Archive of Our Own

As soon as it leaves his mouth, Langdon knows that he’s crossed the line. 

Robby’s concern had been strictly professional — because, of course it was, it always had been, Langdon reminds himself — tucked neatly away behind the invisible, yet hard-set boundary that Robby had worked so hard to keep up. The same one that Langdon had pushed and prodded and tested the limits of since the first day of his internship. 

The whole thing had started out simple: a double-take from Robby upon seeing the red, flushed cut splitting down the swell of Langdon’s lower lip. 

“All good over there?” Robby had said, each back and forth of his eyes across Langdon’s face only serving to turn up the buzz of static prickling under his skin. 

“Oh, yeah,” Langdon had said back, putting on the low, private tone that he only uses when he’s trying to test Robby’s limits. “The side effects of sharing a queen bed with a pregnant lady and a restless two-year-old.”

Robby had pressed his lips into this small, slightly amused smile that Langdon had almost immediately recognized as the one that, up until six months ago, was reserved for Collins. “At least you know you don’t have to worry about Tanner’s gross motor function.”

Langdon smiled back, this heat pooling in his chest at the subtle realization. “Maybe I should put him in karate. Let him really hone those kicking skills.”

There was a brief, comfortable silence after that, the faint sounds of hospital chaos muffled by the break room door and the overwhelming scent of burnt coffee lingering in the pot. 

“I hope you’ll let me take a look at it later, you know, just to be sure,” Robby asked without asking, pulling at the words like he almost didn’t know if he should have said anything. His own way of pushing against the flexible barrier of their workplace relationship, Langdon had thought. “And that you’ll let me know if there’s any atypical pain, or pop-up bleeding—”

“I already checked it out,” Langdon assures, setting his mug on the counter next to Robby’s and turning to face him. “It’s all good. Superficial. No workplace liabilities for you to be worried about.”

Robby hummed disapprovingly, all upturned brows and quiet concern. (Langdon had tried not to read into the slightest lean in of Robby’s body towards his.) “That’s not what I’m—”

“I took worse hits playing junior hockey,” Langdon had tried to reassure him, hoping he didn’t sound as breathless as he felt, his voice fading out into these deep exhales. “Robby, I’m good, trust me.”

That had seemed to soften Robby up a bit, easing some of the tension from between his eyebrows and evening out the crooked slope of his shoulders. But then, as quickly as his body had relaxed, he’d started moving. 

“Just—” Robby’s voice had come out halted, strong hands flying up to hold either side of Langdon’s jaw. Robby had pressed the pads of his thumbs against either side of the cut, holding his lip in place. Scrutinizing eyes leaned in, just inches from Langdon’s face, despite Robby’s reading glasses dangling from the neck of his scrub top. “Okay. Yes. All good. Sorry.”

When Robby had pulled his head back, just barely, the tips of his fingers had traced a thin, searing line across the skin of his jaw. He watches as the muscles of Robby’s hands tense up, all raw strength and years of experience. 

Fucking— it’s absolutely insane. How he just walks around with that face, that body, that mind all day. Genuinely just incomprehensible shit.

“Just making sure,” Robby said, voice low and almost honest for the briefest moment. “Can’t have you out there bleeding on patients.”

“You’re a real worrier, you know that?” Langdon teased, something almost saccharine bleeding into the edges of his words.

It was then that he’d made the conscious decision to fully fucking commit to whatever it was that he was doing here. Langdon had never been one to half-ass something, and he certainly was not going to start now.

“So I’ve been told,” Robby said, his eyes softening ever so slightly as he momentarily held the heavy eye contact that Langdon had initiated. “By you, mostly.”

At first, Langdon thought that he might have imagined it. The gentle rake of Robby’s gaze up and down his body, from his eyes down to the cut on his lip and then to the slightly lifted hem of his scrub top. 

Reality had really only set in when Langdon, ever observant when it came to Robby, had caught the unmistakable bob of his throat and the hint of pink crawling up over the top of his neckline. 

And there had been something about that, that little bit of physical, undeniable evidence that everything — all of Langdon’s little pushes, his button pressing, his increasingly bold flirtations that had begun to toe the line between appropriate and HR nightmare — had made some sort of impact. He had made an impact, which, honestly, is all he could ask for with a guy like Robby. 

There’s this vein of admiration that runs through it, he thinks, a sharp undercurrent of worship and teen-girl-with-a-crush level yearning that colors every thought, every action, every move he makes when it comes to navigating the emotional minefield that is Doctor Michael Robinavitch. 

R2s, as a general rule of thumb, are still like interns in the sense that they are supposed to be as invisible as possible in the ED. Seen, but not heard. But Langdon — again, ever observant — had seen the, honestly, quite glaring favoritism Robby had shown toward him, and fuck, if that wasn’t addicting. 

He’s always had what his mother had so lovingly referred to as ‘an addictive personality,’ but there’s something about this that was completely set apart from every other vice Langdon’d had over the past thirty years. 

Maybe that’s why he had said what he did. 

“You know, now that you mention it,” Langdon drawled, leaning up into Robby’s space — close enough that he could feel a heavy breath leave Robby’s lips and smell his amber-tobacco body wash — with this stupid grin on his face and ringing in his ears. He’d made very, very purposeful eye contact when he said: “It does kind of hurt. You wanna kiss it better?”

This is where it all goes wrong. 

