”

“If I cave, will it shut you up?”

“Yes, which is why you’ll never do it. You like the sound of my voice too much!”

“...No climbing ivy,” Jack confirms.

“Somehow, I’ll carry on,” says Robby.

“You better. That’s the deal.”

Is it just Robby, or are the terms of this deal expanding by implication everyday? Let’s keep it personal not professional, let’s live together, die together. Don’t fuck anyone else. Don’t get hurt, but when you do, come to me.

“I can’t wait to see how this all turns out,” Robby hums.

“You and me both.”

“If I weren’t currently limited to sending messages by bottle, I’d be filing with the city permit office for that spa, so hard. I’d crack their inbox in half, if you know I’m sayin’.”

“Damnit,” Jack laughs. “I should have waited for you before I filed. Last thing I ever wanna do is more fucking paperwork.”

“No, no, there’s not a moment to lose,” Robby insists. “It’ll already probably take until- what? October?”

“Probably.”

“Man, I need that thing up and running by the time it gets freezing again,” he pleads to Jack, to the cosmos. “I’m not doing another Pittsburgh winter without it.”

“Don’t worry,” says Jack. “We can huddle for warmth until it’s ready.”

“Dibs on sticking Nudge down the front of my hoodie.”

“He’s not as warm as you’d think. Might have to zip me in with you, instead.”

“You would stretch my hoodie out,” Robby frowns. “Then I’d really look like hell next time I land myself in the bad think clink.”

If it weren’t for the fact Robby has to face both Jack and a room full of professionals he’s bared an unprecedented amount of his soul to in roughly two hours, he might ask him now.

Really? Do you really want to get as close as I want you? Would we survive the summer if we tried? Would you burrow in bed with me all winter? For how many?

He can’t think like that- that’s part of what Robby’s supposed to be learning here. He has to take things one day at a time, good or bad, and make it manageable. But for how long? He has to make choices that change his life in the long term, because he can’t keep on like he has been. How can Robby hold back from something that feels like it's meant to be forever? Isn’t acknowledging that feeling healthier than not? 

“Robby,” Jack calls his name tenderly, like coaxing him into a hug. “I don’t think you’ll wind up in a place like this again.”

“I’d really rather not, man. I’d rather return to nature, join a wolf pack.”

“Mmhm. That kinda spite can move mountains. And HOA boards.”

Robby chuckles. “This sounds like a story for the drive back?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack laughs. “I got a little shitty with them…”

“Jack Bernard Abbot!” Robby gasps.

“Well, they don’t know knives and blood me like our bureaucrats- it’s a different playing field,” he says. “…That I defeated them on, as soon as I decided which varsity jacket to wear.”

“I’m fanning myself,” Robby says truthfully. “I’ve never been so turned on. And that’s saying something considering what the Zoloft has done to me.”

This business with the spa and getting to actually see Jack again has gone right to Robby’s head- which he smacks a palm to. Come the fuck on.

Jack sighs a laugh. “I’d try and talk you off anyway, but I think we’re almost out of time...”

“Yeah.” Robby clears his throat.

“Until the Zoom anyway.”

“I doubt Dr. Kemper and company are looking to hear about our HOA defying dreams of skinny-dipping…”

Or any other fantasy Robby is harboring, for that matter.

“Maybe,” Jack hums. “Those psych types tend to think it's good to have goals...”

“I’ll see you soon, Jack,” Robby chuckles. “Love you.”

“Love you, too. See you later.”

“Bye.”

Robby probably should have done the Friday discharge. Saturdays are Dr. Kemper’s day off, so there’s not much going on but the group sessions, meditation, and vitals with a nurse. He feels a little itchy about it, especially after having his one-on-one rescheduled yesterday. The predictable routines of his stay here are beginning to wobble, and irregularity is starting to seep back into his life.

It gives him plenty of time with his notebook though, which was already a part of Robby’s regular, long before now. Honestly, when he pulled it out he only meant to do his journaling, not this. Robby’s not very confident sketching with a marker, or applying his modest talent to much beyond people watching, or fantastical couches. He doesn’t usually like to depict people from memory, especially not anyone who’s face he’s particularly attached to. What if he couldn’t capture a true likeness? Dismal. Well, that hesitation is right out the window, because not even the digital precision of a photo on Robby’s phone could truly be like seeing Jack in motion for the first time in three weeks. At this point, anything goes while trying to ease the frenzy in his brain.

It’s a miracle the meeting didn’t prompt them to rethink Robby's discharge and slap him with another diagnosis, seeing as he giggled his way through most of it. He felt the sort of excited anguish he imagines captive pandas must experience when zoos try to match-make them. All these well meaning professions were looking on, examining this nascent relationship as he lumbers out of his confinement. Robby was at the complete mercy of his instincts. It’s not just that Jack’s astoundingly handsome- that’s old news. It was seeing the crafty expression on his face while he spoke to him in front of other people, and the reverent, sure manner Jack had when speaking about him… Watching Jack’s eyes constantly drift to the left where Robby would be sitting on his screen… Maybe he’s not so off base. Maybe there’s something there.

Michael, do you have any concerns? Are there any of Jack’s behaviors that you feel may trigger anxiety for you? It could be helpful to address these things now, before being under the same roof.

Well, yes. But he knows now how I feel about his extracurriculars. We’ve discussed my concern for his safety while he’s doing home improvements this summer.

Jack, does this sound familiar?

He’s not wrong, some work is risky. I should be more careful of my back. 

You can always ask me to help with team lifts. And if you ever did wind up flat on your back…

Mm?

I’d want to take care of you, man.

Same goes for me.

Two adjacent pages of Robby’s notebook are filled with Jack. His face several times- both with his measured smile and his more unguarded one. Him laid back as he chats on the phone in bed. A void of ink with eyes and a tail nestled by his head, and freckles, freckles everywhere.

“Hey Michael,” says Alan.

Robby flaps his notebook shut. “Oh, hey. What’s going on? Wanna get another game together?”

“Later,” he nods. “I was just gonna say- batter up. Phone’s free.”

When Robby makes it to the phone bench, either Nalan has already come and gone, or else decided to forgo his opportunity. Robby has the hallway to himself, with no one to see if he pops his notebook open to a certain spread of pages for a peek.

“Mmm. There you are,” Jack answers the phone, his voice all warm and low. 

“Hi Jack.” Robby smirks at his drawing before he tips the notebook toward his chest and holds it there like a pledge. “What are you up to?”

“Just laying around.”

“I might join you, actually…”

“Tired?”

Robby turns in his seat on the bench and lays back as much as he can, one leg bent, his heel on the far end, the other on the ground. “If anything, I’m still a little drunk from our wild party yesterday. Room’s still spinning,” he chuckles. “While you weren’t looking we were gettin’ low, gettin’ jiggy with it, and doing body shots.”

“Yeah, I think you just missed all those times when I was doing the Carlton,” Jack teases.

“I thought I saw something very endearing out the corner of my eye…”

Jack hums in satisfaction. “I thought it went well, the meeting. You have a good care plan laid out.”

Robby stares up at the tiles of the drop ceiling, a nigh universal feature of hospital settings. It's the same ceiling where he sleeps in the dorms. Same sort that they had when he would crash in the on-call room at Big Charity as a resident. Same at PTMC, now. Boring. Sedate. Stable.

“Yeah,” Robby sighs. “I’ve got as much as I can figured out. But I also know what it’s like. Seen thousands of patients who were new releases from some institution or another wind up back in the ED immediately... It's hard to be fully responsible for yourself after a place like this,” he says. “Nutrition and hydration alone can sneak up on people, land ‘em on their ass.”

“That is all true,” Jack carefully agrees, “but this break is giving you back more strength than you’ve had for a while. And it doesn’t hurt that your baseline is more capable than the average guy.”

Robby stretches an arm up, his fist balled. “Oh yeah. I feel like I could bench press… ten, twenty pounds, at least.”

“You’re gonna be a real asset in the back yard.”

“Yeah! Need this big bad rake moved out of your way? Stand back. Lemme handle it.”

Jack chuckles. “Well. Disclaimer: this is sponsored content. But if you stay with me, we’ll split the household stuff, at least. Fifty percent off sale on cooking and cleaning... Might have to do your own laundry, though.”

“What?” Robby pouts, winsomely. “You don’t want your undies touching my undies?”

“Hey, if you want to do both our laundry, I won’t stop you, or them. Whatever they wanna get up to,” Jack claims, stoking Robby’s imagination quite nicely. “…I was thinking more of how I haven’t done a dedicated load of whites since the Nineties.”

If that’s meant to take the shine off Robby’s little daydream, it doesn’t. So their whites are a little un-snowy if ever they rip them off each other. So what?

“What on earth makes you think I’m religious about that?” Robby giggles, and his hand clutches his notebook to his heart, starting to race. 

“I don’t know. Outdated stereotypes about the fashionability of men who date other men, I guess.”

Maybe he’s joking, maybe he’s not, but it’s so unexpected and he’s so flat about it, that only makes Robby laugh harder. “Jesus, Jack. I’m guessing you haven’t seen the guys on the apps, so I’ll tell you, the aesthetic requirements these days are brutal. I may have a modicum of taste, but I am a schlub! Shabby chic, at best.”

“You’re usually pretty put together,” Jack says, thoughtfully. “Nice wristwatch, fresh haircut. Coordinated...”

“You’re coordinated,” Robby volleys back. “Anybody can be coordinated if you only shop at one store. Coordinated barely cuts it, is all I’m sayin’.”

“Is it even fashionable to wear all black anymore?” Jack wonders, so genuinely it sets Robby off laughing again. “I have no idea. No one is leaving People magazines around my house anymore.”

