Archive of Our Own

ONE

It happens for the first time after Pittfest.

Jack hadn't stayed too much longer in the park after Robby left, maybe 45 minutes, enough time for Mohan and Javadi to make their excuses and head out, both of them, he was pretty sure, not even finishing a single beer. He made it through a second, enough time for Donnie and Princess and Mateo to devolve into showing each other cute animal Tiktoks, a ritual Jack has never cared for as much as the beers.

And enough time, apparently, for Robby to decide against sleeping in his own bed and instead opting to crash out on Jack's couch.

They gave one another keys to each other's places years ago, a “Just in case" born of seeing one too many times what happens when there are no other options. Sure, plenty of people who might have been saved more easily, or saved at all, if someone had been able to get to them without having to wait for EMTs to break down the door, but just as many injuries – from minor scrapes and bruises to full on broken ribs and limbs – from people trying to break into their own homes.

Jack never expected Robby to use his spare key like this – why would he? – but he's not entirely surprised by the sight: Robby, stretched out across the living room couch, thin blanket thrown haphazardly over himself, shoes off but scrubs still on.

“Okay,” Jack says to himself with a sigh as he takes in the scene. He’s exhausted, but he had come in fresh off a few hours of sleep and a half decent meal, not an entire shift’s worth of bullshit like Robby and the rest of them. He’s still surprised any of them were still standing by the end of it. So he’s not going to wake Robby up, that much is obvious.

From there, though, Jack's not entirely sure. For as well as he and Robby know each other, for as close as they've become over the years and especially in the last few, there are still moments where Jack doubts that he knows Robby at all. The roof earlier was one of them; this is another. He still has vague plans to go back to the hospital after a few hours of shut eye, and there would have been no question under normal circumstances, but the day they've had, and now Robby passed out in his living room, are all far, far removed from normal circumstances.

Well, when all else fails, assess the patient. What is going to do the most good for him, right now? Step one: let him sleep. Step two: a better blanket might be nice.

The one Robby has draped over him now is nice, soft, a housewarming gift from Jack's sister when he moved into this place, but it's too short even to fully cover her 5’4” frame. It is, again, not really a surprise that Robby hadn’t bothered to find anything better. For as much as Jack is feeling unmoored in this moment, there are some things he’s still sure about, and Robby not wanting to be any more of a burden than he already feels by rifling through Jack’s things for a better blanket is one thing he is certain on.

He sighs again and opens the lid of the trunk he uses as a coffee table and digs all the way to the bottom, pulling out the best quilt he has. As carefully as he can he tugs the smaller blanket off Robby and replaces it with the quilt, and he thinks he's not imagining that Robby seems to settle deeper into the couch after that. He resists the sudden urge to reach out and run a hand through Robby’s hair.

Focus.

Step three: a glass of water and a couple Advil, Robby's drug of choice, on the table for when he wakes up. Jack can already feel a headache pulsing at the edges of his brain, so he can only imagine Robby won't be faring any better once he’s awake, whenever that happens to be. While he's in the kitchen he shuts off the police scanner, which was still murmuring away on the counter, left on in his haste to grab his go bag and get out the door when he heard that first call come through.

After that, he’s once again at a crossroads, unsure of how to proceed. Robby will know either way that Jack was here – and clearly he had no qualms about Jack finding him or he wouldn’t have come over at all – but Jack can't decide whether Robby would prefer being able to leave the way he came, no questions asked, or whether he'd be comforted by not waking up alone. If Jack leaves again, there's still some level of plausible deniability; they can talk about it or not, and he'll follow Robby’s lead one way or another. If he stays, curls up on the armchair to sleep like he does more often than he’d care to admit, it might make Robby feel like he owes Jack something.

Selfish as it feels, going to his own bed and closing the door feels like the safest middle ground. Robby can do whatever he wants when he wakes up, and Jack will maybe get a few hours of sleep if he’s lucky. Given that decision, he texts Shen, might not be able to make it back later, text if you need me, call if you really need me. It was supposed to be his day off after all.

Naturally, what he gets back a minute later, is: 👍

With that settled, Jack takes a seat and removes his prosthesis. If he leaves that and his go bag within view of the couch, it’ll be a signal to Robby that he didn’t go back to the hospital, and Robby can do with that information what he will.

It’s still not even midnight by the time Jack collapses onto his bed post-shower. He’d normally be just hitting his stride on shift at this point, but the day is catching up to him now. Emotional exhaustion more than anything, but anyone who ever said that wasn’t as bad as physical exhaustion had probably never been through shit like they all had. Almost before he can finish that thought he’s drifting off, and only wakes hours later to the sun high in the sky and an insistent bird right outside his window.

He scrubs a hand down his face, then, first order of business, grabs his phone. A few emails, mostly junk he keeps deleting instead of unsubscribing from, a text from his sister that’s not directly about yesterday but he knows is definitely about yesterday, and nothing from Shen or anyone else at the Pitt, thank god.

He sits up and takes a few deep breaths in and out before grabbing his crutches to see what awaits him in the living room. He’s not sure what he’ll be more surprised by, but he definitely knows what he’d rather find.

As he opens his door, he’s greeted by the back of Robby’s head, sitting up on the couch and bowed over his phone.

“Thought you were heading back in,” Robby says, not looking up.

“Shen said they had enough hands on deck.” It's not a lie, Jack tells himself. He hasn’t heard anything since the thumbs up last night, so he can assume as much, at least.

“That kid's really something,” Robby says with a shake of his head.

“Learned from the best,” Jack replies. He thinks it gets a smile out of Robby, maybe, hopefully, but he can’t quite see all of Robby’s face. It might be more of a grimace. “Coffee?” It's a lame segue, as far as things go, but he's still standing in the doorway, unable to make a move, not sure what Robby wants or needs right now. If he makes his excuses and heads out, Jack will figure out a way to work with that. But what he's hoping for is–

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Jack nods, pushing himself off the door frame to head into the kitchen. He notes, as he passes the coffee table, that the Advil is gone along with most of the glass of water. It's something.

Robby follows him as Jack starts working on the coffee, taking a seat at the peninsula that divides the kitchen from the rest of the apartment.

“You still like it burned or have you gotten better taste since last time?” he teases, throwing a quick glance at Robby, who makes a face at him.

They don’t do this often, crashing at each others’ places. Jack honestly can’t remember when exactly that last time was. Maybe over a year, he thinks, a Pirates game with a rain delay that then went into extra innings. It’s not that they don’t hang out when their schedules allow for it, it’s just that there’s always been more of a distance in their relationship outside work, like somehow the halls (and roof) of PTMC allow for more vulnerability than the halls of their own homes.

“At this point I'll take whatever you give me and I'll like it,” Robby says, definitely with a grimace this time.

“That's the spirit,” Jack replies. He opens the fridge then to assess the situation, knowing it’s probably pretty bleak. He would have gone grocery shopping last night, but – “I've got eggs and toast. You want anything fancier, you're on your own.”

Robby shakes his head and might actually smile. “Real five star service, here.”

“Only the best for you, man.”

“Eggs and toast are fine,” Robby says. “Beggars and choosers, et cetera.”

“On it, boss,” Jack says, starting to pull things out of the fridge and cabinets. When he next looks over, Robby has folded his arms on the counter and has his head resting on them, and it’s only then that Jack realizes he’s still in his clothes from yesterday.

“Hey,” he starts softly, not wanting to spook Robby who turns his head to cast one eye at him, “why don’t you go shower and get changed. You can’t start a new day still wearing that shit.”

Robby lifts his head then, likely taking issue with Jack’s choice of descriptor for his scrubs and hoodie, but as he looks down at himself he seems to reconsider. “Yeah,” he says, gruff. “Okay, yeah.”

“Borrow anything you want,” Jack tells him. They’ve definitely never done that before, shared clothes, but a lot of things about the past 24 hours have been pretty unprecedented. There’s no roadmap here, for either of them, but they’ve always been good at improvising.

Robby salutes him as he makes his way to Jack’s room and the ensuite beyond, and Jack pulls out his phone again. He’ll wait until he hears the shower turn off to actually start cooking anything – nothing worse than lukewarm eggs.

Except without cooking to busy him, he ends up looking at facebook, which is entirely posts about Pittfest. He closes out after less than 30 seconds and instead opens some mindless game his therapist had recommended a few months ago. It was good, he had insisted, for Jack to have something mindless to do, with no expectations and no consequences. Jack had been skeptical at first, but he’s found himself opening it more and more often lately.

He manages to beat a couple levels before he hears the water shut off, and then manages to time it so that the toast is popping up just as Robby is emerging from the bedroom, wet hair dripping onto one of Jack’s ancient UVA shirts, a pair of basketball shorts slung low on his waist.

Of all the unexpected things that have happened since yesterday morning, the feeling that swoops through Jack’s chest at the sight of Robby freshly showered and wearing Jack’s own clothes is perhaps the most unexpected of all, and definitely the one he feels least equipped to deal with.

So instead he focuses on plating up breakfast while Robby rounds the island to grab mugs and pour the coffee Jack had all but forgotten about.

“All good?” Robby asks as he passes behind Jack to grab the half and half from the fridge.

“Yeah,” Jack says, rougher than he’d like, because he’s a professional at keeping his cool, goddammit, “could probably use a few more hours of sleep, though.”

“Amen, brother,” Robby says, and Jack gets the first true smile he’s seen from Robby since he walked in the ED last night, so whatever else, it’s worth that at least.

They settle on the stools at the peninsula, eating mostly in silence, until finally Robby speaks up.

“Thank you. For–” he gestures vaguely. “Just, thank you.”

