mar🌊

“Shit.”

It’s worked its way into the map of the soles. The blood doesn’t look old yet. It looks too wet, too fresh to your exhausted eyes. You gather its in your car now, up your porch steps and outside your front door, into your welcome home mat. It repulses you, but, more importantly, it breaks you down.

The tears fall shortly after you put the trainers in your downstairs bathroom’s sink. You use the running tap as a cover for them. As sobs wreck your body, what you’ve gone through tonight becomes more clear. It’s not a hazy rush you had to get through. Blinkers on, don’t think about, just do your job. That doesn’t exist here. You’ve brought it home with you like the blood you’re washing out of your trainers. How can you not? It was a horror show. It was just like Robby said it was: the worst of humanity. It’s not often you, in the ED, get to see people on their best days, or even good ones, but, today, that you’ll count as one of the worst days of your life. You’re sure it’s the same for others, too.

You wash at your face before you go upstairs. You tell yourself to get a grip and force the tears back. If you’re going to kiss Romi, like you promised, you don’t want her to see you upset. You don’t even want her to be close to your body right now; these scrubs that have seen death and carnage. But you have to check on her. Hers in the first face you want to see. And yet, when you reach her door, you can’t bring yourself to enter while covered in tonight.

Instead, you watch her.

Just watch her.

For a while, you stay in the doorway and admire her sleeping figure. It looks like she’s tossed around and has been thrown into bed with how she lies there, arms thrown up above her head and face smushing into the pillow. It manages to bring a smile to your face, a soft one. You know you can’t kiss her right now. You feel too dirty and she’s too pure. You don’t want to risk rubbing whatever’s on you onto her innocence, tainting the moment with Romi you’ve been building all day from the time of death was called on a child, but, for now, you can watch her breathe and knows she’s safe.

Eventually, you pull yourself away to go shower. Once you’re clean, only then, do you go in; past the door with your daughter’s name on it. You sneak across her pink, carpeted floor and settle down on a patch of it at her bedside. You kiss her head, soft, just enough pressure for Romi to smile in her sleep. There, on her floor, you sit and admire her over. You’re watching Romi like you’re amazed she’s real. In awe, you monitor her breathing carefully. How many parents heard their child’s stop today, in the span of your shift? How many were close to losing them? The thought of it terrifies you. It cuts at your heart, although, you’re certain it’s out of your chest and sleeping soundly now. All your goodness is wrapped up in her, bundled under a mermaid duvet and strangling her beloved, floppy bunny under her arm. The most devastating thing that can happen to her is if the morning she wakes up and ‘Bun-Bun’ is on the floor. She won’t comprehend the demons crawling around in your head as you look at her now.

It’s well past ten when you hear keys in the door. You’ve been away from Romi’s bedside for less than thirty minutes and your scrubs are in the washing machine — tablet and detergent in, just waiting for Robby’s to join. You’re right to wait. You’re right to leave the porch-light on. You’re right that he’ll stop by.

There’s a couple steps before the turn in your staircase, following the corner of your house. You sit on there with a glass of wine in your hand. You’re not really drinking it. It’s wine, so you can excuse it by saying you’re just nursing it, but you both know it’s not true. Robby knows because he barely finished the beer he shared with Jack and a few others in the park before he was walking home, then driving to yours.

“I needed to see her.”

Your eyes meet the sorrow in his. You’re a matching pair. You save your, ‘I know’ for another time. You tuck it away safely the same as you tuck Robby into your home. “Shoes off, give me your bag.”

He does exactly what you say. Robby doesn’t speak while he obeys. He’s too broken. His tiredness is bone-deep, and he can surely argue that he can do it himself. But here you are offering, caring for him the way you do the patients in The Pitt. Robby wonders if you think he’s ill like they are. He wonders it himself after tonight, after he choked.

When you have his belongings, you tell him, “Go on up.”

Robby does as you say again. He leaves his boots by the door and his bag in your lap. Your glass of wine is forgotten about. You leave it in the windowsill by the stairs while you go into the downstairs toilet. In there, your now-clean trainers are resting on the radiator to dry, and you start to clean Robby’s boots. Like yours, there’s blood on his soles; over the cuff of his shoes. You’re lucky they’re leather. If they were suede, they’d be ruined. You wouldn’t even bother cleaning; they’d be going straight in the trash.

You don’t cry again when you’re watching the blood wash away. It swirls in the running water and circles your drain. You make sure to clean it with a piece of tissue and flush it afterwards. You’re not having the risk of Romi finding blood in the room she washes her hands before breakfast, lunch and dinner. Things like that scare a young child. Hell, they scare you. But Romi knows what your job is — what Robby’s is — and she knows it’s not always safe. She understands it can be dangerous. You remember the fear in her brown eyes that time you came home with violently burst capillaries in the white of your eyes after an aggressive patient strangled you. You’ve got the feeling Romi’s expecting something vile like that after you didn’t make it home for bedtime. It doesn’t sit well with you.

It doesn’t with Robby either. None of it does. What happened tonight, he can’t ever explain. He doubts he’ll be able to tell Romi years later. It’ll just be a story he never tells, that he’ll keep locked up until it kills him. Like Nick Bradley. Like Amber Phillips. Like Mr Spencer. Like with Dr Adamson. Working the anniversary is a mistake, Robby knows now. He’s captivated by the anguish. He can’t outrun it. It’s in him. It’s part of this day forever now.

“I did that, too.”

The sound of your voice breaks him from his sombre trance. “Huh?”

“When I came in to be with her, first thing I did was watch her breathe,” you confess. “Watch her chest rise and fall. I had to make sure it wouldn’t stop on me.”

Out of Robby comes a fragile, small, “Sometimes, I don’t think she’s real. Sometimes, I think she’s a dream of mine, that I’m going to wake up and she won’t have existed.” His gaze stays on her as he tells you, “The worst part is when it happens and I’m all alone. I’m at mine and she’s here, and I can’t watch her breathe. I don’t know she’s real.”

An ache knots at your chest. You can’t deny the separation has you thinking all sorts of depressing things too. The first night Robby had Romi alone, and the house was quiet, you slept with the television on; you were just grateful Robby took your call, in the middle of the night, to talk about Romi. He never calls you crazy when every so often you get the urge to phone him when Romi's at his to check in. He calls you sweetheart and tells you something funny or smart or brilliant Romi did that night.

“Come on,” you say, “you can use my shower.”

He’s shaking his head at you. Again, his eyes are on Romi, but they travel to you while he speaks. “No, I don’t want to put you out,” Robby justifies. “I’ll just stay here for another minute and then I’ll head out. You need sleep anyway.”

“Robby,” you say. “Shower here, please. I want to hug you, but I don’t want to do it when you’re still in those.”

It’s enough to shake him loose from the idea he has to leave. You’re giving him reasons to stay longer. God, he wants to hug you too. He wants to grip you tight, bury his face in your neck and never let go. After today, he wants to hold onto you — and Romi —forever.

You take his hand. “Come on, I wanna wash my scrubs,” you excuse. “I’ll do yours while I’m at it.”

Right now, despite it being where his mind goes, Robby doesn’t bring up the implication of your words. How he can easily be swept up by this meaning you’re allowing him to stay — stay longer, anyway. First, he’ll shower; then, he’ll wait for his scrubs to be washed and dried. He ignores the sensible part of his brain that tells him he has plenty of scrubs at home, that he doesn’t actually have to wait for them to dry before he leaves, and you doing this doesn’t mean he stays. Robby switches his reasoning off because he doesn’t want that right now. He wants you. This. Him being able to shower in the bathroom attached to his old bedroom. You nearby. Just you in general.

Neither of you seems to mind there’s no privacy between you. What is privacy to two people who’ve known each other as intimately as you have? Robby doesn’t flinch when you enter the bathroom behind him. You’ve got a t-shirt and sweats in your arms, placing them down on the closed toilet seat. They’re his, but Robby considers them yours. You stole his clothes so much that he recalls choosing to leave some behind for you; he doesn’t tell you how he took the last of your perfume with him when he moved out, calling it a fair trade. He keeps it in his master bathroom; has done since the split, but you never have a reason to go into it, so you’ll never know. He knows about these, however, and you know he knows.

You gather out a fresh towel from the linen closet while Robby starts to strip down. Every move of his is tired. It tells you exactly of his exhaustion. You feel it, too, especially tonight and you will again tomorrow. Because what sleep are you getting tonight? How will you close your eyes and not see red stain behind your lids?

