Chapter Text
The call came out of nowhere just after 3pm.
Robby had been just pottering around the house. Preparing after school snacks for the kids, getting a chance to tidy the place up while he had the house to himself, putting on a load of laundry. The picture of domesticity and tranquility yet his mind was racing. He couldn’t stop thinking about cases he’d seen at his last shift, running over and over in his mind. He couldn’t stop thinking about the kids and wether even after all this time he was doing it right? And throughout his spiral, as he tried to channel his nervous energy into housework he had the itch to make sure their spare rooms were made up. The 3 unused rooms just sitting around, he went though everything from bedding to the little welcome baskets him and Abbot made up which sat in the empty wardrobes until they had an owner.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand next to him and he could stop himself looking at it.
Dana.
He answered it before he'd really decided to. He knew not to ignore Dana.
"That was fast. You’re busy?" she said. Not surprised. Dana had been their supervising social worker for almost two years and she had a very accurate picture of how Robby functioned.
"No, no, I can talk," he said.
"I need to talk to you and Abbot. Is he up?"
Robby scrubbed a hand over his face "He's on nights this week. He'll be home early this morning."
A pause on the other end.
“Can you get hold of him?” Dana said. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
That was enough to make him sit up properly.
Robby swung his legs off the bed, suddenly more awake than he’d been all afternoon. “Yeah. Yeah, I can try.”
Another pause, shorter this time.
“Soon as you can,” she said.
“Give me a few minutes,” Robby replied.
---
He called Abbot first, who answered on the second ring because Jack always answered on the second ring, it was one of those things about him that Robby had stopped noticing until moments like this when he couldn’t forget it.
"Talk to me hun, everything okay at home?" Jack said his voice instantly helping to ground Robby even just a little.
"Dana called. She needs both of us, she said it's time-sensitive."
There was a short silence on Abbot's end. The sound of a hospital, underneath it, an ever present ambiance behind him. "Set up the call. I can take twenty minutes before I'll be needed back on."
Robby texted Dana, who sent a video link immediately, she'd had it ready, which meant she'd been expecting him to say yes. He wasn't sure how ready for this is felt, but it was too late now. He set his phone against the lamp on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed and waited for both of them to join.
Dana appeared first. She was at her desk, hair up, the stack of files behind her that was always there. Then Abbot, a small square in the corner of the screen, in a corridor somewhere, his badge visible.
"Thank you both," Dana said. "I'll be quick because I know you're at work, Jack. I've got two girls, nine and seven, currently in a group home in the Millfield unit. The placement broke down three days ago, the foster carer had a family emergency, it wasn't anything to do with the girls, she just couldn't continue. They've been in the group home since Monday and I need to move them."
"Why together?" Abbot asked. He wasn't trying to be difficult, he just asked questions directly. Robby had learned to appreciate that.
"They're not sisters," Dana said. "They came from different situations. But they've been placed together twice before and they do well together. Separating them now would be… it would be hard. Particularly for the younger one." She glanced down at something, a file presumably. "The older girl is Trinity. Nine. She's got a gymnastics club and a cheer squad at her current school, she's got that all set up, so she'd need to transfer schools but she's got structure there, she's used to that. She's a good student." A small pause. "She has some additional needs around her mental health that I want to flag, she's got a CAMHS referral, it's in progress, there's been some concerns. It's all in the file I'll send over. She's not… she's not the easist, I want to be honest with you about that. But she's a good kid."
"And the younger one?" Robby asked.
"Elizabeth. She's seven." Dana looked at her file again. "Her situation is a bit more complex. She comes from.. there are significant concerns around the environment she was raised in. Religious. Quite extreme. There's been abuse, it's documented and going through the legal system, so reunification is not on the table. She's been through a lot of transition already and she's not currently in school. She'll need, she'll need time. A proper transition plan, working with the school to make sure the environment is right for her, that sort of thing. She may need some additional support in place before she starts." Another pause. "She's very quiet. The group home staff describe her as withdrawn but observant. She hasn't had much stability."
Robby was looking at his hands. He did that sometimes when he was listening, just looked at his hands.
"Medical needs?" Abbot said.
"Trinity has some physio referrals relating to gymnastics, and the CAMHS referral as I said. Mary has a general paediatric review coming up, nothing urgent flagged, but she hasn't had consistent medical care so we're working through that. She will most likely also be up for some form of therapy in the future but we haven’t gotten that far yet" Dana looked at the camera properly. "I know this is short notice. I know you've got Frank and Mel already and that's a full house. But you've got the space, and I think, I think you'd be good for them. Both of you."
