jackabbot | Polar Nightmares

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robby

Polar Nightmares

His therapist in Pittsburgh had told him once that he thought Jack preferred nights because the darkness was a source of comfort for him, and Jack didn't think he was wrong. He usually wasn't, which was the annoying part about therapy. A lot of people were scared of or disliked the dark, which he understood, but he’d never found it scary, even before he'd started working nights all the time. Jack thought it was a lot worse to see all the shit that was coming his way in the light, in a lot of ways, whether that was mortars or MVAs. All of that meant that this polar night thing Darrow suddenly had going on was just fine with Jack in terms of what he was doing and how he was doing it, but he knew that wasn’t true for most people.

Robby, in particular, had been getting incredibly fucking grumpy. He’d come over to Jack’s apartment after he finished another shift of caring for people who had been injured “running into shit because no one remembers to carry a goddamn flashlight or even just use the flashlight function on their fucking phone”. Jack had fed him huevos rancheros, given him a beer, and let him complain, then sent him off to shower and go to bed. Jack’s own body clock wouldn’t let him sleep for a few hours yet, so he read a book on the couch until he thought he could sleep.

When he went to his bed, he fell asleep easily in the new sheets Robby had given him, but he was also almost immediately dropped into a nightmare. He was back in Afghanistan but it was Sarajevo but it was Iraq. There were IEDs but there were missiles but there was friendly fire from tanks. He smelled burning cloth and hot metal and gasoline. He tasted sand and blood and sweat as he tried to tourniquet everyone and everything. He didn’t have enough supplies, enough time, enough skill. Soldiers were dying and Robby was dying and Diane was dying and neither of them should have been there. No one should ever have been there. He called out for suppressing fire, for more supplies, for anything that would slow the blood and death.

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"The carotid is not a standard location to take a pulse if the radial is available," he noted, which wasn't to say he minded Robby's choice to check it there.

Robby really did seem content to let Jack just fall asleep on him, although they both knew Jack shouldn't let that happen, even if Robby planned to slip out from under Jack as soon as Jack was asleep. Robby's back was not going to forgive either of them for that choice.

"Sam was pushing me on who in this world knows me, good and bad. Freckles and scars, I guess. And that's you, brother. It was Diane, but now it's just you. And for my diligence in acknowledging that, I got to watch you bleed out into the dirt, at least in my mind."

His pulse ticked up a little bit, but not enough that he was worried. Not enough that Robby would be worried.

He takes his fingers away from Jack's pulse but curls his hand against the side of his neck instead, almost cradling him close for a moment. He'd suspected something like that and, if it's a surprise to hear himself named in the same context as Diane, it doesn't show on his face.

"Nothing happened to me, Jack," he says, quietly. "I'm right here."

He nodded against Robby's chest, because he knew that was true. He knew Robby was here, breathing, warm and alive. But the nightmare had felt true too. It had felt real.

"There is a color that sand turns when there's a lot of blood soaked into it. You can't mistake it for anything else," he said. Robby had seen that color himself. They'd once played a very dark game of Conflict Bingo to try to count how many different ones they'd been in, respectively. No one won that game of Bingo.

"I remember," he says, and he's not sure that this is the thing that Jack needs to be talking about, right now, but if the thing that he wants to talk about, then Robby's going to listen. The hand on Jack's neck shifts, moving to cup the back of his skull instead.

"You survived though. You're still here, man. You've survived every worst day of your life."

Jack exhaled when Robby's hand shifted to the back of his skull. He was most definitely being held and it felt good. It felt beyond good. Jack hadn't been in a bed with someone without very specific very rapid intent since Diane had died, and he hadn't done much of that either. Grumpy nocturnal disabled widowers were still not a catch, and honestly he hadn't wanted anyone other than in a purely physical sense. He'd barely wanted that, even, and his forays into dating and apps had been lackluster to say the least. He'd thought about getting a prescription for sildenafil in case that was his problem, but then realized it'd probably expire before he needed a refill. It was like his libido had been cremated with his wife.

As it turned out, his libido had not been cremated with his wife. He'd definitely felt a little zing of interest when he and Robby had gotten stuck under the mistletoe and now he felt another one when Robby cradled his head like that. Well, fuck.

"God, there have been some contenders for worst day," he agreed. "None of them have been here, at least."

The way that Jack exhales and melts a little closer is probably a good thing, and Robby leaves his hand where it is, Jack's hair soft against his palm. Jack's warm and solid against his side and Robby's a little surprised by how relaxed he is, too.

"Not yet," he says, but Jack's right. Mostly, life in Darrow has been pretty bearable. More so since Jack walked into Darrow General.

"You did get turned into a statue. And of course there was the mistletoe. And now someone apparently turned off the sun," Jack mused. "But I will take every single one of those things combined over the best day in Afghanistan."

