Chapter Text
Jack took one look at Robby and knew.
Even if he hadn’t known, it seemed every damn person in the ED was going to tell him. McKay, on her way out, subtle: you might want to check in with Robby. Dana, pissed off, less subtle: he’s losing his goddamn mind and I’m not going to be the one to help him find it again. He noticed the looks Javadi shot over her shoulder, the way Mohan avoided Robby’s glance, and how Dr. Al-Hashimi glared at everyone.
He gave himself a moment. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Held it. Breathed out. He had already spent hours in the ED today, had barely gotten a few hours of sleep before he was back. There were no computers, the board was a mess, a new trauma was incoming and Robby was on the brink.
Prioritize.
Robby. Trauma. Then everything else.
He started the conversation casually, even though he knew it couldn’t stay that way. He didn’t want to spook the other man, didn’t want to risk what could happen if he played it wrong.
“You heading out, brother?” A hand on Robby’s shoulder, and he could feel the tension there. Robby was usually loose, his body taking him where he needed to be on instinct, but tonight it felt like a live wire.
“Soon,” Robby said, and Jack knew it was a lie. “My buddy Duke is here, I’m waiting on his CT results and this board is such a fucking mess -”
“Which room is Duke in?” Jack asked, filing the answer away. “I can take him from here. VIP treatment.”
Robby kept talking. Rambling, really. About how he had to leave but this place was holding him hostage. Bullshit. His eyes were wild, he twisted his hands together. He was a goddamn mess.
“Robby, it’s time to leave,” he said. He lowered his voice, left no room for disagreement.
That got Robby’s attention. Made him focus.
“Jack -”
“Go to my house,” he said in the same tone. “Go there and go to sleep.”
Robby laughed and Jack could tell it was forced. More rambling, about his fucking motorcycle death wish trip and needing to leave tonight.
When Jack interrupted, he spoke low and slow and with a force that he knew Robby would recognize. “Go to my house. Go to sleep. If you try to leave town on that bike I swear I will fucking 302 you and you will be held in this ED, in front of everyone, until a bed opens up upstairs. Text me when you’re there and every hour until you go to sleep. Wear your fucking helmet.”
Jack tries not to show his relief as he saw Robby settle. He saw the wildness retreat. He didn’t look happy - had he ever seen Robby happy? - but he was going to do as he was told. A ridiculous twinge of pride in his chest; he could still make Robby obey.
“You’re a fucking menace,” Robby said. But there was no heat, he was already going to comply. Jack quickly took Robby through the rest of the handoff, the countdown to the incoming trauma in the back of his mind, and handed over his keys. He watched as Robby walked out the door, pissed, but his body a bit looser.
Jack got ready for the approaching trauma, put on his gown and gloves and called some residents to join him in the ambulance bay as his mind did a quick safety check of his house. No guns - Sarah had hated them and after Sarah he had never felt safe enough to keep them. He estimated the doses of prescriptions he had left and felt confident the worst anyone could do is puke their brains out. It was a one level ranch, no roof to worry about. His medical go bag was in his car. Maybe a disposable razor floating around in the bathroom. Half a bottle of whiskey.
Of course, he was on that fucking motorcycle
The ambulance doors opened and he pushed Robby out of his mind. He was doing what he could. He couldn’t control everything.
His therapist would be so fucking proud.
Twenty minutes later, when the patient had been stabilized and sent up to the OR, he looked at his phone. A text from Robby, and he let out a sigh of relief as he read the one word message: Here.
Good boy.
____
The shift was…fine. The day shift trickled out. The computers came up at 9pm to scattered applause. He had a conversation with Duke he wished he hadn’t had to have. There was a rush at 11pm, drunk drivers causing chaos on their way home from fireworks. Santos was the last day shift doctor to leave, stumbling out at midnight with her charting done and a clap on the back from Jack. He was vaguely concerned about her; started to make a mental note to talk to Robby and then remembered that Robby was supposed to be taking three months off and wasn’t in any shape to be helping someone else with their problems anyway. His job was about to get a lot more complicated, but that was for tomorrow.
Robby did as he was told. Jack got texts every hour, whether he responded or not, until about 3am when he assumed Robby had fallen asleep. Hoped he had fallen asleep. He wouldn’t let himself consider any other possibilities, not while there were lives to save right in front of him.
As the sun rose and the day shift arrived, Jack grabbed himself a last cup of coffee. He gave Al-Hashimi a slightly perfunctory handoff, believed her when she said she had it under control. Grabbed another coffee and handed it to Santos. Clocked the tremor in Dana’s hands, and the dark circles under Mohan’s eyes and briefly wondered what the fuck Robby had done to these people. He should’ve been paying more attention; not just to Robby, but the collateral damage he’d inflicted.