As the shower starts to run, and Robby steps in, you whisper, “Take your time.” After you scoop up his scrubs, you leave. The bathroom door is left agar by you, but you make sure to shut the bedroom one when you go downstairs. You don’t want to wake your mother, who currently sleeps in the guest room, or, worse, Romi. It’s the excuse you give yourself to why you invited Robby to shower in your bathroom and not the family one across the hall. People are sleeping in your house; if you close Robby in your room, it serves as a separate space. Another world. A parallel plain. Somewhere safe for the pair of you to exist in loneliness, misery and tragedy together.

Half of you wonders how much of it is true when you return to the bedroom, after putting on yours and Robby’s washing, and find yourself at the foot of the bed. You just sit there. The door is shut again. You’ve brought up two glasses of water; your wine in still on the windowsill at the bottom of the stairs. It’s not long until the shower stops, maybe twenty minutes, and Robby is joining you in the clothes you had laid out for him. The collar of the t-shirt is damp, so is his hair, which he then rubs the towel over, sadly thinking it’s dry enough for whatever abhorrent thoughts are tucked inside his head.

And, awfully, your own mind slips too. For a second, you’re not thinking about the mass-casualty and all the blood anymore. You’re wondering if Robby thinks you’re weird to have collected up his underwear with his scrubs to wash as well, that you now know not just from the outline through his sweats but because you choose to do it to him, that Robby’s not wearing anything under the sweatpants he wears. Still, there are some boundaries between the two of you that remain.

Robby stays on that side of the room, a couple metres away from where you are. He sits down on the stool to your vanity. “I had to talk to Leah’s parents before I left,” Robby tells you, and you think you can hear his shattered pieces rattle together. The survivor’s guilt spikes in him. “She had my ticket. I gave her my pass, and I knew that as I had to tell her parents that we weren’t able to keep up with the blood loss, that a bullet had tore through her heart.” His voice becomes thinner. He squeaks while tears consume his eyes. All Robby has his guilt eating away at him. “Jake hates me. He blames me for Leah dying. For not saving her. And you know what,” he sniffles and wipes under his nose, “I’d blame me, too, if I was him.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” you say it confidently. Robby’s not looking at you. He’s keeping his drenched eyes from you, shielding himself from the humiliation of breaking down. He’s mortified it’s happening again, and you can see him fight the inner-turmoil. You rise from where you’re sat. “You’re not responsible for Leah dying, the person who shot her is.”

Robby can’t hear the logic. He grows too weary with his self-flagellation. “I couldn’t save her, he’s right.”

You won’t listen to it anymore. It’s not just an entirely hopeless feat that he’s given himself, but it was absolutely unfair. Robby is tearing himself apart with a responsibility nobody should have to carry, least all all him. You’re in front of him to stop his self-harm. “It wasn’t possible to save her. You’re a doctor, Robby, not god.” Your fingers lift his chin so you can look at him; pin your eyes to his tearful ones. “You can’t save everyone.”

“I was supposed to save her,” Robby sobs, and it wrecks you. “I was supposed to save her for Jake. He trusted me to do my job and—”

“And you did,” you cut in. “Robby…” Both your hands come up to cup his face. “Please,” you say. “You did your job. You did more for Leah than you did anyone else on that hospital floor, okay? I saw it. Everyone saw it. Even Jake.”

Robby hisses at the mention of his step-son. He’s in pain, rolling around in it, reeling from how he thinks he failed.

“Jake learnt tonight that, yeah, you aren’t a hero, but you don’t pretend to be,” you say to him. It sounds harsh, but, right now, you think what Robby needs is brutal honesty from you. “None of us are heroes. We’re definitely not treated like we are, anyway. And Jake’s just a boy. He’s a scared, frightened, hurt boy, who thinks the worlds of you.” You grip Robby’s face harder when he goes to face away. You force him back to you. “Who will still think the world of you when he isn’t so scared or frightened or hurt,” you assert and it almost sounds like a promise.

Your ex-husband can very nearly trick himself into believing it if it isn’t for the haunting words of Jake’s that toy in Robby’s head currently. The thing that sets him off again. The too real, too close to home reminder that makes Robby go cold. “He told me to fuck off. To fuck off because I’m not his dad.”

Inside, your heart clenches. Fatherhood has always been a sensitive topic for Robby. You know this better than anyone. You’re the one with his kid. You’ve had too many deep conversations, long and late into the night, where Robby’s opened up about how he once envisioned his life. It wasn’t ever the way it was with you, especially not how it ended. You weren’t what he saw for himself. Robby wasn’t what you pictured for yourself either. But it’s what you both have and it’s not a regret to either of you.

Maybe how you ended is.

“Oh, Michael, lovey,” you softly say, your fingers scratching at his skin through his beard. “Well, that’s anger for you. That’s a teenager. That’s a hurt, angry teenager, who has just gone through the scariest night of his life, who’s had his first, most devastating heartbreak.”

You’re easily giving Jake the benefit of the doubt —because it’s what he deserves. It’s what Jake needs: someone to defend him privately, in rooms he’s not in. Most importantly, where it lands on Robby’s ears. It serves nobody to be cruel, dismissive and utterly destructive to an already pierced relationship. The broken man in front of you is someone who deserves the same treatment also.

You do promise Robby this time, “It won’t last.”

His tears are starting to both dry and well up again the longer Robby looks up at you. You’re not distant. You’re not something out of reach to him. In fact, you’re in perfect reach to him. When Robby realises that, his hands begin to twitch. He flexes his fingers down the length of his thighs, aware of how you’re between his parted legs. Even without touching you, your own hands just on his face, it feels intimate to Robby. In the sanctuary of what used to be a room you both shared together, Robby reacts to how he craves more. To savour this, with you. And his large hands find their way home to your hips.

First, they rub at your sides through your loose shirt, then, his roaming causes the material to lift. Bare skin peaks out, just a slither, and Robby is ravenous for it. His thumbs circle the exposed flesh until, gradually, his warm palms are pressed to your skin. Now Robby’s hands are under your shirt. They hold you closer. They're splayed over as much of you as you're giving him in this moment. that you're allowing him to have. He pinches the left side of your shirt between his thumb and lifting a little. Robby leans his head forward in your own hands. His rests his forehead to your front. just below the valley of your breasts. And Robby buries himself there.

A kiss is planted to your stomach. and your eyes flutter shut. All of it feels too raw. too sore. As Robby lays another kiss to your clothed stomach, lower now, you wonder if you should let this continue. It'll complicate things. It'll throw a wrench into the co-parenting you have down. Romi is at the centre of this and you have to think of her first. This is the biggest, most head-fuckery of a mixed signal you can be giving your ex-husband.

Lord, he’s not even your ex-husband yet. Neither of you have gone to a lawyer; have petitioned a court for legal separation. In your head, you know that’s probably actually the biggest, most head-fuckery signal you’re giving Robby. By not really divorcing him, by keeping Robinavitch as your last name, you tell Robby every day there’s a chance he can be back here, in this bedroom, being held by you, holding you back, as your husband.

You should stop it. When Robby places a third kiss, you should stop it. You don’t. You let Robby carry on peppering kisses down your stomach until he reaches where he’s lifting up your shirt. His hand holds it up and his mouth is on your naked skin next. There’s no longer a barrier between you and him in that one spot. His kisses are open-mouthed, slow, sensual. His teeth nip at you slightly, and you’re whining at the sensation.

“Robby,” you say, and you hate the fact it sounds like a moan. It’s weak. You’re too pathetically pliant at just a few kisses. Your head starts to shake. There is still some resolve left in you and it begins with your daughter’s name. “We can’t… Romi… It’ll be too confusing for her. It’s confusing to me. Robby,” you say. “Robby.” He doesn’t stop. In his defence, you haven’t told him to. You have to find strength first, against the delicate kisses your ex is working up your bare side and stomach. “Robby, no. No.” You’re shaking your head again and pushing him away on top of it. “No, no, we can’t. We can’t.”

As he glances up at you, your ex-husband looks wrecked. Robby’s eyes are hazy, full of a hunger that only you can feed. His pupils are blown wide. The black of them swells when on you, making those sad, pretty browns appear darker. You’re certain they are. You can’t say yours aren’t the same. You can see them reflected back you and you spot how you’re wavering. This can take the pain away. A handful of kisses and you’re sure you feel less broken than you did when you first came home.

