Archive of Our Own

Robby washed his hands one, twice, three times as he idly reflected on the admin meeting he’d just had upstairs. It hadn’t been about anything emergent, but the ED had been q-word enough that afternoon that he’d felt comfortable leaving everyone alone to handle things for a while.

As always, he’d made them swear to page him for anything—even the most basic trauma—but as much as he’d hoped to have a reason to weasel out of performing his duties as chair and chief, he hadn’t heard a peep.

He’d even had some time to slip, unmolested, into one of the restrooms before getting back out there—a true rarity. He savored it, taking a second to splash some cool water on his face, before pushing back out onto the floor.

He slowly made his way to the hub, peeking into some of the patient rooms to check on his people. He spied a stray student or two, but no senior residents in sight.

As he approached central, he could see a flurry of activity in the trauma room beyond, past a whole lot of innocent-looking nurses who pretended not to notice him. Of fucking course. The silence had been too good to be true.

“We got a fucking trauma? Why didn’t anyone page me?!”

If anyone at the hub heard him, they didn’t show it. He grabbed a pair of gloves off a nearby wall, sliding them on as he strode quickly towards the trauma room. Must not have been important, if they didn’t page him—but judging by the frantic movement inside, it looked like they could use another hand.

Before he could shoulder his way in, Dana materialized and laid her hands on him, her voice and touch gentle, like she was calming a panicked patient. Used on him—here, now—that treatment felt out of place in a way that made his skin crawl.

“Robby, listen to me. Might be best if you sit this one out.”

“What the hell? Why?”

He sidestepped her and craned his neck to get a glimpse of what was going on in the room beyond. He could see McKay, Langdon, a few nurses all moving around the patient, who he could tell from the monitors was struggling severely with oxygen intake—and then the sea of bodies parted for a fragile moment and his stomach fell through the floor.

Jack.

He felt Dana’s grip tighten—“Robby!”—but he pushed past her into the trauma room where the faint ringing in his ears was joined by the blaring alarms of the monitors.

There, in the center of the room, was Jack, his Jack, sitting half-propped on the gurney. He looked awful, washed out and pale, and his brow was covered in sweat as he labored for each breath, chest heaving. He’d been here long enough that they’d upgraded him to high-flow oxygen, and the straps holding the thick cannula in place dug deeply into his cheeks. Above them, his eyes were wide and bloodshot as they met Robby’s.

It took a lot to shake Jack, even when—especially when—it came to his own health issues. This certainly wasn’t his first time in the ER as a patient. But in that terrible moment, Robby saw something new, unfamiliar in Jack’s eyes that made his blood run cold.

Fear.

Robby rushed to his side, pulling out his stethoscope and pressing the chestpiece to the flushed, freckled skin under Jack’s sweat-soaked shirt. “Shit, Jack, what’s going on? Why didn’t you call me?”

Jack shook his head, focusing hard on each inhalation while Robby sped through his exam. “Didn’t want to… worry you,” he eventually gasped between breaths. “Was having… trouble… breathing.”

“Yeah, man, I can tell,” Robby said, trying to sound collected, but failing to mask the shake in his voice. “You tried the neb?”

Jack nodded weakly. Robby distantly registered his team moving around him, drawing blood, adjusting a line, paging resp again, calling out vitals. If they had acknowledged his presence at Jack’s side, he didn’t know, or care. He could only focus on Jack.

Robby gently pulled Jack forward into his chest, getting access to his back. Jack’s lungs sounded much worse than baseline—and his baseline was not great to begin with. Alongside the familiar fine crackles arriving with each heaving inhalation—the same Robby had heard this morning, a lifetime ago now, when he’d woken up a grumbling Jack to check—he also detected an insidious, coarser sound, something different. Indicative of new fluid build up, maybe, or excess secretions. Infection. Acute exacerbation.

