Work Text:
Robby doesn't realise he's doing it at first.
That's what he tells himself, anyway. That it's just curiosity. That he's just wondering what the appeal is, all this talk about fresh air and honest work and weekends spent with your hands in the dirt. He tells himself this while sitting in his apartment at midnight, still buzzing from a shift that ended six hours ago, his laptop balanced on his knees.
He tells himself this while typing "farms for sale Pennsylvania" into the search bar.
The first page of results is all pristine. Beautiful renovations, soaring barns, farmhouses with wrap-around porches and flower boxes and not a single flake of paint out of place. The kind of places that cost more than Robby's salary and his savings and one of his dead relative’s life insurance combined. The kind of places a person buys when they want a vacation home, when they want to spend their weekends sipping lemonade and pretending to be pastoral.
Robby scoffs at his screen.
He likes to spend his weekends on a farm, Robby thinks, and the thought has teeth. I can have a farm. Much better farm.
He doesn't specify who he is. Doesn't need to. The name sits in his chest like a splinter—Dennis, Dennis, Dennis—every time he thinks about those quiet weekends, those long drives out to God-knows-where, that widow with her dead husband and her infant and her land that apparently needs so much help.
...They probably do, though.
My farm needs a lot of help, Robby amends, and his fingers start moving faster over the keyboard.
He filters out anything under fifty acres. Too small and easy. Filters out anything under $500,000, too expensive, but also too nice. He wants something that looks like it's been actively trying to die for the last decade. Something that requires help. The kind of help a certain Nebraska farm boy with a hero complex and zero sense of self-preservation might not be able to resist.
The listing appears at 12:47 AM.
Sixty-three acres in Washington County, forty-five minutes from the hospital. The price is suspiciously low. The photos are suspiciously dark. The description uses phrases like "fixer-upper" and "great potential" and "needs TLC," which Robby has learned is real estate code for actively collapsing.
The farmhouse stares out from the screen with blank, broken windows. The porch sags in the middle like a tired horse. Something that might be a chicken coop or might be a small shed has fallen entirely sideways, leaning against a tree for support. The barn—massive, gorgeous even in its decay—looms in the background of every shot, its roof patchy with missing shingles, its doors hanging open like a mouth.
It's perfect.
Robby buys it at 1:15 AM without telling anyone. Without looking at it in person. Without a contractor's opinion or a soil test or any of the things a rational person would do before dropping a not-insignificant portion of his savings on a property.
At 1:16 AM, he emails his real estate agent—some poor woman he'd met exactly once at a party two years ago and who is definitely going to hate him by morning—with instructions to expedite.
At 1:20 AM, he opens a new message to Dennis.
The photo attaches easily. Robby stares at it for a long moment, this monument to decay, this trap he's built with his own two hands and his own bruised ego. Then he types:
Michael: Got myself into something stupid. Any chance you know anything about old farms?
He sends it before he can second-guess himself.
Dennis's response arrives at 6:47 AM. Robby sees it the moment he wakes up, blinking at his phone through sleep-crusted eyes, his heart doing something complicated at the contact name on the screen.
Dr. Whitaker.
The message is three paragraphs long.
dr robby what did you DO. that foundation is going to need serious work! look at the crack along the east wall in photo 4. the roof is shot, you can see daylight through the barn's south-facing slope. you're going to need: 1) structural engineer 2) roofing contractor 3) someone to look at the well because if that's original you're drinking rust 4) probably an electrician because that knob-and-tube will kill you 5) did you even get an inspection before you bought this????
i can be there saturday morning. send me the address. also, what the hell, dr robby.
Robby grins at his phone in the dark. It feels like victory. It feels like something else, too, something he's not ready to name, something that sits warm in his chest and refuses to leave.
He types back: Saturday works. Bring coffee.
Dennis arrives at 7:30 AM on Saturday, which Robby knows means he left his apartment—Santos's apartment, technically—before six. He pulls up in a battered pickup truck that Robby has never seen before, something ancient and Ford-shaped, the bed filled with more tools than one person should reasonably own.
Robby's standing on what might generously be called a front porch, coffee in hand, watching Dennis take it all in.
