Chapter Text
VII. 2020
By April, the world has settled into a strange, suspended rhythm. It is too soon to glimpse the end, too late to pretend the virus burning through the city will pass quickly, and in the muted glow of Robby’s bedroom, Jack has stopped pretending to read the medical article on his phone. His mind is elsewhere, circling its questions. He wonders, for instance, how long before the worst of this is over, and how long before there are vaccines, and how long they can keep running like this — ever-expanding shifts, dwindling supplies, thinning morale — before running out of breath. He wonders what compelled Robby to text come over before he fell asleep, and why Jack listened: walking to his place after turning over for the dayshift, stripping at the door, showering, and finally climbing into Robby’s bed to surrender to a brief, unguarded sleep.
Except, no — Jack knows why he listened, why he came over, why he always comes when Robby calls. Even if it’s something he keeps circling, still stalling to name, like lingering on the edge before plunging into ice-cold waters. The water isn’t getting any warmer. The truth isn’t getting any easier. Run as much as you can, Jack recalls once thinking to himself, but you’ve never been much of a runner.
Looking at Robby now, watching him lick his thumb before turning the page of the biography he’s reading, Jack wonders now what it might mean to navigate the dark months ahead with Robby, and how long they will keep collapsing into each other at the end of nearly every shift instead of returning to otherwise empty apartments.
It’s been a few months now since Jack and Robby began hooking up. That it might have been, in a certain light, a predictable turn in their relationship is not lost on him. They have their history, of course, but the truth is Jack isn’t in the habit of sleeping with colleagues. Still, there’s a certain ease that comes from the fact that they work together. Robby doesn’t keep the same hours he does, but he doesn’t question them either — doesn’t mind, as so many of his past partners had done, Jack’s absences on weekends and holidays, or the bone-deep exhaustion that clings to him, because Robby feels it, too.
The problem is that convenience doesn’t feel like enough anymore.
Two months ago, when the pandemic began, he and Robby were still circling the edges of what they wanted from each other. On again, off again. Robby going cold whenever one of his tentative attempts at dating looked like it might stick; Jack pulling back when the ache for his wife, or for Robby, or both, rose too close to the surface. Both of them drifting off in search of solace or distraction in others, only to find themselves back where they started. He can’t help thinking that maybe this — whatever this is — needs a conversation, if only to name what they’ve been avoiding.
You’ve never been much of a runner, Jack thinks to himself again, as Robby’s palm settles on his thigh. It’s one of Robby’s rare days off – rarer now, with the hospital devouring their hours – and they have done this before — stayed in bed until midday, stayed in bed at all without first tangling together in heat and urgency.
But Jack had come in so wrung out from his shift that he barely remembered stripping down, barely remembered stepping under the shower. By the time he emerged, Robby was still dead asleep, his face turned toward the morning light creeping in through the blinds, the steady rise and fall of his chest untouched by the fact that it was nearly 8AM then.
Jack could not — still cannot — remember the last time they’d all been worked so thin.
But Robby touches him now, first absently, and then with more intention, his touch an invitation if Jack were only to lean and accept it — his thumb sometimes soothing closer to the sensitive skin of Jack’s inner thigh as he keeps soothing his hand back and forth, back and forth. At last, Jack sets his phone aside, letting the world slip out of reach, and Robby glances up from his book, smiling at him with that open, unguarded look that always lands like a blow. The morning light spilling in from the windows catches the lenses of his glasses, but not enough to hide his eyes, warm and certain as the midday sun outside. Jack feels it then, that familiar pull — his chest tightening, the weight of Robby’s hand searing through him — and it feels though he is still running somehow, even as Robby anchors him in place.
Like everyone around him — every nurse, every tech, every physician — Jack learns to par his life down to the bone. His trips to the gym stop well before it shudders its doors to the public. Tuesday nights with his men’s group vanish until they move online. Even his visits to his sisters dwindle, one by one, until they stop entirely. These are sacrifices, but they feel like luxuries much compared to the sacrifices he and his team continually make at the hospital: the endless shifts, the shortage of beds and ventilators, the quiet, steady knowledge that they are always behind, always fighting uphill with too few tools and too little time and too many patients in need of care.
Jack navigates the chaos at work as best he can, and, given the circumstances, he does it well. He has always had a talent for this, for rising to meet disaster head-on, for finding a strange clarity in crisis and crossfire. He knows how to plant his feet and hold through the storm, to make do with what feel tools he’s given, to keep moving even as the ground tilts and buckles beneath him.
What takes longer to adjust to — and what he fumbles to explain to his therapist these days – is not the chaos or the trauma of the ED, but the silence that follows. The hours when he’s not on call, when there’s no storm to brace against, leave him restless. Like everyone around him, Jack shrinks his circles of potential exposure down as much as he can. The risk is too high otherwise, he knows, and the margin of error too thin. But, unlike Dana or Adamson or most of the people they work with, neither he nor Robby have families to look after, no children or spouses demanding attention or offering support.It is, he knows, a privilege to have no one waiting at home whom he might endanger. It is, he feels, also something like a curse, though he cannot, will not, linger on this.
The rest of his life has narrowed to a thread.
What remains is the work, and Robby. It is the work that holds him together, the rhythm of long shifts and bruising nights, the only place where he feels both useful and alive. And Robby, in his own way, is a tether — something, someone, who reminds Jack of the kind of life he’d like to have one day, the kind of life they’re all fighting to return to. Somehow, it never occurs to Jack that Robby’s company, too, is a luxury until the day he decides it isn’t safe anymore. Until the day Robby tells him they can’t keep this up, not without masks, not without distance, not when they’ve both seen what happens to the ones who let their guard down.
“We both wear N95s. We get tested every week,” Jack tells him, tone even and coaxing. “We’re talking about a 1-1 bubble here, man. The risks are a hell of a lot smaller for us than they are for most people.”
Robby sits back on the couch, runs a hand across his face, trying to gather his words. “And what if one of us gets the other sick?” he asks. “What then? You know what happens when we’re out at the same time, even on a good day. We don’t have enough coverage as it is.”
Jack shakes his head. “I know. I know all that. But that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’re already in the trenches and I don’t think we get through them by stripping away the last good thing we’ve got,” Jack says. “We’re gonna spend months fighting this thing — months at least. Having one person in your corner to keep you tethered and sane and — and close enough to notice when you’re slipping under, that’s not a luxury. It’s how we hold the goddamn line.”
Robby’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t interrupt, so Jack presses on, gentler now. “We don’t get any awards for making an impossible situation harder,” he explains. “And if what’s holding you back is us — well, fuck, I’m not asking you to run down to City Hall with me, Robby. I’m just asking you not to go at this thing alone.”
Robby lets out a breath, presses a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he admits, voice quieter now. “But if we both go down, the ED practically goes down with us. I can't do that to the team. To Adamson. He’s seventy. He could’ve retired. I can’t ask him to hold up the weight of this place without us.”
“Even Adamson’s not doing this alone, though. He’s got a wife and kids — people to go home to. You really think he wants you burning yourself out, trying to carry the load for everyone else?”
