#robby fic

Whitaker's hand hesitated in the air like they were in class. “Well I think by casual she means-”

“I know what casual means, Fuckle-berry,” said Santos quickly. “But it was casual now it's just weird.”

You nodded along, humming.

She groaned, hands running through her hair in frustration. “I don't get it!”

You took a long gulp of your wine.

“How do you handle it?” Trinity asked, arms wide in question at you.

“Me?”

“Yeah, how do you and Robby do casual?”

“Oh- we... it's- um-” you stumbled over your words, hoping that if you let it up long enough she'd take it back and start on her problems again. She didn't and she stood in front of you and Whitaker, waiting for an explanation.

The whole thing between you and Robby had started about the same time Santos and Garcia started. In an awkward confrontation that was you and Trinity bumping into each other in your shared bathroom, both your hairs messed up and both supporting bruises suspiciously in the shape of lips on your necks.

When you returned to your room you and Robby waited eagerly to see who would flee Santos's room. Neither too shocked to find Garcia.

“It's um?” Trinity asked.

“It's going,” you said into your wine glass, finishing it and pouring in more. The truth was for a while things had been odd, on your end more so.

Casual was a label you thought you could do, that when Robby said to you a week after sleeping together, his sheets over the both of your bodies that he liked keeping it simple. Sex. Release. You thought you could do it.

Almost three months since then and you were regretting it because every time you saw doctors eyes lingering over Robby, every time you heard his 'seven-week rule' and every time you saw happy couples fawning over each other in the ED your stomach twisted.

You didn't realise you wanted that until it was dangled in front of you and snatched away all in the same minute.

Trinity's brows rose. “Oh?”

You looked to where Whitaker was next to you, hoping for sympathy. You only found curious eyes. “It's just different than before.”

“Different how?” asked Dennis.

“Is it still casual?”

You scoffed, mumbling under your breath. “Yeah to him.”

“You want to be more?”

You didn't know if she was accusing but your room-mates expecting eyes on you heated your body in shame and embarrassment. “And you don't with Garcia?"

“Ok, enough!” suddenly Whitaker stood up. “The two of you, we need to sort this out.”

With a vacant seat next to you Trinity plopped herself down and you gave her your wine. You just decided to take the bottle.

“I cannot stand it anymore, okay! The two of you, we're gonna change this,” he said. “Trin- no more pining and waiting for Garcia to call at like one am.”

She was wanting to retort but only folded her arms over her chest as he carried on.

“And you-” he focused on you. “Need to stop crying over Robby. You guys can do better.”

“Yeah in a world where we're not working twelve hour shifts five days a week,” you said. The idea of casual hook ups wasn't anything new to the ED, not even the hospital. It was easy way of escape without the pressure of dating when all their time was spent saving lives or charting about saving lives or studying how to save lives.

On the coffee table in front of you Trinity's phone pinged and she reached for it like it was seconds away from self-destructing.

She tucked her phone into her chest to read the text before slamming it back down.

You caught a glance at the words and the contact. Can't make it tonight, I'll hit you up tomorrow- G

“You're gonna leave them,” he said.

You and Trinity sat up. “What?”

“No!”

There was a flicker of fear in his eyes.

“Okay- I take it back,” he said, surrendering. “Then how about give them a taste of their own medicine.”

“Their medicine?” you asked.

Whitaker gently nudged the empty glasses and cans of beer aside, perching on the edge of the coffee table, appealing to the two of you. “How many times have they cancelled plans, or said you couldn't come over to ask you to come over two hours later?”

You hadn't realised how perceptive he was.

“Now, make it so you guys call the shots. They want to come round, you say no.”

The idea was new to you. You'd always wanted Robby. You spent half your spare time wanting him and the other half having sex with him. You'd never even wanted to say no.

“So then we what, don't have sex?” asked Santos.

“You will,” he said. “You create distance, get them wanting and crying or what-whatever and then they'll realise they've messed up.”

You thought we was giving them too much credit.

Santos chuckled. “Huckleberry, are you telling us to play hard to get?”

He thought about it, eyes moving as if he was calculating it. “Yes!”

That's how plan 'hard to get' started. It was agreed you and Santos, the next time Garcia and Robby asked you to come over you'd say no.

Easier in practise when you work with them.

The next day was a slower day, un-usual in that sense. It meant everyone had more time to linger around each other.

“And so I said to him- officer-” said Myrna, lying on the bed between you and Robby. She'd seizure, hurt her leg and needed it disinfected and cleaned- not for the first time in her life. There was a mix of glass and gravel that needed plucking out and apparently the attending of the ED had nothing better to do that join you in the task. “What would you have done if you caught your third husband eating out another woman?”

“And did he say shoot him?” asked Robby. He was bent over the same leg as you, your heads so close you were either gonna head butt or kiss. Not likely over the state of her leg.

“No, he didn't say anything, he just arrested me!”

Robby hummed, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. “Imagine that.”

“You know Myrna sometimes I can't tell if all these stories are true,” you said, taking a small bit of glass and adding it to the pile you'd already created.

“Oh they're all true, honey, I never lie. Unlike Mark that two faced bastard.”

“Which one was Mark?” you asked.

“The fourth husband. Good body and shit everything else!” she said with a wheeze. Abruptly she grabbed your hand. “Are you single?”

Robby glanced up at you, creases of amusement at the corner of his eyes.

You looked away first. “Why, you asking me out?”

“If you're single, stay single!” she said. “Men, all they are are liars! Lying bastards! And babies! I hardly even shot the guy!”

“Am I so bad, Doctor?” asked Robby looking over the frames of his glasses at you.

Was he so bad? No. He was short-tempered sometimes, moody, didn't accept help from anyone. But you knew he could be gentle, you knew his true belly laugh and the smile he gave at mornings when you were still in bed. You just wish you knew if he ever saw himself staying in that bed a little longer, if he ever wanted to make breakfast and take the day together, stealing moments throughout.

“No,” you said, looking back down to her leg that was almost clean. “You're not.”

Myrna was oddly silent but you could see her head moving between the two of you. “Don't go there sweetheart,” she said, a word of warning. “This one might look fun but he's all danger and heartbreak.”

“Me? No,” said Robby with an air of un-care. “I'm a teddy bear.”

Five minutes later you and Robby were instructing Perlah wrapping her leg before throwing off your gloves and leaving her to it.

“How many husbands you think Myrna had?” he asked.

“Oh there's no telling,” you replied, fetching her chart to finish off the notes. At some point someone had put a star next to her name, as if she was VIP.

Robby leant next to you, scanning around the ED. “Any plans tonight?”

“On a Wednesday? Nop.”

“Wanna come over?”

There was an abrupt and loud clear of a throat.

You hadn't realised Whitaker was there but he was watching the two of you, closely. When you met his eyes he gave a small subtle shake of his head.

Robby looked. “You got a cough, Whitaker?”

He cleared his throat, sliding down in his chair. “No.”

The agreement. It was all fine in practise but how were you supposed to say no when you just said you had no plans and you really wanted to have sex with him! It was the glasses, you were sure that was what did it. The way he pulled them on and pulled them off, the focus it gave him and the way they slipped down his nose.

“So, tonight?” he asked again, voice low.

Only a few people knew, like your room-mates and you were sure others had guessed. Robby wanted to keep it private. Or a secret, you'd never asked for clarification.

You caught Whitakers gaze on yours, watchful. He didn't say anything but you wondered if he'd be disappointed. Would you even be disappointed in yourself? “I can't tonight.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding. “Okay.”

He didn't sound annoyed. He didn't sound anything. It was impossible to tell.

“Yeah, we just- there's this thing-”

“Thought you had no plans?” he asked, an almost amused rise in his brows.

Ah. “It's like- not a plan- just a- a room mate thing. You know?”

Robby looked to Whitaker as if to confirm.

He nodded. “Yeah! Every Wednesday. We watch films.”

“Films,” you confirm.

“And talk.”

“We talk.”

Robby nodded. “Sounds thrilling.”

“Robby!” Dana called. “Got a trauma, woman in her thirties. Five minutes.”

“Got it," he said but he was still slumping over the counter. He took his time moving, stretching up till his shirt rode up enough to expose that slither of skin that held so many promises. “Some other time then.” His hand ghosted the small of your back before he disappeared.

You watched him go, realising you wouldn't spend the night buried in his bored but sleepless and restless.

Whitaker replaced Robby at your side. “See? Doesn't that feel good?”

You answered truthfully. “No.”

That night you, Santos and Whitaker sulked on the sofa, face masks over your faces with a bowl of popcorn left on the table and a shitty movie filling the silence.

Your phone lay face up with nothing from Robby and from Trinity's expression you figured she'd had nothing either.

You'd been to the bathroom once, took your phone with you and debated texting him but you never got that far. You only flicked through texts, casual one's at first. Small 'Are you coming over?' or 'You left your shirt at mine.' There were some dotted from him, on times you were both too busy to meet where things got more... riskier. His texts started simple but you could always catch on to his wants, leading his want.

Things like 'Thought about you today,' or 'you looked good today,' but he never just complimented you for the sake of it.

The texts didn't help so you turned your phone off and re-joined the two all the while your head and heart were in bed with Robby.

The next day passed like another dry spell.

It was busy- too make up for the quiet day beforehand. You didn't have time to greet Robby before being thrown into the chaos from a pile up on the highway. All day your bodies shuffled past each other, his hands lingering on your arms when he passed or always standing next to you in trauma.

It felt something like punishment.

Or a test.

By Friday you were crawling out of your skin, still dealing with the ramifications of the last two days. You hadn't even seen that Robby had text you the night before, so exhausted from work you crashed only spotting his name on your phone the morning you woke from the blare of your alarm.

“You're avoiding me,” he said, kneeling at the computer you typed furiously at to get your charting down. It was a casual move he used, usually un-tying and re-tying his shoes. This time, he simply knelt, seemingly done with pretence.

“What? No.”

“I've barely seen you the last few days," he said, wetting his lips. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, no, I've just been super busy,” you said, tapping on the computer.

Robby shuffled next to you. His hand laid next to yours. He didn't take your hand or stop you but his fingers fidgeted like he didn't know what else to do with himself. “Did I do something?”

You looked down at him, spotting the crease between his brows. “No.”

It was the closest you'd got to seeing him vulnerable.

“So tonight?” he asked. “Feel like I'm losing my damn mind.” His finger was light as it traced your hand, slowly drawing circles.

Tasting Robby was like the first sip of alcohol. It always left you wanting me. Sweet. Bitter. Whatever. You were just left wanting and nothing else, which was why you went crawling back every time. Why saying no had never crosse your mind before. Why the smallest touch from his hand was leaving you in shivers.

You squeezed your eyes shut. “I can't tonight-”

Robby smirked, breathing out a puff of air.

“I would,” you said quickly, turning in your chair to face him. “Believe me, I would, it's just... Trinity is going through some stuff and I just- I don't want to leave her alone, you know.”

It was the truth. Trinity was taking Garcia's silence worse than you or Dennis had anticipated. You knew there was more going on, you only wanted to be there to help her.

Robby perked. “You need me to speak to her?”

“No, no, it's just stuff. She'll be okay I just, want to be safe.”

He nodded but his finger fell from your hand. “Okay.”

“Doctor Robinavitch!” his name was called by the familiar dread of Gloria.

He sighed under his breath as he pushed himself up. “Oh so help me, God.”

By Saturday you were sure Robby thought you were lying and sort out to punish you. He was practically glued at your side all day long. He didn't ask to see you, didn't put his lips near you. But he lingered.

“Okay we don't have a lot of time, there's a lot of bleeding,” said Robby in the face of a trauma, looming over you. “We'll do a Hilar flip.”

“A Hilar flip, are you serious?” said Trinity.

“No other choice.”

You gulped, staring down at the bleeding and misplaced lung. “I've never done one of them before.”

“I'll talk you through it, we'll go easy,” he said, coming at your side. “You're gonna rotate the lung one-eighty, very slow. Very gentle.”

Perhaps it shouldn't have been as erotic as it was. The way his chest heaved against your back, his arm stretching along yours to hold your hand and guide it through the blood to his lung. His face was concentrated next to yours but his breath was hot on your cheek and breathless.

“Go slow.... go slow. Easy.... gentle.... just like that, there we go,” he uttered against your ear.

“Blood loss is slowing down.”

“There we go, you got it,” he mumbled as you slotted it back into its place. “Okay-” Robby moved on like your whole body wasn't trembling. You had to carry on trying to save the guys life after it, like you weren't picturing his entire body draped over yours, whispering filthy things in your ears.

“Thought I was watching a porno there,” said Santos as you all fled the room when the guy was stable.

“Jesus-” you caught your breath, throwing off the gloves and running your hands through your hair, trying to get some air to your neck that sweat.

Santos chuckled to herself. “So does Doctor Robby talk you through it?”

“Trin-” you snap.

“Does he praise you? Is that the kind of thing you're into.”

You didn't respond, hiding in the bathroom to throw cold water onto your face and calm the rush of blood but you could hear Santos outside the door. 'This is a teaching hospital!' she teased.

