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“Have you got everything, including the popcorn? Because this is it, I am officially not getting up again,” Jack says, raising his hands in a declaration as he starts taking off his leg on the couch.
Robby gives him a look, putting the bowl of popcorn, the remote, their martinis, and the pile of blankets on the coffee table in front of them. “I got two good legs, I’ll get up if we need something.”
Jack sets his leg to the side and unfolds one of the blankets, settling it around himself. “Yeah, but you’ll bitch about it.”
“When have I ever bitched about taking care of you?” Robby asks, eyes flicking up towards Jack in that way that never fails to take his breath away.
Robby’s just in a hoodie and sweatpants, but he’s as handsome as ever, even more so now since only Jack gets to see this, alone with him at home with the faint glow of the lamp lighting their living room. He's a lot more pleasant than he was twenty minutes ago when he got caught in the rain walking home from work. It's still coming down hard out there.
“Aww,” Jack says, and his sarcastic smile becomes a genuine one as Robby’s gaze makes him feel like a teenager in love for the first time.
“Who pissed in your cornflakes?” Robby asks, feeding the disc into the player. Because physical copies are better, and they last longer, and they own them for life, and this is a disc they burned custom, anyway. Old and beloved and well used. And they can still use it if the internet goes down, something Jack does fear as the rain pounds against the windows.
“We were supposed to do this last night and it got pushed back because of fucking shift schedule fuckups,” Jack grumbles. “So now that you’re here, consider yourself locked in prison, brother.”
Robby slowly grins, joining him on the couch, pulling the blanket over his own lap so they can share it. The red fleece one that eliminates the cold from the storm outside, replacing it only with sweet, syrupy warmth. Robby turns that sweet smile and those brown doe eyes on Jack. He purrs, “Did you miss me?”
Jack tries not to let it show how much that flusters him. “No one messes with my alone time with my man,” Jack says, pulling him in for a kiss that leaves Robby dazed in that way Jack loves. Turnabout is fair play.
“No one messes with your MASH rewatch, sounds like,” Robby says, and cuddles up to Jack’s side as he fiddles with the remote. He hands Jack his martini. “For you, sir, a dryer than dry, unwet martini.” [1]
”Thank you, good sir.” Jack shivers when their fingers brush and not for romantic reasons.
“How are you so big yet always so cold?” Jack demands, taking one of Robby’s freezing hands in his free one and kissing it. Robby shivers, maybe from more than the cold, although he's still recovering from the rain, walking into the house like a wet dog.
He pulls the blanket over his shoulder, folds his legs under himself, and burrows his cold nose in Jack’s shoulder. Jack's just in a tshirt and sweats, and thank god, because he's going to get hot quickly with the blanket and Robby to warm him.
“That question makes no sense,” Robby claims, though his words are muffled. Jack wraps an arm around his shoulder and rubs idle circles over his skin under his hoodie.
At last, they start the disc compiled of all their favorite MASH episodes, the theme song playing as Jack whistles along to it under his breath, a habit Robby catches him doing around the house when he doesn’t even realize.
Two hundred and fifty six episodes, they’ve seen them all enough to know them back and front both before and after they were together.
Only felt natural, a show about army doctors in the Korean War barely keeping their heads above the water and sometimes dipping below, cracking jokes in the interim—and almost definitely fucking each other.
For a little while, it’s a lull of quiet, Jack’s fingers in his hair, letting his eyes shut briefly for a moment as Robby gets properly comfortable. But they both know Jack can’t stay quiet for long, and the cozy quiet mood shifts as Robby sits up for the theme appropriate martini and the popcorn bowl on the table.
He offers the latter to Jack, who declines. "Cheers to a weekend off, brother," Jack says, clinking his glass against Robby's before removing the olive.
They’re just watching Trapper swagger across the compound [2] when Jack says, casual as anything, “He walks like he has a third leg swinging there.”
Robby spits out his drink, turning quickly bright red, turning to look at Jack with a what the fuck expression.
Jack shrugs. “What? He does.” He nudges Robby. “You would know.”
Robby elbows him in the side. "Shut up."
Jack thinks it wise to change the subject before he’s throttled. “So, are you team Trapper or team BJ as a love interest for Hawkeye?”
Robby thinks about it only for a perfunctory moment, but he already has his answer. “BJ.”
