Work Text:
Winters in Pittsburgh are a long and depressing affair that Robby, no matter how many years he spends in the city, always struggles beneath the weight of. The endless blanket of clouds and cruel, chilling winds felt like personal slights when Robby first moved north from New Orleans, and still cut deep with each new year. He’s never been able to quite get a handle around the short, dark days of mid-winter, and is beginning to think he never will.
This season has been harder than most, and Robby’s mental landscape is growing darker alongside the city’s. Fissures, like cracks along the frozen surface of a lake, are multiplying across his carefully built walls. Every night Robby lays awake, terrified of what’s waiting for him in the icy depths below.
It’s the beginning of February, 6 months after the shootings at Pittfest, and Robby is always one wrong step away from collapse. The sky above is grey and swirling, and he has no desire to be under its bleak cover anymore.
—
Standing in the ambulance bay on the tail end of a shift, Robby stares upwards into the abyss and does his best to control his breathing. He’s anxious, hurting, and unprepared for when a familiar shadow saddles up beside him. Dana probably directed him this way… the traitor.
“It's a little miserable out here, isn’t it?” Jack knocks into his side, jostling.
When Robby doesn’t reply, Jack angles inwards a little, trying to catch his gaze. Whatever he sees in the quick glance Robby shoots back seems to be enough.
“Colder than usual this time of year,” He continues, nonplussed, cocking his chin vaguely upwards. “Bet you can feel it even through those layers, can’t you? Your elderly bones quaking?”
Robby can tell what he’s trying to do, and ruefully notes that it’s working. It is cold, and putting a pin in the sensory experience tethers him a bit in his body. That, plus the familiarity of Jack’s rambling in his ear. He dips his head in a jerky nod before pausing and shaking it in a self deprecating sort of gesture at his own inability to respond verbally.
Jack, predictably, is unphased. “Yeah, I bet they are. Gimme your hand.”
Robby, hesitant, unfolds his arms from their protective position over his chest. Jack’s gameplan is a mystery, but that’s not exactly new. He trusts him with this, with himself.
Jack takes his outstretched hand, clasping it between his own.
“Yeesh, yeah, that’s what I thought. Are you getting enough iron, Rob? I swear I’mma get you some gloves, nice big fluffy ones, make all the medics jealous.” Jack rattles on, all the while rubbing his thumbs firmly into the meat of Robby’s palm up to his fingertips.
Robby concentrates on the sharp wintertime sting of the air, the smell of petrol and antiseptic, and the warmth of Jack’s body radiating patiently next to his. Slowly, he feels his breath evening out, the tightness in the back of his throat receding, shrinking down back into his chest to be dealt with later.
He tilts his head down towards his friend, who’s grown silent at last, concentration fixed on the movement of his hands. “I’m not anemic, Jack, I just run cold.” His voice sounds strained even to his own ears, and he winces.
“Huh?” Jack looks up at him, and that same old thrum of pleasure runs through him when they lock eyes. Still, Robby can’t help but chuckle.
“You really don’t even hear yourself, do you? Must be peaceful,” Robby jokes. He turns his hand around in Jack’s, capturing one of them briefly and squeezing in thanks.
Jack smiles at his tone, squeezing back. “How ‘bout some gratitude, huh? You nearly lost that hand to frostbite if it wasn’t for my miraculous medical intervention.”
Robby huffs out a laugh, loosening his grip and bracing against the pre-emptive sense of loss. Jack is quick, though, and holds fast. Their hands swing low together between them, and Jack uses the grip to pull Robby those couple inches closer so that their shoulders press together, too.
His thumb brushes lightly over the back of Robby’s hand, and again Robby can feel all the aching seams in his chest, and the places they threaten to shake loose.
—
The most irritating part is that half the time, there’s no pattern to the panic at all. It feels like one minute Robby’s doing fine, running students through rounds or checking a patient’s charts, and the next he’s shaking out of focus in a bathroom stall– choking through half remembered breathing exercises.
