a pretty how town

Siria @ AO3, Dreamwidth. Fannish bookmarks at @sirireadsfeed

[sammroo167]

What would Carter think of Robby

[siriaeve]

It was serendipity that Robby saw the flyer. Gloria’s 10 a.m. meeting ran over, so Robby went into the twelfth-floor break room to get a coffee. Bulk-buy instant coffee was fine for the peons in the Pitt, but not for the senior admins, and while Robby waited for the Keurig to do its thing he scanned the message board and spotted a notice for ADAPTIVE AND AMPUTEE SOCCER — Ages 12 and up — Brookline Rec Center. He pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to Jack.

Since he’d quit the TEMS unit, Jack had been making noises about needing another hobby (“Would we call that a hobby?” Robby had said) and not liking being without something to do (“You’re making the jokes too easy”, Robby had said). Soccer was a hobby. Not that Robby knew much about it, and he didn’t think that he’d ever seen Jack watch a game, but it was worth a shot.

He didn’t get a reply to his message, but a few days later Jack started adding some new entries to the dry erase calendar that lived on the front of their fridge. Every Saturday now said 9 A.M. — SOCCER in the red marker that meant it was one of Jack’s items.

Robby very carefully said nothing about it until after the first training session, and then over dinner just said, “It go okay?”

Jack seemed to think about it for a moment and then shrugged and said, without looking up from his pasta, “Yeah, okay, I think.”

But when Jack invited Robby to attend his first game (“Match, Robby, not game”, Jack said as if he’d known was the offside rule was four weeks ago), it was so clear that it was okay. Clear that Jack had, in fact, found what he’d been looking for: exertion, challenge, brotherhood, and not a firearm in sight. That ratcheted down some little bit of tension that Robby hadn't even known he'd been carrying inside him.

Robby cheered on from the sidelines as Jack chased down the ball with a look of focused exhilaration on his face. The huffs and shouts of the players as they called out to their teammates mingled with the clang and crash of crutches as they jostled for position and vied to be the first to get a goal. He applauded Jack’s goal, and even though Jack’s team drew, when he swung over to Robby on the sidelines afterwards, panting and sweaty, he was grinning just as hard as if they’d won in a landslide.

“Please go shower,” Robby said, wrinkling his nose as Jack slung one arm around him and kissed him hard. “I love you but God almighty.”

“That is the smell of victory,” Jack said.

“You didn’t win!”

“Victory,” Jack said, and his voice was as firm as his kiss.

[xwilltruman]

based on this post

[rb2m94]

[backonmybullsht]

Noah understands Benton and Carter’s relationship so well! 😭😭😭

“He was always there in the significant ways that showed the depth of his feeling for Carter but he never articulated it or never showed it in any way that Carter could appreciate. But the audience got to see it.”

This is why they always showed us Benton’s face when they hugged, but Carter never got to see it.

But I'd like to think after Benton stayed by his side in season 15, Carter truly knew.

[mistressvera]

Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Assad Zaman as Armand

IWTV - The Vampire Lestat 3.01 "Detroit"

[countygen]

10.11 — “Touch and Go”

[oidingus]

I don’t have anything finished but couldn't miss Dr. Carter's birthday, so here’s a quick rough of him presenting an interesting case to his longsuffering favorite resident (because that cat gif i saw on tiktok matches his energy a little too well)😌 🥕 #JohnCarter #PeterBenton #ER

[jars-artcollection]

a friend told me that shawn hatosy is part hungarian, so naturally, so is jack abbot

[simoneashley]

Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid for GQ Hype by Huy Luong

[siriaeve]

the one where they're irish

"Are you sure you're grand to work today?" Dana asked as Robby stowed his bag in his locker.

"Yeah, sure why wouldn't I be?"

"God, no reason at all," Dana said, and took a long slurp of her tea while levelling a look at Robby over the top of her glasses that was one of the A&E's most versatile tools. "Sure if you're grand, I'm grand."

