Chapter Text
Dennis wakes slowly, and at first he just knows that he’s warm, that the bed is soft, and that the only sound to break the silence is the soft breathing beside him. He snuggles further under the covers, pulling something fleecy up to his neck, and presses his face into the shoulder beside him.
“Morning,” a deep voice greets him quietly, and he makes a happy sound in reply, because hearing that is nice, too. The room is still dark when he opens his eyes, but it’s not until he turns his head and sees Jack rather than a white cinderblock hospital wall that he fully recalls where he is, and who he’s with, and who’s alive despite what he’d believed for months.
“Hi,” he says softly, just taking in the pretty face that up until the previous night, he’d only had his memories and one photo to remember it by. “What time is it?” He reaches up to stretch his arms. The mattress doesn’t crinkle under him like the one in the hospital always did, and even outside of the cozy blankets his hands don’t feel cold, and he knows it’s going to be hell to get out of this bed.
“Quarter til six. Alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.”
Jack moves beside him, and puts a hand on his hip to coax him to roll a little, and Dennis finds himself with his back spooned against Jack’s chest with the other man’s hand wrapped over his waist.
“You sleep okay?” Dennis asks and puts his hand over Jack’s, intertwining their fingers. He’d fallen asleep first, and he absolutely doesn’t want to be a problem for Jack who had mentioned the bad sleep on shitty cots overseas more than once.
“Absolutely.” His breath is warm on the back of Dennis’s neck, and he nods in response. “I don’t sleep so much at night, is all. I’ll nap after my physical therapy.”
“You’re coming to the hospital today?” He can imagine Jack dropping by the ED, and Dennis getting to smile and wave at him in the middle of a day. Preferably when he’s in clean scrubs, when his patients are all relatively stable, when Trinity isn’t nearby to see and rib him about it later.
Jack sighs. “No, West Penn has a better prosthetics department.”
They chat about the logistics for a bit– a taxi over there, it’s too far to walk, it’s the first appointment but he’d spoken with the doctors over the phone from Atlanta– and it all just feels so normal. Like the letters where Jack just wrote about his first Mardi Gras as a resident or the lifting competition at the base, and Dennis had just loved to know the little things about this man who had somehow, inexplicably, decided that he was a sweetheart.
“You got quiet,” Jack says, squeezing his hand. “Falling back to sleep?”
“I’m up. I just like listening to you.”
Over on the dresser, a soft beep-beep from the alarm clock signals that their time is up. Dennis groans and untangles himself from both Jack and the blankets so he can shut off the alarm before it wakes Robby, too.
Jack sits up and pulls the covers with him. “When’s your next day off?”
He has two clean sets of scrubs left, and he sniffs them to make sure before he picks the grey ones. “Tuesday, I think”
“We can look at finding you an apartment then. Or some room to rent.”
It’s good that he’s crouched by his bag and hunched over picking up his ziploc bag with toiletries so that Jack won’t see when he deflates at the reminder that this is temporary. This isn’t Jack’s house, even. “Yeah, sounds like a plan,” he answers, and then hustles into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Robby’s packing his bag in the living room when Dennis gets out there. “Want a ride in?”
He quickly shakes his head. “No, I don’t think– I don’t know how to explain,” Dennis gestures around at the condo, at himself, at Jack still in the bedroom, and Robby nods as if that all makes sense. “So I wasn’t going to say anything. Not yet. And a ride in could invite questions.”
“Sure, sure. It’s an easy walk.” He gives quick verbal instructions, but Dennis had been able to figure as much from the drive over. “I’ll see you out there.”
Even with his sneakers on, Dennis dips back into the bedroom to find Jack, lounging in the bed with half-closed eyes, and for a moment he hangs in the doorway. “You said last night-” he loses his nerve, afraid to ask for what he’d gone in there for– Jack’s almost asleep, and it’s rude to intrude.
Jack waves him over, pushing up to sit against the pillows. “I wanted a goodbye kiss.” He gives him a sleepy smile as Dennis crosses the room and leans down for just a quick peck, Jack’s stubbly chin scratching his face.
Dennis heads out in the early sunlight and looks back at the condo building once he’s on the street, and he’s pretty certain that he can tell which bedroom he’d slept in, and he’s pretty sure that the light is off again. The thought of Jack getting some well-deserved rest in the bed they’d just shared makes the walk in the cold fly by.
