Archive of Our Own

There were days when teaching was rewarding, fulfilling, enriching; days when working with aspiring med students and keen residents felt like one of the best parts of Robby's job. And then there were days like today, when having to justify himself to a sub-intern made Robby feel like he'd be achieving more if he beat his head against a wall.

"But the patient has a score of seven on the GCS," Carson said, for the third time. "We have to intubate. That's what all the textbooks say."

"So I'm going to ask you to revisit the sections of your textbooks on diabetic ketoacidosis," Robby said, pressing his hands together, "and to take this from someone who's been doing this for as long as you've been alive. You pay attention to the patient that you've got as much as you do to the theory. Intubating with a GCS score of 7 is appropriate, yes—but in cases of trauma. This is not a trauma patient. She's protecting her own airway, gag reflex is intact, she's satting well on room air with regular respirations. End-tidal CO2 is appropriate. Blood gas test shows a pH of 6.8. If we intubate her unnecessarily with acidosis that severe, even seconds of apneic time would be enough to tip her over the edge. So, let me ask you again: are we going to intubate?"

Carson looked mulish, and Robby deeply hoped that he hadn't been this frustrating to deal with back in the day. With immense ill grace, Carson turned to look at the monitors displaying the patient's vitals. "No."

"No," Robby agreed. "We're going to try to preserve her respiratory drive, keep going with the DKA protocol, and Jesse, you're going to come find me when her condition changes."

"You got it," Jesse said with a nod, and Robby was glad to be reminded that he really did have a competent team around him. Maybe he'd even be able to count Carson among their number at some point. Just not today.

It was 8:57am when Robby stepped out of Trauma One. He paused to sanitise his hands and to consider whether he should have some burned break room coffee, or whether he should risk taking five minutes to run upstairs to the cafeteria for something moderately more drinkable. He needed caffeine for sure, but his GI tract could be pretty persnickety these days about the quality of the coffee he consumed. Maybe he... but then Robby realised who was standing at the nurses' station.

Who was leaning on it, in fact, apparently deep in conversation with Mel while Perlah and Princess looked on from a distance and whispered to one another: John.

Robby went over to him. "I think I can safely call this an unexpected surprise."

"Robby!" John beamed, stood, wrapped him up in a back-slapping hug. "Passing through town last minute, thought I'd stop by and finally see the place I've heard so much about." Given that John had a sleek brown leather satchel slung over his shoulder, and was wearing a tailored suit that looked like it had cost more than all of the clothes and shoes that Robby owned combined, Robby was mildly sceptical that this was any kind of unplanned detour. John didn't react to the dubious look on Robby's face. "Dr King here was giving me a wonderful introduction to PTMC and all the work you do here."

"Actually, we've largely been talking about horses," Mel said earnestly. "Dr Carter knows a gratifying amount about the American Quarter Horse."

Robby raised an eyebrow at him. "Does he?"

John shrugged. "I dabbled in eventing back in the day."

"Eventing," Robby said flatly. "As in jumping horses?"

"Yeah, and I still ride every so often, though not as much as I'd like," John said, with an air that said he was not getting into this any further right here, right now. "Robby, could I chat with you briefly about something? Dr King, it was lovely to meet you. We'll have to talk more at some point about the best riding trails near here." Without waiting for an answer from Mel, John took Robby by the elbow and steered him in the direction of the ambulance bay doors.

Behind them, Robby heard the gossiping double in intensity. He couldn't claim to speak Tagalog, but he'd picked up a handful of phrases over the years through context and repetition, and he was pretty sure that someone said the equivalent of hot piece of ass. His work colleagues had known for a year now that he had a brother, but there was a difference between knowing that intellectually and having it confirmed in person. He sighed. Time to mentally prepare for at least a week of renewed questions about John, and what he was like, and whether he was still single.

He supposed he should be grateful that Princess hadn't asked for a photo of the two of them together. That would have become a fixture of the break room noticeboard in no time at all.

"So what actually brings you to Pittsburgh?" Robby said as soon as the doors had closed behind them. It was a bright, clear morning but they were far enough into fall by now for there to be a chill to the air regardless. No one was keen to loiter outside in 30 degree weather, so they had the bay to themselves.

"I have some meetings downtown later this morning," John said.

It was time for Robby to raise both eyebrows.

"Well that, and also," John said, opening his bag and taking out a manila envelope that had to be three inches thick. "You don't seem to know how to access your email inbox anymore. And when you don't respond to the lawyers about anything, at all, ever, the lawyers email me. And unlike you, I do check my email, because apparently I—"

"I was going to get around to them!" Robby said, which wasn't a lie if it was also something you were trying to convince yourself about. "Eventually. I do have an actual job, you know."

John snorted and held the envelope out to Robby. "You forget that I, too, have been avoidant. I've been avoidant about exactly this kind of thing in the past. I had FedEx couriers tracking me down in a Congolese refugee camp, that's how much I didn't want to sign any foundation paperwork after Gamma died. But you've got to do it some time. These lawyers are too well paid for them to forget about this and wander off."

"Can't make me do it," Robby groused, even as he took the envelope.

"No," John agreed. "But if you don't read through and sign them, just so you know, my next step will be to tell Jack."

"Bastard," Robby said.

"Please," John said, "that's not even the nuclear option. You know what would happen if I told Dana."

Robby huffed in grudging acknowledgement.

"Anyway," John said, checking his watch, "I really do have some meetings to get to. The top sheet in there has the address to courier everything back to the law firm. Overnight would be great, by the way, since hey, I know you're good for it now."

"Oh, fuck you," Robby said as John started to walk away through the bay towards the street. John saluted him lazily over his shoulder. "How long are you in town for?"

John turned around but kept walking backwards, his hands in his pockets. "Leaving tomorrow morning."

"Dinner tonight?"

"Wouldn't miss it," John said.

When Robby had finally moved out of Janey's house, it had taken him a long time to start thinking of his new place as "home" and not as "the condo." He'd hauled all of his stuff over there, box by box; he'd splurged on a very expensive new sofa, and spent time getting his stereo system set up just right. But he hadn't painted the place. Never bothered hanging curtains. Did little more than eat, sleep, and shower there; preferred to let his occasional hook-ups take him home instead of the other way around. He'd only ever thought of the condo as a placeholder.

Soon, he'd told himself, soon he'd have the time and the energy to look for a place to buy. Once the pandemic was behind them; once he'd gotten a firmer grasp on the responsibilities of being Chief.

"Soon" had turned into five years, and Robby had still never hung up any of his art on the walls.

When he'd moved in with Jack, though, it had all been very different. True, Jack had been living in his house for years by that point. Longer by himself than he'd ever gotten to live there with Maggie, of course, but fully living there. Paint on the walls and curtains on the windows; overstuffed bookcases flanking his TV with its carefully calibrated sound system and neatly stored games consoles; both bathrooms renovated to be accessible and a small but thriving vegetable garden out back. (The ED staff had long since learned to hide whenever Jack showed up with surplus mounds of zucchini and squash to pawn off on whoever he could persuade to take them.)

But right from the moment Robby had carried his first box over the house's threshold, it had felt like his home, too. Before Jack had so much as emptied out a side of the closet or the medicine cabinet for him, or before he'd cleared a shelf for some of Robby's books or found a screwdriver to let him fix his mezuzah to the doorpost, Robby had known in his bones that when he was here, he was home.

True as that was, having lived with Jack for several months now hadn't entirely worn away the tiny thrill that Robby got every time he could refer to their place that way.

Me (11:14): +1 for dinner tonight.
Me (11:14): Do I need to bring anything with me on the way home?
Jack (3:07): Cool
Jack (3:10): Nah I think we're good
Jack (3:11): Who're you bringing?
Me (3:32): John's in town
Jack (3:33): 👍

Robby's shift officially finished at seven, but he didn't get out of there until a quarter after thanks to a high-speed single-vehicle collision that had brought three people into the ED and sent two of them onward to the OR. Both were as stabilised as Robby could get them but he wasn't optimistic about their chances. What a way to end a day. He made decent time getting home, but clearly John and Jack had started without him. Robby let himself in the front door to the sounds of low music on the stereo, conversation and the smell of cooking floating out to him from the kitchen.

"Hey, I'm home," Robby called as he took his shoes off and then padded to the restroom to wash his face and hands before going through to the kitchen. John was sitting at the table, suit jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up; Jack, in his usual sweatpants and a particularly disreputable band t-shirt, was setting out a bowl of salsa next to the rest of the taco fixings.

"Just in time," Jack said, accepting Robby's kiss on the cheek as regally as any sovereign. "John was about to start eating the leg of the table."

"Lies," John said, but then proceeded to put away enough food to leave Robby moderately impressed. That was a teenage boy level of appetite. "Sorry," he said when he was done, "but all they served during those meetings was terrible coffee and some pretty subpar biscotti. Jack, this was delicious."

"Tacos are one of life's great pleasures," Jack said solemnly. "Gotta treat them with respect."

Once they'd finished eating, Robby shooed Jack into the living room while he cleared up. "Fair's fair," he said, and John insisted on staying to help. The TV turned on—momentarily too loud, the announcer blaring WE'RE HEADING INTO AN EXCITING SIXTH INNING HERE before Jack turned the volume down with a "Shit, sorry!"—while Robby wiped down the countertops and John loaded the dishwasher.

"You know, Bubbe would have smacked me if she'd caught me letting a guest tidy up," Robby said as he set some decaf brewing.

"Lucky for you then that I'm not a guest," John said, putting his hands on his hips and stretching out his lower back for a moment like some kind of oversized cat. "I'm your charming big brother."

"Ha-ha," Robby said, getting mugs from the cupboard.

They lapsed into silence for a moment, waiting for the coffee to be ready, and then John said, quietly, "We never really had to do chores much as kids. Servants. I was 27 years old before I did my own laundry for the first time. But sometimes Corinne would let me and Bobby help out in the kitchen, when our grandparents were having people over. Bring her the herbs she needed, do some of the dishes after, that kind of thing. We always thought we were so grown up, doing that. Once, Bobby said it was what he wanted to do when he, uh. When he got older. Be a chef."

Robby glanced over at John out of the corner of his eye. Even after all these months, John mentioned Bobby so very rarely; doled out anecdotes about him like they were rare freshwater pearls. He'd passed on only one photograph of Bobby, showing a kid of seven or eight with a gap-toothed smile and a bowl cut, with the Carter nose and eyes that must have been his mother's. Robby might have resented getting so little, if it hadn't been so clear to him that John had gone years without feeling like he had anyone he could talk to at all about the brother who'd been lost and who could never be found. Scar tissue could turn inflexible.

Robby settled for saying, lightly, "Well, Bubbe would have loved to have two such experienced helpers over for Shabbat dinner," and rested a hand briefly on John's shoulder as he moved past him in search of spoons.

"Thanks again for having me," John said as he and Robby carried the coffees through to the living room. "Beats room service and a night going through grant applications in a hotel room."

"Any time," Robby said as he settled in next to Jack in his usual spot on the sofa. "But if you thought you were being subtle with that paperwork mention, think again."

"Rats," John said, deadpan, from his perch in one of the armchairs, and took a slurp of his coffee.

Jack slanted a look over at John. "You're trying to get him to do paperwork? I didn't know you were such an irrational optimist."

"Optimism's my middle name," John said brightly. "Well, no, actually, it's Truman."

"Oof," Jack said with a shake of his head. "My condolences."

Robby sighed. "Fine, fine, I'll go get the papers. Happy?"

"Thrilled," Jack said absently, all his attention currently focused on what was happening on the TV screen. "Ball! Goddammit."

Robby went out to the hallway, retrieved the envelope, a pen, and his glasses from his backpack, retreated to his spot on the sofa. This time, though, he turned sideways so that his feet were resting in Jack's lap, Jack's big hands warming his sock feet. If he was having to spend his evening on paperwork, at least he could be comfortable doing so.

The top of the thick stack was, as John had said, a cover letter containing the contact information of Martin, Hall, and Jacobs LLP, and a bullet-pointed list of the dozen or so enclosed documents that needed Robby's signature.

We would appreciate your urgent attention to these matters. Should you require any further assistance concerning documents 11-12, please contact Samantha Diaz-Bramwell. For all other questions, please contact the administrative assistant of P.L.F. Cadwallader, Esq., at the number listed below.

