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“You really don’t have to do this, Dr. Robby,” Mrs. Lozano insists without much heat at all.
“Yeah, but I really want to,” he tells her. His hold on the handles of her wheelchair is tight; technically, he’s meant to leave this to one of the nurses, and he knows Jesse wasn’t all that busy, but seventy-eight-year-old Mrs. Lozano has been in with them for the last three days. Her wife had brought her in, feverish and exhausted, on Monday; no beds ever opened up for her upstairs, and so Robby and Jack have been alternating treating her kidney infection themselves in the Pitt since then.
Now that she’s well enough to go home, he finds that he wants to be the one seeing her off. It’s almost the end of his shift, anyway; Jack should be here soon, and he’d like to tell him that he put Mrs. Lozano in her car himself and sent her home healthy and safe before he heads back to their place to sleep.
“Really, I’m alright,” she insists. “I can walk.”
“I’m sure you can, but you shouldn’t have to,” he replies, and she laughs, ringing through the hall as he pushes her away from the Pitt and towards the exit into the visitor parking lot. “Besides, it’s policy to escort you out. Can’t go breaking the rules, now, can I?”
“Not even for me?” she asks, and he laughs.
“Well, you are a special case,” he allows. “Which is why I’m seeing you off myself.”
“Mm.” Mrs. Lozano leans back in the wheelchair a bit, tilting her head to the side. Surely, she can’t actually see Robby from this angle— she’s barely turning— but she still addresses him directly in saying, “Thank you, Doctor.”
“It’s been my pleasure, Mrs. Lozano,” he replies, shifting to lean over her so she can see his face for a moment.
“And—” She reaches back, and he stops so she can take his hand, separated from the wheelchair handle for a moment. “Would you thank Dr. Abbot for me, too? He’s been so lovely at night. He tells such funny stories. Would you tell him?”
“It’ll give him a bigger head than he needs,” Robby warns her, earning another laugh from her. “But, yeah, I’ll tell him. He’ll be sorry he didn’t get to say goodbye, but I know he’ll be thrilled to hear you’re headed home.”
“Believe me, so am I,” she replies.
They cross the threshold out into the dusk, the sun just starting to set behind the buildings towering around them. If Jack isn’t here already, he should be any minute now.
“Adriana is bringing the car around, you don’t have to wait,” Mrs. Lozano says as Robby comes to a stop at the edge of the visitor parking lot. “Just dump me here.”
“I am not dumping you anywhere, Mrs. Lozano,” Robby argues with a smile. “You can sit for a minute with me. My company isn’t that bad, is it?”
“Of course not!” she insists. “I just know you’re busy.”
“You know what? You’re right, actually, I am busy,” he tells her, and she starts to say something before he continues, “I forgot to finish my post-exam of you.”
She frowns up at him, creases in the tired tan softness of her face. “How’d you forget something? You already poked and prodded everything I got.”
“Ah, not everything,” he tells her. “Gotta check your hand-eye coordination. You know, I didn’t see how good you are at dancing yet.”
This brings a burst of surprise and delight shining onto Mrs. Lozano’s face. A fresh laugh rises in her voice as she tells him, “I’m not much of a dancer, Dr. Robby.”
“That’s fine, neither am I,” he says, offering a hand, and she takes it just as a faded blue SUV pulls up alongside them and her daughter Adriana climbs out of the driver’s seat. “Oh, well— Rain check?”
Her wife leans out the passenger window as Robby looks up, still holding the first Mrs. Lozano’s hand. “Not putting the moves on my wife, are you, Doc?”
“Far be it from me,” Robby says, turning back to the first Mrs. Lozano to squeeze her hand and release her. “Are you alright if I leave you with them?”
“I suppose so,” she replies. “Would—”
“Actually, Dr. Robby, do you mind helping me get her into the car?” Adriana asks. “My brother is at home to help us once we’re there, but—”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Robby says, stepping up beside her, leaning down to push the footrests out of the way. “Okay, Mrs. Lozano, how are you feeling? Steady, balanced? Any weakness when you’re standing?”
“Just tired,” she tells him. “Thank you for everything.”
“Thanks for being a good patient,” Robby returns as he takes one of her arms, Adriana claiming the other. “I don’t get too many of those, you know.”
Together, he and Adriana support Mrs. Lozano’s weight between them in helping her to the car. Robby takes most of her weight when Adriana stops to tug at the latch, opening up the sliding door to allow them inside; it’s not too difficult to maneuver Mrs. Lozano into the seat as a unit.
“There we are,” he says, leaning back, clapping his hand on the roof of the SUV.
“You’ve been a lifesaver, literally,” Adriana tells him. When he starts to protest, she talks right over him, says, “No, really, we can’t thank you enough. Would you—”
Her question is cut off by a screeching grind of metal against metal, a synthetic scream far too close for comfort. Robby’s instincts all activate automatically, and his head snaps up, seeking out the source of the sound.
A second later, the metal-scream is joined by human-screams.
Robby just barely has enough time to see the Jeep that has broken up over the curb and is careening down the sidewalk at an angle— speeding towards them, not slowing down.
He has barely enough time to see it, but not really time to process it.
If there’s one thing Robby has experience with, though, it’s acting on autopilot and trusting his brain to catch up. His limbs move automatically, throwing himself forward, and he has just enough time to grab Adriana by the shoulders, shove her forward into the SUV, and twist to shield her body with his own before the impact strikes.
It's then that there’s an explosion of pressure against his back, so hard and so immense and so heavy that it can only last for a second; after that, it feels like absolutely nothing at all. It’s accompanied by a flare of something crunching inside him that gets drowned out in an instant by a much closer wail of metal crashing.
Everything— his head, his body, everything— fills in a shattering cacophony, erupting inside and outside of him, before it’s all dark and silent and gone.
“Hey, hey, good morning, everybody,” Jack calls as he strides into the emergency department, swinging his stethoscope up and around his neck.
“It’s eight o’clock at night,” Jesse points out.
“And I just woke up, so, I repeat, good morning,” Jack repeats, rolling his eyes, drawing a laugh out of Jesse as he comes to a stop beside the patient board. “Hello there, Dana.”
“Hello, Dr. Abbot,” she replies. “Did you see Robby outside?”
“No, was I supposed to?” he asks, whirling. “Why’s he outside?”
“He brought Mrs. Lozano to the patient lot himself after discharge,” she explains, and Jack can’t help the swell of pleased joy he feels at that.
“Mrs. Lozano’s all good to go?” he asks, craning his neck to look as if Robby will appear in the Pitt by manifestation and sheer force of will. “That’s a relief. Why’d he bring her himself?”
“Gotta get those patient satisfaction scores up somehow,” she replies. He grins, gripping the edge of the counter with his hands, tilting back towards her. “No, he did it because he’s Robby. You know him.”
“Yeah, unfortunately,” he says, still all smiles. Twisting around, folding his arms and letting them rest on the desktop, he asks, “Hey, what would you think of—”
His question is cut off by a scraping metal shriek followed by a crunching crash that seems to shake the hospital from the ground-up. The sounds of it echo through the Pitt, shocking everyone into a momentary silence, broken only by the beeps of machines in the department for a couple of stunned seconds. It’s as if the world stands still for a brief moment.
Then, that moment breaks.
People start screaming from the same vague, distant direction the crash just came from. Every voice in the Pitt starts back up at once, speculation and confusion and concern. Jack is one of multiple doctors already sprinting in that direction, trying to think of what the fuck could have just exploded or collapsed. His heart is in his throat, his ears ringing, trying not to think, it’s a bomb, trying not to think, there are gunshots, trying and failing not to think, you are in danger, this is a battle and this is a warzone and this is death—
“This way!” Shen calls, and Jack almost collides with a corner taking it too sharply to follow after him. They cut hard together down the hall he’s pointing down, where the screaming gets louder, louder, every step louder, until Shen is throwing open the side door into the visitor parking lot and Jack is stumbling to a stop.
The scene in front of him is absolute chaos. For a moment, he processes it as one big jumble of color and information and insanity; it takes him a second moment to blink and understand.
From what he can immediately tell, a bright-red Jeep has crashed into a beat-up navy-blue SUV that had been parked out front of the hospital. The confusing part is the angle— it looks as if the Jeep hit the inside of the van, facing the hospital, not the outside.
They’re still crunched and knotted together; people are running over from all over the parking lot, shouting so many different things at once that it becomes a distant white noise in Jack’s ears. Moving on autopilot, he focuses instead on what he always focuses on: the people.
“Is anyone hurt?” he calls, blowing past Shen, jogging up alongside the tangled cars. One of the people inside the snarl of vehicles is screaming, and he’s starting to ask, “Who is—” when he realizes why they’re screaming.
Someone is pinned between the cars.
Robby is pinned between the cars.
“What the hell happened?” he demands, already hyper-focusing and shifting into tactical mode, launching himself forward as close as he can get. The Jeep’s front bumper, the grille, the hood— it’s all crunched up and tangled into the side of the SUV, metal hooked on metal from the collision impact, the sharp angles of a pretzel-twisted wheelchair in the chaos. And there, between the SUV’s shattered, collapsed-in side door and the half-destroyed Jeep, is Robby, for some fucking reason, his legs somewhere in the clusterfuck of smoking metal, his upper body pinned halfway between the torn-up bumper and the SUV’s door, his head—
—his head turned down, limp on his neck, eyes closed, unconscious, blood spilling down both sides of his face, his cheek and jaw all but busted open. He’s sticky, coated in red that drips from him steadily, off the points of his nose and chin, to the fragments of car and wheelchair broken below him.