Usually, when he pulls some shit like this, Robby shoots back at him with something cool and overtly professional. Something vaguely dismissive, but never outright discouraging. 

Now, Robby doesn’t say anything. 

Langdon watches, bordering on tachycardia, as this stain of blush-red bleeds from the tips of Robby’s ears through his face and down his neck. He gets this indecipherable, almost bewildered look on his face. 

Shit. 

So, okay, clearly, he’s found the limit. 

Finally, after all this time, he’s hit the ceiling of completely out of pocket shit that he can get away with saying to his hot, age-inappropriate boss. He’s gotten away with a lot over the years, he knows, but now, he gets the sudden, distinct feeling that this is not something that he is going to get away with, whatever that might mean. 

Blood, hot and bright and a bit more than slightly guilty, flushes up Langdon’s face and settles on his cheeks, under his eyes, and over his nose. The air around them shifts into something humid and heady. Electricity thrums against his skin and pools in the tips of his fingers.  

“I, uh,” Robby swallows, his voice dropped low and eyes zoned out somewhere in the middle of Langdon’s face, almost entirely unreadable in their gentleness.

Then, the break room door swings open, and the chaos of their real lives — the ones outside of this moment where Langdon had said too much — comes back into focus. 

“Robby, if you keep Shamsi waiting any longer, she’ll— oh,” Dana starts, faltering when she sees the scene spread out in front of her. “Am I… interrupting something?”

Langdon catches how Robby’s hands twitch at his sides. The deep, steadying breath he takes.

The smile finally drops from Langdon’s face. He clears his throat and leans back on his heels, that familiar pinch of tension rising in his shoulders and upper back as he moves a professionally-appropriate distance away. 

That seems to snap Robby out of it. He brushes off the look that Langdon has since deemed to be secondhand embarrassment and pulls himself back together. 

Langdon has got to get out of here. 

“Huh? Oh, uh,” Robby coughs, shaking his head. His gaze is still focused on Langdon, and he doesn’t turn to look at Dana when he speaks like he usually does. “No, sorry. What, uh—”

“Shamsi's waiting for you outside South fifteen,” Dana answers before Robby can even ask. Langdon watches, in real time, as Robby’s brain loads like the dial-up modem that used to be in his grandfather's house. Dana, observant as always, prompts him: “For the consult you—”

“Right, yes, shit,” Robby inhales roughly and drags a hand over his face, putting on the supremely professional tone that Langdon had worked so hard to get him to drop. “Thank you, Dana.”

Robby gives Langdon one last look, his eyes crinkling in the corners, before he slides past him and disappears into the haze of gurneys, defibrillators, and patient satisfaction scores. 

Dana gives him a look, too, something cautious and compassionate at the same time, before she follows Robby through the doors.

Langdon goes through the rest of his shift feeling like he’d crawled out of his skin and put it back on wrong. Or, like there’s this feral animal roiling around inside of his chest, one that Robby had only fed once or twice, that keeps crawling back.  

Plainly, he feels like a piece of shit.

Okay, and like, yeah, Langdon knows that he absolutely should be feeling like a piece of shit right now. Whatever that fucking comment he'd made had made Robby — his fucking boss, he reminds himself — shut down in a way that he has never seen before, and, really, Langdon shouldn’t even be saying shit like that in the first place. 

He’s a husband — a father — and a good one, too, he thinks. 

At least, he was a good husband and father, until he’d matched into an emergency medicine residency at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Until he’d left Abby and their newborn in that unpacked, cross-country apartment and walked into the ED. Until he’d met the fucking attending, who’d done a double take upon first seeing Langdon and always seemed to have a hand on his shoulder, his lower back, his hip. 

Long story short, Langdon is now realizing that every single attempt of his to slip under Robby’s skin, to see that addicting shade of red flood his face, had always been too far. From day one. 

He can not believe he didn’t see that until now. 

The guilt-induced nausea hits about four hours after he’d caught Robby staring at him from behind his desktop, face flushed red and glasses slightly askew. (It’s the fifth time he’s caught Robby staring at him since this morning. Twice, from across the ED while he was up to his elbows in blood and gauze and PPE. Once, as he was leaning over the nurses' station to annoy Dana. Another two times when he had been on the phone with Abby, whisper-screaming and trying to avoid another fight.)

Langdon stumbles into the bathroom to dry heave over the toilet. The weight of his desire leaves him with searing embarrassment and something like complete self-disgust. 

Half an hour later, give or take, Dana finds him with red-rimmed eyes and sweaty hair stuck to his forehead and practically forces a Zofran under his tongue.

By the time his shift ends, he’s covered in a thin sheen of cold, guilty sweat, four people are dead, and his head feels just about ready to explode. 

All this to say, Langdon is very ready to go home. 

He can practically hear the hiss of the painfully cold post-shift showers he revels in, paired with the distant hum of Abby watching World News Tonight in the next room while Tanner’s running feet thud-thud-thud against the carpet.

Back in the old days — by which he means before his extremely Catholic parents and Abby’s extremely Jewish ones had all but forced them to the altar five months before Tanner’s arrival and four months after the world had shut down — he’d drown out all of his never-ending guilt by finding someone with sad brown eyes and a lot of pent-up frustration and let them soothe the constant itch under his skin. The ringing in his ears.

He had been satisfied with that someone being Abby. For a while, at least. 