It would be easy to play it off. Maybe another time he would have. But Jack knows what Robby's offering here: It's thank you for letting me stay on your couch, but it's also thank you for letting me stay in your life, and it's thank you for talking me down from the ledge, and it's thank you for staying, too.

Jack nods. “Any time.”

TWO

Robby’s off camping, somewhere up in the Alleghenies that he's been going to for years whenever he needs to get out of the city and out of his head. It's always made Jack antsy, the idea of Robby out there in the wilderness alone with no cell reception, so some years back he made him write out the exact coordinates of his favorite spot and gifted him a personal locator beacon. Robby had politely refrained from rolling his eyes – “I've been doing this since well before we were friends, Jack,” – and accepted the beacon mostly without complaint. Still, every time Robby announces that he's using any consecutive days off to get out in nature, Jack can't help but go on high alert.

Which is why it's both a relief and a new reason for his brain to switch into On mode when he gets home after his shift to once again find Robby on his couch.

He's awake and alert this time, which is a good sign, but Jack's still cautious in his approach.

“Thought you were fucking off to the mountains,” he says mildly as he tosses his bag into the entryway closet. His regular bag this time, not the go bag like last time he came home and found Robby at his place. There's not a huge difference between the two, the main one being that this one is plain black and wasn't issued to him by the US government. Sometimes he wonders why he even keeps that thing around; it's not like there's a wealth of happy memories associated with it. But it's not meant for happy times – it would feel wrong to subject another innocent bag to the job.

“Supposed to rain up that way on Saturday,” Robby says, only briefly removing the pen from his mouth and not even glancing up from the morning paper.

Jack leans over the back of the couch to find the paper open to the crossword puzzle, blank so far except for scrawlings beside some of the clues. “Pen? Really?”

That earns Jack a glance as he rounds the other end of the couch to sit and remove his prosthesis. “Couldn't find a pencil,” Robby mutters as he writes something in the margin of the puzzle. “How's the leg?”

“Oh, same old, same old,” Jack replies as he eases the prosthesis off and sets it to the side of the couch. No blood on it today, which means he can't complain, overall. “Just like the rest of me.” He settles into the couch, resting his head against the back and closing his eyes.

“Six letter word for ‘unofficial.’”

Jack hums. “Casual.” He doesn't open his eyes.

This is the second time in as many months that he's come home to Robby on his couch. He doesn't know what to make of that.

“It fit?”

“Still waiting to see.”

He waits, for another clue, any clue, but Robby is his usual forthcoming self. Jack sighs.

“I'm gonna shower,” he says after a few quiet minutes in which he's not sure whether Robby has written a single word. Just like him to wait until he's figured it all out to put anything down. “You need anything before I go? A pencil?”

He cracks open an eye to see a half smile from Robby. “I can fend for myself.”

“I know you can,” Jack says, heaving himself up and reaching for the crutches he keeps beside the couch. “But you don't have to.”

He comes back out half an hour later, showered and changed, to the crossword puzzle completed – all pen – and the smell of breakfast wafting from the kitchen. He grabs the paper and glances through the puzzle. No mistakes.

Robby is sitting at the peninsula, in the same spot he sat in last time – the spot Jack has been trying and failing not to think of as Robby's – scrolling his phone and looking less troubled than Jack has seen him in, well, he'll have to come back to that one, honestly.

“French toast?” Jack asks, nodding at Robby's plate as he heads for the coffee maker.

Robby shrugs, that little shrug he always does when he's proud of what he's done but doesn't want anyone else acknowledging it. “I’m imposing on your day off, might as well make it worth your while.”

“You're always worth my while.”

It comes out a little too quick, a little too honest, and Jack doesn't know quite how to feel about that. It's true, is the thing, but even though it's only happened twice, Jack has the sudden feeling that maybe it's starting to be true in a different way than it has been before, and that he wouldn't mind coming home to Robby every day of his life.

But it's no use muddling through those thoughts and feelings fresh off a shift with an empty stomach, so he shoves it down and works on a mug of coffee while Robby insists on making a fresh batch of french toast just for him.

And it's good, better than the shit Jack had turned out last time. He's not sure how Robby managed to pull it off considering what Jack knows he has in his kitchen – or, more accurately, what he doesn't have – but isn't it just like Robby to conjure something out of nothing like that.

“Okay,” Jack says some time later, pushing his empty plate away, “dishes are on me. But first–”

Robby gives him a skeptical look, like he knows he's not going to like what's coming next. Which, to be fair, he probably isn't.

“Hey, no, nothing crazy,” Jack says, holding up his hands in placation. “Just gotta answer one question for me.”

“Christ,” Robby mutters, scrubbing his hands across his face. “Okay, fine. Shoot.”

“Thank you,” Jack says, overly sweet. “Now tell me what the hell you're doing in my kitchen when you're supposed to be halfway up a mountain somewhere.”

Robby clears his throat and avoids Jack’s eyes. “I told you, supposed to rain all day Saturday.”

Jack levels him with a flat look. “Man, we both know that's bullshit. If it were just the rain you'd be back home, in your own bed, not slumming it on my mediocre couch.”

“You know you could get–”

“Oh we are so not having that conversation right now.”

“I'm just saying–”

“Mike.”

“Fine!” Robby concedes, and then is silent for a long moment before ducking his head and finally continuing, “It's… my neighbor.”

Jack just manages not to bark out a laugh “Mrs. Abraham?” he ventures. He's met the woman in passing a few times and knows her reputation as the busybody of the street all too well.

“She was trying to get me to help her with one of her projects the other day, something about going door to door with flyers. Told her I wished I could but I'd be out of town. If she saw my truck she'd know I'm around.”

Jack shakes his head and actually does laugh now. “She's in her eighties, man.”

“Oh, you've clearly never been on her bad side,” Robby mutters. “Or her good side.”

Jack gathers their dishes and starts moving everything to the sink. “You're the chief of emergency medicine making life and death decisions every day and you can’t handle an octogenarian?”

Robby huffs, glaring at Jack in a way that does nothing for his case. He looks like a petulant teenager and it’s far more endearing than it should be. “I can handle Mrs. Abraham,” he says, defiant. “What I don’t want is everyone else thinking I’m one of her lackeys and icing me out.”

“Icing you out of what?” Jack says with another laugh as he rinses the plates.

“You know Mr. Hanson? Two doors down from me?”

Jack gives Robby a baffled look. “Maybe? Man, I have a job. Patients. I don’t have time to follow all your neighborhood drama.”

“Back in the spring,” Robby continues, the same voice Jack knows he uses when he’s explaining a procedure to the med students, “Mrs. Abraham roped him into her crusade to get skateboarders banned from the street. He always brings cornbread muffins to the block parties and they’re always a hit, but last one, back in August, no one touched a single muffin.” Robby raises his eyebrows like Jack’s supposed to not only know what any of that means, but be adequately shocked by the reveal of it.

Instead Jack just shakes his head, tamping down another laugh. “How the hell do you even know that? I know for a fact you don’t even go to those block parties.”

Robby goes a little pink, running a hand across the back of his neck. “Nina mentioned it once when I ran into her walking Rufus.”

“Once again,” Jack says, nudging the dishwasher shut with his hip, “I marvel at how you find the time to get so deeply involved in this shit with the hours we keep.”

“The hours you keep, maybe,” Robby lobs back, then he shrugs. “What can I say? I just have one of those faces people want to tell things to. Makes me an excellent doctor. You should try it sometime.”

Jack narrows his eyes at Robby and before he can think twice throws the dishtowel he’s holding at him. Robby, damn his reflexes, catches it perfectly. “Just for that you’re cooking and cleaning for lunch,” Jack tells him, stern, as he makes his way into the living room.

“Cooking with what?” Robby asks, trailing after him, towel abandoned on the counter. And then, a beat later and more softly, “Lunch?”

“Well you’re sticking around, right?” Jack asks, flopping onto the couch and closing his eyes. “Can’t have Mrs. Abraham getting the wrong idea.” He opens one eye to see Robby hesitating at the other end of the couch. “Come on,” he says, lifting his left leg enough for Robby to sit, which he does, reluctantly. Jack settles his leg back down.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping? I don’t want to interrupt your routine.”

“Is that not what I’m doing here?” Jack drawls, shutting his eye again to prove his point. “I’ve slept worse places than my own couch.”

“Still,” Robby says, “you just got off shift. Your bed is right there.”

Jack cracks open an eye once more and quirks his lips, too tired to stop what comes out of his mouth next. “You tryin’ to get me into bed, Robinavitch?”

It’s worth it to see Robby’s face go fully red as he fumbles for the newspaper. “Just saying,” Robby mutters.

“Sure you were,” Jack replies, closing his eyes again but still smirking, willing his brain to think about anything other than just how far down Robby’s blush goes.

“You were right, by the way,” Robby says a few moments later, just as Jack is drifting off.

Jack hums. “Usually am,” he says, only preening a little. “What about this time?”

Robby ruffles the paper. “Casual,” he says. “It fit.”

“Ah,” Jack says, swallowing around nothing. “Glad to be of assistance. But I’m sure you would’ve gotten there on your own eventually.”

Robby nods slowly, something flitting across his face before he says, “Yeah. Maybe. Nice to have the help, though.”

Jack turns that over in his mind as he falls asleep; his foot is in Robby’s lap and he’s starting to think that if he’s not careful, his heart may end up in Robby’s hands.

THREE

It's rare for Jack to work a day shift anymore. He used to be a day shifter – was, up until just a few years ago, him and Robby working side by side before Robby was made Chief in the wake of Adamson. It had been Robby's idea, him moving to night, and Jack had been resistant at first, not to the hours but to leaving Robby alone. But Robby had insisted that he needed someone he could trust watching over the night shifts, and there was no one he trusted more than Jack. He might not have done it for anyone else, but there's very little he wouldn't do for Robby.

