Archive of Our Own

Even without the napkin, it would have been clear that Jack had been the one to pack the cooler bag. Not an inch of wasted space, everything nested together like some kind of food-based, three-dimensional Tetris: a bag of chips; three granola bars, Robby's preferred brand and flavour; a black and white cookie in a ziplock baggie; two cans of sparkling water; a small tupperware container; a thick, square package of something wrapped tight in red waxed paper. On top of everything was a spork, a carefully folded paper napkin, and a wet wipe sachet; the whole sat on top of a heavy-duty reusable ice pack.

But the napkin took away any lingering doubt. On it, Jack had jotted a note in his usual blocky print.

Not sure if I got the salad anywhere close to what your grandma used to make, but mine would have said that God loves a trier. Then again, she did vote for Nixon, and more than once, so she said a lot of shit. Enjoy.

Here the nib of the pen seemed to have dug into the napkin for a moment before Jack had continued: I don't want to get a call as your emergency contact, but I'll pick up the phone for you any time.

Below that, he'd written out his cell number, as if Robby didn't already have it. He ran his thumb over the figures once, twice. Then he folded the napkin into neat quarters and tucked it into the cooler bag's outside pocket before he set some of the food out in front of him. The picnic table he was sitting at stood in a patch of shade, beneath the spreading branches of an elderly oak tree that dominated one edge of the rest stop. It was a little cooler there, and there was an intermittent breeze, but this was still central Ohio in July. He felt sweat trickle down his back. He held one of the cans against the nape of his neck for a moment, gasping in pleasure at how purely cold it was, before knocking most of it back in a couple of great gulps.

It was too hot for Robby to feel very hungry, but he knew that he needed to eat. He was five or six hours south and west of Pittsburgh by now; five or six hours away from sharing a diner booth with Jack. Jack had put away a mound of chorizo hash and a couple of cups of coffee in the time it had taken Robby to finish his own cup, plus a slice and a half of wheat toast.

"How?" Robby had asked, appalled, as Jack had shovelled yet another forkful of hash into his mouth. "Where?"

"Well, I'll tell you this much for nothing," Jack had said in a conspiratorial whisper, leaning in across the table. "It doesn't go into a hollow leg."

That had startled a laugh out of Robby, somehow. He'd made himself chew another bite of toast, take another sip of coffee. He'd slept only in fits and starts for the last two nights, itching to get on the road but not able to let himself leave until he knew for sure that Baran had spoken to HR. She'd done so first thing that morning, with him accompanying her up to the twelfth floor—and then saying "Nope" and turning crisply on his heel when Gloria had appeared and said she'd "appreciate your input, Doctor, on paths forward to navigate this unexpected situation for all stakeholders."

Robby was officially on sabbatical. For the next three months, this was not his circus.

"All my offers still stand," Jack had said once they'd paid and were standing outside the diner. Just past eight thirty, and the day's heat had been coming into full bloom. Jack's voice had been casual; his stance anything but. "All you have to do is say the word, brother."

"I know," Robby had said, fiddling with his sunglasses. He'd looked down at them. He'd cleared his throat. "I—I have to go, Jack."

"Yeah, thought you might say that," Jack had said. "Wait right there." He'd jogged over to his truck and retrieved something from the passenger seat—a black cooler bag that he'd handed over with a little flourish of his free hand.

"Should I ask?" Robby had said, even as he was slinging the bag strap over one shoulder.

"No man can be expected to brave Ohio on an empty stomach," Jack had said. "Cruel and unusual punishment." He'd reached out and patted Robby on the arm, hand lingering there for a moment before he'd turned and walked away.

Robby didn't know what he'd expected to find inside the bag. Power bars, maybe, several packets of that weird flavoured beef jerky that Jack was inexplicably fond of. Not a whole picnic lunch that must have taken him a while to put together—and when? Jack had worked the Saturday night shift, and then he'd covered Yee's swing shift yesterday on last minute notice. Had Jack slept at all?

Because everything in the cooler was something that Robby liked, down to the container of pickled cabbage salad and what turned out to be, when he unwrapped it, a true beauty of a sandwich. He recognised the tomato focaccia from the good bakery a couple of blocks over from Jack's place. The sandwich was sliced in two, and the section through it showed that it had been made with precision: alternating layers of thin-sliced meat and cheese and smears of olive salad. Not a purist's muffuletta, but enough of a riff on one to make it clear that Jack had been paying attention on the times when Robby had offhandedly mentioned things he missed about New Orleans.

Robby still wasn't particularly hungry, but he ate most of one half of the sandwich and some of the salad before packing everything back in the cooler. It would be dinner tonight, whenever and wherever he decided to stop. He figured he could make it to the far side of Dayton, get some gas and find a motel room there, before he lost the light.

Or then again, maybe he'd keep pushing south and west. Three months was a long time. There was nothing to say that he had to go directly to Alberta. He'd bought an old-school road map a few weeks ago on Duke's insistence (only a fool relies on GPS, man) and had it stashed away near the bottom of one of his bags. He could use it to trace out other routes. There were other places he'd never been, places his younger self had always been curious about. The Rockies, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon.

You've got so many wonderful things to see ahead of you.

Robby realised that his hands were shaking. He pressed them between his knees for a moment, focused on his breathing, until he felt them steady. Then he dug his phone out of his pocket. There were dozens of unread messages, emails, push notifications. Robby ignored them all. He held up his phone and took a picture of his view: the cooler bag and his helmet sitting on the picnic table; beyond, his bike parked up on the edge of the patch of shade; further still, a swatch of green woodland and cloudless sky, the red cab of a passing pickup truck. He sent the photo on to Jack—just the photo, nothing else—but barely a minute later, he got a response.

Understood.

He made it as far as Indiana.

He spent most of his time there in a single room in a Days Inn in Terre Haute. When he checked in, he was so goddamned tired that when the clerk asked him "and will that be for one night, sir?", he'd said, "actually, make it two", and then he'd fallen onto the bed and slept straight through until almost noon the next day. He felt groggy as he rolled off the bed, his bladder screaming at him and his lower back protesting so many hours spent prone on such a shitty mattress. He pissed before pulling on the same clothes he'd worn the day before and walking the block and a half to the nearest gas station.

He got a coffee, some water, a bag of chips, a bag of trail mix, and stood for so long staring at the display case of cigarettes and wondering if he was going to break and buy some after more than seventeen years that the guy behind the counter said, carefully, "Hey, you okay, man?"

"Sure," he said, and paid for everything, and walked back toward the hotel. The day was hot. Even with his sunglasses on, he squinted. The air conditioning struggled noisily to bring down the temperature inside his room, but at least it was something. He shucked his shoes and jeans, drank the coffee as he stood contemplating the small stack of pamphlets that sat next to the TV, advertising things to see and do in the area: an arboretum; an alpaca farm run by a group of eco-minded Catholic nuns; a house once lived in by Eugene Debs, now turned museum. He could go visit any of those, he thought. He'd left Pittsburgh to get away from the familiar. He didn't think he'd ever seen an alpaca in real life. Touring the Debs House might be cool. After all, he'd read a lot of history books over the years where the guy cropped up.

He spent the rest of the day lying on the bed, picking at the bag of trail mix and flicking from bad TV channel to bad TV channel and sometimes dozing off. He was on sabbatical; he didn't understand why he was still so tired.

He woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and heart pounding, and he didn't know why. He didn't think he'd been dreaming. He didn't know what he'd been thinking about at all. The air was close and stifling. The TV was still on, bathing the room in the flickering light of a Murder, She Wrote re-run. He lay there and watched blankly for a few minutes as Jessica sleuthed— a murder in a Canadian rodeo, where the investigating Mounties spoke with thick Texas accents; sure, why not—and then heaved himself up and went into the bathroom. He stripped and turned the water as hot as it would go and clambered into the shower and scrubbed himself with the cheap shampoo-body wash combo that reeked unpleasantly of fake apple. He started crying again while he was doing so. He didn't know why.

He got out of the shower. He towelled off. He sat on the end of the bed, head in one hand and clutching at his Magen David with the other. He didn't want to go anywhere. It felt like there was only one place he could go. He looked around for his phone. Battery charge down to 23%. Many more notifications. He ignored them all. He tapped through to the last messages he'd exchanged with Jack. He stared at the photo of a back road in Ohio; the single word Understood.

Before he could second-guess himself, he tapped out, If I came back, would it be ok? Could you help me get help?

It was 3:57a.m. The response came through almost right away.

Yes. Yes.

He got dressed. He checked out. He got gas. He was heading east within a half hour, pushing into the oncoming dawn. He chugged water whenever he stopped to fill up the bike, got some coffee when he reached the outskirts of Columbus, but he didn't eat. The sight of cheap candy bars, or gas station hot dogs rotating in their case, or pre-packaged egg salad sandwiches, made him feel queasy. He drove and drove. His phone's battery went flat. By the time he saw the sign telling him that Pittsburgh was fifty miles away, he thought that his stomach's gurgling could almost be heard over the thrum of his bike and the traffic's roar around him.

Jack's street was middle-of-the-weekday quiet. Most people were at school, or at work. From somewhere in the distance came the drone of a lawn mower. He pulled into the driveway behind Jack's truck and sat there, listening to the tick tick of the cooling engine until the front door of the house opened. Jack stood there and waited until he could haul himself off the bike. He walked up the drive and onto the porch, arms limp and heavy at his sides.

Jack held out a hand to him, voice full of relief when he said, "Robby."

One of the most weirdly disorienting things about it all was how nobody around Robby seemed to think that any of this was a big deal.

Or, no. That wasn't the right way of putting it. What was disorienting was that no one seemed to think that this was abnormal, or another fuck-up on Robby's part, or something that he should be able to take care of by himself if he only tried hard enough.

Not Jack, who hugged him once, fiercely, and led him inside while saying, "You made it right in time for a late lunch, brother. Nice. My special mac and cheese, and before you ask the secret is in my proprietary paprika blend."

Not the registration clerk at the clinic the next morning who was polite and welcoming and in possession of a Yinzer accent even stronger than Dana's mother-in-law, but who took Robby's personal details with the distinct air that this was just another workday for her.

Not the intake therapist, who listened to everything Robby had to say while nodding thoughtfully and taking rapid-fire notes on a pad of paper in honest-to-god shorthand before tapping a bit at her computer, brow furrowed, and saying, "Well, it looks like Dr Sheinbaum has had a cancellation for her 10:45 slot this morning, she could fit you in then. Does that work for you?"

