Fics like If I Should Fall Behind

The trick to Jack Abbot's coffee was that there wasn't one, and Robby had learned it anyway. At a quarter to six Robby was at the counter, hair still wet, scrub top inside-out, half-assembled for the day shift, when Jack wandered in. He had no business being awake—it was his night off—but years of working nights had worn the ordinary hours smooth in him, and he'd never quite managed to sleep through Robby's side of the bed going cold. So he got up, the way he always did the mornings he was home, to stand in the kitchen and see the man off. His coffee was waiting on the counter—black, scalding, two sugars he'd deny to his grave that he took. Robby had made it, the way Robby made it every morning Jack was home to drink it: the one with somewhere to be looking after the one without. Jack picked it up without breaking stride, the way you'd pick up your own hand. He didn't say thank you. Thank you was for strangers. He bumped his shoulder into Robby's on the way to the window and that was the whole sentence, subject and verb and object: you, here, this. Or: The one where Robby finds out that Jack has been receiving mail addressed to his late wife and decides to do something about it.

Fics like If I Should Fall Behind

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