Archive of Our Own

Robby thought he got over his stomach virus a few days ago.

Last week had been rough, admittedly. It had taken two days for him to admit he felt sick, and even that had come about when Jack had caught him with his head halfway down the family restroom’s toilet bowl mid-shift.

After being forced to stay home for four days, though, until he’d been relatively symptom-free for a full forty-eight hours, he thought he’d been doing a lot better, well enough to come back on shift. It was just a virus, after all; in and out, as they do, leaving him a little shaky for a couple days but ultimately no worse for wear.

That had lasted about all of one day.

For the last couple of days since he thought he finally kicked the thing, it feels like the virus is trying to fight its way back into his system. The stupid sickness won’t stop lingering, he assumes; all the same, it’s not enough to stop him from going in for his shift tonight. He couldn’t possibly still be contagious, and besides— His whole schedule’s been thrown off after taking what he considers to be far too much time off. He’s trying to compensate by taking a series of doubles and graveyard shifts, which means that he’s scheduled to work tonight and through the day into tomorrow night until dawn of the day after, and he shows up at PTMC already dreading it all.

It’s not like it’s surprising that he has no appetite, he thinks. Honestly, it’s just logical that he wouldn’t be that hungry if the virus is still lingering like this, making his stomach still ache in a throbbing, vague sort of way.

The low-level nausea is easy enough to ignore at the moment, though, at least, and Robby swallows past it to meet Jack at the hub for the start of their shared shift.

Jack’s chattering away with Dana and Perlah, leaning over the counter with one foot kicked up in the air as he grins at something he’s just said to them. Robby typically likes to greet him with a hug or a kiss when he sees him, especially after they’ve been apart for a day or two, but if he’s still hanging onto this virus, he’d rather not risk getting him sick with direct contact like that, and so he settles for just sidling up beside him and greeting him with a quiet, “Hey, Jack. Dana, Perlah, good— Well, goodnight, I guess.”

“Goodnight is right,” Perlah agrees, throwing her scarf around her neck. “I am on my way out of here.” She peers at Robby for a moment, then tells him, “You look horrible. Are you still sick?”

“Thanks,” Robby comments. “I’m just getting over that stomach thing.”

“I thought you were over that stomach thing,” Jack says with a step closer to him. Pressing the back of his hand to Robby’s forehead, then to his cheek, he frowns slightly. “You’re a little warm.”

Robby ducks him, tells him, “I’ll take off my sweatshirt if I get too warm. Seriously, I’m fine. Just getting over the stupid virus, it’s not a big deal.”

Tilting his head, Jack narrows his eyes, examining Robby as if he has x-ray vision, but he ultimately just sighs and asks, “You’ll come off shift if you get sick again, right?” before swiftly answering his own question with, “Who am I kidding? Of course you won’t.”

“I’m fine, Jack,” Robby insists, clapping his hand on his shoulder. Turning his attention to Dana, swift in changing the subject, he asks, “Shouldn’t you be heading home, too? Don’t stay a second that they’re not paying you for.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Dana replies. All the same, she pulls her sweater off the back of her chair, tells them, “Have a good night, boys. Don’t cause any trouble, you hear me?”

“Hm, what?” Jack asks, cupping a hand around his ear. “You want me to burn the place to the ground? I mean, if you insist—”

“Keep an eye on him,” Dana tells Robby, drawing a laugh out of him. To Jack, she repeats, “And you keep an eye on him. He looks pale.”

“I’m fine,” Robby insists again. He’s doing a thorough job of ignoring the pain in his stomach; he almost believes his own lies. Tilting back, taking in the board over his head, he tells them both, “I got the lac in North 3,” before he’s pushing off to grab the chart from the row on the end of the counter, missing the look Jack and Dana exchange behind him.

“Okay, well, that’s me, then,” Dana agrees, tucking her arms through the burgundy sleeves of her sweater. To Donnie as he comes to drop off another stack of cases on clipboards, she asks, “You all set?”

Only recently promoted to the position of night shift charge nurse, Donnie’s been exceeding even Robby’s already-high expectations. It’s no surprise to him that he readily waves her off with a grin, telling her, “I’m good, you head on home. Get some rest, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

She takes his hand for a moment on the desktop, squeezes it, releases him as she tells them, “Goodnight, everyone!”

It’s with a little wave that her and Perlah disappear, the last of the day shift to head on out, and Robby looks to Jack, asks him, “Already do the hand-off with Dr. Shamsi? Reminds me, I still have to thank her for helping cover—”

“Yeah, uneventful day,” Jack replies. When Robby redirects his attention down to the charts in his hands, learning about the dropped butcher knife that caused the laceration awaiting his sutures in North 3, Jack asks, “You are going to tell me if you feel shitty again, right?”

His tone doesn’t really invite a no answer, and so Robby responds with, “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

The look Jack levels at him tells Robby he knows exactly what he’s doing, but he doesn’t keep pushing. Instead, he just sighs, turning towards the board himself, arms folded, and Robby takes this as his out.

“Looks like sniffles and a cough in Central 15,” Robby points out. “Five years old, been sitting in here an hour already?”

“Got it,” Jack replies, grabbing for the case clipboard without a second glance, moving into work-mode so efficiently and effortlessly that Robby knows he’s mostly free to dodge.

He dips out from the hub with a clap to Jack’s shoulder and a quick kiss to his cheek, hoping it’s enough not to draw too much suspicion but not so much that he infects Jack with whatever the hell crud is still hanging onto him. He’s been avoiding even going over to Jack’s apartment for the last week-and-change, much to their equal dismay, just to try and keep from getting him sick. Those days had been miserable, when Robby felt weak and horrible and pathetic, when he would’ve given anything to have Jack there with him, caring for him, just—

But, he powered through, awful as it was. It wouldn’t do to fumble it all in the eleventh hour of his virus, not after all that work.

If anything, Robby’s grateful for having work to do. It helps to keep his mind off the pain in his stomach, the ache that won’t stop throbbing in the pit of his belly.

He sutures up the laceration on one patient’s hand, he diagnoses and starts treatment for pneumonia in another, he brings down a fever in an infant with a minor flu; he keeps himself busy, treats small burns from a baking tray, a penny wedged in an eight-year-old’s nose, an asthma attack, an allergic reaction to a cat, a bee sting, an anxiety attack, and, and and, the list just keeps going. The Pitt never stops, and so Robby doesn’t, either; he keeps going, going, going.

