Space Date

[jackabbot]

Space Hospital was an awful show. It wasn’t even so bad it was good. It was just bad. Despite that, Jack enjoyed watching it, mostly to make fun of it. He’d developed his own little drinking game for every time the characters did something that didn’t make any fucking sense no matter what universe it was supposedly set in or what made-up species they were treating. Robby gave Jack endless shit for watching it, but he also put up with watching it, mostly for Jack's snarky comments and the opportunity to get handsy.

The midseason cliffhanger episode was airing that night, so obviously they were spending their Friday night watching it. He’d made shakshouka for dinner because it was easy, fast, and had plenty of protein and veggies, but also wasn’t likely to give Robby heartburn if Jack made it mild. Robby had never mentioned anything, but Jack had noticed the bottle of antacids in their bathroom cabinet getting more empty and he knew he wasn’t the one chewing calcium carbonate tablets like they were Necco Wafers.

They’d finished their meal and the show and their glasses of beer were empty when Jack pushed the button to turn off the TV.

“The most unrealistic part of that entire episode was how well-stocked the supply room they fucked in was. I mean, I don’t even care that you’d have to be double-jointed to get into some of those positions, alien or not. No one has that many boxes of gloves just sitting around.”

Comments

[jackabbot]

“Lucky for you that I’ve known you forever and know that there are some things about you that balance out your occasional relapse into stoic asshole syndrome,” Jack teased. When Robby pressed a kiss to the edge of his jaw, he chuckled.

“Why, Doctor! Are you trying to get fresh with me?”

He raised his voice an octave to mimic the character in the episode they’d just watched who had said something almost exactly like that.

[physicianheal]

Robby laughs at that and shakes his head, leaning back into his own space and taking another bite of his ice-cream.

"Not until I finish my ice-cream, Ma'am. Then I'll consider it."

[jackabbot]

Jack chuckled too. If they were near each other and no one else was, it was a guarantee that Robby would be touching him or he’d be touching Robby. Both of them had been a little short on touch recently and he felt like they were both trying to make up for lost time. They kept their hands to themselves at work during handover, of course. Well, mostly. Jack leaned in a little closer to point things out on screens these days, but he thought that was still pretty subtle.

“Who says things like ‘get fresh’ anyway? That’s the slang that made it through however many hundreds of years of language?”

[physicianheal]

"That guy who calls his boyfriend his "steady" probably does," says Robby, finishing the ice-cream and setting the bowl down on the table. He sits back, giving Jack an appraising look, enjoying the way his t-shirt fits across his chest, the muscles in his arms. Sometimes, a lot of the time, he can't work out how he got this lucky.

"You in the mood?" he asks. "For me to get fresh?"

It's been torture, honestly, but he's been letting Jack set the pace, call the shots. It feels like the right choice.

[jackabbot]

“Sousa?” Jack confirmed. “Yeah, I can see that. He seems like he might, and that’s not a criticism. He joined the Army after Pearl Harbor. He knew he was getting into a war. I just wanted to get out of my small town.”

He remembered how everyone had thought that since the Cold War had ended, the “big wars” were over. That assumption had aged like milk.

Robby looked him over and Jack smirked again. He’d keep lifting even without Robby’s appreciation, but he didn’t mind it either.

“Doesn’t look like you’re done with your drink, and that bourbon’s way too good to just gulp.”

Jack also had a few sips left of his Scotch, but he deliberately lifted the glass and drank some of it.

[physicianheal]

"Yeah, you're right," says Robby, watching as Jack sips his drink before he takes a sip of his own. He looks down at the glass, at the finger or so of bourbon left it. "If that's a no, I could definitely nurse this for a while." His tone is deliberately casual, mostly because he's teasing, and they both know it. "Read a book."

[jackabbot]

“You do have yet another cheesy spy novel to finish,” Jack agreed. Robby kept up with the medical literature, as did Jack, but both of them also liked reading less complicated books sometimes. Jack tended towards classic westerns and Robby liked spy novels.

“One of these days you should ask Nikita how many details those books get wrong. She might not answer, though.”

Jack didn’t know exactly what Nikita’s past looked like and he wasn’t going to ask since she was a damn good paramedic and that was more important than anything else, but there was definitely some intelligence training somewhere in there. He’d been around enough people with vague jobs and backgrounds to start recognizing them.