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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.
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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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."
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"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."
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"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.
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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."
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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?"
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"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."
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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."
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"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.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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"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.
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“Gotta talk my doc about those rare side effects.”
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"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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“So what’d ya get me?” He motioned to the little stack of presents on the coffee table.
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"You want me to bring them over?" asks Robby, glancing over at the gifts. There's an expensive massage gun, some heat pads and some pretty expensive sheets -- when he'd last done laundry in this building instead of in his own, he'd thrown some of Jack's stuff in, and noticed that he was still using the crappy sheets that came with the apartment. "Or do you want me to give you a hand over to the couch? If you're done eating."
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"I think I'm done. I'll put the leftovers away in a little while," he said. "If you could get my crutches I can get myself to the couch. Or I can put my prosthetic back on."
He actually could not do that right now, since his residual limb had expanded a little now that it was not trapped in his socket, but it was fun sometimes to wind Robby up.
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Robby knows that Jack's just being an asshole, not that doesn't stop him shooting him a look as he gently shifts Jack's leg out of his lap and gets up to fetch his crutches from their usual spot.
"I'll do leftovers and dishes later," he says. Jack's already said he doesn't want him to go anywhere.
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"Thank you," he said sincerely. He was feeling better now that he'd had food, gotten off his leg, and wasn't arguing with Robby. He'd still let Robby take care of the leftovers and the dishes, though, if Robby was going to volunteer.
He went over to his spot on the couch and sat down, then looked at the presents.
"Is there one of these I should open first?"
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"You're welcome," says Robby, turning away as Jack moves over towards the couch. He grabs the beers that he'd opened -- that he'd mostly drunk, so far -- and carries them over, setting them down on the table. "You want pain meds and water, or are you going to wait until you get into bed?" He pauses, aware that he's still in doctor mode, and that, ultimately, Jack knows what's best for him. Still. He perches on the arm of the sofa, shaking his head.
"Not really. They're all fairly self-explanatory." Maybe not the sheets, given the conversation that they've just had, but he'll offer clarity when he gets to it.
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"Water yes, drugs no. I've got about a thirty minute delay after I take the Vicodin before I pretty much fall over," he replied. He hadn't had to take his Vicodin around Robby in a long time, so Robby didn't know how fast Jack metabolized it these days. Jack did, though. He could practically set a timer on his watch for it.
He picked up the smallest package first and opened it up to find a portable massage gun.
"Oh, my therapist was just telling me I oughta get one of these. Wait, have you been violating HIPAA and talking to my providers?"
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