Robby groaned. What had his life come to, that he had a family lawyer? That he had a family lawyer on retainer whose name was P.L.F. Cadwallader? "Can I remind you again that I never wanted any of the money? I'm fine with being on the CFF Board, but the rest of this bullshit is just—"

"Oh wow, should we get out our tiniest violins?" Jack said. He didn't look away from the TV screen, but he gave one of Robby's ankles a gentle squeeze. "Your diamond hiking shoes too tight?"

Robby scanned the list of documents: an acknowledgement of the terms of a codicil to his father's will; a couple of things to do with a sprawling parcel of rural land in Tennessee that had somehow come to Robby as part of his share of the inheritance and that he now wanted to donate to a wildlife conservancy; his formal appointment to the board of yet another trust in the Carter Family Fund labyrinth, a seat that he'd agreed to take off John's plate even though he had absolutely no plans to attend its annual meetings.

For someone who spent a lot of his life trying to give away the family money, John seemed to have a lot of people who worked for him trying to hoard as much of it as possible, like professional proxy dragons.

And then, second-to-last on the list, was something that gave him pause. Robby frowned, flicked to the document in question, skimmed through it in growing horror. "Hey," he said, raising his voice to be heard over Jack and John's vocal, mutual disapproval of a botched double play. "Why the hell is there a prenup in here?"

John looked faintly puzzled. "Well, I guess they found out you're planning to get married? I'm sure it's just the standard document they provide for all the family members. Plus whatever state-specific tweaks they thought might be needed."

Robby stared at the page.

This agreement is made this ___ day of ___, 202_, between Michael A. Robinavitch ("First Party"), and John R. Abbot ("Second Party").
Whereas both parties intend to enter into a marriage on _____, 202_; and whereas both parties wish to define their respective rights and responsibilities regarding their separate and joint property, and to set forth their mutual understanding regarding financial matters in the event of the termination of their marriage by death or divorce, regardless of whether their property rights are to be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or any other domestic or foreign jurisdiction; and whereas...

"Can you believe this bullshit?" Robby looked over at Jack, half-laughing, held out the agreement for him to see. As much as John and his kids had become an important part of Robby's life with a speed that still startled him if he thought about it, Robby had never once thought of himself as a Carter. The fact that he was—biologically, legally—connected to a group of people who had so much money that even their relationships looked like a profit-and-loss sheet to them was profoundly strange to him. He hoped it always would be. "What the fuck, a prenup?"

Jack's gaze flickered from Robby to the page and then back to Robby. "Drawing it up without our say-so isn't cool, but maybe a prenup itself isn't actually a bad idea."

Robby gaped at him. "Are you kidding?"

"Why would I joke about something like this?" Jack said. He was serious.

"You genuinely think a prenup is something we should sign? That we need?" Robby couldn't believe the way that Jack shrugged at that—shrugged.

"You know what, I think I should head back to my hotel," John said with a very exaggerated yawn, as if he wasn't the kind of night owl that put Jack Abbot to shame. He set his mug down on the coffee table and went in search of his shoes and jacket. "Look at the time, wow, it's getting late. Great to see you both again! Jack, thanks for dinner."

"Any time," Jack said. He turned off the TV and went to wash up the coffee mugs while Robby waved John off.

"Sorry to have caused, uh..." John said with a wince as his cab finally turned onto Robby's block. "I'm sure you can work it all out."

"I'm going to buy the twins something that makes so much noise for their birthday. A lot of noise, and sugar," Robby said, and meant it.

Robby took a hot shower, and by the time he was ready for bed, Jack was already under the covers, reading glasses on and one of his usual chunky paperback Westerns on his lap. Robby climbed in next to him, lay down, nestled his head into his pillow. It had been a long shift, and sleep should have come easily. Robby stared up at the ceiling instead.

Jack turned to the next page of his book and said, "Now that it's been brought up, we'll have to talk about it. Preferably sooner rather than later."

Robby sighed.

"Buddy, who popped the question to who?" Jack went on. "And I seem to remember asking you if you were sure—"

"Prenups are bullshit," Robby said, setting his jaw. "You think I grew up how and when I did to turn into some kind of… of fucking Reaganite now?"

There was a pause, and then Jack said "Okay" with suspicious mildness. It took a long time before he turned the next page in his book. It took Robby even longer to fall asleep.

The next day was one of Robby's rostered administrative ones. In theory, an 8-to-5 workday should have been easier than a 12-hour shift in the ED. In reality, it was just as tiring. Having to wear a shirt and tie to work always made Robby feel vaguely claustrophobic, a feeling that wasn't helped by spending time in the office that had once been Monty's. His therapist seemed to think that it was positive that he'd begun to use it over the past few months—can you articulate a rational reason, Michael, why anyone actually would think it's inappropriate for the Chief of Emergency Medicine to use the office space set aside for the Chief?—but sitting at Monty's desk felt like as much of a task for him as did any of the budget spreadsheets or the department chair meetings or the MM&Is.

Shortly after lunch, Robby got in the elevator and went down to the ED—obviously not because he had any qualms about the attendings on duty, but merely to run some roster changes for next month by Dana. Quicker and easier to do that in person than over email.

"I don't know who you think you're fooling, buster," Dana told him when he handed the roster to her, "but it ain't me. Now get out of here before you get any fluids on that nice shirt."

"A man can't just look around him?"

"A man can. You? No," Dana said.

"Anyone ever tell you you're kind of mean?"

"Not enough," Dana said crisply. "Shoo."

"Fine, fine," Robby said on a half-laugh, and he honestly did intend to go straight to the elevator but as he passed Cassie in South 20, she stopped him for a second opinion.

"Well, third opinion, really," she confessed. "But do you ever, you know, get a vibe?"

"Sadly, yes," Robby said as he reviewed the patient's chart. "But I think you're doing the right thing here. I'd also be cautious in approach, given Mr Washington's history. Keep him in for another three hours or so, monitor those potassium levels closely. No change, you dispo him with the usual aftercare provisions. If there is a change, well, you get to say 'I was right.' Always satisfying." He handed the tablet back to her, headed over to the elevator.

"Thank you," Cassie said, following him. "Obviously, Dr Deranjian is a very good physician, I'm not questioning his judgement, but..."

"Yeah," Robby said with a shrug. "Ned can be Ned." Ned had always seemed too much into golf for someone who'd gone into EM instead of Derm, but Robby supposed it took all sorts to make a world.

"Mmhmm," Cassie said, and then made a clear shift of tone. "So… I hear congratulations are in order!"

Robby craned his neck to look back in the direction of the nurses' station. "I can't believe Dana narc'ed."

"Oh, I didn't hear it from her," Cassie said. "Your brother told Mel yesterday." When Robby groaned and rolled his eyes, she went on, "What? He's clearly happy for you both. I think it's sweet."

Robby sighed and wondered where the hell the elevator was. He slapped the call button again. "It's not a big deal, we're not making a big deal out of it. It's a formality." Fifteen minutes in the courthouse, a new ring on Robby's finger, a nice dinner that evening: who needed anything more than that? And Jack and Robby had never formally announced that they were together to their work colleagues, any more than either of them had ever actually come out. Why change a practice that worked just for the sake of it? People could put two and two together when they spotted the rings.

Cassie snorted softly. "Okay, right, well, take it from someone who's been there, done that, and has the godawful divorce-court anecdotes to show for it: it's never just a ceremony."

The elevator doors finally slid open. Robby stepped in and turned around to face Cassie. "Well, people always say that too much emphasis gets put on the wedding and not enough on the marriage, right?"

"Yeah," Cassie said, and her mouth twisted, wry. "But the question is, where does one end and the other begin?"

The door closed before Robby could answer.

Robby went back upstairs. He sat through an hour-long meeting about marketing strategy and "integrating client and stakeholder feedback more holistically into all PTMC verticals" that made him want to go up onto the roof and scream "Fuck!" very loudly. He signed all of the documents that the law firm had sent him, except for one, and arranged for a courier to come pick them up. He had a conversation with Eileen Shamsi about ways to better streamline interdepartmental communication about patients, which was frustrating but at least had the promise of some tangible improvements in the near future. Reviewing the Emergency Services Committee monthly report didn't take too much time—you could always count on Torres to be succinct—but the HR report on Smith was a masterpiece in vague ass-covering. It made Robby's jaw clench to read it. Most of what had gone down with that jackass hadn't even involved anyone from EM, but Robby still took the time to write a very plainly-worded response to HR.

And then he CC'ed Gloria on it, for good measure.

It was shortly after five by the time Robby disconnected his laptop from its monitor, and put it into his backpack. He looked down at the prenuptial agreement, still sitting on one side of his desk. For a moment, he thought about tossing it in the trash, or putting it through the paper shredder. Then he put it, too, into his backpack.

Rush hour traffic meant that it was almost six by the time he got home. He felt crumpled and tired, his shirt sticking to the small of his back worse than any scrub top ever did. He dropped his bag inside the door, and before he'd had the time to take off his shoes, Jack's head appeared around the kitchen doorway.

"Pasta?" was all Jack said.

Robby nodded.

Jack disappeared.

Robby had spent hardly any time in the ED that day, but he still felt in need of a cleansing. He sloped through to the main bathroom, sluiced himself off in the hottest water he could stand, and pulled on an old pair of sweatpants and an ancient Pirates t-shirt. The heat and the change of clothes did a lot to help his shoulders come down from around his ears, to sooth some of the ache that loved to burrow its way into the place where his neck met his shoulders.

Jack had made a salad to go with the pasta and Robby should have been relishing the rare alignment of work schedules that let them sit down to dinner together, but as he took a seat at the table he was mostly aware of how Jack was looking at him.

Few people could look at a guy the way that Jack Abbot could look at a guy.

"You have a good day?" Robby said, staring down at his plate.

"Fine," Jack said, curt. "You?"

Robby sighed. "We didn't actually have a fight, so could we not?"

"We could not," Jack said, "it's true", and shovelled a forkful of salad into his mouth.

"Jack—"

Another forkful of salad.

"I feel like you want me to say sorry," Robby said, jabbing at a stray bit of pasta with his fork with maybe more force than the pasta deserved, "but I don't even know what I'd be saying sorry for. Sorry for trusting you? Sorry for not thinking you're greedy?"

Jack put his fork down, sat back in his chair. "You could maybe be sorry for putting words in my mouth."

Robby rubbed at his forehead. "Jack—"

"But hey, you started a sentence with 'I feel', so I guess the therapy really is working."

Robby flinched backwards, and it was Jack's turn to sigh. He rubbed at his forehead. "That was a shitty thing for me to say, I'm sorry, I just..."

"I don't understand," Robby said tightly, fighting the strong urge to get up and walk away. "I honestly don't get what the fucking issue is here."

"You've got a lot of money now," Jack said.

"Yeah, I'm aware." Robby was still one of the poorer members of the extended Carter family, but even at that he'd never again have to work a day in his life if he didn't want to. Fuck you money was what Dana termed it. A third of his father's estate plus his share of a trust that Millicent Carter had established for her grandchildren combined to put Robby's net worth in the low eight figures. He could have claimed even more—there were funds, there were offshore holdings, there were technically legal means of squirrelling away money from the IRS that Robby had never heard of before last year—but that would have required lawsuits that Robby wasn't interested in filing, and the divvying up of even more property that he didn't want.

The time that John had asked Robby if he wanted to pick out one of the family's actual, honest-to-god Fabergé eggs for himself had been bad enough.

"This money... you get that I never asked for it and I did nothing to earn it, right?" Robby sneaked a glance at Jack's face and felt a bit sickened by what he saw there: the tiredness, the sadness. How was Robby fucking this all up again, and so soon this time? He never meant to. "And if we're still going to do this, what's mine is yours. You get that, right? Jack, you get it?"

Robby hated what his voice did then, how it cracked and wavered; was pathetically grateful for the way Jack reached out and covered one of Robby's hands in his.

"This isn't about me doubting you, or worrying you think I'm a gold digger, or anything like that," Jack said softly. "Hey, Mike, c'mon look at me."

Robby met Jack's gaze; was overwhelmed, as always, by the depths of what he saw there.

"I know you better than that," Jack said, cocking his head to one side. "Which means I also know you have a tendency to maybe, sometimes, occasionally beat yourself up about shit you couldn't possibly control. You know, like who your dad was or how inheritance law works."

"That isn't…"

"Isn't it?"