Jack had been sick for a few weeks, sure, but he hadn’t been that sick—just the tail end of something generic, something a healthy adult should have no trouble shaking, if it weren't for the deployment-related lung disease scarifying his lung tissue. But he was getting through it, slowly, sure, but through; and Robby had been keeping an eye on him between shifts, had made sure he was medicated, and resting, and fuck, he shouldn’t have left him, should have been paying closer attention—

He startled when he felt Jack’s hand on his arm—despite everything, his grip was still strong, and Robby’s eyes shot up to see Jack’s on him, wide and wild and wet.

“Robby,” he gasped weakly.

“Hey, hey. We’ve got you,” Robby assured him, shaking off the guilt over what had brought Jack in in the first place. Jack needed him here. He gave Jack’s shoulder a squeeze, tried to infuse everything he couldn’t say out loud in front of their colleagues.

“You’re in good hands, brother. We’ll get your sats up.”

“Robby,” Jack pushed out, clearly struggling with the effort of speaking. “Don’t… I don’t want…” He shook his head as if to clear it. Each labored gasp seemed to take more out of him. “Don’t let them… intubate… Robby, please…”

Robby froze. Jack’s hand tightened on his arm, thick fingers digging into the muscle, and Robby’s heart turned as he looked into Jack’s face, desperate and pleading, almost childlike. He rubbed Jack’s shoulder, shook his head slightly. “Jack…”

He chanced a glance up and locked eyes with McKay across the room, who had everything he needed to know written on her face: This ends one of two ways.

His eyes flicked up to the monitors; Jack was rapidly desatting, even with the high-flow oxygen. They could try BiPAP as an interventionary measure, but it was risky—and with the way things were trending, they’d only be delaying the inevitable.

“Jack.” Robby cleared his throat, cast about for the right thing to say to a man whose world had shrunk to one of pure pain and fear. “Jack, listen to me.”

But Jack knew what he was about to say, knew the terrible truth of it, and interrupted, voice hoarse and cracking, “Please, Rob, don’t—”

He began trembling, hyperventilating, his growing panic palpable, and Robby watched with dread as his heartrate ticked up on the monitor and the rest of his vitals began to trend even more sharply down.

“His sats are dropping, O2’s tanking—”

“Flow settings are maxed out—”

“We need to intubate, Robby, now—“

Time slowed, then, and Robby could hardly register the blaring of the alarms and the frantic numbers being lobbied across Jack’s body as he brought a shaking hand up to cradle his stubbled cheek.

Robby, of all people, understood the gravity of what he was about to put Jack through.

At a faraway level, he knew the clinical truths—intubations were a dime a dozen in the ED, a disgustingly standard procedure for how critical they were in the battle between life and death. But that meant outcomes were usually excellent. The vast majority of patients were extubated somewhere upstairs within a few days of their dramatic foray through his ED. It was uncomfortable, sure, but it was simple. Routine.

But Jack… but Jack. Jack was years into an interstitial lung disease diagnosis that had only progressed since his service, since those early, fragile days between them when a surprise bout of pneumonia had made Robby privy to Jack’s ticking clock. His lung function was mediocre on a good day and getting worse by the year. His lungs were thickly scarred, tough and inelastic but delicate, so delicate all the same.

And that made a simple, routine intubation anything but.

This could kill him. Robby had read the studies, had run the full research gamut as soon as he got home the day he found out. He knew the risks, and they were extremely high. Just shy of a death sentence.

But the alternative… Robby couldn’t bear to think of it, merely sidestepped it in his mind like it was a black, gaping chasm that he didn’t have the guts to peer into. He wasn’t ready. They weren’t ready, he thought.

He was being so, so incredibly selfish.

Because really, at the forefront of Robby’s mind, as he looked into Jack’s eyes, red-rimmed and fearful beyond the cannula, was something Jack had told him, years ago. Whispered words, given haltingly and carefully under the cover of trust and darkness as they lay together.

