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The knock, when it comes, is so soft and gentle Robby is surprised he hears it at all.
He’s not alarmed, necessarily, to find Jack on his doorstep, but it’s the familiar rush of want that catches him off kilter; it feels slightly grotesque, that his heart should keep on beating for this man, after today. Internally, it depresses him that despite everything, his years-long affection for Jack remains unrelenting even after the events of today, nor dimmed by the embarrassment of his temper tantrum up on the roof as Jack had tried to comfort him.
Jack must mistake whatever his face is doing for shock, because he looks chagrined. “Sorry, brother, to show up on your doorstep like this, I just— I wanted to see you, see how you’re doing.”
Robby swallows, reflexivity kicking in. “Passing up an ice cold Coors and hospital gossip for me? Stop that, or I’ll start to think you like me.”
Jack smiles, fond and cocky. “Heaven forbid.” He reaches into his ridiculous bag of tricks and pulls out a four pack, bottle clinking softly against one another. “Picked us up something a little better.”
Jack steps in, Robby steps back to make room for him; a little dance they’ve perfected after years. Robby leaves Jack behind to divest himself of his shoes and jacket, and busies himself in the kitchen for a moment longer than necessary, rooting around for his bottle opener, offering Jack a glass even though he knows he’ll say no— buying himself time to steady the unmoored feeling in his chest. The events of PittFest still hum faintly in his bones: the constant, steady stream of chaos and pain, the way Jake had so easily severed their relationship (tenuous though it was to begin with), the pedes room, the rooftop, the long aftermath— but beneath it something else has begun to stir, something older and far sharper: the familiar, carefully managed awareness of Jack’s nearness, the way Robby’s mind and all his senses become attuned only to Jack, drowning everything else out.
Robby has spent years filing his feelings for Jack away under safer guises— friendship, companionship, collegial affection— because those nomenclatures demanded nothing of him, required no explanation, threatened no irreversible shift in the careful architecture of their relationship, both inside and out of the hospital.
The term he kept coming back to, though, was brother. It was Jack who'd bestowed it on him, years and years ago, one of their first shifts together. It was a particularly nasty MVC if Robby remembers correctly— and Jack had looked at him, eyes sparkling, as he stripped off his gloves and they wheeled the guy up to surgery and said “That was fucking magnificent, brother.” And from that point, that was what they were.
They were brothers, in all the ways that a brother should be; someone constant, someone safe, someone whose presence meant he did not have to carry everything alone. It had always been easier to think of Jack as the person who would show up— who would stand beside him on rooftops and in trauma rooms, whose steadiness felt almost fraternal in its reliability— because he had to, because he was bound to Robby by something greater than themselves, instead of indulging Robby’s fantasies of doing so just because he wanted to, because he thought Robby deserved it, because he liked doing that for Robby, as Robby liked doing it for him.
But tonight, watching Jack lean back against his kitchen counter, arms crossed so that he could see the perfect bulge of his biceps, the light dusting of hair on his forearms, and Jack’s eyes following him all the while, with that quiet attentiveness that never feels intrusive and yet never quite misses anything either, Robby feels the fragile boundary between those safer categories begin, almost imperceptibly, to shift.
Because there has always been something else there too, something he has tried, desperately, not to name: the way his awareness of Jack sometimes arrives as a physical thing, a quickened breath, a subtle, unwelcome warmth low in his chest; the way certain moments— a hand at the nape of Robby’s neck guiding him through a doorway, Jack’s laugh too close to his ear, the brief, grounding clasp of his shoulder on difficult days— have lingered longer than they should, replayed themselves in Robby’s memory with a clarity that feels less like friendship and more like hunger.
Jack takes the opened beer bottle when Robby hands it over, their fingers brushing briefly, and the contact is so ordinary, so small, that it would normally pass unnoticed— except that, tonight it doesn’t. Tonight Robby feels it distinctly, the warmth of it, the faint pause afterward, as though both of them have registered the touch and neither quite knows what to do with that knowledge.
“Hell of a day,” Jack says gently.
Robby lets out a breath that almost qualifies as a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“You were good today,” Jack says after a moment, voice low. “No matter what happened. You didn’t have to carry it all by yourself— You shouldn’t have felt like you were.”
The words press unexpectedly at something tender in Robby’s chest. “I know,” he says, though without much conviction.
Jack’s gaze softens, steady and unwavering.
Brother, the safer part of his mind insists again, clinging to the familiar shape of that comfort.
But Jack steps closer then, not abruptly, just enough that the space between them narrows imperceptibly. Robby becomes acutely aware of everything at once: the quiet of his apartment, the harsh fluorescence of the kitchen light, the faint hitch in his own breathing, the way Jack is looking at him now with something more searching, more vulnerable, as though he too has reached the edge of a thing long deferred.