“Don’t worry,” Robby snickers. “You can stick with it, Jack. On you that’s refined. On me? Undertaker.”

Jack hums. “Only when you wear that one deep V tee of yours with the WWF belt.”

Robby smacks his hand to his face. “Jack, I love that shirt. I wear it all the time, it’s my Pretend I’m 39 Again shirt. Please don’t tell me I look like Mark Calaway in it or I really will end it all.”

They cackle themselves into a wheezing fit. Jack is the first to recover and smooth over any offense.

“You only look like you,” he says, simply. “I’d know you anywhere. A mile tall. Big brown eyes. Big heart… that is visibly hanging out of that deep V that even I know you should’ve thrown in the Goodwill bin ten years ago, man. It’s threadbare. I can see everything.”

Robby shoves the notebook on his chest up over his face for a moment, in case his sudden incandescence were to blind an unwitting passerby.

“Where’s this mile I’m tall like, before I decide if it makes up for what you’ve said,” he demands.

“Somewhere on Park Loop Road in Acadia, probably.”

“I’ve never been, but until they turn them all into data centers, a national park is a national park,” Robby acknowledges, with some real appreciation. It might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about Robby’s appearance in his entire life. “…You are forgiven,” he decrees magnanimously.

Jack makes a windy sound of relief. “Well, if when you get home a day of dishwashing and finally trashing that shirt breaks your spirit, there’s a solid chance you wind up in my ED,” he concludes. “I’ll make sure to tell me to check in on you.”

“All right. Cross that worry off the list,” Robby smiles.

“With your worries out of the way... What are you looking forward to, when you get out?” Jack asks, as the next order of business.

Robby takes a deep breath and stretches his leg out in a manner that would have befit a Hepburn before sitting up normally on the bench. “Hmm. First and foremost, getting my boots back, with some decent fucking arch support... Then- seeing you. Naturally...”

He tips back the notebook that’s been held to his chest all this time, for a teaser.

“Only second place?” Jack asks, his tone perfectly matching the smirkiest drawing of his face.

Robby tsks and folds smirky sketchy Jack away again. “You almost were first. It was neck and neck with boots, but then you made your fatal error.”

“My bad.”

“You beat coffee, though,” Robby tells him. “That’s third.”

“I am deeply moved.”

“You better be...”

“Mm. What else?”

Robby sits back against the plexiglass covered wall with a sigh. “Having all my various libraries back,” he lists, of course. “Getting some sunrises and sunsets en plein air under my belt. Hff. They’re a little particular about what hours we can go outside here… And then I know what I said before about beds that are too big, but I want out of Wisconsin’s worst twin so bad, I’m levitating in my sleep.”

All of these things, Robby could list twice.

Boots, for walking around with you constantly nipping at my heels. Coffee that I hand you, or you hand me, the offering immediately touched to eager lips. Our shared sunrises on the roof. The bed you lay in as you gather all of these, my wishes.

“Has the bed there been aggravating your back?” Jack asks.

“Same complaints as ever, but not too severe,” Robby reports, wary of summoning Dr. Abbot to the fore.

Jack communicates his view on Robby’s discomfort with a curt huff. Hey, if he wants to care about Robby as a friend rather than doctor him, there’s an easy way to do that.

“-Soon as I can, I’ll be subscribing to a VIP membership at your spa, and tipping very well, of course,” Robby grins.

“Can I get a review quote for the brochure, then?” Jack asks.

“Mm, sorry, no. That could be construed as medical advice,” Robby says, scrunching his nose. “Besides, if you really want to be deluxe, it should be by invitation only.”

“Gold embossed business card,” Jack says, following along.

“Valet parking. Sound baths,” Robby suggests, really getting into the groove, now. “Hot stone massage. Swim up sushi bar...”

“This is starting to sound like a business proposal.”

With a deep breath, Robby shakes his head and then lets it out again. “I promise I’m not looking for a second career in resort management. I know. If I went civilian, you’d never speak to me again.”

There’s emphatic movement on the other end. Maybe Jack sits up in bed. He certainly lets out his own agitated exhalation.

“Robby…” Jack trails off, before clearing his throat and starting again. “What I said before. Before you left.”

A sudden flush of desperation races through Robby’s blood, making all his extremities, his fingers, feet, nose and ears tingle in warning.

“Jack-”

“-I don’t think I said all the right things that day,” Jack barges on. “I don’t think I say all the right things, any day-”

“You- you say a lot that’s meant a lot,” Robby croaks out.

He probably wouldn’t be here, if not. He probably wouldn’t have waited until the morning to ride if Jack hadn’t chased him down. He would have been exhausted, flying out on the highway in the dark while all the holiday drunks were on the road.

“It’s just- I’ve thought a lot about it. About you. Equating you with work. Why you made your No Work Talk rule, why I have my rules, maybe ones I don’t even know about consciously…”

“Is this going somewhere that’s gonna make me- hhwwfff.”

The notebook slides off of Robby’s lap as he grips the edge of the bench he’s sitting on with both hands. Robby can catch his breath, but only just.

Jack notices. “Shit. Robby. Breathe. In… and out...”

Robby clenches a little too much on an inhale. “Trying…”

In…

Out…

In…

That was better.

Out…

That felt good.

In…

And yes, he can hear Jack breathing, too, with him.

Out…

Robby needed this. He should keep going.

In…

Holy shit, therapy is good actually.

Out…

Okay. Robby’s okay? He felt bad, and then he... worked through it.

“Jack. No big deal, just crushing it at self regulation over here... but I’m listening again,” Robby says, sure he’d want to know. 

Jack lets out one last exhale on his end and gathers himself. “I’m sorry, is what I want to say. I can’t put on you what you are, what meaning you get outta life,” he says, softer, slower than he was trying to explain, before. “I was scared, and I think sometimes, survival mode mouth, even if it gets you through the moment… maybe not the best words to live by.”

Robby hoots out a laugh. “No kidding…”

Jack lets out a quiet, but pained sound. “You are not the hospital, Robby. Not because you’re not important to it- you’re pieces of each other. Forever,” he insists with emphasis. “But there’s so many more pieces of you I’ve been getting to know better... If one of them leads you to something else to do…” Jack huffs, mustering himself. “…Then there must be extraordinary meaning there! Because you are extraordinary.”

For moment there when he couldn’t breathe, Robby’s face, his chest, his whole body felt like he had just spotted a brick wall after coming around a blind turn- but no. It’s just a mirage. He’s fine. He’s better than fine. 

“Okay,” he nods. He wipes the tears in his eyes. He takes a second. “I have been working on this. This work and identity thing. My self worth... Where I get it.”

He’s been working on it a lot. But Robby’s been keeping it from Jack. Because, yeah. A part of him does think if he can’t get his shit together, back into the same shape it used to be, he won’t fit together with Jack’s shape in the dovetail. If they’re not the two minds, two wills, one purpose force that they have been in the past, he won’t be essential to Jack in any context- professional, friendly, or romantic. If Jack was disappointed in Robby for switching specialties, or retiring, or leaning into publication over practice, or the classroom, or anything else, it would break his heart as much as a rejection. That’s not to say Robby got the idea that he’s only as important as his work from Jack- that mentality predates him. But he has reinforced it. An acknowledgement of that may be a very right thing to say.

“Thank you,” Robby sniffs. But he doesn’t know what more appeciation of Jack he can let out without letting all of it out.

It’s not the time. Not when it’s a limited commodity, assigned on some spread sheet in the nurses station. Forever may be on the line.

“Are you okay?” Jack asks.

For a moment Robby is silent, as he leans to pick his notebook up off the floor where it dropped. Without looking, just feeling, he slips a finger between the last few heavily inked pages and where they buckle away from blank ones that follow.

“I’m kinda fucked up,” Robby finally says, folding the notebook against his chest again. “But I’m other things, too. Some things I haven’t even become, yet.”

A psych patient, a doctor, a teacher, a friend, a man in love, a recovered pocket-protector wearing loser, a worsening snob who would quote to you that ‘Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.’

“Yeah,” says Jack. “That’s kind of exactly what I wanted to say.”

Robby’s tongue tours around his mouth trying to find something else solid to say, but the most tangible is how badly he wishes he could offer and be received into understanding arms.

Soon?

Then the second most tangible feeling. The sort of thing Robby wouldn’t have mentioned out loud to anyone a few weeks ago. Who would care?

“…I have a headache coming on,” he realizes.

“Then go take of yourself… For me,” Jack specifies.

Robby lays his notebook in his lap again so he can rub his head and withstand another minute here on the phone. “Sorry I’m getting upset and running away again,” he groans.

“Eh. Jogging, at most,” Jack says. “And not too far away... Just to tomorrow. I’ll catch you then?”

“Yeah,” Robby nods, too busy holding his aching head together to restrain his heart. “I love you, Jack.”

“I love you,” Jack sighs. “Go take some fucking Tylenol and a nap.”

“All right. G’bye.”

“Bye, Robby.”

Put a point up on the board for Monday discharge!

Robby has his last one-on-one, and gets some small relief from revealing that which he didn’t want to have hanging in the room while they worked on more painful topics. Is it a bit disconcerting that after about a solid twelve hours of conversation, his doctor was surprised to learn what it took Irene less than an hour to determine about Robby? Sure. But tomorrow, the unforthcoming knots he’s twisted himself into while concealing his feelings for Jack will be hacked apart anyway, and Dr. Kemper will no longer be his doctor. At least he strong-armed Robby into taking a lorazepam, it was the right call.

While speculating on the romantic inclinations of others is not Kemper’s strong suit, what he does try to impart to Robby in their last session is nonetheless urgent. So urgent, he specifically makes Robby take handwritten notes to reread later, because he’s not a total quack, and he has picked up on Robby’s zeal for documentation: 

• Your depression is worth therapeutic focus

• You WILL feel better than this

• You have to take anxiety just as seriously

• Stress headaches, neck and back 

• Track as symptoms!

• YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO BE IN PAIN bc of career choice or pain of others

• “Visible” pain tracker app, poem a day app??, phone housekeeping

• Keep writing about your experiences with this. Consider sharing.

• Process before you publish (PROMISED!)

Can Robby actually internalize any of this? Maybe in time. Maybe he cries enough in the session that some small space inside him is made available for just a little to seep in. Maybe every time he lets himself acknowledge that there’s still a world full of medical professionals and laymen alike, teachers and students, artists and audiences, and so many in between who do care about the stranger set before them, even if it’s him, he can make a little more room to care for himself.

Robby has all these other plans in motion, what’s one more?

As for tomorrow’s plan… Robby doesn’t know exactly when Jack is leaving Pittsburgh, but now’s the time to square away any last minute details. He dials in Jack’s phone number and then stands staring at the map across the hallway with one arm wrapped across himself. When all is said and done, Jack will have traveled more than a thousand miles for him. How’s that for quantitative?

“Hi.” Jack’s slumbersome chuckle is charmingly stuffy nosed. “You again?” 

“Last time,” Robby says.

“Mm,” Jack considers. “Doubt that.”

“I guess, yeah. I’ll probably wake you up tomorrow, when I get out.”

“Lookin’ forward to it.”

Robby turns away from the map and leans one shoulder into the wall by the telephone. “I wish you were here already,” he sighs. “I had my last sessions and a going away chill pill so I’m feeling fine-to-medium-good about facing the world… Now I'm just spinning my wheels until group meditation, and that’s it.”

“Wish I was there too,” Jack repeats, sleepily. “Sorry my transporter’s down… I’ll have to gas up the landing shuttle and do it the old fashioned way.”

Robby narrows his eyes, thinking of the Enterprise picking up crew members from shore leave. “What does it say about me that I never liked Risa episodes of Star Trek?” he hums. “Even though they’ve got everybody running around in speedos…”

Jack snorts. “Workaholic, duh.”

“I don’t even know why I asked,” Robby sighs at himself. “Wouldn’t turn my nose up at a Risa ep right now, though...”

“You’re in withdrawal, you’d probably take Nemesis if you could get it.”

Robby hangs his head in shame. “Sad but true. The only bearable TV I’ve been able to watch from start to finish here are movie trailers.”

Jack makes a sound of slightly overcooked pity. “As long as you keep it down, you can have full reign of the remote tomorrow,” he promises. “I’ll probably need to sleep a few more hours.”

“Oh! I had a thought about the drive. Would you mind bringing a pillow I can wedge into the car window?” Robby asks. “I’ll try to stay awake and keep you company, but if I pass out in the passenger seat, I know my whole spine’s gonna be a wreck for days.”

“Of course, yeah,” says Jack. “That’s no problem.”

“Did you already get the chock from my garage? ‘Cause you could grab one of my pillows while you’re at my house...”

Jack laughs. “I did get the chock, and I’m happy to go back and get you your own personal pillow if you want it, but I’m not exactly against letting you use one of mine,” he says, amused. “I did invite you to stay at my house. Using my pillows was implied.”

“Yeah,” Robby says, teeth clenched in chagrin. “You don’t have to go out of your way any more than the fourteen hundred miles you’re already going for me...”

“I’ll bring you a loaner,” Jack decides, easily navigating his way to a solution.

“By the time we get back, uhm. I promise we’ll have worked out the me staying at your house thing…”

Possibly the them staying in each other’s social circle thing too, but Robby’s feeling a pharmaceutically assisted amount of calm about that. His heart merely flutters, rather than feel as though he ran his bike over it.

“All right.” Jack hums and then clears his throat. “About tomorrow, though. I booked a room at the Courtyard Marriot, but I didn’t know if you’d need to nap or anything, too?”

“It’s gonna be hotter than hell, sounds like.” Robby’s head rolls back on his neck in preparatory agony, and he moans up at the ceiling. “I’ll at least throw myself bodily at the air conditioner.”

Jack huffs a laugh. “Of course. I’m just warning you, I only got one bed.”

Like a catapult arm, Robby’s head snaps back up. “...That’s fine.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

Robby’s hand flies to hair, smoothing it as casually as can be. “Ever since Ross and Joey cuddled on Friends, I have been an ally of straight men who share beds with their buddies,” he claims. “I’m progressive like that- but please, hold your applause.” 

Just as soon as his mouth is shut, Robby turns towards the wall and thuds his head to it, face first.

Dork.

“Who ever said I was straight?” Jack asks, then.

Is Robby on the wall or on the floor? How high could he possibly be if he was misdosed earlier? He didn’t look at it closely, but it was only one pill, and yet he’s not projectile puking in panic. He’d be asleep right now if it was a zolpidem…

Robby blows out a fairly measured exhale and pushes himself away from the surface of the wall again. “Jack,” he says, evenly. “…We’ve been talking about sex for decades. You’ve never brought it up.”

“We’ve been joking about sex for decades,” Jack corrects him.

Well, maybe it wasn’t always jokes on Robby’s part, but he can appreciate the distinction academically. He’s certainly not a kiss and teller.

“Hmmyeah, I guess?” he squints. 

“I’m something else,” Jack says like a shrug. “Knowing you... I’ve always been a little envious, maybe, that whether or not you were out about it, you at least knew yourself and actually explored it.”

Robby blinks. “…After the last two weeks I just had, I promise you I am a mystery to myself on many other fronts.”

“Obviously,” Jack scoffs. “Me... I don’t have the greatest mind and body connection.”

Thanks to the checkboxes on apps, Robby’s a bit out of practice being entrusted with this genre of conversation, but he is being trusted, and Jack knows he’s a follow up questions kind of guy. 

Just go with the flow.

“So is this… a new connection you’re making?” Robby asks.

“Not really, it just didn’t factor in while being married for fifteen years.” Jack pauses thoughtfully. “When I was younger I didn’t get around much. Had a lot of intense one-sided things for friends- guys and girls- who, you know, ‘loved me like a brother’. Just didn’t know what to make of it at the time... Then eventually, I had my person it all worked out with,” Jack says, matter of fact. “And I never really got the hype about ‘lust at first sight’ unless there were extenuating circumstances...”

That is so fundamentally different from Robby’s experience with attraction, he needs a minute to compute. Robby’s an equal opportunity people person. Quick to click. He’s so widely capable of finding a stranger physically pleasing, what narrows things down is much better determined by personality type… Self sufficient, hard to get types, mostly. It’s no wonder he keeps getting left in the dust.

“What’s an extenuating circumstance?” Robby asks, grasping for some way to tell up from down, here.

“You know,” Jack says, perhaps a bit too optimistically. “When something is supposed to be kinda sexy and funny at the same time, it sort of smuggles it in. Or when something just is sex, like walking in on some troops fucking their brains out in a supply truck.”

Robby coughs and waves as Nalan comes along to occupy the other phone.

“To pick an entirely fictitious example, I’m sure,” he says under his breath.

“When I finally read up on all this kinda stuff for work, I figured, yeah, demisexual, that’s part of it. Feeling like I would wanna sleep with somebody is something that takes time,” Jack says. “Before that, I thought it was too much church growing up. Or, you know, not having a fully formed confidence in my body before I lost my leg... I’d only been with two girlfriends by then,” he explains.

“You did mention Sunday School,” Robby remembers.

“Yeah, that certainly didn’t help.”

Robby had assumed Jack was more experienced, more secure in his sexuality as he’s such a gamely flirt, but maybe he’s just so charming and clever that matching wits with someone who’s so attracted to him only looks like virtuosity.

“So, you know the end of Slap Shot,” Robby says, spinning his hand rhetorically. “Braden’s strip tease…?”

“Don’t we all wish he went all the way?” Jack asks back. “All that build up...”

“Oh, I agree with you, but there are plenty of men who would burn down a Reddit server at the mere suggestion.”

“Failure of imagination," Jack hums.

While Robby has always given Jack credit for his open, inventive mind, this has got to be one of those things that’s too good to be true. Robby’s got to be the one imagining more possibility here than there actually is. This is just crazy twelve car pile up timing, like everything else that happens these days.

“Yeah...There’s a pretty big difference between imagining and doing, though,” Robby points out. "Have you been... doing?"

“No,” Jack sighs.

Robby opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“As you know, I'm deathly afraid of putting my hands on another man’s body," Jack keeps going.

Robby rubs his temple. "I know less than I knew when we started this conversation, who's to say?"

"Robby, If I had all my charts in front of me, I still couldn’t tell you how many distinct times I’ve done that in the past twenty four hours!”

“Oops! No work talk,” Robby says, like a knee jerk.

Jack pauses. “Sex talk’s in the clear, though?”

Robby huffs a laugh and glances over at poor Nalan, who’s sobbing has begun to fill the gaps in the conversation. He keeps an ear out for Jack to go on, but he doesn’t.

“Oh,” Robby realizes. “You’re genuinely asking me if I’m comfortable talking about this.”

“Yeah.” Jack takes a breath. “You’re not exactly out, so I'm not sure if the subject is touchy for you, or you’re just private… And you’ve been through a lot lately,” he says in the soft, sensitive way Robby has never overheard him speak to anyone else. Not in years and years of listening to him comfort patients. It’s the way that makes Robby’s walls crack, just a little more every time.

“We’ve already been talking about it,” Robby says. “…I haven’t spontaneously combusted yet.”

Somehow.

“What if we were talking about it happening between us?” Jack asks.

That does it. Robby’s knees buckle. “Hhmph,” he whimpers, slithering down against the wall and landing on the bench. Unlike his previous moments of weakness here, Robby’s head doesn’t hurt, but it sure feels a few fucking pounds lighter than it’s supposed to. 

