Chapter Text
The park benches, once again, are proving to be a popular break spot before they all head home after their shift. Robby likes this routine, is unusually fond of the tradition, especially on a day like today—it’s still warm out, a couple of stars have made their way through Pittsburgh’s light pollution, and (maybe most importantly) Jack has found the time to join them for ten minutes before he has to head in to start his shift. A strange sense of warmth is growing in Robby’s chest as he surveys the scene; then he remembers he might want to follow the conversation.
“—and anyway, I have a tattoo appointment that day,” Santos finishes. Whitaker is frowning at her, a bit of concern mixed into his expression.
“Another? You’ve just had one.”
“Dennis. When will you learn this? There are never enough tattoos,” Santos replies quickly, shaking her head in mock-outrage.
Robby lazily raises the beer he’s still holding in approval, a small grin disappearing into his beard. That had been his belief, too, for quite a while, before.
Santos notices his gesture, quickly finding his eyes and grinning back at him in understanding before leaning towards him, an eager spark in her eyes. “What’s the story behind your tattoos, anyway? I’ve never even fully seen them.”
Normally, this is when he would suddenly and sharply excuse himself from the conversation, the topic too personal and too close to memories he would like to avoid. Today, he finds that his desire to do so is smaller than the contentment still blooming in his chest. He enjoys hanging out with the younger doctors; likes seeing them as full personalities beyond the gruelling reality of the ED. He wants to encourage them to stay this way, even in his presence. Besides, Jack is right there beside him with one arm resting on the bench behind him, a calming presence that only adds to his enjoyment of the evening.
So, surprised by himself, he decides on indulging Santos’ question.
✾
It’s been over twenty years since his first tattoo, so he finds himself fishing in the dark a bit. He’s sure that the way his memories are a little fuzzy, a little hollowed out, is normal when one has lived as intensely as he has—but it’s still a little offputting sometimes, to reach back into his mind and find nothing there except for a faint sense of loss. But, he thinks to himself, surely he remembers the story of his first tattoo. It would be embarrassing if he didn’t. So he thinks, and fishes, and finds enough strands to weave together something passing as a coherent narrative.
He had been out of residency for only a couple of years at the time, still fresh to his role as an attending at PTMC. He was doing great. This was, after all, what he had spent all those years preparing for—taking on a leading role, making decisions, getting the feeling that what he did mattered, that his work had an impact. People respected him; he got to teach interns and residents and watch them flourish under his watch, his guidance. He was having a great time, really. Even greater once Jack came in as a new attending and they realised how well they played off each other, how something seemed to click whenever their shifts coincided.
(So what if sometimes he found himself unable to truly sleep for days, or spent a whole day crying, or crossed the street without really looking? Mistakes you made under the pressure of the ED would end up haunting you; he had always known that. This was a normal thing when you took up responsibility for other people’s lives. It surely didn’t take away from his enjoyment of this time, and he couldn’t even fully remember those days anyways, and he definitely doesn’t need to say any of that out loud to his residents now. He doesn’t even remember what made him cry, or which nightmares he lost so much sleep over. Surely that’s a sign that it wasn’t that important in the first place.)
It’s a bit difficult for him to reconstruct today, but he thinks it was a coincidence that led to his interest in philosophy. He had been browsing at a tiny flea market he had found while wandering home from a long shift, away from his usual route for reasons he couldn’t quite remember. Seneca’s letters to Lucilius just kind of fell into his hands, and he found himself tearing through the first few chapters—fascinated by his writings, his stance on life, his way of rationalizing death as something you were never truly present for, something that only existed in past and future tense.
Of course, he bought the book, and in the weeks after read it thrice, as well as everything else his library could provide on Stoic philosophy, both Roman and Greek (because he was proud to support local infrastructure, and the library was always there when he needed a space on his days off that wasn’t quite as lonely as his apartment). He found himself agreeing with large swaths of it, and felt like he was failing at other parts. But especially, he found a strange comfort in the notion that death was not something to be afraid of and instead something that you needed to make your peace with before the fact, something that you should bear willingly and uncomplainingly once the time came.
(He worried a bit that he would miss that moment; that he would cling to life too fervently, unwilling to let go after all—but that was a future concern.)
In the end, it felt only reasonable to get AMOR FATI tattooed on his arm. He wanted the reminder—he did love his fate at the moment, felt he had ended up in exactly the right place and was ready to willingly accept it. He had honored his calling, he had persevered, and for that, he wanted to have a token on his body forever.
It’s a nice story to be telling your residents, he thinks to himself a little proudly.
✾
The worst thing is that Jack isn’t sure if Robby is actively lying or if he truly believes he is telling the truth. Because Jack remembers that time, quite well in fact, and it does not match up with Robby’s narration at all.
Oh, the Seneca obsession, sure. He does remember that. He wishes he didn’t, but the memory is seared into his brain. It had, quite frankly, been an unsettling time, and the moment Santos had brought up tattoos, his stomach had turned at the memory.
It had started out a lot better, was the thing. Jack came to PTMC like a lost dog to a shelter—ready to find a new home, but distrustful and ready to be thrown back onto the street for his flaws. His discharge had taken place just over a year ago, and he was barely settled in his own skin, still flinching at loud noises if the day had been too long, or the night too short. Coming back to work felt like an endeavour doomed from the start, an experiment he thought would last a couple of months at best.
