Chapter Text
Dennis spots him before he even enters the cafe, tall and curly-haired and lost looking. The man walks past the tall windows that line the front of the cafe before he gets to the door and comes in.
“You open?” He asks, looking around the fully empty tables.
Dennis smiles and nods, grabbing a menu as he waves an arm expansively. “Take a seat anywhere.”
The customer slides into a table under the watercolor portrait of a flying hamburger and politely says thank you when Dennis comes back with a water and takes his order, just a plate of fries.
“If you’re not too busy,” he asks, “you mind sitting? If that’s alright.” He looks up from his seat with big dark eyes that make Dennis nod before considering another option. If the manager comes by, she’ll get upset, but they’re in the late afternoon quiet before dinner. He figures it will be fine enough.
“I’m Dennis,” he introduces himself as he takes the spot across from the handsome stranger.
“Jack Abbot,” he says back, and extends a hand for a sturdy handshake.
Dennis pulls his hand back when Jack lets go, but his eyes stay trained on the other man’s strong forearms. “What brings you to town? I know I haven’t seen you here before.”
Jack smiles with just the corner of his mouth. “You’d remember if I had been?”
Dennis’s eyes flick up and down over the man and he nods. “Probably.”
“Taking care of some business before I start basic training. I’ve got a flight out to California at midnight.”
Dennis’s face falls, his gaze going from appreciative to something soft. “Big day, then.”
“I'm glad I'm spending some of it with you.” Jack looks at him with an intensity that makes him believe the words as more than just a cheesy line.
He’s older than Dennis- not by much, but enough that he’s certainly got a job and a life already. “Can I ask what you did before?”
“Easy. I’m a doctor, just finished residency, that’s-”
Dennis nods quickly. “I know what that is, I’m a med student.”
“No shit. What year?”
“Fourth, I’m doing a sub-I at Cook County General.”
Jack’s eyes light up with interest and he’s about to ask something when a bell rings at the kitchen window, calling Dennis away to grab the fries in the window. He sighs and pushes up from the table and knows that Jack is watching him as he walks over and back with the plate, but before he can sit back down, the front door opens.
“Sorry, I’ve got to-” he points at the family.
“Of course, of course.”
Dennis pauses for a moment, his hand lingering on the back of the chair he’d been in just a minute ago. “If you've got more time, I'm off in twenty minutes, I can show you somewhere nice nearby.”
Jack nods and leans back, his gaze still so heavy on Dennis’s face. “Works for me.”
Dennis leads Jack to a pier overlooking the lake not too far from the cafe.
“Are you supposed to be here?” Jack asks as Dennis reaches through the fence to open the gate through the other side.
“They would have upped their security by now if it was a problem,” he says. He found this place months back when he’d been too stressed to go back to the house and wandered til he ended up in the half-empty parking lot for the pier. Nobody ever looked twice at him, even when he let himself in, so he simply never quit. “So if you don’t live here, how’d you end up in Chicago?”
“I grew up here. My mom, she died when I was a resident.” Jack says the line smoothly like it doesn’t bother him, but Dennis has seen enough people grieving at the hospital to doubt that. He reaches out to slip his hand into Jack’s and gives it a squeeze. Jack doesn’t react to his touch, but he doesn’t pull away, either. “All her stuff got put into a storage unit afterwards, and it was time to empty it. Sold some of it, got goodwill to take the rest.” He tugged on the strap of his bag with his free hand. “Kept a bit, but I travel light, and the rest of my stuff is in storage now, too.”
Dennis nods. “I hear that. I came out here for med school and just have what I could carry with me. It’s kind of nice?” It certainly is convenient when he bounces from house to house, living with a series of roommates until he finds cheaper rent somewhere else pre-furnished.
They walk along the boardwalk until they find an empty pier, and Dennis takes a seat at the edge and lets his feet hang off. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get back in time for your flight,” he says with a smile as he looks up at a still-standing Jack.
Jack nods and takes the spot next to him.
“Besides, I have a shift at the hospital in the morning. I need sleep at some point.”
Jack furrows his brow over at Dennis. “Waiting tables on the side of being an MS4 seems like alot.”
“I need the money. Loans only go so far, you know?”
“Your family helping at all?”
He thinks of blessings and prayers and cold nights in the barn, and it makes him shiver in the warm air. “No, they got me through undergrad, but I, uh. Bolted, once I got into med school.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “It’s better that we don’t talk, these days.”