Trinity finds him at the central hub when he’s writing up notes. “What’s up with you?” She asks without preamble. “I feel like I missed something yesterday.”
“I’m fine. How was the concert?”
“See, even the way that you said that sounds different. You seem… calmer.” She leans in and drops her voice. “Look, if something’s going on-”
Dennis stops his pen and looks up at her, finally, and she’s looking at him like a patient she’s evaluating and running through diagnoses in her head. “If you’re thinking that I’m happier, I am. But not because of anything bad.” They’d worked together on a patient back when the two of them were new to the department, and she’d used her own history to convince the teenager to ask for help. “I just had a really, really good day yesterday.”
She blinks, surprised, and then gives him a wolfish smile. “Did you get laid?”
“We are at work.” He hasn’t talked to Jack yet about what kind of relationship they’re in or not, how out either of them are, and he’s not about to try to navigate around those questions when Trinity and he are in the eyeline of half of the department.
“So that’s a yes.”
McKay calls for Trinity and she heads that way, but turns back to Dennis and points a finger at him. “We’re not done with this, Huckleberry.”
“Looking forward to it,” he mutters as he gets back to his notes.
He manages to dodge her the rest of the day, and most of the next shift. His patients are all stable, but he’s got to change again after a seven year old with a stomach ache had barfed on his pants. Again. One of these days he’ll learn how to duck and cover, but it’s not his strong suit yet.
“How many changes is that this week?” Trinity asks, coming up behind him as he rifles through the clean scrubs shelves for something in his size.
“Three. I’m getting better.”
“Well I sutured a nicked artery and didn’t even get a drop on me. I could teach you my ways, in exchange for whatever secrets you got.”
He grabs a pair of bottoms and looks over at her with a shake of his head. Jack said he didn’t mind, when Dennis had asked yesterday, if people knew. He wouldn’t lose his job or his benefits at this point, but he’d left it up to Dennis. They’re your coworkers, he’d said.
Trinity shrugs and continues on her way, and Dennis is looking around for an empty room to change when Robby appears with a hand on his shoulder. “You been outside lately?”
“No?” Dennis waves a hand at the general state of himself. The vomit really should explain that he’s been busy.
Robby nods once. “Right. Well, the rain from this morning is starting to freeze over. It’ll be nasty by shift change. I could give you a ride.”
The walk back to the condo isn’t bad, really, but the path through the park isn’t guaranteed to be salted and he isn’t keen on slipping and falling on his ass for no good reason. “That works. I’ll meet you at the lockers, then?”
“Good. Are you going to disappear on me again?”
“Hey that– the circumstances are different,” he scrambles for an answer, flushing at the memory of ducking out of the ED to get away from Robby. It’s been two days, but it feels so much longer. And it’s so silly in retrospect, that he’d been so desperate to avoid Robby when that would have only ended up in Jack’s arms a little sooner.
Their reunion would have been in public, though, so he gives a reflexive prayer of thanks that it hadn’t worked that way.
Robby squeezes his shoulder and goes back to the board, and Dennis tries to make his way to a room to finally, finally get out of these pants.
“You are sleeping with Doctor Robby?” Trinity hisses in his ear, appearing from nowhere suddenly but she’d clearly been close enough to have heard the whole exchange. Dennis grabs her arm and hauls her into the empty patient room. It’s a mark of their friendship that she doesn’t push him off or recoil from his touch, and he knows it.
Once the door closes, he pulls the curtain behind him so that nobody can see them. “I’m not sleeping with Robby.”
“Then why is he driving you home? And you’ve disappeared on him before?” She throws air quotes up in front of her like accusations.
He’d told Carol, and Wendy, and Deb, and it had gone fine. And Trinity is prickly, but she hadn’t batted an eye two weeks prior when a pregnant patient was accompanied by her wife. “Are you upset that he’s an attending, or that he’s… you know. A guy.”
She cocks her head. “What? No, I’m not mad at either. And I’m a lesbian, so it’d be hypocritical anyways. I just want you to tell me.” She smiles again. “So it’s true.”
“Not quite. Wait, do you care if I–” he holds up the scrub pants, using his free hand to gesture at himself, and she just rolls her eyes and nods. He steps out of his shoes and rushes to change while he talks. “I’m seeing. Dating? With his, uh. Roommate? Best friend? And sorta crashing at his place. For the moment.”