But then there had been this quiet realization that the someone he’d spent all his time looking for — the mangled, idealized phantom of a person that he thought only existed in the dredges of his mind — was Robby. (If only they’d met six months earlier. Langdon shudders to think of the things he would have done. The man he could have been.)

When they’d first met, Robby had felt like a manifestation of everything that Langdon had always let himself chase but never let himself catch. Like the figment of some deranged, psychosexual fixation that he’d been feeling around for in the dark, finally brought into the light. 

So, after the day he’s had, he kind of thinks that he might be hallucinating when he sees Robby, who famously walks everywhere and has no good reason to be coming this way, from across the parking lot. 

Around him, there’s this halo of heavy, scattered, mid-summer rain that lights up Robby’s silhouette and clings to Langdon’s skin, his car, the concrete floors. He takes a deep breath, lets the clean, sweet scent fill his lungs, and steels himself for whatever comes next.

Robby’s sort of speed-walking towards him, hands shoved deep into his pockets and shoulders slumped inward, as if he could actually dodge each individual drop of rain. 

He comes to a short stop before Langdon, the bulk of the air around them pushing him into leaning against his driver's side door. It’s a mirror image of them in the break room this morning — standing too close, bodies tilted toward each other like co-orbital entities. 

Then, all breathless and edgy in a way that is classically him, all that Robby says is: “Hey.” 

“Hey,” Langdon’s aiming for cool, kind of nonchalant, but ends up sounding just as breathless as Robby did. 

“Some day, huh?” Robby kind of squeezes his eyes shut as he speaks, an expression Langdon has run over in his mind countless times. 

“Nah,” Langdon says back, only slightly ashamed to admit the way his eyes follow a drop of rain trailing down the line of Robby’s brow. “Nothing you, me, and a couple of improvised subcuticular sutures couldn’t handle.”

Robby tilts his head into this small smile. 

“Fishing for compliments again, Dr. Langdon?”

“From you, boss?” Langdon clarifies, his throat clearing, voice startlingly steady. “Always.”

Robby half-scoffs, half-laughs as he drags a hand down the back of his neck. 

“Well, for what it’s worth, you did good work today,” Robby leans forward, each inch of closed space pushing anxiously against Langdon’s skin. “But that’s all you get, I’m not here to stoke your ego.”

The same drop of rain slides down the bridge of Robby’s nose and drops onto the top of Langdon’s shoe.

There’s this serious, soft look in Robby’s eyes, one that is almost suffocatingly intimate, and not at all what he had expected to see. (But, he’s definitely not complaining. He would do anything, be anything, to get Robby to keep looking at him that way for the rest of his life.)

Langdon feels the heat rise over the collar of his jacket and settle high up on his cheekbones. If Robby asks, he’ll blame it on the rain. The humidity. The way Robby is staring at him.

“Yeah, well, I learned from the best,” Langdon whispers, all hushed and breathy. He lets the admission slide off his tongue, matching Robby’s act of sincerity with one of his own. An eye for an eye. It’s quiet for a moment, until Langdon, always uncomfortable with silence, says: “So, if you didn’t corner me in this parking lot to shower me with praise, then…”

At that, Langdon sees a switch flip in Robby’s brain — a decision being made. 

Langdon watches as he swallows, pulling his hands, still balled into fists, and out of the wet fabric of his pockets. 

He scans Langdon’s face, frantic, yet still soft and sincere, but with this resolute, almost fuck-it look on his face. 

“Oh no, I know better than to do that,” Robby says, eyes dropping again to the still relatively new cut. He takes a deep breath. Pushes past whatever mental barrier Langdon knows he has up right now. “I was— hm,” He groans. Resets. Starts over. “Sorry. I was wondering—”

“Yeah?” Langdon coaxes, getting ahead of himself like always. 

“How’s the cut?” Robby asks then, his voice all serious as his eyes drop down and center on Langdon’s lips. “Still… hurting?”

Oh. Well. Shit. So, clearly, he hadn’t found the line like he thought he did. Or, if he did, Robby has since decided that it didn’t matter. 

Langdon’s throat goes dry. He tries to swallow, the sticky skin of his esophagus proving to be uncooperative. 

Not once does it cross his mind that this thing he’s kick-started is very quickly spiraling into something decidedly dangerous, or even that it might not be a great idea to be talking this way less than fifty feet from the heavily trafficked back exit. 

Fairly quickly, Langdon decides that that’s a problem for the version of him that exists outside of this one, almost perfect moment: them in the PTMC parking lot. The rain. The quiet comprehension. 

“Yeah,” Langdon breathes, watching as Robby unclenches his fist and flexes his fingers by his side, almost eager. He can’t help the half-delirious, half-nervous smile that he feels stretch over his face. “You know, now that I think about it, it actually hurts way worse than it did this morning.”

“Hm. You should get that checked out.”

“Well, I can’t have just anybody messing with my face. I’m pretty picky when it comes to my medical care.” 

Langdon says this very intentionally, his hand twitching at his side and aching to just reach out and touch.

Then, from Robby: “Well, um, I could, you know— if you wanted—”

“Yeah,”

“Yeah?” Robby’s throat clicks, determination settling in the darkening brown of his eyes — the exact shade that always drove Langdon up the fucking wall. 

“Yeah, yes, fuck yeah, come on, please—”

Robby leans in then, the palms of his hands flying up and pressing flat on each side of Langdon’s neck, the slightest pressure under his touch. He presses a fervent, off-center kiss against the cut. 

