Chapter Text
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Santos slouched against his locker, eyebrow drawn up in that obnoxious way of hers that put Dennis’ teeth on edge at once. Something must have happened for her to have that I-know-something-you-don’t look and to have it at the start of his night shift of all things—knowing full well he knew she’s usually gone by now—but she stayed behind because this was something juicy.
“Cute,” he muttered, trying to shove his friend aside so he could get dressed.
Trinity’s grin just grew wider, not moving an inch, her thumbs hooked in her belt loops. “Won’t you ask?”
“Why bother?” Dennis sighed loudly and rolled his eyes for good measure. “You’ll tell me even if I don’t wanna know.”
Trin’s eyes were glittering in that amused way she only got when she knew she was inconveniencing him. Last time was just two days prior, when she’d barged in on him while he was taking a shit, and she didn’t want to yell her latest gossip through the door of the bathroom they shared.
As a fourth-year resident—his last year before getting his official placement as a fully certified ED—Dennis hadn’t known what came over him to sign the 5-year lease with her after staying in her spare room for over a year. Now he had nowhere to run.
“Huckleberry,” Santos growled, her canines peeking out, and Dennis gave up.
“What, Trin? What is it? Garcia? Text from Samira? Did that lab tech try to feel up McKay again? You know how it ended last time…”
“It’s Dr. Robby,” she said. The only thing that could get him to shut up in the span of a heartbeat.
Down the hall, the ED speakers crackled to life with EMS radio chatter—static, then a clipped voice calling in vitals. “ETA three minutes, male mid-forties, unresponsive, suspected opioid overdose, Narcan twice, en route with minimal response.” Dennis felt the familiar mental shift click into place, the pre-shift calm already eroding.
“He’s coming to the night shift.”
“No way,” Dennis breathed, his heart hammering a mile an hour. “What about Dr. Abbot?”
“Delegated to the day shift.”
“No way,” he repeated dumbly. Too stunned to speak. Their attendings’ shift preferences were well known to the entire hospital staff. For it to change after—what would it be—a decade, that was momentous.
“Ask me why, farm boy.”
“Why?”
“Remember the petition?”
Dennis scratched his chin, having been too tired when his alarm went off at 10 PM to get rid of it before the beginning of his shift. Searching his mind for any kind of petition he could have signed. There had been the one from the Church for the supplies for the homeless people, the extension of Chairs, and a new vending machine in the staff lounge. He even remembered signing something for some animal shelter that Mel had brought to his attention a couple of weeks ago.
“C’mon, old people killer,” Trin groaned.
“Don’t call me that,” Dennis huffed absentmindedly. He stubbornly insisted the nickname wasn’t going to stick after having lost three seniors in one night the previous year.
Three deaths, one shift—two DNRs honored and one code that went on far too long. He could still hear the flatline in his sleep sometimes. “What petition?”
“About the statistics thing!” Santos yelled, her arms splayed out in disbelief. “The satisfaction survey? You know, the one we all threatened to go on a strike on if the board pushed it.”
Dennis frowns. He’d heard some buzzing about it, but he doesn’t…
“Oh, shit,” Santos realizes at the exact time he does. “That’s one I signed in your name.”
“You falsi—” Dennis quickly looked around, before lowering his voice, “you falsified my signature again, Trin?”
His roommate of nearly four years sheepishly grins up at him, stepping aside and punching in the code to his locker—one he never gave her—and giving him her best oops face.
“Well, won’t you look at that,” she mutters, peering at her bare wrist. “Time to get outta dodge! See ya!” She yells over her shoulder, Dennis is just a tad too slow to grab her shoulder and make her explain herself to him—but knowing Trinity—she won’t.
Exasperated, he pinched the bridge of his nose, already feeling a headache bloom behind his closed eyelids, and his night shift hadn’t even started yet. On autopilot, he starts pulling out his stuff and gets dressed.
His pager vibrated once—low acuity for now. ESI 4 ankle pain, South 7 chest pain pending labs. Manageable for the moment. It’s when he’s looping the stethoscope around his neck that he hears Dr. Abbot’s distinct shuffle into the dressing room.
“Whitaker,” the man grunts, dropping his bag unceremoniously. Dennis catches his flinch just in time at the sudden noise.
“Dr. Abbot,” Dennis nods politely.
For the last three years, he’d been Abbot’s shadow on the night shift, and some sort of respectful not-quite-yet camaraderie had built between them. They worked together seamlessly. Dennis had learned not to take Jack’s snapping on bad days too personally, and Jack had accepted that Dennis would always check on him after a suicide case or anything veteran-related.
They had a rhythm that worked for them. Abbot ran the room like a battlefield triage, Dennis anticipated orders before they were spoken—fluids hung, labs drawn, airway carts staged before anyone had to ask.
He’d started calling Dennis kiddo one month into the residency, probably picking it up from Dr. Robby, before it went to just kid, to my assistant, to Dr. Whitaker, to just Whitaker, or sometimes even Dennis after a particularly easy shift.
The likes of which were rare, but Dennis treasured them like a dragon on top of his pitiful three gold coins.
“I heard you—” Dennis started saying when the chirp of his phone interrupted him. Glancing down at his smartwatch, he saw it was a message from Dave.
David: Drop off tmrw?
Dennis quickly double-tapped the message, sending a thumbs-up before returning his attention to his attending doctor.
Dr. Abbot was eyeing him speculatively, his glance skimming from his wrist to his face and back down to his wrist before turning to his own locker.
“You were saying?” The older man asked in a muted voice, head bowed, as he started picking at his buttons.
“I heard there’s going to be some changes?”
Abbot hummed non-noncommittally.
“I thought you…” Dennis licked his suddenly dry lips and swallowed. “I thought you preferred the night shift?”
“I do,” Jack sighed, slamming his door shut. Too aggressive, and this time Dennis couldn’t keep from flinching, but he hid it by the time the senior doctor turned around.
Outside, a gurney rattled past at speed, monitors beeping too fast for comfort—sinus tach at least, maybe worse. The night was officially awake.
“It’s punishment for signing that damn petition.”
“We basically all put our names on it,” Dennis shrugged. He wasn’t about to throw his—grudgingly—only BFF under the bus.
“Yes,” Jack slowly enunciated, “but you kids aren’t supposed to be,” he lifted his hands and made air quotes with his fingers, ‘model figures people look up to and would follow into making bad decisions’.”
“Underwood?” Dennis guessed.
“Bingo,” Jack said, grabbing his to-go bottle of water. “Robby and I signed, and now she has us switching shifts to teach us a lesson.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Abbot.”
“Don’t be,” Abbot threw him a quick smile before shuffling past. “We don’t regret drawing a line between the board and us about making this a profitable institution instead of focusing on our true job.”
“Helping people?” Dennis guessed again with a lopsided grin.
“Saving lives,” Jack nodded and pats him on the shoulder. “Let’s brave the chaos, shall we?”
Dennis nodded quickly and clipped on his name tag before following his attending out into the fray. The tracking board was already bleeding red—waiting room packed, holds stacking, ICU refusing two admits.
Somewhere in all of that were the traces of Dr. Robby. Glimpses Dennis had hungrily followed without rarely seeing the man himself for the past four years.
Sometime later today, he could have a freak-out about getting a different attending—the man, the myth himself—ever since getting matched to this hospital, but now it was time to not get any bodily fluids on him for once.
