Chapter Text
Robby startles a bit as the bed dips beside him. He’d honestly thought Dennis was leaving, despite his words. I’ll be right back. Yeah, sure.
It’s not that he doesn’t trust Dennis—he does, likely more than he should. It’s just that he’s heard these words before, said them before. The same words every ER doctor says to their patients day in and day out, enough they’ve become meaningless. It could be a minute, twelve hours, before the long list of priorities whittles down enough to reach the stabilized ones.
That’s how Robby feels: stabilized. Not fixed, not by a long shot, but not in crisis mode. It just… wouldn’t take much to get him back there. Yellow band. Urgent, but stable. Potential for rapid decline.
Robby thinks about the duffel bag by the door, the one Robby threw random shit into because he knew Dennis would be suspicious if he left “for three months” with nothing but the clothes on his back. Thinks about his spare key, about the helmet that’s been collecting dust as it’s sat everywhere but atop his head. Thinks about the carefully curated facade that had slipped away because of a fucking grout stain.
Thinks about kind hands and kind eyes and forgiveness unearned.
Embarrassment curdles alongside guilt in his stomach. He can’t believe he let Dennis see him that way. He can’t believe he let himself get coddled like a child, secrets and soul and bloody hands offered up to Dennis like roadkill from a stray cat. Here, Robby thinks derisively, take this stinking, rotting garbage and pretend you like it to make this pathetic creature feel loved. Yeah, right.
Robby wishes he could kick Dennis out, scream and curse and maybe even push. He wishes he could sit up, stoic and unaffected, and thank Dennis with an uncaring smile on his face before he graciously walks him to the door. Robby wishes he could do anything other than lie here in a ball, eyes trained on the off-white wall across from him as his old, tired ears strain to track Dennis’s movements behind his back.
Robby hears Dennis set something on the bedside table, the muffled thunk it makes on contact making something in Robby twitch. He hopes Dennis didn’t look in the fridge, yet; hadn’t seen the empty shelves, bare except for the arcs of bleach residue on the plexiglass. Robby had wanted to be long gone before he’d had to explain that one away.
The bed shifts again and suddenly warmth is emanating from the body stretched out beside him. Dennis has laid down, his head next to Robby’s on the pillow; he only has the one, so he guesses the proximity is his fault, too. Robby can feel Dennis’s legs kick the blankets around a bit as he settles is, then the top sheet settling over them both.
The sheer unfamiliarity of the situation crashes down on him like an anvil. Sure, he’s had people in this bed before. Maybe it’s been a few months, but he has. It’s just, usually he’s the one leading them to the bed, directing them to the mattress, tucking in their spent and sleepy body as he crawls in behind them like an afterthought. It’s not so bad—Robby likes to feel useful, and the intimacy makes his brain go quiet, if even for a short time. But this is... scary, actually.
Robby knows that doctors don’t make the best patients. He’s seen Abbott with the flu, imitating the walking dead in full PPE so he can stay working without getting anyone else sick despite the fact that he has a fever so high his eyeballs are boiling in his skull and he definitely can’t see straight. He’s had to guilt-trip sleep-deprived interns into sitting the fuck down for a few minutes dozens of times, often threatening bad rec letters and flatlines from carelessness to drill the point home. Robby himself once worked three back-to-back shifts on a broken ankle. Needless to say, he shouldn’t be surprised that Dennis taking care of him feels deadlier than going 90 with the wind whipping through his hair.
“Hey,” Dennis whispers, jostling Robby’s turned back with his arm like they’re kids at a sleepover. “Wanna look at me?”
Robby groans, feeling himself flush from the tips of his ears down to his toes. No, he does not want to look Dennis in the eye, thank you very much.
Dennis laughs, a light and airy thing. “Am I that bad to look at? I feel like I should be offended.”
Robby feels himself turning over without a thought, driven by panic and some unspoken desire to make Dennis feel, well, good.
He finds himself staring at Dennis’s smug little face, lips quirked into a smirk and the beginnings of smile lines etched next to his eyes.
“Knew it,” Dennis says simply, and Robby swears he sees the younger man’s eyes flicker down to Robby’s lips.
“Shut up,” Robby grumbles, blush deciding it may as well take up permanent residence under his cheeks. He hasn’t felt this flustered since he was fifteen.
Dennis chuckles again and wiggles around a little until he’s facing Robby head-on, their kneecaps pressing together under the sheets. Their faces are only a few inches away, Robby’s cracked and dry hands curled into half-hearted fists on the empty mattress between them.
“I’m staying the night,” Dennis says simply, like he’s in charge. Like it’s his damn house already.
It may as well be, Robby thinks guiltily. The paperwork stuffed inside the oversized orange envelope in his study says as much: a transfer-on-death deed that passes the house directly to Dennis when he croaks, no probate period needed. Quick, clean. No mess.
“Ok,” Robby says after a beat, trying to push his thoughts aside. Yellow band. Stable.
Dennis nods, a small smile remaining on his face despite the look in his eyes softening into something more contemplative.
Robby can’t really find the energy to interrogate it. After the confession, Robby feels hollowed out, like his insides have been scooped clean but left to clench around nothing.