Her lips part as her jaw drops. “That… is not what I thought you would say.”
“It’s complicated?” He balls up the dirtied pants and shoves his feet back into his sneakers. “I haven’t told anyone, since it’s new. Sort of. We’ve also been talking since, well. May?”
“And you’ve been miserable until just now because…” she raises her eyebrows, gesturing for him to go on.
He knows that he has two patients waiting on labs, and Dana will be looking for him soon enough, and he can’t get into this with her now. “If I promise to hang out after shift tomorrow and tell you then, will you leave it right now?”
Her eyes widen. “You’re going to hang out after a shift? You really are doing better.” She gives his arm a soft punch as she pulls the curtain back to get back to the job. “If you don’t live up to that promise, I will track you down.”
He nods. “Wouldn’t expect any less.” The room is quiet once she goes and the door swings shut behind her, but he can see out the glass to the rest of the ED where a nurse is running with a chart, a patient is shuffling along, and Robby is leaning in over a clipboard to consult with a PA. He takes one more deep breath, trying to release some tension because that had gone actually so well, before he steps back out into the chaos.
“Do you sleep?” Dennis asks when he emerges from the bedroom after nine thirty on his day off, Jack on the couch massaging his lower leg. Every other day, he’s woken to Jack already awake next to him, and the day before when he hadn’t immediately woken to the alarm Jack had gently shaken his shoulder to help him up.
Jack shrugs. “Enough. I’ll nap.”
It’s the same deflection as before, but Jack’s sleeping habits are currently firmly in the none of his business pile, so Dennis lets it be. The guy has a therapist, so someone else is in charge of that one.
Once he’s had a bowl of cereal and has curled on the couch next to Jack with two matched mugs of coffee, he tries to figure out what he’s actually going to do with the next few hours. Every day off before, he’d either spent it hiding in his room, or had slipped out of the hospital and had to kill time in libraries or malls or the like.
“Where’s your head at?”
Dennis keeps his eyes down on his coffee. “Wondering what I’m going to do all day. And you don’t have any appointments, yeah?”
“Nothing at the hospital. We could go look at places for you.”
The mug in his hands is a welcome distraction as Dennis squeezes it tightly and looks down into the dark coffee. “Yup. I’m sure Robby will appreciate that.” He is a guest, and an uninvited one at that, he has to remember that.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Jack’s head tilt to the side. “He's fine with this,” Jack says slowly. “Did he tell you something else?”
“No! But it's not like he's the one to invite me.”
Jack snorts a laugh. “I'm not sure I invited you as much as ‘took hostage’. I just wasn't about to know that you were sleeping in the hospital where anything could happen.”
“It was fine,” he insists, because at this point it's almost funny to see Jack scowl at him over it.
“Well it's done now. I was looking at the paper, there's some want ads for roommates, and some small apartments in the real estate section. We can make some calls, check out places that are close enough to the hospital?”
“That is a plan.”
Jack's confident face quavers at his curt reply. “What, you don't like it?”
“It's fine. It'll be good. I should have the money for a small enough deposit.” He knows what's in his bank account, he’d checked the hospital ATM on his way out yesterday, as well as what cash is in his wallet, and it's not adding up the way Jack seems to think it does. But he can swing it, if it's low enough, and he can get by on meals from the food cart in the ER and the kindness of the barista in the lobby again.
“I can help with that,” Jack offers, nodding slowly as he thinks. “But you could stay?”
The laugh that pushes past Dennis’s lips is breathy, but he can’t stop it. Because staying here? That’s too much, too good– the warm bed and shower, the meals that Robby keeps making like it’s nothing special and then pushing full bowls towards Dennis, the fact that Jack is miraculously here and in the same room with him– this isn’t the kind of thing that he gets. “Yeah, sure.” He rolls his eyes.
“I’m serious. You want to stay, then just stay.” Jack leans into his space and pulls the cup out of his hands to place back on the coffee table. “I was offering to get you somewhere else since I didn’t really give you much choice in coming here.”
The order to pack up his stuff from his hospital room hadn’t left much room to argue, but Dennis hadn’t been dragged out of there by his ankles. And the offer for a hotel room instead, on Jack’s dime, had been genuine, and he knows it.
