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"I'm not saying it doesn't suck," Robby said as he handed over the paper cup of coffee to Santos, before taking a seat opposite her at the break room table. Loading her up with caffeine a couple of hours before the end of shift maybe wasn't the wisest thing, but the shadows under Santos' eyes were starting to look like bruises. Sometimes a little kindness now was worth a little pain later. And then sometimes it was better the other way around: a little pain now would turn out to be a lot of kindness later. "It totally sucks. And she's being very..."
"Yolanda Garcia?" Santos' tone was as black as the coffee.
Robby shrugged. You could say a lot of things about Garcia, but you couldn't critique her for misrepresenting herself. Garcia only ever was who she was. "Listen, what I'm trying to say is, here's one of the unspoken rules of emergency medicine: we don't shit where we eat."
Santos raised both eyebrows at him as she took a slug of her coffee. "That's rich, coming from you."
"Hey," Robby said, hitching a shoulder. "Noelle and I always kept it outside of work and—"
Santos snorted. "You and Hastings? I'm talking about you and Dr. Abbot."
Robby frowned, confused. "What do you mean, me and Abbot?"
Santos pulled one of her faces at him, the ones that made it clear she'd been right not to aim for a career in diplomacy. "Ugh, Gen X-ers. Look, you get that like... You and Dr. Abbot, you like, you're close to one another, right?"
"Well, yeah," Robby said slowly. "I mean, we're friends." Jack was one of the few colleagues he hung out with outside of work. And he supposed they did that regularly. Grabbing a beer together on evenings when neither of them were working, going to Pirates games, sharing passwords for streaming services that they for some reason still subscribed to even though they'd inevitably fall asleep next to one another on the couch halfway through watching a movie. Jack was listed as his emergency contact; Robby had the spare key to Jack's house. That was just what buddies did.
"Uh huh," Santos said, setting her coffee down on the table. "Okay, boss, I have a very important question. Have you ever kissed Dr Abbot on the mouth?"
Robby stared at her. "Have I... what?"
"No touching below the waist?" Santos' voice is as dispassionate and steady as if she's collecting a patient history, working her way towards a diagnosis.
Robby blinked. "I mean, sometimes I've helped him out with some massage? We're on our feet a lot, massage is important for keeping the residual limb in good shape." Jack was good about keeping up with his PT exercises, about getting professional massages, but every couple of weeks at least, they'd somehow wind up watching the game and having a beer with Jack's legs slung across Robby's lap and Robby absently massaging them without looking away from the TV. At Santos' look, Robby said, "He says it helps, so why wouldn't I?"
Santos leaned back in her chair, folded her arms. She let out a sigh that was so world-weary it was kind of insulting coming from someone who hadn't hit thirty yet. "I'm going to say something, and you should know I say this seriously and as like, a card-carrying lesbian."
"Okay," Robby said slowly.
"That all sounds kind of gay."
Robby scoffed. "It'd be gay if I wanted to sleep with him."
Santos took another sip of her coffee. "And you don't?"
Robby scratched at his beard. "I mean, not any more than normal."
"Which means…" Santos let her words trail off significantly.
"I'm attracted to men." Santos knew that about him. Him being bi was one of the things he'd been careful to casually seed into a conversation with her in the weeks after PittFest—helping to build the trust between them that would get them through that, and her residency, and everything he really didn't want to think about with Langdon. "Jack's an attractive man. Me recognising that doesn't have to mean anything."
Another sip of coffee. "Why not?"
Robby was starting to feel uneasily like he was on a therapist's couch. "Well it's not, you know… I mean, it's not like I'm in love with him or anything. Ha!"
"Interesting how you're going right to that place, huh?" Santos said, in the same exaggeratedly slow, now you're starting to get it, slugger tone he'd heard her use with a patient who was beginning to realise that everyone said "flared base" for a reason.
Wait, she was saying… Him and Jack?