And he's come to love it, now. There's a different sort of camaraderie on nights, not just with the hospital staff but with everyone across the city who works odd hours – the guy at the corner store a block away from PTMC where he stops sometimes when he needs to escape for long enough to buy coffee that’s slightly less shitty than what they have in the staff lounge; the bus driver on the route he takes home sometimes when his leg needs a break after a long shift who always makes sure there's a seat right up front open for him; the woman down the hall from him whose job he doesn't even know but who always gives him a nod and a smile whenever they leave the building at the same time, heading in opposite directions, and he thinks each time that he should find out someday what she does, but also likes the mystery.

Still, he picks up the odd day shift here and there, and it's nice, getting hours with Dana and the rest of the nurses and other staff he used to be close with, and getting to work more closely with more of the new kids who seem to get smarter and sharper with every passing year.

It’s not a bad gig, all in all, but it does always screw up his sleep schedule more than he’d like. He’s looking forward to knocking back a quick dinner then passing out and sleeping through the festivities so that he can wake up at some godforsaken hour to more or less get himself back on track for his usual shift, even though he has a couple days off after this.

He’s looking forward to it, that is, until he opens the door to his apartment to find Robby’s shoes next to the door and his bag next to the living room chair and the man himself rooting around Jack’s fridge.

He lets the door close a little more loudly than usual so Robby will hear it over the speaker he apparently bought that’s playing out some old song, one of those 50s crooners Jack has never been able to tell apart. Robby looks up at the sound and breaks into a smile, and a traitorous little voice in the back of Jack’s head whispers about how nice it would be for this to be a regular occurrence.

“Hey,” Robby says easily, closing the fridge door and crossing to the counter to lean against it. “How was the shift?”

Jack tosses his bag into the front closet and shrugs off his coat, hanging it up beside Robby’s, which he elects to not think too hard about.

“Oh, the winter usual,” he says, dropping onto the couch. “Slips and trips and people who think ice skating is like riding a bike. They need to start putting up signs on the rinks: ‘You’re gonna be worse at this than you think.’”

Robby laughs, genuine, his eyes crinkling in that way Jack loves. “You know some people are optimists,” Robby tells him, smile still lingering on his face.

“And some people end up in the emergency room on New Year’s Eve,” Jack replies.

Robby shakes his head and goes back to the fridge as Jack makes his way to the peninsula and takes up his spot on his stool. He’s never had a spot in his own apartment before, not until that morning back in September after Robby first crashed here. It’s one of the things he misses about being married, the designation of things – a side of the bed, a seat on the couch, a hanger for his coat. Maybe it was the Army that had instilled in him a desire for regimentation, maybe he would have turned out this way anyway, but whatever it is, it had taken him a long time to get used to the idea that he could sleep anywhere on the bed he wanted after Leslie.

And with how easily he’s slipped back into the mindset of having a shared home after just a handful of meals with Robby, he’s starting to wonder if he ever got used to it at all. Probably something for his therapist to dig into, if Jack ever gets around to bringing up Robby and whatever it is they’ve been doing these past few months. Which is mainly eating, so maybe there’s nothing to really tell.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Jack asks as he settles on the stool. “And good luck finding anything in there.” Just as he says it though, Robby starts pulling things out of the fridge and setting them on the counter. Jack frowns at his back. “What are you, some kind of kitchen-centric Mary Poppins? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have salmon filets hiding behind the one bottle of beer in there and I sure as shit didn’t have fucking dill.”

“Oh, I knew what I was getting into,” Robby says, annoyingly charming. It’s amazing he ever has patients that don’t go along with every word he says. “Stopped by the store on my way over, stocked up on some supplies. Including more beer.” To his point, Robby grabs a bottle and crosses the kitchen to set it firmly in front of Jack with a look that brooks no argument.

“Supplies,” Jack repeats, flat. But he does grab the beer, twisting off the cap as he asks, “Supplies for what exactly?” Although that’s becoming more and more clear as Robby continues to unpack the groceries.

Robby doesn’t look at him, and instead starts grabbing bowls and pans from the cabinets, and when the hell did he find the time to get so familiar with Jack’s kitchen storage system? “Thought you might want some company tonight,” Robby replies, eyeing up two sheet pans Jack is pretty sure haven’t seen the light of day in at least a couple years. “But I can get out of your hair if you'd rather ride it out alone.”

Jack shakes his head. “Man, you know I don't actually hate New Year's, right? I just let them all think I do.”

“I know,” Robby says, turning toward him with a glint in his eye. “I believe your exact words were, ‘the more secular the holiday, the drunker the idiots.’”

Jack raises his bottle in mock salute. “And I stand by that.”

Robby ducks his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Lucky the Steelers haven't made it to the Super Bowl since you've been here.”

“Long may that illustrious record last,” Jack says, taking a long drag of the beer. He’s quiet for a moment and then decides, fuck it, Robby has been more open with him the last few months, he might as well return the favor. “I don’t love it, though.” Robby gives him a questioning look so he continues: “The fireworks. It was harder the first few years after I was back, but it’s been almost twenty years now. I know what to expect. And the holidays, I know they’re coming. I can prepare myself, request nights off if I feel like I need it, whatever. It’s when people set ‘em off any other time that I get a little jumpy. But I’ve worked on it in therapy, and it’s fine.” He shrugs and takes another swig of beer.

Robby is watching him, a look on his face that’s considerate and gentle and something else Jack can’t quite name but it makes his skin itch. He shrugs in return, then says, too casually, “Okay, fine. Maybe I wanted the company.”

Jack stills slightly at the confession, staring down the neck of the bottle while he rolls it around in his brain.

Neither of them have ever been great at making friends. He thinks it’s part of why they work so well together; they have the same kind of single minded focus that makes it easy for them to move in tandem, and makes it hard for anyone else to find a way inside. It’s more than that, though. Growing up, Jack had always felt a step behind his peers. Not academically – he was fine there, if not a standout – but socially, it was like he was always missing out on something everyone else knew. Even when he played the same sports and watched the same shows and movies, he still somehow felt out of the loop, like the rest of them were in on some joke he missed. The Army was a little better, but only because Afghanistan was a complete shit show, and no one knew what was going on anymore than anyone else, even the guys at the top of the food chain.

It wasn’t until Leslie that he felt like he was totally in tune with someone; for all the ways they were different, when it came down to it they wanted the same things out of life. Namely, to be together. Jack didn’t think he’d ever find that again once she was gone, had pretty much resigned himself to it, but somehow Robby snuck up on him and found a way in, even when Jack was still so closed off in the early days. Classic Robinavitch, really. Robby has always seemed to try a little harder than Jack has at reaching out, making connections. Jack hasn't been with anyone since Leslie, while Robby was with Janey when Jack first met him, until he wasn’t, then, briefly, Charlotte, and then –

“What about Heather?”

Robby shrugs, that scrunched up shrug he does that makes him look so much younger than he is, that makes Jack feel like he's getting a glimpse of the boy he often finds himself wishing he knew. “What about her?”

“Seemed like you two were getting closer again for a bit there. Wasn't sure if maybe…” He trails off, not sure how to ask in a way that doesn't betray the sense of dread settling in his stomach at the thought. Collins is great. She's a phenomenal doctor and a good person and her and Robby's relationship may have been a mess but they’ve both come a long way in the past few years. It wouldn’t be a total shock, and Jack would definitely be fine if they got back together. Because she's great.

Still, Jack can't quite parse everything that passes over Robby's face before he says, “No. Definitely not.”

Jack nods, trying to keep his breathing even as that feeling in his stomach settles. “Okay.”

Robby decides on a baking sheet, which he sets down on the stove. “She told me something, a few months ago,” he starts, pulling a knife from the drawer and slicing open the package of salmon.

Jack takes another sip of his beer, sets it on the counter, crosses his arms to lean forward a little. “Yeah?”

“Just, put some things about our relationship into a new context.” Robby wipes his hands on the towel he has draped over his shoulder and Jack swallows down the unbidden thought of how attractive it is with the last of his beer.

“Good things, I assume?” He slips off the stool and eases past Robby to grab another beer from the fridge. “You want?”

“Still working on this one,” Robby says, pointing at the bottle he apparently opened before Jack got home. It's gotta be warm and more than halfway to flat by now, but Jack knows Robby doesn't give a shit about that, not really. It's about the vibes with him, as Shen would say.

Robby waits until Jack is back on the stool before answering the first question. “Not sure I'd call it good, exactly. Actually,” he says, bracing his hands on the counter and looking out the window, “I’d say it fucking sucked. More for her than me. But I took a lot of the blame for how things ended and even though it sucked, it helped a little with that.” He turns and looks at Jack. “Is that selfish?”

“Dunno,” Jack replies with a shrug, “hard to say without the full context. But probably.”

Robby shakes his head with a laugh. “Thanks, man, very helpful.” He grabs a lemon and a cutting board and starts slicing it and arranging the slices atop the pieces of salmon.

“But,” Jack continues, leaning forward again, “that doesn't mean it's bad. We're all selfish sometimes, we gotta be or we'd never make it out alive. Whatever it is she told you, whatever weight it lifted for you, I'm sure it did the same for her. But for the weight to fully lift, you gotta let go of the string.”

Robby pauses and takes a deep breath, then looks over at Jack. “Fuck, man. That therapist of yours still taking new clients?

Jack grins. “Not sure he can treat both of us, but I might be able to swing a referral.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Robby says, toasting his bottle to Jack and finally finishing it off. He gets to work on the dill and asparagus, arranging it on parchment paper along with the filets.

