Chapter Text
There’s a reason Jack Abbot is Michael Robinavitch’s emergency contact. Yes, they’re best friends. Yes, Robby is also Jack’s, ever since Claire died and Jack discovered grief could hollow a house out so completely it echoed.
But there’s a quieter one, a much more private reason for it. A reason Jack expects the phone call when Robby stops coping.
Robby was in his early thirties when Jack first met him, already carrying exhaustion like a second skeleton. At thirty two, Michael Robinavitch already had the reputation that would eventually calcify into hospital legend. Brilliant, impossible standards, sharp tongue. Worked too much, slept too little. The sort of doctor who made people feel safer and more nervous simultaneously.
Jack met him at a hospital fundraiser neither of them wanted to attend. Jack had been there to make good first impressions, having just started at PMTC. Robby, had apparently been threatened.
“You look like you’re enjoying this just as much as I am,” Jack told him within thirty seconds of introduction.
Robby stared at him over the rim of a champagne flute. “You usually so honest with people you’ve just met?”
Jack shrugged. “You looked like you were deciding which centrepiece would kill a man fastest.”
“That one,” Robby had said immediately, pointing at a marble candle holder.
Jack laughed so hard he nearly snorted prosecco through his nose.
That was sort of it, really. Friendship arrived sideways. Coffee after shifts sometimes. Texts at impossible hours. Jack discovering Robby only ate reliably if another person physically handed him food. Robby discovering Jack talked through grief the way other people bled through gauze.
Claire had adored him almost immediately.
“He's like a rescue dog that bites people,” she told Jack once while Robby argued with a bartender about hockey statistics. “I want to wrap him in a blanket.”
“He’s 6’3” honey.”
“Mm, and still; blanket.”
So Robby became part of their life gradually. Christmases. Late night dinners. Silent companionship that didn’t require performance. And then Claire died. Suddenly and horribly and far too young. Jack stopped answering calls for a while after that, stopped opening curtains. Stopped being a person in any meaningful sense.
Robby simply arrived anyway, sat with Jack through the ugliest parts of grief without trying to disinfect them first.
Made him food. Handled paperwork. Bathed him, cared for him when he couldn't do it himself. He once physically removed a well meaning neighbour from Jack’s porch after the phrase 'everything happens for a reason' left her mouth.
“You seriously can’t threaten retirees, man,” Jack had said afterward, exhausted enough to laugh.
“Yeah I fucking can,” Robby replied coldly. “And I'll do it again. Watch me.”
That was the year they became family in the quiet irreversible way some people do.
Then, six years later, Jack learned one of the hidden reasons that Robby trusted him. It happened after a brutal stretch at work. Too many deaths, too little sleep. Just weeks of pressure compacted into something dangerous. Robby started cancelling plans first, then he stopped texting coherently, just short answers filled with spelling mistakes and half finished thoughts.
After days of no contact and Robby failing to answer the door one evening, Jack let himself in with the spare key.
The apartment was dim except for the watery blue flicker of the television. One lamp burned in the living room, shoes scattered on the entry mat. Wallet on the counter. Half a cup of coffee gone cold beside the sink.
“Mike?” Jack called to no answer.
He’d rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped cold.
Robby was sitting on the floor in hospital scrubs like someone whose strings had been cut mid motion. Long legs folded awkwardly beneath him. One shoulder slumped against the cupboards, his ID badge still clipped to his chest. There was a smear of something dark near the cuff of his sleeve, probably coffee, maybe blood, impossible to tell anymore with hospital workers.
The television in the next room played some soft brightly coloured children’s cartoon at low volume and tiny animated voices chirped cheerfully into the silence. Robby didn’t appear to be watching it. His eyes were fixed somewhere several feet beyond the wall itself, unfocused and glassy with exhaustion so profound it looked almost chemical. One hand twisted repeatedly in the fabric of his scrub pants in a small unconscious motion.
For one sharp terrifying second, Jack had thought stroke.
Or seizure.
Or that Robby had finally worked himself into an actual neurological event after years of treating his body like something rented rather than owned.
“Mikey, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”
Robby had looked up instantly and Jack felt something in his chest shift strangely. Because the man looking back at him did not seem 42 years old. Robby looked overwhelmed in a way that bypassed adulthood entirely, tear streaked and small despite his size, hands clenched in the fabric of his sleeves.