Jack, on a routine mission, days out from going home, en route to a nearby village for talks with local elders. Jack, in the sun and sand, screams muffled by the deafening ring in his ears, disoriented and afraid and in the worst pain of his life. Jack, in and out of consciousness, bundled into a helicopter, into a C-17, into a hospital, friendly, enemy, he couldn’t know—hands all over him and on his head and on his leg and all he knew was they were forcing a tube into his mouth and down his throat and he needed to fight like hell to stop them from hurting and touching and touching and invading him—

And Robby had held him so, so tightly, had pressed him against his bare chest and tried to make him feel small and strong and seen and invisible all at once. Jack’s shaking sobs into his shoulder, Jack’s curled hair tickling his chin. When they awoke the next morning, weak winter sunlight streaming through the shades, legs and bodies tangled, Jack didn’t say a word. But the air was different; Robby understood. Jack had chosen him, had offered him a precious gift.

And now Robby was about to throw all that hard-won trust into the dirt and fucking spit on it.

In the trauma room, even in his altered state, Jack noticed Robby’s expression change—had always been able to read him like an open fucking book—and his eyes widened in fear. He shook his head, fast, frantic, terrified, as he gasped past the cannula, “No—no, no, no, no, no, please, no—“

“You’ll be sedated, Jack, you won’t feel a thing, it won’t feel like it did—“

“Please, Robby, please—“ he choked, desperate. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—“

He tried to shove Robby away, began thrashing on the table as if to get up—“Somebody hold him down!”—and Robby slid his hands down to pin Jack’s arms and body against the gurney. Jack was strong, but he was sick, and Robby had the awful advantage. He felt his heart twist so sharply that it felt physically painful, could feel the tears welling up in his eyes as Jack strained and gasped and sobbed beneath him, begged Robby to let go, to stop.

To please, please, let him die.

Robby didn’t recognize the hands holding Jack down nor the strangled voice coming from his own throat.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Jack, I can’t, I—I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t lose you, I’m sorry—“

He felt Jack go limp beneath him as the sedative hit his bloodstream. Robby watched his eyes flutter shut, his furrowed brow smooth, his panicked voice die weakly in his throat, leaving only the muted whoosh of the oxygen flow and the angry beeping of the alarms.

Robby suddenly caught a glimpse of Jack’s old tracheostomy scar—just the barest hint of a puckered dimple peeking over his shirt collar—and swallowed against a sudden wave of nausea.

He felt like he was a thousand miles away.

He wondered if Jack would ever, ever trust him again.

“Robby?” Langdon at his elbow. Robby blinked up at the rest of the team, wiped his eyes roughly.

“Yeah,” he croaked, cleared his throat. “Yep, go ahead. Target a lower end tidal pressure, he’s got ILD and we don’t want to risk damaging the functioning tissue he’s got left.”

“Got it. Maybe you should step outside for a second. We’ve got him.” McKay was already readying the laryngoscope at Jack’s head, intubation tray nearby and prepped.

“Yeah. Okay.” Robby blinked again and he was back out in the chaotic noise of the ED, glass doors swinging behind him, expelled from the room where his team was busy saving his partner’s life.

—

“He’s in here. Press the call button if you need anything.”

Robby nodded in thanks to the nurse as she held the door open to Jack’s room.

The door clicked shut behind him, and he stood there awkwardly, taking it all in.

It had been decades since he’d been in one of these awful rooms, and they hadn’t gotten any more pleasant in the meantime. The lighting was dim, save for a cold glow near the head of the hospital bed, which, along with the numerous life support and monitoring machines, dominated the small space. In the corner, a stiff-looking armchair next to a small table. Another chair, plastic. A plain door that presumably led to the bathroom. Aside from a few generic framed landscape photos and an old fold-out TV, the white walls were bare.

His eyes roved around the room, cataloguing, observing, delaying, until he had no choice but to lay them upon Jack’s sleeping form.

Jack—his strong, stubborn, capable Jack—looked so impossibly small in that huge, supportive bed. Robby could hardly see him amidst all the blankets and pillows and equipment—just a shock of gray hair against a stark white sheet. He was so, so still, and Robby would have thought he was dead if not for the monitors surrounding him that said otherwise.

Robby drifted slowly to the side of the bed, gently picked up and placed the plastic chair closer to Jack’s bedside—quietly, as if a loud noise might wake him. He stood there for a moment, feeling so impossibly empty and far away. Oh, Jack. He sank down into the chair with a shuddering sigh. I’m so fucking sorry.