It became a thing you had to do, get away from him. You couldn't be distracted when dealing with patients. It was bad enough working with him when all you could think about was fucking him!

But Robby seemed to insist in helping you.

“Gaping wounds like this, under the skin we use sub-Q to bring it together,” he instructed as started the stitching for a mans wound on his leg. It was just like anything else, hardly a teaching wound when you knew how to do it. As it was under tissue and there was just no other nurse around Robby insisted.

“Five-O under skin, three-O after that,” he said.

“You think you could show me?”

You both knew you didn't need to be shown but Robby still gave you a small smile and sat on the stall, coming close to you till his meaty thigh was against your own. His hands- though gloved as yours were- still grazed yours as he took the instruments to do it.

“Guide it through... it's finer so you want to extra gentle... lotta care...”

You hummed but you couldn't say you were watching it with keen eyes. You weren't watching the way the stitches came together just the way his hands flexed, his fingers moved.

“Start deep... all the way in... bury the knot in... yeah, see how it comes together just like that?”

You nodded with an absent mind.

Robby held the equipment out to you. “Go ahead.”

You hesitated. Maybe you should have paid more attention.

He all but shoved them into your hand. “You're a big girl, you got it.”

Santos's voice played it your head. Were you into this?

With a breath you steadied yourself and went in. As he had before Robby leant over you, his body practically weighing you down.

You took the thread under the skin, pulling together just like he had.

“Bit deeper-” Robby's hands guided your arms. They were as light as a feather at your elbows before slowly sliding down your arms with a firmer hold, leading the threads.

You remembered his tight hold on you when he wanted you in place on the bed, when he was was dragging clothes off your body or wrapping a hand around your neck-

Robby called your name, watching you expectantly. His eyes were softened at the edges but they grew darker, the smallest bit of a smirk at the corner of his lips. Like he knew exactly what he was doing to you.

“Right... sorry-” you went as deep as he instructed, knowing his face was concentrated on you and your hands.

“Do you want me to leave?” asked the patient.

If he could leave his leg and leave it would've been great.

“We'll get you out of here in no time,” said Robby.

You'd thought that maybe the stitching at taken so long it was almost time to leave. Maybe you could talk to Whitaker and Santos about this hard to get thing. It was only eleven and you had more than six hours left with situations that constantly brought you and Robby together. Even when it didn't, there he was, whispering words of encouragement.

“You got this... nice and easy.... doing really good there...”

Or the simple phrase that had you hiding in the bathroom for five minutes.

“Good girl.”

When the end of the day came you ran out of there, gasping in air and rushing back back to your place.

“Hey,” you greeted walking through the door.

Trinity was already there, looking like she was ready to leave, jacket thrown over her scrubs she hadn't changed out of even though she finished an hour before you. “Hey.”

“Where's Huckleberry?”

“Oh he's at Amy's tonight.”

You scoffed. “Woah. What a speech about doing better and playing hard to get but as soon as the chance comes to play farm. So, movie tonight? I can order pizza?”

“Actually, I'm just on my way out too,” she said. “Garcia called.”

You slumped. Your entire body slumped. Your heart gave up. “What? I thought we all made a deal?”

“We did, I played hard to get now she wants to see me,” she said.

“I haven't seen Robby in three days!”

“So go to his, get dicked down, girl,” she said, moving past you with a breeze. “I'm sorry, we can talk about how much of a bitch I am when I'm back from having the best sex yet! Later!”

She was out the door before you could chastise her. You shut it after her, falling upon it.

You'd ran from the ED to stay strong, to avoid another interaction with Robby that would have you climbing his bones in an empty room. You'd happily have done it with the teasing he'd subjected you to all day. For your friends and the promise you'd made you remained strong.

You'd never do that again.

Saturday night after the longest shift of your life and you had the place to yourself. It was rare. Either Denis or Trinity were home or you were spending the night at Robby's.

Your phone was heavy in your pocket.

Call him.

But the problem still lied un-answered. You were still at Robby's beck and call, begging for his attention. Begging him to be hard thinking about you so he could fuck you into the mattress to be professional the net day and treat you like you were just another MR.

You didn't want special treatment so to say, didn't want him to give you the easy patients or get you into the traumas more. You just wanted a smile, or a glimpse of .... love.

Maybe your friends were okay with what they had. You weren't.

You turned your phone off for the night and stripped from your scrubs, changing into a large shirt and blasting music Trin hated and Denis claimed to hate (but you'd heard him playing your playlist in the shower). For a crazy night alone you caught up on washing several pairs of scrubs and anything else, cleaned out the freezer leaving you barren of anything to eat. Maybe you'd even iron some normal clothes-

That's at least what you were thinking when there was a knock at the door.

You'd hoped it was Denis or Trin coming back, tails between their legs, keys forgotten.

Robby stood on the other side of the door.

You stood, frozen, shocked to see him there. He was just as still, waiting with raised brows. “Doctor Robby. Is everything okay?”

His backpack was slung over his shoulder, his scrubs only slightly dirtied from the day. But his eyes were alive and his body didn't sag with exhaustion like usual. His eyes darted back behind you. “Can I come in?”

You held open the door, closing it slowly behind you.

Robby had only been to your place once before. He looked the open living space open with interest. Typically your meet ups were at his, on account he lived alone and his bed was much nicer to be down on than yours.

“Er- Whitaker and Santos aren't home, if- if this is a hospital thing.”

“It's not,” he said, lowering his bag at the sofa.

“Oh?”

He turned, leaning against the back of it. “It's a me and you thing.”

“Oh.”

His arms flexed as he folded them over his chest, the green of his top under his scrub bunched at the forearms. His head ducked, trying to get a read on you. “So?”

You rocked on your heels, realising the shortened of the shirt you wore. Not that it wasn't anything he had seen before. “So...”

“What's going on?” he asked. There was still nothing in his voice to give away his true thoughts, only a slight edge of urgency.

“What-what-what do you mean?”

Robby listed off what he saw was wrong like symptoms. “You've been avoiding me, you never answered my texts, you didn't want to see me the other night nor tonight though you have the place to yourself-”

“I didn't realise they were gone,” you said.

“Okay so every other time?” he asked. “If I did something you can tell me. I'm a big guy, I can take it.”

It was a chance to voice up every ill thought you'd had but all you could think about was how big he was. Standing there, jutted on the back of the couch with his scrubs around his arms and thighs.

“You didn't do anything,” you said, though you weren't looking at his eyes more his arms.

They flexed again like he knew what he was doing. His voice dropped, finally to something you could name. “So tell me. what's going on.”

If you threw yourself at him you knew the chances of him taking you to bed were high, but the chances of you regretting it in the morning when he had rolled out of bed, dressed and left you were higher.

“I just-” you blew out a breath, readying yourself for the dismiss. “I don't think I can do this anymore.”

Robby waited like he was listening to the words re-play. His head lowered as he nodded, taking it in. “May I ask why?”

“It's the casual thing,” you rushed out before you could take it back. “I don't think I can do casual. I thought I could, but I-I can't.”

He nodded, chin tucked into his chest and for a moment you thought you really had upset him. But then he straightened up, pushed himself from the sofa and shrugged. His boots thudded heavy as he stepped to you slow. “Okay then.”

Was this the moment when you got the door for him on the way out?

“Okay, so... um.... I guess I'll see you-”

Robby's hands grasped your cheeks and he kissed you quick, hard. His lips tasted as they always did with a hint of mint-freshness. They were rough as always as they worked against yours, opening you up to him as always-

You brushed away, shaking your head. “I um- Robby I can't-”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. He stepped closer to you, the heat of his body waving over you. “We don't have to be casual anymore, I don't want to be casual- not anymore.”

Everyone knew Robby only knew casual. Only selected few ever got past seven weeks. Heck you hadn't counted how long this had been going on for, maybe ten weeks but that could be nothing. You were good sex, that was all.

“Robby-”

“Listen, listen-” he said, arms waving around you before settling on your forearms. “You don't want casual, neither do I. You want me to ask? You want me to ask you to be my girlfriend, I'll ask.”

“Robby you don't date,” you tried to tell him.

He scoffed. “I date. But not anymore, not if I have you.”

Had word of the deal got out? Was Robby just tired after his shift? Delusional?

“Hey, hey-" his hands ran through your hair, cradling your cheeks. “I should've said it earlier, I know but I want this. I want serious.”

His eyes crinkled as he looked at you, the edges of his gaze soft. “You don't just have to say this. You can have anyone else-”

Robby's head ducked into the crook of your neck, brushing your hair back and pressing light kisses to the expanse of your neck. “I don't want anyone else, I want you.”

Your body awakened in shivers that he elicited.

His fingers wound to the front of your body, slowly peeling away the buttons of the shirt till it pooled at your ankles. He didn't move to ravage you, his lips remained light as they kissed down your neck, finding your collarbone and working a mark there.

Your hands wound up his arms, clutching at his shoulders. “Robby-”

“Not this time,” he uttered against your collarbone.

You knew what you called him when it was you and him. “Michael-”

“Good girl.”

You moaned out at the words, the moan you'd held all day revibrating around your flat.

He slowly kicked odd his boots and helped you throw off his scrub top before he kissed you again.

You only got a short glimpse at the body you craved before his tongue, hot and heavy, slid into you mouth, bathing in the warmth. His hands were rough as they studied every inch of your body, fingertips digging into skin.

“I want you, sweet girl,” he mumbled against your lips as you scaled your hands under his shirt and along his stomach till your fingers skimmed under his waistband.

His mouth opened against yours, groaning at this slightest touch. “Oh-”

His arms scooped you up, bringing your body up and flush against him as his arms were strong on your back, kissing you. It was all wet tongue and soft lips as he stumbled back on the edge of your couch.

“Santos will kill me if we have sex on our couch,” you gasped.

Robby rose a brow. “Oh, we're having sex?” he teased.

“I should hope so.”

You kissed you hard again, wetting the both of your mouths in delectable smacks of your lips. The two of you stumbled away to your room and his body caged you in as the two of you fell atop your sheets.

You crawled up the bed as Robby's face fell between your chest. His tongue made wet paths from each breast, taking a nipple in his mouth and his hand groping at the other one till you withered against his body.

“Michael-”

He moaned into your breast and shoved a meaty thigh between your legs. “Grind on me,” he demanded.

Your body did against him as if it only listened to his command.

He mouthed your other breast, groping where his tongue had pressed before. All the while you body moved against his thigh, dragging your pussy against him.

“Yeah.... jus' like that... god.... can feel you.... so good,” he uttered as he jutted his thigh against you.

Your hands went to his shoulders, messaging the skin there until he came back up your body and shoved his tongue down your throat again. Your arm wrapped around his neck, keeping him into you.

All the while you wet down his scrubs.

“You want serious?” he uttered against you, pulling back enough to see you.

You nodded, hair splayed over your pillow.

Robby nodded along, eyes hooded. His hand slid down between your bodies. “I can do serious.”

His finger slid into you, working in and out in slow thrusts. But even the meassured curl of his finger had you holding him, back arching from the bed.

“Mmph-”

“Don't be quiet,” he said, nuzzling his head in you neck, biting the skin there. “Don't do that.”

Another finger curled in and you moaned on. You weren't quiet usually, there was nothing more than Robby liked than being loud. Everything was measured in the ED, out of it, buried inside of you or hot mouths on each other had Robby groaning, moaning and wanting you to do the same.

His fingers thrusted knuckle deep in and out again, the soft moving of skin moving around the room as your breaths covered the sound.

His fingers moved quick as your breaths grew laboured. He sucked the skin of your neck, thrusting and curling as his hips sort some sort of friction.

You withered against him. “I'm gonna- Michael I'm gonna-”

He released your skin with a small bite and laid his mouth open on yours. “Cum,” he uttered.

“Michael-”

His voice turned harder, the hand that wasn't inside of you wrapping around your neck, pushing you into your bed. “Cum.”

With just the right curl Robby had your pussy in the palm of his hand, slick with your release as he worked you through it, rubbing his hand along your clit with jolts of your body.

“God so good,” he said, looking up at you as a thin sheen of sweat glistened on your bodies. “And all mine?”

You nodded, cheeks flushed. You could feel the heat of your body as strong as it was when he walked in.

“All mine, huh?”

“Yes,” you said, breathless.

Robby slowly took out his fingers from you, putting his fingers in his mouth and licking them clean like it was nothing. He fell back on his feet, fingers working on the ties of his scrubs. “That why you were avoiding me?”

“I wasn't-” your words died in your throat as he dropped his scrubs and boxers in one.

You'd seen his cock enough to know it by memory but the size and fullness of him always rendered you speechless.

Robby knew it to. He stood there with a smirk. “You weren't avoiding me?”

Slowly, he sank to his knees.

“No,” you said, mesmerised by the sight of him going down.

Robby's hands grabbed your thighs, spreading them. He tapped your ankles, getting them on the bed as he got closer to your heat, still leaking from the last orgasm. “Promise?”

The words had hardly left your lips before his tongue pressed into you.

