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Robby’s not sure how many times Jack has said his name, but he can tell by the look on his face when he plants himself in front of him that it’s a number far higher than one.
“Michael,” Jack says, his tone speaking volumes. When Robby’s eyes flick to meet his, he breathes a visible sigh of relief, though his shoulders don’t come down from around his ears. “Are you going home?”
No.
“Yeah,” Robby replies. “Just gonna be a quick stop before I take off, though.”
The inside of his locker doesn’t offer any more insight than it had while he’d been staring into it, thinking of everything and nothing, all at once. Running through his mental checklist, he’d been busy telling himself that he remembered to do everything that needed doing, that he cancelled his weekly grocery delivery, he emptied out of his fridge, he left his spare set of keys on the kitchen counter and his main set in an envelope slipped into Jack’s locker. His apartment is cleaned up, all his important papers neatly stacked and sticky-tabbed on the table, his rental agreements and his registration for his motorcycle and his last will and testament and anything else he thought might be useful or relevant.
Everything else has been straightened out, tucked away. The last thing left to do is leave.
Why can’t he make himself leave?
“And you’re really sure about this?” Jack asks him.
Yes.
“Nah, I could use the break,” Robby replies, pulling his jacket from his locker, slamming it shut for what he knows to be the last time. Part of him wants to linger, but Jack would catch him out immediately if he felt sentiment towards his locker. “We all could.”
“Leave me out of that,” Jack insists. As Robby pulls his jacket on, one sleeve at a time, his motorcycle key jangling in the pocket, he adds, “You know I don’t want a break from you. So, you’ll call me, right?”
There’s no room for discussion, so Robby just nods. He hates lying to Jack, hates it, but he hopes he’ll eventually understand.
“You sure you’re okay for the rest of the night?” Robby asks him. It’s one of Jack’s least-favorite days of the year, after all, and Robby hasn’t missed the way he’s ignoring the windows, avoiding the far-off explosions of fireworks in the skies outside PTMC. “I can stay if you need me.”
Jack’s eyes rake over Robby in that way he has, that scouring way that makes Robby feel as if he’s been flayed open, skin and bones peeled back, a cadaver on a dissection table for Jack to root around inside. For some reason, Robby’s heart is pounding, and he wishes he could stay, he wants to stay with Jack, but he can’t. He just— It’s just—
“You look exhausted,” Jack comments. It’s not an answer, not really, but Robby takes it as one anyway.
Reaching down, he scoops up his backpack and his helmet, throwing one strap over his shoulder. The helmet gets tucked under his arm, soon to be stashed away once he’s actually on his bike, ready to ride with nothing between him and the road but his own fragile bones, his weak brain, his useless heart.
“I’ll get some rest,” Robby promises him. That, at least, is true, even if he’s not sure he deserves it— as badly as he wants this to just be rest. “It’ll be okay.”
He slips his other arm through his backpack, wincing at the pull on his arm where a patient had gouged him earlier. It still smarts, the wound small but deep, probably still sluggishly leaking blood into his sleeve; Robby hadn’t seen much point to wasting supplies on cleaning and stitching it, just for them to go to waste within a day.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jack asks, startling Robby’s attention back onto him. His mouth opens, his heart skipping a beat, uncertain of exactly how to answer that, before Jack is reaching for his backpack and tugging it back off of him. “What happened to your shoulder?”
“Oh.” Robby glances towards his own shoulder, head tilting down to the right, as if he’ll suddenly see a bloom of blood through the dark fabric of his hoodie. When nothing appears, he tells Jack, “Just a little gift from a patient earlier. It’s not a big deal, I’ll take care of it later.”
Jack’s eyes flick over him, still flaying him open. Robby tries to hold his skin together. He fails, of course; that’s the reason for all of this. He can’t stop failing at holding himself together, and it just— None of it will stop. Every day, every minute, in and out, it just doesn’t stop, and he can’t do it anymore, he can’t just— keep doing this, every single day, hoping it’ll get better, dreading the times it gets worse, always worse, inevitably worse, the bright spots fewer and further between until he can hardly remember them at all, retreating too deeply into the darkness.
He’s dodged everyone else all day, slipped under the radar, ghosted around his staff, avoided their eyes that can be so probing like Jack’s, that are designed to seek and find and root out the sickness, that could know. Jack’s the only one he just can’t shake.
“Why don’t I take care of it now?” Jack suggests, shouldering Robby’s backpack himself, stealing his helmet.