Robby subsided.

"And anyway, whatever the morality of it might be, you've got a shit tonne of money now," Jack went on. "I don't. But I've got a house, a truck, a 401(k). I'm one dog away from a country song about a poor kid from the sticks made good. I pay my own way. I'm not exactly a pauper here, I get by fine."

"I'm not—"

Jack squeezed his hand, gently. "Let me finish. I've got some stuff, you've got more stuff, and life is fucking unpredictable. We see that every day in our line of work. I saw that with Maggie. And we can't bubblewrap our whole lives, but we can sidestep some shit. Getting things down on paper isn't such a bad idea."

Robby swallowed. "I just don't want to think about an ending before we've ever really had a beginning."

"You're kidding me, right?" Jack said, mouth quirking. "We passed our beginning a long time ago." He shifted so that he could hold Robby's hand in his properly. "But sweetheart, I'm nowhere near done with you yet."

They agreed to shelve any further discussion until the weekend, when they'd have more time and hopefully more energy to talk about it.

"I'll need to stretch for it," Jack said, deadpan. "Full-on hot yoga session Saturday morning. Get everything limber. Flying Crow Pose."

"One day," Robby said from his perch on the sofa, tipping his head back to accept his customary kiss from Jack before he headed out the door for his evening shift, "you're going to make a joke like that in front of the wrong person. Jesse's going to overhear you. Next thing you know, you're going to be in a yoga studio at the crack of dawn, wearing Lululemon and hearing about your chakras."

Jack leaned closer to murmur in Robby's ear. "Flying Crow Pose. Google it. Then imagine what else I could do."

Once he left, Robby did a furtive internet search.

Me (6:21): That's not fair
Jack (8:43): :)

Friday produced one of the inexplicable lulls that the Pitt enjoyed every so often. Robby didn't think there was any rhyme or reason to them. All he knew was that days like this let him stand at the central hub at 4:30 in the afternoon, and look up in pleasant awe at the sight of a board where a good fifth of the rows were empty—and not because they simply didn't have the staff to take on a full complement of patients. Chairs wasn't packed. Triage was humming along nicely. Radiology wasn't backed up.

Maybe the good people of Pittsburgh got together and had a town hall meeting and said you know what, let's take it easy today. Let's be nice to the PTMC staff. Let's have a day where we don't get drunk and put our fist through a plate glass window, or pass norovirus around in our nursery school, or get stabbed, or have an MI right as we board a city bus, or tip boiling water all over our legs, or get into our car while still dangerously hungover and slam the thing into an underpass.

Robby shared this thought with Dana, who didn't seem particularly inclined to agree. She looked at him over the top of her glasses and said, "You either had too much caffeine or not enough. Now, are you planning to keep on being weirdly whimsical or would you like to see a patient in the near future? Kid in North 4 could do with some help."

"You know," Robby said, "I can treat patients and have a little whimsy. I can be multifaceted."

"Whatever gets you through the day," Dana said, and handed him the patient chart. "Go do your thing, cap."

The kid in North 4 was Alex Smith, nine years old, took a fall off a bicycle in the park, presenting with hefty road rash, pain, and difficulty lifting his right arm.

"Does your hand feel numb, Alex?" Robby asked, probing along the kid's clavicle as gently as he could. "Any spots in your hand or arm that feel cold or tingly?"

Alex shook his head, a mute no. He made no sound at all, even though he was clearly in pain. Robby watched his face closely.

Alex's mom stroked the boy's hair and said, "People who let their dogs run around off-leash should be ashamed of themselves. It's so stupid and thoughtless, it scared him so badly..."

"You both had a shock," Robby agreed. He took his gloves off, tossed them into the nearby trash can. "Well, Alex, I think you most likely have a fractured clavicle. That means you have a break in your collar bone, that's the bone that runs along here." Robby gestured with a hand along his own shoulder. "Your collar bone works like a kind of support for your arm, so that's why it's a bit tricky for you to move it right now. We're going to have to take an X-Ray of your chest to see exactly what kind of break it is. That'll help us to decide what's the best way to take care of you. Does that sound okay?"

Another silent nod.

Robby turned to Alex's mom and said, "I'm afraid there'll be a short wait, but someone will be by soon to fetch Alex and bring him for the X-Ray. We'll know more then."

"Okay, great, thank you," Alex's mom said, pushing a hank of dark hair behind one ear. "Do I have enough time to get him something to eat? We were going to get lunch out today, and then this happened, and we've been here for hours already."

"Uh, sure, might be twenty minutes or so," Robby said, nodding his head in the direction of the central station. "If you go over there, one of the nurses can give you a sandwich, but I think right now the choices are tuna salad or tuna salad. Or there's a cafeteria up on the second floor."

"Oh, yeah, no," Alex's mom said dryly, as she picked up her massive tote bag from the ground, "tuna salad's not going to work for this guy. I'll pop upstairs. Be right back, sweetie."

With her gone, Robby could—should—have snagged one of the nurses and asked them to wait with Alex. He had things to do, residents to check in on. He stayed sitting on the stool at Alex's bedside.

"Do you have any other questions for me, Alex?" Robby asked, very casually, being careful to look at Alex only out of the corner of his eye. "About the X-Ray or what will happen after? Or anything else."

Alex shook his head and then said, in a small voice that Robby had to strain to hear him, "When will CYS be here?"

Robby went very still. Most nine-year-olds didn't know that Children and Youth Services even existed. "Is there any reason why CYS would be stopping by, Alex? Do you and your mom see them a lot?"

"She's not my mom," Alex said, worrying his fingers together in his lap. "That's Linda. She's my foster mom."

"Okay," Robby said slowly. He looked over his shoulder, caught Donnie's eye as he was passing, mouthed Dana. Donnie nodded and took off. Robby looked back at Alex. "So why do you think CYS will be stopping by, buddy? Is there something you want to tell me?"

He hadn't picked up on any particular red flags from the foster mom, but Robby had been doing this for too many years now to be surprised by that. Sometimes an abuser looked like they came straight out of a shitty Lifetime movie, alcohol on their breath and grime under their fingernails. And sometimes an abuser looked like a pleasant-faced woman wearing bright red Converse and carrying a Squirrel Hill Farmer's Market tote bag.

A single fat tear rolled down Alex's cheek. "I'm in trouble."

"Because you fell off your bike?" Robby asked right as Dana arrived. "Do you sometimes get in trouble if you break things, Alex?"

Alex shook his head. "But Jason said that hospitals are really expensive."

Robby and Dana exchanged a look.

"Who's Jason?" Robby asked.

"He sits next to me at school." Now that Alex had started to speak, it seemed like it might be a more difficult thing to get him to stop. "And his grandpa had to go into the hospital last month and he said his parents were fighting about how it was so expensive and they were having to pay the insurance a lot and maybe sell his grandpa's house to pay for his medicine. And I don't want to go back to the group home! I don't want Linda and Simon to have to sell their house because I got hurt, they're real nice and Linda bakes cookies and Simon's teaching me guitar and I like their dog. I'm sorry, I don't want to go back, please don't make me."

Linda came back with food right as a tech showed up with a wheelchair to take Alex off for his X-Ray. She readily told them Alex's history—his father only ever an intermittent presence, his mother a bipolar addict who was currently serving seven years for felony theft. "He's been with us for three months. He's a great kid, there's nothing wrong with him," Linda said with a vehemence that told Robby she'd already fielded that question more than once in Alex's time with her.

"His first placement turned out to be unsuitable," she went on, with a twist of the mouth that Robby could interpret just fine. "And then the second one, they had to move to Illinois unexpectedly after he'd been with them a year. The father got a promotion he couldn't turn down, so Alex went back into the system for a while before he came to us."

"Ah jeez, poor kid," Dana said, mouth twisting in sympathy. "That'd knock the stuffing out of anyone."

"All I wish is that we could make him understand," Linda said, wringing her hands together. "We love him already, he has a home with us. We don't want to let him go! We'd adopt him if we could."

Robby had to turn away from the look on her face: the bright, unclouded affection that told him that regardless of what any pieces of paper said, here was a mother who loved her son. Not a thing that you should be envious of, Robby told himself.

If only hearts worked like that.

By the time Alex's X-Ray came back—singular fracture, non-displaced—and Robby got his arm cleaned up and set him up with a sling, the kid had also eaten half a turkey sandwich and some chips and was looking a bit brighter. The tears had stopped. Kiara stopped by for a chat with Alex and Linda—due diligence only, all was good—and Robby gave a nine-year-old-appropriate explanation of medical billing and insurance, and how a broken bone didn't cost the same as long-term in-patient care.

"You'll be a little sore for a few days," Robby said. "But you're going to rest up at home with Linda and Simon, and you'll be good as new before you know it. Dana's going to make sure that Linda has your after-care instructions, okay? It was nice to meet you, Alex."

Robby made a round of the floor, signed off on some residents' orders, and ended up back at the hub where he put on his glasses and started in on his charting with the fervent hope that maybe this would be the day when he walked out of the door on time and with everything up to date.

"Nicely done with that kid," Dana said from right behind him.

Robby very definitely didn't jump, but he did say, "You know, we should put a bell on you. Like a cat."

"And give up my cunning tactical advantage? I'd like to see you try." Dana poked him in the shoulder. "No changing the subject, by the way, accept the compliment."

Robby shot her a sidelong look. "What did I do, exactly? A med student should be able to cope with a fracture like that."

"That kid walked out of here with a smile on his face," Dana said. "And he's going home that bit more reassured that where he's going is home. That ain't nothing."

Despite the lighter than normal workload, when he got home Robby didn't have energy to do more than shower, make himself a pastrami on rye and then sit on the couch and watch The Searchers for the thousandth time. This was how a lot of Friday nights went, when you were in your fifties and your partner was professionally nocturnal. Robby had made his peace with it.

Shortly before 10, Robby's phone chimed from its perch on the arm of the couch.

John (9:51): You know what never gets any less weird
John (9:51): Is watching a documentary on TV and randomly seeing one of your grandparents in the background

Robby muted the movie.

Me (9:53): What?
John (9:53): Yeah the new American Century one on PBS
John (9:54): It's all panoramic shots and the Ashokan Farewell and then whoops, there's Gamma

Robby cast around for the remote control, wondering if whatever this thing was would be airing on his local PBS affiliate. He couldn't find it at first glance, and then sagged back against the couch, giving up on it. If he was going to watch some gauzy take on the country's past, he'd stick with The Searchers. At least that had fistfights.

Me (9:57): Why's she in it?

Not that it was surprising to Robby that the family would make it into a history documentary, what with all the robber baron-ing and Gold Coast mansion-ing and strike-breaking. It'd probably be stranger if the Carter Clan hadn't merited a mention. But like this? John had told Robby the occasional anecdote about his Gamma over the months. Robby's impression of her was that he probably wouldn't have liked her much as a person, but that he'd have been able to politely, and truthfully, describe her as "formidable." But he'd also gleaned a sense of her as someone who preferred to be a power behind the scenes, not someone who courted publicity. Surely Millicent Fitzsimmons Carter would have thought it vulgar to pose for the newsreels?

John (9:59): Well they don't say it outright here or anything, but you're far from the first bit of scandalous gossip in the family
Me (10:00): The union busting?
Me (10:01): I think I'd call that gross instead of scandalous
John (10:02): No, not that
John (10:02): Gamma had a fling with JFK

Robby read John's message. He re-read it. The text didn't change.

Me (10:05): Hold up
Me (10:05): Ich bin ein Berliner JFK?
Me (10:05): That one?
John (10:06): Well she was hardly John-John's type

Robby hit the call button. "Are you fucking with me?"

"Course not, Junior mostly liked 'em blonde."

"John."

A sigh echoed over the line. "I mean, you can take it with whatever size amount of salt you want, but that's the family lore anyway. She and Grandpa spent a couple of years in D.C. in the Fifties and apparently they had some kind of agreement about playing away that I really never want to think about and I guess one thing led to another? If it makes you feel better, I'm not sure if any of the, you know, action, happened after he got elected president."

Robby stared at the TV screen, where a dozen men on horseback were galloping past a great stone outcropping under the endless southwestern sky. "Why would that make me feel better?"

"Uh. You respect the sanctity of the office?" John offered tentatively.

Robby burst out laughing.