Your entire body moved into his but his arms wrapped around your hips, keeping you pressed into the bed. He moved further up, burying himself in you.

“Aw- fuck-” your hands waved for purchase before curling into the sheets.

He licked a stripe up and down before nudging your lips open and finding himself in there. It wasn't the slow drag of fingers but the desperate kisses and licks of a man hungry. He pulled back, spitting against you. “You won't avoid me again, will you baby?”

You shook your head.

Robby's eyes remained on yours until he buried himself in your pussy. You watched his eyes roll into the back of his head as he moaned into you.

His hands kept you spread open every time they quivered but it didn't take long for his hand to wind down to his cock. You prepped yourself up onto your elbows to watch as he pumped his cock agonizingly slow.

“Want your cock, Robby-”

He halted his movements and you but down on your lip.

“What did you just call me?” he asked, slowly moving up your body.

You knew you were supposed to call him Michael but watching the full swing of his cock stand to attention as he made his way over you was far too distracting.

“Hey-v his hand cupped your chin, forcing you to look up. “Michael.”

You nodded. Your hands reached for his cock, straining to wrap around him.

The only notice of the effect you had was the clench of his jaw.

“Michael,” he repeated, voice almost a growl.

“Michael.”

He nodded.

“Condom?” he asked, jutting back on his heels.

Your hand slowly worked his cock, the pre-cum beading at the tip. You shook your head. You were both clean, you were on the pill but tonight you wanted to feel everything, wanted him to even fill you-

Robby bent his head, spitting down on his cock and your hand. For a moment that's all it was, you hand moving on his cock as your other circled your clit. “God... your hand.... missed you...”

When your strokes got heavier, faster Robby's head fell back and he groaned. His cock was pink, heavy in your hand-

Quickly he grabbed your wrist and threw it off before grabbing the hilt of his own cock and slowly pushing into you.

His throat strained as he groaned at the push in and your back arched into him. “Fuck!” he fell atop you, arms braced at either side. “Shit- ah-”

Your arm wrapped around his shoulders, keeping you in.

“God, you make me crazy,” he uttered, searching for your lips.

The two of you collided in a mess of salvia, tongue, lips as he pushed into you, catching your gasps.

Eventually the rock of his hips grew steady. The creak of your old bed echoed the moves of him against you.

“Shit- ah-” he groaned, shaking off the sweat and the tension.

“Michael,” you said, holding him in closer. “I want you to... go hard.”

Hard he could do. Soft he could do. He would do anything you asked.

His tongue darted out, swiping your lips. “You missed me?”

“So much, so much, so much,” you pulled him down till his weight tested yours, cock deep. “On me.”

“Okay, okay,” he mumbled to himself. He put all his weight down, crashing your body into his bed. He wasn't as young as he once was. By no means but if you wanted it, he'd give it.

Pressed into you his cock went far and deep and he couldn't fully withdraw so it was small, maddening movements.

“Oh god,” he uttered.

You moaned, loud, as he wanted and he was breathless, groaning.

The dull thump of your headboard banged on the wall and something on your bedside table fell off.

Robby's arm stretched out, grabbing your hand and stretching your arms to the headboard, trying to steady it. With the stretch of the bodies he reached that spot in you.

“Aw fuck!” You yelled out, louder than anticipated. “Michael I'm gonna- I'm gonna-”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” he grunted with you. His other hand threw to your hip, holding your pelvis flush into you. “Fuck!”

In seconds he let go inside of you and the gush of his cum and the sound of the wet bodies threw you over the edge. His clutch on your hand grew tighter as his body trembled with yours, the spurts of your releases cooling down.

If this was casual Robby wouldn't have lingered, he'd have pulled out, flashed you a smile before using the bathroom.

He moved slower, staying till the both of you were spent. He kissed you, soft and sweet, lips moving around to remember the taste. “I'll move out,” he whispered as he took out his cock.

You stole a glance of both of your release leaking from you and around him before Robby moved aside.

He didn't flee, he didn't go to the bathroom. He pulled the sheets from under your bodies and got the both of you into bed. He laid beside you.

Robby tucked you under his arm, sweat on both your bodies cooling as you laid together. “Feels better when we're serious.” His fingers moved slow on your shoulder, delicate touches like a feather.

If he woke with a new thought, woke with regret you'd deal with it. For the moment you allowed yourself to feel the thump of his heart as the two of you slowly lulled to sleep.

Your alarm was the first thing you picked up in the morning. It's beeping ringing in your ear as you moved to turn the thing off or throw it at the wall-

A weight over your stomach made the effort harder but you got it.

Last night came back to you in the spill of scrubs on the floor and the ache between your legs.

Robby stirred next to you. Last night.

He stayed.

“You on today?” he asked, morning voice rough. You got a look at him, it was a rare sight you got to see him in morning light. His eyes were still shut, his face without the stress the day job gave him. He asked so casual, as if this was a morning routine you'd slipped into years ago.

You hummed, nodding and readying to move-

His arm tightened, drawing you in. “Call in sick.”

You chuckled, but your eyes closed. You promised yourself five more minutes. “My attending might have something to say about that.”

Robby grumbled. “Have a word with him, I'm sure you can be very persuasive.”

Somewhere in you apartment you heard the front door open and close, voices moving around the place.

You hadn't closed the door.

“Hey! We brought coffee and bagels!” called Santos.

“We're sorry for leaving you- we- huh?” you heard Whitaker. “What the?”

The clothes on the floor. The scrub top that would have his doctors badge on it.

You groaned and suddenly Whitaker and Santos were passing the doorway, one smirking, the other shocked.

Robby beside you didn't even stir.

“Good morning, Doctor Robby!” called Santos.

He only lifted a hand in greeting before making sure the covers were over the two of you.

You reached for something heavy, landing on a cushion and aiming at the door. It closed in front of your laughing friends.

It was coming up on the anniversary of you leaving PTMC. A year since you’d stepped out of the emergency med residency here, a year as a general practitioner at St. Mary’s, a year of deciding your own path. A year without him.

The triage desk was a whirlwind of controlled chaos- Dana Evans barking orders, a student looking wide-eyed at a gurney, the steady beep of monitors from trauma bays. In a way you missed it. The adrenaline rush and the constantly being needed. There’s a purpose in the ED. But the unknown is a silent killer. The patients stabilize and they pass off to another department or go home. You have no idea what will happen next.

No, general practice is better. More control.

At least that’s what you told yourself.

You shake your head and pull the strap of your bag higher on your shoulder. Short cut through the ER, elevator on the left, straight to the OB/GYN. No hassle. No fuss.

You took a steady breath and moved further into the ED, your eyes catching a familiar figure leaning against the nurse’s station, reviewing a patient chart. No. Dr. Michael Robinavitch. He looked better. Healthier, maybe? His hair had grown out, curling softly at the nape of his neck. More color in his face, less of that gaunt, haunted expression in his shoulders. The sabbatical had done him some good. Screw him.

He hadn’t seen you yet. Dana did. Her sharp gaze flicking from the patient board to you. A flicker of surprise, then something unreadable, then to Robby.

You gave Dana a tight smile, hoping she’d see your plea for discretion, and pivoted towards the elevators.

Your three-month postpartum checkup was upstairs. A routine checkup you had deliberately scheduled at PTMC because, well, old habits die hard and you know the OB here. You hadn’t counted on him being back already. If at all.

The click of your sensible flats on the linoleum felt too loud. You kept your gaze on the elevator. Open. Open. Open.

The weight of your secret sat heavy on your chest. Mason’s tiny sock in your purse, the smell of baby powder on your scrubs. Almost there.

“Baby?”

Fuck.

The voice you knew too well, rough with fatigue and disbelief, stopped you three feet from the elevator. Maybe if you didn’t turn around he’d disappear into the void.

No luck.

Robby stood a few yards away, having broken from the nurse’s station. A chart held loosely in his hand, but his attention was entirely on you. His face a strange map of surprise, confusion, and something else- hurt, maybe. You don’t dwell on it. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a consult. Standard procedure. Hospital friendliness and all.” The lie tasted metallic on your tongue. It wasn’t his business anyway. If he’d wanted to know, he would have answered one of the dozens calls you’d made in those first frantic, lonely weeks. He chose not to.

Robby’s eyes narrowed slightly, the doctor in him assessing the lie and not buying it. “A consult,” he repeated, “Upstairs.” He moved, blocking your path to the elevator. “You finished your residency.”

“I did.” No, you had gotten an easier one. One with a steady schedule. One you could take time off without penalty. Semantics.

But he’d kept tabs.

“Dana said you took a job at St. Mary’s.” He said it like he was confirming a diagnosis. “Why?”

The elevator dinged softly.

You shrugged, “Didn’t have my… what were we? Chief Attending, Boyfriend? Fuck buddy? To write me a letter of recommendation for the position here.” The words were cruel, designed to hurt. If you had finished your residency here you would have had the attending positions, no recommendation needed. You just couldn’t be here in these halls that echoed with his ghost. All the pity glances you were sure would be thrown your way.

Robby flicked as if you’d slapped him. For a long moment he just stared at you, the noise of the Pitt fading to a distant roar. “That’s what you think we were?”

Dana from her station, cleared her throat pointedly. A trauma alert blared over the PA. “Robby, we’ve got a GSW, three minutes out,” her tone leaving no room for argument. Saved by the Dana.

He didn’t look away from you. The professional mask slid into place, but his eyes remained dark and troubled. “This isn’t over,” he said, the words barely audible. Then he turned, the great Dr. Robinavitch taking over, and strolled to the trauma bay without a backwards glance.

It was over, you decided. The elevator doors began to slide shut. You stuck your hand out, stopping them and stepped into the quiet elevator.

Get through this appointment, pick up Mason, go home.

It had become your mantra these days. Just get through today. And you damn well were determined too.

But instead of finding it relaxing or looking forward to it, you found yourself dreading it. Your boyfriend was now considered an ex, and the warm beaches you were looking forward to suddenly sounded like hell. Then your dad asked a question that had you rethinking your entire life.

It was the night before your flight back to Pittsburg. You were sitting in your mostly empty apartment, the one that you’d spent the last 6 years at University in, all your belongings except for your last suitcase on a truck home. Or at least what would be your new home. An apartment in Pittsburg city center, near your offices, but close enough you wouldn’t pay out your ass to get back home for weekly family dinners. 

Your parents had phoned you under the guise that they wanted to confirm your flight information and what time you’d meet them for the second flight out to Florida. Then your dad had dropped the bomb, so casually, so matter of factly. “Since Sinclair isn’t coming, I invited one of my friends. Robby. You met him last year when he passed through there.” 

His name immediately had you frozen, your blood running cold, your mind immediately flicking to that night. Reliving it. The way he’d looked pulling into the apartment complex on that bike, hair slightly messy, leather jacket pulled taught against his body. 

You remember the initial awkwardness, you remember the way your eyes had studied his body, the small talk. You remembered the flirting and the one too many glasses of wine. 

You remembered the laughter, you remember how he kissed you, how you’d pulled that leather off his body, how easy he had pushed you onto that kitchen counter. 

You remembered how he felt pressed against you. How well he’d fit inside you. How your hands had held that headboard with knuckle-white strength. You remember how he looked with his mouth between your legs. 

You had remembered it everytime you’d fucked your boyfriend Sinclair after that. How you couldn’t get off unless he was in your mind. 

So when your father told him, he’d invited him, that since your boyfriend wasn’t joining they didn’t want to waste the money, and Robby could use the break. 

And you hadn’t been able to say no, to tell them you didn’t want that, because you couldn’t let them know what happened. So you just said “oh…okay” in a monotone voice. And that’s how you had hoped it would be. 

You hoped you could just ignore him, and that he’d ignore you, but when your plane landed in Pittsburg and you’d met up with your family, in the same airport your flight had landed, and your second flight would be taking off, those hopes flew immediately out the window. 

Your eyes caught his first, and he froze as he did, that same heavy leather jacket he wore that night being pulled close, pausing mid-movement, his jaw clenching hard enough you saw the muscle pop. 

Your dad came up behind him, slightly shorter and clapped him on the back, “Micheal, you remember my daughter?” Your dad said, moving to hug you. You snapped out of that haze and looked at your dad with a small smile, your eyes refinding Robby’s while your arms wrapped around your dad.

“Micheal? I thought your name was Robby?” You state and you see the way he swallows. 

“It is,” he says, voice slightly unlevel. Your dad doesn’t pick up on it, you do. “Robby’s my nickname” 

Your dad starts talking telling you about how the Robby nickname is from his surname. All information you’d known after you’d stalked him the day after. Your dad moves the two of you to the seat where you’d be waiting. You greet your mom, and your two younger brothers. The 14 year old twins, who thought Minecraft on their ipads was more interesting then seeing their big sister for the first time in six months. 

Your dad recounts how he met Robby, something about your brother and the ER, a mutual liking of the same sports team. Yet you don’t pay too much attention, your eyes locked on Robby and the way he averts your eyes. 

You breathe a sigh of relief when it finally comes to boarding. 