Most of the time there is no Jack Abbot around to pull him out of it.
In the wreckage left of Robby’s mental fortitude following the MCI, the starkness of difference between his ability to cope with and without Jack present is thrown into an even clearer light. Robby knows, okay, he knows it’s not fair of him to pin his wellbeing on the support of his friend, but he doesn’t really have an alternative.
The thought of going to therapy– of sharing this dark and anguished thing that has twisted itself around his heart– it’s unimaginable. Jack, on the other hand, can see it all so clearly without Robby having to say a word.
The two connected instantly back when they first met as interns, and in the years following have formed a bond more intense than Robby’s ever had with anyone else. Jack’s his best friend, sure, but it’s somehow more than that. Their lives are intertwined in a way that defies labels, alludes categorization. Robby can’t begin to imagine sharing himself so openly with anyone else, mental health professional or otherwise. Jack gets him because they’re the same, and really, can Robby be blamed for leaning on that sometimes? He’ll put his trust in the one guy he knows won’t judge him, won’t think of him differently. These days, a friendship forged on rooftops might be the only thing left impervious to a dark, dark winter.
—
“Y’know,” Robby manages, looking up from where his head has been locked between his knees for the past ten minutes, “it’s not usually this easy to, uh, to catch my breath.”
Leaning against the emergency exit door on the roof with Jack next to him, Robby’s cheeks immediately flush with the confession. In his defence, that strange post-panic weightlessness is still coursing through him, and that combined with the isolated intimacy of the roof is loosening his tongue. Besides, Jack knows him inside and out. He probably has a notebook squirreled away somewhere that tracks Robby’s panic-attacks by time and severity.
This time around, Robby had snuck up to the roof during a lull in patients to get some sun and breathe through some of the tension that had been building in his skull. Anxiety had been nipping at his heels all shift, and when he made it outside he discovered that the day had completely gotten away from him and the sky was already dark. It was startling enough, how much time he’d lost track of, that instead of releasing the panic was compounded until he was gasping and curling in on himself. That’s where Jack had found him, and had talked to him until his hands stopped shaking so much.
Jack scuffs his foot into Robby’s, anchoring them together. “If this is easy, brother, I’d hate to see what hard looks like.”
Robby tilts his head towards him, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Oh shut up, man, you know what I mean,” Jack laughs, rolling his eyes.
They sit in silence for a moment, and Robby focuses on Jack’s chest as it rises and falls, trying to subtly align their breathing. He’s pathetically grateful for this man, and the endorphins running through his bloodstream make the truth of it bubble to the surface.
“I mean it, Jack. I know it might seem like I’m really freaking out, sometimes, but it’s worse when I’m by myself. When you’re not with me,” Robby rambles, and huh. Jack must be rubbing off on him. It’s either that or his fried neurotransmitters. He can feel his friend’s gaze on the side of his face, and looks stubbornly ahead.
“Jesus,” Jack finally mutters, and throws a heavy arm around his shoulders. He tugs him bodily against his side, and Robby would be helpless to fight him even if he wanted to.
He doesn’t. He could stay here forever.
“Can I ask you for somethin’ here, Robby?” Jack says, and Robby’s got his head on his shoulder and can feel the vibrations of it, the syllables made manifest.
“You can ask, sure,” Robby volleys, just to be a dick. He’d give Jack most things– so long as he’d ask.
Jack sighs, the motion of it rocking Robby like the tide. “Next time you’re panicking like this, give me a call, huh? You say I make it easier- so, y’know. Let me.”
Robby doesn’t reply, but lets himself burrow a little closer into Jack’s embrace. He’ll think about it.
—
Valentines comes and goes, and Robby’s relieved to be spending it single again. He likes to time these things just right– doesn’t have anyone in his bed leading up to the holiday. It’s kinder not to get any poor woman’s hopes up.
Jack left a chocolate bar in his locker, like he does every year, which never means anything except for in all of the usual ways that it does.
