Chapter Text
If Dennis Whitaker had to stand before a judge and jury and explain where this all started, he wouldn't be able to say.
It might have been on his first day, sitting on the floor next to a sobbing Dr. Robby, having no clue what to do and pushing ahead anyway to pull him out of his panic attack.
It might have been a week later, bringing him cups of coffee and checking on him casually, catching the cracks in his composure and pulling him away with some silly question or a procedure he knew how to do but pretended to want guidance on anyway.
It might have been their first night shift together when they'd stood in the stairwell while Robby complained about quitting smoking, and mainlined Nicorette like that made anything better.
Worse, it might have been on his way home the next morning, when Trin stopped at the 7-Eleven for ramen and he'd bought a pack of Parliments—the aqua blue ones because the bored looking clerk had said they were the best—and kept them in his scrub pants.
Worse still, it must have been their next night together, when they'd slipped outside around 2am to wait for an ambulance that ended up diverting to Presby, and Robby had reached for his Nicorette and Dennis had said, offhandedly, "a friend from med school left these at my house when he left, you can bum one, I won't tell if you don't". Robby's eyes had shone with mischief and glee and he'd lit up and taken a drag and let out an honest to god moan that made everything inside Dennis clench deliciously.
Yes, then.
It had to be then.
Because the thought that had only been a tendril until then had snagged.
Dennis watched Robby inhale, his throat working, his eyes slipping shut, his head tilting back as he exhaled into the night and thought 'put it out on me, mark me, ruin me' and then he turned away, because Robby was married and happily at that and if Dennis was anything he was a good person who respected boundaries.
But the thought didn't go away. It was a living, breathing thing between them, this secret. And sometimes when they worked a particularly hellish shift, Robby would give him a look and Dennis would raise an eyebrow and they'd both make their excuses and shuffle off to the ambulance bay, or across the street to the parking garage, and Dennis would let him bum another cigarette and watch him smoke it until the lines in his face eased and he looked a little less haunted and a little more like himself.
He didn't ask why Robby had quit in the first place. It wasn't his right, and anyway Robby volunteered things on his own timeline or not at all. But one night, maybe the third or fourth time, Robby had looked at the cigarette burning down between his fingers and said, almost to himself, "Jack's going to smell this on me."
Dennis hadn't said anything, but jealousy had clawed its way up his throat, hot and bitter, and he'd wanted to say 'good', wanted Robby to go home reeking of Dennis' cigarettes, of Dennis' secrets, of Dennis.
Instead he'd just huffed and shrugged, kicking a rock with the toe of his boot. "You think?"
"Yeah." Robby took another drag anyway. "He always knows."
"Does he give you a hard time about it?"
Robby made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "He gives me a hard time about everything I do that isn't good for me." A beat. "He's not wrong to."
Dennis looked out at the ambulance bay. Counted the seconds. "How long had you quit for, before Pittfest?"
"A month." Robby turned the cigarette over in his fingers. "Almost. Then, on my way home I passed a girl smoking and it was blowing back in my face and I wanted one so badly I thought I was going to lose it. So I bought a pack. And I smoked one. And then I went home and Jack was there and I reeked of it and he just… gave me this look." He took another long drag, savoring it. "That was worse than anything he could have said. Worse than him yelling."
"Well," Dennis pulled a cigarette out of the box and pinched it so some of the tobacco fell out. "I won't give you a look."
Robby's smile was small and tired, but genuine. "Oh, I know, kid." He looked over, and the exhaustion in his eyes was replaced with something else, something warm and amused. "I'm counting on you never giving me any kind of look. It's why you're my favorite."
Dennis felt a stupid, dopey grin spread across his face, and he looked away again, down at the ground, at their shoes. He wanted to say something to that, but what could he say that wasn't 'you're my favorite too' or 'I'd do anything for you' or 'kiss me'? So he just kicked the rock again and said, "I don't think God judges doctors for the vices they pick up to get through the day."
"This coming from the Theologian?" Robby teased gently. "I guess it must be true. Good." He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his heel. "God knows I have a lot of vices I can't ever quit."
Dennis thought that was an odd bit of phrasing, had wanted to poke at it, so he glanced up.
Robby was already looking at him, with an expression so open and raw and wanting that Dennis felt it like a punch to the gut. He didn't have to say 'put it out on me', he didn't have to say 'ruin me'. Robby was already doing it, with just a look, and Dennis was letting him.
"We should get back inside," Dennis said, but he didn't move.
"Yeah," Robby agreed, but he didn't move either. "In a minute."
Neither of them went anywhere for a long time.