Langdon feels like he’s on fire. Like he’s stuck in a body full of exposed nerve endings and sparking wires. He feels the strong, chaste press of Robby’s lips against the left side of his lower lip, the corner of his mouth, centered over the cut. 

It’s quiet. Undemanding. Robby doesn’t move, his body rigid and almost nervous, his lips lingering like he could, genuinely, kiss it better.

For the second time today, the pad of Robby’s thumb brushes against the angle of Langdon’s jaw right before he pulls away, his eyes easing open after being clamped shut. 

Langdon leans in when Robby leans back, this kind of dazed smile working its way across his face. There’s only one thought rattling around in his stupid, enamored brain at the moment: Again. Again. Again.

“I don’t think that’s standard of care for a face lac,” Langdon says, before he can stop himself, all fond and so obviously lovesick that there’s no way Robby won’t notice. 

Even though it doesn’t really sound like it, it’s Langdon’s open plea for more, for something harder, for whatever he can get. 

He’ll take the sweet, soft press of lips any day, but he knows from experience that the persistent itch, the buzz, under his skin doesn’t go away with anything even slightly resembling gentleness. 

It takes something aggressive, something all-encompassing, something destructive.

Langdon lets out this embarrassing, breathy laugh that sounds more like a cough. Whatever. He’ll blame that on the rain, too, along with whatever else comes next. 

“Oh, fuck standard of care,” Robby kind of shakes his head, eyes half lidded and that same flush from earlier blooming at the tips of his ears. 

He leans back in, meeting Langdon somewhere in the middle. This time, it’s messy. Almost frantic. Their noses bump together and teeth meet in a resounding clack. Robby’s beard leaves behind red scrapes against Langdon’s chin. 

Langdon takes the time to memorize the sweet, remarkably human taste of Robby’s spit. It’s all Marlboro 100s masked by the punch of classic Altoids, black coffee, and flavored dental floss. His hands fly up to bunch together the fabric of Robby’s well-loved Beers of the Burgh hoodie, just above his hips.

“Ow, Robby— oh shit,” Langdon mumbles against him, feeling the sting of Robby’s teeth sinking into the uninjured side of his bottom lip. “Is this what had you staring at me all day?” He asks, getting out the words whenever he can, Robby swallowing each one as it comes out. “Thinking about this?”

“About you,” Robby groans, the sound rumbling around inside his ribcage. 

“Oh, yeah?” Langdon, caught kind of off guard and suddenly breathless, traces the line of Robby’s molars with his tongue. The bumps on the roof of his mouth. 

Langdon, greedy as always, pulls Robby closer. He pulls him in to the point where their shoes are slotted together and he can feel the rapid rise and fall of Robby’s chest pushing against his, their hips flush, as if he could bury himself under Robby’s skin and live there forever.

“Yeah,” Robby breathes, each tumbling word pulling at Langdon’s belly button. “Always thinking about you, you have no fucking idea.”

There’s this haze that overtakes him when he hears Robby say that, one that pushes all logic and critical thought out the window entirely. He’s no longer thinking about his post-shift shower, or Abby, or work, or really anything at all. 

For a brief moment, Langdon is almost disturbed by how little guilt this seems to bring him, heavily outweighed by this rush of euphoria, but the thought doesn’t stick around long. 

To be fair, none of Langdon’s thoughts have been sticking for the past five or so minutes. For the past 12 hours. From the moment Robby touched him for the first time — a heavy, possessive hand on the back of his neck two hours into his first shift. 

His brain is all Robby, Robby, Robby, and more, more, more. (And, honestly, he thinks he can probably live with that.)

Langdon kisses him like it’s something he was made to do, going soft and pliant and obedient under Robby’s fingers as they push him back and cage him against the door of his car.  

Robby kisses like a man possessed. Like he never thought he’d get the chance. Like he was made for Langdon the same way that Langdon was made for him. 

He drags his lips across the smooth skin of Langdon’s jaw, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the rain-slick skin of his neck. His hands are everywhere — on Langdon’s throat, grabbing fistfuls of his hair, sliding beneath his raincoat and finding purchase on his waist — rough, claiming, and exactly what he needs. He takes apart each of Langdon’s nonverbal cues, every twitch of his body.

Langdon feels as the itch melts away, along with the guilt, the embarrassment, the overwhelming responsibility of his everyday life — everything. 

On its own, the too-easy release of control and complete surrender to this thing with Robby is enough to satisfy him for weeks. Months. Years, if it has to, but, you know, hopefully not. 

Quite honestly, Langdon isn’t sure if he’d be able to go back to his regular life after this. After Robby had so gently taken Langdon’s still-beating heart between his hands, molded it into something new, and finally made the irreversible step of giving Langdon exactly what he wanted. 

It’s here that Langdon begins to realize that he is absolutely terrified of never having this again — well, of never having Robby like this again, his spit in Langdon’s mouth, guttural sounds catching low in his throat, Robby completely, entirely alive beneath his fingertips. 

(It is also here that he realizes that half of that terror stems from his father's seething voice, moments before he had walked down the aisle. No one cares what you want. This is your mess to clean up. Take some fucking responsibility for once. He pushes it down and saves it for later.)

“You’re so— shit—” Robby groans, his words are halted, like he’s either not sure what he’s supposed to say or like he’s not sure that he should say anything at all. But still, he does. Robby presses a hard, feverish kiss that lands directly against the split on Langdon’s lip, but the pain barely registers at all, because Robby mumbles: “Fucking perfect. So pretty like this.”

