Chapter Text
Dennis’s hand shakes as he raises it to ring Dr. Robby’s doorbell. It feels intensely strange to be standing on his attending’s doorstep. Their shift ended less than 2 hours ago, but it feels like Dennis hadn’t seen Dr. Robby in a decade. He has no clue how he’s going to survive the three months of Dr. Robby’s sabbatical alone.
When Dennis agreed to house-sit, he hadn’t thought about how awkward it would be to go through the motions of exchanging contact information, keys, even Dr. Robby’s alarm code. To be honest, Dennis hadn’t actually thought about much of anything. First, his only thought was, I’m going to see where Dr. Robby sleeps. Yeah, not creepy at all. Then, after Dr. Robby’s comment about not coming back… the thoughts turned darker. Torn between perverse curiosity and dread, awkwardness hadn’t even been on his radar.
Dennis shakes his head, trying to forcefully rid himself of his thoughts. He looks down at his phone, noticing nearly five minutes have gone by. Dennis rings the doorbell again, receiving no answer.
Feeling a bit slimy but even more unnerved, Dennis tries the door. Unlocked. Anxiety rises in his chest as Dennis steps inside, recalling his time sleeping rough, how he heard whispers of the people around him finding shelter, cash, warm bodies in unlocked homes. He locks the front door behind himself, just in case.
Dennis had expected Robby's place to be a complete mess, imagining the older man coming home to shed his controlling persona like snake’s skin. Dennis had pictured his broad shoulders drooping in relaxation, the tenseness fading from his temples as Robby kicked his shoes off haphazardly and threw his hoodie over some chair or another. Envisioned the strong, vast expanse of Robby’s back sinking into overstuffed cushions as he propped his feet up on a coffee table, competent hands searching for a lost remote beneath a pile of throw pillows and worn blankets.
But no, this is nothing like that.
For one thing, there isn’t even a stray blanket amiss. The couch is a soft cream but the cushions are stiff, not a dent to be seen. The surfaces are nearly spotless: a precise stack of cool, gray marble coasters on the coffee table; a small wooden bowl in the center of the kitchen island, filled with apples that look too shiny to be real. A small shoe rack stands to Dennis’s left, the neatly arranged boots and loafers a far cry from the image that Dennis had conjured in his own mind.
It barely even feels lived-in. Dennis’s heart lurches but he pushes past the feeling, venturing further into the dark apartment. He can hear a repetitive jingle coming from further inside, the grating electronic chime of an alarm left to cycle through for too long.
Dennis follows the sound like a homing beacon, heart in his throat. He isn’t sure what he expected, but the sight of Dr. Robby on the floor of his bathroom, scrubbing at the grout between two tiles like it had personally offended him, was not it.
“Hey, Dr. Robby,” Dennis murmurs, trying not to startle the man.
Apparently, the consideration was for nothing. Robby barely reacts, shoulders tensing only minutely as he continues his task. The alarm blares from his phone, sitting face-up less than a foot away. Well within reach.
“Almost done,” Robby mumbles. He glances at his phone, shaking his head. “Supposed to be done,” he tacks on, like he’s talking to himself.
“Can I-“ Dennis starts to reach for Robby’s phone, just to silence the alarm. It’s overwhelming Dennis already, loud and repetitive; he’s not sure how Robby can stand it.
“No,” Robby says harshly, not quite a shout. “No, I’m almost done. I should be done, by now.”
Dennis pulls back, straightens up to lean against the door frame.
“O…k?” Dennis says, uncertain. He’s pretty damn confused, but who is he to question Robby in his own home, right?
So, Dennis lets himself observe Robby as the other man continues his cleaning. It looks like he’s been doing this for a while, likely since their shift ended over two hours ago. His hands are red and a bit cracked around the knuckles, and the cloying smell of bleach permeates the small room. The grout Robby’s scrubbing looks pretty clean, from Dennis’s point of view, but maybe Robby sees something from the floor that Dennis can’t from so far away. That’s what Dennis tells himself, at least, as the alarm continues blaring and Robby looks no closer to being “done” than when Dennis opened his front door.
After an unseen eternity, marked only by the ever-increasing volume of the alarm, Dennis’s resolve breaks. He bends down, snatches Robby’s phone before Robby can even process what’s happened, and shuts the alarm off.
Dennis doesn’t even get a moment of restful silence before Robby is shouting.
