Chapter Text
Dennis had been enjoying a rare moment of peace when he walked into the break room, in an already hectic shift where all of his patients were either waiting on labs—which had a fifteen-minute run both ways—or on CT and other radiology to be developed in-house.
Trin was up to her neck in charting she'd never actually catch up on, with Joy helping take a few basic cases to lighten her load while she learned. Ogilvie was being watched by a far calmer Javadi, and Dennis trusted her to come get him the second anything went wrong.
He didn't intend to be gone long. Just a few minutes of quiet to review labs and eat something.
If he was still going to hit the gym tonight like he'd planned, he needed to do better about bulking through the rest of the day. A protein bar would've been a good start, but he'd given the last one in his pocket to Joy hours earlier and the rest were in his locker.
As he looked around the break room, the only thing left was a questionable tray of lukewarm hot dogs.
Dennis stared at them for a long moment before finally picking up a slightly soggy bun.
The hot dog in his hand had the off-putting texture and smell of something that had once been hot but had long since cooled and stagnated. It might even be unsafe to eat at this point.
Whatever, he thought. He'd just bulk properly after work tonight before heading to Planet Fitness. But right now, he felt weak and needed a quick bite.
So there he was: a partially cold, dubious snack in one hand and a stacked clipboard of patient records in the other when the break room door opened.
And then there was Dr. Robby, appearing out of the blue and surprising Dennis. He thanked whatever God was out there that the hot dog he was eating kept itself from lodging down his throat.
He had a faint smile on his face and Dennis' new ID badge dangling from his hand. The word DOCTOR sat in bold white letters beneath his name and awkward photo.
"Really great work earlier today, Doctor—"
Dennis couldn't stop the mirrored smile that spread across his face. He quickly set the half-finished hot dog back on the tray so he could take the badge.
He maybe should have wiped his hands fully before taking his new badge.
Robby passed the plastic ring of ID cards over unceremoniously before dropping into the chair across from him. For the briefest moment, Dennis thought he felt Robby's fingertips brush his own in the hand-off.
It was small. Barely noticeable.
But it was still there, and it made Dennis' head swim.
Dennis's swimming brain—unhelpfully—filed it alongside every other time his boss had touched him over the past few months. As sparing as the touches had become.
A firm grip on his shoulder during intense medical consults. The guiding pressure of a hand at his back when Robby moved him aside to get closer to a patient in Trauma. The way he'd sometimes leaned in close enough that Dennis could feel the ghost of his breath at the back of his neck, teaching and directing Dennis every step of the way.
Deeply unhelpful information.
Dennis swallowed the bite of hot dog a little too quickly—before he could choke on it. Or on the deeply inappropriate feelings he'd somehow developed on his attending.
He cleared his throat and flipped the badge over in his hands a few times, his fingers tracing the laminated plastic over his name.
All those nights studying. All the rotations that left him feeling brainless and bone-tired. All the times he'd had to decide whether the money he had left that week was going toward his HRT medication or food. All the places he'd slept in that weren't technically meant for sleeping.
All of it, every sacrifice he'd made, had led to this tiny ring of plastic cards.
It weighed almost nothing in his hands.
Which felt wrong, somehow.
It should've weighed as much as the nights he'd spent studying until his vision blurred. As much as the student loans that pressed deep into his shoulders, like an albatross draped across his neck.
As much as the look of disappointment on his father's face the last time he'd seen him—when he'd told Dennis he was wasting his life moving east to study medicine. Back when Dennis had been someone else entirely.
"Huh," Dennis said softly.
It felt no different from the student badge he'd been given months ago. Still light. Still a little oily from the hands that had handled it before him. It even smelled faintly like the laminating machine.
And yet it felt like Dennis was holding something from another world. His whole world, everything in it, all pressed into one small object.
"Oh," he added after a second. The weight of it all settling into his chest. "Wow."
Across from him, Dr. Robby smiled at his whimsy and huffed out a quiet laugh. Dennis felt the heat of a blush creeping up the back of his neck and to his ears.
"You uh—" Dennis rubbed the back of his neck, trying to hide the blush creeping up it. "You can just call me Whitaker—"
Robby shook his head immediately, leaning back in his chair as he gestured toward Dennis and the badge in his hand.
"Not a chance. You earned that."