Behind him, keeping the door open, the SUV’s airbags are all still inflated— save the driver’s side, which someone has punctured, deflating the bag enough to pull the SUV’s occupants out through the window, and Jack belatedly realizes Mrs. Lozano is the one screaming, half-wordless and half-begging, “Dr. Robby!”, but he’s not answering.
For a second— a split second, less than a single beat of his heart— Jack just stares, feeling as if he has stepped into a nightmare.
Then, instincts kick in, and he’s moving forward as quickly as he can, climbing over the twisted-off bumper to kneel on the smashed-in hood and press his fingertips into Robby’s throat, searching for his carotid pulse.
His skin is still warm under his fingertips, the blood making it sticky and hot as it slides down over Jack’s fingers, but he doesn’t feel anything.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he curses, shifting, digging his fingers hard to the soft skin below his jaw, searching for anything— “You better not, I swear to God, Mikey—”
“Shit, is that Robby?” Shen asks from behind him.
“No carotid pulse,” Jack clips out over his shoulder. Examining the tangle of metal below him, he orders, “We need to get him out of this in one piece. Has anyone called 9-1-1? The fire department needs to—”
“Abbot, you can’t be here,” Shen stops him. “Go back in and—”
“Like fuck I’m going back in,” Jack snaps. “Now, are you going to help me or are you just here to screw around?” He doesn’t want for an answer before he snaps at one of the day shift students— Whitaker, as it turns out, eyes fixed on Robby even as he stumbles forward. “You, find me a spinal board and shove it in behind Mike. I need to start compressions now but we can’t move him yet— Thank God,” he groans, just as a firetruck comes blaring up, lights flashing over his face in the growing darkness and chaos. “Santos—”
“Right here,” she says, stepping up, focused on Jack, careful not to look at Robby.
“Go tell them we have one male at the center of the impact, no carotid pulse, gonna have to be cut free,” Jack instructs her. She barely pauses, and still, he shouts, “Go!”
She spins and sprints, taking off for the firetruck, and Jack turns back to Robby just as King comes out the side door with Dana and a gurney.
Dana stops before King does; Jack hears her soft exhalation of breath, followed by, “That’s not Robby,” a hard statement rather than a question, and a lie above both. His only option is to ignore her.
“We’re looking at potential crush injuries, pelvic trauma. The pelvis is all arteries, we gotta be careful— And there’s significant injury to his legs, probably nerve damage— I can’t tell the impact to his abdomen or his spine yet, but— Hey, good, good,” Jack cuts himself off, just as Whitaker brings the spinal board to him. “Climb in there and set that up behind him, go around from the other side.”
To his credit, he doesn’t hesitate, jogging right around the crumpled SUV to climb in the broken-in window. He’s behind Robby a second later, shimmying the spinal board behind him.
“Hold it up, don’t let him move,” Jack instructs Whitaker. “Put your back into it, do you hear me? Do not let him move.”
“Heard,” Whitaker replies. “The airbag—”
“Here,” Jack says, flipping his knife to Whitaker. “Slow and steady, keep him stable. Get behind him— There, good,” he encourages him as he breaks into the airbag and deflates it, his shoulder pressed hard to the spinal board to keep it upright behind Robby. “We need to start compressions now, Whitaker, root yourself in place.”
“You can start,” Whitaker calls from behind the board.
Jack checks Robby’s carotid one last time and still finds nothing. His airway is clear; Jack forces himself not to linger on the touch of Robby’s mouth, his tongue, withdrawing his trembling fingers. He manages to leverage himself forward, though he can’t get as close as he’d like to without putting pressure on the car parts compressing Robby from the waist down.
Usually, when Jack presses his fingertips or his lips to Robby’s throat, he can feel the throb of his heart. It’s become more familiar to him than his own pulse. The idea of it not existing— the fact that he can’t find it now—
“Starting compressions,” Jack calls, leaning forward to tear open the bloodsoaked remains of his hoodie, the scrub-top and t-shirt underneath ripping easily beneath his hands. Bringing his knuckles to Robby’s bruise-darkened skin, he gives him a sternal rub, hard against his chest. Nothing, not even a twitch. “Get me a Lifepak while I work— and where the fuck are the firefighters with the saws?”
He starts compressions vertically, Whitaker bracing from behind. Everything becomes white noise around him; doctors, firefighters, paddles, saws, everything vanishes except Robby under his hands, pumping in rhythm over and over until he feels something inside him crack— and then through it, past it, keeps going, doesn’t stop until he’s told to pull away and Robby’s getting hit, body jerking like he’s been struck by lightning.
His colorless skin, gone grey beneath the blood dripping from his skull, sees a hectic flash of red color as he twitches upwards, sucking in a breath, and Jack catches his head between his hands, steadying him.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t move,” he instructs him, unable to stop his voice from staying hard, even as everything inside of him dissolves with relief. Alive is something he can work with; the lifeless, pulseless thing he had just been— that— that just doesn’t bear thinking about. “Mikey, hey, look at me. You’re okay. We’re gonna get you inside in just a minute, you hear me?”
Robby’s breath comes fast, sharp, hard rattles through his chest as he squints his eyes open. His voice sounds shredded and wet, barely coherent, but Jack would know the sound he makes anywhere. He asks, “Jack?”
“Right here,” Jack tells him, hand cradling his cheek, slick with Robby’s blood. “I’m right here. We’re gonna get you out of this shit, alright? And then I’ll fix you up myself.”
The breath Robby exhales is probably meant to be a laugh, but he groans instead, eyes flickering shut again.
“M…” he starts to try and say, then grimaces, his breath coming faster. His brow furrows, and he grunts, shifting to move himself, and the metal whines around them.
“Don’t move, don’t move,” Jack warns him, patting his cheek in rapid pace. “Hey, hey, look at me. Don’t try to do anything, okay? They’re gonna cut you right out, you’re good. I got you.”
It destroys something small and fundamental inside of Jack when he has to let Robby go, but he’s forced to release him and climb off of the mangled Jeep hood when the firefighters come back, stepping in to take over. Whitaker moves around the car, examining Mrs. Lozano, her wife, her daughter; once he realizes they’re alright— and how they’re alright while Robby is this, Jack doesn’t understand— he escorts them over to Princess, letting her take them back inside. Behind Jack, he can hear the Jeep’s doors being pried open by a different set of firefighters.
He can’t pay attention to any of this, not really. All he can do is bounce beside the gurney, vibrating with adrenaline, eyes locked on Robby as two paramedic firefighters brace him.
“Careful,” he snaps at them, fist clenching around the metal bar on the gurney’s side, leaving a wet ring of Robby’s blood. “He’s probably sust—”
“Let them work, Abbot, they know what they’re doing,” Shen stops him. “You shouldn’t even be out here. Treating your own husband—”
“I’m not letting anyone else treat him,” Jack bites out. His eyes stay fixed on Robby, squinting through the shower of sparks spewing off the saw as it comes into contact with the tangle of metal pinning Robby in place. “Don’t be stupid.”
“He’s doing just fine,” Dana’s voice filters in, talking to someone else from somewhere close by. Jack frowns, actually twisting to look at her, ungluing his eyes from Robby for a split second to see her helping a tall man to his feet on the glass-sprinkled sidewalk as he blinks sluggishly at her. “We should probably grab the officers, he—”
“This the guy?” Jack asks, twisting to face them, heart thudding so loudly in his chest he can feel it in his ears, a throbbing and constant pressure. “You driving that Jeep, man?”
The guy just blinks at him, confused. When Jack takes only two steps closer, he’s slammed with the reek of whiskey, the stench of pure liquor, and he recoils for a split second, struck by it.
Then, he’s throwing himself forward, hands curling up into fists tacky with Robby’s blood, shouting, “What the fuck did you do—” before he’s caught from behind by too-strong arms, wound around his own, trapping them by his sides and sliding him to a halt. White heat bursts inside him; he snarls, “What the fuck—”
“You can’t assault a patient, Abbot, come on,” Langdon says right near his ear, hard and breathless. “You know—”
“He’s not a patient, he fucking— Do you smell that? This is a fucking hospital— Let me go—” Jack demands, attempting to pull free from Langdon, but McKay is in front of him a second later, hands up, palms out, putting herself between Jack and the driver behind Dana—
—Or, no longer behind Dana, since she’s pushing him back and passing him off to Jesse and two waiting security officers, and Jack yanks against Langdon’s arms.
“Hey, hey, look at me— Abbot,” McKay raises her voice, gets right into his face. “Don’t do this.”
“He could have killed—”
“But he didn’t,” McKay stops him, just as the word tears itself out of Jack with a stab. “He didn’t, and Robby is right over there, and he needs you right now.”
Jack’s chest is heaving, Langdon’s arms still tight around him, but he hears the crunch of metal behind him, and that’s his mind made up. He shoves backwards, prying Langdon off of him, and spits, “Fine,” storming back towards the cars, seeking out Robby amidst the chaos. Nobody looks at him, and he doesn’t notice at all; he’s too focused on watching the paramedics winding a collar around Robby’s neck, wishing he were the one doing it all himself.
“Dr. Abbot—”
“What?” he demands. From his short distance away, he sees Robby grimace, his face going white beneath the blood again, and he barks out another, “Careful with him!”
“We’ve got Trauma One open,” Santos tells him, not bowing to his sharp tone. “Ready for you and— whenever you’re ready.”
“Good, thank you, Dr. Santos,” Jack says over his shoulder, watching the metal come away and the paramedics finally laying Robby onto Whitaker’s abandoned spinal board. He’s off like a shot, moving before his brain has given the conscious signal, ordering, “Okay, in, let’s go—”
Jack launches himself over a discarded scrap of metal, kicking it aside to haul the gurney along after him, lowering himself down to the hot pavement beside where Robby has been laid out on the spinal board, checking his airways, his breathing, his circulation—
“Jack,” Robby repeats, trying to move his head to meet his eyes, but Jack shushes him, fingers probing in beneath his jaw, tight between his skin and the collar.
