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“Hey Robby, do you mind stopping by the house to check on Jack tonight?” Dana asks, pulling him aside after he hands off the last of his patients. “I’m working a double since Lena’s sick and he’s been off the last couple nights. Well, last couple weeks, really.”
Robby frowns, studying her face for anything she’s not telling him. “Off how?”
Dana shrugs before throwing one hand up with a sigh. “Oh, you know how he gets,” she says, her tone light even though Robby can see right through her and into the true depths of her concern. “I don’t think he’s been sleeping much. I swear I hear him thumping around on those damn crutches all fucking night.”
“Have you asked him about it?”
“Jack Abbot, talking to me about the hard stuff? You’re funny today, Robby,” Dana teases. But her smirk fades when she checks her phone quickly. “I’ve called him four times today and he hasn’t answered or called me back. Just makes me—”
Robby nods and scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, okay, I’ll swing by,” he says, pocketing Dana’s keys as she hands them over. “Want me to call you when I get there?”
“Only if something’s wrong.” She rocks up on her tiptoes to kiss him quickly before patting his cheek gently. “Too much shit to do here for me to spend time on the phone if I know you’ve got Jack.”
The train ride to the house is longer than Robby would like it to be, especially when his own phone calls go unanswered. He knows how Jack gets, knows it all too well in himself, but Jack’s never gone completely radio silent. Never just ignored both him and Dana and that’s what worries him the most.
So by the time he gets to their house, there’s a twisting knot in Robby’s stomach that winds tighter and tighter with every step he takes. He tries to make as much noise as he can coming in—making a point to jingle his keys and calling out, “Jack? You home?” before loudly slamming the door shut. The house is quiet in a way Robby’s not sure he likes and he quickly sticks his head in the living room and kitchen in hopes of spotting Jack before heading upstairs. “Come on, Jack, you in there?” he says, checking the guest bedroom before making his way down the hall.
The door to Jack and Dana’s bedroom is cracked, soft light spilling into the dark hallway, and Robby pauses, some nearly-forgotten prayer silently spilling past his lips as he takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.
His heart slams against the center of his sternum as he finds Jack sitting on the end of the bed, his prosthetic at his left side and one of his handguns at his right. Robby swallows thickly and steps into the room—moving slowly but deliberately. Jack doesn’t even look at him, just blankly stares at the wall with a worn look on his freckled face, even as Robby says, “You know, I’m not sure if Dana would forgive either of us if you shot yourself and ruined her favorite set of sheets.”
He half-expects Jack to laugh at the dark humor like he usually does, but the joke falls flat as the other man numbly says, “She likes the yellow ones better. Don’t know why.”
That knot in Robby’s stomach is back, twisting and biting like a rat king at how painfully hollow Jack’s voice sounds. He’s seen the bad days but he’s never seen Jack like this. Robby crosses the bedroom and stands in front of him, looking down at the gun. “Is it loaded?”
“Of course it’s fucking loaded,” Jack mumbles, finally looking up at Robby—all the light gone from his hazel eyes. “Kind of hard to shoot myself if it's not.”
Robby chews on the inside of his lip for a second before letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Jack; I’m not great with guns. Think you could take it apart for me so I don’t accidentally blow my fingers off?”
Jack’s gaze drops, staring back at the wall as a shallow, shuddering breath spills out of his mouth, but, after almost a minute, he finally reaches over and takes hold of the gun. Robby watches him rack the pistol and take it apart with such speed and precision that, in any other situation, it would be impressive.
But it’s now and they’re doing this and he knows that those very same skills are the reason they’re in this fucking mess to begin with.
“I already pulled the trigger once,” Jack says bluntly, as he sets the magazine and slide next to his leg and there’s something almost poetic about the scene of it by the time he’s done. Like he and the spread in front of them are nothing more than some art piece designed to make a political statement. “Damn thing misfired. Cleaned it, put it back together, and had it against my head when I heard you coming in.”
Robby sinks down to sit beside Jack and tries to find the right words. Everything he wants to say sounds like complete bullshit in his head, so all that ends up coming out of his mouth is a quiet, “Has it really gotten that bad?”
Jack nods, still staring blankly at the wall like he’s able to see straight into the horrors in his own head. “Haven’t slept in a week. Maybe longer.”
“Dana’s noticed.”
He lets out a short, bitter huff of a laugh and shakes his head. “And here I was, trying not to scare her too much,” Jack says, shoulders sagging just an inch when Robby puts a hand on his back. “I hate how much I worry her, man. I see the look on her face when I wake up screaming and, God, I feel so fucking guilty that she has to see me like that. She deserves better than this.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she would've left a long time ago if she really wanted to,” Robby says, trying to find any kind of levity in the situation. But Jack’s jaw just clenches and his eyes go glassy as he drops his head into his hands, and Robby’s starting to feel like he’s making everything worse. “Jesus, Jack, I didn’t mean it like that…”
The bedroom goes quiet, Jack’s ragged breathing filling the silent, hollow spaces, until the younger man’s fingers twist deep into his curls. “I’m so fucking tired, Robby,” he chokes, the broad expanse of his back shuddering. “I managed to put my life back together but I swear, sometimes it’s like all I can taste is sand in my mouth. Sand and blood and smoke and the weight of that fucking Humvee on my chest like I’m back in Kabul all over again.”
Robby smoothes his hand up the length of Jack’s spine until his fingers dip into auburn curls. “You’re not, though. You’re right here with us."
Jack lifts his head, the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes even more prominent than before as he looks at Robby desperately. “Then why do I end up back there every goddamn night?”