Reaching out, taking the bag and helmet back into his hands, Robby tries not to register the expression of surprise and mild hurt on Jack’s face, the confusion and frustration blossoming there. “I’m good, Jack. I’ll handle it.”
“You’ll take care of your own shoulder?” Jack answers, skeptical. “That’s a bad angle. I don’t mind being your hands.”
“It’s okay, Jack,” Robby insists again, and—
And, out of nowhere, just like these thoughts have been doing all day in the cold finality of this, he realizes this very well may be the last time he ever talks to Jack, ever sees his face in person. It strikes him all over again, how desperately he doesn’t want to do this, how badly he needs to, how he wishes he could stay, that he could just— stay, and be normal, and feel like he can make it through the days again. He doesn’t even remember what it was to be a person who could actually exist, instead of— of this, this thing that he’s become.
“I’m sorry,” Robby blurts out, hating the emotions crinkling up Jack’s face in worried, asymmetrical lines.
“For—” Jack starts to ask, though he stops when Robby drops his bag, his helmet, frees his arms to throw around Jack instead, burying his face in his throat, holding on tight. His arms have never felt so full, and he wishes he could just live in this moment forever. If everything was just this, he thinks he could actually do it.
Jack’s arms close around him. He doesn’t even hesitate, he just wraps Robby up and squeezes tight. His hand comes to the back of his head, cradles the curve of his skull, holds him against him in a close embrace. When his other arm locks around Robby’s back, he can’t help but melt into him, clutching him in a too-hard grip, pressing his face so roughly into Jack’s neck his nose throbs from the pressure.
“Hey,” Jack says, soft, near his ear. The steady rubbing of his hand up and down Robby’s back in long ovals comforts him and draws tears to the surface at the same time. “Hey, you’re okay. What is it?”
Robby shakes his head against Jack’s shoulder. Even if he could tell him the words, even if he wanted to, they won’t come. He’s always had that problem, always; he’s never known the right thing to say when it matters, when it’s one-on-one like this. A rousing speech comes to him, no problem, he can figure out what words will make the people around him happier and more focused, they just come. The rest of it—
Well, there’s a reason the notebook in Robby’s backpack is filled with half-finished letters. Getting the last words right for the people he loves has been the hardest part of all of this, and they still won’t come now, when it matters most, when he’s out of chances.
“Robby.” Jack’s voice is little more than a whisper. “Hey. Whatever it is—”
“It’s okay,” Robby mumbles into his throat. He inhales deeply, pressing back the prickling in his eyes. His nose still throbs, sinuses burning, and he knows he should lift his face out of Jack’s neck, knows that he should let him go, but he keeps remembering this is the last time and he can’t make his arms release.
Running his fingers through his hair, then stroking to the nape of his neck and taking hold, Jack asks, “Do you want me to come with you?”
Yes. Yes, yes, yes, please, come with me, help me, please, I don’t want this, I don’t know what else to do, please, please—
“No,” Robby whispers into Jack’s throat, the single short syllable still managing to fracture as it comes out of his mouth. He clears his throat, repeats, “No, I’m okay,” and hates himself all over again for telling Jack yet another lie.
Despite his words, he can’t make himself let Jack go. It’s like they’ve been stitched together, and he finds himself tightening his grip instead. The corresponding bolt of pain in his shoulder doesn’t even bother him, barely penetrates through the fog, and he only holds on tighter, tighter, until it feels as though his muscles might all snap.
“I got you, Mikey,” Jack tells him. “I got you.” Still rubbing his back, he asks, “Are you sure?”
Robby can’t bring himself to answer, can’t make himself lie to Jack again. It hurts, it all hurts, and Robby knows Jack’s life will be better when he’s gone, knows everyone’s lives will be better when he’s gone, the family members he doesn’t see and the coworkers who worry over him and the people he couldn’t convince to stay. His friends— Jack—
Selfishly, a part of him hopes Jack will miss him when he’s gone, but a larger part knows this is better, hopes that it won’t hurt him too much, prays that he will eventually understand and this will be a good thing.
“What’s going on, Robby?” Jack asks, and Robby doesn’t need to ask— doesn’t need Jack to say it— he knows he’s scaring him, can hear it in Jack’s voice, the tremor and unease he’s carefully tucking away. His words are like a screwdriver prying at Robby’s stuck edges, trying to pop him open and relieve the pressure, while Robby just feels like he might burst. “Talk to me, brother. Don’t leave like this.”