Jack watches Robby while he works, the flex of his arms as he chops the potatoes, the shape of his mouth as he concentrates on folding the parchment paper around the food.

He's been watching Robby for years.

After finishing the worst of his physical therapy and being cleared to work on his feet again, the VA had found Jack a position at their walk-in clinic. It was no emergency room, and certainly no battlefield, but he worked regular hours, 5 days a week, meaning he could tag along with Leslie on whatever adventure she had going on on any given weekend. He had no qualms about hanging around in cabins or tents or lodges while she and her friends biked and hiked and skied; a good book and a cold beer or hot drink, season depending, was all he needed.

After, every inch of Charlottesville reminded him of her. A few months after the dust settled, he contacted everyone from med school and the Army he was still able to get in touch with to see if anyone knew of any hospital openings, location no issue and, if anything, the farther the better. In the end he heard back from Johnson about a family medicine position about an hour outside LA and from Lewis about an ED spot in Pittsburgh. He was enticed by the distance of California, but after a conversation with Adamson, Jack knew it was the place for him.

Within two weeks of the interview he had packed up the house he once thought he’d be living in with his wife for the rest of his life and relocated to a one bedroom apartment – one that was supposed to be temporary until he found something a little less utilitarian but here he still is, ten plus years later – in Pittsburgh, a city he had never set foot in before agreeing to take the job.

He still remembers that feeling on the first day, that strange sense of comfort walking into the chaos that hasn’t stopped in the decade-plus since. He remembers meeting Dana, already old hat at the nurse’s station, though he knew right away he’d never hear the end of it if he said that to her; Princess, fresh out of nursing school and looking relieved that with Jack’s arrival she was no longer the freshest meat on the floor; a whole host of students at various stages of med school and residency, most of whom he can still recall the names and faces of now, and some long forgotten who were gone after only a few months in the endless churn of a teaching hospital.

And he remembers the look in Adamson’s eyes when Jack spotted Robby for the first time, crouched in front of a kid no more than six with a broken arm, laughing even as tears still streamed down her face at something Robby was saying.

“Watch him,” Adamson had said, so Jack did – the way Robby could calm even the most hysterical of patients; the way he was stern with a lesson and quick with a joke; the way he never seemed to let the worst of the days get to him.

For all they’ve changed over the years, Jack never really stopped watching Robby. He's only just coming to realize it's been in a different way recently.

“What about you?”

Jack is startled out of his reverie by Robby’s question and the sound of the oven door closing. “What about me?” he asks with a shake of his head.

Robby hunches a little, always trying so hard to shrink himself down when he wants to pretend like what he's saying is no big deal. “No one else you'd rather be spending New Year's with?”

Jack blinks at him. “You're in my kitchen.”

Robby looks around, nodding. “Thanks for the hint.”

It's a hard fought thing for Jack not to roll his eyes. “I mean, why the hell would you have broken into my home while I was at work if you honestly thought I'd rather be with someone else tonight?”

“Not exactly breaking in if I have a key,” Robby says, shit-eating twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, fuck off,” Jack says good-naturedly. “Really, though.”

“I told you,” Robby says, “just wanted some company.”

Jack narrows his eyes, because – “Did you schedule me on a day shift just so you could surprise me with dinner? What the hell, man?”

Robby’s ears go slightly pink and he does that shrug again, the one that's getting harder and harder for Jack to deny makes him want to grab Robby's face and kiss him.

“Perks of being the guy in charge.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack says, and he can hear the slightly dangerous tilt to his voice. “Any other perks?”

Robby looks at him, then goes to the fridge and grabs another beer, popping to cap off and taking a long drink. “Guess you'll just have to wait and see.”

A loud blare from Robby’s phone cuts through the heavy moment. “Shit,” Robby bites out, and he grabs it from the counter and swipes open the call without even looking at it. He gives Jack an apologetic look just as a shrill voice starts up from the other end of the line, then heads through the living room and out into the hall to take it.

Once the door thuds closed behind him, Jack takes a moment to breathe in deep and let it out slow, once, twice, and a third time just for good measure.

“Fuck,” he says to the empty kitchen.

Whatever he’s been feeling these past few months, he’s pretty much resigned himself to the fact that it’s one sided. Now, after that, he’s not so sure. He tries to think it over, what it means for him, for Robby, for them, but all his brain can focus on is the look on Robby’s face as he drank his beer, making direct eye contact like he knew Jack was watching the bob of his throat. Like he wanted Jack to be watching.

“Fuck,” Jack says again.

He contemplates feigning a sudden onslaught of tiredness, maybe even a headache or low grade fever, something that’ll get Robby to leave without making him worried, because Jack’s suddenly not sure he can get through this evening with his sanity intact. Just as he’s running through the options, weighing their effectiveness, the door clicks back open and Robby comes in, looking like he’s the one who might have to call it a night now.

“Everything okay?” Jack asks carefully.

“Sorry,” Robby says, making his way back toward the kitchen. “My aunt. The nursing home doesn’t usually let her have a phone but somehow she got her hands on one and one of the only numbers she remembers anymore is mine.”

Jack nods. “How’s she doing these days?”

Robby shifts his head. “Dementia,” he says. “We all know how that goes. I let Isaac know, he’s gonna check in on her tomorrow and I’ll try to get out there sometime in the next month or so.”

“Let me know if you want some company,” Jack offers. He knows Robby makes the drive out to Philly as often as he can, but also knows he doesn’t like doing it alone.

Robby contemplates him for a second, opens his mouth to say something only to be cut off by the oven timer. “Dinner,” he says instead.

“You sure you don’t need to take care of anything?” Jack finishes off the second beer and shoves the empty bottle away from himself.

“No,” Robby says, unwrapping the parchment paper and moving the contents of the packets to plates. “I cooked this, and we’re eating it.”

Jack smiles, small and private, but he thinks Robby catches it anyway. “Okay.”

“You want another?” Robby asks, nodding his head at Jack’s empty.

“Dunno,” Jack says lightly, “isn’t white wine the traditional pairing for salmon?”

Robby barks out a laugh. “They teach you that in the army?”

“You’re lucky I know better than to start throwing bottles,” Jack warns, but with that, all the tension lifts out of the room, and it’s back to just them and the ease they always have around one another.

Dinner is good, better than anything Jack has eaten on his own in weeks, and cleanup is a chore, which is why he usually doesn’t bother with cooking. But it’s better with the two of them and it shouldn’t surprise Jack as much as it does that they work as well together cleaning up in the kitchen as they do in a trauma room; it should surprise him more than it does how right it feels to be working next to Robby at home.

After, they settle in the living room and flip through the various stations airing live-from-wherever New Year’s specials, and in the end opt instead for some shitty sci-fi movie on low in the background while they catch up on the day. It’s only when there’s about 10 minutes left before midnight that they switch back to the ball drop.

Jack can’t remember the last time he was up for New Year’s of his own choice. Leslie had always been an early riser – most of the outdoors-y stuff she loved was best done in the morning before the sun got too high in the sky, and Jack was adaptable to her schedule. If anything, he reveled in her consistent routine after the years of operating at all hours of the day and night out in the field. But it meant she rarely chose to stay up to midnight, preferring to get up with the sun and go for an inaugural New Year's run or bike ride. So Jack would go to sleep early, too, then get up and source breakfast when she left to have it waiting when she returned.

He misses that, sometimes, doing something for someone not out of obligation, but because he wants to – to make them smile, to make their life a little easier, just because he can. He does it for his patients whenever he can, sure, and for his staff as far as he’s able, but he misses having his one person to do that for.

He realizes Robby has been doing that for him.

So when Robby turns to him, just as the countdown is starting, and asks if he has any resolutions for the new year, all Jack can think to say is, “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

FOUR

didn't know you were seeing someone

Jack's about to type out something, anything, when Lena calls over, “Cyclist versus mail truck, two minutes out!”

“Christ,” he mutters. There's just over an hour left in his shift, and between the incoming cyclist and a woman in North 4 who swears she hasn’t taken anything that could be causing her symptoms and won’t come clean with it so they can actually properly treat her no matter how many times they tell her it’s completely confidential, he doesn’t even remotely have the time to try to decipher that message.

He sends back a ? before logging out of the station to get the run down from the paramedics.

It’s well over an hour and one fight with Walsh later that he’s finally able to check his phone again. What he finds waiting is a single message, nvm – which would be indecipherable to him if he weren't used to Shen who has possibly never typed out a full word in his life – plus a picture of Robby looking sheepish with a thumbs up and a mug of coffee, the mug that Jack has come to think of as Robby's, which he will never, ever admit to anyone.

There's also a text from Robby himself, unsurprisingly more formal than Jo’s: Sorry about this. I'll get out of here once she's done grilling me.

Jack groans at that, can only imagine the third degree Robby is getting from his sister, but has just enough time to type out, almost done here. stay, then, if you want, before he's once again called away, this time to do handoff to the incoming day shift. It’s never as fun when he’s handing off to Preston instead of Robby, but she’s efficient and has a better memory than anyone Jack has ever met, so he knows no matter how distracted he might be, she’ll always be able to parse out the actually useful information amid his rambling.

Jo wasn't supposed to get to his place until well after he'd had a chance to get home and shower and shake off some of the hospital feeling before switching into brother mode, but leave it to her to show up out of nowhere, hours early, and on the first day Robby has decided to crash on his couch again since New Year’s.

And it’s not like Jo’s not aware of who Robby is, and Jack’s sure he’s talked about Jo here and there with Robby, but with one thing and another, and busy lives – well, it’s a hell of a first meeting for the two of them.

