Chapter Text
“He doesn’t like to listen.”
It was true. Robby really, really didn’t like to listen, which Jack had come to know, begrudgingly at first and then with the sort of resigned intimacy that comes from repetition, from the slow accumulation of small, identical disappointments that are not so much disappointments as confirmations, through their nearly ten-year friendship and five-year—what was that word Parker had used, said with that particular, needling brightness that suggested she knew more than Jack would ever willingly admit? Situationship. That was it, a word Jack had rebuffed initially for its imprecision—anyways.
It had become, over time, a steady facet of whatever it was they were to each other, nomenclature notwithstanding, that Jack was the one who spoke and spoke and spoke, who marshalled facts and logic and experience, and Robby was the one who, if not literally sticking his fingers in his ears and whistling a tuneless, obstinate refusal, then doing something functionally identical: smiling, deflecting, choosing—always choosing—not to be moved.
It was not, Jack would tell Dana, would tell any other nurse or resident or fellow attending that came to him to bitch about it, that Robby didn’t hear them. That would have been easier, almost. It was that Robby heard them all perfectly well and decided, with that same easy, infuriating stubbornness that governed most of his life, that he knew better.
“You have to do your PT exercises,” Jack said, already feeling the familiar edge of exasperation creeping into his voice, the way it always did when he could see, with painful clarity, the exact outline of what was about to happen.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Robby insisted, which might have been more convincing had it not been accompanied by the low, involuntary groan he let out as he collapsed into the bed, one hand flying to his lower back, his face tightening, briefly, into something that looked like real pain before smoothing itself over into something more manageable.
“Robby.”
The other man cracked a single eye open, and there it was—that look, already a little sheepish, already a little conceding, as though he knew, even now, how this would go and was still stubborn to a fault and unwilling to skip ahead to the part where he admitted it.
“It’s fine, Jacky, seriously—”
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes for a moment, because there was only so many times a man could have the same conversation before it began to feel less like a conversation between rational adults and more like a humiliation ritual between a malevolent God and their devoted servant.
“You have the same good sense that God gave an acorn, you know that?”
They held themselves there, suspended in that familiar standoff, Jack still standing, his prosthetic not yet removed, his hands braced against his hips, and Robby half-curled on the left side of the bed, stubborn even in discomfort and abject pain.
But then Robby made a small, miserable sound as he tried to tug the duvet over himself, a sound so transparently self-pitying that it broke, as it always did, whatever thin, brittle layer of resolve Jack had managed to construct.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, already turning away, already moving toward the kitchen, because this, too, was part of it—the inevitability of his own capitulation, the way care, especially for Robby, had always been less a choice than a reflex.
By the time he returned with two Advil and a glass of water, Robby had shifted only slightly, enough to accept both with a murmured thanks that was almost, but not quite, contrite, and Jack, without ceremony and without asking (because asking would have allowed Robby the possibility of refusal) set the glass aside and pushed Robby—gently, always gently—onto his stomach.
“You have to do your PT exercises,” he repeated, as he leaned over and grabbed a bottle of the massage oil he kept in Robby’s nightstand for days like this, and then unscrewed the cap of the massage oil and let it pool into his palms, the scent of it rising—herbal, grounding, something he associated, now, with these moments, with the strange, unspoken intimacy of tending to someone who refused to tend to himself. “What, you think it’s candy they just hand out for the fun of it?”
“I don’t need the exercises,” Robby insisted, because of course he did, because there was something in him that resisted, on principle, the idea of being told what his own body required. “I just tweaked it today, that’s all.”
“Man, what the fuck do you think the exercises are for?” Jack said, though without real heat now, his hands already moving, already working, finding the tight, stubborn knots in Robby’s back and pressing into them with a tenderness that belied the sharp edge of his words. “Don’t even answer that—I know you know the answer. You’re just being an idiot.”
Robby didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to. Jack felt it instead—the slow unwinding of tension beneath his hands, the way Robby’s body, traitorous in its honesty, responded to the very care he insisted he did not need, and, after a moment, the small, involuntary hum that slipped from him, equal parts relief and something softer, as he smiled into the crook of his elbow on which he was resting his face and looked at Jack, above him, all the while.
Jack’s right knee had begun to ache that morning in the way it did when the weather was about to turn, a twinge dull enough to not even necessarily be called pain, but enough to register and to warn, and he had learned, over time, to trust it with a faith that bordered on superstition.
So at handoff, in that brief, habitual overlap of their days, he had advised Robby, “It’s going to rain tomorrow. Bring a jacket if you’re walking in.”
Robby snorted, immediate and dismissive. “Sure, Long John Silver. You going to tell me my future too?”