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It’s when he’s washing his hands for the third time—the feeling of blood dripping down his sleeves after fixing a sunken chest cavity due to a horrible crushing accident—that Dennis starts truly panicking.
The sink water ran pink, then clear, then clear again. Chlorhexidine burned his knuckles raw, the scent sharp enough to sting his eyes. He could still feel the resistance of fractured ribs under his palms, the sickening give when they’d decompressed the chest—air hissing out, the lung re-expanding just enough to buy the man time before that gurgling, wet sound had escaped his throat in a pitiful moan that would surely haunt Dennis’ nightmares for weeks to come.
He knows for a fact the blood’s gone, and he can’t get any cleaner than this, but suddenly he’s imagining Dr. Robby looking over his shoulder again, and his breath is rattling around his chest.
“You’re okay,” he’d told the patient not ten minutes ago, voice steady despite the chaos. “Stay with me. What’s your name?”
“Marcus,” the man had rasped through the oxygen mask, fingers digging into Dennis’ sleeve.
“Marcus, I need you to keep breathing for me, alright? We’ve got you.”
He’s an idiot. A massive idiot. And Trin would laugh her ass off if he confessed to still having a hopeless crush on the older doctor after all these years.
It was something that had grown during his first weeks of residency from admiration and respect to the foolish musings of a stupid boy crushing on his mentor—the biggest fucking cliché in the book.
No. Dennis shook his head and snapped on fresh gloves. Blue trauma gloves. The size a little too tight because supplies were low again. He flexed his fingers, grounding himself in the mundane details, and nodded at Perlah passing by, pushing a woman in a wheelchair drooling and looking way out of it.
It hadn’t really started when Dr. Robby had taken him under his wing, or when he’d offered him compassion and advice after losing his first patient. The true shift had been when he’d found the older man having a panic attack in that stupid, brightly-colored room after the PittFest shooting. Holding his hand. Pushing him away. Telling him to go.
The bashful way Dr. Robby had tried to explain his behavior away afterward. The humanity—the vulnerability—of it all had triggered all of the empathy Dennis had, and he’d been drawn to the attending ever since.
There was something in those sad, dark eyes. Something that felt like everyone else was ignoring because they just couldn’t handle the quiet hurt and pain that seemed to weigh down Dr. Robby more and more with each passing day. They gave him coffee, joked with him, applauded him—literally—after exciting saves, but nobody—or maybe Jack did after hours—but nobody Dennis knew really dug deeper. Some nurses joked and giggled behind the doctors’ backs—it’s what people do—making fun of nobody wanting to brave the mess Dr. Robinavitch was.
Dennis had watched Robby stand at the foot of beds long after families left, rereading charts like the answers might rearrange themselves if he stared long enough.
Dr. Robby seemed like someone who was lonely. Carrying his burdens all on his own because he’s used to it, and Dennis felt… It wasn’t pity. Maybe compassion?
Maybe he was drawn to the feeling of being kindred in that.
He was no stranger to hiding or repressing what he really felt. It was the reason why he’d left Nebraska. The reason why he risked it all, even became homeless in the process, before Trinity offered him her spare room, and saved his ass. The reason why he turned his back on his major in Theology and became a doctor instead.
“You good, Dr. Whitaker?” Dana hummed, barely glancing up from her pad but holding out a clipboard for him to sign anyway. Behind her, a patient groaned softly from Bed 12, telemetry chirping an irregular warning. Someone called out for more morphine down the hall.
The ED obviously never slept—it only shifted its weight, its tiredness in adrenaline and cries—and Dennis has felt exhausted these past four years as a result of it.
Dennis blindly signed it. Santos was right. He was too gullible. No wonder she had it too easy to sign petitions in his name. She could’ve put a contract under his nose, promising his firstborn child to Underwood, and he’d still sign it.
It’s called trust, he snarls inwardly, nearly ripping the paper with the tip of his pen in his sudden frustration. He trusts Dana. He trusts his team. He even trusts Santos not to cross the line too much. In some odd way, they’re the found family he never knew he was looking for, but they were a unit now.
A community.
And Dennis knew how much community could mean.
“I’m switching to half for now,” Dana added when she put the clipboard away.
“Hmm,” Dennis replied, nearly inhaling the lukewarm coffee from the canteen she offered next. Still disgusting.
“Careful,” a woman with a splinted wrist muttered as she passed, eyeing the cup. “That stuff’ll kill you faster than my husband’s driving.”
Dennis snorted despite himself. “Noted.”
“I don’t want Robby to murder someone when he has to switch, so I’m covering half-shifts of day and night to help smooth out the transition,” Dana replies as if the woman with the splint had never interrupted. Dennis added another mental medal to Dana’s collection in his mind. By now, the woman could fill an entire library—maybe he should look into writing the Vatican and promoting her for Sainthood.
“You think it’s permanent?” Dennis asks.
“I think—”
“Dr. Whitaker,” a squeaky voice pipes up behind him. Dennis barely keeps from closing his eyes in defeat. They found him. Of course, they had. Interns were bloodhounds when they smelled the prospect of praise for a job well done. Bloodhounds. And not a rat in sight, he curses inwardly.
“Ackles,” Dennis turns, a fake smile plastered on his face. The intern looked at him. Stars in his eyes. Dennis recognized the look instantly—the one that said please-tell-me-I-didn’t-fuck-this-up. “Andrew near?”
“He’s finishing up the stitches on Mrs. Jenkins’ leg,” Ackles offered, his voice carrying, before stepping closer.
“He’s gentle,” Mrs. Jenkins called from her gurney in the bay, voice wavering but proud. “Tell him I didn’t even cry this time.”
“You did great,” Dennis called back automatically and leaned back, creating a wider gap between him and the counter, and subsequently, his intern.
It had taken him all but three days to realize Ackles had a crush on him. It wasn’t the first time one of the interns had thrown heart eyes at him during his residency, but he hoped to hell and back again that he never had been as obvious to Dr. Robby as Ackles was to him.
God, had he ever been that young?
He felt ancient after running nearly four years of ten-hour night shifts, even nurse Tate told him he looked older than he actually was whenever they had a shift together.
“I was wondering if you could look over my charts about the—”
“Incoming bus accident victims,” Princess shouted. “ETA three minutes.” The trauma board flipped instantly—green to red. Six patients. Unknown severity.
“Duty calls,” Dennis jumps up. “I’m sure your charts are fine. Why don’t you ask Dana to look them over with you during your next breather?”
“Thanks,” Dana mutters low on her breath, so only he can truly appreciate her sarcasm.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths to her over Ackles’ unsuspecting back of his head.
“Flowers, Whitless,” she jokes, yet another nickname he never would have picked for himself—but does anyone pick their own after all? “Flowers.”
“The biggest!” He promises before rushing to the entrance, adrenaline pumping, to receive his new patients. He was already reciting triage priorities in his head—airway, breathing, circulation—shoving everything else, including one Dr. Robby, into a locked drawer he’d open later.
If he survived the shift.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
He gets donuts delivered via Uber to the entire staff room during the first decent break they can manage after five hours of nonstop emergencies, big and small. Five hours of chest pains that weren’t, one that was; a toddler with a febrile seizure; an intoxicated college kid who kept apologizing every time he puked; and a code they’d called after twenty-seven minutes because the ultrasound never showed cardiac activity again.
