Work Text:
From his place amongst those who blur the line between colleague and friend, Jack watches Michael amble off into the distant darkness. With his shoulders slumped forward and his head bowed toward the pavement, he looks like a star on the brink of supernova; a consciousness packed to the brim with other peoples’ burdens. One more atom, one more reminder of grief, and pain, and loss, one last straw, will tip him over the edge. Critical mass. Enter supernova.
The headlights of a passing car surround his silhouette with a glowing light and for a split second it seems like it happened. Maybe his companion star in that moment was the woman jogging past him, or one out of the couple giggling by the crosswalk. Or maybe it was Jake, or Dana, or that girl whose eviscerated heart pumped blood directly into his hands. Maybe it was Jack. Or everyone. Maybe endless empathy is a trait better suited for a Walmart greeter, where everybody who comes through the doors keeps their shit to themselves and leaves on their own two feet.
Jack smiles to himself imagining his friend with a blue vest and a magnetic name tag that reads: Hello, I’m Robby.
He’s able to tune back in to the conversation around him when his suspicions are confirmed. Michael veers right, wandering into the depths of the city instead of booking it straight for home. Good. Pittsburgh will keep an eye on him while Jack works recon, gathering details about today he knows Robby would never dare to disclose. The term companion star implies some sort of reciprocal share of onus; though in reality, Dr. Michael Robinivitch hogs that all to himself. Companion then, only refers to the fact that he and Jack are damned to orbit one another, Jack watching Michael slowly amass the weight of the world, and Michael watching Jack fade away. Maybe they should’ve jumped off that roof together. Nobody ever specified sisyphus was to be imagined happily rolling the boulder upward . Realistically, his joy would stem from sliding his hands into his pockets right in the middle of the hill and allowing the boulder to roll backward, cruising him.
Jack shakes his head to clear that thought. Free to listen to the ambient chatter around him apparently doesn’t mean it comes without effort.
He learns that shit went down between Robby and Langdon and his heart breaks all over again for Michael and for Frank. He doesn’t know which of them loves the other more, or if that matters anyway– doomed stars pushing boulders every which way and all.
Princess describes Langdon slinking out of the ED like a cheating ex-lover caught and kicked out of the bedroom before he could even get a sock on. Jack smiles to himself, blowing air through his nose in a subtle bout of laughter. Minus the ex, and minus the lover, Jack imagines that image to be damn near picture perfect.
So they fought. So Langon slunk back into the shadows after asserting himself as a fixture on the MCI team. It takes more than one fight for Dr. Robby to write anybody off completely. It’s a good thing they aren’t lovers, though. Those two fucking is a recipe for a god damn nuclear explosion. He almost says that out loud before Javadi’s quietly gasping “wait, were they actually—“ reminds him he’s in the company of Robby’s inferiors. Frank’s too for that matter.
“No.” He tries to shut that down before the rumor mill mashes those two’s relationship into even less repirable pieces than whatever state it’s in now. Of course– and he should have expected this– his comment ricocheting into the conversation like a stray bullet only amps up their suspicion, and now all eyes are locked on him. He holds up his hands to gesture to himself “I’m just saying, there’s no world in which he’d turn me down just to chase after that kid’s straight ass instead.”
Of course, that’s not the full story. That doesn’t encompass even half of the nuanced complexities, fallback contingencies, beers-poured-out-for-what-we’ll-never-be, two-stars-orbiting-the-same-center -of-mass-terrified-of-the-inevitable-collision, foreheads-pressed-together-just-can’t-cross-the-line-we-effectively-smashed-through-years-ago conversations on rooftops and alleys behind bars they’d never consider going into. Their story is not a tragedy, nor is it one of either of them choosing anybody over each other. In their case, Sisyphus does smile as he pushes their stars toward each other, knowing full well they’ll be in different galaxies by tomorrow. But that’s a conversation to be had with his therapist.
For the second time that night, Javadi and Mohan stare at him wide-eyed. Though this time it isn’t the halfway I’m-definitely-not-looking-at-the-place-your-foot-used-to-be stare, they’re just full on mouth-agape I’m-hopelessly-unsure-of-how-to-take-you staring.
“Nah, you’re just mad he’s into younger men.” Donnie jabs, laughing at himself. Before Jack has a chance to recover from that blow, Princess laughs too, elbowing the man next to her, “nice!”
“I thought he had a thing with Collins.” Javadi whispers at Mohan from far too great a distance to keep that comment private.
