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Space Date
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.”
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.”
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"I just kept thinking about how pissed Dana would be if she caught someone screwing in the Pitt instead of...you know...clearing beds."
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"But then, no one ever has ever had anything on Dana. We're all fucking lucky that Presby and Westbridge have never managed to poach her away from us."
He knew they'd both certainly tried and he had no idea how their CNO had managed to keep her there. He did wonder sometimes if Robby or Adamson before him had put their thumb on the figurative scale, but he'd never ask.
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"What? The pleasure of my company isn't a good enough reason to stay?" he asks, eyebrows raised as he idly runs his hand from Jack's calf to his mid thigh and back. "Honestly, I think I was more in danger of you poaching her for the night shift at one point. Thank God for her kids."
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It was working out pretty well for Jack, so he didn't mind it. But he'd still mention it.
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"I might be aware of that," he says. It's pretty obvious, when you looked at his relationship history for longer than about five minutes. "And, yeah, she was. Stunning and capable. Which, you know. Still is. Perlah and Princess are great but Dana twenty years ago made them look like amateurs."
God, he misses Dana.
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There was a little 'yeah, okay' face that Robby made sometimes. It was almost as entertaining as the owl sound he made when he was particularly pleased by some kind of procedure.
"If I didn't know Dana would be miserable without her girls, I'd almost wish for her to arrive here just so you'd have her around again."
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"She was threatening to resign the day I left, so maybe we had to get there, back home." He sometimes wishes Dana was around, but not enough to put her through losing her girls and her husband. It's kind of fitting that him and Jack ended up here together. They pretty much only had each other anyway.
"We got anything that looks like dessert?"
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"You went grocery shopping last. If you already ate all the ice cream that's on you."
Robby had essentially moved in to Jack's apartment over the last month, although he still paid rent on his apartment in case either one of them needed to take a quick nap after or before a shift. They'd figured out splitting the chores and grocery shopping without much actual discussion -- if it needed to be done, it got done. It was how they'd always worked, personally and professionally.
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"There is... Probably still ice-cream," says Robby. He gives Jack's thigh another squeeze and then nudges his leg off his lap so that he can stand up. "You want some?" He looks at the empty glasses on the table. "And another drink? This is supposed to be a date..."
Since he's managed to move his shifts around, he's been insisting on Friday nights being date nights -- whether they go out or stay in. He's not sure Jack gets it, but he's humouring him at least.
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Robby was a bourbon guy, but Jack had always preferred Scotch. Good quality bottles of both were almost always in Jack's kitchen, here and in Pittsburgh. He'd let the bourbon run out when Robby hadn't been talking to him for a month, but he'd gone out and bought a really good bottle of it again shortly after he'd had his nightmare.
It was amusing to him that Robby insisted on Fridays being a date night. He understood the need to carve out time to spend with each other, especially when they both had high stress jobs with long hours and opposite shifts. He just didn't quite understand why they had to call it a 'date night'. It reminded him a little of how Diane always used to insist that Jack get her flowers on a regular basis. She could buy her own flowers, and she did sometimes, but she wanted him to get her some too.
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On his way to the kitchen, Robby gets out his phone and connects it to the speaker, sets something playing now that they're not watching TV anymore. Jack's right -- there's not a tonne of ice-cream left, so Robby scoops what's left into a bowl and then pours a generous measure of scotch for Jack and a matching measure of bourbon for himself.
He brings it all back to the couch and sets it down on the coffee table before he sits.
"What do you want to do with the rest of the evening?"
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Jack was fine with Springsteen playing out of the speaker he kept on the kitchen counter, but Robby had also brought over his fancy turntable and speakers and they both knew that sounded better than the little bluetooth thing.
"I don't have any particular plans. I'm just glad not to be dealing with anyone who fell on their ass in the snow or nearly gave themselves an MI shoveling it," Jack said when Robby was back with his ice cream and the two glasses. The city had gotten almost ten inches of snow on the twenty-sixth. Neither of them had worked that day or even the next, but that didn't mean they avoided snow-related injuries.
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"I don't want to have to get up to flip it," says Robby, settling back onto the couch with his ice-cream, his thigh butting up against Jack's. He'd prefer them intertwined again, but there's plenty of time for that.