He groped for Jack’s limp hand, cradled it between his own and pressed it to his forehead, his cheeks, where it came back wet. When had he started crying?

He blinked up at Jack’s face, forcing himself to finally get a good look at him, and his heart sank.

At this close distance, Jack looked a thousand times worse. He was so pale, and bruised, somehow, like he’d been treated roughly when they secured the tubes to his face. His face was largely obscured by the ETT holder, pads pressing cruelly into his thin cheeks. At some point they must have fed in an NG tube—a poor omen for Jack’s short-term prognosis, if his doctors up here weren’t expecting to extubate within a day or two.

Robby—Doctor Robby—agreed with their assessment. Jack, with his lung disease, was an extremely high-risk patient, even more so now that he was on a vent. The next few days were sure to be touch and go at best. An NG tube was a no-brainer, really; if Jack took long enough to kick the infection and pass his breathing trials, which Robby knew would not be easy, he would be looking at another tracheotomy, as well.

Maybe even a permanent one.

But Robby, Jack’s partner, Jack’s closest, oldest friend, felt nothing but raw fear and anguish and guilt twist his heart, enough that he felt he would drown from it.

It wasn’t enough that he felt so fucking scared, absolutely terrified at the thought that Jack might not make it out of this cramped, stale, sterile room—might never again stumble home arm in arm with him after a night out, or wake Robby up with that intoxicating, boyish giggle of his on a sun-soaked weekend morning.

That fear—suffocating, all-consuming—was complicated by the insidious, curling guilt in his gut at having placed Jack in this precarious position in the first place.

He knew outcomes in ILD patients subject to mechanical ventilation were exceedingly poor. He had read every case study, every lit review thrice over; had virtually become Pittsburgh’s leading expert in ILD management and, difficult as it was for him to stomach, end-of-life care. Once patients progressed to the point of needing active breathing assistance, their life expectancy dropped dramatically.

Jack was lucky, relatively. With infection being the cause of his exacerbation—something reversible, treatable—he was in better shape than most. But the case reports continued to roll around in Robby’s head against his will, key phrases sounding out in his mind like a death knell. Dismal prognosis. Poor outcomes. Recommend early involvement of palliative care.

Despite the inevitability of it all, Robby couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack’s life had been newly shortened by his own hand—he had dropped the ball, had left Jack that morning fighting an undetected infection that could have killed him, might still kill him.

And then the horrific struggle downstairs, so foul he could hardly stand to think of it.

Ultimately, he had called it in. He had given the okay to proceed down in that trauma room despite Jack pleading, begging him not to with tears in his eyes. His hands that had clamped down on Jack’s, restrained him, kept him compliant enough for the sedative to do its work. His choice to grossly disregard Jack’s trauma, and likely his desire not to submit to life-saving respiratory care, though they’d never discussed it outright. His decisions. Jack’s life on the line.

Jack’s precious blood on his hands.

He heard a wailing sob and realized, distantly, that it was his own.

—

The world came back to him in pieces.

Disparate sounds, floating through his consciousness like seafoam on the crest of a gentle wave. Footsteps. Distant murmuring, a soft voice, and then a deeper one. Wind through the trees, blowing this way, then that way, then back again. And then the beeping; quiet at first, and then louder, louder, louder until it was all he could hear.

He stirred. Didn’t like that, didn’t like that beeping.

He tried to open his eyes, find the source of it, to no avail. Tried to bring a hand up, but couldn’t, and before he could wonder about it he felt a damp softness on his face, wiping at one eye, then the other.

More murmuring, louder, now.

He strained to look, to see, and this time, his eyes cracked open. He could make out only shapes, amorphous and moving and dim against a pale landscape. He blinked to try and bring them into focus. People, maybe, standing over him. He did his best to train his gaze on the bigger one, squinted a bit. Looked kind of like…

Robby?

The realization shot a current of awareness through him. Robby. Robby was here, standing over him in this forest—no, not a forest, he was indoors, in a room, with that godforsaken beeping. Couldn’t hear himself think over all that noise, just like when he was in the hospital, working, or trying to work, if not for all the beeping—in the hospital? Is that where he was?