Robby knew it was probably weird of him, but he loved the mornings when he didn't have to get up for work, but Jack was coming off shift. It meant that Robby was still warm and sleeping, buried beneath the comforter, when Jack crawled in next to him. It was nice to half rouse, to become hazily aware of an arm wriggling around his waist and a puff of minty breath against his cheek and the fact that his Jack had come back to him, before slipping off to sleep again. Nice to know how readily sleep could come now, when it was the two of them together, with no need to keep a TV or radio on to make the night bearable.

Around nine, Robby woke for good and got up carefully, leaving Jack sleeping while he dressed, brewed a travel mug of coffee, and grabbed his book bag and his ear pods. The library was a solid half hour's walk from their house, but Robby liked that. It let him stretch his legs, walk somewhere with a purpose that wasn't work.

He got to the library right as it opened at ten, returned his books and found a few others to check out. There was a brief zing of satisfaction in finding a copy of a buzzy novel on the 'New Releases' shelf. Robby was curious to know if it was as outrageous as described, but not so curious that he wanted to shell out for a hardcover. Satisfying, too, that the librarian on duty recognised him by now, and teased him gently about his very predictable taste in books. It made him feel like home was a thing that could stretch beyond the four walls of their house.

Robby took the long way back through the park, let himself amble along even though it was a slightly dreary, foggy morning. It was quiet. The only other people around were dog walkers and the most determined of runners. No little kids riding bikes that they could take a spill from.

On the far side of the park was the bakery that Jack liked. It verged a bit too much on the hipster for Robby's taste—aggressively faux-industrial furniture in pale wood and dark metal; all the staff wore thick-knit red beanies and had an incredibly high average number of visible piercings, like an alt-hipster version of Where's Waldo—but even he couldn't deny that they knew their way around a baked good.

Robby got their usual order, and was setting out the pastries on a plate and brewing more coffee when Jack shuffled into the kitchen on his crutches shortly before noon. His curls were awry and the t-shirt he'd slept in had a bleach stain on it and Robby loved him, god, so fucking much.

"How was your shift?"

"Fine, the usual," Jack said, taking a seat at the kitchen table and a grateful slurp of the coffee that Robby put in front of him. He knuckled at one eye. "Parker did some good fucking work on a guy who came in with a GSW to the abdomen. Me, I had a patient who ate a tree."

Robby paused halfway through sitting down. Surely he'd misheard that one. "A tree?"

"Frat boy," Jack said with a shrug, like that explained everything. Maybe it did. Robby had treated enough students from the city's colleges over the years to know that there wasn't much he could hear about in connection with a fraternity that would surprise him any more. "Some kind of hazing thing. Ate a whole bonsai, roots and all."

Robby let out a low whistle. "Determined."

"Dipshit," Jack said. He took one of the almond croissants from the plate, tore it in half. "Aspirated some of the leaves, started choking. Got a tiny branch out of his airway and realised hey, the bonsai tree was a yew."

Both Robby's eyebrows went up. "How dead is he?"

The look Jack shot him was withering. "I was his doctor. You know I pulled him through. Little atropine, little haemodialysis, we're good."

"Uh huh," Robby said dryly, knowing that taxine poisoning wasn't an easy, everyday thing to manage.

"I mean, to be fair, his mom got there around five. Tiny spitfire of a woman, big hair," Jack said with clear admiration in his voice. "Very loudly told him he's a jackass. Maybe he is dead by now. Not because of anything to do with me, though."

"Well," Robby said. "Bonsai. Huh," and then ate his own pastry.

They decamped to the sofa with the rest of the pastries, fresh mugs of coffee, and their respective tablets so that they could complete their ritual bout of competitive Spelling Bee. Jack cackled at getting "penile" as his first word, and Robby slung his feet up into Jack's lap and thought that his life wasn't so bad, all things considered.

But then they finished—Jack got to Genius first, but Robby beat him to Queen Bee, thank you very much—and Jack sighed and set down his tablet and said, "So, okay, time to address the elephant in the room."

Robby took off his glasses and sat up and said, looking out the main window to where rain was now starting to fall lightly on the front garden and the street beyond. "Would we call it an elephant?"

"Can be whatever large mammal you want, brother," Jack said easily. "I'm here for whatever you've got to say."

It took a long moment for Robby to decide what he wanted to say—how he should say it—but Jack waited for him. More patiently, Robby thought, than he deserved.

"Marriage is a big deal," Robby started, and then cleared his throat when his voice cracked almost straight away. Shit, what was wrong with him? "It's a big deal, but it's also a piece of paper."

"Okay," Jack said.

"My Zayde died when I was seven," Robby said, the words coming to him without him even knowing consciously where he was going with this. "I don't remember him all that clearly, and Bubbe never talked about him all that much. I liked him. I think he was a nice man. But I don't think they got married because they loved one another, not like that. I think they got married because it made sense and they knew they could get on and that was just what you did. My mom, obviously, well... And then my other grandparents were married for almost 60 years, but last night John told me that our grandmother might have... Well, it doesn't matter which one, exactly, but she might have literally fucked a president?"

Jack opened his mouth. He closed his mouth.

"That's not... shit, just, forget that part for now."

"I'll try my best," Jack said gravely.

"What I'm trying to say..." What was Robby trying to say? Months of practice at using his words in therapy, and sometimes still even trying to put a name on what he was feeling felt as impossibly complicated as doing a needle crich would feel to a med student. "I don't come from a long line of great marriages. I haven't seen a lot of... Maybe I'm not meant to... What I want to have with you, I want it to be better than that." Robby looked at Jack beseechingly, hoping he understood him despite how fumbling his words were—hoping he could see how Robby was trying.

"So the prenup is, what? What's the issue here? You said something about signing a prenup making you think about endings. You don't want to go into this thing feeling primed for failure?"

Robby nodded, picked at the knee of his pants.

Jack looked at him steadily for a long moment and then shrugged and said, "Okay, fine. We tear it up and we tell your lawyers to fuck off. What do you want to do for lunch?"

Robby gaped. "That's it? After all that, 'okay, fine'?"

Jack cocked his head. "You want me to push back at you right now? To disagree? To be mad? I didn't think that was your kink, but—"

"But you said you thought it was a good idea, that there were things you didn't want to risk. Things you wanted to have arranged."

"Sure. But it's not like a prenup is the only way to make sure of that. You've seen enough powers of attorney over the years to know this. Or you write up a will. Same great power to make your wishes known, none of the baggage."

"Maybe," Robby said.

"You should know," Jack said, leaning in to him a bit and speaking in a stage whisper, "you're already in my will."

Robby raised an eyebrow at him.

Jack nodded seriously. "I'm going to leave you my second-best stethoscope."

"Your second best?"

"Yeah. Ellis gets the Littman Cardiology, she's earned it. I'm telling you this now in case you take it into your pretty head to go bump me off so you can inherit all my worldly goods."

Robby huffed out a tired laugh. "What, are we in a Christie novel now?"

"Nah," Jack said. "No way in hell you could pull off the accent."

Robby sent the lawyers an email about the prenup that was a moderately polite thanks but no thanks, ate some lunch, tackled the laundry backlog with Jack while the two of them went back and forth in the latest instalment of their long-running battle, Who would you have on your all-time fantasy baseball team, and here's why you're wrong.

He was turning on the living room lights against the deepening twilight when he got a message from John.

John (5:54): You know you've confused the hell out of some overpriced Chicago lawyers

Robby huffed out a laugh and hit the call button. The call rang out, but then a couple of minutes later his phone screen lit up.

"Hey, sorry," John said, sounding faintly out of breath. "Had to go outside. The ER walls have ears."

Robby hummed with agreement. That was a constant no matter what hospital you were in.

"If there is an afterlife," John went on, "you're making Gamma clutch her pearls. Do you know how many lectures I got growing up, about how to tell a gold digger from an eligible match?" John, at least, sounded more amused than anything else.

"You know I don't give a shit about pearls, family heirlooms or otherwise," Robby said. He ambled into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water. "I talked it through with Jack, we're good. I don't want it and he understands why. We're good."

"Good, I'm glad," John said.

"Yeah." Robby took a sip of water, looked out through the kitchen window to where rain was still pattering against Jack's vegetable garden. "So I was wondering if you were doing anything on the sixth of next month?"

"Not that I can think," John said. "Why?"

"Well," Robby said, putting his glass down and worrying at the edge of the countertop. "I was wondering if you'd be able to come into town then? For the wedding. Be my best man?"

There was a long pause.

Then, "John," Robby asked, horrified, "are you crying?"

"No," John said thickly, and then blew his nose.

On Monday morning, Jack and Robby went down to the City-County Building first thing and formally applied for the marriage license. The clerk was polite if totally impersonal—took their completed form without making eye contact; your license will be processed and ready for collection in three business days, thank you, have a nice day; moved on to the next person in line. Still, handing over the eighty bucks to her somehow made everything seem real for Robby in a way that it hadn't quite before. They'd already arranged the ceremony slot for the afternoon of the sixth with the help of one of Dana's many cousins, who worked for a local magistrate judge who officiated weddings every other Friday. The main things were taken care of.

They were going to get married.

Jack made a point of Venmo'ing Robby his half of the license fee there and then. "Look at us, getting this show off to an egalitarian start." When the notification popped up on Robby's phone, he saw that there was an attached note: LEGALLY NOT A KEPT MAN.

Robby sighed.

Jack cackled.

Jack had a dental cleaning to go to, so he took the truck and Robby walked the rest of the way over to the hospital. A half-hour stroll was a pleasure on a day like this. The weekend rain had cleared and the weather was crisp but bright, and crossing the bridge and looking out at the river and the skyline reminded Robby that this was his city. This was the place he belonged. Sometimes it was hard to believe that he'd ever lived anywhere else.

He was a couple of blocks from PTMC when his phone rang: John.

"I just realised," John said as soon as Robby answered, "totally forgot to ask you: what's the dress code?"

"For?" Robby asked as he waited at a crosswalk.

"The wedding. At first I assumed if you're going for a courthouse-style wedding that it wouldn't be black tie, but then I thought, you know what they say about assumptions." John sounded hollow, as if he were speaking via tin can from the bottom of a well. "So are you expecting black tie? Or are you fine with a regular suit? Three-piece? Is there a particular colour theme or—"

Robby had not thought about any of this, whatsoever. He blinked. When he tried to picture himself and Jack standing in front of the magistrate, all he could conjure up was him in a hoodie and Jack in one of those black scrub tops that made his arms look nice. Once whatever they wore was clean and mostly wrinkle-free, Robby was sure it would be fine. "Uh, well. Something comfortable? If you've got like, some nice jeans or something."

The sound quality on the call shifted abruptly, as if John had moved somewhere else. Now he sounded as if he was speaking right into Robby's ear. "You'd be okay with me wearing jeans, as your best man?"

"Or sweatpants, whatever," Robby said, as the walk sign finally came on. He crossed the street.

"Michael." There was a definite edge to John's voice now. "What are you planning to wear to your own wedding? And if you tell me 'a hoodie'..."

"There isn't a law against it," Robby said weakly, well aware from a series of verbal combats with a tween Jake over the years that it wasn't great to have it's not technically illegal to do this! as the best and sole justification of someone's actions.

"There... Okay. Okay. Well, we'll have to do something about this."

The call ended. Robby eyed his phone warily. There was no sign of John calling him back.

Me (10:02): John?

No response. Well, Robby would have to try to figure out John's deal later. He had another swell day of meetings and budget review ahead of him, not to mention the joy that was writing the Chair's report on the UTC committee's report on teaching pathways in the EM residency programme. He checked the time as he reached the hospital and told himself that since his first meeting wasn't scheduled to start for another 45 minutes, he absolutely had time to swing by the Pitt.

Chairs was its usual Monday morning crush, every seat full and people sitting up against the walls, with everyone who'd been trying to ignore their symptoms all weekend waiting to be seen while the ED did its best to cope with the aftermath of those who'd been partying hard all weekend and got into their cars still hung over. Robby greeted Ahmad, who was manning the metal detector; checked in with Lupe, who was doing battle with a glitching internet connection; and was ambushed by Dana almost as soon as he swiped himself through into the ED.

"Stop right there, put your bag down," Dana said, holding up her phone.

Robby stopped, set his bag on the floor, held his hands a little bit out from his body as if to say look ma, no guns.

Dana took a photo. "Okay, turn to the side. Now face the other way. Now your other side. Okay, good."