He didn't even give Dennis time to recover before adding:
"I'm proud of you."
Dennis looked up from his hands.
Robby was watching him with those steady brown eyes, eyes that time had seemed to weather and refine, accented by thin lines at the sides. The kind of eyes that always seemed to see more than Dennis wanted anyone to see. He could almost see himself falling into them.
His fingers tightened slightly around the badge as he adjusted in his seat. Still thumbing along the plastic.
"We all are," Robby continued after a moment.
Dennis never quite knew what to do with praise like that.
Especially not when it came from someone like Dr. Robby.
It always hit him in a weirdly soft part of his abdomen—making him feel like he'd been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, even when the thing in question was apparently succeeding at his job.
Excelling, even. As his boss had been keen in telling him recently. Which, if he was honest, he still wasn't used to hearing either.
Dennis had been told growing up that if he made it this far in life, it would only mean he'd worked hard enough to meet the bare minimum of expectations. Of his parents and of God.
None of that would prepare him for the possibility that someone would actually be proud of him.
Dennis opened his mouth, unsure what to say. Then he quickly closed it. A thank you crossed his mind briefly before he snubbed it out, his mind filtering through a dozen different responses that all sounded awkward and strange.
Thankfully, Robby took a deep breath and changed the subject first, talking about the chaos of the shift and the mess they'd been dealing with since the cyberattack that had caused the system to go analog.
Dennis answered eagerly and only a little half-heartedly, grateful for the change in topic. He grabbed his clipboard and started looking between his patient list and the door, more than happy to retreat into familiar clinical territory and eager to get as far away from his attending as he could.
His very sexy, very attractive senior attending who praised him relentlessly and occasionally grabbed Dennis. With a voice like smoke and honey that made Dennis think about what his own name might sound like if he were spoken with him between Robby's legs and—
Dennis forced a smile as he pushed his thoughts down.
Not the time, not the place. He had a job to do. They both did. He could file all this away until he was home and in bed later tonight, with all the time in the world to think his dirty thoughts with a few fingers buried inside himself. Maybe he’d even get to try out the new wand he splurged on last weekend, as long and Trin and Yolanda were still going out tonight.
He was halfway out of his chair to get back to work when Robby stopped him.
Not physically, instead with a shift in his tone.
"You're a very empathetic soul."
That wasn't exactly how attendings usually started casual workplace conversations.
Dennis paused and sat back down. With a stutter he tried to answer, Dr. Robby cut him off and leaned forward slightly, forearm resting on the table now. Up close Dennis could see the beginnings of faint shadows under his eyes (was he not sleeping well?), the way Robby rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table before continuing. His gaze following its trail.
"I understand you've been helping someone out, the widow of that burn victim that died last year."
Dennis felt heat crawl up the back of his neck again.
Did he mean Amy?
How did he know about Amy? Very few people knew about what Dennis did in his free time, Kiara being one of them (due to his time spent on the street team) and the other being his roommate—
Oh.
Well. Fuck.
Santos had a bigger mouth than Dennis had realized, she was spending too much time around Perlah and Princess if she was getting this comfortable airing out his personal life.
His stomach dropped and he bit back a snarl.
Jesus. H. Christ, what exactly had she told him?
Because if Robby thought they were—
If he thought Dennis was—no. Surely not.
Dennis swallowed hard and shook his head in disbelief. He forced himself not to roll his eyes at his attending. Instead he scoffed lightly.
"Yeah—on the farm," Dennis said quickly as he licked his teeth. "Look—I grew up on one, and Amy's—"
He stopped himself from continuing and began again, with less familiar terminology. His hands up in appeasement.
"Mrs. Miller," he said carefully. "She's getting a lot of pressure to sell the farm. I'm just helping out here and there on the weekends."
And that was all technically true.
Every other weekend Dennis drove out to the farm to help Amy, and only sometimes he stayed the night, usually when the work had been so grueling that she demanded he sleep in the guest room. Amy always told him she hated the thought of him getting into an accident due to exhaustion.
But there was nothing romantic about it. Dennis liked being there, he liked feeling useful. Amy said she appreciated the help, that Dennis reminded her of her older brother. And it didn't hurt that Amy and Charlotte were amazing company.