It is in that suspended, fragile second, that Robby begins to let himself entertain the idea that his years of pining have not been so one-sided after all. The realization doesn’t arrive as a dramatic revelation but as a slow, dawning alignment, the subtle clicking into place of things he has always half-noticed; lingering glances, mornings and nights on the roof, bookended with beers in the park or Pens game on the televisions of their respective apartments, the way Jack’s voice softens when he says Robby’s name, or when he speaks to him, the way Jack slows down, just for Robby and always only for Robby, to debate the finer points of medical care; Robby never calls him out on it, even though he would have berated a resident for such pickiness, but with Jack, he indulged him, and let himself indulge, the world around them suspended, and in those finite moments there wasn’t even a trauma beneath them, just Jack and Robby, Robby and Jack.
The space between them feels charged now, but not rushed, not precarious. Robby feels the familiar instinct to retreat, to make a joke, to step back into the safer language of brotherhood and shared history. But underneath that instinct is something steadier, older, the quiet certainty that this, too, has always been part of what they are to each other.
Someone to stand beside him in the harsh light of hospital corridors, the frigid cold of a rooftop; Someone who might also hold him in the softer dark.
The words are spilling out of him before he can stop them, but under Jack’s gaze, he’s powerless to do anything less. “I just, I felt totally alone, in that moment, you know. And I had all these people depending on me, and coming to me for all the answers in the known universe, and in that moment, Jack, I really, I just—I was looking at them, and the only thing I could think is, what the hell are you asking me for? I couldn’t save Leah. Couldn’t save Nick Bradley. And even besides that— look at me, 52 years old and nothing to show for it. No partner, no kids, nothing. What the fuck do I know about anything?”
“Shut up,” Jack chides gently, setting his beer down. “Don’t say that, man. You’re not alone, never alone.”
Robby looks up into the harsh light of his kitchen ceiling, hoping that the burning in his retinas will stave off the tears prickling at his eyes.
“Robby, so long as I breathe, there will never be a day when you’re alone.”
Robby looks down at Jack then, the breath knocked out of him.
“And so what, you don’t have the picket fence and the 2.5 kids? Who needs it?” Jack continues, unperturbed. “You’ve got an entire hospital staff who’d walk over hot coals for you. You’re FACEP. You’ve got Duke, and Mal, and Lawrence, and all your other buddies.”
“And you,” Robby interjects, teasing, but tentatively soft, as well, warm even, testing this thing between them, to see if it will crumble.
Jack stops, his mouth open in a perfect gape of surprise.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Robby clarifies, unable to resist the bait; exploring the waters of this new shore he’s found himself upon. “I’ve got Duke and Mal and Lawrence and all the old gang— I’ve also got you, right? You’re my friend.”
“Yeah,” Jack says, quiet; so quiet it’s almost reverent. “Yeah you’ve got me, Mike.”
This thing between them does not crumble; it does not so much as budge.
Robby sighs, shaking his head, and taking a swig of his beer for liquid courage. “Heather told me today she was— pregnant. And she aborted it.”
Jack sucks in a breath. “Jesus. And it was yours?”
“I think so. I— I think so. She didn't exactly say but— Yeah, I think so.” Robby scratches the back of his head, his nose scrunching up in displeasure at the thought of Heather going through that alone, of how shitty a partner he must have been that the best option for her was to do it alone.
Jack mutters, taking a sip of his beer, “You're a match made in heaven, both never just saying what you feel.”
And this— this Robby can do. He feels more on even footing here. He can do bitchy, he can do banter.
"Oh yeah? Well I had to listen to Mohan wax lyrical about your teaching prowess, Dr. Abbot, so how about you show me?"
Jack's eyes narrow, head titled to the side, a challenge. “Show you what?”
“Show me how to say what I feel.”
Jack doesn’t answer immediately.
For a moment he only looks at Robby, and there is something unnervingly steady in that look— not teasing, not quite serious either, but searching, as though he is trying to determine whether this is still the familiar territory of jokes and deflection, or whether Robby has stepped somewhere neither of them has named before.
“You sure you want that?” Jack asks quietly.
The question should be easy to laugh off. Normally Robby would. Normally he would shrug, roll his eyes, make some deflecting crack and let the moment dissolve back into the comfortable, well-worn shape of their friendship.
Instead, he hears himself say, “Yeah.” The word comes out softer than he intends. Truer, too.
Something in Jack’s face shifts then— not dramatically, but enough. Enough that Robby’s stomach gives a strange, disorienting lurch, the kind he hasn’t felt in decades, the kind he had long ago decided belonged to some earlier, happier version of himself. He thinks, distantly, absurdly, that he is too old for this; that men in their fifties do not stand in their kitchens feeling like boys given permission to do something for the first time.
But Jack sets his beer down.
The small, deliberate sound of glass meeting the counter seems unnaturally loud. Robby watches his hand linger there a second too long, as if giving Robby time, time to stop this, to retract, to restore the world to what it has always been.
He doesn’t.
Jack steps closer, slow enough to allow retreat, close enough to make intention unmistakable. Robby’s breath catches somewhere shallow in his chest.