Robby cocked his head at her. "Am I allowed to ask what the hell that was about? Are you moonlighting as a bounty hunter now or something?"

"No, but I'd kick ass at it if I was one," Dana said, tapping away at her phone. "I have Dr Carter's number, okay, I'm allowed to help him out."

"By taking photos of me?" Robby said.

Dana levelled a worldweary gaze at him. "Wearing a hoodie to your own wedding? And you complain other people ain't maintaining standards around here."

The prospect of whatever the hell John and Dana were cooking up between them was enough to have Robby stay safely in his office all day. He emerged only to grab some soup and a sandwich from the cafeteria as a late lunch before retreating back behind his desk. It wasn't that he was being avoidant, as such, but when he finally left for the day, Robby thought it was best to take the stairs and head out by the south entrance—less chance of Dana setting eyes on him there.

His cunning plan backfired on him. Avoiding Dana going out meant bumping into Lena coming in.

"I hear the wedding arrangements are going swimmingly," Lena said with a sly grin.

Robby rolled his eyes at her. "Oh, don't you start."

"Will I be seeing the announcement in the shul newsletter this week?" Lena asked. "Just so I know when to start prepping the popcorn. When certain moms realise they could also have been throwing their sons at the nice, tall eligible doctor..."

"We're not going that route," Robby said, looking down at his feet. "Courthouse wedding."

Robby had considered it—opting for the chuppah, the seven blessings, the circling, the works—knowing that his Bubbe would at least have appreciated his having a Jewish wedding. That would have pleased her, even though he'd never know what she would have thought about him loving another man, let alone another man who wasn't a Jew. He knew that Jack wouldn't have had a problem with doing it. Robby couldn't remember ever hearing Jack express much of an opinion about religion, good or bad, beyond a muttered no atheists in foxholes or a low whistle when the Catholics had elected that American pope. But Jack would agree without hesitation if Robby asked him, Robby was sure about that. He'd do it for Robby.

Robby just didn't think he wanted to do it for himself.

"So long as you know you can run but you can't hide," Lena said. "The gossip will spread. Small world."

"I know," Robby said, rubbing at the nape of his neck. "It's not about that, it's..." He didn't really know how to put it into words. The Sh'ma on his lips or the mezuzah at his fingertips would always be a comfort to him, the same way that the Magen David that hung around his neck reminded him who he was and who he was proud to come from. But a bone-deep certainty in the existence of God, or a need to follow every rule of halakha? Well, he had tattoos and ate cheeseburgers.

"It's about the two of you. Don't worry, I get it," Lena said, with a brief, gentle pat on his arm. "Even two rounds of divorce lawyers haven't beaten all the romance out of me."

"Good to know," Robby said, and was about to say his goodbyes when something occurred to him. Why not, after all, and he was pretty sure there wasn't a Jew in the Greater Pittsburgh area whom Lena didn't know. "Hey, could I ask you for some recommendations?"

"Well, what happened was," Shen was saying as Robby walked into the ED, "she got something stuck in her teeth, so I said oh hey, I've got some dental floss, let me help you out."

"Gentlemanly behaviour," Santos said with a nod, without pausing in her typing or looking away from the computer screen. "Good, we like it."

"But I had it in my backpack, because I was going to head straight from the coffee shop to here, swing shift," Shen went on.

Santos made a flourishing gesture with one hand that meant Continue.

"Well, I mean, I was coming here, so I had everything in there I bring to a regular shift, right? And well, you never know when something might come in useful. And of course the dental floss is buried somewhere at the bottom, so I start digging around to try to find it, taking stuff out to look—"

"Oh no," Santos said, pausing in her typing and looking up at Shen. Robby could also guess where this was going.

"—and so it's like, pen, back-up pens, eyedrops, two boxes of 10 blades, an IV start kit, a paperback, trauma shears—"

"So the essentials," Santos said, eyes twinkling.

"I look up and she's staring at me like I'm a budding serial killer, and I realise I'd never told her I'm a doctor, I planned to change into my scrubs here—"

"The perils of dating in the digital age," Santos said solemnly.

"I'm going to assume," Robby said, stowing his own, trauma shears-free backpack underneath the desk, "that this delightful conversation goes to support patient care in some way."

"Indirectly?" Santos said, in a tone of voice that meant, no, of course not. "The patient in North 3 came in a few hours ago with vomiting, dizziness, stomach cramps. Stable now, but it turns out her mother-in-law laced her dinner with pesticide."

Robby let out a low whistle. "How'd you figure out what it was?"

"Oh, we didn't have to," Shen said. "Mother-in-law showed up ten minutes later, marched up to the bedside, called her a quote, whoring slut, end quote, and said her only regret was that she hadn't doubled the dose."

Robby's eyebrows went all the way up.

"Anyway," Santos said, deadpan, as she closed out of her computer session, "after the cops left, we got to talking about relationships."

"Okay, well," Robby said, "I'll allow it."

"And on that note," Santos said, standing up and sketching out a salute, "I'm going to go home, nuke a breakfast burrito, and embrace unconsciousness."

Shen walked Robby through the handover, and then as he himself prepared to head out, said, "You know, if you're looking for a band, I'm happy to help out."

Robby blinked. "A band?"

"Yeah," Shen said. "For the wedding? I was in a couple of different bands in undergrad, and I'm still in touch with a lot of the guys. Probably won't be able to get Full Koala Wrap back together because of what happened to Rick, but I bet we could get like, three fourths of Elbow Dimple on stage. We did covers as well as our own stuff. Some classic rock, some ska."

"I will, uh, keep that in mind," Robby said, who was not planning on having a band at all, let alone one that played the kind of music that he knew Shen liked. As far as he was concerned, he and Jack would be getting married, going out for some good Italian food, and going home to bed. No fuss, no musical accompaniment. "But thanks for the offer."

"Any time," Shen said.

The doorbell chimed right on the stroke of nine, Thursday morning. Robby, fresh out of the shower, was only just pulling on his jeans and had to scramble to get the door before whoever was there could press it again and wake Jack up.

Robby opened the door, expecting to find a package or a misdelivered Doordash order, or even a missionary who was about to get a very curt dismissal, but instead found a neatly dressed East Asian man standing there. At his side was a large black rolling suitcase, with a smaller one hooked to its back the way you sometimes saw flight attendants do in airports. A blue van was pulled up to the kerb; on its side, in elegant cream lettering, was Leung and Son, Estd. 1936.

"Can I help you?" Robby asked.

"Dr Michael Robinavitch? I'm Kenneth Leung," the man said, in crisp, British-accented English. "I'm here for your consultation." He held out a business card to Robby. It proclaimed that Leung and Son, Estd. 1936, had offices in Hong Kong and New York City.

"I'm sorry," Robby said with a slow shake of his head, "I'm not sure I..."

"Your brother, Dr Carter, arranged for us to pay you a visit."

"Us?" Robby said weakly.

"My trainee, Hao-Yu, will be assisting me," Kenneth Leung said as the passenger door of the van opened and a young man climbed out. "A southern-facing room will be best."

Me (09:27): John
Me (09:27): Why is a total stranger currently wheeling a portable tailor's mirror into my living room?
John (11:44): 😊

It was mid afternoon by the time they finally got their house back. Robby felt exhausted and Jack looked faintly shell-shocked.

"I need a beer," Jack said, and Robby couldn't blame him. Having your in-seam measured on four hours' sleep on your future brother-in-law's orders probably wasn't the most fun experience. Especially not given how Kenneth Leung's assistant had said "Whoops, no leg!" when he realised that Jack was an amputee.

Robby winced again.

"Again, I had no idea this was going to happen," Robby said, trailing him into the kitchen. "I'm so sorry, and—"

"It's fine, Mike," Jack said, opening the fridge. "We're having a wedding, people get crazy about weddings. Your brother has a lot of money to be crazy about weddings with."

Robby accepted the beer Jack handed over. It was three thirty, but what the hell. "Still, to be clear, not my idea."

Jack took a sip of his own beer, leaned against the countertop and scrubbed his free hand through his tousled curls. "When Maggie and I got married, we had about two dimes to rub together and we were trying to get it done quick before I deployed. We still spent a solid hour one day arguing which colour balloons from the Dollar Store would go best together. I think weddings just make people a bit crazy. Can't escape it."

"You're being incredibly philosophical about this," Robby said, uncapping his own beer.

"Eh," Jack said. "I got to spend a few hours watching you stand there in a t-shirt and boxers while two guys tried to decide if you were more a classic American cut type of guy or if they thought you could pull off a Neapolitan silhouette. Still have no clue what any of that means, but the look on your face was pretty fucking entertaining. And the decisions about colour—"

Robby could feel his cheeks heat. "You know, I do have a perfectly fine suit that I could have worn if I wanted to."

"That thing you wear on office days?"

Robby stared at him. "What's wrong with it?"

"I know sweet fuck all about fashion, and even I know that thing looks like you bought it in Filene's and then sat on it for twenty years—"

"Fine, okay, Christ—"

"—before you kind of threw it on with your eyes closed. Your brother's trying to do something nice for you, man. Let him, okay?"

Robby sighed.

"Hey," Robby said to Dana, once the last of the MVA victims was wheeled up to surgery, "you know how you're good at helping me out with things?"

Dana didn't look up from her tablet. "I draw the line at abetting a felony or doing anything that crosses state lines."

"You want to be a witness at the wedding?" Robby drummed his fingers against the countertop. "Three o'clock on the sixth."

Dana did look up at him then. "You gonna make me wear heels?"

"Never," Robby said.

"Then sure thing," Dana said. "I make an excellent witness."

"And aiding and abetting, but only in misdemeanours?"

"Shh," Dana said, "that'd be telling."

John (7:57): https://maps.app.goo.gl/ujqA...
Me (08:05): Ok?
John (08:07): Upstairs dining room is reserved for the evening of the sixth!
John (08:07): You like salmon, right?
Me (08:12): What

Me (08:45) Remember how you said John was just trying to do nice things for me
Me (08:46) And he's my brother so I should let him
Jack (09:02) Yep
Me (09:04) And you also remember how we thought we'd go to La Cucina for food after
Jack (09:04): Also yes
Me (09:06) Well what if I told you we won't be doing that
Me (09:06) Because he's rented out most of Vive for the whole evening
Jack (09:06) Wtf is vive
Me (09:07) "Vive is a fresh expression of New American cuisine, where a dynamic menu under the curation of Executive Chef Alain Fortin comes alive in an intimate setting with a focus on produce-led dining reflecting the seasons, flora, and fauna of western Pennsylvania."
Jack (9:10) The hell?

A week later, the doorbell rang again, but this time it was Jack who answered it. "We're keeping FedEx busy," he said, coming back into the living room barely visible behind the two large cardboard boxes he was carrying. "Give me a hand?"

Robby took the top box from Jack, set it down on the coffee table. He peered at the shipping label—a return address in New York City. "I guess these are the suits. Don't know which box is whose, though. Are you superstitious about seeing outfits before the big day?"

Jack snorted. He set the other box down and then went back to the front door to fetch something else. "There was also this, addressed to you," he said when he returned, and handed over a mailing tube to Robby.

"Oh." Robby stood frozen for a moment, staring down at it. It had arrived earlier than he'd expected, but then he supposed he had handed over an awful lot of money for an expedited job. The prospect of one gig paying enough to cover a semester's rent was clearly motivating for a MFA student—even as it made the part of Robby who would forever be an undergrad living on ramen blanch. Robby still couldn't genuinely say that he was thrilled at the size of his bank balance these days, or that the money gave him any particular pleasure, but he couldn't deny it was great at making it so you didn't have to worry about even minor inconveniences.

"This is actually something..." Robby tapped his fingers on the outside of the tube. "Can I show it to you?"

"Sure," Jack said, looking faintly curious.

Robby led him through into the kitchen and sat down with him at the table. He fiddled with the cap on the mailing tube for a minute, because when the idea had occurred to him he'd pursued it without stopping to think how to explain it to Jack. "I was thinking some more about our conversation about prenups. What you were saying about it being important for what someone wants to be clear."

"Okay," Jack said slowly, a clear question in his voice.

"Still not going to get one," Robby went on. "I am going to get the stupid over-priced lawyers to make sure I've got a proper will and advance directives and everything. I'd never want you to, to be left to deal with shit because of me."