Don’t leave like this. Robby’s chest cracks open. It’s such a simple request, and Robby had been— he is going to leave like this, he was— is— going to leave Jack like this. Selfish, selfish again, hasn’t he been through enough, haven’t you put him through enough—
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack soothes him, his hands coming to push Robby back a little. When Robby’s chest hitches, tears coming of their own accord, he starts to understand why, but he can’t let Jack go, just holds on tighter. “Whoa, okay. We’ll just stay here for a second, then.”
Robby doesn’t answer, can’t answer, clinging to Jack and trying to swallow back his tears and failing. He’s so close— he’s gotten so close—
“I can’t,” escapes him, despite his best efforts to keep it back.
“You can’t what?” Jack asks him, halfway between himself and Dr. Abbot. His hand threads through Robby’s hair again, soft and even strokes, and Robby clings to him, hangs on desperately, silently begging for him to help, for someone to interrupt them, for something, he doesn’t even know what anymore— “Mike. Talk to me, babe. What can’t you do?”
Robby doesn’t know how to answer that honestly, but he just doesn’t have it in him to lie to Jack again. He fights for an answer— for a word, for anything, and comes up with a pathetic, “Any of it. All of it, I—” His voice cracks; Jack’s arms tighten around him, holding onto him like he might just dissolve otherwise. For all Robby knows, he would. “I can’t keep doing it, Jack. I’m so—” Tears disintegrate his words, and he buries himself in Jack’s skin, made humid by him, and, at his breaking point, he confesses, “I’m so tired. I’m too— I’m too tired.”
Jack’s hands wind up in the back of Robby’s hoodie, fingers tangled up tight, the fabric stretching in his grip. His chest doesn’t move for a long moment, his whole body still, every muscle tensed; after a long beat that stretches on forever, he blows out a shaky breath, and then his palms flatten, start rubbing his back again.
“Please don’t make me stay here,” Robby begs him, barely audible. “Please.”
Jack doesn’t stop rubbing his back, doesn’t even seem to think of letting go. Instead, he takes in another trembling breath, and Robby squeezes his eyes shut, shaking apart in his grip.
“What if you stay with me tonight?” Jack asks, as if he’s afraid of the answer, as if he’s holding so much more back, as if he can’t help but ask. “I can patch you up.”
Robby can’t stop shaking. His mind shows flashes of how he anticipated tonight going, keeps showing him the images as if snapshots in a slideshow: the long hike he’d have to make, all the way to the peak; the last camping site he would ever set, where he’d have to finish his notes; the careful packaging of the last that remains of him, keys and helmet and backpack, final words and sleeping bag and bad excuses; the— the fall, the accident, when he would just tip over the edge and it would take a few seconds and then it would all be over.
If it’s over, he doesn’t have to keep doing this. If it’s over, he doesn’t have any more chances. He can’t— He can’t. He has to make too many calls, take too many lives. Why can’t he be spared this one time from the choice?
So many people who jump and live say they regretted what they’d done, in what they thought would be their last moments, and it’s one of the only thoughts that gives him hope. For a moment, he could feel the desire to live again— even if it was his last moment, even if it was too late. It sounds like it’s not a bad way to go.
He can see it so clearly— the helmetless ride, the everlasting hike, the never-ending fall— and his heart trips as if he’s falling already, tilting over the edge of the cliff, the top of the roof, from the greatest of heights, and his knees feel weak, wobbling, unable to keep him upright any longer.
Jack catches him.
For a split second, in falling, Robby wishes he could live again. He wants to want it; he doesn’t understand why he can’t have it.
“It’s okay,” Jack is saying in his ear. Robby doesn’t even realize how hard his heart is pounding until he has to force himself to listen through the race of his pulse in his ears, his blood in his veins. “You’re still here. It’s okay. I’m right here with you, I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. It’s okay—”
“Don’t make me stay,” Robby whimpers into his shoulder, unable to bring his voice up any louder or lower the pitch any further. “I don’t want to be on a hold here—”
“Robby, you need help that I can’t—”
“Jack, please.” He clutches at him, folds into him, and Jack holds him upright, doesn’t let him go.
It takes a minute that feels like an hour, but Jack finally says, “You can come home with me, and we’ll pick a good inpatient for you together. One that’ll help you. Okay?” His hand runs through Robby’s hair. “You’ll wash up with me, we’ll eat something. You can sleep, I’ll stay up and look after you. And when you wake up,” and he says it like it’s an indisputable fact, hard and firm, you will wake up, “I will take you anywhere you want to check yourself in. It doesn’t have to be here. But we’re going to find something that’ll help you. That will really help you, Michael.”
