Work Text:
Robby perfects talking to him without talking to him. Checks in with banal questions about the whens of his shifts and barely remembers to listen to the answers. He’s pantomiming participating in life, and badly. He misses the looks that Jack sends him, drops the references, bumps shoulders around ER beds.
They have a shorthand, the two of them. They don’t need words or explanations, not when they have a rhythm and choreography that decades of working together have given them.
Only Robby can’t hear the music now.
He thanks every day for Dana. And maybe if it weren’t so obvious how wounded Robby is they would’ve lost her, but all it took was one text from a night shift nurse about Robby to have her reconsidering retirement after all. At least if he can’t send looks to Robby, they can check in with each other about all the looks Robby’s missing.
Jack starts every shift with finding Robby on the wrong side of the roof's safety barrier and every conversation he tries to start, every platitude, every reach of his hand is batted away with a brittle smile and a request for less. Jack usually doesn’t have to be asked for less, it’s something he provides naturally but he’s always tried a little harder for Robby.
He talks to his therapist about all the progress he’s not making and even takes his suggestions.
They go as well as all the things Jack’s tried on his own.
Dana pulls him aside before he can get up to the roof, tells him about the dead thirty-year-old that Robby had liked, how stupid and unfair death was.
It’s shades of people he’s lost before, the shorthand they have coming back when he doesn’t even have to mention patient names, just years, months, the ones that leveled him because Jack remembers Robby’s as well as Robby remembers his. It’s Pittfest again, Robby on the wrong side of the barrier, but turning so they’re shoulder to shoulder and face to face.
His head hangs, perpetually chastising himself for not performing miracles, and it’s so stupid of him. So stupid. Because he’s the best doctor Jack has ever worked with and he doesn’t know it. No matter how many times Jack tells him, he still doesn’t know it.
Jack grasps his forearm, trying to catch Robby’s eyes. He’s not crying which means he might let it happen. He hides his tears from Jack. Jack suspects it’s because he thinks Jack is judging him for them when, if anything, he’s jealous. Jealous Robby isn’t so shut down that he can react with something beyond a clenched jaw and a hard knot of anger. He wipes the side of his face angled towards Jack against the sleeve of his omnipresent hoodie and looks at him.
Jack grips tighter. “You did everything you could.”
Robby gasp-laughs, shakes his head. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” Jack says and there is not a shadow of a doubt in any part of him on that, “I know you. You always do everything you can. You don’t have a dimmer switch, man.”
Robby’s eyes are tracking him, looking for the lie, his shoulder bunches up and that’s as much warning as Jack gets before Robby is leaning into him. His lips are dry, his beard all bristle, and he lingers against Jack’s mouth with closed eyes and light pressure before he pulls away.
Jack knows because he’s completely frozen, eyes wide, lost entirely. He couldn’t have been more surprised if Robby jumped over the edge.
Robby doesn’t even take in his expression before he’s straightening up, dragging a hand down his face. “Fuck. Fuck. That wasn’t…” he dips under the safety railing and stalks off before Jack can even manage a blink.
He gets a sheaf of notes and a more detailed explanation from Dana when he gets downstairs. There’s a clear chastisement in her gaze as she runs it down but he’s too gobsmacked to respond to the implicit ‘You weren’t supposed to make it worse,’ in her eyes.
Robby’s beyond the not-talking talking the next time Jack sees him. All professionalism. He’s not even this cold with Gloria, for fuck’s sake. He keeps it up for four days before the line of his shoulders is back to a slump, too wrung out to be anything other than exhausted with Jack.
He’s still missing the music, he’s still out of sync, but he’s not cold at least. Just… gone.
The thing is, Jack didn’t see it coming. He can see the telegraph of an attack, not affection. Clearly. He doesn’t tell his therapist about it mainly because he doesn’t know what he wants to hear. He’d be happy Jack wasn’t obsessing over his ex-wife but a guy, a coworker, someone in as desperate a need for a life raft as him? Well, that would probably throw up some red flags.
