miles ⭐️🌀

you’re rewarded for your observant nature when your eyes finally land on a crowded high top table just to your right. you don’t even have to turn much in your chair to get a good view of the man at the head of the table. it had to be him, you just knew it. the table was cramped with bottles and glasses, chairs squished so men and women could all fit. but there’s only one man that voice could belong to. you just knew it was him.

“want in on another round?”

the hand on your wrist startles you, pulling you completely out of your thoughts. your friends' dark eyes search yours as you scramble for a response. you reach for your glass, the last dredges of your vodka cranberry diluted with melted ice. you smile at your friend, “i’d love another, thanks.”

you give her a grateful smile as she squeezes your wrist before turning in the direction of the bar. you take the last sip of your drink, trying to put that voice out of your mind. your stomach tugs with guilt and shame reminding you what you’re actually here for, to catch up with your closest friends. but your eyes quickly fall back to that goddamn high top when a voice from that table exclaims, rather loudly, “oh, come on, robby!”

robby. robby. robby michael.

you must be dreaming. you must have fallen asleep on your couch instead of making it to the bar because there was no way robby was just a stones throw away from you right now. before, you had just been caught in the fantasy, of the what-if of it being robby, but it had to be just some other guy named robby, right? a few more moments of eavesdropping makes your stomach twist because the voice is just too spot on.

“ohoh, you’re so going to pay for that, brat.”

you had stumbled across robby a few months ago, he was new on the website and typically you didn’t stray too far from your rotation of voices, but you had made an exception for him. it had been his profile picture that really piqued your interest, it was a close up selfie that cut off right below his eyes.

he had a full, but well trimmed beard and your eyes had immediately darted between all the grey sprinkled in the dark hair, finally landing on the grey patch on his chin. you had always loved a man that was capable of growing a thick, full beard. and his nose. god, his nose. a strong, built nose that sat perfectly on his long face. you were smitten from that picture alone.

and his voice. his voice ruined you for every other guy on the app. his voice was deep and gravely, it definitely came with age, which you certainly had no complaints about. he had a handful of audios regarding age gaps, with him being all sorts of older and domineering figures, which always left you feeling incredibly wet. but even with the obvious tropes he was very clever and creative when it came to his audios.

one of your favorites of his was a short series he did where he played the owner of a used bookstore. his voice was so soft as he had read passages from a book that you couldn’t remember, the sounds of pages turning completely calming your brain. there was a first time audio that you had listened to at least a dozen times at this point, his voice had been so sweet and gentle right in your ear. and the audio that made you squirm the most just thinking about it was a gynecology roleplay he did, you had sighed out dr. robby as you came that night.

“everything feels perfectly normal, miss, but let me add another finger just to be sure.”

and maybe it was a little bit pathetic, cumming to a voice nearly every night that you would never know, so that's why you kept that part of yourself locked away. never talked about it with your friends because it was your dirty little secret. so that’s why this whole situation, is your worst fucking nightmare.

you look over again, stealing a peek of the scene before you. he’s still at the head of the table, nursing a glass of dark liquor while listening to the guy next to him tell a story using mostly his hands. they look to be the oldest ones at the table, robby with his deep crows feet and his friend with his silver curls.

it wasn’t like they were significantly older than the rest of the men and women around them, but some of them were in much flashier clothing. more appropriate for a nightclub than for a casual bar. maybe they were going to a club later, seemingly having much more energy than robby, with his ruddy cheeks and his tired eyes.

shame washes over you, feeling like a voyeur, as you turn away from the group as your friends return from the bar with more drinks. you gladly take yours, more so chewing on the straw to give you something to do as you try to tap back in on the conversation at hand. luckily, it was one of your closer friends rehashing work drama she’d already called you about earlier in the week. it gives you the opportunity to sit back and throw in comments when appropriate and within a few minutes you’re enthralled in the conversation again.

but your eyes can’t help but cut back to that high top table when you hear the sounds of chairs scraping against the bar floor. you watch as the younger girls of the group, dressed in skirts and kitten heels, get up from their seats. you overhear drawn out goodbyes and mentions of “stay together” and “don’t get too fucked up”. but the timber of robby’s voice cuts right through to you. “i’ll walk you guys out, gotta hit the bathroom, anyway.”

he walks behind the girls, making their way past your table towards the front of the bar. “god, robby, already breaking the seal after just one beer?” one of the girls jokes, familiar humor in her voice.

you watch as robby’s face scrunches up in an annoyed huff of breath, “oh, santos, you’ll understand when you’re my age.”