Jack crouched carefully. “Jesus brother, you sick?”
A tiny head shake.
“You hurt?”
Another shake.
Robby opened his mouth like he wanted to speak but nothing came out.
Then, after a long awful effort, a tiny trembling, “J-jack.”
The realisation arrived slowly over the next few hours. Then more fully over the following months, once Robby trusted him enough to explain what little he understood himself.
Stress did this to him sometimes, pressure layered carefully on top of pressure until something inside Robby’s mind bent under the weight of it. Regression became the closest available word, though even that felt too neat for what it actually was. Too clinical. Too easy to file away into psychology textbooks and tidy definitions.
Because it wasn’t roleplay.
Wasn’t a kink.
Wasn’t deliberate.
Robby didn’t choose it any more than someone chooses to faint.
His brain just reached some invisible threshold and abandoned adulthood entirely.
The first signs were always subtle. His speech softened around the edges, eye contact became difficult. He stopped making decisions if he could avoid them. Stress seemed to strip years off him incrementally, peeling away the sharp controlled layers of Michael Robinavitch until something younger and quieter remained underneath.
Then language started disappearing. Sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. Words became visibly difficult, like he had to reach underwater to grab them. Questions overwhelmed him, too much noise made him flinch. He cried easier then, which seemed to horrify him more than anything else. Great silent tears spilling down his face with the helplessness of a child too overstimulated to explain what hurts.
And younger still after that.
Nonverbal some days.
Needing comfort with an intensity that bypassed pride completely because pride itself had vanished somewhere in the process. He sought warmth instinctively then. Soft things. Gentle voices. Familiar television shows. Curling into corners of couches or against Jack’s side with exhausted trust that seemed to arrive from someplace deeper and older than conscious thought.
Small.
That was the only word Jack ever found that fit properly. Not childish, not immature.
Just small.
As though the impossible weight Robby carried around every day suddenly became too heavy for one person to survive holding, and his mind solved the problem by turning him into someone who wasn’t responsible for carrying it anymore. The first time Jack saw him regress completely, Robby cried afterward harder than he had when Claire died. Humiliation more than distress.
“This is so fucked up,” he’d whispered hoarsely.
Jack remembered sitting beside him on the couch, fury rising hot and immediate at the self loathing carved through every syllable.
“Hey, hey,” Jack had said gently. “You think I’m gonna run because your brain copes weird?” Jack asked. “Brother, I’ve watched you eat shredded cheese directly from the packet at three in the morning. You’ve showered me, dressed me, seen me at my absolute fucking worst. The standards for normal left this friendship years ago.”
Over the next decade, they built systems around the bad days.
Jack learned the warning signs before Robby did sometimes. He learned that regressed Robby liked being read to. That weighted blankets helped. That bad days often ended curled against Jack’s side watching ancient movies while Jack pretended not to notice the occasional sleepy thumb sucking that made Robby want the earth to swallow him whole afterward.
Jack never mocked him. Not once. Not even accidentally. And in return, Robby trusted him with the most defenseless parts of himself.
So yes.
There’s a very important reason Jack Abbot is Michael Robinavitch’s emergency contact.
Because if Michael Robinavitch disappears under the weight of his own mind, there is exactly one person on earth he trusts to find him gently.
Jack is halfway through a day off when Dana calls. The phone buzzes against the cushion beside him and Jack answers with the lazy confidence of someone expecting gossip.
“Please tell me someone finally punched a surgeon.”
“No suck luck partner. Got your name out of Robby’s file lookin’ for his emergency contact.”
Jack sits upright instantly. “What happened?”
Dana exhales hard through her nose before answering, the sound muffled briefly by movement on her end. Hospital noise swells around her in bursts. “I’m not even completely sure. He’s in the staff break room and I…” She stops, recalibrating audibly. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
Jack moves automatically through the apartment while she speaks, grabbing keys from the kitchen counter one handed.
“Okay, alright. Talk to me.”
“He comes in looking rough this morning. I tell him to go home and he snaps at me, which honestly reassures me because at least that’s normal.”
“Mhm.”
“But then one of the nurses finds him sitting on the floor in the break room.”
