By shift’s end, Jack was exhausted, stubbornness an ache in his bones. There was no particular patient on which he could hang how he felt, no single case that had thwarted their efforts and stolen their win—only the grind of bar fights and food poisoning, a dusting of fevers, traffic accidents and crises in the night. He bumped elbows with Dana as she looked up at the board, but ducked his head and slung his backpack over one shoulder before she could say anything much.
Some days there just weren’t words enough.
Home was quiet and familiar and beautifully dim. Jack dropped his bag inside the door, avoided the kitchen and headed right to the bathroom, stripped with an efficiency of which he was proud. Sitting on the shower bench before he turned on the water he checked on his leg on some kind of autopilot, knowing by touch as much as sight that he was sore but would do.
The water felt sixteen kinds of exactly what he needed, blisteringly hot. He sluiced his disappointments down the drain as effectively as he could.
Their bedroom was dark, the curtains still drawn, but Jack didn’t need daylight to orient himself toward the bed, to lean his crutches against the nightstand or to ease beneath the sheets. Robby grumbled slightly as Jack pressed in close, as he rested his cheek against Robby’s shoulder, and Robby’s hand moved to cradle the back of Jack’s head. Robby hummed softly, shifting slightly to take Jack’s weight, nosing into his damp, curling hair. “You want to talk about it?” he asked softly, his voice a welcome rumble beneath Jack’s ear.
“No,” said Jack, and Robby was warm and pliant and sleepy against him. He was all that Jack needed. He closed his eyes and hung on.
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It was serendipity that Robby saw the flyer. Gloria’s 10 a.m. meeting ran over, so Robby went into the twelfth-floor break room to get a coffee. Bulk-buy instant coffee was fine for the peons in the Pitt, but not for the senior admins, and while Robby waited for the Keurig to do its thing he scanned the message board and spotted a notice for ADAPTIVE AND AMPUTEE SOCCER — Ages 12 and up — Brookline Rec Center. He pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to Jack.
Since he’d quit the TEMS unit, Jack had been making noises about needing another hobby (“Would we call that a hobby?” Robby had said) and not liking being without something to do (“You’re making the jokes too easy”, Robby had said). Soccer was a hobby. Not that Robby knew much about it, and he didn’t think that he’d ever seen Jack watch a game, but it was worth a shot.
He didn’t get a reply to his message, but a few days later Jack started adding some new entries to the dry erase calendar that lived on the front of their fridge. Every Saturday now said 9 A.M. — SOCCER in the red marker that meant it was one of Jack’s items.
Robby very carefully said nothing about it until after the first training session, and then over dinner just said, “It go okay?”
Jack seemed to think about it for a moment and then shrugged and said, without looking up from his pasta, “Yeah, okay, I think.”
But when Jack invited Robby to attend his first game (“Match, Robby, not game”, Jack said as if he’d known was the offside rule was four weeks ago), it was so clear that it was okay. Clear that Jack had, in fact, found what he’d been looking for: exertion, challenge, brotherhood, and not a firearm in sight. That ratcheted down some little bit of tension that Robby hadn't even known he'd been carrying inside him.
Robby cheered on from the sidelines as Jack chased down the ball with a look of focused exhilaration on his face. The huffs and shouts of the players as they called out to their teammates mingled with the clang and crash of crutches as they jostled for position and vied to be the first to get a goal. He applauded Jack’s goal, and even though Jack’s team drew, when he swung over to Robby on the sidelines afterwards, panting and sweaty, he was grinning just as hard as if they’d won in a landslide.
“Please go shower,” Robby said, wrinkling his nose as Jack slung one arm around him and kissed him hard. “I love you but God almighty.”
“That is the smell of victory,” Jack said.
“You didn’t win!”
“Victory,” Jack said, and his voice was as firm as his kiss.
I wanted to post about this because I know many of my mutuals are avid crafters and I don't know how much attention this endeavour is getting outside of end-of-life spaces-
The Loose Ends Project matches crafters with a project that is unfinished because of death or disability. They offer help with a spectrum of textile mediums in over 80 countries. One project I find particularly lovely:
“My mom was making this octopus for me. She was 67 years old when she passed away from COPD. She was hospitalized for pulmonary rehab several times and would always take it to work on while she was there and loved to talk about it with people."
(the red heart marks the last stitch made by this person's mom)
Anyway, if something like this is something you'd like to be involved in, they are always looking for more crafters <3
My favourite recent finishing project that they posted about wasn't precisely something that the crafter left unfinished. The knitter in question had had dementia, and thought she was knitting scarves. So a finisher was found to piece all the little bits of knitting together into a blanket.
They found someone to repair the hand-knitted block blanket that my great-grandmother made. It had been eaten at by moths in a handful of places before I inherited it, and Loose Ends found someone local to darn it. I asked her to darn in golden yellow yarn so that the story of the repair would become part of the story of the blanket, and I love every bit of it.