And so a tendril of thought became a living, breathing thing, and a living, breathing thing became a pact, unspoken, a shared secret between them. A single cigarette passed from Dennis's fingers to Robby's. A single, lingering look in the dark.
Dennis let it happen. He leaned into it. He let Robby ruin him, piece by piece, one cigarette, one look, one shared secret at a time, until there was nothing left of the good person he thought he was, and he didn't even care that he was fantasizing about a married man, that he was stuffing three, sometimes four fingers into his cunt, his other hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the sounds as he imagined Robby above him, inside him, beside him. He didn't care that it was wrong, or selfish, or any of the things he was supposed to care about.
He cared about the way Robby looked at him.
He cared about the way Robby had started leaving little things for him to find. A bottle of water in the breakroom fridge. A new pen in his pocket. A chocolate bar on the Central station counter when he was having a particularly bad day.
He cared about the way Robby's eyes lingered on him at change of shift, how he could be in some deep, involved conversation with Dr. Abbot but Robby would always pause it to wave and say, "See ya, Dennis." as he left with Trinity.
It was a little bit like being a god, Dennis thought. A small, petty, secret god of the ambulance bay, with one parishioner, and one vice, and a whole lot of faith that this fragile thing they were building in the dark wouldn't shatter under the weight of the light.
The light in this case being Dr. Jack Abbot. Dr. Abbot was the sun. Robby's devoted husband, who waited up for him and cooked him dinner and smelled cigarettes on him from two feet away and gave him a disappointed look that made him want to quit again. Dennis was smoke, was shadow, was a shared sin in the dark.
It didn't feel like a sin, though. Not really. It felt like a communion. It felt like coming home.
It felt, most terrifyingly of all, like love.
And it was on a Tuesday, around six in the morning, that Dennis realized how thoroughly he had been ruined.
Trinity was an R2, going in early for pre-rounds, which meant Dennis was effectively on his own to get to work. He'd been bemoaning this fact as he left, the previous night, when Robby had said, casual as anything, "Santos is about a block away from our place. If you don't mind walking over, I can drive you, if you want."
Dennis, trying very hard to act like this was a normal, regular offer, had said, "yeah, sure, okay."
He'd said goodnight to Robby and fallen into step beside Trinity on her way out, and if he was quieter than usual she didn't comment on it, just unlocked the car and pulled out of the lot with Chaka Khan low on the radio and the city humming on home around them.
"Robby offered to drive me in tomorrow," he said, to the windshield when they were almost home. Calm. Casual.
"Oh, look at you, Huckleberry, lucky dog." Trinity turned the volume down a notch. "You know where he lives?"
"Not exactly."
"Hm." She turned onto Crosby without being asked, slowing as she went. "It's one of these. Garcia pointed it out once." She came to an almost-stop in front of a wide brick townhouse with a porch and warm light already on inside. "That one, I think." She glanced around, looking nostalgic for a moment. "I've always loved this street. Always thought it looked like happy people lived here."
Dennis looked at the house. The light in the windows. The porch with its two chairs.
Happy, he thought, and somewhere behind his sternum something moved, slow and ugly. Happy enough, he supposed. Happy enough and still one stiff breeze away from cheating on his husband with Dennis, so.
"Don't go all stalker now that you know where your crush lives," Trinity said, pulling forward again.
Dennis laughed, which was the easy, correct thing to do. "It's not a crush."
"Okay."
"It's a proximity thing."
"Totally."
"Trinity."
"I said okay." She turned the music back up. Chaka Khan sang about going through the fire and risking it all to be with someone, and Dennis looked out the window and said nothing.
They stumbled in the way they did after every shift, bickering about what to order for dinner, Dennis threatening to cook, Trinity laughing in his face, and he finally settled in his bedroom, full of Pad Thai and exhausted enough that he shouldn't have been able to think at all, but he couldn't stop thinking about the house, the porch, the chairs.
He wondered if Dr. Abbot had picked them out. He wondered if he and Robby ever sat out there at night, with the city quiet around them, and talked.
It's not a crush. He knows himself well enough to know that.
He passed crush about five miles ago and it was now hurtling full speed towards this thing that he didn't dare name, this secret, hungry thing that was going to eat him alive. And the worst part was, he knew he would enjoy every cursed second of it.
He fumbled with his phone, the blue light of the screen cutting into the dark of the room, pulling up Robby's contact and staring at the photo he's screenshotted from the PTMC website. Robby in a white coat, smiling professionally, the kind of photo everyone on the site had.
He trailed his thumb over Robby's smiling face and tried to imagine what his stubble might feel like under his fingertips. What the inside of his mouth would taste like. What the rough, raspy quality of his voice would sound like saying Dennis's name over and over again, breathless and wanting.