Jack closes his eyes briefly. Ah shit, there it is.
Dana keeps talking quickly, professionally, but he can hear the unease threaded underneath every word.
“He won’t respond properly. He’s conscious, he tracks movement sometimes, but he’s not answering questions and I can’t tell if he’s dissociating or postictal or having some kind of neurological event. Neuro hasn’t seen him yet because I figured…” Another breath. “I figured I should call you first.”
Good girl, Jack thinks with fierce affection.He’d learnt this years ago the hard way. You don’t throw Robby into a stress response surrounded by bright lights and six frightened doctors unless you genuinely think he is dying.
“Okay, yeah that’s good, good move Dana,” Jack says calmly, already sitting down to drag shoes on. “Is he safe?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone touching him?”
“No, but Mel tried earlier and he flinched hard enough she nearly cried.”
“Alright. Okay. Leave him alone if you can.”
Dana hesitates. “Jack…He looks real bad.”
Jack softens his voice deliberately. “I know, I know, but it’s best if you leave him alone.”
He can picture it already with awful clarity. Robby folded inward somewhere too bright and too loud. Nervous system overloaded past functionality. Silent because speech itself has become unreachable, terrified by people crowding him and unable to explain why.
“How long’s he been in there?” Jack asks.
“About thirty minutes.”
“Mhm.”
“I dunno Jack,” Dana says quietly now, voice dropping lower as if she doesn’t want anyone nearby overhearing. “I said his name three times before he reacted. And when he finally looked at me…” She swallows audibly. “No one was home. Are you sure we shouldn’t get him to Neuro to be safe?”
That hits Jack because she’s right. When Robby regresses deeply enough, adulthood stops fitting him properly. The sharp terrifying intensity people associate with Michael Robinavitch disappears entirely. What remains is almost vacant, openly overwhelmed in a way that hits Jack’s protective instincts like blunt force trauma.
He grabs his hoodie from the chair by the door. “Dana, you gotta trust me on this one. Just turn the lights out and I’ll be there in twenty. You did the right thing, thanks for calling.”
Dana goes quiet for half a second then, says on a deep exhale, “Okay. Trustin’ you with all I’ve got here Abbot.”
Jack ends the call and starts driving faster than is probably legal.
Because somewhere inside PMTC, Robby has disappeared beneath the weight of his own mind again. And Jack knows from experience that every extra minute trapped inside that fear feels endless when Robby is small.
***
By the time he shoulders through the doors, he already knows the shape of the day. He can feel it in the atmosphere, that strange taut hush departments get when something is wrong with one of their own. Relief moves visibly through the nurses station the second people register him. One resident actually exhales hard enough Jack hears it from ten feet away.
Christ, Robby must look bad. He cuts straight through the unit with focused energy and Dana spots him immediately. Thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph, her face says before her mouth does.
“He still there?”
“Yeah, north break room,” she answers instantly, already moving toward him. “We cleared everyone out.”
“Good.”
Dana falls into step beside him as they walk quickly down the corridor.
“He still not talking?”
She shakes her head. “Not really. Mel got a few responses earlier but…” Dana grimaces. “Not words exactly.”
Jack nods once. “Mhm.”
“Seemed close to tears.”
Robby hates crying in front of people. Even fully regressed there’s usually still enough buried adult shame left to make public vulnerability feel agonising afterward.
Poor bastard, Jack thinks.
“How overstimulated are we talking?” Jack asks quietly.
Dana scrubs a hand down her face. “Pretty bad. The break room lights were definitely too bright, so Mel turned half of them off. He’s wedged himself into the corner beside the vending machine.” She pauses. “I honest to God don’t think he knows where he is right now.”
They reach the corridor leading toward staff rooms and Dana slows slightly, lowering her voice before they round the corner.
She folds her arms tightly. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“You did exactly the right thing. Neuro would’ve had a fucking field day. I promise, Robby will thank you later for not doing that.”
Dana’s expression simply softens.
“Alright,” he says gently. “Stay out here, yeh? I’ll check in with you before we leave.”
Dana nods as Jack opens the break room door carefully and steps inside.