Jack can’t help but huff out a laugh at that, because of course the man who cries at Titanic and buys Jack flowers and blushes when Jack tells him he loves him, would prefer the character who spells goodbye in rocks and throws Hawkeye a party full of red clothes and dye because Hawkeye mentioned once that he was so sick of green. [3]
Jack can’t help leaning over and planting one on Robby, smudging his glasses and leaving him looking at Jack with that breathless, thoughtless expression Jack loves so much. He asks hoarsely, “What was that for?”
“I love you,” Jack says, kissing his cheek again, his hot red cheek, but Robby just puts his head down and doesn’t question it.
Robby puts his head back onto his shoulder, resting his weight, weight Jack takes happily. Jack steals some popcorn and slings his free arm over the back of the couch, laughing until his shoulders shake as he always does at Hawkeye’s abysmal joke, Abe Lincoln who; don’t you know me? [4] And then Jack feels the weight of Robby’s fond gaze on his face.
“Why are you looking at me instead of them?” Jack asks, like he hasn’t been doing the same damn thing. He’s smiling.
“What, I’m not allowed to look at you?” Robby demands with no heat, matching his besotted smile as he finishes his martini. Jack has no good answer for that, so he just shoves another fistful of popcorn into his mouth, trying to ignore Robby watching him and failing. Robby asks, “What about you? What team are you on, Trapper or BJ?”
“I play for both,” Jack says, making Robby roll his eyes, but he adds, “no, really, they’re both good for different reasons. Hawkeye was in love with them both, but only BJ loved him back as more than just a guy to get off with, which is what Trapper thought of him. Which is fine in its own way. He loved Hawkeye in his own way.”
Jack waits until Robby’s shoving some popcorn in his mouth, then adds, “Instead of replacing one with the other, they should’ve just spitroasted him.”
Robby chokes on the popcorn, bowing over himself and coughing into his fist. He glares at Jack.
“What?” Jack says. “I’m sure he would’ve loved it. I’m sure he thought about it whenever BJ would get pissy and jealous about Trapper having been there before him.” [5]
“Well then, it’s a shame they didn’t have you in the writers’ room,” Robby says. As Trapper comes out of one of the tents shrugging on his yellow Hawaiian shirt, [6] leaving it wide open to show his bare chest and abs, Jack wolf whistles at the TV. Robby laughs.
“Can you please get your mind out of the gutter? We see naked people every day in horrific states of being. You’d think they would turn you off this.” Robby gestures to Trapper still walking around on their screen with his shirt open.
Jack puts his martini down to make a point. “The people we see don’t look like Wayne Rogers with a six pack.”
Robby pulls back and looks at him like he’s seeing something Jack can’t. “You look like Wayne Rogers with a six pack. You got the reddish curly hair and everything.”
“Less so these days,” Jack grumbles, tugging on his gray hair.
“Like that’s not the most attractive thing about you,” Robby argues. He pulls back and looks at Jack like he’s seeing something new. “Is this a thing?”
Jack meets that steady gaze. “Is this a thing?”
Robby shrugs like he’s not convinced and goes back to watching. It's quiet again for a while as they cycle through a few episodes.
Then comes Heal Thyself, the episode about the sharp, funny, brilliant substitute surgeon who fits in perfectly with Hawkeye and BJ, only to crack under the pressure completely in the end.
Robby goes still and quiet as they watch Hawkeye and BJ sit with the empty eyed and broken surgeon on the floor, covered in blood that 'won't come off.' [7] Scars both mental and physical that will never fade. Jack's heart hurts watching Robby watch this, feeling him tense with shame and familiarity and sympathy all at once. Too close to home, but neither of them would dream of taking it off the disc.
"He was as strong as any of us," BJ says, haunted as they stroll under quiet and empty nightfall, after agreeing to call Sidney, the psychiatrist, to come help the poor surgeon out. Only Sidney's kind of help could reach him.
Hawkeye says, fading to black: "That's what scares me." [8]
Jack tightens his fingers in Robby's hair, wondering when they strayed there, and holds on as a way to ground him. Robby reaches for his other hand and squeezes it tight. They don't need to speak.
#
"You agree that Hawkeye was Jewish, right? I mean, how could he not be?"
Jack shrugs. "Hey, man, you're the expert, but it fits with me."
