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Robby is the sun.
Everyone knows it.
He’s light and fire and gravity, the center of every room he walks into. His laugh cuts through the hum of the PITT like a bell. His energy wakes up the morning shift, his orders bring order to chaos. He shines so brightly that no one questions the heat. They just lean closer.
Jack is the moon.
He’s what comes after.
Quiet and watchful, a steady pull in the dark hours. He slips in through the back doors when the rest of the world sleeps and holds things together when no one’s watching. His calm is the kind that settles after storms, his voice low and certain when the alarms won’t stop.
They orbit each other. Always have.
Trading notes in patient charts. Their ritual of handover on the roof. The leftover coffee still warm in the pot when one leaves and the other arrives. Gravity pulling them close, always close…but never enough.
The moon doesn’t belong in daylight. But every once in a while, when the sun is burning too hot and breaking under his own heat, the moon rises early… not to steal the light, but to help hold the sky together.
PittFest was one of those days.
Jack is already in one trauma bay, hands slick with blood, when Robby crashes through the door like a solar flare.
They don’t speak, there’s no time. But they see each other. Really see. A breath in the noise. And then they’re moving again.
Robby is the sun, bright, commanding, impossible not to follow. He yells orders across bays, starts chest compressions like it’s muscle memory, not heartbreak. His voice cuts through the haze, and everyone listens.
Jack is the moon, cool hands and quiet control, whispering calm into the ears of the dying. He moves through the madness like he belongs to the dark, but today… today… he’s out of orbit.
Their hands meet over a bleeding patient. Gloved. Fast. Then gone.
Jack doesn’t look at Robby, not really. Just enough to confirm he’s breathing, sweating, alive…
Robby doesn’t say his name, not out loud.
Hours blur.
They cut. They shock. They lose six. Save more. The trauma rooms fill and empty like waves crashing, and still the tide keeps rising. Blood pools under boots. Monitors scream. Jack’s ribs ache from where a gurney slammed him. Robby’s knuckles split open from pounding someone back to life.
The trauma rooms are overflowing, just as many beds have been moved to other floors. The air smells like iron. Robby’s voice is raw from shouting vitals, and Jack’s legs are shaking from hours and the eventual adrenaline crash.
And then… it’s over.
Or as close as it gets.
The sirens stop. The lights dim slightly. The halls begin to empty of screaming and gurneys and sound. A few nurses slump into chairs, eyes hollow. Monitors blink into silence. The world stops bleeding… just for a minute.
Jack peels off his gloves and looks around.
No Robby.
He checks each area quickly, nodding to nurses and residents for a job well done. Checks the ambulance bay, the break room. The morgue . He asks Dana, who just shakes her head with a muttered “Haven’t seen him.”
Jack keeps moving, scanning each corner of the PITT like he’s misplaced a vital organ. His chest is too tight. He can’t settle. Because it’s Robby . And even when they don’t speak, even when all they can do is pass like ghosts, Jack needs to know he’s okay.
He pauses near the stairwell, letting his hand rest against the railing, breathing hard.
And then he feels it…
like a thread tugging in his gut.
A warmth somewhere above him.
The kind of feeling you don’t question.
The kind of pull that’s instinct, gravitational.
The sun is up.
Jack turns taking the elevator as far as it’ll go before climbing the last few flights of stairs.
He finds Robby on the roof.
The air up there is cooler, sharper. The lights of the city stretch out below, blurred from exhaustion and the sweat still drying on their brows. Robby is too far past the safety barrier for comfort, too close to the ledge for Jack to breathe.
Jack approaches quietly but not cautiously. He’s never been careful with Robby. Not really.
“You rocked that shit down there tonight,” Jack says.
Robby won’t look at him.
He’s staring out over the city like the skyline might offer him some kind of salvation. Jaw tight. Shoulders set. Glowing, even now, the ghost of blood on his sleeves, sweat cooling on his neck, but still somehow burning like the goddamn sun.
Jack can see it…the way he’s holding himself together like a dam just barely holding. The way he refuses to meet his eyes.
Because Robby knows.
Just like Jack does.
If he looks… really looks, it’s over. All the space they’ve carved out, all the restraint they’ve pretended to live inside. Gone. Reduced to ash and pulled into orbit again like they never stood a chance.
Jack takes a step forward.
He always does.
He reaches out over the barrier and touches Robby’s chin, gently but firmly, like guiding light through the dark. He tilts his face up until those eyes…those impossible, stubborn, blazing eyes, meet his own.
Hazel to brown.
Moon to sun.
“You rocked that shit down there tonight,” Jack says again, softly this time. Like prayer. Like gravity.
And Robby flinches. Not visibly, but Jack feels it. The hit of it. Like the truth lands too close to a place Robby’s trying to keep locked down.
Like warmth hurts more than wounds.
“Jesus, Jack. Please.” Robby’s voice cracks, raw and unraveling.
Jack’s heart aches.
“Robby…” he breathes.
He keeps holding him, thumb grazing along his jaw. He’s not sure if he’s grounding Robby or himself. The closeness feels like moonlight skimming the edge of a solar flare, drawn in, scorched, undone. But he can’t back away.
Because the truth is, Jack’s always been the moon.
He doesn’t rise…he waits.
He watches from the quiet.
He reflects. He steadies. He longs .
And Robby is the sun…blinding and alive and far too much for Jack to ever touch without getting burned.
But tonight, he’s close enough to feel the heat on his skin.
Still touching him.
Still looking at him like maybe this time they won’t pull away.
And for a breath…one long, suspended moment… Jack lets himself believe in an eclipse.
Robby snaps.
He climbs back through the safety barrier, reaches up and cups Jack’s face in his own hands, dragging him in for a kiss that’s messy, ferocious, aching. He pours everything into it, all the feelings he’s kept corked and boiling through fifteen hours of blood and screaming and not being allowed to feel anything .
Jack stumbles, caught off guard by the force, but, like always, he catches him.
He always does.
And for a long moment, they stay there. Lips crushed together. Breath ragged. The moon and sun suspended in a rooftop sky that doesn’t belong to either of them.
They know it can’t last.
The morning will come, and with it the same old ache, the same distance, the same quiet roles. Robby will rise with the sun, and Jack will sink back into shadow.
But tonight?
Tonight, the sun and moon collided.
And for once, neither of them looked away.