Then again, for as close as he and Robby are, they’ve never had much of a meeting-the-family kind of relationship. Robby’s an only child whose parents were mostly absent during his childhood, while Jack’s parents refuse to leave a 30 mile radius of where they were born and raised. And Jo only moved back stateside a few years ago. It might as well go this way.

Jack has been thinking about that a lot the past few months, since Robby started showing up at his place after Pittfest, since they started circling each other in this new way. He turns it over in his head again as he finally closes out his shift and starts his walk home. Now that Jo is apparently already at his place and making herself at home, he feels less of need to rush, so he forgoes the bus for the scenic route on foot.

The thing is, for as well as he and Robby do know each other, for all the ways they clicked into place with one another within days of meeting, Jack still sometimes feels like he barely knows Robby at all. He knows him as a doctor, sure, but outside of the hospital? He’s been getting these little glimpses the past few months – his cooking and crossword skills – and for all it’s left him feeling slightly unsteady, what takes the greater share is the feeling that he wants more, as much as Robby will give him. He wants the shitty breakfasts and the surprisingly good dinners and the odd hours on days where they’re only ships in the night and he wants everything in between. He just has no idea if Robby feels the same.

He’s still stewing on it as he gets off the elevator on his floor and makes his way to his apartment. He considers knocking but then thinks, fuck it, it’s his place and serves Jo right if she gets startled by him.

“How the hell’d you get here at six in the fucking morning?” he says as he opens the door to find her and Robby on the couch, Jo with her feet tucked up and Robby perched on the edge like he’s about half a second away from making a run for it.

Jo, of course, doesn’t flinch and doesn’t miss a beat. “Good to see you, too. I’m great, thanks for asking.”

“Yeah, clearly,” Jack says, stowing his bag and coat. “Have you slept at all?”

“Ah, you know me,” Jo says with a wave of her hand, and well, Jack does.

“So you drove all night?” he asks, sitting in the chair to remove his prosthesis.

“Less traffic and I had an audiobook to finish.” She says it like she says everything, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and there could not possibly be room for argument.

“You can finish a book any time of day.” He leans back in the chair and glances at Robby, who is looking both more relaxed now and lightly bemused by the exchange.

“Thriller, though,” she says, once again like that explains anything, and Jack’s face must betray how unimpressed he is with that explanation because she adds, “so much more fun to listen to a thriller at night.”

“If you say so,” Jack replies.

“I do,” Jo says, and that, naturally, is that. “Anyway, now that you’re here I’m gonna shower, there’s a bagel from Pigeon for you on the counter, apologies again to Robby for not bringing extra,” and with that she grabs her duffel bag and heads into Jack’s room.

“Don’t use all the hot water,” Jack yells after her.

“It’s an apartment!” she yells back, just before the bathroom door closes and the water turns on.

“Habit,” Jack says to Robby, who still looks a little shellshocked. “She was notorious for her long showers when she was a kid.”

“Right,” Robby says, nodding. Then, “Is she, uh… Is she always…” He waves his hand around vaguely, looking helpless.

Jack can’t help but laugh at him, the guy who usually knows just what to say, trying to be delicate, and it’s cute, seeing him flounder a bit. “A tornado?” he suggests.

Robby breathes out a laugh and hunches his shoulders. “I wasn’t gonna say it, but…”

“You can say it to her face, she won’t care. She knows it,” Jack tells him. “Our parents used to joke, you know they wanted a second kid earlier but it never happened, and then along came Jo when they had given up, way later than they ever planned, so they used to say she was always on the move making up for lost time.”

A soft look crosses Robby’s face. “I like that.”

Jack smiles, then grabs his crutches and pushes himself out of the chair. He grabs the paper bag from Pigeon on the counter then settles on the couch next to Robby.

“You want half?” he asks, unwrapping the paper to find an everything with herb schmear.

“Oh,” Robby says, sounding surprised at the offer. “If you don’t mind.”

“Would I offer if I minded?” Jack teases, holding out the still paper wrapped half to Robby.

Robby gives him a wry smile but takes the bagel. “Thanks. I think there’s still coffee if you want some.”

Jack waves his hand. “Nah, I should try to get some sleep. Might be able to manage an hour or two if she slows down long enough to let me.”

Robby chuckles around a mouthful of bagel. “Good luck with that.”

They finish eating in welcome silence, the shower still going strong even as Robby insists on cleaning up so that Jack doesn’t have to get up again.

“Guess I’ll get out of your hair now,” Robby says, shoving the wrapper from the bagel into the bag and crumping it into a ball. “Don’t need me encroaching on your plans.”

“What plans?” Jack says, easy. “I’m gonna hopefully sleep, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll convince her to get in a few hours, too, then we’ll eat a weird timed meal somewhere between lunch and dinner and wander around whatever neighborhood we end up in and she’ll probably convince me to get some overpriced dessert somewhere.”

Robby smiles, that same soft look crossing his face again.

“What?” Jack asks, settling back against the couch and giving Robby a look in return.

Instead of answering, Robby stands, stretches – and Jack definitely doesn’t watch the way his shirt rides up and exposes a sliver of skin – then grabs the balled up bag and the mugs and brings them to the kitchen. “What what?” he says from the sink.

Jack rolls his eyes, knowing Robby can’t see it. “Just, that look on your face.”

“No look,” Robby says, but Jack’s pretty sure if he were closer he’d be able to see Robby’s ears going pink. “But it’s nice seeing you with Jo. It’s a different side of you.”

“I guess,” Jack concedes, shifting more deeply into the couch.

“That reminds me,” Robby starts, coming back in from the kitchen. “Your letter. The day of Pittfest,” he clarifies, but Jack frowns at him, lost. “The vet you worked on, Raymond.”

Jack tries not to flinch, but he's sure Robby catches it; it's not that he forgot about Ray, but in the chaos he returned to, and the concern over Robby himself, he never followed up.

“What about him?” Jack asks, sitting up straight now and working overtime to keep his breath and voice even, suddenly thrown back into those last few hours of the shift and the horrible quiet after.

“I never told you,” Robby says, careful, cautious. “His sister came in. To ID him. I gave her your letter… She asked me to read it to her.”

Jack swallows, breathes deep, in and out, then swallows again. He hasn’t had another case since – the obvious incident aside – that’s affected him quite as much as Raymond did. And still, he never thought to follow up with Robby about him. He grits his teeth and braces his hands against his thighs, closing his eyes.

“Hey,” Robby says gently, “don’t go there. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“Like you know the fuck what I’m doing,” Jack tosses out, bitter.

“You’re blaming yourself for never following up,” says Robby, soft, because of course he does know what Jack’s doing – it’s the same thing Robby would do if their roles were reversed.

“Why’d you even bring him up now, anyway?” Jack bites out, harsher than he intends. “It’s been months.”

Robby shrinks a little, and Jack immediately softens. “Seeing you with your sister made me think of it. Sorry.”

“No,” Jack cuts in quickly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped.”

“We all have patients that hit close to home,” Robby says, placating. “You’re allowed to feel something about it.”

Jack doesn’t roll his eyes, but only just. “Fuck off with that, man, I’m not one of your students. I should know how to handle my shit better than that.”

“It’s fine,” Robby assures him. “I just wanted you to know.”

Jack nods, the rest of him still tense. “I appreciate that.”

There’s a beat of silence, an awkwardness that’s unusual for them hanging in the air, until the sound of the shower shutting off startles both of them out of the moment. Jack relaxes back against the couch and Robby lets out a slow breath.

“I really should go,” Robby says then. “Got some errands to run.” He grabs his bag from next to the chair and it’s only then that Jack realizes his scrub top is draped over it.

“Were you here all night?” he asks before he can think better of it.

Robby shrinks in on himself, looking like a deer in headlights. “I, uh…”

Jack just shakes his head. “At least tell me you slept on the bed and not out here.”

Somehow, Robby hunches even further in, his shoulders nearly at his ears. God, Jack’s therapist would have a field day with him. “Wasn’t sure,” Robby says, and if Jack didn’t know him better he’d almost say Robby was embarrassed.

“Man, if you’re gonna keep doing this – which is fine, by the way – at least promise you’ll take the bed next time.” Jack levels him with his best stern look, the one he breaks out when he most needs a patient to relent and let him do his job.

A whole host of emotions Jack can’t fully parse flits across Robby’s face before he finally gives in and says, “Okay. Deal.”

“Good,” Jack says, shifting his legs up onto the couch. “And don’t think I’m letting you off the hook for later. She’ll never forgive me if you don’t show.”

“Okay,” Robby says again, ducking his head with a smile. “Text me where and when and I’ll be there.”

Once he’s out the door, Jack, hypocrite that he is, gets in his few hours of sleep on the couch. He would have slept there anyway, always planning to let Jo take the bed, but if he also lets himself believe there’s traces of Robby’s scent lingering on the cushions and pillows, well, that’s between him and no one.

Jo insists on a diner for their, as promised, weirdly timed in between meal in the late afternoon.

“Still don’t get your obsession with diners,” Jack says as they get out of the car, a truck rumbling by on one of the bridges overhead.

“Didn’t you miss ‘em when you were overseas?” she asks. “Nowhere does a sandwich like a diner in America.”

“I missed all food,” Jack grouses. “Pretty big difference between Paris and an MRE.”

She gives him a long-suffering look as she walks through the door he holds open for her, spotting Robby already squinting at a menu at a table near the back.

“I hope this isn’t too weird of a time for you,” Jo says to him as she and Jack slide into the bright orange booth opposite him.

“Oh, our line of work, you learn to take your meals where you can get them,” Robby tells her from behind the menu.

“Here,” Jack says, holding out the reading glasses he’d shoved in his pocket before leaving. “You left ‘em on the table.” He has to glance away from the grateful look on Robby’s face.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Robby says, grabbing the glasses and moving the menu a more reasonable distance from his face.