“Robby,” Jack says, and his voice is different now, almost fragile with restraint. “If we do this…”
He doesn’t finish, he doesn’t need to.
Robby feels the answer rising in him not as language but as certainty. It feels terrifying, yes, but also— unmistakably— like relief. Here’s that line, he thinks, the one you thought you’d never be able to cross.
He nods.
Jack’s hand comes up first, tentative in a way Robby has never seen from him, pausing briefly at his shoulder before sliding, warm and steady, to the side of his neck. The touch is light, almost formal, but it sends a startling current through Robby’s body, some long-idle nerves flickering abruptly to life.
For a suspended second, neither of them moves.
Robby becomes acutely aware of Jack’s closeness; the warmth of him, the faint scent of hospital antiseptic, his cologne, and something that is simply, indefinably Jack.
This is the moment, Robby thinks, with a strange, lucid calm. After this, nothing will be what it was.
He is surprised to find that the thought doesn’t frighten him as much as he expected.
Jack leans in.
The kiss, when it happens, is almost impossibly gentle— so light at first that Robby might have mistaken it for hesitation if he hadn’t felt the unmistakable warmth of Jack’s mouth against his. It isn’t practiced or certain; it’s careful, exploratory, as though both of them are learning the shape of something entirely new.
His hand, almost without instruction, comes up to grip the front of Jack’s shirt, not to pull him closer exactly, but to steady himself, to anchor himself in the reality of what is happening. He leans in, and kisses him back. It doesn’t feel usual, his brain at first doesn’t compute it as a kiss— he’s never kissed someone with stubble, before. But then, he tilts his mouth, opening imperceptibly, and Jack, perfect Jack, like he does in his apartment, like he does in a trauma room, anticipates this, and darts his tongue in, tasting and claiming Robby’s own.
Robby’s mind goes to static, the dizzying sensation of his life tilting onto a new axis.
When they part, it’s only by an inch, their foreheads almost touching, breaths mingling in the small shared space between them.
Jack exhales a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Huh,” he murmurs, barely audible.
Robby lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, his voice rougher than he expects when he says, softly, “Yeah.”
But he doesn’t step back.
And after a moment, it becomes clear that neither will Jack.
“It’s um—” Robby breaks free from the kiss, Jack crowding around him, in the doorway of his bedroom. “It’s my first time.” There is a singular beat, as Jack looks at him like he’s dumb. “With a man,” he hastens to add.
“I know,” Jack says softly, before pushing him back towards the bed.
With anyone else, it might sound downright condescending, but the way Jack says it, the weight of his eyes on him, Robby just relaxes into it, knowing fully that Jack has him. He’s safe, here, in this, with Jack.
Jack climbs up over him, lying flush against Robby, where he can feel Jack’s dick— hard in his jeans— press against Robby’s own hard-on. They kiss for what feels like hours, days, just feeling it; the scratch of his beard against Jack’s stubble, the curious way his lips are undoubtedly male but still soft. Jack’s calloused hands, one framing Robby’s face, one gripping his hip. Robby feels, surprisingly, young. The thrill of it, the giddy novelty; despite his dick, now throbbing where it’s trapped in his cargos, he’d be happy to do just this, making out like a pair of teenagers. He’s happy to have Jack however he’ll give himself to Robby, stunned to have Jack like this at all.
But there, in that moment where Robby appreciates this moment for what it is, the doubt creeps in, the worry that while he loves it now he may never get this again. That’s what it is, their relationship; one of them taps out and the other steps up to help them back to their feet. What’s to say that Jack isn’t just being a good friend to him in this moment? What’s to say that Jack isn’t just going to get him off and then get out of dodge; chalking it up to an act of friendship and never mentioning it again?
Fuck that, Robby thinks. If he has Jack now then he’s going to have Jack for all he’s worth, enough to tide Robby over for the next few years of longing.
He slings a leg over Jack’s waist, shifting his hips so their dicks line up just right as he grinds. The feeling of the two of them; Jack’s fingers twisted in the hair at the nape of his neck, Jack’s tongue soft and wet; Robby could combust. Instead, he lets out a particularly needy moan.
Jack nips at his lower lip, pulling away. “Woah there, cowboy,” he breathes, his eyes dark with the dilation of his pupils, his lips shiny and pink; his chin oh so slightly chaffed from Robby’s beard. “Slow down, we’ve got time.”
“Do we?” Robby asks. It’s an earnest question, despite the way it masks his real intentions. Besides their next shifts creeping up on them in a day's time, there will undoubtedly be debriefings and ad hoc meetings with hospital officials and law enforcement. These next few hours, divested of any responsibility except to themselves, are becoming more precious by the moment.