“What the hell?”
“It was-“
“No! No, I wasn’t done, Whitaker, you can’t, it isn’t done yet!” Robby shouts, face reddening with anger even as panic overcomes his features.
“It looks good to me,” Dennis starts again, but he can barely get the words out before Robby interrupts him again.
“It’s not done!”
/ / /
Robby tries to get his breathing under control, but it feels impossible against the thudding of his heart and the loudness of his own hitching breaths in his ears. Why isn’t this working? Why was nothing he did ever enough? He was supposed to be in control.
The blare of the alarm is still ringing in his ears, despite his phone being held aloft by Whitaker. Dennis fucking Whitaker, his one and only (at least, so he tells himself) weak spot, who is standing in his bathroom doorway. In his apartment. Fuck. This.
Words catch in Robby’s throat as his hands flutter in the air, halfway between reaching for his phone and giving into the urge to scrub the rest of the grout. It was almost done, it was almost clean. His knuckles itch. His eyes are stinging with bleach fumes and unshed tears.
“Dr. Robby, I-I’m not sure I understand what’s going on,” Dennis admits, his big eyes looking wider and sadder than usual. Fuck.
This wasn’t supposed to have happened. Robby was supposed to get home from his shift, take a shower and clean himself up, then give Dennis his spare key and get on the road. It’s just, Robby had seen some grime between the tiles, and he didn’t want to leave Dennis with a bigger mess than he already has.
But they had a plan, and here Robby was, fucking it all up. He should’ve put the spare key in the mailbox, he shouldn’t have lingered. He shouldn’t stupidly, selfishly want to see Dennis one last time.
“Dr. Robby?” Dennis asks, and Robby snaps back into the present. Right, Dennis. In his house. Hence, fucking it all up.
“I’m fine, kid, just,” Robby pauses, looking for an excuse for how Dennis found him. “Maybe won’t be able to give you the Grand Tour tonight, after all. You can find your way back out, right?” His voice comes out hollow, the cloak of exaggerated bravado not quite concealing its hoarseness.
Dennis’s face twists into a pissed-off scowl that Robby is actually shocked to see pointed in his own direction for once, Dennis’s arms coming up to cross over his chest. Robby’s stomach lurches as he notices how tight Dennis’s shirt is for the first time, the simple black cotton stretching across his biceps. There’s a small tear in the thin fabric across his left bicep that widens at the movement. Robby’s fingers twitch toward the floor, seeking out the microfiber towel. It’s soaked through and the texture makes him cringe.
“I’m not leaving,” Dennis says simply. Robby’s phone is still cradled in his hand, and the way he taps it against his arm gives away Dennis’s discomfort.
Discomfort that Robby is making him feel.
“Just go, kid, get a drink with Santos, or something. Have fun. I’ll be fine,” Robby reassures Dennis. He leans down to squint at the grout again, eyes zeroing in on the spot he’d been abusing before. He’s almost done.
This isn’t Robby’s first brush with losing control; he has a system. He keeps his apartment in perfect shape, cleaning it top to bottom at least once a week despite not having company in months. He’s eaten the same three things for dinner every night post-shift for years, balancing vitamins and carbs and protein as if it didn’t all taste like ash. He never let himself drink more than four fingers of whiskey a night, no matter how hard those fingers shook, how many names and faces lurked like ghosts in the back of his mind. Robby was in control.
So why was he slipping now?
Robby knows the answer. It’s standing right in front of him. It haunts him nearly every day, and now it’s followed him home.
“Dr. Robby, I’m staying,” Dennis says. It sounds firm, final, if not a bit unsure. “I can help, ok? I can help you fix this.”
“I wish it could be easy,” Robby sighs, exhaustion loosening his lips. Dennis has already found him manically scrubbing at his bathroom floor before what was supposed to be a simple, selfish, not alarming at all goodbye. The look in Dennis’s eye proves this is just another failure on Robby’s part. What else does he have to lose? So, Robby continues, “I wish I could just… be forgiven.”
“You can be.”
It sounds so easy, from Dennis’s lips. Robby knows better.
“I can’t, Whitaker,” Robby asserts, wishing he could show Dennis just how impossible it was. Robby had tried everything. He’d performed teshuvah in every way he’d learned how; reciting Selichot until his voice gave out, fasting for days on end, visiting the river and chucking breadcrumbs into the murky depths like there was enough water on earth to wash his mistakes away.
