the last episode made me TRULY wish whitaker was at the bar with santos and mel so here’s some food for thought…
he’s definitely a beer guy, never not a budweiser if he can help it. he always grew up with a bottle or can being tossed around on the farm on hot days and such. he nurses it like it’s going to go away in .2 seconds too, always still on his first beer after a couple of hours because he can’t make himself buy another when he’s strapped for cash (which is a constant).
his older brothers taught him how to play pool for sure. and he’s really not too bad at it either, he’s won some cash from it on whim nights with the dayshift crew. it’s a firm belief of mine that if you don’t know how to play he’ll teach you. all pressed against your back, in your ear telling you how hard to shoot, which ball to go for.
if he has enough beer in his system, he’ll do karaoke with some pestering. you have this great photo of him and santos singing i’m every woman where they’re both really getting into it with hands on each others shoulders for support like they’re performing an actual show (it felt like an actual show).
drunk walks back to your shared apartment with santos and whitaker, giggling all the way there. dennis has a supportive arm around your waist, essentially hoisting you up to keep steady while you have one arm slung over his shoulder. and you’re kind of stepping on his feet as you walk, mumbling “m’sorry” every time. he doesn’t seem to mind all that much though.
the whitaker roommate crumbs we’ve been getting has me thinking like crazy…
thinking about rooming with him and santos, upsizing to a bigger place with having an extra person (you) and the problems of sharing one bathroom between two very particular people (three if you count garcia’s bouts of hanging around)
and yeah it’s a bigger space (three beds, two bathrooms) but you and whitaker have to get comfortable really fast because santos insisted on getting her own designated bathroom, fair, while the two of you split one and it’s oddly intimately domestic once you two get in the groove of things.
very let’s-brush-our-teeth-together-but-not-ask-each-other-to-do-it-but-just-assume-so-every-night. one time he accidentally spit toothpaste into your hair and you conveniently had to use the bathroom every time he got out of his room for a week straight. cue pounding on the door and a pissed off santos.
very one person sits on the lid of the toilet while the other is showering and talking about their day. hands grasping for towels that they can’t reach and the other bridges the gap in that way. giggling over a patient that came into the ER one time with their hand stuck in a glass jar while the other was on a day off. shooing the other away when it’s time to get out.
you’ve caught glances of whitaker before, lounge pants low on his hips as he pulls a shirt over his head and he’s lean but still visibly strong from farm work. and it’s embarrassing how fast you have to look away when he starts to turn towards the door to get to the living room for roommate bonding time (rounds of television and a movie with santos).
#scared to start writing for the pitt bc im very particular abt those characterizations but also #excited to write for whitaker bc hes my boyfriend idgaf
hot, hot days where the only thing you can do is lay on the hard wood floor of your apartment and close your eyes because even the couch is too much fabric for you to handle. and you can hear the click and flash of a camera from over you, where you groan, steve laughs, and jonathan says that it’s the best one he’s taken yet.
late nights with wine, sat at a wide open window where the breeze is a comfortable mix between warm and cool and there’s an arm around your waist and a head on your shoulder.
wandering around the city, sweating and shoulders on the verge of being sunburnt but laughing with each other anyway. you guys like to go to the park and sit in the shade (majority rules here because steve likes to sit in the sun). someone brings a deck of cards and you guys laugh and play bullshit, of which jonathan and steve have terrible poker faces for so you call them out every time.
"yeah, bullshit."
"i swear to god, i have four aces!"
"steve, how could you have four aces when i have two of them."
sitting on the concrete stoop outside of your guys' apartment and people watching. you like to make up little stories about the people passing by based off of their walk, their style, anything that catches your eye. jonathans started to get quite good at it, too.
with that, steve had picked up social smoking (again) from hanging around yours and jonathans friends so you guys tend to pass around a cigarette from time to time. steve likes to blow the smoke in your face and jonathan likes to press the cigarette to your lips for you.