The farm looks worse in daylight, much, much worse. The kind of worse that makes Robby briefly question his own sanity. The porch creaks alarmingly every time he shifts his weight. The front door hangs at an angle that suggests the hinges have given up on life. A family of raccoons has taken up residence in what Robby is choosing to call the "guest cottage" but is actually just a smaller, equally dilapidated building fifty yards from the main house.
Dennis gets out of the truck and just stares.
His mouth is slightly open. His eyes are very wide. He's wearing work boots and jeans with actual dirt on them and a flannel shirt that Robby wants to frame and hang in a museum.
"This is..." Dennis starts.
"Yeah," Robby says.
"This is really..."
"Uh huh."
Dennis turns in a slow circle, taking in the sagging porch, the missing shingles, the barn with its gaping maw, the raccoons peeking out of the guest cottage. When he faces Robby again, his expression is caught somewhere between horror and delight.
"Again, you didn't get an inspection, did you?"
"Nope."
"Dirt test?"
"What would that tell me?"
Dennis laughs. It's a real laugh, surprised out of him, and Robby files the sound away for later. "Oh my God. Okay. Okay, we can work with this. We can definitely work with this. I mean, we're going to have to work really hard with this, but—" He stops, tilts his head. "Wait. Why did you buy a farm?"
Robby has prepared for this question. Has rehearsed approximately seventeen different answers, ranging from plausible to ridiculous. What comes out of his mouth is: "Midlife crisis."
It is half-true.
Dennis accepts this immediately, nodding like it makes perfect sense. "Fair enough. My dad bought a motorcycle when he turned fifty. This is probably safer."
Now he feels offended. "Is it, though?"
Another laugh. Dennis is already walking toward the house, already running his hand along the porch railing, testing its stability. "Definitely not. Okay, so first thing—we need to assess structural integrity before we do anything else. That crack in the foundation I mentioned? If that's serious, everything else is secondary. Then roof, because if we get a bad storm before we fix it, you're going to have water damage on top of everything else. Then—"
Robby stops listening to the words and starts listening to the voice.
This is the problem. Has always been the problem. Dennis could be reading a grocery list and Robby would stand here like an idiot, drinking it in, the earnestness and the competence and the way he cares so much about everything, even this, even a stupid farm Robby bought because he was jealous of a poor, lonely woman.
"—and then we can talk about chickens, if you're serious about that. Were you serious about that?"
Robby blinks. "What?"
"Chickens. You mentioned chickens in your text."
Right. The chickens. The excuse Robby had manufactured to keep Dennis coming back, to give him a reason to keep showing up on weekends, to make this whole deranged scheme feel slightly less deranged.
"Yeah," Robby says. "Chickens. For eggs."
Dennis's face lights up. Actually lights up, like Robby has just offered him the world. "Oh, that's great. That's really great. They're not hard, you just need a good coop and some basic knowledge. I can help you build the coop. My brothers and I built one for our neighbor when I was twelve—it's still standing, last I was..." He pauses. "Wait, is this in your backyard? The coop?"
Robby, who lives in a third-floor apartment with a shared patio space exactly large enough for a small grill and two plastic chairs, looks Dennis dead in the eye.
"Yes."
Dennis squints at him.
"My backyard," Robby clarifies.
"In the city."
"That's the one."
Dennis keeps squinting. Something flickers across his face—confusion, suspicion, the beginnings of understanding—but then it's gone, smoothed over by that relentless optimism, that desperate need to be helpful. "Okay," he says slowly. "Well. I guess we'll figure that out. But first, let's look at this foundation."
He heads toward the side of the house where the crack is, and Robby follows, feeling like he's just gotten away with something. Like Dennis knows, maybe, but is choosing not to say. Like he's giving Robby room to keep his secrets, for now.
They spend the whole weekend there.
Robby had planned for this—brought camping gear, a cooler of food, more coffee than two people could reasonably drink. They sleep in sleeping bags on the floor of what might someday be a living room, the windows covered with plastic sheeting to keep out the worst of the draft, and Robby lies awake listening to Dennis breathe and tries not to think about how right it feels.
By Sunday night, they have a plan.
Dennis has filled an entire notebook with sketches and lists and timelines, his handwriting small and precise, each item numbered and prioritised. He's marked up the real estate photos with arrows and notes. He's identified three immediate dangers (the foundation crack, the roof, and the raccoons) and created a schedule for addressing them.