His body doesn’t want to keep going, but Robby forces it all the same. The throb in his belly is becoming persistent, the nausea budding and building as he examines x-rays to find a fractured tibia in one patient, reviews test results to diagnose vertigo from a minor brain tumor in another patient. Though he keeps pausing just to breathe— and, now and then, to just stand in an empty room and gather himself— he manages to keep going, keep going, keep going, and he dumps off his clipboard, swinging around to check the board again.

“Suspected migraine in Central 8,” Mateo tells him at the hub, handing over a chart at the hub as Robby’s swallowing thickly, attempting to ignore the increasing pain in his stomach, shifting slightly lower. He presses his right hand to his stomach, exhales slowly as he grabs the chart with his left to examine the front page, eyes skimming the information regarding his new migraine patient. “You okay?”

“Hm?” Robby looks up at him, realizes he’s been caught, then quickly drops his hand from his belly, ignoring the unexpected wave of nausea that rushes over him. “Yeah, yup, I’m good. Just tired, you know. Virus took a lot out of me.” He ticks the clipboard in Mateo’s direction, slightly over his shoulder, tells him, “Looks like Shen’s looking for you,” and vanishes as soon as he looks away, power-walking to the door into Central 8.

With a quick knock, Robby suppresses his nausea again and eases the door open, asking, “So, Mister Baker, I hear you have—”

He’s cut off when his patient retches into an emesis basin while Donnie rubs his back. To his credit, there’s not even a grimace on his face, not even when Robby’s patient gags and vomits again, making Robby’s vision splotch out.

Though he’s never been a sympathy vomiter— it’s not exactly a welcome trait in his profession, and he’s proud to have a relatively strong stomach when it comes to just about anything— Robby finds his nausea spiking again at witnessing his patient emptying their stomach so violently. Black spots throb at the corners of his vision as his insides turn over themselves, and he realizes he’s reached the end of his ability to hold back.

“Donnie, I forgot something, give me a quick second, okay?” Robby manages to choke out before he’s jolting from the room. He knows he’s not going to make it to any of their bathrooms, and so he just dives into the first open room— Central 10, as it turns out— and grabs for the trash can, kicking the door shut behind himself.

He hasn’t had much of an appetite for the last couple of days. All that he manages to bring up is the protein bar he’d forced himself to eat before leaving his condo, and even that doesn’t seem like it was digested at any point. At least that means that it doesn’t take too long before he’s able to breathe again, nothing left in him to bring up, though his stomach keeps churning as though it’d like nothing more than to keep going.

“Fuck,” he groans, then spits into the trash and straightens up to tie it off and dispose of the evidence. His hands are clammy, shaking a little as he moves; he presses the back of one to his own forehead and curses again, “Fuck,” feeling the heat radiating off of him.

A quick check from the thermometer set in the carry-all on the counter in here tells him his temperature is at 100.1. Not ideal, but not exactly the worst thing in the world, either— and if everything is out of his stomach, he should be fine to keep working now, in theory.

In theory.

Robby forces his way back out into the emergency department, fast in getting rid of his trash bag in the dumpster outside before he’s returning to Central 8 with an apology between his clenched teeth, jaw tight to keep the queasiness as far back and down inside of him as possible.

Though he manages to treat Mr. Baker’s migraine— as well as Mrs. Rodriguez’s dehydration, Mr. Romano’s eye infection, Mx. Cooper’s sprained ankle, and nine-year-old Paula de Armas’s strep throat, all coming after him in quick succession— he has a harder time fighting down the growing nausea and ache in his stomach. It’s getting to the point where he’s being forced to acknowledge that the pain in his stomach is that, pain, and not just queasiness. It actually hurts, in a way that keeps forcing him to stop and breathe through it.

The next time he manages to take a break and duck into an empty room, his temperature has risen to an even 101. He grimaces down at the reading as he pops the sterile sleeve into the trash bin. Just the sight of the bin makes his stomach roll again; he’s forced to hover over it, one hand clutching his stomach and the other gripping the rim of the bin, for a long moment before he hiccups instead and his belly settles enough to move again.

“Shit,” he curses, letting his head fall back, rolling first to one side, then the other. He can’t manage to get his neck to crack, and it’s just one more layer of discomfort on top of everything else.

A sudden knock at the door jolts him, and he feels caught-out when Donnie pushes the door open and says, “Dr. Robby, sorry, but we’ve got a six-year-old hit by a car on their way in.”

“Yup, I’m coming,” Robby tells him, shoving off to join him. Scrubbing at his face with his clammy palms, running his fingers back through his hair to try and get back into some semblance of order, Robby gathers himself as he sterilizes his hands and grabs for a pair of gloves before he’s joining Jack in the ambulance bay with a gurney to wait.

“Six-year-old versus a four-door sedan, driver tried to slow down but hit the accelerator instead of the brakes,” Jack rattles off before he actually turns to look at him. “Jesus, Mikey, you look like hell.”

“Well, aren’t you sweet?” Robby replies without as much heat as he knows he should have.

“Seriously, you don’t look good,” Jack insists, not taking the bait. “I thought you’d come and talk to me if you started feeling any worse.”

“I’ve got it under control,” Robby tells him.

“Like hell, you do,” Jack argues. “Have you looked at yourself since you got here? You’re white as a sheet, you look like you’re about to—”

He’s cut off by the scream of the siren as the ambulance pulls to a screeching stop in the bay. With the look Jack shoots him before they’re darting off with the gurney, he knows this conversation isn’t over, only paused, but at least he’s bought himself some more time before Jack inevitably forces him into the on-call room at best, or into a cab home at worst.

The adrenaline that pumps through Robby sharpens his focus, brings his attention where it needs to be so he can perform, running alongside Jack to bring the little girl into Trauma 1. It’s enough horrible work that he doesn’t have the time or the space to concentrate on anything except the work. Everything is medicine, compressions, stemming blood, suturing wounds, Jack’s voice and Shen’s and McKay’s, reading monitors and print-outs and results. As it always does in situations like these, Robby’s body becomes little more than a machine that is determined to save his patient’s life.

It’s only when the child’s heartbeat has returned, her blood pressure has evened out, and Robby feels secure in declaring her stabilized that he manages to catch a breath, starting to return to himself, and he finds that the body he’s coming back into is hanging on by a thread.

“Good job in there,” he hears Jack telling Shen through the ringing in his ears, and it’s the last thing he hears before he’s ripping his gloves off, shedding his bloodied gown, and shoving his way out of the room. “Hey, Mikey—”

Robby doesn’t stop, doesn’t notice Jack calling after him, single-minded in his determination to get into the bathroom this time. It’s a near thing, but he just barely makes it, shoving the stall door shut behind himself in the men’s room before he’s on his knees and retching again.