Robby doesn’t have to make a choice, as it turns out, to call on Jack in the way he requested.
He’s picking up some overtime, a day shift spilling into a double, when a triple MVA bursts through their doors and the Pitt is thrown into its familiar brand of regulated chaos.
Three cars, two of them families, and only one survivor; rushed up to the OR in critical condition.
It’s brutal, one of the hardest outcomes his team has faced in a while, and Robby can barely hold himself together through the debrief. What guidance is he supposed to give these students? They all look to him for some answer, some kind of reassurance. His watery plea for them to reach out to Kiara, to each other, falls flat upon young ears still ringing with shock.
The second he can, Robby yanks his body towards the deserted family room, where he collapses onto the familiar plastic couch. His breathing is getting totally out of control and he’s lightheaded. He clenches his hands into fists, digging his knuckles hard into his brows in an attempt to ground himself.
When the door swings open and he hears a familiar lopsided gait, he can’t even feign surprise. He works with a bunch of snitches.
It does startle him, though, when instead of joining him on the couch Jack drops to his knees in front of him. Robby peers at him from above where his hands are clenched into fists, pressing hard into his cheekbones. He’s looking right back, making these low shushing noises and cradling… an ice-pack?
“Wha-” Robby’s cut off by a wheezing gulp, perpetually foiled by his own faulty wiring.
“Hey, shh, it’s okay, Rob. Just let me, here-” Jack lifts his hands, tugging at Robby’s wrists and guiding his hands down to rest on Jack’s shoulders instead, ignoring Robby’s whine of protest. His hands are cold.
Jack reaches down and runs his hands along the ice-pack for another second, before reaching up again. He presses one palm against Robby’s forehead, firm and freezing, with the other wrapping itself around the back of his neck. Robby jolts instinctively away from the temperature, but with the way Jack’s got him surrounded there’s no escaping it.
“Deep breaths for me, buddy, c’mon man. How’s that feel? Cold, huh?”
Robby nods, eyes squeezed shut against the weight of Jack’s gaze, hands still gripping at his shoulders. Miraculously, he can feel himself start to unwind in real time. Jack talks him through it, pausing to cool down his hands every once in a while. He only ever chills one at a time, never letting go of Robby completely.
“The dive response, brother, it works like a charm. Activates the vagus nerve, you know?” He traces a cold and dripping finger along the side of Robby’s neck, a demonstration that sends him shivering.
“I read this case study– a long time ago now, come to think of it– where this ER doc jerry-rigged an ice bath for a patient out of cafeteria shit. Dunked his head right into a bus tub, can you believe that?” Jack chatters, still stroking distractedly under Robby’s ear. “The guy had passed out, heart arrhythmia, and the doc thinks ‘hey, if the diving reflex slows down the heart-’”
“-It could break the tachycardia,” Robby finishes, voice rough but thankfully his own again. He opens his eyes to see the smile he knows will be on his friend’s face.
“Yeah, Mikey, you got it.” He soothes the hand on Robby’s forehead back through his hair, tangling his fingers together at the base of his neck, keeping him close.
—
It gets worse in the night, when Robby’s home alone with nothing but his thoughts. No chatter in his ear outside of whatever’s playing on T.V. He’ll read a book, catch up on charts, play his music louder than the neighbors would probably like. It helps, a bit, but not forever. Like an on-scene pressure dressing, keeping him stable until he’s back in a trauma room.
It’s so late it’s early, and Robby’s nearly at the end of his tolerance, here. His usual work-related distractions, articles and laptop, lie abandoned on his kitchen table. The tumbler he’d poured an inadvisable amount of whisky into a couple hours ago has long since soaked a ring of condensation into the papers, and Robby’s head hasn’t stopped spinning since he got off shift.