Jack fixes him with a stare that would cut him down. He reaches down to where Robby’s hands are around his hips. Gripping both of them, his fingers curling softly across the expanse of Robby’s wrist, he pulls them away, and up, and then that’s how Jack has him; pinned down, totally at his mercy. Robby’s mind goes blank, and though his first instinct is to buck against it, all he has to do is look into Jack’s eyes, full of discernment and lust, to relax into it. Jack has him. Jack knows him. Jack’s going to give it to him, and all he can hope for is a good showing on his part so that maybe, maybe, he can convince Jack to do it again sometimes.
It’s a curious thing. With women, he knows his way around. He’s good at eating pussy—enjoys it, even— good at eliciting soft sighs and pleasured yells, and knows how to go fast or slow depending on what his partner wants. But this, here, with Jack; it’s total uncharted ground for him. Robby can’t even remember being under someone else’s mercy like this.
With Jack, he thinks, he might not mind it. He might like it. He tries not to flatter himself when he looks back at Jack, breathing ragged and assessing Robby almost clinically, and thinks that he might like this too.
“We do,” Jack answers, finally. “Plenty of it. And if we run out, that will be too bad, but I guess it means we just might have to do it again.”
“That would be okay,” Robby exhales.
Jack smiles, sharp and hungry. “Here’s how this is going to work.” His hips start a slow grind against Robby’s, sending fire through his groin and up his dick as his nerves feel fit to fry. “You’ve never been with a man before. So, I’ll give you the whistle stop tour. You like what you got, and we stop there. You want more, you’ll get more. But you gotta tell me, Robby, you gotta use your words.” He waits for Robby’s answer, shaking his head slightly at Robby’s nonverbal nod, but his eyes— his eyes are playful, teasing. Holy shit, Robby thinks, He really might be enjoying this.
“Yes,” Robby says, not even caring how desperate, how needy he sounds. “That’s— that’s good.”
Jack releases one of his hands from Robby’s grip, moving down slowly to touch Robby’s stomach beneath his t-shirt, pushing up and up and up.
It feels wrong, that he should be feeling this good, when there are bodies in the morgue that aren’t even cold yet.
The thought goes as soon as it comes, the events of the day already disappearing in the rearview as Robby can only focus on Jack; Jack seeming singlemindedly determined to rid Robby of the ability to form a coherent thought. The way his tongue claims Robby’s mouth, the way Robby’s dick is painfully hard against his stomach, would suggest he’s doing a good job.
It is, a bit, Robby thinks, like jumping off a roof. He feels he's spent the last few years in a fugue state of want, poised at the edge, and now he has Jack here, above him, entwined with him, he feels the rush and exhilaration of momentary flight. Robby enjoys this now for all it's worth because the lower Jack’s hand creeps towards his dick, the more Robby is reacquainting himself with gravity, prepared to throw himself at Jack's feet and let him have it all.
Before Jack showed up at his doorstep, Robby felt undone, unravelled. He was racing a clock that only wanted to steal from him, from others. But now, he wonders if that clock has stopped. Just for a little while. Just like this. With both hands sliding across Jack’s abs, his pecs, across the muscles of his back. He bears up harder where Jack’s own dick digs into the crease of where his groin meets his thigh, hugs him closer, slides his tongue deeper. Jack melts into him and then—
His mind goes completely blank as Jack’s hand wraps around his dick.
“Fuck, you’re already leaking.” He hears Jack say it, thinks he hears awe in his voice, but it’s like he’s miles and miles away, the only thing Robby is anchored to in this moment is the feeling of Jack, his thumb swiping over the head of his dick— which is indeed slick with precome— and stroking him, the perfect rhythm and pressure right off the bat. “You feel so good, Mike, fuck.”
Jack presses a kiss to his carotid artery. “Does it feel good?”
Jack twists his hand, Robby moans.
“Tell me,” he says, tilting Robby’s face toward him, locking their eyes in place. “Does it feel as good for you as it does for me? Say it for me, brother.”
Brother. The term of endearment slips out so easy, it almost makes Robby laugh. All this time, Jack’s been calling him brother, and they could have been doing this instead of drinking beers on the couch? He’d feel sick at the thought of the wasted years if he didn’t feel so good right now.
“It’s fucking amazing,” He says, his voice wrecked. “But you said I could ask for more.”
Jack’s hand stutters, just for a second, hardly enough to notice, but Robby is almost fluent in Jack and besides, he can feel his dick throb by Robby’s hipbone.
“I want more,” Robby says.
Jack’s hand is off Robby’s dick in a heartbeat, coming up to claim its place by his hip instead, as he crashes into Robby’s mouth, hips bucking against his for one minute, then two then—
Jack is off of him, and down, grabbing Robby’s hands, and putting them on his head of curls, his mouth hovering above Robby’s dick.
“You don’t have to be gentle,” he says, slow and steady, eyes never leaving Robby’s, in that same tone of voice he uses when he’s talking a med student through a procedure. “It’s not like with women, you don’t have to be a gentleman; I can take it, I want to take it. So take what you need.”
Take what you need. The simplicity of that— the quiet offer embedded in it; you can have it all— makes Robby’s throat tighten.