“I think he wants me to do my job,” Robby says. “The less risk I take on, the more I can do that, even when other people can’t. Especially when they can’t. That’s the whole damn point.”
“And what if it’s all for nothing?” Jack counters. “What if we keep our distance, play it safer than everyone around us, and get sick anyway? What’ll we have to show for it then? You really think we’ll be glad we spent these months alone?”
“And what if it actually makes all the difference?” Robby asks, giving it right back to him. “What if, when it’s all said and done, we know we could have given more, and we just chose not to? How do we live with that, Jack?”
The silence that follows stretches a beat too long, heavy in the space between them. Jack feels the weight of it settle in his chest — the truth in Robby’s words, as sharp as the truth in his own. There’s no winning this argument, no clear right or wrong, when they are both hedging their bets against the unknown, both trying to hold back the tide, each clinging to what little control they have. The futility of it all tastes bitter on his tongue, and he hates that Robby isn’t wrong, just as much as hates the thought of giving in.
“Look, I’m not asking you to do this my way,” Robby says eventually, voice low. There’s a calm finality to his tone, one that Jack knows well enough by now — it means Robby’s made up his mind. “I’m just trying to do what I need to do to stay steady, that’s all. If you need someone else around to keep you grounded, that’s your call. I know you know what you’re doing.”
“That’s not — you’re moving the damn goalpost, brother,” Jack tells him. He exhales sharply, frustration flickering beneath the ache in his voice. “And fuck you for saying that, man. If I do this with anyone, it’s you or nobody.”
Robby reacts to that. His expression flickers, with something like tenderness or remorse, like he’s sorry for something Jack hasn’t asked him to apologize for. “Then don’t say it like that,” he says. “Don’t do something if you’re just going to turn around and hold it against me later. You wanna talk about making things harder than they have to be —”
“I’m not trying to make anything harder,” Jack says, cutting in. “I’m just trying not to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Robby replies. It’s a response that should infuriate Jack, because they both know he can’t promise that, but he says it so earnestly that it takes some of the fight out of the air when he says it. “I know you think it’s the wrong call,” Robby goes on. “If it is, and I can’t manage it, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
“Sure, if you don’t burn it down first.”
Robby exhales but doesn’t bite back. “I’m asking you to try and back me on this anyway,” he says. “I can’t take you hating me on the other side of this, Jack. You’re my friend. The best one I’ve got.”
Jack doesn’t answer right away. He’s frustrated in a way that only Robby could pull out of him: frustrated that this is what Robby thinks he needs to do, frustrated that he can’t stop him. Because Jack also knows that a man has to survive however he can, that there’s dignity in choosing your own way through, and that, a few years ago, Jack never would’ve imagined being in this situation in the first place. He could not imagine, with any real conviction, that he’d see Robby again, hear his voice, sit across from him like this and get into some useless fight where nobody was entirely in the wrong. And now here Robby is, not asking for his approval, not even for any real sacrifice on Jack’s part — just for his trust. Just for him to stay on his side.
Jack shakes his head once, then rubs at his face with the heel of his hand. “I hate that you do this to yourself,” Jack says, and he sounds exhausted, even to his own ears. “But Jesus Christ, Robby, I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”
And he means it—though conceding is no easy thing, though it means walking back out of Robby’s apartment in the morning, like he’d done all those years ago, with nothing but the faint scent of Robby’s soap on his skin and the ghost of what going through the next months together might’ve meant for them, if only Robby weren’t so hellbent on carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
The disappointment sits heavy at first, sharpening the edges of what Jack feels is an already small life, but he lets it pass. He learns to live within the new boundaries of what their friendship looks like, because beyond the pleasure of kissing him, beneath than the warmth of his bed or his touches, Robby is his friend.
Somehow, it can almost be that simple. Somehow, it can almost be enough. Somehow, it still surprises him, the lengths he’ll go if Robby needs him to — the quiet, unspoken ways he’d give more of himself than he thought he was still capable of offering to anyone, and never resent Robby for the taking.
There is a Vietnamese place on the way to Robby’s apartment that still only offers curbside and takeout, which suits Jack just fine. He waits for two orders of pho, thinking absently about the dull ache in his knees, and through the clear glass of the storefront window, a handwritten sign reads: thank you for helping us stay safe. The woman who carries out his order smiles at him, eyes crinkling above her mask, and when she hands over the bag, their hands brush: Jack’s fingertips, cold from the walk, against the latex touch of her own, warm through her gloves.
It’s nothing, barely a graze. He tips her almost as much as the meal costs.
On the short walk to Robby’s, Jack thinks about how often it’s reversed: his hands gloved, theirs bare. His fingers warm, theirs not. Out of courtesy, or a flicker of sentimentality, or both, he waits until he’s turned the block before he sanitizes his hands.
It’s autumn now, roughly seven months since the hospitals first filled past capacity and everything familiar buckled under the weight of what they could no longer contain. When Jack finished his shift today, there were no cheering onlookers, no strangers banging pots and pans from their balconies and stoops. He doesn’t begrudge it — no one’s doing this work for applause anyway — and it’s natural, he thinks, the way the novelty around frontline workers fades. Still, the ease with which the city let down its guard through the summer had made the waning weeks of August a nightmare. No one wants to say it out loud yet, not even Gloria — who’s had no easy go of it, beginning her tenure at the hospital during COVID — but September looms heavy on all their minds, with schools reopening and another surge already on the horizon.
Jack gets it. The exhaustion. The ache for normalcy. But he also knows how dangerous a false calm can be in a war. He knows that the quiet can become something like bait if you let it, that it’s precisely when you stop looking over your shoulder that you’re most likely offering your back for a punishing blow. But that’s a truth that’s hard to translate to people who don’t have to stand in the crossfire, handle the bodies, listen to laboring breaths.
By the time he reaches Robby’s building, daylight is beginning to wane. He bypasses the main entrance and lets himself in through the side gate they both know the code to. Upstairs, on the rooftop, Robby is already waiting, unfolding two chairs and dragging them apart just enough to maintain a safe distance. He looks up when Jack approaches, giving him a small, tired smile that lands like a balm. There’s something about how he looks when he’s drowsy and they’re alone together — a little more open than usual, a little easier to read — that always hits Jack square in the chest.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Jack says, setting the takeout down between them.
“You feelin’ sore?” Robby replies, a flicker of humor behind the rasp of his voice.
“No more than usual.”
“You could’ve let me handle the food. I offered,” Robby reminds him, and his tone is light, but there is, Jack knows, some real concern behind the comment. He can see it in the way Robby’s eyeing him, like he wants to ask about his leg, about the familiar ache in his knee that’s gotten worse since their shifts started stretching long again.
“Yeah, and I ignored you. As I do,” Jack tells him. “Y’know, leave it to you to laser in on the wrong part of the equation, man.”
Robby smiles at him. “Oh, did I do that?”
“You couldn’t take a compliment if it killed you.”
“That’s not true,” Robby says, lying. “Run it back for me from the top. Lemme try again.”
“No, fuck you. The moment’s passed.”
Robby laughs. “Well, you didn’t specify. Good sight or bad?”
“Terrible,” Jack deadpans, but his smile gives him away.