the teasing lilt of his voice washes over you, your eyes taking long drags over his body as he passes by. he's tall, that's what you first notice. he towers over the girls even in their heels. but he's not imposing, instead he walks behind the small group and gives them a wave as they make it out of the bar and he ducks into the bathrooms tucked into the corner by the front entrance.

the salt and pepper in his hair wasn't surprising, you knew he was older and it showed quite clearly in his profile picture on the site. but seeing all the grey in his well kept beard in person? you had to squeeze your thighs together when he finally came back to his now much less crowded table.

you watch him take his seat at the head again, his shoulders relaxing as he wraps his long fingers around a dewy pint glass. you watch him laugh at something someone says, delighting at the crows feet around his eyes and the way his cheeks flush. but you feel like your stomach is going to fall out of your ass when his eyes cut directly to you. oh shit. he caught you staring.

you feel your eyes widen in embarrassment as he unfortunately holds eye contact with you, before you finally get it together enough to dart your eyes away. you look down at your sugary cocktail, bringing your shaky hand up to the glass. you take a long sip, giving yourself something to do as you try to slow down your erratic heart beat.

you firmly set down your glass, the ice rattling at the bottom, the dredges of your vodka cranberry coloring the pieces a soft pink. the coolness of the glass helps to ground you a little bit. you tell yourself that even though it kind of feels like it, it's absolutely not the end of the world that you were caught staring.

after a few more moments, you force yourself back into the conversation happening around you. you turn your back fully to the man, not allowing yourself to get distracted by him for the rest of the night. but your new position makes you miss the way his eyes shine in delight and his lips curl into a barely there smile. your gaze sends a spark up his spine and even though you don’t allow him another look at your face for the rest of the night, he still shamelessly watches you as you leave the bar with your girlfriends.

the following days are frustrating to say the least and you end up falling into a cycle of remembering being caught by robby, feeling so embarrassed, and then trying to push the whole thing from your mind completely. but, nothing helps. you can’t stop thinking about him. his hands, his beard, his eyes, his voice were all you could think about and it was becoming a major problem.

you were also experiencing another problem, you hadn’t been able to get off since that night. you had banned yourself from listening to any of robby's audios in the following days, but nobody else on the site did it for you anymore, so you were left feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.

but, you end up aimlessly scrolling through the app anyways, just like tonight. multiple new audios were uploaded to the site earlier that morning, but nothing sounded even remotely interesting to you. then you saw it, the slope of his perfect nose in his profile picture. you couldn’t help but feel like he was mocking you by uploading so soon after your blunder. but then your stomach drops when you see the title of his audio, “Meet Cute at the Bar”. oh no. then your eyes skim over the tags he's included, [M4F] [Strangers to Lovers] [Banter] [Slow Burn] [First Time] [Gentle] [Praise] [Curve Appreciation]. but what really gets you is the summary, “I caught you looking from across the bar, mind if I join you?"

you’re pressing play before you can even think about what you’re doing. your ears are initially filled with mindless chatter and the clinking of pint glasses, background noise, before you hear robby's all too familiar voice, “this seat taken?” followed by the sound of him settling into what you assumed was a bar stool. “i know us locking eyes for all of 5 seconds isn’t exactly an invitation for me to come over and bother you, but i guess i’m pressing my luck tonight.”

he follows it up with a laugh, a barely there huff of breath that you've become very familiar with. robby knew how to flirt, which was something that you might have found dickish in other guys, but with robby there was always a sort of bashfulness to it. you scroll down to the comments, reading through the gushing praise that was par for the course for any of the man's audios. when you scroll down to the end, though, you find that the first comment left on the audio was from…robby.

“Made eyes with a gorgeous woman across the bar a few days ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since. Tried to get over it by recording this but, I'm still stuck on her.”

robby's lips curl, warming at the memory.

"'course i remember. had to lick the cum off your legs in the car after so you wouldn't leak on my seats."

the sound of your chuckle ricochets through robby's entire body, flipping a switch only you can reach. one that has his lips dragging back across your skin, plush and swollen as they slide along your neck.

he doesn't have to suckle the skin long for your already-weak barriers to fall, and you're hanging over him on your knees, panties pulled to the side as his tip nudges right against your slit.

robby lingers long kisses into your chin, filling his lungs with the hot air you puff out every time he slips past your entrance and pulls out before he forgets not go any further.

"see," he pants. "like i said—just the tip."