There’s nothing left in his stomach to bring up, and still, he chokes up bile until his body tells him he can take a breath— which he does, slumped against the toilet, cheek pressed to the rim, even knowing how disgusting it could be here. He doesn’t have the strength to care, let alone to move. It all just hurts too much, the radiating pain in his belly consuming every thought, making him curl up and shake there on the floor like he’s about to hurl his organs up into the toilet next.

It takes a couple of minutes before he feels comfortable sitting up, but the moment he does, the throbbing pain in his stomach doubles, and he groans, his head tilting back to collide with the stall door.

“Fuck,” he curses, pushing his hand hard into the place on his belly that hurts the worst, and—

He’s a doctor. He’s a good doctor. He isn’t senior attending because he misses the symptoms of something as common as appendicitis. Even if it can be difficult to diagnose sometimes— he’s not struggling to diagnose it now, not anymore. It’s becoming clearer and clearer by the minute that this isn’t just his stomach virus resurging— if it ever was, the damn thing probably really did end days ago— but, at the same time, he also knows how far he can push this— again, in theory— and he’s not at the wall yet. He thinks. He hopes.

Stumbling upwards, Robby flushes the toilet twice, then splashes his face with cold water in the sink. Rinsing out his mouth does little for his nausea, but he does it all the same, hoping to at least pull it together, pausing to take a few deep breaths over the drain before he glances up at himself in the mirror.

Shit, Jack was right. He looks horrible. There’s no color left in his face; his eyes look sunken, bruised underneath like he hasn’t slept in days. Even his lips look colorless, and there’s a visible clamminess to him. No wonder everyone keeps commenting on him, he looks like a walking personification of plague.

Grimacing, Robby turns away from himself. When he presses the back of his hand to his forehead, he sighs, far more shallow than he might otherwise so he doesn’t trigger his currently-too-sensitive gag reflex.

When he peeks out of the bathroom, he doesn’t see Jack, so he darts quick as he can from the bathroom through the curtain into Central 20, blissfully and luckily empty. He would’ve placed his temperature maybe at 102.4 at most, but the thermometer in here reads 103.2, flashing at him as it beep-beep-beeps, and he blinks at it, his racing heart pounding now.

Pulling the thermometer from his mouth sets off his pathetic gag reflex, despite his best efforts, and he scrambles to grab the small trash bin in the corner before he’s sick again. His stomach aches trying to bring something up when there’s nothing left, and he has to force himself to swallow and breathe so he doesn’t just get stuck in a cycle of dry heaving. It’s making the pain in the lower right of his belly surge, and he can hardly think through it.

As if his body is taking control of his mind, he gags again, bowing over the trash can, unable to control the way he keeps hiccupping.

“Fuck,” he curses again, weak and scraping, before he spits into the trash.

It’s too far. The whole thing, it’s gone too far. He was wrong; he’s reaching the point of no return, and he tugs up this trash bag, too, just like he’d done with the last one, closing it off with his breath held to try and stave off another round of useless vomiting. When he’s heading towards the dumpster outside again with it, he tells himself that, as soon as he’s back inside, as soon as he sees Jack again, he’ll tell him he thinks he might have appendicitis— might, or probably, but— either way, he’ll tell him, and it’ll be fine, and—

“Dr. Robby!” Shen calls, and Robby skids to a confused halt halfway out the doors. “Just got a call in. Two trains collided, they have too many patients for just the closest ERs. They’re sending half of them over to us. First ride’ll be here in five, we’re prepping both Traumas now, plus every room we’ve got empty. Got it?”

Robby only stares after him for a long, bewildered moment, even after he’s mumbled a disoriented, “Got it,” and Shen has run back inside. The doors start to close; Robby only moves to avoid them colliding with him, stumbling outside into the cold to throw the bag in the dumpster.

When the first ambulance shows up, it’s only been two minutes since Shen gave him the heads-up.

From there, it’s sheer chaos.

The next time Robby sees Jack, he doesn’t get a chance to tell him he thinks he probably is displaying symptoms of appendicitis. It briefly crosses his mind, but— Instead, the two of them are working on an unconscious elderly man who had been near to the front of the trains, the both of them covered in blood within seconds, and there are far more important things to be focusing on. His probable appendicitis doesn’t even rank when there are people coding left, right, and center in their emergency department.

With how many passengers there were— and how many patients there are— it feels like it will never end. It just doesn't stop coming.

Patients arrive in waves that just won’t stop, beating against them like they’re the tsunami and the Pitt is the battered shore, struggling just to hang on; their staff is so overwhelmed by it all that Robby, even knowing— knowing, and having seen the worst of the possible outcomes, more than once—

Even knowing all that, even knowing how dangerous it is and how little time a patient with acute appendicitis has before it becomes a problem, Robby decides it’s more important for him to help.

So, he helps.

He swallows down his symptoms as best as he can, and he gets to work, and he makes it worth it. He makes this count. He ignores the fever raging under his skin, making him sweat like he’s burning inside; when he has to, he ducks away to choke up stomach bile, splash his face with cold water, and then fling himself right back into the fray. It doesn’t even feel like an option to consider anything else— not even when he starts getting cramps and pain in his lower stomach so severe that he can hardly take a full breath anymore, just bull-headedly staggering right on through.

He’s just finished a successful amputation of a mostly-removed right arm and turned them over to the next available surgeon to finish up when his vision actually starts tunneling. Lurching on numb legs, he shoulders open the door of Trauma 2, nearly trips over a cart left just outside in the hall.

“Fuck, who left this here?” he demands, whirling to look towards the hub, but his vision smears, the world around him blurring. “Shit—”

“Dr. Robby?” he hears a familiar voice ask, and he blinks until Santos’s face clarifies in front of him. “Oh, God, are you about to pass out? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

He grabs her shoulder, uses her to stay upright; she buckles slightly before planting her feet, bending her knees, making herself solid for him.

“Jesus— Do you want me to get Dr. Abbot?” she asks, sounding significantly more concerned now.

Robby doesn’t even have the wherewithal to process that her first guess is to go get Jack; he only manages to gasp out, “Bathroom,” before she’s moving, dragging him to the restroom doors and shoving him into the family bathroom in the center.

Though she doesn’t come in with him, she stays in the entryway as he collapses to his knees for the umpteenth time today, one foot propping the door open. When he’s stopped retching over the toilet, no longer bringing anything up except splotches in his vision and a searing agony in his stomach, she asks, “You good? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like you’re dying.”

Robby catches his breath enough to tell her, “I think I’m sick.”