“I wish I knew,” Robby says, refusing to bullshit Jack, especially when he’s like this. “But I don’t think the best solution is putting a bullet in your head. Not when you’ve got people here that love you.”
The younger man stares at him for a moment before turning back to the wall and roughly brushing away the first tear as it carves its way down his cheek. “You know, you’re the reason I was going to do it tonight,” Jack admits shakily and Robby’s stomach crawls its way up to the back of his throat, spilling acid that he can’t seem to swallow away. “I knew Dana was working a double and I knew she would send you here to check on me. Knew you’d handle finding me better than she would.”
It feels like a knife right to the gut and Robby has to look up at the ceiling to blink back the tears before they spill over his lashes. “You’re a fucking asshole, Jack.”
“Then just walk back out that door and give me ten good minutes before you come back in.”
“I’m not going to fucking do that and you know it,” he snaps, tightening his grip on the back of Jack’s neck as a silent sob catches in his chest.
Jack lets out a trembling breath and curls in on himself as he mumbles, “Dana should leave me.”
“Like I already said, that’s not going to happen.”
“You should leave me, too.”
Robby shakes his head. “Also not going to happen,” he says, running his thumb over Jack’s racing carotid pulse. “But you need to sleep, brother. At least once, at least tonight. We can figure everything else out in the morning.” Jack shakes his head weakly and Robby sighs. “Come on, if you need a sleeping pill I can—”
“I don’t need another fucking pill,” Jack snarls, his head whipping up so fast that it’s all Robby can do not to jump back. “I don’t need my nightmares to be any worse than they already are.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, finally letting go of Jack just long enough to gather all the pieces of the dismantled gun off the bed. “If you don’t want a pill, I get it, but you need to sleep. Lay down and I’ll stay with you, yeah?”
Jack doesn’t look entire convinced—honestly looks like he wants nothing more than for Robby to just leave him alone with his gun—but he finally relents, scrubbing his trembling hands over his face. “Will you lay down with me?” he asks quietly, more like a tired, begging child than anything else. “Please, Robby…”
It’s not unfamiliar, the two of them in this bed.
Sure, usually Dana’s with them, but it’s not like this is the first time. What’s unfamiliar is the fact that Robby feels like he’s trying to diffuse a fucking bomb when he lays down next to Jack. He might as well be holding his breath every time he touches the other man, waiting to make sure he doesn’t pull the wrong wire, and even when Robby manages to get Jack to stop fucking shaking, it’s not enough.
He watches Jack’s chest heave, the younger man breathing so hard and so fast that it makes even Robby dizzy, and his heart isn’t any better—racing under Robby’s palm as he spreads his fingers over the center of Jack’s chest. “You need to breathe, Jack,” Robby murmurs.
Jack blinks, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes and a furrowed brow, and grits out, “I am breathing.”
“Well, stop breathing like that, then,” he says. “You need to slow yourself down before you end up passing out.”
“Would that be fucking so bad?” Jack chokes and Robby hates how close to breaking he sounds.
He watches Jack’s chin quiver, nostrils flaring as he tries to force his breathing steady, and wishes there had been something in all of his years of medical training that covered something like this. How to take away an invisible pain from someone you love. Robby can fix a lot of things but he can’t fix this and he’s honestly never felt more like a failure than he does tonight.
Jack tries and tries but the effort only seems to make things worse as he lets out a frustrated sob and scrubs his shaking hands over his face. “I can’t—I c-can’t fucking…” he babbles helplessly, starting to push himself upright again. “I n-need—”
“You need to sleep,” Robby insists, wrestling him back down to the bed. He holds Jack by the shoulders, pinning him down to the mattress, and puts enough of his body weight on the younger man to keep him there. “I’m not letting you get up and I’m not giving you back that fucking gun, so just tell me what you need.”
It takes a minute or two for Jack to stop thrashing underneath him and for his frantic breathing steady long enough for him to get any words out but, when he does, it all but breaks Robby’s heart. “I need—need you t-to…to l-lay across—cross my chest,” Jack stammers, blinking quickly like he’s trying to stay focused on Robby’s face and not wherever his mind is trying to drag him back to. “P-Please…”
He wants to protest, wants to tell Jack that’s the last thing he needs right now, but then he sees the same desperate look in Jack’s eyes that had been there when he told Robby that he should leave so he could finish the job he started. Like Jack knows this won’t help in the long term but it’s the only way to fix the right now.
So, because he can’t fix this, he fixes the right now.
He does his best to make sure both of Jack’s arms are pinned tightly underneath him before settling almost his entire upper body weight across the other man’s torso, knowing that anything else won’t be enough. Robby pillows his head on the crook of his own right arm and feels Jack’s breathing begin to slow immediately. He smoothes his free hand over Jack’s forehead, trying to ease the lingering tension as he asks, “Is it good?”
Jack swallows thickly, Adam’s apple pressing tight across Robby’s forearm, and nods. “Yeah…” he croaks as his eyelids begin to sag. “It’s good…”
Robby can feel his heartbeat begin to slow and the barely-there trembling in Jack’s body finally disappears, but his own heart aches for what he knows he’s doing. “Doesn’t this remind you of that day in Kabul?” he asks quietly as Jack’s eyes finally slip shut.
“Not if I know it’s you,” Jack mumbles, speech already slurring with exhaustion. “Who knows…maybe if the weight starts now, it won’t come later.”
“Even if it comes back later, I’ll be here,” Robby says, even if he knows Jack can’t hear him—the younger man letting out a soft snore as sleep finally takes hold of him after so long. “I’m not leaving and neither are you.”