“I wanted to go with you. Cause you had- you’d offered me Robby’s number before, and I didn’t take it, and that’s how I ended up thinking you were dead. And I didn’t want to just–” he shakes his head, looking for the words. “I liked that you wanted to take me home. And that you gave a shit about me being alone there.”
His cheeks flush when he sees how Jack is looking at him now, that intense stare back as he purses his lips like he’s considering Dennis’s words carefully. Jack keeps his serious face on as he surges forward, kissing Dennis and wrapping a hand around the base of his skull to keep him in place. The way his tongue presses into Dennis’s mouth is almost possessive, and Dennis whimpers into the kiss.
“So stay,” he breathes out, when he pauses and pulls back enough to catch his eye and make sure that Dennis understands how serious he is, both of them breathing hard. “I want you here.”
There’s details there like rent that he’ll need to iron out, but with Jack making sure that Dennis keeps eye contact, his brown eyes boring into him, he can only nod. “Don’t make me go.”
“Fucking hell, I wouldn’t,” he answers, and presses in again to keep kissing him.
The chapel speakers play piano versions of hymns that Dennis tries to identify them as they loop through. It's something to concentrate on, at least, with his hands loose in his lap and his eyes closed.
He turns when he hears a familiar step-squeak rhythm, and smiles for a second at the sight of Jack just a few feet inside the entrance.
“How'd you find me?” He asks, and scoots down from the end of the pew to make space for Jack.
“Robby called. Said you'd had a hard day.” He takes the space and leans his crutches against the edge of the pew. “You alright?”
Dennis tucks in close to Jack and sighs heavily, nodding a little as the other man's arm wraps around him. “I guess.” He was supposed to walk home since Robby was working a double, so Dennis had figured that nobody would notice that he slipped away for a while.
This kind of attention– something out of care and concern and love, not surveillance and control– is still foreign to him, but it brought Jack to him here. He can concede that it’s not so bad. How long had Robby waited to call? Had Jack waited to greet him at the condo, and then come looking for him, when he was late?
“Do you pray?” Jack asks.
Every breath is a prayer, a saying from his aunt rings in his ears, an admonishment when he was young and refused to sit still and screamed that he wouldn’t pray at all. He shakes off the memory and considers the question as it is, considers the way he came here to clear his mind some days, or ruminate on patients other days.
“I don't think so. But it's comforting to be here, sort of. And I always liked the music.” One hymn finishes, fading into another, and Dennis holds up a finger and tilts his head, pausing so he can figure out what’s playing next. Jack doesn't rush him while the first few chords play, and once he identifies it he puts his hand back down. “Do you?”
Jack shakes his head. “I didn't pray, after the explosion. And that feels like it's a real no, if even that didn't get me to start.”
“You remember much of it?” They haven’t talked about that part, and Dennis isn't one to push, but he knows that it means the world that Jack is mentioning it without any prompting at all.
“Bits. I was conscious in and out for a while. Didn't think about God at all. I think John was screaming about God, but-” He bites his words off and takes a slow, deep breath to calm himself. Dennis hates to think of the other Abbott– two t’s– for whom someone had gotten the same awful news he had, just delayed. He reaches out to put a hand on Jack's thigh just to be able to touch him, to offer some sort of support. “Thought about Michael, and my mom, and you, though.”
The melody of How Great Thou Art continues to play as Dennis tries to push away the thought of Jack, under the desert night sky, dying. “I'm so sorry,” he murmurs, because what else is there to say?
“I joined because I thought my mom would be proud of me,” he answered. “She always talked about her brother, who joined right at eighteen, but I never knew him. He died over in Vietnam, first deployment. So I was thinkin’ about him and how it was all pointless, and I'd never see you or Michael ever again.”
Dennis turns then, and scans the room– still empty, and it's not as if he has usually seen people come in after seven anyways– so he leans his head on Jack's shoulder, and he's rewarded by being pulled in closer, Jack's hand wrapped around his shoulders and squeezing him in.
“Did you pray for me?” Jack’s tone is curious and he's probably asking more to distract Dennis than anything else, and it makes the question easy to answer.
“I didn't need to, once I thought you were dead. I knew you were somewhere better. I didn't know if you were– well I'd never asked if you believed in heaven, so I wouldn't have prayed for you to go there. But I knew you deserved good things after you died, and I didn't think for a second you needed help from me for that.”