Santos’s wry laugh is a dagger to his skull, dehydration making his head throb. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Now do you want me to get Abbot? He’s right over at the hub with Donnie, if you want. It’s finally slowing down, so I’m s—”

“I’m okay,” Robby tells her, standing shakily. He catches a glimpse of her incredulous expression in the mirror over the sink, rather than face his own reflection again and be forced to witness how much worse he looks since last time.

“Maybe I should just tell him anyway?” Santos suggests, starting to edge out slightly, and Robby makes eye contact with her in the mirror, as hard as he can manage in the moment. “Uhh. Or not?”

“I’ll go talk to him,” he says. It’s starting to sink in that he got sick in front of one of his residents, and he adds, “Thank you, Dr. Santos. I’m sorry about all of that.”

“It’s no big deal,” she replies. “Feel better, Dr. Robby.”

Still, despite the clear dismissal, she hesitates for a moment before she leaves the door and lets it swing shut behind her. Robby sighs, splashing another couple palmfuls of cold water at his face, hunching against the dual pains piercing through his stomach and his back.

Glancing over his shoulder, ensuring he’s alone, Robby hesitantly reaches down to unzip his hoodie, pushing it out of the way so he can untuck his undershirt and tug it up along with his scrub top. A quick examination of himself shows him exactly what he’d expected— exactly what he’d expect from any patient complaining of his systems: his abdomen is already swollen, unsurprisingly bloated. When he holds the hems of his shirts up with his teeth and tries prodding at the lower right of his belly where the hurt is currently most severely centralized, the tenderness and pain is so extreme that he has to drop his shirts to retch over the sink for a minute.

The agony spikes, as if a knife is being plunged into his stomach and twisted, and Robby gasps out loud, clutching the sink just to stay upright, and then—

Then, the pain abruptly releases.

The pressure is suddenly gone, and he feels a sense of relief so unexpected and instantaneous that, for a brief moment, he wonders if he’s just passed out and this is a dream. The sink is still cold under his clammy hands, though, and his reflection still looks just awful when he raises his eyes to see himself, so he thinks he might actually still be awake.

“Shit,” he whispers to himself. He knows what the release of pain means in this situation.

In a second, he’s stumbling backwards, his heart well and truly racing as he yanks the door open and uses the last of his coherent energy to half-jog, half-stumble towards the hub and Jack.

“Mike?” Jack asks, becoming a blur in Robby’s vision the closer he gets. “Jesus Christ, Mike—”

Robby doesn’t manage to stop in time, tripping so he ends up halfway-colliding with Jack and staggering against him. Even though Jack’s hands come up automatically to catch him and keep him upright, Robby jerks away from him, lunging for the trash can just in time to retch up another mouthful of bile.

“Goddamnit, Robby,” Jack curses, and then Robby’s being moved backwards again. “What’s going on? What’re you feeling? I thought you were over this stomach virus— Where’s it hurting the wo—”

Swallowing, breathless, Robby manages, “Appendix,” and gestures vaguely towards his stomach, though moving like that is starting to hurt again.

There’s a split beat of silence where Jack processes what he’s said. Robby forces his head up, makes his eyes open, sees Jack staring at him like he’s just pulled a gun on him, and lets them close again; he doesn’t need to see that right now. It’s just making him queasier.

“Donnie, go grab that gurney, now,” Jack orders before Robby’s manhandled upwards this time. “Robby, help me out here, man, get your leg up— There we go, and two— Lay down—”

“What’s wrong with him?” Shen asks, a disembodied voice coming from beyond Robby’s closed eyelids. “God, he looks like death.”

“He said it’s appendicitis,” Jack bites out.

The gurney’s moving again, and Robby reaches up, to the side, grappling for Jack’s arm. He manages to catch his sleeve and tug.

“What, what is it?” Jack asks, ducking down, his voice getting nearer.

“I think—” Robby manages, then has to swallow, breathe, before he finishes, “—burst, ruptured, I think—”

“You’ve got to be—” Jack starts, then bites himself off. “Slow down, slow down!”

The gurney comes to a stop, and Robby drags his eyes open again in time to watch Jack shove his unzipped hoodie apart, then tug his shirts up. The second he lays eyes on his swollen, bare skin, he’s cursing again.

“How long since it ruptured?” Jack demands.

“Twenty minutes at most,” Robby answers. “Been feeling rough for a— a couple days, I just thought it was the virus resurging before today when—” His nausea swells again, and he just barely gets to choke out, “—it— it got worse— Jack—”

Jack’s hands are there, pushing him up onto his side, and a cardboard emesis basin finds its way in front of his face before Robby’s coughing again, burping up all of nothing despite the awful churning in his stomach.

“I told you to tell me.” It seems like Jack is trying to scold him, but his voice comes out so hurt and broken and desperate that he doesn’t quite hit his mark. Robby thinks he feels even guiltier than if he had succeeded. “If you were feeling sick— If you needed help, Mikey, I—”

“I’m sorry,” Robby pushes the basin away, reaches for Jack once more as the gurney starts moving again. Tears prick his eyes in his fevered frustration. “I’m— We needed to help the patients—”

“Yeah, well, you are a patient right now,” Jack reminds him. Over Robby’s head, he tells someone else, “I want a CBC, full panels, right now. Tell me how high his WBC is. And go up to the surgical desk, tell them to send anyone they’ve got right now, tell them it’s one of our own with a ruptured appendix that has to come out now.”

There’s a faint prick at the inside of Robby’s elbow, though he doesn’t bother to look at who’s done it. His eyes stay fixed up on Jack, his only focal point as everything else blurs and he’s hauled through a smear of white until they’re launching into the newly-emptied Trauma 2.

The pain is beginning to rip at Robby with renewed ferocity, and he starts to curl up on his side on the gurney, wanting to wrap his arms around his stomach, crying out at the intensity.

“No, wait, stop, stop that,” Jack insists. “I need to see— Mike, I need to see your stomach—”

“It hurts,” Robby protests, trying to push harder into the pain in an attempt to relieve it. The pressure doesn’t alleviate anything, even when he pushes harder, and he groans, curling up tighter.

There’s a hand against the side of his face, then.

Jack’s.

Robby would recognize his touch anywhere.

“I know,” Jack tells him, his voice closer again. “I know, it hurts. But we both know how to stop that, right, Dr. Robby? You know how to treat a ruptured appendix following delayed or non-existent treatment of acute appendicitis?”

Robby swallows thickly, his eyes drifting closed again. Allowing Jack to pull his arms away from his abdomen, and someone else to take hold of his ankles to flatten him out on his back on the gurney, he tries to focus instead on the inside of his mind rather than the pain in his body, attempting to lock in on answering Jack’s question as it’s been asked.