Abbot looked at Robby on the screen. It was a small square and the angle was slightly off but Robby knew that look.
"Give us a minute," Robby said to Dana.
She nodded and they split off into a separate call, just the two of them. Abbot's corridor was quieter now.
"What are you thinking?" Abbot said.
"I'm thinking this is a big decision and I’d need to talk to Frank and Mel, and probably cut down on shifts, and there’s alot to organise there and…"
"That's not what you're thinking."
Robby exhaled. "No. I'm thinking about a kid who hasn't had consistent medical care and another kid with mental health concerns that are apparently significant enough for Dana to flag them unprompted, and I'm thinking,yeah. I'm thinking we do it as long as it works for you and the kids."
Abbot was quiet for a second. "Me too."
"You sure?"
"I said me too, Robby."
"Okay." Robby nodded at the screen. "Okay. Let's go back."
---
Dana walked them through the rest of it. Practical things, the emergency placement paperwork, what would arrive with the girls, the timeline. They'd need to do a quick home assessment sign-off, only very brief seeing as they already had two teens but a sign off still was needed before they took younger kids, which their link worker could do that evening. The girls could arrive tomorrow afternoon if everything was in order.
Tomorrow afternoon.
Robby wrote things down on the notepad he kept on the nightstand, things he would need to pop out to get, ways to get their rooms ready, things he needed to do to prep Frank but more importantly things he needed to do to get Mel ready for a sudden change.
After the call ended he lay back on his bed. He didn’t move, not until there was the sound of Frank moving around downstairs after coming in the front door with the particular slightly uneven rhythm of a bad-mobility day, and then he got up.
---
The afternoon ran the way the afternoon usually ran.
Mel got back from school at three twenty like she always did, always the same route which she walked at the same pace until she got to the safety of home again. Robby was already in the kitchen. He’d put her snack out without really thinking about it. Crackers, hummus, apple slices. Same as usual because the consistency of it mattered for Mel. She came in, dropped her bag by the door in the specific place she always liked to keep it, looked at the snack, and sat down. She had her headphones on still.
Robby leaned against the counter for a second, watching. Waiting, a bit, even if he wouldn’t have said that out loud.
She took a few bites before pulling one side of the headphones down. Normal enough.
Frank was on the sofa with his feet up, TV low, something on that he clearly wasn’t paying much attention to. There was a textbook open on his chest but he wasn’t reading that either. Robby had a feeling he’d be asleep very quicjly if anyone left him for too long by the way his head tipped back slightly and how he blinked a little too slow. He didn’t say anything about it. Frank didn’t like making a thing out of bad days, and Robby had learned not too push.
The front door went a while later, earlier than it should have. Robby frowned not expecting anyone else yet and pushed himself off the counter, already halfway into the hallway before he called out,
“Jack?”
Abbot stepped in, shrugging off his jacket and looking tired but more than usual especially for leaving his shift so soon
.
“You’re early,” Robby said.
“Got someone to cover,” Jack replied, like it wasn’t a big deal. “Couldn’t really stay.”
Robby nodded once. That was enough.
Jack moved into the kitchen, washing his hands automatically before filling the kettle and switching it on. The normal things. Still doing the normal things. Frank had shifted on the sofa now, properly watching whatever show was on, and Mel glanced over from the table, her headphones now hanging loose around her neck. Jack reached up for mugs, lining them up without thinking. Tea for him, tea for Robby. He paused, glanced at Mel, then grabbed a glass instead and poured squash without asking.
“Oi,” Frank said from the sofa. “Where’s mine?”
Jack didn’t even look at him. “Not making you coffee.”
"I could make my own," Frank said.
"You could," Abbot agreed, and sat down, “But you know you and caffeine don’t mix well this late so its water or nothing kid”
Frank huffed but didn’t move, which said enough on its own, deciding this was the hill he would die on. As Jack handed him his mug, Robby brushed their hands against each other softly and neither pulled away.
“You okay?” Jack asked, quieter.
Robby let out a breath he hadn’t really noticed he was holding. “Not really. But we’ll figure it out”
Jack nodded like he’d expected that and they didn’t say any more about it just yet. Robby glanced between the teens, Mel at the table, Frank on the sofa, Jack beside him. They’d have to tell them. Just… not right now.
---
Dinner was at six.