He shoved his pants down before he could talk himself out of it.
His boxers clung to him, a tacky, wet mess. He'd been thinking about Robby for most of the day, staring at the curve of his neck, at the veins on his hands, at the precise way he moved, so it was no wonder really. He slipped them down, shivering at the cool air on his cunt as he spread his legs and pressed two fingers in, arching into it. He kept his eyes on that photo, on Robby’s eyes, and imagined Robby was the one doing this, that it was Robby’s fingers stretching him open, that Robby was whispering filth in his ear. When he came, it was with his eyes squeezed shut and Robby’s name on his lips.
"Yeah, no, just gimme a sec, Eli, I've got to take this."
Dennis went still at the sound of Robby's voice and realized two things at almost the same time—it was coming from his phone, still clutched in his hand, for one; and he had accidentally called Robby mid-orgasm, for two.
Unfortunately, the floor did not open up and swallow him whole. Instead, he listened as the noise around Robby dwindled and a door closed.
"Hello?" Robby said into the phone, confused. "Whitaker? Everything okay?"
Dennis considered hanging up, then decided that would be even weirder than just… owning it.
"Hi," he said, and winced at how wrecked he sounded. He cleared his throat. "I uh…" He tried to come up with a plausible excuse for calling at 10pm post-shift, but he had nothing. "Trinity, um… Santos, that is, she showed me where you lived, but she… wasn't a hundred percent sure that it… was exactly where you lived, so I just wanted to… check." There. Normal. Good.
"Ah, fuck," Robby laughed a bit to himself, and Dennis's cunt throbbed traitorously. He pressed his fingers in a little deeper, breathed through the aftershocks of pleasure. "Yeah, I probably should have specified, that's on me." Dennis rolled his hips, clenching his jaw to keep from making any noise. "We're at 1710 Crosby."
"I thought it might be," Dennis said, and it came out more breathy than he intended. "Looked like… a happy house."
Robby laughed again, and from Dennis's end, it sounded just husky enough to cause a shudder to race up his spine. He still had three fingers buried in himself, and he knew he should take them out, but he didn't. "Well, I'm glad to know my house looks happy."
"It did."
"Good." There was a pause, a comfortable one, and Dennis could almost hear Robby smiling on the other end. "It is, I guess. For the most part." Another beat, and Dennis couldn't shake the feeling that Robby knew. That somehow, impossibly, he knew that Dennis had three fingers in himself right now, that he was naked in bed, that Dennis was thinking about him. "Did you need anything else, kid?"
You, Dennis thought, stupidly. Your cock touching the back of my throat, your hands gripping my hair so tight it hurts. I need to feel you split me open from the inside out.
He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. "No," he managed to say, a little shaky. "No, that was it." Robby hummed thoughtfully. "What time do you think I should... come over?" He had meant it as a normal question about rides to work, but it came out sounding wrong. Filthy. The silence that followed this was not comfortable. It was charged, heavy. Tense.
"Not too early, else you'll risk seeing me in my underwear before I've had coffee," Robby said, finally, and his voice was so low it sent a shiver down Dennis's spine, the kind that had nothing to do with being cold. His fingers twitched and he rolled his hips, barely stifling a gasp. "But not too late, else you'll make me late."
"I'll be… I'll be good," Dennis choked out, and it was true, he was. He felt a wave of slickness coat his fingers, the wet sounds embarrassingly loud in the quiet room. He was so keyed up it was taking everything in him not to moan.
"I'm sure you will be," Robby said, and the conviction in his voice was almost Dennis's undoing. "Midwestern charm and all that, bet you'd be right on my doorstep at six on the dot with coffee and a danish if I asked."
Dennis made a strangled, whimpering sound, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. He couldn't stop the wave of pleasure that washed over him, a small, secondary orgasm that left him trembling. He was going to die. He was going to die of shame and arousal and he was going to do it on the phone with his married attending.
"Dennis?" Robby's voice was suddenly very close, very sharp. "You okay? What the hell was that?"
"Nothing," Dennis wheezed, the word more of a pant. "I'm fine. Just. Nothing. I should go."
"Right." Robby didn't sound convinced. "Get some sleep, Whitaker."
"Yes sir," he said, the honorific slipping out before he could stop it, and Robby sucked in a sharp breath.
"Right," Robby said again, but it was different this time. "Sleep. Okay. I'll see you in the morning."
"Okay," Dennis whispered, and he didn't hang up. He waited until he heard the click of the line going dead before he pulled his fingers out of himself and buried his face in his pillow and screamed, muffled and pathetic and turned on beyond all reason.
He didn't sleep.