Only for it to be short lived when you find out he has to sit next to you on the plane. You immediately try to find out if you can switch with your dad under the guise of wanting to talk to your mother. 

But your mother, being your mother, had already picked out a movie she wanted to watch with your father, leaving no space for argument, you sunk into the window seat of the two chair wide aisle. 

It’s a few seconds later that Robby slumps down next to you. And an hour and a half till you are high in the air, your leg bouncing trying to figure out what to say to him. You look at him, deciding to be blunt, and he has his eyes closed head back against the seat. 

It stops you in your tracks. You sigh, turning back towards the window.

“You can take a breath, kid” He says and your head snaps back to him. He hasn’t moved, his eyes still closed. 

“I-” You try but words fail on your tongue. 

“We can pretend nothing happened” He says, popping an eye open to look at you. “Just don’t be surprised when you end up in my bed” He says, closing his eyes again, shifting his head. 

“I am not going to sleep with you…again” You whisper and he chuckles. 

He turns his head to look at you with a look you can’t place. “Are you sure about that?” he asks, his hand coming to rest on your leg. 

You take a shuddering breath in, as his hand moves lower, and you internally curse yourself for wearing a skirt. You move your hand to stop him and he shakes his head. 

“Robby stop” You tell him as you look to make sure your parents, who are sitting in the row in front of you,  aren't looking. Then back to where your brothers are behind you. 

“Don’t worry princess, they're engrossed in their screens. Everyone is” He whispers, moving his head closer to you. His breath fanning your shoulder. 

“Robby-” you try again but it comes out as a whine. 

“Ah, ah, that’s not what you call me” He says his fingers slipping between your thighs, running up and down your cotton covered core. “It’s Daddy to you baby”

His hand moves your panty to the side, his hands finding the wetness beneath it. 

Your body responds to his touch immediately, and it has you biting your lip, and closing your eyes. 

“There you go, baby” he whispers, as his hand finds your clit. 

You cough, covering a whine as that mix of pleasure and pain hits you. He moves his head then to your shoulder, pulling the shirt slightly to expose the skin there, before his lips are on it. Sucking hard enough to bruise. 

“Mich-” he lets out a warning sound as you try to use his name, and you immediately know what he’s referring to. You shake your head, not daring the words to leave your mouth in such a public display. 

But then again, you never thought you’d ever be in this situation. Your dad’s best friends hand between your legs, making you see stars, on a plane. 

He inserts a finger then without warning and you bite down hard on your lip. You swallow that lump in your throat again. A second digit joins him then, and he finds a pace that's enough to overwhelm you but too slow to get high off. 

“Robby” you whine, trying to keep your voice low. 

“That’s not my name, baby” he repeats and you roll your eyes. “Don’t roll your eyes at me” He reprimands immediately. 

“Please” You try and he lifts his eyebrow. 

“You are only making this painful for yourself, baby” He tells you and you curse him in your mind, fighting every instinct in you. 

“Daddy, please” You whine again and immediately he picks up the pace. 

“There we go, wasn’t that hard now was it babygirl?” He asks but you don’t respond, you can’t because the way he moves his fingers, adding a third for good measure, has every inch of your body on fire. 

You bite your lip again, trying to stifle another whine, but it slips out, broken and soft. 

“Carefull, baby, don’t want people to know how drunk you get off daddy's fingers now do you?” He asks and you nod, as you feel your climax starting to build. 

“No, don’t want them to know, Daddy” you dare breathe. 

He nods, and goes back to your shoulder. “Good, Good girl. Show Daddy, how good you make him feel huh?” He says and the dam wall within you breaks. 

You bite your own fist, to stifle every sound that wants to come out of you, and he guides you through it. His fingers coax all the pleasure out of you, until your body goes soft. The energy drained out of you. 

He pulls his fingers out then, his fingers wiping your release on your own thighs, the movement matching letters. You spell it out in your head, needing something to focus on. M. I. N. E

Mine.

You look at him and he smiles, pulling his hand away, and picking up his water bottle with that same hand that just moments ago was in you. He lifts the bottle to his lips, taking in a breath, those fingers against his nostrils. 

It has you shaking your head, closing them and chuckling lightly at the insanity of it.  You stand then, wanting to go to the bathroom to wash yourself of the mess between your legs. 

But he stops you. “You are not going to clean yourself baby, you are going to sit with the pleasure Daddy gave you between your legs.” He whispers in your ear and you look at him in shock. 

“Daddy” You whine in his ear and he shakes his head. 

“Nuh-uh, I want you to look your parents in their eyes knowing what mess I’ve made” He whispers and your eyes glass over. “My baby likes that idea huh?” he asks and you nod. “Such a dirty little girl”

It makes you clench your thighs together as the voice on the radio tells you that you would be landing in the next ten minutes. You look at Robby as he shifts in his seat, adjusting his front, obviously affected by what just happened between you two as well. It was going to be a long, long holiday. 

Robby had filed the name away without meaning to. He didn't examine why. Now he’s somewhere in Ohio, soaked to the bone, and the name surfaces like a buoy. Millwood. It’s not far. He tells himself he’s just scouting the location for Jack’s brother’s wedding. A practical stop. A night, maybe two. Then back on the road.

The dive bar appears through the sheeting rain like a hallucination: a low, squat building huddled on the shoulder of a two-lane road, its parking lot cracked and bleeding weeds through the asphalt. A neon sign blinks erratically: LUCKY’S. Though the C and the K have burned out, leaving LU Y’S.

The whole thing browns out and comes back, and he can hear it doing it from the road, a wet electric fizz.

Robby kills the engine. The sudden silence is worse than the high-pitched ringing, the tinnitus, that’s lived in his ears since COVID, since the mass shooting, since the day he watched his mentor die in the same ER where he still works. He swings off the bike, boots splashing in a puddle that’s already forming, and pushes through the door. ㅤ

ㅤ It's a Tuesday, which at Lucky's means the same six people it means every night. Plus the ordinary weather.

You can name them without looking up. Glen's in the corner where Glen is always in the corner, nursing the one beer he'll make last three hours, watching the door like he's expecting someone who's been dead a while. Margie's at the middle of the bar with a rum and Coke and a captive audience of nobody, telling the story about her sister's second husband again, the one with the boat. Leo's got quarters lined up on the rail of the pool table and no one to play, so he's practicing bank shots and missing, and every few minutes he glances over to see if you saw him miss. You did. You always do. It's the kindest thing about Leo and the most exhausting.

Pete's on a stepladder behind you, swearing at the sign panel, because the LUCKY'S out front has been dying by inches for a month.

"It's the frame," he says, to you or to God. "Whole thing's rotted through. Water gets in the wood, wood swells, pinches the wire. Electrician wants two hundred just to look at it."

"So don't call the electrician then."

"So it falls on a customer and we get sued, real smart, thanks." He climbs down, wipes his hands on a rag. "Margie, you want another, or you gonna keep watering that one down with your own spit?"

"You're a horrible man, Pete."

"Thirty years and you keep coming back."

"Where else am I gonna go?" She says it happily. It's true and it isn't sad, and that's the thing about this place, the thing you didn't expect when you washed up here six months ago with a duffel bag and a resignation letter, still unsent. It closes over people. Nobody asks you what you're running from. They just make room.

The door opens and a storm walks in.

That's the honest first impression. He stands in the doorframe a beat too long with the rain coming off him, backlit gray, like he's forgotten the last step of coming inside. Then he does it, and the door bangs shut on the wind, and he's just a guy. Older than you. Dark hair gone silver at the temples, soaked flat. A face that's had a hard decade and lost. Leather jacket, wet through. He stands there dripping and reads the room before he moves, and you clock that, because you do it too. He counts the exits. He finds the wall. Then he takes the far stool with his back to it, and you think, oh.

"Well," says Margie, at a volume designed to be overheard. "Look what the storm dragged in."

He doesn't rise to it. You drift down the bar.

"What'll it be?"

He looks up and it's a lot of eye contact, more than you're braced for. Not a leer. Assessment. The look of a man who's spent years figuring out fast whether the person in front of him is going to bleed out or lie about their pain level.

"Whiskey. Neat."

"Any particular kind, or are we going for effect?"

The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. Perhaps a hint of one. "Effect."

You pour him two fingers of the bottom shelf, the stuff you keep for people who aren't drinking for the taste. He knocks it back clean. You watch his throat and don't bother hiding that you're watching.

"Another."

You pour. This time he leaves it, turns the glass in slow circles. Steady hands. Very steady, which usually means the opposite of what steady hands are supposed to mean.

"You're not from here," you say.

"Is anyone?"

"Margie was born upstairs, so."

"That's a lie," Margie calls, delighted. "I was born in Akron. But I've been here since Nixon."

The guy almost smiles again. Almost like he's rationing them. "It's a nice town?"

"It's a town," you say. "There's a diner where there’s meatloaf. And a hardware store run by a man who's been about to retire since I was in diapers. And this. This is the nightlife."

"Hey," Leo objects from the pool table, offended on the town's behalf. "There's the lake."

"Leo. The lake is where the youth of Millwood go to get pregnant and disappoint their parents. It's not a selling point."

"I like the lake," Leo mumbles, and banks a shot that actually goes in, and looks so pleased that you don’t have the heart to keep at him.

The guy watches the whole exchange without joining it, the way you'd watch a show in a language you sort of know. You put your elbows on the bar.

"So what brings a wet stranger to Lucky's on a Tuesday? And don't say the whiskey, we established that it's medicinal."

"Passing through."

"To where?"

"Haven't decided."

"A man of mystery. Margie, we've got a man of mystery."

"I heard. He's very handsome under all that self-pity." Margie leans down the bar toward him, conspiratorial, loud. "You want my advice? Whatever she did, forgive her. Life's short."

"There's no she," he says.

"There's always a she. Or a him. Or a whole," she waves her glass, sloshing "... situation. You don't ride a motorcycle through a hurricane into a bar in Millwood, Ohio because everything's going great at home."

"Margie," you say. "Let the man drink."

"I'm just saying what everyone's thinking."

"Nobody's thinking it but you."

"Glen's thinking it. Glen, you thinking it?"

Glen, in his corner, doesn't turn his head. "Leave him alone, Margie."

"See, that's a yes." But she settles back, satisfied, and starts in on her sister's boat again, and the pressure comes off the stranger like a change in the weather.

He looks at you. "Is it always like this?"

"This is a slow night." You reach for a rag, do the honest kind of wiping. Actually wiping, not the performative bartender wipe that’s just moving a rag around to look busy. "Tuesdays are contemplative."

"What are the loud nights?"

"Friday. And the third Thursday, which is karaoke, which I recommend you schedule the rest of your life to avoid."

"You don't sing?"

"I sing beautifully. That's the tragedy. Everyone else sounds like a cat in a dryer, so my gift goes unappreciated." You deadpan, pouring yourself a soda water. It's a long night and you learned the hard way not to match customers. "And what do you do, mystery man? When you're not passing through."

There's a small hitch there. Not a lie, exactly. A door he decides whether to open. "I'm a doctor," he says. 

You raise the soda water an inch, a toast. "That explains the hands."

"The hands?" 

"Steady. Guys who work with their hands, they've all got a way of holding a glass. Carpenters, surgeons, drunks. So you're a surgeon." You tilt your head. "Or a drunk. Jury's out."

That gets a real smile. Small, but it reaches his eyes and it costs him something, like a muscle he hasn't used. "You're very confident about people you just met."

"It's the job." You gesture at the room, the whole warm and shabby length of it. "Six months of this, you get quick. Him—" Leo "—crush on someone unavailable, tragic, ongoing. Her—" Margie "—wants to be needed, will talk to a wall, has buried two husbands and refuses to be sad about it in public. Glen." You pause. "Glen's harder. Glen lost his wife four years back and he's been keeping her seat warm."

The doctor looks at Glen's corner, at the empty stool beside him nobody sits on.

"And you?" he says.

"Me?"

"You do everyone else. Not yourself."

The rag stops for half a second. Just half. You start it up again, and you make your face do the thing it does, the easy thing.

"I pour drinks and mind my business. It's a whole lifestyle. You should try it." You slide his tab across, blank so far. "You’ll want a room, by the way, since you're not deciding where you're going. Pete's got a cot in the storage space upstairs. No shower, but the bathroom's yours and the price is arguing with Pete."

"I've got a tent."

"In that?" Outside, thunder rolls low enough to move the glasses on the shelf. "Suit yourself. Frontier spirit."

He looks up at the ceiling, where the storm is coming down like it's got a grudge. Then, quiet enough that only you hear it, mostly to himself: "That sign out front's going to catch fire before it falls."

You blink. "What?"

"The frame. It's shorting. The wood's holding water against the wire." He shrugs, a little embarrassed to have said it. "Sorry. Not my business."

Behind you, Pete, who hears everything: "That's what I've been saying." ㅤ

ㅤ You don't see him leave and you don't see him stay. When you come down in the morning he's in the lot in the gray after-light, crouched at the base of the sign pole with the panel open, and Pete is standing over him with two coffees, one of which he is not offering.