Jack had bitten back a smile—not because it wasn’t funny, but because encouragement, he had learned, only made things worse. “I foresee,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face, “An unfortunate shower in your future.”
Robby shook his head, grinning now, warming to the bit in the way he always did, as though being stubborn was a game and he was determined to win. “Man, you’ve told me the Pens were going to make playoffs and that you could hit a home run in that softball game against Presby.”
“This isn’t me,” Jack insisted. “It’s my knee.”
Robby gave him a look—long, unimpressed, and already decided. “The same knee that said it was a perfect day to hike Mount Washington? Remind me how that went.”
“That was different, that was geographically—”
Robby waved him off, already halfway out the door. “Stick to the medicine, Zoltar.”
“Bring a coat,” Jack called after him anyway, even though he knew, already, that it would make no difference.
Robby showed up seven hours later, soaked clean through, hair plastered to his forehead, jacketless. Of course.
And Robby, infuriatingly, met his eyes with that same easy, unrepentant steadiness and shrugged as he said, “Coincidence.”
Jack stared at him for a long second, then another, something like laughter and something like exasperation tangling together in his chest, indistinguishable.
“Of course,” he said finally, because what else was there to say? And he turned, already reaching for the spare pair of scrubs he had set aside hours earlier.
Jack had told him, had not only told him but explained, and then re-explained, and then, finally, in a moment of rare and unguarded candor had asked—had asked with a kind of careful insistence that bordered on pleading—not to go into Behavioural Health 2, because there was a particular quality to the situation that set something in Jack on edge, a fine, internal calibration honed over years that told him when something was about to tip from manageable to not, another code hoola-hoop waiting to happen.
“We’re holding off on the Versed until Caleb sees him first,” he said, already hearing, even as he spoke, the shape of the objection that would follow, because Robby was nothing if not consistent in this, in the way he resisted protocol when it seemed, to him, to prolong suffering rather than alleviate it.
“And what about Haldol?” Robby asked, his gaze fixed not on Jack but on the narrow window inset into the door, where the patient’s movement registered only in fragments—limbs, thrashing, the erratic shadow of a body in distress—punctuated by the high, ragged edge of a voice unraveling itself against the walls, words spilling out about revelation, about judgement, about the imminent and inescapable end.
“Following standard of care,” Jack said, sharper now, because he could feel it slipping already, the conversation, the fragile, necessary alignment between them, “We’re waiting for Psych to evaluate before we start anything, to determine if an antipsychotic is indicated or if—Robby—”
Because of course. Because of course Robby was already moving, already halfway down the hall, that same loose, unhurried gait, his long and tall frame moving through the ED, forging a path ahead, like Moses parting the Red Sea as all around him, nurses and technicians and fellow doctors made way, moved around him, making space for Robby, as if the whole place revolved around him.
Jack followed, irritation sharpening into something more urgent. “Brother, Caleb will be here in five minutes—”
“Five minutes is too long to have him in there like that,” Robby said, not unkindly, but with that same quiet conviction that always undid Jack, because it was not wrong, not entirely—it just wasn’t taking into account the entire picture before them.
“Robby—”
Robby glanced back, just briefly, and smiled, and there was something in that smile—something easy, something assured—that made it impossible, in that moment, for Jack to say anything that would actually land.
“Jack,” he said, “It’ll be fine. I’ll take the hit for it.”
And he did.
Literally.
The next time Jack laid eyes on him properly, after shouting for security and hurling Robby out of the room, not even attempting to properly look at him, because he knew if he did, if he saw how badly Robby had been hurt, he would have dropped everything— including the Hippocratic Oath— and gone to his aid, and at that moment there was a more pressing situation that needed to be contained, Robby was sitting on a gurney in Central 14, blood bright and spilling down his face with a frightening speed, even though Jack knew it was nothing extraordinary, was just the normal course for any nasal fracture to follow, but still—
“Man, do you never listen to me?” Jack said, and the words came out sharper than he intended, edged with something that was an intoxicating cocktail of fear and anger, as he snapped on a pair of gloves with more force than necessary. “What do you keep me around for, decoration?”
“Well,” Robby said, because of course he did, because even now, even with blood running freely down his lip, he could not resist the instinct to soften, to deflect, to fucking flirt, “That and your good looks,” his voice warped slightly by the swelling already beginning to take hold.
“Smooth,” he intoned. “But you’re not flirting your way out of this one, Robinavitch.” But Jack could feel the corner of his mouth betraying him, twitching despite everything, despite the irritation, despite the fact that this, too, was part of it—the way Robby refused to let the moment settle fully into seriousness. “Head back.”
And then Robby did what he always did, which was, in Jack’s private and ongoing assessment, both entirely wrong and entirely, impossibly, right.