Langdon's head spins at the praise, and he lets out this surprised, startlingly high-pitched, involuntary, almost animalistic sound from his chest as he fumbles to get his hands under the hem of Robby’s scrubs. 

When he does, he drags the tips of his fingers across the warm, tightening skin of Robby’s abdomen, just above his belly button, and tries to memorize the sensation beneath his hands.

Robby reacts by dropping his forehead into the junction of Langdon’s neck and shoulder. His hand trails to the curling hair at the base of Langdon’s neck, balling into a fist as he pulls. 

“Getting ahead of yourself,” Robby scolds, but it comes out weak. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say,” Langdon rambles, stunted by the fog that’s currently drifting through his brain and drowning the part of his brain responsible for auditory processing. Langdon’s hands bunch up the wet fabric of Robby’s scrub top, his voice quiet, desperate, pleading. “Again, please, need you to do it again.”

Honestly, Langdon doesn’t really know what exactly he’s asking for. He’s grasping at barely there, incoherent urges and hoping Robby will piece it together the way he always does. 

Langdon, all spacey and instinctual, aimlessly nuzzles his face closer to where Robby’s is tucked into his shoulder, the short hair behind Robby’s ears prickling against the skin of his cheek. As Langdon’s head shifts towards his, Robby cranes his neck up and stares at him, blinking heavily, his mouth slightly open, ears dark red. 

There must be something that Robby sees on Langdon’s face, in his half-lidded, dilated eyes, because he can physically feel the shift in Robby’s demeanor as another choice is made. As he shifts his attitude from quiet reservation to something more like sheer reckless abandon.

“Do what again?” Robby asks, voice low and rough and anticipatory, his brows now set in a determined line. 

Jesus Christ, this guy is going to be the fucking death of him. 

Since words seem to be failing him right now, what Langdon does is push his head forward in a jittery attempt to get his lips back on Robby’s. 

Robby, on the other hand, pulls his head back the same amount that Langdon pushes forward. (Cruel and unusual punishment.)

So, they just stand there, the two of them draped in matching senses of invincibility, bodies connected at almost every possible point. 

The itch starts to rise back up from beneath Langdon’s skin.

Robby seems to take notice of this, to understand, and indulges him. He picks his head up and takes Langdon’s chin and jaw in a hard, possessive grip, angling his face into whatever position he wants.

“Oh, I see,” Robby whispers, a rare, dizzy smile making its way across his face. There’s something else there, though, just behind his eyes, that darkens — that wants. It’s a gentle command that comes out next. “Try again. Ask me nicely.”

The words barely register to Langdon, who lurches forward anyway. Robby dodges him for the second time and instead pushes past Langdon’s lips, his teeth, and lets his thumb lie heavy against Langdon’s tongue. 

“Robby,” Langdon keens, a line of spit trailing down from the corner of his open mouth as his voice maneuvers around the — very welcome — obstruction. 

Langdon can’t help himself — he lets his lips close and pushes his tongue up and flat against the pad of Robby’s thumb, eyelids fluttering, little sounds coming out with every inhale and exhale.  

This swell of pride overtakes Langdon as he watches Robby momentarily lose focus, a hitched breath stuttering in his chest when Langdon sinks down to get as much of him in his mouth as possible.

The scene spread out before them, the one that Langdon has spent the past two years writing and rewriting in his mind, is harshly intimate. Slightly embarrassing. Completely dizzying. 

He feels as the air around him thickens and holds him tight in its grip, a dense humidity that burns against exposed, damp skin. 

Here Langdon is, all Catholic guilt, adrenaline, and false confidence, being forced to verbalize the one thing he had always kept suppressed: true, unyielding desire. 

He tries to get the words out, but there’s something in his brain that just won’t let him say it. That won’t let him ask.

But, as Robby pulls his thumb out of Langdon’s mouth, he gets the distinct feeling that Robby won’t stop until he wins — until every single cut is reopened and every bruise pressed. (It’s fucking addicting, how Robby’s always pushing him in one way or another, how he knows Langdon’s limits and abilities better than he does. Not that he’d ever say that. Not that he’ll ever get the chance.)

Then, Robby, in a whisper: “Don’t you want to be good for me?”

Oh. Okay.

There is something about that that sends this shock of electric energy coursing through Langdon’s body, every inch of him overly sensitive and on edge. It’s paired with this flood of oxytocin and dopamine that takes over his brain, because, as always, Robby knows him. 

He knows that all Langdon has ever really wanted was to be able to show Robby just how good he could be for him. To hear him say it. To know that he means it. 

“Fuck, yes, yeah,” Langdon fumbles, pushing his hands further underneath the wet fabric of Robby’s scrub top, his palms pressing flat against the sides of his ribcage. “Gonna be good for you, Robby, so good—”

If any single part of Langdon’s brain were working right now, he’d probably start thinking too intensely about how and why Robby always knows exactly what to say, which button to push, where to touch. 

Right now, this surprise attack in the parking lot feels intensely, singularly physical, like the overextended rubber band has finally snapped. But that — Robby knowing exactly how to get to him, every single time, without fail — is definitely not just the manifestation of solely physical attraction. 

That is something deeper. Something that he can’t let himself think too hard about. Not right now.

