Chapter Text
The Pitt gets new med students on a pretty regular basis. Hell, two of their current residents were from past med student rotations. Robby’s happy to have had Dennis on board for over a year, especially with Victoria starting, officially, as one of their residents this week.
And don’t get him wrong, he likes the med students. Some quickly find that the ER, that the Pitt, is not for them. Others find they like the fast-paced environment, the challenge, and they find their way into the discipline. It’s been comforting to him to know that he’s worked hard on ensuring new and future doctors find their footing in the field.
What he doesn’t like are distractions to his team.
Well, maybe he’s lying. They can all handle a little distraction, with the endless workplace gossip and usual bets on goings on around their department and beyond. But for the most part, his team is focused when it comes to actually saving lives.
The newest batch of students includes two MS3 students, Galilea Narvaez and Raymond Goncalves, alongside one MS4 student who has quickly decided to get on Robby’s nerves, Gabriel Markey. Narvaez and Goncalves are great students they’d be lucky to have stay on at some point in the future. Markey…well, if his inability to keep his hands to himself and general flirtation with pretty much everyone who walks into the ER didn’t spell trouble, the way he looks at Dennis does.
Robby knows he’s being unreasonable. Markey is about Dennis’ age, a smart guy, but he’s just so much. He drapes himself over Dennis’ back, rests his chin on the other man’s shoulder, and the looks he shoots Robby’s resident? HR would be on them in an instant if they saw.
Not that Dennis ever returns them. Or leans into it.
He’d privately heard Dennis tell Santos that he’s not sure why Markey is so touchy, but the guy isn’t hurting anyone, so he doesn’t want to embarrass the kid by shoving him off.
It’s a kind sentiment, to not want to embarrass the new kid, but Robby wishes he would. But Dennis is often too kind for his own good and for Robby’s stress levels. Similar things had happened with overly affectionate patients and thankful parents. Santos offered to do it next time it happens, to give him a good shove, citing the fact that if Dennis is uncomfortable, he shouldn’t have to endure it, but he just waved her off.
Privately, Robby agrees with Santos. He can’t say it, but he does.
However, as the weeks pass by, Dennis starts to correct the kid’s behavior. It’s slow, but Robby can clearly see him moving out of the way before Markey can make contact. He never lets himself be under the kid’s hands for too long and, if anything, initiates a certain level of appropriate contact so Markey learns what that boundary is at work. He’s so good at side-stepping the student that Robby has to wonder why Dennis never does so with him.
He’d tell you, at this point, if he was uncomfortable with you, right? If he can side-step a student who is tripping over his feet to get to him, he’d have avoided you long ago. Would’ve never applied for a residency in the Pitt, asked for the letter of rec, let alone kept on day shifts most of the time. He would’ve found a way to tell Santos and she would’ve stabbed him in the back in anger. She’s not subtle about her protectiveness, both of patients and of Dennis.
Robby might be over thinking this shit, but it’s nothing compared to how poignant Jack’s eyebrow is when they sit on the roof during change overs and bring up their shift’s misadventures.
“So, what do you think of the new kids?” Jack asks, trying for the casual air of nonchalance, but Robby sees right through it.
“They’re bright. A lot more of a lively bunch than our last set.”
“Yeah, right, they’re shaking in their boots when they see you get mad.”
“Not Narvarez. She’ll just mutter in Ixil when she’s upset with me and smile when talking with everyone else. She’s definitely more of a mini Santos. Goncalves is learning, but I think he’s just out of his element with doctors. He gets along great with the nurses and the patients though. From what Dennis told me, he’s just missing being able to speak Cape Verdean Creole on a regular basis. I don’t think he intends to stay in Pittsburgh long.” Robby’s pretty impressed by them both. The more time he spends with them, the more pleased he is.
Of course, Jack clocks the lack of appreciation for one student in particular and starts in on him. “Markey, though, got an opinion on him?”
Robby wants to grind his teeth because, yes, he does. An incredibly unprofessional one, but an opinion nonetheless. As a student, he’s fine, but the ER does not seem to be his forte. Dennis and Javadi both got tripped up when they first started, but with the support of everyone else, they’d really settled in.
Markey can’t seem to get there. Narvaez might end up in the ER or neurosurgery or something just as fast-paced and complicated, but it’s clear that Goncalves prefers pediatrics and internal medicine, where Markey is definitely an ortho or derm kind of guy. It’s not a knock on any of their interests, but its just clear that the Pitt is a place they can be comfortable in, but they might never see an ER as a home to die in. Not like he and Jack. It’s a specific kind of lifestyle.