HOW TO DISAPPEAR
─── jack abbot & michael robinavitch
summary: robby makes you hate him as his last act of kindness before he leaves for his three-month sabbatical. but then he sees you getting close to jack, and it ruins all his plans. (3k)
characters: michael robinavitch / fem!reader, jack abbot / fem!reader, trinity santos in charting jail, dana evans, noelle hastings
contents: lovers to exes w robby, friends to lovers w jack, angst, hurt/comfort, jealousy, implied age gap cw for medical inaccuracies bc i don't know what i'm talking about :D, and mentions of robby's suicidal tendencies
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Robby breaks up with you on a Friday, which you think is especially cruel, considering that every Friday since then has served only as a bitter reminder of the day he told you to leave.
Your relationship had been long in the dying, to be fair. You had stopped recognizing him some months ago — after he brought home that motorcycle, which brought a week’s worth of arguments in with it; and after you found out he made a habit of riding around without his helmet, which nearly gave you an aneurysm with how angry you got at him for it.
You found yourself more mad with him than you were without him, but you stuck around anyway, just torturing yourself with the hope that he’d change. That you would be enough to change for.
“Do you have any affection in your heart for me?” you’d raged from the other side of the kitchen table, burning as hot as your pretty red dress. “Any? At all?”
“Of course, I do!” Robby laughed as he gathered the empty plates, as if he found your anger a quite humorous thing. (It was, in truth, quite funny, because only he could plan a date night that turned into nothing but a total screaming match.)
“Then why do you keep doing this to me?” you’d asked, voice breaking as you blinked away burning tears. “You know I can’t stand that stupid motorcycle to begin with, but you know I hate when you don’t wear your helmet. It’s like you’re purposefully trying to piss me off!”
“Well, believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around you, honey,” Robby answered in a dry monotone as he dropped the silverware into the sink with a thunderous clang.
“Yeah,” you scoffed. “‘Cause it revolves around Noelle.”
“Oh, Noelle!” he laughed louder, turning to face you with a cynical sort of smile on his face. “That’s what this is about?”
“It’s about all of it, Robby!” you thundered. “But, yeah, you flaunting your old fling around at work in front of me doesn’t make it any better—”
“If you don’t like what I do…” he spat, voice even and coated in a layer of venom. “If you’re not happy here… Then feel free to leave. I won’t stop you.”
His words hung in the air for several long moments. They wrapped their cold hands around your neck and stole the breath from your lungs.
“If I go…” you’d told him, voice stern and slightly strangled. “If I walk out that door right now… I am not coming back.”
Robby only shrugged. “If that’s what you wanna do…” he trailed off and turned away, doing the dishes like you weren’t falling apart across the room.
So you left.
And he didn’t stop you.
Robby stuck to his word. And now you’re trying hard to stick to yours.
As the Friday evening draws near — marking five weeks since you walked out the door — you stand at the workstation to finish up your charting. You type slowly, while the rest of the day shift rushes around you to head home, because you have zero plans of returning to your empty apartment so soon. Not until you’ve totally tired yourself out, at least.
It was much easier to be at home that way, you found, when you were only ever there to eat and sleep. It meant never having to face how lonely you truly were without him.
“Are you busy tonight?” Santos wonders aloud as she plants herself at the computer across from yours.
You turn away from the screen for the first time in several minutes to flash the girl a quietly amused look. “You and Dr. Garcia are fighting again, I take it?”
“What?” Trinity scoffs, less than convincingly. “No! Why would… Why would you even ask that?”
“Because normally you’re busy with her,” you answer, partially distracted, as you continue click-clacking at the keyboard in front of you. “And if you’re asking me if I’m busy, it means Garcia isn’t coming over. Which also means Whitaker’s probably going out with Amy, and you just don’t wanna be alone.”
You glance up from your monitor once more, finding the girl scowling at you over the top of hers.
“Is that a fair assessment, would you say?” you quip with narrowed eyes.
“I was just gonna ask if you wanted to watch Drag Race and get wine drunk with me,” Trinity deadpans. “I didn’t need the psych consult.”
You scoff a tired laugh and turn away again. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’m going out with the street team tonight— But you’re always welcome to tag along if you want.”
“And work outside of work?” she scoffs. “No, thank you…”
You tense when you feel a warm, wide hand brush along your lower back.
Your head whips over your shoulder to find Dr. Abbot sliding in behind you, placing a sticky note beside the keyboard on your desk. Cologne clings to the thin black t-shirt he wears, tucked into a pair of camo fatigues. He smells of tobacco and leather and sea salt. A dizzying concoction for a girl so strikingly touch-starved.