The same passes over Robby also. His brain is swimming in grief. He feels it’s drowning him and his head keeps bobbing under the water. You’re the only thing keeping him afloat. For you, Robby is coming up for air. He’s trying to tread water. Robby can think of several moments like that he’s had only today, where water had gotten into his mouth and his legs stopped kicking. It was triggered most in that room. In pedes. Among the cartoon animals painted on the walls. Where Mr Spencer passed away with his adult children at his bedside and where Robby had to make the choice to let Dr Adamson die.

After the latter, the Robby you’d come to know, then, love changed. He got dark after the first anniversary; broken after the second. Robby was lost in it, and he lost you after. Lost this. You in his grasp; you in this bedroom, this house you bought together; calling you his wife and hearing you call him your husband; raising Romi together under the same roof. Robby has lost it all, and he’s realised now he is in mourning because of it. To help him cope, Robby speaks the first thing that allows him to stay above the surface. Earlier he told people it helps in the first stages of loss; now he’s aware you’re his loss.

“I love you.”

You feel your mouth part. Your lips slip open and your eyes well up. When is the last time Robby told you that? When is the last time you felt it?

“Thank you,” he says next. “Thank you for today. For being a great nurse and hearing me when I said I needed you. For making me take the time to talk to Romi on the phone right before we got slammed, because you knew I needed to hear her voice. Thank you for putting that photo of her by my desk, above my computer, after we lost that nine-year-old drowning victim today. Thank you for telling me that Jake’s hurt and scared, because, honestly, I feel the same right about now. For… For…” Robby’s voice catches painfully, “Thank you not taking her away from me.”

That’s the part that makes you react, but it’s not what Robby wants. “I would never take Romi from you…”

“I know, I know,” says Robby gently. He’s tender with his tone. He’s tender with you. His mind goes over the next step. I forgive you is what’s next. Robby has to think carefully about what he says for this because the last thing he wants is for it to sound like he’s accusing you of something. Or his thoughts have before. But Robby wants to finish this. There are things he wants to forgive you for — things he has already forgiven you of. “Let me… I forgive you for…” Robby takes a very real, very nervous swallow. “For wanting better than me. For not sticking this out with me, for giving up. Because…”

Robby closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Because it’s what you had to do. I forgive you for everything you had to do, even if it hurt me, even if you said things, did things, ripped my heart out of my chest and it felt like you were chewing on it every time you walked into work. I forgive you for switching to the night-shift when we first split, I forgive you for switching back to the day-shift, then flip-flopping back-and-forth, back-and-forth, all while it drives me fucking insane because I have to wait until I get the schedule to see if your face is something I’ll be seeing all throughout my day or just for ten minutes.” His voice is charged, fully warped with exasperation. He’s frustrated and hot-headed and stubborn to a fault because he knows he won’t have admitted this if it isn’t for today, for the practice of reconciliation his mentor taught him chipping away at him. “And I forgive you for not knowing which is worst.”

He uses this time to catch his breath. The next stage is the hardest. Robby clenches his jaw and bites his tongue. “Please forgive me, too, for shutting down, for clamming up. For not letting you in even though you begged. You begged me, sweetheart, and I let you,” he recalls cruelly for the both of you, tears blurring you from him, “and I— I caused you to let us go because I wouldn’t let myself be broken with you. I was too broken for you. Please forgive me for thinking that and for being angry at you. For all the comments I make about how Romi could have both her mom and dad back if you just let me come home, that I make you feel guilty for that and I play on it because, yeah, I want you back. Forgive me for that, too,” he pleaded helplessly. “Please forgive me for breaking your heart. For being the one to make the first crack in our marriage and then blaming you because you were brave enough not to wait around for the whole thing to shatter.” Robby takes a pause, holds your gaze and says, “Please forgive me for not working through it with you when that’s all you wanted. If I had, things would be different. We would be different. I,” he finally puts, “would be different.”

Silence has you gripped. His words have you fixed to the spot. Robby paralyses you and you’re wavering. There isn’t a shift between you and him, but a slip happens either way. You don’t need things to change tonight. You’re not even sure they ever will change, but hope flares in your chest that it will, that Robby will. It sounds like he will. He feels like he’ll continue to lay down on his sword for you, to stay here with you.

His hands are still on you, on your skin. Robby stares up at you. What you see is honesty shining in his eyes; devastation in his soul and it oozes out of him in pools. It runs out of him straight into you. Robby’s touch moves with it, travelling slowly over your sides and around your back. He’s reeling you in and you’re caught in whatever web or trap this might feel like tomorrow. Robby’s trapped in your snare too. He has been for years, hooked on the drips of affection you give him; whether it be a reassuring hand on his shoulder, a smile over his charts at work, a hug hello sometimes during drop-off and pick-ups. Now, it’s this. His chin nuzzles against the top of your ribcage, staring up at you from the bottom of your covered breasts with brown eyes you can sink into. His hand puts mild pressure onto the small of your back and causes you to arch into him. Robby is so close.

You’re breathing slow. Your breathing hitches. It’s too late now, you’ve softened perfectly for him. The body that’s yours no longer feels like it’s holding you up —that’s Robby’s job. You’re without bones. You’re just flesh and blood and it aches for him. Every inch of you belongs to Robby in this moment, just as you’re certain he belongs to you. Anything you want, he’ll give you. But there’s only one thing you want now and that resolve you have left, that pushed him away before, is fading fast.

You love him. You’re thankful for everything he’s just said. You forgive him for what he’s done to you, across you and mistakenly for you. You’re just hoping he’ll forgive you for what you’re about to do to him, to each other… Please.

“Please,” tumbles out of you as well. It’s vocalised. You hear it come out and he hears it land on his ears. Your hands pet at his head, at his still slightly damp hair. You cradle him to you and find the weak strength to lean down. Before you know it, you’re kissing Robby.

It’s not his mouth on yours, it’s yours on his. You’re controlling this. He’s at the direction of your will, and you’re just willing this to happen.

The grip you have on him slips into his hair and you tug. It’s causes Robby’s mouth to part with a breathy, “Ah,” and a tsk when he realises your tongue licks into his mouth deliciously. It’s fun, playful; a jarring difference to what brings you together, what has happened tonight. There’s an extreme hunger to Robby. He’s finding his way to devour you. His kisses are harder, much needier than yours. Robby has wanted it longer. He wants revenge for that feeling that’s been tormenting for fifteen months since your split.

His hands are up your shirt now. They’ve made their way up and around the blades of your shoulders as you lean down into him. The two of you haven’t stopped kissing. You’re too scared to let your lips leave him — stop moving with his — in case rare sensibility hits you and you have to say ‘we can’t’ again. That thought terrifies you now when Robby’s touching you again after so long and you’re folding into him.

You step backward, stretched to keep up with the open-mouthed kisses, and you knock his legs together. Robby’s confused by the action, but when you slink down into his lap, he’s not. Robby is on you once more. His steady hands come down from your shoulders, after his fingers traced the expanse of your skin, and he pulls at the length of your shirt. You know what he wants. You want it to. That fear you have goes from your eagerness to keep going. Plus, if Robby gets you topless, you can work on doing the same to him.

It’s a sharply inhale as you part. You let Robby quickly yank your shirt up over your head while your fingers grasp at his own, the shirt you gave him less than ten minutes ago. The speed of which you do is shocks you because, before you know it, your flush to Robby’s bare, hair-speckled chest and your lips are hot on his again.

You’re messier now. His hot breath pants over your face and in your ear. Robby starts to track his kisses on your jaw and neck, down the column of your throat. Those kisses get wetter, louder, more heated. His saliva sticks to your skin and, god, do you want more of it. You want everything. Tangling your arms around the back of his head is easily done. You crave Robby closer now. You’ll stitch yourself to him if you can find a way. And you want to. As your head tips back and your mouth parts with the first moan of many you’ll have tonight, all rational is lost. You’re in this now. You’re in this moment. All you can think, breathe and kiss is Robby.

His mouth meets your naked breast, causing your pulse to jump. This is the wettest kiss yet. All of the slick of Robby’s tongue is curling around your nipple. It’s warm, loving; you can just feel the top of his teeth skim over where you crave roughness. Robby teases your nipple into his mouth while a hand holds the swell of your opposite breast. The thumb of his hand traces over the the other nipple. It pebbles under his touch, and Robby rolls your peak between his thumb and index finger. He flicks it twice, and you let out this drawn out moan.