The quiet between them is comfortable, and three more hymns play before the door to the chapel opens again, and hushed voices overlap with the piano over the speakers. Dennis slowly stretches his shoulders, creating space between him and Jack naturally, and Jack’s hand lingers on him for a moment before he, too, pulls apart and reaches for his crutches.
“You all set?” Jack asks softly.
“Let’s go home.”
Dennis opens the door to the condo and shakes the last of the rain off his jacket before he steps in. Robby had offered to come pick him up, but he'd turned it down. The walk was doable, and he isn't willing to ask too much of the guy on his day off. His rain boots– gifts from Jack, when he’d heard that Dennis didn’t have any– take a second to tug off, so he drops to the floor by the door to deal with those.
“How was your shift?” Jack asks from the living room, and there’s a muffled slap of Jack’s hand on something and then Robby’s answering overdramatic sigh. The volume on the tv lowers, quieting the host on the game show down to nothing.
“Good,” he answers and it's almost entirely honest. He'd been on triage mostly, and Trinity had brought him a cookie that she'd made. In exchange she'd talked him into handling wound care for a patient who’d been flirting with her, but the guy had kept his hands to himself around Dennis. “And your day?” He stands up and steps past the doormat and something in his chest loosens when he sees Jack on the couch, smiling over at him.
“First prosthetic fitting. And PT. Which is how we ended up here.” He gestures to himself, with his legs kicked up into Robby's lap. It almost feels like something that Dennis shouldn't intrude on, Robby's strong hands currently digging into Jack's left calf, but neither of them seem concerned at all to be caught like this so it turns into something he’s invited into, allowed to be a part of as well.
“There's chili in the fridge, when you want it,” Robby offers with a genuine smile.
Dennis nods. “I'll be out in a bit.” As he walks back to their room, the tv volume raises back up, and by the time he's out of the shower he can hear the two of them arguing over the show through the cracked bedroom door.
“Things you bring on a camping trip,” the host asks.
“Tent,” Robby answers.
“Truck,” Jack says at just the same moment
“Truck? You don't bring that, it brings you.”
The contestants ring in with their own answers and the pair turn to critiquing those responses.
He drapes his towel over the bed and pulls the book off of Jack's nightstand to flip through it slowly as he dries off. The patients from the day run through his head, but he’s already had the chance to chat about the worst of it with Trinity and Joy-Ann afterwards, so it’s not overwhelming. And through the door he can hear the two of them chatting back and forth, mostly about the show, and it’s so easy to just… be here, to sit around and not wonder what’s coming next, and relax. He lays there, resting after the long day, getting his fill of being alone.
His clothes are shoved into one drawer of the dresser, and eventually he gets up to grab something to wear for the night. Buying a second set of drawers is on the list for next Tuesday, once he’s graduated and has a whole luxurious week off before starting his residency. It’s so domestic, the idea of wandering through Ikea and then assembling flat pack furniture together in the room that’s becoming theirs rather than Jack’s.
Another episode plays on the tv, but the two have quit bickering when he comes out of their room.
“Thanks for cooking,” Dennis says as he heats himself a bowl from the leftovers in the fridge.
Robby makes a mm of acknowledgement, and keeps his voice low. “Not a problem.”
As the microwave runs, Dennis peeks over at the living room to see why Jack’s so quiet and he smiles when he sees the man fast asleep, pinning Robby in place. For all he insists that he naps during the day, Dennis doubts it’s true all that often.
Once he’s arranged his bowl, he takes a seat in the little stuffed armchair that he suspects Robby brought from his mom or grandma’s place: it’s too shabby and floral for Robby to have purchased himself, given all the other furniture in the condo. “I owe you money for groceries.” He takes the first bite of chili and closes his eyes in utter joy. He would willingly pay the rest of the money in his account, sparing as it is, to be able to keep getting to eat in Robby’s kitchen.
Robby shrugs, one of his hands still resting on Jack’s ankle, his thumb moving back and forth without really thinking about it over the exposed skin above his sock. “Once you’ve got a paycheck, sure.”
There’s rent to discuss, too, but conversation is definitely under the once he’s receiving income category, and preferably best saved for when Jack’s awake.