Robby’s just beginning to fully comprehend what’s about to happen and then Jack swallows him down, and Jesus Christ. If Robby thought his mouth was good for kissing, it was made for this. Hot and wet and perfect, moving perfectly with the buck of Robby’s hips; almost anticipating them, using it to go deeper. His tongue swirling around the head of his dick, lapping up the precome he was preening about earlier.
Jesus Christ, Robby thinks again. He might kill him. Surely, no human being is supposed to experience this level of pleasure. He might explode, he really might.
Robby doesn’t know what sound exactly it is that he makes, but it must be something, because Jack takes his mouth off of him.
“You okay?” Jack asks, looking up from where he’s perched between Robby’s legs, the puff of his breath against his dick almost overstimulating.
Robby is trying not to say something stupid, his head screaming I think I love you I love you I love you so he just nods his head, hearing how ragged his breath is.
“Gonna need more than that, handsome,” Jack says. “Seriously, you good? We can do whatever you want.”
Robby shakes his head. “No, it’s—It’s good. You just— You make me want to say stupid stuff,” he bites out, and then hauls Jack up by his shoulders, crushing him into a bruising kiss, but still can feel the slightly smug smile tinging the corners of the other man's lips.
And fuck, Jack— Jack feels so good, any reticence Robby ever had about well, getting fucked, is quickly thrown out the window and replaced with a regret that he hadn’t done this sooner.
“Fuck, Mike,” Jack exhales, rutting up against Robby’s dick, slick and wet now from the blowjob.
“I want more,” Robby says. “I want it all.”
“Fuck,” Jack says again, forehead creasing. “You’re going to kill me.” He pulls back, and Robby can finally appreciate him in his totally unmade state. His hair is stuck up at wild angles from Robby’s hands, his lips are swollen now, and red, and in his eyes, Robby thinks he could find the centre of the cosmos. He looks ethereal. He looks like this is his natural state; and every other guise Robby has ever seen him in has been just that— a guise. Jack looks holy, like this. Robby thinks he would go to war for him.
“Please,” he whispers, punctuating it with a kiss. And when was that? When was the last time he begged for something? He couldn’t earnestly remember. Jack closes his eyes, waging some kind of internal battle, and Robby frames his face in both hands, reaching up to kiss both his closed eyes. “Jack, please.”
When Jack opens his eyes, he looks wary. “I want to make you feel good,” he explains, his voice soft, almost as if in prayer. “And I want to give you what you want. But I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”
“You could never hurt me,” Robby insists. “And I would never regret anything I ever did with you.”
Jack slowly pushes himself up on his forearms, reaching behind Robby to grab a pillow and seamlessly sliding it under Robby’s hips.
“Ground rules,” he starts, eyes never leaving Robby’s, as he manoeuvres his right hand over to the bedside locker. At the back of Robby’s mind, he wonders how it was that Jack seemed to know that the condom and lube would be in the second drawer, not the first, but he lets it go. Jack always knew him better than he knew himself. “We go slow. You want to stop, we stop. If you don’t want to say it, just tap my shoulder twice.” The click of the lube bottle opening makes Robby’s dick twitch. Jack is up on his haunches, looking at him; his own dick flush against his stomach, red and shining with his own precome. He drizzles his index finger with lube liberally before slowly lowering himself back down, his hand drawing feather light circles against Robby’s hole and holy shit.
It’s scary, it is, to be this vulnerable, to embark on something legitimately new at fifty two years old, but Jack is looking at him, impossibly tender, as though there is nothing strange in this moment at all, nothing belated or fragile about it, only something right, something he has been waiting for with a patience Robby suddenly understands has always been there.
“Jack,” Robby breathes.
“Is it okay?” Jack asks, face creased with such concern, such worry, Robby feels so delicate under his touch, like he is a breakable thing, and that that is no bad thing to be.
Robby can only nod, and then his mind goes blink as Jack pushes in a little bit more, crooks his finger, and— “Fuck!” He doesn’t miss Jack’s cocky smile that he tries to hide by pressing a kiss to Robby’s shoulder.
The sensation is sharp and bright and startlingly good, so good it feels unreal, and for a disorienting second Robby’s body responds before the rest of him can catch up — a helpless, involuntary surge of warmth that makes his breath hitch and his hand tighten around Jack’s neck.
And the immediacy of that pleasure, the way it completely envelops him, hits him with a strange, sudden pang.
Because just a few hours ago, there had been blood on the floors and the metallic smell of it in the air, the relentless rhythm of triage, the unbearable stillness of the pedes room, the lines of the Sh’ma and the Mourners Kaddish the only soundtrack to a moment he was unsure he could ever recover from.
And now here he is with Jack’s mouth warm against his skin and his own body betraying him with how fiercely it wants this, how quickly it answers. The contrast feels indecent to the memory of the day.
How can this feel so good, he thinks dimly, when today felt like that?
