jackabbot | A necessary argument

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robby

A necessary argument

Jack was, to put it mildly, cranky. He was probably beyond cranky and into the state that he’d only seen very small children achieve. He, unfortunately, was not allowed to sit down where he was and refuse to move from that spot while also screaming. He had to continue behaving like a mature adult with an advanced degree and a position of responsibility.

He’d just finished working a double because on top of the usual holiday-related scheduling craziness, people also got sick or injured, which meant they couldn’t work and thus Jack got to work twenty-four hours in a row. Robby might have taken the shift for him, but Jack didn’t ask because Robby essentially wasn’t talking to him for reasons he refused to explain or even acknowledge. More importantly, he was pretty sure Robby had already worked his legally allowed hours this week. Jack hadn’t. Well, now he had. He’d also spent entirely too much time pulling Christmas decorations out of places they should not be.

So he was bone-deep tired and annoyed at humanity, his leg hurt like hell and might be starting a pressure sore, his best friend wasn’t talking to him, and to top it all off, it was his fiftieth birthday. He generally viewed birthdays as proof he’d survived another year and that all the various things in his life that might have killed him hadn’t managed it. He didn’t celebrate birthdays, exactly, but he respected them.

He was not feeling respectful right now. He was feeling like finding the nearest bar and drowning his entire existence in bad beer. He was feeling like going and buying a pack of cigarettes, even though he’d given them up at Landstuhl, mostly because they’d suggested a nicotine cessation plan at just the right moment. He was feeling like being anywhere but here, if that was possible, which it wasn’t because Darrow didn’t work like that.

So, yeah, he was cranky. He stopped in front of his door to fish out his keys, then hissed as his lower back cramped. He breathed through it, but it didn’t help his mood at all. As soon as he got inside, he was taking the damn prosthetic off and then calling for some Thai delivery because he did not feel like cooking.

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"Like I'm worried about that," says Robby, shooting him a slightly reproachful look. "Eat. I'll be back."

He heads into the bathroom first, grabbing dressings and cotton swabs and antiseptic, and then he goes to the kitchen to fix a bowl of warm water and grab a clean cloth from under the sink. When he comes back to the table, he drags a chair close enough that he can see to Jack while he eats and then looks at him expectantly, waiting for him to arrange himself.

Jack didn't need any further encouragement to start shoveling shrimp pad thai into his mouth. He wasn't eating quite as quickly as he would have in Basic when they had ten minutes to eat their entire meal, but it was close. There was an unfortunate similarity between mealtimes in Basic and mealtimes as a doctor sometimes.

Robby came back with some supplies and sat down next to Jack with a face Jack had seen more times than he could possibly count. Normally it wasn't directed at him, though, just like the student voice wasn't. He lifted his leg so that, if Robby wanted, he could put Jack's knee on his thigh and work with his calf.

"That what you wanted?" he said, although it was slightly muffled by shrimp.

"Yes. Thank you," says Robby, hands firm but careful as he guides Jack's knee into place, his lower leg across his lap. He starts by taking the cloth, dunked in the water and wrung out, and starting to carefully wipe Jack's skin.

"I still haven't figured out what to do," he says, his attention focused on Jack's leg. "For the record."

There was a particular way that Robby said thank you that was so precise as to be bitchy. He wasn't quite there yet, but Jack could see it from here. He kept his hip and leg as relaxed as possible as Robby's hands carefully cleaned the sweat and accumulated gunk from his leg. Robby knew what kind of pressure was needed to clean skin that was swollen and angry, even if the nurses usually did that rather than the doctors.

Robby wasn't making eye contact again, but Jack was going to let it slide this time. Instead he swallowed a bite of pad thai before he tried to talk.

"That's fine. You don't have to know what to do. You just have to talk to me and tell me you're working on figuring it out, not disappear into a cave and refuse to even acknowledge that there's something wrong. All those times I tried to talk to you and ask you what was going on, you could have just said you were working through some shit and would let me know when you had something to talk about. Instead you acted like I was bothering you by caring. It fucking sucked, Robby."

"I know," says Robby because, honestly, it sucked for him, too. He'd missed Jack in his space. It made him realise that he's come to depend on Jack in an even more fundamental way than he did back in Pittsburgh. "And I am sorry. For what it's worth."

He finishes cleaning and moves on to meticulously drying Jack's skin, using the softest towel he could find in the linen closet.

"I just... Couldn't see any way that the way I was feeling wasn't going to fuck something up. And I still couldn't stop thinking about it."

"Thank you," Jack said, since Robby had acknowledged and apologized. He sipped a little bit of his beer, but not much. He was going to need the prescription painkillers tonight and they didn't do well with alcohol. He also wanted as much of his brain as possible for this conversation, even though a significant portion of it had already fucked off into exhaustion.