“Are you fouling me for work talk, or are you fouling me to flirt?” Jack questions.

Robby swallows the sudden watering of his mouth. “Not sure this is a conversation I should be having while sitting next to a clinically depressed college kid,” he chuckles weakly.

“Yeah, if he heard what dating after fifty is like, that could be a real setback in his treatment...”

Now if there’s one thing in all the world that can breathe a little wind back into Robby’s sails, it’s Jack’s sense of humor. He bites his smiling lip and tilts his head.

“Dating? Getting a little ahead of ourselves now, aren’t we?”

Jack’s hum is irresistibly deep. “So let’s catch the fuck up,” he beckons Robby along. “In theory. Us. Having sex.”

“As a hypothetical… There is a certain economy to the idea,” Robby admits, forbidding any sign of a grin to seep through his voice. He’s still struggling to believe his ears.

“Mm. You and me pairing off could save a lot of innocent people from our paths of destruction.”

Robby peers up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what’s a more enticing analogy, Jack. Economy or harm reduction?”

“That right there,” Jack points out. The crinkled eye of his cleverest, most penetrating stare is so easy to imagine. “The way you have a comeback for everything, That’s what is very enticing about you.”

He can’t help himself. Robby gives his hair another fluffing for good measure. His hand then glides on down to his nape, over his shoulder, and then finally rests, palm pressed flat to his racing heart.

“I would say the same about you,” Robby tells him. “If I were deliberately flirting with you, that is…”

“So. In theory,” says Jack, “I’m hot, you’re hot. And whatever my inexperience, friction is friction. Fair to say?”

“Fair,” says Robby.

“But there’s a lot more to it than that, in vivo.”

“Correct.”

“…You know this isn’t about convenience,” Jack says then.

Robby sighs and closes his eyes. “No…”

This is very fucking inconvenient.

But Jack’s chuckle is patient. “When I start getting all one word answers out of you, that’s when I know it’s time to beat a retreat.”

“Yeah.”

Robby holds his breath, unsure what more to say. He’s been caught out, and has nothing to regret or refute about it. Jack's objective worthiness of love is just like everything else he does- excessive. He’s wildly wantable, and should never be lead to believe otherwise. It’s just Robby’s nagging fear of what comes next.

“…I think I’m gonna roll over and go to sleep, honey,” he finally says, breathing out. 

“I’ll go and make myself a sandwich, then,” Jack smiles along.

“Definitely got something to chew on, that’s for sure…”

“Yup… Anything you need before I go?” Jack checks. “Anything from the kitchen?”

The most wounded part of Robby, the part that’s been made to live on nothing but withheld tears, broken collar bones, and empty beds wants to shout.

Don’t come!

Jack can never leave him if this never even starts.

Robby rubs at the knocking in his chest. Takes a slow breath in, and out...

In…

Out…

“Don’t forget a pillow,” he says.

“I won’t.”

“I…”

“Tomorrow,” says Jack.

“Yeah.”

“Bye, sweetheart.”

“Bye, Jack.”

             It is a trite observation, and one which, young as you are, I have no doubt you have often heard repeated, that we have fallen upon strange times, and live in days of constant shiftings and changes. I had a melancholy instance of this only a week or two since. 

 Sketches By Boz

While Lola was so thoughtful as to have preempted Robby’s request to charge his phone, there’s nothing she can do about the daunting number of notifications that burst forth from it. She offers him a coffee from the staff lounge on his way out, too, but that’s simply not the order of Robby’s list. First boots, then Jack, then coffee.

It’s already disgustingly hot and humid by the time Robby makes it out to the sidewalk. And the sun. No fucking way. He, his jacket, helmet, and paper bag full of his belongings hustle across the drop off lane and into the shade of the parking garage. Robby locates his bike, blows about an inch of pollen off the combination lock, and gets into his tour pack so he can free up his hands for this, at least. He’s so used to dialing Jack’s number now, he doesn’t bother with the contacts page. But Robby rubs his already sweaty forehead with one hand while the other shakes, unwilling to press the call button.

He barely knows what he wants to say to Jack, and he is beyond sick of having to say it over the phone. He needs to see the look in Jack’s eyes and the twist of his mouth, and let Jack read all of his little tells in return. They need to be completely honest about what this is now, or else how is Robby supposed to have faith in what it could be?

Screw it. He’ll send a text and then take some time to reconfigure his backpack, and probably Jack will say he’s on his way by the time he’s figured out where the hell his airpods wound up.

(JA)

July 14th 9:13 AM

You’re supposed to have checked
in today, so you probably won’t
get this text until you’re out again.
But I want to say, if for whatever
reason you didn’t. I am not mad.
I’m not judging you. All I care about
is that you are hurting. If you need
help I’m here, anytime. If you want
to come home, I’ll come get you.

July 23th 1:36 PM

Should have let you call me today.
All I wanna do is to talk to you, anyway.
Finally figured out what I have to say.

Today 6:44 AM

Hey, I just got to WI. Room 125. 
I’ve gotta crash for a while. Give
me a call when you’re on your
way out and I’ll come get you.

I’ll come get you

I’ll come get you

Of course me and my flying monkeys are coming to get you, Robby. 

All right, change of plan. Maybe Robby can get some kind of grip on the stress he’s feeling if he’s not just waiting around for things to happen to him. If he’s got the room number, he can find Jack himself. Then at least he won’t be out here melting in the 90° humidity when he sees him and either starts crying, or kissing him. Helmet on, jacket on, here we go, Robinavitch.

The hotel is across town on the river bank, which puts the sun out of his eyes and at Robby’s back, at least. It’s not too far, but there are a few stop lights along the way. While Robby waits at one of them, he finds himself charmed by a flowerbed planted in a canoe, out in front of a diner. Why not go pick up some sandwiches there? Then they can have something on hand to eat no matter what mismatched hour they get hungry, and he can snap a picture of the boat. Might be an idea Jack likes for the backyard.

When Robby gets to the Courtyard he parks near Jack’s truck, gets his backpack and the sandwiches from his saddlebags, and then heads in. He winds his way down the carpeted halls until he finds Jack’s door, coincidentally across from a stairwell with a sign: ROOF ACCESS. He’ll have missed sunrise by an hour or so when he got in, but the little hint of normal soothes at least one of Robby’s nerves. The rest, he takes a moment to master by grounding himself before he knocks.

He’ll see Jack’s sleepy eyes, his unguarded smile, his freckled nose, the remains of his bout with the poison ivy, and how he reaches for him, now that he can. They’ll hug and he’ll feel the heat of Jack’s body, the beat of his heart pressed close, his scruffy cheek, and the grip of his fingers, holding him back. Jack’s voice will be in his ear, and his laugh, and Robby’s own sigh of relief. Robby won’t mind the lingering, astringent scent of hospital that follows people like them everywhere, or the stale smell of an all night drive- not when it was to come get him and bring him home. As for taste… He never makes it that far, as he has no frame of reference. Soon he will.

When the door opens, Jack is there in his chair, fresh from the rumpled bed and wearing little else besides briefs and a bewildered expression. His grey curls are flattened on one side, and he reflexively checks his watch.

“Hi?”

“G’morning, Dr. Abbot,” Robby smiles, hospitably. “I believe you ordered our five star wake-up service.”

Jack blinks up at him as he wheels back a pace to let Robby enter the room. “I didn’t realize they hired escaped mental patients here...”

“Who, me? I’m stark raving sane.”

Robby drops the bag with the sandwiches and lets his backpack slide down off his shoulder. Just as soon as Jack hits the brake on his chair, he pushes himself up, trusting Robby to step into an embrace and lend him a little balance. 

While Jack squeezes him tight, Robby can’t help but take inventory of all the things he sought on the other side of the door. All his senses agree, Jack’s here, and what’s more is he’s here for Robby. Not for the hospital, not for the greater good, or even an adrenaline rush. 

“Jack…” Robby sniffs, overwhelmed. “Ugh. Fuck.”

“It’s okay. I got you.”

When they untuck from each other’s shoulder, it’s already too soon to let go. Rather than wipe his tears, Robby clasps Jack’s head with his hand for a moment to make his hair flat on both sides.

“What’s a punk like you doing in a place like this, huh?” he teases him.

“Just giving somebody a lift,” Jack nods.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Of course.”

Robby lets Jack sit back down and then picks up the things he dropped on the floor. All right. There’s got to be a minifridge in here somewhere. He should settle whatever practical matters need to be settled before they get into the matters of the heart that are so surely coming.

While he’s scoping out the room, Robby huffs a laugh. “I see that the flying monkeys got their own digs, but I gotta share with you?”

“I know you’ve been out of the loop, but the economy’s going to shit. We’re trimming the fat at Enemies Incorporated, starting with the expense accounts.”

“Good thing I brought catering then,” Robby says, swinging the bag in his hand. “I’ll stash these sandwiches in the fridge...”

“Mm! Thanks.”

“And crunchy, crunchy chips,” Robby adds, with a malicious gleam in his eye.

Jack sighs at him. “Faaantastic.”

Oh, Robby is helping himself to one of these bottles of water on top of the minifridge, stat. He slams it back while he watches Jack flop back into the bed from whence he came.

“How was the drive?” he asks through a bit of a burp.

Great start to the courtship.

“Piece of cake,” Jack claims, but he gives his driving leg a stretch, knee up to his chest, down, and then up again so he can rub his residual limb. “Here’s slightly closer to Pittsburgh than Maine, actually.”

“And you’re always doing that at the drop of a hat.”

Having heard the worry in his voice, Jack turns his head to look at Robby emphatically. “Maybe I would if I had someone I wanted to show off around the old stomping grounds,” he says, with a bounce of his eyebrows.