“I would, um—” He licks his dry lips. “It would probably be too late for a laparo— laparoscopic appendectomy, so I’d— I’d open the— lower right abdomen—”

A surge of pain rolls through that exact spot as he speaks on it, and Robby thinks, wildly, that he’d love it if Jack would open up his lower right abdomen, if it would just release all the pain trapped inside.

“Jack,” Robby whispers, trying to bite back the sobbing whine that actually wants to tear out of him.

Stroking his hair back, his thumb rubbing a circle into Robby’s temple, Jack whispers back, “I’m right here. You’re in good hands, you’re in my hands, babe. I got you.” A rough kiss pushes into Robby’s forehead, and Robby hiccups again. “You fucking— I love you, you— You goddamned idiot.”

“Sorry,” Robby mumbles upwards at him. “Thought it was better this way.”

“Nothing that hurts you is ever better,” Jack insists, with force. “Ever.”

Robby nods against his hands, trying to curl up again, but Jack won’t let him, and the hands return to his ankles, refusing to let him move.

“Got the CBC,” another voice says. He knows these hands, he knows these voices, but he can’t manage to focus, the fever cooking his brain and the pain stealing away any last remaining sense he has left. “His white count is 12,000—”

“Christ, that’s high.” Jack’s pulling away from Robby’s face so he can prod at his abdomen again. When Robby flinches, he apologizes, “Sorry, sorry— Robby, your stomach virus, when did that end? Three, four days ago?” Robby manages a nod for him, reaching for his hand; when he receives it, their fingers tangled together, they both squeeze. “Okay. I think we’re looking at lymphoid hyperplasia here, he’s going to have a swollen appendix in reaction to the virus, it’s probably what caused the obstruction and led to the infection. So, what do we do now?”

“We have to remove his appendix?” another voice asks. Robby tries hazily to focus; it might be Whitaker, he thinks. Is it already daytime? How long has it been?

“Good answer,” Jack replies. “Which surgeon’s coming down?”

“They said everyone’s in surgery right now because of the train accident,” comes the answer. Javadi, maybe. “They can have someone come down in an hour or two to—”

“I’m not leaving him for an hour or two,” Jack spits back. “The fucking thing’s already ruptured, he’ll go septic. He needs—”

He’s cut off when Robby cries out, a burst of pain exploding in his stomach. Even if he doesn’t mean to make so much noise, it just happens, an animal thing that tears out of him in automatic, atavistic reaction to the agony that feels as if it’s shredding his insides like so much wet tissue paper.

“That’s it,” Jack declares, “I’m taking it out myself,” and Robby sobs in relief.

“Dr. Abbot—”

“Don’t you ‘Dr. Abbot’ me,” Jack warns whoever it is. Shen, maybe, Robby thinks. “I’ve done more than a few surgical rotations and removed more than a few appendices in my time, and if I don’t do this now, the bacteria from his appendix is gonna leak into the rest of his body and cause peritonitis, or— or an abscess, or goddamned sepsis, and I am not letting Mikey die because of his— his stupid, self-sacrificing bullshit and an appendix he barely even needs, do you hear me?”

His words ring through the quiet room, the silence interrupted only by the periodic beeps and chirps and whines of the machines being connected to Robby, one at a time, pricks inside his arms and stickers against his chest.

“I am going to remove his appendix myself,” Jack announces to the room at large. Robby feels himself being moved, poked, prodded; a cuff is wrapped around his upper arm, another poke at his hand, a pinch on his fingertip. “Anyone who doesn’t want to be involved can leave now, but I’m doing this. I’m not letting him go septic, and I’m not letting him die.”

There’s silence. Another brief bolt of pain tweaks his inner arm, then disappears.

“Okay.” Jack’s voice shifts a little further away. “Now, a lot of students don’t get to be part of this, so pay close attention, and I mean it. What are our options for anesthesia?”

“Spinal anesthesia is available now,” Mohan answers.

“No, that’s not good enough, I want him under—”

“We can sedate him as much as possible,” Shen suggests. “Between that and IV p—”

“Yeah, but he’ll be awake,” Jack reminds them, sharp, as if they don’t already know what it means.

There’s a beat before Shen says, “But he won’t feel anything. It’ll be okay, Dr. Abbot. You know that.”

“Jack,” Robby mumbles. Jack’s hand returns to his face, and Robby tilts towards him, lets his eyes drift open to look up at him. “It’s okay. Just do it, it’s okay.”

He gets to see Jack leaning over him, his eyes on Robby, flicking back and forth between each of his eyes before he lowers himself down enough to press his lips to his forehead for a long, lingering moment.

“I need everybody in this room to scrub in,” Jack announces when he pulls away. “If you haven’t removed an appendix before, you will today. Mohan, you’re going to help me with the spinal. Whitaker, how’s that saline coming?”

“It’s in,” Whitaker answers.

“Okay, then, help me get him onto his side.” Robby feels himself get turned over, his clothes stripped off and his body shifted around. “Mike, you’re gonna feel a little bit of pain, okay? And then you’re not gonna feel anything, I promise. It’ll be okay. You’ll be awake, but it’ll all just be— be distant and numb, and it’ll be over in no time. I got you, hon, I swear.”

As if Robby would have ever doubted that. Even in his feverish, sickened, pained haze, he knows this to be true, if nothing else in this world: Jack has always got him.

The injection of local anesthesia to his back hurts for a second, but nowhere near the agonizing torment of his back and stomach until this point. He feels the following needle coming into his spine as nothing more than a tug, and the injection as a flow into his body that numbs everything from that point down within minutes. Robby exhales a shuddering sob in relief at the pain starting to ebb as a result, turning his face into his pillow, trying to catch his breath.

From there, Robby loses bits of time. He misses whatever they give him that makes him feel floaty, distant, but he runs through a list of possible options in his head as he’s being turned onto his back once again, gentle, slow.

It’s strange, as if he’s having an exceedingly peculiar dream. He feels the tugging at his abdomen— the opening of his flesh, the movement inside, so bizarre and unreal— and he can hear Jack dictating as he works, just like Robby would be doing, just like they do for any case. Trying to keep it normal, making an attempt to teach, and Robby can’t manage to verbalize how much he appreciates it. The sounds of his voice keep him calm in the confusing chaos of everything else going on, his port in this storm.