"This morning?"

It wasn't as if there was a good excuse that Robby could give. He'd come here for help; they were offering him help; the intake therapist even knew that he was on a sabbatical from work and that three months yawned in front of him, empty and unmapped. But the thought of starting all of this now, today, had his breathing stuttering. He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. "My, uh, my friend drove me here, so I don't know if I can—"

"Oh, we'll have our receptionist check in with him," the intake therapist said breezily, "not to worry, transportation is easy to take care of. Why don't I walk you down to Dr Sheinbaum's office? The layout here can be a little confusing."

Robby knew when he was being handled, but just then he couldn't think how not to be, and it was lunchtime when he walked back into the reception area and found that Jack was still sitting there, reading a copy of People with a furrowed brow. The cover promised that some blonde woman whom Robby didn't recognise was stepping into a whole new me. Mazel tov to her, Robby thought.

"Hey, great, I'm starving," Jack said, tossing the magazine back onto the low table next to him before walking to the door with Robby. "There's a good Thai place not so far from here, you in?"

Back in his truck, Jack had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the roar of the air conditioning as it kicked in. "We good? Because there are other places, if you don't think this is right for you."

Robby thought about how to answer that as Jack eased them out of the clinic parking lot and into the flow of traffic. Esther Sheinbaum was a few years older than him, with the kind of carefully dyed and blown-out hair and colour-coordinated pant suits that his Bubbe would have approved of. He could hear her voice in his head: Professional lady! He'd panicked a bit when he'd sat down in her office, because what was the most tactful way to ask Dr Sheinbaum if she went to his grandparents' shul because the last thing he needed was—

But Dr Sheinbaum had short-circuited all of that by looking at him over the top of her glasses and saying, "Robinavitch, huh?"

"Yes, ma'am," Robby had said instinctively, which was mortifying because she wasn't that much older than him. He'd rubbed his sweating palms against the thighs of his jeans. "My grandparents were from just outside Kremenets."

"Hrm," she'd said, studying his face closely. "Well. I suppose that gives us a place to start."

Now, Robby shrugged and said, "Fine. I think we're good."

The Thai restaurant was moderately busy, but they still managed to get a booth in a quiet corner and put in two orders for the lunch special pretty quickly.

"You'll have to put that down to be able to eat, you know," Jack said, sounding amused.

"Huh?" Robby looked down at his hands, and realised that he was still compulsively twisting and tightening the bit of glossy cardstock that he'd been given. It was hopelessly wrinkled now, his sweat making some of the ink start to bleed. "Oh, it's, uh. Funny thing is, this is my patient passport."

Jack looked at him blankly. "Your what?"

"Hasn't made it to night shift, huh," Robby said, and for some reason this was the funniest fucking thing that had happened to him in days—weeks. He started to laugh. After… after everything, after all that bullshit, no one in the Pitt was actually using the fucking things?

"You know," Jack said, sticking his straw into his water glass, "I'm getting the distinct feeling that maybe there's some context I'm lacking here."

"It's… it's just stupid, petty crap," Robby said. And something that he didn't actually have to think about for another two months and three weeks—except for the fact that he now had a patient passport of his own. Him. "Not…" He looked down at the faux marble table top, his hands splayed across it. "Saturday sucked, Jack," he said, surprising himself with the vehemence of his own voice. "It really, really fucking sucked."

"It did," Jack said with a nod before continuing, solemnly, "It was a donkey-cock suck of a day."

Robby stared at him, wide-eyed, and then he was laughing so hard that he had to put his head in his hands. He was pretty sure he unnerved the server who came with their food, but Jack just said, "It's been a week," and made sure to leave a very large tip once they were done.

"Why the fuck else do I have a guest bedroom?" Jack said the next morning, when Robby started to make noises about going back to his place. "It's for guests. And anyway, you've already got Whitaker keeping an eye on things. Don't evict him. Let the kid enjoy the novelty of having a cool bachelor pad to hang out in."

"It's not a—"

"Pfft," Jack said, pouring the coffee.

"Jack, I—"

"Shh," Jack said. "We're eating our breakfast now."

Robby ended up spending the next several weeks at Jack's place, every half-hearted attempt at insisting that he should leave met with blunt refusal from Jack.

"You turn down my hospitality," Jack said, handing Robby a house key he'd had cut for him, "and I'll start moping, and making me mope just isn't being buddies."

If there was a flaw in that logic, Robby was still a bit too tired to spot it.

But he kept going with what he'd signed up for. He met with his psychiatrist and started livin' better through chemistry; he met with his therapist, three times a week at first. That made for a lot of entries on his calendar, but still Robby had the jitters about having so much free time to fill. He'd never not had a job, not since he was fifteen and bagged groceries at Giant Eagle to help Bubbe out with the utility bills. He floated the idea to Esther, about him maybe wrapping up his sabbatical early, taking even one shift a week in the Pitt in order to help out, but her "Ha!" had been so scathing that Robby had quickly abandoned the idea.

So mostly Robby slept, and read, and went for slow walks around the neighbourhood, and watched movies on Jack's pointlessly large TV, and slept some more. For all that he'd offered to go back to work, his body felt greedy for sleep: going nine, ten, eleven hours at a stretch on the double mattress in the back bedroom, but also dozing off while reading on the porch, or snoozing on the living room couch next to Jack's warm presence.

"Shit," Robby said, groggy, when the final buzzer woke him. He realised that he'd missed basically the whole game, and that he was draped with a knit blanket that hadn't been there when he'd first sat down. "Jack, I'm—"

"If you say sorry," Jack said, without looking away from the screen, "I'll tell everyone you actually root for the Rangers."

"Asshole," Robby said.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack said, holding out the bowl of popcorn to him. Robby took a handful. "Tell me something I don't know."

The only other person who knew he was back in Pittsburgh was Dana. Jack told her, with Robby's blessing, and she showed up the next Sunday afternoon with a huge bag slung over one arm. From it she produced an equally large tupperware of chocolate chip cookies, which she handed over while saying, "Hey Robby, I hope you know making me bake is a blue moon kind of thing, if you tell Benji I'll deny it all."

"Nice to see you, too," Robby said, and then let out a pained oof when Dana wrapped him up in a bear hug and the corner of the container dug right into his rib cage.

Through gritted teeth, Dana said, "Swear to God, Robby, swear to God," though who was swearing, and about what, was never made clear.

Jack kept working his usual pattern of nights—four on, three off—but seemed to be picking up more swing shifts than usual on top of that. Robby supposed they were short-staffed, but he tried his best not to think about it. He made himself not ask. He was on sabbatical. There was a reason why he'd deleted his work email app from his phone and turned off notifications on everything and from everyone except for Jack, Dana, and his building's super.

If Robby's condo burned down, he'd hear from the super. If something went sideways with Duke's treatment, he'd hear from Dana. If there was anything else he needed to hear, well, that was what Jack was there for, and so far Jack was keeping his own counsel. He didn't discuss what things were like in the ED, or mention whether he was going to keep going with the TEMS nonsense. Robby supposed that was fair enough. Jack was a grown man. His schedule was his business.

But then one morning, Jack came home late. Late enough that Robby found himself getting antsy. Jack was a creature of order and habit. If his shift finished at seven and the handoff went as normal, he walked through his front door somewhere between 43 and 45 minutes later.

When Robby woke around nine, Jack's truck wasn't in the driveway. The door to the main bedroom was ajar, and Robby could see a glimpse of a bed that was unoccupied and still neatly made. There were no local news stories about any MCIs, not even a mention of a particularly nasty car wreck. No missed call or message from Jack on Robby's phone; no response to Robby's Everything ok? Robby paced the length of the house and back. He was Jack's emergency contact, so if something was actually wrong, surely he'd know—but what if there'd been some kind of mix-up? Or what if Jack wasn't at PTMC, what if he was lying unconscious in the ED at Presby and—

Half an hour later, Robby was right on the verge of calling Dana, to see if she knew something, or if one of her city-wide contact network might, when a key turned in the lock. Robby leapt up out of his seat. Jack. He came in looking about as tired as Robby felt most days. "Everything okay?"

"Hey, man." Jack scrubbed a hand over his face as he sat on the low bench in the hallway, before taking off his prosthesis and liner right there. Normally he waited until he was in his bedroom. He rubbed absently at his residual limb for a moment before he picked up a pair of crutches. "Sorry. Time got away from me. I went to see Hiro."

"Oh," Robby said.

"They extubated him," Jack said, and for once he was the one who wasn't meeting Robby's eyes as he headed through to the kitchen. "Prognosis is, you know, everyone was saying that they were very hopeful."

Robby was experienced in interpreting Jack's tone of voice. "But?"

"Looks like severe damage to the laryngeal nerve and likely a permanent—" Jack clamped his mouth shut, started pulling milk and vegetables and eggs from the fridge with more force than was needed. "Twenty-nine years old. And his mom was there and she was thanking me."

Robby rescued the carton of eggs from Jack's grip, set it down on the counter. "And you're beating yourself up over this, why?"

"Well, I don't fucking know." Jack's laugh was wet; his gaze was fixed firmly on the floor tile. "Something to talk about with my therapist, I guess."

If Jack had asked Robby's opinion, back when he was first considering volunteering, Robby would have said something like no, no fucking way. SWAT? Are you fucking shitting me? Are you out of your fucking mind? You want the list of why the fuck not in alphabetical order or are you okay if I freestyle it?

But Jack hadn't asked, and Jack was fiercely independent, and arguments about politics had gotten them nowhere in the past, and anyway what right did Robby have to tell Jack what to do—or to plead with him about what not to do?

"There are a lot of people in this world who wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, brother." And Robby was standing there in Jack's kitchen, barefoot, in the same plaid pyjama pants and ratty old t-shirt he'd worn to bed the night before, and his voice cracked when he said, "You help."

"Don't…" Jack swiped at his cheeks, gestured at the spinach and the tomatoes and the eggs. "I only wanted to make an omelette, man, don't start—"

"So let me," Robby said, and of the two of them no honest person would ever claim that Robby was the better cook, but he made Jack sit down at the kitchen table and rustled them up some breakfast all the same. Both omelettes broke, and he'd maybe added a pinch too much black pepper, but Jack cleared his plate and there was something satisfying for Robby just in that. In getting to sit there quietly, and drink his coffee, and watch some of the worst lines on Jack's face soften in the mid-morning light.

