Chapter Text
“I just… I don’t know that I want to be here anymore. I don’t know that I want to be anywhere anymore.”
Robby doesn’t look up at Jack. He’s not sure if it’s shame or the fear that the words coming out of his mouth are the truest thing he’s said in a long time.
Everything in the emergency department seems so much louder. It’s not just beeping and chatter, but it’s the footsteps and the squeaking wheels of a gurney being rolled right outside the closed door..
That’s why, when Jack finally speaks up, Robby thinks that perhaps he doesn’t hear him correctly.
"Robby, if you don’t want to be here, then we'll go,” Jack says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
As if Robby could have asked him months ago and Jack would have had both their suitcases packed and in the back of his Subaru hatchback, right next to his go bag, before the conversation even finished.
“What?” Robby finally manages to get out. The noise around him quiets for the first time in months and he searches Jack’s face for anything that might indicate that he’s joking. “We?”
“We can leave whenever we want,” Jack says, as if they both don’t have responsibilities and lives..
Jack is about to start a twelve hour shift and he spent most of the day with SWAT. He’s already on the board with patients, and Robby still hasn’t passed all of his over just yet.
“We have money, credentials, and contacts. And even if you don’t want to be a doctor anymore, then we will at least still have the money.”
Robby just stares at him and wonders if he’s dreaming. If he is, he’s not sure how long he’s been asleep. This is not a way to solve his problems, he’s sure, but he can’t think about that right now. He needs to answer Jack so he doesn’t get any more worried than he already is.
For all that Jack is telling him they can run away, he still has this little furrow between his eyes that has only grown deeper over the past decade.
“You really listened to the investment guy at the retirement seminar, didn’t you?” Robby says, well aware of how wet his voice sounds as he tries to joke. He tries to ignore it even though he knows Jack can hear it and he knows that Jack knows that he knows.
“Excuse you, but I have a whole financial advisor.”
Neither of them say aloud that she was actually Liz's financial advisor. Another thing Jack inherited when she passed away. Not her skills of handling the investments, but someone to do it for him, so he wouldn’t have to think about how he now had the amount of two peoples’ retirement funds in his single account.
"I can't just leave. I'm meant to be leading"--
"You're leading yourself right into the ground, Mike." Jack's voice isn't gentle, it's firm and invites no arguments. Robby isn't even sure he has one.
“I want to keep helping people,” Robby blurts out right when it comes to his mind. Jack just nods as if he expected this. There’s a good chance that he did, but wanted to keep all the options open for Robby, reminding him that there were any number of options available to him, even just in being a doctor.
“Okay, but that doesn’t have to be here,” Jack says.
“Right.”
Robby had forgotten that, actually. Even though Jack already mentioned it. It doesn’t seem plausible, not really. This place has been his home base for years. It’s hard to imagine doing or being anywhere else. He guesses that is part of the problem.
“There’s people all over who need help,” Jack says, not exactly following Robby’s train of thought, but just supporting the foundation of what’s already there. “The same people who frequently try to poach us because we are very good at our jobs. Working sabbatical exists. We can take a year, or two.”
Or three, or four, Robby hears.
Poaching did happen occasionally. Plenty of places needed doctors and usually it was more rural areas where they could not keep good ones. Jack hadn’t watched Northern Exposure when it was airing, but they had watched it together once it had started showing up on streaming services. It’s not like Jack is suggesting he and Robby go to a little town in Alaska, but there are plenty of other options.
“It would mean a pay cut,” Robby adds.
Not that Robby really cares. He doesn’t spend the money he has, most of it used to make his life easier so he can work even more. The majority of it is deposited into a trust that Robby has kept a secret from both Janey and Jake because the former can’t exactly yell at him if he’s already dead by the time the latter receives it.
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Jack is in the same boat with money. Even more so, given his…extracurriculars. Robby isn’t sure what kind of hazard pay that a doctor receives when working with SWAT or any number of other peculiar hobbies that Jack has found for himself over the years.
“How is this going to work?” Robby asks, and if it sounds like he’s begging, it’s because he is. This is the start of a plan made by someone he trusts and he needs it.
He wants a roadmap. He needs Jack to lay it all out for him so it sounds more like a plan and less like a wish fulfillment that will disappear the second that another trauma comes through the doors of the emergency department.
“You are going to go home and go to sleep,” Jack orders and Robby grimaces. He doesn’t love the idea to start, but he supposes he can see the necessity of it if Jack really insists. “Then tomorrow, after a big breakfast, you are going to get on your bike and ride however you mapped it out.”
Robby can do that part. It's easy enough to follow his original plan. He likes that Jack’s plan and his are still aligned. It’s a nice compromise that doesn’t completely rock his entire foundation.
“You’re going to listen to audiobooks and each time you stop for the night, you’re going to call me when I wake up to get ready for my shift. And you’re going to tell me what happened in the book,” Jack tells him. “Do you think you can do that?”
Well, he can. Robby doesn’t necessarily want to. He had made a whole playlist that he had planned on listening to on a loop.
But he supposes that he could finally dig up the list in his notes app that he pulls up every time that someone recommends a book to him. He’s never read any, but now is as good of a time as any to start. Especially if it’s Jack asking.
“Okay.” Robby nods, so Jack knows that he’s listening, even if he’s thinking of how he started that list originally in his notes app when Adamson wouldn’t stop going on about a book he read about the history of hurricanes for the last five hundred years. Maybe he’ll start with that one.