“Robby, I-“ Dennis heaves a sigh, Robby’s stupid billion-thread count sheets rising and falling with his chest. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me.”
Robby’s chest clenches, disappointment ratcheting through him like an echo. He should be used to failure, by now. He feels the coat hanger muscles of his neck and shoulders tighten up again. Way to be a difficult patient, Robinavich. Great way to annoy the last person in Pittsburgh who tolerates you.
“Can I touch you?” Dennis asks for the first time that night. It’s a bit laughable, given how many times Dennis has laid hands on Robby tonight. Given the amount of times he’s touched Dennis, and how many more times he’s resisted.
Robby wants to say no. Wants to throw Dennis a bone, give him a more appealing task. Wants to say he’s thirsty again, or that he needs help… doing his fucking dishes, or something. Wants to channel Dennis’s kindhearted productivity into something that actually matters.
“Please,” Robby whispers instead, squeezing his eyes shut against the overwhelm.
The touch doesn’t come immediately. Robby feels the bed move again, blankets slipping up to his shoulder as Dennis shuffles around. He hears the dull thud of whatever was on the nightstand moving once more. He opens his eyes half-expecting to find the bed empty again.
Instead, Dennis is rubbing his own hands together, Robby’s bottle of hand lotion balanced precariously between his knees. Dennis holds out one hand, glistening like a dream, and Robby is at a loss.
“Hands,” Dennis orders softly, and Robby drags them up from the mattress. They’re pinkish and angry, cracks forming like his very skin is repulsed by the man it covers.
The angle is odd, with Robby still on his side on the bed, both arms stretched diagonally up into Dennis’s lap as he sits above Robby, working the lotion gently into his skin. Robby feels himself start to relax again anyway, despite the way his heart races and his shoulder twinges and some of the micro abrasions on his hands burn like hell. It’s not really calm, just kind of… acceptance. This is what’s happening now.
“I love these hands,” Dennis murmurs after a few moments. Robby watches Dennis’s eyes trace the shape of them in his lap. The praise sticks uncomfortably to Robby’s skin like the excess lotion settling in the webbing between his fingers than Dennis has yet to rub in.
Robby scoffs, because out of everything Dennis has said tonight, this is the least believable.
“Seriously,” Dennis says earnestly, eyes finally tearing themselves from Robby’s hands to settle on his face. “Haven’t stopped thinking about ‘em since my first day, actually.”
Dennis doesn’t look embarrassed, but Robby is. It’s unsurprising that Dennis picked up on his… touchiness so early. He wasn’t exactly subtle. He was a creepy old man since day one, but it shames him to hear Dennis say it.
“I’m sorry, Dennis. For that, and for what I said earlier. You’re a good kid, helping me out like this, but I get that I made you uncomfortable. You don’t owe me anything, and I understand if you want to leave. Please don’t feel pressured into this because of my inappropriate actions.”
Robby’s voice shakes. This is the most he’s spoken in hours, but he has to say it now, before things go any further. As if they haven’t gone too far already.
Dennis frowns, shaking his head. “I’m not uncomfortable, Robby. I know how to handle panic attacks—and actual confessions by the way—I went to school for both. This isn’t exactly protocol. I’m here, doing this, because I want to.”
Robby shakes his head. Dennis may think that now, but Robby’s manipulation will catch up to him soon. He feels his eyes well with tears and forces them back, refusing to give Dennis another reason to pity him. Crocodile tears to make an innocent man stay.
“You shouldn’t want to. You’ve already done more than I deserve, Dennis, I promise. All good here,” Robby forces a smile. He feels his crow’s feet crinkle, feels his teeth clench, feels the muscles in his cheeks stretch and compress how they must. He hopes it looks real. Yellow; stable.
But Dennis still doesn’t leave. The lotion is definitely all rubbed in by now, but his hands continue to move over Robby’s. Dennis has calluses on his palms.
“It’s not about deserve.” Dennis scorched back down on the bed, back to their knee-to-knee semicircle, the gap between their heads feeling smaller than before. Dennis still has Robby’s hands clutched between his own, a second point of contact that makes Robby’s heart pound.
“You’re a good man, Robby. You try to leave the world, that place,” Dennis hints to the Pitt without naming it, “better than you found it. You care deeply for your patients and you’re one of the best teachers I know.”
Robby tries not to squirm at the praise, but it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in discomfort. They’re too real, not as vague or ambiguous or appetizing as the “good”s and “yes”es from earlier. Specific and clear like a diagnosis, but Robby can’t for the life of him believe he has the symptoms.
“But you’re just a man.” Dennis squeezed their hands at this, his voice taking on that wiser-than-age tone it had when he’d recited his first prayer to Robby under the fluorescents of the ER. Twenty fingers, four hands, tangled on Robby’s mattress.
“You make mistakes. You have in the past, you will in the future. You’re not some,” Dennis pauses, lets go briefly to wave his hand aimlessly in the air like he’s trying to grab the words before curling it back around Robby’s, “martyr. You can’t control everything and you can’t fix the world out of sheer force of will. You’re a good man, and a good doctor, but you aren’t a perfect one. Never will be.”