Robby took a moment to stare at the break room wall. He blinked. He thought back over the last decade or so of his life and all the ways that Jack was there, present, such a fixture in all of Robby's best memories, and— Holy shit, he was in love with Jack. He wrapped his arms around himself and looked at Santos and said, in a small voice, "Do you think he knows?"
Santos cocked her head. "That depends. Is he stupid?"
Robby felt an instinctive pang of outrage just at the notion. "Jack Abbot is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met."
Santos shrugged. "So then yeah. He knows."
Robby felt himself go pale.
He sleepwalked his way through the rest of his shift, handed over to Shen in a faint daze, and found himself on the doorstep of Jack's house two hours later, without having made any conscious plan.
Jack answered the door in his usual lounging-at-home attire: a faded Soundgarden t-shirt with the armholes cut so deep that Robby can see the occasional flash of nipple, and a pair of black sweatpants. It was probably a telling sign that Robby knew instinctively the kind of thing that Jack was likely to wear in a given situation. Fuck, had Jack’s arms always been this distracting? Robby swallowed hard.
He'd clearly been silent for too long, because the look on Jack's face shifted from one of pleased surprise to worry. "Robby, hey! Something up?"
Robby knew he had to be bright red in the face, and that his hair had to be rumpled from him running his hands through it on the walk over, and that he was bouncing lightly on his heels. "What makes you say something's up?"
"Let's just call it doctor’s intuition," Jack said wryly. He tugged Robby inside and shut the door behind him, ushered him through to the living room. "Generally speaking, you tell me what's wrong, and then I can fix it."
Jack's place was the same warm haven it had always been for Robby—the deep blue on the living room walls, the overstuffed sofa, music playing soft on the stereo and a book and a pair of reading glasses sitting neatly on the coffee table—but for the first time in a long time, being here didn't make Robby feel calmer. It keyed him up.
Robby cleared his throat and put his hands on his hips and said, "I'm not... I'm not sure I'd say it's something wrong. But it's... but... but it might be wrong. For you." He huffed, looked out through the window at Jack's postage-stamp front garden and the street beyond. "It'd probably be wrong for you.
Jack's jaw dropped. "Oh shit, this isn't about trying to make me Chief again, is it? Because Robby, we talked about this. I made my feelings about Excel spreadsheets and budgets very clear, and the words "fuck" and "no" were heavily involved and—"
Robby shook his head. "Brother, I'd never do that to you. No, this is, uh. This is personal." He took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth. "The thing that would be right for me would be wrong for you, and I... I just needed to tell you about that. I think."
Jack's eyebrows went up. "Gee, love when you present me with a moral puzzler on a Friday night. Okay. How about you take a seat on the couch, I'll get us some beers, and you lay your Prisoner's Dilemma on me then, huh?"
Robby shook his head again, wiped his damp palms on the thighs of his pants. This wasn't a time when he wanted alcohol to be involved. "No. No, I think I just need to say this to you."
"Okay," Jack said slowly. He took Robby by the arm, tugged him over to the couch and sat them both down. "Well, just tell me. If it's good for you, I'll try to support it. You know I will, brother."
Robby let out a shaky half laugh and fixed his gaze on the edge of the rug beneath his feet. The one in his second therapist's office had had the same kind of knotted fringe to it. Maybe best not to think about that right now, Mike, he told himself.
Or then again, maybe it was. Maybe it was time for honesty. Maybe it was time for a whole lot of things to be lanced.
"Well, if Santos is right," Robby said, "you already have some idea what I'm going to say. Because until today I didn't know I was feeling it, so I wasn't trying to hide it at all."
Jack leaned back and fuck, shit, the look on his face, Santos had been right. But instead of letting Robby down—polite, kind, as efficient as a scalpel excising necrotic tissue—Jack frowned and said, "Shit, I'm sorry. Yeah, I can back off. I knew I was asking too much from you. It's okay, Mike. You don't have to worry about me."
