Fruits

Jack pauses when he sees the food present. Cheese sticks.. a fuck ton of spaghetti.. tubs of icing…? When he grabs his drink he jokes "you got pizza rolls in the freezer?"

He expects Robby to laugh but instead the man casually says he does. Jack laughs to himself and opens the freezer out of curiosity. He sees pizza rolls, three of the same microwaveable meal, and hot pockets.

"What, are you in your 20s?" Jack jokes. The moment he says that everything clicks to him.

He’s sore from hours on the bike. Achy and grumpy. Not sleeping well. Not eating well to the point that he’s craving a salad like crazy, but he keeps getting alerts about cyclosporasis and he’s not about to take that risk when he’s not reliably near indoor plumbing.

He did his damnedest to push everyone away before leaving, so that means he’s not getting many calls or texts and the loneliness starts to eat at him.

Except for one person (two people if you count Whitaker’s plant updates, but Robby hasn’t been able to bring himself to answer those texts). One Jack Abbot.

Robby had said he didn’t have a best friend on more than one occasion. And he stood by that assertion, maintained that it was true, even to Jack’s face. Because Jack was so much more than a best friend, best friend didn’t even begin to describe what Jack was to Robby.

And every day, Jack sent at least one text. Sometimes it was early in the morning after a sleepless night that Robby’s phone would ping. Sometimes in the middle of the night when Robby was muffling snotty, sobbing gasps in a pillow that smelled either too clean or not clean enough. Sometimes in the middle of the day when he was riding or stopped off to get food or gas.

And Robby read each text over and over. Read them until he could see the words on his closed eyelids. He didn’t answer, not yet, but the texts were there. They were a tether for his spiraling thoughts.

Something he could rely on as he went further northwest. Chasing something he couldn’t see.

He crossed the border with little fanfare and found a campground to spend the night. As he got settled in a rented tent, he was hit with a thought that made him ache. He wanted to go home.

Not home to the apartment that had been more and more devoid of life with each bag of trash he dragged to the curb. Home to Jack. To Jack’s apartment that was stocked with his favorite beard oil and beers. That had the book he’d been reading last on the coffee table. Had the mug he’d been using for the better part of a decade after a medical student gifted it to him, tucked in the cabinet next to Jack’s.

To Jack.

As if on cue, his phone buzzed in his hand and he squinted at the message.

‘Hope the trip is everything you’d dreamed of.’

‘It sucks. Think anyone would notice if I bailed early and came home?’

‘A certain R1 would notice. I’d notice. Everyone else? Depends on how good you are at hiding.’

Robby tried to bite back a smile and rolled onto his side, trying in vain to get comfortable.

‘I know somewhere I could hide that they wouldn’t look. Unless someone were to tell everyone…’

‘I think he could keep his mouth shut if you come home in one piece. Wouldn’t even tease you that much, probably.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Come home, Mike. Please?’

Blinking back tears, Robby typed with shaking thumbs.

‘I don’t want to be on the road anymore. I’m turning around in the morning.’

‘Atta boy. When can I expect you?’

Robby blew out a slow breath and changed the location on his phone maps app.

‘It’ll be a few days. Think you can wait that long?’

‘Brother, I’m on the edge of my seat already. But I’ll hold out a little longer. Come home.’

Because now she had a new best friend. Someone who she had inside jokes with, someone that slept in the same apartment as her that she had started to sleep with her door unlocked around?

And she’d never admit it, but she had been so lonely before (so lonely she had become kind in it). lonely enough to let in a man after knowing him only during one of the top 10 worst days of her life.

Meanwhile Dennis probably has no fucking clue this revelation is happening and just pauses the TV to ask what the muppets were again.

“Oh my god, I actually don’t know how to explain it to you again.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t grow up with a tv.”

And she’d just laugh but at the same time try to blink away the tears from her eyes without him seeing.

this is my first time making one of these i hope i didnt mischaracterize 😢🙏 i wanted to make that ethel cain joke

Rabbot Morning Coffee

Planned to do a quick and easy drawing, nothing too complicated. Four days later here I am.... I regret nothing.

there are so many shots where robby is actively trying not to be perceived and jack is staring at him like he can't get enough of him, like every single microexpression robby makes is his & his alone, and i'm OBSESSED

even when robby literally isn't paying attention and jack is in a different room jack is looking at him, constantly assessing where he's at and what he's feeling, and it is such an intense and obvious sign of his love for robby (platonic or not) that i cannot stomach it

jack sees robby even when robby feels emotionally at his ugliest and he never even remotely flinches away from his desire to figure out what robby is feeling and it makes their dynamic so fascinating to me because you have two deeply empathetic, perceptive men who are hyperaware of each other (to the point where there are multiple times where they interact with each other or move to meet one another without even looking) and are not afraid of this obvious depth of love