He looks at Robby then, really considers him. He’s in a hoodie, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the collar of the white t-shirt underneath it loose around his neck. His hair’s soft and a little undone, like he didn’t have the time to dry it properly before Jack arrived. Robby had been in the shower when Jack called to ask if he could come over after his shift. He could hear the sound of water pattering against tile through the phone, stood there by his locker with his phone nestled between his shoulder and his ear and could imagine Robby clearly: water catching on the hair of Robby’s forearm as he reached past the curtain to put Jack on speaker. His skin flushed, because he likes his showers unreasonably hot.
Watching him now in the cool hush of twilight, Jack thinks that if he could only close the space between them and touch him, Robby’s hair might still be cool and damp between his fingers.
In want of something safer to do with his hands, Jack peels back the plastic lid of his pho. The steam rises warm and fragrant into the air, the scent of lemongrass and cilantro curling around his face, and across the distance between their chairs, Robby is already squeezing lime into his soup.
“How was it today?” Robby asks lightly, the way they’ve both learned to ask by now.
“Nothing to write home about. Freed up some beds that got filled immediately. Gloria’s still wrangling to get us more PPE before the end of the week, but the odds aren’t looking good,” Jack answers, cracking his wooden chopsticks apart. “Walsh nearly bit my head off during rounds.”
Robby smiles — whether it’s at the taste of his first spoonful or the thought of Walsh putting him in his place, it’s hard to say. “So, the usual.”
Jack splits his wooden chopsticks apart, rubbing them against each other to catch any splinters. “She would’ve done numbers if she’d enlisted. They’d have fast-tracked her to interrogations. PsyOps, maybe.”
“She’s a trauma surgeon. They’ve all got big personalities.”
“No, Shamsi has a big personality. Walsh has a bloodlust.”
Robby lets out a low whistle, duly impressed. “Those are fighting words, my friend. You’re lucky she’s not around to hear you. What happened this time?”
Jack narrows his eyes at the way Robby says it — a mock note of exhaustion, like he’s heard this one a hundred times before — but the moment’s already softened into something familiar between them. Like he so often does with Robby, he talks openly, and easily, and freely. He tells him everything. “The problem is she always wants to win,” Jack concludes eventually, after a bite of noodles. “It’s like every tricky case we get is some kind of personal showdown. Half the time, it’s not even about the patient — she just wants to see me cave.”
“Brother, at this point, I think she wants to see you buried in a shallow grave.”
Jack snorts. “You and Dana must’ve been talking. She said the same thing.”
“Well, what did you do?” Robby asks. “Emery doesn’t just go around hating people. She treats me just fine.”
Jack straightens, mildly affronted. “Why do you assume I’m the problem?”
“Because you’re the common denominator. Anytime she’s on one, you’re always at the scene of the crime.”
Jack points at him with his chopsticks. “You have no imagination. She cuts into people for a living. Half the time, while they’re unconscious. That kind of crazy can’t be trusted.”
“You cut into people plenty yourself,” Robby says, before Jack’s face suggests he’s missing the point entirely. “Alright, fuck it, I’ll play ball. What did she do?”
“You know what she did.”
“Brother, I really don’t. Nobody does, not even the nurses. I’d ask her myself, but she already thinks I’m on your side.”
Jack considers this. “That’s true. It ain’t thin, but you’re on ice.”
“Guilty by association,” Robby says, leaning back. “Look, she plays it by the book and she’s a little territorial, sure, but the same could be said for half of us. And, to be fair, you didn’t do yourself any favors by flirting with that pharmacist she’s been eyeing since May.”
Jack tilts his head. The trouble is there’s more than one pharmacist. “The tall one?”
“Mm,” Robby nods. “All that charm wasted on someone who couldn’t intubate a mannequin.”
“What, you would’ve preferred I batted my eyes at someone who can?”
“Who said anything about me? This is about you and Walsh.” Robby’s voice is easy, but there’s something in the glance he throws Jack — just a flicker, just enough.
Jack gives him a look. “Uh-huh.”
“Seriously. I don’t care if you flirt with pharmacists.”
“Yeah? And why is that?”
“Well, for one, they’re not your type,” Robby tells him. “At least, Emery’s wasn’t.”
“And you’re the expert on the subject, are you?”
“I never said that,” Robby tells him, “but I’m not a stranger to it, either.”
Jack laughs, enjoying the rare flash of confidence. It looks good on him. “You’re not wrong, big guy.”
Robby shrugs, his cheeks flushing pink, a self-satisfied curve to his lips even as his focus returns to his last spoonfuls of soup. Jack would chalk the faint color in his face to the brisk air, but he knows better — knows that, despite Robby’s general disposition, it doesn’t take all that much to make him blush.
He watches Robby for a moment longer than he has to, warmth unfurling in his chest. A thought creeps in, as it sometimes does, sharp and soft at once. He wonders, not for the first time, where they might’ve been now, if the world hadn’t splintered under the weight of this new virus. If it hadn’t pulled them apart, what might they have built together instead? Would Jack have kept running, had he known then what he knows now, or would he have stopped, named this thing, drawn lines in the sand around the parts of this life with Robby that he did not — does not — want to go on sharing with strangers? Would Robby have begrudged him the request for something more, if only because Jack still wore his wedding band all the while?
Jack exhales slowly, the sound carrying more ache than laughter. It hangs in the air, too thick, like smoke that won’t clear. “We really don’t catch a break, do we?”
Robby tilts his head. “What, you and me?”
“You and me,” he echoes. “First time we meet, I get sent halfway across the world. This time it’s a goddamn plague. We just can’t be in the same room for too long.”
“There’s that optimistic streak of yours that drives me nuts,” Robby says, caught between something like a laugh and a sigh. “We had the summer. Give it a few weeks. Maybe if cases dip again, we can try our luck again.”
Jack nods. Those brief weeks in June when the caseload dipped passed like stolen time. For a little while, Robby had quietly and cautiously begun letting some of his precautions slip. After-shift beers with the team stayed distanced and catch ups with Jake remained outdoors, but with Jack, something gave.
He still remembers how Robby looked the first time they went back to his apartment. How Robby paused once he stepped inside, mask tugged under his chin, his bag slung over a tense shoulder, like he wasn’t sure if this was a good idea after all. Standing there beside him, Jack hadn’t said much at first. He just reached out and touched him, laid his hand on the back of Robby’s neck and lightly squeezed. It was the kind of thing that could be read as a gesture between old friends, easily forgotten and more easily rebuffed. But he felt the shift before he saw it. The way Robby leaned into his touch and looked at him, like it hurt to have gone so long without it, made something twist in Jack’s chest.
After so many months of distance, falling into bed together again felt almost too much at first: charged, edged with uncertainty where there used to be ease. But it settled between them, softened into warmth and then into new familiarity. It was not like stepping back into the same waters – Jack knew better than to think they hadn’t both changed. At best, taking Robby to bed again felt like Jack had found himself on a familiar shoreline, reshaped by tide and time. The currents were different now, but some things, Jack suspected, might still hold.