July faded into August.

If Robby had made different choices, maybe now he'd be steering the Bonnie across the great plains of Alberta and along a long stretch of flat road that led to a sudden stop.

But he'd chosen to turn back. He'd returned to Pittsburgh. He was doing the work, even if the work fucking sucked. He didn't mind that it was difficult. He'd never minded difficult—not when his AP Chem teacher had first raised an eyebrow at him and said, "Oh, so Mr Robinavitch thinks he can do better, does he?"; not in med school, when he'd been juggling a full course load and taking care of Bubbe; not any time since.

It wasn't that it was difficult. It was that it was frustrating.

There was the way that Esther said Hrm in response to some things he talked about, and was utterly silent about others. There were the writing assignments she gave him after almost every session. Each time he sat down at the kitchen table to write in the cheap spiral-bound notebook that he'd picked up for the purpose, it felt as if he was sitting down in a dentist's chair for a root canal, with no guarantee that the lidocaine was going to work. There was the fact that Robby thought that maybe, slowly, the meds were beginning to have an effect, and there was the nagging question as to what would have happened if he'd started taking them years ago—if he'd said fuck it to his pride, would things ever have gotten so bad in the first place?

Impossible to know.

Frustrating.

And then the dreams, shifting. For years now, he'd been plagued by a recurring dream: he was walking down a long series of hallways in a place that both was and wasn't PTMC, the fluorescent lights hurting his eyes and in his hands something, he could never quite see what, but if he could just get it to Monty, then Monty would wake up, only he could never find Monty's room, always just one more corner between him and it, and time was running out, and the doorways were always the wrong shape, and—

For the past week, Robby had been dreaming something new. No more PTMC. Now, when he slept, he was back in the shul he hadn't set foot in for years, and he was thirteen and he was waiting for the rabbi to call him forward to read his Torah portion and he'd studied so, so hard for months and this was supposed to be something that was shared, a precious thing l'dor v'dor, from generation to generation, but that one seat right there remained empty, she hadn't come, Bubbe had sent her a letter with all the information and she hadn't answered, it was just Robby standing there and when he opened his mouth to read he couldn't speak, none of the words on the scroll made sense any more, and she'd left, she'd left him—

He woke up panting, soaked in sweat.

Jack found him sitting on the porch, elbows braced on his knees and his hands wrapped around a cooling mug of coffee that he wasn't drinking.

"Brother," Jack said as he set down his backpack, "you look like you're dressed as some sad-sack country song for Halloween."

"You sure know what to say to comfort a guy," Robby said. "Not my holiday anyway."

"What, you think Dana never showed me those photos?" Jack shot back. "I know you've got gams."

"And you are…" Robby couldn't think of a good word to describe Jack, not when it was only just past seven in the morning and he'd barely slept and he was clammy with dried sweat. He suppressed a shiver. "Whatever."

"Awesome, good talk," Jack said, and picked up his backpack and went on into the house. He reappeared in the door at some point—Robby had the feeling he wasn't tracking time too well—now on his crutches and with his hair curling, shower-damp, around his face. "If you're willing to move the party indoors, big guy, I've got a stack of sourdough toast with that peach jam you like with your name on it."

"I guess so," Robby said, mock-grumbling, because the jam really was very good. He stood and stretched—his lower back was cramping and protesting how long he'd spent hunched in one position on an unpadded Adirondack chair.

Inside on the kitchen table he found, as well as the toast, two bowls of fruit and yoghurt, and a pot of what Robby assumed was the decaf tea that Jack favoured after a shift, to make it easier for him to sleep.

The food and the tea helped some. So did Jack, just sitting there and ignoring the elephant in the room in favour of spinning Robby an extremely long yarn that had something to do with a lost dog, and a bunch of bananas, and someone who was one of Ahmad's cousins, or an in-law, or maybe a school friend, who worked up on the seventh floor, was it the ninth—Robby lost the thread of it fully sometime around the second or third so Ellis told me that Shen told her that Walsh said, but that mattered to him less than what it felt like, getting to sit here and watch how animated Jack's face got when he spun out a tale.

"Thank you for the sandwich," Robby said when Jack's shaggy dog story finally reached its end.

"Sandwich?" Jack looked confused, cocked an eyebrow at the now-empty plate in front of Robby. "Is this one of those things where you're really stretching the definition of a sandwich, like those weirdos who spend time online yelling about whether hot dogs—"

"No, not now," Robby said. "Back when… when I still thought I was going to leave. The sandwich you gave me. Thanks. I just, uh, thought I should say it."

"Oh, that one." Jack's ears flushed pink for some reason. "No big deal. You're welcome."

Dana messaged him with an invitation to a barbecue she was throwing for Riley's sixteenth birthday.

Nothing fancy just some friends & family & Benji is going to smoke a brisket, would love to see you there but no worries if you can't make it

It was a hell of a thing, realising that Dana had a grandkid who was about to turn sixteen—to realise that Robby could remember her being born. A sweet, skinny little thing, or she had been. He hadn't seen her in, shit, at least a couple of years, not since her mom had taken that job over in Harrisburg. The Evans were good people, and Benji's skills with a smoker were legendary. Part of Robby wanted to say yeah, sure, count me in.

But more of him hesitated. Dana's definition of "some friends and family" was more expansive than Robby's own, but even if it really was just a small get-together it was basically guaranteed that Princess and Perlah would be there. They were some of the best nurses that Robby had ever worked with, bar none, but they were also key nodes in the greater PTMC gossip network. If he went to the barbecue, it was a certainty that "Robby is back" would be all over the hospital within ten minutes of him showing up.

He didn't want curiosity, or pity, or any I told you sos, from Noelle or anyone else.

It had been bad enough when he and Janey had broken up, and some random fellow from Ortho—whose name Robby didn't know to this day—had turned to him in the elevator one day, slapped him on the shoulder, and said, "Condolences. All these medical innovations and we still can't figure out how women's minds work, huh?"

But this was… this was something different. Not just private, but raw.

He sent Dana a polite thanks but no thanks, and made a mental note to pick up a birthday card for Riley the next time he was in CVS. What was the going rate for teenagers' birthdays? Fifty bucks? A hundred? That made him think about Jake. He flinched, and set that thought very deliberately to one side.

Robby had therapy later that morning, followed it up with a long walk through Frick Park where he tried to puzzle through the things that he and Esther had talked about—or hadn't talked about—or might need to talk about soon. COVID, Adamson, PittFest. His mother. Jake. Places where he'd healed wrong, or not at all, and you could try your best to break up scar adhesions but sometimes the damage just went too deep.

By the time Robby got back to Jack's place mid-afternoon, he was sweaty and overheated, looking forward to a cool shower and a glass of even colder water.

It was soon clear that he'd have competition for both of those things.

Jack had spent the early afternoon working in the garden, and when Jack worked in his garden, he got hands-on. His white t-shirt was sweat-stained, flecked with bits of grass from where he must have been using his funny old manual mower on the tiny square of lawn out front; there was dirt caked under his fingernails from the vegetable beds out back.

"You know, I've been getting cranky messages because of you," Jack said, tugging the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Robby looked away from the stretch of abdomen that was revealed; it wasn't polite to stare.

"Oh?" Robby poured them both glasses of water, hoping that would bring down the flush in his cheeks.

"Takes a brave man to turn down an offer from Dana Evans," Jack said, scrubbing his hands clean at the kitchen sink. "Or a real stupid one, depends on how you want to define your terms."

"Ah," Robby said. "Look, I don't want to—"

"No, hey, I get it, man," Jack said, turning to accept his glass with a little nod of thanks. "An Evans Family get-together is a lot. She's worried about you and, you know… expressing it."

"I'm…" The old impulse, to say I'm fine and walk away, was right there. Tip of his tongue. But he could imagine how Esther would look at him over the top of her glasses if he did. He scratched at his beard, looked down at his feet. "I appreciated the invitation. But I just think it'd be a little too much for me right now. Too much, too soon. Maybe in a little while."

Jack shrugged. "Like I said, I get it. Shame about missing out on that brisket, though."

Robby snorted a laugh. "That is sadly true."

The next night, Jack came home from a swing shift irritated and wearing a different set of scrubs than the ones he'd had on when he'd left the house—at least a size too small for him, a couple of inches too short in the leg, and the turquoise of an L&D nurse instead of an ED physician's black.

Robby looked up from his book, took off his glasses in order to better appreciate the sight. "I could ask, or I could not ask."

"Do not," Jack said crisply as he marched from the front door straight down the hallway and into his bedroom. After a few minutes, Robby heard the shower start up. By the time it turned off again, Robby had moved over to the sofa, queued up Back to the Future on the TV, and had a plated sandwich, a large bowl of popcorn, and two beers set out on the coffee table.

"Ugh, yes, thank you," Jack said when he reappeared, now in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that said Pittsburgh Blues and Roots Festival across the chest. "You know the way to a man's heart."

Robby felt his cheeks heat; reached for a fistful of popcorn to try to disguise that as Jack set his crutches to the side and flopped down on the couch next to him. "Nah," he mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn.

"Pfft," Jack said, and poked him in the side, and Robby felt so suddenly, inexplicably confused that all he could do was start the movie.

"Can I ask you something?" Robby said to Esther during their next session. He folded his arms, jogged a foot up and down, looked out through the big office window to the view beyond: a carefully manicured lawn and a parking lot. "But it's not... I'm not sure if it's a therapy thing, per se."

"So ask," Esther said with a shrug. Today's pantsuit was teal green, her red fingernails barely more lacquered than her hair was. His Bubbe would have approved. "What's the harm in asking?"

Robby had spent the last two nights turning things over in his head as he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He wasn't a stupid man, he didn't think, but he was a confused one. Noelle, Rachel, that redhead at the ACEP conference in Philly: no one could say that he'd been a monk this past year, and he didn't think that even Noelle could have any real complaints about how un-monkish he'd been. He liked to think he was, well, generous in bed. But had sex with any of those women been about desire, or about scratching an itch? Going through the motions, because he knew they were attractive and into him and why not try to get out of his head for a bit?

And if Robby didn't always get hard, or couldn't always come, if sometimes he was happy to simply eat them out until they were sleepy and smiling and sated, shuddering apart under his hands—well, he was getting older. Fifty-ish. These things happened.