In a surreal sort of way, Robby thinks he likes having Jack’s hands inside him. He likes feeling the tugs deep in his belly and knowing that that’s Jack working on him, taking part of him out, being the one to cut him open and remove his appendix and wash out his insides with salt water. He can hear, vaguely, the comments when Jack discovers the beginnings of peritonitis, and feels the ensuing opening across the center of his belly before he’s cutting out the infected tissue and cleaning out the bacteria and Robby’s feeling it all like the softest, furthest thing from pain there could be.

With a faint laugh, Robby mumbles, “Thanks, Jack. Feels nice.”

“It—” Jack says, then laughs. “It feels nice? You’re— God, you’re so ridiculous. Stop talking while you’re opened up.”

Robby hums, letting his eyes close again. He doesn’t like thinking about being opened up, so much, in that particular sense, and so he lets himself drift a little bit, just feeling the vague tugs like Jack’s stroking his hair instead of removing part of his insides.

In that haze, it’s a surprise to him as much as anyone when his heart starts racing.

“Heart rate’s increasing,” Javadi warns. “150 and rising—”

“Why’s he tachy?” Jack demands. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know—”

Robby blinks, blinks again, and feels hands on his abdomen, on his chest, on his face. They’re pulling inside his arms, tugging at him, pushing at him, and then he feels—

Nothing. Nothing, there’s just— nothing. No pain, no light, no tugs, no team, no Jack.

Nothing—

—Before he feels a jolt and he’s gasping, the world rushing back in in a flood, sensations and sights and sounds slamming into him.

“That’s it,” Jack shouts, then laughs, sounding near-hysterical. “That’s it, that’s it, there you are, baby, don’t go anywhere, okay? Don’t leave us again, you just— Stay right here with me, we’re almost done. Don’t you go anywhere again, you hear me?”

Robby manages a barely-there nod.

“Jack,” he mumbles.

“Right here,” Jack promises him. “Right here, you lunatic. So you better stay right here with me, got it?”

“Got it,” Robby echoes. It sounds like a mush to him, incoherent and unintelligible, but Jack ducks down and kisses his cheek, hands-free, so he must get at least a bit of a vibe of what he means.

In his abstract mind, Robby is aware of Jack washing him out, of him giving orders to the others, of him gently and carefully stitching him back up afterwards like he’s attempting gold-seamed Kintsugi art and not repairing Robby’s messy human body.

Robby’s eyes slip open when a hand meets his face again, and he finds Jack above him once more, unreal and perfect-seeming and glowing, he thinks.

“Wow,” Robby mumbles. “Hi. You’re pretty.”

Jack smiles. If it’s possible, he looks even prettier.

“I’m keeping you on a few IVs, okay?” Jack asks him. “One for the pain, one for antibiotics, and another one of saline to help rehydrate you. And I’m taking you up to recovery myself.”

“Got it,” Robby repeats. “Got it. I got it—”

“Shh, shush,” Jack quiets him. “Just rest. You’re all closed up, you’re going to be alright. No thanks to you.”

Robby hums. “Sorry.”

“Save it.” Jack kisses his forehead, then his cheek. “C’mon. I had Langdon run up and get you a nice recovery room all to yourself, how’s that sound?”

The world starts to shift and roll around Robby. He tries to tell Jack that that sounds nice, but it’s hard to find his way back into his entire body. Instead, he lets himself drift along, enjoying the lack of pain after what feels like so much time of only pain.

It’s all haze and softness and nothing, for a while, and then Robby’s blinking and sees Jack sitting on the edge of his bed, adjusting one of his lines.

“Hey,” Robby murmurs in his direction. His throat scrapes, rough and torn.

Jack’s eyes snap up to his face. There’s a brief moment where Robby just thinks, Uh-oh, and then he’s going.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jack demands. “Why did you let that go so long? And do not give me any bullshit about needing to keep working, I swear to God, Mikey—”

“Jack,” Robby says, reaching out for him. Catching his hand, Jack kisses the back, leans in closer to him. “Mm. The patients are more important.”

His brain-to-mouth filter is non-existent, a fact he’s distantly aware of. He can’t manage to convince himself to listen to the voice expressing that understanding in his head, though, as looped-out as he is on whatever it is Jack’s chosen to give him as a painkiller.

“No, they are not more important,” Jack argues with him. His lips are brushing the back of Robby’s hand still. “You are the most important person—”

Robby shakes his head in a twitch. “Mm-mm—”

“You are to me,” Jack insists.

His words give Robby a warm, happy feeling inside, and he grins up at him.

“Thanks, Jack,” he mumbles towards him. “I love you— so much, Jack, I’m so sorry.” He turns his hand over, reaches to pat at Jack’s face. “It’ll never happen again. I promise.”

“Well, yeah, because your appendix is gone, my man,” Jack reminds him. “So, can’t really happen again, now, can it?”

Robby keeps stroking Jack’s face, enjoying the feeling of his stubble prickling under his fingertips. “I wouldn’t anyway. I want you to be happy.”

“Well, you make me happy,” Jack replies, indulgent. “So, stop trying to take yourself away.”

“Mm.” Robby lets his eyes close, enjoying the feeling of Jack’s skin under his hands. “I don’t want to.” After a rumbling hum, he confesses, “It’s so funny, but you make me want to not die. Like— Jack, you actually make me want to live, I love you so much.” He sighs, wavering, not wanting to cry. “I’m sorry I made you sad. I didn’t mean to.”

Jack’s lips meet the center of his palm once, twice, before he’s burrowing his face into Robby’s hand.

“I love you, too,” Jack mumbles into his skin. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Mikey. I’m not mad at you. Just rest, okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Robby agrees. His eyes slide back open; it takes what feels like a monumental effort, but he manages it, wanting to look up at him. “Thanks for not yelling at me. You should yell at me.”

“Believe you me, I’m tearing you six new assholes once you’re actually awake and coherent again,” Jack tells him with heat.

“Good,” Robby tells him. Jack’s lips twitch, and he reaches to trace their outline. “I like it when you chew me out. Makes me feel like you care about me.”

“I do care about you,” Jack insists.

“I care about you,” Robby replies, punctuated with a tap of his index fingertip to the center of Jack’s lips. “I love you. I want you to put your hands in me again.”

Jack laughs around his hand. “Well, you’ll probably be in here for at least a week after that shenanigan shit you pulled. Gonna have to wait out your recovery before my hands are going anywhere inside you.”

“No, I mean—” Robby stops, frustrated, unable to verbalize what he wants to tell him. Instead, he grapples for Jack’s face, then starts to rise, wanting to sink his fingers into his hair.

“Stop trying to get up,” Jack scolds lightly. “Lay down. What do you mean, hm, big guy? Use your words.”

