Work Text:
If you were to ask any of the staff at PTMC, they'd tell you that Dennis is Robby's favourite. That much is obvious, between the constant touching, and the constant praise, it wasn't that hard to figure out. But what nobody seemed to notice was the matching chains hidden under the shirts, how an outline of a ring may or may not be hanging from said chains. All they knew was that something was going on between the two men, and that acted as a catalyst for rumours.
1
Before anyone in the ED decides there's a possibility that Robby and Dennis together, the prevailing theory is that they used to be. It makes sense really, because there is simply no heterosexual explanation for the way they are fine with sharing the same coffee cup, or how they can communicate full conversations through eye contact, or whatever the hell is happening every time they are trapped in a trauma room together. So, naturally, the department concludes that they are in fact messy exes.
The rumour only seems to solidify after Santos overhears an exchange whilst she's definitely trying to chart
"You never listen to me," Robby says flatly, in that exhausted tone the entire ED has gotten used to.
Dennis, without even looking up from charting replies, "And yet you continue to be obsessed with me."
Robby just shakes his head, sighs and mutters, "Unfortunately."
"Sounds like a you problem."
She attempts to look overly focused at her computer when Robby walks past, before immediately texting the group chat, and boy, did the theory only evolve rapidly from there. Conspires start to fly out; from how they met before Dennis started his residency, to reasons why things ended, or how Robby left Dennis stranded but still yearns over him.
None of this is true.
Well.
Most of it, at least. Because, whilst they did meet before Dennis' residency, at a coffee shop where Robby offered to help him study—cliche, i know—they definitely did not break up. They have the rings and honeymoon pictures to prove it.
The funniest part is that they both catch onto the rumours almost immediately, and instead o correcting anyone, they lean into it.
It's small first, Robby sighing every time Dennis does something annoying, but in a more fond, exhausting way, and vaguely commenting on it being 'muscle memory' if anyone brings it up. Then, Dennis makes slight comments that could be brushed off as normal unless you're one of his crazy co-workers. It's things like muttering "unbelievable" if he catches Robby looking unfairly attractive during a shift, or whispering "You think you know someone" under his breath whilst Robby talks about his new fascination in computer games (games that his husband definitely didn't force him to play one weekend).
By week two, the rumour has become so elaborate that the new med students are actively warned to not ask what happened between them. Robby finds out about this by Dana and very nearly bursts out laughing.
2
The break up rumour lasts about a month before the ED collectively decide there is no way Robby and Dennis are actually exes. Mostly because exes generally try to avoid each other. Meanwhile, the two voluntarily spend their very small and limited breaks together, arrive together in the mornings and stand weirdly close in trauma bays like magnets. Plus, the whole 'exes-turned-coworker' energy gets progressively less convincing when Robby keeps absentminded touching Dennis every chance he gets. Seriously, whether its a hand on his neck, or shoulder, or waist, Robby finds an excuse to touch Dennis and he takes it.
Dana finally says what everyone is thinking after catching Robby brush a piece of hair from Dennis' face without really processing what he did.
"Oh my god,' She says slowly. "You're sleeping together."
Everything feels weirdly silent for a moment, which is impossible for such a chaotic place like the ED. Dennis looks at Robby, who looks back at him. And the, disastrously, they both start to laugh.
That's what seals it. Because if they had denied it immediately, maybe people would have let it go.
Instead, Dennis just leans against the counter, visibly delighted. "What gave it away?"
Dana points at the older man like she's preventing evidence in court. "He just brushed your hair back like a 1950s housewife."
The breakup theory dies pretty quickly after that, and the new theory spreads with frightening spreed. The new theory being that they used to date, but Robby got his infamous '7 week itch', so they broke up and are now trapped in the world's messiest friends-with-benefits situation.
To the others, it explains everything. The tension, the playful bickering, the accidental intimacy, the way Robby looks one minor fuck up way from kissing Dennis senseless at all times.
Nobody considers the possibility that they might just be simply married and in love. Especially because the husbands start to encourage the rumour for their own entertainment.
One morning, Robby leans over Dennis' desk whilst he's charting, taking a sip of the coffee next to the mouse before speaking up. "You can't stay over after shift anymore."
The shorter boy doesn't even question him as he takes the coffee cup, looking up at Robby.
"That sounds emotionally loaded.'
"It sounds like you steal all my blankets."
Princess just happens to be walking past, but physically pauses when she hears Robby's words. Dennis notices this, and decides to double down.
"You said you liked it when i stayed over."
"I said i tolerated it."