But the past few weeks, it had felt like his libido was shuddering back into life, like his body was relearning how to want something other than quiet and sleep. Maybe it was a side effect of the meds kicking in, though Robby knew well that SSRIs tended to dampen sexual desire, not to increase it. But equally he knew that this was more than just him waking up with morning wood again. It was him noticing physical things about Jack—noticing him, Robby's best friend of a decade's standing—in ways that were increasingly difficult to deny.

He'd get distracted by the sight of a trickle of sweat running down the nape of Jack's neck; Jack's hands as he chopped vegetables for dinner, his movements deft and sure. Yoga was an occasional pleasant release for Jack and increasingly a torment for Robby. When Jack fell asleep slumped next to Robby on the couch, the warmth of his body had Robby's skin prickling with real heat.

Robby wasn't just waking up hard in the mornings again. He was getting into the shower and jerking off and imagining that it was Jack's big hand wrapped around his cock and coming on a shattered gasp.

It really could just be an odd side-effect. The misfirings of a brain that he was trying to hard reset after all this time. Physiology was a spectrum. And yet.

He scratched at his beard, made himself look over at Esther. "Is it possible for someone to… to actually figure out something new about… about what they're into when they're in their fifties? Like, sexually? The types of person they might be into. Or is it just wishful thinking? Meds fucking things up?"

Esther looked at him steadily for a long moment, and then took her glasses off. "And you think this isn't a therapy question, Michael?"

Any chance I can tempt you out of your cave for a coffee?

Jack doesn't live in a cave, Robby wrote back, and met up with Dana the next morning. Not at their usual place—too close to the hospital for Robby's comfort—but at some hole-in-the-wall spot that Dana suggested, near to where her sister lived.

"It's tiny," Dana said, "but it's got two things going for it. It ain't trying to be trendy, and it does proper Italian-style stuff, like I was raised on."

Robby's regular black coffee was blisteringly strong, even by the standards of someone who'd been working in EM for thirty years. He winced at the first mouthful. "You were raised on this stuff?"

"What? Puts hair on your chest," Dana said, taking a sip of her own drink. She leaned back in her chair, looked Robby over the same quick, focused way she might triage a patient. "You're looking good, cap. Little bit less like a strong breeze would knock you sideways."

"Would we call that a compliment?"

Dana snorted.

For the first time since he'd turned his bike back east, Robby felt able to ask some questions about how things were going in the Pitt—felt like he could stand to hear the gist, at least, without it being a slap in the face, or an elbow jabbed into a fresh bruise. "Are things, you know…" he said eloquently, fiddling with the handle of his coffee mug. "I mean, with Dr Al-Hashimi and, and…"

Dana cocked her head. "You haven't been talking to Jack, huh?" Her tone was that rare thing for Robby when it came to her: difficult to interpret.

"Meaning what?"

Dana's expression went innocent in a way that clearly wasn't trying to be all that convincing. "You should check in with your boy."

For once, Robby actually had things on his to-do list other than therapy: a dental cleaning, a haircut, picking up some underwear and t-shirts to supplement the limited supply he'd packed for his trip. By the time he got back to the house, Jack had already left for work. Earlier than Robby had thought he was scheduled for, but it didn't seem like it was because of an emergency. There was a Post-It note on the kitchen counter that simply said Dinner in fridge. See you tomorrow. :)

Robby resisted the urge to message Jack. If it was something bad, genuinely bad, Dana would have told him. Something could be important, serious, without being bad. Whatever it was, it would definitely be better to talk about it in person. Robby told himself all of that, and was still distracted enough that he couldn't concentrate on the movie he was trying to watch.

Around eleven, he gave up and went to bed. If the ED was slated for closure, he told himself as he brushed his teeth, or if mortality rates had skyrocketed in his absence, or if the fucking squirrels were nesting in the ceiling void again, Jack wouldn't have kept that from him.

You haven't been talking to Jack, huh?

Robby had to punch the pillow several times before he could finally settle down to sleep.

Robby was wrangling some laundry when Jack got back the next morning, once again later than usual. He was still in his regular scrubs and didn't look either pissy or like he was upset about something and trying to hide it, so Robby tried not to read too much into that.

Or he didn't, anyway, until Robby stepped into the kitchen and said, "Late again, huh? Getting to be a habit, Dr Abbot."

Robby had meant that as a joke, nothing more, but an expression flashed across Jack's face—guilt? What the hell did Jack have to be feeling guilty about when it came to his work hours? Unless he'd somehow followed up on his suggestion of picking up some locum shifts at Presby, which was a thought that made some kind of weird jealousy flare up in Robby's gut.

"You, uh, you have a good shift?" Robby asked as he popped some bread in the toaster when Jack showed no signs of saying anything. You should check in with your boy.

"It was fine." Jack stuck his head deep into the fridge, as if the milk had somehow become impossible to find.

"Okay," Robby said carefully, trying to think what his next foray could be, but then Jack popped back up and peered at him like a prairie dog in a PBS nature documentary that had scented danger on the wind.

"You been talking to Dana?" Jack's eyes narrowed further. "Dana been talking to you?"

"Dana seemed to think maybe I haven't been talking to you enough," Robby said slowly. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and folded his arms. "Jack?"

Jack huffed, closed the fridge door, cracked his neck.

"Jack?" The toast popped up; Robby ignored it.

"Okay, okay…" Jack took a seat at the kitchen table, gestured for Robby to take the seat opposite him. Robby sat. Jack sighed. "Hear me all the way out on this before you say anything. You remember how we watched that movie a few years ago, with the popes and the elections and shit?"

It took Robby several seconds to switch mental gears from PTMC to Hollywood. "Conclave? What the fuck does that have to do with—have you started going back to church or something?" Jack had been an avowedly lapsed Catholic for as long as Robby had known him. He didn't bring up the Church often, but when he did it was in pretty caustic terms.

Jack snorted. "Fuck, no. No. Just, you remember how when we watched it and you made that crack about Vatican politics? And then I said shit, you think that's bad, you try enlisting in the U.S. military for a month and see if—"

"Jack."

Jack's jaw worked. He stared down at the kitchen table. "Senior management's been looking for its pound of flesh lately, or a blood sacrifice to the budget gods, or whatever, and with you away and uh, well, with some other recent personnel changes—and bees protect the hive, man, so—"

"For fuck's sake, spit it out."

Jack closed one eye. "If I was to tell you that I'm, uh, the Acting Chief of the ED…"

Robby's jaw dropped. "You?"

"Me."

"You once told me that budget spreadsheets gave you anaphylactic shock. You once turned to a whole ACEP panel and—"

"I don't think I put it exactly like that."

"Yes, Jack, you did." Robby cocked his head. "What happened to the guy who never, ever wanted to be in any kind of managerial position because, and I quote again—"

Jack looked up and met Robby's eyes. "He paid attention to what way the wind was blowing. I heard a few of the names that were being floated around to bring in, looked into them a bit, and no way, no how. You'd flip and I'd walk. And if the options on the table are either MBA/MDs who've made a career out of slashing and burning, or someone like Baran, where I don't doubt her skills as a clinician but where her CV falls short of what we need just to keep our accreditation? Well…" Jack spread his hands wide.

Robby stared at him.

"Dana keeps calling it a coup," Jack said, sounding sulky. He folded his arms. "It was not. I, uh, had some conversations with people, confidentially, and I talked Gloria around to my way of thinking, kind of, and then it was a matter of—"

Robby felt his jaw drop. "Jesus, you did do a coup."

"Well, and what?" Jack looked away. "The way I figured it, Norris and the other bigwigs want one of three things. One, they're looking to downgrade the whole hospital, jettison the ED so they can wriggle free of EMTALA and focus on higher profit margins in ambulatory surgery or whatever. Two, they'll keep the ED open but they'll contract it out to some Randian wet-dream management company so that it can be sliced and diced more effectively. Or three…" A shrug.

"Or?"

"They were trying to force you out. Trying to find some plausible-seeming excuse to not have you come back from the sabbatical, or sideline you, or…" Another shrug. "You push and you ask for things and you have a nasty habit of saying the quiet parts out loud, Rob. And you're a fucking great doctor, but you're not so hot at the diplomatic shit."

Robby made a low noise of frustration. "I'm a physician, not a—"

Jack flicked a hand. "We've had that discussion a million times, let's take it as read. But the plain truth is that you haven't exactly prioritised playing nice with others the last few years. People respect your skills, sure, but do you think Eileen Shamsi would go to bat for you? Or McGregor? Joon?"

"And they would for you, is that what you're saying?"

"This isn't about me," Jack said with a shake of his head. "None of this is about me. This is just me being the biggest, bluntest obstacle I can turn myself into, because they can force you out and still hold onto some shreds of shakily plausible deniability, the hero doctor of PittFest be damned, but get rid of the disabled vet as well and—"

Robby sucked in a breath. "Jack, you wouldn't."

"Like fuck I would," Jack said evenly. "I'd walk away in a heartbeat, brother. And I'd take a couple of things with me when I was heading out the door, and I'd drop them in the lap of some eager beaver over at the Post-Gazette. You think I don't know where a few of Norris' bodies are buried?"

"So all this time when I thought you were just picking up swing shifts to help out, you were—"

"Mostly sitting in your office and swearing at spreadsheets and whatever the fuck mail merge is, yeah," Jack said. "I went in early yesterday because there was a FIRM conference. And this isn't…" He let his head roll back, stared up at the ceiling, huffed. "Look, if you decide you don't actually want to come back to PTMC, or you decide you don't want to be Chief anymore or whatever, that's fine. You don't owe anyone anything, me included. It's your decision to make. But I want it to be your decision, not one that's forced on you by some Wharton grad dipshit on the twelfth floor who's pissy because you want people to live even if they don't have a credit card they can hand over before we'll crich 'em."

Robby leaned forward, put his head in his hands. He thought back over the last year. Hindsight, more sleep, the meds in his system, Jack's words—with any or all of these, it was easier to see some things now that he'd missed before. He hadn't been totally blind. It had always been plain that Norris was happy to call Robby a rockstar in public, but far less eager to loosen the purse strings in private.

But shit, all the rest of it? Robby had been so focused on wading through the mire these past few months, so desperately trying not to lose his footing, that he'd been caring too much and not enough at the same time. Blaming himself for every DOA trauma that was wheeled through the Pitt's doors; shrugging his shoulders at every sign that he was being outmanoeuvred by administrators who saw the world as made up of cells in a spreadsheet, not of people. Where had that left him? Unable to protect his ED when it needed him the most.