"He said he can fix it," Pete tells you, like it's your fault.

"I can fix it," the doctor says, not looking up. "The wire's fine. It's the housing. Whoever framed this used pine and didn't seal it. I can pull it, cut new, seal it right. Day's work. Maybe two."

"You're a doctor," Pete says, plainly.

"I was a carpenter's apprentice for about six months when I was nineteen, before I was anything else." He sits back on his heels. "My mentor made me learn. Said a man who can't fix things with his hands is only half a man."

"Your mentor sounds insufferable."

"He was." Something passes over the doctor's face and is gone. "He's dead. But he was right about the wood."

Pete chews on it. "You fix the sign, you can have the cot till it's done. I'll knock it off the tab."

"I don't have a tab."

"You will," Pete says, and stomps back inside, and the deal is made the way all his deals are usually made, by him walking away before you can argue.

You lean in the doorway with your own coffee and watch the man take the sign apart. He's careful with it. Methodical. He lays the old frame pieces on a tarp in the order they came off, like he might have to put them back, and there's something in the neatness of it that tells you more than anything he said last night. This is a man who needs his hands full. Give him an idle minute and something in his head starts talking, and he doesn't like what it says.

You bring him a coffee at ten. Black, no sugar, and you don't know why you know he takes it black except that you do.

"You didn't take the tent," you say.

"Storm let up." He doesn't sell it. You both know the tent was never happening.

"There's a hardware store in town. Gus's. He'll have cedar, and he'll try to sell you a smoker you don't need. Don't let him."

"You offering to come with?"

"I'm offering to keep you from getting robbed. There's a difference." You hand him the coffee. Your fingers touch and neither of you makes anything of it.  ㅤ

ㅤ Here's how the two weeks go, if you had to say it in one breath: he fixes the sign in two days and then finds nine more things to fix.

The sign is only the start. Once it's up and glowing clean and even, LUCKY'S all the way through for the first time in a year, Pete gets ideas. There's a door that's hung wrong since the Clinton administration. There's a section of the back deck you've been told not to stand on. There's the storeroom shelving, half of which is holding on out of habit. The doctor, whose name is Robby, works through the list like a man doing penance. And maybe he is.

You learn him in pieces, the way you learn all people, by not asking directly.

You learn that loud noises do something to him. Not a flinch you'd catch if you weren't looking. But you were looking. Glen drops a glass one night, and Robby's whole body reorganizes for half a second, hands going still and flat, before he lets it back down. You don't ask. You bring him a whiskey and set it in front of him without a word, and he looks at you like you've done something, and you say, "You looked thirsty," and let him have his dignity.

You learn he's funny, underneath, in a dry gone-to-seed way. That he and Glen have started talking. That Margie has decided to adopt him, and tells him things about the town he did not ask to know. That Leo tried to be short with him for exactly one afternoon before deciding he liked Robby too much, which is the most Leo thing that has ever happened.

What Robby learns about you, he mostly learns from Glen.

You find that out later. That there was a night, the first week, when you'd gone up to change a keg, and Glen leaned over from his corner, and in the flat way he has of saying true things, told Robby the part you don't tell.

That one behind the bar. She's been half here since she showed up. Lost somebody. She'll joke you to death before she'll say it, so don't wait for her to say it. And then, because Glen is Glen: Don't be another thing she loses. She's had enough.

Robby doesn't tell you Glen said it. But he stops asking you the sideways questions after that, and starts just being around. Easy, no pressure, refilling the ice well without being asked, walking you up the stairs at close so you're not doing the lot alone in the dark. And it's that, more than any line he could have delivered, that gets under your armor. Not being seen. Being tended.

You bring him up to your apartment on the ninth night, or he brings you. You take the stairs badly. He's got a hand at the small of your back and then his mouth at the side of your neck before you've found the top step, and you lose track of which one of you started it. Nine days of him keeping a careful foot of air between you, of not-quite-touching when he passed you a glass, and it turns out the foot of air was him holding something down with both hands. Now it's up, and it has weight.

He kisses you urgently. There's nothing steady about the hands now. They're everywhere and they're not sure of anything. This deliberate man gone suddenly greedy and graceless with it, forgetting the door, forgetting his own name, walking you backward into the dark with his forehead against yours like he's trying to get inside your actual skull. You get his jacket off him. It takes both of you and neither of you laughs. The rain's come back loud on the skylight and you can taste the whiskey on him and something warmer under it, and the part of you that reads people for a living has gone quiet for the first time in six months. All the way quiet, and there's only the sound he makes low in his throat when your hands find skin. Like it hurts. Like it's been so long it hurts. Afterward he lies there with his eyes open at the water-stained ceiling and you can feel him thinking again, the machinery starting up, and you put your hand flat on his chest, over the noise of it, and say, "Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Whatever you're about to do to this. Stop it."

He's quiet a while. Then: "I'm not good at this part."

"Nobody is." You turn your face into his shoulder. He smells like cedar and sweat and the cheap soap from the bar bathroom. "Go to sleep, Robby."

He does. You don't, for a long time. You lie there listening to him breathe and you think about how you're going to feel when he leaves, because he's going to leave, they all leave, and you already know it's going to be bad, and you let yourself have it anyway. That's new. Six months ago you wouldn't have. Six months ago you were a stone at the bottom of a well. So. Progress, maybe. Or just a better class of mistake. ㅤ

ㅤ He asks about her at the lake.

It's the first clear evening in two weeks, the sky doing something pink and gold over the water, and you've got a six-pack going warm between you on the dock. Leo was right about the lake. You'd never admit it out loud.

"You had a friend," Robby says. Not a question. Glen's work.

You could deflect. You've got six ready. Instead you peel the label off your beer and watch your own hands do it.

"Mara. We taught at the same school. Third grade her, fifth grade me. But we'd known each other since college. She was my…" you look for the word and it's stupid, there isn't one "... she was my person. You get one, if you're lucky. She was mine."

"What happened?"

"Glioblastoma." You say the word flat because if you say it any other way you'll cry, and you're not doing that on the dock. "Brain tumor. The bad kind. The kind where they tell you the number of months up front so you can, I don't know. Budget."

"How long?"

"Four months, they said. It was more like three and a half." You drink. "You want to know the part nobody tells you? It's not the dying. I could've done the dying. Maybe. It's that it took her before it took her. It's in your brain, so it's you it eats first."

He doesn't say anything. He's a doctor, he knows all this, and the kindness of him is that he doesn't say I know. He lets you say it like it's news.

"She got mean," you say. "Not her. The tumor. She'd say things. Cruel, specific things, things she'd have to have known to hit that clean, and then ten minutes later she'd have no idea she said them. And you can't be mad, right, because it's not her, it's the thing in her head, and everybody keeps telling you it's not her, it's the disease, like that helps. Like knowing the difference makes it hurt less when your best friend calls you a selfish coward and means it, and then asks if it's Tuesday."

Your voice has gone somewhere you didn't authorize. You stop. You drink.

"There was a day near the end I didn't go," you say, quieter. "Just one. I was so tired. I'd been there every day for months and I was so tired, and I told myself I'd go tomorrow, I'd be better company tomorrow, and I stayed home and I watched garbage TV and I felt guilty the whole time, which is the worst of both, you don't even get the rest." You breathe. "And that was the day she went under for good. She was still alive after. A week, more. But she never really came back up. So the last time she was Mara enough to know me, I wasn't there. I was on my couch. Watching a fucking show I don't even remember."

The lake is very still. Somewhere a fish takes something off the surface, one clean plip, and the rings go out and out.

"People keep telling me she wouldn't want me to feel bad about it." You laugh, and it comes out wrong. "Like that's a comfort. Mara would've absolutely wanted me to feel bad about it. She'd have held it over me for years. That's how I know they didn't know her. The real her wasn't a saint. She was a pain in the ass. She'd have said, you missed the good ending, dummy, that's on you." Your throat closes. "And I'd give anything to have her say it."

You're crying now, quiet, the leaking kind, not the loud kind. Robby doesn't reach for you right away, which is right, because there's nothing to do with this, no fixing it, and he's a fixer and he knows better than to try. He just moves his hand along the dock until it's next to yours. Not holding,  next to. So you can take it or not.

You take it.

"I don't tell people that part," you say, when you can. "The couch. I tell them about the cancer."

"You just told me."

"Yeah, well." You try to chuckle, wiping your face with the back of your free hand. "You caught me on a dock with three beers in me and a pretty sunset. Cheap. I'm cheaper than I look."

He almost laughs. Then, because you gave him yours, he gives you a piece of his, which is the only trade that matters. "I held my mentor's hand while he died," he says. "Adamson. It was COVID, the bad part of COVID, and he was in a bed in the department I run, and there was nothing to do. We'd run out of things to do weeks before,” His thumb moves once over your knuckles and stays. “But I kept him on the machine. Seventeen days.”

The words just sit there. You don't touch it, and he's grateful, you can feel him be grateful, the way he keeps going.

"There was a kid down the hall that could've used what he was using. Better odds than he had. I knew it every morning, did the math, and every morning I found a reason to keep him on it one more day." He says it flat, to the far shore. "Kept telling myself I was fighting for him. I just couldn't be the one to say when."

"Robby."

"You want the punchline? I run the place. I'm the one who teaches the residents the most important thing in the room, to know when to stop." The edge of his mouth quirks up remorsefully. "Physician, heal thyself."

"So we've both got a day we didn't get right."

"Mine's got a body count. Beats sitting on a couch."

"It's not a competition."

"Little bit it is."

And that's the thing that finally cracks it, the both of you going over to the wrong side of a laugh, low into the darkness that's come up off the water while you weren't watching. You don't tell him it wasn't his fault. He'd hear the lie in it, same as you'd have heard it in yours. You just work your fingers deeper into his and hold on.

He looks at you then. The sun's about gone and the shadows have come back up under his eyes, but there's something open in his face that wasn't there two weeks ago.

"I wasn't going to stay past the first night," he says.

"I know."

"I keep not leaving."

"I know that too." You lean into his shoulder. "Don't make it a whole thing, Robby. You'll ruin it."

So he doesn't. For once, he doesn't. You sit on the dock until the mosquitoes drive you off, and you don't talk about him leaving. You both know he's going to. ㅤ

ㅤ The stupid thing is that it starts as a good night.

Pete's gone home. It's just the last-call regulars, Glen nursing the dregs of the one beer he's made last since eight, Margie holding court about a man she almost married in 1974, and Robby down the far end doing the thing he does now where he pretends to read the paper but is actually listening to Margie with the delight of a man at a play. You're closing out the register and losing, because you're always eleven dollars off and you've stopped caring which direction.

"Eleven dollars," you announce. "Again. Same as Tuesday. I think this bar is haunted by a ghost who steals exactly eleven dollars."

"It's you," Glen says, not looking up. "You can't count."

"I have a degree, Glen."

"In what?"

"Elementary education."

"So no."

Robby laughs, this quiet huff behind the paper, and you point the pen at him. "Something funny,  Motorcycle?"

"He agrees with me," Glen says.

"He does not. Robby. Do you agree with him?"

Robby lowers the paper about an inch, deadly serious. "I've watched you give a man change for a twenty out of a ten. Twice."

"That was hospitality."

"That was a felony," says Margie, and the whole end of the bar goes up, and you throw a bar rag at Robby and he catches it without looking, which is somehow the most annoying thing a person has ever done, and you're laughing too, actually laughing. It occurs to you distantly that you haven't been eleven-dollars-off and happy about it in a very long time. You don't examine it. You just let it be nice.

Glen finishes his beer and stands, joints announcing it. Margie gathers her enormous purse and kisses you on the cheek and Robby on the top of the head like he's hers now, which he sort of is. And then it's the two of you and the hum of the cooler. You lock up, and it's a good night, it's such a good night, that you can start to feel the gravity of an impending moment, a moment coming up right after this.

You're wiping down the last of the bar. He's still on his stool with the paper, not reading it.

"You didn't turn the page once," you say. "The whole time."

"I was listening to Margie."

"You were listening to Margie for forty-five minutes on a single page of the Millwood Gazette, which has, I happen to know, four pages total and one of them is coupons." You toss a scrap in the bin. "What's the article?"

He glances down like he genuinely doesn't know. "Zoning."

"Zoning."

"There's a dispute. About a fence."

"You've been staring at a fence dispute so you didn't have to look at me." You say it lightly, still teasing, and it's only when it's out of your mouth that you feel it turn true in the air between you, and his face does something small, and the good night tips over so quietly you almost miss it.

He folds the paper. Sets it down. Squares the edges, which is a thing he does when he needs his hands occupied. You’ve catalogued all his tells by now.

"I fixed the bike," he says.

You wait, rag still in your hand, for the part that makes that a normal thing to say.

"The carb's been running rough since Missouri," he continues. "I did it tonight, at Leo's. Runs clean now."

"Okay."

"Full tank."

Out front the sign buzzes clean, LUCKY’S. All seven letters, because he made it.

"Okay," you say again, and it comes out different this time.