"At least they confirmed that Sidney was," Robby points out, around mouthfuls of popcorn. He's lucky Jack has decades of experience listening to him talk in all states of being, because he's fairly unintelligible at the moment, gesturing at the TV with popcorn in one hand and passion in his voice. Jack is grinning. "I'd like to imagine he and Hawkeye finding companionship in that."
Jack tilts his head. "You have a crush on Sidney, don't you?"
"Who doesn't? He's kind and gentle and brilliant and funny—" [9]
"Much like you," Jack teases, tugging on his hair to get Robby to squirm away.
"And impossible not to love," Robby adds. "They should've let him into the peace talks, the Korean War would've been over in one year instead of eleven."
Jack barks out a laugh.
#
“If we're assigning ourselves to characters, I am Hawkeye—“
“No—“
“No, I am.”
“You are not Hawkeye, man, come on,” Jack says. “Neither of us are. Do you want to be Hawkeye, the guy who’s joking about breaking down every week when he's not actually breaking down, the guy who literally says joking is the only way he can open his mouth without screaming? The guy who ends up in a mental health facility at the end?” Jack demands.
“You wanna be him just because he’s the main character? And besides, you hate the kind of attention Hawkeye craves. That man is a whore for attention. So tell me, do you want to be him?”
Robby has the gall to look sheepish. “No.”
Jack nods resolutely. “Good. Stay that way. I’m Trapper, and you’re BJ.”
“Now you’re just making shit up,” Robby grumbles, both of them absolutely not paying attention to the latest prank on Frank Burns happening on TV. They burnt the episodes onto the disc out of order.
“You said yourself that I look like Wayne Rogers with a six pack,” Jack points out. “And you look like BJ.”
“I don’t have a cheesy seventies gay porn mustache,” Robby says, and before Jack can say you have a mustache, Robby’s adding, “I'm hairy and you're ripped. That’s just looks. Personality counts more here.”
“Oh, you wanna go there? Alright, cowboy, I can rodeo,” Jack says, shifting to turn fully towards him on the couch. “You know how many problems would’ve been solved if BJ faced his demons, came out, and unrepressed himself?
“You know how jealous and possessive he was about the littlest remarks his wife made in her letters? Brother, that man went from the spitting image of wet behind the ears Americana to a cheesy seventies porn getup, like you said. Maybe not all you, but any mess BJ had, he created himself. A mountain and a pile of self made bullshit that Hawkeye had to show him was utterly ridiculous. And he had a guilt complex the size of a house.”
Robby turns away, red as a beet, looking flayed open. But he gives as good as he gets. Jack’s gonna get hit below the belt too.
“And you cover everything with humor and flirting, and you use sex appeal to distract everyone from your own insecurities. And you can get broody and grumpy and cynical with the best of them, brother.”
Jack sighs; he’s not wrong, but the last thing he wants is to fight right now. He pulls Robby closer and kisses his temple. “Yeah, alright, fine. We don’t have to be anyone. We can just watch the damn show without having to project onto it. You’re just hurt about not being Hawkeye.”
Robby levels a look at him, a mix of emotions. And then comes the shot of BJ with his furry chest out in the shower, toned arms and a big mustache and that devious smile, and Robby’s already bright red when Jack turns to look at him. [10]
“See, you are just like him,” Jack says with a sleazy grin, making Robby hide his face in Jack’s shoulder.
“Gutterbrain,” Robby mutters.
Jack actually loses his train of thought for a moment, watching BJ soap his tits up. “Oh, come on, tell me you don’t go all gutterbrained when you’re looking at that.”
And then they come to Robby’s favorite episode. Point of View, the one where you’re seeing through the eyes of the wounded soldier with a throat injury who can’t talk, interacting with the characters from a first person perspective.
Robby’s never said it’s his favorite, and if Jack asked which his favorite episode was, he’d probably pick something extremely emotional or extremely funny—but Jack knows it’s this one. He’s known Robby for almost thirty years.
He knows, just like Robby probably knows without having to ask that his favorite is Abyssinia, Henry, the episode famous for the first major character death on a sitcom. He'd call Jack a glutton for punishment. Jack would call it appreciation of beautiful and tragic storytelling, doomed from the start.
Robby always goes a little quiet during Point of View. As they watch, he’s hugging Jack’s arm, slumping further into his side, and Jack tugs him down to rest his head in his lap. Robby goes willingly, letting Jack play with his hair, which isn’t always an easy battle. But POV brings down his defenses.