“I j—” His throat clicks. “I can’t—”
“You can. You have to.” Jack cradles his head, kisses his cheek. His lips brush Robby’s scruffy skin, and his voice sounds just as rough. “You know you have to. I’ll be with you, I’ll come every day you’re there. We’ll figure it all out together, I promise. But you have to.” Every word is tighter, more choked than the last. “I can’t lose you. I won’t.”
Robby’s heart pounds, pounds, pounds before he admits, unsure even to himself as to why he’s choosing now to do so, “I put my house key in your locker.”
Jack is suddenly still again, as if momentarily frozen, struck by lightning, run through with a sword, a hard figure cut from marble in Robby’s desperate embrace. When he unlocks, moves again, it’s to tighten his grip on Robby like he wants to pull him under his skin, kissing his cheek again, his ear, his hair, before he’s clutching at him and trying to bury himself in Robby as much as Robby has been trying to do the same to him.
“Goddamnit, Mikey,” Jack murmurs into him, choking again. Robby’s throat feels similarly blocked and thick. “God—” He stops, breathes, then whispers, “Thank you. Thank you, for telling me,” so soft Robby almost thinks he imagined it. “Can I help? Please, I want— Let me help.”
It’s all too much, but his last three words prove to be Robby’s tipping point, pushing him finally and fully over the edge.
Desperate, jerky, he nods against Jack’s shoulder. He just barely manages to choke out, “Please,” and, “I’m so sorry,” before Jack shushes him.
“Don’t be sorry,” Jack says on repeat. “Don’t you be sorry, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay, I got you, brother, alright? Neither of us is going anywhere without each other, I can promise you that.”
Robby nods against Jack’s chest in a jerk. Behind him, through his pounding pulse, he dimly registers the creak of the door, and he jolts apart from Jack, hands coming up to his eyes, already missing his arms around him before they’ve even started falling away.
“Hey, D—” Samira starts to greet them, but she barely gets a word or a step in before she stops. “What’s wrong, Abbot?”
“Nothing,” Jack answers, hands swiping upwards, Robby can see in his peripheral vision. He keeps his own head down, tilted away, focusing far too hard on picking up his bag and his helmet again, ignoring the tears that soak into his beard and streak down his throat. “We were just talking. Listen, do you think you can tell Dana we’re going to both be heading out? Dr. Robby’s not feeling too well, I’m going to look after him.”
“Oh.” There’s more weight in that one sound than Robby is expecting to hear, and he closes his eyes, tries to take a steadying breath. The tears are still there, no matter how hard he fights. “Okay, sure. Feel better, Dr. Robby,” she adds, before pausing for a beat too long. “Don’t forget to wear your helmet on sabbatical.”
Robby’s head snaps up, but even then, he’s still too late to catch her. She’s already gone, back out the door she came through, and Robby’s left looking to Jack for an answer.
“Jesse snitched,” Jack offers as an explanation, moving to pop his locker open. Robby’s pulse thunders in his ears. “Saw you come in this morning without it, told me while I was at the hub. I told everyone not to worry, I’d talk to you, but, well.” His eyes cast over his shoulder at him, meeting his red-eyed gaze. “They all love you.”
“Jack,” Robby warns him.
“They do,” Jack insists. “All of them. You mean— so much to them. You’ll remember that.” He turns back to his locker, steeling himself for a long moment. Robby almost thinks he’s stopped talking before he adds on a final, “You mean so much.”
Robby doesn’t have a chance to answer that, nor the wherewithal, before Jack takes a deep breath and actually pulls the locker door open. There, incriminating, right in the center of his belongings, is the small white square Robby tucked his building and apartment keys into.
Jack slips his finger under the edge of the envelope, tearing it open in one easy glide. He almost seems surprised to shake the keys out, despite Robby having just told him what was in there, before Jack turns his red-splotched face up to him, his bloodshot eyes, and asks him, “That’s it?”
Robby’s about to ask What more is there? when he considers Jack’s question more thoroughly.
“I wasn’t done yet,” Robby tells him. At Jack’s blanching expression, eyes darkening as his face pales and drains of blood, he lifts his bag a little bit. “The drafts were still…” His head swims a bit. He hopes, deep in his hopeless heart, that they never would have been finished.
“Don’t,” Jack says, apparently without even thinking. “Please, don’t— don’t finish that.”
Robby’s eyes stay fixed on Jack’s, unable to look away— unwilling to look away. Part of him is screaming inside, rallying against him, banging his fists against the insides of his skull and ribcage and demanding that he run away, that he end this, please, that he go, just— just sprint, because Jack can’t catch him, nobody can—
But the other part of him wants to be caught, and he wants to die, and he wants to live.