“Yes, you can.” Dennis sounds certain, unwavering. Robby can’t help but be a bit in awe with the younger man, unflinching in the face of Robby’s mess.
Dennis pushes himself up from where he was leaning against the doorway, broadening his stance a bit as he straightens to his full height. It’s not intimidating, despite Robby still sitting beneath him. Dennis isn’t threatening, and it’s not just the fact that he stands a mere 5’7”. He’s strong, sure, wielding a sturdiness that only comes from a lifetime of hard work. Robby knows this, yet he still feels no fear.
What he does feel, though, is far worse. Self-hatred, disgust, and traitorous arousal mix in his gut as Robby looks up at Dennis, and he wrings the sullied towel between his shaking hands. He shouldn’t feel this. Dennis is young—his subordinate—and Robby is a twisted old pervert. His skin crawls like it’s coated with a layer of grime. Maybe he should take the bleach to it, too.
“Robby,” Dennis says, and Robby can’t help but notice the lack of an honorific. No title. No Dr. His heart throws itself against the bony confines of his chest. “Put that down.”
The command jerks through Robby, catching him entirely off-guard. Sure, Dennis is less meek than he was a year ago, but he’s never heard anything like this come out of his mouth.
Still, Robby’s body moves on instinct, letting the towel fall from his grasp. It lands with a sick, wet squelch off to Robby’s right side, but Dennis doesn’t react. If anything, he seems pleased. Robby’s brain stutters, reboots.
“Good,” Dennis murmurs, and Robby feels the last of his control slip through his grasp like the bleach-drenched towel. He feels wild, untethered.
“Kneel.”
Robby’s shock must show on his face, because Dennis’s skin flushed pink from the top of his head to where it disappears beneath his tighthot v-neck. Still, he doesn’t waver. It’s in this moment that Robby remembers, Dennis was almost a priest.
“You want forgiveness, right?” Dennis asks, and Robby feels himself nodding. He does, Robby wants nothing more, except maybe Dennis himself. But he knows better than to even consider that; somehow, salvation seems more realistic. “Then kneel.”
So, Robby does.
It’s not without struggle. The position is unfamiliar to him, both in his personal life and his own religion. It doesn’t help that Robby’s not as young as he used to be; his knees crack beneath him as he shifts from his sprawled position on the floor to settle into a kneel. His lower back is tight and sore from hunching over his bathroom floor for an hour (although, it must have been longer. The timer he’d set had been going off for… who knows how long. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be done. He wasn’t-)
“Good,” Dennis says again, and Robby’s train of thought shudders to a halt. The single word feels like a caress, and Robby’s body sinks back without his assent, his weight coming to rest on his heels.
Robby’s hands clench and release against his thighs, antsy and anxious without a task to ground them. He feels the skin break on the knuckle of his middle right finger, the bleach having dried it out like sun-split leather. The sting barely registers against the emotion swelling in his chest.
“None of that,” Dennis hums, gesturing down to Robby’s hands. “Palms down on your thighs, or clasp them together in your lap.”
Robby complies, right hand coming to rest atop his left, forearms against his legs. They clench together so tightly, his tendons twinge.
“Still,” Dennis commands gently, and Robby does. It feels impossible, unfathomable, but his grip releases ever so slightly. “Like that.”
Robby shivers, echoes of his own reassurances to Dennis ringing in his ears. Dennis’s words sound so much more certain than his, despite Robby knowing that his own were more truthful. Dennis deserves the praise, he’d earned it. All Robby has done so far refrain from fidgeting like a toddler. Yet, Robby can’t help but let them wash over him.
“Ok, Robby,” Dennis allows after a moment of stillness, “confess.”
At first, Robby can’t find the words. It seems too insurmountable, to dig through the endless piles of guilt, shame, disgust, here on the cold tile. But then, Dennis moves; reaches out one strong arm to flick off the bathroom light, leaving only the hall light behind him alit. In the doorway, he’s bathed in the dim glow, Robby’s crumpled figure in the shadow beneath him. It feels right, somehow, at his feet. When Dennis nods at him, permission once again granted, Robby finds himself speaking.