"Your exact words were 'don't leave'."
That causes Robby to throw a pen at him and walk away, and Princess scurries away to find Perlah.
The problem is that Robby and Dennis are fundamentally incapable of committing halfway to a bit. So, by week 3, dots are being falsely connected. According to the staff, they only hook up after shifts, keep strict boundaries despite Dennis catching feelings, and Robby is too emotionally unavailable to be in a stable relationship.
The rumour reaches peak absurdity when someone catches Dennis and Robby interact during a night shift swap, when Robby is covering for Abbot. He's passing his own key's to Dennis like its second nature, telling him to sleep well and eat something before he does.
"You gave your hookup a key?" McKay asks, confused but also amused.
Robby just shrugs, cuffing the sleeves of his jacket. "It's casual."
3
Just like the first rumour, the Friends-with-benefits theory dies down after roughly a month, and a new one fades in.
Mostly because people start noticing something deeply concerning: Robby let's Dennis get away with literally anything. It's not your normal attending to resident favouritism. It was worse. He lets Dennis eat messy food at his desk, interrupt him constantly, and even once told him to 'use your indoor voice' when Robby was getting snappy. And Robby never actually gets angry.
Frustrated? Sure.
But never genuinely angry.
Which, frankly, feels less believable than the hookup theory.
The rumour officially starts after Dennis accidentally elbows Robby in the ribs. Whilst trying to get past him in the hallway, and then immediately says; "What are you gonna do? Fire me?"
Robby just sighs, "You know I can't."
They both see a few eyes flick up in their direction, and Dennis has to turn his head away to hide a grin.
"Oh my god. They think im blackmailing you."
After that, things start to deteriorate, like they typically do.
"What does he have on you?" Perlah asks two days later.
"Classified," Robby responds, completely deadpan
That makes Dennis gasp dramatically. God, Robby loved his husband and his stupidly amazing humour.
"You swore you'd never bring it up again."
"You started it."
"You did it."
The nurses' station became so quite you could hear the voices from the chairs.
And so, the blackmail theory spreads through the ED by lunch time. This time they had come to the conclusion that Dennis knows something career ending, helped him cover up said incident and has physical proof he's using as bribery. The truth, however, was that he has seen his husband sobbing over a dog adoption commercial after a double shift, and likes to tease him about it.
However, yet again, Dennis and Robby can't help themselves when they make the decision to stir the pot a little.
"You can't keep threatening me like this," Robby huffs out one morning, handing Dennis a freshly made coffee.
Dennis just leans back in his chair with a shit-eating grin. "Yet here we are."
"You're a parasite."
"And you admire it, Dr Robby."
A med student later tells Langdon she thinks Dennis must know where Robby buried a body.
Then at one point, someone directly asks Dennis what he has on Robby. He pauses to think for half a second before he answers.
"He signed a legally binding document without reading the fine print."
Which is technically true, just not in the way anyone thinks. The best part is that Robby occasionally leans into it harder than Dennis does.
Mateo not so casually asks why he keeps giving Dennis preferred shifts, and Robby just stares into the distance for a long moment.
"You don't understand the power that man holds over me."
Meanwhile the actual truth is staring everyone directly in the face. Robby isn't acting like he's getting blackmailed. He's just acting like an old man who's deeply, catastrophically in love with his husband.
4
By the time the blackmail theory starts to die out, the ED has reached one universal conclusion: Whatever is wrong with Dennis and Robby is most probably work-place specific.
Because yes, maybe they flirt. Maybe they're co-dependent. Maybe Dennis openly steals food from Robby's plate like a raccoon with no fear of God. But they also spend twelve hours a day together in an environment psychologically hostile to normal human behaviour.
So, eventually the staff settles on the explanation that feels safest, which is that they're work spouses. Just…significantly too intense about it.
This rumour gains traction after a sixteen hour shift, when Dennis walks out of a trauma room with the other man, takes one look at him and sighs.
"You've had too much caffeine and not enough real food today."
Robby groans, "I had almonds."
"That was at nine am."
Then, Dennis disappears and comes back five minutes later with coffee, a sandwich, a protein bar and Robby's migraine meds. He pushes the items into Robby's arms with no words and a stern glare.
Javadi raises a brow, "That is the most married-est thing I've ever seen."
Dennis just shrugs, but glances in relief when Robby opens the sandwich to eat.
"Work married."