He would pay attention. He promised himself he would, even as he left. He could grab that beer with Al-Hashimi and come up with a plan to get them some extra support. He thought of Robby at his house, asleep in his bed. Maybe just a coffee.
He drove home in silence, drinking the disgusting break room coffee out of necessity. He didn’t have a plan, exactly. But he was getting there.
He couldn’t fix Robby. His therapist had told him that enough times, and even he didn’t have that much of a god complex. Robby need therapy and meds and time off that had nothing to do with suicidal ideation and maybe a hobby or a friend who had absolutely fuckall to do with PTMC. He couldn’t fix Robby.
But maybe, just maybe, he could get him to step back from the edge he was so obsessed with walking on. Robby had done it for him.
Not just on the roof, when he found himself on the roof. That was almost leftover, an impulse born of not quite forgotten history. Real - sometimes, on the bad days, Robby’s presence behind him on the roof felt like the only real thing. But it didn’t start on the roof.
It started when Sarah died.
He could think of it now without feeling like he was suffocating. There was grief, and pain, but not so much that he couldn’t breathe. But back then - he couldn’t breathe. He could drink. And cry. And answer the door when Robby showed up after too many days of unreturned texts and phone calls.
It wouldn't be exaggerating to say that Robby had saved him. That he had come in, and seen exactly what Jack was doing to himself, and put a stop to it. He created structure. He let Jack grieve, but he also made him eat, and drink something other than alcohol, and shower on occasion. He didn’t cajole or even ask - he just told Jack what to do and Jack listened. It was such a relief to not have to think. His brain was so full of grief and guilt and futures that he would never get to see, that having someone else handle the day to day tasks of keeping a body alive didn’t feel like quitting. It felt like a gift.
They had never talked about the day it turned to something else. He knew there was a big red flag somewhere in his therapy file about this, had noticed the raised eyebrow, the scribbling of notes. Robby had told him to shower, and so he showered. Bathroom door open because even then, months later, Robby didn’t trust him alone in there. Most days he didn’t trust himself so he didn’t push back. His dreams the night before had been a mess of grief and sex. He couldn’t remember, exactly, what had happened, but he had woken with his dick half hard and Robby and Sarah tangled up in his mind. In the shower, he took himself in hand. Tried not to think that this was the first time he’d even considered sex since Sarah had died. Stroked himself, tried to feel like a normal fucking person. And instead had felt like he was choking, drowning, the lump and his throat and pit in his stomach impossible to push through. He had leaned back, crashed his head back against the shower wall. Hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to injure. But it must have been that sound that brought Robby in, had him opening the shower curtain, fear in his eyes, only to see Jack with his dick still in his hands, eyes closed, fighting back tears.
Robby had paused and assessed the situation. Jack hadn’t moved - didn’t have the strength to make a joke or even let go of himself. He just let Robby see him, naked and guilty and wanting to move forward and being completely unable to take even the first smallest step. Robby saw it all and stood there and crossed his arms. Something dark crossed over his face, and Jack couldn’t figure out what it was at first.
Then Robby spoke. His voice low, hoarse, but absolutely sure. “Keep touching yourself. Look at me.”
And Jack, who had been eating and drinking and sleeping and showering at this man’s command for months did as he was told.
Later, he’d wonder if it was always headed to this. If it started the first day he’d met Robby and given him a once over and fleetingly wished they had met anywhere else besides work. Or if it had started the day Sarah died, when the only number he could think of was Robby’s. Or if it was just pure chance - if he’d been quieter, if he’d shut the door, if Robby had been watching TV and hadn’t heard anything, would it just not have happened at all?
But whether it was inevitable or chance, Jack came over his hand, the hot water immediately washing him clean, as Robby held his gaze steadily. His wanting showed on his face, but he didn’t touch himself, didn’t ask Jack to. He hung a clean towel on the hook and walked through the door. He turned in the threshold, his gaze still hot, catching Jack just as he was about to spiral into shame.
“You did good.”
The door clicked quietly behind him.
____
They had continued like that for a while. Jack slowly came back to himself, but he found comfort in the structure Robby had created more than he could have predicted. The sex was, at first, infrequent. But the more Jack started to slowly take over his own ADLs - breakfast before Robby woke up, leaving the room to shower without Robby having told him to - the more he needed Robby for sex. Or maybe it was the more Robby needed him.
Touch yourself.
Touch me.
Open yourself up.
Kneel.
Bend over. Just like that. You’re doing so good.