His hair is a little longer, faux hawk grown out awkwardly as if he hasn’t had the time to get a proper hair cut. His beard, more grown out and patchy in the place you always used to kiss. The tired lines and shadows around his brown eyes only thinly veiled the surprise in them when he looks at you.

Robby looked like he hadn’t slept thoroughly in weeks. But of course you’d know that, you had lived together for a year after all.

In his shopping basket: tagliatelle pasta from the brand he always got because you liked it, a jar of the off brand tomato sauce you definitely didn’t like, a brick of the espresso you both used to drink together, and some other bare essentials.

He looked….over it all. You could see it in his sad eyes, conflicting emotions thinly veiled by his slow blinks.

And god damn it, the way he smiled at you in the way that made your stomach flip. The way his hand moved made you feel like the ground should open you up and swallow you.

It had been a year since the break up.

You were forced to choose between your relationship and your career. Robby wanted you to choose yourself - he easily had at least almost two decades on you, prattling on about some nonsense of not wanting to steal your youth. And the way you cried made him hurt in a way that he hadn’t known for a long time, wanting to be with him through whatever life had left to give him.

You hated it, the way that there was no way to be fair about any of it. Not with the way your hearts broke because nothing about his schedule let you live a life that wasn’t constantly tearing you apart.

It’s not like you weren’t friends, but neither of you hadn’t spoken since you had moved out of his place.

“Hey..” Your voice is awkward and small, nothing like the first time you had met him at that bar, walking up to him full of tipsy swagger.

Robby doesn’t say anything, but his eyes said it all as he scans you over. You had to be real, because only you would buy the hot water pack with the cute design on it and those god awful sour licorice candies he hated. There used to be a drawer in his kitchen filled with all the snacks you’d have to bribe him to try with a kiss. Cutely designed things that made his house feel like home that he never had the heart to take down.

You were present in his home long after you’d gone. A forgotten bottle of perfume on his dresser. Your pictures on the fridge. A post-it note with your rushed half cursive half print handwriting reminding him his coffee tumbler was by the keys on the counter. Books about places you wanted to travel to together with tabs in between the pages.

Robby had given you every right to leave him, and you did. But he couldn’t let you go.

“You look…” He shifts the weight on his feet, trying to decide if he should stay or go, “good.”

“Yeah um..i-it’s good to see you too. How are you?”

“I’ve been good..” He clears his throat, “Better.”

There’s a kind of silence that expresses all the hurt left unsaid, and the bridges yet crossed.

If you admitted how seeing him now made you feel, what would even happen anyway? That’s not how the world always worked.

“ ‘sit that time?” He asked, nodding to your basket, and you only nod.

“Yeah, I can’t find that painkiller you got me last time? I can’t remember what the name of it is but it was something with an ‘n’ ?”

“Naproxen sodium.” He finishes for you helpfully, carefully stepping into your space to help you search the highest shelf. “Looks like they’re all out. I have some at ou-my place, if you want to come over and have something to eat?”

The words are out of his mouth before either of you realize, your heads turning in disbelief.

Robby uses his free hand to rub his neck nervously, lips tightening in a thin line. The way you’re looking at him, scared and undecided, makes him feel foolish. As if he over stepped a line that he had annoyingly established against himself.

The silence between you two floats in such a fragile way, Robby doesn’t know if he’s ready to bare the heartbreak all over again. Despite not knowing what he wanted out of this beyond this moment, he knew he couldn’t miss the serendipity life had planned for you.

You’re looking at him as if you’re trying to convince both of you that missing each other wasn’t supposed to happen.

But fuck, if it wasn’t hard to make good on boundaries where Robby was concerned.

This felt like the first time he officially asked you out, except on a much weirder scale.

There’s a warmth that washes over Robby’s face when he sees you smile shakily, trying to keep yourself from crying as you nod.

You’re far too exhausted from the pain to argue with him about paying for both of your things, so the only thing you do is stare as he pays, and he dares to take your hand in his big, warm one as he leads you back to the place you both used to call home.

–

It’s a special kind of nostalgia how home can still feel and smell like home, no matter how long you’ve been away.

You were curled up on Robby’s expensive leather couch, on the L-shaped corner you loved so much, under one of the heavy blankets with the kitschy lion design that his neighbour Maria gifted him one time for recommending a vet friend of his to take a look at her sick dog.

It was the couch that had seen i’s fair share of period cramps and Robby holding you when he used to be able to soothe your pain away.