Robby pulls Jack closer with his grip on his hair. “I love your hair. It’s so nice. It’s soft. I like seeing you go grey, it makes me happy.”

“Okay, you’re not gonna be happy about all this later,” Jack says, reaching up to remove his hand from his hair, but Robby just tightens his grip, refusing to let him go. “Mikey—”

“I wish I could get you under my skin,” Robby insists. “Or that I could get under yours. You make me feel so special. I don’t like when we’re not together. It makes me so fucking sad sometimes.” He tugs again, trying to draw him as near as he can get him. “Can I have a hug?”

Jack’s hand runs through his hair before he kisses his temple. “Of course, you can. If you’re careful, you lunatic.”

All smiles, Robby lets Jack take the lead, gentle in bowing over him and wrapping his arms around him. He does the same; though he feels a light tug at his incisions and stitches, he ignores it, tightening his grip on Jack and clinging to him as hard as he can.

“It’s a good thing you’ll be here for a few days,” Jack murmurs near his ear before he kisses the shell. “I’ll know exactly where you are so I can keep an eye on you.”

Robby grins. “You want to keep an eye on me?”

“Yeah, I want to keep an eye on you.” Jack pulls back enough to sit on the edge of Robby’s bed. He doesn’t think it’s the same gurney as earlier, and wonders when he got moved. Time is shifting so funnily around him. “Isn’t that something? I want to take care of you, Mikey. Because you deserve care—”

“Jack—”

“—because you’re important,” Jack steamrolls on. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, do you get that?”

Robby blinks up at him, letting his head fall back against his pillows again. Definitely not the same gurney as before.

“You’re my person,” Robby tells him, insistent. “Be my person.”

“I am,” Jack replies. “Didn’t you just say so?”

There’s a smile in his voice, flickering on his face. Robby considers himself forgiven, even if he knows he’ll probably reconsider that later when Jack does chew him out. It’ll be nice, though; Robby’s almost looking forward to it, to feeling so loved and looked after, to being able to hold Jack and comfort him.

He should do that now, actually, and he grapples for him again, grabbing at him to pull him into another hug.

“What are you—”

“I’m sorry I pissed you off,” Robby apologizes, getting him close enough that he can tuck his face into his shoulder. He smells like blood and antiseptic and his soap, and Robby inhales, then noses up higher, letting his curls brush against his forehead, his eyelashes, his cheek.

“You didn’t piss me off,” Jack sighs. His hand comes up to stroke the back of Robby’s head, slow and steady. “You scared me. I knew something was wrong, hon. Why’d you keep lying to me?”

Robby half-shrugs. “Didn’t feel like lying. Felt like I should keep going.”

Jack’s quiet for a long moment before he tells him, “I really want you to start seeing someone.”

Blinking his eyes open against Jack’s shoulder, Robby frowns a little.

“I just—” Jack continues, then stops for a moment. The air feels too thick. “It shouldn’t feel like you should be—” He takes a breath this time. “I don’t like that you’re hurting yourself to help others, Mike. You could’ve— That could’ve killed you. That matters.”

Robby has just enough wherewithal not to argue the point. He doesn’t think it would help— and, in this vague, foggy place he’s in right now, he thinks he knows Jack’s right. His gut instinct to protest, to tell him, no, it doesn’t matter, isn’t so much a good thing, maybe. The realization makes him frown.

“Mike?” Jack asks, hand stilling at the back of his head. “You okay?”

Though he starts to nod, Robby changes course halfway into it and shakes his head instead.

“You’re right,” he chokes up. Tears start spilling of their own accord, and he knows, in the logical back of his brain, that the fever raging inside of him and the drugs coursing through his system are largely responsible for his severely heightened sensitivity, but he still feels. Knowing the reason doesn’t stop the emotions. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— I’m sorry, I’ll—” He nods roughly. “I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jack whispers to him. “Hey, it’s okay, big guy. Take a breath with me, you’re alright. I’m not mad.”

“You should be—”

“No, I shouldn’t,” Jack murmurs. “Don’t tell me how to feel.” Robby huffs, the breath of a laugh wet and sad. “I was scared. I am scared. I don’t like seeing you on my table, Mikey. I don’t like watching you code, I don’t— I don’t like opening you up and having to take bits out of you because you just let them explode.”

Robby almost protests, almost tells him, ‘I thought I had more time,’ because it’s technically true, but the truer thing would be to say, ‘It didn’t matter enough to me if they did,’ and he knows that’s the whole problem, that that’s what’s scaring Jack.

“I’m sorry I’m scary,” Robby tells him, throat thick.

“No, that’s not—” Jack pulls back, just a bit, and ducks his head, makes Robby meet his eye. His face is so earnest, his eyes so intent, and Robby relaxes into him. “I love you. So, it scares me to see you hurt. How would you feel if it was me, Mike, if I’d— I’d spent the day telling you I’m fine just to collapse on you when I was almost septic?”

The thought turns Robby’s stomach, tears burning into his sinuses again. “I’m so sorry—”

“M—”

“I shouldn’t have— I just— I know it’s supposed to matter, but I couldn’t make it matter,” Robby tells him, desperate for him to understand. “I should’ve been able to get through it.”

Jack frames his face between his hands. “You— You’re a human, Mike. You’re a person just like the rest of us. Fuck, you’re my favorite person, you’re— You just said it, right? I’m your person, you’re mine.” He presses their foreheads together, bowing over him. His breath puffs warm over Robby’s lips when he speaks. “It matters. You matter.”

Even though Robby shakes his head, his chest forcing up a hiccup as tears rim his eyes and threaten to spill again, Jack just clutches him tighter, pulling him into another hug.

“You’ll tell me next time,” Jack says. An instruction, an order, a desperate plea. “Right?” Robby nods against his shoulder. “And you’ll talk to someone?”

“Yeah,” Robby breathes.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Jack warns him. “Even when you’re normal again. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” Robby clings to him. “I like when you yell at me.”

“I am not yelling.” Jack punctuates this with a kiss to the top of his head. “When I’m yelling, you’ll know it, Robinavitch. I’m gonna yell at you a whole lot when you’re up again.”

“Okay,” Robby sighs, settling into him. Twisting towards him, he tries to kiss his cheek, the edge of his jaw, his earlobe. Jack laughs, parting them slightly.

“Alright, big guy, I think you need some rest,” Jack informs him. “That’s enough of that, I think.”

Robby frowns up at him. “I know what I did wrong. I’ll fix it.”