The day it began to chafe, that the structure began to feel like walls, the first time he truly thought about saying no, he was relieved. That was a version of himself he recognized. And then he was scared. Scared to lose the thing, the person, that had dragged him back into living. Scared of facing the world alone - no Sarah, no Robby, just himself. But even the fear had the edges worn down. He felt like he could survive it.
That night, Robby was there. He wasn’t there every night now. He had slowly started to ease out, to give Jack space, to trust him. But that night he was there and he must’ve seen the distress on Jack’s face, because he crossed over immediately, caught his mouth in a bruising kiss.
Jack opened for him, of course he did. He let Robby lick into his mouth and he grasped his arms and he tried to fall back into the space where what Robby wanted and demanded was always the right thing.
But when Robby started to push him back, he held his ground.
A pause. A recalibration. Robby pulled back, looked at Jack carefully.
“It’s my turn,” Jack said and it wasn’t a request.
Robby thought about it. Jack could see him thinking and let him. Kept his eyes on Robby and didn’t let any part of him show that he was fucking terrified.
“Ok,” Robby finally said. He stepped back. Let his hands hang by his side. He let Jack look at him and he waited.
And Jack wasn’t scared anymore and he wasn’t even relieved. He wasn’t exactly who he was before - he was battered and held together with tape and wire and a prayer - but he was also somehow completely himself.
Touch yourself.
And Robby did.
____
It could never have lasted. The foundation was shaky, built on friendship and trust and love but also grief and suspicion and resentment. Jack grew and Robby stayed the same and neither one could bend.
They tried. They tried the best they could, which from the outside probably didn’t seem like trying at all. When Jack was self-sufficient again, when he didn’t need to rely on Robby to keep himself alive, something shifted. No one could say it wasn’t good. Of course it was good that he could remember to eat a meal, or at least a protein bar, without being led to the kitchen like a dog on a leash. What could Robby say? Fall apart again? I need to be useful? Robby could be a dick, but not like that. Not with him.
But of course, Robby began to chafe too. They both ignored it at first. The hesitation before following an order. The push back against a restraint that wasn’t a no but wasn’t exactly a yes. He spent more time at his own place than Jack’s and they ignored that too. Until one day Jack told him to kneel, and he didn’t and Robby told him to turn around and he didn’t and they both knew it was done.
Mostly done.
They moved on. Their friendship, somehow, miraculously, survived. Without discussion, it stayed easy, but never shallow. And every once in a while, Jack walked into his house to find Robby there and they both needed the same thing and Jack took Robby apart piece by piece and nobody said no. After Heather told him the truth about himself. After the MCI. Once, in the sticky heat of summer, Jack hadn’t talked Robby back from the edge of the roof, he’d simply demanded it and Robby had done as he was told and been rewarded for it and somehow they had both managed to keep their jobs.
Robby hadn’t shown up at his house in a long time. Jack had wondered - had witnessed the slow disintegration of what little mental health he had, had listened to him plan his death wish motorcycle trip, and thought more than once tonight, he’ll come tonight. But he never did. He hasn’t asked because that would have been talking about it and they didn’t do that. He had told Robby to call him if it was dark, and Robby hadn’t answered. And Jack was willing to let Robby off the hook for a lot of things, was willing to pretend it didn’t sting when Robby didn’t reach out, but he wasn’t going to let Robby fucking kill himself just because that felt easier than putting in the work.
Robby was going to put in the work. Robby was going to live. He wondered if this was how Robby felt about him after Sarah. Had never actually considered when and how Robby decided that he would be in charge, or how that responsibility sat with him.
He thought about how he was going to get Robby there. How he was going to make him hear reason. Move towards living instead of dying.
Robby didn’t know how to be alone with himself. Couldn’t stand the volume of his thoughts without a distraction to take the edge off. Jack knew he needed to learn how to do that. How to hear his thoughts without letting them take him over. Jack knew his suicide motorcycle trip wasn’t actually a well thought out suicide plan. It was the whisper of one he turned his ear towards, a hope, some romantic notion of fate. Because Robby would never look at the pain straight on. Would never clock his ideation as that and come up with a plan. He was a fucking doctor - it would be the easiest thing in the world to come up with a plan that would actually work. But he was too stubborn to face it.
But getting Robby to listen to his thoughts, to hear himself and not run away, to recognize pain and sit with it as just another part of the human experience - Jack couldn’t do that. That was a job for the professionals.
What he could do is get Robby’s mind to be quiet. He could make Robby be present and in his body and turn the volume of his mind all the way down. Jack could focus Robby’s attention on him, then turn it back to Robby.
There was going to be pain. More than he’d used before, but Robby was more far gone than he’d been before. So there would be pain.
And then he’d make Robby agree to get some fucking help.