Dennis pauses, looking right into Robby’s eyes like he’s searching for something. Robby lets him look, unguarded, and Dennis seems to find what he needed because his expression turns certain. Resolute.
“That doesn’t mean I want you any less.”
And… what?
“What?” Robby asks, his filter crumbling to dust in the inches of air between them.
“I heard you earlier, Robby. I know you like me, want me, whatever you want to call it. Well, I want you, too.”
Robby blinks, trying to process Dennis’s words.
“You don’t,” he says on reflex. It doesn’t make sense: Robby’s old, washed up, out of shape. He’s jaded and mean and stubborn as an ox. He’s a clean freak and he knows what the city looks like from the hospital roof. Rapid decline imminent.
Dennis pauses, then shakes his head decisively. “Yep, I do.”
Robby frowns. “Ok, well, you won’t for long. Give it a second.” Seven weeks, he thinks bitterly. Maximum.
“Gave it a second already, Robby. Ten months, actually.”
Dennis looks so earnest that Robby feels just a bit sick.
“I like you, and I want you, and I’m staying the night tonight. I know you want me, too,” Dennis says like it he’s reading off facts. “Are you gonna accept it or are you gonna pout all night and make me figure out how to build a pillow wall with no pillows?”
Robby looks at their intertwined hands, feels the soft circle that Dennis has been rubbing on the back of his knuckles while they talked. Robby thinks about all of the not-so-fleeting touches at work, the way he could swear he felt Dennis start to lean into them. Robby remembers the bathroom, the halo of the ceiling lights in Dennis’s hair. Kneel.
One more confession, his traitorous brain urges.
“I want you to kiss me.”
Dennis looks momentarily shocked, his smug confidence slipping as his eyes dart around Robby’s face like he’s waiting for Robby to say sike. Maybe he should.
Then, just as Robby’s about to take it back, play it off as a pervy old-man joke, Dennis smiles. It’s not the same casual one as before, but a big, toothy thing that lights his whole face up.
“Cool,” Dennis murmurs, and Robby registers how insane of a response that is right as Dennis’s lips meet his own.
Robby’s eyes stay open a beat too long, registering how long the white-blond tips of Dennis’s eyelashes are before it hits him: Dennis Whitaker kissed him.
Dennis Whitaker is kissing him. Dennis Whitaker is kissing him.
Dennis Whitaker is kissing him, and Robby fucking needs to kiss him back.
It twinges his back a bit to lean forward, but Robby does it anyway, letting his eyes flutter shut as he kisses Dennis in earnest. He feels something come loose in his chest, something wild and buoyant that’s been shackled behind his ribs like a cramp.
Dennis lets out a soft sigh against his lips and Robby wants to crawl inside of him. Robby wants to make himself at home in the warmth of Dennis’s heart. He wants to stick himself between Dennis’s molars like a popcorn kernel that just won’t come loose. He wants to attach himself to Dennis’s skin like a leech, walk around with him all day like a pebble in his shoe. He may not be all that comfortable to be around, but selfishly, Robby can’t help but want to give Dennis this forever.
Robby tries to sit up, tries to make his body submit to his own will so he can be the one make Dennis feel good, for once. But it doesn’t work. He’s tired, his muscles loose for the first time in… fuck, probably decades, and as happy as he is, he isn’t exactly turned on.
But he can give Dennis this. It’s not much, but Dennis sounds happy and has pressed himself so close to Robby that their still-tangled hands are likely bruising matching marks into their chests.
Dennis had given him so much, and Robby only has so much to give. He’s given his house, his advice, his praise. So he’d give himself; it’s the least Dennis deserves.
If only his tired, floating, useless body would cooperate.
Dennis—omnipotent, perfect Dennis—seems to sense Robby’s mounting frustration before he can put a name to it himself.
“Later,” Dennis mumbles, easing Robby back onto the mattress to lie flat again. Robby lets himself be moved, feeling like clay in Dennis’s capable hands.
Robby’s vocabulary doesn’t exactly include later, or really anything set in the future, anymore. Not for a while. Not since he stopped wearing a helmet. Not since well before If I don’t come back.
Robby hears himself whine as Dennis shushes him, pressing him back down onto the mattress, belly-up like prey.
His muscles ache at the stretch as Dennis nudges his legs flat below him, places his hands down on either side. Robby’s slow, soothed brain attempts to kick up speed to determine what’s next when Dennis lies his whole body atop Robby’s, head on his chest and legs splayed to either side of Robby’s own like a weighted ragdoll.
Robby feels the last of the day’s tension leak out of him under the full-body pressure. He finds the strength to lift his arms just enough to wrap them around Dennis’s narrow back and preens when it makes Dennis grumble happily.
Robby cuffs his own hand around his opposite wrist, ensuring that he won’t lose his grip on Dennis any time soon. Feels the weight like a bracelet: yellow. Stable.
Rapid decline is still imminent.
But tonight, on the soft sheets of his bed, his muscles lax and his soul unburdened, Robby lets himself fall asleep to Dennis’s promise. Later will come, because Dennis said so.
Robby is forgiven, because Dennis forgave him.