But then, there was Robby. Robby and his kindness, his quiet trust in Jack, his soft-spokenness, and underneath it all, an exhaustion Jack knew all too well. He didn’t like seeing it in others—didn’t like to think about what Robby had experienced to turn out this way, didn’t like to think about where he might be headed. But he did like Robby, and he decided he had to try his best to stick around at PTMC just so he could keep an eye on him. In a friendly, platonic way, of course.
He learnt quickly that this had been a good decision, and that “keeping an eye on Robby” was also the best he could do; the man seemed to possess a unique talent for escaping genuine conversations about his mental health. But, to be fair, Jack wasn’t great at that either, so he gladly settled for quietly joining Robby on his walk home, or inviting him over under the pretense of some TV event, or taking over hard cases before Robby could make them his burden to bear. And it worked. He didn’t think Robby was doing great, by any means, but he was solid, stable, a trustworthy constant in Jack’s life (and he didn’t like to think about how fast that relationship had turned from purely professional to something way more all-encompassing).
Then, a string of bad cases, critical patients lost, multiple hard shifts in a row, and Jack found himself pushed away by Robby. Sometimes it was only that the other man seemed more withdrawn and less talkative, and sometimes Jack suspected Robby literally changed his route home so Jack couldn’t meet him somewhere along the way.
It was then that his fascination with Seneca started. Whenever Jack came over to Robby’s, worried what he got up to on his own, he found the man either reading, writing frantically, or simply staring out of his window lost in thought. Jack didn’t care for any of it. It was an unsettling way of coping, it didn’t seem healthy to him, and (perhaps selfishly) he missed the Robby from before—his fellow attending, who struggled at times but was there when it mattered. Who once read Jack as effortlessly as he now only read Latin letters.
One of those days, he found himself on the roof for the first time. It was early autumn and the view of the city offered a more colorful Pittsburgh than he was used to, all gold and red and orange. He had come here in the middle of his shift, which he knew he wasn’t supposed to do, he was still on the clock—but he had been watching Robby and that unhinged smile of his all day, and for some reason it almost made him cry. So, before scaring his patients, he decided to take his break for once and just find a moment to breathe, and think, and wonder what it was about Robby that made caring about him so damn painful.
He was about to head back down when Robby himself stuck his head out of the door. “There you are,” he said, a little pointedly. “They pay you for standing around looking pretty now?” Jack knew that being called pretty was not the point to this conversation. He felt his face heat up nonetheless.
“Been thinking about you, actually,” he blurted out, then cursed himself. What kind of answer was that supposed to be?
Robby only furrowed his brow and took a few steps out of the door to join Jack at the railing, simply looking out over Pittsburgh with him for a few seconds. If Jack hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought that Robby was blushing, just a little, high up on his cheekbones. It was probably the wind, anyway. “You were?” Robby asked finally, almost shyly. This was already nearing the record for their longest conversation of the past few weeks.
“Yeah,” Jack replied simply. “Been thinking about what to do about you, since you’ve replaced me with your old pal Seneca. It’s not very gentlemanly of you, you know that?” He tried to make it sound playful, but he thought his real hurt still came through quite strongly. Robby seemed to think so too, an almost guilty expression on his face now.
“I know,” he admitted quietly. “I know I haven’t been great to be around lately, and I know I’ve probably let you down in ways I can’t even fully fathom yet. I—can’t even explain it to you, I wish I could, but I don’t know what’s been happening to me, why I’ve been so—so—,” his voice broke here and he bit his lip instead, eyes slightly glassy.
Jack took a deep breath. Here he finally had his moment of honesty, and he had no idea what to do with it. He settled for a comforting hand on Robby’s shoulder, digging his fingers into his neck just a bit (and if a slight feeling of possessiveness overcame him for a second, he elected to ignore it). “You know we all struggle, brother. You’re not alone in that,” he finally said, painfully aware of the hollowness of his words. “But you talk to me earlier, next time, okay? Or I’ll give you the number of my therapist. Both work for me.”
Robby simply nodded, and dragged a hand over his face, and seemed to pull on a mask again. “Okay. Break’s over. Come back down with me,” he ordered, voice steady again, all his hurt somehow hidden away. Jack thought it was a little scary just how good Robby was at pretending.
A few days later, Robby showed up with his first tattoo, and a spring in his step that Jack hadn’t seen in months. He marked the issue as settled for now in his mind, thinking he would bring it back up later, when Robby seemed a bit more stable.
He never did, until years later.
✾
Robby has stayed oblivious to Jack’s slight detour down their shared memory lane. “So, that’s the story behind that. Not the most exciting, I know,” he says, stretching a bit and rubbing a hand on his neck, almost sounding embarrassed.
Jack privately has always thought it fascinating how all of Robby’s imposing presence seemed limited to the hospital, and left him for an almost shyness once he had left his proverbial doctor’s coat behind. Sometimes, he wants to study Robby like an especially interesting specimen, dissect him until he can understand all of his quirks and mannerisms, all the things that make Robby Robby. He’s sure this is a normal and not at all possessive approach to friendship.
Santos, meanwhile, is unburdened by such thoughts. “But that’s only the first one, right? Didn’t you have, like, a matching one too?”