Dana forgives him with her knowing eyes when her teeth sink into a red velvet, and nobody says a thing when he puts a couple aside in the fridge, writing ‘day shift’ on the box.
“Sugar is a medical necessity,” someone mumbled around a mouthful, and Dennis didn’t bother correcting them. He thinks it might be Princess.
As a resident, he still wasn’t earning the big bucks, but living with Trinity and being generally frugal out of necessity and a lifelong experience of coming from a poor family had him with a little extra cash to spare, so Dennis preferred to splurge on his ER makeshift family instead of on just himself. It felt like repaying a debt—to the nurses who caught his mistakes, the techs who never laughed when his hands shook, the attendings who let him learn the hard way but didn’t let him drown.
Because sometimes everything felt a little like drowning, didn’t it, Dr. Robby?
A little quid pro quo, too, because someone on the day shift kept leaving things for his team.
Dave would object if he knew, but Dennis had been adamant about keeping everything split, even if they were dating.
What David didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
They’d been pretty casual for the first six months, and he knew Dave wanted more. He’d started—unsuccessfully—hinting at moving in, or even taking a holiday together first, but Dennis had his job as an excuse.
It wasn’t even a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
Trin would tell him—for the millionth time—to just break up with the guy, but it was nice to sometimes have someone to wind down with. As long as it had been casual, Dennis could deal, but he felt guilty as sin that he couldn’t truly offer what Dave really wanted the longer their dating lasted.
He could comfort patients through their worst nights, but couldn’t bring himself to disappoint someone who cared about him in daylight.
He knew it was time to be honest, but between shifts, Trinity’s social calendar she forced onto him, doing some extra studying, finishing his charts after work, the Street Team—meaning doing more overtime—and his volunteering with the homeless…
Honestly, it just wasn’t a priority, and it made Dennis feel like the worst human being ever.
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He’s clocking out, smelling like sour baby vomit, and the scruff on his chin feels raw from all the nervous plucking he’d been doing at it the entire night, and he’s too tired to even walk straight. His shoes were still faintly sticky with dried saline and god-knew-what from the trauma bay. His back ached in that deep, bone-level way that only came from leaning over gurneys for hours, and he’s slumped against a tree, waiting on his bus—he’s not risking falling asleep on a bench in broad daylight again—when he sees Dr. Robby on the other side of the street, rushing.
One hand holding a coffee, the other a bag from Prêt à Manger, and Dennis had known. He’d known someone from the day shift had been leaving treats in the fridge for the night shift since forever, so Dennis had started doing the same now and again, but he’d never known—he’d suspected—but he’d never had the confirmation it was Dr. Robby himself who was the Good Samaritan.
Robby, who pretended not to notice the way residents perked up when he walked in. Robby, who always stayed five minutes late to tuck blankets around sleeping patients before handing them off. Not that Dennis had been hanging back sometimes to get a peek at the man himself, like a creep. Maybe slightly like a creep. Creepish?
He contemplates shouting and drawing the man’s attention. Saying hi or thanking him or something, when he realized he could have left a post-it in the fridge during all those years, asking who to thank, or maybe send a text to the group chat, and outright ask if someone knew who the benevolent soul was. But he hadn’t. Ever.
His hand slowly drops from the awkward, almost-wave and clenches in a fist at his side.
Dr. Robby pauses in the middle of the pavement, looking down at his own hand holding the bag, and he’s shaking his head. Muttering something to himself. Even from here, Dennis could recognize the posture—shoulders curling inward, spine folding like he was bracing for a push of the edge that never came because they did it to themselves, didn’t they? They kept coming back anyway.
Working at the PTMC felt a whole lot like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down, and just thinking… Will I make it today?
The bag shakes a little, nearly hitting the trash can when the attending moves to dump it, then jerks it back. Then he’s almost putting it in the bin again before drawing it back for a second time, this time into his chest with a visible heavy sigh.
“We don’t save everyone—but we try,” Robby’s voice echoes in his head.
“Who saves you, Dr. Robby?” Dennis wonders out loud.
The older man closes his eyes, struggling against some indecision, and pushes the carton of his coffee to his forehead. He’s muttering to himself again before continuing down the street. Coffee and treat bag still in hand.
Weird. Dennis tilts his head, staring after the man, lost in thought. He nearly misses the bus. Nearly.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
“Big date?” Trinity asks, slurping her green health smoothie while watching Dennis rush from one end of the room to the other, gathering his stuff. She’s perched on the arm of the couch like a gargoyle, surgical scrubs abandoned for an oversized hoodie that absolutely isn’t hers. The blender still hums faintly, and he hates it when she doesn’t pull the plug after using appliances. It’s been drilled into him his entire youth that it’s wasteful as hell.
Shit, he’d taken way too long picking out his outfit.
“Dave’s picking me up in five,” he explains.
“Uh-huh,” Santos argues in just a sound. It’s the same sound she makes when a patient insists WebMD told them they’re dying.
“What?” Dennis knows he’s already being defensive, which means she already won half the battle.
“David, the boyfriend, is picking you up,” she continues. “That’s the reason why I heard you crying in the bathroom when your favorite deodorant was out and why this living room,” she waves her hand around to make her case, pointing out the tornado of clothes that must have passed while Dennis hadn’t been paying attention, “looks like something exploded in here? The boyfriend,” she repeats slowly, mockingly. “Not the fact you’re back for the first time in almost four years to serve under your favorite bear.”
“Trin,” Dennis chokes out, shocked. “It’s not, I d—don’t…” He knocks over a shoe in his panic. It ricochets off the coffee table like it’s trying to escape the conversation, too. He was speechless. Santos had the power to do that to him sometimes.
“Cheer up, Huckleberry. You have Ackles, now Robby has you again. The circle is,” her hands make a fluid shape in the air, “Round. Like the on-call schedule. Like your pupils when your otter-coded doctor walks by.”
“I have a boyfriend,” Dennis feels the need to point out.
“Uh-huh,” he hates when she uses that tone with him, “A boyfriend that’s already halfway out the door. The only reason he doesn’t know it yet is because his geriatric ass needs a little boost to find the one-inch threshold.”
“He’s not geriatric.”
“He was born when Armstrong stuck his flag into the moon. The guy’s seen the birth of the internet. He was already mixing drinks at his shitty bar when some cow birthed you in a bale of hay, which, for the record, explains a lot about your bedside manner.”
“He’s not…” Dennis tried to interrupt her, but his friend was really building up steam now.
“He thinks Gangnam Style is a modern song, still believes Brangelina is a thing, doesn’t know what bubble tea is, still calls Myanmar Burma, he…”
“He does not—”
“—calls TikTok ‘the application with the dances,’”
“Okay, that one’s true.”
“—and thinks a CT scanner is still a ‘CAT scan’ because ‘that’s what we used to say’.” She can do a pretty good, gruff man’s voice impression. He had to give her that.
“God, can you give it a rest!” Dennis burst out. “I know! I’m never taking him with us to a pub quiz ever again!”
“I can never show my face there again,” Trinity sniffs theatrically, before slurping loudly from her smoothie. Judging by the sound, she’s at the bottom. Just like Dennis. Rock bottom at this point in how much he’s losing it. “Do you know how humiliating it is to lose to orthopedic bros?”