Amy was kind. Quiet and reserved, but outgoing and animated when you got her going about the things she loved—usually a bunch of nerdy stuff she rarely had the time to invest in anymore.
It was surprising to Dennis that she could still keep her head high, would be surprising to see in anyone after grief hollowed them out so thoroughly.
When her husband died last year it had almost broken her. Dennis had had the misfortune of watching it happen in real time. Of watching parts of her heart and soul wither and die with him.
The first few weeks that they brought him home Dennis saw the hope die first. Family from both sides filling the waiting room and then eventually the farmhouse. Friends and loved ones bringing food and sleeping in shifts even through his hospice.
Everyone was convinced he'd pull through, despite being told by multiple doctors of the opposite.
The burns had been too severe, too deep in the muscle. And they covered almost every inch of his body. It would be a true miracle if he survived past a few weeks.
And as Amy's due date got closer, he watched as peace died next as the panic set in. How would she handle a newborn alone? What would she do about the farm while she recovered from childbirth?
All questions she asked Dennis, rhetorically, while her husband quickly lost his battle against sepsis. But she stayed by his side until the bitter end, held his hand as he succumbed to his injuries. Crying into Dennis' shoulder for hours.
In the end her husband died just weeks before he ever got to meet his beautiful daughter. Charlotte.
After the funeral, a beautiful service that Dennis got to attend, and the birth of Charlotte, the farm and all its work had been left to an exhausted Amy and a newborn baby. A single mother left alone.
Sure, her family helped when they could. But most of them had their own farms and jobs back in Port Matilda. Their own lives they needed to return to.
Amy could move back there if she wanted the help, pack up everything and head east to central PA.
But that would mean giving up the land she and her husband had built together. The life they had always imagined having since high school.
So Dennis did what he always did when someone needed help. He stepped in, he stepped up and put himself to work. It was what he was best at, after all.
"What about her friends and family?" Robby asked carefully. Pulling Dennis out of his contemplation.
"Yeah, they're around..."
"Supporting her?"
Dennis shifted in his chair uncomfortably, he shrugged and hugged out an annoyed breath.
"Yeah... I mean, they try but she's mostly leaning on—"
He stopped and the realization crept in slowly. Amy's entire farm, her repairs, her livestock feeding and cleaning schedules.
The errands and runs into town for tools and feed.
The grocery runs.
The late night calls to his apartment when something broke or a perimeter fence went down.
All of it, more often than not, all fell back on—
"—Me."
Robby leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply, his brow furrowing.
He didn't say I told you so. But the look on his face got pretty damn close. Dennis mirrored the movement from his attending, leaning back as the room settled into a quiet that suddenly felt heavier.
Dennis knew Robby meant well.
He knew Robby was looking out for him, the same way Dennis had been trying to look out for Amy. Trying to be a decent human being to someone desperately in need of a little kindness, in need of a break.
But suddenly the situation sounded... different when someone else said it out loud. Dennis had thought he was just helping. Now, coming from the mouth of his attending, it sounded a lot like he'd been playing house and step-father with a widow and her newborn.
Dennis rubbed hard at the back of his neck again. The skin was starting to feel raw.
The worst part about all of this? Amy really was a sweetheart. Bright, ambitious and still so young—far too young to have gone through everything she had last year. She still had this stubborn little streak of optimism in her, this sunny way of talking about the future even after everything she'd lost.
And maybe Dennis had been trying a little too hard to keep that alive.
Robby let the tense silence sit for a moment before speaking again, maybe sensing the cat that gripped Dennis by the tongue.
"I'm sure she's really grateful for everything you do for her," he said finally, the wind thoroughly taken out of Dennis' sails with every word. "But it's important to have boundaries."
Dennis shifted in his chair, pushing himself further away from his attending as he glanced down at the badge still sitting in his palm, thrumming it a few times against the callused skin there.
Doctor. Doctor Dennis Whitaker.
The title suddenly had a weight that wasn't there a few minutes ago, a weight of expectation. Of duty. Dennis nodded stiffly and pursed his lips.
"Yeah." I know, he wanted to say. I understand boundaries.
But he didn't, really. Helping people had always been something he was good at. The main reason he went into medicine to begin with. He was man of action.
Back home in Broken Bow, if someone's barn roof collapsed or their tractor died in the middle of harvest season, you didn't sit around talking about boundaries. You grabbed your tools and went to help.