For a fleeting moment guilt flickers through him— sharp and questioning— as though the pleasure itself might be a kind of betrayal.
Jack must feel the shift in him, the faint tension threading back into his body, because the cockiness vanishes as quickly as it came. His kiss softens, lingering at Robby’s shoulder, his voice low and steady when he murmurs, “Stay with me, brother.”
The words pull him back like a hand at his sternum.
Robby exhales shakily. Jack’s touch is patient, unhurried, asking nothing except that he returns to this moment, to this room, to the simple, undeniable fact of being here, being alive, being held.
Robby lets out another breath, this one softer, and leans back into Jack’s touch, allowing himself, cautiously, to feel it again.
“Good, Robby, good,” Jack says, punctuating it with a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Do you still want to?”
Robby nods his head so hard he could reasonably give himself whiplash. Jack pulls back again, just enough to grab the condom and roll it on. His hands, big and strong, slowly position Robby’s legs up by his hips, anchored.
He lines himself up, his dick pressing at the entrance to Robby’s hole, and Robby has to stop himself from pushing his hips down and taking him in there and then. Instead, he drags his eyes up to meet Jack, who’s looking at him with such unrestrained longing, Robby’s heart lurches painfully in his chest. “Robby,” Jack says, his hand coming up to rest at his clavicle. “I love you, brother. I would never hurt you. I want this to feel good for you.”
They’ve said that before, is the thing. When Jack has days bad enough he can’t get out of bed, or on Emma’s anniversary, Robby has hugged the other man and told him “I love you, man” more times than he can count. When Janey dumped Robby’s sorry ass, Jack was the first one over with pizza and whiskey, and when he left he embraced Robby, tight, with the promise that it would be okay, and that he loved him.
So it’s not technically outside their vocabulary to say it. But it’s also no surprise that it feels different this time.
Robby swallows. His throat feels tight, his pulse everywhere at once— in his neck, in his wrists, in the heat coiling low in his stomach where Jack’s still waiting, steady and patient.
“Yeah,” Robby breathes, anything more complicated than that feeling impossible to put into words. His hand slides up Jack’s side, thumb brushing the line of his ribs, grounding himself in the solid reality of him. “I know.”
Jack’s gaze searches his face anyway, like he’s looking for the tiniest flicker of doubt. “You tell me if you want me to stop. Any time. I mean it.”
There’s something about the earnestness of it that makes Robby’s chest ache.
“Jack,” he murmurs, softer now, nudging his forehead forward until they touch. “Please.”
Jack exhales like he’s been holding that breath for a while, and his hand slides from Robby’s clavicle up to cradle the side of his neck, thumb warm just under his ear. “Okay,” he whispers.
He presses in slowly.
Robby’s breath catches— sharp at first, the stretch making his fingers curl instinctively into Jack’s hip— but Jack stills immediately, exactly like he promised he would.
“Breathe,” Jack murmurs, reverent, his nose brushing Robby’s. “I’ve got you.”
Robby lets the air out in a shaky laugh that melts into a groan as the tension eases, his body giving way bit by bit. “Don’t… don’t stop,” he manages, hips tilting despite himself, chasing the closeness.
“I’m not,” Jack says, voice low and rough now, but still careful, still controlled. He moves again, just as slow, watching Robby’s face like it’s the only map he trusts.
The discomfort fades, replaced by something warmer, fuller— the overwhelming awareness of Jack everywhere: his weight, his breath, the hand still steady at Robby’s neck like an anchor.
“See?” Jack murmurs, a hint of a smile ghosting across his mouth. “Told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Robby huffs out a laugh. His hand slides up into Jack’s hair, holding him there, their foreheads still pressed together.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You never do.”
And this time, when Robby shifts his hips, Jack answers with a thrust, and Robby feels lit up from the inside.
“Robby,” Jack exhales, and it sounds like an oath. “Oh fuck— That’s it,” he says, his face losing tension as he fills Robby up, bit by bit. “That’s so good, brother. That’s so good, Robby.”
Held there, with Jack’s voice warm against his ear— There you go, just breathe, just like that, fuck you feel so good, does it feel good? You feel so perfect, you are so perfect, fuck, brother, fuck, Mike— Robby has the strange, disorienting sense of being gently unmade, as though some long-rigid part of him were finally giving way. Instinctively he clings to Jack, not out of fear but out of recognition, the closeness between them the only thing that feels certain in a world that, earlier that day, had reassembled itself into a place of uncertainty and unknowables.
He fucking loves this, is the problem. He has never, in his life, felt as good as he feels right now, with Jack above him, moving in him, his forehead creasing with every little moan he makes as thrusts, the puff of his breath mingling with Robby’s.
It occurs to Robby, how stupidly small a space that was to cross, just a few inches between them, this whole time. Why had he been convinced, for so many years, that it was a treacherous and uncrossable distance?