"Fuck," Robby spat.

"That about sums it up," Jack agreed.

"What do I do," Robby said, picking at a cuticle, "if I want something but I don't want it at the same time?"

"It depends on what the thing is," Esther said. Today's suit was a plain, pale grey but her blouse was covered in an extravagance of pink polka dots. "Something tells me you're not talking about a tuna fish sandwich."

"Going back to PTMC," Robby said, then winced. He hadn't meant to say it so bluntly. He took a breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I like the work."

He thought about the pride that came with seeing a difficult concept click for a student for the first time; the unmatched rush that came with securing an impossible airway. Knowing, without any doubt, that you'd helped someone.

"I like it. I'm good at it. But I… I think I hate my job?" He let the air escape from him, a controlled exhalation. "I think I hate my job."

"Can you tell me," Esther said, "what it feels like to want something that you hate?"

"Wanna go see Dippy?" Jack asked on Wednesday afternoon. It was his day off, and Robby didn't have therapy, and the weather was just unseasonably dreary enough to make a walk or work in the garden seem like unappealing ideas.

"Trying to relieve the middle school glory days?" Robby asked as he stuck a bookmark into his book and set it down on the coffee table.

"The day I'm too old for dinosaurs," Jack said, very seriously, as he grabbed his truck keys from the hall table, "is the day I'm too old for life. C'mon."

Robby couldn't remember what grade he'd been in when he'd first come on a class trip to the Museum of Natural History. It felt like there'd been a time when it had been a yearly trip, an easy place for overworked school teachers to corral giddy students—at least until they hit high school and then everyone was too cool and too grown-up to care about dinosaurs.

But Jack was right: you were never really too old for dinosaurs. Sure, maybe the dioramas seemed sillier than they once had, but how could you not find Dippy impressive? Robby stood there, hands in his pockets, and craned his neck back to try to take in as much of the skeleton as possible while standing as close to it as he could. A hundred and fifty million years old. It was a span of time that was difficult to wrap your head around. And here it still was: clean, dark bone lofted up overhead, an elegant line from neck to tail that encouraged you to imagine what this animal might have once been.

Jack leaned in and murmured, "You ever get the urge to see if The Flintstones had it right? See if you could play its spine like a xylophone?"

Robby had to smother a laugh. "Don't get us kicked out of a major cultural attraction, please."

"Wimp," Jack said, with a glint in his eye that was way too attractive for Robby's good.

They ambled along at each other's side as they looked at the gems and the geological samples and the other dinosaur specimens and bickered gently, just for the hell of it, about whether a velociraptor or a T-rex would win in a fight. Robby swore that he had physics on his side; Jack put his faith in the evidentiary power of Jurassic Park. By the time their debate came to a grudging draw, they were in one of the interactive play areas. It was intended for families, but it was mid-afternoon empty, so Jack and Robby lingered and explored the specimens and the kid-friendly mini experiments.

On one of the walls, in large capital letters, was printed SLOW DOWN. LOOK CLOSELY. TOUCH EVERYTHING.

Jack cocked his head to one side. "I can't decide if that's a good general life motto or not."

"Guaranteed to keep the Pitt in business." Robby hitched a shoulder. "Touch the superglue to see if it's dry. Touch the lawnmower blades to see why they aren't spinning. Touch the—"

"You ole cynic, Michael Robinavitch," Jack said, sounding delighted, as they headed back towards the entrance. "Where's your whimsy?"

"I have whimsy!" Robby insisted, and to prove his point he bought them each an overpriced stegosaurus-shaped lollipop in the museum gift shop.

"Sweet, strawberry flavour!" Jack unwrapped his and popped it in his mouth as they crossed the street to where he'd parked the truck. He looked over at Robby as they walked and grinned around his mouthful of sugar-y dinosaur, happy and unselfconscious and oh, Robby thought, instinctively smiling back.

Well, okay, shit. This wasn't just down to him recognising that Jack was attractive.

Elaine and Jack had never given the same story twice when asked about how they met. They'd look at one another and grin and say: oh, in a too-long line for the restrooms at a Pearl Jam gig; when Jack was the best man for his cousin, and Elaine was the chief bridesmaid for her oldest friend, and their eyes had met across a crowded dance floor; when they each got given the other's dry cleaning by accident; on a beach in Miami at sunset, and on, and on.

Even Robby didn't think he'd ever heard the true story, though he suspected it was something fairly mundane. Jack's first army base had been within spitting distance of Elaine's home town. He was a handsome young soldier; she was pretty and working part-time towards her education degree. A baseball and apple pie romance. It would have been stranger if they hadn't fallen for one another.

All those fictional meet-cutes were part of some venerable in-joke of theirs, getting on for a decade old by the time Robby first knew them.

"Don't you ever get tripped up on them?" Robby had asked Jack once, when they'd maybe had a few beers more than they should have at one of the PTMC fundraiser galas. "Which story you told who when?"

"Eh, who cares?" Jack said. "Commitment to the bit, that's what a successful marriage is built on."

"Sure," Robby said, dry, before taking another pull of his beer.

"Well," Jack said, listing into Robby ever so slightly. "Technically, it's honesty. That's what got us through when I was transferred back from Landstuhl and I was being a whiny little piss-baby."

"Jack," Robby said, appalled, "You lost a leg, you could have—"

"Yeah, and Elaine will tell you I was no fucking stoic about it. She told me I was being a piss-baby—"

Robby had met the woman; he was sceptical. "Elaine did?"

"Well, not in so many words," Jack conceded. "But we had to use our words and shit. No way around that part. Marriage, man."

"I'm starting to wonder why you picked EM over psychiatry," Robby said. "These kinds of insights…"

"You laugh now," Jack said, gesturing at Robby with his beer bottle, "but one day you'll admit I'm right. Honesty. The only way out is through."

Jack insisted that a watched chili pot never finished cooking, so they were out on the porch, watching dusk draw in across the neighbourhood. From a few houses down came the sound of a barking dog and laughing children. It was a nice evening. Robby couldn't stop wringing his hands together.

"There's something I want to talk to you about," Robby said into the quiet. Want was maybe too strong a word for it. In fact, he'd have happily never talked about any of this shit ever again—but the longer that Jack went as Acting Chief without being aware of it, the guiltier that Robby felt.

Jack shot a look at Robby out of the corner of his eye. "That's your serious voice. If this is you making another attempt at paying for the utilities, then buddy, thank you but—"

"No. Nope," Robby said. He scrubbed his hands over his face. "It's only, if you're Chief—"

"Acting Chief."

"—there are some things you should know."

"Listen, between Dana, Lena and Gloria I got a crash course in the essential paperwork, it's—"

"Not that," Robby said. There was a lump in his throat that he supposed came from nerves. "Some stuff that's not documented anywhere."

Jack's expression shifted, went keener. "Oh?"

"Langdon."

"Ah." Jack sighed, relaxed back into his chair. "Listen, I've been keeping an eye on the kid. Best as I can tell, he's been doing the work, all of his tests have been clean—"

"Stuff that's not documented and... and that you don't know about."

There was a long pause. "Tell me."

"He was using, he was diverting. You know that much."

"I do," Jack agreed evenly.

The urge to get up and walk away was incredibly strong, but Jack needed to know exactly how much Robby had fucked up. Robby respected him too much to keep the whole of it from him any more. "The whole reason I found out about that was because on her very first shift, Santos spotted that he'd been adulterating meds. Tampering with the vials, swapping in saline solution, putting them back."

Jack let out a low whistle.

"Yep," Robby said.

"What did the audit show?" Robby didn't answer, and didn't answer, and Jack leaned forward and said, low and urgent, "Jesus Christ on a bike, you didn't do a drug audit?"

"I asked Dana to do one!" Robby said, stung. "Of course I did. But then PittFest happened, and she walked out of that door and didn't come back for a month and there were fifteen fucking million other urgent things to do all of a sudden and who could I ask?"

"Lena," Jack said, without a hint of a pause. "Bridget. Fucking hell, you could have asked me."

Robby looked down at the grass, shrugged. His shoulders ached. "After a few days it felt like too much time had gone by, and anyway, I didn't want to ruin his whole life. I wanted him to get help. I—"

He clamped his mouth shut. Reasons, or excuses?

"And what about the people he hurt? C'mon, Robby, I know you've asked yourself this question." There was a clear thrum of anger in Jack's voice. Fuck. "No audit and he's still got his license and I haven't heard shit about any disciplinary processes so I'm guessing you didn't report him. The fuck? How many patients did you, or I, or any of us, give fucking salt water to when we thought we were actually helping them, huh? How many seizures—"

"I don't fucking know," Robby said, and he could feel tears running down his cheeks. He'd been trying to help people, and he'd unknowingly been presiding over more hurt; he'd tried to do right by a student of his, and it'd be blood on his hands when Langdon relapsed and someone else got hurt, someone died; and Monty would be so disappointed in him, he'd be so, so—

"I don't—" Robby was gasping now, the heel of one hand pressed to his chest. Panic attack, he thought vaguely. "I fucked up, Jack, I, I fucked up, I fucked up—"

Jack's arms were around him, wrapping him up, tugging him against Jack's chest. Robby went rigid at first, tried to pull back, but Jack didn't let go and all the fight went out of Robby all at once. Limp, he pressed his face into Jack's shoulder and sobbed and sobbed. It hurt. He was a screw-up, a fuck-up, a waste of everyone's time. He'd broken the oaths he'd made in every way that counted.

"You've been carrying this all by yourself? For a year?" Jack's voice had gentled. "Shit, brother. Learn to share the load." Jack rubbed circles into Robby's back, almost hypnotic in how regular they were.

Robby wanted to close his eyes and just stay there in that sensation forever. He sat up; he wiped the tears from his cheeks. Raspy, he asked, "Does getting into a yelling match about it in the ambulance bay with Dana count?"

Jack snorted. "You know the answer to that one." He didn't look bothered by the mess Robby had made of his t-shirt, soaking the sleeve through with tears and snot; the anger had faded from his face, but left behind was an exhaustion and a sadness that were almost worse to look at. Robby knew that he'd put it there. "It's too late to report him now. Not without it blowing up in other people's faces even worse."