“Is it so wrong of me to want to look nice for my first shift with my first-ever big mentor in my current specialization? You know, clothes build confidence sometimes, yeah?”
“Clothes don’t save lives,” Trinity says sagely. “But they do make your ass look phenomenal. Especially clothes you’d like him to peel off of you…”
“Trin!”
“With his teeth.”
Dennis thinks he might combust any second now. He’s red as a tomato, and it takes him a moment to recognize the insistent noise to be the doorbell signaling that his partner has arrived.
“You,” he points at his friend, “are a terrible human being. Don’t—Put that down!” He snaps when he sees her take a shirt off the floor and hold it in front of her.
“Don’t worry,” Trinity laughs. “Ever since you started working out, your shirts have gotten too big for me. Garcia likes my clothes tight. Just like I like her tight—”
“Gotta go! Love you! Shut up! Bye!”
He hopes the slam of the door sends the rest of his message loud and clear.
“Hi,” Dennis breathes a little dazedly when he sees David leaning against his motorcycle, and shit, he might not love the man, but the sight does make something flutter low in his stomach.
Muscle memory, his brain supplies unhelpfully. Some weird glitch that’s sending it dopamine without any real emotional attachment.
“Hi yourself,” Dave smiles, it makes him look a decade younger at once, and Dennis is painfully reminded of Santos’ remarks whenever they’re drinking during The Bachelor and talking shit about the candidates. He does have a fucking type.
“Wanna get out of here?” Dave offers his spare helmet, and Dennis leans in, giving him a quick kiss before taking it over and placing it on his head. The kiss is warm and familiar. Easy, and that somehow makes it worse because he’s not feeling anything else.
He knew he looked stupid with his curls plastered to his forehead, but since Santos gave him the mullet, wearing a helmet didn’t give him a too bad hairstyle.
He was grateful for the roar of the motor to drown out any chance at conversation, his thoughts oddly quiet for once, and then they were at the corner of the street leading to the emergency room. Way too soon for his mind to completely settle.
“How’s your weekend look like?” David asked when Dennis ruffled his curls back in order, grateful for the thicker army green jacket he’d gotten a couple of weeks ago. He’d almost cried over getting rid of his threadbare jacket—the barely resistant to snow, rain, or wind—but it had been all he’d had during med school before switching it up with the new one.
“Sunday brunch?”
“I’ll text you?”
Dennis nodded quickly, eyes quickly scanning his surroundings. He knew it was stupid, but he’d been careful so far not to let his personal life mix with his professional life, and in some way, he was a bit hesitant to openly declare himself gay in front of his entire team.
It’s not that he was in the closet, but there were enough reasons to be careful. Reasons he’d hoped to leave fully behind in Nebraska, but had lingered in the back of his mind. Stronger than he’d thought, and he just didn’t consider himself ready. You could never know how your co-workers would react. Or patients.
“Have a good shift, Dennie,” David sighed at his boyfriend’s short answers, and after another dry kiss, he drove off.
Dennis stared after him, guilt consuming him once again. He really had to put an end to the man’s suffering. It was obvious as hell how much Dennis was pulling back, and Dave deserved better.
“Rough night? Day, I mean?” Mel’s voice sounded next to him, making him almost jump a mile in the sky because he had been checking the trash cans again before going in—force of habit. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you,” she apologized quickly, scanning him. “Dilated pupils, pale skin, clenched hands,” Mel started rattling off as an explanation.
“No, it’s fine. Just lost in thought, so I didn’t hear you come up to me.” He deliberately loosened his fists, letting his fingers uncurl. He doesn’t know if she’d seen him kiss David, but Mel just looked at him with those wide, friendly eyes, and he knew she wouldn’t say anything even if she had. Mel kinda was like Switzerland.
“You ready for shift?” It was a Friday night and a full moon to boot—not that he believed in that nonsense—which meant it was promising to be hell.
“Yep,” Mel sounds, popping the p loudly. “You didn’t answer my question?”
“Day was fine,” Dennis shrugged his backpack higher. “Slept. Did some chores around our place.”
“I visited my sister,” Mel continued, and Dennis knew she wasn’t asking more questions because she realized he didn’t really want to talk, but because she was putting in an effort to take part in small talk, something she thought she needed more practice in.
“How was Becca?”
Mel’s answer flowed over him while they walked together to the ER, and Dennis wasn’t really listening, which was rude, but his attention was on skimming the crowd, trying to find… Ah.
Dana and Dr. Robby were huddled together near the screen, leaning over a pad. An alert was on the big screen for a team meeting in five minutes in the break room. Under it, the tracking board was already half yellow, a few orange creeping in at the edges.
“Good morning!” Mel piped up brightly.
“Good night, more like,” Dana smirked, and it took a beat, but then Mel laughed. A little too loud, making Dennis almost cringe at the forcedness of it, but his friend was trying her best, and he threw her a warm smile, his hand grazing her elbow. Mel visibly relaxed at the contact, recalibrating.
“Good—” Dr. Robby started saying, turning around, and then he did a double-take when he noticed Dennis was also present. “G—Good shift,” the man stumbled over his words, making everyone frown up at his tall figure.
Dr. Robby cleared his throat. “Right, there’s going to be some changes, so I’m addressing those in a couple of minutes in the staff room. Dana’s catching me up on running cases, so give us a few, and we’ll be with you kids shortly.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Mel saluted and rushed off.
“Dr. Robby,” Dennis said, trying to catch Dr. Robby’s gaze that was resolutely looking down at the pad in his tight-knuckled hands. Failing at making eye contact, he continued bravely, “I’m sorry you’re being punished, but I’m glad to have the honor of working with you again.”
“Y—yeah,” Robby sighed. “Thanks ki—Whitaker. You should join the other attending staff before all the coffee’s gone.”
“I’ll save some for you,” Dennis grinned.
“Tw—“, Dana started saying.
“Two sugars, no milk, got it,” he threw over his back. The moment he turned into the break room, he glanced back at his attending and the head nurse. Dana was tutting and patting Dr. Robby—who was leaning with his forehead on his arms on the counter—on his back.
Shit, Dennis thought. Dr. Robby must really hate the night shift. This really sucked.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
Even Garcia was there, lurking, perched against the counter and drinking from a mug that looked way too fancy to be from the ER kitchen. Dennis wedged himself near the back, watching others file in. They used to do announcements in front of the board, but hospital policy had changed—again—so they weren’t allowed to do that anymore.
“Alright,” Dana said briskly, clapping once. “Let’s make this quick and painless so we can all get back to pretending we’re not running on fumes before shift has even started. Giving the floor to you, Cowboy.”
A few tired chuckles rippled through the room. Robby inhaled, visibly steadying himself, then spoke.
“As you’ve probably heard,” he began, voice even but pitched just a touch higher than usual, “there are some temporary scheduling changes effective immediately.”
Temporary. Dennis clocked that word and told himself to lose his shit about it later. After this shift.
“Dr. Abbot and I will be swapping primary attending coverage for the next few weeks. I’ll be taking over night shifts, effective tonight.”
Mateo muttered a low ‘oh shit’, not quietly enough. Mel tilted her head slightly, processing. She usually kept to day shifts, so she could visit her sister, but maybe there had been an outing with the care facility Becca stayed at.