That was just how things worked, it was what he was used to. Boundaries be damned.
But the hospital was different, Pittsburgh was different. And it seemed that Dennis was slow to understand that.
And now Dr. Robby was sitting across from him reminding him—a bit gently, but still firmly—that he'd crossed a line he never even considered was there.
Dennis nodded again, even though the words sat uncomfortably in his chest. Burning a hole through his stomach and right into the floor.
"Alright," Robby said. Then he leaned back in his chair, the tension in his shoulders easing just slightly.
And for a second Dennis thought the conversation was actually over. That he could go about the rest of this chaotic shift and not think too much about Robby, or Amy, or his inability to keep his personal and professional lives apart. That Robby had finished his lecture about how Dennis needed to learn how to separate himself from the people he treated. From the people he worked with.
Which would've been bad enough on its own. Because while Robby was talking about professional boundaries with Amy, Dennis couldn't stop thinking about the other boundary he'd been quietly violating for months.
The one where he'd developed a ridiculous, embarrassing crush on his attending. One that had all but consumed his heart and brain every waking hour, to the point where Dennis often found himself escaping to Amy's farm or the gym. Just to stave off the borderline HR issue thoughts of getting Dr. Robby in his bed with intense manual labor.
Robby didn't know about that boundary crossing at least, didn't need to know about it either.
And if Dennis had anything to say about it, he never would.
"Hey," Robby said suddenly, pulling Dennis back again from his spiraling thoughts. Dennis blinked a few times, trying to get his brain off the slide.
"You wanna do me a favor?"
Dennis straightened up slightly in his chair at the question, his full attention on Robby. He nodded.
"Uh... yeah?"
"You wanna house-sit for me while I'm gone?"
Dennis scoffed a few times before he could stop himself, a small half laugh escaping between breaths.
For a second he genuinely thought he'd misheard, that the haze of the day and lack of water and food was making him hear things. Giving him full blown auditory hallucinations.
Doctor Robby—his attending and boss, the head of the ER, the man who had just finished explaining (in a strangely intense way) professional boundaries to him—was asking him to live in his house.
Granted, Robby wouldn't be there.
But that didn't matter because all of his personal stuff would be, and Dennis would be living among it all. He would be sleeping there. Showering there. Existing in Robby's space.
Every day.
For three months.
"You'd actually be helping me out," Robby added after a moment. He leaned forward slightly as he said it, closing some of the already small space between them.
"And you could save some money on rent."
Dennis blinked at him absentmindedly, his throat felt impossibly dry. He waited for Robby to say he was joking, that it was a test. A test on Dennis' willpower and his loose morals surrounding boundaries. A test he was about to fail, miserably.
Surely Robby was joking, or testing him. Or both?
Right?
"Are—are you being serious?"
Robby didn't even pause, didn't hesitate either as his lips quirked to the side.
"No smoking," he began, ticking the rules off on his fingers. "No parties. No pets..."
Dennis nodded along automatically, his body and mind disconnected from one another in some sort of dreaming state. He might as well have been dissociative.
"...No babies. Yours or anybody else's."
"Wha— I—" Dennis stammered, since when did he think Dennis had a baby? "No, I don't have a baby." He added a little too quickly.
Robby smirked.
A small, teasing expression that made Dennis' stomach flip in a way that was deeply unnecessary, butterflies kissing the lining of his stomach.
"No," Robby said. "But she does."
Ah.
Amy. It all circles right back to Amy.
Was that the point of the job offer? To keep Dennis from spending all his weekends out at the farm? To set arbitrary boundaries for Dennis?
Would living at Robby's place make that harder? Dennis couldn't think straight long enough to figure it out. Dennis' brain tried to grab onto that detail and process it but the rest of the conversation kept moving too fast.
The whole time Robby was talking he felt the space between them shrinking. Not dramatically, just enough that Dennis could feel the warmth radiating off him across the table.
And Robby was looking at him. Looking at him, intensely. Like Dennis wasn't already sold on the idea of spending time in his space. Soaking up his smell and his...
"...I was gonna ask Abbot," Robby continued casually. Interrupting Dennis' inner thoughts, "but he does nude yoga at sunrise and I don't think some of my elderly neighbors would survive seeing that."
