Chapter Text
Four days after being discharged following the accident, Robby hears a knock at his door that doesn’t sound familiar. He knows it’s supposed to be Perlah’s turn to check in on him, and she definitely doesn’t have that heavy of a hand.
She probably just switched with someone, so he doesn’t think much of it either way as he calls out, “Door’s unlocked!”
He watches as the knob turns, and then Jack’s face is in his doorway. Robby goes tense as Jack hovers there for a moment, seeming as much a mirage now as he had back in the hospital when Robby had been drifting in and out.
“You can’t leave your door unlocked, man,” Jack says, finally stepping fully inside and pointedly turning the lock behind him. “I know walking’s hard right now but come on.”
Robby knows his casualness is a front, betrayed by the way he still lingers in the entryway instead of coming all the way into the room.
“What are you doing here?” Robby’s too tired to keep the emotion from leaking into his voice, and even if he wasn’t, he’s not sure he’d care to, anyway. He’s hurt, and confused, and he’s spent the last four days, as friends and colleagues have cycled in and out to check on him, recontextualizing the last three, nearly four months of his life. And, if he’s honest, the last thirty years. Every time the bell rang or there was a knock at the door, a tiny part of him hoped it was Jack; now that he’s here, Robby just wants him out of his sight.
“Look, I–” Jack starts. He takes half a step toward the living room, then freezes again. Robby’s not sure he’s ever seen him this unsure of his movements. Even when Jack was Johnny, quiet and quick and unlike anyone else Robby had ever met, there was a sureness to him that Robby – Mike – had envied. It says something that he’s lost it now. “I don’t know where to start,” he says eventually, deflating.
Robby just shakes his head. He wants to be angry, but part of him can’t be. The part of him that is still, forever, standing in his Bubbe’s back yard as an old, brown car drives away can’t be angry that the boy in the passenger seat finally came back to him.
“You know, when I woke up I thought I had dreamed it. Dreamed you,” Robby tells him. “And then I saw that fucking chess piece on the table next to my bed. What the fuck, man?”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, and it’s not enough, and they both know it.
Robby stares at him, emotions warring through him. “Did you know the whole time?”
Jack looks down, then around the room, then right at Robby. “Yes.”
“Fuck,” Robby whispers, shaking his head, in disbelief or anger or something else, he’s not totally sure. “And you didn’t say anything because…?”
“What the fuck was I supposed to say?” Jack bites back.
Robby clenches his jaw, and it’s nice to distract from the pain in the rest of his body. “Anything, Jack. You could have said anything.”
“You’re right,” Jack says, and Robby doesn’t let it do the work he knows Jack wants it to. But he does look at him standing there, still so uncertain, and decides to take a little pity on him.
“Would you just sit?”
Jack startles, then gives a single nod and steps the rest of the way into the room before crossing past Robby and dropping onto the other side of the couch. He crosses his arms, then uncrosses them, shifting around uncomfortably.
Robby sighs. “I’m not…” he starts, then thinks again, and starts again. “Okay, I am mad at you. I mean, fuck, what you did is…” He shakes his head. “But I’m willing to hear you out. That’s why you came here, right?”
Jack rubs his palms over the tops of his thighs, then crosses his arms again, leaving them put this time. “Wasn’t sure you’d remember me,” he says, like that’s an acceptable reason. But Robby said he was willing, so he waits. Jack continues, “Wasn’t sure if it was better if you did or better if you didn’t.” Then, a beat later, like he had to debate with himself whether or not to say it, “Wasn’t sure if I wanted you to.”
Robby looks at him, really looks, and all he can see suddenly is that kid who showed up at his house that first day, so many years ago, defiant and lonely but who would never admit to any of that.
“Why? Why would you think I wouldn’t want to?”
“Fuck, man,” Jack says, wiping a hand down his face. “It’s been thirty fucking years. I don’t know you anymore.”
Robby breathes, in and out, shaking his head. “You do. I kind of hate to say it in this moment, but you do know me. You always have.”
Jack looks up at him. “I never knew. All those years, that summer meant everything to me. But I never knew if it meant anything to you, or if I was just some kid you half remembered, you know? A blip on the radar.”
“Never,” Robby says, his mouth reacting before his brain can. He pauses, trying to pull his thoughts together. “I didn’t think about you for a long time,” he confesses. “It hurt too much. But I never forgot you.”
He sees the muscles in Jack’s jaw working, clenching and unclenching. “I searched for you. Found you here.” He paused, then, “You ever look for me?”
“I couldn’t…” Robby starts, and Jack gives him a look, pity or disbelief or something worse. “Not– not like that,” he corrects. “You know we never knew your last name?”
Jack freezes, breathing slow, like the last thirty years of his life are rewriting themselves in a single second. Robby has a pretty good idea how he feels. “No,” Jack says eventually. “I didn’t know that.”