***
Robby is folded into the narrow space between the wall and the vending machine. He’s curled tightly inward, knees drawn up toward his chest despite the obvious discomfort it causes his long frame. One hand is trapped beneath his cheek. The other twists weakly in the sleeve of his scrub top in repetitive little movements that scream distress to anyone who knows him well enough.
Jack shuts the door quietly behind himself. “Hey bug.”
Robby flinches instantly, a small full body tightening, like his nervous system fires before recognition catches up.
Then his eyes lift and relief floods visibly through his entire body the second he sees Jack standing there. His face crumples softly at the edges with it, exhausted and overwhelmed.
“Oh honey,” Jack says gently.
Robby makes a tiny sound. It’s barely even vocalisation, just breath catching unevenly in his throat. Jack crouches slowly a few feet away instead of approaching immediately. No sudden movements. No crowding. At this level, Robby startles too easily. Too overwhelmed to process fast interaction properly.
“You did so good, got yourself somewhere safe, hmm?” Jack murmurs. “Dana called me. I’m here now, it’s okay.”
Robby’s eyes stay fixed on him with desperate concentration. Jack can see the effort, the awful frustrated strain behind his eyes every time his brain reaches for language and comes back empty-handed.
Jack learned years ago not to force it. The more pressure Robby feels to perform adulthood, the deeper the panic gets. So instead Jack settles himself slowly onto the floor nearby, making his body loose and nonthreatening.
“No talking, yeh?” he says softly. “No words is okay. Everything is okay.”
Tears gather immediately in Robby’s eyes, sudden and helpless.
Poor baby.
Jack glances briefly around the room. Too bright still, too loud, far far too much.
“You wanna get outta here, bug?” he asks quietly.
Robby doesn’t answer, just curls tighter into himself.
Okay, Jack thinks, too overwhelmed for transitions yet. He shifts carefully closer, giving Robby plenty of time to react. “Can I touch you, baby?”
Robby nods once. Tiny. Jack moves slowly after that, sitting beside him against the wall. The second his shoulder brushes Robby’s, tension visibly leaves the man in shaky increments. Like his body recognises safety before his mind can catch up.
“There y’go,” Jack reassures.
Robby turns instinctively after a moment and folds inward against him with exhausted desperation. It’s always this part that undoes Jack a little. Robby spends every waking second of his adult life holding other people together. Carries entire teams on his back. Makes impossible decisions. Stands between dying patients and terrified families and chaos and suffering over and over and over again until there’s barely anything left of himself at the end of it. And then sometimes Jack finds him like this. So unbearably small.
Robby presses his face into Jack’s shoulder hard enough to wrinkle the fabric of his hoodie, one hand fists weakly against Jack’s chest and Jack immediately wraps an arm around him.
“I know, bug,” he says softly into his hair. “I know. System got too overloaded, huh?”
Down the hall someone laughs loudly and Robby startles hard enough his whole body jerks.
“Easy.” Jack rubs slowly up and down his back. “Too noisy?”
A tiny nod against his shoulder.
“Yeah. Thought so.”
Jack reaches into his pocket carefully and pulls out his phone, muting the television remotely through the staff system app Dana must’ve left logged in earlier. The room settles instantly into softer silence and Jack sits with him like that for several long minutes, saying nothing unless necessary. Just grounding him slowly back into safety through steady touch and familiar presence.
Eventually Robby’s hand creeps upward between them and Jack feels uncertain fingers brushing weakly at the front of his hoodie before curling there instead, holding on.
Clingy. Very little.
“How about I get you home, hmm? You want to see Sebastian?” he asks quietly.
At the mention of Robby’s plush Rabbit he stills, then, slowly, there’s a tiny nod against Jack’s shoulder.
Jack smiles softly into his hair. “Yeah? Thought maybe Seb’s probably wondering where his boy went.”
Another tiny sound leaves Robby, fragile and wet around the edges. God, he’s deep. Jack rubs a slow hand up and down his back for another moment before shifting carefully. “Alright bug, we gotta stand up. I know,” Jack murmurs immediately at Robby’s reluctance. “I know, sweetheart. But we can’t live in the hospital break room now. People’ll start charging you rent.”
“C’mon.” He adjusts slightly, sliding one arm around Robby’s back. “Up we go.”