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She was also part of the editing team for Martin Scorsese’s 1970s films “Taxi Driver,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “New York, New
Marcia Lucas was the editor on 1983’s "Return of the Jedi" and the pre-"Star Wars" George Lucas-directed films "THX 1138" and "American Graffiti."
She was also part of the editing team for director Martin Scorsese’s 1970s films "Taxi Driver," "Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore" and "New York, New York."
Marcia Lucas was often called the unsung hero of "Star Wars," the original film that after sequels, prequels and spinoffs has come to be known by its subtitle, "A New Hope."
She convinced husband George that he should have Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, in his light saber battle with Darth Vader and become a spirit guide to Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker.
And she had to make sense of the raw footage that could’ve been a mess in the wrong hands, including the climactic rebel attack on the Death Star.
[....]
"Her influence on film is indelible, but those who knew her best will remember the way she made life feel more vivid, more beautiful, more fun, and more full of love," a family statement said. "Her work was known for its emotional intelligence, rhythm, and humanity — a rare ability to find the truth of a scene and bring heart, momentum, and clarity to the screen."
"Are you sure you're grand to work today?" Dana asked as Robby stowed his bag in his locker.
"Yeah, sure why wouldn't I be?"
"God, no reason at all," Dana said, and took a long slurp of her tea while levelling a look at Robby over the top of her glasses that was one of the A&E's most versatile tools. "Sure if you're grand, I'm grand."
Robby was able to give as good as he got in the looks department, but he also knew how to pick his battles. He needed his strength for other things, such as asking, "Do I want to know how many are on trolleys right now?"
"Start with the smaller crisis," Dana said. "I think Jack's up on top of the multi-storey."
"What's he doing up there?" Robby sighed. "It's lashing out."
"They only pay me enough to know so much," Dana said, making a show of turning back to her computer screen. It was easy knowing she was a Limerick woman. "All further questions can be addressed to the HSE enclosing a stamped addressed envelope."
The joys of being the department Clinical Director, Robby thought. He pulled his rain jacket on over his scrubs and headed back out into the grey early morning, dodging first the mini lakes that formed in the street outside anytime it rained for more than an hour straight, and then the little huddle of HCAs gathered under the entrance to the multi-storey. He pretended he didn't see they were smoking on hospital grounds just the same way that the senior management team pretended not to see all the structural work that needed to be done around here.
"How are ye?" Robby said with a nod as he passed them; he got an answering chorus of "Grand, Dr Robby, and yourself?"
He climbed the three flights of stairs up to the roof level, feeling every year of his age during the climb, and winced as he left the stairwell to be hit in the face by a burst of mizzle. A jacket couldn't do much for you when the rain was coming at you horizontally. Jack—standing over near a red Nissan Micra that Robby was fairly sure belonged to Mateo—didn't seem to be paying any mind to the weather.
"Well, Jack," Robby called across to him.
"What are you doing here?" Jack said without turning around.
"Some would say I'm working," Robby said. "And yourself?"
"Ah, I don't know." Robby sidled up next to him, and judging by how red-rimmed Jack's eyes were, he'd say it wasn't just that Jack's cheeks were wet because of the rain. "The mam of the O'Shea lad came in last night. Had a Mass card for me and said she hoped I'd come to the month's mind and that the whole family wanted me to know they appreciated what we'd done for him."
Robby winced. Some patients hit you harder than others. That was how it went. When it was a healthy fourteen-year-old who keeled over in the middle of a GAA match because of a previously undetected congenital heart defect, well, you tried your best no matter how hopeless you knew it was. Jack had managed to get sinus rhythm back twice, because he was one of the most skilled doctors Robby had ever met. He'd tried his very best, and the chap had still died, and that was a blow like a physical thing.
"Not something I want to be thanked for, you know?"
"You wouldn't be the better of it," Robby said lightly, because it wasn't so much that he agreed as that he didn't disagree, and he didn't want to be having a familiar, circular argument in a multi-storey car park at half seven of a morning. "Now can I interest you in not freezing our bollocks off up here?" He nodded in the direction of the white concrete bulk of the main hospital. "There's tea over there."
"Ah, sure go on, yeah," Jack said, and he was making a show of reluctance, playing at humouring Robby, but Robby could tell that he was just tired. He could see it in the dark circles under his eyes; in how his accent grew stronger, flattening out his vowels beneath the weight of watery Midlands bogs. Not to mention that this couldn't be good for Jack's leg.
As they headed for the stairwell, Jack said, "Some days I do wonder if I'm cracked to stay here and keep doing this. I could walk into a job at one of the private places, reel in all them sweet VHI euros. Or sneak in with all the junior doctors and head off to Australia."