The dining room chairs he bought a lifetime ago are hard, uncomfortable things that Robby usually avoids in favour of his couch. Right now, the discomfort is the only thing keeping him tethered in his body as his palms sweat anxious prints into the knees of his cargoes. His phone is a heavy weight inside his pocket, and he thinks about the offer Jack made him weeks ago on the roof.
The moments bleed together in a soup of adrenaline and alcohol, and Robby finds himself listening to the familiar ringing of an outgoing call. Before he can lose his nerve, the tone clicks and he’s no longer alone.
“Robby,” Jack answers, sounding out of breath, “Hey brother.”
Robby didn’t think this through. He opens his mouth, preparing to make some kind of excuse, but his breath betrays him in a weird little hitch that makes his face burn bright red. He raises a hand to press firmly against his mouth, but it’s too late.
“Hey,” Jack repeats, softer this time. Attentive. “What’s going on, man, you okay?”
Robby nods, before remembering that Jack can’t see him. He clears his throat, suddenly feeling a lot more inebriated than he did a minute ago. He’s distantly aware of the tears dripping down into his beard.
“I’m- uhm. I’m okay, I just wanted to- y’know.” He rambles nonsensically. “D’you remember when you said. Uh. Fuck, Jack. I don’t know.”
Jack makes a sympathetic sound down the line, and it wraps around Robby’s head in a cocoon of warmth. Right, yeah. This is why he called.
“I gotcha, man. Rough night, huh?”
Feeling exhausted and pathetic, Robby sniffles. He nods again, this time meaning it.
“Yeah.”
“Okay- that’s okay. I’m glad you called man, that’s real good.”
There’s some shuffling around Jack’s end, and the background noise cuts off. Fuck, he must be on shift right now. What was Robby thinking, calling him so late? People are sick, people are dying, and here Robby is– holding up a senior attending just because he’s feeling sad.
“Talk to me, brother, what’s happening in that big brain of yours?”
Robby rubs a rough hand over his head, gripping the hair there and pulling. “You’re at work.”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about that,” Jack says. “It’s been slow, Ellis has it covered.”
“I should- I should let you get back,” Robby’s voice only shakes a little, this time.
“Nah, man, forget it. Where are you right now, you at home?”
Robby tilts his head towards the ceiling, fixing his teary gaze on a waterstain. “Yeah.”
“Okay. In bed?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you do that then, huh? Get comfy.” Jack’s voice has gone all soft around the edges in that way it does, sometimes, when it’s just the two of them.
It’s easy enough to listen to Jack as he guides him through the motions of getting changed into sweats and a t-shirt, splashing some water on his face. He feels close, pressed up to Robby’s ear like this, and something about it loosens the vice grip of panic that had been forming in his chest. Robby gets into bed, and finds himself surprised by the weight laying down takes off his aching back.
“How you hold’n up, Mike?”
“M’okay. Better.” He turns on his side and pushes his face into his pillow– pretends that it’s Jack.
There’s a slight commotion on Jack’s end, who’s quick to mute the call. When he un-mutes a couple seconds later, his voice has lost some of its cottony gentleness.
“I gotta go, man, I’m sorry. You gonna be able to get some sleep?”
“Mhm. Thank you,” Robby says, and means it.
“No need to thank me, brother. I really am glad you called. It makes me feel better, knowing you’ll reach out,” Jack assures, sincere in that overwhelming way of his. Someone yells somewhere in the distance. “Shit, okay, I’ll talk to you soon. Love you.”
As Robby drifts off into blissful unconsciousness, those words fill up his empty room. Love you, love you, love you, he thinks right back.
—
It sticks with Robby, the idea that Jack might appreciate knowing when Robby’s having a bad time. It makes sense, in a lot of ways. Jack likes to be prepared, likes to know the risks of any given situation that might go sideways. Robby is feeling, and perhaps even telegraphing, his propensity to do just that. Go sideways, or what have you.
Robby knows Jack cares about him, knows it deeply, inherently. Knows that it hurts him to see Robby upset, and that it hurts him more to know he’s hurting and to not be allowed to do anything about it. A worker bee through-and-through, his Jack.