It was supposed to be a joke, but somehow that made things worse. Because once people started to look for it, the work spouse thing is everywhere. They know each other's schedules better than their own, and they instantly gravitate toward each other during difficult trauma cases. They even have this scary synchronisation that nobody thought was possible. The weirdest thing is that they don't even seem to be aware that they're doing it anymore. Dennis automatically hands Robby a pen before he asks. Robby catches Dennis before he walks directly into a door after a double shift.
At one point, Dennis falls asleep sitting upright during a lull in the ED. Without even pausing the conversation with a few others, Robby reaches over, shifting his head onto his shoulder. The staff at the nurse station watches this happen in silence, the sight looking oddly domestic.
Robby notices approximately thirty seconds too late, all unoccupied eyes on him and the sleeping Dennis Whitaker on his shoulder.
"What?"
Santos just blinks at him once, before tilting her head and humming. "You tucked him in."
"He looked uncomfortable."
Dennis, however, still half asleep, finds comfort in his husbands warmth and leans closer, "You're so soft."
They has Robby visibly consider death for one, having half of his staff see his 'secret' husband nuzzle into his arm, and two, not being able to cuddle said husband back.
The work husband thing becomes popular after that, a running joke in the ED. But nobody finds it as hysterically funny as Dennis and Robby. Especially because this is the closest anyone has ever gotten to the truth so far.
Obviously, they start escalating.
Dennis begins to jokingly refer to Robby as his 'work husband', and Robby retaliates with a sarcastic comment about Dennis being his 'unfortunate workplace companion'.
Then, there is the overnight shift incident.
It's a rare occasion where both of them are on the night shift. Dennis is running on little to no sleep and those red bull drinks that Robby hates. They're in a room with one med student, going over a basic case, but Dennis slips up and calls Robby 'baby'. They all freeze, before Robby changes the conversation back to the patient, nut its to late because the med student looks like she's having a religious experience.
The theory just validates itself, depicting Dennis and Robby as two coworkers who have become so emotionally entangled through shared trauma and long shifts that they've accidentally developed a marriage-like bond.
Honestly, everyone finds this explanation comforting. Especially since the alternative would be admitting that Robby and Dennis are behaving exactly like people secretly, legally and happily married.
5
The work spouse theory survives for maybe two months. Long enough that people stop actively investigating whatever is happening between Robby and Dennis and simply accept them as a deeply unsettling workplace unit.
Then Dennis ruins everything during a shift in late October. It's getting to the colder temperatures, enough for Dennis to slip outside, grab Robby's spare jacket from the car and slip it on over his scrubs. When he walks into the staff break room, Dana narrows her eyes immediately.
"What happened to your own clothes, Whitaker?"
Dennis just makes himself a coffee like normal. "I was cold. And this is all could find, since someone gets weird if i steal the good hoodies."
"You got a stain on the blue one."
"You said you liked that hoodie on me."
"I lied."
Nobody reacts at first because this is, unfortunately, normal for these two. What Dennis mutters next, however, changes things.
“Besides, technically half this stuff is mine anyway.”
That causes silence, it causes Robby to stop typing, and Dennis to stop moving once he catches the meaning of his words.
Dana slowly lowers her coffee cup.
“…Technically?” she repeats.
Dennis turns around like a man realizing he has just stepped directly onto a landmine. But then, instead of listening to the look in Robby's eyes and shutting up, he doubles down.
“You know how Vegas is.”
Now the silence is gone and the room explodes.
“What.”
“Oh my god,” Santos whispers. “OH MY GOD.”
The theory develops at horrifying speed. They're not secret exes, not work spouses, not using any blackmail.
No. Instead, They drunkenly got married in Vegas and never annulled it.
This. Whole. Time.
Everything suddenly makes sense. The odd domesticity, the matching routines, the bizarre tension. Everyone now realises why they act simultaneously married and emotionally repressed.
The entire ED latches onto the theory with frightening emotional intensity.
Especially because Robby and Whitaker react way too strongly.
“We are NOT married,” Robby snaps later that morning.
“Then why did Whitaker say Vegas?” Mckay asks immediately.
Dennis points aggressively with a huff, “Objection. A lot of things can occur in Vegas.”
“That’s not how objections work.”
“You don’t know my process.”
After that, things spiral beyond recovery. The ED becomes obsessed with reconstructing the fictional Vegas wedding in between the chaos of treating patient after patient.
According to various the whispers; they got drunk after a secret conference, one of them dared the other, and then they woke up married and mutually decided to ignore it forever
The details vary wildly depending on who you ask, and of course Robby and Dennis make absolutely no effort to help.
In fact, they actively make it worse.
“You promised we’d never speak about Vegas again,” Dennis says tragically during a lull moment in the ED which lead to them getting questioned once more.