Dennis kept his eyes resolutely on the floor tiles because if he looked at Robby right now, he wasn’t sure his face wouldn’t give him away.
“This isn’t a reflection of performance,” Robby continued quickly, too quickly. “Patient care metrics remain our priority. Dana will continue overseeing staffing continuity to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.”
Dana nodded, solid as a wall. “If anything breaks, it’s my fault,” she said. “As usual.”
Dennis snorted. Robby’s shoulders loosened by a fraction at the sound breaking the terse silence. He glanced down at his notes—unnecessary, Dennis thought.
“Any questions?” Robby asked.
Nobody spoke up. Garcia just hummed in her coffee, pretending Dennis didn’t even exist as usual. Even when she stayed over, Dennis was just part of the furniture to her. Trinity found it hilarious.
“Good,” Dana said, already moving. “Let’s go save some lives,” effectively stealing Dr. Robby’s famous line. The man gasps in mock outrage, pretending to clutch his nonexistent pearls. Dennis thought he’d look great in pearls.
The room broke apart immediately—chairs scraping, people funneling out, conversations already shifting to labs and bed numbers and who’d stolen whose pen. Dennis lingered a second too long, pretending to reread a notice on the board while watching Dr. Robby from the corner of his eye.
The attending hadn’t moved a muscle. He looked so tired. Dana leaned in close, saying something under her breath. Whatever it was, Robby huffed a weak breath that might’ve been a laugh if it had more air in it. He nodded once, then finally lifted his head.
That’s when his eyes flicked up—and caught Dennis’ gaze. Robby startled and then schooled his expression into a forced blankness.
“Whitaker,” he said, voice softer now.
“Sir,” Dennis replied automatically, stepping forward before he could overthink it. “Uh—good briefing.”
God. Good briefing. Kill him now.
Robby’s mouth twitched anyway. “Thanks. I was aiming for ‘minimally alarming’ with the change of staff.”
“You succeeded,” Dennis said. Then, because he was apparently incapable of shutting up tonight, “Mostly.”
Dana snorted. “High praise from this one. He once called a five-hour MCI ‘manageable’.”
Dennis grimaced. “Counterargument, we had decent snacks for once.”
Robby blinked. Then he laughed. A quiet sound, surprised out of him, like it hadn’t been on the schedule on his pad. It eased something in his face, smoothed the tight line between his brows.
Dennis wanted to make him laugh more often.
“Right,” he said, clearing his throat again, slipping back into attending-mode. “You’re on trauma intake tonight, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
Robby hesitated. His eyes flickering from dark to conflicted. “It’s good to have you here with me for my first, official, not called-in-due-to-an-emergency night shift in thirteen years.” his voice sounded self-deprecating, but with enough humor to make Dennis smile.
“Glad to be,” he said, and meant about six different things at once.
Dana checked her watch. “Alright, break’s over. Let’s go make Underwood regret her life choices.”
They split off then—Dana already barking orders, Dr. Robby heading toward the main Hub, Dennis falling back into motion like muscle memory kicking in. As he passed through the doorway of room 4, he risked one last glance over his shoulder.
Robby stood at the screen, shoulders squared now, but his mouth pursed in thought. He looked entirely kissable.
We don’t save everyone—but we try.
Dennis adjusted his stethoscope and stepped into the room. “How’s your eye, Lydia?”
Tonight, at least, he’d be trying alongside him once more.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
He wasn’t touching him anymore. It didn’t take Dennis long to realize. Ever since he’d caught Dr. Robby having his panic attack after the PittFest shooting, after showing that vulnerable side of himself, after non-too subtly asking if he would tell anyone else about his lapse of composure, the attending had stopped touching Dennis.
The absence was louder than any monitor alarm. Dennis noticed it in the trauma bay first—when Dr. Robby stood a careful half-step back instead of crowding his shoulder during a FAST exam, when his voice replaced the quiet pressure of fingers at Dennis’ elbow. “Probe angle’s off,” Robby had said, hands folded behind his back as the ultrasound image jittered uselessly on the screen. Dennis corrected it alone.
It had been something, as soon as the first touch had lifted, Dennis had known deep into the pit of his stomach. Dr. Robby didn’t touch anyone else. Just him. It was part of the foolish, youthful adoration that had triggered his stupid crush. He’d catalogued the difference the way he noted symptoms—pattern recognition drilled into him by years of medicine. Robby leaned in with everyone else, sure, but he’d only guided Dennis.
He remembered swallowing and nearly choking on his own spit when that thumb had dug into his neck, dragging him along. The brush of a hand on his lower back. An elbow steering him sideways to make room before making the first incision on a patient.
“Scalpel,” Robby had murmured once, breath warm against Dennis’ ear as a trauma nurse counted down vitals—BP dropping, sats slipping. Dennis had barely registered the blood pooling at the clavicle because all he could feel was the steadying press at his spine, the unspoken you’ve got this. Before it had all been snatched away.
The touches had grown exponentially that first shift—that complete disaster of a day—and then after the panic attack… Nothing.
Not even during procedures where proximity was unavoidable. Not during intubations when the room was too small, and the patient was desatting fast.
The attending would narrate instead—clinical, precise, voice a little too flat. “Tube’s through. Inflate cuff. Confirm with end-tidal.” His voice never faltered, and—regretfully for Dennis—his hands never strayed again.
Dennis knew that Dr. Robby had wanted to restore the professional divide between them, maybe even overcompensate a little, but Dennis had felt different. Special. Chosen. Dr. Robby hadn’t done it to Victoria, or Santos, or anyone else. He’d watched Robby correct Santos with a raised eyebrow, watched him joke with Victoria while standing a safe distance away, hands firmly occupied with a chart or folded around a coffee cup. Dennis alone had been handled.
And he knew, intellectually, that Dr. Robby touching his interns and residents was just an HR violation waiting to happen, but he hadn’t minded. He’d welcomed it.
It had been so long since he felt someone being so warm, and open and friendly to him since leaving Nebraska. Med school hadn’t left him with a lot of opportunities to date or make friends, and Dr. Robby was different.
He’d tried to place himself in his attending’s orbit more often, at first. Noticing how Robby, in general, didn’t like anyone touching him either. Only Dana and Jack were allowed sometimes during high-stakes crises.
So Dennis had kept lurking at the corners, stepping in and almost making the senior physician run into him on more than one occasion, but still, the touches had stopped. Completely.
Now Robby pivoted away at the last second, sidestepped with the efficiency of someone used to crowded bays. “Watch your sterile field,” he’d said once, voice neutral, eyes fixed firmly on the drape instead of Dennis’ face.
Dennis sighed, pressing the buttons on the vending machine and waiting for his salted cashews to drop, so his overworked mind gave him the time to reminisce. Wasted time. It’s been years of nothing at this point. He shouldn’t have expected anything different now Dr. Robby was back on his shift.
A monitor alarm escalated in the distance and then abruptly stopped—someone had fixed the problem before it became a crisis, So Dennis didn’t even react while he kicked the vending machine.
He’d overstepped, clearly, back then, after PittFest, offering Dr. Robby advice and a listening, non-judgemental ear, and it had made the man close up afterward. Maybe he was ashamed about his lapse of strength, but Dennis never thought a man weak for feeling too many things at once.