“So they tell me.”

“Is he always like this?” Jo asks, as if Jack isn’t right next to her.

“Always,” Robby says, teasing.

“Never should have let you two meet,” Jack grumbles.

To prove his point, Robby and Jo have no response but to laugh at him.

“So,” Robby says later, once they’ve ordered, “I don’t think you said earlier, what brings you to town, Jo?”

“My college roommate is getting married up in Detroit,” Jo says. “And before you say it, no I don’t know why the hell she decided to get married outdoors in Michigan in February.”

Robby laughs, his eyes crinkling. “Sounds like a recipe for an ER visit to me,” he says.

“Well if you’re anything like him,” she says, nodding her head towards Jack, “everything sounds like an ER visit to you.”

“Just sitting here,” Jack says, “minding my own business.”

“When have you ever minded your own business?”

“Sorry for keeping you alive as a child.”

“I think that was mostly mom and dad, actually.”

“Sure, the ten percent of the time they weren’t in the shop.”

Jo swats him on the arm. “Be nice. Fifteen.”

Robby watches the exchange with an amused tilt to his mouth, his eyes crinkling. “I see why you and Walsh are the way you are now,” he says.

“Walsh?” Jo asks, eyebrows rising.

“No one,” Robby says, just as Jack tells her, “Night shift surgeon.”

It’s Jo’s turn to laugh then. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Oh, there’s a story alright” Jack says, relishing in finally getting a chance to get back at Robby. “They fucking hate each other.” Jo looks delighted; Robby looks like he’s contemplating scheduling Jack on the day shift for the next month.

“We have professional differences that sometimes lead to disagreements,” Robby says in his best bullshit tone. “But we’re colleagues who have to work together, and we’re both able to put aside any personal feelings to get the work done.”

Jack snorts. “Wish I caught that on tape, she’d lose her shit hearing that.”

“I’ll see if Don has any security footage we can use,” Robby says, dry.

Jack grins at him, and the rest of the meal passes in easy conversation. And try as he might, Jack can’t help his mind from wandering to images of this, all the time: him and Robby with guests at Robby’s place, better for entertaining than Jack’s apartment; the two of them down in Cape Charles, in Jack’s childhood kitchen, helping his mom with dinner; anywhere he can think of, it feels right that they’re together.

“I like him,” Jo says later, once Robby has made his excuses and gone home and she and Jack are back on his couch with a Pens game on and a giant bowl of popcorn between them. “He seems good for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack says, trying not to betray anything. “And what do you know about that?”

She tosses a piece of popcorn at him, hitting him square on the forehead with the kind of aim only a younger sister could have, even at nearly forty. “I’m being serious here.”

“Yeah, throwing food at me really helps sell the gravity of the situation.”

“Keep it up and I’m not sharing anymore.”

Jack holds up his hands in defeat and Jo passes him the bowl. He takes a handful and shoves it in his mouth. “You were saying?” he prompts around a mouthful of popcorn.

Jo rolls her eyes but smiles in that way that reminds Jack of Grandma Lynn, who Jo barely knew but looks more and more like with every passing day. “I just think that the times I’ve seen you happiest were when you were seventeen and you hit that home run in the playoffs,” she says, putting up a finger, “when you graduated from med school,” – another finger – “when you brought Leslie home for the first time, and today at dinner.”

“Not my fault you weren’t born yet when I learned how to ride a bike. That was a pretty big one,” Jack says, because he may be fifty now, god help him, but first and foremost he is an older brother.

But if anyone isn’t gonna let him get away with that shit, it’s Jo.

“Jack.”

He instantly deflates. “Yeah. Okay.”

“So?”

“What’s there to say?” he says with a shrug.

Jo sighs and gives him a long-suffering look like she’s the one with a decade on him and not the other way around. “You gonna do anything about it?”

Jack looks away, pretending to be engrossed by an ad for air fresheners. Jo pokes at him with her toes, a classic move of hers. “What we have now, it's good. No need to complicate it.”

“But it could be better.” She waggles her eyebrows at him and Jack shakes his head.

“See this right here is why you went to grad school in France and I joined the army.”

Jo laughs, and for one fleeting second Jack is a kid again, sitting on the couch with his mom, watching her watch an episode of Cheers; he never understood the jokes back then, but he liked seeing her happy.

“Well for what it’s worth, I think you two would be great together.”

Jack chews on his lip for a moment, then takes a deep breath. “You didn’t…” he starts, then trails off, hating himself a little for even wanting to ask this, but it’s been at the back of his mind all day, and he needs to know. “When you texted this morning, about not knowing I was seeing someone…”

Jo raises her eyebrows at him and nods, but he’s struggling to find the words. “What about it?” she prompts.

“You weren’t…” he tries again, then scrubs a hand down his face. “I mean, you just assumed I was seeing him.”

She looks even more lost, and god, he’s really fucking this up. “Yes?”

Jack takes a deep breath and then, as he lets it out, says, “Even though he’s a man?”

“Ah,” Jo says, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing!” Jo says quickly. “Honest.” She puts a hand over her heart but still Jack narrows his eyes at her. “Okay, look,” she continues, “yeah, you’ve never mentioned anything about men before, but to be fair you’ve also never mentioned anything about any other women since Leslie, either.”

Jack purses his lips but concedes the point. “Fair enough.” He actually focuses on the game for a minute, but still feels Jo’s eyes on him. “What?”

Jo shrugs. “Even if he doesn’t feel the same, I’m glad you have him.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, “me too.”

FIVE

Worry lances through Jack as he opens the door to see Robby's backpack by the door but no sign of Robby himself in the living room or kitchen, the places Jack has become accustomed to finding him. He takes a moment to center himself – Robby is probably just in the bathroom, or else ducked out to do something about the sad state of the fridge, or got antsy waiting for Jack and decided to go for a walk or a run. And Jack's building doesn’t have roof access.

He stows his bag and coat in the closet as usual, but keeps his prosthesis on, just in case. Nothing else seems out of place to Jack as he glances around the apartment, so Robby can’t have been here for long, or else he made an effort to leave everything as undisturbed as possible, which would be just like him. The remote is where he left it on the couch instead of the table even though he always ends up sitting on it, and his plate and mug from yesterday are still sitting next to the sink; the newspaper is untouched on the coffee table, so Robby hasn’t made any attempts at the crossword, either.

The bedroom door is closed.

Jack closes it when he sleeps so no extra light seeps in from the rest of the apartment, but the rest of the time it’s too much trouble to bother with when he’s on crutches. Hell, he’s lived alone for over a decade now, he doesn’t even close the bathroom door most of the time.

He grabs his crutches from beside the couch then makes his way over to the bedroom, easing open the door. Sure enough, there’s Robby, curled on top of the comforter and still in his cargo pants and undershirt, shoes kicked off by the foot of the bed. Jack lets out a long breath.

“Okay,” he whispers to himself. It feels a lot like that first time after Pittfest, when he didn’t know what Robby wanted or needed; the difference then was that he could make some guesses, take some steps that felt correct. Now, he’s at even more of a loss.

First things first, now that he knows Robby is okay, he needs to get his prosthesis off, his leg aching after a long run of shifts the past few days. He needs to go to the bathroom and ideally he’d take a shower, but he doesn’t want to wake Robby. Evidence points to Robby coming here directly after his shift, but that hardly means he’s been asleep the whole time.

In the end he decides to forgo the shower, and does the rest of his usual routine as quietly as possible. Robby doesn’t seem to stir, even as the bathroom door creaks open and Jack surveys the situation.

He spent years sleeping on Army cots in the desert and then weekends on always deflating air mattresses following Leslie around the Appalachians and more, and is now no stranger to grabbing a couple minutes here and there on an empty patient bed. He can spend one night on top of the covers instead of under them, especially if it means being close to Robby.

Because he's too tired to pretend anymore that he doesn't want to come home to Robby every single day. He knows, of course, that with the way their jobs work that wouldn't be the reality even if Robby wanted him back, but the heart doesn't care about reality.

His heart wants Robby.

He hasn't wanted anyone in this way since his wife, and maybe not even then.

It had been quick with Leslie, a whirlwind. One day they were meeting, the next getting married, and in the blink of an eye she was getting diagnosed and then Jack was standing at her hospital bedside, monitor flat.

That's just how she was, though, and it’s part of what Jack loved about her. After he was discharged he landed in Charlottesville again, because he didn’t have anywhere better to go and Jo was still working on her degree, and it had a VA hospital where he could go to PT on the Army's dime, as often as he wanted, while he adjusted to life with only one full leg. That's where he met Leslie.

Leslie wasn't a vet herself, but the daughter of a lifer. She was in PT working through a rock climbing injury, which had somehow aggravated an old surfing injury. Not to mention the unrelated but still niggling mountain biking injury. Jack was in awe of her, the life she led that he heard all about while she did rotator cuff exercises and he sat limply, still unable to wear his prosthesis for more than a few hours at a time. He'd been on another continent for the past few years, treating battlefield injuries and getting his leg blown off, and he still felt like he'd barely experienced anything in comparison to her and her endless tales of adventure.

Within 18 months they were married, and six years later, within even less time, she was diagnosed, then gone. She used to joke about the irony that in the end it wasn't her adrenaline junkie nature that took her out, like her parents had always feared, but regular old cancer.