“Oh my god, speaking of Collins!” Princess picks up, cranking the handle of the mill once more. Intentionally or not, she shuts out the speculation surrounding Michael’s sex life with pure conjecture as to why Collins had to leave early today.
What the fuck? This day really brought them all the shift from hell, didn’t it. He figures should check in on her. Heather isn’t one to walk away without cause. He pulls out his phone to message her. I don’t know anything, but I came in tonight and didn’t see you. Call me if you want to talk. If it was Mikey, just lmk and I’ll slap some sense into him.
Mikey. He almost laughs at himself typing that. She started calling him that just to fuck with him when they first started dating. It’d make his face go all red and he’d cross his arms and pout like a little kid. Jack wished that nickname had stuck it out. Alas, long it’s-not-you-it’s-me, I-can’t-love-you-if-you-can’t-love-yourself, being-with-you-is-the-only-thing-more-painful-than-leaving-you break ups tend to be destroyers of everything jovial. Now, the nickname lives in the sparse text thread between two people unsure of whether or not they’re planets or other stars orbiting their wayward sun.
There’s still flame left in those coals if they’d only stop dousing them with cold water every time there’s a gust of wind.
Being on his phone reminds him that time exists and that he’s rocketing through it. At ten to 11, he’s sure Michael is actually headed back to his apartment now, and he knows his presence, though maybe not imperative, will be appreciated.
He pictures himself standing up and walking off in the direction of Michael’s apartment before he has to rewind and remind himself to reattach his prosthesis. No matter how ingrained in his day to day it is to roll on his gel sheath sock and secure himself to his prosthetic ankle, there never seems to come a day where his last time imagining himself with two full legs was actually his last time.
“Alright,” he groans, grabbing his sock and bending down to pull it onto himself. “At the risk of being called old again, I’m going to have to head out.”
And so begins the dispersal of the crowd.
“I think I get how horses do it.” Javadi replies. A total non-sequitur until her body seems to reanimate, remembering it was sharing a thought. She continues: “sleep standing up, I mean. I think I could do it!”
Mateo laughs, shifting his smile from Victoria to Jack. “Nah, old man. I think it’s all of us.”
Mohan puts a hand on Javadi’s shoulder and leads her back in the direction of the hospital. Hopefully she drives her home. Jack, now standing, offers his arms to collect empty beer cans while Donnie restocks the cooler with those that had been acquired but not yet opened.
Mateo claps his shoulder as Jack passes by him, sharing a goodbye to the park as he deposits the lot in the recycling bin.
It’s amazing the amount of noise human brains can filter out to consider the ambiently loud city of Pittsburgh quiet. Tonight, past the sound of tires on asphalt and people distantly interacting, the city is quiet. And so, Jack walks to Michael’s apartment in the comfort of relative silence.
He has a key to Michael’s place just as Michael has one to his. Though Michael acquired his key by means of a friendly “you can keep it,” after he had watered Jack’s plants for him one week he was away; and Jack acquired his by months of badgering and an eventual breakdown in faculties at a corner store that happened to have both the restock of whiskey they were seeking, and a key-copying machine right next to the exit.
He unlocks the door for himself, half expecting to come face to face with a brass chain keeping him out. Luckily for him, the apartment still seems to be empty.
He takes the liberty of welcoming himself inside, smiling as he wonders if he’s still the only one allowed to wear his shoes inside this apartment. Despite his solitude, he still bends to the rules and grabs his “house sneakers” from the shoe rack and replaces them with his work shoes once he’s changed.
Michael’s apartment barely looks lived in, save for the pot of coffee left out on the counter that Jack helps himself to the last of. He doesn’t even microwave it, just dumps it into a mug he finds hanging above the stove and takes a few sips before opening the fridge to search for some sort of creamer, or possibly something to eat. Whatever strikes his fancy, really.
He comes out of the fridge with a half-empty carton of oatmilk, a bag of baby carrots, and a hope he’ll find ranch dressing in one of the cabinets. When his search turns up nothing more in the sauce department than a jar of tahini and a bottle of yellow mustard, he pops a carrot into his mouth, grinning and bearing the way he can feel it spitting off into chunks inside his mouth with nothing to hide the fibrous texture.
The next few minutes are spent reluctantly grazing on the carrots and walking around looking for something to do. It looks like Robby has been reading a book about tuberculosis, so Jack peruses that for a while, learning about the author’s family history with the disease and the teenagers who tried to assassinate the archduke Franz Ferdinand.