On the contrary, Dr. Robby never strayed too far from his mind ever since, and now the man, nearly four years later, at the end of Dennis’ residency, was back as his attending. Back on nights. Back in Dennis’ periphery all the time, whether either of them liked it or not. Back correcting his orders when necessary with the same careful precision—but from an arm’s length away. The distance exactly the same. The feeling of having overstepped as big as if those last few years hadn’t even happened.
Dr. Robby had changed, too. There was even more salt-and-pepper in his beard and hair; he’d changed glasses to less thick frames, more round, and the ever-present hoodie had been changed to one in deep purple.
Dennis wondered if Robby noticed anything different about him.
Would he see that Dennis wasn’t shaking bottles anymore without checking the lid? That he’s finally able to grow a full beard if he wanted to? That his voice doesn’t go squeaky when he’s talking to patients? That his hands don’t shake when he’s making the first cut? That he could run a code without looking to the corner of the room for reassurance? That he could call a time of death without his stomach folding in on itself?
Would Robby notice?
The quiet confidence, growing with every passing day, or does he look at Dennis and still see the quiet, shy, nervous kid riddled with anxiety and the eagerness to please? Still, the resident who hovered too close, who wanted too badly to be useful, to be seen.
“Stupid, stupid,” he mutters quietly to himself when he picks the bag of cashews from the box and rips them open, spilling some of them on the floor. Great. Just fucking perfect.
Mateo, passing by, snorts loudly. “Three-second rule doesn’t apply in hospitals, doc.”
Looking up, he notices Dr. Robby’s head ducking down.
Please don’t tell me he saw that, Dennis pleaded to the vending machine.
The soft scuff of shoes on linoleum alerted him that his prayers had gone unanswered.
“I wouldn’t,” Robby said, voice neutral, eyes still fixed very carefully on the vending machine instead of Dennis’ face.
Dennis swallowed, barely able to look into Dr. Robby’s face without bursting into flames. “Yeah. Uh. Not my plan.”
He crouched anyway, because apparently humiliation was a hobby now, and started scooping the escaped cashews back into the empty part of the torn bag. One bounced away, ricocheting under the bench.
“I’ll—” Robby started, then stopped himself. Dennis felt it more than saw it, that aborted motion. A ghost of a step forward. “Just… leave it.”
“Waste of protein,” Dennis muttered, straightening up too fast and knocking his elbow into the metal side of the machine. It clanged loudly.
Robby winced like it was his own funny bone. “You alright?”
“Yep. Totally fine. Love being alive.”
That earned him a huff of a laugh—quick, involuntary, gone just as fast. The older man finally lifted his gaze, and for a split second Dennis caught something raw there, but it wouldn’t be the first time his rampant imagination had made him believe foolish stuff.
“You’ve been running hard tonight,” Robby said instead, defaulting to the job the way most repressed men always did when emotions got too close. Dennis is familiar with the type. “Chest tube placement was clean. FAST was fast. Good call on the massive transfusion protocol.” Remarking on it like Dennis was still a little intern, or maybe this was Dr. Robby extending an olive branch over years of awkward separation.
Dennis blinked. Praise always threw him off, even now. Especially from him. “Thanks. Uh. Trauma gods were feeling generous.”
“They usually are,” Robby said softly. “With you.”
Dennis laughed awkwardly, heat creeping up his neck. “Statistically unlikely, but I’ll take it. I bet you still recall my first shift and the thousand mistakes I made?”
Silence stretched between them. It felt incredibly charged, and Dennis blamed his imagination again. It did make him realize how close they were standing. Too close for comfort. Or maybe not close enough.
Robby cleared his throat. “I remember you did alright. You were tough. You should eat something with… actual substance, though. Cashews don’t count.”
“They absolutely do,” Dennis protested. “Healthy fats. Sustained energy. Besides,” he adds like an idiot whose secret kink is complete humiliation now, “I like nuts. C-cashew nuts.”
Robby’s mouth twitched. “You sound like Dana when she tells me to hydrate more, and that coffee doesn’t compensate for a skipped meal.”
“I’m offended on her behalf.”
“I’ll let her know.” The threat was real, but it made them both grin. Robby glanced down at Dennis’ hands—clean now, knuckles still faintly pink from scrubbing too hard after his last patient. His brow furrowed.
“You don’t have to—” he began, then stopped again. Restarted. “You’re allowed to take breaks, Whitaker.”
Dennis shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “Habit after four years.”
Dr. Robby nodded slowly, and Dennis hoped he’d driven his point home. He wasn’t a green firstie any longer. Did Robby see it?
“Still,” he said, quieter now. “You don’t have to prove anything. To m—anyone.” The man had clocked Dennis within what? The first four hours of their first shift together?
Dennis opened his mouth, unsure what he was even going to say—some deflection, probably—but before he could, a pager went off. Robby’s. Then Dennis’. The blessed, terrible interruption of real life.
“Room eight,” Robby said, already shifting back into attending mode. “Hypotensive. GI bleed.”
“On it,” Dennis replied instantly, grateful for the familiar click of purpose snapping everything back into place. They walked side by side down the hall, matching strides without thinking.
At the doorway, Robby slowed just a little to let Dennis go in first. Passing him close enough that Dennis felt the heat of him anyway.
Dennis snapped new gloves on. “Let’s see what we’re working with,” he grinned, scanning the monitors.
What Dennis didn’t see—couldn’t see—was the way Robby watched him a second too long after that. His gaze lingers, soft and aching and full of things he’d never let himself have.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
It was during crazy shifts like these that Dennis missed having more people on staff. It had been bad enough to lose Langdon, and then the man had transferred to Chicago after rehab and his divorce. But when Dr. Collins moved to California with her fiancé after having her baby, that had been a big blow for the hospital.
Dennis had thought it meant having the funds to take on more residents or have more hires in the nursing department, but Gloria had put a stop to that.
Now it just meant the people working at the ER were doing the job of two or three people at once. Dennis was no exception to the unfairness of it all, but he was still grateful that there had been enough money left to get placed here after his match.
Victoria had moved as far away as possible, to be away from her mother’s hawkish gaze, and Dennis understood, truly, it just meant feeling lonely once Santos moved onto surgery and getting the day shifts, which meant they saw each other in between naps and quick rushing in and out to grab stuff.
Dennis was used to loneliness, but it was even worse getting used to not feeling lonely, and for that first month, he hadn’t been alone. Ever. He’d felt like he found his true home for once. And then it had all been swept away from under his feet.
It took a little longer for him to get used to the new team. To Jack Abbot.
And way longer to get used to interns trailing after him like little ducklings.
Shifts blur into days again, and he’s getting used to ignoring his rampant heart whenever Dr. Robby draws near.
Weeks have passed when they have one of the worst cases of arterial bleeds they’ve seen in a while.
“Move!” Dennis barks at Ackles when the boy seems to botch the tourniquet. Blood is spurting up the ceiling, onto the wall, spraying the kid from forehead to sternum, and Dennis’ gloved hands slip, the patient’s BP dropping fast.
“Name?” He snarls over his shoulder.
“A-Alex Bennett,” Andrew stammers, reading the patient’s file on the pad. “Nothing much known about him. Came in with—”
Another man rushed into the operating room.
“Alex!” The man cried out, out of his mind with worry, and Dennis could smell something else besides the stench of blood staining his hands and scrubs—a scent he’s familiar with after living on the streets—while he’s trying to get the tourniquet in place.