He doesn't look up from the squared-off paper. And here's where a lesser man would give a speech, and you almost wish he would, because a speech you could argue with. What he gives you instead is worse. He gives you the truth in the smallest possible unit.

"Every morning I decide to leave," he says. "And every morning something's broken, so I fix it, and then it's not broken, so I stay one more day. The sign. The door. The deck." A breath. "Last night the bike was the last broken thing. And I lay up there thinking, thank God, the bike's broken, I can't go." He finally looks at you. "That's not a normal thing to be relieved about."

"So you fixed it."

"I fixed it. And now I can leave."

You don't say anything for a second. You pick the rag back up. You need your hands doing something, same as him. And there it is, the recognition: you're squaring your edges too.

You go to the register. You open it, and you count out what's in the tip jar. His cut of the two weeks of work that was never on any tab, and you fold the bills once and set them on the bar in front of him. Then you take the spare key off your own ring, the one to the storeroom cot, and set that next to the money.

He looks at the little pile. "What's this?" "Your cut." You keep your voice even, which costs you everything. "You want the math? Two weeks. The sign, the door, the deck, the shelving. For a cot with no shower and my coffee." You slide it an inch closer. "That's the worst deal anybody's made here, and Pete knows it. He'll want you paid right. So there's your key back, and there's your pay, and Gus opens at seven if you want coffee that isn't mine before the highway."

"So you're not going to fight me on it?" he says. Not quite a question. Something off-balance under it.

"No."

"Why not?"

And here's where the old you would've made a case, or made herself small enough to fit through the crack in the wall. Instead you just hold his eyes, and let him sit in a doorway with someone standing in it. Not blocking the way, for maybe the first time in his life.

"Because I know what you did," you say, finally. And you don't say Adamson, you don't say seventeen days, you don't say any of the words that would make it a speech, either. You just let the weight of the afternoon on the dock sit between you, and watch it reach him. "And I'm not gonna make you do it again. Not with me. If you're going, I'm not gonna be the one making you say when." His face goes. You've never seen it go like that.

"So take your key back," you say, softer, "Or don't. But it's a door, Robby. And it opens both ways."

He looks at the money and the key and doesn't touch either.

Then he pushes it back across to you and leaves his hand flat on top on your side of the bar, where you'd have to move his hand to get to it.

"I don't want to be paid," he says. Low. Like it's being pulled out of him by the root.

His jaw works around something and nothing comes, and you watch him hit the wall he built, from the inside, watch him get a hand on the top of it and find he can't say what's on the other side.

So he stops trying to say it.

He comes off the stool. He's got your face in both hands before you've put the rag down. Both hands, gone unsteady, and he kisses you like it's the sentence he couldn't finish, all the words he doesn't own delivered at once and out of order. You get a fist in his shirt. The money's still under his other hand on the bar one second and it isn't the next. It's on the floor, and neither of you looks. You break long enough to get a breath. His forehead's on yours. His eyes are shut.

"That's my tip jar all over the floor, by the way," you say. "You're picking that up."

A sound comes out of him that's half a laugh. "So," you go on, "you're officially out of things to fix. Sign's lit. Door's hung, deck holds weight. Which leaves you unemployed and homeless, and I happen to have a room." You bump his nose with yours. "I'd charge rent, though." His mouth twitches against your cheek. “But you can't count."

"I can count to one. Watch." You turn to peck his lips. "One."

"That the whole lease?"

"Renews nightly. Terrible terms. No exit clause." You feel his hand tighten on your waist. "Landlord's a menace."

"Tenant's a flight risk. So we're perfect," you say, and it comes out with the laugh riding under it. 

"Don't." He warns, gently.

Don't make the joke, don't help me pretend this is small. He leaves that part unspoken, but you hear it, hanging over the inch of air still left between you and him.

So you stop. You put your hand flat on his chest, over the part that's working too hard, and you don't say anything. ㅤ

ㅤ Two nights later is the third Thursday. It's karaoke night, and the bar is a different animal.

Somebody's dug out the machine that's older than Leo. Margie's Christmas lights are still up from December because nobody ever takes them down, blinking out of time. The place is packed, regulars and half of Millwood and faces you don't know, and the air is beer and body heat and the particular joy of people who cannot sing agreeing to cannot care.

Robby's at his stool with a whiskey, watching you work, and you're not just working tonight. You're in it, arguing with Margie, dodging Pete, laughing at Glen who has been talked into holding a tambourine he refuses to shake. You feel him watching. You feel, more than that, the specific weight of a man deciding whether he gets to have a thing.

Margie clocks him. "There he is!" She points across the room with a whole arm. "Motorcycle! Get up here, we need fresh meat."

"I don't sing," Robby says.

"Nobody here sings, sweetheart, that's the point."

And the bar takes it up, because the bar will take up anything, a low chant, and Leo's whooping, and Glen is almost smiling, and you catch Robby's eye across the whole warm mess of it and you raise one eyebrow.

Come on. Prove you're not a coward.

You watch him hear it. You watch him decide.

He gets off the stool.

The song's already cued, Pete's doing, and when the opening riff of ‘Voices’ comes crunching out of the tinny speakers the whole bar loses it. And then you're up there next to him with a mic in your hand and no plan.

You go first. You're loud and off-key and you do not look at the screen. You look at him.

Hey, it's me again, plain to see again.

I'm a fool again, I fell in love with you again.

You try not to mean the words. That’s stupid, too on the nose and too perfect. But the words are doing something to his face anyway, and you keep going, brave and terrible, and you hold the mic out to him.

He takes it. Please, can I see you everyday?

He can't sing. Neither can you. It does not matter even slightly. The whole bar's singing now, drunk and joyful, Margie on some harmony that exists only in her heart, Glen finally shaking the tambourine, Leo filming it on his phone, and Robby opens his mouth and sings this stupid perfect song badly, and something in his face comes loose.

When it ends the place comes apart cheering, and you throw your arms around his neck and kiss him right there on the little stage, and he kisses you back like you're the last solid thing in a spinning room.

"Our song," you say, breathless, dumb. Happy.

"Our song." he agrees.

And for one night he lets himself believe he gets to keep it. You can see him let himself. That's the part that guts you next. That he let himself, and it was true when he did it, and it still wasn't enough. ㅤ

ㅤ You wake up alone.

The sheets are cold on his side, which means it wasn't recent. Which means he did it in the dark. He did it while you slept next to him, and that's the detail that'll live on in your head. Not the leaving. That he made himself do it slow and quiet so you wouldn't wake, that he had the discipline for that, the same steady hands.

You know before you check. You check anyway. The bag's gone. The boots. You go down in your shirt and shove the back door open and the spot where the Triumph sits is a wet rectangle of nothing, oil sheen and rain.

No note.

Of course no note. 

You stand in the cold with your breath going white and you wait for it to hit, the rage, the wreck of it, the thing that makes you throw a glass. It doesn't come. Not yet. What comes is the ringing, the specific high whine of nothing where a thing used to be, and you think, absurdly, oh, this is the tinnitus, this is what he was talking about, and you almost laugh, and that's when you know it's bad, when you can't even cry, when the sound in your ears is the sound of a person leaving through a wall you helped make a hole in. And the person you want isn't Robby. She comes up the way she always does. When it's bad, uninvited and too clear, the exact pitch of her voice before you've decided to remember it. From the back of your skull where you keep her always running, even when you don’t let her visit. 'Well,' Mara says. 'We saw that one coming from outer space.' 'I know.' 'He literally rode in on a storm,' she continues.

'That too.'

'You got up and sang,' she says. 'In front of the whole town. For him. You don't even sing for me.' 

'I’m not going over this with a dead woman.' You tell her. She does the thing with her eyebrow, the one that meant she was waiting for you to catch up. 'Well, you already are.' 

The actual bad part comes later. It comes at close, when Margie asks where your broody boyfriend's got to and you have to say the words. It comes when Glen doesn't say anything at all, just looks at you across the bar with his old ruined patience, and that nearly finishes you, because Glen told him. Don't be another thing she loses. And he was, anyway. It comes when Leo tries to cheer you up and you have to walk into the storeroom to pretend it doesn’t affect you, past Pete’s shoulder and past the shelves Robby fixed.

You did know. That's the thing you'll keep telling yourself. You saw the wall, the writing on the wall. You heard him at the bar, stuck between choosing to lose you or risk it getting done to him. You knew the song was too perfect and too on the nose and you let it mean something anyway.

You go back inside. You close the door. You start the coffee, black, no sugar, out of habit, for a man who isn't there, and you pour it down the sink, and you go open the bar. ㅤ

ㅤ He rides for twelve hours and it does not help.

Every reason he had comes apart the second he looks at it in daylight. She's better off. I'm doing her a favor. This ends bad no matter what. He's used all of these before, on other exits, other doors he walked out of clean. Not one of them was ever true. He's a smart man who knows the lie while he's telling it, and tells it anyway, which is the worst kind of smart to be.

The song loops. There’s a specific image of you in his head. Your voice, off-key, fearless, not looking at the screen. Looking at him. I'm a fool again. He's the fool. 

At the Pennsylvania line his phone pings.

Jack Abbott: Still alive?

He pulls into a rest stop and sits over the phone a long time.

Define alive, he types.

Vertical and breathing. That's the bar. And then, a second later, because Jack knows him: You're coming to the wedding. Millwood. In two months. You're on the list, Robby.

Millwood. It goes through him like cold water. He'd let himself forget the wedding was there, in your town, that Jack had said the name in a hallway months ago and some animal part of him had steered toward it before he understood he was steering. He'd ridden into Millwood chasing something he couldn't have named. And now he's ridden out of it, away from the one thing he found. The one you.

I'll do you one better. I’m coming back, he types. It sounds so far off in his own head that he's sure he doesn’t mean it. 

But he kicks the bike over and rides back to Pittsburgh. Back to the department, back to the life he tried to leave behind. Well, he was trying to leave behind living at all. This is better then. Vertical, breathing, and on his way back home. It doesn’t feel like it, though. Home was the darkness of an upstairs room with a leaking skylight and you who told him to stop thinking because he was terrible at it. He knew that the whole ride. He rode anyway. 

That's the disease he actually has, and it doesn't have a number of months on it. ㅤ

ㅤ You don't leave Millwood, even when confronted with something forceful enough to displace you. 

Each time you tell yourself something new. It's money, it's Pete, it's the school district not posting anything. This time the truth is smaller and much worse: leaving means those two weeks fade, and the two weeks are all you've got of him, so you stay where they happened, like a person keeping a light on for someone who isn't coming.

Then the wedding happens, because the universe is not subtle.

It's a niece of a friend of Margie's, marrying some guy from Pittsburgh, whose brother is a doctor. And doctors have colleagues, and you'd have connected the dots weeks ago if you'd wanted to, and you very much did not want to. 

Lucky's is doing the bar. That means you. You'll take it because the money's good, is what you tell yourself.

The venue's a restored barn on the edge of town, strung with lights and wildflowers. You're behind a folding bar in your Lucky's shirt, pouring champagne for people in better clothes than you own, cracking wise with the groomsmen, doing fine, doing genuinely fine, right up until the DJ puts on a song and your whole body stops.

That riff. Bright, dumb, unmistakable. Perfect and on the nose. Hey, it's me again.

Across the barn, near the doors, a man in a dark suit that doesn't fit with the ease of everything else. Silver at the temples. Shadows under the eyes. A glass of whiskey held like it's holding him up. He's already looking at you. He's been looking at you. But you notice her first before you register anything else. There she is, uninvited as ever, right at the edge of it. ‘Tell me not to,’ you say. 

‘No,’ Mara says back.

‘I'm working.’

‘You're a bartender, not a surgeon. Put the bottle down.’

‘But he left,’ you tell her. 

‘And he came back.’

‘I could get it wrong.’

‘You'll almost definitely get it wrong.’ She gives you the raised eyebrow. ‘So what?’

The room tips. Your limbs are moving before you decide to, setting down the bottle, cutting through the dancers, and he's moving too, off the wall, weaving toward you, and you meet somewhere in the middle of the floor under the ugly beautiful lights.

"Hi," he says.

And before he can get out whatever careful thing he's rehearsed for two months on the back of that bike, you hear your own mouth go:

"Good that you showed. I'm pregnant, and it's yours, you know."

His face does the whole cycle. Shock, then something like terror, then, God help him, a flicker of hope, all inside one heartbeat, and you let it hang there in the golden light for exactly as long as it takes to be cruel, and then you crack.

"I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Oh, your face." You're laughing and it's a little unhinged and you don't care. 

The terror drains out of him. And then, slow, disbelieving, like it's been sitting unused in his chest for two months, Robby laughs. A real one. Rusty. It changes his whole face, the way it did on the stage.

"That was evil," he says.

"You ghosted me. So."

"Fair." He's still half-smiling, but his eyes have gone serious under it. "You're really here."

"Lucky's is doing the bar. I live here, Robby, remember? You're the one who left." You cross your arms. "Why'd you go?"

He doesn't dress it up. "Because I'm a coward. You already knew that, you even told me to go."