"Hey," Jack said, reaching across to cover one of Robby's hands with his. "You know that's not what it was about, right?"

Robby nodded, not quite able to meet Jack's eyes. "But it got me thinking. About how to show you that I'm... that I really am making a promise with you. To you. That I want it to last." He opened the tube and carefully pulled out what was inside: a roll of thick, creamy cotton rag paper wrapped in layer upon layer of tissue. As Robby unpeeled the tissue paper, he said, "You know what a ketubah is?"

"Kind of," Jack said, with the hesitancy of a man who knew a lot more about Judaism now than he had a few years ago but whose fluency was still more in Robby's deli order than it was in Talmudic principles.

"Well, I found someone local who makes them. Got her to make one for us." Robby unrolled the page. It was exactly what he'd hoped for. He'd shown Avigail a photo of his grandparents' one and fumblingly asked her for something like that, but different. She'd given them exactly that.

The olive branches that framed his grandparents' ketubah here had been transformed into an abstract impression of leaves, emerging here and there through a watercolour wash of shades of green from light to dark. The colours made Robby think of new growth, of life persevering; of Jack's eyes seen in the morning light.

And then, layered over that in elegant white calligraphy, the text of the ketubah itself, first in Hebrew and then in English. Their names and when and where they'd be getting married, all the standard elements of this kind of marriage agreement, and then the part of it that Robby had sweated over:

This agreement into which Michael and Jack are entering is a covenant, made in loyalty and love to stand forever. It is written that Jonathan's soul was bound together with David's soul; Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. So too do Michael and Jack make a covenant with one another. They commit themselves to one another, set themselves apart for each other, mutually dedicate themselves to working faithfully towards the communal task of mending our world. And they pledge that they will do this together for the rest of their lives, just as has been written: Set me as a seal upon your arm, for love is stronger than death.

Robby watched nervously as Jack read it, as some emotions flickered over his face that Robby couldn't quite parse.

"If you don't like it," Robby said, "you don't have to sign it, we don't have to keep it. Only I thought, you know... It could be like a, a plan for how to build together. Not an escape plan for if things fall apart."

"It's..." Jack touched a corner of the ketubah with his fingertips, very lightly.

"Or we can stick with the advance directives," Robby said, when a minute passed and Jack still didn't show any sign of speaking. Shit, he was bad at this. He'd made a mistake, he'd—

Jack stood, stepped around the corner of the table so that he was right next to Robby; stooped so that he could rest his forehead against Robby's. He cupped a hand around the back of Robby's head, just as gently as he'd touched the ketubah, carded his fingers through the short hairs there. Robby closed his eyes.

"So what's going to happen right now," Jack said, his voice gravelly, "is I'm going to take you back to bed. I'm going to take all your clothes off. I'm going to fuck you with my fingers until you're begging for it, and then I'm going to fuck you with my cock until you're hoarse. You good with that?"

Robby swallowed hard. "So you like it?"

"Mike," Jack said, and Robby opened his eyes and looked up at him, met his gaze. "I love you."

Robby found himself checking the weather forecast more frequently than usual as the wedding day got closer. Not that it actually mattered that much whether it would be overcast or drizzling or windy—he was going to marry Jack regardless; Robby would marry this man amid a hurricane—but the symbolism of it would be nice. On the day Jack said yes, the sun was shining.

"You swear you and John aren't that alike," Jack said the night before. In theory, Robby was watching the game while massaging some lotion into Jack's residual limb; in reality, the massage was happening in between bouts of refreshing the weather radar on his tablet, and responding to messages from John and Dana, both of whom seemed to be taking their witness responsibilities very seriously. "But the two of you are both kind of goofy. Different varietal, maybe, but same overall brand."

"We're grown men," Robby grumbled, using his thumb to dig into a knot of muscle in Jack's leg until it released, "we're not goofy."

"Sure you are," Jack said. "You're the kind of goofy that's seen Star Wars and he's the kind of goofy that hasn't."

Robby sighed.

The next morning, however, was unseasonably cold but bright. It meant that Robby got to stretch like a cat in a pool of sunshine when Jack kissed him awake.

"Our last day of living in sin," Jack murmured against Robby's mouth, rolling them over a little so that Jack could sprawl himself on top of Robby, and Robby liked this—liked him—so, so much. He waggled his eyebrows. "Wanna sin a bit?"

Robby smiled up at him; reached up to touch, with a careful hand, the arch of Jack's cheekbone, the smile lines next to his eye. "Is that how it actually works?"

"Eh, who cares," Jack said, and proceeded to give Robby a blowjob so thorough, so slow, so very fucking good, that Robby was sweating and swearing and hearing in colours.

"Shit, well," Robby said, panting up at the ceiling, while Jack finished himself off against Robby's hip, "living in sin does have its perks."

"All this and great breakfasts," Jack said, and patted Robby on the belly before reaching for his crutches and clambering out of bed.

Jack made French toast topped with fresh berries and a decadent amount of syrup while Robby brewed the coffee. They lingered over their food, and chatted idly, and Robby stole a sweet-sticky kiss from Jack before finally making himself say, "We should go get ready," although he couldn't tear his gaze away from Jack's mouth and he knew that Jack knew that part of Robby desperately wanted to say to hell with it and take Jack back to bed.

That'd be one hell of a reason to miss your own wedding: too busy fucking your intended husband to make it.

They took turns showering and getting dressed, and Robby had to begrudgingly admit that he owed John a debt. John had sprung not only for the suits but also for the shirts, ties, and new shoes to go with them. Whatever about Robby in his own outfit, Jack looked spectacular in his: midnight blue and tailored to make the most of his shoulders and arms, to underscore the strength in his thighs. He looked like he'd stepped right out of the pages of a fashion magazine.

"Will I do?" Jack said, smoothing down his tie.

"You look hot and you know it," Robby said, mouth dry.

Jack dimpled at him.

While Jack gave himself one last check in the bathroom mirror, Robby took a sneaky photo of him on his phone: his face, so dear to Robby now, in profile and cast in silhouette by the late morning light. As an example of photography, it wasn't great; as a record of what Robby felt in that moment, it was priceless.

Dana wolf-whistled at Robby when he and Jack got out of the cab at the courthouse. "Look at you, Robby, all dressed up and in a suit that actually fits! And people say the age of miracles is past."

"Ha," Robby said, and felt his cheeks heat. "You're not looking too bad yourself."

"I guess I know how to scrub up okay," Dana said, doing a quick twirl. It was so unusual for Robby to see her with her hair down and make-up on, let alone in a dress, that he wondered if he should take a picture of her, too, to prove that it had happened.

It wasn't unusual at all to see John in a suit, but Robby still hugged him and thanked him for coming and said, "Shit, okay, this is kind of surreal, isn't it?"

"Weddings always are," John said, then batted Robby's hand away from fidgeting with the knot of his tie. "Quit it. You keep tugging at it like that, you'll mess it up."

"Ugh," Robby said. "It's—"

"It's fine. Everything's going to be fine," John said, and patted him on the shoulder as they headed inside. "Relax. There's nothing that can happen that we couldn't find a workaround for. Did I ever tell you about the time one of the nurses at County got married in the waiting room?"

"What?" Robby said.

"Yeah, although I actually only made it to half the ceremony," John said. "I was helping Benton out with a nasty case of testicular torsion."

"What?" Robby said.

The interior of the courthouse was, well, it was a municipal building in Pittsburgh. It looked like every other courthouse that Robby had been in—which actually wasn't that many, in the grand scheme of things, but he had gone to a lot of protests during the Bush years. Still, the magistrate judge was welcoming, and did only one polite double-take between Robby and John, and got things going right on time.

She welcomed them and their witnesses, and reminded them that a good marriage was built on a bond of friendship and respect. Robby nodded along with what she said, and kept his eyes trained on Jack's face, and hoped like hell his hands weren't going to get too sweaty for him to hold the ring. They'd been told when they'd arranged for the ceremony that they were allowed to write their own vows if they wished, once they kept things brief and reasonable, but Robby hadn't seen any need to mess with the standard. It had all the key parts, after all: a promise to stand together through the good stuff and the bad, to love and to be loved, to be faithful and to have the gift of someone else's fidelity in return.

They'd both opted for simple, dark silicone bands—better for a hospital environment, plus Robby had seen too many degloving accidents to have been comfortable with one made of metal. Robby would have felt embarrassed at how tears stung his eyes as he slid Jack's ring onto his finger, if he hadn't felt the way Jack's hands were trembling when he did the same to Robby.

"With the blessings of those present, and by virtue of the authority vested in me and in conformity with the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," the magistrate judge said, "I pronounce you married. May you live together happily from this day forward."

John and Dana whooped and clapped and made a frankly improbable amount of noise for two people. Robby laughed—he couldn't help himself—and had to raise his voice to be heard by Jack. "Married, huh?"

Jack grinned back at him, and then hauled him in and kissed him—really kissed him—a kiss that felt like a promise, a vow as much as anything they'd said aloud, and Robby was in his fifties and he'd lived a life and he still felt himself light up, up, up at Jack's touch.

They had a few hours to kill between the obligatory post-wedding photos and the wedding dinner, so John suggested they all go somewhere for a drink first, his treat.

"You're on," Dana said, slinging her purse over her shoulder, "but no well drinks, I'm too old for that shit."

"For you, top-shelf liquor only," John said with great gallantry.

John opted for some downtown cocktail bar, the kind of place that Robby hadn't frequented in years. Plush finishings, high mark-ups, a regular crowd roughly evenly divided between those who wanted to show off how big their quarterly bonus was and those who were looking not to spend an evening alone. The kind of place that Robby had once heard Santos refer to as a "suburban divorcé hetero fuck-scape."

Like so much with Santos, harsh but not necessarily untrue.

The bar's decor had clearly been chosen with an eye to what would make for good backdrops for social media posts, though at this hour on a Friday afternoon, no one here was posing in front of the potted orange trees or on the bright red spiral staircase. There weren't that many people there at all, in fact, since it wasn't long past opening time, and so their group had the sleek leather sofas near the fireplace all to itself.

Robby was idly trying to decide whether he wanted an Old Fashioned or if he was content to opt for whatever they had on tap when John caught the eye of a server. He turned to a page in the drinks menu, said, "The Dom Pérignon Plénitude 2, please, the 2004. And four glasses," and handed over a sleek black credit card.

Next to Robby, Jack turned to the same page in his own copy of the menu, made a faint choking sound, and then put the menu down very carefully on the coffee table in front of them. He leaned in to Robby and murmured in his ear, "Please, for the sake of a nice day and your blood pressure, do not look at how much they're charging for this champagne, okay?"

"It can't be that—"

Jack put a hand on Robby's arm, stopping him from reaching for the menu. "Mike. Do not."

Robby subsided.

"Cheers to the happy couple!" Dana said, raising her fizzing glass once the champagne had been served. "You picked a good one, now don't fuck it up."

"Gee," Robby said. "Inspirational."

The restaurant was a short drive away, in a renovated red-brick building in Lawrenceville. Robby eyed it dubiously as they entered. "This is a big place, John. Isn't renting out the top floor for four people a bit extravagant?"

"Yeah, well, about that," John said as he held open the door at the top of the stairs, and Dana walked in ahead of him, clapping and saying, "Three cheers for the happy couple!"

An unexpected chorus of hip hip hoorays! broke out.

Robby discovered that the upper floor of Vive was unexpectedly beautiful: an expanse of parquet floor and wood-panelled walls, the soft lighting overhead making everything glow amber and warm. One wall was taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows; opposite them was the main bar, which looked to have been hewn out of a single block of variegated green gemstone, polished to a high gleam; behind it, rows of backlit shelving holding liquor bottles marched upwards toward the ceiling.

But even more overwhelming than that was the discovery that most of the tables here were already full—that John had not only booked out the restaurant for the evening, but had also managed to stealthily invite about fifty people as well.

Shit, introducing John and Dana really had been a strategic mistake.

"Did you know about this?" Robby asked Jack.

The smirk on Jack's face was answer enough. There was only one thing that Robby could do in response. He took Jack's hand in his, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which got them cheers—but then Jack turned and tugged Robby closer and kissed him full on the mouth, hot and intent and showy, which got them whoops and a whistle and a shout of "Get it, Dr Abbot!" that could only have come from Santos.