Robby scoffed. "You'd miss the go of it here. The glamour. The chance of seeing your workplace on an episode of Prime Time." He looked sidelong at Jack as they crossed the street through the slackening rain, and said, half-sly, half-earnest, "Me."
"Ah, would you ever whisht," Jack said as they walked back through the automatic doors that led to A&E, and surely it was the blast of hot air from the heater mounted overhead that put that sudden tinge of pink into Jack's cheeks.
Or maybe it was the sight of a patient dancing around the waiting area, stark bollock naked and waving the county flag over his head. "Next year in Croker! Hon the lads!" he slurred in a way that said he'd probably come straight from a lock-in at Kavanagh's. Ossified, Robby's Bubbe would have said. You could practically see the alcohol fumes coming off him, like how a cartoon character would emanate waving lines.
"For feck's sake," Robby said, planting his hands on his hips.
"Or," Jack said contemplatively, eyeing the chaos as a small team of staff tried to corral the naked man into a side room, "the two of us could make a break for it."
It was Robby's turn to feel his face heat; there was something in Jack's tone that he could have sworn was Jack asking a question. "I thought you normally had your existential crises on the far side of a bank holiday weekend, not before it."
"Eh," Jack said, shrugging, watching Robby out of the corner of his eye, "sure there's maybe something to be said for trying out new things. That and tea."
A question, alright. Robby felt his mouth curve into a slow smile. "Tea and that," he said.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 8/8
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jack Abbot/Michael “Robby” Robinavitch
Characters: Jack Abbot (The Pitt), Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, Baby Jane Doe (The Pitt Season 2)
Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 02, Kid Fic, Slow Burn
Summary:
“You… you took home Baby Jane Doe?”
Together, Robby and Jack grasp a new chance at family.
One of the best things about Project Hail Mary (and there were many) is that the AT&T commercial lady got a real, honest-to-god speaking part in a major movie. Go AT&T lady!
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
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HELLO july 4 has me thinking about jack being sensitive to fireworks due to his military service, and robby comforting him or stepping in to support him when the explosion sounds start. do you have any headcanons about this? or know of any fics w this premise? <3
so my headcanon for this goes a little bit against the grain. i was actually talking at length about this to @alethialia last week but the stars didn’t align for either of us to write it, so allow me to present to you now
FOURTH OF JULY: JACK’S FAVORITE HOLIDAY
look, we don’t know any hard facts regarding jack’s time in the service, but i think it’s pretty safe to assume that he’s been out for at least ten years, probably more like fifteen. i more often than not headcanon him enlisting at 18, and if we go off of hatosy’s age, that would most likely have him enlisting in ‘94. say he does the medic thing for a few years and then decides to goes back to school and become a doctor, you can still have him getting a few tours in by the mid-00s
that would have been TWENTY years ago.
my point is that while i can maybe buy a jack who doesn’t like fireworks, i personally find it hard to believe that the jack we see in the present day has such strong and unmanaged PTSD symptoms that he’s having a full-on breakdown over it. maybe he did twenty years ago, but i think it does a disservice to the character we see on screen and the clear amount of work that he’s put in to himself to have him be that much of a wreck about it. but ymmv, you do you and all that.
and not to be all I Have Veteran Friends, but i know the EXACT fic i would write about him on the fourth of july, and it is as follows:
jack always takes fourth of july off. the fourth of july is sacred. the fourth of july is the one day he and all his army buddies get together for the tried and true american tradition of blowing shit up.
robby usually works a double on the fourth so jack can have it all off, and everyone knows this. cue everyone misunderstanding why jack takes it off, and being So Sympathetic when he gets called in to help with day shift for [reasons].
he’s SO goddamn grumpy about it, but he’s grumpy because he should be tits out poolside right now. he’s grumpy because he has incredibly expensive steaks in the fridge that he should be eating. he should be manning the grill right now. his grillmaster skills are the stuff of LEGEND. he should not be at work on this auspicious day.
(robby always works the fourth because he Cannot hang out with jack’s friends at jack’s barbecue. any other day, they’re great guys. but he does Not want to witness what OSHA violations are going to take place. he will have an aneurysm, no matter how many times jack says trust me, i’m a doctor or it’s fine, it’s just steve, he’s a demolitions expert. like, that’s exactly why he has concerns, jack.)
so jack is working, and he’s not in the best mood, and now we have THE most absurd comedy of errors. he starts going on a rant about fireworks in the daytime, and it’s not about the noise, it’s about how that’s a FLAGRANT waste of explosive firepower because you can’t even see them? he wants to see that shit spark, baby.