Robby ducks his head and lets out a pained laugh. “It was so fucking easy to lose people back then. No last name, no phone number, no forwarding address… You could have been anywhere.”
“I was,” Jack says with a rueful smile. “Anywhere, everywhere. Even if you did have any of that information, it wouldn’t have mattered for long.”
Robby smiles, a little sad. “Every Johnny or John I met I wondered. And then you show up and you’re not even Johnny anymore. Pretty rude, man.”
Jack laughs, his eyes crinkling with it, and he’s older but god, he’s just the same. “Haven’t been Johnny for a long time now,” he says. He twists his mouth, a pained sort of smile. “Some days I still feel like him, though.”
“I haven't been Mike in a long time, either. But ever since you showed up… I kept thinking about that summer, more than I have in years. I didn't know why.” He ducks his head. “Guess some part of me still recognized you.”
“Every time I played chess I thought of you.” The words are out of Jack’s mouth so quickly Robby wonders if he even had time to think about them at all, or if they’ve just been waiting on the tip of his tongue for months, years.
Then he frowns, recalling the woman from the car accident a few weeks ago. “You said you don’t play anymore.”
“I don’t,” Jack confirms. “But I did. Back when I first enlisted. Other guys in my unit eventually banned me from playing. Never could beat me.”
Pride swells in Robby and he grins, unable to hold it back. “Guess you must have had a decent teacher.”
Jack gives a little half shrug. “He was alright.” He smirks, and something new tugs at Robby’s chest; it looks just the same as it did all those years ago. “Did Bubbe ever find out?”
Robby hunches his shoulders. “I don’t know. I didn’t bring that set out much after you left. Played some with friends in college and med school, but I never could–” His throat tightens again and he cuts off, swallowing. “I can’t believe you still had it.”
It’s sitting there on the coffee table in front of them – Robby had been holding it the whole way home from the hospital and when Dana tried to clear it away from the table to make room for meds and food he may have thrown a slight fit until she relented and let it stay – and both their eyes land on it now. Jack reaches for it and holds it carefully, reverently.
“I brought it with me,” he tells Robby, eyes still on the figure. “To Afghanistan. Two tours, undergrad and med school, another tour and half a leg later...”
“Jack,” Robby breathes.
“Anyway,” Jack says, clearing his throat, “part of me always thought it was ridiculous. That you never meant it that way, but…”
“I did,” Robby says, quick and sure. Jack looks up at him and he repeats, “I did.”
It makes his chest ache in ways that have nothing to do with the accident, in ways he can’t even explain, knowing that the kid he said goodbye to all those summers ago carried this piece of him for so long. He reaches over and places a hand over Jack’s, and Jack nods and lets him take it.
The edges are a little duller now, more rounded and worn, and there are little chips here and there. But it’s still the same, and more important now than ever; he never found out what happened to the rest of the set.
“Can I ask you something?”
“I think I owe you that much.”
Robby sets the piece back on the table and immediately regrets it, his hands suddenly feeling awkward and unsure of themselves. “The kid I knew didn’t seem like the military type.”
It’s not a question, but Jack doesn’t seem to care. He just shrugs and says, “Lot happened after we left Illinois. Bounced around a few more places. Made it hard to finish school with anything even resembling passing grades.”
Robby grinds his teeth and feels something old well up in his chest. Whatever he felt about Jack back then – Johnny, his brain reminds him – he knew that he deserved better. He could beat Robby – Mike – at chess half the time after only a few lessons. Not that he’d been a grandmaster himself by any means, but it had taken him close to a year to beat his uncle.
“You were so smart,” Robby says. “I never met anyone, myself included, who picked up chess so fast. You deserved… God, you deserved everything. Anything.”
Jack’s mouth twists, and that more than anything takes Robby back. God, how did he not recognize him instantly?
“I made it here, didn’t I?” Jack says. “Doesn’t really matter to me how. Does it to you?”
“No,” Robby says quickly. “Fuck no. Of course not. But I can’t stop myself from wishing it happened differently.”
“I get it,” Jack says with a nod. “I’ve had thirty years to reckon with it. You’ve had a few days, and most of those were coming to after surgery.”
Robby laughs softly, some of the anger in his chest seeping away. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Anyway,” Jack continues, “I don’t know that I ever would have become a doctor without the military. It’s true,” he says, cutting off Robby with a look before he can start to protest again. “It’s shit out there for kids like me, no prospects of college, it’s basically either the military or trade school and even trade school costs. All I needed was a bus ticket. And for better or worse it got me where I am today.”
“Fuck, Jack. I–” Robby ducks his head, shaking it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Jack says, and Robby lifts his head slowly to look at him. “I’m not,” he repeats. “Ask me why.”
Robby lets out a small huff of a laugh. “Okay. Why?”