He squinted past Robby, trying to figure out where the trees were, because he could hear the wind so clearly, rustling their leaves back and forth in time with his… with his breaths.

He felt the tube in his throat.

The world came back to him like a blast wave.

Pain.

It filled his awareness completely, swelled to obscure anything else he had been beginning to sense through the fog of his sedation. Pain, and fear, and pain, all throughout his body like ice, but in his nose and in his throat and at his wrists, his wrists, where he was restrained—like unforgiving fire.

He was completely, utterly powerless. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All he could do was gape, afraid and unbelieving, at the bed where he was strapped down, like some kind of wild animal, unable to bring his hands up to pull the intrusion from his throat like his body was screaming at him to do.

And his throat burned, it really fucking burned. He gagged and choked on the tube reflexively, and as he blinked away tears he could feel the warm, sun-baked grittiness of sand underneath him, the phantom smells of dust and iron. Helicopter blades overhead.

He felt so certain he was about to die, here in this forest-hospital-desert.

Most awful, most terrifying of all, was the ceaseless push-pull of air inside his lungs, the terrible, violating intrusion of it. It was the most horrifying feeling he’d ever, ever experienced. And with the life he’d lived, that was a high fucking bar.

A forced breath in, his chest rising traitorously, against his will and command.

A forced breath out.

An agonizing moment, filled only with the clicking of the ventilator, where he wasn’t able to breathe, couldn’t breathe, was sure that he was drowning.

And then again. In, and out, and in. Again and again and again. Wind in the trees. Wind in his lungs. A voiceless scream in his throat.

Above him, the figures, Robby, were moving quickly and talking, to him, probably—but then Robby wasn’t Robby, and he was wearing a uniform, and this stranger was reaching out to touch him, and the helicopter was waiting overhead, and Jack knew he had to fight like hell to get out of there.

So he fought. He kicked as hard as he could, and struggled vainly against the restraints, and the pain tore through his leg and his wrists but he fought anyway, because they were here to hurt him. And he wasn’t going to let it happen again. Not again.

Please, he thought, dimly, desperately, as the world began to fade once more into muffled darkness. Please. Not again.

—

They’d made it through.

Well, not entirely. There was a long, challenging road ahead of them, over the next few hours, definitely, and then for however long it would take for Jack to be stable enough for discharge. Weeks, probably.

And then they’d have to face what life would look like, now, at home, with everything new that Jack would need. Equipment, medications, careful routines that would ease him back into the world without risking further damage to his dying lungs.

Robby tried not to think about it.

For now, he was focused on Jack, who was beginning to fully wake up after that morning’s extubation.

It had been a difficult one, as far as extubations go. After that disastrous first awake trial, where Jack had come to in a violent panic—Robby had been glad they’d had the foresight to restrain him, but it had been incredibly painful to witness—they’d upped his anxiety meds and adjusted the sedation for subsequent trials. He needed to be aware enough to follow commands, but not enough to rip out the ET tube before he was ready, and with his past trauma, it was an extremely tricky line to walk.

He’d tolerated the daily awake trials, then, but when the vent settings were lowered to evaluate his breathing, he’d struggled immensely. It was okay, normal, even, to fail the first trial or two. But he failed again, and again, and then Jack had been on the vent for a week, and Robby was standing with his arms tightly crossed outside Jack’s room, speaking in hushed tones with his somber-faced doctor.

They needed to consider the best path forward for Jack, she’d explained. A trach would improve his immediate chances for recovery, but the impact on his life after would be significant. So they would try one more trial, massage their criteria a bit. Worst case scenario, they’d reintubate… and trach. It was Jack’s only option. His only chance at getting out.

So they’d put him through that final trial, and he had struggled for breath—it was chaos, the room full of people, and he’d cried and coughed and choked on his secretions, again and again, and for a terrible moment they considered reversing the procedure—but they put him back on the high-flow nasal cannula, and after a brief period of touch and go, it had been enough. Just enough.