The show he put on serves as a welcomed background noise while he makes the both of you something to eat. He insisted on you eating a banana before dinner, to at least have something in your stomach before taking the medicine he promised you and long enough to hold off until food was served.

The conversation during dinner is easy enough, with the show serving as more than welcomed distraction for the silences in between.

–

Somehow, Robby is relieved you haven’t run away from him yet.

Sitting next to you while watching another show about some 19th century New York City tycoon, he thinks it’s a little sad that it’s been this long since he’s had anyone over.

There’d been a lot of sleepless nights for him. The kind where he’d forget that he had pushed you away from something you’d never been afraid of. Where he’d wake up expecting to find you there, and being met with the coldness of the reality that living without was like living without air. A forever that was too long without you.

You’re cocooned into your favorite corner of the couch again, trying not to care that you were at your ex’s fiancee’s house and he was taking care of you as if nothing had happened.

You adjust the way you’re sitting, mostly ignoring how you can feel Robby’s eyes on you when you tuck your feet just below his thigh to keep them warm.

Fuck, he felt like he wanted to explode.

Robby tries to ignore the way his heart is about to jump through his throat when he dares to put a hand on your foot, giving it a small squeeze before resting on your ankle, rubbing small circles there with his thumb.

“I uh…” He coughs, feeling his eyes and throat sting with the weight of all the things he should’ve said to you a long time ago, “I missed doing this with you. I miss you.”

“Robby, that’s-” Your heart sank. How were you even supposed to respond to that?

Robby sighs, his other hand rubbing his face before pinching the bridge of his nose. He tosses the remote aside, letting it clatter on the coffee table before looking at you.

“Please, let me just say this.” You sigh defeatedly, nodding at him to go on, “I was an insecure ass. I was so afraid of what I could give you, what I have left to give you. I was an asshole and assumed what you wanted. Put words in your mouth that weren’t even true. And I regret that every day since I pushed you out. I’m so fucking sorry for all of it.”

“Robby, I don’t even…” This hurt so much fucking worse than the cramping, “We were together for four years. I chose you every single day. You don’t think I don’t know my own mind?”

“I know.”

“You broke my fucking heart, Robby.”

“I know.”

Fuck, when he looked like this - like a sad puppy that just wanted to be held, it made your heart squeeze. You hated how he beat himself up when it came to his personal life so much. Hated how he felt like he couldn’t trust himself to feel safe enough to want things that were good for him.

“You didn’t take any of my stuff down.” You continue after a while, not knowing what else to say. Did he want you to accept his apology? To say you were moving back in tomorrow?

Robby busies his hands with your ankles, massaging them softly and noticing how cold they were.

“Just never got around to it.” He adds, “I wasn’t really home a lot, only came back to sleep, if I could even do that. The nightmares started a little after you, I..”

Something between a sniffle and a sigh escapes you, and you remove your legs from his lap so you can get off the couch. Fuck, you wanted to hug him and hold him and will away all the hurt he still carried, but you needed that from him, with the way he broke your heart into pieces.

“C-can we go to bed please?” You asked, almost embarrassed of the idea of missing him at all. “It’s late and I don’t feel like calling a cab.”

“S-sure, yeah, alright.”

It’s almost comical, watching a 6’2” man scramble after you after turning everything off. You didn’t even wait for him while walking to the bedroom you used to share, nor when you slowly crawled under the blue sheets that smelled so much like him and felt like a home that had been aching for you.

Robby walks into the bedroom, something conflicting washing over his face.

“Let me get you the heated blanket, I should still have it.”

“Can you get my socks? The fluffy ones?”

Robby hums, disappearing for a moment before coming back with the things and helping you settle into bed. His hands shake a little, as if he was touching you to make sure you wouldn’t disappear.

“Come to bed, Robby.”

“Y-”

“Please? We can deal with everything else tomorrow.”

For the first time that night, Robby hears the way your voice cracks, like when you’re about to cry, and it galvanizes him to tuck himself into bed next to you.

A shaky breath leaves him when you turn around, curling into him and tucking your face into his shoulder. The tears slowly fall from his eyes when he feels you shake, and he scoops you into his arms, trying to will away all the hurt he ever caused you.

“Robby?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I loved you. I still do, so much.”

Robby hugs you tighter to him, placing a soft kiss to the side of your head, breathing you in like you were a balm for his aching. The heated blanket between you, slowly healing all the hurt that sat like a soggy spot in the mattress.

There was definitely a conversation to be had, but for now? You’d let each other indulge in the idea that not only had you both crossed a physical bridge, but one of the many emotional ones.