Pulse.
He just feels it for a second.
Robby’s rough voice again. “Jack—”
“Don’t try to talk, babe, alright? Just focus on breathing right now,” Jack instructs him, eyes skimming over his body, trying to take stock of everything at once. “You got hit pretty good, but you’re tougher than that, aren’t you?” Robby huffs, eyes closing again, and Jack reaches down, frames his face. “Hey, hey, Mikey, what’re you doing? Look at me, okay— Hey! One, two, three, eyes on me—”
Robby exhales a strained laugh of a sound, forcing his eyes back open. His face crumples up a second later, and Jack shushes him, hands skimming him, searching out injuries. Unclear on spinal; lacerations to the head; should check for internal trauma and organ damage— already, he’s mentally planning imaging, tests, CT scans and X-rays and MRIs, but he needs to get him there first; pelvis definitely broken, Jack can feel the parts shifting under his hands, can hear Robby’s pained groan when he touches them; legs—
Jack sits back.
There are other people around— his colleagues, the Pitt crew that has become his family, horrified onlookers crowded too close— but Jack doesn’t hear any of them, doesn’t see them. His hands are clenching up, bare and soaked in Robby’s blood, just over the mangled mess of Robby’s legs.
“Okay,” he breathes, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. “Okay. Okay.” There’s too much blood, obscuring most of the actual injuries, but he can’t figure out where he would place a tourniquet, if he even could; there’s the occasional flash of white bone peeking through skin, and the fact that Robby is conscious right now and not sobbing or screaming is either very good or very, very—
“Mm?” Robby tries to ask, a strained questioning noise.
“Hey, Mikey, I need you to do something for me,” Jack says, leaning up to see his face, reaching down for his hand— Jesus Christ, there’s so much blood everywhere, he might need a transfusion at this pace— and wrapping his fingers up in Robby’s. “Squeeze for me, okay? Can you squeeze my hand?”
Robby blinks up at him, slow and syrupy. After a long moment, his hand in Jack’s contracts, and Jack exhales roughly.
“Good,” he says, “Good, okay, now— Other hand, gimme that,” he says, leaning over, lifting Robby’s left hand. His ring is still on, though slick and filthy with his blood, and Jack threads their fingers together, feeling it clink together with Jack’s own matching band. “Another squeeze, babe, c’mon— Good, awesome job.”
“Sh—” Robby attempts, then coughs. It rips out of him, sounds thick, sounds wet, and Jack runs his hand over his chest, feeling the rattle inside.
“Possible fluid in the lungs,” Jack murmurs, mostly to himself. He shuffles back on his hands, manages to get himself to the end of the disaster that is the lower half of Robby’s body, fuck, th— these are Robby’s legs, the ones Jack feels against him in bed, the ones he likes to fit himself between and bite at, and they’re just—
“Should we get him in?” McKay asks from over his head.
“In a minute. Apply pressure to his head, stop the bleeding there,” he instructs her, and she moves to do as told, sterile pads in both hands that she presses to either side of Robby’s skull. He groans again, and Jack finds his sneaker, works his fingertips into the heel, tugs it off. Holding his foot in his hand, thumb pressed to the blood-soaked fabric beneath his toes, he tells him, “Okay, now, wiggle your toes for me.”
Nothing.
“Mm,” Robby says above him, tone shifted, high and strange. “Jack—”
He’s cut off by another round of heavy, thick coughs, each wetter than the last, and Whitaker crouches over his head with the suction, helping Santos to tip his head back and open his jaw, slipping the tube in. The slurp of wet blood getting sucked out of Robby’s throat sends a single shiver through Jack’s frame, the skeleton of a house in a hurricane.
“Okay, potential spinal,” Jack says from the ground, as if he’s not talking about Robby. He can’t let it sink in, can’t let it take him, or he’ll lose his mind and he’s not sure he’ll be able to regain it. “Let’s get him up and inside, hear me? Santos, Whitaker, Langdon, take a corner, help me, on the count of three— One, two, three—”
Together, they hoist Robby up and onto the flattened gurney. His face scrunches up again, drained of color; Jack smears blood away from his eyes, his mouth, jogging alongside, guiding his gurney with a strong pull.
“Everything’s just fine,” Jack promises him, shoulder-checking the side door open, hauling him back into the hospital.
Robby’s eyes catch the fluorescent lights overhead, looking too bright and too huge, shining amidst the gore splattering his face. His lips part to show his blood-slick teeth when he manages, “Liar.”
The laugh that escapes Jack is a little hysterical, but he doesn’t dwell on it.
“Who’s lying?” he asks. “Everything is gonna be just fine. I’m your doctor, aren’t I?”
Robby tries to lift his hand, but he only manages a shift of his shoulder and a twitch of his fingers before he’s wheezing out a scraping sound, collapsing backwards.
“Stop trying to move,” Jack scolds him. “Jesus, I thought you were a doctor— Oh, shit,” he says, as Robby full-body heaves, making a wheezing noise this time, a gurgle in the back of his throat. “Obstruction to breathing, we need suction again—”
“Here,” McKay calls, catching up alongside him, threading the tube into his hands while she holds the machine at the other end. Robby opens his own mouth for them, eyes wild and landing on Jack as he pushes the tube between his lips again. “Should I—”
“Hit it,” Jack tells her, and it’s not blood that comes up this time. “Fuck— Okay, okay, he’s asphyxiating— He’s aspirating vomit, come over here— We need to give him something for the pain and get him turned—”
They crash through the emergency department at top speed, Dana ahead of them to clear the path as Jack directs them to Trauma One, bringing the empty room bursting to life. It takes effort to get Robby transferred into the bed there, but they manage it between them all, starting to hook him up, clipping on his pulse ox and putting him on oxygen and starting to run an IV.
On the monitor beside him, his heartbeat thrums out a chaotic rhythm, alive, alive, alive—
—Then descends into a single sonorous tone.
At the same time, his blood pressure bottoms out. Jack’s head snaps back to Robby, slumped and limp on the bed, and bites out, “No, no, no—” as he shoves himself upwards, demanding, “Help me—”
Whitaker gives him a hand, and Jack manages to swing his leg over Robby’s waist, straddling just over his body to give him a better angle to tip his head back, clear his airway, and give him air before he starts compressions again.
“Not— fucking— today,” he grunts out on each downbeat, finding the familiar rhythm before ducking to give him another breath. He tastes like copper and acid, and Jack forces himself back upright, returning to his compressions, exhaling a hard breath every time he pumps down again. “Fucking— don’t— you— dare— I need a hit, now—”
“Get off of him,” Langdon instructs, so Jack lifts himself off of Robby, knees on the bed, hands up, ensures they’re not making contact when the pads get stuck on and the room’s defibrillator charges up. “Clear—”
“I’m clear,” Jack calls back, and Langdon hits him, sending a jolt through Robby’s body. Every pair of eyes in the room flies to the monitor, but the flatline remains unbroken. “Charge it again—”
“Abbot—”
“Charge it,” he repeats, resuming compressions.
“Should I get the LUCAS?” Whitaker asks.
McKay’s voice. “Maybe we should try a REBOA, or—”
“Move, Abbot,” Langdon shouts over them, and Jack lifts himself up again, letting Langdon swoop in and hit Robby again. This time, his pulse jumps, a hard spike on the monitor, and all of Jack’s breath escapes him in a gust. “We’re going to need blood—”
“Then go get some,” Jack orders him. “Mike’s O neg. Get as much as you can, go. McKay,” he calls, and she’s there. “Help me down, we’re going to stop the bleeding and start cleaning him up, we need to keep as much in him as possible.” Once he’s steady on the ground again, he barks, “Whitaker,” and the resident is there. “Call upstairs, tell them we have a patient who needs everything we’ve got, I want a full work-up for internal trauma, do you hear me?”
“Heard,” Whitaker says, already backing up to push out of the room. King slips in past him, tugging on new gloves, striding right up beside Jack to stop and examine Robby.
“What can I do?” she asks.
He doesn’t take his eyes off of Robby as he replaces the tube in his throat with an oxygen mask over his mouth, thankfully not yet having to intubate even if he knows it’s coming soon. Focused on his work, he tells her, “Possible spinal. No mobility connection to his foot. Hey,” he says, leaning over Robby as his eyes blink back open again, though he keeps them scrunched to slits against the harsh lights overhead. “I need you to tell me what you’re feeling, Mikey. If it hurts, blink when I ask, okay? Head?” Blink. “Okay— Neck?” Blink. “Shoulders?” Blink.
His spine, blink; his back, blink; his arms, blink; his chest, his stomach, his hips, blink, blink, blink.
“Legs?” Jack asks, evaluating his right shoulder to see if it’s only dislocated or if something is broken, hands examining while his eyes stay fixed on Robby’s face, watching his eyes. No blink. “Knees?” Robby stares up at him, unblinking, pupils blown. His body is starting to shiver, delayed shock setting in to shake his frame. “Okay, that’s okay. Ankles, feet?”
Robby keeps staring up at him, silenced by the mask over his mouth. At Jack’s side, Princess ducks in, swiping blood from Robby’s face with a thin towel and gentle hands.
Inside, everything in Jack’s head is going so fast he’s moved past thinking and his brain is just— working, overlapping itself. Studies he’s read, experiences he’s had, patients he’s treated, training he’s received, diagnoses he’s theorizing, treatments he’s planning, ideas he’s having, everything happening all at once on top of itself. He cuts through the chaos to take the towel from Princess, nudging her aside to swipe Robby’s face clean himself.
“We’re gonna relieve the pressure on your spine, see what happens,” Jack tells him. “Something that big colliding with your back at that speed, that’s gonna do some damage, but it’s nothing I can’t fix.”