Jack smooths his hand over Robby’s hair, then leans in to kiss him at his hairline.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Jack murmurs against him, lips brushing his skin before he gives him another kiss right there. “I just…”

He doesn’t seem to know how to finish that, so Robby mumbles, “I know,” and drags him closer again. “Did I tell you I’m glad you’re the one who took it out?”

“Yeah, you—”

“I’m glad you’re the one who’s giving me the scar,” Robby continues, letting himself fall back against the pillows once more, hauling Jack along with him. He notices him rolling his eyes at him, and he can’t help smiling, everything else flying out of his fuzzy head as soon as he catches sight of him. “Well, I am. I’m gonna be better, I promise.”

“You’re already the best,” Jack replies. “That’s why I want you to stick around. And not go down over something as stupid as ignoring appendicitis.”

“I am stupid,” Robby agrees, mournful.

“God, I wish I was filming this.” Jack kisses the top of his head again, shuffling to let Robby rest against him. He shifts nearer, sighs, his head lolling against Jack’s shoulder, happy to be nestled into his chest like this. “You’re not stupid, babe. Just—” He pauses, asks, “Have you heard of setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm?”

Robby nods, allowing his eyes to drift closed.

“Baby, you are in cinders,” Jack continues. “I gotta say, I don’t love it.” A kiss next to Robby’s eye, this time, and he smiles. “But I love you. And I’m just— I’m glad you’re okay.” Another kiss before he demands, “Next time, though, you will tell me right away.”

“Mm-hmm,” Robby agrees, mostly-asleep.

“Promise me,” Jack insists.

Muzzily, Robby raises his head, forcing his eyes back open to squint at Jack. His face is— not serious, exactly, but earnest, and there’s a shade of desperation that Robby doesn’t like, colored by fear, and he doesn’t enjoy being the reason it’s there.

“Promise,” Robby tells him, making a sloppy x over Jack’s heart, fingertips trailing along his chest, catching on the breast pocket of his scrub top. “I promise. I’ll tell you next time my stomach hurts.”

“Tell me if anything hurts.” Jack taps his heart. “Anything, Robinavitch, you hear me? I’m keeping my eye on you.”

“Mm. Okay,” he agrees. He tilts in for a kiss, and receives one this time. Smiling into it, he asks, “If you want to keep such a close eye on me, why don’t you want to live with me?”

Jack’s palm flattens over his heart and he withdraws, brow furrowed. “What the hell’re you talking about?”

Robby frowns. “I just— Every time I float the idea, you don’t really…” He stops, looks Jack over, wishing this conversation wasn’t happening while most of his brain is already checked out and the rest is sizzling with fever. “I thought you wanted your own space.”

“Mike.” Jack sits up a little, but a soft whine escapes Robby before he can bite it back, and Jack settles back down, his arm winding around Robby and holding him close again. “You’ve never asked me.”

“I’ve tried,” Robby mumbles, embarrassment heating his face.

“Mike,” Jack repeats.

For a beat, Robby hesitates— but, when he opens his mouth, words just start waterfall-spilling out. “If I said, ‘Jack, do you want to move in with me?’ and you said, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ well— That’s it, isn’t it?” Jack’s hand weaves up to the back of Robby’s neck, fingertips threading through the short hairs he finds there. “But— I mean, I tried to— to see if you wanted to— I was—” He huffs. “I didn’t do a good job. I figured it was better than asking if you wanted to ma— But, I— You know, I mean—”

“No, I just— Is that what you were doing?” Jack asks. “Mikey— Even if I did say no, to— y’know, to whatever you asked me, you know that’s not it for us, right?” His fingertip twists around a small lock of his hair. “I don’t think there ever is gonna be an it for us. I’m pretty much locked down on you no matter what we look like.” His other hand comes up, takes Robby’s chin between thumb and forefinger, tilts him towards him until Robby’s eyes meet his again. “And for the record, if you did ask? I’d say yes. To either question.”

“Really?” Robby asks, a surge rushing through him as he jolts upwards. It’s too fast, too severe; his incisions pull, stitches throbbing, and he flinches with a sharp, inhaled gasp.

“Okay, that’s enough of that, you need rest.” Jack lowers him back down against him, tells him, “We’ll talk when you’re awake again, okay? I feel like I’m taking advantage of you having no filter right now.”

“I wish I had no filter with you all the time,” Robby insists. “I want you to know how much I love you. I’m sorry I can be so bad at saying it.”

Jack’s knuckles lightly stroke Robby’s cheek. His eyes seem to shine when he presses a soft kiss to the space just beneath his eye, murmurs, “I know. I can be, too. We’ll work on it together, okay?”

Every thought in Robby’s head is becoming fleeting, distant. When he tries to reach out for them, they slip through his fingers like fistfuls of water, unable to be truly grabbed. He knows there’s a lot of recovery ahead— physical, emotional, mental— but it all feels fuzzy and unreal and distant. The only real thing in the world right now is Jack.

“It hurt so much before,” Robby mumbles, eyes drifting shut again. “Thanks for making me feel better.”

Jack huffs against his hair as he settles down, holding him close as he slides towards sleep. “That’s what we do, right?”

Robby realizes he does feel so much better now. It’s like Jack’s cleansed him inside and out; he’s taken away the pain, removed the source of his agony, scrubbed him clean, bandaged him up, given him the chance to start over. He’s done it to his abdomen as much as he has to his brain, to his heart, to him.

“You’re the best doctor,” Robby insists. “Ever.”

“Now I really wish I was recording this.” Jack kisses his temple. “Sleep. I’ll be right here.”

“Better be.” Robby shifts to throw an arm around him, wanting to snuggle into him like he does when they share a bed, but his stomach aches again.

“Stop wriggling,” Jack instructs him, voice a whisper. “Here.”

Jack’s the one who moves this time, fitting himself into Robby until he’s carefully curled around him. Robby nuzzles his face into Jack’s throat, head pillowed on his shoulder and upper arm, and lets their fingers weave together between their bodies. It’s not the most comfortable position, but he still thinks it’s the coziest he’s ever been, all wrapped up in Jack like this, floating through the painkillers rushing through his system.

“How’s that?” Jack asks, lips brushing his hair. “Feeling okay?”

Robby nods. “Much better,” he mumbles.

The last thing he feels before falling asleep is an overwhelming sense of relief— and a wave of fondness, affection, adoration so intense that he finds himself kissing the hollow beneath Jack’s throat as he slips off, buried in there as he disappears into sleep, vaguely aware still of Jack’s hand in his, his other curled up to stroke soft and steady and slow against the edge of his bearded jaw.

“I love you,” Jack whispers to him, and though Robby is too far gone to reply back, he knows that Jack knows his answer to be an echo.