"I wanted you to prove me wrong."

"I know."

The song plays on. Please, can I see you every day? Somebody's aunt is crying at a table. The lights sway.

"I had a whole thing," he says. "Two months of a speech. And it's gone, standing here, so I'll just…" He stops, starts over, and it comes out plain and a little broken. "I stayed two weeks. I've never stayed two weeks. Not since I was young. And it was you, it was all of it. The bar, that stupid goddamn sign, and Glen, and Margie, and everyone. And I still left." He shakes his head. "I couldn't stand to stick around. I didn't deserve to. I still don't know if I do. And you're the first thing that made me forget all that in a long time, and I ran from that, because I'm an idiot, a fucking idiot. And I'm so sorry."

You make him stand in it.

"I'm still really mad," you say after a beat.

"You should be."

"You don't get to give a nice speech at a wedding and have it be fine."

"I know."

Outside the open barn doors it's started to rain. Soft. Not a storm, just a turn of weather. The ordinary kind.

"I'm not fixed," you say. "I want to be clear. I don't know if I'm ever going back to a classroom. And I still talk to my dead best friend sometimes. I'm not some healed-up version of me who's ready for you. I'm just me."

"I don't want the healed-up version." He says it too quickly, like he's afraid you'll finish the sentence for him. "I want you."

You look at him a long time. This wrecked, brilliant, maddening man who rode a motorcycle into your bar in a storm and fixed a sign and broke your heart with the discipline of steady hands. And you understand, clean as a struck bell, that you want him too. 

"And I'm going to yell at you a lot. A lot. You've got a running balance."

The corner of his mouth goes up. "I know."

Behind you the DJ's still got the song running, well past reasonable, and you're pretty sure that's Margie's doing, working the guy from across the room, buying you both the time. Over Robby's shoulder you can see her at a table, watching, not even pretending not to, one hand pressed to her chest like she's at the movies. Glen's next to her, of course he's here, one beer, and he lifts it an inch when your eyes meet. Small. Just enough.

"Do you want to dance," you say. "Before this song finally dies of old age? I'll make you look real bad. It's the least you owe me."

He laughs, the real one, and pulls you in, and his arms come around you like he's had two months to practice and got it wrong every time until now. Your head finds his chest. The song is ending. 

Outside, it keeps raining. The soft and ordinary kind that eventually clears up, to give way to the sun. ㅤ

During your early university years, back when you were still a student, there was a boy who was your anchor, your shadow, and your absolute best friend: Michael Robinavitch.

You eventually lost touch after finishing your residencies, but the fracture line —the quiet, devastating beginning of the end. had been carved into your history long before that.

Robby and you had been an unbreakable unit. You pulled brutal all-nighters together in cramped library corners, breathing in stale coffee, and you celebrated every end of course.

Everyone around you swore there was a hidden, magnetic pulling you two together.

But you both played the part of the platonic best friends flawlessly, denying it to anyone who asked.

Even after that specific night.

Almost when you both where about to head your residencys.

You were huddled on the hardwood floor of your tiny student apartment, preparing for the final neurology exam.

A couple of cheap beers sat between you, opened purely to off the suffocating stress.

The problem was, you never drink.

Two bottles were more than enough to completely dismantle your frontal lobe's carefully constructed defenses.

You weren't sloppy drunk; your inhibitions had simply disintegrated, and the heavy shroud of shame you usually carried had vanished.

For thirty agonizing minutes, you hadn't read a single syllable of the textbook open in front of you.

Instead.

You were watching Robby out of the corner of your eye, caught in a spell.

The painful truth was, you had been deeply, hopelessly in love with him for years, but you had spent every single day convincing yourself that a girl like you could never be his type.

In the amber glow of the dim desk lamp, he looked achingly handsome.

The warm light traced the sharp, familiar angles of his face, catching the way his brow furrowed in deep concentration as he read.

The glasses he wore slipped down his nose slightly, making him look effortlessly, devastatingly attractive.

Your eyes traced his defined jawline, finally landing on his eyes, your absolute favorite place to get lost in.

"Robby" you breathed, the name slipping out like a quiet confession.

"Mmm?" he murmured, his eyes never leaving the text, entirely absorbed in his own world.

Setting your book aside, you shifted onto your knees, crawling across the small expanse of the floor until you were right beside him.

That was when he finally tore his gaze away from his book, a flicker of confusion crossing his features as he took in your proximity.

Slowly, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs

You reached your hands out toward his face. Your movements were agonizingly tentative, a silent plea, waiting to see if he would pull away or shatter your heart right then and there.

But Robby didn't move.

He set his textbook down on the floor, his breathing hitching as he watched you expectantly, his entire body shifting heavily in your direction.

For your, that was the green light.

You crawled forward until your knees bracketed his thighs.

Completely closing the distance.

His hand, warm and trembling slightly, slid up to anchor itself firmly on your waist.

You tilted your face down, searching for his in the dark.

And you kissed him.

It started as a slow, agonizingly tender question. But the moment Robby’s hands tightened on your waist, pulling you against his chest, the dam broke.

Suddenly, the kiss turned fierce.

Hungry.

Cruel in its intensity.

It was a collision fueled by suffocating anticipation, hidden tears, and deeply repressed desire.

He hauled you upward until you were sitting completely in his lap.

The friction between your bodies, hot.

Your fingers tangled desperately into his dark hair, pulling him closer, needing to erase the very air between you.

A low, ragged growl escaped the back of his throat, a sound of pure surrender that ignited your instincts until you were both completely consumed by the fire.

And just like that, after years of pure, safe friendship, a single study night utterly ruined you.

You never spoke of it again.

The very next morning, the heavy, suffocating silence of regret filled the room.

You both simply agreed it had been a one time thing.

Nothing more.

And that agreement absolutely slaughtered you from the inside out.

You spent years harboring a quiet, bitter hatred for the fact that for him, the greatest night of your life was just a mistake to be brushed under the rug.

In reality, Robby was drowning in his own cowardice.

He waas so utterly terrified of losing you that his mind convinced him a relationship would inevitably end in ruin, and if he lost you permanently, he would never forgive himself.

So, he chose a quiet, safe distance.

Juts to lose you in anyway.

When residency applications came, he stayed behind in Pittsburgh.

Broken hearted and desperate to escape the painful ghost of what could have been, you packed your entire life into bags and fled to California, chasing a fresh start.

For a time, you kept in touch through brief, painfully strained phone calls or messeges.

Eventually, swallowed whole by 80-hour work weeks, grueling on-call shifts, and a chaotic sea of patients, you drifted apart until you became complete strangers with a shared past.

To your surprise, building a new life initially felt achievable.

Perhaps it was just the heavy armor of a heart that had already been broken once.

You found a partner, a doctor who checked all the right boxes, and you even got married.

But the universe wasn't done playing cruel jokes. Years later, that happily ever after completely shattered when you caught him sleeping with a nurse at the hospital.

The divorce was a loud, ugly, humiliating affair that left you raw and bleeding.

So, you did what you always did best when the world burned down around you: you packed your bags, left the city.

And so, after 20 years. You returned to Pittsburgh.

You missed the quiet comfort of your parents, and if you were being entirely honest with yourself, you carried a tiny, pathetic ember of hope that you might catch a glimpse of your first love again.

For Robby, the intervening two decades had been a slow, lingering ache.

He had thought about you every single day—the girl he had loved so desperately but had been too much of a coward to hold onto.

He had dated other women, had tried to build a life, but every relationship crashed and burned.

The years of heartbreak and survival had completely transformed you.

Just as Robby, you had turn into an incredibly sharp, brilliant, and fiercely intimidating Emergency Medicine physician.

So when you applied for a position at the city's busiest level-one trauma center, The Pitt, to cover the sabatical of the daytime atending. They handed you the contract

But no one had written his name the documents, it wasn't necessary.

On your very first official morning at The Pitt, the emergency department was a war zone.

You stood squarely at the central nursing station, dressed in sleek, dark scrubs, reviewing the active patient board with Dana.

You were already setting the perimeter, your sharp tongue drawing lines in the sand.

"Look, Dana, I don't care what the administrative protocol for stable discharge says" you stated, your voice cutting through the ambient noise like a scalpel as you tapped the monitor.

"Bay 4 is clear, and I want that patient moved out before the morning rush-hour traffic on the bridge brings us three more unannounced traumas"

Dana raised an eyebrow, tightening her grip on her clipboard, clearly testing the spine of the new attending.

"The paperwork takes time, Doctor. We don't skip steps"

"Then let's find a way to run faster"

"Good luck trying to break the system on your first hour" a wry, deeply masculine voice chuckled from right behind your shoulder.

The intrusion grated on your already frayed nerves.

You frowned, your shoulders squaring as a sharp, biting retort formed on your tongue.

You turned around slowly, fully intending to humiliate whoever had dared to question your authority on day one.

Standing there, leaning casually against the desk with a large cup of coffee, was an attending physician.

He looked at you with a detached, professional amusement, but his eyes were entirely vacant of recognition.

More than twenty years had passed.

The cruel passage of time, the hard, defensive lines of your posture, and the elegant, sharp styling of a seasoned doctor meant you looked completely different.

To him, you were just a fierce, difficult new colleague.

You, however, were hit by a physical ache.

The breath was brutally knocked from your lungs, and the entire hospital faded into an agonizing, dead silence. Your heart stopped, then slammed violently against your ribs.

The jawline was a bit more rugged, his hair carried silver threads at the temples, and his posture held the easy weight of authority, but he was wearing those exact same style of glasses. And his eyes, were staring right through you.

It was Michael Robinavitch.

Robby took a slow sip of his coffee, entirely oblivious to the emotional execution happening in your chest.

He gestured toward the digital board, offering a polite, welcoming smile.

"I assume you're the new attending taking over my shift while I'm away" he said, his voice casual, friendly, completely ordinary. "Dr...?"

He paused, his eyes dropping down to the plastic hospital badge clipped to the pocket of your scrubs, searching for your name.

The moment his eyes scanned the printed letters of your first and last name, the world stopped for him, too.

The casual, polite smile died on his lips.

His fingers clenched around the plastic coffee cup so violently that the lid popped off, hot liquid spilling over his knuckles, but he didn't even flinch.

Robby slowly, agonizingly lifted his gaze back up to your face, his eyes blowing wide with a mixture of profound, terrifying shock and a sudden, violent rush of raw, unadulterated grief.

The ghost of the girl he had spent twenty years mourning,the one he had ruined his own life trying to forget. was standing right in front of him.

"Hey" he whispered, his voice cracking, turning into a raw, broken sound as the reality shattered his composure.

His eyes locked onto yours, trembling. "It's... it's really you."

Your hands clamped onto the patient chart so hard the metal clip bit painfully into your palm, but you couldn't feel it.

Your mind was a violent thunderstorm of old wounds, the agonizing sting of his rejection, and the humiliating memory of your failed marriage, all crashing together at once.

You had absolutely no idea how to survive this moment.

A violent, burning pressure built behind your eyes, the unmistakable warning of a catastrophic emotional meltdown.

You wanted to bolt down the corridor, lock yourself in the staff bathroom.

But that would be a pathetic show.

So you just stood there, paralyzed, a prisoner of your own choices, staring at your first love while the crowded ER bustled around you like a time-lapse video.

Robby didn't move an inch.

His eyes devoured your face, tracing the lines that time and heartbreak had carved into you, desperately trying to find the university student he had been too much of a coward to fight for. The silence between you grew heavy, thick with twenty years of unspoken apologies and repressed agony.

Then, the red trauma phone shrieked, shattering the fragile glass of the moment.

Dana snatched the receiver, her sharp gaze cutting between the two of you with intense suspicion, but her training overrode her curiosity instantly.

"Inbound ambulance. Ten-minute ETA. Multiple-vehicle pile-up on the Liberty Bridge. We have a thirty-year-old male, unrestrained, massive chest trauma, hypotensive, and tachycardic. They’re bagging him now. He's crashing"

The agonizing thoughts of your past, the heartbreak, and the urge to weep vanished, replaced instantly by the cold, ruthless focus of a trauma surgeon.

You let out a jagged breath and looked at Dana, your voice ringing across the floor with absolute, terrifying authority

"Prep Trauma Bay 1. Get respiratory down here right now, and tell the blood bank I want four units of O-neg hanging by the bed before the wheels hit the bay"

"Moving" Dana responded, already shouting orders to the residents.

You turned your eyes back to Robby.

The raw, emotional shock was still bleeding through his expression, but the professional in him took over.

He set his ruined coffee on the counter, his shoulders squaring as he stepped closer.

"You need a hand?" he asked softly, his voice carrying a quiet, protective undertone that had absolutely nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with the fact that he was still the boy who hated seeing you carry a burden alone.

You looked at him

"I've got the floor, Dr. Robinavitch" you said, a fierce, razor-sharp smile cutting across your face as you snatched a pair of trauma shears from the desk.

"But you can write the intake notes if you want to"

Robby's eyes crinkled behind his glasses, a breathless, genuine smile breaking through his shock as he shook his head in sheer, unadulterated admiration.