So– okay. He’ll try to be a bit more open, more communicative. If he frames it in his head as a favour he’s doing for Jack, and not as something he’s asking from him, it’s almost doable.
At handoff when Jack asks how the shift went, Robby doesn’t deflect quite as diligently. Answers a little more honestly when he’s feeling run-down, anxious, upset. Jack rewards him with his endless empathy, squeezing Robby’s shoulder and taking time to walk through the more difficult cases with him. Likes to pull him aside at the lockers and into his arms, holding him firmly for a minute, letting him catch his breath.
Robby’s annoyed to find it’s actually been kind of helpful– panic attacks coming a little more sporadically and his mood lightening, slightly, with spring on the horizon.
He still has bad days. Really bad days, even. Days that bowl him over and leave him a hollowed, shivering shell. He calls Jack only when he’s at his absolute limit, though, and is trying not to get dependent on it as a crutch. He doesn’t let himself think about the routine too much, because he might then have to face the fact that he already is. That he has been for a while now.
—
It was only a matter of time, Robby thinks deliriously, standing in front of Jack’s modest townhouse with his hands in his pockets and the weight of the world on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to internalize Jack’s offers of help so sincerely. Should have just called him again, if he was gonna be needy.
In any case, he absolutely shouldn’t be letting himself in with the spare key.
It’s like his higher functioning brain has split in two. As much as he berates himself internally for the intrusion, for burdening Jack on his night off, he’s simultaneously untying his shoes with trembling fingers. His head is a prickly, staticky mess, and he needs his lifeline so goddamn bad he can hardly breathe. Hears Jack calling out a bewildered greeting from the living room and tumbles in that direction.
Robby’s vision narrows to a pinprick seeing Jack lounging on the sofa, bathed in orange lamplight. His eyes are so bright and immediately alert and concerned, and Robby sobs as relief pours down his spine. It’s Pavlovian, his reaction. Jack is safe.
Robby is by his side in a blink, but stops awkwardly in front of the couch, wringing his hands. He thinks about how he came here unannounced, still in his work scrubs, and crying already. He feels like he might throw up.
Jack’s frowning, eyebrows twisted up and mouth pushed into a pout. “Awh, Mikey.”
He reaches out and up, grabbing Robby’s twisting hands in his own. He brings them closer, presses kisses to the knuckles.
“C’mon, come here.” Jack tugs a little, and Robby’s clearly powerless to resist him at any turn. He collapses down on top of him, straddling his lap. He probably looks ridiculous, curling as he is around the smaller man, but the closeness is a heady kind of relief and he’s helpless, always so helpless.
“What do you need from me, Robby?” Jack murmurs, lips brushing against the shell of his ear. His hand is still firm on Robby’s neck, holding him against the sturdy curve of his shoulder. His other hand moves in broad, sweeping motions up and down his back.
“I don’t- fuck-” His thoughts tangle and rush in a cascade of white noise, too quick and too panicked to catch. Robby chokes down a sob, feeling the fabric of Jack’s shirt soak up his silent tears as he shakes helplessly against him.
“I don’t know.” It comes out whiny and shameful and Robby wants to disappear, to be anywhere else but here, and in the same instant wants for Jack’s body to swallow him up. How could he possibly know what he needs, what would fix this?
Jack is rocking him, calming, steady. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, just stay here with me, okay? That’s all. That’s all you need to do.”
Easy for him to say, Robby thinks. He feels like he’s half out of the room already, the grip he has on Jack’s shirt the only thing keeping him here at all.
They sway there together for a few moments, before Jack pulls back slightly. The whine that bubbles high and fraught from Robby’s throat is as humiliating as it is involuntary.
“Hey- I’m here,” Jack soothes. “I want you to try something, yeah?”
Anything. Robby nods, eyes squeezed shut. Fuck– he might actually pass out this time.
