Work Text:
It didn’t take long for Santos to notice that after Whitaker moved in, he never really… moved in. Sure he slept here, and his few depressing bags from the eighth floor were here, but her warning about minding his business and keeping to himself seemed to have had a much more potent effect than she thought. It had been weeks and his dishes hadn’t shown up in the cabinets, his food hadn’t shown up in the fridge, hell his toothbrush hadn’t even shown up in the damn bathroom. Like, was he not brushing his teeth? What was going on there?
Whitaker moved through her apartment like a ghost, the only signs that he lived there a movement in the corner of her eye, a chair out of place, or the occasional light being switched on and off. It was bizarre, and frankly she was too nosy for this shit so after some investigating (read: snooping through his room) she figured out he just truly had nothing. Yeah, he was keeping his toothbrush and some clothes haphazardly packed in his suitcases, but other than that he just. had. nothing. The fact that his suitcases were still packed told Santos everything she needed to know, and frankly it was just depressing. That’s why it was so painfully obvious when things started to change.
· · • • • ✤ • • • · ·
The first thing that showed up was practical, of course, a cup with Whitaker’s toothbrush and toothpaste a few weeks after he moved in. The occasional leftovers in the fridge, which looked suspiciously like the sandwiches from the patient cart, were even less obvious and only stuck out because Whitaker had been so meticulous his first few weeks living there. The real shock came when an otherwise inconspicuous polaroid showed up taped among her other pictures on the fridge.
It was a simple, slightly blurry picture of the students with their residents and attendings: Javadi, Whitaker, Santos and Samira all squished into a booth with Dana, Robby, Mel and Abbot standing behind them, Robby’s hand on Dennis’s shoulder as they smile at the camera. Santos is shocked it made it onto the fridge. She remembers taking this picture, how Javadi had sheepishly asked a passerby if he would take it for them on her polaroid; it had seemed like she really wanted it.
Santos wonders if Javadi had noticed the same strange ghostly behaviors in Whitaker, how he seems to think their friendships and experiences in the Pitt are temporary, something that will slip away, and decided that he needed a reminder that they were in this together as friends. Whatever. She doesn’t mention it but it makes her smile, seeing something finally make it out of his suitcase.
The next item was more specific to Whitaker’s personality, and honestly knowing his budget Santos has no idea how the little fucker was even able to afford a brand new CD player with a matching stack of weird CDs. There was everything from his bizarre vintage funk to country oldies to alternative and weird dad rock from the eighties and nineties. Who knows how he started listening to some of that stuff, but it was neatly stacked in the once empty shelf below their TV below her own “film bro” movies.
This new acquisition came with a change in behavior. Whitaker began sitting in the living room to study, quietly singing or tapping along with the music as he highlighted and annotated his medical textbooks, occasionally texting some mysterious person on his phone.
It was comforting to see him settling in, not that she would ever admit that to him. His squirrely behavior tended to put her on edge, a clear clashing of how their past traumas had affected their behaviors and reactions. This (slightly) more relaxed Whitaker enabled her to feel a lot more comfortable in her own home, like she didn’t have to walk on eggshells to preserve a cold and dangerous silence.
(Further snooping in Whitaker’s room proved that it was, as of yet, undecorated making the unnecessary and impractical CD player an even more baffling choice. Everything else was sentimental or practical, so why did he have that?)
After this strange addition the changes happened more rapidly, a tea kettle and mugs popped up in the kitchen and, after a few days of apparent agonizing, teabags populated the cabinets. This seemed to be some kind of test, because when she didn’t use any Whitaker slowly started stocking up on cheap ramen and a frankly alarming amount of canned tuna.
Shabby size nine sneakers show up on their shoe rack, only to be rapidly replaced by the easily cleaned and highly coveted Clove sneakers. Whitaker-sized hoodies and coats appear on the coat rack while decidedly not Whitaker-sized hoodies begin to hide amongst their blankets and poke out from under the pillows on his bed, like he’s trying to hide that he finds comfort in someone else's clothes, their scent.
And don’t get her started on scents, dear lord, their apartment was absolutely covered in candles now. New ones populated corners of counters (kitchen and bathroom), the island, and the coffee table while an odd collection of half burnt candles seem to become a cast of rotating characters in Whitaker's room, as if he and some strange entity are playing the world's slowest game of hot potato. As weird as this is, it's nice to see that he must be making an effort with at least one other person in his life, and that this effort extends to Trinity herself with newly instated roommate movie nights and his newfound ability to stay out drinking longer than an hour.
· · • • • ✤ • • • · ·
Trinity’s final time snooping through Dennis’s room (at least without knocking) happens months after he moves in and, by this point, she and Dennis are close enough for her to understand why it took him so long to actually unpack his life into their apartment. His constant state of financial distress and transient lifestyle had led to a feeling that nothing was permanent; not his friendships with the others who suffered through Pittfest, not his room in their apartment, and most certainly not his place in the Pitt itself.
But life had changed, and so had Dennis. He knew that his room would always be open to him, that his friendships were strong and long lasting, and his good fortune on Match Day had ensured a long term spot back in the Pitt. (The very same night that he accepted his residency he and Trinity split a bottle of wine and gave each other drunken celebration haircuts.) So Trinity thought that this was it, that Dennis had physically and emotionally unpacked and moved into her life, which is why it was so surprising when something new popped up in their home.
The change was inconspicuous when she first walked in, a simple pair of size 11 Cloves and a suspiciously familiar zip-up in their mudroom. A new Radiohead CD played quietly in the living room, a nice change of pace from the funk and folk that Dennis tended to listen to. There was also the usual murmur of voices coming from Dennis’s room, indicating he was watching TV while he waited for her to get home and decide on dinner.
Trinity didn’t think anything of it when she barged in without knocking, Dennis hadn’t changed anything in their apartment or complimentary routines in months. But maybe she should have knocked because Dennis had acquired something new. There on the floor was a messy collection of clothes carelessly discarded in Whitaker’s usually immaculate space. And on the bed? A smug Dr. Robby, casually flipping through a newspaper while Whitaker hides his face in a pillow.