“Oh.” You’re a hushed whisper in your own bedroom, upon his lap, where the bludge of his cock stirs. You can feel the heavy shape of it through his sweats and through your thin sleep-shorts. They’re too thin. You’re starting to feel your dampness create a wet spot in the centre. You’re leaking too much already, and all he’s done is kiss you and play with your nipples.

It’s all you need.

There’s a string of saliva that spread across your chest when he moves to pay attention to your left nipple now. Your right is soaked. It’s covered in Robby. You gasp at the sensation of his fingers toying with the slippery nipple that’s been in his mouth before, for longer. It breaks down your resolve further. Impatience is leaving you while the horniness fogs your brain; while Robby whispers out, “Good girl,” against your chest.

It has you going. You’re drenched below, and you need Robby to know. You need him as helpless as he’s currently making you. Your grind down on him. He grunts around your nipple, the nipple he’s got his lips around and is sucking into his mouth, that his tongue is soothing over and his teeth tease. Your centre is pressed down on him. There’s two layers between your pussy and his cock, and you can feel the stiffness of it as your roll your hips and drag yourself down over him. Your mouth fills. Warmth pools in your belly, spreading lower, exactly where you need him.

All you’re doing it panting and whining while Robby makes you a mess. “Robby,” you whimper. “Robby, please.”

“'Please'?” Robby likes the sound of that. His voice is dark, husky as it vibrates over your increasingly sensitive skin. His mouth is working its way up again, up the length of your tipped back throat. You coo at the feeling of both the tip of his nose dragging against it and his beard scratching at you. The friction is a good burn, and it’s eased by how you can feel him smile against your skin just before he nips at your neck. “You begging me now?”

You are.

You actually are.

Part of you should be disgusted at yourself for falling well and truly down this hill with Robby, but you don’t mind it so long as he's just as desperate as you are. You have to make it even.

“You’re loving this,” you say, as you return your head to its normal position. It’s not falling back anymore. You’re not giving up access to all of your neck and chest while you hold onto Robby’s shoulders for support. Not anymore. Your hand slips between you. “You’re loving having me… in the palm… of your… hand.”

Trailing out, building up the anticipation, your words are whispered against his ear and make the moment your hand lands on Robby’s crotch more perfect. You palm at Robby — at his dick. You feel how achingly hard it is under your touch and you smirk when it’s his turn to feel powerless to you. When Robby grunts then whimpers, you think heavens have opened. You feel like a god.

The freedom is grants you is enough for you to take control of him. You feel the thick, bulbous head to his throbbing penis through his sweats and you rub until you’re smiling wickedly. There’s a subtle wet spot forming at Robby’s own crotch, under your hand, where you’re touching. The damp sensation melts into your hand. You suck his earlobe into your mouth and bite down. Robby winces when it happens and his immediate reaction is to jerk up. You feel yourself squirm on top of him. But you can’t lose by Robby’s accidental thrust up into you. Your hand adds more pressure, the heels of your palm rubbing at Robby while he hisses your name as some of warning prayer.

“Come on, sweetheart, no need to play dirty here,” Robby tells you. “I want you too badly to tease you. I want you so fucking much. Want to be inside you already.”

As you attach your mouth to that sweet spot beneath his ear, you know it’s to cover an embarrassingly loud moan at what he says. But it’s works. You’re satisfied to know Robby’s patience is fast waning like yours already has. Robby doesn’t like not being in control either, so it’s worse for him than you. He wants equal turf. He knows exactly where that is. He peers at it over your shoulder right before you palm him firmer again and his teeth fix to that same shoulder of yours he just glimpsed over.

His large, gifted hands track around your thighs. You think he going to grab at the plush flesh of your ass, to dig his fingertips into it until he leaves either a dent or impression. Robby always likes it when your bruise a little and he can see where he’s been. Yet, that’s not what he does. Robby locks his arms around your thighs, and you die to feel the constraint of his muscles flush to your legs. Before you can let out another moan, you’re up.

Robby’s up. He’s kissing you again. You’re carried several strides away from your vanity and dropped to the bed. Your bed. His bed. Once, your bed together. All of it is pressed out of you when Robby is. Those hands that held you up are yanking at your sleep-shorts. Shoving them down to find you bare and drenched for him. Robby inhales, slow. He engulfs your scent, the aroma of your heat. You’re burning up for him as he puts tiny, little pecks up the inside of your legs, not yet parted them. He’s taking his sweet time with you, and you’re close to thrashing about to get a slither more attention.

“Michael…” slips out of you. If he’s toying with you, then you’ll toy with him back. You know the power you possess when you first-name him. You’re one of the few people who use it. You’re the only one to use to against him, especially like this. “Michael, please. Do something. Anything. Touch me. Eat me. Fuck me stupid. I don’t care, just do something before I lose it.” You’re lifting yourself up and grabbing his face away from giving your thighs those torturous kisses. “I’m losing it.”

You glimpse that greedy, cocksure half-grin he gets when he’s entirely too confident. Robby even gives a breathy chuckle at your neediness, an action that some spiteful part of you wants to shove him away for and make that vanity chair of yours a new voyeur seat so he can watch and not touch, but his mouth descends on yours next. His hand has cupped the back of your head and Robby pulls you in for a passionate kiss. His tongue dominates yours. The force behind it has you weak, and that part of you, that might have put him in a chair across from the bed, knows it would’ve ended with you inviting him back when your fingers don’t feel like his; when your vibrator isn’t hitting the spots that Robby hasn’t in fifteen long months since your split.

His lips are still on yours. They slant to the right of your mouth, then, your jaw, then your neck again. Lowly, rumbling against your skin, Robby whispers, “Lie back. Let me care of you.”

Your brain spins. You’re dizzy from him, shaking in anticipation of what’s about to happen. You’re dripping. Soaked. You feel your own slick smush between your legs, at the top of your thighs. It doesn’t disgust you, and the last person who will be disgusted is Robby. He loves this stuff. He loves seeing the flooding reaction he gets out of you. He drinks it up like a sponge. This is the stuff that always got him going more. It is now because you can feel the angry shape of his erect cock up against your calf as he sinks down.

Eyes holds yours while he kisses your body. It’s like Robby refuses to miss a favourite spot. When one is delivered to your engorged breast, just skimming your glossy, hardened nipple, you moan and arch your back. You shiver when he reaches you hipbone and the soft pouch above where your pussy is furiously begging for attention. His kisses stop for a beat. Robby runs his palms down, past the tops of your legs and find their way under. He grips just beneath the back of your knees, kissing the other side of it before he parts your legs.

Glistening, your hole leaks for him already. Your vulva is covered in your own arousal, having built up in your make-out session and his expert way to peak your nipples; you grinding down into him to speed up the moments that lead to this. A growl is stuck deep in Robby’s throat. He feels it travel from the base and get trapped in the back of his mouth. “Oh, she’s still so pretty,” Robby says of your drenched, slickened pussy. He keeps getting closer, inch by inch, tortuously slow much to your impatience. He puts another kiss to the inside of your upper thigh, licking softly when he realises it’s damp too, but his eyes — they remain on you, on her.

He drags a finger down her. He started at the top of your vulva, above your clit, and gradually swipes his finger through your folds. A broken, “Uhh,” moans out of you, and you buck your hips to feel more, to have more, to get it.

“Looks just as needy for me as she always did,” he observes, as his hand that’s not teasing your wetness snakes under where your leg is lifts. Robby winds it around and curls his palm over the back of your thigh, spreading your legs further, digging in. “Bet she missed me. I missed her, so much,” Robby shares, just as he circled his index around your weeping hole and dips in with his final remark.

“Oh, yes,” you hiss, feeling the tip of finger poke through. He slips it in deeper, curling towards the front. “Oh, my god, Robby.”

His smirks knowing he’s melted you. He’s got proof of your puddle leaking down his finger that angles in and out of you. More strangled moans are elicited out of you, and Robby soon follows it up to get louder ones, ones from deeper parts of you, when he adds a second finger.

“Fuck, shit, yes, yes.”

You’re purring even before Robby sets a pace. Two fingers plunge in and out of you, over and over and over again. The best part is when he adds his tongue. The pleasure you feel electrifies you. As you bite down into your bottom lip, Robby sucks at your clit. Your hand grabs at the sheets either side of you. You hold it tightly, squeezing as your walls do his fingers. Your pussy is so wet, it squelches. It cries for Robby as it clenches. The sound is obscene and gratefully contained to your bedroom. It’ll be mortifying if it isn’t so hot. Robby worships the sounds, too. It’s his favourite one, especially when you’re moaning for him; his name just keeps falling out of your mouth, over your lips.