Because as Jack moved closer, as he pressed gauze to the bridge of his nose, as he tilted Robby’s head with careful, practiced hands, moving through the familiar choreography of care, Robby reached out and rested his hand, warm and steady, against Jack’s thigh, fingers curling just enough to be felt, just enough to anchor.
“Rabbit,” he said, softer now, the humour stripped away, leaving something gentler, something that did not ask to be seen but was offered anyway. “I’m okay.”
And Jack stilled, just for a moment, not enough to interrupt the work of his hands, but somewhere inside the sharp edge of his frustration softened by the simple, undeniable fact of that touch, the warmth of it seeping through fabric and skin alike, grounding in a way that words never quite managed.
He swallowed, once, deliberately, and forced his focus back to the task at hand, to the practical, the necessary.
“You said no dirty talk at work,” he said, after a moment, because deflection, he knew full well, was not Robby’s alone.
And Robby—God, Robby—laughed.
He laughed, even now, even like this, the sound bright and unguarded despite the blood, despite the swelling, despite the fact that minutes ago, he had been struck hard enough to break skin and cartilage alike.
Jack shook his head, a small, helpless motion, something like fondness threading its way, inevitably, through everything else.
Stubborn, he thought. And stupid, and headstrong, and allergic to listening to anyone but himself, but he was Jack’s, all the same.
(And then, of course, there are the other times—rarer, and therefore more unsettling in their deviation from the familiar pattern—when Robby does not argue, does not deflect, does not meet Jack’s insistence with that easy, maddening refusal that has, over the years, come to feel almost reassuring in its predictability, but instead folds in on himself with a kind of terrible inwardness, as though something essential has given way beneath the surface and all that remains is the slow, unavoidable collapse.
Sometimes it’s a specific patient, sometimes a particularly difficult call with Gloria and the Board, and sometimes it’s nothing so obvious as that; sometimes it’s just the accumulation, the quiet sediment of too many moments in which Robby has had to step forward where someone else has stepped back, absorbing impact after impact until there is, finally, nowhere left for it to go.
During those times, Robby will be in Jack’s arms—and sometimes he will still smell of Noelle or Nicole or whoever else’ perfume, having come straight from their apartment to Jack’s house, as though proximity to Jack was instinctive, as though Robby’s body, had already made a decision that Jack was still catching up to—and Robby will be shaking, a fine, relentless tremor, all the nervous energy his body is storing up where he can’t release as he usually would, self soothing by stroking the back of his head or crossing his arms over his chest, folding in on himself in a desperate attempt to make himself smaller.
Jack will do what he knows how to do, which is to triage, assess and fix: his hands will move first, settling at the back of Robby’s neck, along his spine, mapping the familiar terrain as though it might yield answers under pressure, speak where Robby cannot. Jack will talk, then, too, because speech is another form of care, and the words come in the same measured cadence he uses everywhere else, the practiced neutrality of reassurance shaped by training, by repetition.
It wasn’t Robby’s fault.
He will say it once, but even as the words leave him, he will know that they have not landed, that they have not even been permitted the most cursory entry into Robby’s psyche. Robby’s body will not respond or soften; if anything, it will tighten further, as though the words themselves have pressed against something already bruised.
So Jack will say it again and again and again, that it is not Robby’s fault. None of it, ever, will be Robby’s fault. Robby never argues during these nights, which is, in its own way, worse.
Because the lack of the usual refusal, their familiar dance of contradiction and counterpoint, always sets Jack on edge— as if Robby’s disagreement is unnecessary because the conclusion has already been reached, fixed in place. Jack can feel it in the way Robby holds himself, in the tension that does not dissipate under touch, in the absence of any outward resistance.
Robby’s hands will always find him then, on their own private pilgrimage, not with any clear intention, but as though guided by something more primitive, more reflexive, settling against Jack—his side, his hip, wherever it can make contact—and gripping, not tightly but persistently, the way one might hold onto something in the dark, not to pull it closer but simply to confirm that it is there.
Time will loosen here, and become indistinct. The repetition blurs, each iteration folding into the next, until Jack is no longer certain how many times he has said it, only that he has not stopped, that he cannot stop, because stopping would imply completion, and there is nothing in Robby’s posture, in the set of his body, that suggests anything has been completed at all.
But Jack’s words—that it wasn’t Robby’s fault—will slowly quieten, and take on an almost lyrical quality, reminding him faintly of saying a rosary, when the repetition of words become so rote that they almost lose all meaning— and Jack will continue to speak them, if only to maintain the rhythm, the presence of them in the space between them.