He notices his fingers scratching at the back of his head and eventually, the itch of dried sweat and dandruff overcomes his ability to focus any more on tuberculosis’ history and he decides now’s about as good as any time to take a shower.
Michael does not keep a shower chair for use by his long-time friend. What he does keep, however, is a plastic folding chair, which Jack reminded him over and over again, would be destined for his “bare cock and balls” to touch it.
“Do you want to shower or not,” Robby had huffed, pushing the chair out from the back of his closet and dropping it sort of in Jack’s direction.
Jack flinched as it clattered to the floor just before his fingers got close enough to catch it. “Yes. I just want to be clear. My hairy ass is sitting naked in that chair for the entire duration of my shower.”
Michael, perpetually stressed right to the point before fracture, smiled a closed-lipped smile and cupped his hands around the back of his neck. “Are you planning to use soap?”
And so this chair is now his emergency shower chair; stored in the linen closet in the guest bathroom.
Inside his go-bag, he has a backup pair of scrubs and a change of clothes— a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of sweatpants— but Michael’s apartment is way too warm for all of that, so he dons the t-shirt and heads to Michael’s room to find a suitable pair of shorts. He has to settle for a pair of blue cloth ones that he can’t conceive of a reason why the other man would ever own, as much of Robby’s wardrobe is worn and dirty scattered vaguely around the hamper on his closet floor.
He checks his watch, considering the fact that 11 PM has come and gone and Robby is nowhere to be found. He designates midnight as the time he’ll go to search for his best friend’s body, though he can’t help but mentally map to the nearest bridge and set of train tracks, nor can he prevent the scenes of him walking up on Michael’s dead body that he’s forced to think his way through.
It’s probably more productive to learn about tuberculosis’ modern impacts than to picture having to be the one to call to have Michael’s body scraped from the train tracks.
Of course, it’s harder now than it was before the shower to concentrate on this chapter’s story of a boy living with TB in Sierra Leone. He keeps checking his watch, watching the minutes tick closer and closer to the predetermined panic time. His legs bounce incessantly underneath him and his fingers fiddle with the back of his wet hair. Michael is probably fine. Jack lives with suicidal ideation day in and day out and here he is. Constantly staving off the impulse to end it— to drop the boulder and let it roll back over him. Roof. Gun. Pills. Noose. His mind a continuous roulette of terrible choices that often seem quite palatable.
Though maybe that puts him at an advantage over where Robby is now. He knows how to feel it. How to fend it off. He dials back the internal panic timer. 11:45. In 8 minutes, he’ll worry. For now, Sierra Leone.
Thankfully, only 3 of those minutes scrape by with Jack trying desperately to learn about this kid while wondering if he should’ve followed Michael from the park instead of letting him go off alone. Obviously he couldn’t be trusted to be alone. If he’s here now, he should’ve chased after him before.
The lock in the door slides closed and then open again. Jack closes his eyes, scolding himself for not locking the damn door. He stands, all the nervous energy building inside him propelling him from his chair at Robby’s tiny two seat table.
Michael steps into his apartment red-eyed and groggy like a drunk the morning after a great night out. He freezes when he meets Jack’s eyes, his hand going slack, dropping from his neck to his side.
“Was getting kind of scared you weren’t coming back—“ the intrusion of Jack’s voice startles Michael out of his daze and he interjects without even a nod to what Jack might’ve been saying.
“—I’m so fucking glad you’re here.” Robby breathes, stumbling across the floor in his hospital shoes and crumbling into Jack’s arms. Not exactly a mirror of his earlier greeting to Jack when he'd showed up at the ED, go bag at the ready, as this picture shows a far less collected version of Dr. Michael Robinavitch.
Jack accepts his embrace, bearing the weight of both himself and the taller man as Michael loses all composure. “Thank you,” Michael heaves, tears instantly burning through Jack’s shirt sleeve, immediate and hot— flares erupting out of the burning sun with the transfer of a single charge. “Thank you, thank you.” He cuts himself off with his own, wet inhalation.
Jack nods his head; one of his hands moving to rub hard circles over Michael’s shoulder blade while the other clutches him by the small of his back so his legs don’t literally give out and drag them both to the floor.
He is not okay. This is not okay. Jack feels his heart rapping against his ribcage. So much for being cool in a crisis.