“Here’s Mr. Turner’s address,” the man tells you. “Or where he says he’s been hanging around recently, at least.”
Your eyes scan over the half-legible scrawl on the paper below, brows furrowing because it feels half-familiar to you. When you turn back to Abbot, you find him towering over you, much closer than you’d anticipated. “Isn’t that the overpass across town?”
“I think so, yeah,” Jack nods, scratching at the silver curls at the nape of his neck. “I’m pretty sure that’s where the ambulance picked him up when he overdosed, too…
“I’ll add that to his chart,” you murmur under your breath and turn away again. “I was gonna extend his prescription for Clonidine anyway— you know, so he didn’t have to come in so often. But this way, I can bring it to him with the street team. Make sure he’s doing well and everything.”
“You going tonight?” Jack wonders aloud.
“Mhm,” you nod as your fingers flit across the keyboard.
“Got room for one more, you think?”
Your squinted eyes cut suddenly in his direction, eyeing the man tentatively as he leans against the desk beside you. His freckled biceps strain against his t-shirt sleeves when he crosses them over his chest.
“Aren’t you working tonight?”
“Nope,” he answers. “Technically, I’m off ’til tomorrow.”
“…Then shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“And miss out on all the action?” Jack scoffs.” No way.”
A laugh sputters from your mouth before you can help it. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s very healthy, Dr. Abbot.”
“Of course, it’s not. But my therapist told me I needed a hobby, so…”
“So you decided getting shot at was the next best thing?” you finish in a deadpan.
“What can I say?” he shrugs. “I suck at golf.”
“You should try jogging,” you tell him, crossing the workstation for the printer on the other side of it. You feel a smile hinting at your mouth when Jack follows the short distance behind you. “It’s like running away from your problems, but, you know… pretend.”
“I tried that, actually,” Jack tells you. “But it’s harder, you know… With my leg.”
You pluck the warm paper from the buzzing printer and turn to face the man behind you. He sports a barely-there wince on his scruffy features, as if the mere mention of the amputated limb has reminded him of the phantom pain that never quite leaves him.
“Is it the sweat?” you ask with a sympathetic grimace.
“The sweat...” Jack nods slowly. “And the constant adjustments, and the strain it puts on my hip and… All of it’s a mess, to be honest.”
“You use liners, right? When you run, I mean?”
“Silicon ones, yeah.”
“You should try double-stacking knit-rite over the silicon,” you tell him, shifting awkwardly on your feet as you struggle to meet the man’s unwavering stare. You swallow hard and fidget with the paper in your fingers. “I, uh… I hear the knit helps with the sweating. Keeps the skin from blistering and everything.”
Jack’s eyes narrow, sparkling with the quiet grin that tugs at his mouth. “Where’d you learn all that, huh?”
“I’m trying to get a vascular surgeon fellowship,” you confess with a shy smile. “I’ve been working with a lot of amputees, and… they’ve taught me a whole lot, you know?”
Jack nods slowly, impressed and half-shocked. “Nice…” he hums. “Let me know if you need a letter of rec.”
He pats you gently on the shoulder as he walks by. You feel your skin burning beneath your scrubs, in the place where he’d touched you, like your brain is scarring his touch into memory.
“And, you know, if you ever wanna take up running again— We could always go to the track by the park,” you blurt. “I can help you make some adjustments, and you can help teach me a thing or two?”
You wince on instinct, preparing for rejection after being so blatantly forward.
Jack only smiles in response.
“Sounds fun,” he says, before sauntering off in the opposite direction. “Come find me before you leave with the street team tonight. We can take my truck.”
“Sure thing,” you call back, with a big dumb smile on your face. It fades the second you realize how dumb you sound. “Sure thing…?” you repeat under your breath, half-disgusted, as you return to your computer.
“About fucking time…” Santos grumbles, still in the same spot you left her in.
“Time for what?” you scoff.
“For you to get laid,” she answers like it’s obvious. “Instead of moping over Robby all the time. It was starting to get a little depressing, to be honest.”
Your face burns red hot.