Robby nodded. This was his to carry. He didn't want it causing any issues for Jack or Santos or Dana.

"But I'll know what to keep an eye out for. Thank you for telling me," Jack said. He took an audible breath. "Look, I want to believe that Langdon can make a go of it, but if he fucks up again, I will report him and I won't hesitate."

"I know you wouldn't." Because Jack was the braver of the two of them—the better man—and always had been.

One of the fucking awful things about all of this, something Robby never thought he'd see as a downside, was the fact that his sleep habits kept steadily improving. No more passing out for eleven, twelve, thirteen hours at a stretch and waking up groggy and exhausted still. No more having to keep the TV on, or an audiobook playing, to get him to sleep and to keep him there.

"You know, when Bernie put his back out a few years ago, he didn't sleep for a week, and neither did I," Esther said. Today's suit was a deep, saturated yellow that made Robby think of one of the prairie flowers that bloomed in Jack's garden. "Most people would think a simple, solid eight hours is a good thing."

"Yeah, but it gives me more time to think about things I don't necessarily want to think about," Robby said.

Esther stared at him silently for a long moment before arching both of her eyebrows at him over the tops of her glasses.

Robby flushed. "Yeah, well, therapy is different."

"Oh, sure," Esther said dryly. "Covered by insurance, for one thing."

August ripened toward September, the last few weeks of the summer gilded by a stretch of the kind of weather that was bound to bring a surge in ED visits. Heat stroke and dehydration and sunburns; broken bones from slips by the pool and drownings from slips into the pool; concussions from flipped four wheelers and trampolines; and on, and on. Any other year, Robby would have been right in the middle of the action. Now he got to sit back and watch as Jack pushed himself through it: work, work, work.

Robby didn't expect that Jack would have time to think about or do much of anything outside of work, not until the schools started back. Jack seemed to have other ideas.

It took Robby a while to realise what the difference was one morning, leaning on the kitchen counter and drowsily drinking his coffee and watching as Jack cooked up a hash for breakfast. Jack was partway through some story about an old army buddy of his and a game of darts, gesturing with the spatula to make a point, when the caffeine finally kicked in.

"You're not wearing your ring," Robby blurted out.

Jack went still.

Probably not enough of the caffeine had kicked in.

Jack coughed and started to stir the hash again. "Yeah, I... Today would have been twenty years, you know. If."

If was such a little word that could hold so much within it: a whole other life where Elaine had realised she needed something more than plenty of cranberry juice, or had decided to go to Urgent Care instead of waiting to see if it had cleared itself up by Monday, or had been seen by a physician who'd recognised the signs of septic shock more quickly.

If.

"And I thought, you know," Jack went on, staring down at the skillet like his life depended on it, "that's a grown-ass human, that's a nice round number, I think I can call it now."

Robby took a sip of his coffee. He'd seen first-hand how Elaine's death had hollowed Jack out; had been there to help when, eighteen months after her death, Jack had finally been able to empty out her side of the closet and the bathroom vanity, and to box up her clothes to take to Goodwill. He said, carefully, "That's big."

"It is and it isn't," Jack said, then let out a painful-sounding laugh. "Don't tell my therapist you heard me say that."

"Any particular reason?"

"Too fucking many to count, brother," Jack said, still not meeting Robby's eyes, and started to plate up the food.

Esther had him make lists. One of them was made up of people he wanted to talk to; another was people he needed to talk to. There were some people who were on one list (he'd have heard from the super if something had gone very wrong with the condo, but he should check in with Whitaker at some point all the same), some who were on both (Jake; his mother, as impossible as that was), some who surprised him by being on neither (Heather; he guessed they really had covered all the important things in the back of that ambulance).

Jack's was the first name on both.

"I know you enjoy telling me why you think I assign you certain exercises." Today, Esther was resplendent in raspberry pink, with nails to match. "You want to explain this one to me?"

"Anyone ever tell you you can be a little, uh, acerbic?"

"And I know we've talked about the deflection habit," Esther said. "I take notes, I can give you dates."

Robby sighed. He waited. Esther didn't say anything. "You want me to think about a tendency to deflection and isolation and a paradoxical desire to be seen?"

"A tendency?" Esther said mildly. "Does that tendency belong to anyone in particular?"

Robby sighed again.

It was hardly the first time he'd been accused of avoidance over the years, and like always that accusation made him itchy. For some reason, no one ever wanted to acknowledge the times that Robby had faced things head-on. He preferred to think that he picked his battles.

So if Esther wanted him to figure out exactly what he was thinking about Jack, fine, Robby could work on that part. His laptop may have been gathering dust back in his condo, but Robby had a smartphone and a wifi connection and a steadily growing fascination with Jack's Cupid's bow and what it might feel like against his own mouth. For empirical purposes, he told himself that night when Jack was safely at work and Robby was tucked up in his bedroom, he could look up some stuff online.

He needed to figure out if he was confusing gratitude toward Jack with something more than it was—if his body was so stupidly greedy for any kind of welcome physical touch, so baffled by being continuously around someone in a warm, safe place that it was making lust out of friendship. Could he even be into men, properly? A couple of tipsy kisses at a party during med school surely didn't count. Maybe, Robby thought as he scrolled through the search results, none of this would do anything for him.

A gasping half hour later, Robby tapped pause on the last video. Frozen now on his phone screen was a slightly blurry image of a man on all fours, his head thrown back mid-enthusiastic moan while his ass was being eaten. With his broad shoulders and salt-and-pepper curls, he looked just different enough from Jack to confirm to Robby that the guy thing wasn't going to be an issue, but just enough like Jack to strip away the last shreds of plausible deniability.

Now what did he do?

Robby rolled out of bed and into the en suite. He cleaned himself up, washed his hands, took a long look at himself in the mirror. What did he see? A tired and sad fifty-something with thinning hair and a greying beard. Maybe not quite as tired and sad-looking as he'd been a few months ago, but still no one's idea of a real catch. He knew he'd do for something casual, but would anyone want him for longer than six weeks?

Jack finally taking his ring off didn't necessarily mean that he was ready to think about a new relationship, and it said nothing at all about whether he was into—could be into—other men. Robby tried to picture what would happen if laid it all out on the table for Jack—the way his face would crease up with laughter at the obvious joke before going blurred with pity.

And still Robby wanted to talk to Jack. Needed to talk to him.

He just had no idea what to say.

Jack came one evening with a bag of Chinese takeout so hefty it made a thunk when he set it on the kitchen table.

"This is giving me flashbacks to when you were carb loading before that marathon," Robby said, watching wide-eyed as Jack unpacked at least three different kinds of noodles, plus a bunch of other stuff. "The hell, Jack? This is enough food for six people."

Jack was pink-cheeked. He'd probably been pushing himself too hard at work lately; Robby worried that he was coming down with something. "So I couldn't make my mind up, so we eat leftovers for a few days, sue me."

They sat down to eat. They talked about Jack's options with his truck lease soon to be up, they traded cartons of food back and forth, they shook their heads over the misery that was the Pirates' starting line-up. And then, stomachs full and the light fading outside, Jack fiddled with his chopsticks and cleared his throat and said, "Um. I've been wanting to talk to you about something. If that's cool with you."

Robby leaned back in his chair. "Okay?"

"When you really started planning your trip, like in detail," Jack said, "when it seemed like you were genuinely going to leave, I started researching it a bit. The places you said you were going. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and all of that."

Robby rubbed at the nape of his neck. "I'm not going to—"

"No, I know that," Jack huffed. "I'm trying to say something here, if you'd let me?"

Robby made a little have at it gesture with his hand.

"I crossed a lot of Alberta using Google Street View, and I was taking these notes and... Well, anyway, the main thing is that I told Pete about this and he had some questions."

"Okay," Robby said slowly. He didn't get why Jack would have told his therapist about any of this, or what questions the guy could have about Robby's abortive vacation—unless he was thinking about heading to Canada himself? "I mean, I didn't get very far, but if he's looking for advice about places to stay between here and Indiana—"

"I'm coming at this all wrong." Jack stood, went to one of the cupboards, and pulled out some tupperware to use for the leftovers. Robby waited. Jack was frowning down at the containers as if they'd personally offended him, his nose twitching every so often. Robby was long familiar with that expression: that was Jack working through something, winnowing down possibilities and diagnostic pathways until only one option remained.

Eventually Jack came back to the table, sat, and without any preamble said, "Pete knows a lot about you. Not just the motorcycle-Canada-dream quest bullshit. He knows that I've watched fucking endless Columbo reruns because of you. He knows what type of creamer you like, because I keep it in my fridge all the time even though I think it's disgusting. He knows why you're my emergency contact. He knows, uh, he knows..." Jack flattened his hands against the table top.

"Jack..." Robby was faintly bewildered.

"Pete knows I'd have gone with you on that whole fucking trip if you'd ever asked me. Not because I was worried about you, or not just because I was worried about you, but..." Jack chewed on his lower lip. "Pete also thinks I have trouble telling instead of showing."

"Not trying to gang up on you," Robby said, "but I kind of have to agree with Pete on this one."

Jack shot him a look.

"How about this," Robby said, "how about instead of telling me what your therapist knows about me, you tell me what the issue is here? Pretend I'm a patient you don't like. You never have a problem giving it to them straight."

Jack snorted. "Okay. Okay, none of this is... is me, uh, making a claim or, or assuming anything. You don't owe me anything. And I get that with you staying here right now, maybe this gets uncomfortable and I'm sorry about that, but if I don't say this now—"

"Jack."

"Over the past year, I have developed some..." Jack squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them, and met Robby's gaze directly. "I love you. In the, I'm in love with you sense."

Robby gaped at him. "But I'm fucked up."

Jack shrugged. "You're you." There was a long pause. "Anyway, I needed to say it and I thought you deserved to know and hell, telling you cuts down on the number of things Pete yells at me about by at least one. So, uh, that's it. Good talk." He gathered up the leftovers, carried them over to the counter, started decanting them into the tupperware.

"Good talk?" Robby echoed, staring over at him. "Good talk? That's it?"

The line of Jack's shoulders was tense. "What else? I'm not going to apologise for it, what I feel for you is one of the best things that's happened to me in literal years, but you're my straight best friend, Michael. I wasn't expecting this was going to be some long conversation or something."

"Why would I ask you to apologise for anything?"