Those things were annoying, certainly, and he'd been fucking worried about Robby when he'd been a statue, but no one was shooting at Jack every day. He wasn't riding in Humvees hoping no one blew an IED up under his wheels. He wasn't wearing so many pounds of body armor that he had lost weight from all the sweating and bent the St Michael pendant his grandmother had given him that he wore underneath it. He wasn't taking care of pimply teenagers and very carefully not assuring them that they'd see their moms again when he knew they weren't even going to see the next sunrise. He wouldn't lie to them even in that moment.

He wanted to stretch his arm across Robby's chest to his side. He wanted to put his knee up on Robby's leg, even though it was the bad leg. He was not going to do either of those things, but he was going to be glad he was not in his twenties and didn't have such a hair trigger.

"True on all fronts," says Robby. He's spent time in warzones, but never anywhere like Afghanistan. He doesn't particularly like to think about Jack there, or the state that he must have been in when he came home. "How often do you have the nightmares now?" he asks. The grip he has on Jack's bare shoulder loosens, and he idly trails his fingers up and down his bare arm instead.

Those light fingers on Jack's arm were not helping his sudden awareness of how close he was to Robby. He'd asked for the damn hug in the first place, so it was his own fault, if it was anyone's, but he hopefully covered the shiver with half a shrug to answer Robby's question. He didn't really want to answer it, but one of the things that made Robby such a good diagnostician was his attention to detail. Of course he'd caught that.

"Not that often anymore," he assured Robby. "Fuck, when I was at Landstuhl and once they shipped me to Brooke for rehab, they had me on the highest allowable clinical dose of promethazine for awhile."

"It seemed like you had a lot after Diane died, too." He does Jack the service of not dressing things up in euphemism because he was there and he knows what happened. "When you were staying with me."

Jack doesn't pull away, so he keeps up the idle, wandering touch, his other arm still looped around Jack's shoulders, even though part of him wants to slip it around his waist instead.

That was getting fucking distracting, but Jack had sewn a soldier's bowels back together while the hospital was under a rocket attack because who cared if there was a giant red cross on the tent? He could focus on one thing to the exclusion of all other things.

"I did," he agreed. "I'm pretty sure I looked like I oughta be a patient instead of a clinician sometimes. Monty pulled me aside ... three times? Four times? To remind me about the hospital's leave policy but I had to keep working, you know. I had to not go home to an empty house and a closet full of her clothes."

"Yeah, I know." He'd had that conversation with Adamson too, about Jack, and he'd explained that there was no way that Jack was going to take time off, so they just needed to keep him working and supported and as whole as they could. "I remember that, too."

Without even thinking, he turns his head and presses a kiss to Jack's forehead, just below his hairline. He does it, and then he freezes.

"Shit," he says. "I'm sorry."

"You gonna get mad at me if I try to thank you for letting me camp out in your guest room and for modifying your guest bathroom again?" Jack said lightly, because he'd definitely thanked Robby enough times during that time that Robby had declared Jack wasn't allowed to thank him anymore. But Robby had held Jack together and held him up. -- literally, sometimes, when Jack had been too drunk to walk safely on his own. How could Jack not thank him for that?

Robby turned his head and dropped a gentle kiss on his head and then froze like he hadn't meant to do that. Jack froze too, then relaxed back into Robby's shoulder. He wasn't sure why Robby had done that, but he couldn't mind it. Fuck, he wanted to drop a return kiss on Robby's clothed shoulder, but he wouldn't.

"No worries, man. You're tired. I'm tired," he said, so Robby could have an out if he wanted it.

It's more than that, and they both know it, but Robby isn't going to push anything on Jack because Jack relaxes back into him and, if that's all that he gets? It's enough. He combs his fingers through the short hair on the back of Jack's head, his fingers going back to trailing against Jack's skin because, somehow, he thinks its settling for them both.

"You ready to try and sleep, or is your brian still too busy?"

"So that's a yes on the getting mad at me for thanking you?" he said, since Robby had not even bothered to respond to that, as Jack knew he probably wouldn't. He always acted like it was beneath his dignity to respond to some of Jack's more outrageous statements, which was sometime why Jack made them.

The back of his neck was sensitive for reasons he didn't know, but everyone had their quirks. Having Robby run his fingers through the hair there, along with the kiss and the other fingers on his delt meant even without a hair trigger, he probably needed to get Robby to go back to his own room if Jack didn't want to have some very awkward explaining to do.

"Yeah, I think I can sleep. And you can go back to your room."

"That's a me ignoring you until you shut the fuck up," says Robby, fondly. Jack suggests that he can go back to his own bed, and Robby realises how little he wants that to happen. Jack might be able to sleep now, but Robby's gotten too comfortable with Jack in his arms and, selfishly, he doesn't want to let go just yet. He breathes in, and lets it out slowly.

"What if I don't want to?"

There it was, and Jack smirked against Robby's shoulder, not that Robby could see it. Robby's fingers were still on the back of his head, and yeah, Jack needed to move. He wasn't hard, not even half hard, but there was some blood flow in that direction and he really didn't want to try to explain that right now. Sleep shorts were only so loose. He rolled over onto his side so he was facing away from Robby.