Her parents hadn't been at the wedding – no one had, just the two of them and a random witness and the justice performing the ceremony – but they were at the funeral, side by side with Jack as the funeral director served up rote platitudes, her mother Ellen holding fast to Jack's hand. No one was surprised that Leslie refused to be buried; instead, her ashes were divided up, her parents and Jack keeping small vials each and the rest among her friends to be scattered in the places she liked best. Benji took her out into the Chesapeake, Hannah to the top of Mount Rogers, Asher all the way out to Vail. Jack put his in his box of mementos from his time in the service, next to his dog tags and the small carved dog the son of his unit’s translator had given him and the few faded polaroids he had of his team, wrinkled almost beyond recognition now. He had thought about putting his wedding ring in there, too, but his hand felt wrong without it, and he could only handle one set of limbs feeling unbalanced.

When he was young, he never envisioned himself getting married; but then, he'd never envisioned much of anything for himself. The people in his town didn't leave, and that was that. He decided he wanted to become a doctor after saving a kid one summer as a lifeguard at the beach; his parents had no money for medical school; the military did. It was only when he met Leslie that he started to think about any sort of future. No kids, she didn't want them and he had never cared one way or the other, but a life of trailing after her on her adventures. He wasn’t ready to give that up when she passed, and taking the ring off felt like admitting that he was giving up on the life he’d envisioned for them, even if he couldn’t live it alone.

These days, he usually wears the ring on a chain around his neck, only slipping it on at the times when he feels he most needed it, a little reminder of strength from the strongest person he's ever known, Army be damned. He knows she'd tease him about it, but he also knows she'd have done the same in reverse.

Six months after her funeral Jack landed the job at PTMC. Looking back, he’s not sure he thought he’d last this long. Nothing else in his life up to that point had gone the way he had thought it would – he’d become a doctor, sure, but he lost his leg in the process and was taken out of active duty years before he wanted to be; he had gotten married, but it wasn’t the kind of wedding day his parents had always talked about – all the family together in the back yard – not that it mattered to him then, and what did it matter at all in the end, when she was gone so soon? So he had no reason to believe that becoming an attending at the Pitt would stick; he had no reason to think that Robby would manage to work his way under Jack’s skin and refuse to leave.

But now he’s here, over a decade later, and for only the second time in his life, at fifty years old, he can picture a future.

Leslie had been a rush, both in personality and in the way she made him feel, and he wouldn't trade any of it, not a single second, for anyone or anything. But one of the last things she had made him promise – and she was always making him promise things, from going to see a movie she knew he'd hate to doing something he'd always wanted to but had been too afraid to – was that if another chance at love came along, he would take it.

It is different with Robby, and maybe that’s why it’s taken Jack so long to recognize it for what it is. Robby isn’t the rush of youth and adventure but the solidness of knowing someone for years, and knowing that you’ve both been through hell and come out the other side.

Jack’s still turning it all over in his mind, body fatigued but brain refusing to shut down, when Robby stirs beside him.

“Morning,” Jack says softly as Robby squints up at him.

“Jack?” It’s unfair how good he looks having just woken up.

“The one and only.”

Jack thinks if he were just a little more awake Robby would have the good sense to roll his eyes at that. Instead, he asks, “What time is it?” voice all gravelly and sleepy and beautiful.

“A little past ten,” Jack tells him. “If you’re not careful you’re gonna get yourself onto my sleep schedule. Can’t recommend that.”

Robby pushes himself up until he’s sitting against the headboard beside Jack. “You sleep at all?”

Jack shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me, though. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Robby says, as if he isn’t the exact same.

“Yeah, well, tell it to my boss,” Jack says.

Robby smiles at that, small and tired, but there. “I’ll be sure to give him a talking to.”

“You hungry?” Jack asks as Robby stretches, his shoulder making a hideous pop.

“I could be,” Robby says, “if you have anything worth eating.”

“Unlikely. I was probably gonna order something anyway. Your lucky day.”

“Yeah, lucky me,” Robby replies, and it’s one of those moments where Jack thinks that if they were everything he wants them to be, Robby would lean over and kiss him, quick and familiar. But they aren’t that, not yet and maybe not ever, no matter how close it feels.

Jack clears his throat. “Here,” he says, passing his phone to Robby, “order from wherever you want. You know what I like. I’m gonna shower now that you’re awake.”

“Oh,” Robby says, small, glancing down at the phone. “Feels like it should be on me as the guest.”

You wouldn't be a guest if we were together, Jack doesn’t say. “Next time,” he says instead.

Robby nods and grabs the phone, and Jack disappears into the bathroom.

Breakfast, when it arrives, is a quiet affair. Robby seems determined to look anywhere but at Jack, and Jack refuses to look anywhere but at Robby. He studies him, the tense of his shoulders and the bruised circles under his eyes and the way his leg won’t stop bouncing. Jack knows he could go easy on him, let him get away without addressing any of it, but he hasn’t slept and the memories of his marriage have left him feeling a little uncharitable.

He balls up the paper of his breakfast burrito and drops it onto the counter.

“Wanna tell me what brought you here?” he says, no preamble.

Robby startles a little but still doesn’t look at him. “I, uh, was having trouble sleeping.”

Jack considers him for a moment. “Might have helped if you changed out of your work clothes.”

Robby looks down at himself, like he’s only just realizing what he’s wearing. “I did,” he says quietly. “But then I left again. Grabbed whatever was closest.”

“To come here.” It’s a statement, flat, no room for Robby to try to throw out alternatives or shrug it off in any way. Jack is pretty sure he knows what’s going on here, but if Robby is the horse and this thing between them is the water, Robby’s about to die of dehydration.

Robby rubs a hand at the back of his neck and looks toward the door.

Time for a new tactic, then.

“You only do this, show up here, when we’re going into a stretch of days off. Why?” It had occurred to Jack while he was lying in bed, before Robby woke up. He wants to think he knows the answer, but he needs to hear Robby say it.

Robby’s eyes stay fixed on a point over Jack’s shoulder, like if he looks directly at Jack it’ll be too easy for Jack to see through whatever lie is about to come out of his mouth. “Coincidence, I guess.”

“Bullshit.”

“You tell me then,” Robby says, shoving his hands into his pockets, “since you seem to know the answer already.”

Jack snorts and shakes his head. He then pushes himself off the stool and makes his way over to the couch, dropping onto it gracelessly. He looks back at Robby. “Come sit.”

Robby looks at him, finally, but only to frown, brows drawing close. “Jack…”

“I said sit.”

Jack’s tone startles Robby enough that he seems to stand and start moving without really knowing what he’s doing. He looks lost as he sits delicately on the edge of the couch, as far from Jack as he can get, staring at Jack expectantly. Jack waits him out. For all Jack tends to blabber when he’s anxious or on edge, he’s well acquainted with stubbornness, and he’s not going to be the first to break here.

“Pleased with yourself?” Robby asks eventually, easing minutely back on the couch.

“Brother, I could have sat here in silence all day.”

Robby gives him a displeased look, a look Jack might have been cowed by, once upon a time, but has now seen turned on too many patients over the years to have it work on him any more. “What are we doing here, Jack?”

“Funny,” Jack says, idly inspecting a hangnail he was picking at last night while waiting for lab results to come through on a CT, “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Look, if you want me to leave just say so,” Robby says, still trying to be on the defensive despite Jack’s refusal to play the game.

“I just invited you to sit,” Jack says.

“And now I’m here,” Robby replies, and it’s like Jack can see him laying brick after brick between them.

There’s no sense beating around the bush anymore, not when Robby is liable to bolt any second. “You slept in my bed, man.”

“You offered,” Robby says, like it’s some kind of gotcha, like Jack might not remember the gamble he took making that offer, hoping every day that Robby might take him up on it. “Insisted, in fact.”

“And since when have you ever listened to me?”

Robby blows out a breath and hangs his head, bracing his hands on his knees. “I don’t–” he starts, then cuts himself off with a shake of his head.

“What?” Jack asks, trying to keep the edge he’s feeling out of his voice. “What do you want, Mike?”

Robby shakes his head again, like maybe if he does it enough something will reset. “Oh, I don’t think we have the time for that right now.”

“We both have the next three days off,” Jack reminds him. “That’s all the time in the world to me.”

Instead of giving in, Robby inches back toward the edge of the couch. “I should go.”

Jack sits up straighter and lets out a short, quick breath. He wants to reach across the space between them, physically, emotionally, but he can’t if Robby won’t let him.

“You don't have to.” They stare at each other for a beat during which that space seems to grow ever wider, a gulf big enough to get lost in. “I don’t want you to go.”

“You should.” Robby sounds broken, and it only makes Jack angrier.

“Fuck you. You don’t get to decide that.”

Robby opens his mouth, then closes it, and looks away. Jack knows there’s no magic word, nothing he can say to make Robby take a step he’s not ready to take. He learned a long time ago that he can’t fix everyone, even the people he loves the most. Robby stands, and Jack doesn’t stop him, just tracks his movement as he crosses the room to grab his bag and shove his feet into his shoes.

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll see you Monday.”

The silence is heavy after the door falls shut behind him.

Leslie’s parents had come down to Charlottesville when it was clear her health was taking a turn, that her time would come soon. They had stayed at the house for about a week after the funeral, long after Jack’s own parents had gone back out to Cape Charles, helping Jack feed himself and sort through her things. When they finally left, a few boxes packed away in the back of their sedan, the emptiness felt like it might swallow Jack whole.

This isn’t the same, not even close, but the memories of that time are running on loop in Jack’s mind as he locks the front door, finishes cleaning up the detritus of breakfast, and finally lays back down in bed to try to get some sleep.

PLUS ONE

The roof is blustery, March still not quite warm enough to spend more than a few minutes as exposed to the elements as they are up here. Even Robby, in his endless array of fleeces, can usually only handle it for 20 minutes, max.

It’s been at least 30 now.