"I'm not—I just said I wouldn't!" Jack stashed the leftovers in the fridge, turned around to glare at Robby. There was a high flush spread across his cheekbones, and Robby's breath caught at the sight of it, and all things considered it was amazing that Esther had never outright laughed in his face.

What a fucking pair they were.

Robby stood and walked over to Jack, who was eyeing him warily. Jack, who was also Robby's best friend. Jack, whom Robby wanted. Whom he loved.

"What?" Jack said, snappish, when Robby was as close to him as they'd been to one another on so many different occasions: in a trauma bay, at a baseball game, on the PTMC roof, on the couch.

"There was also something I've been wanting to talk to you about," Robby said. "Because my therapist's also been hearing a lot about you. Slightly different things."

"Sure," Jack said.

"Kind of embarrassing things," Robby said, voice a low murmur now. He reached out with one hand and touched Jack's cheek, very carefully. Already past the point of plausible deniability now, but he knew he had to keep going, especially given how Jack was staring at him in open disbelief. "See, until not so long ago I would have totally described myself as your straight best friend. Except maybe I'm not that straight. I've, uh, I've been thinking some things, about you." He was aware that his voice was shaking, ever so slightly. This was the best kind of scared he'd been in such a long time. "You can ask Esther, she takes notes."

"Meaning what? You—" Jack's eyes darted back and forth across Robby's face, studying him intently. "If you're fucking with me, I swear to god I will—"

Sometimes you had to figure out the words to say things, and sometimes you had to do them. Robby kissed him. It was the gentlest, most cautious kiss Robby had had in a long, long time. It was the one that made him feel most alive. It was Jack, wrapping his arms around Robby carefully, as if he was afraid that Robby was going to bolt or break or something, and it was the gentle scratch of Jack's stubble beneath his palm, and it was Robby leaning into it, marvelling at how right this all felt.

One kiss bled into the next, into the next, until Robby had to pull away a little to catch his breath, to think. He rested his forehead against Jack's, closed his eyes. "Two steps ahead of me," Robby murmured. Jack had always been the brave one. "I hadn't even worked out what I wanted to say to you. If I should even say it."

Jack let out a shaky laugh, tightened his arms around Robby. "Brother, I'm a sure thing. Been a sure thing for a long time."

And the impossible, incredible thing was that Robby believed him.

Esther didn't seem to find the fact that Jack and Robby had spent a solid hour making out before falling asleep wrapped around one another in Jack's bed as thrilling as Robby did.

She was more focused on the fact that the end of Robby's sabbatical was looming, and that he had some decisions to make. Go back to being the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, same as always, and hope that a simple break had been enough to make a real difference? Go back but only after securing promises of change from Gloria, or requesting formal accommodations? Step down to part-time status? Switch to a purely teaching position? He could stay at PTMC, but he also knew that his reputation was solid enough that he could walk into a job across town at Pitt Med, or even go somewhere else if he wanted.

Leave Pittsburgh. Change of scene; fewer ghosts around every corner.

Or Robby could simply retire. He was getting older; he'd gotten tired. He'd seen enough. Done enough to request emeritus status. Call time and trust he'd already passed on enough. Could he learn to find real pleasure in a life where the biggest decisions were things like whether you wanted to repaint the guest toilet Blue Willow or Clear Pond, or if you wanted to renew your library books today or tomorrow?

"And which of those things do you think is actually likely to happen, Michael?" Today's suit was a sedate navy blue, but Esther's blouse was striped in various shades of orange and cream.

"Well, you tell me," Robby said, waspish.

Esther wrote something in her notebook. "I have to say, by this point, this kind of response on your part seems pretty pro forma."

Robby sighed.

Jack was working a day shift for once. There was an M&M in the morning that couldn't be rescheduled and that was bound to be gruelling, pulling in people from three different departments and with Park and Walsh primed to go on the defensive. As Jack got dressed he grumbled about it all, a steady cadence of who'd even think a double lumen ETT could go there, do they not teach what pharyngeal soft tissue is in anatomy classes any more, for fuck's sake, and Robby said, "Welcome to being Chief, have fun," but pressed a kiss to Jack's cheek and promised that he'd be the one to take care of dinner that evening.

Normally when Robby said that, it meant that Jack would be coming home to takeout or to soup and a sandwich. Today, Robby had decided to do something different.

He got dressed and headed out to the farmer's market, knowing he'd have to be early to get the best produce. Tote bag full to bursting, he paused for a moment trying to remember which corner the meat stand was located in when he realised someone was calling his name.

"Fancy seeing you here!" Cassie McKay smiled up at him from beneath the brim of a baseball cap.

"Hey." Robby returned her smile, hefted his tote bag a little higher for a moment. "Needed to pick up a few things. How've you been?"

"Pretty good, actually," Cassie said, shifting her own bag from one shoulder to the other. "Busy, but you know how it is."

Robby nodded, felt the creaking of the disused mental gears that let him make small talk with co-workers, and said, "Harrison doing well? Your parents?"

"All good. I mean, Harrison's started learning how to play the electric guitar, and he's decided that he prefers body sprays to showers, so my house is also full of horrors. But good. And you're looking well." Cassie looked around, took a step closer, lowered her voice a little. "How were your travels?"

Robby's fingers flexed around the handle of his tote bag, but he'd known he'd get questions like this—and he'd always liked and respected Cassie. Friendship required both give and take. "I, uh, I got what I needed from them. Maybe realised I didn't need to know exactly how close the edge was."

The look of relief that washed over Cassie's face made Robby feel both good and bad, all at once. Softly, she said, "I'm glad you're back with us."

"Getting there," Robby said, rueful.

Cassie nodded. "Understood. And just so you know, if anyone asks me, I didn't bump into a single person at the farmer's market."

"Thank you," Robby said, clearing his throat. "I appreciate it."

Cassie touched the brim of her hat to him in wry acknowledgement. "Okay, it was very good to see you, but I should get this stuff home."

"That is... a lot of spinach," Robby said, raising an eyebrow at the leafy greens which were brimming out over the top of her bag.

"Spinach and cherries," Cassie sighed, and then at the quizzical look on Robby's face went on, "I'm kind of seeing a guy? He's a bit of a health nut, in training for a marathon, and he drinks a lot of these smoothies. Really gross smoothies."

"Spinach and cherries? Together. In the same drink."

"I know! I'm not saying I condone it," Cassie said on a half-laugh. "I'm not even saying it won't become a dealbreaker six weeks from now or six months from now. But for now? He's nice and we're having fun. It's good."

"Spinach and cherry smoothies it is," Robby said.

Robby did a lot of searching online before he started to cook. Temperature, timing, what kind of seasoning and how much. He wasn't shooting for anything fancy—a roast chicken, some cabbage and carrots cooked in the schmaltz, mashed potatoes—but if he was going to do this, he wanted to do this right. Via text, he extracted a promise from Dana that she'd have Jack out the door exactly on time, and left everything chugging along before taking a shower that was as quick as it was thorough.

He was dressed again, had a playlist going through one of Jack's portable speakers and was setting the table by the time that Jack got home.

"Uh," Jack said when he came through to the kitchen and saw Robby taking the roasting pan out of the oven.

"Almost there," Robby told him. "Should be ready by the time you're done with your shower."

"You cooked all of this?" Jack's eyebrows were making a valiant attempt at meeting his hairline.

"And if you don't shower now, I'll have overcooked all of this," Robby said. "Chop chop."

Jack reappeared right as Robby was lighting the candle, his hair curling damp at the nape of his neck. "Did I forget something?" he asked as he rested his crutches against the wall and pulled out his chair. "A birthday or an anniversary or—"

Robby shook his head as he set Jack's plate in front of him. "No, nothing like that. Think of it as a thank you, I guess."

"Shit," Jack said, mouth a thoughtful curve, "all this from a couple of make-out sessions? Who knew that my tongue was capable of so much."

"Not for that, idiot," Robby said, but kissed him on the cheek before he sat himself down.

The meal had turned out surprisingly well. Maybe the vegetables had been in the oven five minutes too long, but everything tasted good, and the red wine Robby had taken a chance on in the store went well both with the chicken and with the brownies he'd bought for dessert.

"I know it wasn't fancy or anything," Robby said. "But it's—"

"Are you kidding me?" Jack pressed his foot against Robby's under the table; he kept looking at Robby, studying his face, with a directness that was flustering. "This is great. This is proper wining and dining. I'm wined, I'm dined, hell, I'm wooed."

Robby felt his face heat.

Jack insisted on helping Robby to tidy up, but they didn't get much past setting the roasting pan to soak in the sink before they got distracted by a song that cropped up on the playlist: an old Jimmy Smith number, soulful and made for slow dancing. They couldn't do that properly, not with Jack on his crutches, but they could wrap their arms around one another and sway together slowly in a kitchen that was turned mellow gold in the evening light.

"Who knew," Jack murmured as the last strains of the song faded away, one warm hand stroking lightly at the nape of Robby's neck, "the rockstar Dr Robinavitch, secret romantic?"

"That's not me," Robby said, resting his forehead against Jack's, "that's not who I am," and Jack seemed to know exactly what Robby meant by that.

"I know. I know who you are, Michael," Jack said, low and earnest. "I know you."

Robby closed his eyes.

Jack took him to bed.

For reasons voiced aloud by neither of them, they'd been taking it slow the last couple of weeks. Jack hadn't been with another guy since he'd met Elaine; hadn't been with anyone since her, period. And some lingering, loathsome part of Robby insisted that fucking someone was what made it real and that as soon as it got real, Jack was going to walk away.

Robby hated talking about sex in therapy.

They'd touched, sure. Glancing touches, lingering touches—a hand brushing over a hip as one passed the other in the kitchen; a head resting on a shoulder as they watched a movie—almost enough of them to sate that constant, shameful, desperate little need in Robby for more. They'd touched and they'd kissed. They'd made out—on the living room sofa, in Jack's truck, pressed up against the wall right inside the front door—until Robby's lips felt swollen and Jack's curls were in disarray. Once they'd even made Jack late for work.

By slow degrees, they'd been getting to this moment: when Jack said, dimpling, "So we've done the wooing part, I think the ravaging part traditionally comes next. What do you say?"

All Robby could do in response was nod.

Words weren't any easier to find when they were sitting on Jack's bed, with Robby already naked and Jack wriggling out of his shorts and tugging his shirt over his head. Robby's mouth went dry. He'd seen penises before, seen Jack shirtless before, this wasn't anything new in theory or in practice—except for how this was Jack getting naked for him. With him.