All right, not too worn out to flirt.

“I hear tell there’s some nice driving in Acadia...”

“Yeah. It’s really beautiful. I guess you could third wheel with us, if you wanted,” Jack smirks.

“Dick,” Robby chuckles.

But he’s too hot to properly enjoy the sensation of a blush. Robby wafts the neck of his tee shirt, trying to let some air in. He’s gotta take off his jacket already before he keels over. Jack’s two bags are already set on the desk by the bed, so he shucks his things into the chair before setting off to see what the hell temperature the room’s AC is fixed at. 

Jack rolls onto his side to watch him, curious. “Bike ride was okay?”

“Yeah... Good to stretch my wings a little after all that,” Robby says. He gets to the AC and balks at the digital numbers reporting that it’s supposedly 65°. “Jesus. Does it feel like sixty five in here to you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Robby flaps his shirt from the hem to let the vents blow through. “I think I'm gonna need a shower to cool down. That SSRI sun sensitivity warning is no joke,” he tells Jack. “Hhhwooh.”

“Have at it,” Jack gestures to the door. “Clean up. There’s no rush. I’ll nap.”

As Robby crosses the room again he grabs his bag. “I don’t know how you can possibly stand to, knowing I’ll be naked,” he tosses over his shoulder.

Jack, cool as ever, shrugs. “Gotta recharge, if you're gonna be a passenger princess on the drive home.”

“You know…” Robby stops to lean in the doorway with a coquettish bat of his eyelashes. “I was going to offer to drive a shift, and hope like hell you turned me down, but now I’m not so sure I want to chance it.”

“Mhmm.” Jack finally smiles back. “I scheduled for that.”

Robby scrunches his nose at him. “Next time I complain that you’re an all or nothing extremist, remind me of this...”

Truth be told, it’s Robby who can’t stand to be away any longer than he has to be. His mind is made up, and now he just needs to make the rest of himself presentable. He flies through the motions of a shower, a shave, and an extra tooth brushing before he realizes the rather aromatic floral arrangement on the bathroom counter is not a fixture placed by the hotel. It’s soaking in a Yeti rambler. A pair of handsome sunflowers set in eucalyptus sprigs, wrapped in gilded edged paper with a little card to match. 

Wouldn’t it be nice?

His hair and eyes are still damp when he ventures back out into the hotel room in his boxers. Jack has turned off the bedside lamp now, but there’s enough light coming in through the curtains to see that he’s awake and laying in wait, his head propped up on one arm. He’s caught up with Robby like he always does, but he won’t ever overtake him, kicking and screaming. The deciding move he leaves to Robby, now as ever.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” Robby reminds Jack.

“I had to watch your back in case Clone Robby tried to switch places,” he says.

Robby fluffs his hair and rubs his neck as he approaches the bed. “He got written off, actually. You must have missed that episode,” he tells Jack. “Real tearjerker.”

“Eh. I always liked you better, anyway,” Jack smiles at him.

Here goes nothing.

As Robby climbs onto the bed Jack holds out his arm, a bit pink and dry in patches from his poisoning, but still too shapely and appealing for that to matter in the slightest. Robby comes and lays close enough to sling his own arm around Jack’s waist, but not so entangled with him that he can’t appreciate the view of the face he’s missed so much. In turn, Jack rubs a thumb at his cheek.

“You cooled off enough?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Robby says.

Even with a shower, he doesn’t stand much of a chance with those undefinable eyes of Jack’s locked on him, now. Every color, warm and cool, is collected together. Just like him. That he wants Robby the way he wants to be wanted, the most surprising shade of all.

“Can’t imagine how sweaty it is sitting out in the middle of the asphalt in this heat.”

“Maybe not, but I bet you can still smell it. I can.”

Jack leans in, nuzzling his face into the crook of Robby’s neck and shoulder and breathing deep. “You smell amazing,” he hums. His hand slides around to the back of Robby’s head and scratches into his hair as he brushes a few dry kisses to his freshly shaved neck.

At this, Robby shivers and clings tighter. “Maybe you’re smelling the flowers in the bathroom…”

Jack pulls his head back. “Fuck, I forgot. You kinda boned my plan by just showing up.”

“Sorry,” Robby says. “I think I needed… a little control after so long not having any.”

“It’s okay. You're here now,” says Jack. He keeps stroking Robby’s hair. "What else do you need?” His brow furrows, but his eyes are wide and willing.

But Robby just smiles, already content. “For a while I kept thinking, I need to know, somehow, that you won’t leave me. But I realized I wasn’t looking at you the right way.”

Jack blinks at him. “Robby, I couldn’t. I-”

“So many people have left me, Jack,” Robby laughs. Laughs. That’s gotta be some kind of progress. “But…you’re the one who came to get me when I left.”

It’s not the first time he’s chased Robby down- and realistically? Probably won’t be the last. But that’s who Jack is. A born devotee, who by some twist of fate has chosen him to follow.

The concern on Jack’s face squirms around into one of his most bedimpled smirks. “You don’t do that great a job covering your tracks,” he says. “Besides. I had to come get you, take you home. I’ve liked having you around for-”

“Don’t say how many years. My vanity…”

“-Several years,” Jack says like he’s rolling his eyes, but really they’re trained on Robby’s mouth. “…I’m not done with you yet.”

“I trust you,” Robby says, truly.

It’s not clear to Robby who moves first, but suddenly they meet in a rough and tumble kiss, Robby pulling and felling the sturdy wall of Jack’s body on top of him, and Jack grappling to gather his face in his hands. Finally, Robby gets his taste of him. The strength of his jaw, his heated breath, his slightly salty mouth, and the groan he emits when Robby sucks his lip. All of his senses are aligned to Jack, now. If finally kissing him is the culmination of every long distance conversation they’ve had, it’s being caught in a ‘No you hang up,’ loop of mutual cupidity. Neither can get enough. Delight of all delights is the discovery that Jack kisses like he flirts, setting tantalizing traps of his own, and stumbling into Robby’s ruses with equal charm.

“I love you,” Robby gasps away from a kiss, incapable of holding it back any longer. He nods as he catches his breath a bit. “Whenever I’m with you, it feels like it’s where I’m supposed to be,” he tells Jack. 

Jack’s already well built chest swells against Robby as he inhales his confession. He kisses him once more and then stops and wonders down at Robby with crinkled eyes. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. Where I want you,” he says. “Past few weeks I’ve been on a fucking odyssey.”

“Look at you with the literary reference,” Robby grins up at him.

Though Jack doesn’t say it when he bends to press a kiss to Robby’s forehead, the ‘Dork’ is implied. He lingers with his nose in Robby’s hair, a bit sniffly. “I’ve been waking up to you every day, then missing you like hell the rest of it,” he tells him. “But it’s like I was saying yesterday. I can be slow. Sorry about that.”

“It didn’t feel slow, it felt like a daily bungee jump appointment,” Robby chuckles.

After one more kiss to his forehead, Jack looks Robby in the eye again. “I’m supposed to see you every day. That’s why I asked you to come stay,” he explains. “But then I was getting the room here, and picking the bed and…” Jack takes a deep breath. “I didn’t just want you in my house, being loud and having strong opinions, and babying my cat…”

His conviction growing by the minute, Robby sighs, so relieved to be done with restraint.

“It was killing me I couldn’t just say yes.”

Jack smiles and pets Robby’s hair back from his temples. “I want you as close as I can get you,” he tells him. “Want you right here, where I can love you and you can’t deny it. You fucked up, stubborn, beautiful man.”

Robby blinks. “I might deny it... Just to hear you say it again.”

Slow, so that Robby can see every minuscule flicker of care, longing, and intention that passes across his handsome face, Jack’s hands pull Robby in close. After a deep, even slower kiss he gently lays him down again.

“I love you, Robby.”

Robby shakes his head against the pillow, amazed at this. “Who knows why.”

“If anyone should, probably you,” Jack says. He raises an eyebrow. “You want me to tell you?”

“That sounds like it might be kind of intense.” Robby blinks up at him. “Remember, I was just released from the hospital. I’m very fragile right now.”

Jack’s grin is one of vicious intent. “I think you can handle it.”

“Uh oh.” Robby moves to get his elbows beneath him. “Hey, maybe I should go next door real quick and check what the monkeys are up to…”

But Jack hasn’t been chasing Robby around all this time and accepted his surrender to let him go now. He presses him back down into the bed and lowers his mouth to him. 

“You’re. A real. Romantic,” Jack purrs, dropping a trio of kisses to Robby’s sternum. He goes on to make a meal of it, scrubbing his stubbled mouth around his heart in a spiral. “…In love with the whole world. I know it hurts sometimes. But it makes everything you care about beautiful.”

Robby’s breath catches as Jack swirls wider around his chest and finds his left nipple. “Okay. That’s nice.” He squirms under Jack’s roving attentions, which are becoming wetter and wetter by the inch. “That’s plenty, if you wanna have your way with me. I’m seduced.”

“And you’re good at your shit,” Jack growls against his stomach. There, he gives up circling around in favor of following Robby’s hairy sagittal line. “And decent. And fucking hilarious…” Before he can pass the waist of Robby’s boxers Jack lifts his head and braces himself over Robby’s midriff. “And unlike every other asshole we know who’s most of those things, you've never been intimidated by me. You think I'm cute,” he sneers.

Robby tries to bite back a smile and fails spectacularly. “But you are! You’re like a little Ken doll, with all your uniforms and accessories…”

A stonyfaced Jack puffs a breath out his nose.

“Yeah, you’re right, that doesn’t work on me.”

Jack’s facade crumbles with a laugh. “Outside the Army, my brother and my wife were the only other people who never were intimidated by me. Even my Ma kinda fell off.”