"Thank you all for coming," Jack said, raising his voice to carry across the room. "It means a lot! And I hope you'll enjoy the appetisers and the champagne for now, but if you'll excuse us for a few moments, I've got something to take care of with my husband first."

"What's going on?" Robby said as Jack steered him across to another doorway and through it, half-confused and half-thrilled at hearing Jack refer to him as his husband. On the other side of the doorway was a much smaller, private dining room with a table that could hold maybe eight people. The table wasn't set, but there was something on it, covered with a cloth.

“So after you did your big old ‘heart of a romantic’ gesture,” Jack said, raising Robby’s hand to his mouth and pressing a kiss to it, “I went and I did some reading up about ketubahs. How they’re supposed to be signed."

There was a gentle tap on the door. “Come on in,” Jack said, letting go of Robby’s hand.

It was John and Dana, accompanied by Lena and her current boyfriend.

“I know you’re not super hung up on customs,” Jack said, drawing back the cloth to show their ketubah, spread out on a large piece of black foam-board, “but I figured if you went to the trouble of getting this, I should make sure that we went the whole way with it.”

Robby gaped at him. "How the hell did you get this here without me knowing?"

Jack grinned. "I've got skills, man."

John took a fancy pen out of his jacket pocket and handed it over to Robby. "For the signatures. Dana and I are here to silently witness—"

“—and Max and I are here as the official Jewish delegation to provide the required signatures," Lena said as she signed her name with a flourish. "I've been saving Jack's ass when it comes to paperwork for years now. Why stop now?"

"You are a national treasure," Jack told her solemnly.

Robby had to take a breath before he added his own name next to Jack's, as his family and some of his closest friends looked on. Michael Robinavitch and John R. Abbot, written boldly and clearly, the two names side-by-side for everyone to see. The statement that would soon be hanging in their home.

The others filed out back to the main drawing room, John carrying the ketubah to set it up on an easel where it could be seen and admired by the guests.

"See?" Jack dimpled. "I did my research!"

Robby had to kiss him for that, pour every single thing that he felt for Jack into it. He felt breathless by the end of it; Jack was pink-cheeked.

"We'd better go back," he said, adjusting his tie, "or we're going to have people gossiping."

"Let them talk," Robby said, and kissed him again.

Back in the main dining room, one table—slightly larger than the rest but set just for two—had been set up in a recessed space just in front of the windows. Jack and Robby were seated there and dinner was served—every course was delicious, finished off by slices of incredible, light lemon cake and some of the best coffee Robby had had in a long time.

"We're starting off this whole married thing totally spoiled," Jack said, closing his eyes as he savoured his last bite of cake. "Mmpfh, this is good." As the last of the daylight faded outside, the candles on the table cast Jack's face into gorgeous relief and Robby let himself indulge in a little staring. It was his wedding day, and he was in love; fuck it, he was allowed.

There was a brief lull in the room's conversation while people finished their dessert, and at a nearby table John took advantage of that to stand and clink a spoon against his water glass until the room was totally silent. "Good evening everyone," he began, in the practiced voice of someone who'd done a lot of public speaking. "I'd like to thank you all for coming to celebrate Michael and Jack's happy day. For those of you who don't know me, my name is John, and you've probably guessed that I'm Michael's brother—"

Polite laughter rippled around the room.

"—and I can't tell you how pleased I am to be here today, and to join you all in helping to get their marriage off to a wonderful start."

A brief round of clapping; Robby felt his cheeks heat again.

"There's a lot that I could say about Michael, and what a sincere joy it's been for me to get to know him, as a brother and as a friend, over the past year or so." John cleared his throat; Robby felt alarmed. Was there going to be a speech? Oh no. "We didn't grow up together, but I do think I now know my baby brother well enough to know that he would be mortified if I made a speech right now, so I won't."

Robby exhaled in relief.

"But several of you told me that you'd like to be able to say something about the happy couple," John went on, "so I'm going to turn the floor over. Pete?"

Robby's brother was an asshole.

The first person to speak, Pete, was also part of the group of amputee vets who Jack semi-regularly played basketball with, who ribbed him gently about how competitive he could be and who raised a glass to him and said, "Doc, if you're half as fucking stubborn about your marriage as you are on the court, everything's going to work out just fine."

Jack laughed and took Robby's hand in his and said, "Challenge accepted!"

Pete was followed by Jesse, who told a story about Robby's one and only and totally mortifying attempt at karaoke several years ago, during one of Gloria's misbegotten team-building exercises; Mel, who stood with her eyes closed and hands clasped and recited a brief poem; Mandy, who lived across the street from Jack and Robby's place and whose cat Robby had rescued from a tree three times already.

Parker Ellis stood and introduced herself and said, "As some of you know, in a few months I'm going to be moving to Atlanta for a new job." She paused and bowed in acknowledgement of the burst of applause that got her from the ED staff. "Thank you. But I have to say that one of the things I'm going to miss most about Pittsburgh is the opportunity to learn from Jack Abbot. He's been a true mentor to me. Commonly referred to around the Pitt as the man, the myth, the legend—"

There were whoops and cheers, someone stamped their feet; it was Jack's turn to redden.

"—but I'll always remember him fondly as the attending who lost a bet to me, and who worked a whole night shift in a pair of bright pink cowboy boots without complaining once, because in his own words, 'a bet's a bet and fair's fair.'"

Jack put his head in his hands.

Parker laughed and raised her glass. "To Jack and Robby!"

"To Jack and Robby!" the room echoed back.

John stood back up. “And now, folks, it’s time for us for the main events of the evening to begin. There’ll be an open bar from now until 11pm—”

A ragged chorus of cheers.

“—and Dr John Shen has agreed to be in charge of this evening’s musical playlist—“

Shen, who'd clearly been waiting for his moment, put on a pair of dark sunglasses.

“Time to dance!”

The first strains of music sounded, the tables were being cleared and moved back to allow for dancing, and Jack stood and held out his hand to Robby. “Shall we?” he asked, all mock gallantry, like something out of a movie from the Forties.

And Robby beamed at him, and took his hand, and everything about this moment felt vaguely surreal and totally wonderful, as if all of Robby's vascular system had been filled with nothing but the finest, fizziest champagne.

After a breathless half hour on the dance floor, Robby ceded his husband to Dana for a dance or two and went out to the terrace to cool down a bit. The view from here wasn't as panoramic as from the top of PTMC, but thanks to the heaters that had been set up, standing out here was a hell of a lot warmer.

Everyone else was still living it up inside, except for John who was sitting on a low bench and scrolling through something on his phone. He looked up and grinned when he saw it was Robby, shifted over to give Robby room to sit. "Hey, how are the first, uh, six and a half hours of married life treating you?"

"Pretty good," Robby said, scratching meditatively at his beard. Shit, he was married. He was a married man. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah, just sending some photos to Olivia," John said, holding up his phone screen. A steady stream of heart emojis and responses was rolling in, almost faster than Robby could track. "I was threatened with serious repercussions if I didn't send her pictures before her bedtime, so I'm complying. She's the only person in the house who knows how to turn on the wifi router."

"The real power in the household," Robby said solemnly.

"You know it," John said. He fiddled with his phone for a moment and then said, "Thank you for indulging me. For letting me..." He gestured back through the French doors to where the dancing was still in full swing. "It's not every day I get to spoil a sibling, you know."

"Spoiling me?" Robby laughed. "You're paying for an open bar for several hours, they're going to petition to have a statue of you erected in the Pitt."

"Got to get rid of the ancestral blood money somehow," John said.

Robby rubbed at the nape of his neck. "It's kind of a full-time job, isn't it? Giving it away."

"Compound interest's the enemy," John said, slipping his phone into his jacket pocket. "That and incredibly complex trusts."

"And dodging the kind of people most likely to put their hand out once they know you've got money." Robby sighed. The hospital admin had seen that fucking newspaper article, the same as apparently half of everyone whom Robby had ever met, and they'd been making some very unsubtle hints about how wonderful it was when a member of their Valued PTMC Community gave back to the institution. And it wasn't that Robby couldn't see how the ED was hurting for cash, but he also knew that whatever he gave to it wouldn't be used to increase its pool of resources—it would be used as an excuse by the board to redirect existing funding from the Pitt to other parts of the hospital.

Robby wasn't silly enough to deny that having such a healthy bank balance had any perks. He'd never have to worry that Jack wouldn't be able to afford any of the healthcare he might need as he aged; he'd put aside money for Jake and college years ago, but now he'd be able to ensure that Janey didn't have to carry any of that weight at all. He could buy whatever book or LP caught his eye in a store, or think seriously about a lavish international vacation, or drop an objectively eye-watering amount of money on a piece of paper because he thought it would make Jack happy.

"You know, if you're serious about giving away as much as possible," John said, "I can give you some advice on how to do it. Been there, still doing that. Or I can put you in touch with some lawyers who specialise in this kind of thing? Maybe you don't want to set up a whole foundation, but there are other things you could do."

"Huh." Robby had been considering setting up some scholarships, but he hadn't really known where to start—open it up to anyone who wanted to go into healthcare? Keep it for students at CCAC, where he'd had his own start? Cover tuition alone, or offer a cost of living stipend as well? How much should that be? What about a hardship fund? It seemed like the more he thought about it, the more things there were to consider, and he wasn't sure he trusted any institution that would want his money to be totally truthful with him. But John, John he felt like he could trust. "Sure, yeah, we could talk about it. I'd like that."

Robby looked out over the rooftops, the city lights glimmering in the dark. He wondered what the Robby of five years or so ago would make of this moment if he could see it now: the promise that the man who'd stood beside him through some of the worst months of his life, the guy whom he'd come to think of as his best friend, was now married to him; that Monty would be dead and gone, but that Robby would be trying his hardest to keep his legacy going as best as he could; that Robby would, improbably, have not only a husband but also a brother and nieces and a nephew—a family.

"It's weird," Robby started, and then paused.

"Weird?"

"Well, you know. Road less travelled. If I'd decided to take the attending position in New Orleans, instead of coming back here. What kind of person would I be? Would I still have met Jack? Or if there hadn't been that fog in Newark that day, then what? I might never have known you existed."

John blinked in bemusement at him. "We met in Ohio?"

"Yeah, but we were there because—oh." Shit. How had he never told John this? "We were only at that seminar because Jack basically worked out you existed. And he did that because we were stuck in the airport for a bit, because of a ground-stop, and this random woman stopped to talk to me, and she clearly thought I was you."

John's eyebrows went up. "What? Who?"

"Uh." Robby struggled to recall. "Blonde, maybe this tall? Said she knew you from Chicago in the '90s. Maybe her name was Anne? Angie?"

"Holy shit, Anna? Anna Del Amico?"

Robby winced. He really hadn't been paying very close attention. "Might have been an Anna?"

John stood up; sat back down; gaped at Robby like some kind of deep-sea fish. "And she thought you were me and she still, uh, she still wanted to talk to you? Me?"

"I guess so?" Robby peered at him. "Let me guess, she's one that got away."

"Something like that." John chewed on his lower lip; his eyes had gone unfocused, distant. "I... Huh. I... You think she might talk to me, if I got in touch with her?"

Robby had no clue. He shrugged. "Can't hurt to find out?"

A few people came out onto the terrace to smoke; John and Robby drifted back inside. Robby accepted congratulations and requests for photos from half a dozen people, had another drink, let Jack dance him around the room to "Ain't That a Kick in the Head". Robby's face hurt from smiling. There wasn't a hora but there was a conga line, there were fancy cocktails, Santos acquired a hat from somewhere. Gradually the night wound down. People had shifts in the morning, baby sitters to get back to, or, if you were Parker Ellis, another date to get to.

Dana, pink-cheeked, hugged them both tight before Benji drove her home, leaving bright lipstick marks on both their cheeks. "I'm happy for you," she tipsy-whispered into Robby's ear. "You got happiness, Rob. That's a gift. You take it with both hands, you hear me?"

Robby was misty-eyed himself by the time he and Jack got into the back of the Lyft, the now-framed ketubah cradled gently between them.

"You folks having a good night?" the driver asked as he pulled away from the kerb.

Jack flashed a grin at Robby. "The best."

It felt like any other evening when they were getting ready for bed together, except for how it didn't. Robby left the framed ketubah on the coffee table, ready for tomorrow's decision making as to where best to display it. He did his usual checks of windows, locks, the thermostat, and set up the coffee maker reader for the morning while Jack went to take the first shower.