It’s not a lie, not yet; it’s more like Schrödinger’s truth, unknown in its entirety until all of this is over, and they’re still dead in the center of it.
“You’re still with us,” Jack says, his hand lingering soft against Robby’s face. His cheekbone is split on the left side, he can tell just looking at it; the shape of his cheek is all wrong because of it. “That’s most important, okay?”
Robby blinks. Hurts.
He tries to speak, and Jack tugs the mask down for him, frees him for the time being. Robby exhales, then manages, “Won’t,” voice tight and ragged. “Not you.”
Jack presses his lips hard to Robby’s forehead, slick and metallic, then cleans the blood away from the place he’s kissed. He can still taste it on his lips, can feel it, tacky and lingering.
Years ago, he had a marriage that ended up being his first marriage, a husband that ended up being his first husband, a life that— well, honestly, he thought would be his last, but he got through it somehow anyway. It had felt like the worst pain he could endure, and now— now, staring down the double-barrel of being widowed for the second time, Jack isn’t sure he could take it again.
Actually, he knows he couldn’t; Robby was the only reason he got through it the first time.
“Jack,” Robby tries again.
“Right here,” Jack promises him. “I’m right here, Mikey. You’re not going anywhere, you hear me? I’m not losing you again, we’re fixing this.” He looks to McKay, tells her, “We’re going to need to perform on his spine. Probably a decompression, we need to look at it first. Call for surgeons.” To Santos, “Call an anesthesiologist, then get a Dilaudid drip on him. I don’t want him feeling any of this.”
“Got it,” she says, already moving, before Shen is at Jack’s side.
“Abbot, if you want me to take over—”
“I need you to prepare for neuro,” Jack stops him. “He needs a full exam, he’s lost consciousness and had a hell of a blow, I want to know what the damage is.”
“Got it,” Shen replies. To his credit, he’s unhesitant, moving up towards Robby’s head, a light shining into his bright, dark eyes.
“Listen to me,” Jack tells the room at large, and every doctor, nurse, resident, student, and attending turns to him. The only sound is the steady beep, beep, beep of Robby’s revived heart. “This is not a class. This isn’t training, you’re not here to learn. This is the real thing. Fuck up, and I’ll—” His voice chokes up, cuts off. He doesn’t know how to finish that. Instead, he forces out, “You hear me?”
“Heard,” comes a near-simultaneous scattering of voices, overlapping each other.
“This is your attending,” Jack reminds them. “This— This is my husband. This is Robby, do you hear me?”
“Heard.” Everyone speaks at once, this time, and Jack leans over Robby’s face, framing it between his hands, forcing him to meet his eyes.
“You’re not leaving me,” Jack insists to him. “I don’t care how hard you hit your head, you can’t be that stupid.” Tilting in, he kisses him upside-down. He can feel Robby pushing up into him in return. “I’m gonna let you sleep, okay? But you’re gonna wake back up, or I’m coming in after you, you hear me, Mikey?”
Robby smiles sleepily up at him. The drip must already be working, then.
“Heard,” he mumbles upwards. “You’re everywhere.”
“Damn fucking right, I am,” Jack insists. “And you’re not going anywhere.”
Though Robby’s eyes keep flickering closed, he forces them back open again, fixing on Jack above him. There’s wet grit in his voice when he forces out, “Hurts, Jack. Please—”
“I know,” Jack tells him, tangling his fingers in Robby’s, holding on as tight as he thinks he can without hurting him worse than he already has been. “Don’t worry about a thing. I got you. Just keep looking up at me ‘til we can get you some sleep, okay?”
The way Robby stares up at him then burns through Jack’s retinas and into his brain, writing itself on his memory. He doesn’t think he can ever forget his dark eyes in the mess of his face, looking up at him like he’s never going to be able to do it again, all that intensity inside of him leaking out into his expression. Jack ducks down, eyes staying open when he kisses him one last time.
“Trust me,” Jack whispers, hoping he can take his own advice, and Robby blinks up at him.
“Yeah,” he agrees, more an exhalation than anything. His body is slowly relaxing, painkillers making their way through his system. “Love you.”
“No, don’t say it like that,” Jack warns him, ignoring the prickle behind his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you, you’re not going anywhere without me?”
“One more,” Robby tells him. There’s sleepy relief in his voice; Jack watches another light skim over his face from Shen’s hand, his pupils shrinking in the flash, equal and reactive. Instinctive, he squints, trying to turn his head away— sensitive, then— but the collar stops him from getting anywhere. Looking to Jack instead, he repeats, “I love you,” then, without waiting, “Say it back.”
A raw laugh tears out of Jack like wet tissue paper. “I love you.” Glancing up, he sees Shen moving to let the anesthesiologist in, and he tells Robby, “Okay, hang tight. Remember, don’t go anywhere without me, got it?”
“Yeah,” Robby repeats, blinking sluggishly up at him, long sweeps of his eyelashes as his eyes linger closed for longer moments.
Jack takes one last look at his face before he hardens his heart and sets to work.
The first thing Robby is aware of is that he’s laying on his side.
He never sleeps on his side; it leaves him feeling uncomfortable, cramped, like he does right now, and so he tries to shift to sprawl out on his stomach instead. There’s resistance, and he groans, attempting to push out, assuming he’s just wrapped himself around Jack in the night, or vice-versa.
His hand tugs.
There’s no body warmth against him.
Robby blinks his eyes open.
This isn’t his bed— this isn’t his bedroom, this isn’t even his home. This is— This is a room at the hospital, he recognizes it instantly, and he’s wedged on his side in a bed.
As if a train— or maybe, he thinks, brain starting to blink out, a fucking Jeep— is slamming into him at top speed and full force, Robby remembers what happened. He remembers throwing Adriana into her van; he remembers the collision, the memory of the impact sending a shiver up his spine; he remembers the pain, and Jack’s face over his, and the entire world moving in flashes and fits and starts.
That’s all he remembers before now— though, he can take a guess from there.
Barely a second has passed. Robby blinks his eyes again, trying to get the fuzziness to clear away; after a couple more, his vision clarifies enough for him to see the white walls, the low lights, the multicolored glow off the machines beside him—
—and Jack, curled up on his side on the short sofa that was once beneath the curtained window, now dragged up next to his bed.
There’s a single flat hospital-issue pillow under his cheek, and two of their standard blankets laid out over him. Beside the stiff sofa, he’s got two bags— his usual go-bag and a duffel from home, both spilling clothes out of their opened mouths, zippers gaping. There are dark bruises punched in under his eyes, his whole face looking strained and exhausted; even his body is a tight coil, unwilling or unable to relax, even as he sleeps. His phone is beside his cheek, like he fell asleep holding it, again; his other hand is curled and hanging, near Robby’s at the edge of his bed. The sight makes Robby smile, though it sends a throb through his face, echoing into his skull, and he would retake his hand, if he could stretch and reach.
At least Jack remembered to take off his leg, if not plug in his phone, his prosthesis stuck into his duffel bag, his crutches leaned against the wall just behind the sofa, in the space it has left behind. Robby’s smile slips, taking this all in, wondering how long Jack’s been here— how long he thinks he needs to be here.
There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, and Robby exhales slowly before closing his eyes and starting to take an internal inventory of himself. It’s difficult to read; all of his pain is distant, like it’s being held back by a wall of fog, strong painkillers sluicing through his system to dull most of it. There’s a throb in his head, an ache in his back; he twitches his fingers, shifts—
Pauses.
He remembers, too, the annihilating pain and pressure in his back, almost impossible to think past. All he’d wanted to do was scream, but Jack’s face had been right there, and he couldn’t scream while Jack was there.
And Jack had asked him to wiggle his toes, and he couldn’t. He hadn’t been able to feel shit.
There’s a long moment where he doesn’t move at all. Not even a breath escapes him; his lungs burn, his chest tight, and it finally wheezes free when he can’t take it anymore.
When he can manage it, he breathes, then moves his foot.
He could cry for the surge of relief he feels, even through the sparkling lightning bolts of pain that manage to shoot up both legs at his shifting. The fact that he’s feeling pain at all is more than he thought he’d get when he’d seen Jack’s face, before he’d gone under; he’ll take it.
The effort and the spike of pain force his heart to start pounding, too deep and too rough in his chest. This reflects on the monitor, his long, steady beep, beep, beep becoming a faster beepbeepbeepbeepbeep that stirs Jack, to Robby’s regret.
At first, he only moves a little, inhaling more deeply as he comes back into himself. His eyes flutter, then snap open, flying first to the monitor before flickering to Robby’s face.
When he sees his eyes open, he’s already moving. He all but shoves the sofa backwards at a half-angle so he can climb up onto the bed instead, sitting on the edge to lean over Robby, biting out, “Mike— You are never doing that to me again.”
“My bad,” Robby manages, his throat feeling cracked and dry and shredded. “Sorry.”
Jack’s answer is a hard kiss, bowing over Robby to tip his head and bring their lips together in a slam, like he wants him to feel him crushing himself into him.
He doesn’t fully part from him, their mouths still mostly-connected and lips brushing when he says, voice breaking, “You motherfucker.”
There’s no space for Robby to answer before Jack is leaning away, grabbing a miniature water bottle off the little stand connected to the gurney. When he brings the lip of the bottle to Robby’s mouth, he pulls away just enough that Robby can see his eyes skimming him— lingering for a moment on the white hairs beneath his chin, the creases at the corners of his eyes, the flush of color that must be rushing over his cheeks.
The water has made his voice a little clearer, allows him to ask, “What the hell happened?”