Jack forces himself to take a breath. If he loses his shit at the exact same time it’s game over for both of them. Nobody makes it out of this place. He’s assaulted by the smell of sixteen hours of running around the emergency room. Pair that with the souring effect of stress and the warmth in this apartment and the man’s an acrid diffuser. He catches himself using the coarse texture of Michael’s hoodie to soothe himself so he slows his hand, focusing on pressure rather than the subtle lines of the tight-knit wale that makes up his clothing.
Jack shakes his head, trying to think of the right thing to say. He recalls a tip from Michael’s speech and parrots: “Just grief leaving the body man.” He uses the palm of his hand to attempt to peel Robby away so he can meet his eyes. Gauge whether or not his tactics are effective. “Right?” Robby doesn’t budge, so Jack relents to carry on, his hand now patting gently at the heaving mass in his arms. It probably isn’t working.
“It’s good, you know? Good for you to let it out cause–” he scoffs, “cause you’re the fucking boss at keeping that shit bottled in, right?” He’s talking too much. That’s why it’s not working. He knows he is, but his lips just keep on going. “You know when you open up a can that’s been shook up real good? You know how hard it is to stop the spray so I’m just saying–” He presses his forehead into Michael’s dirty hair, trying to silence himself for the benefit of the one person who does not need to parse through his psychobabble right now. “It’s gonna keep on coming but it’ll stop sometime.” Hairs now tickle his lips as he speaks, warning him to back down. “And there’s always something left in the can–” he shakes his head. He is not making sense. Better to just shut up.“–not–” and, he’s still going, well aware of the fact that he’s losing the metaphor with each passing breath. He just has to get it out: “not like there’s still grief or whatever the fuck left. There probably is– but I mean you can cry like this and there’ll still be you leftover.”
The crumpled puppet of his friend animates slightly in his arms as Michael breathes in, “What are you saying?” shaking his head against his collarbone.
Jack throws his hands up, his arms still pinned to his friend to maintain their function as structural support. “I don’t know!” He gives a quiet, sort of deranged laugh, “I have no idea.”
He feels the desperation has lifted some from Michael’s breathing, if only because crying that hard is entirely unsustainable. He has no choice but to continue: “I just want you to know it’s okay. Okay? This is good.”
“Good?” The word bubbles through his t-shirt like a burp of hot gas.
Jack attempts the peel away method again, if not only as a means to reconnect in a hold that better supports them both. Robby sways slightly, but keeps his gaze locked to the ground no matter how hard Jack vies for his to be reciprocated. His arms curl up behind Jack’s back, clenching in his t-shirt, utterly unprepared to let go.
Cool air rushes up into the tiny gap between them, alerting Jack to how hot Robby’s worked up body has been running. He pushes a hand between them to fumble around the other man’s chest for the zipper that’s locking it all in.
“It’s good that you’re feeling your feelings. All of your feelings.” He locates the metal lever and pulls it down, releasing a flash of radiation originating at Robby’s torso. “You gotta take this thing off, man.” He demands, running his hands up over his chest to peel the melting fabric down his shoulders. “I’m not just talking about feeling your shit about the shooting, or about Jake or, or Leah.”
Robby’s entire body stiffens at the mention of her name. His breathing stopping entirely. Sirens flash across Jack’s vision, punishing him for his rambling. That was not the right thing to say. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, man.” Jack soothes, running his hands down Michael's back, serving the dual purpose of venting the backside of his sweatshirt to prevent a flash-point explosion and bringing him closer so the feeling of another breathing body reminds him to do the same.
“I know it’s hard to see it, but that girl was dead when she got to us, Robby–” he’s said this already. “I’m not trying to do this again–” he should shut up “I just need you to know that that her death belongs to that fucking psyco who–”
Michael rips himself away from him, throwing his hands up around his neck and pressing his palms into his cheeks. He skitters away, hoodie flowing gently around his waist as he turns his back to Jack.
His dash for distance is instinctual, a prey animal clambering for any available cover. Distance will just have to do as he’s met not by darkness or shelter, but the wall in his dimly lit living room. His jaw is clenched shut, leaving the tears rolling down his cheeks his body’s only means of letting anything out. Jack is quiet now, effectively gone to Michael as the only stimulus he can perceive is the ghastly pull in the pit of his stomach that drags his diaphragm inward and refuses to let it go.