“Good, good, okay- wrap your arms around me, all the way. Exactly. Good job Robby,” Jack instructs, and following his directions has always been too easy. “Now squeeze real tight, as tight as you can, c’mon.”
Robby hesitates for just a second before another wave of panic comes crashing down over his head, sending him shuddering and squeezing Jack for dear life.
“Yeah, just like that. You’re doin’ great, brother.”
Jack is solid in his arms, body strong and compact and small enough to envelop. Squeezing him gives the tightness in Robby’s chest somewhere to go– a cathartic externalization of his anxiety. He’s talking, still, but Robby doesn’t register the words so much as the feeling of them. They buzz up from Jack’s chest straight into Robby’s, the vibrations a balm on his nerves.
He doesn’t know how long they sit there, but eventually his arms start to ache and he comes to the belated realization that his breathing has evened out and that he can blink without sending cascades of tears down his cheeks.
Jack is still rambling. “...and people don’t really think of ‘em when they think of pollinators, y’know? But Rob, I swear, there’s somethin’ like 80 medicines extracted from the plants they pollinate. It’s incredible...”
Robby shifts his head to the side, presses his forehead into the warm, freckled skin of his neck. Concentrates on the faint pulse of his carotid.
“...They’re practically our mascots, man. Vaccine research superstars.”
“Jack,” Robby’s voice is rusty, crackling over the syllable. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The hand on his back stills, and Robby pulls back a little, reluctantly. Jack looks up at Robby, smiles soft and lopsided. “Bats, dude.”
“Bats.”
“Yeah, they’re fuckin’ awesome. How are you?”
“I’m… okay. Tired.”
“I bet you are. That looked pretty rough.” Jack nods sympathetically, hands trailing up from his back to rest on Robby’s shoulders.
Now that he’s no longer in fight-or-flight mode, Robby can feel the strain of his position on his knees and lower back. He shifts sideways off Jack’s lap, blushing. Jack doesn’t let him go far– adjusting them so that Robby is resting sideways with his legs still over Jack’s thighs, back against the armrest. Robby watches as Jack sneaks one hand under the bottom of his scrub pants to grip an ankle– the other rubbing small circles just above his knee. Robby owes a lot to those hands.
“Sorry for barging in like this,” Robby says, voice just above a whisper. He waves a hand around in a vague gesture meant to encompass his whole- well- his whole everything.
“Cut that out.” Jack squeezes his leg for emphasis. “I’m fuckin’ sorry you’re going through this, Robby, but there’s no world where I can stand you going through it alone.”
Robby sniffs and rubs at his eyes, nods. He stares at where Jack is holding him– where he’s tracing tender designs into his skin– and he gets it, he thinks. Doesn’t know how he ended up so lucky, but he understands. Knows, with a certainty he allots very few things in life, that Jack is somehow exactly where he wants to be.
—
Spring announces itself with the bloom of fragrant pink cherry blossoms, which seem to sprout overnight the way they do every year. By mid-March, Robby notices the presence of sparrows and kinglets chirping away on his morning walk to work, and the world which has come alive in ways he’d completely forgotten it could.
Lately he’s been spending time at a local garage, wrestling life back into a Triumph Bonneville that Jack alternates between cursing and rolling his eyes over. Robby maintains that nobody who spends his days off dodging bullets is allowed to make assertions about dangerous lifestyle choices. The bike gives him something to do, anyways, helps to liven his days outside of work in a way that makes the endless grind of the emergency department almost bearable. He likes having something to fix that’s slow, manual and almost meditative, and Duke is endlessly interesting and charmingly gruff– a fast friend.
Robby’s still quicker to panic than he’d like, has days that make the long drop off the roof a tempting spiral, but those nights are interspersed with all varieties of life and love. He has a best friend to keep him company, who will hold his hand and watch nature documentaries until the sun comes up around them both.
This time of year the air in Pittsburgh smells like petrichor and new growth. Robby is happy he’s around to see the clouds breaking open above him– grateful not to be doing it alone.