“I should’ve talked to you sooner,” Jack says, pulling his coat from his locker, then his bag, all without looking, leaving everything else behind for now with a decisive bang-slam of the door back into place. “As soon as Jesse told me— As soon as I knew that—”
“It’s okay, Jack,” Robby says, keeping his voice low as if it will prevent it from shattering. The way Jack’s head tilts, and his face creases, tells him exactly what he thinks of that. “It is.”
“It’s going to be,” Jack tells him. He’s decisive, as if he knows that’s the truth, and Robby finds that he doesn’t want to doubt him, that he wants to just spill himself into his hands and stay there and trust him. He can already see the gears turning in Jack, his clever mind working; he probably has a treatment plan all laid out in his head, plans for the next few weeks, and Robby just wants to surrender to him. “I’m going to help, okay? And you’re going to be just fine. I’ll make sure of it myself.”
Robby can’t help himself. Something inside of him just— breaks wide open and finally sends everything flooding out.
He staggers forward into Jack again, arms surging around him, clutching him against his chest, burying himself in him like he could burrow beneath his skin and live forever as a part of him. His lungs contract, throat constricting as he sucks in a ragged breath, tears burning in his eyes and spilling over in hot rushes. Jack grabs onto him just as hard in return, hands spread across Robby’s shoulders, fingers digging in, his lips everywhere he can reach on his face, kissing in drags that streak saltwater all over them both.
“I’m so sorry,” Robby sobs into him, feeling Jack’s pulse throb against his cheek, and it’s like a release. “I’m so sorry—”
“I’m sorry,” Jack insists to him. Robby shakes his head in a jerk, hiding in his throat again. “I’m sorry. I’m right here, Mikey. You’re not alone. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow you,” and his voice catches again, forcing him to choke out, “Not without me—”
Robby shakes his head again, clutches him harder, feeling Jack’s breath hitch as he tucks his face into Robby’s hair. He inhales, a shuddering thing that fills his chest up, then blows the breath out in a rush over Robby’s head, grazing his ear. It sends a shiver down his spine, and he hangs on tighter to him.
“This is the worst it’ll feel,” Jack promises him. “It is. It’s going to get better. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe. We can do this, we’re going to make it better.”
Clinging to him, Robby nods, wanting it to be true, desperate for it to be true. For all he has been lying to Jack, Jack never lies to him— never has, never will, he knows that— and he has to know this, too. He tries to force his insides to listen, to make his emotions match up with where they’re supposed to be. All he can manage is to pull himself into a hazy outline, a shadowed shell of himself, the threads of him barely present.
Jack holds him together the rest of the way.
“I love you,” Jack whispers in his ear, fierce. Rattling Robby a little bit, he repeats, “I love you, you hear me? I’m fighting for you, and you’re fighting with me. Right?” When Robby’s response is to hiccup into his throat, Jack asks again, “Right?”
“Right,” Robby whispers against him. Something about it makes his heart feel like it has a shape again, and he repeats, “Right,” with enough of himself in it that Jack frames his face in his hands, lifts his head, kisses him right between the eyes.
“Right,” he whispers there, then kisses him again, again, and Robby opens his eyes to see Jack’s only inches from his own. He can see himself reflected there, Jack’s eyes red-veined and veiled with a sheen of wavering water; his head tips forward, his forehead colliding with Jack’s. “I’m going to take you home. Okay? I’ll patch you up, you’ll be okay. And in the morning, we’ll figure it all out.”
Robby nods, blowing out a hard, shaking breath. His tears won’t stop spilling over, and Jack kisses the hot trails streaking down his cheeks. When Robby tries to speak, his voice catches, and he has to screw up his mouth, taking a moment before he manages, “Thank you for— for helping me,” and that’s it, he’s crying too hard again, and Jack just pulls him back into his arms, quiets him, strokes his hair and rubs his back and promises it’ll be okay.
And it will, Robby thinks, be okay; Jack doesn’t lie, not to him.
“I don’t want to die,” Robby confesses into Jack’s pulse, into his throat, into his heart, and Jack squeezes him tight.
“Okay,” Jack whispers, like it’s just that easy. “Then, you won’t.”
A desperate sob escapes him, and Robby reminds himself, Jack doesn’t lie, Jack doesn’t lie, Jack doesn’t lie, with each pulsing throb of his still-beating, fragile, living heart.
“Okay,” Robby echoes in a soft, tight press against Jack’s skin. Jack kisses his cheek again. “Okay.”