The pressure of the world around him crushes him in at the stomach, hunching him over before his hands fall to catch himself clattering to the floor. He’s trying to breathe but it feels like any oxygen in the nebula surrounding him is being propelled far, far away. That seems fitting. Repulsive even to the molecules he needs to keep him alive.
“Fuck. Fuck!” Jack’s voice is again audible from behind him and then there’s a string of muttering he can’t bother to make out covering a clattering of items somewhere in his kitchen, but Robby is still trying to force himself to do something other than gasp into the carbon dioxide filled cavern formed by his arms locked over his knees. “You gotta chill out, man.” Jack’s voice is moving back toward him, “I’ve got a trick we try on vets but it’s sort of fucked. I’m going to put an ice pack on your neck, alright?”
Treating this interaction like something he could consent to is like asking a patient for permission to defibrillate. Do or die. Act or abandon. The cold ice pack on Michael’s neck triggers an inhale that opens his lungs for the first time since he called time of death on the girl who would quite possibly be named Jake’s first love. His hands bat Jack’s away instantly so he can secure the connection between the cold and his skin himself.
“Oh my god.” His voice is so high pitched it could have come from a toddler. The ice bores a hole in his skin the way a superheated weight would sear through a block of frozen fat. He moves the ice pack from his neck, pressing it between his collarbones where his undershirt gives way to bare skin. The chill creeps through him like the lowest possible voltage electric shock reaching between distant ends of a circuit.
Michael is certainly not engaged in a social interaction right now, but he’s coming back into the knowledge that at one point he was, when Jack squats onto the floor in front of him. He closes his eyes, still only really capable of thinking about his own immediate survival. Effectively, he is alone.
In the ensuing silence, a rush of shame for being here, for doing this, flashes through him, causing another bout of ragged breathing. Twice in one day. Twice in one day he couldn’t keep himself together. Twice in one day another person has been there to watch him break down like a true and worthy psych patient. “Fuck!” he howls, pressing the ice pack into his forehead like it might freeze out his ability to think.
He feels toes press against his and pries open his eyes to see the pristine white rubber of Jack’s house sneakers creased against the browning gray of his hospital ones. Those need to be gone. He drops the ice pack so that he can rip his shoes from his feet and toss them too hard against the door.
“Thank god.” His eyes break contact with the discarded shoes to find the face of the person talking to him. “I’ve been trying to get you to take something off since you got here,” Jack’s smirk is accompanied by a dry, unsteady laugh.
Michael’s sweatshirt sags over his shoulders, clueing him in to how hot his body feels underneath it. He tears that off too, wrestling with the fabric like he’s never properly removed an article of clothing in his life. He shakes it to the the floor, reveling in the drastic decrease in temperature. Shoes off. Socks must go.
“Woah there cowboy, maybe leave something to the imagination.”
Robby laughs at that. Broken and distant, but enough to bring him back to the present company. He looks up at Jack who stares at him, concerned brow furrowed above soft brown eyes and worriedly thin lips. He can’t think of anything to say to him.
Jack has a solution to that. If he can do anything, he can talk. “I’m sorry–”
If he was trying to get Michael to do the talking, it worked, “don’t. Please.”
So Jack just nods, visibly biting his lips to keep his mouth quiet and busy. His thumbs twiddle in his lap as he checks in with the floor.
The floor seems like as good a place as any to find a way to address this. He hopes the fake wood planks will phrase “I killed my pseudo-kid’s girlfriend after finding out I could’ve been a dad in another life. Also, my work wife quit and I fired my favorite resident,” in a way that doesn’t make him want to kill himself. Alas, the vinyl seams only taunt him with their vast, closed-lipped smiles. Serves him right for consulting the floorboards.
That, though, gives him something to say to the man across from him. “One of the night nurses told Frank she saw me talking to the animals on the walls in peds.” A surprisingly effortless confession in the wake of his absolute, six-story collapse.
Jack nods his head, restless fingers stilling as his eyes find Michael’s. “Did they have anything useful to say?”
Michael scoffs, eyes scrunched closed. He turns his head toward the kitchen to avoid accidentally seeing Jack’s face as he admits the part that feels somehow more embarrassing than the prospect of talking to the cartoon monkey that grinned while it watched his mentor die. “They don’t speak Hebrew.”
“Ah.” is all he gets back from Jack.
He returns his gaze forward, catching the other man still worrying his lips between his teeth. “Yeah.” Michael’s saliva slides thick down his throat as he swallows.
“Well,” Jack’s shrug draws Michael’s eyes to search for his, but he’s not searching for that kind of attention now. “Let me know if He calls you back this time.”