“I do.”
“Well, enlightening.”
“Shut up,” Robby checks his friend with his shoulder. “He’s going to be a good doctor. Don’t think the Pitt is for him, though. He’s comfortable enough but–”
“He’ll never settle here. He’s flashy. He’ll go for something else and never look back.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re hoping for that, though, aren’t you?”
“I’m hoping he finds his speciality–”
“No, no, no,” Jack speaks right over him. “You just don’t want him to stay. Think he’ll try and kidnap Whitaker away from your side or something? Or just jealous, since the kid gets a free pass to grab at your Bloodhound, whereas you need to be dragging him around from case to case?”
“Shut up.” Robby’s cheeks color. Jack knows him and his bullshit far too well not to have clocked how he feels about Dennis. “I do not get jealous.”
His best friend guffaws at him. “You’re hopeless. One day, it’s gonna bite you in the ass when you least expect it. Santos has been dressing him up for the wolves, you know. Mohan and Javadi have shown me their Halloween costumes. Cute. They matched, went as a group. Short, short skirts and a lot of skin.”
“You’re the worst friend I’ve ever had.”
“Would I be the best again if I told you I got the photo?”
“…maybe.”
Things are fine, for a while. But a few incidents have Robby biting the inside of his cheek or spinning on his heel only to growl and snap at everyone for the rest of the day. Markey pushes his luck over and over, dousing Dennis in saline one morning so he can offer to “help” Dennis change into new scrubs. He accidentally trips the resident, only to snag him by the waist to “steady” him. Even Langdon had noticed, having pulled Dennis aside the day of The Incident, as Javadi and Mateo put it, to check to make sure Dennis was okay.
Markey and Dennis were with Langdon and Mel, working on a kid who’d tried to parkour or something and accidentally impaled himself on a fence, meaning that the firefighters had to cut the fence off and drag it into the ER so he didn’t automatically bleed out.
Dennis, of course, ends up covered in blood. Everyone else’s hands were covered, but Dennis looks like he’d lost a fight with the femoral artery. He’d left Mel and Langdon on his way to change and decontaminate, but Markey catches up to him by the lockers. Robby’s been chatting with Santos about one of the other patients, debating on how quickly they could get Kiara involved when it all goes down.
One moment, Dennis is bending down to untie his shoes, and the next Markey’s hand moves to steady him. But his hand doesn’t find a shoulder or his back or even his hip. It finds his ass.
Markey is clearly recreating his previous two attempts in a more perfect storm of events. The second his hand grips Dennis’ ass, leaving a bloody handprint on the bright blue scrubs, Robby sees red. His vision blurs, and it takes all the willpower he didn’t know he had left to not immediately start screaming. He opens his mouth to tell the kid to let go and scream out a metric ton of potentially HR violating curses, but he’s not the only one who was paying attention to the scene unfolding before them.
“Markey!” Santos snarls, moving forward with purpose. She snags the back of his scrubs by the neck, yanking him backwards so hard he stumbles to keep up with the force of it. The vexation she has towards him is written all over her face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The kid whirls around, clearly unaware of the audience. “I was just trying–”
Dennis has jolted upright by now, jerking backwards into the wall and away from the med student. His eyes are wide, like he hadn’t anticipated that Markey would be bold enough to actually do something like that in front of Santos, let alone Robby, whose eyes he finds as he tries to regulate his breathing and not go berserk in this instance.
“You need to shut up! You need to stop fucking touching him without express fucking permission. You don’t get to come in here as a fucking student and grope at a resident and not expect me not to deck you?”
The kid’s face goes pale as he clearly realizes she’s sussed him out. “I–”
“Don’t speak. If I wanted to hear what asbestos sounds like, Huckleberry and I’d go back to the 8th floor. You need to learn to listen. If you think this kind of behavior’s gonna fly with other people, with other residents, you’re in for a fist to the face.” Santos yells, a lot, but there’s something almost psychotic and downright vicious with the way she’s speaking. “Get the fuck away from him and go clean up. Now.”
The kid scampers away, almost slamming into Mateo and Javadi, who had come through the doorway at the screaming. Santos, of course, has steam spewing from her ears, but she’s already in front of Dennis by the time Robby feels like he can move. Dennis is trying to assure her that he’s fine, but she, as usual, won’t take him at his word, muttering things in Tagalog that must be illegal to hear in a workplace. Robby doesn’t reprimand her once. Dennis does go to shower and change, but Robby whispers, “Good job, Santos,” only when Dennis is out of eyesight.