"And I'm sorry about calling you Michael. I know you hate it and I was trying to be hurtful because I was hurt."

He'd definitely had to figure out that kind of motivation to hurt in therapy, but he'd done that because he'd actually gone to therapy. His marriage wouldn't have survived his amputation if he hadn't, probably.

"I don't mean to be dense here, but I don't understand why you think realizing you're attracted to me would fuck things up."

Robby accepts the apology with a glance and a faint smile, still focused on the task in hand. He sets the towel aside and reaches for emollient, which would help calm how angry and red Jack's skin is.

"It's not the being attracted to you that's the problem," he says, resolutely not looking at Jack, and glad that he has a good reason not to. "It's the not being able to stop thinking about doing something about it."

He really shouldn't be so happy to actually get some damn eye contact from Robby, but he was. It felt like they'd gotten through something important in this argument, although it definitely wasn't over yet.

It took another few seconds to understand what Robby was saying and how that all tied up into this whole situation. It had honestly not even occurred to Jack that Robby was not only attracted to him but wanted to do something about it. He was going to have to spend some time thinking about that on a night that was not this one.

"I can see how that would be distracting," he replied. "But again, you didn't talk to me about this. You just decided that it couldn't happen or it shouldn't happen and you had to fuck off into the desert forever or whatever."

"I didn't want to...fuck everything up," says Robbie, his hands working over Jack's sore skin in a detached, professional way, keeping the pressure firm enough to sooth sore muscle without making irritated skin worse. He pauses to apply more emollient to his palms.

"It's not been like this for the last thirty years, before you ask. I'd think about that night in Sarajevo every so often but in a sort of...detached way." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and he shakes his head. His cheeks feel warm and he wonders how obviously he's blushing. "Like...it wasn't really us."

Robby was giving him a very targeted massage at this point, which was possibly not entirely part of the treatment he'd offer anyone else, but Jack wasn't complaining. He could feel the angry skin and muscles and nerves all settling down a little under Robby's talented, focused hands.

"I thought about it a lot for a little while, but I was still stuck in the shit," he admitted. Robby was blushing, but Jack didn't blush or he might have since he'd thought about it at very specific times. "And then I got home and life went on and it started to be something that happened to someone else, like you said. I did tell Diane I'd known you before, though, when I met you that first day after they hired me. Even told her you and I had gotten naked together. She said she wouldn't bring it up at the departmental Christmas party."

That was Diane, all over. She heard her husband had slept with another man that he now worked with and she was just not even concerned about it. But Jack was all in for her, and she knew that.

Robby geninely laughs at that, and now he really is blushing. He takes his hands off Jack's leg, studying it critically. The skin reddness has definitely started to calm down and the whole thing looks less angry. "I fucking loved Diane," he says, and it's not the first time he's said. Jack knows. "And that sounds exactly like something she'd have said." He reaches to pick up the antiseptic cream, dabbing some onto his finger before he applys it to the sorest spot on Jack's leg. He normally would wear gloves for this, but he washed his hands well, and that'll do for now. "Feeling like it happened to someone else was just...easier before Kagura." He concentrates on what he's doing. "I...wasn't expecting that to feel the way it did."

"Same," Jack said lightly about Robby loving Diane. It didn't hurt as much to talk about her now. Right after she'd died, he'd been a fucking basket case. He'd stayed in Robby's guest room for a solid month because he just couldn't handle going back to an empty condo. Robby hadn't said a word about it in terms of telling Jack he ought to go home. He'd just bought more food and the guest shower had suddenly acquired a hand-held sprayer.

He winced a little when the antiseptic cream hit, which told him he had actually broken the skin and he would need to keep a close eye on it. He had a feeling Robby would make sure he did that, though. Neither of them wanted Jack to get cellulitis.

"Well, who could have predicted magic fucking mistletoe, anyway?"

"This fucking place," says Robby, shaking his head. He puts the cream aside and reaches for a hydrocolloid dressing, opening it and then carefully smoothing it into place over the pressure sore that Jack was definitely developing. Finished, he makes no move to dislodge Jack's leg from his -- he kind of likes the weight of it there, honestly. And it's comforting while they're having this conversation. He does reach for Jack's open beer and takes a long swallow.

"I honestly thought I could tough it out. I..." He frowns. "Need you as a friend more than I want you as anything else, if it comes down to that."

"What are my discharge instructions, doc?" Jack asked jokingly, since it seemed like they were done with the leg care for now. Jack wasn't in any hurry to move his leg, though. It was elevated, which was helping it feel better, and he'd been doing his PT stretches regularly enough that this wasn't putting any kind of strain on his hip flexors.

He sobered after that, though, considering honestly and seriously what Robby was telling him.