For now, it’s easy to settle into the comfy chair and guess along with the contestants in hushed voices. When it’s late enough that he needs to go to bed, he leaves Jack on the couch and brings Robby a glass of water, since neither of them are about to interrupt a minute of his sleep.
The leather outsole of his boots make a satisfying click, click as they walk across the parking lot and to the country bar that Jack’s physical therapist had suggested. Dennis had finally opened the plastic grocery bag he’d shoved the boots into that last day at home, and carefully gotten the dirt off of them so that he looked the part.
“What’s got you smiling?” Jack asked.
It’s not that he feels like himself– the version of him that wore these almost every day feels far away and he’s grateful for that– but it’s familiar in a way that doesn’t hurt to remember. “Just that I haven’t worn these in ages.”
They settle into stools at the bar as they wait for the show to start, and Jack orders a round of beers. “You sure you don’t want to be up closer to the stage?”
It’s not a huge venue, probably usually used more for dancing, so he’s got a good enough view from where they are even with the small crowd growing across the room. ”I’d much rather be next to you, come on.”
When the bartender comes by with their pints of whatever light beer’s on tap, Jack raises his glass in a toast. “To you, for graduating,” he says, and Dennis flushes pink as he clinks his glass back.
“Thanks,” he answers. “You didn’t have to-”
“Yes, we had to celebrate. Don’t start.” Jack cuts him a glare, and Dennis just looks down at the sticky bar to smile since he adores this side of Jack, a little bossy and always so sweet on him. When Trinity had asked what he was going to do to celebrate, he’d so confidently said that Jack would think of something– and Robby cooking some nice dinner, or a trip out to some park elsewhere in the city, or a coffee shop for a fancy breakfast with pastries all would have been just as good, if Jack had thought of it.
Instead, Dennis hollers as a band in boots and fringed shirts gets on stage and starts playing country music- mostly covers, but good ones. A few times the crowd starts dancing, and Jack pushes Dennis up and into the fray when Jack sees how he’s twitching to join in when they play a line dance that he knows.
He comes back breathless and with a wide smile, the boots so damn comfortable even jumping around from all the time he’d spent in them on the farm.
Dennis takes a sip of the water that Jack had ordered as the band introduces their next song, and the crowd makes a collective little sigh as the soprano singer begins. He sways along to the music, and looks over at Jack who’s frowning.
”I gotta tell you, Dennis, I don’t get the appeal, this shit’s so sad.”
He shrugs. “But it’s so pretty, come on.” The soaring melody floats over them, the crowd singing along, and holds up a hand like see? They get it. “But of course it’s tragic. It’s country music, half of it is tragic.”
Jack tries to bob his head, but his brow furrows as he takes in the lyrics. “Does this song remind you of me?”
“Everything reminds me of you.” He answers lightly. He doesn’t need to hear a song about a soldier dying in Vietnam to think about Jack, when there’s already ringing phones and his folding knife and patients with military IDs or curly hair to do the job.
Jack looks at him again with that face of just aching need and almost hurt, and Dennis wonders what he’s said wrong. “Hell, sweetheart, come here,” he says in a low gravelly voice. Jack leans in to kiss him, just on this side of decent for a bar, and Dennis makes a soft sound that he can’t hold back when Jack pulls away. They really should have stayed home to celebrate, so that propriety doesn’t have to keep him in his seat when he wants to be wrapped up in Jack again.
The band fades out, leaving the soloist to repeat the final chorus, and the song sweeps over the hushed crowd.
Our love will never end, she sings, and Dennis reaches for Jack’s hand, intertwining their fingers. Waiting for the soldier to- as the singer takes a little hiccupy breath, like she’s the girl with the bow in her hair fighting back tears- come back again. Jack leans over to bump his shoulder against Dennis’s, and he tips his head over to rest his head on Jack.
“Nevermore to be alone,” he sings along, softly so that nobody else but Jack has to hear if he’s a little off pitch, and he smiles as Jack turns to kiss his hair, lingering there so Dennis can feel his breath. He feels so alive, and safe, and fucking happy in a way he wouldn’t have comprehended a year ago, and he lets out a satisfied little hum before he whispers, so softly, “I love you,” and Jack’s answering squeeze of his hand lets him know that he’s not the only one lost in his thoughts for a moment.