"New title, same beautiful disaster" he murmured under his breath, stepping into line behind you.

"Lead the way, Doctor"

The trauma had been a bloodbath, but you had handled it, stabilizing every patient from the bridge before sending them up to surgery.

The adrenaline had finally left your system, leaving your muscles aching and your mind completely drained.

So you needed a break.

Leaving the emergency department in a state of quiet, controlled order.

You went to the ambulance bay.

The bay was quiet, save for the distant sound of city traffic and the chilly Pittsburgh afternoon air rushing over your skin.

You wrapped your arms tightly around your chest, taking a deep, ragged breath of fresh air. You closed your eyes for a brief second, trying to process the absolute whirlwind of your first morning back in your hometown.

"I figured I'd find you out here" a quiet, familiar voice murmured from the shadows of the bay.

Your eyes snapped open.

Standing a few feet away, leaning against the concrete pillar, was Robby.

He had his jacket unzipped, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

He looked at you with an expression so heavy with nostalgia, regret, and relief that it made your breath hitch all over again.

"Robby" you breathed, your voice cracking slightly. "Sorry for not saying something before, i didn't expected to see you again, at least not so suddenly.

"Me neither"

You just smile at him.

"You were incredible in there" he said softly, taking a slow, tentative step toward you.

Your favorite blue searched your face, tracing the lines that time and a hard life had carved into you. "I mean it. Watching you command that trauma bay... you've become a phenomenal doctor. You're exactly what this hospital needs"

"I had to learn how to survive" you replied, a sudden, unexpected prickle of hot tears burning the backs of your eyes. The memory of your painful marriage, the messy divorce, and the long years of loneliness in California suddenly felt so light in comparison to the weight of his presence. "I had to learn how to be strong"

Robby closed the remaining distance between you, stopping just inches away.

The familiar, comforting scent of him, coffee, cold air, and the faint trace of the soap he’d used since college, wrapped around you like a blanket.

"I'm sorry" he whispered, his voice thick with raw emotion. "I'm so sorry I was a coward, twenty years ago. I thought I was saving our friendship, but I just... I let the best thing in my life walk away"

The confession broke the final dam holding back your defenses.

You stepped forward and threw your arms around his waist.

Robby let out a choked, broken sound against your hair and instantly hauled you against him. His large, warm arms locked securely around you, as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, squeezing you so tightly it knocked the air from your lungs.

It was a deep, desperate embrace.

Holding onto him like he was the only anchor left in a world that had burned down around you too many times.

You could feel the frantic, rapid thumping of his heart against your chest, matching your own rhythm perfectly.

For the first time in twenty years, you felt completely safe.

You were finally home.

For a long, suspended moment, you just held each other on the quiet.

Robby slowly pulled back just enough to look down at you, his hands resting gently on your shoulders.

The raw emotion was still swimming in his eyes, but underneath it, there was a sudden, guarded look, the exact same look he used to get when he was overthinking, trapping himself inside his own mind.

"I still can't believe you're here" he murmured, his voice low, his thumb lightly brushing against the fabric of your scrubs "Twenty years... and you just walk right back into my shift"

"I missed home, Robby" you said quietly, looking up at him through the chilly air. "And maybe... I missed you"

He froze for a fraction of a second, his gaze dropping.

You watched his jaw tighten, his brow furrowing exactly the way it used to when they were students.

It was the face of a man who had a thousand things to say, a man whose head was completely flooded with words, but who was suddenly paralyzed by his own old fears.

"There's... there's a lot we need to catch up on," Robby finally said.

He cleared his throat, pulling his hands back into his jacket pockets.

"We should get a coffee. Or dinner. Sometime soon. Let's save it for another day, when the floor isn't so crazy"

You looked at him, a faint, familiar ache twisting in your chest. Even after all this time, even after a devastating divorce and two decades of living apart, he was doing it again.

He was retreating into his feelings, overthinking the moment, pulling back because he was terrified.

He was choosing to save the truth for another day.

What you didn't know, what he couldn't bring himself to tell you as he stood there looking at your, was that "another day" was a luxury he was already running out of.

He was trapped in his own head, completely overwhelmed by the reality, right when his own life was packed into leather saddlebags, waiting to cross the state line.

"Yeah" you whispered, swallowing down the sudden chill of the afternoon air, forcing your confident smile back onto your face. "Another day. We've got time"

Robby just nodded, a heavy, quiet sadness settling over his features as he looked at you, keeping the secret locked deep inside.

The afternoon bled into a heavy evening shift.

Every time your paths crossed at the central desk, his eyes would linger on you a second too long, filled with that same paralyzing conflict before he would look away, retreating back into his own head.

By the time the clock struck 10:00 PM, the night-shift crew was officially taking over the floor.

You stood by the staff lockers, rubbing the back of your neck to ease the deep exhaustion settling into your muscles.

The door clicked open, and Jack Abbot walked in.

He had a fresh cup of coffee in hand, his dark eyes sharp and observant.

"Rough first day, Doc?" Jack asked.

"Just the usual"

》"But we kept everyone alive. That's a win."

Jack didn't immediately move to his own locker. Instead, he leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You know, when Robby told me they hired a new day attending to cover his sabbatical, he didn't knew it was you" Jack said quietly. "But the second I saw you two out by the bays today... I knew exactly who you were."

"What do you mean?"

"Robby and I have been friends a long time. When he gets a few drinks in him, or when the night shifts get too quiet and the ghosts start crawling out... he talks. He told me about university. He told me about a girl, a cramped student apartment, a neurology exam, and the biggest mistake he ever made in his life"

Your heart slammed against your ribs.

"He... he told you about that?"

"He told me he let the only woman he ever loved walk away because he was too damn scared to fight for her"

A bittersweet, painful ache flared in your chest. "He's running out of time"

You blinked, a cold dread suddenly gripping your stomach.

"What are you talking about?"

"This sabbatical isn't a vacation" Jack revealed, the gravity in his eyes making your breath hitch. "He didn't tell you, did he? He’s not planning on coming back to Pittsburgh. He’s not planning on coming back at all."

The locker room seemed to spin.

"What?"

"He's giving up" Jack said, a thread of raw, angry grief straining his voice.

"He packed everything he owns on his bike. He’s riding out west with no destination, no timeline, and honestly? No will to survive. He’s depressed, he’s completely burned out, and the way he’s talking about this trip..."

Jack reached out, his hand coming down firmly on your shoulder, gripping you with a desperate intensity.

He wasn't just your colleague right now; he was a man trying to save his best friend's life.

"I've tried everything to break through to him, but he won't listen to me" Jack murmured, his eyes pleading with yours. "You’re the only person on this earth who can pull him out of his own head. If you don't stop him tonight, if you don't make him face the truth right now... he’s going to ride past that state line, and we are never going to see him again"

You ran.

The cold night air hit your face like a physical slap as you burst through the hospital's back exit, your breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps.

Jack’s words echoed like a death sentence in your mind: If you don't stop him tonight... we are never going to see him again.

You sprinted through the shadows of the parking, your eyes frantically scanning the asphalt until you saw the low, amber glow of a single motorcycle headlight cutting through the dark near the edge of the lot.

It was him.

Robby was already straddling the massive bike, his heavy leather jacket zipped to his chin, his gloved hands gripping the handlebars.

The engine was idling, a low, ominous rumble vibrating through the quiet night air, ready to carry him away into the dark, boundless highway.

"Michael!" you screamed, your voice tearing through the silence, stripped of every ounce of professional composure.

The engine instantly died.

The sudden silence was deafening.

Robby froze, his shoulders tensing under the leather.

For a long, agonizing moment, he didn't turn around.

He just sat there, staring down at his dashboard, his knuckles turning white over the grips.

Slowly, heavily, he kicked the stand down and swung his leg over the bike.

When he turned to face you, the dim light of the parking lot lamp caught his expression.

It completely broke your heart.

He looked utterly exhausted, hollowed out by a deep, suffocating depression that no amount of medical knowledge could cure.

"You shouldn't be out here" Robby whispered, his voice a raw, jagged thread. He wouldn't look you in the eye, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground between you. "Your shift is over. Go home to your parents"

"I know about your plans. Why didn't you tell me?"

"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, it’s great to see you after twenty years, by the way, I’m completely broken and I’m leaving'?"

"You're running away!" you fired back, the angst ripping through your chest as you stopped just inches from him. You grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket, your fingers trembling with a mix of fear and rage. "You did it after that neurology exam, you did it when I went to California, and you’re doing it right now! You get stuck in your own head, you get scared. Michael you need to stop"

"I don't have anything left to give!"

He gripped your wrists, his breath coming in ragged bursts as tears finally spilled over his eyelashes. "Look at me! I am burned out, I am empty, and every single day in this hospital is a reminder of the life I hate, and it just kills me"

He let go of your wrists, his hands dropping hopelessly to his sides as his voice cracked into a desperate sob.

"I'm losing my mind, and I can't get out of it" he whispered, completely undone, his head bowing against your shoulder. "If I stay here, I'm going to drown. I just need to ride until the noise stops."

You looked at the man you had loved with every fiber of your soul, realizing Jack was right. This wasn't a sabbatical; it was a slow, agonizing surrender.

"I get it, you know" you whispered, your hands searching for his.

"I left Pittsburgh because I couldn't live watching you date other girls, watching how everything was slowly dying because we were cowards" Your eyes began to burn with the sudden, stinging rush of hot tears.

"I ran away too. I left. I didn't try to call you back after the last time, I just left"

Robby didn't say a word.

"I run always. I ran from Chicago after my husband cheated on me" you said, a bitter, twisted smile breaking across your face, tasting the salt of your own tears.

The silence stretched between you in the freezing air, the heavy confession hanging like smoke.

You were both completely exposed, two runners who had finally run out of pavement, standing face to face at the edge of the exact same cliff.

"But I'm tired of running, Michael" you said, the words slipping out as a heavy, exhausting truth. "I'm too old for this. I need to figure it out, to finally face my fears so they can let me finally live in peace. Happy. With love."

"Don't you want that too?" you asked him, looking straight into his eyes.

"If you keep running, they are going to keep chasing you" you said softly, gently placing your hand against his face, your warm palm resting on his cold cheek. "Until they get you again, and again, and again"

"You have to face them, kill them, make your fears and shadows disappear"

Robby didn't move.

His grip on your hands tightening, closing his eyes for a long, agonizing second as your words pierced straight through his heavy depression.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, looking down at you with a fragile, beautiful hope that he hadn't let himself feel.

He reached up, his gloved hand covering yours where it rested on his cheek.

"I don't know how to stop" he confessed, his voice barely a whisper, thick with tears. "I don't know how to face them alone anymore"

"You're not alone" you said fiercely, refusing to let him slip back into his head. "You have me know" you said looking for his eyes "But you have Jack, and Danna and this hospital. They all care for you Robby"

The realization hit him in visible waves, his chest heaving as the crushing isolation he’d built around himself finally began to crack. He was looking at you as if you were a lifeline in the middle of a storm, his hand still holding yours against his cheek.

And you couldn't wait any longer.

The twenty years of running, the bitter sting of the past, the painful divorces, and the miles of highway between you, it all narrowed down to this exact square inch of concrete in the cold Pittsburgh night.

You leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn't like the desperate, alcohol-fueled rush of that neurology exam night twenty years ago. This was deep, intentional, and thick with the heavy ache of two decades of longing.

Your lips met his with a fierce.

Possessive.

Tenderness.

Silently pouring every unspoken apology, every ounce of love, and every ounce of your stubborn strength into him.

Robby let out a low, ragged sob against your mouth.

The wall completely collapsed.

His arms wrapped violently around your waist, pulling you so hard against his chest that the metal buttons of his leather jacket bit into your scrubs.

He kissed you back with a terrifying, beautiful hunger, his lips trembling as he anchored himself to you.

His fingers tangled desperately into your hair, holding you as if he were a drowning man and you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

You brought him home.

He brougth you home.

When the kiss finally broke, neither of you pulled away.

You stayed right there.

Foreheads pressed together

Your warm breath mingling in the freezing night air.

Robby’s hands were still trembling where they rested on your waist, but the frantic, terrifying tension that had locked his shoulders all day was gone.

He let out a long, shaky exhale, leaning his weight against you as if he were finally letting himself rest.

"I've been so tired" he whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, vulnerable honesty. "For so long, I've just been so damn tired"

"I know" you murmured, brushing a stray lock of dark hair away from his forehead, your thumb gently tracing the line of his jaw. "But the running is over, Robby. You don't have to disappear into the dark to find peace"

He unzipped his leather jacket, taking a deep, clean breath of the Pittsburgh air, and finally offered you a real smile, the genuine, crinkly, eyed smile that you had fallen in love with all those years ago.

"Okay" he said softly, reaching out to take your hand, his fingers intertwining perfectly with yours. "Let's go home"

You smiled back, the bitter weight of the past completely dissolving as you squeezed his hand. You humped in his bike, ready to finally face tomorrow.