Getting hard for him. Fuck.

"I've been told over the years," Jack said, a glint in his eye, leaning in to Robby, "that I've got a real big fucking mouth on me. By commanding officers, by handsome chief attendings..."

"They sound like smart people," Robby said, trying to sound cool and wryly amused, but that was difficult with how Jack was stroking his thigh with one big hand.

"Mmm, well, definitely one guy is," Jack said, and there was a look in his eyes that had Robby's traitorous cheeks flushing again. "You want to know something else I've learned over the years?"

"Sure, why not?" Robby said, wry, because there was no chance that Jack was going to keep it to himself.

"I kind of love it when someone else is telling me how to use my big fucking mouth," Jack murmured, still stroking Robby's thigh, rubbing the fine hairs there against the grain. It was amazing how just that one touch, to just that one part of Robby's body, could make him feel so good. "You want to give it a try?"

"Fucking hell," Robby said, and kissed him, and they fell back against the mattress still kissing, pressing together, Robby's arms wrapped around Jack and wanting him close, closer.

"You want to stay like this?" Jack said between kisses, reaching down between them to take hold of Robby's hardening cock and stroke it once, twice. His hand was dry; Robby didn't really give a shit. "Or you want my mouth on your cock? My tongue in your ass?"

Robby closed his eyes, shivered at the heat that a dozen competing images sent rushing through his body. "I can't believe anyone would ever think you have trouble telling instead of showing."

"I contain multitudes," Jack said, sounding very self-satisfied. "And also, we've got options." He pulled away long enough to reach over, open the drawer of his bedside table, and pull out some condoms and a bottle of lube. Robby used the pause to inchworm up the bed so that his head was actually resting on a pillow and his legs weren't dangling off the edge of the mattress.

"You want, um..." Robby's words trailed off as Jack shifted to straddle him, a delicious heft. His hands came up to rest on Jack's thighs, his hips; he relished the prickle of coarse hair, the flex of muscle, the sheer solidity of Jack against him. The man who'd been willing to turn himself into an obstacle for Robby's sake, who'd reached out a hand to help Robby pick himself up, over and over.

"Sure," Jack said.

"I didn't even say anything," Robby laughed.

"Don't have to," Jack said, his voice a confidential rasp, "whatever you want is what I'm here for."

Robby's grip on Jack's hips tightened. "Dangerous thing to say."

"It's the truth, brother." Jack leaned down, kissed Robby again, rocked against him lazily until they were both gasping from it. He pulled back a little and said, "If you don't have any special requests, you mind if I try out an idea?"

"A Jack Abbot Original, huh?"

Jack grinned. "That what we're calling it? I like that. Sure, okay, I can work with that. You, you I want to lie back and enjoy yourself. Clear?"

"What..." But Jack's plan became clear soon enough as he worked his way down the bed, settled himself between Robby's legs. The idea had Robby's hips hitching, his arousal kicking up another notch.

"So what's going to happen here," Jack said, "is I'm going to suck you off. Which is a thing that me and my right hand have been fantasising about for quite a while—"

"Shit, Jack."

"—so I know I'm guaranteed to have a real good time," Jack said, reaching down between his own legs and Robby couldn't see what he was doing but he could imagine it: tugging at his own hard cock. He hissed. "What I need from you is feedback, okay? I want to know what you're feeling. What I'm doing to you. Every bit of it."

"You want me to talk?"

"Hands in my hair also work," Jack said, "but I kind of want you verbal for this, okay?"

"You are a fucking menace," Robby said weakly.

"That's the spirit," Jack said, and then his mouth was just—oh, talented motherfucker—just taking him in, slow and steady, and Robby panted up at the ceiling, eyes wide. He was, that was perfect, yes—and then Jack was lifting his head. "I thought we had a deal, huh? No slacking off on me, man."

"When do I ever—" Robby swallowed hard as Jack took him back into his mouth, and then winced when Jack flicked him with a finger against the back of his thigh. "Okay, okay, fine, it feels, uh, your mouth feels good? Nice. I like it."

Jack made an affronted noise and pulled away again. "Good? Nice?" He wrapped one hand around Robby's cock, jerked him off once, twice, the right side of too much and too tight. "What is this, a two-star Yelp review? This mouth deserves better than that. You know how to give feedback man, use your fucking words."

"I thought that's what I was doing," Robby said, snippy, but then fuck, Jack was swallowing him down again, taking Robby in so very deep, and Robby swore and said, "It feels good—no, don't—I mean it, I—you think you were the only one jerking off? You know how often I've been in the shower the last few weeks, touching myself and t-thinking, fuck, thinking about your mouth, wanting it—"

With one last luxurious suck to the tip of Robby's cock, Jack lifted his head. "Oh yeah? Am I living up to your imagination?"

"Better," Robby said, hoarse. He reached down and touched Jack's cheek, relishing the way that Jack pressed into Robby's hand without the least hesitation. "So much better, Jack. How could I ever have hoped for you?"

"Easy," Jack said with a shrug, "you have taste." This time when Jack bowed his head, he ignored Robby's cock and started licking and mouthing at his balls instead, and the whole time he was making noises that had Robby's fingers tangling in the bed sheets.

"It, uh, it feels like you're into it," Robby said, forcing himself to keep talking; reaching down and touching Jack's hair, very gently. "And that's hot, thinking that you've been getting off on this, on—" He broke off on a moan as Jack ran one spit-slick finger down to tease at his hole; he could feel tears start to prickle at the corner of his eyes. "—oh fuck, I, you feel so good and Jack, I think I'm going to come and I don't know what would feel better, coming in your mouth or seeing my come on you, I, I want—"

"Shh," Jack said, unfolding himself so that his mouth was level with Robby's and now they could kiss and kiss while Jack wrapped his hand around Robby's cock and stroked him. Robby whimpered. "Baby, it's okay, we've got time, you can have me all kinds of ways, shh, that's right. I'm not going anywhere. It's okay, it's alright, there we go, give it up for me—"

And Robby clutched at Jack's arms and sobbed out his name and came.

Robby's brain came back online afterwards in fits and starts—a slowly growing awareness of how he and Jack were stuck together, pleasantly sweaty and gross; of how Jack's cock was still pressed hard against his belly; of how Jack was lightly stroking the nape of Robby's neck, over and over, the muscles there loosening, relaxing. Robby pressed a haphazard kiss to whatever was the nearest patch of Jack that he could reach. He sighed; he closed his eyes. Robby couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so uncomplicatedly good in his own body.

"We still at the two-star Yelp review level?" Jack said eventually.

Robby slapped him, very gently, on the ass. "Fishin' for compliments," he said, hearing the slur in his own words.

"We call this soliciting honest feedback," Jack said lightly. "It's how we grow as physicians and as people."

Robby snorted. "Uh huh." He stretched and opened his eyes, and would he ever get used to seeing Jack's face like this, so fond and so close? He hoped not. Amazing to think he'd ever harboured a doubt about whether he was genuinely attracted to Jack. "Well, if we're doing skill-building, you want to help me out?"

Jack cocked his head. "I'm listening."

Robby got a hand between their bodies, gave Jack's cock a slow stroke. He delighted in how just that simple touch made Jack shiver. "Well, I've never gone down on a guy before. Teaching opportunity?"

The grin that spread across Jack's face was slow, lazy. He rolled onto his back, stretched his arms wide. "You know what they say, man. See one, do one."

Robby didn't think he was a blowjob savant, but he didn't think he'd done too badly either, for a first time. At the very least Jack didn't seem like he had any major complaints. He'd stared down at Robby the whole time, wide-eyed and his lovely mouth slack, and made a mantra of Robby's name before coming, his thighs shaking beneath Robby's hands.

"Fucking showoff," Jack muttered afterwards into a kiss, and Robby laughed before going to fetch some washcloths.

They drowsed for a while after that, kissing and touching on lazy reflex. Robby would have happily stayed in that bed forever, drifting and content, if his bladder hadn't been insistent that he needed to get up, and if Jack's phone hadn't started ringing with the break-through tone that meant it couldn't be ignored.

Robby hauled himself up off the bed, found the phone in a pocket of Jack's abandoned jeans and handed it over, before heading into the bathroom to piss. Jack was still on the phone when he was done, frowning and saying, "Uh huh" every few seconds, so Robby pulled on a pair of boxers and padded into the kitchen.

The microwave clock told him that it was a little after nine. Robby was starving, the kind of appetite he couldn't remember having in months. He got the leftover chicken and some salad fixings out of the fridge and set about making two hefty sandwiches. He plated them up and carried them and two large glasses of water into the bedroom, crumbs on the sheets be damned; they'd need to be changed anyway.

Robby handed the plate over to Jack right as he finished the call. Jack let out a little groan of satisfaction. "We're going to have to add 'mind-reader' to your list of many talents. I don't know what takes it out of a guy more, sex or having to take a late-night call from Trent Fucking Norris."

Robby wrinkled his nose. "Maybe don't mention him while we're in bed?"

"Noted," Jack said around a mouthful of sandwich. "For future reference."

"Jack got me a new lunch bag for starting back," Robby said. "You know, one of those fancy cloth insulated ones, with the roll top? Says if I am going to go back, I have to make a commitment to actually eating proper food. No more doing twelve-hour shifts on a power bar and some coffee."

"Dr Abbot seems to be a man of rare common sense," Esther said dryly. Today's sage green suit was accessorised with a large gold brooch. "But you know I'm going to follow up as to how, exactly, any of that answers my question."

"Of course you are." Robby looked out the window for a moment. The morning had started out cloudy, but it was picking up now, patches of blue sky visible. In three days, he'd be walking back into PTMC for the first time in as many months. He wouldn't be the same man that he'd been back in July, but he wouldn't be wholly different, either. He was under no illusions about how difficult it would have to be: the work he had to do, the apologies he owed, the things that had to be fixed and the things that couldn't be.

But Robby was more than the work, had more than the work, now. He had the sense that there could be something ahead of him. Being in his body no longer felt like inhabiting one long, slow-rolling panic attack. Sleep didn't feel like an escape anymore; food didn't turn to ash on his tongue. If he hadn't fully untangled the skein of thoughts in his head, well, he felt like the worst of the knots were getting looser. He was learning how to unpick them. He had the promise that someone would stay.

"Yeah," he said. "Yes. I'm ready."