“You think we really could’ve managed it?” Robby asks now, shaking Jack back into the present. “Just us, holed up together for weeks? I mean, we’d still have our own places, but only ever seeing each other. No one else in or out of the bubble.”
“I think you overestimate how often we’d keep the same hours,” Jack replies. He leans back a little, gives it some more thought. “I think we’d do a lot of sleeping, and almost never at the same time. I’d’ve cooked, though. You’d spend less on takeout, with me around.”
Robby tilts his head, amused. “That’s your pitch? You’re the fiscally responsible option?”
“My other strengths speak for themselves,” Jack says. He pauses, weighing the truth in his mind like its a heavy thing, trying to guess how much of it Robby can bear. The vulnerability is a gamble, but the risk feels small now, in the silence between them
“We probably would’ve driven each other crazy. Gotten cabin fever in two apartments instead of one, maybe, and a little sick of each other to boot,” Jack decides to say. “But you might’ve liked the company more than you think.”
Robby doesn’t tense, or go cold, or take to running for the proverbial hills. He just nods, almost imperceptivity, as if only to himself, and looks out to the skyline ahead of them. Jack imagines him turning his words over in his mind, giving them a taste, seeing if they’re to his liking. Ultimately, he doesn’t really say.
When Robby’s eyes find him away, Jack is met with that fond and tired smile of his, the one that reaches right up to his eyes. “Next time the world nearly ends, let’s do things differently.”
In the end, Jack thinks that perhaps they’d been right not to isolate together.
When he gets sick in September, it comes on quiet: a dull sense of fatigue that’s almost indistinguishable from his usual exhaustion, until the low-grade fever makes it clear where this is headed. He’s lucky. Jack is spared the worst of it – he doesn’t need oxygen, doesn’t land himself in a bed, bounces back quickly – but his lungs haven’t worked quite right since Iraq, and every cough, though hollow and unproductive, aches in his chest like a pulled muscle.
He does what he has to do: goes home, keeps an eye on his O2, waits it out. Robby calls him daily, during brief breaks or his scattered shifts off, and in the time it takes for the worst of the virus to move through Jack’s body, Adamson’s numbers plummet.
Jack isn’t there when Robby has to make the call, though Dana phones him the very hour she decides to sit Robby down and have that conversation. Fourteen days on ECMO and still no change — Adamson is alive in the most technical sense, but there’s no rise in oxygenation, no sign that his lungs can do what they need to without the help of the machine. There’s a child who could use the help in his place, whose chances of recovery are more promising on paper, and Dana is right to say it’s what Adamson would’ve wanted. But they lose the girl, too, which makes the indiscriminate loss all the more bitter and senseless.
By the time Jack is in the clear to come back to work, Adamson is gone and Robby is changed.
Robby shows up for shifts, still answers his phone, still completes every chart efficiently. It’s precisely his stubborn impulse to carry on as usual that becomes the problem. By October, everyone is picking up extra shifts — but none more than Robby. In a way Jack didn’t think was still possible, Robby throws himself into the work completely, or at the very least, seems hellbent on letting it swallow him whole.
Their opposing schedules mean it’s not unusual for a few weeks to pass without seeing each other at the hospital. But Robby’s absence begins to stretch outside of it, too. There are fewer rooftop conversations. Fewer chances to cross paths and reset over a drink, a meal, or an afternoon. No real sign, to Jack’s eye, that Robby’s eating three meals a day, with or without him. Jack stops seeing his name pop up in missed calls or late-night texts.
Jack starts checking his phone more often than he’d like to admit, scanning for texts that don’t come, missed calls that never show. It’s not just the absence that unnerves him, and it’s not entirely a matter of just missing him, but something greater: the slow, creeping sense that Robby is pulling away from everyone, including himself. That he sealed something off within the day he stepped into pedes and Dana told him it was time.
In the months that follow Adamson’s death, the hospital feels off-kilter — the pace and atmosphere of the ED still fissured from his absence, everyone in it thrown a little out of step. That Robby takes on the role of acting chief of the department in Adamson’s stead is only natural. The eventual permanency of his position feels even inevitable, but these aren’t the circumstances anyone would’ve wanted for him. For months now, Robby has been holding the line with both hands, white-knuckled and unrelenting, as though sheer willpower alone could keep the department from splintering further — but the weight of it all takes its toll on him, and makes itself known quickly and well.
Of the many people who approached Jack to talk about Robby, it’s only Gloria Underwood who comes as a surprise.
She catches him just as he’s signing in for his shift, the purple of her blazer a brilliant flash of color under the usual hum of the fluorescent lights. Usually, by this hour, she’s halfway out the door but she approaches Jack like she’s been waiting for him. “Got a minute?” she asks.
Jack straightens. “Sure. I even got two if you need ‘em.”
They round the corner near supply, her voice low but steady. “I told Robby he can’t pick up any more extra shifts until he agrees to take two full days off a week,” she says. “At least for a little while.”
“Two days without him puts the rest of us in a tight spot,” he replies, not with resistance, but some surprise. “That must’ve been a tough call to make.”
“It was. We need him, but not like this. He’s burning out. That’s why I’m putting my foot down.”
There’s a quality in the way she’s looking at him now that he’s seen on Dana’s face before — like she knows he knows and is hoping for something from him in the way of more answers. But what is there, really, to say? They’ve all seen him working himself to the bone; they’ve all watched the bags under his eyes darken, his posture worsen, his temper shorten to a brittle fuse.
“You don’t think it’ll work,” Jack tells her. It’s more of an observation than a question.
She gives him a level look. “Do you?”
“I think, the minute we need him badly enough, it’ll be impossible to turn him away, and he knows that.”
“There you have it. I may not know him well, but I know him well enough.”
“Give the shifts to me before he gets the chance to snatch them up, then.”
“That’s just patching over the problem. It won’t solve it. I need him to understand that pushing himself like this doesn’t help anyone. Not the nurses, not the residents, and certainly not the patients.”
The trouble is Gloria isn’t wrong, but this isn’t a message — and she isn’t the messenger — that Robby will take kindly. “That’s gonna be a tough sell,” he says. Then, with an attempt at levity, “Are you sure you’re ready to have this conversation?”
“Absolutely not,” Gloria says, with the faintest flicker of a smile in her voice. “That’s why I’m asking you to do it.”
Jack blinks. “You’re his boss,” he replies, not unkindly.
“Yes,” she says. “But when it comes to something like this, he might actually listen to you.”
There’s no edge in her voice, no resentment — just the plain truth, inconvenient as she might find it to be. Jack glances at her, and for a beat, there’s nothing but quiet understanding between them. He respects her: the way she runs the place like a ship and keeps the chaos from sinking them all. She expects the best, and, while that’s already earned her a few enemies, Jack has never minded being held to that standard.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Gloria adds, pinching her mask against the bridge of her noise. “We’ve all got our roles to play, Doctor Abbot.”
“Yeah?” Jack lifts an eyebrow. “And what’s mine — Robby’s wrangler?”
That earns him a real smile. “To whom much is given, much is required.”
Jack laughs, shaking his head. “Don’t I know it, boss.”