It’s also been nearly a month since the last time Robby showed up at Jack’s place, and he’s been keeping the handoffs quick and formal. No matter how hard Jack has tried to get through to him, or around whatever is going on, Robby has been keeping him at arm’s length. He hoped it wouldn’t come to this, the rooftop, but he also had a feeling deep in his bones that it couldn’t be settled any other way. It’s their place of last resort, after all.

Jack jokes sometimes about Robby being in his spot when he finds him up here, close to the edge, but the truth is Robby was coming up here long before Jack ever did. He was the one to let Jack in on the spot in the first place, which had in turn been shown to him by one of the senior attendings who had retired well before Jack landed in the Pitt. A slightly fucked up tradition that Jack hopes he never has to pass on.

Robby’s on the wrong side of the barrier tonight. Dana told Jack it was a normal shift when he asked after Robby, nothing out of the ordinary that would account for Robby slipping into the elevator when he thought no one was looking, but Robby himself has been not-quite-normal lately. It was only a matter of time.

“We gotta stop meeting like this.”

Robby doesn’t flinch exactly, but he does wrap his arms a little more tightly around himself.

Jack approaches the railing slowly, sidling up to the corner of Robby’s vision. He knows Robby hates being treated like a wounded animal that might spook and run, but, well, sometimes Robby really fucking acts like a wounded animal that might spook and run.

“Come on,” he says, inching just close enough to nudge Robby's ankle with his foot, “what's going on in that head of yours? You gotta tell someone before it takes you over the edge. Doesn't have to be me, but I am here.”

Robby pulls his shoulders a little higher. “I know you are.”

Jack nods. “Okay.” He starts to reach out, but drops his hand half way through the motion. It lands with a dull clang on the metal still separating Robby from him. He doesn’t try again.

After several minutes of silence, Robby finally says, “I was gonna go to your place.”

Jack bites back a swear, and instead closes his eyes and counts back from ten. “You can, you know.”

“And what?” Robby says, a desperate edge clinging to it. “Sleep in your bed and make you breakfast then leave and never talk about it and pretend like we don’t both want to do that every day of our lives?”

Fuck.

“Anything to say to that?” Robby’s still stiff, arms crossed tight in Jack’s periphery.

“Gimme a second, man. I wasn’t expecting that when I came up here.”

And fuck it, if Robby’s not gonna come over to his side, Jack might as well put them on the same plane. He ducks down and swings his good leg through first, then hauls the prosthesis after the rest of him. Robby watches, uncrosses his arms and shoves his hands into the pockets of his fleece instead.

“Were you ever gonna say anything?” It’s a little mean, and a little sad, and a lot Robby.

Jack leans back against the railing, not quite touching Robby’s shoulder, but only just.

“I’m not having that fight with you, Mike,” Jack tells him, watching the last rays of the sun cast long shadows over the city. “I was waiting for you.”

Robby lets out a huff, visible for a moment before a gust of wind blows it away. “Not sure that’ll do you much good.”

“What,” Jack says, lightly indignant, “you don’t think you’re worth waiting for?”

Robby just shakes his head, letting out a bitter laugh.

“So what is it,” Jack says. Not a question. He watches Robby’s jaw clench and unclench, over and over.

“I'm too old. Too fucked up. You deserve better. I don't deserve you.”

It sounds like some fucked up inverse of the ho'oponopono, and Jack knows without a doubt that Robby has repeated it to himself almost as much as he has the prayer. About this – about Jack – he's sure, but about Heather and Janey, and the ones who came before them, too, who Jack has only ever heard about in passing.

Jack sighs, then nods, even though Robby isn't looking at him – won't look at him. “Okay. And what about when you get all that bullshit out of the way? Because it is bullshit, and we both know it.”

Robby takes his hands out of his pockets and laces his fingers together behind his head. “You make me happy, Jack. I don't really know what to do with that.”

“Well, you could try letting yourself be happy for once in your goddamn life.” Robby snorts and Jack shrugs. “Just a suggestion. But what the hell do I know, right?”

“I've dated people I work with before,” Robby says, shaking his head again, that slow deliberate shake that Jack has gotten so fond of. “Doesn't always end well.”

“Of course it doesn't. No relationship ends well. Until one does. And even then…” He's not sure where he's going with that, not sure he’s at all convincing, or which of them he's even trying to convince. “Look, if it wasn't gonna work out, it wasn't gonna work out. Coworkers or not.”

“Yeah,” Robby accedes, “probably true.”

“And maybe this won't either.” Robby gives him a look, equal parts annoyance and fondness. Jack knocks their shoulders together. “But if we'd both be happier together than not…”

There's another long beat of silence, nothing but their breathing and the hum of the city below, before Robby drops his head and lets out a long, slow breath that sounds a lot like giving in. “Okay, yeah.”

“Yeah?” Jack tries to keep the smile out of his voice but he can't quite help it, knows Robby would hear it anyway even if he could.

“Fuck it. What's the worst that could happen?”

“That's the spirit,” Jack says with a laugh, and then Robby is kissing him.

Jack makes a surprised noise, one hand grabbing the railing for support and the other going to Robby’s waist under his fleece. Robby’s hands are on either side of his face and it’s rewiring Jack’s brain a little bit, to have hands larger than his own holding him.

Robby’s kiss is insistent and desperate until Jack is able to get more control and slow it down into something a little softer. Robby follows his lead until they’re both out of breath, breaking apart just enough to look at each other. Jack searches Robby’s eyes for any traces of doubt, but only finds an ease that he hasn’t seen in years, if ever. Robby traces his thumbs along Jack’s cheekbones, sending shivers down Jack’s spine as much as the wind, and leans in for round two.

“Wait,” Jack says, putting a hand to Robby’s chest. “I mean, yes, just–” He grabs Robby’s hand and pulls him down, back under the railing and away from the edge. “Okay,” he says once they're safely on the other side. “Full steam ahead.”

Robby laughs and pulls him back in, and it’s a long time before they pull apart again, an persistent beeping from Jack’s phone interrupting them. It was only a matter of time before someone needed him to come down and do his actual job, and he’s grateful Lena opted for texting rather than coming and looking for them.

“Hockey practice mishap seven minutes out,” he tells Robby. “Gotta get back to it.”

Robby nods, then looks around and says, “Fuck it’s cold,” like he’s only just noticing it now that everything else is out of the way.

“Brother, how do you think I feel?” Jack holds out a bare arm, covered in goosebumps.

Robby winces. “Not sure how I feel about you calling me brother now that you’ve had your tongue in my mouth.”

“We’ll workshop it,” Jack says, patting him on the shoulder.

Robby rolls his eyes, smiling fondly. “Here,” he says, and then he’s unzipping the fleece and pulling it off, holding it out for Jack.

“Appreciate it,” Jack says, “but hell no. I go down there wearing your fleece, neither of us will ever hear the end of it. Hell, I’ve already missed nearly an hour of my shift, we’re already in for it.” And at this rate Jack’s gonna have to make up a mild illness and put a mask on to hide the beard burn.

Robby grins again, his cheeks pink and not just from the cold, Jack thinks. Fuck, it’s a good look on him. “So you go down first and I try to sneak out the back?”

“Oh, you’re not getting out of handoff that easily,” Jack says.

“No?” Robby says, glint in his eye. “How about now?” He pulls Jack in for another kiss, and god, Jack’s not sure he’ll ever get used to it. Kind of doesn’t want to.

It’s a hard fought thing to keep their hands to themselves once they’re back in range of hospital cameras and other prying eyes, but thankfully the incoming hockey players are enough to distract a good chunk of night shift while Robby finishes charting, and most of day shift has already left, minus Santos who is trailing after Ellis, nodding at every word she says.

Once the kids are stitched up and resting and the rest of handoff is done, Jack follows Robby out to the ambulance bay, blissfully empty.

“Kind of feel like I could pull a double right now,” Robby says, ducking his head against the wind.

“I give you four hours before the high wears off,” Jack says with a snort.

“I can think of some things that could keep me going,” Robby says, low and rough, and it takes everything in Jack’s power not to shut him up with his mouth.

“Keep that energy for when I’m off,” Jack says instead. “We’ve got three whole days ahead of us, you’re gonna need it.”

He feels almost lightheaded, shamelessly flirting with Robby within earshot of anyone standing inside the doors, but he doesn’t care. People will find out eventually, the when, where and how don’t really matter to him at this point.

Robby is lingering, watching as Jack, still in short sleeves, blows on his hands to keep them warm. He has a look on his face like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing, and Jack’s sure he’s not faring much better as his eyes trace the smiles lines on Robby’s face.

“Go,” Jack tells him with a nod. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Robby lets out a reluctant sigh but hikes his backpack further up onto his shoulder. “Any requests for breakfast?”

“You know me, anything’s good as long as I’m not the one cooking it.”

Robby gives him a mock salute, walking backwards out of the bay until he has to turn back around to cross the street. Jack watches him until his figure disappears, then heads back inside.

It’s a standard shift, all things considered, and despite the need buzzing through Jack every time his mind isn’t otherwise occupied, it seems to fly by. Before he knows it he’s handing off to Preston and heading out the door, promising Lena he’ll only get some R&R if she does, too.

Even though he’s expecting it this time, opening his door to find Robby in the kitchen and the smell of breakfast wafting through the apartment still doesn’t feel real, especially when Robby tosses down the spatula he was working with to cross the living room and push Jack against the closed door, kissing him like he couldn’t on the roof.

“Welcome home,” Robby says when they pull apart, his eyes alight.

“Happy to be here,” Jack tells him, and he thinks that’s probably never been truer.

“You hungry?” Robby asks, making no move to actually go back to the kitchen.

“Always,” Jack says, eyeing up the array of plates and pans spread out over his counters and wondering how long it’ll keep. “Whatcha got for me?”