Kaylia

Let's start with my tags and their purposes. These can also be found within the tags at the bottom of the post to easily search the blog!

#kaylia.exe -> all kinds of my writing excerpts

#kaylia.archive -> all fic-posts, introducing their AO3 version

#kaylia.inbox -> any asks coming in (prompts will also be marked with .exe)

#the robinavitch case -> thoughts and processes on that series

#Anonymous Aftercare -> my Omega!Robby and Alpha!Jack universe, I am building!

My current rabbot fics or introspectives that I have created thus far!

The Robinavitch Case (Explicit) (ongoing) ao3 | tumblr point taken (Mature) ao3 | tumblr just this once (Gen) ao3 | tumblr In His Defense (He Didn't Use a Clicker) (Gen) ao3 | tumblr Loneliness Hangover (Mature) ao3 | tumblr

The game was on the third quarter now, but Robby had stopped actively paying attention to it somewhere around the second.

It wasn't his fault though. The Knicks were down by eleven and Jack had been giving a shitload of commentary that had very little to do with basketball and a lot more to do with his personal beef with specific players that Robby knew dated back years. It was background noise in the best way possible. That kind Robby's brain didn't have to do anything with and could instead just… turn off.

Unfortunately though, that plan hadn't panned out the way he intended, because for some damn reason, something was different today, compared to the many times he had constructed this situation. Instead of being able to just exist in the proximity that was so much more than just a ball game, Michael was aware the entire time.

Aware of the fact that Jack's arm was laying along the back of the couch.

Now… that wasn't unheard of and far from the first time it had happened, but today, during his shift, he had overheard a singular piece of a conversation that simply wouldn't let him rest.

'Oh, well that's not surprising. Dr. Robby doesn't really like being touched.'

Which… was true. To some degree, but instead of just appreciating the fact that his boundaries were being respected and communicated, Robby's mind immediately shot to the fact that he wanted nothing more than being touched. Nothing. More. Yet never would allow himself that.

The arm was not around him and that was the thing. It was just… there. Draped over the cushions lining the back of the couch; Like Jack needed somewhere to put it, the back of the couch was both convenient and comfy and Robby just happened to be there. Entirely without ulterior motive. Just like every time.

Now Michael had become aware of it in the way one became aware of a sound that'd been going for a while. Not immediately as it started, but after some internal threshold had gotten surpassed and ones brain decided that it was time to register it now. The warmth of that arm sitting almost-but-not-quite on his shoulders- The fact that if he shifted back even just a minimal amount-

But Michael didn't shift back.

Instead he thought about why not.

He thought about Santos who'd grabbed his elbow some two weeks ago to get his attention. How Robby had shifted away without taking his attention off her, responded and then spent the next ten minutes utterly aware of his own elbow as if it was an open wound in need of navigating around. He thought about how touch lands wrong on him usually. Acting as too much information. Too much intimacy for what it pretended to be. People touching him to get his attention or a point across and his body logged every single instance of it with a faint, persistent static he'd learned to just- live with.

Maybe he didn't like touch after all.

Jack's arm hadn't moved and there was no static to report.

However, this time that was the part he kept returning to, circling it without landing on the conclusion. That silence, where a clear discomfort about the incoming touch would be. But… He was fine. More than fine actually.

Michael was sitting there in that specific warmth of Jack not-quite-touching him and some traitorous part of him had been quietly cataloguing the exact distance between Jack's arm and his shoulders. Wanting. Wanting in a way that had nothing to do with anything reasonable for that distance to close.

Michael wanted it the way he wanted things he never let himself have. Badly and without any logic tied to it, and underneath everything else, like a damn frequency his body's been broadcasting for so long he'd forgotten it was there in the first place.

The problem - and he saw this very clearly - was that if this were anyone else on that couch, he wouldn't want it. He'd be managing it. Smiling, staying still, waiting for it to be over. But the wanting and the aversion seemingly ran on the same track, the same wire, which meant the only touch that didn't make him want to crawl out of his skin, was the exact touch he couldn't ever afford letting himself need.

Because Jack would notice. Of course he fucking would.

Jack who had known him for long enough to read him even when Robby was actively working on being unreadable in his expressions and actions. Jack, who could see through every facade of his and butt his way head first through any stubbornness he put on.

If he shifted back in the slightest and Jack's arm were to settle around his shoulders, then something in Robby's face would change and betray him. Which Jack would clock immediately. Which would then turn into a moment of Michael baring himself in a way he hadn't even allowed himself to look at for a long time.

So he sat precisely the way he did. He held his beer in his hand and he watched the Knicks.

When the Knicks score, Jack's arm lifts off the couch, accompanying his huff of disapproval.

"Clean shot," Robby says, his voice a little wobbly from the stiffness in his neck. He said it because it was a clean shot and because he needed to be saying something out loud after all this time. Certainly not because the absence of the arm behind him had landed in his soul like a damn sinking anchor.

"It wasn't a clean-" Jack turned to stare at him with a fully betrayed look in his eyes; then his hand dropped right onto Robby's head and tipped it forward the way one were to dunk someone in a cake. "Robby!"

When he was satisfied with the punishment of straining Robby's neck, Jack looked forward again at the TV. His hand however, didn't move back to the top of the couch. Instead it just… stayed.

Shifting slightly from the top of his head down to the back of Michael's neck, Jack's fingers settled at his nape with something that could only be the absolute thoughtlessness of familiarity. Like they had simply found the exact place they'd wanted to go and stopped there.

Robby didn't say anything. He wasn't sure if he could if he wanted to in the first place.

His body was frozen in place as he was more than just aware than moving a single muscle would lead to that hand leaving his skin, moving somewhere far away from him again.

The Knicks scored again and distantly, Jack said something about it. The commentary continues as the game went on, but Michael heard none of it. He sat in the warm, unbearable and completely ordinary fact that Jack's hand was draped across the back of his neck and had to admit that it changed something within him.

Something in his chest had gotten very quiet, settled down for the first time of what felt ages, held in place by a touch that he'd craved for even longer.

The thick fingers wrapping around the base of his skull didn't rest but instead let their tips run through the short hairs in Michael's nape.

If the Knicks lost by fourteen, several minutes later, Michael didn't see it.

How was he supposed to, with how heavy and deep his breaths had gotten, grounding him in the moment. How was he supposed to notice with how hazy and blurry his vision had turned, giving him no chance to even guess what had been going down on that screen. How was he supposed to notice anything, when there was this warm buzz spreading from his nape and seeping into every limb, making it impossible to focus.