The next day, Jack comes in early enough that he has to walk a few laps around the ambulance bay just to kill time before Robby’s shift ends. The ER is humming with chaos when he spots him — gloved up, halfway through a central line, eyes hollow with focus and sleeplessness.
Jack waits until he’s finished charting, then intercepts him with a quiet gesture away from the nurse’s bay. Robby gives him a curious look, brows furrowed, but follows him into the employee lounge anyway. Thanks to a little collaboration from Dana, Jack finds it empty, filled only with the faint scent of old coffee and the humming of the vending machine.
He shuts the door behind them. “Relax,” he tells Robby, reading the immediate tension in the air. “I’ve just got something I wanna talk to you about, big guy. Shouldn’t take long.”
Robby exhales, heavy, like he already knows what’s coming. “If this is about my hours, Gloria already gave me the lecture.”
“I know,” Jack says. “This isn’t that.”
Robby leans back against the counter opposite of him, arms folded. “Then what is it?”
“You want to reconsider that thing we said, about not seeing each other again until the cases die down again?”
Robby stiffens, eyes flashing towards the door, even though Jack is leaning his back against it. “Is this really the place to be having this conversation?”
“I wouldn’t call it ideal, but I haven’t exactly seen a whole lot of you elsewhere.”
Robby’s mouth thins to a tight line. “I’ve been busy, Jack.”
“I know you have.”
“It’s not like I’ve been sitting around picking roses.”
“I know,” Jack repeats, a little apologetically, because it feels like he’s already on the back foot. “You’re running the department now. You’ve got a hell of a lot on your plate, man. I get it. That’s why it might be good for you to have something to look forward to on your off-days.”
“I’m fine,” Robby replies. The words come out too fast, too sharp. Jack lets it slide — pushing now will only drive him off, hitch that tension in his shoulders a little higher.
Instead, Jack says, “I’d kill to see you doing better than fine.”
Robby snorts, dry and a little self-deprecating. “Yeah? You wanna tell me what that even looks like these days?”
Jack doesn’t take the bait; the question isn’t really meant to be answered, and he knows it. “Look, if not me, you could sort something out with Janey. Jake’s still going to school remotely, isn’t he? She’s working from home. No big risks there on either side.”
“No, Janey’s got her parents to worry about, and anyways, I wouldn’t want —” he hesitates, almost like he wants to say something else, then shakes his head. “It's not the same.”
Jack’s brows lift. “Not the same as what?”
“Just not the same,” Robby tells him. “And, anyways, I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Great, ‘cause I’m not offering to babysit,” Jack says evenly. “I’m offering you somebody to talk to without picking up your phone. Someone to share a meal with. A trip out of the city, maybe, if our schedules line up and we have a few days free. Gloria’s forcing you to take some time off. I’m offering you a way to take advantage of it.”
Robby hesitates. It’s hard to read his expression behind his mask, but Jack thinks he sees the faintest crack around his eyes, a hint of give. When Robby finally speaks, it sounds less like a refusal and more like he’s trying to talk himself out of saying yes, convincing himself as much as he’s trying to convince Jack.
“You don’t get it,” he says. “My place is a mess, I barely keep food in the fridge. And at your place, I’d just—” He breaks off, draws a breath that rattles in his chest. “In case you haven’t noticed, Jack, I’m not exactly great company these days.”
“So you can’t pull out all the bells and whistles right now — who cares?” Jack replies. “I’m not asking you to entertain me, man. I don’t need a tight ten. You’re my friend. I just wanna be around you.”
Robby shifts his weight like he’s bracing himself, shoulders hunched as though he’s trying to fold in on his own height. He looks worn thin, shadows under his eyes pooling like bruises, and up thus close, Jack notices the length of his hair — longer, he knows, than Robby likes to keep it. In the sterile brightness of the lounge, with the hum of fluorescent lights and the weight of silence pressing in, Jack feels the ache of it all: how difficult it is for Robby to be carrying around this much grief, how unfair it feels to watch him try to bear it alone.
“I don’t know if you know what you’re asking for,” Robby says, voice rough, he’s forcing it through his teeth. “I’m — I’m barely treading water here.” He drags a hand over his face, and for a second Jack thinks he’s about to lose it, that whatever’s been holding him together is about to crack. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve never been more tired, but I can’t sleep. I try to and I keep waking up —” He breaks off, breath shuddering. “Can’t make it through a single night without thinking about . . . fuck, man, you don’t wanna know how bad it gets.”
“Sure I do,” Jack says, softer now. When Robby shakes his head, he continues: “What, you think I don’t get it? I’ve been here with you every step of the way. Every time we get hit with another wave, I’m right there taking the blow with you.”
Robby’s gaze flickers up at that, something raw passing over his face — like he wants to believe him, like the words land somewhere that’s bruised and tender.
“Whatever it is you’re wrestling with, I’m right here with you,” Jack continues, his voice steady. “Put me in the ring, partner. I’ll bring my own folding chair and everything.”
Robby lets out a wet laugh despite himself, scrubbing at the corner of his eye. “This thing you’re angling for here, Jack — if you want it, don’t bring WWE into this.”
“What’s wrong with WWE? You got something against the performing arts?” Jack says with a crooked grin. Then, more earnestly, he adds: “Look, I’m not exactly being a martyr here, either. I could use you around. I told you about therapy. I’m still going, and I like Andy just fine, but he’s a civilian, he can’t — there’s no one else who really gets what we're dealing with here, except us.”
Jack hesitates, the name heavier than he thought it would be, but he doesn’t step back. “There’s no one else we can talk to about Adamson.”
Robby’s eyes flicker, glossing over. “I’m not the guy to help you with that.”
“Why not?”
“Talking about him isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Who said anything about fixing?” Jack counters, his voice soft but insistent. “There's no fixing this shit, Robby. It’s fucked. It’s fucked that we lost him. It’s fucked that you were the one to do it, that I wasn’t there to see him — but there’s no going back now. There’s just figuring out some way to live with it.”
Robby glances away, eyes wet but guarded, his body language tense with words he won’t say.
Jack waits, then gently presses on. “Why do you think I go to groups?” he asks. “It isn’t to fix anything. It’s to feel like I’m not crazy. You think you’re completely alone in the hell you’ve been through and then you hear somebody tell the story of your life right back at you, like they read your mind, and it changes shit, Robby. It helps.”
Robby shakes his head. “That might work for you, but not me.”
“Then don’t talk,” Jack concedes. “Just come around sometime. Watch a shitty movie with me, fall asleep on my sofa. Hell, take the bed if you want it. You wouldn’t have to do anything. You’d just have to show up.”
For a moment, Robby says nothing. He runs a hand through his hair, pressing hard against his scalp like he could squeeze the thoughts out of his head. When he speaks, it’s almost too quiet to catch: “I’m so fucking tired, Jack.”
Jack holds his gaze, steady and patient. “Come here,” he tells him, easy as anything.
Robby hesitates, caught not only by the risk of breaking the safe distance between them, but by the novelty of the request — of Jack asking this here, in the hospital, of all places.