“Sounds hard,” Jack answers, and leans over to bump his shoulder against Dennis’s gently. When he doesn't know how to say anything else because it is hard and there's nothing to be done, he's glad that Jack doesn't try to fill the conversation yet, he just stays leaned against him.
The sun dips as they talk, the sky lighting up orange-red as Jack fills him in about his first Mardi Gras in New Orleans as an intern, and Dennis tries to make his internal medicine rotation sound impressive. Eventually, Jack looks down at his watch and sighs. “Time’s up.”
As Dennis pushes himself back from the edge to stand, he’s stopped by a tug from his left foot. “Fuck,” he mutters, and leans forward to see what’s wrong. He had kicked his foot into a fishing net wrapped around the wooden beam under the pier, his shoelaces and the plastic strings all tangled together.
“Hmm?” Jack asks, and his face is suddenly next to Dennis's, looking down at the mess. “I got it.” He reaches into his backpack’s front pocket and pulls out a folding knife. He swings the blade out with a practiced ease and leans across him to start cutting away at the net.
Dennis watches with wide eyes, and his arm is in the way so he places it lightly on Jack’s back as the other man plucks at each strand of dirt-caked plastic, his forearm muscles on display.
“You didn’t notice?” Jack asks, calm as he pulls the net away and then cuts a few last strands.
It takes a second for Dennis to find his voice, his mind still focused too much on Jack’s arms, on how easily Jack had just pushed into Dennis’s space, on Jack. “Guess I was distracted,” he says softly.
Jack sits back up and looks him in the eye with a smirk in the corner of his mouth. “All better. Let’s go.” He folds the knife back into the handle and pushes it into his pocket before he stands and then puts his hand out to help Dennis up.
“You just keep that with you?” He asks, his eyes once again on Jack’s arm even though he’s on his own two feet now and Jack lets go.
“Always do. Here,” he pulls the knife back out, and extends it to Dennis. “You keep it.”
“I couldn’t,” he answers immediately, his hands in front of him gesturing no back and forth.
“You should.” Jack takes one of Dennis’s hands and gently turns it palm up, coaxing it to open.
The knife is cool against his palm when Jack places it there and he closes his hand around it because Jack is looking at him again, nodding a little to encourage him. “If you insist.”
“I have more. But it came in handy for my residency.”
It’s nearly full dark as they head back through the parking lot towards the rest of the city.
“Can I write to you?” Jack asks.
Dennis just blinks at him in slight disbelief. “You really want to?”
“I’ve been told that there will be downtime.” He shakes his head with a smile like he doubts it. “I could take your number, too.”
Jack pulls a notebook from his bag and Dennis writes his address and phone number neat as he can, like his handwriting is a test here.
“They said I could give this out to people, it’ll route your letter my way,” he says and hands back another address on a ripped-out page.
“Anyone else you've got waiting for you? I know you said your mom-”
“I’ve got Michael. We did our residency in New Orleans together, woulda been attendings together probably, but.” He waves a hand as if to gesture at the general state of the world, and Dennis gets it. A med student at County General had joined up in September, too. “So I’ve got my emergency contact.”
“That’s good. And you’ve got… well, me. I guess.”
Up ahead their quiet road joins up with a busier one at a stoplight, and the headlights that rush by illuminate them both.
“Before we get to the road, can I kiss you?” Jack asks.
Dennis nods quickly, and stops to turn towards Jack, who puts a hand under his jaw to gently tilt his face up to meet him. It’s chaste, or close to it, but comfortable. Dennis reaches out to put his hand on Jack’s side, sighing into Jack’s mouth.
A car whizzes by, headed for the pier, and Dennis tenses up even though there’s no need- nobody here knows him, nobody cares, nobody is going to do anything about him kissing a boy. Jack pauses anyway, pulling back.
“All good?” He asks.
He should ask Jack to keep kissing him, explain that his freezing up was a moment of temporary insanity, but instead he smiles and nods and takes his hand off of Jack so they can keep walking towards the road.
The bus stop is just a few blocks down, and they walk in almost-comfortable silence as the cars hurry by.
“I’ll write you,” Dennis promises when his bus arrives, taking him back north, because it was good to meet you feels so formal and so final, but that’s the only other thing he can think to say.
Jack gives him a double thumbs up and Dennis holds onto the loop overhead as the bus pulls away, his eyes focused on the man until he turns a corner and he vanishes from sight.