“You’re also going to be looking for a home for us,” Jack adds casually, like it isn’t the biggest deal in the world.
That the two of them sharing a home after trying to keep their heads above water together best they can isn't something neither of them have ever admitted aloud.
It’s a new day, Robby thinks, as he searches Jack’s face for any kind of hesitancy.
There is none. Not even a god damn trace. Jack is looking at Robby like he's the only thing that matters.
Robby thinks that Jack has maybe been strategizing this plan for longer than he’s letting on. He wonders if Jack has book recommendations too. Maybe once he’s done that first one from Adamson, Robby will tell him about it and then have him pick the next one.
“I am?” Robby checks again, making sure that he’s heard correctly.
“Yeah,” Jack says, still an easy tone. “Doesn’t have to be an actual house if you don’t want. Even just a city or town you like. One that will look past the idea of two men living together in exchange for damn good medical care.”
Right. Because they’re going to be living together. Robby can see how Jack very carefully isn’t touching him and first, he’s worried that maybe Jack thinks it’s because Robby will break.
But he sees Jack’s eyes looking past Robby for a second, checking on the department they’ve currently shut out of their lives, even if just for a few minutes.
If Robby has to guess, Jack isn’t touching him because this doesn’t belong to the Pitt.
It belongs to the two of them, for him and Robby. Just like how Jack only let himself really breathe up on the roof, Robby is going to have to wait until they’ve left hospital property for real.
“Right,” Robby finally answers Jack and for his trouble, gets a teasing smile.
“That means talking to people. Stopping in diners, local restaurants. Scoping out the joints. We know plenty of people you can ask. There’s always hospitals looking.”
“I can talk to people,” Robby insists, playing along, feeling even more tension leave him. Jack raises an eyebrow at him and Robby amends his statement. "Well, I need to try local delicacies.”
"And you're going to have a standing appointment with one of Caleb’s people. Once a week.” Jack says it as simply as he’s laid out all of his other conditions, as if it’s not something that Robby has been avoiding for months, years.
"Okay," Robby says quietly and Jack really looks at him, meets his eyes and doesn’t look away, searching for any hint that he's being bullshitted.
"I think evenings would be best, but that's your call. After a few weeks, you'll figure out what works best.”
Jack doesn’t exactly say that he doesn’t want Robby getting on a motorcycle after squeezing himself through an emotionally fraught session with a trauma therapist, but the implication is clear enough. Robby could understand that, but he was also glad that Jack didn’t say the obvious part aloud.
It’s another reminder that Robby can’t really help anyone right now, not until he helps himself. He thinks that clinging to the Pitt is making it worse.
“I also want postcards, but I guess that can be optional.”Jack shrugs and finally looks away, as if this is the point where he thinks he might have gone too far.
“You have been giving me a list of orders for the last few minutes and now you’re getting shy on me?” Robby says incredulously.
He goes to grab Jack, even just to put a hand on his arm and then stops. It’s for him as much as Jack. Instead, he puts his hand right on the cold metal guard of the gurney, right next to Jack’s hand. Judging by how Jack stares at it for a long minute, Robby think that he gets his point across.
Still, he wants to be closer.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m just saying. I’ve seen your handwriting. Really upholding the doctor stereotype there. Even if you do send them, I wouldn’t be able to read them,” Jack ends this with a mumble that Robby isn’t about to let him get away with.
“I’ll send you postcards,” he promises. He adds postcard stamps to his packing list. If he’s going to let himself sleep and eat a big breakfast before he gets on the road, he might as well stop at the post office too. In for a penny.
“At each stop?” Jack asks hopefully.
“You think that every little town I ride through is going to have postcards?” Robby shakes his head. “Man, when I took Jake on that Boy Scout trip, the rest stops barely had them anymore.”
“Dying art,” Jack mutters.
“I’ll do my best,” Robby promises and just when he thinks Jack is going to let it go, he feels those eyes pinning him again.
“Not just for the postcards, right?”
“No, not just for the postcards,” Robby promises and for the first time all day, he thinks that he means it.
He thinks that Jack believes him too, and if Jack believes him, then Robby thinks that he really is being truthful. It's going to take the both of them in more ways than one.
“Are you free tomorrow?” Robby asks. “For breakfast,” he clarifies. “After your shift.”
“You cooking?”
“Yeah, but you’ll have to put my dishes away once they’re dry. I'll be long gone."
And for the first time in a while, Robby mentioning his trip doesn't sound like a suicidal journey.
“Make the kid do it,” Jack gestures towards the outside of their little bubble, to wherever Whitaker is and Robby laughs. God, it’s been a fucking day. “You already gave him your keys, right?”
“I’m going to leave. And I will see you tomorrow morning,” Robby says for the two of them.
He almost gives into the temptation to touch Jack but he’ll have time tomorrow, before he leaves. Then, according to Jack’s plan, they might have all the time in the world.
"Oh, one more thing!" Jack perks up as if he's only just remembered and Robby prepares himself for something he can laugh off.
Instead, Jack finally does take hold of Robby. He pulls him behind the privacy curtain that surrounds the interior of the room, frames his face between both of his hands, and kisses him in front of God and PTMC ED Room 18.
"You're going to wear your fucking helmet," Jack tells him.
He leans in one more time and Robby isn't sure how he manages to kiss him through the smile he's got on his face, but Jack's a man of many talents.
Robby thinks he can meet all the objectives laid out for him. If not, Jack will only be a phone-call away.