Dr. Robby flies inside, Mateo quickly holding out a sterile gown in front of him.
“Present!” Robby snaps, already gloving up, eyes flicking from the arterial spray to the monitor to Dennis’ hands, and quickly sliding the tool kit closer and looking for the best clamp to get the artery.
“Pressure first,” Dennis says, ignoring Robby for now, jaw tight, palms already slick despite the suction whining at full blast. “Ackles, higher. You’re below the bleed.”
“I—I am—” Ackles shifts, hands shaking, the tourniquet slipping another inch. Blood pulses again, obscene and bright.
“Jesus—” Mateo mutters.
Dr. Robby doesn’t look at Dennis when he speaks. “We’re losing him. Clamp proximal. I want vascular on standby. Prep for massive transfusion.”
Dennis feels a spark of something. Not really panic, he’s years beyond that, but the sharp, cold flare of being stepped over. Orders fired into his room, to his team, in a voice they’ve been conditioned to obey. It’s been a while since he’d been challenged on his turf. It doesn’t matter that it came from his ex-mentor.
“Ackles,” Robby adds, firmer now, “step back.”
Ackles freezes, eyes darting between them.
Dennis’ head snaps up. “No. He stays. Ackles—listen to me. Higher. Now.”
The intern obeys Dennis after a beat of hesitation—maybe his crush, or maybe because he knows Dennis better. The bleeding slows a fraction.
Robby exhales sharply through his nose. “Whitaker—”
“Artery’s shredded but not gone,” Dennis cuts in, eyes never leaving the wound. “He’s hypotensive because you let go of compression to talk.” He sounds bitter. Angry, and he’s being pretty obvious about it. The room goes quiet enough, the sudden silence almost drowns out the frantic beeping of the monitors. He knew the words have landed harder than he intended, but Robby had to learn he wasn’t the same kid he remembered from years ago.
Dr. Robby stiffens, an angry flush rising to his cheeks. “I’m taking over.”
And just like that, Dennis is twenty-six again, palms sweating, waiting for permission that never comes. Sticking out a hand, and getting pushed away. Before he can respond, the other man—the one who came in with Alex—surges forward again.
“Don’t touch him!” the guy shouts, pupils blown wide, jaw grinding like he’s chewing gravel. His breath reeks—sweet, chemical, wrong. “You’re killing him!”
“Security—” Mateo starts, but it’s too late, and the man lunges with a loud growl.
He shoves Ackles hard enough that the intern slams into the tray table, metal clattering, a scalpel skidding across the floor and narrowly missing Perlah’s shin. Ackles cries out, more shock than pain, hands flying up to protect his face when he drops.
“Hey!” Dennis roars, finally looking up.
The guy turns, feral, eyes locking onto Robby now. “You think you’re God? You think you can just—”
He swings at the attending, and Robby steps back on instinct, but the man’s momentum carries him forward, shoulder slamming into Dr. Robby’s chest. Robby stumbles into the IV pole; the monitor screeches in protest, and Dennis just sees red for a heartbeat.
The room erupts into frantic movements. Mateo’s helping Ackles up by lifting him in his armpits, and Perlah’s squaring herself for a fight when the stranger makes a move to bulldoze right into Dennis’s side.
“Get him out—”
“Call security now—”
“Dennis—” Robby says. It’s low. So very soft, and worried-sounding. Just a breath, really, but Dennis heard it anyway and jumps into action. He doesn’t think. There’s no space for it. He drops pressure for exactly half a second—Mateo’s already there, hands sealing the wound—and pivots.
“I don’t think so, buddy. On the ground,” Dennis says, voice low. Heart dead calm. Is this how snipers feel before they take the shot?
The man laughs, wild and glassy. “There was an alien inside him! It’s eating him!”
He steps inside the guy’s reach, hooks an arm, using the man’s own forward drive to spin him. A sharp shove between the shoulders, a sweep of the leg—years of farm work and wrestling brothers coming back like muscle memory—and the man goes down hard, air whooshing out of him with a surprised yell. Dennis is on him instantly, knee between shoulder blades, pinning him without crushing or obstructing oxygen flow, forearm braced just right.
“Do. Not. Move,” Dennis says, each word cracks like a whip. “You’re high. You’re scared. And you’re about to get Alex killed.”
The man thrashes once, and then wails a pitiful Alex before slumping into unconsciousness. Security barrels in a second later, too late to be useful, hauling the guy up and out amid slurred protests. The room is left ringing with silence and the flat, urgent beeping of Alex’s monitor.
Dennis is already back at the bed. “Back,” he snaps, reclaiming his place like he never left. “Suction. Now.” Ackles’ trembling hands offer him the tool.
He can feel Robby standing there for a beat, hears the sound of the air in his heaving chest, eyes on Dennis like he’s seeing him for the first time.
“BP’s sixty systolic,” Dana calls from the doorway. “He’s circling.”
“Not today,” Dennis says. He glances at the wound, calculates, commits. “I’m going in. Ackles—watch and learn. This is how you earn your keep.”
Ackles nods, pale but focused, eyes glued to Dennis’ hands.
Dennis makes the incision, deeper, controlled. Finds the vessel. Clamps. The bleeding slows, then stops.
“Wow,” Mateo breathes.
“Get me the suture,” Dennis says. “No—bigger. He’s young. He’ll tolerate it.”
Dr. Robby steps forward, reflexive. “Whitaker—”
Dennis doesn’t look at him. “My patient, Dr. Robinavitch.”
For a second, it looks like he might argue. Then something in his face shifts—not offense, but recognition, and a grudging respect. He nods once, “your patient, Dr. Whitaker.”
Dennis might get reprimanded afterwards, but for now Robby knew when to pick his battles. So, Dennis ignores the small shiver traveling over his back at hearing those words and concentrates instead.
“I’ll assist,” Robby says quietly, already reaching for the light. “Tell me what you need.”
Dennis exhales, just a fraction. You, I just need you. “Retract. Steady.”
Robby does. Perfectly. No commentary. No corrections. They work like that—Dennis leading, Robby supporting—until Alex’s pressure crawls back up, color returning to his face like a tide reversing.
“BP’s ninety,” Dana says, awe creeping into her voice.
Dennis ties the final knot. “Page vascular. He’s not out of the woods, but he’s alive.”
The room exhales as one, and it’s only then that Dennis allows himself to lean back, hiding his bloodied hands, which are starting to tremble, behind his back.
Andrew looks at Dennis like he’s just witnessed a magic trick. Mateo grins, shaky. Even Dana’s eyes are wide. Robby removes his gloves slowly and turns to Ackles, but his mouth clicks shut. When he looks back at Dennis, there’s something like wonder there.
“Ackles,” Dennis says, not breaking eye contact with his attending. “Get yourself checked out and take a break. Everyone else, alright?”
A chorus of ‘yes, Dr. Whitaker’ fills the room, and he exhales slowly. A job well done. Another life saved.
“You’re a far cry from the kid I met years ago,” Robby states.
Dennis finally meets his gaze, pulse still hammering with adrenaline, but his hands have steadied again, and he busies himself by cleaning up his workspace. “I still have a lot to learn from you, Dr. Robby. Don’t worry. But keep in mind that, by now, I’ve acquired a bag of tricks of my own.”
Robby huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “Can’t wait to see them all.”