Although Jack can say it lightly, Robby’s heart aches for him. He reaches out to Jack’s face, cupping his cheek and scratching into the curls behind his ear. “Babe,” he sighs.

If Jack’s smile ever faltered, it rebounds and then some at Robby’s touch. He licks his lips and darts his eyes back to his task. “And it doesn’t hurt you’re a little bit of a bad boy, yourself,” he says, finally dragging down Robby’s boxers. “Mmm…”

Robby spaces out for a minute when Jack gives his cock a lavish greeting lick.

“Somebody had to be horny enough for the both of us til you caught up,” he wheezes. He lifts his hips so Jack can pull his boxers the rest of the way down. “C’mon. Let’s see it,” he then says, hooking his thumbs into Jack’s briefs, in turn.

“All for you,” says Jack. His hefty cock tumbles out and bobs around until his briefs are flung to parts unknown and he’s free to kneel astride Robby again.

“Hey good lookin’...”

They fall into each other and grope and shimmy around, getting acquainted. Jack wraps a hand around them both and pumps them together, while Robby sucks on his tongue. It’s fabulous, but it’s just an appetizer.

Robby swallows and wipes his mouth. “Do you by any chance have Surgilube in your kit?” he asks.

“‘Did I bring Surgilube?’!” Jack scoffs and kneels up over him, indignant. “I could give you an appy right now if I had to, never mind a catheter.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Robby stops and gives Jack’s hip a light By your leave swat to go fetch it. “I’m just not really into appendix play. Condom?”

“Not as useful in first aid,” Jack grumbles. He crawls over to the edge of the bed, where his bags sit on the table. “Figured I had one more pit stop ahead of me when I picked you up… Do you want me to step out?”

Robby blinks up at the ceiling, not really bothered by, but just aware of the absurdity. Some people in this bed came out to Wisconsin with forewarning of this situation while others were not even in their own custody until an hour ago.

“You thought ahead to buy me flowers but not condoms?”

“I’ve never slept with someone on a first date before, I’m a gentleman,” Jack says, very preciously.

“But you know I’m a floozy!” Robby cries.

“…I didn’t want to assume.”

“Well.” Robby supposes he has hardly been a role model lately, what’s one more stumble in the grand scheme of things? “You know what they say about assuming,” he sighs. “Makes an ass you’re gonna fuck unprotected feel pretty good…”

However quaint he may be, Jack is not dissuaded when he turns back around, quarry in hand. “…I know you test for exposures. We all test,” he says.

“And I’m on Apretude.” Robby raises an eyebrow. “…Any other questions here, or are we just putting your research skills to the test?”

Jack shrugs. “I’ve watched, before. Figure I can do this one, then teach one, next…”

Robby rolls both his eyes and his body and tackles Jack as soon as he’s in range, getting him flat on his back in the middle of the bed. Jack’s still clutching the tube when he catches Robby, who lands on top of him. His stiff cock insists against Robby’s belly as he scrambles to feel him up and attach himself to his neck like a leech.

“Mmm. I swear…”

“Mmwhat?” Jack asks, all gruff and rumble voiced.

“I can actually taste the drop off in freckles on your farmer tan,” Robby chuckles. “…Here, gimme some of that.”

He holds out a hand for a dollop of lube and quickly slicks it on both of their dicks before pressing close again. While Robby does some more freckle quality control, Jack breathes heavier beneath him, seeking the squeeze. He holds Robby tight around the waist as he ruts against his meaty thigh. All of Jack is meaty, really. In the ED Robby usually has the boxes of XXL gloves all to himself and his very long fingers, and has memorized the circumferences he is capable of encircling when scaling treatments- but he can’t even come close to circling them around Jack’s biceps. Better off trying to pinch drywall.

As Robby scatters kisses across his chest, Jack nuzzles into his hair, murmuring sweet nothings. Mmmlove you… Robby, baby… So glad we’re here. Robby’s musings are less endearing.

“I’m just gonna say it...” Robby mashes his face into the admirable mass of Jack’s pectorals, one after the other. “Your body is outta control. Look at this rack of slamchops. Hhn!”

Jack snorts. “I don’t suffer through work outs because I hate to be complimented…” He clears his throat. “Not that Catholic.”

“I’m not gonna leave it there, then.” Robby drags his tongue along the muscular crease beneath each peak and swarms his hands along Jack’s mighty build, up and down. “You’re gorgeous. My tongue is actually rolling out like a carpet. Great in cartoons, disgusting in real life...”

“Nah... I like when you’re kind of a freak,” Jack hums.

Robby pushes up on to his elbows to get a better view of this resplendent sight that lays beneath him. “You know how it is in medicine,” he says to Jack. “You sort of tune out nudity like a smell, but pffff. You’re a bonfire, babe. Can’t get a whiff of you and not wanna be there. I wanna have you on a beach, or in the middle of a field, in the grass under the stars... Trash some antique furniture in the process...” Again, he buries his face in Jack’s neck and breathes him in. “You’re so fucking hot.”

“All right, I get it, don’t hurt yourself,” Jack chuckles.

Oh, does Robby love to have his mouth on him when he laughs... Let his lips turn to lava on this hunka-hunka burning love.

“Worfff it!” Robby muffles. 

Jack’s strong arms snug around him appreciatively. He urges Robby upwards and finds his face again and kisses him hard. ‘Let’s fucking do this’ hard. They wrap and slide together, fingers and thighs and tongues. Robby can feel himself losing the upper hand, losing control, but it’s Jack’s keeping he’s falling into, safe and sound.

Not to give the wrong sort of people a win, but if this is Jack’s M.O., consider Robby a happy convert. He hasn’t loved someone so much and known them so well before sleeping with them since- maybe ever? At some point early on he decided he was better off being cheap than staying on the shelf forever, unwanted. And sure, it’s been exhilarating to throw the injured dove that is his heart into the air and find out if this time it’s mended enough to fly, but that’s nothing compared to having it coaxed out of its nest and caressed. His most secret desire has been exposed and yet Robby is struck by how secure he is. This feels so right. Though probably, he shouldn’t be surprised. Everything he does with Jack, he does with unparalleled resolve.

“Hope someday, y’know, when I’m twenty five percent less of a mess, you can feel like I feel when you’re with me,” Robby tells Jack, across a shared pillow.

Jack’s eyebrows knit together. “How do you feel?” he asks. 

He’s probably better than Robby at guessing these things despite all his obfuscations, but it’s stirring to be asked and realize that for once… Robby doesn’t want to hide an inch of the answer.

“Good,” he says, rolling his hips into him. He kisses Jack, pressing him with all of his desire. When their lips part, Robby stays hanging around his neck. “…and safe,” he says, in a hush. “I want you to feel safe with me. I'm going to really try and get my shit together, be there for you."

For as long as Robby has known Jack, there have been the distractions. Jack has to leave the engine running and the key in the ignition, just in case. Robby wouldn’t expect that to end. Exhausting himself in the yard is no problem. The contact sports, the martial arts- fine. Maybe Robby could even get Jack on a bike someday, for a fix. Lots of couples do that together. Robby’s not some wide eyed kid, he knows he can’t be Jack’s whole world, his only thrill, but still. He hopes… maybe? Maybe Jack can sleep a little more soundly at his side.

A gentle smile creeps across Jack’s face. “I don’t think it’s gonna take twenty five percent,” he hums. “Hang on to this…”

He hands off the Surgilube and then lands his tender touch on the side Robby’s body, headed down. Jack kisses him hungrily as his hand slides to his hip, heavier and heavier. He pushes at Robby’s iliac crest, twisting his body at the waist so he has plenty of elbow room to take hold of his dick and work it from root to tip and back again, slow, but firm. When Jack knocks his forehead against Robby’s, it's a bit humid.

“Making you feel safe makes me feel good,” he tells him, in a hush.

“Mmn.”

“Like- remember when you caught me?” 

“Yeah?” Robby squeaks out, just a little. Of course he knows immediately what Jack means. He’s thought about it every night since.

"I was in bed waiting for you to call... thinking about holding you, safe in my arms…”

While Robby is currently trembling in Jack's arms, it is not remotely out of anxiety.

“Hfff. Like this?”

“Mm. Almost.”

After one last kiss to his lips, Jack touches Robby’s shoulder, leading him to turn in his arms. He curls up behind and around Robby, his chest covering his back, their knees nested, and hands bundled in a knot. At first Jack doesn’t say anything more or move to titillate him. He doesn’t have to for Robby to already feel a bone-deep satisfaction unlike any he’s had in a long time. It feels like he could lay here while the days roll by without them for at least a year or two. There’s no books Robby would want to read more than he’d want to soak this up. No sports scores he’d want to check. No midterms to hand wring over. No investors to fend off from trying to ‘unlock value’ from the hospital... Maybe it’s just that he’s hot and tired from the emotional upheaval of thinking he’s in love with the unobtainable, and then finding out he was wrong about that and so many other things besides. Maybe it's something in him healing, a little bit.

Whether or not they could lay wrapped up together for days on end, Jack doesn’t leave Robby wondering for too long. He drags his raspy cheek along Robby’s neck and shoulder and then chases the burn of it with a gnawing, loping kiss.

“I wanted to hold you…wanted to feel you breathe... make you breathe faster…”

He easily inspires more of this by undulating his hips. The hot, ready length of him pries into Robby’s cheeks, tantalizing close, making him throb down to his core.

“Hnnf. How were you going to do that?” Robby asks.

“Kiss your neck,” Jack says, and then he does so. “Mmm. See how you like it…”

“Very much, for the record,” Robby breathes out. “Actually getting a little tachypneic.”