But through every usual move Robby made, through every familiar space, he was aware of the barely-there weight of the ring on his finger, of the fact that in every way possible he was signed, sealed, delivered to Jack. The knowledge of it fizzed under his skin.

It heated him more even than the water did when he himself finally got into the shower, rinsing off the day's sweat with efficient movements. He towelled himself off roughly, brushed his teeth, thought about pulling on a fresh pair of underwear and then asked himself who he was fooling.

Jack was clearly on the same page, because when Robby walked into the bedroom, only one of the bedside lamps was switched on and the sheets and comforter had been folded down neatly to the foot of the bed. Jack was sitting propped up against the headboard, just as nude as Robby was, checking over his residual limb with practiced fingers. On the bedside table, next to the tube of body lotion, was a bottle of lube and a strip of condoms.

"Why Dr Abbot," Robby said, climbing onto the bed, "if I didn't know better I'd think you were planning to seduce me."

"Who, me? Nah, my seducing days are behind me. I'm a virtuous married man now, thank you very much," Jack said, and turned to meet Robby in a kiss that soon had him shuddering.

It was strange to think that Robby didn't have a particularly clear memory of the first time that he and Jack had kissed. They'd been in Robby's old place, half-watching some game on TV and chatting and Jack had made some joke about dry spells and how did dating apps even work, he'd been out of the loop for so long now—and then Robby had made an offer, some silly joke about a helping hand—and Jack had said okay, why not and kissed him. How had things gone after that? Had they stayed on the couch or moved into the bedroom after a while? Or had that been the second time? Robby couldn't remember.

All he could remember was that it had been good that first night, and off and on in the weeks that followed; great as the months went by and Robby spent the night at Jack's place more and more, and had come to know Jack's body so well, and Robby had been determinedly telling himself that Jack had only ever been asking for a friends-with-benefits situation, a little stress relief. Jack wasn't looking to saddle himself with an ageing introvert with a punishing work schedule and an atrophied social life.

And then, it had turned out, Jack loved him. Jack had loved him for so long, and so well, and now Robby smiled into the kiss, wrapped his arms around Jack and pulled him closer.

"You know," Robby said, running a hand down Jack's side, "your words say one thing, but I'm pretty sure you're willing to put out."

"Oh yeah? What gives you that idea?" Jack asked, nuzzling his way along Robby's jawline.

Robby moved his hand from Jack's hip to his ass, pressed a finger in between his cheeks and found— "Well, I saw the other bottle of lube in the shower. Not very subtle."

"You think I was trying to be?" Jack pushed back, encouraging Robby to tease at him with his finger where he was already wet and waiting. "It's my wedding night, Mike, I'm a sure thing."

"Well, who am I to argue with a sure thing?" Robby got Jack up to two fingers and groaning with it, a flush spreading across his cheekbones, before getting him to settle on his belly. Robby trailed his lube-sticky hand down Jack's back as he moved to kneel behind him. "We still sure?"

"Who told you it was polite to tease?" Jack grumbled, hiding his face in the crook of his arm even as he spread his legs wider.

Robby grinned. He bowed his head and pressed a kiss to the small of Jack's back; nipped gently at the birthmark on Jack's right ass cheek before kissing it in turn.

"Are we going the long way around?" Jack sniped, his words trailing off into a low groan as Robby held him open and licked one hot, spit-slick stripe over his hole. "O-okay, maybe not, carry on."

This, Robby decided, was way too much talking for his liking. He licked again, and again, and again, until Jack's hips were working against the mattress in shallow thrusts. And then he started to work his tongue into Jack's ass, relishing the heat of him, the way Jack grunted when Robby wrapped his hands around Jack's hips and angled him so that Robby could work him just right.

"Fucker," Jack said, "shit, ugh, yeah, no...."

Robby lifted his head. "Is this feedback? Peer review?"

"You are," Jack said, "the most impossible—"

Robby pushed his thumb into Jack's hole, used it to tease at the rim, and whatever Jack had been about to say was lost to a hoarse shout. "I'm going to take it that's a positive score. C'mon, up on your knees for me. Think you can do that?"

"Insufferable," Jack said, but he went eagerly, his cock hanging hard and heavy between his legs.

Robby braced one hand on Jack's hip as he leaned past him to get the bottle of lube and a condom from the bedside table. He rolled the condom onto his cock and then applied the lube liberally—more on Jack's hole, some on Robby's left hand, more on his dick—before tossing the bottle to one side.

Jack's responsiveness was a dream. Robby had always enjoyed going down on a partner, the intimacy of it—licking and sucking at a woman's clit until she was sobbing from overstimulation and her thighs were clamped, shivering, either side of his head; eating out a man's ass until his chin was slick and sticky with spit and lube—but doing it to Jack made him feel almost light-headed with contentment. He loved this: the way Jack would choke and gasp and whine when Robby licked at him. How he'd rock his hips back insistently for more when Robby pushed his tongue in deep, deeper, but then thrust forward into the grip Robby had on his cock. No need for talking like this. Just the two of them, working together, Jack wanting to feel good and Robby determined to get him there. It was like the rare occasions when their shifts overlapped and they got to run a trauma together, so in sync and the one feeding from the other.

Robby worked at Jack until his jaw ached and his tongue felt swollen, heavy; until Jack's head dropped and he was arching his back more and more and he started to mumble, "I'm gonna, I—I'm gonna," words slurring like he'd necked that whole bottle of champagne by himself.

Robby waited until Jack sounded right on the brink and then pulled away, letting go of Jack's cock as well.

"Son of a fuck," Jack said, sounding winded. "What are you, Mike—"

"Wanted to look at you some more like this," Robby said, hoarse even to his own ears. He ran an admiring hand up over Jack's ass, along his still working hips; stared greedily at how his spit and lube were running down Jack's crack. "Do you know how hot you are? Fuck, do you know how glad I am that I'm yours?"

Jack looked over his shoulder at Robby, flushed and pissy with it, and said, "What's the plan here, you gonna edge me until our first anniversary or something?"

Robby tilted his head, made a show of considering it. Impractical, maybe; appealing, definitely. The thought of keeping Jack here in his bed—their bed—shivering and moaning and aroused, for months on end? Losing himself between Jack's thighs, not having to think about anything other than the weight of his cock on Robby's tongue, the clench of him around Robby's finger, the scent of him in Robby's nostrils? Robby's beard soaked from eating him out, from Jack coming on his face? Fuck. He wrapped a hand around his own cock, gave it one slow stroke. "Nah," he said.

Instead, Robby shuffled forward on his knees, admired what it looked like for the head of his cock to tease at Jack's hole.

"Are you... Are you going to get on wi—"

Robby slid home and fuck, god, was there a better sound in the world than the punched-out groan that Jack made in that moment. Forward and forward until his hips were flush with Jack's ass and keeping going still until he was draped over Jack, relishing the slide of sweaty skin and the heat of them together. Robby wrapped an arm around Jack's waist, canting his hips a bit to let Jack take some of the weight off his bad leg and at the same time working Jack backwards more deeply onto his cock and, "Yes, yes, fuck."

After that it was all a desperate chase to the end, Robby fucking him as hard and as relentlessly as he could, until Jack was finally coming everywhere, shooting over the sheets and Robby's hand, and Robby had a few moments of smug accomplishment before he too was lost to the white-hot wash of orgasm. Robby pressed his forehead to Jack's shoulder as he shook his way through it, relishing the feel of the breath rasping in his lungs and the trickle of sweat running down the back of his thigh.

They stayed like that for a long moment, and then Robby pressed a kiss to the nearest patch of freckled skin and said, "So this is what it's like not to be living in sin anymore, huh?"

Jack started to laugh so hard that Robby almost lost hold of the condom as he pulled out.

Robby was a gentleman, so he hauled himself out of bed to take care of everything—tossed the used condom, swilled out his mouth quickly with mouthwash and ran a damp washcloth over his face before bringing another one back to the bedroom. Jack was curled up his side, clearly already most of the way asleep and golden in the lamplight, and Robby wondered if there would ever be a time when he didn't feel overwhelmed by the fact that his man had made a vow to him—that he'd promised to stay with Robby, for better or worse, forever? He hoped not.

He padded over to the bed, sat down on the edge of it. He reached for Jack, wiped him off as gently as possible. Jack still stirred at Robby's touch, blinking up at him hazily and with such a smile on his face that Robby felt humbled by it.

"It's past midnight," Robby whispered. Well past it, at this point. Onto day two.

"Come to bed," Jack whispered back. Robby stood, turned off the bedside light; climbed onto his side of the bed and fumbled to pull the sheets and comforter up over both of them. In the darkness, Jack curved towards him, slung an arm over his waist.

They slept.

Robby only woke because his bladder was screaming at him. He eased himself out from beneath Jack's arm, staggered into the bathroom to piss. While there, he brushed his teeth and splashed some cold water on his face, which had him feeling somewhat more human. Celebrations hit differently in your fifties. He found his pants, discarded on the bench which sat next to the shower, and dug his phone out of the pocket.

They'd fucked both their sleep schedules for the next few days, Robby thought when he caught sight of the time. It was a few minutes before noon, and he could hear Jack starting to stir in the next room. At least neither of them would be back in the Pitt until Tuesday. Time to readjust.

Although, Robby thought, as he headed back to the bedroom while scrolling through his phone, it might take him that long to work through all of his notifications. Guests from last night had forwarded on photos that they'd taken; Shen had sent them his playlist; people Robby hadn't worked with or heard from in years had somehow already heard about it through the ineffable workings of the extended PTMC grapevine and had messaged him their congratulations.

Gloria had emailed him her congratulations and a request for his comment on the Q1 budget. Robby sighed. Of course, a response to the messages could always wait.

Robby made two coffees and a big plate of hot buttered toast, brought them through on a tray into the bedroom. True, the crumbs would get everywhere, but the sheets were already a loss. Screw it. "I know it's not as fancy as yesterday's breakfast," he said, as Jack yawned and sat up, scrubbing at his eyes. "But it's the thought that counts, right?"

Jack leaned over, smacked a kiss against Robby's cheek. "You're here. Breakfast of champions."

They ate, they got washed and pulled on some sweats, they changed the sheets, and then by mutual unspoken agreement climbed back into bed with their phones and some books, all of which they proceeded to ignore. Neither of them had anything else to do today, nowhere to be, and for Robby, lying there wrapped around Jack felt as indulgent as any bespoke suit or fancy restaurant. They lay there quietly for an endless moment, Jack holding Robby's hand against his chest and idly playing with the ring on his finger.

"I never thought I'd get to have this again," Jack said after a while. His voice was very soft, as if he was confessing some big secret. "When Maggie died I thought, well man, you were lucky to get even one shot at something like this. Be glad you ever had it. And now with you..."

Robby tugged Jack's hand over to his mouth, pressed a kiss to the back of it.

"Look, I know it's just a piece of paper," Jack went on, "and in every way that counts, we're the same people now that we were two days ago. But I do love you, so fucking much, and I'd swear to that in front of anyone."

"I'm going to tell all your med students you're an incurable romantic," Robby said, but even as Jack squawked at that he went on, "And anyway, I'm the lucky one. You know that, right?"

Robby's phone chimed a few times in quick succession before Jack could say anything. He huffed and went to put it back on silent, and then saw that the flurry of notifications was from John.

John (07:13): What if I did contact Anna though?
John (07:47): I mean what's the worst that could actually happen
John (07:49): I know it's been a long time
John (07:49): Fuck it's been 30 years
John (07:51): She'd probably say no
John (07:56): She could be married, she's probably married, who wouldn't have wanted to marry her if they could
John (07:56): She probably wouldn't even respond to me
John (09:24): I mean why would she
John (10:19): Ok she's working at Boston Children's, her email address is right there in her profile
John (11:31): Fuck. FUCK. I emailed her :(
John (2:02): OH FUCK
John (2:03): SHE REPLIED
John (2:03): If I don't ever read it I won't know what she says and that might be better
John (2:03): She gave me her personal phone number and said she'd wondered about me
John (2:03): Is that a good sign?
John (2:04): Do you think she's flirting with me?

Robby sighed and dropped his phone back on the bed, let his head fall back on the pillow next to Jack's.

"Everything okay?" Jack said.

"Sure," Robby said, and took Jack's hand in his, wove their fingers together. "Everything's fine. Just family."