Robby takes a lap after Santos explodes. He’d been so close to doing the same, but her little bite into the med student was enough for him to step back and hold his tongue between his teeth lest he say something he’d regret. And if he gave her fun, interesting cases for the rest of her shift to reward her for good behavior, neither of them commented on it.
On the kid’s last day, he accidentally walks into a scene he didn’t want to hear. Or see. Or know about.
“–just wanted to see if you had any interest in going out after?” Markey’s voice is hopeful in a way that speaks to his youth. And his definitive interest in Dennis.
“Look, Gabe, you’re a good student, and you’ll be a good doctor, but,” Dennis sighs, shoulders straight back. “I’m not–we can’t. We shouldn’t. I think you’re a great person, I’m just–”
“Not into me.”
“No.”
Robby feels his heart stutter in his chest. He really shouldn’t be listening to this conversation, but fuck it if he won’t move now.
“You didn’t–but–”
“It’s not something I wanted to bring up at work. You never went over the line, per se, except maybe that one time, but I’m also a resident. I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of the other students.” Dennis is gentle in his delivery, but straightforward and professional. “You remember a few days ago, when Dr. Santos snapped at you?”
Though he can’t see them, he figures Markey nods.
“She did it because I won’t. Since I’ve been here, these people have seen me change scrubs like seven times in one shift, put an IO in an awake patient, and completely and utterly fall apart. They had to deal with so much shit from me. Trin’s my best friend, my roommate, and she’s overly protective when she doesn’t need to be. But she’s right.” He can hear the weight in Dennis’ sigh. “I didn’t want to make you feel like you were being singled out. That’s not my style, except maybe for when Victoria passed out on our first shift here. But seriously, I’m more of a slow and steady corrector.”
“You kept moving away…”
“And you noticed, which was good. It’d always take like twice as long as Trin’s method before it caught on, but I’m a little old fashioned sometimes. She can tease me endlessly about it, but it has its merits.”
“It definitely worked, but she just kind of…pushed it out into the open.”
“True. And look, I know you’re gonna do great at your next placement and wherever you match to, but I think we both know the Pitt isn’t for you.”
“It isn’t. I’m definitely more…of a relaxed kind of guy.”
“That’s okay, but just remember that you’re at work when you’re doing your rotations. These are people who can be your coworkers and bosses. They can write recommendations and guide you through job applications. They’ll see you at your worst and at your best as you figure it out. They can’t be romantic partners.” Dennis’ voice is firm and Robby can’t tell if the implication is about convincing himself or of convincing Markey. “At least, while you’re a student. You’re not out of med school yet. Wait at least until you’re a resident before you blow up your own career, okay?”
Markey laughs. He must agree with Dennis because there’s silence for a moment.
“Friends?” Markey asks, still a little hopeful.
“Friends,” Dennis agrees.
The tension in Robby’s shoulders eases. He didn’t even know he’d been holding his breath until the fresh oxygen hit his lungs. He slinks out of there, heading back towards the desk to find Shen to do a hand off. After, as Robby’s heading out, Dennis catches up with him. “Hey, Robby!”
“Dennis, how are you doing?” He keeps his voice steady, hand automatically finding Dennis’ shoulder like it’s magnetized to be there.
“Good!” The smile that lights up his face is so bright that it makes his pulse quicken. “Just wanted to make sure you and Jack were coming to the bar tomorrow. Dana wants to make sure we can surprise Mel and Becca with a cake.”
“We’ll be there. If I have to, I’ll drag him there. But between you and I,” he tosses his arm around Dennis’ shoulder, dragging him close enough to feel the warmth of his skin, “I think he’s excited to see Becca and thank her for the scarf she knitted him. He’s never worn something more, and even bragged to Dana and I that Becca made it for him and not for us.”
Dennis chuckles, his toothy grin aimed towards the floor as he shakes his head, likely imagining Jack saying that out loud.
“Den, if you don’t get the fuck over here, I’m leaving without you!” Santos’ voice calls out from the other side of the parking lot, where she’s bundled up against the cold. She’s in one of Dennis’ winter coats, one she’d probably stolen after hers had gotten doused in cheap beer the last time their team had gone out together, and some under 21 frat bro tripped into her. Dennis had gotten so mad on her behalf, Robby’d gotten hot under the collar.
Dennis rolls his eyes, shouting that he’s on his way, the light and love in his eyes evident when Robby catches them again. “I’ll see you at the bar, Robby. I better go before she strangles me or attempts to pawn me off to our landlord to catch the rats stalking our dumpster.”
Robby laughs, the deep, guttural kind that starts in your stomach. “Okay, okay. I’ll see you soon, Dennis.”