Hawkeye’s smiling at the screen, reassuring the POV soldier about his throat injury before surgery. “I know what you’re thinking. This guy looks like he couldn’t even fix a bicycle tire. Well, I can’t. But I’m going to get you through this. Just you wait and see.” [11]
And then Hawkeye flashes that blindingly charming smile right at the camera, so beautiful it must be genuine, it certainly feels it.
Robby sighs wistfully at that, something like lovesick. Jack tries not to be jealous, because that would be ridiculous, but he can’t help even the hint that Robby’s affection is not entirely directed towards him at all times. He doesn’t say anything about it, just smiling and letting Robby have his fantasy.
Jack’s so fucking content, having him laid out in his lap like this, all to himself after a hard week of work, the rain still pouring outside...love fills up Jack's chest enough to burst with it.
He can’t help tugging Robby up just enough to kiss, swallowing Robby’s moan of surprise into his mouth. Jack was honestly just going for some affection, not trying to get anything started, but then Robby starts shifting and squirming towards him and he can’t be held responsible for his actions.
“Did Wayne Rogers’ abs get you all hot and bothered?” Robby asks with a grin into his mouth. “Is that who I have to thank for this?”
“Don’t act like you don’t see where I’m coming from. Oh, I know you want a piece of this ass, sweetheart,” Jack purrs, leaning closer and kissing Robby gently, letting it go deeper and turn more passionate by the passing seconds.
“Jack,” Robby pants into his mouth, then his cheek, as Jack’s hand strays down to his pants and starts to undo the fly, under the blanket. “Jack.”
“Shh, don’t try to think,” Jack says, getting his palm nice and wet and stroking him still in his pants. “Just enjoy it. This is your favorite episode, baby, you don't want to miss it.”
“I’ve seen it a hundred times,” Robby protests, and lays his forehead in Jack’s shoulder for a moment as he pants for breath, quickly coaxed to fully hard in Jack’s palm. Jack pushes him gently back by the shoulders into his lap, laying his head down as Jack plays with him.
“Just relax, let me please you,” Jack says again, playing with him firm and strong and wet as Robby struggles to keep his hips still, shifting on his back to look up at Jack. Jack doesn’t want to come himself, just wants to keep looking at Robby like this, wants to make him flush and squirm and find pleasure only from Jack’s hand, no one else’s.
It doesn’t take long. The POV soldier is receiving a sponge bath from Margaret Houlihan [12] by the time Robby comes, silent and shuddering into Jack’s fist. Jack considers making a joke about that, but he decides to be nice and not ruin Robby’s orgasm, only encourage it. Robby admitted once to Margaret being his first childhood crush, to which Jack just laughed fondly and told him that Parker said the same thing—and honestly, who wouldn't?
Jack hums and strokes him through it, feeling Robby go boneless, nuzzling into his thigh. Jack pulls his hand out and wipes it off on the blanket, hoping Robby won’t notice until he can throw it in the wash.
POV ends a few quiet minutes later, BJ and Hawkeye and Potter’s smile the last thing the soldier sees before the ambulance doors shut. [13] Robby’s facing the TV again, and Jack can’t see if he’s awake or just resting his eyes while the credits play. He nudges Robby with his knee, and Robby grumbles something unintelligible before opening his eyes.
“That’s the end of the disc, brother, if you’re still with us,” Jack says, grinning besottedly at the sight of Robby like this, soft and sleepy and pliant. Robby slowly sits up, yawning.
"Have fun?" Robby asks, stretching. "Pleased with yourself?"
“Giving my boyfriend a handjob under a blanket while MASH is on sounds like a pretty sweet Saturday night to me,” Jack hums, wrapping his arm back around Robby and kissing his temple. Thunder rumbles distantly through the house. “It’s still storming out.”
“I'm not complaining," Robby says, voice rough but smiling as he sits up and kisses him properly. He's flushed red but afterglowing. "You wanna go to bed? I'll hold you through this storm. Won't let anything touch you."
Jack feels a bit raw and exposed about the fact that Robby knows he's nervous about the thunderstorm even when Jack doesn't know yet, but all he can do is surrender to Robby's love. "Only if you let me sleep on your hairy chest, BJ," he says with a grin, just to make Robby blush. "ER cowboys, Swamp Rats...not so far off."