This has never been something they’ve done here; this has never been something they’ve allowed themselves to bring inside these walls. Whatever exists between them has always been kept apart, sealed away from the fluorescent light and endless noise of the ED. But Jack has his back to the door, and he cannot think about the possibility of anyone opening it behind him or what it says about him that, in this moment, he couldn’t care less if someone caught them; he can only think that his friend needs him, that he wants to hold him, that it feels good to have something to offer Robby which he might need.
The space between them narrows quietly, carefully. All Jack has to do is reach for him, a hand out asking for nothing more than to touch him, and Robby folds into the hug with quiet concession. Any last thread of hesitation dissolves beneath the steady warmth of Jack’s palm against the broad plane of Robby’s back, the comfortable weight of Robby’s face tucked into the space between Jack’s neck and his shoulder.
They stay like that — still and breathing — until the weight between them lightens, until Robby lets go.
In a perfect world, that embrace might have been enough: the start of some new chapter, a quiet gesture to signal that, now that they have made up their minds to weather the pandemic together, they might somehow move through it more easily.
In the weeks that follow their agreement to stop isolating from each other, widening their circles just enough to make room for one another, Jack and Robby settle into a rhythm. There are moments of real joy: shared dinners, wandering conversations, rare mornings or nights when neither has to rush out the door, and bundled walks through the bitter cold, if only for the small pleasure of being outside. For a while, it helps. They help each other. Just as Jack knew they would.
But the long, yawning winter that follows Adamson’s death proves to be the hardest stretch yet. As cases surge and shifts expand, their schedules increasingly misalign. And when they do, in the bleakest stretch of winter, they’re too tired to cross the city, too drained to do more than sleep once they make it back to each other’s apartments, both more temperamental, more raw. Adamson’s absence casts a long shadow, in more ways than one. With one less attending on the floor and surge after surge flooding the ED, every shift feels like an uphill battle fought with empty hands.
For better or worse, Jack has always known how to bury his bullshit. He learned it as a young man, got better at it as a soldier. He knows how to compartmentalize, how to shove every distraction aside until the crisis passes. If he can just grit his teeth and push through the misery, he knows there will be time to inspect his wounds on the other side of it, and set the sore parts back into place. But Jack’s not so young anymore, and maybe not as strong. Not now, with wave after wave of cases flooding the ED, no end in sight. Somewhere, between the exhaustion, the pain of losing Adamson, and the rolling tide of senseless loss, Jack feels his grip slipping, his control unraveling, a little more of the grief spilling out from the corner he used to shove it into.
In all of that noise, Jack doesn’t realize how close Robby is to the edge himself until a new guy on the night shift talks to him about it.
“Yeah, no, I heard it from Batey on the day shift,” John Shen tells him, lowering his voice as they wait by the coffee machine. “He said Dr. Robby went off on Harper this morning. Like, full-on dressing her down, in front of half the floor.”
Jack frowns. “Harper? What the hell did Harper do?”
“She made the wrong call with a patient — forgot to run some labs, or something. All I know is that Robby went off. Apparently, it got bad enough that Dana got involved.”
Shen pauses, pouring himself coffee into a disposable cup. “Y’know, no offense, but I didn’t think he rocked like that,” he adds. “I mean, I guess I don’t know him much, but I never got that vibe from him.”
“That’s because he doesn’t. That’s not like him,” Jack says, a little too quickly. He catches himself, aware of how much he’s bristling on Robby’s behalf, so he tempers it, his tone leveling out. “Love it or hate it, if Robby came down hard on Harper, I’m sure he had a reason.”
Shen blinks, sensing the shift. “Yeah, I mean, I guess it just sounded a little harsh.”
“Not disagreeing with you,” Jack replies. “This job’ll grind you down if you let it.That’s why you have a team — to check each other before it becomes a habit. I’ll make sure he’s good.” He pauses, tone softening just a touch. “Just cut him some slack, yeah?”
Shen nods, still curious but backing off. “Sure thing, boss.”
Jack offers a quick half-smile before leaving Shen alone to drink his coffee. But even once they’ve both returned to the fray and are working through the rest of their shift, their conversation lingers in the back of his mind. Because what he told Shen wasn’t exactly the truth — It’s true that Robby is usually the more personable mentor between them, the one who smooths out tensions rather than flares them. But he also knows that lately Robby’s fuse has been a little too short for his own good.
The next time they’re together outside of work, moving around Robby’s kitchen in the quiet rhythm of cleaning after dinner, Jack tries to nudge the conversation there — casually, broadly, giving Robby every chance to bring it up on his own. But Robby deflects, sidestepping the invitation like there’s nothing to discuss.
Now they’re standing across from each other at the sink and counter, the last of the dishes drying in the rack, the smell of garlic still faint in the air. Jack watches Robby as he dries a glass with a dish towel, turns it in slow circles in his hands before setting it down.
Tired of waiting, Jack finally asks: “You ever going to tell me what happened with Harper?”
Robby wipes his hands on the dishtowel, and leans back against the counter. “That’s already passed,” he says, and he’s right, it’s been a few days now, but that’s not the point. “Anyways, there’s nothing worth retelling.”
“I heard you laid into her in front of half the unit.”
“Did Dana tell you that?” he asks. When Jack doesn’t answer, he tacks on: “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was bad enough that it’s all my crew were talking about,” Jack says. He sets down the dish towel in his hands. “Fill me in, man. What happened?”
Robby dries a glass with a little too much force. “Young guy came in three days post-fall — scraped up, bruised, swollen ankle. Harper clocked the avulsion and tunnel-visioned. Basically tried to send him home with some painkillers and a pat on the back.”
Jack frowns. “And?”
“And I caught the chart on a pass-by,” Robby continues. “His leg didn’t look right. I mean, it was bruised, but it wasn’t tracking right. He reported a few days of sharp, searing pain, and then nothing. He said it just stopped. I asked if she'd run any labs, and she hadn’t, so I had to have ‘em sent myself and when they come back, it’s red flags across the board. Elevated CK, dropping hgb, glucose was through the roof —”
Jack’s already thinking it. “Nec-fac?”
He nods. “We got him to the OR within the hour. If I hadn’t caught it, she would’ve discharged him.”
“Jesus,” Jack says, grimacing. “Okay, yeah. That’s a hell of a miss. But, she’s still learning —”
“She’s a senior resident, Jack,” Robby cuts in. “She should know better. We’ve talked about this. I’ve talked about this. You don’t skip out on labs. You don’t walk past it because someone’s young and ambulatory and seems fine. You check your bias and you cover your goddamn bases.”
Jack leans against the counter, his tone gentler now. “I get it. I’m with you there, man. I’m not saying she didn’t mess up. I just think there’s a difference between correcting someone and humiliating them.”
Robby scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t humiliate her.”
“Whatever you wanna call it, then. You know tear-downs don’t teach. They just make people afraid of screwing up, and less likely to ask for help, and that’s when small mistakes get worse.”
“Except it wasn’t a small mistake,” Robby replies, sharper now. “It could've cost us the patient and it cost me time I didn’t have to correct. We don’t have the margins right now for residents to fuck up on the basics because I’m not hounding behind them each step of the way.”
“And we don’t have the numbers for you to scare off our residents, either. She hasn’t shown up for work since.”