Robby points at him with a targeted look, “You lost passport privileges.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You tried to marry an Elvis impersonator twice.”
The most ridiculously part is that the rumor is so close to the truth it starts making both of them visibly nervous for the first time.
Because yes, they did get married unexpectedly.
And yes, there was alcohol involved.
And yes, they absolutely kept putting off dealing with it.
The only difference is that somewhere along the line, neither of them actually wanted the annulment anymore.
Unfortunately, nobody in the ED interprets the growing panic correctly. They think Robby and Dennis are terrified of people discovering they’re legally tied together.
Really, Robby is terrified because Dennis keeps accidentally revealing details that are alarmingly specific.
“Remember when you lost the ring in the hotel bathroom?” He says absentmindedly during charting.
Robby looks like he’s about to have a cardiac attack.
“That,” he says carefully, “was hypothetical.”
His husband just stares at him. “…Right.”
At this point the ED has fully committed. A betting pool starts over whether they’re secretly trying to get divorced or secretly in love.
Meanwhile Robby and Dennis are sleeping in the same bed every night and arguing about grocery lists like actual psychopaths.
+1
At some point, the rumours stop becoming as funny and start becoming genuinely unmanageable. Not because they're close to the truth. Not because they're close to the truth. Honestly, despite having the information practically served to them on a plater, most of them are so wildly inaccurate that Robby and Dennis mostly find them amusing.
The problem is the conspiracy board.
Not an actually conspiracy board. Probably.
But Robby is almost positive that there is a group chat dedicated to keeping tabs on their relationship, and someone made a spreadsheet at some point. Then, last week, a med student had asked Dennis whether 'the Montreal incident' happened before or after the alleged Vegas marriage.
There was no Montreal incident.
There was no vegas marriage either. Well…not Vegas.
The final straw comes a month or two into the whole 'Vegas Marriage' that everyone is set on believing. After another shift at the ED, a lot of the staff have a get together at the local bar.
"I have questions." Dana says.
"And I don't have answers." Robby huffs, sipping on his whiskey.
"You told Langdon you met in Chicago, Whitaker told Javadi you met on a beach, and I was told you were married by an Elvis impersonator."
That makes Dennis snort, and Robby elbows him in response.
Dana narrows her eyes, her scary maternal act coming out.
"What is actually going on with you two?"
Dennis looks at Dana, then at the others who look just as interested, and then he looks at his husband who looks exhausted from the attention.
There's a long pause, the Robby sighs.
"We're married."
Dana stares at him, than laughs.
"Okay," She shakes her head. "Seriously. I ain't believing that Vegas bullshit anymore"
Dennis just snorts into his drink.
"This is serious."
"No, come on." It was Mateo this time that spoke up.
"We got married one year ago," Robby says.
"At a courthouse," Dennis adds helpfully. "Very boring. No Elvis"
They all wait for the punchline, but it never comes. The tables they were all sat at slowly gets quieter as more people realise the conversation has stopped sounding like a joke.
This time its Santos that speaks up, blinking. "Wait—does that mean you've been lying this whole time?"
Dennis puts his hands up, "In our defence, we have technically told the truth multiple times."
"You said Dennis blackmailed you into marriage." Langdon argues.
"It was a hyperbole."
"You called him your ex-wife!"
Dennis shrugs.
"Spiritually."
A horrifying realisation spreads across everyone's face as they connect the dots.
"Oh my god." Javadi whispers.
And then, somehow, impossibly, Robby makes it worse, and he might just class it as payback.
"We didn't think people would take the rumours that seriously."
Dennis laughs softly at that, his head falling against his husband's shoulder for a moment for stability.
"You gaslight the entire emergency department for months!"
"Counterpoint," Dennis hums. "It was really fucking funny."
Everyone just kind of stares at them for a moment. Nobody seems capable of processing the fact that the actually truth is somehow simpler and yet also more insane than every theory combined. That's when Mel, who's been keeping out of this whole mess, speaks up.
"So..wait."
Everyone looks at her.
"You're actually in love?"
They all go still at that, but then Dennis' expression softens first, and Robby looks at him automatically, as instinctively as breathing.
Then Dennis smiles.
"Unfortunately." He hums.
Robby cuts him off with a flick to the head, "Obsessed with me, actually."
The truth, in the end, was much clearer than anyone would have guessed; they had just fallen in love and never figured out how to act normal about it. However, they all forgot about one main thing about workplace relationships getting a spotlight. HR, unfortunately, has to request a meeting.