You cum hard and fast, and Robby doesn’t stop. It’s not over for him. Even when your thighs clench around his head and you try to scooch away, retreat up the bed to get away from him, Robby’s arms are looping under and around your thighs again. He uses that leverage to yank you back. His broad tongue swipes at your folds more furiously, down towards your beating hole. It whirls around it, sinks inside, and Robby laps at you like he’s starving. You cry out in pleasure. It catches in your throat.

Somehow you find the strength in your shaking, tingling arms to lift one. Your hand lands on his head after you reach down between your legs. You tap at his him. You tug at his hair. “Rob—Robby, stop. I can’t. Enough. Enough, I— Oh, my fucking god! — Yes!” Your grip tightens on the short length of his hair. You tug harder as you grind down on his face. The tip of his nose catches your clit and you bite harder on your lip to stifle a scream. Your head thrashes to the side, mouth parting when Robby continues to work his skilled tongue in you now with his two fingers stretching your hole wider for him. “Yes! Shit, you’re so good at that.”

He hums against you. You feel it echo up into you. Robby is so close to being fully inside of you that you’re crooning while his tongue does the work. He swirls it around as his fingers curls upwards, harshly hitting that sweet spot inside of that that makes you loose any sense of things that aren’t pleasure. You’re sparking alone with it. And when Robby persists with an urgency to get you there, to climb higher, you’re soon mewling before a second orgasm heads your way.

“Fuck, I’m— I’m cumming,” you say with a moan so loud that you have to let go of Robby’s hair to slap a hand across your mouth. You feel yourself let go. Complete bliss envelops you up and your legs go weak. They buckle and you lose the ability to keep your head up. It falls back against the pillows and your throat is so damn dry compared to his.

When Robby is satisfied — him, satisfied, despite that being all about you — he releases that hold. His grip slackens; it loosens around the plump meat of your thighs, and Robby, as he lifts his own head, meets your foggy, love-drunk gaze and wipes one palm over his mouth. He swipes your arousal into his beard. It dampens the coarser hair. If it’s softer tomorrow, that’s the magic of you. He proves it after he shoves down his sweats immediately, faster than ever has before because he’s afraid you can stop this at anytime. There’s a slap when his dick stands fiercely erect, hitting his stomach, and Robby crashes his lips back on yours. His hand is at the back of your head, holding you in place while he kicks the sweats down to his ankles and off. Robby is over you again; you can feel what’s between you.

“Pr—Protection,” you muster, because, honestly, you've not too far gone to remember that safe sex is paramount.

But it had Robby hesitating. He blinks at you, down at your face that under his; your naked body trapped under his own now. “I didn’t bring any with me.” He shoots you a tired smile and a rough laugh as he honestly tells you, “I didn’t think I was getting lucky.”

“Shit.” The condoms in your drawer, they’re his. Yours. They’ve been there for over fifteen months. Longer perhaps. You don’t know if they’ve expired. What you do know is the pining in your system is making you lose responsibility. “Fuck it. Go raw.”

Your desperation has never been clearer to Robby. His eyes widen briefly, stunned at the risk. After Romi, you took every precaution not to have a second accidental pregnancy. Now, you are one step away from begging, dripping, if it means Robby is not in you in the next ten seconds. He kisses you again. Robby makes sure his lips are moving with yours, in perfect sync, when he reaches down between you both and finds the base of his cock.

It’s instinct to him. An action he’s done countless times before. Robby never stops kissing you while he guides his dick into you. Even as both your mouths part with soft, needy moans, Robby still classes it as kissing you. His breaths go right into your open mouth. He pants into it as he sheathes himself in your wet warmth.

“Fuck,” he says, and he’s slowly sliding his dick all the way in.

The stretch is delicious. You let out a moan so pornographic that you’re convinced in another life this is what you and him are meant to do forever, all the time, for a job — over making seriously ill and injured people feel better.

“Oh, my god, Michael.”

“That’s it. Say my name. Say it, sweetheart.” He withdraws his length, almost pulling fully out. The tip is still in you, toying with your pulsing hole, then, Robby pushes back in. He sinks firmly into you, and you both grunt into each other’s mouths as your walls flutter.

“Michael.” He does it again. He rocks in and out, and you’re gripping at shoulders to attach yourself to him. “Oh, Michael.”

Something about this being one of the few times you call him 'Michael' has him thrusting harder. His best is the only acceptable response. “Yeah, baby, it’s me.” Robby’s head burrows into the crook of your neck. His forehead presses against it, half-shut eyes on the sweat that glistens across your stomach. “It’s me.” From this angle, Robby peeks at where your two bodies connect. He can see himself enter you. In and out, in and out; and at a pace that has you rising your hips from the bed. He can see it, but he feels it more. How warm and wet and responsive you are. “God, you feel so good,” he groans. “I’ve missed this, baby. Missed you. You’re perfect. Perfect. Nobody better.”

He starts to pick up the pace. His hips snap forward and you cry out at the impact. Your back arches up off the bed to feel him be so rough with you. Robby thinks that position of you is an advantage to him. An arm of his slithers under your back. He holds you up and to him with it. The pair of you are flush again. You’ll be forgiven for thinking this makes you one. From it, Robby is back to a rhythm he recognises with you. He rocks into you. The curve of his dick is delectable, you swear you’re drooling out the corner of your mouth. Then, Robby hits two spots inside of you: dragging the head of his dick against a spongy one when he pulls back and then bullies back in deep, driven into extra sensitive one next your cervix like he’s on a mission to bruise it.

“Oh, my— Fuck.” You let a series of strangled mewls. “Shit, Robby, right there. Right there.”

“That’s it, that’s my girl.” His nose tracks down your sternum, between the valley of your breasts. He nips at the side of your left one. “I got you, I got you.” Robby peppers kisses on your chest and collar as he grunts. “I know, baby. Fuck, those pretty, little sounds you make drive me crazy,” he pants at you, while he makes his way back up to your face. He smiles at you, drunk on lust for you. “Thought I was never gonna hear ‘em again. I’m so lucky.” Robby sucks at your jaw. “I’m so lucky.”

His repetition has you in a haze. Your hands cup at his waist, then, his ass. You dig into his cheeks as you force him to make those thrusts hurt. You want to hasten his actions. “Go faster,” you whisper.

Robby starts to plough into you. It’s not just faster, it’s deeper. It’s perfect and exactly what you need. You’re moaning wildly now. “Fuck, Rob— Michael! Michael! Michael!” Panic hits you. It’s frantic as it pounds through your blood. Your clammy hands work their way home to his face. You lift his head out from where he’s pinned to your neck. You grab at his bearded chin, eyes blown wide in sopping hunger. “Kiss me. Kiss me.”

He obeys. Of course he does. Robby won’t risk messing this up. He’s got you now, he’s not letting you go. Part of Robby wonders if he’s dreaming; if this all just a big, extremely vivid dream he’s had after knocking out after a couple beers on a truly abhorrent day. After today — Jake, the mass-causality, the teen with a fentanyl overdose, an accidental drowning of a kid, too many deaths — Robby’s convinced he can hallucinate that his hands are touching yours. That his fingers are threaded with yours while drills into you. It’s akin to dreams he’s had before, filling his head while he sleeps. The only reason he knows it’s not is because your nails claw at his shoulders like you want to draw blood and the heels of your feet dig into the small of back to dive him down further. A broken cry comes out of you when he reaches and thrusts at that spot that makes your eyes roll in the back of your head.

Skin pressing into skin, Robby is on fire. His body has never worked better than when he's fucking you. He’s alight with insatiable need. Roasting as he pants into your mouth and his teeth clash with yours. The bed that you once shared holds the weight and the force of how hard he’s fucking you. Robby’s only doing that to make it feel more real. Every time his hips thrust, yours chase that thrust. He’s sharing your bed again. He remembers going shopping for the frame and mattress prior. Your joke about which was better to have sex on messes with him now. Robby uses it to distract himself for blowing too early. He goes over the day in his mind. You both went on about how noisy the headboard would sound as it furiously knocks into the wall — that’s why you chose the upholstered, thick headboard. You tested every mattress for its firmness and its ability to muffle the sounds of him fucking you into it, meanwhile, your daughter sleeps down the hall. This one has always been good to you both on that front — because you and Robby were never quiet.