“I’m a hypocrite. I’m cruel, and cold, and I hate Dr. Mohan for making the same mistakes I have. For being as weak as I am,” Robby spits, feeling his chest tighten with the panic he berated in one of his most competent doctors only hours ago. Hearing the stuttered, breathless gasps of his own breakdown in Pedes. Talking to farm animals, Frank’s voice spits, nearly as venomous as his own had sounded around the words, mommy issues. And, G-d, Langdon. Robby can’t help but continue.
“I’m a fraud. I told Langdon he let everyone down, but it isn’t true. It’s me. I know what it’s like, to,” Robby’s voice cracks, pinpricks of needles ghosting against the thin skin of his wrists, between his fingers, the crook of his elbow, “to lose control. And I didn’t see it. It’s my fault,” Robby gasps.
Dennis doesn’t speak, so Robby continues. Figures, it’s barely the tip of the iceberg.
“I’m not a good doctor, I lose more patients than I should. More friends,” Adamson’s face flickers behind his eyelids, intubated and pale, and Robby keeps his eyes shut just to linger with the image. Just to see the man again, even like this.
“I’m a failure, in all of the ways that count,” Robby continues, leaning his head forward as the fight seeps out of him. He feels his head brush against the rough denim of Dennis’s jeans, feels the twitch of the younger man’s thigh against his forehead. Can’t find it in himself to pull away.
“I’m sick,” the feeling of Dennis against him punches the words out like antidote draws out poison. “I’m depraved. I want things I can’t have, people. Someone,” Robby confesses, because isn’t that the point of all of this? Confession? Truth? It tastes like bile on his tongue, but he continues nonetheless.
“I want you. I want you in ways I shouldn’t, and I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it. I can’t control it, these thoughts. I can’t control my feelings anymore, not when it comes to you.”
Robby can hear Dennis’s breath hitch above him, but he barrels on. It’s barely a comfort that he knows Dennis has been trained for things like this, in seminary. Robby remembers Abbot telling him, once, that you could confess to murder and a priest still couldn’t tell anyone. But that doesn’t mean Dennis approves—the opposite, likely, given the whole Catholicism of it all. Oh, well. There are bigger things to hate Robby for.
“I miss you even when you’re next to me, I want to touch you all of the time. Not just on the shoulders, not just like I already do. I want you to rely on me, to need me. I want to matter to you,” Robby sobs, pressing his forehead further into Dennis’s thigh like it’ll transfer the rotten thoughts from his mind into the purification of the man above him.
Robby thinks of the motorcycle in his driveway, the spare key on his counter. The real reason Dennis is even in his home, tonight. “And I’m just so tired.”
When Dennis seems to realize Robby has run out of things to say, words to translate his traitorous thoughts into, he speaks.
“Look up,” Dennis’s voice comes, soft but strong in its command.
Robby feels small like this, in more ways than one.
The feeling only grows when Dennis’s hand comes down to cradle Robby’s chin, forefinger curved just above Robby’s Adam’s apple, thumb in the hollow beneath his jaw. Some half-baked metaphor tugs at the back of his mind—something about apples, sins, Heaven. Robby pushes it away and lets himself feel held.
“I said look up, Robby,” Dennis repeats calmly. The smallest iota of pressure tilts Robby’s chin up, and he goes without protest.
Robby’s eyes flicker up on instinct more than anything. He feels drawn to respond, a puppet dangling limply by abandoned strings until Dennis hoisted them up.
Fighting to keep his eyes open, Robby’s blurry vision finally lands on Dennis. His eyes: a deep, serene blue, but churning with an ocean of unreadability. His hair: backlit by the overhead lighting in Robby’s hallway, glowing gold like a halo. An angel on earth, yet somehow not Fallen.
“I’m sorry,” Robby says, his voice coming out in an embarrassing croak. The words sit like a bird between Robby’s teeth, prone and barely twitching, the fight gone out of it. An offering.
It’s the only thing he has left to say; the rest of his soul lies bare in the inches of empty space between Dennis’s body and his own.
“You’re forgiven.”
Dennis absolves him easily, two mere words against a tidal wave of wrong. He’s so certain that it feels like another command, another order Robby has no choice but to allow himself to follow.
Robby breaks. His head is still held in Dennis’s palm, his neck just barely straining as the rest of his weight drops heavily to the floor. It feels like every muscle in his body has relaxed at once, like the best high he’s ever had with none of the paranoia. A harsh breath punches out of him, nearly loud enough to be a response.
Robby wonders if Dennis can hear the relief in it, if it sounds enough like amen.