“What happened, Michael,” Jack answers, hard, as if Robby can’t see the broken-open expression on his face, “is you got yourself hit by about five thousand pounds of steel and dropped out on me—”
“Shit,” Robby curses. “Jack— I’m sorry. You okay?”
Jack laughs without much humor in it. “Are you— Are you kidding me? Seriously? Your heart stopped on my table, you’re asking if I’m fucking okay?”
“Yeah, I am,” Robby says, because if it’d been Jack without a pulse on his table, he knows he would not be anywhere near okay. He knows Jack— and, hell, he can see him, the exhaustion and pain in his face. No mask, guard dropped, raw, vulnerable, making Robby’s insides shiver. “I’m asking.”
There’s a long moment where Jack just looks down at him. His breath starts coming faster, after a moment; his face flushes, and his eyes get too bright, and he reaches down, fingertips stroking over the back of Robby’s head. He tightens his grip in his hair, just a gentle tug, and shakes his head.
“Of course I’m not okay,” Jack chokes out. “Goddamnit, Mike.”
“I know.” It’s like Robby’s heart is stopping all over again. “I’m okay now.”
The look Jack gives him then is a bit sardonic. “You are not. Don’t say you’re okay— Look at you, you’re not fucking okay. You were dead, I almost—” His other fist clenches up, beats out a rhythm against his thigh as he looks away, a trembling exhale escaping him. There’s a crack down the center of his voice when he says, “You scared the hell out of me, Mikey.”
“I know,” Robby repeats. “Come here.” Jack hesitates before he says again, “Come here,” and it’s only then that he folds downwards, fitting himself into the space leftover beside him. Robby manages to get his arm up, his hand placed secure on the back of Jack’s neck. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. You made sure of that, didn’t you?”
A raw scoff huffs out of Jack. His head finds the space next to Robby’s on his pillows, their eyes meeting.
“I thought you were dead,” Jack confesses to him, quiet, exposed. “I thought you’d never walk again, or I’d have to— God, and it’d be my fault—”
“Nothing that happened was your fault,” Robby stops him. “If I died—”
“Don’t.” Jack’s voice is an exposed nerve. His eyes shine, and Robby watches a tear roll from one over the bridge of his nose to the other, then further to soak into the pillow beneath him. “You did. I lost you.”
“And that’s not your fault,” Robby repeats. Jack’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t relent; he wants to bleed this out before it festers. “Shit, Jack— You’re saying my heart stopped on your table, and here I am, so you brought me back on your table, too. I’m here ‘cause of you—”
“—Mike—”
“—Just like always,” Robby continues as if he hasn’t spoken, and Jack’s eyes close, tears slipping fast now, breathing even faster. “I know you, Jack. You did everything you could. You’re a good doctor— the best. If I’m gonna have anyone working on me, I’d want it to be you.” Jack’s hand fists in the thin hospital gown Robby’s wearing, tight over his heart. “Thank you.”
“Stop,” Jack whispers.
“Thank you,” Robby repeats. “You shouldn’t have had to do that. I’m so fucking sorry, Jack. I wasn’t thinking—”
“That’s right, you weren’t thinking,” Jack bites out. His eyes flash back open, meeting Robby’s without needing to search. “You see a fucking Jeep coming at you, you get out of the fucking way. You don’t stand there.”
“I wasn’t standing there, I was—” A chill comes over Robby as he remembers, and his pulse spikes on the monitor again. “Oh, shit— Jack, did Adriana and—”
“Yeah, everyone’s fine except you, calm down,” Jack instructs him, tilting his head back to examine the readings coming in on the screen behind him. “The Lozanos told us all about your heroics. How am I even supposed to be mad at you?”
Robby hesitates, then suggests, “Don’t be?”
Jack huffs again. His eyelashes sparkle with clinging tears, shadows beat in beneath his eyes, a tired ashen pallor to his skin, unshaven and exhausted and broken.
“You look like shit,” Robby comments, his throat feeling tight.
“That supposed to make me less mad at you?” Jack asks. “Of course I look like shit. I’ve been keeping your ass alive.” His eyes skim Robby’s face, glide down over his chest then back up. “You don’t look so good, yourself.”
Stroking his thumb in a circle at the nape of Jack’s neck, Robby asks, soft, “How bad was it?”
Jack’s eyelashes flicker. “Bad. I—” His breath shudders again; his voice is hoarse when he repeats, “Bad.”
“What’s the damage?” Robby asks him, and Jack twitches his head in a sideways shake. “Want me to read it off my chart instead?”
There’s a beat where Jack just tries to breathe. Robby can almost hear his counting as he grounds himself, then slips into a more professional, clipped tone when he lists off, “Pelvic fracture. We don’t know the extent of the nerve damage yet. Trauma to your— your liver and your intestines, some internal bleeding. Hypovolemic shock. Slammed your head, concussion but no red flags yet. Multiple instances of your heart— stopping, fuck, and I broke your breastbone trying to restart it, and—” His voice gets faster, tighter. “Severe crush injuries to your entire lower body. Your legs— You were a mess, Mike, we— We had to get you into surgery. Take the pressure off your nerves. Hey, how—” Swallowing thickly, audible, Jack manages, “How’s it feeling? Your legs?”
“Doesn’t feel good,” Robby answers. “Lots better than feeling nothing at all.”
A trembling exhalation of relief escapes Jack at that. “Good. Good, I— Good.” His hand flattens over Robby’s heart, palm over the pound of it. “You’re gonna have a hell of a fucking time healing back up, Mikey.”
“Well, yeah,” Robby agrees. “You Frankensteined me back together.”
Jack pushes in tighter to him. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m a little funny.” Robby examines Jack from the closer distance, near enough to see the prickle of little hairs across his unshaved jaw. “I love you, Jack. I’m so sorry.”
Jack starts to nod a little before his face crumples. Robby can only watch as the last string inside him snaps and he burrows into Robby as close and careful as he can, gripping Robby’s gown in his fists and starts to sob. It’s the kind of crying Robby hears all the time in the Pitt, but never from Jack. He hasn’t heard him cry like this in— shit, in years, and he regrets how wedged and immobilized he is right now, because all he wants is to yank Jack into his arms and hug him as tightly as he can.
As it is, he just lets his hand slide down to Jack’s shoulder, slipped beneath his collar, rubbing into the tight, coiled muscle there. The loose fabric is soft, familiar— Robby’s, he realizes, one of his old worn t-shirts, and he tugs a little at it, giving him more space to rub his back.
His own eyes start to burn, his sinuses prickling. Heat wells up and leaks out watching Jack fall apart like this, and he whispers, “It’s okay. You’re okay. I got you, honey. You’re okay, I’m okay. We’re okay. You just breathe with me, we’ll get through this.”
“Shit,” Jack groans. “Mike— God—”
“I know,” Robby whispers back. “I know.”
Jack’s having a hard time letting Robby out of his sight.
He works with trauma every day. His job is, at its core, basically just trying to get people through the worst day of their lives. For his entire life, he’s gotten used to being in the shit.
It’s different when it’s Robby.
He’s having a hard time shaking it off.
There’s a world of difference between person going through recovery and Robby going through recovery, a gulf that Jack had not anticipated. Even Jack going through recovery had felt easier than this; he’d had at least some degree of control over that, the understanding that it was his body and his experience and that he could react and act however he wanted. At the end of the day, it was his weight to bear, not anyone else’s.
And now, he just— he hates that. He hates that he has no control over this, he hates that it’s not his body and his experience and that he cannot react and act however he wants, because it’s not about him. It’s about Robby, and, at the end of the day, he’s not letting Jack bear any of the weight.
Sure, he lets Jack hover at his bedside until he’s discharged from the hospital, and he allows him to keep his eyes fixed on him every minute they’re home, and he permits him to accompany him to physical therapy once he’s allowed to start moving around again, but it doesn’t feel like he’s doing it for his own recovery. It’s like he’s doing it for Jack. And he does it all with an increasing edge of frustration that they can both feel and dance around, but he still allows it, and Jack’s not about to poke that bear and lose that access.
Robby’s getting better, Jack reminds himself, sitting on the edge of their bed, watching Robby sleep. He used to sleep on his stomach— used to sleep with his face buried in Jack’s chest, or his shoulder, or his belly, sprawled across him to begin with and curling into him throughout each night— but now he’s always on his back, a pillow wedged beneath his knees, motionless in sleep, different. He’s the same in a lot of ways— still wants to keep going, hates being cooped up, basically needs to be sedated to get any rest— but he’s different, too.
It’s not like it was in those first days after the accident— though, calling it an accident feels akin to referring to a hurricane as a bit of a breeze, or the Titanic as a boating mishap. When Jack couldn’t sleep, and Robby still looked more like an open wound than a person. It’s better than that now, though Jack’s not sure he’ll ever forget any of it, yet another ring of horrible memories to add to his endless loop of nightmares.
Still. It’s not like that, not anymore. It’s not all— all changing bandages soaked in blood, and monitoring vitals that could crash at any second, and Robby so quiet and pained all the time that it hurt Jack just to look at him.
But Jack can’t forget that, even after Robby’s started walking again and eating on his own and talking more.
Even now, with his hand wrapped loose around Robby’s bare ankle, feeling the throb of his posterior tibial pulse as he sleeps, he can’t stop thinking about before. He can’t stop cataloguing every healing scar, every fading bruise, every twitch of discomfort— everything that happened while he wasn’t there. If there’s one thing he can do now, it’s be there— be here.
Beneath his touch, Robby shifts, and Jack jerks his hand back as if he’s been burned. His eyes stay glued to Robby as he wakes up, watching every tiny micromovement, waiting for— something, he’s not sure what.
Robby stretches; Jack has to hold himself back from grabbing onto him, massaging out his muscles himself. When his eyes blink open, sleepy and dark and searching upwards at first, Jack releases a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.