Getting him upright is like coaxing a tranquilised bear. Robby tries, Jack can feel that much clearly. But regression always leaves him clumsy in his own body, disconnected from his height and strength in strange uncomfortable ways. He sways hard the second they stand and immediately grabs for Jack with both hands in silent panic.
“I got you.” Jack steadies him automatically. “It’s okay baby,” Jack says softly. “Just tired. There we go.”
He keeps one arm firmly around his waist as they move toward the door. Robby stays pressed close enough they’re practically walking attached together, his grip on Jack’s hoodie never loosens once.
Before opening the break room door, Jack pauses, “Nobody’s gonna know what’s going on,” Jack tells him quietly. “Okay? They all just think you’re burnt out. Overworked. Dehydrated and stubborn. None of them are sitting out there going ‘Wow, Dr. Robby sure is psychologically baby shaped today’.”
A tiny strangled sound escapes Robby before he hides his face instantly against Jack’s shoulder again.
“You’re safe, bug. Nobody’s laughing at you.”
Robby relaxes another fraction after hearing it, though he still refuses to lift his head again. Jack opens the door carefully after that.
The hallway outside is quieter now, Dana’s clearly done crowd control while he was inside. Only a few staff remain visible near the nurses station, all of them professionally pretending not to look over too hard when Jack guides Robby out.
Dana approaches slowly, movements deliberately nonthreatening. Her entire face softens when she sees Robby leaning heavily into Jack’s side with his eyes fixed downward behind crooked glasses.
“Hey, Boss,” she says gently.
Robby doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look up. Just twists his hand tighter in Jack’s hoodie instead.
Dana looks at Jack over his head. He good?, her eyes say silently.
“He’s okay,” Jack says quietly. “Just overdone it.”
Dana nods immediately. “You need help getting him outside?”
Jack glances at Robby. At the exhausted way he’s swaying slightly where they stand. At the effort it’s taking just to remain upright.
“Probably,” he admits. “Just walk to the car with me?”
Dana nods as they begin to move towards the exit.
Robby stays tucked hard against Jack’s side the entire walk. His steps are slow and uncertain, the exhaustion in his body obvious now that he’s no longer forcing himself upright through sheer professional willpower. One hand remains twisted tightly in the front of Jack’s hoodie while the other curls against his own chest like he isn’t fully sure what to do with it.
Jack keeps his arm firm around his waist.
“You’re good,” he murmurs every so often when Robby’s breathing starts hitching again. “Just heading home.”
When they exit out to the parking lot, the cooler air seems to help slightly. Robby blinks slowly, eyes heavy and glassy. Jack guides him carefully toward the truck and opens the passenger door carefully.
“Okay, up we go.”
Robby manages the first awkward step up into the truck before freezing halfway and Jack immediately braces a hand at his back.
“You’re okay.”
Robby makes a tiny frustrated sound.
“I know,” He whispers so only Robby can hear, “Body’s too big and your brain’s too little right now, huh?”
He helps guide him gently into the seat after that, careful not to rush him through the process. The second Robby settles properly into the passenger side, he curls instinctively, knees drawing upward slightly. Smaller spaces, contained spaces always feel safer.
Jack reaches in to fasten the seatbelt for him and pauses when Robby suddenly grabs fistfuls of his hoodie again with surprising desperation.
“Oh, baby.”
Robby’s eyes are wet again. Overwhelmed by the transition, the movement, by the lingering fear still trapped inside his nervous system. Jack leans into the truck enough to press their foreheads together briefly.
“I’m not leaving,” he says quietly. “I’m just walking around to get into the driver’s seat, yeh? Just a few seconds.”
When he steps back, Dana is standing a respectful distance away beside the truck, arms folded loosely against the chill of the garage.
“You’ve got him?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Jack says gently. “It’s all good, I’ve got him.”
Dana steps back fully, arms folding around herself as Jack closes the passenger door gently between them. She waves at Jack as he calls a goodbye over his shoulder, already walking around the car.
Through the window, Robby’s eyes follow him instantly and Jack taps lightly against the glass. “Be right there, bug.”
***
By the time Jack gets him home, Robby is barely holding himself together. The drive had been quiet except for the occasional shaky breath from the passenger seat and the soft repetitive sound of Robby sucking his thumb.