Now, Robby sat in the uncomfortable, and now familiar, corner armchair, and waited for Jack.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by Jack stirring in his bed, suddenly, and making a mournful, uncomfortable sound. He watched Jack’s eyes blink open, and he brought up an uncoordinated hand to rub at them before scanning around the room, looking for a moment like he was about to panic. Robby got up from the armchair as quickly as his knees allowed.

“Hey, hey,” Robby murmured, moving into Jack’s field of vision. “I’m here, hey. Good—good morning.” He gave a wavering smile. “You did great, baby.”

Jack reached out weakly for him, and he took that as welcome to come in closer. Jack’s face followed him like a sunflower as he moved around the bed to his side, and he leaned in to brush a gentle kiss over Jack’s damp forehead.

Robby pulled back and looked at him, and Jack’s eyes were red and tired, but bright, aware—Jack was here, really here, all of him, and before Robby could really think, he leaned back down, held Jack’s face with both hands and pressed their lips together for the first time in over a week. Jack’s were chapped to all hell, and the cannula made the positioning awkward, but the kiss was so tender, so gentle, that Robby felt he might die from it.

And Jack was kissing him back.

He didn’t remember.

Robby scooted the plastic chair forward so he could sit close by. Jack was trying to swallow, his throat convulsing. He let out a dry-sounding croak and made a slow gesture at Robby. He mouthed something indistinct.

“Water?”

Jack nodded slightly. Robby leaned to grab the cup of ice chips left by the nurse, rattled them a little with a regretful smile. “This is all you’ll get for now, unfortunately.”

Jack lifted his chin and opened his mouth a tiny bit, and Robby was able to slide in an ice chip. His chapped lips quirked as he worked the ice around, and then he made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a choke, and Robby was pulling him forward to slap at his back.

Jack coughed, and coughed.

The fit seemed to die down, and then he was giving Robby a pleading look.

“Another one? You sure?”

Jack nodded plaintively.

Robby sighed. Against his better judgement, gave Jack another ice chip. This one, he was able to keep down.

After a minute, Jack finally spoke, his voice raspy with disuse, and so quiet, just barely over a whisper.

“How close was I?”

Robby felt so, so tired. He wasn’t ready to face it yet, the stark reality of how close Jack had come, how so very close, to not making it out of this alive. How he wasn’t out of the woods yet, not fully, and—

“To trach,” Jack said.

Oh.

“One or two days, probably.”

“Pffeew.” Jack tried to whistle, ended up just blowing out a pitiful stream of air instead. “Pretty damn close.”

Robby eyed the puckered scar on Jack’s neck.

“Yeah.”

He remembered, suddenly, another precious moment, years ago.

Jack had been on his back, half-propped against the headboard with an arm thrown up lazily over his head, Robby sprawled on his stomach and his cheek resting on Jack’s chest. Together, they had breathed, sweat cooling in the bedroom air. Robby had peeked up at him, appreciating the swell of his chest, the corded muscle of his thick neck. And at its base, a faint dimple, the size of a dime.

Jack had noticed him looking. He cleared his throat and the scar spasmed momentarily.

“Had a pretty bad lung contusion. Blast lung injury. Took a few weeks to get me off MV.”

Robby had only hummed in response. He waited for Jack to elaborate, to launch into some sort of war story like he so often did. But Jack just lay underneath him, breathing steadily, eyes slightly unfocused.

“Weirdest fuckin’ feeling,” he had finally whispered, as if to himself.

Robby wondered if Jack, this Jack, was thinking of it too.

They sat together in silence for several minutes, Robby feeding him the occasional ice chip, listening to the constant flow of the cannula.

After working up the courage, Robby finally spoke up.

“Do you—do you remember? What happened down in the ED? When you came in.”

Jack seemed to think about it for a moment.

“Not a lot,” he said eventually, low and hoarse. “I remember the ride here. Bits and pieces after that.” He paused. “I remember feeling really… really scared.”

He looked away from Robby, somewhere past the edge of the bed and into the rest of the ICU room.

“You were there.”

Robby’s heart twisted. He had never been able to keep anything from Jack, and he wasn’t going to start now. Jack deserved to know.

“Jack… Yeah, I was there. You… you begged me. Not to let them intubate you.”