Now it was Robby's turn to frown. Jack was wonderful, and he'd fight anyone who said otherwise, but the whole stoic, square-jawed martyr thing could be a bit much at times. "Asking from me? Look, man, you can't honestly think that... that me lending you my table saw or whatever is on the same level as me being in love with you. I... I'm sorry I didn't realise it sooner."
Sorry he didn't realise it before he'd led Noelle on that sorry dance, she hadn't deserved that; sorry he hadn't realised he was letting his heart sit out there, bleeding, where anyone can see it; sorry he hadn't learned to hide it sooner, better.
"But I needed to say it so that... that you'll know," Robby went on. "And because you always make me want to be braver. And... and because I'll try to stop, now."
It was maybe the most Robby had said about his feelings at one time in a decade, and by the time he was done he felt lightheaded, as if he'd been hyperventilating even though his breathing was just fine.
Jack gaped at him. "You're in love with me?"
Robby cringed a bit, but nodded. No point in wimping out about this now. "Yes."
"I'm confused but..." Jack tilted his head. "Seriously. This whole time, it wasn't just about you being a good friend? Taking care of the depressed disabled widower?"
"Why the hell would you say that about yourself?" Robby sat up straight. "Why the fuck did you never punch me if you thought I thought that about you? Jack, you're perfect, you're—" Robby never got to finish his—very convincing, if he said so himself—argument, because all of a sudden he had a lapful of highly-qualified EM attending.
"Really?" Jack said, sounding on the verge of something—fury, tears, Robby couldn't get a proper read on him. That was unnerving. Robby could always get a read on Jack. It was what made them them. "But I am those things."
"But you're not—"
"I am. I'm me. That’s why I needed you to sleep in my bed when I had nightmares and massage the soreness out of my legs. And then I liked it. So if you thought of me like that, fine.” Jack shrugs. “You never thought of me as just those things. I know that. But if you thought I didn’t need your help, you would have stopped, right? Because you weren’t doing it for you. You were doing it for me.”
He was right.
"Jack..." Robby stared up at him—at Jack, his Jack, who was on top of him, who had his hands braced on Robby's shoulders, and whose waist was, somehow, now beneath Robby's hands. It was hard to think all of a sudden. Because Jack was right there with him, heavy and warm and of fucking course Robby was in love with him. In love with all of him.
How was it that it apparently took Trinity Santos to see every big thing in Robby's life that he'd been oblivious to for the last three to five calendar years? "Jack," Robby started again, because he needed to say this right, he needed to phrase this in just the right way to get Jack to believe him. It was so important that Jack believed him—but then Robby blurted out, "Fuck it," and kissed him.
The kiss was... well, it was something else. It was Jack's mouth on his, warm, and Jack's shiver against him like he was cold. It was the way Jack's kisses could sting, his teeth nipping against Robby's lower lip, but his hands were so very gentle as they cupped Robby's face. Shit, Robby thought, Santos is going to be so fucking smug about this, because it turned out his feelings for Jack really were kind of gay.
"Mike," Jack groaned when the kiss finally ended. He rested his forehead against Robby's; his eyes were closed. "If we do this, it's you and me. It has to be. Are you sure?"
Robby started to laugh, helpless. The forty minutes it had taken him to walk here from the hospital, all he'd been able to do was think about Jack. Jack with him; him without Jack. Was he sure? He was still snicker-snorting when he flipped them so that Jack was now on his back on the couch and Robby was sprawled on top of him, and fuck, the look of startled, outraged challenge on Jack's face was the hottest thing that Robby had seen in years.
"You've got jokes," Robby said, amused.
Jack wrapped his arms around Robby, opened his legs to let Robby rest between them, at the same time that he set his jaw and said, "Keep laughing all you want, buddy, but I’m not putting out unless you agree to go steady."
"Oh, Dr Abbot," Robby sing-songed, "are you trying to seduce me?" As soon as that made Jack start to squawk in outrage, he leaned down and kissed his lovely mouth, and then kissed him again just because he could. Each kiss was better than the last: warmer, softer, slower, molten. Robby hummed into it.