And that upholstered headboard, the one you specifically wanted in that plum velour fabric so he paid extra for and got made-to-measure, Robby now uses as leverage. His grip snaps to it and Robby has it tightly in his grasp as he uses it to fuck you harder. He crashes his hips into you, it’s super charged. And cruel. It allows him to roughly drill at that spot again.

Over and over.

In and out, at a brutal pace.

You clench around him again, and Robby beams. “That’s it, you’re almost there,” he says like is a huge victory for him. “I can feel it. Let me feel you. Let go, sweetheart.” His face brushes up to your temple, pressing an open-mouth kiss to your cheek. His breath is hot on your face. It fans over you while he whispered out his instruction, “Let… go.”

You listen. Your body listens. It never stops when it comes to Robby. His instruction is gold. For the third time, you contract around something belonging to Robby. This time, it’s his dick and it’s the most perfect thing to ever be inside of you, making you feel things you’ve only ever felt with him. He’s made for you. You’re made for him, and you’re a vice wanting to milk him dry.

“Ahhh-eghhh, fuck! Oh, my fuck.”

Robby feels you pulse around him. Your warmth draws him in tighter. When you clench and lock and flutter; a thick, creamy rim around the girth of his cock, and Robby touches the edge as well. “Fuck!”

It happens together. An explosion. You’re sparking alive. Your body shakes and your vision spots white. Robby’s hips jerk forward with his orgasm. His pace stumbles, and he thrashes out of the routine that got you both there. He comes undone the same as you do. While you cum around him, trembling, Robby spills inside of you. You feel it fill you up and you don’t care because this is the greatest you’ve felt in months. In a year. In fifteen lonely months. You shake and shudder and you swear you can’t feel your face until Robby is kissing you again.

Your lips are numb. Tingling. And both you and Robby are breathless as your bodies give out like everything else. He collapses on top of you. You wonder how his back is holding up as he finally lets go of yours. Your legs loosen from around him as well. You can’t keep your heels digging into him forever. Robby can’t stay inside of you for the rest of the night, but you won’t put it past him if he tries.

You’re willing to try also.

The breaths you share are erratic. Your chest rises and falls fast, laboured. In the moments after, post-pleasure, you’re not totally sure you’ll ever catch your breath again. It happens. It will eventually happen, because you’ve come down from these kind of amazing highs with Robby before, but you’re savouring it while it lasts. You don’t care that your skin is sticky — that Robby’s is too — as it draws you both closer. It makes you the same. You’re just two people, connected by your parts, and that makes you one. One being. One entity. One collection of atoms that have collided with each other.

“Fuck,” Robby says again and, then, he’s laughing in awe. His eyes shine with disbelief. He wonders if some part of him did imagine this; he’s not completely convinced this isn’t a dream. The only way he knows it’s real is when he tried to un-bury himself from between your legs and your pussy acts as a vice once more. It locks him in, and Robby can’t deny it where he wants to stay too. He’ll die here if you’ll let him. It’s a good place to die. To Robby, who denied he was religious earlier today to one of his med students, this is heaven. You’re a god-given gift and that sex was the best of his life. “Jesus Christ,” he utters, thready, physically exerted from what you’ve just done. “That was… Amazing. Just like I remember. Better than I remember,” he corrects after a small, barely there beat.

“Uh-huh,” is you’re only agreement. You're not sure you can add more; your voice is too ran-through and used up currently.

A groan leaves Robby while he eventually slips out of you, and you whimper at the emptiness. But you’re not empty. The remnants of Robby are dripping out of your pussy. You feel it gush like Robby has taken away the plug; and beneath you now, rolling down between your cheeks is both ropes of Robby’s cum and your flooding wetness. The slick sensation of stickiness blends with wet spot on your sheets. If you aren’t still so turned on, you’ll be repulsed. You’re not. You gag for the feeling.

You’ve missed it.

You’re missed Robby.

Tears brims your eyes. They sting and swirl, and you’re wanting to cry after such a massive wave of too many overwhelming feelings. The bed rocks on the side you’re not on and you’re reminded you’re not alone, so you can’t cry. You see Robby’s completely bare frame track over to your bathroom. It’s a sight you’ve seen many times before, but rarely through tears. You feel one slip from your eyes and roll horizontally down the side of your cheek to the pillow. The tap’s running, you can hear it, and you swiftly wipe the fallen tear away. You push back any sign you’ve upset yourself by reminding yourself that you miss Robby, that you miss this with him and having amazing sex with him.

He returns with a wet rag. He’s cleaned himself up, he’s coming to do the same for you now. It’s sweet, thoughtful. It’s Robby. Your Robby. It’s something he just does and that sensitive pull, that’s made you cry once, returns. You can cover it better, however, when he cleans you and you whine at the touch. Especially when Robby murmurs to you, “I think I was too rough with her.”

It brings a laugh out of you. It’s cosy and wraps your ribs up in a blanket rather than a cage. “I don’t know, I think I can safely say she enjoyed it,” you express teasingly. A coy smile dances on your lips. “Oh, sh—shit,” hisses out when Robby does another thorough wipe of your most sore area. Then, you’re laughing again. Your palms cover your face, the heat of your inflamed face burns brilliantly. “My god, I can’t believe we did that.”

“I, for one, are very happy we did that,” he claims, and you’re made acutely aware this is triumph for your ex-husband. You’re not stupid to pretend he hasn’t wanted this since your split. There’s been 'almosts' before. None this big. None that come close to ending like this. The closest Robby has gotten before is his hand cupping your clothed mound and his hardened groin pressed into you. Today’s loss and tragedies served as the perfect catalyst — bouncing off a point — to be end up with Robby crawling up next to you in your post-sex bliss. “We’ve still got it,” Robby tells you, a tender kiss place to your bare shoulder.

The least surprising part of what’s happened is how you find comfort in the moments after. In that sweat, musky heat is perfectly hazy over you. There’s a barrier between you and reality. It befalls the pair of you. You and Robby. Together, once more. So long as you’re in this bed, lying in the wet spot, sticky sweat blending with his, limbs tangling while he holds you, you can stay. Robby can stay.

But it doesn’t last long.

You and Robby exist for ten minutes outside of what happened. Until you can no longer smell sex in the air. Until your breathing recollects. Until the barrier is broken and that wet spot doesn’t feel so wet anymore. Your sweat isn’t pricking at your skin and his isn’t dampening more of you. Robby still holds you, but you know he can’t stay the night like he’s planning to.

There’s an excuse already playing in your mind, circling around, getting the wheels turning. You’ve both had sex to be able to say you’re human together, that you’re alive. It’s only now a problem come morning and Robby’s still next to you. His side is pressed up against yours, one arm snug around your shoulders, folded over your bare chest with delicate fingers just skimming over your breast still. The weight of what’s been done starts to crush you. This is going to mess up your arrangement. The co-parenting plan you’ve nailed for your daughter.

Romi.

Her name starts to chant in your head. You feel like a monster. A well fed, thoroughly pleased and excellently fucked monster. Your hands drag down you face as she shame washes over you. There’s a pit in your stomach at what you’ve done. The thing you silently begged for Robby to forgive you for is right on the tip of your tongue, the tongue you’ve had in your ex-husband’s mouth not ten minutes ago.

“You have to go.” It leaves you and you hate yourself for it. “I don’t want to risk Romi waking up and finding you here, in my bed.”

A real, genuine laugh rumbles out of Robby. He cranes his neck down to be able to see you properly. “You’re joking. You’re kicking me out?” His eyebrows lift. “After that? After all that?”

The corners of your mouth quirk up along with his. You find the same humour in it as he does. “Don’t do that,” you say while you shove at his chest. “You know why I said it. We can’t risk confusing her. She’s a creature of habit on the nights she doesn’t see me come home.” It’s routine, and you recount the cycle for him, “Romi gets up and she comes in here to check I’m home and awake, and she snuggles with me until her stomach growls and she demands breakfast. If she comes in here and sees you—” you poke at his hairy chest, “what do you think she’s going to think?”

The smug smirk on his face annoys you. Robby’s glinting with mischief when he replies, “That daddy came home, too.”

You want to laugh. You have to really fight it back. “Robby, please. No joking.” Rolling onto your side, you face your ex. You stare up at him and meet his eyes and that very real smile on his face, that, soon, you’ll wipe off. “You know I’m right about this.” You remind him, “We have rules in place. Boundaries.”