“And who do you think has to deal with that?” Robby fires back. “Not anyone on your side, Jack. Fixing the schedules around her bullshit fell on me.”
Which alright — fair, Jack thinks, even if he doesn’t exactly love the way he’s said it.
Robby takes a breath, exhaling slowly. “Half the nurses are burning out or going part-time, you’re running night shifts with barely enough coverage, and, everywhere I go, I’m getting pulled into three places at once. If a resident can’t keep up, that’s on them.”
“Well, what’s the end game here? We leave her behind? She’s probably just scared now, man. Not any smarter, and not any help to anyone, hiding away at home.”
“You know, I’d think you of all people would understand where I’m coming from here,” he replies. “We’re always talking about accountability — and these kids, it’s like they go into anaphylactic shock the second you try to hold them to it. Like it’s a crime to expect them to own up to their mistakes.”
“Like you’re doing now?” Jack asks, before he can think better of it.
Robby’s brows raise. “Wow,” he replies, a little disbelieving. “Let me get this straight: I caught her mistake. I fixed it, saved the guy’s life in the process, but I’m the problem because you don’t like the way I did it?”
“I’m not saying that,” Jack says, frustrated now, pushing past the sting in Robby’s voice. “I’m always telling you to ask for help. And if you’re stretched thin enough that you’re laying into a third-year in front of the team, in earshot of the patients, then you need to ask for help.”
Robby huffs out something between a breath and a scoff. “And what would help, Jack? You want me to hold hands with Gloria and talk about my feelings? Get a fuckin’ BetterHelp subscription? Spill my guts to some underpaid grad student over Zoom?”
Jack’s spine stiffens. The words hit harder than perhaps they should — too close to home, given how long it’s been since he’s been able to join any of his group meetings. “Yeah, well, It couldn’t be any worse than what you’re doing now.”
Robby’s brow furrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m saying maybe this — whatever we’ve been doing, it can’t be the place where you run from your shit.”
Robby blinks at him, confusion flickering across his face. “Jack, you asked for this,” he says, slowly, his voice edged with defensiveness. “This was your idea.”
“I asked you to let me be there for you. To let me help. I’m the other attending here, remember? If you’re taking on too much, share the load with me. If a resident’s driving you crazy, switch her to nights. I can’t help if you don’t let me.”
There’s a beat of silence and Jack’s heart stumbles in his chest as he realizes what he’s about to say. “I know we’re not putting a label on this, whatever this is,” he continues, “but I thought we were in it together.”
Robby’s expression softens, a slight tension creeping into his features. His gaze drops to the floor, and when it returns to Jack’s, there’s an undercurrent of conflict in his expression. “We are in this together,” he says, but his voice isn’t as sure as before.
“Are we?” He doesn’t want to ask it, but the question spills out anyway. “You’re still keeping those walls up, man. Still carrying it all alone, like you think you have to. Like I’m not right here, asking you to let me in.”
“I am letting you in. Do you think I’d do this with just anyone?”
“What, isolating together? I told you, you could’ve done this with Janey if you wanted to —”
“No, I didn’t want to do this with Janey,” Robby cuts in quickly, voice tight. “And that’s not what I’m saying, Jack. I’m not talking about that.”
Jack’s brow furrows, still trying to piece it together. “Then what?”
Robby falters, his lips pressing together as he works his way around whatever it is he cannot say. “All of this,” he says finally, voice quieter now, like he’s testing the waters. “The way we work together, come home together. Everything we’ve been doing, all this time.”
“So, you mean sleeping together?” Jack asks, the words sharp. “I don’t know if you get any medals for that if it’s your shortcut around actually dealing with your shit.”
The silence that follows doesn’t flare, doesn’t spark into some big, roaring fight: it sinks, a low and weighted thing. Robby blinks. “That’s what you think I’m doing? Fucking you so I don’t have a panic attack or something?”
Jack hesitates. The answer is no. He wants to say no, that isn’t what’s happening here, but he doesn’t know what else he’s allowed to call this.
Robby just stares at him, disbelief softening into something worse. He breaks the silence first, his voice low, quieter than before. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jack.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Jack says, trying to regain control. “I just don’t know what this is. I don’t know what we’re doing, or what it means, if it means anything at all.”
“Of course it means something,” Robby replies, the words tumbling out like he’s devastated he even has to say it. “I know I’ve been shit at this. I know I shut down sometimes, but don’t stand there and act like this doesn’t matter to me. You’re my friend.”
It’s a simple thing, that phrase, but it carries so much weight now.
You’re my friend, Jack had told him, when he confided to Robby about his wife, his nightmares, the chronic pain in his knee. You’re my friend, he’d said, when he asked Robby to take no small risk in re-integrating Jack into his life, knowing that Jack’s exposure to this virus would compromise his own. You’re my friend, Robby is saying now, repeating it back to him, and what has always felt like some kind of secret code, some kind of time-out card between them, instead feels muddied now, creating more questions than answers.
“And you’re mine,” Jack answers, his voice steady, but there’s a weight to the words that feels heavier than usual. “But is that what this is? We’re friends, but we work together. We’re co-workers, but we’re fucking. We’re fucking, except when it’s convenient to fuck someone else. Once all this mess is over, once it’s safe again, is that what we’re going back to?”
The silence that follows is Robby’s making, and Jack can’t hold it against him. What hangs between them now is the thing they’ve been circling around for months — the wide expanse between their actions and the things they’ve both left unspoken.
“I thought —” Robby starts, his words tripping over themselves. He falters, then tries again, his voice quieter now, uncertain. “You said you wanted this to be easy. I thought that’s what we were doing. Is that not what you wanted?”
Jack almost says yes, almost says no — he did say that, it’s true, but —
“I was wrong,” Jack says, realizing the truth of his words as he says it. “I meant it when I said it. I thought — maybe I should’ve known better, because it was you, but I thought it wouldn’t be complicated with you. You knew where I was with Sofia, and you’d just come out of your thing with Janey. I figured you didn’t want anything serious, and I thought I didn’t, either.”
Robby looks at him with something like sadness in his eyes. “I didn’t realize you were hoping for something else.”
“I wasn’t,” Jack admits, his gaze drifting to the ground for a moment before he looks back up at Robby. “You weren’t the first person I slept with after Sofia. Hell, you weren’t the second or the third, and with them, I never wanted anything else. I didn’t have it in me. But with you… I don’t know. I think I could, if it was you.”
Robby nods, swallowing hard. There’s something flickering in his eyes, a mix of confusion and sadness that Jack can’t quite read, but knows it’s anything but easy. “How long have you felt this way?”
“Almost from the start,” he answers. He might as well tell the truth.
Robby frowns. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jack hesitates. He considers the questions. The words feel stuck, lodged somewhere between his heart and throat. “I thought we had more time. I didn’t think we’d end up here, in the middle of a damn epidemic, and then, the longer this went on, the more I didn’t think I could. You won’t even talk to me about work, Robby. How was I supposed to tell you?”
Robby doesn’t answer right away. He just stands there, nodding slightly, rubbing the bridge of his nose, eyes closed as though he’s trying to block out the weight of Jack’s words.