“Because it brought me to you,” Jack says. “And I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world. I’d do it all, every second, all over again, every move, every new school and shitty apartment and every hour in that clanker of a car in the middle of nowhere, every single second of basic and losing my leg, all of it if it meant just one moment of it brought me to you.”
“Jack…” Robby breathes.
Then there’s a hand sliding around the back of Robby’s neck and Jack is kissing him. There’s no hesitation in it, just the confidence and conviction that this is exactly the right move. Thirty years of – god, Robby’s not even sure what – course through the kiss, and then almost before he can process it Jack is pulling away.
All Robby can think suddenly is that he doesn’t want him to. He knows he didn’t want Jack back then, at least not on any level he was aware of, but it’s only now occurring to him that that wasn’t true the other way around. The way he always felt like Johnny was holding some part of him back; he’d put it down to, well, everything about his entire life back then. But Jack is no longer Johnny, and Robby is no longer Mike, and whatever did or didn’t happen then, whatever they did or didn’t feel then, doesn’t matter.
They’re here now, and Robby wants, in a way he’s not sure he ever has before. He looks up at Jack, sees something in his eyes and that he’s about to open his mouth to say something, but before he can get anything out, Robby cuts him off.
“Do it again.”
Jack’s eyes go wide. “You sure?” he breathes.
Robby doesn’t wait for him. He tugs at Jack’s shirt and presses their lips together for the second time, and it feels so right, like his whole life has been leading to this, to them.
“Fuck,” Jack says, pulling back and breathing hard, one hand resting on Robby’s chest and the other now running through his own hair, messing it up. It looks unfairly good. Robby isn’t sure he’s ever thought to acknowledge it before now but yeah, Jack looks good.
“Did you…” he starts, tentative. “Back then?”
Jack bites his lip and suddenly Robby doesn’t care what the answer is. He dives back in, catching that lip between his own teeth instead.
“Yeah,” Jack breathes when they pull apart again. “I did. That day we went to the beach, wearing your trunks and shirt… I’d barely let myself think about you like that before that day. I knew, but you know how it was back then. But then –” he waves a hand, “– and I couldn’t keep it locked away anymore.”
“I wish I knew,” Robby says. “I wish I knew so many things about you. I always wanted to know everything that was going on in your head. You were the one person I could never figure out and it drove me crazy.”
“You got me now,” Jack tells him. “I’m an open book. All yours.”
Robby looks at him, really looks, and for once he thinks it’s true; for all the times he’s looked at Jack over the past few months and been frustrated by his inability to get anything out of him, for all the times he watched Johnny, all those years ago, and didn’t know what to make of him, right here and now Jack is as open as Robby has ever known.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he admits after a long moment. “It’s been thirty fucking years, man.”
Jack reaches over and runs a hand along Robby’s face, and Robby shivers with it. “How about I start?” he asks. Robby nods.
“When I was discharged I had nowhere to go, didn’t know where my mom was and the only other person… That’s another story for another time. I ended up with my grandparents in Delaware.” Robby watches as Jack takes a deep breath, in and out. “They told me about my dad.”
Robby listens, rapt, as Jack relates everything he learned about his father, his history, the reasons why his childhood had been the way it was. His heart breaks anew for that boy, and the man now sitting before him.
“And your mom never told you any of this?” he asks finally. He looks down to find his hands wrapped around Jack’s, and it feels so right, like they’ve always been this way.
“Nope,” Jack says. “I didn’t speak to her for a long time, but we talk now and it’s… I don’t know what we could have had but what we have now is good.”
Without really thinking about it, Robby tugs Jack’s hands forward and pulls him into a hug. “I’m happy for you, man. You deserve that.” It hurts after a moment, his ribs still healing, but he doesn’t want to pull away now that Jack is in his arms. Jack must feel a wince though, because soon he’s leaning back, though he stays close to Robby’s side.
“There’s more,” he says, and Robby follows his eyes back to the chess piece on the table. He nods, and Jack continues, “After a couple years in Delaware I had them transfer me to another VA. Great Lakes. You know it?”
“It sounds familiar,” Robby says, and it does, but he’s read about a million case studies in his lifetime, so most places do.
“It’s in Illinois,” Jack says, and then it hits him. “‘Bout a forty minute train ride north of the city. I lived in the city, not too far from–” He pauses, looking at Robby. “I visited her.
Robby drops his head and blows out a breath, long and slow, then feels a hand on his arm. He looks up to see Jack’s eyes shining.
“I never got the chance to thank her,” Jack says. “Her and you both. I don’t know where I would have ended up if it weren’t for you two.”
“But we didn’t–” Robby starts, but his throat gets tight again. “We couldn’t–”
“You did,” Jack insists, trying to hold his eyes.
Robby turns away, looking out the window at the darkening sky. “There have been so many kids I couldn’t save. I remember them all, their names and their stories and the looks on their parents’ faces…” He trails off and shakes his head. “You were the first.”