“And we broke all the rules and crossed every one of our boundaries last night,” Robby counters back at you. For now, he’s smiling still. The skin by his eyes is crinkled. He’s happy with himself until he isn’t happy with you. His expression falters. The victory he won might be lost in ten minutes. “Jesus Christ, you can’t just kick me out. This is my house too, sweetheart, my name is still on the lease. In fact, my name is still on you as well,” Robby chooses to recount in this moment.

The laugh you’ve been holding back chokes out of you incredulously. “You know why that—”

You don’t finish. You don’t get to finish. The strong argument you have is swallowed up by Robby with a kiss. His arm around your shoulders locks; it brings you in closer to him. Your hand falls to his chest as Robby continues to press his mouth to yours. He kisses you harder. He forces all his hopes into these, trying desperately to sway you around to him like he has done earlier.

When his lips finally leave yours, a “Fuck,” whispers past yours.

That smirk of his is back. His grin is bearing down at you like he’s proud his point is proven. “Exactly.”

“Fuck…” Your head is angled up at him and you grind your jaw mildly, “you, Robby.”

He takes your thin threat, that’s wavering by the second, and pulls you to be completely flush to him. “Moan it next time, I might believe you,” he says into your ear. “Because the only thing I believe right now is how if I slip my fingers between your legs, I’ll find just how much you want to keep me in our bed.”

“It hasn’t been our bed in over a y—year…” While you speak, Robby manages to cut you off. His free hand, the one not trapping your body to his, cups your centre. His middle finger parts your folds and he finds that pretty, little bud of yours with extreme ease. “Oh, my god.”

“There? Right there, yeah.” Robby plays with you. The tip of his finger rubs circles around your clit. He doesn’t even need any lubrication to make those fantastic, electrifying circles feel smooth; you’ve gotten wet between the clean-up because of how turned on you still are. “I can feel you wanna go again, baby. This perfect pussy of yours is soaked and that’s not the sign you want me gone…” he says confidently. “Not yet.”

It’s a yelp that causes you to struggle to get his name out. It splits on your tongue. It catches in your throat, the only dry part of you. “Rob—by.”

The circles change. It’s not his finger toying it your clit now. His finger has slipped down and, along with his index, enters you. What’s circling your beating clit is the pad of his thumb and it’s wonderful. It’s got just enough pressure, just enough coarseness, to make you mewl again.

Again, Robby’s mouth hovers over yours, which parts with a silent moan. “I promise you, I’ll help you get off now. Then, I’m going to fuck you again,” Robby asserts to you, and you know he’s not lying. “And I’m going to remember to wake up an hour before our kid does, because I know she’s a creature of habit too and that girl of ours hasn’t woken up before six since she was a toddler or unless she’s ill— Is she ill?” asks Robby, and you shake your head. You pant into his mouth while those fingers move in and out, in and out. He curls them up against the front wall of your vagina, and Robby says, “And she hasn’t been a toddler in a while, so.” Robby’s fingers work harder. They thrust into you slower, more forceful, and Robby delights when you moan directly into his mouth. It drives him on. He gets a resurgence of authority over you. “So, I’m going to make sure I wake up an hour before six and I’m going to fuck my wife again. Because if I’m walking out of my house, then, you best believe I’m doing it after I’ve had you twice more and I’ve slept tonight in the bed that we bought.”

A raw whisper wrecks you, “Okay.”

Robby’s brown, lust-fuelled eyes land on yours. He holds you glazed stare while he checks, “Okay?”

You become too eager. You’re nodding fast as your walls flutter around his fingers and he adds speed to how he swipes your clit. “Okay.”

“Good. Now cum,” Robby orders, and you obey with a long whine that he captures up with his lips again.

It’s a problem for you. True to his word, Robby does precisely what he tells you he will. Unlike last night, this morning feels riskier, too dangerous. What happened before, the twice he had you in the dark, that’s kindling compared when daylight arrives. This is playing with fire. And Robby encourages it. He stokes it. He tends to the flames like he wants to be caught, like he wants to traumatise your child when she discovers years later that her daddy wasn’t ‘play-fighting’ with mommy at all and ends up in therapy because the sight of his naked ass while he drills into you isn’t one she can push back into a box once it’s out.

The clean-up after is swift. You shower again. Less than eight hours ago it was to get rid of the stench of death and blood that clung to you. Now, it’s because you covered in Robby. He offers to shower with you, but you turn him down because you’re cutting it too closely after he spent twenty minutes teasingly eating you out when you both woke up.

You think if you go in the shower, Robby will take it as your invite out of here. Your quiet way of pushing him out and along. However, Robby either doesn’t get your hints or is actively choosing to ignore them. The latter seems more like the Robby you know, but any ire you hold for him when you see he hasn’t left yet disappears when you spy his helpfulness. You exit the bathroom to find a now-dressed, in the same clothes you gave him last night, Robby has stripped the bed and remade the bed for you.

Shaking your head, you mention, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“We’re less than fifteen minutes from six,” Robby tells you, “I saved you a job.” He shrugs off his good deed like it’s nothing. He’s stripped and changed this exact bed hundred of times before. Robby thinks he’s missed the chore so long as it’s this bed he’s making. So long as it’s you he’s making it for. Committing himself to that, silently in his head, Robby travels over to your freshly showered and now dressed figure. His arms snake around you, hands settling on your lower back as he hugs you to him, acting like what you have between you is romantic. “Because I’m guessing you don’t want our daughter to be snuggling in the same sheets we ruined last night.”

“I want no association between last night and our daughter,” you inform him, bordering on serious. There’s still, however, a playful lilt to your words. But it doesn’t linger long. “Unless,” you start, “it’s to rehash our boundaries.”

Something about the mix of the three times you’ve had sex in the recent hours, how you’re allowing his hands to venture lower even now and how Robby never quite takes you wholly serious in moments paired with the first two anyway, causes him to find humour. He jokes with you, “Ah, the boundaries. And rules. Let’s not forget the rules. I seem to remember you said something about rules, that we broke,” Robby points out, reminding your exactly of how it all went down.

Still, you don’t waver even if your head spins with all the lewd memories of what you two did in the bed behind you. You accuse him right back, “You broke.”

At it, Robby guffaws. “Me, alone? By myself?” He’ll be laughing at you if it doesn’t seem so mean in this moment. “I broke the rules without any help from you?” His brows lift above enlarging eyes and his head bobbles side to side as he considers what memories he has of his own flashing in his head as he looks at you. It makes him double-down on his teasing. “Well, I have a different recollection, but I do remember doing most of the work," he says, ducking down to conclude the last part as a husky whisper in your ear.

You shove at his chest. It lands with a hard thud. “Ugh, you pig,” you curse him out, disgust clipping at your tongue, as you go to shove him again.

Yet, Robby’s quicker. He predicts you’ll go in for a second hit and Robby grabs your wrist first. His hold burns. It fiercely winds around your wrist and Robby yanks you back to him, forcing you to collide with his large chest. “I liked doing most of the work.” His eyes pin you to the spot, unflinching. “I will do most of the work every time in the future if we talk about this, properly.”

The last part clenches at your heart. This is the part you dreaded when you let your body silence your mind and take control. That you prayed Robby would forgive you for. At the way this is going, you know there’s plenty of forgiveness he won’t give you.

“Robby, there is nothing to talk about,” you say, as you try to let your ex-husband down gently. “Last night, while it was great—”

“Amazing,” he cuts in. That smile of his is back and he’s nodding far too much, the way he does when he’s hiding just how upset or frustrated he is. “I remember amazing was used.”

It’s making you exasperated. He’s making you feel crazy for defending yourself — for arguing against this. You hate the feeling so you throw back at him, “By you, yes.”

Craning his neck back, Robby bears down at you. He questions what you’ve said, your words, your slightly wavering responses. “You don’t think it was amazing? Because we can run this back right now if you…”

“Stop.” Your eyes are clenched shut. What happens is a yelp, halfway to scream. Your palms are laid flat to his chest and your push, just a little, just enough to have him pause. “Stop. Robby, please.” You shake your head and fight how your tiredness makes you want to drop your head right in the place where your hands rest. But that doesn’t happen. You don’t do what your body tells you to do now because you can’t quieten your mind anymore. “I don’t want to have to do this with you now. Not when Romi’s about to wake up. Not when we’ve had this same conversation before.”