Langdon runs his fingers through the hair scattered across the plane of Robby’s abdomen, digging blunt fingernails into the exposed skin of Robby’s hips. (It gets this groan out of him, the one that’s kind of low and kind of stuttered. The same one that plays on loop in Langdon’s head during some of his more frantic, private moments.)

If it’s even possible, Robby crowds further against him, their bodies entirely pressed together as the rain comes down harder, almost bruising. 

Langdon’s hands, on their own, he swears, find a place against Robby’s beard. 

“Then ask nicely—”

“Please—” Langdon tries to seize his head forward for the third, humiliating time, crawling back to Robby to soothe the itch like he always does, only to be dodged for the third, humiliating time. 

“Please, what?”

“Please,” Langdon groans, chasing the singular, focused attention of the one person that he is absolutely not supposed to want it from. “Kiss me again, please, need you to—”

“There he is,” Robby grins, satisfied. Strong hands trail down to push at the side of Langdon’s hips, effectively keeping him pinned, and putting the slightest bit of space between the unforgiving, revealing press of their bodies. “Good boy.”

Robby finally, finally closes the space between them again. He sets a slower pace this time, but it’s just as overwhelming as the quick, frenzied collision from earlier. 

It’s almost romantic, Langdon thinks, the two of them kissing in the rain like this. Despite that, he knows, deep down, that romance is a dangerous thing for him to want from this. 

This whole mess would be so much easier if his attraction were strictly physical, if it were something that could be resisted, if there were absolutely no feelings involved whatsoever. 

But this is not that. It never was that. It never will be that—

Robby gives him some help in not getting too lost in that thought by whispering into Langdon’s open mouth: “Always so good for me. My guy.”

For once in his life, Langdon might genuinely be speechless. 

So, instead of trying to say something back, he keeps kissing Robby until the rain stops feeling romantic and just starts feeling like rain. The cold, wet air begins to make itself a home in the heat of his stomach, his hair stuck to his forehead, his clothes soaked through. 

“Hold on, hold on, can—” Langdon, words failing, uses the hold he has on Robby’s jaw to push his head away and lets one hand fall by his side to fumble with the exterior lock on his car door handle. He shakily presses the button once, twice. “Get in?”

Robby blinks at him, dazed, a few times before seemingly realizing they can’t stay out in the rain like this forever. Robby clears his throat and stumbles toward the passenger door of the SUV, his eyes never falling from Langdon’s face. 

Once they’re in the car, with the rain beating against the doors and curtaining down the windows, Robby is back at it. 

He awkwardly bends over the center console, planting one hand on the side of Langdon’s headrest and the other to hold himself up against the driver’s side window behind Langdon’s head. 

Langdon lurches forward, arching his back up and angling toward Robby’s face where it hovers in front of him, bumping their noses together for the second time. 

Robby’s lips hover just above his, a small smile tugging at the corners. When he kisses Langdon this time, it’s quick, all teeth and tongue. A hot, frantic, desperate thing. 

Langdon sighs into it, this obscene sound that makes Robby’s breath catch again. He pulls back to nose along the line of Landon’s jaw, pressing quick, fervent kisses to the underside, punching even more shallow, breathy sounds from the back of Langdon’s throat. 

When Robby’s lips brush against his pulse point, Langdon’s entire body jerks in anticipation. His hands fly up into Robby’s hair, his neck falling to the side and pushing up against Robby’s lips. 

“So worked up,” Robby mumbles, this amused half-laugh bubbling from his throat. He pinches the thin skin of Langdon’s pulse with his canines, which almost involuntarily causes Langdon’s fingers to curl in Robby’s hair, tightening their grip as Robby presses his tongue flat against the bite, encouraging a bruise. “Just for me?”

A hot wave of indistinguishable emotion hits Langdon all at once, because, like, how the fuck is he supposed to explain that to his wife? To their coworkers? There would be absolutely no explanation that would make any form of logical sense. After all, it’s not like he can blame it on a curling iron. 

“Robby, wait, fuck,” Langdon whines, his hands finding a hold on Robby’s jaw, palms itching against rough facial hair and fingers pressed near his hairline. Robby, being who he is, stops kissing him immediately, but doesn’t pull his head back.

“I didn’t hear an answer,” Robby whispers, voice firm and unyielding as he pushes the tip of his nose against the spot where he had just bitten down and inhales deeply, intentionally. (So, Robby has a thing about his neck. Duly noted.)

It’s a fucking nightmare, this indecision squirming around inside of him. 

Half of his brain, the reasonable half that keeps his very precariously balanced life together, is screaming at him to make his hands useful and push Robby away by his jaw. 

The other half of his brain, the half he usually listens to anyway, is screaming at him to let Robby take whatever he wants. To let him use teeth, and tongue, and leave claiming, splotchy red-purple-blue bruises against the pale skin of his neck, against his ribs, between his thighs.

He fumbles for the right combination of words, a skill he’s always lacked, and comes up empty. The only thought his brain can conjure up is:

“Robby,” 

“Baby,”

And, well, that hits Langdon like a fucking bomb. It bounces around the inside of his, apparently brainless, skull: baby, baby, baby. 

It completely, officially, shuts down the reasonable half of his brain. Turns it completely analog, makes him succumb to his baser instincts. Instead of pushing, he pulls Robby’s lips back to his neck. 

“Yeah,” Langdon rasps, finally giving Robby the answer he had been so insistent on getting. “Just for you.”