"We'll need to come back next weekend," Dennis says, packing his truck as the sun starts to set. "I can bring more tools. Someone might have a circular saw I can borrow—they owe me, and we should probably get someone to look at the electrical before we do too much inside, because if that wiring is as old as I think it is—"
"Dennis."
"—you're looking at a fire hazard, really, and I don't want you sleeping here again until we know—"
"Dennis."
He stops, looks up. The setting sun catches his face, paints him gold.
Robby forgets what he was going to say.
"Thank you," he manages. "For this. For... all of this."
Dennis's expression softens into something unbearably gentle. "You don't have to thank me. I like helping. You know that."
"I know."
"And this is—" Dennis gestures at the farm, the barn, the whole glorious disaster. "This is fun. I mean, it's a lot of work, obviously, but it's good work. It's nice to be able to see what you're fixing, you know? In the ER, sometimes you don't know if anything you did mattered. But a house—" He shrugs. "A house, you can watch it get better."
Robby thinks about Dennis sleeping in the hospital, before Santos found out. Thinks about him squatting in an abandoned wing because he had nowhere else to go, because he'd rather be homeless than ask for help. Thinks about how he shows up here, to this disaster Robby created, with notebooks and tools and plans, because someone needs him.
"Yeah," Robby says quietly. "I know what you mean."
They fall into a rhythm.
Weekends at the farm. Dennis arrives Saturday morning, sometimes before Robby, already halfway through some task when Robby pulls up. They work through the day, stopping only to eat whatever Dennis has brought. Sandwiches usually, or things from a slow cooker that he's figured out how to transport without spilling. They work until they can't see, until their hands ache and their backs protest, and then they collapse onto camping chairs by the barn and watch the stars come out.
Dennis talks about Nebraska. About his family's farm, the one he left behind, the one he misses even though he'd never go back. About his brothers and their uncomplicated lives, their uncomplicated relationships with the land, their uncomplicated sense of belonging somewhere.
Robby talks about his parents. About watching them age painfully slow, about the years he spent being helpless, about how he became a doctor because he couldn't bare to see them but maybe he could save someone else. About how sometimes he's not sure it worked.
They fix the foundation first. Then the roof, which takes three weekends and involves Dennis climbing around like a mountain goat while Robby watches from the ground, heart in his throat, shouting useless warnings. They evict the raccoons humanely—Dennis's insistence—and patch the holes they'd used to get in. They rewire the parts of the house that need it most, hire out the rest. They start on the barn, which is bigger and more complicated but also more beautiful, and Robby catches Dennis running his hands over the old wood like he's greeting an old friend.
"You really love this," Robby says one Saturday afternoon. They're sitting on the barn's loft floor, legs dangling over the edge, eating Dennis's sandwiches.
Dennis considers this. "I love this. This specific place. The work of it. But farms in general..." He shrugs. "They're complicated. My family's farm was my whole life for eighteen years, and I couldn't wait to leave. But now—" He looks out at the fields, the ones Robby has no idea what to do with, the ones that are just growing things, apparently, without anyone's help. "Now I miss it. The way things make sense out here. The way you can see the result of your work."
"You could have your own farm someday," Robby says. It comes out casual, like he's not holding his breath.
Dennis laughs. "With what money? I'm a first-year resident. I'll be paying off loans until I'm fifty."
"You could share one with someone."
The words hang in the air. Dennis looks at him, and Robby looks deliberately at the horizon, at the tree line, at anything except those brown eyes that see too much.
"I guess," Dennis says slowly. "If I found the right person."
By month three, the farm is starting to look like something.
The house has a roof that doesn't leak. The foundation has been stabilised. The porch has been rebuilt entirely—Dennis's project, one he'd tackled with an enthusiasm that bordered on religious. The barn's roof is patched, its doors hang straight, and Robby has started thinking about what he might actually do with sixty-three acres of Pennsylvania farmland.
Dennis is there every weekend. Has been there every weekend since that first Saturday, with exactly one exception. A double shift that had left him too exhausted to drive. He'd texted Robby at 6 AM that day, apologizing like he'd committed a crime, and Robby had texted back: Rest. The farm will wait.