After a beat, Jack finally speaks again. “What I said earlier . . . I didn’t mean it. I don’t think us sleeping together is some sort of fucked up coping mechanism on your part or mine. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Robby takes a slow breath, his voice soft but steady. “Maybe not. But I think you meant some of it.”
Jack doesn’t argue. He can’t, not without making things worse.
The fight doesn’t exactly blow over in the hour that follows. Instead, it hovers through the space like smoke, lingering in the air between them but weaker now that the tension has gotten some time to disperse.
It’s actually Robby’s cellphone that gives them the excuse they need to separate for a little while. It’s work — they both know it is, well before Jack spots the caller ID — and there’s nothing work-related that Robby has to keep from him, but he steps out onto his balcony to take the call anyway. Maybe, Jack thinks, he just needs the space, the cold air, a moment to breathe.
He stays out there even after the phone call ends, arms folded over the railing.
Jack gives Robby as much space as he can bear. He puts away the last of Robby’s dishes, so that there won’t be any work waiting for him in the kitchen, when he comes back in. Then he moves into the bedroom, collects only some of his things, his bag slowly filling with the items he’s gathered; He retrieves a fleece zip-up from Robby’s closet, taking it with him as he finally steps outside.
Robby turns to look at him as the door opens, his gaze a little guarded, but missing any of its earlier sharpness. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t bristle, either.
Jack clears his throat, holding out the sweater. “I thought you might be cold.”
The gesture is small, simple, and Jack hopes Robby understands it for what it could be — the start of some apology, or perhaps even a chance for them to to start over. But even if he doesn’t, Jack hopes Robby takes it anyway; it’s too cold now for him to keep standing out here in a long-sleeved shirt.
Robby hesitates just a moment, his gaze briefly flicking from Jack to the sweater, then back to Jack’s eyes, but then he takes it, the fabric warm in his hands. “There goes your chance to give me frostbite,” he says after tugging it on, half-joking, the lightness in his tone not quite masking the tinge of weariness.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Jack replies, returning Robby’s small smile with his own, softening the tension. “Dana would never forgive me.”
Robby snorts. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You didn’t hear the way I snapped at her for telling me to take it easy on Harper."
“Sure, but she let you live to tell the tale. I’d say she cut you some slack.” Jack’s smile fades just a little. After a moment, his voice turns quieter, a bit more vulnerable. “For what it’s worth, Robby, I’m sorry.”
Robby shakes his head. “You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”
“Sure I am. I shouldn’t have let it escalate like that, shouldn’t have let it turn into something personal when it shouldn’t have been. I —" He stops, almost reluctant to say it, but knowing it’s the only thing that feels right. "I’m sorry for how ugly that got. For how I made it about us.”
“No, that’s — that’s always been our problem, Jack. Even before COVID, those lines were blurry. We don’t have an ounce of work-life balance between us.”
Jack chuckles, but it’s tired. “One day, the work will love me back.”
“Not today, but maybe tomorrow,” Robby responds, his smile faint. His focus drifts away for a moment, as he settles on the right words to say next. “I really fucked up the other day. I could’ve handled it differently — could’ve stepped away, could've handled it privately, but instead, I just exploded. Made an ass of myself with the nurses. Blew up at Harper when I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Blew up at you, too, for checking me about it. I’m so sorry.”
Jack nods. “Yeah. It’s alright, Robby. I know.”
Something in the space between them eases with their apologies, but there’s still something Robby isn’t saying. He stares out into the night, his expression distant, shoulders heavy. “What did you mean back there,” he begins, his tone cautious, “when we were talking about us, and you said you should’ve known better?”
Jack takes a moment to measure his words.
“I dunno, Robby. I just think, sometimes, that it was a little naive of me to think I could be casual about you,” he tells him. “I thought about you for so long after I met you. I’d make up stories in my head about what my life would’ve been if I hadn’t run off to the army. Some of ‘em included you. And then I met you and you weren’t the person I made you to be in my head. You were better.”
Whatever Robby thought he was going to say, it wasn’t that. Jack can see it clearly in the way Robby’s expression falters, the way his words seem to have caught him off guard.
Robby’s voice is small when he speaks, barely audible against the quiet night air. “I didn’t think that’s how you meant it,” he tells him. “Lately, it feels like you’ve seen the worst of me. It’s all I’ve had to show you. And I keep thinking — I mean, compared to who I was when you first met me, god, what a fucking let down.”
Jack doesn’t ask what Robby means—whether he’s talking about when Jack joined PTMC, or back in their twenties, when their lives had yet to intertwine in the way they do now. In a way, it doesn’t matter.
“You’re one of the best men I’ve ever known, Jack,” Robby tells him. His words break again, heavier this time. “But I don’t know if I can give you what you need right now.”
The confession hangs there, quiet but immense. Robby swallows hard, looking away briefly as if the weight of what he’s saying is too much. “I’m trying,” he continues. “I really am. But I think I’m too far under. I know how to be your friend. I can keep up with that. I can do better by you at work. But I don’t know how to be more than that without fucking it up entirely.”
Jack nods. He swallows around the ache in his throat. None of it comes as a surprise, but disappointment nips at him anyway.
“Then let’s call it,” Jack says, even though it stings to say it. “Not everything. Just the part that’s confusing the rest. If we know how to be friends, then we go back to only being friends. If the work is getting messy, we focus on straightening that out first. And then, maybe one day, we can figure out the rest.”
Robby’s eyes flicker with something Jack can’t quite place: disappointment, perhaps, giving way to resigned acceptance. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t argue. He just nods slowly, his shoulders tense. Almost inexplicably, Jack can feel that he’s still holding something back, like there’s something he wants to say but isn’t ready to voice.
Jack inhales deeply, letting the cold air settle in his lungs. He hesitates for a moment, unsure whether to fill the silence or leave it to hang between them. Instead, he steps closer and places his hand gently over Robby’s, which is resting on the railing. Robby’s hand is cold to touch, when Jack squeezes it, offering what little warmth he can.
“I don’t think I should stay over if —” Jack begins, his voice low, measured. “I think it might be better if that’s off the table, for a while.”
“Yeah, that’s probably for the best,” Robby agrees. “Do you think you’d still want to come over? From time to time?”
“Of course,” Jack tells him, smiling, trying to break the tension. “Brother, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Robby gives a small, resigned laugh. “Good. I didn’t think so,” he says, his voice softening, carrying more weight than before. “I don’t want to lose you.”
The words are simple, but they land heavy between them, encapsulating everything — the fear that’s divided them and has also, somehow, been their common ground, the steady foundation beneath every other unsteady, crumbling thing. Not just their attempt at a relationship, if either of them could even call it that, but everything else, everything much bigger than them. All the loss, and the work, and the stress, and the chaos.
Jack swallows around a feeling he doesn’t want to name. “You won’t.”
It’s true, he knows it is and he hopes the man beside him knows it, too. But the fuller truth, the one Jack can’t say, is this: he could never touch Robby again for the rest of his life and still want nothing more than to be near him. He could love him, care for him exactly like this — as partners, as brothers, as friends — and it would be enough.