"Preach," he says, taking a bite of his ice-cream. It's chocolate, a decent brand, so it ought to go well with the bourbon. "Prefer you to myself anyway."
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“I think I got a full BINGO on this episode. There was weird jargon, a disease progression that doesn’t make sense, three dramatic gasps, a character that we’ve never seen before and might never seen again, and of course inappropriate uses of a supply room.”
The characters spent more time in the supply room some episodes than they did talking to patients. They’d slept there, taken phone calls there, had arguments, all kinds of things.
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"You should make yourself a card next time," says Robby, gesturing with his spoon. "I've been saying for a while that you need a hobby."
It's amazing to him, quietly so, how they've just slipped into this -- living together, eating together, sleeping in the same bed when they're both there at the same time. Robby hasn't lived with anyone since Janey, and he thought he was out of practice.
Turns out he was just waiting for this.
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This was a light-hearted argument they’d had many times. Jack didn’t object to Robby’s hobbies, but he didn’t want to join them, especially running.
“I’ll sit on the beach in the shade and ogle you while you surf, though. That’s about my speed, I think.”
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"You can ogle me at home," he says, lifting one foot to nudge Jack's thigh, grinning, as he takes a sip of his bourbon. He was right -- it does go well with the chocolate. "It's warmer and it has the benefit that we can both get naked whenever we want."
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She’d transported someone who’d decided to go polar bear swimming at midnight when they’d ostensibly been stone cold sober. Jack and his team had gotten the person warmed up and they hadn’t had any long term consequences to their stupidity, fortunately for them.
“Oh, right. She called it a budgie smuggler. Are you saying you don’t want to see me in a budgie smuggler?”
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"If you keep saying that, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get hard again," says Robby, taking another bite of his ice-cream. "I've seen you in less than that, too, and I gotta say that I prefer that picture."
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He'd made progress in that arena over the last month but whether he'd get it all the way up and then keep it up was still a little bit of a crapshoot. It was still better than not getting it up at all, so he was taking that win. Robby had been as patient as Jack knew he could be about it all, and had also firmly disallowed Jack from saying anything too negative about it.
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Robby shoots him a look that always accompanies him referring to it as any kind of 'problem'. So far, it hasn't stopped them managing to have as an active a sex life as can be expected at their age and with their work schedules, at least as far as hands and mouths are concerned.
He doesn't have a free hand to squeeze Jack's thigh so he settles for nudging him with one knee.
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Jack nudged Robby with his own knee.
“Statement of fact, man. No judgment implied or stated.”
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"It's the word problem that I object to," says Robby, mildly, sucking his spoon clean and then gesturing with it. "Definitely didn't feel like a problem last night. That's all I'm saying."
Jack might say no judgement, but Robby knows he's a little bit delicate about it, sometimes. Robby just keeps reminding him. That's all he can do.
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Since Robby was gesturing with his spoon, Jack took the spoon away from him and got a bit of ice cream out of Robby's bowl, then ate it before handing the spoon back to Robby. It was good ice cream. It didn't quite go with Scotch, though, which he discovered when he took another sip of that to wash the ice cream down. It wasn't bad, but it didn't go well.
"I don't think that's gonna be on any dessert menus any time soon."
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He knows Jack well enough to almost be able to read his mind when that smirk shows up on his face. He rolls his eyes as Jack takes his spoon, but he holds the bowl out so that it's easier to scoop some ice-cream up.
"Bet it goes better with the bourbon," he says, reaching for his glass and holding that out, too. Even after all these years, the idea of drinking bourbon with Jack has almost a Pavlovian effect.
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“When I bought that bottle, the clerk asked me if I needed to apologize to someone for something. I decided not to tell him that I bought it after you apologized for something. I’m not sure bourbon is an apology liquor anyway.”
Maybe anything could be an apology liquor.
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"Once again, I apologise for being an asshole," says Robby, and he means it, too. He might not be particularly open about talking about his feelings, but he can admit when he's wrong.
Sometimes, anyway.
He leans in and kisses the hinge of Jack's jaw.
"But looks where it got us."
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“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.
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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."
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“Who says things like ‘get fresh’ anyway? That’s the slang that made it through however many hundreds of years of language?”
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"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.
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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.
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"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."
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“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.