“I’m not trying to get laid—” you say, then argue in a sharper whisper, “And I’m most definitely not moping over Robby.”
“And I’m not on my third breakup of the day with Garcia,” Trinity deadpans. “Since we’re both lying to each other now…”
“Only third, huh?” you quip. “Must’ve been a slow day today.”
You laugh when she flips you off.
Robby spends the better half of the afternoon just watching you.
It’s not totally his fault, to be fair, his eyes have always had a way of trying to find you in every room he’s in — even when he knows you aren’t there. But then he sees you talking to Jack, and it becomes virtually impossible to work through the sudden heaviness in his chest.
It had been thirty-five days and counting since he talked to you last, and he feels the weight of every single one of them.
He replays the words of that argument ad nauseam. He sees the face you made right before you left whenever he closes his eyes — the furrow that had formed between your brows, the way the lamplight glittered in your unshed tears, the way the tendons tensed in your neck as you fought back the urge to cry.
He thinks he’s only managed to make it this long without talking to you because he finds a strange sort of companionship in his loneliness — in the knowing that you were grieving the same way he was; that you returned to an empty room in a dark apartment every day just like he did. It’s selfish and it’s cruel, but he liked that you were just as hurt as he was. It made him feel less alone that way, like he was still close to you despite the obvious distance.
But then he catches you laughing, and his chest warms instantly at the sound — the prettiest he’d ever heard. His heart deflates a second later when he looks up from his tablet to find Jack standing in front of you, so close that you have to tilt your chin just to keep his gaze.
You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes, half-shy; the way you always looked at Robby in the very beginning of your not-quite relationship.
“Come find me before you leave with the street team tonight,” he hears Jack tell you as he walks away. “We can take my truck.”
Robby thinks a knife to the stomach would hurt less.
“Don’t you dare,” he hears Dana scold from just beside him, when she catches the man about to follow after you when you walk by without a glance thrown his way — as if he were a ghost, doomed to watching the rest of the world move on without him.
His head snaps to the side and finds the woman glaring at him over the top of her glasses.
“Don’t what?” Robby scoffs.
“You know what,” the older woman answers. “Give the girl a break, Robinavitch— You put her through enough as it is.”
“Oh, my god!” Robby exclaims with a cynical laugh. Something manic and half-hurt glitters in his dark eyes as he argues, “I got a fucking motorcycle! Why is everyone acting like I shot someone?”
Dana’s eyes harden as she pulls off her glasses, crossing her thin arms over the chest of her grey scrubs. The look she gives him then nearly makes him cower — it’s not quite angry, just colder than ice, and it cuts through him like steel.
“It’s not just the motorcycle, Robby, and you know it.”
“Do I?” he scoffs a humorless laugh.
The woman shakes her head and turns away, sneering slightly to herself, ‘cause it’s almost like he’s trying to miss the point. “If I have to spell it out for you, Robinavitch, then you’re a bigger lost cause than I thought…”
Robby spends the rest of the day stewing in her words.
Because he thought he was doing both of you a favor, in truth. He thought leaving you would make it easier to leave all the rest of it — that not having to miss you the entire time he was gone might make the trip a little more bearable. And if he knew you weren’t missing him too, then maybe he wouldn’t be thinking about you every second of every goddamn day.
That’s why he got that stupid fucking motorcycle; why he slipped up and told you he rode around without his helmet, just to pick a fight; why he told you about Noelle, because he knew it’d make you second-guess everything between the two of you. He wanted you to distance yourself from him — he needed you to distance yourself from him — because he wasn’t man enough to do it himself.
But now his foolproof plan is biting him in the ass.
And he’s missing you before he’s even left the building.
Robby asks around for you before he leaves, and Shen tells him that he saw you around back through sips of his iced coffee. So he goes to find you while the rest of the day shift trickles slowly out, with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs. When he finds you sliding miscellaneous supplies into the back of Abbot’s truck, it feels a little like a punishment — one that he knows he deserves.
“So… About that offer from before…” Jack grunts as he slides another two cases of bottled water into the bed of his truck. “I was thinking maybe we could stop by the track tomorrow morning. You know, before your shift.”
Your eyes narrow despite the quiet smile pulling slowly on your face. “I wasn’t joking about you needing to sleep after this— You do need to sleep at some point, Jack, you know that, right?”