Robby’s confession hung, accusing, in the air between them.

“Begged, huh?” Jack still wasn’t looking at him.

“Yeah, Jack.”

“Must have been pretty bad then.”

Robby wasn’t sure what to say. He sat for a moment, looked at where his hands were lying, palms open, in his lap.

He startled when he heard Jack say, suddenly, “I’m sorry, Rob.”

“What? Why?” He shot his head up to see Jack peering at him, an inscrutable look on his thin face. “Jack, what the fuck are you apologizing for? I’m the one who let you get so sick, I wasn’t there for you when you needed me! And you were fucking begging me, Jack, with real tears in your eyes, and I just—I didn’t listen, I didn’t listen, I let them do it anyway, even though I know how hard it is for you, and I don’t know if I even made the right choice, but you’re here, and I can’t—I can’t imagine what it would be like if you weren’t, and I—Jack, I—Jack—”

He was crying, now, big, fat ugly tears, and all he could see through the wetness were his hands, supplicant at the edge of Jack’s bed, shaking, shaking, shaking.

He was dimly aware of Jack’s hand moving into his field of view, groping for a moment and then grabbing one of his. Jack squeezed him firmly, tightly, with more care and feeling than Robby deserved.

“Robby,” he heard. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, Jack?” Robby choked. “For what?”

“I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

Robby wiped at his face roughly with his other hand, and found the courage to peek up at Jack. Jack, who, despite being the one sick and breathless in a hospital bed, was looking at Robby with all the care and love in the world.

When Jack looked at him like that, Robby felt like maybe, just maybe, he could be someone good. The man Jack thought him to be.

It was like looking into the sun, almost.

“You made the right choice, Rob.”

“Yeah?” Robby wiped his face again.

“Yeah.” Jack sounded like he was on the verge of tears, too, his hoarse voice wavering. “I was scared, but I… I want to live. I want to live,” he repeated, almost to himself.

“And I… I should have discussed with you sooner. This was always going to happen, one way or another. I didn’t tell you before, because I was afraid, or, I don’t know, hopeful, maybe, but—but I need you to know. I want to live. And I’m so… I’m happy, that I’m alive right now. I really am.”

Robby let out another choking sob. He let himself fall forward until his forehead was pressed into Jack’s side. He felt Jack’s other hand touch his head lightly, gently, fingers running slowly up and down his nape.

“I need you,” Robby whispered into him. “I need you. I can’t do this without you.”

“I know, Rob. I know. I’m here.”

—

art by @eameschairs

Robby put the car in park and chanced a glance over at Jack, who had his head laid back with his eyes closed. He still looked like shit, Robby thought, but the marks on his cheeks had faded, leaving only pale, stubbled skin pulled too tightly over high cheekbones. Jack had refused a shave before they left the hospital—”Who’s gonna see me? The paparazzi?”—but Robby secretly liked the longer scruff.

Robby’s eyes followed the line of the oxygen cannula up and around Jack’s ear, hidden briefly under his unwashed curls, then looping under his chin to meet its twin. It wound down and fed into the portable oxygen concentrator in his lap, which was nestled inside a blocky black bag. The machine gave off a low-level mechanical hum, and whooshed and clicked quietly, periodically, as it transformed the stale air from inside the car into something pure enough for Jack’s damaged lungs.

Robby sighed, paused for a moment to take him in. All of him; the lovely, beautiful parts of him that still made Robby’s heart skip a beat after all these years—the sweet, small curls behind his ear, his strong jaw. The silvering temples. The crow’s feet that were a permanent fixture now, smiling or not.

And the less-than-lovely parts, too. The cannula bisecting his handsome face. The gauntness of him. The way his hands shook ever so slightly where they rested on the concentrator bag, their backs veined and battered and bruised.

Old hands, Robby’s brain supplied. No. Jack’s hands. Hands that had healed and loved and held. Hands that Robby knew better than his own.

“We getting out of this fuckin’ car or what?” Jack said suddenly, one eye cracking open. Robby smiled despite himself.

“Can’t a man behold his beloved for a minute?”