Dennis stared at him, unblinking for a moment. He wasn't so sure that this conversation was helpful in setting those boundaries that Dr. Robby suggested he have.
And as time passed the conversation just kept getting stranger. It felt like Robby was trying to sweeten a deal that already felt completely and ridiculously uncomplicated from Dennis' perspective.
Because when it came to Dr. Robby, Dennis probably would've said yes to just about anything. Robby could have asked him to sit through a thousand thunderstorms on his porch and wait for him to come back, and Dennis probably would have agreed, eagerly too. Though he liked to think he'd at least pretend to think about it.
Fuck, he really had it bad.
Robby was looking at him expectantly and Dennis suddenly remembered he'd been silent a touch too long. He cleared his throat loudly and tried very hard not to sound too eager.
And of course, he failed immediately.
"Y—yeah! That—that would be amazing—"
He stopped himself and cringed. Could he sound any more desperate to please? He seriously doubted it. If only the floor would open up and swallow him whole.
"The house-sitting," he clarified quickly. "Not the—uh— not seeing Abbot's naked yoga."
Dennis immediately felt the urge to crawl under the table again, why was he so damn awkward? Obviously Robby knew what he meant. That abyss Dennis longed for couldn't come soon enough.
But Robby just laughed. The sound was warm and low, and it made something deep in Dennis' chest flutter as those same annoying butterflies traveled up and against his ribcage.
Robby leaned back again in his chair and their knees bumped together under the table. Dennis wasn't sure which one of them had moved, it could have been either of them. Their bodies naturally orbiting around one another, mimicking their usual dance in the ER.
He just hoped it had been accidental, or maybe that it hadn't been. He wasn't sure which one he hoped for more.
Then Robby said the one thing Dennis would spend the rest of the shift thinking about.
"And if I don't come back," he added lightly, "you've got yourself a swinging bachelor pad."
Dennis' brain stalled, full stop. What did he just say?
Too many thoughts hit him at once.
The talk about Amy and boundaries, the house-sitting offer. Leaving for three whole months, his attending alone on the open road traveling and seeing the sights. Robby was leaving soon, tonight if he could swing it. That much was clear, but not coming back?
'If I don't come back.'
What did that even mean?
Robby had said it like it was an obvious joke, like it was nothing but a throwaway. Instead of the clearest and reddest flag Dennis had ever seen and heard.
And to anyone else it might have been. But Dennis wasn't like everyone else.
Dennis had seen Robby on (arguably) one of the worst days of his career. All those months ago, his head in his bloodied hand and trembling in Pedes. His grip tight around his Magen David, clutching it like a lifeline as he prayed, slouched and folded against the wall. He'd never forgotten the way the man had looked in that makeshift morgue during the Pittfest mass casualty surrounded by bodies and exhaustion and grief. A man desperate to fix everything around him, unable to fix himself.
And Whitaker had helped pull him back to his feet. Told him the words he knew his attending needed to hear. Robby had found him later with a strange pep in his step and a similar dark joke about this being his first day—he hadn't found it funny. It didn't feel like a joke, then.
Just like how the words didn't feel like a joke now, either.
Dennis' head was spinning too much to process any of it. It had all happened so fast—the praise, the critique of boundaries, the crossing of said boundaries. And now...
'If I don't come back.'
He had so much to say, so much to explain about himself and ask Dr. Robby. Questions that burned in his throat and scratched behind his teeth. But they all caught behind his ribs, and all he managed was a weak:
"...Okay."
And just like that, Robby nodded and stood up. Taking a moment to fix his scrubs at the hip and adjust his stethoscope.
No dramatic, eye-opening moment of clarity or word of wisdom. No joke to linger on. Not even a borderline inappropriate touch for Dennis to obsess over later.
He was already halfway to the door again before Whitaker could even get his bearings. Tossing a hand over his shoulder dismissively.
"Come see me after the shift," he said over his shoulder. "I'll give you the keys and the security code, I can grab your number too. To text you the address."
Then he was gone.
Leaving Dennis alone in the break room, the half-eaten hot dog forgotten and a confused Dr. Al-Hashimi trailing in behind him. Asking Dennis questions he couldn't hear, his ears were ringing.
And suddenly, he wasn't all that hungry anymore.