It had felt significant, typing those words. The farm. Our farm, almost. The farm they were building together.
The chickens arrive in month four.
Dennis shows up with a cardboard box full of peeping fluff, his face alight with an excitement Robby has rarely seen outside of trauma saves and particularly difficult procedures.
"I couldn't help it," he says, setting the box down in what is now definitely a chicken coop, rebuilt from the ground up with Dennis's careful plans and Robby's less careful labor. "The feed store had them, and they were so small, and I thought—we have the coop now, we have the run, why wait?"
Robby looks into the box. Eight tiny chicks stare back at him, unimpressed.
"What do they eat?"
"I brought food. And I read a book. Actually I read three books. And joined some online forums. We're going to need to supplement their calcium when they start laying, but that's months away, we still have time to figure it out. I never touched my family's chickens, so..."
"You read three books about chickens."
Dennis shrugs, sheepish. "I like to be prepared."
Robby looks at him—at this impossible person, this farm boy who left the farm and then found his way back to one anyway, this resident who spends his precious days off helping his attending physician with a project that makes no sense. This man who reads three books about chickens because Robby mentioned wanting eggs once, months ago, as a cover story.
"I'm going to name them," Robby says.
Dennis grins. "You absolutely are."
"I'm going to name them after nurses who scare me."
"Please do. Dana can be the bossy one. That one—" Dennis points at a particularly assertive chick, already pecking at its siblings. "That one's definitely Dana."
It's month five when Dennis finally asks.
They're sitting on the porch—the new porch, the stable porch, the one with actual chairs and a small table where they sometimes eat dinner. The sun is setting, painting the farm in shades of gold and amber. The chickens are put away for the night, safely locked in their coop. The barn looms in the distance, solid and beautiful, a monument to their work.
Dennis has been quiet all evening. Quieter than usual. Robby's been watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for whatever's coming.
"Why did you really buy this place?"
The question lands soft, like one of Dennis's sutures.
Robby considers lying. He's good at lying, has spent decades perfecting it, building walls around the vulnerable parts of himself. But Dennis is looking at him with those eyes, those impossibly gentle eyes, and Robby is so tired of walls.
"I was jealous," he says.
Dennis blinks. "Of... the farm?"
"No." Robby takes a breath and lets it out. "Of her. The one you've been helping. Amy."
The silence stretches. Robby can't look at him, can't watch the realisation dawn, so he stares at the barn instead, at the roof they fixed together, at the doors they straightened.
"I heard about it," Robby continues, because once he's started, he can't seem to stop. "Well. Santos and I had a conversation. About you spending your weekends on a farm. Playing house with a widow. And I thought—" He laughs, humorless. "I thought, he likes farms. He likes helping. He likes fixing things. I can give him that. I can give him a farm that needs more help than hers ever did. I can give him a project. Something that requires him. Something that... keeps him coming back."
"Dennis has been spending time on a farm" isn't something Dennis has ever mentioned, and Robby realises now that he should have asked and talked to him like an actual adult instead of building this whole elaborate scheme.
"You bought a farm," Dennis says slowly, "because you were jealous of her."
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me."
"No."
"You just... let me come out here every weekend. Let me fix your porch and patch your roof and build you a chicken coop. Let me read three books about chickens."
"Yes."
More silence. Robby forces himself to look at Dennis, to face whatever's coming. Anger, probably. Or disgust. Or that particular look of disappointment that Dennis wears so rarely but that always, always cuts deeper than any shout.
Dennis is smiling.
A small smile, confused around the edges, but genuine. "Robby. You bought a farm."
"I'm aware."
"Sixty-three acres. In Pennsylvania. A whole farm."
"I was there. I signed the papers."
"Because you wanted me to spend time with you."
Robby's throat tightens. "That's not—I mean, yes, but it's not—" He stops. Tries again. "It's not just that. I wanted to be with you. I wanted—" The words stick, barbed and difficult. "I wanted you to choose me. To choose spending time with me. And I heard about the farm, and the widow, and I thought—he's choosing her. He's choosing that. A dead man's wife and a dead man's farm and a life I can't give him."
Dennis is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is soft. "I'm not dating Amy."
"I know that now."