“And I will get some when we’re done out here,” he promises and takes the stack of hygiene kits off your hands. “So… What do ya say?”
You ponder for a long moment, with your lips pursed to the side of your mouth. You can’t help but think of Robby in that moment, if you getting this close to his best friend would break his heart — or what Jack would think about you, if he found out what had really happened between Robby and you.
Because he knew the two of you were close — everyone knew, and everyone had their own speculations — but only a few knew the true extent of it; of how long you and Robby had loved each other, and of how it all crashed and burned in the end.
“Well, we’d have to go pretty early,” you mutter sheepishly. “My shift starts at seven, so…”
“That’s okay,” Jack shrugs with a grin that makes your stomach do a backflip. “I like early.”
You feel your face flare.
“I like early, too…” you mumble sheepishly as you turn back for the rolls of sleeping bags stacked on the sidewalk.
Your gaze locks with Robby’s from where he stands off in the distance. It’s like your pupils are made of magnets, like your eyes were created to be drawn immediately to his. He walks slowly through the parted double doors with his hands in his pockets and something sad in his eyes. Your heart drops at the sight of him.
“Hey, brother,” Jack greets. “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m headed that way…” Robby huffs with a slow nod. His brown eyes dart wildly between the two of you — from Abbot’s oblivious grin to your wide-eyed gaze. “Where are you guys off to, hm?”
“Street team,” Jack tells him.
“Jesus,” the older man scoffs. “You never slow down, do you?”
“I would, but… No one ever taught me how,” Jack quips and takes a step forward to close the distance between them. You continue packing up while the two men share a brief hug. You vaguely hear them murmuring from behind you. “Make sure you come back… Call me if it gets too dark… I’ll take care of her, I promise…”
Robby knows it’s supposed to make him feel better, but it only makes the knife twist further.
He can feel the blade piercing a lung when he asks to speak with you alone; he’s already close to bleeding out by the time he walks you to the edge of the dark sidewalk, leaving Jack to pack up all the rest.
“You gonna be alright while I’m gone?” he asks.
The smile you give him is cynical and doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Yep… I’ve been doing alright without for a while now, so…”
Robby nods, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I… I deserve that, I guess…”
“I’m not saying it to hurt you, Robby,” you sigh. “I’m saying it because it’s true— That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t take pleasure in making you feel like shit.”
“I was trying to— I just wanted to—” He stumbles over himself trying to get the words out. He huffs and runs his palms down the length of his bearded face. “I think I was just trying to make it easier on us, you know, me going away… I thought if we hated each other, I’d be able to leave, but now…”
“Now what?” you press.
“Now you hate me!” Robby answers with a laugh. “And I still don’t want to leave!”
You sigh hard through your nose. Though your stern stare never wavers, you soften visibly around the edges as you confess, “I don’t hate you, Robby… But I do want you to leave.”
He flinches like you’ve hit him “…W-What?”
“I want you to go. I want you to have the… best three months of your whole goddamn life. I don’t care where you go, who you see, or if you— take Noelle with you. I don’t give a shit, I just…” You trail off with a heavy sigh and firm glare. “I want you to come back. That’s all I care about.”
“Of course I’m coming back…” he tells you gently, hands aching as he fights the urge to hold you. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, honey.”
His words make your stomach swirl with a warm feeling. He grins down at you like he knows it, too.
“Bye, Robby,” you deadpan and turn on your heel to walk away.
“Are you still gonna be here?” the man calls after you. You look at him over your shoulder and feel your throat closing at the look he gives you — dark eyes wet and squishy around the edges, glimmering gold beneath the amber streetlamp. “When I came back, I mean. Are you… Are you still gonna be here?”
“I’m always gonna be around, Robby,” you tell him. “You know that—”
“Yeah, but… Will you still be here?”
Waiting for me, he doesn’t say.
You don’t have the right words to answer him.
“…Call me if you need me, okay?” is all you can think to say in the moment. “I’ll answer. I promise.”
Robby feels his heart breaking when he watches Jack help you into the passenger seat of his truck. Because a part of him knows, not so distantly, that he’s bound to find you by Abbot’s side when he returns.