Robby shakes his head. Once, and then over and over again for good measure. “I’m sure His voicemail box is full.” The room continues to sway for a few moments after he stops moving. He needs to fucking sleep.
“So it goes.” Jack claps his hands together. Shaking them up and down like he’s just made a deal with himself. He clears his throat. “Here’s what I think we do next. You,” he grins wryly out of the side of his mouth, “smell like a fucking gym bench. You gotta take a shower, change your clothes, and then go the fuck to bed.”
“And you?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He waits for Robby’s eyes to meet his. “Literally. Unless you pull me up, my ass is stuck right here on this floor.”
This spurs Robby into motion. Sputters is probably a more accurate description. His knees crack as he pushes himself up and he groans, “best of luck, brother.” His lips smirk, a dull light shining behind his very red eyes, but his body deceives him as he doesn’t so much as take a step out of Jack’s vicinity despite his cheeky response. Jack holds out his hand and Michael clasps it in his, a steady force urging him upward as he peels away from the floor.
Michael’s hand travels up Jack’s arm and feels it’s way behind his back, chasing his inertia to siphon it into his own depleted battery. Jack shakes him off at his kitchen, where he acquires two glasses of water and Michael moves into his bedroom.
He’s already in the bathroom, shower on and shirts off when Jack finds him with a nearly overflowing cup. “Drink,” Jack demands, his eye catching on the golden star of David hanging over Michael’s bare chest. Sometimes he wonders what his own cross is thinking stuffed deep in his bathroom drawer.
The water is gone in seconds and Jack is left to contend with the empty glass. In the shower, Michael grits his teeth and hisses as cold water assaults his skin. No use for hot water tonight. Not when comfort is a luxury and an ice pack was the thing to press pause on his implosion. A reactor meltdown isn’t combated with hot water, and so his own will not be either.
He drags shampoo out of his hair, down over his face, scrubbing at his skin with the intent of flaking off the cells that remember today. Maybe when he sees himself again he'll be stately. Bright eyed and clean shaven, wholly unprepared for the neverending rollercoaster before him. He can barely pull his eyes open when the soap is washed away– the lights too bright for his tired pupils. His body is powering down, faculties degrading with each bit of debris washed down the drain.
Jack’s voice drifts into his bathroom, calling out to him before announcing. “You’re a slob.”
He backs out of the cold water, the warmer air providing a disconcerting reprieve. “Thank you.” He groans, eyes squinted shut once again.
“Just thought I’d let you know before I told you I found you something to wear. Seen enough of you naked tonight, I’m not trying to see the rest.”
He sighs, leaning forward to turn off the water and landing, courtesy of Newton, with his arm against the wall and his head pressed into his arm “Afraid you’re going to be jealous?” The effort needed to move air through his lungs almost not worth the reward of reciprocal interaction.
Jack huffs on the other side of the door. “Only of your other foot.”
Michael finds he’s been delivered a raggedy cubs t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. “You trying to start something?” He calls out, smirking at the t-shirt.
“What?” Jack huffs, grunting like he’s not just sitting around waiting for him on the other side of the door, “the shirt? Yeah, I’m willing to look past your Chicago bullshit tonight on account of you being a total fucking trainwreck.”
Robby pulls the shirt over his head, a dark chuckle rattling his chest as he does so. “I should've let you walk off that roof.”
Jack’s voice comes back to him from farther out in his apartment, “you gotta speak up brother, you know I can’t hear shit anymore.”
“Whatever, man.” Now fully clothed, he wanders through his empty bedroom and out into the common space. “You still sleepin’ on the couch?”
“The couch?” Jack’s voice places him in the laundry room. “Fuck no, I’m not doing that shit again.”
Presented with two battles to fight, Michael decides to let slide the one that leaves him with clean clothes. “You headed back to the hospital then?”
“Not 2 A.M. yet is it?”
His brain short circuits with that, and he stands there, one elbow raised up in the air as he scratches at the base of his neck. “It’s close enough.” He decides, wondering how little sleep he’s destined for.
Jack slams the lid of the washer, cascading though the short hallway and patting Robby’s chest on the return to his bedroom. “Yeah, I’ll go when I’m good and ready. Till then, this bed looks big enough for the both of us.” He drops himself at the foot of it, pulling his leg up to work at his shoelace.