Jack’s never had a problem with the gay thing, the bi thing, the two dudes thing. He’s army, he’s run the gamut on that and he’s never felt any particular way about it. Mainly because it’s never had shit to do with him.
This? This is a curveball.
“What are you doing here?” Robby asks, exasperated, when he opens the door to Jack. He sounds like he’s been expecting this and he still doesn’t have the energy for it.
Jack flexes his fingers around the strap of his backpack because he doesn’t know. He can’t envision the whole guy thing because for nearly five decades that’s very much not been a thought in his head, but the kiss hadn’t been… bad. It hadn’t been much of anything honestly, pressure and Robby freaking out. He can’t extrapolate any data from that aside from the fact that Jack’s pretty sure Robby needs a hug and he wouldn’t mind being the one giving it.
Maybe that goes somewhere. Maybe it doesn’t.
Only one way to find out.
He leans forward, cups a palm around the back of Robby’s neck, and pulls him in, towards his mouth.
Robby turns his head so Jack’s lips meet beard and he pulls away quickly, grits out, referencing his own attempt,“I shouldn’t have done that.” It’s clear he thinks his own aborted kiss initiated this one and, yeah, fair.
Jack still has no idea what to do with that or what the hell that really means. Robby shakes him off, turns around inside but he leaves the door open so Jack takes a tentative step forward, closing it behind him.
“I mean it,” Robby says, putting the island in his kitchen between them. Jack obligingly follows to stand on the other side, “why are you here?”
“You kissed me.” If he could find his way around blunt, he would, but Robby’s already used up all his ability to do that during their working hours.
“Yeah,” Robby closes his eyes, nods his head with a huffy breath, “yeah, that was,” he leans back, crossing his arms, “I was in a low spot and I—”
“You kissed me.” Jack doesn’t know how else to say that. That’s not a low point, a low point is Collins or someone else who's still starry-eyed. But him? That’s yearning that’s broken like a wild horse past its fencing. That wasn’t the first time Robby’s had that thought and Jack knows it. He won’t pretend he doesn’t.
“I never thought it was mutual,” Robby tries, casually dismissive in his expression even if his voice can't quite carry it off.
"And it wasn't," he bites back, harsh in a way he hadn't meant to be. Fuck him, but he doesn't know how to do this. He knows Robby's rhythms in precisely one environment and even that's been discordant of late. This is not a conversation he knows how to have. He's gruff and unsparing and he doesn't know how to anticipate Robby's needs here because he has no idea what they are outside of an ER floor.
He didn't think they thought of each other outside of those doors, either of them. He feels like Robby's broken some unwritten rule by doing that. It shouldn't be allowed; he shouldn't want Jack as more because Jack has never given the impression that he can bear anything extra, not scrutiny or weight or want.
Hell, Robby found him on that roof first.
Robby's smarter than this, or maybe it's because he's smart that he's chosen Jack and he's just satisfying some self-destructive urge with him.
Robby hitches up that all's-well smile. That fake shit that Jack has had to stare back at for weeks on end and pretend it doesn't make him furious. "Well, there you go then." His arms are still crossed in front of his chest and he gives a peppy little shrug of his shoulders and Jack's not sure if he wants to kiss him or punch him.
"Yeah, then you kissed me." Jack shifts his stance. He's not going to be a cudgel for Robby to beat himself with, he refuses. "I'll admit," his hand clenches on his backpack strap, "I don't know what I can offer you, exactly, but I'm willing to find out." He is, he's afraid of a lot of things but touching a dick isn't one of them.
Robby looks as though Jack's chosen the punch, like he's taken a blow that's shortened his breaths. It comes out in his bewildered, "Why?"
And it's so clear he has no idea, that the question is beyond genuine and Jack hates that he can't see himself. "Because you matter." And Jack means that entirely in the cosmic sense. Robby makes a difference, every day he exists is a better day in the world and how does he not know that? How does he not marvel at that the way Jack does when they get to the end of a down and dirty save together?