This was not flexible. The time was not flexible, the order of it was not flexible. Mel set the table, which she'd started doing herself after about two weeks of living here, and the layout was always the same, and everyone sat where they always sat, and Abbot always served because he was the better cook and Robby had accepted this about himself a long time ago. These were the bones of the thing. Mel needed them and so they had them, and honestly Robby had come to need them a bit too.
Tonight was pasta. Mel had confirmed this was the right night for pasta because it was Tuesday was pasta night, and Robby had said yes, obviously, pasta night. Robby helped by reheating the sauce Jack had prepared assuming he was supposed to be a work now while the pasta cooked. Frank had come and set himself in the way on the counter because he liked being in whatever room had the most people in it even though he'd deny that of anyone ever asked.
They sat down at six on the dot tonight. Pasta, sauce and cheesy garlic bread in the middle of the table, Mel's portion slightly separated from the sauce because she didn't like it mixed together, which had taken one disastrous first dinner to establish and had never been repeated. Frank had the end seat because he liked being able to shift his legs out if he needed to. Abbot sat across from Robby. They'd had this table for almost three years and it still felt new sometimes, in the best way.
Robby set his fork down.
"So," he said. "There's something we need to talk to you both about."
Mel looked up. She was very good at reading shifts in atmosphere even when she didn't always read facial expressions intuitively, and a sentence like that at the dinner table and not at wind-down time after was clearly registering as significant. She looked at Jack, then back at Robby.
"We had a call today," Jacl said. "From Dana. She's asked us if we'd be willing to take on an emergency placement."
"Two kids," Robby added. "Two young girls, one's nine and one's seven. They've been living together in a group home for the last few days because their placement broke down suddenly. It wasn't their fault, it was just… circumstances. But Dana needs to move them and she called us."
Frank nodded slowly, he had been the first child they’d taken in and had gotten used to seeing other temporary placements come and go, well until Mel came and stayed with him. He just wasn’t sure how the other would react. Mel had put her fork down. She was looking at the table.
"We haven't said yes yet," Abbot said. "Not definitively. We wanted to talk to you first. This is your home too."
"You want to say yes," Mel said. She said it flatly, factually. Not an accusation.
"Yeah," Robby said. "We do. But not if it's going to make things really hard for you two. That matters."
Mel was quiet. She picked up her fork and put it back down, repeating the action to feel more steady. "Where would they sleep."
"The two rooms at the end of the hall," Robby said. "The ones we've been saving just incase, they could go next to your room or at the end of the corridor."
"So they'd be on our hall."
"Yes."
More silence. Frank reached across the table and broke a piece off the bread, he needed something to do with his hands, he was always looking for something to keep himself busy with.
"What are they like," he asked.
"We don't know them yet," Abbot said. "We've got some of their files. The older one is Trinity, she's the nine year old, she does gymnastics and cheer. Dana said she needs some time to get comfortable but she’s a good kid." He said this simply, the same way he said most things. "The younger one is Elizabeth. She's seven. She's been through a lot which is very different from some of the other kids you’ll of seen here. She'll need time to settle."
Mel looked up at that. "What kind of a lot."
"The kind thats her private information," Robby said. "Same as yours is yours. Same as Frank's is Frank's."
Mel accepted this with a small nod. That was one of the things about her that Robby admired, she had a strong sense of the logic of fairness. If the rule applied to her it applied to everyone, and if it applied to everyone it applied to her. She liked rules that were consistent. She liked order. It made sense and was predictable.
"She's not in school yet," Robby added. "She'll need to settle in here first and then we'll work out school together. Trinity will transfer to the school up the road that you used to go to Frank, they've got space."
"I liked that one, she’ll like it ," Frank said.
"Yeah."
Frank did the still-face thing again. Then: "Is she going to be all right. Trinity."
"We're going to try to make sure she is," Robby said.
It wasn't an answer, really. Frank knew that, but he nodded anyway.
Mel was looking at the table again. She had gone somewhere slightly internal, which she did when she was processing. They'd learned not to rush her. The pasta was going slightly cold and nobody said anything about it.
Then Mel said: "When would they get here."
"Tomorrow afternoon," Abbot said. "We know that's fast."
She looked at him with a trace of panic. "That's very fast."
"It is," he agreed. "Dana wouldn't ask if she had more time."
"Would the schedule stay the same."
"Yes," Robby said, and he meant it to come out steady and it did. "Dinner's still at six. You still set the table. Your snack is still there when you get home. We'll talk to you before we change anything and we'll change it together if we need to. But the bones of it — that stays."