Alive, he thinks, just before Robby turns his head down to find him at the foot of the bed instead.
“Hey,” he murmurs, thick with sleep. “What’re you doing?”
“Just— putting my leg on, you know,” Jack replies, motioning downwards. His prosthesis has been on for at least twenty minutes, but Robby doesn’t need to know that. “You sleep okay? How’s your back feeling?”
“It’s fine.” Robby’s voice is a rumble as he rolls onto his side, then up, slow and steady, just like he’s been told and taught.
Jack can’t help but study him through the whole process. “How about that? Any pain?”
“It’s fine, Jack,” Robby repeats, digging the heel of his hand into one eye. “Are you hovering?”
“No,” Jack replies automatically. They have had several very definite conversations about hovering recently. “Just getting ready for work.”
Robby’s breath catches as he remembers, glancing towards Jack.
“You sure about this?” Robby asks him.
“I feel like I should be asking you that,” Jack volleys right back. “You sure you’re ready? ‘Cause nobody’s saying you have to go back today. If you need more time—”
“How much more time could I possibly need?” Robby asks.
“You got hit by a fucking car,” Jack reminds him, as if either of them needs reminding. “You’d be within your rights to take the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, well, despite all odds, that’s a little longer than I thought it’d be, so.” Robby stretches, and Jack resists the urge to stop him. “I’m gonna use it.”
It’s been like this since Robby got cleared for light work. Ever since Dana had her little party to celebrate him not-dying and he saw the Pitt again, Robby has been clawing to get back to work, more desperate than a kid trying to get to Disney World.
It hadn’t helped things that their coworkers— friends, family, really— just kept talking about how quick Jack was, how smart, how cool, how he saved his life, how they’re both heroes, and—
All that had just been a lot, for Jack to hear. Claims he might have usually taken in stride, or made jokes about, seemed to slam into his chest, and he hadn’t been aware enough, not on his game enough from that point forward— which means he’d been too distracted to stop them from telling Robby about everything he’d missed since he’d been gone. All that had done was just kick Robby’s brain into overdrive, and Jack knew he’d lost the battle for a slow-paced recovery from that point on.
For the love of God, Robby had even willingly agreed to the clearance for only light work, even though it clearly grated on him, because— as he’d put it, “A little bit of something is better than a whole lotta nothing.”
Of course, Jack probably should have known where this was ultimately going to go.
It is becoming increasingly clear that, to Robby, light work apparently means anything and everything he used to do; to Jack— call him crazy, but light work is light fucking work. Filling out forms, sitting at a desk, taking notes, that is light work. Even that, he worries, has the potential to stress Robby out too much, put strain on his heart or his brain or his eyes or the entirety of his nervous system or—
“Okay. What’s that face for?” Robby asks, leveraging himself upwards with a hand on his nightstand, gripping for balance.
“Would you use your cane?” Jack asks in return. “That’s literally what it’s for, it’s right there—”
“I’m just getting up, Jack, c’mon,” Robby stops him. It takes him an effort to actually get to his feet; once he’s there, though, he glances sideways at Jack, says, “I’ll use it now, alright? I know what I’m doing. You don’t need to treat me like I’m a patient.”
Jack bites back his instinctive reaction, because reminding Robby that he was a patient not that long ago isn’t going to get them anywhere.
Instead, he says, “You know, if you really did want to take a few more days, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Might even be a good thing.”
“If I don’t get back in there, I never will,” Robby counters without hesitation, as if that’s even a little bit true. He’d go back if his head was hanging on by a thread, and Jack would still have to stop him. Of course, the same is true in reverse, but acknowledging that right now also isn’t going to get them anywhere. “I really just gotta throw myself in again and get back into the swing of it.” He waves around his head with his free hand, a vague gesture to the entirety of their condo. “I can’t keep sitting around here, I’m going insane.”
“What, is my company that bad?” Jack asks.
“You’re the best thing about all this,” Robby says, off-handed and honest, catching Jack off guard like he still somehow manages to do. “You get what I’m saying, though, don’t you? I vividly remember you going stir-crazy when you first came back over here after—”
“I did not go stir-crazy,” Jack protests.
“You went nuts, man,” Robby insists. “You had six scanners going at one point.”
“Yeah, and now I have none, so,” Jack reminds him.
“Because you replaced scanning police calls with scanning me,” Robby points out to him. “Jack, I’m fine. Really. Look, see?” Spreading one arm, his other hand white-knuckling his cane— a quad cane, lightweight and standard and still medical-issue, because “Why would I get something nicer? I won’t need it that long—” he says, “Perfectly fine. And more than capable of light duty.”
Robby’s motioning to himself as if Jack can’t see, overlaid on him still, the memory of him dead on the table underneath him.
“Fine,” Jack acquiesces, looking away, throwing his hands up. “Fine, but— Would you just— please, be careful?”
“I won’t say, ‘What’s the worst that could happen,’” Robby replies, “because it feels like that’s just asking for trouble.”
“Good.” Jack tugs his sock on, then rises to stand, himself. “I expect this to be the most boring day shift I have ever worked.”
“You really don’t have to work day, by the way,” Robby says, not for the first time— not for the hundredth time, probably. “They’re probably just going to park me at a desk for the whole shift.”
“Then I’ll know exactly where to find you and make sure you’re not collapsing in a puddle or shitting out your own spine,” Jack replies.
“Colorful.”
“Well, you know me.” Jack stops himself just barely short of clapping Robby on the shoulder, not wanting to hurt him. Instead, he swings his hand behind his own back, catches his wrist with his other hand, holds himself back. “And if you need me—”
“Which I won’t,” Robby interjects, “because I’ll be sitting at a desk—”
“—just call for me, I’ll come right down,” Jack continues over him, elevating his voice as if he weren’t talking at all. It draws a smile out of Robby, so he counts it as a win and returns to dressing himself, pretending that his heart isn’t beating just a little bit too fast at the idea of Robby returning to the ED, even just to sit at a desk or offer advice or whatever it is they’ll have him doing today, because he knows Robby won’t want to stop there.
Jack all but stands over Robby while he moves through showering, brushing his teeth, dressing himself. He makes them fried eggs and watches Robby like a hawk to make sure he finishes his; every time Robby glances up at him, no doubt feeling his eyes burning into him, he looks away, trying not to get caught.
Over his orange juice, Robby finally snags him, raising his eyebrows when their eyes meet, a silent gotcha.
“I’m not going to keel over out of nowhere,” Robby reminds him. “I’m really fine.”
“You weren’t supposed to get hit by a car out of nowhere, either,” Jack counters.
Robby sighs, as if he’s the one long-suffering. “Statistically, it is highly unlikely that either of those things will happen here.”
“Can never be too sure,” Jack replies, sipping his own juice, eyes now firmly fixed on Robby. He’s already been caught; may as well drink his fill while he can. “Today is probably going to be quiet. Talking about statistics. Today, tomorrow, what’s the difference if—”
“Jack,” Robby interrupts him. There’s a hardness to his voice that draws Jack up short. “I’m going in today. I’ve been cleared for light work. I’m fine.”
But you weren’t, Jack’s mind screams at him. You weren’t okay, you fucking died at that hospital, what more do you have to give them, what do you think you have to prove and to whom, what the hell are you even talking about?
Jack knows— he knows, because he’s been paying for extra sessions of therapy to work his way through this, because he could feel from the jump that this wasn’t something he was going to handle all that well— that he’s got a hard time with control. He struggles accepting that he can’t protect Robby from the world, that he can’t stop him from being vulnerable, that he can’t just— control everything, which sounds simple but feels really, really fucking hard.
He also knows that Robby’s not having the easiest time accepting help. He never has, really, but it’s been exceptionally bad this time around, with recovery moving in fits and starts, Robby getting frustrated with his own body and trying to push too hard more than once.
The part of him that knows Robby wants to be fine— that he should let him be fine, that he can’t control him being not fine— is at war with his other half, the part that knows Robby wouldn’t say anything if he weren’t fine, not at this point.
Jack saw the way Robby prickled and fought against every single time he needed help at the beginning of recovery— every time he needed to be handed something, needed assistance in moving, needed anything, this expression of absolute torment would come onto his face, like he’d been struck with a sudden onset stomachache. And Jack gets it— fuck, if anyone gets it, he gets it, and he wants Robby to be up and moving and fine more than anyone— but he’s also a doctor, and he’s seen too many shit ends of shit sticks to trust that everything’s going to go perfectly here.
If anything, Jack has learned the lesson that things in his life do not ever go perfectly. He always loses the things that mean the most to him, always; it’s not a matter of if, just a matter of when.
It already feels like him and Robby are on borrowed time, now. He doesn’t want the end to come any sooner than it has to.
“Jack?” Robby asks, and Jack refocuses. He’d been staring right into his eyes, he realizes, blinking. “I swear, I’m fine. Stop scanning me like that.”
Jack scrubs the back of his wrist across his eyes, sighs. “I know. I know, you’re fine.” I know you say you’re fine. “Just— You’ll tell me if you aren’t. Right?”
When Robby looks at him, there’s a moment where Jack’s sure he’s just going to say, “Yeah, right, of course,” and blow past this, and it won’t feel real— just like none of this feels real, all one big, weird stage-show that everyone but Jack apparently has scripts for.
Instead, though, Robby sighs, too. His elbows find the table, and he scrubs at his face with his hands. His shoulders are straight, his back stiff; he hunches in on himself less now, physical therapy forcing his spine up, his shoulder-muscles broader. When he looks up at Jack, he looks far more tired than he’s expecting, and he has to actually bite the tip of his own tongue to stop yet another insistence on staying home from coming out.