He’s almost surprised by the complete lack of effort that it takes to admit how entirely, fully Robby’s he is, or how it’s been that way as long as they’ve known each other. How it will probably always be that way. 

The lapsed Catholic in him hopes he’ll be forgiven. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. 

Robby smiles and turns his hand into Langdon’s palm, pressing closed lips against the crease of his knuckle, just below the metallic line of his wedding ring. (Langdon very intentionally does not think about that, or how easy it is to imagine a different wedding band sitting in its spot. A different life entirely.)

Robby pushes Langdon’s raincoat off his shoulders, throws it in the backseat, and takes hold of his wrist in a strong, pacifying grip. He takes his time brushing his lips up from the bare, rain-wet skin of Langdon’s wrist, up to the inside of his bicep, all the way to his temple. 

“Shit, sorry, it’s just,” Robby whispers between kisses, the start of some quiet admission slipping through the cracks. It sounds uncertain, almost self-conscious, out of absolutely nowhere. “Now that I’ve started, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop.”

For just a moment, Langdon feels like he’s free-falling. Stumbling off a cliff in a half-sleep state, lingering in the moments just before jerking awake. His heartbeat picks up, chest clenching around it. This hot, curling desire trails the base of his spine and pulls below his navel. 

He has the sudden, distinct comprehension that this is not infatuation, or some unintentional collision, or even something as plain as good old-fashioned lust. 

No. This, Langdon realizes, vaguely horrified, is something different. Something he knows the word for, but can’t bring himself to use. 

Because he knows that if he did, if he let himself put a name to the agony pooling in his chest when Robby touches him, looks at him, picks him first for cases, tells him he did good, that there would be absolutely no going back. It would destroy them both, he thinks. Maybe irreparably. (Or, maybe not. Maybe they could have a soft, quiet life. Morning routines and grocery store trips. Arguing over takeout after work and shared space. A menorah next to a Christmas tree. Robby and the kids on the weekends.)

“So don’t,” Langdon insists, pushing past his turmoil, all heaving breaths and half-lidded eyes. 

“Huh,” Robby says, the observation coming out like a puff of air.

He watches Robby’s face, his fond, dark eyes widening in something like surprise. Which, by the way, makes no sense at all, because there’s absolutely no way that Robby came here thinking that Langdon would even have the capacity for this to be a one-time thing. That Langdon would ever tell him no. He has to. 

Still, just to be sure, Langdon adds: “Don’t want you to, Robby, please.” 

“What do you want?” Robby breathes, pulling back a bit to look Langdon right in the eyes. It’s a hot, heavy stare that makes it hard to breathe right.

So much, Langdon doesn’t say, everything, anything. 

Langdon pulls his hand back and brushes the tips of his fingers down the line of Robby’s forearm where it leans against the headrest, wrapping shaking fingers around his wrist in a silent plea. 

“Use your words,” Robby coaxes, his voice sweet and low as the command breaks through the glowing haze in Langdon’s skull, centering him in a way only Robby can. 

“You,” Langdon admits, his grip on Robby’s wrist tightening. He tries to put it in a way that won’t expose too much, that won’t ask for too much. He knows what this is. “Just… you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Robby breathes, this vulnerable warble molding the way it comes out, that makes him sound almost pained. There’s this look on his face, too, his brows pinched together and a serious, kind of troubled look in his eyes. “You fucking have me.”

Langdon almost thinks he heard him wrong. It’s too honest, too heartfelt. Quite honestly, Langdon has no idea what to do with that, the jumble of words Robby’s just thrown into his lap, the admission that momentarily makes Langdon consider that he might not be the only one with feelings here. 

It leaves him with this gentle fluttering in his stomach, a ringing in his ears, a heavy ball of anguish sitting in his throat. Robby’s voice, low and sweet and just for him, echoes across the corridors of his mind: you have me. You have me. You have me. 

Langdon breathes the words in and lets them settle between the edges of his ribs, the empty space behind his heart. 

Instead of saying something back, which would probably only embarrass him, Langdon leans up and kisses Robby again with a certain intensity, a fervor, that he hopes gets the point across — that Robby has him, too. 

He puts his all into it, the year and a half of ‘harmless’ flirting, the love buried deep down below the surface. 

He lets it light a fire inside of him, one that forces him to act, to soak up every second he can out of this thing with Robby before real life comes creeping back in.

“Need you like this all the time,” Langdon murmurs, reveling in the slow, sweet press of his lips against Robby’s. Then, so quiet that there’s no way Robby can hear him: “Wish things could be different—”

“Come out with me tonight,” Robby unknowingly interrupts, this kind of pleading tone edging across his voice, and fuck, Langdon wants absolutely nothing more than to say yes.

He imagines the two of them crowded into a too-small booth in the back of some shitty downtown bar, bodies pressed against each other in the low-light, untouched drinks sweating on the table in front of them. 

He imagines Robby’s voice being the only thing he can hear over the blaring late-90s rock coming from behind the bar. He imagines hands all over him in a tiny bathroom, smiling into kisses under the pale light of the moon, Robby pressing him against a wall on a desolate side street, post-rain air filling their lungs.

At the same time, he imagines Abby at home, waiting up without an explanation, ready to argue the second he walks back in the door.