Mel looked at him for a moment. Then she picked up her fork and continued eating again,
getting back into the rhythm of dinner time, which, Robby had learned, was her version of okay.
Frank exhaled quietly across the table. "Two more," he said. More to himself than anyone.
"Two more," Robby confirmed.
"Right." Frank picked up his fork too. "All right."
---
After dinner Mel washed up, which was her job, and Frank dried, which had become his job by some process of natural selection that nobody had formally organised. Robby and Abbot cleared the table and made the next day's lunches, another routine, done every night without fail, because Mel needed to know her lunch was sorted and Frank ate more than was probably reasonable and it was easier to make them the night before. They moved around each other in the kitchen, easy, practised.
Jack’s hand found Robby's shoulder briefly as he reached past him for the bread bags. Just a touch. Just there.
At eight Mel went up for her bath, which ran on a timer because she found it hard to get out of water she was comfortable in, and Frank sat back on the sofa with his legs up and the textbook out again. By half eight Mel was done and came back downstairs in her pyjamas and sat in the armchair with her book. Robby put the TV on low — not for anyone in particular, just as background texture, which helped. Nine o'clock was wind-down. Half nine was Mel's bedtime and ten was Frank's, which Frank complained about regularly and observed without fail.
It was a good evening. Nothing dramatic. The house just doing what the house did.
---
At quarter to ten Frank's phone buzzed and he looked at it and turned it face down, which Robby noticed.
"Meds," Jack said, not looking up from his book.
Frank made a face. "I haven't forgotten."
"I didn't say you forgot. I said meds."
This was a nightly thing. Not a lecture, not a doctors check-up, just a word. Frank had fought it initially, fought it a lot, actually, in the early weeks, because there was a complicated history there and the complicated history was that the meds were part of his pain management and his pain management had been very wrong before he came to them. He'd been the one managing it unsupervised for too long. He still didn't love being reminded. But he tolerated it because Jack said it the same way every night, flat and calm, and never made it into anything bigger than it was.
Frank pushed himself up off the sofa. On a bad day he'd have one of the aids, a crutch, or his stick, depending on the day, but tonight he was upright and steady as he made his way to the kitchen for his meds, only a slight favouring of one side. Robby watched without watching.
When Frank came back he stopped in the doorway. Looked at Robby.
"It’s going to be fine," he said out of the blue seemingly.
Robby blinked. "Sorry?"
"Tomorrow it’s going to be fine." He said it like it was obvious, like he was stating a fact that Robby had somehow missed. "You always make it work.. so"
Then he went upstairs before Robby could say anything.
Jack looked at Robby over the top of his reading glasses as he screwed shut the meds bottle he was holding again.
"He's right you know," Abbot said.
"Don't."
"Okay." Abbot went back to his book.
Robby sat with that for a minute.
---
Mel was sitting up when he knocked on her door at quarter past ten. She did this sometimes when couldn't quite get herself to slee. Just sat in her bed with the lamp on and her book, very still until hopefully her head would quiet a bit and the buzzing feeling under her skin would stop.
"Hey," Rooby asked from the doorway. "You doing all right?"
She considered this. "I don't know yet."
"Yeah." He came in and sat on the edge of her bed, not too close. Mel had very clear ideas about physical space and he'd learned where the edges were. "It can be hard to figure out how you feel. What are you not sure about."
"Change," she said. Simply. "I don't like it."
"I know."
"You said the schedule would stay the same."
"It will."
She looked at her book, which was closed on her lap. "But the house will feel different. Even if the schedule is the same. The house will feel different because there will be more people in it and they'll be in the rooms at the end of the hall and that's, that's different." She looked at him.
"Yeah," he said. "That's different. I'm not going to tell you it isn't."
She thought about that for a moemnt, her mind making sense of his words "It would be worse if you did."
"I know."
The lamp made the room warm and small. Outside there was the occasional car. Robby sat with his hands in his lap, not filling the silence but just letting it be.
"They’re younger than me," Mel said.
"They are, yeah. Nine and seven."
"Have they had consistent placements before."
"I’m not sure hun."
Mel absorbed this. "So they probably won't know what to expect either."
"No."
She thought about that for a while. Robby didn't know exactly what was going on in there, he never quite did, which used to scare him and now he'd mostly come to accept was just part of knowing Mel. She processed things in her own order and you just had to trust that she'd arrive somewhere.
"My schedule will really stay the same," she said.