"I was helping her. Because her husband died, and she had a baby, and I know how hard farms are. I know what it's like to lose someone and still have to wake up at 4 AM to milk cows. That's all it was. Helping."
"I know."
"She's not—" Dennis gestures vaguely. "She's not you. She's not who I want to spend my weekends with."
Robby's heart stutters. "Dennis."
"I come here every weekend because I want to. Because you asked me to. Because—" He stops, looks away, and Robby watches his throat move as he swallows. "Because I'd follow you anywhere, Robby. You know that. You have to know that."
The confession hangs between them, fragile and enormous.
Robby thinks about all the weekends. All the sandwiches. All the hours spent side by side, fixing things, building things, making something new out of something broken. He thinks about Dennis sleeping on his living room floor, about the way he looks in the morning light, about the chickens named after nurses and the barn that stands straight and the porch that doesn't creak anymore.
"I didn't know," Robby says. "I hoped. But I didn't know."
Dennis turns back to him. His eyes are bright, wet, impossibly open. "I thought you just wanted a friend. A project manager. Someone to help with your midlife crisis farm."
"My midlife crisis was you," Robby admits. "Has been you. Since—" He laughs, helpless. "Since you found me in Pedes. Since you talked me down. Since you looked at me like I was worth saving."
"That was my first day."
"I know."
"You were having a panic attack and I was covered in someone's blood and you still—" Dennis shakes his head. "You still made me feel like I mattered. Like I could do this. Like I belonged there."
"You do belong there."
"In the ER?"
"In my life." The words come easier now, once they've started. "You belong in my life, Dennis. That's what this was. All of this. I didn't know how to tell you, so I built you a farm instead."
"It's not my farm."
"It could be." Robby reaches out, slow enough that Dennis could pull away. He doesn't. Robby's hand lands on his, warm and calloused and real. "It could be ours. If you want it. If you want—"
Dennis kisses him.
It's not graceful—they're both angled wrong, and the porch chairs aren't made for this, and Dennis's nose bumps against Robby's cheek on the way in. But it's warm, and it's real, and it's everything Robby has been too afraid to want for the last year and a half.
When they break apart, Dennis is laughing. Actual laughter, bright and surprised and wonderful.
"I can't believe you bought a farm," he says.
"I can't believe you read three books about chickens."
"I can't believe you named them after our murses."
"I can't believe you're here."
Dennis looks at him like he's seeing Robby for the first time. And judging by his reaction, he likes what he sees.
"I'm here," he agrees. "I'm not going anywhere."
They lie down under the tree an hour later.
It's an old oak, massive and gnarled, standing sentinel over what will someday be a garden. They've talked about the garden—what to plant, when to start, how to keep the chickens out of it. Another project. Another thing to build together.
The grass is cool beneath them. The sky is going purple at the edges, the first stars just beginning to show. Dennis's head rests on Robby's shoulder, his body warm along Robby's side, and Robby thinks he might die from the rightness of it.
"We should probably go inside," Dennis murmurs. "Before it gets dark."
"In a minute."
"You always say that."
"Because I always mean it."
Dennis laughs softly, his breath warm against Robby's neck. They lie there in the growing dark, listening to the crickets start up, to the distant sound of the chickens settling in their coop, to the quiet creak of the barn settling into night.
Robby thinks about the months behind them. The work, the patience, the careful building of something neither of them had dared to name. He thinks about the months ahead—more work, more patience, more building. A garden, maybe. More chickens. A real kitchen, so Dennis can cook more than just things from a slow cooler. A bedroom with an actual bed, so they don't have to keep sleeping on the floor.
"Hey," Robby says.
"Mmm?"
"I love you."
The words fall into the quiet like stones into still water. Robby feels Dennis go still against him, feels the breath catch in that warm chest.
Then Dennis is moving, shifting up, looking down at him with those impossible eyes. The last light catches his face, paints him in shades of dusk.
"Say it again," Dennis whispers.
Robby reaches up, cups his jaw, runs his thumb along that cheekbone he's been wanting to touch for months. "I love you. I bought a farm for you. I'd buy a hundred farms for you. I'd—"
Dennis kisses him again, and this time it's better. A promise.
When they break apart, Dennis is smiling. That smile, the real one, the one that reaches his eyes and makes him look like the sun.