Jack’s thrusts get harder, go deeper, and it is a totally new sensation, to feel this full, but it is not unwelcome, and it feels amazing. Every guarded piece of himself offers itself up, helplessly, toward Jack.
It feels so good, that at first, Robby doesn’t understand what’s happening.
He only knows that something in him has loosened— some long-tightened seam giving way— and that the feeling arrives not as pain but as an unfamiliar, almost frightening relief. Jack is moving with such care it feels ceremonial, as though he is handling Robby rather than touching him, and the gentleness of it moves Robby more than any roughness could have.
In the aftermath of PittFest, after the noise and the blood and the terrible arithmetic of who had lived and who had not, the horrible way Jake’s eyes had filled with tears when he told him about Leah, the way everyone had looked at him as he tried, selfishly and foolishly to bring her back from death with no avail, he had assumed that whatever part of him that was capable of experiencing pleasure had been cauterized away. The world had seemed too broken, and he himself too implicated in its brokenness, to permit anything that would make his time on this earth worth living for. And yet here it is: the steady weight of Jack, the warmth of his breath, the careful way he says Robby’s name, the way he seems unable to help himself, peppering him with kisses and saying “Good, so good Mike”.
Robby’s throat tightens before he can stop it.
The first tear feels almost abstract, a sensation more than an emotion— a faint tickle as it slips across his cheekbone, the small betrayal of wetness cooling on his skin. His brain starts to kick back into gear as he wonders if he should apologize, or explain, or gather himself the way he has always gathered himself, but the effort seems suddenly beyond him.
Jack stills almost immediately. “You okay?” he whispers, the words so soft they barely disturb the air between them.
Robby nods, though the movement is clumsy. His hand tightens at Jack’s shoulder, not to push him away but to keep him there, to anchor himself to the undeniable solidity of him. He laughs once, a fractured sound he doesn’t recognize as his own.
“It’s… it’s good,” he manages, the admission scraping out of him like something long buried. “That’s the problem.”
Jack doesn’t laugh. He only lifts a hand to Robby’s face, thumb brushing away the tear there, carefully, almost reverent. For a moment Jack simply looks at him— not startled, or disgusted, only attentive.
“You’re allowed,” Jack says quietly. “You know that, right? You’re allowed to feel good.”
The words settle into Robby with a strange, echoing depth, as though he has been waiting for years to hear this, for decades. Allowed. The idea feels both childish and immense, and before he can marshal any defense against it, something in his chest gives way entirely.
He turns his face into Jack’s shoulder and cries then— wracked with it, his shoulders and chest heaving as sobs tear up through him. Jack gathers him closer without hesitation, one hand steady at the back of his neck, the other holding him with an ease that suggests he has been prepared for this, or perhaps has known this moment would come.
“I’ve got you,” Jack murmurs into his hair. “We can stop. Or we can wait. Whatever you need.”
Robby inhales, uneven, the breath catching and stuttering before it settles. For a moment he considers the familiar instinct to retreat— to apologize, to call an end to the moment, to restore the safe distance that has protected him all his life. But the thought of losing this closeness feels suddenly far worse than the fear of staying where they had been.
He lifts his head at last, eyes wet.
“Don’t stop,” he says, so quietly it is almost only a shape of breath. “Please.”
Something in Jack’s expression softens further, if that is even possible, and he nods, accepting a trust far larger than the words themselves.
“Okay,” he says.
And when they move again, it is slower than before, almost solemn in its care, as though both of them understand that what is happening is no longer merely physical but something else entirely— an opening, a yielding, a small but irrevocable shift in the scaffolding of their lives. Robby holds on to Jack not out of fear of breaking, but out of the realisation that he is allowed to.
Later, he will think that what unsettled him most was not the sex itself, nor even the unfamiliar gentleness of being held with such unstudied certainty, but the way his body, traitorous and instinctive, had permitted itself pleasure at all after a day that had seemed composed entirely of its opposites. It feels, in those first suspended seconds afterward, when he comes careening down from his orgasm, almost like a breach of conduct. As he comes back to himself, thoughts returning to language and form instead of instinct and feeling, he thinks that there ought to exist a rule against this kind of ecstasy following so closely on the heels of unspeakable tragedy.
He can still summon the weight of the rooftop air— the wind, the city spread below them, the strange, hollow feeling in his chest when he had looked down at the ground far, far below him— and the way Jack has stood there, beside Robby. Robby remembers feeling exhausted, feeling that something inside him had been pared down to function alone, that whatever softer parts of him once existed had been carefully sealed off for the sake of getting through the shift without breaking. He remembers how difficult it had been even then to speak. He remembers the horrible, awful things he’d said to Jake in the depths of his grief; telling him he’d remember Leah long after Jake did, like a jackass. He remembers the ugly fight with Langdon, the way their own friendship turned sharp, and then fractured and splintered, leaving neither of them unscathed. He remembers answering Whitaker’s kindness in silence, the way he’d pushed him away. Above all, he remembers the small, grounding fact of Jack beside him, resolute in his belief of Robby’s goodness, not wavering, simply present in that steady way that had made the silence on the roof feel less like isolation and more like something shared; the way his head rested against Robby’s shoulder, as if it had always been there, as if the only unnatural thing was the lack of it, the space between them when he wasn’t there.