(one of my favorite things to imagine is that jack spends the lead up to the fourth going “you know what next week is?” to robby with Very Serious Eyes, and everyone thinks it’s because he’s being vigilant and prepared, and it’s not wrong, but really he’s just preparing robby for the fact that he’s about to blow hundreds of dollars in the meat department. he’s a little twitchy because he’s HYPE.)
maybe there’s a situation that gets him a little angry, makes him start breathing a little heavily. maybe one of his buddies texts him a photo of steve touching the steak in the fridge that is specifically labeled DO NOT TOUCH - THAT MEANS YOU STEVE. maybe one of the ducklings thinks he’s having an episode and starts furtively googling how to deal with fireworks related PTSD and then starts trying to guide an increasingly confused jack through box breaths about it.
mel would show him her lava lamp app, and jack would not get it. “kid, in my day, those things were real?”
someone asks if he’s fine and he snaps that he’s NOT fine, because he’s here when he should be chugging beers and setting off roman candles, but he doesn’t get the chance to finish that sentence because someone starts coding and he has to go run and deal with that.
robby at some point finds out about the misunderstanding, and because he likes to cause problems on purpose, gently encourages all of the ducklings. when jack finally buys a clue about why the fuck everyone is being so weird to him today he’s SO exasperated. threatens robby with some kind of punishment. see if he gets any of jack’s meat, later.
(there’s a spinoff to this fic where brad comes to visit one year and jack goes into a TIZZY about making sure he can show up the marines and live up to his reputation, because Winning At BBQ is definitely something normal to want and possible to achievable, even when brad is like why are you trying to out-brisket a jew? i knew you were an officer, but damn because fortunately for jack, HE KNOWS A GUY. anyway, robby spends an entire month eating brisket. he’s never yearned for a fresh vegetable so badly in his life.)
anyway i have no idea how this story ends. jack ends up making out with robby in the call room to turn him all red as part of his punishment, and robby is like “this doesn’t feel very much like a punishment” but then he has to go back out into the ED looking Like That so jack’s all have fun with that, bye!
jack manages to makes it home right in time for nightfall and right in time to blow some shit up, everyone lives happily ever after, the end.
Of the many things Robby has searched for in his life, the great gladness he feels to simply share a bed with Jack is unlooked for. It’s a steady wonder to him that the heat of Jack’s body, the wrinkling of bedsheets beneath them both, the view of Jack’s face pressed into a pillow, half hidden from view can stir such ordinary happiness inside him. It’s the happiness of the familiar, of the mundane, of a life built from spilled coffee on the kitchen counter and underwear left on the bathroom floor. It’s stolen blankets and post-it-note messages on the fridge; the stale smell of sleep on Jack’s skin and the battered paperbacks in an unsteady pile beside the sofa. It sits like a welcome weight inside Robby’s chest, a grounding sweetness threaded together from rolled eyes and a dozen irritations as much as glancing kisses and deepening smiles.
Robby rolls to his side and slides an arm around Jack’s waist, watches him grumble in his sleep. It is easy to love him, more difficult to be loved. But in this moment there is a calm between them that sings in Robby’s blood, that warms him beyond the tangling of the blankets. He watches Jack sleep until his own eyes close again, and when he drifts, it’s within the boundaries of a safety he didn’t know was missing until Jack took his hand and said, “I'm here.”
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i like that jack's big, bold strategy for getting robby to listen to him in that last episode essentially boiled down to a full hour of staring intently at robby until he orbited his way back to him (because of course he would eventually, because he always does) and then once he had his attention, proceeding to following him around until he gave up trying to escape and let jack aggressively emote in his general direction until robby gave in and listened.
i'm dying to know if this plan was born from experience or instinct. has jack deployed that strategy on him before? robby knew he was being handled and tried to shake jack off for two full episodes before he gave in, so this is clearly not brand new behavior. how did jack discover this was the way to break through robby's defenses? how many times has robby tried to be emotionally distant with jack and jack just flat out refused to let him. it's like the fight leaves robby entirely. he lets jack care, unapologetically, in a way he does not (at least that we've seen) let anyone else. even with dana, who gets the closest to any other person on screen, but still he tries to be strong for her in the end, but with jack he resists and resists and resists and resists but then he gives in, and somehow jack knows that's how it's going to go, that he just has to tread lightly until he can wage a full on emotional attack, where robby will let him in and then he has to talk fast and show that he cares so much because he knows that when he finally wears robby down that's the only time he has a chance to make all of it land.
there's something very funny to me about the idea the jack has poured hours into coming up with a plan of attack with robby over the years, like the 'break glass in case of emergency plan', but it's basically just the jaws theme playing in his head while slowly encroaching into robby's personal bubble and his big finisher is somehow just him yelling "you're a fucking dumbass and you are so loved! let me love you, you stubborn asshole!!!!" paired with as much physical affection as robby will let him get away with. how many years has jack had to study this ridiculous man to have a "robby is being an idiot and thus i need to Act" plan just waiting in the wings, ready to deploy?