"I love you too," he says. "For the record. In case that wasn't clear."
"It was clear."
"Good." Dennis settles back down against him, head on his shoulder, hand on his chest. "So what do we do now?"
Robby looks at the farm—their farm, theirs now, built by their hands and their patience and their ridiculous, stubborn love. He looks at the barn, the coop, the house with its new roof and its straight porch. He looks at the man in his arms, the one who followed him here without question, the one who read three books about chickens and never once asked why.
"We keep going," he says. "We keep building. We see what happens."
Dennis hums agreement, already half-asleep. "That sounds good."
The stars come out fully. The crickets sing. Somewhere in the coop, one of the chickens makes a soft, sleepy sound.
Robby holds Dennis in the dark and thinks about the year ahead. About all the weekends. About all the work. About all the quiet evenings under this tree, watching the sun set over the farm they're building together.
It's not what he planned. None of this is what he planned. The jealousy, the impulse buy, the slow and careful construction of a life around a man who didn't even know he was being courted.
But lying here, with Dennis warm against him and the farm quiet around them, Robby can't imagine it any other way.
They wake to dew and stiff backs and chickens making an unholy racket.
Dennis groans, pressing his face into Robby's shoulder. "What time is it?"
"No idea."
"Why are we outside?"
"We fell asleep."
"Under a tree."
"Yes."
Dennis lifts his head, blinks at the farm in the early light. The barn, golden in the sunrise. The coop, full of demanding birds. The house, waiting for them.
"Huh," he says.
Robby looks at him. At the sleep in his eyes, the grass in his hair, the small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"Good morning," Robby says.
Dennis looks at him. Really looks, like he's still surprised to find Robby here, like he's still marveling at the impossibility of it.
"Good morning," he says. Then, softer. "I love you."
Robby's heart does something complicated and wonderful. "I love you too."
They lie there a moment longer, in the dew and the morning light and the impossible reality of each other. Then the chickens scream again, and Dennis laughs, and they both get up to face the day.
Few months later, the farm has more chickens (eight, plus two new ones Dennis brought home without warning) and a garden (tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and something Dennis calls "experimental squash") and a kitchen that actually functions. The house has a bedroom with an actual bed, though they still fall asleep on the floor sometimes, too tired from the day's work to make it that far. The barn has a loft that Dennis has started talking about converting into something, though he won't say what.
Amy visits once, with her baby and her own rebuilt life. She walks the property with Dennis while Robby watches from the porch, trying not to hover. They talk for a long time, heads bent together, and when they're done, Amy hugs Dennis and waves at Robby and drives away.
"She's doing okay," Dennis reports that night. "She has another friend. A veterinarian, actually. He helped her with a sick cow and somehow that turned into coffee and then dinner and then—" He shrugs. "She seems happy."
"I'm glad."
"Me too." Dennis leans into him on the porch swing—the porch swing they built together, from Dennis's plans and Robby's slightly-less-terrible carpentry. "She said something interesting, though."
"What's that?"
"She said—" Dennis hesitates. "She said she always knew I was in love with someone else. Back when I was helping her. She said I talked about you constantly. About Dr. Robinavitch this and Dr. Robinavitch that. She said she was surprised it took us this long to figure it out."
Robby's quiet for a moment. Then, "Everyone knew but us?"
"Apparently."
"Huh."
They swing gently, watching the sunset paint their farm in shades of gold.
"I'm glad you bought this place," Dennis says eventually. "Even if it was for stupid reasons."
"It wasn't stupid."
"It was a little stupid."
"Okay, it was a little stupid." Robby presses a kiss to the top of his head. "But it worked."
Dennis tilts his face up, smiling. "It worked."
They watch the sun finish its descent, and the stars start to appear, and the chickens settle into their coop for the night. The farm settles around them, solid and real and theirs.
Robby thinks about jealousy, about impulse, about the strange and winding paths that lead people to each other. He thinks about Dennis in that supply closet, Dennis on this porch, Dennis under the oak tree saying I'd follow you anywhere.
He thinks about all the weekends ahead. All the work. All the quiet evenings.
"Hey," he says.
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For following me here."
Dennis smiles against his shoulder shyly. "Thanks for building someplace worth following to."