"I'm trying," Jack said after a moment, craning back from Robby's kisses in a way that would have been more concerning if his gaze hadn't been so fixed on Robby's mouth, "to have a serious conversation here."
"You are?" Robby let out a little oof as Jack somehow flipped them with shocking ease, so that Robby was now pressed against the back of the sofa, Jack pressed warm along his front and Robby's wrists pinned together in Jack's grasp. Robby blinked at him. "Because I was having a bit of an epiphany that was turning out to be—"
"Mike." Jack sighed. "Man, I love you, and I will happily fuck you six ways to Sunday—"
Robby beamed.
"—but you've got to promise me you're not going to freak out and leave while I'm asleep. Or—"
Robby wormed his hands free of Jack's grasp, slipped one of them up the back of Jack's shirt, running it up that expanse of warm, freckled skin that he'd been way too fascinated by—or maybe just enough fascinated by—for years now. "Leave while you're asleep? Oh Dr Abbot, you are trying to seduce me."
He pulled Jack a little closer to him, fascinated by how willingly Jack came, until they were pressed so close together and shit, maybe Robby was going to have to buy Santos one of those Edible Arrangements or something. Jack loved him. Robby hadn't even suspected it when he left for work this morning, and now it was something he had no doubt about at all.
"I'm not going to freak out," Robby said, tightening his grip around Jack's waist. "I'm not going to leave you. Actually, how much I'm not going to leave might end up being a bit problematic."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Oh, as far as I'm concerned, you live here now," which should maybe have been concerning given that they hadn't so much as gone on a single date, but screw it, this was Jack. Jack knew every fucked up, messy bit of Robby, and he loved him anyway. Robby felt giddy with it.
"Okay," Robby said. "Yes." Then faster, more fervently, "Yes, please, anywhere with you is where I'm home. Jack, I love you—" He hugged Jack close to him, closed his eyes, kissed his temple, and they had a good thirty seconds of what Robby was pretty sure you could classify as perfect fucking happiness—and then his stomach growled loudly. He remembered that he'd worked a busy 12-hour shift and then marched right over here without thinking about anything so mundane as dinner first.
Jack laughed. "Okay, hot stuff, when was the last time you ate?"
Robby scrunched up his nose in an effort to think. "Uh. I had a granola bar around ten, I think, maybe."
"A granola bar around ten, he thinks, maybe," Jack echoed. He sat up on the edge of the couch, his curls all in disarray, and said, "It's so lucky for you, my friend, that you just landed yourself a guy who knows how to cook."
Robby grinned up at him. "Is that what I did? Landed you?"
"You did," Jack said, standing, and Robby was very intrigued to get a glimpse of the evidence that the past few minutes had definitely made their mark on Jack's body. For a moment, he let himself entertain a vivid, indulgent fantasy: what it'd be like for him to kneel on the floor right here while Jack stood and fed his hard cock all the way into Robby's mouth. He felt his cheeks heat.
"I'm going to make you dinner," Jack went on, and held out his hand to Robby. "You coming?"
Robby nodded and took it, stood, felt like he'd been given a prize.
"Brace yourself, you're about to have the most gourmet grilled cheese of your life," Jack said, leading the way towards the kitchen and somehow knowing exactly what Robby defaulted to after a hard day. "Custom cheese blend, a little dollop of mustard, you won't know what hit you. Beer later, but water now, because something tells me you're probably at least somewhat dehydrated."
"Okay," Robby said mildly, and followed Jack into his little kitchen, and stood too close, and talked about his day, and Jack's day, and the book Jack's been reading, and what they thought the game was going to be like tomorrow. Jack made Robby drink a tall glass of water and fetched him a beer, cut him some little pieces of cheese to snack on while Jack cooked. It could have been any other evening with just the two of them, but it wasn't. Robby smiled. This is it, he thought—this was the two of them, now.