It is that same steadiness he feels now, close and unmistakable, Jack’s arm still around him, Jack’s breath warm and even, and the continuity between those two moments— the rooftop, raw with the day’s aftermath, and this one, improbably tender— strikes him with a kind of disorienting force. He had thought, standing up there earlier, that the day would end as it had begun: in the private discipline of carrying what could not be fixed. He had not imagined that it would end here, in warmth, in closeness, in the almost frightening permission of being allowed to unfurl against someone without explanation. It feels indecent, almost, to be undone by this after a day in which so many bodies had failed so brutally, so irrevocably; some stubborn part of him wants to believe that grief should preclude this kind of relief, that the existence of one ought to cancel out the other.
But his body refuses that logic. His body, exhausted and finally safe, takes what it is given.
And what undoes him, he realizes, is not merely the release itself but the dawning, almost incredulous recognition of what surrounds it: that Jack has not shifted away, has not retreated into the careful politeness that so often follows a casual fuck, has not treated the moment as something already concluded. Instead there is only the quiet constancy of him, the unspoken assumption that his presence here, in Robby’s bed, requires no justification, and that assumption feels, to Robby, so unexpectedly merciful that it lands with the force of absolution.
Jack slowly pulls himself out, steadying himself with a hand to Robby’s flank. He strips the condom off, ties a haphazard knot and flings it somewhere— a move so un-Jack like Robby knows he must be in a sorry state, if Jack doesn’t want to sacrifice even a moment away from him, even for his love of proper order. Jack tilts his head, offers him a soft smile.
“You good?”
Robby nods, giving him as much a smile as he can muster.
“It was okay?” Jack crawls back to him, arms bracketing him, holding him.
“It was perfect,” Robby whispers, not wanting to raise his voice, lest he start crying again.
It doesn’t work, because when Jack reaches out, gently, with his thumb, and wipes another errant tear from Robby’s cheek, Robby breaks.
He had moved through the day with a constant gnawing sense of insufficiency. The litany of small, relentless doubts: you should have known about Langdon, you should have saved Leah, you should have held it together— and although no one had spoken those accusations aloud, he had carried them anyway, as he always does, a private ledger of failures. Yet here, in Jack’s arms, there is no ledger, no accounting, no subtle suggestion that he has fallen short, not even in the way he starts crying, in earnest, Jack’s dick against his leg, his own cum drying on his belly.
With anyone else, on any other day, he would be mortified, he would want to drop dead from the embarrassment of it. Even his nineteen year old self held it together better during his first, fumbling time, instead of this. But before the thought can even fully form, Jack’s thumb is there again, ridding him of his tears, pressing a kiss to his temple, and there is only the simple, radical fact of being held as though he is enough exactly as he is.
He presses his face instinctively closer, half in embarrassment, half in a wordless attempt to anchor himself to the reality of Jack’s warmth, and he waits, in that old, conditioned way, for the moment of recoil, for the subtle stiffening that will signal he has revealed too much.
"Fuck, Jack, I'm sorry—" He gasps, rubbing a hand over his eyes, hot with tears.
It does not come.
Jack’s hand only settles more firmly at the back of his neck, steady and grounding, a small gesture, unceremonious and certain.
“Shh, Robby,” Jack soothes. “I got you, brother. I’m here.”
And so, he collapses against the other man, burying his face in his shoulder, gripping him like a lifeline. He wails, he sobs, so hard he's exerted by it, his chest screaming and his eyes fatigued from the sheer force of his sorrow. Jack is steadfast, against him; stroking his hair, drawing small comforting patterns into his skin. "It's okay, brother," he reassures him, soft and gentle, like he was a child. "Let it out. I've got you. You're okay."
Robby weeps without restraint, the tears coming not for one thing but for the unbearable accumulation of the day— for what happened, for what might have happened differently had he been quicker or wiser or stronger, for the faces he could not save: Adamson, Leah, even Langdon. He cries, too, for the bewildering relief of being held at last, for the fragile, almost frightening softness of Jack’s arms around him, for the dawning possibility that this tenderness is not borrowed or accidental but meant for him. And beneath it all is a quieter, more frightening realization: that Jack’s love does not exist in spite of the flawed, shadowed parts of him, but seems, impossibly, to make room for them.
And because that permission feels at once so simple and so undeserved, he closes his eyes and lets himself remain exactly where he is, listening to Jack’s steady breathing, his reassurances like a prayer he’s reciting by heart, feeling the last of the day’s brittle vigilance dissolve into something softer, something almost like trust, and hoping— cautiously, but for once without dread— that this is not a fleeting reprieve but the beginning of a space in which he might finally set some part of the weight down.