Robby's tentative hope snuffs out, the corners of his mouth pulling down, and Jack can tell it's not because he hasn't been understood but because he has. "You should go."
He's done something wrong here, missed something, but he doesn't know what. He wishes he had Dana on the other side of the room to translate it for him because when he misses things, she doesn't. He doesn't want to go but he doesn't know where he lost the possibility of 'stay,' so he doesn't know where to even start to get back to it.
Robby stills a moment, gives him a chance to make some rebuttal, but, when he can't, he walks to the door and opens it for him.
Jack can't help but boil it down to, "I want to help."
Robby smiles at him, not real, eyes all glass, and says in that cry-rough voice, "I know," and closes the door behind him.
Jack gets to the corner, closes his eyes, tries to imagine it more familiar. Robby in a crisis, in a room, with the tools he needs, with the help he needs, imagines saying all the same words there in that context and—maybe. Maybe he knows why he's on this side of the door now.
Robby opens the door at his knock and his eyes are wet, glossy, but there are no tears. Jack opens his mouth but Robby says before he can, "I thought, for a second, I thought you saw me and not just the shape of me. The air I take up in a room, the space you navigate around."
Jack drops his backpack and one hand is on Robby's neck, the other on his side. Where Jack has seen music, a dance, Robby has seen a barrier, a lack of intimacy. "I see you." Jack kisses him softly, a mere brush of lips more than anything else. Doesn't linger long enough to feel it, not really. "It's all fucked in my head," he admits, his fingers digging in, and that he feels, the muscles, the ribs, "because I'm also in awe of you and I know you can see that, maybe that's all you can see."
He can't blame Robby for it either because that's been so eclipsing in his own head that he didn't know until he got to that corner what was wriggling underneath the rock of his reverence. Robby is more human than him and even if Jack can do something technically more proficient, he'd still want Robby to be the one to do it. There's the perfect tension in everything he does, a Midas touch, that's tender but firm, reassuring but competent. He's everything Jack would want if he were in pain, if he were scared, if he needed another person to care for him.
Robby's somehow got him on that rooftop again, grasping for words, for comfort, for meaning and coming up endlessly short. "You want me to see you because you don't think I do, you think I overlook you and assume competence and skill in place of you but that's not it, not exactly." He presses into Robby's space. He's staring at the ground between them and so Jack swallows it up, dips his head to meet Robby's eyes. "It's trust, not a thing I'm inherently good at or that I find entirely easy except I forget that with you. And do you know why?"
Robby sniffs, shakes his head so slightly that Jack's not entirely sure he saw it.
"All your faultlines are how deeply you fucking care, for people, for person. So much it can crack you apart and you want me to see that and make some judgment about it?" Robby's gone still under his hands. "I have no judgment about that and that doesn't mean I don't see you, that doesn't mean I'm mythologizing you into some ideal. I see you, that just doesn't mean I think less of you the way it seems to make you think I should."
Robby shakes his head, looks up. "It should." He nods to himself, sniffs. "It should and you still don't—You want me for the world." He looks away, down the hall, backs up a step so Jack's hands fall and he can recross his arms. "You should still go."
Jack licks his lower lip, nods. "I love you unselfishly, yeah. It's not 'I love the way you look at me' or 'I love the way I feel when I'm with you,' I just love you. That you are. That's true." He rubs two fingers over his mouth. It's not a way he ever would have put it before today, love, because it's not the way he would've labeled the cluster of feelings he has for Robby. Not because that's not what it is, but because that's not how he thought of it.
"I can't blame you for thinking that's it because maybe I did too, but I think if you weren't on that roof tomorrow I would lose my mind," he half-laughs because it's truer than he ever could've guessed, "for no other reason than my day is incomplete without you. I don't have this," he gestures between them, "with anyone else. And maybe to you it's not a lot, because it's always been so much less than what you were after, but to me? You matter to the world, Robby, I stand by that, but you also matter to my world."