–

Robby was so deep inside you, scrambling both nerves and thoughts and any fucking sense you had that it took you too long to register who it was. You lost precious seconds of potential crisis management to the relentless stroke of his cock inside you, your walls clenching tighter and tighter around him as you were being dangled off the steep cliff of bliss until—

“Fuck—Fuck! Stop—“ You tried to push against him, but it was no use, the man might as well have been a fucking boulder.

Robby only pushed deeper, making it impossible for you to continue your squirming, “Just don’t answer it.”

“He has a key—“

Finally, his hips halted and you watched, stricken, as the pleasure in his eyes slowly drained and was replaced with steady horror as you both heard the jangle of keys outside the door.

He cursed under his breath as he nearly leaped off and out of you—the sudden absence of him leaving you with a feeling of hollowness.

"Get in the closet." You hissed, hopping around as you tried desperately to pull on a pair of pants. You heard the clatter of keys against hardwood and Jack's soft cursing and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for granting you more time.

"You want me to get in the closet?" Robby hissed back as he tried to collect his clothing, strewn haphazardly around the apartment from when you had been frantically making out and ripping each other's clothes off, "Have you seen my shirt?"

"We don't have time for this," You whispered and placed your hands on his chest, pushing him backwards until you were at the closet. You opened the door and unceremoniously shoved him inside it, not waiting for his response before closing the door in his face.

At that same moment, your apartment door opened.

When you started at PTMC as a surgery intern and Jack introduced you to Robby, the infatuation had been almost instant on your end. There was nothing you loved more than a tall, bearded man who could be a little mean. Whenever the ER called down for a surgery resident, you practically jumped at the opportunity, bouncing up and down on your heels as the elevator slowly ticked down, down, down to the Pitt. It had been an effort to finally get him in your bed, more effort than you had probably ever put in for a sexual partner. But it was worth every second.

It was immediately obvious to Robby that you had a chip on your shoulder from being raised in your brother’s shadow, but he was oblivious to your yearnings for an agonizingly long time.

Because your parents had adopted you when Jack was well into high school, he affectionately referred to you as their mid life crisis. Jack adored you, but he was your brother. And so he pushed and teased and mocked your whole life.

So while it was nice that Robby was your type, it was more thrilling to know just how much it would get under Jack's skin to know that Robby was fucking you. Because regardless of your differences, Jack had always been protective of you and you knew he would lose his fucking mind if he knew. And Robby knew it too.

And so, even though part of you wanted Jack to find out, to grant yourself the satisfaction of knowing you had pissed off the unflappable Jack Abbot, most of you was a little nervous to find out what he would do if he found out.

You were running to the front door when Jack walked in, looking at you with confusion as he took in your appearance. Clothes crooked, hair mussed, mascara smudged under your eyelids, face glowing and sticky with exertion.

Slowly a smile stretched across his face, "Are you—Is someone here?"

"No," You said quickly, too quickly, "Just me. What're you doing here?" You hugged your arms around yourself subconsciously.

Jack continued to eye you curiously and held out the Stanley cup in his hand. Your Stanley. "You left this in the Pitt."

You took it reluctantly, "You could've left it at my locker."

"Yeah, I could've, but I wanted to see you. Feel like I haven't seen you in weeks—"

"Well, I'm busy, so. You should've called first." You snapped.

Jack was unbothered though, "Who's here?"

"No one you know. Now could you please get out?"

Jack gave a short laugh, "Right. No one I know. You don't have a social life outside the hospital. You want me to believe you're sleeping with someone I don't know?"

Before you could argue, your eyes caught on a black scrub top to your left, poking out from under the console table in your entryway. You remembered now how you had whined desperately with Robby's body pinning you to the wall until he had pulled it up and over his head.

And Jack followed your gaze, smile only growing when he saw it too, "That's a black scrub top." His eyes went back to yours, "Who are you fucking in the Pitt?"

He was moving towards the shirt and you stepped in front of him, "Jack—"

"Is it Shen?" He was stronger than you, so it wasn't much of a fight for him to push you to the side, "Or… It's not the Whitaker kid, is it?" He made a face as he bent to pick up the scrub top—

When his hand closed around it and he started to straighten to standing, there was a clatter as a badge, forgotten beneath the heap of a shirt, fell back to the floor, face up.

You watched, frozen, as his eyes took in his best friend's smiling face looking up at him from the piece of plastic. You thought from the look on his face, he was probably processing denial for about twenty seconds before he moved to the next stage of grief: anger.