"Really. Same snack. Same dinner times. Same everything. If anything needs to shift we talk about it first, together, you get a say. That's not going to change."
She nodded. Very small, deliberate. "Okay."
He stood up, moved to the door. "Try and get some sleep."
"I will try," she said. Which was Mel being precise, she would genuinely try, she wasn't promising she could manage it.
"Good enough," he said. "Night, Mel."
"Good night Robby."
He pulled the door mostly closed behind him and stood in the hallway for a second with his back to it. The house was quiet. The rooms at the end of the hall had been empty yet set up waiting for so long. Tomorrow those rooms would have kids in them.
He went to check that Frank's light was off, it was, and then went downstairs to find Jack.
---
Jack was locking up. Front door, back door, windows, the way he always did, methodical, a full loop of the house. Robby sat at the kitchen table and watched him do it. There was something good about watching him move through the house at night. Something that still felt, sometimes, like relief.
When Abbot was done he came and sat across from Robby. He'd taken his prosthetic off, he usually did in the evenings once they were done for the night, and he moved differently without it with a crutch tucked under his arm, more careful, used the furniture lightly. He sat down and looked at Robby.
"Whats got you thinking so hard?" Jack asked.
"I'm not…" Robby started, and then stopped. "Okay. What if we're not enough and this is too much to take on. For two more."
Jack didn't answer straight away. He had this habit of pausing before he spoke, not in a way that felt unsure, just… taking a second, and it had taken Robby longer than it should have to realise that wasn’t hesitation, it was him actually taking the question seriously.
"What does that mean," Abbot said. "Not enough."
"What if it's too much. What if Frank needs something and Mel needs something and these two new kids need something and I'm running a day shift and you're…"
"Stop." Abbot said it gently. "You're listing things that might happen, not things that are happening. We can deal with that if, if, we get there."
"They're going to happen. Kids need things, they need a lot of help. That's the whole…"
"Yes. And we handle it. We've been handling it." Jack leaned forward slightly on the table. "Frank had his struggles, you remember? We got through that."
Robby remembered.
"And Mel's settling-in period was…"
"Yeah."
"We got through it as well. Because we figured it out." Abbot's voice was even. "We're going to figure this out too."
Robby looked at the table. "What if these two are harder than Frank and Mel."
"They probably will be. They're coming from a group home, they've had a placement break down, the younger one's background sounds…it sounds alot, and who knows what to expect from Trinity." He paused. "It's going to be hard sometimes and we’re going to struggle but that's not the same as us not being enough."
Robby exhaled. It came out shaky, which he'd have been embarrassed about with almost anyone else. "I just…"
"I know."
"I keep thinking about being seven," Robby said. "Or nine. And the places I was. And then I think about these kids being in a group home right now, tonight, and I…"
"Yeah." Abbot said it quietly. "I know love."
The kitchen was very still. The fridge hummed. Abbot's hand was on the table between them and Robby put his hand over it because sometimes that was easier than talking.
"You're a good dad Robby," Abbot said. "I'm not saying it to make you feel better, I'm saying it because it's true and you need to hear it regularly or you start forgetting Mel adores you and you’re so good with her. Frank looks up to you so much, you know he was thinking about being a doctor in the future because of how much he looks up to you."
Robby didn't say anything.
"Frank told you you'd be fine," Abbot said, and there was something almost like warmth in it, quiet amusement. "Frank doesn't say things he doesn't mean, not like yhat."
"He really doesn't," Robby agreed.
"So."
Robby looked at him and Jack looked back.
"Okay," Robby said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He squeezed Abbot's hand once. "Let's go to bed."
---
The bedroom was dark when they got in, and Robby was too tired todo much else than strip and throw on some pyjama pants before crawling under the covers. Abbot moved around the bed, the familiar sound of him, and got in next to him.
For a while neither of them said anything.
Then Robby said, into the dark: "Trinity and Elizabeth."
"Yeah."
"They're in a group home tonight."
"Yeah." A pause. "Tomorrow they’ll be here."
He thought about that. He thought about the rooms at the end of the hall that he still wanted to sort, again. He thought about Mel hopefully sleeping peacefully now and hopefully Frank's back not giving him trouble. And two kids he'd never met who were going to be in this house in less than twenty-four hours.
He thought about being seven. He thought about being nine.
Abbot's hand found him in the dark and held on.
Robby closed his eyes leaning into the embrace.
The house was quiet around them. All its people in it.
He slept.