Robby was able to give as good as he got in the looks department, but he also knew how to pick his battles. He needed his strength for other things, such as asking, "Do I want to know how many are on trolleys right now?"

"Start with the smaller crisis," Dana said. "I think Jack's up on top of the multi-storey."

"What's he doing up there?" Robby sighed. "It's lashing out."

"They only pay me enough to know so much," Dana said, making a show of turning back to her computer screen. It was easy knowing she was a Limerick woman. "All further questions can be addressed to the HSE enclosing a stamped addressed envelope."

The joys of being the department Clinical Director, Robby thought. He pulled his rain jacket on over his scrubs and headed back out into the grey early morning, dodging first the mini lakes that formed in the street outside anytime it rained for more than an hour straight, and then the little huddle of HCAs gathered under the entrance to the multi-storey. He pretended he didn't see they were smoking on hospital grounds just the same way that the senior management team pretended not to see all the structural work that needed to be done around here.

"How are ye?" Robby said with a nod as he passed them; he got an answering chorus of "Grand, Dr Robby, and yourself?"

He climbed the three flights of stairs up to the roof level, feeling every year of his age during the climb, and winced as he left the stairwell to be hit in the face by a burst of mizzle. A jacket couldn't do much for you when the rain was coming at you horizontally. Jack—standing over near a red Nissan Micra that Robby was fairly sure belonged to Mateo—didn't seem to be paying any mind to the weather.

"Well, Jack," Robby called across to him.

"What are you doing here?" Jack said without turning around.

"Some would say I'm working," Robby said. "And yourself?"

"Ah, I don't know." Robby sidled up next to him, and judging by how red-rimmed Jack's eyes were, he'd say it wasn't just that Jack's cheeks were wet because of the rain. "The mam of the O'Shea lad came in last night. Had a Mass card for me and said she hoped I'd come to the month's mind and that the whole family wanted me to know they appreciated what we'd done for him."

Robby winced. Some patients hit you harder than others. That was how it went. When it was a healthy fourteen-year-old who keeled over in the middle of a GAA match because of a previously undetected congenital heart defect, well, you tried your best no matter how hopeless you knew it was. Jack had managed to get sinus rhythm back twice, because he was one of the most skilled doctors Robby had ever met. He'd tried his very best, and the chap had still died, and that was a blow like a physical thing.

"Not something I want to be thanked for, you know?"

"You wouldn't be the better of it," Robby said lightly, because it wasn't so much that he agreed as that he didn't disagree, and he didn't want to be having a familiar, circular argument in a multi-storey car park at half seven of a morning. "Now can I interest you in not freezing our bollocks off up here?" He nodded in the direction of the white concrete bulk of the main hospital. "There's tea over there."

"Ah, sure go on, yeah," Jack said, and he was making a show of reluctance, playing at humouring Robby, but Robby could tell that he was just tired. He could see it in the dark circles under his eyes; in how his accent grew stronger, flattening out his vowels beneath the weight of watery Midlands bogs. Not to mention that this couldn't be good for Jack's leg.

As they headed for the stairwell, Jack said, "Some days I do wonder if I'm cracked to stay here and keep doing this. I could walk into a job at one of the private places, reel in all them sweet VHI euros. Or sneak in with all the junior doctors and head off to Australia."

Robby scoffed. "You'd miss the go of it here. The glamour. The chance of seeing your workplace on an episode of Prime Time." He looked sidelong at Jack as they crossed the street through the slackening rain, and said, half-sly, half-earnest, "Me."

"Ah, would you ever whisht," Jack said as they walked back through the automatic doors that led to A&E, and surely it was the blast of hot air from the heater mounted overhead that put that sudden tinge of pink into Jack's cheeks.

Or maybe it was the sight of a patient dancing around the waiting area, stark bollock naked and waving the county flag over his head. "Next year in Croker! Hon the lads!" he slurred in a way that said he'd probably come straight from a lock-in at Kavanagh's. Ossified, Robby's Bubbe would have said. You could practically see the alcohol fumes coming off him, like how a cartoon character would emanate waving lines.