He looks back at Jack and sees the heartbreak in his eyes, and he’s suddenly sure that this is it. That Jack will change his mind, get up and walk out the door and never look back. That Robby got everything he never knew he wanted, but only for a moment before screwing it all up again.
Instead, he feels a steady hand around his neck again, and sees Jack ducking his head to try and meet Robby on his level, to bring him back. “No, Mike, never.”
Robby freezes. It’s been thirty years since he last heard this man say that name. He wasn't even a man yet, then. Neither of them were, not really.
“Johnny,” he whispers, and Jack nods.
“I lived so many places before that summer and you know how many people reached out? How many people tried to extend a hand? None. None before her. She didn’t need to take me in, I was just some random kid in a diner. But she did. And you didn’t need to put up with me, teach me chess and answer all my stupid questions and bring me into your life. But you did.”
Robby feels tears forming hot at the edges of his eyes, feels one or two slip free and track down his cheeks. “We could have tried harder…”
“When my mom set her mind on something, there was no changing it. But I am the man I am today because of you and Bubbe. Because of a lot of other people I met and knew, sure, but it started with you.”
A thumb presses to Robby’s cheek, wiping away a tear. He reaches up, holding Jack’s wrist in his hand, then gently turns it to press a kiss to his palm.
“I never got to thank you, either,” he says softly. “You showed me how to take life a little less seriously. I think I still need that reminder sometimes.”
Jack smiles at him, and it’s radiant. “Always happy to help.”
Robby leans forward, ignoring the burning in his ribs, and presses his lips softly to Jack’s.
“Just tell me one more thing,” he murmurs, pulling away just a fraction of an inch. “Did you get a job at the Pitt just to get close to me again?”
Jack doesn’t blush easy, still as unflappable as he was at fourteen. Except now, Robby’s got him, and for maybe the first time ever he sees the faintest pink start to color Jack’s cheeks.
“I took a job at the Pitt because Adamson’s a legend,” Jack says, holding his head proud. “You’re just a nice perk.”
“Uh-huh,” Robby says, smirking, and Jack just shakes his head. Robby watches him, the way his eyes crinkle and his mouth twists, and a particular fondness he hasn’t felt in years blooms in his chest. “I’m glad you did,” he adds, as sincerely as he can muster.
“Yeah?” Jack looks up at him and there’s a twinkle in his eye that Robby can’t resist. And now he doesn’t have to.
He pulls Jack to him again and it’s like the world is unfolding anew, like the morning after a thunderstorm, bright and clear and fresh. Jack reaches a hand up and winds it into Robby’s hair, tugging lightly as they learn each other anew.
“Used to be so jealous of your hair back then,” Jack confesses the next time they break for air, then adds, a little lower, “Still looks good.”
Robby runs a hand over his head and gives an incredulous laugh. “What's left of it.”
Jack shakes his head, smiling. “I don’t know how to tell you this, man, but you’re hot as hell.”
He may have gotten Jack to blush for the first time in his life, but Robby knows he’s always flushed easy, and that hasn’t changed one bit over the years. “You’re not bad yourself,” he says, trying to deflect. Johnny would never have let him get away with it; he knows Jack won’t either.
“True,” Jack agrees, “but we’re talking about you now.”
“We don’t have to,” Robby replies, one last desperate attempt.
“Mike.”
“Yeah?”
“You might just be the most beautiful man I’ve ever known.”
Robby feels his flush go deeper as he tries not to look away from Jack, tries to take the compliment for what it is and believe that it’s true. “Thank you,” he says quietly, pressing another soft kiss to Jack’s lips.
“Any time.”
Robby laughs again, and as he shakes his head, he catches a glimpse of the clock in the kitchen.
“What?” Jack asks as Robby frowns.
“Perlah never showed up. It was her turn unless I read the schedule wrong.”
To Robby’s surprise and great amusement, Jack goes pink again for the second time in less than ten minutes and maybe in his entire life.
“I may have bribed her with the promise of free babysitting in the future to switch with me.”
Robby laughs out loud at that, and it feels good. “You would have been here in another couple days anyway.”
“You memorize the whole schedule or just my shifts?” Jack shoots back.
“Oh, it was killing you, wasn’t it?” Robby teases, but he really can’t blame him, and he really can’t be mad, considering the outcome. “I was looking forward to her soup, but I guess I’ll still recover okay without it.” He presses a hand to his forehead as Jack rolls his eyes.
“Fuck, I can make you soup,” Jack says, indignant.
“Oh? Since when?”
Jack straightens up tall and looks Robby square in the eye. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Yeah?” Robby asks, still smiling. He pulls Jack out of his ridiculous posture and back close to him, running a hand up his arm and threading his fingers through Jack’s curls. “Can’t wait to spend the rest of my life finding out.”