“Ah-ah,” Dennis tuts good-naturedly, an unspoken request to forgive his rudeness from before. “A magician never reveals all his secrets.”
If Dennis didn’t know any better, he’d say Dr. Robby looked quite besotted in that instant.
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
Break-ups are messy.
Not that Dennis had much experience with them. He remembers Valerie, the one and only girl he’d dated in high school, and to whom he’d given just one kiss, to then know for sure he was absolutely not into girls like he’d hoped he was—even if it was just to not disappoint his family. Especially his dad.
Val had been nice enough to still go to prom with him, but she ended up in the back of Josh’s car, not that Dennis minded.
Then, throughout college and med school, there had been very short flings, a couple of quick and mediocre handjobs in bathroom stalls before he’d stumbled into his first decent relationship, which lasted four months. Then Kenneth had moved on because Dennis had been too busy studying and working several jobs at the same time, and to be honest, he hadn’t been too heartbroken about it.
He knew he’d always had a thing for older guys, and Dave had been the perfect guy to come along to distract him from his foolish infatuation with his mentor after having been three years a resident, hoping to catch a glimpse of Dr. Robby like a pathetic, pining puppy.
David owned a bar on the other side of town. They met on a dating app, and it had escalated quickly to sex after Dennis discovered that Dave looked exactly like the pictures on the app.
To be fair, he hadn’t needed a lot of convincing once he noticed the name, the age, and how the man looked.
Tall, dark eyes, graying hair. Not to mention the motorcycle.
It had been hot as hell in the beginning, good for Dennis to finally catch up on some sexual experimenting, and their dating worked perfectly around their compatible working hours, but the guilt was getting too much, and Dennis felt like he needed to come clean.
“I see,” David murmured quietly after Dennis had rushed out his entire explanation, followed by a million apologies. The older man kept stirring the spoon in his coffee for the umpteenth time. Dennis followed the motion, transfixed, or maybe using it as an excuse to not show how many tears had gathered in his eyes.
“I can’t say I’m really surprised,” Dave sighed, finally leaning back and leaving the spoon and cold coffee for what it was.
It had been Dennis’ idea to meet up in a neutral spot, to grab a coffee. A place where they had both never been on a date.
“I could feel you pulling back these past couple of months, and I’m not lying when I say I’ve enjoyed the time spent with you.” His dark eyes tracked over Dennis’ body. “I can’t force you to feel anything more for me.”
“I’m really sorry,” Dennis couldn’t keep another apology tumbling from his mouth. “I feel like I’ve used you to ignore my… My…”
“Inappropriate crush on your attending?” David offered with a wry grin. “It’s okay, Dennie. I never expected this to last anyway. You’re…” He waved his hand in the general direction of Dennis. “You’re young, and bright, full of potential. I’m way too old for you anyway.”
“Age was never an issue,” Dennis is firm to point out. “At all.”
“I wondered,” Dave hummed. “What if you wanted kids at some point? Or when I’m having more issues getting it up or something.”
Dennis laughed, “I’m a doctor. There’s not much I can’t fix.”
“I loved watching you get more confident and cocky,” David smiles. “I’m sorry you’re putting an end to it, but I’m grateful for the time we had. I’m too old to be a bitch about this when I saw this coming from miles away. I just didn’t expect… Tell me.” his voice grew hushed, and Dennis leaned it a little. “Does he treat you right?”
“Oh, no, there’s, there’s nothing between us. He’s not even gay, I think, or even interested in me at all. I’m just this rookie who sometimes assists him on his own floor. That’s all I am, really.”
“I seriously doubt that,” David crosses his arms, his eyes raking over Dennis again. “The man must be either blind, an idiot, or both if you really believe that.”
Dennis huffed out another laugh. This one felt painful and stuck behind his ribs. Pressing into his quickly thumping heart. It was dangerous to have even a sprinkle of hope. David was being kind, but Dennis couldn’t take any more kindness from the man he’d hurt and used for all these months.
“I’m so sorry, David. You’re a really great guy, perfect really, I’m not… I don’t deserve someone like you, and I’m sure you’ll meet your special someone.”
“You’re a good kid,” David says with a fond smile playing around his lips, “and honestly, one of the best lays I’ve ever had.”
Dennis thinks they could spot the redness of his cheeks from the International Space Station.
“And so easy to embarrass,” his ex-boyfriend chuckles. “I’m heading out. This is getting a little too awkward for my tastes, but with time, I…” David smacks his lips, looking around at the other patrons, coffee forgotten. “With time, text me or something. Let me know how it goes.”
“I will,” Dennis jumps up and, wearing somewhat twisted expressions—filled with hurt and comfort and maybe even a little bit of grief for something that never could be—they hug. David leaned back and pressed his index finger under Dennis’ chin, forcing him to tip his head backwards, straining his neck. Dennis closes his eyes when David kisses him. Long, warm, and tenderly. He doesn’t deepen it. Just lingers a breath, two, three before drawing back slowly.
“You’re something special, alright,” the man murmurs sadly.
David’s revving out of the street when Dennis, on the verge of crying his heart out in public, whips out his phone and calls Santos.
“What’s up, Lost Boy?”
“Trin,” he says, voice wobbly. “We broke up.”
“That douchebag broke up with you?!” She shouts into the phone, completely outraged on his behalf. It was nice how—even with her tough exterior—she always had his back.
“No,” his voice small, “I did, it went amicably, but I don’t… I’m pretty sad about it now.”
Trinity’s voice softens, “Oh, Huckleberry, do you want me to come get you?”
“I want to get drunk as fuck,” Dennis replies with a sniff.
“Say no more, Boy Scout. I’ll text you an address.”
───╲╱───✚───╲╱───
Dennis is grateful when Dana hands him a painkiller and a Gatorade as soon as she sees him dragging himself into the ER for his shift. Maybe Santos had called ahead, or maybe, it was the truth when Dana claimed to be all-seeing and omnipotent.
“Rough weekend, Whitless?” She asks, kindly. It’s almost enough to set Dennis off again. “You look like my youngest after an all-nighter with her colicky three-month-old.”
“Broke up with my partner,” is all the explanation he offers before downing the entire bottle. He knows the bags under his eyes are the size of fists, but he can’t seem to be bothered divulging private information for once on the work floor. The head nurse had easily slipped into the role of his work mom and role model. She was a hero. Fuck, all nurses were.
“Oh, sweetie,” Dana offers, patting his shoulder, and she keeps rubbing his upper arm in that comforting way of hers. Compassion written all over his face. “Let’s hope for an easy one today then, yeah? Holler if you need anything.”
“Good evening, Dana, Dr. Whitaker,” Dr. Robby pipes up calmly behind Dennis, and Dennis knows he should pretend everything’s fine, but hearing Robby’s voice, thinking of the hurt he’d put on Dave’s face, and the way Dennis had used him…
Added to the fact that he was dehydrated as hell after his drinking binge with Trin—and not yet ready to look his attending straight in the eye—Dennis ducked his head, muttered something about the patient in room twelve, and shuffled off without another word. He could hear Dana and Dr. Robby whisper furiously among themselves, but he just ignored it.
“Dr. Whitaker!”
Dennis heaved his eyes upward before turning. “Yes, Ackles?”
He kinda wished he had succeeded in drowning himself in the shower earlier that evening.
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