Jack snorted. “Yeah, right. You’re not fooling me, Rob. I know I look like I was just run over and dragged behind a truck for three weeks.”

“Yeah, you do,” Robby chuckled. “On second thought, I’ve seen enough.” He patted Jack’s thigh and got out of the car to grab his chair.

They made it into the house without issue, thanks in part to the ramp and other accessibility mods Jack and Claire had made to the house long ago.

“Where do you want to be?” Robby asked as he toed off his shoes in the entryway. “Couch? Bed?”

“Couch. Once I get into that bed I’m never getting back up.”

“Sure you are,” Robby said amiably, pushing Jack into the living room. “No way I’m letting you waste away after all that conditioning work.”

He parked the chair next to the couch and easily transferred Jack onto it with a hup, making sure his bag made the journey there with him. He watched Jack settle into the couch with a deep sigh, cannula slightly askew. Against his better judgement, Robby leaned down to gently adjust it, smoothed the loops over Jack’s ears, tightened the adjuster.

He noticed Jack watching him with the fondest look in his eye.

He straightened back up. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Fussing. I know you hate that.”

“I do, usually,” Jack said, soft. “But not when it’s you.”

Robby didn’t know what to say to that. He looked around the room for a moment, took it all in. Tried his best not to cry.

“C’mon,” Jack said gently, lifting his arm and patting the seat next to him.

Robby sank down into Jack’s embrace, feeling the last three weeks weigh heavy, heavy on his heart. It felt so difficult to believe they’d return to anything approaching normal after all of this. Robby knew things would look different for Jack, now, in a lot of ways. But it would become normal, routine, eventually. These things always did.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, enjoying the relative peace of life outside the hospital. Around them, the house made its usual sounds—the low hum of the refrigerator, the clunk of the basement furnace kicking on. The occasional car driving by.

And, above it all, the unfamiliar hum of the concentrator on Jack’s lap. Whoosh, click.

“You know, this might be it for me,” Jack said casually, breaking the silence between them. “On supplemental O2, sitting around at home till my lungs finally bite the dust.”

“You don’t know that,” Robby said, trying and failing to sound confident. “What’d they say? Few weeks, probably. You’ll heal up. You might need a little help when you’re working out and active, but that’s it. You won’t need 24/7.”

He didn’t mention work. He knew they were both thinking it—that with Jack’s recommended activity level and fatigue, it was unlikely he’d ever return to the Pitt in any meaningful capacity. But they didn’t need to talk about it now.

He felt Jack shrug.

“Maybe. Even so, my time’s limited. You and I both know that.”

Robby sat silent for a moment, traced idle patterns in the fabric of Jack’s pants. The concentrator whooshed and clicked quietly in time with his breaths.

“Everyone’s time is limited.”

“Deep.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. Doesn’t change the fact that mine is more limited than everyone else’s.” Than yours, Robby heard.

“What do you want me to say?” Robby asked, suddenly annoyed. “Sorry, this is too much for me, I don’t love you more than life itself, see you later? See you on the other side? Have fun dying alone?”

Jack was silent, and Robby’s heart skipped a beat as he thought maybe that was too much, too far, too soon—but then Jack laughed, and it felt like the sun on his face after a hundred-year storm.

“I guess when you put it that way.” He chuckled again before sobering. “Seriously, though. I just want to make sure you know. It’s not going to be easy, and it sure as hell won’t be pretty. You’ll have to…” He cleared his throat. “You’ll have to watch me… die. Most likely.”

At that, Robby straightened up, drew his arm around Jack and pulled him as close as he could. Held him hard, firm, fast, like maybe if he squeezed him long enough, their bodies would merge together. He pressed a kiss against Jack’s temple. Lingered there, felt the warmth of his skin, the faint pulse of his tired heart.

The concentrator hummed quietly.

“I do know. I’ll do it, Jack. I’ll love you with everything I’ve got. And then I’ll watch you die.”

Jack breathed, and Robby with him. In and out. Whoosh, click.

Robby wondered if he’d ever get used to it.

“Okay,” Jack said finally, sighing. “Okay. One day at a time, then.”

Whoosh, click.