"For feck's sake," Robby said, planting his hands on his hips.

"Or," Jack said contemplatively, eyeing the chaos as a small team of staff tried to corral the naked man into a side room, "the two of us could make a break for it."

It was Robby's turn to feel his face heat; there was something in Jack's tone that he could have sworn was Jack asking a question. "I thought you normally had your existential crises on the far side of a bank holiday weekend, not before it."

"Eh," Jack said, shrugging, watching Robby out of the corner of his eye, "sure there's maybe something to be said for trying out new things. That and tea."

A question, alright. Robby felt his mouth curve into a slow smile. "Tea and that," he said.

[jackabbot]

ER (1994-2009) 7.22 • Rampage

[siriaeve]

The first thing that startled Robby was just how long it took him to realise what he'd done. He'd strode across to meet the incoming ambulance, heard what info the EMTs had to pass on, walked the gurney into Trauma One, supervised Cassie and Nazely's assessment and stabilisation of the patient—gunshot wound to the abdomen, lower right quadrant; congratulations, you've just won the hopefully-once-in-a-lifetime chance to have Yolanda Garcia rummage around in your insides—and only then did it hit him.

He'd been out in the ambulance bay on the phone with Jack when he'd heard the wail of an approaching ambulance. Their discussion of whether to try the fancy new pizzeria with the odd toppings around the corner from Jack's place, or just to stick with the tried-and-true option for watching the game tonight, would have to wait. "Gotta go," Robby had said, distracted as he tried to estimate how far out the rig was, "see you later, I love you."

Robby stood there in the trauma bay and the full horror of the realisation slowly dawned on him. He'd told Jack he loved him. He'd told Jack he loved him, and then he'd hung up on him.

"Fuck," Robby said.

He snapped off the nitrile gloves he was wearing, binned them, and pulled his phone from his pocket between his thumb and his forefinger, as if he was handling some kind of medical waste. Nothing. No missed calls, no voice mails, no texts except for a scam one trying to get him to pay an imaginary FasTrak toll in California. Nothing at all from Jack, and Robby couldn't decide if that was better or worse.

Hand-off to Shen and Ellis was its usual clockwork, and on the drive over to Jack's place Robby went through various stages of bargaining with the universe. Maybe Jack hadn't heard him. Reception in the ambulance bay could be spotty. Calls sometimes dropped. Or maybe Jack would laugh it off, treat it as just the kind of brain fart you sometimes got near the end of a long but humdrum shift—like how a little kid in elementary school might absent-mindedly call their teacher 'mom' in front of the whole class.

A little voice in Robby's head, one that sounded suspiciously like his therapist, said what are you bargaining here for, exactly? Which was one of many reasons why therapy was doing a number on his temporomandibular joint, because clearly Jack had been getting along just fine with Robby not saying anything, even though Robby had surely been painfully, mortifyingly obvious, and wasn't the whole point of the therapy sessions for him to learn how not to leak his feelings all over everything and everyone?

And really, Robby thought as he parked in front of Jack's building and sat there rubbing at the hinge of his jaw, would we even call what Robby felt for Jack love? Or if he did, well, there were lots of different kinds of love. It didn't have to be that kind. Did it? Robby strained to recall all those ancient Greek words for love he'd studied in a long ago philosophy gen ed course. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, one two three. Who was to say that Robby hadn't meant brotherly love? Philia. That could have been what he meant.

It's still bargaining if you're splitting hairs and looking for get-out clauses, his little internal therapist pointed out.

"Fuck," Robby said.

In the elevator ride up to Jack's condo, Robby wondered if there was scope for him to invent some sudden emergency. If he could just text Jack and say, Sorry, can't make it tonight, my condo's flooded or Cafeteria food gave me food poisoning, see you in 24-48 hours. But part of him felt like: well, hell, face the music. Play stupid phone games, accept stupid phone prizes.

See you later, I love you.

"Fuck," Robby said, with emphasis.