Jack chuckles. “…Got myself off thinking of how you’d want mmmore,” he says then, mashing him with his sloppiest kiss yet, “and you’d deserve more... more love…”

“More,” Robby whimpers.

“…and I could give it to you.”

“Please.” Robby untangles their hands so he can grab the lube from where he dropped it when he rolled over. “I want you,” he begs, pushing back into the cradle of Jack’s hips. “I really want you to fuck me...”

“No you don’t,” says Jack. Yet he offers his fingers for slicking.

“Uh.” Robby narrows his eyes at him over his shoulder while he squeezes the tube. “I just double checked, and I’m pretty sure!”

“Hmm. You’re pretty, all right.” Jack kisses Robby’s cheek. Then he reaches down and feels around for his hole. He rubs two fingers at the ring of muscle at the entrance. “Pretty, but you got some shitty instincts…”

Robby blows out a dizzy breath. “Got me this far, haven’t they?”

“To fucking Wisconsin.”

“Into your arms,” Robby laughs. He dips his head to kiss Jack’s other hand that’s still tangled with his own at his chest.

An agreeable noise rumbles from Jack’s body directly into Robby’s. He’s breathing hot and heavy at him like he’s stumbling towards shelter after trekking for miles in a storm, and Robby wants nothing more than to let him in.

“Then let me take it from here,” Jack rasps in his ear.

“Okay,” Robby shivers.

“First I’m gonna get you ready, sweetheart,” Jack tells him. “Then… I’m gonna make love to you like you really want. Like you deserve.”

Jack’s fingers finally slipping inside him he can handle, but what was supposed to get Robby ready to hear those words?

“Nnnh. Jack…” Robby turns his face to moan into the pillow. “You softie...”

“That’s right,” Jack hums. He draws his nose in a short line, up and down at Robby’s spine, again and again. Drops a kiss below, like an exclamation point. “As much as I know we both enjoy the full throttle… I wanna be gentle with you. Take care of you.”

Robby’s cheeks burn hot. “I know.” 

He’ll never doubt that.

Jack fingers him methodically, puffing kisses and fond whispers at Robby’s shoulder until he has him as relaxed as can be. Then he gets a little feisty. He knows what he’s looking for, of course, but the angle’s not quite right until Jack pulls out and replaces his fingers with his perfectly hooked thumb.

“Oh ffffffuck.” Robby’s hand flies to his dick. He’s been enjoying himself, certainly, but it’s been a little slow going getting fully erect. Well. Not anymore.

“Sorry,” Jack chuckles. “Always try to avoid embarrassing anyone during a digital exam. Never really got to fuck around and find out with this little guy before…”

Jack kneads his thumb into Robby’s prostate like he’s holding down a return key on the computer, making pages and pages of empty white fly by. After weeks of torment coming from within his own skull, Robby can’t think of anything but how clear headed he feels. He sobs and squeezes himself, half expecting to finish right here and now.

“Ha, ahhh, ah…”

“Oh Robby,” Jack purrs. “Must really like that if you’re not flagging me for work talk.”

Robby grits his teeth. “Mmngmakinganote,” he grunts. “I’ll deal with it later...” 

Jack withdraws, giving his ass an affectionate squeeze on the way out. “C’mere. Let me make it up to you,” he says as he moves. He pushes up from his side, onto his knees. “On your back, lazybones.”

“Lazybones,” Robby tuts as he flops, both lazily and bonelessly. “Sorry that I took you at your word that you wanted to do all the work…”

Jack shrugs. “You’re the one on sabbatical now, but someday I might be the VIP. Then you’ll get a chance to be a little twerp about it.” He maneuvers Robby’s closest leg by the knee as though he’s opening a door and then positions himself to come on through.

“Very Imperiled Person?”

Jack scoops a hand under each of Robby’s thighs and drags him closer. “Keep talking back, you’re gonna be an imperiled person,” he glares.

He really is so cute when he plays tough.

Robby bats his eyelashes at Jack. “Vexing Impotent Penis,” he suggests, next.

That makes Jack drop his act and laugh. “Combined, we’re giant tortoise years old,” he says. “That’ll be next week, probably.”

“I know,” Robby sighs. “But you’ll still wanna make out, right?”

“Oh yeah. Only way to get a little peace and quiet out of you.” Jack smirks, posing with his hands on his hips. He then frowns and looks around. “…Now where the fuck did the lube go…”

Instantly, Robby pulls it out from under his shoulder. “You put me in charge of it, babe,” he beams up at Jack. Without that to babysit, he can finally get comfortable. Robby shimmies around in the bed to get closer, but holds up a finger of pause before Jack can climb aboard. “Pillow.” He reaches around and grabs one from the head of the bed to shove under his hips. 

Jack squints at him as he fusses with the elevation. “Is this why you wanted me to bring a pillow from your house?”

“No!”

“I was about to say. If there’s a reason they invented anonymous hotel pillows, it's for this.”

Robby pats the doomed thing consolingly as he watches Jack coat himself in Surgilube. “Yeah, be sure to say whatever you’ve gotta say to this pillow now, because it will not be returning to the top of the bed. It’s going to pillow Valhalla.”

Having readied himself, Jack leans down on to all fours over Robby, curling a boyish grin at him. “Not the only one in this bed who’s gonna get a peek at heaven,” he says.

“Unff,” Robby bites his lip. “Take me away, you cheesy angel.”

Robby hooks his legs around Jack’s hips, an arm around his neck, and slows his breathing in anticipation. They kiss and cling together, and then moan as one when Jack finally starts sinking into him. The stretch is painless thanks to Jack’s thoroughness, but still Robby feels an incredible, mounting pressure rise up through his body. His thighs shiver. His sweat ducts spring into production. His abdominal muscles clench and clench until they’ve reached their limit and then let go.

“Ohjack,” he gasps. “Ohhhfuck...”

“That’s it, sweetheart.” Jack plants a row of wet kisses along Robby’s neck and keeps pushing in, slow and steady. “I got you. You can let go. Mmhhh. Just relax...”

There’s not really another option. From his shoulders down, Robby feels like a puddle of paint. Let Jack make of him what he will. He closes his eyes and breathes through their merging, feeling like he’s breathing through his every pore. Robby feels entirely permeable, able to take in every inch of Jack’s love, of course, but also the slightly musical hum of the AC, the smell of eucalyptus and the shaving cream he neglected to rinse down the sink in his haste to return to Jack, and the scorching slice of afternoon light coming through the curtains.

“How’s that, baby?” After he bottoms out, Jack pets Robby’s sweaty hair back from his forehead. “You all right?”

Robby opens his eyes again and nods, otherwise struck dumb.

“It’s okay. Take a minute,” Jack says, dropping a kiss on his wordless lips. “We can take all the time you want. Lets me just look at you,” he smiles down at Robby.

“Ghh. Don’t!” Robby laughs. “I’m about to cry.” He wipes at his face with the back of his wrist. “Just. Really happy,” he quickly assures Jack.

There’s an extra glitter rimming Jack’s already pretty eyes. “Me too,” he says. He kisses Robby’s forehead again, each of his cheeks, too. “Really fucking happy, Robby.”

Robby hooks his fingers into Jack’s hair, pulling him into a flurry of laughing, soppy kisses. “Love you. Love me. Keep- keep loving me… keep going.”

Jack kisses him back in reply. “Love you. I do. Anything for you…”

Then, like he’s casing a baseball card someone has just told him the absolutely outrageous value of, Jack starts to sheath in and out of him. Maybe he’s a newcomer to this, but man oh man, is there a reason people pay a lot for rookie cards. Some people are born to be stars, and you just don’t know until you know. Jack is gentle as promised, of course, but he’s so sure about it. He already worked out exactly the angle he wants to hit during practice, and now he swings right for it. Effortless.

Robby’s bones begin to feel as though they never stopped rattling after his bike ride. Every time Jack’s dick makes perfect contact with that spot inside of him he shakes and has to grab onto something to keep from feeling like he’s going to convulse right out of bed. He grips at Jack’s back, his arms, his thighs, his ass, trying to pull him closer, tighter, deeper, again.

“I need you,” Robby pants into Jack’s mouth. “I need you…”

“You have me,” he promises, his voice husky but steady. “I’ll give you what you need.”

But Jack’s need is getting more frantic, too. Every time Robby moans, he groans in response. Then when Robby spasms, ecstatically gripping his thighs around him, Jack’s restless hips do all they can to prolong it with a rocking, stuttering burst of his own.

“Uhnhn. You feel so good,” Robby tells him. “So good...”

Jack whimpers in his ear. “You feel like home,” he says.

Home. Home with Jack. Where he belongs.

“Yeah.”

That’s it, Robby’s going to cry again. When Jack leans away from kissing him to better mobilize his thrusts, he throws an arm over his face and sobs.

“Hon… Don’t hide.” Jack draws his arm away and covers Robby's face with kisses instead.  “Don’t hide from me… Let me come get you. Let me take you home…”

“Mmmgh.” This time, Robby keeps his eyes on Jack when he leans back. “Take me home,” he nods, watching Jack watch him. He’s always watching, making sure he’s all right. That’s what makes things all right. “Just wanna be home with you...”

Everything will be that much better when they have each other close at hand, and they’re free to take comfort in it.

“Yeah,” Jack nods and snaps his hips harder, speeding toward their destination. “Yeah, baby. Take you home. Hhhh… Make you my home...”

“Mnhn! Jack. C’mon.” Robby mushes kisses to him, wherever he can reach. “Come home. Come home with me… Come inside.”

“Hhffuckrobby,” Jack wheezes. He drives in deep with a grunt.

Robby holds tight around Jack’s back as he’s seized by his orgasm. His every muscle is momentarily tense under Robby’s hands, in thrall to biology, then tender, then tense and tender again until he’s finished spending himself. The feeling of it inside him is maddening.