“I can’t,” Langdon shudders, a deep exhale puffing into Robby’s open mouth. Lips still pressed together, Langdon mumbles, “I want to, Robby, but Abby, she—”

“Just make something up,” Robby says then, uncharacteristically eager and pushy in a way Langdon has never seen before, but is honestly completely infatuated by. “Apologize to your wife, fuck it, I’ll apologize to her—”

“Robby—” 

“Don’t think about it. Just say yes,” Robby urges, sounding like he might die if Langdon goes with his better judgment and turns him down. “Please.”

Well, shit. He’s always had a weak resolve, but there’s no way he can say no when Robby is bright pink in front of him, refusing to break the kiss, and begging. 

He gives in. The same way he always does when it comes to Robby.

“Yeah, okay, fuck it,” Langdon whispers, fingers ghosting down the side of Robby’s neck, his thumb rubbing these small, uncoordinated circles that catch on residual raindrops. “Let’s go.” (By which he means: I’d follow you anywhere.)

In the end, Langdon winds up getting exactly what he had been imagining, a physical manifestation of a reality that he shouldn’t want, but does desperately. 

Robby calls for a car to pick them up just outside of PTMC and take them across the bridge.

(“Wow, an Uber Black. So, what is it, you just can’t help but wave your fancy attending salary in my face?”

“Didn’t your father ever teach you the importance of making a good impression on a first date?”)

They abandon Langdon's car in the parking lot, rainwater squelching against the leather seats as they position themselves unnecessarily close together in the Audi that shows up not ten minutes later.

They spend the relatively short ride with their hands all over each other in the backseat, ignoring all formal rules regarding manners and decorum as the spotlight that shines on them in the North side fades as they disappear South, into the haze of the slowly setting sun. 

Robby and Langdon hop from shitty downtown bar to shitty downtown bar under the guise of ‘team building’ through the early hours of the night, long after the rain has dried on the sidewalk and they’ve downed their sixth doubles. 

Robby kisses him breathless in dark corners of the bar, under bright streetlights next to the river, and in the privacy of the uncrowded side streets leading to Market Square. 

Langdon spends the night making the most of his time with Robby. He falls to his knees in a grungy bathroom stall, does as he’s told, and lets Robby breathe out stuttered praise as he looks at Langdon like he’s the center of the universe. (Because as much as Robby knows Langdon, he knows Robby, too. It’s not unlikely that when Langdon gets back to work on Monday, Robby will have put up another, much higher, emotional wall. One that he’s fortified in such a way that Langdon won’t be able to knock down again. So, he takes what he can get for tonight, knowing it might be all he gets.)

As they go up the stairs to Langdon's apartment, Robby has a strong, guiding hand on the back of his neck, keeping him upright. His head is swimming in this pleasantly warm, drunken haze when the front door swings open and he sees Abby, dark brown hair sticking up in every direction and a sleep-deprived scowl on her face. 

He thinks he hears her grumble something about it being “four in the fucking morning, Frank,” before Robby, like he had promised he would, pacifies her with an apology and makes up some story about a nurse knocking a hot cautery iron out of his hands and it hitting Langdon’s neck. 

Robby pushes him through the door with a whispered goodnight, letting him stumble past Abby. He trudges over the carpet, dodging Fisher-Price light-up toys as he goes, and flops down onto the too-hard sofa they’d gotten on sale. 

Langdon isn’t sure how long Robby stays to speak to Abby after he’s made his way inside, but it can’t be long. He hears Abby reluctantly thank Robby for getting him home safe before the sound of the front door being shut and locked. (From his face-down spot on the couch, this huge pit opens up in his abdomen once he knows Robby’s gone for good.)

Abby idles, quietly, with her arms crossed over her bump. Langdon’s sure that she’s staring at him, her eye twitching, from the edge of the couch. 

“Where’s the car, Frank?” She asks after a moment, her voice rough with sleep and years of exasperation. “Tanner has his appointment in the morning, and I am not taking the train with him.” 

“It’s… uh,” Langdon’s voice comes out slurred, his head heavy as sleep threatens to overtake him. “At… hospital. S’fine. Gonna… pick it up t’morrow… all good.”

“Before ten, please,” Abby says, her voice low in warning. Langdon can practically hear the wrinkling between her brows. “We have to be out by half past.” 

“Yeah, okay, got it,” He holds up this half-assed thumbs up, all too eager to drift into a mindless state that will fill his brain with visions of Robby’s hands, his lips, his voice.

The familiar sound of Abby’s footsteps trails from the carpet to the creaking hardwood, back in the direction of the bedroom. She stops just short of the hall, hovering in the archway. 

“Did you have a good time?” She asks, a careful consideration, a measured patience in her voice that Langdon has gotten used to hearing from her. 

He thinks about Robby. About the rain. About everything. 

“Yeah,” Langdon answers after a beat, the entire night burnt against his eyelids, the inside of his skull. “Was good. Really good.”

“Oh,” Abby whispers, almost like she wasn’t expecting that to be the answer. “Well. Good.”

She takes her leave then, the click of the bedroom door shutting behind her echoing out in the cramped space of their apartment. 

The text comes right as Langdon’s about to fall off the ledge of consciousness into a restless, insomniac’s version of sleep — two total hours interrupted by tossing and turning and little fires spreading in his brain. 

Robby (Work)

4:21 >> Had fun tonight. Maybe we could do it again?

Jesus Christ, he was right. Robby really is going to be the fucking death of him. (But, he thinks he's okay with that.)