“There might be some parts of this where I’ll feel less than fine,” Robby says, which does nothing for Jack’s nerves. “That’s recovery, right? Some parts of it hurt. I have to let them. You know that.”
“Yeah, well.” Jack drains the last of his orange juice. “Maybe I just don’t like the idea of you hurting. Ever think of that, smartass?”
“Wow,” Robby replies, dry. “Because I never felt stressed after you came back with one leg—”
“That was different,” Jack stops him, rising to take their empty dishes, trying not to clatter them together too fiercely.
“How is that different?” Robby asks. “I didn’t shadow you at work. I didn’t hover—”
“I am not hovering,” Jack says. “Look, it’s just— It’s different, okay, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Robby’s got that voice he gets, like he already knows where this is going and just needs Jack to catch up with him. It makes his heart rate spike in a way he doesn’t love; he knows he puts the dishes down a little too hard in the sink, but he can’t help himself. “Or you don’t want to tell me?”
Jack exhales a harsh breath, then flicks on the hot water in the faucet. After a moment, he changes his mind and switches over to cold; probably better, right now, with how flushed he’s starting to feel.
“You were hurt bad, Mikey,” Jack reminds him. He shouldn’t need reminding. “You were hurt at the hospital. I get that the work’s important, but—”
“That’s the thing,” Robby says. “If anyone would get it, I thought it’d be you.”
“I do get it.” Jack grabs his scrub-brush and the dish soap. There’s a few other dishes in here from yesterday, too; may as well get them out of the way while he needs something to do with his hands. “You want to be back at work, you feel like you’re not useful, but letting your body recover is useful.”
“I’ve been letting my body recover for weeks, Jack,” Robby argues, because this is an argument, Jack lets himself acknowledge. He glances at the clock over the stove; lucky them, there’s still plenty of time for this. “Months. It’s not going to keep getting better if I stop here. I need to go to the next step, right?”
“And the next step is throwing yourself back into the Pitt?” Jack asks.
“It’s going back to work on light duty,” Robby rattles off. “Which anyone would—”
“Anyone is not an attending in one of the worst emergency—”
“Would you let me talk?” Robby bites out.
“Would you let me?” Jack shoots back, rinsing a plate with a bit too much force, shoving it into the drying rack. He drops the scrub-brush into the basin and grips the edge of the counter, knuckles white on the granite, splashed speckled-wet by the sink’s spray.
There’s a moment where neither of them speak. Jack lets his head hang, eyes falling between his hands, watching water fly every which way as the faucet’s stream hits a plate.
Eventually, Robby’s voice, low and quiet, says, “Look. I know how you feel.”
“I—”
“Just— Can I?” Robby asks, and Jack sighs. “I know how you feel, because I was you. I was there, remember? I sat with you and— and wondered how you’d feel when you woke up, and I wondered if you’d wake up, and I was there watching you get— so goddamned mad every step of recovery, I swear, I sometimes thought you would actually rip my arms off of my body.”
Jack huffs, a bubble of amusement and shame and frustration in the back of his mind, most of it old.
“It sucked.” Robby takes a deep breath. On the countertop edge, Jack’s fingers twitch and tighten. “It really sucked, Jack, but what the hell was I gonna say? My life’s really hard, I feel sad ‘cause you have one foot? How’s that going to come off?”
Jack drums his fingers on the countertop. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Robby echoes. “And— look, I get it. I know it’s not the same, I know we’re— together now, but, Jack, I loved you then, too. Fuck, it hurt like a bitch that I couldn’t be the one holding your hand all the time. I’m— I’m really glad I have you for that now.”
Chancing a glance back at him, Jack finds that Robby’s already looking at him, and their eyes catch again. He’s gone all soft and broken-open, tired and vulnerable and hazy at the edges like he only ever gets alone with him.
“So, I want you to know, I get it,” Robby tells him. “And it’s— it’s okay, to feel how you’re feeling. I know how much it sucks. But— But you can’t let it stop me from getting better, right? And I am getting better.”
Dipping his head in a nod, Jack takes this in, turns it over, makes himself actually think it through before he responds, instead of just reacting.
“Working hard on therapy homework?” Jack asks, and Robby smiles a little, twitches at the corners of his mouth.
“Not much else to do,” Robby reminds him.
Jack nods, glancing back towards the sink again. After a moment, he reaches out, twisting the water off.
“I get what you’re saying,” Jack tells him, because it’s important he tell him that. “I know you get it, I— I know, but— Mike— You’re acting like nothing happened, like— like I haven’t been keeping you alive for weeks—”
“Yes,” Robby stops him, trying to keep that same patient, even tone. “You did, and I love you, and I’m grateful for you, and I can never thank you enough—”
“You don’t have to thank me, I—”
“But I have to keep myself alive now,” Robby finishes anyway. “I gotta live my life, I can’t— I can’t stay like this anymore.”
Something clicks into place in Jack’s mind, and he thinks, oh. Robby wants to live and I’m keeping him dead.
It all just sort of starts slipping together. Jack leans back against the counter, hands gripping it in reverse now, letting him fidget and push himself up and down a little bit.
“I just…” Jack tries to arrange his thoughts and feelings into coherent sounds, into words that explain how he feels, into something that will help Robby understand. “Mikey, I— I think I’m really scared.”
Robby’s brow creases, his lips parting, like he wants to say something but he’s not sure what. It’s a feeling Jack knows well.
“Of what?” Robby finally asks him.
Jack’s grateful he didn’t say, “Don’t be.” He probably knows it’s not much of an option.
He twists his arms a little bit, rolling himself to one side, then the other. After a moment, tipping his head up, allowing his eyes to find the crack near the ceiling light that they always say they’ll patch whenever they change the lightbulb, and always forget about immediately afterwards, he gathers himself up a little bit more.
Then, he says, “There was— When I thought you were dead—” and his voice breaks, shatters, and he shakes his head, letting his eyes slip shut and his head fall to hang. “When you were dead— Fuck—”
“Jack.” Robby’s voice sounds strained.
“I can’t do it,” Jack forces out, the tears finally spilling. His sinuses burn, and his throat is thick, but he can’t stop, even though it’s making him feel hot all over. “I can’t— I can’t get past it, no matter what I do, I just— I keep— I keep seeing you, and— I can’t—” Shaking his head, digging the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, he says through the frustrating tears, “I can’t go through losing you, Mikey. You don’t— I can’t. I literally cannot do it, and the idea of it— The— When you— I haven’t— God, I don’t think I’ve taken a full breath since it happened.”
There’s a long moment of silence that is filled only by Jack’s shuddering breaths, each one shakier than the last as he hitches through sobs that he’s trying to fight back at the same time that he can’t help but let them come.
He hears the soft scrape of Robby’s chair against the kitchen tiles, then the uneven tread of footsteps and cane combined, not yet totally adjusted.
A moment later, a hand is touching Jack’s cheek, and he stiffens, surprised despite the signs.
To his dismay, Robby’s hand withdraws, and his voice sounds heartbreakingly sad when he says, “I know.”
Jack’s eyes slip open as he looks up towards Robby in front of him. They’re not touching anywhere anymore; it’s not clear to him if that’s good or bad. And Robby is crying, too, though quieter than Jack— he’s got red eyes, tears slipping in steady streams down his cheeks, flushed all over. He just gets so red when he’s upset. Well, when he feels anything too strongly, really.
“You know?” Jack asks him.
“Yeah, I know.” Robby interlocks his fingers behind his head, tips back— then forward with a jolt, one hand grabbing for his quad cane, steadying himself. On instinct, Jack grabs his other hand and balances him, drawing him closer. “I haven’t, either.”
He’s not expecting Robby to secure his grip on his hand, slip their fingers together, hang on tight.
“God, I miss you,” Robby confesses in a burst, as if the words are breaking from behind a dam to rush out between them. “Jesus— Jack, I miss you so much. I miss you being you with me, I—”
“What?” Jack asks. “What do you—”
“—I know it’s not the same now, I know, I— I feel like you look at me and you see—” Robby’s voice catches in his throat, and he looks down at their joined hands, squeezing him. “You’re seeing me when I was— when I was out, when I—” He stops just short of saying “died,” but Jack hears it anyway. “You’re not seeing me.”
Robby’s hand in Jack’s feels so solid. He tries to hang on.
“I don’t think you look at me the same anymore,” Robby says. There’s fear in every word, like he’s afraid to say this. “Or— Or something, I don’t know. You just— I mean, I did notice. The way you look at me is different. You don’t…”
Whatever it is Jack doesn’t, Robby stops just short of telling him. His eyes are still fixed on their joined hands; Jack’s busy trying to read his face, all blocked-up and sad-looking.
“You don’t touch me anymore,” Robby finally manages. “Not like you used to.”
It cracks into Jack’s chest, each word another hammer blow. The worst part of it is that he thinks Robby is right; it’s so hard to touch him, sometimes, and remember how vulnerable he is, how hurt he was, how badly he can be damaged.
“And I get it, I do, but it just— I know, it’s hard,” Robby tries, his breath speeding up a little bit again. “But it just— It hurts? It hurts, and I miss you.” Tears slip when he adds, “I miss you a lot,” and Jack hates this, as much as he hates that he actually hesitates before reaching up to cradle his face, sweep his thumb beneath his eye, because he’s right.
“Mike,” he says, not knowing what else to say. “I’m— I—”
“You can touch me, you know,” Robby stops him, putting his hand over Jack’s on his face, pushing him in tighter, until Jack can feel his cheekbone jutting into his palm, and he winces at the reminder of how it had looked and felt broken and split—
“I know,” Jack chokes out, but he doesn’t, not really. “I— I know I can.”
“Do you?” Robby asks. There’s a moment where he seems like he’s about to say something more, but he stops short. A couple more tears slip free, twisting Jack’s stomach to see them, before he actually manages, “Do you even want to anymore?”