Jack hopes Robby knows, but he thinks he might, that he would not stop repeating those words until he was blue in the face and his voice had grown hoarse and then silent. There is nothing in the world that could ever compel Jack to stop, to cease his reassurances of Robby’s goodness, of his inherent worth, of how much better he makes the world just by being it. And so as difficult, as horrible as these nights are to witness, they are also deeply necessary, because it is in these moments that Jack will be reminded, and subsequently resolve, to never, ever stop speaking to Robby, even when he doesn’t listen and it falls on deaf ears, but he will continue to do it, because it is the only way Jack knows how to show him—this man who resists, who deflects, who so often turns away from what is offered—that he is, and will remain, held.
And Robby—who will not respond, who will not agree, or offer any indication at all that Jack’s words have been accepted—at the very least, will not pull away.)
It was, Jack knew even as he agreed to it, a fool’s errand. Jack knew that much to be true, but Dana had asked, and she looked distraught when she did, so Jack had sighed, and gone to find Robby. He did not begin with instruction; he’d learned, over time, that that would only get Robby’s back up, would be reframed as a challenge instead of a friendly suggestion. So, instead, Jack began where Robby would allow him to begin, which was with the thing itself—the bike, the damage, the inconvenience of it—and from there, gradually, widened the scope; commiserating, offering, suggesting without quite insisting that he could drive them both home to Jack’s place now that Robby was moonlighting as an AirBnB host apparently, that they could load the bike up into his pick up truck, that there was no urgency that required Robby to go tonight, in the dark, in this state, that postponement was not failure but prudence.
And Robby listened, in the way he always did: attentively, outwardly receptive, his gaze fixed, his posture angled toward Jack as though he were taking in every word, and yet Jack could feel, even then, the distance between hearing and accepting, the quiet, internal calculus already underway. Robby had looked unsure, but then Duke accepted for him, and when Robby had shot the older man with a stern look, he’d told Robby to accept a good thing while he had it, and so Robby had relented, silently, and wheeled the bike to Jack’s pick up, laying the Bonneville gently on its side, as Jack went in and feigned an issue with his leg, and Shen reassured him they had it from here.
And so they’d gone back to Jack’s, and Jack had ordered from that Thai place Robby liked so much, and as they sat on the couch together, Jack drinking up the other man, Robby’s day unfurled in front of him, a litany of small frustrations and bigger arguments, with Mohan, with Al-Hashimi, with his still unresolved feelings about having Langdon back in the ER, about Duke’s condition, the grief that Robby held for the man, the sorrow and guilt he’d felt at having to deliver that kind of diagnosis. And then Dana, and the way he had snapped at her, and the immediate, unshakable regret that followed; and beneath that, deeper still, the unease at leaving, at stepping away from a place that had, over time, come to define not just what he did but who he was.
Robby spoke about his unease at leaving, at the thought of the ER being able to run without him, the way it ran without Adamson, functioning, sure, but worse for wear. What would happen to them? Robby fretted. Who would be there to weather the storm for them, go to bat for them, step up when someone needed to step back? And what if someone did do that, someone like Al-Hashimi or Shen or even maybe Langdon, and they did it better than Robby? What if The Pitt got better in his absence, not worse? What would that mean? How would he return then, would he even be able to? The question did not resolve, instead it expanded, proliferated, branching into others that Jack could see forming even as Robby spoke: what would that mean for his life, his most basic and intrinsic sense of self?
And Jack, for once, did not speak, because he knew not that Robby wouldn’t listen, but that he couldn’t, that he needed more than anything right now, a safe place to land, to voice all this without judgment or interruption, to be allowed to be scared and selfish and uncertain as to what to do. So he sat there, and held the space for Robby to just be, and let the words come, and when they faltered, did not rush to fill the silence, allowing it instead to settle, to widen, until Robby, finally, ran out of language, out of the ability to continue circling the same set of concerns. And when it finally seemed that Robby had run out of steam, Jack got up off the couch and tilted his head towards the bedroom, offering his hand out for Robby to take.
And Robby took it, and followed him, and later that night, when the sky had finally returned to darkness as the fireworks faded into memory, Robby lay blinking up at the ceiling, and Jack lay beside him, watching him. And when the night turned to morning, and Robby got up, and brushed his teeth, he walked back from the bathroom, still in his pyjamas, and looked between Jack, still in bed, and his clothes from last night, still a crumpled heap on the floor.
And when Jack stretched his hand out across the empty expanse of the bed where Robby should have been, he tried to put into words everything he’d wanted to say to him last night, and said “Robby, stay.”
It was not a command; It was not even, really, a request, or an instruction, or even a question. It was, Jack realized as he said it, something closer to an offering, a single, unembellished alternative to the path Robby had already begun to set himself on.
And Robby, with no more than a second glance to the clothes, closed the distance between them, and took Jack’s hand, and listened to him.