Now he’s curled into the corner of Jack’s couch beneath two blankets despite the mild weather outside. He sits folded inward bonelessly beneath the blankets, knees drawn up slightly. Sebastian is trapped firmly in his arms, one trembling hand stroking repeatedly over the plush rabbit’s ear in slow unconscious motions.
He hasn’t cried properly since they left the hospital, but he looks on the verge of it constantly. Eyes wet. Bottom lip trembling every few minutes. Staring somewhere distant and unfocused like he’s still only halfway present inside himself.
Jack crouches carefully in front of the couch, forearms resting loosely across his knees. “Hey darling.”
He reaches up carefully and smooths a hand back through his hair once. The tension in Robby’s shoulders loosens visibly beneath the blankets.
“Do you know how old you feel right now?”
Robby’s brows pinch faintly like he’s genuinely trying to answer the question and can’t quite reach the words for it. After several long seconds, he shakes his head.
No.
Jack nods immediately like that’s perfectly alright. “Okay. That’s okay.”
Robby’s mouth wobbles faintly afterward, frustration flickering across his face. Somewhere underneath the regression there’s still enough awareness left to know he should be able to answer.
Jack reaches up and cups gently at the side of his face. “Hey,” he says quietly. “It’s okay. Just feeling very little, yeah?”
A tiny nod this time. And there it is again, that awful heartbreaking tremble in his bottom lip.
“Oh bub.”
Robby’s eyes immediately flood harder at the gentleness in Jack’s voice. He ducks his face halfway behind Sebastian like he’s embarrassed to be looked at too closely while this small. Silent tears finally spill over after that, slow and helpless down flushed cheeks while he curls tighter around the rabbit in his arms.
“You with me, Mikey?” Jack watches him carefully for another moment before asking gently, “You know who I am, baby?”
Robby opens his eyes again and nods much faster this time, clutching Sebastian tighter.
“Yeah?” Jack smiles softly. “Who’m I?”
Robby tries. Nothing comes out. His face crumples instantly in frustration.
“Hey, hey.” Jack reaches up immediately, soothing a hand through his hair again. “Doesn’t matter. You know me, that’s enough. Your Jack is here, okay? You don’t have to talk at all if you can’t,” he says quietly. “Can just be little. I can do the rest, yeh? Do you want a bottle, bub?”
A tiny nod.
Jack smiles softly. “Yeah? Okay. Hungry baby, hmm?”
Robby curls tighter around Sebastian as Jack stands, tracking him instantly with sleepy overwhelmed eyes while he heads toward the kitchen.
Jack can feel those eyes following him the entire time.
“You stay right there,” he calls gently while pulling a bottle from the drying rack beside the sink. “I’m just making it warm.”
By the time he returns to the couch, Robby has shifted deeper into the blankets until only his face and the floppy ears of Sebastian remain visible.
“There’s my boy,” Jack says softly, coming back over. “Got your bottle.”
Robby makes a tiny sound at the word bottle and tries to push himself upright too quickly. It goes badly. The blankets tangle around his legs and he ends up half twisted sideways with a distressed little noise, clutching Sebastian tighter against his chest.
“Oops,” Jack sets the bottle down briefly and crouches beside the couch again. “Brain’s too small for all that coordination nonsense tonight, huh?”
Robby blinks at him, completely gone. No embarrassment at all anymore. No adult awareness left to cover the rawness of his reactions. He just looks overwhelmed and tired and deeply confused by the fact his body isn’t cooperating properly.
“C’mere then, bug.” He slides one arm carefully beneath the pile of blankets and rubs slowly at Robby’s back. “Need you up here with me so I can help hold it, alright?”
Robby immediately leans toward him on instinct alone. Jack helps untangle him gently from the blankets and shifts back against the couch cushions, guiding Robby carefully upward until he’s sprawled mostly across Jack’s chest and lap instead.
Long limbs everywhere. At fifty three, Robby is still absurdly large to be treated like this. Even regressed into near infancy he remains six foot three and broad shouldered and impossible to maneuvre elegantly. But the second Jack settles him properly against his chest, Robby melts bonelessly into place like he’s been searching for exactly this.
“There y’go,” Jack hums.
Robby’s head tucks automatically beneath Jack’s chin. Sebastian gets squashed securely between them as Jack picks the bottle back up and brushes the nipple lightly against Robby’s lower lip. Robby opens immediately and latches on with a shaky little breath like he’s been holding himself together by threads waiting for it.