"I don't usually have another nightmare in the same night, but if you gotta be a mother hen about this, then you're the big spoon," he said lightly. He honestly didn't think Robby would stay and he certainly wasn't expecting Robby to actually be the big spoon, but that was up to Robby.

Edited 2026-01-04 04:10 (UTC)

Here's the thing -- if Jack point blank didn't want him to stay, he would have said so. Jack Abbot is many, many things but, in Robby's experience, he's never struggled to make his opinions crystal clear. Still on his back in Jack's bed, Robby looks up at the ceiling for a long moment. His phone (and, therefore, his alarm) is still in the other room, but he'd left the door open on the other side of the bathroom, so he'll hear it, when it goes. He glances at his watch; he's got time to get another couple of hours before he has to get up.

And then there's the fact that, if givent he opportunity, he really does want to stay.

Eventually, he rolls over, close to Jack but not actually touching him, and then he reaches out and touches Jack's hip, fingertips half on the fabric of his shorts and half on bare skin.

"Tell me to fuck off," he says, and hopes against hope that it doesn't happen.

Robby knew very well that Jack could have told him to go in no uncertain terms, and Jack knew he knew that. They both knew each other well enough to know right where the weak spots in the body armor were. The truth of the situation was that Jack didn't want to sleep alone right now and apparently Robby didn't either, for whatever reason. He heard Robby settling close enough behind him that Jack could feel the warmth radiating off of him because Michael Robinavitch was a fucking furnace and always had been, then felt a feather-light touch on his hip. And that did not help his dick calm down, so apparently Jack was going to be talking to Sam about more shit.

He shook his head with a little negative noise, because he wasn't going to tell Robby to fuck off.

"We are not fucking talking about this tomorrow," he said firmly. They probably would have to talk about it at some point, but he was just making that clear.

When Jack shakes his head, Robby relaxes into the pillow. He gives Jack's hip a former squeeze and then settles his arm into the space between them on the mattress. He finds himself staring at Jack's bare back, fighting the urge to slip his arm around Jack's waist and pull him closer.

"No argument from me on that one," he says.

He hadn’t expected Robby to mind not talking about this. Robby was the king of Not Talking, as they both knew and argued about.

“Shocking,” he teased in a low drawl, but he also settled down and closed his eyes with a soft sigh. The adrenaline had faded away and now he was so, so tired. But he was also so, so warm and comfortable with Robby behind him to protect him from the world and that was a weird thought to suddenly have that he was going to also discuss with Sam, but it was … true. Robby would protect him. He’d protect Robby. It was what they did. It was what they’d done for thirty fucking years.

“Thank you, Misha,” he said as he fell asleep, and where his brain had dredged that up, he didn’t know and wouldn’t worry about tonight.

Jack says it and Robby lies awake for a long few minutes, just floating in the way that hearing that name used has made him feel. Nobody's used it in years. Simply, he remembers telling Jack that that's what his Baba called him, once upon a time.

He can't really figure out how heading it from Jack Abbot makes him feel, but it's definitely not bad.

He drifts to sleep like that, close enough to Jack that he can almost feel him breathe.

Jack woke up slowly. He was mostly used to waking up between one breath and the next, whether it was because his alarm had gone off or someone had knocked on the call room door or because there were Dustoffs incoming, but when he could wake up slowly, he didn't mind it. He especially didn't mind that he felt rested, which he didn't expect after having his sleep interrupted by a nightmare. There was a warm arm around his waist and a warm body pressed firmly against his back, and for a moment he thought he might not be awake after all. He shifted just a little bit and decided he wasn't dreaming and there was someone behind him in the bed. His sleepy brain didn't know who it was, though. It wasn't Diane. She wasn't ever a sleep cuddler like that -- she preferred to be able to flop around like a starfish and there had been one too many hits to his balls before they realized they needed to not do that.

There was something hard ... oh, fuck. Robby was in the bed with him and he had morning wood. He was going to be incredibly fucking embarrassed if Jack let on, even though it was just a physiological response and they both knew that.

He stretched a little, which shifted his ass away from Robby's dick and might wake Robby up enough that he could flee if he wanted to. Jack put odds on the fleeing.

When he wakes up, Robby realises two things in quick succession: that he's got his arm around Jack's waist, and that his cock is hard. Thankfully, there's some space between his hips and Jack's ass, so maybe Jack hasn't noticed.

"Shit," he says, voice still thick with sleep as he rolls away from Jack, taking his arm with him. "Sorry."

And there was the fleeing. Robby could be apologizing for apparently deciding he did want to be the big spoon or for the morning wood. Jack was going to assume it was the spoon for the sake of both of them, although if Robby was blushing as much as he probably felt like doing, he might not have much problem with the morning wood for very long.

"S'all good," he said easily and sleepily. "I said you could be big spoon."

Polar Nightmares

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