Normally, this would be a line they’d try not to cross, but who are they protecting anyway? Michael shrugs his shoulders, finally on the way to closing his eyes and forgetting today for as long as sleep will let him. The flash of Jack’s shoe falling to the floor draws his eyes to his legs. He shakes his head. “Nope.” Is all he can muster at first, but then he processes even more of the picture and he groans. “Those are my shorts and you’re on my side of the bed.”
Jack scoots obediently to the opposite side, though he speaks only in defiance. “Nobody should own shorts like this. Shorts like this are why you’re not getting any.”
Michael flips the light switch, bathing them in darkness until he makes it to his nightstand where he flicks on a smaller light. The change in stimulus hard-resets his exhausted brain and he climbs into bed without considering a response to whatever he’d been talking about before.
He eyes the pillows to the left of his head, tracing the turmeric colored sheets and black duvet to the back of Jack’s silhouette that now works at removing his prosthetic. Had he been alone, he’d probably already be unconscious. A long sigh escapes his lips as he forces himself back up into a more seated position.
He takes a pillow from Jack’s side and a pillow from his, building them up into a pseudo wall that divides the bed into his and his. The routine no doubt a holdover of high school hospitality.
Jack turns around to the sound of pillow-bricks being laid. He smiles, biting back a full-fledged laugh at the other man’s expense. “Jesus,” he shakes his head, “what is that, the Berlin Wall?”
Michael shrugs his shoulders, genuinely without an answer. He doesn’t have a reason why he erected the barrier; doesn’t really care if they share the bed unbarred. Sleeping next to the man whose shirt he’d clung to while he’d been trying to undress him seems innocuous compared to the intimacy of a complete dissolution of fortitude. It had merely seemed appropriate that he designate a space explicitly for his guest.
When he abstains from any further self-defense, Jack relents. If only to stave off another nuclear meltdown. “Alright,” he sighs, “you take the East, I’ll take the west.” He scoots himself up from the foot to the head of the bed. “You handle your shit, I’ll be over here spray painting peace signs and flowers.” He rolls onto his back, immediately turning his head to inspect the pillow wall with diligence. “I commend your craftsmanship, really. It’s a shame your side’ll be missing out on all the concerts.”
“Fuck you,” Michael scorns, a real smile peeking out of his ever-graying beard. He drops a hand onto one of the pillows between them, attempting to commence demolition.
Jack drops his hand over Michael’s. “Woah there Mr. Gorbachev. You’ve got a few years before this bad boy can come down. Besides,” he waits until the other man’s eyes find his before he whispers, “I know you’re scared we’re going to spoon in your sleep.”
Relief is all Jack feels as Michael’s sparking eyes smile back at him. Thank god he’s still in there. “Right.” Michael retorts, maintaining eye contact despite the dull lighting weighing on him quite heavily.
In reality, it’s not fear that holds the wall up between them. It’s certainty. Clairvoyance surrounding the inevitable end and every step it would take them to get there. Star crossed partners locked in a binary system; prophesied for one to watch the other explode. Night vs. day. It would be a beautiful light show.
Jack turns away, eyes to the ceiling. He sticks his foot into the air. “You’d be weirded out by the stump. It’d be a whole thing.” He could push. He could. He knows it’d take but one more nudge and they’d be wrapped up, one fully encompassed by the other, but morning would come eventually and they’d be forced to return to each other all of their borrowed pieces.
So Michael rolls over too, reaching over to turn off the light, remembering this time, even in the darkness to take his turn in the conversation. “I’m a whole lot scarier than an amputated limb.” So maybe turn taking wasn’t really the right way to describe it. He responded— ball in Jack’s court— but the silence of the darkened room falls so heavy he can’t quite move his arms to grab his blanket.
“Now that’s just not fair.” Jack tries to sound playful, he does, but even though it’s Michael’s turn to fall apart Jack’s words scratch his throat as he responds, “if that was the scariest part of me, you’d never have caught me on that roof this morning.”
He hears Michael’s hands scratching— raking through his beard. He doesn’t need to sleep with the burden of any more of Jack’s shit. Not when he does that with everybody else’s. He places a hand on top of the wall, timid fingers reaching out from east to west, hoping for it to be met with acceptance rather than resilience.
When Michael’s hand falls into his, it clings to him with the strength of a bound current, magnetic to the point that Jack becomes magnetic too.
And so they lie there, orbiting each other so closely that Michael takes a little from Jack and, if he’s lucky, Jack takes a little back from him too.