“Gorgeous, babe,” Robby fawns over him, rubbing his hands up and down Jack and then gripping his hips to keep them flush to his own. “And so hot.”

“Oh man,” Jack puffs. He kisses him gratefully, if a bit off target and breathing hard out the corners of his mouth. Then before he can soften, he braces above Robby on one arm, so he can stay inside him while he strokes him off. “C’mon, beautiful… Want you to come for me.” 

“Mnhh, I wanna,” Robby whines. "Just-"

“I know, I got you,” Jack nods. “It’s all right… Just breathe.”

With where he’s at pharmaceutically, Robby wasn’t so sure he could keep up. Until he locks eyes with Jack and matches breaths with him, anyway.

That figures.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Robby huffs. With every matched breath he edges closer until he’s finally overwhelmed, spilling over Jack’s fist.

“That’s it, sweetheart," he urges. "That’s it..."

“Hhh. Jack…”

The rush of it courses through Robby’s whole body, banishing any lingering unknowns that hadn’t already been ousted. Jack waits for Robby to return to his senses, pressed close against him, petting his hair back and smiling like the cat that got the regurgitated goldfish. 

“Hhwoo,” Robby blows out. “That was-”

“Economical?” Jack raises an eyebrow.

Robby’s panting jaw drops and stays dropped for a mortifying moment. “…If you're gonna hold me to things I said while I was in a psych ward we’re gonna have to die old together. So jokes on you, man!”

Smiling and shaking his head, Jack uses the corner of Robby’s pillowcase to wipe his belly off, then he piles back on top of him for some more kissing. The strangest feeling comes over Robby then, while he’s in Jack’s arms, currently licking his molars, and achy hipped from the sex they just had. 

Gotta call Jack about this later.

Such a nice insane thought to have, for a change.

“Okay,” Robby sighs, as he becomes conscious of the rapidly cooling mess he’s laying in. “Rock, Paper, Scissors for who gets to use the bathroom first?”

“Sure,” Jack says. “I’ve been feeling left out from all your arts and crafts…”

Perhaps predictably, Jack throws scissors at Robby’s paper, but at least he takes the trouble to ‘snip’ him before he gets out of bed.

“Maybe we should rebrand it,” Robby muses up at the ceiling, while Jack wheels away. “Bomb, Amnesia Gun… Shark Fin?”

“How does that break down?” Jack asks. “Bomb destroys Gun… Gun confuses Shark. Shark eats Bomb?”

“Exactly,” Robby grins.

“I like it.” Jack runs the sink to wash up, shuts it, and then comes flying back to the bed. He flops in next to Robby again with a curious look on his face. “Should we rebrand, too?” he asks. “‘This is my enemy, Robby’ feels a little impersonal after I just dropped everything and crossed a couple state lines to capture you.”

Robby grins and chews on his lip, in thought. “A change in title is probably in order, yeah,” he agrees. “I love the sound of ‘lairmates’, but it might make people think we’re just in it to save on utilities...”

Jack nods, impressed by the suggestion. “Best I could come up with for evil lovers was ‘death partners’,” he says.

“Mmm. That’s very capital ‘R’ Romantic,” Robby hums to him with a kiss.

“Mm!”

While he carefully removes himself and his impure pillow from the bed, Robby wracks his brain for more options. “We could really go wild here... My trueloath. My ex-hater. My ungentleman caller,” he offers up. “My significant smother…”

Jack snorts. “My mistake, opening the floodgates. You’re getting too into it. ‘Boyfriends’ is fine. Hey, do you want your underwear?”

“Yes, please… boyfriend,” Robby calls back, tiptoeing into the bathroom. “If I see yours, I’ll send up a flare…”

“Go long!”

Next thing Robby knows, his balled up boxes are flying past his head, into the bathroom with him. He steps back into the shower for a quick rinse, dries himself off, and then dons them again, feeling refreshed all the way down to his neuropeptides. Before he heads back to the room, Robby grabs his phone from his backpack so he can look for some music to unwind to. There’s a new playlist on his account called ‘Jack’s Normal Name Playlist’ that looks like a cherrypicking from some of albums he’s had in heavy rotation lately, plus a few songs Jack had played him on the phone. Robby blinks his eyes before they can tear up again. Taps play.

“This okay for a bit?” Robby asks, adjusting the volume. “I know you need to sleep...”

“I’m calling Dr. Kemper!” Jack hollers back. “You’re still out of your mind if you think that’s going to happen before I get the chance to feel you up a bit more.”

Robby catches himself smiling in the mirror for the first time in a month, at least. Who the hell is that happy guy?

Jack is peeling down the covers on the bed, upon Robby’s return to the room. He fluffs an unused pillow for him and then lays back while Robby scouts around for his briefs. “You don’t have to find them. I can sleep naked,” he says.

As wonderful a concept as that is, Robby is on a mission.

“But they have to be here somewhere… I know your unbridled desire for me vaporized them on an atomic level, but c’mon,” Robby mumbles to himself. “Conservation of matter.” Finally he spots them by the minifridge. He hooks them on his toe, kicks them up into the air to catch and then tosses them Jack’s way. “I thought I wasn’t going to end up picking up after you, and you were going to lighten my load a little,” he teases him.

“I’ll do the dishes tonight,” Jack says. “We’re having wrapped sandwiches, right? Sheesh… The things I do for you…”

Robby eyes him shrewdly as he climbs back into the bed. “If I’m going to live with you, we need to have a serious conversation about spoons.”

Jack chuckles and comes to collect him into his arms. “Honey, of course you want to be little spoon. It’s tattooed on the back of your neck, I’m looking right at it.”

“No. When you’re done with them,” Robby specifies, before Jack can minx his way off topic with kisses. 

“Mmwhat?”

Robby sighs, puts his phone down on the bed, and closes his eyes. “For some people it's the sight of blood, and for others it's the noises of eating. For me… it is congealed food in spoons,” he says. “You don’t rinse your spoons before you leave them in the sink.”

He has never bothered to make a point of this to anyone he has lived with. Probably something to do with his unwillingness to communicate his needs, or ever cause a whisper of domestic friction that might render him too much trouble to put up with. A small breakthrough, unlikely to land Robby on the cover of Psychology Today, to be sure, but it feels good nonetheless.

“I thought you were a schlub,” Jack frowns against him.

“A schlub who rinses spoons.”

“I’m pretty sure I rinse my spoons…”

Robby clears his throat. “Not to completion.”

Jack squeezes his arms around Robby, apologetic. “I will… start rinsing my spoons.”

“I will put on the radio when I am eating,” Robby offers in return.

“Ahem.”

“I will put on the radio when I am, in your parlance, ‘horking it down’,” Robby promises.

Okay, now they’re getting the cover of Psychology Today.

“Any other points of order?” Jack asks, like they’re handing off a shift.

“Hmm.” Robby stretches out his spine, yawns, and then melts again to lay flat in Jack’s arms. “I’d like to hang my hammock out back,” he says. “For when you’re too busy to cuddle me. And to supervise, make sure the yard doesn’t have a seizure...”

“Good thinking.”

"Did you have anything else?”

Jack nuzzles up to his shoulder with a blustery, laughing kiss. “Sorta, but now I feel a little stupid about it,” he snorts.

“Aww. Tell me, babe.”

“Hhff… I had a plan with the flowers. When I was gonna pick you up, we’d have to load the bike. I was gonna spring ‘em on you right after, take you on a date,” Jack says.

“Well, great,” Robby laughs. “We can still go on a first date! Without the anxiety of whether or not we’re gonna put out, after… Ruins a lot of perfectly good movies.”

Jack’s grin is legible against Robby’s skin. “I’d love to take you out to a movie. I could spend an hour trying to work up the nerve to hold your hand,” he says.

“I dunno…” Robby scrunches his face. “That might be moving a little fast. I’d need some kind of commitment.”

“Get tickets for whatever weirdo art movie you want.” Jack squeezes around Robby’s waist and runs his hand up his side indulgently. “…I’ll even let you eat popcorn.”

“Ohhoho, you are going to regret this,” Robby snickers and immediately reaches for his phone. “Does nine o’clock-ish make sense? We can load the bike while there’s still light beforehand and then do ice cream, since it’ll still be ninety fucking degrees.”

“Oh yeah, ice cream is mandatory,” Jack says gravely.

“It’ll probably mean we’ll have to stop again on the way home,” Robby notes. “Do you have time for that?”

“Mhmm. My Tuesday nights already belong to you, remember?”

Of course.

Robby twists his neck to kiss Jack’s head, laid at his shoulder. His eyelids are heavy now, as his interrupted schedule starts to catch up with him. “You should get some sleep, hon,” Robby murmurs to him. “When you wake up, we are going for a cinematic fucking ride…”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack yawns and shuts his eyes. “I’ll just have to keep telling myself ‘It’s better than the bike…’.”

While Jack is asleep Robby extinguishes the dumpster fire that is his iMessage inbox, adjusts some of his screen time limits, turns off some notifications, investigates some recommended apps, and then lets himself doze on and off to the music. That’s plenty for now. Any urgent calls that have waited this long for a reply can either wait until he’s back in Pittsburgh, or call again. The emails can keep. The constant pleas from chronic posters can wait. This Headline Right Here That Is a Matter of Life and Death is probably overstated. Tomorrow he’ll do a little more.  

The only alert he keeps an ear out for is Jack’s watch, which beeps its alarm at his usual ‘morning’ hour. Robby rolls over to be nose to nose with him, grinning already. Jack deactivates his alarm blindly, breathes in deep, then opens his eyes.

“Mm. I knew it,” he says, and smiles.

“What?”

“I knew I’d like waking up with you for real.”