They're staring at each other then, Jack hoping he's finally made this stupid, wordy medium work for him and he's actually gotten his point across and Robby with his disbelief slowly softening.
Jack takes a step forward and Robby's curled fingers brush past the stubble on his jaw, fan out behind his ear, down his neck, his thumb guides his chin and then their mouths find each other's. Jack's not sure what to expect, he hasn't been kissed in years, not since Robby on that roof and that had been a question more than a kiss.
This can't be confused for anything else. Robby's lips are soft, his mouth is warm, his pressure's firm, his tongue inviting. He waits for Jack to meet his every increase in tempo because there's a rhythm to this too, one Jack's not only sure he can find but that he wants to.
Robby pushes, long, slow slides of his tongue, a hand at his hip, a press of his chest and it's a surprise when Jack's back hits the wall across from Robby's door. He's not one to lose track of his surroundings, that's hard to breed out once it's been honed, but his eyes had been closed and his higher brain function had all been Robby.
Robby's hands, still with a thumb guiding his chin and fingers on his neck, a palm flat on the wall over his shoulder, Robby's lips coaxing and coaxing for more from his own, Robby's gasps for breath and needy groans for closeness. Jack's been so focused on Robby that he hasn't even noticed his own grasping hands, pulling at the shoulder of Robby's hoodie and the fabric at the back of his neck, dragging him in, his mouth parting and parting and parting and trying to invite Robby into all of him, his chest heaving for air even as he refuses to let Robby pull even an inch away from him.
Yeah, the dick thing's probably not going to be an issue for him.
He's not sure how long they've been devouring one another, only that it's Robby who pulls away and that Jack's more than half-hard when he does. Robby's grinning, a wide if still wobbly thing, happy but distrustful of it. "I'm not in a good place," he says, shaking his head. He's breathing hard and his voice is rough and none of that should be as fucking hot as it is.
Jack licks his lips. "I haven't been in a good place for almost twenty years." He jerks his chin towards Robby. "You're the one who thought this would be a good idea."
That startles a genuine laugh out of him. He backs up, hands and stance no longer caging Jack against the wall, instead finding their anxious home inside the pockets of his hoodie. "We probably shouldn't—I'm too ratcheted up to care it's your first time." He meets Jack's eyes. "I want to care it's your first time."
Jack could tell him he's not some shrinking violet but he knows when Robby says 'I want to care,' he means that, this is about the plans he has. Robby has a script for this, he doesn't want to veer too far from it, and Jack can respect that. He straightens up and Robby's eyes fall to his crotch, as though he's considering tossing everything he just said aside and pulling Jack into his apartment with him. And, well. That's heartening. Jack smirks. "I've told you before, I've got two hands."
Robby laughs again. "Need both, do you?"
"You're not the only one who wants to pamper me."
Robby's grin is huge now and Jack can't help but grin back. "You, uh," Robby licks his lower lip and Jack tries not to let his eyes glaze over because of it, "you sure about this?" His hands pull his hoodie across his waist.
"Hell no," Jack says immediately, and honestly, "haven't been sure of anything since I was in my twenties, back when no one had ever been as smart as I was." Robby laughs again and there's a lot of relief in that one, shoulders unwinding from Jack's original 'no.' "But this is something I'm more than willing to be wrong about."
It takes Robby a moment but he half-smiles and says, heartfelt, "Me too." He pulls a hand from his pocket, rubs a palm over the back of his hair, and seems to be debating what to say after you've come out, kicked out, and made out with your colleague. After an awkward moment, he lands on, "Okay." He rocks back on his heels, turns around, and closes the door behind him.
Jack only realizes he was leaning into Robby's space, pulled in by his gravity, when his first step isn't as balanced as he would like. Christ. Okay. So. Robby then.
Fuck, he is not looking forward to telling his therapist.