“But we haven’t—”

“Yes, Robby, we have,” you interrupt, arguing once again. “And—”

“Last night was different,” Robby defends, harsher. "It was different than the times before. What I said." He’s like a whippet with it. He’s too quick and what he’s bringing up shuts whatever you want to say down. “You’ve heard that from me? Because I promise you, you didn’t up until last night,” Robby avows to most definitely. “What I said to you—Jesus fucking Christ, I opened up to you,” he now accuses. “I said I love you and I apologised for all those things I did.”

Hotly, mainly because you feel targeted, you retort, “Did you?” It stills him for a moment. The shock pierces Robby, and he drops his stake on you. His touch, too. “Did you apologise, or did you ask me to forgive you? Because there’s a really big difference.”

Robby shaking his head at you, mouth pressed in a thin line. “That’s not fair. Last night—”

“—Last night was hell,” you intercept. It paralyses Robby. He stumbles back, stunned despite how well last night went in his head. But that’s not what you’re referring to. You’re putting everything else together — the things before the two of you. Your hands clasp together in a prayer and you say, “We had both gone through so much, seen too much, and we found comfort in each other, Robby. That is what happened.” You think you come on too strongly. You’ve been too harsh with him. You can see it now as his eyes start to fill and your guilt spreads. You reach for him. “Robby, I love you. Listen to me, I love you,” you tell him sincerely, as you grab at his face, fingers scratching through his beard. “I care about you. I care about you so much. I don’t regret, I—I just can’t…” You trail off, weakening, as tears brim your own gaze. Your defeated hands fall from him. “I can’t go there with you again. We have Romi to think about.”

There’s reluctance in him; it’s easy to find. Robby wears it all over his features, threaded through every line. His eyes have only looked this sad and broken twice before: the day Adamson died and the night you told him your marriage was over — and he didn't fight it. It’s probably the same as what Robby thinks about now because he looks off to compose himself, to not give too much of himself away just like he did that night. Although, you’ve already seen it. He made himself vulnerable to you last night, you saw the worst of it leak out of him, and now Robby has to pretend he had plug it again. It feels a lot like drowning to him.

So, he nods and, in distress, Robby runs his hand over his beard. “Right,” he sighs.

“She comes first, Robby,” you tell him, not that it feels good, not that you want this.

But Robby repeats it for you so you know he’s heard you, so you know he’s respecting your choice. “She comes first.”

Your throat tightens. Your eyes swim with tears, and you whisper, “Thank you.”

The two of you go quiet. Your bedroom doesn’t feel as loved anymore. Its space feels as though it is sucking you through a vacuum-pack and you can’t breathe. Robby must share your feelings because he sucks in a sharp breath and struggles to release it.

When he looks at you again, finally looks at you, he looks resigned. He knows he’s lost that victory, the one he celebrated too early. “I should go,” he says. “Romi will be up soon.”

“I’ll… make sure I get those scrubs back to you,” you reply, unsure if you have anything else you can say to him. Nothing you have will make this better for Robby. You’ve just snipped his last rope to the life-raft.

After a beat, Robby says, “Thanks,” and then, he breaks for the door.

You don’t know why you can’t stop yourself from following him down. In your arms, you have the proof of last night. You hold the laundry basket with sheets, covered in both you and Robby, completely aware that you can’t leave them in that room. Your room. You can’t go back to bed and pretend Robby wasn’t lying with you in it forty minutes ago. You can’t wait to hear the front door shut from that spot either.

Robby finds his boots where you left them in the downstairs toilet. They’re clean. He thanks you for it again. The wine you didn’t finish still sits in the windowsill where you left it. It makes you feel sick. You hate the remind of unfinished things. It feels like poking a stick at your marriage, at your love for Robby. But he’s never loved you without Romi being here. He didn’t love you enough to do what he did last night when you begged him for it before, where you screamed at him to open up and Robby firmly padlocked the door on whatever ate him up. It’s the reason you’re here. It’s the reason he’s not here. It’s why he’s leaving the house you once shared together.

“Mommy?”

Behind you, your head goes back up the stairs. You hear Romi’s little voice, all tired and sweet. In the middle of the staircase, Romi slumps down in her rainbow-striped pyjamas, rubbing the sleep from her eyes while holding on tight to Bun-Bun’s leg. Her confused, tiny face looks so innocent as her stare drags from you to the front door, which is open, and Robby stands beside.

“Daddy?” Romi blinks twice, checking, too much like Robby. She realises he’s real and she’s not dreaming him up. “Daddy, what you doin’ here?”

You’re caught. Busted by a four-year-old. Your panicked lips part with an answer you’re ill-equipped to give and she’s far too young to understand.

Yet, you’re not alone. You don’t have to flounder and search for a convincing lie to tell your daughter because Robby’s already thought one up. “I’m here for breakfast, lovebug,” Robby claims, and your eyes snap to him. “Yeah, breakfast. You want pancakes and bacon, right? Plenty of maple syrup.”

He speaks it like this has always been the plan. He says it so naturally, so believably, you wonder if this is just something that’s slipped your brain. And worse, it works. Romi’s getting excited. She warms up into it, steadily losing the rest of her just woken up state to see that her daddy’s come over for breakfast.

“Really?” Romi comes down a couple more steps, a grin slowly pulling at her face. “Why you early?”

“Gotta be early to have breakfast, don’t I?” Robby returns, and it’s the most perfect reply.

Romi slips in by you first. Your hand worms around her head, stroking her frazzled curls out of her face, and you use the gentle hold you have on her head to bring it in. You lean down and kiss her forehead. “Good morning, lovebug," you greet, using the same affectionate nickname you and Robby long settled on for her.

“Good mornin’, Mommy,” Romi says to you, still half-asleep but very happy. To her, this is the single, most greatest surprise. It’s the type of thing you and Robby have done for her before, just never this early and never after three rounds of sex with your ex. Romi gives a big yawn, telling you that she needed those extra ten or so minutes you and Robby stole from her when she no doubt heard the pair of you either bicker or go downstairs. Her eyes squeeze shut with it and she holds her small hand to her mouth.

“Oh, that is a sleepy girl,” Robby comments. He crouches low and Robby holds out his arms for her. “Come here, my sleepy girl, come give me a cuddle. I miss your cuddles,” he says, as he beckons your daughter to him. It doesn’t take much for Romi to step off and into her father’s arms. There’s practically nowhere she’ll rather rest her head. And with the way she drops it straight to his shoulder, you have a sneak suspicion that Romi will drop off back to sleep for those stolen minutes really soon.

You accept that this is the next turn in your morning. You’re not getting rid of Robby so easily today, which, honestly, ease your guilt for both rejecting him and sending him to spend the day alone after a mass-casualty. He’s planted himself in your home and, because of it, you shut the door. “Guess you’re staying for breakfast,” you mutter, as you pick up the laundry basket again. “Funny how that all works out for you, huh.”

They’re behind you again. They’re following you through to the kitchen where you dump the laundry basket on the counter, a touch more peeved than you’ll like Romi to see you. Not that she sees anything past the fabric of her father’s t-shirt. You hope, as you pour the detergent into the drawer of the washing machine, Romi won’t notice he smells like you. Like this house. Like her. Like you.

“Daddy?” Romi’s tired voice pipes up, curiosity laced within.

Robby acknowledges her while he watches you fondly from the doorway. He sways with Romi in his arms, her bottom resting against his strong arms and his little arms stretching around his neck. “Hmm?”

“Shoes off,” Romi says.

“Yeah, that’s the rule. No shoes on in the house,” Robby returns softly.

With a tiny shake of her head, Romi says, “Nuh—oh, Daddy. Shoes already off,” she states, puzzled as her smaller brain tries to make sense of what her eyes previously soaked in. “Off when I come down. Off when I say mornin’,” yawns Romi, and afters she does, her eyes flutter close. She taps her father’s chest twice and sleep peacefully takes her again.

From it, you look over to Robby. Your eyes lock with his. His are already pinned to you, knowing too well that your smart daughter has noted something you both never think she will, that you think you can get away with. As Robby holds your shared child, half of you and half of him so beautifully blended, a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. You scoff a laugh and exchange the washed scrubs from yesterday for the spent sheets you both ruined last night and this morning. It doesn’t matter if you draw the new line, course-correct those boundaries and create a few more rules, what’s done is done, and Robby knows that you know that.

And Romi might know it, too.

(because i heard Garcia say, “you’re gonna make a great ex-husband one day, robinavitch” and i took that personally)