Because @permanent-fire-hazard wants to be kill me. Here is my retaliation to this post.
It took Jack an embarrassingly long time to realize what happened.
The way Michael held him like he was trying to memorize the exact indents he mad against his skin. The subsequent months of nothing. At first he was afraid for a different reason. He’s seen it with some of his guys, felt it for a while after coming back.
God.
Robby felt.
He felt for an elderly person who sat on a park bench with the ghost of another. He felt for a young child racing through the park fully trusting the world to be kind to them. He felt for dogs that rambled along with their owner even as their body sags with exhaustion.
It was something Jack could never fully comprehend. How a man who bleeds every emotion could somehow be a doctor, an emergency doctor, of all things.
And he might’ve always feared that one day Robby would feel just a little too much of the wrong thing.
He nearly cried with relief when he heard Michael’s voice. It was calm and even and completely unaffected after hearing Jack’s voice. That was the first hint. One that Jack couldn’t even see until hours later after pulling himself out of a spiral.
I’m sorry, sir, but I really don’t know you. Sir. Robby called him sir.
Sir is for E-1’s who sound like their balls haven’t dropped yet. Sir is for random civilians who see him in uniform. Sir is for cheeky assholes like Martinez. Sir is not for Michael Robinavitch who knows him too well to ever have that distant respect.
I hope you find who you’re looking for. But it’s Robby. He was looking for Robby. He’s always looking for Robby.
Why does Robby sound like he doesn’t know him?
He’s not the type to pull some elaborate cruel prank.
Some part of his brain—the doctor, the person that looks at twenty injured men and determines who’s actually got a shot at surviving—pieces it together. The wedding. The sudden disappearance. The apparent lack of memory.
But he’s a soldier, he doesn’t leave a man behind. He doesn’t abandon his battle buddy, and Robby’s been his since they were twenty one with brains melting during O-chem.
Charlotte find him manically trying to call Robby back.
She doesn’t try to stop him once he explains. She holds him when realty hits and his calls aren’t even going through anymore.
~~~~~
The world has some fucked up sense of humor. Truly, cruelly.
Dr. Robinavitch is in front of him. Ten years older with a beard and the implication of crowsfeet. He has his hand out to shake Jack’s. They’re on the same panel, how to handle trauma in unprecedented events. The aftermath of a hurricane and an active battlefield respectively.
Dr. Robinavitch looks good, healthy with a slight bounce in his step. He mentions a boy, Jake. The way he sounds…it’s like he’s his own son.
Jack notices Dr. Robinavitch mindlessly rub his chest. Right between his ribs.
Jack makes sure to stay clear of Dr. Robinavitch.
~~~~~
Jack comes to Pittsburgh to die.
He promised Charlotte after the convention fiasco to never look up Michael Robinavitch. Not professionally and certainly not personally. She demanded this for his own sake and that’s why he was resistant. It wasn’t until she started to sound bitter that he finally acquiesced. He was always better at doing right by others than by himself.
Charlotte’s dead now. He laid her to rest a month ago. Most everything was sold or given to various family members. Jack certainly wouldn’t need it.
The only thing he keeps is his ring.
He slides into the emergency department without any resistance. He’s not planning on staying too long but he doesn’t wish to go out on that bad of a note.
He’s placed on nights which is inconvenient because Robby’s a day attending. But it’s so poetic Jack can’t find it in himself to try and change shifts. It’ll just mean his plan will take a bit longer. Which means more suffering. More penance.
He doesn’t fall in love with Michael, he woke up to it. Something latent turning over and coming back into conciousness. Jack doesn’t immediately try to befriend him, but they’re about the same age, unmarried, and in the same nightmarish job.
It starts with dragging their feet during handoff, the evolves to drinks at the bar, then mutates to going over to Robby’s. His town house leaves Jack hollow, every room is shifted 2.5 inches to the left. Almost in the form of home decor.
It’s the same hybrid of classic wood, mid century modern, and esoteric mad scientist. There’s no pictures of Robby during med school.
Jack starts to insist they go to his, citing accessibility. Robby is needlessly apologetic about being ‘inconsiderate’. Jack figures he needs to buy a coffee table and some plants to not seem suspicious.
It’s easy, loving Michael Robinavitch. It’s easy to love his compassion, his dedication, his loyalty.
The flowers remain stubbornly dormant.
Years past. Adamson dies. Jack starts therapy and greatly minimizes his reason for coming to Pittsburgh. Robby continues to decline. There’s still no damn flowers.
Neither of them say anything.
Pittfest is another type of beast. One that everyone handles with depressing efficiency. Over worked, over stretched, under paid, and not protected. They still do their damn jobs.
He finds Robby on the roof on the wrong side of the barricade and Jack thinks, “This is it. If he goes I go. One way or another.”
Not exactly how he planned it all those years ago, but it would hurt. It might be enough for absolution. No it won’t. Nothing will.
But he can’t let Michael die.
The leave that night and for a moment Jack can imagine what life might’ve been like if they weren’t cowards. If Robby fessed up. If he just reached out during those eleven months. If he tried to explain during the conference. If he confessed now.
Maybe they never would’ve been lovers, maybe they’d always just be brothers in arms. But there would’ve been this comrade and some delusional part of Jack thinks it would be enough.
By the time the 4th comes around everyone’s lost and nothing is okay. Jack’s finally watching his oldest Robby fear come to life. Robby feeling too much of the wrong thing. It’s ugly, he’s mean. He can’t even look Jack in the eye.
Jack’s never left a man behind. He doesn’t plan to now.
“It’s you and me.” A vow and a curse and the only thing keeping either of them here.
Robby rides off and Jack wonder for the nth time why he doesn’t have and flowers.
He loses his mind quietly in the peds ward (thankfully void of children and corpses). Why are there no flowers. He loves Robby. Probably had for much longer than he was ever aware of. And Robby can’t love him. Because that’s the whole point of the surgery and Jack hates him for making that call and loving him for doing what he must to survive and hating himself for being the cause of all this and maybe hating Charlotte because if not for her he would’ve figured it out eventually. Right? Would he? He would have to. Because the alternative is he would’ve just forced Robby to suffer permanently and what kind of friend, doctor, person would he be?
Thankfully Pittsburgh’s kind and Jack’s spiral is uninterrupted.
He gets back to his house and he notices a motorcycle.
He practically trips through the door. Would crawl over glass of that’s what it took because what if he’s too slow and Robby decides to leave?
There, on his couch, wrapped in an old sweatshirt of their Ala Mater, Michael looks like he did thirty years ago.
Jack doesn’t wake him. He brews some tea, black tea with honey just the way Robby’s Bubbe makes it.
Michael wakes up only because his body isn’t so exhausted that it can’t sense another presence in the room.
Jack’s sitting on a chair. There’s the tea on the coffee table he scrounged from a garage sale because it was only meant to be needed for two years.
Jack and Robby know each other fairly well in this life. Jack knows Robby’s coffee order; Robby knows Jack’s IPA preferences.
Jack shouldn’t know Robby prefers black tea but doesn’t drink it as often because he can it reconcile his job with its caffeine to liquid ratio. He definitely shouldn’t know he prefers it brewed on the lighter side with only half a teaspoon of honey.
Robby look and Jack and something nudges closer to it’s correct place. The switch precariously tilting to the correct side and closing the circuit.
He sounds like he’s testing out the name.
“Jack.”