Right after he knocked on Jack's door, Robby realised he'd been so distracted by what he'd said that he'd totally forgotten what he'd promised to do in the first place. As soon as Jack appeared, in shorts and a ratty old t-shirt, Robby blurted out, "I didn't bring any pizza."

Jack looked at him, slow and steady, and then said, "We're working on our conversational segues, huh?"

"You heard it, right?" Robby said as Jack stepped back to let him in.

"Heard it, yeah," Jack said, closing the door and used one of his crutches to point in the direction of the living room. Robby obeyed, glum. The pre-game show should have started by now, but Jack's TV was switched off. A glass of whiskey sat on the coffee table. Robby had the distinct impression that he wasn't going to be watching the game that night. "Heard it, thought about it. Processed," with that precise, Dr-Abbot-y enunciation that could be terrifying when turned on a wayward med student and that now made Robby wince.

"I'm sorry," Robby said, hoping Jack would also hear the sincerity in his tone. "It was a lapse, it doesn't have to mean anything, I can keep a handle on it."

"Oh my god," Jack said, in tones of disbelief as resonant as if Robby had just confessed to liking low-fat popcorn, or thinking that the Pirates had a chance of winning the World Series this year.

"I can go," Robby offered. "If you don't want—"

"Sit," Jack said, and pointed at his couch. Robby sat. Jack picked up his glass and knocked back the last of the whiskey in one big gulp. Robby winced. That boded."Okay."

"'Okay' what?"

Jack squinted at him. "You think you're getting to steer this conversation right now? Because that happened earlier, and look where that got us."

"Jesus," Robby said.

"Let's leave him out of this," Jack said and, setting his crutches down, moved to straddle Robby's lap.

"Um," Robby said.

"You didn't need to woo me with fancy pizza," Jack said, "because brother, surely you know a sure thing when you see it. But I will say—"

Robby was long familiar with that particular tone. He rolled his eyes, preemptively.

"—as first declarations of like, undying passions or whatever, you could do with a little more finesse."

"Undying passion?" Robby echoed.

Jack stared impassively at him and raised both his eyebrows. "Well?"

Robby took a deep breath and fought not to close his eyes. Surely he could be brave enough to say this to Jack face-to-face? "I love you. I'm in love with you. I don't know when it first started but I do know that I can't imagine myself now without that fact of loving you. I'm not… I'm not good at words, I don't sing love songs well, but for you, I wish I could."

Jack leaned forward, rested one hand gently on Robby's chest, right over his heart. The expression on Jack's face now terrified Robby; made him want to keep being brave.

"I said it because it's what I'm always feeling. When I say hello to you, I mean I love you. When I say good night, I mean that I love you. When I—"

Their first kiss was a slow thing, a tremendous thing, with as much weight and heft to it as Jack had in Robby's lap. Robby's hands came up to settle on Jack's hips, and his head swam like he was the one who'd drunk the whiskey, instead of just having licked the taste of it from Jack's mouth.

"How about now?" Jack murmured, voice gone raspy. "Do you mean it now?"

"Yes," Robby said, and he'd never wanted Jack to believe him so much about something as he did right now. "Jack, I—"

"I love you, too," Jack said, and he was smiling like he'd just discovered the map to some undiscovered country, and the only thing that startled Robby now was how long it had taken them to speak.

[siriaeve]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Fandom: The Faculty (1998) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Stan Rosado/Original Male Character Characters: Stan Rosado, Casey Connor Additional Tags: Future Fic, Past Relationship(s)

Summary:

Herrington, Ohio. 2023.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[siriaeve]

Noah Wyle and Sally Field for Variety’s Actors on Actors, releasing June 12.

[siriaeve]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 8/8 Fandom: The Pitt (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jack Abbot/Michael “Robby” Robinavitch Characters: Jack Abbot (The Pitt), Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, Baby Jane Doe (The Pitt Season 2) Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 02, Kid Fic, Slow Burn

Summary:

“You… you took home Baby Jane Doe?”

Together, Robby and Jack grasp a new chance at family.

Now complete!

[valeron99]

Everyone always needs a beach episode.