And then finally: Relief.
It’s visible. Visceral. His whole body softens all at once against Jack. The rigid trembling exhaustion easing in slow increments while he drinks. Eyelids already drooping, breathing evening out around quiet sleepy sucks at the bottle.
“Oh, somebody’s very very little today,” Jack says softly.
Robby makes a tiny humming sound around the bottle and curls tighter instinctively against his chest. He can’t manage holding the bottle himself tonight. His hands try once weakly before giving up almost immediately, coordination too slippery and distant to cooperate. So Jack holds it for him instead, one hand steady beneath the bottle, the other smoothing slowly through dark hair over and over.
Bottle.
Rabbit.
Jack.
The holy trinity of surviving deep regressions.
The living room stays dim and warm around them. Rain beginning softly against the windows outside now, turning the apartment into a little cocoon of muted sound and yellow lamp light.
Robby drinks with the desperate exhausted focus of someone who’s too overwhelmed to do anything except seek comfort wherever he can find it. Completely gone. No Michael Robinavitch left anywhere in the room tonight. No terrifying capability, no sharp intelligence crackling behind exhausted eyes, no tightly wound control.
Just this deeply worn down baby curled across Jack’s chest clutching a stuffed rabbit while Jack feeds him warm milk on the couch.
Jack looks down at him with unbearable tenderness. “You held it together way too long,” he says quietly. “Poor little bug.”
Robby blinks slowly up at him mid sip, eyes glassy and damp and impossibly trusting. Then he presses closer again, bottle still tucked against his mouth, like he’s trying to climb directly into Jack’s ribcage where nothing can reach him anymore.
He drinks for another minute in sleepy silence before the bottle slips slightly from his mouth, his fingers tighten weakly in the fabric of Jack’s hoodie.
“Juh…”
The sound is wrecked with exhaustion.
Jack stills immediately. “Yeah baby?”
Robby swallows hard, visibly fighting through the fog in his head to reach language. His mouth works once before sound finally emerges in a tiny trembling murmur. Jack’s entire chest caves inward.
“Yeh honey?” he says softly. “Such a sweet boy.”
Jack shifts the bottle just enough to free one hand so he can cup gently at the back of Robby’s head, thumb brushing slow against warm skin beneath dark curls.
“I’m staying,” he promises quietly. “Got nowhere else to be.”
Robby watches his face with enormous sleepy concentration, like he needs to hear it several times before his nervous system believes it fully. After another few minutes Robby’s eyes drift half shut.
“Seb,” he mumbles suddenly around the bottle.
Jack glances down at the plush rabbit crushed firmly between them. “Sebastian’s right here.”
Robby pats clumsily against the rabbit’s ear without really lifting his head.
“Mhm,” Jack cooes. “He’s takin’ good care of you too, isn’t he? What a good bunny.”
That earns the faintest sleepy little nod.
Jack could probably cry from how small he is right now. All the hard sharp corners of Robby temporarily dissolved away, leaving only this soft exhausted creature beneath them. Trusting Jack with every vulnerable inch of himself without hesitation.
The bottle starts slipping slower after a while, sleep pulling harder now. Robby’s eyes are barely open anymore, mouth growing lazy around the nipple between intermittent sucks.
Jack eases it away gently before he can fully doze off with it. “All done, baby.”
Robby immediate protests, a tiny distressed sound escapes him and his eyes blink open again wet and confused.
“It’s all gone, bub,” Jack smiles softly. “You drank almost the whole thing. Good job.”
Robby stares at him for another long sleepy second. Then, very quietly mumbles, “Lo’e y’.”
The words are slurred nearly beyond recognition. Falling out of him unguarded and honest in the heavy haze between regression and sleep.
Jack closes his eyes briefly against the force of it. Adult Robby says 'I love you' carefully. Intentionally. Usually after thinking about it first like it costs something precious every time. Little Robby says it like breathing. Simple. Certain.
Jack kisses the top of his head again. “Love you too, bug,” he murmurs into his hair.
And Robby falls asleep against his chest, thumb already suckled gently in his mouth and his other hand still clutching Sebastian tightly in one small exhausted fist.