“What?” Jack asks, too surprised to form an actual answer. It’s too absurd a question. “Of course, I do—”
“Then why don’t you?” Robby probably means it to come out demanding, but it sounds more like begging. “Why don’t you look at me? Why do you— Why do you act like I’m not— not me anymore?”
Jack makes himself look at him— really, actually look at him, past who he used to be and past what he looked like hurt and past everything except him, right now.
There are shadows under his eyes; his pupils are wide, dark, turning his irises into a thin rim of golden-brown. A scar crosses his cheekbone under Jack’s thumb. Another scar chews up from this throat and over his jaw, cutting a line through his beard. Tear tracks slick his skin, more welling up as Jack looks up at him, and he exhales shakily.
“I’m scared,” Jack admits. “It’s— I’m terrified of hurting you, Mike. It’s hard, to— to look at you, to—” His thumb runs over the scar, a soft stroke. In his chest, his heart won’t stop thundering. “All I can think about is what happened.”
Robby’s lips part around a soft exhale. He looks so fucking sad.
“But I don’t— I don’t want you to feel like you’re something I’m scared of touching, Mikey,” Jack insists. “I just—” He takes a breath, tries, “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
Robby’s hand tugs at Jack’s, pulling it until he can tangle them together. His eyes stay fixed on Jack’s as he kisses the back of his hand, tightening his grip. When he speaks, his lips brush Jack’s skin there. “It’s just— You just keep looking at me like I’m going to break, Jack. I think it’s worse than actually being broken.”
“You’re not broken,” Jack tells him, before he can even think. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—” He pushes up into him, kisses him, tastes salt between them. “I don’t want to make you feel that way. I hate that I—”
“No, it’s—”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says again, and Robby brings their joined hands up, nudges at Jack’s bottom lip with his thumb.
“I’m sorry,” Robby echoes. “I know this is hard. I’m sorry this is so hard.”
Jack tilts into him again, rises up to give him another kiss. His breath catches; he can feel Robby’s chest hitch, warm tears slipping down into their kiss, and so he pushes in harder.
It’s not until they’ve parted and taken a breath that Robby reminds him, quiet, “Recovery hurts, Jack. It might be hard today, but I have to do it. And I know it can be hard to look at me, or touch me, but—”
“I have to do it,” Jack finishes, earning himself one of Robby’s little smiles, tugged lightly at the edges of his lips. “It’s not you, Mike.”
“I know.”
Jack trusts him, believes he really does know. After a beat, he adds, “Well— Don’t push yourself today, though. That’s only gonna set you back.”
Robby’s eyebrows tick up. “I can sit at a desk without dying.”
“You say that,” Jack replies, trying not to let the protective flame in him get too much more oxygen, “but yesterday, you could barely stand for five minutes without looking like you were gonna pass out, Mikey.”
“This is what healing looks like,” Robby says, a firmer edge slipping back in. “You have to let me heal.”
“You have to let you heal,” Jack insists. “You’re not supposed to be on your feet too long, and you’re not supposed to put stress on—”
“I was cleared for light work.” Robby’s thumb runs in a circle on the back of Jack’s hand, over and over. “Walking a little and sitting at a desk all day is light work—”
“Pushing yourself to the point of collapse isn’t light work—”
“I didn’t actually collapse yesterday—”
“No, you just looked like you were about to,” Jack protests, “and do not expect me to just stand aside and pretend like that doesn’t fucking matter, Mike, because it does.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Robby says, desperate again, his eyes burning into him. “You have to let me—”
“You don’t get it—”
“Then help me get it—”
“You died!” Jack exclaims, and Robby blinks, breath catching. “In my hands, Mike! Do you— Do you understand that? I can still feel you dead in my hands, forgive me for— taking that fucking seriously.”
Tears burn up into his own eyes once more, scoring down his cheeks, he can’t hold them back. He can barely breathe, and Robby’s tightening his grip on his hand, then tugging him in, letting go of his hand and his cane so he can wrap his arms around Jack instead. Jack dissolves into him, clinging to him, face buried in his throat, inhaling as deeply as he can before he’s crying again.
“I’m sorry,” he bites out into the soft material of Robby’s sweatshirt. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”
“Shh,” Robby quiets him, one hand coming up to cradle the back of his head. When his fingernails scrape over his scalp, running through his hair, Jack shivers, tightening his grip on him. They balance into each other, keeping one another upright. “It’s okay. Don’t apologize, Jack, it’s okay—”
“You were dead in my hands,” Jack repeats, unable to shake it now that he’s said it, “Christ— You shouldn’t have— You shouldn’t have survived, you should— You should be dead— Oh, God, Mikey—”
“I know,” Robby says near his ear, tightening the arm wound around his shoulders. “I know. You’re carrying around a lot, it’s heavy. I know, honey, c’mon. It’s okay.”
He’s quiet, steady, holds Jack while he cries like he hasn’t since Robby first woke up, like he’s needed to since this all happened, everything bottled up inside him until the pressure was just too much. Even when Robby starts to sway a little bit, he doesn’t back down; it’s Jack that nudges at him, forces him to back up and return to his seat at the table. When Jack moves to take the seat next to him, though, Robby won’t release him.
“Sit with me,” he insists.
Jack sniffles, scrubbing his hand under one eye. “I’m just—”
“Sit on me,” he clarifies, tugging at him to draw him closer. Jack hesitates, breathes through it, and shifts forward to do as he’s asked, climbing into his lap like he used to before this all happened. Robby wraps his arms around him without hesitating; Jack melts down into him, letting him hold him, trusting him to take his weight. “There you go. It’s okay.”
Burying his face in Robby’s throat again, running his fingers up into his hair and gripping, he murmurs, “I don’t know how to come back from that. From— From you dying, I thought— Fuck, I can handle shit like this—”
“Hey,” Robby stops him. “I’m not doing the best job handling it, either. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“No, you were right,” Jack mumbles into him.
There’s a beat before Robby’s voice, softer now, says, “I don’t like fighting with you.”
“Then don’t,” Jack says, and Robby huffs a laugh he feels. His embrace tightens, his thumbs stroking his shoulders. “That wasn’t even a fight, c’mon. We’ve had some barnburners in our time, this barely registers.”
Robby’s next laugh is even stronger. He kisses the side of Jack’s head.
“You’re right.”
“Yeah, remember that next time.” Jack sits up enough that he can look down at Robby, framing his face between his hands before stroking back through his hair, feeling the raised ridges of his scars there, too. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Robby turns his face into his hand to kiss his palm before Jack nudges him back around to meet his eyes. “I’m still alive.”
Jack sighs, feeling all the air in him rush out.
“And we’re together,” Robby continues. “So, we can do this. We just have to do it together, like we do everything together.” He finds and holds onto Jack’s hips, thumbs running in circles. “We just can’t hold anything back from each other.”
“I know,” Jack says. “I know, I just—” He sighs again, then says, “I’m sorry for being weird just ‘cause I’m scared of losing you.”
“Hey, look, I get it,” Robby reminds him. “I do. I understand. And I’m sorry for not thinking about your point of view as much, that wasn’t cool of me.” After a beat, his smile twitches up again. “Really putting that therapy homework to use, here.”
“Proud of you,” Jack replies. “Nah, what am I saying? Proud of us, I’m also doing awesome—”
“And just so modest about it,” Robby teases. “Okay, now, you actually have to get up, my legs are starting to—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Mikey, why didn’t you say someth—”
“I’m saying something now!” Robby protests as Jack all but leaps off of him, nearly getting tangled in the table leg before Robby catches him.
“If it’s still hurting when you—” Jack starts, but Robby shoots him such a look that his words dry up in an instant.
“How about,” Robby suggests, leaning to plant his hands flat on the table, “I will return to regular work at a reasonable pace, and you will trust me not to push myself too hard.”
Jack eyes him for a moment.
“And we’ll support each other,” Robby adds. Unnecessary, but still nice to hear.
“And we’ll both talk to our therapists about this,” Jack tacks on. “I know I’ve been holding back a little there, too.”
“Yeah, well.” Robby looks up at him as Jack leans against the table. When he reaches down, cupping Robby’s chin in his hand, thumb stroking soft over the scar on his jaw, he murmurs, “Hey, look at that, see? You’re already touching me again.”
Jack lets his little finger find Robby’s carotid pulse, feels it thrumming beneath his touch.
“It’s not like it’s a hardship,” Jack teases. “Pretty guy like you.”
Robby’s smile changes the contours of his face in a way Jack will always recognize, always, no matter what happens to either of them.
“You’re sure?” Jack asks, one last time.
“I’m sure,” Robby says, and Jack nods.
“Okay.” He takes one deep breath, then another. “Okay. But if you n—”
“If you say ‘need help,’” Robby stops him, “I’m going to trip you whenever I see you today.”
Jack can’t help but laugh.
“Fine,” he says, “fine, fine. But if you trip, buddy, just ‘cause you pushed yourself too hard too fast, I’m laughing first and helping second.”
“I expect no less from you,” Robby says, smiling now, and Jack scrubs away the last evidence of tears on his cheeks with his hands.
It feels like them again, like they’ve scoured out an infected wound and now it can start healing— they can start healing, even if things are different now, even if they are a little different now.
Jack takes what might be the first real, whole breath he’s taken since he saw Robby pinned between those cars.
“Hey,” he murmurs, drawing Robby’s eyes flicking back up to him. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“Hell yeah, I do,” Robby replies. His grin is a little ridiculous, but then— so is he. “You saved my life.”
Jack thumps him on the shoulder.
“I love you, too,” Robby tells him, still all smiles. “Sorry for dying.”
“You,” Jack warns him, “are not forgiven,” and can’t help but smile, too.