"I don't know how I feel about most of this, right now, and I'm tired enough that I might as well be drunk, but I'll tell you what I do know. We've been through hell already, Robby. Both of us have, together and separately. It would be really fucking hard for you to tell me something that would make me stop being your friend. You almost got there by not telling me things, though."

"Change the dressing every three days, or sooner if you think you need it. We caught it early, so it should get worse, but keep it clean and moist, all the same. Leave your prosthetic off for as long as you can. Keep it elevated." He sets down the beer and reaches for the food he'd plated up for himself.

"Noted," he says. "And I...can't promise I won't fuck up again, but I'll try." He takes a few bites of his food. "You want me to get out of here so that you can sleep?"

Now that he's back in Jack's space, he doesn't really want to go, but he'll also understand if Jack needs room.

"I'm off tomorrow night and they were talking about shuffling the schedule, so I might be off more than that," he replied. He'd go to hydrotherapy tomorrow, too, and he wouldn't wear his leg around his apartment. He hardly ever did, though.

He appreciated Robby's consideration about getting out of his hair, but he didn't want that. Now that he had his friend back, he didn't want Robby to go that far away.

"Nah, it's all good, brother. You just dealt with some heavy emotional shit too, and you've gotta be tired. Just don't be surprised if I snore like a freight train tonight. The dry mouth side effects are real."

Robby huffs a laugh at that, going back to his food, Jack's leg still in his lap. What passes for his bedroom in Jack's apartment is the walk in closet and it doesn't have much in the way of sound proofing. Still, he thinks he'll be pretty glad to lie there and listen to Jack snore.

"It's okay, you know," he says. "If we never come back to this. I'll figure it out."

"We'll come back to it," Jack said firmly, because Robby had been brave enough and honest enough to say something that was vulnerable, and he deserved for Jack to not just say "Noted" and move on.

He ate a few more bites of his shrimp pad thai and then grabbed a chicken satay skewer and dunked the end in the peanut sauce.

"Thank you for this, by the way. The last thing I wanted to do after that double was cook, and of course you knew that."

Robby had been able to predict that Jack would have chosen the Thai place and ordered what he knew Jack would want because Robby knew Jack better than literally anyone else on the planet.

"I did know that," says Robby drily, with a nod. He's been there himself, too many times. He takes another swallow of the open beer, another couple of bites of his food. "And you are welcome. It's my pleasure."

He can ignore, he thinks, the way it feels to look at Jack after his revelation. He can just sink into how comfortable it feels to be close.

"I really wasn't going to miss your birthday. Especially now we're in the same decade again."

Edited 2025-12-21 12:23 (UTC)

"If you're trying to give me shit about being old, it ain't gonna work," Jack pointed out, although he didn't really think that was what Robby was trying to do. "Too many times when I didn't even know if I was gonna get one hour older to be worried about a new decade."

The most obvious of those times was still laying across Robby's lap, but there had been more, times when his entire unit had been pinned down with no certainty of extraction or even artillery support. He still had nightmares about some of those times and he probably always would, according to his therapist.

"I would never," says Robby, and means it. While he's spent time in warzones with DWB, he's never been in combat the way Jack has, and he knows the kind of doctor that it's made him. He's watched Jack do complicated things he'd only ever seen in med school as casually as he would knot shoelaces and known, without a shadow of a doubt, that it's something he learned to do in the dark, under fire.

"Anyway, older looks better on you that it does on me." He gestures to the grey in Jack's hair, and then scratches his nails through the grey in his beard.

Most days, all he feels is tired.

“Don’t sell yourself short, man,” Jack teased, pointing his satay stick for emphasis. “I’ve heard the staff talking about that distinguished look you’ve got going on there.”

Jack heard more than people thought, probably because he could walk and stand very quietly if he needed to do that. Robby nearly always knew Jack was behind him, but most other people didn’t. If Jack did manage to sneak up on Robby, it always made him a little smug.

"Distinguished? Nobody in that Department has referred to me as distinguished, and you know it. You're full of shit, man," says Robby, picking up his fork again and going back to his food with a roll of his eyes. God, he's missed this -- this easy closeness. He doesn't feel this still with anyone else.

“So the LPNs who were talking about which doc they wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers definitely didn’t say Robby? Huh. Must’ve hallucinated it,” he replied, because they definitely had mentioned Robby. Also Jack, but he wasn’t gonna blush about it. Robby had never stopped blushing when anyone said anything nice about him, not since he was in his twenties.

“Gotta talk my doc about those rare side effects.”

"You definitely should," says Robby, cheeks flushed pink, resolutely concentrating on the food in front of him. It's not that he doesn't believe Jack -- he does. He just prefers nurses who've got other things to worry about, like Princess and Perlah.

"Glad you're not my patient," he says, ignoring Jack's leg still in his lap as evidence to the contrary.

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